Toellner Tells it

Ideas I Love For Kansas City: Neighborhood Bus Shelters

In Kansas City, like in many urban communities, a significant percentage of the population relies on public transportation to move around the city. Because they are economically poor, or simply because they prefer to not have the expense of an automobile, transit is their primary form of communication.

Unfortunately, using public transit isn't always easy or inviting.

This is the bus stop that is closest to my house (ok, it could be questioned whether this is "closest" as I'm close to several stops, but this is indicative of almost all of the stops). This is a bus stop -- which really amounts to a sign, on a pole, next to a trash can. The vast majority of stops in this city resemble this.

Unfortunately, for the 25% of the time when the weather isn't good in Kansas City (or more this week), these stops are far from inviting. While many of the more popular routes (like the Max lines) have covered bus shelters, most urban bus stops don't. If it rains, you're going to be wet when you get to your destination. Bummer.

However, in some areas of the country, cities are partnering with neighborhoods and businesses to help create bus SHELTERS for the city. The shelters are designed to capture the essence of a neighborhood, and are paid for by those in the neighborhood (who are also likely to be using or benefiting from that particular stop). 

How would this makes stops more inviting if stops in the finanical district had a money-themed shelter? Or how about fresh-produce themed spots at the city market?  What if the shelter design borrowed from the shirtwaist style houses in certain neighborhoods?  What if the bus stops provided SHELTER while people waited for the buses? Would riders be more likely to stop off at a local business if they would be protected from the elements on the re-ride to their final destination?

It seems like a simple approach that the city/neighborhoods/business could work together to help make using transit more inviting and customizable for their neighborhood. It might be fun. It would be interesting. And it would certainly make transit ridership more inviting. 

H/T: Good

TIF for new Aldi location at 39th and Prospect

Today, Kansas City, Mo announced that it was going to TIF $5 million worth of spending on a new 16,500 square foot building that will house an Aldi store at 39th and Prospect.

Let me start with the good news.

1) I'm completely supportive of TIF money being used in the Urban core of Kansas City to help bring jobs, development, and resources to our badly-in-need urban core.

2) The new Aldi store will bring an estimated 13 jobs to this area of town.

3) Aldi is a great (and growing) brand, that serves low-cost goods. These types of low-cost food are in desperate need in this neighborhood that is in the middle of one of Kansas City's many Food Deserts.

So on many fronts, I applaud the city for funding this much-needed development in one of the city's high-need areas.

On the flip side, the building pictured above is an old Grocery Store that is in a strip mall at Linwood and Prospect -- a mere 7 blocks away. Could we not, less expensively, get a new grocery store to move into an old grocery store space just a couple of blocks away?  This would have helped end the blight of an abandoned building, helped the store get open sooner, and been less expensive for the city to help fund since it was an existing buidling.  Seems like it could have been an easier solution that could have left more available TIF funds for other projects instead of just throwing money at the situation for money's sake.  Not that this is a bad idea, just that it seems like there is a better, cheaper option.

Kansas City makes owning chickens easier - and why this is good for the Urban Core

Earlier today, the Kansas City City Council changed the rules regarding back yard chickens. They changed the provision that didn't allow chickens within 100 feet of neighbors (which, frankly, made owning them in many neighborhoods impossible) to allowing them within 100 feet of neighbors, as long as the neighbors consented.

To protect some concerns, they put in provisions to allow for inspections, mandate proper disposal of manure, and (unfortunately) prohibits the onsite sale of eggs. (Last year, the city allowed for the on-premise sale of garden vegetibles. I have no idea why selling tomatoes at my house is ok, but eggs is not).

The move by the council is another step forward for urban agriculture in the city - and I applaud the city for taking positive steps forward in this regard. It is no secret that Kansas City's urban core has a lot of abandoned lots that can be put to good use -- and much of the urban core is in what the USDA has termed "Food Deserts" -- where there is limited access to fresh food.  Allowing for alterantive uses for these empty lots, as well as providing another urban food sources, is a solid way of solving both problems.

Meanwhile, some cities, such as Birmingham, are combining the urban gardening, the problem with food deserts, the abundance of empty lots, and children who have become increasingly far removed from their food supply, and started teaching urban gardening in schools -- with very good early success. 

KCUR's Jabulani Lefall on his morning radio program Central Standard has also been tackling this subject this week -- where yesterday he interviewed local youth that were also doing local, urban food production.

So here's to Kansas City's City Council, at least the majority of them, seeing the positive side of urban farming and again relaxing rules and making it easier for these small, urban farmers.  

 

KCMO School District needs to exercise nimbleness in reuse of schools

Earlier today, the Star ran an article discussing some options for a couple of the now-abandoned KCMO area schools. One of the options is a proposal by Academie Lafayette (a very successful French immersion charter school in the city, now with over 600 students) to take over Longan School at 3421 Cherry St.

According to the article, Academie Lafayette is seeking an answer on their proposal to take over the school this week because they need time to upgrade the facility (which has been abandoned now for more than a year) and accept increased enrollment -- or seek other options.

Now, make no mistake, this isn't a rushed decision by Academie Lafayette. Discussion about taking over Longan School has been going on for at least 3 months now.  Academie Lafette wants to take over the abandoned school.  The neighborhood is as close to unanimously in support of them taking over the abandoned school as could possibly ever happen.  And the KCMO school board is supposedly eager to not let their 30 newly abandoned schools got to good use and not sit and rot like other abandoned schools have.

So, what's the hold up?

While I respect that the school distric wants to make the best use of their school buildings, there seems to be little that could be a better fit for a school building, in a neighborhood, than a successful school.

Apparently other schools are also up for re-use proposals as Alta Vista has a proposal in for Douglass School (2640 Bellview) and Academy of Integrated Arts has a proposal in for Franklin School at 3400 Highland. 

If the school district is to repurpose these schools, they must use a respectable amount of nimbleness in doing so. They cannot make the red tape of using the schools be too big of a barrier to reusing these schools and not only preventing them from blighting neighborhoods, but actually making them USEFUL for the neighborhoods.

This is a can't lose. Make it happen. Because blocking progress is everything the school board said they wouldn't do when they shut down the schools a year ago.

 

Kansas City's Food Deserts

Earlier this week, the USDA released its latest online tool that they're calling the nation's Food Deserts.

Essentialy, a "food desert" is any place where there is both low income and low access to food -- as defined by the place having 20% or more of the population living below the poverty line AND there isn't a supermarket within a 1 mile radius in urban areas.

Living more than 1 mile from a grocery store for someone who is low-income and who likely doesn't have a car makes having access to fresh food very problematic. The map, to the left (click to enlarge) shows the food deserts in the Kansas City area (they're the areas in pink). Obviously a large part of the metro lives in a food desert -- particularly in Jackson and Wyandotte counties.  Based on their data table, 83,477 people in 31 census tracks in Jackson County alone live in a food desert. 

As our nation faces an obesity epidemic - particularly among low-income children -- a look at the availability of fresh food is a major part of the equation. People will not eat fresh food if they don't have access to it -- and too many Jackson Countians do not.

It may be time for Kansas City to look at how to increase the number of grocers in our urban core -- possibly by creating a separate type of business that sells food but not liquor -- that could be eligible to receive tax incentives for opening up business in these select census tracks.

It could be a good start to making urban core neighborhoods more livable for low-income, auto-less, families -- and save money on the back end in public-provided health care.

H/T: Good

KC's eTax passes by large margin, but what are (or should be) next steps?

Yesterday, Kansas City voters voted to keep its earnings tax. Keeping the tax earned a whopping 78% of the nearly 74,000 votes cast (in what was a surprisingly high voter turnout given the one-issue on the ballot and potential voter fatigue after having 3 elections in the past 2 months).

The issue is slated to appear on the ballot again in 2016.

It seems that the consensus among folks at city hall is a sense of relief that it passed. Admittedly, it seems as if there couldn't have been a worse time for the city to lose the revenu from the eTax without any programs in place to replace that revenue -- and with budgets having already been slashed by $200 million a year because of the down economy.

But what's next for city leaders?

It seems that most in political circles seem to think the status quo on the tax is A-OK. Others have gone so far as to want to petition Jefferson City to remove the requirements of Prop A so we no longer have to vote to keep the eTax.

Sadly, there seems to be no real conversation of analyzing the eTax to see if it is really a good idea for Kansas City.  Voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of the eTax because it was the only option on the table to drive necessary revenue. Being the only option on the table is different from being the BEST option. And city hall has a responsibility in the next 5 years to create the best option.

And I think most, if they're honest with themselves, will realize the eTax is not it.

Over the past 4 decades, Kansas City has lost nearly 10% of its population -- dropping from 507,087 population in 1970 to 459,787 in 2010.  This population loss is actually much worse than this in the urban core, as their losses have been somewhat offset by population gains North of the River.

Meanwhile, Kansas City has also lagged behind other areas of the metro when it comes to job growth. Over the past 15 years, the metropolitan area has grown total jobs by about 7% (compared to around 15% for the US average).  However, almost all of the job growth has been on the Kansas side of the state line -- with the Kansas counties growing by about 17%, while the Jackson County part of KCMO lost 15% of its jobs (KCMO as a whole grew by about 4.2% -- again due to gains North of the river).

Proponents of the eTax have (rightfully) pointed to other factors like crime, poor schools, and more aggressive tax incentives from the state of Kansas as the reasons for the declines in population and jobs. As with most things, there are a variety of factors at play here. 

However, it should also be nearly impossible to ignore that most other cities that have city income taxes are also struggling.  The list of cities with an earnings tax is a virtual who's who of struggling cities: Birmingham, AL; Wilmington, DE; Louisville, KY; Baltimore, MD; Detroit, MI; Cleveland, OH; Cincinnati, OH; Pittsburgh, PA;  Toledo, OH; St. Louis, MO. 

The few cities that do have an earnings tax that seem to be doing well have other factors at play -- certainly New York City is a far different situation than Kansas City, Portland has a regional earnings tax, so it remains on a level playing-field among its regional counterparts, and Washington DC gets the benefit of not having a state income tax that surrounding areas have to pay.

In fact, over the past decade, of the 6 cities that have suffered the largest population declines across the country, 5 of them (Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh aand Toledo) all have an earnings tax.  Only New Orleans -- whose losses are tied to Hurricane Katrina - does not. Sure, there are other factors you can point to, but the reality is, that all of these cities have struggled to replace their large industries with smaller start-up companies.

While most reports show that large corportations seldom use the earnings tax as a deciding factor in where to relocate, it is a much larger factor among smaller companies -- the type that don't get large tax breaks, or are impacting only a few employees. These are the small companies that get often unnoticed, but are the ones that often grow to become the next large companies in a city.  And KC is losing out on most of them.

According to a recent report by the Show Me Institute, they are estimating that the city's earnings tax in KC led to the city population between 1990 and 2000 to grow by 1.5 percentage points less and for employment to grow by 2.3 percentage points less due to the earnings tax (with efforts made to control for other factors).  While we can discuss whether we trust the Show Me Institute, or their methods of figuring this, I don't think those swings over a 10 year period would surprise anyone.  And in a 10 year snap shot, they seem fairly inconsequential -- but if you multiply the numbers by 4 (to include the number of decades we've had the eTax), you start seeing a pretty large shift in business from one city, to others.

These are the type of conversations the city should be having over the next 5 years -- to come up with a better solution to the eTax. Instead, I get the sense that the city will just assume everything is just great, that no changes are needed or wanted, and continue on with the status quo....which is Kansas City continuing to lose jobs and population across the state line.

A couple of months ago, the KC Downtowners Blog had a nice analogy:

"With its complete dependence on the earnings tax, City Hall is like a heroin addict. Its short-term desire for the next fix overwhelms any thoughts of long-term health. Meanwhile, the drug is slowly poisoning the body."

Woody Cozad, who has been a very vocal critic of the eTax, made similar statements in last night's concession speech of sorts:

Tonight, a small minority of Kansas Citians choose to continue with an earnings tax that is driving small businesses out and pushing homeowners away. For the first time in 40 years Kansas Citians had a discussion about whether or not the earnings tax makes sense. Thousands of Kansas Citians have decided it does not.

“No one disputes that our city would be more attractive to small businesses without an earnings tax and no one wants to cut police or firefighters. The dispute is about whether or not we can find a better way to fund our city. 125 of the largest cities have done it and Kansas City should too.

“Now that the campaign is over, our leaders have an opportunity to take an honest look at the problem without the hyperbole. The time has come for those paying in to get the same level of services that are being spent out, on both sides of the river. Tonight we extend an olive branch to our leaders. Commit to finding a better way forward and we will work with you. However if they choose to continue this regressive tax then this is not the end of this campaign; it’s just the intermission.”

Instead of acknowledging that Cozad may have a point, the Kansas City Star's Campaign manager columnist Yael Abouhalkah called Cozad "graceless" and "insulting" and the campaign to end the eTax as "snake oil" and the olive branch comment "laughable".

Hopefully the folks at city hall will engage in a real debate at city hall about the merits of the eTax vs potentially better forms of revenue generation.  My fear is that with the margin of vote, it will be easier for them to just dismiss KC's problems with growing new business and continue on with the status quo. And that would be a shame.

 

Some Staggering Statistics on Martin Luther King Jr's Birthday

Forty three years ago Martin Luther King Jr was killed - -fighting to end segregation in this country. Even though his efforts dramatically changed the legal rights of minorities in this country, sadly, our schools may be even more segregated than they were before.

According to a study by UCLA, the average white child in America attends a school that is 77% white, and where just 32% of the student body lies in poverty.

Fifty four percent of White students attend a school with more than 80% of the students who are White. More than 70% of White students attend a school that is 70% or more white.

The average Black child attends a school that is only 29% white, and 59% poor.

Latinos go to schools that are 27% White and 57% poor -- and 1/3 ofBblack and Latino children sit in a classrooom that are 90-100% Black and Latino.

The Kansas City school district resembles this continued segregation, with 87% of the students in the KCMO school district being Black (63.9%) or Hispanic (24.7%).  On the flip side, 92.5% of the students in the Blue Valley School District, and 91% in the Shawnee Mission School District, are White.

Sadly, 43 years after Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, and in spite of the some much needed changes in laws, our schools are not really less segregated than they were prior to his death. 

H/T: Dana Goldstein via Marginal Revolution.

Opposing Project Based Section 8 is opposing bad policy

It doesn't come as much surprise to me that my post last week about the Section 8 Housing along Armour was met with skepticism. I think it is easy for people who are not familiar with Section 8, or not familiar with the area, to dismiss the neighborhood's concerns about these apartments as a case of racism, or a situation where the people in Hyde Park are trying to force out their lower income neighbors.

But if people care enough to actually investigate the situation, I think they will realize that bad policy is bad policy, regardless of who is complaining about it. No one wants to live in a high crime area -- not people in the Hyde Park neighborhood, nor the low-income people who live in the Section 8 apartments. This is clearly not an us against them type of setup --because high crime isn't good for anyone: the residents of the apartments, the neighborhood, or the city.

The Problem

There are many apartmens along this eight block stretch of Armour, however, there is a pretty dramatic differential in crime between those that are designated as project-based Section 8, vs those that are market rate (some of which allow for Section 8 vouchers).  The following is a list of the apartment units along Armour, the number of units in each building, and the number of 911 calls in the first nine months of the 2009.  I'm working off of a chart for this, so I don't have exact numbers, so I've estimated the numbers:

Apartment Units 911 Calls

Bainbridge (Sec 8)      160    610

Homestead (Sec 8)  70 250

Georgian Court (Sec 8)    90    180

Kenwood (Sec 8)     60 160

Locust St Apts (Sec 8) 40 110

Newbern (Market Rate) 130 70

Armour Towers (MR)    80 40

Hamilton (MR) 70 40

Armour Flats (MR)   40 50

Sombart (MR) 40 20

Obviously the Section 8 apartments are drawing a out-of-line number of 911 calls based on these numbers -- with each unit averaging 3.1 calls per unit, where each unit in the market rate apartments averages .6 calls per unit. High concentrations of low-income individuals --for a variety of social reasons -- is a magnet for higher crime.

This isn't just 911 calls -- the same ends up being true for actual crimes -- including shootings, strong armed robberies, rapes and assaults. This distinction is why the corner where the Homestead and the Bainbridge are located has become an aggravated assault hot spot in the KCPD quarterly homicide report You can view the map highlighting the apartment area here.

No one wins when crime is this high. Let's look at the victims.

The people who live in the Section 8 Apartments

When I say no one wants to live in an area that is a highly concentrated area of poverty, no one if affected more than the people who live in the aprtments. Most of the people who live in these apartments are nice people -- they're just financially strapped. They don't have many options on where they live -- they're sort of stuck in having to live in Section 8 housing. And in this case, they're stuck living in very violent section 8 housing.

When you watch the report by KCTV5 about the most recent shooting in the Kenwood Apartments, listen to the woman who is scared for her children and scared to have her name or face on tv. When people ask why the reseidents are not stepping up, this is a large part of why. They're scared. They're under-privilaged. And they're largely ignored by the powers at city hall. So why risk their lives and retaliation by stepping forward when no one will likely listen to them. Many are, but many, justifiably, are not.

Many of these people would gladly move, but do not have the resources to relocate and very few options available to them. They are trapped, prisoners in their own homes.

This is one of the reasons HUD no longer promotes project-based section 8 housing and now favors the voucher system that promotes mixed-use living. Here's what they have to say:

Most housing professionals agree that concentrating assisted-housing for low- and very low-income Americans in dense, urban areas is not an effective use of scarce affordable housing resources. Over the past decade, professionals in the affordable housing industry have turned increasingly to mixed-income housing as an alternative to traditional assisted-housing initiatives. Mixed-income housing is an attractive option because, in addition to creating housing units for occupancy by low-income households, it also contributes to the diversity and stability of American communities.

Voucher-based section 8 allows low-income residents choose where they want to live -- which allows them to live, not just in an apartment building with only low-income people. Studies have shown that the ability for low-income people to get back on their feet faster is enhanced by living in lower crime, mixed income, housing.

The Residents of the Surrounding Neighborhood

Crime has a negative impact on quality of life. Most people like the idea of being able to walk their dogs, go for an evening jog, and living in a relatively crime-free neighborhood.  While a lot of the crime remains in the apartments themselves, a lot of it also filters out into the neighorhood. The fear of crime, burglarly or worse, definitely hurts quality of life.  It decreases neighborhood walkability and also decreases home values.

If the crime becomes too intolerable, many of the people in the surrounding neigbhorhood have the ability to relocate to a new neighborhood. If they decide to relocate, many will move to other communities outside of KCMO -- possibly Johnson county or eastern Jackson County.  It is this type of urban flight that led KCMO to decrease in population from 507,087 people in 1970, to 435,146 in 1990 (the 2006 estimate is that we're at 447,306 people in KCMO). Obviously having people leave the city is a negative for the city proper.

Kansas City, MO

The biggest loser in all of this is Kansas City, MO. The high crime generated from these apartments continue to drain resources from the police department. Meanwhile, the crime also prevents many people from wanting to live in many areas of the city -- this lower's property values (which decreases property tax revenue) and lowers the number of people who want to live in the city (which also decreases tax revenue). Because people don't want to live in these high-crime areas, it increases the number of abandoned houses that then cause the city more problems. 

The whole thing is a lose/lose/lose for the city, the apartment residents and for the surrounding neighborhood. 

While many of the areas of the city that suffer from high poverty, high crime, and high numbers of abandoned homes are that way due to generations of social issues that will take time to fix, the particular problems along Armour Boulevard are that way 100% because the government has created it (with our tax dollars).  And that's pretty messed up.

What should we do?

There are a lot of different options for what we do.

Many seem to want to just dismiss this as a bunch of people just trying to run off poor people in their neighborhood. They're ignoring that this isn't just Hyde Park residents, but leaders of other urban neighborhoods such as Old Hyde Park, Manheim, Squire Park, Center City and Ivanhoe have all joined together to seek better options for low-income housing in the city. They're also are ignoring that the majority of the experts on Section 8 housing acknowledge that high concentrations of low-income housing create crime problems and are not good for the neighborhoods or the residents.

Sure, we coudl decide to ignore the problem, and relive the last 40 years over again as the city.

Or, we can decide to do something about it. We can decide create a voucher-based section 8 system that allows those who need assistance can live anywhere they want with assistance, and not just in a few select buildings. Part of a comprehensive plan will include being sure enough housing is available in the city that have viable access to amenities like public transit (and creating more viable public transit in other parts of the city - including access to jobs in other parts of the metro -- but that's a whole other post).  We can create options for the residents of Section 8, and decrease the concentration of crime in Hyde Park.

This solution won't eliminate crime in midtown. No one is saying it will. But it will deconsolidate it which carries a lot of advantages:

1) It makes Section 8 residents not prisoners in their own homes

2) It makes this particular neighborhood in midtown more livable, which will increase demand for people living there (which increases revenue for the city)

This doesn't remove the need for social programs to help people, nor does it eliminate the need for police presence, but it will help everyone -- with virtually no negative side effects. Most experts agree that this is a more viable solution....so why are denying it is a problem, denying the statistics and criticizing the messengers?

A Modest Proposal Regarding Citidel Plaza

I haven't had much time for Kansas City politics lately (thus, the few blog postings), but I have been following with some casual interest the Citidel Plaza project in KCMO. (And atip of the hat here to TKC, who has actually used his blogging time wisely by doing a good job of covering this strory -- it's a shame he doesn't put his writing skills to this good of use all the time.)

The proposed project is for a shopping district at 63rd and Prospect.  For those not initiated with 63rd and Prospect, the neighborhood has has long been in a neglected part of the city. The 64132 zip code has a poverty rate of 29% (more than double the state average. 13.7% of the population has an income 50% below the poverty level (also more than double the state average).  The zip code has lost nearly 20% of its population since 1990.

Everyone on the council knows the Citidel Plaza project is a loser financially for the city. There is no way a shopping center in that location is going to pay out in the TIF money they need to build it. And given the current economic situation of the city, taking on more TIF losses doesn't seem like the most responsible thing to do.

But politically it's a loser too. No one disputes that something needs to be done to help this area....which is, at this point, overgrown with weeds and the blight is becoming a haven for crime. Denying redevelopment TIF money to a blighted and forgotten part of town is not good either.

But it doesn't take much driving by the area to realize that the Citidel Plaza area may be the least of the area's problems.

Drive two blocks west and you get to your first abandoned office building.

 If you drive another 2 blocks, you get to another shopping center that sits about 1/3 full of businesses.

If you go another 2 blocks, there is a shopping mall/center that is pretty rough looking, and appears to have several open sites:

And two blocks later, you get to the now-empty building that used to house the Cleveland Chiropractic College:

Given all of this vacancy along 63rd Street, I find it hard to believe that building more buildings is actually in the best interest of the area.  Maybe the answer should be, that instead of building another shopping center, maybe we should provide an incentive for people to fix up and fill the empty building space that blights the area. Maybe once we can get these buildings remodeled, and filled, maybe then, the new shopping center might make sense. But building more buildings for shopping, while others sit empty just blocks away, doesn't make sense: financially or logically.

Helping these buildings get improved and inhabited would likely require less subsidy than the Citidel Plaza project.  And it would also be helping benefit the neighborhood that badly needs it (which will help the city council politically by not turning their back on the area -- not to mention, it would be the right thing to do). Besides, even if they build the Citidel project, they're likely going to have to subsidize this blight anyway (especially when they can't compete with the new development that has tax incentives). 

Maybe it's a horrible idea.  If it is, tell me why. But it seems like better solution for the neighborhood, and a better financial situation for the city.

What does the future infastructure of Kansas City look like?

Last week, the Bloomberg administration in New York City released a new manual for how future street development in the city will be done. The 232 page manual provides guidelines -- a "single framework and playbook" - for the types of projects that the adminstration will approve quickly as the city seeks to make over the 1970s-style streetscapes.  Improvements include energy-efficient lighting, wider sidewalks made of a rubber byproduct that is durable and more comfortable to walk on, more benches on sidewalks, sidewalk cafes, types of utility poles, building facades and awnings, narrower streets with slower-moving traffic -- and overall, be more aestetically pleasing, environmentally friendly, and treat strets as public spaces, not just thoroughfares for cars.

Obviously New York's vision is, and should be, different from Kansas City's. But the problem is, what is our vision?

Probably the most influential document for the vision for -- at least the central business corridor -- is the Sasaki Plan that was prepared for the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City. Even though this costly plan was designed as a "framework," many parts of it have been virtually ignored by developers and the folks at City Hall.  In just the past 4 years, things like the placement of the performing arts center, downtown baseball stadium, changed uses for Barney Allis Plaza, mass transit and the placement/use of parking garages and surface parking lots (especially the emphasis on shared parking spaces) have been largely ignored.  

So, if we're going to ignore the only major document that shows a vision for the future of Kansas City, what should we use as a roadmap?  Having a roadmap would provide us with better, prioritized use of taxpayer dollars, wiser use of TIF, provide a roadmap for developers so we would not have new development that doesn't fit into the longterm future of the city, and provide a guideline for what would, and would not, receive support and/or funding at City Hall.

Right now, it seems as if every new development opportunity is decided in complete isolation.

Light rail?  Let's form a committee to see where it should go.

Dog parks? Let's form a committee to see where they should go.

Troost BRT? Let's form a committee to examine.

Redevelopment at Linwood and Troost?  Let's form a committee.

What should and shouldn't go on our boulevards?  Let's form a committee.

And this is just current projects. It seems that as a city we have no idea what our long-term strategy should be for dealing with the issues facing our city. No roadmap for redeveloping our neighborhoods, for Section 8 housing or for dealing with crime, abandoned housing or schools buildings.  This doesn't even tackle futuristic issues like what do we do when there is greater public use of electric cars or better ways to enhance bicycling routes through our core.

It's time for us to build a roadmap. Put together a well-publicized document that people can stand behind and say THIS is the vision for Kansas City. Sure, not everyone will agree with it. But it will prevent us from making all future decisions for roads, parks, development and transit in a complete vacuum... and a little cohesiveness and vision can only be a good thing.