I have lived in Lee’s Summit my entire life. I have three children, ages 10, 12, and 16. They have lived in Lee’s Summit their entire lives. This is a great city, but it can be even better. We can start by providing our city employees a competitive wage. We are a growing city and we can do this without raising taxes.
Our focus should be on making this city one in which people who want to work and live here can do so while making competitive wages. This goes beyond providing competitive compensation to our city employees. This includes attracting businesses that provide high paying jobs that lead to a high quality of life. We do not need another Wal-Mart or another strip mall. We need a company like Burns and McDonnell or Black & Veatch. Companies that provide great salaries and help people create a high quality of life.
Wal-Marts and strip malls provide lots of minimum wage jobs and generate revenue via sales tax. Because more and more people are using the internet to do their shopping we must come up with a new way of creating revenue. The revenue created via sales tax will surely decrease as time goes on. Providing incentives to build strip malls will only lead to empty strip malls. The days of incentivizing retail stores, strip malls, and apartment buildings needs to come to an end. The era of incentivizing companies that provide high wages within the city limits needs to begin.
It is time for a change in Lee’s Summit. I want to be part of that change. I want to represent the City of Lee’s Summit and the members of District 2 to help ensure that we make the right changes to improve the quality of life for every citizen of Lee’s Summit. This city is big enough in geographical size and population that we can create a community of high paying jobs, provide great compensation for our city employees, and encourage entrepreneurship. We can do it all while maintaining our parks and nature and wildlife areas.
Lee’s Summit used to be a place where the best and the brightest wanted to live and work. In the 90’s and early 2000’s it was almost impossible to obtain a position as a Lee’s Summit police officer or Lee’s Summit firefighter. In 1998 the LSFD had one open position. Hundreds of people applied for that job. Currently we have three open positions that they cannot fill. Lee’s Summit should be the first city in which police and firefighters want to live and work. It should not be the city in which they want to leave.
