On Wednesday, October 9, a new committee of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen is holding its first hearing. The Special Committee on Special Taxing Districts was formed to look into how the city can provide better oversight of the many community improvement districts (CIDs), transportation development districts (TDDs), and other such entities in the city.
CIDs, TDDs, and other districts undoubtedly need better public oversight. There also needs to simply be fewer of them, oversight or not. Hopefully the second part will be as important as the first part for the committee. An audit of CIDs by the Kansas City auditor in 2021 detailed the many issues with them in Kansas City, and a similar report from this committee would be beneficial.
I will be at this first committee meeting to enter into the record the 2019 report on special taxing districts published by the Show-Me Institute. It is great that the city has formed this committee, and hopefully both better oversight and reduced usage of special taxing districts will be the result.
(As a child of the 80’s, the hardest part of writing this blog post about a special committee studying special taxing districts was avoiding making a bunch of church lady references.)
