Your primer to Wyandotte County’s similar-sounding commission candidates

Lower property taxes. Develop beyond the western outskirts of Wyandotte County. Revive the urban core. Wyandotte County voters have heard these platitudes before, and they’re hearing them again from the most recent slate of candidates for the Unified Government Board of Commissioners.

Their predecessors ran on similar platforms. And yet, Wyandotte County’s property-tax rate remains among the highest in the metro while sales-tax-supported development sprouts around Village West but remains at a relative standstill elsewhere.

Half the seats on the UG commission are up for grabs, but only two of those five races will be competitive. (Commissioners Brian McKiernan, Ann Brandau-Murguia and Angela Markley are running unopposed.)

Can this latest cast of candidates effect much change? Here’s The Pitch‘s guide to the upcoming races.

1st DISTRICT AT-LARGE

• Nathan Barnes

• Melissa Bynum

• Mark Gilstrap

• LaVert Murray

• Tamika Pledger

• Christal Watson

• Janice Witt

UG Mayor Mark Holland was the last person to hold the 1st District at-large seat. Holland vacated the seat after being elected mayor, and it has sat empty for two years due to the commission’s voting deadlock between Nathan Barnes and Don Budd. Voters across the county will finally decide who gets the seat in the April general election.

This race was thrown into a bit of tumult when community activist Tamika Pledger was charged with manslaughter after a crash that killed a teenager and injured three others. Pledger, out on bond, remains on the ballot but likely isn’t a viable candidate.

That leaves six contenders.

Barnes, an 18-year commissioner who left politics in 2012 after losing the primary to succeed former Mayor Joe Reardon, wants to re-enter public office. The small-business owner lists among his achievements the renovation of Parallel Parkway between Fifth and 18th streets and housing developments on Quindaro Boulevard.

“My fingerprint is on each and every housing development we have in the northeast area,” Barnes says.

Barnes bristles at Wyandotte County’s high property taxes despite development around the Kansas Speedway, which leaders promised would lower that rate.

“There was a promise of lowering taxes,” he tells The Pitch. “Very few people are talking about it.”

Barnes lives in northeast Kansas City, Kansas, one of the most impoverished sections of town.

“We are doing this at the expense of other parts of our community,” he says. “I think there can be and should be a more balanced approach to economic development.”

Barnes has kept a low public profile the past two years. Last fall, he campaigned for Gov. Sam Brownback during an event at the Quindaro Ruins.

Barnes acknowledges that supporting a Republican who lost badly in Democratic Wyandotte County could hurt him, but he says Brownback staffers listened to his ideas to revitalize the urban core when other, unnamed “Democratic terrorists” wouldn’t. Brownback’s office has since announced a pilot program that could offer tax benefits to people who choose to live in urban KCK.

Speaking of Republicans, Mark Gilstrap can finally run for the UG commission. Gilstrap worked in the UG Finance Department for 33 years, and from 1996 to 2008 he served as a Kansas senator from western Wyandotte County and portions of Leavenworth County. He was a Democrat before switching parties when then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius backed Kelly Kultula in a race against him.

“If you look at the makeup of the commission, there are good people on there, but there aren’t any people with an extensive background in finance,” Gilstrap says.

Like Barnes, Gilstrap wants to lower property taxes. He senses an opportunity to do that when sales-tax revenue (STAR) bonds, which financed such destination projects as the Legends, expire in 2017, adding an influx of revenue to county coffers.

Does that influx become a cash grab?

“The pet project is lowering property taxes,” Gilstrap says.

Melissa Bynum was a late entrant to the race. She works with Julie Solomon (Holland’s wife) at Wyandot Inc. and is considered well-connected. She’s thought to be a contender to advance to the general election.

LaVert Murray, former UG development director, is well-versed in how City Hall works. But Murray has run for the board of the Kansas City, Kansas, Community College several times and lost.

Christal Watson, Kansas Black Chamber of Commerce CEO, is on the Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools Board of Education. Watson, for the most part, is a well-liked figure in KCK. She beat a 20-year incumbent for her school-board seat.

Community activist Janice Witt ran for mayor two years ago but was a long-shot candidate who lost in the primary.

4th DISTRICT

Few UG Commissioners since the 1995 consolidation of the Wyandotte County and KCK governments have drawn as much notoriety as 4th District incumbent Tarence Maddox. He has twice been censured by the county’s Ethics Commission and been otherwise embarrassed by high-profile news stories that have caught him threatening a convenience-store owner with city inspections, warning people about the county’s “black mafia,” and throwing a tantrum at Legoland.

Still, don’t underestimate the continued support for Maddox in the 4th District.

Even so, he has drawn two challengers; both say they’re running for themselves, not necessarily to unseat Maddox.

Harold Johnson, senior pastor at Faith Deliverance Family Worship Center and a former commercial lender, is receiving campaign help from people connected to former Mayor Carol Marinovich. Johnson’s priority is economic development in the urban core.

That view is echoed by Scott Murray, a former UG city planner and a political newcomer. A KCK resident for the last decade, Murray has served as president of the Turtle Hill neighborhood, an enclave slowly on the upswing.