With zeal of evangelist, ex-Kansas City mayor preaches gospel of consolidation

And in two public appearances and a meeting with Evansville Courier & Press editors, she preached the gospel.

Speaking six weeks before local voters cast ballots on a referendum on Evansville-Vanderburgh County government consolidation, Marinovich told a success story.

It would not have happened with separate city and county governments that often worked at cross purposes, Marinovich told the Rotary Club of Evansville during its Tuesday luncheon at the Aztar Executive Conference Center.

"That was the primary reason I supported consolidation. I thought to address long-term issues, we needed that single vision. To create those economic development opportunities, we needed that single vision," she said.

The consolidated government also now speaks with one voice to the Kansas Legislature, Marinovich said.

On April 1, 1997, voters by a 2-to-1 margin approved the consolidation of local governments for Kansas City, which had a mayor and a six-member City Council, and Wyandotte County, governed by a three-member county commission. Consolidation often had been discussed, Marinovich said, but 1997 marked the first time it had made it onto a referendum ballot.

Marinovich left office in 2005 having successfully pushed for creation of the largest tourist attraction in Kansas — the Village West retail and entertainment development, which includes large outdoor retailer Cabela's, Nebraska Furniture Mart and other local and national retailers. She also helped push for the Kansas Speedway, a major motor speedway that is a stop on the NASCAR and IRL circuits and a major tourist attraction.

The growth increased the Kansas City/Wyandotte property tax base from $15,000 annually to more than $7 million, creating thousands of new jobs. Marinovich said Village West and the Kansas Speedway bring up to 10 million visitors to Wyandotte County annually.

Marinovich also made reinvestment in community's urban core a priority.

In 2004, 500 housing permits were issued in Wyandotte County — then a 40-year high. In the same year, unemployment dropped for the first time in five years.

During her tenure, she received the Excellence in Local Government Award from the League of Kansas Municipalities. She was recognized by GOVERNING magazine, a Washington, D.C.-based journal that caters to state and local government officials and employees and journalists, as one of the Public Officials of the Year in America.

"The city seems to be stemming its population loss; while residents had been leaving at a rate of well over 1,000 per year through the early 1990s, KCK's population in 2000 was virtually the same as it had been in 1992," GOVERNING wrote.

Marinovich told Courier & Press editors consolidation did save some money through government employee attrition and efficiencies.

"But where you really get the dollars to address the tax issue long-term is that single vision bringing in economic development and growing your tax base," she said. "Because if you think in terms of efficiencies, that's a finite amount of dollars you can save."

Consolidation was not all happiness and light.

The Kansas City Star reported on the day Marinovich left office in 2005 that "high property taxes" were Wyandotte County's Achilles heel. The report was published in the midst of a decade-long nationwide boom in property values.

"Despite an 18 percent reduction in the Unified Government's rate of taxation since 1997, most property tax bills continue to rise as property values surge," the newspaper reported.

Marinovich said the growth the county was seeing helped drive property values upward even as tax rates went down.

"People were complaining that they were paying more in taxes," she said. "They'd say, 'My taxes went up.' I'd go, 'No, your taxes went down. The value of your property went up.'

"And that is a much better problem to have — people upset with their valuations going up — as mayor than valuations going down or stagnant."

Evansville-Vanderburgh County consolidation advocates point out there is no tax increase in the Plan of Reorganization as adopted by the County Commissioners and the City Council last year.

Marinovich added an important caveat. "No plan can promise there will never be an increase in taxes," she said.

Kansas State Rep. Mike Peterson, who was chairman of the Wyandotte County Democratic Party in 1997, staunchly opposed consolidation because it included nonpartisan elections. Kansas City elections were then nonpartisan, but solidly Democratic Wyandotte County elected officeholders in partisan contests.

Peterson acknowledges he and other Democrats didn't want to lose a partisan advantage and that individuals associated with county government didn't want to give up their own power bases.

But he also believes consolidation has been a smashing success.

"Who could argue with the success we've had since (Marinovich has) done this?" he said. "I really don't know of anybody who could honestly say it's been a failure. It's been a boon for us."

Mike Jacobi, a leader in the consolidation campaign, said entrenched constituencies led the opposition to consolidation.

"Anybody that had any vested interest in the Wyandotte County side of it — anybody that had contracts, anybody that had anything to do with that, they wouldn't be for it," said Jacobi, a retired real estate broker and Army officer.

"It has 1,000 supporters now."