Prioritizing Public Safety

Before I became mayor, our police officer and firefighter pay was the lowest in the metro. Compensation for all employees had fallen 10% or more below the average market pay.

City Council publicly fought over pay increases, but nother ever got done. In my first year as mayor, I identified $4.2 million and championed a 10.7% pay raise for all our city employees.

This has allowed our city, including the police and fire departments, recruit, train and retain the very best employees.

A no tax increase bond was approved to replace our two oldest fire stations, renovate our police headquarters, and equip all vehicles and officers with cameras. Recently, in the first major expansion in 14 years, we increased our number of public safety employees to help keep up with the ever-increasing population and demand on our resources.

Going forward public safety and taking care of our own will remain my number one priority as your mayor.

Building Infrastructure

Lee’s Summit has secured some amazing development projects in the future, including Property Reserve Inc who’ll be building out 4,100 acres, as well as other large tracts. But one barrier to entry for businesses and developers we need to solve is the gap in infrastructure we have in parts of our city, whether it is roads, water, or most notably: sewer. 

When developers come, they will be building hundreds of thousands of square feet in industrial buildings, and bring hundreds of well-paying jobs to Lee’s Summit. Or, they may be  wanting to build hundreds of high-quality homes in our community.  

We can certainly require them to connect to our sewer lines, but the sewer mains have to be there to connect to. Read More…

Economic Development

For decades our citizens and stakeholders have talked about diversifying our local economy. For decades, Lee’s Summit has heavily relied on residential sales tax and property tax for our revenues. But the problem is, we need to diversify the economic base to find a larger variety of ways to increase tax revenue from other sources besides just our residents.

When I became mayor nearly four years ago, I focused on diversifying our economic base by facilitating a welcoming environment for businesses to invest and expand in our community. Read More…

Building a Strategic Plan for the City

We are blessed with beautiful parks, amazing lakes surrounding our city, and an abundance of cultural and recreational activities. We have the most charming downtown in the nation, and retail and dining in every corner of our lovely suburban city. We have many things to be proud of in Lee’s Summit, and the coordination doesn’t happen by chance. We’ve worked hard to build our culture. Read More…

Farmer’s Market and Downtown Performance Venue

In 2013, the citizens approved a $600,000 bond for a downtown farmers’ market and performance venue. A conceptual plan was developed for the market and venue, but there was no progress for nearly five years.

In 2018, the City purchased a parcel at 3rd and Green for $378,000, but it was not enough land for the farmers’ market. This also left only a couple hundred thousand dollars for construction for a multimillion-dollar project. This was frustrating because the downtown is the heart of our community and a great source of pride. Read More…

Diversity and Inclusion Commission

The last few years our community has struggled through conversations around race, diversity, and equity. The Lee’s Summit School District in particular often made headlines and was portrayed in the media as unwilling and afraid to have conversations about diversity and more. The conversations echoed throughout our city, not just the schools, and our citizens and stakeholders needed an avenue for having healthy discussions. Read More…

1/2 Percent Safety Sales Tax - Vote Yes on April 5

There’s going to be a 1/2 percent Safety Sales Tax issue on the ballot April 5, 2022, and our police and firemen need you to vote yes.

Public safety has always been the number one priority for our citizens. The demand for police officers and paramedics is off the charts with one adjacent city of similar size recently reporting a shortage of 40 officers and a larger adjacent city reporting a shortage of 100 officers. Read more…

Culture of Collaboration

When I was elected four years ago, I focused on creating a collaborative culture on the city council and encouraged council members to break from voting in blocks, because it was hurting the City and preventing us from getting things done. Most voting blocks had nothing to do with partisanship such as republican or democrat, but stemmed from years of adversity and division within Lee’s Summit. I asked council members to give each other grace and start finding common denominators that we could agree upon. 

There are 9 council members including the mayor. In my nearly 4 years as mayor we have had only 3 votes that were split 5-4. All other votes were unanimous, 8-1, 7-2, and a few 6-3 votes. When our council appeared to be headed toward a divisive 5-4 vote I slowed the process to find greater consensus. Read More…