urbanSTL

Amazing how people leap right to merger when we're talking about reentry. Definitely a big challenge for our messaging. Rainford didn't help I suppose. Luckily it doesn't have to be a unanimous vote.

quincunx wrote:Amazing how people leap right to merger when we're talking about reentry. Definitely a big challenge for our messaging.

Merging the county offices of the City of St. Louis with their counterparts in St. Louis County is a merger. Calling it something else as a crude attempt to reshape the discussion isn't going to change minds, whether you call it a re-entry or a sexy government coupling. Better to focus your "messaging" on making the case that this particular type of merger is independently in the best interests of both city and county residents. And better still is to never use the word "message" as a verb.

The trouble, as evidenced by the reportage in and ensuing comments storm following any article on this subject, is that people jump to the conclusion that "merger" means the merging of everything. Many feel extremely threatened by that and the discussion stops. That is why I prefer the term reentry in order to distinguish what we're talking about this time versus a city-county consolidation a la Nashville. Reentry reminds people of the history; that we were once one county. It also indicates how our structure is such an oddity.

The challenge is to first convince people that were aren't talking about the big merger and then get to discussing its merits.

Here's an example of how imprecise language gets us nowhere.
Can you figure out just what they're talking about here? Or what the individuals quoted are really advocating for?

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metr ... 4a334.html

^^ Ah yes, the aimless attack on someone's grammar to prove a point.

Merging some departments is not that same as a full-scale merger of both county and city government into one entity, which is the conclusion that some citizens seem to leap to when only discussing city reentry to the county.

Looks like this conference today hit the spot.

Visiting business leaders preach the gospel of regionalism

http://www.stlbeacon.org/issues-politic ... egionalism

At least St. Louis doesn't have to combat one problem cited by both Krieger in Oklahoma City and Miller in Nashville -- a negative media stereotype.

Um Most Dangerous City?

Video:

http://www.hectv.org/programs/spec/prog ... ecialid=57

quincunx wrote:Looks like this conference today hit the spot.

Visiting business leaders preach the gospel of regionalism

http://www.stlbeacon.org/issues-politic ... egionalism

At least St. Louis doesn't have to combat one problem cited by both Krieger in Oklahoma City and Miller in Nashville -- a negative media stereotype.

Um Most Dangerous City?

Video:

http://www.hectv.org/programs/spec/prog ... ecialid=57

I think that was a pretty good session.

I am really quite interested in the "no poaching policy" that they have in Oklahoma. I am going to have to research that a bit.

quincunx wrote:Video:

http://www.hectv.org/programs/spec/prog ... ecialid=57

Wow! Wow! Wow! If anyone is wondering if OKC is benefiting from the vision and leadership of a person from Portland, OR, they need only spend a three day weekend there. I've been visiting OKC almost twice a year for the last five years; my brother works at Tinker AFB down there. The growth and development of the area is absolutely insane! Devon Energy is currently building a tower downtown that is twice the size of largest tower currently standing, they've just completely revitalized a CityGarden-esqe area downtown called the Myriad Gardens (makes City Garden look pretty meh, actually), they have a 50-mile drive radius and several cool dymanmic hip areas (the Paseo, Chinatown, etc.), they have tons of cool architecture (mainly brick turn of the century buildings and several craftsmen style bungalows) and there is not one sense of fragmentation. Tons of companies are moving down to the area. They have several high-quality educational institutions that allow them to keep those grads in the city IF there are jobs to be had, and there are tons.

There are many similarities to OKC and St. Louis and yet there are vast. glaring differences. The largest difference that I've seen: STRONG, COHESIVE LEADERSHIP with a SHARED VISION and PLAN.

Bottomline: I think its great that the StL County and StL City hold these forums. When can we expect the rubber to meet the road? When do we expect the Leadership to roll out a 5-10 year plan on how to get STL to OKC status circa 2011?

Pool City v Point-of-sale City article in the St Louis Beacon. Shows how the fragmentation wastes time, money, and gray matter when it could be focused on other problems.

If St Louis City reenters the County must it be a Pool City since it would come to be a city within the county after 1994? Or is that something that a reentry plan could dictate?

In the case of University City, they generate $2.1M for the pool and receive $4.3M. Would St Louis City end up like that? Can anyone familiar with the formula figure out what the numbers would be? That could be a problem if it's dramatic and may lead credence to the fear that the city would leach off the rest of the county.

Municipalities scramble for bigger slice of county's shrinking sales tax pie

http://www.stlbeacon.org/issues-politic ... es-tax-pie

True some trends aren't looking good for the county.

To answer my own question:
City General sales tax revenue FY11 Est = $45.12M
General sales tax rate = 1.375%
45.12/1.375 = $32.8M contributed to the pool. (not to say that the County's 1% tax replaces the City's 1.375%. Not sure how that would play out)

The Beacon article says pool cities get $115 per capita
115 * 319,294 = $36.7M

City nets $3.9M, which is better per capita than U City at least. I'd figure the $115 per person would come down a bit since the City would be a net taker from the pool. At $110 it'd be a $2.3M net gain.

Alex Ihnen wrote:^ IMO - it's more evidence that the County has enormous challenges around the corner. If re-entry isn't done in the next decade, the City very well may not want to do it.

Have to agree, a couple of things that could happen in the next year or two that might very well convince Slay to slow down his push and/or sideline it altogether.

1) Police comes under local control and SLPS continues to make progress as well as the fact that the city has the most charter schools and choice of private schools.
2) Some well known county based companies name downtown as their new HQ location - Kellwood and Monsanto come to mind off the bat. In other words, more employees, employers, and residents in downtown and central corridor which will have any ever increasing investment from Barnes Jewish to boot
3) Arch Grounds moves forward and Stan K realizes that no one is going to build home a new stadium at half a billion (settles for some more reasonable upgrades to the Edwards Dome)
4) China hub deal comes to be a big plus and attracts the business we hope. City could be in a strong position to attract the back office with direct transit access, relatively short commutes by any standards and cultural/entertainment institutions that have not left the city but have gotten stronger.
5) Finally, but not least, is the number of alderman are reduce or at least an effort to be more consistent across the board with zoning, ordinances and the likes.

Of course this might well lead to the biggest reason why you could see the city change its mind, undisputable increase in population.

^ I don't understand how any potential progress in StL City would or should slow down interest in a city entry into the County.... City would still control police and fire, etc. Both City and County will continue to face challenges and hopefully things like China Hub and Emerald Motors will move forward to the benefit of both.... we're in this together and there is no substantive reason (just political) why the city shouldn't be part of the county.

I've researched and wrote about this issue pretty extensively.

It will always make sense for the City to re-enter the county. Or, said another way, it will always make more sense for the County and the City to combine services and power structures. There is already far more waste on the county side in terms of redundancies in service and political infrastructure to the tune hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Some of it is readily apparent and complained about (TIF shuffle) and some of it is swept far under the rug and kept very, very quiet by people who benefit from the overlap (the ridiculous number of "Fire Districts" in the county).

What scares the sh*t out of me is the current proposed legislation (thank you Fenton) to amend the Pool Cities vs Point of Sales cities list. If Fenton and Chesterfield get their way, they and other revenue generating municipalities would become Point of Sale Munis and completely screw the rest of the Munis in the county, an assumption based on probably the most asinine and immature logic path I've ever tried to follow. If that legislation passes, I would venture to say the City rejoining the County is all but a wild dream.

Some other points:

1 - I wager that the County benefits from the China Hub more than the City. In other words, most of the business infrastructure that could happen because of China Hub will take root in Munis around the Airport, where there is an overabundance of warehousing and vacant land (in most cases) adjacent to the Airport. Take a trip around the Boeing complex to understand what I'm talking about.

2 - Realistically, assuming a continued upward trajectory, the City is at minimum a decade away from having enough of an economic generator that it would consider NOT entering the county. A merge would have to happen before that time to save the rest of the region, IMO.

New report suggests region to pull together in order to grow economy. If not we will be looking up at KC instead of Minneapolis.

http://m.stltoday.com/STL/db_259771/con ... d=KSYqM4CE

^ Maybe we should used the failure of the Cargo Hub as a motivator. If the state isn't going to help us, then we need to do it on our own. The only way to do it on our own is to actually come together as a singular region.

^ I agree with you. My point was that we're not getting or going to get any help from the state. All the more reason for us to work together.

^I do like the idea of seceding from MO

After all, if they (dumbass out-state politicians) won't even appropriate half of the 50% + of state revenue we generate for us, what's that point of being a part of MO, exactly?

Ugh, this state.

I would be nice if we could all work together, and we should be able to. Metro, formerly known as the Bi-State Development Agency could perfectly well carry out many of the functions current city and county governments do on both sides of the river.

Hopefully, cities and municipalities would be interested in turning power over to Metro and Metro will be willing to take more leadership in the development of the region and issues outside of transportation.