Take the steps to make McCook an even better place to call home

Last year, the McCook Community Foundation Fund Advisory Committee reviewed and revised its vision statement. It’s pretty simple and straightforward: Making McCook an even better place to call home.

In other words, McCook has a lot of great things going for it, a lot of tremendous assets already in place, a lot of great people working to make our community thrive and grow.

But we can’t rest on our laurels, we can’t continue to do the status quo because that is actually going downhill, we can’t continue to just do things “because that’s how we’ve always done it.”

Instead, we need to step it up a notch. We need to make what we already have even more appealing. We need to invest in our community and make what we already have even better. We need to appreciate what those who came before us have done and build upon their accomplishments.

For example, this past weekend I helped coordinate the fourth annual Michelle’s Memorial Triathlon. (Chris Schaben did the majority of the work and deserves huge kudos for all the hours he puts into the event.)

Triathlons, which involves swimming, biking and running, is a fairly niche activity, drawing people who don’t mind some mild chafing since you hop out of the swimming pool onto a bicycle, soaking wet. In other words, the event draws people not only from McCook and Southwest Nebraska, but from across Nebraska as well as Kansas and Colorado.

There is nothing like an out-of-towner to remind you of the good things in your community, things which we take for granted, things which we overlook, things we may notice until someone else brings it to our attention.

The triathlon is held at Kelley Park in McCook, utilizing the McCook City Swimming Pool, the road next to the hospital (just coincidental) and McCook’s walking trail. After the race, several of the participants came up to me to thank us for hosting and commend all the assets we had used.

Although the McCook city pool can be downright cold and climbing out without a ladder takes hurricane strength especially after a 500-meter swim, we are able to accommodate a lot of swimmers and water walkers all at once. And we have a great city pool staff including the lifeguards who got up so bright and early, especially TJ Renner, Emily Tjindal and Kora Keslin.

While we appreciate the pool we have and are looking forward to hosting hundreds of swimmers in a few weeks, that should not stop us from building an even better pool to serve our community’s needs. A new aquatic facility would make McCook an even better place to call home.

As for the bike portion, there is nothing we can do to assuage their minor gripes: the wind and hills, except embrace the fact that McCook actually isn’t flat.

The runners and walkers then took off on the walking trail, which winds through Kelley Park and down to East 11th Street. The trails we have are great. Trees provide shade on portions. There are benches along the way to rest. Exercise equipment alongside the trail adds to the allure.

But it is a relatively short trail system. Just as you are getting your heart rate up, you’ve reached the end. And the trail does not get you safely across town on foot or bike.

An expanded walking trail would make McCook an even better place to call home.

Do these improvements bring more jobs to our community? Does it improve the housing situation in our community? Not directly, but they do improve the quality of life and may be the deciding factor of whether a young family decides to make McCook their home.

As Abraham Maslow (better known for Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) said, “You will either step forward into progress or you will step backward into safety.”

If we want people to choose to stay, live or return to our community, then we need to make these improvements; we need to make these investments; we all need to take the steps to make our community an even better place to call home.