Susan Pendergrass speaks with J.S. Onésimo “Ness” Sandoval, demographer and professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Saint Louis University, about what the data says about the future of the St. Louis region. They discuss record low birth rates and what they mean for school enrollment, why St. Louis is among the top regions in the country for deaths outnumbering births, how the region compares to Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and why suburbs like Chesterfield and St. Charles are aging faster than most people realize. They also discuss the role of housing supply, school choice, crime, and domestic migration in whether St. Louis can attract and retain young families, and more.

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Episode Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:00): Well, certainly not the first time we’ve spoken, Dr. Sandoval. At St. Louis University, you are such a fascinating demographer of the region, and I’ve been following your work as new census data has been released. You’ve been writing about it and creating what I think are really cool mapping tools that folks can look at to see how the St. Louis region is impacted. Thanks for coming on to talk about that. But first I want to sort of expand our view, because pretty sure that I read within the last week that the number of babies born in the United States was at an all-time low. Is that right?

Ness Sandoval (00:35): Yeah, so every year the United States will probably be breaking records. The data coming out for 2025 is a record low, and the data coming out for 2026 is even lower. The first few months of 2026, the provisional data that’s out shows even fewer. And this is what we expected. We call this a demographic shock, because in 2026, whenever you create an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear, rational people do not have children until they understand that their job is safe, there’s not a recession coming, and we’re not at war. When you create this sense of fear, young people do the rational thing and don’t have children. We saw this in 2020 with COVID. We saw this in 2008 with the Great Recession. Anytime there is uncertainty, young people will postpone births. And that’s what we’re seeing. This started in November. We started to see the decline in births, and it’s continued from November, December, January, February. And so this is what we’re going to see.

Susan Pendergrass (01:51): So next year is going to be lower. And when you look at the state of Missouri, I’ve been saying this ad nauseum for years that our K-12 school enrollment is declining and will decline because of that sort of peak in 2008, just before the Great Recession. So our biggest kindergarten class was around 2012, and our kindergarten classes have by and large declined ever since. And so those kids are moving through the system. You can project that we will just have fewer and fewer kids enrolled in our K-12 system in the state of Missouri.

Ness Sandoval (02:06): No, we peaked in 2008.

Susan Pendergrass (02:11): By and large declined ever since 2012. And so those kids are moving through the system. So you can project that we will just have fewer and fewer kids enrolled in our K-12 system in the state of Missouri.

Ness Sandoval (02:24): Yeah, this is true, and we have a pretty good chart. We make these for every city. We’re replacing very large cohorts of children who were born. I have a son who was born in 2007, just before the recession. That cohort that graduated in St. Louis was 40,000 students. The baby birth cohort is now 27,000 students. So that’s just in that one year a 13,000 decline. And it’s going to decline every year for the next 15 to 18 years, because we don’t know what the bottom is yet. It has not reached the bottom.

Susan Pendergrass (03:01): Right. People say where are the kids going? I’m like, they’re not going anywhere. They weren’t born. The St. Louis region, like Clayton is declining, Ladue was, I mean, all of these school districts, I think almost everyone in the county has fewer kids today than they had 10 years ago.

Ness Sandoval (03:07): They weren’t born. Yes, and it’s not just St. Louis County. St. Charles County is experiencing this. There are some parts that are growing, in the Wentzville area, O’Fallon, but if you look at the old St. Charles areas, they’re experiencing decline. Families with children are declining in those areas. We had made an interactive map that I think shocked a lot of people, of seniors outnumbering youth. People could not comprehend this. Like, my gosh, this is not 2000 where youth were dominating these neighborhoods. I live out here in Chesterfield. The entire Route 64 corridor is senior citizens dominating the youth in Chesterfield. People are shocked. More seniors lived in Chesterfield than youth in 2010, and that’s only grown since. This is happening throughout West County.

Susan Pendergrass (04:14): Wow. And your maps actually go down to the zip code, right? You have very granular data.

Ness Sandoval (04:27): Across into Illinois, yes. The only way you can turn this around is young people from across the United States deciding that they want to make St. Louis their home, have a family there, create a business there. This is what I promote. We have to get younger. We really should have a preferential option for families with children. And that’s a hard message for a lot of people because they’re like, wait a minute, we grew from 1970 to 2020. And I’m like, but all of that growth was driven by babies born. Over 1.8 million babies were born. And I tell people, just do the math. 27,000 babies per year times 50. That’s the back of the envelope for what’s coming over the next 50 years. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s going to come. It’s going to be a lot lower than that. People are starting to get it. We’re not going to have 1.8 million babies born over the next 50 years.

Susan Pendergrass (05:33): Yeah, and I think about things like individual school systems building new elementary schools when there have got to be a lot of buildings that are empty. And also, won’t there be more competition for public resources between children and older people?

Ness Sandoval (05:49): Yeah. At my previous job at Northwestern, we did a project on this in one of the suburbs because we were studying seniors. There was a debate about how to spend public money. Was it for transit for seniors or transit for children? This was 2006, and this was the debate happening in Chicago. How do you provide paratransit for senior citizens when that number is increasing? We’re just having this discussion because St. Louis is leading. We’re in the top three of regions. Pittsburgh leads the country, Cleveland is second, and St. Louis is third, tied with Tampa. More people dying than babies born. We simply don’t have the number of babies born for the size of our population. And it’s because we’re a very old region. We’re the ninth oldest region in the country.

Susan Pendergrass (06:58): Yeah, I mean, we used to have 800,000 people in the city of St. Louis, right? And now we’re 280,000 or something.

Ness Sandoval (07:05): Yeah, and I was just looking at the numbers. It is very possible within two years that Kansas City will have more babies born in absolute numbers than the St. Louis metro region. That’s how few babies. I’m talking about the region. Indianapolis is about 700 babies behind St. Louis. Nashville is about 800 babies behind. All of these smaller regions are having lots of babies, and young people are moving there. Your future depends on the number of children born. And when you look at population projections, I kind of know what this looks like. When you fall below Kansas City in number of births, at some point Kansas City will be larger than St. Louis. We can project this out. We’re talking absolute births, not birth rates. We had lots of babies born 10 years ago. We were fine 10 years ago.

Susan Pendergrass (08:09): Yeah, wow.

Ness Sandoval (08:29): We can go back and talk about what happened since 2010.

Susan Pendergrass (08:35): Yeah, please. I’m curious what did happen. I know you call it the death spiral when there’s more deaths than births, but how did we get into this?

Ness Sandoval (08:41): So I moved here for the Great Recession. I moved in 2008 to start my job at SLU. And there was hope when I got here. There was some positive momentum happening. I think the region took it for granted that it didn’t have to do anything. We just have to be St. Louis. We don’t have to do anything. Unfortunately, Nashville came on the scene. Then you started to see regions change. Regions thinking we need to get young. And St. Louis absolutely did nothing. Since I’ve lived here, there’s been a lot of resistance to economic development in the region. Nashville, I think it was the popularity of being young, being pro-development. I went to Nashville to actually look at it, like why are young people there? And I went to Vanderbilt. And I saw this really interesting integration between the city and Vanderbilt University. That does not exist here in St. Louis. Making it a vibrant, cohesive, urban experience.

Susan Pendergrass (09:47): Yeah. Right. Now you step off campus at SLU and you’re in an area you don’t want to walk at night.

Ness Sandoval (10:00): Yeah, and even if it was WashU, right. And then you can talk about the Loop. It never recovered from COVID, traffic is down. I think the region has really struggled to attract young people to stay here and live here.

Susan Pendergrass (10:13): Well, we’ve been looking into the issue of crime in St. Louis quite a bit, and I know it’s down and everyone’s celebrating that fact, but I’m not sure when you survey people and ask how they feel walking alone at night, that it’s changed all that much. Even if the number of murders are down, I don’t know that people feel safer walking alone at night, and that’s got to have an impact on whether you want to stay in St. Louis after you have kids.

Ness Sandoval (10:47): Yeah. I think in the city you move out to the suburbs. The challenge is they work and you live for affordability. So many suburbs are against new development, even though they can develop. We see these debates in Chesterfield, that debate in Creve Coeur, several debates out in St. Charles. They don’t even talk about Jefferson County, because they’re celebrating voting down housing. My point is if you don’t want to build housing, Indianapolis is going to build it. Columbus is going to build it. Nashville is building it. We are no longer in the top 50 in new housing permits in the country. We’re 58th.

Susan Pendergrass (11:34): Why though? Is it because there’s not demand, or is supply being constrained?

Ness Sandoval (11:42): Supply is being constrained. Part of it is, when I speak to people, they say it’s going to hurt my home values. People want supply down. But you understand there’s a consequence to this. And home values are always good in St. Louis. But again, we always say there’s a city that we can look to that’s our future, and that’s Pittsburgh. If you really study Pittsburgh and look at it, you’re like, wow, there’s a lot of things we can learn as a city, and say this is not what we want to be. Pittsburgh leads the country in discounted rates on home sales. When people offer their price, most people do not get the price that they want. It’s a significant discount because the demand’s not there. We are about 20 years behind Pittsburgh.

Susan Pendergrass (12:25): Wow. I think a lot, in what I do, about the educational offerings in the region. Before we were recording we were talking about Texas. Texas, number one, doesn’t have an income tax, and also you can pick your child’s school from the get-go. They have hundreds, if not thousands of charter schools. And now they have a private school choice program that I think 250,000 families apply to. And Missouri has an extremely limited private school choice program, maybe 6,000 or 7,000 kids in the state, and not even the ability within St. Louis County to go outside of these tiny little districts. You can’t even go from Clayton to Brentwood. People really feel strongly about this and fight the idea of opening up the county and letting kids go within the county to any school district, and then the legislature fights it every year. And I’m like, we are just becoming less and less competitive.

Ness Sandoval (13:36): I don’t think people understand. I do a lot of work with schools now. We’re going to lose at a minimum 100,000 children under 15 by 2045. This loss is built into the system based on 27,000 births right now. The numbers are starting to show up in kindergarten. We have a smaller kindergarten class, a smaller first grade class coming in. And so a lot of schools are like, wait a minute, what’s going on? This is just starting. You have another 20 years, because we have these large cohorts that were still born after the Great Recession that are going to be replaced by smaller cohorts coming in. And there is no significant migration of children coming into the region.

Susan Pendergrass (14:28): So there are going to be difficult staffing decisions, and people don’t want to hear it. Like, we cannot continue to hire more teachers.

Ness Sandoval (14:32): You have to close schools. You have to close schools, have to merge schools. I’m doing some work in Parkway. People should not be surprised. Parkway is having meetings this month about what Parkway looks like going forward, and people are discussing consolidation. Rockwood is talking about a 15% decline in 10 years. Go out another 10 years, Rockwood will be talking about school consolidation. St. Charles will be talking about school consolidation in the old St. Charles area, the city of St. Charles. This is coming. Everybody focuses on the city and says the city needs to close schools. But you will see a discussion, I think, between Clayton and Brentwood.

Susan Pendergrass (15:06): For sure. Clayton had 2,500 kids. Now they’ve got closer to 2,000. I mean, that’s teachers, that’s buildings. And I know in Indianapolis, I’ve talked to a superintendent in that area. All parents can pick a public school. And he was like, I had some under-enrolled elementary schools and it was great for me because I put a language immersion program in one to bring parents in. I think the resistance to this idea is all about not wanting kids who aren’t paying property taxes, but I think it’s going to flip. Then you’ll be like, we’ve got to fill these seats. We’re paying the same teacher for 18 seats that we could pay for 22 kids. At some point they’re going to have to start laying off teachers. So I think there are some very difficult decisions ahead that you can see now, and there are things that could be done now, like at least not filling open positions.

Ness Sandoval (16:16): I think universities are seeing this, because many of them are relying on tuition and those dollars are not coming in. A smart university has to make cuts because it doesn’t get any better next year or the following year. There will be fewer students coming in. So universities that want to survive are making necessary cuts to survive.

Ness Sandoval (16:45): Again, we don’t know what the bottom of the birth decline looks like. We just happen to live in a state and a region that has seen a significant decline in children. I keep saying we’re modeling the future for people, either as a good or bad thing. They’re like, we want to be like St. Louis, or we don’t want to do what they did.

Ness Sandoval (17:13): I think a lot of people are starting to understand this. It’s like, we’re letting our children go, and we’re not doing a very good job of trying to keep them here. When you had 1.8 million births, you had enough to let children leave your region, leave the state. You don’t have that luxury anymore. Our models show the region should have anywhere between 1.3 million to a million births coming in over the next 50 years. We hope it’s not a million births, because that means you have an 800,000 decline in your population under 50. Or it’s 1.3 million births, which is only a 500,000 decline. But that’s coming.

Susan Pendergrass (17:43): How does immigration factor into it? Because I remember the last time we talked, you said that St. Louis is not very immigration friendly. And of course, the current national environment is not very immigration friendly.

Ness Sandoval (18:03): Missouri and St. Louis cannot rely on immigration to save it. It’s not a state that immigrants are going to come to in large numbers. They’re going to go to Florida. Miami leads the country. Even though domestic migration has people leaving, international migrants are going there as their top destination. They’re going to Philadelphia, they’re going to New York. We get immigrants who come here, but it’s a very small number, like 6,000 a year. We’re not even in the top tier as a top 25 metropolitan region. And Missouri is not either. So Missouri has to rely on domestic migration.

The data will show that probably for the decade, there will be more people dying than babies born in Missouri. Missouri will start to have from a natural perspective more people dying than babies born. And 91 counties across the whole state will have more people dying than babies born. So Missouri will become dependent for growth on domestic migration.

Susan Pendergrass (19:29): Or do we just accept that we’re not going to grow anymore? What’s the impact of that?

Ness Sandoval (19:33): Again, it’s going to be specific. I do think the Springfield area is going to grow, the Branson area, there’s growth. Part of this is retirement, I think. Kansas City is growing.

Susan Pendergrass (19:42): Why Kansas City more than St. Louis? What’s attracting younger people to Kansas City that is not happening here?

Ness Sandoval (19:49): Kansas City is a younger region. St. Louis is a fairly old region. Kansas City is a lot younger and it has a large Latino population, and that’s the largest growing population in the country, birth-rate wise. Latinos are now the second largest population in Kansas City. They surpassed the Black population, which I think even shocked me, because we thought we knew this was coming, but we thought this was going to be post-2030. The fact that it already happened shows just how many Latinos are moving there. And then you have an exodus of Black residents leaving Kansas City as well as St. Louis. I always tell people, when you have young Black families leave or young Black adults leave, those children ultimately leave too. And so that’s part of the story.

Ness Sandoval (20:48): When young people leave, the children that traditionally were born to those young people are now being born in Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston. The number one challenge for St. Louis and the state is the decline in births. If that doesn’t change, then you’re going to see that decline start to show up in five to ten years in our schools.

Ness Sandoval (21:17): And the private schools will simply go out of business because that’s dictated by the private market. Or they’ll do what many of the Catholic schools are doing. They think, we’re going to have middle school now, or we’re going to be K through 12. But then what about the parochial schools? There’s no growth. They’re just taking children out of other schools and putting them in their school system.

Ness Sandoval (21:45): And so again, I go back to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is about how do we manage population decline? The city is growing a little bit, but 100% of the growth in terms of the losses is in the suburbs. And that’s going to happen in St. Louis. When this loss starts to show up in the demographic accounting, most of the loss is going to be outside of the city of St. Louis. It’s going to be in the Chesterfield areas. It’s going to be in St. Charles.

Susan Pendergrass (22:18): So what could be done from a policy perspective? Chesterfield is trying to have this arts and entertainment district. They put in Topgolf and the concert venues. They’re trying to attract younger people there. Is it working?

Ness Sandoval (22:34): It’s not working. I mean, they have the same slight increase. I just posted this yesterday. People are shocked. The growth is in non-family households in Chesterfield. If you look at the new development, I call it downtown West Chesterfield. These are million-dollar homes, very expensive. Very few families with kids are there. These are empty nesters or dual-income, no-kids households. It’s very expensive for young families to get into Chesterfield today, when your entry-level home that was $170,000 in 1980 is $600,000 today. These are the challenges.

Susan Pendergrass (23:23): So build more starter homes?

Ness Sandoval (23:32): You need more entry-level homes. I’m not even going to use the word affordable. You need attainable homes for two incomes. And they can be built. But what I’ve heard is that a lot of cities do not want these homes. They want the $600,000 to $700,000 homes because of taxes. And so there is this tension there.

Ness Sandoval (23:56): Parkway and Rockwood are going to look very different in 30 years. They were very attractive amenities for young families with children. But I look at the data, and my kids are in Parkway. These schools are under-enrolled. You go and objectively look at the classrooms, you’re like, there should be 30 kids in these rooms and there’s 15. It’s great for me as a parent. I’m glad there’s only 15 kids for my fourth grader. One of the classes in Parkway Central, in the middle school, in his math class, there are eight students. I love it as a parent, but as someone who looks at the data, this is not sustainable.

Susan Pendergrass (24:45): Yeah, lots of one-on-one. Yeah. I’m just trying to figure out what would cause a renaissance in St. Louis. It doesn’t feel super safe. It has some great amenities and a great food scene and now MLS soccer. What would it take? Well, number one, you do have the school system problem where the St. Louis public school system is kind of a dumpster fire. So people want to move out if they have small children.

Ness Sandoval (25:32): Yeah, the decision to move out is made within the first three years once the baby’s born. We can see that in the data. When we moved from Chicago, because we lived in the city of Chicago, we wanted to live in the city of St. Louis. I think most people who move from Philadelphia or Boston are living in the city. We thought the city of St. Louis would be offering the same amenities. Because of the Great Recession, I came a year before my family, and we soon realized the city of St. Louis was not the city of Chicago in terms of amenities. And so we ended up in St. Charles. And I think most people make that same decision.

Susan Pendergrass (26:25): Yeah, my husband and I moved right into the city.

Ness Sandoval (26:27): We see it in the data. People are moving into the city from Philadelphia, from Boston, from Houston. But then, like me, if you have children and you’re not going to pay for private school, because that’s a tax in many ways, they’re going to exit out. And then with the Catholic schools closing in the city, there are going to be fewer options.

Susan Pendergrass (26:50): Yeah. But the public transportation is no good. I mean, there are things.

Ness Sandoval (26:57): And it’s interesting. We did see a kind of experiment during COVID. When COVID happened, the Catholic schools in the county opened up. A lot of families wanted their children in face-to-face instruction. So they left the city. They did not stay. So we had kind of a quasi-experimental design there. Education was very important.

Ness Sandoval (27:26): A lot of people left the city because of that and never came back. And that started before COVID. But I think this idea of school choice is something where parents want it. We have enough anecdotal evidence. When Normandy closed, the school system closed, families moved to Normandy to get their kids into Francis Howell. There’s enough evidence to show that families want to make these decisions. The question would be, would Parkway accept all of the students that would want to be in Parkway?

Susan Pendergrass (27:56): Yeah, the law would have to say that they would have to. You couldn’t let them pick and choose.

Ness Sandoval (28:15): Yeah. And so the question is, you have a lot of people who would love to be in Parkway. I gave a talk at Marquette and I was shocked because a good percentage of the students there were saying those public school students, but the parents had left to get out to West County for their children. So the question is, do you just let the private market dictate this? Those who can leave the city will ultimately leave the city and get out to West County.

Susan Pendergrass (28:50): There’s movement out. And I think in terms of domestic migration, to get parents to move in, you can go to our northern border, Iowa. The state pays for private school tuition. Oklahoma to the south, the state pays for private school tuition. Kansas, you can go to any public school in the state. It’s 100% open enrollment. Arkansas is one of the strongest for school choice, both public and private. I think we’re going to be surrounded by it and just have our arms folded across our chest. Because Parkway doesn’t want all those kids coming, or Rockwood doesn’t want all those kids coming. Parents are simply going to move across the border to a state where they can pick any public or private school. I’ve talked to some parents who have reached out to say, I’m thinking about moving to the region, is it true I can’t pick a school? And I’m like, it is true. You cannot pick a school. And I think they’re like, forget it. I’m not going to make this big decision on where to buy a house. I think if we don’t do things that are family friendly, and if we don’t get crime under control in some way, or have a 911 system where when you call somebody responds, I think it’s interesting that St. Louis will become this example for the nation of what a dying city looks like.

Ness Sandoval (30:08): We have three examples today: Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and St. Louis. Tampa is kind of unique because it is a destination for retirees. The Wall Street Journal has an article today on Cleveland, the renaissance of downtown Cleveland. And Detroit too, it’s a renaissance.

Susan Pendergrass (30:29): Wow. What about Detroit now? So St. Louis hasn’t figured out our renaissance yet.

Ness Sandoval (30:49): And to be honest with you, I think it will be hard. I’m not pro anything, but I find this whole debate about the city and county interesting. I’m not from here, so I don’t have this history of growing up here. But I think objectively, when I look at the budget of the city of St. Louis and compare it to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is a little bit bigger. It’s got 25,000 more people. But their budget is significantly smaller than St. Louis City’s budget. Part of me wonders, because the city is both a city and a county, it doesn’t have enough people or revenue to operate as both. And this is what’s helping Pittsburgh out. This is what’s helping Cleveland out, because that county revenue is spread among more taxpayers. In St. Louis City, the county functions are spread among a dwindling number of taxpayers. The city probably cannot be a county anymore. There’s just too few taxpayers to provide both city services and county services.

Ness Sandoval (32:08): I looked at these budgets and I’m like, my gosh, why is St. Louis’s budget so much more? I’m talking not a little bit more, a lot more than Pittsburgh’s budget. Pittsburgh is having trouble. And I don’t see the long-term fiscal situation turning around for the city because it’s got to provide all of these services. The tax base is going to decline. The next three years are probably going to see population loss in the city. The numbers just came out in March, but we’ll get the numbers in May. It’ll probably lead the country again in population decline for large cities.

Susan Pendergrass (32:58): Are we still a top 20 city? We’re number one in population decline, but what about in population size?

Ness Sandoval (33:01): We’re number one in decline. Last year, St. Louis City was number one. We’re declining. We’re not in the top 20 yet, but we’re very close. If we go back to 2020, we’re smaller than we were in 2020. The only reason we’re not number one in decline is because we had so many immigrants that offset our domestic migration loss. But this will be an interesting 2030 census, because it’ll be the first time the region will go into a census with more people dying than babies born. In the last census, we had about 75,000 natural growth. We’re looking at about 25,000 to 30,000 natural decline going into this census without any domestic migration. I tell people that this story is just starting. We have 74 years of the century left.

Ness Sandoval (34:18): I’m just trying to get people to move from the mindset that this is 2010 St. Louis. You don’t have 36,000 births anymore. You have 27,000 and it’s declining, one of the fastest declines in the country. Because of it, we’re aging very fast, and so we have to shift. The region has to make a choice that we start to organize our economy around senior citizens. There’s lots of money to be made from senior citizens, but we will never be viewed as Nashville or Austin as a place for young people.

Susan Pendergrass (34:52): Absolutely. That Route 64 corridor is just going to be all retirement homes.

Ness Sandoval (35:04): We won’t be talking about single family homes anymore. We’ll be talking about senior housing. We’ll be talking about a workforce that’s going to work with seniors instead of a workforce for children. And there is money to be made in that economy. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. But again, we can look at other parts of the country where this transition has happened. Local government spending is being consumed by senior citizens, the healthcare of senior citizens, the paratransit of seniors. Seniors will lose their ability to drive. That cost typically gets covered by local governments. And so you will not be providing buses for children. You’ll be providing paratransit to get seniors to their doctors. Churches will have to think about being accessible to seniors. I go to Church of the Ascension and they are not prepared. At Easter, one of the Masses, one-third of this section was senior citizens in wheelchairs. The churches are simply not prepared for a parish that’s going to be 50% of the population at 70 years old and older. Restaurants have to think about this.

Susan Pendergrass (36:30): Wow, that’s crazy. Well, interesting stuff. I hope you’ll come back and talk about this more. And certainly I’m very interested in reading everything that you write about what St. Louis can do. We need to figure out a renaissance.

Ness Sandoval (36:51): We’ve got to get younger. The kids are giving us a try. They’re coming to school, they’re coming here because they have hopes. We just have not responded the way we need to. A lot of companies are starting to recognize this. I talked to the mayor and said, you need to be a more proactive voice on this. But the region, this is not a city of St. Louis issue. This is a St. Charles issue, a Jefferson County issue, a Chesterfield issue. Most of the people live outside of St. Louis city. The loss we’re projecting is going to come from the suburbs. And that’s what’s happening in Pittsburgh, that’s what’s happening in Cleveland. 100% of the demographic loss is in the suburbs.

Susan Pendergrass (37:21): Yeah. Wow, that’s crazy. Well, fascinating. Thank you so much for explaining it. I don’t want to be depressed about it, but it’s not super optimistic. We’ll find a silver lining. Thanks, Dr. Sandoval.

Ness Sandoval (37:59): All right, thank you very much.

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Patrick Tuohey and David Stokes join Zach Lawhorn to break down the key issues Missouri voters will decide on April 7th. They discuss whether local elections should stay in April or move to November, property tax limit votes happening in more than 90 counties, new fire district sales tax authority and what it means for taxpayers, the 1% earnings tax renewals in Kansas City and St. Louis, and Springfield’s convention center lodging tax returning to the ballot after voters already rejected it. They also discuss use taxes, senior property tax freezes, the economic development sales tax on the ballot in O’Fallon, and more.

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Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post Missouri’s April 7 Ballot Breakdown with David Stokes and Patrick Tuohey appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Youth sports centers have been exploding around Missouri for two decades and, unfortunately, tax subsidies seem to go hand-in-glove with them. Let’s make one thing clear at the start: these aren’t parks. These aren’t public facilities where any kid or family can go and play or picnic or fly a kite with a delightful, singing nanny. These are businesses aimed at youth travel sports clubs, which are private, expensive teams. I like club sports (if my kids’ coaches are reading this, please don’t bench them). I just don’t think they fit any definition of a public good. These private facilities have no business being subsidized by taxpayers; if there is a market for them (there is), then they will succeed on their own.

Here is a brief listing of some of the major youth sports facilities that received taxpayer funds of various types (grants, incentives, special sales taxes, etc.) by various governments:

• Springfield heavily subsidized the Sports Town project.
• St. Louis County had trouble deciding which of multiple youth sports projects to ultimately fund (it eventually subsidized both).
• A baseball complex in Lake of the Ozarks has seen multiple battles over tax incentives.
• O’Fallon just rejected subsidies for another complex (yeah!), but then turned around one week later and approved them (boo!).

This is just a short list. I am sure there are more. The first policy change we need is to remove the ability of cities to make these decisions. At a minimum, counties should make all of these tax subsidy decisions. County officials are at least answerable to the voters for their choices. Municipalities routinely grant tax subsidies to businesses where the immediate impact to the city is limited but the harm to the school district, library district, and other entities that rely on tax revenue is substantial. Yet voters in those other districts often don’t live within the municipality and can’t hold anyone responsible with their votes.

Beyond that, we need local municipal officials to better understand basic economics and think both long term and regionally. I am not holding my breath.

The post What’s the Deal with the Tax Subsidies for Youth Sports Centers? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The request to amend the zoning map was approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission in May. The request was submitted in order to accommodate the development of a new subdivision, the Highlands at Busch Wildlife. The bill is revised from an earlier proposal called Tall Tree. The Tall Tree zoning amendment request, which was denied by the Planning and Zoning Commission in June 2023, was a 556-lot proposal on about 355 acres. The new development is for only 120 lots, cutting down the number of homes in the development by over 75% while reducing acreage by around 60% compared to the original proposal.

The St. Charles County Council chambers were filled with disapproval from St. Charles residents and nearby O’Fallon neighbors. Residents expressed concerns about negative environmental impacts (see the Missouri Department of Conservation’s comments on p. 42–43 of the amendment request) and increased traffic along state highway DD. Nonetheless, the bill passed by a vote of 5–2. Interestingly, the councilman of District 3—the district where the Highlands at Busch Wildlife will be built—voted in favor of the bill. Following the bill’s passage, a portion of the dissenting public in attendance left the room, and some even shouted their displeasure at the council while doing so. It is not uncommon for current residents of a community to be opposed to new development in their area. However, is this new development really something the citizens of St. Charles and the surrounding communities should be so upset about?

A 2018 paper titled Supply Skepticism: Housing Supply and Affordability from NYU’s Furman Center addresses many of the concerns commonly expressed by residents about new development. The paper discusses how development­—at any price point—can help improve overall housing affordability. Furthermore, development can also increase productivity and signal that the given community is a place where people want to live. This does not necessarily suggest that development should always happen anytime or anyplace. However, restricting housing supply is associated with numerous problems including increased racial segregation, decreased mobility, and slower economic growth.

While some St. Charles citizens may be dismayed by the passage of Bill No. 5300, hopefully the benefits of increased housing supply will become more evident over time. Who knows—maybe other communities around the state will even look to St. Charles as an example of how allowing the market supply of housing to move more freely can help meet the needs of their community.

The post St. Charles County Council Approves Zoning Change for New Housing Development appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The one-year extension came together after O’Fallon in October 2018 terminated the Rascals’ lease at CarShield Field and barred the team from the facility, saying at the time that the team’s ownership was “repeatedly behind on rent.” O’Fallon later let the Rascals back into the facility as it worked through negotiations with the team for new lease. O’Fallon said Monday that the Rascals still owe the city a balance of $36,600 on a debt of $60,000 from several years ago, and plans to discuss the debt with the team as it winds down operations.

Let’s not mince words: The city of O’Fallon was spending taxpayer money on a private enterprise exactly because the people of O’Fallon and the surrounding areas decided not to spend their own money on it. How was this ever a good idea? This comes on the heels of a similar situation in Wyandotte County, Kansas that we discussed and wrote about previously: A city spending limited taxpayer resources on a faltering private enterprise that only postposed the inevitable.

Incredibly, the larger cities on both sides of Missouri are contemplating even bigger versions of the same mistake, either by building a baseball stadium in downtown Kansas City or a Major League Soccer stadium in downtown St. Louis. The owners may be different, but the policy remains the same: City leaders using taxpayer dollars to shift the risk (but not the reward) from private investors to public taxpayers.

The post The Entirely Predictable Failure of Sports Teams Subsidies appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Construction unions are pressing the City Council to adopt a “project labor agreement” mandating union labor and other rules for the $28 million police headquarters-court facility approved by voters in April. In return, unions agree not to call strikes on the project.

While a project labor agreement that forces the city to use union labor rather than the best available bid is a bad idea in its own right, the fact that construction unions appear to be threatening a disruption in order to get exclusive access to this project is beyond the pale.

Where to begin?

Shouldn’t public works projects be awarded based on contractor qualifications and bid amounts? Doesn’t this combination get taxpayers the best value for their dollar? On the other hand, when a city adopts a constraint on a public works project that favors a certain kind of contractor for reasons other than value, isn’t that a bad sign?

I would say so. An agreement that awards contracts exclusively to unionized labor seems to be less about getting taxpayers the best deal and more about appeasing a politically active special interest group. If unionized businesses offer taxpayers in O’Fallon a better deal than non-union shops, they will win public contracts through the strength of their bids. Special treatment is unnecessary.

I don’t think anyone wants to see a slowdown on a $28 million public works project like this, but special treatment for unions trying to exercise political muscle should be non-negotiable, especially if they’re threatening to punish the city if they don’t get their way. O’Fallon should do the right thing for its taxpayers: Take bids from all parties and assess them on their merits.

The post Will O’Fallon Use a Competitive Bidding Process? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In a recent audit, the city of O’Fallon discovered that the license office had undercharged residents for the sales tax due on their motor vehicles. Now, DOR has billed many residents for the difference in what they paid and what they should have paid in taxes. (Even three years later, the DOR may legally assess these taxes under Chapter 144 of the Missouri Revised Statutes.)

This case is an example of how inefficient government bureaucracy results in undue burdens on citizens.

To a family hit hard by the recession, several hundred dollars can be difficult to come up with on short notice. This isn’t a case of citizens paying their fair share; it’s a case where a relatively minor governmental mistake can have unexpected and burdensome consequences on individuals.

Sales tax rates in Missouri differ from municipality to municipality because the total is comprised of special, local, and state sales taxes. While there is a general state rate of 4.225 percent, each municipality may charge its own additional rate. On top of that, special taxing districts within a municipality may impose relatively small sales taxes for specific purposes, causing sales tax rates to differ block by block in some areas.

In this case, the multiple layers of taxing authorities did not properly communicate and failed to charge residents the correct amount.

It is unclear who exactly made the error, but it likely occurred because of outdated maps that did not reflect O’Fallon’s recent annexations. Many vehicle owners were charged sales tax rates for unincorporated St. Charles County, when, in fact, they lived within O’Fallon’s city limits. When they paid the sales tax on their vehicles, the licensing office apparently acted on incorrect information.

According to Tom Drabelle, O’Fallon’s Director of Public Relations:

“It is very possible some of the maps being used by the local office, maybe even the state, weren’t updated as they should have been with all the annexations that took place and the changes that occurred literally on the fly sometimes.”

Because of confusion at different levels of government, hundreds of Missouri taxpayers are forced to bear an immediate burden. For more information, please see the article on KSDK’s website.

The post The Undue Burden 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.

I don’t know the answer to that, but I guess I would recommend keeping the position as it is, if anyone asked me — which nobody (yet) has. However, I think it is a tough call. I have considered this issue in my testimony to charter commissions in Jefferson and Franklin counties. Which positions should be elected, and which appointed? The guidelines I have come up with are that if an official either makes important policy decisions or serves as a check on the power of other officials, that position should probably be elected. If an official simply exercises authority dictated by state or local law, without much discretion and without serving as a check on other officials, that position should probably be appointed. Examples of the former include prosecuting attorney, assessor, auditor, treasurer, and election clerk. Examples of the latter include recorder of deeds, coroner, circuit clerk, and collector of revenue.

So, how does this apply to O’Fallon? Well, as I said, it’s a tough call. The above examples were for counties, not suburbs (even large ones) like O’Fallon. As far as I know, there is only one other city in Missouri with an elected treasurer, and that is because St. Louis ain’t in a county. The city manager system works well for suburbs like O’Fallon, and in cases where it does not work, that has nothing to do with having too few elected officials. But I do like counties and larger cities to have at least one independent fiscal officer, be it an auditor, assessor, or treasurer. So, I think O’Fallon will be just fine with whatever the voters decide. Saving $11,000 a year would be nice, but having an independent elected official managing the money is also good government.

The really big question here is whether or not a minor vote like this on an obscure special election day (Feb. 2) would be enough to convince a certain Show-Me Institute employee who lives in O’Fallon that his vote might actually count enough for him to go and actually cast it.

The post Should O’Fallon, Mo., Keep Its Elected City Treasurer? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

People who don’t want to be annexed don’t usually get a chance to have their voices heard, but here in Missouri they are guaranteed that right. There is also an issue of renter v. owner at play here. While renters outnumber owners in this case, they both have an equal voice at the polls. It should be interesting to see how this plays out on election day.

The post Give and Take appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

My buddy Mike Sweeney, over at STL Hops, is having a “Best Missouri Craft Beer Challenge.” It’s a bracketed tournament that is set up like much like the March Madness tournament, in which you vote for one beer over another and whichever one has the most votes moves on to the next round.  Currently, they are on Round 3, so get over there and vote.

My personal pick to go all the way is the O’Fallon 5-Day IPA. The site attracts a large proportion of hopheads (fans of the ingredient that bitters the beer — not dope smokers), so that bodes well for O’Fallon. Plus, I always favor the underdog, and since they are a 52 seed out of 64, you can’t get much more underdog than that.

As long as a pumpkin beer doesn’t win, I will consider it a valid tournament. Enjoy.

The post Missouri Beer Challenge (March Madness Style) appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I think we could do the same thing in Missouri with the words “developer” and “blight.”

On today’s list: O’Fallon.

“City officials late Thursday night were debating whether to declare blighted the site of a proposed eco-friendly housing development to allow a developer to receive a tax break over 20 years.”

Missouri newspapers should just hotkey this sentence. It could read something like this:

“[State, County, City] officials [insert time] were debating whether to declare blighted the site of [insert property or district here] to allow a developer to receive a tax break over [enter years here] years.”

The post The Mess That Missouri Made appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Local governments throughout Missouri continue their neverending quest to lure favored businesses and keep the chosen ones they already have within their boundaries, by granting tax abatements, tax increment financing (TIF), and tax exemptions. Yet not every government entity in Missouri is playing this game. One local government in particular has vociferously opposed TIFs, and has been extremely careful with its use of other development tools. How has it worked for them? The government in question, Saint Charles County, has been the fastest-growing county in the state for three decades.

While governments constantly seek to both raise tax revenues and lure businesses, too often they first enact burdensome tax codes and regulations, then give away the store to the select businesses they want to lure in. Wouldn’t it be much easier on everybody to create a favorable tax and regulatory climate across the board, and trust that it will lure businesses and development to your community? Saint Charles has chosen the latter plan, and the economic growth in the county speaks for itself.

Saint Charles has not only refused to use TIFs, it has actively fought court battles when cities within the county have attempted to use them. The cities within Saint Charles know they will have a fight on their hands every time they attempt to enact a new TIF. The result is that only 491 parcels of property in Saint Charles are involved in a TIF, compared to 1,808 in Saint Louis County and 2,293 in Saint Louis city. The fact that all of the TIF parcels in Saint Charles and most in Saint Louis County are within municipalities is a strong argument for having these decisions made at the county level.

An analysis conducted by business consultants for the Saint Charles Economic Development Council in 2004 stated, “TIF financing [sic] is often not easy to get approved,” citing this as one of the few drawbacks to the county’s business climate. Of course, the consultants — who are in the business of getting incentives for their clients — relied on the constant canard that maintaining a competitive edge requires increased use of government incentives. Recent history has demonstrated that Saint Charles has done just fine, thank you, with very limited use of incentives.

The county has also refused to issue tax abatements and exemptions, while it has judiciously managed the use of tax-free revenue bonds for projects. Basic economics teaches that a wider tax base enables lower rates for everyone, and these low taxes are certainly one of the reasons the population of Saint Charles has increased from 145,250 in 1980 to 348,844 in 2007. Comparing property tax rates across boundaries can be tricky, but one tax levy in particular compares directly and consistently. The commercial surcharge that is added to commercial property tax bills in every Missouri county totals $1.64 per $100 of assessed valuation in Saint Louis city, $1.70 in Saint Louis County, and just $0.53 in Saint Charles. Clearly, when taxes are this low, you don’t need to dole out tax breaks.

Obviously, many other factors explain the tremendous growth throughout Saint Charles, and some of the county’s cities have aggressively used TIFs and other incentives for their own developments. Has the use of incentives by municipalities like Saint Peters and O’Fallon had a greater impact on the area’s economic growth than the county’s prudence has? One might argue that, but the county’s general low-tax and pro-business policies have been in effect for three decades. The use of incentives by cities has come too recently to explain most of the growth.

Like an arms race, local governments throughout Missouri fear unilateral TIF disarmament would put them at an economic disadvantage. Saint Charles County has shown that it is possible for a local government to avoid the use of tax giveaways and still be a growing, thriving community. I hope other governments throughout Missouri will learn from this example.

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

The post Saint Charles County Grows Without TIFs appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Most of the extremely small districts are in the rural areas, although St. Louis County has some, Hancock Place and Bayless mostly, that should merge. It’s not as if these small, rural districts just want to be left alone to operate by themselves. Many of them are currently suing the State of Missouri for more tax money. I hope they lose their lawsuit and the state refuses to increase financial support for any school district below a set number of students.

Missouri has as much duplication in government as any state. The examples abound: too many St. Louis City Alderman, to many St. Louis County municipalities, too many state representatives, too many separate counties, and way too many school districts.

On another note, the new school, Fort Zumwalt East, has chosen its new mascot and colors: the Lions, and black and gold. Nice to see they are starting off the new school by copying everything from University City High School. Next, I bet Fort Zumwalt will put enormous lion statues at the entrance to O’Fallon.

The post There Are Way Too Many School Districts In Missouri! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I would feel better about the statement by O’Fallon Mayor Donna Morrow that she is opposed to this if she didn’t also say she was unaware it was being proposed in the first place. It seems the bureaucrats might have just a little too much power in O’Fallon. I have had the great pleasure of going to the Busch Wildlife Area. My friend, Willis Corbett (scroll down), took me out there to participate in a Pointer and Setter competition a few years back, which was two hours of the most wonderful horseback riding of my life.

The good news is that ideas this bad are usually stopped when common-sense Missourians realize what is being proposed. The Great Rivers Habitat Alliance, supported by the Busch family, is strongly opposed.  They have done incredible work over the past decade in St. Charles County. St. Charles County Councilman Joe Brazil, who represents the area, is also opposed, and states:

"There should be a state law prohibiting municipal governments from taking county or state parks of more than 100 acres."

The only thing he is wrong about is that the law should apply to parks of any size, not just 100 acres.  The State Department of Conservation is much better equipped and prepared to manage our park system than any local municipality. The land should remain unincorportated to best honor the gift of the Busch family.

The post We Have a Nominee for Worst Proposal of 2007… appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

O’Fallon is considering many options, mostly involving expanding the number of wards. Perhaps they would be like Wildwood, which for some insane reason chose to have eight wards with two councilmembers each. Florissant gets a little better, with nine wards but with just one rep. per ward. University City, where I proudly live, has only three wards but with two reps per ward. That system — three or four wards with two reps per ward — is used by a number of cities in St. Louis County. The city of St. Louis is, of course, the champion of too many elected officials, with 28 alderman for 28 (now very small) wards and 11 other citywide elected officials.

Whatever O’Fallon chooses to do will be affected by its city class, because charter cities have more authority to form their own style of government than other classes. In my opinion, cities should have fewer elected officials in general but pay them better to justify the work they put in. I should be clear that I do not mean “pay them better” in a dramatic sense, just higher stipends to encourage more residents to consider getting active. In my opinion, cities in the general range of 25,000 to 75,000 people should have a full-time city manager, a mayor elected citywide and paid a part-time salary of around $10,000, and four wards with one councilmember each making around $5,000 a year. One councilmember would be elected chair each year from within the body — I am looking at you, city of St. Louis, and your silly president of the Board of Aldermen position. The mayor would vote as a regular member of the council, not just sign or veto bills like governors or mayors of large cities. The most important thing O’Fallon could do is upgrade from a city administrator to a city manager, which sounds redundant, but the latter actually has more power and authority than the former.

The post The Credit Hours of Local Comparative Politics, Just for You … appeared first on Show-Me Institute.