SKCA General Meeting March 2025

Please join us for a community forum on two very important April 8 ballot issues at 6 p.m. Monday, March 10, in the Community Room of the Red Bridge Mid-Continent Public Library, 453 E. Red Bridge Rd., in the Red Bridge Shopping Center.

Proponents and opponents of the proposed 20-year extension of KCMO’s quarter-cent public safety sales tax will debate the extension of the tax which is now used for Fire Department emergency medical services and Police Department expenses and is scheduled to expire on June 30, 2026.

Melissa Patterson Hazley

Melesa Johnson

KCMO City Councilwoman Melissa Patterson Hazley and new Jackson County Prosecutor Melesa Johnson will be speaking in favor of the tax extension and Decarcerate KC Executive Director Amaia Cook and President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City Rev. Dr. Vernon Howard Jr. will be speaking in opposition.

Amaia Cook

Rev. Dr. Vernon Howard Jr.

Representatives of the Fire and Police Departments and the KCMO Municipal Court will be present to explain the current and proposed uses of the tax if it is extended. All speakers will take questions from the audience.

If the proposal passes by a simple majority, the city intends to also use funds generated by the tax to construct a rehabilitation and detention center for city prisoners.

The city does not now have a city jail and contracts with Johnson County, Missouri, and Vernon County, Missouri, to house its prisoners when space is available in Warrensburg, Mo., and Nevade, Mo., respectively, both far outside the metropolitan area which makes it difficult for prisoners’ families to visit them.

These counties have the contractual right to refuse to accept certain prisoners – often persistent violent offenders – who are the very type of prisoners that most need to be incarcerated so they cannot continue to harm their victims or others in the community.

This shortage of detention space sometimes forces police to only be able to give tickets even to persons accused of violent conduct, rather than removing them from the scene and placing them in detention to deescalate the situation and prevent continued immediate and sometimes worsening violence. This occurs all too often in domestic violence incidents.

Critics of the proposal point out the regressive nature of sales taxes, while supporters stress that out-of-town visitors such as tourists and people who work in KCMO but live elsewhere also will pay a substantial percentage of the tax.

Rita Cortes

Nicole Collier-White

Rita Cortes, Kansas City Public Schools Board of Education President, and Nicole Collier-White, Chief Communications & Community Engagement Officer for the school district, will explain the need for a $474 million general obligation bond issue on the April 8 ballot that will take a 4/7 majority (over 57.1%) of the vote to pass.

Funds from the bond issue will be used to modernize the district’s aging schools by replacing inefficient heating & cooling systems that are extremely costly to operate, repairing roofs, updating plumbing, installing safety & security features and making other long overdue improvements. The last time the district passed a bond issue was in 1967, 58 years ago.

A total of $50 million of the $474 million bond issue will be allocated for improvements to nine participating public charter schools in the district.

The district estimates the amount of the property tax increase needed to retire the bonds will be 61 cents per hundred dollars of assessed valuation.