Wichita poised to make the wrong moves on campaign signs and parking lot | Opinion

There are two issues on Tuesday’s City Council agenda that ought to be getting a whole lot more attention than they are right now.

One would force home and business owners to host other people’s signs on their property, without getting paid for it.

The other would extend and cement a contract for City Hall parking that is ridiculously expensive and unnecessary.

Let’s look at signs first.

The city is proposing an ordinance change involving yard signs on city easements. This one isn’t necessarily the fault of City Hall, but the execution is faulty and it needs a significant rewrite before going into the Municipal Code.

The state Legislature, in its infinite wisdom, passed a law in 2015 that stripped cities and counties of the authority to regulate political signs in the 45 days before an election. The reasoning behind it was that people ought to be able to put signs in front of their house supporting the candidate of their choice without having the city come by and take down the signs between the sidewalk and the curb.

That conflicts with a Wichita ordinance that essentially bans signs from the public right-of-way along city streets.

Recently, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach has pressured Wichita to comply with the state law on political signs, threatening legal action if they don’t.

Truth be told, Wichita’s ordinance was probably unconstitutional anyway, because government can’t regulate free speech unless it serves a compelling governmental interest.

It would be laughed-out-of-court difficult to make a case that a small sign saying “vote for whoever” stuck in the grass between the sidewalk and the street represents that compelling interest, unless the sign in question was blocking traffic or motorists’ sightlines, creating a safety hazard.

But that said, the proposed Wichita ordinance flips the script way too far in the opposite direction.

If it passes as written, anybody who wants to would be able to plunk down a sign on the strip in front of your home and you couldn’t do a thing about it.

The current ordinance reads: “Any property owner or tenant may remove an unauthorized Temporary Sign which is placed in the Right-of-Way when such Right-of-Way immediately abuts or is adjacent to the owner or tenant’s property.”

The proposed change adds this: “The provisions of this section shall not be applicable to Temporary Signs placed in the Right-of-Way during an Election Period.”

“Election period” is defined as 45 days before any election, plus the entire period between an August primary and two days after a November general election.

So, from about the middle of June until the first week of November, any politician, even one you might absolutely loathe, could put their sign in front of your house, and if you take it down, you’re the one who violated the sign ordinance.

And, the ordinance is “content neutral,” so it’s not just limited to campaign signs. Anyone wanting to promote their business, be it a bar or strip club, gun show or drag show, or anything else, could take the same advantage, and there’d be nothing you could legally do about it.

This is a gross infringement of everyone’s property rights.

In most cases, when you own a home or business in Wichita, your property technically includes the right-of-way out to the middle of the street. The city has an easement for a street through your property, but you’re the one responsible for mowing the strip between the sidewalk and the curb. And if the sidewalk in front of your house buckles or cracks, guess who has to pay to have it fixed. Hint: not the city government.

The proposed changes are on the council agenda as an “emergency” ordinance. The real emergency is they might actually pass the thing the way it is.

I spoke with Mayor Brandon Whipple on Monday and he said he’ll be offering amendments at Tuesday’s meeting to try to fix it. Here’s hoping he succeeds.

Now, let’s look at the City Hall parking contract.

A company called The Car Park Inc. currently gets paid $12,000 a month to administer the parking lot at City Hall. They pay the people who staff two tiny booths at the north and south entrances, dispensing tickets to park and collecting the charges on the way out.

The gate system’s been broken for years.

So now, the city’s proposing to spend $168,000 to buy a new automated system that would eliminate the attendants who staff the booths. The Car Park would buy the new system and the city would pay them back for it at the rate of $2,800 a month for the next five years.

Because they’ll lay off the workers, the cost of managing the lot would drop by $5,420 a month. So going forward, The Car Park would get a mere $9,462 a month management fee.

Oh, and their contract will have to be extended to at least 2029 while the city’s paying off the cost of the new automatic gate equipment.

Excuse me? The city’s going to pay a private company $9,400 a month to manage a relatively small parking lot, using automated equipment that the city’s paying for?

Seems like a scam, doesn’t it?

But let’s ask a deeper question: Why is there a charge to park at City Hall in the first place?

The city used the excuse of the 9/11 attacks to ban the public from using the City Hall parking garage (that the taxpayers paid for) for the last 20 years.

And the only reason the “public” lot ever fills up is because every day, dozens of city-owned vehicles are parked there.

Meanwhile, there’s a huge parking lot just on the other side of the city-owned Rounds and Porter building, which is adjacent to the public parking lot.

But it’s permit-reserved, so nobody other than city employees can use it.

It’s practically empty every single day.

Once, a long time ago, I asked a state legislator why the Kansas Turnpike, which has been paid off for decades, still charges tolls. He told me that if they didn’t charge tolls, there wouldn’t be any money to pay the toll collectors. I couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not.

As of now, that same justification appears to apply to the parking lot at Wichita City Hall, but worse.

And when they get rid of the people who staff the booths, there’s no justification at all.

It’s just a ripoff.