Streetcar Issue Highlights Our Leadership Vacuum
Yes, it certainly would be a nice feature in Downtown Kansas City. So would personal unicorns for everyone working there.
In a rare brush with fiscal sanity, the Kansas City Council has recognized that the proposed $100 million Downtown streetcar system needs a broader funding base than the targeted zone that runs from the River Market to Crown Center. That’s 2½ miles long—and all of four blocks wide. Those inside that flagpole-shaped district would see their property taxes go up, along with an additional one-cent sales tax levy. Full disclosure: I’m one of those property owners, by a matter of about 5 yards, so I have a financial stake in the outcome of this initiative. Color me biased.
But even if I could find a lever big enough to heave Ingram’s offices across the street to the west, I wouldn’t like this plan. Yes, a streetcar on rails would be a nice amenity—they make getting around a downtown much easier in markets like Denver and Portland. I have no doubt that one would benefit Kansas City too.
That isn’t the point. This is a simple matter of cost-benefit analysis, and I’m not entirely sure folks at City Hall have a proper understanding of what that entails. This system will cost us better than $7,200 per linear foot. You can subsidize a lot of other public transportation with scratch like that.
The real disconnect, I believe, is the notion that if you build it, they will ride. This effort to compel people to use mass transit has been tried in city after city, and almost nowhere has such a system been able to so much as break even. Kansas City’s reputation for having more interstate lane miles than any other metropolitan area is well-deserved: we like our cars.
Having this system in place isn’t going to change that dynamic. And even if Downtown were able meet its long-held goal of doubling the population inside the Loop, there still wouldn’t be enough density to make this plan realistic nor to cash-flow it.
Still not enough argument for you? Then consider this: Looming in Kansas City’s future is the bill coming due for that federal consent decree with the EPA over our storm-water system. Estimated at $2.5 billion as recently as 2008, that figure, per very credible industry professionals, is considerably higher now. The feds have graciously agreed to a 25-year plan for making those fixes.
Which breaks down to $100 million a year—every year—for the next quarter-century, even using the low-end estimates. With the same kind of economics the streetcar proponents employ, you could build a rail line all the way to Harrisonville. If we’re having trouble ponying up the money for the short starter line, how in the world do we expect to keep the city solvent and suitable for business growth with 25 more swords, all just as big and sharp, hanging over our heads?
Again, I think it would be great to have rail Downtown. The Power & Light District is a wonderful asset—I go to games and concerts at Sprint Center and patronize the establishments nearby. But there’s no question that this city failed badly to deliver on the economic promise of the district—to the tune of $14 million a year in subsidies to keep it going. We simply don’t have the fiscal flexibility to build yet another cash-eating monster into our budget.
What’s needed right now is logic among leadership—a nifty segue into this month’s edition of Ingram’s and our annual 40 Under Forty recognition. We make these selections each year to spotlight young executive talent that has demonstrated proven leadership within their own organizations and trades.
Because if ever there were a need for serious leadership on the infrastructure issues confronting KC, this is the time. I want someone to look me in the eye and tell me what I can expect to be paying in taxes as a cost of doing business when all the bells and whistles—and infrastructure needs—have been factored in. Right now, too many business owners are in an information vacuum. Even if they think the economics of the streetcar line make sense, even if they’re willing to gin up the money every year to subsidize the line, the other tax shoe hasn’t dropped for them.
Another installment in this issue, 50 Missourians You Should Know, notes that business leaders from around the state frequently cite our Show-Me motto as a defining characteristic of people from Missouri. That’s all I’m asking here: Show me how this is going to work, how it’s going to benefit the broader business community, and how it’s going to help me grow my own business, especially being located here inside the choo-choo tax zone.
Absent that kind of response from people in leadership roles, I’m more inclined to climb on board with Blue Cross and Blue Shield and its biking club, rather than take a comfy ride on the Fat Train. 
Joe Sweeney
Editor-In-Chief & Publisher
JSweeney@IngramsOnLine.com