Jenson: Ambiguity spawned distrust among voters on convention center issue 

Last edited 10:28 a.m., Nov. 7, 2025 [Editor's note: One of the speakers has been identified.]

One topic was bound to come up in a Zone 3 town hall meeting hosted by Councilmember Brandon Jenson the day after the election. 

At the meeting yesterday at the city’s Regional Police-Fire Training Center, Jenson’s constituents were thinking about the failure of the sole ballot measure, which proposed an additional 3% tax on overnight accommodations in the city to help fund a regional convention and event center. 

During a question-and-answer session at the meeting, West Central resident Rob Ybañez identified himself and lobbed the first query, which concerned the future of the project.  

“It seems like there’s still plans to try to have that be built one way or another, and I’m just very curious to know why that’s such a fixation on the city, to invest in these things when there are so many other issues that could be prioritized over that,” he said.  

Several other community members chimed in with remarks like, “Yeah,” and, “I have the same question.”  

Jenson said he could speak only for himself and not the other council members, but he noted he has a hard time seeing a route forward for the project.  

“This sales lodging tax was a pretty important component of how we would finance the debt that would be necessary to construct the facility,” Jenson said. “It is definitely not possible to fund this, as I understand it, without a stable, additional source of revenue beyond what’s currently available to the city.”  

Jenson said the only way to move forward is to take the failed tax as a lesson learned and gather feedback from residents to understand what their hesitations were. At that point, council could potentially revise the plan and take it back to voters.  

“That would be the only route forward that I’m seeing,” he said.  

Jenson said the feedback he has heard stressed the lack of a holistic picture of the project and a raft of unanswered questions.  

“People tend to not trust ambiguity,” he said. “It’s my sense that that may have been a challenge for this ballot measure – the lack of clarity in the long-term plans, both for an event center and then the hotel development that would be necessary to support its success long term.”  

The election outcome was close, losing by a 52%-47% margin with only 7% of voters weighing in, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting, and Zone 3 constituent views reflected the split result. 

Another constituent, Steve Koehler, former News-Leader reporter and a resident of the Mark Twain neighborhood, described the failure of the tax as a missed opportunity. 

“Some people don’t realize how in-demand Springfield is in the nation for a location for conventions,” he said. 

He said people want to come to Springfield – he cited meetings by Assemblies of God and the Southern Baptist denominations and a national homeschool basketball tournament, with visitors dropping millions of dollars in the city – but Springfield currently lacks hotel rooms and event space to accommodate them. 

“While you may not go to an event, the sales tax from all those events goes to the city coffers, which goes to us to pay for these other projects we want,” he said. “They did a lot of hocus-pocus with where this is going to go and all this stuff, the tax itself was good to build this structure, because we are in demand, and everything right now goes down to Branson.” 

Jenson said it’s important to scrutinize the results of the election to determine what they mean. 

“If this is something that will continue to be a priority for our city, there’s clearly more work that we need to do,” he said.