2016 Building permits and city politics

[flyingember]

About seven times as many permits issued so far in 2016 have been for Kansas City in Platte and Clay counties than for Jackson and Cass counties — 2,915 vs. 426.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/business ... 44837.html
For the sake of discussion assume the south of the river units aren't just offsetting east side decreases. Let's say that with downtown growth any new units are a net increase for KC south of the river.

The current average people per home nationwide is 2.5 right now. Let's use this citywide for the sake of discussion.

That's a growth of 7287 people in the northland while south will grow by 1065. for a difference of 6222.

https://data.kcmo.org/Census/2010-Popul ... /6t27-u3xd
The current city council numbers are based off the 2010 census or 459590

A single city council district is around 76500 people (they stacked the northland by a few thousand less for growth allowance but that's likely been long skewed)
The current census estimate would put that at 79000. But just this year's growth, with zero growth 2010 to 2015, would mean the northland districts are avg 79500. And if we were to look at the 2010-15 growth I bet it skews towards the northland even more.

Now, we know that downtown is really offsetting east side population drop. So what does this mean?

The 4th district entirely fronts the northland today except for the arm into it. The 4th has also grown more than the average south of the river so it has to shrink in physical size. It has to cover less area of the city but this can't mean shrinking in the northland. Which way does it pull? Do you pull north and keep the Historic NE in the district and lose midtown? Do you cut the NE district and make it into a west of Troost and northland district?

The urban growth is great for the city, it's not great for the east side. It dilutes the power of the area by covering a larger geographical area each time they go to redistrict the east side. The only alternative I see is to finally give up on E vs W and bust the Troost line the length of the city. No more weird arms that try to split the city up so east vs west has equal power, it's not going to work moving forward without dramatic population increases that didn't happen on the east side.

What can the east side do? Work to kill the at large districts. If they end up with 2.5 seats worth of votes they'll have a hard time picking at large winners. Having more smaller districts would be in their interest.

This also pushes downtown's northland issue off for longer. The northland can have ~5 districts instead of 2.5. So you don't end up with a district serving Briarcliff all the way to the Plaza with split interests

[aknowledgeableperson]

No system is perfect but having 6 in-district and 6 at-large council members is the best. If there were 12 councilmembers who were all in-district you would have 12 individuals looking out for only who lives in their district - forget the rest of the city.
However I do agree with your comments on Troost.
Maybe not in 2020 but I do see a time when half or more of the city's population lives north of the river.

[FangKC]

The Northland is going to grow. It's likely to be similar to past Johnson County growth. The City is putting the infrastructure in place now for 70,000 people, and that is in only one part of the Northland.

My concern is that it will be mostly low-density growth that in a century will become a huge drain on the budget as it ages. If the Northland has a similar geographical land mass as south of the river, but only has half the population density, this will become a huge problem. The City will be paying to maintain costly infrastructure with half the people per square mile that exists south of the river.

The City budget doesn't depend so much on property taxes. It comes from sales taxes, earnings taxes, various business taxes and fees, and other taxes that are assessed for specific purposes. For that to work, you need a lot of residents per sq. mile to pay for their own infrastructure and services.

Already in the Northland we have older neighborhoods with houses on huge lots that south of the river would have three houses in the same space.

Many cities can no longer afford to grow this way because we don't have five people in a household. In many households, we have one or two people.

The City really needs to put into place higher density zoning for new development on raw land within the city borders. This might be a standard lot size, and any single family home lot that exceeds this size must pay a special assessment. This makes up for the loss of revenue if your lot is so large it displaces potential for other households, and taxpayers per sq. mile.

I'm not picking on the Northland. There are similar situations south of the river as well.

[earthling]

Slight tangent... While commuter rail and new urbanism development would be more ideal, Northland otherwise is getting to the point of needing to expand highways beyond 2 lanes or is going to have some issues given the increasing rate of growth. Am not pro mega freeways but even in high density east coast, 3 lanes is the sweet spot with balance of transit.

[flyingember]

Slight tangent... While commuter rail and new urbanism development would be more ideal, Northland otherwise is getting to the point of needing to expand highways beyond 2 lanes or is going to have some issues given the increasing rate of growth. Am not pro mega freeways but even in high density east coast, 3 lanes is the sweet spot with balance of transit.

The northland has the widest freeway in KCMO One segment of I-29 is 8 lanes wide.

This is where the modified chastain rail plan is a smart yes vote. Because the cost to widen 169 will be WAY more than laying track.
And serving second creek with transit and busses instead of roads would be a coup for the city.

Sadly too many people are too fixated on who made the plan than taking advantage of the opportunity to save billions of dollars and introduce transit that makes it super easy for people to commute downtown, helping drive jobs to locate there.

Or is it better for everyone to go down 635 to JoCo?

[flyingember]

The Northland is going to grow. It's likely to be similar to past Johnson County growth. The City is putting the infrastructure in place now for 70,000 people, and that is in only one part of the Northland.

I counted 100,000 people worth of development underway a year ago and that's without Liberty's southern expansion which is another 20-30k. Platte County schools is going to grow so much they'll need 4 more high schools minimum. NKC will need a 5th, Liberty a third and Park Hill a third. Not sure about Smithville, it's southern boundary comes almost to 435. That would take Clay/Platte to no less than 17 high schools from 9

With the aging of JoCo, we're not too far out from the northland as a whole being the employee center for the city.
100k is another 60k jobs needed.

[shinatoo]

435 is 10 lanes at the triangle and 8 lanes across most of it's southern segment.

[flyingember]

Already in the Northland we have older neighborhoods with houses on huge lots that south of the river would have three houses in the same space.

The City really needs to put into place higher density zoning for new development on raw land within the city borders. This might be a standard lot size, and any single family home lot that exceeds this size must pay a special assessment. This makes up for the loss of revenue if your lot is so large it displaces potential for other households, and taxpayers per sq. mile.

I'm not picking on the Northland. There are similar situations south of the river as well.

Zoning plays a huge part in our development. Side setbacks is easily the #1 density buster. The requirement for 16 feet min between most homes wastes more space than anything.

Theres a major need to go back into zoning and change this so people can build tighter, many developers would since land is 10-20% if a project's cost. A 40 foot wide home needs 56 feet of width today. If that dropped down to 48 feet then 500 feet of width would hold 10 homes instead of 8. 5000 feet would be 100 homes instead of 80. That's no difference in house size but developers gain a 20% increase in homes for their land purchase. The city gains 20% in taxes. It's a no brainer