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

Pennies on the dollar for State Workers.

Why the governor is blasting a proposed 1% pay raise after state legislators approved a much larger raise for themselves.

Also, a chilling threat at City Hall.

New details on the man locked up for threatening to kill Wichita mayor Lily Wu.

But first, a rocky start for downtown paid parking in Wichita.

The new system is running in the red right out of the gate.

Find out what city officials have to say about that and how they plan to right the ship.

On this edition of Kansas Week.

Welcome to Kansas week.

I'm Jared Cirillo.

It's been controversial from the start, and now we learn that Wichita's new downtown paid parking plan is losing money.

Officials have revealed that the new parking system brought a $410,000 loss in the second half of last year.

The city blames the deficit on heavy one time setup costs, like ripping out old meters, pouring concrete and installing new cameras which cost over half $1 million.

The blow was significantly softened by the rest of the city's parking operations.

When looking at the entire parking fund, which combines the new street meters with money made from city garages, tickets and event parking, the overall loss shrinks to just $3,800.

To boost future revenue, the city plans to roll out Apple Pay and new event rates soon.

Here to talk about this and some of the week's other stories are Wichita Councilwoman Becky Tuttle.

Wichita City Councilman Mike Hodges and Voice of Reason radio show host Andy Houser.

Thank you for all joining us.

We have two council members joining us at the table.

I think that might be a first.

So we're not we're not close to having a quorum.

So that's that's definitely good.

So I'll let me start with you Becky.

This.

When did this first start.

When this when this paid parking.

This has been an idea that's been tossed around for many years.

It's not you know, I think back in 2019 is the first time that the parking plan was actually developed.

I remember it coming to my district advisory board, and then we had Covid and everything kind of changed.

You know, the need wasn't as great.

But one of the things that I have quickly realized is we have to do something right.

There's no such thing as free parking.

And I really see having a paid parking plan, paid parking within our community.

It's a user fee, and in many communities, most communities smaller or larger than us within a region across the nation have some sort of paid parking, especially in their core.

Right.

It's one of the unfortunately, the hazards of growing.

I suppose, you know, it's good to grow.

And with that comes things like bigger events and you know, more things happening downtown.

Someone has to pay for that parking.

How has it been done in the past?

Because it's been free, but it's not necessarily been free, right?

It's been free.

And I'll be happy to have my colleague chime in as well.

But, you know, we have a parking fund, but it didn't have any revenue going into the parking fund or very little.

And so people have the expectation, and especially as more people are going down to the core, more people are utilizing parking.

And so they're seeing that our parking garages aren't well maintained.

They're probably not as secure and safe as they should be.

We need to have more lighting.

And then also with parking.

We've heard from businesses who say people are parking in front of my business, but not coming into my business and taking the spot for hours and hours and hours.

So I know it's change.

People don't always appreciate change or it takes a while for us to acclimate, but this is something that truly the city has to do to have to implement the user fee.

Council member Hazel I believe the city in the past had especially in the old Town area, not downtown as a whole, but in the old town area.

Business owners paid into a fund.

Can you explain that a little bit?

Do you know about that?

Yeah, yeah.

For the longest time, I think it was about 30 years as, rates were actually frozen.

So they were paying the same rates then the last couple of years that they were paying in the 90s.

So there was a need to look at that, reevaluate that, because that money is supposed to go to Old Town parking.

Old town parking lots.

Old town parking garage.

It was not being, raised the way it probably should have been.

So that's another thing we got to look at.

There's a couple of options we're looking at as far as how to pay for Old Town parking without necessarily going in, with meters or with, some of the infrastructure that we have nowadays.

So those discussions are ongoing.

We want to make it as easy as possible to people.

We want to make sure that we're not hurting the businesses that, are down there currently.

And that's what I've heard from before.

I move on to Andy.

That's what I've heard from the very beginning, especially on social media.

A lot of people have been, you know, since this paid parking started.

Well, I'm not going downtown any more.

Are we seeing that has has have downtown visitor numbers dropped?

Do we do we have any evidence to show?

I haven't seen any data.

I think that I've heard anecdotal stories just anecdotally.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's at the beginning of this, it did cost money to put the infrastructure in there.

We'll we'll see how it all pans out.

My friend Becky and I here disagreed on some things, so.

Yeah, you voted no initially.

Tell us about that.

You voted no initially on the, plan to begin it.

I feel like there's a time and a place for it.

I just didn't feel like we had the density at the time downtown to necessarily justify it.

I do have concerns.

And that's, informing my my decision making on some of the other things.

Some of the other areas, such as Old Town, making sure, again, that we make it as user friendly as possible.

I have a lot of concerns with the event fees.

Especially as proposed.

But again, that was, not even a recommendation, but something staff is asking us to look at.

So, I know a lot of us have concerns about that, and we'll just have to see how that plan butters out over the next couple of months.

Andy Houser from from a more citizens type standpoint.

How do you feel about paid parking?

Well, look, I mean, every Becky, you kind of mentioned it already.

I mean, every city has growing pains, right?

And it's just that point when you have to take that next leap.

I mean, I don't think anybody wants to, but I don't know, a city that doesn't have paid parking in a downtown area.

You know, personally, for me, I live outside of the city.

I don't go downtown very often, but you're usually kind of assuming that you're going to pay some type of parking when you get down there at some point.

So it's the accustom to try and figure out how it's going to figure out how it's going to function, how the city is going to be able to adapt it, and we'll see how that plays out.

Yeah, and we're confident before we move on.

We're confident that it will turn positive and we will start making revenue and we won't continue to be in the red is that's the expectation.

This year was the most expensive, as you mentioned in the in the intro, just because we had to purchase the infrastructure.

Right.

Yeah.

And I think the biggest question is going to be later is, you know, just parking in general how much accessibility is going to be there.

And like you said, with businesses, how much it's actually going to impact, you know, their business along the strip.

So yeah, I mean, we'll see how it goes.

And as we do continue to grow, then we're going to have to find more spaces for more parking at some point.

Yep.

In the biomed center as well.

That's going to be another tricky one to, to cross that bridge when we get to it.

But there's hopefully there's just, a steady stream of people coming downtown.

Yeah.

All right.

New details are emerging about the man accused of threatening to kill Wichita mayor Lily Wu.

Police say A911 call came earlier this week from a South Wichita QuikTrip store.

The caller warned dispatchers that a man was on his way to the mayor's office and threatening to kill her with his bare hands.

50 year old Kyle Cornejo is now locked up in the Sedgwick County Jail on a $50,000 bond.

He is facing a charge of criminal threat to cause terror.

Mayor Wu, meanwhile, says she has received threats before, but this one crossed the line.

Police are working closely with her staff that are keeping tight lipped about any increased security measures.

And of course, police are going to keep tight lipped, tight lipped on any security measures.

I'm not downplaying this at all, but I think as council members, you've probably had death threats to maybe not making the headlines like this.

It is an unfortunate reality of of the job.

Yeah.

Extremely unfortunate.

You know, anyone who's willing to serve, I applaud them.

Right.

And it's a risk that should not happen.

But as we've all been talking and council, it really speaks to the mental health and substance abuse crisis that we have in our community.

I serve on the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Coalition board of directors.

And, and I used to be a past mental health and substance abuse counselor.

And this just really shows that many people in our community are in crisis and don't don't necessarily have access to the care that they need.

So it's it's very unfortunate.

And I'm very glad that our Wichita Police Department is taking it as seriously as they should.

And I think a lot of people had it.

And this happened initially right after the sales tax vote had happened.

And people are very charged up about that topic as well.

And I think some people may have thought it had been tied to that, but it turns out that's not the case at all.

You fought Council member Hazel.

You fought very hard for mental health.

More funding in that area as well, right?

Yeah.

No, it really speaks to, what we see on the street.

A lot of years of policy has gone against, providing beds for mental health, providing services for mental health.

The states that I think over 4000 beds over the last couple of decades.

And we're seeing the fallout from that nowadays.

It's the same thing with, resources to battle addiction.

It's the same thing with the resource of the battle of number of the other ailments that we see on our streets nowadays.

It just goes down the line a couple of years, and then we see you add on social media influences from social media.

You see, a number of other things.

And stressors in the community right now that are really driving people.

Driving people to, places that they really don't want to be.

And, we need to continue.

Thank God we've got the, the, health center coming in on, the One Rise campus down there in south Wichita.

But we need to keep our foot on the gas and increase as many, treatment centers as we possibly can.

And add this, you host a conservative radio show at.

This is a very politically charged environment nationally anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, look, I mean, you guys touched on the mental health part, which is a good focus.

I think we need to start focusing more attention on the preventative as opposed to just the treatment side, because the treatment side is, you know, as a conservative sees as more government and more government spending and more regulation and more taxation and another program we have to deal with, which is important to do, but we need to work on the preventative.

So that way we're not in that point in the first place.

But you're right.

I mean, outside of mental health, there's the politically charged scientists, conservative host, the amount of hate that I get and threats that I get, you know, is is equivalent to an elected official, which is unfortunate.

So I don't know whether that have anything to do with this type of threat particularly.

But it's a I think it's a conversation that as a society, we need to start having that the divides and the threats and the keyboard warriors we see on social media.

It's bleeding out into the real world, thinking that there's no ramifications to actually go after someone for a political difference.

Yep.

That was that was my next topic is to add social media into this.

And we have a lot of people who sit in their offices, in their bedrooms, in their homes, whatever, typing on keyboards.

How does it affect you serving as Electeds Council member?

I mean, doomscrolling is definitely something I think affects us all.

I make sure to stay off social media as much as I possibly can.

It's important to remain in contact with our constituents and with the public to know what they are, how they feel, what their thoughts are on various topics.

But at the same time, just as a society, I think we have not really grappled very well with how to adjust to this new world that we live in, with social media, with constant contact with, just all these negative things constantly in front of our faces.

We don't celebrate good things.

We don't have good news out there that we can all come together around anymore now.

Anything else to add?

I just want to say thank you.

And aflutter Wichita Police Department.

This individual was found apprehended very quickly.

Which I know brought a lot of comfort and peace to the council office, to the community.

So, never can we thank our police and or fire departments or first responders enough that, you know, when something like this happens, you worry how long it's going to take to find someone in the level of fear that was happening in the council office.

And, you know, they were able to do their job and do it well as they always do.

Right.

Kansas State employees are in line for a pay raise, but it is significantly less than what the governor first requested.

Lawmakers in Topeka have agreed on a budget bill that includes a 1% across the board salary increase for about 35,000 state workers and university employees.

Governor Laura Kelly originally pushed for a 2.5% bump.

While some legislative leaders say the 1% raise will help all workers fight inflation.

The governor is blasting the move.

She calls the small raise, quote, table scraps and points out that lawmakers gave themselves a massive 93% pay increase two years ago, along with another 4% this year.

The budget still needs final approval from the full House and Senate before heading to the governor's desk.

Andy Hoosier, I'll start with you.

I think that's a little misleading when we say that, state lawmakers gave and gave themselves a 93% pay raise while they did at the point in time, it's the pay raise for lawmakers was like $22,000 a year.

Yeah.

And the point the whole point of getting people to serve was to raise the pay.

And maybe we'll get more people to.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, look, I'm usually not for big government spending or allowing, elected officials to have major pay raises.

But you're right that it wasn't a livable wage.

So the only people that were able to run for office were people that either ran their own business or could make their own schedule or were retired and could, you know, had the time to do it and didn't need to worry about that.

It didn't allow my generation, particularly, to actually have some ideas to go up and do something productive in the legislature.

So I agreed with that move.

Then.

Look, I mean, the 1% raise for the state employees, we want to help keep up with inflation.

You know, I don't know how many people get a 3 or 4% raise to keep up with inflation in the private sector.

I don't know why public workers would do the same.

So that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

We give them a little bump, but we're still trying to get $200 million out of our state budget.

So we got a ways to go to cut spending.

Yeah.

Council Member Hodges, you always take flak and heat too when it comes to pay raise time.

Yeah.

Though, I also like to point out that we will lose workers if we do not pay them what they're worth.

And I think we've seen that over the years.

Some of the budget issues that we've been facing is because of the pay increases to police and fire.

And quite frankly, we had so many open spots, particularly in the police department, that it's necessary in order to run the type of government that you want.

Also, and this doesn't just extend the workers, this also extends to cost of living.

Raises, for people who are retired, people are on fixed incomes.

We see inflation.

Now it's more than 1%.

We see the we had the tax assessments coming out here recently.

That's more than 1%.

It's just getting tougher and tougher for working man or woman in this world to even tread water.

Yeah, I want to I want to push back a little bit on that.

Just, you mentioned the livable wage for public employees, which I agree, they need to be competitive.

They need to be livable wages.

And I'm glad we saw some raises for people like, you know, our law enforcement because we need that.

It's gone so high, on the other hand, that the smaller communities around now can't find workers because everybody is getting trained into the smaller, communities and then going to them being a city council member for a really small town where we have 2 to 3 officers in our whole town, we just lost one because they came to Wichita after getting trained and working with us for six months.

And, you know, now we have to find somebody else, or now smaller communities have the financial burden to try and raise it up to keep competitive as well.

And a lot of them just can't do it.

And we want it to be competitive, competitive to the private market, but we don't want it to be exceeding the private market.

So that way we can stay competitive in the public sector alone.

Yeah.

No, we face that all the time.

We hear that from our county.

All right.

Friends, as well, about pitting each other against each other.

But at the end of the day, the people in all our communities deserve to have full employment.

It's the same thing with street sweepers.

We have a the reason that we're not sweeping streets as often as we have in the past is because we simply don't have the employees.

So, if we expect, more services or I really expect us to do what the public expects us to do, that comes with the price, and we've got to work that out.

Council member Tuttle, we are in the service industry at the city of Wichita.

The only thing that we make and sell is water, right?

And we try and keep our rates as low as we can.

So we have to have the best employees that we can to provide exceptional quality customer service that our residents expect and deserve.

And so every time that we've had an opportunity to provide a pay increase for our employees through cost of living or performance based evaluations, I have been supportive.

We hear from employees all the time that, you know, they're being recruited by the private sector that have a servant's heart and want to work for the city of Wichita.

75% of our budget goes towards salaries.

And so that shows we truly, I say, almost every day we are in the service industry and we need to make sure that we have exceptional customer service.

Now, I will say at the state level is they're talking about pay raises for state employees, that right now we are still, per capita, one of the highest states in the nation with the most amount of state employees.

So while we're trying to deal with our budget at a statewide level, cutting $200 million out of the state budget, which is still pennies compared to what we could potentially be cutting and gouging into our billion dollar safety net.

That's depleting very quickly.

We're in the top five nationwide for the most amount of state employees per capita, and if we want to give them better wages and better benefits, we should probably cut some to actually make it more efficient.

So you're saying our state government in Kansas is bloated?

Is that what you rightly.

Slightly.

Allegedly.

That's right.

I want a bill banning undocumented immigrants from receiving state benefits is now heading to the governor's desk as well.

The Kansas Senate narrowly passed Senate Bill 254 earlier this week, following a wider approval in the House.

If signed into law, residents would have to prove their citizenship to receive any state assistance.

The measure would also strip away in-state tuition benefits for undocumented students who attend Kansas colleges and universities.

Senate President Tim Masterson argues that the legislation is necessary to bring the state into compliance with federal law and prevent future lawsuits.

Governor Laura Kelly, meanwhile, has not yet indicated whether she will sign the measure or reach for her veto pen.

Andy, I'll start with you.

I'm sure you've talked about this one a little bit on your on your talk show.

Yes.

Tell us your feelings.

Yeah.

Look, I mean, I, I agree with this move.

It puts us in compliance at the federal level.

And I think that no one should be if we're going to have out-of-state in-state tuition benefits for us here in the country as citizens, we should do that as well for non citizens as well and make that a perk if you want to get in-state tuition, if you want some of the additional benefits that we have here, become a citizen, go through that naturalization process.

I don't see a problem with that whatsoever.

In fact, I encourage that because I want to see more people go through the naturalization.

I want to see more people be proud to be an American.

And, you know, going to those naturalization ceremonies brings a tear to my eye, seeing the waving of the American flag, seeing so many cultures and people come here to want to do that, make it a perk for them.

But why give it away just because we want to bring more people, entice them to come to Kansas?

Let's do that by showing perks of what you do when you go through the process, you know, and we've been talking about proving citizenship to vote these days is which is common sense.

Yeah.

We're not this isn't the only topic where the nation is dealing with proving citizenship.

You know, be the American citizen if you're here and you're not a citizen, whether illegal or illegal, it doesn't matter if you're here and enjoying the United States and what we have to offer, whether it's here in Kansas or beyond, then enjoy the perks of it.

Go through that process to become a citizen, and we welcome you.

As Donald Trump says, with the big, beautiful doors.

And let's welcome you to the country and actually be part of this society in a in an official manner.

Yeah.

Council member Hazel, you're, I think you might have a little bit of a difference.

Opinion.

Go ahead.

This one hurts.

This one hurts my heart because there could be kids in here that are five years old.

When they come over and through no fault of their own, they go through school.

They're trying to be good students, and they want to go to university somewhere.

And just to have something like this going, it just seems more vindictive than anything else.

I appreciate, trying to get people to become citizens.

But that is an extremely long and complicated process.

We're going through it with dreamers right now.

And these people that thought that they were safe, people that want to come out, they're members of our community.

We see people who are deported who go back to their countries that they have no idea about their about the how their government operates.

They have nobody back in these countries that they can rely on.

So we're dropping them off in the middle of these countries.

We gotta balance justice with humanity.

We got to balance the law with humanity.

And I think that's one of the things that we're definitely missing in politics nowadays, because again, we're not talking about people trying to take advantage of a situation.

We're talking about people who are trying to improve their lives, which is the American dream, the American way.

And again, there's points to be made about, having that process set out.

But again, it's a it's a long and difficult process to become before.

Let me before, before I let Andy, respond anything to add counsel on and certainly not my area of expertise.

I just wanted to give you an update, but I do want to say, and I do not know, but I, I speculate that because we've had this issue come up with us too at the city level, that you don't want to become out of compliance with the federal government because there are repercussions that come from that.

And so we had to make a controversial decision at the City of Wichita with our diversity, inclusion and Civil Rights Advisory Board that they, the federal government, said, if you continue to have that, you're going to lose all your funding for housing and transit.

And so that makes things much more challenging.

If it is an issue of federal funding potentially being lost to the state of Kansas, you know, and, and the federal there has been that talk about threatening to lose federal funding in other areas as well die.

But go ahead.

Respond.

Yeah.

No, just two quick points on that.

Number one, I mean, look for the immigration stuff like immigration reform has been a conversation in DC for a really long time, and they haven't done anything with it.

And I agree there needs to be reforms on that.

I know people that are DACA, people trying to go through the process to get naturalized, trying to go through the process to become permanent residents, whatever it is.

And that process does need to be easier.

We need to have that conversation for sure.

I will say that, you know, for a long time we have not enforced immigration policy in this country, and we are now and we have to, you know, if we're going to be a nation built on laws that we have to enforce those, you know, in the first place, to give the permits for citizens.

As for, like you said, federal funding, you're right.

I mean, we this should be a prime example for those that like big government on the other side of the aisle, that if you don't like the the funding being cut, we should find other ways to do it with the idea of federalism and having stuff more funded at the state level, or at the county or the community level to where the federal government's not actually doing it, or if you are, then you have to abide by their rules.

One last thing.

Anything else?

No.

I appreciate that that argument there.

As far as we need to have the the conversation about comprehensive immigration reform, I saw a clip the other day about Ronald Reagan and George H.W.

Bush in the primary in 1980, and they sound like conversation.

Yeah, they sound like liberals compared to where where a lot of people are today on it.

And, George eight George W Bush was not my favorite president.

But I do appreciate his stance on trying to get some sort of immigration reform that is fair, is balanced, is common sense.

And so I'd like to return to those conversations.

All right.

Our last story today, new answers are surfacing about what caused a deadly cancer cluster in three north central Kansas counties.

A new study by K-State researchers found silent, hidden dangers inside homes across Ellsworth, Lincoln and Russell counties after noticing an unusually high number of cancer deaths among younger residents.

Investigators tested local air and water.

They found nearly half of all homes tested had dangerous levels of radioactive radon gas.

Private wells also tested positive for contaminants like uranium, mercury and nitrates.

Researchers say many affected homeowners have since installed mitigation systems to make their air and water safe again.

Health officials are now urging everyone in rural areas to pick up simple radon and water testing kits from their local K state extension office.

Councilwoman Tuttle, you have a health background.

I do this, this rings home for you.

Yeah.

And you know this again.

Not my area of expertise.

Not a story that I'm extremely familiar with, but I just really want to praise.

They mentioned that they have free testing kits that they can go to their their K state research and extension and be able to get, you know, having access to clean water, clean air is the most basic human right that we have.

And this is when I'm really glad that at the state level and then at the local level, we have staff who are content expert t experts who can help keep our community safe.

And this is a really scary story.

And and really a wake up call.

And I hope they find the root cause of us for the reason for these higher levels of radon.

And the city's been dealing with this as well.

In North Wichita, a plume contaminants that that the city is dealing with.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah.

That happened here recently on 29th and Grove.

We also have one on the south side that has been remediated over the last couple of decades.

This is one of the basic functions, I think the government is making this information available.

Stopping whatever is causing this.

I know some of it was, chemicals that were coming out of train cars.

Some of it was in west Wichita, dry cleaners dumping chemicals in the ground.

So I think it's very important that we identify the root causes.

Something else that's missing from this conversation as well is, the lack of health care, because we can tell people, but especially in rural areas, if you're if you're informed of this but you don't have the health care, how much good does that actually do you.

30s to respond.

And look, I think that this is a conversation we need to be having, especially in rural communities like that, when we have conversations about fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides that have been poisoning the soil for a long time.

And I think we need to have a deeper conversation about those.

All right.

That's a wrap for this week.

Thank you so much to Councilwoman Tuttle, Michael Hazel as well, and Andy Hoosier for being here.

And thanks to cake for sharing their video with us.

Have a great weekend.