Blogs

BY DAVID MARTIN

A company that failed to win a multi-million-dollar contract is suing the City of Kansas City,
Missouri, and a rival.

Perfect Output, a minority-owned company based in Overland Park, says the city acted in bad faith when the council rejected its proposal to manage the city’s document flow. In a suit filed last month, Perfect Output says the city behaved in “an arbitrary and capricious manner,” costing the company $13.5 million.

The suit also faults a competitor, Ricoh Business Corporation. Perfect Output claims that Ricoh caused the city to deny approval of the contract by distributing false information and causing “inflammatory and racially motivated news coverage.”

In 2005, City Hall asked for bids on a job to supply photocopiers and handle other document needs. A selection committee ultimately recommended Perfect Output, and negotiations on a contract began.

Accusations of favoritism and interference tainted the process, however. City Auditor Gary White would later determine that Ricoh and Perfect Output had helped draft the requests for proposals and had personal contact with members of the selection committee. A councilman, Terry Riley, also intervened on Perfect Output’s behalf, at one point summoning a city staffer to his office to discuss a potential subcontractor’s minority status. Reporters started asking questions about Perfect Output’s bid proposal, which was significantly higher than Ricoh’s. (City officials said Perfect Output was promising do more if it got the job.)

Amid the controversy, the city’s Finance and Audit Committee voted in 2007 against entering into a contract with Perfect Output. The process is back at square one after the city decided to reject all the proposals.

White’s audit faulted the city for having inadequate procedures for awarding contracts and for doing a poor job of following the guidelines it has. Casting a wide net of blame, Perfect Output’s suit claims the audit was “erroneous” for holding the city to a process that hadn’t been adopted.

“How do you hold someone to a standard that isn’t in place,” Perfect Output’s attorney, Janet Blauvelt, tells me. “It’s a sham.”

The city denies wrongdoing. In an answer to the suit, the city’s attorneys say the council did not abuse its discretion by deciding not to award the deal to Perfect Output. No contract was breached because no contract existed, the city says.

A Ricoh official said the company had no comment.

By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI

Architecture firm BNIM, which includes green-building visionary Bob Berkebile, took home a prize this week from The History Channel as part of the network's “City of the Future” challenge. The national competition asked architects to create visionary models for what urban centers could look like in the year 2108.

BNIM, on a design team along with Atlanta-based Praxis, revamped Georgia’s capital city. The group had seven days to come up with a concept, which they presented to a jury of experts.

Their vision was decidedly green. In their submission, the BNIM team turned the Atlanta metropolis, with1,900 miles of wastewater and sewer pipes, into “The City in the Trees,” where swaths of forests and wetlands cleanse and store the city’s water — not to mention purify the air and beautify the region.

It was enough to earn the four-firm team a $10,000 prize as one of three regional finalists. After weeks of online voting, the team took home the national award last night.

But it’s all just an exercise in utopian thinking, right? Maybe not. Like Atlanta, Kansas City has a massive stormwater and sewage problem and BNIM is working with municipal officials to use green ideas to deal with the billion-dollar conundrum. Sure, it's the stuff of the next century, but even environmental misers couldn't argue with Kansas City looking a like more like the images the team dreamed up.

By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI

Time is running out to get a controversial anti-affirmative-action measure on the Missouri ballot
this November. So, in a rush to get signatures before May 4, organizers for the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative are recruiting out-of-state volunteers with an all-expenses-paid vacation to the Show-Me State.

The Missouri Civil Rights Initiative aims to amend the state constitution to ban “any preferential treatment to any individual or group based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education and public contracting.” In plain English: it eliminates affirmative action programs.

But to get the measure to a public vote, the MoCRI needs nearly 140,000 signatures by this Sunday – and they’re looking for outside help.

Last week, hate-watch activists with the Center for New Community in Chicago got a copy of an e-mail sent to members of the San Diego Minutemen. One of the most combative and controversial anti-illegal immigration groups in the country, members of the SDMM have been accused of vandalizing migrant camps and verbally and physically abusing both opponents and day laborers.

They may be working the streets in Missouri this week, though. On April 13, the SDMM director Jeff Schwilk – who did not return a call from The Pitch – sent out an e-mail calling for 50 or so volunteers to head to Missouri on an all-expense-paid trip. It was a repost of an e-mail sent to him by Stuart Hurlbert, a biology professor at San Diego State University and director of Californians for Population Stabilization. Here's an excerpt:

"Dear MM friends and allies:

They say spring is beautiful in Missouri. Bet most of you have never seen it. Bet some of you might be up for a 1-2 week paid “vacation” there. Now! Even though we have many Minutemen ops locally to choose from these days.

Ward Connerly, President of the American Civil Rights Coaltion, and Tim Asher, Executive Director of the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, need some help. The objective is to eliminate use of racial and gender preferences by state and local governments in Missouri, via a ballot initiative.

If work and family obligations are not an obstacle, please consider this request seriously. It would be a big contribution to an important cause. You get to see springtime in Missouri, and you get to interact with and make friends with some more can-do “salt of the earth” folks you may never otherwise meet!

The e-mail asked interested Minutemen to respond to Hurlbert. He told The Pitch yesterday that he got responses from “several” San Diego-area Minutemen and put the potential volunteers in touch with Tim Asher, director of MoCRI.

Asher says that the initiative has been looking for volunteers, and it’s standard operating procedure to offer to compensate signature-gatherers their work. But he says efforts to link MoCRI to immigration activists are ridiculous. “You know how those things go; you send an e-mail to somebody that says ‘We need help, please pass this around’ and that can go to just about anybody, anywhere. As far as any specific groups being sent a request for assistance, I do not know anything about that happening.”

But if you see any petitioners lingering at construction sites and surveying the skin tone of the workforce, they may be taking a few moments for “vacation” sight-seeing: Minuteman-style.

BY DAVID MARTIN

The Cordish Co. claims that the Kansas City Power & Light District is an $850 million project.

That number appears to be off by about a half-billion dollars.

Scrounging around my desk for a lost CD, I came across a glossy brochure the Downtown Council put out a couple of years ago. The brochure illustrates in impressive detail all the investments that have been made between the Missouri River and 31st Street.

The Power & Light District is described in the brochure as a $350 million project. But Cordish claims in its materials that the entertainment district is worth $850 million, a figure the media have repeated.

Cordish's Jon Stephens says the larger number is correct. “The aggregate development cost of the Power & Light District footprint is estimated to be $850,” he tells me in an e-mail.

But the Downtown Council was closer to the truth.

The Power & Light District sits in a tax-increment financing (TIF) area. When a TIF is in place, developers are eligible to receive some of the new taxes their projects generate.

A city-funded agency called the Economic Development Corporation administers TIF. According to the most recent report available on the agency’s Web site, the entertainment district’s cost is estimated to be $322 million. (City-issued bonds are paying $269 million of the tab.)

Another $50 million is assigned to a condominium-and-hotel project that Cordish has yet to formally submit to the city. But even if that piece comes to life, the Power & Light District is still a few hundred million short of its list price.

Cordish, it appears, is counting development within the TIF area but outside the entertainment district. The new H&R Block headquarters, for instance, cost $308 million.

Asked for clarification, Stephens says the $850 million figure is an “inclusive number,” whatever that means.

P.S. If anyone has seen a jewel-case-less copy of Dwight Yoakam singing the songs of Buck Owens, let me know.

By NADIA PFLAUM

A Lee's Summit mom named Maria Sullivan filed a federal lawsuit today in Kansas City against the makers of baby products containing bisphenol A. The lawsuit, which also lists four other plaintiffs, seeks class-action status for anybody "who purchased plastic baby bottles, bottle liners, and cups containing the synthetic chemical."

Click here to read how Missouri biologist Frederick vom Saal and his team exposed the dangers of bisphenol A — and earned the wrath of the plastic industry.

And click here to read the lawsuit.

By PETER RUGG

The Pitch — along with, apparently, every other media outlet in town — received an e-mail Tuesday for a free family portrait by photographer Michael T. Van De Carr at Temptations, a strip club downtown on Grand.

So this afternoon, I was joined by the Ginger Man and a resident women’s objectification expert – we’ll call her Cassandra — to scout the downtown gentlemen’s club. By the appointed time of 12:30, there were only a few, lightly perspiring men in dark suits waving placards with random slogans — and no one had taken the bait for free photos. There was one tall man with a fat digital camera, though unfortunately, he carried no Olan Mills-style backdrops. Disheartened, we got a table at Willie’s, where we could lean out the long, open windows and wait for something to happen.

Not much did, except for a circle jerk involving the local TV-news crews that did show up and a waxing crowd of the anti-strip-club crowd (captured in the photo below).

But no one except The Pitch, with this blog item, actually publicized the event beforehand. And even we were only a few hours ahead. So it seems reasonable that few Temptations regulars even knew about the sting.

By 1 p.m., the crowd started to disperse. We’d expected them to go at least an hour or at least wait for someone to come to the club. Cassandra and I jumped through the window and ran toward the crowd, holding hands so that they might assume we were a couple.

“I don’t want to be respected!” she said. “And how about the First Amendment?”

“I love watching tities! Let’s go watch some tits!” I said.

Unfortunately, they didn’t tell us about the error of our ways or offer to take a picture. Maybe it’s because we didn’t have a child with us. One man did tell us to have a blessed day, though.

We did go into Temptations to see if they’d barricaded themselves in, like the losing side in the last days of a war waiting out the artillery shells. But aside from one Amazonian bartender, a waitress and a security guard near the stage, the place was empty. There wasn’t even a dancer performing. Next door at the Cigar Box, the hostess told us the Christians had been taking photos of people’s parked cars and shots of the drivers getting out when they could. Perhaps they’ll be circulated later on a Web site, to shame them for parking within 30 feet of a place that, later today, will feature topless women.

“It’s all right though,” the hostess told us. “We just put on the music really loud and blasted them out. They left pretty soon.”

By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI

Photos by Michael Boles

For the past eight months, a group of urban cyclists have been sprucing up a long-forgotten storefront at 31st and Troost. It's the building with “Niece’s Bags” still painted on the glass-fronted entryway. They’ve been pulling up old floorboards, building a storage shed and collecting donations and tools since last summer. This weekend, it will reopen in the tiny shop space as the 816 Bike Collective.

Joining hundreds of bike collectives around the globe, the aim of the 816 is to rescue and repair old or abandoned bicycles and give them away in exchange for money, volunteer manpower or other friendly barter. If other cities are any guide, with a dedicated, non-commercial space to do repairs, host events and distribute bikes, more folks will start pedaling -- and the community of earth-friendly commuters grows.

Check it out when it opens Saturday from 3 to 7 p.m.

By ERIC BARTON

Last week, Pitch contributor Chris Rasmussen wrote this item for the Bugs & Cranks blog that suggested ways to teach his child about the lifetime of misery she'll face if she becomes a Royals fan. Now Chris is getting parenting tips via a video response from broadcaster Trev Alberts:

Chris then posted this response to the response, in which he suggests that perhaps he should "should focus entirely on my daughter’s positive attributes rather than creating a soulless, beaten fan of a small market team."

By JEN CHEN

Deadlines, social obligations and lack of TiVo sometimes interfere with my TV-watching ways, and sadly, I’ve missed the last two episodes of The Real Housewives of New York City. But really, in the grand scheme of things, I’m pretty sure that haven’t missed all that much. My favorite character – former Fort Scott resident Alex McCord – is still annoying and pretentious (and still doesn’t own a comb). Gawker has an excellent write-up of last night’s episode, as does the blog Scented Glossy Magazines. And Gawker also drops the scary suggestion that naked Alex pictures might possibly be floating around out there.

Oh, and “gorgons” is my new favorite word.

By CRYSTAL K. WIEBE

In the wake of his fourth restaurant’s debut, changes are afoot at the eatery that started Rob Dalzell’s little downtown empire.

As of this week, 1924 Main will serve lunch only on Fridays. “It has kind of turned into that whole special occasion place,” Dalzell says, noting that Friday has long drawn the busiest lunch rush. “People always thought of it as an end of the week lunch spot,” he says.

The overworked chef, who also operates Souperman, Pizza Bella and the recently opened Chefburger, hasn’t exactly cut back on 1924 Main’s business hours, however. The upscale establishment with the prix fixe menu has been offering Sunday brunch since Easter weekend. And now, 1924 Main will offer discounted dinners on Sunday and Monday nights, when many of its competitors are closed. “It kind of gives all of the service industry folks somewhere to go,” Dalzell says.

By Justin Kendall

Erotic City has filed a federal lawsuit that asks a judge to overturn a Jackson County ordinance outlawing sex in the video booths of adult bookstores in Blue Summit.

Click here to read the lawsuit.

And stay tuned for a cover story in tomorrow’s Pitch on Jesse Franklin Herd III, who admitted to prostituting his stepdaughter at Erotic City, a case that led to the county’s ordinance.

By DAVID MARTIN

Carva White, an ex-convict who has relied on candy-hawking children to support his itinerant ministry, is being sued by two landlords and the city of Kansas City, Missouri.

The Pitch documented White’s activities in a 2006 feature story about the churches and charities that solicit donations by pestering motorists at stoplights. The story described how White’s sons and other children waded into busy intersections, trading candy for donations to their church. While White is indeed a preacher, he’s also a convicted felon. In 2001, he reported to the federal pen in Leavenworth after pleading guilty to a count of bank fraud.

White maintained his innocence in an interview. But court records suggest that his life is one cheat after another.

In January 2007, a landlord evicted White from a house off Swope Parkway after failing to receive $2,350 in rent. In May, a different landlord took White to court and won a $900 judgment.

In December, the city sued White for $970 for unpaid water services. Records indicate that the city has been unable to serve White with a summons to appear in court.

I went looking for White at a storefront church on Troost, where he was preaching when he and I last spoke in 2006. But when the service ended on Sunday, White did not emerge from the building in one of his magnificent suits.

By ERIC BARTON

Prosecutors in Lawrence today charged two men with the slaying of Anthony Vital, the rapper who was the subject of this cover story in The Pitch last June.

Major C. Edwards Jr. and Durell A. Jones face charges of first-degree murder. Vital's widow told The Pitch last summer that Edwards had picked up Vital the night he was killed.

This press release sent out by prosecutors doesn't specify why the charges came down today, and Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson wasn't immediately available for comment.

BY CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI

The Southern Poverty Law Center released its second list of anti-immigrant "nativists” today, and Kris Kobach, a UMKC law professor and chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, made the top 20. Calling the profile a "hit piece," Kobach tells The Pitch that the SPLC report is riddled with errors.

Based in Alabama, the SPLC identifies and tracks the activities of hate groups. In recent years, the nonprofit has highlighted the growth of anti-illegal-immigration organizations such as the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. But, according to the SPLC, it’s not just the Minutemen who are having a negative influence on immigration policy.

In their quarterly magazine, Intelligence Report, released this week, the SPLC profiles 20 activists it brands “new-wave Nativists.”

“The net effect of their collective effort,” the magazine says in its introduction, “has contributed mightily toward darkening the skies of an already harsh political and social climate, with the tone of the national debate on immigration growing nastier by the day and with Latinos increasingly being subject to discrimination and violence.”

According to the SPLC, one of the men who has been a leader in that collective effort is Kobach.

In their short “snapshot,” the SPLC describes Kobach as a far-right Christian fundamentalist who’s been accused of inflating his law credentials and taking money from racists in his 2004 run for Congress. He’s also the “the man behind many of the deeply flawed anti-illegal-immigrant laws passed recently,” the SPLC says, including ordinances in Pennsylvania and Missouri that punish employers and landlords for hiring or housing undocumented immigrants. (The bio also cites a Pitch profile of the immigration professor in January 2007.)

Kobach says SPLC has it all wrong. In fact, federal judges in the past three months have upheld municipal and state laws that the UMKC professor helped craft. In January, a federal judge ruled that the Kobach-assisted, anti-illegal-immigration ordinance in Valley Park, Missouri, did not violate federal law. Last month, an Arizona judge upheld a law that requires employers to check the status of its workers or risk losing their business license if they're caught with undocumented employees. Kobach also helped Arizona lawmakers author that bill.

The chair of the Kansas GOP also takes issue with SPLC's nativist label, calling it a "gross distortion" of his views.

"I think that one of the greatest tragedies in our system is that legal immigrants have to wait so long to be reunited with their family members," he tells The Pitch in an e-mail. "I want legal immigration to be more efficient, so fewer people are tempted to break the law. I do not agree with nativists — who are opposed to all immigration, legal and illegal — at all. But, of course, that doesn't fit the SPLC's agenda, so they leave out the truth."

By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI

Now you see it, now you don't. This time last week, Missouri officials approved the construction of a new, coal-burning power plant. Today, the electric company put those plans on hold.

Last fall, Springfield-based Associated Electric Cooperative Inc., announced its intent to build a new facility in Norborne, a small town 60

AEC’s New Madrid coal plant  

Nancy Southworth, a company spokeswoman, tells The Pitch thatAECI officials decided to shelf the coal plant at a board meeting last Friday. "They looked at all the data about the project and the costs had continued to climb," she says. According to a news release this afternoon, the estimated price tag had grown to more than $2 billion.

Southworth says AECI has already committed to buying electricity from wind farms in northwest Missouri and will unveil a new energy efficiency program later this week. AECI is also investigating the use of nuclear power, she added.

Norborne won't be getting AEC smokestacks anytime soon.

The Sierra Club, which had spent months in "frank discussions" with AECI, praised the utility. "With today's announcement that they are abandoning their coal plans in favor of clean energy, Associated Electric is taking a giant step forward in our collective fight to stop global warming," Melissa Hope, an organizer with the Missouri Sierra Club, said in a news release.

AECI isn't alone. Including the Norborne proposal, 63 coal-burning plants across the country have been canceled or postponed in recent months. Meanwhile, Kansas legislators are still trying to ram through plans for a massive coal complex in Holcomb. Maybe this forward-looking utility from the Show-Me state can help lead the way.