South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

Stenger’s ‘on-the-fence style of leadership’ a failure for 6th District

To the editor:

County Councilman Steve Stenger’s on-the-fence style of leadership has been a failure for the 6th District.

His failure to respond and help concerned citizens has been repeated many times. Following the contributions to his county executive election campaign clearly identifies this certified public accountant’s interests.

• The Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, and the National Church Residences, or NCR, development on Telegraph Road — Stenger was a driving force helping NCR in the HUD venture into Oakville.

Concerned Oakville voters’ repeated calls for help and their presentations at numerous County Council meetings were ignored by Stenger. Accepting campaign contributions from the attorney who represented NCR showed Stenger was not on the fence. He looked out for the interest of NCR, not the Oakville taxpayer.

• Tesson Ferry Library relocation — Stenger again was on the fence. There were multiple reasons for Stenger supporting the taxpayer and not ignoring them, including:

The library board had a choice of spending $16 million on a new library or spending $500,000 for a complete rehab at Tesson Ferry. Although Steve Stenger is a CPA, a savings of $15.5 million didn’t register.

A large number of people expressed their opposition to the relocation and obvious huge tax waste. Stenger failed to return numerous phone calls from Green Park Mayor Bob Reinagel and many other concerned library users — nor would he attend meetings held to stop this waste, as he was too busy.

Why wasn’t Steve interested in helping? He stated he was on the fence on this issue. By accepting a $5,500 campaign contribution from McBride/Berra, the company interested in selling the overpriced property to the St. Louis County Library, he was clearly not serving the interests of the taxpayers or the library users.

• St. Louis City-St. Louis County merger — another bad idea.

Stenger has been unable to express a clear opinion of the proposed merger. Stenger is on the fence once again.

This is not a position a leader takes so many times.

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