Soulard Mardi Gras Parade 2000 (Photo by Jerry Naunheim Jr.)

With municipal budgets expected to be stagnant or worse for years to come, and with police services usually the largest item on those budgets, how should cities set priorities?

Obviously, the first priority is to deal with serious crime and take the worst criminals off the street. Police departments must maintain patrols and the community policing that keep neighborhoods and business districts safe.

But who should pay for the officers who patrol public venues with cultural attractions? Who should pay for traffic and crowd control at privately sponsored special events? What are their claims to limited law enforcement resources? Should they pay more of their own way?

St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom last week proposed that costs of policing special events be closely examined and, when appropriate, sponsors should be required to pay the costs directly.

The deceptively complicated debate is overdue.

St. Louis police patrol all of the region’s big-league sporting events and most of the fairs, concerts, parades and other events, including Mardi Gras in Soulard, the Forest Park Balloon Race, the Moonlight Ramble, PrideFest, the Muny Opera and various parades. The roster grows every year.

On top of that, there are conventions, revivals, civic conferences, charity walks and runs, tournaments, funerals and neighborhood celebrations. In special years, the Cardinals make the playoffs and the World Series or the Rams make the Super Bowl. Once there was a papal visit.

It’s good not just for St. Louis, but for the entire region.

Special events and institutions that draw large crowds animate and contribute to city life as much as diverse neighborhoods and vibrant commercial centers. The center city, by definition, is the heart of a community, where the public gathers and celebrates. Events and institutions that receive special police service contribute significantly to the local economy, generating tax revenue to pay for city services.

So, the issue isn’t deciding who should get first dibs on police service or focusing on who’s paying what share of the police department budget. There’s no easy answer. City residents shoulder a big part of the load. The city earnings tax — paid by people who live throughout the region who work in the city and by city residents — is a major component of the city budget. And events and institutions that receive special police service contribute significantly to the local economy, generating tax revenue to pay for city services.

The salient question: Can the region take a modest step to ensure that its largest law enforcement agency has the resources to police the huge array of events that benefit the entire area?

The best approach would seek to spread the costs widely, to ask many people to contribute relatively small amounts. The Metropolitan Zoological Park and Museum District could be a model. It levies a property tax in the city and St. Louis County, raising about $70 million a year to support the Zoo, the Art Museum, Science Center, Botanical Garden and History Museum.

Over the years, there have been many discussions about making the ZMD tax truly regional, taking in St. Charles, Jefferson and Franklin counties and the Metro East counties of St. Clair, Madison and Monroe. This would spread the cost of maintaining these cultural jewels to everyone in the region who enjoys them.

Getting people in the suburban counties to approve such a tax for the police force would be tricky. But perhaps they would consider a much smaller, multi-county levy dedicated to police services throughout Forest Park, where four of the Zoo-Museum institutions are situated.

Other relatively painless strategies come to mind to underwrite police services at special events: small registration fees or a concession tax. Putting a 25-cent tax on every beer sold at Mardi Gras, for example, could pay for a lot of police overtime. Everyone would understand it’s for a good cause. After the first couple of beers, no one would care — or even notice.