FangKC wrote: ↑Wed Feb 13, 2019 3:59 pm
I am reporting what I am observing. The Paseo is one of those emotional responses where residents feel another slight from City Hall. Everyone is correct about there being more important issues to care about. For some residents, the renaming was the last straw. These neighborhoods have gone decades being ignored, and having their needs met.
If you live east of Troost anywhere in the city, your neighborhoods are the last to have snow plowed. They are where people come from other parts of the Metro and dump trash and construction debris in alleys and on vacant lots.
There are homeless squatting in vacant houses and setting fires. On one block alone this winter, three vacant houses caught fire from squatting. The people who own houses on that block know it's going to take years to get the burned out shells demolished. In the meantime, try selling their house. It's value has plummeted because no one wants to live next to burned out houses. If someone calls 911 to report a squatter attempting to enter an empty house, the police might show up 30-60 minutes later.
There are homeless living in the wooded parks, and creating trash piles so extensive it takes 20 local volunteers a full day to clean it up. The City doesn't ever clean it up. It's volunteers. Break-ins by known metal thieves are so common that some have given them nicknames on Facebook.
At night, there is so much gunfire that it sounds like Syria. If you follow neighborhood Facebook pages, you know this.
Residents feel the City ignores all of their issues.
There was some polling done on the Paseo issue and the vast majority opposed it. Some council members even stated they did informal outreach to people living on Paseo. They were surprised how many opposed it. This is on a street heavily populated by people of color, whom they assumed supported it. Canady said so in Council the day of the vote. She reported that many living on Paseo didn't even know about it. No one had approached them, or sent out letters informing them of the proposed change and how it would impact them. No one had asked for their input.
Now imagine this. What do you think would have happened if the City Council had renamed Ward Parkway without consulting the people living on it--or informing them in advance how they would be affected? Try it. Rename Ward Parkway anything: Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Franklin D. Roosevelt Parkway, or Ronald Reagan Boulevard. People would be upset. Some might be willing to punish any mayoral candidate who voted for it.
I have now lived in the Old Northeast for over 10 years--after living downtown for six. The Paseo issue appears to have lit a fuse under years of frustration with City Hall. Yes, many are saying they will vote based on that one issue. Why? Because they already know that most of the candidates won't do anything for them anyway if they get elected Mayor. So this issue just represents everything, and they are willing to punish over it. It's called "resentment politics" and it's how Trump got elected president. Film director Michael Moore was warning that Trump might win, and everyone rolled their eyes at him too.
There are many people who vote on one issue. Some vote against their financial interests just because of abortion. I grew up in a part of the state that is full of these one-issue voters.
Voters might not see the policy differences between any of the mayoral candidates. So when it comes down to voting for Jolie Justus or Scott Wagner, some voters will remember that Justus voted for the renaming, and then vote for Wagner. There may be an upset in which two candidates might be in a run-off.
Had Kander stayed in the race, many would have voted for him -- not because of any specific policies in his platform, but because he had the greatest name recognition. It is very possible that a smart insurgent candidate might win.
We are development nerds that pay attention to all these policy differences, but most don't.