About Mo-Kan

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MO-KAN Regional Council is an economic and community development organization servicing county and municipal governments in four Missouri counties, two Kansas counties and one municipality in a non-member Kansas County: Andrew, Buchanan, Clinton, and Dekalb counties in Missouri; Atchison and Doniphan counties in Kansas; and Morrill municipality in Brown County, Kansas.

The concept of a regional council stemmed from the need to pool area resources for the purpose of securing professional services for counties and municipalities. One such service lacking at the time of conception was that of planning services for land use and zoning. Legislation providing for this pooling of effort was enacted in Kansas and Missouri in the 1950's and 60's. In 1957, Kansas authorized County Zoning and Planning Commissions, which could either employ a Zoning Officer or in the less populous counties contract for consulting services. In 1966, Missouri designated twenty areas permitted to pool planning resources. Included in the Missouri pooling zone were Andrew, Buchanan, Clinton and DeKalb (ABCD) counties.

The ABCD Regional Planning Commission was chartered in February 1968. In June of 1968, the Doniphan County, Kansas Planning and Zoning Commission sought membership with the Missouri Commission to create synergy in the outlying St. Joseph Metropolitan. Consequently, permission was granted to create the Mo-Kan Bi-State Planning Commission whose name changed five years later to the entity we now know as Mo-Kan Regional Council. Immediately seeing the value in the regional planning commission, the City of Atchison sought and was granted membership in November of 1968. Kansas membership increased with the addition of Atchison County and the City of Horton in 1974. In 1984 the cities of Hiawatha and Morrill also elected to join.

Over the course of time, member governments developed a wider-range of needs other than that of long-range planning. The organization began providing services such as grant procurement and administration, offset printing and cartography, and has continued to broaden its scope of services over the years.

The voting membership of the Mo-Kan Regional Council consists of 32 persons, sixteen each from Missouri and Kansas. Kansas members are named directly to the Council by Doniphan and Atchison Counties and the municipalities of Atchison and Morrill. Missouri members are first named by the counties and municipalities to the ABCD Regional Planning Commission. This group then holds a caucus by county to name the sixteen who will be the Mo-Kan Council voting members from Missouri. The Council and the Commission meet simultaneously each month to transact Council Business.