Sam Maxwell IV
Sam Maxwell IV will be quick to point out that his family goes back generations as citizens of Leavenworth. He is a fourth generation Maxwell who describes himself as a “blue collar working for the blue collar.” Maxwell made an unsuccessful bid for city commission in 2023 but hopes to do better in the current race.
“I’ve lived in this town my whole life, born and raised,” said Maxwell. “I was born at Saint John’s. I’ve lived on the same street my whole life because I bought the house right next door to my parents. I know this town. I’ve worked on the innards of it. I’ve been at the wastewater treatment plant knee deep or just in people’s sewage working on it. I know this town pretty intimately.”
Maxwell is a graduate of Pleasant Ridge High School. After high school, he attended a trade school and has built a career working in public works construction. He was involved in the recent 4th Street improvement project downtown. He has background in other industries as well.
“I was a volunteer firefighter out in Kickapoo for 13 years,” Maxwell said. “I worked at the state penitentiary for four years. I work for Lineweaver Construction. I’m a superintendent and I oversee multi-million dollar jobs. I do the work as well. Like, right now, I’m in Olathe doing a $3.5 million road where it’s a rehab, basically. I tear it out, replace, put in new and tie back into the old road. They have a brand new road. So, I can do everything from storm, water, sewer, most any utilities – plus road grading, dirt work, concrete curb, asphalt. We have subs that do our concrete and our asphalt because it’s just a lot. But I oversee all that work. I know the ins and out of 50% of what the city does.”
As much experience as Maxwell has, he says there’s always room to learn new ways of doing things.
“I don’t call myself an expert because there’s always room to learn and I’m learning new things every year,” Maxwell said. “But I’m good at my job. There’s constant changes in this industry, though. I cam speak the language with the engineers, the entities, everybody proposing projects. I can kind of really dissect them.”
Maxwell shared his perspective on the present situation for Leavenworth and the approach he sees would be priorities.
“Here’s the problem every city has right now: It’s, one, pay for their employees is not that great. But the only way to get more pay is to get more tax revenue. The only way we’re going to get more tax revenue is to get more people here. Right now, the city of Leavenworth is on a decrease of population and have been for at least the last 10 to 15 years. Nobody’s coming here. So, number one, we need to get more people to come here and, two, we need to get more businesses to come here. A large part of my perspective is planning and zoning. Their rules and regulations need some tweaking.
Maxwell delved into that in more detail.
“There need to be a greater ease for people to understand the rules and regulations for a business to come in and be, like ‘Hey, here’s a streamline way to get it done’ if we’ve got something we need to work out – rather than ‘No, this is the way we need to do it and there’s no ifs, ands or buts.’ There’s always room for wiggle room. There’s always something you can do to bring them in and keep them here. There’s ways to still be in your regulation but make it easier for them to accomplish that. I don’t feel like there’s enough help there.”
When speaking of regulations, Maxwell was referring to the city’s municipal codes and taking a look at making some changes there.
“We’re dealing with codes that have been written over the last 150 years. And the whole reason we have a lot of these codes is because somebody has done something stupid so that had to put them in there so they don’t repeat the stupidity again. Basically, that the whole reason for codes is to just keep people from doing those things again.”
Another concern Maxwell touched on is the lack of a grocery store on the North end of Leavenworth.
“It’s not going to be popular because right now, in this climate, caring about poor people is an issue,” Maxwell said. “But I think this is a solvable problem but it’s probably going to involve some grant writing and might involve an RHID there. In becoming a commissioner, one of the things that I wanted to be able to say is that you have to have a deeper understanding of how all these formulas work.”
Another issue Maxwell is concerned about is the old mall.
“All that stuff up there needs to be demolished,” Maxwell said. “They need to start slapping that property owner with extra taxes because of how dangerous it is up there just for the simple fact that there’s probably rebar rocks. Somebody’s going go out there and get hurt.”
Maxwell appeared at the League of Women Voters candidate forum, the Leavenworth-Lansing Chamber of Commerce candidate forum and the United Kansas forum, each held on different dates over the past month at the Leavenworth Public Library. You can hear further comments from Maxwell by clicking on the link for the Leavenworth-Lansing Chamber of Commerce youtube site at https://youtu.be/L8aZx9kP4Vg?si=iJ4iEFTMCWvljbmP You can use the slider below the video to scroll to different parts of the video or listen to the video in its entirety.