^^pathetic isn't it?!
The urban areas do not get the kind of representation they deserve on the Missouri state level. On the other hand rural areas are overwhelmingly represented, because of the way the redistricting is done. Another big problem is the lack of cohesiveness and unity in the St. Louis area. Representatives in St. Charles and even far west and south county might as well move to the bootheels, because that's definitely how they vote in the state legislature. Not to mention that Kansas City often votes against the interest of St. Louis in the state legislature (why the two urban largest areas rarely work together is beyond me).
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Once the baby boomers die off maybe there will be a chance to get some long negelected American cities back together.
So Illinois pays $100 per person for a county with a population less than Springfield, MO that is a complete political after-thought, and Missouri pays $1 per person for its largest city???
Great!
Great!
The state of Illinois gives St. Clair County, population 200,000, about $20 million a year in transit funding.
By comparison, the state of Missouri allocates $1.4 million in transit funding for the 1.3 million people in the St. Louis city and county region. That funding could be cut further to $1.15 million amid the state budget crunch, according to Dianne Williams, a spokeswoman for Metro.
simply amazing. I HATE our ass-backwards state. I NEVER tell anyone I'm from Missouri, only say St. Louis. jesus. embarrassing.
JCity wrote:The state of Illinois gives St. Clair County, population 200,000, about $20 million a year in transit funding.
By comparison, the state of Missouri allocates $1.4 million in transit funding for the 1.3 million people in the St. Louis city and county region. That funding could be cut further to $1.15 million amid the state budget crunch, according to Dianne Williams, a spokeswoman for Metro.
simply amazing. I HATE our ass-backwards state. I NEVER tell anyone I'm from Missouri, only say St. Louis. jesus. embarrassing.
Me too. Missourah can eat it. Hopefully Jay Nixon and Claire McCaskill can can help set a progressive agenda for St. Louis.
The thing that pisses me off is that it seems like the outstate legislatures will do anything to stop the city from progressing, not necessarily that they are conservative.
^ I don't think legislator see themselves as stopping the city from progressing. More accurately, I think they view the City as a failed experiment and therefore not a worthy investment of rural tax dollars. Rather than "throwing good money after bad," legislator would rather throw money at growing areas which will in turn generate more tax dollars for the state (such as St. Charles County). I think this logic is a load of crap, but remember busdad's constant reminders that no regional funding for transit will work without the growing tax base of western St. Louis county.
^ Obviously that is a load of crap, but that's the state of Missouri for you (even the state of our nation). Throw money at unsustainable development, run a way from problems, sprawl baby sprawl, divide people instead of uniting them. I want to know what it would take for lawmakers to realize that extending the metrolink in urban areas is a far better investment than building mega highways to nowhere.
If rural lawmakers were interested in preserving the rural way of life to the greatest extent possible, then perhaps an alliance could be make linking the need for densification within the City with a desire to prevent rural farms from becoming the next Ballwin. The issue is that the farm lobby in most states doesn't see it that way. Rather, farmers and rural-dwellers see the development brought by suburbanization as the equivalent to winning the lottery. The goal is not to prevent suburban development, but preserve farm equity so that rural families can cash in when development comes their way. All of this, and we haven't even touched on the strongest cord linking rural lawmakers and suburban lawmakers, values.
JMedwick wrote:More accurately, I think they view the City as a failed experiment and therefore not a worthy investment of rural tax dollars.
This is what gets me: the idea that somehow city people are soaking up "rural tax dollars" when in reality it's exactly the opposite.
I read a Dave Drebes column a few years back where he said that some 40% of Missouri's sales tax revenue comes from the St. Louis metro area. It sure as hell isn't coming back to the St. Louis metro area from the state.
But hey, if that's the way they feel, an amicable divorce from Missouri sounds like a great idea to me. What exactly does the state government do for us that we couldn't handle ourselves? Let's go our separate ways and see what happens...
^ Notice that you said 40% comes from the METRO AREA, not St. Louis City, which is an important difference when you consider that some St. Louis County (let alone Jefferson County or St. Charles County) representatives find more in common with their rural colleagues than with St. Louis City representatives.
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jasontoon wrote: Let's go our separate ways and see what happens...
Isn't that how we got where we are now?
St. Louis City: Let's go our separate ways and see what happens...
St. Louis County: Great, go ***** yourselves.
^He's right. The only way we're going to get anywhere is by learning to work with the county and state.
From Greater Greater Washington:
How in the hell are we going to promote public transit when our own representatives on Capitol Hill are of the mind to kill it completely.Bond(age) and Crap(o): Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO) plans to introduce two more amendments to strip transit funding from the stimulus and give it to highways. One would eliminate the high-speed rail corridor program entirely. The other, cosponsored by Senators Boxer (yes, Boxer again), Baucus, Cochran, Voinovich, Bayh, Brownback and Crapo, would cut all the money in the "supplementary transportation grants", a pot of money that could go to new projects in roads or transit, and dedicate it completely to highways.
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Can we get Bond and his pizza looking face out of the Senate now instead of having to wait until 2010? Isn't there some ambassadorship somewhere Obama can appoint him to?
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i would like to know what conversations that these guys have with each other are like. but it is quite obvious that these guys are buddies with highway contractors. why else would they try to strip all funding for anything else. it's very selfish and not helping anyone by doing this. the good thing is that i don't see this making it that far. the bad thing is, don't count on bond to help with the funding crisis that is unfolding at metro and is now a national headline.
Mill204 wrote:From Greater Greater Washington:
How in the hell are we going to promote public transit when our own representatives on Capitol Hill are of the mind to kill it completely.Bond(age) and Crap(o): Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO) plans to introduce two more amendments to strip transit funding from the stimulus and give it to highways. One would eliminate the high-speed rail corridor program entirely. The other, cosponsored by Senators Boxer (yes, Boxer again), Baucus, Cochran, Voinovich, Bayh, Brownback and Crapo, would cut all the money in the "supplementary transportation grants", a pot of money that could go to new projects in roads or transit, and dedicate it completely to highways.
Well, frakkity frak. Does that make anyone else want to piss fire? What the hell, Bond? Have you even TALKED with anyone on the two ends of the state recently?
Damn, I hate Missourah. Seriously. SERIOUSLY.
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Interesting how Congress(and MoDOT)wants to buy buses for transit agencies, when they can't afford to keep the ones they have on the road.
Link to Article
Rider Paradox: Surge in Mass, Drop in Transit
St. Louis is girding itself for some of the most drastic service cuts in the country.
By MICHAEL COOPER
Published: February 3, 2009
ST. LOUIS — Buses will no longer stop at some 2,300 stops in and around this city at the end of next month because, despite rising ridership, the struggling transit system plans to balance its books with layoffs and drastic service cuts.
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Dilip Vishwanat for The New York Times
Val Butler worries about her commute to the Garden View Care Center in Chesterfield, Mo.
One stop scheduled to be cut is in the western suburb of Chesterfield, Mo., just up the road from a bright, cheerful nursing home called the Garden View Care Center. Without those buses, roughly half of the center’s kitchen staff and half of its housekeeping staff — people like Laura Buxton, a cook known for her fried chicken who comes in from Illinois, and Danette Nacoste, who commutes two hours each way from her home in South St. Louis to her job in the laundry — will not have any other way to get to work.
“They’re going to be stranding a whole lot of people,” said Val Butler, a nurses’ assistant at Garden View, who said that she feared looking for work elsewhere in a tightening economy. “A lot of people are going to lose their jobs. A lot of people.”
St. Louis may be girding itself for some of the most extreme transit cuts in the nation, but it is hardly alone. Transit systems across the country are raising fares and cutting service even when demand is up with record numbers of riders last year, many of whom fled $4-a-gallon gas prices and stop-and-go traffic for seats on buses and trains.
Link to Article
brody wrote:^He's right. The only way we're going to get anywhere is by learning to work with the county and state.
If St. Louis city and county ARE the state, problem solved. I personally don't give half a damn about the backwoods neanderthals who insist that we pay for their rural routes instead of our own light rail. And they sure as hell don't care about me and you and all the other sinners in Sodom. Time for a mutual breakup.
Streetsblog is now reporting Bond's highway robbery.
These are the two amendments from Bond:
• One strips all $2 billion set aside for high speed rail and redirects it to highway funds.
• The other takes $5.5 billion from "competitive grants" for transportation and gives it to highways.
How quickly the days of $4/gallon gas are forgotten. It goes without saying that de-funding high-speed rail and shoveling extra billions to unaccountable state DOTs, most of which have a penchant for expanding highway capacity, is exactly what we don't need right now. (Bond should be trying to locate billions for transit operations instead: His constituents in St. Louis are bracing for the nation's most severe transit cuts.)
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I'm fuming pissed off! Doesn't Slay have anything to say about this?
Golly it feels good to let loose on a rant to a politician as I've been doing lately. I even went ALL CAPS on this one just for fun. They don't read them or care too much so whatever. Only money, bribes and guns get things done anyway.
Kit Bond got it not Slay. FYI.