We won tonight.

Voters decide scores of local elections across our area.

We look at election days biggest surprises and unexpected outcomes.

Also this week, the all day that thin skinned city hall launches an audit into biased coverage of the Kansas City Star.

Jackson County pushes a new ban on data centers, and Missouri lawmakers stripped funding from the Truman Sports Complex.

We look at what happens now and people are starting to notice.

Why is Kansas City still looking so trashy?

Just ahead of the World Cup?

It's a mess.

I mean, there's trash all over.

Weekend review is made possible through the generous support of Bob and Marlese Gourley, the Courtney S Turner Charitable Trust, John H. Mize, and Bank of America Na 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 and glad to have you with us again on our journey through the week's most impactful, confusing and downright head scratching local news stories.

Hopping on board the Week in Review bus with us this week.

From the prime time anchor desk at KMBC nine news, Kris Ketz former star reporter Dave Helling KC was local government reporter Savannah Bates and at the helm of our metro's newest newspaper, Next Page KC Eric Wesson.

Now, so was all the stress and worry misplaced?

Tuesday was local election day in Kansas City, voters overwhelmingly pass the biggest issue on the ballot, renewing the earnings tax that everyone in the metro pays.

If you happen to work in Kansas City.

So.

So let me make this clear for all of y'all.

We won tonight.

Congratulations everybody who won tonight.

Already Eric, what happened to all that public backlash we were told to expect because people were so upset about property taxes and what was happening with the stadiums and what was happening at City Hall.

Oh, y'all.

Oh, well, I mean, they scared everybody if you don't do it.

And, the emergency service people are going to let your house burn up, are you going to be dying?

And the trash is going to build up.

So it passed.

But, you know, I just hope that they have more accountability with what they do with the money.

And it still passed with about the same margins it has in previous election cycles for all of the drama that's gone.

Yeah.

This is the fourth time that's passed by such a wide margin.

I mean, it's a smaller margin than I, and an election has passed, but it's still over 75%.

And this is what, you know, the mayor and a couple of many other elected officials, you know, said after the win was like, we've proven time and time again since the state required Kansas City to vote on it every five years in 2010, that people will support it.

So stop making us spend money on it and vote on it.

You were also one of those, Dave, who said, you know, we should be paying attention to this backlash and, how people were feeling about taxes and that would affect the vote.

Yeah.

I mean, I do think people are angry about property taxes in Kansas City and Jackson County.

There's no question about that.

But the earnings tax is a fascinating device to raise money in this community.

It is simple.

Everyone understands it's 1%.

You don't really even file a return.

It's broad based, Nick, because it includes people from other communities who work in Kansas City, particularly Johnson County.

And it raises a ton of money.

And so if you are going to replace it, if you're going to get rid of the earnings tax and do something else, you need to find something that's simpler, more broadly based and raises just about 375 million a year.

And no one in those four elections has ever suggested a better way to raise money than the earnings tax.

So it should not be a surprise that voters go back repeatedly and say, no, this we don't like taxes, but this works for us and let's renew it.

It's never gotten less than 70%.

And for renewals that have happened, and I think Dave is absolutely spot on.

I think the broad base part of this, aka Johnson County, is who work in Kansas City, Missouri, to have that part of our, metropolitan area paying for something significant.

I think there's tremendous appeal, on having this election this week, though, it was also an incredibly important milestone because it meant what happens next.

And we are hearing rumblings as we record the show that there could be an announcement now, because now that that has passed, that the Royals will make their big stadium announcement next week.

In fact, City Hall already working on a financing deal that would move the Royals to Washington Square Park.

Washington Square Park.

I don't know that the Royals, as we sit here and record this program, I don't know that they have a date yet when they're going to announce, but I think it's coming very soon.

Washington Square Park all signs point to, as we saw Thursday afternoon, at the city council meeting, the mayor with, presenting an ordinance essentially, outlining some of what the city's commitment to this project is going to be.

It's a $1.9 billion stadium with, development around it.

600 million in bonds is what the city is looking to propose, to be paid off through sales taxes in that general area.

This isn't going to be kind of a county wide thing, as we saw with the Chiefs on the Kansas side.

But isn't this deal also does not involve a public vote, Savannah?

No.

And this is what, you know, after the failed sales tax renewal vote.

You know, the mayor said that some sort of financing plan would not necessarily go to a public vote.

That was his goal all along.

This would get public input through the committee, the finance committee, that would be next week, although introducing it on the floor, you know, on Thursday makes it so that there's very little time for anyone to come together and actually make plans to be able to be at City Hall at 1030 on Tuesday.

It's very hard to get public input.

Forget the fact that by, making this announcement after the earnings tax vote, that those who might want to gather petitions to put this plan on the ballot will not have the election day in which they can stand outside polling places and gather signatures, which makes it, particularly in Kansas City, much easier.

So there was some strategic involved in this decision to, to unveil these details.

Now, just but Washington Square Park is part of the Parks board's jurisdiction.

Wouldn't it require a public vote to give up that park to transfer it to a stadium?

Yes it would.

They would still have to get to public.

And they always vote yes.

But most people don't even know where those park properties are.

But it's interesting that they could have fined $600 million to do this.

And just months ago, we were having a $100 million deficit in the city budget.

And then we had $10 million went to police department.

It's amazing how they could come up with bond money for that.

And I think that's part of the, you know, the public will be able to vote on the transfer of the park land.

This I think, you know, if the public is mad enough about it could become a sort of referendum on the location and the financing package itself that they won't be able to vote on the financing package, much like we saw with the sales tax renewal vote, just quickly, that there is a way around the vote to give up parkland, and that is to give the stadium to the Parks Department and continue to call it Kansas City Parkland.

And therefore it would just be a transfer and you wouldn't be giving up land.

So that might be a part of the deal.

Now we just don't know.

The only thing that I would add, the public financing part of this is still, as we sit here and record this program, a bit of a moving target, the state of Missouri will be significant contributors to this, what that final number will be.

We still don't know yet, but the people that I talked to at City Hall seem awfully confident that they can do this with the city and the state, and that's it.

Okay.

We're going to know a lot more about this when we record the show next week.

So join us for that.

By the way, about it again.

Really.

Well all right I'm sorry about that.

But you know, there were a lot of other things happening on election night.

Who was the biggest winner on election night?

Could it be this guy?

Communication has to be better than what it has been in the last four years.

And I want to make sure that we have better communication in independence.

A former roofer and union leader with no previous elected experience wins the keys to the mayor's office against a pretty well known and connected opponent.

How did Kevin King pull that off?

I mean, voters were mad about this data center tax abatement deal that the city gave more than $6 billion in tax breaks to nebulous, which said, I wanted to build sort of an AI factory on the eastern edge of the city.

Voters tried to stop the deal from going through, they tried to get city council members to vote no against it.

They tried to put it on the ballot, which they were eventually, you know, turned down from doing by a Jackson County judge.

So this is sort of their only recourse to weigh in on this data center was to get the people who voted for it, like Bridget McCandless and Jared Fierce, a city council member who was running for reelection, out of office.

I think that's especially clear when you see that McCandless was winning against King in the primary by seven, more than twice the vote.

Yeah, and that flipped after the city, which is really sad, I know, but is still puzzling.

I mean, Bridget McCandless was been on the show actually several times.

I mean, she was the head of the Health Forward Foundation, very prominent doctor helped found a free health clinic in independence.

This was somebody with a lot of experience.

And on the city council.

Yes.

And that those data centers are such hot button items in Festus, Missouri.

They've voted their entire city council out because they did that.

And I bit of a throw the bums out feel the independence municipal election.

But that data center I think really tipped the balance, in this particular race.

And I think the only reason they didn't vote the entire city council out like they did in Festus and sorry, was because only two of them were on the ballot this time.

And I think having this data center vote in in March, so close to the April election, really ruined any track record that McCandless and fear's had it ruined any other votes that they had put in, because people were only thinking about how angry they were about the data center and how betrayed they felt through the lack of transparency through the city.

Okay, we're going to return to the data center issue in a little bit later in the program.

But voters picked a lot of new mayors around the metro on Election day, including at least summit, where, Vito Lopez, the head of Guadalupe Center, became the first city's, first Hispanic mayor.

What were the other noteworthy results from local election day 2026 here in the Metro?

That surprised you talked about last week?

It wasn't a surprise, but we talked last week about the school bond issues that were on the ballot across.

They seem to age in place.

It seems as if the, vote of confidence, if you will, in how schools were run continues throughout the metropolitan area.

I think that's a significant development.

And in particular, the results in the Hickman Mills School District, which is a struggling district right now trying to regain full state accreditation.

The budget problems there have been well documented, and voters turned out some pretty big numbers.

And I thought that was a a significant vote of confidence for the people in charge right now.

Yeah, I said Hickman Mills also because they did they were getting money to kind of get back on track.

I think they have a good superintendent now.

That has a good direction and he's got a good board.

And so I think they can move things along, you know.

Are they that thin skinned?

City hall launches an audit into bias coverage at the Kansas City Star.

Now, apparently they've been unhappy by how the city's been written about in our newspaper record.

Matt Lucas denies ordering the audit, even though his name appears on a trove of emails this week.

Is this much of a buttoned up?

Is this much I'm putting my teeth back in?

Is this much ado about nothing?

Or a worrying sign of how City Hall is now viewing criticism of its works about it?

I mean, I think, you know, City Hall has tried to weigh in on the work of journalists for a long time here.

I think this bias audit, though, is interesting because it's the first, you know, clear time that there's been an official sort of investigation into, how journalists are doing their job and covering the city.

And I think, you know, it framed itself as anything that was not immediately affectionate or praising of the city was was biased against it.

When when our job is to hold the city accountable.

Yeah.

And Dave, you no longer work for the star so you can speak freely.

What was what was your response to that?

Yeah.

Well, first of all, I spoke freely when I worked for the star.

Just so we're clear on that concept there, there's a bit of a smile when you see a story like that, because that's exactly where the newspaper should be.

It should be, an institution that challenges people like the mayor and the city council and the city manager and the mayor and the people who put this together at whatever level, should be deeply ashamed that, they involved themselves in two things.

I thought the reaction on the part of the mayor was, at best, clumsy because the star's reporting they have the receipts.

Yeah, that's number one.

And number two, newsrooms are not.

And maybe I'm just too old school about this.

I don't know 43 well, 47 years doing this okay.

Newsrooms are not in the business of being we're not in it for a popularity contest.

We're here to cover the damn news.

And I'm still I'm continually astonished at the number of public officials who still don't get it.

And your first question was, are they thin skinned?

Yes.

Mayor Lucas is thin skinned.

He might come across like, oh, I want to answer all your questions and do all of this when he's on a camera.

But behind the scenes, it's like, hey, I don't want to answer that question.

And Brian Platt was just as bad as the city manager.

Next week, Matt Lucas will be here for the entire half hour to explain how that completely I he knows nothing about it.

But, yeah, he he picks and chooses what he knows about once you get the results of this survey.

So what would you what what what are you going to do and what are you going to do?

Nobody.

Oh, I think the story said that the plan was to write a letter to the editors of the star have been citing a couple of examples.

It doesn't go well, but it wouldn't have done any good anyway.

Again, the the first thing the editor would have done is walk into the newsroom, go, hey, look what we just got from the mayor.

You know, so and it's not you know what we say.

That's good that he's reading the paper.

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, there's a lot still to come on this program.

They passed a moratorium against Ice detention centers.

Now, Jackson County leaders have a new target data centers.

The new crackdown comes in the same week as several states in the hit the pause button on the facilities.

And the public pushback is now leading to violence.

13 bullets were fired at the home of an Indianapolis city councilman this week after he cast the decisive vote to approve a data center in his district.

But our Jackson County leaders are a bit late to the party, with dozens of small and large sized data centers already operating in Kansas City.

I think this is much like when Kansas City changed its zoning to sort of make it harder for data centers to get built in the city.

It doesn't, of course, affect any of the data centers that are already built.

Or how about the one in independence?

It won't affect that has no impact whatsoever.

And if this moratorium gets passed, well, the one in independence was a private sale of land.

And independence and zoning still allows for data centers and industrial sites.

This is why Kansas City changed its industrial definition.

The Jackson County change of zoning.

Even if it's approved, it would only be on on county specific land where there isn't a city zoning regulation impacting it.

It's and even the, you know, the legislator that put it forward, John Smith, is saying that this is more to start a conversation with the cities in the county to, you know, maybe change their own, rules about it.

Now, Missouri lawmakers are still bitter that the Chiefs are moving to Kansas.

How else would you explain a move by the Missouri House to strip $2 million in funding from the Truman Sports Complex?

But given everything we've already talked about on this program, the Chiefs have gone to Kansas.

We have the Royals now potentially going to Washington Square Park.

What difference does this make?

My guess is, the legislature will put the money back in if they don't, the county would default on the leases, potentially, and that would be a problem.

But it does suggest that if this other, package for the baseball stadium is now making its way through the legislature, if 2 million is too much to swallow, 350 million seems, a difficult ask as well.

Just as the Kansas City Council was getting ready to vote this week on a contentious new ban on the sale of many liquor bottles, Missouri lawmakers move to block the measure from becoming law.

The Missouri House speaker is spearheading the effort to ban cities from regulating alcohol sales, specifically as it relates to the size of the container.

The state of Missouri already prohibits local cities from enforcing their own gun laws to restricting disposable plastic bags.

So why does Jefferson City care that Kansas City wants to try and tackle what they argue is a crime and public disorder issue, Eric, because it doesn't really address the problem.

It's really kind of discriminatory because it's not a city wide band in every part of the city is, and it's kind of red lining.

But how do you I think I believe that the state has a lot of control when it comes to regulating liquor and those kind of things, gaming machines.

And so all of those convenience store owners we saw protesting last week must be breaking open the champagne or the small liquor bottles in their stores this week, because they were claiming a thousand jobs are going to be lost.

They're going to be closing.

Many of these stores.

You know, I think probably so I mean, that whether or not the city council votes on this ban, if the state chooses to override it, which they are want to do, they love to preempt most of the things that come out of City Hall.

It won't be able to take effect.

And so it would be pretty much null.

Let's be clear, the obsession in the state legislature of telling cities what they can and cannot do is legendary.

It's, frustrating and grotesque that state legislators who can't get their own acts together spend all of their time telling mayors and councils what they can and cannot.

There are too many liquor stores in the urban core, that is.

That is a fact.

But I don't know if the small bottles are going to change that.

You got to do a moratorium on liquor stores now.

It may have gotten lost in the headlines, but this week was the final community summit to decide the future of 71 highway.

More commonly called Bruce Watkins Drive, which brings thousands of metro area commuters into Kansas City every day.

It's named after the late city councilman who led protests against the road project, calling it Kansas City's Berlin Wall.

It's been a sore point for years, with civil rights leaders claiming it created a new barrier between white and black Kansas City.

Now, city leaders say that five mile section, which includes stoplights, is now the most deadly stretch of road in Kansas City for pedestrians and cyclists.

So a fix is finally on the way.

One option is to make the whole thing a freeway with no lights and hold the front page.

Savannah a new plan to take the highway underground.

How would that work?

So this is a combination of two plans that the city put forth, through these community engagement sessions, making it entirely a freeway was obviously not popular with the neighborhood where.

But I'm sure popular with drivers, well, popular with drivers.

But it's been a popular driver since the 71 destroyed hundreds of black homes in Kansas City's East Side.

And so this effort, was supposed to reconnect those neighborhoods.

So a freeway was not necessarily the only good viable option.

Combining them would put the freeway underground.

Still popular with drivers who want to get out of the city fast and go to suburbs like Lee's Summit.

But then put a parkway up top, much like Ward Parkway, where people can cross would be safer for for walkers, bicyclists.

And it could also, you know, sort of reconnect the, these neighborhood grids that were destroyed by this highway and it would stop that people running into the back of you on 55th Street, that intersection, which probably has more accidents than any other intersection in this in Kansas City, I just don't know what put in $5 million to study.

This is going to come when people have already said, for decades what the solution to the problem is.

And I guess they needed to make it more sophisticated.

And I think coming up with that, and I think the solutions that people are talking about right now are probably so cost prohibitive that you kind of wonder where this is going to go.

I think this is a significant story to watch.

What do you think about, you know, just putting the highway, finding the answers is not going to be cheap.

Yes.

All right.

Just just quickly.

The reason the lights are there is because of objections from the neighborhood 40 years ago.

Yes.

The reason the bridges look like they do over that highway is because of the objections.

And Emanuel Cleaver, who was the councilman at the time, went out and got extra money to improve the beautification of 71 highway.

It was fought bitterly at the time, but there were compromises reached that allowed it to be built.

And now, of course, there are second thoughts about having it built at all.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas finally acknowledged this week that he's out of miracles to save the midtown Costco store.

He says the warehouse chain will stay in the location, but this fall will convert into a Costco business center.

That means the Linwood and Main Street location will no longer include a pharmacy, a care center, food court, alcohol or food samples, books, furniture, plants, toys.

We may be seeing a real change to the Costco in Midtown, which disappoints not just me, but I know probably hundreds of thousands of Kansas City and people in northeast Johnson County.

Casey Kay, and other places so Kansas City can host a World Cup but isn't big enough to host a full service Costco store.

Can't.

Come on, Chris.

Well, I'm not so sure if this is the end of the world, but no, to a lot of people, this is more important than the World Cup.

For many people it may be.

And even people in southern Johnson County will even drive all the way to Lynnwood and Gillum to take advantage of everything that Costco store had.

The city hasn't thrown in the towel, but it's pretty close.

I was always surprised, though.

I was thinking behind the scenes, I was I was surprised by his announcement because I was expecting it to be throwing lots of tax incentives and new money at Costco to keep all of those offerings well.

And the Costco area, it was under a tax increment financing plan when it was built.

Of course, that was if they could do it again.

Yeah.

But I think the city has exhausted most of its levers to, you know, go up against this international conglomerate that wants to change us, that clearly, clearly, no more samples.

Yeah.

Now, that part I heard that was that that was that.

That's the part that's what the straw that broke the camel's back.

So Eric Wesson now we've heard from a number of our viewers who, by the way, as we leave the program this week that you can't believe how trashy the city looks, just as we're about to welcome the largest global audience in our city's history, it's a mess.

I mean, there's trash all over now.

Apparently, that's been taken to heart by city leaders as they launch a countdown to the World Cup cleanup starting this week.

Plus, we're told the city and the state are going to wrap up road construction projects before our first international guests arrive.

So we're going to do our best to hide all the orange cones and metal plates on our roads in the next few weeks.

Is that possible?

Eric?

I know especially especially on I-70 going east or west, I don't know what they're going to do with that, because at some point it's two lanes.

Then it goes into three lanes and it goes into five lanes.

I don't know how they're going to get past that, but I do know that there are a lot of trash in the area, and I think they're going to really make an effort to get that trash picked up.

But the homeless people, that's another issue that they got because homeless camps, I think they said they got like 60 or 80 people off the street in a few days this week.

But I see those tents popping up everywhere.

Now, 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?

The bells ring out for the first time in decades on the Country Club Plaza, as The New York Times devotes significant attention to the struggling shopping district and the $1.5 billion plan by its new owners to rescue the struggling attraction is the next U.S.

attorney general.

A senator from Missouri, Eric Schmidt, still on the president's shortlist after the firing of Pam Bondi.

Is the drama over affordable housing now shifting from Prairie Village to Overland Park, the city votes to drop some of its zoning rules this week to boost the building of lower priced homes.

Cue the pushback from angry residents.

This is against what the constituency wants, and not a good example of how we maintain the safety, security and intent and character of this neighborhood.

And the first parade of heart sculptures hit Kansas City streets.

The new Hawk design leans heavily on World Cup themes, as Kansas City prepares to host the largest event in its history.

All righty, Chris Katz, did you pick one of those stories or something completely different?

I love the Parade of Heart story just because it's one that you're hosting that is so wonderful.

I think it's a fantastic effort.

It's one of those things that, you know, at a time when we're divided so politically, culturally, geographically, this is one of those things that brings everybody together.

And I think it'll be an unexpected surprise for many visitors who come here to see all of those around the city.

Eric, I took something different, but it affects Kansas City.

The Department of Homeland Security said that everybody that comes in has to pay a $15,000 bond to come in to get their visa, and they're doing this the World Cup teams, the people that follow those teams like Algeria, which will be coming here, but they have to pay the $15,000 bond to come in.

So now will that affect the amount of people that they're projecting to come in?

Does that take it from 600,000 visitors to 300 or maybe even 200,000?

The city of Kansas City has approved, I think seven, pre-approved housing models that people can build without going through, you know, all of that long drawn out permitting and an architect process.

So that should make it easier to build housing in the city.

This is an oldie but a goodie.

I reported this about a month ago, but Kansas City says it's going to do its best to collect earnings taxes from players at the World Cup here in June.

Now, after the earnings tax collection people stadium, we'll see.

Now the actual doing of it is going to be difficult since many of them are paid in other currencies in other places, but they say they're going to do their best.

Well, I still use British pound, so I think they can do it.

All right.

And on that we will say all week has been reviewed courtesy of Casey Savannah, Hawley Bates and Channel nine and Commander khris Ketz from next page, KC, Eric Wesson and news icon Dave Helling.

Now Mr.

Kansas City stack on Substack.

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

Be well, keep calm and carry on.