February 16, 2024

My neighborhood is changing. In just the six years that we have lived in our suburb after fleeing St. Louis, Missouri for a more conservative area that supports our conservative values, towering apartment buildings are being built everywhere. There have been dozens of new car washes, chain restaurants, and big businesses put in or approved.

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During 2020, panhandlers started appearing in the area. This has grown so common that the local government had to recently pass a bill outlawing it for the safety of pedestrians and drivers because the panhandlers were obstructing traffic.

While conservative Americans have continuously expressed outrage at political movements that seek to urbanize suburban areas, uni-party elitists in Washington have pressed to globalize every aspect of our lives.

Now, I believe that these officials do deserve plenty of blame, but unfortunately, local officials are a driving force behind this modern crusade to turn every area into a city — complete with liquor stores on every corner.

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I report for my local paper. It is run by a former writer for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. She left that “prestigious” paper when they went corporate years ago.

Writing for a locally owned paper and reporting on my local beats was supposed to be a nice change of pace from my other political writing job, but after months of attending Board of Aldermen meetings, I’ve learned that, just like everything else, all of this starts closer to home.

I have three beats. One is my municipality, which I love. The mayor and board all get along and pass pretty much everything that is proposed with little to no opposition. It seems very kosher, but that is because virtually none of our 60,000 residents in my suburb attend the meetings.

Everyone is too busy to come and see what their city government is actually doing with their land and their money. Most of the time, the only people who show up to these public meetings are individuals who are invited for awards.

Recently our local library closed for renovations. It was moved to a failing mall as a temporary option, but our Mayor hinted at the last meeting that this may become a permanent location. He presented the situation as a positive endeavor, so my husband and I went to see the mall library room. It was so small it looked like it barely held a few dozen books.

My husband is furious. We’re both concerned with what is happening around us. We also want to know what the city is going to do with the old library location, should the temporary mall spot become permanent. Are they going to host illegal immigrants there? Will it be torn down to build yet another big gray apartment complex that looks like a prison? We don’t know. And neither do any of the other residents.