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He's also running for Congress in the sixth congressional district up in the Northland. He joins us on KCMO. Alright, Nathan, we appreciate you being here. First off, was yesterday the first time you heard about this proposed ordinance from the mayor, or is this something that's been talked about behind the scenes for quite some time? Yeah, well, first of all, good morning, Pete. Happy Friday. This is something that I've heard some things about. I don't know how much of it says it's actually the mayor's ordinance and deal as much of it as the city manager, and then the mayor introduces it and acts like it's what he put together. So I just want to clarify that right off the bat. But I did not see the official proposal until right during council. I heard that that was going to be introduced and nine of my colleagues co-sponsored it, and it takes nine votes to get something through and a pretty good, you could do it same day, but they are sitting in it to committee next week to have some kind of public input. But my main thing here is, you know, as someone who represents the Northland and someone who is fiscally conservative, and I do care about the royals as well, we got to make sure that this plan works for the city, and there should be questions asked. When you don't ask questions, that's when a lot of things may be the devils and the details, as they say, and I want to make sure that the details are good. And I do believe that the people ultimately should be able to decide on a decision like this. Nathan Willis joining us on KCMO. I hate to do it on the air, Nathan. I'm going to ask you to slide five feet to your left or right. There's a little bit of a cell phone break up there. But I want to follow up with you on that and say, OK, we're two days removed yesterday. We were two days removed from the city voters going ahead with the sales or the earnings tax for another five years. And the city comes out and says, hey, if we don't pass the earnings tax, we're broke. There's no cops. There's no fire. There's no nothing. But now we're talking about a $600 million redirect for a baseball stadium. So what exactly is the fiscal situation of Kansas City, Missouri, as you understand it, as a member of city council? Yeah, well, I think that we did OK on the last budget. I did vote against it because it had a lot of junk in there, but we could have gone away with at least 20% of the budget and still been fine in the city. But I'm asking the questions of how does this $600 million redirect affect the police budget? How does it affect the firefighters budget? You're going to talk about a complex going in downtown Kansas City. We're going to make sure it's safe for people to go there. And number one, a lot of my constituents would like to see the K be where they remain for a period of time. Obviously, that's not a decision. But if this is going to happen, there has to be people who are standing up and asking legit questions and not just being rubber stamped on it. So where is this council at when it comes to potentially being divided on this issue? Or do you think the mayor knows he's got the votes to move ahead with this? And that's why the announcement came down yesterday. Yeah, I think that you'll see more in their presentation next week. I think that this exciting proposition, obviously, we want to keep sports teams in our state. But the question is, to what extent? I will say this, the difference between this time around and last time around is you have the show me sports act, which the state of Missouri is going to send hundreds of million dollars to Kansas City. And so it has more incentive for people to vote for something if they were to put it on the ballot. And so I'm confident that if you are transparent with the voters and you put something together and give them the opportunity to weigh in on it, I think something like this would pass. I don't think decisions that this magnitude, like let's talk about the airport. The first time around when they did the airport, that thing failed. They went back to the drawing board. They communicated with constituents, seen what they want. Obviously, we don't like the bathrooms in the new airport. I don't think people would have voted for it if that was the case on the ballot. They knew that ahead of time. But you know that they did go back to the ballot on the airport and then the voters voted for it. I think this is something that they should be doing. I don't think the team, the Royals should be scared of a vote. I think that if you make a good argument and talk about it, I think that it could pass. But I'm someone who's not going to be a rubber stamp on this. I just want to make sure that we are actually doing the role of local government, which is public safety and infrastructure and then supporting our neighborhoods. Do we know, the mayor referenced like there being an entertainment district, you know, kind of a TIF district or whatever, that obviously would redirect monies to pay off a portion of the stadium. Do we know the size, the scope, the boundaries of this district or is that all TBD as far as you know? I'm sure that's TBD. I think that they're confident that they can generate the amount of money in that area. But the other thing I want to tell you, to Pete, that's not talked about that I'm going to introduce a council this next week is there's the Korean War Memorial there at Washington Square Park. And I want to make sure that if we are going to put a baseball stadium in there, we find just as good, if not a better spot to recognize veterans of the Korean War. And I'm going to make sure that we find a spot in the city if that were to happen. That is number one, public and accessible to our veterans. And then number two, a beautiful area that we can have just as nice of a tribute. So I may be looking at some places up in the Northland. But you know, as one member of this council, I can't get to decide everything. But what I can do is push back on a few items to make sure that we are actually doing a role in trying to be a guardrail, even when they try to go off the rails. All right, so what's next? I mean, has the mayor said when this is going to go to a vote of the city council and what details do you have, if any, on that front? Yeah, it could be voted on next week as early as next week. I do think that there might be a parks decision as well, which I think is a less of a controversial item as long as we figure out what we're going to do with the Korean War Memorial. But the bottom line, Pete, like you said, you had that earnings tax vote and then you have announcement like this. It was five years ago when we did the earnings tax vote and the mayor did the defund the police a $42 million reallocation. So you never know what comes out of City Hall a week or two after the earnings tax vote. And so that's why you didn't really see me go raw raw on that as well. Obviously, you want to protect pensions of our first responders. But you know, at the same time, you can't just be acting like police and fire, police and fire, and then a proposal like this could potentially hurt our police officers and firefighters. And so I want to make sure that this proposal does not do that. Nathan Willett, Kansas City Councilman on KCMO. He's also running for Congress in the sixth congressional district up in the Northland. Nathan, thank you as always for the time we appreciate it and have a great weekend. Yeah, you too, Pete. Thanks. You bet. Nathan Willett on KCMO, talk radio. Now it's actually making something, but that's starting to go down, down, down. I love how we can play the fact that inflation has been really high as a positive. But if you're a saver, you know what that means? Silver lining, Joe, silver lining. Afford anything, follow and listen on your favorite platform. Full send golf. You guys know how much I really, really love golf. And I think every week would be dope to post on the golf channel. I want to get a lot of guests on here. Salim's going to take a leap. I'm down to be in it. It's not really worth to play golf. Join the party on the golf course. I was like, let's go to the range. So what are we putting on it? We said 10K, right? 10K? All right. We probably bet more than all the other golf channels, right? 10K, 9-ohls. Those guys bet for like cookies. I feel like I'm going to shank it. This guy's been trading like a Navy Seal when it comes to golf. I'm very, very excited. Are you excited? Yeah. Full send golf. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.
