OK folks, it's time to question why we pay Wildwood and Jennings over $900,000.00 per year!
I have no idea if most of you are aware of the fact that one of our former Mayors in conjunction with the deceased Buzz Westfall, and some other liberal socialists in the County hatched a plan to send over $900,000.00 to Wildwood and Jennings each year!
Yes, I said Wildwood where you can't buy a dog house for less than $250,000.00, and Jennings, where a very large shopping center is about finalized! What? No that's not right Ford, your crazy! Well it is right, you see we had a "point of sale place" (Crestwood Plaza,) and they didn't, and to a liberal, well that can't stand, so our erstwhile Mayor agreed to the Marxist plan!
Now, we are not the only ones suffering this budget drain ala Carl Marx, no not at all. In fact to our West the fine City Of Fenton has the same ridiculous problem thanks to their previous leadership! Mayor Hancock has, for some time now been very vocal on the subject of stopping this foolishness, and I for one applaud him for it!
Now that we know what these people did to us, are we willing to stand for it? I am calling on the Mayor, and the BOA to join forces with Mayor Hancock of Fenton to get up to Jefferson City and stop this tax grab! By the way, please don't tell me the "climate isn't right" for this in Jefferson City because we have a very good Republican majority, and when last I looked, they don't go for this either!
It's now up to us to band together, craft a petition, or do whatever it takes to get this lunacy stopped! "Crestwood taxes for Crestwood!"
Tom Ford
NO. 498
Yes, I said Wildwood where you can't buy a dog house for less than $250,000.00, and Jennings, where a very large shopping center is about finalized! What? No that's not right Ford, your crazy! Well it is right, you see we had a "point of sale place" (Crestwood Plaza,) and they didn't, and to a liberal, well that can't stand, so our erstwhile Mayor agreed to the Marxist plan!
Now, we are not the only ones suffering this budget drain ala Carl Marx, no not at all. In fact to our West the fine City Of Fenton has the same ridiculous problem thanks to their previous leadership! Mayor Hancock has, for some time now been very vocal on the subject of stopping this foolishness, and I for one applaud him for it!
Now that we know what these people did to us, are we willing to stand for it? I am calling on the Mayor, and the BOA to join forces with Mayor Hancock of Fenton to get up to Jefferson City and stop this tax grab! By the way, please don't tell me the "climate isn't right" for this in Jefferson City because we have a very good Republican majority, and when last I looked, they don't go for this either!
It's now up to us to band together, craft a petition, or do whatever it takes to get this lunacy stopped! "Crestwood taxes for Crestwood!"
Tom Ford
NO. 498
posted by Crestwood Independent at 19:56
25 Comments:
Tom, I'm aboard. I'd love to see an explanation of how the distribution works. I bet the County Executive has no idea. He's too busy giving tax breaks galore to Edward Jones right now.
I believe our neighbors in Webster are going to fight us on this.
If the City can put money forward to fight for TIFs, they most certainly should look into this.
Contact former Mayor Jim Brasfield for the complete story of the "sales tax sharing plan".
Interstingly, the greater population numbers are with the Pool Cities, vs. the Point of Sales Cities, which in the pure political world means the votes would favor the status quo.
Goodf luck, you will need it.
9:31 AM blogger: Why contact the guy who went along with the plan, can you imagine the spin they have cooked up by now?
The story is as simple as Westfall telling him what to do, and he, and hid board doing it, never thinking it would cause us grief at a later date.
Now we fast forward to 2008, were almost broke, Wildwood has a major surplus thanks to all the muni's with POS retailers sending them money.
Talk about "you paid for it!" I think, no I know we need Mr. Elliott Davis in on this one.
9:36 PM blogger: I don't doubt they (Webster Groves) will fight it, after all it's free money from someone, no? But so what, so will all these nickel shooter burgs that have lived off of others for far too long!
If were going to use up our legal budget (and believe me we will, one way or another,) it seems to me that to use it to remove this Marxist plan is the best way.
I would love to see a joint task force from Fenton and Crestwood formed to attack this plan while we have an outstanding reason to do it!
Tom Ford
Were those townhall meetings merely sales' pitches to get us to vote for a tax increase?
Indeed it was a sales pitch. Do we even know why $800K more is needed? Or was that just a nice round number?
Tom:
The $900,000 you are quoting comes from the 1% sales tax. This tax is NOT a "Crestwood" Tax. It is a County Tax that is shared, with Crestwood getting the lions share. Westfall's original plan would have forozen the amount that Crestwood could have recieved... Crestwood would have NEVER been able to get more, but could always get less.
good point,do we need it, read the Call and you read Mayor stating we have over $3,500,000 in cash now. Anything left over, if the tax increase passed, after fixing up streets, etc. will be used as pay increases. Just like Tom said they wouldn't. Tom you better check in with the Mayor before you claim to know what is going on. Seems as of late the two of you are not on the same page
This whole pool sharing thing should not have gone through in the first place. Buzz Westfall was the one, in the end result, that got most of the money. Webster Groves and other bedroom communities would fight us if we tried to reclaim what was taken from us.
It got through because Buzz Westfall knew how to wheel and deal with politicians, pure and simple.
It just makes me sick that during the good years, we had to share part of our sales tax revenues with communities that wanted to stay "bedroom communities" with no retail sales to keep them going. And they all had the option at one point to become a point of sale city if they wanted to and they refused.
They wanted their peace and tranquil community with no cars backfiring and no trucks coming and going. And they used our money to keep up their communities and in doing so made the sale on their homes worth more than ours.
I wish I knew how to turn it around because I would fight to have it stopped. But unfortunately, you have to have money and clout to do it. I have neither.
Wasn't the distribution of sales tax funds voted on? I don't think it was just written into law without the citizens voting but I could be wrong. Anyone know?
Not that is was a bad idea then, but should have put some type of limit
I believe it was done in early '90's but not positive.
10:35 AM Oh Yes, it was voted on but we didn't have a chance with all the bedroom communities voting for it and Westfall pushing it. Would you vote yes or no, if there was a vote on the ballot that said, will you or won't you assist Crestwood with their sales tax being down?
This pool issue didn't start in the 90's, it started longer than that. Pat Killoren and others were furious but there were many municipalities that would reap from it including Webster Groves, who incidentally also has a very big property tax. The biggest windfall went to the County and Westfall knew he would be lining the County's pockets the most from the get go.
When we found out that they were going to base the tax formula on a per capita basis, that was another reason why we annexed so that our population would be increased.
Lots of big mistakes were made by lots of people going back over 25 years.
Jim Brasfield and Dr. LaBore as well as Tom Fagan can tell you lots of details about this windfall pool tax given to bedroom communities.
So why is Fenton's Mayor the only one willing to take a stand?
What does Fenton pay their mayor? For the decent amount of revenue that Fenton generates they are pretty darn conservative with their spending.
I have no idea if anyone is really pursuing the issue and if they are, how they intend to do it. It would be interesting if all of the point of sale cities could get together and have the law repealed but I haven't heard anything regarding to a plan being executed. In fact, I haven't heard a word about what happened on this until it was brought up on this blog.
It would really be interesting if we could go back to the board of aldermen minutes when this whole thing started, just to recap some of the facts leading up to this whole catastrophe, birthed by Buzz Westfall much to the burden of the point of sale cities.
Also, keep in mind that in order to repeal a law, you would have to have the cooperation of Senators and State Representatives. Which one of these people will back up a repeal when they represent many of the cities that are bedroom communities that get this money?
Therein lies a big problem because I don't see how we could ever win when we would have no assistance from the big guns.
Is a total repeal needed or just a tweaking to reflect the current situation? How does your City qualify for it's status? A or B?
I see a 1/2 cent sales tax is being pondered for Metro. Won't be long and we will all be working until June just to pay our taxes.
If two collars had a race, how would it end?
In a tie!
5:24 PM blogger: We can, and we should do exactly that! Sorry but I have been out of town for the past four days. I hope everyone behaved in my absence.
Tom Ford
Another great fleecing of Crestwood taxpayers(and our neighbors) is the new MSD stormwater tax. Those inside of 270 are basically paying for MSD's expansion west. We will get no improvements from this tax hike.
9:34 PM blogger: Very true my friend, very true indeed!
I am sending a photo of my "rain runoff area" to MSD with a protest letter! You see, my property cannot possibly drain into the storm water, or sewer system unless they train the water to run up hill!
I will be requesting that a "supervisor" meet me at my home to show me why I should pay this tax, this will be a "hoot!"
I will report the results right here on the blog, so if you want to protest this rip off, you will have some idea on how to proceed.
Tom Ford
Are you going to write a protest letter to the Mayor for his support another Crestwood tax increase?
I don't think that all "rain runoff areas" are the responsibility of MSD. If they were don't you think Mr. Deutschmann would have had his situation taken care of by now????? It has been years of flooding on his street.
4:05 PM blogger: In a word, NO!
Tom Ford
well why not, you want to qwrite one to MSD for their tax increase?
Tom, you seem so against all this horrible "liberal socialism".
Is it that maybe you've got some investments in Crestwood for which you want a government handout? That's what Republicans stand for, you and I know, right? We want this already absurdly high tax money to stay in Crestwood so we can handout welfare tax subsidies and TIF and grants to rich developers and investors who as best as I can tell apparently don't want to work for their living! I'll tell you what's costing us more than the money we're sharing with other areas due to some revenue sharing agreement - the welfare we're handing out to private corporations for everything from Transportation District handouts to supplies of police communications systems and a fleet of shiny new police cars that spend most of the time sitting on the parking lot, and other important "free market" stuff. Is this all "free market", incidently? Hmmm, I thought our economy was free market, I guess it is kind of Marxist to distribute this money to selected developers and private corporations by big government.
Let's not forget to be realistic and realize we're probably not sharing much anymore, anyway. Our mall just isn't generating much revenue because it's going down the tank. Some "free market" reason must exist for someone to do something with it without a welfare handout, or else it's not worth doing. That's our problem, not the small amount going to Jennings. We need to get real, and raising our taxes to pay for more TIFs isn't the way to solve our problems.
2:40 PM blogger: "Tom, you seem so against all this horrible "liberal socialism"."
True, I am against it, but I am also against TDD,TIF,CID, and eminent domain! I assure you I have only two investments in Crestwood. My home, and my family!
I will be writing my position paper on Monday evening visa vie the tax increase, and my position on the mall project (and others.)
I know this will not sway anyone, but it may be a bit of a revelation to some of you who believe I am a staunch follower of (fill in the blank.)
Until then, please join me in honoring our veterans, alive and dead who gave us the right to have a blog in the first place!
Tom Ford
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