urbanSTL

Well there's only been one merger, Vinita Park and Vinita Terrace.
I don't know why there aren't more. I guess they just want to hold on.

You're right, my mistake, I was thinking of the munis that simply voted to go away.

Well anyway, hopefully there's more reduction, one way or another to come. 

imperialmog wrote: ↑

Jul 11, 2020

One thing it does bring up is why is there a part of St. Louis County south of the Meremec in the first place? Its interesting they either didn't use completely a straight latitude line or the river and has to be a reason.

Maybe the Meremec changed course at some point in the past? That's why Kaskaskia, Illinois, is west of the Mississippi. 

framer wrote: ↑

Jul 11, 2020

imperialmog wrote: ↑

Jul 11, 2020

One thing it does bring up is why is there a part of St. Louis County south of the Meremec in the first place? Its interesting they either didn't use completely a straight latitude line or the river and has to be a reason.

Maybe the Meremec changed course at some point in the past? That's why Kaskaskia, Illinois, is west of the Mississippi. 

Where the county border is located its rather hilly. I did look at a historical progression map of Missouri Counties and it was defined in 1819 when both Franklin and Jefferson Counties were formed out of St. Louis County. It was likely included since Fenton was plotted as a town in 1818 and how transportation was set up. Actually brings up interesting history questions of the 18th and 19th century St. Louis City and County area.

sc4mayor wrote: ↑

Jul 11, 2020

I always thought it would be a good idea for the 24:1 group of communities that make up the Normandy School District to consolidate into one large city.

Nope. Makes entirely too much sense. 

Indeed. Large by our standards. It'd have about 43k people and be the third most populous in St. Louis County. They'd be in a stronger position to leverage their tax-base and lobby the county and state for support, and they wouldn't have to waste so much civic energy collaborating on this and that, but not that other thing, but with just among a subset, etc, etc, etc.

^If it's relief for emergency services that's needed maybe offer to provide consolidated emergency services . . . but not cash? Offer to cover relevant services if the municipality in question folds up its police, fire, or court? Tough call.

sc4mayor wrote: ↑

Jul 11, 2020

9ine Runner wrote: ↑

Jul 11, 2020

quincunx wrote: ↑

Jul 11, 2020

Normandy (pop 5008) and Glen Echo Park (pop 160) are applying to the St. Louis County Boundary Commission to put consolidation on the November ballot. Let's get more of these!Normandy and Glen Echo Park Merger.png

What would need to happen for multiple munis to consolidate? Say for instance if all the munis of County Council District 4 wanted to consolidate into one?

I always thought it would be a good idea for the 24:1 group of communities that make up the Normandy School District to consolidate into one large city.

I think a lot of folks around there feel good about having a direct friend or a cousin on the mini council.

Watching Bob Clark on Donnybrook tonight makes me believe more than ever that some sort of City / County consolidation is the single most important issue facing the St. Louis region. 

We keep hiding our heads in the sand, while other areas are kicking our butt. 

framer wrote: ↑

Aug 14, 2020

Watching Bob Clark on Donnybrook tonight makes me believe more than ever that some sort of City / County consolidation is the single most important issue facing the St. Louis region. 

We keep hiding our heads in the sand, while other areas are kicking our butt. 

I agree.  We are losing to metros half our size like Nashville and Oklahoma City who have enforceable regional taxation and decision-making simply due to the enormous size of their core city compared to their metro area.  As our new MLS owners say, we are one city -- St. Louis. 

Promo - More and more cities are promoting themselves by bragging that they are bigger than St. Louis. Including KC -- now declaring they are the biggest city in Missouri.  Actually, the portion of KC metro in Missouri is about half the size of the portion of St. Louis metro in Missouri.  Yet they get treated as a near-equal in Jeff City. 
Leadership - Merging would give our area access to much better political leadership than we have now.  I was watching Denny Reagan on the Muny Video show last night and I was thinking -- wow the organization and leadership running the Muny is outstanding.  The way they pivoted to online and money raising was flawless.  Wish we had him in politics.
Rankings - Short of mergings, I think the one best thing St. Louis region can do for itself is:  get the city off the top of the murders per person rankings.  We need the city and downtown to be safe again.  We need to attack it multiple ways.  Whatever it takes. 

1.  Reduce Murders -- Of course the most direct way is to actually reduce murders in the city -- which may take taxing the metro area to provide better job training, better policing (which includes social services to solve domestic and mental health incidents with experts in those areas instead of dumping it on the police), & dropping the police residency requirement as most County towns already do.  It may take the city selling the airport to raise the cash the city needs to do this if the rest of the region refuses to contribute to revitalizing our core city.  OKC had a series of 5-year sales taxes (regional since OKC includes 90% of its suburbs) targeted on the core to make downtown OKC a showcase.  And consider an overwhelming gun reduction campaign. Places with fewer guns have fewer gun deaths. 

2. Force Fair Rankings -- Work on the denominator of the "city" murders per person in the national "cities" rankings.  Did you know that according to the skyscraperpage.com numbers St. Louis has more high-rises per person than Chicago.  That's how ridiculous "city" rankings are when the denominator for some of the cities (city population) is only 1/10 of it's metro. Media doesn't care, so:

a. Merge city and county police departments and stats supplied to the FBI.  
b. Or just stop supplying the stats at city levels to the FBI for our metro and provide only metro totals since the city numbers are badly misrepresented by media in apples to oranges rankings.  Many other cities are not in the rankings because they won't follow the FBI reporting rules. 

Here's the Donnybrook episode with Bob Clark. His portion starts around the 28 minute mark.

https://www.ninenet.org/donnybrook/

Watched interview as well and had very similar thoughts.  Regional cooperation is the thing that holds the metro back.  

From what I can tell, most people just don't seem to get it or care.  How many more decades will go by before a merger / consolidation / re-entry occurs....  All the while STL falls further behind.

I'm just extremely pessimistic on a change occuring in a reasonable time-frame.  

When you depend on nonresident shoppers and they disappear it exposes the fragility of the strategy.

KMOV - Chesterfield, Des Peres considering property tax to help with revenue loss during pandemic

We’re gonna be able to handle this COVID situation hopefully but longer term we gotta look at where we’re going because the path we’re on is simply not sustainable," said Geisel.

https://www.kmov.com/news/chesterfield- ... dd80b.html

. . . but longer term we gotta look at where we’re going because the path we’re on is simply not sustainable," said Geisel.

Oh gee, you think? In some real ways I would regard this as some of the rare excellent news to come out of this mess. Any step towards a more rational regional tax policy would be wonderful. Thank you Quincunx.

Senator Williams on the extra challenges faced due to fragmentation. At 1:23:20 he's asked whether consolidation would benefit the Black community. He says (like many electeds) he'd need to see details, sure of course, but instead of waiting for them to be place in front of you, start sorting them out! Please lead!
The entirety is worth a listen. 

Excellent essay. I'm going to be sharing that one.