11 questions needing answers before Tuesday vote on Wichita sales tax | Opinion
It’s been about a week and a half since a new group, called Wichita Forward, put forth its plan to establish a 1% sales tax across Wichita.
And at the two-week mark, the City Council is scheduled to vote on putting the tax on the ballot for a March election.
I’m not ready to dismiss a sales tax out of hand. It could do Wichita good, if it’s properly targeted like the temporary 1% sales tax that built the Intrust Bank Arena.
But frankly, this new plan sends a shiver down my spine because I also remember Brownbackonomics, former Gov. Sam Brownback’s grand plan to do away with income taxes and backfill the budget with sales tax.
For those who weren’t here, or don’t remember, it went poorly (to say the least) and before it was repealed, the wealthy benefitted far more than the average resident.
The triumvirate leading Wichita Forward is three prominent local CEOS: Aaron Bastian (Fidelity Bank), John Rolph (Thrive Restaurants) and Ben Hutton (Hutton Corp., formerly Hutton Construction).
They’re very good at business, but I don’t know if their best interests align with mine (or yours).
On top of that, it’s ironic and bordering on bizarre that the campaign for the tax is being handled by Republican political strategist Ben Davis, who just got through convincing this town not to tax itself to support public education.
The sales tax plan
Here are the proposed expenditures for the new tax, as presented by Wichita Forward:
Public safety, $225 million — to fund all scheduled capital improvement projects and provide resources for existing and new initiatives.
Convention space, $225 million — to invest in facility renovations and additions.
Homelessness and housing, $150 million — cover capital improvements and permanently fund the multi-agency center; investments in affordable housing and diversion as preventative measures to reduce homelessness overall.
Property taxes, $150 million — Dedicate $21 million per year for property tax relief, through 2033.
New Performing Arts Facility, $75 million — To develop a public/ private partnership to build a new performing arts center in downtown Wichita.
Century II, $25 million — To revitalize and renovate Century II, the current convention and performing arts center.
Many questions unanswered
A sales tax increase needs to be carefully constructed before it goes on the ballot, particularly when the proposed campaign period is as short as this one.
So here are some questions that need to be asked and answered by Wichita Forward and/or city staff before letting this anywhere near the ballot:
Property tax relief — One of the key selling points in substituting sales tax for property tax is that some percentage of sales tax in Wichita is paid by people from out of town who shop here. But a not-insignificant percentage of Wichita property is owned by out-of-town and out-of-state corporations — including commercial businesses, factories, apartment buildings and single-family rental housing.
Q: Will the increase in new money coming into Wichita from sales tax be more, or less, than the property tax breaks that out-of-area corporations and absentee landlords will be taking out of the local economy?
Tax rates across the city — The chatter’s been that the increase will raise the sales tax from 7.5% to 8.5%. But that’s not the whole story. The city government has been very generous in granting community improvement districts (15 as of today), where the sales tax has already been raised as much as two percentage points, with the extra going to developers. In some areas, the proposed increase will hike the sales tax to 10.5%
Q: Can we get a true accounting of how much sales tax we’ll be paying and where?
Performing arts/convention facilities — This one’s a real head scratcher. It’s proposed we spend $75 million for a new performing arts center while also spending $25 million to revitalize Century II, the current performing arts and convention center.
Q: Do we need a new performing arts center, or is this a way to use up some of the downtown land that the city has given to developers that they haven’t developed?
Q: If we build a new performing arts center, what are we going to do with Century II? Will we keep two performing arts centers, or is there some undisclosed plan to convert Century II performance spaces to something else? If so, what? (Sorry, that’s three questions, maybe four).
Q: If the performance space at Century II will be used just for conventions, why is it a separate line item and not part of the $225 million in convention space improvements?
Police and fire: The proposal says this is to pay for capital improvements (essentially buildings and equipment) and providing resources for existing and new initiatives.
Q: If we pay for capital improvements of police and fire stations with sales tax, what happens to the money that’s already set aside for that in the capital improvement plan?
Q: What are the existing and new initiatives that are proposed to receive funding?
Housing and homelessness: There are two key developments along this front that need to be taken into account. One is that the city government is in the process of selling off all of its low-income housing assets to the private sector. The other is the ongoing development of Second Light, a publicly funded, privately run homeless shelter and service center that used to be called “the MAC,” for Multi-Agency Center.
Q: With the city essentially exiting from owning and operating public housing, who will get the money from the “investments in affordable housing” envisioned by the sales tax?
Q: Who will be investing the tax money to create what appears to be some form of an endowment fund for the continued operation of Second Light?
Q: Where will the tax money be invested, and what guardrails will there be on investment and expenditure of that money?
Short time frame for decision
Those are some of the questions (and by no means an exhaustive list), that should be answered before the council votes.
Will they? Probably not, because there isn’t time for the kind of deep analysis the proposal requires.
The city staff report for Tuesday’s meeting is basically a copy-and-paste job from Wichita Forward’s website and press release.
Apparently, the only opportunities for questions before the council vote will be a meeting at 5:30 p.m. Monday, put on by Wichita Forward at the Advanced Learning Library, and the council meeting itself, 9 a.m. Tuesday at City Hall.
There’s time pressure here. The council has to take a vote by Tuesday to make it on a March ballot, or wait until at least the next primary election in August, according to the staff report.
So here’s my final (and probably most important) question for the proponents of the sales tax:
Q: If this is such a great idea, why didn’t we hear a word about it until two weeks before the deadline to put it on the ballot?
This story was originally published December 7, 2025 at 6:04 AM.
