Voters showed good judgment

Wichita voters favored the mayoral candidate who best understands City Hall and the challenges of governing, two-term City Council member Jeff Longwell.

That bodes well for the city, which will benefit from practiced leadership as it tries to recover from years of job cuts and other economic turmoil.

Voters also chose carefully in the three council races, re-electing Pete Meitzner and Vice Mayor Jeff Blubaugh and picking park board president Bryan Frye to succeed Longwell.

The to-do list for Longwell and the new City Council includes the priorities that would have been addressed by November’s defeated citywide sales tax, including an improved bus system, a long-term water supply and a way forward on economic development. They’ll need to make fiscally sound but forward-looking decisions on a new downtown library, Century II, and the $2.1 billion needs of the sewer and water system.

They must contend with a new Sedgwick County Commission majority that is shunning regionalism and planning as well as cooperation with the city.

The new mayor and council also face significant distrust among citizens – some of it based less in facts than in the misleading campaigning that preceded both November’s and Tuesday’s elections. But shootings of citizens by police in recent years have eroded confidence as well, leading to the welcome commitment by City Manager Robert Layton to outfit officers with body cameras by the end of the year.

Local voters were smart to re-elect Wichita school board president Sheril Logan – though they failed to get the message that board member Jeffery Davis intended his challenger, Joshua Blick, to win.

The wild card on this election was the ballot question on whether to lessen penalties for first-time marijuana possession in Wichita. Its solid victory can be seen as an acknowledgment that even conservative Kansas is shifting its thinking on the drug, and especially the high costs of treating low-level users like violent criminals. But passage won’t guarantee change, as the state has threatened legal action to block the ordinance.

It was a strange election, and perhaps the last of its kind. Over locals’ strong objections, the Legislature is poised to bundle these bipartisan municipal and school races with fall partisan contests in the name of increasing participation. But Tuesday’s voters, though few, get credit for good judgment.

For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published April 7, 2015 at 7:06 PM with the headline "Voters showed good judgment."