August 17, 2011

This crafty li’l pooch just got wind of a great grassroots effort to change some current, anti-neighborhood sentiment at City Hall. Some short-sighted council folks seem bent on neighborhood destruction, all in the name of eco-devo. The Polsinelli Plaza debacle is the springboard to the larger issue of council committees throwing out years of neighborhood planning and dictating to neighborhoods throughout the city what’s good for them. Note to the new mayor and council: Don’t urinate down our backs and tell us it’s rainin’. A bad plan is a bad plan, and it should ultimately be up to neighborhoods as to how their areas are developed, not a high and mighty City Hall committee.

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If you’ve noticed some new plants in the flowerboxes near Independence and Prospect lately, you’re not seeing things. Hundreds of Iris bulbs have been planted by volunteers from the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences and the Northeast Chamber of Commerce. The colorful flowers were acquired through a United Way beautification grant to NECC and Northeast Arts KC. After looking at the old Vista Theater rubble for so long, the new color will be a welcome change next spring along a byway that sorely needs some positive reinforcement.

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Things that make you go “hmmmm.” A few weeks ago while covering the Git-N-Go story, we noted a gas station across the street at 5401 Winner Rd. that really wasn’t a gas station. Oddly, now the Conoco-Phillips Company is sending out credit card applications to area residents offering a 10 cents per gallon rebate on gasoline purchased at the gas station that isn’t really a gas station. We’re not sure if the rebate would be valid on other products purchased at the gas station that isn’t really a gas station (like chore-boys and roses in glass tubes), but we thought it a bit odd to offer a rebate on a product that isn’t even available (and hasn’t been since late 2010) at the location the oil company is pushing. We don’t make this stuff up folks.