Readers Don’t Think McKee Will Come Through With Urgent Care, Hospital/Medical School
Paul McKee’s 3-bed urgent care facility had been under construction, but after a wall collapsed last year it stopped.
Given aldermen’s failure to do their jobs before Friday’s vote approving tax subsidiesfor McKee, St. Louis taxpayers can only hope those creditors will thoroughly scrutinize the viability of the two-phase medical-complex project McKee proposes for north St. Louis. The first phase of the project, a three-bed urgent-care clinic, will cost $21 million, with McKee having come up with only $8 million in promised credit. The second phase involves building a 103,000-square-foot hospital/medical school. McKee has no funding source in sight for the $73 million he’ll need for that.
Friday’s vote puts taxpayers on the hook for $4.6 million in subsidies to be drawn from tax-increment financing worked out years ago with McKee after he used shell companies and other means to acquire around 1,500 acres of dilapidated, abandoned north St. Louis properties. Instead of improving those properties, he allowed them to deteriorate while punting property maintenance to the city. McKee offered grand designs for housing projects and retail-office complexes surrounding the new site of the $1.75 billion National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency western headquarters. Those plans fizzled. (Post-Dispatch editorial)
In the recent non-scientific Sunday Poll readers were skeptical of McKee delivering:
Q: Agree or disagree: The 3-bed urgent care facility and the hospital/medical school will open by the promised deadlines.
- Strongly agree: 1 [3.57%]
- Agree: 0 [0%]
- Somewhat agree: 0 [0%]
- Neither agree or disagree: 3 [10.71%]
- Somewhat disagree: 2 [7.14%]
- Disagree: 7 [25%]
- Strongly disagree: 14 [50%]
- Unsure/No Answer: 1 [3.57%]
If I were a gambling man I’d say not only will he not deliver, but the deadlines will get extended and the subsidies increased. Twenty-three aldermen voted in favor of Board Bill 103, sponsored by Tammika Hubbard.
Ayes (23)
Ward Alderman
- 1 Sharon Tyus
- 3 Brandon Bosley
- 4 Samuel L Moore
- 5 Tammika Hubbard
- 6 Christine Ingrassia
- 9 Dan Guenther
- 10 Joseph Vollmer
- 11 Sarah Martin
- 12 Larry Arnowitz
- 13 Beth Murphy
- 14 Carol Howard
- 15 Megan E. Green
- 17 Joseph D Roddy
- 18 Jesse Todd
- 19 Marlene E Davis
- 21 John Collins-Muhammad
- 22 Jeffrey L Boyd
- 23 Joseph Vaccaro
- 25 Shane Cohn
- 26 Shameem C Hubbard
- 27 Pam Boyd
- 28 Heather Navarro
- President Lewis E Reed
One voted “present”:
Present (1)
Ward Alderman
- 8 Annie Rice
Three were absent for the vote:
Absent (3)
Ward Alderman
- 2 Lisa Middlebrook
- 7 Jack Coatar
- 16 Tom Oldenburg
Only two had the convictions to vote “no”:
Noes (2)
Ward Alderman
- 20 Cara Spencer
- 24 Bret Narayan
Aldermanic courtesy, the process of rubber-stamping legislation in another ward, is alive and well.
— Steve Patterson