From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio PBS Kansas Presents Kansas Week A Silent Crisis in the heartland.

Farm bankruptcies are skyrocketing, and the financial stress is taking a deadly toll on mental health.

Also, a radical proposal to change how you elect your governor.

A new bill would create a state electoral college and give rural areas more power over who leads Kansans.

But first, guardrails are now in place for Wichita's sales tax vote.

The city council setting strict rules on how the money can be spent.

But is this enough to quell concerns that the plan is rushed and not well thought out?

That's what we're talking about right now on Kansas Week.

Hello and welcome to Kansas Week.

I'm Jared Cirillo.

With less than a month before Wichita voters go to the polls.

The Wichita City Council has officially set rules for the 1% sales tax proposal.

On Tuesday, the council approved eight key resolutions.

The measures establish so-called guardrails for the $850 million that the tax would generate over seven years.

That's if voters approve on March 3rd.

Among the changes, the first $300 million collected will be prioritized for property tax relief.

The council promising a four mil reduction in property taxes if revenue targets are met.

Which would save the owner of a $200,000 home about $92 a year beginning in 2027.

Funds would also be spent on public safety and homeless services.

The council also ruled that no public money can be spent on a new performing arts center, unless at least $50 million in private funds is secured.

Here to discuss this, and some of the other week's other top stories are community activist and sales tax opponent Celeste Reset.

Wichita businessman and former member of the state Board of Regents and supporter of the sales tax John Roth, former Wichita City Councilman Brandon Johnson, and former Wichita City Councilman Ryan Frye.

Thank you all for joining us here.

John Rolfe, I'm going to give you the floor first as one of the organizers of this.

Talking specifically now about guardrails, how can we assure because that's what happened this week.

How can we assure that the city council will follow such guardrails that were set, even though it's not in the ballot language?

Well, you know, I think there's legal precedent.

First, the after people vote on this, the buckets are formed, the accounting is done.

And, the money has to be spent on these projects.

Then there's a 15 member oversight committee of private citizens.

There's quarterly reports, and there is, independent audits, which gives us more visibility into how the city operates probably than we've ever had.

And so, people have a low trust in government.

This ought to help with that.

I think what the city was doing this week was then adding more clarity, as people were asking for, of how will this roll out.

They prioritized how this money will go to make sure that they could fund the property tax relief in year one, to make sure they could fund the homelessness, activity that needs to be funded where the funding runs out in October.

With that clarity, I think it's relieved the pressure for a lot of people who care about funding homeless, who care about making sure our first responders are taken care of.

And knowing with the citizen oversight on top of it, I think people can feel good about a yes vote coming up.

All right.

Brian Fry, let me move on.

Let me move over here to you.

You've been publicly against this, and I'll ask you the same question, since that's what the council did this week, can we assure that a future council, 3 or 4 years down the road, their priorities won't change?

Can we assure that they'll stay with the same priorities and guardrails?

You can't.

I mean, we can use the word guardrails, but it's really more suggestions.

It only takes four votes on the council to change anything, any policy, any ordinance, unless it's a charter ordinance which would require five votes.

Leadership changes, staff changes, the will of the community.

Budgets exceed projections.

There's a lot of changes that would require maybe some adjustments along the way.

I think it's difficult to say this council is going to have to abide or future council is going to have to abide by the decisions that are made here.

It's a worthy goal.

I get it.

And I think having more accountability and more, oversight is certainly worthy.

That's what the maps program in Oklahoma City had.

It took two years to build that trust to get to that vote.

And I think that's what's needed on this to give some of that trust back in government.

I think we've seen too many examples over the last few years where that has eroded.

And I think it's worthy to put these kind of suggestions and guardrails in.

But you can't hold future councils to those decisions.

Understood.

Former council member Brenda Johnson, you've said especially in the last couple of years, you just came off the council in December.

You've been saying over the last couple of years that the city has not been keeping up with its tax base and its tax responsibility in the first place.

Absolutely.

I've been saying probably since my first year that we needed additional sources of revenue.

I'd suggest a property tax increases.

Of course, the council disagreed with me, and I've also said sales tax.

There's a lot of worthwhile projects that need funding and a dedicated funding source.

Council always has to prioritize as they should, but oftentimes those quality of life projects that I tend to care about and fight for don't get the funding that I think they should.

Yeah.

And the city has been as prided itself, many the city manager and many council members have have, made it a good, positive note that the city hasn't raised its mill levy in close to 30 years and actually lowered it last year.

I voted against that.

So you did vote against tried to lower it two years in a row but didn't get the votes.

Yep.

Yeah.

So but tell me, tell me why you're supporting this as a former council member.

Tell me why you're supporting this in in about a minute's worth of time here.

It's really simple.

It's another option for the council, dedicating funding to public safety.

That's always the top priority of the community.

When we look at our citizen survey, homelessness has been a key, priority, especially since the pandemic and since the emergency shelter was in district one.

I think that the multi-agency center needs a funding source.

Right now, they do not have a committed funding source of multiple millions per year.

This does that.

This also allows the, projects that were in the CIP for a public safety council.

They can look at what else can we do with those funds.

Well, quality of life, which is what I care about.

So I support giving the council an additional option, not just doing it the way we've always done it.

I was a participant in that for eight years.

It was always frustrating, but having additional revenue source to fund some of these projects I think is a good thing.

Celeste Racette, you've been a staunch opponent of this.

When we talk, your main argument has been it's too rushed, it's too vague, it's too quick.

Tell me why you're so staunchly against this.

Sure, I'd be glad to.

So for the last six years, I've been studying city finances.

And the thing I've been most appalled about is the lack of oversight.

In fact, for three years, the city didn't even have an internal auditor.

So I've been digging down into some of the development projects.

Let's look at the Wichita water plant.

It's not currently working.

The first thing we need to fix in the city of Wichita is basic water.

We've got to figure out what's wrong with those clarifiers, figure out what it's going to cost to get the water plant up and running.

That's the number one infrastructure to me is key.

If you don't have water, you don't have a city.

Then there's other developments that have gone south and not worked out as we were promised.

The Ball stadium is currently under water for its debt, and the Star Bonds will start pulling out of the general fund in 2028.

Kenmore development is something we're currently litigating because we didn't collect $2 million from the developers, but kept giving them incentives.

We've probably wasted hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money.

And I say trust is a big issue here.

73% of Wichita fans don't trust City Hall.

And that's because they know of all these failed deals.

So I say let's start with the new city manager.

Give Dennis Marshall some time to get his hands around the budget, which starts in a month.

Then let's start building some trust and actually performing according to what we told citizens we would.

Before we start asking for $850 million.

John Ross, let me let me go back to you.

A lot of what I've heard out on the street and talking to other people myself is that to this day, no single project has been identified.

There are buckets of public safety and a bucket here for homelessness and a bucket here.

But no single project has been identified.

I've.

I've heard people say if if I knew we were going to build a fire station here and a police station here and specific projects were identified, they might support it.

Yeah, I think it'd be a great idea.

I've heard that from people, and it's really a misnomer.

If you look at the CIP, I think you can see the projects that have been identified for public safety.

It's infrastructure, whether it's new stations, whether it's maintaining the stations that are our bravest are in, I've heard recently that mold is in a majority of our stations, including maybe three, where it's airborne.

We got to do better by our firefighters.

And the people keeping us safe.

I think when you look at homelessness and the plan there, it's quite detailed.

It took ten years to develop this.

Start with the Mental Health Coalition and to the homelessness coalition, and then to the Coalition to End Homelessness that visited other cities, created a model that worked for Wichita, around the best in class and has launched a launch this property tax.

They council laid it out.

It's four mils in the next budget so people can know what to plan on, when they're when they're budgeting.

And we're trying to keep seniors in their home and the arts and essentially to a Celeste nose and Brian and Brandon, you know, it's been studied over and over and over again.

We have a new populous study that says we're missing out on 32 million a year indirect spend because of what we're missing.

But if we're trying to keep seniors in their homes with the property tax issue that keeps rising, if we're trying to keep seniors in their home, is this the right tax to raise on lower income people and senior citizens?

A sales tax is regressive.

Quite a regressive tax.

Yeah.

Well, you know, Lois, so, just just for comparison.

So Wichita is the largest city in the country outside of Portland that doesn't utilize the sales tax to balance out the pressure.

It's on property tax versus consumption tax.

This tax raise on sales tax, it's $0.01 would bring us up to level with all the surrounding communities around us.

What you pay when you go to and over what you pay when you go to May's, what you go to pay when you go to Derby, where those companies are, those cities are investing themselves.

Yet we have all these people that live in those communities that come into Wichita every day that aren't contributing to our infrastructure because they're not having to pay the sales tax when they go out to launch another thing.

So this actually is as a much fair way, a part of the guardrails conversation you can't miss is that the council, passed a $55 rebate for families that qualify for the, the subsidy for the water bills and utility people are going to have to apply for that program, which they do now.

And it works.

It works very well.

It can.

We trust the people that need it the most will do actually do this?

Well, I sure hope so.

I mean, they're doing it now.

And then I think we have the Homestead Act also, passed as part of that, which again, helps seniors.

And I, every elected official I talked to has told me that they hear over and over again, property tax is a problem.

How do we hold it down?

What do you do?

Four mills is a is a 12% reduction off what the city collects.

Now that's that's real money and helps balance it out.

And it helps preserve the arts.

It helps, fund the homeless.

It does really good things.

That pulls up our community and creates public safety, that allows it to thrive over time.

Right now, if we don't do anything, I think what you'll see, I don't I can't imagine future councils will will raise the taxes.

As you said, what you'll see is us continue to push capital projects out and we'll have our roads will continue to degrade.

Our public safety will continue to great our fire.

Numbers are worse than the national average.

Our deaths per thousand.

I mean, I love Wichita, but we've got to invest in ourselves and be sound, from a fiduciary standpoint for the kind of community we want.

Brian Fry, let me move over to you.

Go ahead.

When he when he mentioned, the the sales tax versus property tax, it's I saw your message on Facebook a few days ago that no matter what, everybody's going to pay more.

It doesn't.

The sales tax equation doesn't translate into the property tax.

It's going to be more it's going to be more plus that's and the council did say four mills.

But is that based on that taking the full valuation that is going to probably exceed the four mills.

We know the valuation is going to go up.

So it's not a reduction because you're still going to pay more.

It could be less than what you could pay.

And the public policy part of the Homestead Act and the, the rebate, that's only if the sales tax passes.

That's what the council says.

Correct.

That is good public policy.

They should probably do anyway.

So figure out how to fund that.

And they haven't identified how to pay for that yet.

They said that's $600,000 that they got off work and within the budget itself.

Brian, you said early on that that you had voted twice to reduce property tax.

What was your argument then, if you're using it now?

It was exceeding the revenue is exceeding the revenue neutral rate.

And we got to get a control on spending since 2021 to this year's current projected budget, it's up $100 million, 40% increase.

That's from 248 million to 346.

That's that's a lot to take.

The police department budget has also increased from I believe, and a lot of that to a lot of that was getting our police and fire pay that they needed to be at and fire fight.

That's really and I'm fully glad that we did that.

We needed to do that right.

Go ahead.

And staffing.

We also hired 42 more firefighters, which was part of the Safer grant.

So we have ramped up our personnel and our public safety costs.

What I find ironic is when we talk about how this is going to benefit certain segments of the five buckets, that could all change, like you said, with just four votes in the future, look at some of the charter ordinance that were passed to take care of century two, and that funding was diverted.

In fact, there's a great article in the Wichita Eagle just today about how that funding from a charter ordinance was diverted to go into other buckets besides taking care of century two.

So there's no guarantee, even if they say, oh, we're going to cut for meals, that's not in the ballot language.

The ballot language does not specifically cover for mills of property tax valuation.

So nothing is guaranteed under this proposal.

Brandon Johnson, go ahead.

I was just not that's not what the article said.

The article talked about the prioritization.

The money actually did go to century to address was not at the level that some people, not by the visit.

Wichita was able to get some funding from that.

And when you think about it, it's chicken or egg.

So you can take care of a building, but you need folks and butts and seats to pay the transient gas tax to actually take care of the building.

So you got to figure out which one on there and visit.

Wichita does a great job of bringing people here.

Also made the case that our convention and performing arts is inadequate where it's lost money 23 of the last 27 years.

And so, you know, we've got to make an investment.

Those are going to continue to operate and be a drain on this community who has an opportunity to do so.

If we look at the state of our buildings now, look at the current state of the former public library.

It's had roof drainage.

There's ceiling tiles on the floor.

We have done a deplorable job of taking care of our public buildings.

So to me, it doesn't make sense until we can take care of what we currently have that we would add on here and build a new building here.

We've really got to get a reign on how we're spending our money.

But the great thing about this is the maintenance piece in the public safety for firefighters sleeping in those kind of conditions.

I mean, the guys in station one during that cold snap or sleeping in the cold, but the ballot language says other purposes.

That's right.

Which is so much wiggle room that could be used for salaries and bodies.

And also just the council can say it's not going to be used for that, but a future council can say, you know what, we got to make this invest.

I think that's why elections matter.

Exactly.

To chair candidates, uphold what was agreed to.

And if they don't, then you don't vote.

But over a seven year plan, that makes it very tough to do the CIP.

I wanted to ask you about the CIP.

You know, when I was on council in 2021 and looked at the CIP and I thought, oh my gosh, you know, all of these, who would not want to do any of these things?

Fire stations, police stations, century two and all streets and all sorts of things.

And then I, you know, the more time that I was on council, I thought, there's never any way that 90% of these projects are ever going to move from the CIP to the budget.

So your argument is this is about the only way we can get some of those right is the best way to guarantee that those things happen every time I hear.

And no offense to my colleague, a question about spending.

It's we have these needs.

These are not just wants.

And this is a funding source that can make those things happen.

We had to push off projects for a number of years to try to get the funding allocated, or the political will to actually do it.

This funding source means that these projects can happen and they can happen now.

All right.

Save $20 million.

And but you just said earlier that there's money freed up to now spend on other things.

So there went your cash savings.

You're just going to spend it.

And not only that, there's no detail for how this is going to be spent.

John.

Ralph, I'll give you the last word you've organized this year.

One of one of the three people that's that's pushing this the hardest.

Is it too rushed, too vague, too quick?

Absolutely not.

I think, you know, we make the argument that it's too slow.

We're a community that doesn't utilize the sales tax.

We have been developing a lot of these plans that have these conversations for years.

I don't think there's a person around the table that can deny any of these five items, hasn't been studied and talked about ad nauseum.

We know that they are community priorities.

We've, they with the council, setting the election, we've now had time for the community educate themselves, and we should encourage people to decide what kind of city do they want to live in.

We need a vibrant, wonderful town, and you've got to invest in it and you've got to work.

Compassionate city.

We have to take care of our most vulnerable in the homeless.

And this does that.

I think people can be proud to vote yes for this.

Yeah.

And I think it's important that everybody at this table loves Wichita and wants what's best for Wichita.

March 3rd is the election.

Go ahead, $20 million.

Do you want to invest that in interest or in your city and projects that are worthwhile?

That's actually 25 million and some interest is good.

Some debt is good.

In fact, when I was on the Wichita operating a 15 seconds go ahead when I was on the okay, sorry.

Ironically, that was one of the recommendations we made from the Loj group, the bipartisan that's residency study.

We said prepaid gym caucus Fairfield in and get that debt off our books.

And you know what?

City Manager Layton told me?

He said, we're getting low interest.

Why would we want to go ahead and pay that off?

So it's really ironic to hear you take the opposite position.

When we had a group of accountants trying to guide the city on how they could find efficiencies, and that was one I've got to leave it at that.

I've got to leave it at that.

That's March 3rd is the election.

Get out and vote.

A new proposal in Topeka would dramatically change how Kansans elect their governor.

A House committee is considering a constitutional amendment to create a state electoral college.

Under the plan, each state senate district would get one electoral vote for governor and lieutenant governor instead of the current statewide popular vote system.

The move comes as a crowded field of nine Republicans and three Democrats are already vying to replace the term limited governor Laura Kelly.

If passed, the change would not take effect for this year's election, but will reshape Kansas politics for decades to come.

Council Member Johnson, I'll start with you.

You know, I this seems like a push.

Or tell me tell me your thoughts about this push.

It seems like a Republican push to get more power to rural counties.

Am I reading that right?

I think so, I believe in one person, one vote.

I don't agree with our current electoral college.

I think we should get rid of that on the federal level.

I think the majority vote should win.

I don't think we should do that in Kansas, and I think it'd be terrible for our state.

Ryan from yeah, I don't know what the problem is we're trying to solve here.

Yeah, right.

I agree with my former colleague as it seems to be working just fine.

Identify what the problem is and let's figure it out.

And let's have a discussion before this is the first I've even heard of this.

I hadn't heard, and it just all of a sudden popped up as a House bill.

That's not the way to do things.

Yeah, Celestria said anything to add.

I agree with them as well.

I think one person, one vote for the governor.

I don't know why we would want to do this.

It doesn't make sense and we'd be the only state doing it.

I think what we have is fine.

One person, one vote.

All right.

And our last story of financial crisis is hitting American farms.

And Kansas families are feeling the pain.

New data shows farm bankruptcies jumped 46% nationwide last year, with the Midwest seeing a staggering 70% spike.

Steven McCloud, a farmer in Kansas Farm Bureau board member, says the financial stress is taking a heartbreaking toll on mental health, with farm debt hitting a record $624 billion.

Suicide rates among farmers are now more than triple the national average.

The Farm Bureau has launched a new task force to help, urging farmers to reach out and reminding them that their lives matter more than the markets.

Celeste, we were talking before you.

You grew up on a farm.

Tell me about what what are your thoughts on this here?

Well, I know that in rural areas, like, we our homestead was in Kerwin, Kansas.

John and I were talking about our farming backgrounds, and it is hard for farmers because there's growing crop insurance costs.

There's growing crop costs.

It's very difficult for farmers to make a living.

So I can understand why this is a growing concern.

Or is it is it like what is the root cause here?

It seems like are the federal policies causing some of this that coming down from the Trump administration or what I would, as some federal policies over the years and multiple administrations have been causing that.

I think that that should be looked at again.

But also with the mental health crisis, we need more investment in mental health.

We've been saying that as a city with our mental health hospital, but hopefully the state looks at doing something about that and federally as well.

Yeah.

And also farmers have long been able to use crop insurance to be bailed out for lack of a better term.

Yeah.

I mean, even mental health resources are thinner in our rural counties, right?

They have to come to Wichita to get services and needs, and they can't be away from the farm, too.

I mean, that's that's a reality of that lifestyle.

And so they they don't feel like they have the ability to go get the help.

And it's a very prideful community too.

It's it's very hard to ask for help, in that situation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And John, if you, if you need to get up, but I, I, I'm not chair of a board.

The supply chain does 2 million, $2 billion, and purchase in a year.

There's no doubt that the, the tariffs and the trade wars have had an impact on our farmers.

We used to feed the world, and markets have closed to our guys, and gals who are out there hard working.

We have restaurants all in up and down the heartland.

AG is really important to us and, have family that still farms and you know, we do too.

We have farmers as well.

Starts in the dirt.

It's very capital intensive business.

And, I think we need less.

We have great untrustworthy product.

We need to make sure that the world is open, to buying our stuff because it also impacts global hunger, which is another sensitive issue for me.

And Kansas can be a central part of helping solve that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And a new bill in Topeka would require Kansas kids to start school at age six instead of seven.

Republican Representative Susan Estes is now pushing this change, saying that children who start later are disadvantaged.

Kansas is currently one of only nine states that allows parents to wait until a child is seven years old to enroll them.

While some parents support the early start for socialization, others argue that families need flexibility for children who might not be ready.

I admit, I was surprised to learn that you did not have to enroll your child until seven years old.

It seems that I totally your thoughts.

Council Member Johnson actually learned that from Doctor Thompson a few years ago.

It's kind of mind blowing because I'm one of my kids to be in school early.

I don't really think they should change the law.

I think they should incentivize early education.

That's really expensive.

Daycare is expensive, and if you can have, institutions that do education as well as daycare, I think that's a great way to do socialization and to get kids reading early.

And that gets them ready for school.

Yeah, yeah.

And early literacy is a sign of success.

And the earlier you can get kids reading, they're going to be more I almost said more smarter.

That's an inside joke.

More better.

Yeah.

Celeste, anything to add here?

Oh, absolutely.

Early childhood development is so critical.

Head start in those programs that help children begin starting on literacy is really important because as we know, Kansas is lagging right now on our reading and abilities in math.

So I say let's encourage earlier the better.

Yeah.

And especially in Wichita schools, I see and I don't mean to pick on Wichita schools for sure, but in in some of the more urban areas, we see graduation rates or not necessarily graduation rates, but, math rate, literacy, reading literacy rates are astonishingly low in some schools.

So it's hard to argue that allowing kids to start later would help.

Well, I can tell you from being on the Board of Regents that the readiness college readiness has dropped across our state.

Yeah, you know, precipitously before Covid, it got accelerated through Covid.

You know, earlier intervention and education is, is a ticket to success.

Literacy is a big deal for us.

I'm dyslexic.

We've we've, invested a lot and trying to help broaden that out across our community, but I just want to miss opportunity.

It's a beautiful thing.

You know, we can argue about the sales tax here at the beginning, but you can hear the hearts here.

We care about the kids.

We believe in literacy.

We we have hearts for the farmers.

And those are needs.

And that's what's great about this city is we're compassionate and we're caring about our neighbor.

So I just don't miss that here.

I don't think any of us wouldn't be here if we weren't right.

I think we can have an intelligent adult conversation and argue our points, make our, you know, and still, at the end of the day, come away as friends and passionate Wichita.

Yeah.

That's right.

That's a wrap for this week.

Thank you to all of you for joining us today.

Really appreciate it.

We had a great discussion.

And thanks also to Kake news for sharing their video video with us.

March 3rd is that special election for the Wichita sales tax referendum?

Get out and vote.

I'm Jared Cirillo.

We'll see you next week.