City of St. Louis Back in St. Louis County
I don’t quite understand it, in last weeks poll 45% of you felt the most important non-project for St. Louis was to rejoin St. Louis County as the 92nd municipality. Most assumptions about the city rejoining the county have the city limits unchanged. What changes is the boundaries of St. Louis County.
The main advantage for the city & county would be the elimination of duplicate “county” offices. Although I’m not sure St. Louis County’s systems & personnel could handle the addition of the city so the duplication could not fully be eliminated. With separate courts, property records and marriage licenses since 1876 merging these into one would be a major task. Counties throughout the country often have more than one judicial center so I could see both remaining in operation.
The option I didn’t give you in the poll would be better and even more unlikely — a single unified city-county merger. All the 91 municipalities in St. Louis County would get wrapped together in a single unit of government along with the City of St. Louis and currently unincorporated areas of St. Louis County. 93 government entities would become one.
Economically depressed Wellston might like the idea but well to do Ladue would never go for it. But one unit of government for the area known as the City of St. Louis & St. Louis County makes the most sense.
Perhaps getting the city back into the county is the first step? Studying the various ways these mergers have been accomplished is of course an important step. There is no single way to “merge” the city back into the county. Each will have a long list of pros & cons. Just being one of too many county municipalities doesn’t appeal to me.
– Steve Patterson
Steve, while I agree with many of your observations, as with any poll, it may simply have had more to do with the limited choices you gave us. You may have tried to cover too big a list with too few choices. A non-project is also a nebulus concept – a more-accurate description would have been a non-physical project. The choices you gave us would all have been major projects to accomplish, just not things that would have left specific, immediate, physical legacies. If the choices had focused only on the wonkish governanace and charter issues, and the choices had been . . .
· Reduce the number of wards from the current 28 to 14
· City becomes St. Louis County’s 92nd Municipality
· Switch to non-partisan local elections
· Add term limts for all local offices
· Merge the City & County, combining all 92 municipalities into one
. . . then merger might have come out on top. The longer I live here, the more I see that most people are happy enough with the present ward dynamics – small constituencies, long tenure, tightly-controlled ascendency – to not really be interested in changing things. That’s also why I expect most people would be comfortable with becoming the 92nd municipality, if that’s the only choice we’re given concerning merger. Part of it is an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it attitude, part of it is a real (or perceived) fear of losing access to and/or a loss of “control” over government services, and part of it is the undercurrent that some government employees will likely lose their jobs.
I do agree that merger offers more to the city than to the county, and that, alone, will be nearly insurmountable. It’s only when more than a few county government entities, not just cities, become insolvent and/or unable to deliver basic services will merger start to gain traction. And remember, there are multiple layers of government in the county – the city, the fire district, the school district, the new trash-collection district and the services the county provides, like health and building inspection – many of these cross city boundaries already and have different funding dynamics than the individual cities.
The only other dynamic that could spur merger talks would have to come from Jeff City. If our basic local taxing structure were changed, through state edict, be it changes to how property taxes are assessed and collected or limitations are placed on TIF’s and local sales taxes, then the reasons for staying small and/or the same could also change, possibly significantly. It’s like the police governance issue – while I’d like to see the “City take over police department from state of Missouri”, I honestly don’t see where that, alone, would result in signicant internal changes. Our police “problems” have very little to do with how the chief is selected and a whole lot to do with a combination of institutional culture and trying to police a city with high levels of poverty.
People in the county will scream if you tell them they have to forfeit one percent of their earnings like the city dwellers.
We need to get the City back into the County first and then consolidate to fewer municipalities, not necessarily one. I don’t know what the right number is but maybe 20 or 30 instead of almost 100.
How would the dynamic of the Metro funding vote change if the city residents were pooled with the county? Would a tax pass in a combined county?
I wonder if a compromise is possible, maybe Saint Louis city annexes some inner ring suburbs rather than merging with the entire county. A long shot, of course, but not as extreme as full merger.
Anything is “possible”, but a few years back Brentwood, Clayton, Maplewood & Richmond Heights explored merging with each other but couldn’t figure out how to combine 2, 3 or 4 pretty-similar cities. Why would any of them be any more inclined to merge with St. Louis city?! Even places like Lemay and Mehlville seem to be pretty happy being unincorporated. What do we offer that they don’t already have? The reality is that the only inner-ring suburbs that may be inclined to merge with the city will demand more in services than they generate in new revenues, places like Wellston, Pine Lawn and Pagedale, and, as a city resident, I would have to be convinced why that would make any sense for the city. We have plenty of our own challenges with poverty, crumbling infrastructure and limited resources – why would we want to add more?!
Until and unless multiple municipalities go “belly up” financially, this is all just a pipe dream. The only way would be to convince the rep’s at the state level that this fractured gov’t is hurting the region, and thereby hurting the state as a whole. Then the state could do the work of combining the region from Jeff City. Talk about a tough row to hoe.
A city County merger would definitely make St. Louis, “look” better in the national eye. When people see a house divided, it makes them want to shy away. In our case we are losing people, businesses and major corporations, and now more recently American Airlines. People view us as a joke because we can’t even work together. The population of the city and county according to recent stats reflect apx. 1.4 million people. That would make St. Louis America’s 6th largest city which would demand public attention and would attract businesses, people and the like. Maybe not all at once, as suggested, but perhaps little by little over the course of some years. If Louisville, KY can do it then I’m sure St. Louis can.
I didn’t notice this post when you made it, but I will throw in my two cents: a city-county merger is perhaps the only way that St. Louis could become a “great” city again. Coming from Nashville, Tennessee, I can tell you that having only one city-county government, which includes sewer, schools, fire department, police department, and garbage collection, has made governance considerably more efficent in middle Tennessee. There is very little animosity between various municipalities “within” Nashville because they all are pooled into Metro. Granted, Nashville did this more than 45 years ago. The only way it could happen in St. Louis would be a state-level push. I don’t see that happening under a Democrat (fearful of angering the St. Louis machine), and I don’t see that happening under a Republican (encouraging an urban city to grow more powerful only strengthens the Democrats).
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