Iola should have a city flag, local artist Max Grundy says.
Grundy, who purchased Iola’s old Elm Street water tower in 2022 with plans to convert it into a one-of-a-kind Airbnb, spoke Monday with City Council members about his vision for a potential city flag.
He provided 10 or so potential designs he considered representative of Iola.
Most were blue and gold, to represent the “unique partnership” of the Kansas sky and fields of grain. That both also match Iola’s school colors played a role in his thought process, Grundy said.
Some of his designs had stars, a bird and many had geometric shapes like squares to represent Iola’s downtown square. Still another paid homage to the city’s trails.
Grundy also included one sporting an image of what he expects his water tower to look like once it is transformed into an Airbnb.
“The challenge with a flag is it has to be simple and interesting at the same time,” Grundy said, “which is a lot harder than it seems.”
He described many state and city flags as “a hot mess,” usually because they tried to convey too much, and often were designed by committees.
“You have to be able to read it from a great distance, and be able to convey information, but it can’t be too busy,” Grundy said.
Grundy noted both Wichita and El Dorado have introduced city flags to great fanfare in recent years, because of their distinct, yet simplistic designs.
“I just want to see what your thoughts are,” he told Council members.
Grundy spoke a bit about what made Iola unique in his eyes.
As a relative newcomer to the Sunflower State — he grew up in Salt Lake City before moving to Los Angeles for much of his adulthood before migrating to Iola about two years ago — Grundy said part of Kansas’s beauty is the unique partnership the terrain carries with the sky.
“From where I’m from, you have giant mountains and a metropolis below,” Grundy said, “and you see the sky a little bit. In Kansas, the sky has an equal opinion as the ground does. In a lot of ways that struck me, the ground and the sky are in almost equal proportions.”
Council members were receptive to his proposals, and promised to consider which designs they favored.
IN OTHER business, the Council renewed its property, vehicle and workman’s compensation insurance premiums through EMC Insurance for 2023-24 at a cost of $551,113, an increase of about $55,000 from last year.
