Tagged: Mark Funkhouser

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – KCUR is running a series of conversation with candidates in the race for Kansas City Missouri Mayor. We're asking them about crime and how to balance the city's budget during tough economic times. Maria Carter caught up with the incumbent, Mayor Mark Funkhouser, at his campaign headquarters in the city market.

Kansas City, MO – Kansas City mayor Mark Funkhouser made the formal announcement Tuesday: he's running for reelection.

Funkhouser's told reporters his administration has put city finances in order, reined in lucrative development TIF deals that cost the city millions and gotten the metal plates off of the streets.

nd He says controversies over his board appointments, rebuffs by the council and the lawsuit accusing his wife of discrimination at the office have simply primed him for a rugged campaign.

Kansas City, MO – Saving endangered neighborhoods and mortgage-embattled dwellers advanced on multiple fronts in Kansas City.

With one in every 650 Missouri homeowners facing foreclosure, Mayor Mark Funkhouser joined the organization Communities Creating Opportunities to ask the Missouri Attorney General to call a temporary moratorium on foreclosures.

Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser says it will allow time to negotiate between banks and borrowers.

Kansas City, MO – For the second time in as many weeks, Mark Funkhouser has used his veto power - this time on a ballot measure to amend the city charter so council redistricting could possibly wait until after new census ethnic distribution data is released.

The mayor says the the US Constitution mandates that redistricting must be done before the spring city election because Northland districts are underrepresented, and that the city will be found in violation of the constitution if it does not correct that situation.

Kansas City, MO – The Kansas City, Mo., finance department verified Wednesday that after two years of major spending cuts the city has money in the bank. And the mayor and council members immediately started talking about how much more the city should borrow.

The 34.2 million dollars the city has in its general fund today, day one of its new fiscal year, is about 8 percent of this year's budget. That's the largest balance in a decade, and the city's credit rating is also at its highest in ten years.

Kansas City, MO – Kansas City will pay a $250,000 deposit to take the Power and Light Building and the block around it off the market while studies continue on creating a new convention hotel on the site. But Mayor Funkhouser still thinks it's a bad idea.

The city will lose the quarter of a million it doesn't build a hotel on the property, and the mayor says the "found money" from the restaurant tax could be better spent on neighborhood infrastructure or marketing existing hotels.

Kansas City, MO – The Kansas City city council wouldn't go along with Mayor Funkhouser's plan for a large bond issue for infrastructure around schools, but it approved its own 90 million bond issue package Thursday.

The bonds the council allocated were approved by the voters in 2004 and 2005, but never actually sold.

Councilman Terry Riley characterized the bond package as a local economic stimulus.

Kansas City, Mo. – Five Kansas City Councilwomen took the floor Thursday to take Mayor Mark Funkhouser to task for stripping away all of their colleague Jan Marcason's committee positions.

The women added their comments to scheduled debate on a shoo-in ordinance taking the next step toward a computer based traffic ticket and municipal court case management system.

Finance committee chair Deb Hermann briefly endorsed the ordinance, then turned the discussion to lavish praise for Marcason's ability, hard work and excellent performance.