The Eternal Question No. 1

On August 6, Kansas City voters narrowly declined an opportunity to add $35 million to the city’s public-improvements budget without a tax increase. Their message to City Hall was clear: “Listen to us before spending our money.”

Now the $35 million Question No. 1 is back. Kansas Citians have one last chance to pour extra funds into the city’s backlog of potholes, busted curbs and ancient sewers — and give a facelift to its decrepit downtown. But in their dash to put the question back before voters, city leaders only half listened.

The early August vote was a tough loss for Mayor Kay Barnes as well as for downtown business interests, who had ponied up a quarter of a million dollars to sell the $35 million bond plan to the public. The only vocal opposition was in a couple of neighborhood newspapers — and the e-mails of a handful of neighborhood grumps, who brazenly predicted that they would kill the initiative without spending a dime.

After the polls closed on election day, the neighborhood activists found themselves in the minority. But they’d still defeated the bond issue, because Missouri law requires a 57 percent majority to approve general-obligation bonds. The initiative fell about 200 votes short.

Barnes immediately vowed to put the $35 million plan on the November 5 ballot. But the deadline was August 22. She and other bond supporters had barely two weeks to figure out why the proposal had failed, make changes and push it through the City Council approval process.

The Neighborhood Action Group had opposed the bonds because nearly half of the money would flow through the mayor’s newly appointed Greater Downtown Development Authority.

NAGers argued that wasn’t how things are supposed to work at City Hall. The city’s policy dictated that general-obligation bonds be directed through the well-established Public Improvements Advisory Committee (“Money Changes Everything,” July 25). Every year, PIAC holds a series of neighborhood meetings to figure out where taxpayers want to see capital-improvement money spent.

On August 21, City Councilman Evert Asjes convened a meeting of his Finance and Audit Committee to consider a rewritten ballot initiative. This one contained the same 45/55 split between downtown and “other neighborhoods.”

In the new version, though, the politically connected folks in the GDDA would first make their case to PIAC, which would then decide which projects would go to the council for approval.

At the beginning of the committee meeting, Councilman Paul Danaher turned to Asjes and asked, “Who is the author of this?”

“Well, I guess it’s kind of … uh … uh … I was involved in it. The mayor was involved in it. I believe the actual author of it is actually Heather,” Asjes replied, referring facetiously to Heather Brown, a city attorney who vets ordinances and resolutions to ensure that they’re legally sound.

When Asjes opened the meeting for public comment, the first to speak was Mike Burke, a former councilman and development attorney who chairs PIAC. He stressed how important it was for council members to reach a consensus on the issue, lest it fail again. “The budget is almost in crisis mode,” he said.

Burke then explained that a week earlier, after a contentious public meeting, PIAC had passed a resolution urging the council not to give the GDDA any “special preference.” PIAC had also argued that only a third of the money — as opposed to 45 percent — should go toward downtown.

Then other PIAC reps took turns at the microphone. “It’s difficult for me to support, or ask my neighbors to support, a few million extra dollars for downtown when I know what this money could do for people who have sewage coming up in their yards,” said Clinton Adams Jr., who represents the 3rd District.

“To the best of my knowledge, I can’t think of a single group that has gotten special treatment,” said PIAC member Rob Kinder, who represents the 1st District. “This is a bad precedent to set.”

Then an elementary-school principal and Northeast neighborhood leaders complained about a hilly road where children walk to school. They said they wanted more money for sidewalks and stop signs. “We’ve clocked cars at 45 miles an hour,” said McCoy principal Jo Nemeth. “It’s an accident waiting to happen.”

Only one citizen — GDDA member Warren Erdman of Kansas City Southern — spoke in favor of the 45/55 split. “Our revenue base is eroding into Kansas,” he said, explaining the need to improve downtown so it can attract and retain businesses.

Asjes and his colleagues wasted no time deliberating. Asjes simply asked who was in favor of the slightly revised bond initiative. Only Danaher voted against it.

“I didn’t feel that surprised,” says Kinder, who had cashed in a vacation day to spend the afternoon at City Hall. “I’m sure there were behind-the-scenes discussions already. I’m sure they already had their minds made up.”

Asjes admits that the outcome was basically predetermined. “Yeah, I thought we ought to do it,” he says. The next day the full council agreed to put the rewritten question on the ballot.

Shortly thereafter, Barnes asked Burke to lead the new bond campaign. Despite PIAC’s loss at the Finance Committee meeting, Burke threw his support behind the measure. “We need it to get us through this recession,” he says.

The bill’s proponents have shown up at a dozen neighborhood meetings to drum up support. The Clay/Platte Dispatch, which had opposed the plan this summer, endorsed the bill with an October 9 editorial: “We would have preferred that there be a more even split of the revenue, but with the economy as it is, there is a dire need for an infusion of money to keep the city’s deferred maintenance program from slipping farther behind.”

But bond supporters still have a lot of work to do. And if the issue fails at the polls again on November 5, it may be because its proponents are still out of touch with some critical neighborhood leaders.

For instance, Jerry Riffel, a former city councilman and development attorney who is the GDDA’s official liaison for the campaign, tells the Pitch that the Northland News and the Northeast News also have endorsed it. “Not will endorse it,” he says, “but have endorsed it.”

However, the editors and publishers of these papers say they’ve made no such decision. Northeast News publisher Michael Bushnell says, “Who is Jerry Riffel? I’ve never even talked to the man.”