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Friday, October 10, 2008
She’s Correct
I received an email from a regular reader today complaining that this blog seems to be "biased" in favor of the presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama.
It is.
I have endorsed Sen. Obama and I will do whatever I can to ensure his victory in November.
As I speak at meetings across the City, here’s what I remind people: Senator Obama offers us the best chance to get our country back on the right track and to continue our City’s revitalization.
During most of the past eight years, the federal government in Washington has been preoccupied with matters pretty distant from the needs and concerns of the residents of most of our neighborhoods.
This has required us to allocate more money to help people with their skyrocketing energy bills; to create a safety net to provide health care to tens of thousands of our citizens who do not have insurance; to train more people for new careers so they can raise their families; and to keep people in their own homes during the credit freeze.
We want to do more. But, our ability to help is limited by the thousand other things a city must do and by the size of our tax base.
So, we need a President who knows and cares about the problems of cities like ours.
That’s Barack Obama.
That’s my bias.
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Friday, October 10, 2008
Say It Ain’t Jo
Jo Mannies, the dean of eastern Missouri’s political reporters and one of the most widely read, will retire from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after the November election. She will be missed.
During her distinguished journalistic career, Jo has probably written and uttered more words about the nuts and bolts of politics and political campaigns than the next five most prolific reporters at her newspaper combined. She has moderated dozens of major debates, sat on hundreds of panels, and been quoted nationally and internationally on Missouri and US politics. While some of her younger colleagues still struggled with their digital recorders, Jo taught herself about blogging, twittering, YouTube and the other techniques of contemporary reporting.
A recent story on her widely read blog Political Fix is illustrative of both her professionalism and her humor. Jo walked over to a downtown hotel to cover a press conference by political asterisk Ralph Nader only to discover that she was the only reporter to show up. Unfazed, Jo filed a thoughtful report and blogged it – noting slyly that her account was “an exclusive.”
I have never heard a candidate or elected official complain that Jo was too busy to take their calls, though plenty of us have been awakened from sound sleeps in the middle of the night to find Jo on the phone looking for a quote on a breaking story.
I’ll enjoy the extra sleep, but miss the reporter.
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Thursday, October 9, 2008
Sam Moore, Kate Shea, And Dick Gregory Place
In an earlier blog item, I mentioned efforts to preserve elements of City’s cultural heritage by designating them as historic structures in order to allow developers to use tax credits to rehab them. After reading the item, Barb Geisman sent me a note.
According to Barb, Dick Gregory Place, the newest historic district in the Ville neighborhood, is already generating positive change. The Ville Neighborhood Housing Corporation, Northside Community Housing, and the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance are partnering on a development proposal that will produce forty new historically rehabilitated, affordable rental apartments in a block of Dick Gregory Place fronting on Dr. Martin Luther King Drive. The new development will transform long-vacant, but culturally and architecturally significant, structures into quality new homes that will showcase the Ville’s historic importance. Both federal and state historic tax credits are critical to the feasibility of this development — and an application is pending at the Missouri Housing Development Commission for federal and state low-income housing tax credits.
I strongly support this development, which is one of the new Major Development Initiatives that I have worked to structure in partnership with City aldermen over the past two years. I congratulate and commend Alderman Sam Moore, Harold Crumpton, and RHCDA for their work in putting this development package together.
And, since she (and they) too rarely hear it: I thank Kate Shea (and her staff) for their work in putting this new historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. Without their dedication to and passion for making sure that our cultural heritage is appropriately recognized, we’d lose far more of it.
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Thursday, October 9, 2008
Finding The Gems
The City’s Preservation Board has endorsed an application to the State of Missouri for a federal grant that might help preserve important elements of our African American heritage – and will certainly make life safer for residents in some neighborhoods. The Board voted unanimously to instruct the Cultural Resources Office to ask for a grant to help pay for a high quality survey of properties in the Ville and Greater Ville neighborhoods which might eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
The Ville and parts of the Greater Ville neighborhoods were the locations where African-American residents of St. Louis were able to live and also purchase property during the worst years of legal racial segregation in Missouri, between 1918 and 1948. Many of the most culturally or architecturally significant buildings in those neighborhoods are already protected by a Local Historic District; some are not. Identifying the significant but unprotected properties makes them eligible for both federal and state tax credits, which makes it more likely that they will be revitalized and less likely that they will be demolished and their histories lost. (Conversely, identifying the good buildings will also point out the ones that are not significant or have lost their significance, making it easier for neighbors, aldermen, and public safety officials to make their cases to demolish dangerous eyesores.)
These are tough economic times, and the selection process for this grant funding is very competitive. I lend my own endorsement to our application.
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Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Subscription Journals
The Suburban Journals have announced that the newspaper will charge for subscriptions starting next month. The cost will be modest – about $20 a year – but it is a change that will have some callers to Town Talk squawking.
For the City, the change is generally a welcome one. Copies of the several print editions of the Sub Journal thrown here tend to end up in vacant lots, in front of empty buildings, and stuffed into dumpsters (often unread, because unsolicited). Still, free local news delivered reliably to your front door each week is a sad thing to lose.
I will be buying a subscription.
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Monday, October 6, 2008
Four Hours To Chicago By Train
If you could get to Chicago by train in less than four hours, would you do it – rather than drive or fly?
The Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act passed by Congress last week includes a plan to build 3,000 miles of high-speed track in nine states, and buy comfortable, fast (110 mph) trains to travel on them. The states affected, including Missouri, Illinois and Iowa, will need to match 20 percent of the estimated $7.7 billion cost.
Rising driving and flying costs are making train travel a more attractive choice for many people. In the past year, the Amtrak ridership between St. Louis and Chicago has increased by 15 percent. Nothing we are learning about the economy on TV today is likely to make cheap, fast travel less attractive.
Now would be a very good time to find out what your candidates for state representative and state senator think about increased funding for transportation.
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Monday, October 6, 2008
Chief Dan Isom
Maj. Dan Isom was my choice today – and the right choice — to be the City’s new police chief. Dan is a strong leader who will get the best out of the men and women under his command. He is a person of integrity and honor. He is tough. He will be a great role model for young people.
During the interviews for the job, Dan convinced me that he is ready right now to improve the department — by using modern police tactics and technologies to take criminals off our streets and prevent crime before it happens; by using and improving street patrols to make all of our neighborhoods safe; and by understanding the urgent need to repair and restore the department’s credibility as the scandal that has rocked it unfolds.
I have worked with Dan on several anti-crime initiatives. I know that the success of the Wells-Goodfellow anti-violence initiative is attributable, in large measure, to the fact that Dan planned it, organized it, and lead it.
I have asked one thing of Chief Isom during his tenure: that he never hesitate to speak the truth about crime, its causes, and what needs to be done to stop it.
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