Liberty Approves Increased Sales Tax

Mayor Bob Steinkamp said he was ecstatic with passage of a three-part sales tax referendum that would allow the city to make infrastructure improveements and provide basic services to the city.

"This shows that the community is willing to put it's money into the development of a road system and infrastruction that is conducive to the future growth, "Steinkamp said. "I think it's fantastic. Voters by an overwhelming number said they wanted to ensure Liberty's future."

Voters also agreed to raise the existing transportation quarter-cent sales tax by a quarter-cent, increasing it to a half-cent.  Both sales taxes, which needed a simple majority for passage, expire in 2030.

The mayor said revenue from the new quarter-cent sales tax would start being collected in April.  As a result of the vote, Liberty's total sales tax will go from the current 7.35 percent to 7.6 percent.

Kellybrook Elementary School waits for Cemetery to be Relocated

Article from The Kansas City Star
By JOHN SHULTZ

Mercer Bush fought in the War of 1812, took a pioneer’s trail to Missouri, and — better than 100 years after his death — brought bulldozers to a halt in Liberty.

This week, a team of archaeologists is undertaking the painstaking, by-hand work of moving Bush and 11 members of his family and slaves from ground tabbed for the construction of the Liberty School District’s 10th elementary school, at 108th Street and North Eastern Avenue in Kansas City.

With the district footing the bill for the grave relocation and for a new, memorial-rich burial site about 100 feet from the original graveyard, Bush’s distant descendants couldn’t be happier with the move. It wasn’t that long ago, relatively speaking, that the family’s homestead and cemetery were to give way to a never-realized landfill.

“This is much, much better for the family,” said Gary Bush, Mercer Bush’s great-great-great-great grandson. “We are very grateful the school district has decided to do this.

“These were highly respected people, very good people,” he said. “Mercer arrived in Clay County in 1835. This is where he raised his family, and where he lost his family” with his death in the 1880s.

The district, meanwhile, also is pleased with the turn of events. Last week, a Clay County judge gave it permission to move the cemetery. And Kellybrook Elementary couldn’t have been built without moving the graves, said district spokeswoman Eileen Houston-Stewart.

The burial site sits in the path of a key driveway for the school. Engineering the development around the graves would have meant adding a significant retaining wall to the project, a feature the district considered a safety hazard for schoolchildren, Houston-Stewart said.

Kellybrook is being built on about 16 acres donated to the district by developer Tim Harris. Houston-Stewart said neither the developer nor the district knew about the graves until after the transaction, when engineers discovered a few headstones under a shade tree while walking the land. The cost of the move has yet to be determined.

Gary Bush isn’t entirely certain how many graves are on the site, nor who is buried in them.
The family only learned of the graveyard’s existence after the landfill was proposed for the site. He said when he was alerted by the Clay County Historical Society that the school was going in, he expected there to be about a half-dozen graves on site.

But the archaeologists from the Environmental Research Center found evidence of 12 grave shafts on the land.

Two belong to Mercer and Perlina Bush; of that, the family is certain.

Based on the size of the graves, two more belong to other adults, said archaeologist Chris Hansman. One belongs to an infant, and seven others are likely children.

The dead were buried in six-cornered wooden coffins in the area’s naturally highly acidic soil. Factor in the age, and there’s little in the way of remains to be discovered.

“With the adults you may get some bone fragments,” Hansman said. “With the children, you’ll find buttons and coffin nails.”

Hansman expects the project to be wrapped up by Friday.

All that was left in one girl’s grave excavated early Wednesday was 10 glass buttons. Those buttons will be moved to the memorial site.

But the departed now can provide a palpable touch of the county’s past for anyone visiting the memorial.

“This will be a valuable history lesson for the kids who go here,” Houston-Stewart said.

Liberty Expects Budget Shortfall

The Liberty School Board is considering freezes on hiring and on salaries to deal with projected budget shortfalls, officials say.

District spending could dip into the red next year and be as much as $28 million more than general operating fund revenues by the 2011-2012 school year, according to a report prepared by Carol Embree, the district’s chief financial officer, and Interim Superintendent Mike Brewer.

Board members received the news at a Sept. 6 work session. The Liberty School District is in the black currently, but reserve funds will drop from $12 million this June to about $9 million next June, Embree said. And it will likely take immediate spending cuts to achieve that $9 million in reserves.

Deficit spending would begin in the 2009-2010 school year without changes.

Click here to read the entire story by Kansas City Star reporter Bill Graham.

Clay County Tax Levy

Clay County Commissioners on Monday agreed to keep the county’s property tax levy at 24 cents and use a portion of it to fund road and bridge maintenance.

Faced with having to make severe cuts in the 2008 operating budget, commissioners last year reluctantly approved a 24-cent property tax levy to fund road and bridge maintenance. That tax is expected to generate about $8.4 million this year.

Click here to ready the entire story by Kansas City Star reporter Glenn E. Rice

Kansas City Existing Homes Sales Recover

The Kansas City real estate market is divided by the Kansas-Missouri state line, but it functions as a single housing market. So the figures here, from the Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors, include sales from both sides of the border.

The market seems to be recovering from a bottom it hit in January. The Kansas City metro area, with a population of about 1.97 million, never experienced the torrid sales pace that much of the East and West Coasts did during the recent housing boom. Sales did hit a cyclical peak last June but then fell. Sales have risen for the past four months. And sales of existing homes were up 1% in April compared with April last year, though the average price fell about 1%.

For newly built homes, sales were down 18% in April compared with April 2006, but the average price rose nearly 7% to $282,990.

"We had a little optimistic building" by developers, says Diane Ruggiero, CEO of the local association of Realtors. There was a 10.4-month supply of new homes on the market in April, down from the peak of 15.9 months at the start of the year. For existing homes, there was a 6.8-month supply, up from March but down from an 8.6-month inventory in January.

"There are two differences in our market than (five years ago)," Ruggiero says. "One is bigger inventory, two is more agents. In 2001, we had 6,500 agents in this region. Now, we have a little over 10,000. There's a huge growth in the number of people coming into the business."

Liberty High Schools Military Hall of Fame

Liberty High School is partnering with Proud Military Moms to implement a Military Hall of Fame for Active Duty Alumni. We want to honor current Liberty High School students that are classified as Active Duty or Liberty High School graduates that are currently in Active Duty, the Reserves, or in the National Guard. To participate in this program, or for more information, please contact Mrs. Parnau at http://www.proudmilmoms.com/ or 913-338-9473.

We can't give it to you if you don't ask.

I just spoke with a friend today that has discovered something bazaar and he wanted me to know about it.

A couple of years ago, he refinanced his house with an adjustable rate mortgage that was scheduled to reset in two years time. He told me they thought they would probably move before that time, so the lower interest rate was enticing to them. Last month that interest rate jumped up enough to make his house payment go from $1,350 to $1,825 - an additional $475 a month!

When he called today, he confessed to me that his business wasn't doing very good right now and they've had to make their house payments late for the last two months. This not only destroyed his credit scores, but also made the payments go even higher with all the late payments and extra interest that was due.

Today his mortgage company called again to see when he would be making his October payment (today is October 29th) and here's the interesting part. When he told them the higher interest payments were killing him, the woman on the other end of the phone asked him to explain. He told her he needed some help to see if they could possibly work something out to lower his payments back to the old rate, so she transferred him to what she called, "our loan workout department".

Apparently, this lender has been so swamped with people having trouble making their payments and even risking forclosure, that they've created an entirely new department for helping people "work out" a new payment plan.

After taking some general information over the phone, my friend was able to negotiate a lower fixed rate interest payment and lock it in for a 30 year term, all because he asked. He told me the woman said to him, "We can't give you this option unless you ask." I suppose it's their corporate policy.

After he called me, I did some research and have since found out that this is becoming very common these days. Lenders are "working out" new plans that are more affordable, especially for people that got locked into a situation like my friend where their interest rate and payment made a huge jump seemingly overnight. These lenders have decided it doesn't benefit them financially or from a public relations standpoint to force people into these bad situations.

If you're having trouble with an adjustable rate mortgage such as this, you have 3 choices. Sell the house, refinance the loan, or you might simply try calling your lender to see if they might be willing to adjust your current interest rate.