Wyandotte County passes budget with tax increase despite delays, mayor’s veto
The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas’s board recently settled a financial debate that has waged on for more than a year: tax relief or revenue?
After months of social media vitriol, heated meetings that ran late into the night and flurrying frustrations over high property tax bills and lacking public services, commissioners formally decided how much more in property taxes residents will pay to the local government in 2026 than they did in 2025.
Their decision is expected to bring $16 million in increased property tax revenues across the local government and direct funding toward public services and departments that have struggled since last year’s decision to freeze property tax revenues in the 2025 budget year.
It also means that KCK residents with a $200,000 home can expect to see a roughly $90 increase on their annual property tax bill, about $34 on the city side and about $56 on the county’s, according to the government’s chief financial officer.
The Monday evening adoptions of the government’s city and county budgets, despite two separate 7-3 supermajority votes, didn’t pass without a hiccup.
At the end of a nearly three-hour meeting, Mayor Tyrone Garner vetoed each budget. First the city’s, then the county’s. Combined, the two budgets total about half a billion dollars, about $388 million on the city side, $121 million on the county.
Although the board sent government staff back to the drawing board throughout the budgeting season to find additional cost savings opportunities for residents, Garner said the budgets proposed and approved still didn’t have enough.
“Under what little authority I have left as mayor, I cannot in good conscience support this budget at this time,” he said ahead of vetoing the KCK budget.
District 5 Commissioner Mike Kane motioned to overrule each veto. By two 7-3 votes, commissioners overturned Garner’s vetoes. The mayor/CEO of the Unified Government has authority to veto a board vote, although a supermajority vote from the commission can overturn it.
Commissioners Tom Burroughs, District 2, at-large; Chuck Stites, District 7; and Philip Lopez, District 6 were the dissenting votes on both budget approvals. They also supported Garner’s vetoes. Burroughs was in the running for the role of mayor in the upcoming general election but lost in the August primary. Stites is running for another term on his seat. Lopez is in the running for Burrough’s at-large seat in the general election.
Tax bills, PILOT reduction
Under the board’s decision to collect additional property taxes in the coming year, KCK residents with a $200,000 home are looking at $1,655 for the Unified Government’s portion of their annual property tax bill, according to the budget. That number was closer to $1,562 last year.
The median home value in Wyandotte County was about $180,000 in 2025, according to the County Appraiser’s Office.
Residents have anticipated a property tax increase since earlier this summer, when Unified Government commissioners approved a notice of intent to exceed revenue neutral. That notice indicated they planned to break the year-long stagnation on property tax revenues that they adopted back in 2024 in an effort to provide property tax relief for residents.
Property tax revenues will account for 65% of the county’s revenue and about 18% of the city’s, according to the budget.
Commissioners included a 1% reduction on the Board of Public Utilities’ payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) fee for residents. The fee will move from 10.9% to 9.9% for residents. Last year, commissioners brought the fee down from 11.9% to 10.9%.
The reduction that commissioners approved Monday will result in the Unified Government collecting $1.2 million less in revenues, County Administrator David Johnston said.
