Northeast News
January 28, 2015

Infrastructure be damned, we’re gonna have us a streetcar! Despite the fact that voters overwhelmingly rejected the second phase of Kansas City’s ill-fated streetcar last year at the ballot box, the city council’s Finance, Governance and Ethics Committee, at the behest of City Manager Troy Schulte and under the direction of Jan “we don’t need to audit the Museum” Marcason, decided they’d set aside $3.4 million of bond money that councilman Ed Ford said would ultimately go into the toy train streetcar account. That would be part of the $10 million in bond money issued last year because the city council thought we’d all just embrace the daylights out of the toy train streetcar. Think this is a backwards process? It is.

As part of the resolution, $2.2 million was dedicated to the Garrison Community Center in Columbus Park and another $800,000 was slated for 20th Street streetscape and $1.95 million for Bartle Hall roof replacement. Can you say hush money? You can almost hear the conversation inside the committee room. “We’ll give them these crumbs so they’ll keep quiet and we can go on about the business of ramming this horrible, money sucking project down their throats whether they like it or not.”

If that’s not enough to light you up, take note. The resolution also calls for a $2.5 million loan from the Water Department Revenue Fund to pay for Blue River flood control. That loan would be paid back out of PIAC funds. This newsdog thinks its high time for a PIAC overhaul. It’s turned into what critics have long feared – a slush fund for pet projects pushed by city council people and high ranking bureaucrats using “dummy requests” to hide their grafty handiwork. With sham council representatives who ostensibly represent Historic Northeast, continuing to raid PIAC funds for the streetcar, this pooch sadly doesn’t see an end in sight for this type of highway robbery.