Newsletter

13 November 2008

Dear Folks,

This Week’s City News

The trip to the Mayor’s Institute on City Design went very well. The Mayor received a lot of useful information from the experts who came from across the country for the conference and also from the other Mayor’s in attendance. Funk finds the other mayor’s inspiring, not to mention reassuring, especially when they speak of the similar, inherent challenges of the job. I’ll be imparting a few of the Institutes suggestions to you over the next several newsletters. For now, I’ll tell you about one of Funk’s favorite suggestions that had to do with the Mayor’s New Tools initiative. The Institute encouraged Funk to have the New Tools task force find a way to include transit as a new tool for economic development. My favorite insight came from Maurice Cox, with National Endowment for the Arts. He told Funk to, “slow down there a little bit Mayor, you’re on the right track, but you’re moving very fast and are probably frightening a lot of people. I don’t want your efforts to get thwarted by others’ fears.” Very wise advice. Unfortunately, there’s too much work to do to slow anything down.

To briefly touch on the local gossip: the Mayor has not moved his office out of city hall. Like the rest of the council, much of his work consists of meetings outside his office or out in the community with the people that he serves. And concerning the lawsuit that the Mayor had to file - it is not a lawsuit in the traditional sense - it is only a motion for declaratory judgment. The Mayor seeks no monetary damages from the city and the lawyer, Doug Carter, seeks no monetary compensation for his services. Given these facts, it should not cost the city or the taxpayers a single dime to ask a judge to make a ruling on whether it is the Mayor, or the City Council, that gets to control the Mayor’s office.

I heard through the grapevine that a well-known political consultant in Kansas City tipped the Wall Street Journal to the declaratory judgment filing, and sure enough, Funk received a call a few days later from a reporter with that newspaper. It seems that the consultant in question finds it amusing to create scandals where none exist. As usual, the Mayor answered the questions posed to him in his typical honest and straightforward manner, thus lessening the negative antics of the individual looking to cause dissention in Kansas City.

On a More Personal Note

I have been reading a book that my husband read 40 years ago – the story of Malcom X. It is strange to be reading this now with President-Elect Obama having just won the election. Malcolm X was a visionary change-maker, who in his day was hated by the establishment, but loved by the people. I cannot help thinking that if Malcolm X caved to the intense pressure that he received in his time - pressure to sit down, shut up, play nice and come across more appropriately - then President-Elect Obama would not be standing where he is today. There have been many occasions in my lifetime where I have silently said a prayer of thanks to the women who came before me. Because it is only through their efforts that my daughter and I enjoy the rights that we have today. Today, I find myself saying many silent prayers throughout the day to people like Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Ghandi, and Malcolm X, for they are some of the change-makers that made it possible for this country to have made history last week.

The next Town Hall MeetingThe Southern Communities CoalitionWednesday, November 19, 2008, at 6 p.m. Baptiste Education Center, 5401 East 103rd Street, Kansas City, MO

In faith,Gloria & Mark