Photography courtesy of Grand Center Inc.
Vince Schoemehl describes himself as an “incurable optimist,” which is an achievement by itself after the positions he’s held and what he’s tried to do. Since 2001, Schoemehl has been president and chief executive officer of Grand Center Inc., the nonprofit that oversees the development of the area along Grand Avenue between Lindell and Page. After serving six years as alderman in the Central West End’s 28th Ward, Schoemehl was elected as mayor in 1981, when he was 34 years old. He was re-elected twice before serving one term on the St. Louis Public Schools Board, from 2003 to 2005; he was the founding chairman of the St. Louis Language Immersion Schools. Schoemehl also serves on the board of Metro, the area’s public transit company. Today, at age 67, he says retirement is not an option.
Do you view the city—the central core of the region—differently than you did when you were mayor?
Certainly, because it is different. We’ve continued to sprawl, and there are fewer people in the core. It’s all tied to our being able to attract people to move to St. Louis and to retain the people who already live here. We have to reverse the slow growth experience we’ve had in the St. Louis region, and we’ve got to do a better job of educating the population that’s here, so we have a better chance of competing for 21st century employment.
People seem to worry most about crime and schools. Do you think local control of the city police department will have a positive effect?
Local control will help because it will allow the leadership of the St. Louis community—the mayor, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, the board of aldermen—to actually make decisions that get implemented on the street. That’s never been the case since we lost control of the police department. You could have debates about strategies to fight crime, but you could never implement them. There was always this "distant remove" that made it difficult for the city to have any impact on crime. That will be a major difference. I know lots of controversy is associated with certain aspects of what’s going on in New York City; yet the crime rate in New York City on a per capita basis is statistically zero—compared to where the city was 30 years ago. It proves that there is this whole body of information and strategic approaches to fighting crime that’s out there that the city of St. Louis has never even tried to implement because we never had the opportunity. Now we do.
That would not include NYC's stop-and-frisk program, right?
Stop-and-frisk was the controversial part of it, but they had a whole series of things and continue to do a whole series of things that are much less controversial and still very effective. They’ve been working on any number of strategic initiatives over the last 20 years, and it’s had a profound impact. You have to pick the strategies from that menu of opportunities to reduce crime that are clearly constitutional and then implement them. All of the reduction in crime in New York City has not been tied solely to stop-and-frisk. There’s a whole body of experience that we are in position to begin to try.
From your time on the city school board, what do you think can be done as a region to improve public education?
The region needs to speak through the state of Missouri to get a stable financing strategy in place. This idea that year to year, you never know how much money you’re going to have to spend on education makes it absolutely impossible to plan and implement educational strategies. There are limits to what money can do, but I also believe you have to have reliability. You have to know how much money you’re going to have year to year to year in order to have consistency. What good does it do to have an art program one year, then drop it the next two years, then re-instate it the year after that? We don’t have any consistency in our educational approach, therefore it’s impossible to develop long-term strategic solutions. Again, nationally, we now know how to address a lot of these problems in education. You can fix some of these things now. We know how to do it, but you can’t do it if you don’t know what your budget is going to be year after year. So somehow, we have to establish a funding strategy for the state that gives certainty to educational leaders, so they can implement strategies that make sense long-term.
How about funding for transportation and transit in Missouri?
I’m hoping that part of what they do on a statewide initiative to address transportation funding will include transit. I don’t know if that is the case, but I am hopeful it will be. Transit allows people to get to jobs. Like many cities, we have a big disconnect between where people live who can fill low- to medium-range-paying jobs in retail, health care, etcetera, and where those jobs are. The second thing is a lot of communities that are making transit the centerpiece of their renovation strategy are attracting younger, better-educated populations. The first choice for transportation among younger, well-educated employees is no longer always an automobile. So having a transit system that serves people who need it and also serves people who want it is an important part of economic strategy.
How do you view the Better Together effort that is exploring changes in local government structure, including possible mergers or re-entry of the city into St. Louis County?
The effort to try to educate the community is an important first step. We’re not going to get people to change 150 years of behavior without some effort to educate them about what the upside is for them individually and for the community collectively. It’s an important step for this to be something the community wants done, as opposed to the community’s leadership wanting it done.
What do you during your down time?
I read books and watch movies. I read history and non-fiction. I very rarely read fiction—I watch movies for fiction.
What books have you read lately?
The Patriarch, the book about President Kennedy’s father; the last installment of William Manchester’s three books on Winston Churchill; and the most recent volume by Robert Caro on Lyndon Johnson. All three are very good books.
What do you recommend St. Louisans do to contribute to the common good?
Find something you are passionate about and volunteer. I find a lot of people get burned out because they volunteer some place where they have a friend or somebody recommended it, and they don’t have a personal passion necessary to really put the hours in that are needed to make a difference in an organization. A good friend got involved in an animal-rescue program, and he just didn’t like it. It was not because of the animals; it was because a friend of his recommended it to him, and he ended up not putting the time in. He didn’t feel good about it because he didn’t feel he was a success at it. I said, "Do something you care about." Now, he’s tutoring kids, and he’s really enjoying it. Whatever you do, do something that’s important to you. You’ll find that putting hours in won’t seem like work—you’ll enjoy it.
