urbanSTL

^ Was never for a merger for a variety of reasons, but I knew it wouldn't gain wide-spread support because Countians don't want to merge with each other, let alone with the City.  But it would be an interesting STL County merger vote to have where it follows Baltimore County governance as a consolidated entity with no independent municipalities. An interesting variation on that would be STL City rejoining the consolidated County as an independent city.

Anyway, I doubt an internal county merger vote would ever be held, but there are opportunities for smaller mergers within the County like the 24:1 communities, etc. as well as greater formalized cooperation between city & county.

St. Louis City needs to enter the county and there needs to be 10-15 municipalities max with populations of about 50-100k. Ever city should have a top notch city services, there should also be a consolidated fire, police, streets, planning, and court system. I personally would be for a full out consolidation for a city of 1.3 million. I think St. Louis is at a point where the needs to be a total regional restructuring, but I know that would be a major uphill battle. 

It's just so bizarre to drive down the street and see a sign for a new municipality every few blocks.

We are about five years from the narrative shifting away from "We don't want to merge with the city and bail them out" to "We don't want to merge with the county and bail them out"

To me one of the biggest issues with balkanized local government is the way municipalities war with each other over scraps. With a stagnant population when one muni builds a mall, that means another will probably close in a different one.  And the same goes for attracting employers. 

I'm not sure how much savings there would be with consolidating services like public health, I just honestly don't know. I also wonder if there wasa merger if that would mean moving more local government jobs to Clayton (ideally we'd consolidate Downtown and sell off most of the County Gov't buildings in Clayton but I'm not sure if that's realistic). But I think consolidating governments to stop the zero-sum economic development strategy is an an important goal. The problem is, that that doesn't stop at STL City/County. 

goat314 wrote: ↑

Jun 25, 2022

St. Louis City needs to enter the county and there needs to be 10-15 municipalities max with populations of about 50-100k. Ever city should have a top notch city services, there should also be a consolidated fire, police, streets, planning, and court system. I personally would be for a full out consolidation for a city of 1.3 million. I think St. Louis is at a point where the needs to be a total regional restructuring, but I know that would be a major uphill battle. 

Setting a minimum of 5k would eliminate half the municipalities.

On the other hand, if the suburban structure is flawed, it doesn't really matter how much garbage you wad together, it will still be garbage. Maybe it would be better to merge the urban-form communities into one city, and the garbage ones into another, so St. Louis Super City's finances aren't brought down by Hell City.

^Maybe it's best to just demolish the most unworkable cities and start fresh with a clean slate at some point in the future. Though realistically what will happen is they'll be slowly sold off to out-of-town landlords, rented for a quick buck, and allowed to slowly decay bringing poverty and its attendant problems to newer digs while someone else gets fat off the drippings.

Keep in mind subsidy streams are already set up through MSD, utilities, state roads, etc.

https://nextstl.com/2016/10/how-we-subs ... utilities/

Always know to expect the worst when Pine Lawn is in a headline.

StlToday - Bellefontaine Neighbors mayor defends withholding pay of dissident aldermen

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... 07ff7.html

StlToday - St. Louis County considers service cuts, tax hikes to fill $41 million budget hole

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... cfc64.html

quincunx wrote: ↑

Oct 12, 2022

StlToday - St. Louis County considers service cuts, tax hikes to fill $41 million budget hole

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... cfc64.html

StL City finished the 2022 FY with a $49M surplus, maybe it can lend some money to the County 

^If we did, I think there should be strings attached. Merger strings, with mixed use and higher density zoning requirements. So much of the county could more profitably be razed and replaced.

Surplus must be from the 1% they stole from my paycheck (and thousands of others) even though I didn't set foot in the city for work for almost 2 years.

That being said, I want the city to succeed, so I'm not really that mad about it especially since I spent a lot less money in the city during that time frame. I still believe (and some courts appear to be agreeing) that the rule change was illegal, and have been requiring the city to issue refunds like they did prior to the pandemic.

Apologies for the mostly off-topic digression. Earning Tax Discussion here for anyone interested.

Stltoday - Manchester wants to expand its borders. Sam Page is trying to stop it.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... 153d1.html

Somehow I agree with Trakas on something