Poll Results on Mayor Slay’s Odds of Getting Charter Reform

My poll last week asked:

Will Mayor Slay get 1) Charter Reform, 2) local police control; 3) the city back into STL County by the end of his 3rd term (April 2013?

Forty percent of the responses say none of the 3 will happen:

But more importantltly, 60% of you think some change will happen in the next four years.  I think the 12 that thought all 3 would happen are foolishly optimistic.  I don’t see St. Louis County taking the city back after a 130-year separation.  Of course I also didn’t think county voters would approve the Page extension through Creve Coeur Park.  I’m not convinced we need to be back in the County.  I’m on board with charter reform and local control of our police.

Kinloch Park; The Rapid Transit Suburb

Ads for new home building lots in May 1893 for the St. Louis suburb of Kinloch Park touted its transit connections — calling itself “the rapid transit suburb.”  Kinloch Park was served by the St. Louis & Suburban Electric Railway and the Wabash Railroad.  Building lots started at $40.

At first Kinloch Park was meant for whites only.  An online guide to African-American Heritage in St. Louis County tells the story of Kinloch:

People often wonder how the all-black community in northwest St. Louis County came to have the name, Kinloch. The name is Scottish in origin and means “at the head of the lake.” Some sources indicate that Major Henry Smith Turner named the area after his ancestral family name. Other sources state that the Scots settler, Major Richard Graham, who arrived in the area in 1807, named part of his land “Kinloch” after his holdings in Virginia. The area remained sparsely settled up to the end of the 19th century. A small number of blacks had land in the locality.

Kinloch Park was developed in the 1890s as a commuter suburb. The establishment of the Wabash Railroad from downtown St. Louis through the Kinloch area sparked development by whites. A small area of land was reserved for purchase by blacks, many of whom where house servants for Kinloch’s new homeowners. When a white land-owner sold to a black family a small parcel in an area of Kinloch restricted to whites, many whites sold their lots and moved, thus further opening the market to blacks.

The majority of blacks arrived in Kinloch during the 1920s. Many of them were black soldiers returning from service in World War I. Restrictive housing practices in St. Louis City made moving outside the city and away from the pressures of racial prejudice appealing to many blacks. The East St. Louis race riots in 1917 brought many Illinois residents to the area. Additional black settlement was abetted by the northern migration of blacks from the South.

The initial black church in Kinloch was the First Missionary Baptist Church, now at 5844 Monroe Avenue, dating from 1901. Other churches followed: First United Methodist Church in 1904; Second Missionary Baptist Church at 5508 Lyons in 1914; Kinloch Church of God in Christ, now Tabernacle of Faith and Deliverance, in 1914; and Our Lady of the Angels (originally Holy Angels) in the early 1920s.

Although the one-room frame Vernon School opened for black children in 1885, it closed a few months later. Black children in the Kinloch area traveled to Normandy to attend the school opened at Lucas and Hunt [electronic editor’s note: “Lucas and Hunt” is the name of a single street.] in 1886. The Vernon School, which moved to a number of locations in the area, served black children until the formation of the Kinloch School District in 1902, and its building remained in use as an all-black school in the Ferguson District until it was closed in 1967. When whites in the area split to form a separate school district in 1902, the Scudder Avenue School became Kinloch’s elementary school. A second elementary school, Dunbar, was opened in 1914. High school students attended Sumner in St. Louis City until Kinloch High School opened in 1937. In the mid-1970s, to further integrate education, both the Kinloch and the white Berkeley school districts were annexed into the Ferguson-Florissant School District. Kinloch students were also served by Holy Angels (now Our Lady of the Angels) Elementary School which opened in 1931.

In 1948 Kinloch was incorporated as Missouri’s first fourth-class, all-black city.

Much of Kinloch was destroyed by highway construction and sound mitigation for Lambert Airport to the immediate West.  If you look at the map you’ll see streets but few remaining buildings.

St. Louis had many transit suburbs (or streetcar suburbs) other than Kinloch.   Ferguson, Kirkwood and Webster Groves come to mind.  In regions like Chicago original transit suburbs like Evanston IL have remained as transit suburbs.  It is unfortunate that our region, over the last 100+ years, didn’t make the necessary  steps to retain a rail connection to these suburban municipalities.

Mayor Slay Calls for Local Police Control, City Rejoing County

Yesterday was inauguration day at city hall.  Half the Board of Aldermen were sworn into office as was the Comptroller (4th term) and Mayor (3rd term):

Here is the published text of Slay’s inaugural speech:

In preparation for these formal remarks, I read through some of the many words I’ve used as mayor. There have been a lot of them.

There is one phrase, a phrase that has occurred in speech after speech, which I have come to consider my hallmark. A thousand times – at neighborhood associations, ribbon-cuttings, ground-breakings, announcements, and bill signings — I have said: “ . . . and this could not have happened without the hard work of the people gathered in this room.” And a thousand times, that has been true.

It is especially true today. What has been accomplished over the past eight years has been done — together — by the people in this great room.

President Reed; Comptroller Green; members of my own family and of yours; honored guests; judges; aldermen; legislators; county-office officials; cabinet officers; department heads; all the hard-working men and women who work for the City of St. Louis in patrol cars, on the other end of phone lines, on hose lines, on garbage trucks, on ladders, at desks, and on the business ends of brooms and shovels – thank you for all you do for the people of the City of St. Louis.

An inauguration is as good a time as any to put some things behind us. And I mean to do just that. Given the challenges ahead of us, we cannot afford to keep fighting the old St. Louis fights. So, if you have ever, for any reason, thought my door was closed to you, try it again today. We have a lot of things to do in four years – and getting it all done is going to take every arm, every eye, every pen, and every heart that I can enlist.

The same is true for our region – and I mean both sides of the Mississippi River. We can no longer afford to compete against each other. We must combine our resources and talents to figure out solutions to regional issues as complex as race relations, poverty, transportation, and creating jobs in new industries – and to regional tasks as simple as writing smoke-free laws, sharing public services, and building bike paths.

The world is changing at a dizzying pace, accelerated by a brutal economy. The City and our region will be very different four years from now. They can be better – but not by accident. We have to make it happen. We must understand our strengths – and use them. We must notice our weaknesses – and correct them.

The national economy — and its aftershocks in Missouri and St. Louis – means that many more middle class residents will find themselves vulnerable – to layoffs, to furloughs, to foreclosures – and that already-vulnerable citizens will find themselves at ever-greater risk. Yet, necessity and opportunity have collided. This is fair notice to everyone: I plan to work with the elected officials and business community in the region to ensure that every federal dollar that crosses the Missouri border is spent where and when – and how — it was intended by President Obama and Congress.

I intend to make it the first business of my administration to refocus the attention and energy of government on doing the things that we do best: maintaining parks; providing recreation opportunities; fixing streets, sidewalks and alleys; expanding greenways and bike paths, and marking bike lanes; and using technology to improve communication with residents and enhance the delivery of services. I believe that there will probably be fewer city employees four years from now, but I know for certain that the ones who remain will be more productive, more committed, and better trained. And as City government looks for its correct size, it is imperative that we address – perhaps with state and federal help — the daunting task of fixing the employee pension systems.

There are things that City government has done well. We have won national and sometimes international attention for our prisoner re-entry program, our Problem Property Task Force, the rehabilitation of historic buildings, the renaissance of our Downtown, our efforts to end chronic homelessness, and our initiative to protect children from lead paint.

We will continue to challenge ourselves to do better.

To reinforce our efforts to deliver high-quality services to our neighborhoods I hope to enlist the services of local university graduates in a year or more of service in municipal government. If a mobilized group of young people can revolutionize communication, reshape traditional notions of consumption, and elect a president – they can certainly energize the IT Department, the Planning Agency, and the Citizens Service Bureau.

City government will have my mandate to reduce the amount of energy we consume, and the amount of pollution we produce.

We will do whatever is necessary — no matter whose toes we step on– to expand quality educational opportunities in the City so all children, regardless of income or neighborhood, can get the education they need to compete in a global economy.

We will, using sensible public incentives to attract private investment, continue to rebuild the historic neighborhoods that most need it. The local media will be covering north St. Louis the way they now cover downtown.

We will work together as a City to help the private sector to rebuild our economy and create good jobs in sustainable industries. That means we will have to innovate. It means we will have to retrain our workers. It means we will have to combine the governance of the region’s airports. It also may mean we will do more business with China than with St. Charles or Chicago. It means we will have to take advantage of our strengths, including our great universities, hospitals, and large number of beautiful, historic buildings.

Many of our government institutions and practices were put in place in a very different age, long before anyone considered Mexico and India as threats to our jobs. We will have to become more effective and efficient—and government must be collaborative. The City must reform its charter. The City, the inner suburbs, and outer suburbs must combine services. And, I strongly believe, that we must begin to lay the groundwork for the City of St. Louis to enter St. Louis County.

There are several representatives here today from Governor Jay Nixon’s office and several members of the Missouri General Assembly. Ladies and gentlemen from Jefferson City, it is time to let go of the past. The Civil War ended 144 years ago. In the age of YouTube, I-phones, and Twitter, it is time that St. Louis joined every other city in America and got its own police department. Governor Nixon, I promise we will not use it against the Confederate Army.

There are several representatives of MoDOT here. With a fairer share of the state transportation dollars that are now chiefly allocated to roads, bridges, and highways, the St. Louis region could fund affordable, clean, reliable, useful, and safe public transportation that let workers reach their jobs without burning gallons of gasoline. And we could finally break the “one-to-a-car, surround-it-with-surface-parking” construction habits that waste valuable land and blight landscapes. If MoDOT will not play fair now, it cannot expect us to support its plans in the future – and we will also work with others in the region to find ways to help ourselves.

There are representatives of MSD here today. We will work with them to modernize our sewer systems—not only to get the Environmental Protection Agency off our backs, but also because it will make our city more sustainable.

And in everything we do, we will, wherever possible, use St. Louis companies and St. Louis workers.

All of these changes — to help those struggling in this economy, to reorganize city and regional government, to find better educations for our children, to reinvest in our neighborhoods, to improve our quality of life, to create jobs in new industries, to engage young college graduates, to build contemporary infrastructure — will require that we talk to each other more often, more directly, and in different ways.

The way we share information has changed. Newspapers and radio stations are struggling for audiences. Television has been fragmented into hundreds of channels and time-shifted by DVR and the Internet. As a result, it is almost impossible to develop a consensus on any answer, except “no.”

So, we will have to learn new ways of communicating, of organizing.

Community meetings will take place in neighborhood list serves and web sites. Community meetings will be on-line forums, as well as in person meetings. Every part of municipal life — signing up for summer recreation, Operation Brightside blitzs, street closings/repairs, paying a tax bill, dealing with a bad neighbor, recycling, getting involved in a mentoring program, finding job counseling – must be available on-line. There is no reason why getting a building permit should require a trip to City Hall – or be much more difficult than buying a book on Amazon.

The past eight years have been an awakening—we have shown what we can accomplish if we dream great dreams and if we work together to make them reality. The next four years will see just how far we can really go.

It is time to get to work on the future. It is time to set aside our differences and come together around a common agenda.

I am excited to be your mayor. I am proud of our City. I am optimistic about our future. I am ready to get back to work.

Thank you, and God bless St. Louis.

Still here?  That is a lot to take in.  Let’s go in order looking at selected text:

We can no longer afford to compete against each other. We must combine our resources and talents to figure out solutions to regional issues as complex as race relations, poverty, transportation, and creating jobs in new industries – and to regional tasks as simple as writing smoke-free laws, sharing public services, and building bike paths.

True, we can’t continue competing with each other.  Moving employers around the region doesn’t help the region.  I like that he specifically mentions smoke-free laws.

Many of our government institutions and practices were put in place in a very different age, long before anyone considered Mexico and India as threats to our jobs. We will have to become more effective and efficient—and government must be collaborative. The City must reform its charter. The City, the inner suburbs, and outer suburbs must combine services. And, I strongly believe, that we must begin to lay the groundwork for the City of St. Louis to enter St. Louis County.

Collaborative government?  Yes.  Reform the city charter?  Yes.  Combine services?  Yes.  Reverse the 1876 split from the county?  Not until the 90+ municipalities in St. Louis County get consolidated by at least half.  Both charter reform & rejoining the county would involve eliminating a number of elected offices.  If they remained they’d no longer be elected positions.  Sheriff, Recorder of Deeds, Circuit Clerk, Circuit Attorney, Collector of Revenue, License Collector, Treasurer, Public Administrator and Comptroller are either duplicates of existing offices in St. Louis County or are offices which could be appointed by the Mayor and approved by the Board of Aldermen.

My poll last week was on this very topic.  Only 30% of you took the term “merge” the city & county meant just rejoining the county.  Sixty percent took it to mean a consolidated government form.  Mayor Slay, however, said “rejoin” not “merge.”

There are several representatives here today from Governor Jay Nixon’s office and several members of the Missouri General Assembly. Ladies and gentlemen from Jefferson City, it is time to let go of the past. The Civil War ended 144 years ago. In the age of YouTube, I-phones, and Twitter, it is time that St. Louis joined every other city in America and got its own police department. Governor Nixon, I promise we will not use it against the Confederate Army.

You’ve got to watch those confederates.  We can always tow their cars and sell their event tickets.  Seriously, we should have control of our own police force — for better or worse.

Community meetings will take place in neighborhood list serves and web sites. Community meetings will be on-line forums, as well as in person meetings. Every part of municipal life — signing up for summer recreation, Operation Brightside blitzs, street closings/repairs, paying a tax bill, dealing with a bad neighbor, recycling, getting involved in a mentoring program, finding job counseling – must be available on-line. There is no reason why getting a building permit should require a trip to City Hall – or be much more difficult than buying a book on Amazon.

Obviously I’m a huge fan of the digital lifestyle but I don’t ever see the internet displacing the value of face-to-face meetings.  I do see huge value in having every single municipal form online as an editable PDF document.  We are such a long way from that now.  Most forms are not even in a non-editable PDF format.  I got one form recently as a Word document.  Our city website is stuck in the 1990s so I agree we need a digital overhaul.  Of course with so many elected officials the Mayor doesn’t have oversight in many aspects of city government.

Can Slay make these changes?  It is a tall order.  But we must dig in.  I say a first step is to eliminate partisan elections for city offices — that would simplify elections every two years.  I talked with one Alderman today about reducing the total number.  This Alderman was complaining about the lack of support staff to succeed.  Well, eliminate 14 Aldermen and suddenly you’ve got nearly half a million dollars a year available for better aldermanic pay and/or increased support staff.

This last item was tried in November 2004 as one of four charter reform measures.  Conveniently a classmate made a presentation on the 2004 charter measures last night.  He was one of the original citizen stakeholders that proposed the changes.  A more seasoned political staff took over and poorly pushed four measures on the same ballot.

Proposition D called for a gradual reduction of the Board of Aldermen to 15 with the presiding officer being selected from within the Board rather than via a city0wide vote as we currently do with the President of the Board of Aldermen.  Not sure 15 is the right number but conceptually I agree.

Being the mayor that led the city to successfully change its charter would be an outstanding legacy.  But can he do it?

—

Follow UrbanReviewSTL on Twitter

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.

Green? Yes. Accessible? No.

Green building is all the rage these days.  That is a good thing, but I wished walkability was given the same importance.  Walking, after all, is one of the most green & healthy things we can do.

So last year when the old Sym’s clothing store in the St. Louis suburb of Brentwood was converted into an Office Depot & Westlake Ace Hardware I was hopeful that pedestrian access would make it into the renovation plans.  I periodically scooted by and saw the nifty bioswales being carved out of the existing parking lot but no accessible route connecting the public sidewalk to the accessible entrance of the two stores..

The parking lot was completely redone so there was plenty of opportunity to do the greenest thing of all — welcome pedestrians.

I love the green bioswales which catch and use water runoff.

But when we’ve got major reconstruction of both building and site and no priority is given to connect to the existing public sidewalk we have a problem.  When “green” ignores pedestrians, we have a problem.  When developers and large retailers are able to ignore the basic right of accessibility we have a problem.

You might be saying to yourself, “npobody walks that stretch of Manchester Rd.”  First, not true.  Some do walk here.  But given the lack of consideration for the pedestrian it is no wonder too few walk.  This property is surrounded by residential properties and is only a mile from the Maplewood MetroLink light rail station to the East.

Which comes first the pedestrian or the sidewalk?