Royals form campaign for new ballpark, Chiefs upgrades. You’ll hear more post-Super Bowl
Supporters of a 40-year sales tax to help pay for a new Royals ballpark and renovations to Arrowhead Stadium took the first steps this week toward financing a ballot campaign by forming a campaign committee as required by the state of Missouri.
A written statement organizing The Committee to Keep the Chiefs and Royals in Jackson County was filed electronically Monday afternoon with the Missouri Ethics Commission.
The committee’s address is Kauffman Stadium. Sarah Tourville, the Royals’s executive vice president and chief commercial and community impact officer, was listed as co-chair. And the team’s chief financial officer, Whitney Beaver, was listed as campaign treasurer.
No other officers’ names are on the form, although the statement could be amended.
Campaign committees are created, as required by state law, to be the conduits for accepting donations and paying the bill in political campaigns. They have to create a separate bank account for those dollars to pass through. But no financial information is available yet for this committee. Feb. 22 is the deadline for its first financial report.
However, after this story was originally posted Thursday afternoon, the Royals contributed $500,000 to the committee, records show.
No other information about the campaign committee is publicly available so far. But former Kansas City Mayor Sly James, who was rumored to be involved, acknowledged in a phone conversation with a reporter on Thursday morning, that the political consulting firm that he and his former chief of staff, Joni Wickham, formed after leaving City Hall has been hired.
Wickham James – Strategies & Solutions will handle community outreach, he said. James and Wickham will be meeting with and trying to gain support from local civic, business and neighborhood groups and their members.
“We’re in the process of compiling meeting times and dates and setting a calendar, but we’re not going to do anything, probably until after the Super Bowl,” James said. “We’ll be out there working behind the scenes, putting the infrastructure together to make sure that we have what we need. Then things will roll out in short order. But it’s really a matter of waiting for the Chiefs to finish the Super Bowl.”
Wickham James will not run the overall campaign. Other consultants have been hired do that and buy advertising, but he did not did not identify them. A Washington, D.C. consultant is said to have a lead role.
Tourville did not respond to a message left on the phone number that was listed as her point of contact on the committee’s statement of organization.
While no one from the Chiefs is named on the document as co-chair, and the campaign’s address is One Royal Way, Kansas City, Missouri, James said the Royals’ current next door neighbors are fully engaged in the campaign.
“The Chiefs are involved in all the meetings and have a voice in everything, and have the ability to make their desires and wishes and thoughts heard. And it’s an equal partnership,” he said.
If approved on April 2, the ballot measure would end collection of the current 3/8th-cent sales tax set to expire in 2031 that supports the teams and pays debt payments on the $425 million that taxpayers borrowed in 2006 for renovations to Kaufman and Arrowhead stadiums.
A new 40-year sales tax in the same amount would be levied to pay off the remainder and new debt incurred for a new Royals ballpark and Arrowhead renovations. But no details have been released on the financing, the location of the new ballpark or the extent of the renovations.
The teams promise to provide that information soon.
This story was originally published February 8, 2024 at 12:50 PM.
