Primary election required
With the filing of Nathan Barnes on Jan. 5 for Unified Government Commission, 1st District, at large, a primary will be required in the three-way race.
Barnes, an 18-year commissioner from the 1st District, will face Mark Gilstrap, a former state senator and former chairman of the Wyandotte County Republican Party, and Christal Watson, president of the Kansas Black Chamber of Commerce and a Kansas City, Kan., school board member, in the primary.
Barnes previously had submitted his name for the vacant 1st District, at large seat, and was one of two finalists for the position, which went unfilled when the commission could not muster six votes for either one. He left his commission seat to run for mayor in the 2013 contest.
Reached today, Barnes said, “I feel that the mission overall of governance needs to be redefined. My experience will allow that to happen.”
He said it should be a mission of inclusion rather than exclusion. He wants to make government work for everybody and not just the chosen few, he said.
During his years in office, Barnes was instrumental in improving the 1st District, helping to add several new subdivisions in an area which had not seen new single-family housing for decades. He also played an important role in redeveloping the 18th and Parallel intersection area, and in building the Boys and Girls Club here from a classroom at a middle school to a $16 million building. He is also proud of his work in passage of the prevailing wage for city contracts and minority participation. Some of this work on prevailing wage has since been overturned by the state Legislature.
The biggest campaign issue is representation, and the 1st District, at large, has not had representation for the past two years, Barnes said. He said he feels the appointment process was not handled properly.
“The first thing is to get that representation in place, and second, to get us to address the issues unaddressed in the charter ordinance itself,” Barnes said.
He said the UG’s charter needs some critiquing and needs to go back to some basics. The charter ordinance says it was supposed to be re-evaluated after 10 years, and that was not done, and it also says the vacancy on the commission should have been filled, which also was not done, he said.
Barnes said he was not going to complain about the past or point fingers.
“I think what I have to bring to the table should be the issue,” he said.
When asked about working with other people on the commission who did not vote for him, he said there were many issues going on as to why they did what they did, and he would not hold it against anyone.
He is someone who can serve with the group to bring people together, he said. During his 18 years of service, there were many disagreements, but the commission always found ways to work together, he added. Since he has been gone from the board of commissioners, they were unable to find that middle ground, he remarked.
Constant communication is the answer to a governing body’s dysfunction, he said.
Barnes was asked to join a lawsuit as a plaintiff challenging the UG leaving the commissioner position vacant, but he did not join it.
“To be truthful, not in my wildest dream did I think the position would go unfilled for two years,” Barnes said. “I didn’t think any group of people could be that much in violation and not address it.”
He added he was shocked there hasn’t been a bigger reaction from voters.
The issue of having to step down from the 1st District, as Barnes had to, to run for mayor, was picked up by some people who see it as a discriminatory policy that needs changing.
Barnes supports efforts for more diversity in public safety jobs and in all public jobs. “All of the elements involved in Ferguson are present in Wyandotte County,” he said, including a majority – minority community where the commission and the public safety force is not reflective of the community.
“We have been so blessed and lucky not to have the trigger elements that happened in Ferguson, Mo.,” he said.
As to some media reports that opposed his appointment during the selection process, Barnes said “only in Wyandotte County” could there be a candidate with 18 years of service and “someone has to scratch their head as to who’s the better candidate.” It was more about popularity than about qualifications, he believes. As there were last-minute allegations of taxes not being paid during the appointment process, Barnes said he had paid all of his own taxes, that he probably paid more taxes than most others on the commission, that the questions were about one of his business partners, and that the taxes have since been paid. His opinion is that the media has often portrayed him negatively and not positively.
One of the issues the commission may face in the coming year is the Healthy Campus project in downtown Kansas City, Kan.
Barnes said he believes there should be a Healthy Campus, but he had a problem with one part of it, the grocery store. The project started with a need for a grocery store in the northeast area, he said, and there were petitions submitted by area ministers. A feasibility study conducted by a grocery firm identified the first preference for a location as the northeast area, around 18th and Parallel, in the same general area where a grocery had closed, he said.
The second preference for a grocery location was downtown. The Healthy Campus project has selected the second location, downtown near 10th and State, near Big 11 Lake and near the existing JFK Recreation Center.
“A lot of people in the northeast area feel they have been silenced and overlooked,” Barnes said.
While he agrees he would like to see a healthy presence for the YMCA downtown, he said he believes that many people favor a grocery store in the northeast area, near Parallel. There is also an issue about spending northeast area money on the project downtown, which is not considered part of the northeast area, he added.
Barnes said he is in favor of some creative and innovative solutions to issues. For example, he said if the community has a problem with old billboards in existence here, a not-for-profit program could be started to boost the arts locally, displaying local artists’ work on billboards. “There are solutions other than what they’re looking at,” he said.
Barnes is a former Wyandotte County Democratic Party chairman, and said he would be a lifelong Democrat. He sometimes takes a different position on some issues than the party, however. In the fall election, he endorsed Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. He said that was his choice as a private citizen, not a statement as a former county party chairman or a former commissioner.
A 1977 graduate of the University of Arkansas, with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration, Barnes, 60, is a small business owner and has received many awards, including the Friends of Yates Black Man of Distinction award.
He was chairman of the Boys and Girls Club advisory board, where he served for eight years; past president of the Wyandotte County Historical Society board; board member of the Convention and Visitors Bureau; and has served on Mid-America Regional Council boards and groups.
The primary election will be March 3 and the general election will be April 7. The filing deadline is noon Jan. 27.