About Alex Ihnen

Alex is the founder of nextSTL.com. He earned a B.A. in Journalism and Masters in Public Affairs at Indiana University and has studied in Adelaide, Australia and Perugia, Italy. Alex can be found on Twitter @alexihnen and reached at [email protected]
  • MRNHS

    Gotta wonder…does MODOT actually think this is going to pass? Or is this a stepping stone for them to get the gas tax raised?

    • Jared

      Pro A7 campaign has raised $2.5m so far and $1.2m in the last week alone according to the mo ethics website, that tells me that the people donating are getting solid polling info back since they are donating a month out before the election….the pro group will probably raise another $1.5-2m before end of next week and the anti group that I noticed on mo ethics has raised $0

      • Fred Reiss

        All the money the supporters have donated makes me wonder what they’ll be doing 2-3 weeks out from the primaries. It’s extremely important that we encourage as many people as possible to vote NO to amendment 7 on the 5th of August. If not, the special interest groups may out-number those of us against this at the polls.

        • Jared

          They will get the rural parts educated is my guess and have the unions do a big get out to vote campaign for it

          • Fred Reiss

            MoDOT, with our tax money, is taking every opportunity to meet with Chamber of Commerce groups, county commissioners. clubs like the Lions, etc. I’ve been to two of these meetings.

          • Jared

            MoDOT can inform the public and they have been pretty open about that, while they can’t say vote yes for a7, they can Inform the public about it and what it is and why it’s needed….and by your tax dollars do you mean use fees to pay to use the roads? Do you go to target and get anything without paying?

          • Fred Reiss

            I’ve been to several of MoDOT’s informational meetings with the most recent one at a Chamber meeting in my area. The one previous to that was at a weekly county commission meeting. You are correct that MoDOT won’t tell you to vote yes, but they sure can tell you what dire shape they believe our transportation system is in and what they think will happen if this issue doesn’t pass. At the commission meeting, they wanted to up-date the commissioners on how much money the county will receive from 7 and what they could do with it. I was bothered that there is expense involved with all these appearances. In 2012, MoDOT was highly involved in all the Blue Ribbon Citizen’s Committee meetings all across Missouri. While I don’t know it for a fact, the bright orange Polo shirt with the new Move-On logo I’ve seen MoDOT employees wearing is probably a taxpayer expense.

  • Fred Reiss

    Polls have Amendment 7 DOA. Thank goodness. Sales taxes in Missouri, and especially St. Louis, are high enough!

    • STLEnginerd

      ^source?

      • Fred Reiss

        Springfield News-Leader poll conducted last week. Opposed was 57.43%, in favor 35.48% and undecided 7%

        http://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2014/07/05/debate-continues-build-transportation-tax/12259765/

        Any questions or comments?

        • Alex Ihnen

          Guessing if this doesn’t play in Springfield, then it’s dead – anyone have a clear take on urban/rural dynamics here? Perhaps out-state is more anti-tax? Thought they’re also likely more pro-highway? Don’t know.

          • Fred Reiss

            I live in a very poor county that will get 3 re-surfacing jobs for all our tax dollars. The dynamics are simple…the majority of the folks in my area will vote no because the benefits seem to be tilted highly in favor of the urban areas or the I-70 project. Bike paths, greenways, corporate jet hangers, sidewalks, trolley car lines, and many of the other un-necessary items on the project lists don’t excite us and it’s very hard to justify these expenses.

        • Jason

          Online newspaper site poll? You can’t be serious. Lol. Actual polling by a professional company has it passing 54-46-% and that’s before the campaign by the private group has even started

          • Fred Reiss

            And where is your source? I have an imagination it’s from MoDOT’s efforts to make it look like a popular issue. The problem is that MoDOT skews the truth and cherry-picks the facts. Pony up your source, sir.

  • John Westermayer

    Why can’t they accomplish the same goals with a gas tax increase instead of throwing this on our backs? What if other major funding issues arise? How about funds for our deteariating inner cities? How about stadium funding? Where are these funds going to come from when your sales tax is already at the the top of the scale?

  • Alex Ihnen

    If you’re not doing so already, follow 24th Ward City of St. Louis Alderman Scott Ward on Twitter @ward24stl for more on Amendment 7.

  • moe

    In one word: NO

  • Devin R

    I love all the “Project contingent upon $Millions contributed by” qualifiers. Funny that most of those seem to be on the public transportation aspects. We are going to give $5B for all these improvements, but that still isn’t enough? Who in their right mind wants to spend $38 for a bus from Chesterfield to Downtown? That is insanity!

    • Dale

      The partial funding for some of the projects is like that because the sponsoring agency requested it like that, the city asked for $25m for the street car. Because the whole street car is like $280m and the city’s entire allocation was $235m. A lot of the grg partial funding jobs are partial because that’s what grg asked for since you know they just passed their own funding source.

      As for the 2 brt routes, metro did studies to figure out the best routes and those 2 are choose. Metro isn’t just a city of st.louis transit operator, in case you didn’t know. It’s regional

  • SnakePlissken

    Oddly enough, the most irritating allocation wasn’t the $500 million for I-70 but the $2 million “studies for light rail expansion and funding scenarios” for STL City/County. Haven’t we studied this? Don’t we know what needs to be done? I don’t understand the continuous studies that yield zero results.

    • Our leadership looooooves its feasibility studies. Gives the impression of action, without the responsibility of actually, you know, acting.