Print edition: 
The battle over $2.25 million in guest tax revenues for a proposed downtown boutique hotel heated up Wednesday with both sides accusing the other of misleading and harassing prospective petition signers.
The Ambassador Hotel developers, now calling themselves Moving Wichita Forward, launched a telephone campaign this week to short-circuit a petition drive to force a public vote on the guest tax revenues, a campaign that has some petition signers crying foul. Meanwhile, a private consultant hired by the developers - a consultant developers have not identified - says that petition drive is going to come up short of the necessary signatures.
Americans for Prosperity-Wichita, the group that circulated the petitions against the guest tax revenues, held a Wednesday morning news conference, producing three Wichitans who say they received calls Tuesday night asking them to sign a second petition that would remove their signatures from the public petitions. AFP officials on Monday turned in petitions with more than 3,600 signatures seeking to force a public vote on the guest tax revenues, which make up about 10 percent of the proposed $22.5 million Ambassador Wichita, a 117-room boutique hotel at Douglas and Broadway. Requests to remove signatures from the petition must be received by the Sedgwick County Election Commissioner by the close of business today.
Tulsa developer Paul Coury, who heads the development team planning the hotel, confirmed that he’s hired a consultant to make the mass calls to petition signers. Coury’s group declined to identify that consultant, but AFP officials said it was Goss Consulting, a Colorado-based group.
Coury said his group also has hired a consultant to analyze copies of the AFP petitions, and that consultant believes the group is short of the verified Wichita registered voters it needs to force the public vote. Specifically, the Ambassador analyst found that 3,618 signatures were obtained, with 3,569 legible. Of that number, only 2,160 could be matched with Wichita registered voter rolls, 368 short of the 2,528 signatures — or 10 percent of the voters in the last election — required to force the public election.
AFP, which opposes government involvement in private development projects, wants voters to decide whether the Ambassador developers get to keep 75 percent of the transient guest taxes collected there over its first 15 years, an estimated $2.25 million. Since the City Council’s had to amend a charter ordinance to allow the developers to receive the guest taxes, the action is subject to a protest petition.
AFP-Wichita spokeswoman Susan Estes criticized the mass calls, calling them the move of a desperate group of developers.
“From what we have heard from some of the recipients of recent phone calls, the actions of our opposition seem desperate, insulting and even intimidating to some ... ,” Estes said. “Do we trust the people of Wichita to make an informed decision at the ballot box that will be in the best interests of the community, or don’t we?”
And in the Wednesday morning news conference, Wichitans James Woomack, Gretta Esslinger and Carol Jester said they were called Tuesday night to sign a document to have their names removed from the AFP petition. They contended that the callers warned that “hundreds of jobs” would be lost if the guest tax revenues failed at public vote and that signing the petition meant that “you don’t want Wichita to prosper.” Repeatedly through the news conference, the Wichitans referred to the guest tax as a sales tax.
However, Coury said his group has information that some signers were misled about the petition’s purpose. Thus, it’s necessary to analyze the signatures and call those who signed “to see if these people actually knew what they were signing,” Coury said.
“We were approached by a couple of people who said that when they signed at Walmart, they were told it was to prevent the loss of housing for poor people,” Coury said.
Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman said the mass calls are legal.
“The names of petition signers are public information, and telephone numbers are public information through voter registration rolls,” Lehman said. “The calls may be annoying ... but they’re part of the political process.”
Lehman said her office is continuing to verify the signatures on the AFP petition. She expects a decision on Monday.
