If Quinton Lucas will heed Dave Helling’s suggestions — and will also do what he himself says needs to be done — then he could have a very good first term as mayor.
First, let’s go to Helling’s suggestions, which he laid out in an Op-Ed piece in Sunday’s paper.
Helling’s advice was that Lucas not be overly ambitious in his first four years. He pointed out that the last three successful mayors — Sly James, Kay Barnes and Emanuel Cleaver — all found their footing in their second terms, after having sloshed around a bit in their first terms.
Two of James’ biggest second-term achievements included convincing voters to approve an $800-million general-obligation bond issue and reviving the apparently lifeless new-airport issue.
In her second term, Barnes ignited a Downtown revival that all of us benefit from today. To measure her contribution, just imagine where we’d be without the Sprint Center and the Power & Light District.
Helling suggested that Lucas focus on two things: more quality housing and better neighborhoods. Among other things, Helling urged Lucas to focus on funding a $75 million housing trust fund and shifting development incentives away from downtown and into neighborhood housing projects.
Those are certainly winning ideas, and if they come to fruition, many more Kansas Citians will have a lot better quality of life than they do now.
In another story, Lucas showed that he’s got some good ideas of his own.
In the story, written by Allison Kite and Steve Vockrodt, Lucas said:
“I hope to spend a lot more time on the council floor — the 22nd floor. I have not seen the mayor down there in about maybe three years and 11 months.”
James was obviously a powerful personality and strong leader, but he also was a go-it-alone-type, who over the years managed to alienate most of the council, with the exception of Jolie Justus and Scott Wagner. He won Justus over by appointing her head of the Aviation Committee, and he made Scott Wagner mayor pro tem. Most of the others, he ignored.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had a mayor who really worked hard at cultivating good relations with individual council members and actively sought to work behind the scenes with them to move toward consensus on big issues. It’s a lot easier to stay up in the big office on the 29th floor and enjoy the view rather than get on the elevator and schlep down to the 22nd floor hat in hand. But if a mayor wants to enjoy good relations and consistently reach his or her goals, he or she needs to regularly make that descent and treat the other council members as co-equals — which they are when it comes down to voting in the 26th-floor council chamber.
I hope Lucas follows through on his pledge to solicit council members’ advice and support. It’s vital that he stay humble and remind himself every day that he’s a working politician and not a king…For the inhabitant of the 29th-floor aery, the path down to 22 is the real road to success.
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I often wonder if the editors at The Star ever get together and discuss story direction and length. It appears not.
Way too often I see stories that drag on and on and on. Extremely long stories, unless they are compelling and judiciously selected — tend to discourage readers.
The two selections on Sunday’s front page were perfect examples of stories that reduce readers to a soporific state.
The lead story — about U.S. Department of Agriculture employees not eager to move to Kansas City because their jobs are being moved out of D.C. — jumped from A1 to A8 to A9 and mercifully came to an end on A10. Twenty-one hundred and twenty words bleeding out over four pages like an oil spill.
The second story — about the importance of racial sensitivity training for teachers — was even longer, 2,545 words on the front page and then jumping to A2.
Once during my 36-year-plus career at The Star the editors decided to clamp down on story lengths and arbitrarily set a story-length limit of 30 inches — about 850 words. (For illustrative purposes, the blog post you’re reading now is about 750 words.)
The 30-inch limit was a mistake because some stories simply can’t be told in 30 inches. Fortunately, that dictate didn’t last very long.
But today The Star routinely runs stories too long. It’s a sorry spectacle to see the dump truck back up and disgorge thousands of unnecessary words on the heads of the remaining print subscribers.
Copious copy
In spite of Helling’s advice not to be overly ambitious, Lucas has very ambitious goals. The day after his election, Lucas said number one on his priorities list is creating a safer city. He said “I want to see us get below 100 homicides for like two years in a row, not just one.”
Homicides have only been below 100 once this decade. We’re already at 62 this year, and we’re not even half-way through. Given those horrendous numbers, I won’t criticize Lucas for ignoring Helling’s advice.
Of course.
One of the greatest flaws of Sly James time as mayor was his gutless approach to the slaughter of young black men being shot by other young black men (not to mention the collateral damage). Instead of addressing the culture of violence, in one of the great acts of political cowardice, he flatulently touted the latest gun control nonsense that has proven to be a failure in every major city that’s tried it.
If access to guns was the relevant variable, the lily white suburbs of Johnson County would be awash in violence, and they’re not. Indeed, gun control only restricts honest citizens, not criminals and if there is a place where honest citizens need access to firearms it is in the crime ridden neighborhoods of our inner cities.
Hopefully Lucas will have the integrity, lacking in Sly James, to honestly address the problem so the number falls far, far below 100.
When you say “flatulently,” do you mean he blew it out his ass?
Same effect, same result.
touted or tooted?
Very good, Gayle…
I disagree that shifting incentives away from downtown is a successful strategy (although I unfortunately think Lucas will be going that route) and here’s why…
Without an attractive downtown the neighborhoods suffer as well. When downtown was being gradually decimated from the 1960’s to 2000’s our neighborhoods declined as well. For instance, nearly half as many people live in Midtown today as in the 1930’s.
With downtown rebounding, there more investment in our neighborhoods. Right now, there are 400+ apartments on Troost under construction (Marcato at 28th has 182 units and another at 25th has 340 units). in addition, there are over 100 million dollars of investment slated for Linwood, Armour, and 31st. I don’t think it downtown was still a wasteland that more neighborhood-centric projects like this would happen.
The success of the core radiates to the neighborhoods, just like when the core is rotten it radiates to the neighborhoods. So I’m all for continuing to use incentives to strengthen the core as it’s strength or weakness is felt in other parts of the city as well.
Thanks or posting, I enjoy your blog.
Michael