TKC NOTE: This is probably one of my favorite things Craig has written in a while because it has so many good local ideas.
Check it:
If I Ruled The World
Or At Least Kansas City
As you all know, the city is getting ready to spend millions of dollars on a new street-car operation for downtown and midtown. I would imagine most of you are with me when our brain says, ‘that ain’t gonna work’. So what would I do to fix Kansas City, MO over the next few years?
1) Kansas City is a name people know around America but have no clue what the city is all about. Our City has chosen to waste millions of dollars trying to bring in second and third tier conventions. What we should do is put together a strategic marketing group to produce television commercials promoting Kansas City as not only a great place for families to move to, but visit. The commercials should show our unknown but exciting shopping and living areas, i. e. the Country Club Plaza which is virtually unknown nation-wide but is one of the nicest shopping and entertainment districts in the country.
Why not show some of the gorgeous homes in Mission Hills, Ward Parkway and other neighborhoods around the city where someone might like to move to and in addition promote how affordable the cost of living is here compared to other cities. I’ve never seen a media campaign to promote Kansas City in my lifetime. Yes, it should include social media as well.
2) Find a way, outside of taxing everyone, possibly with a city bond investment, to upgrade and modernize our most successful areas including places like The Plaza, Brookside, Waldo, Westport, Mid-town and the Crossroads District. We need to reward the areas that are paying much of the city taxes and getting little in return.
3) Investigate where all the millions of dollars went that our leadership made to attempt to move Kansas City forwards including City Market, 18th and Vine, The Zoo…in short everything they have ever done. Somebody went south with big bucks, big time. Example: 18th and Vine, 300 million? Really? Show me where that was spent. Turn 18th and Vine into an area for young, well-to-do, upwardly mobile urban crowds complete with nightclubs and restaurants featuring the music and ambiance they want with police protection. At least someone would go there. You might want to do a music museum based on more current celebrities like Tech N9ne, that might actually draw a crowd.
4) Be more business friendly, especially to small businesses wanting to come in to KC, Mo. Make the journey for new businesses to get liquor licenses, construction permits, health inspections and the like faster. Streamline the process so that these things can be done quickly and easily much more like your neighbors in Kansas City, KS.
5) Find a way to give real tax incentives for real estate and small businesses that they can actually use, especially new businesses. Have an outside group, not the City Council, deal with taxes and ways to lower them for businesses. The current ten percent city tax is oppressive when you add that in with Federal tax, higher rents, higher wages, etc. It doesn’t work.
6) Create a board made up of business and marketing people with a track record of success of opening businesses or turning them around. These would be men and women not unlike Carl Peterson, like him or not, and other successful business owners.
7) The Mayor’s office and City Council are made up mostly of activists with almost no business history or skills whatsoever. The city is effed up and broke because of this poor leadership. Take their power away. Remember, most people on the City Council over the years have been the lady up the street unhappy with her trash pickup or a sub-par attorney who wanted the job to stimulate his paycheck. That’s what we’ve had for the most part over the last fifty years. Let me give you an example. Doing what Kansas City does with our multi-million dollar budget and turning it over to people who often have no experience with business or these large sums of money is like giving a tenth grader who’s kind of good at math a rocket ship to fly. They meant well but they don’t know how to fly a rocket ship.
8) Lastly, more control of the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department, a real board made up of multi-racial well educated business people that can understand Law Enforcement issues and problems. Officers need to be more visible on foot and in patrol cars in areas of high crime especially at night when a majority of the crimes happen, not just come after the guy got shot. We need less DUI checkpoints and have those same officers go door to door to homes, businesses, condos and apartments, bang on those doors and ask if everything is okay tonight.
9) In short, City Council and the Mayor’s Office has been a pretty big failure since the 1960’s, and it’s time to put together new leadership, a better educated experienced business group to better oversee the spending of our millions of dollars in tax revenue and promoting our city in a much better way than we have up to this point.
There are many more ideas, these are just some of mine, what are yours?
I'll go ahead and say it: We need to get Craig to run for the Mayor's office in KCMO.
ReplyDeleteHis agenda is better than most of the people running for Council already.
(CNN) — If you’ve ever complained that people who use the word FAIL repeatedly are a bunch of sadistic psychopaths, you might be onto something.
ReplyDeleteAn online survey by a group of Burlesque researchers suggests that people who use the word FAIL ad nauseum are more likely than others to show signs of sadism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism”: a disregard for morality and tendency to manipulate or exploit others.
“It was sadism, however, that had the most robust associations with the word FAIL of any of the personality measures,” says an article by psychologists from the Troost Avenue Laundromat. “In fact, the associations between sadism and … scores were so strong that it might be said that the FAIL obsessed are prototypical everyday sadists.”
Sadism is a tendency to take pleasure in other people’s pain or discomfort.
How about the bonds buying German Shepherds and internment camps for certain of our uncivil citizens?
ReplyDeletewhile we enjoy lampooning Glazer....this time I say, well spoken Mr. Glazer.
ReplyDeleteI would argue with the promotions part. A good product will mostly sell itself, a bad product is a tough sell no matter how much you advertise. Spend the money on fixing the product.
ReplyDeleteI do agree KC is hell on small business. The incompetent finance department creates a paperwork nightmare.
Glazer was going to run for Mayor in the early 2000's got into trouble and had to stop. Too bad. Fantastic report.
ReplyDeleteI think instead of the local government deciding we need a street car that costs millions, us TAX PAYERS should take those millions and find us a new city government.
ReplyDeleteya like one that actually gives 2 shits about this city !! lol Good Luck!
ReplyDeleteThere's not enough business people telling city hall what to do because they all puke dick.
ReplyDeleteA few things: Get a real light rail system and do it right. Be like Chicago and go out to the suburbs and into the city. Build a baseball stadium downtown. Make Westport a mini-French Quarter. Allow open-air drinking. And allow the cops to run things the way things should be run. By that don't allow the underage black kids to line Westport Road and harass the shit out of paying customers. Get a gov't in KCMO that can be trusted so bi-state taxes can be passed and Kansas will go for them for the betterment of the city. BTW, I don't expect any of these things to happen.
ReplyDeleteSame shit spewed by the biggest bullshit artist in KC.
ReplyDeleteLegends, Zona Rosa and Town Center all better shopping then Plaza, without the problem.(yet)
The 7th point is pretty damn accurate. My boss keeps his job because he panders to the Council by letting them make decisions that is his responsibility. They feel good about themselves, and he keeps his job.
ReplyDeleteHe tells me, that he is following the approach used by the CM.
People who take from their elected official position their primary sense of self worth are low hanging fruit for this approach.
Getting business savvy individuals who know how to run a business, and understand the concept of delegating, then holding staff responsible, make great leaders.
KCMO really doesn't have an elected municipal government. It has a recycled bunch of amateurish "politicos" who subsidize anyone with a pulse who promises to build something, gives away money without any criteria or accountability for results, and races around teh city pandering to every little self-identified and aggreieved interest group promising them they'll "get their fair share".
ReplyDeleteIt is a taxpayer-funded ATM machine with an endless parade of favor-seekers marching through 12th and Oak trying to guess the PIN number.
And it is a world class joke.
I agree with most of Craig's list but only because he doesn't include a street car as the solution to all of our problems.
ReplyDeleteSome of these suggestions are good but there's simply too much negativity in KC to address them properly. We need people who are dedicated to improving KCMO. Not just people pushing their own agenda.
ReplyDeleteStop being such a pantywaist @ 7:53!
ReplyDeleteIf you want to fix KC then you're going to have to be willing to take on special interests and their agendas.
Is it bad to say that I like Craigs ideas more than slys?
ReplyDeleteHow many more wars can we start? How many more industries can we draw to prison labour? How can we get more toll roads?
ReplyDeleteWho is this Craig guy? I like the cut of his jib!
ReplyDeleteWanna fix Kansas City? Start with a new city manager and department directors.
ReplyDeleteIf that idiot ruled the world we would be more fucked than we are now. We have enough con artists in city hall we don't need anymore.
ReplyDeleteTony if you think these are all so great you just proved you're a bigger idiot than Glazer.
Lets just bring Byron the idiot into city hall as well
ReplyDeleteHe hit all the nails on the head.
ReplyDeletewhat does the polar bear think
ReplyDeleteSome good ideas, some bad one. I think it's kinda clear Craig doesn't live in KCMO. Not that I can blame him.
ReplyDeleteHave they fished CG's head from the toilet yet?
ReplyDeleteStarting to smell like it
ReplyDeleteGlazer your points are some of the best I've read on this town. The best. Thanks. They won't listen to you though, but you already know that.
ReplyDeleteNormally I like to crap on GC but he makes good points. Especially the first one. Cities like Omaha and San Antonio have benefited from advertising themselves as business friendly and fun for a weekend visit. We should be doing something similar.
ReplyDeleteWhat ? Like a gun fight on the plaza ?
Deletemore fish please
ReplyDeleteCRAIG notice your haters have dropped off to a large portion? You are beating them with the truth and well thought out articles like this one.
ReplyDeleteNorm/Leawood, STFU.
ReplyDeleteI loath Glazer, but if he included fixing the schools in this list I would vote for the asshole.
ReplyDeleteYes schools are a mess in KCMO. I think that should be on the list myself. Craig Glazer is a talented leader, needs to step forward and be heard. I mean that.
ReplyDeleteGlazer would like to hear more.
ReplyDelete6:53 has some great ideas, but is also correct that none of those things will ever happen.
ReplyDeleteThere's no serious leadership from KCMO city hall and of all the 115 other muncipalities in the metro, none of them would ever consider collaborating with KC only to watch the 'ol money switcheroo that goes on almost daily at 12th and Oak.
Most of the surrounding cities focus on actual municipal services and base their operations on credibility and delivering what they promise.
So folks who continue to bail out of KCMO can rest assure there'll be plenty of places to live, raise a family, work, and enjoy life available without leaving the metro.
Then roll into the "urban environment" of downtown, let the kids ride the @300 million streetcar, buy some arugula at the City Market, and head for home before dark.
The larger metro could use some real leadership and everyone suffers from the buffoonery of Sly and the gang.
4:17 sad but true.
ReplyDeleteRun for office, then, if your ideas like "the city chould make Brookside and Waldo better" or "the city should make 18th and Vine a Club district" are so smart and easily achieved, ya fucking jagov.
ReplyDeleteNothings easy, Glazer tried to run once, but they ran him off, our loss.
ReplyDelete