urbanSTL

Time to let go Wellston. Where's the county and state?

KSDK - Wellston Police Chief Thomas Walker says inmates set free because there's no money to feed them

A local police chief is forced to set inmates free because he doesn't have the money to feed them.

http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/389718 ... feed-them-

quincunx wrote:Time to let go Wellston. Where's the county and state?

KSDK - Wellston Police Chief Thomas Walker says inmates set free because there's no money to feed them

A local police chief is forced to set inmates free because he doesn't have the money to feed them.

http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/389718 ... feed-them-

Absolutely.
Seriously, it cannot be cost-effective for all these shady munis to operate their own jails. Talk about a prime breeding ground for graft/corruption/whatever.

^Not to mention paying gun-toting police officers $12 an hour. A muni - ESPECIALLY one like Wellston - can't cut corners on things like Police. Pizza drivers earn more than that.

The old "You get what you pay for addage" holds true more often than we like to admit, and while I'm sure some of the officers work there because they want to, regardless of the money, I'll be willing to bet that most of the officers simply couldn't get hired elsewhere, which can't be a boon to the department... *Goes to dig up Wellston's budget*

STLEnginerd wrote:I don't think the main reason we want the city to rejoin the county is so they can get their fingers into the sales tax pool. I'd be perfectly ok with exempting the city from the pool and in fact dividing the current pool into 5 bailanges. A mechanism by which we might be able to get a burough type structure established.

I don't think anyone here brought up the sales tax issue because they wanted the City to get their hands on County sales tax revenue. It was brought up to highlight the complexity and difficulty of overcoming even what should be a minor issue in getting the City to re-enter the County.

Re-entry and re-organization should be a no-brainer. But the path to actually getting there would be wrought with layers and layers of complexity and mind-numbing political battles. Personally, I don't think re-entry will happen. I wish it would, but I just don't think there is enough political leadership in our region to make it happen.

Good news. A town that small can't possibly take care of itself. Citizens are recognizing that they'd probably be better served by the county.

Stltoday.com - Uplands Park residents take initial step toward dissolving their community

Board Chairman Henry Iwenofu railed against the effort to “disincorporate” or dissolve the village and pledged to challenge the petition.

“Even a blind person can see it’s nothing but a land and resource grab, that’s all it is,” Iwenofu said.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metr ... d5f4a.html

Is there any chance they'll merge with a neighboring town, or would they just stay unincorporated county?

I see they don't quite border the city, so there's no shot of them joining there. (I also don't know if the city even has that ability or if it'd be a good idea if they did.)

I saw Alex's tweet on this and was interested, since I just spent a week in Paris on vacation. Paris is expanding city government to take in it suburbs.

"Following a vote in Parliament earlier this month, the city of Paris looks set — after years and years of discussions — to join with its hinterland in 2016 and become part of a huge new urban authority, one with roughly three times its current population and four times its current land area. Dubbed the "Métropole du Grand Paris," this new city authority will break down the rigid barrier between the city of Paris and what are referred to as its suburbs, despite their often being more densely populated than many American downtowns."

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politi ... deal/6345/

Many issues don't apply to our situation -- there are no bad parts of town in the current Paris city limits, and only one skyscraper. La Defense skyscraper district is just outside of the current old city limits. And the poor live in the suburbs. But some of the issues are the same -- namely matching the dollars required to maintain the center of a modern great metropolitan area with the revenue stream from its users.

I think the petition is just for disincorporation. I suppose afterwards it could be annexed into a neighboring town. I think that is an easier route to go than negotiating a merger between two towns.

If the 24 munis in the Normandy School District merged it'd be a town of about 42K people. It would be in a better position to provide services and tackle problems. It would have a stronger seat at the table with the county and state.

Annexing into the city should be an option too, but under the MO constitution such a thing takes a Board of Freeholders and a vote by the city and the county, rather than the usual annexation process in the county. This is one reason to get rid of the BoF via doing reentry by constitutional amendment rather than reentry under the BoF.

But what about protecting Uplands Park's identity?????

(j/k - reference to Cool Valley)

Relevant to the discussion of political re-entry versus a slow, piecemeal consolidation of services, the Beacon recently had a good article on the merger of development agencies: Partnership aims to cement cooperation -- not competition -- in economic development

I'm increasingly convinced that even re-entry is to o hard for the anemic leadership in the region to pull off. Maybe the consolidation of multiple agencies like this will add up over time and bolster the argument for full re-entry.

rbeedee wrote:Maybe the consolidation of multiple agencies like this will add up over time and bolster the argument for full re-entry.

My understanding, is that this what leadership is thinking. Not that they wouldn't prefer it to go quicker and smoother, but that they recognize the obstacles and think this is one way to get people to ease into accepting it.

Champ and its 13 residents were mentioned on another thread; for 5 years I lived basically across the street from where Champ supposedly is, and knew of no place that defined itself as being in Champ. So I decided to look into it and discover why it was ever formed. Turns out, it was all due to the effort of one guy who wanted to put a domed stadium on the land.
Sounds like an interesting guy, who had long since moved on from the stadium effort, yet the municipality remains.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metr ... ee048.html

I hope some good reforms are recommended and pushed by the Joint Interim Committee on St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area Governance and Taxation. My list - TIF reform, muni accountability system, reentry, put all in sales tax pool.

Committee website:
http://www.house.mo.gov/committeeIndivi ... &year=2013

StlToday.com - City-county merger, sharing sales tax money could be focus of Missouri panel

The key focus is expected to be on the way sales tax revenue is shared by the municipalities in St. Louis County, but the group also could consider the question of whether St. Louis should become part of St. Louis County.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt ... 2813c.html

Uplands Park will feature a special ballot on their elections this November 5th on whether or not the village should dissolve and become an unincorporated part of STL County.
Source: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metr ... 85d57.html

It's was on the Charlie Brennan show at 9. Someone was filling in for Charlie.

gone corporate wrote: He said it's possible either through full merger or admitting STL City as just another municipality within STL County, that both options viably exist.

I don't see how full merger is viable. It's important that people don't feel like something is being taken away from then. Taking away their towns won't be popular. History tells us that going for a big change in gov't structure doesn't pass. Reentry is hard enough to pass and implement. I hope they don't go for full merger. An in between would be mergering the city and county while leaving the 90 munis alone. Still I think that's too much to bite off.

If I had my way, there'd be a merger OR a re-entry with annexation of some of the neighboring municipalities.

But it does sound like re-entry itself is an uphill battle, so I don't get too excited about the possibility of a merger. But I would like to see the city limits expand, and I think there's a lot of neighboring municipalities that just oughta be part of the city. Not because they don't do a fine job running themselves, but just because they feel like the city. (Maplewood and U-City come to mind).

But there's also more complex issues at play that I'm not even thinking about. I've dove head first into understanding St. Louis issues and politics, but there's still much I don't grasp or have awareness of.

From what I understand, the boroughs of New York were, before 1900, individual counties. Would it be possible to name all of St. Louis County a "borough" of St. Louis City? Would that be like merging the County in to the City? I would think it could be structured such that every current city in the county would remain as they are now, but we would merge the county and city offices. The County Executive office would be eliminated in favor of a new Mayor of St. Louis office, covering both boroughs. The new Mayor of St. Louis would preside over the two boroughs of St. Louis -- St. Louis City, and St. Louis County, just as Bloomberg is the Mayor of all the boroughs of New York.


I believe the State of Missouri could pass a law that would create this organization. If it works out, maybe later St. Charles County and Jefferson County would want to become boroughs of St. Louis.

I actually like the St. Louis borough plan. 4 boroughs (North County, South County, West County, City of St. Louis) with their own unique name.

Possible borough names
North County = Normandy or Florissant
South County = Lemay or Meramec
West County = Wildwood or Manchester
St. Louis City = St. Louis or Oldtown

Each borough would have a county seat, their own borough mayor, school districts, etc. We would merge the police, fire, planning, economic development and sale ourselves as St. Louis to the world.