Small, 'adorable' municipal governments abound in St. Louis
St. Louis Globe Democrat
June 24, 2010
by Sterling Levy
Johnny Carson devoted a good chunk of his monologues to the expansiveness and wackiness of Los Angeles and its suburbs after he moved "The Tonight Show" to Hollywood in 1972.
But, from a crazy-quilt standpoint, L.A. has nothing on us.
That St. Louis County has so many municipalities is about as well-known as the "high school" question, and perhaps these phenomena have similar origins.
Yet, how many know that our county has the second highest number of municipalities -- cities, towns and villages -- in the NATION, with 91 of them, second in number only to Cook County, Illinois, which has 110 and parts of 26 others, surrounds Chicago and is the second most populous county in the nation. We have more than the 88 in L.A. County, which IS the most populous county in the nation, and in the 1970s, when Carson began talking about it, we had as many as 97 munies while L.A. had as few as 79.
But, much more significant is the relative sizes of the local burgs. In Cook County, excluding any consideration of Chicago, the average municipality is about 6.3 square miles and had, at the most recent available count, almost 18,000 residents. In Los Angeles County, again while excluding the City of Los Angeles (which is almost as large as St. Louis County itself), the average city is 10.7 square miles and has 60,700 residents. None, incidentally, has "Hollywood" in its name.
Here, though, our 91 munies (St. Louis City isn't even in the county, of course) average less than four square miles and average fewer than 7,700 residents.
Sterling Levy
Olympic Boulevard in Beverly Hills in 1955.
A "municipality" is a unit of general government designed to serve a particular area, while a "county" is historically an administrative unit of state government, although in populous areas, counties have taken on increasingly complex roles. In our region, municipalities are cities, towns and villages. But a "township," while a general government unit, is not a municipality, as determined in federal Census reports and elsewhere, because it is merely as subdivision of the county. Townships do perform limited government functions in 20 states (including in Illinois and in rural Missouri) but they are distinct from municipalities.
In that regard, note that St. Louis County not only has the second largest number of municipalities in the country, it by far has the highest number of small munies! Yes, Wildwood, the last county municipality to be incorporated, is 66.5 square miles, larger than the City of St. Louis. And Wildwood has about 33,000 residents. But the county also includes Mackenzie, a village of 137 residents in .02 square miles, that began in 1946; Glen Echo Park, with .03 square miles and 166 residents, founded in 1937; and Champ, where 12 residents occupy a village that has .08 square miles and was founded in 1959 after dreams that it would hold major athletic venues collapsed. Those small municipalities conduct business out of residents' homes.
Good or bad, this is definitely St. Louis for you! It doesn't even extend outward, as the surrounding counties sport size and population averages which are more typically American.
St. Charles County has 17 municipalities averaging about 10.5 square miles and with 14,900 residents; Jefferson County has 13 municipalities averaging 3.1 square miles and with 4,300 residents; Franklin County has 12 municipalities averaging 3.3 square miles and with 3,400 residents.
In fact, nationwide the rough average is fewer than seven municipalities per county, but this of course includes densely and sparsely populated areas. In nearby Illinois, St. Clair County has 27 municipalities, including Belleville, East St. Louis and Mascoutah; Madison County has 28, including Alton, Edwardsville and Collinsville
(St. Clair County also has 21 townships, as noted above; Madison County has 24 of these. Cook County, in fact, has 30, and nationwide the rough average is about 14 per county, in those states that have them at all.)
History shows four distinct periods in the creation of St. Louis County municipalities:
--Prior to 1876, when St. Louis city and county had their great divide, five municipalities with rich railroad and cultural histories were incorporated: Bridgeton in 1843, Florissant in 1857, Pacific (which was, and is, mostly in Franklin County, 1859, Kirkwood in 1865, and Fenton in 1874. Webster Groves another cultural icon, followed in 1896.
--A half-dozen municipalities that border the western edge of the city of St. Louis have hose incorporation dates to the early decades of the 20th century. They include, from south to north, along the city-county border, , Shrewsbury which incorporated in 1913; Maplewood, in 1908; Richmond Heights, in 1913; Clayton (which was the county seat even before it became a city), in 1913; University City, in 1906; and Wellston, which first became a city in 1909, was dissolved by 1912, but incorporated again in 1949.
-- More than half of the current slate of 91 municipalities started functioning in the 1934-1957 period, as relatively small groups of residents and developers sought to protect their own (often prejudiced or misguided) interests, and Missouri state law on incorporation was not cumbersome. Some applicants got their incorporation papers with a few days after petitioning the county's (administrative) court. In later decades, much more paperwork and legal documentation would be required.
-- More recent incorporations were tied to specific social and economic-political issues. Black Jack incorporated in 1970 primarily in an effort to zone against low-income housing, but the city lost lawsuits and eventually got such housing. Maryland Heights incorporated in 1985 after a power struggle with the county involving primarily sales tax receipts and zoning controls; Green Park began in 1995 following annexation turmoil involving several South County areas, and Wildwood's beginning the same year was related to a desire to exceed development and zoning standards in place in the unincorporated county.
Finally, gone are such "adorable" munies as Peerless Park, Times Beach, Margona Village, Arbor Terrace, Goodfellow Terrace and Bridgeton Terrace. They were small and legal existence became too expensive, or even just a mess, some would say. Even Affton was a village for a few years in the 1930s, but couldn't last that way.
But our county's longtime record of the greatest number of small municipalities in the country isn't going anywhere, fast!
