MUST READ!!! TRANSIT ACTIVIST CLAY CHASTAIN OPEN LETTER TO KANSAS CITY MAYOR SLY AND COUNCIL: STOP CHEATING!!!
Kansas City's top transit activist wants our elected leaders to make an honest effort regarding and upcoming light rail proposal that voters have supported previously.
Check it:
City trying to manipulate outcome of Nov 4th. Light rail election
Mayor James and the City Council have a few days left to do their duty to the citizens of Kansas City and place before voters on the November 4th ballot, fairly-worded light rail initiative ballot language.
As a die-hard light rail advocate (who believes light rail make a transit system go, and a city as well), I even agree that on November 4th Kansas City needs a final decision on light rail, one way or the other.
But we cannot glean a clear answer from KC voters if voters are not presented a clear question.
The City, who adamantly opposes the light rail initiative and has blocked a vote for three years, plans to place before voters light rail ballot language that does not even include the words light rail, just the taxes! Moreover, the City has also broken that unfair confusing ballot language into two separate ballot questions (one for each tax) to further confound voters in hopes of manipulating the outcome of the election.
A voter standing before those two questions will not even know what they are voting for or against!
This amounts to a self-serving scam perpetrated by a government against its own people just because it (technically) can.
Kansas City's government should act like a government of America, not a third world government that only lets you vote for what they want you to vote for.
Mayor James: You have a sworn duty to try and do the right thing and govern in good faith. You had your chance, but voters clearly rejected your streetcar vision.
Now its our turn ( the 4,000 voters, including me, who signed the light rail initiative petition) to try and move the city forward with a citywide light rail-based mutlmodal transit initiative plan (headquartered at Union Station.)
So stop cheating, being a sore loser, and place fairly-worded light rail initiative ballot language before the voters so they can decide this issue once and for all.
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Stop cheating......... BWHHAHAHAHAHA
ReplyDeleteClay, I don't even know what you want them to put on the ballot anymore it has been so confusing.
ReplyDeleteIs this a vote for fixed rail transit from Union Station to the Airport, who's going to pay for it, and is the streetcar boondoggle included?
It is clear as mud.
I'm voting with Clay for no other reason than to let the city royalty know they don't own the who fucking thing just yet.
ReplyDeleteWe voted NO on riverboat gambling many times. They were determined to have it here, ya think?
ReplyDeleteSame with light rail. We don't want it. It's a huge expense. It wouldn't be good for Kansas City....but you know what? It's coming. And they'll expand the line almost immediately.
If you vote for Clay's train, City Hall will take the money to build the toy train because they excluded Clay's plan from the election and the courts let them. Sorry Clay, need to start over.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the "toy" part of toy train?
ReplyDeleteThat shit might work on east siders and sub rube-an warriors but your bullshit got fuckstomped in midtown, aka, real KC.
Go back to Poverland Oark, internet lawyer boy. We took your best shot (it's a Jim Crow slave train discrimination/magical mystery buses are coming!) and handed you your culdesac candy ass.
Nutter money doesn't mean shit here...
@8:41pm
ReplyDeleteFirst, the claim was that KC was a "real city" and everyone cool supported real transit.
Then the story changed to the notion that the area of the Main Street line had the greatest density of anywhere in the metro, so rail would be great.
Then the tale morphed into the silly statistic that downtown was the fatest growing population.
And now, mid-town is aka, the real city.
When millions of dollars are being taken out of PIAC accounts THROUGHOUT THE CITY, the mid-town toy has become everyone else's expense, and therefore their concern.
It's sad that a little group of folks with very little stake in the city feels that city government should be their own personal piggy bank to fund their dreams, but it appears that a mjority of residents of KCMO have decided they don't want to pick up the tab.
And you used to be so clever, Mensa boy.
ReplyDelete"When millions of dollars are being taken out of PIAC accounts THROUGHOUT THE CITY,
ReplyDeleteIt's sad that a little group of folks with very little stake in the city feels that city government should be their own personal piggy bank to fund their dreams"
You just described how the suburbs have looted the economic base (AKA: downtown, midtown and plaza) of this city for 50 years...
You obviously don't know much about how PIAC is funded or used. Which is par for the course for the anti-transit cabal.
Why should "our" PIAC funds in the city be used for multi-million dollar roads to nowhere in the northern hinterlands? Why can't they pay for their own roads up there? Why should I have to pay for highway crossings in the middle of nowhere so sprawl bots can shave 15 seconds off their commute through non-existent KC "traffic"? Why should I pay for sidewalk no one walks on in neighborhoods that were intentionally built without them? Or sewers on rural land where no one lives?
Why should my PIAC money (most of which comes from the River-Plaza area) go to that kind of waste and "toys" for suburban entitlement culture?
I really wish Chastain would pack up his shit and gtfooh and go back to Virginia or wherever the fuck he's from. I'm all for light rail with a reasonable financing stream. But it sounds like (and has always sounded like) Clay's plan for financing this thing is a lot of hocus pocus and wishful thinking. It sounds like he's basing a good portion of the financing on "hope". As the saying goes: "Put hope in one hand and shit in the other...".
ReplyDeleteAnd since Clay doesn't live here, he won't have to experience the economic strain this puts on the city when financing fails.
Hell no I'm not going to vote for his light rail plan or any other light rail plan until someone with half a brain comes up with a REAL way to finance it that doesn't involve putting tons of economic strain on taxpayers. A lot of whom probably won't even ever use it.
8:22: Once the roads and sewers are in, how long does that land stay vacant?
ReplyDeleteDid it ever occur to you that, once upon a time, the area where you live was vacant land?