Kansas City voters renewed a local sales tax on Tuesday that officials say will help fund the construction of a new municipal jail.
Voters passed Question 1 by more than 8,000 votes; 60% to 40%; renewing the public safety sales tax for 20 years. Extension of the tax is a crucial step in the city’s yearslong plan to operate a municipal detention center again.
This is the third time Kansas City voters have supported the quarter-cent public safety sales tax. Voters first passed it in 2002 and renewed it in 2010.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas was among the tax's supporters.
"Investment in public safety allows us to ensures bad acts have consequences that are swift and certain, while also focusing on mental health services and rehabilitation," Lucas said in a statement.
City finance officials estimate the tax brings in about $24 million a year. Some of that revenue will also fund upgrades to Kansas City police car camera systems, body cameras and a new building for the Central Patrol Division.
Kansas City hasn’t overseen its own jail in about a decade, and currently sends municipal inmates at least an hour away to Vernon County or Johnson County jails in Missouri. But supporters of a new jail said during the campaign that arrangement is not feasible. KCPD officials have said its own division patrol centers do not have enough cells to handle the need.
Residents and small business owners have voiced concern about property crimes and gun violence in the months leading up to the election, and officials say the city needs a new detention center to combat crime.
But opponents, including KC Tenants, Decarcerate KC, and Stand Up KC, opposed renewing the jail tax and building a new city jail. They criticized the tax as regressive, and said it was wasteful to use tax money on incarceration without funding the social services that address the root causes of crime.
At a watch party Tuesday night for opponents of the tax, attendees were disappointed in the results, but hopeful for the future. Decarcerate KC, which organized several canvassing events to speak to voters about the tax, has been following the city's efforts to fund and build a new jail for the past few years.
Despite Tuesday's results, Decarcerate KC organizer Dylan Pyles said the group will continue to oppose the jail.
"We still say we deserve more as Kansas Citians," he said. "We still say alternatives to incarceration."
The most "no" votes came from south of the Missouri River, where 43% opposed the tax. North of the river in Clay and Platte counties, "no" received 30.5% of the vote.
Rev. Vernon Howard of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City urged people at the watch party to keep organizing.
"The moral universe is shifting in Kansas City," he said.
A new detention center will cost the city about $250 million, according to estimates from City Hall. Kansas City officials want to build the facility next to the Jackson County jail, which is currently under construction near U.S. Highway 40 and Blue Valley Park.
Kansas City Council previously approved $2.3 million to purchase the land from Jackson County. Voters’ decision Tuesday means that deal can proceed.
