On the eve of Prairie Village city elections largely defined by whether candidates support or oppose the city’s $30 million municipal complex project, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that had previously stalled the city’s plans to move forward with the plan.
Now, city officials say they’re figuring out how to get the project “back on track” even as the city awaits the results of Tuesday’s much-watched city council elections.
On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson dismissed Prairie Village resident Marc Vianello’s lawsuit that aimed to force the city to bring the project to a public vote before it could move forward.
Plans to build a new city hall have become the central issue of this year’s Prairie Village city council races, with candidates in each of the city’s six city council wards generally on opposing sides of the matter. (Read more about that here.)
Still, the results of Tuesday’s election will determine the makeup of the next city council and could influence the trajectory of the city’s plans for the project.
How did we get here?
Back in June, the Prairie Village City Council in two separate 9-2 votes approved the project and the process to issue bonds to pay for it.
Soon after, Vianello filed his lawsuit, originally in Johnson County District Court, asserting that Prairie Village residents should get to decide at the ballot box whether the city should issue bonds and take on debt to pay for the project.
The city had planned to accept a bid for those bonds in August, but the litigation forced a pause on that process. At the time, city staff said delays to the project could increase the costs for it up to $125,000 per month.
Now that Judge Robinson dismissed Vianello’s lawsuit, City Administrator Wes Jordan told the Post in a Tuesday morning statement that the city is working on “next steps.”
“This project was temporarily halted because of the filed lawsuit,” Jordan said. “With its dismissal, we are now working with our city attorney, bond counsel and construction manager at risk to determine next steps to get this previously-approved project back on track.”
Through Sept. 30, the city of Prairie Village had spent $58,476 in fighting to dismiss the lawsuit, according to records obtained through a public records request. City staff said they anticipate being able to reimburse up to $25,000 of that through insurance.
Mayor Eric Mikkelson told the Post in a texted statement on Tuesday morning that he sees the dismissal as “clear judicial validation” of good practices in Prairie Village city government.
“Critical infrastructure decisions, especially where public safety is involved, are for our democratically-elected city council, not the courts,” Mikkelson said.
Vianello’s attorney did not immediately respond to the Post’s request for comment for this story.
Federal court found Vianello has no legal standing
In her Nov. 3 ruling, Judge Robinson found that Vianello’s lawsuit failed to prove his legal standing to bring the action forward.
Vianello argued that as a municipal taxpayer and a voter in Prairie Village he had standing to bring the suit, but Robinson found that wasn’t enough.
At the heart of the dispute was Vianello’s assertion that the city is required to put bond issuance for the municipal complex project up for a public vote. The city in 2016 passed Charter Ordinance 28, effectively opting itself out of a state law that requires public votes on such matters.
Vianello argued that the city violates several Kansas laws, including one that says the city illegally opted out of K.S.A 13-1024a by voting during a committee meeting where no binding action is allowed.
City officials previously told the Post that the city council’s vote to opt out of the state law actually took place during the regular city council meeting, when they took action on a committee report. They said confusion stems from the way city records at the time documented the vote, which made it appear as though the city council voted during a committee meeting.
Robinson also found that part of Vianello’s argument — that he had standing because he’s a Prairie Village taxpayer — is irrelevant because the city hadn’t spent any tax money on bond issuance yet.
The judge wrote in her ruling that legal precedent showed “[a] plaintiff’s status as a municipal taxpayer is irrelevant for standing purposes if no tax money is spent on the allegedly unconstitutional activity.”
“Here, Plaintiff fails to allege that tax money is spent on an unconstitutional activity,” Robinson wrote. “Rather, Plaintiff is challenging the method and process by which Defendant is utilizing its funds.”
As for his argument for legal standing as a voter, Robinson found that Vianello failed to point to previous cases “that found an even remotely similar action by a municipality to be in violation of state or federal law.”
“Plaintiff has simply failed to establish he was deprived of protected voting interest and therefore he lacks injury to establish standing as a voter,” Robinson ruled.
Read the dismissal in its entirety in the embedded document below.
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Open in new tab A brief overview of the $30M project
Prairie Village has spent the past several years working on ideas to upgrade its aging city hall and police department.
After numerous meetings and decisions in that time, the city council ultimately landed on a $30 million project to build a new city hall at 7820 Mission Road and renovate the existing facilities for an upgraded police department and municipal court.
Of that $30 million, $23 million is earmarked for the new city hall building (including $4.5 million to purchase 7820 Mission Road). The remaining $7 million is slated to go toward renovations of the existing facilities that will expand the police department and municipal court.
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