Highlight Kansas City projects
HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS
Kansas City took several steps to better support and uplift the homeless community and to help prevent more people from becoming homeless and keeping them in their homes, including:
A living wage jobs program (CleanupKC) for people living in homeless shelters
Converting a hotel into transitional and supportive housing for the homeless
The City’s first emergency cold weather homeless shelter and a year round low barrier shelter network
An all new independent Housing Department focused on building and preserving affordable housing and preventing homelessness
A Right to Counsel program (the 13th city in the country to do so) and rent assistance programs that has prevented hundreds of evictions in its first year alone
The City’s first Homelessness Prevention team
Streets: street resurfacing, vision zero, and snow removal
After years of neglect and deferred maintenance, Kansas City’s streets have never been better thanks to a few key initiatives:
Fiscal year 2024 saw a record 519 lane miles of streets resurfaced, more than 3.7 times the historic rate, and more than 1500 lane miles resurfaced in 4 years (25% of all city roads)
Using new image analysis technology to determine pavement quality in an equitable, data driven manner
Stronger street excavation rules are extending pavement life and limiting future potholes and other quality issues
Launching Vision Zero with 400+ safety improvement projects and 50 miles of protected bike lanes installed in the first 4 years
A dramatically improved the snow removal operation with:
100 additional drivers and 50 additional snow removal vehicles
utilizing a new type of snow melting product called “Ice Ban” that works better in colder temperatures
Digital route mapping and plow tracking technology
expanding residential street plowing to 24 hours a day and including all streets in snow removal for every storm
Pre-treatment of all roads before storms arrive
Clearing of bike lanes and sidewalks around public property
A national model for sustainability
Kansas City is a national model for how cities can more efficiently utilize resources, reduce carbon emissions and pollution, and improve environmental quality. Some examples include:
Advancing construction of a solar array at the Kansas City International Airport on 3100 acres of land that when completed could provide up to 500 MW of power, enough for 1/3 of the homes in Kansas City
Converting (almost) all of the City’s streetlights (90,000) to LEDs, that will save over $5 million a year in reduced energy and maintenance costs, plus is the equivalent carbon emissions reduction of taking 6,000 cars off the road every day
Planting 10,000 trees in 3 years partially by giving away thousands of trees to residents for free
Launching a municipal composting program
A “trash to roads” initiative to utilize plastic and rubber waste in the creation of new streets
Converting the municipal fleet vehicles to zero emissions battery electric where available: in 2023 we replaced 45 older fire department SUVs with EVs and estimate cost savings to be $14k over the life of EACH vehicle
Community support
Kansas City has made significant strides to be more reflective and inclusive of the communities it serves through a variety of initiatives including:
Hiring the City’s first ever Chief Equity Officer (also the first in the entire Midwest)
Building the most diverse leadership team in Kansas City’s history
Celebrations of cultures and ethnicities including the City’s first ever Hannukah menorah lightings at City Hall, raising the pride flag at City Hall, recognition of Juneteenth as a City holiday, and support of new events such as Pride on the Vine
A firefighters union contract (Local 42) with revisions and new policies that unwind from possibly discriminatory and unequal treatment of employees, and the most diverse recruit class in Kansas City’s history
Expanding our employee healthcare policy to include gender reassignment treatments and procedures
An all-gender/ single occupancy bathroom policy in public facilities
4 straight years of perfect scores on the Human Rights Campaign’s “Municipal Equality Index”
Economic development
Kansas City is experiencing growth and investment unlike ever before:
$2.5 billion of development projects breaking ground between fall of 2024 and spring of 2025 alone
Opened an all new $1.5 billion single terminal airport in 2023 with a record volume of passengers (12.1 million) in 2024
$200 million park over highway 670 breaking ground in 2025 that will create a destination gathering space and bring new development downtown
a $1 billion riverfront project underway which includes CPKC Stadium, the first sports arena purpose built for a women’s sports team (KC Current Women’s Soccer team)
$500 million West Bottoms neighborhood revitalization that will add 1,200 apartments, 168,000 square feet of office and retail space, and all new neighborhood amenities
16 redevelopment projects at various phase in the 18th and Vine historic neighborhood, including the $300 million Parade Park project that will add hundreds of affordable and senior housing units
Restructured planning and development processes and services to streamline reviews and approvals and reduce time to market