TDDs are often abused by private developers as a means to expand corporate welfare under the pretext of “infrastructure improvements.” Most TDDs are created simply by the signatures of the property owners (often just one developer) who want to establish them. The TDDs are then governed by a board (affiliated with the property owner) that treats the tax funds as private money rather than public tax dollars. Missouri state auditors have consistently documented problems with TDDs for the past two decades.

Kirkwood city leaders deserve credit for putting this TDD to a vote of the entire city. They also made the right choice by ensuring that city leaders will have primary control of the future funds. Kirkwood residents can be confident that the taxes raised would be properly accounted for and spent on public needs, not private wants.

The main argument against this TDD is that sales taxes are not, generally speaking, the preferred way to fund transportation projects. Kirkwood should consider a local gas tax (which is allowed, yet admittedly rare in Missouri) before it commits to a sales tax for its roads. And, while nobody wants to hear it, property taxes are a better way to fund sidewalks in a community. General sales taxes are a way to push local costs onto visitors instead of having local people pay for the public services in their own neighborhoods.

Kirkwood voters face a tough decision tomorrow, but whatever the result of the vote, residents will benefit because the most harmful aspects of TDDs have been properly addressed by the city.

The post A Fork in the Road in Kirkwood appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Unfortunately, the city announced in June that it would not be moving forward with any of the six proposals that were submitted. These proposals would have offered downtown Kirkwood new retail storefronts, additional parking, and residential spaces.

So why would the city of Kirkwood reject all six proposals? Frustratingly, the city council hardly offered any reasoning other than general opposition to large developments in the downtown area. Parker Pence, a Kirkwood native who has written about the rejected proposals in his blog, the Kirkwood Gadfly, quotes a newly elected council member in a comment to one of his pieces:

One of the main promises of my campaign was a promise to stop large developments in our downtown and I am delighted to inform everyone that the current council voted unanimously against any new large developments and advised the city staff to tell all developers that we are not moving forward with any proposals for those parking lots.

These lots are zoned in the Central Business District, which, according to the Kirkwood Municipal Code “seeks to encourage mixed-use development with commercial services, retail facilities, and residential uses that complement each other and attract customers from outside the district.” This type of blanket opposition to “any new large developments,” is the opposite of productive for this area.

Pence investigates how much money Kirkwood stands to lose by rejecting these proposals. He notes that Clay|Adams estimates that the city forfeits nearly $90,000 in additional sales tax revenue and $145,000 in property tax revenue by turning down its proposal. Developer assessments should be taken with a grain of salt, but this still provides a ballpark idea.

Furthermore, proposals that include apartments, such as the Clay|Adams proposal, could even boost housing affordability by providing higher-density housing. For many, apartments are likely to be more affordable than the median half million-dollar single-family home found in Kirkwood.

It is disappointing to see Kirkwood pass on such an opportunity with its vague opposition to large developments. I hope that in the future, Kirkwood and other cities will objectively and transparently evaluate the economic growth and community benefits these types of developments could bring.

The post Kirkwood Rejects Development Proposals appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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You have probably heard about all of the large water main breaks throughout the St. Louis region over the past month, leading to boil-water orders, traffic mayhem, and extensive repairs.

Wait, they haven’t been throughout the St. Louis region? They’ve all been in the City of St. Louis? Yes, indeed they have been, but what difference is there?

The difference is twofold. First, the city’s water system is simply older, and in fairness an older system is going to have more problems than a newer one. But the other problem is that the city water division is owned by city government, whereas in most of our region—including all of St. Louis County (with the partial exception of Kirkwood)—the water is provided by a private company (in most cases Missouri-American Water). While water line breaks can and do happen to every water utility, the recent, dramatic trend in the City of St. Louis is not being experienced elsewhere.

The fundamental problem with government utilities is that politics inevitably interferes with the management of the utility. It can do so in ways that may seem beneficial, like holding water rates artificially low because politicians don’t like increasing rates on their own voters. Did you know that the city’s water division has never installed meters in many homes to help allocate billing and prices? That technology is almost a century old, yet it has never been adopted citywide.

In a 2002 study on water utility privatization, the National Research Council stated (emphasis added throughout):

Some studies show that the public is willing to pay for reliability and for high water quality. . . . Yet water managers and city councils often lack the political will to practice cost-based ratemaking. They may want to protect residential customers (who are also voters) from higher rates and use water pricing and availability policies to promote economic development even though there is scant evidence to support the usefulness of this strategy.

Compare those findings with these recent quotes by city officials, as reported by the Post-Dispatch:

The city’s water chief told aldermen Monday he needs two 20% rate increases in the next fiscal year—one in July and one in January—to shore up a division struggling to manage rising costs and aging infrastructure.

The increases . . . would be the largest in nearly three decades.

The system is supposed to pay for itself by charging ratepayers enough to cover the cost of operations and upkeep. When it can’t, the mayor and the board are supposed to step in and adjust rates.

But they don’t like to do it. The last time they obliged was in the late 2000s, another time when staff was telling them they had no choice.

While the proposed water rate hike is absolutely necessary, and the related proposal in the current bill to reduce political influence by automating future price hikes would be beneficial, I have zero faith that future politicians wouldn’t respond to pressure to reduce rates by backtracking as soon as possible. The city’s leaders have a history of ignoring recommendations to deal with the water infrastructure until every decade or so it becomes impossible to ignore it further.

Other communities in our region have privatized their water and sewer systems in recent years. Eureka recently completed the sale of both to Missouri-American Water for $28 million. Florissant and Webster Groves both privatized their water systems 20 years ago, also to Missouri-American. Other utilities are also potential bidders. Voters in Olympia Village in Jefferson County approved the sale of its sewer system to Liberty Utilities in 2021.

I hope city residents reconsider the benefits of cheap, public water the next time they have to boil it before drinking or get home late due to a massive traffic jam. Politics has gotten the St. Louis water division into this mess, and politics isn’t going to get it out. It is time to privatize the entire system as part of an open, transparent process that will hopefully lead to the city’s vital water system being operated by a private, regulated utility. Customers of private water utilities don’t have to think very much about their water supply, and that’s the way it should be.

The post St. Louis Should Privatize Its Water System appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There are ways to fund local road maintenance other than sales taxes. As the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission has noted, paying for road maintenance with taxes largely unrelated to road usage creates problems. If people aren’t charged for using roads directly, people will drive more, which in turn leads to higher road maintenance costs.

A local fuel tax is a good solution to the problem of paying for road maintenance—a fuel tax is directly related to driving. Additionally, local fuel tax revenue is constitutionally required to be spent on local road maintenance, decreasing the risk of financial misuse.

Seven Missouri cities already have local fuel taxes; none are higher than 2 cents per gallon. According to my calculations, Kirkwood could raise over $266,000 per year from a 2 cent per gallon local fuel tax on gasoline and diesel fuel. A downside of a local fuel tax is that you don’t collect any revenue from large trucks that may not stop to buy gas in Kirkwood, but still damage the roads when passing through.

No matter how Kirkwood residents and officials decide to raise money for local road maintenance, the city should carefully manage the money raised and ensure that all proper reporting, transparency, and auditing rules are observed. The proposed TDD has redeeming qualities and could be a viable option for funding needs. Nontheless, Kirkwood officials and residents should also consider other transportation policy options.

The post Kirkwood Should Consider the Pros and Cons of All Transportation Funding Options appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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Some people in Warson Woods are up in arms over this proposal. It’s their city and their taxes, and they have every right to be concerned and ask tough questions. But the reaction, in my opinion, does seem out of line relative to the proposal. Warson Woods would not be taken over by some giant organization. The city would go from being served by a department of 6 total officers to being served by a combined department of about 15 officers, including all of the Warson Woods policemen. If you want to know the names of your local police (a perfectly worthy aim), you can still do that.

The proposed contract is estimated to save around $2 million over the next ten years. That is a lot of money for a city like Warson Woods. Warson Woods leaders have put together a committee to investigate the proposal from Glendale, and I hope it gets the careful consideration it deserves.

The people of this region have made it clear that most people don’t want some massive government consolidation. But nobody should reject out-of-hand smart changes to our government structure in St. Louis County. The idea that contracting with a neighboring city for police services to save tax money and improve services (more frequently having multiple officers on patrol will improve service) is somehow radical is unfortunate. It is, in fact, quite common. Warson Woods itself has contracted with Glendale for fire services for decades. The small, neighboring suburb of Oakland contracts with Kirkwood for police services. Nearby Frontenac patrols three other smaller communities adjacent to Frontenac: Westwood, Huntleigh, and Crystal Lake Park. I have honestly never heard anyone in Westwood (which is really a country club with a city attached to it, like Prussia) or Oakland say, “Things are great here, but it would be better if we just had our own police department. Those guys from Kirkwood and Frontenac just aren’t cutting it.”

I wish the committee investigating the proposal all the best. Few may want a massive overhaul of local government in St. Louis, but that doesn’t mean there should be knee-jerk opposition to smart, narrowly defined changes that save tax dollars and improve public services at the same time.

The post Synchronicity in Warson Woods and Glendale appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Currently, local roads are funded by a combination of fuel taxes and local property and sales taxes. Sales taxes are the worst way of the three to fund road maintenance.

Paying for roads with taxes only tangentially related to road usage promotes inefficient vehicle and travel choices, which leads to faster road deterioration, wasted fuel, congestion, and air pollution. If people aren’t exposed to the true cost of something, they will overconsume it. For a market to work properly, true price signals are needed.

Instead of a TDD, Kirkwood officials should consider implementing a local fuel tax. Local fuel taxes allow markets to work by connecting how much you drive with the cost of driving. Buying a gallon of gasoline has more to do with driving than buying a TV or a loaf of bread.

Additionally, money raised from local fuel taxes is constitutionally required to be spent on road maintenance and safety, reducing the risk of the money being spent on other, potentially wasteful projects. The biggest challenge in implementing local fuel taxes is that they require a two-thirds majority among voters to pass. Kirkwood’s TDD would only need a simple majority.

Seven cities in Missouri currently have local fuel taxes. Most are just one cent per gallon and, depending on traffic, can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Kirkwood is significantly larger than any of these cities and thus may be able to raise even more money.

If Kirkwood officials want to raise money for local transportation fairly, they should kick the TDD to the curb and become the eighth city in Missouri to adopt a local fuel tax.

The post Kirkwood Should Consider a Local Fuel Tax to Fund Its Transportation Needs, Not a TDD appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Let’s break this down. Since the 1970s and 1980s, when fire alarms, new technologies, and improved building standards decreased the number and severity of fires in the country, there has been a steady increase in the number of people employed as firefighters. You might think the number of people employed to fight fires would decrease as the need for fire response decreased. You’d be wrong.

To compensate for this decrease in the demand for their services, fire departments began taking on the broader role of providing emergency medical services—that is, driving ambulances and providing on-the-scene support to people involved in accidents. Fire departments might have saved money if they then decreased the number of people employed as firefighters and invested more heavily in paramedics and EMS equipment, which typically cost less, but that didn’t happen.

Here we have a textbook case of mission creep, the tendency of government organizations to gradually shift their goals and expand their purpose. Society no longer needs as many people fighting fires, yet because government lacks an efficient mechanism for linking supply and demand, we continue to spend an increasing amount of tax revenue on fire protection. Government has a tendency to grow, even as needs shrink.

If the city of Kirkwood wants more paramedics, then they should hire more paramedics, not firefighters. Shifting resources to pay for more EMS and less fire services, or even privatizing certain functions, could help pay for this. It’s simply a waste of money to raise taxes to hire workers for an unneeded and more expensive job.

The post Increased Fire Tax in Kirkwood? Why Now Indeed! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

So it has been with great interest that I have followed the debate in Kirkwood over the intersection of Kirkwood and Manchester Roads. Kirkwood asked for redevelopment proposals, and received two proposals without a TIF (one does have a smaller Community Improvement District), and one major development proposal using a large TIF package. In a normal world, it would be assumed the city would take the projects asking for either no subsidies or greatly reduced subsidies instead of the huge TIF, but Saint Louis does not operate under normal standards of free markets.

But, in excellent news, Kirkwood is going with the two proposals that did not ask for a TIF: a CVS pharmacy and a farmer’s market. Good for Kirkwood to say “yes” to free markets, competition, and actual capitalism.

The only good thing that would have come from the TIF is that I would have enjoyed the city having to declare “blighted” an intersection two-tenths of a mile from the richest city in America. That would have been fun to watch…

The post Kirkwood Says ‘Yes!’ To Actual Capitalism appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We must remember that students are riding buses for multiple hours each day by choice. These students want better educational opportunities. They are willing to ride the bus for hours each day to secure those opportunities. Some are even willing to ride their bicycle 30 miles to secure that opportunity.

The fact that students are riding the bus for so long is hardly a criticism of inter-district transfers or school choice. Rather, it is a testimony to the resolve of students and their families. Their sacrifice demonstrates that there is great demand for school choice.

I by no means believe the current transfer law is perfect. Something must be done to make the law more tenable, but fixing the problems should not mean we have to deprive students of the opportunities they so desire and deserve. Long bus rides are not the problem. The problem is a lack of educational options close to home. We can work towards solving that problem by expanding school choice, not by limiting choice.

The post What Do Bus Rides Tell Us About School Choice? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Obviously when I was 6 years old I lacked the foresight to bring my sno-cone to the kitchen table, or simply save my money for something better than an artificially colored high-fructose corn syrup treat. But as an adult, I think carefully about my purchases and investments to determine whether they are necessary and beneficial to me.

And I appreciate when cities make careful decisions about spending residents’ money, even when others around them do not.

I commend the Crestwood Board of Aldermen for scrutinizing the use of taxpayer dollars for the Crestwood Mall commercial redevelopment. (See link for project description.)  Board members opposed the heavy use of tax incentives for developer Centrum Partners, despite neighboring cities’ use of incentives for similar projects (such as Kirkwood, Webster Groves, Affton . . .). During the Oct. 9 meeting, the Board voted to defeat a proposal to use $26.6 million of public financial assistance to Centrum via tax incentives.

Centrum’s plan included one subsidy, Tax Increment Financing (TIF), and two additional taxes, which would put Crestwood’s sales tax at 10.745 percent. Neighbor Kirkwood’s sales tax is 8.175 percent.

It sure is enticing to follow the route of surrounding municipalities that used subsidies such as TIF to create shopping centers that took business away from the now vacant Crestwood Mall. But should a commercial center be heavily supported with public dollars? Would it benefit the city to have such high sales taxes? They are right to question the amount of taxpayer money going into this development.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the project may be re-visited at the Oct. 23 Board of Aldermen meeting. Hopefully, city officials will continue to stand firm against subsidies for this project.

The post Crestwood Says No To Tax Incentives appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The new meters use radio signals to provide real-time readings accessible to customers online, which means residents should be able to spot potential problems or abnormalities in their average monthly water use.

Easier access to better information is always a good combination. But the best part of the article is not about O’Fallon. The best part is that it gives us a very good estimate of what it would cost the city of St. Louis to install water meters in the first place. If you frequent this blog you are probably aware that the city of St. Louis does not use water meters for home water use. In my opinion, that is insane.

If it costs O’Fallon $5.8 million to replace 15,000 meters, we can estimate it would cost the city of St. Louis $34 million to install water meters for its 87,000 residential customers without meters. That is approximately $390 per residential customer, and that number ignores the likelihood that the cost per unit would likely be lower for an order six times larger. Residents would then be able to adjust to higher water rates by using less water, something that businesses in the city are already doing.

Of course, I think the entire water division should be privatized in St. Louis, as well as in Kansas City, Springfield, Kirkwood, and Columbia. But at least those other cities make use of water meters. Privatized or not, the city and its water customers should expend the necessary funds to install and operate water meters.

The post O’Fallon Updates Its Water Meters – Why Not St. Louis? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Kansas City, however, is one of the largest cities in the country to make full use of the city manager system. The job comes with a great deal of power, and in many ways the most important role of the council is the choice of the city manager. But city manager’s have short life spans. I could compare it to prime ministers in parliamentary systems of government. One day you are the most powerful person in the country, then something goes wrong, you lose a no-confidence vote, and you are out just like that. Margaret Thatcher sort of went out in that way. The analogy might work better if Wayne Cauthen had access to nukes.

I have no idea whether he was a good city manager. My guess is that he was, but the nature of the job is unstable. You get hired by one group of politicians and then, when power changes, who knows whether you are still wanted? I wish him well, and I think we can all agree that being escorted out of city hall by security was a bit much.

The post Live by Political Appointment, Die by Political Appointment appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Liberty does not need to do this. Missouri-American is more than capable of purchasing the water system and serving the needs of the citizens. And with the proposed Liberty rate increase, they can almost certainly do it at a lower cost to the city and its residents, even after you remove the one-time profit of the sale from the equation.

To Liberty’s credit, they do seem to have bid out their trash collection services, which are handled by BFI. Plus, the city has one of the better municipal websites I have visited, so let’s give them props for that, too.

The post Liberty Should Consider Privatization, Not Tax Increases for Utilities appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The county library has its headquarters and a branch near Kirkwood. They provide better service and parking, Allin said. The county library benefits from economies of scale — and its 14-cent tax rate is lower than the Kirkwood library’s, he said.

Liz Walker, my counterpart in Kirkwood, offers a number of retorts:

Liz Walker, chairwoman of the library’s trustees, on Thursday said the tax increase would preserve "a huge asset for all citizens of Kirkwood. It’s convenient, and it brings in people from all parts of the community."

I think that a having a public library in the heart of a downtown area really adds something to the area, such as in the University City Loop, Downtown St. Louis and Downtown Clayton.  I also think that the property tax increase proposal is going to be a victim of bad timing, coming a few months after voters approved another tax increase and a few days after voters will have received their property tax bills in the mail.  But speaking of timing, the voters and citizens of Kirkwood could always consider selling off their municipal utilitites, which would give the city and its taxing districts a number of options moving forward. (Thank you to the Missouri Political News Service for hosting my latest op-ed.)

The citizens of Kirkwood get to decide between some obvious choices: higher taxes and a quality library right in the heart of their downtown area, or lower taxes and a reduction in local libarary services, which may or may not be offset by the presence of two county libraries nearby. I am not going to presume to tell the voters of Kirkwood what they should do, but I look forward to following the debate and decision.

The post Kirkwood, Tax Rates, and a Well-Timed Op-Ed appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Kirkwood is the only municipality in Saint Louis County that continues to provide utility services to its residents. Would citizens benefit if Kirkwood abandoned this service model, instead allowing private, regulated utilities to provide all utility services to residents?

In January 2002, Florissant sold its water distribution system to Missouri-American Water Company for $14.5 million. That works out to $268.78 per person. Going by that ratio, Kirkwood could sell its water distribution system for $7,344,072 (in 2002 dollars), which matches the estimates Kirkwood received in 2004 when it investigated the possibility of selling its water system.

Florissant used the profit from its sale to finance additional street repairs, public works improvements, and police department projects. It then put most of the money, $10 million, into a reserve fund that earned interest for the city. Kirkwood had to consider a similar decision in 2004 because of the major capital needs of its aging water treatment plant. Officials opted to close the treatment plant and purchase water wholesale from Missouri-American Water, but maintain city operation of the distribution system. Kirkwood Electric operates in the same manner, purchasing electricity wholesale from AmerenUE and reselling it to residents.

A 1970 study by University of Missouri economists Paul Junk and Richard Wallace demonstrated that private, investor-owned electric utilities had significantly lower operating costs per kilowatt hour than municipal utilities. While that study compared power-generating municipal utilities to private utilities, it is still relevant to the current situation. The study concluded it would be better for municipal utilities to purchase and redistribute power from outside sources, as Kirkwood now does for both electricity and water, rather than produce or treat it themselves, as Kirkwood used to do. Is it now time to move further?

There are good arguments for maintaining the existing municipal electrical and water distribution systems. Both systems continue to generate excess revenues that can be reinvested into other Kirkwood services and help keep the city’s tax rates lower. The current tax-exempt status of the municipal distribution system decreases pressure on costs and allows more revenue to be returned to other city services. In fiscal year 2005, the electric department returned $1,380,000. Although it is hard to measure, a sense of civic pride can result from having your own city provide this service, much like community pride in a high school football team.

Kirkwood’s own website states that residents pay the same rates for electricity as AmerenUE customers. From a review of the publicly listed rates for water, it seems that Kirkwood residents pay a slightly higher rate for water ($1.8353 per 100 cubic feet compared to $1.5253 for Missouri-American) than other county residents, but with Missouri-American’s recent rate hike request, the Kirkwood rate may soon be lower. The benefits to Kirkwood residents do not lie in cheaper electricity or water, but in reinvesting resale profits in the city rather than seeing them go to shareholders.

There are also strong arguments for selling off municipal utilities. The one-time profit from a sale of the water distribution system could finance immediate needs, an emergency fund, a long-term, interest-earning reserve fund, and a property tax cut for Kirkwood’s residents — all at the same time. While there might be no short-term salary savings from employee layoffs, because the utilities still generate a profit, savings from long-term employee pension costs could be significant. On top of the immediate profits Kirkwood would receive from any sale, AmerenUE and Missouri-American Water are two of the 10 largest property taxpayers in Saint Louis County. Replacing tax-exempt facilities with systems they own would increase Kirkwood’s tax base and provide a long-term revenue benefit on top of immediate profits from the sale and budget savings.

While Kirkwood utilities do make “payments in lieu of taxes” back to the city, those payments really just move government money around without generating new revenue or long-term savings. And not every year going forward will result in an operating profit to be transferred to the general fund. According to Kirkwood’s 2007 budget report, “The high average age of our (electric) system dictates more replacement and maintenance and drives our operations and maintenance costs up.” This situation will not become less expensive for Kirkwood over time.

In my opinion, Kirkwood should follow the example of the other municipalities in our area that have ceased providing utility services, and sell its facilities to investor-owned, regulated utilities. This would allow Kirkwood to focus on services that are not privately provided, such as police and fire protection. Aside from the one-time profit, however, the immediate, quantifiable savings to residents from the sale would be minimal. If the residents and leaders of Kirkwood wish to continue the current system, there are legitimate reasons to do so.

David Stokes is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based think tank.

The post Should Kirkwood Sell Its Municipal Utilities? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Each of these nine local libraries has its own local property tax. The residents of these nine systems pay this tax — not the county libarary tax. All nine have higher tax rates than the county system, which is 15 cents per hundred dollars of assessed valuation. The attached article has the tax rates, although I know University City’s rate has decreased significantly since this list was put together, and others may have as well. The difference in tax rates is pretty small in real terms, but it’s there. So, finally, I am getting to my point …

Should these nine municipal libraries merge into the county system, as former library districts in Clayton and Florissant did decades ago? Let’s take them each as they come. University City, Webster Groves, Kirkwood, and Ferguson are four of the larger municipalitites in St. Louis County, and as such are capable of supporting entities — such as libraries, and more — on their own. I have been to three of those four buildings, and each is very impressive, with a substantial collection. While all may be close to existing county system libraries, I really don’t see any gains for any of the above four cities in consolidating their library systems with the county’s. The tax savings would be very small, and the residents of these four communities like having their own, wonderful libraries.

Now let’s take Brentwood, Richmond Heights, and Maplewood. Each of these is a much smaller town, but all are known for one set of things, tax-wise: retail shopping and sales tax dollars. All three have very low property tax rates — just above the county rate — and all three have low property taxes in general, because sales tax revenues fund most of city government. Not coincidentally, with the tremendous retail growth in all three cities during the past decade, all three have new library buildings for their residents.  Maplewood, in particular, is not close to any existing county libraries, although parts of Richmond Heights and Brentwood are not far. I don’t see any real gains or reasons for consolidation for any of these three systems.  The current tax system favors all three of them and the local libraries are easily well-supported.

This brings us to Rock Hill and Valley Park. They are the two smallest cities listed, and Rock Hill has by far the highest tax rate. Valley Park is close to exising county libraries, while Rock Hill is not. (My guess is that families want to be able to make a very short drive or walk in order to get to the libaray, and distances that would be fine for most things are too far for the library.)

Rock Hill is well-known for its recent financial difficulties — although things are improving, thanks (and I use that term very loosely) to retail projects brought about by eminent domain. Nonetheless, Rock Hill’s residents would benefit from the large tax cut. With Valley Park’s small population and low tax rate, I have to wonder about the quality of their library (which I admit I’ve never been to).

Final recommendation: Valley Park should dissolve its library system and enter the county system. Rock Hill should also dissolve its system and attempt to join Webster Groves’ or Brentwood’s system. If that does not work, Rock Hill should join the county system also. The other seven municipal systems should remain as they are. Now go read some books!

The post You Want Library Posts, You Get Library Posts! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The first Post-Dispatch article is about the efforts of local suburbs to create downtown areas for their communities. The second is specific to the Olive Boulevard area of University City and Olivette, with which I am pretty familiar.

As for the first article, it was excellent reading once I got past my initial, "Are you kidding me? Is this a joke?" response. There is some absurdity in suburban towns that "just decide" (say that like Chris Penn in Reservoir Dogs) to suddenly create an urban environment, with all its inherent hipness, in the middle of suburbia. It’s like Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs sat down and just worked out a compromise over coffee. Tell me what is missing in this statement:

Planners tout Manchester Road in Maplewood, downtown Kirkwood and Washington Avenue in St. Louis as premier examples of vibrant business and residential districts created by refurbishing existing buildings.

What is missing is the acknowledgement that the planners didn’t have anything to do with the success of Washington Avenue, downtown Maplewood, or Kirkwood. I was there on Wash Ave., man — to do my best 1967 Haight-Ashbury impression. Entrepreneurs made Washington Avenue what it is, along with some dedicated urban trailblazers. City government had nothing to do with it, although they almost screwed the whole thing up with a neverending street improvement project. I admit I like the zipper motif in the road, for which we can thank the city, but that’s it.

Downtown Maplewood is the same thing — restaurateurs built that up while the city was tearing down houses for Wal-Mart just to the north. (Side note: It’s a brilliant idea to take advantage of the fact that the city goes 100 yards west of Skinker to put up bars with 3 a.m. licenses on the city line, in what feels like the county. See Delmar Bar and Grill, Cheshire, and Cusumano’s on Manchester as successful examples.)

As for Kirkwood, the downtown area there was popular long before the new loft developments were planned. The hobby shops, diners, neighborhood bars, and markets gave the place a great feel without the new urban hipness everyone apparently wants now, according to this article. If Dardenne Prairie, Manchester, and Chesterfield want to just build downtowns out of thin air, I wish them luck (not really) but feel they are going to have the same results as Wildwood:

In Wildwood’s town center, leaders say some businesses have thrived, though some residents have been disappointed at the pace of the residential development.

"It’s been slower than most people expected," said Joe Vujnich, the city’s park’s and planning director.

Really? So people who want to move to Wildwood aren’t looking for loft living above the new P.F. Chang’s? Really? This surprises you, Mr. Developer and Ms. City Planner?

The University City / St. Louis Loop is one of the greatest areas in our community. I met my wife there and play darts there every week (excluding this summer, because of the birth of my son). Joe Edwards gets all the press, and he deserves every bit of it, but other business owners deserve credit, too, for making the area what it is. Business owners like Joe made the Loop what it is. To its credit, University City government has always responded well to the needs of the business community, and it could serve as a great example to other cities for how to let businesses lead, and how to work with them.

I say all this because if U. City thinks it is going to be able to work with a developer to turn Olive near I-170 into anything resembling the Loop, or any other successful mixed-use area, it ain’t gonna happen.  These things take time, not a horrible new Italian restaurant chain in a city filled with great Italian restaurants. Bob’s Seafood, Nobu’s and Beyer’s Lumber have been in University City for years. As Jane Jacobs argued, those are the types of small businesses that make vibrant areas, not things to be pushed out for some awful, artificial development. I hope U. City and Olivette avoid tax incentives that would give new chains advantages over older, established businesses. If new chains want to move in, fine, but they should do so without the type of government aid that distorts the free market and often fails anyway.

The post The Inherent Fallacy of Central Planning, Local-Style appeared first on Show-Me Institute.