Ald. Donna Baringer

Blight Me!

 A politically-connected rehabber scores a 10-year property tax break by expanding his law offices.

  

Joseph V. Neill’s law office on Hampton Avenue in June 2011. In May, 16th-Ward Ald. Donna Baringer called for the property to be blighted, making it eligible for a 10-year tax abatement.

first published in the Journal of Decomposition, Aug. 8, 2012

Attorney Joseph V. Neill, a member of the St. Louis police pension board appointed by Mayor Francis Slay, will receive up to a 10-year tax abatement for rehabbing his law office on Hampton Avenue, according to a bill filed in the Board of Aldermen.

On May 22, an ordinance introduced  by16th-Ward Ald. Donna Baringer blighted Neill’s property, thereby creating a redevelopment area.  Under the law, blighting the property for redevelopment is in the  “interest of the public health, safety, morals and general welfare of the people of the city.”

In this case, blighting is also in the interest of the property owner,  JVN & Company, a limited liability corporation set up by Neill in 2009, which also includes four other attorneys that practice law at 5201 Hampton.

Baringer defends her legislation by saying that it is for the common good.

“The 16th Ward’s business district is 50 years old and in need of assistance for the deteriorating buildings,” Baringer told the Journal of Decomposition. “Joe Neill  has been active in our neighborhood for many years and is liked and respected. I took this piece of legislation before the St. Louis [Hills] Neighborhood Association before introducing it, and they had voted in favor of it.”

Records on file with the St. Louis Assessor’s Office  show JVN & Company  paid $7,440.33 in annual property taxes in November 2011. Under the terms of the proposed abatement, the commercial property will be frozen at its pre-improved assessed value  of  $84,100 for the next decade.  

“It’s not like we’re not paying anything,” says Neill. “We’ll be paying, a substantial amount of taxes, whatever the real estate taxes were before. We did a gut rehab on the place. We made substantial improvements to it. Basically, we took what was an eyesore and it’s now going to be a nice looking building. That’s the purpose of tax abatement – not to penalize somebody for taking something that’s an eyesore and making it into a better product.”

To accomplish their goal, Neill says he and the other lawyers pooled their money to buy the building through JVN & Company,  the limited liability corporation he formed. When finished, the plan is to lease the office space back to themselves from the corporation. Neill estimates that the exterior work could possibly be completed within two weeks.

The expanded law offices will replace a hodgepodge of storefronts in the 5200 block of Hampton. “There were four or five different storefronts,” says Neill. “There was stucco, there was tile, there was brick, there was wood.  When we’re done, it’s going to be a uniform front of brick.”

Neill says he considers his trusteeship of the police pension a civic duty. Moreover, he sees no conflict of interest between his serving at the behest of the mayor on the pension board since 2006, and being granted a tax abatement by City Hall. “I’ve never talked to the mayor about this abatement and I don’t think the mayor has any input on it,” says Neill. “It’s an aldermanic thing.”

Besides Neill, the mayor also appointed Tom Stoff to the board of trustees of the St. Louis Police Retirement  System.  Stoff has worked as an aide to incumbent city treasurer Larry Williams, who is bowing out after more than 30 years in office. William’s leave-taking comes in the wake of federal charges issued last year against  Fred W. Robinson, a city Treasury employee accused of having a no-show job.

The seven-member police pension board also includes the president of the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners, the assistant city comptroller, and three representatives from the police department.

Control of the police pension fund has long been a contentious issue between Slay and the St. Louis Police Officers Association, the labor organization that represents the majority of city cops. Voters will likely decide in November on whether to take control of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department away from the state and give it to the city. In the past, the police union has opposed the change. The push to get the measure on the ballot was spearheaded by an A Safer Missouri, an advocacy group bankrolled by right-wing billionaire Rex Sinquefield.

Neill is no stranger to public service or the controversy that sometimes accompanies it. The late Gov. Mel Carnahan appointed him to the St. Louis Election Board in 1994. He held the post until 2001, when he resigned in the midst of an investigation into voter fraud. Neill was not a subject of the investigation.

Prior to his election board duties, Neill served on the judicial panel that picks finalists applying for open seats on the St. Louis Circuit Court bench. Two of  Neill’s siblings,Margaret and Mark Neill, who are twins, are currently judges in the city circuit court. Joseph V. Neill did not sit on the judicial panel when either of them were nominated.

Before taking the bench, Mark Neill also practiced law at the Hampton Avenue address that his brother Joseph V. Neill still shares with four other attorneys.

Earlier this year, one of those attorneys — John Bouhasin — appealed a municipal court decision in Judge Mark Neill’s courtroom. Judge Neill ruled in favor of Bouhasin’s client,  overturning the lower court’s ruling that had revoked the liquor license of   Washington Avenue nightclub owner by Aprille Trupiano, daughter of the late mafia boss Matthew Trupiano. Mayor Slay’s administration favored the revocation.

In 2003, Bouhasin, a former assistant city counselor, was one of the subjects of a police internal affairs investigation, according to  the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The inquiry centered on allegations of a high-ranking police officer interceding to fix a DUI ticket of a  longtime drug informant.

Another attorney with his name painted on the door at 5201 Hampton — Thomas R. Carnes — was placed on one-year probation and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine in June 2011 by the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel of the Missouri Supreme Court for violations of  professional conduct. Carnes had previously been reprimanded in Missouri and Illinois for misconduct in 2006.

You’ve Got Trash

A millionaire landlord from Ladue ditches the city’s refuse service in favor of Republic Services. There’s only one problem: the private company isn’t picking up the trash. 

first published in the Journal of Decomposition, Aug. 20, 2012

“They need to get them cans out of the alley,” said the city worker, who sat behind the wheel of the big orange trash truck. The “cans” to which he referred are the blue dumpsters that now compete not only for space but also business with the St. Louis Refuse Division.

Two years ago, the city began charging property owners for trash pick up. The fee is $11 a month per unit. That amounts to $462 a year in additional expenses for the owners of four-family apartments. Under the ordinance, property owners can cancel the service if they show proof that they are having a private company haul the trash instead of using the city service.

After permitting private trash pick up, the law stipulates that the city will “inspect the property thereafter to confirm that the waste in fact is being collected.” But that’s not what’s happening in the 6300 block of Sutherland Avenue in the St. Louis Hills neighborhood, where trash has been accumulating for months. Plastic bags of rotting garbage have been festering all summer. The trash is now overflowing and spilling into the alley.

When contacted on Wednesday,  Aug. 15, 16th-Ward Alderwoman Donna Baringer advised Chris Howard,  the city’s neighborhood stabilization officer, to contact Allied Waste about emptying the neglected dumpsters. Allied Waste is owned by Republic Services.

In response to a constituent’s email, Howard promised to act swiftly. “This appears to be a serious problem  and I will do my best to rectify this asap,” wrote Howard.

Since the issue was brought to the attention of Baringer and Howard, the city refuse division has emptied its dumpsters twice, according to its regular schedule. But the Allied dumpsters remain full. The continued neglect of Allied Waste to collect the trash is attracting rodents and creating a public health problem in the immediate vicinity of the dumpsters.

Spokespersons for the mayor’s office and the Street Department could not be reached for comment. Allied Waste also could not be reached for comment. The introduction of competing privatized trash services without sufficient oversight or regulation has thrown a monkey wrench into the city’s otherwise efficient trash disposal service.

The overloaded dumpsters are located behind 6325-6327 Sutherland Avenue. That building is owned by a trust in the name of G. David Voges. Voges, 64,  is the heir to a St. Louis real estate fortune. He lives at 20 Log Cabin Lane in Ladue. Voges has participated in the past in a real estate awards program sponsored with the Regional Commerce and Growth Association. The program was implemented to spur positive publicity for the St. Louis real estate market. Voges’ late father, George F. Voges, was a longtime member of the Missouri Athletic Club, the exclusive businessmen’s organization.

No one answered the phone at Voges’ Ladue residence when an effort was made to contact him.

In 1998, the city cited a rental property owned by Voges because one of his tenants was living with 56 cats. The stench from the cat feces prompted neighbors to alert the city to the problem. Voges was quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as saying that the renter was a good tenant.

Voges also owns an a four-unit apartment at 6445 Nottingham Avenue, a few blocks from his building on Sutherland. Allied Waste has a dumpster at that location, too.  The alley is shared with single-family homeowners on adjacent Murdoch Avenue, including Ald. Barginer. Unlike the mess over on Sutherland, however, Allied Waste appears to pick up the trash regularly at the Nottingham address.

Back in the alley on Sutherland, the city trash man used the controls inside the truck to grab a city recycling bin, hoist it in the air and dump it into the back of the trash truck. He then vowed to tell his supervisor about Allied Waste’s neglected dumpsters. But he expressed little confidence that the issue would be resolved in a timely manner.

“The city isn’t going to do anything,” he said. Then he drove slowly away.