You Paid For It!

["Wildfox" Meta S. Foxx]

I thought it would be a good idea to bring this up because it's one of the best parts of one of my news channels here in town. It's a segment called You Paid For It and it investigates questionable government spending within the St. Louis area. Here are a few stories I wanted to share with the group:

www.fox2now.com/news/youpaidforit/ktvi-upaid-for-it-trees-072710,0,3850697.story

Now this story here hits me close to home because I myself am a tree worker for the municipality that I'm employed with. It amazes me that took the City of St. Louis two years to respond to residents about their city owned trees that did in fact look dangerous. Usually in my city, we're up to date on our trees and we respond to resident calls about any city owned tree quickly. We're a small municipality I know, but even as big a city as St. Louis is, you would think the Parks, Recreation, and Forestry director would at least get a crew to assess their trees, right?

www.fox2now.com/news/youpaidforit/ktvi-ypfi-jennings-school-board-raises-072610,0,4136927.story

Don't you just love school districts that don't care about the schools at all? I mean, who the hell hires top administrators and pays them large amounts of money while at the same time they eliminate eighteen teaching positions? That makes no sense! And the state has been on them for about nearly two years and they keep increasing top admin's pay. The school district is partially accredited as it is which means their students aren't getting the attention they need.

In case you're wondering, this does yield some positive results, too:
www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-ypfi-results-mehlville-rockhill-080210,0,7830043.story

Let me know how you guys like this because if I find more stories on YPFI that I find interesting, I'll be glad to share.

[Sinful Orchid]

I wish they would do something about these trees here. I have ten trees in my front yard...yeah, they are still alive, but half of them are leaning, so when we have heavy wind it the trees make me nervous. We already have one fallen already a couple of years ago (this was in the backyard and there's about 15 or 20 back there).

["Wildfox" Meta S. Foxx]

You should get a hold of a good tree service company and have them assess the trees. If the trees are not in the tree lawn (i.e., the lawn between the sidewalk and street curb), the city or state or whoever is responsible for street tree forestry cannot do anything about it. The trees in your front yard are on your property, so they are your responsibility unfortunately. Believe me, I've been stopped by many residents asking me about trees in their yard, and I always have to tell them that trees on their property are their responsibility and that we only take care of city planted trees on the curbside lawns.

["Wildfox" Meta S. Foxx]

Here are some more You Paid For It stories from my home area.

www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-you-paid-for-it-tennis-courts-20110822,0,1699409.story

This one involves a cash strapped school district in St. Charles County, Missouri, who charged taxpayers $902K to renovate their tennis courts. THEIR TENNIS COURTS!!! And the sad part is they had the option to take a less costly affect, at only $233K, but one board member decided to take the most costly option. I just love it when schools put their athletics ahead of their academics. Just goes to show how low our school systems have seriously gotten.


www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-you-paid-for-it-state-control-over-troubled-school-districts-20110825,0,6935971.story

Oh, this one's a good one, too, on how the state of Missouri likes to run public education. I should note that I was a product of the St. Louis Public School system years before it lost state accreditation. Since I've been out of high school, I have watched helplessly as the SLPS system slowly went downhill. Some time ago, the state of Missouri took over running SLPS, as well as another school district in St. Louis County that is also struggling. What you have here in both cases is a three member state-appointed school board that takes over from the elected school board. This three member team then spends billions of dollars in taxpayer money to help in the turnaround of these districts...a turnaround that yields nothing in terms of results. The sad new here is this has been done before. Another struggling school district in St. Louis County had this same approach taken on it, and after years of trying and billions of dollars spent, guess what!? That school system is no more...those students have to go to school in another district. So what exactly is going on in the state that's raising so many questions and giving little to no answers? No sense in asking the perosn in charge of this. It takes her ten seconds to even come up with an answer. Yeah, something's fishy about this.


One more story for you that involves the city of Collinsville, Illinois making a very expensive land purchase without getting said land appraised:

www.fox2now.com/news/youpaidforit/ktvi-collinsville-land-deal-you-paid-072511,0,3065337.story

This one could be filed under World's Dumbest as well. I mean, c'mon. Why in the hell would you buy any piece of land without having it appraised first? That's just basic common sense. The city is spending $480K of taxpayer money on 30 acres of land adjacent to its golf course (that's about $16K per acre). That's pretty pricy! Oh, and watch the video on this one to see what exactly the land looks like. When you see it, you too will be wonder who the hell was smoking what when they decided this was a good idea.



Gotta love wasteful government spending, don't you?