Revitalizing Kansas city

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Revitalizing Kansas City“The city of Kansas City, Missouri, is in the midstof a major urban renaissance,” says the first line ofthe city’s application to the 2006 All-America CityAward. Civic activists, business leaders, and govern-ment officials have a vision of positioning the city asa “premier destination location within the Midwest,by building a world-class downtown for our resi-dents and visitors to live, work, and play.”

“In order to become that city,” the authors of theapplication explain, “we have begun to reinvent themanner in which we serve our residents, developnew points of contact between citizens and city officials, and facilitate the construction of newamenities, such as a performing arts space and enter-tainment district, that our citizens desire.”

Kansas City is known for jazz, barbecue, steaks,and stockyards, and for having more fountainsthan any other city in the world besides Rome andmore boulevards than any city except Paris. It ishome to several sports franchises, including theRoyals, the Chiefs, Major League Soccer’sWizards, and the Arena Football League’s Brigade.The city serves as headquarters for HallmarkCards, Russell Stover Candies, H&R Block, andAMC Theaters, among others.

Kansas City has another distinction. It is one of ahandful of communities that have won the All-America City (AAC) Award five times (1950,1951, 1985, 1994, and 2006). Kansas City, in fact,has boasted some of the best management andleadership of any American city, and—during theRoaring Twenties and the Great Depression—someof the worst.

Much has changed since 1950, when Kansas Citywon an AAC award for resisting an attempted

comeback by the notorious political machine oflocal Democratic Party boss Tom Pendergast.Indeed, much has changed since 1994, when thecity’s award-winning projects were focused on fight-ing crime and promoting racial harmony. ThenMayor Emmanuel Cleaver organized a “spring sum-mit” of businesses, civic, political, and religiousleaders to respond to urban problems such as crimeand joblessness. The other two projects highlightedin 1994 were an innovative “antidrug tax” and aprogram called “Harmony in a World of Differ-ence,” a ten-county area alliance of citizens deter-mined to improve race relations in a city that wasonce deemed among the twenty most segregatedcommunities in the United States.

In 2006 the theme was revitalization, not just therebuilding of the city’s central business district—aneffort that has received worldwide recognition—butits neighborhoods as well. Kansas City has activeneighborhood groups, a dozen or so communitydevelopment corporations, and a number of innova-tive public-private-nonprofit partnerships. Two ofthem were highlighted in the city’s AAC bid: theWestside Community Action Network Center,which has developed a bold program to take home-less people and day laborers off the street; and achild care-social services center known as OperationBreakthrough.

Historical Background

Kansas City began in the 1820s as a fur trading poston a bend of the Missouri River. During the CivilWar era, it was the site of fierce skirmishing betweenpro-Union and pro-slavery groups, culminating inthe Battle of Westport, Missouri’s largest Civil Warengagement, which was fought on the outskirts ofthe city. A bridge across the Missouri River and the

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Nat ional Civ ic Review • DOI : 10.1002/ncr.173 • Summer 2007

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opening of transcontinental railroads in the 1860smade Kansas City a major freight hub for grain andcattle. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-turies, Kansas City was a wide-open town with afamously corrupt political machine ruled by Tomand James Pendergast.

Tom Pendergast started out as a bookkeeper at oneof brother James’s saloons and worked his way upthrough the ranks of the machine to be the unchal-lenged boss of Kansas City and Jackson County pol-itics, famous for his links to organized crime and thewidely inflated numbers by which his chosen candi-dates won elections.

For years the city was the bane of the municipalreform movement. In 1926, the voters adopted acouncil-manager form of government, but thelong-serving city manager, Henry McElroy, was aPendergast partisan. It wasn’t until Pendergast wasarrested on federal income tax charges that the citybroke his grip on local government. In 1940, aftersweeping city council elections, reformers hired L. P. Cookingham, the city manager of Saginaw,Michigan. Cookingham, a founder and presidentof the International City/County ManagersAssociation, would serve as city manager for eigh-teen years.

Considered the dean of American city managers,Cookingham ended the patronage system, cuttingthe number of city jobs while increasing salariesfor city employees across the board. He institutedan open bidding process for works projects, low-ered taxes and utility rates, and expanded thecity’s parks program. One of his lasting legacies,however, was expansion of the city’s boundariesthrough annexation. During his term, the city dou-bled in size. The annexations were both a blessingand a burden. Delivering city services across sucha large area ultimately proved difficult. By the1970s, much of the city’s infrastructure was aging,and it was losing population to the outlying suburbs.

The Downtown Boom

“Downtown is the heart and lifeblood of a city,”notes the city’s 2006 AAC application. “Kansas Cityonce had a thriving downtown; however, as the cityexpanded, attention became focused on developingother parts of the city. Little investment was madedowntown, particularly in the central business dis-trict. Decades of neglect resulted in a downtowncharacterized by crime, blight, and poverty. Once-prosperous areas became seas of parking lots andabandoned buildings. Commercial and residentialvacancy rates soared. A 2002 study showed thatdowntown had shrunk from 32,000 residents to6,300, from 450 bars and restaurants to 150, andfrom 175 hotels to 10.”

Kansas City’s downtown is undergoing a majortransformation, with more than $3 billion of publicand private investment. Projects include everythingfrom streetscapes to utility improvements, new resi-dential lofts and apartments, and numerous com-mercial renovations. An important player in therevitalization is the Downtown CommunityImprovement District (DCID), a nonprofit organiza-tion with 40 “ambassadors” who provide patrol,information, and cleanup services. The rebuildingprocess began in 2001 when the Civic Council ofGreater Kansas City funded a new master plan forredeveloping downtown. Better known as the“Sasaki Report,” the document identified twentyyears’ worth of development goals.

The DCID’s efforts have brought about numeroussuccesses in the areas of safety and the environment.The area has experienced a dramatic reduction incrime since these projects began. According toKansas City’s 2006 application for an All-AmericaCity Award, “overall crime in the CBD (CentralBusiness District) has decreased by 11 percent; rob-bery dropped by 34 percent, and juvenile crimedecreased by 28 percent. A study showed a 28 per-cent improvement in litter and trash and a 26 percentimprovement in pedestrian environment in the CBDbetween 2003 and 2004. In addition, the DCID has

National Civ ic Review DOI : 10.1002/ncr Summer 2007

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fostered much-needed landscape and maintenanceservices in public areas (parks, bus shelters) andassisted in 122 special events, conventions, parades,gallery openings.”

“The re-invigorization of downtown has brought amuch-needed change in Kansas City,” says the AACapplication. “Citizens witnessing a transformationhave a renewed energy and sense of pride in thecommunity. Blighted areas are being converted intoattractive lofts and stores throughout the urbancore, which has spurred development throughoutthe city. Kansas City is fulfilling its goal of becominga destination place for residents and tourists.Experts assert that no city in America has accom-plished so much in a short time.”

“The re-invigorization of downtown has brought amuch-needed change in Kansas City,” says the AACapplication. “Citizens witnessing a transformationhave a renewed energy and sense of pride in thecommunity. Experts assert that no city in Americahas accomplished so much in a short time.”

The Westside Community Action Network Center“Historically, the Westside community of Kansas Cityhas been a disenfranchised, disengaged neighborhoodpopulated by low-income and homeless Spanish-speaking immigrants,” says the AAC application. “Aliquor/convenience store parking lot served as a desti-nation point for newly arriving immigrants and anunofficial hiring site for day laborers. The daily con-gregation of Hispanic immigrants reached nearly 200as criminal activity and public intoxication soared.Although the majority of the immigrants were thereto find legitimate employment, the area became filledwith drugs, alcohol, violence, burglary, vandalism,prostitution, and aggressive panhandling. The areahad one of the highest [rates of] calls for police ser-vices for general disorder disturbances. Businessessuffered financially and tourists were steered away.”

The city’s Hispanic population dates back to theearly 1900s, when refugees from the MexicanRevolution and workers laying the railroad trackscame to the area in large numbers. DorothyGallagher, a graduate of the New York School ofSocial Work, opened a settlement house on theWestside in 1936. The Guadalupe Center heldclasses and provided vocational training and trans-lation services, earning a national recognition.

The Westside was cut off from the rest of the citywhen the interstate highway system was completed inthe 1960s. In the 1970s, after the U.S. Housing andUrban Development Department described the areaas “no longer viable,” community activists foundedthe Westside Housing Organization to revitalize thearea. The organization is a member of the nationwideNeighborhoodWorks Network and has built scores ofaffordable homes and helped renovate hundreds.

The Westside Community Action Network Center(CAN) was founded in 1995 as part of a citywidecommunity policing effort that relied on the “bro-ken windows” model of strict enforcement of crim-inal law and building codes. The city assigned twopolice officers and a city property inspector to helpresidents clean up the neighborhood.

“The idea,” says Lynda Callon, director of theWestside CAN, “is that blight begets crime andcrime begets blight. If you fix the blight but not thecrime, it doesn’t work, and if you fix the crime andnot the blight it doesn’t work. It was sort of holistic,trying to deal with disruptions, disrepair, and dis-tress, the three disses.”

For the first eight years, the center focused on reduc-ing crime, cleaning up the neighborhood, and pro-moting civic engagement. But in 2002, the centertook on a new challenge.

For as along as anyone can remember, the corner ofSouthwest Boulevard and Summit Street has beenthe main pick-up spot for day laborers in Kansas


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City. Many are recent immigrants who are cut offfrom their families and without much in the way oflocal resources.

“It’s one thing when you have 20 or 30 guys,” saysCallon, who began her work as a neighborhoodactivist in the early 1990s when she fought to keep thecity from closing a neighborhood library. “Butaround 1994 the number started ballooning. Now wewere getting 100 or 150 guys, and with them camethe drug dealers, the prostitutes, and the predators.”

With no public bathrooms, homeless people and daylaborers would urinate in alleys and backyards.Sometimes they would use area residents’ gardenhoses to bathe or fill up their water containers.Neighborhood kids walking to the local conve-nience store would have to run a gauntlet of disor-derly bystanders.

“It’s hard to get people to take pride of ownershipand clean up the neighborhood when that’s goingon,” says Callon. “We had to figure out what to dowith all these men. I’m not into reinventing wheels,so if somebody else has figured this out, I’m pre-pared to rip off ideas from the best.”

When Callon started surfing the Internet, the words“day labor center” practically jumped off thescreen. A professor at UCLA had compiled a man-ual on what the city of Los Angeles did to deal withsimilar challenges, and Callon managed to get herhands on it.

After four years in operation, Westside’s DayLaborer Center has become an important fixture inthe community. It takes day laborers off the street bygiving them a place to wait for work, go to the bath-room, pick up messages, grab a meal, or use aphone. It’s great for the men, but it is just as big abenefit to the neighborhood. “Crime is down byabout 60 percent,” says Callon. “Business is up by30–40 percent. For the first time in a long time, theneighborhood has a branch bank.”

Callon attributes much of the program’s success tothe two police officers assigned to the center, MattTomasic and Chato Villalobos. She also puts in a plugfor Kansas City Police Chief James Corwin, who hadthe courage to back a potentially controversial idea.

The Westside commercial strip now has a beautysalon and an ice cream parlor; a new restaurant witha world-renowned chef recently opened there. Thingsare so nice, says Callon, the neighborhood is experi-encing a new challenge: gentrification. Young, middle-class people are moving in to be near the newly revi-talized downtown and Crossroads arts districts.

“Nobody has done gentrification well,” says Callon.“Contrary to what some people say, it is not a win-win situation.” So what will Westside do about it?

“We don’t know yet,” says Callon, with a wearysigh. “We are trying to figure it out.”

Operation BreakthroughOperation Breakthrough was founded in 1971 by twonuns, Berta Sailer and Coita Busanmas. It began as aday care center for four toddlers and six preschoolers,but it has grown into something much bigger. Withabout five hundred children, it is both a child carecenter and a broad-based social services agency.

Of the children, 98 percent live in families withincome below the poverty line, 95 percent are fromsingle-parent families, 25 percent are homeless, and25 percent are in foster care. Some were displacedby Hurricane Katrina.

Players and spouses from the Kansas City Chiefsdonate their time and money for the center, whichgets a good chunk of change from a preseason NFLcharity game. It also gets funding from the city, thestate, and the federal Department of Agriculture.

The center offers a before-and-after-school program;speech therapy; a girls’ leadership and social skillsgroup; a volunteer program for adult men to serve


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as mentors for fatherless boys; a mentoring programfor teenage males; and a health program with immu-nization, well-child examinations, and dental care.

Neighborhoods and Community Development

“For so long our downtown was neglected, and nowthe pendulum is swinging back in the other direc-tion,” says Gloria Eurotas, former executive directorand CEO of the Kansas City NeighborhoodAlliance. “Neighborhoods are very happy aboutwhat is happening downtown, but they don’t wantall the focus on downtown.”

Helping neighborhoods in the core urban areas of thecity get their share of the municipal pie is part of whatKCNA is all about. Until the civil rights movement ofthe 1960s and 1970s, African Americans had littlechoice but to live in the older neighborhoods in thenortheastern part of the city. Housing patterns aremore fluid today, but years of “redlining”—that is,discriminating against low-income neighborhoods onthe part of lending institutions—and spotty city ser-vices led to deterioration of housing stock.

The Kansas City Neighborhood Alliance wasfounded in 1979 after a study by the housing com-mittee of the Civic Council, an organization of theCEOs from the city’s one hundred largest corpora-tions, identified the need for grassroots communityorganization and training to promote support sys-tems for neighborhoods in the urban core. Fundswere leveraged from the public and private sectorsfor a four-point agenda:

1. Making the city more aware of its neighborhoods2. Fostering a new spirit of understanding between

neighborhoods and business3. Making neighborhood associations more effective4. Addressing specific housing problems in the

neighborhoods

In 1983, the alliance began an ambitious program oftraining to develop neighborhood leaders. Aboutthirty-five leaders a year from four to six neighbor-

hood associations undergo a nine-month trainingprogram to boost their knowledge on developingresources, building networks, recruiting volunteers,and creating action plans to improve their neighbor-hoods. The alliance has also formed a partnershipwith the city’s police department to implement aTeam Policing Program.

More recently, the alliance has launched a program toundertake a Neighborhood Housing Inventory to de-velop a comprehensive picture of conditions of about120,000 properties in the city. Neighborhood leaderswill be trained to identify trouble spots on a map andtrack city funds to determine how effectively dollarsare being spent to solve problems in those areas.

Before KCNA, neighborhood leaders were lesssavvy about the ways of city government, says LarryWashington, senior director of neighborhood initia-tives. “They didn’t know the programs. They didn’tknow what the city did and how things worked.Now they are more familiar with how to get thecity’s resources. What they were able to do in someneighborhoods (not all) was to protest with angerand try to get some reaction from the city. Now theyhave much friendlier relations, and that’s workedout well, but we’ve still got a long way to go.”

The angry protest politics of the past has given wayto a more collaborative urge to have a seat at thedecision-making table. Neighborhood leaders meetregularly with city manager Wayne Cauthen to dis-cuss issues such as spending priorities.

“KCNA does a wonderful job of connecting thedots,” says Edward Linnebur, director of businessdevelopment. “We try to find a need and we marshalthe change through developing partnerships and rela-tionships with those who can resolve the problem.”

Recently the organization has taken on the problemof how to provide homeowners insurance at a rea-sonable rate in the older neighborhoods. “One ofthe things we are currently fighting is that there is a


“When Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes took office inApril 1999, support for downtown was at a record low,”says a press release from the American PlanningAssociation. “Plans for an entertainment district hadbeen scrapped, and long-time tenants were leavingdowntown for the suburbs. That didn’t stop the newmayor from putting forth a vision for a new Kansas City.Through strategic partnerships and public consensus,Kansas City is becoming what the mayor envisionedwhen first taking office, a city with strong neighbor-hoods, a revitalized downtown, and a healthy economy.”

Kay Barnes has a long history of civic activism. Shewas a founder of the Women’s Resource Center at theUniversity of Missouri-Kansas City. She developedmulticultural women’s speaking panels for the west-ern United States. For twenty-three years, she waspresident of Kay Waldo, a human resource develop-

ment firm specializing in leadership, supervisoryskills, time management, stress management, andcommunications skills. She worked with a range oforganizations, including the private sector, nonprof-its, and government.

The National Civic Review interviewed Mayor Barnes inearly February 2007 as she was beginning the finalthree months of her second term. Kansas City has atwo-term limit for its mayors.

NCR: How did you get involved in civic affairs?

BARNES: In 1974 I was asked to run for a position on

the Jackson County Legislature, which I subsequently

decided to do. I was elected and served four years

there. Then instead of running for reelection, I chose to

run for an at-large seat on the city council of Kansas

City. I served on the council from 1979 to 1983, ran

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perception out there that the urban core is a higherrisk,” says Linnebur. “This is one of the biggestissues in trying to market our neighborhoods; insur-ance is almost twice what it would be if you boughtoutside the urban core. We also know that aboutone in three are currently insured, which is kind ofscary. What we’ve got is an aging population thatlives in these homes. Some have lived there for thirtyyears, and they have paid off their homes. They areno longer required to have insurance.”

Linnebur has been in discussions with state insur-ance officials in Missouri and Kansas to resolve thisproblem. He has also been working with KansasCity, Missouri, officials to see if the city could be aninsurer for low-income homeowners.

The aging of residents in older central city neighbor-hoods poses another challenge for community-

building groups such as KCNA. “In these older neighborhoods, the leadership is now getting older and not as able to be active,” says Washington. “Part ofour goal is to bring out the emerging leadership, theyounger folks who want to take a leadership role andhelp train them so they can become leaders.”

The organization is currently trying to think up newways of developing such leadership. “How do youwork with a neighborhood that is changing?” asksEurotas. “Neighborhood meetings are not necessar-ily the way to convene people and get their atten-tion. People will come out when there is a hot issue,but otherwise how do you create community whenpeople are busy with their kids, busy commuting, orusing the Internet? So how do you do neighborhoodwork?”

Michael McGrath is the editor of the National Civic Review.


An Interview with Former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes

9Nat ional Civ ic Review DOI : 10.1002/ncr Summer 2007

for reelection, and lost, so I was out of politics actively

as a candidate and picked back up full-time with my

consulting and speaking work. In the midnineties I was

asked by the then-mayor to serve as chair of the tax

increment financing commission for the city. That got

me back in the loop of city business. The mayor could

not run for reelection—we’re term limited at eight

years—so I ran and was elected in 1999.

NCR: Was there any particular issue area that you

were concerned about when you ran for mayor?

BARNES: When I ran for mayor, I was primarily

focused on delivery of basic services. Kansas City is a

pretty large city geographically. We have 320 square

miles. You could put six cities the size of San Francisco

inside our city limits. It requires always a great deal of

effort and resources to go into maintaining all of that

infrastructure, the streets, the bridges, the sidewalks

and sewers, and so on.

NCR: So there were infrastructure problems?

BARNES: It was partly infrastructure, but partly the

delivery of these services that were often complained

about, and it is an ongoing issue in a city where you have

got just under five hundred thousand people responsible

for that large an amount of space. St. Louis, for exam-

ple, is a little over fifty square miles, so that gives you an

idea of the difference. How you get the resources to pay

for that infrastructure will always be an issue.

NCR: The city grew because of annexation.

BARNES: Over a period of time, there was an enor-

mous amount of annexation that occurred. It’s both a

challenge and an opportunity. We’re not landlocked.

We are not piled on top of each other, and we do have

a wide range of housing for people. There are opportu-

nities for new development and the need for redevel-

opment in some of the older areas.

We have a lot of rural land in our area, in addition to

everything else you would see in a city. We’re not the

largest in geography. Jacksonville, Florida, and

Oklahoma City are two that I believe have larger land

areas than we do.

We have parts of four counties within our city limits, so

the dynamics are very challenging, but it gives the city

a lot of opportunity. We have, for example, in the north-

ern part of the city—the part that was annexed latest—

areas ripe for all kinds of new development, and that’s

what we are experiencing. It’s beautiful in terms of the

topography, rolling hills, and so on. There is a lot of res-

idential development there, and also retail and com-

mercial operations.

We have everything within the city limits that you could

have in terms of living options. We have the old core of

the city with its aging infrastructure and need for revi-

talization, and as you spread out we have the older sub-

urban neighborhoods that were developed in the 1920s,

1930s, and 1940s. Moving out from that we have

newer suburban communities started in the fifties, six-

ties, and seventies. We have brand new suburban areas

that have been built out in the last five to ten years. In

addition to all of that, we have I think nearly 30 percent

of the city undeveloped. It’s very interesting.

NCR: So all of that annexation and development in the

periphery had an impact on the core part of the city in

terms of the need for downtown revitalization.

BARNES: Our redevelopment of our downtown area

has been slow in coming, but we are really moving for-

ward now. We have multiple initiatives that are just

going to totally transform our downtown. We have a

beautiful state-of-the-art, I would say world-class arena

going up later this year. We have an eight-square-block

entertainment retail district that will open later this

year. We have a performing arts center a few blocks

away that is beginning construction. We have a brand

new, forty-five-thousand–square-foot ballroom and

renovated convention center that is also adjacent to

everything else I’ve been describing. We really are

transforming that greater downtown area.

Kay Barnes Interview (continued)

Kay Barnes Interview (continued)NCR: When I was in Kansas City, say, twelve years ago,

I noticed something of a gap between the “convention

center” part of downtown and the periphery, this sort of

warehouse-industrial corridor that put an edge to your

redevelopment. So now you are filling out from the core

central area.

BARNES: There’s a lot more to do, so I wouldn’t want

to paint a picture that everything is being done that

needs to be done, but we are making major progress.

NCR: Was that a conscious strategy when you took

office?

BARNES: Yes, although when I came into office, which

is true for almost any mayor, there was a steep learning

curve; no matter how experienced you have been you see

things differently. I certainly realized, as did a growing

number of civic leaders, that we did not have the luxury

of waiting. We also didn’t have the luxury of doing a sin-

gle project, completing that, and then beginning

another—in other words, a linear approach. We realized

that we would be successful by moving multiple initia-

tives forward simultaneously. And that is what we have

focused on doing, and it is proving to be successful.

NCR: So the strategy is to create a sort of critical mass.

BARNES: Yes, and even though, intellectually, I could

probably have told you this would happen, to see it

unfold is amazing. I would not have imagined such a

quick turnaround as we are now seeing—the entrepre-

neurial, small-business efforts that are bubbling up

within this greater downtown area and sidewalk, the

storefront restaurants and different retail ventures on

the block near the larger projects. The momentum has

been wonderful to see, people catching the spirit, peo-

ple getting excited for the first time in a long time and

wanting to be part of the action.

We are also seeing interest on the part of investors and

developers, not only from around the United States but

also from countries as far away as New Zealand and

Australia. People who keep a close eye on what cities

are bubbling up in terms of the vitality and opportunity,

many of those investors and developers are now taking

a look at Kansas City and choosing to invest.

NCR: Sometimes when there is a lot of emphasis on

downtown development, neighborhood groups com-

plain. You’ve done both downtown and neighborhood

revitalization at the same time.

BARNES: I believe we have, but that does not mean

that there are no citizens who are disgruntled. There is a

lot more work to do in the neighborhoods, but the citi-

zens have really been partners in moving things forward.

We’ve had thirteen ballot initiatives that have passed,

and most of them relate to neighborhoods—everything

from a major ballot issue for increasing the number of

firefighters to improve facilities, another for police,

another for indigent health care, and another for capital

improvements and deferred maintenance needs across

the city. We have a new “311” system for complaints

that come in. That is dramatically changing our ability to

respond quickly to citizens concerns.

NCR: Does the 311 system include some sort of per-

formance measurement system analysis?

BARNES: Very much so; that is a major part of it.

We are able to measure, record, and document every

single call that we get, where it’s coming from and

which department is involved, tracking on a real-time

basis where there are peaks in problems, so we can

address those more quickly than we have been able

to in the past.

NCR: So you are term-limited out. Do you have further

ambitions in public service?

BARNES: The only office I have been pushed to run

for is a congressional seat we have in the northern part

of the city. I doubt that I will end up doing that. I prob-

ably will end up teaching a couple of college courses,

which I’ve done before. I want to get back into my pub-

10 Nat ional Civ ic Review DOI : 10.1002/ncr Summer 2007

Kay Barnes Interview (continued)

11National Civ ic Review DOI : 10.1002/ncr Summer 2007

lic speaking, particularly convention and conference

speaking, and will be doing some of that, and I am

interested in serving on a couple of corporate boards.

NCR: What will you be teaching?

BARNES: My focus will probably be on leadership,

and not just public sector leadership but overall lead-

ership as a category. My personal belief is that every-

body is a leader at certain times. You can be a leader

of a very large group, you can be a leader in your fam-

ily, and you can be a leader in your Sunday school

class. I think there are some general concepts of lead-

ership that apply across the board, and I will probably

be using my experience as mayor.

NCR: You already had a background in leadership

training. How did that help you as mayor?

BARNES: When you are mayor, you are up in front of

people so much of the time, either making extempora-

neous remarks or making prepared remarks. Several

times each week. My background as a public speaker

has allowed me to be very comfortable doing that. I

have not had to go through the anxiety that a lot of peo-

ple have doing that. Even if you have gotten to the

point of being a mayor, most people have not had a lot

of experience in public speaking.

Certainly the work I did in time and stress management

helped in understanding my limits as mayor. There are

so many demands made, and I turn down a lot of what

I am asked to do as mayor. I know my limits, so I think I

have been able to stay healthy and not be burned out.

NCR: Kansas City has a city council–city manager form

of government with enhanced powers for the mayor.

BARNES: It’s been enhanced over the years by

changes in the charter. The mayor makes appointments

to all boards and commissions, which is really huge.

Much of our work is done by agencies and commissions

of the city peopled by volunteers, and we have over a

hundred boards and commissions. The mayor has veto

power over anything passed by the council; I can veto,

and it takes a supermajority to overrule that veto. I

have never used it.

I think it is a good balance. I’ve never liked the “strong

mayor” versus city manager issue, because I believe

you can be a strong mayor in a city manager form of

government. I think also being able to work effectively

with the city manager and with the council and being

able to build consensus is an essential role for a strong

mayor in a city manager form of government.

Through strategic partnerships and public con-sensus, Kansas City is becoming what the mayorenvisioned when first taking office, a city withstrong neighborhoods, a revitalized downtown,and a healthy economy.

A M E R I C A N P L A N N I N G A S S O C I AT I O N P R E S S R E L E A S E

NCR: Any departing advice for future mayors?

BARNES: It’s very important to have a solid staff. I am

very fortunate with my staff. They all came in with me,

and they have all stayed within the office. I’ve had a

great staff, and that has made a world of difference. If

I were to say what I feel best about, it is the appoint-

ments of really good people to boards and commis-

sions, a cross-representation of people in the

community. We’ve worked very hard on being sure we

have solid numbers on minority participation, female

participation; we track those numbers carefully, but

those literally hundreds of people serving on those

boards and commissions have made enormous contri-

butions. I would also say that you should make every

effort to avoid burning a bridge with a group of indi-

viduals, because it can really come back to bite you

even decades later. You can disagree, but a mayor has

to make an unusual effort to not fall into that trap, as

tempting as it may be.

Documents

Revitalizing Kansas city