Martin, Pitch

Nick Wright calls his dad, Louie, 'a fireman,' omitting the union boss part

David Martin — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:00:00 -0500

Jim Rome knock-off Nick Wright wants to be able to sit in his box at the coliseum and wave a perfumed hankie as football players, the gladiators of modern times, ferociously hurl themselves at each other.

Wright, a host at 610-AM, made callous comments after a violent weekend in the NFL. Wright talked about the most recent spate of brain-rattling hits as an occupational hazard.…

In fight to convert old school, Ivanhoe neighborhood group beats developer in court

David Martin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:05:57 -0500

An East Side neighborhood group has beaten a private developer and a city agency in court for the third time.

The Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council wants to turn the old Horace Mann School at 39th Street and Bruce R. Watkins Drive into senior housing.…

Russ Johnson cherry-picks data to establish downtown's awesomeness

David Martin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:00:00 -0500

City officials are working hard to justify the investment in the Power & Light District in the face of a grim financial outlook, the subject of this week's column.

Councilwoman Cindy Circo put on her hard hat and described the struggling bond issue on her blog as a $150 million sewer project."The improvements above ground are just icing on the cake," she wrote.…

KU ticket scandal offers a glimpse into functionary hell

David Martin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:00:00 -0500

Last week, two guys who used to work at the University of Kansas Athletic Department pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the ticket skimming scandal.

Their names are Brandon Simmons and Jason Jeffries, and their titles are unimportant. All you need to know is that they were functionaries, organization men lucky or skilled enough to insert themselves into the ecosystem of big-time college athletics.…

Power & Light District to cost taxpayers until Howl at the Moon opens on Mars

David Martin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:05:35 -0500

Sensible people at City Hall have looked at the numbers and determined that the decision to build a funporium in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, will ding taxpayers for years to come.

The news/non-news in today's Kansas City Star is that the Power & Light District will require an ongoing $10 million to $15 million annual subsidy. The city issued $295 million in bonds for the project in 2006 in the hope that visitors would buy enough burgers and vodka tonics to pay off the creditors.…

White flight may get its own museum in Johnson County

David Martin — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:00:00 -0500

A recent Associated Press story makes Johnson County sound like Portland with better schools.

The story outlined the vision for the National Museum of Suburban History, an idea that's being promoted by the officials at the Johnson County Museum and the Arts Council of Johnson County. The AP story began by declaring Johnson County an "economic powerhouse that has eclipsed its big-city neighbor in political influence."

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Research 2000, source of weird Missouri poll data, accused of fraud

David Martin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:00:00 -0500

A polling outfit whose work The Pitch questioned in 2008 is being labeled a fraud by a client.

On Tuesday, the liberal politics blog Daily Kos disowned the polls it had asked Research 2000 to conduct.…

Mark Funkhouser asks city to focus on technical portion of his program

David Martin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:45:35 -0500

Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser made a populist, combative, defiant, fireworks-lacking and allusive State of the City speech on Thursday.

The Kansas City Star's coverage emphasized the position the mayor took against the "well-connected few" and the manner in which he challenged his rep for being a doofus. KMBC's account played up Funkhouser's poor relationship with the City Council.…

Cognitive dissonance heads Newsweek's list of top public schools

David Martin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:00:00 -0500

Newsweek has come up with a list of America's best public high schools.

The results run contrary to a half-century of migratory patterns. The area's two highest ranking buildings are located in Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas.…

Apartment finders use animation to ridicule state agency

David Martin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:30:00 -0500

Tiffany Lewis helps renters and landlords find each other. Later this month, a jury in Platte County will consider the question of whether she needs a license to do the job.

Lewis is president of Kansas City Premier Apartments.…

The Pitch's coverage of convention hotel informs tall citizen's thinking

David Martin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 06:00:00 -0500

Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser took a side in the conversation about the 1,000-room convention hotel. He thinks it's a dumb idea.

Last Thursday, Funkhouser voted against exercising a $250,000 option on a downtown parcel targeted for the convention hotel.…

Mark Funkhouser, ex-auditor, calls for audit of TIF Commission

David Martin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:00:00 -0500

As a candidate, Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser ran against the generous distribution of incentives developers received from City Hall. Today he asked for an audit of an agency that makes the magic happen.

Funkhouser asked for time at Wednesday's meeting of the Tax-Increment Financing Commission.…

Will the convention hotel be a boondoggle? Signs point to yes

David Martin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:00:53 -0500

A hospitality consultant has come up with numbers supporting the idea of building a 1,000-room convention hotel in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. The consultant based the report on surveys of convention planners, who were asked what kept them choosing from KC as a site for their meetings.

In this week's Martin column, I question the consultant's data.…

Suspicious handling of KU tickets mentioned to Star in '06

David Martin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:00:00 -0500

A sentence in the recent Yahoo! Sports investigation into the KU ticket scandal suggests that The Kansas City Star let the story slip through its fingers.

The Yahoo!…

KC parks department pisses on advocates then wonders where advocates went

David Martin — Fri, 28 May 2010 14:55:30 -0500

Kansas City, Missouri, parks officials kicked an advocacy group in the teeth this week.

The foot-to-face came in the form of a response to a question from The Kansas City Star's "Watchdog," an element in the paper which is sadly unaccompanied by an image of a doberman wearing a spiked collar. A reader asked the Watchdog for an update on the logy effort by the city to create more dog parks.

Sharon K. Henry of Kansas City wanted to know if the proposed dog park at South Oak Park at East 83rd and Main "would be done before my dogs reach old age and die."

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John and Mildred Caylor double homicide has taken a curious path on Web, in court

David Martin — Tue, 25 May 2010 10:00:08 -0500

A 2004 double homicide in Raytown continues to be notable for reasons apart from the appalling nature of the crime.

John and Mildred Caylor were stabbed to death inside the Bible store they operated on East 63rd Street. Believing that a robbery had turned deadly, investigators used DNA found at the crime scene to identify an ex-con named Kellen McKinney as the suspect.

The murders formed the basis of a (sub)urban legend.…

KC and St. Louis separated by more than 247 miles of awful interstate

David Martin — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:30:00 -0500

Kansas City and St. Louis share an interstate, an Amtrak line and weather patterns. A new report on cities says the similarities end there.…

Sam Brownback called out for distorting think tank's take on car loans

David Martin — Wed, 19 May 2010 07:00:00 -0500

After a recent stunt, U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback has lost the ability to complain that his words were taken out of context. Ever.

On Monday, the head of a think tank sent a letter to the Pentagon in response to a suspect piece of correspondence that Brownback sent on Friday.…

Porcelain god about to demand annual tithe of $100 million

David Martin — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:25:41 -0500

Flushing a toilet is about to get really expensive.

Finalizing an agreement with the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, the City of Kansas City, Missouri, has agreed to spend $2.5 billion upgrading its sewer system. The work will begin in 2014.

Karl Brooks, the regional administrator of the EPA, announced the consent decree on Tuesday at the Anita B. Gorman Conservation Discovery Center, near the occasionally foul-smelling Brush Creek.…

Bill Black, UMKC prof, breathes fire at banking hearing on Capitol Hill

David Martin — Tue, 18 May 2010 07:00:00 -0500

Everybody is mad as hell that big investment banks put the country on the brink of economic ruin. Few people get a chance to vent in front of Congress.

Bill Black, a law and economics professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, appeared before the House Financial Services Committee last month.…

Schools First meets the sound of silence

David Martin — Thu, 13 May 2010 11:45:00 -0500

One of Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser's major initiatives met the sound of crickets chirping on Wednesday morning.

Funk presented Schools First, his idea to issue $100 million in bonds to pay for sidewalks and other infrastructure around school buildings, to the Transportation & Infrastructure committee. No one on the committee made a motion to pass the ordinance, putting its future and its chief sponsor in an unhappy place.

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Want to stop neighborhoods from running down? Get out your checkbook

David Martin — Thu, 13 May 2010 08:15:00 -0500

Have $6,000 laying around? Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser thinks you should buy a house.…

Mayors go looking for tourists in mostly wrong places

David Martin — Wed, 12 May 2010 10:30:00 -0500

Area politicians are pretending to be service workers in an effort to highlight National Travel and Tourism Week. Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Mark Funkhouser was supposed to surprise guests at the Westin Crown Center with his tallness this morning.

In Kansas City, Kansas, on Tuesday, Unified Government Mayor Joe Reardon and commissioners John Mendez and Tom Cooley went to CommunityAmerica Ballpark for the Kansas City T-Bones' home opener.…

NASCAR hall KCK once chased opens in N. Carolina

David Martin — Tue, 11 May 2010 11:30:00 -0500

The NASCAR Hall of Fame that officials in Kansas wishfully pursued opened today in Charlotte. Racing fans gathered outside the $200 million attraction under the cover of darkness in order to be the first to gawk at Goody's Headache Power decals and other memorabilia.…

Leading site for convention hotel has a somewhat murky past

David Martin — Fri, 07 May 2010 13:30:00 -0500

Officials in Kansas City, Missouri, have targeted the site of the Power & Light Building for a 1,000-room convention hotel. If the project gets the go ahead, a little environmental cleanup work will be required.

Decades ago, a powerhouse operated at the site.…