A proposal has been laid out that would give discounts on things like parking or admission at the city’s major tax-funded attractions to city residents. For instance, the Zoo would offer discounted parking to all city residents…except for those that live close enough to walk, who get nothing we guess. Maybe we can give them a balloon with a zebra on it or something?

Gloria Wessels recently suggested that four of the five institutions funded by the zoo-museum district offer discounts on parking, concessions and special exhibits to visitors who live in the taxing district. If necessary, those discounts could be funded through price increases for visitors who live outside the district, she said.

“I’d like to see city and county residents get a break,” said Wessels, one of four city residents on the district’s eight-member board. “And I think it would make people (from outside the district) more aware of what city and county taxpayers provide.”

The zoo, of course, hates the idea. Not because they don’t want to give tax-payers a break, but because they don’t want to have to check your ID.

Jeffrey Bonner, the zoo’s president and chief executive, said he didn’t think it was practical to offer district residents a discount for parking, which costs $12, because it would take too much time for lot attendants to check drivers licenses for proof of residency.

“We already have cars lined up more than 100 deep,” he said.

…but you have time to take their money?

The upshot here is that for the five tax-funded attractions in town, you might, if passed, be able to get a slight discount on a few things the next time you go to one of these things, which is, lets be honest, close to never. Guys that tip $5′s instead of $1′s at the Hustler Club get better perks than this. Free parking is nice guys, but if you want to keep people in the city, you need to be a little more like the Hustler Club and find a way to give us whatever the equivalent of a handjob in a gross East-Side bathroom stall next to a guy doing coke is. …Maybe that’s free Zoo parking and a free ice cream cone.

City living: Ever so slightly more worth the crime, horrible schools and taxes!

via STLToday

The few of you that voted decided that the St. Louis City earning tax should be kept around yesterday night, in what ended up being a decisive landslide approving Proposition E. Meanwhile, in his skull-shaped island lair, Mayor Slay tapped his fingers together in pleasure because he would continue to reap the roughly $150 million dollar revenue stream the income tax generates (or, probably more precisely, he wiped the sweat off his brow, high-fived his buddies, then went home to rub one out and get a good night’s sleep for the first time in a few months, but the super villan in his lair sounded more awesome).

Mayor Slay has been out there campaigning for keeping the tax in recent weeks since it’s obviously a large part of the city’s budget, which is already bleeding, and with this vote the city (figuratively of course, since only the old people voted) has decided to keep the tax in place, which is the right move. Even Slay admits the earnings tax is something that needs to be phased out, but right now, in the midst of probable fireman layoffs, isn’t the best time.

Eventually, Slay has said, the city needs to come up with alternative sources of revenue to replace the earnings tax. Ideas that have been floated included higher sales or property taxes, a tax on nonprofits, and the city entering St. Louis County as a municipality or the two sharing services. Preserving the tax this spring will give the city more time to adopt other revenue sources, he said.

Oh, he’s just being modest. Those little revenue ideas will amount to nothing once the St. Louis scientists finish work on the machine that turns discarded fake hair in to gold! The city streets will be littered with gold! …now if only we could turn blood, homeless guy piss, and general dispair in to something we can spend and we’d be a city on the top of a few lists finally. List’s like “Fanciest Places to Get Herpes From a Girl Name Cherise and Then Get Yelled at By a Large Ugly Woman Holding a Sign With A Chopped Up Fetus on Your Way in to Planned Parenthood a Few Day Later”

Hello tourism!

Results via KSDK, and quote from St. Louis Business Journal

St. Louis’ 250th birthday isn’t until 2014, but that’s just around the corner when you are planning a big ass quarter-millenia bash!

Missouri History Museum president Robert Archibald is leading the planning group preparing for the 2014 commemoration. Archibald says the goal is to organize a commemoration that includes the entire region.

Alright! Lets all get together and celebrate the fact that our home will be 250 years old. We may not see 300, but that’s ok, we’re old and old people/cities can do all kinds of crazy stuff like being #1 in violent crime, #2 in Chlamydia, #12 in Gonorrhea and #1 in hairy backed people deciding to wear mesh shirts in public places. People still get grossed out and w0n’t touch us, but they’ll just pat us on the arm and say “Oh that’s ok. How long has it been since you’ve been changed?”

He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the working name for the celebration is “STL250,” though that may change.

“STL250″?! That’s what you’ve come up with? …oh it may change? Why is that? Maybe because all you did was take the widely used city initials and slam the age against it’s ass. If it took you longer than 1 second to think of that then we aren’t holding a lot of hope that this celebration will be any more than a Fair St. Louis in February. Hey, do you think we can get Sammy Hagar to play the event? What about Sheryl Crow or Dr. Zhivegas? They never play here. What a treat that would be. Maybe take this whole idea way outside the box and put the Arch on the logo! In fact, where calling it:

Lets’ all remember to come back here and check to see how close we got sometime around mid-2013. We don’t have a lot of hope that we nailed the slogan, but we have high hopes for the all too simple and obvious logo.

Who knows, maybe this will turn out to be a good time. We hear they’re pulling out all the stops and plan on renting out Chicago so we can have the party somewhere nice.

Source: the AP via KMOV

What?! It happens!  Sometimes people move to the city.  Maybe they are athletes or maybe they just want to fill their Foursquare feed with more hipster places…either way, it happens.

Here are some tips from Punching Kitty skewed towards people from the area that are moving to the city. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

10. If you called it Missou-rah, that’s fine. Stop now though.

9. We’d like to say “Get rid of your truck.” but we can’t. Lots of people have them, though we aren’t sure why.

8. If you’re from out west, this is a black guy:

They’re cool, so you be too.

7. Hey, nice trendy neighborhood! …Guess what though, 6 months ago an old lady was shot so someone could steal her food stamps 2 blocks away from your fancy place. No matter how many tapas restaurants you have in walking distance, it all St. Louis. You want to be an uppity little bitch about your neighborhood? Move to Ladue. Otherwise, don’t compare neighborhoods you don’t know about. City veterans hate that.

6. Cardinal games are great when the “trip” home is all of 10 minutes max.

5. You want to eat a restaurant? Tons of options. You want to go to a grocery store? Your options are too ghetto or too fancy. The county still has us beat on this one.

4. This is an example of two dudes kissing. It doesn’t happen all the time, but if you wander by Manchester & Sarah on a Saturday night, we don’t want you to be surprised.

Again, they’re cool, so you be too.

Click through the jump to read the top 3!

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A recent opinion piece posted in the Post Dispatch recently is making the rounds. The piece, written by UMSL professor Charles D. Schmitz is entitled “St. Louis is a world-class city” it’s a well-written rah-rah piece that someone from another town might brush off as self-aggrandizing, it makes some pretty cogent points.

The focus of the piece is one major issue: St. Louis City should swallow St. Louis County. Schmitz ran the data as if that was the case and came up with the following:

- St. Louis would suddenly fly from 53rd to the 7th biggest city in the US. Seventh!

- Including the county in all metrics and our high crime rate drops to below the national average.

- Same with our currently high dropout rate and shittastic (our word, not his) schools. Adding in the country and we peak above the national average.

In the world we live in, our failure to do this simple act will relegate us to the ash heap of history. On the other hand, merging the city and county into a “city” as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, will increase our status, bring us unimaginable opportunities and change the perception that we are a third-rate city with a rank of 53 to our deserved lofty ranking of seven.

You can’t deny the data points here, adding the County to the city limits seems like a great idea from the city perspective…but its going to be crazy difficult to get the county to go along with this.

Let me put it to you this way. If you were an old crack head with no education and someone said “Wouldn’t it be awesome if you were banging that younger, attractive, but kinda prude chick over there?” Of course it would! No brainer. …not a great thing for that chick though. It might turn out great, but just try to convince her of that now.

The free ride might be over for St. Louis city residents who have been living the good life with “free” trash pick up.

On Wednesday, city leaders released a proposed budget that includes a provision for homeowners to pay $8 a month for trash services. The city said the move would raise $10 million in the next budget.

City leaders claim that many county residents currently pay for trash service. In some communities, trash collection costs homeowners up to $20 a month.

…and do those county residents also have to give 1% of their income over to their local government every year? Ok, great. Douchebagsayswhat?

We here at Punching Kitty are all for the city relieving it’s monetary woes, but potentially picking up less trash because someone didn’t pay their bill is a slipper slope to Detroit. Make your money, but keep picking up all the trash you can as often as you can. You accidentally compact a bum? Eh, it happens.

Also, maybe trash pickup shouldn’t be all that much of a focus right now. Things seem to be going pretty good there. Oh by the way I drove past four kids in the street at 11am on a Tuesday being taught how to hunt for food by a ferrel dog, but yeah, lets make sure that trash pick up is making the bank.

via KSDK