TKC BREAKING AND EXCLUSIVE NEWS!!! CITY HALL PROPOSES MILLIONS WORTH OF CUTS TO POLICE AND FIRE DEPARTMENTS!!!
Budget time is almost upon us here in Kansas City and that means more fighting over scarce resources unrelated to the toy train streetcar.
To wit . . .
KICK-ASS AND RATHER BRILLIANT INSIDERS WARN THAT MILLIONS WORTH OF CUTS AWAIT THE KANSAS CITY POLICE AND FIRE DEPARTMENT!!!
Here's preliminary word about the impending devastation . . .
INITIAL BUDGET CUT RECOMMENDATIONS ASK FOR $19 MILLION IN CUTS FROM THE KCPD AND $10 MILLION WORTH OF KCFD TRIMMING!!!
There's a bright side here that has more to do with politics and business as usual in Kansas City than ANYBODY concerned about City Hall priorities . . .
AN AWESOME INSIDER TELLS US: "The hiring freeze is very real for a lot of us at City Hall and the budget cuts that are being proposed could be massive. However, they always talk about these steep cuts and they never end up happening. The firefighters have still failed to eliminate anything from their budget even through attrition. Don't get me wrong, the numbers need to be reduced and that's what the preliminary budget suggests . . . Just don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen."
And so . . . Expect Kansas City's budget to remain "structurally unbalanced" while this town continues to spend hand over fist on toy trains, junkets, convention pipe dreams and all manner of corporate schemes.
Developing . . .
Maybe we could return that new logo to generate more cash.
ReplyDeleteBasic services first- Public safety, maintained streets, functioning water & sewer systems, trash collection. You know, like our neighboring communities have. Why is that simple concept so difficult for our Mayor & City Council to grasp?
ReplyDeleteSince the current group haven't gotten their priorities straight in their terms in office, they should be replaced. Period.
Simple, but true, 7:36. Simple, but true.
ReplyDeleteBrutal.
ReplyDelete7:36 is correct.
Agree with 7:36. The cuts for basic services have been deep and it's been going on for years now. And yet they're driving us into more debt with unnecessary projects and spending for travel. That isn't how I run my household and it isn't how our city should be run.
ReplyDeleteIt is costing the city way more than 29 million each year just to keep the pension fund from falling further into the black hole. Being underfunded by 600 million and using at least a 7% rate the pension fund needs an additional 42 million each year just to keep from falling further behind. That 42 million is in addition to the current required contributions and the amount needed to reduce the 600 million deficit.
ReplyDeleteKC is not Detroit but it will be in ten years.
Screw you. We need TIF handouts to or developer buddies, street cars, fancy shiny things like power and light to make our friends at national league of cities impressed, heavily subsidized in the hood etc. You people that work hard every day only work for is to throw your money down the toilet. LONG LIVE THE TOY TRAIN
ReplyDeleteYou don't understand Detroit or what happened there very well. But your not concerned with facts, just howling and shrieking and regurgitating talking points.
ReplyDeleteFor those that do care about facts:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/17/opinion/eisenbrey-detroit-pensions/
Must be the same source who dais the FD didn't have drug tests, because the FD has cut positions, taken years of wage freezes while working more hours, and given up overtime pay for extra shifts, saving the city literally millions while maintaining the same level of service.
ReplyDeleteWant to cut 10 million from the budget, end the TIFing of greenfeild developments, and collect the tax revenue your supposed to from corporations and developers.
Let Kansas mortgage its future.
i will believe it when i see that the fire dept actually does cut their budget. everyone knows that the fire dept is untouchable
ReplyDeleteWell, the city just gave Cerner over a BILLION in tax breaks. Someone has to pay for that. I guess it's blue collar workers subsidizing millionares.
ReplyDeleteWe need more assistant city managers. Should also up their salary.
ReplyDeleteSTFU
Anything for that trip to Spain.
ReplyDeleteMarch 2010
ReplyDeleteKansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser called for the city to cut its $2 million subsidy of the Truman Sports Complex. Instead, Funkhouser thinks this money should go to providing services to Kansas City citizens such as improving street maintenance, expanding automated trash collection for certain neighborhoods, enhancing code enforcement, boosting the 311 Action Center hotline and funding a popular paint program and an innovative crime prevention program.
Funk Versus Sly - - While other cities are turning off their lights and cutting police to save money, Kansas City, under Mark Funkhouser, has added cops. Balanced the budget and cleared snow better than ever before. ‘You said to tighten our belts and we did. We are delivering more services more efficiently with fewer employees. We got TIF under control, we fixed the budget and we stopped the bleeding debt. Progress has not been easy, but it has been real.
ReplyDeleteKansas City is a Goliath among corrupt cities. From its earliest days as a muddy sin stop on the banks of the Missouri River, through the years when “Boss Tom” Pendergast ran the town with a greedy fist, to the 1990s when a near quorum of its City Council was indicted on criminal charges, K.C. has been at the forefront of graft.
ReplyDeleteThe city has been caught up in a pork fest — all of it perfectly legal — the likes of which are unequaled in any American city. A small group of developers and attorneys with City Hall connections glommed on to a program for poor neighborhoods and used it to build luxury hotels and fancy shopping centers in the richest parts of town, draining $90 million per year from the city’s budget and racking up $5 billion in debt. Cash poor, the city’s bridges, sidewalks and sewers were literally crumbling, and Kansas Citians were at wits’ end.
ReplyDeleteSteep cuts in KCFD are way overdue.
ReplyDeleteWe need Funkhouser back or State control of City Hall.
ReplyDelete"Mark Funkhouser, the Kansas City auditor, has compiled some troubling numbers. The show an astronomic rise in local T I F expenditures, from $1.1 million in 1995 to $21 million this year to a projected $45 million in 2004."
ReplyDelete"A policy born to rescue blighted, abandoned communities has turned into a device to:
(1) Pick the pockets of all taxpayers to pad the wallets of developers, and
(2) accelerate the kind of sprawl that eats the heart out of urban economies."
The city has been caught up in a pork fest — all of it perfectly legal — the likes of which are unequaled in any American city. A small group of developers and attorneys with City Hall connections glommed on to a program for poor neighborhoods and used it to build luxury hotels and fancy shopping centers in the richest parts of town, draining $90 million per year from the city’s budget and racking up $5 billion in debt. Cash poor, the city’s bridges, sidewalks and sewers were literally crumbling, and Kansas Citians were at wits’ end.
ReplyDeleteNailed it
8:18 Pensions may have not bankrupted Detroit but not funding them did. Employers typically fund pensions at 10% to 12% of salaries and the investment earnings allow employees to retire at 50% to 75% of salary. Since most cities allow retirement at 50-55 most employees draw pensions for about the same years as they worked. So if you don't fund pensions properly instead of the 10%-12% you eventually would pay out 50% of salaries in pension funding.
ReplyDeleteSince most politicians are too stupid to understand and too morally corrupt to care they just kick the can down the road.
One may argue about whether or not pensions are too high but there is no argument about not properly funding them. And KCMO along with most other cities have not properly funded their pensions, electing to spend current funds elsewhere.
Pick the pockets of all taxpayers to pad the wallets of developers.
ReplyDeletePick the pockets of all taxpayers to pad the wallets of developers
Pick the pockets of all taxpayers to pad the wallets of developers
Pick the pockets of all taxpayers to pad the wallets of developers
I miss anything?
Is Troy submitting his resignation with that type of budget?
ReplyDeleteThe question is, if the economy is coming back, and growth is at 3 to 5 percent this year, why all the cuts? What are they adding that requires these cuts. That is what fire and police should go after.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to Sly's KC. Crime up, blight, rigged tax votes, irresponsible spending, etc.
ReplyDeleteSomeone has to pay for that $75 million per mile street car. You know, the one that follows the exact same route as a fleet of city buses.
ReplyDeleteFire is way over staffed with firefighters and under on ems
ReplyDeleteGo online and find an article from Rolling Stone (conservatives you'll like it too) called Apocalypse, New Jersey from Dec. 19, 2013. It's about Camden, NJ. It's worse than here but you can't help but think they're on the same path.
ReplyDeleteFire always says they're cutting but creatively never does. Some may retire but then guess what? We have to pay more overtime to cover the shortage of personnel. Wage freezes never affect them
ReplyDeleteDidn't anyone see the business session several weeks ago...this budget will be the mayor's budget. He wants to control it. Problem is, once he takes it, it becomes a public document. City attorney was on Channel 2 trying to explain that fact to them. It's going to be a messy budget season.
Lol @ wage freezes never affect fire. Fire pd and city workers have all had wage freezes for most of the last 5 years but city hall used that money to subsidize northland and downtown development.
ReplyDeleteFire and EMS are the same staffing pool Marissa
ReplyDeleteNo, fire and EMS are walled off from each other which is why most ems is prohibited contractually from cross training as fire fighters. It is in effect a bolt-on EMS service.
DeleteThink I will go take a Glazer while I ponder what this story is all about.
ReplyDeleteYes, fire Troy and his 10+ incompetent assistant city managers.
ReplyDeleteNever reveal your sources, Tony. Credibility is obviously not a goal for you. Just more sensationalist bullshit. You honestly think they'll cut funding for the increased crime? Not to mention they are about to lose a school district unless NiCastro will stop sleeping with private interests.
ReplyDeleteIf this is actually true, and I hope you have the balls to reveal your source, then that means we put a priority in susidizing Cordish properties (White Power & Light) and other business ventures (Union Station)?
Interesting... comparing the Funk to the current administration. Yup the sacred cows should be cut... send those skill light to sack groceries instead of driving their big trucks over there for breakfast.
ReplyDeleteRight you are, 10:36 or whoever. Basic services. WE'll miss the Funk I suppose... Sly has a couple crazy sons, the Funk had a crazy wife.
Remember...we don't get to pick our families. Only our mayors.
Dear Mr. Tony: If the city is indeed planning such cuts in the KCPD in light of our ongoing crime disaster, there is only one explanation for such a foolish move: The powerful individuals who bear responsibility for our city's crime disaster are looking for a way to lie their way out of the catastrophe they have created; if the crime problem continues or gets worse they will say a year from now: "Well, the violence is unfortunate, but it is all due to the city's "severe budget crisis." " Take care. Sincerely and Respectfully, Ernest Evans
ReplyDeleteErnest, look back every Jan. Its the same chicken little freak out from the city administrators about the budget. That's because the city fy ends in April and this is the first salvo in the political process where the department heads have to pay homage to their bosses. It is the begging and groveling and implied threats of rifs to keep people in line.
DeleteI work for city hall and for the past 6 years the city employees have been laid off. Time for the Cops and Fire department to take their share in the cut backs.
ReplyDeleteThe only issue is that your dealing with the safety and lives of citizens when you lay off public safety (hence the name). Whens the last time someone was injured because a water pipe remained broken for another day or they were unable to schedule their large trash pick up om 311?
DeleteDear Anonymous 3:44: You have a point, we have been through this "dog and pony show" before. And, you may be right that they are not actually going to make any cuts when the time comes. But, do remember one thing about our city's crime problem: We are out of step with most of the rest of the nation, crime-wise--which means that the city's elite has to find some way to lie their way out of responsibility for what they have done. Personally, I hope you are right--I for one am quite weary of local politicos getting people killed to protect their reputations. Take care!! Sincerely and Respectfully, Ernest Evans PS: Sorry to be so brutal in what I have to say about local politicos--but I grew up in Washington, DC during the Vietnam War--and ever since politicians letting people die to save face has been a red button issue with me.
ReplyDeleteNo proof at all.
ReplyDeleteSlanderella 2014: there is always more and it is always worse.
If you got rid of half the turd mongers in the actual city hall building, would anyone notice?
ReplyDeleteI think pd and the fire guys are way more important than a popcorn eating assistant to the assistant in city hall. There are a lot of no nonsense jobs paying 50,000 dollars a year up in city hall. Most of the ones you cal at city hall have no idea what the hell they are doing anyway. Keep our public safety alone and get rid of City hall staff.
ReplyDelete5:36 Makes a lot of sense. Cut public safety so we don't lose anymore paper pushers at city hall. This is Missouri not Colorado. Smoking dope isn't legal here.
ReplyDeleteAt a time when most well managed cities are stabilizing their budgets, KC's continues it's downward spiral.
ReplyDeleteThe budget document is smoke and mirrors. The 12 month budget year is only funded to about 10 months. That's why the salary and hiring freezes are in place.
Turd mongers wins
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how many floors KC has downtown but I bet 90% of them are waste. Make a great hotel….
ReplyDeleteTwo pumpers in one station. Enough said. And its not a law to have four on a pumper. No other service does that in this whole area.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather have cops, firefighters, plowed streets, lots mowed and trash picked up than 2 mile toy train, fancy parties for "dignitaries," paid trained monkeys who can't string together an intelligent sentence, paid people who either are related to someone, fucking someone in "power" or the relative who can't get a job anywhere else. We need those cops in Killa City. If nothing else for crowd control.
ReplyDelete2:18, why would Tony reveal his sources? Other journalists don't. I know folks at City Hall and these cuts are real.
ReplyDelete