Funkhouser pushes for Kansas City Chamber

The Kansas City Business Journal reports that the future of a Kansas City-specific Chamber of Commerce hinges on the re-election of Mayor Mark Funkhouser.  The Kansas-friendly Greater Kansas City Chamber has consistently endorsed programs that favor the business interests of Kansas at the expense of those in Missouri, most recently and notoriously the so-called PEAK program, which the mayor re-designated as "Poaching Employers Across Kansas City."  If re-elected, Funkhouser will likely lead the effort to create a KC chamber.  If not, it is unlikely that anyone else will.  One suspects too that a Kansas City chamber will not be paying its president $600,000 a year as GKC Chamber did to its past president, Pete Levi.

Kansas City Business Journal Poll Shows Mayor Mark Funkhouser in the Lead

A 2011 survey conducted by the Kansas City Business Journal of who should be the next Kansas City Mayor shows most Kansas City voters who participated prefer Mark Funkhouser.  The second most votes went to Mike Burke followed by Sly Jones with all other canidates significantly far behind.

Star's Sneaky Boost of Funkhouser Bid

To no one's great surprise, the Kansas City Star editorialists have decided that Mark Funkhouser ought not be re-elected mayor of Kansas City.  Given the history of Star endorsements, however, one has to wonder whether they were not subconsciously hoping to boost his candidacy.  One recalls, for instance, the stirring Star endorsement of Kay Barnes for Congress.  That and a $2.5 million war chest netted Barnes 37 percent of the vote in an election that Star reporters predicted would be a nail-biter.  As Wikipedia notes, "[Sam] Graves even trounced her in the areas of the district closer to Kansas City."  The closer to Kansas City the more clearly the voters remembered how she and City Council collaborators like Deb Hermann and Jim Rowland nearly bankrupted the city through a series of ill-inspired tax breaks to developers.  Barnes was the Star's kind of mayor.

KC Survives Storm "Incredibly Well" with Quick Cleanup and Snow Removal

At a press conference held hours after the snow stopped, Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser praised city workers' response to an epic blizzard.  "We just went through what everybody said was a storm of historic proportions, and did a pretty good job by all accounts,” said Funkhouser.  “Nobody was hurt….Things went incredibly well.”  

The mayor also lifted the state of emergency and resumed the city's trash pick-up and recycling.  There is no truth to the rumor, although it is understandable how it might have started, that Funk conjured up these storms just to look good.

Some Snow Jobs Are Better Than Others

As Mayor Bloomberg of New York can attest, the mayor will inevitably catch heat when the city does a poor job removing snow.  Misty McNally of Kansas City is one citizen who recognizes that good snow jobs don't happen by themselves.  When she and her husband moved here from Colorado in 2003, they learned that Kansas City, Missouri, had a "terrible downside," namely its inability to remove snow.  So bad were the city's efforts that the couple considered moving to Kansas.   "But not this year," writes Misty in a letter to the Star.  "This winter we have seen timely, repeated, adequate snow removal from the streets around our home in Waldo. We appreciate that Mayor Mark Funkhouser and public works officials listened to citizen complaints and made changes for the better. While there is still room for improvement, we now can truly enjoy living in Kansas City even in the winter."

BLC Stings Star for Preposterous Funkhouser Slight from Kansas City Star

As Bottom Line Communications observes, "It is enough to make a journalist embarrassed to be part of the profession."  The BLC editorialist refers here to the Kansas City Star's high-fives for those born-again mayoral candidates who have shifted positions on using city-backed bonds.  

The Star praises by name Deb Hermann, Jim Rowland, and Mike Burke for coming to recognize that city-backed bonds had been issued promiscuously under past mayors.  In an impressively petty little slight, however, the Star editorial fails to credit--or even mention--Mayor Mark Funkhouser for his principled stand against bond abuse dating back to his initial candidacy.  

Indeed, in its logic-twisting conclusion the Star editorial seems to imply that the sudden awakening of these candidates reverses "what’s happened the last few years," presumably under Funkhouser, and promises "a more fiscally responsible city government."  And we wonder why the paper is shedding backers faster even than President Mubarak.

Will Kansas City Discrimination Suit Really Damage Schulte?

When asked to define "paradox" at Genius School, Bart Simpson answered, "Damned if you do, and damned if you don't."  Acting City Manager Troy Schulte knows exactly that feeling.  He and the City of Kansas City were on the losing end  of a $2.6 million reverse discrimination suit filed by two white workers who had recently been laid off.  

Star columnist Yael Abouhalkah insists that the loss "damages the public standing of Acting City Manager Troy Schulte."  More likely, the loss will help educate taxpayers that in the Orwellian world of discrimination law even the best meaning people can find themselves on the wrong end of a law suit.  

Mayor Funkhouser and wife Gloria learned this the hard way a few years ago.  Now that Abouhalkah has spanked candidate Mike Burke for trying to pin this suit on Funkhouser and Deb Hermann, maybe he will come to see that the Funkhousers were not to blame for the last one.

Funkhouser Takes On the Kansas City Port Authority

The sometimes cartoonish reporting on the Port Authority scandal in the local media demands a cartoonish response.  In this one, two people debate whether it is better for Mayor Mark Funkhouser to be cooperative--or to be right.

Cauthen Watch, Week 2

This just in. Former Kansas City Manager Wayne Cauthen, the cause of a fair share of the problems from which Kansas City's City Hall is still digging out, was just bounced from consideration for the city manager's job in Savannah, Ga.
The Savannah City Council named two finalists - Alfred Lott, city manager of the considerably smaller Albany, Ga., and Rochelle Small-Toney, the city's acting city manager.