urbanSTL

By the looks of the photo in that link, his audience appears to be 5 ladies in their 70s....

Mark, Hanley Industrial court is squarely in Brentwood. The light industrial area surrounded by all the big box stores in Brentwood. I use to cut through all the time to avoid Eager when going to Dobbs/Target/Trader Joes as well as use a blueprint shop/print shop tucked away in the court

Maybe he has to mask the fact that Brentwood tax dollars are going into building a new Drury Hotel.

A grotesque, short Drury hotel in the middle of a parking lot...

Good luck getting there if you don't have a car. It's about a 20 minute walk from the nearest bus stop.

Yep 16 min drive, 1 hour Metro ride. including a miserable walk along Manchester

quincunx wrote:Yep 16 min drive, 1 hour Metro ride. including a miserable walk along Manchester

Is there a walk along Manchester that isn't miserable west of Big Bend?

roger wyoming II wrote:^ Anyone know if that Great Streets project for Manchester in Greater Whereversville is moving forward?

Yes

Stltoday.com - Opponents of a St. Louis County and City merger make their case

Ultimately, however, Bird said county residents need to ask themselves, is a merger essentially a move to "bailout" the city?

Approximately 60 people attended the forum, including a fair number of municipal officials and candidates for state and municipal office.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt ... 5b0ba.html

i'd be willing to bet at least half of the attendants were local political candidates hoping for a chance to grandstand

I am not sure we should be quick to want the city in the county. I don't want people from west county having to much of a say in the city. For example just compare the city's transit project list vs the county's.

shadrach wrote:^ As much as the County has been anti-City, I'm leaning that way too.
With a 3 to 1 population majority, the old 'County' folks will probably try to build a Busch Stadium IV in Chesterfield Valley, move the Art Museum to Des Peres, the Zoo out to Wildwood, send the Science Center to Fenton, have the Blues play in Queeny and try to get SLU to move somewhere near Sunset Hills.

The county has more population, but the population isn't uniformly anti-city. It's probably more like 60-40 against at worst. I mean, most of the population has an easier time getting to the city than to Chesterfield or Wildwood.

Edit: And of course, past competitive urges on the part of the county would be dulled if the city were to rejoin, which sorta is the whole point of the merger to begin with.

Worked out well for St. Louis!

In an interview this month, Nation said more likely scenarios are the city forming its own county; becoming an independent city, like St. Louis; or challenging the constitutionality of the local sales tax system.

Shifting retail spending from one area to another is good and normal. Meanwhile most residents earn high incomes outside the city. They can't have an earnings tax. They have valuable homes, but won't raise property taxes.

“The more I learn the more it becomes apparent to me that it’s so upside down,” Nation said. “There is no more incentive for us to continue to allow or encourage good, normal economic development.”

Saint.Louis County is starting to face a lot of problems with munies not being very happy with the way things are others seem to be struggle trying to stay afloat like Breckenridge hills St Ann Berkeley etc.
I feel the city is on the verge of something positively big but i do think the City and county should become one big Saint.Louis getting rid of all this power waste & glut. The region would be far more sustainably attractive.

They are out with a report comparing St. Louis municipal spending to Indianapolis (merged with most of Marion County 1970, UNIGOV) and Louisville (merged with Jefferson County 2003). No surprise we're spending more per capita, $590.53 and $815.42 respectively.

Is this due to fragmentation and inefficiency or are we getting that much more service? Given the relative performance of the regions over the last decades, I lean toward mostly the former.

http://www.bettertogetherstl.com/wp-con ... rview1.pdf

quincunx wrote:Fenton goes on record as opposed to St. Louis city-county merger

FENTON • Fenton Mayor Michael Polizzi said the passage of a resolution to opposing any St. Louis City/County merger proposal on Thursday was "outstanding."

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metr ... 11381.html

Fenton don't need no merger; they have a Walmart, a Target, AND a Best Buy!!!

I'm sure Fenton is thinking like the old Mayor of St. Peters who effectively said they had the best of both worlds. So why change? (Why buy the cow if the milk is free?) Maybe the cow should think about charging fairly for the milk.

The city needs to get better for the county citizens to want to merge with it. One way to do that would be to raise a lot of money and revitalize all parts of the city, which would raise property values for higher school revenue. This could attract new residents back into the city and make it a more viable merge partner. One way to raise money for the revitalization is to charge fairly for the services the city provides to the entire region.

Like the airport. What would keep the city from imposing a much larger ticket fee at the airport for the purpose of using the regionally generated money to improve ALL the services the city provides regionally, not just the airport? The improved city would make it a more attractive merge partner. After the merger, the ticket fee could be reduced, since those regionally provided services could be supported directly through the new merged county government.