This week at Wichita City Council. This Tuesday, six speakers have signed up to appear on the public agenda. This is a portion of the meeting where citizens may speak on nearly any topic. Five are speaking on the city’s proposed trash plan, while one is speaking on a city-wide recycling project. … Approval of the city’s legislative agenda will be considered. Probably the greatest threat to economic freedom is this plank: “City of Wichita supports continued use of effective private-public partnerships and the appropriate intervention of state and local governments to spur economic development.” Also the city expresses support for highly subsidized, expensive, and little-used passenger rail service. … Also the council will consider amending the Wichita-Sedgwick County Comprehensive Plan to include Project Downtown: The Master Plan for Wichita. This is the plan that consulting firm Goody Clancy developed for the revitalization of downtown Wichita. The complete agenda report is at Wichita City Council, December 14, 2010.
Sedgwick County Commission this week. On Wednesday the Sedgwick County Commission will vote on its legislative agenda. The agenda, or platform, is not law, but expresses the sentiment or desire of the commission. Last year Commissioner Karl Peterjohn shepherded through the requirement that voters approve all tax rate increases. This year the same language is proposed, but it may not pass. (The proposed language is this: “All local sales tax increases must be approved by voters under Kansas law. All property tax increases that raise the mill levy should also be required to receive voter approval.”) Some commissioners believe that voters elect them to use their judgment to make decisions on taxes, while other commissioners believe voters should have the final say on something as important as this. The agenda and backup material for Wednesday’s meeting is at Sedgwick County Commission, December 15, 2010.
Wichita Eagle: Adopt downtown plan. Today’s Wichita Eagle editorial calls for passage of the downtown master plan recently developed by planning firm Goody Clancy. Rhonda Holman argues that a “busier, richer core” will benefit the town economically, adding that “downtown matters too much to be left to chance.” The idea that the core is essential to progress is taken as a given, but when downtown supporters are questioned, no evidence to support this nostrum is given. Also, this concept of “chance” that Holman doesn’t trust could also be described as a dynamic marketplace of ideas and capital, with many diverse players with dispersed knowledge acting to advance their own self-interest by creating things people will freely buy, all coordinated through the magic of the price system. What Wichita — with Holman’s support — plans to do is to replace this with the bureaucratic and political system.
City planning by “Those Who Know Best.” “While the fixations of trendy planners might not register on the list of things that average Americans think about, these new utopian land-use ideals are filtering down into government agencies and city councils, and might eventually impact the way we all live.” Writing in the Orange County Register, Steven Greenhut quotes the definition of New Urbanism: “New Urbanism is the most important planning movement this century, and is about creating a better future for us all. It is an international movement to reform the design of the built environment, and is about raising our quality of life and standard of living by creating better places to live. New Urbanism is the revival of our lost art of place-making, and is essentially a reordering of the built environment into the form of complete cities, towns, villages and neighborhoods …” He warns: “Whenever some ideologue claims to offer the most important thing since sliced bread and then promises to reorder my life around it, we should all get nervous.” (The downtown Wichita planners do not use the term “New Urbanism,” but they share the same characteristics and goals.) And even more strongly: “The New Urbanists claim to want to give our lives meaning by creating superior urban forms of living, yet they miss the most meaningful things in life because they emphasize architecture over people. Like all totalitarians, they assume that what they prefer is so good and noble that they have the moral right to impose it on everybody else. The rest of us need to take notice now, so there is still time to oppose it.”
Anderson appointment criticized. KU political science professor Burdett Loomis criticizes the appointment of Steven J. Anderson to be the new Kansas budget director, branding him an “ideologue” that has made “broadside attacks on public education.” Anderson believes in limited government, and his “attacks” on public — let’s be clear here — government schools are advocating school choice through vouchers. In states where vouchers are used, evidence is that public schools improve in response to the competition from private schools that parents can now actually afford. Plus, the state saves money, too. Loomis also criticizes Anderson for uncovering the large unspent fund balances in many Kansas agencies, balances that Loomis seems to doubt exist. Overall, Loomis presents an argument for the status quo in Kansas government, and the potential for change in the direction of restraining its growth has Loomis — in his own words — “concerned — worried, even.”