Local News

It’s Time for Wash U to Sit Down With University City and Talk About Money

Published

2 years ago

March 21, 2024

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I love Washington University. I grew up in University City. When I was a boy, we used to play football behind Francis Field. I took a music theory class there one summer when I was a teen. I’ve attended innumerable Thurtene Carnivals, innumerable readings and lectures and concerts at Graham Chapel. I met my wife, Phoebe, in Holmes Lounge. I did graduate work there. I love that it looks like a university and not a mall.

When I studied there, my buddies considered me somewhat exotic because I am actually from University City. Sometimes the university doesn’t feel like a neighbor. Sometimes it feels like we are all just carbon-based lifeforms who share a ZIP code.

click to enlarge COURTESY PHOTO Author John Samuel Tieman.

Washington University owns about 200 properties in University City. They are our largest landowner. They use our streets, parks, police, fire protection and other services. Yet the university pays not a nickel in property taxes. They’re a nonprofit. That tax burden falls upon those who live here.

For all our sophistication, we’re just a small Missouri town. In 2023, U. City had an annual budget of $29.5 million. Property taxes were not quite $7 million. That money was divided between the school district and city services. Wash U was exempted from perhaps $3 million in property taxes. That was hundreds of thousands of dollars less for the schools, and hundreds of thousands less for infrastructure, services, payroll.

University City has studied this problem. There are any number of avenues into the future. Legislation at the state level could force Wash U to pay more. I’m certainly not opposed to that. However, I’m not a person who thinks that much gets done by being adversarial and angry. I prefer to advocate for a vision. I want Washington University to become more like Yale, Brown, Heidelberg. I want our neighbor to become a full community partner. These other universities have taken on a variety of cooperative projects and agreements. To name just two, there’s the PILOT program, “payment in lieu of taxes.” There are also programs wherein the university takes over, for example, the upkeep of a park. And there are many other options.

In fairness, Wash U is involved in the community. Take, for example, the Public Art project sponsored by the Municipal Arts and Letters Commission. University students create art that they then display around the city. Now in its fourth decade, this is the oldest cooperative program between a university and its neighboring municipality in the United States. It brought U. City its “Rain Man” and many other sculptures. Students get an audience for their work. This laudable impulse toward cooperation; this is what needs to expand.

Wash U owns the land on Vernon Avenue, land upon which the new firehouse sits. They rent it to U. City for $1 a year. Wash U did initiate a small payment-in-kind program, a program that didn’t go very far. There are a number of other reimbursement initiatives. Again, this impulse toward cooperation is laudable. But, taken as a whole, these efforts come nowhere near to replacing the lost tax revenue we experience annually.

I’m a retired teacher. Some time ago, at an international conference, a Japanese educator spoke of his school. He spoke of plans for five years into the future, ten, twenty. I suddenly realized that this guy was talking about plans for fifty years into the future. It’s not very American to think like that, but that doesn’t make it a bad idea. U. City has a comprehensive plan through which we envision our town decades into our future. Washington University could join us in this vision.

“Town and gown” need not be adversarial. It can describe neighbors. U. City is already embedded in Wash U, and Washington University is already embedded in University City. You can’t walk down a street here and not run into someone who graduated from the place, works there, is an adjunct professor of something or another. We will always be joined, well, not exactly “at the hip” but at about Forest Park Parkway.

Washington University has a history of visionaries. Edward Doisy and Arthur Holly Compton both won the Nobel Prize. Pulitzer Prize winner Howard Nemerov lived on Yale Avenue. So let this little essay be both a challenge and an invitation. Instead of medicine or physics or poetry, let’s envision a neighborhood. Let the prize be a place we all lovingly call home.

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Local News

Fenton Man Charged in Sword Attack on Roommate

Published

1 year ago

May 22, 2024

Natural Bridge

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A warrant is out for a Fenton man’s arrest after he allegedly attacked his roommate with a sword.

Police say that on Sunday, Angelus Scott spoke openly about “slicing his roommate’s head” before he grabbed a sword, raised it up and then swung it down at the roommate.

The roommate grabbed Scott’s hand in time to prevent injury. When police arrived at the scene, they found the weapon used in the assault.

The sword in question was a katana, which is a Japanese sword recognizable for its curved blade.

This isn’t the first time a samurai-style sword has been used to violent effect in St. Louis. In 2018, a man hearing voices slaughtered his ex-boyfriend with a samurai sword. His mother said he suffered from schizoaffective disorder.

As for Scott, 35, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office was charged yesterday with two felonies, assault first degree and armed criminal action. The warrant for his arrest says he is to be held on $200,000 bond.

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Caught on Video, Sheriff Says He’s Ready to ‘Turn It All Over’ to Deputy

Published

1 year ago

May 22, 2024

Natural Bridge

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Video of St. Louis Sheriff Vernon Betts taken by a former deputy suggests that the sheriff has a successor in mind to hand the reins of the department over to, even as Betts is in an increasingly heated campaign for reelection.

“I ain’t here for all this rigmarole,” Betts says in the video while seated behind his desk at the Carnahan Courthouse. “The Lord sent me here to turn this department around and I’m doing the best I can and I think I’ve done a good job. I’ve got about eight months and I’m going to qualify for my fourth pension.”

He goes on, “Right now I can walk up out of here and live happily ever after and forget about all this…and live like a king.”

The sheriff then says his wife has been in Atlanta looking at houses and that the other deputy in the room, Donald Hawkins, is someone Betts has been training “to turn it all over to him.”

Asked about the video, Betts tells the RFT, “My future plans are to win reelection on August 6th by a wide margin and to continue my mission as the top elected law enforcement official to make St. Louis safer and stronger. Serving the people of St. Louis with integrity, honor and professional law enforcement qualifications is a sacred responsibility, and I intend to complete that mission.”

The video of Betts was taken by Barbara Chavers, who retired from the sheriff’s office in 2016 after 24 years of service. Chavers now works security at Schnucks at Grand and Gravois. Betts’ brother Howard works security there, too.

Chavers tells the RFT that she was summoned to Betts’ office last week after Betts’ brother made the sheriff aware that she was supporting Montgomery. It was no secret: Chavers had filmed a Facebook live video in which she said she was supporting Betts’ opponent Alfred Montgomery in the election this fall. “Make the judges safe,” she says in the video, standing in front of a large Montgomery sign on Gravois Avenue. “They need a sheriff who is going to make their courtrooms safe.”

In his office, even as Chavers made clear she was filming him, Betts told Chavers he was “flabbergasted” and “stunned” she was supporting Montgomery.

“I don’t know what I did that would make you go against the preacher man,” he says, referring to himself. He then refers to Montgomery as “ungodly.”

Betts goes on to say that not long ago, he was walking in his neighborhood on St. Louis Avenue near 20th Street when suddenly Montgomery pulled up in his car and, according to Betts, shouted, “You motherfucker, you this, you that. You’re taking my signs down.”

Montgomery tells the RFT that he’s never interacted with Betts outside of candidate forums and neighborhood meetings.

“I don’t think anyone with good sense would do something like that to a sitting sheriff,” Montgomery says.

Montgomery has had campaign signs missing and on at least two occasions has obtained video of people tearing them down. (Chavers notes that the sign that she filmed her original Facebook video in front of is itself now missing.)

One man who lives near Columbus Square says that he recently put out two Montgomery signs, which later went missing. “If they keep taking them, I’ll keep putting them up,” he said.

Betts says he has nothing to do with the missing signs. In the video Chavers filmed in Betts’ office, Betts says that his campaign isn’t in a spot where it needs to resort to tearing down opponents’ signs.

“If you sit here long enough, a man is getting ready to come across the street from City Hall bringing me $500, today,” Betts says. “I’m getting that kind of support. I don’t need to tear down signs.”

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St. Louis to Develop First Citywide Transportation Plan in Decades

Published

1 year ago

May 21, 2024

Natural Bridge

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The City of St. Louis is working to develop its first citywide mobility plan in decades, Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office announced Tuesday. This plan seeks to make it easier for everyone — drivers, pedestrians, bikers and public transit users — to safely commute within the city.

The plan will bring together other city projects like the Brickline Greenway, Future64, the MetroLink Green Line, and more, “while establishing new priorities for a safer, more efficient and better-maintained transportation network across the City,” according to the release.

The key elements in the plan will be public engagement, the development of a safety action plan, future infrastructure priorities and transportation network mapping, according to Jones’ office.

The overarching goals are to create a vision for citywide mobility, plan a mixture of short and long-term mobility projects and to develop improved communication tools with the public to receive transportation updates. In recent years, both people who use public transit and cyclists have been outspoken about the difficulties — and dangers — of navigating St. Louis streets, citing both cuts to public transit and traffic violence.

To garner public input and participation for the plan, Jones’ office said there will be community meetings, focus groups and a survey for residents to share their concerns. The city will also be establishing a Community Advisory Committee. Those interested in learning more should check out at tmp-stl.com/

“Everyone deserves to feel safe when getting around St. Louis, whether they’re driving, biking, walking or taking public transit,” Jones said in a news release. “Creating a comprehensive transportation and mobility plan allows us to make intentional and strategic investments so that moving around St. Louis for jobs, education, and entertainment becomes easier, safer and more enjoyable.”

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