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Based on your own past postings, you moved from the urban core to the suburbs way back when for school reasons (correct me if I'm wrong), though your heart and soul has always been with the urban core.
If there are other solutions, why didn't you opt for them yourself? Why didn't you stay and make your utopia into exactly "what it could and should be"?
Actually, if you must know. The primary reason we left the city was to be closer to my wife’s aging parents that live east of Blue Springs.
Schools were definitely a factor, but we could and would have stayed in the city had it not been for the relatives thing. I have brought up that we left the city for the suburbs mostly just to say that there are alternatives to JoCo. JoCo is not the only area of the metro with good schools, so I would point out that we moved to eastern Jackson county.
Believe it or not, I was not fan of Blue Springs and to this day, the place is not exactly a place I love or anything. But even so, I did get very involved in the community and still maintained involvement in kcmo as well.
I was probably the only person in Blue Springs that would put kcmo yard signs up that blue springs people didn’t even vote on. Why? Because people in BS or any other suburb, should be able to vote on transit issues, the zoo, museums, stadiums etc. At the very least, it might give a BS resident a reason to think about issues in kcmo and how they might affect them.
But I was also VERY involved in BS. It didn’t take long before I was emailing the mayor and council members and actually stirring up some controversy. You see, I was very against the city using tax breaks to develop adams dairy when those tax breaks should have been used to redevelop Woods Chapel and 70 or parts of the Route 7 corridor. My wife and I actually created a grassroots effort to get some things done in other parts of the city while letting the city know we were not happy with the corporate welfare on Adams Dairy. I’m confident that these efforts are the main reason why the city is now rebuilding Woods Chapel Road and plans to bring in new retail there as well. While construction won’t start till this year due to the time it takes to design and acquire property, we got the project in front of the city and pretty much made it happen. My 12 year old son even had an opinion in the Examiner about how BS needs sidewalks along Woods Chapel so he could safely walk to Old Mill Park. Had we moved to BS five years earlier, maybe this project would be done and maybe this part of Blue Springs would be in better shape today. But as others have stated, maybe it’s too late.
Also, while we lived in Blue Springs, we did have a rash of burglaries one summer and even a couple of home invasions. It never even crossed my mind to move away, instead we got our entire neighborhood together with the PD and had a huge meeting in a local park. It got so much attention that local news channels showed up. We worked with the PD and residents to figure out what was going on and it was generally people from inner city kcmo preying on the area due to easy access to 70 and a quick escape from BS. If something seemed out of place, emails would fly. We were able to pretty much halt burglaries in the area and it remained that way for many years up till when we left.
Blue Springs was okay, but if I had to do it all over again, I would have stayed in the city and made her parents drive to Brookside or we could have gone to BS to pick them up. We are not in “best” (whatever that really means) schools where we live now. The schools here are probably similar to BS where there is a lot of often conflicting demographics from poor minorities to affluent. There seems to be some drug issues etc. Fights do break out in the schools too. The high schools has a full time cop. But my kids do just fine, they are in advanced classes and they are challenged regardless of what the overall school ranking or stats are, they will do fine and be well prepared for college. They hang with the right people and stay out of trouble. I’m not sure moving to some school district where all problems are hidden or swept under a rug are any better. Districts that are highly affluent have just as many problems, funny thing is that most of the problems occur outside the schools right under their parents noses. Rather than take drugs to school, they can just do them on the third floor of the mcmansion while mom and dad are on business trips or they can just ask mom or dad to buy the liquor for them. Or when the kids do get in trouble, you will have mom or dad at the school siding with the child rather than the teacher or principle. There are problems everywhere and affluent, all white suburbs have issues too. At least my kids have an idea of how to deal with a situation when they do see something that they know is wrong while many parents raise kids as if they will never see such a thing in their perfect little worlds.
Anyway, I don’t think you know me too well. But I’m pretty much the last person you want to call out for not offering solutions etc.
If more people did do what we do and took just a fraction of our interest in what’s going on around them, I’m sure metro KC (and much of the country) might have just a little less blight and decay and less people running for the hinterlands when they think "things are going downhill". People are going to run out of places to run to.
So I guess BS will be Grandview in ten years. So basically the entire I-70 corridor across metro KC will be nothing but crap. That will be terrible for kc's image. I have no more words for such a possible scenario. It’s really just too bad such things can’t be reversed. I guess everybody can live north of hwy152 or south of 135th...
Actually, if you must know. The primary reason we left the city was to be closer to my wife’s aging parents that live east of Blue Springs.
Schools were definitely a factor, but we could and would have stayed in the city had it not been for the relatives thing. I have brought up that we left the city for the suburbs mostly just to say that there are alternatives to JoCo. JoCo is not the only area of the metro with good schools, so I would point out that we moved to eastern Jackson county.
Believe it or not, I was not fan of Blue Springs and to this day, the place is not exactly a place I love or anything. But even so, I did get very involved in the community and still maintained involvement in kcmo as well.
I was probably the only person in Blue Springs that would put kcmo yard signs up that blue springs people didn’t even vote on. Why? Because people in BS or any other suburb, should be able to vote on transit issues, the zoo, museums, stadiums etc. At the very least, it might give a BS resident a reason to think about issues in kcmo and how they might affect them.
But I was also VERY involved in BS. It didn’t take long before I was emailing the mayor and council members and actually stirring up some controversy. You see, I was very against the city using tax breaks to develop adams dairy when those tax breaks should have been used to redevelop Woods Chapel and 70 or parts of the Route 7 corridor. My wife and I actually created a grassroots effort to get some things done in other parts of the city while letting the city know we were not happy with the corporate welfare on Adams Dairy. I’m confident that these efforts are the main reason why the city is now rebuilding Woods Chapel Road and plans to bring in new retail there as well. While construction won’t start till this year due to the time it takes to design and acquire property, we got the project in front of the city and pretty much made it happen. My 12 year old son even had an opinion in the Examiner about how BS needs sidewalks along Woods Chapel so he could safely walk to Old Mill Park. Had we moved to BS five years earlier, maybe this project would be done and maybe this part of Blue Springs would be in better shape today. But as others have stated, maybe it’s too late.
Also, while we lived in Blue Springs, we did have a rash of burglaries one summer and even a couple of home invasions. It never even crossed my mind to move away, instead we got our entire neighborhood together with the PD and had a huge meeting in a local park. It got so much attention that local news channels showed up. We worked with the PD and residents to figure out what was going on and it was generally people from inner city kcmo preying on the area due to easy access to 70 and a quick escape from BS. If something seemed out of place, emails would fly. We were able to pretty much halt burglaries in the area and it remained that way for many years up till when we left.
Blue Springs was okay, but if I had to do it all over again, I would have stayed in the city and made her parents drive to Brookside or we could have gone to BS to pick them up. We are not in “best” (whatever that really means) schools where we live now. The schools here are probably similar to BS where there is a lot of often conflicting demographics from poor minorities to affluent. There seems to be some drug issues etc. Fights do break out in the schools too. The high schools has a full time cop. But my kids do just fine, they are in advanced classes and they are challenged regardless of what the overall school ranking or stats are, they will do fine and be well prepared for college. They hang with the right people and stay out of trouble. I’m not sure moving to some school district where all problems are hidden or swept under a rug are any better. Districts that are highly affluent have just as many problems, funny thing is that most of the problems occur outside the schools right under their parents noses. Rather than take drugs to school, they can just do them on the third floor of the mcmansion while mom and dad are on business trips or they can just ask mom or dad to buy the liquor for them. Or when the kids do get in trouble, you will have mom or dad at the school siding with the child rather than the teacher or principle. There are problems everywhere and affluent, all white suburbs have issues too. At least my kids have an idea of how to deal with a situation when they do see something that they know is wrong while many parents raise kids as if they will never see such a thing in their perfect little worlds.
Anyway, I don’t think you know me too well. But I’m pretty much the last person you want to call out for not offering solutions etc.
If more people did do what we do and took just a fraction of our interest in what’s going on around them, I’m sure metro KC (and much of the country) might have just a little less blight and decay and less people running for the hinterlands when they think "things are going downhill". People are going to run out of places to run to.
So I guess BS will be Grandview in ten years. So basically the entire I-70 corridor across metro KC will be nothing but crap. That will be terrible for kc's image. I have no more words for such a possible scenario. It’s really just too bad such things can’t be reversed. I guess everybody can live north of hwy152 or south of 135th...
We're a long ways from running out of places "to run to".
This country was created over 200 years ago by people escaping an environment they found unacceptable. So they sought a new land, a new beginning, an opportunity to fashion a new life more to their liking and more under their own control. And there was nothing new about what they did even back then, except that most hadn't crossed an ocean to do it. The point being that man's thirst for exploration and to seek new opportunities to improve their lot in life dates to the origin of man. Neither you nor anyone else is going to stop it and it is folly to even try to.
My post was prompted not because I question or challenge your community spirit, but rather to point out and challenge your very familiar intolerance of ANY critical commentary of any aspect of Missouri side life. If racer's comments had been about any part of Johnson County, you would have piled on, high-fiving him, and repeating your own personal hostility to all things Johnson County for the benefit of anyone joining the forum in the last 10 days. The rest of us have seen it ad nauseum seemingly since time began.
It was also to point out your continuing transparent do-as-I-say, not as-I-do hypocrisy. Your wife's parents are not a factor in the DC area, correct? And yet you once again chose the suburban life. Just like the vast majority who have school-age children and the means do. Just like anyone, with children or not, who desires a safer and cleaner environment does.
As you and the other regulars know, my experience living in the KC metro is dated, as I left against my better judgement (family pressures) in 1990. So I'm not in a position to give much specific help and advice these days to people comtemplating KC relocation. So why do I still post in this forum and why do I care what goes on here? It's very simple....you and a few others have turned it into a political soapbox, pushing aside truth in favor of an imaginary image that is a product of your wishful thinking.
Aside from the summer weather, my 13 years in Johnson County with a young family were of a life quality unequaled anywhere else I have lived....from the Northeast to the West Coast. I liked it there - a lot - and life was good. And, though this entire nation today seems on a precipitous slide toward territory known only to the oldest of us still living today, it's a safe bet that Johnson County living is still relatively good living - and a better option than a multitude of others out there.
What continues to irk me and motivate me to speak up here as I have been doing for quite some time now is the continuing mis-use of this forum by you and handful of others as a vehicle to vent your life-long infection of personal demons underlying a contemptous attitude toward the people of Johnson County and Kansas, and "suburbia" generally. Of course, it goes without saying that the "suburbia" in which you choose to live is different. It's all the rest that is so evil....with Johnson County being at the core.
Your eccentric bias belongs elsewhere. For this forum has become so saturated with it that there is precious little truth remaining. That is what I care about and why I continue to post. People from other areas with no KC experience coming to this forum for the first time see it's most desirable area under relentless political attack from your soap box, while at the same time seeing Missouri side areas protected from any and all criticism, justified or not, from the same perch. You simply won't have it....as shown for the umpteenth time in this thread.
Folks with no prior or other knowledge of the KC metro are either confused or misled by this. And that is simply not right....and solidly defeats the real purpose of this forum. This is not a place to continue fighting the Civil War, as some attempt to do - and is equally not a place for the venting of personal demons and prejudices born of envy or any other human weakness.
You have gone on a great length here five hundred and one times about wanting KC to be all it "could and should be". Well, that's fine for a political forum despite the fact that most don't see your particular utopian vision in their minds. What I would like to see is for this forum to be what it could and should be. And what we have seen for the last 5 years is anything but.
^ this thread has nothing to do with Johnson County and I never said I have anything against suburbs, in fact, I continually say that they should coexist with a core city rather than compete with it (which is my primary issue with joco).
Not that I would put a lot into that list, but I would take notice that the vast majority of the commenters seem to think Blue Springs is still a nice place.
I guess a LOT has changed in one year!
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