Iola Mayor Bill Shirley remembered the city’s decision 4 1/2 years ago to hire Van Scoyoc Associates, a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm.
“We said we’d stick with them as long as we got results,” said Shirley, then a city commissioner.
On Thursday, Van Scoyoc representatives were in Iola to remind the city just how successful some of those results have been.
For about $60,000 annually since 2007, Van Scoyoc has assisted the city secure $500,000 in federal monies to help upgrades to Iola’s sewer lagoons; another $300,000 for drinking water and wastewater pipe improvements and $48,000 to upgrade the city library.
But Van Scoyoc’s assistance was never more apparent than following the summer flood of 2007.
Iola had found itself on the losing end of a bureaucratic str uggle to secure funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a number of repair or replacement projects, City Administrator Judy Brigham recalled.
Van Scoyoc represented the city in a number of meetings with FEMA executives, an effort that culminated in the agency eventually providing more than $1.5 million for such things as Iola’s new swimming pool.
“Without (Van Scoyoc) I know those FEMA battles would have been very one-sided,” Brigham said.
Brigham and Shirley spoke Thursday during a special Iola City Council meeting to host Jeffery Trinca, vice president of Van Scoyoc, and Stephanie Roehl, the firm’s manager of government relations.
The pair were in Iola as part of a listening tour of communities and agencies it represents in Washington.
Brigham said Iola’s and Van Scoyoc’s relationship with the city’s congressional delegation goes beyond dollars and cents.
“We had to learn how to make Iola’s issues important to them in Washington,” Brigham said. “Our congressional delegation has a real endearment to our community. They know what we’ve done and that we’ve been good stewards of our tax dollars.”
Trinca spoke about Van Scoyoc’s ongoing efforts to secure funding from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a levee study at Riverside Park, including the costs associated with creating a certified levee on the east side of the park, making it essentially flood-proof.
Trinca said the firm also is constantly looking for federal monies, through grants or earmarks, that would benefit rural communities such as Iola. In that vein, the firm is working with Sen. Jerry Moran to find funding for new health care facilities, such as the planned construction of a new Allen County Hospital.
The political climate, mixed with the country’s ongoing national debt showdown, have made such efforts considerably more complicated, Trinca acknowledged.
But with Van Scoyoc, “Iola is as well-represented as any small community in Kansas,” Trinca said.
Trinca also lauded the city’s annual trek to the nation’s capital to visit with its congressional delegation, which keeps the city’s issues in the minds of those in Washington.
IOLA’S relationship with Van Scoyoc took shape in 2007 through the efforts of Iola native and businessman Richard Zahn and members of the Community Involvement Task Force, a local group of volunteers seeking a better Iola.
“It’s important to understand that the whole process began by citizens who were not elected officials,” former mayor John McRae said at the meeting. “When you look at the numbers, we are on the positive side of it.”
Through Van Scoyoc, the city was able to seek money to which it had no real access before then, McRae said.
“The money was there,” Brigham agreed. “But we didn’t know how to ask.”
