TKC EXCLUSIVE AND BREAKING NEWS!!! TRANSIT ACTIVIST CLAY CHASTAIN TOUTS LIGHT RAIL PLAN AND HIS UPCOMING KANSAS CITY COURT DATE WITH DESTINY!!!
Right now we're featuring the latest note from the last guy to win a citywide rail vote in Kansas City . . .
CLAY CHASTAIN OUTLINES THE PETITION HE HOPES WILL GET ANOTHER APPEARANCE ON THE UPCOMING KANSAS CITY BALLOT!!!
Like it or not, it's an important proposal and the way Mr. Chastain has been shut out by politicos and newspaper reveals a shocking disregard for Democracy in Kansas City . . . Check the deets:
Light Rail Hearing set for May 19th @ 10:30 - Ballot Initiative Language
A fourth light rail court hearing is set for May 19th @ 10:30 before Judge Midkiff, and we pray this judge will finally take the light rail initiative (ruled constitutional by the Missouri Supreme Court) out of the courts...where the city has held it hostage for nearly three years... and onto the ballot so the voters can decide.
Here then is the complete ballot language for the initiative...to build a citywide, multimodal light rail-based transit system (headquartered at Union Station)...Mayor James and the City Council do not want citywide voters to vote on and decide themselves:
IN ORDER TO PROVIDE THE PEOPLE A MORE GREEN, PROSPEROUS, AND TRANSIT-ORIENTED CITY shall the City of Kansas City, Missouri impose a capital improvement sales tax of 1/4% and a transportation sales tax of 1/4%, both not to exceed 25 years, beginning in 2011, to help fund the following improvements to the city's transit system:
* Construct a 22-mile light rail spine from Waldo to a Park & Ride (P&R) lot south of Kansas City International Airport...with electric shuttle service to the terminals...including stops at or near Brookside, UMKC, the Plaza, Westport, Penn Valley Park & Liberty Memorial, Union Station, the Downtown Power & Light District on Main Street, City Market, NKC, Vivion Road, Line Creek Park, and Zona Rosa generally following the Country Club right-of-way, Broadway, Main St., Burlington, North Oak Trafficway, and the Interurban right-of-way;
* Construct a 19-mile commuter rail line from south Kansas City to Union Station including stops at or near a P&R lot at Blue Ridge and Hwy. 71, a P&R lot at Blue Ridge and I-470, the Bannister redevelopment site, Swope Park, and the Truman Sports Complex generally following existing rail corridors and Truman Rd.;
* Construct an 8.5 mile streetcar line from the Kansas City Zoo to Union Station including stops at or near Medical Research Center, Citadel redevelopment site, Cleaver Blvd., Troost Ave., Hospital Hill, and Crown Center generally following the Prospect Ave., Linwood Blvd., and Gilham Road corridor;
* Construct an electric bus and bikeway feeder network that will connect to all rail stations with the bikeways separated from traffic and using where possible the grassy mediums of city boulevards; and also use the tax proceeds to finance bonds and secure federal matching funds?
Now compare that comprehensive transit vision to the city's...restricted to the central city and undemocratically administered... streetcar vision consisting of a maze of streetcars slogging about downtown streets in traffic with no service to the airport, the northland, Brookside, or south Kansas City!
Kansas City Community Activist, Clay Chastain
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Developing . . .
I think Clay could take Russ Johnson in a fight but it would be good to watch no matter who wins. Maybe that's the way this should be decided!
ReplyDeleteShit, Ole Russ man would kick this fucking queer's ass!! But Clay is too much of a pussy for a fight. Nah, he'd rather "fight" in the press.
ReplyDeleteClay for Mayor? He ks mor involved than Sly!
ReplyDeleteI hope he dies.
ReplyDeleteAren't you the asshole, 4:44.
ReplyDeleteBottom line - every city of this size has light rail from the airport to the City. Folks will vote for that alone.
Keep up the good fight, Clay. No one else is.
Don't you wish I would just get fucking cancer and die? Jesus H Christ, do I have a fucking ego or what? Even if I did die, my fucking ghost would probably hang around in the produce aisle at Cosentinos in Brookside by the cucumbers and hit on your wife.
ReplyDeleteIt would be like "Field of Schemes" where I am like fucking Rasputin or somehting, you jsut cant fucking kill me. I will fly into your city and torture the fuck out of everybody about a light rail system that I could actuall give a fuck less about, but my brobdingnagian ego which is the size of the fucking Federal Deficit, just will not stop.
I am like a fucking T 1000. I will not stop, I don't feel pain, I will not be reasoned with, I don't give a fuck, you are getting this goddamn fucking light rail system shoved up your fucking ass if I have to ride on the back of a Byron's fucking burro from West Virginia for the rest of my fucking life.
Man did you mother ever wash mouth out with soap. Dam you must ready hate clay or just got hard on for him. this not about clay but the right to vote but i guess your brain to small to understand that.
ReplyDeleteWhere is Blond Watermelon? He seems to have the hots for Clay.
ReplyDelete5:52
ReplyDeleteNo, it's about Clay. It's all about Clay.
I support Clay, Russ beat my children!
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, even though Clay doesn't live in KCMO, he has about as much of a financial stake in rail transit as all the 20-something barristas who voted for the streetcar, are all ga ga over spending even many hundreds of millions more on expansion, and are happy to let the grownups pay for their fun for decades.
ReplyDeleteSo if you can't vote for a TDD if you don't live in it, even if you own property, and you can hang big financial obligations on others even though your modest income doesn't ake much of a hit, there's not a whole lots of difference between you and an out-of-towner like Clay.
And both support very expensive rail transit in a low-density automobile town.
No idiot it's not about clay, but your right to vote. They won't put it on the ballot. Even HE got three thousands signatures from people who want to see it on the ballot.
ReplyDeleteThis is your right, not the politicians to tell you what to vote on.
REMEMBER, THIS IS AMERICA, NOT A SOUTH AMERICAN DICTATORSHIP.
Well sorry but we few city left that donest have lightrail.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible Hugo Chavez has returned to Earth in the form of Sly James? Sly does seem to enjoy transparency in government or being told he cant do whatever he wants. That being said, anything is better than the last buffoon, Mayor Mark Smartwithnothinghouser and the Co-Mayor, the Squid. It would be nice if Sly would stop borrowing money and leading us to financial Armageddon.
ReplyDeleteCool plan. Good to see that it garnered so much support. Shows that people really do want transit in KC. Unfortunately it doesn't qualify for FED assistance because it would have totally gutted the current bus system, and that's a non-starter for fed money. Can't raid bus money and still get fed money, no matter what the anti-streetcar tin hatters on this forum say.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it would take a 2 cent/dollar sales tax increase to pay for it all, but dreaming is free...
I'm not even sure 2 cents/dollar sales tax hike would pay for 41 miles of light rail, 8.5 miles of street car, the trains themselves, plus the park and ride lots, the "electric shuttle" (What? No gondolas?) to the airport, the bikeways, and the electric bus "feeder network."
ReplyDeleteBut I'm damned sure 1/4 of a cent ain't gonna do it, and another 1/4 cent to operate it.
Which is why it won't make the ballot. The numbers just don't add up.
"the way Mr. Chastain has been shut out by politicos and newspaper reveals a shocking disregard for Democracy in Kansas City"
ReplyDeleteNo, Tony. The only thing this reveals is Chastain's utter disregard for the law and/or his complete inability to learn after so many years and so many petitions.
Under the law, if you are going to propose any expenditure, you also have to propose new funding sources sufficient to cover it.
Chastain doesn't even give you any kind of estimate of how much his grandiose plan will cost, let along whether the sales tax funding sources will be sufficient to cover those costs.
And no, he cannot presume funding sources such as federal money that have not been approved.
Tony, you should read the Missouri Supreme Court decision before you write that the court approved this petition.
ReplyDeleteChastain and his attorney thought they were being clever with the "to help fund" language, which means they knew that the proposed sales tax increase wouldn't fully pay for what he proposed.
The court ruled as such, the petition was only a sales tax increase question, and not a mandate for the city council to do anything but collect the sales tax.
Fuck all those facts, guys...it's the TKC comments section. Facts not allowed or appreciated. Stick to paranoia, FEARFEARFEAR, and hyperbole.
ReplyDeleteThen write "toy train boondoggle" 50 times.