Is Wichita City Council repeating past mistakes on sales tax vote? | Opinion
You all know how annoying it is when you want to buy one thing and the salesperson keeps trying to sell you a “bundle” to get the “best deal.”
You might say, “I just want internet service. I don’t want a TV package, I don’t want a cell phone, I don’t want a home phone. I just want to get my computer online!”
And then the sales person says: “Well … you know, if you just add this, then I can save you this much.”
And on and on and on and on.
That’s kind of how I’m feeling at this moment, contemplating the sales tax election plan that the City Council approved on Tuesday at the end of a grueling four-hour public hearing.
The council voted 7-0 to put a 1% sales tax proposal to voters in a special election, prompted by Wichita Forward, a coalition led by three prominent local CEOs: Aaron Bastian of Fidelity Bank, Jon Rolph of Thrive Restaurants and Ben Hutton of Hutton Corp., formerly Hutton Construction.
And barring a highly unlikely rewrite between now and final council approval next week, we’ll be asked to buy the sales tax bundle a little more than two months from now on a March 3 ballot.
Bundling killed the last city sales tax proposal in 2014, and I suspect that will it probably be the death of the new sales tax proposal.
And that’s sad, because it will probably be another 10 or 11 years before anyone gets up the nerve to try again.
Lesson from the past
To fully appreciate the situation, it helps to take a look back at the 2014 sales tax ballot question.
It would have provided $250 million for water improvements, $80 million for job development, $40 million for public transit, and $27.8 million for street maintenance and repair.
City residents in general probably would have hit the “like” button on their ballots for streets and water — possibly even public transit.
But the campaign against the ballot measure homed in like a guided missile on the $80 million for job development — much of which would have gone to build out the Innovation Campus at Wichita State University and to offer incentives to companies to locate there.
In the lead-up to the election, The Eagle ran point-counterpoint pieces on the tax proposal, written by supporters and opponents. And for the “no” side, bundling was the issue.
And it was devastatingly effective.
“Wichitans deserve the right to vote on these issues separately,” wrote 2014 tax opponents Jennifer Baysinger and Mike Shatz. “They should not have been bundled together just so the jobs slush fund would pass. The City Council needs to come back with real solutions for water, streets and transit. Try some new ideas. Then split the vote, and let Wichitans decide on each one individually.”
And on the night that the proposal went down to defeat 62% to 37%, Baysinger put an exclamation mark on it, saying: “People wanted to vote on the tax (issues) separately and they wanted transparency, and I don’t think they thought they were going to get that.”
History repeating?
Fast-forward to today: We’re being asked to vote to tax ourselves $850 million over the next seven years.
That includes $225 million for public safety, another $225 million for convention space, $150 million to fight homelessness and spur affordable housing, another $150 million to cut property taxes, $75 million for a contribution to a public-private partnership to build a new performing arts center, and $25 million for renovating our current performing arts center, the Century II.
Woof. Talk about bundling.
Offhand, I’d say that Wichitans would most likely vote to fund more police and fire stations.
There’s also pretty strong momentum for addressing homelessness and housing, led by Justice Together, a coalition of Christian, Jewish and Baha’i faith congregations that can put 1,200 to 1,400 people at a time in an auditorium.
I’d rate property tax relief as a toss-up. It’s the cause du jour for businesses and people with expensive homes. But on the flip side, there are a lot of renters in this town, and they’re all smart enough to know that their rent isn’t going down if their landlord gets a property tax break.
But I have a feeling the real deal-killers are going to be convention space and the performing arts center.
Rush to March special election?
The performing arts center plan is vague and involves unidentified private-sector partners, which is a huge red flag amid the unkept promises of developments past, like the WaterWalk and the Baseball Village.
Judging from public comments on Monday and Tuesday, another red flag is that despite the set-aside for Century II, there’s suspicion that the tax plan sets the stage for a version 2.0 of the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan, which proposed tearing down the city’s signature big blue-roof building and replacing it with new performance and convention facilities.
There are also serious (and not at all misplaced) concerns about the process to rush the sales tax to the ballot to meet deadlines for a March special election, which will very likely be a very low-turnout affair.
The council vote to hold a special election came just two weeks after Wichita Forward made its plans public. And residents got only two chances to discuss it: Tuesday’s council meeting and an hourlong Monday evening session with pro-sales tax campaign spokesmen, where about 100 attendees were pointedly told only to ask questions and not make statements.
It’s not the sales tax per se that’s the problem here. I think everybody outside the “TAXATION IS THEFT!!!” crowd can agree there’s some good stuff in it.
But the $850 million question is, will this city buy the whole bundle? And do we get an iPhone with that?
