The St. Louis City Board of Alders Legislation and Rules Committee set aside two hours of their 28 day summer vacation to hold in-person plus virtual option hearings on Board Bills to send voters seven Charter Amendments.

The meeting is set for 2 pm Today, Tuesday, July 23rd. The time allotted would appear to be seventeen minutes each Charter Amendment for presentation by Alder sponsor and then pro-con testimony. Absurd. I can see why people would just ignore it.

I have not reviewed all of these Board Bills thoroughly yet but here are some of my notes on these proposed Charter Amendments.

City Counselor Appointment and Removal– Board Bill 60 by Alder Bret Narayan. Changes City Counselor appointment from mayoral appointment to mayoral appointment with consent of Board of Alders. Allows Board of Alders to remove City Counselor for cause with a 2/3 vote.

I do not have strong feelings about this proposal at this time. Doubt Board of Alders will ever have 2/3 vote to do much of anything other than approve corporate welfare. The Charter Commission or Alders should have looked at the whole issue of City Counselor working for Mayor but providing legal counsel to all departments and offices, including other elected offices, and in charge of compliance with State and City Sunshine Laws (cough cough).

Create Transportation Department– Board Bill 61 by Alder Michael Browning. Changes Streets Department to Transportation Department and moves Excise Division (Liquor Licenses) from Public Safety Department to new Transportation Department. Removes engineer qualification for Director of Streets, new Transportation Department.

I oppose this ballot issue because I believe all department heads should have qualifications other than “knows the mayor” and I believe Transportation Director should be an engineer. The removal of engineer qualification looks suspiciously like an effort to help one person move up the ladder. I think the part about removing engineer qualification should be in the ballot language and it’s not.

Creating Office of Public Advocacy– Board Bill 71 by Alder Daniela Velazquez. This whole thing is a hot mess and I will write at length about it later. Well intentioned. Good idea. Poor execution.

Changes Who Decides Hikes in Fines/Fees– Board Bill 72 by Alder Daniela Velazquez. Allows fines and fees to be set by Board of Alders instead of citywide ballot vote. Hard NO.

Changes Election Date and Screws Public Schools– Board Bill 75 by Alder Shane Cohn, Alder Daniela Velazquez, Board President Megan Green. This Charter Amendment would move municipal elections from March and April to August and November. This would leave School Board elections to low turnout and allow groups and persons such as Rex Sinquefield to run the table in electing school privatization slates. Voters defeated this proposal in 2017.

There is a lot more to Board Bill 75 and it’s mostly all bad. Will have more to blog on this later.

Changes name of Board of Alders to City Council– Board Bill 76 by Alder Shane Cohn, Alder Daniela Velazquez, Board President Megan Green. This amendment does a lot of things that would be good- changing pronouns to titles for example. But changing the name of the Board to Council will just lead to confusion and should have been left out. I will write more on this later.

Gives Board of Alders Power to Reorganize City Departments Without Public Vote on Charter Amendments – Board Bill 77 by Alder Alisha Sonnier. Hard NO. Fix the Charter. Board of Alders does not deserve more power to do things poorly.