This week, we bring you our handy dandy guide to Election Day with all you need to know about the biggest races on the ballot on both sides of state line, plus the rest of the week's most needy headlines.

From trashing one of Kansas City's most storied cities to a new World Cup reveal.

Plus, the shutdown now hitting hard.

Close to home.

I don't know how I'm going to feed my kids.

It's all a head on weekend review.

Weekend review is made possible through the generous support of Dave and Jamie Cummings.

Bob and Marlese Gourley that Courtney as Turner Charitable Trust, John H. Mize and Bank of America and a co trustees.

The Francis Family Foundation through the discretionary fund of David and Janice Francis and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Hello and welcome.

I'm Nick Haines Glad to have you with us again on our weekly journey through our Metro's most impactful, confusing, and downright head scratching local news stories.

Hopping on board.

The Week in Review bus with us this week from KCUR News Lisa Rodriguez from former star reporter Dave Helling, who still seems to be writing a big chunk of the editorials you see in our cities.

Biggest newspaper from KCUR, while local government reporter Savannah Hawley-Bates is with us and at the helm of our metro's newest newspaper, Next Page KC Eric Wesson.

Yes, I know this is not one of those big national election years, but Tuesday is Election Day and there are still some pretty meaty issues on the ballot for voters to decide.

We're going to track some of the biggest and most interesting races and issues now.

Handy dandy guide to Election Day.

Just weeks after voters toppled Jackson County leader Frank white.

They now have another major decision to make should they elect their county assessor.

It comes, after all, the anger and protest over property assessments in the county.

Remember those?

If you vote yes, what will change, Lisa?

Well, right now the Jackson County Assessor is appointed by the executive.

So what would changes is that becomes another elected position that people vote on every election cycle.

So that means they would campaign to voters.

They would run on a platform so that voters know a little bit more what to expect from their assessor.

It also means that they're going to try to be winning voters over with the with the best platform that they think will win them the office.

And actually, Jackson County is the only county in the entire state of Missouri that actually has an appointed assessor.

Everybody's already electing them.

What happens if you, vote no?

Then it will continue to be an appointed position by the, Jackson County Executive.

Couldn't the Jackson County executive, who just came in and was always very skeptical about what was happening in Jackson County, couldn't he just fire the assessor now and bring in something new?

Actually, he could, he could make the new appointment for that position.

But I don't think right now it's a good time to do it.

I think right now he's focused on getting things stabilized there.

And, I think this will be probably if you talk.

I know voter turnout will be low, but if you're talking about a landslide of people that want to elect the county assessor, I believe it'll be overwhelming is by 80%.

But savanna isn't there.

Is there a downside to electing the assessor?

Yeah, well, like Eric said, there's a lot of appetite, especially in eastern Jackson County, for for doing this because of property values.

And property taxes went up so much in the past few years.

But with the elected assessor, like Lisa said, they're they're going to try to win votes more than they would if they were appointed.

And they don't need to win over the voters to be in the seat.

It could artificially, keep taxes low, which they've done in recent years, which is why Jackson County is in this problem to begin with.

Jackson County officials have already said that they wouldn't assess values more than 15% increase this year.

so you can only imagine if they keep artificially keeping them low so that they can win elections will be in this position all over again in a few years, and.

We'll likely then if they're going to be campaigning, we're going to be seeing a whole lot more advertisements coming your way from these, candidates.

You can start seeing ones like this one.

This is from the county assessor in Saint Louis.

As a kid, I dressed as a cowboy, but I knew I wasn't a cowboy.

I'm Jake Zimmerman, and today I know that this is a farm, and this is not.

As county assessor, I cracked down on fake farmers who say parking lots are farms to avoid taxes.

Jake Zimmerman has never been cool, but he's always been fair.

I believe in fair and accurate assessments.

Whether your home's worth $50,000 or 5 million, and I'll never allow drive by assessments.

Jake Zimmerman for county assessor.

Cool.

Maybe not fair.

Always.

That's not a fringe candidate.

That is the assessor.

Dave.

Yeah, and.

You will see more of that if they elect the assessor in Jackson County.

The important point to keep in mind is first, it doesn't.

The election wouldn't happen until I think 2028.

So it's not going to change anything immediately.

And second, as my colleagues have pointed out, the problem isn't necessarily with who sits in the assessor's office, but it's increasing values.

And then the political decision to distort that by capping or rolling back or imposing freezes, all that does is delay the day of reckoning and really put counties into a real mess.

we already do that at the state level farm.

property is valued differently than residential property and commercial property because of assessment rates.

So, you know, I have a sound of this on the show before people hate property taxes, Nick, because they're based on a guess and because they aren't realized until you sell your home.

So that's not going to be over.

Anytime soon, I think.

One other thing, Nick.

I think now it gives taxpayers somebody that they can hold accountable.

In the last, circus that we had, they held the county executive responsible for it.

Now they have an elected official that they can hold accountable.

And I should point out also, even if you voted no on this, I see on the ballot in the state of Missouri in 2026, next year is should Jackson County elected its assessor.

So, it would be people in in Missouri, in Saint Louis and other parts, Cape Girardeau, deciding whether Jackson County should be electing its assessor, even regardless of this vote.

Right.

And that's likely what prompted Jackson County to finally put this before local voters, so that Jackson County residents themselves can decide on this issue rather than putting it to a state.

Well, here's another interesting issue coming up Tuesday.

Independence voters are being asked whether they want to continue with their four day school week.

We've had friends leave the area because they're like, well, if I'm going to have to pay for three kids on a Monday, for childcare, I might as well send on a private school.

All of the school districts.

We are.

Competing so.

Hard for the very.

Best talent, and this.

Really does give us an.

Advantage.

Alrighty, Savannah, can independent school officials, though, say that performance of students has gone up any since they made this change two years ago?

Well, they are saying that performance has gone up and that teacher retention has improved, which was why they went to this Four-Day School Week in the first place.

However, it's only been two years.

So the validity of these, you know, improvements, it could be other factors as well.

But overall, independent school district educators and employees are saying we need this Four-Day School Week to stay intact so that we can better help students and make sure their teachers aren't fleeing to other districts.

Now, what is not in question is how this ended up on the ballot, which is your state legislature saying, in essence, big cities shouldn't be able to go to four day weeks unless they get a vote of the people.

But small rural communities, the backbone of Missouri, should be able to do this without a vote of the people.

It's blatant discrimination against urban areas, and independence is the first example.

I think.

People in that district have gotten used to the four days, and having some place for their kids to go on Monday and, and like she said earlier, the teacher retention is a lot better than it.

Was.

You know, we have parents like we just saw who are saying, go, you know, what are we going to do with our kids on a Monday?

Yeah.

Nick, I'm, I'm very sensitive to, to the struggles of parents, especially of young children.

I have a young child myself.

And finding a place to to care for your child on a Monday.

Most daycare don't offer one day a week child care.

You can get it in the district, but it costs money per day.

but some parents have been supportive.

Some parents have been able to absorb the change, especially parents of older kids in high school where you don't necessarily have to worry about watching a kid every minute.

But for a single parent household, for parents have to work.

Their families have two working parents that can't afford to have one go part time.

It's really been a struggle.

And without bigger systemic change, like a four day workweek, it can be hard in these urban areas to also to limit school without limiting work.

And the district also says that they're not spending any less time in the classroom.

They're just expanding the day to make up for the change.

Right.

And something that, you know, that Dave brought up is that independence is the biggest district, that by far that has had to weigh on.

And that's the other district that had to vote on a for the school.

We only had a couple hundred people.

The whole district independence has 14,000.

And so this vote will also be a signal to other districts in the area, in the Kansas City area, on saying, can we go to a Four-Day school week if I'm in Lee's Summit, if I'm in Blue Springs, like, is this a Blue.

Valley, or.

Is this something that that parents and teachers and the state would support?

Okay.

Hopping across the state line now to Kansas and Prairie Village, vote is they're being asked to do something kind of dramatic toss their entire city government structure and start again.

It sounds like a dauntingly huge question, but they condensed it down to just 14 words.

Shall the city of Prairie Village, Kansas, abandon the mayor council form of government?

Obviously it isn't working because our taxes have raised.

Our spending has gone up.

there's been such vitriol in our city.

We're just navigating a moment that is very divided.

But to wholesale abandon our government because we're in a divided moment.

I mean, that is a very serious and very consequential decision.

Dave Helling, what happens if voters vote yes.

Well, nothing immediately.

because of a quirk of the way this ended up on the ballot, the replacement system won't be voted on on November 4th.

Just the idea of abandoning the government.

And so presumably the city council would have to step up and say, okay, by ordinance, we will, realign the mayor, the city administrator, city manager.

But the practical reality is they could go months without a replacement.

It could just be frozen in place until that's all worked out or almost certainly taken to court.

but believe me, tensions.

I worked on this for the paper.

Tensions in Prairie Village are pretty high about this issue.

You don't lobby to put this on the ballot if you're not exceedingly frustrated, though, what were those frustrations that led people to collect the signatures necessary to even get that on the ballot?

Well, those issues started several years ago when, the mayor and city council brought forth some zoning changes that would allow more multifamily housing, more workforce housing into Prairie Village.

And people were upset.

And there's a group of citizens under the umbrella of, Privilege United who really fought these changes, who fought to, remove this system of government, who put forth, several ballot measures before that were tossed by the court.

Several I do recall the mayor several times.

And so all of these tensions have been boiling.

There is a lot of tension in the Prairie Village City Council.

However, I would I would posit that, when you're unhappy with your mayor and your city council, there is a democratic process to do that that involves getting elected, getting different people elected who will pass your policies and perhaps down the line they can consider a change in that.

That could happen because you do have all of the members of the city council on the ballot think.

There are six seats up for election this time.

The council is actually 12 people.

They rotate it.

So, but you could have a change in the governing majority, depending on the results next Tuesday.

The idea, however, that if you just went to a city manager form of government, which the, supporters of this proposition say would be the next step.

And if you want any evidence of that, look at Kansas City, Missouri.

I mean, Kansas City, Missouri has a city manager form of government.

The, the the idea that somehow that avoids controversy or gets politics out of government is really ridiculous.

Now.

Mayoral races topped the ballot in more than a dozen cities on Tuesday, including Kansas City, Kansas, which is picking a new leader after Tyrone Garner announced he would not seek reelection.

We're not going to delve into that race as we devoted last week's show to a debate between the two candidates.

If you missed it, you can catch it on the Kansas City PBS YouTube channel.

But we are going to mention, though, an interesting race going on in Johnson County's largest city, Overland Park, where we would have guessed that a potential royal stadium in the city has become one of the big dividing issues in the race for mayor.

I assure you that not 20.

5% of.

The people of Overland Park in the vicinity of this area that is being considered for a stadium wants it there.

Now, that's former city councilman.

Far as far as he was challenging overland Park near can't cut school.

Interestingly, they've never done one debate together during this election and he tried hard to pull it off far.

Reason?

He said yes, but med school says he didn't have the, quote, capacity to participate.

Does that speak to the bad blood between these two candidates?

Yeah, I mean, I think so.

The Johnson County post also tried to do a panel with both candidates, and only Skoog agreed and for he did not, focus on he's also been, you know, going after Mayor Skoog about, campaign spending for our city spends a lot less.

He allegedly has only reported $25 for his whole campaign, whereas, America at school has, you know, about 160,000, which is normal for elections like this.

But they would view, though, that a lot of those contributions are coming from the very developers that have the projects that want to get tax incentives in league.

Right.

And Mayor Askew is saying maybe this isn't a bad thing.

Overland Park is, you know, the biggest city in Johnson County.

And it's also, brought a lot of element in recent years that residents seem to enjoy.

And so that is sort of the central question here.

Is development yes or no?

Yeah.

But it's also interesting that all the things you talk about in Prairie Village aren't some of those exactly the same things playing out in Overland Park.

I remember when they just launched a brand new tree on the flag there as a branding for the city, and a lot of the Facebook comments were what they needed to put an apartment complex on there, not a tree, because that's what all they're putting in.

A I live in Lenexa.

Same, discussions are going on.

So that's why Prairie Village is important, because I do think there is a restlessness politically in the suburbs in which people are saying, is this the best way to govern?

And I think we'll see the results of that, maybe in Overland Park and in Prairie Village.

Tuesday.

What other race or election trend are you paying attention to?

locally on election night on Tuesday?

Eric?

I'm still stuck on, Overland Park.

Would.

Yeah.

Because how do you say you don't have the capacity to do a debate?

Well, last week, as we were hosting those mayoral candidates in Wyandotte County, that meant we didn't get to have a chance to talk about the street car extension, grand opening the street that date city.

It's now been operating for a full week.

Has it been smooth sailing for the extended line down to the Plaza Savannah and Umkc?

All the teething pains that didn't quite make the news.

Well, I'm a big fan of it.

it takes about 30 minutes to read end to end from the river market down to your own KC it can go faster because of the transit.

Only lanes.

Although I will say on opening day there was a crash that occurred involving the streetcar.

So there's maybe so it was.

Shut down for a. While.

Yes.

There's some growing pains involving exactly where you can and can't drive and operating around the streetcar.

Eric.

Yeah, I think it was smooth sailing behind the scenes, but those kind of things and people are kind of confused about can they ride and drive in this lane, or do they have to stay out of that lane?

And how do they make turns?

But they have right turn lanes there as well.

Lisa.

I think I think any type of, lane changes, anything that's going to limit the ability of drivers in Kansas City.

You can't come here, you can't turn here is going to take a while to to get used to.

Or the alternative chase people off that street will go to Broadway or Southwest traffic way or Gil or any number of north south streets, and it'll be interesting to see over time whether that has the lack of car traffic A develops, and b if that's a problem for the businesses on the.

Businesses are excited about it because they've seen uptick in businesses.

Now though, street car and and shut down lane shut downs and barking is a little bit easier.

Was the same thing in the city market.

Remember when the original streetcar opened it?

There were excitement at first and then people started going, well, maybe it's a little different, so we'll just have to pay attention.

Will Kansas City's Will Cup committee was also promising a big update this week.

This one centered on the FIFA Fan Festival.

That's the free food, soccer and music experience that will accompany the global tournament when it arrives in show in June.

We knew the event will happen on the South Lawn of the National World War One museum, but few other details were known.

What did we learn new, if anything, this week, Lisa.

I don't know that we learned much earth shattering pretty pictures here, but we did get some images.

We saw that there's going to be this big heart shaped archway.

Apparently the heart is Kansas City's new new thing.

It's on the flag.

We've got the the statues of the hearts.

So it'll be a big heart archway, big screens.

I don't know that any of this is shocking.

We knew this would be where people would watch.

We knew there'd be screens and and a beautiful layout there.

And it'll be open for 18 day.

So not just for the games that Kansas City will host, which is only about six of them.

But anytime the the U.S.

team plays, that will also be open and on some of the other more significant, bigger, World Cup games that take place as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so people can go there to watch it, which might solve some of the headaches of with transportation of people not knowing how exactly to get to Arrowhead Stadium to watch the games.

They can stay downtown off the streetcar line and watch the games there.

There are a lot more questions we have with the World Cup, though, beyond where fans will watch it, which include, again, how will they get there?

What will transportation look like?

We can barely get people around the metro around right now and well as security look like as well.

That actually got less attention this week, but we did find out that the they now relying on Katrina to do a lot of the heavy lifting of getting people to this stadium and around town during that period of time.

They said, we need $11 million to make that happen.

Then they don't have the money.

But they'll find it.

Okay.

Sure, they'll find it in the left pocket or the right pocket, but I know that there are going to be some, contracting out for other areas to come in and, and provide transit.

You're going to have a lot of Uber drivers, a lot of private drivers.

So I think transportation is going to be a lot better than we think is going to be right now.

Yeah.

Casey 2026, the group that is planning for Kansas City's gains in the World Cup, has leased 200 busses that will act as shuttles to only go between the airport and downtown and then also out to the stadium.

So that will take care of a lot of the fan traffic.

but it's what's happening with Kcca is to make sure that those holes can get filled.

Can people get around town?

can people who aren't going to the games, who aren't in town, but locals who live here get around as well?

a lot of that money, was hoping to come from the federal government.

I think a lot more is in the air with that now.

Well, we're now in the fifth week of a federal government shutdown, and its impact is now being sharply felt far beyond the thousands of local federal workers who were missing their paychecks.

Starting this weekend, more than half a million Missourians and 188,000 Kansans will no longer receive food assistance under the government Snap program.

We've seen some of our pantry partners shelves just.

Completely empty, and we need to help as much as we can.

The need and.

What we're hearing from our five.

Beneficiaries is something we've never heard before.

They're desperate.

I don't know how I'm going to feed my kids.

In addition, 17 Kansas City Head Start locations will close starting this weekend, but headlines that massive Honeywell facility in South Kansas City would be shut down proved inaccurate.

The plant, which makes non-nuclear components for the nuclear stockpile, is staying open, at least for now.

These though the biggest local impacts of the shutdown all there more we're not reading about.

Lisa.

I think there are probably lots of impacts that we're not reading about, but certainly the, the the ending of of Snap benefits starting this weekend.

and the potential closure of all these Head Start locations in my mind are the biggest impacts.

We're seeing grocery stores who rely on Snap funding not being able to fill their shelves in addition to pantries like harvesters.

And it's not that this was a massive benefit that took care of all these families completely anyway.

It was just a portion of what they of what they could feed their families with.

But I think that's a it's a massive effect.

And we've seen a lot of local a groundswell of support, local organizations doing drives, trying to provide groceries.

But it's a it's a real crisis moment.

Yeah.

I mean, I think food is the biggest aspect of this because not only is Snap ending, but federal employees are now missing their second paycheck.

So they're also being customers of these food pantries.

And so all of these people are sort of struggling for money at once.

And that's putting a big strain on our local food system at the same time.

Oh I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

Head start.

I think head start is probably going to be the second biggest problem, because now parents are going to have to figure out what to do with their children.

The childcare industry, as it is now, is bulging at the same.

So I think that's going to be the biggest part of this story as well.

And the focus is, you know, neck of this dispute in Washington is over subsidies for health care premiums under Obamacare.

People are starting to get notices this weekend about what they're going to pay next year for their subsidized health insurance, presumably without that help.

And the premiums are skyrocketing for a lot of people who rely on, subsidized health insurance.

So all of this is sort of mixing together.

I think the whole idea here is to really put pressure on the Congress to figure this out in the next week to ten days, so that these kind of problems don't continue.

When you put a program like this together every week, you can't get to every story grabbing the headlines.

What was the big local story we missed?

Was it just mayhem for mayhem sake?

Vandals trashed the Foley theater.

Performances are canceled after a break in that causes more than half $1 million in damages.

We just can't wrap our brains around something like this.

They deployed seven fire extinguishers, which is really what caused the bulk of the damage protecting kids.

Days after the funeral of a nine year old killed while riding her bike to school, Kansas City bands, right, turns on red lights in school zones.

Kansas Senate Republicans say they've secured the signatures to trigger a special legislative session to redraw the state's congressional map.

Governor Laura Kelly is still skeptical.

It'll happen, she says.

The House still doesn't have the votes.

Missouri's most famous landmark turns 60, but the celebration of the Saint Louis Arch couldn't come at a worse time.

Put the champagne on ice.

The attraction has now been forced to close due to the federal government shutdown.

And you can't blame the shutdown for this one.

Kansas City's iconic Western Auto sign goes dark, and now there's a fight to fix it and to figure out who pays.

All right, Lisa, did you pick one of those stories on something completely different?

Lots of big stories there.

But I wanted to plug a story, actually, that Savannah posted.

Savannah wrote this week about how Kansas City has somehow wound up as a talking point in the New York City mayoral race, mostly as a cautionary tale against democratic socialists.

Around Mamdani plans they cite.

Critics cite Kansas City's failed free bus program, a failed government run grocery store program.

But Savannah Story offers some interesting analysis that that comparison may not be the right one to make.

So that means you have to choose something else other than your own stories like this.

I don't know if mine is the most important of the week, but I think, you know, with this, this child that was killed on her way to school, I think is the one that has tugged a lot of people's heartstrings this past week, rightfully so, and has put into question a lot of whose responsibility is it to make sure kids are able to go to school, on their bike, walking on their scooters?

This is not the only child that's been hit by a car, in recent months.

and so, you see, a lot of, you know, the city's coming together with an ordinance, to, to make, turning and crosswalks a little safer.

School districts are figuring out where can we put cross guards?

which streets do we have jurisdiction over?

And in the meantime, at that intersection in south Kansas City where that girl was killed, a grandfather is stepping in to help kids cross on their way to school.

Very good.

Eric, I. Had Parade Park, did the grand opening for the new housing development there, which will be interesting to watch.

That and for my shameless plug I am collecting at my newspaper, nonperishable items to help, offset the need that people have with the Snap program.

My address is 1216 Brooklyn.

If you want to bring nonperishable things, buy there for families in need because it takes a village.

We haven't have to pitch in and help each other.

1216 Brooklyn we're going to put it on the bottom of our screen.

Eric.

Thank you, Dave.

And blocks north of Old Municipal Stadium.

I thought I'd throw that in.

Kcpt has done a great job.

And this show, particularly Nick, in bringing the issues in this election to the people.

But let's also salute our friend Kyle Palmer at the Johnson County Post, who sponsored, I think, a dozen different debates for Johnson County elections.

It's an enormously difficult task, an enormously important, service that he provides, that the post provides.

And we ought to tip our cap to him for doing that and allowed all of us to pay a little bit more attention to the races on that side of the state line.

Our viewers biggest question of the week, though, Dave, was what was your Halloween costume?

My Halloween costume, Great Pumpkin.

Okay.

And on that, we will say a week has been reviewed courtesy of Casey Wallace, Lisa Rodriguez, and Savannah Hallie Bates from next page.

Casey Eric Wesson, who is going to be a K-pop demon hunter, Halloween and news icon Dave Helling.

And I'm Nick Haines from all of us here at Kansas City PBS.

Be well, keep calm and carry on.