Rex suggested the public school system could have (not in a literal sense) created the current public school system to keep black children poor and dumb.
It’s not only on the surface offensive, one has to put it in the context of Saint Louis which almost had the SLPS Board taken over by a majority aligned with the Council of Conservative Citizens* in 1991. Mayor Slay, not then Mayor helped stand up to that group as did Robbyn Wahby (then Stewart). It’s not funny and as much as the SLPS has been a mess in many, many ways, it’s not because of active racism of the people in the system. Remember, the SLPS was the District county districts sent their black districts to before segregation was outlawed. It was the primary place for black children to attend school in the region.
Fundamentally, the problems of the SLPS and other flailing school districts in the Saint Louis region is that they deal with too many poor students in concentrated areas. High percentages of the students live in poverty and they have chaotic lives and parents who cannot and in some cases will not prioritize stability in their kids’ lives. Kids don’t learn well on average when stuck in miserable conditions. Alleviate those conditions and their performance will improve. Schools need work, but no amount of school reform is going to solve the underlying problems of poverty and instability.
*I give Carol Wilson a pass from being a member or understanding the nature of her fellow slate members after talking to her and knowing her.
It doesn’t come out as well in the picture, but this is a pretty typical parking job on my street.
The St. Louis-based cable, TV and Internet company ranks fifth on the list, receiving a satisfaction rating of 59/100. Improper billing practices and poor customer service make up the majority of complaints lodged against Charter, which filed for bankruptcy in 2009, forcing it to downsize and cut costs.
Anita Lamont, a spokeswoman for Charter said, “It’s disappointing to be named, but Charter has committed to a customer experience transformation and positive things are happening. We’ve just begun a journey that will take time, but customers have noticed and we’re beginning to hear encouraging feedback.”
I once had one of their telemarketers threaten to kill my family and I. It was very strange because I wasn’t angry and certainly not difficult. I had asked them to stop calling and when I got this call, I asked to speak to a manager to try and get the calls stopped. The guy then threatened me. I wouldn’t believe it either other than having been on the line with the clown.
After the third person needed me to give them the same details I had done initially, I just told them to never call me again and they finally got that right.
Saint Louis submits application with half hearted support from RCGA:
Brookings officials say RCGA’s attitude was not a factor in the decision to defer St. Louis’ application. Rather, officials cited unresolved — but not insurmountable — questions about whether the St. Louis region has the capacity for kind of “deep private-sector engagement and regional cohesion” needed for this kind of enterprise to be successful.
Amy Liu, who heads the Metropolitan Business Planning project, told us that metro areas that are chosen don’t get a Brookings report. They get a business plan, for which people within the community have done 90 percent of the work. Such a plan only can be effective if it is the shared work of the community, she said, reflecting a genuine statement of “regional intention” by major employers and public institutions to transform the local economy.
What Brookings can to bring to the process, she says, is help to achieve “market discipline” and “action discipline” in the planning process. That means making sure any regional plan truly is rooted in market expertise. It means identifying real people and enterprises committed to carrying out each step of the plan.
Brookings says it is “committed to working with leaders in greater St. Louis on their regional ambitions, and we have offered recommendations to strengthen the likelihood of success of a metropolitan business plan.”
On a complete side note–Amy is from my hometown and we are friendly acquaintances though I haven’t talked to her in some time.
East-West Gateway does what it can, but ultimately, the elders in Saint Louis are pretty happy watching the place stay stagnant as they offer TIFs for minor developments. If you actually change and embrace things like biotech firms in a city with multiple hard science institutions you might have to start listening to the new people who come and we can’t have that.
The really important thing about living here–as the second choice under Living Here on RCGA’s website points out is we have pro and college sports.
Just about 10 years ago I was in Austin and doing some field work. I was staying in a hostel and a guy from Seattle came up to me and told me how cool Saint Louis’ music scene was. He was talking about bands like the Bottle Rockets and festivals like Twangfest that actually appeal to young people looking for a cool place to live and work. Let me repeat. He was from Seattle.
The problem? Unless you are really into music you wouldn’t know that Saint Louis has any attractions that appeal to anyone under 50–actually that’s probably 60 now. Take a look at the list of people RCGA site.
All notable people and old or old and dead with the exception of Buck and Costas and they aren’t young either
I’m sure one would hear the excuse that this fits the demographic of CEOs and such and it speaks to them.
That is the problem in itself. It’s not CEOs of big companies you want to attract–it’s younger entrepreneurs who are going to be the CEOs of tomorrow. Don’t throw out the list just update it. Like that Jon Hamm guy who is even a regional booster. Or what’s that band headed by a kid out of Belleville? Wilco…and his past band partner is still here and releasing fairly popular albums–Jay Farrar and Son Volt. Nelly maybe. Outside of Austin & SXSW we have one of the best Twang/Americana scenes, but nada. We sure wouldn’t want to be attractive to young people and entrepeneuers like Austin is though..we need those big companies that Dick Fleming knows how to talk with their CEOs and play golf and have highballs with….
In many ways I’ve separated myself from the region as my kids have gotten older and my attention has had to turn to some pedestrian concerns, but frankly writing the same crap over and over again about the problem with this region just gets fucking old. Again, it’s not Dick Fleming and RCGA that are the problem, they are just the symptom.
Until this region develops some sort of capacity for venture capital and attracting new ideas it’s just not going to change. You have many of the ideas with biotech, but it has to go to Chicago to even think about venture capital and what was built looks more like multiple 5 year Soviet style plans.
Even when small breweries don’t produce brews I like I’m generally of the attitude the more the merrier, but really?
William K. “Billy” Busch, 51, said he is close to opening William K. Busch Brewing Co., a brewery that will initially focus on American-style pale lagers, similar to Budweiser and Bud Light.
The goal is to have two lagers available in the St. Louis market by November, with broader, regional distribution after that.
While a bunch of whining twits complain about how one bad restaurant owner means the Loop is falling apart even though the number of restaurants is at least steady and in many ways improving, we get the Post-Dispatch’s brand destroying commenters still going at it:
- charger said on: June 8, 2011, 1:45 pm
- These punks are destroying our Loop. The word punk really means uneducated negroes. We must remove them or face ruin.
- charger said on: June 8, 2011, 7:46 am
- There goes the neighborhood. I hope we can defeat the invasion of rap punks but if we fail UCity will be East ST. Louis.
The Post Dispatch apparently doesn’t understand the quality of interaction on their web site matters as much as the volume. When you let racist dumbasses take over and dominate your comment sections, the entire point of your comment section as an attraction to repeat viewers is lost.
Test3
I got a nice case of some sort of plague from the girls that kept me pretty out of it for the run up to the general election, but thank you to Ward 24 for dispatching Tom Bauer once again. Tom, don’t go away mad, just go away.
But Chappelle-Nadal’s rhetoric turned decidedly ugly — and some say racist — during an interview on radio station WGNU.
On the air, Chappelle-Nadal called St. Louis leaders in favor of local control “house slaves” following the lead of their “plantation owner,” Missouri billionaire Rex Sinquefield, who is helping to organize political support in Jefferson City.
Those comments on WGNU now have two prominent local African American political leaders speaking out against her.
State Representative Jamillah Nasheed – who sponsored the local control legislation in the Missouri House – did not mince words. “You know, I think that she is mentally unstable,” Nasheed said. “It was just really unfortunate that she had to take it to that level of racism. She needs to seek some help.”
And from St. Louis Board of Aldermen President Lewis Reed, a statement saying that Chappelle-Nadal should quit.
Police control was taken away in 1861, by pro-slavery lawmakers in Jefferson City, who wanted to make sure that Union supporters in St. Louis would not be able to make trouble for Confederate sympathizers or turn the weapons in the city’s armory against them.
And bad trial lawyers for Maria Chappelle Nadal please send all bogus threats of lawsuits to archpundit@gmail.com
Other than the overt racial bullshit she brought into this, there is a pretty big logical inconsistency. Rex Sinquefeld only started supporting local control recently while local control has been supported by most Saint Louis politicians for years. Rex only returned to Missouri somewhere between 2003 and 2005.
For example from February 27, 2000 in the Post-Dispatch:
The oft-debated issue was raised anew last month in the Missouri Legislature. There, state Sen. William Lacy Clay Jr., D-St. Louis, introduced a bill that would shift to the mayor from the governor the power to name four of five board members. The mayor would continue as the fifth.
“Having the governor do this is ludicrous,” Mayor Clarence Harmon said recently in support of the change. “On routine issues, I’ve got to go over there and convince four other people.”
I’m no fan of Rex Sinquefeld though I don’t see him as Satan either. However, blaming a push for local control on him is sheer lunacy unless he has developed time travel ability. And that is all the anti-local control forces have–lunacy in Maria, in Weigert, and in the Teabaggers who are too stupid to understand how they are being used by racist nutjobs like Weigert.
During Wiegert’s first show, most of the calls were about cops and crime. Typical was one caller’s riff: “You can’t even walk in and buy something in a fast-food place without the fear that someone might come in and rob it and shoot the owner and maybe shoot you for what you got. I mean it’s just fear, fear in the 10th Ward. Anything it takes to do it, like the Giuliani deal, I’m all for it.”
Wiegert thanked the caller and responded: “I like that style that [Mayor Rudy] Giuliani presented in New York. Basically, the criminals and gangs were taking over the city. They went into a total enforcement-type mode where they wanted to suppress even the minor-type activity.” But then, Wiegert admitted, problems arose when an unarmed man, Amadou Diallo, was shot 41 times and killed by four New York policemen, who were later cleared. “[Diallo] did unusual actions,” Wiegert said on his show. “I mean, he was an immigrant and didn’t understand the actions of this country, or what is suspicious and what isn’t suspicious, and he ended up being shot.”
You know how New York City governs the Police Department? The Mayor directly appoints the Commissioner who is a civilian appointee who oversees the department. It was changed to limit interference from a 4-6 member commission that jointly ran the NYPD prior to 1901.
But remember. Black people are scary.
Yeah…all the shit we miss since WGNU went to gospel. For those not familiar with Weigart is he is the knuckle dragging former head of the Saint Louis Police Officer Association (white officers primarily) who used to have a radio show on WGNU when it was the primary place to find angry loons of all political stripes. Wiegart’s radio show was a hoot, if you think thinly veiled racism is a hoot.
The problem with this theory is that nearly 70 percent of the City of Saint Louis supports local control of the police department.
There are few things that surprise me about the Tea Party, but throwing in on continued state control because of some imaginary threat from the New Black Panthers does it.
The only way it makes any sense is if you have a black board like Glenn Beck and no ability to reason whatsoever, but word salad of scary words. You also have to believe that Francis Slay is a black radical hiding his true beliefs. Then again his family tree goes back to Lebanon so I’m sure he’s an Al Qaeda sleeper agent because those Eastern Rite Christians are kind of scary and swarthy.
The anti-local control group is a pretty hysterical gathering of morons from Wiegart, to the Tea Partiers, to crazy Maria Chappelle Nadal.
Looking at the various numbers and where the greatest losses are in the City of Saint Louis, it looks pretty clear that North Saint Louis will lose a full ward to the Central Corridor/South City. As I said, let the Craig Schmidt pool begin.
While losses are balanced more than I had expected, with the losses on the Northwest side compared to modest gain in one Northeast ward and relative stability in others, the choices about how to reconfigure the map will be very, very difficult without moving a ward south. Not necessarily to South City, but south of Delmar for sure.
The five biggest losers are Wards 3, 4, 21, 22, 27 with Ward 1 coming in 7th biggest loss after Ward 8 (probably the biggest surprise). Old ward ideal size was in the 12,500, the new one will be about 11,500 so from that perspective you know Wards that lost 1000 people could stay essentially the same without changing the borders. Those with more than 1000 lost will have to expand and those with less than 1000 lost or gained population will give away territory. Those Wards needing to gain population are largely on the North side with the ones listed above and ward 2 which needs about 500 more people.
The argument in 2000 was that the Districts on the north side should be reconfigured to stretch south to gain population, but still stay largely North City based. The problem was the losses were simply too great. If you had tried this, the Districts would have moved south enough to displace all of 7 or 28 just making the effective impact a rename of one of those districts.
The same thing is likely to occur this year. The Wards in North City with the biggest losses account for over 9,000 people who need to be added to them to get an equal size ward which is only 2,500 off an entire ward. Taking into account the other North Side wards you still need another 500 so a total of 9500 votes are needed to maintain the Wards up north. If you try and move Districts south you end up misplacing wards so that it might have the same number, but won’t be the old ward in anything, but the number on it. 6 and 19 do go into the Northern Corridor a bit, but they their population increases are not much of a help if you shave off those votes since most of those increases are south of Delmar at least.
None of this means it will be a majority white district necessarily, however. I bet we hear that it will be, but relocating a ward south of Forest Park could take some excess areas from 17, 28, 6, 7, 19 somewhat and create a majority minority District and reflect where the greatest population increases have occurred. Combine that with 20, 9, 8, and 6 (maybe 7) which are already majority black and the opportunity for African-American representation stays high. Well, assuming someone actually organizes African-American voters in those areas and runs. That’s pretty unlikely, but one can dream.
The Mayor’s office has released a fair amount of data now and I’m going through it to see where the losses were. We’ll have to have the Tract data to get a strong understanding of the losses, but it’s interesting to note losses on the South side were only 4,000 less than on the North side, but it’s even more interesting. Let’s look at the African-American population loss on the North side.
The North side lost 18,000 African Americans. The Central Corridor lost about 2300 African Americans. The South side lost 300 African-Americans. African Americans 18 or older actually increased by 14 percent in South Saint Louis or about 3500 more African Americans over 18.
Total housing units were essentially flat which has two interesting implications. With 320,000 people in 142,000 occupied unit the average unit had 2.25 people. In 2000, the City had 2.37 people per housing unit on average with about 350,000 people and 147,000 occupied units. There was an increase in vacant units citywide by 4600 units. The extra units at the new average accounts for about 10,350 of the population loss meaning about 18,000 in losses are largely due to the change in people per housing unit. This almost certainly means families are getting smaller and probably that fewer families are staying in the City to educate their kids even with increased options.
So take an African-American population under 18 for 2000 which is 59,005 and compare it to the 2010 under 18 African-American population of 43845. The total African-American population loss for under 18 is 15160 or about 3/4 of the African-American losses citywide.
With whites, same proportions. 12000 total white population lost, just under 8000 of them under 18.
The City of Saint Louis lost a bit over 28,000 people since they last Census. With wards averaging about 12,500 people from the last redistricting, new wards will be about 11,400 people . 2 1/4 Wards worth of people are gone.
So that means redistricting is going to be especially fun. I’ll be holding a pool to see where Craig Schmidt ends up this time. My guess is he might be representing Riverview or something like that.
The painful part isn’t just the loss in population, but likely where that loss is likely to be concentrated. The estimates over the last 10 years seemed to show a reversal in the population decline since 1950. That ended up to be an illusion and I have a couple good ideas why. One may well be fewer people per household. Estimates are based on prior tendencies, and as many of the areas that have done well have been rehabbed many of the households are smaller than in the past. This may seem like a small thing, but a small change in averages makes a big change overall.
The factor I expect to account for most of it though is far more troubling if I’m correct. The northwest side of the City of Saint Louis is abandoned in many areas. You know this as you travel the streets, but it’s hard to determine the full impact until you get a count. Estimates do a fairly good job at looking at relatively static situations so the number of housing starts/permits/rehabs against other figures for those moving out give a good average in most cases. However, if you hit a tipping point and an area has high levels of abandonment that take time to hit the property roles and such. If this is the case, the Northwest portion of the city may well have hit a point where a goo portion of the losses are from there. There’s a fair amount of evidence that the population in those areas have moved south to the Southeast portion of the city or to north Saint Louis County.
Privately I’ve been the round mound of doom over this area for several years now. I expected the losses to lead to two Wards being moved south with this redistricting and unfortunately I think this may be the case. Even if there was slower growth on the South side, there is no doubt that the northwest portion of Saint Louis has been hit the hardest. If the losses are largely concentrated there, we could see the need for two Wards to be moved south with another one forced to move south and east to gain enough population.
The human effects are bad, but the political recriminations will be worse. For too long, much of the African American leadership in the City of Saint Louis has worried about geography and land and not people. White politicians get no credit here, it’s just the elected black officials are the truly derelict. The African-American population has moved south or out and yet most of the African-American leadership still talks about race as the Northside versus the Southside. That has not been true for the entire time I’ve lived here though. Yet few African-American politicians have sought to organize on the Southside instead fighting over smaller and smaller numbers on the Northside. There are notable exceptions—Lewis Reed, Kacey Triplett, Mike McMillan, but they are exceptions.
Craig Schmidt, a terribly nice guy, but not exactly the strongest politician has survived in a majority black ward with virtually no attempts by African-Americans to win that Ward. This cycle–three whites are running for that seat-in a majority black District with many challenges. It might seem obvious, but to win a black district, you have to contest it because we have this weird notion of people voting for representative where they actually live.
None of this lets white politicians off the hook in Saint Louis. Clearly areas of the City have been needing dramatic efforts to shore them up. However, white politicians weren’t representing those wards. And where African-Americans have moved? African-American politicians are largely still ignoring those areas.
We’ll hear much gnashing of teeth and anger at white politicians. Probably much of that is deserved. However it isn’t a plot or coordinated effort to disempower African-Americans. I can find a few of those politicians running around who would join that plot, but when the votes of African-Americans in this City aren’t even being competed for so they don’t even have to put out the effort.
A couple folks I know are helping out with a IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge and asked me to take a look at it–I approve wholeheartedly as it brings out my tech geek and marries it to my city redevelopment ideas. Here’s a bit from IBM:
Could your city use an infusion of IBM talent and technology? The computing giant is offering its help with the Smarter Cities Challenge, a grant program that will dole out $50 million worth of technology and services to 100 cities around the world.
The program, launched this week, will give $250,000 to $400,000 worth of services to each city selected through the competitive grant process. Those services may include access to City Forward (an IBM tool which allows cities to analyze and and visualize data across systems), workshops on social networking tools, time with top IBM talent, and assistance with strategic planning. IBM explains:
A consistent theme will be collecting, sharing, analyzing and acting on data. For instance, IBM experts might suggest ways to link the processes and objectives of multiple departments to reduce cost and improve productivity. A city’s education program could be more effective if it was closely coordinated with social services, transportation, parks and recreation, public health, and safety. Police officers might be more effective if timely, customized information were electronically “pushed” to them while walking the beat or in transit. Citizen engagement could be improved if computer access were more widespread. Snow removal teams might be more efficiently deployed if ultra-precise weather data were obtained and analyzed.
Anyone who deals with city governments, Saint Louis as well as many other cities in Missouri included, know that often one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing and citizens often have a hard time figuring out who to talk to where. While efforts are made to make it better, seldom can cities coping with a recession and any number of other problems take a larger strategic view of it’s systems and plan how to integrate them.
Saint Louis City tried something along these line when Mayor Slay was elected and failed miserably largely because of the the personnel decision made. Slay has had a lot of success in a difficult environment, this wasn’t one of them. One of the the advantages of having outside folks come in is they can look at the whole thing and meet the needs of all stakeholders. This also isn’t for only big cities either.
The important thing to keep in mind is that, the applications are due by the end of the year. That’s the bad news, the good news: the application is awesomely simple compared to most grant applications.
1. Fill out the application here: https://smartercitieschallenge.org/reg.do
2. The proposal has to include the following criteria in order to be successful:
- Describe 1-3 potential problems or opportunities to address with the grant
- Provide clear, compelling evidence that the city is well positioned to utilize the resources offered in the Smarter Cities Challenge
- Outline how a grant of IBM talent and technology has the potential to substantially enhance the city’s capacity to act on key issues
- Highlight recent efforts to develop innovative solutions to public problems, including any initiatives to implement new technologies or open data policies
- Demonstrate the city is ready to match IBM’s investment with its own commitment of time and talent, including access to the city agencies and personnel relevant to the project
If you’d like to know more, you can watch a short video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nmhs4-QplWc
You don’t have to be an avid Governing reader to figure this out, just make sure your city knows about it and can take advantage of it.