Joe Miller: Maria the Poodle and the Upcoming Kansas City Elections

Here’s a big juicy slab of arrogance for you all to sink your fangs into:

As everyone knows, I was the brains behind the "Maria the Poodle" YouTube video in Mayor Funk’s first campaign. So it seems only right that I should critique the sequel.

Let me start by giving props where props are due: Maria is one of the freaking cutest creatures on the face of earth. She should run for Fourth District At-Large. She’d kick Joe Serviss’s ass. She looks great in the video, too, and surprisingly upbeat, even though I know that it’s been a rough couple of years for her.

First, she lost her co-star from the first video: Ginny, who passed away in late ’07, dog rest her soul.

Then she lost me.

Everyone on the Mayor’s "core team" knows that Maria loved me the most. She went crazy whenever she saw me coming up the front steps.

Because my belly rubs fucking rocked! I owned that little bitch’s soul.

Anyway, here’s my main beef with the Maria, Part II:

They filmed it in a park?

What were they thinking?

For one, it looks like the park hasn’t been mowed for months. The grass towers over her head. Why? Because the Parks Department has cut way back on its mowing schedule since Funk got elected.

Not exactly the best example of A City That Works.

But that’s not the worst of it. By filming his doggy in a park, Funk and co. are drawing attention to what is probably the best example of his ineffectiveness as mayor.

Remember the fight over putting a dog park in Sunnyside Park in Waldo?

Mayor Funk was a HUGE champion for that park.

In fact, for a month or so last year, he made that dog park one of his top priorities. He and his staff assured the park’s proponents that they were going to get the park approved. That it WOULD happen.

Then he called in all the members of the Parks Board one by one — the Parks Board members that he appointed, who are, in essence, members of his cabinet — and tried to coerce and cajole and even threaten them into approving the park.

And they thumbed their noses at him.

Let me repeat: He couldn’t even get his own Parks Board to approve a measly $100,000 project.

I’m quite certain that any other mayor in the history of Kansas City could’ve gotten the job done.

But this one couldn’t.

Meantime, Cindy Circo, a lowly City Council member who Funkhouser tried to strip of power by removing from a committee chair position, was somehow able to get the Parks Board to spend more than a million dollars to buy land from one of her campaign supporters and turn it into a park that apparently no one even wants.