BY JOE ARCE AND COREY CRABLE
Kansas City Mayor Pro Tem Ryana Parks-Shaw wants to continue what Mayor Quinton Lucas has started.
Parks-Shaw, City Councilwoman for Kansas City’s Fifth District since 2019, says that after much reflection and prayer, it only made sense to announce her candidacy for mayor on 816 Day one year ago. She’s been working ever since to convince Kansas Citians she’s the ideal person to carry on Lucas’ work.
Born and raised in Kansas City, Parks-Shaw is a small business owner and has served as a high-ranking health care executive. In her capacity as a councilwoman, she serves as chair of the Neighborhood Planning and Development Committee, as well as chair of the Land Bank Commission, among other positions.
“My vision for Kansas City is really about uplifting our neighborhoods and having a city that is responsive to the community, to the residents. I truly believe that when we have strong neighborhoods, we have a stronger Kansas City. My vision for that is where every growth and opportunity can reach every neighborhood in Kansas City because Kansas City will be better for that,” Parks-Shaw told Kansas City Hispanic News in an exclusive interview. “I want kids, the families and residents to feel safe. And I want our young people to feel that they have a future in Kansas City, that they can see themselves here in Kansas City.”
Parks-Shaw identified safety and housing affordability as the two foundational issues on which she has built her campaign on.
“Public safety has got to be at the top of the list. There isn’t a corner, a block that I’ve gone to that they haven’t said something about public safety. So people want to be safe and they deserve to be safe where they live, work, and play,” she said. “One of the major challenges that we’re facing is housing. Housing is a major challenge here in Kansas City and across the country. Kansas City is growing, but we need to make sure the people aren’t priced out. We’ve got to build the housing. We’re 64,000 units short. So we have to build housing at all different price points to ensure that people aren’t priced out.”
Other issues remain, Parks-Shaw noted, but they’re ones with which every mayor is faced – notably, the city’s operating budget.
“I recognized we needed to improve our budget process back with COVID, and I actually created legislation to change the way that we budget to address those issues,” she explained. “So we now are doing priority-based budgeting, and it took us three years to transition to this.”
Priority-based budgeting, Parks-Shaw said, involves city leadership hearing what residents want addressed, and making their voice a priority in the budget allocation process. Traditionally, Parks-Shaw added, city leaders simply examined the previous fiscal year’s numbers and rolled those allocations over for the coming fiscal year. Priority-based budgeting, she said, empowers residents to help voice where they believe money should go.
“Now, I believe that we still will have challenges, because we always get more requests or there’s more needs than the money that we have,” Parks-Shaw said. “But this will allow us to truly be able to (allocate funds) in a way that prioritizes what the residents want, what the taxpayers want, as well as look at and ensure that we are reaping the outcomes that they would want us to have.”
Parks-Shaw said she also understands the importance of ensuring non-English-speaking residents have the resources and ability to communicate that they need from city hall.
“It was my legislation that created the Office of Language Access. We have taxpayers that will work to try to connect (non-English speakers) with their city government, and their city government should be easy for them. They should have access to their city government,” she said. “And several years ago, we had a lady that had to bring her own interpreter in to communicate with us about how she felt we should spend her tax dollars in the budget. And it really bothered me. For the next several weeks, I actually didn’t sleep well. And that really was the impetus behind my creation of the Office of Language Access. We now have a whole division that is set to help reduce barriers for not only people who don’t speak English as their first language, but also plain language.”
When asked about the federal investigation into herself and her husband, another city employee, Parks-Shaw said she appreciated the question and added that she wanted to be open and transparent about the issue. Parks-Shaw and her husband Michael, the city’s Public Works Director, are being investigated by the FBI regarding potential campaign-related activities and misuse of city authority.
“I still have not been contacted by any federal authorities. If there’s an investigation going on, they haven’t contacted me,” Parks-Shaw said. “So I can’t confirm that there’s even an investigation going on because I haven’t been contacted, nor has my husband been contacted, either.”
No matter what happens, Parks-Shaw said she is wholly committed to getting out and meeting voters, and sharing with them her vision for
the city.
“I love the people here. We’ve got a lot of rich history, got a lot of culture, many different cultures throughout our city,” Parks-Shaw said. “And I genuinely love this city. It’s where I was born and raised. I grew up here, and it has been my honor to be able to serve the residents of Kansas City for the last seven years, and I hope that the residents will allow me to continue to serve
on their behalf.”
For more information, visit https://ryanaparksshaw.com/.
