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1 minute ago, wgstl said:

Ya I know it for sure drops us from the top 10 ranking, which is prettty significant news even if we land at #11

I read somewhere (just tried finding it on the google machine but couldn't locate it) that said by combining STL city and county population, we would drop closer to 100 in the crime rankings. How crazy is that....by simply removing an arbitrary and invisible line, we instantaneously change the way we are perceived on a national scale. Obviously, we'd still need to address our crime issues but changing the national narrative of St. Louis is a good start.

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2 hours ago, billiken_roy said:

didnt louisville just recently do something similar to this?   how is that working out?   i dont know just wondering for comparison sakes.   

It appears to be working out great for Louisville. Here's an article a few years back on Nexstl.com that talks about Indy and Nashville's decision to consolidate local government decades ago:

https://nextstl.com/2015/05/the-view-from-kirkwood/

 

 

 

 

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19 hours ago, RiseOfTheBillikens said:

You'll fit right in

It surprises me yet doesn't surprise me that there are a lot of people (mostly in the outer suburbs and surrounding counties) that don't seem to understand that a declining St. Louis city and county has a negative impact on them and their community in the long run.

Quick question: Where do a significant portion of the people who live in St. Charles, or across the river in Illinois, or Jeff Co work? If I had to guess, i'd say St. Louis county or St. Louis city. What happens to those companies, those jobs, if St. Louis continues to decline? Do these people in St. Charles and Jeff CO honestly think these companies will simply pick up and just move 20 miles west  to their county instead of moving to a Nashville or Denver or Kansas City? This assumes, of course, that these businesses were able to survive.

I work in finance/real estate redevelopment. An overwhelming amount of the construction workers on these jobs drive in from outside St. Louis city and county every morning. Their livelihood, their family's livelihood, depend on a thriving St. Louis city.  You think they'd make this 45 mile drive every morning and every evening if there was enough work for them in Jeff Co? or St. Charles? or Franklin County? This notion that one can simply keep moving further out, ignore the core problems of St. Louis county and city (the heart and soul of our region), and think everything will be okay in the long run is insane to me.

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I think people are truly not understanding what would happen under a merger.  The only difference between St. Louis and Chicago or Kansas City is that the City of St. Louis is treated like its own county.  That's it.

Cook County, Illinois has 130 municipalities, including Chicago.  http://blog.cookcountyil.gov/economicdevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Municipalities-and-Maps.pdf  Cook County has elected leadership for Cook County, and Chicago still has a mayor.

If a merger happens, the City of St. Louis still exists.  It still has the same borders.  Crime rates are still calculated using those borders.  It isn't going away due to the merger, and neither is Kirkwood, Chesterfield, Florissant, Ferguson, Sunset Hills, etc.  The only thing a merger accomplishes is to consolidate some services and some leadership, but this would only be for stuff that a county normally presides over anyway.  So, basically you can go look at Phelps County down 44 and figure out what it does in Rolla, compared to what the City of Rolla does for Rolla and that's all that gets changed.

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39 minutes ago, Slu let the dogs out? said:

I believe under Better Together's plan, St. Louis city and county would become a metro city of 1.3 million, which would drop St. Louis out of the top 50 in crime.

Again, I don't think that's true.  Chicago's crime rate is not calculated based upon the entirety of Cook County.  It's only based upon the City of Chicago.  The crime statisticians aren't going to start using numbers for the whole region, just because the City of St. Louis gets put into St. Louis County.

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6 minutes ago, Slu let the dogs out? said:

It surprises me yet doesn't surprise me that there are a lot of people (mostly in the outer suburbs and surrounding counties) that don't seem to understand that a declining St. Louis city and county has a negative impact on them and their community in the long run.

Exactly. A successful St. Louis makes the whole St. Louis region thrive. I don't think it's that hard to understand but a lot of people are fine with separating themselves from it.

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2 minutes ago, cgeldmacher said:

The crime statisticians aren't going to start using numbers for the whole region, just because the City of St. Louis gets put into St. Louis County.

No, but the police departments would be combined.  I'm guessing that combining the police force would enable them to provide crime stats based on the total number of crimes committed in the city-county region and the total city-county combined population.

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19 minutes ago, cgeldmacher said:

Again, I don't think that's true.  Chicago's crime rate is not calculated based upon the entirety of Cook County.  It's only based upon the City of Chicago.  The crime statisticians aren't going to start using numbers for the whole region, just because the City of St. Louis gets put into St. Louis County.

I agree it is not based on county stats, however, look at Better Together's plan. It involves combining St. Louis city and county populations into one mega city of 1.3 million. So when the FBI or whoever is compiling their statistics on crime, they would use the 1.3M population number as their denominator rather than 315,000. This mega city would be the 9th largest city in the country (minute 6 of the video below)

I agree, not all merger plans would necessarily combine populations, and some ideas simply have St. Louis as just another city in the county.  In those plans, St. Louis city would still have a population of 315,000.

Who knows, I'm sure I'm reading Better Together's plan incorrectly...

Here's a Better Together video that goes over their plan (discuses metro city at 3:50):

 

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34 minutes ago, cgeldmacher said:

Again, I don't think that's true.  Chicago's crime rate is not calculated based upon the entirety of Cook County.  It's only based upon the City of Chicago.  The crime statisticians aren't going to start using numbers for the whole region, just because the City of St. Louis gets put into St. Louis County.

This is a giant question for me too. 

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38 minutes ago, cgeldmacher said:

I think people are truly not understanding what would happen under a merger.  The only difference between St. Louis and Chicago or Kansas City is that the City of St. Louis is treated like its own county.  That's it.

Cook County, Illinois has 130 municipalities, including Chicago.  http://blog.cookcountyil.gov/economicdevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Municipalities-and-Maps.pdf  Cook County has elected leadership for Cook County, and Chicago still has a mayor.

If a merger happens, the City of St. Louis still exists.  It still has the same borders.  Crime rates are still calculated using those borders.  It isn't going away due to the merger, and neither is Kirkwood, Chesterfield, Florissant, Ferguson, Sunset Hills, etc.  The only thing a merger accomplishes is to consolidate some services and some leadership, but this would only be for stuff that a county normally presides over anyway.  So, basically you can go look at Phelps County down 44 and figure out what it does in Rolla, compared to what the City of Rolla does for Rolla and that's all that gets changed.

I think you missed the part where the super mayor based in the city is over the whole "metro city" along with  the "municipal district" legislators.  There's some deputy mayors too for god knows what.  We are talking about MUCH more than putting the city back in the county and getting rid of the county offices like the sheriff's department in the city.   

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43 minutes ago, Box and Won said:

No, but the police departments would be combined.  I'm guessing that combining the police force would enable them to provide crime stats based on the total number of crimes committed in the city-county region and the total city-county combined population.

I just don't think that's accurate.  Just because this commission says it will happen this way, doesn't mean it will.  The merger will not create big Mega City like someone suggested.  The City of St. Louis's borders will still exist.  The police departments being combined will not change what is the City of St. Louis any more than Chicago trying to claim the crime statistics of Oakbrook.  When the articles about crime statistics are written, the authors don't use metropolitan areas and they don't use entire counties.  They use city borders, like Chicago, Memphis, Indianapolis.

The idea that merging the City and County will drop our reported crime statistics is as naive as thinking that Detroit should be able to start considering the entirety of Wayne County, Michigan for its crime statistics.  Detroit doesn't get to include Dearborn, Michigan in its stats just like St. Louis won't get to count Chesterfield in its stats.  The writers of these articles choose not to include entire counties in their numbers for reason.  They're not going to be tricked into doing it differently. 

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Also, if what you are saying is true about this Super Mayor nonsense, then we would be unlike any other city in the country.  Can you imagine Chicago having Super Mayor over all of Cook County?  We'd go from being ridiculous one way to being more ridiculous the other.

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1 hour ago, Slu let the dogs out? said:

I believe under Better Together's plan, St. Louis city and county would become a metro city of 1.3 million, which would drop St. Louis out of the top 50 in crime.

It would be no different then KC which is part of Jackson County - so I believe you are correct.

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3 hours ago, Billiken Rich said:

Experience

Tell that to the people in Ellisville who did not want the Tidal Wave and a 2 story storage unit to be alongside their property where a church was - they gave an earful to the mayor and council and all they got was a chance to attend meetings.  My point is if there is enough money involved for the town then what you want is not going to matter regardless if your kid coach is the mayor.

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I believe crime statistics to be very misleading though. When you say the city of St. Louis most people, especially nationwide think of the St. Louis metro area when in fact the City of St. Louis is only 10% of the metro population. Is there another major city who's actual city is such a small percentage?  For example the city of Chicago is about 30% of the Chicago metro area. The city of Detroit is 15%. Dallas is 20% and that is including Ft. Worth area. If you combine both the major cities with the metro area it's over 30%.  I would bet there is an area of Chicago with approx. 300k that rivals St. Louis City in crime. In 2017 Chicago area had 3.3 times as many murders at the St, louis area despite being just 3 times as large. I can't find Detroit's murders as a metro area but the city of Detroit had more than the entire St. Louis metro area. 

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1 hour ago, Slu let the dogs out? said:

It surprises me yet doesn't surprise me that there are a lot of people (mostly in the outer suburbs and surrounding counties) that don't seem to understand that a declining St. Louis city and county has a negative impact on them and their community in the long run.

Quick question: Where do a significant portion of the people who live in St. Charles, or across the river in Illinois, or Jeff Co work? If I had to guess, i'd say St. Louis county or St. Louis city. What happens to those companies, those jobs, if St. Louis continues to decline? Do these people in St. Charles and Jeff CO honestly think these companies will simply pick up and just move 20 miles west  to their county instead of moving to a Nashville or Denver or Kansas City? This assumes, of course, that these businesses were able to survive.

I work in finance/real estate redevelopment. An overwhelming amount of the construction workers on these jobs drive in from outside St. Louis city and county every morning. Their livelihood, their family's livelihood, depend on a thriving St. Louis city.  You think they'd make this 45 mile drive every morning and every evening if there was enough work for them in Jeff Co? or St. Charles? or Franklin County? This notion that one can simply keep moving further out, ignore the core problems of St. Louis county and city (the heart and soul of our region), and think everything will be okay in the long run is insane to me.

You raise and interesting point - I would imagine that the craft unions would be pushing this concept and since this is suppose to be a state wide vote then I could see all these workers being favorable towards.  

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Gotta love the “fiscal conservative” county folk who are getting ready to put up a fight against this liberal “big government takeover”.... when in actuality a merger means the reduction of extra unnecessary government jobs that suck more taxpayer dollars out of the region. One would assume they would take the opposite position and would want to reduce excess government...

Also, not to get overtly political or anything, but people in STL county complaining about the Democratic Machine of the city should look at their own voting record for county executives...

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1 minute ago, Spoon-Balls said:

Gotta love the “fiscal conservative” county folk who are getting ready to put up a fight against the reduction of extra unnecessary government jobs that suck more taxpayer dollars out of the region. One would assume they would take the opposite position and would want to reduce excess government...

Yep - just like one of the parties saying that they want the government out of their lives but want to legislate what adults do in the bedroom.  It is a crazy world.

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38 minutes ago, slufanskip said:

I believe crime statistics to be very misleading though. When you say the city of St. Louis most people, especially nationwide think of the St. Louis metro area when in fact the City of St. Louis is only 10% of the metro population. Is there another major city who's actual city is such a small percentage?  For example the city of Chicago is about 30% of the Chicago metro area. The city of Detroit is 15%. Dallas is 20% and that is including Ft. Worth area. If you combine both the major cities with the metro area it's over 30%.  I would bet there is an area of Chicago with approx. 300k that rivals St. Louis City in crime. In 2017 Chicago area had 3.3 times as many murders at the St, louis area despite being just 3 times as large. I can't find Detroit's murders as a metro area but the city of Detroit had more than the entire St. Louis metro area. 

Also, gentrication alone would improve the City of St. Louis crime statistics. Even if the borders remained exactly the same.

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18 minutes ago, 3star_recruit said:

Also, gentrication alone would improve the City of St. Louis crime statistics. Even if the borders remained exactly the same.

I believe you are right but by the time this happens we will be even further behind -  this is a PR need as well as a growth need. 

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1 hour ago, Spoon-Balls said:

Gotta love the “fiscal conservative” county folk who are getting ready to put up a fight against this liberal “big government takeover”.... when in actuality a merger means the reduction of extra unnecessary government jobs that suck more taxpayer dollars out of the region. One would assume they would take the opposite position and would want to reduce excess government...

Also, not to get overtly political or anything, but people in STL county complaining about the Democratic Machine of the city should look at their own voting record for county executives...

Saying not to get overly political doesn't make your post not overly political.  

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6 hours ago, Billiken Rich said:

We should be able to cooperate more in that regard.  That is true. 

 

By the way, when the super mayor wants to steal your house through eminent domain for a great regional project and you have no local government to talk to, don't come running to me.... 

Lol, you don't need a "super mayor" for that scenario to occur.

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6 hours ago, Billiken Rich said:

We should be able to cooperate more in that regard.  That is true. 

 

By the way, when the super mayor wants to steal your house through eminent domain for a great regional project and you have no local government to talk to, don't come running to me.... 

So you cool with federal gov using eminent domain for the Wall?

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