Josh Merchant is The Beacon's local government reporter in Kansas City. After graduating from Seattle University, Josh earned a master’s degree in investigative journalism from Columbia Journalism School with coursework in data journalism. Josh has contributed reporting to The Seattle Spectator, The South Seattle Emerald and THE CITY in New York. They're a former Beacon intern. At The Beacon, they reported on issues of traffic safety, with a focus on roadway design, as well as tax-incentivized development at a variety of Kansas City agencies. They have lived in Kansas City since 2021.
Kansas City, Missouri
English, French
Local government
Data journalism
The sort of heat wave baking Kansas City looks to be increasingly common, and increasingly dangerous.
“The climate crisis isn’t one single moment of disaster,” said Laela Zaidi, an organizer with Sunrise Movement KC, a group fighting climate change. “It’s also days and weeks of extreme heat, of drought, of failing infrastructure.”
Here’s why severe heat is so dangerous and what you can do to keep yourself, your neighbors and your loved ones safe.
Imagine cruising down the street at 45 mph with a line of green lights ahead. Your mind wanders. You don’t notice that one of the lights has changed to a yellow, then to red.
Before you know it, you’ve crashed into another car at a right angle — and maybe even killed the driver.
Instead, picture seeing a flurry of yield signs ahead and a roundabout with a steady stream of cars. Now, you’re paying attention.
Eight people have died in traffic crashes along Ward Parkway since 2022, and four of those crashes happened when cars cruised past a red light or stop sign.
People make mistakes. Even the most experienced drivers misjudge the timing on a yellow light or roll through a stop sign.
But on roads like Ward Parkway — where traffic regularly tops the 35 mph speed limit — such mistakes prove deadly.
An 18-year-old died when he was thrown from a car days after his high school graduation. A grandmother was killed when she was struck by a car while walking to buy groceries at Aldi. Three teenage girls died when their car hit a tree.
The crashes were almost as predictable as they were tragic.
A sparkly new development coming to Kansas City’s riverfront?
Like we haven’t heard that line before.
Seemingly every decade like clockwork, somebody pushes an idea that would finally put Kansas City’s 55-acre blemish along the Missouri River to good use. And, inevitably, the proposal ends up elsewhere — and the riverfront remains empty.
But this time, it looks to be finally happening. Like, really, truly happening.
School districts in Jackson County saw home property assessments leap by nearly a third — and add more heft to their tax bases.
They set their property tax rates lower to reflect the beefier assessments — amid a furor from homeowners and politicians contending the numbers inflated the real value of properties in the county.
That tossed Jackson County into the center of a court challenge from the state that could test who can challenge assessments and how.
School districts in the county claimed in court this week that a win for the homeowners would prove “catastrophic,” costing school districts nearly $1,500 per student.
Takeaways: If Kansas City had its way, the local minimum wage would run $17 per hour, grocery stores would only use paper bags and you’d need to pass a background check to buy a gun in town. But politicians and businesses that see these policy ideas as threats to their authority or their bottom lines, […]
Kansas City is about to bottle up its trash better. Bins will replace bags, keeping animals out of the garbage. But the convenience of a lidded trash bin may come at a cost for the environment.
Kansas City set a goal in 2009 to divert 80% of its waste from landfills. Now 15 years later, the city is halfway there. The bins, with their bigger capacity, threaten to reverse that progress. And it might still take more effort to keep trash safe from raccoons.
The signs of springtime are among us: The smell of new flowers, the sight of children playing at the park and the sound of metal scraping against asphalt as cars kerplunk into potholes.
But for all of the racket these potholes cause every spring — and all the money that City Hall dumps into street resurfacing every year — Kansas City’s streets may only become more of a problem in the future.
Three residents filed suit against the state of Missouri this week to end state control of the Kansas City Police Department.
Under the current system of state control, a governor-appointed police board has complete authority to make decisions about KCPD policy, the hiring of the police chief and how the budget is spent.
Spencer Webster, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, argues in the lawsuit filed Monday that the system violates both the U.S. Constitution and the Civil Rights Act because it was intended to discriminate against Black Missourians and preserve the institution of slavery.
