Be leery of anything that Adolphus Busch IV supports. Remember the Post Dispatch called him Fredo Corleone for betraying the Busch Family and St Louis over the sale of the Brewery. He supported the convict Mayor in St Peters and the wild faction in O’Fallon. He is anti flood plain development but his Castle in O’Fallon is surrounded by a moat that floods Old Monroe. Be very careful of anything he supports.

Why is the St. Charles County Municipal League using TAX DOLLARS to promote ballot issues?
The MML gets their money from municipalities who get it thru taxes.
I thought tax dollars were prohibited from being used to tell the people how to vote.
The MML needs to be reeled in from participating in this clearly illegal circumvention of the law.

I have to agree with Been There; Adolphus’ support is enough of a reason to vote against it.

We just saw an article in the post outlining how agencies are not using the tax money they are receiving from telecommunication companies to upgrade their communication network. In short, they have been given the money. They did not use it appropriately, now they are asking for more in a ballot. All these .0008 taxes are adding up people. VOTE NO. VOTE NO. VOTE NO. Enough is enough. Where is the accountibility of the funds received….obviously there is none. WE HAVE TO START HOLDING OUR POLITICIANS ACCOUNTABLE OR THEY ARE GOING TO TAX US TO DEATH AND SPEND US INTO THE GROUND.

If you do not beleive my comments are wish to research this further, go to the archives section of the post and go back about 2 weeks, you will find the article.

Please be smart, vote no.

Cell Worker, your comment is interesting, but has little to do with this particular initiative. Why have we not seen you come out so vocally in opposition to other, less important initiatives in the last decade? Or did your company tell you to speak up because this is a potential impact to the bottom line?

I’ve long contended that the fragmentation we see in Missouri with special taxing districts, rather than municipal services, dilutes the ability for the taxpayer to prioritize where his or her money goes and decentralizes accountability to make these decisions away from a council to all sorts of little boards of directors for these districts. This fragmentation impacts how tax money is used. Just because municipalities have some revenue stream, like a franchise fee or similar, doesn’t mean they send it to like projects. Here’s a defined initiative that takes a hodgepodge of junk (literally in some cases) and seeks to transform those into a homogenous system, not only in one county, but in seven Missouri and Illinois counties plus the city of St. Louis. Opposition comes from people who have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are (cellular companies), from buffs who will have to buy a fancy police scanner to listen in because the new stuff won’t work on their $30 Bearcat and because they can’t hear downtown from 60 miles away (the important question is can the coppers hear downtown reliably when they’re IN downtown, not when they’re in Atlanta), and from people who vote no on virtually everything regardless of importance or need.

I see how cellular companies benefit from inadequate radio systems. Police officers and firefighters are heavy subscribers to one particular walkie-talkie-like service that allows one-to-one communication because their regular systems cannot accommodate this kind of use, both because their current direct systems only have a range of a few miles, and because there are only a handful of common channels available through thousands of square miles, and those don’t cross lines from police to fire, or vice versa. That particular company advertises that it is the solution for problems like that, but it, too, falls short in coverage and only covers give or take within 5 miles of the Interstates, or where there are enough subscribers to recoup a return on investment for putting in a cellsite (no blame, that’s a fundamental tenet of business - don’t provide the service if it can’t make money for shareholders). The problem is that coverage for police, fire, or EMS who use cellular to prop up their one-lunged radio systems also falls short. The sites fail when the power goes out past any batteries, and the technicians have one generator that covers dozens of cellsites. Who gets the generator? The site that is near the place with the most accidents, or the one that creates the most profit? What if a message to evacuate a building about to collapse doesn’t go through because commercial users were making the system busy by telling each other to turn on the news?

The economy is bad and this ballot has incredibly bad timing, but the need is genuine, and keeping the old stuff will ALSO require putting “good money after bad.” That’s right, the other side of the story is that either way, existing radio systems, regardless of how effective they are, will need major modifications by January 1, 2013. That might mean that millions of dollars are invested in what is proven less than adequate, just to regain the capabilities of what they use now once the FCC forces the same amount of information into half the bandwidth. Cellular services cannot meet the needs of public safety, nor can wireless Internet service providers, or Blackberries. If they could, this wouldn’t even be on the radar. Public safety grade networks require hardening and reliability beyond the investments business and casual networks are willing to make. Those cellphones worked great at Katrina and 9/11, didn’t they? How well will they work for a plane crash in Femme Osage or Portage Des Sioux? Will responders have the “right” cellular company that DOES have coverage, or will they have zero bars (the likelihood is that if they’re using the walkie-talkie company they’ll have zero and will be beeping instead of talking)? Roll some dice before the ambulance pulls out of the station. I don’t want my life to be based on random or revenue-driven deployment.

I’m voting “Yes,” and so should you. Save your “No” vote for a campaign to put cast bronze statues of San Carlos of Borromeo in parks (one past elected official bought a bronze statue of St. Chuck instead of providing a substantial salary increase to his employees one year) or to increase politicians’ salaries or benefits by 35 - 50%.

Good luck to us all.

Hal you sound like you are on the steering group board for passing this. However the problem has been not suffciently explained-no real need for this……..the economy stinks-why am I giving money to the government when things are this tough……Adolphus Busch is with you-never a good thing. The only logical vote here is NO.

I’m voting NO on this badly timed tax increase. For example: The local fire districts have PLENTY of funds to pay for this upgrade. Why would any taxpayer who is aware vote for a tax on top of taxes that are already mis-spent and abused? The bureaucrats will never stop with the need for more tax money.
I will vote No on ANY tax issue until the elected representatives can prove to the taxpayers that our hard earned money is spent efficiently. Some areas of government are well run, but most should be turned over to the private sector.

First, let me agree with some of you on one the Buschs’, I watched one of them bank roll two or more elections cycles in St. Charles County that in my opinion were the worst six years in the history of the county. Whether it was just bad judgment or one’s attempt to gain political influence I don’t know, but that is over at least for the time being. Don’t let who is contributing a measly $1200 dollars to a project influence your good judgment.

This is about being able to communicate with other emergency responders in our area and across the state and some of the country. To me it has nothing to do with who is making a buck or whether one cellular phone service is better than another. O’Fallon already stepped up and funded a new radio system that is waiting to be installed. They didn’t/couldn’t wait any longer due to community and officer safety issues. If you are an O’Fallon resident this is a chance to recoup some of the cost already outlaid for their new radio system and will include interconnectivity. The cost will be shared county wide since the whole county benefits.

I agree that times are tough, but what about all of the years when O’Fallon residents benefited from a reduction in real estate taxes during the good times. This is a sales tax increase, so you pay a little extra when you buy something. I know the little extras add up, but this is a legitimate reason.

Trying to save lives, or just provide simple government care taking functions when you can’t communicate with your own dispatcher let alone other emergency responders is difficult at best. Police are usually the first to arrive on the scene of any critical incident, or even stumble upon one. It would be nice to at least be able to convey that you are in cardiac arrest, so the emergency medical personnel can pick it up a bit, and get out of the rig prepared to take immediate action.

It would be nice to communicate with someone when you jump out on a foot chase at Goodfellow and 70 because you just pursued an armed gunman who committed a violent felony in St. Charles County. It can be a little un-nerving when it’s just you and bad guy and you can’t communicate with anyone. Don’t get me wrong, we will still do what we do now, and we will continue to provide the same service we do now. We pledged that as emergency responders, we are the sheep dogs, so no matter what attacks the flock we will remain ever vigilant on the fringes to keep you safe and sound.

Right now we are running on four worn tires without a spare. You wouldn’t take a cross country trip without a spare would you? All of our tires are flat before the county line.

Please remember the emergency responders when you vote on this issue. Think about you, and your families.

As always happens in these debates the lines are being redrawn by one group. In this case the people for this are trying to characterize the people that oppose this as people that don’t want this upgrade. I believe that you will find very few people that are actually against the upgrade. Of course in every debate and on every side you have wackkos that will oppose everything. Just as you would probably have a few wackkos vote for gold plated radios for first responders. This issue is not whether or not the upgrade is needed. The issue is whether or not a tax increase is needed to pay for it. So really I have one major question.

How long as the county known about this?

I ask this because maybe they should have started saving for the upgrade when they first found out about it instead of waiting, literally, until the last possible minute to ask for a tax increase. Save for it then take out a loan for the balance and cut other areas of the budget to pay for this necessity. You can’t tell me St. Charles county is funding just the necessities… Family Arena anyone…

So when the officials say “we must have this” and “I don’t know what we are going to do if this fails”, forget about it. They obviously didn’t care enough to come up with a Plan B. So in the end make your decision based on the facts and not being scared into thinking you are against the first responders if you vote no.

The elected officials have failed them… NOT US.

To: Of Course It’s Needed

We all know it’s needed…I just don’t want one’s hatred for a person or organization to lead to it’s demise. I could care less if Nancy Pelosa endorsed it, and I’m a die hard republican. It is needed and either now or later; the community is going to foot the bill. If not now then 2013 when our radios stop working, and we are paying fines out the wazoo to stay in service. That is a fact! This is a bi-partison issue, so whether you are a conservitive or liberal, you should be concerned for what is at stake.

I personally would rather pay for capital improvements than fines.