In less than a week, voters will head to the polls to select the next mayor and CEO of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas. After the primary election in August, the candidates on the ballot are Christal Watson and Rose Mulvany Henry.
Watson has previous experience working in the Unified Government, as she served under former Mayor David Alvey as the deputy chief of staff for neighborhood and small business development. Currently, she is the executive director of the Kansas City Kansas School Foundation For Excellence, a nonprofit. She believes the Unified Government could have used its spending power to better serve its residents.
"There should be a community benefits agreement built in (to our development projects) that adds jobs or higher paying jobs, right, or allows for contracting for small, local and MBEs (minority business enterprises)," she said. "We've missed some opportunities to have some of that funding go back into our communities, and and I think that's why we have (had problems), particularly when it comes to infrastructure."
Rose Mulvany Henry has spent three decades as an attorney and executive, and has also sat on the Board of Public Utilities for the last six years. She views high property taxes as the number-one issue facing the people of Wyandotte County.
"If we don't build density, if we don't bring more development of all kinds, small businesses, right all the way up to large developments, if we don't bring those things and broaden our tax base, we're not going to be able to get (tax) relief for the rest of us who are there now," she said.
