The City of Wichita is seeking to further enrich wealthy business interests, while making working-class people pay to fix its past mistakes.

Voters will soon vote on a ballot initiative to implement a 1% city-wide sales tax. The proposal was put together by Wichita Forward, a coalition of citizens, with most being owners of private businesses.

The special election  on the sales tax is on March 3, with early voting currently taking place.

Regardless of the result, the sales tax proposal accomplished something many think of as impossible in our divisive political climate. It has brought people from across the political spectrum under one umbrella of opposing it.

Wichita Forward claims to provide a way to fund critical necessities for the city. Over the course of seven years, the group projects a 1% sales tax to generate $850 million in revenue. That money will be distributed among five proposed areas.

On the surface, these all sound like reasonable items that the average person would want to see funded. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details, and this requires pushing through the coordinated media campaign to understand the reality of the proposal.

The main point at the center of Wichita Forward’s proposal is that the city must implement a 1% sales tax, or property taxes will rise to make up for inadequate revenue for the city. Property tax increases have been controversial in Kansas, with the Kansas Legislature looking to address the issue in its current session.

By asserting that the city is struggling to get by, which is not in line with the city’s financial report for 2024, the proposal assumes that simply bringing more money in would solve many problems the city is facing.

To be clear, more funding for the areas outlined in the sales tax proposal would be beneficial. The problem is that it would not make up for how the city has neglected to address these issues adequately.

Let’s take a look at funding allocated for the Wichita Fire Department. Two main concerns have made headlines recently — mold in fire stations and slow fire response times.

Ted Bush, International Association of Fire Fighters Local 135 President, supports the sales tax initiative and has said that mold in fire stations has been a known problem for decades. Gary Janzen, Wichita’s director of public works and utilities, attributed the deterioration of fire stations to a history of short-term repairs.

Response times by the Wichita Fire Department fall below the national standard of four-minutes. The Wichita Eagle found that the city has known about these issues for decades, but has failed to follow through with actual solutions.

The revenue generated from the sales tax would not cover the funding needed to address response times, thus repeating the cycle of Wichita city officials being aware of an issue, but failing to put together adequate solutions to solve it.

As for the issue of mold, I share the same perspective as the leader of the Save Taxpayer Vote No coalition, Celeste Racette. The fact that mold at fire stations has become such a high priority so close to the election, after years of being known but unaddressed, raises suspicions.

The current system of addressing issues like mold at stations is hindered by the bureaucracy of the process. Funds for maintenance needs come from the Capital Improvement Plan, which takes longer than it would to access similar funds through the sales tax.

The examples of issues faced by the fire department may indicate that the city is finally addressing them by attempting to garner funds to pay for much-needed repairs. Unfortunately, the city has historically shown itself to not allocate other sources of tax revenue to their intended purpose.

A 6% tax on hotel rooms is meant to make up for operating deficits at Century II, but some of the revenue was found to be going to Visit Wichita, the city’s convention and visitors bureau. Visit Wichita has funded studies aimed at expanding the Bob Brown Expo Hall, which is attached to Century II and a key point in the sales tax proposal.

The issue is that the money from this “guest tax” is meant to be spent in a specific order of priorities. Century II’s operating and maintenance deficits are supposed to be covered before any money is sent to Visit Wichita.

Despite that, there have been repeated incidents of the city not covering all of the deficits that Century II accumulated, yet still paid money to Visit Wichita.

Despite what the city claims, they already have a history of tax revenue not going toward its intended purpose, even with built-in guardrails. A survey paid for by the city indicates that a majority of city residents have a poor or fair level of confidence in the city government, while about 35% indicate they have confidence in the city government.

Instead of recognizing this issue and addressing it, the city has decided to fast-track a rushed sales tax proposal onto the general public. Rather than the sales tax vote occurring along with the August primary or November general election, the city council voted for the ballot to be on a special election, giving less time for residents to understand the ballot measure.

The city doubled down on this by voting against moving the ballot question to the later election dates after approving the ballot to be voted on by the public. Special elections have shown to have some of the lowest turnout rates, especially compared to presidential and midterm elections.

On top of the expected low turnout, 26,000 voters will face issues submitting their ballots since a large number of polling locations will be closed.

The city added $20,000 dollars in cost to send out postcards notifying voters about the special election. In total, the March 3 special election costs $170,000. Adding it to the August primary or November general election would have negated a large majority of the cost.

I, for one, see the disregard for voters who are facing obstacles to vote on the sales tax, combined with the city’s history of not allocating tax revenue correctly and being unable to address long-running issues.

When a well-funded private coalition of wealthy business interests wants to push the financial burden of the city’s past failures onto average Wichitans, the city happily obliges.

The issues the sales tax aims to address are valid concerns that need solutions. Maybe the city could seek to better its operational and administrative practices first, instead of throwing money at problems it has shown an inability to handle.

I hear there is a large group of wealthy individuals in Wichita who want to better the city. Maybe the city could scrape its pocketbooks before those of the people struggling to get by.