Letters: Readers discuss KCI Airport overruns, the wall and ending the shutdown

KCI warnings

Thank you for your diligent reporting on the Kansas City International Airport terminal project. The cost overruns prove either gross incompetence or fraud.

No developer or engineering firm can completely miss the cost target — from $900 million, to $1 billion, and now approaching $2 billion. (Jan. 12, 1A, “Turbulence is common for cities with airport projects like KCI terminal”) Evidently, we’re throwing darts at a board full of numbers.

I fly out of KCI three weeks per month, traveling to most major airports in the United States. None has convenience that compares to the existing terminals at KCI. We have an old structure that could use updating, but not replacing.

Misleading the public with optics of more restaurants and a nicer facility at no cost is a sham. If more restaurants could survive with the traffic of this airport, they would already have moved in.

What will be the cost to maintain this new facility? Larger structures cost more to maintain, heat and cool.

The former airport engineer advised caution on the new design and how it could cause gate delays, but he was ignored.

Most council members and the mayor need to be called out on this sham. Kansas Citians will pay for this in the end, with increased costs for airfare and parking. It will not be free.

Brett Schmidt

Shawnee

Second verse

We’re going to build an airport. And the airlines are going to pay for it. Hmm: Where have we heard this kind of talk before?

Bob Byrnes

Raytown

A way around

I propose this compromise to ensure border security while also ending the partisan stalemate over constructing a wall on our southern border:

Both Republicans and Democrats should agree to allocate $5 billion. In stage one, one-third of this amount would go immediately to construct a wall covering one-third of the length of the border that President Donald Trump has proposed. After one year, if illegal immigration and the flow of illicit drugs are down by 20 percent, then the remaining two-thirds of the funding would be released to construct the final two-thirds of the wall.

But if illegal immigration and the flow of illicit drugs have not been reduced by 20 percent, then the remaining $3.3 billion would be shifted to infrastructure spending, such as shoring up our nation’s bridges and overpasses to make them safer. Infrastructure spending seems to be a bipartisan desire, and it is desperately needed throughout our country.

With this system, the onus would be on the president and Republicans to prove the wall will work and on the Democrats to put up big money for the infrastructure that everyone can agree we need as a nation.

Scott Latman

Lee’s Summit

You’re grounded

President Donald Trump should have allowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plane to leave on its trip to Afghanistan and Brussels — and then he should have grounded the return flight. (Jan. 18, 3A, “Trump grounds Pelosi after she imperils his State of the Union”)

Pete Connors

Lee’s Summit

An easy concept

There is a simple solution to end this moronic shutdown of government over a wall. Congress must do what it is mandated by the Constitution to do: Control the president, not vice versa.

C.D. Rinck Sr.

Mission

Just Democrats?

The author of a letter to the editor Friday said that the Democrats would not go along with anything the Republicans propose. (8A)

How about the Republican-majority Senate refusing even to hold hearings for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, for almost a whole year in 2016?

Or how about the current Senate not voting on multiple bills the House has passed to end this partial federal government shutdown?

There is enough blame for both sides.

Alice Smith

Lee’s Summit