Lopez, Blubaugh clash on key issues, make their case to southwest Sedgwick County voters

Property taxes are the most important issue to voters in southwest Wichita, Haysville and Clearwater, according to the candidates who want to represent them on the Sedgwick County Commission.

“So many folks are on fixed incomes, and getting calls saying they’re going to be taxed out of their homes are probably the hardest conversations that we have to have,” said Sarah Lopez, the lone Democrat and only incumbent defending a seat on the five-member governing body this November.

Her opponent in the District 2 race, Jeff Blubaugh, is a real estate broker and longtime Republican member of the Wichita City Council who left in January after hitting council term limits after nearly 11 years.

“When I’m out there knocking doors, people are telling me they’re choosing between prescription drugs and property taxes,” Blubaugh said.

The candidates’ ideas on what should be done to provide tax relief differ considerably, as do their assessments of the county’s 911 system and their feelings about the soon-to-be-built state psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of southwest Wichita.

Blubaugh has been endorsed by the Wichita fire and police unions, Republican Congressman Ron Estes and Kansans for Life, the state’s leading anti-abortion group. Lopez has drawn endorsements from past and present commissioners of both parties — David Dennis, Tim Norton, Tom Winters and Dave Unruh — Realtors of South Central Kansas and the Wichita-Hutchinson Labor Federation.

County commissioners are responsible for setting policy direction and approving a budget for vital services such as EMS, 911, Comcare, corrections and the sheriff’s office. They also oversee Fire District 1 and serve as the board of health, the board of canvassers of elections, and the hearing panel on tax appeals. Commissioners’ base salary is $101,527 a year.

District 2, roughly bordered by K-42 to the west and K-15 to the east, is home to more registered unaffiliated voters — 38.2% — than Republicans (36.3%) or Democrats (23.5%), county data shows.

Lopez track record

Lopez, who previously worked as a technical engineering analyst for the Ascension Via Christi Healthcare System, was elected to the commission in 2020 when she defeated Republican incumbent Michael O’Donnell by less than 1% of the vote. Democrat Tim Norton held the District 2 seat between 2000 and 2016.

“When I started, we were about sixty-five percent staffed overall across all of the departments, which we know that no organization can run efficiently or effectively at sixty-five percent staffed,” said Lopez, 36, who lives in Haysville with her husband and children.

“Today, through changes that we’ve made through pay adjustments and better benefits and eight-week paid parental leave policy for both parents, we’re now at eighty-five to ninety percent staffed, so we’ve been able to significantly increase the quality of our services that we provide just with that alone.”

Last year, Lopez participated in a county Zoom meeting the day after giving birth to twin girls. She said hers is a valuable perspective to have on the commission — not just as the only woman and the only non-white commissioner — but as a young parent.

“We have a two-parent working household, which the majority of people do, so having just those experiences and understanding our community in that sort of way is really helpful to creating and crafting policies that are actually going to be beneficial to everybody,” Lopez said.

She said she’s proud of the major building projects that have been undertaken in her first term, including the $107 million psychiatric hospital and the $15.7 million emergency operations center — both of which will be in District 2 — as well as the Comcare crisis center expansion downtown and the EP2 outdoor amphitheater and playscape project at Exploration Place that aims to grow the science museum’s economic impact from $21 million to $66.7 million a year.

“The work that I did at Ascension, I did a lot of large projects, and really some of the hardest work comes at the end,” said Lopez, who serves on the Exploration Place advisory board and the EP2 steering committee, as well as the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Coalition. “I want to make sure that I’m here to be able to finish these projects because what we’ve started and where we’re at today is fantastic, but if it doesn’t cross the finish line, then what do you have?”

The emergency operations center is a collaborative effort with McConnell Air Force Base to bolster the county’s response to an array of potential emergencies, including future pandemics and extreme weather. The new Comcare facility, which Lopez called “a huge win,” will provide expanded walk-in mental health treatment and a designated detox space.

Blubaugh track record

Blubaugh was first elected to the City Council in 2013. Since then, he has kept a database of every constituent who’s reached out with a question or concern.

“I’ve always kind of viewed my role as, I’m your customer service rep for my district,” Blubaugh said. Many of the residents he speaks to these days don’t realize he isn’t elected, he said.

“I’ve just been their go-to guy for so long and I still know enough of the folks to be able to get things resolved,” said Blubaugh, 52, who has lived in his southwest Wichita home since 2006.

His school-aged children attend the Chaparral district in Harper County and split time between Harper County and Wichita because it’s important to him and his wife that they “understand rural values.” But Blubaugh said he’s 100% based in Wichita. “I’m here all the time.”

He and his wife enjoy CrossFit training together and walking at Pawnee Prairie Park, where Blubaugh used his council district’s $1 million portion of the Hyatt Regency sale proceeds to invest in hiking paths, bike paths and improvements for horseback riders

He’s particularly proud of the infrastructure projects completed in south Wichita during his time on the council, including the construction of Eisenhower Airport and the rework of K-42 and West Street.

“I did Seneca [improvements]. I did Meridian. I did West Street. Got them all redone and expanded,” said Blubaugh. He also cited the city’s decision to run a drainage pipe to the river along Orient Boulevard to mitigate heavy flooding after rain as an example of his hands-on leadership.

“When we get hit hard, we’ll get a little bit of flooding around 31st and Seneca but it’s nothing like what it was,” Blubaugh said. “Meridian, remember it used to be underwater whenever you’d come over the railroad tracks.”

Another major project he believes is needed to support future growth is the 95th Street connection from Greenwich to Meridian. There’s currently no connection between Bluff and K-15 over the Arkansas River, and existing roads are either gravel or paved two-way streets. A county study calls for 95th Street to be transformed into a five-lane corridor. Blubaugh said he’d like to see it extended west to 183rd Street South and connected to Kellogg.

“We need the kind of leadership that’s going to go work with the state, work with the federal government and try to get these opportunities. I’m sure if we go through a recession or something, there’s going to be a huge highway bill that comes out,” Blubaugh said.

Tax relief

The county’s 2025 budget trimmed roughly a million dollars in quality-of-life spending on the way to lowering the property tax levy by a third of a mill. Despite the county’s lowest mill rate in 27 years, most property owners will pay more in taxes because property valuations continue to climb year over year.

Neither candidate is ready to throw their support behind a proposed switch to sales tax funding for quality-of-life programming that’s traditionally been paid for with property tax revenue — even though it would allow the county to lower its mill levy.

Blubaugh said that’s “just shifting” the tax burden.

“We’ve got to do it differently. I think some cuts are necessary, but we’ve got to go to more of a self-sustaining model for our cultural arts amenities like Exploration Place and the zoo,” he said. “More like, you need to be close to breaking even on the revenue you bring in.

“. . . You’ve seen more and more money funneled to Exploration Place, funneled over to the zoo. I hear there’s going to be an ask for another elephant barn,” Blubaugh said. “The quality of life stuff’s great, but people are hurting.”

Lopez said switching to a sales tax model could take decisions about arts and culture funding “out of the political realm.” She plans to support that change only if it provides equitable relief for renters, though.

“We can prove right now, if you own your home, that it will decrease your mill levy and you won’t pay as much back in sales tax, but what we have a hard time proving is for rental properties,” Lopez said. “Are renters going to still see the same impact that homeowners do? And if not, are they going to have a higher proportion of sales tax?”

Blubaugh said state-level reform of the property appraisal process will be necessary to deliver real relief. The current system is broken, he said, and his first-hand experience fighting the assessment on the 17-acre “dilapidated farm property” in Harper County that he bought from his father after his mother’s death in 2017 has taught him the appeals process is cumbersome and usually futile.

The property was re-classified as commercial after the Blubaughs built a small pole barn in hopes of creating a wedding venue.

“We’ll have $30,000 in property taxes and we didn’t even spend $30,000 to build this building,” Blubaugh said. “I don’t want what happened to me happening to anybody else.”

Lopez agreed the county’s legislative agenda should include a focus on property tax reform that provides relief for residents.

“At the end of the day, we’re all feeling the weight of inflation. I have a family of seven, so going to the grocery store just gets more and more expensive,” Lopez said. “We have to also realize that government is facing that same problem. Our expenses are significantly increasing as well, and because we are an organization that employs almost 2,900 people, we have to make sure that we’re keeping up, especially with pay for our staff.”

Mental health hospital

Next February, Sedgwick County will break ground on a 104-bed state psychiatric hospital in the heart of District 2 at MacArthur and Meridian.

“The mental health hospital is desperately needed. It’s something that’s been needed forever and it’s been talked about for a decade or so,” said Lopez, who was appointed by Gov. Laura Kelly to serve on the state task force that chose the site. She vocally opposed efforts to derail that site by people who favored remodeling the defunct Riverside Hospital complex on west Central.

Blubaugh said the decision to place the high-security state-run facility on 11 acres of land donated by Jeff Lange, the county’s on-call real estate agent, came off as rushed and secretive.

“By the time we had the meeting at South High in February, they’re like, ‘Well, we picked the place down south. We’re sorry we couldn’t do more community outreach,” Blubaugh said.

Before the site was chosen, the county and the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services held a town hall meeting to announce the four finalist sites and launched an online survey asking residents to share their preference. Respondents favored Riverside Hospital to MacArthur and Meridian by a narrow margin, but the task force settled on the southside site, in part because it was the only property developers offered to donate.

“There’s trailer parks down there. It’s the lowest-income area of the whole district. You couldn’t do this anywhere else, and a lot of people down south feel like they weren’t represented on that,” Blubaugh said.

“You know, people escape out of mental health hospitals. It happens from time to time.”

Lopez said safety is “first and foremost in every decision that we make” about the hospital, which will serve both patients who are ordered to receive treatment by a court or doctor and people charged with crimes who need a competency evaluation before they can stand trial.

“It’s going to have two fences around it — everything that you could possibly think of for safety measures is going to be addressed in this building,” Lopez said. “At the same time, we’re making sure that it is a space that’s going to be conducive to healing inside as well.”

She pushed back against the idea that the project will be a detriment to the district.

“That’s going to create over 350 jobs. It’s over $100 million of investment in south Wichita, which is just really helpful to be able to invest in the district when we haven’t had much investment in many, many years,” Lopez said.

If elected, Blubaugh said he would take a critical eye to the zoning applications brought by OneRise Health Campus, the planned 77-acre behavioral health campus that Lange has been developing plans for over the last four years, to make sure individual components of the project fit with the character of the neighborhood.

911 system

Another issue that the District 2 incumbent and her challenger are sharply divided over is the performance of Sedgwick County’s 911 system, which receives emergency calls and dispatches first-responders from the county and its 20 cities.

The department has been under heightened scrutiny since the Brookhollow Apartment fire last October, when 22-year-old Paoly Bedeski died trapped in her apartment after 911 dispatchers failed to communicate potentially lifesaving information about her location to Wichita firefighters on the scene.

Blubaugh said he “absolutely” has ongoing concerns about Emergency Communications Director Elora Forshee’s leadership. The firefighters union and a group of 15 former 911 employees called for Forshee to be removed late last year, accusing her of fostering a toxic work culture and relying on deficient training standards.

Lopez said the county has taken a number of important steps in the year since the Brookhollow fire, including spending heavily on 911 in next year’s budget, pursuing accreditation for the agency and working with the city to hire Jensen Hughes, the same consulting firm that rendered a blistering report on the Wichita Police Department in 2023, to conduct an independent audit of both 911 and the fire department. She’s been a vocal defender of Forshee’s leadership.

“I am not, and none of the commissioners are, 911 experts. So we can follow the opinions of the experts, but we’re not that, so we’ve really had to lean into Elora’s guidance on that, and we’ve come a long way,” Lopez said.

She said the tragedy has been exploited unfairly to cast hard-working call-takers and dispatchers in a negative light.

“It’s too bad that it’s become what it is where it’s almost like a hunt to get the person who answered the phone, which, we’re all humans,” Lopez said. “We’re going to do everything possible to do things as perfect as we can get, but as long as a human is answering the phone . . . it might not ever be one hundred percent perfect.”

Blubaugh, who said it took months to extract meaningful data from the county when he requested 911 staffing records, is skeptical of the forthcoming consultant report.

“I’ve seen this time and time again, the city, the county. Let’s hire Jensen Hughes . . . Let’s bring in a third party, and they’re going to interview all of us, and then you’re going to come back and give us feedback, and tell us, ‘Here’s a couple areas of improvement but you guys were doing everything right,’” Blubaugh said.

In his estimation, county officials haven’t been asking enough hard questions about department operations during public meetings.

“I think it’s great to praise employees, but you need to be questioning county directors,” Blubaugh said. “And especially when the public has all these questions . . . It feels like it’s all praise and no questioning.”

Lopez said it’s important for elected leaders to stand up for employees who are being unfairly criticized. She pointed to 911’s current staffing level of 94% and the commission’s approval of funding for dispatchers who only handle law enforcement or fire/EMS instead of both as examples of the department moving in the right direction.

Ultimately, voters will choose who they trust to oversee vital services, make tough budget decisions and help shape the county’s priorities over the next four years.

Mail-in voting began Oct. 16 and early in-person voting will get underway Oct. 21 ahead of the Nov. 5 general election, when western Sedgwick County voters in District 3 will choose between first-time commission candidates Stephanie Wise and Celeste Racette.