‘You don’t do this for legacy’: Mayor James sits down for exit interview with The Star
Mayor Sly James leaves office later this month after eight momentous years to be replaced by Mayor-elect Quinton Lucas.
As he boxed up his office on the 29th floor of City Hall, he sat down with The Star to talk about his tenure. Accompanying this Q&A is an article about his legacy.
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Proudest accomplishment as mayor
“Turn the Page KC, (third-grade reading program) working with kids, trying to find ways to give them the tools that can actually benefit them over the course of their lifetime — that’s education. I’d say followed by that would be the Urban Youth Academy — working with (General Manager) Dayton (Moore) and the Royals and Major League Baseball, again, trying to make sure that kids have the tools they need. If we don’t have any other obligation as adults, We have the obligation to take care of the people we bring into the world and to make sure that they have the tools at their disposal that are going to prepare them to deal with an increasingly challenging world.”
You’ve said that two of your biggest regrets were not getting voters to approve the east-west streetcar line in August 2014 and the pre-K ballot initiative last April Can you talk about why those were essential, and what might you have done differently on those?
“Why did I have to do anything differently? What makes you think that because they weren’t successful that it was something that I failed to do or needed to do something differently?”
I’m sure there are a lot of reasons that they failed, but this is an interview about your time.
“I know, but the question itself implies that there was some flaw in what we did. Now, that may or may not be true, but one of my problems with doing these interviews in the first place is that assumption that somehow if I had done something different there would have been a different result. That’s not necessarily true...
“But to answer your question, there are a lot of things that could have been done differently...Streetcar — it would probably have been wise to go at a different time, but we were trying to take advantage of the fact that we knew what was available in D.C. and we knew who was going to be making the calls on federal funding...The gamble was go quick while we know who the players are or wait and take our chances...Then we ran into a lot of lies and racial nonsense that led to the downfall there, and there was nothing I could have done about that...
“With regards to pre-K, what I probably could have done and should have done was to not take it off the docket in November (2018) in the first place. Somehow waiting to see in deference to the school superintendents complaining that they weren’t involved and needed more time only to find out that they had more time and then did nothing with it. So that was a strategic mistake to give into that pressure. And the other thing is that I assumed that the issue of taking care of the kids would be superior to the issue of guarding turf and protecting budgets. It was not.”
And why were those two projects essential?
On streetcar: “If you don’t go east-west in the city, you’re not crossing any racial lines. If you just go north-south, you’re getting the same demographic slice. If you go east-west, you’re going to get a different slice and you get into the minority communities, and you spread the development opportunities and the transportation opportunities that way, so I thought it was essential that we do something that had more of an equitable approach to it.”
On pre-K: “You can’t change poverty and criminality by simply arresting people and giving them food stamps. You change it by making sure that they don’t have to wind up in poverty and criminality in the first place by giving them the tools to avoid it. And we don’t seem to have that capacity. We always want to attack problems from the end as opposed to preventing them. These are chronic problems in this country. We tried all of the criminality. We built more prisons, we’ve got more guns, we’ve got more police officers. We do all these things, but we are not going back and taking care of the basics. We should be talking to pregnant mothers and pregnant fathers about the brain explosion that occurs between the ages of zero and five, and we should be making sure that kids and parents have quality child care so that mothers can go work without fear and get out of the house if that’s what they want to do...It would help the workforce. It would help them. It would help kids. It would free up families to be able to earn and to do the things that are necessary to survive in this country right now.
“We’re not taking care of the little things, and we don’t start at the beginning; we only react when there’s a problem. It’s kind of like we have lost the ability to think ahead. One of the things we have to think ahead about is what are our kids going to be doing when this world is changing and (artificial intelligence) is coming into vogue and robotics are taking jobs and you need a higher skill set to survive. Are we training our kids for that? Are they ready? And how are we going to stop people from all the crime if we don’t teach them about self-control? And being able to control their emotions and getting along with people of different races and genders when they are most susceptible to learning and incorporating those things into their lives.
“So we wait until they’re 15, 16 years old and somehow expect them to change...If we had done those things in the beginning, they would start off in a better place in the first place. It’s very fundamental as far as I’m concerned, and that’s why it’s important. And that’s why they were big misses.
“But this constant thing about ‘what could you have done differently,’ we could have all done things differently, and I’m not willing to let other people off the hook by simply saying, ‘I could have and somehow that would have been different.’ There’s a whole lot of stuff that could have been done differently, and they need to be accountable as well.”
In what ways is the East Side in a better position than when you came into office, and what should be done next?
“The East Side is in a better position on a whole lot of reasons. For one, we’ve done a ton of infrastructure work there to make it viable for things to be developed. When I got into office, the 39th Street Aldi’s was still in limbo. We called people into the office, sat them down, argued with them for a while, butted their heads together and said, ‘Get it done,’ and it got done.
“We had to purchase the Linwood Shopping Center to get a supermarket over there. It got done. Something that had not been done for 15, 20 years before. Their housing situation is significantly better than it was. We got our housing out of receivership. It had been in receivership for 20-something years. I went and sat in the courtroom and listened to those boring, boring hearings about housing evaluations and HUD regulations...and told the judge we need to get the stuff out of receivership and it got done. That’s how Beacon Hill was turned around. That’s how a lot of things were turned around.
“We’ve gotten rid of a whole bunch of vacant and abandoned properties by spending $10 million. We were able to get the benefit of (late construction company owner) Jim Kissick’s tremendous generosity by volunteering to take down houses at his cost and saving us probably $600,000, $700,000 worth of work and by him being the spearhead to get others to do the same.
“It’s better in a whole lot of different ways, and it’s all better because not what I’ve done but because of working with a whole bunch of people who knew things had to be done and wanted to get it done and we worked together to get that done. It ain’t perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than it was, and it’s going to continue to get better if people continue to work better and stop trying to always find somebody to scapegoat for a problem.”
What should be the next steps for —
“That’s not for me to decide. Let the next mayor decide what the next steps are.”
Do you feel that your Citizens Task Force on Violence moved the needle? And what’s next on that issue?
“Once again, it’s not — I’m not going to separate out one thing...If we want to talk about violence, I want to talk about the entire panoply, not just the task force. The task force has done some things in terms of trying to organize resources and create a one-stop-shop type of approach to the extent they can by coordinating people...So it’s helped in that regard. The Kansas City No Violence Alliance has done a lot. Teens in Transition has done a lot. The fact that we spend $500,000 a year in the summer to keep kids off the street and give them a safe place to hang out has done a lot.
“The fact that the police have changed their approach has done a lot. The fact that ShotSpotter (a system of acoustic sensors that detect gunshots) has been instituted has done a lot. The fact that we still have a legislature that doesn’t do a damn thing to help us keep guns off the street has not helped us in one single solitary bit...
“We have the worst gun laws in the country and some of the highest violence in the country. Massachusetts has the best gun laws in the country and the lowest violence in the country. I think there’s a correlation...Bottom line is that once again, this is not a single thread that you can pull and change things. If that were the case, we would have done it a long time ago. This is a complicated, complex situation...
“When you go to St. Louis and you see people in a parking lot of a convenience store get into their vehicles with AR-15s and other forms of assault weapons and literally drive through the streets of St. Louis in a running gun battle, that’s a problem. So I’m trying to figure out why exactly do we need AR-15s in the city? There’s nothing to hunt there, and anything that you can shoot is illegal. But why can’t we as St. Louis and Kansas City have anything to do about controlling what happens on our streets? Because some lobbyist from some other place in Missouri and some legislator of some other place in Missouri want to make sure that they don’t offend the (National Rifle Association) and hurt their reelection chances. So when we talk about crime and violence, we have to talk about the entire panoply, and to sit around and ask the mayor or the City Council, ‘What are you doing about violence?’ is a fool’s errand because there’s really not a whole lot you can do independently...”
In the book, (“A Passion for Purpose”) you talked about your strained relationship with the second council. What happened that that relationship got off on the wrong foot?
“It’s in the book. I said what it is in the book. I’m not going to get into it any more than that.”
Also in the book you mentioned Councilman (Quinton) Lucas’ legal contracts for the airport. What do you think of him of coming in as a mayor, and what advice do you have for him?
“I think he is the mayor. I will support the mayor of my city just like people supported me, and the advice I have is make your decisions based on facts and data and not politics and supposition and speculation.”
Do you think he’s ready to be mayor?
“That’s up to other people to decide. He’ll have an opportunity to prove himself, and you can gauge for yourself.”
I understand that you’re going into business with your chief of staff Joni Wickham. Can you tell me about what the nature of that business is going to be?
“We’ll make an announcement mid-August about what we’re doing, and I think I’ll wait until then to do that.”
Do you think the mayor should have more executive power than in Kansas City’s weak mayor system?
“I think there’s benefits and detriments to it. I actually thought that I would do what I needed to do until somebody stopped me. That’s ho
“If you do not, then you’re going to have a problem, and that’s true for the city manager as well. It works both ways. City Manager Troy Schulte and I have had a tremendously good relationship, and we’ve worked well together. We don’t always agree, but we’ve always managed to figure out a way to get things done, and I know that he has been absolutely dedicated to doing as much for this city as he possibly can. And I know from working with people across the city that he’s respected for that. When people call up Troy Schulte and tell him that they’ve got a problem and they need help, he’s going to always try to find a way to help them even though sometimes I think that he shouldn’t because you can’t help everybody and sometimes you just have to say no, but Troy doesn’t like to say no and that’s really his best and worst trait. He’s very good at trying to make sure that everybody gets what they need...I’ve always thought that a city of this size — the mayor’s office needs a little more control over things and what’s going on. One of the things that I thought was good in St. Louis was the executive order privilege that a mayor had. To be able to get things done without having to jump through 50 hoops and to go through — you start with an idea and by the time the idea goes through the legislative sausage-making machine it looks like an idea that came from somebody else. That doesn’t always feed the bulldog. I’m not huge on it one way or the other. I think that there are things that could be done to strengthen the mayor’s office, but I understand our system. I worked with it, and we were successful with it to the extent that we possibly could be, so I think at the end of the day, mayors are able to get done what they need to get done depending on how they approach it. At least, I hope so.”
For what reason should Kansas City be optimistic about its future?
“Because they should be optimistic and proud of their present, and as long as they continue to do the things that are working in the present, there’s no reason to think that the future wouldn’t be good. If you’re not — I tell people all the time, ‘If you don’t love Kansas City today, you never will.’”
What parting advice do you have for the city as a whole?
“Keep loving Kansas City. Keep doing things that make sense, and have fun. Don’t take yourselves too seriously. You start to go jumping off cliffs when you do.”
Any moments that kind of stand out good or bad over the last eight years as you’re reflecting and getting ready to move on? What will you remember the most?
“If I am going to think about one thing, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some absolutely tremendous people. In this office, my staff is fantastic — couldn’t ask for better staff. In the city, I’ve worked with some tremendous leaders and people who are dedicated to the city. I’ve worked with people around the country that I admire and respect. I’ve seen and met with and talked to President Obama a bunch of times, been to the White House a bunch of times, met a whole bunch of different people, had the opportunity to spend time at Harvard learning stuff in the Bloomberg Harvard thing and sitting across the table from Michael Bloomberg and talking about stuff and meeting mayors from London — and God knows, don’t ever go drinking with British people. (They’ll) drink you under the table in a heartbeat and then laugh at you. There’s just too much stuff. There has been this long assembly line of good stuff. I can’t pick out one thing and say that it was better than the other. They were better in the moment, and I prefer to look at it like that as opposed to isolating one, I like to look at the whole. The whole has been pretty damn good.”
Anything you would do or say over again?
“No.”
What do you hope people remember about your time as mayor, and what do you want to stand out as your legacy?
“I don’t want anybody to remember anything that I suggest. They can remember what had an impact on them individually, and I don’t particularly care about a legacy. Somebody else will do that. The only people that ever ask me about legacy are people in the media — only people. I really don’t give a shit. You don’t do this for legacy. You do it because it needs to be done, and you do it because you want to do it. If you spend time trying to think about, ‘How’s this going to look when I’m gone?’ you’re in it for the wrong reason. This isn’t what I do. That’s what people want other people to think you do. That’s how people in my position are painted as doing things for legacy. I really don’t give a damn about legacy. Everything I did, I did because I thought it was in the best interest of this city, and if people believe that, great. If they don’t, great. I don’t care because at the end of the day, I know what I was trying to do, I know what we were able to do, and I know who helped get it done. That’s all I need. Everybody else can cast all these judgments and (aspersion) and all this other crap on it. That’s up to them. I really don’t care. It’s not why I’m doing this.”
Is there anything you learned about yourself that surprised you?
“It was really an opportunity to employ something I learned in the Marine Corps about ‘improvise, adapt and overcome,’ because in this office you learn to improvise, adapt and overcome all the time. It was fun to play with that and to figure out how to do that and how to use that in order to get things done because basically what it was, ‘O.K., here’s a road block. What are we going to do about it? Well, we’re going to improvise, we’re going to change, we’re going to overcome it and we’re going to succeed.’ And that was what we lived by. So yeah, this was probably the best place in the world to employ that Marine Corps strategy.”
This story was originally published July 29, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
