The distinction between living in a municipality versus living in an unincorporated area of St. Louis County should be noted as it relates to trash districting. Resdents of municipalities such as Crestwood, Florissant, etc., are given the right to vote on issues affecting their city and their way of life, and they vote on representatives who directly govern their city. This same right — voting — was not allowed for unincorporated residents, which is a violation of the County’s own charter, which calls for residents living in unincorporated St. Louis County to vote on issues such as this. Why then the circumvention by STL CO?

Unincorporated residents’ lives are affected by elected officials who do not live in their areas, i.e. South County residents are affected by votes from North County Council members. Again, this issue revolves around a private citizen having the right to contract with a private company when said citizen is using their own private funds to pay said contractor. Once a government takes that right away — without a vote of the affected citizens — the government is no longer working in the best interests of the people it represents.

As someone who lives in unincorporated South County who is not much of a fan of Charlie Dooley’s performance as county executive, I’m pleased with the results of the bidding. What I’m paying for once a week pickup, without bulky trash pickup is ridiculous. Specifically, the fuel surcharges are being increased and I’m tired of it. This is the way things are supposed to work, a bidding process takes place and the lowest bid wins. Honestly, I’ve come to the conflusion that alot of senior citizens and stodgy people in the community will not be happy if they don’t have something to be outraged about. I have lived in st.charles, north and now south county and by far, while south countians are probobly the nicest people I’ve lived around, the level of discontent over everything is overwhelming. If only these same people were as concerned about some of the awful looking homes and yards which there is little recourse for because of the lack of a municipal government. I’m not crazy about the lack of representation I have living where I live, unfortunately, there is no interest in creating a municipality. If I’m not mistaken, it was attempted once before and failed, which I’m sure had something to do with paying for something.

I understand why some people have an issue with mandated recycling, because of a new mandated addition to the bill. However, if seven dollars is such an issue, then it may be time to make some changes.

TheFacts,

You are completely wrong. I suspect you know it, but it is possible that you are simply hopelessly ignorant. Given your moniker you ought to look into things more prior to making false claims and misleading statements as you have done above.

Residents of municipalities most certainly do NOT vote on their trash service, the contracts, prices or anything else like that by way of municipal services. The only thing people vote on with any regularity is property tax rates and even then you only vote when you raise the rate above a certain point. Most municipalities rarely raise property taxes or even attempt to do so, thus voting even on that by citizens is, in actual fact, a rarity. So your claim about people voting on such matters is either deliberately misleading or you are staggeringly ignorant about how government works.

To assert that because someone on the County Council who lives in a different part of the county votes on matters affecting residents elsewhere is somehow different in municipalities is absurd beyond belief! County Council members are the elected representatives for county government just the same as city council members are the elected representatives of the various municipal governments. One could make the same absurd complaint that not all city council members live in the same neighborhood as those impacted by x, y, or z decision and therefore the people living in neighborhoods different from those of the people on the council are not “represented.” Your entire argument is, frankly, untrue and ridiculous.

Again, your assertion that anyone anywhere votes on trash service is laughably ignorant. You ought to get at least some actual facts before embarassing yourself in a post like the one above. Remember, everyone has a right to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.

Ciao!

Informed,

I have to laugh at the absurdity of your moniker as you are indeed more ‘uninformed’ or ‘misinformed’ than any recent poster on this site. The arrogance in which you assert that any person is ignorant if they do not believe as you do and that ‘everyone has the right to their own opinion, but not their own facts’ is laughably self indulgent and shows that as the ‘dictator-of-all-thoughts’, you are fine with anyone else’s thoughts as long as they are in line with your own.

Where to start with your mad ranting…

First: if you are in a municipality and your city is considering offering trash service for the first time (as the county is doing), then there will be a vote to find out if the people want this or not (guess you have never been involved in the forming of a new municipality). Many municipalities, when forming, tell people what services they intend to offer under the new government and people vote to incorporate or not based on these services (see, again you are misinformed or uninformed, as polite people do not refer to others as ignorant). Have you even read the County Charter that specifically states that county govt. has to have ‘a vote of the people’ if they want to provide new services for St. L county residents?

Second: You claim ‘Most municipalities rarely taxes, and voting on this is a rarity’, gee what planet are you living on? How do cities raise taxes to pay for increased services or to create additional revenue? They have a vote of the people to do so…duh? Have you ever even looked at the County Elections site to see how many municipalities have votes to raise taxes for services? There are a bunch! ‘Bunch’ in this context means ‘not a rarity’.

Third: Have you ever even been to a County Council meeting? Do you know why, when an issue comes up that deals with that councilmen’s area, that all the other council people defer to him/her for their direction on a decision? Its because they think that that Councilperson knows and represents their area best. In this case, the South County area encompasses 4 of the 8, or 50% for the uninformed, county mandated trash districts? Then why did not the Council people allow that councilman to decide on what is best for his district? This is not like some small municipality of 500 people; each councilperson represents 160,000 people! There is no way Mike O’Mara or Kathleen Burkett are ever going to know what the people of South County want…and Quinn and Wasinger are voting for a law that don’t even affect their voters as they are all in unincorporated areas!

Finally, ‘misinformed’, get off your high horse and start doing more reading and listening than blathering…and by the way, no one who lives or is from St. Louis ever uses the sign-off ‘Ciao!’, so you obviously are part of the elite snobby liberal left wing (what part of San Francisco are you from?)…please (see how polite we can be?) go back under the rock that you came from.

Methinks that “Informed” doth protest too much. One wonders if s/he is a shill for county administration, likely an employee.

Read the County charter “Informed” or, more appropo,”MISinformed.”

Enough said.

You two are a couple of regular Einsteins aren’t ya? I must say I’m impressed with the confidence with which you assert utterly false notions, but no matter how many times you repeat something that is not true, it remains untrue.

The fact is that no municipality puts services on the ballot either when services are new or otherwise. You cannot name one instance where that is the case. Not one. Why? Because it doesn’t happen you nincompoops! You dont need to be a shill or a county employee to have basic knowledge of municipal government. You clearly don’t have even the slightest inkling about how local government works.

It is also a plain and easily verifiable fact that our municipalities in St. Louis County rarely raise taxes precisely because it has to go to a vote. Instead, they set a property rate at or beneath the ceiling above which a vote would be required. On occasion special sales taxes are voted on, but those do not fund general revenues. Instead, they fund specific things like parks or firefighting services as allowed by the legislature. This horrendous situation with proplerty taxes which are the mainstay of local government, has led to many (if not most) of our cities (that are not point of sale cities that heavily benefit from sales taxes) being faced with budget problems and service cuts because they either cannot get taxpayers to support an increase in taxes or their council people are simply afraid to even put a property tax increase on the ballot. Thus, costs increase while taxes do not and the services in our municipalities and citizens suffer because of it. The county government has not raised property taxes in many, many years even though it should have done so long ago for precisely these reasons. Now all kinds of budget problems and service cuts are taking place at the county level while dimwit antitax nutcases howl about nonexistent issues such as not getting to vote on trash service. It’s embarassing to see this level of ignorance displayed publicly on so many issues facing local governments generally. Your positions are preposterous and entirely misinformed.

Hmmm. The leftist “Informed” shill squeals louder because s/he is being denied additional access to we citizens’ incomes. The real story unfolds.

Poor shill. The available tax money is never enough for you types, is it? Always wanting more.

Oops — your commie is showing.

Wow, Misinformed,
They say when you don’t have the facts to win a debate, you resort to name-calling. Love your use of highly intellectual words like Nincompoop, dimwit, nutcase, and I am truely sorry you are embarassed by my comments, as I am a lowly ignorant (I learned that word form you) taxpayer who has to fund all your wild hair liberal schemes put forth by the county government…voting on services? never happened? case in point: Several years ago they tried to incorporate an area of South St. Louis County which they were going to call Southpointe. They listed all the services which they would provide to citizens which they were not getting at the time, including the Dooley-loving mandated trash pickup…and the people got to vote on it (this never happens, huh?). And they voted it down, big surprise!

And you are oh so right…cities and counties seldom get tax increases passed because, in general, people do not feel govt. is efficient ($4 million for trash cans for everyone in the county?) nor responsive (literally thousands of people come out to meetings to express their displeasure with mandatory trash districts and the county doesn’t even respond, amazing!). And they wonder why no one has any confidence in them. St. Louis County Govt, and specifically Charlie Dooley, like you, feel you know what is best for everyone…in your little mind it makes sense to you, therefore it is the right thing to do, and everyone should goose-walk in lockstep and be happy doing whatever you say? Then you are outraged when anyone questions your holier-than-thou approach. That is not how democracry works. If it were, we would still all have British accents.

And again you are right…when St. Louis County Dooley does not want to try to raise taxes for fear of losing at the ballot box, they just go out and raise your assessed valuation on all our homes (up an average of 23% last year), they leave the rate the same, and voila! your taxes are raised and Dooley reaps the windfall from the poor taxpayers for his mandate programs. If the county is so poor and are having to cut services, where did the $4 million for the trahs cans they bought us come from??? Gee, I gues that was extra money they had in the till -our extra tax money that they had in the till.

Hope you have a great weekend instructing all those in your area who are not as smart as you are…surprise, that is everyone! See you at the next American Communist Party gathering! CHOW!

I am glad that democracy gives even people who don’t have the foggiest idea what they are talking about the opportunity to make fools of themselves for all the world to see. What is most remarkable about the ravings of the foolish is that they strut their ignorance around with supreme confidence as though a) their own personal beliefs and prejudices are valid, intelligent and appropriate, and b) that no amount of indisputable factual information can block the continued assertion of their ignorance.

You two fellas are a perfect example.

First, there is no incorporation movement in the county as far as I know and even if there were that is a completely and totally different set of circumstances than the very narrow issue of these trash districts which irritate small minds so badly. Thus, trotting out an incorporation argument is completely devoid of any meaning or relationship to the original argument about not being represented and that other areas vote on such things which they most certainly and clearly do NOT. Neither of you troglodytes can cite even one instance of any municipality voting on trash services because it never, ever occurs.

As for the reason tax votes are rare it is because of the utterly foolish Hancock Amendment which restricts MO municipalities far more than municipalities in any state in the union and turns on it’s head, the idea of majority rule by giving backward, small minded, crotchety ignoramuses veto power over government funding. That is why it is rare. It certainly is not because the majority opposes providing decent levels of service. Furthermore, this idiotic restriction on how government operates has harmed our public school system immeasurably (something I’m sure matters not at all to you two since you obviously gained little benefit from the limited schooling you have completed).

I have said nothing about whether or not I favor or oppose the county’s trash district policy. Additionally, I have not defended it. But you two are so thick you don’t distinguish between what I’ve pointed out (how false and innaccurate your statements are) and opposition to your position.

Now, for the record, the truth of the matter is that you don’t like the trash district idea which is perfectly fine. But, simply because your little brains cannot accept that it is a reality gives you no right to blatantly misrepresent the facts of local government which are:

A. The County Council represents citizens in the county in exactly the same manner as any city council represents the citizens of a given municipality. Citizens in the unincorporated areas of the county have had full representation all along. The truth is that you two guys simply oppose the county policy (again, no problem there)but making up things and spreading falsehoods is a childish and dishonest means of making your case.

B. Citizens in municipalities do not vote to approve or disapprove of services provided by their municipalities. Period. Neither of you can cite a single instance where this has been the case because it isn’t the case. Thus, the argument that somehow because you don’t like a given policy there should be a public vote is not valid when predicated on an argument claiming citizens in municipalities do so because they do not.

C. The Hancock amendment severely restricts the ability of local government entities (such as county & municipal governments & school districts)and reverses the traditional majority rule principal with respect to taxation in MO. Because super majorities are needed for tax increases, property tax increases are rare in St. Louis County at all levels. Because property taxes have not kept up with the cost of providing services, the level of services and the quality of services provided by local governments and the public schools has been degraded over the past 30 or so years Hancock has been in effect.

Please spare yourselves the additional embarassment of claiming that any of this factual information is communist or wrong simply because you don’t want to face reality and you don’t like it (which is all your howling and gnashing of teeth really is about). As an issue, the trash districts may or may not work, the people living in affected areas may not like it, but that isn’t and hasn’t been my point as you would clearly be able to tell if you could read and understand what I’ve written here without conflating your opposition to the districts with my irrefutable points on the facts and the truth. Throughout this comedic exchange I have simply objected to your mangling facts and distorting the truth. If you stick to the facts and wipe the foam from your mouth, you might actually be able to communicate some intelligent point.

I have real sympathy for the two of you. You are pitiable really. It must be tough being an ignorant authoritarian Republican these days. Kinda like being on an endangered species list isn’t it fellas? Sorry to inform you of this, but more and more of the scary smart people are popping up every day who just refuse to live in the fog of ignorant, mean-spiritedness that gives you such comfort. Clearly your brains are taxed beyond their capacity when discussing the subject of how local government operates as our exchange here so amply demonstrates.

I can only imagine how your teeny tiny little brains probably hurt too when people speak of more complex concepts you are unable to grasp like evolution when you prefer the fairy tale of a literal seven day creation by a big grandpa sitting on a cloud in the sky and humans living alongside dinosaurs despite all the scientific and irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Perhaps prozac or a tranquilizer would help?

Ciao Ya’ll!

I have read your blogs and would like to say although your issue is about the present, the bigger issue is about the future. It appears to me that half of your trash collectors will be out of business by the end of the year. In three years, when the bidding begins again, you may find haulers put out of business because the winning bids may be from haulers that are not even from your area. In Kent Co., Delaware, that is exactly what happened. Not only did the small haulers get put out of business, the local hauler who won the bid originally, was replaced by a company out of Texas. So much for local, small haulers. Welcome to big business!

First, I think everyone in the county wants an improved trash system and everyone should be recycling, whether they like it or not. This is hard to argue against.

There are some things with the trash and recycling program that cannot be changed at this point. Here’s some thoughts.

1. Trash districts – Why 8? Why not 10, 15, etc. I don’t believe the legislation calls for districts, but I could be wrong here. The solution? Do away with trash districts, require the haulers to meet minimum standards and let the market determine the price.

2. Billing of trash and recycling even if not used – I’ve heard different answers here. The situation is a family that winters in the south for several months will have to pay for trash and recycling even though it’s not used. What have you heard?

3. Little to no serious consideration has been given to those who are negatively impacted by the regulation. This includes over a dozen trash haulers in the county (those who did not get contracts) or the many non-profit organizations who rely on recycling through their organizations. Sure, the county encourages people to continue this support, but let’s be realistic. I have already talked to neighbors who said if they have to pay for recycling, they’ll let the trash hauler take it away.

4. Vote – If the state charter calls for a vote, let’s vote. Now we have the law suits being filed and the attorneys involved.

5. The Billion Dollar stadium or the $10 million trash program – This morning’s front page of the paper talks about the possibility of our needing a Billion Dollar stadium somewhere down the road. Now how did someone come up with the One Billion Dollar figure? Probably the way someone came up with the $10 million investment in a trash program. You pull numbers together on the hard dollars (recycle bins @ $4.4 million), the number of trustees in the county meeting on this issue (2,000 for 1 year), County employees and County Council members, attorney’s, state legislatures, trash company employees, etc. and you easily reach $10 million. The money’s already spent and the bins delivered so this cannot be change.

6. The headlines say “Dooley Wins.” Let’s wait until election time.