49 News sits down with Mayor Bill Bunten
3:40 p.m. Wednesday, July 9, 2008
49 News: Could you go ahead and describe your job for us.
Mayor: The charter ordinance describes the office of mayor as being the political leader of the community and outlines certain things that he is required to do. The Congress will have two bodies, the Senate and the House. So does our state legislature. But here in Topeka we have only one body and the only check and balance against what could be perhaps termed as an unpopular move by the council is the veto which has been vested in the office of mayor.
It is an important position and it is the only position that is elected citywide and I take it very seriously. If it had been, and I'll say in all fairness, if it had been what I call a position where you're a hand-shaking, back-slapping PR bozo, I wouldn't have run for it. But it is much more than that and it's all outlined in the charter ordinance.
49 News: Earlier last month, you had scheduled a meeting to meet on the charter ordinance, to meet about different things that weren't able to take place during a regular city council meeting. Does the city council waste too much time?
Mayor: Well no they don't...well they...I think there are things that they can do that would help them run a little more efficiently. For example, as a member of the legislature in both the House and the Senate, we regularly had, actually on a daily basis, a caucus before we went to the floor to discuss legislation that was pending so that everyone would know what the bill did and why it was there and who was going to carry it, who wanted to amend it, who objected to it, so that there aren't any surprises there.
It doesn't serve a legislative body well to be surprised with something they're not aware of because then they can't cast an informed vote. It doesn't serve the city well to have people come down and be surprised at a council meeting by something that they're not familiar with.
Yes, we can run more efficiently and we can run, we can work together better. If everybody will understand that when you take nine people and you want them to work together, you're going to have a lot of differences. So getting them to all go in one direction is not easy, but there should be certain things that we can agree on and move forward on and I don't think we've done a good job with that and perhaps that's my fault.
49 News: In the past you've vetoed the Lawson purchase, the helicopter and just a few weeks ago you did the stoplights. And you said before, the veto power is a very important part of the power of the mayor. Have you used your veto power too much?
Mayor: Well, I don't think so. Kendall, in this job, you have to do what you think is right. And that's what I try to do. I don't use the veto power without giving it a great deal of thought. But if I feel it's the right thing to do, I'll exercise it.
49 News: You're a life-long Topekan. You've been mayor for about three years now. Just a question about the direction of Topeka...What do you see as your vision for Topeka? How would you like to see it different, what kind of changes would you like to see made and what are you doing to help those changes come about?
Mayor: Well, the first thing everybody should know is that when I ran for mayor, I ran on the platform that we would clean the city up physically. We would make our neighborhoods safer. We would become more business friendly and we would grow responsibly.
I think most Topekans can see that our infrastructure is in disrepair. We have streets and curbs and gutters and medians and alleys that need to be repaired. We have abandoned buildings in neighborhoods that need to be razed. So that's part of it, to clean up the city physically.
In every low-to-moderate income neighborhood, we should have a code compliance officer to ensure that those landowners and landlords obey our codes which are laws. We have to make it clear that if you're gonna own property in this city you're going to have to take care of it.
Ask your tough question
All month of July, 49 News is taking your questions to people in power in Topeka. Though you've missed the opportunity to ask Mayor Bill Bunten, you can still submit your question to other city officials. Submit your question here.
Clean it up, make it safe, make it business friendly and then you grow responsibly. The other factor in that, of course, if you have to have good schools and I think we do have good schools.
Everything is here ready to grow and prosper and be a capital city that all Kansans can be proud of, but we're gonna have to fund it. And perhaps your next question will be, how you gonna fund it?
49 News: How will you fund something like that?
Mayor: If we could increase the sales tax by a small amount, one-half of one percent, it would really bring in a substantial amount of money that would allow us to do all the things I talked about with you today.
49 News:If you weren't in this job, what would you be doing?
Mayor: Well, I'm not sure. But I'd be doing something. One of my greatest fears is to wake up and I don't have any place to go or anything to do. My health is excellent and I still walk 2 to 2.5 miles almost every night. I can't do it every night because I'm out so much. But this job is fun. And if you get to know all the people, people from all parts of the city, you can understand what quality of people we have here.
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