Month: December 2021

Time to consider a better way for historic preservation here

The historic church at 7th and State could be torn down to make way for development of the new KCKCC downtown campus. The old 7th Street Methodist Episcopal Church was built about 1888. The issue comes before the Unified Government Commission at Thursday’s meeting.

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Opinion column

by Mary Rupert

It’s time for Wyandotte County to consider a better way to preserve its historic buildings.

Recently, the Unified Government Landmarks Commission voted to give approval to tear down a historic building, the old 7th Street Methodist Episcopal Church, at 7th and State Avenue, if certain conditions were met.

The issue goes before the full UG Commission for a vote on Thursday, Dec. 2.

The church, which is on the local historic sites list, was more than 100 years old, and its founders included some of the founders of the town of Wyandotte, one of the towns that came together to make up Kansas City, Kansas. Native American Wyandots came here from Ohio to found the town, with many staying to settle here. Only a few blocks away, the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention was held, near 5th and Minnesota, where the state constitution was debated. That historic site was marked by the Reardon Convention Center.

Such an important link to the town’s history as the church at 7th and State should not be forgotten.

The new $70 million KCKCC downtown campus to be built at 7th and State is a very worthy project, and it will be a great benefit to the community.

However, how did the church get to the point of being on the brink of being torn down for the development of the campus?

A recent discussion with retired Rev. George Kemper Sr., who was pastor of the Ebenezer Church of God in Christ at 7th and State from 1988 to 2008, shed some light on the situation. He said the Ebenezer church sold the building to a Hispanic congregation around 2011 or 2012.

The church was built about 1888, and has been vacant and owned by the UG for a few years. It is the last standing example of High Victorian Gothic architecture in Kansas City, Kansas. There are plans to use parts of the old church, such as stained glass pieces and a few pews and trusses, in the new KCKCC campus building. The church building itself would be torn down, if conditions are met.

The church building, according to Kemper, should never have been on the UG’s delinquent tax sale list because it was being used as a church the whole time.

Apparently what happened, he said, was that the last owner did not file its paperwork for a nonprofit organization with the state, and ended up accumulating taxes, with the Land Bank eventually getting the building. Also, he said the last church had sublet the property to another congregation.

If their paperwork had been filed, the church would have been tax-exempt, according to Kemper.

He added that the Ebenezer church wasn’t interested in buying it back, and it had accumulated more than $30,000 in back taxes, almost around the amount they sold it for. It was difficult to keep up the old building, and it was put on the market in 2008, although there wasn’t serious interest in it until around 2012, he said.

The Ebenezer church made several efforts to preserve the historic building, starting in 1988, he said. They tried to get the church on the state and federal historic registers, but it did not work out.

Several public officials came to events emphasizing the church’s history, and they included city officials and the chief of the Wyandots, he said.

“We put almost $50,000 worth of renovations into it, but nobody would help us,” Kemper recalled. They restored a lot of the church to the original, but there was only so much they could do, he added.

He’s a little upset that currently, some people are talking about trying to save the old church. “Where were they then?” he asked.

“There was years and years and years of effort put in to try to attempt to save that church and bring it back to former glory,” Kemper said. “Everybody who came in talked about how beautiful it was and it was just not cost-effective.”

With a small congregation, it would cost too much to restore the church, he added. To sum it up, they couldn’t get any help and they couldn’t sustain it, he said. The cost was overwhelming. Kemper feels the church probably should be torn down, as it is expensive to restore.

However, keeping the church and restoring it could be an addition to the efforts to promote historic tourism in Wyandotte County. It might have become a museum, with exhibits about the early settlers, tours given, and admission charged to help support the building costs.

It was the church where the Conley sisters were members, and they were significant to Wyandotte County history and the defense of the Huron Cemetery against commercial encroachment. There are definitely pre-Civil War-era stories to be told about how passions were so inflamed in early Wyandotte that some of the local churches were burned. If the church could not be restored at its site at 7th and State, perhaps it could be moved to a different site, such as a county park, and become part of a larger historical tourism setting. As we know there are efforts to develop historic sites for tourism in the Quindaro area, it may be a good time to expand that effort to the rest of the community.

The situation with the 7th and State church points up the difficulty of maintaining historic buildings.

While some of the community may feel that this or that group should have restored the building, there is a point where an older building should pass into community responsibility, especially a prominent one. After 100 years or so, the community ought to ask itself how it can help take care of these landmarks.

A better mechanism needs to be set up to help preserve historic buildings in Kansas City, Kansas. Local historic preservation funds should be set aside and kept up for these purposes, to be used with historic preservation grant funds that may be available.

Throughout the nation, historic sites are the backbone of tourism, and it seems that this community could work harder at it so that historic sites, like the 7th and State church, could be a bigger part of tourism efforts here.

To reach Mary Rupert, editor, email [email protected].

See earlier story at https://wyandotteonline.com/landmark-kck-church-could-be-torn-down-as-colleges-downtown-campus-moves-ahead/.

U.S. Rep. Davids denounces gerrymandering of congressional district boundaries

Davids seeks passage of federal election reform bill ahead of 2022 elections

by Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids lashed out Wednesday at politicians motivated by personal and partisan gain to create a gerrymandered map of congressional districts in Kansas that effectively silences the electoral voice of voters in the Kansas City region.

Davids is seeking re-election in the 3rd District anchored by Wyandotte and Johnson counties, but boundaries of all four districts in Kansas could be significantly altered by the Kansas Legislature before voters head to the polls for the August primary and November general elections.

“There are leaders in the Kansas Legislature who have explicitly stated their motivation to gerrymander maps to their party’s political advantage,” she said. “I know people are tired of feeling like billionaires have more of a say than they do in our democracy, tired of having their voices taken away by partisan gerrymandering.”

She said some elected public officials were placing their partisan political goals above the public’s interests, which was “truly insulting to folks that not only want but deserve to have their voices listened to.”

Each state’s congressional map is redrawn every decade to reflect population shifts, and former Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle said the 2022 election cycle was an opportunity to advance GOP candidates. Other Kansas Republicans have expressed a desire to shifting the boundaries in Kansas to undermine Davids’ re-election.

The map-making work could get awkward because usurping Davids could increase obstacles to re-election of U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, a Republican serving the neighboring 2nd District in eastern Kansas, or influence the campaigns of GOP Congressmen Ron Estes of the mostly urban 4th District and Tracey Mann of the rural 1st District.

On Wednesday, Davids was part of an online news conference with two congressional colleagues and a pair of election reform advocates to encourage the U.S. Senate to approve the Freedom to Vote Act. Major elements of the legislation have been adopted by the U.S. House.

The bill would attempt to bring an end to partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, initiate an overhaul of the federal campaign finance system and create safeguards against subversion of the electoral process.

It would create baseline national standards that supersede more restrictive state voting rules by establishing minimum standards for early and mail voting, modernizing voter registration and restoring the right to vote to formerly incarcerated people. In addition, it would strengthen legal standards for challenging laws that burden voting rights and tackle the problem of dark money in political campaigns.

Former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder, who serves as chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said federal action on the Freedom to Vote Act was necessary to moderate action by state GOP politicians and federal GOP lawmakers who seek to hold on to “power at all costs.”

“Our democracy is at a crossroads,” Holder said. “We’re on the verge of, I think, a political apartheid system where we have minority rule.”

Tiffany Muller, a former Kansan who is president of End Citizens United/Let America Vote Action Fund, said activities of the Republican Party amounted to a “brazen power grab” driven by those who benefit from a rigged system of gerrymandering and the influence of untraceable campaign contributions.

“It’s designed to eliminate accountability in Washington so that the system serves the corporate special interests and dark money groups rather than the voters,” she said.

U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, a Democrat from Texas, and U.S. Rep. Kathy Manning, a North Carolina Democrat, also urged the U.S. Senate to take up legislation to thwart gerrymandering of congressional districts through adoption of the Freedom to Vote Act.

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.org, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
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See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2021/12/01/u-s-rep-davids-denounces-gerrymandering-of-congressional-district-boundaries/

BPU warns customers about scams

The Kansas City, Kansas, Board of Public Utilities wants customers to be aware of utility scams telling residents their utilities will be shut off immediately

According to BPU representatives, multiple reports have been made about calls stating if payment is not made, services will be shut off within 30 minutes.

The caller claims to represent a local utility, and sometimes uses caller ID spoofing to convince victims the call is from a real customer service number, a spokesman stated.

The caller tries to get the customer to provide credit card information or other personal information, telling the customer a check has bounced or he or she has a past due bill. Imposters will often ask customers to use a pre-paid card for payment, according to the spokesman.

BPU will never ask a customer to purchase a pre-paid debit card, gift card, or any form of cryptocurrency, to pay for service, the spokesman stated.

BPU never asks for payment over the phone or threatens to disconnect utilities due to non-payment, the spokesman stated. Customers that suspect they are being targeted by a scam need to hang up right away and call the BPU Customer Service Department at 913-573- 9190. If you feel you have been a victim of a scam, work with your local law enforcement agency to report the crime, the spokesman stated.

Although BPU sometimes uses pre-recorded messages to notify customers about future dates for possible disconnection, they do not cold-call customers to demand immediate payment, according to the spokesman.

BPU offered tips for customers to protect themselves if they are unsure about a call, email, or visit from a utility representative:

• Never give credit or debit card, Social Security, ATM, checking or savings account numbers to anyone who comes to your door, calls, texts, or sends an email asking for information regarding your utility bill. Verify the request is authentic by either asking to see company identification or calling the BPU Customer Service Department.

• Be suspicious if you receive an email regarding your utility bill if you have not requested online communications from BPU.

• Never provide personal information via email or click any suspicious links or attachments.

The BPU spokesman said electric customers have been targeted by scammers using a variety of such scam attempts for a number of years across the country. Scammer calls to utility customers always seem to increase around the holiday season, according to the spokesman.