How We Got Here—and Why We Can’t Keep Pretending

Seeing fences go up around our parks is painful. People are angry, frustrated and looking for someone to blame.  But if we are going to talk honestly about what is happening, we have to talk honestly about how we got here.

For years, Independence’s General Fund—which pays for police, parks, the library, the museum and other everyday services—was spending more each year than it brought in. Instead of fixing that structural imbalance, previous city leadership routinely used transfers and loans from Water, Sewer, Stormwater and Transportation funds to cover the gap.

The people making those decisions at the time may have believed they were doing what was necessary to revitalize Independence.  And to use a line I’ve heard more times than I care to -  “they weren’t illegal” – they sure weren’t best practice.  During that period, our community built important things: a new library, parks, City Hall and other public facilities.

But building something and being able to operate and maintain it are two different things.

Grants can help design and construct a facility. They generally do not pay to staff it, clean it, insure it, repair it and keep it open year after year. Independence expanded its public assets without establishing enough ongoing revenue to sustain everything it created.

Meanwhile, transfers from other funds made the General Fund appear more stable than it really was. It was the municipal equivalent of using one credit card to pay another: it delayed the reckoning, but it did not solve the problem.

Beginning in 2022, city leadership started ending that practice. That exposed the true size of the structural deficit—but ending the practice did not create the deficit. It revealed it.  And it was concerning.

The people now being blamed for “not knowing how to manage a budget” are the very people who stopped using the accounting practices that had concealed the problem. Thanks to City Manager Kenna West, we cut up the credit cards. Now we are doing the painful work of living within our actual recurring revenue and repairing the damage.

Since 2022, the city has eliminated or left 11 positions unfilled. Library and museum staffing and hours have already been reduced. Purchases have been delayed, expenses reduced and positions left vacant. The financial situation has also been examined through a fiscal recovery plan, federal technical assistance and an independent S&P Global Ratings review.

This did not suddenly appear last week when fences went up.

The city has discussed its structural deficit publicly for years—in budgets, council meetings, work sessions, community presentations, newsletters, mailings and public hearings. I understand that not everyone follows city government closely. But there comes a point when civic engagement also requires some responsibility from residents: opening the mailer, reading the newsletter, watching a meeting, asking questions before a crisis becomes physically visible.

The Community Services & Parks Fee was adopted as a recurring source of funding specifically for parks, the library and the museum. It was included in the adopted 2026–27 budget so these services could continue operating.

Then a referendum petition qualified the fee for the November ballot. During that process, the city cannot collect the revenue on which the adopted budget relied. Without that revenue, the city must reduce the corresponding expenses. That is why closures are happening now.

This is not retaliation. It is not a stunt. It is not an attempt to punish residents into voting a certain way. It is what happens when budgeted revenue becomes legally unavailable and there is no remaining General Fund money to replace it.

What makes this especially difficult is hearing some of the same voices associated with past city management now present themselves as the experienced people who can rescue Independence. Experience deserves scrutiny. Anyone claiming to have the answer should be willing to explain the financial practices used during their own leadership, why structural problems were allowed to continue and whether their proposed “solution” simply returns Independence to borrowing from one fund to support another.

Greg Ellis and David Clyne should also explain the contradiction of helping suspend the fee while suggesting they may ultimately vote to approve it. The referendum did not create the underlying deficit, but it did remove the funding that would have kept these services operating while the community considered its longer-term future.

Residents deserve answers to those questions.

Current leadership did not create every decision that brought Independence to this point. We did, however, inherit the responsibility to deal with the consequences. The least responsible thing we could do would be to hide the problem again, raid other funds, drain what little one-time reserves we have left or pretend another temporary patch amounts to a solution.

That would be easier politically, but it would also be dishonest.  I know I would rather not be spending my days doing this, but I also want the community to know what's going on.  

I hate seeing our parks closed. I hate what this means for families, employees and our entire community. But I will not support returning to the practices that allowed the problem to grow. We have to grind through this difficult period, establish sustainable recurring revenue and build a city that can afford to care for what it owns.

People have every right to be angry. But that anger should be informed by the complete history—not just by the fences that finally made the consequences impossible to ignore.