Overland Park Mayor Curt Skoog enumerated a long list of the city’s successes in his annual State of the City speech Tuesday — along with one particular request for residents.

“If you live in Overland Park you will get in the mail a ballot. Please check ‘yes’ on the sales tax and help us maintain the streets that our residents expect,” he said.

Skoog’s personal plea (city administrations are not allowed to campaign for ballot issues) was in reference to the June 22 mail-in ballot that will ask city residents to raise the one-eighth-cent sales tax to a three-eighth-cent tax to be used for infrastructure.

An emphasis on infrastructure

Street maintenance has been high on the to-do list for many councilmembers for years, in part, because of resident complaints about chip seal surfacing the city uses for road maintenance.

Overland Park has also had trouble keeping up with its street maintenance needs using the current one-eighth-cent tax.

After a study by a special advisory group last year recommended adding $28.5 million a year for infrastructure needs, the council decided to ask voters to raise the sales tax. The original tax is set to expire next March.

“We have a great opportunity this summer to look to the future,” Skoog told his audience Tuesday at the Aspiria Auditorium on the former Sprint campus.

He cited a citywide survey saying street maintenance and traffic flow are the top priorities of residents.

“This funding would provide the resources the city needs to do more street rehabilitation work with mill and overlay, asphalt and concrete methods to keep Overland Park streets in good condition,” he said.

Councilmembers react to Skoog’s address

Councilmembers Scott Mosher and Logan Heley afterward agreed on the importance of passing the sales tax but added it would not be the answer to all of the city’s needs.

The increased revenue is meant to reduce the city’s reliance on chip seal maintenance, which has generated many resident complaints over the years.

“There’s certainly a lot of work to do. We’re so far behind. But I think the city is moving in the right direction by using that money for road restoration,” Mosher said.

Building more concrete streets is a good step, he said, because, “maintenance of those streets is extended so we’re not putting them in and fixing them, putting them in and fixing them.”

Heley said the sales tax issue for streets is not the only important issue, but it’s “certainly the most important one that’s right in front of us. We need folks to vote ‘yes’ in June …but that’s not going to solve all of our needs. We’re an aging city with by far the lowest taxes of any place around and those things can’t always live together. At some point we need to pay to maintain a great place.”

The city has a big infrastructure backlog, but also some pressing needs on housing and climate change, Heley said.

“Those are not easy issues. They’re challenging, they’re nuanced,” he said. “If we can have a governing body who’s going to put serving our community above politics then we’ll be able to achieve some good things.”

Councilmember Faris Farassati, who has spoken often about the constituents’ dislike of chip seal, said the plan to address the issue is too slow and that it would take fifty years to eliminate chip seal.

“While we all love Overland Park and are proud of its strengths, ignoring problems that have been created by wrong fiscal policies established by Mayor Skoog and his supporters on the council over the last decade is not the right approach,” he said. “We collect millions of dollars of extra property tax in this inflated real-estate market, and we still need to ask for more money from hard working people if anything major is supposed to be done.”

Skoog highlighted other recent developments

Much of Skoog’s speech was a list of city initiatives and new businesses and developments coming to town, including entertainment venues for pickleball, the arboretum’s new LongHouse visitor center, design proposals for a revamped downtown farmers market, the Aspiria campus and the hiring of a new city manager and sustainability manager.

The message also included a video in which Skoog interviewed various business and community leaders about what they see as needs for office space, walkability, public transit and things that make the city attractive to young workers.

Councilmember Melissa Cheatham also mentioned some of those things in comments before the speech.

“I think the state of our city is strong. We’re already a great place to live, work, have a family, have a great time and we’re on the cusp of more good things to come as our new city manager settles in,” she said.