From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio PBS Kansas Presents Kansas Week.

Fighting back against rising property valuations.

State lawmakers advance a plan giving voters more leverage to veto local tax hikes, but it might leave cities scrambling for cash.

Also, the growing backlash against Big Tech, why rural residents and state leaders are pushing to block multi-billion dollar server farms from draining the region's resources.

But first, toxic fungus or election theater?

A closer look at the timing of firehouse closures as voting on a sales tax increase is underway.

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

Hello and welcome to Kansas Week.

I'm Jaren Cirillo.

Is it a genuine public health emergency or a well timed political maneuver?

Critics are raising eyebrows over the sudden closure of Wichita fire stations due to mold.

Station 15 is set to reopen in early March.

But station 11 on George Washington Boulevard will now likely close next.

Skeptics are pointing to the highly coincidental timing.

Fungus has reportedly been known to exist for several years in many of the city's firehouses.

But officials waited until just before the sales tax election to bring it to the public's attention and begin closing fire stations.

The sudden outcry comes just as voters are deciding on a proposed 1% sales tax that would fund police and fire infrastructure among other things.

The citywide special election takes place Tuesday.

Mayor Lily Wu says the tax is needed to fix decades of neglect, adding to the turmoil.

Fire Chief Tammy Snow also just announced her retirement.

Though she insists her departure has nothing to do with the spreading crisis.

Here to discuss this and some of the week's other local and state news is state Republican Representative Leah Howell, state Democrat Representative Angela martinez, former Wichita City Council member Lovato Williams, and former state Board of Education member Doctor Walt Chapel.

Thank you all for joining us.

Former council member Williams, I'll start with you.

Since you were a former member of the Wichita City Council.

Welcome.

Thank you.

This is from a former council person standpoint.

How have you been viewing this as what's going on?

It's been very controversial, unfortunately.

Absolutely.

It has been.

But for me, I look at it to say, have we been taking care of this?

Have we been looking at this?

If this is nothing new, then why now?

I think that we as, former council members and council members, we have to be proactive as opposed to reactive.

And right now, we're reacting to something that should have been taken care of probably some years before.

It was not always the case that our staff would report to us, because that was not the case.

I could go to the mayor's office.

It could be an a conversation between the mayor and the city manager at that time.

Sure.

But proactive as opposed to reactive is what I would say.

You know, and as far as the mold issue, the union representative has been saying they've been bringing this to council members and staffs attention for years.

And nothing's ever gotten done about it.

It just keeps getting put on the back burner.

Do you believe that, or is the union has been very specific about wanting to pass this tax with no, no extra or no specific project or even identified to do anything with it yet?

But I thought I heard something about it being in the CIP, the capital improvement plan, if it were in the capital improvement plan, and maybe that's where some of the money is coming from.

Now, in order to make those changes.

I think that we should have been looking at that beforehand.

As as I said again, I just think that, right now, was good timing for this to show up.

Mold can affect breathing.

Mold can affect other parts of your body.

So have we had these reactions, from our firefighters before now?

Yeah.

And one other thing before I move on is, I've been hearing from people who we had a guest on last week who said our firefighters actually should be taking care of.

They live in these buildings.

They should be helping to take care of them all during the day.

Do you agree with that?

I definitely agree.

The union has said no, that they don't want their firefighters dealing with these types of things.

I said on, Wichita police and Fire Foundation.

And so we listened to many of their concerns.

I will have to say, I have not heard this concern from our firefighters.

Okay.

All right.

Doctor Walt Chappell, what are what are your thoughts on this, sudden issue of mold in our fire stations right before we go to vote on a sales tax?

Well, there's a little phrase that I come back to, and it's called out of sight, out of mind.

And, I think we have a lot of things in our city that have been buried, if you will, at the staff level that haven't been brought to the council.

If the council knows about, they could have dealt with it.

But many time things get covered up.

And, you know, the, the a lot of people have blamed past councils is that is that this council is and maybe 11 to this is for you to answer I guess two but do you think that's maybe kind of pushing them, pushing the blame further down, kicking the can down the road, maybe.

I think that should not always be our first comment.

Yeah.

Is that of that council this is not my problem.

They should have.

No.

If we're in that seat then it's our problem right now.

And so I think that's the way we would have approached it.

Looking forward is probably looking forward.

Is it all right?

Don't blame somebody when you don't know if that was on their plate.

Right.

Exactly.

Two state lawmakers here, Leah Howell, from, a standpoint, this has been very bipartisan against this whole sales tax.

I've, I've seen Democrats, libertarians, Republicans all strongly opposed to this, not necessarily opposed to the tax, but opposed to the plan.

Is that what you're seeing out in the community?

It is what I'm seeing in the community.

I don't represent Wichita.

So just making that clear.

But just, you know, on my own personal social media, I have been very impressed at the bipartisan reaction.

And, it's been interesting to observe.

And I will just say, on, you know, in our role at all levels of government, I think we are responsible to make sure that we are maintaining our buildings, and that should be included in our in our budget.

And I think it behooves us as elected officials that we should be checking on buildings ourselves.

We should be touring buildings and making sure that it looks like things are being done on the up and up.

And I do know that, Sedgwick County firefighters are expected to help maintain and do basic maintenance.

Probably not mold specifically, but basic maintenance.

They do on a regular basis.

I have no idea about Wichita Fire, but, I just can't speak to Sedgwick County.

Sure.

So just from personal experience.

But Angela martinez, what are yo Well, I think it's unfortunate that it's that it's gotten into that condition.

It is a little fishy, moldy.

You know.

Right.

Yeah.

That it's all of a sudden brought to our attention.

Mold is something.

Mold is something that, builds up over time.

And, for it to just come out now.

Yeah, it's it's just a little.

It's just a little weird.

And, you know, they've they've also complained of terrible sleeping conditions and complained isn't the right word, because if these are our conditions in our fire stations, that's a problem.

That is a huge problem.

But it seems like they're bringing up this topic.

The union especially is bringing up this this subject of broken ceiling tiles and, soiled mattresses and terrible heat conditions during the winter for many of our fire stations.

How how did we get to this exact location to begin with?

You know?

Exactly.

That's what I wonder, right?

And that's what I wonder, too.

And so it makes me, think it for one.

What what's has been done with with the money so far?

Deferred maintenance, you know?

Yeah, I just don't know.

I mean, I'm in.

I'm on, on the fence, you know, I'll be on the fence until I probably go vote.

But, I do wonder where the funds have gone.

Where?

Some buildings have gotten so far into this condition that they need to be closed.

Yeah.

And one.

One.

Before we move on, LaVonne, to one quick question for you.

I mentioned deferred maintenance.

That's a highly thrown around buzz word on on City council and at City Hall.

And it's been an issue not only with our fire stations, but with century two, our police substations as well.

The council has to deal with decisions that they have at the time the pandemic in 2020, Bob Layton said, we would have spent much more money on century two if it weren't for the pandemic.

Do you do you agree with with that?

I mean, how do you deal with deferred maintenance, making those decisions on an annual basis?

I think there have to be charts and balances.

I think that we would have had to have had something that has all of the buildings on it, a yearly check or a six month check.

Like she said, mold doesn't just grow overnight.

And so I just think that somewhere the ball has been dropped or it's not getting to the council.

And I just think that we haven't taken care of it the way we should have.

But this is something that has to be done at this time.

But it should have been done already.

There should be checks and balances somewhere along the way.

We've checked these five buildings.

This is what we need here.

This is at.

This building is good.

Let's move on to the next.

I just think that the checks and balances were not there at this time.

The fight over a massive data center in western Sedgwick County is now escalating.

State Senator Chase Blasi is now demanding that the county impose a full three year moratorium on development, calling the current 90 day pause inadequate.

Developers are eyeing hundreds of acres near Gardner Plain for a sprawling AI facility, but Blasi and local residents warn that it will overwhelm the power grid and drain Cheney Lake to cool its servers.

Blasi warns if county commissioners refuse to enact the three year freeze, he will introduce state legislation to force their hand.

Public like town halls on this I data center issue will begin in the middle of March, and we talk to our state lawmakers first.

Is there anything that's being done on the state level?

Let me let me start with Angela on the state level to bar these data centers.

You know, there's good points and bad points about them.

But is there anything on the state level that you know of that's not that I know of?

And I just heard about this moratorium just recently.

But I know that I personally had a concern, with the water, the state of water in Kansas and in the data center.

So, and how the two relate and what the risks and benefits are.

So that's other than that, I have not heard anything.

And a lot of the complaints have also centered around the massive amount of electricity that these centers use.

Yes, that could drain resources away from Evergy.

Representative Howell.

Well, and I think in the spirit of full disclosure, as I think everyone at this table knows, I'm married to a county commissioner.

So I think that's important for the audience to know.

But, I think it would be, appropriate for the public to know that the county commission has a legal process that they always follow with all of these types of decisions.

And so, you know, and these they always follow those.

And they, you know, they rise to these decisions very carefully.

So, that I think that's important to know.

I don't know that, all the legislators are perhaps aware of that.

And so I think that's that's important to note.

But they do require energy, of course.

And I think but there is a lot of outdated and misinformation that goes around that.

So I think having accurate information is really important.

And I, I know the county has the 90 day, moratorium right now while they're doing research and data, and they have a lot of staff to do that.

So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Doctor Chappell, we always talk about ways to bring in more tax revenue for our local governments.

And this seems to be like a way to do that.

But then when we hit the environmental impact, it is it is it the right idea to move forward?

Well, I come back with another phrase which is haste makes waste.

It seems like we need to give the county commissioners and the planning department enough time to really see what's involved here.

The amount of water needed to cool these server farms is just amazing, and we already have had cycles in the city.

New reservoir where we have now filled it up again, which is wonderful, but it won't take long to get it back down.

There's so many other communities in Sedgwick County that rely on that water.

It's not just Wichita, so we've got to make sure we do this right.

The other concern I have is this may be a sad.

We have so many places across the country that are put in data centers at some point, you've overbuilt, and I don't see any reason that we should rush into this.

Yeah.

Lavon, tell Williams tell me your thoughts.

I definitely agree that the community and the county needs to be involved.

In in discussing this, you're always going to have that.

Not in my backyard.

I had that all the time.

But give the community an opportunity to weigh in on this.

Look at the, environmental effects.

Are there any environmental effects?

Right now from those that have been built around the country?

Making sure that we can give them all of that information to make them feel comfortable with what's going on.

Of course, the water is an issue.

We've got to look at that as another part of the environment.

And so I just think that we need to cover all of our bases, before any decisions are made.

So I, really agree with the county for doing what they're doing and putting things off until they've had those, town hall discussions and, and then to find out the environmental pieces attached to that, is it appropriate?

And whoever wants to answer that, is it appropriate for, Representative Blazey to go to the county commission and basically demand this is, is is it appropriate or not?

Do you want to comment?

Representative Howell?

I will just carefully say that I think it it behooves all of us as elected officials to probably be careful about, we say if the shoe is on the other foot, how would how would we statewide elected feel if the the local electeds were telling us that we needed to have a statewide moratorium and they were demanding that of us?

I'm not sure how we would feel about that.

And another point I would just point out, too, is we need to also remember part of the decision that they count the county commissioners have to consider in this is, that there are private property rights involved in this.

And those are sacred.

So that's an important part that we cannot just remove from this discussion.

Our next story, a major shift in Topeka, could give you more power over your property taxes while costing local governments millions of dollars.

And the Kansas House has revised a tax reform bill to make it much easier for voters to fight back when cities or counties try to increase property tax revenue by more than 3%, lawmakers lowered the number of signatures needed on a protest petition to just 5% of voters.

But in the same move, the House also scrapped a $60 million fund.

That money was supposed to reward local governments that actually kept their tax rates low.

Conservative lawmakers argued that the state simply cannot afford the massive payout.

The revised bill now advances after an 87 to 22 vote.

Representative Martinez, we've been talking about, lately, property tax.

The mill levy has stayed the same, but the county appraiser has risen property values across Sedgwick County significantly.

So how does that translate into this, where we talk about governments trying to rake in more and more and more money?

Well, I am no tax expert.

Believe me, I don't save on tax.

But I. I understand that, I think I think giving it back to local governments to handle and then if they're going to increase putting that out to the people.

However, the $60 million that was taken back, I wish they would have left that in for the cushion.

Because we have these mandates on our local governments and we expect them to provide these services.

And, and then with not with not having that $60 million to fall back on if they should need it.

Kind of causes, repercussions because anytime you, anytime you services suffer, it always suffers.

You know, the marginalized communities, black and brown, lower economic communities fill those first.

So, I voted no.

Okay.

But that's my reason for voting no, because I felt like, it's good to have the cap.

It's good to give choice to the people.

But Reagan back that $60 million was something I kind of didn't agree with.

Representative.

How how did you vote on this matter?

Well, I will just tell you, this was probably one of the harder ones that I have had in my five years there.

This is my fifth session, and this is probably this may be the only one that I. I voted one way one day and the next day for final action.

I actually flipped my vote and I ended up voting no.

And it was very difficult for me.

And, so, I really wrestled over the 60 million because we had an amendment to pull out the 60 million.

I ended up voting for that, even though I really struggled with that, because we really didn't have the 60 million at the state level to spend that money out of our budget, because our budget is actually we're spending more than we want to.

And what we need to add already.

So to add that 60 million on top of it is a problem for us.

So there's that.

But the real clincher for me that made me change my vote the next day was we had a second amendment that lowered the, amount of signatures needed for the petition.

And I didn't have time to do the math because I don't have the math brain that my husband does.

And so I couldn't do it fast enough.

And so with the new amendment that lowered the amount of signatures that it would take, in Sedgwick County, it lowered it down to only, I have it in front of me because I knew it when I would not remember.

It is only, 7627 signatures.

And that's that's less than 2% of registered voters in Sedgwick County.

So that's two out of per 100 registered voters.

And just for an example, my husband likes to file for petition by file, I mean file, registered reelection, thank you by petition.

And he has to get 710 signatures.

So one tenth of that, and he usually does that by himself.

So that's not very many people have to weigh in to run a budget.

Right.

And so I just I could not I just did not think that was enough voices to have to be heard.

Doctor chapel, what are your thoughts?

We have to give people a voice.

And right now, property owners are getting taken to the cleaners at all levels.

And one of the things in this bill exempts school districts.

And that's a real problem in Wichita.

We increased the local option budget by 22%, and the school board wasn't informed beforehand.

The Financial Oversight Committee was not informed ahead of time.

It shows up in December.

They passed the budget in July and August.

So we have to have an opportunity for the people of our state and local communities to be able to say, wait a minute, just because you lave kept the mill levy, the same does not mean my tax bill is going to stay the same.

Yeah, and that's where we are right now.

We've had such an increase in appraised value that it's just getting out of sight.

We've got to stop this former council member Williamson.

And one of the thing I like to point out in what Doctor Chappell just said is the city council actually last year lowered the mill levy.

But despite lowering the mill levy, they still took in more money than they did the year before.

So lately people don't realize that.

No, they don't realize that.

And we're talking about affordable housing.

And we also need to look at property tax.

We also need to look at all of the other components of owning a home, and how our black and brown people are able to live without renting and own their own, and still be able to take care of all of the entities that are there.

And so we need to look at all of that as we look at property tax relief.

Yep.

Good discussion.

Could this be the year Kansas finally legalizes marijuana?

Two new bills just introduced in Topeka would green light both medical and recreational cannabis?

Supporters argue that taxing weed sales could fund affordable housing, child care and property tax relief.

Democrats have pushed for legalization for many years, but Kansas remains one of the few holdout states.

This latest push comes as President Trump recently signed an executive order downgrading marijuana from the strictest federal drug category, making it easier for scientists to conduct medical research.

Both state bills are now headed to committee.

Doctor Chappell I'll start with you.

You've you've looked at this and it we had a little discussion before that.

It seems like the state of Kansas is missing out on a lot of tax revenue.

We talk about trying to find other revenue streams.

But Kansas just just been holding out on this possible revenue stream for marijuana over at least, 40 states that have either medical or recreational marijuana.

We have people in Kansas that use it every day.

We're not taxing it.

We're not getting the benefit.

They're enjoying their pleasure, if they will, or their need for medical marijuana.

It's very helpful, apparently, for folks who have PTSD or veterans and so forth.

People have had various accidents.

So I don't think we should be hypocritical about this.

We have Oklahoma and Colorado, and we have New Mexico, Missouri right next door to us that all have both medical and recreational marijuana, every every state surrounding Kansas now except Nebraska.

Okay.

Nebraska.

Right.

Okay.

And Iowa.

But the point I'm getting is we have to come to reality.

Yeah.

This is not something that we need to keep fighting over.

I think we need to pass the bill, get it done.

The thing I noticed is that this bill has been introduced in February the 4th.

It has not had a hearing yet.

It has gone to state and Federal Affairs Committee, which means it's exempt.

It can come up again, but I'm not sure if it's going to die because leadership won't bring it forward.

The chair won't hear it one way or another.

This needs to come forward and get some decision.

Yeah.

LaVonne to Williams I probably haven't followed it as close as I should, but I do like numbers.

I'd like to see what kind of numbers come in from across the the states that are surrounding us.

What does it look like for them?

Medically as opposed to recreationally?

What kind of money does it bring into the state?

And I think that's one of the things that we need to look at as well.

I think we need to weigh all options.

Representative Martinez, what are your thoughts here?

Is this going to be the year we finally legalize marijuana?

Well, I and it is late in the game, so I don't know where that bill will end up, but, I believe it's a good start.

Probably for next session.

I don't know who will be in office then or where or if it'll happen, but I think I think we do need to, really begin, discussing it because, like, like we said, the root or the reality is that the prohibition isn't stopping use, and we're losing out on a lot of revenue.

So, but there's a lot that we need to research.

So with, with about 30s representative health, I would just say, I think that we will have to see some significant changes in leadership and probably some of the electeds to see some movement forward.

And also, I think it would be good to do some investigation into the, we've seen some presentations on increased organized crime and different things like that, some of these states.

All right.

And I want to get to our last story very quickly.

Wichita is mourning the loss of a trailblazing leader and dedicated public servant, Melodee McCray.

Miller has passed away at the age of 69, a lifelong Wichita, and she made history as the first African-American woman to serve on the Sedgwick County Commission.

She also spent eight years as a Kansas state representative and most recently served on the Wichita School Board.

I wanted to give to a couple just with seconds here, tell me your thoughts about Melody's life.

He is a person that will truly be missed.

She was one of those that found her seat at the table.

At every table she went to, it was helping her community.

Not only did she help her community, she was always willing to help those that were coming up along beside her and behind her.

So Melody is one that we're going to miss, and it's going to be big shoes to fill.

All right.

That's a wrap for this week.

Thank you so much to Leah Howell Angela martinez, Lovato Williams and Walt Chapel for being here.

Thanks to Kake news for sharing their video with us.

I'm Jaron Cirillo.

Have a great weekend.