No more excuses. Get to work.

By Mark Forsythe The Kansas City Post Of the current council members I had contact with during the campaign, I don't recall one of them asking the voters for patience while they "learned the job." The rhetoric that most politicians (myself included) threw around was they were "experienced" and "ready to hit the ground running." Now is the time we find out what our new leadership is made of. Who is going to hit the ground running and who is just going to hit the ground? It's time to get to work. There is plenty of legislative housekeeping that can and should be addressed immediately. The panhandling ordinance. The Red Bridge Road project. There are also many less high profile issues that need to be addressed. Jurisdiction of codes inspectors. Sidewalk cafe permits and other small business policies. Changes to the codes enforcement process. The list is long. The list is important. It would be interesting if each councilperson transferred all their campaign issues from their sites over to the official website, so we could all track their progress. Think that's going to happen? In fact, one of our elected official's campaign site has already taken down all its Issues content. Another never had any to begin with. It's still "Coming Soon!" Get over to BlogKC and check things out for yourself before all these sites disappear completely. I challenge this new council to use their official web presence as more than a vanity page. Tell us what you're priorities are for the next six months. What ordinances do you intend to author? What ordinances do you intend to change? What policies will you influence to make City Hall run more efficiently? In short, what will you do and what have you done for us lately?