The Kennedy Aquatic Center, 6050 Wells Road, will not open to the South County public this summer, St. Louis County Executive Sam Page stated at a media briefing on Feb. 11, in which various county service reductions were announced.
“The Kennedy pool is 50 years old and has a water main break that has been extraordinarily expensive to repair and maintain. The parts for the pool that (are) needed are no longer available. It would cost more than $100,000 to repair the water main and to maintain this pool,” Page said. He continued that another reason the Kennedy Aquatic Center — along with St. Vincent’s Pool in North County — were chosen for closure this summer out of all the county pools was due to “a much lower community participation” in comparison to other sites.
Despite the pool’s closure, the rest of the Kennedy Recreation Complex — as of now — will remain open with none of its hours changed.
Additional cuts impacting the South County area include the newly reduced in-person hours at the South County Government Center, 4554 Lemay Ferry Road. The office will now close to the public at 3:30 p.m. as opposed to 4:30 p.m., though the opening time of 8 a.m. will remain.
Other county government offices were also affected. The West County Government Center, located at 70 Clarkson Wilson Center in Chesterfield, will close its doors permanently after Feb. 27, while the Clayton Government Headquarters, 41 South Central Avenue, and Northwest Crossings, 715 Northwest Plaza Drive, will now close to the public, like South County, at 3:30 p.m. daily.
“Reducing our service hours will allow us to cut those overtime costs. It will allow us to decrease some of our security service costs, and that will be meaningful. To also help our Department of Revenue staff, they will no longer be processing in-person senior tax freeze applications on Fridays … Friday will be reserved for our county employees to go through those applications,” Page said.
Though this is not the only change regarding the senior property tax freeze. A contract with a temporary agency to assist the Department of Revenue in processing the senior property tax freeze applications was canceled as part of the county’s service reductions.
Cuts to services across the county are due to the budget that the County Council passed in December. The council cut approximately $48 million from Page’s proposed budget, which included a $81 million deficit.
“Let’s be clear. These are not cuts that my office wanted to make. The budget that I sent to the County Council would have allowed us to avoid all of these service reductions, services that residents enjoy,” Page said. “I proposed that the council use the (NFL) Rams (relocation) settlement funds to bridge the gap for a year and put a ballot question in front of the voters for an Internet sales tax.”
Per Page, the Internet sales tax, also known as a use tax, would bring the county between $45 million and $75 million, closing “the gap between revenues and expenditures.”
“The council so far has not agreed to put this question in front of the voters. They have said repeatedly that they don’t think the voters are interested in any sort of new taxes,” Page said.
County residents can likely expect the announcement of additional county service reductions in the coming weeks.
