The High Cost of Fragmentation Archived Message
Posted by 3Dee on December 18, 2010, 11:40 pm
I read this article (linked at the bottom) and it articulates a lot of concerns that I have about the St. Louis Region and the Granite City area. I talked at length in previous posts about visiting the idea of combining municipalities of Southwestern Madison County. Some on here supported it, some didn't. I really think that such an idea that has been laid out would be beneficial. As the article points out, there are over 1,000 governmental unites in the St. Louis region. Everything from a large city with 355,000 people to a cul-de-sac with 6 homes, per the article..there are many levels of government. By reading the article, you will see how one municipality's gain can be another municipality's burden. I believe that if we forged ahead on something like this, we would be behind the curve nationally, but still way ahead of the curve in St. Louis, where things sometimes change at the speed of smell. I proposed a Southwestern Madison county municipality, with as much of Choteau, Venice, Nameoki, and Granite City townships as can be incorporated. Obviously the northern part of some of these townships identify more with Wood River..and Edwardsville usurped some areas of our townships as well, thus stifling MORE of our growth potential - taking it for themselves back up the hill. I believe growth can be ours in 20-30 years. For now, we just have to cooperate to stop the bleeding, just to kind of address the points where our area is hemorrhaging and shore them up. But if Granite bickers with Madison and Pontoon, we cannot move forward. If we don't work with St. Louis we don't move forward. Anyway, there have been talks about St. Louis returning as a municipality in St. Louis County. Now there has been talk of furthering the talks to a City-County merger, similar to that of Indianapolis, Nashville, and Jacksonville. So if we on the Illinois side of the river do not look into some of this forward thinking, we will not be bickering among 1,000 municipalities anylonger. We could someday have to face a juggernaut of a city-county merger in St. Louis. The article gives good reasons for regional cooperation. It's non-existent right now, and for many it's not even in their mindset. But if we're ever going to get out of the dark ages and have hopes of competing with Minneapolis, Denver, Chicago, Indianapolis, Nashville, Louisville, or Memphis - then we really have to get our acts together as a region.
|
Link: http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/article_cb635aa8-cf9f-5e01-b14e-545e892fb74c.html
Message Thread:
- The High Cost of Fragmentation - 3Dee December 18, 2010, 11:40 pm
|
|