Well, now we’re talking…
The Star came out yesterday with an editorial endorsing a single-terminal airport.
Mincing no words, the editorial began:
“Building a modern, fully functional airport is a high priority for the Kansas City area, residents and many local companies.
“Here’s one clear vision of what a new Kansas City International Airport would feature: a single terminal with convenient passenger drop-off zones, efficient security lines, quick walks to gates, and a wider variety of desirable restaurants and shops.”
The editorial is great news for backers of a new terminal, which is estimated to cost upwards of $1 billion.
Voters will be asked to approve revenue bonds to finance construction, and, despite the waning power of print, The Star still leads the way on community issues. I worked for The Star, as many of you know, for nearly 37 years, and it has always looked out for what is in the best interests of the public. It’s a non-vested-interest institution that the vast majority of area residents trust, even if they don’t like the paper’s left-tilting political endorsements.
So, the “Save KCI” crowd just caught a bad break: They are now in for a likely losing battle against the Chamber of Commerce, the Civic Council, the Aviation Department, the airlines, the political consultants (who stand to make big bucks off the campaign), KC Star jackhammer editorial writer Yael Abhoulkah…and, of course, the very influential JimmyCsays.
A 24-member panel appointed by Mayor Sly James is holding hearings and meetings on the issue, and you can expect this to be a slow process. That’s partly because a lot of people are wedded to the hopelessly archaic and sentimental idea that the three-terminal set-up — with its dark, vapid, curving concourses — is the best airport layout ever invented. “By God, it’s ours, and you can’t take it from is,” might as well be their schoolyard campaign slogan.
So, the powers that be — no dummies at shaping public opinion — will wait out the brunt of the opposition and will chip away at educating the electorate. going education.
The Star’s editorial now has this project poised to lift off, eventually.
LAX…A single terminal KCI could have concourses that look something like this…”Hey, Mom, it’s bright in here, and there are plenty of places to buy souvenirs and eat!”
Wisely, The Star isn’t swallowing whole the $1.2 billion plan proposed by the Aviation Department. In the editorial, the paper encouraged the study panel to “investigate other ideas that have been proposed to ‘save’ the current KCI and especially its convenient passenger drop-off feature.”
The Star also said the cost estimate needs to be trimmed. Many opponents are shrieking about the price tag and saying that it’s a big waste of money and would detract from, and perhaps supersede, other high-dollar projects, such as repairing streets and bridges and upgrading the antiquated water and sewer system.
The Star parried that groundless objection by explaining:
“In reality, Kansas City already has a solid list of projects aimed at improving public services, and all are being done with dollars that would never be spent to build a better KCI.”
In other words, not all the project are being financed from a single fund, with various projects competing against one another for financing.
Consider:
— The water and sewer upgrades are being financed in large part by the water and sewer rates that the city high-handedly jacked up a year or so ago, when it went to monthly bills instead of bi-monthly…with the monthly bills being about the same as the bi-monthly bills had been. (Those bills are headed ever higher, by the way.)
— Street and bridge repairs come out of general operating funds and the city’s capital improvements sales tax.
— Two other voter-approved sales taxes are paying for fire and police department improvements, including new facilities.
Don’t let the whiners intimidate you with their squawking refrain, “We can’t afford it!”
Yes, we can. This is a big city and it takes big bucks to keep a big city humming.
I feel a lot more confident today than I did yesterday. I can almost hear the humming of the power tools at work on a new, single terminal in Platte County, MO.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
The Star has been on the wrong side of every important issue facing KC. Always in bed with City Hall, JE Dunn, banks, developers, scammers, charlatans, frauds and scumbags.
No one vets the numbers accurately and when projects fail to deliver projected results we get the golly, gee, shucks the numbers worked at the time story.
These idiots wouldn’t last a day in the private sector if they were held accountable for ROI and P&L.
Fortunately, this isn’t a low information voter issue. People are paying attention. We the people are smarter than they the shysters.
Gonna be a Biblically cold year in hell Fitz before a new single terminal facility gets built at a price tag of 1B$ or more. Judging by the crowd and dialog at last nights debate the one terminal shysters KNOW they are being watched…..closely.
Death to the Tsar! Death to the Tsar! Death to the Tsar!
Smartman, I can see you (without knowing what you look like) leading the masses down Oak Street, ascending the City Hall steps on 12th Street, with the incensed crowd chanting (what else?), “Death to the Tsar!”
+1 smarty
Too small time for me. If I’m gonna save the country I’ll enact my master plan which requires the elimination of 2500 people in politics, media and pop culture. Pretty small body count to get the country back on the right track.
That’s one of the many things I like about you, Smartman — always ready to make the ultimate personal sacrifice for the “better good.”
Jim,
This is a classic case of “We know better than everyone else.” Let’s be honest here: the current airport is working, having gone thru a $200 million upgrade in the last 10 years; the city is upset about the money spent on security (at gate after gate); and the pitch from the city is “We have to spend $1B so that (maybe someday) more airlines will come to KC.”
At a time when the airline industry is consolidating into fewer carriers, fewer hubs, and fewer flights, KC is going to spend $1B on its terminal without any clear commitment or idea of a clear goal.
And they wonder why everyone isn’t jumping on the bandwagon???
That certainly appears to be a factor, Willie — “we know better…”
It looks like we could have a hell of a fight, unless the “we know betters” back down..And I don’t think that’s going to happen. A public vote might not happen until Sly’s second term.
…By the way, I’m an old hand at being on the “we know better” side. During all my years in journalism, I was convinced our job was to give people what they needed in the way of news, not what they wanted. Otherwise, every paper would have been like the big sellers in England, featuring photos of bare-breasted women every day.
Nevertheless, as the descent of print picked up speed, many papers, including The Star, began lowering their standards and trying to figure out what people wanted. But this isn’t like trying to design the best cell phone or toys that kids would insist on having. As a result, we couldn’t find a common denominator, because when it comes to their newspapers, people say they want this or that but, really, they don’t know what they want.
That’s why I believe in the NYT and own a significant amount of the company’s stock: Times’ publishers and editors have never never strayed far from their realization that it’s their job to decide what the most important news is and how best to present it to the public. That’s the winning newspaper formula.
The Star and other major dailies have now come just about full circle and have gone back to non-nonsense, no-titillation presentations. That’s not going to halt the descent but it might slow it down.
Fitz, you may find this interesting.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/07/12/Poll-Public-Esteem-of-jopurnalists-collapses-to-28-percent
That’s worth running in it’s entirety, Smartman….Here it is, readers:
“A new Pew poll that examines public esteem of various institutions shows that members of the media have rapidly lost favor with the public since 2009. Four years ago, 38% of adults believed journalists contributed “a lot to society’s well being.” Today, that number is down to 28%. Journalists are rapidly losing favor with women; that number dropped 17 points, from 46% to 29%.
“Out of ten professions, including the military, clergy, and artists — journalists sit at the bottom of the pile, ahead of only business executives and lawyers.”
Written by John Nolte on the web site breitbart.com.
…Thanks for highlighting that for our readers, Smartman. I know it’s true, and it infuriates me; it didn’t have to happen. If newspaper publishers and editors would have stood their ground and continued giving the readers a solid, reliable product when the descent of print picked up speed (see my response to Willie), that number could well be in the 40s instead of the 20s. At the same time, I realize it’s hard to refrain from tinkering when the wheels are falling off the wagon…Let it be known, though, that if I had been the Tsar, it would have been a lot different. I would have followed the ship down, deck chairs securely anchored.
Allow me to beat my dead horse and agree with Smartman on just about everything and your last paragraph.
The Star has lost all credibility as a news gathering organization precisely because, as Smartman correctly points out, its editorial board is first and foremost a shill for the metro area’s corrupt establishment. One looks in vain for one of these scams that the editorial board hasn’t promoted.
Indeed, it’s role as snake oil sales crook even trumps ideology. One of my favorite editorials was reading The Star’s editorial endorsing Karen Brownlee when she was on board with one their JOCO scams. You could just picture Barb Shelly throwing up in her mouth while she was writing it.
If The Star is not primarily a vehicle for propaganda, why has it retained a collection of boring, tedious, predictable editorial “writers” at the expense of losing so many talented reporters?
Fire the entire editorial staff. Give us news, spare us the brazen, tedious bullshit. I guarantee you The Star’s reputation would increase overnight.
Well, with respect to the proposed single-terminal plan for KCI, I’d like to see it assigned to a “holding pattern” (so the fine points can be studied at length in the interest of the greater good) if not “grounded” altogether, which is my personal preference. In these difficult economic times, even if the money needed for the project is theoretically “available,” I don’t think an expenditure north of 1 billion can be justified in good conscience when the current airport is more than adequate in most respects, not to mention popular with travelers. Time was when The Star spoke, people listened and things happened. But those days, I’m afraid, largely belong to the past. I’m with the crowd that’s closely watching the developers, contractors and vendors who need to “straighten up and fly right.”
I’m starting to get queasy again…
Here is an interesting article from Cincy concerning said airport. From the Tsar!!
http://savekci.org/cincinnatis-lesson-to-kansas-city-kci-is-better-without-a-hub/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SaveKCI+%28The+Latest+From+SaveKCI.org%29
On Ruckus the other night, there was NO resounding affirmation of this 1.2 billion dollar deal at all.
There was a time when the path to statewide office in Kansas ran through the Wyandotte County bureau of The Star. I think that era was over by the time Fitz was editor there.
While I don’t know for sure, I’m betting The Star reflected the values of its readers a lot more closely in those days than it does now.
What would be fun is if the reporters who got canned from the Star would do what they did in one of the small town newspapers I think out in western Kansas. They created a competing paper. There’s a lot of talent that has gotten the boot and with a seasoned editor/publisher like Fitz we could have a winner.
Stop trying to get me off the golf course, John…