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Happy Election Day, Kirkwood!
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Polling places are open today from 6am–7pm, and you can vote at any location in the County.
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In Kirkwood, four candidates are running for three Council seats: Sheila Burkett, Justin Arnold, Deb Lavender, and incumbent Al Rheinnecker. I support Burkett, Arnold, and Lavender.
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The biggest issue for me is Kirkwood's housing. A guy recently proposed demolishing a historic home on North Taylor to build his dream McMansion there—exactly the sort of thing that basically all of Kirkwood is against. Burkett, Arnold, and Lavender all support finding solutions to help preserve Kirkwood's historic homes while Rheinnecker said his only concern was protecting the new owner's right to tear the thing down.
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Rheinnecker is all in on selling Kirkwood Water to a private company while I think the city continuing to provide the public service is likely to save Kirkwood residents money in the long run.
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And there's the elephant in the room: Rheinnecker is a Republican running for a Council that already has a 6-to-1 Republican majority. I don't think his support for Trump is the main reason to vote against him (the policy differences above are enough on their own) but it's worth knowing what another Rheinnecker term would mean for the political balance of the body that governs Kirkwood. I wrote more about the dynamic here:
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Kirkwood's 6-1 Republican Majority
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In a Friday evening news dump the week before Thanksgiving, Kirkwood City Council announced that they would be parting ways with city administrator Russ Hawes. There would be no formal transition to a named successor, no transfer of institutional knowledge, and no grand send-off. Instead, the end for the man who had managed the city's day-to-day operations for more than …
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So go vote! And tell your friends and family to go vote as well. Because the stakes really are quite high! And I'll see you on the other side: at Happy Hour this Friday, at 5pm at 4 Hands!
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