Endorsement: Celeste Racette or Stephanie Wise for Sedgwick County Commission? | Opinion

Like we earlier pointed out in Sedgwick County Commission District 2, District 3 voters have a tough choice to make in the Nov. 5 election, between two qualified candidates with valuable skill sets.

We give a narrow nod to Celeste Racette over Stephanie Wise, although we believe the county would probably be well-served by either.

What tipped the scales in favor of Racette is parks.

As an editorial board, we were leaning toward endorsing Wise until late in the campaign, when she floated an idea for consolidating city of Wichita and Sedgwick County parks that is too horrifying to contemplate.

“You know, we (Sedgwick County) only have three (parks),” she said in an interview for her candidate profile. “We don’t do that very well. So is that something that we can ask the city of Wichita to help us manage our parks? Because they have a couple hundred of them.”

That might be the single worst idea we’ve heard this county campaign season.

Sedgwick County Park, adjacent to the county Zoo, is the gem of Commission District 3 and arguably the best park in Wichita .

Meanwhile, the city’s stewardship over its parks has been, is, and will likely continue to be a disaster.

The city department is without a director after the embarrassing revelation that a private disc-golf operator had been undercharged for rent of the clubhouse at the former Clapp Golf Course, which the City Council closed with an eye toward commercial development at the site.

But the bigger problem is the city’s philosophy that parks primarily exist to serve business interests instead of the public. We’ve seen that at Naftzger Park and Chester I. Lewis Reflection Square Park , which were rebuilt into sterile monuments to concrete and artificial turf for the benefit of neighboring developers; at the privatized Stryker soccer complex , and elsewhere.

Wise also suggested that the county could explore turning Lake Afton Park over to the city of Goddard. But Goddard may be even worse than Wichita, having uprooted and relocated its community garden so property that was donated to the city for public use could be sold to a developer on the cheap for duplexes.

Racette also wants to explore consolidating services as a way to save money, but with a caveat: “If there were to be any consolidation on parks, I would want the county to manage them instead of the city of Wichita because, based on my observations, the county is much better run.”

Parks aside, we see this race as a toss-up choice for voters.

Although Racette is a Democrat and Wise a Republican, both are staunch fiscal conservatives (though they differ on social issues that are pretty much irrelevant to county government).

Racette, a retired federal bank examiner and white-collar-fraud investigator, has been a thorn in City Hall’s side for the past five years. She got her start when the city and county helped fund a plan to tear down Century II to free up the land for new convention and performing arts facilities, and private developments.

Racette showed her ability to work across party lines when she teamed up with two of Wichita’s most conservative Republicans — former District 3 Commissioner Karl Peterjohn and Pachyderm Club fixture John Todd — to raise 17,000 signatures of registered voters in an attempt to put preserving C-II on the ballot. They got enough signatures to qualify, but City Hall succeeded in scuttling the initiative in court.

With her financial background, Racette has become one of the city’s leading watchdogs on government spending, appearing frequently before the council to question special deals for special people. Turn her loose on the county’s books and if there’s waste to find, she’s the one to find it.

That said, there’s a lot to like about Wise, too.

She serves on the district advisory board of retiring Commissioner David Dennis. We would expect her to continue the kind of thoughtful representation that the district has come to count on from Dennis.

Plus, as a commercial real estate broker and property manager, her knowledge and expertise in that arena could help move the county out of the seemingly endless stasis it’s been in as it tries to find a suitable and permanent home for its offices.

County offices are spread out all over the place and the administrative center is in rented space in the downtown Ruffin Building — being paid for with the last remnants of the county’s share of federal COVID-19 relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act. It’s not a tenable situation long-term and the longer the county drags its feet, the more expensive it’s going to be.

Wise’s experience could help keep the county from getting a raw deal on real estate.

The two candidates are divided, if subtly, on an issue that’s on many voters’ minds, the rising cost of property taxes.

Real estate speculation has driven up the price of housing throughout the county, and with it, the tax valuation on most properties. It’s causing sticker shock for homeowners getting higher tax bills.

Both candidates have said they’d be open to considering slightly increasing the countywide sales tax from the current 1% to keep property taxes lower — an idea the commission is exploring already.

Where they differ is that Wise said she would favor separating out the additional sales tax revenue to specifically fund county “quality of life” functions, including parks, the zoo and Exploration Place, which she doesn’t see as “core functions” of county government.

Racette said she does see those expenditures as core functions and would keep any additional sales tax money in the general fund, to preserve flexibility if cuts become necessary. She said she also worries that a separate funding source could become a slush fund for developers seeking public assistance to build profit-making projects under the banner of “quality of life.”

It’s complicated and as we said, this is a tough choice between two women of accomplishment who both bring solid skills to the table.

But we think overall, Racette has made the better case for herself.