COVID took a toll on KC City Hall. So did internal strife. Here’s what’s left undone
As Mayor Quinton Lucas rolled down Grand Boulevard in early February, just days after the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory, he still thought the year looked promising.
The City Council had recently adopted the city’s first ever Tenants Bill of Rights. Budget experts were expecting increased revenue. The mayor announced a pardon system for municipal marijuana possession convictions. He had big plans for the year.
“The world changed on us pretty dramatically,” Lucas said this month.
Within six weeks of the Chiefs parade, drawing hundreds of thousands to downtown, gatherings of more than 10 were outlawed.
In an instant, the city’s priorities for 2020 — reducing homicides, building more affordable housing and limiting tax incentives for developers — were overshadowed by COVID-19. In the ensuing months, council relationships would show strain. And going into the new year, several major priorities have yet to be realized.
When the pandemic struck the Midwest in March, Lucas’ attention quickly turned to public health and working with surrounding counties on shutdowns. The few weeks officials thought it would take to contain the virus gave way to a year unraveled.
By the time the City Council entered its last few meetings of the year, that all had taken a toll. Though Lucas and the Council broke through the COVID-19 chaos to pass some major legislation, including making transit fare-free across Kansas City, they still have work to do.
Navigating the new reality and trying to stay afloat led to City Council tension, said Councilman Eric Bunch, 4th District.
“Just being around each other in sort of non-business mode, like going out for drinks with each other, I think was really important and something we missed out on,” Bunch said.
A year like no other
A year ago, Lucas said he knew crime prevention would be a major issue. The city ended 2019 with 153 homicides. And 2020 set a record with 180 killed by Dec. 18.
Even as homicides skyrocketed this past year, they were eclipsed by COVID-19 deaths — 326 in the city alone as of Dec. 21.
At the same time, Lucas and the City Council were attempting to address longstanding racial inequities that burst to the forefront following the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Floyd’s death, recorded on a cellphone, set off weeks-long protests for racial justice and against police brutality across the world.
In Kansas City, officials struck marijuana possession from the city code, effectively decriminalizing it on the municipal level. They’ve created an administrative adjudication system to keep people from being arrested for unpaid parking tickets.
Lucas survived a recall attempt as some residents protested COVID-19 emergency restrictions. The city struggled to get federal funding to deal with the pandemic, which was administered through the four counties it lies in. And the once-consistent regional COVID-19 shutdown gave way to a patchwork system where the rules vary greatly between Kansas City and Johnson County.
The biggest lesson 2020 held for Lucas: “that local government needs to be ready for any challenge.”
“I certainly always believed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would have clearer guidance. It didn’t really,” he said. “I recognized fairly early on that the state of Missouri would leave us to handle pandemic response a great deal more than, perhaps, one might have thought.”
Lucas said his “north star” in responding to COVID-19 was saving lives.
Among his proudest victories in 2020, Lucas said, were eliminating fares on the city’s bus system, striking marijuana from the municipal code and pushing for police reforms.
“I don’t know if there has been a mayor that … has been as active in legislation as I have been,” Lucas said.
Lucas’ colleagues credit his work on those issues, and none envied him the position of issuing orders to deal with COVID-19.
Councilwoman Melissa Robinson, 3rd District, said the mayor’s greatest accomplishments in the past year were policies impacting people of color, including marijuana decriminalization and eliminating jail time for people with unpaid parking tickets.
“People get caught up in the system for very minor parking tickets,” Robinson said, adding that she knew someone with more than 20 parking tickets who was arrested.
As the city enters a new year, though, several major initiatives remain incomplete.
Legislation meant to limit the city’s use of tax incentives for economic development, introduced in June, has yet to receive a committee vote.
Lucas has sponsored legislation, both as a councilman and as mayor, to require housing developers who receive incentives to build affordable units. That has been held in committee for several weeks.
The pandemic has exacerbated issues like violent crime and the city’s affordable housing shortage. Lucas said he had not abandoned those issues.
“A pandemic mayor can’t stop doing all the other mayor stuff,” Lucas said. “You just have fewer resources. You have less time, but it just means I have to work harder, everybody around me has to work harder.”
Struggles within
The external forces plaguing Kansas City weren’t the only struggle Lucas had to overcome this year.
Under the stress of this year, City Council meetings were, at times, far from harmonious.
Robinson said even outside City Hall there was a perception that the council is “all over the place.”
“There’s no unity around anything, whether it’s potholes, whether it’s the airport,” Robinson said.
After a nearly year-long search process, Lucas advised the City Council he would recommend Brian Platt as the next city manager, relieving the interim manager, Earnest Rouse, and succeeding Troy Schulte, who retired in late 2019.
But the confirmation process soured. Lucas was the only Black member of the council to vote for Platt, who is white. The other four — Brandon Ellington, Melissa Robinson, Ryana Parks-Shaw and Lee Barnes — dissented.
This summer, Lucas took over temporarily as chair of the council’s Transportation, Infrastructure and Operations Committee as civil rights groups called on him to remove Councilwoman Teresa Loar, 2nd District at-large, from the post over what they called a racist mocking of Robinson.
Most recently, in the last week of City Council business for the year, Bunch was pushing to create an LGBTQ Commission to advise the city on policies. His version was supplanted by an amended version from Councilwoman Katheryn Shields, 4th District at-large, which Bunch accepted just to get the legislation out of committee.
Though it passed, the resolution sparked frustration on the council floor.
As Kansas City enters 2021, the division among council members could make those challenges even more difficult to contend with.
Looking ahead
When City Council meetings resume Jan. 6, the pandemic will still be there. Kansas City will still be in a budget crisis.
And Lucas said among the biggest issues for the City Council is curbing violent crime.
City leaders will also receive, early in the new year, a six-point plan from Fire Chief Donna Lake to address systemic racism and sexism in the department following a year-long investigation by The Star that found Black firefighters have been harassed on the job, kept out of sought-after stations and passed over for promotions.
Lucas said the past year has made it clear whom he works for: the most vulnerable, struggling Kansas City residents. It’s been a year with significant criticism that forced him to develop thicker skin.
“I’m proud of the fact that we’ve held firm on things like making sure Kansas Citians stay safe, making sure that we continue to work towards affordable housing … everything I ran on is something that I think we’re still working towards actively right now in Kansas City.
“And I’m proud of that.”
