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The number of wards

Author:Steve Patterson October 25th, 2009

In looking back over the many posts I’ve done over the nearly five years I’ve been publishing this blog one of my favorite topics is local politics.  Reforming the city’s charter is always a good discussion.

In 1950 the City of St. Louis had 28 ward-elected Aldermen representing 850,000 residents (30,350/Alderman) covering 61.9 square miles.  By 1970 the population was down to 622,000 but we still had 28 aldermen.  By 1990 the population was below 400,000 yet the number of elected Aldermen & wards remained unchanged since the city had more than double the population. Today each Alderman micromanages a fiefdom of less than 13,000 subjects.

In January of this year I presented the following chart created with the assistance of a friend:

The current level of Aldermen causes each to focus on their ward only.  Constituent service becomes their top priority: stop signs and other items better suited to a bureaucrat.  Because our elected  aldermen focus mainly on issues within their ward, the bigger city-wide issues often lack leadership.  Many corridors cannot be planned because different aldermen control opposite sides of the street.

I don’t believe our city will prosper again until we make a number of structural changes, including reducing the number of ward-based aldermen.  I tend to believe we need both ward-based and city-wide representation.  I’d like to start from scratch.  At the very least change all the names — City Council instead of Board of Aldermen, Districts rather than Wards. Shake City Hall from top to bottom.

The poll this week deals with one aspect of charter reform, the number of representatives for our city.  The number of representatives cannot possibility be right in 1950 and in 2009 with half a million fewer residents.  Did they have too few in 1950?  No, we have too many today. Would this mean less Black elected official?  Yes.  Less White officials too.  I think the proportions would remain unchanged.

Vote in the poll in the right sidebar and discuss your views below.

- Steve Patterson

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  • Angelo
    Any studies showing a correlation between the figures shown above and indicators of economic prosperity or positive political activity?

    Just by looking at the chart above and knowing the general state of many of those cities, I see absolutely no correlation between a healthy city/city government and the percentage of constituents served per alderman (or city rep).

    The three cities with the highest citizen to alderman ratio are:

    New Orleans
    Kansas City
    Pittsburgh
    Memphis

    A completely random mix of situations and prosperity levels. New Orleans is known for a terribly dysfunctional city government. Pittsburgh is not the picture of prosperity (though it is making significant improvements). Memphis and Kansas city are average when it comes to functional governments and economic prosperity.

    The lowest ratios are:

    Chicago
    Saint Louis
    Cleveland
    Milwaukee

    Again, random. Chicago is known for corruption, Saint Louis is known for political pettiness and short-sightedness, and Cleveland and Milwaukee are doing rather well...actually.

    So far, there is nothing indicating that the number of alderman is a significant factor in a city's prosperity or functionality.
  • Fenian
    The City government definitely has too many aldermen for its own good. As opposed to the evils of machine politics, we are all at the mercy of aldermen and their, as Lana Stein calls it, "Ward-based factionalism" as they attempt to run their wards as fiefdoms.

    I also support reverting control of the police back to the City. However, knowing how our City operates, it pains me to say that it might be best the way it is. At least until fundamental reforms of our system of governance are enacted.



    [slp --- Good point, I think the city needs to control its own police but not this 28-ward city. The state should mandate significant charter changes as a condition of turning over control to the city.]

  • stl truth
    Tom, try starting out with an undereducated, underemployed, low income population, in a town with aging infrastructure and a dilapidated building stock, and you'll understand why city government is so expensive to operate.
  • I absolutely support the idea of charter reform, but I cannot say that I have yet to settle on a concept that I feel St. Louis could fully embrace. I don't think that the staggering number of representatives is necessarily the issue in their failure to provide meaningful service while in office. Rather, I am convinced that the failure of all persons presently serving on the Board of Aldermen to carefully scrutinize expenditures of public money and the performance of City government agencies are the real reasons for our government's continual and compounding failures. Aldermen seemingly enjoy having a role to play in street paving, trash collection, dog catching, and any number of other governmental functions that in a community with better governance would simply occur without political intervention. That an Alderman nearly always must request a service from the appropriate City department for the department to do its job says everything about the failure of our hyper-political system of public service to function. 28, 14, 9, 7; I cannot say that the number of elected representative matters so much as does their quality.

    Will the people we elect ask hard questions of those who work in government? Will those in elective office ever step it up and demand to know how the City of St. Louis can spend nearly $1 billion a year on all of its governmental functions while our community's public institutions remain mired in mediocrity? Why do our schools remain unaccredited and our public health indicators abysmal when we spend so much money? Waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption are the buzzwords that matter to me, not the number 28.
  • Tim E
    I think you start with a simple fact for a simple reform, you need half the alderman because you lost half your population. Actually more, but numbers are easier to grasp for people if you can just start with half.

    Less aldermen might actually encourage people to vote. The city has a dismal voting record outside of a presidential election and that only makes things worse.

    I recall the last meaningful city school board election had 6% turnout. Folks like myself just shake their heads when people claim they don't have representation in the city. Why, first individuals have to take the responsibility given to them.
  • Deborah Moulton
    Seattle has nine city council members who are non-partisan and elected at large. Each council member heads at least one major committee that covers the whole city, i.e. Planning, Land Use & Neighborhoods or Finance and Budgets. This structure attaches citizens' and lobbyists' efforts to issues, not geography. It also ensures that community issues and investments are addressed citywide and not doled out piecemeal.

    Each council member is paid for full-time work (about $113,000 a year in 2009) and has three paid staffers to handle the work of the office.

    It's a much better system because advocacy is primarily attached to the issues. As a matter of practicality, they do become attached to issues in the neighborhoods they live in, but in Seattle, the neighborhood definitions are much larger than our wards in St. Louis and cover wide swaths of geography like downtown, Queen Anne, Capital Hill, West Seattle, Ballard, or the Ranier Valley.
  • Chris
    Washington, DC, where I lived for six years, has eight wards, and three "at-large" aldermen for a city of approximately 600K. The at-large aldermen focus on the entire city, and not just one portion of it. I could actually remember the names of all the aldermen in DC, but in St. Louis I can never keep track. People always flip out at the thought of reducing the number of aldermen, but DC shows that a city can thrive and rebound with one third as many as St. Louis.
  • Jimmy Z
    Since the other city I'm most familiar with on the list is Denver, for several reasons, I found their representatives to be probably more responsive to "real" citizen concerns. One, they're paid a full-time salary and have a budget for staff - they can focus on policy and the bigger picture issues while their staff can deal with potholes and stop signs. Two, city departments are more empowered to make rules and to do their jobs - there's less meddling by aldermen, as in passing an ordinance saying a stop sign shall be installed at a specific intersection, as happens here. And three, since their elections are non-partisan, they, personally, have to be responsive to every constituent, not just party leaders, unions and well-connected developers. So while there's a lot of history on why things are the way they are, as MH notes, there's also a lot of reasons why looking at changing how we do things makes a lot of sense, including things like the automobile, computers, cell phones, the internet, far fewer ethnic enclaves, declining union membership and, above all else, a reduced ability to deliver services as our economic base continues to erode.
  • MH
    After reading some interesting books on the history of our city's government ("St. Louis Politics, the Triumph of Tradition" by Lana Stein being the best so far) the number of alderman is NOT what makes them focus on their ward only. It has nearly ALWAYS been this way. We have this many wards mainly because the various ethnic neighborhods and immigrants within them wanted closer access to what they felt was a downtown government in which they didn't have an influence. What we are trying to change as the "new blood" in this city is a heritage that has been around nearly the entire history of St. Louis. I'm not saying it is impossible, but it will take time.



    [slp --- You are right, I've read Stein's book but didn't have time to review again for this post. The number doesn't cause the ward focus but I think it contributes to them not looking to the bigger city issues.]

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