The Chris Hill Festival -- The Time Has Come, the Walrus Said, to Talk of Many Things...

I got a postcard in the mail the other day claiming that there is an "August Primary Election" tomorrow, which is strange since I thought the Missouri Primary already happened. I will go vote anyway though, as there are numerous controversial issues up for grabs like should we allow another casino to get built in the area (no, this is Kansas City not Atlantic City) and should we allow AEG to build an enormo-dome downtown.

The latter issue, however, is not the least bit controversial. Nearly everyone in the city is for it, since AEG is funding the whole thing and will be responsible for any losses or cost overruns incurred (and of course for any profits as well) by the arena. You may be questioning, as I did, why we need a giant arena downtown when we have no sports team to play in the arena. Despite lunatic ramblings by some locals, we are not getting a hockey team considering there probably won't even be a hockey season next year or a basketball team since there's just not an interest in non-Kansas-University basketball here. However, I've been convinced by a number of studies that not having a team there is actually beneficial for booking conventions and big-name, no-talent musical acts since there's no schedule to work around.

So in summary, the stadium is basically free, it will bring big events to the area, and there is a plan to revitalize the downtown around the arena which will bring money to the city and beautify it. So who in the world would be against it?

In a word...David Warner. Well, not David himself, but David's soulless corporate bosses. You see, the only downside to the arena is that part of it is being financed by a $4 increase in taxes on rental cars. David's bosses seem to think that because of this increase, no one will rent cars here anymore and they will cease to exist as a profitable entity because of it. So much so that they've sunk a whopping $450,000 into completely ineffective radio and TV spots fruitlessly urging people (who don't give a flying you-know-what about David's bosses) to vote against the arena even though right now the approval rating for it stands at about 90%.

Besides wasting their money and causing people to start grumbling about a boycott campaign, David's bosses are being incredibly bizarre in their reasoning. Rental cars are, for the most part, a need rather than a want. If I fly into a city and need to get around, my choices are rent a car or rely on public transportation, which does not exist in any reasonably-usable form in KC. If rental car prices increased by $20 a day, maybe I would start travelling less, but you can't even buy a pack of baseball cards for four bucks anymore. It's a drop in the bucket for anyone travelling here on business (and let's face it, no one else is coming here and renting cars. This isn't exactly NYC).

Give it up, David's bosses, and let us have our enormo-dome. Give our fair city the culture of Christina Aguilera's "I Need More Money 4 Piercings" tour, Ashlee Simpson's "FiFtEeN mInUtEs Of FaMe!!!1" tour, and this week's marginal rap group that is popular because someone in the group has been shot at.

Hey, the primary gives everyone in Missouri the excuse to hold up big signs saying "Hold EM Holden!" and wave at all the passing cars. I'm all for it.
It also might explain why the park rangers at the state park I camped at this weekend were asking us all to vote for the parks tax so we could have clean bathrooms (well, they didn't put it that way, but surely we would have cleaner bathrooms if we increased the parks tax. Right?)

Chris, the distinction between Enterprise and most other car rental agencies is that Enterprise's primary market is the vehicle replacement market. What this means is that a huge portion of Enterprise's revenue (~80%, I believe) comes not from people flying in on airplanes but from people who need rental cars while their car is being worked on in the body shop. (Loaner cars that insurance companies and body shops provide are often Enterprise cars, for example.) From what I've read about this debate, Enterprise wanted to exempt Kansas city residents from paying this tax, ensuring it would only be carried by people flying in, but that proposal was rejected, so I'm rather surprised that people in KC aren't a little more concerned about that. If only a few local residents would be impacted by the fee, why not exempt them?

Enterprise's problem is that no one really knows that they don't make their money from airport rentals. But in fact, Enterprise has been around for almost fifty years, but its only in the last five to ten years that they've started opening branches at airports.

The other aspect to all of this is that insurance companies and body shops have negotiated better rates for their loaner rentals than you or I can get at the airport. Which makes a $4/day tax the same as imposing a 30-50% tax on a company. It seems to me that most companies would devote significant resources to fighting something like that.

These are good points, but the tax (and, in fact, the ballot issue itself) only applies to Kansas City proper. The vast majority of the people who live in the area live in the Kansas-side suburbs (Overland Park, Olathe, etc.) or North Kansas City. In fact, on our discussion board at work, many people debated the merits of the arena and rental car tax, but I was one of the very few who actually got to vote on the issue since I live inside the city limits.

I doubt many of the suburbanites would be going downtown to rent a car or have repair work done on their own cars, and I would imagine that people who live in the suburbs and work further away from home would be the ones in the market for replacement vehicles. It doesn't seem like many people would be affected by the tax, although the vote was closer than most thought it would be.


	The Time Has Come, the Walrus Said, to Talk of Many Things...
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