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