SierraScape October 2018 - April 2019
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by Henry Robertson
Energy Committee Chair

The St Louis Blues thought Creve Coeur Lake Memorial Park would be the perfect place for their new practice facility last year. With four rinks and parking for 800 cars, they'd make it available for youth hockey teams — a public (more or less) recreational facility. They might have got away with it, too, if the National Park Service hadn't pointed out that indoor ice rinks aren't for "outdoor recreation" and so didn't qualify for federal funds. Open space is precious to us, but some people only see cheap land ripe for development. All too often local officials are eager to side with developers. Once lost, a park is gone for good.

If you're a St Louis County resident, you have a chance to protect the County's 71 parks with your vote. The County Council voted unanimously in August to put an amendment to the County Charter on the November ballot. If it passes by a simple majority, any future attempts to sell or otherwise dispose of park land for non-park purposes, or to put it to commercial use by a lease, will have to be approved by a public vote. Because it's an amendment to the Charter, the County's constitution, the Council won't be able to repeal it or water it down without another public vote.

We are grateful to the Council, and especially Chairman Sam Page who guided it through, for giving us this voice. Similar charter amendments passed in St Louis City in 2007 after BJC hospitals tried to take out a 99-year lease on a corner of Forest Park, and in Olivette in 2014 when Warson Park was threatened with development. But those amendments were resisted by the cities, forcing citizens to put them on the ballot by petition drives.

This ballot proposition started out as a petition effort too. The Open Space Council took the lead, convening an assembly that included Sierra Club, Missouri Coalition for the Environment, the Audubon Society, former County Parks officials and other parks advocates. Great Rivers Environmental Law Center helped draft the language. It was a great relief not to have to go through the long, arduous and expensive signature-gathering process. In St Louis and Olivette these Parks Protection Amendments passed with over 60% of the vote. And neither city has even tried to put a development scheme in a park since they passed. They work as a deterrent, without frequent, contested elections.

County voters, you have one more reason to go to the polls November 6!