Kansas City voters pass public safety tax for new municipal jail
Kansas City voters approved a sales tax extension Tuesday that will pay for construction of a controversial new city jail and other public safety capital improvements.
With nearly all votes counted, 63% of voters approved a 20-year extension of the tax, with the largest margins of support coming from the parts of Kansas City in Clay and Platte counties.
The ballot language was nonspecific on how the money raised would be spent and did not specify that a big chunk of it would be used to build a 250-bed jail estimated to cost between $150 million to $250 million.
Critics said the advertising campaign waged in support of the tax renewal downplayed the jail in favor of ads that stressed that the money would be used to support 911 emergency calls and “essential services that protect our community.”
But the jail was at the center of public discussions leading up to the vote, and both supporters and opponents leaned heavily on that in urging voters to cast ballots for or against the tax measure.
The city’s public safety sales tax has passed with wide margins twice before over the past two decades, in 2002 and 2010, when revenues from the ¼-cent tax were designated for mostly non-controversial purposes: a new crime lab, the replacement of cramped and crumbling police stations and new equipment, such as radio systems, police cars and helicopters.
That last renewal passed by a ratio of 2-to-1 with little opposition other than complaints that sales taxes are regressive in that they place a greater burden on people with lower incomes.
This year’s renewal of the tax set to expire next year proved more controversial, though still passing comfortably. The revenue raised will fund construction of a jail to replace the one the city closed 16 years ago.
Does KC need a new jail?
Opponents questioned whether a new jail was needed to house what they said were people mostly charged with misdemeanors and non-violent offenses. Since the city closed its jail commonly known as The Farm in 2009, it has contracted for jail beds elsewhere. Opponents of the tax offered few alternatives for changing that arrangement.
Jackson County provided those beds initially in a facility adjacent to its downtown detention center for people awaiting trial on felony charges.
Now two rural Missouri counties house as many as 105 Kansas City prisoners each night, which is less than half of what a new city jail would provide.
Tax renewal supporters countered that the lack of a municipal jail in Kansas City worsened public safety.
Without those extra beds, they said local police and prosecutors had no choice but to ticket people who ordinarily would have spent a night or two in jail. Instead, proponents argued, people were released after booking to potentially commit more crimes and put victims of domestic violence in potential danger.
Organized opposition
Opponents of the 20-year tax extension included a consortium of long-established civil rights groups such as the Urban League of Greater Kansas City and the NAACP collectively known as the Urban Council.
But the most vocal group leading an aggressive grassroots anti-tax campaign was a coalition of younger social justice activists led by Decarcerate KC called the Safety and Justice Alliance.
Opponents’ main criticism was that a large portion of the revenue collected would go for the construction of a jail that they believed was unnecessary, as most of those sent to a jail have committed petty crimes.
The money spent to build and run the jail, they said, would be better spent on crime prevention.
“We cannot in good conscience support what is essentially a ‘Jail Tax’ that shifts $250 million away from vital services such as first responders and 911 operators while investing $0 on infrastructure to facility the delivery of service focused on the root causes of crime,” the Rev. Vernon Howard Jr., wrote in a recent opinion piece under his byline and on behalf of the Urban Council that published was published in The Star.
Johnathan Duncan was the lone member of the Kansas City Council to come out against the tax.
Jail part of ‘comprehensive strategy’
But supporters countered that farming out the city’s detainees to other Missouri counties – women to the Johnson County jail in Warrensburg and men to the Vernon County jail in Nevada – was expensive and put a hardship on family members who wanted to visit their loved ones many miles away from home.
And they said, the tax would make it more likely that detainees would get access to counseling and rehabilitative services, even though the new city jail itself would not offer all that.
“True public safety is about a comprehensive strategy – because everyone deserves to feel safe,” Councilwoman Melissa Patterson Hazley wrote in support of the tax renewal.
Under the city’s proposal, the jail would be built adjacent to the Jackson County Detention Center now under construction at 7000 E. U.S. Highway 40. The county said any city rehab center associated with the municipal jail would need to be built off site due to security, as the county houses prisoners as they await trial on more serious felony charges.
Councilman Crispin Rea said the city plans to make those services available off site.
This story was originally published April 8, 2025 at 9:12 PM.
