CITY OF ST PETERS, MISSOURI FIASCO

COMMENTARY:

Adolphus Busch and many of his friends should be considered heroes for trying to protect the City of St Peters taxpayer community from the folly of some of its elected leaders. Busch and others have, on numerous occasions in the past, at considerable expense to themselves, warned the City regarding the lack of merit of the Premier 370 (Lakeside) project. Mayor Pagano, according to a recent Journal letter from Mr Busch, sought to seek 41 million dollars from Great Rivers and the County, apparently to bail the City out of “questionable” policies perpetuated by St Peters officials and their advisors, past and present!

Mayor Pagano and his allies on the Board of Aldermen have, according to the Busch letter, voted to deny their citizens participation in the traditional August tax holiday, giving as a reason the City’s heavy legal expenses in defending the Premier 370 lawsuit. In this case the City has been reversed by a Kansas City judge and, according to Mayor Pagano, has spent $300,000 of taxpayer money on that! Further significant legal expense has been incurred as a result of a guilty verdict and a million dollar plus award to a citizen in an unrelated matter. It would appear that hard-earned taxpayer money is literally flying out of the City treasury at breakneck speed. It looks, at this point, like millions more is slated to go down the tubes.

Taxpayers should be outraged and should demand accountability. With this sort of political leadership both elected and appointed in St Peters, it looks like the “lawyers full employment act” is in full swing and the Missouri Sunshine Laws have been buried! Mayor Pagano and his “buddies” are obviously “in” over their heads.

Click on the link below for excerpts from the Adolphus Busch letter to the Journal and links to the complete articles :

...At a meeting on March 25, called by Mayor Pagano himself, the mayor made several demands of the county and Great Rivers Habitat Alliance. "Back out of the TIF lawsuit or we will place the blame for the cancellation of the upcoming tax holiday on you." We wondered why the mayor would penalize his residents for his inability to resolve an issue.

But, much to our surprise, the mayor made an even more astonishing proposal. If the city were paid $41 million, it would consider walking away from the entire Premier 370 project... (end of excerpt)

Here’s a link to the complete letter: http://stcharlesjournal.stltoday.com/articles/2008/05/05/opinions/sj2tn20080503-0504stc-busch0.ii1.txt
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Another article in the Journal gives more detail. You can read this article by going to the following link:

http://stcharlesjournal.stltoday.com/articles/2008/05/04/news/sj2tn20080503-0504stc-land0.ii1.txt