Wichita mayor’s speech on fiscal discipline cost the city $9,500 | Opinion
Here’s a pro tip for all you mayors out there: If you’re going to ask your constituents to trust your fiscal discipline, it’s best not to do it in a speech that cost the city $9,500 to stage.
That was the price tag on Wichita Mayor Lily Wu’s State of the City speech last Sunday at Century II.
It’s pretty incredibly frustrating coming about a week after the voters of the city rejected City Hall’s call for an $850 million sales tax package, to build a bunch of stuff and relieve property taxes primarily for people at the top of our local economic pyramid.
In the State of the City speech, Wu acknowledged that her vote last December to put the tax plan to a special election vote on March 3 was “a mistake.”
I kind of think that goes without saying, given that the tax plan was defeated 82% to 18%.
Restoring lost trust?
Wu went on to address what she called “the deeper issue beneath that vote.”
“After a series of public-private partnership mistakes, skepticism has been building for years, and I get it,” she said. “Restoring trust starts at the top with transparency, accountability and discipline.”
Which brings us to the audio-visual bill for the State of the City address. City Hall didn’t have to rent the room — under the management contract the council approved in 2021 when they privatized Century II, they get to put on four(!) events per year rent-free.
But they had to use the convention hall, because the other two theaters in CII were already rented out to paying customers.
So, to stage the mayor’s speech, the city had to rent a raft of equipment for the afternoon, including:
Video Package - Control / Camera / Stage TV, including a Dual Presidential Teleprompter with laptop & control, $2,750.
Video Package - Projection, including video projectors and two 16x9 screens, $2,650.
Labor, including set-up and takedown, $2,750.
Lighting package, $800.
Audio package, $400.
Delivery and misc, $150.
It started with yard signs
I initially started looking into this when I noticed campaign-style yard signs promoting the speech planted in the public right-of-way in my neighborhood. It was unusual enough that I inquired who was paying for them.
To her credit, Wu says she spent her own money for those signs, and billboards also promoting the speech (I didn’t see the billboards, but I take her word for it).
And I’m not going to make a big deal out of the yard signs apparently being out of compliance with the city sign code from Friday to Sunday last week. We have this very weird sign ordinance that says you can put yard signs in the public right-of-way — for any purpose — from 45 days before an election until two days after, when all those signs are required to come down. Nobody understands it anyway.
Later, I found out that who paid for the signs had been discussed in the City Council’s agenda review meeting on March 6, which was also where council member Dalton Glasscock teased out the cost of the AV equipment for the speech.
I watched the recording, where Wu sought to downplay the expense with a little creative whataboutism.
“State of the City addresses are paid for by the city,” she said. “The previous mayor had State of the City at Botanica, and . . . Century II was also a place for State of the City.”
So I called the previous mayor, Brandon Whipple, and he said, “There’s no way I would have been allowed to spend $9,500 on literally anything.”
He had three State of the City speeches during his tenure in office.
The first was in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was done at Botanica, outdoors, with a select audience of mostly health professionals. It was cold and windy, so the audio was awful, and they re-recorded the speech indoors to release to the public.
Whipple did his 2023 State of the City speech in the regular council chamber at City Hall.
For both those events, costs were negligible.
Whipple had his 2022 speech at Century II. It was in the Mary Jane Teall Theatre, which was already equipped for audio and visuals. It was still under city control while transitioning management of the convention and performing arts complex to a private company now called Legends Global.
The production cost for Whipple’s 2022 speech was $471, according to city records.
In closing, I’m going to quote again from Mayor Wu’s State of the City speech:
“In the end, voters spoke and I heard you loud and clear. The (sales tax) proposal asked for a level of trust many Wichitans weren’t ready to extend at a time when families are already feeling stretched thin. All of us, including me, must take that lesson seriously.”
Indeed.
This story was originally published March 14, 2026 at 5:04 AM.
