The Wichita City Council held a special meeting on January 14, 2026, to consider repealing the ordinance for a March 3, 2026 special sales tax election and moving the vote to the August 4, 2026 primary. The meeting featured a presentation from the Sedgwick County Election Commissioner on polling place disruptions and increased costs, extensive public testimony, and a council vote. The motion to delay failed 5-2, keeping the March 3 election.
This special meeting. I will call this meeting to order. May we please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. Second, we have a workshop scheduled to discuss guardrails on January 27th. Then we'll open it for public comment so the community can share their feedback on a potential delay in the special election and any suggestions for guardrails on this proposal. In the interest of time, and I see that there are many of you here. Madam Clerk, please call the item. Repeal of city ordinance 52-866 in consideration of an ordinance of the City of Wichita, Kansas, for the purpose of submitting to qualified electors of the City of Wichita the question relating to the imposition of a 1% citywide retailer's sales tax and placing a question on the August 4th, 2026 election ballot. Sheridcraft, City Law Department. Laura Rainwater is here and has another commitment this afternoon. So if we could take her out of order, she's here to talk about generally why the change was made regarding the polling places for the March 3rd election as well as the potential costs for having the election on March 3rd versus at the primary on August 4th. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council members. I am Laura Rainwater, your Sedgwick County election commissioner. Thank you for inviting me here to briefly explain the election administration timeline for the March 3rd election. The election office was asked in mid-November by the city's legal department about the cost to hold a special election in March. There are approximately 253,000 registered eligible voters within the city of Wichita. At the time of the request, we knew of approximately 500 voters who vote in four different polling places in surrounding communities that we we would need to temporarily move due to efficiencies of election operations and the cost of opening those sites for a minimal amount of voters. It costs approximately 1,200 per site to open on election day and less than 500 total to move those voters to a temporary site for this election. So the total estimate given at that time back in November was approximately 150,000. We officially received notice of the city's special election on December 16th. The following week, we began contacting about 70 polling sites to see if they were available for the March 3rd election. What we weren't expecting was having to temporarily move another 25,500 voters. That's just over 10% of eligible voters. This is a very high number. To give a comparison for the USD 259 special election last February, which had approximately 200,000 voters, we had to move over just over 10,000 voters, which was approximately 5% to a temporary location. We contract with polling sites approximately a year in advance for the primary and general election. The contracts do not include special elections. The sacrifices they make for the August and November elections are huge. They do it for minimal compensation and out of service to our community. We truly appreciate all they do to make our elections accessible accessible to all our community. For the March 3rd election, one site, Westlink Christian Church, has been sold and will no longer be a host site. Another site, Heart of Christ Church, we had to make a difficult decision to move voters because of ongoing maintenance issues at that site that kept it from opening at all last year. So that leaves us with the other five locations. They told us last week that they have events scheduled that prevent them from being a host on March 3rd. By law, we must send notices of the temporary change by U.S. mail to every impacted voter. The cost to send these notices increased the cost of this election by approximately 20,000. So far, we have incurred no direct election expenses for the March 3rd election. By law, we are not allowed to charge for staff time that has been involved thus far. Pallots and envelopes were supposed to be ordered yesterday, and the notice of election publication is scheduled for next week. So those expenses have not been incurred because I put everything on pause until after this meeting. If you move this election to the August primary or the November general, there will also be no cost to the city as it is a countywide election. Again, I want to thank you for inviting me here today. I'm happy to stand for any questions. Councilmember Hoheisel. Thank you, Mayor. Did you receive any feedback from any voters that had to move in the last um spring election? We always get feedback when voters get moved. We do not like to have to move voters to temporary polling locations.