For a day or so a couple of weeks ago, I was briefly second-guessing my commitment to Jolie Justus for mayor.
I’ve heard several people, mostly from Midtown, say her responsiveness to constituents has faltered and that she’s too willing to go along with the developers and the development attorneys — big sources of campaign contributions.
My own feeling — overriding those legitimate concerns — has been that she would represent our city well at the state and national levels; that her eight years’ experience in the Republican-dominated Missouri Senate has given her a depth of political experience that her opponent Quinton Lucas lacks; and that she is very good at listening to people on all sides of issues and arriving at reasonable positions.
On the latter point, for example, some people are angry at her for supporting Quik Trip’s successful push to expand its store on Westport Road west of the Trafficway. But who’s to say that won’t turn out to be a positive for the area? Tons of people patronize that location, and it may well be a safer and smoother operation with the pumps on one side of Mercier and the store on the other.
Anyway, like I say, my equivocation was short lived.
About the time I was having second thoughts, The Star came out with an editorial asking, “Should City Manager Troy Schulte be replaced.”
In response to The Star, Justus was generally supportive, saying, “I happen to think Troy has been a strong city manager for Kansas City.”
Lucas, on the other hand, seemed to be open to the idea of replacing Schulte — which would require a majority vote of the 13-member City Council. He was quoted as saying…
“There have been several areas in which I have disagreed mightily with Mayor (Sly) James and by default, I have disagreed on those topics with what the city manager has been directed to do.”
Lucas — who teaches law classes at the University of Kansas — is a smart man, but that was a jaw-droppingly off base statement to make.
First, a city manager isn’t going to last long if he doesn’t keep the peace with the mayor, particularly a very strong mayor, like James has been.
Second, in my view Schulte has been the best city manager since “good government” advocates displaced the Pendergast machine in 1940 and installed L.P. (Perry) Cookingham in the city manager’s office. During his unmatched 19 years as city manager, the stage was set for development of Kansas City International Airport, and the city doubled in geographic size, from 60 to 130 square miles. (It’s now 319 square miles.)
Schulte has now been city manager for nearly a decade, and I don’t see why he couldn’t — and shouldn’t — go on another decade and surpass Cookingham. Under Schulte, city services have improved by leaps and bounds. Among other things, the 3-1-1 call-in and online complaint-and-request system used to be maddeningly bad, but it now runs flawlessly (at least in my experience).
In addition, Schulte is a friend of the fountains, which, as many of you know, are close to my heart. From the $800 million G.O. bond issue that voters approved in April 2017, Schulte allocated several hundred thousand dollars to renovate the Spirit of Freedom Fountain on Brush Creek and several hundred thousand to augment private funds to renovate Haff Circle Fountain at the Meyer Boulevard entrance to Swope Park.
Flashy projects or nuts and bolts, Schulte gets things done. Just a few weeks ago, for example, Ward Parkway from about 59th to Gregory was a demolition-derby area, with almost more potholes and gouges than flat surface. But the city repaved it just in time for the Rock the Parkway half marathon on April 13…I credit Schulte.
So, for Lucas to intimate that he would consider leading an effort to oust Schulte is out of bounds for me. What that sounds like is a guy who is getting ahead of himself and who might be prone to bad judgment on important matters. There’s absolutely no reason to consider removing Troy Schulte. We’re very fortunate to have him, and firing him would be a colossal mistake and could begin to undo a lot of progress the city has made the last 10 years on delivery of basic services.
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Over and above the Schulte issue, a story in today’s KC Star further affirmed my commitment to Justus. City Hall reporter Allison Kite wrote about the problem of the city’s underfunded pension plans. While it’s not an issue that gets a lot of attention from the public, it is extremely important because it could mean the city will have to significantly reduce services in the future in order to live up to its pension obligations.
The story said that 10 years ago, pensions accounted for 8.5 percent of spending from the city’s general fund, but it now absorbs more than 13 percent and is expected to rise to 15 percent by 2024.
The city has four pension funds, covering police officers, civilian police employees, firefighters and non-public-safety city employees.
What aroused my political genes was the fact that Lucas was “nowhere to be found” on the pension issue.
Kite had no trouble getting a quote from Justus, who said she would defer for now to a task force that is studying the issue. But Lucas, Kite wrote, “did not respond to a voicemail or text messages requesting comment.”
That was not only surprising but worrisome — worrisome because Lucas has the backing of the police and fire fighter unions.
His reluctance to respond to Kite is attributable, in my view, to not wanting to say anything to upset the police or fire fighters. In other words, let that sleeping dog lie.
Those pension funds are sorely underfunded for one reason: Those two groups of employees have scratched and clawed for good salaries and great benefits for decades — they have routinely worn down the City Council — and the city, consequently, has postponed the day of reckoning.
If Lucas should get elected mayor, you can bet he will further postpone that day…Justus just might do that, too, but because she is running without the support of the police and fire fighters, we the citizens just might have a better chance of seeing her take on the issue. Someday fairly soon, some mayor is going to have to deal with it.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
I thought Kite’s article was very good. I’ll restrict my comments to the matter of pensions.
Neither Justus nor Lucas came off looking good in the Star article. Neither provided a thoughtful position on what should be done to dampen the rising cost of pensions. That’s disappointing given they’ve had four years on the council to think about the matter.
And yes, as you and I have discussed in the past, there obviously is at least as much politics involved as actuarial science when it comes to addressing city pensions. But, personally, I didn’t get any great clarity regarding who I should vote for. I’m glad I’ve got several more weeks to make up my mind.
I thought Jolie’s response was very good because — and I didn’t put this in the post for space reasons — as she said in her quote to The Star, a task force headed by lawyer Herb Kohn is studying the pension issue but has not yet issued its report. It would be premature for her to take or express a position on the issue before that report has been delivered.
By the same token, Lucas could have used the task force as cover and taken the same, hands-off-for-now position. But it appears to me he just wanted to duck the issue altogether because it’s so sensitive to the police and fire fighters.
…And, by the way, the fire union president’s comment to Allison Kite that there wouldn’t be a pension problem if if weren’t for all the TIF’s that this and other councils have handed out is complete and utter balderdash. It’s the overly generous police and fire contracts over many decades that have put the city behind the eight ball.
As I said, I haven’t made up my mind who I am going to vote for. I may end up voting for Justus.
But, I think she and Mayor James suffer from the same affliction, i.e., when in doubt, their instinct is to form a committee (a.k.a. Task Force) and hope for the best. How many of the recommendations of the Citizens Task Force on Violence that James formed and Justus chaired have been implemented? Of the recommendations that have been implemented, how effective have they been in reducing violence? For that matter, how many Task Force reports from the past are simply gathering dust on bookshelves at City Hall?
In short, it’s inexcusable that Justus and Lucas don’t already have some well-developed thoughts that they were willing to provide to Kite. After all, they have served on the council for four years. If the (yet another) Task Force report changes their thinking on some aspects, that’s fine. But they owe it to the voters to tell us what their current thinking is so we can cast a more informed vote.
I disagree that Sly has been a strong mayor. One of the biggest issues he faced was the slaughter on the east side and he squandered his political capital on on a doctrinaire rant against firearms (See Chicago, Baltimore, DC and other high gun control cities to see the stupidity of that argument) instead of giving the black community answers they didn’t want to hear. That cowardice alone should give him an F as mayor.
Oh, how I wish you were 20 years younger and just as smart and talented as you are today. You would have made a GREAT mayor!!! I am not kidding.
That’s very kind of you to say, John, but as much as I fucked up and shirked work in my 36 years at The Star, I seriously doubt I would have been a good mayor. A council member, possibly, but not the hottest seat in KC!