Transit, redevelopment, education: important questions in city elections

File photo. City council candidates at a recent forum.

File photo. City council candidates at a recent forum.

What should Midtown’s transit future look like? How do we encourage growth and development while still retaining Midtown’s unique character? What role, if any, should the city council and mayor play in education?

These are the questions people want to hear the candidates for city council answer at an upcoming candidate forum. And there’s still time to suggest topics you would like to hear the candidates address.

The election will be held on June 23.

The Midtown KC Post, MainCor, the Broadway Westport Council, and the Westport Regional Business League are sponsoring a candidate forum on June 17 at 5:30 p.m. at the Uptown Theater.

Before the primary election, Midtown residents said the most important issue in the upcoming races was transportation, including whether to extend streetcar lines and how to improve biking and walking options. Reinvestment in the urban core was another popular topic, as was how to reduce crime.

We need your help in deciding what the most important questions are for the moderator to ask at the June forum. Now that the candidates have been narrowed down to two in each race, we are giving the community another chance to help define the topics they want the candidates to address. Here’s a summary of input so far:

• Redevelopment: how to encourage the continued growth and development of Midtown while also retaining its local character.
• Increasing population density
• Transit: how to make Kansas City a more efficient city in terms of public transportation. Does it make more sense to focus on streetcars, buses or cars?
• Downtown housing
• Personal property crime
• Overall cleanliness of the city
• Education

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