photo by: Bremen Keasey

Zack Daniel, who was recently named Eudora's City Manager, outside City Hall. He hopes he can continue to manage the city's growth and believes it is set up to take advantage of regional development.

For the past two years, Zack Daniel said he had some of the “best on-the-job training” to take the reins of Eudora.

Daniel has served as an assistant city manager for the city the past two years and was named the interim city manager in June after the Eudora City Commission voted to end the previous city manager’s contract, as the Journal-World reported.

The Eudora Commission voted to offer Daniel the full-time role during a meeting on Sept. 22, putting the Kansas native in charge of the day-to-day operations of city government in the community of about 6,000 people just east of Lawrence. Daniel had served in city governments across Kansas, including Edwardsville, Emporia and Wichita, but he hopes to “lean on” his experience in Eudora to make sure he can help the city take advantage of what’s expected to be many opportunities.

“We are poised for growth,” Daniel said. “I am happy to have a seat at that table.”

In recent years, growth around Eudora has been in the spotlight, in part because of the recent developments in nearby De Soto. The Panasonic plant, with its expected 4,000 jobs, is “right on the front door” of Eudora, Daniel said. The plant is less than a 10-minute drive from most parts of Eudora.

Since the announcement, he said the city has seen its “baked in advantages” help make it attractive to development. It has easy access along K-10 and swaths of developable land are available in the city and just outside the city limits. Some annexation also is taking place to grow the city’s boundaries, Daniel said. Those assets, along with the city’s strong community character, made developers take notice, and Daniel believes the regional spotlight is something Eudora can capitalize on.

“It gives us lots of opportunities to consider when it comes to residential and commercial development,” Daniel said. “My goal, broadly, is to best position Eudora to leverage (our) baked-in advantages.”

While he noted the city is in a key spot to capitalize on growth, he said it will be important to “thread the needle” to make sure the growth is managed. Daniel said it is a good challenge to have — as opposed to needing to generate growth out of nothing — but he is mindful of needing to strike the right balance of bringing in more residents to support economic development while not overburdening current residents.

“Balancing all of these different needs and opportunities, that’s our biggest challenge,” Daniel said.

Daniel said maintaining the city’s service levels will be a key focus. That includes the need to upgrade or replace its water treatment plant. Daniel said the plant is in a floodplain and will eventually need to be moved. Already the city has approved new planning and design for the plant for next year, and Daniel said the city plans to approach such large projects with careful planning. As the city explores upgrades for infrastructure, like improvements to its electrical department, Daniel said he wants to ensure the city makes those upgrades at a deliberate pace to guard against big spikes in cost.

“We want to avoid that sticker shock,” Daniel said.

While he is still new to the position, Daniel said his two years in Eudora gave him lots of interaction with residents and stakeholders in the city, and he considers himself lucky to be in the community. He said that although residents may have many different perspectives on how to improve Eudora, they also have a deep “attachment to the community” and want to see it prosper. Daniel is excited to work on managing the city’s growth and said he thinks it is on the right path forward.

“I’m just very happy to be here,” Daniel said. “(There is) a lot of excitement for what we’ve got and the kind of success we’ve set ourselves up for.”