Breathe, People

Last week, angry West Siders told Funkhouser that they were having a hard time trusting him anymore. When I interviewed him back in November, Funkhouser talked about trusting government. The basic elements of trust, he said, are "that the government has integrity, generally chooses the right course of action — the morally right course of action — and has competence. And if it chooses the morally right course of action, it will succeed. Second, if it doesn't succeed, it will acknowledge and learn from its mistakes. The third critical component is transparency — citizens will see with their own eyes that we're choosing the right course and succeeding and learning."

Last November, here's what he said he hoped to accomplish as mayor: "Can you really raise citizen-satisfaction scores? Can you really get rid of the damn metal plates? Can you really make Kansas City just as appealing a place to live as Prairie Village? Can the schools be good? Can we have a real bus and a real transit system? Yes. That's not easy. It's hard to do."

Now, parks board members are just trying to do their part.

"Certainly I respect the opinions that have been voiced on both sides," Fierro tells me. But the board is moving forward, he says. "We're responding to the mayor's challenge to improve satisfaction ratings. It's a group effort, with each member of the board, to come up with a realistic plan to improve those ratings."

To save a city, it takes all kinds.