urbanSTL

Considering that Missouri borders something like eight states, I think this article provides support for the idea that Missouri should consider getting rid of the the state income tax. For similar reasons, STL and KC need to get rid of their earnings taxes. With so many neighboring states (particularly IL), we have a great opportunity to draw new residents from around the area.



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1202775 ... d_outlooks

realclear wrote:Considering that Missouri borders something like eight states, I think this article provides support for the idea that Missouri should consider getting rid of the the state income tax. For similar reasons, STL and KC need to get rid of their earnings taxes. With so many neighboring states (particularly IL), we have a great opportunity to draw new residents from around the area.



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1202775 ... d_outlooks

I think your right if St. Louis and the rest of Missouri got rid of all those damn taxes we would definitely see a lot of needed economic growth which would then spur population growth.

We invite readers to visit the U-Haul Moving Company Web site (www.uhaul.com), where you can type in a pair of U.S. cities to learn what it costs to move from point A to B. If you want to move, say, from Austin, Texas to Southern California, the moving van will cost you $407 to rent. But if you want to move out of California to Austin, the same van costs $1,831. A move from Dallas to Philadelphia costs $663, versus $2,433 to swap homes in the other direction. The biggest discrepancy we could find was $557 from Nashville, Tennessee to Los Angeles, but the trip costs nearly eight times more, or $4,285, to move to Nashville from L.A.

Why is this?

^Governments will NEVER spend tax dollar efficiently. Most of it will go toward bereucratic process. Look at Forest Park Parkway, SLPS, etc. Most government projects end up overbudget, cut requirements, etc.



Hence, taxation is often unhelpful since the people rarely, if ever, get the bang for their buck.

u hauls rates have nothing to do woth the cities you are going to or moving from. the rates are based on where they need which trucks and where they do not. A friend is in the business..



but as an earlier post of mine suggests, this is a bad tax for business.

Quite a while ago, I suggested leasing Lambert Field to a private company for long term contract -- 20 years or 30 years. I think that would cover it, but I'm not sure if current airport funds just go back into the airport operations, or if they scrape some of the airport money into city coffers already.

http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-pl ... -the-dime/

An excerpt from the above linked P-D editorial on the subject

Six weeks before Francis Slay won his first term as Mayor of St. Louis in 2001, JoAnne LaSala, the longtime budget director for former Mayor Vince Schoemehl, published a commentary piece on these pages. She offered this advice:

The people can elect a mayor who is “smart and aggressive” and get “costs under control and beg for scraps of money from the state.”

But, ultimately, she wrote, the 350,000 “city residents and some intrepid commuters … cannot support the lion’s share of the natural and inevitable level of poverty, crime and need generated by a region of 2.5 million people.”

The challenge, Ms. LaSala contended, is to find a way to close the “giant social loophole in St. Louis” that appears at the city limits on Skinker Boulevard, the one that invites people who “don’t want to pay for the costs of the poor and needy” to “just move, and the costs disappear!”

"don’t want to pay for the costs of the poor and needy"

what are these costs? why does the City Government have to be responsible to pay them? Or more correctly, why do City Residents have to pay for other people? I'm all for some basic safety nets, but what are we seriously talking about here?

Eliminate the pay of 28 Alderman. What a complete joke that we have 28 Alderman while NY and Chicago have 15!! LOL!!
I bet I could go through City Hall and slash that budget by millions. How much waste is spent there is unknown. I think Slay has had a good start, but there is much more to be done.

St. Louis has an "anti-business" image with its additional taxes and union friendly and over the top quota policies. I see companies every day that choose not to locate in the city for this very reason.

JCity wrote:Eliminate the pay of 28 Alderman. What a complete joke that we have 28 Alderman while NY and Chicago have 15!! LOL!!
I bet I could go through City Hall and slash that budget by millions. How much waste is spent there is unknown. I think Slay has had a good start, but there is much more to be done.

St. Louis has an "anti-business" image with its additional taxes and union friendly and over the top quota policies. I see companies every day that choose not to locate in the city for this very reason.

In re paragraph 1: I'm not sure I agree. I think we all agree that the way in which the Aldermen currently operate is unacceptable, but I think people confuse the problem. Is 28 "too many"? I don't really think so. I think it's about right, and in any event if all of us on this site are correct, the City's population will steadily increase, eventually reaching a point where it will increase dramatically (that's the hope anyway). In which case, having reduced the number will be seen as a bad idea.

Comparatively speaking, the City is about as well represented or underrepresented compared to municipalities in the County. I'm not necessarily saying that such a comparison legitimizes the City's current represenataion levels, but I submit that the "28 is too many" mantra is something of a knee-jerk reaction.

The real problem, as I've written on Patterson's blog, is not the number of Aldermen, but rather the way in which they operate. We'd all like to see a truly legislative body in the City that has the entire City at its heart, and not a ridiculous version of the House of Lords. That's true, but is reducing the number of Aldermen going to get us to that goal?

I know that several St. Louis County residents are really angry that they only have 6 County Councilmen. It's impossible to get a hold of them, they represent way too many people. Oh, and having the fewer Councilpeople does not make them any more susceptible to being more regionally-minded. Just as with the Aldermen, the Councilmen really don't care about what goes on outside their districts. Nature of the beast, I suppose.

If you want to cut the number of Aldermen simply to save money, I can at least accetp that argument as valid, but I cannot accept any ideological grounds to do so. I think it would be bad policy, but perhaps a necessary evil.

In re paragraph 2: This sounds more like rhetoric than cold hard fact. I know a lot of people talk about how "oh, if only the City didn't have that tax and those unions, I'd move there tomorrow!" I just don't buy it.

I used to always say STL has too many alderman for a city it's size, but steve brings up some good points. And St. Charles, which has 60,000 residents has 10 city council members, roughly one for every 6000 residents while in St. Louis each alderman represents roughly twice that number

I do think that the Board of Alderan could be run differently however, and perhaps the job need not be full time.

As for the earnings tax, sure no one wants to pay it, but c'mon it's 1%! Too many people have the idea you can cut taxes indefinitely and it's somehow not going to affect services you are going to need at some point.
I don't know how many companies REALLY aren't choosing to locate in the city due to the tax. Maybe we could have the first year be free of the earnings tax for employees or something if it helps our bargaining position. Oftentimes I think they use that as an excuse.

Update: Earnings tax catches some heat at downtown luncheon
By Tim Bryant
An executive of consulting firm Jones Lang Lasalle said today that holding back progress in downtown St. Louis are the city’s 1 percent earnings tax and the high cost of parking.

...

MORE

The "lack" of downtown parking or the "high cost" is a complete fabrication. I posted this comment on a RFT blog story about the potential downtown farmer's market and the fact that the market's organizers think parking could be a problem. Seems fitting here too.

it's "absurd" because there isn't a downtown parking problem (more specifically a parking problem close to Old Post Office square).

However, there is the perception of a DT parking problem and stories like this continue to perpetuate the myth that parking in DT St. Louis is problematic. I'd venture to guess that no other DT--not even DT Detroit--has more available parking for workers/residents/visitors.

To elaborate on my original comment, here are some parking options (consisting of hundreds of parking spots) within two small blocks of Old Post Office square:

1) The Culinaria's parking garage
2) Renaissance St. Louis Grand parking garage
3) 7th and Olive Garage (houses FedEx/Kinkos)
4) Garage at 740 Washington (across from entrance to Convention Center.)

And, if you are shopping for an entire week, bring a hand cart and walk.

O man, she sounds like a suburbanite.. O WAIT SHE IS. From what I gathered from google, she focused on Clayton the burbs, and then moved to Jones Lang Lasalle, so now she is automatically considered an expert of urban environments, aka the big bad city.

And of course a man who knows what he is talking about rejects her idea of the parking, "Scott McCuaig, president, of Stifel Nicolaus & Co., said downtown parking is not much of a hassle but agreed that the earnings tax should go."

From the article it sounds like McGuaigs think she missed a lot of points and didnt bring with her what can offset the "cons." Good for him.

Man, all I can say about this chick is:

SoulardX wrote:The "lack" of downtown parking or the "high cost" is a complete fabrication. I posted this comment on a RFT blog story about the potential downtown farmer's market and the fact that the market's organizers think parking could be a problem. Seems fitting here too.

it's "absurd" because there isn't a downtown parking problem (more specifically a parking problem close to Old Post Office square).

However, there is the perception of a DT parking problem and stories like this continue to perpetuate the myth that parking in DT St. Louis is problematic. I'd venture to guess that no other DT--not even DT Detroit--has more available parking for workers/residents/visitors.

To elaborate on my original comment, here are some parking options (consisting of hundreds of parking spots) within two small blocks of Old Post Office square:

1) The Culinaria's parking garage
2) Renaissance St. Louis Grand parking garage
3) 7th and Olive Garage (houses FedEx/Kinkos)
4) Garage at 740 Washington (across from entrance to Convention Center.)

And, if you are shopping for an entire week, bring a hand cart and walk.

Exactly. I guess the executive from Jones Lang Lasalle that was quoted in the article above doesn't get out much. Suggesting that parking in downtown St. Louis is expensive or somehow problematic is one of the most absurd things I have heard in a long time about this city. And stories like this perpetuate that tired and grossly inaccurate myth, which is probably part of the reason that our leaders and developers cannot seem to break the cycle of viewing parking garages as catalysts for downtown growth when they tend to have the opposite effect.

I guess Wendell Cox wasn't available for a quote?

Lynn Schenk actually used to have quite a few downtown listings when she was with Nooney Krombach, IIRC. Not sure where she was coming from on the parking issue though.

I propose an urbanstl walking (pedaling? driving?) tour of downtown parking options.

I thought monthly parking rates in Clayton were more expensive than downtown. Having been to other cities in this great country of ours, I was under the impression that downtown St. Louis parking was cheap and abundant

lukethedrifter wrote:I propose an urbanstl walking (pedaling? driving?) tour of downtown parking options.

I would love that. Document every garage/lot. Have photos as well as highlight everything on a google map.

zink wrote:

lukethedrifter wrote:I propose an urbanstl walking (pedaling? driving?) tour of downtown parking options.

I would love that. Document every garage/lot. Have photos as well as highlight everything on a google map.

- http://www.downtownstl.org/GettingAround_24.aspx
- http://www.downtownstl.org/docs/ParkingGuide%2708.pdf

Those are a good start, but wont add any value if we want to prove that we have enough parking downtown.

Think of it has a non-profit consulting gig to document every garage/space and than present it to some meeting when they say they want another garage.


- We would need people to record the excess capacity at the garages during business hours.
- Photos of every garage (not goole map photo) in order to visually see them all.
- more stuff.... cant think right now.

How about a commercial parking facility tax in the city to offset part of the earnings tax phase-out. X percent of the gross dollars per car hour, or something. This would slow the boom in unncessary parking garages, and tend to tax county residents who currently use, but do not fund, city services.