‘Years overdue’: Kansas City school leader again urges council to curb tax incentives
Kansas City Public Schools’ highest official on Monday urged the City Council to immediately curb the city’s generous flow of tax incentives to developers — a move he said that is “years overdue.”
“As incentive reform flounders, how many more luxury buildings in affluent neighborhoods will generations of students be forced to subsidize?” KCPS Superintendent Mark Bedell wrote in a letter to the City Council on Monday that was obtained by The Star. “How many more parking garages will be built with public dollars?”
Since last summer, council members have been weighing legislation meant to further limit the amount of property taxes Kansas City can abate to spur development.
Even if the council adopts incentive reform, officials might include an amendment to delay implementing it for four months, Bedell said.
For decades, Kansas City has offered property tax abatements to get developers to build, particularly downtown. City Council members and boards appointed by the mayor make those decisions, but often, schools, libraries and mental health providers stand to lose the most.
Those abatements, which provide breaks on taxes that would otherwise flow to the district, Bedell said, have drawn more and more from KCPS’ budget in recent years. At the same time, the City Council voted last week to build a $36 million soccer park in the Northland during a budget crisis and included a provision allowing the city to start on the project immediately.
“So, I ask: When will ensuring our most vulnerable school children don’t lose out on critical resources become an urgent issue?” Bedell said. “When will supporting additional funding for counselors and wrap-around supports and after-school activities be an immediate priority for the city?”
As it stands, the legislation — authored by Councilwomen Melissa Robinson and Ryana Parks-Shaw — would limit abatements from 75% to 70% for the first 10 years. After that, developers could get 30% abatements for five more years. Right now, they can get 37.5% for 15 years. It contains several large exemptions, and if members adopt an amended version proposed to the committee, it wouldn’t go into effect for 120 days.
The council’s Neighborhood Planning and Development was expected to discuss it last week, but some members wanted it held, and the committee’s chair wasn’t sure there were enough votes. It’s back on the same panel’s agenda for Wednesday.
Early in the months-long discussions, the reforms were more sweeping: a 10-year 50% cap and language allowing the districts to opt in or out of longer, deeper incentives.
Bedell said KCPS gave up on those proposals, which he considers “true equity.”
“We have constantly and consistently been asked to negotiate against ourselves, being pressured to give up more and more — when, quite simply, using public dollars to subsidize private projects should be the exception not the rule,” Bedell said.
Robinson, 3rd District, said she understood Bedell’s frustration and the district’s desire “to have some level of relief from the exorbitant amount of incentives” granted within its borders. But she said she was prepared to move forward with the proposal late last year, only to have KCPS pump the brakes.
She said the four-month implementation delay gives a window for City Hall, developers and school districts to keep working on other necessary reforms, including reforming the AdvanceKC Scorecard, a system the city uses to determine what projects are worth backing.
“And I think in the long run that will be beneficial,” she said, adding that the parties have known reforming incentives would be a phased approach.
Bedell and KCPS have spoken more frankly since last summer about the way development affects the district’s bottom line. At that time, the City Council was considering extending a property tax abatement for a West Bottoms company that had already been receiving a break for 20 years.
The proposed deal, for BlueScope, was an example of “systemic racism,” Bedell told the council in a letter then.
“Financial decisions can be moral ones and this request is a violent economic practice that would never be inflicted on the majority-white school districts in the Northland,” he wrote then.
The last year, Bedell said in his letter Monday, has been “immeasurably grueling.”
“As we look at the blatant lack of equity that has been allowed to fester when it comes to development in our city and who has borne the brunt of that cost, though, I hope this decision is an easy one,” Bedell said. “As I have found in my many years as an educator — when you put kids first, it’s always the best investment.”
This story was originally published February 22, 2021 at 7:44 PM.
