A recent article in the Post-Dispatch insinuated the lifeblood of St. Louis was at stake in efforts to expand the MetroLink. Because MetroLink is such a successful (???) driver of mixed-use development, by not expanding it into depressed or underdeveloped areas, we’re letting the urban core languish. At least that's the story. Reality is quite different.

Here are some uncontroversial facts.

• MetroLink has failed to significantly spur development (and especially the dense mixed-use development that planners dream of).
• MetroLink is incredibly expensive and inefficient. As my former colleague Joseph Miller has pointed out, since 1992, MetroLink has cost St. Louis taxpayers $3 billion, and despite system expansion, MetroLink is at a decade low for ridership, with just 2.55 riders per revenue mile.
• On top of this, MetroLink expansions—and rail projects in general—tend to go far over budget.

Despite all this, regional leaders and rail proponents continue to argue that expanding the MetroLink will catapult the region into some utopian age of livable-community bliss. Having vibrant, “walkable” communities is a noble goal, but if rail proponents really think they can just build a train and turn the region around, they’re woefully misunderstanding the fundamentals of economic and neighborhood development.

The fact is that driving sustainable development is hard. Neighborhoods like the Central West End and Soulard don't just pop up because politicians and planners put in rail lines. In reality, when development does occur around rail stations, those projects are, nearly without fail, accompanied by generous tax subsidies, relaxed zoning, and other government perks. To think rail is some development silver bullet is to confuse the powers of a whole subsidy package with just one of its constituent parts. If economic development really is the goal planners have in mind, they would do better by removing hurdles to business and growth and save the cost of expanding MetroLink.

The truth is that a $2.2 billion expansion of the MetroLink won’t spark a development frenzy, but it will create a massive new taxpayer burden. 

The post Riding the Dream-Train to Development Bliss appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

First, let’s analyze MetroLink’s effect on public transportation usage. It is true that people (including myself) use the MetroLink; the system handles an average of about 44,000 trips per day. However, MetroLink’s effect on total transit ridership has been modest. Despite the immense expenditures (around $3 billion) and multiple expansions, total bus and rail ridership today is lower than bus ridership alone was in 1991, three years before the MetroLink opened. Even worse, not all MetroLink expansions have even resulted in sustained higher MetroLink ridership. Take the case of latest expansion, from Forest Park to Shrewsbury, which opened in 2006. While the addition initially pushed rail ridership to new heights, ten years later total MetroLink ridership is lower than it was the year before the expansion opened.

The increasing supply of light rail, along with flagging enthusiasm for its use, has meant that in terms of passengers, MetroLink now has the lowest rate of use it has ever had, with only 2.55 riders per vehicle revenue mile.

Next let’s evaluate the MetroLink’s impact on development in Saint Louis. Consider the expectations of MetroLink’s proponents when the initial line opened in 1994. They hoped rail would generate urban renewal, with specific hopes that it would save Saint Louis Centre and bring life (and even a golf course) to East Saint Louis. Far from rejuvenating areas that were down on their luck, the MetroLink failed to prevent decline in areas of its route that appeared on the ascendency in 1994, like Union Station and Laclede’s Landing. Some areas near MetroLink stations have done well, like the Central West End or the Loop, but in these places development seems to be happening near the MetroLink, not radiating from it. With few exceptions, MetroLink platforms remain areas of quiet repose, far from businesses, residences, and crowds. It’s ironic, given the claims of rail advocates, that the true success stories of urban renewal in Saint Louis City are places like Soulard, South Grand, the Grove, and now Cherokee Street, located far away from any MetroLink station.

With regard to increasing transit usage in Saint Louis and spurring urban revitalization, the MetroLink has, to this point, been an expensive disappointment. There is no reason to think any MetroLink expansion will create different results. It’s time for the region to start looking for better, more cost-effective ways to achieve progress toward public transportation and development goals. 

The post Saint Louis Should Learn from MetroLink’s Disappointing Past appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Maybe that cab driver had someplace to go or was simply done driving that day. I do not know. But what I do know is that woman could have used a convenient, inexpensive ride home. The same is true of the 60 drivers who were cited with DWIs before 8 p.m. Unfortunately, the supply of taxis in Saint Louis is strictly controlled by a regulatory body that thinks it knows how many cabs Saint Louis should have and how those cabs should serve customers.

That body is known as the St. Louis Metropolitan Taxicab Commission (MTC), and they have decided that new ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft should not be able to provide needed transportation to Saint Louisans on nights like February 14. Instead, they tightly control the supply and business practices of for-hire vehicles, as we have detailed in previous blog posts. That includes UberBlack (Uber’s expensive black car service), which can only partner with a limited supply of MTC-licensed premium sedans.

But change may be in the air for Missouri cities, including Saint Louis. Other cities, like Kansas City and Columbia, have or are in the process of changing their taxi codes to allow ridesharing. However, Columbia’s changes ask for insurance that is reportedly 20 times the dollar amount they require for cabs, perhaps to make Uber too expensive to operate.

At the state level, two bills in the Missouri Legislature, SB 351 and HR 792, would set a statewide standard for the regulation of Uber, Lyft, and other ridesharing companies (officially transportation network companies) given certain license payments and insurance coverage. If these state standards pass, it would be a dagger to the heart of the MTC, as it would preclude that body from regulating ridesharing companies in any way. The MTC’s significant barriers to entry and management of ridesharing company driver supply would be eliminated. That would open the door for cheaper, more plentiful transportation in Saint Louis.

In the many states where ridesharing companies are allowed to operate, thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands, of for-hire vehicle drivers have entered the market. Even during peak hours, they pick up passengers quickly and offer the ease of app-based payment, all for prices competitive with regular cabs.

Just think, next time it might be you on the street corner in the freezing cold after a big event. Would you want to rely on a few passing cabs to decide whether your fare was worth the trouble? Or would you rather rely on a competitive market that includes cheap, responsive ridesharing services at the touch of a button? Not a hard choice, unless of course you’re a taxi regulator.

The post Change On the Way for Rideshare Regulation in Missouri? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

James V. Shuls (JVS): Susan, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me. Tell me a little about Lafayette Preparatory Academy. What makes this school unique or innovative?

Susan Marino (SM): Well, we get this question a lot. ‘What is your innovation?’ For us, our innovation is not that we are radically different, but that we are looking to do what is most effective. We’ll have a heavy focus on math, literacy, and science and we will have an extended day. So it’s not that we are doing anything incredibly innovative, rather it’s almost like we’re going back to the basics. What will make us different is our constant pursuit of effectiveness, not trying to do something fancy, or new, or untried, just focusing on the things that we are trying to get done.

JVS: So, when you say “back to the basics,” what does that mean exactly? Walk me through a standard day at your school.

SM: When I say, “back to the basics,” I don’t want to people to envision this old school house where students are sitting at their desks quietly and accepting knowledge as it is given out. That’s not what I mean. What I mean is focusing on the core content areas, strongly. School will go from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and that is a long day for a kindergartner, but I know it is doable. We will have at least 2 ½ hours dedicated to literacy. We’ll have an hour every day for science and an hour for math. We will have large blocks of time for each of the focus areas.

Again, back to the basics does not mean sitting at desks. When you walk into my school, there will be some noise. It will be very structured and everything will have a plan, but our students will be moving around and actively engaging with what they are learning.

JVS: Do you already have curriculum lined up for the school?

SM: No, I don’t have everything picked out, and here’s why. I have researched so many different curriculums and I find so many great ideas in each of them that are very effective and have been tried in other schools. But because we are a small school and we are committed to being responsive to our students and allowing our teachers to really build around the needs of the students, I don’t want us to get trapped into a model that someone else has designed for another school. So we are going to take the bits and pieces that work from other programs and mold them to fit our school. This will be developed by our teachers for our students. But of course, we will be looking at curriculums, which will help us lay a foundation which we can build upon.

JVS: You know, I have heard another school leader say that he didn’t know how he could really hold a teacher accountable if he picked out their curriculum and told them exactly how they were supposed to teach. Because when the results came in, if they were not what was expected and he had dictated how everything should be done, then part of the blame was his and not just the teachers. It sounds like you’re saying something similar. You want to really bring the teachers into this planning process and let them be flexible to students’ needs and be innovators in their classroom. Is that about right?

SM: Yes, so our innovation is not that we have something all new that we will be using, but our innovation is on that day-to-day basis when we are able to be responsive to our students’ needs. For example, my two kindergarten teachers will have the same standards which they must meet, so their students will understand the same concepts at the end of the year, but they don’t have to do it the same way, because they won’t have the same classrooms and they won’t have the same styles.

One of the best lessons I learned my first year teaching was when an administrator came to observe me teaching. During my lesson, I was just not connecting with the kids. I noticed my administrator over in the corner just laughing. So I went over and asked, “Are you laughing at me?” And she said, “Why are you trying to be like me?” I had walked in and tried to be her, but I was completely different from her. So when I tried to be something I wasn’t, I seemed like a complete phony. It didn’t suit my style and it didn’t suit the kids. I want my teachers to say, “this is who I am as a teacher and this is how I’m most effective,” instead of giving them something and trying to make them fit into something that is unnatural for them and unnatural for their students, and ultimately will be ineffective. JVS: You were a teacher and you worked in the public schools, right?

SM: I worked with an alternative program and in the public schools, so I have been in both.

JVS: So what made you want to take this on? It sounds like your job was pretty stable and now you are taking on a big challenge. What made you go this route?

SM: It was a tough choice between safety and pursuing something I really believe in so deeply. I am a believer that without a little bit of risk, great things can’t happen and somebody has to take that risk. This was a tough question in our house. Was that risk best to fall on us? In the end, we decided it was. I was in a safe situation, it was very comfortable, I was on the right path, but I didn’t live in the community where I was working. My daughter is 4 and will be 5 next year. We don’t want her to have a sub-standard education and we didn’t really feel like we could pay the tuition for her to go to a private school. So, we have our own personal motivation, for our family, for our friends’ families, for our neighborhood.

When I met the original group who had the idea for Lafayette Prep I knew it was just right. I actually met them through happenstance, but right away I knew they had the right mission in mind and their beliefs really matched mine; the focus on a rigorous education, the focus on community, the focus on keeping it small. A lot of charter schools have a bigger plan in mind than we do. We are intentionally small. We want to keep it small, so we can really cultivate that community. We want to always be responsive to our communities’ needs. I liked that about this idea; that we would be so focused on the needs of our community. What I mean by our community is Downtown, Downtown West, Soulard, LaSalle Park, King Louis, Peabody, and Lafayette Square. All of these areas are close together, but very disconnected as neighborhoods. We want to draw these neighborhoods together.

JVS: It sounds like this was really a grassroots idea.

SM: That’s right. The first three individuals who got on board with this idea live in Lafayette Square. Like all of us who live in the city, when we go to the park and our kids start playing, the adults start talking. The conversation always goes to, “where does yours go to school?” Because we are all looking for that magic ticket, that is a great free public school that is near us, that suits our family’s values and our hopes for our kids. As they had that conversation, they didn’t have an answer because our community lacks a free, high-quality option. So they started thinking about opening a charter school and gathering people who had a similar vision to make this happen. People just started coming on board and it built into what we have today.

I got really lucky, because I met them all this past January in one of those playground conversations. I fell in love with the idea. They live in Lafayette Square, I live in Soulard, others in the group live in Downtown West and Downtown. We are working to get others from the area involved, so we can build this homegrown school; built by us, for us, responding to us, accountable to each other.

JVS: What grades do you plan to serve when you open the doors in the fall?

SM: The first year we will have kindergarten and first grade. We will have a year over year plan, where we add a grade annually.

JVS: And the goal is to eventually add all the way up to 12th grade?

SM: Yes, our initial charter is K-5. In 2018, we plan to expand to sixth-eighth and in 2021, we plan to expand to a high school. We really have a backwards design mentality. We are starting with the end goal in mind, thinking, “What do I want my daughter to be able to do when she graduates?” And then building back from there to think about what our students need to know when they leave kindergarten and first grade.

JVS: If someone is interested in the school, they live in your area and want to know more, or possibly enroll their kid, what do they do?

SM: First off, I’m really accessible. They can reach me at Susan.marino@lafayetteprep.org or they can call me on the phone directly. On our website, at www.lafayetteprep.org you can go to the enrollment tab and fill out the registration form. That will go directly to my email. Once I receive that, I’ll contact them to schedule a family tour. Once they’ve toured the building then I’ll give them the application materials and we’ll schedule a home visit.

JVS: Great. Susan, thank you so much for your time.

The post A Homegrown Charter School: Lafayette Preparatory Academy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The school received final approval at the October Missouri Board of Education Meeting and school leaders are planning for the opening. The head of the school, Susan Marino, stopped by the Show-Me Institute to tell me a bit about this new school.

Marino has worked in the education field for many years and lives in downtown Saint Louis. She came into contact with a group of parents in her neighborhood who were concerned about the availability of quality educational options in their area. So they banded together, drafted Marino to lead the efforts, and started sowing the seeds for a new charter school.

The school will focus on the core academic areas and will have a lengthened school day. Marino notes that the school will “have at least 2 ½ hours dedicated to literacy . . . [and] an hour every day for science and an hour for math.”

Marino hesitates to define the school; rather, she wants the students’ needs to shape how the school operates.

“We are committed to being responsive to our students and allowing our teachers to really build around the needs of the students,” Marino said.

Read more about Lafayette Preparatory Academy on the Show-Me Institute’s website.

The post A New Homegrown Option Downtown appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

James V. Shuls (JVS): Thanks for taking the time to sit down with me. Tell me a little about EAGLE College Prep. What makes the school unique or different? Why should people be interested in this school?

Suzanne Johnson (SJ): Well, we know that students in South City and students in Saint Louis in general need a great education if they are to break out of the cycle of poverty that we see in too many places. And we know a great school system is critical for the revitalization of Saint Louis. The mayor talked about this recently during a press conference where he said people are choosing to not move into the city or choosing to move out of the city because they don’t have a good public school choice. We saw that need and want to bring a better choice to a neighborhood that is currently underserved. I can speak to this from experience. I lived in the city for five years, we rehabbed a house in Soulard and loved it, but we moved to Illinois because I was having my first child and I couldn’t afford private school and I was not sending my child to a Saint Louis Public School.

So, we’re looking at bringing a neighborhood school, a free public charter school that is going to provide a world-class education. We expect that our students will be able to compete with students in the county, because they will receive a high-quality education, the kind we would all want for our own kids. Not to put anyone else down, because there are many great schools, but we believe the South Tower Grove neighborhood is currently underserved. There just aren’t that many quality options for the kids in that neighborhood and we want to serve them.

The other option that we are bringing in is a blended learning model. We will be using direct instruction, or traditional education, but we also know kids need differentiation. This neighborhood is very diverse; socially diverse, economically diverse, culturally diverse. So the one-size-fits-all model is not going to work. We want all of our students to achieve, so in addition to the direct instruction where we use the best researched-based methods, we’re also going to differentiate using a blended learning model with the Compass Education program. Our kids will be meeting in small groups for reading and math so we can really target in on those skills that our kids need remediation with or have an opportunity to excel. We know we will have some gifted kids, and we will be thinking “how can we get them higher?” We know we will have kids who will come in to kindergarten not recognizing their alphabet, so we have to start where they are and bring them up, and we have to be able to do that.

JVS: Talk a little more about the blended learning model. There is a lot of talk that blended learning can not only improve education by tailoring education to a student’s specific level, but could possibly bring some financial benefits as well. Was that part of the consideration when thinking about a blended learning model?

SJ: Right now we are seeing great success with our schools in Milwaukee and in Phoenix and they’re using models very similar to ours, with the differentiation piece. As a former classroom teacher, and a former principal, I know this is critical. When I was a high school English teacher, I had a class of 30 kids; some were reading at a third-grade level and some were post-high school. How do I go into that class and teach a lesson? You need help. You can break into small groups, but classroom management becomes an issue. So we believe a blended learning model will help us engage students and keep them on task, so we can have that one-on-one time. And yes, there are economic advantages because this is economically feasible. This is a great tool, plus we know technology has transformed so many jobs in the work place, so kids need to be able to use a computer to learn and perform in the work force.

JVS: I’m a former first grade teacher myself. I taught reading and I had that struggle of working with my small group, while other students are supposed to be working at literacy centers. So I had to find tasks for the students to do, which often resulted in a lot more work for me. Plus, the students were often off task, which distracted my small group. For many teachers like me, literacy centers are a headache. The idea is great, but it is hard to manage. So is blended learning kind of a different take on learning centers?

SJ: Absolutely, and we will utilize paraprofessionals to help in that time, because while the teacher is engaging that small group, you may not be able to pay attention elsewhere. And that is where kids are off task. We will have paraprofessionals to guide students, to keep them on task, and to help the teacher.

JVS: Some people are critical of computer-based instruction. They think this is the dehumanization of the classroom. How would you respond to that?

SJ: If we were going to 100 percent computer-based instruction, I would be on that bandwagon. There are things that are appropriate for every age level. For us, along with the computer-aided instruction, students will be engaging with their teachers. Another way we will humanize the classroom, to use your term, is by teaching character education. That will be a huge component of our schools.

Parents aren’t just concerned about the quality of education they are receiving; one of the major concerns is safety. Somewhere we lost that character component. I found it to be my job as a teacher and a principal to teach kids how to be good people, to form a classroom community. So that humanization is going to come by blending character education in with our daily instruction. [We are] teaching kids, not just expecting them to enter the school knowing how to be good students, knowing how to be good people. We will teach them values, like how to be respectful, how to be helpful, how to be responsible, how to be safe, how to be a servant leader to their community. Because we know we have to give back in order to revitalize our neighborhoods.

JVS: You talk about character education and the name of the school has college prep in it, but it is one thing to say these things and another to actually do them. If you go to any low-performing school and change the name, it’s still a low-performing school. So how will you actually teach character and how do you actually put the emphasis on college prep?

SJ: It is part of the culture of the school. You teach character education, just like you would teach a lesson about adverbs. And you don’t just say these things, you have teachers who model the traits that they are teaching. You use direct instruction, saying this is what being responsible looks like, and you reinforce it. Then you go back and you re-teach, because kids don’t learn these things when they are told them once. I have a 6-year-old, and I know you have to reinforce those traits that you want to see in children.

I took over a school that had more than 5,000 office referrals the year before. Within three years, we had less than 1,000. So, I know it can be done. We didn’t weaken the rules, there were still consequences for bad behavior, but by the time our students left the school and went to the high school, there was a difference. High school teachers commented that they could tell which students came from our school because they treated their teachers with respect.

You focus on college prep with the same mindset. You reinforce to kids that it’s not “if I go to college,” it’s “when I go to college, which college am I going to?” You create this mindset by having teachers talk about their college experiences. A little thing that makes a huge difference is college Fridays. Every Friday our staff will wear clothes from their alma mater. They will talk about what it was like to be a college student. We will talk with kids, especially as they go into high school, about how to apply for college. We will work with families and help them with the paperwork. As a first-generation college student, thankfully I had people to do that for me and we will do that for our kids and give them those opportunities. My goal is not only 100 percent of our students will graduate and go to college, but we want 100 percent of our students to graduate from college. It is not good enough for students to enroll in college and then drop out; we will continue to support our students because that is how we do business.

Matt Hoehner (MH): The community is really a focal point of our school. A lot of community leaders that I know are coming together for this school. I live in the neighborhood and it is not only about teaching the kids, but teaching the parents as well. When we use love and logic to teach the kids, we will also have parent meetings where we share that information. We will share what we are doing in the classroom, so families can reinforce those skills throughout the day. We will really build a community and once you build those relationships, it carries on through college because it is more than just a school. It is a community, it’s a family, you have these relationships and you care about these people beyond the class walls.

JVS: You keep talking about college, but isn’t this school initially only going to have youngsters? What grades are you opening with and how do you plan to expand to that point where you are serving high school students?

SJ: We will start with a K-3 school and will add a grade every year. Our initial charter is through eighth grade, but we have an expansion plan in place, so when our sponsor says we are ready, we will be able to open a high school. My vision is that those third graders will go from eighth grade into our high school.

JVS: Suzanne, you brought up your experience and I’m sure you could have stayed where you were. So what is it about this school that made you want to take this step and say, let’s do this?

SJ: The idea of being able to teach kids to be a servant leader. I want to be able to give back to the community. Nobody goes into education to become rich. And if you don’t go into education because you love kids, you’re going to burn out quickly. Saint Louis is such an amazing place, but we have a need for high-quality schools. This opportunity is the perfect meld, because I want to be able to move back to the city, I want my kids to have a great place to go to school, and I want to be a great school leader. This is the opportunity to do that and really make a difference for our area, to really help Saint Louis grow to what it once was and what it can be.

JVS: Matt, you live in South Tower Grove, but the management company, Educational Enterprises, operates schools in Milwaukee and Phoenix. How did you and Educational Enterprises become interested in Saint Louis?

MH: I have been in the Saint Louis area for 14 years. I have a 7-year-old and a 5-year-old and obviously education is important to me, for my kids and the kids in my community. Before this role with Educational Enterprises, I served as a pastor. So I have been serving and caring for many other kids who also need a great school.

The South Tower Grove area has many refugees, Nepalese, East and West Africans, and they don’t have enough money to send their kids to a private school. So, they come from a refugee camp into Saint Louis and their children are often placed in failing schools. We know that system is simply not working out for many of them. So we started wondering, how do we meet that need?

In my former congregation, we leased out our building to a charter school and then ran an after-school program to support the kids afterwards. It was through that interaction, as I was directing the after-school program, that I came into contact with Educational Enterprises. Having been on school boards with private schools, I was able to see their track record, meet with the CEO, and understand their vision and mission. I could see how well their schools were performing in Milwaukee and Phoenix. I visited their schools to see what it was they were doing and when I saw it I said, “We need this in Saint Louis.”

So we worked to bring Educational Enterprises here and EAGLE College Prep is our first school here in the city. This organization is all about the kids. Every decision we make is kids first. Our blended learning model is not just about being financially feasible; we believe it is what’s best for kids. It makes the school sustainable, it’s long lasting, and it helps us reach all of our students individually.

Our model has been proven to be very successful in both Milwaukee and Phoenix and we are really excited to bring this school to the kids in our neighborhood.

JVS: You mention an after-school program. Will EAGLE College Prep have an after-school program?

MH: Educational Enterprises will create a separate after-school program to wrap around the public charter school because we believe that additional support is important. We also recognize that many families want a faith-based option. Through our free public charter school and a separate, optional faith-based after-school program, we believe we can meet the need for a high-quality school and faith-based instruction. The after-school program will run from the end of school at 3:45 p.m. to 6 p.m. The kids will be able to be at a place where they will be safe, they can play sports, get a healthy snack, and also have some Christian faith-based instruction. We will also be offering a pre-school to families with young children. And, it is our goal to make all of these additional options as affordable as possible, so they are accessible to everyone.

JVS: The school is to open next year, for the 2013-2014 school year. If someone is interested in EAGLE College Prep, what should they do now?

SJ: We will be accepting any student who is a resident of the city and will be going into grades K-3 next year. The enrollment packet should be online at the beginning of November. Like other schools, you will have to be able to prove residency and you will need shot records, all the state required pieces. Enrollment will officially begin in January and will run through sometime in March. If we have more names than seats, we will do a lottery.

JVS: What else should people know about this school?

MH: The three words that best sum up EAGLE College Prep are college, character, and community.

The post College, Character, and Community appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It is the same with cities and governments. Planners may want to focus on the Big Proposal that is going to “reinvent” or “transform” the community, but those Big Plans frequently fail from the beginning. Often, it is the individual homeowner or entrepreneur who are the real change agents in providing useful economic growth and community development. Which would you rather have, Soulard or Laclede Town?

Right now, many people in Saint Louis are once again engaged in a conversation about the political make-up of our area. Should the city and county merge? Should the city simply re-enter the county? What to do about the county’s 91 municipalities and patchwork of fire, school, and library districts?

These are big and important questions and it is good that they are being discussed and debated. Without buying into the assumption that bigger is automatically better, let us hope that positive changes will come from this re-examination of existing arrangements, changes that will improve government services in Saint Louis as a whole. But if we focus only on the Big Idea, we risk overlooking benefits that smaller changes in government can have for Saint Louisans right now. One city in Saint Louis County, Jennings, is showing how small improvements under our current governmental system can add up to big rewards for people.

Over the past few years, Jennings has made two principal changes moving away from the idea that every city need stand on its own. First, it became one of the few cities that switched from a point-of-sale city to a pool city in Saint Louis County’s sales tax pool system. As sales taxes within the city declined, Jennings had two choices. It could make use of tax increment financing and other political tools to try to alter market forces, or it could join the pool. Pool cities benefit from economic growth wherever it occurs in the county. Pool cities are less likely to abuse eminent domain and TIF by forcefully locating retail development in targeted areas, and not to areas where the free market would naturally lead. Jennings chose to join the sales tax pool and engage in the regional economy, not just the Jennings economy.

More recently, Jennings chose to dissolve its own city police department and contract with the county police for public safety. This will allow the city to improve the overall quality of the police force serving its residents and save money at the same time. To say this is a win – win understates the significance of the change. Other local leaders, including Fenton mayor Dennis Hancock, have made this change for their cities and it has worked out very well for their citizens.

Jennings city officials deserve a great deal of credit for these changes. Joining the sales tax pool and contracting with the county for police services will save money, provide better public services, and avoid the destructive, TIF-fueled quest for “economic development” that is pitting city against city in Saint Louis County. These simple changes in Jennings are showing the other parts of the county the way to a future prosperity that maintains city pride and independence while thinking and acting like a region. That is a Little Idea worth celebrating – one that will provide big and lasting benefits.

David Stokes is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, an independent think tank promoting free-market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post In Praise of Jennings appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Unlike the ongoing tax credit review commission, which is stacked with supporters of tax credits, I don’t have any animus toward this initiative. It seems to me that the people involved probably believe they have good ideas for Missouri, and that they are not participating in this project for personal gain. The politicians and the other participants involved just buy into the notion that if a number of smart and dedicated people work together to come up with a plan for Missouri’s economy, they can do great things for our state. That belief is neither malevolent nor corrupt. It is just wrong.

The governor laid it out plainly in Kirksville (emphasis added):

“We can’t go down every road,” Nixon said. “We need to act, not react, and in order to do that we need a plan.”

No, we don’t need a plan. Missouri’s economy of the future will be shaped by individual people taking risks and seizing opportunity. The government has absolutely no idea what the economy of the future will — or, more importantly, should — look like. Committees like this (as common as they have been in our history) buy into the idea (intentionally or not) that the government should be involved in crafting the elements of our economy. That is a frightening notion, and one filled with enough examples of failures using public dollars that I would have thought the idea would have been disposed of by now.

My favorite example is the 1947 St. Louis plan that called for the destruction of Soulard often mentioned by Bill McClellan. (You can read about Bill’s column from a blog post by someone who considers himself a libertarian but supports Paul McKee’s grand plans for the north side of St. Louis. Crazy, eh?)

Here’s a realistic plan for actual growth: Perform the core functions of government as efficiently as you can, and reduce the tax and regulatory system as much as you can within the constraints of democracy (i.e., I recognize that other people want the government to do more things than I want it to do). Then sit back and let individuals and companies succeed or fail based on market interactions and their own efforts. That is the only plan we need for our economy.

The post Planners Save Missouri! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I originally wrote that the Kansas City TIF commission consisted of 11 members, which was correct. That is the number I used when I spoke to the Kansas City Pachyderm Club last month about TIF. However, as we were getting ready to publish my op-ed on the subject, I came across minutes of the KC TIF commission that made it appear it had 12 members. (Go to items 4,5,6,7, and 8 of the report and start counting members in the various roll calls; they have different members depending on where the project is.) My major mistake was either failing to write down the info, or incorrectly filing it, when I was first told that the commission had 11 members. So, I could not find the info, assumed I screwed up, and went with the number that appeared the TIF minutes suggested in the original published draft of my op-ed about TIF in Kansas City. I didn’t realize that a consultant to the commission had been included in some of those roll calls, leading to my miscount. If I had read further, I would have found roll calls with numbers other than 12.

It really is not a big deal, and the fact that the KC TIF commission has a ratio of six KC members to only five members from other bodies (instead of six to six, the corrected figure) actually makes my point stronger, not weaker. But “An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it,” as John F. Kennedy once famously quoted Orlando Battista. So, I have corrected the piece online and over at the Missouri Record, which graciously ran the article for us in the first place. And I admit my mistake here, as well, for the whole world to see — and probably not care about at all …

I try to really get into the minutiae of government here for the Show-Me Institute. Because local governments are so different in Missouri than in other states, covering local governments entails risks. You can’t just be an expert on local government in general, you have to become an expert in every individual system. That is hard, and takes a great deal of work. But there is no excuse for making a mistake like that, and I pledge to work hard not to do it again.

The post Nothing Worse Than Changing a Right Answer appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The historically revitalized neighborhoods in Saint Louis, such as Soulard and Lafayette Square, did not come about because of a government plan. They happened because free people made choices and put time, money, and effort into their neighborhoods. The government did not “plan” for Lafayette Square becoming what it has become, and it certainly did not mandate its development with legal contracts, etc. (I am certain that there are similar neighborhoods in Kansas City that have been revitalized in the same way as Soulard.) I will admit that the government does provide historic tax credits that encourage much of the revitalization, and they should continue to do that in historic parts of Missouri.

But the city should not get to “choose” who is allowed to buy property. From the Star article:

He and two other buyers were chosen to purchase and fix up the homes.

Even if the city had owned the homes by then, they should have taken the best offer. Somebody who wants to “mothball and flip it” might be doing just as much for the economy as someone who gets a lot of government tax money to subsidize revitalization. The Kansas City planners have no way of knowing what the best long-term plan is, and they have apparently not been making cost-effective decisions (emphasis added):

Beacon Hill so far is known mostly for exorbitant spending of federal dollars on two bungalows in the 2500 block of Tracy Avenue.

Government should stick to governing, rather than trying to predict the future and take risks with public money. That should be left to the private sector.

The post Yet Another Example of Terrific City Planning appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Jim Roos, a veteran activist against eminent domain abuse in Missouri (and a notable contributor to our recent eminent domain study), has painted a two-story mural on the side of a brick apartment building near Soulard, owned by his housing ministry, which advocates an end to state eminent domain abuse. The mural is visible to drivers heading north toward downtown on I-55.

The city of St. Louis has cited Roos for displaying a sign that officials say violates city zoning ordinances. This has prompted a federal lawsuit challenging the ordinance on free speech grounds. In the Post-Dispatch‘s coverage of the issue, Roos has a really great quip:

“I think if it said, ‘Go Cardinals,’ we wouldn’t have any problems."

How sadly true.

The city of St. Louis routinely approves exemptions for large signs, but argues that its opposition to Roos’ particular sign is in the interest of “clutter” and neighborhood complaints — not political message. One city official commented:

"Can you imagine what our city would look like if everyone were allowed to paint a 363-square-foot, two-story sign on their buildings?"

I’m not sure, but I can guess that it would probably look something like all the buildings downtown with two-story “Go Cardinals” signs displayed on them.

But apparently that’s not “clutter.”

The post Why Don’t They Just Designate the Building as Blighted? It’d Save Some Time appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." — Joseph Stalin, aka Koba the Dread

"No, crime statistics are statistics, not facts" — Justin Hauke, aka impressionable young NWA fan

The funny thing about inter-office blog fights is that you argue with coworkers online instead of walking six feet to talk to them. Ain’t technology great? Seriously, I wonder whether Justin would like to tell the family of a murder victim that the crime was just a statistic, not a fact.

Near the beginning of his post, Justin writes:

Dave has probably never been to Compton, Calif. Neither have I, for that matter, and I believe most sensible people haven’t. You can not honestly tell me that St. Louis is a more dangerous place to live, I’m sorry.

Well, Justin, it is true that I have never been to Compton, although I did once go to an NWA concert at the old Arena. As a quick aside, I went to the show back in high school with my buddy Dave G., and everyone before us in line got a full body search and everybody after us in line got a full body search, but we were just waved on through by security. True story, as Krusty would say, although to this day I still can’t figure out what was different about Dave and I in comparison to the rest of the crowd.

But back to Justin’s post. I am not the one substituting my personal impressions gleaned from the entertainment world for crime statistics compiled by law enforcement. One of us is trusting the statistics (which, while some would argue are skewed, nobody is saying they are false) and one of us is writing a blog post while envisioning himself doing an 8-ball with Eazy-E while pumping the radio front and back and side to side, and jockin’ some bit’ young ladies in suburban Cali.

Justin next writes:

The first problem I have with the data is that St. Louis’ bizarre municipal boundaries make the per-capita crime statistics appear much higher than they otherwise would be.

St. Louis is by no means the only city that can not expand its boundaries. In fact, the majority of cities either can not or do not do that. Some, such as the ones he mentioned in his post, certainly do. But there is a long list of Midwestern and Eastern cities that have not expanded their boundaries in decades. And St. Louis has a higher crime rate than all of them, except Detroit, which sort of plays the role of Mississippi in always placing last (or first) in these types of rankings. As I said in my own post, as long as the crime stats are comparing St. Louis to Kansas City rather than Jackson County, or Atlanta rather than Fulton County — and they are — then our apples are being fairly compared to other, less violent apples.

I have to reprint the next paragraph in full, as Justin truly enters bizarro world:

My second point of contention, though, is that crime at the national level is grossly underreported, particularly within low-income and minority neighborhoods. I imagine that Compton, Calif., gets a much better rating because most of the crime that occurs within its borders never gets reported to the police. I mean, it’s not like the Crips go to the police station every time a Blood robs one of their fellow gang members. In contrast, I imagine that a significant portion of the crime being reported in St. Louis comes from those trepid suburbanites that make the five-mile trek into the city and become easy prey.

Where to begin? I guess at the beginning…

• IF crime at the national level is underreported in low-income and minority areas, then that happens in all of those areas, not just cities like ours trying to spin their crime stats.
• Gang members are not just confined to Compton, you know — there are plenty of them in St. Louis, too. And they are not more or less likely to report their activities depending on what the RCGA would have them do.
• As for "significant" crime reporting in St. Louis coming from suburbanites who become crime victims when they visit the city, at least Justin began that statement with "I imagine," because that idea is just a fairly tale. And even if it were somehow true, does that make the crime less important? Or less reportable?

Justin returns to reality with his summary: "I believe it is unfair to single out the city for idiosyncratic features that should be washed out of any truly unbiased statistical study." As is clear from my own posts, I am far from convinced that the city’s features are indeed idiosyncratic — and a crime is a crime, no matter who reports it or where it comes from. If St. Louis wants a lower crime rate, there are a number of things officials can do — economic growth and education being the only real answers that would be effective in the long run, and putting people in prison being the only real answer in the short run.

But trying to deny that the city has a crime problem, and a serious one at that, doesn’t do anyone any good. And trying to convince people that it’s safe to come downtown, and to the West End and Soulard — while completely true — does not do any good for the citizens who still live in the other parts of the city where violent crime is a normal fact of life.

The post Justin Channels Stalin appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The City of St. Louis uses a neighborhood approval process for granting liquor licenses. There is no limit on the total number of licenses that can be issued if neighborhoods approve the granting of one for their area. Obviously, neighborhoods like the Central West End and Soulard are going to be more generous in granting licenses than St. Louis Hills, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Ladue, on the other hand, strictly limits the total number of licenses. There are seven licenses available for restaurants, most of which have been held by the same places forever. You can probably name all of them if you try: Schneithorsts, Busch’s Grove, Sportman’s Park, Truffles (one of the new ones), that one place at Clayton and I-64 that has been like 12 different bars — I remember it mostly as S and P Oyster Company — does Women’s Exchanges still have a license? 

If I were going to recommend any changes it would be to get rid of state liquor licensing and leave all the regulation to local communities. The good news in St. Louis County for bar owners is that the county itself only regulates bars in the unincorportated area, so bars only need one local license to go along with the state license. I wonder how they do it in Jackson County. Do you need a state, county, and city license to operate a bar there? If you know, please feel free to e-mail me at david.stokes@showmeinstitute.org.

The post Getting Sauced on Liquor Licenses … appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Young, whose ward includes the mall, said she hopes the pact will set a precedent for private agencies to help run city parks, while still offering public uses.

Sounds like a public-private partnership to me! Much more to come on this issue (PPPs, not the sculpture park, although I hope that succeeds, too) in the future from SMI.

The post Somebody is seeing the light … appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The story is a “he said, she said” story in which city officials’ trumped-up allegations against Roos are reported alongside Roos’s responses. Since most readers don’t know any of the parties and aren’t going to do research for themselves, this gives the (erroneous, in my view) impression that there must be something shady about Roos or the Post wouldn’t have published such a critical article. Here’s an example:
 

Roos’ properties have drawn complaints for graffiti and trash buildup. This year alone, city inspectors cited Roos’ properties for several infractions, including broken or missing window panes, a collapsed fence, a collapsed porch, a partly collapsed wall and improper display of address numbers.

Even the “End Eminent Domain Abuse” mural, which can be seen heading north where Gravois Avenue becomes Tucker Boulevard, has been cited. Last month, the Department of Public Safety issued Roos a notice for having an “illegal sign” and ordered it removed.

Other than the mural, Roos says that the buildings cited by the city had the violations before he purchased them. Roos says his rental units are “decent,” though not glamorous.

“It’s ordinary housing,” Roos said. “But durable, safe.”

Is Roos is telling the truth that his citations are only for buildings he’s recently purchased? I’m willing to bet he is (which would be an effective rebuttal to Roddy’s insinuation that he’s a slumlord) but the reporter didn’t check, something I expect he could have done fairly easily. Instead, he just repeated Roddy’s allegations and left the reader with the impression that Roos is probably up to something shady.

The story also glosses over why Roos is running housing in slums in the first place. Like most cities, Saint Louis has a shortage of affordable housing. Low income people have difficulty finding housing that’s “durable, safe”—and affordable. Roos provides such housing. And having seen both his office and his home, I can say with confidence he’s not getting rich in the process.

So what does the city do to help out?
 

A city-backed commission, led by the Missouri Botanical Garden, used eminent domain to acquire nearly two dozen buildings Roos owned or managed in the McRee Town neighborhood.

That’s when Roos said he first became a “victim.” To hear him tell it, McRee Town, left alone, would have been the next Soulard.

Not so, says veteran Alderman Joe Roddy.

“It was a neighborhood in a free fall,” said Roddy, who cited the area’s high crime rate.

Today, the neighborhood is home to a suburban-style subdivision — Botanical Heights, with homes listing for more than $300,000 — which Roddy points to as evidence that eminent domain can work.

That sounds lovely except for one little detail: poor people can’t afford $300,000 homes. The city has “solved” the problem of poverty in McRee town by forcing the poor to move to a different neighborhood. I’m sure that counts as “progress” for Mr. Roddy, because now they’re probably out of his ward and no longer his problem. But it’s not progress for the city as a whole. In fact it’s the opposite of progress, because what affordable housing remains will be more expensive and more crowded than ever.

The post Disappointing Reporting in the Post appeared first on Show-Me Institute.