Poll: Do you support the idea of “Participatory Budgeting” in St. Louis?

The idea of participatory budgeting has entered the local conversation. What is it? Glad you asked:

The process was first developed in Brazil in 1989, and there are now over 1,500 participatory budgets around the world. Most of these are at the city level, for the municipal budget. PB has also been used, however, for counties, states, housing authorities, schools and school systems, universities, coalitions, and other public agencies.

Though each experience is different, most follow a similar basic process: residents brainstorm spending ideas, volunteer budget delegates develop proposals based on these ideas, residents vote on proposals, and the government implements the top projects. For example, if community members identify recreation spaces as a priority, their delegates might develop a proposal for basketball court renovations. The residents would then vote on this and other proposals, and if they approve the basketball court, the city pays to renovate it. (The Participatory Budgeting Project)

Sounds like a way to get more people to participate in decisions rather than just complain after the fact. But how would this work on a local aldermanic level? We just need to look to Chicago’s 49th ward and Ald Joe Moore:

Over the past three years, I’ve asked my constituents–the residents of the 49th Ward–to decide how to spend $1 million in tax dollars.

Each alderman in Chicago gets over $1 million a year to allocate for various infrastructure improvements in his or her ward. This so-called “menu money” goes to resurface streets and alleys, repair sidewalks and curbs and gutters, put in new streetlights, and the like. I’ve also used the money to subsidize special infrastructure projects, such as the Harold Washington Playlot and the Willye White Community Center. This menu money is spent at the total discretion of each alderman.

Beginning with the 2009-10 budget cycle, I have ceded my decision-making authority to the residents of my ward through a process known as Participatory Budgeting, or “PB49,” in which all 49th Ward residents are eligible to vote directly on the infrastructure projects that are funded in our community.

The 49th Ward is the first political jurisdiction in the nation to adopt such an approach to public spending, and it’s been so well-received that I have pledged to make it a permanent fixture in the ward. Word of our success has spread. This year, three other Chicago aldermen have pledged to use participatory budgeting to decide how to spend their aldermanic menu money and other cities in the U.S., including New York City and Vallejo, California, are emulating our model. (source)

St. Louis, like Chicago, has funds available for each ward. These funds get allocated and spent each year with little to no input from the public. In some cases the money isn’t spent, the alderman decides to hoard the funds instead.

So what do you think, do you support this idea in St. Louis? The poll is in the right sidebar.

— Steve Patterson

Readers: Either February 14th or 15th is OK For St. Louis’ Birthday

The poll last week on St. Louis’ birthday was a dud, not getting many responses:

Q: Do you think St. Louis was founded on February 14th or 15th on 1764?
1. Either is OK 30 [45.45%]
2. 15th 15 [22.73%]
3. 14th 10 [15.15%]
4. Unsure/no opinion 7 [10.61%]
5. Other: 4 [6.06%]

Here are the “other” responses submitted:

1. Don’t care
2. founded in 1904 and downhill ever since
3. who cares
4. Show us a copy of the manuscript so that we can make an intelligent guess!

I’ll try to get a copy of the original document so we can see if we think the date was the 14th or 15th.

— Steve Patterson

Poll: Thoughts On Drone Use in Missouri?

You thought drones were just for warfare in far away lands? Thank again. As I watched the CBS Sunday Morning report Drones: Eyes in the sky (w/video) I liked the idea of using a personal drone to get good aerial photos to use here.

Suppose you’ve got a dangerous hostage situation; an unmanned aircraft can track the gunman. It can evaluate flooding, or help firefighters cheaply and safely without endangering lives, the argument goes.

(snip)

But today, you or I could go online, order a drone kit for a few hundred dollars, and fly the thing anywhere, legally.

Terry Kilby, a smartphone app designer, and his wife, Belinda, an art teacher, use theirs to take bird’s-eye view photographs of Baltimore.

“We can get something that is a totally unique and fresh perspective on images that you would ordinarily think that you’ve already seen before, but now it’s a completely new take on it,” said Belinda. (CBS Sunday Morning)

Their photos shown in the CBS report forced me to imagine the possibilities, although the cost is too steep for my purposes:

Now they shoot with a custom hexicopter, an approximately $3,000 flying photography studio that can climb as high as 400 feet. It’s outfitted with two cameras, GPS to lock and hold an altitude, and a gyroscope to keep it level. There are goggles Kilby can strap on to see exactly what the drone is seeing. (Baltimore Sun)

But Amazon has one for $299 that I could control from my iPhone (pictured). But I also thought I’d be concerned about someone controlling a drone outside my 4th floor windows.  In December a bill was introduced in the Missouri House regarding drone use:

The bill proposed by State Rep. Casey Guernsey, R-Bethany, would require law enforcement officers to get a warrant before using drones to gather evidence or other information about criminal activities. It also would ban people, organizations and state agencies from using unmanned aircraft to conduct surveillance of people, farms or agricultural operations without the owner’s permission. (KMOX)

The bill is HB46.

The poll this week seeks your thoughts on drones. Would this bill protect your privacy or infringe your rights to use a drone? The poll is in the right sidebar, mobile users need to switch to the full layout.

— Steve Patterson

Poll: Do You Think St. Louis Was Founded On February 14th or 15th in 1764?

Last week St. Louis turned 249 years old but some celebrated on the 14th while others noted the occasion on the 15th. Others celebrated both days rather than taking sides.

February 14, 1764 has been the accepted date for many years but some are saying Auguste Chouteau’s notes indicate the 15th:

The party was premature, says a history professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who has studied Chouteau’s original manuscript for a new book on the city’s founding. Fred Fausz, a professor at UMSL since 1991, says Chouteau’s “5” isn’t the best example of penmanship but is clear enough. Fausz says the 15 in Chouteau’s manuscript has a 5 that looks just like other 5s elsewhere in the paper, and nothing like the 4 that marks Page 4. Fausz also says Chouteau cited Feb. 15 in transcribed testimony for a land case in 1825, four years before he died. (recommended —  stltoday)

Chouteau was just 14 or 15 when St. Louis was founded. The above article from 2/14/2010 also presents evidence the date is the 14th.

The poll question is which date do you think St. Louis was founded? Or maybe we should just make next year’s 250th anniversary a two-day affair, embracing the controversy. The poll is located in the right sidebar.

— Steve Patterson

Poll: Do You Identify With Any Particular Religion?

Fewer and fewer people are identifying themselves as being part of a recognized religion:

More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion – or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether. (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life)

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life: U.S, Religious Landscape Study is interesting reading, to me at least.

Highlights in the report include

• Men are significantly more likely than women to claim no religious affiliation. Nearly one-in-five men say they have no formal religious affiliation, compared with roughly 13% of women.
• Among people who are married, nearly four-in-ten (37%) are married to a spouse with a different religious affiliation. (This figure includes Protestants who are married to another Protestant from a different denominational family, such as a Baptist who is married to a Methodist.) Hindus and Mormons are the most likely to be married (78% and 71%, respectively) and to be married to someone of the same religion (90% and 83%, respectively).
• Mormons and Muslims are the groups with the largest families; more than one-in-five Mormon adults and 15% of Muslim adults in the U.S. have three or more children living at home.
• The Midwest most closely resembles the religious makeup of the overall population. The South, by a wide margin, has the heaviest concentration of members of evangelical Protestant churches. The Northeast has the greatest concentration of Catholics, and the West has the largest proportion of unaffiliated people, including the largest proportion of atheists and agnostics.
• Of all the major racial and ethnic groups in the United States, black Americans are the most likely to report a formal religious affiliation. Even among those blacks who are unaffiliated, three-in-four belong to the “religious unaffiliated” category (that is, they say that religion is either somewhat or very important in their lives), compared with slightly more than one-third of the unaffiliated population overall.
• Nearly half of Hindus in the U.S., one-third of Jews and a quarter of Buddhists have obtained post-graduate education, compared with only about one-in-ten of the adult population overall. Hindus and Jews are also much more likely than other groups to report high income levels.
• People not affiliated with any particular religion stand out for their relative youth compared with other religious traditions. Among the unaffiliated, 31% are under age 30 and 71% are under age 50. Comparable numbers for the overall adult population are 20% and 59%, respectively.
• By contrast, members of mainline Protestant churches and Jews are older, on average, than members of other groups. Roughly half of Jews and members of mainline churches are age 50 and older, compared with approximately four-in-ten American adults overall.
• In sharp contrast to Islam and Hinduism, Buddhism in the U.S. is primarily made up of native-born adherents, whites and converts. Only one-in-three American Buddhists describe their race as Asian, while nearly three-in-four Buddhists say they are converts to Buddhism.
• Jehovah’s Witnesses have the lowest retention rate of any religious tradition. Only 37% of all those who say they were raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses still identify themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
• Members of Baptist churches account for one-third of all Protestants and close to one-fifth of the total U.S. adult population. Baptists also account for nearly two-thirds of members of historically black Protestant churches.
  

This changing religious landscape, along with a huge drop in population, has left St. Louis with many vacant & underutilized churches.  More on this on Wednesday February 20th when I present the results of this week’s poll.

The poll asks how you identify, the options are:

1. Christian – Protestant
2. Christian – Catholic
3. Christian – Mormon
4. Christian – Jehovah’s Witness
5. Christian – Other
6. Jewish
7. Buddhist
8. Muslim
9. Hindu
10. Other
11. Unaffiliated – Atheist
12. Unaffiliated -Agnostic
13. Unaffiliated -Secular
14. Unaffiliated -Religious
15. Don’t Know/Rather Not Say

The poll is in the right sidebar.

— Steve Patterson