Taxpayers, brace yourselves. There are attempted assaults coming on your wallet.
If you’re at your limit on tax increases, you’ll want to be sure to show up to vote in coming elections. It starts next Tuesday.
The Northland Regional Ambulance District has an 81% increase in its tax levy on the ballot. The Platte County R-3 School District wants you to approve a waiver that would eliminate the school district’s requirement to follow the Proposition C tax rollback. If you want to keep the tax break in place, you’ll want to vote no.
And later this year, it is expected Platte County will have a new sales tax proposed for voters to fund a massive expansion of the county jail in Downtown Platte City.
Make your own decisions on how you vote on these things, of course. This post is just for the sake of wallet awareness. If taxes are important to you and your budget then you’ll want to be in tune with multiple upcoming ballot questions and take part in the election process.
How’s March Madness going for you?
I actually got away from the office for several hours last Thursday to view some daytime basketball on the massive television screens at the sportsbook at Hollywood Casino. My son broke away from his job in Manhattan to join me for some bonding, basketball, and low-level wagering. The legal kind. At a legal sportsbook. Which unfortunately is something we don’t have in Missouri, though we keep being told it’s coming sooner or later. As you read in these Landmark pages recently, there’s a chance a legalized sports wagering question will be on a statewide ballot later this year. We’ll see.
As dedicated Landmark readers know by now, the idea of legalizing sports wagering in our state draws unanimous approval from your Landmark columnists. We’ve all been known to dabble in some responsible wagering on sportsball and whatnot.
My columnist buddy Guy Speckman tells me even if legalized sports wagering makes it onto a ballot and gets voter approval, we should expect the folks at the Missouri statehouse to still screw it up somehow. Sounds like a cynical view, though not inaccurate.
Anyway, back to a more specific discussion of March Madness.
Time to review those futures wagers I have on which team will be the March Madness champion. The Kentucky Wildcats let me down in the first round but I still have several possibilities alive. Here’s what is left in my portfolio, shall we say. The majority of these bets were placed at Hollywood Casino way back on Jan. 19, so these odds, of course, are no longer available.
•$25 on Connecticut at 11-1 odds, potential payout $300.
•$21 on North Carolina at 18-1, potential payout $399.
•$25 on Duke at 22-1, potential payout $575.
•$20 on Tennessee at 15-1 (this bet placed on Feb. 4), potential payout $320.
•$5 on Gonzaga at 70-1 (this bet placed on March 8) at 70-1, potential payout $355.
Feel free to help me cheer any of these teams to a championship.
Weatherby Lake Mayor Steve Clark sent us a note about Chris Kamler’s tongue-in-cheek column last week. The mayor knows it was all in jest but he still wanted to “defend” his quality city as not really “a poor man’s Smithville.”
Clark also has invited Chris and I down for what sounds like a majestic cruise on Weatherby Lake. He says Chris will be in charge of bringing the adult beverages.
Uh oh, does the mayor realize what he’s done? Putting Chris Kamler in charge of bringing the booze to a cruise reminds me of the words from that scene in Jaws when the men see the massive shark for the first time. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Kamler has another column you’ll want to read on page 3 this week. It’s about the new women’s soccer stadium in Kansas City. It’s known as CPKC Stadium, home of the Kansas City Current women’s soccer club. It’s located near the Kit Bond Bridge. You’ve likely seen it when you’ve crossed the bridge in recent months.
Anyway, read more about this in Kamler’s column, but I was kind of looking forward to going to a game there this year just to take an up close and personal gander at the privately-funded stadium. I’m not a huge soccer fan, as you know, but still the curiosity was in me to check this place out. At least I had the curiosity until I heard about the parking situation. Parking fees there are $50, which actually increases to more than $60 when they add in taxes and associated fees.
Yikes. I’d like to report a crime. Talk about stealing my curiosity and murdering my desire to go to a game.
I’m not a soccer fan but you may recall more than a decade ago when Kamler and I played in the Kansas City Comets media soccer games. I only played two years, I think it was 2012 and 2013. I do remember I decided to quit taking part in the media soccer battles when I nearly died that second year. I started out the game with a sprint down the field to try for a loose ball, which was shall we say, not a good decision. The rest of the game was spent trying to catch my breath and grabbing my chest as if that was going to help. It only made it more obvious that I was terribly out of shape and in no condition to be running around in a sport that, let’s be honest, is basically glorified jogging.
Would have been really embarrassing to die during a media soccer game. What a story that would have made for someone at The Landmark to write in my absence.
Tragedy avoided. But I’ll never again be taking a “gotta risk it for the biscuit” approach to any media shenanigans involving exercise.
(Mostly mentally fit but maybe not physically fit, you can email Foley at ivan@plattecountylandmark.com)