Should KC tax recreational weed to fund community improvements? Voters will decide
Should recreational marijuana be taxed an additional 3% in Kansas City to help improve neighborhood quality of life? The decision will soon be in the hands of voters.
Kansas City Council members on Thursday voted 9-2 in favor of adding a question to the April 4 general municipal election ballot asking whether the city should add the additional tax to help fund solutions to chronic challenges in Kansas City. The tax would not apply to medical marijuana.
Councilwoman Heather Hall, District 1, and Councilman Brandon Ellington, District 3 at-large, voted against the ordinance.
The mayor’s office estimates the tax would bring in an average $6.5 million annually in revenues over the first five years, with $3 million in the first year and $10 million by year five. The moneywould go through the city’s health department and would be put toward city clean-up efforts, homelessness prevention and violence prevention, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, who sponsored the ordinance, announced earlier this week.
The revenues would create stable funding for neighborhood improvements that otherwise would have had to be negotiated from the general fund each year, Lucas said.
“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 on Monday.
Kansas City isn’t the only Jackson County jurisdiction that could see additional revenue from marijuana sales. Raytown, Independence and Lee’s Summit are among a number of smaller cities also considering the tax.
State voters legalized recreational marijuana in Missouri in November’s election, allowing the state to collect a 6% sales tax on recreational purchases to help fund marijuana oversight programs and expunge prior marijuana offenses from records.
Now, Kansas City is looking to cash in on weed too. Here’s what that money would fund, according to Lucas.
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.
Homelessness prevention
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 the city is committed to addressing violence.
This story was originally published January 12, 2023 at 5:37 PM.
