ShareThe numbers are in.
We ran a 15 day poll on our website, promoting it through Facebook and Twitter, to see what options people might consider to fund the budget shortfall which is impacting St. Louis County parks operation. When the poll started, the parks were in imminent threat of closing January 1.
By the [...]

Share(The following is not an official editorial view of the River Hills Traveler but that of Jo only.)
By Jo Schaper
This week, according to a short, unattributed story on STL Today, the city of Valley Park has expressed interest in taking over ownership of Simpson Park, which is within the city limits.
Few details have been [...]

ShareBecause our focus is usually elsewhere, Traveler isn’t often concerned with the ins and outs of St. Louis County politics. Since the St. Louis County parks issue is at its heart a budget issue, we focused some effort to understand it.
Jo found this explanatory story by Paul Hampel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch/STL [...]

ShareBy Jo Schaper
The St. Louis County Council submitted legislation to approve a compromise budget December 6, which would allow the parks threatened with closure in 2012 to remain open, and reduce the number of employee layoffs from 173 to 40. Other service cutbacks, such as closing a satellite government center, and cutting back [...]

ShareIt’s a fact that Don Corrigan of the Webster-Kirkwood Times, the South County Times, and probably more publications, is known to Traveler staff. After all, we carry his nature books: Show Me Natural Wonders and Show Me Nature’s Wrath. We’re entirely separate publications, but in these days, newsprint people need to stick together.
In [...]

SharePosted December 21
The St. Louis County Parks closure proposal has moved to a new phase, that of finding funding, and I’ve started a new Traveler Links page. And after the first three weeks, the old one had gotten unwieldy, to say the least. Time to link to the old, and start a new one. [...]