Sunday Civic Blogging

[Updated below]

Okay Kansas City readers - I am going to start doing something just for you. Call it this atheists Sunday offering, if you want to piss off the bible bleaters with a minor blasphemy while reminding 'em that even non-believers can be altruistic, and genuinely so, because it ain't getting us past St. Pete.

Anyway, I live in this city, and when I say "live" I mean that as an active verb, emphasis on active. Especially now that spring has sprung (they mowed the grass at the Kenneth A. Spencer Center yesterday), look for a lot of mobile blogging with this spiffy new laptop for which I want to say thanks once more - I am still radiating from the goodwill that poured in when we had our fundraiser in January.

But getting back on topic - this post is the first in what I am mulling making a regular Sunday feature - right now it's a notion, and we'll see where it goes...

VOTE YES APRIL 8th

Go to the polls next Tuesday and vote "yes" to extend the 3/8 cent sales tax to maintain our METRO until 2024. I use the bus service, and I can say with absolute surety that the ridership is increasing. More and more people are parking their cars and riding the bus as gas prices have stabilized at three bucks a gallon.

Can we get metro schedules on Broadway, please?

Speaking of the METRO - we need to pass the extension, and then the powers that be need to spend a few bucks to update the stops along the 51/Broadway route. Just try finding a stop with a schedule posted! At the very least we need one at the Broadway/Linwood stops. More and more Penn Valley students are riding the bus. Can we take some of the guesswork out of it? On the printed schedule, the times listed jump all the way from Pershing & Grand to 39th and Broadway. And none of the stops in between have schedules and only one has a shelter. That's a huge gap. No, it isn't necessary along the Broadway Extension, but once the bus gets up the hill, and there are stops on every block, there needs to be a schedule posted on every other.
You know it's spring...

I haven't seen a robin yet, but I know it's spring anyway. Folks in Midtown/Westport know that the first sure signs of spring are found on Pennsylvania in the heart of Westport. The Westport Beach Club spring volleyball league started this week. Time to get out the Hawaiian shirts! The Sons of Venezuela kick off the summer Salsa dancing season at 8:00 p.m. on May 3. With the exception of the May 3 show, the bands will start at 10:00. Every Saturday, you can get a free Salsa lesson before the show. Lessons start at at 8:30.

Chubby's Closed Temporarily Everyones favorite after-hours breakfast joint is temporarily closed. A week ago Friday the LaBruzzo family, who owns the building and operated the diner as a family business for decades, evicted the company that took over operations about a year ago. The business was founded by father and son Vito and Nick LaBruzzo, and now Nick's sons, Vito and Nick, are taking back over. They are closed for a couple of weeks for remodeling and will reopen as The Original Chubby’s on Broadway.

Light Rail citizen input meetings next week

The next midtown gathering will be April 10 at St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Main. The meeting will run from 5:30 to 7:30. What we do is break into groups with a map of the area and citizens offer their input on routes, stops and stations. It's our city and it's our train. I'm damned sure making my voice heard.

Appreciating what we have



The Sculpture Garden at the Nelson is the perfect place to fritter away an afternoon.

And since Katie lied to me and it isn't raining, I think that is precisely what I am going to do.

I'll be back this evening.

Consider this an open thread, Kansas City. Put your own input in comments, and if you know something I need to make sure to include next week, send me an email.

Update 8:45 p.m.

Even Christians are DFH's in my neighborhood

I spotted this walking from McCoy's where we took our granddaughter for lunch (some day they will make mac and cheese as good as I do) and I said "Hold up. I have to get a picture for my friend [Blue Gal ]" (no relation). Resolution could be better, I took this with my phone. I am posting it to atone for missing something so huge and important as the annual Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm last weekend.

(click to enlarge)

BG (too) told me posting this would be atonement aplenty. As she is a driving force behind Blog Against Theocracy, I will consider my slate clean until next year.

Light Rail Community Meeting Tonight, Kansas City

I am very sorry for posting this a mere two hours before the meeting convenes, but I promise to not only be more prompt, but to develop a widget in the sidebar that will take you to the latest KC light-rail updates and information...

Apology rendered and promise made, I just want to add a plea to all who care about mass transit issues in this city to please turn out for these meetings.

The time is right for a train. Gas prices are killing American families. Kansas City is a sprawling metropolis. A friend of mine drives from Lenexa to Lee's Summit five days a week in a four-cylinder, stick-shift Kia. When gas prices first hit three bucks a gallon and I stopped driving in the city and started using public transportation, she mocked me and gave me no end of grief. Now that the reality of three-dollar gasoline is setting in, I am looking a lot smarter, she is feeling contrite...and bitching about no immediate plans to connect the 470-435 suburbs via a rail link...and this is me doing the "I told you so! Dance."

Now - about tonights meeting...I lift this directly from the KC Light Rail website...

Scoping meeting tonight

February 27th, 2008 | Category: Route, General

The ATA will host the first public meeting of Phase II of the Alternatives Analysis tonight. The agenda is here and the scoping booklet is here. This is your chance to provide your opinion the final route between the Plaza and I-29.

5-8 p.m.
Mohart Community Center
3200 Wayne (between Paseo and Bruce R. Watkins) [map]

The facility is directly accessible from ATA route #28, which terminates at 9th & Main or Blue Ridge Boulevard (or free transfer from MAX at Crown Center). You can also use the Trip Planner.

See you there!

And what the hell? I lifted this from Let's Go KC Alliance for Transportation Choice:

Light Rail Update

13th February 2008, 11:35 pm

The long process of studying and formulating an official light rail plan is moving into a second phase of public meetings. The next opportunity for you to lean more and voice your own opinions is Wednesday, February 27 from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Mohart Community Center. Formal presentations will be given at 5:30 and 7:30. The location is at 3200 Wayne Avenue, on Linwood Boulevard between The Paseo and 71 Hwy.

Sixteen additional public meetings will be held during March and April, at locations throughout the city.

For more information on light rail in Kansas City, see the KCATA’s light rail site and check out the KC Light Rail blog for daily news and updates.

See you there, Kansas City. Because it is up to us. Our leaders are really kinda worthless where light-rail is concerned, and if we don't kick their asses and turn out and let them know that we give a damn about this issue, they'll screw us over again just like they did when they decided to toss the results of an election just because they didn't like the way the teeming masses voted.

UPDATE 8:30 p.m.

Well, that didn't quite go like I planned. Let's just say I know better than to take anyones advice on bus travel in this town. Always check the schedules yourself. There is no Max-28 connection at Crown Center between 3:15 and 6:55. I called the Metro call center and was told that the 28 I could catch downtown at the transit center would take me where I needed to go.

This was bad information.

But I was downtown, across the street from the central library, and I have a laptop, so I popped in and looked at the map. What a "Duh!" moment! I needed to take the Max to 31st street and take a 31st street bus to Wayne Ave. I was just checking schedules and times and my phone rang. My niece who works one block from the library where I was needed me to come get her car and run an urgent errand for her. I could feel her sigh with relief when I laughed out loud and told her where I was and why...

So short story long - I have no light rail information to impart.

But on the upside I got some fresh air and put some karma in the bank and got a gratitude fix that puffed me up to the point I was informed that I was being insufferable.

Let’s talk about light-rail, Kansas City

If you live anywhere in the KC metro area and you are blissfully unaware that we have been feuding over light rail for a year, well, you likely didn’t get to this blog from a bookmark.

Light-rail in Kansas City is going to be a featured topic on this site for the near future. Today, I’ll introduce it, and give an overview of the financial hurdles we have to overcome.

I love trains

Let me state up front that I am unabashedly pro-train. Almost didn’t move here because the city didn’t have a train. I have voted for every single light rail proposal that has been on the ballot since I moved to this city in 2001 and registered to vote at the Westport branch of the public library (where my husband went for storytime as a tot in the 50’s, about the time they tore out the last streetcar line) a couple of hours after the coffeepot was unpacked.

I refuse to let the perfect be the enemy of the good in regards to public transportation. I voted for the proposal last November giggling all the while and knowing the gondola was a pipedream that was never gonna happen, and I actively wondered what was in the pipe when Chastain dreamed up that part of his plan.

But the city administration wanting to take a mulligan on the whole election pisses me off to no end. We voted for a train. Get your asses busy writing some grant proposals already, and taking other concrete steps to make it happen. A full freakin’ year has slipped away while y’all have bickered like 12-year-old girls.

It gets my hackles up that the city administration has put all their effort into remaining deadlocked for an entire year. I’m annoyed that, out of a sense of the public’s frustration, the city's major newspaper put together a viable plan (who would know better how pissed off the public is than the folks who read the submissions to the letters to the editor?) And let’s talk about that for a minute. I give the Kansas City Star a hard time on a regular basis. I have no intention of letting up on them in other areas just because they stepped up like menches on this issue. Every time I catch them stepping on McClatchy’s fine reporting to soften implications of malfeasance against the Missouri GOP, I’ll give ‘em hell about it. If they ever get all puffed up and try to charge four bills a year for their website again, I’ll give ‘em hell about that, too.

So when they do something right, I am honor-bound to give them their due. Some entity with juice had to take a bold step and break the deadlock that Kansas City politics is famous for. (Say what you will about the Pendergast political machine – but stuff got done when his machine ran the show. The building I live in was constructed as a Pendergast patronage project, and it is possibly the best-constructed and most well-appointed brick walkup in the entire city. And an interesting and related aside, the public transit system as it exists today was, apparently, designed for the people who live in this building.)

For a solid year, since the election last year, the powers that be have squabbled. The results of the vote were shocking – I figured it would be like every other proposal and me plus twelve other cranks would vote for it, they would make fun of us for a couple of weeks on Ruckus, and that would be that. Then holy hell! It not only passed, gondola and all, it passed overwhelmingly! Woody Cozad is still, a year later, completely apoplectic.

Kansas City is unique in a lot of ways. There are two states and somewhere between eight and ten counties, depending on how you define “metro area” There is a hodgepodge of local governments, every last one of them antagonistic to all the others, the only thing they can all agree on is that they all resent the hell out of every penny that their citizens leave in KCMO. Herding cats is an understatement.

The Star did a bit of research (which is what newspapers are supposed to do) and found evidence that in virtually every instance of an urban area adopting a starter line in the heart of the city, the suburbs get a taste of public transit done right, they get jealous, and the lines expand. $3.00 a gallon gas, added to an undeniable awareness of the effects of anthropogenic global warming, and the demand for efficient and reliable public transit is bound to accelerate.

Only a few dinosaurs like Cozad are flat-out opposed to light-rail no matter what. I say lets just ignore them.

Which brings us to funding

A starter line in KCMO is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. A regional system would cost billions. But it turns out that we might be closer to footing the bill than one might think.

Of course, there are obstacles. Among the highest hurdles to clear: Kansas political leaders want Kansas money to stay in Kansas, and they are skeptical that rail transit is the best option. But other communities, namely Seattle, have overcome such parochial concerns and learned to work together for the betterment of the community.

Let’s look at potential revenue streams.

Local funding for a starter line will initially have to come from KCMO and North Kansas City. North KC is essentially an industrial area that sits between the Missouri river and Kansas City North. NKC has a very low residential population, employing many times their population in the businesses that operate there. It simply stands to reason that the area would benefit from light rail – employees who are discouraged from looking for employment outside their immediate area by high gas prices would suddenly find the options of employment in NKC more attractive. Additionally, we get some very active weather. Employees who drive to work would be les likely to call in when the roads are covered with snow and ice if they only had to get to a train station, and not all the way across the river.

Kansas City Kansas is another potential partner. Western Wyandotte County is booming, and the county looks to have $20 million available by 2013 in new taxes from development projects, and Joe Reardon, the Mayor of the Unified Government of KCK and Wyandotte County has indicated that some of that could be used for transit.

Regional taxes. Missouri has agreed to give it’s counties the option to pass a half-cent transit sales tax, but the initiative failed in Kansas in 2006. Missouri may go ahead and pass the tax without waiting for Kansas. A regional tax could potentially produce a significant amount of money for transit improvements and expansions. The Star reported that a metro-wide half-cent tax would produce $134 million a year. That would be sufficient revenue to finance a $3 billion construction effort.

State funding. Dream on. Kansas only spends $6.2 million per year in public transportation funds, and Missouri spends even less, a mere $4.2 million, and Missouri has over two times the population and two major, bi-state metropolitan areas with their urban cores in Missouri. Both states have Republican state legislatures that are foaming-at-the-mouth insane about taxes. Kansas is locked in at their current funding level until 2009, but Missouri, whose highway monies are limited by the state constitution would be very difficult to squeeze another dime from.

Federal funding is most likely to be a viable source of much-needed revenue in the future. If federal funds are sought for a starter line, it would delay the project by a couple of years. No matter how the starter line proceeds, federal funding will certainly be pursued in the future for system expansions.

Getting a starter line going on our own could help with the effort to obtain federal funds in the future. Competition for light-rail funds is strong now, and only expected to intensify in the future as communities look to light-rail to solve transit needs.

I think the time to strike was seven years ago, when the iron was hot, gas prices were still under $1.50 per gallon, and the competition for federal funds wasn’t so fierce. But that’s just me doing the “I told you so!” dance again. Since we didn’t, and got a MAX express bus line instead, we need to act now.

Next up: More on obstacles to progress, and the obstreperous nature of our local politics.