“Lets go to the track and play on the monkey bars”

Quoted by JohnnyBravo on purposebuilt.org

Let me start out by saying that the “sale” of the track is not a decision that the owners want to make. They are not sell-outs, nor are they willingly abandoning the racing community. They are as deeply tied to racing, if not more, than anyone here.

In a nutshell, this was a political move. It may be one person, it may be a combination of people, but there are only 3 major players who have the kind of clout around KC to force the sale of the track.

1. Claire McCaskill. She owns approximately 27 acres (I believe) in the immediate vicinity of the track. My understanding is that she has been unable to market or sell her property for a significant profit because of the proximity of her property to the race track. That might make a good motive to lean on the city to force the track out of operation. And you can’t forget councilwoman Circo…who also happens to be a fundraiser for Claire McCaskill. Interesting how that works out, isn’t it?

2. Christine Kemper. She owns one of the houses on the hill on the other side of Noland Road, across from the track. The bulk of the track’s problems started immediately upon her taking possession of that home. Many of you will recall the huge debacle involving the storage shed that Kemper and Porrevecchio tried to use as leverage to shut down the track. Huge hearing before the BZA. City Hall was packed. While she was successful in costing the track a lot of money in unnecessary “improvements” and attorneys’ fees and ultimately restricting the days and hours of the track’s operation, she could not shut the track down. But don’t for a second think she has let it go.

3. Ms. Ulmer who owns all of the property up on the hill, east of the track. After her husband passed away, she has been trying to develop that property by herself. Rumor has it that nobody is thrilled about assisting in the development of that property because it’s right above the track.

Now which one(s) of these people are behind the political pressure to force the sale of the track is anyone’s guess. But there is a jerk in the woodpile somewhere.

Next, while what the city may try to claim is that this is a voluntary sale, nothing could be further from the truth. The city had been trying to buy the track for a while, but could never come up with any money. So the track entered into negotiations with another buyer (who would actually keep the track there, but would result in an infusion of cash for the track). After finding out that the current owners had found a buyer that would keep the track where it is, the city sent a letter threatening the condemnation of the land. Guess what that did to the sale of the property.

While under threat of condemnation, the property is dead. You can’t sell it. You can’t rezone it. And it makes no sense to spend any more money on it, because it may be taken from you at any time. So that’s the first dirty trick the city pulled. Just the threat of condemnation crushed any chance the track had of selling to someone who could improve the place and devalued the purchase price to any other interested buyer.

Then the city, through its codes administration, began really putting the pressure on the owners to “fix” certain alleged violations at the track. “You can’t have any electricity in your new outbuilding.” Ok. Then it was, “You MUST run electricity to the new outbuilding.” Ok. Then it was, “You have to repave the parking lot near the outbuilding”. Why? That wasn’t on the approved plans? “DO IT!” Then it was, “you need illuminated exit signs in the building.” Why? Those weren’t on the approved plans and this is a storage shed. It’s not a public building as defined by the codes. “Do it or we’ll fine you, etc, etc,”

So the city started making it clear that if the owners didn’t sell, at a low ball price which the city could afford, they’d just come out there every single day and find something to ticket them for. Take away their vending permit. Something. The city very clearly sent the message, ‘If you don’t give us this land, we’ll make your life a living hell. And if you make us go through the condemnation process, we’ll make sure you are offered pennies on the dollar for the property and that after you’ve paid your lawyers, you’ll walk away with next to nothing.”

Welcome to Kansas City politics. And you thought it was bad during the Cleaver days?

And so far, the city has failed and refused to provide any assistance in finding another location for the racetrack. The owners even agreed to take less money in exchange for help finding a replacement property and some time to operate while they built the new facility. The city was NOT willing to give them another season, or even another day. The city is not paying what the property is worth, but it’s paying more for the property just to shut it down NOW and to not have to find a new place. If that gives you any idea of the real motivations behind this move.

So you, the tax payers, while still getting a deal on the property, could have had it even cheaper if the city would have given the owners more time and helped them find a new place. But the city would rather pay more to run a business out of town immediately. Feel free to be pissed aS fuark about that, too.

So the city will have a completely worthless, non-income generating nuisance that it will have to take care of in place of a money earning, property tax paying business.

But hey, at least some of the more powerful women in the city will be able to line their pockets with cash after it’s gone. And when it comes down to it, isn’t being a politician really about using your power for your own profit?

Those are about all of the details I can provide at this time. I’m waiting for the press release to be issued by the city, to see how they “spin” this thing, but what I just told you is pretty dang accurate (other than my speculation about who is behind the string pulling). The city is RUNNING THE TRACK OUT OF TOWN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

The track has been blackmailed, bullied and beaten into selling. HOWEVER, you can still lean on your elected officials to either (a) undo the deal and refuse to fund the purchase; or (b) at a minimum, assist the owners in finding a new location for the track.

Those are the facts as I believe them to be.

http://www.purposebuilt.org/forum/showthread.php?t=43312&page=6

https://www.facebook.com/notes/kalynn-clements/lets-go-to-the-track-and-play-on-the-monkey-bars/10150913341040501

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This sure make KCMO look like a great place to start a business, eh?  These are the tactics they will resort to if they don’t like you or want your business gone.  Instead of helping bring jobs to KC, City Council likes to keep them away.

A few years ago the City began requiring taxi cab owners to post info about whether or not they accepted credit cards. It seems it was thought a great benefit to spare passengers the need to enquire about payment before riding half way across town.  The Kansas City Star put it this way: ”The city had imposed a law in 2009 that encouraged cabs to accept plastic and required them to display information if they did not. But investigators found cabs that weren’t complying with that law, and customers were complaining about having to carry cash to pay their fares.” But now the ante has been upped: the Council has passed another law requiring all cabs to take credit cards. To this THE STAR trumpets: ” Taxi cab customers will no longer have to carry large wads of cash in Kansas City.”

Excuse me, but have we not all lived through decades of bellyaching about Kansas City’s poor public transportation? Have we not endured Clay Chastain’s repeated attempts to push light rail on an unwilling voting populace, for just that reason? Thankfully, the light rail plan that finally did pass a vote in 2006 would have been such an obvious economic disaster, even our City Council was unable to bring themselves to enact it. Many of us knew that a better way existed anyway: Why not improve the bus lines and eliminate the barriers to entry for new transportation providers. Entrepreneurs might find new ways to solve our transportation needs without running deficits or requiring federal handouts.

So now, along with a still-unsatisfactory transportation system, we find ourselves in the midst of an economic downturn the likes the country has not seen since the great depression. And just as the City has begun posturing as if wishing to take great pains to remove the barriers for small business, we are treated to this—the eye watering irony of a ridiculous law which can only do one thing: make it harder to be a new independent taxi cab service provider in Kansas City.

Such stories, related by shell shocked business people, is one of the purposes of meetings like the one I attended last Monday evening (October 17), put on by the new Special Committee on Small Business. These meetings are held at commercial venues around the Metro in order to make it easier for owners who find it difficult to get downtown, or simply have an understandable aversion to setting foot in City Hall. Committee members say they want to collect testimony in an effort to reduce obstacles to the growth of small business in the Metro Area.

According to committee members, the process for getting approval to open Faulkner’s Ranch doors would be less lengthy today than it was in 2008. This is because paperwork no longer needs to wait on one desk for signing before proceeding to another. Additionally, communication problems like those experienced by the Faulkners with City Hall are said to have been greatly reduced with the creation of Bizcare, a customer service center across from City Hall which opened in 2009.

Beyond such process improvements, and the periodic off-site small business meetings, the City has launched the website KC Momentum. It’s an implementation of a third-party collaborative web app called MindMixer, described by its creators as a “virtual town-hall.” The purpose of KC Momentum is to provide direct community input via a slick, easy to use, digital forum. Additionally, Scott Talyor described a yet-to-be-developed online automation system for getting businesses off the ground and maintaining permits, inspections, etc. He said that in the near future, it would likely be unnecessary for many small business owners to make a trip to City Hall to start or maintain their businesses.

How likely is it that the work of the Small Business Committee will make a real difference? The idea of making government efficient and free of hassles is ultimately a losing battle since there are no market forces to keep it moving in the right direction. Instead, it has only one ever-present incentive: take the path of least resistance and provide less  value while increasing revenue via taxation. That’s leaving aside the out-and-out antagonism to small business displayed in many actions taken by the City Council: like the just-passed law requiring all taxi services to accept credit cards, amounting to a huge barrier-to-entry into the public transportation sector.

Short of the elimination of regulatory bureaucracy in KC altogether, this author suspects that online-based automation (like KC Momentum and the proposed future implementations) is a decent way to go—provided the software is any good. At least it could eliminate the need for entrepreneurs to have to interact with bureaucratic zombies who want to hassle them and send them on wild goose chases. Of course, good software can’t to be taken for granted: the same inherent problems that plague other government endeavors, make it inevitable that software government produces will likely suck too. But third-party web solutions like MindMixer, designed by entrepreneurs, will be far better than solutions cities might develop themselves.

In a real sense, turnkey solutions like MindMixer, represent a way the market is coming to its own aid in combating the natural inertia of government.

Occupy KC demonstrators at Penn Valley Park with IOU/USA sculpture in the background.

While not all of the stated goals of the occupy movement jibe with Libertarian ideas for how to improve our economic and political problems, there is much common ground and libertarians are increasingly getting involved. For instance, this Saturday, a large group of Occupy KC demonstrators marched to Troost Park and back to Penn Valley park where the occupiers have staked their ground between the Federal Reserve and Liberty Memorial. Representatives of Liberty Restoration Project, along with KMBZ Radio personalities, Landmine Billy and Granny Major, were there to provide hotdogs, sodas, chips and candy for the marchers upon their return.

Also present to show support for the marchers were We Are Change KC and Young Americans for Liberty, from Lawrence. Both groups lent a hand distributing food and discussing issues with other “occupiers” throughout the evening. After sunset, LRP projected economics and liberty related videos from a small projector attached to a laptop for the edification of die-hard occupiers remaining after dark.

This was the second march local Occupy forces have undertaken to raise awareness for their cause to reclaim democracy from corporate and financial elites. As with the previous march on October 5, it was done in coordination with the original New York demonstration and with other local demonstrations throughout the country. This time, however, the movement reached yet further with protests taking place in the UK, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.

If you are not familiar with the movement, here is how the original Occupy Wall Street demonstration officially describes itself:

Occupy Wall Street is a people powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. #OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Italy and the UK, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people who are writing the rules of the global economy are imposing an agenda of neoliberalism and economic inequality that is foreclosing our future.

Official Occupy Wall Street website: http://occupywallst.org/

Official Occupy KC site: http://occupykc.com/

Long story short, Red Light Cameras will not be coming down this session, but if we don’t act… we will be getting SPEED CAMERAS!!!!

You can find your Missouri Representatives contact information here:
http://www.house.mo.gov/member.aspx
Please, make phone calls and send emails.  We must not allow this legislation to continue!!!
It is very critical that you contact your State Rep., as well as Tim Jones, House Floor Leader and urge them to kill or change HB 430. SA 11 needs to be removed! Please urge them politely to do so.

The busiest travel day of the year was designated National Opt Out Day at airports around the US, encouraging travelers to forego going through the full body scanning devices implemented by the TSA. The body scanning devices reveal in full detail all of one’s bodily nooks and crannies, but unfortunately the only other alternative in airports is a pat-down that many are describing as intrusive and insulting, given that it gives workers the authority to feel virtually every part of the body, genitalia included.

I went up to Kansas City International Airport earlier today to get some shots of the local opt-out advocates handing out fliers and information at one of the terminals – Wednesday, November 24, 2010.

Travelers passing through Kansas City International Airport, like at airports across the nation, have apparently opted-out of the National Opt-Out Day protest, as the TSA reports no delays over so-called intrusive body scans.

A small group of protestors did demonstrate at the airport on Wednesday, upset over body scans that they say are an unwarranted invasion of their privacy. The group urged passengers to cause delays by refusing the full-body scans and instead request the more time-consuming pat-downs instead. But the majority of travelers, like Curt McMillan, say it’s more important to him to be safe, with as little inconvenience as possible.

“Honestly I would probably choose whichever line is the shortest,” said McMillan. “So for me, it’s really more about getting through in a timely fashion. Certainly I understand why they’re doing it. So I’m really not offended either way. I just want to make sure that I get through make my flight, whichever line is the shortest that’s the one I’ll go.”

Protests appeared to be fizzling out at other major airports across the nation. However, Tracy Ward, a protestor with the Liberty Restoration Project, says that there is an outcry from the public about the airport security body scans.

“The public is speaking out, saying we’ve had enough we want something to be done about it,” said Ward. “We want the airlines to stand up and take a stand for us as well. Privatize security for airlines. Let passengers choose which airline to fly on as far as their security measures.”

The protests may have fizzled out, and Federal officials claim they will continue working on less invasive ways of keeping terrorist off airliners. But the fear of travel havoc has airport managers continuing to urge travelers to cooperate with security workers.

“Part of TSA’s operations is that they do things a little differently each time,” said Kathleen Hefner of KCI. “That’s a security procedure to keep people off-guard. What happens for one person is not going to be the exact same thing that happens for another person. So it’s good to be a little flexible. Expect that it might be a little different for you compared to the person in front of you in line.”

http://www.fox4kc.com/news/wdaf-thanksgiving-travel-kci-security-112410,0,5552374.story