24th Ward Endorsement: Independent Scott Ogilvie

If you thought the 2011 St. Louis municipal elections wrapped up with Tuesday’s primary, you’d be wrong.  Tuesday was just the primary, the election is April 5th.

Democratic voters in the 24th Ward on Tuesday nominated former alderman Tom Bauer in a 3-way race.  Bauer received 437 votes to incumbent Bill Waterhouse’s 425. In 2005 voter recalled Bauer.

In the only upset, former Alderman Tom Bauer beat his old foe, incumbent Bill Waterhouse, along with two others to take Dogtown’s 24th Ward Democratic slot in April’s general election.

In 2005, Bauer was recalled by voters and replaced by Waterhouse after an uproar over eminent domain. (STLToday.com)

However, it is Independent Scott Ogilvie that has my attention and endorsement for the general election.

Hopefully Ogilvie can motivate the 563 people who didn’t vote for Bauer to vote for him on April 5th.  Check out Ogilvie’s website (ward24stl.com) and you will see he lists both ward issues and city-wide issues. Like me, Ogilvie wasn’t born in St. Louis, but he is sharp.  The ability to think and reason is far more important than a political party or where someone went to high school.

I have donated advertising space on this site to Ogilvie and I even sent him a small check, something I will only do for independent candidates.

– Steve Patterson

Gas Is Too Cheap

I’m tired of the news stories about the recent spike in gas prices, as a nation we’ve enjoyed cheap fuel for decades.  Long enough to build ourselves into a corner where if we don’t continue to have cheap gas our society crumbles. Well folks, the party is coming to a close. Now the Obama administration is considering stepping in and selling some reserves:

“The U.S.-held emergency oil supply – called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve – contains 727,000,000 barrels of oil … enough to supply the nation for several months.

Proponents say releasing oil from the reserves would calm spiking gas prices and limit the threat to the U.S. economic recovery. Critics say the oil reserves should be saved for a true emergency.” (CBS News: Would tapping oil reserve help in wake of Libya?)

An increase in price isn’t an emergency — yet.  We need to figure out how to transition from our cheap gas culture (sprawl, limited transit, etc) to the reality the rest of the world has known for years, oil supply is limited.  Officials worry about the economic recovery, but they want to get back to the old economy that requires cheap gas.

In other parts of the world gas can cost the equivalent of $6-$8/gallon! We must work on a plan to get us to this point with as little pain as possible.  We will get there at some point anyway, I’d just rather we planned for it than having it creep up on us.  The pain (war) it will take to keep our cheap gas society over the next 20 years will be far worse than planning for change now.

From April 2010:

“Responding to one of the first major directives of the Obama Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today jointly established historic new federal rules that set the first-ever national greenhouse gas emissions standards and will significantly increase the fuel economy of all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States. The rules could potentially save the average buyer of a 2016 model year car $3,000 over the life of the vehicle and, nationally, will conserve about 1.8 billion barrels of oil and reduce nearly a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the lives of the vehicles covered.” (Source: EPA)

Raising the CAFE standards was a good start, we’ve got to let gas prices go up so that buys demand the more fuel efficient vehicles the automakers must begin selling in volume.  The longer we wait the harder it is going to be when the time comes.

The following steps need to be taken:

• Raise fuel taxes to fund modern urban transit systems (modern streetcars) and discourage auto use.
• Change zoning & building codes to require compact/walkable development.

We don’t need to ban cars, we just need to tilt the playing field so people have legitimate options to get from A to B.

– Steve Patterson

Readers: City Better Than A Decade Ago

In the poll last week readers could pick up to three answers, the top answer shows many felt the city has gotten better in the last decade, despite a loss in population.

Q:Reaction to the 2010 Census showing a loss of 29k residents? (pick up to 3 answers)

1. Fewer residents but the quality of the city has improved in the last decade 111 [33.74%]
2. Previous estimates showing a slight increase gave me false hope 67 [20.36%]
3. Very disappointing 61 [18.54%]
4. Happy the losses are getting smaller each decade 26 [7.9%]
5. Partly the outcome of low density housing policy 22 [6.69%]
6. The numbers must be wrong 16 [4.86%]
7. Surprised the loss wasn’t greater 13 [3.95%]
8. Other answer… 11 [3.34%]
9. No opinion 2 [0.61%]

The “other” answers were:

1. St Louis to Jennings
2. Our schools need to be improved if we are ever going to retain our population
3. i am very curious to know how the ave resident/house and income/house changed
4. so many people were not counted.
5. many people didn’t bother to send in cenus forms
6. The numbers Might be wrong
7. Note we gained amongst 18 , MUST fix schools
8. My pride is hurt, but as long development doesn’t slow; it’ll heal.
9. Obviously better with fewer low income African Americans
10. Mixture of some areas (n. St. Louis) and emptyin and fewer large families.

Much work remains but for me the total number of residents is less important than the quality of life of those of us who didn’t leave.

– Steve Patterson

St. Louis Needs To Go Non-Partisan

Today is the partisan municipal primary in the City of St. Louis, each political party (Republican, Green, Democrat) will select from candidates to represent them in the general election next month.  Well, at least in theory.

In practice, today is the election and next month is an unrelated election for school board and propositions. You see we have so much money in St. Louis we can afford to hold two elections every two years.  After all, any city with a massive budget shortfall wouldn’t continue funding duplicate elections, right?

If we faced severe budget issues we’d go non-partisan for local officials and condense two elections into a single election with instant runoff. Just glad not all races will be decided today, as a few will not be determined until next month.

– Steve Patterson

Family Dollar Misses The Walkability Mark

The Family Dollar store at 6000 Natural Bridge was built in 2006.

I’ve stopped by twice in the last two weeks and both times I spotted customers who were pedestrians.  During the week there were more pedestrian customers than driving customers, the opposite was true yesterday.  Family Dollar caters to a lower income crowd, those who are often transit dependent. Yet, they don’t make it easy for their own customers who arrive on foot.

Family Dollar replaced the public sidewalk along Natural Bridge — 300 feet along the property line. That is a good start, but just 20 more feet of sidewalk would have enabled pedestrians to get from the public sidewalk to the private walk in front of the door without having to walk through grass or mud.

Pedestrians have so little value in St. Louis that a business with many pedestrian customers can just ignore how they come and go. St. Louis needs to mandate that new buildings be built with connections from public sidewalk to main entrance. Also, new occupancy of existing buildings should also require a pedestrian connection. If a public sidewalk exists, businesses should be required to connect to it. Period!

Pedestrian connections should be a given in the city, especially when tax incentives are given for the development!

Ordinance 67014. sponsored by 22nd Ward Ald, Jeffrey Boyd, covers lots of strings for the redevelopment of the property but the basic need of walking from the public sidewalk to the front door of the business establishment just wasn’t important enough I guess.  The above tax info can be found at Geo St. Louis.

I have contacted Family Dollar to see about them connecting to the public sidewalk, hopefully they will be receptive.

– Steve Patterson