‘We cannot just stop progress’: Kansas City approves Buck O’Neil Bridge funding plan
A long-anticipated deal to replace the Buck O’Neil Bridge passed the City Council Thursday, bringing the city one step closer to construction.
The Council voted 10-3 to approve a funding agreement with the state of Missouri to split the $250 million cost down the middle, even though the state owns the bridge. According to a Missouri Department of Transportation website, the state hopes to finish the project by the end of 2024.
The span — called the Broadway Bridge until it was renamed for the Kansas City baseball legend — connects downtown to Clay County, carrying more than 44,000 cars per day. It’s aging rapidly and has undergone significant repair in recent years. To Northlanders — and, in turn, their council members — it’s an essential piece of infrastructure.
Councilman Kevin O’Neill, 1st District at-large, said that use of the bridge will only grow and that the city needs to rebuild it to reflect that.
“Unfortunately, the state threw it at us, but we had no other choice,” O’Neil said.
Finding a way to fund the bridge was years in the making.
Kansas City and Missouri with each kick in $125 million. The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the project a $25 million grant, which the city and state will split evenly and apply to each of their ends of the deal.
Kansas City will also benefit from $40 million in federal funding that is normally shared with other parts of the metro. Other jurisdictions agreed to forego some federal transportation funding in a regional deal to replace the bridge.
The rest of Kansas City’s obligation — $72.5 million — will come from a one-cent sales tax voters renewed overwhelmingly with the bridge and other capital improvements in mind. The city has to send its portion of the funds to the state in the coming months and will temporarily borrow from within its own budget to do so. Eventually, it will sell bonds to finance its portion of the bridge to be repaid by those sales tax funds.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson announced in his State of the State address earlier this year that Missouri would live up to its half of the deal.
Though replacing the Buck O’Neil Bridge has long been planned, it comes at a precarious time for the city’s finances. The spread of the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, is wreaking havoc on the global economy and governments’ budgets. A preliminary estimate prepared for City Council members last month said Kansas City may have to cut $115 million from other funds in its budget over the next five years in the even of a “light” recession and quick economic recovery.
Councilwoman Katheryn Shields, who has said she thinks those projections are too rosy, raised concerns Thursday about committing city money to “help to bear half the cost of the rebuilding of a bridge that is a state asset.”
Shields, 4th District, added that she is “very opposed” to inter-fund borrowing.
Councilwoman Teresa Loar, who represents the Northland’s 2nd District at-large, said that the money for the bridge is already identified and that she believed federal stimulus money would help the city’s financial position. She said crossing the bridge, which is prone to traffic backup, every day can be difficult.
“We cannot just stop progress,” she said.
Shields, Councilman Brandon Ellington and Councilwoman Ryana Parks-Shaw voted against the ordinance. Ellington and Parks-Shaw did not explain their votes.
