Toellner Tells it

Kansas City Crime is mostly on the decline

Earlier this week, the Star ran an article on crime rates by neighborhood in Kansas City.

According to the article, 83% of the city's 240 neighborhoods have seen a decline in crime, led by two newly popular urban areas in the downtown loop and the Crossroads.  Here's a link to the hard data.

Even my own neighborhood showed significant declines (which I have, by the way, noticed just from living here).

The reasons for the decreases are varied. Some areas, such as Brookside, Hyde Park and Ward Parkway have hired off-duty police officers for extra patrol.  In some area, neighborhood advocates have stepped up their own patrol. 

I think it's no coincidence that several of the neighborhoods that have seen major decreases in crime have done so at a time when the population of those areas has increased pretty dramatically.  Nothing seems to breed crime like empty buildings and houses, and low foot-traffic on the streets.  Drug dealers, gang members, prostitutes, etc don't much care for people watching them carry on their business.  So they hide out. Empty homes and buildings become huge havens for these people.  People walking on their dogs on the streets, sitting on their front porches and playing catch on their front lawns become deterrents for crime. No one wants to be watched.

For this reason, I think the city should work harder at "infilling" older neighborhoods with residential by offering incentives for people who buy, fix up, and inhabit older homes in KC's older neighborhoods -- particularly on the East Side.  Many neighborhoods on the east side will have 30-50% of their housing stock sitting empty.  This leads to a lot of places to hide out for criminals.  It has fewer neighbors walking up and down the streets, playing in the yards, and sitting on the front porches. There are a lot of places to hide.  Providing incentives for people to move into these existing homes -- many of which are quite large and need a lot of money in repairs -- would be huge for solving crime problems in many of these neighborhoods. Offering tax breaks for people in these neighborhoods (encouraging those who live there now to own, vs rent from slumlords) would be a good start.  Offering tax credits to people who invest money in fixing up the home. would also be nice. 

We're not talking about multi-million dollar projects here.  We're talking about a series of small, several thousand dollar projects that would make a world of difference in these older neighborhoods, instead of continuing to offer tax incentives for people to build in our ever-sprawling suburban areas and the northland.

It just takes a little common sense...and a little willingness to work to let the "little people" have a hand in development...

Performance Enhancers in Baseball

The Mitchell Report came out this week -- naming names of those that might be associated with Steroids in Baseball. Nothing in the report was really all that surprising...and IMO, it was a lot of hoopla over what we already suspected.

However, here's a link to one of the more interesting things I've read this week. It's a post from June 4th, but it's a statistical look at baseball hitters that were statistical outlyers that defied the usual decline in production that comes from aging by having their better years much later in their careers.

There are two very interesting parts of this list.  #1) of the 18 players on the list, 17 of them have played since 1987, 14 of them since 1994, and 10 of the 18 had their outlying year during a 5 year period from 1996 - 2001.  #2) 5 of the 18 players have been pretty closely linked to steroid use (or other performance enhancers).  Another 4 or 5 of them would not surprise me in the slightest if they were involved.  While I would expect today's players to perform better at a later age than those in the 30s and 40s, due in large part to better diets and training, I think it's pretty obvious that the past 12 years or so in baseball have been riddled with players usinng performance enhancing drugs.

Sad news for the 18th & Vine Area

Yesterday, the Peach Tree Restaurant announced that come January, it is going to shut down its sole food and live Jazz Restaurant in the 18th and Vine District, and reopen in March in the new Power and Light District.

This is a good news, horrible news event. 

First, the good news. The good news is that many of the restaurants that are going to be filling up the new downtown entertainment district are national chains.  Even in Kansas City, the home of fabulous barbeque restaurants and steak places, the Power & Light District is going to feature national chains filling those niches with Famous Dave's BBQ and Ted's Montana Grill.  The Peach Tree is going to join Chef's Burger as just a couple of the P&L Restaurants that will be locally owned.  It will be great for the city, and great for visitors of the area to have local flavor that will make the P&L unique to KC.  And for the Cordish Company, I applaud them for attracting these two local chefs.  My biggest hope for the Peach Tree is that the new location doesn't take away its charm that came from having such a diverse crowd of old and young, black and white, that it had in the 18th & Vine area.

The downside is that this is horrible news for the 18th & Vine area.  Over the past decade, a lot of progress has been made to bring the 18th & Vine area back to life. The area has a rich reputation with the black community in Kansas City.  It was the home of many Jazz legends, including Count Basie and Charlie Parker.  A decade ago, some people had a vision to bring the area back to life.  They built a fabulous jazz museum, and the Negro League Baseball museum that now has national standing.  They revived the Gem Theater, which houses many great national Jazz acts throughout the year. A great annual event, Rhythm & Ribs festival brings thousands to the area each year.

They've built and remodeled several apartments in the area for people to live.  And the area has attracted a couple of great restaurants -- the Peach Tree and the Red Vine -- to join nearby Arthur Bryants for great dining.  All of this surrounded the Blue Room, which continues to house great live music from our fabulous local jazz musicians 5 nights a week.  About 2 years ago, the Red Vine closed down.  Smaller crowds in the still-growing area and the fabulous Cajun Cuisine weren't enough to overcome the high rends and it closed down.  Now, the Peachtree has left for greener pastures as well.  The promise of the opening of Harpers never seems to come.

The 18th & Vine area is one of my favorite areas in Kansas City, and is a cultural treasure that we need to preserve and grow. Losing yet another great restaurant in the area will be pretty devastating. My hope is that the building owners in the area can figure out a way to attract a couple of new restaurants soon -- at lower rents, or rents that are based on a percent of sales -- to help the area grow back to prominence.  It's too important of an area to let go.

BCS Football Bowl Playoff

This isn't about Kansas City.  It's not about advertising.  But the time has come for me to pipe up. It's becoming an embarrassment that my favorite sport, College Football, remains the only major sport in the world that does not determine a national champion through some type of playoff system. If I want a national champion chosen based on someone's opinion of who's better, I'll start watching more gymnastics, diving or figure skating (not that I'm bashing those sports, or the talented athletes in those sports, I just don't like the winner chosen based on someone's opinion).

There are many reasons people give for not changing the current college football system.  To the best that I can tell here are the major reasons why people feel like college football should not have a playoff:

1) The Bowls, and the cities that run them would be out the money from the bowls being in their area.

2) With so many games in a playoff, it would drive travel costs up significantly for fans, causing games to not sell out.

3) There is history and tradition in the bowls.

4) Too many games for players.

No one really claims that the current system works, but I can see #1 and #2 being pretty significant factors. #4 is bunk as the average high school champion team plays as many games as the current college guys, so I think they can handle a couple of extra games as they mature.  So, here's my plan, that I think covers off on most of the objections, and gets college football a true national champion, with a bonus thrown in.  Here's the deal:

1) 8 team playoff.  6 teams are chosen based on being the conference Champions of the 6 BCS conferences.   2 would be at-large teams to capture great teams from non BCS conferences (this year's Hawaii) or the best of the conference #2s.  For the purpose of my discussion, I'm going to use Hawaii and Missouri for this (although my guess would be in the real world Georgia would fill this role in real life).

2) Games are played at a predetermined location based on conference affiliation, tradition and location for easier travel by fans.  I'm less concerned with "seeding" these teams than I am with having them play each other in a playoff -- this would be the High School concept where all the Kansas City teams play first to meet with the St. Louis area schools in the HS Championship.  It doesn't matter that the best two teams meet in the National title game.  So here are the matchups and locations:

     a) Rose Bowl - Big Ten winner vs Pac 10 Winner (Ohio St vs USC) -- keeps the Big 10/Pac 10 tradition alive and makes for easy travel for the USC fans.  Maintains the pagentry of the Rose Bowl.

     b) Cotton Bowl -- Big 12 Winner vs the Western Most At Large team (Oklahoma vs Hawaii) -- Most Big 12 schools are within relatively close driving distance to Dallas, and most of the at-large teams will be too (Hawaii of course is not within driving distance to anywhere). 

    c) Sugar Bowl -- SEC Champion vs Eastern most At Large Team (LSU vs Missouri) - -Maintains the historiy of the affiliation between the SEC and the Sugar Bowl.  New Orleans is easy to get to for the vast majority of SEC teams, and likely the Eastern most at large also

    d) Gator Bowl - (ACC Champ vs Big East Champ) - Virginia Tech vs West Virginia -This one is chosen base on location more than the quality of the current Bowl. 

    Semi-Finals --

    e) Fiesta Bowl - Winner of Game A and Game B

    f) Peach Bowl (Atlanta) - Winner of Game C and Game D (chosen more for location than the quality of the bowl currently)

National Championship - Orange Bowl, Miami (figuring these teams know this is the last game and folks will travel to the National title game regardless of location).

I think the geography helps fans prepare for trips they plan to make (seeding would make it a very last minute decision on where to go) and the geographic proximity will help teams' fans to travel. 

The bonus here is that if you win your conference championship, you're in the playoff and have a chance at a national championship.  I think the now not having the fear of losing a pre-conference game hurting your national title hopes, will also encourage more big schools to play each other during the pre-conference season.  That would be a bonus for all college football fans (I can do without another Mizzou/W. Michigan or KU vs anyone matchup personally).

Every team from a BCS school has a chance to make it in the tournament and win it all.

I think it'd be a huge hit, and huge boom for these cities.  If they wanted to keep the 2nd tier bowls for other teams to get a chance to play somewhere (and to entertain me during the week between playoff games) that's fine with me. 

What do you think?