At last night's Public Works and Safety Committee meeting more items regarding the upcoming budget were reviewed.
One item of interest was Jeff Vaught's comments about not giving Wonderscope Children's Museum $10,000. Gee Jeff, are you finally listening to me?
Last year, and for a couple of years prior to that I have spoken out at council (it's on the record) that we should eliminate the city's contribution to that organization. There were times when I even produced copies of Wonderscope's IRS Form 990. As a tax exempt organization their IRS filings are available for public scrutiny. One year, they gave a former executive director a 15% salary increase, while we were freezing employee salaries. Hopefully the item can be struck from the 2012 budget.
Interesting side note is that Dawn Kuhn was silent on this last night when in the past she has jumped to the defense of Wonderscope. Wonder why? Does her silence mean that she does not support giving them the money?
Let's move on to the topic of economic development.
SEDC executive director Andrew Nave gave a presentation. I'm not going to go through it item by item but suffice it to say it is my opinion that some things were lacking.
There was talk about attracting various businesses, but, that we did not necessarily have the buildings of sufficient size for them. The city manager mentioned that some companies were expressing an interest in the riverfront project/area.
At no time do I remember hearing any mention of a strong emphasis to attract destination type businesses/developments that could feed off of KCK's Village West along the I-435 corridor. Duhhhhhhhhhhhh.........................
When the presentation brought up info about new businesses and their potential payrolls, Council Rep Neal Sawyer asked a very important question: How much of those projected payrolls would stay in Shawnee? Very valid.
Side note: A few years back I proposed that any incentives given to businesses should have a tie in to the payrolls remaining in Shawnee. Think about that. How beneficial is a business that employs let's say 25 people, with a yearly payroll of $1,000,000 if let's say $800,000 of that belongs to folks who live (buy/rent) and shop in other cities. Will some of that be spent here? Yepper. Would more of it stay here if these businesses brought folks to Shawnee from other cities? Yepper.
