Having bailed on the silly idea of convincing Kansas City voters to approve a bond issue for a new, modern airport, Mayor Sly James is now pinning his legacy on another proposal. It’s a…it’s an arts festival.
But not just a plain-old arts festival. This will be a mind-boggling arts festival — a huge, Donald-Trump-scale arts festival. (I’m sure he’s put one on somewhere, sometime.)
“My vision for the festival,” the mayor intoned last week (undoubtedly emphasizing the word “vision”), “is simply to maximize Kansas City’s talent and resources, put them on display, provide a venue for them to collaborate, bring regional and national attention to the city, and finally to produce some revenue related to the arts.”
Wow…I mean WOW!
This gigantic, national-attention-drawing festival — let’s call it Big-A-Fest — should once and for all strip Kansas City of its cowtown image. Plus, it should, at long last, give us a festival we can be truly proud of.
I mean, who pays any attention to the piddly little cultural events and occasional parades we have now?
I’m talking about things like the Ethnic Enrichment Festival…the Plaza Art Fair…the Brookside and Westport art fairs…Kansas City Irish Fest…KC RiverFest…the 18th and Vine Jazz & Blue Festival…Santa-Cali-Gon-Days…the St. Patrick’s Day Parade…the Snake Saturday Parade.
Yeah, those crummy events barely draw a couple million people a year, so what we need is a big, BIG, BIG arts festival (that’s why we’re calling it Big-A-Fest, don’t you know) that will probably draw six or seven million people over what…maybe a week or so? Yeah, let’s give it several days so the horns, violas and violins can really get cookin’ and the painters, sketchers and leather-hat vendors can get their creative juices flowing and whip up some of their best-ever work right here in our own KCMO!
…Did I tell you how the mayor proposes to finance this BIG, BIG arts festival. Why easy as falling off a Lake of the Ozarks dock. He’d pluck $250,000 from the Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund, a tax-funded pool the City Council created about 25 years ago.
There’s one catch, though…Until now, the NTDF committee members have been real sticklers for how those millions of dollars are spent each year. They’ve been requiring, among other things, detailed applications and line-item budgets, as well as supporting documents and recommendations from interested parties.
Unfortunately, nothing like a complete application and proposed budget exists for Big-A-Fest. But not to worry: Mayor Sly…Oops, I mean Mayor James…waved off such petty concerns, saying the arts generate an estimated $250 million in economic impact (!) for Kansas City and can be an even bigger engine for cultural tourism and growth.
Even bigger…Yes!
This afternoon, the City Council, in a frenzy of efficiency, voted 11-2 to approve the $250,000. The only council members who failed to be swept away by the mayor’s vision and wisdom were Jermaine Reed and Quinton Lucas. Those guys must be wearing blindfolds.
So, it’s just about a done deal, I guess. Look for Big-A-Fest at a park near you. Oh, did I mention it ain’t gonna be free? They’ll be charging admission.
…Now, some of you might be saying, “But…but, Jimmy, what about that dump of an airport we’ve got up by Cookingham Drive?
It can wait, I tell you, it can wait. It has to wait. When an idea this BIG comes along, you gotta jump high and fast or you end up on your back in the wading pool.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
I agree, Jim. We have enough fairs and festivals.
This may rival the time my old boss, Mayor Charlie Wheeler, (Charles B. Wheeler Jr, MD, JD) sent me and Jerry Jette and Kay Lentz and Pat Gray to figure out how to bring the World’s Fair to KC in the 70s…At the time I was director of the Mayor’s Council on the Arts. He funded that out of his birthday party money. That is, until he decided to run for Vice President. He planned to endorse Scoop Jackson. I said, “Charles, one does not RUN for veep, one is tapped. And since you are anti-labor and Scoop is labor’s man, I don’t see you getting the nod.”
Wheeler blew so many sparks out of his pipe, the embers burned five holes in his seersucker jacket and his bowtie.
…Fitz, you and Roger Moore were covering Wheeler back then.
Great story, Tracy…But that was a bit before my time, my official time at City Hall, that is. I didn’t get there ’til ’85, when Berkley was mayor.
But you’re right; I was around City Hall now and then and got to cover Charlie from time to time. I also got to drink a few late-night beers with him at Kelly’s and play a few rounds of golf with him and Marjorie at Swope Memorial.
…I remember the time he claimed to have wrestled a bear in his office. I was reading about that on a plane to Florida, and I about busted my gut when I read this Wheeler quote:
“The bear sat right over there on that couch and drank a Pepsi.”
Priceless. Thanks for the smile.
Berkley was so dull; Sly James is dull, too, even with his bombastic personality.
Cleaver could light it up sometimes. I liked his unpredictability. But Wheeler…Holy shit. He was the most spontaneous, quotable, interesting mayor we ever had. No one else comes close.
The issues the mayor has raised throughout his stint in office are so, so much more important than he is himself, one inevitably forgets about Sly, the individual.
Surely this is not diffidence or false modesty, but a profound humility, one enjoined to serve the city’s interests, and the interests of the citizenry, ahead of any personal desire for lasting fame, the blandishments of local/national journalists, or the adulation and love of Sly’s hometown.
Indeed, were we to unquestioningly do Sly’s bidding our old Paris on the Plains would heal itself, the boulevard’s fountains would again gush sparkling clear water, airplanes from all over the world would descend upon our shiny new airport, little children would again have faith in The Future.
We have not seen Sly’s like before, nor are we likely to do so again.
Bring on Big-A-Fest!*
* The single caveat here is that Big-A-Fest must be accessible via the new trolley.
Let’s spend tax dollars with accountability. Let’s promote the arts — KC is a great arts town — but the primary focus should be on quality, and only secondarily on “economic impact.” A government grab-bag is not accountability nor art.
Exactly, Vern. This is a crazy project. September? Seriously? The beginning of every arts organization’s season? As one who once applied to NTDF, I can tell you, this is completely a raid on their funds. Nobody else gets “seed money”, it’s all reimbursement for completed projects, with huge bans on staffing and planners.
That said, NTDF has long been what we called during the days of Model Cities in the 70’s, a “set aside program”–a payoff to folks mostly in the inner city, covering little neighborhood picnics and poorly attended festivals. The fact that the Chairman once went to 400 NTDF events in one year tells you that.
NTDF is like when Carol Coe said, “Y’all can’t have any votes from me till MY people get theirs.” Hence, the first $22 million for the Jazz District. Which is now at $114 million in subsidies, and STILL a dying project.
So, do I think folks will flock to Swope Park for anything in September, rather than the Plaza Art Fair? hahahahaha. Not even if Sly’s Toy Train has free trips there. They don’t even feel safe going to the Plaza on weekend nights.
KCMO–you have huge problems. Lack of festivals is not one of them. And I see that Megan Crigger was hired Jan. 1, 2015–so is this her first rodeo???
http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/steve-paul/article4453281.html
Finally, there is no vehicle left to promote said festival. The STAR has no reporters and no news hole. The local TV stations cover stories with silly little 45 second “packages”. The only way Sly’s arts festival would get any news coverage nationally is if it was hit by a tornado. Hard to plan for that…
Fitz, remember the news rule: One cannot feature an event as the “First annual”…so this is not a repeater. It’s another pipe dream by our homeless mayor (he rents on Union Hill) in search of publicity to divert attention from his many failures.