TKC READER REAX: SUPER DAVE TALKS QUESTIONABLE CITY HALL FINANCES!!!

TKC NOTE: Tonight, take a look at a comprehensive and thoughtful perspective on Kansas City's financial mess from our pal Super Dave. In this post he shares thoughts on the retrofitting, planning for the future along with a great deal of healthy skepticism about Kansas City's plans for development. Checkit:

Fiscal Insanity @ City Hall

Poor old Kemper Arena a building that nobody seems to want. But why is it that nobody wants it, is it because it is too old? Is that how our city governments operate now if something gets to a certain age nobody wants it anymore so let’s just get rid of it and throw it away? It is still a very modern looking building and has maybe not enough parking but parking space is expandable all around it. One of the things it was built for was to help out the American Royal. An event that was pretty famous and well known all across the country every year. But life and times have changed and the operators of the American Royal have slowly but surely stuck their heads up their rear discharges. They even went so far as to move the famous barbecue event out of the American Royal area to another location.

Whatever happened to using your head and planning for future expansion on our big public buildings?


Parking has always been an issue; parking has always been an issue in anything this city has built. There is either a huge lack of parking or you’re raped by paying huge parking fees. Your other choice is you’re left with parking in a bad neighborhood and hope that the insurance company will pay you back for any damage or loss of property you may incur with the thugs breaking into or stealing your car.

The American Royal claimed that they had to turn participants away and maybe that’s a good thing, maybe you need to increase your entries fees a few dollars and have top quality teams competing instead of making it a Wild West shootout of too many smokers. I mean to be honest how can you sit and sample 200 different styles of ribs as a Judge and pick one as the clear winner? From some of the complaints that I have heard from people the past couple months the event has gotten so big they can’t really handle it no matter where it is at. I think that’s the writing on the wall that says you need to scale it down just a little bit and instead of making it bigger make it a smaller fantastic event where only the best of the best show up.

The West Bottoms played a huge role in creating the history of Kansas City, actually the West Bottoms made Kansas City. Why the city does not go in and turn the West bottoms that’s already partially done into a major attraction by increasing the parking and stop wasting money on stupid toy trains and design a shuttle service that works. A parking lot full of shuttles not being used between events is much cheaper to operate than a toy train going nowhere every day.

I guess nobody is satisfied with old anymore, if it’s not brand-new and shiny and taxing us to death nobody will come. I have attended many events at Kemper Arena and never once had a bad experience there. In this day and age of towns trying to draw people to make use of public facilities would it not make sense to have people partaking in facilities that have paid for themselves versus spending billions of dollars for a fancy new building that’ll take 30 or more years to pay for itself if it does even then?

I’ve never been a fan of that let’s put all of our eggs into a one spot area and hope the people come. The Power & Light district has been proof that while an event is taking place there is some excitement yes but when nothing is going on it’s deader than the cemetery at midnight. That’s a part of what makes Kansas City actually a better attraction area for people to come to if all of the towns were to get their heads out of their rear discharges drop their egos and work together. We don’t need one huge entertainment district, we need entertainment spots. Yes what I’m saying is after an event downtown you can go to the Plaza have drinks or dinner, go to the legends or the Northlands or go out to Johnson County and maybe even have drinks, dinner and whatnot after the main event. By this happening you allow your crowd to spread out everywhere after a major event. You can’t build a place for the people to attend let’s say a major event in and then walk across the street for further entertainment. Well ok so Las Vegas has done such but in a much different layout than Kansas City is. The Sprint Center can hold 19,000 plus people and there’s no way 19,000 plus people can walk across the street to the Power & Light district. So let’s say 5000 people walk across the street to the Power & Light district, I will be honest with you that’s a crowd of people I would not want to be in. The businesses over there would be expected to go from zero to full out at the drop of a hat and in this day and age of rude and pushy people it is courting disaster. People complain that down in the Kemper Arena area there was nothing to do after an event and that you had to go somewhere else to finish off the night, that was great and that’s what we did. We would hit another place that would not be jam-packed full of people, it would just be normal Saturday, Sunday or a weekday night crowd.

I knew as soon as Kay Barnes tried to sell the city on the Sprint Center it was going to be a disaster and there’s a lot of people they can still tell you I said those exact words. Spending millions of dollars of taxpayers money’s on false dreams and non-supported facts should be construed a crime. But year in and year out city leaders all across this country keep spending and keep building. The time to draw the reins back has come. The taxpayer should no longer be held responsible to continuously put out more money for bigger and newer and fancier buildings with quirks that local politicians seem to think we need.

Our airport works, I have flown in and out of it many times and I love it. I can move around this airport better than I can any other airport in our country. People claim it sucks to layover in Kansas City and I’ll tell you it sucks no matter what airport you’re in. Myself I take a good book when I am flying to deal with layovers and delays you never know you may have, Nobody pre-plans for things like that anymore I guess, must be to easy to just bitch about it. I don’t go to the airport for five star dining and entertainment I go to get in a plane and get the hell out of there. I heard someone the day say that they went up to the KCI airport and were in and through security in 12 minutes and on the return flight from LA it took them one hour and 10 minutes to get through security.

As for one who has done a lot of conventions, set up shows at conventions and designed booths for conventions I know how they work. Putting another convention hotel in downtown Kansas City is not only idiotic but just plain stupid while not necessary. It’s just another monument for a politician to claim as theirs. Who will probably move from the city after their term to avoid paying taxes for all the stupid things they built.

Our cities need to start building buildings that will have a life expectancy of more than 20 or 30 years. You know I find it amazing that Wrigley Field opened in 1914 in Chicago, that same field is where they play ball at today. In fact they just undertook a start to a $575 million facelift all done with private money. That just goes to prove if there is money to be made private industry will spend the money. I know how TIFs work and TIFs are a joke. Most times in a TIF district a store may only be required to be there for five years minimum before they bail and in that five years they do not pay back any taxes. So it allows a company to come in build a place, not pay taxes, while you keep paying taxes on their gamble rather they can make it or not. The city wants to spend your tax money on a gamble that a Convention Hotel Center will work. When was the last time the city gave you money to gamble with?
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