Tag: st louis

St. Louis Will Lose A Half-Million Dollars In Marijuana Tax Revenue After Failing To Submit Documents To Missouri Officials

The city of St. Louis will lose approximately $500,000 in tax revenue after it failed to submit documents with the Missouri Department of Revenue to collect a voter-approved recreational marijuana tax.

City voters approved a 3 percent tax on recreational marijuana in April. State law would have allowed the city to begin collecting the tax on October 1 if paperwork was filed by June 30.

Bill 139 was passed unanimously by the St. Louis Board of Aldermen last December to ask voters for permission to tax recreational marijuana by 3 percent. The state tax on recreational marijuana was set at 6 percent when Missouri voters approved the initiative last November.

“The City wishes to impose an additional sales tax to support efforts for the residents of the City of St. Louis to address historic inequalities,” the bill stated. “These efforts may include but are not limited to funding access to education, workforce opportunities, and youth engagement.”

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St. Louis mayor wants to ban AR-15s, AK-47s on city streets

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones will introduce new legislation that would ban AR-15s, AK-47s, and similar “military-grade” weapons on city streets.

In a Tuesday morning press conference, Jones announced her intent to introduce new gun safety regulations with support from the Board of Aldermen.

Jones said the legislation would be designed to:

  • Prohibit military-grade weapons on city streets
  • Prevent the transfer or sale of guns to minors
  • Take action on military-grade guns and similar untraceable firearms
  • Prepare St. Louis for the passage of Blair’s Law to ban celebratory gunfire
  • Prohibit anyone convicted of insurrection or hate crimes from having guns in St. Louis

“My daughter was killed with a military-style weapon, which was an AK-47. People of the military know what type of impact those type of weapons do,” said Erica Jones, whose daughter, Whitney, was murdered on Aug. 13, 2015, in the Walnut Park area.

She said Whitney, 24, was the mother of a five-year-old. She was studying to become a nurse and worked two jobs.

“Her oldest sister held her when she took her last words,” Erica Jones said. She said the crime remains unsolved.

“What do you tell a 13-year-old young man who cannot see his mother, he cannot smell her, he cannot touch her?” she said.

Jones was one of many advocates who shared their stories at a listening session hosted by Mayor Jones on Tuesday.

“Gun violence is a plague. And it’s painful touch has stung families across our region,” the mayor said.

She said on average, 1,351 people die from guns in Missouri each year. Jones said this push comes in an effort to tackle gun violence in St. Louis City.

“Gun violence is a public health crisis that impacts families and communities in every neighborhood across our city,” she said. “We’re coming together around a shared vision: A safer, stronger St. Louis that is ready to stand up for our values.”

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‘Atomic Fallout’: Records reveal government downplayed, ignored health risks of St. Louis radioactive waste for decades

For kids like Sandy Mitchell, Ted Theis and Janet Johnson, childhood in the North St. Louis County suburbs in the 1960s and ‘70s meant days playing along the banks or splashing in the knee-deep waters of Coldwater Creek.

They caught turtles and tadpoles, jumped into deep stretches of the creek from rope swings and ate mulberries that grew on the banks.

Their families — along with tens of thousands of others — flocked to the burgeoning suburbs and new ranch style homes built in Florissant, Hazelwood and other communities shortly after World War II. When the creek flooded, as it often did, so did their basements. They went to nearby Jana Elementary School and hiked and biked throughout Fort Belle Fontaine Park.

Growing up, they never knew they were surrounded by massive piles of nuclear waste left over from the war.

Generations of children who grew up alongside Coldwater Creek have, in recent decades, faced rare cancers, autoimmune disorders and other mysterious illnesses they have come to believe were the result of exposure to its waters and sediment.

“People in our neighborhood are dropping like flies,” Mitchell said.

The earliest known public reference to Coldwater Creek’s pollution came in 1981, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency listed it as one of the most polluted waterways in the U.S.

By 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was advising residents to avoid Coldwater Creek entirely. Cleanup of the creek is expected to take until 2038. A federal study found elevated rates of breast, colon, prostate, kidney and bladder cancers as well as leukemia in the area. Childhood brain and nervous system cancer rates are also higher.

“Young families moved into the area,” Johnson said, “and they were never aware of the situation.”

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EPA finds radioactive contamination in more areas of West Lake Landfill

Radioactive waste in the West Lake Landfill is more widespread than previously thought, officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday.

The finding is based on two years of testing at the St. Louis County site, which has held thousands of tons of radioactive waste for decades. An underground “fire” in another area of the landfill threatens to exacerbate the issue, which residents believe is responsible for a host of mysterious illnesses.

Chris Jump, the EPA’s remedial project manager for the site, said the findings don’t change the agency’s planned cleanup strategy or the level of risk the site poses to the surrounding residents. The radioactive waste is still within the footprint of the landfill, she said.

“The site boundaries themselves aren’t expanding, but the area that will need the radioactive protective cover is larger than previously known,” Jump said to a crowd of about 50 Tuesday night at the District 9 Machinists hall in Bridgeton.

The Missouri Independent and MuckRock are partnering to investigate the history of dumping and cleanup efforts of radioactive waste in the St. Louis area.

St. Louis was pivotal to the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, and community members say they’re still suffering. Waste from uranium processing in downtown St. Louis — part of the Manhattan Project — contaminated Coldwater Creek, exposing generations of children who played in the creek and most recently forcing the shutdown of an area elementary school.

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St. Louis mayor plans reparations committee for black residents

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones signed an executive order to establish a volunteer panel that will determine the degree to which black residents of St. Louis have suffered from racism. The stated goal of the committee is to explore the history of “race-based harms” in St. Louis and reveal the “present-day manifestations” created by said history.

As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, Jones came to the conclusion that the panel was needed after a “growing tapestry of equity-based analyses” shed light on the city’s history of violence, segregation, and exploitation that she says has left it as one of the most divided cities in the country.

“I look forward to reviewing this commission’s work to chart a course that restores the vitality of Black communities in our city after decades of disinvestment,” the mayor remarked in a statement. “We cannot succeed as a city if one half is allowed to fail,” she declared.

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“We Are Not the Photo Police” – St. Louis Election Officials Tell Volunteers at Training Session Not to Worry About the New Photo ID Law

On Wednesday, October 19, 2022, there was a training session for Missouri Election Judges. The training was held at the St. Louis Board of Elections Headquarters at 1 PM.

Following the training session several witnesses wrote The Gateway Pundit to share their concern that the election workers will not enforce the new Voter ID law in the state.

The trainers at the session told the workers not to worry about Voter ID adding, “We are not the photo police.”

Missouri passed Voter ID laws this past year.

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Radioactive Waste Found at Missouri Elementary School

There is significant radioactive contamination at an elementary school in suburban St. Louis where nuclear weapons were produced during World War II, according to a new report by environmental investigation consultants.

The report by Boston Chemical Data Corp. confirmed fears about contamination at Jana Elementary School in the Hazelwood School District in Florissant raised by a previous Army Corps of Engineers study.

The new report is based on samples taken in August from the school, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Boston Chemical did not say who or what requested and funded the report.

“I was heartbroken,” said Ashley Bernaugh, president of the Jana parent-teacher association who has a son at the school. “It sounds so cliché, but it takes your breath from you.”

The school sits in the flood plain of Coldwater Creek, which was contaminated by nuclear waste from weapons production during World War II. The waste was dumped at sites near the St. Louis Lambert International Airport, next to the creek that flows to the Missouri River. The Corps has been cleaning up the creek for more than 20 years.

The Corps’ report also found contamination in the area but at much at lower levels, and it didn’t take any samples within 300 feet of the school. The most recent report included samples taken from Jana’s library, kitchen, classrooms, fields and playgrounds.

Levels of the radioactive isotope lead-210, polonium, radium and other toxins were “far in excess” of what Boston Chemical had expected. Dust samples taken inside the school were found to be contaminated.

Inhaling or ingesting these radioactive materials can cause significant injury, the report said.

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Panel rules against church leaders who gave bologna sandwiches to homeless

The city of St. Louis did not violate the First Amendment rights of a Christian pastor and his assistant by threatening to prosecute them for handing out bologna sandwiches to the homeless, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

Pastor Raymond Redlich, vice president of the New Life Christian Evangelical Center, and his assistant, Christopher Ohnimus, were distributing bologna sandwiches and bottles of water to the homeless in October 2018 when they were cited by a police officer for violating a city ordinance regulating the distribution by temporary establishments of potentially hazardous food, such as meat, poultry, eggs or fish.

Although the city opted not to prosecute Redlich and Ohnimus for violating the ordinance, they nonetheless sued the city in federal court saying the ordinance violates their rights of free expression and religious exercise under the First Amendment.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Nanette A. Baker in St. Louis granted the city’s motion to dismiss the complaint on summary judgment last year, finding Redlich and Ohnimus did not prove that their fundamental right to association was at issue.

The two men appealed that ruling to the St. Louis-based Eighth Circuit, arguing at a hearing in June that the enforcement of the ordinance against them interferes with their ability to communicate their message about God’s love and concern for those in need.

In Wednesday’s ruling, a three-judge panel ruled government regulation of “inherently expressive” conduct – such as distributing sandwiches to the homeless – does not necessarily violate the First Amendment if the regulation furthers “an important or substantial government interest” unrelated to the suppression of free expression.

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St. Louis preparing to sue Hyundai and Kia over rampant car thefts in the city

Car thefts have skyrocketed in St. Louis in recent months, with city leadership threatening lawsuits against Kia and Hyundai for an alleged defect that makes certain makes of the cars easier to steal.

“Our drivers probably get about five of these things a day. Just Kias and Hyundais getting stolen,” tow truck driver Mark Hartmann told KMOV last week of thefts in the city. 

Auto thefts in St. Louis have doubled this year, according to KMOV. In July alone, the city averaged about 21 Kia and Hyundai theft incidents each day. That number increased to 23 thefts each day in August, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch previously reported. 

In August, St. Louis leaders threatened to sue Hyundai and Kia, demanding the car companies address a defect that allegedly makes stealing vehicles made before 2021 easier to steal. KMOV reported last week that plans to sue the carmakers over the city’s spike in auto thefts are still in the works.  

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900 Missouri residents who ‘snitched’ on lockdown rule-breakers fear retaliation after details leaked online

Hundreds of Missouri residents have had their personal details shared online after the publication of a document that recorded reports made against those flouting lockdown measures.

Some people are now concerned that they will face consequences for ‘snitching’ on coronavirus rulebreakers in St Louis County, Missouri.

It comes after St Louis County authorities called on people to report businesses and persons not following statewide lockdown measures, last month.

The names and addresses of almost 900 people were shared on Facebook to name-and-shame them after authorities had released the data following a media request under the state’s ‘Sunshine Law’, which requires authorities to release information submitted to public agencies.

“I’m not only worried about COVID, I’m worried about someone showing up at my door, showing up at my workplace or me getting fired for doing what is right,’ said a woman named Patricia, who had made a report, to KSDK news.

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