Why vote NO? Ballot language says "demolish (both) existing terminals". Would you buy a car or cell phone with a contract that says, first we crush your trade-in--and lookee! here's a picture of what we MAY give you to drive in two years.

The new KCI plan is clearly a scam. 

Sly's Used Cars! JUST SIGN HERE:  First we CRUSH your trade-in, SO THERE'S NO GOIN' BACK. 
We'll deliver you a brand new car...soon.  Fingers crossed!
If we can trust the airlines,
the ones that drag unruly passengers off. 

Lookie here, see the picture I had a buddy draw on a cocktail napkin  and then have a kid make a watercolor last month? 
TRUST US! 
We call this NEW KCI design the Cordish...I hope you'll like it.  Cuz your old car's gone.

Did T-Mobile demand you crush your old cell phone before handing you a new Samsung?
Hell no.  You're not that stupid. 

And did you believe Apple when some fat clown salesman
in a BBQ-stained bow tie
told you that a new iPhone X  would be free????

You would not buy a car--

or a big screen TV
or a cell phone
based on such a sketchy "contract"--no plans, no budget, just a promise based on a 30 DAY OLD watercolor sketch without furniture or people!


BEFORE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY VOTE:
Read the ballot language: it authorizes the "demolish existing terminals"--think about that.  A future blank check approval that legal eagles secretly embedded, to also include, down the road, without need for a future election: Wheeler downtown.  Who knows what the city might do with that?  Give it away to Richard Branson or Elon Musk or Jeff Bazos@Amazon??

THE OFFICIAL BALLOT LANGUAGE:
Shall the City of Kansas City be authorized to construct a new passenger terminal at Kansas City International Airport and demolish existing terminals as necessary, with all costs paid solely from the revenues derived by the City from the operation of its airports and related facilities, and without the issuance of general airport revenue bonds unless such general airport revenue bonds have received prior voter approval?



What's the rush?  The city is afraid you'll come to your senses, that's what.

Just vote NO.  They will be force to come back with a better plan.  Don't fall for "Lame Duck Dying for a Legacy Plaque" Sly James' idle threat, "If you don't do what I want, right now, we won't repair, we won't remodel, we'll just do nothing for 50 years."  My Dad tried those tactics in the 50's.  If I didn't detail his 1953 Studebaker before supper, he was gonna lock me in my room for 50 years. 

Finally, last week the City made a deal with Burns&Mac, the so-called losers in the bidding war.  All they had to do was make a token $20,000 contribution to the $1.6 million campaign fund, and the city will, in turn, award them a $50 MILLION contract to be the city's "Owner's Representative."

Corruption.  The City has an Aviation Department.  THEY are the Owner's Representative.  If they need to hire some engineers to supervise, they can hire them away from Burns & Mac--and I can assure you, it won't cost $50 MILLION!

Burns&Mac running false radio ads on 4 stns! Deceives public! Lobbies KCMO Council for their NoBid "New KCI"!! Goals: a) avoid public vote b) skim addl $140M financing profits and c) head off Katy Shields' smarter plan: local revenue bonds

 Bottom line: if Burns & Mac will lie to the public NOW, what else will they conceal?  Or attempt to sneak past the KCMO City Council?

This is a clear case of deceptive lobbying.  Burns and Mac is spending thousands of dollars on what's called The Assumed Close.

They struck their deal with Mayor Sly James.  It's been blocked.  The council wisely caved into public pressure, to at least invite a few others to bid.  And best of all, Katy Shields came up with a better plan, selling Airport Revenue Bonds, which will save the taxpayers $140 million in interest, since public bonds are sold at a lower interest rate than what Burns and Mac's secret moneybags, Michael Merriman at Americo will charge rich investors, (eg backers of Sly James).

But who would be surprised  at the temerity of telling an untrue outcome?  At B&M's IGNORING the facts that is, their Pearl Harbor sneak attack to spend a billion bucks to build a SMALLER airport may have been thwarted??

Who would be surprised at Burns and Mac now lobbying falsely by running radio spots AS IF THEY ALREADY WON AND BUILT THE "NEW KCI"??????

The splash page of Burns and McDonnell's own website is our first clue to an altered sense of integrity.  It starts with some X-files worthy music, and this apocryphal quote:
It can happen right before your eyes.
And at first, you might not even notice.

I hate liars.  So when I heard this unsourced radio spot on my favorite station, 980 KMBZ, claiming the city already built a new KCI, paid by Burns & Mac, I investigated.  Because the FCC says all spots must make it clear, who paid for them.  This one doesn't.  

Turns out it IS Burns and Mac paying the bill.  But could just as easily have been a lobbying group promoted and funded by their benefactor, Sly James.  Or Michael Merriman at Americo Insurance, the secret financier who hides from all reporters, and stands to make $140 million in higher bond rates.

Mike Merriman's Americo Life secret downtown financing partner 
for Burns and Mac's No Bid billion dollar, smaller"New KCI".
He may have paid Burns & Mac to run the false radio spots.
After all, if he snags this No Bid contract, he makes an extra 
$140 million, because private investments earn 1 1/2 to 2% 
more interest per year than publicly financed Airport Revenue Bonds. 

Burns & Mac has 5 registered lobbyists, according to James Klahr, Director of the Missouri Election Commission.  He shared with me, Missouri law is very weak on disclosures--re issues coming up on a ballot or a candidate: just for printed materials.)  But the FCC says  on every spot in America for any purpose: reveal to the public, (which owns the airwaves), exactly who is paying to dish out this narrative, in this case, a false one.

The spot states, "...in 2017, Kansas City made history, with the first ever privately built airport in the nation...built and financed locally...every pilot is talkin' about that new privately built KCI..."

It's simply not true!  It's wishful lobbying.

Listen here: KCI Pilot radio spot on 
4 Entercom stations


The spots are airing this week and next, thousands of dollars on a heavy schedule on four major Entercom radio stations: AM 980 KMBZ; 98.1FM (think EJ& Ellen and Dana and Parks); KCSP610 Sports, and 98.9 KQRC the Rock (Johnny Dare et al) .

Sly says123GOBonds free sidewalks expire when the money runs out!

Play this as you read!

Chaos is coming to KCMO!!!!!!!!!!!
If you thought the nudie cutie teaser photos on www.tonyskansascity.com were hot, grab your cell phone and head downtown to City Hall.

Last night at the State of the City speech, Mayor Sly James let it slip--he thinks citizens will only get free sidewalks as long as the money lasts!

OMG---A freebie with limits??  

                                Last one on the express elevator at City Hall to the 28th floor 
                                         has to pay $14000 assessment --for her new sidewalk.

Can you image the stampedes?

We haven't seen provocative lobbying like this since Cathy Jolly worked for a New York minute across the street for Mike Sanders!  (no photos available.  Her hubby is running to replace Sly James so she deleted herself from Google.)

Troy Schulte, KCMO City Manager told Dave Helling that HE is the Decider--not Sly James!!!!  And Schulte says he intends to take two years to make the lists.
Can you imagine Brookside yoga-obsessed housewives sneaking up to the 28th floor,the City Manager's office,  and ripping off their TJMaxx lycra hoodies and stretch bras-- to offer Troy Schulte lap dances in order to get on The Free Sidewalk List?

We haven't had hot sex in City Hall since barefoot Gloria Squitiro quit doing the nasty with Mayor Mark Funkhouser after hours on the 29th floor.

And what's that delicious smell?  Oh, trays of homemade meatloaf from Ward Parkway PTA presidents?  Italian mamas from Out Northeast, bringing in their special Sugo sauce recipe, trying to get THEIR sidewalk on Troy's short list!

The first time we saw a gravy train like this was the Three Wisemen trekking to Jerusalem for the census.

And of course, the most poignant List story was that great film, Schindler's List...

Now some folk will be fooled, thinking currently slim Sly James, our weak mayor,  at 108 E 30th St. is the Listmaker.  So another ant trail of Beseeching Bedroom Community Babes will head there.  Note:  Linwood Costco is just 6 blocks south of where Sly James rents a home on Union Hill.  Costco has sensational lasagna.  Just sayin...

Poor homeless Mayor James: No Hillary to coattail Cleaver to WDC new cabinet job, thus Sly can't run to replace Cleaver in Congress! Time to actually BUY a home in KCMO?

The saddest clown in town is clearly Mayor Sly James.

Mayor Sly James tugs on his bow tie...

His secret plan to ride the glory train to Washington was thwarted by the election of Donald Trump.

When will voters and taxpayers demand their Mayor actually BUY a home here???

Did you ever wonder why your mayor does not OWN a home in KCMO???  (He rents, on Union Hill.  108 E. 30th St.--where there are often campaign signs for friendly Dems and his endless tax increases.)  He sold his famous home on Mannheim Road in Hyde Park, the one where he was then caught early this year during his re-election campaign, by Clay Chastain's campaign for being delinquent on paying property taxes on two beater cars.

You know about that.  The election board --and the media--simply ignored the clear violation.  Because Sly's opponents were The General, a homeless man with no phone number who slept on friends' extra beds or at the motel on The Paseo.  And Clay Chastain, who lived in Virginia, and slept at his sister's house when he occasionally visited KCMO.  (at least we hope it's a separate bed...)

The plan that fell apart:
Run for an easy re-election, since the 1000 other lawyers in town sat it out.  Check.  How hard was that?
Then support Hillary for President.
Congressman Cleaver was then hoping to be appointed to either a cabinet position OR some department head or a job with either the Clinton Foundation or the Obama Foundation.
He's already locked up HIS lifetime pension, having served more than two terms.
And when the appointment job would be over, Cleaver could then become a lobbyist, like Senator Blunt, and have Dianne Cleaver and a couple of kids also become lobbyists.  It's all still legal. And rotten.

Sly James then hoped and planned and prayed and EXPECTED to be APPOINTED by the Dem. Central Committee to replace Cleaver in Congress--from which he could then run in 23 months for re-election--as an incumbent.

He and his wife could then move to WDC!  Buy a home THERE!~!!
Better parties, more fun.  And a much longer mass transit train to ride for years--at taxpayer expense.

And, like Kansas' senior Senator, Pat Roberts has done for years, just RENT in his home district.  In fact, Roberts only rents a room and a Barcalounger in a sycophant's home in Garden City.  Not even a whole house!!

Sly James hoped to buy this Barcalounger to keep in a back badroom of a rented condo in KC when he went to Congress on Clinton's and Cleaver's generous coattails...

Well, as the Norwegians say, "Uffda!"  (Jews say "oy veh".    Same diff.)

So now Sly James is stuck in purgatory: KCMO--with a crumbling infrastructure, no sugar daddies or Queen Hillary to support him.  And worst of all--no big future ahead of him.  Mayor is generally the end of the line.

But hey--consider this!  If Sly James succeeds in somehow conning the public into extending his Toy Train down to the Plaza, then the fake paid protesters will be able to ride, for free, all the way from Nichols Fountain to 12th St!  Then they just have to manage to drag their bought-and-paid-for protest signs and their giant papier mache effigies of President Trump four blocks from Main to Oak.  (Nobody had time to make those artworks that fast.)

Because the truth is--KC is not a walking town.  And protesters really never walk very far.  It's too hard on the TV News crews to capture and edit that much footage.  Thepaid protesters were handed those signs.  They were handed those effigy artworks and the matches.  They were paid to walk.  By the mischief maker man who visited Obama's White House 342 times the past eight years.  It's all a fake.  Just like the Ferguson protests.  Paid by outside agitators.

OK.  If you "feel Sly's pain", send a sympathy card to your homeless hopeless mayor.  Or drop it off at 108 W. 30th St.  But don't bother to make it a Hallmark card.  You only do that 'When you care enough...to send the very best.'

Not every greedy mayor lives in KCMO. Now PV Mayor/Welfare Queen Laura Wassmer is in bed with developers, hurting SM schools and property values.

Over in JoCo, the county and now the City of PV have learned from Sly James, in KCMO, how to deliver the bacon, to their friendly developers.

Remember Van Chevrolet?  They turned developer.  First they failed to invade the Plaza, when Polsinelli got a better deal around the corner, when they convinced Sly to bail out both Bob Bernstein and Terry Dunn--and lease it to them.  Now VanTrust has become a JoCo developer. So they bought Meadowbrook Country Club, 9101 Nall.  And in classic car dealer style, they took it as a "trade in" and are now double dipping profitably on TWO deals!

We at VanTrust keep the good land, and sell off the rest to JoCo,
who must build us a free detention pond.
BOCC then gives the clubhouse away for free to PV,
in return for approving this deal instead of building a new courthouse!
(plus it rewards Ron Shaffer being swing vote on King Louie...)
Would you like a free hotdog?

Now VanTrust wants to build upscale senior housing in PV--but waaaaaahhh--- they don't want to pay their property taxes!  But not even JoCo voters would fall for a TIF giveaway to a car dealer.  So,VanTrust is "parting out the car".  Parcelling off the interior half of the land, and foisting it off on JoCo government, with the first ever "reverse TIF".  Instead of jamming that property tax money into their own pocket, they used the three shell game trick.

  

VanTrust is stuffing the abated taxes into the pocket of JoCo Parks and Rec.  To cover the taxpayers' cost for the back half of this trade-in.  But ONLY if the SM Schools fall for this game.  And the big vote is this Wed.

So how does JoCo then pay off the swing voter, new Commissioner Ron Shaffer, former mayor of Prairie Village?  Brilliant!  JoCo Parks & Rec is gonna turn an aging Meadowbrook Clubhouse into the first city to receive a FREE community center, at the expense of ALL the county's taxpayers.  For the win: Prairie Village! 

But Cindy Neighbor on the SM School Board is opposing the TIF.  Wants to veto it Wed. night. How dare she!!!   Welfare Queen Mayor Laura Wassmer is furious!  She is trotting out Kay Barnes, the giveaway queen of KCMO,  and former Mayor Roe Talliaferro, everyone except Bernie Sanders. 

Roe Taliaferro, flanked by former Kansas City, Mo., mayor Kay Barnes (left) and
Prairie Village Mayor Laura Wassmer at a presentation earlier this year,
is encouraging PV residents to contact their representatives on the SM School Board.

 Wassmer is calling SM Schools need to collect property tax to keep competitive with Blue Valley Schools a "short term concern"!   Who is Wassmer's speechwriter?  Sly James??? 

The fact is this: The citizens of Prairie Village are now being lobbied by BOCC Commissioner Ron Shaffer, their former mayor who is trying to deliver the bacon, millions of dollars of JoCo tax dollars, to provide PV with a FREE community center. That is RECREATIONAL WELFARE. No other community got a free community center paid for by ALL of JoCo taxpayers. Not Shawnee, not Lenexa, not even the big dog, OP.  (They are getting one mold-filled room for yoga classes inside King Louie.  By one vote, the BOCC paid $4.5 million for the ugly asbestos filled building. A year later it appraised at $430,000, before pouring $32 million into rehabbing that pig. King Louie is smack dab between Matt Ross Community Center and the vacant Metcalf South.) 

Your home is often your single biggest asset.

Your public schools protect your property values.
So it doesn't matter if you have kids.
Bad schools, eg KCMO, equals lower resale value.

A rec center with subsidized day care COMPETES with private industry, which is well capable of offering yoga or pilates classes and day care. 
If you want the economy to improve, (so your kids and grandkids can get a job and move out of your back bedroom) then stop allowing your governmental lackies to transfer private tasks to public tax financed efforts.

SM Schools should STOP allowing businesses to demand TIF's.
The Meadowbrook TIF is a shell game.  Pretends the tax is for the county not the car dealer, when it is just an account transfer.
By one vote, the JoCo Commission refused to negotiate, and let a car dealer set the inflated price, sans appraisal.And because the car dealer is building things that don't generate much property tax, 
the TIF is a fake: it will likely never be paid off.
It's a gift disguised as an incentive.

This is a Trojan horse.  VanTrust is sneaking into NE JoCo to build what they want,
on the GOOD land, while sticking the county with the worse half, the interior in need of a giant detention pond, and then using Kay Barnes and Welfare Queen Laura Wassmer to hustle for it, 
and now trying to guilt trip the SM Schools into taking it in the yoga shorts.

If PV wants a community center, they should pay for it, and not demand RECREATIONAL WELFARE from every resident in Johnson County.
The SM School Board, led by Cindy Neighbor of Shawnee, should demand their property taxes. Period. VETO THE TIF.  

JoCo, did you learn NOTHING from KCMO???  When you go to sell your home, you don't want to have to lower your selling price by $20,000 to compete with a homebuyer who might not even have kids but wants to move to the Blue Valley School district...for the RESALE VALUE.

What is more important? Resale value of your home? Or putting on your lycra yoga pants and going to the Meadowbrook Welfare Rec Center?

Mayor James--Governor Sam Brownback's secret eco-devo hero!!!!

Hosannas and praise to Sly James, Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri.  You are doing MORE with your left-handed bungling than even Kansas Governor Sam Brownback thinks he is, to support the stalled economy in Johnson County, Kansas!!!

Sly James --the mayor who does not even own a home here, commenced his second term in August, kissing up to a local push from an organizing group of people all wearing red T-shirts to raise the minimum wage, just in KCMO, to $15 an hour.

Sly loves anything in a red shirt.  Just like he donned a red KCMO Firefighters button down shirt the night that JJ's Restaurant exploded and killed a worker--the night the KCMO firefighters drove away without turning off the gas leak, themselves, claiming (with a perhaps falsified FAX), that was somehow justified or prudent, because of some preposterous goofball policy that the "gas company had it covered"...no need for the Fire Department to actually do their tax-supported job.

So Mr. Big Red Jacket, we all know you love being on the news.  And so you supported the $15 an hour organizers, as well.  You made the news.

But that puzzled me.  Because Mayor James has a day job, as a lawyer.  It is illegal in Missouri for a city to pass a law controlling the minimum wage.  It must be a statewide thang.  So shouldn't he know better?

But oh well.  Details are not Sly's thang.  Like how to build a hotel downtown, without violating securities law, because your secret research report told you and the council that it won't pay for itself.
As of August 29,2015, the City of KCMO is claiming they don't have to release the secret research report, "because it was embedded and bundled inside a request for a sealed bid".  So even tho the taxpayers PAID for the report, they can't see it.  Details.  "It's a secret!"   (More on that soon.  What we need in this town is an Edward Snowden to leak the report.)

Another pesky detail this week:  Sly James now is scheming to borrow money from the Zoo Bond Fund to pay for a completely different project.  Might that be the same downtown hotel?  But wait.  The ballot issue promised the taxpayers when they voted for the penguins that the money would only go to the Zoo?  Details.

So when I read that Sly was grandstanding for the $15 an hour minimum wage, I just smiled.  Four years as a mayor is a LONG time for him to campaign to replace Congressman Emanuel Cleaver in Congress.  (Unless Sly knows something we don't, and is expecting Cleaver to resign early.)  Mayor James is gonna need alot of free headlines.  Like Donald Trump's race, it's far too early for details.

But now the news is reporting that Sly apparently read the state law, and perhaps had a "duh moment".  So now he is joining hands with union workers in St. Louis, and the new battle cry is "Raise the minimum wage across all of Missouri--to $15 an hour."  Coming soon to a red T-shirt near you.

To my mind, Sly James' campaign is the best news that Johnson County has had in a long time. Because every business that CAN migrate across our itty bitty and oh so close State Line Road--into Kansas for regular minimum wages--will do so.

The truth is this.  The economy has not recovered from 2008.  Businesses large and small are doing everything in their power just to survive.  And they are holding off on actual hiring.  Because we don't trust Congress not to jack up the tax code and the labor laws even worse.  And let's not even go there regarding Obamacare.  It's too big to repeal, too hard to repair and too soon to tell.

The second Big Truth is: newbie workers are not worth $15 an hour.  Period.  It doesn't matter if you exclude kids, late teens.  A greeter at Walmart is not worth $15 an hour.  They don't earn their keep. I don't want my prices raised.  Do you?

A new kid out of college, just learning their trade as a copywriter?  Not worth $15 an hour.  A new kid out out college, learning how to load up sod or trees at the Home Depot next to Linwood Costco? Not worth $15 an hour.  A newly hired empty nester Mom, seeking her first job in 18 years, anywhere, since the kids went away to college?  Not worth $15 an hour.  She might be, soon.  But not on Day 1.  So the entrepreneurs and the franchisees in Johnson County or KCMO or Branson are not going to lose money, they just won't hire anyone starting out at $15 an hour.  Including the marcher carrying his sign UPSIDE DOWN!

So please, Sly James.  LET THE MIGRATION BEGIN.  You keep wearing your red T-shirts and your red KCFD button down shirt.  And send ALL your businesses over to Johnson County--it's in the Red State.

Hugs,

Tracy Thomas, publisher of JoCoPost.com
New publisher of KCMOPost.blogspot.com