Unfettered Letters

Make a difference

During difficult economic times, there are two ways that a city can improve its financial situation — cut expenses and increase revenue. But it takes much more than a balanced budget for a city to thrive. It takes citizens who care deeply and take action — people like Linda Callon and Mark Forsythe.

Linda Callon is an activist on the city’s West Side. She mobilized an effort to improve the neighborhood sprayground by adding shade so the children could enjoy the park all summer.

Mark Forsythe, a former neighborhood president, learned that an electric car company was looking to relocate, and he contacted the city’s Economic Development Corporation. Because of his initiative, an electric car plant is being built that will employ 200 people.

Look around and imagine what you might be able to accomplish. If we are going to weather this economic storm, we all need to be part of the solution.

Jan Marcason
Kansas City Council, Fourth District, in-district
Kansas City

Proposed KC budget cuts risky

I hope Deb Hermann and the rest of the City Council realize they are playing with fire (no pun intended) by wanting to close three fire stations to balance the budget (3/18, A-1, “Third budget in the mix”). Time is the most important element in the event of any emergency, heart attack, auto accident or fire. Lives are saved in a matter of seconds.

The National Institute of Standards and Technologies building research laboratory report, taken from large-scale tests, shows how fast fires grow in furnished rooms from ignition to flashover — when all combustibles in a room burst into flames and the fire spreads rapidly. For example, a dry Christmas tree in a room will flash over in 45 seconds, an upholstered sofa in four minutes, and a wastebasket in an office in five minutes. That is why fire stations are strategically located.

Surely the Council is aware of the severity of these decisions.

Jack Stokes
Kansas City

While reading assurances that Kansas City’s budget proposal would not reduce the number of our police officers, to whom do we go for assurance that a number of those officers will not be moved from the streets to desk jobs to cover for the dismissed civilians?

Not until we have been assured of our basic services can we responsibly consider the optional services, about which so many seem unrealistically concerned.

M.E. Bryan
Kansas City

Take responsibility

To all you “inner city” residents (and I am one of you), quit whining about special-interest programs that may be eliminated from Kansas City’s budget and start taking responsibility for yourselves.

It’s simply the right thing to do.

Charles Ballew
Kansas City

KC should consider pay cuts

The Kansas City government is in bad financial condition. Instead of reducing services by laying off a lot of employees, why doesn't the city or other government agencies reduce the pay of all employees - more at the top and less at the bottom?

Some employees might be able to get other jobs, thus freeing up more money for the remaining employees.

Bill Joyce
Westwood

Cut out the pork

Halt Congressional add-ons — pork-barrel spending — to federal funding bills immediately. Both parties are mindlessly spending money we no longer have. Congressional add-ons are unregulated and being used to subvert the federal budgeting process. This is practiced deception and corrupts the opportunity to reduce deficits.

Congress should be looking to prepare and pass appropriations legislation by Oct. 1, the start of the annual federal fiscal year. Holding federal agencies hostage to force special projects is tantamount to sedition. Omnibus appropriations are disruptive and expensive to all taxpayers.

If the elected officials are not competent enough to perform the most important budget functions necessary for the continuous operation of government, then they must be replaced. This isn’t a request. It’s a demand for the end of corruption by angry taxpayers. Now.

Carol A. Clopton
Kansas City

Let players pay for stadium upkeep

Maybe the Royals and Chiefs players, coaches and staff could take a 10 percent pay cut, and that would give them the $2 million that Mayor Funkhouser wants to cut for stadium upkeep (3/6, A-1, “More layoffs suggested.”).

Isn’t it time for everyone to step up to the plate and give back some of their riches so that the city, county, state and nation gets back into the black? People out here are cutting back, so it is time for the millionaire ball players and owners to bear some of the burden and cut back.

Threatening to move to another city is ludicrous. Who wants losing teams?

Dorothy Thiel
Overland Park

Stop stadium subsidies

City Manager Wayne Cauthen’s desire to continue shoveling money into the sports complex in the hope that neither the Chiefs nor the Royals will leave has left me thinking Cauthen is clearly not in touch with the current fiscal reality of Kansas City and its residents (3/6, A-1, “More layoffs suggested; Funkhouser also advises ending stadium subsidies while avoiding increases in property taxes and police cutbacks”).

Nor has Cauthen learned anything from sports history about some teams being as greedy as some of the worst robber barons of the 19th century — their goal being one of seeing how loud they can cry “poverty” and how far they can dip their hands into taxpayers’ wallets — even as they pay themselves and their players hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars annually.

Mr. Cauthen, the Kansas City taxpayers who pay your salary — people who are losing incomes and jobs — can’t afford these “giveaways” you so dearly like. Please stop giving taxpayer-provided charity to these wealthy sports franchises.

Lew Hughes
Kansas City, Kan.

Save money and Kansas schools

Here is a plan to close the Kansas budget gap and save our public schools.

Cut spending by consolidating many of the too numerous rural school districts, which result in high administrative costs.

Shift revenue raised by the lottery and gaming to education and the general fund.

Raise revenue by restoring the oil severance tax to its historic levels prior to the cuts of recent years.

This plan helps public schools and the average taxpayer.

Bill Roush
Overland Park

Missouri budget decisions

The budget of Missouri is not just numbers. It is a moral document that reflects our core values. With Missouri and our nation in the midst of an economic crisis, there is much danger that some of our most vulnerable neighbors will be left out.

But Missouri does have other alternatives. We have founded a coalition to promote in-depth dialogue about the 2009 budget process and invite your involvement in three ways:

Call, write or visit your elected officials. Let them know about people who are hurting in your community — those jobless, homeless or uninsured.

Join our coalition to speak out together with people of faith and citizens of good will. Read our principles at the link labeled “Join Coalition” at www.moimpact.org/issues. Or request an informational packet by phoning 573-635-2689.

Visit the Missourians for Tax Justice Web site at www.missouriansfortaxjustice.org to learn more about our current unfair, inadequate, and outdated tax system and changes that need to be made. Then speak out with us in support of Tax Justice for a Healthy Missouri (HB 567).

The time to act is now, while there’s still time to influence the state budget decisions that become final in May.

The Rev. John Bennett
Outreach Coordinator, Missouri IMPACT
Jefferson City

Rabbi Susan Talve
St. Louis

Rep. Jeanette Mott Oxford
Missouri House District 59
St. Louis

‘Political games’ in Kansas

I guess Republicans aren’t dead yet politically. At least in Kansas they’re not. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius rolled over and signed the budget, allowing Kansas to be able to meet payroll and pay out tax refunds. It seems the “political games” (her words) were basically being played by her, and she lost (2/18, A-1, “Kansas budget standoff settled; Gov. Sebelius agrees to Republican-backed $300 million in cuts, but lessens sting to schools”).

In Kansas it’s fairly clear: If you borrow a ton of money for your budget, you have to pay it back. And the Republican leadership actually had the audacity to want to do it this year, as the law calls for. And if that’s the case, you have to have actual money to do that.

People across the country should look at this example of what should be happening at the federal level, because our current president doesn’t have this conservative legislature to balance his out-of-control spending and borrowing.

Dyrk Dugan
Overland Park