Legislation Calls: PV United and the City of Prairie Village appeared before the Court of Appeals on Oct. 16 to appeal the petitions circulated last year

The Kansas Court of Appeals reviewed three separate petitions issued by Prairie Village United, a local anti-rezoning group, concerning rezoning and the city’s form of government, on Oct. 16. Arguments from each side were presented before a panel of three judges, and a ruling will be issued in the next few months.

Attorneys from PV United and the city had 15 minutes each for oral arguments, followed by a three-minute rebuttal from PV United. Judges Henry Green, Karen Arnold-Burger and Stephen Hill oversaw the hearing.

“The court currently has the matters under advisement, and we will hope for rulings in the near future,” the city attorney on the case, David Waters said in an email.

The “rezoning” petition proposed a city ordinance that would limit rezoning in Prairie Village, according to the Johnson County Post. The “abandon” petition suggests throwing out the current form of city government that gives the mayor “far-reaching, unilateral power” according to pvrezoning.com.

Finally, the “adoption” petitions propose a new form of city government that would reduce the council from 12 to six members. Each petition received approximately 2,000 signatures, according to former city council member Edward Bowersma.

Last year, Judge Rhonda Mason found only the “abandon” petition was eligible to be put on the ballot for Prairie Village voters, and the other two petitions, “rezoning” and “adopt,” weren’t eligible for the ballot due to a lack of legal necessities, according to the Johnson County Post.

PV United filed for an appeal to make the other two petitions eligible just days after the ruling was issued. Last October, Prairie Village filed for appeal to deeming the “abandon” petition ineligible as well, according to the Johnson County Post.

PV United believes the mayor has too much authority and this petition aims to reduce that.

“[A] strong mayor sets the agenda, strong mayor controls what happens, the city wanted to gain its city back,” PV United representative Rex Sharp said.

City council member Chi Nguyen believes that the petition restricting less council members will reduce the representation of Prairie Village citizens.

“[With the current form of government] you would get more viewpoints of the community, rather than just one person per Ward,” Ngyuen said. “I don’t think that [less council members are] going to give you a good overall perspective.” 

The main arguments made by Sharp were that the qualifications preventing the petitions from being passed last year weren’t enough to ban them from the ballot. One of these technicalities was the manner in which the petitions were signed.

“[One] of the technicalities that was raised here, [was] that the circulator should’ve used a voter identification law rather than just watch over the people who signed,” Sharp said. “But the voter identification law was passed, 25-2908 B and that only applies to actual voting.”

Another issue raised by PV United was that the Court of Appeals and the District Court didn’t have subject matter jurisdiction over the case, meaning that the court does not have the ability to rule based on the subject.

“We will not let them run over us and do what they want on rezoning ninety percent of our city without our consent,” Sharp said.

The city, represented by attorney Joe Hatley, argued the petitions weren’t submitted early enough to make the ballot. They also said the wording of the petitions wasn’t clear enough and didn’t define zoning in a specific way — only as changing the city zoning from more restrictive to less restrictive.

Rebutting Sharp’s claim that voter ID is only necessary for elections, the City stated that collecting voter ID and verifying who someone is not hard to do, according to Hatley. Finally, it was mentioned that if the “abandon” petition is passed on its own, it’ll have no effect. Rather it will eliminate the current form of government but has no replacement effectively making it a “symbolic” petition.

“[The City’s] position is, if they want to do these things, they need to go back to the drawing board and do it more confidently,” Hatley said.