Voice For Liberty

Category: Wichita city government

  • Wichita City Council, September 15, 2009

    On today’s public agenda of the Wichita City Council, I have two things to discuss with the council. One is the city’s refusal to make public proposals submitted by planning firms wishing to be awarded a contract by the city. Background is here: Downtown Wichita proposals not available to citizens.

    Then, there’s Janet Miller’s junket to France, with background here: Janet Miller’s junket should be canceled.

    Mr. Mayor, members of the council:

    I’ve asked that the proposals from the four finalist firms for the downtown revitalization master plan be made available to the public. My request was denied.

    The part of the Kansas Open Records Act that the city cited does not prohibit release of the proposals. Instead, it states that the city is not “required to disclose” the proposals.

    So the city can share these with citizens if it wants to. And I think it should.

    According to the communication I received from the city, these proposals will not be made public until the city council accepts a proposal (or rejects them all).

    Since citizens won’t be able to read these proposals, they won’t be able to give any reasoned input on this matter. We don’t even know what questions to ask. I think this is intolerable. It’s offensive.

    There are a few citizens who can read these proposals: a select group of downtown boosters. The interests of these people — and of the various bureaucrats who also have these proposals — I would submit, are not representative of the city as a whole.

    Mr. Mayor, you can release these proposals if you want to. The citizens of Wichita would be better served if you do.

    Now, to the matter of Council Member Janet Miller’s travel to France. This trip can only be described as a junket, with all the negative connotations that go along with that word. To make it worse, the city is paying for a private citizen to make the trip, too.

    We’re in a tough budget time. Even in good times these trips should be avoided, but when budgets are stressed, travel should be the first thing to be cut.

    I realize the cost of this trip is small when compared to the total spending of the city. It’s less than $4,000, according to the estimates I’ve been given. But that’s still money that could be saved.

    Furthermore, these actions are symbolic. The city council asks citizens and employees to sacrifice, but in this case is not willing to set an example.

    There’s more travel to be approved on the agenda today, along with an item that hints of more to come later on. These items should not be approved.

    For Council Member Miller’s trip, I have these questions:

    What is the benefit of traveling to the International Cities Conference and the Sister Cities Festival?

    Why is the city paying for a private citizen, even though she is the Wichita Area Sister Cities President, to attend these events?

  • More Wichita travel on tap

    At tomorrow’s meeting of the Wichita City Council, approval of more council member travel is on the agenda.

    The two items are:

    • Approval of travel expenses for Council Member Miller to attend the Annual Built Environment and the Outdoors Summit in Topeka, Kansas, October 1-6, 2009.
    • Approval of travel expenses for Mayor Brewer, Vice-Mayor Skelton, Council Member Schlapp, Council Member Gray, Council Member Williams, and Council Member Miller to attend the LKM Annual Conference in Topeka, Kansas, October 3-6, 2009.

    (I wonder why Council Member Jeff Longwell isn’t making the LKM trip.)

    As of early Monday morning, the agenda packet (that’s the detailed material, sometimes several hundred pages, that accompanies the agenda) is not available for tomorrow’s meeting. But the agenda packet usually doesn’t contain more information about these travel items.

    I’ll be at the council meeting tomorrow asking that Janet Miller’s junket to France be canceled. (The city is also paying for a private citizen to take the trip with Miller.) I’ll ask that the council cancel this travel, too.

  • Janet Miller’s junket should be canceled

    At a time the City of Wichita is under severe budget pressure, shouldn’t unnecessary travel be the first place the city looks to save money?

    At the August 18 meeting of the Wichita City Council, an agenda item was approved without discussion or presentation of any details other than what appear here: “Approval of travel expenses for Council Member Janet Miller and Kelly Harper, Wichita Area Sister Cities President, to attend the International Cities Conference in Paris, France and the Sister Cities Loire Festival in Orleans, France, September 21-27.”

    It took several phone calls and emails, but I’ve learned that the estimated costs for this trip are $1,587 for Miller and $2,137 for Harper. That’s a total of $3,724.

    And yes, the city is paying these expenses for Harper, a private citizen. Van Williams, the city’s public information officer, said that Harper, who will also serve as an interpreter, is leaving three days earlier to help prepare for the trip.

    I’ve asked Miller several times to explain why this trip is a good idea. In an email message, I explained while that my nature is to be critical of expenditures like this, I’m willing to listen and learn. I asked if she could give me some insight or reasons as to why it is wise for the city to spend this money. Also, what are the benefits of the Sister Cities program?

    But she won’t respond to email or telephone messages.

    Council member Miller is aware of the budget pressures at city hall. At one time she suggested salary reductions as an alternative to layoffs and service cutbacks.

    Travel — especially a junket like this — is an easy item to cut. Citizens need to demand an explanation as to why the city is paying for this trip.

  • Cable television, but no paint?

    While I was watching the City of Wichita’s cable channel 7 (where it’s all things good about Wichita, 24/7) Mary K. Vaughn, Director of Housing & Community Services appeared with an announcement:

    The city has a free paint program. If homeowners meet income guidelines and their houses are located within certain areas of town, the city will give them free paint.

    Here’s my question: If someone can afford cable television — that’s where the city’s channel 7 appears — can’t they buy their own paint?

  • Downtown Wichita proposals not available to citizens

    As part of Wichita’s downtown revitalization effort, city leaders decided to hire a planning firm. Four firms have been selected as finalists, and a committee is in the process of evaluating their proposals.

    Whether or not you think this planning process is wise — and I happen to think it is not — it seems to be the will of the city and the special interest groups that will benefit from this type of central planning. So, it seems, we might as well make the best of it. This would include selecting a planning firm that seems most likely to respect property rights, specifically: (a) rejecting the use of eminent domain to seize property, (b) respecting existing zoning and land use rights, and (c) rejecting the use of TIF districts and other forms of public subsidy. These are the things that I learned are important from my trip to Anaheim’s Platinum Triangle, if a city wants to plan in a freedom-friendly way.

    On September 22 and 23, the planning firms will be making presentations to the public. I thought it would be great for citizens to be able to read the proposals so that they would be able to ask intelligent questions at these presentations. Unfortunately, the city won’t let citizens read these proposals, and citizens will not be permitted to ask questions at the presentations.

    The City of Wichita, according to Scott Knebel (Principal Planner, Advanced Plans Division, Wichita-Sedgwick County Metropolitan Area Planning Department), doesn’t consider the proposals to be open records under the Kansas Open Records Act. He wrote that in response to my informal request to view the proposal documents. I’ve now made a formal request to the city, and if the city denies access to the records, it will have to cite the provision in the Kansas Open Records Act on which it is relying.

    Earlier I said that citizens can’t read these proposals, but that’s not entirely true. If you’re a member of a select committee, you can have them. Government shouldn’t be allowed to pick and choose which select citizens are allowed to see how their tax dollars are to be used, and all citizens have a right to know if government intends to take their property.

    The fact that the city doesn’t want to let citizens — except those in a limited circle of downtown boosters — view these proposals and participate in the planning firm selection process is disturbing. It follows a pattern of stacking committees with people friendly to the desired goal, with no desire for dissent to be heard.

  • Wichita city managers travel

    At the same time that the City of Wichita is struggling with its budget, including making layoffs, senior managers still travel.

    City council members still travel too, as last week the council approved travel expenses for Janet Miller to travel to France for a sister cities meeting. It’s unclear whether the city will also pay for the Wichita Area Sister Cities President to make the trip.

    Some of the trips the Wichita managers made sound like worthwhile trips. In the private sector, however, travel to conferences and such is one of the first things to be cut when budgets are stretched.

    To view the summary of Wichita senior management travel that will be presented to the Wichita city council tomorrow, click on Wichita senior management travel expenses for June 2009.

  • At Wichita city council, special pleading of selfish interests

    At yesterday’s meeting of the the Wichita City Council, a matter was presented to the council that provided an illustration of basic economic principles that are foreign to the council.

    A condominium homeowners association asked for special assessment tax financing to make repairs to the building. My remarks that I delivered at the meeting were based on my post In Wichita, waiving guidelines makes for bad policy.

    David M. Bryan, a Wichita attorney and resident of the building, represented the the homeowners association that is asking for the special assessment financing. He spoke after I did. His wife accompanied him to the podium.

    Bryan’s case for help was based on factors that — besides being irrelevant — show just what a fiasco this matter is. It also illustrates just how selfish these condominium owners are in expecting the city to bail them out of their problem.

    First, he says that he and the other condo owners represent one of the goals of downtown redevelopment. “We all took that leap of faith and bought the lofts” when the building was still under construction.

    He didn’t know what tuckpointing was when he moved in to this building, and he and the other residents didn’t know that this [the need for repair] was going to happen.

    He said that he thinks the building represents a sound and good investment in downtown redevelopment, and that the building is part of what the city council wants to accomplish.

    Conventional financing for these repairs would, Bryan said, require personal guarantees by all residents, and that would prevent the individual units from being sold unless the entire loan was paid off.

    (In my testimony, I made the point that the amount that each condominium owner needs to pay to fix the building is on the order of what it would cost to paint a conventional house of the same value as these units. There’s also a defect in the ownership structure of this building if there is no way to pay for repairs like the present situation, as things like this are foreseeable.)

    Council member Paul Gray, speaking from the bench, expressed concern that approval of this request sets a precedent for other condominium buildings in Wichita to make the same request that this building has made.

    In the end, council member Lavonta Williams made the motion to approve the financing. All members except Gray voted for it. Vice-Mayor Jim Skelton was not present.

    After the council voted, Mrs. Bryan gave Wichita economic development director Allen Bell a pat on the back, and Bell and Mr. Bryan shared a congratulatory handshake. You can see these things by attending the meetings in person.

    It appears that the city’s desire for downtown redevelopment is an unsustainable goal that can’t be maintained without continued subsidy. The message is this: When a downtown development gets in financial trouble, make a beeline to city hall. This was the case last year when the Warren Theater received a no- and low-interest loan from the city, propping up the city’s ill-conceived investment in a TIF district benefiting that theater.

    Recently we learned that rehabilitation of a downtown hotel is on hold because historic tax credits — that is, outright gifts to developers — are on hold because the state can’t afford to grant them.

    Now, buildings that need small repairs that can be deemed to be part of the city’s plan for downtown redevelopment are eligible for special assessment financing.

    I don’t think the council is aware of the corrosive effect of these special favors. No news media reported this story. It is a small amount of money that is involved in this case. This matter is emblematic, however, of an activist city council and city staff who believe they can direct economic investment in Wichita better than its citizens can on their own.

    While listening to Bryan make his case, I thought this is an illustration of the lessons Henry Hazlitt taught us in his classic work Economics in One Lesson. The first chapter may be read at One Lesson, which I excerpt here:

    Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics, or medicine — the special pleading of selfish interests.

    While every group has certain economic interests identical with those of all groups, every group has also, as we shall see, interests antagonistic to those of all other groups. While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. …

    In addition to these endless pleadings of self-interest, there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups.

  • I’m not proud of Wichita’s airfare subsidy

    In today’s Wichita Eagle, editorialist Rhonda Holman gives Wichita a big pat on the back for its subsidy given to a low-cost air carrier. She goes so far as to mention a recent New York Times article that tells how Wichita was one of the first cities to do this.

    It reminds me of how a few years ago Sam Williams, a Wichita advertising executive and onetime Chairman of Fair Fares, likened Wichita’s subsidy to the role of Kansas during the Civil War.

    It’s all a little over the top, to say the least. But this is all in the spirit of the claims made to support the necessity of the subsidy. At one time, subsidy supporters claimed that the value of the subsidy would be $4.8 billion per year to Kansas. I think that number is larger than the state’s general fund spending at the time, and certainly not supported by any reasonable interpretation of facts.

    Whether the subsidy paid to AirTran is a success is hard to say. If your inclination is towards ever-increasing government involvement in commerce, you probably like the subsidy. Never mind that it may not be providing the benefits we really need.

    But when a city will loan money to a private condominium association to make repairs to its building, what’s a few million dollars paid to an airline?

    At one time it was thought that the subsidy would be temporary. All that was needed, leaders such as former mayor Bob Knight said, was to give AirTran a jump start, and in a few years it would then be able to sustain itself without continued subsidy. Now, however, the subsidy is a permanent fixture, even though Holman raises alarm as to whether the state of Kansas will continue its $5 million annual contribution to the subsidy.

    My question is this: will AirTran ever report a profit on its Wichita service, thereby reducing the subsidy it receives?

    What, are you kidding?

  • In Wichita, waiving guidelines makes for bad policy

    Remarks to be delivered to the August 18, 2009 meeting of the Wichita City Council.

    Mr. Mayor, members of the Wichita City Council,

    I am here to ask you to deny the request for special assessment financing for the Lofts at St. Francis homeowners association to make repairs to their building.

    I’ve spoken to this council about how the facade improvement program, in general, is bad public policy. In this case, it’s bad public policy compounded by the waiver of principles or guidelines that this council recently set in place.

    I realize that special assessment financing means that the city is not making a grant of money to the homeowners association. Instead, the city is making a loan, which is required to be repaid over time.

    What concerns me about this situation is that two guidelines in the city’s facade improvement program must be waived for this project to obtain special assessment financing.

    The first is the private investment match. This is designed to ensure that the property owners have “skin in the game” and that the taxes will be paid back.

    Here, the city is proposing that since the building’s owners have made a past investment in this property, there’s no need to require a concurrent investment. It hardly needs to be noted that anyone who has purchased property has made a past investment in that property.

    Second, facade improvement projects are required to undergo a gap analysis to “prove” the need for public financing. According to the city’s report: “This project does not lend itself to this type of gap analysis; however, staff believes that conventional financing would be difficult to obtain for exterior repairs to a residential condominium property like this.”

    So the city proposes to waive this requirement as well.

    There seems to me to be a defect in the manner of ownership of this building. While the homeowners association and the individual condominium owners might not have anticipated that repairs would be needed so soon after the building’s opening, they must have contemplated that repairs and maintenance — to either exterior or interior common areas — would be needed at some time. How does the association plan to pay for these?

    So what will happen if the city council doesn’t approve the special assessment financing? The agenda report states “Each individual condo owner would be required to fund a share of the cost.”

    Isn’t that what private property owners do: fund the cost of repairs to their property?

    According to the Sedgwick County Treasurer’s office, the appraised values of these condos range from $103,000 to $310,200, with an average value of $201,943. The maximum amount being added to each condo’s assessment is $4,022, although I have learned that the actual amount may be closer to $3,000.

    That’s along the lines of what it might cost to perform a few repairs and paint a house that’s worth what these condos are worth. So I think it’s hard to make the case that these property owners can’t afford to make these repairs on their own without a loan from the city.

    Furthermore, if the goal of the facade improvement program is to provide an incentive for property owners to fix up their buildings, I would submit that such incentive is not necessary in this case. This building is a valuable residential property, and the homeowners have a strong incentive to maintain the integrity and value of their property.

    Mr. Mayor and members of the council, let’s ask these owners do just what thousands of homeowners in Wichita do every year: take responsibility for the maintenance of their own property without looking to city hall for help.