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Testimony Opposing Tax Increment Financing for the Ken Mar Redevelopment Project
Read more: Testimony Opposing Tax Increment Financing for the Ken Mar Redevelopment ProjectTestimony of John Todd, opposing the formation of a tax increment financing (TIF) district, delivered to the Wichita City Council on August 12, 2008. Mr. Mayor and members of the Wichita City Council, thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak before you today. My name is John Todd. I stand before you today…
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Random thoughts from a Wichita school board meeting
Read more: Random thoughts from a Wichita school board meetingI attended the meeting of the USD 259, the Wichita public school district, board on August 11, 2008. The proposed bond issue for 2008 was a big part of this meeting. There were many speakers from the audience at this meeting. Almost all were employees of USD 259 or parents of students. Most said so,…
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Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group: Hiding Budget Numbers
Read more: Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group: Hiding Budget NumbersPaul Chesser of Climate Strategies Watch writes about the budget transparency of the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group, or KEEP. Kansas government often has troubles with transparency. One of the main problems with KEEP is that policy is being formulated under the guidance of an outside radical environmentalist group, instead of in the…
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Reverend Kevass Harding’s Wichita TIF District: A Bad Deal in Several Ways
Read more: Reverend Kevass Harding’s Wichita TIF District: A Bad Deal in Several WaysRemarks to be delivered to the Wichita City Council on August 12, 2008. There’s several reasons why this council should not approve this request for TIF financing. Material in today’s agenda packet doesn’t specify an amount, but past materials indicated that the project was $2.5 million short of the total needed for the project. Now…
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Maryland Previews Kansas Climate Change Panel
Read more: Maryland Previews Kansas Climate Change PanelIn Kansas, the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group, or KEEP, is meeting and planning the future of Kansas energy policy. If we want to see what the conclusions of this effort will look like, we can look to the just-completed effort in Maryland. Yes, we’ll have to make a few adjustments, as Maryland…
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Liberals Favor Outsourcing
Read more: Liberals Favor OutsourcingA press release announcing the new book by Peter Schweizer Makers and Takers contains this sentence: Schweizer argues that the failure lies in modern liberal ideas, which foster a self-centered, “if it feels, good do it” attitude that leads liberals to outsource their responsibilities to the government and focus instead on themselves and their own…
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Follow Me on Twitter. I’ll follow you.
Read more: Follow Me on Twitter. I’ll follow you.Some people have asked if I’m on Twitter, and the answer is yes. Here’s a link to my Twitter profile, from where you can choose to follow me. I don’t use Twitter as much as a lot of people do. I don’t have a mobile device like a Blackberry. I have a regular old-fashioned cell…
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My Apoligies For Comment Loss
Read more: My Apoligies For Comment LossYesterday afternoon I was performing some maintenance on my server. I deleted a test installation of a WordPress blog that I used for, naturally, testing. I thought I deleted the testing database that belong to the testing WordPress installation, but I actually deleted the production database that runs the Voice For Liberty in Wichita. Oops.…
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In Sedgwick County, New Technology vs. Old School
Read more: In Sedgwick County, New Technology vs. Old SchoolI was one of the two campaign co-managers for Karl Peterjohn’s successful campaign for the Republican nomination for Sedgwick County Commissioner, third district. As such I was invited to the election night party where we watched the returns roll in. I had my laptop computer with me, connected to the outside world by a wireless…
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Kansas Blog Roundup for August 8, 2008
Read more: Kansas Blog Roundup for August 8, 2008The August primary exposed some ugly behavior in the Kansas Republican party. And from its senate leadership, no less. While not, strictly speaking, a blog, Kansas Liberty is a great place to read about Kansas politics. The article Senate Leadership PAC supporting Republican liberals over conservatives in primaries: Conservatives protest GOP contributions to liberal Republican…
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Predictions of Downtown Wichita Arena’s Success are Premature
Read more: Predictions of Downtown Wichita Arena’s Success are PrematureSeveral Wichita Eagle editorials in recent weeks have mentioned the success of the Intrust Arena being built in downtown Wichita. Success, I might ask, at doing what? The fact that the arena structure is rising is evidence of only the smallest measure of competence by Sedgwick County officials. Having entrusted them with some two hundred…