notmymayor

Alright, it’s that time in the semester, so I am going to keep things pithy for the next few days. MayorSlay.com is an obnoxious inside joke for the Callow-Rainford-Slay triumvirate, as evidenced by its Tuesday, April 28, 2009 post, “A Virtual City Hall.”

Firstly, it seems that Slay must have a private contractor waiting in the wings to assume many of the City’s building permitting responsibilities; the mention in the Third Inaugural Admonishment [Address] really freaked me out. Francis Slay loves contracting out, but he loves doing it in ways that harm the public interest. (Red light cameras, Information Technology, etc…)

Secondly, how uninformed does Rich Callow think that we are? He writes [as Mayor Slay?], “Geo St. Louis provides a great deal of on-line information about every address, yet it is not possible to return a jury questionnaire on-line to the circuit courts.”

• Barb Geisman = Good
• Mariano Favazza = Bad

And then goes for Mike McMillan’s jugular with his snarky conclusion:

“Somewhere in between good and terrible practice is the License Collector’s office which allows local businesses to file the paperwork to get a business license on-line (good!) – but charges a 2.75 percent (bad!) “convenience fee” to do so. On a $7,500 license, that’s a $200 lug. For much less money, a local business could buy the fee a nice lunch and send it to City Hall in a taxi.“

• Not cute, Rich Callow. Not cute. Makes me want to vomit and go to work for McMillan.

This does raise an important question for me, however, because I wonder how exactly Callow wants to continue funding city services in the absence of fees. After all, Francis Slay’s largest campaign contributor, Rex Sinquefield, wants to eliminate the city’s earnings tax. It seems that the City’s fiscal trainwreck is about to explode during Callow-Rainford-Slay’s third term. Better watch out.