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Rams Settlement Survey Wants to Know About Your Sad, Sad Life | St. Louis Metro News | St. Louis

Published

2 years ago

August 18, 2023

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click to enlarge DOYLE MURPHY City Hall wants your thoughts … on some subjects. Earlier this week, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen announced a survey to help it figure out how to spend the $250 million windfall it received from its lawsuit over the Rams’ departure. But if you eagerly signed up to participate, thinking you could spam the survey with suggestions on how to spend the money on your pet projects, guess again. This survey has just two questions, and it is not asking you about your priorities. Instead, it wants to know about your miserable life. (It’s also going to be really hard to spam.)The survey is a curious thing, really. Once you register (more on that in a minute), you are asked just two questions. The first question wants to identify what challenges you are facing in your life — and the second offers the same possible challenges and asks if they impact others in your life. click to enlarge These challenges run a wide gamut (as, let’s face it, the lives of city residents do). Options include everything from being unemployed to having a criminal record to struggling with mental health issues to having medical debt or student loan debt. It’s a litany of struggles.But we couldn’t help but notice that we, both on our own behalf and that of others in our lives, are also being asked about two things that relate not to poverty and the general lack of a safety net in the U.S. in the year 2023, but to the functions of the city itself. Namely, these two options:* My car has been damaged by poorly maintained roads and streets.* I have not received a timely or appropriate emergency response when calling 911. click to enlarge Now, many local armchair quarterbacks have been asking lately why the city can’t just spend the Rams settlement money to fix the broken 911 system, which has notoriously failed to provide timely service even when residents find themselves crushed to death by trees or suffering from a heart attack in Forest Park. You’ll also hear plenty of people wondering why the heck our streets look straight out of Beirut when we have all this Rams money.Is this survey designed to gently guide us towards those particular issues? We can’t say for sure, but they do feel like the two things on the list indisputably assigned to city government — and it’s frankly hard to imagine $250 million making a dent in many of the others, no matter how pressing. (Beyond that, any local plan to provide student loan relief, as we’ve seen on the federal level, would surely end up stuck in litigation for years on end.) One thing is also worth noting. As we mentioned earlier, it would be hard to spam this survey. Not only are respondents required to give their name and address, but they must provide an email address, where a code is sent that allows them access. All good — but it might make some people unwilling to open up about their problems. Do I personally want the Board of Aldermen to know that I don’t have a primary care doctor (yes, that’s a question) or a good salary (ditto), much less about my ongoing struggle to stop self-medicating with a bottle of gin? Nope, can’t say that I do. Yusuf Daneshyar, a spokesman for Aldermanic President Megan Green, confirms that the survey is something Green’s office commissioned on behalf of the Board of Aldermen. The board is spending $9,800 on a one-year pilot program with a company called CitizenLab.”Currently the scope of work is limited to the BOA’s public engagement process for the Rams Settlement Fund,” Daneshyar explains. “That said, once the pilot is over, we will evaluate how this service or a similar service could be used to make residents part of the legislative process and encourage participation. I think it’s too early to tell if other city departments would find this engagement tool helpful, but we would be happy to share our experience to help other departments inform their approach to public engagement.” So far, he adds, 854 residents signed up to take the survey.Now, might the survey provide ammunition for the increasingly loud voices calling for a 911 fix? Only time will tell. But unless you fill out these two questions now, you can’t complain when the Board analyzes the results and come back in mid-October and begins to “establish the priority challenges.” Give ’em that address and your full name and throw down about your sad, sad life! Just don’t be surprised if $250 million isn’t enough to change it for you and 300,000 of your neighbors, too.

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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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