Wednesday, April 29, 2009

The Austin Model-Polar Opposite of St. Louis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3fUkvuvFHg&feature=channel_page

Clicking on the above video will take you to its YouTube site. You can also click on the headline to be taken to the video. Sorry, embedding of this video has been disabled, but I assure you its worth watching.

Submitted for your approval (sorry Rod) a commercial from candidate for Mayor of Austin, Texas Brewster McCracken. In this spot, the candidate takes an objective look at the CITY of St. Louis and how it went from boomtown to laughingstock. His message? Don't let what happened to St. Louis happen to Austin.

McCracken is spot on. The CITY of St. Louis has been allowed to die because of petty politics, a complete lack of vision for the region, and denying its residents essential services like well paved streets, decent schools, and functioning public transit.

As you can imagine, the locals here are up in arms about this shot at St. Louis. They're hurt, and I don't blame them. Its harsh, but its completely true.

St. Louis is the poster child of how to kill a city's soul, drive the people and businesses you need to thrive to the suburbs (where I live and could not be happier), and have city and county leadership spending too much time at the baseball stadium (with the vacant lot next door that was supposed to be a multi million dollar shopping/office/residential mecca in time for July's All Star Game) and not enough time looking around to see what a mess they've made or thinking of realistic ways to improve the quality of life in the region.

I don't know anything about Brewster McCracken. Wait, I do know ONE thing. He's got a better view of the sorry state of St. Louis than the people running our region do. Maybe our local leaders will take a minute, watch this commercial, and ponder what they've done to the once grand CITY of St. Louis.

Perhaps during the seventh inning stretch?

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