coming up on Kansas week.

May Wichita school superintendent gets a new contract with more money and more perks.

Is he worth it?

Also, candidates for a hotly contested Wichita City Council seat discuss priorities as the August 5th primary nears.

But first, under threat from the Trump administration, the Wichita City Council makes Di Donna.

We'll discuss the possible consequences and some of this week's other big stories right now on Kansas Week.

Hello and welcome to Kansas Week.

I'm Jared Cirillo.

A contentious debate facing cities nationwide has hit home here in Wichita.

Diversity initiatives versus federal dollars.

This week, the city council was forced to choose with $100 million for critical city services hanging in the balance.

Cakes.

Lily O'Brien has details on the controversial 4 to 3 vote and the passionate debate that followed.

Fascism is a far right, authoritarian and ultra nationalist political ideology that fundamentally opposes democracy, without elaborating.

Whether you agree with my inference or not.

You undoubtedly know exactly what and whom I'm referring to.

That alone speaks volumes.

In a resolution to authorize a Wichita city manager to ensure compliance with federal grant requirements came criticism and constitutional concern.

A nation founded on three co-equal branches and checks and balances is seeing that very fabric stretched to a near breaking point.

These are dark and trying times.

The Tuesday morning vote centered around whether the city should eliminate some Dei initiatives in order to keep about $100 million in federal grants.

Cities like Wichita are also asked to cooperate with immigration enforcement and certify that they do not maintain noncompliance.

Dei programs.

A no vote today.

If this were to fail, would jeopardize $100 million of investment in our community, correct?

There is some jeopardy to some or all of the funding if we're found to be in noncompliance.

The Wichita City Council, faced with a decision that risks losing federal funding, voted 4 to 3 to approve the resolution alongside the vote, a pass on Wichita's advisory board on diversity, inclusion and civil rights.

While executive orders are reviewed, President Trump's orders include ending the government's DEA programs.

I think it's important we don't lose that perspective, on the council because we can't personally represent every demographic in Wichita, and they help us to care for more folks in our city.

We're the ones who see the impact in our communities.

Where are the ones I see what we need to do in our communities in order to move forward, to make sure that everybody has a place at the table.

Here to talk about this and some of the week's other big stories.

We have a full panel today.

Democratic state Representative Henry Helguson, state Republican Party vice chair Andy Hoosier, conservative political consultant Ben Davis and Fringe University political science professor Doctor Russell Urban Fox.

Thank you all for joining us today.

Doctor Fox, I'll start with you.

Fascism.

Really?

Brandon Johnson is calling.

I think, schism here.

I think Council Member Johnson's, speech was a, you know, wonderful articulation of a point of view that is one that he holds too deeply that many of his constituents hold to that many people across Wichita and the United States as a whole hold to is it a majority position?

Is that the interpretation of the Trump administration and the interpretation of the tack on die that's held to by the majority of people across the entire United States?

Probably not, but I appreciate him speaking up for it.

I appreciate it for a couple of reasons.

One, because, as council member Maggie Ballard also emphasized, having an advisory board on diversity, equity and inclusion issues is not the same thing as having active Dei affirmative programs.

Now, from the point of view of the Trump administration, maybe they wouldn't see the difference and maybe that money really would have been threatened.

Then again, considering the way the Trump administration frequently, you know, plans, all sorts of cuts, all sorts of tariffs, all sorts of actions and then frequently retreats from them.

We wouldn't really know if that money was going to disappear until it actually did.

So I'm wondering about the council, you know, jumping at a, you know, particular possible thread when it comes to dealing with something that up until this point, I think has served the city well in highlighting as again, Council member Ballard pointed out, members of the community that do not have as much of a voice as some other groups do.

Andy Hoosier, let me move over to you.

What do you think?

Here is the city kowtowing to the Trump line here?

Is that really what's happening?

But here's the thing.

I mean, Donald Trump set a mandate of the direction he wants to go as a nation.

And we're done with identity politics.

We're done with playing this day.

We're done with playing with this garbage.

And he has the right to do so.

We've done it throughout every administration before.

If you remember, when John Kasich tried to run for president back in the day as governor of Ohio, he said the same thing, essentially, that he wanted to cut, Planned Parenthood and said that he couldn't because if he did, he would lose funding for Medicaid in the state of Ohio.

So these mandates have been sent down all the time before.

It's nothing new.

We're done playing identity politics.

We don't need initiatives.

Get on board and get your money.

It's that simple.

Representative Helguson, tell me your thoughts.

Keep the 100, 100 million, so no question about it.

And then if there are specific, you know, in this whole discussion, I never saw or heard one specific problem issue.

You know, if they have an issue with a particular statute or program or a committee, then they make a policy decision that they keep to 100 million.

And then if they want to run the risk of jeopardizing that hundred million, you have something specific and says, this group, this committee, this statute, this this ordinance runs a fair offer of it.

But they didn't talk about that.

I, I appreciate the passion on both sides.

There comes a point, though, when the election is done, you understand that you follow what the rules are and the rules are.

You give up that hundred million if you don't follow what the rules are at the federal level.

And I mean, maybe that's a way for people to, I think, kind of dodge the substantive issues at work here.

I appreciate what my own district representative, Vice Mayor Johnston said.

I mean, his statement to the Eagle was basically the Trump administration has made this statement.

And so we're going to comply with this statement.

This goes to your point about mandates.

But the fact that people have used that as a way to not get into a substantive argument, I mean, you're making this argument about identity politics.

We didn't see that argument take place on the city council.

And it could.

Well, let's see.

Let me let Ben Davidson the substantive issue.

And I appreciate that.

So I was just looking so this board was created by, the prior mayor, Brandon Whipple, in response to the George Floyd riots, which were far away from from Wichita.

And I've inquired as to what did that board actually do since it was created, and to your point?

Well, not to your point, but using substance, nothing of substance.

It was almost purely symbolic.

I mean, they really they were fairly subdued.

They were never really empowered, I guess, to go out and do anything or do any investigation.

So they met almost symbolically.

So it basically just this holdover token from Brandon Whipple's, you know, political campaign is now putting in jeopardy $100 million in federal funds, potentially.

And it was never really doing anything.

It had no active investigations.

It wasn't really adding any value even to race relations here locally then.

I mean, even if the money wasn't in jeopardy, I would be all for dismantling things like that.

I, I don't see how anything with with real substantive issues, especially conversations around race or maybe police brutality, have been served by that board.

And at the same time, if we talk about substantive conversation, I mean, how is calling Donald Trump fascist, which, by the way, is not true in any way, shape or form?

How is that a substantive conversate should have when we're diverting just because we're upset about, like you said, a panel or a committee or whatever, focusing on things that we don't need to be focused on with identity politics.

How is that furthering the irony that democracy is somehow at risk?

When in the last election, Donald Trump won the popular vote, the Electoral College Republicans held the Congress and gained seats in the Senate.

It looked to me like democracy was in full operative force then.

Yeah, 30s to go ahead.

Whipple won the election and it was the city council that had been elected before that put the, committee in place.

Now for the committee to change its minds on the basis of some sort of argument that's coming out of Washington, DC.

I mean, that doesn't sound like local control, which I suppose conservatives are supposed to support, right?

Well, I got to leave it at that.

We got to move on.

That was that was after the Wichita City Council suspended its diversity advisory board.

All five candidates running in the race for the district one seat voiced their opposition to that move.

They also discussed their top priorities in advance of the August primary.

Ksn's Peyton Steiner attended a candidate forum and filed this report.

State senators, local politicians, community organizations, and hundreds of community members flooded in.

Every morning.

They looked to the five new faces running for City Council District one all Jeannie Bennett, Darrell Carrington, LaWanda de Chasseur, Chris Kelly and Joseph Shepherd.

Alginate Bennett says her platform is one of environmental responsibility and protecting tenants rights, well, housing and tenant rights because those two things go hand in hand.

Public safety is my next issue.

And of course, I'm very concerned about the education of our children.

Darrell Carrington says the issue of transparency in City Hall is a priority in his day.

One issue is the cleanliness of city streets.

The day one would be the issue of litter and dumping.

LaWanda DeKeyser also spoke to the importance of public and affordable housing.

Day one agenda items I want to accurate financial standing of the city of Wichita.

We heard this guy was falling.

I really want to see the numbers.

Chris Capelli says he plans to focus on fighting rising housing costs, and wants to work to develop the riverfront area.

I thought if we work hard, we play by the rules that we can leave a better place for the community behind us and listen.

It feels like more and more as time goes on that's becoming less and less a reality.

Joseph Shepherd, already endorsed by Council member Brendan Johnson, defines his platform around the, quote, tabletop issues of affordable housing and economic development.

People in Wichita want clean roads.

They want their potholes fix.

They want to make sure that we are supporting small businesses and attracting new business and industry to grow our economy.

Two of these candidates will move on to run for City Council District seat one after the primary.

So it's interesting.

This is there's three city council races that are up for grabs.

This is the only race that will have a primary contest because there's five candidates that filed.

Ben Davis, you were there.

What did you take?

I was I actually took my ten year old son.

He thought it was very amusing.

No, I, it was, I was I was glad to see that the room was so full of people.

And I appreciated the the the passion of all of the candidates.

They're all taking this race seemingly very, very seriously, which I appreciate it.

Look, I'm a conservative.

It was hard for me to be nodding my head in agreement with most of the things that I heard there, especially when we started talking about reparations.

Especially when they started talking about expanding Medicaid, which is not at all under the purview of a city council person.

But there were some areas of agreement.

You know, I hope this doesn't hurt her, but, Anthony Bennett was somebody who I really gravitated towards.

In the race.

And, you know, I think she seems like a very sensible.

Quickly, though, what did you take from the pump Kelly issue?

Pump Kelly had to be, chided for.

Yes.

For attacking one of the other.

Yes.

I mean, so he he went after he went after Joseph Shepherd, saying that that Joseph is basically a wolf in sheep's clothing because Joseph, you know, implicitly supported Mayor Wu against Brandon Whipple in the last election.

And Pompeo said that, you know, he was he was hampering, progress for the city of Wichita.

I that it remains to be seen what that progress actually was, but yeah.

Doctor Fox, go ahead.

No, I was actually going to ask Ben to comment on the fact that.

So I mean, obviously, district one is the strongest Democratic base, within the city.

It's got all sorts of religious and civic organizations that have generally channeled people's energy and their passions in that direction.

But there was some interesting conversation there about, you know, the need for better police enforcement support for police.

I mean, how is that playing out among the kids?

Yeah, it was it was interesting.

I think, Miss Bennett and then the other gentleman with the longer hair, the issue.

Representative forgive me, I don't I don't Joe Shepherd.

No, no, no, no, the Darryl Carrington deal.

Carrington.

He actually his closing statement I thought was very interesting, because he said that he had a long, family history of his father, I think, and grandfather were both police chiefs.

And so he had a very different perspective on on the police.

I didn't see or hear a lot of, you know, police or law enforcement bashing.

I didn't hear any of that from any of the candidates.

But I definitely think Miss Bennett, Mr. Carrington, others were far stronger on those public safety issues than others.

Representative Helguson, what are you taking off of this city council race here?

I think they need to focus on the key issues.

Key issues in that area.

Police.

That's what I hear.

Property taxes.

The you know, I didn't hear that brought up at all.

But those kind of issues are out there across the city.

And those need to be focused on as opposed to some of the other issues that really are not their purview.

And, and, you know, it is interesting, Andy, who's here that Chris Pompey put out a campaign piece a week or so ago that talked about lowering property taxes, supporting police.

That's not the typical left argument in this town.

And that really shows that, from a political landscape that they're maybe trying to bring things back to the center just a little bit, which is interesting, as you mentioned, being a deep blue district.

So I used to live in that district and, you know, not being there anymore, but being a city council member in a small town myself, you're right.

We need to focus on the priorities of property taxes.

The food desert.

There's a major food desert going on in that area as well.

Those are the conversations they need to have, not reparations, not some of the other bigger Medicaid issues.

Focus on what the city council can do for that community in that area.

I will say, you know, the water issue, the water contamination issue at 29th and Grove has been has been very, very deeply concerned.

Absolutely.

And I will give credit.

I trust me, I don't agree with Brandon Johnson as much.

I live in district one.

I will give him credit.

I think he has done a good job trying to advocate getting real remedy to that issue.

I think.

Councilman, or County Commissioner Ryan Beatty has also worked with him and trying to do that with the governor's office.

And so you've seen a lot of good bipartisan to right a very deep wrong in that issue.

And so I hope that we can see more action on that.

I think there are over 200 water contamination issues around the county and city that really need to be addressed.

That was obviously the most egregious.

All right.

Also, this week, the Wichita City Council put the future of Wichita's historic Crown Uptown Theater in serious doubt, a motion to add the nearly century old building to the city's historic register failed on a deadlocked 3 to 3 vote.

The debate pitted the owners private property rights against passionate calls from the community to protect the landmark from demolition.

Now the clock is ticking.

A temporary hold on the owners demolition permit that expires on August 4th, so that leaves the theater with no historic protections.

Ultimately, it seems like this comes down to, business owners private property rights.

If the owner owns the building, he can do whatever he wants with the building, right?

I mean, that's what it sounds like.

It would be essentially private property rights for the most part.

I mean, historical, it's always sad to see, especially in Kansas, we have so many great historical buildings.

I would hate to see something like that go to the wayside.

Having some kind of protections and help there would be beneficial.

I mean, our city council that I live in and we have our city council meetings are in a building that could be a historical building as well.

It's always sad to see those go at the end of the day, private property rights, I mean, you can kind of make the decisions that you want to, right?

Yeah.

Let me let me go ahead.

Okay.

I agree private property rights business I own, property I own I have the authority to do that.

But the city has, has for a long period of time neglected the whole process.

And what they should do is put a tag on a building or a property and say, this has historic significance before you tear it down, you're going to have to go through some more hoops.

You know, I can go through several historic buildings that were in this downtown or on the river that suddenly were bulldozed without appropriate oversight.

There's another step that should have been done in this whole process, and the city should step forward and do that.

And I'll just say this though, so I think I maybe you're right on that, but there's been a long time that the city could have done that and has chosen not to.

And the other thing is the owner, Mike Brown, applied for a permit to expand it before there was any talk of demolition.

And then when this when he was denied that, and then the city put an injunction against that man.

And then now we've gone through this whole thing.

I don't think his original intent at all was to try to demolish it.

And now I think he's being approached with, with maybe even above market offers to try to buy it.

I think there's all kinds of other creative solutions.

I don't think that was his original intent.

Look, I could see it from the historical point of view.

You know, culture is a very important thing for communal identity that should be preserved.

But at the end of the day, one of the bedrocks of communities and civilization is private property and respecting private property rights.

And as difficult as this may have been, I think that that was the right outcome for this.

Hopefully, as a community, we can get creative on how we can save.

Yeah, I think that really draws the line is where's the line between the value for the community based on a historical site and the private property rights for the business owner makes a decision.

Do I profit off this?

Do I expand it?

Like you said, I try to do whatever I can to preserve it in my way and and make it work for me.

But where's the line drawn between, you know, again, the government coming in and trying to keep something going that we don't necessarily need because I like culture, I like the history.

I'm all about it.

But there's a line that's got to be drawn is how much value will it bring to the community?

Yeah, but let me let Professor Fox.

Yeah, I was just going to say that the line that you're talking about is at least as important to the development of civilization as property rights, arguably, has been the ability of the people who actually live in a place, the people that live in a neighborhood, the people that are part of a community, to be able to say something about the character of the community that's important.

Now, the way we do it obviously is complicated, and I really appreciate the way you're talking about how, you know, the city government could have established different steps, different processes.

Unfortunately, you know, we have processes.

We have, you know, a historical advisory board, and we've had the city council before completely ignore recommendations that have been made by that historical advisory board.

So so Rec recommend that we explore different processes.

That doesn't necessarily give us a clear way of negotiating.

You know, the line that you're talking about here, this is just a hard situation because there has been previous owners of Crown Uptown who have tried to make it work.

Some have been more successful than others.

There's obviously other variables that come into play, and maybe there are still some that will yet come into play.

But, you know, this was a big move that a lot of people were pushing for.

They didn't have the support on the council.

Representative Helguson you as a business owner yourself.

He was denied.

He asked to expand his business.

He needs more parking or whatever it is in the city.

Initially denied him that.

Then he threatened to tear down the building.

That's when the threats began.

So I think I go back a number of years.

I grew up in the College Hill area, and so I have a lot of sympathy for it.

In fact, that's my first theater I ever went to was The Crown.

I think that what we don't have is a process of, say, before he buys the property.

Ten years out, 15 years out, you say this is likely to be on the historical register.

You don't tear it down without going through an extra hoop.

And they haven't had this process in the historical, review.

And I think that would help developers say, hey, if I buy this building such as The Crown, I may have some real problems expanding and or do something else.

He was in a really a bad situation because he wanted to try to develop it, but not develop it in the way that the College Hill neighborhood, wanted.

And especially because College Hill, two blocks down, has some real sensitive feelings about.

Sure.

This isn't the first parking debate in college Hill.

Yeah.

That's correct.

I think that's a fair point that, you know, this should have happened long time ago, establishing these things to give the clear ground rules for developers and people who would acquire these properties on what they have to do.

I think that's a very, very fair point.

Yeah.

And he kind of acknowledged that, like, look, this was this was not in the contract, this was not in the purchase agreement.

And all of a sudden I buy this property and I try to make it genuinely profitable to add value to the community.

And now the city comes in and is saying retroactively, well, no, you can't do this.

I think that's I think that's unfair.

Moving on.

Our next story, the Wichita school board making a big investment to keep its leader extending Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld contract through 2028.

The new deal approved unanimously.

It adds longevity bonuses and boosts the school district's contribution to his retirement package, bringing his total compensation now to nearly $385,000.

It also includes an unusual new clause giving Bill Feld the intellectual property rights to the experimental micro school concept that he helped create.

Board members say the move is designed to ensure leadership, stability and reward innovation.

You know, I've been talking about this even back when I was a council member in Wichita myself.

Now, granted, the council doesn't have anything to do with school board, but at some point when do we recognize that our leader salaries $385,000?

The the city manager now approaching more than a quarter million dollars a year for his salary?

When do we acknowledge that these salaries may be getting out of control, out of control?

In regards to what?

To what's the standard that we're going to make use of here?

Why did we have to hire a superintendent in at a salary higher than the previous superintendent?

I don't have any kind of knowledge about, salary scales for school superintendents nationwide, or the way in which you would adjust those to accommodate the particular challenges of two, five, nine versus any other school districts.

I'll just say this.

If there is one element of the free market argument that I agree with, and there aren't many, one of them is that if you pay people what you think they're worth, you're going to attract the people who will be able to perform at that level.

That's why our legislators should be paid more.

That's why I think the city council members should be paid more.

I want to attract better talent and hold on to people that have the kind of expertise that otherwise will be drained away to other things.

So I, I'm I'm an ardent capitalist.

You are not.

But but we we would agree on this.

I completely agree, with what you just said.

My question is, what has he done to earn it right?

What?

Where's that?

Where where is the success to warrant an almost $400,000 salary.

So what do we have here?

We have a major bond issue, which was which is honestly one of his biggest priorities when which went down, failed, which failed.

And and then we have so-called higher graduation rates.

But then now a scandal at Southeast High School that we the one that we know about could be there really hasn't been explored as much as it which it's to.

Exactly.

So a scandal there.

There were people who were already questioning the high graduation rates.

Anyway, when you see test scores and there are a lot of ways to interpret it, but there's only one way to interpret that they continue to go down and have for quite some time.

Now that's I think that's beyond that's beyond dispute at this point.

Well, a lot of people are asking, and yet we're at we're graduating higher people.

What standards have changed?

A lot of people are asking us how graduation rates can continue to rise, but all of the proficiency scores are lowering.

In a math reading, they're all lower.

That's exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, you said the same thing.

Then I was going to say is the the fact that, hey, what standards are we going to hold here to give you more money, but yet we're not seeing the results come back from that.

If you're in sales in the private sector, you make more money based on what you're actually bringing in and based on the productivity.

We're not seeing the productivity, but we are getting a ramping down of this master plan, even though we overwhelmingly rejected it with the first bond issue that was on the ballot recently, and they still want to ram it through, saying it's going to help by condensing classrooms, expanding it, condensing the number of buildings, having more students in there, and then thinking that somehow that's going to raise the rates of the test scores and the graduation, the proficiency and so on and so forth, it's not working.

So we're going to give more money to the superintendent while we can can continue to say that there's not enough money in the school district to do what we need to do, none of it makes sense to me whatsoever.

It's kind of ridiculous.

If you're a senior who is about ready to be property taxed out of your home, and one of the guys who wants to continue to see those property taxes rise now is making almost $400,000 a year.

It's a tough year.

I can't say the words on TV that I want to say.

I would be very angry to see that.

I'd be angry if I was a teacher in two five.

Yeah.

Representative Henderson, I didn't see what the performance measures that they expect from him in the future.

And that's what I would have liked to see.

What I only saw, the only thing I saw was, we're not going to take any piece of this private venture that you're working on, on during the day, you know.

Do I have some questions about that?

Yeah, I expect him to work, especially for $400,000.

I expect him to work 24 hours a day and making sure the schools perform better.

And he shouldn't have time for some other development.

Yeah.

Russ Fox, one just last point really quickly, in terms of taking a look at what his agenda was and taking a look at the bond issue, you say they're going to bring it back and try to quote, ram it down our throats again.

One, it's a vote.

You can't ram something down when people can vote no on it.

Two it is changed.

They've made it clear that it's not going to be the same bond asset that they were looking for before.

It's going to be smaller.

It's, reworked in certain ways.

I still think that overall we were 10s.

I mean, roughly, I mean, out of the seven bonds that have been since the beginning of the year, the state has rejected near five of them.

So I don't think it's a popular thing right now.

Yeah.

All right.

That's a wrap for this week.

Thank you so much to Henry Helguson Andy Hoosier, Ben Davis and Doctor Russell Arvin Fox for participating.

We'll see you next week.

You.