KANSAS CITY 'AFFORDABILITY' STAYS LOSING AMID RISING TAX & RATE SPIKES!!!



A worthwhile conversation on the horizon and important REALITY CHECK regarding the rising cost of local life as this town confronts MORE SALES TAX QUESTIONS coming up in the Spring.

Take a look:

KC Library: We’ve Built Cities We Can’t Afford

Nationwide, we’ve built cities we can’t afford. Kansas City is among them, able to budget just 10 percent of recommended street maintenance in 2019 and hitting a similar financial wall on sewers and water lines.

Dennis Strait, managing principal of the Kansas City studio of Gould Evans, an architecture and planning firm, lays out the problems and solutions in the first of two Making a Great City installments in March.

Kansas City is nearly four times as large as it was in 1950 and, without corresponding growth in population, each resident is responsible for maintaining four times as much infrastructure. The answer, Strait says, is more strategic development and a restructured tax system that motivates the private sector to build in ways that increase the city’s fiscal health and financial resilience.

Co-presented by Gould Evans, the Hall Family Foundation, the Urban Land Institute of Kansas City, First Missouri Bank, the Mid-America Regional Council, and Newmark Grubb Zimmer.

Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Reception: 6 pm
Program: 6:30 pm
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Developing . . .

Comments

  1. Finally. An honest assessment on what it takes to live in a city. If you want to live there, you have to pay for it
    However, people started leaving cities in large numbers when they realized that city governments were wasting the money and not maintaining the city. It has snowballed from there to the point where they’re just giving away revenue through TIF and doing nothing to keep families in town
    Try to envision Kansas City in twenty years and ask yourself if you will still be living there

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    1. Racism is more of a reason for white flight than finance. The exurbs have the same problem, they are just a few years later in the reconing.

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  2. Stop incentivizing greenfields development. The new streets/sidewalks are dedicated to the city and the city must maintain them in perpetuity.

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  3. At last someone is telling it like it is and the real truth about it.

    Lucas needs to step up and admit this is fact and stop handing out tax breaks right and left. Stop wasting money on MLK projects and either a private groups takes over 18th and Vine or bulldozers can make another park out of it.

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    1. Racist resentment much? It would make more sense to privatize your street and sewer and if you and the neighbors don't pony up, let it turn to mud instead if expecting government to give you free shit.

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  4. Just de-Annex the entire Northland!
    PLEASE!

    Then, with 1/3 of your population and 50% of your City's area gone, your only problems will be running the City off of the 37% of revenues that you will be left with.

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  5. Eliminate the neighborhood associations. The leadership of the neighborhood associations are pocketing the annual dues. Audit the neighborhood associations. Not out of the ordinary for over 50% of the dues to be spent on insurance to protect the president of the association from litigation. Corruption at all levels in Kansas City.

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  6. Unless KC MO continues the "earnings tax" the consolidation of KC MO would devastate the revenue base for KC MO. South is Kansas. West is Kansas (again). East is a ghetto. North is new development. And how is the new development, both economic and housing, an issue for KC MO? The next 100,000 residents of KC MO will be north of the river. The population south of the river wont increase. The economic development south of the river wont increase. I don't think north of the river is interesting, but interesting doesn't provide stability.

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  7. Less dense cities are not necessarily more expensive to operate. If that were the case Overland Park would have been bankrupt years ago. The problem is the city is less dense because the middle class left and took the tax base with them. Instead of blaming lack of density perhaps they should address why the middle class left.

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    Replies
    1. White flight is well established as primarily racist. Fix yourself.

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  8. Perhaps eliminating incentives that reduce automatic increases in city revenue due to property appreciation might help. Also stop building garages, hotels and dumping cash into Arts Celebrations and Jazz districts.

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  9. Without a decent KCMO school district, the KC population will never grow. No one wants to raise a family in the city limits when you could just go a mile west and be able to give your kids a serviceable education.

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  10. While white flight may have played a large part in the middle class leaving now you have middle class blacks fleeing also. Plenty of areas north of the river are deteriorating because the middle class is shrinking there also.

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  11. More excuses. Pre Sly and his downtown over everything the roads didnt look that bad.

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  12. The northland deteriorating is one of the most important stories of KC that no one will ever care about. It's always been a pretty anonymous existence up there because no one cares about it but over the last 6 or so years or so the working class base has been moving to either suburbs outside of the KCMO city limits or to JOCO. The Northland is getting run down.

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  13. More stupid than a box of rocks farting Swallow-well2/17/20, 8:50 PM

    At my advanced age, and as a lifetime Northland resident, I am somewhat I will hopefully not see the complete and utter deterioration of my neighborhood, although that is a trend which accelerates yearly. Dim run cities cannot continue to give every penny to grifters rather than maintain infrastructure, and hope to survive as desirable places to live. Ala Detroit, Baltimore, LA etc. In hindsight, North Kansas City and perhaps Gladstone may be able to hold off these changes for awhile. Liberty is the newest Northern flee to refuge from (New York) KC haven.

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  14. Not clear where anyone get the idea north of the river was deteriorating. The neighborhoods are stable. The neighborhoods with the lowest quality housing are experience tear downs and rebuilds. Go a bit further north and the developments are new and growing. Endless new additions with $300,000 homes. No section 8 homes north of the river...

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  15. The past 8 years under the like of James, Reed(MBA) and Justice had a goal of deferring as much general fund money to east side projects. Roads, sewers and police suffered. What did we get as a result? MLK Signage, City owned grocery stores in the 3rd district, 18th and Vine, Jazz District and a bunch of employees who do nothing for the city.

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  16. lllawd have mercy, what happens if you get the co-presenters to definitively pass wind in unison once every three years!

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