Photo courtesy of John Todd
This section highlights a local person of interest and admiration, a person whose achievements, manner, leadership, and/or character distinguish them. If you know people we should include, please apprise us at editor@candor.news, and we will interview them for future issues of Candor. In your submission, include the person’s name, noteworthy traits and accomplishments, and their contact information.
In this issue, we are highlighting John Todd.
I was born in Pittsburg, Kansas, spending my first 12 years as a farm boy and attending a two-room country school. In the early 1950s, my family moved to Kansas City, where I finished grade school, high school, and junior college. I graduated from the University of Kansas in 1963 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army, subsequently serving two years of active duty that included a tour in South Korea.
In 1965 I accepted a job as a sales representative with the National Gypsum Co. in Wichita, selling its full line of walls and ceiling products, calling on lumber yards and construction tradesmen. I had the good fortune of selling the 25 carloads of plaster that went into the new Century II Civic Center that was built by a vote of the citizens of Wichita to celebrate Wichita’s first century while looking forward to its second, thus the name. After similar employment with Masonite Corporation selling their line of building material products, I began my successful 30-year career in 1976 as a self-employed real estate broker and developer.
Years of sales and marketing provided me with the first-hand opportunity to learn about how free markets work. My understanding was honed after reading Leonard E. Read’s essay I, Pencil, which provided me a succinct illustration of how Adam Smith’s invisible hand of markets works, alongside Friedrich Hayek’s emphasis on the role that the price system plays in communicating signals that “will make the individuals do the desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do.” Click here to read I, Pencil.
This, in my view, provides the basis of the economic freedom and liberty we enjoy in this country. Thousands of individuals working towards their own enlightened self-interest in a free market is superior and more efficient than centrally-planned economies controlled by a small group of self-serving elites. My personal choice is for individual economic freedom over collectivist control anytime!
During all of my years in the marketing arena, my major emphasis was practicing consultative sales techniques as opposed to a “hard-sell” adversarial approach. Humor has always played a role in my dealing with people. In a real estate transaction, everyone should win or it simply should not go together at all.
A major personal mentor during my professional career in real estate was real estate broker, investor, and entrepreneur Colby Sandlian. His seminars in “Broker Estate Building” were invaluable. I learned the importance of counseling with customers/clients as an integral part of successfully structuring real estate transactions with benefits for everyone. Colby taught us the importance of specializing and developing an expertise in a real estate niche as opposed to attempting to work the whole spectrum. Land assembly, option contracts, rolling option contracts, and how to use real estate exchange as a valuable real estate-problem solving tool were included in Colby’s informative courses. I also admire Colby’s little known work in giving back to his hometown, Wichita.
I have been blessed over the last 20-plus years with the opportunity to become and work as an active and engaged citizen. My early legislative actions included failed attempts at municipal court reform in the early 2000s. This was followed by an ongoing fight to protect individual private property rights from eminent domain abuse in Kansas, starting in 2006 following the disastrous Kelo decision by the SCOTUS that left property owners in Kansas vulnerable. (Kelo v. City of New London ruled that government could use eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another private owner as a “permissible public use.”) Attempts by cities in Kansas to expand their municipal eminent domain powers legislatively have been an issue that I have had some success in fighting for the last several years. However, this issue needs continued monitoring since it seems to return each legislature year in one form or another.
For nearly twelve years starting in 2008, I had the privilege of producing literally hundreds of weekly programs for the Wichita Pachyderm Club. We scheduled from a broad spectrum of high-profile, quality speakers who graced our lectern each week with expertise and experience in politics, economics, history, business, current events, as well as a wide variety of educational issues. Our goal at the Wichita Pachyderm Club was to promote active, informed citizen involvement. In 2013-14 our club was recognized by the National Federation of Pachyderm Clubs as the most outstanding club in the nation. Click here to view Wichita Pachyderm Club videos.
For the past couple of years, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, I was invited to participate in the planning of New Symposium Society: Civil Discourse in the Pursuit of Truth. Meetings were held at Friends University and featured panel discussions presenting opposing perspectives on a wide range of topics. After one of the forums a panelist noted: “This was the first time I ever participated in a forum that included anyone who did not hold my views on the discussion topic, and as a result, I learned something new tonight.” She reinforced my own observation that I learn more from people I disagree with than from those whom I do.
I joined the Wichita Chapter of Americans for Prosperity—Kansas in 2004 and became the first AFP volunteer coordinator in the country. In 2014, I was honored with AFP’s grassroots volunteer of the year award at their convention in Dallas, Texas. A year earlier, the Kansas Policy Institute honored me with the John J. Ingalls Spirit of Freedom Award. At AFP-Kansas, until a couple of years ago, I helped lead organized grassroots efforts and provided educational discussion seminars in support of private property rights, economic freedom, and liberty.
Over the years, one of my major overriding goals as an active citizen has been the creation of better government and the preservation of liberty. As former U. S. Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives Tip O’Neill so accurately explained – “All politics is local.” Therefore, a great amount of my political, educational, and citizen-activist work over the years has focused on local government reform. Much work is to be done in our own local community. I heartily encourage other citizens to get involved in this noble effort!
Perhaps you have also observed that there are people in our society who love governing other people. They like rules and laws for others, but not necessarily for themselves. Business owners, along with their business associations, espouse to be free-market oriented, but nonetheless use their influence with governmental officials to promote licensing and regulations to limit their competitors. They also see nothing wrong with using this same influence, although technically legal but perhaps not moral, to obtain public financing incentives to further their own personal financial gains. Unfortunately, the use of this type of governmental influence activity actually works to the detriment of other productive taxpayers who are left with the ongoing bill to pay for public safety, our court system, and the schools necessary to educate our children. In some circles, this practice is called “legal” plunder. Click here to download or read Frederic Bastiat’s The Law
My first educational foray into the reality of politics was as a University of Kansas college intern in the Personnel Department of Kansas City, Missouri, in 1962. One day while administering 40-word-per-minute typist examinations required of all prospective city job applicants, a future employee was sent to the personnel office by Mayor H. Roe Bartle -- and was hired immediately without having to take the typing test. I asked Mr. Donmeyer, a Senior Personnel Examiner in the department, how he intellectually dealt with what I had just witnessed. He advised, “John, in order to successfully work for the city of Kansas City, Missouri, and to keep your job here, you have to be able to sit on a fence and look two ways at the same time!”
As an observer of the Wichita City Council for many years, I have witnessed a litany of people who appear almost weekly before the council with wonderful so called “economic” development projects and job creation schemes that, if approved, will make the elected officials look like visionaries. However, there is always a catch to their creative proposals: they can’t perform their magic if they are required to pay taxes like every other taxpayer in town. So, many of these special-interest requests are approved by our city council members by using taxpayer-funded incentive programs -- STAR Bonds, CID’s, tax abatements, and TIF’s, all of which are authorized and enabled through Kansas statutes (courtesy of the Kansas legislature). Many citizens as well as business owners stand by and say nothing about this common practice even though they oppose these government-funded incentives because they fear reprisals from customers, clients, and even the government. Now we are back to the Mayor H. Roe Bartle story and the city employee’s fear of losing his job if he stands up in opposition.
About one year ago, the Wichita City Council spent $100,000 of taxpayer money to partially fund and support a downtown public/private redevelopment group whose plan many people believe was predetermined and would eventually lead to the demolition of the citizens’ iconic and treasured Century II and former public library without a mandatory vote of the people of Wichita. Both of the buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. So as a result of this group’s action, a Save Century II citizen’s group organized a Municipal Petition Initiative drive to force the Wichita City Council to require a mandatory majority vote of the people to decide the fate and disposition of Century II and the former public library.
The Save Century II petition movement was a significant citizen action handled by over 400 volunteer petition circulators who, to their credit, obtained over 17,000 voter signatures despite the feared coronavirus pandemic that was going on. They were tired of the lack of city transparency in downtown redevelopment projects that enriched many of the same favored downtown developers with public land giveaways, public financing, and other creative, developer-favored incentives. To our amazement and pleasure, we found that the petition signers were Wichitans from a broad ideological cross section. The city council’s response to their citizens’ petition was to file suit in District Court to block the citizen’s’ right to vote. After facing a setback in the local District Court, the Save Century II Committee has appealed the people’s case to a Court of Appeals, and is working tirelessly in an effort to pass legislation in Topeka that would mandate a public vote of the people on a potential $1 billion project designed to replace Century II.
Even at this late date, there is still time for dialogue between Wichita citizens and City Hall. I would challenge our Mayor and City Council to seize this opportunity to work constructively with their constituents by dropping their lawsuit against the Save Century II supporters and by further supporting a Municipal Historic Buildings Act that will soon be introduced in the 2021 Kansas Legislature, mandating a citizen’s vote before city-owned buildings on the National Register of Historic Places can be demolished. This could bring needed uplift to our community and restore citizen trust in their elected officials, a win for everyone!
My activism over the years has given me the opportunity to meet and build networks with many elected officials and hundreds of active citizens. My hope is for people, young and old, to recognize that we are so much richer than our 18th century, pre-Industrial Revolution ancestors. My concern is that too many of us take our privileged lives for granted and therein lies the risk of squandering it. Another concern is our willingness to think that government is the solution to all of our problems, and that our rights as citizens are granted to us by our government and are not natural rights that preceded the advent of government, in particular our constitutional republic. Click here to watch the video Hockey Stick of Human Prosperity
Wichita is a tremendous community to live in. As compared to driving the freeways and interstate highways in Dallas and Kansas City, driving Kellogg is a pleasure. Driving anywhere in Wichita takes 10-15 minutes and yet we have a similar variety of arts, cultural events, and great food choices available to us as in larger, more congested cities. Wichita is a place I treasure for my family and the many friends who bring meaning to my life.
And finally, my wife Carol of 49-years has been a blessing in my life as well as our two grown children and five amazing grandchildren.