urbanSTL

A mailer I received said $4,000,000 or so would be set aside for a home repair program. Wasn't this raised early on an ineligible use of the funding under tax exempt municipal bonds?

Did they get around that or will these be taxable bonds? Or will they carve off the $4,000,000 in a separate, taxable bond issuance?

Northside Neighbor wrote:A mailer I received said $4,000,000 or so would be set aside for a home repair program. Wasn't this raised early on an ineligible use of the funding under tax exempt municipal bonds?

Did they get around that or will these be taxable bonds? Or will they carve off the $4,000,000 in a separate, taxable bond issuance?

There was likely never going to be a single $180m bond issue. The City can't spend the money fast enough and it makes no sense to pay interest on a bunch of bond money you can't spend yet. Instead, there will likely be several small bond issues over the next half dozen or so years that total $180m. My guess is that any bond issue for the home repair and demolition programs will be a separate taxable issue.

I ended up voting no on the bond issue - too much garbage and graft in the ballot issue. Seriously, ward capital funds divided pro rata by geographic area? Yeah, let's penalize the compact, high density successful wards so we can build ghost infrastructure in the unsuccessful wards.

City workers per citizen

DC 1/25
San Fran 1/28
NYC 1/32
Baltimore 1/43
STL 1/50
Cincinnati 1/52
Nashville 1/58
Detroit 1/61
Indianapolis 1/65
Boston 1/65
Kansas City 1/69
Memphis 1/70
Minneapolis 1/75
Chicago 1/78
Milwaukee 1/90
Pittsburgh 1/94
St.Paul 1/96
Columbus 1/99
Portland 1/102
Ok City 1/134

I'm voting NO.

1. Some/many of the proposed expenditures are for maintenance..not capital improvements.
2. Some/many of the proposed expenditures are for capital improvements that have a useful life that is shorter than the 20 year term of the bonds. So the improvements will wear out before we finish paying for them.
3. Ten million dollars gets split among the wards for discretionary spending on god knows what... Probably to ultimately help reelection of the incumbents.

Failed to get 2/3, 61-39.

Did the stadium funding vote decision of yesterday have an impact?

The periodic stories of cars for electeds and big pension payouts to retirees sour people?

A desire to not give more money to a system people are generally fed-up with?

What else?

The periodic stories of cars for electeds and big pension payouts to retirees sour people?

^ I am hearing a lot of people cite wasteful spending in city government as a top reason for voting "no".

Isn't there an old proverb about something like cleaning one's own house before starting work on your next project?

High salaries for city employees, double-dipping on pensions, patronage, revolving door personnel practices, car allowances, etc are the kind of thing that turn off average people.

There's a lot of grandstanding about the stadium deal, but you don't hear too many STL officials complaining about the above.

Start there, cutting fat from city government, then maybe there'd be more support for things like the stadium and this bond request.

quincunx wrote:
Did the stadium funding vote decision of yesterday have an impact?

please tell you arent buying in to that insane reasoning from Ogilvie

^Agreed. Did anyone that voted yesterday think about that? I didn't. Never crossed my mind.

Its so stupid its unbelievable to me that someone would even suggest it.... "A judge made a city ordinance related to funding on stadiums invalid, so now i may or may not get to vote on $66M or 6% of the project therefor im voting no on this unrelated issue"

Scott Ogilvie ‏@ward24stl 10h10 hours ago
The RSA lawsuit & Judge Frawley's decision hurt bond issue vote today. I feel for City employees dealing with equipment that doesn't work.

I wasn't thinking about the stadium deal, and I did vote in favor of the bond issue, but I was concerned about the long range financial sustainability of the city's tax base. Raise taxes enough and people will move out.

And even though I voted, "yes", I didn't think the bill would pass.

Getting a 2/3 vote in favor of a tax increase, when a lot of the $$$ is going toward things most of that paltry 7% turnout won't feel, is a very hard sell.

I would really like to hear some of our elected officials weigh in on the options for reducing administrative costs in city government.

While the private sector gets cut to the bone, working for city government is perceived a comfy, job-for-life, situation. All city employees have pensions. Most firemen have side businesses on their many days off a month. Cops work secondary routinely. There is an obvious revolving door for city employees/elected officials.

People are tired of seeing their tax dollars go to these sorts of things when on the other hand, government comes knocking on the door for further tax increases.

Funny, all those headlines about corruption/inefficiency at city hall are one person...

Recorder of Deeds forced to resign for nepotism
Former recorder of deeds forced to resign is re-elected
Recorder of Deeds collecting salary and retirement pension for the same job
Recorder of Deeds fires employee to make room in budget for city provided car
City of St. Louis just fine with giving Recorder of Deeds city owned car
Recorder of Deeds let husband drive City owned car which he then crashed
City decides maybe its not a good idea to provide Recorder of Deeds with city owned car

It was the gift the just kept on giving. And mortgaging city hall to pay McKee for property they sold him (and he paid for with state subsidy) didn't help either.

dbInSouthCity wrote:Its so stupid its unbelievable to me that someone would even suggest it.... "A judge made a city ordinance related to funding on stadiums invalid, so now i may or may not get to vote on $66M or 6% of the project therefor im voting no on this unrelated issue"

Scott Ogilvie ‏@ward24stl 10h10 hours ago
The RSA lawsuit & Judge Frawley's decision hurt bond issue vote today. I feel for City employees dealing with equipment that doesn't work.

I think it goes: "I don't get a say in the stadium when voters made it clear they wanted one? F the system, not voting, or voting no"

Megan Ellyia Green @MeganEllyia · 23h23 hours ago

In box flooded this morning by #15ward residents against tax money for stadium. "Why would we vote for bond if we have no say in stadium"

quincunx wrote:

dbInSouthCity wrote:Its so stupid its unbelievable to me that someone would even suggest it.... "A judge made a city ordinance related to funding on stadiums invalid, so now i may or may not get to vote on $66M or 6% of the project therefor im voting no on this unrelated issue"

Scott Ogilvie ‏@ward24stl 10h10 hours ago
The RSA lawsuit & Judge Frawley's decision hurt bond issue vote today. I feel for City employees dealing with equipment that doesn't work.

I think it goes: "I don't get a say in the stadium when voters made it clear they wanted one? F the system, not voting, or voting no"

Megan Ellyia Green @MeganEllyia · 23h23 hours ago

In box flooded this morning by #15ward residents against tax money for stadium. "Why would we vote for bond if we have no say in stadium"

MoScout poll on Sunday, before the ruling, had it at 61%. and what was the final #?

I rest my case..

dbInSouthCity wrote:Its so stupid its unbelievable to me that someone would even suggest it.... "A judge made a city ordinance related to funding on stadiums invalid, so now i may or may not get to vote on $66M or 6% of the project therefor im voting no on this unrelated issue"

Scott Ogilvie ‏@ward24stl 10h10 hours ago
The RSA lawsuit & Judge Frawley's decision hurt bond issue vote today. I feel for City employees dealing with equipment that doesn't work.

Some stadium supporters on this Board really need to reduce their hostility towards those that are unhappy that our City's tax dollars are going towards building yet another stadium that we don't really need because of our politicians' mistakes 20 years ago, while not even being allowed by our politicians today to have a true say on the matter this time around.

The reason why these two issues are related is that citizens are upset by the clear political farce of the process surrounding citizen input into this stadium deal, and so do not trust our local political leadership and local government right now. With the stadium process -in combination with the endless new stories of the mess of corruption surrounding Sharon Carpenter- who nobody seems to be doing anything about- and the distrust by many towards our city's first responders due to events over the last year, it's not hard to see why trust in our local leaders is not at an all-time high in the City.

The two issues are related for many. (not me, btw, as I would vote for both if I had the chance)

I have to agree with Roger on this one. Their is support to rebuild streets, buildings, etc. as per majority yes vote. The issue was that the waters got muddied and Darlene Greene stating publically stating she was against the bond measure didn't help. It looks really bad if Greene's comments have a grain a truth and BoA are essentially sitting on cash without filling that pot hole, or fixing that sidewalk or even willing to put some back into the general fund to buy that fire truck for the greater good

Scott, any reply to this statement in the St. Louis Biz journals this morning? I'm sure their is some nuances that typically don't get reported because they don't make good sound bites.

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/morn ... issue.html

Comptroller Darlene Green in July criticized the inclusion of $10 million in "Ward capital," which aldermen could use for improvements in their wards. Ward capital accounts, Green said, already have existing outstanding balances of $31 million.

roger wyoming II wrote:I think including non-essential items doomed it and made too many people needlessly conflicted. If it only included essential capital items and specific street work I think it would have passed.... but including demo & stabilization funds, ward funds, "McKee" funds, etc. muddied the waters and led to many otherwise sympathetic people just sitting this one out.

Bingo! Come back with separate ballot issues for police, fire and streets and I predict all three will pass. If you hold the election on the same day as the presidential primary next spring, the Missouri constitution says you only need 4/7ths (not 2/3rds) voter approval. Jamming everything into one ballot issue, adding stuff like ward capital funds and scheduling the election for August all reflect very poorly on the wisdom of our elected officials.

Yes - I'd put the Comptroller's letter about that as the #3 headwind against this after RSA / Stadium ruling and the general McKee stuff. Honestly I find her coming out late "against" this, more or less, as completely unexplainable. Her staff spent two years working on this. Her office spent literally hundreds and hundreds of hours helping with the capital needs inventory we developed. Figuring out what we have borrowing capacity for, interest rates, and so on. So she's not 100% happy with every detail? So what, no one is.

Specifically on the unexpended capital - she's really bending those numbers. She included FY16 money, which didn't "come online" so to speak until around August 1st. Of course none of it has been spent. That's 9 or 10 million. Then there are balances from past years, but again, a lot of that money is actually encumbered towards a future project, or accumulating towards a project. If you have a $1M streetscape project or something, you have to save for years to execute that. So the fact that we're carrying some money forward every year isn't a surprise. There are a few wards that probably have larger balances, but mostly there are PLENTY of things to spend the money on.

"Ward Capital" is just money that goes to capital projects. The vast majority goes into the basics: street repaving, traffic signals, paint, sidewalks, ADA compliance, dumpsters, trees, parks, playgrounds, park restrooms, baseball fields, etc. Sometimes it provides local match funding for larger projects with federal money. Its also generally the only money that residents actually have any say in how its spent. Describing it as a slush fund etc., is a real stretch in most cases.

Thanks,

Scott Ogilvie
24th Ward Alderman

roger wyoming II wrote:I think including non-essential items doomed it and made too many people needlessly conflicted. If it only included essential capital items and specific street work I think it would have passed.... but including demo & stabilization funds, ward funds, "McKee" funds, etc. muddied the waters and led to many otherwise sympathetic people just sitting this one out.

This is absolutely why I voted no.

Anyone who makes this about the stadium.......... just

People vote based on impressions; it's completely plausible that voters thought "I'm annoyed at the government throwing money at a new stadium, so I'm voting no in this bond". It might not be logical, but logical voting is rare.

I don't think pre-decision polling necessarily disproves this theory, if we're talking about frustration with government rather than the technical specifics. On the other hand, it's also not fair to heap too much blame on the stadium deal. Surely very few of these hypothetical "no's" are frustrated solely by that single issue while remaining otherwise happy.

Wha? How in the world does someone advancing ideas like these get elected to city office:



Maybe there are still reasons to hope for a brighter future for STL?

dredger wrote:Comptroller Darlene Green in July criticized the inclusion of $10 million in "Ward capital," which aldermen could use for improvements in their wards. Ward capital accounts, Green said, already have existing outstanding balances of $31 million.

This, to me, is a silly reason for Darlene Greene to have criticized the package. If individual aldermen have cumulatively saved $30 M in their individual ward capital budgets over the past few years to get streetlights, sidewalks, parks projects, etc that would cost $40 million to complete in their wards, why does it matter if that gap $10 million is bonded to get them the money faster and the projects completed faster than would otherwise be possible?

It doesn't make sense to expect aldermen to drain their ward capital budgets each year if the annual budget isn't enough to pay for substantive projects. If your ward needs to complete a street repaving project that costs $3 million, but you only get $1M a year in your capital budget, then that's what you've got to do and you've got to build some reserves.

Northside Neighbor wrote:Wha? How in the world does someone advancing ideas like these get elected to city office:



Maybe there are still reasons to hope for a brighter future for STL?

A blog posting by a St. Louis Alderperson? Everyone get their drinks ready...

Ctrl + F "comprehensive plan" = FOUND!

Everyone finish their drinks.

A blog posting by a St. Louis Alderperson? Everyone get their drinks ready...

Ctrl + F "comprehensive plan" = FOUND!

Everyone finish their drinks.

I think the above response is both unfair and highly cynical.

We elect citizens to serve as leaders. We expect leaders to lead. We expect them to generate ideas, share their thoughts, and have vision to lead people.

Ald. Green is new, and she is providing vision, leadership, and ideas.

To shoot that down is cynical and unfair.

What in the world was wrong with anything she wrote? She nailed all of the major problems going on right now.