We're back and so are the royals, teasing us again with more design sketches for a new stadium, but still no final decision.

Plus, is Kansas City really serious about closing its downtown airport?

The city manager says it's hampering development, but is the idea plausible or preposterous?

If you live in southern Johnson County, you're already feeling the pain of construction of a new toll road.

But stop the presses.

All toll roads now on the way.

Independence gets national attention this week as it starts a full day school week.

Meanwhile, Kansas City schools grabbing the headlines for three hour days.

We just could not in good conscience expect for them to endure the heat and hope for the best.

Those stories and the rest of the week's news straight ahead.

Week in review is made possible through the generous support of AARP, Kansas City RSM Dave and Jamie Cummings, Bob and Marlese Gourley, the Cortney S Turner Charitable Trust, John H Mize and Bank of America and a co trustees.

The restaurant at 1900 and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Hello and welcome.

I'm Nick Haines.

Good to have you back with us after our summer membership drive.

And we've got a lot to catch up on together, picking apart our metro's most impactful, confusing and befuddling local news stories.

Lisa Rodriguez from KCUR.

While news from former star reporter and opinion writer Dave Helling from City Scene, KC, Kevin Collison, and from our metro's newest newspaper.

Next page, KC, Eric Wesson.

Now, the Kansas City Royals continue to build suspense this week for their $2 billion stadium and ballpark district plan.

This will be good.

For Kansas City no.

Matter where we land.

We'll see to that.

And you can hold us to it.

The team's leaders unveiling new renderings for the two sites they are now considering.

One in north Kansas City, the other in the East Village, a largely neglected stretch of land east of City hall.

What, if anything, though, did we learn from this latest stadium road show, Kevin?

Well, the only real hard news that came out of it is that they have the royals have acknowledged that this idea that people would be able to find parking in existing spaces and garages downtown is out the window.

They did say they plan to have a 4000 space parking garage that would be built as part of the East Village site.

The name Kauffman Field is not going to happen.

They were very candid that they're going to sell the naming rights.

So Coffman as a name, is going to disappear.

They did say they would find a way to suitably honor Mr. Coffman, but they certainly made it clear that they plan to sell the naming rights to the ballpark as part of the financing of the whole deal.

Other than that, you know, a lot of what we heard was just a a more detailed version.

I mean, North Kansas City site, 90 acres, they got a lot more room to play with.

It's going to be a lot more horizontal.

They did say they need to create a place there.

They want to put a park in as part of that deal.

The East Village would be more vertical.

But the other fascinating thing is they acknowledged that they want to develop the, say, a West area on the other side of 71 highway from the site.

In fact, one of the renderings showed a pedestrian bridge going over 71 highway.

And there has been speculation about what might happen with that area.

And when you look at it, it's certainly ripe for some kind of development because it's kind of a nondescript quasi industrial, although there's a couple of really beautiful historic buildings in that area.

Well, we also didn't hear is any full final total about actually the public funding of this might be.

Absolutely the biggest questions that we had going into this are remain the biggest questions, at least for me coming out of it, which is exactly how they want to finance it, what that final number is going to be.

They've talked about if it stays in Jackson County, renewing that three fourths cent sales tax, if it goes to Clay County, potentially a $0.01 sales tax because it's less populated there.

But until and they haven't quite tipped their hand on whether they have the support of city officials in getting this on the ballot or whether they think it'll pass, I mean, they're confident it'll pass.

But but we've seen reports this week that suggest otherwise.

Yeah, there was a Clay County reporter at the business Journal published that about how about 70% of voters in Clay County were not in favor of a sales tax for the royals to move to, not Kansas City.

Right.

Although the survey didn't say how much of a tax and for how long.

So all who put the survey together or put it together.

So I suspect.

Quick correction to my friend Liz it's three eight 2% in Jackson County not three fourths of a cent I talked to someone very close to the negotiations this week after the news conference who said, look, what if the Royals go to the ballot in April in Clay County and the Chiefs go to the ballot in Jackson County in April for the 3/8 extension and the Chiefs, because they're popular and they're winning, they get that money and the royals lose in Clay County.

What are the royals do then?

Well, they can't.

Go back to Jackson County because that money will already have been.

Well, they'll be there.

They'll be the Nashville Royals.

At that point.

They could be.

And that that's why I think the chiefs have looked at Wyandotte County, the royals looking clay kind of they understand that asking just one county to pay all the money.

I have to say, Eric, one thing it was interesting to me is there was a lot of effort made by the team's owners, the team's management group, to say how great the negotiations would go away with City Hall and with Jackson County, with Frank White.

And yet there were other reports that said, Frank, why they didn't even like the East Village site if it was about community betterment, social impact.

He did not like that site city much prefer it to be on the 18th and Vine.

But is there any sense that that that site would change?

Well, I think the barn is kind of land locked, so I don't know where they could draw a rendering had to go in that area.

Well, I thought it was going to be at that.

So scattered everywhere, 18th and troost.

You're right.

And the KC 88 people pulled that site off the table two years ago.

One thing that hasn't been talked about and again, I've talked to some people familiar with this, there's going to be a big ask from the state of Missouri.

We haven't really heard about that yet.

But a source that I know who's pretty involved with the North Kansas City negotiations said that the Chiefs went down to Jeff City last couple of months ago with a hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars request for help.

And now, though, that Mike Parson, the governor, has just put a Chiefs tattoo on his arm, which we saw while we were away.

Clearly he's probably going to say yes to that is a huge.

Well, you know, you run into the buzzsaw of the rural interests in Missouri, not really caring that much about either Saint Louis or Kansas City.

And they got burned to a large degree with the deal in Saint Louis for the Rams.

And they built that beautiful stadium, got a ton of money from the state, and now the Rams are playing in LA.

So but there are other players here besides just Jackson County.

And the final decision won't be made until probably the third week of September, which is the end of summer in the United States, which is what they said at least.

But in any of the language Woods expressions for a live news conference this week, did the Royals show their hand in any way that they were favoring North Kansas City versus a downtown?

I didn't detect any any favoritism for one site to another.

I think truly it depends on these conversations behind the scenes and where they think they can secure that money.

It's about money.

It's not really about what the pretty picture is.

It's who will cut the best deal.

Kevin talked a little bit about the state of Missouri.

The state of Missouri let the Rams and the Cardinals go from Saint Louis rather than pony up the kind of money that the teams wanted.

So asking them for a huge amount of money for the Chiefs seems problematic as well.

One other quick note is the fact that city manager Brian Platt kind of caused some discomfort the other day when he gave me an interview and said, well, whether they go to North Kansas City or the East Village, downtown is going to benefit one way or another.

I know that gave a lot of downtown interests heartburn.

So this is a.

New council has to decide on which side of the fence they're going to be on to.

And this is a lot of stuff coming in with me.

I'm just trying to figure out the council has no role yet.

It's a county operation in Clay County.

But clearly they'll be asked to put somebody in, whether it be for utilities, for interchanges.

Well, if the royals move to Clay County, that money is off the table.

Kansas City is not going to pay for the royals to have maintenance in Clay County, the north Kansas City Royals.

All right.

So those questions are very complicated and we're not even close to answers.

Is Kansas City making plans to close its downtown airport before you channel former tennis batboy John McEnroe and say you cannot be serious.

It's apparently on the wish list of city manager Brian Platt.

According to a front page story in the star player is threatening to shut down the Charles B Wheeler Airport because it's seriously hampering the city's development plans.

He claims construction on at least half a dozen high rise projects have been stalled because the FAA says they would interfere with the airport's flight paths.

How should we take this story?

Is it just piling up the outrage meter?

Is it plausible or preposterous?

Kevin?

I don't think it's going to happen, but I know the city has been butting heads with the local FAA office now for the past couple of years.

You know, they have been really tough on efforts to develop taller buildings in the river market.

There's another project over near the Kauffman Center that's a high rise project that they've been having pushback on.

What's interesting is, you know, I like Brian Platt for just throwing out some fresh, provocative ideas, because you go to other cities like Denver, they redeveloped the whole Stapleton site and the whole Lowry Air Force site to marvelous residential and commercial development.

But what's really kind of sad and, you know, back in the old days, ten years ago, you had a Kit Bond or you had a Danforth or some U.S. senator representing Missouri who would call up the FAA people in D.C. telling them, you know, have your local office chill a bit, you know, let them, you know, stop giving them so much grief.

Now, we really don't have that kind of representation in Washington.

You know, we've got senators that are more about their own political future than they are serving constituents.

So it's too bad the city has to make such loud saber rattling.

This is used to be something that could be settled by effective representatives in Washington.

By the cities over the years.

They'll have done this, including Chicago about 20 years ago.

So they have been we're moving downtown airports for the benefit of development.

But what would actually be the point of doing that in Kansas City and what would actually take over that space?

Are we looking at a Disney park to come in there?

I don't know exactly what would go there.

I think the main focus has been trying to develop the river market and the crossroads and getting more high rises there.

But it's it's a very pro-development stance from one of the most powerful people.

And you could build a pretty nice baseball stadium on the land for the airport.

Well, I'm not that tough.

I mean, not as tough as Clay County is going to be.

The problem with downtown airport is that it has a real utility for very wealthy people and for businesses.

But for the general public, they don't fly in and out of that at any level.

I mean, there's no commercial service out of that airport.

So it is hard sometimes to plan.

So there's plenty of room now at the new KC and.

They could use some of the old terminal space to do to do Beechcraft, that type of.

Thing, and control the property assessments has consumed Jackson County government for months.

It's also diverted attention from another big contentious county issue, the new jail.

Back in April, county lawmakers were talking about hitting the pause button on the $300 million project at the learning of massive cost overruns.

There was even talk of scaling back the project or putting the jail on the ballot for a public vote.

So what happened this week?

We got a long overdue update as members of the Kansas City Council and the Jackson County lawmakers met together to get a progress report.

Is it still at a standstill or is construction underway?

Eric?

I think it is still at a standstill.

They're just trying to work out some bugs before they go public with saying, okay, we can go with this project.

Kansas City needs a jail for their municipal court system.

Well, because a.

Few people realize that since 2019 there hasn't been a Kansas City jail and they are actually spending millions of dollars shipping detainees out to Joplin and Warrensburg and places like that because they don't have a space.

But was that was an agreement made on that this week?

We don't have an agreement yet.

We have what we do have are new members of city council that expressed some frustration that the previous city council and mayor administration didn't get anything done on this.

So it really I mean, I feel like this is the first really big issue that that the new council has to decide on quickly and they have to really get negotiating on it.

I mean, the sad thing is, again, we've got a city in a county that is everybody's mentioned this issue's been looming for several years.

It just makes you really scratch your head at the competency of both the county and the city as far as addressing major strategic.

Issues, Did you see independents getting national primetime TV attention this week, eight months after the independent school board voted to enact a four day school week, the slimmed down calendar experiment finally got underway this week.

Tell me why.

You're leading.

The charge.

In this shortened week in your district.

We were very transpo with our community.

That this was not about saving money because it doesn't.

What it was for us completely was our ability to attract and retain quality staff.

So how was it going with our two teachers in every classroom, Lisa Because the district had so incredibly well recruiting staff lured by the idea that they no longer had to actually work on Mondays?

Well, I'm not sure it went quite to that, but but Superintendent Dale Harold has been very vocal that applications for teaching jobs really ballooned after this announcement.

So and we've heard even through the debates at the end of last year over whether to make this change, that teachers really wanted this change that they were feeling burned out and overworked, and that pay can only address some of that and that they could benefit from this extra additional day to plan for the next week.

So we'll see how it goes.

Technically, the school district has been in five days a week this first two weeks, but they'll switch to a four day week.

They've got all these planned activities for for kids to participate in on their off days.

They're offering child support at a cost to families.

So we'll see.

I think it's a really interesting thing, Superintendent.

Our independence is the largest district in Missouri to have made such a change.

And so I think other larger districts in urban areas may be watching to see if this is a success.

Can it be replicated, do you think?

Kansas City, Shawnee Mission Blue Valley are looking at this year?

They're seeing how this is going to go with independence.

Probably Raytown would be the next one to follow because they have some issues there as well.

But I believe this is something this will be the model to see if it actually works.

Yeah.

The problem is that this is primarily a tool for rural districts to to lure teachers to teach in places that may not be as sort of popular in terms of amenities or even in salary.

But, hey, we can offer you four day a week schedules if big districts start doing it, then that advantage goes away.

If Kansas City does an independent Shawnee Mission or whatever.

And that's why legislators, particularly in Missouri, are trying to prevent the big districts from doing it.

And they want to keep independence doing five days a week so that they can have the advantage where it's very popular and more rural.

But one other important thing is that, you know, the kids are getting the same amount of time in the classroom.

They've expanded the day, what, a half hour is like.

75, something like that.

Yeah.

They say it's about roughly the same as what they would do.

I guess my question is, why don't they take Friday off instead of Monday?

You know, I mean, it's what the heck, have a TGIF schedule that would be even more popular for teachers.

You are now giving ideas for the other superintendents watching this program that might start as another effort to recruit teachers.

It was a rough start to back to school in our metro.

In addition to the usual stories of school bus driver and crossing guard shortages, Kansas City public schools were letting out students before noon every day this week due to the oven like temperatures.

They said Most of the district's high schools and some middle schools don't have air conditioning.

Back to school.

And all those heat.

It is going to feel like 115 degrees again this afternoon, maybe pushing 120 like it did yesterday.

We just could not in good conscience expect for them to endure the heat and hope for the best.

I just have to go home and miss all day work.

And just take the cup on my paycheck.

And here we are having to miss out on a couple hundred dollars a week for this week alone just to come pick them up.

Some people were expressing outrage over that this week.

Given how much money has been invested in schools over the years.

How wasn't that happened, Eric?

Because they needed money in other areas and the maintenance with Kansas City public schools has been neglected for probably a decade, if not more.

So they don't have the money to fix and replace and do the things that they need to do.

If schools lack air conditioning in Kansas City, Missouri, that at least in part is due to mismanagement at the board level.

Not that money hasn't been available.

They've had hundreds of millions, billions of dollars for capital improvements.

If someone forgot to do air conditioning, it's not necessarily the fault of the of the patrons of the district.

And I do think that there was an effort, as I recall, 20, 25 years ago, to put air conditioning in all the Kansas City, Missouri schools.

Now, that maintenance may be a problem, revenue may be a problem.

They've closed schools, they've shrunk the district.

They get less money from the state.

But it isn't because totally because there hasn't been money that they don't have air conditioning.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I tend to agree.

But the reality is they haven't had a levy since the seventies.

What can you buy today that you could pay the same price for and to see also reality is is the levy doubled for the Kansas City Missouri school district as part of it and and and Eric as you know the school district is not subject to the Hancock amendment so that if valuations go up as they are, there's no requirement that they roll back.

They can levy whatever they think the market will bear.

So Kansas City, Missouri has tools to do the things that it needs to do.

It just needs the will to do them.

But I should point out though, there were other school this including a Shawnee mission this week.

Lisa, that even had air conditioning systems and set the kids home because you can still struggle and have maintenance issues with the systems with.

Outs.

When it's this hot.

I mean, we're we're not dealing with AC systems, especially for schools that have window units.

And that's how they're cooling their classrooms that can withstand heat this this much.

And this was a topic when we were talking about consolidating the district.

Their main concern was we're so behind on maintenance and they ended up after public outrage, scaling that back and not closing all the schools that they said they needed to.

Now, if you live in southern Johnson County, you're already feeling the pain from construction of new toll lanes on 69 Highway.

But even though the new fee based express lanes won't open until 2025, that may be plans afoot to add another toll road in Johnson County, this time on K ten.

The busy stretch of road way to Q that connects Kansas City to Lawrence as this show is about clearing up befuddling and confusing issues, how come Missouri Governor Mike Parson, Dave Helling just agreed to add a third lane in both directions of I-70 from Kansas City to Saint Louis with no need for tolls, no tax increase in Kansas with massive budget surpluses, can't find the money to do the same.

Well, they probably could find the money if it was a priority.

But I do think that, you know, they're building other Kansas has spent an enormous amount of money on highway transportation in and around the Kansas side of the Kansas City area over the years.

Just drive out to 435 or the interchange with K ten as you head toward Lawrence.

There's concrete everywhere.

So it may be that rural interests are not that excited about spending the millions, the hundreds of millions that you would need to improve.

K ten.

And, you know, let's face it, there wasn't there's not unanimous support for the I-70 project in Missouri.

Some rural interests are saying, what about our highway?

What about our.

So it's a little more complicated than they do at one place and don't do it in another.

And, you know, although both states are pretty conservative, Kansas has always been a bit more progressive, particularly in infrastructure and other public works projects.

And they've had the precedent of a toll road for a long time.

You know, anybody that drives to Topeka and to Wichita, they're on the Kansas Turnpike and it's going on all over the country.

I mean, you go to Minnesota, Minneapolis, you go to Denver, Denver.

They actually had private developers build a beltway around the city that is paid for by tolls.

It's a four profit venture.

Well, one of the reasons for that, Nick, and this is an important thing to understand, is cars get better mileage.

A lot of electric cars are paying gas taxes.

Everyone's looking for an alternative way to pay for road improvements.

And one of the ways to do so is.

I have to say what amazed me at a time of great outrage of public prostrate for almost every single issue under the sun, that this hasn't gotten as much public anger as I might have anticipated.

Is that because you can you don't actually have to pay anything if you're not using the express lane.

It's not like everybody has to pay it.

You just have to emote just taking longer to get to your destination.

That's part of it.

We're we're early on in these discussions.

This is just an idea that is that we've just surfaced this week.

And I think if if they were considering tolling all of K ten and taking away our only free way to get to Lawrence, then then I think there would be a lot of outrage.

But for offering one toll lane option for people who want to pay it and others that can that can just go for free, I think that alleviates congestion on both sides.

As we've been gone two weeks.

There are far too many stories we've missed to do justice to our usual big story, missed segment just this week.

We could do a segment just on the big lawsuits we've missed.

Increasingly, we are turning to judges to settle our most divisive disputes.

So perhaps that's a better question to ask before we leave, which was the biggest lawsuit we missed lawsuits on the way after that police raid on a Kansas newspaper.

Will it cost the police chief his job?

Will a judge block Missouri's ban on child transgender treatments?

Missouri's new law goes into effect on Monday.

Another lawsuit filed to block an abortion rights question on the Missouri ballot.

The suit from three Republican lawmakers claims the ballot language should tell voters it will cost $12 billion a year, the amount of lost tax revenue from aborting unborn Missourians and the clash over affordable housing in Prairie Village heads to a Kansas courtroom this week.

A judge deciding whether three citizen petitions that limit apartments and multi-family homes can be added to the November ballot already.

Lisa, did you pick one of those stories or something completely different?

You know, I don't know if this particular lawsuit is the biggest news, but I do think the issue over housing in Prairie Village is a huge one and one that other Johnson County suburbs are also looking at.

It's the city of Prairie Village desperately needs more affordable housing options.

That's what they're trying to push forward.

But but these group of residents that oppose any type of multifamily housing or anything that would threaten the image of what Prairie Village presents, which is these, you know, middle to upper income, nice trim houses there.

It's it's a real cultural debate there.

And I'm very curious to see how that plays out, that there's lots of layers in this discussion.

And it's.

Spinning out, of.

Course, all over the metro as nobody seems to want apartments on multistory living, even though nobody can seem to afford to buy a house right now.

Dave, what did you put down?

Well, I think we ought to pay attention, of course, to the story in Marion County, where the police department raided a newsroom looking for alleged evidence in a dispute.

What your viewers may not remember and which I'm revealing here, again, maybe for the first time, this is not the first time that a law enforcement official has raided a newsroom in our region in the mid 1990s, Claire McCaskill raided the newsroom at Channel four under the same circumstances would have with a search warrant, not a subpoena, looking for what she believed to be evidence in a murder case.

It prompted a federal lawsuit.

We we I say we I worked at channel four at the time.

We wanted to try a level lost of the appeals court.

But it is not unusual for police want.

But did people at that time start using the words Nazi Hitler Gestapo which was really interesting, the use of language in this case.

And certainly no one referred to Claire McCaskill as Hitler like at the time.

Kevin Well, they were all actually lawsuits related to some very important topics.

I'm going to go down and talk about the one that the legislators in Jeff City are yet again trying to sabotage, torpedo, whatever verb you want to use people's right to petition for changes in our state constitution.

This is a relentless campaign by the Republicans to try to sabotage the ability of people to put this abortion issue on the ballot.

And they're going to just amazing extremes to try to make their case.

They've been defeated at least two times as far as I can remember.

And it's just you know, they just it's fascinating that they are so reluctant to allow the people to vote on topics.

I mean, it's to me, it's an indication of they're fearful and and it's just sad that they continue to try to force this thing to be delayed.

Eric.

The Kansas City, Missouri, Fire Department and the Justice Department are coming in to investigate allegations, lawsuits, payouts that the fire department has had for discrimination against black firefighters.

The battalion chief SEALs, I've talked to him several times about that situation within the fire department and nothing has changed.

And I.

Okay.

And just quickly, Kansas City is now under scrutiny for its hiring practices and both its fire department and its police department, which says something about government to governance of public safety.

I think in.

Kansas and on that we will say our week has been reviewed courtesy of KCUR's Lisa Rodriguez and Kevin Collison of City Scene KC from the Helm at.

Next page KC Eric Wesson and former star reporter and opinion writer Dave Helling.

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

Be well, keep calm and carry on.