It’s a relief that, at least for now, the majority of Sedgwick County commissioners are smart enough not to fire County Manager William Buchanan. The commission was expected to go into executive session Wednesday but didn’t do so — apparently because there wasn’t enough support for the move by Commission Chairman Kelly Parks and Vice Chairwoman Gwen Welshimer to oust Buchanan. It would have been irresponsible to fire Buchanan, who has capably managed the county for nearly two decades and has strong support from business leaders, the public and county staff. Yet it’s troubling that Parks appears not to have completely abandoned his terrible idea, telling The Eagle that “I think it’s really not over but appears to be for now.”
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23 Comments
Let’s face it, the last ten years of city and county government in Wichita and Sedgwick County have been nothing to write home about.
But now we are finally on the way to a new beginning. We have a new Wichita city manager and new USD 259 school superintendent. It would be a good time for county manager Buchanan to quietly leave town so we can get some innovative new thinking in the county courthouse.
Buchanan is basically on early retirement. He was one of a small gang of “music men selling non-existent band uniforms” to the taxpayers of Wichita and Sedgwick County. They promoted construction of the super expensive unwanted, unneeded white elephant downtown Intrust arena.
Thanks to Buchanan, we now have a major unsolved problem: the unusable downtown arena mistake, poorly designed, can’t do much of anything right other than provide a place for some adults to play hockey.
Now its clearer that the Kansas Coliseum and its adjacent pavilions and its 4,000 car parking lots and its relaxing adjacent Wiedemann Park and easy access from I-135 freeway still offers the best amenities for the tax paying public.
The best solution is to transfer the Kansas Coliseum property to Park City or a private company with the financial ability to fix it up and use it correctly.
Let Sedgwick County operate the downtown Intrust Bank arena somehow. Or close and implode it. That site should have been saved for a parking lot for a future midwest regional Amtrak train station in the historic Wichita Union Railroad Station. But Wichita has no planning worthy of the name.
Whether Buchanan should be fired or not is a question that should be debated fully and openly. However, Kommisar Kelly’s back-room approach taints any action that might be taken. His ’star-chamber pseudo-hearings’ (including his recent ploy with his buddy Lippencott and Heritage) clearly violate the spirit (if not the letter) of open meetings laws. It becomes more clear each passing day that Parks wants to ramrod his agendas through the Commission without allowing for reasoned and careful consideration.
It is time for the rest of the Commissioners to rein him in.
It would be risky in these troubled times to topple the apple cart, just to soothe some ideological or philosophical differences. Perhaps the measuring of projects with rhetorical bias is not the standard for commission parliamentary procedure.
I still think that Wichita needs to look at transportation solutions like those in European Cities. Wiesbaden, Germany has a wonderful bus system, easily identifiable and works in conjunction with the walk and bicycle zones. It’s safe, makes for a beautiful downtown area and gives a city a charm that attracts customers. With large walk zones, outdoor vendor permits can flourish adding to the flavor and identity of a city.
But, I digress…
Regular – agreed. I think we could at least start by developing a bus alternative for arena events. The downtown depot is right there near the Arena. For years I have suggested running special buses for weekend events during River festival. Use Dillons parking lots ‘out in the fringe’ and bring people downtown.
Then we could support pedestrian areas with less pressure to allow cars everywhere.
A really good area for your idea would be the brick streets in Old Town. It would be nice to be able to dine outside without vehicle fumes. Open the streets from 4AM-10AM for supplies but close otherwise.
“Regular” extols the virtues of –
“Wiesbaden, Germany has a wonderful bus system, easily identifiable and works in conjunction with the walk and bicycle zones. It’s safe, makes for a beautiful downtown area and gives a city a charm….”
Sounds pretty SOCIALIST!!!! to me.
bth,
Wish I had saved a map from Wiesbaden that showed the bus routes – it’s a wonderful system, color coded for easy destination identity. Since buses ran every ten minutes from any locations, one really didn’t even an exact schedule of stop times. It was efficient and pure pleasure to get around Wiesbaden.
Actually MonkeyHawk, certain concepts need to be in the publicly owned sector because of the expense. Mass transit transportation is one of them.
I agree the most of old town should be closed to vehicle traffic, and durning events like first and final Friday they use the trolleys rather effectively in getting people from area to area
The problem with reform of the transit system is cost, I don’t locals here paying higher taxes to pay for a revamped mass transit system( Although I agree it should be done).
regular – agreed. Also Paris, London and Hamburgh. In fact, I could navigate easily with virtually no understanding of French or German.
I agree with Regular and Ben. Excellent ideas for the 21st century. I can not agree with J. Wink on his usual complaints about the Intrust Arena (although I know Ben agrees with many of them). Other arenas have in fact had a positive impact on their downtowns (particularly in the acts that they attracted). The transportation solutions suggested I think would help to make the arena work.
Remember, the sign of success for the Arena won’t be if it itself makes a profit, but whether it helps to facilitate further downtown and Old Town development and activity.
Monkeyhawk: “Sounds pretty SOCIALIST!!!! to me.”
True enough, but let’s face it, a needless trollish response to a thoughtful post.
Regular: “Actually MonkeyHawk, certain concepts need to be in the publicly owned sector because of the expense. Mass transit transportation is one of them.”
Nice response, and a good job of not getting drawn into defending a rigid ideological strawman.
In 1980, I tried to get lost in London using the tubes.
Couldn’t do it. They have a great transportation system.
In this country, I have been impressed with the integrated transportation system of Washington D.C. as well.
“Regular” admits –
“…certain concepts need to be in the publicly owned sector because of the expense…”
DING!
DING!
DING!
DING!
TELL HIM WHAT HE’s WON, JOHNNY!
Health care is one of those things.
We already have Health Care funded by the government MonkeyHawk.
What O’BAMA wants to do is have his fingers wrapped around the throat of the health care industry as what they can and can’t do.
It’s called a power play – nothing to do with the health and welfare of a nation. O’BAMA could care less of the old sot in New Mexico who hasn’t seen a sober day in 30 years has health care. The old sot could probably care less. I’m sure there are many hundreds of thousands, if not millions that don’t want to be forced into health care.
So O’BAMA wants to take control of an entire industry because of power politics.
BTW, just how many U.S. Citizens are running to Canada on a daily basis to get health care?
I would think every old sot along the Canadian border would do so. How come they are not?
“Regular” –
Uhm…
Because they’re not Candaian?
“Canadian” –
Sorry for the typo.
How could Buchanan be fired/ According to today’s Eagle, the meeting that was called for that purpose was not called by anyone for any purpose!
“I didn’t call a meeting, did you?”
“No , not me, how ’bout you”
“Not me, ask him” ……
Brought to you by:
Shep, Moe, Curley, Shirley and Not Necessarily.
gster – yea, I found that rather amusing. Nobody called for the executive session – NOT! Sounds like Kelly conveniently ‘forgot’ that he had done that. Honesty and integrity are not exactly his strong suits.
bth- Yes, and then the head Stooge said that the matter the meeting that was not called for was not over!
Can we syndicate these clowns? Imagine the potential revenue stream for the City.
“The Wichichumps”?
A use for their Arena: hold commission meetings there and charge admission. Then, instead of voting on issues let them fight to the last man (or woman) standing.
Downtown Master Plan Finalists Selected
Date: July 23, 2009
Contact: Communications Team
Four firms were selected as finalists on Thursday to participate in the downtown master plan Request for Proposals (RFP) process. The finalists, recommended by a selection committee and endorsed by the Downtown Revitalization Steering Council during a meeting at the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce, are:
* Chan Krieger Sieniewicz of Cambridge, Massachusetts;
* Crandall Arambula of Portland, Oregon;
* Goody Clancy of Boston, Massachusetts;
* and Looney Ricks Kiss of Nashville, Tennessee
More information on the finalists can be found on the attached document. The selection committee reviewed 32 proposals, interviewed nine finalist firms by telephone and checked references. The four finalists have multiple partners, including local partners. Finalists will submit written responses to a RFP by August 28 and make public presentations of those proposals during the week of September 22. A location will be determined and announced later.
Mayor Carl Brewer, who has spearheaded community discussions regarding the future of downtown, praised the selection process.
“We appreciate the time and effort of private sector volunteers as well as staff to spend time making sure we have a thorough process, resulting in the best firm and outcome for Wichita,” Brewer said. “We want a great partner who will guide us through this process because it will be the community’s input that will define the vision for downtown.”
Jeff Fluhr, who heads the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation, said: “We were very pleased with the level of response and the caliber of the responses. The firms put a lot of thought and effort into the proposals and it’s exciting to see the process by which we can work together to advance our downtown and our community.”
The downtown plan is designed to connect and maximize the potential of areas including Old Town, INTRUST Bank Arena and the River Corridor, while also building on previous plans. The plan will provide specific action-oriented strategies, including implementation plans to maximize private sector investment and return on investment of public dollars. The RFP identifies the need for the consultant team to build the plan based on comprehensive economic analysis and economic realities.
It has been shown that revitalized downtowns help retain young people, families and jobs, as well as increasing tourism, growing the tax base and making Wichita competitive with other cities. The Downtown Revitalization Partnership is a public-private initiative funded and led by the City of Wichita, the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation and businesses.
For more information regarding downtown revitalization efforts, please visit wichita.gov and click on the Mayor’s Downtown Vision item under City Spotlight.
Now after spending some $500,000,000.33 public taxes in Wichita’s central business district, the Downtown Revitalization Steering Council finally wants to hire a planning consulting firm to furnish ideas on how to revitalize downtown.
An interesting pamphlet was recently presented by, among others, Wichita’s downtown development corporation, Wichita’s Visioneering group and Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce entitled “A case for downtown Wichita revitalization.”
In a section, “Wichita, what’s next?”, I found an interesting comment: Cities with successful turnarounds have shown for every $1 of public investment there will be an investment of $10 to $15 of private money …”
“Haw, haw, haw …” Pardon me while I turn away laughing.
To me this means the $500,000,000.33 public money/sales taxes invested by the citizens of Sedgwick County in the white elephant downtown Intrust arena … Sedgwick County taxpayers can expect some five to 7 1/2 billion dollars in private investment in our downtown Wichita central business district. Wow, I hope this prediction comes true!
My first question, of course, is just when will this new downtown development boom begin?
My second question is, what about all the blue ribbon downtown businesses that are rushing out of downtown anticipating a drain on their private parking areas by attendees at Intrust arena functions?
Third question, why is the Intrust arena not designed to be used for horse shows, antique shows, gun shows and conventions. These activities require ample space for their horse trailers, delivery trucks, etc. These tried and true activities now must go to other counties for their shows.
Fourth, whose idea was it that Wichita people are waiting with baited breath to sit on their behinds watching hockey games with players they never heard of? No one I know of will attend.
The downtown arena is not designed acoustically for fine concerts but might work for heavy metal concerts where acoustics are not important.
Fifth: Where will the 500 car parking lot be located for a midwest regional Amtrak railroad station that might have come to Wichita’s historic Union Railroad Station?
And finally, how many executives from Wichita’s downtown business corporation, Visioneering group and Wichita Chamber does it take to screw in one new florescent light bulb?