Junction City, KS (Just Say "NO"!) (Manhattan, Riley: low income, sales)

[AnywhereElse]

We lived in JC 3 decades ago, and have returned being here for a year. JC has long been known as "Junktown", and sadly, it has gotten much worse since we lived here 3 decades ago.

1. Shopping is almost non-existent here except for Wal-Mart and assorted "dollar" stores. Either order it in or pick it up in Manhattan. The downtown has basically nothing with most buildings empty and in serious need to repair, renovation or needing to torn down like many of the dwellings here.

2. The roads are in especially bad repair, even though property taxes and sales taxes are high, and where it goes, I couldn't figure it out! They are paying off a big foul up that they (the city) decided to participate in: https://www.governing.com/gov-instit...-comeback.html So that mistake has cost the infrastructure of a city already in bad shape.

3. Be aware that if you buy property here, there is a program operating that spay/neuters abandoned cats after catching them, and then they place them back in the neighborhoods. While this sounds like a good thing, they refuse to pick up any stray cats, which means if you actually care about them, you watch them getting hit in the streets, trying to care for kittens in sometimes less than zero degrees, and if they are using your yard for a toilet, making your dogs bark, exposing your kids to various viruses/diseases that can cross over into the human population, you can do nothing about it as the cats have been given the "right of way".
Even PETA disapproves of the way this is being handled. Currently, about 50 cats "fixed" and released over a 5 year period with many, many more running the streets. They refuse to do a working or farm cat program.

4. Also, in the be aware if you are going to buy property, they allow 19 pets per household here. Do you really want to chance that? And, yes, people do have that many.

5. JC has always been known for having a higher crime rate, but it used to be more or less limited to a certain area of the town that one simply could avoid. Unfortunately, they decided that low income housing should be spread throughout the town, so I don't think I need to explain what the impact of that was. There are a lot of charitable organizations and health clinics that make this city an attractive place for "welfare" types, well, there is no nice way to put it out there.

6. JC has always, IMO, taken advantage of being located next to an Army Post. Unusually high rents for rat traps (old, old mobile homes) is really the worst of it. The one saving grace for the city is that it is convenient to Ft. Riley. If one doesn't mind the drive, just about any other place in the area would be a better choice.

7. It has the problem that other cities have in that you have a "core" group who control everything, and bringing in any business that would compete against the "core" isn't going to happen. You know the type, they don't answer to anybody and keep getting elected.

It is unfortunate that the city is in its current state of disrepair, but frankly, I don't think those that are here actually saw the decline. Everything here is overpriced. We recently had some big bad thing that happened at the water department, a mistake by the contractor, but under the contract, from what I could tell, the city will be covering the expense, so go slowly if you drive through, I don't want you to disappear into a pothole!