Our plans for Johnson County's first permanent homeless shelter, now dead.

I don't think that it's going to be good for the neighborhood.

There are homeless people living in Johnson County.

Do you want them on a street corner or flying a sign, or do you want them in a world class facility?

John Sherman back in the spotlight for the first time since voters rejected his dream of a new downtown ballpark.

Are we really ready for the World Cup?

New questions now being asked about how Kansas City plans to move hordes of foreign visitors around the city for the tournament.

Plus, Kansas City's sideshow problem.

What happens when you call 911 and get ready.

They're coming back.

Kansas City, green lighting red light cameras.

Week in review is made possible through the generous support of Dave and Jamie Cummings.

Bob and Marlese Gourley.

The Courtney as Turner Charitable Trust, John H. Mize and Bank of America.

N.A.

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.

Glad to have you with us on our weekly journey through the most impactful, confusing and often downright head scratching news stories of our week hopping on board the Wicked Review bus this week from our metro's newest newspaper.

Next page, KC Eric Wesson tracking the region's top political stories for KCUR News.

Brian Ellison from the anchor desk at KMBC9 News.

Chris Ketz And for My money, one of the best news writers in town, the Kansas City Star's Mike Hendricks, who usually avoids TV like the plague.

Take a listen to me, Michael.

Wow, that's big.

All righty.

Have you heard the expression Kansas City?

Nice.

It's where people hear a generally polite with one another.

We don't verbally attack each other in meetings and public spaces.

We usually do that behind the scenes.

Well, the gloves came off this week as the vice president of shuttle melt and the owner of Betty Ray's ice cream gives Mayor Quinton Lucas a tongue lashing over his lack of leadership on crime.

Shatto Milk is one of those feel good companies.

They're the ones who make read Milk to cheer on the Chiefs.

But company CO Matt Chateau sent out an open letter to Kansas City this week attacking the mayor after one of his stores became the latest casualty in a string of business break ins.

I have businesses all around the metro.

Seattle writes Your city is the only one that on a daily basis we wonder if our staff is going to be safe and our assets protected, he continues.

You were elected due to your perceived leadership ability.

I'm asking what you're doing to lead on this issue.

You walk around with two security guards at a time, but we can't even get a police presence in the river market if we're ever going to be responsible for providing our own safety, then simply give us a rebate on those taxes and stop pretending like we're getting something for those dollars.

Now, outside of Clay Chastain, who ran against Lucas twice, I don't think I've ever seen such a public attack on the sitting mayor.

Is this am I right or is there more to it than that?

Well, I've written some pretty fiery editorials myself, but yeah, and I think it was well deserved.

And and he brings up some great points.

One of the things and I think that people need to kind of look at is, is it the mayor's responsibility to step out on crime or is it the chief of police?

Is my position has always been these are chief of police problems.

I want the mayor to tell me about city services and all the things.

Do you think then do you think Mr. Chateau is wrong then to single out the mayor for criticism?

The mayor stepped in that position to take those hits.

He should take them.

I'm curious, Michael.

Mike, what is the mayor's response to all of this?

Well, I haven't talked to the mayor, but I would think his response would be he has no control over the police department, city hall.

This does not and this is a classic example of why it's a problem for Kansas Police Department to be under the control of the governor rather than the mayor.

Is that line wearing thin, though, with the public and with business leaders?

Now?

Listen, I think that that letter that he wrote speaks for an awful lot of people.

And that number continues to grow as these cases continue to increase.

It doesn't seem as if police have gotten a handle on this yet and that that frustration is only going to get worse.

I like to think this program is about putting things into proportion or taking things into two extremes.

This is one business owner who is speaking out in a very public way, which I do find unusual.

But what should we look at here?

I mean, is there something important that has symbolic importance as we move forward, Brian?

Well, to be clear, he isn't the only business owner who has spoken out, but I think his prominence and probably his association with I mean, Chateau Milk is sort of a a progressive sort of organization.

They sell their milk in glass bottles.

I mean, I think it's part of where it's coming from, the fact that a voice that might be expected to be supportive of the mayor or progressive leaders in Kansas City is taking this position might be significant.

I think something we need to acknowledge, though, is that the problem is growing.

It's it shouldn't surprise us that more voices are coming out to say these things, that more and more people are being very personally or financially affected by the problem.

Mike brought up a point about local control and the police department, but the mayor was the one that advocated and pushed to check the box to have Stacy Graves as the chief of police.

When you have press conferences and issues that are taking place, you don't see her.

You see him when things are going great.

He takes credit for that.

But in this particular case, things aren't going great.

He's got to take the heat.

But in fairness to the mayor, he has said he's starting a new business compensation program for those businesses that have been victimized by crime.

They're going to get some money and grant money for that.

Also opening up the Kansas City police headquarters building to allow for more opportunities to detain those who are causing these problems.

So you want to go with the first thing first about giving these businesses money for that for you had Chris Good's business on truce.

He's been broken into eight times.

You had Peachtree restaurants seven or eight times.

Both of their businesses have been broken into.

So the perception in the black community is when did it start happening?

And while Doe and Brooks are, oh, we got to get them some money.

But this has been a problem in the black community for years.

We're going to return to the issue of crime in just a little bit.

But first, here's another story that seems to expose the widening gulf between what our city leaders say and what they actually do.

Two years ago, Kansas City was picked to host the World Cup, and Matt Lucas claimed it would be the catalyst for long term progress on expanding public transportation in this city.

His city manager claimed the city was considering a 21 mile rail line from the new airport terminal to downtown.

Now, with the clock ticking, it looks like the best we've come up with is to move the hordes of visitors coming in for the tournament.

On least busses have a promise to coordinate with rental car, rideshare and taxi companies.

As the Star reports this week, all those more ambitious plans you heard about have been walked back.

In fact, the study still hasn't even hired a consultant to figure out how it could connect Casey to downtown by rail.

So this was all just spitballing and nothing was done.

Well, I don't know about football, and I think there was a lot of.

Yeah, well, maybe so.

I think I think there was a lot of enthusiasm expressed by the mayor and the city manager back in May.

And June of 2023 when the they sort of kicked off the organization for getting ready for the World Cup.

And they did discuss this rail study and they were going to have a consultant hired by the fall of 2023.

And here it is a year later, and they still haven't done done that.

And I've been unable to get any answers really out of city hall about this.

You know, enthusiasm is one thing.

But, Mike, you well know there was a healthy level of skepticism at the time about the thought of a rail line between downtown and KCI, given the enormous cost that is involved here and that cost continues to go up, it's it's many billions of dollars.

And I don't know that we're any closer to that now than we were when all of this talk was in your report, you said 3.4 billion to $6 billion, which was the Mid-America Regional Council account of what it would actually cost to do that.

Did they did the city get cold feet about that price tag?

Well, I the city council, the city put out a press release last fall saying they were teaming with the federal government to work on a lot of big projects into that and that they that press release, they talked about a $10 billion project.

Yes, it was totally ridiculous to think that they could ever get a rail line in in time for the World Cup to Casey.

Was it a mistake in hindsight that the city didn't actually put in place any fixed transit option when they built that KC terminal in the first place?

Well, I don't know if it was a mistake, but it certainly was a noticeable difference from what was anticipated.

And I think this is something that's been going on for a long time, decades.

In fact.

I agree that those numbers that Mike reported were eye popping.

But another number was also eye popping, which is the cost of doing sort of the same thing with busses, half a billion dollars for 180 million busses, which, by the way, could go to a lot of different places throughout the metro, not just to one sense station downtown.

It does sort of raise the question of why we're talking about rail at all.

If there is another option that would run on streets that already exist, but we were talking about to get rail and automated shuttles even, and possibly at one point to remember is a streetcar line extension to our head.

And I was just talking about leased busses and going to rideshare companies to help us move these people around there.

And that's probably the most cost effective, simple way to do it.

Basically, what do you do after the World Cup leaves when you have these rails?

And if you really stop and think, how long is Main Street been a mess just going from here to you and KC So the technology and being able to do that is something that's kind of a pie in the sky approach.

And we may be talking about as many as 200 busses, especially on those game days.

And something else to watch was revealed this past week by the interim cf0 VTA that the MTA right now is looking at a $35 million budget shortfall next year because cities like Blue Springs and Lee's Summit in Independence have gone in a different direction.

Something to watch in the future.

Speaking of walking back, big projects plans to open Johnson County's first permanent around homeless shelter and now in danger of being scrapped after the city of Lenexa voted down the project this week, Johnson County needed Lenexa to sign off on the plan since the 50 bed shelter would be housed at a converted La Quinta Hotel in the city.

My position is that I don't want it here because I don't live very far from it and I don't I don't think that it's going to be good for the neighborhood.

There are homeless people living in Johnson County and do you want them on a street corner or flying a sign or do you want them in a world class facility?

Already members of the city council argued the new shelter would detrimentally affect nearby properties and strain law enforcement resources.

The project also got caught up in the immigration debate, with some opponents claiming it will house migrants who have entered the country illegally.

So does this mark the end of the shelter?

Mike Well, it's hard, hard telling what happens.

I read a letter from the mayor of Lenexa who who said it was the wrong the right idea and the wrong place.

And it needs to be rethought and it needs to be a county wide effort.

And but they always say, whether it be an apartment complex, multi family homes, a homeless shelter, it's always a great project except in the wrong place is not the ultimate is everywhere in the wrong place is my town.

Okay.

Any of the other municipalities in Johnson County would have been fine.

And I think I think this is really the challenge that Johnson County is going to face.

This is a defeat for for commission chair Mike Kelly, for sure, who really put a lot of stock in this project.

But but it's hard to know what he could have done differently other than go to a different city and try with a more accepting group of city leaders.

The arguments that were made against Linux's location could be made anywhere if people will buy into those arguments.

Loitering.

It doesn't feel right for our neighborhood.

And of course, as you heard, some of the ones you didn't share veered even further into racist or sort of conspiracy theory concepts about migrants or who might be using this, which are not, by the way, backed up by the numbers about the homeless population in Johnson County.

Well, clearly, this was an issue that people felt very passionately about.

Not only do we see large crowds there, but this meeting went on 6 hours.

The result, the final vote came after 1:00 in the morning, Chris.

That's very unusual.

Yeah, this was going to be a heavy lift anyway.

And the fact that it didn't happen is probably not a great shock, especially to people in Johnson County.

But you're right, Johnson County is have got to sort of get their arms around what I think is an increasing problem when it comes to homelessness in places that years ago you never would have thought that would have been a big deal.

So what happens to the homeless now as a result of this?

I mean, where are they going to get really?

Kansas City, Missouri is the only place where there is a permanent shelter for the city or the street.

I mean, I think they are unhoused.

I mean, they are living on couches.

They are living in cars.

And I think as often as we talk about this as the issue of homelessness, I think it's worth remembering we're actually talking about people who right now don't have a place to sleep tonight.

In recent weeks, we've talked about shootings in Kansas City, car thefts and business break ins.

But one incessant problem that's still angering many residents are loud, disruptive and often dangerous.

Late night street racing and huge groups of vehicles commandeering public intersections for driving stunts that are known as sideshows.

I've got a number of people who say they're destroying their neighborhoods.

But this week, KCTV five had an interesting story about what happens when you actually call the police.

It's after midnight, a car spins around an east side intersection.

Smoke fills the air.

Tires screech.

It became a spectacle.

Taryn Kelly called 911 and sat and sat on hold.

She reports the Sideshow.

But police don't come and the crowd grows.

10 minutes later, she calls again.

You have reached Kansas City, Missouri, 911.

All commentators are currently busy.

It's second time as a little over 4 minutes.

KCTV five research this sideshow and the police response.

In total, seven police units with nine officers arrived.

But it took a bear from 19 minutes to an hour and 26 minutes for those units to show up.

No drivers were arrested.

We caught up with Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas.

You're shaking your head.

Here's the thing.

If this part of the system doesn't work, then everything else collapses.

What I find fascinating about the story is that it links every single concern people have about crime in one single place.

And it starts with dialing 911 in the first place.

We see in the video Mayor Lucas saying this is unacceptable, but he's been saying that for at least two years.

What's the problem and why is it so hard to fix?

Eric they say the problem is the lack of police officers to go out and patrol the area.

That's one thing.

Not having an alternative for young people to do something productive and constructive is another thing.

And just lawlessness.

You know, they say they came up with the ordinance to say, hey, if you get out there, you're going to get a fine.

They're burning up $600 worth of tires.

Do you think they really care about a four or $500 ticket?

And so you've got to do something in the alternative.

In fairness to the police, they could have been dealing with a double shooting at the same time as that was happening.

It could have been some robbery taking place.

They would have had more priority over this one.

But also speaks to the the dysfunction in the whole 911 system here.

Yes.

The mayor, the city council have recently gone to the police department in the fire department to see if they can get a sign off on combining fire and police dispatch operations.

But they're getting pushback from Local 42, I believe, of the of the firefighters union.

You're answering some questions here because we had a lot of concerns about 911.

We had this one from Ben who says, last time I checked, 911 dispatchers were making $23.50 per hour.

I would not work in a house stress job for that amount of money, would you?

That's that's asking an awful lot of people, certainly.

And given the call volume, which continues to increase.

And what was interesting I thought about that particular piece was it took an hour and a half almost for the full police response to arrive at that scene.

If it's just one officer or two in a crowd of several hundred people, I don't know that you can expect a lot to happen, at least right away.

But it does speak to the fact that this department doesn't have enough officers.

And here's the thing that's puzzling.

They've given them raises.

They said they didn't have to live in Kansas City.

They can wear braids.

They can show their tattoos.

But yet and still, we can't fill the vacant positions that you have in a police department.

Something is really wrong with that scenario.

Or in the dispatcher department.

We have vacancies in that department no matter how much we seem to be able or willing to pay them.

I think, yes, when one or two officers arrived, they couldn't respond to this.

Frankly, when nine officers arrived, they still aren't able to respond to this, which means we have to sort of start talking about some of the underlying problems, what is happening in the community, that this is how people are are spending their recreational time and money.

And as you said, it's not like it's a cheap habit.

The $100 fine isn't an increase in the fine is not going to really change that because there's something else driving the community together in this way.

The good news is we have a solution thanks to our Kansas City Weekend Review viewer John, who says, I think the 911 problems could be improved by using a AI if there's a staffing shortage.

Couldn't a hi help with routine calls and notifying police a lot faster?

Isn't this a perfect place if you can't find the people to be incorporated in that technology?

You look skeptical, Mike.

I am.

No, I'm not.

I'm not an expert on this.

I don't know if there's an application currently operating.

I know.

Yeah.

All right, so what the A I know to go to a64130 is the zip code in the same manner as they would in a zip code in another area.

Apparently, New Orleans is already doing it.

They're triaging emergency calls with eight, seven, 911 call centers are being using it, you know, because people have foreign tongues.

They're using it for foreign languages and they are using it to loot calls in other places.

What's happening there is we're having a struggle with getting workers.

Is that the solution?

Clearly, I'm not getting any support on that.

Thank you, John, for writing in.

I like that question.

The royals may be heading to the playoffs for the first time in nine years.

What else is making a big comeback for the first time in nine years?

Red light cameras a decade after Kansas City suspended its red light camera program over legal concerns.

The Kansas City Council has approved turning them back on.

Mayor Lucas says the cameras are needed to help combat a wave of traffic fatalities.

At one time, Kansas City was netting more than $2 million a year from its 29 cameras, issuing 11,000 tickets a month.

So where will all this money go?

Hiring more police officers, possibly hiring more 911 operators would not be a solution.

Well, that's not where the money's going to get the money.

The money is going to go to the Vision Zero traffic safety effort at Kansas City and also to fund the system for issuing the tickets.

But the effort the city believes this is necessary because of the high rate of traffic deaths we've been seeing here in the last few years.

But I remember when they first came and when they were removed because we were told it was unconstitutional, there were so many legal woes because why?

Why What changed?

They mentioned the A.I..

I mean, it's technology.

It's they have better technology now, before they would take the red light cameras would take a picture of the car license plate, and they would send the ticket to the owner of the car.

But the owner of the car would say, I wasn't driving it.

My brother was.

But now they have equipment that will take a picture of the license plate and and the driver and match it up with your driver's license.

Saint Louis is doing it.

And so we're going to be we're Kansas City.

So you can you can't as easily sneak out of a ticket as you did before.

I know people who have done that as if I ever done that.

I can neither confirm nor deny.

But one of the good things about it is and this is one of the things that I would applaud the mayor for, and there's a lot of traffic fatalities.

I think we are like at record numbers with traffic fatalities.

And if this will be a deterrent for that and on our hands and for that, and it isn't the only part of that effort.

It's a multipronged effort, including changes in road design, so-called road diets, adding more roundabouts.

There's a number of pieces that the city hopes will bring about a change in that regard.

Five months after voters overwhelmingly rejected plans for a new royals ballpark, we haven't seen much of team owner John Sherman.

But a front page story in The Star this week is trying to rehabilitate his image.

The story laments what it calls the false and nasty villain ization of Sherman, as if he were a carpetbagger swooping in to exploit Kansas City.

Is that why we haven't seen Sherman do any big public interviews or public appearances since the vote?

He's feeling a little bruised still, Eric.

I think he feels a little bruised.

I think him and Mr. Hunt both feel a little bruised about how they were projected, and both of them do a lot for the community, especially Mr. Sherman.

So I think he might be licking his wounds on that for what was the biggest news story in town for month upon, month upon month.

That was the only thing we ever talked about.

It sort of virtually disappeared as a story right now.

So what's happened?

Is there any development, Michael?

Well, behind the scenes there, there still.

Both teams are exploring their options, as they say.

There's been discussion, as you know, about recently, about possibly building a ballpark down by Washington Square Park.

I'm not sure what what the royals involvement is in it.

And that's interesting because even with that development, we still didn't hear anything from John Sherman.

He's just not visible.

We just wait.

Is he just waiting for them to make the playoffs to say, see, this is what we can do and why you need to have this stadium?

Well, I don't think that will hurt.

I think that I think that will help the political options.

But but but to be honest, I think one of the flaws with the previous campaign, the previous effort altogether, was in fact, that it didn't have more work done behind the scenes, if you will, before it went public.

I mean, I think and not because I'm calling for a lack of transparency, but rather there just needed to be more homework, there needed to be more work done with the property owners and the tenants in those buildings.

There needed to be more better contemplation of why it needed so much space and what the full implications of the costs would be.

If that is what's happening now.

I would say that seems like a much smarter way to proceed.

Listen, the sales tax vote lost by what, 16 points?

I mean, that was a landslide.

And if I'm John Sherman and if I'm the people who were part of that campaign, I'd be laying low, too, because at some point there's I would assume there's going to be another attempt to ask the public for some cooperation when it comes to a else ballpark.

And maybe this is part of a different way to go about it.

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 new horror attraction on Halloween.

Josh Hawley finally agreeing to debate his Democratic opponent on Halloween night.

Children in horrible conditions.

A scathing foster care report in Kansas finds more than a hundred kids still sleeping in state offices and low budget motels despite the governor's promises to fix the system.

The Kansas City Council is moving forward with plans to construct a 144 bed mini jail at the Kansas City Police headquarters building.

Sunday is your last chance to see the royals at home.

Are they finally playoff bound?

So controversy sells.

Harrison Butler outselling Travis Kelce in NFL Jersey.

Sales number seven has now sold more shirts than any kicker in NFL history and the are on favorite tunes this weekend with promises of quadruple security to keep visitors safe.

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

I did one of those stories.

I think the foster care story in Kansas continues to be troubling.

And at a time when it the hope was that things would improve and it doesn't appear as if that's happened.

Mike Well, of course, the royals I'm a I've been checking my my the standings every day.

But beyond that, I think it's interesting that the Kansas City is progressing right now early, taking first steps towards building this park over the over the freeway on the south loop.

I was surprised that they they made that move last Friday, even though they don't have all the money and they still say they want to start that before the World Cup.

Indeed they do.

Will you be writing another huge story about how they had to walk back that promise?

Does it does it seem like there's a connection there?

Okay, very good.

Erik, the $16 million to build a 144 space in a police station, $16 million seems like a lot to build one floor.

That's very interesting.

Data.

Right?

Was on the program last week and said the complete opposite.

It would cost them a lot more to do that because of all the safety requirements they need in jails today.

I would say that the actual price tag eventually will be a lot higher than that.

Yeah.

Brian I would also like to talk about the rails every week, but I won't this week I'm going to talk about politics instead, which is there's a polling out from Emerson College that talks about the top issue, the most important issue.

Missouri voters say they'll be basing their votes on this year.

It's not a surprise that economy is the top answer with 40%, but I am more taken by how far behind every other issue is threats to democracy, crime, immigration, abortion, things that we talk about on these programs all the time don't even make the double digits compared to the economy.

Where was funding for public broadcasting among them?

Let's see.

I'm funding.

Maybe it's smaller.

All right.

On that, we will say all week has been reviewed courtesy of Mike Hendricks from your Kansas City Star and Brian Ellison of KC News from Next page, Casey, Eric Wesson and Channel Nine's Chris Katz.

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

Be well, keep calm and carry on.