Voice For Liberty

Tag: Sedgwick county government

  • Sedgwick County Commission Republican candidates to speak

    This Friday (July 16) the Wichita Pachyderm Club will feature Republican candidates for the Sedgwick County Commission. While three positions are open, in one position there is no contest in the Republican primary. In district four, the candidates are Lucy Burtnett and Richard Ranzau. In district five, the candidates are Dion Avello, Jim Skelton, and Chuck Warren.

    All are welcome to attend Wichita Pachyderm Club meetings. The program costs $10, which includes a delicious buffet lunch including salad, soup, two main dishes, and ice tea and coffee. The meeting starts at noon, although it’s recommended to arrive fifteen minutes early to get your lunch before the program starts.

    The Wichita Petroleum Club is on the ninth floor of the Bank of America Building at 100 N. Broadway (north side of Douglas between Topeka and Broadway) in Wichita, Kansas (click for a map and directions). You may park in the garage (enter west side of Broadway between Douglas and First Streets) and use the sky walk to enter the Bank of America building. The Petroleum Club will stamp your parking ticket and the fee will be only $1.00. Or, there is usually some metered and free street parking nearby.

  • Sedgwick County jail programs are working

    By Karl Peterjohn, Sedgwick County Commission Chair

    While making this community as safe as possible from criminal activity is a never-ending challenge a major achievement has been accomplished in Sedgwick County. The Sedgwick County jail population growth that appeared to be rising inexorably has been reversed in the last nine months.

    This is a major success.

    The June 18 Wichita Eagle editorial and news coverage about the recent success is understated with figures that diminish instead of accurately reflecting this accomplishment. As the new commissioner I had to cast a very difficult vote to appropriate additional tax funds of $2 million to finance the growing jail population last year. The jail population had been rising throughout 2009.

    By last October we had as many as 1,760 people in the jail, work release, or in other county jails around Kansas. That month’s average was 1,736. This was much higher than the beginning of the year.

    What changed? The county has expanded a number of alternative programs including day reporting, drug court, mental health court, and around the beginning of September, an expanded pre-trial services program. The intent was to make the people involved in a variety of misdemeanors and non-appearances for court dates more accountable for these types of illegal behavior and an extra benefit would be a reduced cost to taxpayers.

    In addition, a series of articles discussed the delays in sentenced criminals in being sent to the state prison.The impact of these articles resulted in changes and has had a major positive impact on the number of people occupying the county jail. In one day last month, the number of people in the jail dropped to 1,477.

    The cost of putting a person in the jail is over $65 a day. Pre-trial services cost per person is roughly 1/10 that cost. The jail problem is not solved, but the dimension of this problem has changed significantly for the better with a population that is closer to 1,500 than 1,750. June 22 there were 1,502. This is about the same as the average number of people in the jail between 2005-to-2008. When the cost exceeds $65 a day, this translates into $5 million a year, or over 1 mill on county property taxes.

    There are no final solutions for the larger issue of crime. However, there are much lower cost alternatives that are now being used to help keep this community safe. This success by Sedgwick County has not mentioned any of these jail population figures in the editorial commentary or news coverage. There is a lot of credit that deserves to be shared with all of the people: elected, staff, and judicial who are all involved in trying to keep our community safe.

    As a county commission candidate in 2008, I spoke out against spending over $125,000 per bed for additional space in the county jail expansion proposal that had a total price tag of almost $50 million. I said that there were better options available to keep this county safe at a reasonable price. These detention figures indicate that Sedgwick County is making significant progress in utilizing lower cost detention options.

  • Wichita economic development official to speak

    This Friday (June 18) Vicki Pratt Gerbino, president of the Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition, will address members and guests of the Wichita Pachyderm Club.

    The Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition, also known as GWEDC, is responsible for economic development in the Wichita area, such as recruitment and retention of “economic driver industries” in Wichita and Sedgwick County.

    All are welcome to attend Wichita Pachyderm Club meetings. The program costs $10, which includes a delicious buffet lunch including salad, soup, two main dishes, and ice tea and coffee. The meeting starts at noon, although it’s recommended to arrive fifteen minutes early to get your lunch before the program starts.

    The Wichita Petroleum Club is on the ninth floor of the Bank of America Building at 100 N. Broadway (north side of Douglas between Topeka and Broadway) in Wichita, Kansas (click for a map and directions). You may park in the garage (enter west side of Broadway between Douglas and First Streets) and use the sky walk to enter the Bank of America building. The Petroleum Club will stamp your parking ticket and the fee will be only $1.00. Or, there is usually some metered and free street parking nearby.

  • Southwest Airlines topic of Wichita Eagle article

    Sunday’s Wichita Eagle carried a story featuring local elected officials’ reaction to the possibility that Southwest Airlines would start service to Wichita. (City, county officials cautiously weigh subsidy for Southwest Airlines, May 30, 2010)

    A source of controversy is over the payments of public funds that are thought to be necessary to acquire the service. The Eagle article quotes an unnamed source as saying it would take about $3 million in public funds to “get the service up and running.” It is not disclosed whether this is a one-time requirement, or if this is $3 million per year for some specific period, or perhaps forever.

    Wichitans may want to remember that the subsidy paid to AirTran started small and was promoted as a temporary measure until the airline could establish itself in Wichita. The program, however, has grown to a combined $7 million annual payment from the state, county, and city. It seems unlikely that this number will ever drop.

    At one time Wichita was a city known for its entrepreneurs. But recently the New York Times noted that Wichita is known as a “pioneer in the business of paying airlines to continue service.”

    An interesting tidbit in the Eagle story is Wichita City Council Member Sue Schlapp making a distinction between a “subsidy” and an “incentive.” What we offer to Southwest would be an incentive, not a subsidy, she said.

    The overall tone of the article is that Wichita City Council Members and Sedgwick County Commissioners are making a show of concern, wanting to be “realistic,” desiring more details and something “reasonable and feasible.”

    Despite this show of concern and prudence, if this matter comes before these bodies, I’ll be surprised if even one member votes against it.

    One thing this article did not mention is that Charleston, South Carolina was able to lure Southwest without having to pay a subsidy.

    By way of comparison, the Wichita metropolitan area population is 612,683 (2009 estimate), while the Charleston-North Charleston-Summerville, metropolitan area populations is 659,191. In 2008, there were 780,756 enplanements at the Wichita airport, while there were 1,174,667 at the Charleston airport.

    According to reports, the Charleston Convention and Visitors Bureau estimates a $139 million economic impact with the arrival of Southwest. An economic impact analysis has been prepared for the City of Wichita, but Wichita officials will not release it, citing an exception in the Kansas Open Records Act (KORA).

  • Wichita’s Intrust Bank Arena shrouded in mystery

    Okay, maybe that’s a little over-hyped, but when arena cheerleader Rhonda Holman of the Wichita Eagle starts to question the operations of Intrust Bank Arena in downtown Wichita, there must be something going on.

    Holman’s column of yesterday complained of lack of transparency in the arena’s operations: “But with hindsight, and with the Intrust Bank Arena open three months and generating revenue, it’s more clear all the time that county leaders gave away too much oversight authority to SMG, leaving citizens in the strange and frustrating position of having too little hard information about how their $206 million investment is doing.”

    The sudden departure of arena manager Chris Presson under circumstances that can only be described as alarming will add to the concern of citizens. Well, not all citizens. Some arena boosters simply don’t care how much of a burden the arena may become to county taxpayers, as long as they have their arena.

    The lack of transparency at the arena and some county commissioner’s lack of concern about this important issue has been the subject of articles on this site. See Wichita downtown arena open records failure, Wichita downtown arena contract seems to require Sedgwick County approval, and Sedgwick County keeps lease agreement secret.

  • Sedgwick County Commission Chair to speak

    On Friday April 30, Karl Peterjohn will address members and guests of the Wichita Pachyderm Club. Peterjohn is the chair of the Sedgwick County Commission. His topic will be “A view from the county commission.”

    All are welcome to attend Pachyderm club meetings. The program costs $10, which includes a delicious buffet lunch including salad, soup, two main dishes, and ice tea and coffee. The meeting starts at noon, although it’s recommended to arrive fifteen minutes early to get your lunch before the program starts.

    The Wichita Petroleum Club is on the ninth floor of the Bank of America Building at 100 N. Broadway (north side of Douglas between Topeka and Broadway) in Wichita, Kansas (click for a map and directions). Park in the garage just across Broadway and use the sky walk to enter the Bank of America building. Bring your parking garage ticket to be stamped and your parking fee will be only $1.00. There is usually some metered and free street parking nearby.

  • In Sedgwick County, is there slack time?

    As reported in the Wichita Eagle, the Sedgwick County Commission decided to reimburse the county for time its employees spent working on arena-related matters. The money will come from the sales tax that was collected to build the Intrust Bank Arena in downtown Wichita. The amount of money the commission decided to transfer is $1.6 million, although according to the Eagle, the total cost could reach $2.6 million.

    Here’s something of concern to me in the story: “But he [Sedgwick County chief financial officer Chris Chronis] pushed for the money to remain in the arena and pavilions’ operating and maintenance reserve fund, which last month had just less than $14 million, because taking money out of the fund would drain it four years earlier than expected — in 2024.”

    Evidently the county has financial projections for the arena all the way out to 2018, and possibly beyond. That is a very long time into the future, and any projections about the performance of the arena over this period would be based on assumptions that can’t be estimated with anything approaching certainty.

    Projections with this precision made about events so far in the future surrounded by so much uncertainty remind me of the saying that economists use a decimal point to show they have a sense of humor.

    Back to the present: Commissioner Dave Unruh told the Eagle that the county did not hire any new staff to perform work that has an estimated value of $2.6 million. My question is this: Is this evidence that there was $2.6 million of slack time in county employee’s schedules? How were they able to get this vast amount of work accomplished? Perhaps after the arena work that has occupied $2.6 million of staff time is complete, we could hire out this staff to earn revenue for the county, as it seems they will have time on their hands.

    Regarding the contention that voters in 2004 were promised that no property tax money would be used on the arena, Unruh was quoted by the Eagle as saying: “I do think that we made a very strong commitment that all the sales tax money would be used for the arena and pavilions.”

    It seems that now Sedgwick County voters have a new concern: When politicians make a promise, do we have to ask them if this is a regular commitment or a very strong commitment? Or are there other types of commitments that we don’t know about?

  • Tour of Register of Deeds office offered

    Americans for Prosperity-Kansas, Wichita Chapter, will hold an informational tour of the Sedgwick County Register of Deeds Office on Tuesday, March 9, 2010, at 11:30 am in the lobby of the
    Sedgwick County Courthouse at 525 N. Main in Wichita.

    The tour of the office will be presented by the Register of Deeds, Mr. Bill Meek.

    Then from 12:30 pm to 1:15 pm, participants may have lunch at the Sedgwick Court House Cafeteria, located in the basement of the Sedgwick County Court house. Attendees will need to pay for their own meal.

    Optional RSVP to John Todd, Wichita AFP volunteer coordinator at john@johntodd.net or 316-312-7335, or to Susan Estes, AFP-Kansas Field Director at sestes@afphq.org or 316-681-4415.

    The Register of Deeds is responsible for recording all transactions relating to real estate in Sedgwick County. This includes deeds, mortgages, oil and gas leases and platted additions to all cities in Sedgwick County. The Register of Deeds also files financing statements and security agreements on personal property under the Uniform Commercial Code; federal and state tax liens, corporation papers, powers of attorney, county school records, and military discharges. The Register of Deeds office plays a vital role in the protection of private property under our system of government.

  • Sedgwick County Treasurer Ron Estes will address Pachyderms

    On Friday March 5, Sedgwick County Treasurer Ron Estes will address members and guests of the Wichita Pachyderm Club. Estes is a candidate for the Republican nomination for Kansas state treasurer. (Estes replaces Sandy Praeger, who had to reschedule.)

    All are welcome to attend Pachyderm club meetings. The program costs $10, which includes a delicious buffet lunch including salad, soup, two main dishes, and ice tea and coffee. The meeting starts at noon, although it’s recommended to arrive fifteen minutes early to get your lunch before the program starts.

    The Wichita Petroleum Club is on the ninth floor of the Bank of America Building at 100 N. Broadway (north side of Douglas between Topeka and Broadway) in Wichita, Kansas (click for a map and directions). Park in the garage just across Broadway and use the sky walk to enter the Bank of America building. Bring your parking garage ticket to be stamped and your parking fee will be only $1.00. There is usually some metered and free street parking nearby.