Northeast News
January 13, 2016

When is a plan not a plan? When two city councilmen from the Third District try and ramrod $18 million in supposed “improvements” in the 18th and Vine jazz district down the voters throats. Armed with a plan that was long on dreams and short on specifics, Councilmen Reed and Lucas with the help of Fifth District Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, grandstanded in front of a joint meeting of the city’s Planning, Economic Development and Zoning Committee and Finance and Governance Committee in what they obviously thought was going to be a rubber stamp approval to throw even more taxpayer subsidies into the failing district.

Thanks to Finance and Governance Committee chair Scott Wagner for finally demanding specifics from Reed and Lucas in the form of some basic real estate management and marketing questions. Reed and Lucas even dug up former Councilman Ron Finley to pompously request a $1 million grant for youth programming in the district.

Question to the Councilmen: How will dumping over $400,000 for a new HVAC in the Lincoln Building help deliver one additional patron to the Blue Room. Answer: It won’t. If an $800,000 neon sign installed in 2008 doesn’t deliver the goods, this dog is doubtful new a/c ducts are gonna be the end all to bringing more people to the jazz district.

But given this sham of a measure passed the full council and directs city manager Troy Schulte to find these funds, this crafty news-canine is officially warning neighborhoods city-wide that they had better guard those Public Improvement Advisory Committee [PIAC] fund dollars closely. That $18 million has got to come from somewhere and you can bet it won’t come from transportation, given the new toy train streetcar.

If you’ve been following the bouncing checkbook, this means that close to $100 million has flowed into the jazz district with less than stellar outcomes. Note to the Councilmen: this is not the infrastructure we were looking for.