Will you vote yes or no with the stadium tax now in the hands of voters?

Plus, the new fight over busses and the college Baseball Hall of Fame.

Coming to Overland Park, did it just save the museum, a prairie fire?

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.

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And by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Nick Haines and glad to have you with us on our weekly journey through the news of our week.

Hopping on board our Week in Review bus This week is Channel nine political analyst Michael Mahoney at the helm of our metro's newest newspaper.

Next page, KC, Eric Weston.

From our own newsroom, Flatland KC Mary Sanchez and former star reporter and editorial writer Dave Helling, who I don't think has ever been in more demand in print, radio and television this week because of the stadium deal term.

This is a good opportunity to remind people I am retired.

Yeah, but.

I am not following this stuff as closely as I once did.

But it's great to be all right.

Well, you no longer have to head to the movie theater or click on Netflix to experience high drama.

You can simply head on over to the Jackson County courthouse.

72 hours after Jackson County executive Frank White vetoed plans to put a stadium tax on the April ballot, lawmakers voted to overturn their leader, putting the issue directly to voters.

I received overwhelming outreach from constituents and the community and stakeholders asking me to allow them to vote on this issue.

We don't know what a stadium is going to go for the royals.

We don't know what the team's plans are for renovation.

We don't know what the team's plans are for keeping their offices and their workout facility and training facility in Jackson County.

We think we have a great project for Jackson County, the city of Kansas City and the region, for that matter.

Friday, a growing number of lawmakers were siding with white.

They simply didn't have enough information to move forward.

They said.

72 hours later, Eric, they abandoned their position to place it on the ballot.

What was happening behind the scenes?

Do we need to see if there was an uptick of dislocated shoulders that we don't know?

Jancee Rooms Was that a lot of arm twisting going on behind the scenes that we didn't get to see?

Labor opened their billfold and and gave them a barrage of press in to help constituents to contact their representatives to tell them that they wanted the stadium issue on the ballot so that voters can make a choice on whether it was enough information or not.

So it wasn't the.

Royals and the Chiefs plowing them with free swag or anything.

It was really labor because they're going to be the ones building these stadiums, trying to convince.

A television commercial.

They did surveys.

They had sent letters to all the representatives.

They pretty much put the pedal to the metal on them.

Radio commercials as well.

I was half expecting, though, to get them to be convinced to do this, that we will at least find out, Dave, that we would know where the royals would build their ballpark.

But they do make a concession.

They will announce that by February 29th, which will give them more than a month to tell and convince voters.

Is that enough time.

And give voters six weeks to decide if this is a good idea?

It's interesting that rather than answer the questions that are unanswered, the teams decided to put pressure on legislators through voters to try and get this to the ballot.

And that pressure worked because the royals and chiefs are unique in this community.

I mean, they're one of the few things that unites the community on both sides of the state line.

And so that pressure can be effective.

And it was this time.

Just a quick reminder, Labor was also behind Burns and McDonnell at the airport, and they had all kinds of efforts to try and force a vote on the Burns and McDonnell development of KC, and of course, that crashed.

But but in a sense, though, the people voted overwhelmingly for the airport.

70% of voters said yes to that for all of the concerns about this, is there any evidence to suggest voters wouldn't say yes to this, Michael?

Yeah, I think there's concerns about it.

Like what?

Well, I think that for for one in eastern Jackson, in Jackson County, there's a lot of resentment that I think may come to the fore about having the royals move out of the sports complex and go to someplace downtown.

I think the things that Frank White, who's been taking white hot heat on on this, some of the questions that he's raising about this, about where would the ballpark for the royals be, how much is this going to cost?

What's the design look like?

All those are valid questions.

And I think voters should have access to some of that information before they go to the polls.

And right now, the teams are promising that information before voters get to the ballot box.

But I wanted to bring up here, this is a that's.

Been this demand for information that's been out here for months.

It's polling extremely well.

And even though that they're talking about moving it out of eastern Jackson County is polling extremely well.

But one other thing with this, all the civic counsel came out.

And the.

Chamber of Commerce came out and they had people sign on Negro Leagues, Baseball, Museum, Urban League, all of these agencies came together.

And I don't I don't want to say that it was for the stadium.

I think it was more so give the people an opportunity to vote for it.

I don't think that they would have gone in April if they didn't have that kind of poll.

Viewers look for it to be at the star building.

Okay.

Well, let me ask you this.

And so we actually met this week here at Kansas City PBS with a major downtown power broker who said they've been in talks every single day with Royals owner John Sherman about moving it there and bleeding over into the power and light district.

Yes, that is where it would go.

And yet, why aren't the royals then just being more forthcoming about that?

Why not just name that the system?

You don't want to have that much time for people to start pushing back any sort of coalition.

You know, if it does go there.

There are a lot of businesses right along that corridor that are developing East Crossroads that will start pushing back all the questions that opens up about how much more land they've got to take.

And it raises the issue of the east side property not choosing that.

What does that say to the east community?

And we're hearing lots of questions, by the way, from our own viewers.

John wants to know what will John Sherman do if Jackson County voters reject the tax proposal?

Michael.

That's a $2 billion question, isn't it?

They will still have some time to go back and put this on another ballot, further down ballot, perhaps in August, maybe November, maybe maybe in a different year.

But the clock runs on this.

If they're looking for, say, state support for for this plan, for the for the for the stadiums, you know, legislature ends in mid-May.

And if there's nothing in place before they adjourn, a vote in August would have question marks about state support.

A vote in November would have questions about state support.

We have no idea if the state will contribute a dime to this project.

Now, the governor gave his state of the state Wednesday and released the budget.

As far as I could determine, going through that budget, there was no money set aside for this project nor the World Cup.

You know, we've talked about Kansas contributing.

So that's going to come out of nowhere.

Voters may have no idea what the state is going to do.

We have no idea what, if anything, the city will do, particularly if it goes to the star side, whether there are incentives, abatements, TAFEs, other things involved.

And we haven't heard much about John Sherman's billion dollar nearby village.

That was always a part of this.

What is the status of that discussion?

Well, I think if it was in the power light district, that would allow a lot of that to happen with the developer.

Okay.

And that cap that they want to put over the freeway, they could connect that to it.

They can connect it to 87 because that was one of the selling points out here.

We don't know any of that.

We don't.

Know.

Well, here's another question, because we already.

Active on the star builder.

What happens to that?

Well, here's another question that people have you got a positive thing about?

We heard from Jane this week, who's a faithful watcher of the program.

Thank you, Jane.

If the tax extension fails, can Jackson County use the current tax money to begin building a new stadium?

Doesn't the current tax last until 2031?

Yeah.

So here's the situation.

We'll get tax.

It raises 50 million a year.

The debt service on the old debt from 26 is about 30 million a year.

That extra 20 million now goes to the teams for what's called the maintenance fund, and they use that money for repairs and other things.

So there will be some money available, certainly not enough to build a new stadium.

Nashville Royals, that's what they've become.

To answer your question.

For our viewers who are already suffering from stadium fatigue, do not worry.

There are lots of other issues on the program this week.

Kansas City made lots of national headlines back in 2019 when it became the first major city in America to make its bus service totally free to passengers.

Now struggling with cash, the KTA, which runs the area's busses, is moving to restore fares.

If you missed that big meeting this week because they held it in the middle of a weekday and you had to work.

Here's a snippet from some of the riders and drivers who testified.

This bus has become the shelter for the homeless people.

We actually lost more ridership due to the free fare because.

They started filling, feeling unsafe.

Our city will be way less safe if people lose their access to jobs, their medication, their education.

All righty.

Mary Sanchez, didn't Kansas City just vote in November to renew the bus tax which plows millions of dollars to support the service?

What's changed?

Well, nothing changed.

I mean, that was a very good kudo was passed by what it more than 70% of the public vote.

The problem is that that only fills like 30% of the budget.

And there's also a $10 million deficit.

So how all that's going to work out, what you're hearing here is the conversation around the bus fares.

Are they going to reinstitute bus fares, which were a dollar 50, basically, and they put it off.

They basically said, let's just study it more with the study.

Is is how do you reinstituted if we're going to do.

It is is is this as much about money as it is about solving another problem?

And that's what's happening with the homeless now that anybody can ride, that they can be on that all week long.

We heard from that first rider.

They're saying that was a concern.

We also got an anonymous, a disabled rider.

Thank you for reaching out to us this week who said they've also noticed the cat has now begun removing benches at the bus stops, particularly downtown, because of the homeless problem as well.

Right.

And the lady that was on at first, she calls me at least once a week complaining about homeless people riding the busses all day, especially during the cold weather, because they're trying to get warm.

And in the summer it's too hot.

They're trying to do that.

But there's a lot of problems with that.

And I think we've had in the urban core, we've had two stores closed as a result of it while grains on Emanuel Cleaver Boulevard and Truce and then the CVS up the street because they said to the homeless people and people run in, they steal stuff out the store, run out and jump on the bus.

So they've got that time.

But I think it's more of a concern, especially during a COVID season of homeless people.

Riding the busses for free.

One of the big issues of wasn't this about fairness and equity to begin with in 2019, I remember Mayor Quinton Lucas appearing on this program and said, Why is it that you can ride the streetcar line for free yet more essential service like the bus you have to pay for?

This was an equity issue as much as it is about money.

Well, it was also but it was also about the people believing that the revenue from the fare box wasn't so significant that they would have a major dent in their budget if they got rid of it.

Plus, collecting it was considered to be a problem.

You had machines in the busses that had to collect the fare and sometimes that got to be a problem.

So but I don't think my again, I haven't gone to these meetings, but but my sense of this is that it's the bus drivers who are worried about security always have been that are aren't fond of the free fair.

And then you fold in the fact that there is a somewhat of a deficit.

6,000,010 million whatever the number is.

And so the pressure to reinstate them is there.

You know, the bottom line here is they don't have the bucks to do what they want to do with a free, fair system.

But they put off the decision.

They haven't said yes yet, but they.

Know they put it off for a little while.

They were filling in that the lack of the funding through COVID funds and the COVID fund turnout at the end of this year.

So that's why this this conversation is about what happens in 2025 and going forward.

Okay.

So it's not going to be an immediate decision.

One of the things about the safety is not only the homeless people ride with the free fares, but they also say they had a lot of incidents where people were arguing with bus drivers about paying fares.

So that security issue also came into the conversation.

So it's kind of like a double edged sword.

If they ride free, we got issues.

If they pay, we've got issues.

And it's my understanding that since they can do free fares, they don't have those confrontations at the fair.

As Dave Hailing already mentioned this week, Missouri Governor Mike Parson was in the spotlight as he delivered his final state of the state message before lawmakers he leaves office at the end of the year.

Did the moment Michael leave him choked and emotional, sobbing uncontrollably from the podium?

No.

It was victory lap, of course, for him.

He was quite proud of the things that that he accomplished.

Some folks will suggest that he had an unsettled term, that there were things that did not go well.

He will get credit for infrastructure, not only the I-70 project.

He also wants to do something with I-44.

He's got he's got some educational feather in his cap.

But the way that the parts of the administration had handled handled COVID and some other issues make it a mixed bag.

I think there was.

Something he certainly is.

Thousand.

22,000 Missourians died from COVID.

But he patted himself on the back over the issue of abortion.

Nearly 8000 elective abortions when he took office in Jefferson City today at zero, that was a big deal.

But were there any other big surprises or big messages that we need to be taking home from that speech this week, Mary?

Well, I don't think from necessarily that speech, but just reading the cards going forward, what is going to happen with this legislature?

You know, you just have this huge kerfuffle with the GOP calling out his own far right, becoming more and more far right, a small caucus, the swamp Creatures.

So how much is actually going to get passed?

And, you know, for the good of the people is a little bit up in the air.

Well, let's look at that issue.

I think.

Because he wasn't getting a lot of love from members of his own party this week.

Governor Mike Parson, borrowing a tactic most often seen in Washington, a group of Republican senators were blocking all of Parson's appointments for state agencies, boards and commissions until the Chamber took up a vote on changing the rules for passing constitutional amendments with an abortion rights petition effort.

Now underway, some Republicans want to increase the percentage of the vote necessary to pass such efforts at the ballot box.

But if the abortion amendment Davis gets on the ballot in November, won't this effort to change the rules come too late?

Well, no, not necessarily.

If you can pass it and get it to the ballot in August in Missouri, there is a sense that you could make it effective before the November vote.

You know, that's why I think there's some hurry up among members of the so-called Freedom Caucus to try and get this figured out.

Ironically, of course, the efforts to make it harder to pass initiative petitions would go on the ballot with the simple majority that now exists rather than the supermajority that the conservatives want.

But it's about abortion.

The same thing happened in Ohio, where there was an effort to change that petition process and the referendum on changing the constitution.

There was first a vote on how you do it and then on the merits itself.

But but they didn't.

But they did try it last year in the legislature and it failed.

Is there any evidence it would be more successful this year?

I think it may be because they've had one one run at it.

Secondly, the the effort to put the abortion question on the ballot in Missouri got a very, very late start because of court battles over it.

And it's not clear that they're going to have the opportunity to meet the deadline that's coming up in in May to get enough signatures to require this on the ballot.

You remember a few weeks ago, Governor Mike Parson was in the news.

He was signing an order blocking China from owning Missouri farms, or at least on land within ten miles of military bases.

Now, Kansas lawmakers may be going further.

An effort is now underway to block a Chinese firm from building a factory next to Johnson County's New Century Center, which was not only the site of last year's Kansas City Airshow, but a hub for charter flights and pilot training.

The company called C Nano supplies components for electric vehicle batteries and would employ about 100 workers.

How is this different, if at all, from what's happening in Missouri?

Well, it's all part of the same campaign across the country, Nick, led by conservative lawmakers who are concerned about Chinese investment, primarily Chinese investment in in American factories and farmland and other American properties.

And this debate is playing out all across the country.

It has great resonance for some people because of their concerns about the Chinese and Chinese communism.

So that's what this is about.

Well, then the thing to remember is that Chinese ownership of land in Missouri and in Kansas is not they are not the dominant foreign owner of property in these two states.

They're not even in the top five.

And and so, as Dave said, he had this is a talking point.

It's it's going to be one of the issues, I think sort of like the transgender issue in the last campaign cycle.

You're going to see this a lot.

But I think it's a little different on the Chinese issue because even we're actually Laura Kelly, the governor of Kansas, was the first Democratic governor in the nation to ban any state employees from using tech talk in her office over the very concerns over surveillance, where the use of data is.

And that's the concern of Republicans in this case, that they may be sharing data with the Chinese Communist Party as they put it.

Well, I think there are there's always reasons to look at intelligence, security, all of those issues.

Look at our history, though.

It's a country with the big question is, where are you being safe?

Where are you being honest with voters, with the public?

Where are their real concerns?

And not leaning too far into this idea of like a nativism where we're trying to isolate ourselves?

Isolation does not keep you secure.

But if there were to be a problem and there worse to be stolen data or other sensitive information, wouldn't we in the media be the first to say, Why wasn't there more due diligence?

Eric?

Why weren't we monitoring these companies that were in our states?

Yes, Arcata this week, they just had a data breach and they couldn't use their phones or computers.

But why do you have a system set up that would let somebody hack into it?

That would be the first thing that we would want to talk about because you don't know what information those people are getting.

Now, just a couple of weeks after the Museum of Prairie Fire was making headlines over its financial future, the Overland Park attraction just wins a big new tenant.

The College Baseball Hall of Fame is moving to Johnson County and will be headquartered inside the Overland Park Museum at 135th.

And now we had a chance to visit many cities across the country, great cities.

But time and time again it was the people that made us feel welcome and feel like this is home.

Knowing how popular youth baseball here is in Kansas City and how relevant it is, I couldn't think of a better place to have the College Baseball Hall of Fame to be in Overland Park.

Former royal star Alex Gordon isn't the only big name now backing the project.

So is Patrick Mahomes, who just cut a substantial check to make it happen.

If they ask excited, shouldn't we all be?

How much do people care about a college baseball Hall of Fame?

Michael I think for first you got to say this is an impressive get for Overland Park and and the Prairie Fire Museum because by almost all measures, this is the sort of thing that ought to be in Omaha, Nebraska, with the College World Series there.

And so the fact that Omaha not did not get this and Overland Park and Prairie Fire did is almost next to mystifying on this, then the question becomes, does this really generate the sort of money that the Prairie Fire Museum project needs?

And that remains to be a question.

Despite all their optimistic projection.

There seems to be different views on that as to what the developer there, Fred Merrill, says there are 100% occupancy in the entire development there.

Some of the stories they claim of being overexaggerated.

But is this at least confirms that having a museum in Johnson County dedicated to natural science didn't quite bring in as many people as they wanted in something else needs to be tried here.

You know, museums, Halls of Fame are not in and of themselves great money generators.

And we know that in Kansas City because of the college basketball experience, which has had financial problems since it opened and needed forgiveness of some of the debt it owed to the city, the Negro Leagues Museum has succeeded only to the extent of national efforts, unrelenting efforts to raise money.

But the Jazz Museum struggles still, and for that matter, the Negro Leagues Museum is not on, you know, overwhelmingly strong footing.

So the idea that this is going to rescue prairie fire is probably a stretch.

I would agree with Dave on that.

But I think the popularity of the College World Series, if you've ever tried to get tickets to that, thankfully, I have friends in Omaha who can help.

It's a huge get and I think it's wonderful for this region.

It just would have made more sense, perhaps for 18th and Vine to include it with all the synergy already there.

What was there any did you hear that from Bob Kendrick over at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum?

Hey, why not over here?

Yeah, no, I hadn't talked to him about it.

But the new museum that he is going to build there on the corner of 1810 for sale, that would have been a great fit.

You could build the College Baseball Hall of Fame next to the college basketball experience as part of the new stadium complex downtown.

You have baseball fans there.

Then you have the College Baseball Hall of Fame, the college basketball experience next to the arena.

Some of that makes sense.

It belongs in Omaha.

But 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?

Chiefs Fever rules the Metro just ahead of the AFC championship game this weekend.

Kansas City recording a ratings bonanza in last week's Chiefs bills game, now officially listed as America's most watched TV program since the Super Bowl last week, I asked, would we quickly move on from the mass shooting at Crown Center?

Well, businesses in the shopping center say yes, they complaining Crown Center management has been totally silent since six people were shot in a dispute between two groups of young people.

Kansas City recording the nation's third largest rise in rent prices.

The Missouri auditor making headlines as he accuses fellow Republican Jay Ashcroft of breaking the law for failing to turn over cybersecurity reviews of local election offices.

These are political opinions.

Under the.

Guise of an honorable.

Court.

Howard heads rejoice.

Kansas City's first Margaritaville hotel now has an opening date, spring 2025, Next to the Legends in Cascade.

And how many event spaces do we need?

Live Nation begins construction this week on a new 15,000 seat concert venue in Riverside.

Already Eric Wesson, Did you pick one of those stories or something completely different?

I linked mine and with the vote that the city council is going to be taking on the discrimination for rent, the battle between the KC tenants and landlords over what they should be asking people that they're renting their properties to.

Mary I wrote the positive Just because we need this with this dreary weather, Kansas City is once again made a huge a listing of James Beard, some semifinalists.

And what I would just say is congratulations to them because this area has got a general nation's long history within culinary that they've just joined a huge team.

Michael.

On the rent increase, I am sort of piggybacking off what Eric said.

Kansas City has a reputation for being a livable city and an affordable city.

And this sort of statistic really flies in the face of that, and it's going to require some some close inspection.

Governor Mike Parson in his budget in State of the state address talked a lot about giving more money to teachers in Missouri.

Missouri teachers are so seriously underpaid that it's probably good news.

It may not be enough, particularly for teachers who've been around for a while.

So look for a major discussion in Jeff City about making teachers or having more money for teachers.

Or alternatively, we do a three day week for teachers beating the four day week already.

I know that we will say our week has been reviewed courtesy of Mary Sanchez from the Kansas City PBS NEWSROOM and Channel nine political analyst Michael Mahoney.

From Next Page, KC Eric Wesson and former style newsman Dave Helling.

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

Be well, keep calm and carry on.