It Doesn’t Work That Way

Posted on by Susan Pendergrass

The St. Louis Board of Alderman just passed a symbolic resolution to ban any new schools (read charter schools) as long as enrollment in St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) is declining. But banning alternatives to SLPS will not force families to stay. Just the opposite, in fact. Providing options may very well be what is keeping families in the city.

In the last 20 years, enrollment in SLPS has declined from nearly 46,000 students to just over 21,000.  Meanwhile, charter school enrollment in the city has grown to over 11,000 students. This has led to a fairly steady public school enrollment of between 30,000 and 35,000 students in the city for almost 15 years.

Soon, St. Louis children who qualify will also be able to apply for scholarships through the new Empowerment Scholarship Program, signed by the governor this week. This will open even more doors to families.

Ultimately, parents will stay in the city if they have several options for their children. Other cities that have created vibrant portfolios of school choices, such as Washington, D.C., provide proof of this fact. Enrollment in D.C. Public Schools declined from 71,000 students in 1999 to just over 44,000 in 2009. In the last ten years, it has increased to almost 52,000.

Resolutions to tie children to their one and only assigned public school seat are desperate attempts to protect a failing system. Wouldn’t it be better to consider all students in the city, both public and private, as precious resources that make St. Louis more livable? Wouldn’t it be better to provide every family in the city with at least a few choices? Don’t we want St. Louis to be a city where young families choose to stay and raise their children, rather than one that bans their demonstrated preferences?

It’s time for the adults to stop fighting over us versus them and to get busy building a portfolio of schooling options for every family.

Crestwood TIF Update

Posted on by Corianna Baier

Dierbergs has withdrawn its request for $17 million in subsidies ($13.5 million via tax-increment financing [TIF] and $3.5 million from a community improvement district [CID]) to redevelop the Crestwood mall site. However, it’s not a win for taxpayers.

Dierbergs has decided instead to use the TIF that was approved for the site in 2016 for a different developer but was never acted on. The previously approved TIF is for $15 million, a slightly higher amount than the one in Dierbergs’ proposal. But TIF projects can only be active for a maximum of 23 years, and because this one was approved in 2016, it will only have 18 years available. It appears that there will still not be a request for funds for the residential portion of the development

The 2016 proposal also included a $5 million CID and $5 million transportation development district (TDD). A Dierbergs representative said the company will be asking for a CID that is less than $5 million and will not use both a CID and TDD to develop this site. If this remains true, the overall size of the subsidy package will be slightly smaller than the overall $25 million proposal in 2016. But it’s possible that this new avenue will give Dierbergs access to even more taxpayer dollars than its proposal from a few months ago.

It’s unfortunate that taxpayer dollars are being used to develop this area at all. Sure, there’s a shorter timeframe for the TIF and no subsidy for the residential portion, but that’s small consolation. What was true in 2016 is still true today: A TIF at this location is just a way for lawmakers to look like they are “doing something” about this long-empty location at the expense of taxpayers.  Hopefully in the future, Crestwood can do better for taxpayers by not offering their dollars to developers at all.

Webster Groves Addresses Hard Issues in Zoning

Posted on by David Stokes

A version of this commentary appeared in the Webster-Kirkwood Times.

Zoning can be a complicated issue for people who believe in limited government and market-based policies. There is the conflict between the rights of people to organize their community how they want it, the rights of people to develop their own property as they see fit, and the issue of how local governments will prioritize those rights.

Usually, any discussion of reducing or ending zoning immediately leads to nightmare scenarios of a chemical plant opening up right next door to your house. (This actually happens in rural areas with concentrated animal feeding operations, but that is another issue.) But what if the concerns and questions are about much smaller changes to zoning?

The City of Webster Groves is undergoing such a debate right now. Recently, the city council passed changes to the city’s zoning code that will increase housing and development options in parts of the city. In short, the city will allow more small, multi-family homes (i.e., duplexes) in parts of the city previously reserved for single-family zoning. The stated reason for the change was to provide greater housing options that might allow people from different backgrounds to move into Webster Groves. However, a group of residents opposed to the changes has collected enough signatures to put that ordinance change up for a referendum on the ballot on August 3. Those residents, like many suburban residents in our country, prefer single-family zoning for their communities. Needless to say, the upcoming vote has stoked a great deal of interest in Webster Groves. I don’t think the town has been this riled up since the premier of Sixteen in Webster Groves 55 years ago.

The debate over allowing more duplex housing could be academic enough, with good arguments on both sides, but from discussions with residents, letters-to-the-editor, and more, it is pretty clear this debate is closely related to issues of public housing as well. Two years ago, Webster Groves added “source-of-income” to the anti-discrimination rules of its housing ordinances. That means that a landlord in Webster Groves can’t refuse to rent to a person or family who will use a federally funded Section 8 housing voucher to pay the rent. This goes far beyond Obamacare simply requiring everyone to buy health insurance; this law says that a landlord is now compelled to participate in a welfare program whether they want to or not. Bake the cake, landlord! (Keep in mind that Section 8 is a federal program, and there is no federal requirement that landlords accept it). Taken in combination, it is not unreasonable for some people in Webster Groves to think that this rezoning is a first step towards much greater use of multifamily housing and Section 8 vouchers in their city.

Should a community ban the use of the camel because it occasionally sticks its nose under the tent? I guess it depends on what you think about the tent. If your community is based on one-tent per family per lot and you and your neighbors like the community you have built that way, changes in zoning to allow for more tents per lot can be concerning. But if you think tent prices are too high and people need more options, then a simple allowance for two smaller tents on a parcel instead of just one makes sense. (And make sure that camel is not a nonconforming pet under the animal code.)

The rubber will meet the road in debates about equality in housing policy when people—including suburban liberals who claim to passionately support more diversity and inclusion—are forced to consider changes that could affect their own home values and community makeup. I don’t claim to know what the people of Webster Groves should do in the long run. (Though they should definitely use another referendum to get rid of the terrible “source-of-income” rule). However, people have a right to create and abide by zoning laws that maintain the type of community they want to live in, even if not everyone would make that same choice. It is going to be very interesting to see debates play out like this across Missouri’s suburban communities in the coming years.

A Property Tax Tale of Two Cities

Posted on by David Stokes

A version of this commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

It costs money to run cities, and that money comes from taxes. While governments at all levels waste that tax money to varying degrees, sometimes it is necessary to increase certain taxes to fund necessary services.

Right now in St. Louis County, two prominent suburbs have put property tax increase votes before their citizens in August. The first one is Clayton, the county seat and central business hub. The second one is Frontenac, a wealthy bedroom community with a major mall right in the center of St. Louis County.

Too often governments try to export the costs of running their cities to outsiders with tourist taxes, sales taxes, special district taxes, and so on. In the cases of Clayton and Frontenac, the best thing you can say about the proposals is that they are property taxes that will be paid by the residents and businesses of their respective communities. Of course, the businesses don’t vote—only the residents do. But businesses and residents all benefit from effective police, properly equipped fire departments, and well-maintained roads.

There is one difference between the two proposals. That is, simply, the size of the proposed property tax increases. Clayton’s proposal is relatively modest, at 18 cents per $100 dollars of assessed valuation. While Clayton has very valuable buildings and beautiful homes for which even a low-percentage increase will mean real money, at least at this reasonable level of increase people can fairly weigh the costs and benefits to the proposal. (As a point of reference, a home worth $500,000 would have a $171 tax increase.) Nobody is getting hammered with radical tax increases. What’s more, residents and businesses will see the same rate increase. They will share in the costs and benefits of the proposal.

The same can’t be said for Frontenac. Frontenac’s proposed tax increase is huge any way you look at it. The city’s residential tax rate is more than doubling from $0.435 to $1 per $100, and the commercial property tax rate is tripling. Tripling! The owners of 1701 S. Lindbergh, the primary parcel for Plaza Frontenac, will pay $150,000 more in property taxes to the city if this proposal passes. $150,000! The owners of the Frontenac Hilton—which just experienced a pandemic year with hardly any guests and furloughed 128 employees in 2020—will have to pay $40,000 more per year in taxes. Nothing says “we will all get through the pandemic together” like a huge tax hike on struggling businesses.

Do these cities truly need this money? That is up to the voters to decide. They both claim that they have cut waste as much as they can, and I believe they have tried to do so. Frontenac’s website details money it has saved by sharing services with other cities and freezing employee salaries. Fair enough. Clayton’s website also documents recent budget savings by the city, but considering that Clayton still offers rear-yard trash pick-up, I know of at least one more thing they could cut to save tax dollars—rear-yard trash pick-up). Clayton is expected to receive over $3 million and Frontenac about $750,000 from the latest federal stimulus funds. This is on top of the likely increases in tax revenue for each city from online sales tax collections and higher gas taxes passed in the recently concluded state legislative session.

Residents, voters, and taxpayers (most people are all three, of course) generally like the high quality of services found in most St. Louis County suburbs, especially in the more prosperous cities like the two we are discussing here. But you can only ask for so much before people start saying “no.” People want quality services; they also like fair taxation and the idea that their cities aren’t just out to gouge them. The Clayton proposal will probably pass that test with many voters, but with numerous Frontenac residents staring down an increase of over $1,000 in property taxes, I think the gouging question is going to be asked a lot.

A New Sales Tax for Law Enforcement in the Lake of the Ozarks

Posted on by David Stokes

There is a one-quarter cent sales tax increase on the ballot for August 3rd in Camden County. The extra revenue would go to the county sheriff’s department. The sheriff has been promoting the sales tax increase as a way to hire more officers, retain current officers (via a pay increase), and improve the department generally. Public safety costs money, and if the people of Camden County—the largest county in the Lake of the Ozarks region—want more law enforcement in their community then increasing funding for the sheriff’s department is the most direct way to do that.

I have no doubt that the sales tax is being proposed in order to make sure that tourists pay their “fair share” of the costs for greater law enforcement in the area. The Lake is one region where either a sales tax or a property tax increase is going to raise significant tax money from non-permanent residents, with either tourists paying the sales (and lodging) taxes or vacation homeowners paying the property taxes.

But back to the sales tax increase. Residents know better than anyone if increased or better law enforcement in Camden County is required. They and the tourists (like me) will pay for it. But is there money available outside of a tax increase? Here are some things to consider:

  • Online sales tax collections are coming (officially) to Missouri, which will increase local tax collections starting in 2023.
  • Parson just signed the gas tax increase, which (assuming it survives legal challenges) will further lead to more money for counties. (The money raised has to be used on roads, but that loosens up other tax revenues.)
  • In the short term, Camden County is set to get almost $9 million from the stimulus plan. That is, shall we say, a lot of money.
  • Housing values are soaring, and even with the required tax rate rollbacks, there will still likely be noticeable local property tax collection increases.

Leaving aside this increased future revenue, are there other ways to increase funding for law enforcement in Camden County without tax increases?

I would suggest two things. First of all, get control of the generous tax subsidies granted to developers in the region. That is tax money that is given away to private interests instead of going to public services. The Lake Ozark region has currently promised TIF subsidies of $395 million. $395 million! To be clear, because the TIF reports don’t give addresses, and because many Lake of the Ozarks cities are in multiple counties, I can’t determine how much of that is within Camden County itself. But undoubtedly it is a very large amount of tax subsidies over the next decade or so, very likely in the hundreds of millions. That is tax revenue that could have been used for public services, including law enforcement.

Another option is greater consolidation of 911 emergency dispatching services, like Miller County and many other Missouri communities do. Camden County law enforcement agencies appear to operate their own dispatching services, which is an area ripe for economies of scale and cost savings.

But in the end, the choice, as it should be, is up to the voters.

Lee’s Summit School District Wants $40,000 to Show What It’s Teaching Kids

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

As readers know, over the last few weeks we’ve made public records requests to schools and districts across the state to find out whether they are teaching critical race theory (CRT) or any of its related concepts. You can find the database of records we’ve received here. It was bound to happen, but we finally got a cost estimate for public records that shocked even me, and it’s a doozy.

$40,609.01. That’s what the Lee’s Summit School District wants to complete our Sunshine Law request. From the email:

The total amount that would need to be received to begin the discovery of the records requested would be $40,609.01. I do want to let you know that I have been conservative with the time estimates in order not to inflate the payment amount. However, it very well could require additional time, thus payment, in order to comply with all your requests. [Emphasis mine]

That figure looks bad, but it’s actually far worse than that. The main cost driver for the estimate is the request for whether teachers are including CRT in their lesson plans, and for that, the district estimates it would cost $35,997 per quarter!

That’s right—if you want to find out what’s in Lee’s Summit’s lesson plans for a full year, it looks like you’d be on the hook for over $140,000.

Organization and efficiency of reviewing all lesson plans would need to be a priority in this task. Therefore, I am suggesting that we review one quarter at a time. Each teacher has their own pay rate, depending on degrees completed and years of service. For purposes of this estimate, I will use the lowest hourly pay rate for a teacher which would be $27.69. I also will estimate one hour per teacher to review one quarter of the school year. For us, the first quarter will begin on August 25 and end on October 22. The total estimate would be 1300 hours @ $27.69 = $35,997. [Emphasis mine]

You can peruse the full correspondence at the link. We were able to get a handful of documents from Lee’s Summit prior to this demand; I don’t know what, if anything, changed since then, though it should be noted that the district has been in the news lately over a racial controversy.

Regardless, it’s not just startling that the district would demand tens of thousands of dollars for these records; it’s startling that the district apparently has no idea what teachers are actually teaching in their classrooms. Putting up an absurd barrier like this and preventing parents from seeing what their kids are being taught is bad governance. Lee’s Summit parents deserve better.

Columbia Public School District Bringing the 1619 Project to Classrooms

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

This week at a meeting of its school board, the Columbia Public School District officially accepted a grant from the Pulitzer Center to teach aspects of the New York Times’ 1619 Project in the classroom. The Columbia Daily Tribune reports:

The 1619 Project is a central aspect of what is known as Critical Race Theory, which has been a controversial topic.

Under the program, teams of educators will receive grants of $5,000 each “to support exploration of key questions of racial justice and other pressing issues,” the agenda item reads.

District educators must manage the writing and sharing of at least one of the standards-aligned unit plans that connect students to resources from The 1619 Project as part of unit objectives. Unit plans should explore questions including under-reported stories and why they are important; the role of journalism in evaluating history; and examining contemporary under-reported issues with connections to the past.

Those following the Show-Me Curricula Project may have noticed that this was in the hopper, in light of the grant application we received from the district that it had filed with the Pulitzer Center. The memorandum of understanding, however, provides further definition to what is expected for the money. From the memorandum, which is also filed in our public database:

Network teams will develop standards-aligned units that engage their students in The 1619 Project, and other journalism and historical sources, to strengthen connections to existing curricula, practice media literacy skills, and build empathy. At least two educators from each team will then implement units with at least two classes, evaluate student outcomes, and share their projects publicly through Pulitzer Center’s lesson library and virtual professional development programs. Program details and deliverables are further outlined below. (Emphasis mine)

Keep in mind that the grant requires “at least two educators” and “at least two classes” to teach the 1619 Project. This is only the minimum required under the grant. It does not touch on what other teachers might bring into the classroom on their own. In any case, the board’s adoption of the 1619 Project appears to give a green light to bringing those resources and related resources into the classroom.

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