The Sunflower reached out to all the Wichita City Council candidates for an interview about their priorities, background and more. Candidates’ answers have been edited for length and clarity. The other candidate for District 3, Genevieve Howerton, did not respond to requests for an interview.
Why are you running?
The reason I ran the first time is because I have multiple family members who have issues surrounding mental health and addiction, and I’ve seen the gaps in the community as far as help for families like mine. So I wanted to run and try and improve that process and make sure – because in South Wichita, there’s not a family that’s not touched by one of those two issues – and so just making sure that we improve the resources that are out there and really try and help families that are facing these issues. After the last four years, we’ve done a number of things to advance those causes, and I just want to keep my foot on the gas. We’re moving in the right direction, but I want to see us through.
Why should Wichita State students vote for you?
Well, I want to set Wichita up to be a community that you can live in now, but also the one that you can find gainful employment, that you can just fall in love with the city and want to stay here and especially, want to raise a family. We’re doing what we can to address quality of life issues that will affect them, not only short term, but especially long term. If they do choose to stay here, if they do find employment, we have a low cost of living here, which can be very attractive to people if what you want is a nice home or a nice apartment, and again, to be able to find gainful employment and raise a family. I want to continue to work on that to make Wichita a great place, not just to visit, but a great place to live.
How would you describe the role of a City Council member?
You have to be involved. Technically it’s a part time job, but if you operate like it’s a part time job you’re not doing your job. So, engaging with the community, their concerns, their needs, making sure that you’re present in your community so you know what issues need to be addressed, what issues are holding people back. Dictating policy; we are a council-manager system, so we tell the city manager what to do and you got to count to four to be able to move in a positive direction for your policy that you’re trying to affect the change on. So, working with your colleagues also to come up with a clear direction and policy that you want the city to follow.
What are your main priorities and how do you plan to address them?
Well, a lot of it has been infrastructure. My side of town has been neglected as far as infrastructure goes, for quite some time. The way the city was designed 100 years ago, we’re the flood plain. We also have the sewage treatment plant that emits this horrendous odor – we actually have an ongoing project right now that’s going to address major odor control changes this time next year.
So that was one project that I did focus on, but I want to continue to work to bring more funding down to address some of our flooding issues that we have; streets that are falling into disrepair. It’s twice as expensive to work on a concrete street as it is an asphalt street, so there’s been a lot of streets that have been neglected. We are bringing $2 million more into the budget to help with residential concrete streets, so that is a change that we’ve had over the past couple of years with me being on council. It’s bringing more infrastructure spending down to South Wichita, in my district in particular. It’s also continuing to work on the issues that we have with homeless people or unhoused (people), and addiction and addiction treatment, and mental health.
What experience do you have that makes you the best fit for the role?
I have four years of working like a dog for my community. It’s a heck of a job. You know, it was actually about a year and a half in before I finally started understanding the whole process, once you see things coming up again. So I will be ready on day one to continue the work that we’ve been doing over the past couple of years.
What principles or values are guiding your campaign?
Looking out for everybody. There’s a lot of people who are in despair right now. There’s a lot of people who have been left behind. We see rising costs is everything. Social security is not going up enough to cover those costs. Disability is not going up to cover those costs. Wages aren’t going up enough to cover those costs. So we need to make sure that our dollars are working for the right causes and working to affect people, everyday people, in a positive way.
Are there any past actions of the council that you are proud of or that you strongly disagree with?
The things I’m the most proud of would be the sewage treatment plant. That is a generational issue. I joke all the time, but it’s the truth – I would wake up one day and I would smell the Wonder Bread plant or the Rainbow Bread plant on Hydraulic Street there, and next day, I’d wake up and I would smell the results of the bread plant. So that’s a major generational issue right there that we are getting addressed.
Also the improvements at Clapp Park. If you go by there, it’s a playground that is built for kids of all abilities, including kids with disabilities. … You can take a kid in a wheelchair up and they can go down the slides; ziplines for kids in wheelchairs; stations where they have sign language, so kids with hearing disabilities can communicate with the other kids out there.
As far as council actions, I think we’re putting the cart before the horse on some of the issues that we’ve been addressing, and we just need to make sure that we follow through with these programs and give people an option before we start cracking down. So yeah, that’s, I guess that would be one of the main disagreements I have.
You know, we need to keep encampments out of our neighborhoods, absolutely. But there are other areas where they are out of sight that if we go in there right now and push them out with nowhere to go, all it is is displacing people and it’s turning major camps into smaller camps that pop up in our neighborhoods. So until we actually have the homeless shelter up and running and having a way to actually move people through and get them into permanent housing, it’s just going to be playing Whac-A-Mole.
