Low self-esteem is certainly a huge problem considering the amount of time, money, and energy that will need to be invested in any type of municipal/regional government reorganization.
Here are my notes from today. I hope I have the panelists' statements recorded accurately.
Terry Jones lead off with a little history. He's quite negative on reentry. His main point is that it'll take too much effort which could be put towards working on other areas to cooperate. The opportunity cost is too high.
He brought up the same pitfalls from his policy brief from earlier this year. Circuit Courts- combine circuits? What about variance of policies of the prosecutor in the city vs county? Elected county officers of the city whereas, except for the assessor, they aren't in the county. County-type employees of the City are guaranteed a city job. What about the Dept of Public Health? Econ development offices? County Council size and district boundaries. Governance of special districts. He says we should stop talking about consolidation. Rather accelerate partnerships in econ devel, public health, airport authority, etc. What about the rest of the region? Mixed results on efficiency gains is other places where consolidation has occurred.
Lyda Krewson is very much for reentry. Mechanical issues formidable, but cultural issues are more formidable. But gov't can force the pieces together. Examples- the smoking ban took forever to happen and when it did the world didn't end. Recycling in the city, took a while to get past the cultural mindset that it wouldn't be embraced and now that we have it, it's very popular. Build the will to change first then figure out the mechanics. Reentry may spur county muni consolidation. Obviously public health should be combined. Combine park depts? Econ devel fighting against each other. Zoning. Need to force the pieces together. County is starting to look like the city of 50 years ago with a fleeing middle class. Why are we so risk adverse?
Mike Jones said he'd moved toward TJ's thinking after going on an RCGA trip to Pittsburgh. Get over it (reentry, merger,) # of munis is political not economic. Figure out how to deal with the unintended consequences of many munis. Keep adding regional organizations. Changing the cultural structure leads to changes in policy and political structure. Pittsburgh had a crisis when the steel industry collapsed and began regional thinking quickly whereas we have had a slow decline that hasn't fostered such quick action. Here we need a state gov't with urban agenda that can reform things here because they are more insulated than local pols. Governor, Speaker, and Pres Pro Tem could do it in five months if they wanted. PIT figured out how to reconnect with global economy let's figure out how to do that rather than reentry. China Hub was an attempt at that.
Four things for a strong metro area:
1. State gov't with urban agenda
2. Progressive business community
3. Effective local gov't
4. Growing professional minority middle class
What's made Indy is not UNIGOV but that the state capitol is there. To talk to MO econ devel you go to Jeff City not St Louis. Wnat to talk to IL state econ devel go to Chicago. No MO econ devel office in StL.
Frank Hampsher worked on 80s county muni consolidation effort and 2004 City county-type governance reform effort. Learned that they were to big and complicated and they weren't understood well by the voting public. Public must understand the problem and how it'll be better with reform. Don't go for silver bullet. Too much focus on very small issues. How do reforms really impact Joe Citizen? Work on reforms in between that don't go to voters. Establish a pattern of success then start to ask voters for bigger reforms. Resource are about 3/4 county and 1/4 city. What would a county voter get out of a combined judicial circuit?
1. Develop a storyline for public
2. Push on city and county gov'ts to cooperate and consolidate
3. Maintain persistence over time/ long-term effort
Questions followed which I didn't take notes on. Sounds like there are many who have been talking about this stuff for forever. Seems there's a generational divide. "If the City Reentering the County is the Solution, What's the Problem?" Seems to me the problem is low self-esteem which is evident in the confidence level of the older people as to whether this can be accomplished. I think the fragmentation promotes low self-esteem. This enters into other areas like getting what we want out of the state, getting anything big done, businesses exploiting the fragmented structure for incentives, etc.
Thanks for the summary, quincunx. As someone who moved to St. Louis two years ago from outside the area, it took me awhile to grasp the fact that the city and the county were separate places. Add to that the fact that the larger metro area is divided between two states and you have a recipe for inefficiency and intra-regional competition and cannibalism rather than cooperation.
I don't know if a legal/political merger is the answer at this point, but if the St. Louis region wants to compete nationally the first thing is has to do is stop competing with itself.
^^ Yep. I've always thought of the "merger" as a means to an end - eliminating the competition for TIF between tiny municipalities, etc. If that can be done by another means, well that's great, but I'm pessimistic.
quincunx wrote:Here are my notes from today. I hope I have the panelists' statements recorded accurately.
Terry Jones lead off with a little history. He's quite negative on reentry. His main point is that it'll take too much effort which could be put towards working on other areas to cooperate. The opportunity cost is too high.
He brought up the same pitfalls from his policy brief from earlier this year. Circuit Courts- combine circuits? What about variance of policies of the prosecutor in the city vs county? Elected county officers of the city whereas, except for the assessor, they aren't in the county. County-type employees of the City are guaranteed a city job. What about the Dept of Public Health? Econ development offices? County Council size and district boundaries. Governance of special districts. He says we should stop talking about consolidation. Rather accelerate partnerships in econ devel, public health, airport authority, etc. What about the rest of the region? Mixed results on efficiency gains is other places where consolidation has occurred.
Wow. Good thing Terry Jones wasn't in Berlin when the wall fell and East and West Berlin somehow figured out how to merge their government institutions. I could hear Terry now whining, "It's just too hard."
Alex Ihnen wrote:^ Terry Jones as Abraham Lincoln...
But seriously, Terry's very smart. I do think, however, that he's missing the psychological power of a politically unified region.
I agree. I'm starting to think it IS going to take some catastrophic event, like the one in Berlin or Pittsburgh to get this to happen. Maybe an astroid or something. We could probably get Mikhail Gorbachev to turn the tables during one of his speaker series visits and proclaim, "Mr. Dooley, tear down this wall." Or do like Libya and just set up a renegade provisional joint city-county government in, say, Maplewood. We all start mailing our tax money there and let the current city and county apparatus die on the vine. OK, too radical. The city should just take a page from MoDot and make all the roads going out of the city toll roads on Blues Hockey night.
Piling on--
Terry Jones as Ronald Reagan "Well, tearing down this wall will be too hard, let's just have the two sides use the same trash company"
Seriously though I could feel how the old timers in the room have talked about this for decades and are worn out by failing at getting it down. I've heard the latest talk described as "this generation's chance to fail at it." Maybe we will fail this time but it's going to fail every time until it succeeds. The difference we should commit ourselves to is if it fails this time we don't give up and rather come right back and try again, not wait another 30 years.
Gave this some more thought on a long flight(s) home... the idea that it takes too much energy for unknown, as yet to be quantified benefits, and perhaps should just remain because public opinion polling says we like it that way, is just... stupid. I mean, that implicitly states that we should just wait until half, maybe 2/3 of county (city too) residents decide on their own it's a good idea. The worst park, IMO, is that allowing fractured government to continue infers that "we got it right" in the 1950's when every 2,000 or so white families were encouraged to move to the 'burbs and set up their own government. If that's too extreme for you, the argument at least says that that same system works OK for us now - at least well enough that we really shouldn't worry about it.
^The conventional thinking (perturbed by low self-esteem I contend) is that the polling is currently bad. We won't know until we actually do one!
You're right you can't just wait around until is seems it's a slam dunk. You only need a majority and the point of the campaign is to convince people and get your supporters out to the polls.
I can see some merit in a modified argument of Jones.... heavy political capital at least for now may be better spent on more realistic activities that support regionalism such as perhaps a regional parks board, etc. and that increasing cooperation makes city reentry into the county more likely. We have to continue the discussion on both though.
^That was Frank Hampsher's main point. Start with areas of cooperation that don't require votes or combining or eliminating depts and jobs. Establish a pattern of success and then go for bigger things that require complicated consolidations (like combining parks depts) and votes (like reentry).
I think we've got a decent track record already. MSD, Zoo-Museum, STL Community College, Bi-State. Too far in the past? Recently there's the Metro tax, smoking ban, Great Rivers Greenways, China Hub effort, and scrap metal regs.
How about using the St. Louis County parks closings as a place to merge park administrations, save money, and save some parks. There must be some efficiencies that could be gained.
PD wrote:And Slay's not the only one calling for this. The same idea came up in a study issued last month by the County Economic Council and that agency's boss, Denny Coleman, has been raising the issue in recent months.
Mike Jones poo-pooed the idea at the seminar at UMSL a few weeks ago.
In the Mayor's blog post:
But, “many of you” - in this case - isn’t enough. There are not the votes in St. Louis county to accept the City of St. Louis as a municipality. Not yet.
Do they have polling or is this what Dooley & Co say, or is this a repetition of the conventional wisdom?
Dellwood is made up of 1.041 square miles
Dellwood has 2,060 single family dwellings. There are NO multi-family dwellings
Dellwood has 16 full-time police officers
Dellwood has 2 fire districts: Metro North and Blackjack, neither has a firehouse located here
Dellwood has 3 school districts: Riverview Gardens, Ferguson-Florissant and Hazelwood (however, there are NO schools within or city limits)
Dellwood has 1 church: Northminister Presbyterian Church
According to Wikipedia, the 2010 census showed 5025 residents.
The new RCGA head is from Louisville. I hope he encourages regional cooperation and consolidation given Louisville's recent reform.
This looks promising
"This is the most complex political campaign that the community will ever see," said Joe Reagan, president of Greater Louisville Inc., a key figure in the Kentucky city's successful "Vote Yes for Unity" campaign that prompted 54 percent of voters in 2000 to OK a merger with Jefferson County.
The campaign was disciplined and guided by research, said Joe Reagan, president and CEO of Greater Louisville, Inc. — the merged Greater Louisville Economic Development Partnership and Louisville Area Chamber of Commerce. It helped too that the merger had the support of local and state leaders.
“We had an impenetrable wall of Democrats and Republicans who supported the move,” Reagan said. “We had selfless (political) leaders who knew they would be working their way out of jobs, but were willing to support the merger anyway.”
Is there any reason why St. Louis City cannot cross county boundaries and annex part of St. Louis County? I just learned that Kansas City overlaps parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties, so it must not be a state law.
