This week’s Mini-Poll lets you be a city development official — or an alderman. It presents you with a hypothetical development in the City of St. Louis — type unspecified — that would generate a new net annual revenue stream to city coffers of $1,000,000. The poll asks you to consider a range of issues that might arise in connection with the project and asks you to answer — honestly, please — whether that condition alone would be enough to trigger your opposition to the project, regardless of the new revenue it would bring to the City of St. Louis.
You know that the City’s budget is strained. You know that new jobs are a high priority. You know that some sources of municipal revenue are flat, even as costs — such as public employees’ pension systems — are rising. You know that the city’s many neighborhoods have unique characters. You know that the costs of maintaining some city services often means that others must be scaled back. And, finally, you know that most of the City is more densely and diversely populated than is farmland in S. Illinois or flood plains in St. Charles.
Knowing all these things, the poll invites you to weigh in.
