Steven bros’ Ice Center disaster remains a stain on Wichita and City Manager Layton | Opinion

As City Manager Robert Layton coasts to his end-of-year retirement, you can expect present and past City Council members to lavish praise on him for his 16-year tenure at the helm of city government.

Sadly, you won’t hear a word from them about what is arguable Layton’s biggest failure, the debacle known as the Wichita Ice Center management contract with brothers Rodney and Brandon Steven and their Gensis health club franchise. More than a debacle, it is a festering, pus-filled abscess on Layton’s record.

Under Layton’s supervision (and with the acquiescence of past and present council members), Genesis was awarded a $750,000 “loan”, which, according to the contract and current legal documents, would be repaid at $100,000 a year for 10 years.

Genesis made a first-year payment of $14,127.65 on June 15, 2017, and never made another payment.

Worse yet, the contract (again, supervised and implemented by Layton) provides that delinquent payments beyond three years can’t be recovered. Layton should have filed collection actions the third year of the contract, and each and every year thereafter to preserve the collectability of the contract.

Instead, he (and a stream of council members from 2017 to present) chose to ignore the delinquency, effectively handing the Steven brothers $100,000 of taxpayer money each year the three-year limitation took effect.

Finally, after the contract had expired and the city ended its relationship with the Stevens, the city filed a lawsuit that originally asked for $350,881 in debt repayment, which apparently was the sum of the final three years of the contract.

That means the rest of obligation (roughly $700,000 in payments and interest) is uncollectable, safely in the pocket of the Steven brothers because of the three-year look-back clause.

You can’t really blame the Stevens, who recognized they were working with a spineless, developer-friendly city manager and equally spineless council members. Once the first three years of delinquency were ignored, the Stevens realized they could ignore any future payments.

The closest any council members came to touching this sleazy handout was former council member Jeff Blubaugh, the only “no” vote on Layton’s most recent pay raise. Unfortunately, Blubaugh’s concerns weren’t strong enough to give him the courage to explain his vote, which might have threatened campaign contributions to his subsequent election to the Sedgwick County Commission.

In a 2020 email from Layton to the Stevens’ agent, former council member Greg Ferris, Layton meekly asked about the unpaid obligation, which at that time was $336,770. Ferris and his clients apparently ignored the request, and pocketed the taxpayer money, along with the unpaid amounts for the rest of the 10-year contract.

The city, in the most recent court filing, has now jumped the damage claim to $2.76 million, without itemizing what part is unpaid debt and what part represents other damages. A trial date has been set for January of 2026, conveniently just after Layton will have retired.

Attorneys will argue the case for both sides, but the taxpayers who got stiffed for hundreds of thousands of dollars will have no voice in the trial.

The city won’t want to acknowledge it had abandoned any repayment enforcement until the contract expired, and the Stevens certainly won’t raise that issue. Nobody will be present to speak up for the victimized taxpayers, including the long list of past and present council members who sat on their hands since the first delinquency went on the books in 2017.

The silence of the current (and recent past) council members attests to the influence of wealthy campaign donors and a city manager who wields far too much power without accountability.

Mayor Lily Wu spoke out about the Genesis contract in a campaign appearance on KPTS-TV. But once elected (with the help of an organized fundraising effort by the development community), Wu remains silent.

She did speak out against the mishandling of a $300 monthly lease for the Clapp Park clubhouse, demanding accountability from the city manager. But challenging the Steven brothers over $700,000 is apparently out of her comfort level.

Layton also had the audacity to fire two golf division employees last year over their alleged mishandling of a few thousand dollars of concession revenue. If that same standard applied to Layton, the council would fire him at the next meeting.

But accountability has lost out to influential campaign donors and bobble-headed council members who don’t have the courage to protect the taxpayer.

And to make things worse, the same city council that held Layton harmless for this episode of managerial incompetence will now pick his replacement.

The only ray of hope is that city elections take place later this year. Maybe candidates will emerge who will have the guts to push this brutal financial disaster into the public view and demand greater accountability.

This story was originally published May 19, 2025 at 1:43 PM.