To the editor:

In 1876, the city of St. Louis decided to exclude itself from St. Louis County due to lack of revenue generation in the county and cost to the city.

Now that the county has grown and flourished and the city has exhausted raising more revenue from within city borders, the city wants to push its costs over onto the county via a city-county merger. So the city sees the county as a cash cow. But why should county residents be made to bail out the city?

Plans are being laid to put the city-county merger issue on the ballot as soon as August 2014.

The people and organizations supporting a merger are lobbying for this issue to be placed on a statewide ballot, so the voices of local citizens can be drowned out by a slick media campaign pitched to out-of-area voters who won’t be affected by a merger and don’t know the true issues.

So if you do not want your taxes going up, county crime statistics rising, property values decreasing and insurance rates increasing, check out

for more information, including actions to take.