Category: Sedgwick county government

Here’s a chart that shows the number of Sedgwick County residents for each Sedgwick County employee:

Although there have been ups and downs, the trend is that Sedgwick County employee count is growing faster than the county’s population.

A recent advertisement by Sedgwick County Commission Candidate Marcey Gregory in the October 12, 2008 Wichita Eagle contained a few points that deserve comment and clarification.

First, the ad, as part of a checklist of attributes or characteristics of Gregory, has the item “Lower taxes.” If she’s proclaiming that we need lower taxes, voters only need to be reminded that in August, the City of Goddard, of which Gregory is the mayor, raised the property tax rate by a large amount. She supported this tax rate increase even though Goddard, as a growing city, experiences rapidly growing assessed value, and therefore rapidly rising tax collections. (See What Ray Frederick Forgot to Include about Marcey Gregory.)

Another item in the list is “Citizen voice in property tax valuation increases — Elect, don’t appoint, the County Appraiser.” Whether this is a good idea is open to discussion. Currently, there aren’t very many elected appraisers. That might be because the most prominent city with an elected appraiser — actually several — is Orleans Parish in Louisiana, which has the same boundaries as the City of New Orleans. That city and its system of elected appraisers richly deserves its reputation for political corruption.

Another item is “Protect and grow our tax base.” Gregory’s received the endorsement of the Wichita Chamber of Commerce and public support from some of the aircraft industry. Many of the Chamber member companies and these aircraft plants frequently appear before the Wichita City Council seeking property and sales tax exemptions. These exemptions, by removing property from the tax rolls, weaken the tax base. Does Gregory plan to eliminate these tax exemptions? That would protect our tax base — if that’s what she means to do.

The list of items for Karl Peterjohn, her opponent, contains one item, repeated twice for emphasis: “Paid lobbyist.” It’s a convenient slur, as right now lobbyists are held in low regard. But who has Peterjohn lobbied for? The answer: the taxpayers of Kansas, working against the type of tax increases that Gregory ushered in as mayor of Goddard.

Bob Weeks is one of the two campaign managers for Karl Peterjohn, Marcey Gregory’s opponent.

Two weeks ago, Kansas held its primary elections. As part of the primary, we elect precinct committeeman and committeewomen. It’s sort of confusing, as everyone else on the ballot goes on to face a challenger in the November general election. But for the precinct races, it ends in August.

Earlier this year someone convinced me that being a precinct committeeman was worthwhile, so in June I filed. Some precincts don’t even have candidates, and in many others there’s only one candidate. But in my precinct I had an opponent.

At first, I decided not to campaign. I was involved in another campaign and working hard on it. And, it was more important to me that that candidate be elected to his office than it was for me to be elected precinct committeeman. So I didn’t want to take time away from my efforts in his campaign. But someone else convinced me that I should campaign for myself and try to be elected.

How, then, should I campaign? Everything I’ve read told me that personal contact with voters is the best way to get votes. So I made a campaign flyer, which you can download here. (Imagine this printed on both sides of a sheet of paper and folded.) It’s pretty plain — okay, painfully plain — but it says what I wanted to say.

I obtained the voter list for my precinct, and identified the houses I wanted to visit. There were nearly 200. I planned to visit starting the Friday before the Tuesday election.

Then, on the Thursday before the election, a mailing arrived at my home. It was a generic mailing which you can view here. You can tell that the candidates’ names and polling place location are printed separately.

Nowhere on this piece can you identify who sent it. Kansas law doesn’t require disclosure for precinct races like this.

So now I panicked. Could I still win? I had 200 houses to visit, and very little time. So for many houses, I just “dropped” my flyer without ringing the doorbell. But I talked to many voters, especially on a warm and sunny Saturday morning, when many people were outside working in their yards before it got too hot.

I never saw evidence that my opponent did anything like this.

The result? I won by 67 votes to 32 votes.