Generic Form Letters Mailed To Owners Of Poorly Maintained Surface Parking Lot Notifying Them Of Code Violations

In May I posted about the parking lot to the East of my condo building, see Deplorable Surface Parking Lot At 1601 Locust Cited, Fined. The next month I submitted a request to the city for copies of the notice(s) sent to the owner. I’ve finally received  them.

Here’s the timeline:

• Friday June 3 @ 9:09am: Emailed request to St. Louis’ centralized custodian of records.
• Wednesday June 8 @ 4:43pm:  Reply from the city acknowledging the request, describing the process. “We anticipate completing this process during the week of June 13, 2016.”
• Tuesday June 21 @ 10:03am: I replied to followup on the status.
• Friday August 12 @ 11:02am: I replied again, but copied Maggie Crane in the mayor’s office, I wrote: “It’s been nearly three (3) months since my request was made. Guess I’ll have to file a complaint with the state…”
• Friday August 12 @ 11:46am: I received a reply from the custodian of records: “I apologize for the delay in getting back to you regarding your above-referenced Sunshine Law request. I appreciate your patience in this matter. Attached are the responsive documents.”

I was initially encouraged when I found out the city had centralized the request process, as opposed to having a person in each department be familiar with Missouri’s Sunshine Law and ensure compliance. I was disappointed I didn’t receive a response by the date they said I would. I was upset when I didn’t get a reply to my followup email. By the time I remembered in mid-August I was furious.  I should’ve copied someone else on my initial followup of June 21st.  Lesson learned.

Here are the documents I received:

• May 2015
• June 2015
• January 2016
• April 2016

I now know the name of the building inspector, we’ve talked by phone and are communicating. I’ve asked if the owner is being fined and if it can be sent to court for prosecution of the violations. I’m not an expert in these matters, but I don’t think mailing letters to an LLC in Illinois regarding a surface parking lot with the first sentence that reads “Thank you for choosing to live in the City of St. Louis” is an effective strategy.

I didn’t want to do this, but yesterday morning I emailed Carl Phillips at Parking Enforcement and asked them to warn/ticket people who end up over/on the sidewalk. After lunch I went out and the same two cars from 6 days earlier had something under their wiper.

Hopefully drivers will start paying attention, or will park elsewhere. If the owners lose enough business perhaps they’ll take action.

— Steve Patterson

b

b

b

August 2nd Primary Precinct Turnout Ranged From 7.46% to 675%: St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners (UPDATED)

NOTE: A response from the Board of Elections is at the bottom.

While the battle over absentee ballots on the 78th House race continuers (see Absentee ballot applications and their envelopes are public record, St. Louis judge rules), I decided to focus on voter turnout at the precinct-level.

Two days after the August 2nd primary I posted about the outcome: A Look at Some of Tuesday’s Primary Results. On the 15th the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners generated at detailed final report based on ward and precinct.

The overall turnout for the city was 28.26%. Of course, some wards have higher turnout than others. The ward-level turnout ranged from a low of 20>2% (25th) to a high of 38.1% (16th) — source. Each of the 28 wards are divided into 6-11 precincts — 222 in total. I entered the turnout from each into a spreadsheet so I could find the precincts with the highest & lowest turnout.The results weren’t what I expected.  Remember, overall the citywide turnout was 28.26% and the ward-level range was 20.2-38.1%.

Three precincts had single digit turnout:

• Ward 19, Precinct 2: 9.8% (5 out of 51 registered voters)
• Ward 08, Precinct 6: 8.45% (6 out of 71)
• Ward 09, Precinct 7: 7.46% (5 out of 67)

On the high side there were 9 precincts that were in the 40s, and another 4 at 50% or higher. This is where it got strange:

• Ward 14, Precinct 8: 50% (28 out of 56 registered voters)
• Ward 02, Precinct 6: 78.7% (11 out of 14)
• Ward 01, Precinct 7: 106.42% (116 out of 109)
• Ward 15, Precinct 7: 675%! (27 out of 4)

I emailed St. Louis Board of Elections commissioner Gary Stoff Thursday morning to enquire about these impossibly high numbers. Stoff quickly replied saying they weren’t possible, he’d look into it and get back to me. At this point I’ve not heard back and the results with these numbers are still online, here. I assume at some point they’ll take it down, so I’ve uploaded a copy here (3,144 pages). It’s dated 8/15/16 at 14:36:35. I also uploaded the summary results here.

I don’t know why some precincts have so few registered voters, when many others have over 1,000. Is geography (distance to polling place) keeping some voters away? How can there be more voters than are registered? I hope we find out what happened before November 8th.

— Steve Patterson

The following was received on 8/31/2016 @ 1:52am:

Steve — The reason for the discrepancy in that those precincts were located in polling sites with more than one precinct. The election judges in those precincts checked in the voters who came to their table correctly, but used the wrong encoders (encoders from another precinct in that same polling place) to issue voters a ballot for the touch screen machines. As a result, the numbers are skewed in those precincts. There is no way to correct the mix-up in the database for this past election, but we will make every effort in our next round of poll worker training to impress upon the poll workers the importance of not mixing up encoders.

Thank you for calling this matter to my attention.

Gary

Sunday Poll: Two Questions on Urban Food Production

A number of things online recently got me thinking about urban food production:

City and suburban agriculture takes the form of backyard, roof-top and balcony gardening, community gardening in vacant lots and parks, roadside urban fringe agriculture and livestock grazing in open space. (USDA)

One of the things that got me thinking about this was a Facebook post by Ald Cara Spencer, which included a link to a local survey on policy:

St. Louis Food Policy Coalition wants to hear from you about your interest in growing food in the city!

We want to learn from St. Louis residents 1) what you and your neighbors are already growing, 2) what types of agriculture activities you would like to see in the city, and 3) how you would like those activities to be regulated. (SLU)

Because of the range of topics, I decided this deserves two questions today.

Question #1

Question #2

Please respond to both before they close at 8pm. If you haven’t already, please also respond to the survey mentioned above.

— Steve Patterson

An Example Of How The St louis Region Fails Pedestrians, Transit Users

Part of the implied contract when taking a bus to a destination is when you’re dropped off at your stop, you’ll be able to get to the corresponding stop in the opposite direction for the return trip. Seems simple enough, right? But in many parts of the St. Louis region being able to reach a bus stop in the opposite direction is impossible if you’re disabled. I don’t go looking for them, I run across them just going about my life.

Since the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 became law, transit operators, like Metro St. Louis, formerly Bi-State Development Agency, have equipped their fleet of buses with either a lift or ramp in new low-floor models. This permits those us who use wheelchairs to board every bus with access to hundreds of routes throughout the region — theoretically, at least. Bus routes are operated on municipal/county roads throughout our region. The responsibility for these public rights-of-way (PROW) are that of the municipality, county, or state — depending upon the entity that has assumed responsibility. Regardless, the transit agency generally isn’t responsible for the pedestrian infrastructure (sidewalks, curb cuts. etc) to/from their bus stops.

Today’s example involves a 2.5 mile stretch of Manchester Ave from McCausland Ave to Kingshighway Blvd — all in the City of St. Louis. A third of this stretch is fronted by the St. Louis Marketplace — a strip retail center that opened in 1992 — it was St. Louis’ very first TIF project. A former industrial area was reclaimed for retail by relocating railroad tracks further away from Manchester. The entire site was new from scratch and post-ADA.  Furthermore, Manchester Ave has had a bus route for the entire 26 years I’ve lived in St. Louis — probably for at least 3-4 decades. For years it was the #59, but after the Cross County MetroLink line opened in 2006 the #59 stops at Maplewood and the #32 was extended West to Maplewood.

The morning of August 11th my husband forgot his phone, so I decided to take it to him. His morning client lives a few blocks North of Manchester Ave. in the Franz Park neighborhood (aka Dogtown), 24th ward. With my car key I was able to leave his phone in the door pocket and a note on the seat. I needed to return to Manchester Ave and catch the #32 Eastbound.

When I boarded the bus from this stop the driver asked me how I managed to get to the stop!  On the bus I noticed a stop further East that I’ve blogged about before.

I paid attention to all the stops as we passed each one. I decided I needed to look at the entire stretch, not just one stop here or there. Again, the distance between Kingshighway and McCausland is 2.5 miles. There are 12 MetroBus stops in each direction.  All 12 in the Westbound direction are accessible — not ideal but adequate.  However, in the Eastbound direction only half are accessible/adequate.

Six aren’t accessible, although I was able to power through the grass to reach one of them. Four of these six inaccessible bus stops are in front of the St. Louis Marketplace, the retail development that was created 100% from scratch after the ADA became law. Let’s take a look.

Previous posts on a couple of bus stops on this stretch of Manchester:

• September 2015: Dangerous Reaching Bus Stop On Manchester At Hampton
• November 2015: Macklind Ave Is An Inaccesible, Incomplete Street

Gee, I wonder why few walk or use public transit? Seems so inviting…

— Steve Patterson

Reusing Reusable Shopping Bags; Need For A Bag Giveaway Event

I’ve been using reusable shopping bags for years now, it’s just habit. I’m also a fan of laws that ban single-use plastic bags or impose a fee for their use. About 160 cities in 17 states have such laws, source. Discount grocery store chain Aldi has charged for bags for years, encouraging customers to reuse them.

I keep two bags on my wheelchair — both cloth bags I purchased: one at Trader Joe’s and the other at Eataly Chicago. The TJ’s bag is large, this is my regular bag. The Eataly bag is secondary, in case I want to buy more than the other will hold.  The large cloth bag from Trader Joe’s is the same design as the free Farm Aid bag I got in my media kit when the charity concert came to St. Louis in 2009. That well-used bag is in the trunk of our car, along with 2-3 heavy non-fabric bags.

So we have 5-6 bags that get used on a regular basis. Logically, the heavier the bag the more resources it took to produce and transport it. If it gets reused often it is less of a burden on the environment.

Some reusable bags need to be used over 100 times before they’re better for the environment than single-use plastic bags. Polyethylene bags need to be used four times, a polypropylene bag must be used at least 11 times, and a cotton bag must be used at least 131 times, according to a study by the U.K. Environment Agency. (MarketWatch: The truth about reusable shopping bags)

I estimate the Farm Aid bag I got in 2009 has been used over 1,000 times. Because of the size, it easily replaces 2-3 typical plastic grocery bags. The newer TJs cloth bag has been used hundreds of times at this point — I occasionally toss it into the washing machine to keep it looking good.

While we get regular use out of 5-6 bags, we have many more not getting used. These days every event, conference, etc has a bag. Attend a major car show, for example, and you could go home with a dozen bags — from one event! We both show restraint at events, taking only one bag to hold materials collected. We go for the highest quality available.

Then what? No, we don’t discard them — that would be wasteful. Sometimes a new bag will replace an older one we’d been using regularly. But most end up in our spare closet.

We don’t need the closet space, but there’s no point to us having all these bags when others might get use out of them. I wasn’t even sure how many bags we had, so I got them all out and organized them based on size from small to extra large.

Yes, nearly 40 reusable bags not being reused! Many, however, have been used more than once. Still, I’d love a way to get all of these into the hands of people who will use them to help give up taking single-use plastic bags at stores. Plus we have an assortment of other bags: lunch, courier, etc. I don’t want to organize it, but I’d love to see an event where bags are collected from people than distributed to the community.

Any ideas? Does this already exist?

— Steve Patterson