Category Archives: city council

Mayor defends Sister Cities trip to France

Sept. 15, 200910:34 a.m.

WICHITA — Facing criticism of City Council member Janet Miller’s planned Sister Cities trip to Paris, Mayor Carl Brewer launched a long defense, saying that such trips can draw business to the city.

Brewer’s response today comes after Bob Weeks, a local blogger who has pressed the city on the issue, called the International Sister Cities Conference a “junket” that the city should not pay for in a tough economic climate.

“Even in good budget times, I would argue these trips should be avoided,” Weeks told council members this morning.

Read More »

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under Carl Brewer, City of Wichita, Uncategorized, city council | Comments (2)

Topeka OKs sales tax increase for streets

April 8, 200912:32 p.m.

WICHITA — As Wichita struggles to find enough money to repair its deteriorating streets, another Kansas community has chosen a solution for its street problems.

Topeka residents approved a half-cent sales tax Tuesday to fix streets and other infrastructure. The proposal to raise the sales tax to 7.95 cents on the dollar was approved by 57 percent of voters.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports: The 10-year tax takes effect Oct. 1, with proceeds going to pay costs of “maintenance and improvements of existing streets, gutters, curbs, sidewalks, alleys and street lighting.”

Wichita has more than 500 miles of streets in “critical” condition and isn’t spending enough to keep up with the deterioration, we reported in February.

By Marcia Werts | Filed under City of Wichita, Uncategorized, city council | Comments (2)

Families of Carr victims: Don’t abolish death penalty

March 12, 200911:54 a.m.

TOPEKA – Standing with Attorney General Steve Six on Thursday, family members of the Carr brothers’ victims joined him in urging lawmakers not to abolish the death penalty.

On Monday, Senate Bill 208 is scheduled to for debate on the Senate floor. The proposal would abolish the death penalty for cases sentenced after July 1, 2009.

Six worried that the change could mean that death row inmates currently appealing their sentences – such as Michael Marsh and Gavin Scott – could be exempted from execution.

Family members also worried that Reginald and Jonathan Carr could escape the death penalty through appeals, if the law were changed.

It is’t about cost or closure, said Amy Scott, who was dating Brad Heyka, one of four people kidnapped and shot execution style on a Wichita soccer field in 2000 by brothers Jonathan and Reginald Carr. A fifth person survived. The Carrs have been on death row since 2002.

“We’re never going to have closure because we’ve lost the people we loved so much,” she said. “I just think this is a matter of justice. This just needs to be finished to the end.”

The proposal comes from Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick, who says all cost-saving measures should be considered while the state faces a budget crunch.

Prosecutors, such as Six, have argued that the cases do not necessarily cost more and justice should not be predicated on expense.

He urged Kansans to contact their lawmakers and express opposition to banning the death penalty.

Kansas has 10 men on death row. No one has been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1994.

By Jeannine Koranda | Tags: , , , , Filed under Police Department, Statehouse, city council | Comments (12)

Mayor quietly sought wage freeze for himself

Jan. 28, 200911:20 a.m.

Mayor Carl Brewer said ‘we all need to share in this pain’ during his State of the City Address last night, and he pledged to not accept a cost of living increase or raise. City spokesman Van Williams said Brewer recently quietly sought a wage freeze for himself in the human resources department. If the wage is frozen, that would lock the mayor’s salary at $82,660, according to the 2009-2010 city budget.

Last year, the mayor and city council members each got a 4 percent cost of living boost — along with most other city employees. Council members, whom most consider part-time employees, are actually listed as full time employees (or equivalent), and they make about $35,000 a year.

To see more about the council’s budget, see their portion of the city budget.

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under city council | Comments (0)

Word cloud from Brewer’s State of the City speech

Jan. 27, 20096:46 p.m.

Here is a word cloud of Mayor Carl Brewer’s third State of the City speech, which he delivered Tuesday night. The Eagle created it using the text of Brewer’s speech and Wordle.net. (You can double-click it to get a closer look.) Click here to see the word cloud from his 2008 speech and to read more about word clouds. Or click here to read this year’s speech as it was written.

By Lori O'Toole Buselt | Tags: Filed under Carl Brewer, city council | Comments (0)

Tuesday is State of the City speech

Jan. 22, 200910:15 a.m.

Mayor Carl Brewer plans to give his second State of the City speech Tuesday night at 6 p.m. Invitations to the speech were sent out a week ago, but no official announcement has been posted on the city’s web site. Brewer, who has struggled with some speeches and proclamations, has been rehearsing the speech for at least a week.

Last year, Brewer spoke to a packed city council chamber of mostly invitees. His 3,800-word speech drew applause more than 30 times, giving it the feel of a State of the State or State of the Union address. But his themes were hyper-local, addressing gang violence, the murder of Robert Ridge, fighting blight and retaining and attracting business — particularly in the aviation sector, where Brewer worked until he was elected as mayor, a full-time job, in 2007. This year, we anticipate that the speech will focus on layoffs in the aviation sector and downtown development.

In keeping with the parallels between the city speech and those of governors and presidents, here is a “word cloud” image that balloons the words he used the most in his 2007 address. This cloud was created using Wordle. Similar clouds are used by major media outlets, such as The New York Times, to give readers a sense of the dominating themes of speeches.

Brewer speech cloud

Brewer speech cloud

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under city council | Comments (2)

Wichita is Onionized

Wednesday9:28 p.m.

We hope we don’t ruin the fun by typing about parody here on a stuffy government blog, but we couldn’t resist the chance to chatter about The Onion’s election coverage — complete with a Wichita dateline.

Using the tone of some of the stories chronicling President-elect Barack Obama’s win, the satirical periodical reports that Alan Klemke won the District 4 City Council seat in the Nov. 4 election. (Of course, being a serious news source, we feel compelled to note that Wichita’s city council elections are in April and District 4 isn’t up for election in 2009.)

Here’s a taste of The Onion’s story: Read More »

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under city council | Comments (0)

Bring your beer with while bar hopping?

Oct. 27, 20085:39 p.m.

So you’re at a bar and all your friends want to take off to the next establishment — but your beer is still half full. As it stands now, you’ll have to pound it or leave it behind. But there’s some hope for pedestrian drinkers. One of the legislative issues Wichita City Council members will discuss Tuesday is a move that would urge the state to pass a law allowing “entertainment overlay districts” where you could take your drink out of the bar and down the street. Read More »

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under city council | Comments (3)

Amtrak, Cowtown and homelessness on Council’s agenda

March 28, 20087:00 a.m.

City Council On Tuesday, the Wichita City Council will vote on whether to endorse a plan to end chronic homelessness, a resolution supporting the expansion of Amtrak passenger rail service through the city and a $54,000 contract to market the Old Cowtown Museum. And there’s also a contract on the agenda that would sell a city-owned downtown parking lot to Cargill Meat Solutions for $1.

Homelessness: This move wouldn’t commit the city to any spending, but it would let Interim City Manager Ed Flentje work with County Manager Bill Buchanan to develop yet more recommendations on what local governments should do to help people who are on the streets.

Amtrak: It has been 28 years since Wichita had passenger rail service, and now many are calling for an extension of existing rail lines through Wichita. That would provide train service from Fort Worth to Kansas City. This resolution wouldn’t authorize any spending, but it would formally encourage the project.

Cowtown: The museum is set to re-open May 9, and the city wants to hire and advertising firm to get the word out via a marketing campaign. The gig would go to Jajo, Inc., a Wichita company that would use e-mail, radio and other tactics to “generate buzz” and bring people into the struggling museum.

Cargill: The parking lot is located near First and Water streets downtown, which is near one of Cargill’s buildings. The company has been expanding downtown, and it is adding more and more employees.

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under city council | Comments (4)

Brewer presses to end chronic homelessness and beyond

March 19, 20088:58 a.m.

Homeless manMayor Carl Brewer made an impassioned plea to his fellow city council members in a workshop Tuesday, trying to overcome the philosophical differences on the government’s role in ending not only “chronic homelessness” but homelessness in general. That plea came after Council member Paul Gray questioned whether the city should spend any additional money on a plan that the faith-based community might be able to fund. Gray noted that The Lord’s Diner has been run for years with private donations. “If they’re willing to do it, why do we have to do it?” he asked. Council member Sue Schlapp was also skeptical, saying that people tend to donate more when government isn’t involved. “It makes me always nervous to think that if we throw taxpayer dollars in that the rest of the community then backs off,” she said.

Then Brewer tried to change some minds, and he said the city must do its best to end chronic homelessness and then move on to helping others who are a paycheck away from being on the streets. It’s something, Brewer said, that many people sitting on the council and in City Hall may not understand because they haven’t been there.

“I wish there was someway you could flip the script and put the policy makers in the shoes of the homeless person,” Brewer said, using a tone that he has used only a few key topics, such as gang violence. “If there was some way that that could ever happen, I think that people’s attitudes would change. We have never experienced the suffering that those individuals have to suffer.”

Brewer grew up poor, a fact that he has only discussed on a few occasions. And he hasn’t yet brought it up in the context of the plans to end homelessness.

The Mayor also emphasized that some of those on the streets are the people who fought for the country in Iraq and Afghanistan, something that the task force has noted as well. He said many men and women come home only to immediately lose their jobs, leaving them with one last paycheck to live on at a time when they may be struggling to re-adapt to life without explosions and death. Many of them end up homeless, he said. “War does that.”

With clear philosophical differences among council members, it remains unclear how they will vote when they’re asked to endorse the plan April 1.

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under Uncategorized, city council | Comments (2)