KC's capital projects blew past their budgets by $52 million

When Kansas City voters approved GO KC bond money for streets, sidewalks, bridges, and parks, they were told their tax dollars would fund specific improvements at specific costs. And for a while, the numbers probably looked reasonable on a spreadsheet somewhere.

They don't anymore.

The city's own capital project tracker now shows 27 bond-funded projects that started with a combined budget of $69 million. The current estimate to finish them all? $121 million. That's a $52 million overrun — a 75% increase over the original price tag. And it's not evenly distributed. A handful of projects are responsible for the bulk of the damage, some have been running for over a decade, and one museum renovation is on hold at $15.4 million despite having no original budget at all.

The big picture: where the money went

Here's the thing about cost overruns — they're not inherently scandalous. Construction costs rise. Scopes expand. Designs run into unforeseen soil conditions or utility conflicts. A 10-15% overrun on a major public works project wouldn't necessarily raise eyebrows.

But 75% across an entire portfolio? That's a different conversation.

And it gets sharper when you look at how the overruns are distributed. The five active projects alone account for roughly $28 million of the $52 million total overrun — even though they started with just $5.6 million in combined original budgets. The six projects with the largest individual overruns are responsible for more than $46 million of the excess.

What that chart shows is the dollar amount by which each project exceeded its original budget. Combined, those six projects account for $46.5 million of the $52 million aggregate overrun — meaning the other 21 projects are responsible for just $5.3 million in net overruns. A few even came in under budget.

So this isn't a story about systemic waste across every project. It's a story about a small number of projects that spiraled.

The projects that spiraled the most

Let's talk about the worst offenders, because the details matter.

NE Vivion Rd — Streetscape Improvements was originally budgeted at $70,000. Its current estimated cost is $5.8 million. That's an 8,183% increase. The project has been running for 10 years and is still listed as being in the "Design" phase. Ten years, and they haven't broken ground.

63rd Street Reconstruction (Section 1) — Woodland Avenue to Prospect Avenue — started at $250,000 and now sits at $6.2 million. A 2,384% increase. It's been active for 3.7 years and is also still in design. To be fair, these initial figures may have represented planning-phase allocations rather than full construction budgets. But that's part of the transparency problem — voters see an original number and a current number, and the gap is staggering.

Englewood Rd — Streets Reconstruction is the portfolio's longest-running project at 17.6 years. Originally budgeted at $4.7 million, it's now estimated at $18 million. Its phase is listed as "Close Out," which is encouraging — but close-out on a project that's been running since 2008 raises its own questions.

And then there's the Kansas City Museum Corinthian Hall Renovations. This one's unusual because it has no original budget listed at all — $0. The current estimate is $15.4 million, and the project is on hold. That $15.4 million appears in the overrun column entirely because there was nothing to compare it to.

Three of the six active/hold projects have been running for a decade or more. The median duration across all 27 projects — including the finished ones — is 2.5 years. But the average is 4.6 years, pulled up hard by those long-tail outliers.

Department breakdown: Public Works carries the load

Twenty-three of the 27 projects belong to Public Works, with original budgets totaling $49 million and current estimates of $83 million — a 70% overrun. Parks and Recreation has just four projects, but their overrun rate is actually worse: 87%, driven almost entirely by the KC Museum project and the two fountain renovations (Spirit of Freedom and Delbert Haff).

The fountains are a good example of why averages can mislead. Spirit of Freedom Fountain was budgeted at $864,000 and came in at $1.98 million — a 129% overrun. Delbert Haff was budgeted at $1.14 million and finished at $1.81 million — a 59% overrun. Those are real money, but they're not the same order of magnitude as the road projects.

The honest takeaway: most of the dollar-weighted overrun is concentrated in a handful of Public Works road reconstruction projects that were either dramatically underestimated upfront or changed scope multiple times over many years. The question is whether those initial estimates were genuine cost projections or placeholder numbers that were never meant to represent the final price.

What the data can't tell us yet

• Why initial budgets were set so low for some projects. A $70,000 budget for NE Vivion Rd and a $250,000 budget for 63rd Street look more like planning allocations than construction estimates. But the dataset doesn't distinguish between budget types.
• What caused individual overruns. The data includes financial totals and project phases, but not change order histories, scope revisions, or cost escalation explanations.
• Whether projects delivered what they promised. A project that goes 285% over budget but delivers a fully reconstructed corridor might be a different story than one that stalls in design for a decade. Outcomes aren't captured here.
• How these compare to peer cities. We don't have a benchmark for whether 75% aggregate overrun is unusually bad, roughly normal, or actually modest for a municipal bond portfolio of this age.

What to watch next

1. The three decade-long active projects. Englewood Rd (17.6 years), the Sidewalk Inspection RFQ (10.8 years), and NE Vivion Rd (10 years) are all still active. Whether they close out in 2026 or continue to accumulate costs will tell us a lot about the city's project management trajectory.
2. The KC Museum. At $15.4 million with a status of "Hold," this project is in limbo. If it restarts, it could become the single most expensive project in the portfolio. If it doesn't, that's $15.4 million in sunk planning costs — or the city walks away.
3. The next bond cycle. GO KC was a voter-approved bond package. When the city comes back to voters for the next round of capital investment, these numbers are the track record they'll be running on. A 75% aggregate overrun is the kind of figure that makes bond campaigns harder.
4. 63rd Street. A project that's ballooned from $250,000 to $6.2 million while still in the design phase in District 5 is one to monitor closely — especially as it moves toward construction, where the real spending happens.

Methods and sources

• Data covers all 27 projects in the KCMO GO KC Capital Project Dataset as of February 14, 2026.
• "Original budget" uses the original_budget field. "Estimate at completion" uses the estimate_at_completion field. Overrun is the difference.
• Project duration uses the projdays field, converted to years (dividing by 365.25).
• Status distribution reflects the project_status field at query time.
• Two projects (KC Museum and Sidewalk Inspection RFQ) have $0 original budgets, which inflates the aggregate overrun percentage. Excluding them, the remaining 25 projects have an original budget of $68.8 million and an estimated completion cost of $102.3 million — a 49% overrun.
• Some initial budgets may represent planning-phase allocations rather than full construction estimates. The dataset does not distinguish between budget types.
• Source: KCMO GO KC Capital Project Dataset
• Processed file: data/processed/kcmo-capital-projects-2025.json