Tyrone Garner, Mayor of Kansas City, Kansas, who also serves as the CEO of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County, said he doesn’t know why four commissioners decided to call a special meeting, moving up a vote on exceeding the revenue-neutral rate by a day.
After a contentious, six-hour long meeting on July 10, 2025, the commission voted to delay the vote a week, after Garner asked staff to look for savings in the proposal.
The commission was to have again voted on a notice of intent to exceed the revenue-neutral rate on July 17.
But on Tuesday, July 15, four commissioners, William Burns Jr., Christian Ramirez, Dr. Evelyn Hill, and Mike Kane, wrote the Mayor Pro Tem Tom Burroughs, staff calling a special meeting for 5 p.m. on July 16. A meeting which was scheduled for a different room from where the commission normally meets and, according to the Unified Government’s release, this time no public comment was allowed — and at a time when most of the public would be unable to attend in any event.
However, the commission voted 7-3 to issue an “intent to exceed the revenue-neutral rate” on Wednesday after Wyandotte County Administrator David W. Johnston told commissioners failure to raise taxes would result in a $9.3 million “structural deficit.”
Johnston said a 3 mill increase would result in a $1.2 million surplus.
According to KMBC.com, the original proposal would increase the mill rate by 5 mills and potentially increase revenue by $20 million. One mill is equal to $1 per $1,000 of assessed property value.
“We still are working on our final budget recommendation,” Johnston said, “So this is not anything to do with the budget. You’re setting a limit … to give us a guideline not to exceed, we have no intention to reach that limit in our budget preparation.
“What we were asked to do last week was continue to take pencil to our budget, which we have done. There was a recommendation by a couple of the commissioners to look at a three-mill increase. I believe that we are comfortable with that.”
The commission voted to set a 5 mil increase as a “cap” that the budget cannot exceed.
Wyandotte County did not increase property tax revenue in 2024, but it is still 300% higher than in 1997 and more than three times the combined increase in inflation and population.
Unified Government Budget Director Reginald Lindsay said staying revenue-neutral for a second straight year would bring in revenues of $84.3 million to the general fund, but the UG estimates expenses of approximately $93.6 million.
In a brief phone interview a few hours before the meeting — which he was able to chair — Garner said he didn’t know why the commissioners had called the meeting a day early.
“That’s a good question for the commissioners,” Garner said. “There’s four commissioners that signed up on that, so that’d be a good question for them. I haven’t talked to them, and none of them have contacted me, so that’s a question that I’m trying to get some answers to.”
The Sentinel asked all four why they chose to call the meeting a day early, but as of publication, has not received a response.
However, Garner said he had originally planned to be out of town Wednesday, but had notified staff and the mayor pro tem that if he was for some reason, unable to be back in time, the pro tem “would have to run the meeting.”
“I was out of town on business, and my plan was to be back Thursday, but I did notify staff that, just in case … because you never know, something could happen where I couldn’t get back in the office, (the pro-tem would need to run the meeting)” he said. “But I had full intention to be at the meeting, short of something…coming up.”
Garner also said he was meeting with staff today in order to see what savings have been found in the proposed budget.
The commission’s vote to issue a “notice of intent to exceed revenue neutral” does not mean that the final vote will be for higher taxes. The vote simply set a “revenue-neutral hearing” on August 26 of this year. A final vote on the budget — which is set to be presented on August 7 — will take place at that hearing.
Wyandotte County and KCK taxpayers are already paying for eye-popping salaries and pay raises for government employees, some of which may result from additional overtime, payouts of unused sick or vacation leave, or working a partial year in 2023.
As the Sentinel recently reported, County Administrator David Johnston, hired in March 2023, was paid more than $285,000 last year — a 48% increase from his first-year salary. Police Sergeant Matthew Cross was the second-highest paid employee at nearly $251,000; Cross collected $44,000 in overtime and may have received additional pay from unused paid leave.
A dozen Wyandotte County employees were paid more than $200,000 last year. Three employees collected more than $100,000 in overtime.
