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Issue: 1053 Date: 10/28/2010
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St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay wants a city, county merger
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St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay has some new ideas for making the city and the region more competitive in a global economy and they include revising some local boundaries that go back to an 1876 split.
For more than a century, St. Louis has been a city without a county. Mayor Slay says that has to change for the future of the region.
"Our region is connected economically, but we're divided geographically and politically," says Slay.
He says it's time to tear down the wall between city and county. In a struggling economy and with resources tight, Slay believes the St. Louis region must act as one when attracting jobs and providing services.
For starters, the Mayor would like to relinquish control of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport -- consolidating all the region's airports under a single port authority.
"We have been spending a lot of energy and resources competing with each other more than we have trying to work with each other and promoting the region as a place to do business and to live," says Slay.
Already working together on Metro, MSD and the Zoo Museum District, county officials say they are open to mending the 1876 split.
"We don't hold a grudge on the county side of this," says Garry Earls, the Chief Operating Officer of St. Louis County. "We want to continue to work together to make this a great place to live and work. What we believe, though, is that there's quite a bit of work to be done and most of that will have to happen on the east side of Skinker in order to achieve the results that need to be done."
"We're going to have to," says Slay. "The world is changing at a very, very fast pace. St. Louis has not been changing very, very fast. We need to reinvent ourselves now in order to prepare for tomorrow."
County officials say it would take a change to the state constitution and likely several years for a city, county merger to become a reality. However, merging airport authorities could happen relatively quickly. |
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