Reed Campaign Uses Crime Report with “Questionable Methodology” Against Shrewsbury

The Reed campaign postcard I just received blames Jim Shrewsbury for being “ranked as the worst city for crime in the country.” No reference is given to which ranking but I assume it is the controversial one from Morgan Quitno. Here is what MayorSlay.com had to say about that report:

Every year, a guy in the Kansas City suburbs publishes a list that points out St. Louis as one of the most dangerous cities in the country. He isn’t an FBI agent, a former police chief, or a criminologist. He’s just a publisher with a good gimmick, a readable press release, and some questionable methodology.

St. Louis is not a dangerous city. There are certainly some high-crime neighborhoods – just like in every city. But, the vast majority of St. Louis neighborhoods are safe places to live, work, and raise families.

There are plenty of other cities in the country with the same amount of crime within a similar area. Every city has high-crime neighborhoods. But, unlike most other cities, St. Louis is locked into the 19th century borders that separate us on the charts (but not in any real sense) from places like Clayton, Webster Groves, Maplewood, University City, and Shrewsbury. If these nearby communities were added to the City, we’d be one of the safest cities in the country – with no change in the patterns of local crime.

But, putting a thoughtlessly designed list into perspective isn’t my final word. Crime is up in some City neighborhoods and that does require a response. While most City neighborhoods are safe, a few are not.

Although the deployment of the police force is not in local control, I have found Chief Joe Mokwa to be responsive to our concerns. City voters recently approved an increase in the graduated business license fees that will help pay for more police officers on the Most Dangerous Offenders unit. The same revenue will also create a Career Criminal unit in Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce’s office to beef up her ability to prosecute repeat- and multiple-offenders; and it will expand the problem property and nuisance crime strike force. In addition, new state and federal grants we sought and received are aimed at reducing the number of paroled criminals who return to lives of crime.

I actually thought the report had some validity and that we should address crime in a more direct manner. Here is how I finished my post at the time:

St. Louis may well be the most dangerous city in America. I can accept that and work to change the underlying causes. When you vote Tuesday keep that in mind, are you voting for more of the same? When filing opens at the end of this month for half the seats in the Board of Aldermen & two seats on the school board will you sit back and assume that others will solve these issues or will you step forward to chart a new course for the city? Our entrenched leadership has gotten us where we are today — the top of the most dangerous city list. It is now up to us to work to change that reality. If we do not, we cannot bitch about remaining on top in the years to come.

In my post I outlined causes dating back nearly a hundred years. The root causes of our crime issues pre-date anyone currently in office or working for the police force.

I’m not a fan of political postcards that make bold statements yet fail to provide the necessary information to validate the claims. If you want to make reference to items then let me know what those are.

I looked up the archives of the Post-Dispatch and found no such headline. The headline on October 31st ran as; “City fears fallout from crime ranking ‘This thing is bogus,’ chief of staff for Mayor Slay says.” I reviewed several articles and columnist stories and not only did I not find such a headline I did not even find such a combination of words. Basically, it appears the Reed campaign has attempted to give the impression the Post-Dispatch ran such a headline. [Update 2/15/2007 @ 9:30pm — I was wrong in the above statement — the St. Louis Post-Dispatch did indeed run the above headline for a article on page B4 on 10/30/2006. My apologies for anyone damaged by my research error.]

The backside is even harder to verify. What was the legislation on which Shrewsbury said no to additional revenue? Was that part of a bigger budget — I don’t think he has any sort of line item veto power. Also, MayorSlay.com indicated above that we the voters approved additional revenues for prosecutors. What is the real story?

And this letter signed by “every prosecutor” in the city? Did that relate directly to Shrewsbury as this is hinting or was it a general plea for more funds — which they will be receiving due to our vote to increase business licenses fees.

I think we do have crime issues to address but it seems to me that Mr. Reed and the majority of aldermen backing him have more than enough votes to pass whatever legislation they see fit to improve the situation in St. Louis. It is Mayor Slay that seems to be the one indicating crime is not as big of a deal as this “bogus” report makes it out to be.

To my knowledge this is postcard is the first such swing by either candidate in this race. If one or both are going to go this route they need to back up their claims with names, dates, and places so the information can be verified. Without such verification, I do not give much credibility to these types of statements. And for the record, I have not spoken with either the Shrewsbury or Reed campaigns about this postcard — it came in the mail this afternoon and I knew I needed a post for today.

Update 2/16/2007 @ 10:15pm — An update has been posted at LewisReed.net regarding this postcard. Included in a PDF copy of the letter signed by prosecutors requesting additional funds from E&A. Like BJC, the motion failed to get a second. All the blame is being laid on Jim Shrewsbury while Darlene Green is getting none of the blame. This seems unfair. Why not call out Darlene Green as well?

Update 2/20/2007 @ 9:40am — From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on 6/16/2005 – the day after the E&A did not approve Joyce’s request:

With nearly two dozen prosecutors watching, top city officials reached a compromise Wednesday that will give St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce some of the extra money her office was seeking.

The Estimate Board voted to allow Joyce to spend an additional $60,000 on salaries but denied an earlier request for about twice as much money.

Mayor Francis Slay wanted the higher amount.

“It’s a step in the right direction but an extremely small step,” said Slay, whose motion to inject $123,111 for prosecutor pay raises died without a second.

The Estimate Board, which must approve the city’s budget, is composed of Slay, Board of Aldermen President Jim Shrewsbury and Comptroller Darlene Green. Joyce, with many of her employees crowded behind her, asked the board for a larger budget to help retain senior attorneys and recruit new ones.

She said that she was disappointed in the Estimate Board’s decision — that it does not put any new money into the budget, but only allows money previously dedicated to unfilled positions to be spent on existing personnel.

So Joyce moved unused money from her budget to give some raises to some attorney’s on her staff.  Oh wait, the postcard didn’t mention that?  I for one think the prosecutors deserve fair compensation for their work, especially relative to the City Counselors office but I don’t for a moment think if the E&A had approved the extra funds for their budget that somehow we’d not appear in the top five of that annual report.  The day before the vote the Post-Dispatch wrote:

Mayor Francis Slay has come out in favor of the money for Joyce’s office. James Shrewsbury, president of the Board of Aldermen, said Tuesday that he’s unlikely to support the request. The final member of the Estimate Board, Comptroller Darlene Green, is said to be on the fence.

Joyce’s effort falls in a year in which cases handled by her office created some political tension in City Hall.

In February, for example, Green had to testify in the trial of Operation Big Vote founder Nonaresa Montgomery, who was found guilty of perjury for lying about whether she could track fraudulent voter registration cards. Part of the trial centered on what was said during a meeting in Green’s campaign office although she was not accused of any wrongdoing.

It seems to me that if people want to be upset it is both with Green & Shrewsbury.  The above postcard makes it out as though Shrewsbury killed it on his own.  And that if he hadn’t, we would not have been named the worse city for crime some 15 months later.

Helping You Submit “Open Records” Requests

Ever considered submitting your own request for public records but didn’t know how to go about the process? Well, the first step is to review the excellent ‘Missouri Sunshine Law’ webpage from the Missouri Attorney General. This resource is well organized and informative. To get you started it even includes sample language.

The next step is to know who to submit your request to. With so many departments and agencies it can get confusing. To make life easier, I requested a complete list of the “custodians of record” for the City of St. Louis. I took the 7-page Word document and put it in columns to that it wouldn’t be so paper consuming. You can download the 4-page PDF file here. So now you’ll know, based on which department has the records you are seeking, who you should contact. Sadly, the list prepared in December and just received by me last week is already out of date. A first step before mailing/faxing/emailing off your request for records would be to call that department and confirm the person listed is still the current custodian of record.

Maybe if the city receives enough requests for rumored projects we’ll start to see them being more forthcoming rather than wait until the week the legislation is being introduced? Yeah, I know, probably not but one needs to attempt to be optimistic every so often.

‘Roger & Me’ Raises Old Questions That Are Still With Us.

In class on Saturday we watched the classic Michael Moore documentary, Roger & Me. You may recall this was Moore’s first film and it focused on his hometown of Flint Michigan. The topics covered are wide-ranging from corporate greed (GM was making a big profit in those days), outsourcing jobs, a community’s heavy reliance on a single employer, and the costs to lure tourists to town.  A short sequel, called Pets or Meat, is online.
Flint, located an hour or so from Detroit, was the auto capital of the world at one time and was closely tied with General Motors. Between GM and associated suppliers the auto industry was the employment base. The town, like so many, had a downtown that had seen better days. Hoping to bring new life, in 1981 they opened a luxury Hyatt Regency Hotel w/convention center and a “festival marketplace” known as Water Street Pavilion. In 1984 they opened a theme park called AutoWorld which, I kid you not, had a reproduction of their old main street. All were intended to bring in droves of tourists.

The $100 million AutoWorld theme park wasn’t even open a year. The hotel & marketplace both eneded up closing within a decade. All three were internally focused projects with little relationship to each other or the real city. Instead of returning their main street (Saginaw St. btw) to its former glory they went for the big splash projects popular in the times.

Around this same time St. Louis had followed much of the same formula. We already had our convention center in place in the 1970s but we’d see new hotel projects and expansions of the center on the boards in the 80s. We also went crazy with two competing shopping destinations downtown; St. Louis Union Station and St. Louis Centre.

Each time our convention facilities failed to produce the desired revenue, the answer was to expand. Either we needed more floor space to attract larger and larger conventions or the answer was a dedicated convention hotel. Many conventions I have seen both in town and in other cities fit comfortably within the context of a hotel — the days of the mega convention are coming to an end. In reality, the convention route for tourist dollars may never have been as hyped. Here is the executive summary from a 2005 Brookings report titled ‘Space Available: The Realities of Convention Centers as Economic Development Strategy:’

To cities the lure of the convention business has long been the prospect of visitors emptying their wallets on meals, lodging, and entertainment, helping to rejuvenate ailing downtowns.

However, an examination of the convention business and city and state spending on host venues finds that:

• The overall convention marketplace is declining in a manner that suggests that a recovery or turnaround is unlikely to yield much increased business for any given community, contrary to repeated industry projections. Moreover this decline began prior to the disruptions of 9-11 and is exacerbated by advances in communications technology. Currently, overall attendance at the 200 largest tradeshow events languishes at 1993 levels.

• Nonetheless, localities, sometimes with state assistance, have continued a type of arms race with competing cities to host these events, investing massive amounts of capital in new convention center construction and expansion of existing facilities. Over the past decade alone, public capital spending on convention centers has doubled to $2.4 billion annually, increasing convention space by over 50 percent since 1990. Nationwide, 44 new or expanded convention centers are now in planning or construction.

• Faced with increased competition, many cities spend more money on additional convention amenities, like publicly-financed hotels to serve as convention “headquarters.” Another competitive response has been to offer deep discounts to tradeshow groups. Despite dedicated taxes to pay off the public bonds issued to build convention centers, many—including Washington, D.C and St. Louis—operate at a loss.

This analysis should give local leaders pause as they consider calls for ever more public investment into the convention business, while weighing simultaneously where else scarce public funds could be spent to boost the urban economy.

The full report is worth the read because several pages focuses on St. Louis as a case study. It goes through all the history from the 1970s through to a few years ago. Concluding with:

St. Louis used the vast bulk of its $130 million in federal empowerment bonds authorization, fully 75 percent, in pursuit of its convention hotel dream. It also took on the obligation to repay another $50 million backed by its HUD community development block
grant funds. The commitment to the hotel, rather than some other form of job creation or economic development, thus represents a substantial opportunity cost. Now, with the hotel failing to meet its operating costs or debt service, the city of St. Louis will be forced to use $500,000 in federal aid to meet the debt service cost this year.

But the bill for the convention center and headquarters hotel in a highly competitive market does not stop there. The Moody’s assessment of the hotel’s financial prospects argued that its future success “will depend in part on continued redevelopment of down-
town,” with the city seeking to “fast track certain downtown redevelopment efforts.” The likelihood is that St. Louis and the state of Missouri will continue to pour public capital investment and tax subsidies into the downtown area and convention competition, despite
the limited returns. The city is thus regularly subsidizing the convention center at the expense of other public services or other revitalization strategies.

So when you are wondering why we don’t have money to maintain Forest Park just keep failed projects like the $90 million St. Louis Centre (now with a new round of funding backed by the city), St. Louis Marketplace (costing us $1 million a year) and the convention center fiasco. Elected officials continue to pour money into mega projects with promises of big returns.

French & Patterson on KDHX’s Collateral Damage Tonight, 7pm

Not to be confused with the British comedy team, French & Saunders, but Antonio French of PubDef.net and myself will be guests tonight on KDHX’s Collateral Damage program hosted by DJ Wilson and Fred Hessel.  With only a half hour program we certainly won’t be able to touch on all the items in the news of late.  Tune in at 7pm, 88.1FM.

“Blairmont Scheme” Is Fulfillment of Official City Plans

Much has been written lately about the sinister plot, known to many as “Blairmont”, to bulldoze North St. Louis (specifically the St. Louis Place neighborhood). The focus has been on various straw companies such as Blairmont Associates, LLC and part owner Paul McKee. McKee is a founder of well known commercial contractor Paric, an officer in McEagle Development and current Chairman of BJC Healthcare. In other words, a prominent citizen for all that’s worth.

The major issue has been these companies are buying hundreds of properties, including some very historic structures, and letting them sit empty and decaying. A few have had some devistating fires. Nobody has been able to track down any more information on the motives & intention behind these purchases. Interestingly, the answer was under our noses the whole time.

This is all part of a public plan, one of many actually.

The city’s 1947 master plan highlighted many areas immediately south and north of downtown, indicating they were obsolete. You know, places like the trendy Soulard neighborhood. This plan called for it to be wiped clean and given a fresh start with cul-de-sac streets and lots of the much touted “open space.” Subsequent plans have followed along this same theme with the “Team Four” plan, a reaction to an early 70s research report from the Rand Corporation commenting on the conditions in St. Louis, calling for reduced services to parts of North St. Louis so that people will leave.

In 2002 the city’s Planning Commission adopted the 5th Ward Comprehensive Neighborhood Plan. It should be noted the boundaries are the old 5th Ward, not the boundaries as changed around the same time as the plan was being adopted. Anyway, in the plan a large swath of land just north of the long vacant Pruitt-Igoe site is shown hatched out with the designation “Proposed Large Land Use (for further study).” In other words, level anything remaining and start fresh. There it is, fully adopted after numerous public meetings and everything.

[Above: 5th ward zoning proposal shows large white area with red diagonal lines as a proposed large land use]

McKee’s various companies own many properties within the large land use area as well as areas surrounding it. Much has changed since the first public meetings where held in the Fall of 1999, adoption in April 2002 and today. In places the change has been good — new infill construction (some of it actually attractive, the rest not so attractive) as well as strong renovation efforts. In other parts of the ward, however, people have left and buildings have continued to deteriorate and be razed.

In the Spring of 2005 the city adopted a new Strategic Land-Use Plan. For the most part it was simply a recording of uses already in existence but in places the plan does call for changes. Also, the city has failed to follow through with the next step which was to be new zoning which cooresponds to the land uses. In this land-use plan, however, we can see the large area from the 2002 5th ward plan designated as “Neighborhood Development Areas (NDA):”

Residential/non-residential areas with substantial amounts of vacant land and abandoned buildings suitable for new residential construction of scale/associated neighborhood services, respecting stable properties that may be considered as part of any new development. Opportunities for new housing construction/replatting at critical mass scale defining a new neighborhood character over time.

The land-use plan goes further than the 5th Ward plan, calling out additional land as “Opportunity Areas:”

Key underutilized locations where the use of the land is in transition. Location and site characteristics of these areas offer particular challenges/opportunities that could be advantageous to a range of development activity. This designation is intended to be flexible and specific development proposals will be entertained as they present themselves.

Stable areas such as the Old North St. Louis neighborhood and the area immediately surrounding St. Louis Place Park are designated as “Neighborhood Preservation Areas:”

Areas where the existing housing and corner commercial building stock will be preserved and augmented with new infill residential and corner commercial development physically integrated with, and primarily serving the immediate neighborhood. These areas generally consist of stable residential areas of the City, including but not limited to historic districts, where the character of the neighborhood is currently well preserved with relatively few vacant lots and abandoned buildings. The plan contemplates continued preservation and improvement, with quality rehabilitation and infill new construction that is sensitive to the character of existing residences. Commercial and institutional uses catering to the immediate needs of the neighborhood are acceptable and reflect the traditional role such activity has played in the history of the City.

So, in keeping with officially approved plans I expect to see some large-scale reconstruction in the area just north of Pruitt-Igoe as well as lots of infill housing in surrounding areas such as Old North St. Louis.

Local architectural firm Arcturis has been mentioned by others as being involved in whatever the plans are for the area. I asked Arcturis COO Vernon Remiger about “Blairmont” earlier this week and he declined to comment. This tells me their firm is most likely still involved. Of course, the bulk of this area does need large quantities of new housing. In places like Old North St. Louis the neighborhood itself is working with developers and they have been building attractive new housing and rehabbing other buildings. Numerous vacant lots remain throughout the neighborhood.

For me my concerns are several. In areas where large-scale redevelopment is proposed will it simply involve possiblly replatting the lots to be slightly wider or do they want to screw up the highly functional grid of streets & alleys? Furthermore, do they want to build a bunch of similar looking single family detached housing or will we see a mix of housing types such as townhouses, live/work spaces and condos/apartments over storefronts? What about new alley houses like we used to have and like those being built out in New Town at St. Charles.

The problem with building most new construction next to one of our older houses is no matter the condition of the old house it almost always looks more graceful than the new. The materials and proportions are better, the detailing is stunning. New housing, next to old, just pales. This, I believe, is why many suburban developers seek to raze existing properties.

For further reading check out the “World of Blairmont” on The Ecology of Absence webiste. They’ve compiled a list of their own posts on the subject as well as from other sources, including the RFT.