There’s a good argument to be made that Wichita should just get over the Pat Salerno debacle already, but it was hard not to feel further insulted over Salerno’s decision to pass on becoming Wichita’s city manager in light of this: Salerno is now among 56 applicants for the job of city manager in Deltona, Fla., a planned retirement community of 84,000 and home to one of Florida’s largest sinkholes. Then again, it’s further affirmation that Salerno wasn’t right for Wichita.
Derby has taken ribbing from Wichita for being behind the times or worse. But the community is busy busting the stereotype: On Tuesday the Derby City Council voted 5-4 in favor of a clean indoor air ordinance that, unlike Wichita’s weak compromise, bans smoking in all businesses and public places. It goes into effect Sept. 1. Only outdoor patios at bars and restaurants are exempt, and then depending on how far they are from the main entrance and ventilation unit. (Maize also passed a limited ban last week.) Last week also saw the first meeting of a Derby advisory board assigned to study and make recommendations on residential trash franchising and curbside recycling - two issues that Wichita’s leaders seem happy to willfully ignore.
A man who’s annoyed by his neighbor’s free-ranging cat spoke to the Wichita City Council Tuesday, suggesting that the city needs a leash law for cats.
File that one in the kitty litter box.
Put aside for the moment that most cats don’t take to leashes or directions or other attempts at cat herding.
I know my cat Mo would resist leash training as being utterly beneath him.
More seriously, cats don’t pose the attack threat to other pets or humans that dogs do. And the ordinance likely would be widely ignored.
Maybe Wichita’s animal control officers do need a way to respond, though, when a cat leaves deposits with neighbors and its owner won’t respond to complaints.
That stinks. Maybe there’s a way to train the humans.
Movie-house mogul Bill Warren, buffeted by public backlash to the city’s $6 million loan to his struggling Old Town theater, is asking his audience members for feedback on what they want and how to make the theater succeed. You’d think he and his partners in the Old Town Warren might have a revival plan worked out already, as a condition of the loan, right? Still, it’s smart to try to get Wichitans on his side by asking them what they want to see. And he might actually get some good ideas.
Some think an art film house could be the ticket for the upscale, condo/urban adult audience that lives and plays downtown. Others think showing classic or offbeat movies would draw a crowd. At any rate, Warren might do well to consider something along these niche lines that stands out as a departure from the usual moviegoing fare.
Wichita City Council members Tuesday went out of their way to offer effusive praise for Assistant City Manager Scott Moore, who will take over next week as the city’s interim city manager. In the past three years, Moore, the former city manager of Ellsworth, has overseen eight of the city’s 17 major departments and is said to be widely respected throughout City Hall.
Vice Mayor Sue Schlapp called Moore “an up-and-coming guy” who has “so much potential.” Other members used words such as “steady” and “responsible” to describe him.
So why didn’t Moore, who applied for the city manager position, rate an interview as a finalist? Is City Hall neglecting its up-and-coming talent?
You could almost feel sorry for Wichita City Council members, who were caught off guard by Pat Salerno’s decision Monday to turn down the job of Wichita city manager. But then you recall how Salerno was the only candidate that the council brought in for interviews. And how the council rushed to hire him, even though there were serious concerns about his history as a city manager in Florida. And how he had been passed over repeatedly as a candidate for other manager jobs. In other words, the council got burned by its own botched process.
Junk cars that people leave sitting on lawns and streets, broken-down and abandoned for months on end, are an eyesore and lower the quality of life of a neighborhood. Kudos to the Wichita Police Department and Office of Central Inspection for its sweep last Thursday that hauled off 27 of these junkers in northeast Wichita after owners ignored citations to fix them.
After years of letting things slide on blight, the city of Wichita is sending a welcome message that it’s serious about cleaning up neighborhoods.
Wichita City Council members did the right thing Tuesday in moving to resolve a funding conflict with six local groups that provide paratransit bus services for people with disabilities.
The nonprofit providers, including Starkey, KETCH and Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation of Kansas, have long complained that city reimbursements don’t cover the costs of providing transportation services. Under federal law, it’s the city’s responsibility to ensure adequate disabled transportation access.
Paratransit bus service is a crucial lifeline that makes it possible for Wichitans with disabilities to participate in our community.
So it’s encouraging that council members gave initial support to increasing payments by more than 35 percent. And kudos to Mayor Carl Brewer for pushing for immediate relief for the groups instead of waiting for consultant studies.
Let’s hope this agreement keeps the buses rolling.
The Wichita City Council will consider today whether to proceed with the purchase and installation of eight in-car video cameras for the Police Department, the next step in a pilot program approved last year to be focused on cars used in traffic enforcement. The proposed $75,000 contract with Lenexa-based ICOP Digital Inc. has been long in coming to Wichita, but the cameras are a law enforcement best practice in other communities. Once installed, the cameras should shed light on what happens in public-police interactions and protect both officers and citizens from false charges.
Best wishes to former Mayor Bob Knight as he recovers from heart attack symptoms he experienced just a week before the unraveling of his bid to open a Mulvane casino in partnership with MGM and Foxwoods. Meanwhile, Knight remains in the hunt for a Ford County casino, in the Dodge City Resort and Gaming Co. partnership that also involves Wichita attorney Steve Joseph, media owner Larry Steckline and his wife, former Kansas Attorney General Carla Stovall Steckline. The group’s proposal, one of two for Ford County endorsed last week by the Kansas Lottery Commission, calls for a $92.3 million Western-themed hotel-and-casino complex near Dodge City complete with three rodeo arenas. “If Branson, Mo., can do it, Dodge City can do it, too,†Joseph said.
Patrick Salerno may be a great candidate for Wichita city manager, but without any other candidates to compare him with, it’s difficult to tell. After saying it planned to bring in other finalists for the position, the City Council rushed approval Thursday to begin negotiating with Salerno for the job. The quick decision presumably was because Salerno is also a candidate for the city manager job in Durham, N.C. But the fact that Durham is having such a difficult time deciding and has considered looking beyond Salerno and its other finalists raises more questions about Salerno, who was forced out of his previous job in Sunrise, Fla.
Pat Salerno, with 18 years of experience managing rapid growth in Sunrise, Fla., appears to be a qualified prospect for the city manager opening — he’s experienced and results-oriented — although his forced resignation in his last job and reputation for secrecy are serious concerns.
“There can be no room whatsoever for holding information back,†said council member Jim Skelton.
It’s good that the council held a public forum Monday to allow Wichita citizens to see the candidate up close and ask questions. (The forum will be rebroadcast on the city’s cable Channel 7 at 8:30 p.m. Thursday.) This models the kind of transparency and accountability Wichita expects in its next manager. Council members and the public still need to interview several other candidates, though, before determining the best fit for Wichita.
The problem isn’t just that several Sedgwick County sheriff’s deputies violated county policy by sending e-mails with inappropriate racial and sexual content; it’s that they apparently thought the offensive comments were OK. In other words, it would have been just as bad if the deputies had whispered the comments to one another rather than used county computers to disseminate them. It’s good that the office is taking the policy violations seriously and intends to take disciplinary action. But the lesson to the deputies is not about being more careful with their e-mail; it’s about changing their mind-set.
Before its reconstruction began, people used to consider Kellogg a joke. Since then, the joking has been about how long the project is taking. The most-told joke notes that because scientists say the sun will burn out in several billion years, “that means we’ll have to finish the Kellogg freeway construction in the dark,” as then-City Manager Chris Cherches put it in the ’90s. Similarly, when the downtown flyover opened in 1994, colorful signs went up nearby declaring, “And people said the sun would burn out first!”
Local wit Bucky Walters noted in The Eagle three years ago that “historians have always held that the construction of Kellogg was begun by Coronado in the 16th century. However, with the discovery of a mastodon tusk by present-day Kellogg workers, scientists have confirmed that the planet’s oldest unfinished highway was first started by prehistoric man.”
Anyone have other Kellogg jokes to offer? In any case, as our editorial today argues, the seemingly endless construction project remains essential for the community.
After months of sometimes bitter debate, Wichita quietly took the first official step Tuesday toward an indoor smoking ban in all businesses open to people under age 18, on a 4-3 Wichita City Council vote to be finalized next month. A Tuesday SurveyUSA poll of Wichita, sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12, seemed to confirm that the community is ready: 69 percent said smoking should not be allowed in public places with customers under age 18, more than two-thirds predicted that businesses would either gain customers (29 percent) or see no impact (38 percent) because of the ordinance, and only 19 percent said they’d be less likely to go out in Wichita because of the ordinance.
Among other benefits, the restaurant smoking ban approved this week by the Wichita City Council could help discourage teenagers from taking up the habit.
That’s according to a Massachusetts study indicating that teens who lived in towns with strict restaurant smoking bans were 40 percent less likely to become regular smokers.
“When kids grow up in an environment where they don’t see smoking, they are going to think it’s not socially acceptable,†said Michael Siegel of the Boston University School of Public Health, the study’s lead author. “If they perceive a lot of other people are smoking, they think it’s the norm.â€
Some choice quotes from the Wichita City Council’s discussion prior to voting 4-3 Tuesday for a workplace smoking ban exempting bars:
- “If this ordinance was a potato, it would be a mashed potato,†said member Jim Skelton (in photo), who voted “no.â€
- “Are we going to ban stupid people from driving? . . . We can’t save everybody from everything because there’s a couple of people that think it’s the government’s job,†said member Paul Gray, a “no†vote.
- “I’m always a little fearful when The Eagle agrees with us,†said member Jeff Longwell, an architect of the ordinance.
Credit four members of the Wichita City Council with acting on the only logical conclusion to be drawn from the 2006 U.S. surgeon general’s report on secondhand smoke — that public health demands a ban on public smoking. The ordinance’s exceptions for bars and some pending “tweaks†fueled confusion and eroded support; enforcement remains a question. But it took courage to pass even the compromise, tirelessly crafted by council members Jeff Longwell and Lavonta Williams, in the face of those who declared any limit a violation of property rights. “We have to start someplace,†Mayor Carl Brewer said. This ordinance is a reasonable and welcome place to start.
It’s good that the city of Wichita plans to change its new ordinance requiring a license if you breed dogs. The stated aim of the ordinance is worthy — reduce the number of puppy mills and pit bulls. But the wording is so vague that it can apply to anyone whose dog has puppies. Members of the Wichita Kennel Club also complained that they didn’t know anything about the ordinance until it went into effect in December — which is probably why the ordinance has problems. And did you bloggers see whose picture was included on Tuesday’s front-page story about the ordinance? Fellow blogger Hank Price.
Wichita’s clean-air ordinance was once forecast to pass the City Council before the end of 2007. Council members reluctant to take a stand on the contentious issue should take a cue from Kansas City, Mo., where voters Tuesday gave smoke-free workplaces, including restaurants and bars, their 52 to 48 percent approval. The ban begins in 60 days. “This was citizen-led. This wasn’t government-sponsored,” observed Cathy Jolly, a Kansas City councilwoman and cancer survivor. Why not put Wichita’s ban — preferably a clean, rather than convoluted, clean-air ordinance — on the November ballot?
The Wichita City Council members face their first test of the city’s new dangerous dog ordinance, in a case involving a pit bull that bit a 5-year-old girl in the face, inflicting wounds that required plastic surgery.
The owner is appealing the city’s animal control service recommendation that the dog be euthanized, saying the dog is a beloved family pet. But the dog has bitten someone before — the owner. And at an earlier appeal hearing, the city’s animal control supervisor, Dennis Graves, said he thought it likely the animal would bite someone again. That’s a potentally deadly situation, especially when a large, powerful dog breed is involved.
The 16 appointments so far to the citizen committee helping search for a new city manager say a lot about the Wichita City Council’s priorities — a predominance of real estate and business professionals, with a few nods to diversity and neighborhoods. To be sure, these people know Wichita well and will bring distinct perspectives to the search. But many have agendas, too. And there’s a good case to be made that members Ben Sciortino and Greg Ferris do not belong on such a panel, because their work has involved lobbying the City Council.
As the Wichita City Council makes appointments today to its citizen committee to screen applications for the city manager’s job, here’s hoping members give some thought to ensuring the committee reflects the community and, frankly, the diverse council itself. Last time, in 2004, the 21-member search committee included only one woman. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, the top six finalists for the manager’s job were all men. Such panels are a valuable tool for grooming leaders in the community. Their membership should make it clear that all of Wichita has a seat at the table.
Bill Warren has significantly improved the quality of life in Wichita with his movie theaters and support for community causes. So here’s hoping he won’t harm Wichita’s effort to revive Old Cowtown Museum.
Warren is considering challenging a planned new building at Cowtown on the basis that the city signed a “non-assistance covenant†when Warren built his Old Town theater. The agreement said that the city wouldn’t offer incentives to “movie theaters or theaters†within a four-mile radius of his downtown theater.
It is questionable whether the proposed multipurpose building at Cowtown, which would be home to the Diamon W. Chuckwagon and other events, qualifies as a “theater.†But even if it does, it’s unlikely that it would be in direct competition with Warren’s theater. On the contrary, resurrecting Cowtown could benefit other area attractions, including Warren’s theaters, by making Wichita even more of an entertainment destination.
Memphis developer John Elkington is just a consultant to the WaterWalk development — a good thing, given his troubling track record in some other cities. If he were in charge, rather than just lining up the Funny Bone Comedy Club and Wet Willie’s Daiquiri Bar for the project, Wichitans might have big reason to worry. Still, two things said in Thursday’s Eagle article on Elkington’s messy history were cause for concern: WaterWalk president Tom Johnson’s comment that he doesn’t care what Elkington did in other cities, and Wichita economic development director Allen Bell’s suggestion that Elkington’s track record isn’t the city’s responsibility either. Elkington’s limited role may be no big deal. But if WaterWalk doesn’t care about its consultants’ track records and the city sees no need for due diligence on its part, who is looking out for the taxpayers who are backing this major public-private project along Wichita’s best riverfront real estate?
There’s a good argument to be made that Wichita should just get over the Pat Salerno debacle already, but it was hard not to feel further insulted over Salerno’s decision to pass on becoming Wichita’s city manager in light of this: Salerno is now among 56 applicants for the job of city manager in Deltona, Fla., a planned retirement community of 84,000 and home to one of Florida’s largest sinkholes. Then again, it’s further affirmation that Salerno wasn’t right for Wichita.
