“We have about 88 municipalities, 55 police departments, around 80 municipal courts, and somewhere around 650 elected officials. We fight about wherethe next Walgreens is going to go and who should pay for the convention center.The structure we have now, it’s actually our job to fight about these things, but that’s not where the competition should be. The competition should be between St. Louis and Nashville, or St. Louis and Indianapolis. We need to set up a structure where we are all working towardthe common good.”
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“It would be very useful to bring the city into the county. It would help with the duplication of county services, and it would save the city quite of bit of money. We have a long history of cooperative agreements in the region, everything from the Metropolitan Sewer District to Great Rivers Greenway, and they’ve all been successful. It’s something that nobody touts here.”
—Webster Groves Mayor Gerry Welch
“One of the oldest tools of segregating St. Louis has been the allowance for each municipality in St. Louis County to hold its own home rule zoning and planning powers. The division in zoning powers allows some municipalities to completely restrict any kind of housing where low-income people would dwell. The patchwork of planning powers has rendered many neighborhoods—historically those occupied by black or minority residents—vulnerable to the vagaries of competitive retail wars.”
“Simply put, the region’s governance is fractured. It makes regional coordination on the smallest of issues difficult. On major issues—such as economic development, equity and race, public safety, efficient delivery of public services—the fractured governance stands in the way of effective coordination and overall accountability.”
—St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger
“One of the problems is that unincorporated parts of St. Louis County lack local governments with direct representation to guide municipal functions. Other than a County Council representative—representing districts with populations of more than 100,000—residents in unincorporated areas do not have direct relationships to municipal functions such as planning, zoning, and economic development.”
—University of Missouri–St. Louis political science professor Todd Swanstrom
“The most important factor is St. Louis’ image around the country. We could become a top 10 city once again, which would improve our chances of becoming an airline hub and attracting businesses and keeping them. We would not be No. 1 in bad categories, and we would be ranked higher in good categories.”
“Access to a quality education is one of the most important issues. We need to talk about school equity as part of a regional structure, including a unified school district if that is the best way to share resources and integrate.”
—St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones
“The political dysfunction we see in the city and county is partially driven by the partisan election process in both of those governments. What we have now is essentially one-party rule, which means leaders are chosen during the primary, in which only a small part of one party actually votes to choose who will be our leaders.”
—Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III
“St. Louis’ problems aren’t unusual. There are brilliant solutions out there already. Why don’t we apply them? Usually because a handful of municipalities are willing, and the others aren’t part of the conversation. I’m not trying to take away anybody’s sovereignty. But chopping ourselves up into tinier and tinier fiefdoms was foolish, and it limited our ability to solve big problems.”
“The perception that the cause of our various problems is the number of municipalities is a false impression. The number of municipalities is a byproduct of the failure of the city; it’s not the cause of the problems of the city. I think we do have too many municipalities; I think many are too small to provide efficient services. But the suggestion that bigger is more efficient isn’t necessarily true.”
—Chesterfield Mayor Bob Nation
“Having seen a lot of fires and natural disasters, the one thing the city and county need to do better is coordinate their response to everyday incidents, incidents we know are going to come.”
—St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson
“For us in St. Charles County, the most immediate [concern with] the current structure is the airport. We have an airport that was purchased by the city in 1927. Since then, all the money used to improve the airport has come from landing fees and federal grants. Twenty-five years ago, we had a debate about the expansion of the airport, and a decision was made to expand to the west, not to the east. All of us in St. Charles were upset that we weren’t at the table. Now we need to decide who is going to run Lambert Field and whether they are going to run it in the interest of the entire region or just the interest of St. Louis [City].”
