Prairie Village voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected the question to “abandon” the city’s form of government.
This year’s Prairie Village municipal election saw not only six contested city council races, but an unusual question about whether the city should “abandon” its mayor-council form of government. It was one of two critical issues defining the 2025 Prairie Village City Council election, with half of the candidates supporting and the other half opposing the ballot measure.
This question is a remnant of the 2023 resident-led petitions circulated by Prairie Village United, a group who rallied against any potential changes to the city’s residential zoning codes.
The “abandon” question failed with the “no” votes earning 65% of the vote, according to unofficial final election results. This means no changes are coming to Prairie Village’s form of government.
Jim Sellers, the Ward 6 candidate who is leading that race with 63.7% of the vote, said the rejection of the “abandon” petition — coupled with the six non-PV United candidates making a clean sweep on Tuesday — signals that voters want to “return to fact-based approach to decision making.”
“Prairie Village voters turned out 2 to 1 to say ‘no’ to abandoning the current Prairie Village form of government,” the leader in the Ward 6 race Jim Sellers told the Post. “Not only that, but they wholesale rejected the Prairie Village United slate of hand-picked candidates.”
How we got here
In 2023, PV United circulated three petitions dealing with zoning and reshaping the city’s government: One to limit rezoning, and two separate petitions to “abandon” the mayor-council form of government and “adopt” a mayor-council-manager form of government while also slashing half of the city council.
After years of litigation in appellate and district courts, only the “abandon” petition was found eligible for a ballot measure, which the city decided earlier this year to put before voters in the general election.
The city placed it on the Nov. 4 ballot, and in the weeks leading up to the election, signs popped up around Prairie Village calling on residents to “vote no” or “vote yes” on the question.
A look at the results
On Nov. 4, Prairie Village voters rejected the question to “abandon” the city’s form of government by a margin of 65% to 35%.
A total of 8,741 votes were cast for the “abandon” question, with the “no” votes receiving a total of 5,690, according to unofficial results.
Councilmember Cole Robinson, who appears poised to win his reelection campaign to the city council, said he thinks the petition was flawed from the beginning and “was a huge mistake for Prairie Village United.”
“I do really think that the ‘abandonment’ question was just a way to really consolidate people’s feelings on the political environment in Prairie Village,” Robinson said. “It really gave voters something to unite around.”
