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A recent article in Missouri Lawyers Weekly reports that the City of Raytown has been ordered to pay $42,550 for a violation on Missouri’s Sunshine Law. The suit was brought by the daughter of a woman who died in a car crash at 67th Street and Ralston Ave. The City Clerk refused to release documents and cited a city policy closing records in cases involving potential legal action. The denial was issued 5 days after the request. On an editorial note, it would be interesting to know who was responsible for the creation of that policy. On April 2nd of 2019 there will be an election for Raytown, Raytown School District, Raytown Fire District and Jackson County water District #2. Filing for these elected positions closed on Jan. 15th. City of Raytown Alderman Ward I – 4 year term expiring April 2023 Alderman Ward II – 4 year term expiring April 2023 Raytown C2 School District Two positions are open Bobbie Saulsberry (incubant) Raytown Fire District Barb Schlapia Jackson County Water District #2 Sub district 3 Fred Hartwell Arimeta DuPree is running for the Democratic nomination for the Jackson County Legislature in the 2nd District. Raytown’s portion of that district is from Raytown Road West, with slight exceptions. I know Arimeta and have endorsed her. I admire her intellect, passion for justice, and ability to work well with people from all walks of life. Below is a video of her presentation to the Raytown Democratic Association at their July meeting. She received the organizations endorsement. I added a picture of her sign to cover my bad camera work in the last minute of the presentation.
The election is closing in on us, and I for one am thankful. I am aware all elections have their own smear component to them and one must be though if they are going to put themselves in the public eye. That being said the conduct of the two factions has been wholly different. A couple months ago the attacks started. The ProTax movement has repeatedly launched false accusations on community member who didn’t want to be bankrupted by wasteful spending.
They started by attacking local small business owners calling them degenerate parents, then they moved to accusations of criminal conduct including selling drugs. When they failed at their boycott attempt of these businesses they started in on residents, trying to advance that one was a wife-beater. And finally when they still weren’t gaining traction they went on a rampage against elected officials that refused to endorse either side but chose neutrality. The attacks on State leaders who in the past have offered help, and small business owners who provide jobs and sales tax revenue is unconscionable. Meanwhile the groups supporting reasonable spending have attacked no one, sticking only to the facts at hand. There are no attacks on the Board members who put us in this position, or on those who have chosen to remain neutral. I believe trusting such leaders (who have already squandered) is a bad idea. Please, join me on August 7th voting NO to tripling property tax and bankrupting citizens. John A Jacob “Tony” Note from RaytownOnline. The only editing made to this submission was to break the text up into 3 paragraphs and to add Mr. Jacob’s name at the end. The submission was verified before publication to insure the validity of the source. On July 19th at the monthly Raytown Democratic Association (RDA) meeting, Raytown’s Mayor spoke out in support of the three tax increases for Raytown on the August primary ballot. The RDA has already voted to not support the requested increases in property, gasoline, and internet purchase taxes. Below is the Mayor’s speech uncut.
On Friday April 6th 2018 the city manager of Raytown (Tom Cole) turned in his resignation. Mr. Cole indicated he had a desire to pursue other paths in life before it was too late. He will be missed.
The following is a list of some of the city employees that have quit since 2015. Tom Cole city administrator
John Benson community development director
Mahesh Sharma city administrator
Mark Loughry finance director
Briana Burrichter finance director
Katie Horner public works director
Brenda Gustufson public information officer
This seems like a high turnover rate.
Sources in the Raytown School District stated that the call for ambulance services went out at 7:12 and that video footage show the arrival of the ambulance at 7:27. By doing the math, and deducting the 7 minutes response time, we have 8 minutes for dispatch to take the call and relay it to a Raytown EMS unit.
More on this if and when I learn more facts.
Raytown broke a long loosing streak against rival Raytown South with a decisive 35 to 14 win on Friday.
RaytownOnline.com received multiple calls about the game, but not about the score. The calls were about the amount of time it took an ambulance to take an injured Raytown High player away for medical attention. One call claimed it took 45 minutes for the ambulance to arrive, but research indicates that was not the case, closer to 20 minutes was the actual amount of time that passed. The injury took place 3 minutes into the game. The game started at 7:00 pm. Given this, the probable time of the injury was between 7:04 and 7:08, depending on how much time passed with the game clock not running. Photos received from people attending the game show the ambulance at 7:28 pm. (see below)
Sources at Raytown City Hall report that the EMS log indicates a 7 minute response time. What is not known is how long it took the coaching staff to decide to call an ambulance. Requests to the School District for this information have yet to be responded to. Normally 911 calls would be routed to the Raytown Police Dept. dispatch and they relay this to the EMS unit. Normally this would also be relayed to the Raytown Fire District and they also would respond. Sources in the Raytown Fire District have no record of a call coming in on this incident. These are the facts to the best of my knowledge. The Raytown Board of Aldermen moved their regular meting to 6:pm on Tuesday, Sept. 5th 2017 to have a town hall meeting on the proposed budget at 7:00 pm.
The town hall meeting was packed, with people seated in a spill over room, watching it on TV. At least 80% of the crowd seemed to be supporters. friends, police, or their family members. While the meeting at times got loud and there was some heckling, the actual numbers of disruptive people were a small minority of the people attending and the Mayor did a decent job of settling them down. City manager Cole did an overhead projector presentation of the details of the budget and the information table had plenty of copies of data from past years. The audience submitted questions with the aldermen and Mr. Cole responding to them. After that there was a public comments and questions from the podium. You can view the meeting video by clicking HERE. The almost sole issue in the town hall meeting was the reduction of the amount of funds the Raytown Police Dept. requested. The Raytown GeneraL fund has a projected income of 10 million and the police requested 7 million of it. The 7 million is above and beyond the 2.7 million from the Public Safety Sales Tax and the Capital Sales Tax. The primary argument for the 7 million for the police was, give the police what they are asking for or we will not be safe. The primary position by the aldermen was, we don’t have the money. In truth the Aldermen could have given the police 2 million more, by draining the contingency funds, but that would have been a one year fix that would have left the City seriously weakened for any emergency that might occur. Once the fund is drained, there would be nothing left for the next year. Other areas addressed by the audience were crime rates and crime spillover (implied KCMO residents not staying in their area), low property taxes, TIF mistakes. I did not have enough battery power to video tape the entire meeting, but do have audio for almost all of the meeting, and probably better than the city’s recording. I will post the audio and may be able to post specific requested video if it is earlier in the meeting. Town Hall on budget 2017 audio I am not interested in dwelling of all the negative statements about Raytown that were made to instill fear and justify expenditures. The bottom line is we cannot spend what we do not have. We need to work to promote Raytown and Raytown businesses to increase tax revenues and every department in the city needs to tighten it’s belt. Below are two charts that show the proposed budget and historical spending by department.
Diane Krizek’s call for a recount resulted in Phylis Goforth gaining a vote, but no change in Bonnaye’s or Diane’s count and no change in the result.
* winner
Ward 1 *Frank Hunt 285 Ward 2 *Jason Greene 394 Ward 3 *Ryan Myers 283 Ward 4 *Bill Van Buskirk 441 Ward 5 *Bonnaye Mims 236 The Judge and Marshal were unopposed
Parties unknown claimed to Facebook that my endorsements were abusing and managed to get them deleted. To read my Endorsements and decide for yourself if there is an iota of abuse or abusive language in my endorsements, you have to go to this website if you are reading this one facebook. Everyone else, please share my endorsement post.
Michael N. Downing Half of our Board of Aldermen are up for election next Tuesday, April 4th.
Ward I No endorsement Ward II Lore
Ward III Ryan Myers : This is a tough call, as both candidates are good-natured and have good intent. Ryan add more energy and numeric analysis to the board and by that gets the endorsement. Ward IV
Ward V
The Raytown Times article gave Mims only 5 % of the space that was given her opponents and no photo and her name was the only one of all candidates in all races not highlighted. To balance the scales, Raytown Online will provide featured coverage.
Dear Neighbor, I want to be your Ward 5 Alderman and I am asking for your vote on Tuesday, April 4th. My experience as an active member of the Raytown community, a State Representative and a School Board Member make me a great choice to be the voice of the people. We have many things to be excited about! Raytown is growing and this is exemplified by the increase of new businesses and the face-lifts of current businesses. Continued public and private investment will increase the opportunities for Raytown’s ongoing economic growth. I have been speaking with residents in the 5th Ward and have been honored to meet so many wonderful people. The common theme we share is a vision for safe neighborhoods, providing local services for seniors, Veterans, and families, and repairing our streets and building sidewalks. Residents are looking for experience and leadership and I would be honored to be your voice in our city. I firmly believe it is my responsibility as a public servant to not play politics, but to give our community the resources needed to thrive, not just survive. Respectfully
The League of Women voters forum for candidates for Raytown Missouri’s Board of Alderman. In order to quickly post this no editing has been done. This is straight from the camera.
Tuesday December 13th was the first day for filing for city office. Candidates that file on the first day have their place on the ballot determined by a lottery. Candidates filing after the first day are placed on the ballot in the order they file. So far there has not been a filing for the two year remaining term of Steve Mock in Ward 5.
Here are the first day candidates. FILING FOR OFFICE April 4, 2017 General Municipal Election Alderman Ward I – 4 year term expiring April 2021 Alderman Ward II – 4 year term expiring April 2021 Alderman Ward III – 4 year term expiring April 2021 Alderman Ward IV – 4 year term expiring April 2021 Alderman Ward V – 4 year term expiring April 2021 City Marshal – 4 year term expiring April 2021 Municipal Judge – 4 year term expiring April 2021 On Friday afternoon November 18, 2016, Mark Loughry – Interim City Administrator and City Finance Director, submitted his resignation effective December 22, 2016.
Mr. Loughry has accepted a position as a County Administrator in the State of Kansas. The City of Raytown appreciates his service to our community and wishes him well in his new role. Mr. Loughry’s resignation letter is below. RaytownOnline note, the letter below was converted to text from an image by our OCR software and it may have introduced typos that were not in the original. Some were corrected, but some may have been missed. Mayor and Board of Aldermen First and foremost I want to take this opportunity to say what a blessing the City of Raytown has been to me and my family. The past five years have not always been easy but they have been fulfilling. I have had opportunities here to establish friendships that I know will follow me for a long time. I also know my career here has given me the chance to improve myself in a way that would not have happened anywhere else. Second I want to thank all of the staff that have been supportive and willing to work towards a common goal of making this a great place to work and Raytown a great place to live. Over the past five years and more specifically the last few months I have really started to see a change in attitude of some of the staff. I know I have been excited to come to work and I have seen that in others as well. Just this week I had an employee tell me they were excited to see the progress we have made this past year. We are putting into place changes today that will continue to impact this community, for the better, for years to come. Changes to our Codes that will make it easier to clean up problem areas in the community. Changes to auxiliary services that will improve our ability to maintain core services without new fees or taxes. Changes to employee benefits that keep the City competitive with surrounding communities and immediately impact our employees for the better. All of these coupled together will result in the most important change, the ability for our citizens to see an improved quality of life. Lastly I want to acknowledge how the current Board of Aldermen have worked with me over the past few months during what could have been a very challenging transition. The City lost several key staff members that had been with the City for a long time. The challenges created by that could have been nearly insurmountable, instead through cooperation with the Board and staff it has been a relatively smooth process to this point. Even with some of the outside detractors it is clear to me that the Board, without exception, truly has a common goal of doing what is best for Raytown. All of these things make my decision to resign one of the most difficult things I have had to do. Over the past few days the Leavenworth County Commission has been in contact with me about an opening they have for what is their equivalent of a County Administrator. While it was an extremely difficult decision for me it is one that I feel is best for me and my family. I will be closer to home, will no longer have night meetings and have the unanimous support of the Commission as their preferred candidate. This is not a position I sought out but it is one that feels like a good fit for me. With that I thank all of you and plan on December 22′” being my last day with the City. Sincerely, On Tuesday at 6:30 pm Raytown’s Mayor unveiled the memorial to Alderman Steve Mock. The memorial sits in front of a Sweetbay Magnolia tree also planted in remembrance.
 Steve Mock memorial Sweetbay Magnolia
 This is what the flowers will look like in the Spring.
Video of the memorial services.
October 18, 2016, 6:30 PM, Raytown City HallThe City of Raytown will host a dedication ceremony to commemorate the life and civic leadership of Alderman Steve Mock who passed away earlier this summer. The ceremony will occur with the Mock family and City leaders on the east lawn of Raytown City Hall near the staff entrance to the building. Please join us as we dedicate a tree and monument in his honor.  Aldereman Steve Mock and Clarice Titus What is the core issue in a lot of these recent letters/press releases is that the Fire District is asserting that they are not getting their fair share of tax revenue. Get being loosely defined and both not getting money and being charged too much in some cases. This is about the TIF tax abatement for what can be called the Wal-Mart development. The details are complex, and since I am personally not a lawyer, tax accountant, or knowledgeable in TIFs and the details of the Wal-Mart TIF, I am very hesitant to judge the merits of either sides arguments.
Even the flow of money is complex, in that in some cases instead of not getting money, the Fire District is paying from the taxes it gets back to the city to pay for its share of the TIF. Is the amount correct, should they be liable for all phases of the project, did they agree to some aspects, is their explicate agreement requires? These are all questions that may take a judge to decide in the end. Somewhere there is a quote about sitting on the fence getting you shot by both sides, but I cannot seem to find it. The following support document was attached to the press release from the Raytown Fire District.
Click HERE to read the Districts request for a meeting with Raytown City officials and employees.
May 5, 2016 Release from the Office of the Fire Chief: The Raytown Fire Protection District will hold a public informational hearing regarding our concerns with the 350 On April 28th, the Fire District requested that the City of Raytown participate in this hearing (attached document Since September of 2015, the Raytown Fire Protection District has made numerous attempts with city officials to In 2007, the Fire District entered into an agreement with the City to participate along with the other taxing • The submission of accurate annual financial reports to the State of Missouri The Fire District has investigated this matter and contends that the City of Raytown has failed to meet the The concerns expressed by Joe Willerth are not without merit. We agree, and are willing to limit participation to Thank You, Matt Mace Fire Chief |
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