Mar

31

Independence still struggling with transit funding

March 31, 2008 | 6 Comments

The City of Independence is stuck in a perpetual crisis of bus funding. Unlike KCMO with its transit sales tax, Independence has no dedicated source of money to pay for its bus system.  Instead, it is continually struggling to budget money out of the general fund. Last year Independence chose to cut service instead of [...]

Mar

31

Star tries again for A&E weekly

March 31, 2008 | 3 Comments

This week the Star is launching another attempt to compete with the Pitch in the weekly arts/entertainment/20-30-something category. “ink” is debuting on Wednesday at shiny green news boxes all over the city and online at inkkc.com.
You may remember they tried this a few years with a stand-alone Preview weekly, but ultimately had to scale it [...]

Mar

28

Chubby’s closed temporarily

March 28, 2008 | 8 Comments

Don’t freak out if you see the closed sign on Chubby’s diner on Broadway in Midtown.  Joyce Smith reports that it is only temporary. It seems that the LaBruzzo brought in an outside operator last year, and now they are in the process of bringing the diner back in the family as the LaBruzzo grandsons [...]

Mar

27

Star campaigning against earnings tax?

March 27, 2008 | 4 Comments

The earnings tax has been in the news quite a bit lately. Tony claims the city is quietly working on a plan to raise the tax in order to deal with the budget shortfall.  There might just be some truth to this, since the Star seems to be slamming the earnings tax from multiple directions. [...]

Mar

27

Local housing market improves a bit

March 27, 2008 | 1 Comment

February showed a small but encouraging sign in the local housing market.  Building permits have been declining for months, but in February they actually went back up a little bit. KCMO was by far the leader in new construction. Even during the recession the Downtown and Northland markets continue to outperform than the suburbs.  Olathe [...]

Mar

26

Bistate III – Back to basics

March 26, 2008 | 3 Comments

The Star’s Kevin Collison has a column on the issue of regional funding for regional cultural assets like the Zoo, Liberty Memorial, and performing arts center. In it, he raises the idea of trying again for bistate tax.  The original idea of bistate was to fund arts and cultural facilities and programs, but it was [...]

Mar

26

Street repaving could be slashed

March 26, 2008 | 2 Comments

Mayor Funkhouser’s pledge to spent $35 million on fixing city streets seems to have been dealt a death blow by the city’s budget crisis.  News surfaces this morning that the 2008-2009 street repaving budget could be slashed to almost zero. Another problem is that Mayor Barnes and the last City Council promised $5 million to [...]

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