Voters in Sedgwick County’s 2nd Commission District will choose between two candidates with a combined 16 years of experience in local government in this election. The 2nd District includes south Wichita, Haysville and Clearwater.
Jeff Blubaugh, a Republican who served on the Goddard School Board from 2011-2013 and Wichita City Council from 2014-2023, is challenging Democratic incumbent Sarah Lopez, who has served on the commission since 2021.
The County Commission sets property taxes, land uses and the budget of the county, along with having a critical role in local public health and safety like 911 operations, the fire department and the police department.
Sarah Lopez
Lopez said she “didn’t grow up in a political home.” Her first foray into local government came after one of her daughters, who is gay and went to a Catholic school, faced homophobic comments from a teacher and principal.
One school day, after being told that she was “sick” and would “go to hell” if she didn’t “get help,” Lopez’ daughter locked herself in a bathroom.
“She was referred to conversion therapy and all these, you know, awful things,” Lopez said. “And so, (I) took her out of that school and put her in Wichita public schools and realized that their schools didn’t have an ordinance that protected LGBTQ students. And so I, as a parent, was concerned that I was taking her out of an awful situation and potentially putting her in another bad situation.”
Lopez helped advocate for the USD 259 school board and Wichita City Council’s non-discrimination ordinance to be updated to include LGBTQ+ protections. She said that advocacy opened her eyes to the impact of local government.
Lopez said she ran for County Commission because her background working in Information Technology and at Ascension Via Christi. She said that fits some aspects of the commission job.
“The County Commission is also the board of health for our community, and we run the Public Health Department,” she said. “So if I wanted to engage in any of the government entities at a local level, that’s really where my background fit the best.”
Lopez is the only woman, person of color and Democrat in the five-person County Commission. She said that background gives her a “completely different lived experience than my colleagues.”
“I don’t think anything negative of my colleagues, but you can only know what you know, and you can only live the life that you’ve lived,” Lopez said. “And if you don’t have a better understanding of more people, then how do you really represent them well?”
Jeff Blubaugh
Blubaugh was born and raised on a farm in Harper County and got a job at Cessna out of high school, where he worked his way up from the shop floor to the marketing team — while attending Friends University at night.
In the late 2000s, he transitioned to working in real estate. One day, he told his wife that he wanted to “do more in the community.” He began coaching junior football in Goddard, which led to a run on the school board and, eventually, Wichita City Council.
“It’s kind of one of those deals, you know, you get into something, and then you just want to continue to serve,” he said. “And I had good momentum with the city of Wichita … and I want to extend that out to the county because it has been overlooked.”
Blubaugh described the south side of Wichita as “overlooked” and filled with “working-class neighborhoods.” He said his background in aviation and real estate fits the district.
“I’ve worked in aviation for 17 years,” he said. “I know the ins and outs of an airplane. I know the ins and outs of manufacturing. (As a) real estate broker, I understand the property values of the area.”
Blubaugh called himself a “big data person.” He keeps a customer database to track calls from constituents about issues they need help with and checks in months later to see if the problem was fixed.
“I work for my constituents,” he said. “I mean, if you have something, you have a need. I’m going to push for you, and I’m going to fight for you … I don’t care if you’re the lowest-income person in the city or the highest-income person in the city. I want to give everybody VIP service.”
Property taxes and assessments
The County Commission is in charge of setting the mill levy, a property tax based on the assessed value of a property that helps fund public services like schools and recreation.
While this tax is only applied to homeowners, Blubaugh and Lopez both stressed that renters and other consumers feel the effects of the mill levy as well.
“Whoever owns the property you’re renting from, they are absolutely taking whatever it is that their taxes are increasing and putting it off to the renter,” Lopez said. “So you might not be directly paying for it, but you’re paying for property taxes, and so it is really important for us to make sure that we are keeping those as low as possible.”
While the candidates agree that the tax rate is important and should be as low as possible, they disagree on the county’s role in assessments of property value — and whether the commission is currently doing a good enough job providing tax relief.
Blubaugh argues that the appraisers, who decide the value of the property and work for the state of Kansas, are incorrectly over-valuing properties, increasing the homeowners’ tax burden.
He said the commission should “sound the alarm” by putting the issue on their legislative agenda, which is a list of items the Kansas legislature should investigate.
“I’ve been in real estate for 25 years, and appraisal is an opinion. You can’t tell me your opinion’s right 99% of the time,” he said.
Lopez disagrees that the county should be involved in telling the state government how to appraise property.
“If the county commission were to step in and say, ‘Well, we want this house to be appraised differently,’ then that’s unethical in so many different ways,” Lopez said. “And that also opens the door for doing friend’s deals behind the scenes, and it’s just not fair and constitutional. And so it should not be at the county level to have anything with the appraisal process.”
In August, the commission passed a cut to the mill levy rate that Lopez said left it at the “lowest it’s been in nearly 30 years.” Blubaugh contested the characterization that the county has done enough to lower the tax burden on property owners.
“I keep hearing the county really boast about this mill levy reduction,” Blubaugh said. “And the assessment process is what is broken.”
The county’s mill levy represents less than a third of the total property tax bill on homeowners. Lopez pointed out that the school board and city government must also cut the tax rate to make a real difference in people’s wallets. She said the county should be more focused on making government programs more efficient.
“At the end of the day the only way to see that significant change go down for the tax burden is through consolidation,” Lopez said. “And we’re creating, between city and county, a blue ribbon committee that can look at, ‘Where are there duplications of services between the two?’”
Housing, WSU and other priorities
Blubaugh and Lopez both expressed interest in expanding affordable housing in urban Wichita.
“You see all these houses around WSU, and they’re just dilapidating, but the red tape involved with trying to remodel them and do them and trying to make them an equitable property that somebody owns, it’s just too tough,” Blubaugh said. “So we’ve got to go back to the drawing board, (and) look at what opportunities we can have, especially in the infill.”
The county is also involved in helping fund university projects. In the past decade, the commission has provided funding for Wichita State’s innovation campus and helped plan the downtown biomedical campus. Lopez said the partnership between Wichita State and local government is “something that we should all be really proud of.”
“That really helps us figure out, ‘What (does) that workforce for tomorrow look like?’” Lopez said. “And that is so desperately needed for us to continue to grow as a community.”
Blubaugh said the county should continue to ensure that local firefighters, police and 911 dispatchers have the resources and tools to execute their jobs — and the pay to ensure they stay in Sedgwick County.
“I’ll never touch law enforcement (in the budget),” he said. “Public safety is utmost to me.”
Young voter involvement
Blubaugh and Lopez agreed that young voters should be invested in what happens at the county level.
“A lot of people are like, ‘I’m my 20s, I don’t care,’” Blubaugh said. “And I’m like, ‘You’d better start caring because this is your future. You guys are going to have to live in it a lot longer than I am.’”
Both candidates said they often speak with college students and recruit them to work with them, whether it be in campaigns or advisory boards.
“I go to as many things as I can with our college students, because it’s so important, and at the end of the day, you are the future of what we’re doing,” Lopez said. “You need to be at the table in these decisions because I can tell you what I think is right, but that doesn’t mean that what I’m saying is right by your generation.”
