From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio.

PBS Kansas presents Kansas Week.

Sedgwick County halts new large scale solar projects.

Extending a time out to reassess their impact on our rural landscape.

Wichita Public Schools throw open their doors, inviting voters to inspect aging classrooms ahead of November's bond overhaul.

And a new report finds homelessness surging as the affordability gap widens across Sedgwick County.

Join us for a half hour of local news and analysis right now on Kansas Week.

Welcome to Kansas week.

I'm Jared Cirillo.

An eye opening new report is revealing a growing affordability crisis that's now pushing more Sedgwick County residents out of their homes.

The Coalition to To End Homelessness claims that the number of newly unhoused households has now jumped a staggering 170% since 2020.

During a single night census earlier this year, workers identified more than 850 people experiencing homelessness, with 222 of them living in unsheltered areas on the streets.

The report reveals seniors are now the fastest growing homeless population, doubling in the last five years.

Advocates are warning that with nearly 40% of local families living paycheck to paycheck, many are just one unexpected bill away from the streets.

And here to discuss this, and some of the week's other state and local news is State Senator Stephen Owens of Houston, former Wichita City Councilman Brian Frye.

Community activist Faith Martin and Friends University political science professor Doctor Russell Ogden Fox.

Thank you all for joining us.

We've been off for the last three weeks.

So welcome everybody back to our show.

This is an interesting one.

You know, seniors, we typically don't hear that seniors are a growing population of homeless people.

That's hard to hear.

It is very it is very hard to hear.

And what is driving that what we know some of what's driving that or the ever increasing property taxes.

I hear it regularly from our constituents, people literally being forced out of their homes, home that they might have paid off 10 or 20 years ago and into retirement.

They just can't keep up with the property tax payment.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Faith, Martin, you've dealt with a lot of local issues and homelessness.

You've been very outspoken about homelessness.

And as far as the city, what what does the city doing right?

And what is the city doing wrong about homelessness?

Well, right out of the gate, 40% is kind of a misleading term because I went to the, Alice legislative tool and in my congressional this or in my Senate, and House district for the state, 53% of people are actually below that threshold, not 40%.

It's a different tool, but it's basically you work, but you and you live paycheck to paycheck.

But you still can't earn enough, for the cost of living to.

And housing is more than 30%.

So I think what we could do at the local level, what we're doing right, is getting more community engaged.

It can't just be government.

It has to be private.

And it has to be, nonprofits and churches that get engaged.

What we're not doing right is we're not relaxing zoning laws.

We're not relaxing building regulations for like, incremental developing and infill and incentivizing inclusionary zoning.

Those are things we could do here in Wichita that would help it without building a lot more houses, smaller bills, local small developer financing for former Councilman Frye.

You've you've been obviously very on the council more than eight years.

The city you were instrumental in helping bring what's known as the macro second second light, I believe it's called are we doing.

Is this helping the situation at all or.

We've spent $20 million.

The city has spent some $20 million.

Are we seeing any dent in this homeless crisis at all?

It doesn't appear so.

And there's a lot to unpack there.

First off, I didn't support the initial Mac investment.

Okay, for that $5 million because I said, well, how are we going to pay for this going forward?

It's one thing to for the city to give $5 million of Arpa dollars to develop it.

It's how are we going to fund it?

And that hasn't happened to the level that it needs to.

I think what we're seeing, and that's growing a lot of frustration in the public, is the unwilling to take advantage of the services those individuals, for the people that need help and support and services, it's available, and you can get temporary housing and you can get services and aid and support.

Is that 10% that we're continuing to see on the streets that are causing problems for private businesses, for general public who want to go to our parks and be able to enjoy them and not feel like they're getting, panhandling aggressively.

And I think that's what's the frustration that you're seeing in the community.

And how do we reach those people?

How do we get them into the services and get the help that they need?

And they seem to be unwilling, and I think that's causing a lot of frustration.

The chronic of the people that you're talking about falling under the chronic, chronic.

Well, and they typically do have other issues.

It's just not being unhoused.

It's mental health.

It's addictions.

Again, it's those things.

And that's the biggest struggle that 10%.

And we're seeing that grow.

It's important to focus on that.

I mean, Brian's correct to to bring up the distinction between, the sort of people, you know, Senator Owens made reference to them.

You talk about Alice, which, you know, some people ought to be aware as a way of talking about asset limited, income constrained, employed people.

In other words, people who do have jobs.

But for a variety of reasons, they can't make enough money in order to deal with the tax burden, to deal with the increase in housing costs, to deal with other things that we kind of lump into the affordability crisis.

I think that there are really important ways in which a more responsible and aggressive, funding scheme for programs like we have through Second Life can help out that population.

Well, but it's also important to recognize that the people causing the greatest disruption, the people that we have the most amount of concern for are this hard 10%.

And that's probably not going to be the sort of thing that increased funding will make much of a dent, because we've already tried a lot of funding approaches.

We've had some successes in some areas.

We need to build upon those successes, but we probably need to think very differently and very, you know, broadly about what sort of solutions will work with people that have been on the streets for a long time, that have acculturated themselves to an environment of deprivation, violence, drug addiction, etc.

and I don't want to lose sight of being passion and having passion and compassion.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

But you also have to make it uncomfortable.

I think there's some folks that are used to being, ignored and yes, given, handouts, handouts, thank you.

And support when.

I don't mean to put one.

No.

You're fine, you're fine.

It's Friday afternoon.

Yeah, but I think that it is also worth recognizing that Wichita is still one of the most affordable places in the nation for the largest metropolitan, with the lowest under ten.

The 10%, per capita for homelessness.

We actually have a smaller share of homelessness per capita than many other large metropolitan areas.

Yeah.

And we also focus on the 20% that are most visible instead of the 80% that are not visible, that are actually the ones struggling in housing.

I don't know how the rest of you have done business, but in the corporate world, we don't focus on the 20% until we've handled the 80%.

It's both, aren't they the ones that are taking advantage of the services that Second Life has to offer, and they're the ones that are back on the couch surfing.

They could be living in their mom's basement.

All of these people are not contributing to the housing market nor taking advantage of what being a homeowner can be.

So once 80% of the people are back on track contributing to the tax base, then we'll have more to focus on prevention and less on intervention with that 10 to 20%.

That's my opinion.

Yeah.

It just seems like that.

Back to Councilmember Fries point that, you know, we talk about mental health and substance abuse being often the root cause of homelessness, that you're the root cause of the 10 to 20 first.

Right?

But that can't be the factor with senior with our senior citizen population, surely it wouldn't seem.

Oh, look, everything has gotten more expensive.

Certainly.

And we've also gotten used to luxuries that growing up we didn't enjoy.

We didn't have cell phones.

We didn't have internet service.

You know, we didn't have fast food drive through all the time.

You know, we have bougie coffee.

You know, we got, you know, something very old.

And yes, I get that.

But but we had basics that, you know, we met.

Right, right.

And vacations were a luxury.

Now there's a whole different mentality about I'm entitled to all these things.

Well I wouldn't like I, I don't like using the word entitlement.

But you're not wrong to talk about this in terms of, I mean, the whole reason why it properly is described as an affordability crisis is because a lot of this is quite subjective.

Yes.

You can talk specifically about rising home costs.

You can talk specifically about education.

You can talk specifically about health care, but then there's all this other stuff that has become part of our lives, and it adds up.

And there needs to be a genuine shift in how we think about all the other stuff, because a lot of the other stuff is, you know, its role in how we think about affordability is out of sync with where the actual problem is.

And I think financial literacy has to be part of this conversation.

Yeah, I know people that make low six figures that live paycheck to paycheck and can barely afford their house payment.

Yeah, yeah.

True.

All right.

Our next story Wichita Public Schools are opening their doors to show voters exactly why they say a massive bond issue is needed this November, the district kicking off the first of eight summer open houses this week at Truesdell Middle School, highlighting aging infrastructure and accessibility challenges in a building dating back to the 1950s.

The proposal asks voters to approve a $615 million package over two ballot questions.

The first would rebuild Truesdell without raising taxes any higher than they are now, while the second would increase property taxes for the average homeowner by about $50 a year.

The tours have drawn mixed reactions, with some parents calling the investment foundational for the community, while critics question if the overhaul is necessary given existing budgets.

Is it necessary?

Doctor Fox, we saw that voters, you know, I guess the question is may not be is it necessary?

But will voters think it's.

Well, are you talking about is the bond issue necessary or are these tours necessary?

For the second question, it's pretty obvious that one of the main lessons that the school board learned was that there was a lack of information, there was a lack of trust.

There was a lack of clarity in regards to the pass bond issue.

This seems to me like a pretty reasonable response by the school board to try to put forward to the, the voting public the sort of issues that they're wrestling with, the issues that have led them to feel like, yes, even though the last one was voted down, we actually do need to try this again.

And outreach is probably particularly important when you're dealing with the fact that Wichita is not a quickly growing place.

It is an aging place.

There are proportionally speaking, more and more voters that don't have kids in Wichita public schools.

And so if they're going to agree to this, they're probably going to need to have the school board point to things to try to make the case.

And so, I mean, this seems like good voter management.

So do you think the open House is a good idea to get people to come in.

And it's perfectly reasonable for them to do this?

Is it is it good, though, that, you know, with 80%, I think it was rejected.

Was it 80% in my wrong or what?

They said that was a total sales tax.

That's right.

I say no, that was right.

This was very close.

So it was closer for the school bond issue before last year, more than a year ago, where they were asking for $450 million.

Now they're asking for six or even more and splitting it into two questions.

It seems like it's getting is it getting more?

So they may have gotten smarter with their campaign and learn from their mistakes, but things have not changed for the positive, for them to hope for a successful outcome this time, because sales tax, property tax valuations have increased, everyone's paying more property tax.

The sales tax failed.

And so that didn't give them a good thing to build upon.

Yeah.

And headwind there.

And nothing has improved in the school district to allow to say yes we're doing things well.

Give us this chance to fix it or to make things more right, more, better.

Sorry, that's my phrase inside joke.

I got that one.

So I don't know how this is this time around.

It's going to make any difference what has changed in the positive for them to make them think they're going to be successful because they're asking for $200 million more, and additionally, since then they've closed even more buildings.

They're their their expenses have to go.

They had closed six buildings before the first bond issue.

They've closed at least four more buildings, one in my neighborhood.

How how are they continuing to ask more?

Closing buildings is not without costs, okay?

It's not like they just lock all the doors and leave it alone desolate.

There are transition costs that are involved, moving people around, that sort of thing.

I don't know, Brian.

I just know that a school board has a fairly limited set of tools available to, and they have a fairly limited set of tools, but they're certainly getting more money than they ever have from the state of Kansas.

We've seen this increase.

There's just 162 million more last year alone.

All while we're seeing prop, we're seeing population decline.

We're seeing people having less children, less students.

It's quite a conundrum.

I'm no fan of school bond issues.

I'll be 100% honest.

I don't know what the percentage is in Wichita, but up in Harvey County, nearly 30% of our property is not even subject to tax yet.

You have other people that can force their will upon that are living in some of these places that don't pay property taxes, that can force the other 70% to actually pay 100% of the bond you say forced, but it did pass.

It did pass.

But you have voters that it doesn't affect that still get to vote on it.

Let me let me get it.

Let me let me say so.

I mean, we had, we had a neighborhood school closed, thankfully, a private entity bought it, and it will still stay school.

It'll be a private school, but we no longer have access to that space as the public.

And I think I will support this, just like I supported it last time, because education isn't free and we have so many kids on free and reduced lunch that are struggling with housing, with transportation.

And we're not talking about people who are eating avocado toast and getting coffee on the corner.

They are really living paycheck to paycheck.

Education should not be one thing.

The parents have to find out, well, how are we going to pay for this?

If it's $50 out of my pocket, I would like the next generation to have just as much access to a good education as mine did as I did to Kansas schools.

I think it's unfortunate there was so many buildings falling apart, and we're saying, show us the results of that.

You can give us some more taxes.

Well, a lot of times you can't show results because it's a new chiller or it's a new the foundation needs to be like, it's our maintenance is terrible and it's we, we need to invest in it.

Not only the school board.

The city has developed with deferred maintenance issues for the past two decades or so.

But, has this, you know, another argument that was brought up in the last bond issue was mismanagement of the bond issue.

Money as well.

Has the district or does the district needing need to be more outspoken that they won't mismanage or misspent the funds?

They built new things on a school out West that two years later the school was closed.

They built storm shelter.

I can't remember the name of the school, but they built brand new storm shelters for a school that closed in two years.

How have they?

Have they been able to get over that hump of not mismanaging money in order to get this to pass?

I don't know if they have, but one of the ways in which you would assume they would try to get over that hump would be actually bringing people into the schools, showing them this is a thing that will be fixed, this is a thing that will be fixed, you know, that sort of thing.

Sure.

All right.

Anything else on school one?

It's like the CIP.

The CIP and the budget aren't the same thing and they don't do the same thing sometimes these projects have been in the works for a really long time, and then they just happen and then they close the schools.

So I think people need to learn a little bit more about why the projects are always so delayed or why they're behind.

Yeah.

All right.

Sedgwick County officials are hitting the pause button on large scale solar projects.

Now, commissioners have approved a six month moratorium on new developments exceeding 50 acres to allow time to tweak county regulations.

This move comes as proposals for massive projects totaling nearly 3000 acres continue to surface to put that footprint in perspective, that is roughly ten times the size of the entire Wichita State University main campus.

These proposed solar farms are designed to meet a surge in energy demand, driven by the growth of artificial intelligence and data centers.

While developers argue that the projects will generate millions in power sales and bolster the grid, county leaders and nearby cities are raising concerns over infrastructure impacts and long term land use.

The moratorium will not impact the two projects that are already under review, but it gives the county until December to reevaluate the rules before any future farms are approved.

We don't have anybody from Sedgwick County Commission here today, unfortunately, but, who wants to chime in on this one thing real quick?

Everybody talks about these things, and they lump it in with the national discourse about data centers and and I look at the actual language of the proposal, which you quoted, about how this is about strengthening the grid.

Okay.

There's more and more electrical use taking place in terms of people pivoting to EVs, people finding different ways to make use of renewable resources to avoid the kind of high gasoline prices that we've been dealing with.

People need to look at these proposed, expansions, these proposed energy projects.

And yet, I think it's reasonable to you know, go about it carefully.

You've got to take planning into consideration.

But if you look at these things and you just say, oh, more water sucking air plans.

No, this is about bringing us more power, more affordably generally, so we don't have to suffer brownouts and blackouts and things like that.

We've never suffered that.

But go ahead, say we could become a place we could.

I guess you look at Texas, but we're part of the southwest power pool.

So I read, let's see what it is.

Anyway, the future load scenarios in that big document that the article linked and it's data centers.

I crypto mining, large learning models for surveillance and data mining.

Those are all going to do a huge suck on the grid.

And whether, like you said, you got to look at the individual proposals to find out what it is.

Not everything is an AI data center.

Sometimes they're mining for crypto, sometimes it's for surveillance.

I think that wind and solar are very viable because they protect the public from these massive price increases on the energy market.

So I think that people need to say they are together because they power that.

But those are separate issues.

As long as we keep it local, I think the people can decide whether we want more renewables in our backyard, whether we want more data centers in our backyard, but the public has to weigh in on these things and not take the public discourse that's happening now.

And and where does the private property rights question come in?

Absolutely.

And I totally agree with that.

These are private property rights.

But where does the property tax discussion come in here?

When I look at the benefit to some of these projects and I want to be clear, I have no problem with a moratorium.

We've got to make sure we're doing it right.

We've got to make sure we're not harming our equus beds.

You know, we've got to think long term so that we're not shutting down schools two years after we invest millions of dollars in them.

We're not disrupting something 5 or 10 years from now.

But I look at this and I say, man, the net benefit to the taxpayer when you have something that'll add 10 or $20 million to the property tax base, that could then offset that, that the residential taxpayer and homeowner are struggling with.

I think that they deserve, a solid amount of prudence.

And I love that.

It's a local level decision.

Yeah.

Here we talking about you know, people are complaining about higher property taxes.

And here we have these large scale developments that could bring in millions and millions annually to the property tax rolls.

And we have some people saying, whoa, wait a second, you know, so I serve on the planning commission, and we took two years designing the permitting process for these applications that the county approved.

These two companies that brought forth the permits met all the dotted, all the I's crossed, all the T's, did everything according to the process.

We've heard two cases.

We've had, about 11 hours of testimony already on these two.

They both are proposing millions of dollars in property tax revenue, even with the exemption that they were granted by the state on the personal property part of it.

One example was, the, the application was generating about $14,000 a year in property tax revenue.

If it went forward and it got developed, it would be 2.5 million a year for school districts.

And rural counties.

Yeah.

That's significant.

And again, personal property rights, I'm I'm a big believer in that as well.

And if you don't want that coming next year you have every right to protest it and get your neighbors together.

But if these individual landowners want to lease out or sell, that's their right.

Brian, what do you think about Blue bars implied criticism of those parameters that you guys worked so hard on, saying, oh, well, we need to go back and take a look at these things again.

He wasn't on the county commission when those were approved, if I remember correctly.

And that was so the latest is now he's chair and he's got that right as chair to say, let's take another look at it and see if we've got it correctly.

That's his prerogative as chair and they want to take another look at now doesn't affect that two permit.

Right.

Right.

There would be anything else.

And I think there was a lot of things that we learned during all the testimony and all of the things that we didn't think about, including decommissioning and how some of that is guaranteed that it gets paid for and no one's on the hook for it.

Those are things that probably weren't thought through well enough.

And these are all questions that came up during this permitting process.

So I think it's fair.

Okay.

I appreciate your perspective on that.

Our last story, meanwhile, there is also controversy over building another nuclear power plant in Kansas.

The underground nuclear reactor would be near Parsons.

The company, Deep Fission, is now looking to raise more than $40 million through an initial public stock offering.

The company is developing a unique gravity reactor that is designed to operate one mile underground through the.

Though the project has sparked concern among some local residents over safety and untested technology, the company moves forward with pilot drilling.

It still faces significant regulatory hurdles and even questions regarding how the power would ultimately be sold.

I have to admit, this is a I had never heard of this one before.

I didn't realize that nuclear reactors went a miles underneath the ground, I guess.

But, Senator Owens, as a state lawmaker, have you heard anything about this before?

So, yeah, they don't go miles underground yet because this company is trying to make that happen.

Right?

Okay.

They are they are coming to us.

It's in Parsons, near the old ammunition plant, which is property that arguably is ideal for something along these lines.

You definitely have a community that is more comfortable around things like this.

I'm sure there are some people that have concerns and we should all have concerns right now.

You talk about water, you talk about land use, things like that.

But nuclear as a whole, we know how safe nuclear really is, how clean nuclear is.

And, really, it has gotten a really bad name, due to other energy forms kind of making it look bad when really, you know, the bang for the buck with nuclear is absolutely there.

And so while they still have years to go in proving this concept before they're able to do anything, I look forward to seeing how the process can work out and how we can actually get more nuclear in our energy infrastructure.

Yeah.

Any any comment over here?

Yeah, I would just look that, you know, Kansas law is what's stopping if this project goes through for them to be able to sell their power to anyone they want.

It's Kansas law that stopping that.

Right now I think they're beholden to sell, to Evergy and who will then disperse it.

But I'd like to see state law change where local energy producers, whether it's a solar farm or a nuclear power, they would be able to, you know, they don't choose their customers, their customers choose them, or they can sell to whoever, you know, the market, free market.

Absolutely weird concept.

There are some that are setting up literally, you know, energy power plants just to sell directly to a data center next door.

Yes.

They're being stood up and that's a 1 to 1 connection.

I mean, this they're building their own just takes us away from the topic.

But I mean, it's been brought up.

And the fact of the matter is, is that every state, Kansas, every state, the nation as a whole, we're all going to be having to do some serious rethinking about regulatory policy when it comes to energy.

I mean, it's not going to be long before people are going to be able to install in their own homes batteries that will be able to collect electricity generated from the solar panels.

They have on their own home.

And how is that going to fit in with all of these rules that we've set up in regards to the grid?

So whether it be some untested technology involving underground nuclear plants or whether it be, you know, some contained system in your own home, we've got to rethink how we regulate energy.

It's 30s left.

Council member anything else to add there?

I think you haven't checked out a lot to learn.

I love the name Deep Fission.

That's fantastic.

Yeah.

And initial stock offering.

Probably a customer.

Yeah.

So, I got to learn a little bit more about it.

Exactly.

Right.

As we demand more energy, whether it's cell phones, everything else, we've got to figure out how we're going to continue to generate the electricity.

That's right.

Because if we're not generating it, then somebody else or somebody else will, and our data is going to be house somewhere.

And I'd much rather be in our country than I don't know, someplace like China.

Right.

And that's a wrap for this week.

Thank you so much to Senator Owens, Council member fry, Faith Martin and Russell Arvin Fox for being here.

And thanks also to K and CSN for sharing their video.

I'm Jared Cirillo.

Have a great weekend.

You.