Kirkwood's 6-1 Republican Majority

• From the January 29th Council Work Session minutes, some troubling news of slowing sales tax receipts. The interesting thing here is that some of the biggest sales tax engines in Kirkwood —Target, Walmart, and the other big box stores in Kirkwood Commons— are in the part of Kirkwood (Meacham Park) that was annexed in 90s and thus is required to pool its sales tax revenue with the rest of the county and redistributes it on a per-capita basis. The rest of Kirkwood —including the big box stores on the western side of Lindbergh, Downtown Kirkwood, and the retail businesses along Manchester— keeps sales tax revenue at the point purchase (Kirkwood). If you moved Target and Walmart across Kirkwood Rd and reconstituted all of Meacham Park as residential again, Kirkwood would get a larger percentage of the pooled tax revenue (thanks to Meacham's bigger population) and the point of purchase tax revenue (since Target and Walmart were moved to the original part of Kirkwood).
• In last week's Webster Kirkwood Times there were stories on:
  • Pg. 1, another 5% increase in water rates
  • Pg. 7, a letter from Kirkwood City Council candidate Justin Arnold outlining his vision for correcting Kirkwood's troubled finances
  • Pg. 6, I also really liked Leon Miller's take on the demolition of 751 N. Taylor and think it's a superior solution than outlawing demolition, a policy that the Post-Dispatch reported the Mayor was exploring