Kansas City mayor proposes 3% marijuana sales tax. Here’s what it would fund
With recreational marijuana now legal in Missouri, cities have the opportunity to benefit from weed sales. In Kansas City, Mayor Quinton Lucas hopes to use an additional 3% tax revenue, if approved, to fight some of the city’s most enduring battles.
Kansas City is among several cities in the metro considering putting the tax on the April 4 ballot.
When state voters passed a law allowing recreational marijuana in Missouri in November’s election, the state began collecting a 6% sales tax that helps fund marijuana oversight programs and expunge prior marijuana offenses from records. If passed, the city tax would add an additional 3% tax onto recreational marijuana purchases.
Lucas told The Star he’s proposing to use those tax revenues, if approved by council members and voters, toward long-term funding to address three major challenges which have been chronically underfunded but remain top of mind for his constituents:
Cleaning up illegal dumping
Addressing homelessness
Funding violence prevention programs
Lucas initially considered investing some of the revenue into funding enforcement of the amendment. But he said at present, the existing budget allotment for the city’s regulated industries department should cover the additional enforcement of businesses selling marijuana, similar to liquor control enforcement.
Later, with suggestions from other members of his staff, including deputy chief of staff Melesa Johnson and policy director Anne Jordan, Lucas said they landed on the latest plan instead.
“It shows we have a real commitment to social justice, to mental health, to actually not just talking about root causes, but actually funding ways that we address those issues. That’s something that I can’t say we’ve done enough of over the years,” Lucas told The Star.
Trash clean-up
Kansas Citians have long complained about the eye-sore of illegal dumping across the city, but particularly in underserved neighborhoods and along major roadways.
A city audit released in April found it took the Public Works Department an average of 24 days to clean up a site of illegal dumping after receiving a report. The audit also found that resident satisfaction with illegal dump cleanup was at its lowest in six years.
Lucas hopes to put some of the revenue toward neighborhood clean-ups, which also aligns with the city’s long-term climate goals.
Addressing homelessness
Last summer, advocates for those who are unhoused lamented the lack of emergency shelters in Kansas City made worse by a rise in recent years in the number of people experiencing homelessness.
“There are no spots for children, women and children, single women, people with disabilities or our elderly,” Jennifer Hull, who has worked in Kansas City as a contractor and volunteer street outreach worker for the past few years, told The Star one hot July day when every shelter bed for families, transitional youth, unaccompanied youth, domestic violence survivors and single females was full.
Local leaders have said emergency low barrier to entry shelters would remove many of the requirements and prerequisites that current shelters have in place for entry and help more people get the immediate safety they need.
Now, Lucas is suggesting a funding solution: putting some of the marijuana tax revenue toward low barrier to entry emergency shelters.
“A lot of other cities have been able to accomplish that and in Kansas City, it’s been held up a number of times. One of those reasons is cost,” he told The Star on Monday.
While creating more emergency shelter availability is top of mind, Lucas also hopes to put some of the funds toward mental health and other support services that the city thus far hasn’t been able to fund through the city’s general revenue pool.
Violence reduction
In 2022, Kansas City suffered its second-deadliest year in recorded history with 171 killings, which includes three fatal police shootings, becoming the third year in a row with staggering violence in the city.
Until recently, experts have said a comprehensive and collaborative approach that is well-funded and involves different stakeholders remained elusive in Kansas City. But at the end of 2022, city leaders said they finally had solutions, pointing to a new violence intervention initiative called Partners for Peace and a local victim-witness relocation program, among a few collaborative ideas underway.
But, despite so many leaders in local anti-violence work, including the mayor’s office, the prosecutor’s office and the police department, coming together under the same roof for the first time in years, funding remains uncertain.
Johnson in late 2022 told The Star she estimated Partners for Peace would need anywhere from $2 to $3 million annually to start. She initially planned to ask that the money come from the city’s general fund.
Lucas now hopes to solve the funding gap with the marijuana tax revenues, which he also hopes could go toward programs for youth and Aim4Peace, another anti-violence program that’s faced funding uncertainty.
He said the revenue would ultimately go toward addressing retaliation, prevention and intervention efforts, mentoring and conflict resolution programs for young people “so that we can actually start to do something more than simply showing up to crime scenes after problems have already occurred.”
By creating a stable source of funding, he hopes it sends a message that the city is committed to addressing violence long term.
Funding estimates
In the first few years of the tax, if passed, the mayor’s office estimates the city will see an average of $6.5 million annually in revenues, with $3 million in the first year and $10 million by year five. These numbers are based on data from Denver and Portland, Lucas said, adding that if recreational marijuana is legalized in Kansas, that could also affect the projections.
The first year, he hopes to put $750,000 each toward solid waste management and homelessness prevention, and $1.5 million toward violence prevention efforts. By year, five, the mayor’s office hopes that funding expands to $5 million toward violence prevention and $2.5 million each toward homelessness and clean-up efforts.
Regardless of the final totals, Lucas said, the revenues would mean some sort of stable funding that wouldn’t have to be negotiated from the general fund each year.
“I think it just makes good sense,” he said.
The ordinance, brought forward by Lucas, will be presented at the Special Committee for Legal Review at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday. If approved by the committee, it will go before council members for a vote as soon as Thursday.
If approved by council by Jan. 24, a question about the tax will be included on the April ballot. If approved by voters, the tax revenues will be available as early as late 2023, Lucas said.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misspelled Anne Jordan’s first name.
This story was originally published January 9, 2023 at 6:11 PM.
