Ald. Florida Introduces BB39 to Amend Redevelopment Plan
Ald. Florida today introduced Board Bill #39 to amend the Gravois/Meramec/Grand redevelopment plan to allow drive-thru establishments for a single parcel — the one owned currently by Pyramid and proposed for the new McDonald’s.
Funny, Ald. Florida is the same person that said the redevelopment plan only applies if a developer is seeking tax incentives. By her own argument, the no drive-thru clause cannot be enforced on property owners if they are not seeking tax breaks. By her logic then we must believe it is the intention of hers to seek tax breaks such as a TIF or property tax abatement since she is attempting to amend the redevelopment ordinance.
It should also be noted, the LCRA board’s idea of public notice is an agenda in the lobby of 1015 Locust. No agenda online. No use of the City Journal, a publication created solely for the purpose of meeting public notice requirements. The LCRA is the board that voted on April 4th to allow the change.
The bill has had its first reading and has been assigned to the Housing, Urban Design and Zoning committee (HUDZ). The aldermen on the committee will, no doubt, rubber stamp this legislation without batting an eye if the public remains silent. I urge everyone reading this post to contact every single member of the HUDZ committee.
Here is the list:
Fred Wessels, Jr. Chair, 13th Ward
Craig Schmid, Vice-Chair, 20th Ward
Freeman Bosley, Sr., 3rd Ward
Jeffrey Boyd, 22nd Ward
Gregory Carter, 27th Ward
Stephen Conway, 8th Ward
Dionne Flowers, 2nd Ward
April Ford-Griffin, 5th Ward
Kathleen Hanrahan, 23rd Ward
Bernice Jones King, 21st Ward
Lyda Krewson, 28th Ward
Michael McMillan, 19th Ward and candidate for License Collector
Kenneth Ortman, 9th Ward (Ald. Ortman “prefers not to be contacted via email.” Hmm. So call him at 314-622-3287
Lewis Reed, 6th Ward
Matt Villa, 11th Ward
Phillis Young, 7th Ward
The main points:
Mention BB39, ask that they withhold support.
Explain this is against the wishes of the neighborhood.
Let them know more is at stake than a simple stop sign, they should not defer to Ald. Florida in this case.
Amending a redevelopment plan to the wishes of a single property owner is a slippery slope.
Let them know they can read more at www.nodrive-thru.com (links back to my posts).
Look for a committee meeting next week with a hearing around the same time. No date has been set but this committee often meets at 10am on Wednesdays.
– Steve
LCRA is an antiquated part of city government; no wonder that its board doesn’t want to get wth the times and publish its agenda online.
Seriously, the city is doing too well these days to require a “land clearance” agency.
Isn’t Schmid against this proposal already? Didn’t he break with “aldermanic courtesy” and oppose the McDonald’s plan? Am I imagining that?
[REPLY – You are correct. I included him on the list because a) he is a member of the committee so I didn’t want to exclude anyone and b) I think it is important that Schmid know others share the same view. – SLP]
Does anyone have their actual e-mail addresses or at least something we can include in a CC line instead of writing each one individually from the Alderman site? I have no problem with copy and paste, but I’ve found myself writing the aldermen a lot latetly and I don’t have all of their addresses.
The real challenge in sending these emails is to keep them civil. These are all the creatures (notice that I have trouble acknowledging they are even human!) that uphold aldermanic courtesy so that when their big campaign contributors want them to do something stupid and regressive, all the rest of the board of alderman will help them.
What happened to caring for the voters? I guess the entrenched system keeps them in office at our expense.
Any chance this topic or the tradition of aldermanic courtesy will be brought up on tonite’s edition of “The Wire”?
Ken Ortmann may also be reached at 776-0161 (9th ward office at Arsenal and Lemp).
By the way, the deal with the aldermanic emails is that about 1/2 now do check their own personal emails directly; but the other 1/2 still rely on the aldermanic secretaries to receive and respond to emails on their behalf. So that’s why you have to use the form.
Besides which, I’d highly recommend customizing your message to each alderman, and focusing on the one in whose ward you actually reside or do business. Most (but certainly not all) tend to ignore the views of non-constituents.
I have wrtien to the whole crew several times. There seems to be a small group of 4 or 5 representatives that takes the time to read their e-mails and respond – sometimes just an all-purpose acknowledgement, but in a couple cases there has been some actual “discussion”.
I think the letter writing campaign is having an effect on several of them who appear willing to at least consider the evidence. Those who have responded have indicated a general predisposition towards allowing each other a lot of lattitude in development decisions within individual wards.