A picket opposing a half-cent increase in the transit sales tax in St. Louis County reminded me on Friday that I overlooked a piece of the proposal’s puzzle – a one-fourth cent increase in the transit sales tax in St. Louis.

With a sign declaring “Metro should move people around, not pass money around” hanging from his neck, Clarence Rowles of North County stood in Friday’s lunch hour at Forsyth Boulevard and Central Avenue in the heart of downtown Clayton. As I listened, he pointed out to a bystander that St. Louis would see a tax increase if the county proposal passed.

The city’s voters approved the tax in November, 1997 by 331 votes out of 38,411 cast. The same election saw 58 percent of 138,751 voters reject the increase in St. Louis County. The city never levied the tax, delaying the increase until county voters approve the same boost.

Metro estimates the St. Louis tax increase would raise about $9.3 million a year, Dianne Williams, a transit agency spokeswoman, said.

It would join three other pieces in County Executive Charlie Dooley’s transit tax increase proposal:

> Half the money from the tax increase – initially about $40 million a year – would go to operate Metro. The transit agency would continue to receive revenue from the current one-fourth cent transit sales tax.

> The other half of revenue from the tax increase, also about $40 million a year, would help pay for MetroLink expansion.

> The county each year would adjust the shares of revenue from a separate half-cent transportation sales tax that would go to Metro and to county arterial roads. The shares for Metro and arterial roads would vary with the needs of a particular year.

County voters are likely to consider the tax increase on Nov. 4.

The total sales tax rate in St. Louis County is as low as 6.075 cents in the unincorporated area. It exceeds 8 percent in shopping centers where a transportation development district levies a tax of as much of 1 percent on top of state, county and municipal sales taxes. St. Louis’s total sales tax is 7.741 percent.

If the half-cent increase passes, a county resident purchasing a vehicle worth $20,000 would pay an additional $100 in sales taxes.

County officials had included the St. Louis tax increase in their planning, Garry Earls, the county’s chief operating officer, said. The city tax revenue would offset additional money the county would take from the transportation sales tax for roads. He did not expect the county to take more than about $10 million a year in additional revenue.

Both St. Louis and St. Louis County levy the half-cent transportation sales tax and the current quarter-cent transit tax that Dooley wants to increase in the county.

St. Louis sends all of its transportation tax revenue – nearly $18 million a year – to Metro.

Earls reiterated that Metro needs a good road system to operate buses. “We have to do the roads first, then the bus system,” he said.

The county official also confirmed that the county has committed more than $15 million to four projects. He said the county may spend money on most of them before a Nov. 4 transit tax vote.

They are:

> $6 million to build a “jughandle” that would move traffic from northbound Hanley Road under Hanley to westbound Eager Road in Brentwood and Richmond Heights.

> $5.1 million as the county’s share of the improvement of the interchange at Interstate 270 and Dorsett Road in Maryland Heights to help move new traffic generated by expansion at the nearby north office complex of the Edward D. Jones company.

> $3 million for land purchases for a connection of extended Highway 141 at Olive Boulevard to an extended Maryland Heights Expressway in Chesterfield.

> $1 million as the county share of the cost of rebuilding the Old Gravois Road Bridge across the Meramec River between Sunset Hills and Fenton. Earls said some of that money may be in in-kind design services rather than cash.

Rowles, the protester, said he doesn’t like the way government spends its money. He explained why he was picketing in Clayton: “It’s easier to defeat a proposal if you stop it before it goes on the ballot.”