On Tuesday, April 5 voters in Parkville will elect a new mayor to replace Nan Johnston and the city’s natural disaster recovery team can move into the rebuild phase. Clean-up on Aisle 5.
There is much renovation work needed. It will take a while just to open the doors and windows of the mayor’s office and let the ethics violations and profanity-laced temper tantrums air out. There’s also the lingering aroma of a criminal investigation.
A suggested first step for the new mayor is simply to become an adult in the room. That will go a long way to removing the clouds that have hovered over Parkville politics the past few years.
That’s assuming we have a peaceful transition. Surely Nan won’t pull a Jan. 6 type event on April 6, will she?
Close your eyes and imagine Nan on April 6, emboldened by liquid courage from the secret speakeasy, standing a few blocks from City Hall playing the victim card while speaking at a “Stop the Strongly Written Reprimand” rally. Steven Coronado is playing the role of Rudy Giuliani. Alderman Bob Lock is praising Nan’s cheerleading abilities. Tricia Szasz is going full Kimberly Guilfoyle, loudly screaming words nobody can understand. Dagmar Wood is in Viking headdress, ready to storm the building and snap selfies with her feet propped on the mayor’s desk. Local police are trying not to be overrun by Nan’s friends from Wine Club, who are worked into a frenzy because they thought they were there to elect Nan student body president. Several aldermen watch from a safe distance, muttering: “Nobody is guilty of anything here. This is not a court of law.” And Dave Rittman is standing near a Landmark news rack with a tiny pair of scissors and a bottle of Elmer’s glue, anxiously awaiting the new edition so he can clip articles and send them to the city’s legal team.
I don’t know if you know this, but Nan has been telling people that if you want to know which candidate she is endorsing to be the new Parkville mayor you can contact her privately and she’ll tell you.
Nan recently posted on Facebook that she will not be making a public endorsement announcement and every candidate in the race just breathed a sigh of relief. Ain’t nobody want to carry that baggage.
With our new-found famous friend/former big league pitcher Al Fitzmorris now considered a Landmarker, columnist Guy Speckman–always an idea guy–the past couple of weeks in his column on page 3 has been promoting the thought of a Landmark softball team.
Makes sense. It’s safe to say we have the physical attributes of a beer league team. Speckman says we also have the mental aptitude of such.
Throw in Fitzmorris as our pitcher and we might even win a game, with some luck maybe two. Let’s do this either in the spring or fall, I’m far too out of shape to be breaking a sweat during the heat of a Missouri summer. We may need our team to be co-sponsored by the local ambulance service.
So the Chiefs are making some changes. It has been an interesting off-season and the draft hasn’t even happened yet.
I’m not excited about the return of Eric Bieniemy as offensive coordinator. It’s time to move on to a fresh face and a new approach in that spot. As you know, after a relatively long delay following the close of last season Bieniemy recently signed a new one-year contract to return. I really think the Chiefs were hoping to move on from Bieniemy right now, but when he couldn’t find another job in the open market for like the fourth consecutive year (we’ve previously told you the reason why) the team felt obligated by loyalty and public perception to bring him back for another season.
Prediction: This will be Bieniemy’s last season in Kansas City. His situation has become a distraction, and Matt Nagy is now on board waiting to become the new offensive coordinator. Bieniemy’s newest one-year contract is a face-saving courtesy deal. The Chiefs won’t be as polite at the end of the 2022 season. If I were Bieniemy I’d start turning the job search into a year-round event and not wait until the end of the season.
Though my co-workers are sometimes impressed by my ability to tell them someone is on Main Street puffing a ciggie even though no one is visible on the street in any direction through our large picture windows, I wish I wasn’t able to smell cigarette smoke from about a mile away but I can and that’s the curse I live with.
The NFL Draft will be held in Kansas City in late April of 2023 and this is a big deal. If you haven’t been paying attention the past several years, the NFL Draft has become more than a bunch of NFL execs sitting around picking names off a board. It’s now a big-time event with a lot of ancillary activities in the host city.
“This will be one of the biggest and most-anticipated professional sporting events our city has hosted,” said Kathy Nelson, president and CEO of the Kansas City Sports Commission and Visit KC. She’s not wrong.
This was discussed last April when Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas appeared on Landmark Live (we’ll be getting him on again soon). Lucas last year at this time emphasized in our interview the importance of getting the New KCI Airport completed, open and running smoothly in time for the city’s hosting of the NFL Draft. That’s how big of a national attraction this event will be.
The New KCI, in case you’ve forgotten, is targeted to open in March 2023, about a month prior to the draft. Officials are saying so far so good, the airport project at this time is still on schedule.
(Foley remains ready and willing to cover any mayoral riots that occur after the April election. If you can’t send him a disappearing text message simply email ivan@plattecountylandmark.com)