Utter Incompetence

The Kansas City, Missouri, City Council majestically passed their budget last night as the deadline for doing so rapidly closed in. Ignoring recommendations from both their adversary, the mayor, and their fair-haired city manager they cut the police department's budget by 12 million dollars.

Lord knows Mayor Funkhauser has made his share of mistakes, but they usually have been fouls away from the ball, most having to do with the antics of his wife. He otherwise is knowledgeable and competent about the city in stark contrast with the bulk of the Council. Many Councilmen / women seem to lack any real-world experience. Incredible, given that KC is--depending on which poll you care to cite--the 18th most dangerous city in the country. Regardless of what else may be happening here, with crime that significant does it really make sense to cut the police budget? Another poll, faithful readers will recall, recently ranked KC as the 46th-least desirable city out of 50 to which people living elsewhere might choose to move.

The mayor and City Manager Wayne Cauthen are not exactly close friends. They don't 'complement' each other. But even Mr. Cauthen seems to feel the Council reduced the police budget too severely. Always on the fence, he won't say so himself but allowed his 'Chief of Staff' to express that thought to the Mayor last night. (And does anyone besides me doubt the city manager needs a chief of staff? There is a city job ripe for the scrap heap. Teach Mr. Cauthen to use Outlook. He already has Assistant City Managers. Chief of Staff? Get real.)

So in this time of murders, theft, assaults, property crimes and infestation of drugs and drug gangs the Council not only will not maintain the police budget but gouges it deeply. In doing so they proudly are able to avoid reducing codes administration inspectors and maintain cutting weeds for property owners who should be cutting their own damned weeds anyway. Our elected representatives in the high crime districts should go outside once in a while and hear the gun shots. They should drop by the ER at Truman Medical Center at 2:00 on a Saturday morning. Maybe they should ride along with a cop and see if they really should be reducing police funds.

Now the Council claims that even with these reductions the police won't have to change the number of cops on the streets. ("Oh, " they say. "We are just looking to reduce the civilian staff at the Police Headquarters. It won't affect the patrols.") The Chief of Police isn't so sure. With neighborhood 'activists' as our elected representatives we seem to lack the common sense approach to governing that a printer, an auto worker or a business owner (someone with a real job) might bring to the table. Why put the Chief in that position? Give him the tools for which he asks. This isn't a little crime-free town in the Nebraska panhandle. This is an urban drug center with the turf wars, gang violence and creeping street crime to prove it. New York City is safer by the numbers.

Sorry, but we have a dreadful city council. Their chief accomplishments have been the abolition of smoking almost anywhere in the city and the banishment of the mayor's wife from city hall. (There's a record to run on next election.) Now add to that a public goring of the police department. They skipped an entire week of city business so they all could go to the Democratic National Convention in Denver last summer. They don't seem to get that the citizens here want to feel safe in their homes and don't mind moving to Johnson County to do so. With every move the tax base takes a hit, and in KC south of the river, there is block after block of virtually worthless property with microscopic tax value. Left behind in part because no one felt safe living there. So definitely cut the budget for law enforcement.

One of our little whiney-assed 'activist' council-persons must have got a traffic ticket one time; maybe the officer was uncompromisingly firm about it. So now we are stuck with city fathers who have the old 'flower child' mentality. "Let's just be nice to each other!" So you be nice to the nine-year-old with the AK-47 who is stealing your car.

Maybe the City Council can get the Democrats to hold the convention here in 2012. By then, if the Council has its way, we will have just six or eight cops left. The Bloods and Crips and MS-13 will provide contract security and direct traffic. They may be running the City Council by then as well.