What Would Mr. K. Do?

Recently I have been thinking about Question 1, and planning on voting against it. My opinions on this one are not set in stone, which is one of the reasons I want to get reader feedback on this one.

Question 1 would extend a quarter-cent sales tax for an additional 10-12 years, generating approximately $1.2 Billion of which half ($600 million) is to be used for renovating Kauffman Stadium and Arrowhead Stadium, while the other half is intended to help pay for arts programs in the various counties where the tax is levied.

The supporters have a massive "Think Big" campaign underway with the basic theme that these improvements are needed to make sure Kansas City is a world class city. The thinking behind it is that without renovating the stadiums KC may lose the Royals, and thus not be a "major league" city. If the tax goes into effect the Royals will sign a new 25 year lease with the city and not move for the next 25 years.

I want KC to be world class, in fact I am excited about a lot of things going on in KC that I think will make it a better place to live and work. I am excited about all the talk, and some of the action towards making KC a biotech capital. I am not excited about "Think Big"

I started thinking about it and the more I though about it, the bigger mistake I thought it was. Will adding more women's restrooms and wider concourses to 30 year old stadiums really make us world class? No. Is the stadium the reason the Royals might leave, or the reason they fielded such a bad team this year? No. What exactly are we going to get from this, the arts center that will be built will be great, but that is only $50 million of a $1.2 Billion dollar plan. When I look at the numbers, they just don't seem to add up. The city did a renovation on Kemper Arena a few years ago, then this spring decided to build a new arena because the 20 year renovations turned out to not do that much good. The last bi-state tax renovated Union Station, but it left control in the hands of an incompetent board that relied on overly optimistic projections and squandered millions, now Union Station hemorrhages millions of dollars every year.

But I don't oppose this for any of those reasons.

I think about what Ewing Kauffman, one of the true heros of KC business, the founder of the Royals, and a man who created thousands of jobs in KC would do. He would start a business and really grow the city. He would not spend millions to spruce up the stadium that now bears his name.

If Kansas City really wanted to "Think Big" and insisted on raising a tax, it should put it to good use. Great cities are not great because of their sports teams, people don't want to do business in New York because of Yankee Stadium (or the Meadowlands, a dump across the river in New Jersey where both of the city's pro football teams actually share a 30+ year old stadium). People want to work and live in world class cities because there are world class opportunities.

Just think if KC combined its two biggest goals, renovating downtown and becoming a biotech capital, into one idea. We could still give the arts a quarter billion dollars, we could still give sports a quarter billion dollars, but we could take $250 million (or whatever it costs) pick one of the biggest abandoned buildings downtown and build the biggest, most sophisticated biotech research center in the world and then rent out space to entrepreneurs and fledgling biotech companies with great ideas. We would still have $450 million left to fund some kind of Kansas City Biotech Incubator. KC could harness the fledgling biotech resources our city already has in place (KU, Stowers, etc..) and add a serious biotech/ venture capital element to what the Kansas Legislature began doing last year.

That is an idea that could really create jobs, create great new businesses, literally save lives and cure cancer. It is an idea that could jumpstart growth in KC, grow the market and provide real long term solutions to the problems of a small market team like the Royals, who in the end might be in kind of a big mid market city, and the great thing would be, that city would be Kansas City.

Timothy Burger