Columns

WICHITA MATTERS: The New Council, Part 1

By |

The Potential of, and the Problems with, Wichita’s (More) Partisan Future

There’s been a lot of talk about the “new Democratic majority” on the city council that officially took power on Monday night. WSU professor Chase Billingham, in particular, observed last August what the consequences of the November elections might mean should they go the way Mayor Whipple wanted them to (which they did). In a long Facebook post on Monday, Billingham considered a relatively small-stakes fight during last week’s council agenda review meeting in ways that makes his observations from last year seem pretty prescient: namely, that with three–presumably reliable–Democratic votes on the council, Mayor Whipple appears both capable and willing to pursue agenda items that he previously knew he wouldn’t have the votes to push forward. And he wants the Republicans on the council–who have long enjoyed an unstated and basically uncontested majority on the council but are now in the minority–to know it. So is the business of the city council, or the way it conducts business, about to radically change, and if so, how should the people of Wichita feel about that?

Columns

Why Councilmember Brandon Johnson Matters

By |

My headline is pretentious, of course; Brandon Johnson—the councilmember representing Wichita’s heavily African American and traditionally Democratic District 1, a longtime community activist and an alum of Friends University where I teach, as well as someone I have a friendly (if not close) relationship with—matters to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons, most of them far beyond the specifics of current Wichita City Council debates. But as a someone who has spent decades observing and thinking and writing and teaching about politics, Brandon Johnson’s comments, toward the end of another marathon session dealing with the proposed non-discrimination ordinance before the council, were a deeply profound perception about the nature of political life. Watching the whole thing is a revealing as well as often depressing slog, but if you zip to the four hour and six minute mark, you’ll hear this (edited slightly for clarity):

“A ‘community divided’ [over]…a non-discrimination ordinance? I don’t know if I would go that far. There are upset people.

Columns

WICHITA MATTERS: Eight Inter-Connected Observations about Complexity, Liberty, and the City of Wichita

By |

1)  Cities are complex systems—that is, they are places where different groups of people organize, worship, trade, celebrate, work, and simply live in close proximity to each other, all in different ways and with different goals in mind. In other words, cities are pluralistic, with different sectors and levels all interacting in complex ways. Obviously not all cities are equally pluralistic and complex—the size of the city matters, its economic and racial and religious and regional history matters, and the way it is governed matters. Still, the one common feature of every modern city—meaning every built community that isn’t a rural village and exists in the wake of the democratic and industrial revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries—no matter what its relative size or history or location or politics, is simply this: its day-to-day operation is a complex, and by no means necessarily automatic, matter. 2) That doesn’t mean a large portion of what happens in any given city on any given street on any given day isn’t significantly automatic, because in a healthy city an awful lot of it will be.

Columns

WICHITA MATTERS: Biden and (Some) Better Times for (Some of) Wichita

By |

When President Joe Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan (ARP) a little more than a week ago, I commented to some friends that this may arguably turn out to be one of the best things that has happened to Wichita in a very long time. Let me explain that argument here—starting with a rephrase of my original comment: the ARP will likely turn out to be one of the best things that has happened for many Wichitans in a very long time. Why the change? In part because there are a thousand ways to think about a city, depending on the perspective of the person doing the thinking. For every metric I or someone else might propose, someone else can surely come up with a different, countering one.

Columns

WICHITA MATTERS: Century II, Home Rule, and the Problem (and Appeal) of States Pushing Cities Around

By |

On Sunday the Wichita Eagle ran two guest editorials–one by me on how state governments push cities around, and one by my friend John Todd on the effort by him and others to get the state to require cities to hold a public referendum before historic buildings like Century II could be torn down. Both essays are essentially about “home rule,” though neither ever use that phrase. Let me try to expand on that idea here. “Home rule” refers to the principle of municipal governments being allowed the ability to fully govern their own residents. Under our constitutional system, the national government and the state governments are assumed to have some degree of sovereignty; no such assumption necessarily holds counties and cities, however.

Columns

WICHITA MATTERS: On Partisanship and Punishing Politicians

By |

It would be wrong to say I know James Clendenin. I’ve met him a few times at different city events. Once I asked him to come to Friends University (where I work) for a candidate forum, during which he interacted with and answered questions from the students–about parking enforcement, marijuana decriminalization, and more–in a smart and open-minded way; and that impressed me. Another time I had nice things to say about his genuinely admirable—and ultimately successful –work to save the Starlite Drive-In in south Wichita. That’s not enough to say I’m friends with the man, but perhaps it gives me a little cover when I say: the fact he still hasn’t resigned from the Wichita City Council in shame disappoints me—but perhaps that disappointment is at least as much rooted in the structure of our city council as much as in anything relevant to the character of Clendenin himself.

Columns

WICHITA MATTERS: Decisions in a Distracted and Divided Wichita

By |

This composite image contains two scenes that I’ve seen nearly every day for weeks as I’ve walked our dog near our home here on the west side of Wichita. These two homes are directly across the street from each other, with each Biden sign more or less directly facing a Trump one. I’m not sure which family put up which sign first, but I observed their numbers growing, one sign or flag or banner after another, one day or week after another, in a silent suburban struggle. (And it’s continued since I took these photos; the Trump house now has five signs advertising their preferred choice for president, while the Biden house now has four signs, plus one for the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate here in Kansas, Barbara Bollier.) I may make a point of avoiding this particular street on the day after Election Day. Wichita isn’t, of course, actually this evenly divided; while the major parties and news organizations don’t spend much effort polling in any cities besides the very largest, the best and latest polling available makes it pretty clear that Trump leads Biden beyond the margin of error in Sedgwick County.

Columns

WICHITA MATTERS: Glimmers of a Different Wichita

By |

Two weeks ago, the Wichita City Council, by a 4-3 vote–a result which surprised more than a few Wichitans–implemented a mask requirement in the city of Wichita, in the wake of the Sedgwick County Commission’s refusal to fully support the mask mandate which Governor Kelly had called for all the state of Kansas to embrace. (The commission, in the wake of Wichita’s decision, later supported a similar order from Dr. Garold Minns, the county’s health officer.) Then earlier this week the Wichita Historical Preservation Board, by a 5-2 vote–a result which, once again, surprised more than a few Wichitans–nominated Century II for state and national historic status, thus supporting the effort to get the iconic building listed by the Kansas State Historic Preservation Office and the National Register of Historic Places. If that happens, it would likely present very serious obstacles to any plan–such as that proposed by the Populous outfit hired by the Riverfront Legacy folks–which involved the destruction of Century II, which is why multiple interested groups sent representatives to the Preservation Board to make their case (in vain, as it turned out). I found myself wondering yesterday: is there anything these two votes have in common? The obvious first response–and, in all likelihood, mostly the correct one–would be: “no.”

Columns

WICHITA MATTERS: The Coronavirus in Kansas: The First 100 Days

By |

This past Saturday was more than just the summer solstice, the longest day of the year and the official start of summer (astronomically speaking, if not calendrically). It also marked the 100th day since the coronavirus pandemic formally began in Kansas, with Governor Kelly having issued her state of emergency order, in response to the first Covid-19 death in the state, on March 12. Wichita and Sedgwick County began to follow suit the same day, and just as USD 259 students were beginning their spring break, our long Covid Spring started. Now, our Covid Spring has become a Covid Summer. What’s different, what’s the same and what, if anything, has been learned?

Columns

WICHITA MATTERS: The Road Ahead

By |

In the midst of violent protests, police violence, and a pandemic, I’m thinking about a road. It’s not much of a road; just a short stretch of University St., directly west of Friends University, where I’ve taught since 2006. Over those 14 years, I have biked back and forth on that 1/10th of a mile stretch, which dead-ends 50 ft. short of Meridian Ave., probably over 7000 times. It’s the final leg of my normal commute route; I bike from my home in west Wichita eastbound on Maple St., cutting south to University at West St.