CID signs missing at some Wichita merchants

Not all merchants located in Wichita’s Community Improvement District program are displaying the required signage.

CIDs are a creation of the Kansas Legislature from the 2009 session. They allow merchants in a district to collect additional sales tax of up to two cents per dollar. At the time CIDs started forming, I and others suggested that the city require signage notifying shoppers that they would be paying an additional sales tax, and at what rate.

Not everyone thought that would be wise, according to discussion at a Wichita city council meeting. Informing shoppers as to the actual rate of extra tax would be, according to Council Member Jeff Longwell (district 5, west and northwest Wichita) confusing.

Council Member Sue Schlapp said that transparency is vital for government, but evidently not always, she argued: “This is very simple: If you vote to have the tool, and then you vote to put something in it that makes the tool useless, it’s not even any point in having the vote, in my opinion.”

A representative of a group wanting to establish a CID told the council that developers do not “have any interest in hiding something from the public, or keeping citizens from having full knowledge about these community improvement districts.”

But he added that the retailers they are trying to bring to Wichita would be discouraged by full disclosure of the extra sales tax that citizens would pay in their stores. “We want to make sure that anything that we do, or anything that we implement within a policy is appropriate and will not counteract the very tool we’re creating here.”

The compromise that emerged is a small sign that states “THIS PROJECT MADE POSSIBLE BY COMMUNITY IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT FINANCING” along with a reference to the city’s website to learn more, as explained in the city CID policy document.

That website, www.wichita.gov/CID/?, has information and maps of CIDs, but there’s no way to learn the names of stores in the CID, except for a few cases where the district is named after a merchant. (The city’s site also has broken links, dating from the redesign of the city’s website.)

Examination of merchants in Wichita’s CIDs found two examples of merchants not displaying the signs. Drury Plaza Hotel Broadview and Fairfield Inn at Waterwalk display no signs. Cabela’s displays the signs and is in compliance, but the design of these signs makes them difficult to see.

The city’s policy document regarding these signs doesn’t specify penalties for non-compliance, but that continued failure to comply would result in nonpayment. When asked about the missing signs, city staff said they will investigate and take corrective action.

Curiously, the new CVS drugstore in east Wichita displays the CID signage, but based on purchases made, the store isn’t collecting the CID tax it is entitled to collect.

Slideshow: Wichita CID signs.