Sunday Poll: Is It OK For An Alderman To Also Be A Lobbyist?

The elected office of St. Louis Aldermen is considered a part0time position, most have jobs. The jobs they hold vary greatly. The job of one new alderman has been in the news recently:

Last month, a company offered to outfit every St. Louis Metropolitan Police Officer with a camera for one year for free. Now, News 4 has learned one elected official is getting paid by that same company.

Sarah Wood Martin is the Alderwoman for the 11th Ward, elected earlier this year.

According to documents News 4 obtained, just last week, she filed forms to be a lobbyist on behalf of the company Axon. (KMOV)

This is the subject of today’s poll.

This poll will close at 8pm tonight.

— Steve Patterson

Sunday Poll: Should Vehicle Lanes Lost During Road Diet Projects Be Put Back?

For more than a decade the East-West Gateway Council of Governments, our Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), has been working on a road diet project it calls  The Great Streets Initiative:

East-West Gateway launched the St. Louis Great Streets Initiative in early 2006 to expand the way communities think of their streets. Rather than viewing a roadway project as solely a way to move more cars and trucks faster, the goal of the St. Louis Great Streets Initiative is to trigger economic and social benefits by centering communities around interesting, lively and attractive streets that serve all modes of transportation. (Great Streets)

Communities all over the country have been doing the same thing for the same reasons, but in the Los Angeles area one community is putting lanes back:

The move eliminated traffic lanes and added a bike lane, reducing parts of Venice Boulevard, Pershing Drive, Jefferson Boulevard, Vista del Mar and Culver Street to one lane in each direction in order to slow cars and make streets safer for bike riders.

The plan, however, left area residents in an uproar.

An online petition calling for an end to the project gathered thousands of signatures and an online campaign has raised tens of thousands of dollars for its supporters to take legal action against the city and organize opposition.

The anger over the elimination of lanes prompted an effort to recall Bonin.

The changes announced Wednesday include the restoration of lanes to Vista del Mar while still allowing transportation officials to continue to address the city’s liability issues while maintaining coastal access, Bonin said. (CBS LA)

Today’s poll is about road diet projects like South Grand and Natural Bridge here in St. Louis.

This non-scientific poll will close at 8pm.

— Steve Patterson

Sunday Poll: Are Current Gas Prices High or Low?

A recent online debate reminded me not everyone views gas prices as I do.

Over the years gas prices have risen and fallen, resulting in automotive changes. The first in my lifetime was the 70s oil embargo:

During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military and to gain leverage in the post-war peace negotiations. Arab OPEC members also extended the embargo to other countries that supported Israel including the Netherlands, Portugal, and South Africa. The embargo both banned petroleum exports to the targeted nations and introduced cuts in oil production. Several years of negotiations between oil-producing nations and oil companies had already destabilized a decades-old pricing system, which exacerbated the embargo’s effects. (Secretary of State)

Our daily paper had a recent story talking about the first wave of compact US cars, less than a decade before I was born:

The “compact” segment of the American car market was new to most consumers. VW had made inroads with their bug, but many folks looked on them more as a curiosity than something they would actually plunk down their hard earned money to buy. But, with gasoline prices “soaring” to around 25 cents per gallon, some were taking a second look at these smaller cars.

Chalk one up for the little guys. Studebaker beat the Big 3 to the punch by introducing the Lark a full year before Ford brought us the Falcon, Chevrolet debuted the Corvair and Chrysler unveiled their Valiant.

Studebaker came out of the chute with a full lineup of body styles consisting of a 2-door sedan, 4-door sedan, 2-door hardtop and a 2-door station wagon … all in base Deluxe or top-of-the-line Regal trim levels. A 4-door station wagon and a convertible were added for 1960. (Post-Dispatch)

My parents, again before I was born, bought a new VW and later a new Plymouth Valiant. In between they had, of all things, a used Cadillac!

Anyway, today’s poll is about how you perceive current gas prices. High? Low?

This poll will close at 8pm tonight,

— Steve Patterson

Sunday Poll: Are Disasters Part of God’s Plan?

There have been quite a few recent disasters: multiple hurricanes and the earthquake in Mexico. Some reactions differed from the rest. For example, actor Kirk Cameron.

The former child actor posted a video on Facebook saying that Hurricane Harvey and Irma were all a part of God’s plan and sent by Him so we can repent.
“How should we look at two giant hurricanes coming back to back like this?” Cameron said in a Facebook video posted from the airport in Orlando Thursday. “Do we write them off as coincidence? Do we write it off as a statistical anomaly? Wow! Who would’ve thought? Is it just Mother Nature in a bad mood?” (Miami Herald)

You can watch Cameron’s video here. A well-known member of clergy, Joel Osteen had a more positive message for those dealing withHarvey:

During his televised sermon today, Osteen seemed to reference the storm that devastated huge swaths of Texas and Louisiana. And the way the preacher told it, hurricanes like Harvey are just God’s way of saying you can take a great and life-altering tragedy.

Bringing up a biblical story involving Jesus and his apostles sailing across a lake during a hurricane-like storm, Osteen said that Jesus didn’t wake up during the squall because he knew they could handle it. “If they were all going to die, he would have gotten up without them having to wake him up,” he exclaimed.

Osteen then went on to tell his congregation that sometimes they may call on God to “fix this right now” as they panic during a storm, but that God apparently has a plan.

“The reason it may seem like God is not waking up is not because he’s ignoring you, not because he’s uninterested, it’s because he knows you can handle it,” he stated.

Osteen added, “Take it as a compliment.” (Mediaite)

You can see Osteen’s sermon here.

Which brings us to today’s poll.

This poll will close at 8pm tonight, though any attempt to skew the results will prompt me to close it early.

— Steve Patterson

Sunday Poll: Would Razing An Existing Area Be Worthwhile To Get Amazon’s Second Headquarters?

On Thursday Amazon announced it wants to build a second headquarters somewhere in North America:

About 40,000 Amazonians work across 8.1 million square feet of office space in the company’s sprawling Seattle campus, and Amazon is on track to grow that physical footprint by half in the next five years.

The public search for a new headquarters will likely spark a bidding war among states and cities eager for a piece of one of America’s fastest-growing companies.

An eight-page request for proposal Amazon posted online Thursday said incentives offered to offset building and operating costs “will be significant factors in the decision-making process.” (Seattle Times)

St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson mentioned it at a speaking engagement that morning:

“We’re all abuzz this morning about Amazon’s announcement,” said St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson.

The mayor was speaking at the Governor’s Economic Development conference in downtown St. Louis on Thursday morning,

Krewson said the city is “putting together a team right now to make a very competitive” proposal.

Cities have until next month to apply through a special website, and the company said it will make a final decision next year. It gave few hints about where it would land, but did say it is looking at metropolitan areas with populations of more than a million that have the potential to attract top technical talent. (Post-Dispatch)

Amazon says the location doesn’t need to be contiguous, but the various sites “should be in proximity to each other to foster a sense of place and be pedestrian-friendly.” A greenfield site site would need to be about 100 acres — the size of the new NGA site.  I don’t know what existing site(s) we have in the St. Louis region that qualify. Today’s poll assumes some demolition would be necessary at some point.

This poll will close at 8pm tonight, results and my thoughts on Wednesday.

— Steve Patterson