{"id":7594,"date":"2004-03-04T22:33:00","date_gmt":"2004-03-05T04:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2004\/03\/04\/7594\/"},"modified":"2018-08-10T10:59:30","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T15:59:30","slug":"7594","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2004\/03\/04\/7594\/","title":{"rendered":"A Nickel&#8217;s Worth of Free Advice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The St. Louis Regional Commerce and Growth Association has commissioned a highly-paid professional to come up with some suggestions about improving the business environment in St. Louis, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/business\/stories.nsf\/Business\/AFD9053F81E1B6D186256E4B0021DA2D?OpenDocument&#038;Headline=St.+Louis+must+loosen+its+tie+if+city+is+to+attract+entrepre\" target=\"new\">according to the <i>St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The consultant offers a couple of suggestions as well as a couple of head pats for what this charming provincial little city on the frontier is doing right.<\/p>\n<p>To summarize:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Those assets include affordable living, a renowned medical school and several unique cultural and historical amenities such as Forest Park, he said. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s the head pat.  This metro area of two million people has cheap housing, a medical school, and &#8220;unique&#8221; amenities like Forest Park.  That sounds more like Columbia, Missouri.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest drawbacks?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i>Often, however, talented workers leave the region because its corporate culture stifles entrepreneurs and leaves little opportunity for up-and-coming, creative employees, Kotkin said.<\/i>\n<li><i>But in order to compete effectively with cities like Kansas City and Minneapolis, the region must first address several obstacles, including &#8220;standoffish attitudes toward outsiders, as well as a legacy of racial divisiveness,&#8221; Kotkin said.<\/i>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Uh huh.  Neckties too tight, xenophobia, and racism.  Platitudes, platitudes, and more platitudes for $75,000.  I think I want to start a company called <b>Pl<\/b><i>ATTITUDES!<\/i> and get in on this racket.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s my nickel&#8217;s worth of free advice, St. Louis (and I address the city because no one else in the country understands the extreme difference between the city of St. Louis and the rest of us in St. Louis <i>County<\/i>):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Elevate the level of the elected officials in St. Louis.  Let&#8217;s face it, if they&#8217;re <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/sections\/politics\/DailyNews\/stlouis010724.html\" target=\"new\">peeing in trashcans during debates<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/news\/stories.nsf\/News\/96E1DA1417C7779186256E4D0017E89C?OpenDocument&#038;Headline=New+allegations+investigated+against+School+Board+member\" target=\"new\">pouring a pitcher of water on the adversaries as directed by the voices in your head<\/a>, they&#8217;re not governing, and they&#8217;re only serving as trivial punchlines.  This is what people from around the country see in your city.\n<li>Instead of world-class, tax-funded sports facilities for football, baseball, hockey, basketball, la crosse, volley ball, arena football, soccer, and tournament bridge, how about some world-class roads instead of the cheese graters you have downtown?  I don&#8217;t have an off-road vehicle.  And I don&#8217;t go downtown.\n<li>Hey, how about some tax cuts?  I mean, I don&#8217;t live or work in the city because I don&#8217;t want to pay the one percent of vig the city taxes off of my earnings to pay for commissions that recommend world-class sports facilities and then paying for luxury boxes in said sports facilities for said commissions into perpetuity.\n<li>Hey, has the state removed the accreditation for your schools yet?<\/ul>\n<p>Hey, my advice&#8217;s free, and it&#8217;s better than the stuff assembled <i>as a discussion of the $75,000 answer<\/i>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Some ideas already have been developed by a group of young professionals assembled by the RCGA to discuss the report. Those ideas include creating a system to welcome new workers to the area, devising a mentoring process to link executives with younger workers and establishing an annual entrepreneur contest. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s what you get when you assemble young professionals whose neckties are too tight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The St. Louis Regional Commerce and Growth Association has commissioned a highly-paid professional to come up with some suggestions about improving the business environment in St. Louis, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The consultant offers a couple of suggestions as well as a couple of head pats for what this charming provincial little city [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-st-louis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22727,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594\/revisions\/22727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}