Fire hats off to Wichita and Sedgwick County for taking a first step last week toward merging their fire departments. We’d like to see full consolidation of the two governments, but realize that is a tougher sell, as Topeka and Shawnee County found out last week. Even though 59 percent of voters favored consolidating those two governments, the proposed merger failed Thursday because it required that a majority of Shawnee County voters who live outside Topeka support it (and only 40 percent did).
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
4 Comments
Oh my! Much tougher to get through here. Although I don’t think it is a bad idea.
Maybe if we changed Sedgwick County to Wichita County (basically flipping names) it might make it much easier, because people wouldn’t see the difference between the city and the county, but just having a different name would be the end of true unified consolidation.
Joe: Interesting idea — change Sedgwick County to Wichita County. Then State of Kansas would have two Wichita counties! As I recall, the current Wichita County is in western Kansas, just west of Scott County. I don’t remember driving west of Scott City so don’t know what’s there. Most likely wheat fields and people trying to catch a bus out of there to Denver.
JWink
That is what I meant by flipping names. Switch names of those two counties. The Wichita County out in Western Kansas to Sedgwick and vice versa.
Another thought would be to ANNEX the western Kansas Wichita County. Then build our new jail out there. Also put a landfill out there. Send our homeless people out there. Build the new downtown arena out there in downtown Leoti out of the way of everything.
On the other hand, it might be better for them if they would annex our Wichita and send their problems here!