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 DAVID MARTIN

U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s hairline has made a dramatic comeback.

The 62-year-old politician and minister is rocking a full head of hair in television spots that encourage residents to build rain gardens. Robust growth covers a forehead that had started to become exposed when Cleaver was mayor of Kansas City in the 1990s.

The congressman, it seems, got his new hair in surgery, not a wig shop. Cleaver spokesman Danny Rotert says the congressman is not wearing a hairpiece. Asked if Cleaver had undergone hair transplantation, Rotert says: “He may have.”

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 DAVID MARTIN

The developer of the Power & Light District is threatening to sue if city officials continue to support a bill that would allow Westport and other business districts to sponsor festivals where alcohol can be carried freely.

As I wrote in February, the Cordish Co. opposes a piece of state legislation authorizing the Westport Business League and other promotional associations to apply for special festival permits. These 48-hour permits would make legal for visitors to imbibe in common areas tote drinks from one establishment to the next.

The bill is a more restrictive version of a law passed on behalf of the Power & Light District before it opened. In an effort to protect a competitive advantage, Cordish has come out against the new proposal. Cordish spokesman Jon Stephens suggests that that the legislation would create “multiple ‘Bourbon Streets’ throughout the neighborhoods of Kansas City.” Stephens’ prepared statement continues: “Festival license districts belong in downtowns, not in neighborhoods.”

Cordish reps lobbied against the bill in Jefferson City and now they’ve brought out the lawyers. Earlier this month, Cordish attorney David Frantze wrote this four-page letter to City Attorney Galen Beaufort outlining the company’s objections and accusing the city of acting in bad faith. The city, meanwhile, says it is under no obligation to protect the uniqueness of Power & Light District’s liquor license.

It’s not often that developers clash so openly with city officials. Perhaps the most amusing aspect of the disagreement is the passage in Frantze’s letter stating Cordish’s belief that the current proposal is “motivated solely by individual political contributions to individual political Council persons.”

It’s a somewhat strange position to take, given Cordish officials’ willingness to throw around the campaign cash.

One of the main champions of the Power & Light District, former Mayor Kay Barnes, who is now running for Congress, has received $6,000 in donations from Cordish officials.

Frantze has also given to Barnes. Campaign-finance records indicate that he gave $4,600 to Barnes in 2007, with half of the money arriving on December 31, the same day the former mayor collected all the Cordish money.

Stephens declined to comment on the contributions. Frantze, a development lawyer who’s done a lot of business at City Hall, did not immediately respond to an e-mail inquiring about the possible “motivations” behind his giving to Barnes and other candidates.

By DAVID MARTIN

Mayor Mark Funkhouser and the Kansas City, Missouri, Council recently accepted previously approved pay raises. Funkhouser defended the move, saying he took a “substantial pay cut” to serve as mayor.

It’s not the first time that we’ve heard this. Gloria Squitiro, Funkhouser’s wife, complained last year about the first family making financial sacrifices.

But as critics have pointed out, Funkhouser actually takes home more city cabbage when his pension is added to what he makes as mayor. Funkhouser cleared $146,791 in salary and pension in 2007, bettering the $140,928 he made in his last year as city auditor. As mayor, he also receives $600 a month to keep his crappy Corolla on the road.

Confronted with these not insignificant details, the mayor has pointed to the teaching positions he once held. He told The Kansas City Star this week that he made as much as $5,000 per class per semester.

I contacted the universities where Funkhouser taught in an effort to get a grip on his teacher pay. Turns out, he’s not fooling.

Funkhouser made $15,000 in 2005 and $15,500 in 2006 lecturing at the University of Kansas, according to the office of Human Resources & Equal Opportunity. Funkhouser also taught at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he made $1,000 a month, according to a school spokeswoman.

So, Funk’s W-2 pile is a little less robust than it was before he started wearing orange ties all the time — although he’s hinting that he may try to teach while in office, what with all the free time he has after solving the city’s problems in a mere 12 months.

Still, the mayor and the light of his life would be smart to put socks in the talk of pay cuts. His preraise, prepension salary still exceeds the $40,920 median household income in the city he governs by $68,565.

Besides, once he leaves office, Funkhouser will not only have raised the price of his lecturing and speaking engagements; he will have created an entirely new pension stream. A substantial pay cut’s going to look like a substantial raise in 2011 or 2015.

By DAVID MARTIN

Voters in Kansas City, Missouri, chose a new mayor more than a year ago. Yet a billboard promoting a candidate who failed to make it out of the primary looms over midtown.

Nearly 14 months since her name appeared on a ballot, Janice Ellis continues to ask for support from a billboard near 36th and Main. Ellis, it turns out, is not forgetful or a sore loser. She says she's talked to the the billboard owner about papering over her face and her campaign slogan of "No excuses. Just results."

But, as Ellis tells it, Phil Goode, the president of Emerald House Convention Center, to which the billboard is attached, is unwilling to send someone up the ladder until a new client wants to rent the space.

“He said, ‘It’s my billboard, my property.'” Ellis says.

Before I spoke with Ellis, I called a phone number on a second billboard affixed to Emerald House. "Yeah, what's your point?" a man barked when the Ellis ad was described. A follow-up question met with a similar response: "Maybe you ought to call her [Ellis] and talk to her about it."

I assume the charmer was Goode, but the man on the phone refused to give his name, calling it "not important."

BY DAVID MARTIN

The mystery man behind the ad campaign against the bus tax chooses to remain in the shadows.

A lawyer named Philip N. Krause incorporated American Democracy Alliance, the outfit that reportedly gave $75,000 to the last-minute campaign against the sales tax that benefits the bus system. The tax is up for a renewal on Tuesday.

Krause has an office on the fifth floor of the handsome New England Building in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. The door was open to Krause's office, so I walked in and stood by a reception desk.

Seconds after I arrived, a casually dressed man in his late 40s or 50s walked through the door. He said he was Philip Krause, but he declined to answer any questions about himself or the alliance. And with a friendly pat on the shoulder, I was on my way.

American Democracy Alliance made the one and apparently only contribution to Kansas Citians Against Taxpayer Abuse, a heretofore unheard from group that began a television ad campaign this week. Advocates for the bus tax are complaining about all the anonymity, as well the content of the group's message. The television spot mentions that tax-increment financing captures some of the money raised by the 0.375 percent sales tax for the buses. The ad says the money is being diverted to "wealthy developers and City Hall pork-barrel projects."

City Councilman Ed Ford said on Thursday that if TIF is the opponents' beef, they should try to change the state law that created it.

Records indicate that Krause incorporated American Democracy Alliance last summer. He filed paperwork on behalf of a group called Missouri Limited Government Alliance at the same time.

By DAVID MARTIN

Lance Feyh, a writer and Royals fan who lives in Rolla, has come up with Foxworthyesque
list of signs indicating terminal allegiance to the hometown team.

The son of Kansans, Feyh tells us that he follows the Royals via satellite radio. As if it's not hard enough rooting for a team that hasn't won 90 games since a current player's dad was on the roster, the Ozarks is Cardinals country, where Royals games are seldom seen on cable.

By DAVID MARTIN

Kansas City Star business writer Rick Alm has spent too much time with tourism officials who try to make cities feel bad about their convention facilities. In his column this week, Alm wrote that the Sprint Center was “smallish.”

Yep. Sorry, folks. You spent $276 million on a spiffy new arena. And it’s “smallish.”

Alm’s column began with a new study suggesting that the convention-venue industry may be overbuilt. This is not news. For years, cities have improved and expanded convention centers in order keep the podiatrists and church groups coming to town. It’s an arms race that taxpayers lose because convention business has not kept up with the construction boom.

After warning that Kansas City had insufficient hotel rooms to land conventions, Alm made the “smallish” crack about the Sprint Center.

But here are the seating capacities of Kansas City’s pipsqueak of an arena and its competitors. (Capacities listed are for basketball games.)

Ford Center, Oklahoma City: 19,599

Pepsi Center, Denver: 19,309

American Airlines Center, Dallas: 19,200

Sprint Center: 18,795

Wells Fargo Arena, Des Moines: 16,110

OK. Sprint Center’s on the small side. But it seems implausible that Kansas City is going to lose conventions left and right because Dallas can squeeze 405 more fannies into its arena.

So, Kansas City, you’ve recently expanded and remodeled your convention center. You have casinos, delicious barbecue and a new downtown entertainment district. Say, how big is your arena?

It holds 18,795 for basketball.

Click.

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 DAVID MARTIN

Kansas City, Missouri, Councilman Terry Riley called me this morning to complain about this column. Riley accused me of misquoting him when I wrote that he said: “All you guys do is fuck me every time we interview.”

Riley said this morning that he used the verb “screw.”

I told the councilman that I quoted him accurately. “No, you did not quote me accurately,” he responded.

But a recording of the conversation exists, and it supports what appears in print.

A digital recording device was running when I approached Riley on February 7 and asked for an interview. The device was in my coat pocket, which explains (a) the less-than-stellar quality of the recording and (b) Riley’s apparent willingness to drop an f-bomb and later deny it. Here's the conversation:

By DAVID MARTIN

Kansas City sports fans are lucky to have a writer as talented as Joe Posnanski covering their teams. If you don’t know what I mean, spend a few weeks subsisting on the poop Woody Paige leaves on Denver doorsteps every other day.

Yeah, it’s nice to be greeted by Joe’s big ol’ round head after getting through the Metro section. But his annual “The Royals are going to win the division!” column is a source of dread.

The Royals have been so bad for so long that even sunny Joe can’t write the column with a straight face. In this year’s edition of Hope Springs Eternal, Posnanski cops to thoughts of suspending the tradition. But the smell of freshly cut Arizona sod and an e-mail poll trumped reason. So at spring training, the Poz huddled with some unnamed baseball men, and from under their Panama hats out came these turds:

Hillman got tossed in Japan  

“To me, the difference is [new manager] Trey Hillman. Take a look and see what Eric Wedge did as manager in Cleveland.”

Number of years it took Wedge’s Indians to win the division: Five.

“Team environment is everything.”

Things actually more important than “environment”: Hitting, pitching, defense, base running, powder-blue uniforms, bat day.

“Brian Bannister is going to win 15 games.”

Bannister is a fun player. Not overly talented, he tends to get outs with his wits more than anything. But as much as they might be rooting for him, few educated people expect Bannister to match his 2007 performance (12-9, 3.87 ERA).

To evaluate pitchers, nerds have to come like a stat called batting average on balls hit in play. The research indicates that BABIP is largely a function of defense and the whims of the baseball gods. A typical BABIP is .290. Bannister’s was .264 last year, suggesting that Royals defenders’ mitts intercepted an unusually high number of hard-hit balls. Watch, those line drives will land for doubles in 2008.

“Brett Tomko is going to win 15 games.”

If a scout really said this, he should be fired immediately for incompetence. Brett Tomko sucks. The man hasn’t won 15 games, like, ever. Yet, according to Posnanski’s column, some sunburned, cigar-chomping fool actually thinks Tomko, at age 34, is going to win as many games as Johan Santana and Daisuke Matsuzaka did last year. Instead of writing down this quote, Joe should have punched the scout in the face.

Yes, David, you’re out  

“You know, David DeJesus, last year was really his first full season.”

Year DeJesus made his major-league debut: 2003.

Year DeJesus first started the majority of Royals games in CF: 2004

Year DeJesus first logged at least 450 at-bats: 2005.

“It was really Mark Teahen’s first full season.”

Teahen’s career at-bats: 1,384.

2006 NL MVP Ryan Howard’s career at-bats: 1,461.

“I think with David DeJesus, Mark Grudzielanek, Mark Teahen, Alex Gordon, Billy Butler, Joe Guillen and all the others, we’re going to score a lot of runs.”

In 2007, only Guillen was better offensively than the average player at his position. Gordon and Butler seem poised for great things. But when DeJesus, Teahen and a 37-year-old second baseman comprise the core of your attack and you play in the American League, the words “a lot” and “runs” do not belong in the same sentence.

BY DAVID MARTIN

The Kansas City, Clay County & St. Joseph Railway collected fares from more than 2 million passengers in 1923. Known as the “maroon line” for the colors of its cars, it stretched 78 miles and touched four counties.

Today, of course, Amtrak is the only passenger rail option in these parts. But a century ago, five independently owned and operated companies connected Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, to suburban areas.

Ed Conrad, a retired technical writer who lives in Blue Springs, tells the story of Kansas City’s interurban lines in a book titled Heartland Traction. With Mayor Mark Funkhouser attempting to muster support for a regional light-rail plan, I decided to chat with Conrad about the days rail tied Olathe, Leavenworth and Liberty to the urban core.

We think of rail as a means of ameliorating sprawl. But your book seems to suggest that interurban lines played a part in spreading us out.
[City] streetcars, you might say, contributed to some what we now think of as suburban sprawl. But it was the interurban that contributed even more so, because interurbans allowed people to live in communities much further removed from the city than what the streetcars would allow.

Interurbans, having their own private right of way, could go fast, and that means people could travel longer distances in the same amount of time they could on a city streetcar. So that’s when started we seeing outlying places like Lenexa, Overland Park, Olathe, Leavenworth, Bonner Springs and to the north, Excelsior Springs, and to the far north, St. Joe. And then communities in between all those began to develop as a result of the interurban.

You have the ability to time travel. Which of the five lines you describe in your book would you want to ride first?
Well, I’d probably want to ride the Kansas City, Clay County & St. Joe, because that was built to such high standards. It was a very fast line. There is evidence that in the flats area north of Kansas City, going up to St. Joe, it could reach speeds of 70 miles an hour. Seventy miles an hour to people around the turn of the [last] century would be almost like supersonic travel today in an airplane.

Cable car employees in 1895 Kansas City.

What’s the condition of the tracks these lines used? Can they be of use to transportation planners today?
Well, no, the tracks are all gone. All of these interurban lines – with the exception of some tracks that have been relaid in one of the parks in Overland Park, where the Strang Line used to run, and they’re only there like museum pieces – but all of the tracks that the lines ran on are all gone.

What about the right-of-way?
Some of the right-of-way still exists, particularly on the Kansas City, Clay County & St. Joe, because the northern part of Kansas City was not developed as much and as fast as the southern part. So there are places, especially along the line that ran between Kansas City and Excelsior Springs.

I’m making you king. Give me a practical light-rail proposal.
Well, I’m not a real proponent of light rail… I feel that light rail has to serve all parts of the metro area, which means Missouri but also Kansas. But the folks in Kansas are really dragging their feet. Which is unfortunate, because right now that’s where the wealth of Kansas City is… So right now we need their support – their financial support, their political support, and we're just not getting it. Mayor Funkhouser has work cut out for him trying to bring them into the fold.

Beyond that, I really don’t have any preferences about particular routes. I think the routes that would have to be considered, though, would basically be the corridors of our freeways. [Interstate] 35 South, that would be the route I would start with first, because that’s where so much of the traffic is. And then I would probably look at 35 North and portions of 29…

So when you say you’re not a fan of light rail, does that mean you don’t think the starter route would really accomplish anything? You think we have to build something monumental.
That would be the preference. But from a practical point of view, we’re going to have to get in line to get the federal money to do all this. There are lot of other cities that are in line already. I would think it would probably be somewhere between five years at the very least and probably more like 10 years before we get the money to do very much. Because of that, some people say that what we ought to do is build a starter line within the city that we could finance through our means. But a starter line like that is just nothing more than another streetcar line, and it’s not going to have all the attributes that a real light-rail system is going to have. [Light rail] does have some street running, but it also has a lot of private right-of-way running. And that’s what you need -- you need the speed so that people can travel from outlying areas easily and rapidly into downtown Kansas City.

There are a lot of obstacles that have to be considered. The other obstacle is we have such a low population density here. Even though light rail in none of the cities makes money, they have to make a certain amount of money in order to quality for matching funds. And it would be difficult for us because of our light population density to achieve even that minimum. We have a lot of strikes against us here with trying to build a light-rail system here in Kansas City.

BY DAVID MARTIN

A principal in the dubious effort to build a $980 million entertainment and sports resort in Kansas City, Kansas, is being sued over a $591 dry-cleaning bill.

Five Star Dry Cleaning recently filed a small-claims action in Johnson County against bodybuilder-turned-developer Craig Chambers. The dry cleaner complains that Chambers, the managing director of Sport World Live, has not responded to repeated requests for payment.

Chambers, a former Mr. Missouri, has been chased by creditors in the past. Researching Sport World Live last summer, I discovered that he had filed for bankruptcy in 1996. Last year, a credit-card company went after one of Chambers' bank accounts in order to collect a $3,625 judgment.

Sport World Live is an unrealistically ambitious proposal to transform a KCK floodplain into a Disney-like destination, with athletic fields, a five-star hotel, an events center, a shopping center, an RV campground and an "international village." The Unified Government approved tax-increment financing for the project last summer, in spite of the thin credentials of the development team. At the time of the vote, Chambers was managing an equipment-rental business in Gladstone.

Eight months later, tangible progress remains elusive. Most conspicuously, the developers have yet to acquire the necessary land.

Chambers did not respond to an interview request through an attorney who has worked with the Sport World Live team. One of his partners, Overland Park businessman Tom Lyons, insists that work is being done. Buying the land, he tells me, is "a small piece" of the puzzle.

By DAVID MARTIN

Guys who talk about sports for a living can get into trouble when they veer into politics.

On a recent installment of Between the Lines on 810 WHB, host Kevin Kietzman drew a flummoxed difference between politicians and sports figures. Kietzman talked about how strange it was that coaches acted like gentlemen next to dirt-slinging candidates for public office.

Kietzman’s right to suggest that KU basketball coach Bill Self talks less trash than Bill Clinton. But the reasons should be obvious: Politics is a hearts-and-mind game, fought between people whose policy ideas may be indistinguishable. Sports rivalries, by contrast, determine winners and losers on fields and courts of battle, where opinion means nothing. (The exception, of course, is boxing, whose combatants freely trade literal and figurative jabs.)

Kietzman shared his thoughts with play-by-play man Kevin Harlan, who came up with a gaffe of his own. Citing a book about Abraham Lincoln he recently read, Harlan said that rough-and-tumble politics were hardly new. Harlan then said that Lincoln had jousted with “Frederick Douglass,” confusing the abolitionist with debate partner Stephen Douglas.