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.