Joe D. Dennis Park, our city’s most valuable asset, is very quiet about the benefits it brings to our community. And now our Westwood Mayor and City Council want to sell it off for some cash relief and a tax base that is far from guaranteed. There is a charm to our city that is easy to understand. But there is a threat from this development for our city that is very tough to comprehend.

We will talk character in a moment, but first a quick comparison that, though the difference is in billions of dollars, the outcome has great potential to be strikingly similar.

One of the worst deals any U.S. municipality has ever made was to close a temporary budget shortfall in 2008. This is when the City of Chicago sold all the revenue from its parking meters for the next 75 years.  An extremely long-term solution to a temporary problem, it has been a great deal for the private investors and a terrible deal for the city.  Sadly, many small communities are following this terrible example, selling off their parkland assets for what amounts to a quick fix. Several states, including the Kansas legislature, have recognized this vulnerability and enacted laws to help prevent a passing administration from selling the coveted lands for a budget fix or other insufficient reasons (K.S.A. 12-1301).
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For more information on how this development agreed to by Westwood leaders is a bad deal for Westwood, check out our Financials page. Now let’s get back the Character of our town, a quiet asset that speaks volumes in the way of attracting tax-paying residents in the first place.
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Walk down any street in this city and you can feel it. The canopy of the trees (see the trees to be removed). Kids walking and talking to and from school. Birds chirping. Squirrels everywhere. The serenity of the homes, each distinctive, but with a feel of having stood the test of time. The warmth of that person next door and down the street, there to lend a hand, keep an eye out, enjoy a word, be a neighbor. There is pride to all of this. Tough to put a finger on it, but you can feel it.
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Take a drive around our community. Go corner-to-corner and get a look at our park, our state-of-the-art school, our much-improved grocery store, our homes, city hall, the handful of low-lined businesses, and our apartment building.
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Wait? What? Our apartment building? That’s the one thing that doesn’t look like anything else in our community. It gets a pass since it's at the edge of town, not in the middle of our residential area. Now picture the proposed development; what is labeled a "feature park" appears to be more of a office back lawn dwarfed by a handful of looming buildings more suited for south Johnson County than our little hamlet.
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None of this means we should be standing still. Change is the one constant of life. But change — change for the better — is within Westwood’s grasp. On this site in the coming days, we will be providing alternatives that can make for a better path forward. Our city doesn’t have to settle for this plan. Let’s Vote NO, study our other options, and not rush toward a deal that gives our city leaders no real control of the development less than 20 years from now.
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We all deserve better than this. Our character — and that of our city — is on the line.