After another year of pandemic and gun violence, Lucas and Kansas City Council look back
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and the City Council will end 2021 much as they started it: stalked by a pandemic and struggling with near-record setting gun violence that has left 156 people dead through Dec. 27.
But there were also some solid accomplishments amid the challenging year, elected officials said. The city made strides in affordable housing, tenants’ rights and help for the unhoused. Spending on street resurfacing was doubled.
And while the number of residents fully vaccinated (54.6%) against COVID-19 trails the national rate (61.7%), Lucas said he is proud of the city’s intervention efforts nevertheless.
“I believe that we saved hundreds of lives in Kansas City,” he said. “By the influence we’ve been able to have on other jurisdictions in the region, probably thousands.”
As the city prepares to deal with the omicron variant and continued gun violence, the mayor and City Council members look back on what they did — and what they wish they would have done — in 2021.
Managing the pandemic
Last January, Councilwoman Melissa Robinson said the prospect of vaccines left her more hopeful that the upcoming year would see the city emerge from COVID’s tunnel.
“Obviously, we did not,” Robinson, who represents District 3, said. “The pandemic is still raging on.”
Health officials have warned that this winter is on track to be worse than 2021, with case numbers on the rise and hospitalizations spiking — mostly among the unvaccinated.
Kansas City spent most of the year under a mask mandate, which was lifted temporarily over the summer, reinstated in August and rescinded again for most of the city in November. Until the end of the year, the mandate applies only to schools and school buses.
Councilman Dan Fowler, who represents District 2, said that he would have liked the mandate extended. But he is less fearful ending 2021 than he was beginning it.
“I’m more optimistic that we’re seeing the end of the tunnel,” Fowler said.
Kansas City did push to get residents vaccinated once shots became widely available and created a task force to help facilitate that. The city also offered vaccines at some concerts.
Gun violence
In 2020, Kansas City saw its deadliest year of violence with 182 killings and 621 nonfatal shootings.
Lucas rejects any suggestion that this year’s slightly lower numbers mean that it has turned a corner. He said too much time was spent sparring over the police budget and not focused on making the community safer.
Police commissioners sued city leaders earlier this year after the council redirected more than $42 million of the state-controlled department’s budget to a “Community Services and Prevention Fund,” with its use to be negotiated by City Manager Brian Platt and commissioners. A Jackson County judge ruled that the city overstepped its authority.
Lucas said he wants to see more of a focus on better solutions to the violent crime, along the lines of the Kansas City No Violence Alliance. The program, which enjoyed some early success in targeting violent people to offer education and other assistance if they changed their behavior, has been largely disbanded.
“If we can get that one public safety side of things done, then I will be as proud of my four years as mayor as anything in my life because we would have given Kansas City the city that they deserve, that they’ve wanted for generations and we would have accomplished it in a fast time,” Lucas said.
Robinson said officials must address the factors that compel people to violence when they can’t resolve conflicts.
“Our theory of change has been flawed in that we believe increased policing would lead to reduced homicides and violence,” Robinson said. “While law enforcement is part of mitigating crime and homicides, it’s not the only solution … we have to be able to supplement what the police are doing.”
Police commissioners have said that Chief Rick Smith will retire sometime next spring, earlier than what he told them privately. Calls for Smith to step down were renewed following the guilty verdict against former police detective Eric DeValkenaere in the shooting death of Cameron Lamb.
The five-member board, which includes Lucas, will make the hire. The other members were appointed by the Missouri governor.
Lucas said they need to listen to people from all communities. He said he’s proud that the board gave police officers their first raises in three years, but that leadership needs to be more attentive to the public.
Housing and development
Kansas City created the Department of Housing and Community Development, a new standalone agency to focus on the unhoused, creation of affordable housing and support for tenant advocacy. The city has also established an Unhoused Task Force, with the goal of developing long-term solutions.
And in December, the council approved a plan to allocate $400,000 to create a “Housing Navigation Center” through a partnership with Lotus Care House.
Kansas City also amended its Housing Trust Fund ordinance, extending the period that units created under the fund must remain affordable from 20 years to 30.
The city established the trust fund in December 2018 to develop new housing and preserve existing stock. In May, officials allocated $12.5 million in federal COVID relief to the fund. The money must be spent by 2026. A third of that $12.5 million has been allocated to developments.
A sticking point has been who oversees distribution of the money. KC Tenants has demanded a seat at the table to ensure the fund benefits those most in need. Leaders of the citywide tenants union have testified against the mayor’s proposal, calling it a “developer’s slush fund.”
KC has also implemented an Office of the Tenant Advocate.
Most recently, the council approved Tenants Right to Counsel legislation, guaranteeing tenants have access to legal representation in court.
Councilwoman Andrea Bough, who introduced the ordinance, said that the city is headed in the right direction on serving the unhoused. Next steps must be to provide necessary services with compassion, Bough said, not just moving people from one area to another.
“I think affordable housing is something that we have to continue to address,” Bough, District 6 at-large, said. “There are areas of the city that are either on the verge of being neighborhoods that are blighted or in disrepair.”
Lucas and the council received widespread criticism earlier this month for awarding $7.5 million in property tax abatements to Fidelity Security Life Insurance to build a luxury office tower near Crown Center, just a few blocks from its current headquarters.
Lucas, who campaigned for mayor on a promise to limit downtown development incentives, said the city has reduced both the duration and value of incentives that developers can receive.
“We’ll continue to see incentives largely used in areas where we can attract development through traditional means,” he told KCUR recently. “We continue to spend tens of millions of dollars every year in building up the east side of Kansas City,” he added. “This is not an either-or sort of thing.”
Divided council
The year’s events have left divisions on the council that Robinson said are worrisome.
“The tension and the discontent is palpable. And it has become stronger,” Robinson said. “And I think that could be cancerous to the overall body in terms of our body’s ability to move forward.”
Fowler said the vote earlier this month on the new council district map — which divided the Northland with a horizontal boundary (along Barry Road) instead of the usual vertical line — was divisive. All four Northland council members voted against it.
Differences over police funding also pitted north and south. Northland council members said they were improperly excluded last spring from email deliberations over the plan to reallocated a portion of the department’s budget. The mayor’s spokeswoman said at the time called the accusation a “false narrative.”
Lucas said that when he spends time in the Northland he is struck by what he hears from residents and how disconnected it is from the complaints of the area’s political leadership.
“I don’t think the Northland is all that upset,” he told KCUR. “There are a group of people who are concerned about losing power.”
This story was originally published December 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
