Money Changes Everything

But by the time McClure stood up to take part in the so-called process, Kansas City's corporate power brokers had already been pushing to slip the money past PIAC and give it to their new group, the GDDA.

On the same day McClure had polled her peers in the Southland, Bill Berkley, chairman of the Civic Council, had written a letter to Asjes reaffirming the group's support of the CIC report while arguing that the city council should authorize the GDDA to set priorities for spending half of the money downtown. Pete Levi, president of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, sent a letter saying the same -- though it was the Chamber that had conducted the study that led to the CIC report.

The argument for allowing the GDDA to figure out where to spend the downtown money -- which by the end of May had become the prevailing wisdom in City Hall -- was that many of the group's members were businessmen and lawyers who had profited from downtown for years. They knew the lay of the land. Who better to decide where the money should go?

But many neighborhood activists weren't buying it.

"The little rich kid who used to crowd in front of me in the grade-school drinking-fountain line has now grown up and gathered a bunch of other 'poor little rich boys' to crowd in line ahead of the neighborhoods of Kansas City," Hyde Park resident Mark Esping wrote in his often contentious electronic newsletter, The Neighborhood Hotline. "I do not think that the average working guy needs to give any of his tax money to help guard the investment of millionaire developers."

Esping might be the city's most rascally neighborhood activist. He often comes across as a man with a headful of conspiracy theories and too much time on his hands.

Yet for the last several elections, Esping has batted a thousand.

The city's business elite can't make the same claim.

Esping's newsletter rants represent the public's distrust of City Hall. Having seen downtown-revitalization plans before, the residents who showed up at the Finance and Audit Committee meetings to testify on the bond issue were dubious about the urgency of the current scheme. They wanted to know precisely what this new GDDA intended to do with the money. And what exactly was the GDDA anyway? Was it public? Or private? Or both?

More important, to whom, or what, was the GDDA accountable?

At that point the GDDA didn't even exist.

On June 19, the mayor and the city council (except Danaher) agreed to let Kansas Citians vote to renew $35 million in debt -- a puny pie that'll come presliced: 55 percent to go to the neighborhoods through PIAC and 45 percent for downtown via the GDDA.

Earlier that week, PIAC members had gathered and griped about having to share the meager spoils.

"It's hard when you have a powerful, well-organized group you're up against," said Mike Burke, the development attorney Barnes appointed to chair PIAC.

But PIAC itself is supposed to be a powerful, well-organized group (especially since Burke, who has been described as the mayor's "confidante" and who represents several private developers and is the attorney for the city's Port Authority, ought to know his way around the process). Early on, Burke had fought in favor of letting PIAC handle the whole $35 million. In one meeting, he reminded John Laney that the two of them had worked together on the CIC report that warned against abandoning procedures to pursue the latest whims of the city's power elite.

But this time, his clout wasn't enough. "PIAC doesn't really have the ability to lobby," Burke says.

Put another way: PIAC can't offer campaign money.

"The downtown interests knew they would be expected to come up with campaign money" for the bond issue, one insider observes. "So that provided them the leverage to get a bigger piece of the pie."

By mid-June, PIAC members had one choice: $19 million or nothing. And the neighborhoods needed the $19 million.

The committee members agreed to spend the money on a specific list of projects. More than half -- $9.6 million -- would go toward street-resurfacing. This is the one compromise everyone seems happy about. (In response to council members' requests for some concrete facts about what the money could do, Public Works Director Ed Wolf figured out that with just less than $10 million, the city could smooth out its 2,300 miles of washboard streets by fall 2008.)

The rest of PIAC's share would fund, in roughly equal amounts, improvements to municipal buildings, bridges, sewers, boulevard curbs and sidewalks. The folks at PIAC already have a pretty good idea where this money will go. They're the ones publicly guarding the city's long list of chores.