While we encourage voters to go to the polls on Tuesday, April 7 for the general municipal election, and we have a few endorsements to make in St. Louis city and county, we are sympathetic to the confusion and despair many feel when confronted with the most local politics. The St. Louis region is cut into a jigsaw puzzle of municipalities, and other independent government entities such as school and fire districts, and its ballot would look like a Chinese menu if we imagine all of these electoral options grouped together.
In St. Louis County, 27 municipalities have mayoral races on April 7, with 47 mayoral candidates on the ballots. There are 369 people running for city council, trustee or aldermanic positions in 82 municipalities. About a dozen municipalities have propositions on the ballet. Sixteen fire districts and six school districts have races for new directors. In St. Louis city, which is notoriously separate from the county, 31 candidates are vying for aldermanic positions in 17 city wards, and aldermanic President Lewis Reed faces two challengers.
Fragmented as that may sound, our columnist Charles Jaco argues this week, “These elections will make our dysfunctional system of fractured postage stamp-sized municipalities worse, not better. The Village of Bellerive Acres (population 188) and the Village of Bel-Nor (a relative metropolis with 1,499 residents) both have measures on the ballot to change from villages to fourth-class cities. What’s the difference? Fourth-class cities can levy higher property taxes. That’s it.
“Meanwhile,” Jaco continues, “the Village of Wilbur Park (population 471) and the Village of Sycamore Hills (population 667) each have measures on the ballot asking if they can simply skip having elections if not enough candidates file for office. This begs the obvious question: If you’re admitting you can’t even get enough candidates to run for village offices, why not just vote to dissolve the place?”
Indeed, why not?
Greendale Mayor Monica Huddleston argues in a column in today’s paper that residents of small municipalities (like Greendale, population 654) fear they will get worse public services if their municipalities are dissolved into unincorporated St. Louis County. Though white flight and strategic segregation were responsible for the formation of this fractured municipal map, many of these tiny municipalities are now mostly black. However, Jaco notes, “the politicians of all races who run them usually want them kept just like they are.”
The Department of Justice report on Ferguson shows where this leads: to underfunded municipal governments, limited in their ability to raise taxes by the Hancock Amendment, pushing their cops to issue tickets and urging their judges to issue bench warrants to use the threat of incarceration to force people to pay their fines and fees. It’s a systematic approach to fleecing the poor – for the most part, poor black people – so unjust that it has made Ferguson and the St. Louis region a national symbol for municipal dysfunction and structural racism.
We wish the April 7 ballot gave citizens options for dissolving or merging their municipalities, rather than options to switch who sits in the deck chairs on our regional Titanic. That said, our region needs effective, transformative political leadership, and we do see a few change candidates who warrant strong voter support. In the City of St. Louis, we strongly endorse Cara Spencer for 20th Ward alderman. And in the much-discussed City of Ferguson, we strongly endorse Ella Jones (1st Ward), Bob Hudgins (2nd Ward) and Lee Smith (3rd Ward) for Ferguson City Council.
