Hi Kathleen Pointer, Kansas City Public Schools. What you're going to hear from me today is not going to sound new and that's because this is not new.
Unfortunately, people continue to ask Kansas City's children to bear the financial burden for high-end projects in wealthy areas of town.
As always, I want to re-emphasize that KCPS is not anti-development and we frequently support worthy projects that fulfil a true public need, but we are frankly tired of the inequitable practice of giving out unnecessary and inappropriate public funding that comes at the expense of Kansas City's public schools, public library and mental health fund.
As we were reminded earlier, KCPS is already subsidizing several very nice hotels downtown, while we continue to have about $400 million dollars in deferred building maintenance.
Your decision isn't really about whether or not Kansas City needs yet another publicly funded fancy hotel downtown, it's about if this city is ready to start actually saying no to truly outrageous incentive requests.
In closing, I urge you to remember that we should only be diverting dollars from classrooms to support development that this city truly needs the public support. Does a taxpayer funded giveaway for a luxury hotel located on the most valuable piece of undeveloped land downtown meet that benchmark? Is that really good for the Children? Thank you