Regional goals/strategies for 2010
Many of us use this time of year develop goals/strategies for ourselves, personally & professionally. I have a number for myself as well as this site. But I think this would also be good practice for cities & regions. The following are suggestions I have for the City of St. Louis and the St. Louis region to adopt for this year:
Region as a whole, including all counties & municipalities:
- Rethink land development practices. Concentrate not on assembling land, but on infilling existing areas at higher densities and at a finer grain & highly connected.
- Rethink funding mechanisms for infrastructure and projects. Find ways to decrease one municipality trying to steal sales tax dollars or employers from another.
- Work on ways to reduce the total number of units of government including, but not limited to, municipalities, school districts, fire protection districts, etc…
- Create a cooperative agreement among municipalities in the region’s core (both sides of the river) to work on big picture planning for the older center. Shared issues such as aging infrastructure, population loss, urban infill, and public transit can bring these cities together to share ideas and to leverage their collective strength.
- Understand that by creating a great region in which to live more people will visit and stay.
St. Louis County:
- Pass the dedicated transit tax in St. Louis County on April 6, 2010. See Greater St. Louis Transit Alliance for more information.
City of St. Louis:
- Establish a forum for citizens to explore changes to the city’s charter. Many ideas exist about the problems and solutions – these need to be discussed.
- Along the same lines work to shift control of the police force from Missouri to our local leaders.
- Drop the idea of rejoining St. Louis County.
- Set up group to begin looking into the long process of changing our outdated zoning code.
There are probably many more items for these lists but the above is a starting point. Happy New Year!
– Steve Patterson
Region & County – All make perfect sense, but more often than not, logic and politics make for strange bedfellows. Ideally, Metro should be given a dedicated funding stream and more control over infrastructure investment. The current situation, where the E-W Gateway COG “decides” where to build rail projects but leaves funding the operational costs to others simply isn't sustainable.
City – Agree on updating Zoning. Need to know more on why we should remain independent. And for the first two, I'm afraid that any “problems” with the current dynamic are less structural and more cultural – neither aldermanic courtesy nor patronage, for example, are written into law. I would expect little change in how the Police Department functions should the board structure change. I've actually seen some good, positive change just by putting in a new chief who's willing to challenge some of the traditional way of doing things, with absolutely no change to the existing “structure”.
S – Happy New Year
It would be great to see the city exercise Facebook, Twitter and some strategically placed blogs in the way of inviting participation in the process. To be expected, the forums would draw the lunatic fringe but many of the greatest advancements of our time were showcased by people who were believed to be mentally marred –
Really enjoy your blog – take care and have a compelling new year.
I would have to agree strongly with a regional way to better fund infrastructure. The region has been at competitive disadvantage because we can fund roads but lack the ability to build bridges (New Mississippi River Bridge should have already been built), transit and quality of life issues for urban areas such greenway trails. Nor do we have the funds to rebuild current infrastructure or remove failed ideas. Westbound I-64 still has an adequate bridge for crossing the Missouri. In the city, we are essentially hoping for either a TIGER grant or TIF or both in order to rebuild 22nd interchange or near northside infrasctructure. I still think the Mississippir River Bridge will not be used to its fullest intention until Tucker Ave is realigned and areas brick and mortar infrastructure is replaced. This probleim is in part to the fact that we are losing out on a lot of federal matching funds to other Metro regions because we are still very depedent on MoDOT in a low tax state. I actually prefer that Missouri remains a low tax state overall and local regions support more of what they need. My gripe is the local leadership does a very poor job of selling infrastrucure to its urban popluation. Infrastructure that makes a big difference in commerce, time and options for commuting and green space.
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