Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's not about whether you're four streetcar is not whether
you're against the streetcar. It's really about just trying to
learn as much as you can about the streetcar itself.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And uh that's what we're talking about here.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
So uh.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Are let's get to the phone lines of four h two, five, five, eight,
eleven ten, and we have John here to talk about
the street car.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
How's it going, John?
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Pretty good? Thank you?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
What's up?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
I mean, well, anyway, I didn't listen to the total
interview with Jeans Stothard on this, but I was downtown
Omaha here a while back, and I brought this up
to one of the one of the business owners that
was in that general area. That's going to be I
guess an attribute to the to this uh trolley. But
(00:46):
the problem I'm having I had. I had a question
for them. I said, to what affair is it going
to affect you guys? He says, well, it doesn't make
any difference. She says that you know we're being taxed
on it. There is a I don't know how they're
orchestrating it. I don't know if they're changing the mill
(01:07):
levy of those people that are down there in them businesses,
but they're going to receive money, some kind of a
taxation reward or whatever funding for that trolley. And it
seems to me that that would be Hey, you know,
it's not put to vote. We're just going to have
you guys pay for it. I mean, that's the way
I would look at it if I had a business
in that area. Yeah, if you can get some businesses
(01:29):
that are down there, once you put this out, they'll
call forward along the cord or this this subway or
trolley that can call in and say, hey, we are paying.
We're going to have an increase in mill levy or taxes.
And this particular business is not going to benefit anything
from it because they really don't have a service that
(01:52):
would call for this type of foot traffic.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah yeah, okay, So so John, I think I don't disagree.
I mean, obviously those people would know more about that,
you know, than I would, because it's there, it's it's
their business. But you know, the numbers that she gave,
and I don't know if you heard are kind of
going through and walking through the numbers. She said the
current price is three hundred and eighty nine million dollars
for the entire project. None of that is going to
(02:21):
be involved with any sort of tax increase for the
general citizens. It is being paid mostly through the developers
or anything along the development. And I don't exactly know
how that's like, how that's divvied up. I don't know
exactly what like new new places or what places said
that they would pay for it if it was there,
(02:41):
But it sounds like this was a The street car
itself is kind of part of the bigger kind of
revitalization of downtown Omaha, which saw the four hundred million
dollars spent on the park in the river front and
the trails and all that stuff through there, the you know, skyscraper,
and the investment of you know, mutual want to put
that building there, all these other things that are being
(03:03):
funded and built along what would be near or within
a block of this route all the way through town.
It is kind of fascinating because she says, based on
studies done to other cities around the country who have
built street cars in the last fifteen years, and there
are actually quite a few of them. We're talking about
Kansas City, We're talking about Seattle, We're talking about some
(03:24):
places over in the northeast there's a lot of places
that have know of Omaha side is a little bit smaller,
maybe a little bit bigger, that have built street cars,
and they anticipate within the first fifteen years of the
street car being operational it could generate up to four
billion dollars in development downtown in Omaha. So and the
(03:44):
property values in these places definitely have risen based on
the information that I can find anywhere within a mile
and a half or so of the streetcar. So it's interesting.
I would be interested to see if we talk to
enough businesses kind of along the route. Some people may
say this isn't going to help us, and we may
be on the hook for a little bit of it.
Some places say, yeah, we're paying a bunch of it,
(04:06):
and we think it's going to really help us. I
would love to talk to as many people as possible,
to be honest with you, because I feel like everybody's
seeing it a little differently, if that makes sense. I
think a lot of John. But Okay, well, John, it
was good talking to you. Thanks for calling in and listen.
I don't think I'm not a not an expert on
(04:26):
every single thing that a mayor or a city council
member or anybody is going to is going to do right.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
She talked about bond issues.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
She talked about people being able to go to the
ballot on anything that's going to affect the way that
their taxes are paid. That all makes sense, right, Like
that makes I understand that for the most part. But
I also understand how you go through the process to
build something. Now I think I've told the story before.
Let me tell you a story. I was covering news
my first professional job that was full time. I was
(05:00):
sports and news director. I had to go to every
c the council meeting. I was at a town of
ten thousand people. It's called Oscar Luziowa. And the biggest
news item that was going on when I was there
was this giant building that was kind of like a YMCA,
but it wouldn't be called the YMCA.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
It was. It was a.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Rec center with like a gym and workout activities, but
it also had like childcare early childcare in there, so
for daycare or whatever that would be there. The current
YMCA in that town while this was all happening, was dilapidated.
It was old and it was beyond repair. There was
no way you were going to be able to get
funding that made any sense to renovate that building and
(05:40):
make it good. So some of the leaders in the
city put together this plan for a twenty four million
dollar building that they would build, and they thought, not
only would this be good for people who want to
work out, it could be good for our athletic programs,
It could be good for the community. It could be
good for early childcare and early childhood development. But it
(06:02):
also could attract people to come work at places like
Cloud Valve Company or Muscow, a couple of big players
who are in Oscaloosa, and attract people to come to
the university, which is my school, William Penn University. And
you would not believe, dude, the pushback on this. They
surveyed a ton of people in and around the county
(06:25):
that they would use this, and eventually it was the
rural guys, the farmers in the county that voted it down.
They needed funding from not just the city council, which
they got. They didn't also they also were going to
need funding from the county the Board of Supervisors, and
that's how they operate in Iowa. They have a Board
of Supervisors and the Board of Supervisors I think wanted
(06:47):
to vote for it. They allowed it to go to
the ballot, and then once it was able to be
voted on by people of the county, it was overwhelmingly
defeated because none of the farmers said They said, all
of that tax dollar, like the local option sales tax
that would have been going that direction, it needed to
go to secondary roads. They didn't care that new people were.
(07:07):
They didn't want people to come to oscar Loose, so
they didn't want people to come to Mahaska County. They
didn't care about, you know, the big companies or the college.
They really just wanted to take care of the secondary
roads because that's what they used. And that's the question
here is the people who aren't even thinking about using
the street car or what its value potentially could be
for their life. Are they the ones that are outspoken
(07:27):
against this thing, even if it's not costing them extra dollars,
even though it's not necessarily doing anything to their land
or their property at the time for what they're trying
to do or achieve. And they're the ones saying we
don't want this here, even though I just had the
mayor on and said this isn't changing how anybody's paying taxes.
We are already looking like as far as our you know,
(07:50):
the conversation goes, we've already gotten over nine hundred million
dollars in development basically achieved here for something that's the
project that costs less than four hundred million dollars, and
by all of our studies, we are projected to make
upwards of four billion dollars over the first fifteen years
of the street car existing along this route. This project
itself could be responsible for over four billion dollars in
(08:12):
fifteen years in the Omaha economy. I don't know how
you hear those numbers and are just like, nope, don't
believe it. Not interested, even if it's not costing you
extra tax payer dollars. It's just the way that those
are being allotted. And also how the developers are covering
a lot of the costs to make this thing happen.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
It just seems like a very strange thing, a very
strange hill to die on for a lot of people
in regards to this streetcar when there are a lot
of other things that I'm sure Mike McDonald and John
Ewing and all the other candidates are really probably needing
to lean in on because, as Mayor Stouthers said in
our interview, things are pretty good in Omaha right now,
(08:48):
and it is growing in a way that I think
a lot of people are like, Okay, feel pretty good
about where we're.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
At right now. Is that why we're hearing about the
streetcar so much?
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I have no idea, but if you want to chat
about it, we can four h two five five eight
eleven ten four two five eight eleven ten. News Radio
eleven ten, Kfab and Resunger, Welcome in, Bob. What's on
your mind today?
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Well, good afternoon. I like to make a comment. I
was born in nineteen forty two. I figured out about
eighty two years old. I lived at one time when
I was young, at sixteenth in Webster Street. That's about
five hundred north the possibly or seven hundred north anyway.
(09:31):
I used to when I was a kid, I used
to look out my window and I'd see the street
car going up, and that was kind of cool, you know,
just a kid. But when winter came, oh, that was
an entirely different problem. I see him getting stuck, I
see him getting in recks, I see him doing all
kinds of today jumped the tracks. Now that streetcar ran
(09:53):
by electric with the wires and all stuff. I don't
know what they're going to do on this one, but
probably motorizes some sort. But anyway, the reason I'm calling
is everybody's seeing how much it's gonna cost blah blah blah,
But nobody's bringing up the maintenance costs to maintain these
(10:13):
things or the storage costs if they're not going to
run them in the wintertime. You know, I don't know
what they're gonna do, but I'm just saying, there's cars
are one hundred and thirty dollars an hour. Now, I
won't know what a street car is going to be
and who is boring to pay for that?
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yeah, it's all good questions, Bob, And that's I think
the biggest problem with a lot of people in the
street car is questions like this or general questions. They're
just not really sure how to find out what would happen,
because this is kind of a new fangled idea. And
I do appreciate the call, Bob, thanks for listening to us.
His first point about the winter time, these are not
the same type of street cars that are like above,
(10:53):
ground trolleys that are just like they need everything to
like operate properly to get up and down. There are
a lot of cities in cold climates that have these
new fangled looking ones that I mean, you can look
around and they even have a packet of like the
specific car that they're looking for, but they have a
lot of like protections essentially for any sort of weather situation. Now,
(11:18):
as far as the maintenance were to go, you know,
I'm sure it's factored in. But this is the kind
of thing that and this is why like a city bus,
the city bus does have problems, especially in the winter time.
A city bus has about as much maintenance as you
would to figure that a you know, regular vehicle is
(11:41):
going to have just you know, bigger. It might be,
it might look a little different based on its shape
and its size, but I think that if we look
at it from just that perspective, this vehicle specifically is
going to be less maintenance once we have the track
and the vehicles operating properly. They said it's something like
twenty minutes or something for it to go from the
(12:03):
start of the the the what's the word the route,
the start of the route all the way around and
get back to the top of the route again, and
they're going to have multiple cars, maybe like four or
five cars. They said that could be picking you up,
so you only have to wait more no more than
five minutes. It's actually very it's very common transportation when
(12:25):
you go to European cities or bigger cities. I saw
the street car operational down there in Tampa when I
was there in January.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
It was operational.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
I know that it's not the same temperature there, but
in terrible weather, hurricanes and stuff, that thing is still
able to move if it needs to. So it just
is a different thing altogether than what a street car
a trolley would have looked like a long time ago.
As far as the maintenance cost, they're certainly built in.
But if you're telling me that Omaha stands to make
upwards of four billion dollars in the first fifteen years
(12:53):
of that thing being operational, I'm sure that you would
take any maintenance pricing that it could be. It's cost
seeing less than four hundred million dollars to build the thing.
You're taking that time ten very easily. With the four
billion dollar profit margin that's they're anticipating. Through development on
the route. So I don't know it's a it's going
(13:15):
to cost money to maintain, certainly. I'm just not sure
it's going to be as much as we think it
might be. That's on our phone line four two, five, five,
eight eleven ten, Beth, what's your thoughts on this?
Speaker 5 (13:25):
Well, my thoughts are the same thoughts I always usually have.
You know, private, I mean, our world is ran by
these private and public partnerships. Okay, they're the people that
you know, and somebody else can develop those relationships. It's
(13:45):
not like he's the only one that can do this.
I believe that people should be termed out. I mean,
if there's not term limits, then the voter have to
term them out.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
I don't. I'm not.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
I think career political right is a real problem in
our country, and it's a problem locally, and I think
what's happening on a national level.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
I'm run out of time, Beth. I got ten saying
it is.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
If you want to stick around, Beth, I'd love to
get that finished thought because I don't disagree in principle
what she's saying about term limits. We'll talk about that.
We talk about more news, and we'll speak with you.
More coming up right here on news radio eleven ten
kfab