A couple of local items
How convoluted can one issue be for a city? Sometime back...a long time back...the Maplewood city council reached an agreement with Quik Trip to allow the company to move its station to the corner of Manchester and Big Bend. It is currently located a bit south on Big Bend. Conflict arose when some in the school district became adamently opposed since the high school is just west of the intersection. Now some residents vow to put this issue on the ballot and let voters decide.
Frankly, this is not a ballot worthy question, all it will do is encourage anyone who has a future beef with local officials to petition others allow voters to decide about anything. Gridlock. Approving or dismissing municipal development is for the locally elected people. Don't like something? Vote out the council.
As if red light cameras, cameras in stores and cameras placed on city streets aren't keeping us watched every moment of the day, now we learn that many St Louis area police cars have cameras attached to the roof line light bar and are randomly scanning thousands of cars and license plates. yours is probably one of them. The argument in favor of this action is that it helps solve crime and get criminals off the street. I'm one of those who love having those who break into homes and cars arrested, but really, this type of surveillance should make all of us uncomfortable. It's intrusive and violates our individual privacy. But sadly, it's already part of the culture and there's no going back.
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