Category: St. Louis

City collects special money to help developer out building a mostly empty development, then the developer goes bankrupt.

Pulaski foreclosed on a loan to Sappington Square LLC last year and is suing the corporation. In the meantime, a special one-cent sales tax that is designed to finance $2.5 million in public improvements at the site is still being collected, and the new agreement is needed to allow Pulaski Bank to access those funds as a developer.

How are cities going to make up for these losses on individual public-private partnerships? Volume.

I guess we know what happened to the people left unemployed by the Internet bubble of the late 1990s and who blew vast amounts of capital on things like Pets.com. They went back to school and got into government.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch juxtaposes these headlines today:

• Financial outlook for East St. Louis is seen as dire
  

  City revenue is expected to fall by more than 18 percent next year as officials struggle to maintain vital services, according to information presented Friday.

  Patrice Rencher, executive director of the East St. Louis Financial Advisory Authority, said the city must make “tough decisions” to deal with the expected revenue crunch next year. Revenue is projected to fall from $23.5 million this year to $19.2 million next year, Rencher said at the authority’s monthly meeting Friday.

• Could the Rams play in Illinois?
  

  When rumors had it that the owners of the St. Louis Rams are considering moving the team to a new stadium, one suggestion about a possible site came from someone who lives far outside the 314 area code.

  “It’s something to study,” said Illinois state Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) in an interview with KMOX-AM earlier this month, suggesting the state could help with financing.

Basically, it’s that time again, where billionaires who own sports teams come around with their hats simultaneously held out for a handout and mournfully over their hearts in regret that they need tax money to compete because although they’re billionaires and the sports teams are making money hand over fist, thanks to creative accounting they’re really impoverished. It’s only been 15 years since the football team did this. The Cardinals did this just a couple years back. And always they publicly mull over the possibility of graciously accepting the corporate welfare from the bankrupt state across the river.

But here’s the rub: If a St. Louis sports team moves to Illinois, its gate will drop. Period. Many Missourians will be reluctant to drive over the river, across the bottlenecks of the bridges, and for an extra hour to see their sports teams. Not just because of the inconvenience, but because of East St. Louis’s reputation.

And I don’t care if Collinsville, Highland, or Edwardsville gets the stadium. To a lot of the Missouri side of the metropolitan area, the east side is East St. Louis, oil refineries, and strip clubs.

Just once I’d like to see the public officials in Missouri call this bluff. Let the Rams build a park over there. Let the Cardinals go over there when they need Busch III in 2020.

Ah, but that would mean that the public officials would have to drive over, too, to ride in the backs of their chauffeured cars for an hour, and to sit somewhere other than the boxes reserved for the honored lackeys of the aforementioned billionaires. Never mind. Public officials serve themselves, not the public.

County property value dip is historic:

The value of property in St. Louis County has dropped for two years in a row for the first time since the Depression years of 1931 and 1932.

St. Louis County reported that the assessed value of residential and commercial real estate and personal property had dropped by 3.6 percent this year.

Taken with the drop in 2009 of 2.9 percent, county property is worth about $1.6 billion less than it was two years ago. The county’s assessed values determine property taxes.

The first time since the Great Depression? You don’t say.

It’s unfair to put it all on President Obama. After all, he has help from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in frightening Americans into thinking that their world and their government is arbitrary and unpredictable and makes us all want to dig our fiscal bunkers just a little deeper.

Police pull alligator from creek in DeSoto:

De Soto police fished a 2-foot alligator out of a creek there Sunday evening, an alligator that’s now making its home at the World Bird Sanctuary.

Someone spotted the animal in Joachim Creek about 6 p.m. Sunday and called police, said Chief Ernie Paul. Two officers snared it with a catchpole, and kept it overnight in a makeshift pool in an unused city building.

I bet that building was safe for the night.

The title is a joke alluding to a children’s book, Frederick’s Alligator.

An article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch proves a useful lesson in municipal civics. The article’s title: St. Louis drops fee for pools, rec centers.

Lede:

Kids can play in city pools and gyms for free again this summer, thanks to a last-minute shift of tax money set aside for crime prevention.

Lesson 1: All Taxes Are Slush Funds

Aldermen have been trying to spend the money — $1 million a year from the public safety sales tax proposition passed by city voters two years ago — but they haven’t been able to agree on how. In the meantime, the money has largely been siphoned off to backfill other programs.

…

Proposition S had passed with 55 percent of the vote in February 2008. The half-cent sales tax increase was projected to raise $18 million a year to hire more police officers and replenish police and firefighter retirement systems.

A total of $1 million annually was also promised to city aldermen, to be used on crime prevention projects.

The city’s voters passed a tax to hire policemen. The city no doubt pitched it that way. It did not pitch that the annual salary of 10 or more policemen would be given to the aldermen as slush. But that’s how it worked out, isn’t it? Plus, these targeted taxes are always put on the ballot for popular (at least, popular enough to pass–55% might not count as popular in your high school), and the remaining regular revenue goes to other projects, programs, and payouts that would not garner 51% of voter support. Targeted taxes allow the city “leaders” to avoid prioritizing programs and maybe even cutting some when they need funding elsewhere.

Lesson 2: The Government can do things less efficiently than the private sector.

Then this summer, aldermen learned that a new $10-per-month fee was keeping kids out of the city’s seven recreation centers. Nearly 900 residents signed up for summer programs in June last year, said Gary Bess, director of city Parks, Recreation and Forestry. This June, only 600 enrolled, a drop of about one-third.

…

So, Friday, the committee voted unanimously to send $500,000 from the crime prevention budget to the city’s rec centers, to offset the new fees for children 18 and under. Bess, the parks director, said it would probably be enough to end the discounted $5-per-month fee for seniors, too.

So the city is spending an additional $500,000 to drop the fees for students and seniors. This is in addition to the $2,000,000 annual budget for the PRF Recreations division ($2,099,046 to be exact).

You want swimming pools and rec centers? The YMCA is lousy with them.

For $907,000, you could buy 900 household memberships, which would allow two parents and all their dependents to go to any YMCA in the country. That’s a net increase in served users over the 900 individuals this article seems to talk about.

There are fewer YMCAs in the city limits, 6, than the number of 9 rec centers and the 2 park pools the solution would replace, but in the metropolitan area, the YMCA has a total of 18 branches and the membership cards are good at any Y in the country. These city folk could hop into the Pat Jones YMCA here in Springfield and pump iron right next to me, for crying out loud. Some straw critics and maybe even a few real ones would argue that city residents wouldn’t be able to go to their corner rec center or pool, but with only 9+2 in the city, for most residents, going to the pool or the rec center would be a destination where you pack up into the car or hit the bus for an outing anyway.

Lesson 3: They Haven’t Passed The Law of Diminishing Returns

Spending $500,000 to get 300 people to return to the pools and recreation centers is spending $1667 each out of that raw cash dip even before you factor in the loss of revenue from the 600 residents who were actually paying in.

Maybe this is a corollary of the first lesson, though: since it’s all slush and it all must be spent, why not spend it foolishly?

(Sources: St. Louis YMCA rates and benefits and branches, St. Louis Parks, Recreation and Forestry centers and pools, and City of St. Louis FY 2010 Annual Operating Plan.)

And those, my friends, are the lessons you can learn about how government should not operate from one single piece of “good news” in the newspaper.

Crowne Plaza wants to spruce up downtown garage

Because the word wants is in it instead of just the past tense Crowne Plaza spruces up downtown garage, you know Crowne Plaza wants something else.

STL 200 N. 4th LLC, the legal entity that owns the hotel, wants to establish a Transportation Development District to raise money for the garage project. The money would come from a 1-cent tax on retail sales on hotel property.

And you know who will get to vote on whether or not to spend tourists’ tax money on the Crowne Plaza? Why, the owners of the property in the district: The Crowne Plaza hotel, or the oddly named LLC that runs it.

So the hotel wants it, the hotel will get to vote on it, and the hotel will get it. In Missouri, private enterprises now have the right to levy and collect taxes.

As a public service to those trendy kids, all 239 of them, in St. Louis who call the city “The Loo” (a British bit of slang for “the toilet”) and move to the city and its lofts to feel like they live in the Real City and who look down their retro-glasses adorned noses at people who don’t live life in the gritty Big City, particularly the people in the county who make up the bulk of the population in the St. Louis Metropolitan area, and who form coalitions and Web sites touting the development and resurgence of the city (a new crop of optimism every generation):

The city of Wichita, Kansas is larger than the city of St. Louis.

Carry on.

UPDATE:This just in: Evan has lost his job at the downtown coffeeshop that opened in a burst of fanfare two years ago but found that there aren’t actually customers downtown. Evan has moved back to Affton to live with his folks and look down at the other local yokels who could not make it in The Big City (even though he could not, either, and the city wasn’t that big). This brings the St. Louis Booster count to 238, which includes both actual city government employees who believe in the city line. Both are custodians at different facilities who grew up on the South Side.

It’s a common schtick on my other blog to make fun of job listings on Craigslist and elsewhere, but this one isn’t funny, really, in a funny way.

Here’s the ad for a Software Development Manager at Joyce Meyer Ministries:

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For those of you not into Joyce Meyer or not in the St. Louis area, where the newspapers and television shows routinely run exposes on the multi-million dollar industry and where plantiffs sue Joyce Meyers whenever one of its employees commits a crime, this is a very large ministry operation with television, print, and apparently software or Internet operations. But the trigger here is that it’s Christian.

Now, Craigslist hipper-than-thou readers often respond to job listings, mostly to mock misspellings or crazy collections of buzzwords sown by recruiters, but this respondent mocks the company for its beliefs:

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1) Must believe in the supernatural, specifically Jesus.
2) Must be mentally unstable and suffer from Glossolalia.
3) Must be comfortable working for an organization that doesn’t pay taxes and contribute to society.

Haw, haw!

Anyone want to guess the over/under that this respondent would think working for an environmentally themed non-profit would be A-OK? Maybe a subsidiary of the government handling operations that aren’t constitutionally allocated to the government? Those are enlightened callings, not vocational insanity demonstrated by Joyce Meyers employees.

Any time I see reflexive anti-Christian sophistication like this, I always assume someone has unresolved issues with Mommy and Daddy.

Hey, is it that time already?

A delegation of St. Louis business leaders spent much of Monday in the Quarterback Suite at this city’s new Lucas Oil Stadium, a fitting place to think about a big looming question for St. Louis: What to do with the Edward Jones Dome.

As everyone in the room was aware, the Rams will be free to leave their lease – and St. Louis – after 2015 if the stadium does not measure up among the top quarter of facilities in the NFL. Despite being just 15 years old, the Edward Jones Dome is not even close.

So ears perked up as some of the people behind Lucas Oil Stadium described their efforts to build the $1.1 billion, 63,000-seat downtown complex, and keep the Colts in Indianapolis. One thing everyone from Indy agreed on: Building a new stadium is going to cost public money.

Meanwhile, team officials cross their fingers behind their backs and promise to build a mixed use commercial and housing development called “Stadium Village” just as soon as they get done spending the public money on the stadium and its luxury boxes for the committeemembers who get it the government money.

The City of St. Louis shows its consistency in bad judgment when joining with developers to revitalize downtown:

Just three months ago, Pinnacle Entertainment and the city of St. Louis were standing side by side to save the President Casino.

Now they are racing to the courthouse steps, brandishing lawsuits against each other.

City Hall and the Las Vegas-based gambling operator each sued the other Tuesday as a dispute about their contract for Lumière Place casino boiled over. At stake is the city’s shot at Missouri’s precious 13th casino license and $50 million in new housing and retail that Pinnacle had promised to build downtown.

The suits focus on a 2004 redevelopment agreement that paved the way for the half-billion dollar Lumière Place.

In it, the city agreed to oppose any new casino development within 25 miles — aside from Pinnacle’s new River City Casino in south St. Louis County, which was then on the drawing board. Pinnacle agreed not only to build the glitzy Lumière complex north of Laclede’s Landing but also to put $50 million worth of residential or retail development nearby.

Yes, indeed. The corporation got what it wanted and stalls on providing what the city wanted. Maybe they should call this development Casino Village to make the parallels clear.

Do you think this latest lesson will teach the city not to take on loans to renovate private property or to cosign loans for mall development where the developer can just walk away or to give great tax breaks and whatnot to developers who want to build something profitable but promise to build something unprofitable and unsupportable afterwards?

Hardly. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, such as those who run the city of St. Louis.

In St. Louis, the Metro mass transit authority has gotten a new sales tax it cannot wait to spend, so it’s increasing its budget:

Metro commissioners on Friday approved a $232.4 million transit operating budget that reflects the restoration of public transportation service following the passage of Proposition A.

. . . .

Still, the agency’s budget reflects growth over last year’s spending level of $204 million.

Friends, that is a whopping 15% increase in a recession.

Baer said sales tax collections already were down $5 million because of the recession. Passenger revenue also is down because of a recessionary drop in ridership. Further, Baer said, the state reduced the emergency appropriation it made to restore some service in August 2009.

Okay, so let me get this straight:

• Existing sales tax revenues are down.
• The existing gap plugged by “emergency” one-time (ha!) stimulus funds is down.
• The amount collected from riders is down.

And Metro increases its budget All the better to cry poverty again in five years when it wants to increase its sales tax, my dear.

Responsible government at its normalest.

Also, focus on this nugget:

Passenger revenue also is down because of a recessionary drop in ridership.

Never again let anyone promote light rail or mass transit by saying that it’s more economical than a car and helps move passengers in a recession.

What a surprise.

After seven years of raising money, the Animal House Fund didn’t reach its goal of building a new city pound.

But organizers did know how to throw a party.

Young supporters donned their Hellenic best for a toga fundraiser in Soulard, while comedian Elayne Boosler emceed a gala at City Hall. Andy Warhol paintings —his dog portraits — provided the backdrop for another benefit at an area art gallery.

The photo opportunities were plenty. The direct benefit to the dogs and cats in the city’s dilapidated shelter, though, remains questionable.

The founder was the former head of the St. Louis city board of aldermen.

In the “city” of St. Louis, the alderman are happy spending taxpayer money renovating for-profit business:

Aldermen approved tax increment financing and other public assistance that could reach $28.7 million. The redevelopment area is comprised mainly of the 21-story Railway Exchange Building, which houses Macy’s, and the parking garage across Olive Street from the store.

Macy’s plans to downsize the store from seven to three floors. Much of the first phase of TIF funding — $8.4 million — will be used in the store remodeling, Young said. The company has yet to provide remodeling details.

Maybe I should call any business in downtown St. Louis “for-profit” with quotation marks since so much of the business model seems to be getting money and concessions from government entities instead of consumers. But what “consumers” want to go downtown, pay to park, and then pay almost 10% in sales tax to shop at Macy’s downtown when they can get the same thing at a suburban mall? Even the half dozen or so residents of lofts downtown pull the Mini out of the garage and go to the suburbs to shop.

Maybe I should have titled this post “businesses whose logos are red stars and governments whose should be.”

The City of St. Louis is tackling car break-ins by placing advertisements:

In an effort to reduce car burglaries and thefts, billboards and posters will carry the message across the city’s central corridor, coupled with concentrated police enforcement and proposed legislation aimed at stiffer penalties for first-time offenders.

The ads already proved successful in a test in the Police Department’s Third District, where car break-ins dropped by 40 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007. Soulard businesses plastered the posters throughout their establishments, said Bill Shelton of St. Louis-based Left Field Creative, which managed that campaign and is donating his help to broaden it.

Was it the ads or was it the concentrated police enforcement? It doesn’t matter. What does is that the advertisements are more effective at the most important thing: getting city officials invited to ad agency parties rife with hot 22-year-old creatives.

(Here’s a related sign from downtown St. Louis whose image I seem to have temporarily misplaced.)

Or maybe it was unfortunate placement for these ads:

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Thrills by day and chills by night. How’s that working out for St. Louis?

A riddle based on this news story: St. Louis residents happy with city police service, most tell pollsters.

What do you call a St. Louis City resident who’s dissatisfied with city policing?
A St. Louis County resident.