Longtime City Attorney and City Manager for Dodge City passes away

By: Matt Allen, City Manager for Garden City

Dodge City, KS(westernkansasnews.com) Former City Attorney and City Manager for Dodge City Ken Strobel passed away on Jan 14 2018.

Strobel was the City Attorney for the City of Dodge City for 16 years prior to being appointed City Manager in 2007. He continued in that capacity until 2014.

During his career, Ken was instrumental in the establishment, preservation, and
expansion of Essential Air Service (EAS) to western Kansas. He authored most of the
combined responses to service proposals for the western Kansas EAS communities and
often served as the region’s spokesperson to the Federal Aviation Administration staff.
When an EAS community would employ a new City Manager or a new Airport Director,
Ken graciously served as the EAS historian, and would help guide the new staff through
the labyrinth of the federal program’s processes and red tape.

Strobel was a fierce champion of Dodge City high school and college athletics and full of
community pride, Ken promoted regional collaboration. He was instrumental in
establishing the Southwest Kansas Coalition (the lobbying group created for the Cities of
Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal). He also helped craft the proposal for, and then
advocate for, consolidating Garden City and Dodge City’s Essential Air Service funds to
secure 50 passenger regional jet service to southwest Kansas. This was not an easy
political position for Ken to take, but nobody knew the Essential Air Service program
better than him.

His professional opinion that regional jet service out of Garden City
Regional Airport was in the best interest of both communities (and would likely be the
only way to preserve commercial air service in the region) coupled with the relationships
of trust he had built over the years with FAA staff, leaders in other communities, and
leaders within his own community, however, eventually won the day. American Airlines
flies out of Garden City Regional Airport today, sustainably servicing a broader customer
base than our airports’ ever collectively served before, thanks in very large part to the
ingenuity, resilience and character of Ken Strobel.

Funeral service will be held at the First United Methodist Church in Dodge City on
Saturday, January 20, 2018 at 10 a.m.