A 2017 KCPT documentary detailed the effect of the increases in water rates—240 percent since 2000—on many Kansas Citians, and the apparent inability—or unwillingness—of local leadership to do anything about it. All of this is due to a settlement with the EPA, which cited Kansas City for multiple violations of the Clean Water Act and forced the city to agree to extensive upgrades to its water and sewer system.

Taking the violations and the need to address them at face value, it is still fair to ask what is going on with the water department. How is it spending its money and are there opportunities to be more efficient? Here there might be an opportunity. In its 2019 endorsement of Quinton Lucas’s mayoral effort, The Kansas City Star editorial board quoted Lucas as saying at a prior candidate debate, “I’m not just open to a conversation on a state audit; I think we need a state audit of the water department.” This is welcome, especially since the previous mayor denied requests by the Missouri State Auditor to conduct an audit of the water department.

It may very well be that the city-run water department is a model of efficiency and that these frequent increases are necessary. If that is the case, there may be other opportunities to address rising costs in a way that does not so burden those among us who are at the most risk of losing service. Mayor Lucas, the city council, and indeed those at the water department should all welcome an audit, be it by the Missouri State Auditor, a private and completely independent firm, or both.

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Watch the full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEuphouW5vU

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NibOUrzzwho&t=5s

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According to The Kansas City Star back in February 2016:

City Manager Troy Schulte recently estimated it would cost $10 million to knock down all the most dangerous houses and other buildings in the city. That backlog of 870 buildings has built up because in the past, the city has only been able to spend about $800,000 annually to demolish about 100 houses, and more properties keep getting added to the list every year.

The city sold bonds to raise the $10 million to pay for the demolition. Work started in June 2016 and it was to take two years to tear down about 800 buildings. In April 2018, Channel 41 reported that the city surpassed it goal and “taken care of” 895 buildings in two years. That is because many were sold and rehabilitated, not demolished.

According to city data, only 609 buildings actually have been torn down by the city in the three years since. While this is slower than initially planned, it represents good progress toward addressing blight.

As of October 7, 2019, there are 343 dangerous buildings remaining on the city’s list.

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These struck me as very large increases in such a short period of time. The last census report on biking to work was published in May 2019 and only includes data up to 2017. It indicated that only 0.6 percent of U.S. workers commute to work by bike. In Kansas City, the 2017 census data indicated that the number was 0.3 percent in the city and only 0.2 percent in the broader metro area. Where is the data that bike commuting has jumped 130 percent since 2016?

After Rogers stated those percentages, Shanin asked him what the numbers of commuters were [starts 3:39]. Rogers declined to answer, suggesting instead that viewers could do the math on their own. But they can’t from what Rogers provided; a percentage increase does not indicate the actual numbers. In fact, the high percentage increases may be a function of low actual bike commuting numbers. If two people in Kansas City biked to work in 2016, and three more joined them in 2018, that would represent a 150 percent increase—but it’s still hardly impressive.

Rogers has yet to respond to several requests for the data underlying his claim.

Incidentally, Rogers still has a blog post on BikeWalkKC that makes demonstrably false claims. In an April 1 (!) post titled, New Bike Plan Will Save Lives and Boost the Local Economy, he writes, “Economic Impact Analysis shows new bike master plan will save 36 lives every year, add $500 million to the regional economy, and create 12,000 jobs.” My colleague Kelvey Vander Hart addressed the claim about saving lives earlier this year.

But the jobs claim is just flatly wrong. The summary of findings upon which the Bike KC Master Plan claims are based states on page 6 that “this increase in economic activity leads to 12,600 additional jobs (measured in job years) over the period.” The period is 30 years, 2020 through 2050. Dividing 12,600 “job years” by 30 years gets 420 actual jobs. (Frankly even that seems high, but it’s not 12,600!)

Contorting data to justify dubious claims about job creation doesn’t help anyone. It only gives Kansas Citians even more reason to be skeptical as advocates ask taxpayers to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for something in which some neighborhoods see little value.

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Click here to read the full report.

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As anyone who took Economics 101 would expect, the increase in hotel room supply will drive down prices. And a drop in prices can hurt hotel operators. This is why—in a free-market system—hotel operators may be hesitant to build new hotels. If they overbuild, their investment won’t be as profitable.

But in Kansas City, they aren’t just spending their own money. They are receiving subsidies in the form of abatements and tax-increment financing to shield them from risk. Recall that one development attorney made exactly this point in a recent letter to the folks who dole out such subsidies.

As a result, Kansas City is in a predicament: too many hotels rooms resulting in lower than ideal occupancy rates. To fill as many rooms as they can, hotels will reduce their rates and settle for lower profits. VisitKC refers to these completely expected free-market forces as “destabilization.”

VisitKC wants to avoid this. So one of their “strategies for combatting the destabilization” is “increased resources for VisitKC” including a “re-focused” sales and marketing strategy. (A copy of the Visit KC presentation is available below.) In short, they want to spend money doing what hotels should be doing themselves: selling hotel rooms. To their credit, they have also called for a halt in development subsidies for hotels.

To recap: city hall spent so much taxpayer money subsidizing hotels that more hotels were built than necessary because developers were shielded from the risks of expansion. Now that overproduction risks reducing hotel rates, city hall wants to spend taxpayer money. As I said on KCPT’s Ruckus, yes, this is as stupid as it sounds. Kansas City must do better.

tif april 10 2019.pdf

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Exactly what does it mean to have the conversation? It will doubtlessly require money spent on consultants to draft options, hold meetings, and the like. And what will those plans drive toward? Probably an expensive public finance project to buy a new stadium for a billionaire.

We’re spending money so we can spend money. It’s absurd.

It gets worse. The Star’s editorial board included this nugget:

City Manager Troy Schulte said his conversations with [Royals owner David] Glass associates have left the door open to that possibility.

“He (Glass) is saying, “Give us some options,” Schulte said. “He has not said no.”

In other words, the team owner isn’t even asking for any of this, he just didn’t refuse. And why should he? He’d be a fool to stop the city from offering him the same type of taxpayer subsidies that cities make all the time. As a result, city leaders, including the Star, are eager to start spending money on it.

Wait, there’s more. The Star makes clear there is additional cost beyond the taxpayer outlay of funds on consultants and construction subsidies:

Other possibilities remain east of City Hall and near the 18th & Vine Jazz District. “You’ve got to reserve it, or you’re losing development sites,” Schulte said.

Schulte is saying the city would intervene in the market to “reserve” sites, effectively stopping anyone else who might have a better, unsubsidized, idea for development. (One can imagine that at the time of construction, the then-mayor and council members will point to the lot they have kept vacant and say, “look at this lot no one has developed, we need this downtown stadium to address blight.”)

If Kansas City’s wealthy sports team owners want to consider other locations for their stadiums, and spend their own money doing so, they are free and welcome to do so. But the idea that taxpayers should take the initiative and spend money now so we can maybe spend money later is completely wrong.

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“There is still work to do because even one homicide is too many,” [Mayor] James said. “But I have faith in the collaborative and strategic approach of KC NoVa. This year’s data tells us that so far we are making great strides in the right direction.”

Fast forward to today—after years of a nation-leading spike in homicides (currently #5 in the nation with 108 in 2018 as of this writing)—and those same people seem to want to deny any affiliation with policing. The mayor, whose role as a member of the police board was highlighted in 2014, seems to shrug off any role in policing today. In a KCPT panel discussion about the 50th anniversary of the Kansas City Race Riots, moderator Nick Haines raises a question about minority hiring in the police department, “Mayor, you’re on the police commission.” James responds, “Yes . . . and…?” to laughs from the audience. (Starts at 35:32.)

In a more recent press conference, Mayor James complained bitterly about lack of gun control legislation and political ideology in the state legislature. But as a recent KSHB report on homicides made clear, there is no evidence that Jackson County, Missouri, has significantly more gun ownership than, say, Johnson County, Kansas, or that gun ownership in Kansas City has increased over the same time frame that homicides have spiked. It’s not the guns.

There is research, however, that indicates that increasing the number of police officers does reduce crime. KSHB’s Andy Alcock makes that point in his report, too. In fact, according to FBI statistics, Kansas City has fewer police officers per capita than all other cities with high homicide rates. What’s worse, since 2011, the number of uniformed police officers in Kansas City has declined.

As I laid out in a Kansas City Star guest column, no one in Missouri has more power over policing in Kansas City than the mayor’s office. What is lacking is not power, but will. And until Kansas City leaders get serious about adopting policies and policing methods that actually contribute to reductions in violent crime, we are figuratively whistling past an ever-growing graveyard.

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