KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The seemingly near-constant construction on West 39th Street has the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, taking his concerns to social media.
Over the weekend, Mayor Quinton Lucas tweeted that a lack of communication between the city and utilities had resulted in a weeks-old road resurfacing project now being ripped up.
Seeing the work that will carve up the weeks-old resurfaced 39th St. Appearing both sides impacted. Disappointing here was that this is a city-owned water utility project that will require new patch work redoing work just done by public works—doubling cost to taxpayers/ratepayers https://t.co/3K62kbt3we pic.twitter.com/32zeO5xpqo
— Mayor Q (@QuintonLucasKC) October 18, 2020
The mayor's frustration over the work on 39th Street is mirrored by small business owners on the street.
"This road got fixed a few weeks ago, and it's already under construction again," said Taylor Vana-Herrick, owner of Energizing 39th at 910 W. 39th St.
She has owned her tea and shake store for a year, and in that time, she said the road has been under construction at least a dozen times.
"I hit my one-year mark and I was super frustrated because I thought they were going to redo it, and once again they were just patching it," Vana-Herrick said. "I hit my wits' end and was talking to people and googling who do I go to or where do I go to make this a fixable issue."
Vana-Herrick said her issue lies with why a road is being torn apart and repaved, only to have construction crews return days later.
"I think actually for my entire life we have had this problem," Lucas told 41 Action News on Tuesday.
He said this back-and-forth is an issue with cost implications.
"The challenge for me is for example, we just resurfaced 39th Street, which costs us some money. But then we are going to do further Water Department work through a contractor, which is costing us money — including in that cost, resurfacing the section that they just dug up," Lucas said. "It's crazy. It doesn't makes sense."
To fix the problem, Lucas wants city departments to adopt a plan similar to how they handle work along the KC Streetcar route. This plan would fix street problems all at once so crews are not ripping up the road multiple times a year, Lucas said.
"Because if you notice, we don't shut down Main Street through downtown often because somebody has to replace a pipe. Because we recognize that that would shut the streetcar," Lucas said. "That would do a lot more work."
On Tuesday, he met with leaders of the public works, water and planning departments as well as the city manager's office. He said city departments need to communicate better.
"I think the idea is that we need to find a way to come to sustainable solutions," Lucas said. "This is not rocket science."
Small business owners like Vana-Herrick hope the mayor's plan works.
"I'll trust in the mayor and hope he can get people all on the same page to fix these things," Vana-Herrick said. "But I don't know if we will ever be on the same page here soon."
Lucas told 41 Action News he is doing a ride-along on Thursday with the Public Works Street Preservation Team to "learn more even more about why it is that we are running into this, learning more about the work they are doing."
