Few of us know the pressures of being in Kansas City's biggest political hot seat.

For the first time ever, our four immediate past mayors come together to lift up the hood on the frustrations, constraints and challenges of running the city.

This hour, we leave the studio and head to the Plaza Library as we look back and consider Kansas City's future with Sly James Kay Bonds, Emanuel Cleaver and Mark Funkhouser.

As one guy told me, Mr. Mayor, before you came, they were taking money out of the city with both hands, and now they can only take it out with one hand because we got to fight you off.

I was known and I will fight to my dying breath to oppose this queen of Tiff.

Understand that people are never going to like everything you do.

We're partnering this hour with the Kansas City Public Library and the Citizens Association, and we get to hear from you straight ahead.

Week in review is made possible through the generous support of AARP, Kansas City, RSM.

Dave and Jamie Cummings.

Bob and Marlese Gourley The Cortney S Turner Charitable Trust.

John H Mize and Bank of America and a co trustees.

And by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Hello and welcome.

Do you have what it takes to lead Kansas City?

Every week I hear from viewers who tell me if I was the one in charge, we wouldn't have this crime problem.

We wouldn't have those potholes.

Now, the only obstacle, of course, is those individuals did not actually get off the sofa to ever run for office or collect any money or get tens of thousands of people to vote for them.

You are going to be experiencing four people who went through all of that and who understand the pressures, the constraints, the limitations, the challenges of being in Kansas City's biggest political hot seat.

Please welcome to our stage.

The four immediate past mayors of Kansas City, first elected in 2007, Mark Funkhouser, and the man who succeeded him, Sly James.

The only woman ever to be elected Kansas City mayor.

Kay Barnes and stuff stuck in Washington is the man who went from the pressure cooker of the mayor's office to the calm and serenity of Congress.

Emanuel Cleaver.

Congressman Cleaver.

Congressman Cleaver, you mean to tell us that staying in Washington to try and stop a worldwide economic calamity if the Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling is better than being with us here at the Kansas City Plaza Library.

Yeah, I know.

I would love to be here dealing with many of the people that I would prefer not to sit next to.

And and I would always prefer to be in concert with my my colleagues, former mayor.

This is not one of the places of great joy.

But we've got some business that we have to take care of.

And so that's that's exactly where it is.

I apologize.

We're I'm in the Capitol right now.

We just finished a round of 23 votes on 22 amendments to my two amendments.

So I'm not going to be able to stay throughout the program.

I apologize.

But you have all the smart guys up there on the stage that can answer everything that you remotely suggest.

They have all of the answers right there on that stage.

I know we have all the answers.

I'm wondering, do you miss being mayor of Kansas City or the perks and pay of Congress?

A much better deal for you.

Congressman Cleaver, I'll tell you, the the work as the mayor of Kansas City places people on center stage of the Kansas City drama of mayors are impacted and they make an impact.

One of the things that I think happens when you're mayor is that you go to the grocery store, you go to the drugstore, you go to a mall.

Anywhere you go, you've got to find your constituents.

And they're going to be certainly feeling comfortable in approaching you and asking you to do something or or chastising you for not doing something and in Congress, you can.

I mean, I can go to stores and restaurants and so forth here in Washington.

Without that happening here, there are people who come here for the purpose of being disruptive, to get here on the evening news, every audience on cable TV will know who you are.

That does not happen at certainly at the level that I've seen it here in Kansas City.

Thank you.

Mayor Cleaver, I know you may be weaving in and out with us, but I'm going to I'm you're welcome back.

At any point during this conversation.

But we know, of course, you went from the mayor's office to Congress.

Now, all of our mayors on stage have their groupies, of course, and some people in our audience who really follow every twist and turn of city hall.

But most of us have no clue what actually happens.

We don't follow every single political leader who ever walks through Kansas City.

So just very quickly, Mark Funkhouser.

You left office in 2011.

It's been almost a decade.

What happened to you?

What happened after that?

Well, I went to work for Governing magazine, which covered state lower government, and I was the publisher there.

And then they closed the magazine in 2019, over October.

I started my own little company with a bunch of other folks from government.

We have Funkhouser and Associates and basically the day workers we talk to and write about local government.

Now, you said when you left office this was the greatest job you've ever had in your life and the most difficult job you ever had in your life.

Do you still miss it?

I do miss many aspects of it, yes.

There are some aspects I do not miss.

Bonds, you are known, of course, as the person who revitalized downtown, got a sprint center, the Power Light District.

When you left office, you made an unsuccessful run for Congress.

What has happened since then?

Are you here tonight to be able to announce you're running for governor of Missouri?

If Sly will be my campaign manager.

Well, I still am affiliated with Park University.

Have been since 2007, and thoroughly enjoy working with senior staff and leadership at Park University.

It's a wonderful place, so I'm enjoying that.

I'm on a couple of boards, so I'm keeping busy.

You are a professor of public leadership at Park University.

Now, not all of us, of course, have the funds to go off and get a college tuition and go off to college.

What's the juiciest piece of advice that you offer the students who come through your program about your time as mayor of Kansas City?

I suggest to them that if they have any interest in politics at all, that they consider running for elected office if not to get involved in campaigns on particular issues, they care a great deal about to be good listeners, to not be afraid to speak up, speak out, make some mistakes behind us is a picture of the street car you will see there.

And that and Sly James's watch.

We brought the streetcar to Kansas City and then the you say, James, we started work on the brand new airport that is going to open in just a few weeks time.

You've been out of office now for four years.

Many people thought you would be running for higher elected office.

Have you got an announcement to make that you may be seeking a potential bid against Josh Hawley or succeeding Mike Parson as governor of Missouri, having announcement to make.

There's no way in hell.

Do you miss the job of mayor?

No, I don't.

I do, miss.

No, no, it's not because I didn't enjoy it.

It's not because I didn't.

I don't appreciate the value in the things you're able to do.

I just have a very basic philosophy.

If you spend your time missing something, you're not enjoying what's ahead.

I don't have time to look back.

We're doing too much, looking forward.

And that's the only way you can avoid bumping into stuff.

I do miss, however, the parking.

What pesky issues did you wrestle with as mayor that you were surprised?

I'm going to start with you, Emanuel Cleaver.

What pesky issue did you work with as mayor that you're surprised that we're still finding is a huge problem today in Kansas City, that we still haven't fixed?

Well, on the first day I was sworn in, we knew that we were having a problem with the housing authority.

And the second week I was there, the United States government put the housing authority in receivership.

But the problem of housing, affordable housing, was a problem on my first day.

It was a problem on my last day.

It is a problem this day.

And it is a very difficult problem to solve because there's a lot of sociology involved.

And frankly, there are some prejudice involved.

There's some cowardice involved as it relates to trying to do the kind of zoning that we need to do to make sure that people will have the opportunity to live in all parts of the community in decent housing, and then the federal government doesn't do what it should do.

I am chair of the House Committee for the last two years, up until that two weeks ago.

And so, you know, we are woefully inadequate as a federal government in giving the dollars and the public housing authorities that they need.

I've gone on tours of public housing in Washington, in New York.

And I'm telling you, the problems that we see in Kansas City exist in every major city in this country with affordable housing.

Maybe the worst is in Los Angeles.

If you've been to Skid Row, if you have a you don't want to go and see it.

It looks like a third world country.

What about for you, Mark Funkhouser?

What is the issue you wrestled with that you're surprised is still a huge issue in Kansas City today.

Public safety and crime.

You focus on that.

During my time, we had a 20 year low in violent crime in Kansas City.

But it's back.

It's back about as bad as it's been.

And it's just one of those things that you have to focus on all the time.

Okay.

We happen to have with us a lot of elected leaders.

It's a cavalcade of stars actually in the audience.

My Quinta Lucas is with us, Jackson County executive Frank White, lots of members of the city council, a witness too many to mention.

So we have them all here.

What's your advice, though, on what the best way to try to fix that issue?

Well, I'm on prime.

It's there are three things.

First, you need to do those sort of intervention programs, things we had aimed for peace.

Now we're talking about cases 360.

The problem is we haven't done them.

And a sustained and well-funded way.

The second thing that you need to do is you need to focus on the case clearance rates and not just for homicide, but for every violent crime for rape, for assault.

Those you know, when you're looking at the police department and you're measuring the police department's performance, the case clearance rate is absolutely critical.

And then the third thing that you need to have, you need to have a very strong, tight relationship between the police and the citizens.

Police tend to be insular.

They tend to form a culture that works inside and that doesn't work.

They need to be connected to the community.

What are we still dealing with in Kansas City, Mayor Barnes, that you wrestled with and couldn't solve?

I'm really kind of surprised.

After all this time, we're still facing in Kansas City is a huge issue.

I think it's adequate development and redevelopment on the eastern side of the city.

It is an area, though, that I regret.

I was not able to do more.

I was.

I want to know why, though.

You sort of got the rap.

You did all of this stuff downtown and some people felt that you were the downtown mayor.

You ignored other parts of Kansas City.

That may be totally unfair, of course, but why?

Why has it been a still an issue that it is when there's money available?

It never seems to quite get to the east side of Kansas City.

Well, when you say money is available, I wish that were true in the sense of developers in the private sector willing to take the higher risks of working with the public sector on development projects.

That does not mean it can't be done.

It is challenging.

It's difficult.

I'm hoping that the atmosphere here is such at this day and age that it is more likely to continue to build in that direction than it has in the past.

You can't talk about the East Side not being developed without recognizing the racial issues in this city, period in the story.

Okay.

That's that's part of it right there.

All right.

But I want to get back to the question that you asked about issues that we worked on that were not resolved.

We have not done a good enough job or even, frankly, an adequate job of taking care of that group of very special people who are between the ages of zero and five in this city, period.

In the story you want to wipe out.

You want to reduce crime.

You want to reduce poverty.

You want to reduce drains on social services.

We need to do better with our children.

If we don't take care of those kids and do that now, we will continue to have the same problems that we have.

These are all chronic issues that we have never found or been willing to work on sustainable solutions to resolve.

That's the main thing in my mind.

When you were mayor of Kansas City and you remember this, you are being blamed for what was happening with the school district and at that time you were calling for the mayor's office to actually take all the responsibility.

Oh, no, I wasn't the wrong one.

I was being blamed for it, but I wasn't calling for it.

Other people were calling for the mayor to take over the school district.

Absolutely.

But you never wanted that.

Oh, I didn't care one way or the other.

You know, in Chicago, for instance, the mayor controls the school district.

Well, there's a lot of places where that's true.

But what I wanted was something to be done to improve the quality of the system.

I wanted accountability.

We continue to train turnout kids who are unprepared for today's world and we just blink an eye.

Those of us who have means and opportunity and live in nice places, not a problem for us.

But the problem is, is that 30 or 40% of the rest of the population don't have those opportunities.

And they're the ones that we're going to need to keep things going.

And we are not doing it at all because we have not developed the political guts to do what we need to do for the kids of this community, period.

A story a story in the Kansas City Star a few years ago claimed Kansas City mayors get too much credit when things go well and too much blame when they don't.

Mayor Funkhouser, what was the biggest issue you believe you were unfairly blamed for when you served as mayor?

I'm fairly blamed for this one.

Be good.

You know, I. I don't have much of a list there.

Can I provide one thought?

Are you right?

I didn't hear that.

All right.

You were blamed, of course, for giving your wife a senior job in your administration.

If you had the chance to do it all over again.

Would you have kept Gloria at home?

I would have kept her in the mayor's office as I did.

Okay.

So you need to change that at all.

That was that was a side story that was developed to divert attention from the real issue was money and power and prestige.

I was trying to do the kinds of things that correctly identified its race and the East side and trying to trying to work on that.

And I was as one guy told me, said I said, why is it is it so vitriolic?

Why am I being hit so hard?

And he said, Mr. Mayor, before you came, they were taking money out of the city with both hands, and now they can only take it out with one hand because they got to fight you off.

That it's all about money and power.

Mayor Barnes, what were you blamed unfairly for, in your judgment, as mayor of Kansas City?

I was known by a few.

And I will fight to my dying breath to oppose this queen of Tiff.

Yes.

Yes, it is.

I saw one comment which I found here, that you were giving away tax breaks, like tech tax was something completely unfathomable.

But there were concerns about the Power Light District that Kansas City is still, after all of that investment, having to support millions of dollars to pay off the debt in the district.

That happened during your watch.

And it will not be paid off the debt until 2040, about 20 years from now.

In hindsight, would you have done anything differently there?

I'm not sure what might have been done differently other than to have forecast the economic downturn that occurred that precipitated much of what you're referring to.

I think the advantages, the pluses far, far outweigh any negatives.

And I would challenge anyone who would suggest that that was money misspent.

Because if you look at all of the development and redevelopment jobs that have been created and so on as a result of those projects, we are much better off as a city than we would have been otherwise.

You were quoted as saying, I think there's a misconception among some in our community that economic development is only about money going to developers.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

What is closer to the truth?

Municipalities have two ways to have enough money to address neighborhood needs to fund the police and all of the other needs that a municipality is responsible for.

Two ways.

One is through economic development, investment, and the generating of taxes that go into the city coffers or raising our individual taxes to such a point that nobody would want or could afford to live in the city.

That's simply the reality we have to deal with.

Granted, there need to be parameters, and yet if I have a fear, it's not that we do too much development.

It's that we close the doors too quickly.

Mayor James, what were you unfairly blamed for as man?

I want to know who wrote that quote that you read.

The which one?

The one about mayors or too often give credit for things and get blamed for that.

It was an editorial in the Kansas City Star about that's why I didn't see it.

Oh, let me let me say this.

You know, I'm going to come to her defense and I'm always going to come to her defense because I remember what downtown looked like before she got her hands on.

Okay.

It was a cesspool.

It was strip clubs.

It was hardly of houses.

It was vacant parking lots with oil stains and rusted metal rope where nobody wanted to be.

After 5:00.

I moved my office downtown in 2002 after Craig Barnes had been doing stuff and I ran across the street naked.

Nobody knew.

And there's no picture to prove it.

And there was nobody there.

There was nobody there.

Here's the thing that happened from when when the stadiums were built, when the airport was built, when all that stuff was done, people said, oh, we've done enough.

And they stopped and downtown went down the hill.

Downtown is the heart of the city.

It is the economic engine that pumps blood to the extremities.

If you don't have an engine is pumping blood to the extremities, the extremities will die.

I give Craig Barnes tons of credit for having the guts to take the crap from people who didn't know diddly or tax incentives or tip from abatements to do what she did.

Because if she hadn't done it, we'd still be looking at a downtown that sucked and didn't do anything.

So give her some credit for what she did.

Absolutely.

By the way, you have a chance to ask your own questions and we are going to be giving you that opportunity.

But we're not looking for lectures.

You should be able to ask a question at about 20 seconds or less, and it should end with something that asks gives the opportunity for people to answer it.

So that will be coming up in just a moment.

We'll take care of that for you.

But I'm interested in Mark Funkhouser.

In your very first State of the City address, you said you'd have a laser beam focus on basic services in Kansas City.

And one of your personal missions you said at that time was to get rid of those blasted metal plates from our roads.

Well, I passed I went through five of those on the way to the Plaza Library today.

What happened, do you think, Lucas, from its own basic services, is not a one and done thing.

It's something that has to happen every day.

So we did get all the metal plates up here, 90% of them.

And, you know, I'm a data guy.

We had the data.

Yes, they were up.

But of course, they come back.

If you don't keep working at it.

We have a huge change going on in city hall this year.

Half the city council, because of term limits, will be heading out the door.

Some of the biggest names on the council we have 40 candidates running for office and our friends at the Citizens Association was partnering with us at this event, were worried because a lot of the folks who are running, they should be running for Congress.

They said they should be running for the state legislature because many of the issues they campaigning on have nothing to do with city hall.

So what's your best advice starting with you, bonds to a candidate who wants to be successful serving on the city council.

And you were a city council member prior to actually be elevated to the mayor's office.

I would say, listen, pay attention.

Understand what you don't know.

Don't be afraid to ask questions and have a passion about your city.

I've been really pleased as I've met some of the candidates in this particular election coming up in a few months.

The ones I've talked with in depth are passionate about the city.

That's the bottom line.

You have to care and you have to care pretty deeply because the challenges that you will face, many of them are unanticipated be open to working with other council members, with the mayor and be very cautious about burning bridges with people, because I can almost guarantee that a week later, a month later or a year later, that individual is going to be an important part of an equation for you.

Mayor James, now that you're out of office and as a consultant, you're paid to offer your advice.

But can you offer some free advice to some of the candidates in this room right now who are running for council about how they could be successful?

Seems like an oxymoron.

You said I was paid.

Now you want me do it for free.

Yeah, I can.

Number one, look up the definition of politician and then look up the definition of public servant.

You will find they are not the same.

Be a public servant, not a politician.

Number two, never take a vote that the next morning you wake up and say, I wish I hadn't.

Okay.

Number three, understand that people are never going to like everything you do.

And if you spend too much time trying to please people, it's going to bite you in the back.

You can stand on the street corner as a mayor or a city council person handing out $20 bills.

30% of the people will say thank you.

30% of the people will say it should have been a 50 and 30% of the people say, my gosh, why are you handing out money?

And the other 10% will just not know what the hell to do.

Mayor Funkhouser.

Well, I'll betray my own predilections, which is pay attention to the money, because nothing else works.

If the money isn't right.

How you can't take care of all the other stuff that you want to do if you haven't focused on the money and the other things that I talked about, the basic day to day work like Congress.

Mayor Cleaver.

Congressman Cleaver, let those folks deal with whatever they're dealing with.

You've got to deal with the stuff that's right here in your neighborhood, in your town, what your your neighbors want you to do.

The list of issues facing the next mayor and council are very long.

We've heard about crime already.

And we also heard from Emanuel Cleaver talking about the affordable housing issue, but also big ticket items like deciding on a possible new downtown ballpark, Mayor Bonds.

Some people may not remember that you were under pressure to get behind a downtown ballpark while you were mayor nearly 20 years ago.

At that time, you said, quote, No thanks, it would be better to renovate the existing stadiums.

Do you still feel that way?

The reason I may have said that at the time was because we had an owner who refused to be open to the possibility.

That was the bottom line.

It didn't make any difference what the rest of us thought.

He was very friendly about his opposition.

It was not a hostile kind of situation, and yet he was not there.

I think now is the time to look at it seriously.

Whatever the end result will be will be hotly debated, I'm sure, over the next several months at least.

And that's okay.

That's part of what democracy is all about.

Mayor James, what was your impression of that?

Now you're out of the mayor's office about a downtown ballpark?

Well, I co-chaired the renovation campaign committee with Albert Grieder when it was going through, so I wouldn't smoke more times than I really needed to, to people around this entire community about those stadiums and the need for renovations.

Renovations are great.

You know, we have a house we renovated and then ten, 15 years later, we say, yeah, this renovation ain't working quite the way that we want it to and we move.

I think that there is a very valid reason to give serious consideration to moving.

I also think people ought to pay attention to the overall situation.

There are two teams at that complex.

What happens with one will have a major impact on the other.

You can't separate the two.

They're both under the same lease.

They're both looking for the same thing.

They are both talking about stadium issues.

Be careful what you wish for.

You may throw out one and get them wind up with none.

At the end of the day, there is always reason to improve your lot.

One of the reasons we got into the situation where we had to do something drastic downtown was because we refused to build as we went.

We took a hiatus from improving and it hurt us and it cost us more in the long run.

And it wasn't her fault.

It was the fault of the fact that nobody has taken what's taking care of the baby during the whole thing in the first place.

We're in the same situation now.

We should not be afraid of change, and we should never, ever be afraid of improving the city because this city is worth improving every single day.

Madam Fankhauser, you mentioned that the advice for candidates is watch the money.

So how do you come down on the idea of a downtown ballpark?

Well, this will not shock you.

I would not spend a dime of public money.

I would welcome private investment just fine and maybe help with zoning and whatever other.

I wouldn't spend a dime.

I mean, if you look at the issues crime, housing, street, street, maintenance, none of that.

You know, economic development, economic development needs to happen by attracting people.

None of that stuff is addressed or solved by where you put the baseball stadium up.

If you've got questions, we're happy to hear from you.

It seems Kansas City's most ambitious ideas are being thwarted by state lawmakers in Jefferson City, from police funding to gun laws, even local cities ability to ban things like disposable plastic bags.

Now that you're out of office.

Is there a better way you can suggest for Kansas City to get more of what it wants from a Republican controlled legislature 150 miles away?

Matt Barnes When I think back on our efforts to get state approval for an issue to go on the ballot to generate money, particularly for infrastructure, for the downtown revitalization we spent and I mean, we including ten, 12, 15 of us spent an unbelievable.

As I look back now, amount of time in Jefferson City talking with legislators one on one, in-depth conversations, people who were experts in the finance sources representing our perspective sat down with people who were representing rural parts of the state.

And I think that made all the difference, was building those relationships, building those relationships with people who typically would not understand what a big city would want or need.

They came out of those discussions, though, after months and months of effort, having a clear enough understanding that they were willing to give us the approval to ask the voters for those changes.

It was all about relationships.

It seems like it seems to be a constant sense of restraint that Kansas City can't do certain things because the state legislature is in a better way of working with the major things.

Yeah, Kansas City.

You have to break away from the state of Missouri and become its own fiefdom.

You know, Mayor Barnes was mayor.

Jefferson City wasn't the Jefferson City that it is today.

Congress wasn't the Congress that it is today.

Politics wasn't the politics that it is today.

Now it's all about us versus them.

And a lot of the decisions that are made are made for political reasons.

And Jefferson City, a lot of the folks there see Kansas City as a threat or a group of Democratic leaning people that do not serve their purposes.

They've been hostile.

And I think one of the things that made them hostile was the school desegregation case.

They were exceptionally mad about that.

This carried on.

If you spend any recent time in Jefferson City, you will note the hostility that exists between the legislature in Kansas City and the legislature in Saint Louis, because the cities are not kind to their political beliefs.

I think there is one thing that we can do, and that is to try to do everything we can to bring balance to the legislature so that we do not have a situation where there is not a single not a single statewide office holder who's a Democrat, not a single one in a state where there has never been an African-American elected to statewide office, in a state where everything that happens is veto proof, that type of power will corrupt.

Knowing all of those things.

Why didn't you run for office statewide?

Because I have absolutely no desire to have my family threatened and do all the nonsense that you have to do in order to be in political office.

Plus the best you can do in Jefferson City now as a Democrat or anybody who's not a conservative Republican, is try to stop bad stuff from happening.

And thank God there's enough people down there trying to do that.

But I really do not have the personality to engage in the long term arguments because at some point, if there's a sharp object around, somebody might get hurt.

All right.

All right.

Mayor Funkhouser, you actually have clients who are local cities and things and they are must be wrestling with state legislatures, too.

First, what Casey said about relationships is absolutely right.

And you can't.

And she also said, don't burn your bridges.

So, you know, those those are two key things.

And then what Sly said, he's right.

It's worse.

My advice to folks is three things.

First, look at the evidence.

Make a solid case for the evidence and then choose an anecdote or a story that fits the ideology of the people you're trying to persuade in those one on one conversations.

Evidence, anecdotes, ideology.

You're not going to change ideology if they're if they're you know, RedState, deep Trumper.

You're not going to change that.

However, you know, you can you can find a switch if you look hard and you work at it that that works.

Stories that work with them.

You're talking about a divide here between the state and the city.

But there is a divide that's also taking place and seems to be increasing right here in our own city limits.

And that's that division and tensions between Kansas City North of the river, and Kansas City, south of the river.

And Matt Lucas, I saw on your one of your tweets recently, you said Kansas City, south of the river, continues to average a population to decline of roughly a thousand residents per year.

Was that an issue we had to wrestle with when you were mayor?

Kay Bonds I how do you resolve that difference?

I think it would bubble up periodically, perhaps around a specific issue.

However, again, I'm not being too much of a Pollyanna when I say this.

If we focus on that, quote, divide and everybody's talking about the divide, then the divide increases.

And what I made an effort to do, and I certainly know my staff did, and I think many of the council members with whom I served, we would try to go beyond that and spend time in the north land, spend time south, look at what was being dealt with that was in common.

Often between both parts of the city.

So dwelling too much on that supposed divide, even though it was there to some extent, I think only exacerbated it.

How did you experience that North-South divide, if at all, Mayor James?

And how do you better heal that tension?

And we saw it, for instance, on the police funding vote just recently in the last election.

Yeah, I remember when I was running, I used to tell people that truce was not the the Maginot Line and the river was not the Rubicon we could cross.

Both would feel safe in doing so.

I now live north of the river, which is quite a switch bourbon field.

And I have to come south every now and then to get my injection of of of asphalt and and fluorescent light.

But I remember when I was when I was in office, I made a point of going north of the river.

And I was always I was always tickled by the fact that when I would go north, people say, oh, my gosh, you're north of the river.

So good to see you.

I said, Well, I had to come up and see you because you never come see me.

Okay?

Look, we are all one city and we are going and we cannot let what happens in this country happen in this city where we divide ourselves to such an extent that we become warriors and defenders of our turf because we will fail and it will be miserable.

This city will only succeed when people understand that we rise or we fall together and we get to choose.

We can either rise or we can fall, but we can't do it as long as we are making north and south like some civil war, some sort of a big issue.

Are there issues that affect the North differently?

You have there are.

Can they be resolved?

Yes, they can.

But we have to be about resolving issues, not talking about how big they are.

Mayor Funkhouser Well, these issues of trust and distrust and division are across the country in city after city.

And it's a basically it's a it's a new responsibility that city leaders have.

It's not only do you have to fix the potholes and plow the snow and everything else, but you've got to work constantly to develop trusting relationships between your residents as well as between them and you and city government.

If you run for council and you get elected.

Part of your job is to keep knitting the community together because there are a lot of forces trying to pull it apart.

If you're mayor, it's part of your job trying to knit the community together.

And, you know, again, it's across the United States.

It's something that's happening everywhere.

We'd love to hear from you and we're going to hear from you, sir.

Thank you for your patience.

Thank you, Nic.

Appreciate it.

My question involves the local control of the Tennessee Police Department.

How do you all feel about that issue and what did you try to do when you was mayor?

Thank you for taking my question.

Thank you.

Who would like to answer that question?

Mayor James, I firmly believe in local control of the police department.

I, I said when I was on the police board that if they ever tried to go to Jefferson City and passed the legislation that they did pass that allowed police officers to live outside the city that I would basically burn their houses down.

I didn't want to be a terrorist, but I felt that strongly about it.

You should not have a badge and a gun in our city if you don't think enough of it to actually live there.

Okay.

I set up a set up and I set up a commission to it that included members of the FOP citizens, retired police officers, other folks in the community to try to find a way to do that.

And we thought we had a deal until a couple of people at the last minute switched up on us.

And it didn't happen.

But right now, the city has no control over how they police what we have control over is the checkbook and that's about it.

So, yes, local control is a must in my mind, Mayor Funkhouser.

Absolutely.

You can't be the only city in the country that doesn't have you know, it's a city of a half million people and you have your own police department.

So we're ready for your question.

Thank you all for being here.

My question is, in regards to public transportation, I think particularly in light of Warren Buffett's letter to the city of Omaha about their streetcar project, I'm curious how you all see the future of our public transportation.

Look, public transportation is one of the pillars of equity.

If people can't get from their homes to jobs in other places, then they cannot be equal.

We have to have quality public transportation.

We have to recognize that not everybody is going to be able to go out and lease a car every three years.

Number two, we have the best streetcar system in the country right now, the best hands down, not even close.

And I can prove it because I can go show you a bunch of mayors who tried to emulate it and put a fare on it and it ain't working.

Mayor Barnes, we need to as rapidly as possible add those lines along Independence Boulevard and also 18th Street into the eastern part of the city, because that's where the highest public transportation usage is.

How about the standard, which is one proposal in balance?

Make your partner take taking the streetcar to the stadiums, which was one proposal.

I'm concerned about Independence Boulevard and 18th Street.

Yeah, we tried that.

We tried that.

The only the mistake that we made was we did it.

We went too fast, but we went fast because we knew our our audience in D.C. was very favorably disposed to it, and it didn't work.

But we wanted to go to Lynnwood from Main Street to Prospect so that we could do something with the Lynnwood Shopping Center, which we bought, by the way.

That's on the East Side.

And we actually bought that thing so that we could put a decent grocery store in there.

That's the city that did that.

No, it wasn't some ferry that came down and did it.

The city actually did that and we wanted to do something on independence because we knew it would bring economic activity there.

And it was it was not passed.

And it's going to be much more difficult to do it in the future.

You have always, again, been about the smart money, Mayor Funkhouser.

So how does that sit with you?

The trouble with with the streetcar as it is now and and other things that we've done is that they're too small to actually have an impact.

It needs to be a lot bigger.

And again, it lives right.

It is a key to equity.

If people can't get around, they can't get to work.

They can't take a kid to daycare, they can't shop all that, you know.

You know, and cities across the country.

Why didn't you do the streetcar when you were there?

I thought it was to use Mayor Cleaver's line.

It was touristy frou frou.

I thought it was too small to make a difference.

And so it wasn't a wise expenditure.

Madam, we're ready for you.

Thank you.

And thank you guys for your time today.

House Listeners.

There's a growing problem in Kansas City over the years.

And I was wondering in your administrations if, like, what did you learn when it came to addressing house business?

What worked, what didn't work?

What do you think needs to happen?

The problem is, is that to some extent there is a tide that we do not have a big enough wall to stop called the economy as people are disaffected by the economy, do not have the money to exist.

Housing prices go higher and higher.

There's going to be more people on the street.

Secondly, a lot of issues relate mental issues, mental health issues with for which we do absolutely nothing in this country.

We do not do a very good job on addiction, which is also a problem, and we tend to want to just pass over it.

It ain't us, so I don't care.

They become faceless, nameless people that bother us when we get to the street corner.

At the end of the day.

There are things that can be done, but it requires that we sit down and form a coalition and be willing to dedicate the resources to do it.

And when there is competition for money, there's a whole lot of people who say, don't start saying you were mayor for eight years.

So why was that so tricky to accomplish when you were there?

Well, we actually did dedicate some resources to it.

We just didn't have enough resources to do it.

I mean, you got to remember the federal government and the state government create a lot of problems that come to live in the cities.

And we're left to kind of find a way to deal with it.

But they don't give us any money to do it.

What I said about the economy, I mean, wages have been stagnant in this country for since like 73, 75.

So if you look at what wages have done and then you look at what rents and so forth, if the supply of housing is not increasing, and if wages what you have when you have homelessness and affordable housing problem, you have a huge gap between what people can afford and what is available.

So there's less and less ability.

So that's it's as much, you know, see Kevin O'Neill here on the front row, a union guy.

We need more unions.

We need more collective bargaining.

We need salaries to go up and they go up when people are unionized, that's it's as much of bring the salaries up as it is, bring the housing cost down the state, cut our low income tax our low income housing tax credits dramatically, which affected our ability to do low income housing.

And once that happens, it's hard to get a developer and say, come build us some low income housing and that's okay, take a loss on it.

That's not happening.

We're ready for you.

Thank you for your patience.

Thank you.

Thank you all for being here.

So this is a question surrounding definitions.

I heard you all use the word revitalization a lot, but it was usually towards like shiny buildings, like the sprint center or the stadiums or things like this.

And these are things that I can't afford because I'm poor, I'm broke.

And so in the name of Kansas City's poor, I wonder, what does the word revitalization actually mean to you?

Revitalization is multifaceted.

It includes everything that's been brought up this evening, and it does include economic investment.

It does include addressing as directly and completely as possible homelessness, other forms of poverty, relationships, the complexity can be overwhelming, but that for me is revitalization.

It covers virtually everything.

The big fancy buildings get a lot of press.

What doesn't get as much attention publicly, it's just the day to day pounding away at some of these issues that are chronic.

And I remember Mayor Barnes when he first got elected, you came on our program, we were doing a debate program, and you were the back to basics mayor.

You wanted to focus on those basic services when you were running for reelection.

You then said that, because then we were doing the Sprint centers and the power light districts that actually the public actually likes all of these big, big, splashy developments.

And so what they may say, they want basic services.

They are judging you on those kinds of projects where you don't get adequate basic services.

If you don't have economic engines to generate the money to go into the city coffers to address those services.

So it's they're not mutually exclusive.

It's circular, it's constant.

And it has to be addressed at every point on the circle.

People need to stop thinking about these things as zero sum games.

They're not zero sum games.

You I mean, a lot of people focus.

Exactly like Mayor Vaughn said, on the big shiny baubles in front of them.

But I didn't see that many people at the groundbreaking in the neighborhood we were doing revitalize housing.

I didn't see that people at at the neighborhoods that we went into and tore down all the vacant properties, we spent several million dollars, took it out of the budget and started and fortunately, we had great partners like Kissick and others who came and tore down vacant properties so that we could do it.

I didn't hear anybody talking big time about the program that we put together where you could buy a house for a dollar as long as you fixed it up within two years and it was yours.

Didn't hear all of that.

So this is not a zero sum game.

We cannot I don't think people understand how complex this city is.

This is not like you take one piece here and you put one piece there and all of a sudden you've got a puzzle put together.

It's very intricate, it's very interrelated and it's very needy.

And there's never, ever enough money to do what you want to do and whatever you try to do, there's always a percentage of the people who are going to complain about you trying to do it.

So we're ready for your question.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, honorable mayors, for giving the public opportunity to ask questions.

So I'm speaking as somebody who's going to be soon expecting their first child and wondering what the world is going to be like when my child is thinking about what the world, what Kansas City is going to be like when my child is my age.

Kansas City, as you all know, noted, has a problematic history with systemic racism, including environmental racism.

Just this past quarter, your colleagues here bravely centering, addressing its environmental race and passed a climate protection plan.

But that's already unpopular and folks are trying to water it down.

How important is it for this council and community stakeholders to forge ahead to ensure that it is fully implemented so that we can all have a city where our children can thrive?

Thank you very much.

I think climate is one of the major issues of this lifetime.

We should stand firm on the climate initiatives.

We could and should increase the climate initiative.

We should be aggressive and maybe just a little bit pushy about making sure that we have clean air, clean water and a place where kids can grow up in the next hundred years and still breathe without an oxygen mask.

Mayor Funkhouser?

Well, the climate deniers, I think, are or are losing their father and father behind.

There are more and more people who get it that this thing has to be dealt with and they're doing it.

So I feel hopeful for, you know, when your kids come in, it's going to be cleaner.

It's cleaner now than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

My question is also regarding homelessness, which I call the great hot potato issue in our metro and our region.

Who do you believe is responsible for delivering on solutions for our houseless crisis in Kansas City?

Is it City Hall?

Is it the county?

Who is it?

And it counts.

If Congressman Cleaver is on.

I would love his thoughts as he's fixing the world from the debt ceiling right now.

So he's got a little bit more bigger fish to fry.

But Mark Funkhouser can answer that question for you.

Well, what I would tell you is that the city hall and the mayor are going to be held accountable for that.

So it's not something they can duck.

You know, Ralph Becker was a pretty good mayor of Salt Lake City and he lost a bid for reelection.

And the issue was he hadn't done enough about homelessness.

Now, where it's where it's working across the country a little bit better and it's not working well anywhere, but it's working a little bit better is when the city and county form a coalition and work together, because a lot of times the county has the kind of social services the city doesn't necessarily deliver.

The county has mental health, the county has health services.

When those things are linked together, it works well.

Are you proposing that Kansas City consolidate with Jackson County government, Mayor Funkhouser?

Well, that would be a fine idea.

But if we don't do that, that's at least form a coalition or a partnership on homelessness.

I want to end with this because all of you have expressed frustration about the limitations of the mayor's power.

Now that you were out of office, what change, if any, do you think Kansas City should consider that would make government in Kansas City operate more efficiently?

Mayor Bonds I think it's much more about who the people are in office than it is about any particular mechanisms that might be changed.

So the quality of candidates, the quality of officeholders I mentioned earlier, the passion that individuals need to have public service is what it's all about.

It's not about being a politician.

So I'm more interested in quality of candidates and officeholders than any particular mechanisms.

After you left office.

Mayor Funkhouser, you said everyone has enough power to dead end any improvements, but no one has enough power at City Hall to make things go anywhere.

How how do you think Kansas City could fix that work change?

Could they make the gap between the responsibility of the mayor and the actual authority of the mayor is still way too large.

You know, and and something has to has to bridge that gap.

What change would you make?

I would probably make it so that the well, my big fight was with the city manager.

I would want to make sure that the mayor had the city manager that he or she wanted regardless.

Mayor James, you said you got blamed for everything that goes wrong, but the mayor, quote, doesn't actually have any authority except through powers of persuasion or a temper tantrum.

Would you, now that you were out of office?

Yeah.

Would you prefer to propose a change to how City Hall operates?

That would actually make two things.

Number one, recognize that we already have term limits.

It's called Election Day.

You don't need term limits.

Yeah.

Yeah, because if you can stay there long enough, you might actually be able to move the needle.

But when you're gone, every time there's a change in administration, there's a change in direction.

Every single time.

You cannot get anyplace zigzagging back and forth.

Number two, executive order.

Give the mayor the power to have limited executive orders where you can write something can be done with a pen and without having to go through all the rigmarole and it's subject to it's subject to referendum or whatever.

But let them do some things without having to work five years to get things done.

And you have been watching the four mayors of Kansas City K Bonds, Sly James, Mark Funkhouser, and earlier Emanuel Cleaver are still trying to work on the debt ceiling limit in Washington DC.

Onto our fifth panelist.

You thank you for providing your energy to this hour too I'm Nick Haines from all of at Kansas City, PBS and our project partners, the Kansas City Library and the Citizens Association.

Be well, keep calm and carry on.