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A quick reminder that Downtown Kirkwood will be hosting the annual Halloween Walk tonight from 4-7pm. If you're going, enjoy! If you're not going, avoid Downtown Kirkwood like the plague; at least until 7:30! Portions of Kirkwood Road, Jefferson, and Argonne will all be closed.
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- There are no major meeting this week, but I do want to emphasize that it's starting to get pretty insane that the City Council has not announced a plan for the former Public Works Site at this point. It's now been 13 months since the Request for Proposals for the site was opened to bids. I can appreciate the Council wanting to get this right; it's a big project. But when you raise electric rates on folks by 15% and then transferring a potion of those rates to the general fund to cover other holes you've created in the general budget, then you need all the revenue you can get and we're leaving millions on the table right now. What's the deal guys? To govern is to choose, and it's choosing time.
- Some highlights from last week's Webster-Kirkwood Times:
- On Electric Rate Hikes (pg. 1): I was hoping to have my write-up of Kirkwood Electric's 15% out by now, but then I read the excellent Webster-Kirkwood Times piece on the subject that covered a lot of what I had to say and provided some helpful additional context. I highly recommend you go check that out for now, but save room for dessert because my piece on the subject should be out by tomorrow.
- On the Old St. Lukes in Des Peres (pg. 4): The old St. Luke's Des Peres Hospital is obviously located in De Peres, but it is also located *just* inside the Kirkwood School District boundary. Now, because St. Luke's was a nonprofit, they didn't pay any taxes to the school district but if we get private development on this site, that changes, meaning the site could have a decent sized impact on Kirkwood itself. On the one hand, I'm hoping for housing because more housing here will mean Kirkwood's housing gets a bit more affordable as people trying to move to the district will have more options. On the other hand, if maximizing the financial impact to the Kirkwood School District is your priority, then you probably want to see commercial development, which gets taxed at a higher rate and which doesn't bring with it the added costs of educating additional student like residential would. Another public or nonprofit use would mean we'd get neither additional affordability nor additional tax revenue for the district, so I'm rooting against that.
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That's it for this week! Hope to have something for you tomorrow. Have a great weekend, everyone!
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