Tag: ST. Louis

Adaptation to Change

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I once read it took the English over 100 years to adopt the use of the fork while dining. The English saw the fork as an extension of what they called French effeminacy and argued the proper way to eat is by using one’s own hands.

And, at one time in France, women were believed to be of ill repute if they were seen out at night dining. It took a lady of high status to join friends in a very public display to change people’s minds. In this story, she is a prop for the purpose of public relations in, what I remember to be, a new fine dining restaurant seeking to succeed. This one event had a remarkable change, not only on the culture but on the economy of France. The French, long known for their love of spectacle, created a market for spectacle based on what could have been a scandal. It is difficult to criminalize what, and who, we love.

We often see change as a right. Change is analogous to choice and if we choose mashed over fried potatoes is of little consequence until we decide to have rice. But, can we get rice? The feelings are not the same when we are told we will be getting rice when we want fries. People like options, but they don’t like being force fed.

This is similar to the state St. Louis is in right now. We have nothing but change on the menu today. The idea of having to adapt to change is fed by fear and that is a bitter meal.

We are trying to welcome new-comers to our region to grow. Any region trying to compete has population growth on the menu. This includes growing our foreign born population. St. Louis is an insular place with tremendous civic pride. We support our communities so much that we are often in the top 1% in charitable giving in the whole US.

Some are also trying to effect social change. There are big fights between progressives and conservatives in the region wanting to see more equitable solutions from local government. Ferguson, a small suburban city in the region, has been a catalyst and a choke point in this effort.

A police shooting of a young, unarmed, Black man in Ferguson launched protests and conversation about what our region was doing wrong. The event came four days after the first Black county executive was ousted from office under a dubious campaign calling him corrupt. I was a member of that administration and remember the chorus singing the tune of corruption, which was nothing but dog whistles.

But before these two events there was unemployment through a prolonged downturn in the economy. The Black community was hit harder than most and inequity would be the timber which would soon ignite into fire.

And, just before the events in Ferguson would become a symbol of dis-function in the region, a group called Better Together (BT) would launch their efforts to restructure the city and county governments and limit the authority of local governments like Ferguson. By erasing the imaginary lines of city boundaries in favor of a unified regional government, they argue a common voice can lead us to a better position in the global economy.

Their early internal polling showed that the region is against the change BT want, but not necessarily the rest of the state. BT saw that, after hearing messages about the benefits and problems with status quo St. Louis, statewide voters moved to be more favorable to voting for unification compared to the voters in the region.

The poll identified the vehicle of change: a statewide vote. And now, this is the biggest fight in the region. In fact, regional consolidation includes the fight for equity and the growth of the region. But as much as a consolidated region can improve equity, mostly through spreading planning decisions like low-income housing and improving access to workforce development and jobs for all, consolidation means concentrated power.

Concentrated power is a big part of what people are against. Until yesterday, it was certainly what I had been against because I don’t trust the person who would have been running the whole show. The BT plan was to skip the regularly scheduled election and instill the current county executive into the newly created metro mayor position. Not only does the new position benefit from stronger powers to govern and make decisions the position includes a greater portion of the metro area and limits the local control of existing municipalities within that area.

Fortunately, the current county executive is being investigated by a federal grand jury for contract rigging and will not most-likely not be continuing his “service” for much longer. But the structure of the government and power of the metro mayor do not change, just the first design on who would conceptually lead the region.

Most people are against a centralized government that would largely erase the hyper-local city governments in St. Louis where people reside. This is why a statewide election is the only possible vehicle to get the outcome BT wants. Restructuring the St. Louis region is not in the interest of the people who live their today. It is in the interest of the people who will come after them. The quaint communities that makeup St. Louis are the embodiment of living nostalgia. But they are all past their peak.

The statewide vote raises serious issues of self-determination and rights. It is certainly an infringement on the concept of government for the people and by the people. Here, self-determination is in conflict with the notion that cities are creatures of the state. The state does have an interest in the future well-being of St. Louis. But does it have the right to direct a change that has been in conversations for over 100 years?

We have to acknowledge the slippery-slope and comparative analysis fallacies that go along with this discussion, but we will attend to them at another time. These are statements that if they do it to St. Louis, they can do it to X and then the comparison of X city either in the region or another state. These hypotheticals are pointless because they are too simple and ignore the complexities of regions, especially in St. Louis.

The present policy Better Together is pushing is all about control. The City of Champ is a model example. It exists in St. Louis County and was built on the idea of being a domed Olympic stadium. That never came to fruition, and the 518-acre incorporated village became a landfill. It is a corporate town with just enough residents (14 or so) to keep it from being dis-incorporated (everyone who lives their works for or is related to workers of the company).

As it stands, Champ has full self-determination as prescribed by state law. But a landfill is a messy business when it comes to governing. Consolidation would likely mean a change in tax structure for the business and possibly reconfigured regulations. Mostly it means a wholesale shift in their political power.

Proof of this comes from those who would most likely want to see this operation change. Whether or not an environmentalist lives near an environmental issue is rarely of consequence to them. Changing the structure of governance would have a real impact on the possibility of regulation change in this instance. Businesses tend to want something close to complete self-determination for themselves.

The policy implications are such that there are community benefits as well as concerns. For the few people who live in Champ, it is pretty evident that they lose a lot of their voice for a government that attends to their concerns. They may start getting more services, but it changes the fact that it is actually most consequential to them and the greater St. Louis region. That is, why live here?

In some rural communities, cities are fighting for their lives against laws regulating CAFO’s. A CAFO, or concentrated feeding operation, produces a lot of environmental waste and disruption in the form of dust, runoff and foul smelling air. They aren’t good neighbors. The legislature in Missouri has been debating legislation which would make it impossible for counties to regulate CAFO’s. This is good for these businesses but not for the greater community.

The same could be said of the Better Together proposal. Most industries we have in St. Louis would certainly benefit from having one government and code. Policies like these, pushed for the benefit of businesses, can have dramatic effects on communities.

But, just as most people like a good steak, our trash has to go somewhere. How do we meet these needs while maintaining control of our community. There is a lot of value in noticing similar constituencies between residents fighting CAFO’s and residents fighting BT.

BT claims one regional government will implement efficiencies that don’t exist today. But this is also a false argument because of the vast majority of municipalities in St. Louis County contract with the county for inspections on electrical, plumbing, building and other codes. This means those cities are mostly using the code adopted by the county already.

So if we’re all ordering off the same menu already, albeit with multiple logos, why is one menu with one logo better? What does the new menu have that we don’t already have? And what can one menu provide that 90 can’t?

Let’s go back to graft. Our county executive mentioned earlier is on display for exactly what people should be most concerned with in this deal- contracts. Contracts are big business and the reality BT is not dealing with is that contracts, just like tax credits, can be bought and sold. Since the 1950s, the St. Louis region has created dozens of private organizations to manage public services.

Transportation: Metro (once called bi-state), Great Rivers Greenway

Municipal: Metropolitan Sewer District, Zoned trash contracts, private water supply, Regional Health Commission

Economic Development: The St. Louis Economic Development Partnership (EDP) is a regional eco devo service operating an umbrella organization of about a dozen entities empowered to manage loans, grants, land reclamation, oversees regional industry sector development. It operates under a formal agreement between agencies in the city and county through the brand of the EDP, which is dissolvable.

Entertainment: St. Louis Zoo, Botanical Garden,

These entities and more operate through agreements with the city and county. For instance, St. Louis County has a sales tax for transportation. There are other taxes but this is just an example for simplicity sake. They can use that money to provide transportation in just about any capacity they want. But, through the structure of the organization of the board for Metro elected official have some control over operations.

Metro is the only real game in town for what we consider public transportation and considers that revenue stream as theirs. But cabs could also become public transportation as well as Uber and Lyft. This would certainly change the politics of the St. Louis Metropolitan Taxicab Commission. It would change the nature of service delivery and change the market in many unknown ways. With modern technology, diversification may actually lead to more efficiency in the short run, but not meet all the needs in the long run.

Consolidation may meet regional needs in the long run. But, that is only if the person in charge values equity, efficiency, productivity and the perceived value of existing communities over political ties and power. The BT failure is that they are putting faith in government over the pride of communities. How can we have faith in government while our leaders are doing a perp walk?

For the past 60 years, St. Louis created private and quasi-public organizations run by nonprofits to provide infrastructure and services to the region. This increased complexity actually limits local communities from tapping into their tax base. It also hides things of value form the public, like contracts.

Major change like the one proposed should come from within an institution and branch out. Forced change not only faces questions of legitimacy, but also rips people’s sense of buy-in away. The English, in one way, rebuked change that seems like a beneficial idea all because of where it was coming from. The French embraced change because of who it came from and why.

If the state decides we are required to change people will eventually adapt to the change by attrition. That is those opposed to the change will do their best to vote with their feet or die trying. But I don’t see the change being of any consequence to the run of the mill resident. I see the change as an attempt to manage procurement and bigger contracts to fewer organizations. Whoever has control over the contract process will have control over the well-being of the region. Let’s hope they stay out of jail.

Triangulating Outcomes

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Source: St. Louis City Planning
Sources: City of St. Louis Board of Elections

Column-
1: Wards
2: Republican Governor’s Vote- 2016
3: Lewis Reed’s vote in the 2013 Mayor’s race
4: Francis Slay’s vote in the 2013 Mayor’s Race
5: Mayor’s Race vote total between Reed and Slay
6: Slay’s vote minus Reed’s vote in the Mayor’s Race
7: Reed’s Vote in the BOA President race
8: Nasheed’s Vote in the BOA President race
9: Green’s Vote in the BOA President race
10: Total Vote in the BOA President race
11: Mayor’s Race Total Vote Minus BOA President Total Vote

The 2019 President of the Board of Alderman race is exactly what the Democratic Party needed at this time in St. Louis. A three-way race between a black male and white and black females shows exactly where the splits are in St. Louis. And there’s a good chance we can extrapolate this information to show the same veins in the county.

The table above tells a hell of a tale on that race. The first column of Republican voters for governor. You may be asking why I would include something like that in a primary race for the Democratic nomination. The answer is to show there are republicans that turn out. But when it comes to the mayor and BOA president race these Republicans vote Democrat. Sure, not all of them. But a lot do. And even if it’s only half, that’s enough to win in yesterday’s race.

Reed demonstrates this by winning four wards where there is significant Republican voting.

I include the results from the mayor’s race to show the old guard outcomes. It appears that Reed has taken control of most of that Republican vote to maintain control of the BOA. However, his performance is not as good against progressive females in Democratic precincts. In other words, the conservative Slay coalition has switch over to Reed and the Reed coalition largely split between Nasheed and Green on racial lines, based on racial mixes of wards. The city of St. Louis machine is in flux.

Reed maintained a relatively stable vote per ward garnering no less than 200 votes in all but 2 wards, while winning only 5. Nasheed won 13 and Green took 10. Most wards way under performed compared to the mayor’s race, which is to be expected when issues like less money come into play. One report pegged the total spending at $1m. But Green pushed 3 wards to increase their vote in the BOA race and Nasheed and Reed each pushed one.

Each candidate’s outcome is interesting by what it tells us of St. Louis at this time. In the context that all incumbent aldermen won their races we would expect Reed to coast to victory. And he may have coasted. Green looked to solidify her progressive base, but lost African American support to Nasheed, who ultimately saw neither she or Green could win a three-way race and publicly asked for a sit down with Green.

The problem there is that Nasheed and Green were fighting for the hearts of activists and Reed fought for the heart of the city- a centrist leader versus two liberals.

The mechanics of this race are peculiar. Looking at the first five wards, which are largely Black wards, Reed lost to Nasheed almost 2:1. He was closing in on 3:1 against Slay in the mayor’s race. That’s a big flip in the other direction for him. Notwithstanding the decline in turnout, Reed should be concerned with what comes next for him.

But, if it is the case that the progressives can now run the town it appears that Nasheed and Green should sit down to decide what that means and how they should run it

For the progressives, they now have a treasure trove of data to resolve. When the precinct data comes out they will be able to triangulate what comes next with a clear vision.

But, they have to ask themselves if this vision is shared or if it is mutually exclusive.


All food is local

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A college professor once asked my class to write an essay explaining why all politics is local. A young man raised his hand and said, “what if you don’t believe that.” I sat there quietly a little swollen in my chair at the foolishness of the line in the sand the guy was drawing.

The professor’s shocked face gave all the reply the class needed. “What else could it be,” he replied. “If you don’t agree with that statement you had better have a good reason, and that is the point of the paper anyway. So as long as your focus is on the idea that all politics is local you should write your essay explaining what that means.”

Harold Laswell says that politics is who gets what, when and how. We can apply this definition to everything you do. Every decision you make in life is a political decision and answers the question can you do X.

We tend to think that politics is about voting or whether we have certain rights. We want to push politics out of our lives when all we are doing is not recognizing everything we do is political. If you’re thinking right now that money decides who gets what when you’re kind of like that kid in class and not recognizing the central point- politics happens before economics.

Have you ever tried chicken feet? There’s a restaurant in St. Louis I like called the Mandarin House. They serve authentic Chinese cuisine and when you go with a friend from the community you will probably hear about how what most of us order isn’t authentic Chinese food. It’s an interesting discussion because like you I’ve had my fill of General Tso’s chicken.

A few years ago some friends were telling me about problems we were having with Chinese restaurants. The health department was cracking down on how they prepared food. Cooks were leaving food out too long before it was being prepared. This can cause problems because bacteria grow at temperatures between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

The United States Department of Agriculture has all kinds of regulations and recommendations for food handling. This is important because for most of the food we consume it goes through a process of being broken down and transformed within a supply chain. Their guidelines define how long you should let food sit out before cooking and then once cooked what temperature you need to hold the food at and even how long you can take to cool food for storage. It’s a complex system designed to prevent people from getting sick.

Those standards, it turns out, also don’t fit the cultural traditions of some chefs who weren’t trained in the US, as I’m told. It may be they came from a place that was either lax in these standards or they knew these standards and just ignore them. The reality is if you don’t follow these rules you will, eventually, get people sick.

Many restaurant owners in the Chinese community felt they were being targeted because they weren’t passing their health inspections and being threatened with fines or being shut down.

I was introduced to the Mandarin House by then Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal who I worked for a few times in the past when she needed a local person to help with things in her district. If you think she’s wild on twitter ride around all day for a few month with her. You’ll see her whirlwind life is a passion for the people in her community. She’s kind of like water: if there isn’t a way she’ll make one.

Maria introduced me to the Mandarin House with an intern who was from the community. We didn’t go to the buffet. Instead, we chose from the dim sum carts and that’s the way to go for a real experience. The food is amazing and intricate and the texture is nothing like Western food.

One of the items we had was chicken feet. Not every place on earth has the commodity hog, beef or chicken we have in the US. In fact, we didn’t always have those beasts at the level we do now. People had to make do with the food they had and animal protein was sparse. Bone marrow is a trendy dish now in part because it tells a story of who we use to be.

Chicken feet will set some people off but it’s really good and a fun dish, in part because you can’t help but break etiquette to do it properly. To make chicken feet you have to boil them forever in high-temperature water, broth or sauce. The tendons need to break down and they become loose and then get cooled. Here in lies a problem based on where you’re from. Some might take them straight to a refrigerator but they should actually go into an ice bath.

The ice bath not only lowers the temperature quickly passing the danger zone but it also seizes up the feet making it a crispier product when you finally fry it.

So the dim sum cart comes along and Maria chooses for us and there are the chicken feet. I’m listening to how my company passes on Americanized Chinese food and that they have never really tried it because it lacks the flavor. So here I am jamming chopsticks into my mouth and twisting the feet around and sucking on knuckles. I slide the bones back between the chopsticks with my tongue and place them clean back on the plate, no different than a wing besides the utensils.

I mentioned I had never had the opportunity to eat chicken feet before and I was curious. They watch me maneuver the morsels and ask me what I think. I kid you not, I said it tastes like General Tso’s chicken because it did. Right down to the sauce the feet were served in. It was crispy, chewy and tasty. And I moved on to the pork bun.

Whether you eat chicken feet today is first a political decision because it answers who gets what, when and how. Whether you’re eating chicken breast or feet is an economic question. Economics is about choice where politics is about decisions. Once you have choices you can then make a decision. Politics decided that it is possible to serve chicken feet so long as you follow certain rules along the way.

The issues with the restaurants made it’s way up to the ninth floor and the health department convened a meeting with the offended parties. Staff from the county executive’s office attended and the situation was discussed as a group. St. Louis County government is the chief regulator of restaurants within its boundaries where food is concerned.

As an aside, Urban Chestnut in the Grove is actually regulated by both the City of St. Louis and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) because they produce liquor on site and distribute it around Missouri and other states, who also regulate them. But, the restaurant itself falls under local jurisdiction.

The county adopts a code and implements it locally. It also implements it across the board and applies it the same to everybody regardless of the municipality the business is in. It’s one uniform code. But the purveyor has to choose which municipality to set up in.

Between the city and county we have the choice of some 90 municipalities, unincorporated space and the City of St. Louis. The politics is different among all of these places and the city county merger can’t change that. Why? Because all politics is local and neighborhoods will always determine who gets what, when and how. Right?

The Mandarin House set up on state highway 340 in University City because they wanted to be in U City, right? Well, they wanted to serve their authentic cuisine to a population who would appreciate it. They wanted their customers to have a reasonable drive to get to them. So they chose to be located on that stretch of 340 known as Olive Boulevard. If you click on the embedded link above, you will see that 340 runs through multiple municipalities.

That Wikipedia page states the entire route is in St. Louis County. If you Google Olive Boulevard you are shown a map that designates 340 as running into the city ending at North Skinker Parkway. This is important to the Mandarin House because they want their customers to be able to find their way in the easiest way possible.

All customers know that the commute is a part of the experience of eating out. How you get there and home is as important as whether you have water placed in front of you when you sit down. If the commute sucks that will likely taint the whole experience. How do I know this? Because some restaurants make getting there a part of the experience. Ever heard of the Safe House?

But if I were to leave from Ellisville and go to eat in U City I would pass through multiple municipalities who all have different feelings about the state highway running through them. To my knowledge, the state has responsibility for the entire stretch. However, they hear from the different communities in different ways and at different times.

The Mandarin House probably doesn’t lobby a lot about the condition of 340 out front. But the fact that a state legislator likes to go there likely means that if they need to ask questions about its condition they know who to talk to, as do the city administrator and mayor of U City. As do the same people in Ellisville where you will find a Pasta House.

This is another popular place in our region and franchises are available. So if you were interested in buying this franchise what would you do? You’d talk to the county about health code and then probably talk to a couple different cities. Why? Because you need to be informed on each of their own codes, which may or may not have slight differences.

In reality most cities in St. Louis County actually use county code for buildings. The answer is straight forward, economics. These cities can’t afford to manage the technical needs of building code. But before it’s an economic choice, the county made it a political decision. They won’t implement individual codes for each muni. Public Works in the County keeps a matrix to keep track of which city they have a contract with to manage electrical, plumbing and other codes. But each city the county contracts with uses the adopted County code.

This leads to some interesting lobbying from school districts, city aldermen from county munis and business. Enter the raw politics most people can’t abide. I’ll tell some of those stories another time.

But, if you wanted to start a business, would you want to spend time getting to know all of your choices? Or, would you prefer knowing you had one place to deal with?

If it’s a choice of chicken feet or chicken breast you’re really talking about economics. But if I were having dinner with Laswell, I’m pretty sure we would focus on the fact that this choice doesn’t go away because both are regulated the same way.


A Story from St. Louis

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St. Louis is spinning right now! We are just now starting to see real movement out of years of inaction after events in Ferguson rocked our community. We were severely divided. My father-in-law is a retired police officer from St. Charles County, near St. Louis, and my daughter is a social justice-minded teenager and aspiring artists. I am a political operative who wrote the St. Louis County policy on human relations, created a bi-state human relations commission and has worked for progressive politicians who often put inequity on the table. Needless to say, my daughter’s mouth takes after me.

A couple of years ago, when Ferguson erupted, members of my family immediately took polar opposite sides on issues. Many saw Mike Brown as a punk who got what was coming to him for attacking a police officer. My daughter posted a lot on social media about how people are treated by police, especially people of color. Something she believed was unfair and needs correcting. This was met by backlash from my in-laws. My side of the family is largely non-existent on social media because they’re teachers and you all can’t control your kids.

My wife ended up in the middle of a firestorm. She was being told by her brothers and sister what to do, which is never a good place to be. Her father wasn’t talking to anyone in my house and posted some hurtful things about his grand-daughter online. Sides were taken and there was no shaking anyone out of it. Essentially we all moved on from each other for a while.

That’s St. Louis for you. We’re a bunch of municipalities of different ages and maturity who occasionally take sides against each other. Now, the question is: If we could come together, can we address our issues and actually solve problems?

St. Louis City is a charter city in Missouri. It has about 308,000 people according to the census bureau’s 2017 estimate. The city has been shrinking since the middle of last century and has been ranked last according to some reports in growth. Updated reports place St. Louis a little higher these days. But, if you’re in the business of big sales, that isn’t enough for most people these days. We’re in a global economy and we need to act like it.

The city separated from the county over the same issue: You can’t tell me what to do or who to be.

The solution we are debating is should we get the family back together. The reality is that we’re different people since our big fight. In St. Louis we call this split “The Great Divorce.” The event, outcome and failed resolution have had drastic consequences. But so too has other policy on the region.

We once had an amazing trolley system. We were a connected place. Kenneth Johnson’s Crabgrass Frontier describes a St. Louis where weekenders would go to Kirkwood and Webster Groves. Those lines were scrapped in favor of automobiles and the interstate highway system bulldozed through neighborhoods speeding up suburbanization into St. Louis County.

The way we are connected in this region constantly changes. We continue to lay tracks, invest in a virtual persona, and rebuild those highways. As such, the conversation has evolved and a resolution is expected to be put in front of us in 2020. While the outcome is not certain, a parent’s command of you will fix this is hoped for by some and frightens many in the region.

Some claim the many municipalities in the county hamper economic growth. And others point to the city as an example of being too big and failed. Social media is being filled with pockets of the city where neighborhoods look rundown. Neither side recognizes the thriving neighborhoods of the region that exist because of and despite the separation. Our focus is on the question of, can we thrive better if we act more as a singular family unit under one direction?

Do we lose our individual perspective if we act as one? Will we be seen only as one if we join forces?

Over the summer and fall, I spent a lot of time in Michigan for work. I had never heard of Troy, Sterling Heights or Royal Oak, which are all suburbs of Detroit. This place is massive. Detroit itself is reported as 142.9 square miles through a Google search. The Census Bureau calculates the urbanized area to be 1,337 square miles. That makes it 11th in the U.S. in the urbanized area even though Detroit City ranks 64th in size by area compared to other major cities. It should be noted that 14 of the cities on that list above Detroit don’t have a population of 100,000.

So in this global economy, if it makes sense for St. Louis City and County to merge, why not Detroit? Well, first, St. Louis City is 66 square miles according to a Google search, other estimates have it being less. Either way, that’s a pretty small community. But there are still over 300,000 people living in that little place.

Using Census figures Governing Magazine puts the density of St. Louis City at 5,030 people per square miles. You’ll notice that’s respectably high for population density.

St. Louis County is another story. Google says it’s 523 square miles. The City of Wildwood in St. Louis County is 67.08 square miles making it larger by area than St. Louis City. The Census estimates the counties population to be 996,726 residents. The county is almost eight times the size and only three times the population. Could it be more populous if one government was managing growth?

It’s been a few years since the uproar in my family. We’ve largely grown in our own ways since then, much like the region where we all live. There hasn’t been much reconciliation from anyone. We do our best to support each other in our own ways. The parallels to the city and county are striking. Both issues will always be there. It’s become a part of who we are in many ways.

Nobody has the opportunity on any side to just walk away from each other because we are, in all reality, bound to each other for good and bad.

It is said cities are creatures of the state. If a city acts outside the intentions of the state’s interest they can be forced down a different path. In 2020 we may see the state take St. Louis City and County down another path. Emotions are high on both sides. Personal identity is at stake and individuality is on the line.

So what will we do? Will we see the common interest is not what our individual want reflect but that together we can address the bigger problems. Or should we hold on to what we want at this time despite the fact years pass and new needs emerge?

I invite you to explore St. Louis and discover how much fun you can have here. I’ll be exploring St. Louis over time and discussing what I enjoy here. If you have questions message me and I’ll try to point you in the right direction. But I would point out that I can’t contrive your experience. You will need to explore what works for you along your own path.