U. City Holds 'State Of The City,' Celebrates Founder's 150th

UNIVERSITY CITY, MO — University City Mayor Terry Crow gave his first State of the City address Thursday night at an event celebrating the 150th birthday of the city's founder, Edward Gardner Lewis. In his speech, Crow laid out his priorities for the city's future, starting with a controversial development at Olive Boulevard and Interstate 170 that has stalled due to what he called an "egregious" error.

That error, identified by U. City watchdog Greg Pace, and first reported by Patch, misidentified how the city receives its share of sales taxes and leaves the city short of about $27 million that it had hoped would come from the project.

"Olive and 170, no matter how you slice it, is a big deal," Crow said. "It is one of the biggest single developments in St. Louis County. It is one of the largest TIFs."

Crow said the council continues to support the project as it stands, but that the city will reject the project if councilmembers do not believe a final agreement is in the best interests of the community.

"We recognize fully that most recently our consultant, PGAV, made a rather egregious error," Crow said. "Many people have said, you need to have a new TIF hearing. That's not true. The numerical error made by the consultant does not in any way impact the TIF or the vote that was taken. But it clearly impacts the negotiations between the developer and the city. And that is where we find ourselves right now. We are in the process of negotiating with the developer."

In addition, Crow said he continues to wish for the success of the Loop Trolley and asked people to get out and ride it. The St. Louis Business Journal reported Wednesday that ridership is lower than anticipated and a 1-percent districtwide sales tax alone is not enough to keep the $50 million project afloat.

"We feel horrible for the businesses that did not make it through the construction process," Crow said. "For our businesses' sake that are there, we need this to work through. We all have our questions. I still do too. But our trolley is here, and we need to see it work through."

Crow also called for a more "equitable" relationship with Washington University, referencing a student Mardi Gras party that seems to have gotten out of hand Saturday night.

"This is kind of like having a shared driveway," Crow explained by way of analogy. "Who really wants a shared driveway, but we got one, and we need to work with our neighbor here and get this relationship a little bit back in whack."

Crow said the city is also fast approaching having its ambulance service back, referencing the 2015 EMS outsourcing to Gateway. The mayor — then a councilmember — said he was "viciously opposed" to the outsourcing, which led to the city losing mutual aid with surrounding municipalities.

A $1.9 million federal grant will pay for part of the cost to return the ambulance service to the fire department, but some questions remain about additional costs.

"We hope to have the ambulances back sometime in either the third or the forth quarter of this year," Crow said.

Finally, Crow called on residents to take the time to read a proposed amendment to merge St. Louis City and County, calling Better Together "probably the longest Constitutional amendment in the history of the state of Missouri."

Crow said he's not opposed to a merger in principal, but "this isn't the right one," adding that a potential statewide vote frustrates him.

"There is no way that people in Neosho, Nevada, Kirksville, Poplar Bluff and Farber, Missouri, should be making this vote," he said. "None whatsoever."

Crow said he fears people in "outstate Missouri" would be easily swayed by a $25 million ad campaign.

He also called for St. Louis City to default on its bonds if the merger goes forward, calling it a "market solution" for managing the city's debt.

"This may sound a bit conservative to some of you in the room, but I really did grow up at Edward Jones, and there is a market solution here," Crow said. "When the City of St. Louis sold their portfolio of bonds, they sold them at a higher interest rate because of the quality of the credit ... That person or institution that bought those bonds took that risk. If we come in and merge the city and the county together, we are all going to be subsidizing the payments to an investor group that already took that risk.

"And the solution is clearly for the market to take its course. And when the market takes its course, that means the city should default on its bonds, and it should negotiate with the committee that would easily be formed, and then you would determine how much each bond holder gets."

Crow said the proposed merger would likely place on hold plans to build a new police station because it might soon be transferred to "metropolis," his term for a newly-merged metropolitan city. He also criticized the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department for its recent string of controversies.

"I think you've got to stop and ask yourself, does it really make sense for our police department to be merged into the city of St. Louis' police department, when they have 12 officers — 12 officers — under investigation for everything from bribery and embezzlement to murder," Crow said. "This does not strike me as sound policy for us."

City Manager Rose also spoke, saying that despite employees wanting to do a good job, the structure of the city's staff "did not lend itself to effective service delivery" prior to his arrival. The city has since hired new communications, economic development and planning and development directors, and passed a pay raise across the board to bring its pay scales into the 75th percentile of competing markets. Some citizens call those measures fiscally irresponsible, but Rose hopes they will make the city more competitive, drawing more development to ultimately "move us toward a sustainable city."

As for the city's future, Rose cited President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society initiative to end poverty and racial injustice through social welfare programs as a model, but said, "before you can have a great society, you must have great cities, and before you can have a great city, you must have outstanding leadership."

He praised Crow's leadership and said he looks forward to continuing to work with the mayor and council.