A little more effort to be warm and toasty

I’m not sure how you’ll feel about this but I know what Janie thinks….let’s just say she expressed a high degree of low enthusiasm for the new Open Ignition Ordinance. Open ignition means the car is running unattended. By the end of this year, it will be against the law to warm-up your car in the driveway unless you are in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle OR inside the vehicle OR if the vehicles windows are closed and the doors are locked.

Yes, you will be able to run your car in your driveway unattended if the doors are locked and windows closed.

I am working on clarification of the circumstances if you are inside the house watching out the window – I would think that you could demonstrate “control” over your vehicle if you came out of the house as soon as an officer stopped to investigate. Conversely, if the car is running in your garage and the garage door is open, that still probably represents a significant risk of theft if the doors are not locked or the windows are down. These are my impressions; I’ll post again when I’m sure.

It’s really important to understand that particularly thefts of running cars are crimes of opportunity – someone wasn’t stalking your car because they wanted to steal your car. They’ll steal your car just because it happens to be available at the moment that they decide to steal any car. If the car is not available, it’s much less likely to be stolen. And it doesn’t appear to take that much to make your car “unavailable”.

In short, you’ll stay clear of a citation if you LOCK-UP THE CAR if you need to warm it up on those cold winter mornings. Fer pete’s sake don’t let any of your neighbors warm up their car in the garage with the door closed.

In one of the PV Wards replete with single-car garages, I was hesitant to support this ordinance, but since it does not completely prohibit cars running unattended, I thought it did much more good than harm. You see, it’s not just that the owner of the car is saved from himself with this law, it’s the community at large as well. Specifically, when a car is stolen, there is now a criminal driving a two-ton weapon through Prairie Village wanting to get out of the city as fast as possible. Just seeing a police car might spark some extremely dangerous driving. In addition, 75% of the cars stolen with “open ignition” are recovered in the inner city of KCK or KCMO. They are most likely used by gangs in the commission of gang on gang crime or some other crime. One car was recovered with bullet holes and shell casings of an assault weapon. So we’re not just saving the driver from herself. We’re taking an additional weapon out of the hands of a criminal.

Every year cars are stolen in PV. Every year the auto theft rate surges in the winter months. For example, there have been 16 auto thefts in PV so far this year, 12 of them happened in the first three months, 11 of them were open ignition thefts.

Prairie Village Council Supports Tax?!?!?! Arrrrgh!!!

Much to my consternation and disappointment, the city council voted to officially endorse the Johnson County quarter cent sales tax measure. Personally, the thought of the Prairie Village council endorsing the tax is stupid on multiple levels.

1) It’s not our place to endorse or decry any political issue outside our jurisdiction. As a governing body, we have no impact on the issue whatsoever. We only influence the issue as individuals and we all – as individuals -- have slightly different opinions so we shouldn’t masquerade as though we speak with one voice. . . . . even though the overwhelming majority of us support the tax.

2) Does anyone in PV give a rip about what the council endorses when the council can’t control the outcome?

3) Endorsing the tax makes the council look stupid because the continuation of the tax continues the flow of tax money into the city budget – it gives the council more to spend at residents’ expense.

Anyway, five of us weren’t enough to keep the measure from passing. Somewhere, somehow, you might see a little news article saying that the council says “yea” to the County Quarter Cent sales tax. The mayor didn’t seem to be too crazy about the idea so he might not suggest that the staff to use any and all means necessary to make sure that this is front page news. I’m not saying that’s how things work, but since there was nothing in today’s Neighborhood section of the Star, I just have a feeling. Of course it could be that the Star’s coverage of the city business of Northeast stinks. And that’s not a feeling, that’s a fact.

This is the link for the language of the ballot question:
http://www.jocoelection.org/questions/Election-County-09-27-05.htm

this link is the advocacy page of the Shawnee Mission School District:
http://www.smsd.org/Parents/legislative.htm the county tax is specifically addressed in #6 (actually, “VI.”)

I can’t present the other side of the issue. I’m not sure if there is an organized effort to defeat it.

From the perspective of an “inner ring” suburb like Prairie Village, strong, competitive schools are necessary to keep the area attractive to families. A strong case could be made that the money is important to JoCo schools since the state is not solving the school funding problem. I absolutely support any measure that benefits the continued health and success of the city.

The one thing that I object to is the “dollar spent per pupil” figure. Supporters of the tax say that the money spent per pupil in Johnson county is low compared to some benchmark (I can’t remember what it is). KCMO spends a whackload of money per pupil and it obviously does not result in good schools. The only thing that I would universally support is much higher teacher salaries. But none of this money will go to that. It may continue some very important programs but it won’t make teachers competitive salary wise with engineers or MBA’s. Personally, I think if we paid teachers as a profession consistent with their value to society we’d have a LOT fewer Johnny’s who couldn’t read.

It’s not a new tax, you’re already paying it. Everyone who pays retail sales taxes (i.e., non-residents as well) in Johnson County pays it. Voting yes would be to continue paying it. About two-thirds of it goes to the county which will grant it back to the 7 Johnson County school districts. One third would go back to the 21 cities in Johnson County. The most recent 3 years of the tax generated about $47.5 million for the schools, $27 mil for the cities; PV got about $1.2 Mil.

City website will get new look

Speaking of the city website: The Communications Committee met with our web designer and we chose a new layout and more “2005” design. Content won’t change drastically but you will hopefully find it easier to navigate. Changes should be made within the next month or so.

We Can See Very Well Thank You

Sorry if you weren’t able to come to the Village Vision meetings last week. The latest step in the process reviewed the themes that came directly from the ideas generated at the community meetings last spring and the goals that were developed from them.

Feedback from the attendees at the Tuesday meetings were used to shape the conceptual drawings of a few areas around town that Prairie Villagers said needed some special attention – the 75th Street corridor and -- from the steering committee’s recommendation – the Corinth Shopping Center. As you might expect the larger developments were mixed-used concepts but there were some really creative streetscape ideas for 75th as well. I’ll let you know when I have my own copy of the presentation or when an update is posted on the city web site

This week's surprise website

I hate to tell you too much about This Week's Surprise Website -- it wouldn't be a surprise. I think this is cool, but I am fascinated by aerial photos. If you are, try Google Earth or Google Maps, too. But the Images of Johnson County are better here......

Get Your Vision Checked

You should have gotten a post card from the city by now. It’s time to give your input in the next stage of the PV comprehensive plan, “Village Vision”. Click on the link at the top of this blog and see how. The Community Choices Workshop is on September 13th and there is an open house for the ideas and themes that have been generated so far on the 14th. There is a lot more information at the Prairie Village website. Nothing is final yet.

Do you have something to say about Meadowbrook as a mixed-use development? As a site with 14-story condos?

Did you see the article in the KC Business Journal about Lenexa installing Wi-Fi equipment for municipal wireless communications? It’s not for residential or private use yet but if Philadelphia or Minneapolis or North Kansas City can make city-wide Wi-Fi work, it might be the next logical step for Lenexa. Would you want PV to pursue something like that?

Do you know the challenges that face PV in the future?

Go to the Village Vision website, come to the meetings, make sure we have YOUR Vision. Call me or e-mail me if you want details.

How to post

A few of you have run into a little hitch posting comments. To those of you that would like to post comments, I really would like to thank you in advance. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO REGISTER. Click on the “Comments” link below any post and you can either choose “Other” or “Anonymous” as your identity. With “Other” you can leave your name. With “Anonymous” you don’t even have to do that. However, there is apparently called Comment Spam so you do need to enter the random string of letters that you see at the bottom of your comment screen as a verification that you are indeed a person and not a spammer.

“…I know it when I see it…” -- Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

Several times a year, residents will call me about car trouble. Not their own, someone else’s -- on the street or in the driveway or even in the yard. There are too many or they are too large or they don’t seem to have moved in eons. They might be causing a safety hazard or they might be lowering property values. I understand your concern.

Most recently some friends of ours focused my attention on what my kids and I call the “beat-up Cadillac house.” Unfortunately, a resident in our neighborhood has taken advantage of his rights as a Prairie Villager to accumulate four or five Fleetwoods or Devilles or whatever and they are -- in one blogger’s opinion -- an eyesore. There are always one or two in the driveway and one or two parked on the back patio. This is a house on a corner lot that is slightly below the elevation of the street; everyone that drives by can see them as plain as day. There are also reports of nearly abandoned cars on Belinder and cars parked on the front yard around 79th and Canterbury.

As the ugly cars go, aesthetics are extremely hard to legislate. One person’s eyesore is another person’s “only form of transportation that I can afford; what does it look like, I’m made out of money?!?”

As far as the number of cars is concerned, that’s very difficult to regulate as well. It’s not entirely out of the question that each driver in a household could have his or her own car. And it’s not beyond reason that there might be four or even five drivers in a household. Fortunately, there are forces external to city ordinances that limit the number of cars that might end up parked outside a PV home: the expense of buying multiple cars, the expense of insuring and maintaining them, the desire to keep these possessions protected inside a garage, the feeling that having cars parked all over our property would be unattractive, etc.

Nevertheless, we have all seen examples of cars that don’t seem to be in regular use and so their unsightliness is even more frustrating. So we try to regulate what we can: By requiring that vehicles be licensed, we make sure that someone is going through the expense of paying taxes and insurance on them. By requiring that cars appear to have all their parts, we can at least make sure that air is in the tires and that vehicles cannot sit disassembled in plain view. By requiring that they be parked on “improved ground”, we ensure that no one parks cars on their lawn.

Unfortunately, it is my understanding that our city prosecutor does not feel it would be lawful to require that a vehicle owner prove to a city officer that a car actually runs or can move under its own power.

I don’t disagree that one can get a strong feeling that a particular vehicle or group of vehicles isn’t actively participating in a person making their living or commuting to school, it’s just there because the owner wants it there, he or she is saving it for something or someone or just likes having an extra vehicle around. But how do you turn that feeling into an illegal situation? Thus, the Potter Stewart reference and the parallel quandary.

I am very sensitive to safety and maintaining of property values but the ugly car that seems never to move is a very difficult situation to regulate. We may be able to improve on what already exists but it will take some thoughtful work. I would like to speak with my co-members of the Legislative and Finance committee about this and see what’s been discussed before but feel free to send your suggestions.