Coming up, Kansas City finally on the global stage.

How did we do?

We have a report card on the first World Cup game in Kansas City history.

Plus World Cup joy overshadowed by a skydiver crash killing everyone on board.

The plane was up in flames.

So I just said a prayer that everybody was okay and hoping there was no one else on the plane when it happened.

That was fast.

The first pilots of the August primary election to send out this week, and after all the legal drama over redrawn maps in Missouri, election boards across the state have chosen to use the new Republican pass congressional map for this election.

Is that the end of the story, plus new drama over data centers and the rest of the week's news straight ahead week in review is made possible through the generous support of Bob and Marlese Gourley.

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

Thank you.

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

Hopping on board the Weekend Review bus with us this week.

And by the way, we're hoping it's a smoother ride than many of the passengers experience.

Headed to the World Cup this week, but KCUR's local government reporter Savannah Hawley Bates is with us.

Along with KCUR's chief political analyst, Brian Ellison at the helm of our metro's newest newspaper.

Next page KC, Eric Wesson and former star staffer, now Mr.

Kansas City stack on Substack Dave Helling.

Now, after a decade of planning, Kansas City finally got its global moment this week as it hosted its first World Cup game.

As night falls to the loudest stadium in the world, it is not in red tonight.

Is that Kansas City or Buenos Aires, Missouri?

This is a packed house full of Argentine fans to see the defending world champions take the stage about San for his career world Cup hat trick ties a goalscoring record.

Well, for months now, the question has been Is Kansas City ready to host an event of this magnitude, and will fans even show up?

Did we get a definitive answer to that this week, or is the verdict still out?

Dave no, I the first week has gone off relatively well.

It helps.

I think that Argentina was one of the, teams in the first game here.

Argentina apparently is one of the favorites to win the World Cup.

Has a huge fan base.

There had some hiccup.

There were some hiccups, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, in terms of transportation to and from the stadium, but by and large, Arrowhead looked good, the city looked good, the attendance was strong.

There weren't weather problems.

There certainly weren't.

I think a lot of people and they were afraid of crime problems or some sort of huge breakout of crime that didn't occur.

So I think, you know, good grades for the first week.

That's my impression.

But but some of the joy of Kansas City's first World Cup was overshadowed by a string of news stories about how Argentinean fans were hit by gunfire during their Uber rides to see the game at Kansas City Stadium.

And just like Messi's hat trick, that was also getting plenty of headlines in countries around the world.

Eric Yeah, but it was kind of on the back burner here locally because I didn't hear anything about it until like a couple of the next day, but usually things like that come on the news.

I was saying that it was a good, experience.

We had a lot of things that we got to work out, a lot of bugs, transportation.

The weather wasn't bad, but you still have people jammed up in that area was hot in that area, and I think they had to call paramedics over there.

So but I think all in all, they did surprisingly well.

We knew all along, Savannah that transportation would be a weak point for the city.

In fact, when even when we were bidding on it, that was a concern.

How did we do in that area on the day?

I mean, I think you have to put in perspective, right?

Like Kansas City is the only World Cup host city, presumably, that has had maybe this much ground to make up in terms of transportation and so in that regard, they did stand up a pretty good bus system just for World Cup visitors.

I spoke to people at Fan Fest who said the busses went off without a hitch.

The airport shuttles and the the ones around town where it really ran into trouble was getting to the stadium.

And there's a bit of disagreement over who's at fault for that.

It's FIFA who controls the stadium entry and, you know, the roads around the stadium.

There were only two gates open to get into.

And during a Chiefs game, you can have eight gates there.

Big.

The gates open earlier during cheese games.

And so there was this huge back up miles long.

I was there Friday night.

We were you know, we got to the stadium area around 445.

We didn't get up to Blue Ridge cut off until like 630.

People were outside of their cars, their rideshares, and some people even said they got off of their their fan Fest busses to just walk in on people as much as a mile to get there.

Some of the headlines in our local TV news was this was chaos, Brian.

Some people going from Fan Fest to the stadium on those busses, taking two hours to get that right, especially the ones apparently that left from Fan Fest to some of the ones that left from other points around the Metro reported not having quite as much difficulty.

But look, Nick, I, I have a pretty unabashedly positive impression of this first week.

I think a lot of things cooperated.

Good weather.

As you said, Argentina being in town, as you said.

But I think when we when we've been talking about this all along, we've talked about whether the investment is worth it.

Right.

And, and a lot of times we're talking about whether it pays off with economic benefits, and we don't know what the answer to that eventually will be.

But there's reason to be skeptical about that.

What we often have to add on after is that there's other benefits to the community.

It's the way it makes the community feel.

It's the the sense of joy and purpose and togetherness and hospitality.

And that seems to have been present in abundance, at least in this first week of the World Cup.

I was on the streetcar, to and from fan festival twice, full of happy, joyful Kansas citizens and visitors from around the world.

I feel like this is a good moment for the city, at least so far.

And I will say, even the fans that had to get off and walk like a mile to the stadium from their busses were still happy and excited to be doing so.

They were chanting, their own theme song, two hours on the bus from Fan Fest to Kansas City, and I'm still hoping it's like a fine if you like, excited about it.

Eric, Eric, Eric, what can I just say?

One of the things I'd heard from people who are the Chiefs fans, who go all the time is, you know, they opened the stadium a much early on as part of that, right?

So when you have something that opens much closer to the stadium time, you've got an awful lot of people who have never probably been to the stadium before coming all at once.

That was the big difference from a Chiefs game.

Yeah, that I think that's where the cluster came in.

That was trying to get people through two gates.

There were a lot of busses.

I mean, I went out east with traffic because I couldn't go out 70 because they were taking the soccer team and they had closed out the exits to get onto the freeway and the on ramps, but they had closed it.

But there were a lot of busses.

I've never seen that many busses.

It was the concern that they should have at a designated area, a bus line.

Do you think that should have happened?

And wouldn't that be complicated on I-70?

That would have been a lot better and it would have been a lot smoother, I believe coming into the city, because you couldn't get on the freeway, so you had to go through.

It's a traffic way.

But I saw people parking in the church parking lot on Eastwood traffic way and Raytown Road, and they walked all the way to the stadium.

I'm like, I don't realize.

I don't know if they realize how far they have to walk, but that was a long wow.

Just two quick points.

First, anyone who assumes it's easy to get into a Chiefs game hasn't been to a Chiefs game in a long time, and they're difficult people have to wait sometimes a long time just to get to those gates.

And second, while transportation problems should have been anticipated and need to be fixed and will be a subject of commentary, the fact is it's probably better than not having transportation problems and a half empty stadium that you know, at least you're getting people at the exit points.

So so so again, if you take it sort of.

All in all, I think the if you talk to the, the 2026 people, they will tell you it went about as well as they hope and they were in charge of the busses.

FIFA was in charge of the stadium.

That was something they didn't have control over.

I did see our friend Charlie Keegan from channel 41 did a story and then asked FIFA what they were going to do differently, and he was notified they would let him know within 14 business days.

They are kind of busy right now.

Now, as we discussed problems, by the way, they were, as Brian pointed out, lots of magic moments that people seem to appreciate, not just at the stadium, but all around our metro.

As we end this first full week of the Kansas City World Cup compete list sentence.

The biggest surprise I didn't expect to see is blank.

Savannah.

I don't know if it's so much of a surprise, but I think the best thing that I've enjoyed is seeing how much more sense has adopted Algeria as their home team, for lack of a better word, and sort of become, you know, rock shock Algeria as I say, Dave, I would say that how, attractive Arrowhead looked on television with a soccer pitch instead of a football field, and you could see all kinds of comments on social media.

Why are the Chiefs abandoning this to go to Kansas?

And I think that's a fascinating question.

Perhaps we wouldn't have had all those transportation problems if it was at the new Kansas side.

Well, then we could spend another half hour on that.

But I think that the city showed out well for a stadium that is as old as their Ryan, I think so, and I think that's that's what they paid all the big bucks for, really.

It's that shot, right?

It's that shot to say to the world, this is Kansas City.

I mean, I think my biggest so surprise is probably just the level of sort of community and joy that I detected at the fan festival.

The, the folks with the Argentina jerseys, the Algeria jerseys, but all the other jerseys, too, coming together.

I mean, it did feel like something new and different than what I think I district, as well as fan watch parties all over town.

That's a request.

And I actually pulled a clip of you.

This is from our Year in Review show in 2024, when we asked our panelists to name the most over reported story in Kansas City, the World Cup, I can go for the rest of 2025 without hearing another word about a World Cup and what it's going to do for Kansas City, and how Kansas City is going to do it.

I know I we are all ready.

Are you willing to change your tune now?

Eric?

No.

Oh, God, you're a hard man.

It's gotten even worse.

We had so many things going on, and that's the only thing people talked about was that.

But we had a lot of issues going on.

But they said, you know, our hotels at the 111% for this week on last year, even after all those horror stories about what was happening, a hotels that improved, that improved, and what was interesting was seeing people from Argentina embrace barbecue because they were going to the barbecue restaurants.

I didn't think they knew a whole lot about barbecue.

Complete the sentence.

The biggest disappointment so far in this World Cup?

Savannah is black.

I think right now the thing on everyone's mind is the transportation hiccups and seeing if they'll be worked out by Saturday's match.

I don't know the disappointment, but I think it'll be fascinating to see if this enthusiasm that Brian and others are talking about around the table here continues.

This is a month long event.

It's not just a one off appearance of Argentina and Algeria.

And so whether the momentum can continue in terms of enthusiasm, visitors to the Fan Fest, visitors to local bars and restaurants, I still think it's an open question and you can already see some reporting around the country of people asking a similar question.

That first week was great.

Will the other weeks be as great?

Eric I think the disappointment was 18th and vine in the jazz district.

They had a watch party there.

Somebody filmed there, looked like a ghost town.

The people on the stage were singing to themselves, and a lot of people put a lot of money invested in businesses to go in that area.

That's got no return on their money.

Brian, I think not just this week, but overall, the biggest disappointment is, FIFA.

The way that they exercised tight control over things like hotel reservations and canceled them, they exercised tight control over ticket prices and how they can be resold.

And so now we're still seeing tickets and hundreds or thousands of dollars not accessible to the very people for whom the world Cup is so special.

There needs to be a way to figure out a better calibration.

And a lot of folks do that at the hands of the governing authority of the sport.

I have to say, we have plenty of viewers who also say, can you talk about anything other than the World Cup?

And yeah, I, I we realize that.

Oh, absolutely.

But, you know, there are lots of other things happening.

And as much as we'd like to believe that we were in the global headlines this week because of the World Cup, just as many headlines coming out of Kansas City because of a totally unrelated tragedy as a skydiving plane carrying 12 people crashes shortly after takeoff, killing everyone on board.

The aircraft, operated by Skydive Kansas City, went down moments after departing Butler Memorial Airport, about an hour south of Kansas City.

Now, while the crash happened an hour from where we're sitting, we're learning more about the people on board.

And for the most part, they're from here, from Lawrence.

They're from independence, North Kansas City, Liberty.

So if you're really going to be from Kansas City, you want to skydive.

This is where you would go.

Brian.

Yeah.

And I to be honest, I have learned that in this week of reporting.

I didn't know that it was such a center.

But but there are several skydiving operations, and the Butler Airport is a place they like to go.

Apparently it's the right, closeness to the city while also being remote enough that there's not a lot of interference.

This really was a tragedy, and one that that seems to have happened to a company that does not previously have, a poor safety record.

So we're still waiting to hear what I also found.

Amazing Dave.

Everybody seemed to have an explanation immediately for what actually happened.

And yet we did see the National Transportation Safety Board saying, no, there are no quick answers.

It's going to take some time before we know.

It's important to remember, Nick, that industries like this are more self-regulated than you know.

It isn't as if the FAA goes out and inspects a plane every time it goes into the air.

So that will all be, painstakingly reassembled whenever there's a fatality involving an aircraft.

The NTSB is involved, and we should know within the next eight to 10 to 12 months precisely what this tragedy came from.

Well, time is flying by.

Did you know the first ballots of the August primary election was sent out this week?

Those were to military and overseas voters.

And after all that legal drama and political division over redrawn maps and Missouri election boards across the state have chosen to use the new Republican congressional map for this election.

A map that slices and dices Emanuel Cleaver is district, making him decidedly one of the most vulnerable incumbent congressmen in the country.

But I thought, Brian, some of these election board leaders were refusing to use the map, saying it's illegal and it's thinking they're still challenged in the courts.

There was hesitation in a few counties around the state and ultimately the Boone County, in Columbia, Missouri, official, the clerk was was particularly ready to challenge the secretary of state on this point.

But at the end of the day, she said that, hey, Kansas City, Saint Louis, they're using the new maps.

If we were to not use the new maps, that would create more chaos.

And, well, she was certainly not easing up on her criticism of Secretary of State Danny Hoskins.

She said, we're not going to cause more chaos.

Emanuel Cleaver has persistently said that he is not going to campaign in those other areas, which really takes him almost to the Columbia and, Jefferson city limits in that new district.

Has he changed his tune now?

Well, he doesn't have a primary opponent, so right now he really doesn't have to.

But as it gets closer to the election, either, he'll have people that will support him to go out and campaign in those areas that he can't get to, or.

But he will have a presence.

Is this the end of the story?

No.

There is still a real possibility that the old map will click back into place for November, because of the petition drive, which now sits on the desk of the Secretary of State.

If those are valid, there is a sense from the Missouri Supreme Court that the old map then would go back into place for the general election, which is an extraordinary thing, an extraordinary development, and may justify whatever, Representative Cleaver has done politically in terms of this election.

Well, in other news, this week, Jackson County lawmakers announced they would vote this week on a six month moratorium on new data center development.

Just not put us in a position where it's it's just this war, of economic progress versus, you know, residents seeing their quality of life deteriorate.

We just want to start talking about what does responsible development look like.

And this is an IT start holding people accountable if they want your vote.

So with all the attention on the World Cup, did that actually pass well so it advance right.

They say advanced it in you know legislative lingo.

They they amended it from 120 day ban to 180 day ban, which, you know, adds two months to it.

It's still waiting to be passed like they perfected it.

And we'll see what happens.

Why did this delay, though, Eric, when we're told on this program and in other places, now that this is a one of these bipartisan issues that everybody seems to hate data centers and yet Jackson County can't move forward with not a ban, but a moratorium because there's an August primary, and then there's a November general election.

And people that support is usually get voted out of office.

And we've seen that in independence.

So I think that might be and you got people on the legislature that are running for office and you speak about independence.

There was a, recall election.

They've been collecting signatures to try and remove a city council member there who had a pivotal vote in favor of a major, a data center there.

And there's gonna be a special election, a recall election now against him in September.

That is true.

And there is a lot of opposition to data centers.

But I also want to make sure that we aren't too far into our bubble to see that it is not universal.

I actually spoke this week with Governor Kehoe in Missouri, who spoke very favorably about the possibilities that I and the data centers that support it create across the state.

We we have seen some municipalities on the Kansas side, not, adopt data center moratoriums, where, some in their communities were calling on them to do so.

And so we may see that pendulum swinging back a little bit, and we'll see how it turns out.

And, governor, okay, I don't have to pay the utility bills, but just what people are complaining about.

But keep in mind that a 180 day delay is largely performative.

It doesn't mean that you can't go ahead and plan a data center in Jackson County if you want to.

It just means the permits would not be allowed, which is more amazing to me if it's so performative, it doesn't have much detail why it was so difficult for them to get the votes to do.

And I think Brian may be right that there are elections involved and other political considerations.

I did notice also this week, Dave, that the big Panasonic plant that got so much attention in Kansas to make electric vehicle batteries, now that that market has softened, is now transitioning a lot of its production to stop building batteries for data centers.

Softened is a good word to use, Nick.

It's like saying the traffic problems at Arrowhead were a hiccup.

I mean, it has definitely softened electric vehicles, and the employment market at the plant has not reached expectations.

They some at one point expected 4000 or so employees.

They have less than half of that.

I think it could be an issue in the Kansas governor's race.

You know, Ty Masterson was way out front and providing tax breaks for data centers.

I think the Democrats are more queasy about it.

Some Republicans as well.

That could be a sneaky issue in November.

Well, bus fares were set to return this week as Kansas City brings to an end a six year experiment in making bus ridership free.

Man, this kind of messed up.

The transit service reinstated bus fares a few weeks ago, but then hit the pause button after mass confusion and technical snafu.

Did they return this week, Savannah as planned, or is this still a problem when we still on pause?

Well, it's sort of both.

The chaos grace period they had did end this week, and so everyone now is expected to pay fares.

However, United Way is handing out those free bus passes in phases.

And so not everyone who you know expected a free pass has had one.

Also, you know, I was taking the 39 bus the other day and I tapped on to pay, go in to my destination.

I came back in the bus, I took back.

I didn't even have, you know, the the toll that you can't pay cash because there's now no cash can be allowed.

And that's a pretty international, expectation.

And so when they, you know, a lot of things changed and how busses operate in the six years that Kansas City, you know, not everybody necessarily had to bring them.

But the smartphone and the equipment doesn't work on all the busses.

And, I was talking to someone this morning about it and they said, and there is poor customer service because they're holding the passengers responsible for the bus equipment not working and throwing people off the bus because they don't pay to pay the fare.

And at this, I don't think it's going to smooth out anytime real soon.

No.

And and this is what the first phase of implementation for, for bus fares.

And at this point, people who don't have a credit card or a smartphone, they need to go to the East Village Transit Center or the CCT headquarters to buy a physical pass or go through a nonprofit who has those free passes.

It's not until the fall when they're expecting to have more of those day cards available at grocery stores and banks, and so there's going to be a lot of readjustment for people and a lot of discretion up to the bus drivers on how this sort of plays out over the next few months.

And we were bringing back the bus fares, Brian, at the very same time that now the World Cup is here, we're actually offering free busses from the airport to Fan Fest downtown, the airport to the Overland Park Convention Center and back again.

So people that can get this for free.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect that that can be a permanent service without some sort of additional subsidy.

A lot of money came in for the World Cup to provide for those kinds of services.

If you know of a source of revenue for, the city or the state of Missouri to provide that kind of service, I think that would be very hard because they are talking about making it permanent.

There's already talk, by the way, of building light rail to the Chief Stadium.

Yeah, yeah, that's about 6 or $7 billion.

Who's going to pay that?

So until everyone sits down in a room and says this is what the infrastructure should look like and reaches an agreement, we're going to have more and more stories like this.

So that's we want to be seen as, you know, a world class city.

You can't do that if you can't bus people from point A to point B, you can't get light rail until you can run a bus service.

Now, speaking of permanent, many people attending Fan Fest are asking about the 62ft half that you go through as you enter the FIFA event.

The mayor says he'd like to keep the big metal heart here permanently, if not in its current location, but in another prominent point in the city is that going to be our new Gateway Arch, Brian?

It seems unlikely the, the designers of that sculpture populous, the sports architecture firm, say that they didn't really engineer it to be a permanent installation.

The two flimsy to see it get through a Kansas City winter or two.

It may not be quite as welcoming 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?

Get ready for a royal visit.

The King and Queen of the Netherlands in Kansas City this weekend for our second World Cup game.

They're supporting Curacao, a Dutch island that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The head of the symphony puts a price and a date on plans for the new 4000 seat concert venue.

They're planning to build off the country club Plaza is $70 million.

Venue will open in September 2028.

Kansas City marks Juneteenth, and it's nice to see not all events have gone into hibernation for the World Cup.

The Heart of America's Shakespeare Festival also returns for a more than two week run of free plays at Southmoreland Park, and the England team swap the football for baseball.

This week, the Three Lions head to the cage to watch the Royals take on the Cardinals.

Eric Wesson, did you think one of those stories or something completely different?

I picked something different.

The new jail that was supposed to be done for the World Cup, $25 million.

It was supposed to get people that were over stimulated and might get arrested and put them in jail as a holding area.

None of that's done.

So the question is, people that are out overstimulated, where are they putting those people?

Well, I think we just heard from the police chief this week to say we're going to still take them to rural detention facilities, rural jails in Outstate, Missouri, to do that, because we don't have that temporary facility.

So somebody from Argentina or Uruguay is going to be going Warrensburg.

Yeah, I mean, they just couldn't get the staff.

Bryan Missouri State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick issued a report that painted a pretty bleak picture of what's going to happen with Missouri's reserves as it continues to pass deficit budgets.

I spoke with Scott Fitzpatrick as well as Governor Kehoe this week about that.

They're delivering a very consistent and maybe even coordinated message that says the state has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

That's the line they both used and said that's going to result in a lot of line item vetoes.

And withholdings from the governor.

That has to happen by the end of this month.

So, if we're if folks are concerned about the low level at which certain programs like education or social services are funded in Missouri, they're going to have to keep an eye out because it might get cut even further.

At the with the governor's pen.

Savannah, Jackson County voters might have another thing on their very long ballot in November.

The county is considering a transit tax, to help fund the KTA and other transportation.

We've given a lot of airtime to the issues, with transportation on the show.

And I think if this tax were to pass, this would solve or help solve what experts are calling the death spiral with the case, go together.

For a couple of weeks, Kansas City television viewers have watched a television commercial run by an animal rights group, hammering Roger Marshall for his support of a of a bill called Save Our Bacon, which is, in essence, a bill that would give Washington the ability to override animal welfare laws.

And last week, Roger Marshall decided to abandon Save Our Bacon.

And lo and behold, new ads have popped up from the same group saying, call Roger Marshall and thank him for his Flip-Flop on this issue so that that may be something we'll want to pay attention to this November approach that we will say a week has been reviewed courtesy of KCUR's Savannah Hawley Bates and Eric Wesson from Next Page, KC and KCUR's chief political analyst, Brian Ellison and news icon and mister Kansas City Stack on Substack.

Dave Helling and I'm Nick Haines from all of us here at Kansas City PBS.

Be Well, keep Calm and carry on.