Every Day Now, Some New Lie About a New Airport

Really, it's come down to one new lie, more misrepresentations about the old and new airports every day now.

Today, in the mail, yet another big postcard, telling me, us, why we should spend more than one billion dollars on a new airport.

Here's what came today----

It says we should buy and spend and build this new airport because:

"A Better KCI Brings More Jobs and Businesses to KC"

Whoa.

Slow down there, cowboy.

Let's look at that.

First, a new airport, more than one billion dollars or no (and it will be more than 1 billion dollars, let's not kid ourselves) will no way "bring more jobs."

Oh, sure, it will bring some construction jobs.  For a while. For as long as it takes to make it.

What is that?

A year? 18 months? Two years?

But that's it.

There would be some construction jobs and then they'd go away.

And then the other half.

Bring more "businesses to KC"?

Since when did a business--any business except airport food service--take more jobs to a city just because they have a new airport?

It doesn't happen.

That's just silly.

No company goes around to other cities, looking at their airport to decide where they're going to locate first.  That's absurd.

That's when, on this postcard today they say "That's why we need a better KCI."

The fact is, I say again, we don't need a new airport. We need an airport authority that will see to the updating and modernizing of the airport we have. It's only as "out of date" as they have ignored and neglected it and let it be and stay undone and unattractive and less functional because they want a shiny new bauble in a single terminal airport, complete with it's billion plus dollar price tag.

The postcard today says "Kansas City can compete and win the new Amazon headquarters, which will bring 50,000 new jobs and billion in economic development."

That sounds like a guarantee to me. And it's a guarantee they can't deliver.

Yes, we need "a better KCI."  Sure. And all we need to do for it is take care of and modernize and update the airport we have. We absolutely don't need to walk away from our current one, only to build new, completely, from ground up, nearby. That would be stupid. That would be fiscally irresponsible. It would also be environmentally irresponsible.

So no. Vote a resounding no on Question 1 November 7.

We can do better than this.

We can do much better than this.

And smarter.

And it will cost far less.