The Star’s endorsement in the Kansas City, Kansas, District 8 primary | Opinion
Editor’s note: Read the races The Star Editorial Board will endorse and why we’re focusing on Wyandotte County’s future.
Wyandotte County voters will go to the polls on Aug. 5 in the primary elections for the Unified Government’s governing body. Those elected will be tasked with addressing critical issues such as safety, housing and property taxes.
In District 8, which covers the north central part of Kansas City, Kansas, four candidates are running to be elected to the Board of Commissioners: the incumbent Andrew Davis, against Jacob Handy, Madella Henderson and Nanette Tucker.
We spoke to Davis and the newcomer Handy but were unable to connect with Tucker for an interview. She provides transportation services to students receiving behavioral or special education services. Henderson did not respond to emails. She has come forward as an alleged victim of KCKPD officer Roger Golubski and has advocated for survivors and their families.
Davis ran and was elected to District 8 in 2021. He is a senior program manager at Community Capital Fund. Originally from the south side of Chicago, he moved to Wyandotte County after he met his wife who he said is a “native Dotte” to be closer to her family.
Davis’ experience on the board can’t be discounted, but does he provide the leadership needed to guide WyCo and Kansas City, Kansas? His opponent, Tucker, has criticized the current board for choosing to exceed revenue neutral and increase taxes.
In a July 18 Facebook post, she wrote: “6 More Mills? Exceed revenue neutral?? Our Community Can’t Afford It. Raising taxes by 6 mills and going over the revenue neutral rate is going to hurt the very people trying to stay afloat in Wyandotte County. Families, seniors, and even renters will feel this, some already struggling to hang on. We have revenue out there already. The problem is we keep giving away tax breaks to big developers with no real benefit to the people who actually live here. It’s time to stop squeezing working families and seniors. We need to start managing our budget responsibly. We need leadership that puts our community first, not one that keeps passing the buck to taxpayers.”
Dispute over taxes
We asked Davis about the board agreeing to exceed revenue neutral. “I didn’t necessarily like the process by which it happened, but I do stand by my vote to do so because it opened up options. We are not an anomaly. … Bonner Springs, Edwardsville, all four of the school districts because of the federal cuts all chose to exceed going revenue neutral or at least open up the possibility to do so.”
“I think we have hard decisions for us to make, but I did not want us to be cherrypicked as though the decision that we made was any different than what other folks would make in the midst of federal cuts and ARPA and all these other resources not being available.”
Davis said he does want to help take the tax burden off residents, including attracting more jobs, investments and the land bank. He said KCK needs to grow its economy through any revenue that is not just property taxes. “We have to grow the amount of jobs that folks are accessing, the quality of those jobs, the amount of businesses that we have in our community, right?”
He also talked about plans for the land bank. “ We have a lot of areas that have a lot of land bank properties that need to be occupied. That has been essential to my campaign. And so, I’ve done a lot of that work on growing our economy, particularly with our new land bank policy where we’ve made it easier for residents to obtain land. We’ve also just been more aggressive with disposing of land bank properties and have seen more developer interest, particularly experienced developers showing interest in our inventory.”
Davis said that KCK is dealing with the remnants of redlining — a discriminatory practice where financial institutions deny or limit loans and insurance to specific neighborhoods based on racial or ethnic composition – and the remnants of of urban renewal.
“A lot of those failed practices still have an impact on our local economy and our tax base today.”
Jacob Handy
Handy is a newcomer to politics. He said he was born and raised in Wyandotte County, and is a documentary filmmaker and educator. He reports being a football coach at Langston University, a historically black university in central Oklahoma. After coaching, he said he returned to KCK to teach at Washington High School.
He said he also has worked at KVC Missouri, which provides child mental health services. “(I have) a track record of being in children’s mental health and then also in the education field working directly into the KCK public school district,” he said.
As far as needs, Handy said basic infrastructure must be addressed. “We see now just from the recent floodings that it’s important. We’re talking about streets and potholes that end up costing taxpayers more money just to get their cars fixed. We’re talking about different types of parks and recreational centers for our youth.”
Handy, who also considers himself a mentor, said the community hasn’t provided solutions for youth “to be doing anything outside of getting into some mess. So I think that that’s one of the things that we really need to be focusing on too. A lot of youth programs.”
That’s important to him because of he has previously worked in those types of programs. “That is where we have to start our foundation, with our youth, because if not, we’ll see the same thing happen over and over again. These (poverty, violence) are generational curses that we have to be able to uplift.”
We agree that providing better opportunities for the next generation of District 8 is critical to its future.
Making a choice
While his revenue and property tax ideas aren’t popular with everyone, Davis proposes ideas to grow the economy and population of WyCo and District 8 instead of just cutting taxes.
While we didn’t speak with Tucker, on her Facebook page, she, too, suggests new land bank management and to “review and renegotiate PILOT agreements (payment in lieu of taxes) to make sure they actually benefit the community not just developers.” She also wants to “cut wasteful spending and demand transparency.”
Because of Davis’ experience in government and Handy’s fresh vision with mentoring and youth, we endorse Andrew Davis and Jacob Handy for District 8 board commissioners.
This story was originally published August 1, 2025 at 1:54 PM.