Next Steps
Here at the “where to go next?” part of our story is a good place to revisit our moral commitment.
We have a commitment to preserving the equal rights for all individuals. Our moral commitment to each other is to oversee and redirect our government when it is forsaking its role to protect those rights. We need to be better overseers.
First, let’s put “the government” in the right perspective. We have this tendency to personify our governance: “that’s the government’s role” or “the government messed that up”, as if this institution, this thing we call the government has a fully functioning central nervous system. The government is a system, and it's supported by many talented people who are dedicated to making a difference, but this system is only as good as the people it represents. We the People need to set expectations and provide oversight, then allow the elected representatives and staff of the system to do what they were selected to do. Remembering that we are responsible for whatever outcomes are achieved provides the right framing.
Second, one of the first things we need to get back in order is the functioning of our systems. We have a Council/Manager form of governance that tends to act more like a group of multiple managers. That’s dysfunctional. The city council needs to act more like a Board of Directors and allow the city manager, the capable professional we pay to manage our city, to do his job directing and overseeing all the other professionals we pay to administer our city.
Next, we need to commit ourselves to operating under a truly balanced budget. What we have now is only balanced in accordance with the rules we’ve allowed to define acceptable behavior. The reality is
-
we aren’t funding the maintenance of the infrastructure that allows our city to function,
-
we haven’t fully funded the pensions we’ve promised to our staff,
-
we underfund our Parks and Recreation department relative to all the parks and community centers we expect them to maintain and program,
-
we underfund our waste management services and allow trash to accumulate along our streets.
-
there’s more, but you get the point.
It is dishonest to say we run a balanced budget when we aren’t addressing the commitments we’ve established, regardless what generally accepted accounting practices may be. It’s ridiculous to expect that we can afford to provide housing, care for those in need, build ballparks, etc. etc. etc. when we can’t afford to run the city we already have.
Lastly, we need to be much more discerning about the development we permit. The way we grow and manage our city is the primary way we can manage the taxes we pay and care for the city we’ve built. When we permit development that adds more costs for the city to operate than tax revenues to fund those operations, we’re digging a hole. When we incentivize development, we risk digging that hole even deeper. Too many of our current development policies are digging us deeper and deeper into a hole and away from the ability to be a great city.
So what should our next steps be?
-
Establish expectations for our local governance.
-
Vote for people we believe can meet those expectations.
-
See that they are moving us towards becoming a great city.
Following the lead of our founding Declaration, it is our responsibility as Kansas Citians to pay attention when things aren’t being governed well and to take actions to see that they are. The way that We the People of Kansas City, the citizens, the community leaders, the business leaders and civic leaders can help make our city great is to vote for candidates who (1) can show us they understand the importance of a balanced budget and (2) are fit for the task of leading the City towards a balanced budget. Our next council needs to show that they understand and are prepared to address the following needs of our city:
-
We are not generating enough tax revenues to keep up with the demands of all the things we expect our taxes to provide. Yes, there are inefficiencies in government that should be considered, but the core problem is we have created more needs than resources. Overcoming that will take us years, maybe decades to accomplish, but it can be accomplished.
-
We need a plan to build our tax base. Because of the breadth of the challenge, this will be a long-term plan that takes decades to achieve. Changes in current behavior will also be needed, so the plan should allow for the time needed for people to adjust their business models to new priorities and expectations.
-
We need to recognize the good that we started twenty-five years ago and continue reinvesting in our downtown, expanding that reinvestment southward and eastward in the part of Kansas City built to be a city, built to be a land of opportunity: the central city.
-
We need to attract many more people to live in the city part of Kansas City that we’ve depopulated over the last 75 years, which will help to build our tax base without increasing our footprint of infrastructure and public services responsibilities.
-
We need to follow the leads of progressive suburban communities like Overland Park, Lenexa, and Lee’s Summit, communities that understand better than most the financial realities of the suburban development model and, as a result, are building mixed-use village and city centers to build more robust tax bases for their communities. We can do the same in our suburban areas.
-
We need the use of incentives to be transparent and strategic, focused on projects that have the potential to be part of the city’s economic engine, projects that help to balance our budget by contributing more to the tax base than is in return the City has to spend on the maintenance and public services those projects will require.
-
We need a city council that understands how to operate effectively in our Council/Manager form of governance, providing high-level strategic direction, seeing that we are working towards a budget that balances obligations with the resources and the staff needed to run our city effectively, and then demanding accountability for results from our city manager while staying out of day-to-day operations of the City.
-
We need the mayor to champion our opportunities and our challenges and to lead the Council to consensus on the key issues Kansas City needs to address to be successful.
We will have the chance to do our job as Kansas Citians and put a city council and mayor in place next year with the skills and the commitment needed to take on the fundamental budget challenges. This is our responsibility as Kansas Citians. We can’t afford another four or eight years of status quo, continuing to grow in a way that makes our city poorer and increasingly fragile.
We won’t be starting from scratch but leaning into the good things previous leaders have already put in motion. Twenty-five years ago, we started rebuilding downtown, encouraging people to live, work, and reinvest in the city. As a result, downtown zip codes started growing again in 2010 and Mid-town/Plaza zip codes have just recently started growing again since 2020, this after generations of decline and population loss. However, suburban flight continues and we are still losing more residents East of Troost than we are gaining west of Troost. The last twenty years of reinvestment plus our recent streetcar extension and a new ballpark are sources of precious momentum. We need to make good use of that momentum and bring more people back to live in our urban core, a lot more people, 100,000 more people to help us balance our books and do the things great cities can do, but without a major change in behavior, that is not going to happen.
The challenge before us is not a lack of information. We have access to more information than any generation in history. The challenge is whether we are willing to see what is already in front of us.
The Founders assumed certain truths would be self-evident. History suggests otherwise. Every generation has had its blind spots. It’s a human vulnerability, a weakness in our software. The question is not whether we Kansas Citians have issues we'd rather not see and address. The question is whether we will recognize and overcome them while momentum is still on our side.
Please help by getting involved, and please share this website with anyone who cares about making Kansas City a great city.
Let’s find a way to work together. Please reach out for a discussion: dennis.strait@notselfevident.com.