Letter to the Editor

To the editor:

It appears to me that the effort to force a Board of Freeholders to convene as an alternative to Better Together’s effort to amend our Constitution is like fighting for a road when your opponent is taking your ground.

If you go to BetterTogetherSTL.com, you’ll see that they have dismissed the Board of Freeholders as insufficient to address the changes they wish to impose.

I think it is a safe assumption that whatever wording is proposed for amending Missouri’s Constitution, it will nullify the Board of Freeholders.

Once the Constitution is changed, then future changes to St. Louis are made much easier. For now, their initiative allows us to keep our fire departments.

But the Better Together website acknowledges that that may be temporary. If the merger of Louisville, Kentucky, teaches us anything, it is that the same rationale for merging municipalities applies to fire departments. Ten years after merging the city and county of Louisville, the fire departments merged.

Louisville also has only one school district. I know we are being told that we can keep our school districts. But what happens when the same argument put forth for lowering crime statistics in St. Louis city by merging it with the county is put forth to raise St. Louis Public Schools’ accreditation scores? And why should taxpayers pay thousands of dollars for multiple superintendents, who are the highest paid tax funded salary in any school district, when one school district with one superintendent could save money?

I agree that cooperation through recommendations by a Board of Freeholders is a better way to improve our city and county.

I just don’t see how that will happen if Better Together succeeds at changing the Missouri Constitution.

Michael Peters
Crestwood