On June 3, The Beacon gathered community members at the Mid-Continent Public Library’s Blue Ridge Branch in south Kansas City for a conversation about one of the most important civic documents shaping life in our region: the Kansas City budget. Budgets can be overwhelming. They’re often hundreds of pages long, packed with technical language and […]
Kansas City Hall
Posted inLocal Government
Nearly $103M raised through taxes on online sales bypass voter-approved funds in Kansas City budget
Voters have approved seven special revenue sales taxes for things like transit, public safety and infrastructure. But taxes collected on online purchases from out-of-state retailers bypass those uses in the city budget.
Posted inLocal Government
The Missouri legislature is cutting local governments’ power to pass their own laws
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, […]
Posted inCivic Engagement, Local Government
Kansas City flunked its Spanish test. A proposed ordinance aims to bridge City Hall’s language gap
Imagine trying to get a pothole filled or trash pickup scheduled, or stopping a nuisance from setting up in your neighborhood.
Fighting City Hall is hard enough. For the one in 20 Kansas Citians who don’t speak English very well, it can prove practically impossible.
A proposed Kansas City ordinance aims to change that. It will appear on the City Council’s agenda Feb. 15. It would create an office of language access to expand the city’s translation abilities and bridge the gap between local government and Kansas City’s diverse immigrant and refugee communities.