Yes, Your Vote Really Can Matter!

Yesterday was election day, and thankfully now all the mailings and annoying TV ads can stop. There were some surprisingly close votes yesterday, including close calls for long time incumbents Russ Carnahan and Charlie Dooley, but the closest race I personally voted on was for the 24th district State Senate between Barbara Fraser and John Lamping. The Post article has Lamping winning by 239 votes, but at the St. Louis County election site they have added up some additional votes and his win dropped to just 172 votes from among 60,000 votes cast (30,384 versus 30,212) for a winning margin of 0.28%. There were also 74 write in votes who could almost have made the difference in this contest. So for anyone who thinks their vote did not matter you are wrong! If just a few hundred folks had decided not to vote the election could have gone the other way.

As for the results, I was happy to see both hotel taxes (Clayton and Richmond Heights) were defeated, I was surprised to see how close the "puppy mill" vote was, and I was surprised to see how large of a victory there was for the "earnings tax" proposition. Now that Prop A has passed the city earnings taxes can actually come up to a vote next April, and that will determine whether the city income tax actually changes or not. Since the votes from the city were strongly against the proposition (41,712 against and 26,423 for it), the tax will likely remain anyway, so it should have little effect on the St. Louis city income tax. It will just mean one more issue to vote on every 5 years for the city residents. I also found the school district votes interesting. The Hazelwood, Pattonville and Lindbergh school issues all passed, but Mehlville's failed and Kirkwood did a smart move in breaking their vote into two issues. Kirkwood had said if only the school improvement bond issue passed they would not need to raise taxes, but if the athletic facilities one passed they would need to raise them, so the bond issue for school improvements passed but the other did not. Did they really think residents would be willing to give themselves a tax increase for better athletic facilities in these tough times? If they had been lumped together as one bond issue it most likely would have failed so it was a good thing they split it up as they did. We did not have a vote in the Ladue district since we already had one in April of this year. Our enrollment in the school district keeps growing, so it is definitely good that we have more facilities where we can expand.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trying out the L'Ecole Culinaire Presentation Room restaurant

Image
We had been seeing the ads for the restaurant at L'Ecole Culinaire and since we live so close by we thought we would try it out. We had always enjoyed dining out at cooking or hotel schools like the CHIC in Chicago and the Statler at Cornell where we went to college. Since we still love to go out and eat here in St. Louis , we ventured over to their restaurant on the first day they were open for lunch. The first thing we noticed is that they do not have much parking! They really need to let patrons know where they are supposed to park. The restaurant itself is small but very well attended. There was one fellow who kept straightening all the centerpieces and place settings on the tables, and we always saw one or two student workers milling about. The lunch menu was small and the choices did not appear overly "gourmet". The special of the day was a bison burger stuffed with cheese, and other choices picked by my group included a club sandwich, a "margherita" pi...
Read more

BMI & BMR Calculator (Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate)

Image
My wife has been researching type 2 diabetes and recently checked a book out of the library which included a body mass index (BMI) chart much like the one pictured here. Whereas it is fairly easy to follow, I, of course, think it must be converted to an online calculator! However, when I checked the Internet, there were already a billion of them so I had to make one that was different. So my lovely BMI BMR calculator accepts either inches or centimeters for your height and pounds or kilograms for your weight and calculates not only your BMI, but also your BMR (basal metabolic rate) which determines how many calories you should consume! So I made a spiffy "all in one" healthy body indicator calculator which not only determines how underweight or overweight you are, but also tells you how many calories you should consume to maintain or improve your ideal weight. 
Read more

Not all Frosted Window Films are the same!

Image
We live in an older home with a lot of issues and one of them concerns our back door to our patio from our sunroom. The door has double paned glass on it, but unfortunately the seal has broken so you can see moisture collect inside of it. We decided the easiest way to "remedy" the problem was to cover the window with some "frosted" film so we did not have to see the moisture condensing between the panes. But the question was, what film? There are a bunch of them available so we had to select something to try on the door. The first place we tried was our nearby Lowe's store which had a bunch of Gila brand film. We selected what seemed like the typical adhesive based door sized  film that cost about $25 after tax. We thought it could not be that hard to put up and look nice on our door. So one day my wife ran out and purchased it at Lowe's and we commenced to install it on our door window. We made our own soapy water solution and followed the directions...
Read more