Toellner Tells it

Governor Nixon kicks off 100 Missouri Miles Campaign

Yesterday, Governor Jay Nixon was at Loose Park to officially announce the kick-off for his "100 Missouri Miles" Challenge.

A few weeks ago, American Trails, a national organization, named Missouri the "Best Trails State" for its collection of city and state-wned hiking, biking and equestrian trails. The Missouri State Parks system alone boasts more than 1000 miles of managed trails.

Meanwhile, the Katy Trail is the longest developed rail-trail in the nation, and alone brings in more than $18 million in tourism revenue for the state, and supports more than 100 dedicated jobs.

In honor of the "Best Trails State" Award, Nixon is challenging Missourians to the "100 Missouri Miles" challenge -- encouraging all Missourians between now and the end of the year to tackle 100 miles of trails -- either by hiking, biking, walking, horseback riding or kayaking. 

As of this morning, more than 2000 Missourians have already signed up for the challenge and have tracked more than 8,000 miles of trails. You can sign up too at the website. 

After the short press conference, Nixon invited those in attendence to join him as he walked the entire 1 mile loop around Loose Park. Around 50 people followed him around the loop -- and I have to say, the Governor keeps a very brisk pace!  

First off, I think this is a really cool award for Missouri. I love that we're finally getting recognition for the great recreational activities we have in the state. I also think this is a really fun idea by the Governor and I am hopeful that a lot of people sign up to participate. I am signed up, and will highlight my journey to 100 miles (of which I'm 1 mile in after yesterday's walk) on this blog.

Meanwhile, I was disappointed that there was more political support from Kansas City for the announcement. KCMO Parks Department Head Mark McHenry was in attendence, but there was no representation from the mayor's office or the city council. Also, news coverage from the mainstream media also was suprisingly light given that he was kicking off the campaign in Kansas City (the initial kickoff event in St. Louis was rained out last weekend).  

But I encourage people to sign up and check out what Missouri has to offer in the way of hiking, biking, equestrian and kayaking trails.

Website: 100 Missouri Miles

Twitter: @100MoMiles 

Brush Creek Trail

Ok. So, I've been awfully busy lately with another project that not only has kept me away from this blog, but also away from a lot of the activities I like to do. However, over the summer I saw that the city had been working on some portions of the Eastern part of the Brush Creek trail, so, last week I dusted off my bike and went for a ride along the newly finished part of the trail.

And I have to say, kudos to Kansas City for finishing this part of the trail and for doing a great job on it.

For those that don't know, the trail along Brush Creek starts around the plaza area -- and then runs out past the Kaufmann Gardens area. At that point, until recently, there were parts of the trail that existed, and parts that didn't. But at the Kaufmann gardens, you can take the trail across the Troost bridge to the South of the creek, then follow Volker for a few hundred yards, and then go back down to the creek, cross a foot bridge over the creek, and then continue east for several miles now along the North side of Brush Creek.

The trail follows the creek and goes under the major intersection bridges, Paseo, Prospect, 71 Highway, Cleveland, etc, -- but is a very pleasant ride/run. They've put in some nice wildlife areas along the creek, and even a huge, nice waterfall and an ampitheater. Honestly, I greatly enjoyed the ride and in places the trail actually resembles many of the great urban biking trails in this country. Seriously, it's that good.

The trail now functions as a continuous trail along the creek until it peters out just past Elmwood (there is an overlook that overlooks another waterfall area there) -- although you can cross Clever IV Boulevard and continue on the trail along Clever for several more miles (to about 35th street or so).

I snapped a few photos along the bike route -- they were taken with my iPhone, so I'm not going to win any awards for the photography, but I think it will give you a feel for parts of the trail.

Now, while the city and the parks department deserve some kudos for their work on this, there are still a few issues with the trail. Brush creek still has a LOT of trash in it -- which definitely hurts the feel of the ride. If the city can ever figure out a way to clean up Brush Creek, it will certainly impact how nice the trail is.

But I do recommend people use the trail -- it really is nice, and is much prettier and easier to navigate than the very popular Trolly Track trail.

Citizens have no input

This is going to end up being a rant. It's one measily story -- about not one of the most important topics in Kansas City, but I think, in a nutshell, it emcompasses almost everything that is wrong with politics in this city.

If you're a normal taxpaying citizen of the community, your opinion doesn't matter. Even if you get on a citizens committee, your opinion doesn't matter.  The city doesn't have to -- and won't likely -- listen to you.  At some point the government in this town quit caring about its residents, and now takes a "Daddy knows best attitude" toward the people.  And we need to fix it.

The Dog Park Debate

I quit caring much about the dog park in Sunnyside Park awhile ago. I was never the biggest plan of the proposal but even less of a fan of how it's been handled by our city officials.

Two years ago a group of citizens approached the parks board with the idea of building a dog park in Sunnyside Park in Waldo. They had raised $20,000 of their own money to help pay. They had crafted a design.  In a back room deal that I'm pretty sure violated open meetings laws, the parks board unanimously agreed on a proposal that required a dog park to be a certain minimum size, and that no dog park could exceed 20% of the size of the overall park.  The proposal essentially eliminated 90% of all of the parks in Kansas City from being able to contain an off-leash dog park -- including Sunnyside Park. 

After much debate, the Parks Board decided to create a citizens committee to make recommendations on potential dog park sites in the city.

For the next nearly two years, this committee met.  They studied parks based on Walkability, vegetation, topography, distance from programmed areas, rainwater management, availability of parking (it wouldn't be a KC discussion if we didn't discuss parking), restrooms and availability of water for a drinking fountain.

The committee wasn't swift in its findings, but it was thorough. And even though I don't agree with all of their recommendations, it was tough to find fault in their effort for their 47 page report.

Unless of course, you are our parks board. Which once again came back with a unanimous decision to createits own set of rules for the requirements of dog parks - -including that all dog parks must be no less than 5 acres big (this ignores the reality that Kansas City's only current dog park - -one that by everyone's assessment is extremely successfull - is only 3 1/2 acres big).  The new criteria virtually assure anyone living in on of the city's many older neighborhoods that will never get a dog park in their community -- based on an arbitrary size made up by 6 parks board appointees.

So while the Citizen's Committee created recommendations for up to 22 parks in the city that could be used for varying sizes of dog parks, the Parks Board came back with 6. The one in the "South Region" (nearest Sunnyside Park) that is recommeded is at South Oak Park.  While very close to Sunnyside Park, it's terrain is very wooded and would require the removal of 5 acres of trees to create the dog park -- making it so costly that it likely will never get done. The Citizens Committee ranked this park 12th best out of 15 parks in this region for suitability for the dog park. Nice.

The Parks Board essentially ignored the citizen committee's recommendations - wasting 2 years of time for a committee of 14 people. Daddy knows best. And the idea of creating a second dog park in the city of 500,000 people is on year 3 with virtually no progress.

Dog Parks

There have been a lot of comments about dog parks being for dogs, and parks for people, and all kinds of things on the internets. I want to set the record straight here. Dog parks are for dog owners as a place to take their dogs in the same way that Tennis Courts are for people who play tennis - -not for tennis rackets.  I've never quite understood why people think it's ok to build tennis courts with taxpayer money, disc golf courses,skateboard parks, playground equipment for kids, softball fields, soccer fields, bike trails, running trails and the vast array of things we put in our parks, but for some reason, not for dog owners. We share our park space. I don't play tennis -- but I think it's great that we have tennis courts for these people. I don't have kids, but like that kids have a place to play. Shared park space makes for a better city for everyone. But I don't quite get how a larger percentage of people can own dogs than have kids under the age of 12, or participate in most of the specific activities we put in parks and yet people who own dogs don't get much respect when it comes to their own space.  It doesn't make much sense to me.

In the 2008 citizen satisfaction survey, 51% of people said they don't feel safe in our city parks during the day.  90% don't at night. In large part this is because our parks are terribly underutilized and it isn't an odd occurrence to be in a city park and be the only one there.  Putting dog parks in many of our city parks would increase usage (see what it's done for Penn Valley park?) and the increased usage would increase the feeling of safety.  We're missing a huge opportunity with our under-utilized parks system.

Speaking of the parks system - -it should be noted that less than 50% of the population in the Citizen satisfaction survey were satisfied with every single element of the parks and recreation district (except the location of the parks). And only 18% of citizens are happy with our appointed boards, including the parks board.

But is anyone listening to the citizens?

Mark Funkhouser

Three years ago, mayor Mark Funkhouser announced his new parks board and it was with great satisfaction that he declared that this would be a non-elitest group (implying that the old board was). But since then, the board has been infested with the same old same old (or worse than the old group) problems. It started with the problems (and eventual stepping down) of Francis Semler who was a member of the minute men group and has manifested itself through an entire group of people who make snap, rash decisions, who put arbitrary limits in place with no rationale at all, and who seem more interested in using power to settle personal vendettas against other people than actually following any type of real public input and public service. It's been a real disgrace to this city in so many ways.

"Are we gong to disappoint people?" asked Parks Board President John Fierro.  "Of course.  We disappoint people every Tuesday when we meet here." 

It shouldn't be that way.

We must make the change

The citizens of this city need to take back their government. At some point over the past few decades we became a a group of people that fears their government -- when it should be the government that fears us. They work for us: the voters, the taxpayers. We need to demand better. We should no longer allow a few high-dollar campaign donors to raise enough money to keep electing THEIR candidates into office. We need to vote in OUR people. This may mean voting for the person with less money, without the snazzy ad campaign and signs. It may take going to forums, meeting the candidates, reading their websites and really getting to know them outside of the pages of the Kansas City Star. But the citizens need to do it.  The information is too readily available now online and in blogs for us to continue to make bad decisions on candidates who don't represent us -- or who think they can appoint a board that doesn't need to listen to its constituents -- or its own appointed citizen committees. 

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm tired of living in a city where the citizens don't matter....and we somehow accept it. 

This story is only about dog parks....but the same thing happens daily in virtually every area of our governing body.

Shame on us.

Tackling the tough problems

I just got this in my inbox. All I can really think is "really?!?"

This is a ceremony. For a sign. To discourage people from feeding geese.

I'm glad the parks board is tackling the tough issues with real solutions to real problems.

Now, how about that dog park committee you promised us in August of 2007. Whose last meeting minutes that were posted were from February of 2008.  How's that coming?

Maybe they should combine the two initiatives. If there are geese causing a lot of problems in a park, maybe they could put an off-leash dog area there. The dogs would no doubt run off all the geese. Two problems solved.

But nope. A sign. That will solve it.  Can't wait to attend the sign posting ceremony. I'll be the one with the bag of bread crumbs.

Kansas City Citizen Satisfaction Survey

The Star announced today that the city has just released its 2008 Citizen Satisfaction Survey. It certainly is interesting timing -- a) right after the election, not before. I'm assuming that this was an effort to not remind everyone how disgruntled they are in hopes of passing the light rail vote and b) right after the election of the first non-white as President in the history o fthis country and the survey could more easily get buried in headlines a bit because there is other stuff going on.

There aren't a ton of surprises in the survey, however the city saw pretty significant drops in satisfaction in 32 areas of city services.  Ouch. 

Sixteen areas got below a 20% approval rating.

Six of those are directly related to programs and availability of programs that are the responsibility of the parks department (swimming pools, city sponsored athletic programs, ease of registering for programs, etc).

Five are directly related to basic infastructure issues (building, road, sidewalk maintenance and cleanliness).   

Two are directly related to codes enforcement including abandoned buildings and overgrown weeds.

Certainly I think the mayor's declarationg of war on weeds and metal plates has raised public awareness of how bad these situations are in the city...but suffice it to say, they have not seemed to show improvement at this point. I certainly think the codes enforcement issues seem to have gotten worse over the past couple of years, and not better.

Two are particularly disturbing as they show a concern for the lack of effectiveness of city boads and commissions and the amount of public involvement in local decision-making.  Three other areas just barely made the 20% cutoff with "how ethically the city conducts business", "overall quality of leadership by the city's elected officals" and "effectivenesss of the city manager" all scoring at 23% or below.

I would certainly say that the lack of satisfaction with the administration and the council as a whole certainly came out in the disapproval of the city council and the mayor's Light Rail plan yesterday.

Overall, the city was graded fairly well as a place to live and a place to work -- but horribly as a place to raise children. Concerns over the amount of crime -- particularly in eastern neighborhoods and in public parks at night -- and no doubt the schools (even though they are measured in the study) are playing a role in that.

There's a lot of data in here -- and I'm sure I'll be pulling out nuggets for awhile, but thought it was worth sharing.

Making KC attractive for those with options (part 4)

Yesterday I covered the first four areas where KC can improve and is doing well in keeping up with what people view as being the most important part of their quality of life. Now I'm going to address the next 3 items.

Culture/Leisure

With a few exceptions, Kansas City excels here -- and is getting better. Kansas City has great concert venues. The Sprint Center has been hosting a wide variety of events and concets. The Midland has been recently remodelled and by all reports is beautiful. The Uptown is an awesome venue and is hosting more concerts now as well. The Music Hall and Starlight Theater continue to bring in travelling broadway-style shows -- and Starlight has been hosting a lot of great concerts as well. The recent Music Hall renovations will help them attract shows they were unable to host only a few years ago. 

The new performing arts center is rapidly taking shape and will be a beautiful addition to downtown -- on top of hosting  a wealth of events from the Kansas City Symphony, Lyric Opera and the KC Ballet. Add this to smaller venues and Jazz Venues like the Gem and the Folly Theater and we have a great array of music choices.

The creative class in Kansas City is also making national headlines with a host of local art galleries in the Crossroads and now venturing out to neighborhoods in midtown and along Troost. For art on a larger scale, the Nelson Atkins Museum continues to be a world class art museum and the Bloch Building addition has been getting rave reviews. Museums like the Steamboat Arabia Museum, Science City, the Negro League Baseball Museum and American Jazz Museum at 18th & Vine, and the newly renovated World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial combine to make KC a haven for wonderful cultural opportunities.   

If it's bars, night life and great food your after, the Power & Light District, Westport,  Crossroads,  Plaza, and Martini Corner offer a diverse range of bars, restaurants, night clubs and fine dining -- including many nationally renowned fine dining restaurants and chefs.

No other place in the metro can compare, and few places in the midwest outside of Chicago can compare to what Kansas City brings to the table. If residents can continue to support the cultural places and restaurants, and the private sector can continue to invest in our museums and cultural centers, KC will continue to provide a lot of things to do for the residents here.

Health

Kansas City has a lot it can work on in this arena. Kansas City ranks very poorly in outdoor activities. Many of its parks are woefully underutilized. Many tennis courts don't have nets on them, there are few biking/running trails, almost no bike lanes on roads, few hiking trails and little neighborhood walkability.

However, we have a nice roadmap from which to work with for making up for this gap. Several years ago, Loose Park was given a large private grant that provide for increased care, maintenance and beautification for Loose Park. In the process, Loose Park has become the crown jewell of the KCMO parks system. 

But better yet, the better maintenance of city parks has expanded beyond Loose Park. A couple of years ago,Gillham Park was added to the "increased improvements" list. The park has since gotten an upgrade in new playground equipment that is frequently used. The trees and brush in the southern part of the park were cleared out and much work has been done to improve the running paths and stairs in the park (with more work to come).  Picnic tables have also been added to the south part of the park. The result has been a dramatic increase in park usage -- more running, walking, biking, dog walking, frisbee tossing, etc. And the increased usage has caused people to feel more safe -- which has FURTHER increased park usage.  More help for Gillham Park is in the works as they will soon be adding more playground equipment and replacing the outdated swimming pool with a new splash park.

The momentum has continued. Last spring, a private resident donated money for the same type of service for Hyde Park (the actual park, not the neighborhood).  The funds have been used to rebuild crumbling stairs, repave tennis courts, more frequent mowings, and brush removal. The net result? A park that used to be a safe haven for the homeless, people doing drugs, and even an o ccassional prostitution deal (yeah, I'm still scarred for having stumbled upon that) has become a park used for all sorts of activites -- tennis, mountain bikers, walkers, dog walkers, movies in the park, picnics, etc. The pictures in this section were all take a couple of weeks ago of the new and improved Hyde Park.

If you include the idea of private dollars going to fund improved parks that will encourage people to get out and be active, the possibilities are endless for improvements. Veterinary groups, dog food companies, and animal health companies could fund the building of dog parks.  Bicycle groups, or manufactures, could help fund more and improved bike trails in places like Swope Park or the completion of the Brush Creek trail. Companies that market to kids could improve playground equipment in city parks (Build A Bear Workshop and Kaboom! have partnered to do this in many neighborhoods across the country already). We could hit up running shoe or apparell companies for support for more, better and lighting for running trails. Neighborhoods and private citizens could fund smaller neighborhood parks. You get the idea. Promoting this type of private involvement in our parks, and removing red tape for these projects, would be a great solution to improving these park spaces.  And the increased park usage would help lower crime rates in these parks too...an added bonus.

Meet the Neighbors

Again, I think Kansas City shines in this area -- but there is always room to grow. Strong neighborhood organizations are essential for KC - -built around parks, churches, community centers, etc. There are many strong neighborhood groups - Hyde Park, Union Hill, Ivanhoe, Westport, Westside, Scarritt, Squire Park etc are great neighborhood groups that are devoted to improving the areas they serve. This is important for people -- especially folks with young families. If we can continue to promote strong neighborhood groups -- particularly in low-income areas, the whole city will improve and benefit.  But I will say, that I feel more connected in my neighborhood now than I ever have in any other place I've lived in my entire life. Front porches and unattached (or non-existent) garages are a huge improvement socially in neighborhoods to back patios and attached garages that exist in the suburbs.

Tomorrow, we'll talk about how to help the urban poor.

KC Dog Parks Committee

On November 27th, the Dog Park committee appointed by the Kansas City City Council and the KCMO Parks board will begin meeting to provide recommendations for dog parks in Kansas City.   Improved usage of city parks has been on Mayor Funkhouser's agenda from early on in his tenure, and I know that my post recommending increased penetration of dog parks made it on his desk as a possible solution.

Initially, the city parks board passed a policy that would prevent a dog park from going into a park that was smaller than 100 square acres.  However, they waived that policy awaiting the recommendation of the park's board. 

I cannot stress enough how important I think dog parks are for Kansas City.  Our parks are completely underutilized.  About 45% of the people in our city have dogs...and in a city of nearly 600,000 people, we have 1 dog park.  That's not nearly enough.

There is a great story in the Washington Post about dog parks in the Washington DC area (hat tip to Deb Hipp from Woof passing this along).  For many people in other areas of the country, dog parks have become a fabulous meeting ground for the people in the neighborhood.  Single people who are new to town often meet their neighbors, friends (and story mentions several spouses) at their neighborhood dog park.  They've become a popular meeting place.  And as neighbor's meet neighbors, and hang out in the city's parks, they become better neighborhood watchdogs (which brings down crime) and increases satisfaction of living in areas.  There is also anecdotal evidence that points to neighborhood dog parks actually increasing home values significantly as people look for this amenity.

The Post article has a lot of great quotes in it that sum up my thoughts on a lot of the opponent's argurments against the dog parks.

"At first people questioned why we were building parks for dogs", said Tim White, director of the Fairfax County (VA) Park Authority.  "But they're not for dogs.  They're for people.  Saying you're building a dog park for dogs is like saying you're building a golf course for golf balls."

"We realized a long time ago that these parks weren't about the dogs so much but about people coming together and building communities," said Steve Temmermand, division chief for Arlington Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources. "There are potluck supper clubs, book clubs, people exchange movies, all kinds of stuff. It's an entire social network. People have met their boyfriends, girlfriends and spouses at these parks."

In addition to being good for dog owners, well exercised and socialized dogs make people MUCH safer from potential dog bites and attacks.

I've provided a lot of thoughts in the past about what I feel the committee should do, but for the committee, here are a couple of my recommendations:

1) Build a couple of regional-sized dog parks, similar in scope to the one current city dog park at Penn Valley Park.  Using a couple of the city's larger regional parks like Hodge Park, Minor Park, Swope Park and Barkley Riverfront Park would provide large regional dog parks.

2) Get these large parks largely funded through advertising opportunities for businesses.  Sponsorships of certain things like benches, a bulletin board, fencing, trees, etc would be good advertising for animal-related companies and would offset some of the costs of the parks.  Culver City, CA provided a fabulous model for how this might look to offset these costs to the general public.

3) Once these are complete (which should be sooner rather than later), neighborhoods should be allowed to propose neighborhood off-leash areas.  While many of them can be fenced, I don't think fenced off-leash areas are a requirement.  As long as people are able to control their dog and get it to come to them using hand signals or verbal commands, then they should be fine running in an off-leash area without a fence.  These should all be subject to neighborhood approval, but should be open for discussion.

4) One final thought on this is that there are many areas of the city that could be regionally set as dog parks.  Here is an example of a dog park in Toronto  (hat tip Marjorie) that is a seasonal dog park.  During the spring, summer, and early fall, the area of the park is a used for baseball leagues.  However, once the baseball league season is over, the baseball park is completely unused.  So they have put up a temporary snow fence to fence off the area so that for 6 months of the year it can be used as a dog park.  Driving around our city, there are dozens of these softball and baseball fields that get no use from October -March and could be fenced off for use as dog parks.    Just another way of meeting Mayor Funkhouser's goal of increasing usage of the city's park space.

Hopefully our committee that is headed by architect and former city council hopeful Mel Solomon will come up with some good recommendations.  Even more hopefully, our city appointed parks board will listen to their good recommendations and follow through with them. 

It would increase the overall use of parks, provide a service to nearly 1/2 of Kansas Citians, improve neighborhood safety by having more people out and about and increase safety through better exercised and socialized dogs. And should be able to be done with minimal cost from taxpayers.  It's a complete win for everyone.  Let's make it happen.

Bad day for Marky Mark's PR Machine Today

Marky Mark (Funkhouser) and his hand-appointed Parks Board (for now known as the Funky Bunch) are a PR nightmare at every corner.  For something that seems so non-controversial, this parks board has sure found a way to be a disaster for the Funkhouser administration, and he has no one to blame but himself.

For the past several months, local people in Waldo have been put forth a proposal for a new dog park in Sunnyside Park to serve the Waldo and Brookside neighborhoods.  The folks met all kinds of demands to overcome the few, but vocal, opposition to the park.  So today, at the Parks and Rec meeting, the Parks Board decided to propose an amendment to the current Off-Leash Dog Program. The new amendments feature a couple of provisions that basically ensure that there will be no such thing as a neighborhood dog park in KCMO -- in spite of evidence that there is demand for dog parks in other cities and they actually have a propensity to raise property values.  You can read more about those amendments here.

What was marvelous about the amendments were the complete under-handedness and lack of openness that they came with.  The news the the public hearing about the Sunnyside Dog Park was cancelled and that these Amendments were going to be voted on came on the Parks and Rec Website at 11:00 today.

When someone mentioned that violated their agenda policy of 24 hours notice they smuggly stated "well, it was posted in our lobby yesterday" -- yes, because the average Kansas Citian passes through the Parks and Rec lobby probably several times a day.  Nice job getting the word out.

It was also brought out that apparently these amendments and discussion all occurred behind closed doors (since they never happened at a public meeting) -- which is yet another violation of the requirement that these types of meetings are open to the public (yeah, that'd be a Constitution thing).

Then, the amendments were passed with ZERO public discussion -- or at least none that didn't come while Fierro was banging his gavel trying to maintain order.  As soon as the new amendments passed, Fierro looked over at one of the other folks in the room and said something to the effect of "Is it safe to assume that Sunnyside Park no longer qualifes for the dog park." The Person said "yes" and Fierro replied, "well, then let's move on."

If the news stations (who were all present) come back with a newscast that shows anything short of a circus show tonight, it will have been some super-fine editing in the works.

This is going to be a (yet another) PR debacle for the Marky Mark's appointed Funky bunch. Marky Mark based his campaign off of public openness -- that didn't happen in this case.  He also called out early in his administration that he badly wants to increase use of the city's public park spaces, and then had his parks department, behind closed doors, turn down an opportunity where scores more people would be using Sunnyside Park -- and funding all of the renovations with PRIVATE FUNDS.  And to make it worse, they've made sure to continue to make it virtually impossible for other private groups to build more parks.

Meanwhile, Marky Mark made a comment at the announcement of the Park's board that previous board was elitist - -and THEN, allows Aggie Stackhouse (who it's my understanding was the driver behind these amendments) to drive this plan into the ground because she is friends with one of the few opponents of the plan.

Whoever is handling the PR at City Hall doesn't get paid enough to deal with this...it's another debacle, and there is no way to spin what happened out there today.  I voted for the Marky Mark, and have supported him, but allowing this type of thing to continue within the Funky Bunch.  It's time to break up the band.

Editor's Note: Looks like the new dog park guidelines are already up on the web.  It's amazing that it was proposed, voted on, and on the web in the amount of time it takes to sell out an Elton John Concert (90 minutes) but it took them 21 hours to update the website to let people know the agenda item change.

A Solution for Mayor Funkhouser

Yesterday, KMBC TV ran an article about how Mayor Funkhouser is concerned that citizens don't feel safe in the city's parks. 

I won't get into the complete absurdity that the "news" station focused its story on Loose Park -- easily among the city's safest parks -- as opposed to focusing on the parks that have even bigger issues.

But I do want to propose a solution...that actually improves two problems in one.

One of the reasons that people don't necessarily feel safe in many of the city's parks is because most of the parks have relatively few people in them. If there are other people around, they feel safe, because if "something happened" there would be someone there to help them.  So as people quit going to parks, parks become less populated, which makes them feel less safe, and the cycle continues.  There is nothing that makes someone feel unsafe like being the only person in an empty area with a lot of trees/wooded areas around for unsavories to hide and stash their bodies.

So let's create something that will instantly draw people to the parks -- getting bodies in the parks will perpetuate itself.

An easy way to do this is to build a lot of smaller-sized dog parks (small in size, but not necessarily for small dogs -- although some should be for that too).   Roughly 45% of Kansas Citians own dogs...most would love a close, convenient dog park for their dogs to run, play and socialize with other dogs.

The City of Calgary, Ontario has 83 total dog parks in the city -- a community that's roughly double the population of Kansas City, MO -- which has 1 dog park and is working on a 2nd. 

Calgary's rush to build a lot of dog parks has happened over the past 15 years to solve a completely different problem.  In 1985, Calgary had a peak in dog-related incidents -- at approximately 2,000 incidences.  Since then, they've adopted other policies and built over 4,500 acres of dog parks (totalling approximately 25% of their total park space).  In 2006, they had only 400 dog-related incidents in spite of doubling the human and dog population in that time.  Even with that much dog-park land, Bill Bruce, the head of animal control in Calgary, says that their off-leash areas are almost maxed out. (Editor's Note: I would like to note that Mr. Bruce is going to be coming to Kansas City on September 15 for the Canine Legislation Conference to talk about the success of Calgary's dog ordinance -- in a talk that we do intend to open up to local civic leaders who would be interested in finding out about how a real affective ordinance works -- so put it on your calendar if you're interested).

So let's see, if we use a larger portion of Kansas City's 9,776 acres of park space to dog parks, not only would they increase attendence at parks (that everyone benefits from, because with some of the park space in use, the rest of it becomes "safer" because there are other people around), we can increase the usage of public parks, AND help increase the socialization of the city's dogs and make the city's citizens safer from non-socialized dogs.

If money is the problem, let's use Mark Forsythe's idea (damn you Mark for beating me to this as I SHOULD be both a better dog person and advertising person than you) presented here (see Nov 10 entry) and sell advertising on the fencing to companies looking to reach dog people (there are a lot of them). 

Problems solved.  More used parks.  Safer parks.  More dog-friendly areas and thus fewer dog attacks.  Mostly paid for by advertisers. 

Just a thought.