Get to know your 5th District at-Large candidates

By Tyler Schneider

With incumbent Lee Barnes Jr., unable to run again due to term limits, the 5th District’s at-large seat is up for grabs once more.

His successor will be either Michael Kelley, a community activist making his first run at elective office, or Darrell Curls, a political veteran hailing from a well-known Kansas City family.

Kansas City’s new council map means Hickman Mills and Ruskin areas will now be voting as part of the 5th district. “At-large” means voters throughout the city vote for the position.

Michael Kelley

Michael Kelley, 31, perhaps best known as the BikeWalk KC Director, is a first time aspirant for political office who comes from a neighborhood activism background. 

He is a resident of the Gregory Hills neighborhood of South Kansas City and attended Kansas State University before earning a master’s degree in public administration from UMKC.

Blight and Housing

Kelley recognizes that the blighted portions of neighborhoods like Hickman Mills are often exacerbated by absentee property owners with no physical presence in the area.

“We see many out of town landlords that are not interested in the vitality of the community. I really want to focus efforts on strengthening our healthy homes programs, penalties for actors who are behaving badly. I also think we need to look at vacancy taxes for those landlords who aren’t renting their properties out intentionally. That contributes to the blight that we see,” Kelley said.

If elected, Kelley’s initial priorities here would be to “redefine affordability” by reexamining rental rates and working to revise the city’s zoning codes to make better use of city resources that are already available.

The goal, he said, would be to move towards creating a system in which the city creates housing “which everyone can access, and ensure that what we’re building can be maintained.”

Transportation

As the director for BikeWalkKC, Kelley is particularly knowledgeable on the close ties between infrastructure, public transportation and economic improvement. 

“A big challenge is not just the crumbling infrastructure we have, but also the lack of transportation options for people who don’t have access to a car,” he said. 

This connection can be repaired through programs like the federal Reconnecting Communities Pilot, where funding can be at least partially sourced from above, Kelley said. This strategy has already been utilized to help renovate parts of the city’s west side to make them more friendly for pedestrians and nonmotorized forms of transportation. Kelley said he intends to find and leverage other grants to continue that work.

“The RCP was created to help remediate the harm caused by projects such as highways. Knowing that parts of South Kansas City and its communities have been split, torn pretty far apart by these highways, we should be looking to not only reconnect these communities, but reconnect neighbors with each other from the bottom-up,” Kelley said.

Infrastructure and Health

“What we’re building in Kansas City is important, but we need to think more about who we’re building our community for. That means keeping basic services going, like road maintenance and public utilities. It also means improving our city services to reach our neighbors who are consistently left behind,” Kelley said. 

In connecting many of his key issues back to infrastructure, Kelley also lists public health as an important factor in strengthening and connecting communities. 

While countless people did perish from COVID-19, Kelley said, “there are thousands of people in KC and throughout our region who had COVID, survived it, and are living with significantly diminished physical and mental abilities. We need to build to accommodate their care.”

Darrell Curls

Darrell Curls, 64, hails from a family that’s been a mainstay in regional and state level politics for decades. In his bid for city council, Curls cites his activity as a board member of Freedom, Inc., and his former role as director of the Hickman Mills School Board as examples of his ability to bolster communities.

Curls earned his undergraduate degree from Park College, and his MBA from Central Michigan University. He has lived in South Kansas City with his wife for over forty years, and recently retired from Ford Motor Company.

Crime

Curls said his plan to reduce Kansas City’s increased crime rates would hinge on providing more resources for neighborhood crime prevention programs. He said the goal of creating more jobs went hand in hand with offering more support toward fighting drug and substance abuse in the city’s homeless population because poverty often exacerbates those issues. If elected, Curls would look to help form a greater collaborative effort between neighborhood groups, law enforcement and school districts.

In the long term, Curls said he also supported efforts to regain local control of the KCPD from the state.

“Perception of the police department is poor and will continue to be poor, in part, due to us not having local control,” he said.

“We control the budget, but not the department. That’s not a good workable proposition for the city or its residents,” Curls added. “The city controls the fire department and has done so pretty well. I believe the city can also control the police department.”

Infrastructure and City Services

Curls also noted the importance of the little things, including a “greater investment in curbs, sidewalks, street repair, repaving, and bridge replacement.”

“We have to use all the available resources through state as well as federal grants and increase the amount from the general fund for our infrastructure needs,” he said. 

This ties in with some of the more minute aspects of services provided by the city. Curls wants to deliver more reliable and improved trash pick up, snow removal, and street maintenance.

Blight and Housing

Like Kelley, Curls supports the People’s Housing Trust Fund, but he the program still needs more funding to work as intended. Aside from that fund, he said he’d also like try to leverage more state and federal grants and begin working more closely with developers and the city’s real estate community to maximize the total dollars spent on affordable housing projects.

Relatedly, Curls said he wants “provide more affordable housing choices for renters and buyers through rehab, renovation and construction,” which he said could include major blight removal programs.