Author: Brian J. Noggle

Manchester mayor expects retail center will happen:

In a tie vote, the Manchester Tax Increment Financing Commission declined Tuesday to recommend that the city approve the Manchester Highlands shopping center project – and the tax increment financing plan that would go with it.

The six members of the commission appointed by city officials favored the Pace Properties Inc. project. The six members appointed by other jurisdictions, mainly St. Louis County and the Parkway School District, opposed the proposal.

Aldermen are expected to consider the commission’s action at a meeting Nov. 7. Mayor Larry Miles said he expected the project to move forward anyway.

This isn’t taxation without representation at all. It’s reduction of taxation without representation, and although it does place a larger tax burden on the non-Elect amongst us who don’t have the juice to impress municipal officials, it completely adheres to the founding philosophy of our nation. Also:

Some city-appointed commission members urged Pace to avoid using eminent domain to get land for Manchester Highlands. Doug Huff, vice president of Pace, said his company generally avoided its use.

As a mere citizen of a former representative democracy, where governments exercised emininent domain and other rights ceded to governments by its citizens, I supplicantly plead that Pace also not raise an army and compel me to shop at its little principalities scattered among the formerly free city-states that comprise what was the United States of America.

Columnist charged with domestic battery:

Chicago Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member Neil Steinberg was arrested at his home late Wednesday and charged with striking his wife during an argument.

Steinberg was charged with domestic battery and interfering with the reporting of domestic battery, both misdemeanors, Northbrook Police Sgt. Tony Matheny said.

I’ve enjoyed Steinberg’s column for years, but one thing I’ve disliked is when he’s made cheap shots on Bob Greene, former columnist for the Chicago Tribune for a slightly sordid but legal adulterous dalliance with a teenager. Now he’s got his own troubles and material for cheap shots from people who disagree with him.

There’s a lesson to be learned from this, gentle reader. Unfortunately, it kinda eludes me, and I expect I, too, will continue to be snarky until my own wife beating comes to light.

Please, gentle reader, send me flowers when my beautiful wife puts me in the hospital.

1. Declare something a fundamental right:
   

   San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who became internationally known for his campaign a year ago to legalize gay marriage, said on Monday he considered wireless Internet access a fundamental right of all citizens.

   Newsom told a news conference that he was bracing for a battle with telephone and cable interests, along with state and U.S. regulators, whom he said were looking to derail a campaign by cities to offer free or low-cost municipal Wi-Fi services.

   Wi-Fi is a short-range wireless technology that is now built into most laptop computers and is increasingly offered on handheld computers and certain mobile phones. Local officials are mulling plans to blanket every nook and cranny of this hilly city of 750,000 residents with Wi-Fi access.

   “This is inevitable — Wi-Fi. It is long overdue,” Newsom told a news conference at San Francisco’s City Hall. “It is to me a fundamental right to have access universally to information,” he said.

2. Fund it with tax dollars–or do you want to roll back all civil rights and repeal the right to vote for blacks???!

Lindenwood wants city to use eminent domain

Lindenwood University officials want the city to use the controversial power of eminent domain to force out a heating and air conditioning business to make way for a new fine and performing arts center.

Lindenwood President Dennis Spellmann asked city officials Tuesday night to consider using such authority to allow a redevelopment corporation, headed by Spellmann and two other university officials, to purchase a 4-acre site along West Clay Street near the northwest corner of West Clay and First Capitol Drive. The private university has already acquired about 20 acres for the project.

The 138,000-square-foot, $32 million complex would feature a 1,375-seat auditorium for live performances as well as classrooms, rehearsal studios and office space. University officials hope to begin construction before the end of the year.

Local universities seem to have some sort of phallic competition regarding these venuews; UMSL has opened one which continues to struggle with low attendance and debt, but the president of Lindenwood wants the city of St. Charles to steal some land to give his university land to build another. Well, not the university, per se, but a redevelopment corporation run by him and a couple of other officials.

But he’s been pushed to the end of the rope:

Spellmann said he’s avoided using eminent domain to acquire property in the past but thinks the university has exhausted its options in this case.

Spellman’s damn benevolent to avoid using his power of stealing private property, but he’s almost exhausted all options.

But Spellman fails to, purposefully I would suspect, to take the remaining legitimate option available to the university: Build his boondoggle somewhere else. Or don’t bother. Two options Spellman doesn’t include in his list of options for confiscating someone else’s land for his own ends.

Leader of New Orleans Police Resigns

Police Superintendent Eddie Compass resigned Tuesday after four turbulent weeks in which the police force was wracked by desertions and disorganization in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.

I’ll grant Police Superintendent, but leader? I think not.