IS IT PROGRESS OR DECAY?; ST. LOUIS EXAMINES DETERIORIATING ASSETS

Two articles, side by side in last Sunday's Post Dispatch, highlight the demise of the city of St. Louis as a viable governmental entity. Editor William Woo focused on racial politics of St. Louis and wrote:

"One example of what I mean was the unanimous opposition of blacks to placing Forest Park under joint city-county ownership. To many whites, it seemed self-evident that the city is incapable of properly maintaining this crumbling metropolitan asset. Blacks saw it in terms of power and principle. As a black member of the Board of Electors put it, `One day we may have a black mayor in this town, and there won't be anything left for him to govern.'"

The unnamed black member of the Board of Electors is correct in his or her observation. Much of the City of St. Louis is becoming a pile of municipally owned junk, abandoned property and tax abated downtown commercial real estate. Forest Park simply can't make it on its own. The potholes, weeds and sewers overwhelm the sparse maintenance force.

If the vigor of youth at Riverport overpowers the geriatric set at the Municipal Opera, Forest Park could have yet another relic on its hands.

The adjacent item last Sunday described the decay of the Civil Courts and Municipal Courts Buildings. The story states, "For years the 13-story (Civil Courts) building has been dilapidated, obsolete, a firetrap and downright dangerous. The Municipal Courts Building, two blocks west on Market, is also in sorry condition, officials say."

The author is generous with his compliments, but the City doesn't have $61 million for repairs. Like Forest Park or St. Louis Regional Hospital, there has to be a rescue from outside sources. This time it will be the federal government. The feds will build a new court house and give or sell their hand-me-down building to the City. According to the Post-Dispatch article, "The mayor said in April that he was unsure how the city would pay its share ($30 million) of the project cost."

Pay it with prayer. That's about all that's left.

We're out of smoke-and-mirrors money. The County has helped out on the Zoo, Regional Hospital and now maybe Forest Park. The City attracts fewer and fewer residents. In 1950, St. Louis was the 8th largest city in America with a population of 856,000. Today it is the 34th largest with 356,685 people. Valparaiso is closing in on us.

Go downtown someday. If you find a fairly new building or a nicely rehabilitated building, you can wager that it is sitting there under some form of tax abatement. Only the declining commercial property and home owners are taxed and their money goes mostly to the endlessly troubled St. Louis public schools. It is the decline of that school system that drives more young parents to the County and attracts few in. The school system is our very own, real-life "Terminator" of City Progress.

Yes, the black member of the Board of Electors was correct: There won't be anything left to govern. The City of St. Louis cannot survive with a crumbling infrastructure, a dwindling population and a declining source of tax revenue. In 1950, when St. Louis' population peaked, the Post-Dispatch ran an extensive and provocative series of articles captioned "Progress or Decay?" Decay won.

The City's problems can no longer be resolved on an ad hoc, Band-Aid basis. Metropolitan St. Louis cannot flourish with a cancerous core.