Poll, What Does”Merge the City & County” Mean to You?

The City of St. Louis was located in St. Louis County until 1876.  St. Louis, not Clayton, was the county seat.  That year the city became its own City-County, or “independent city.”

Prior to 1877, St. Louis County encompassed the City of St. Louis plus all other areas within the county boundaries including such towns as Kirkwood and Florissant. During that time, the county seat was the City of St. Louis. Often called the “Great Divorce,” the split occurred after the citizens of St. Louis County (that included both city and county) voted on the question of whether the City of St. Louis should separate from the county and become an independent city.

The vote took place 22 Aug 1876, and the initial count indicated that the separation question had failed by just over 100 votes. Supporters of separation then brought charges, including fraud, and a recount was ordered. The recount took four months so it was late 1876 before it was determined that the vote for separation had passed.  (Source)

There have been numerous attempts since 1876 to reverse this vote.  All have failed.  This “independent city”  arrangement is part of the Missouri constitution so any change becomes a statewide issue.

Today you will still hear people say we need to “merge” the city & county.  OK, what does that mean?

The landscape is very different today than it was in the late 19th Century.  Does merge mean expand the county boundaries to include the city — making the City of St. Louis a city among the 90+ other municipalities in St. Louis County?  Would Clayton remain the county seat?  That is more rejoin than merge in my view.

Merge would be a bigger task of creating a consolidated government — eliminating most or all of the 90+ municipalities and having one big city-county governement.  If we went this route I think all would agree the resulting entity would be named St. Louis.  But where would the government body be located?  Like other regions that have actually done this, existing buildings throughout the region would be incorporated into the new government structure.

I don’t think for a moment either one will ever happen but it is interesting to ponder.  I’m not neccesarily an advocate of changing the city-county relationship.  I am interested in consolidating the 90+ cuonty municipalities down to less than 10.  Same for school districts, fire districts and such. The St. Louis region

This week’s poll tackles this subject.  So take the poll on the upper right of the main pageand add your thoughts below on how you’d like to see our local governments restructured or perhaps left as is.

St. Louisans Want More Street Vending!

This past week I asked a simple question in my weekly poll (see post):

Many cities have active sidewalks with: numerous street vendors selling hot dogs and such. What are your thoughts on allowing more street vendors downtown?

I’m never sure what the sentiment among the readership will be.  I just put it our there and see how people vote.  Here are the final results for the above question:

This poll was not scientific.

Out of 161 responses only two indicated either to retain the status quo or eliminate the little bit of vending that is permitted.  Overwhelmingly you the readers want more street vending.

So now what?

Legal permits are severly limited in number.  I’d never advocate just setting up shop on the sidewalk illegally.  I also don’t want to see all barriers brought down so we have chaos on the sidewalks.

Like valet parking, I think we need to review best practices from other coties so as to allow, but not stifle, the activity while not infringing on neighboring brick & mortar businesses.

My guess is that several decades ago well meaning men thought it best to restrict street vending to protect restaurants hurting from downtowns dwindling role in the region.  Your elected officials at city hall need to understand you want the current politically imposed limitations eased.  We, as consumers, need to support street vending if we hope to see more street vendors on the sidewalks.

Coleman Must Face the Results

This week it became clear that Coleman didn’t have enough votes for a victory.

I’m speaking, of course, about Norm Coleman of Minnesota.  The recount in November’s U.S. Senate is favoring Democratic challenger Al Franken.  Humorist Franken is now leading Republican Coleman by 312 votes, an increase over his narrow 225 vote lead in November.

On Tuesday, 351 once-rejected absentee ballots were counted and broke for Franken (source).

In other Coleman news from Tuesday, former Missouri State Senator Maida Coleman did not prevent Francis Slay from becoming the 4th St. Louis Mayor to be elected to a third 4-year term.

Back in Minnesota, Norm Coleman needs to accept the reality that he lost to Al Franken by a tiny margin.

Spending Money on the Way Out the Door

Four years ago, in March 2005, I lost my bid to become Alderman for the 25th Ward.  My opponent was Dorothy Kirner, the incumbent.  Kirner had won the office through a special election in 2004 when the previous Alderman, her husband Dan Kirner, died while in office.

I ran on the premise that I’d do something. I didn’t win.  Kirner was elected to a full term.  She did something  — she hoarded $625K in capital improvement money rather than, you know, make needed capital improvements in the ward.

Alderman Dorothy Kirner incurred the anger of a neighborhood group when she approved a repaving package for her ward that includes $21,600 to repave two blocks in front of her house.

The allocation is part of $409,600 in capital spending she signed off on recently to repave parts of 12 streets in her 25th Ward.

Chris Wintrode of the West Dutchtown Neighborhood Association said there’s more pressing needs and that she didn’t obtain comment from the residents, some of whom have other concerns.

“The issue’s not that Alderwoman Kirner has no authority to spend money in the account. It’s that she’s secretly spending taxpayer money less than a month before she leaves office resurfacing the road in front of her house,” Wintrode said.

The repaving money came from a $624,469 reserve built up from 25th Ward capital money not spent for several years. Kirner is free to allocate it as long as it is spent on public property or a public right-of-way.  (source: Suburban Journal on 4/7/09)

So Kirner hoarded $625K over her four years in office and then spent 2/3 of it in her final month.  Why wait until you are a lame duck?

I should note that some money was spent in her four years.  Streets were repaved.  Beautiful brick alleys were covered in asphalt.  Sidewalk repairs were made.  Dumpsters were replaced.  But six hundred twenty-five grand was not spent.  Amazing!

The Dutchtown West Neighborhood Association has listed all 28 wards in both numerical order and in money unspent (link).  As of December 2008, the 25th’s $624,469 placed it second to the 1st ward with $745,617 in unspent money.  On the other end of the scale the 18th & 24th wards have fully exhausted their allotments.  The city’s fiscal year ends on June 30th.

The city’s 1st ward is located on the Northside and includes the intersection of Kingshighway & Natural Bridge.

The total unspent funds was nearly $5.5 million!  Are these wards so perfect we have no projects worth doing?  Aldermen too afraid of Eliot Davis questioning the use of the money allocated for capital improvements?

The city could certainly benefit from $5+ million in capital improvements.  I can think of many things likely needed in these wards with stockpiles of money.  Bike racks, street trees and ADA curb ramps come to mind.  Street furnishings like trash receptacles and benches are also good projects, in the right spots.  Parks always need improving as well.

This might explain a few things . . .

By Jim Zavist, AIA

One of the first things I discovered after I moved here in 2004 is that St. Louis has a lot of 4-way stops.  Some appear to have replaced traffic signals, at intersections where the cost of maintaining them could no longer be justified (Jamieson & Fyler or Olive & Sutter, for example) – it makes sense given the city’s financial struggles over the past several decades.  But there are many other locations where they seem to have been installed because someone (not a traffic engineer) convinced someone else in the city (likely the alderman) that doing so would make the neighborhood “safer” – Arsenal and Chippewa between Grand and Broadway are both classic examples*.  A not-so-surprising discovery is that many people don’t actually stop at all our STOP signs, many just slow down, then keep going.

It turns out that one of the traffic engineers I worked with in Denver grew up in St. Louis and southern Illinois, and he enlightened me a bit on how things worked in an earlier time, after I sent him this picture:  “In those days, the 1950’s, they used a lot of yellow stop signs and red ones they called boulevard stops.  I think the idea was that the yellow ones were meant to be like a yield sign because you didn’t have to stop at them unless there was cross traffic.  I remember my grandpa hollering at my mom not to stop at stop signs because you didn’t have to.  It made her mad because he did not have a car nor a drivers license.”

My wife also informed me that one of her older, senior friends remembers when the standard practice at 4-way stops in St. Louis was two cars at time alternating, not just one, as is (supposed to be) current practice and law.  Combine these two aberrations from current standards and practices, along with only token enforcement by the St. Louis Police and many people learning to drive/bad habits from their parents, it becomes easier to understand why a STOP signs here are viewed by many as only a suggestion!  As both a relative newcomer and an occasional cyclist, I’d like to hear what natives have to say on this one – is it a quaint St. Louis tradition, a clash of generational values, or something else?

*Having become pretty active in neighborhood politics, I had suggested the addition of 4-way stops at certain Denver intersections.  Since the city actually lets their traffic engineers design and manage a functional system, I quickly learned that 4-way stops are not the “preferred alternative”, that they were reserved for use almost exclusively at schools, where there would be a large amount of pedestrian traffic.  The engineers found, as we see here, with 4-way stops, that a large number of drivers assume that the other driver will actually stop, so they can just slow down.  They found, and secondary streets with moderate traffic, that alternating 2-way stops (E-W, N-S, E-W, N-S, etc.) was much more effective in both obtaining compliance and in balancing smooth traffic flow and safety than 4-way stops.

Local Architect Jim Zavist was born in upstate New York, raised in Louisville KY, spent 30 years in Denver Colorado and relocated to St. Louis in 2005.