Goodbye, city and county? Potential city/county merger (St. Louis: 2013, crime)

[DogtownBnR]

^In my opinion, the issue with the City is St. Louis is the government and “politicians”.

Get rid of them and establish a strong central government and I think this is more of a well oiled machine versus a socialist situation. I agree, City government is a mess. 28 alderman for 310K people. What a joke! Now, saying that, this would all be eliminated with a unified government. I fully support this as long as this newly formed a government understands the challenges of our region and is motivated to move us forward as a region that will compete on a national level. It is time to clean up the negative perceptions and awaken the sleeping giant that our region has been for a long time.

Ps- I’m A lifelong St. Louis resident who has lived in both the county and city.

[MUTGR]

Originally Posted by DogtownBnR

^In my opinion, the issue with the City is St. Louis is the government and “politicians”.

Get rid of them and establish a strong central government and I think this is more of a well oiled machine versus a socialist situation. I agree, City government is a mess. 28 alderman for 310K people. What a joke! Now, saying that, this would all be eliminated with a unified government. I fully support this as long as this newly formed a government understands the challenges of our region and is motivated to move us forward as a region that will compete on a national level. It is time to clean up the negative perceptions and awaken the sleeping giant that our region has been for a long time.

Ps- I’m A lifelong St. Louis resident who has lived in both the county and city.

Who elects those politicians? And they overnight become the biggest voting bloc in a unified City/County?

[chicagobear]

It is hard to see why the more affluent cities in the county would go along with this, although maybe they won't have a choice. I think it is unrealistic to think that school districts wouldn't eventually be touched if St. Louis city and county were a single city.

[mjtinmemphis]

Originally Posted by chicagobear

It is hard to see why the more affluent cities in the county would go along with this, although maybe they won't have a choice. I think it is unrealistic to think that school districts wouldn't eventually be touched if St. Louis city and county were a single city.

If St. Louis county had a reasonable amount of growth that may be the case. Given Chesterfield, Ballwin and others are not really gaining population it makes financial sense for the region to reinvent itself. People are just shuffling around. In many cases they are shuffling on out of the county.

[deb100]

If nothing else this would remove St. Louis' stigma as the city with the highest murder rate, since this is only due to its city limits enclosing such a small part of its metro area compared to others of its size.

[MUTGR]

Originally Posted by chicagobear

although maybe they won't have a choice.

This seems to be the plan B put into action with support from both sides of the aisle, if not the residents of St. Louis County.

[FrankMiller]

Originally Posted by chicagobear

It is hard to see why the more affluent cities in the county would go along with this, although maybe they won't have a choice. I think it is unrealistic to think that school districts wouldn't eventually be touched if St. Louis city and county were a single city.

They probably should be, but I don't see why the school districts would follow a county merger. They're not tied to municipalities. If anything, I think the backlash from a city/county merger would probably make a district merger even less likely.

Personally, I think they should just reenter the city into the county. I don't know why there's so much attention on complicated total mergers. Just having a useful regional government would be the biggest gain, economically.

[chicagobear]

Originally Posted by FrankMiller

They probably should be, but I don't see why the school districts would follow a county merger. They're not tied to municipalities. If anything, I think the backlash from a city/county merger would probably make a district merger even less likely.

Personally, I think they should just reenter the city into the county. I don't know why there's so much attention on complicated total mergers. Just having a useful regional government would be the biggest gain, economically.

It will take a while, but I think that it would be hard to justify keeping the Clayton school district separate from U. City or the city once everything is St. Louis city.

[FrankMiller]

It's not as if the Clayton school district is currently tied to Clayton city boundaries. Why does Valley Park have its own tiny school district while surrounded by the enormous Parkway and Rockwood school districts? Nothing about the current districts is easy to justify as-is, so I don't think anything will change.

I'm also not sure there's any particularly compelling reason to merge school districts. Maybe some smaller ones would benefit from merger, but why the whole region? You still need the same number of high schools and principles and buses and so on, because the services provided by schools are very local. If your high school is large enough to offer desirable specialty classes (3-D printing or Chinese or whatever), you've already achieved desirable economies of scale.

Funding, of course, can be equalized without merging districts.

[STL1980]

I'm all for it, but just keep the existing school districts. Forced district merging would recreate the disastrous 1970's north/south city busing situation where the city lost more population than any other decade. Sounds good on paper, but people will just vote with their feet and move.
The region should really spend money to help redevelop north city and county so that it doesn't continue to deteriorate.