Tuesday, May 14, 2013
One Creve Coeur City Councilwoman said Monday she had to stand up for a defeated city council candidate. Her colleagues said they were "saddened" and "appalled" by references to a recent prayer to remember the Holocaust.
Three weeks after Creve Coeur's new city council was seated following April's elections, allegations concerning dirty campaign tricks boiled back to the surface Monday night when one councilmember invoked the words of an invocation to recognize Holocaust Remembrance Day. Ward 4's Jeanne Rhoades referenced "the price of staying silent," part of an invocation used last month by B'Nai Amoona Rabbi Carnie Shalom Rose. She did so in speaking out about a last minute campaign flier which colored the end of the Ward 1 race between Cynthia Kramer and David Caldwell, won by Kramer. The flier, paid for by an employee of the printing firm Kramer's campaign used, accused Caldwell of being a bully, mirroring an allegation leveled at Caldwell by a …
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Steve Wasserman spoke out at Monday's meeting of the Creve Coeur City Council.
Earlier this year, the Creve Coeur City Council voted to lower property tax rates, from $.084 per $100 assessed value to $.70 for residential rate payers. By law, the same rate will also be in effect for 2013. Monday night, Creve Coeur resident Steve Wasserman called out council members for the move, telling them he was disappointed in the decrease. Wasserman said the reduction went against the initial recommendation of city staff. He chided lawmakers for listening to a small group of citizens who have championed the subject. "I think that there’s some kind of movement around the country to lower taxes without thinking about it and I’m afraid that the council might have been swayed by a vocal minority of citizens and acted to mollify them …
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
One case tied to the Creve Coeur Mayoral election is over, while another waits.
In her first interview with Patch since the Missouri Ethics Commission issued a ruling dismissing the post-election complaint filed by Creve Coeur City Councilwoman Jeanne Rhoades against the Barry Glantz for Mayor campaign, the agency's Executive Director said complaints are taken "very seriously," and that evidence is looked at "very thoroughly" and "very carefully". Julie Allen was unable to speak about specifics in the case due to state law, instead directing people with questions about the verdict to copies of letters available on the agency's website. In reacting to the dismissal, Rhoades said Friday the ruling serves to "raise more questions than they answer..." Allen, again while not addressing a specific element of the case said …
Saturday, July 21, 2012
"I'm pleased that this issue appears to be behind us," Glantz told Patch Friday.
Creve Coeur Mayor Barry Glantz received a letter in the mail Thursday, confirming a July 13 decision by the Missouri Ethics Commission to dismiss a complaint filed against his election campaign by Ward 4 Councilwoman Jeanne Rhoades. The two-page, five paragraph letter does not lay out decisions on all of the aspects raised in the nine page complaint. It does say the following: It dismissed the allegation that he "concealed" his involvement in sending a mailer against his opponent in the Mayor's race, Laura Bryant, and that he concealed the employer of a campaign contributor. The MEC investigation said "there was no evidence that you knew the individual responsible for the negative mailer or had any knowledge of this mailer's distribution …
Friday, July 20, 2012
The Glantz campaign will have to file amended campaign finance documents.
According to letters sent to interested parties in one of two sets of complaints filed in connection with the 2012 Mayor's race in Creve Coeur, the Missouri Ethics Commission has announced it has dismissed complaints brought by Creve Coeur City Councilwoman Jeanne Rhoades against Mayor Barry Glantz and a woman who supported the Glantz campaign with a late-in-the-campaign mailer, Donna Dill. The decision, which came during the Commission's July 13 meeting and announced in letters dated July 16, came as the panel decided that "Mr. Glantz concealed his involvement in sending a political mailer against his opponent and that he concealed the employer of a campaign contributor were unsubstantiated," according to a letter sent to Councilwoman …
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Current and former members of city council say they've received anonymous typed letters over the last decade and just recently.
Tuesday 5:58 p.m. Update: Creve Coeur Police Chief Glenn Eidman, who was not in attendance at Monday's Council meeting when the letter in question was turned over, told Patch late Tuesday afternoon "We are looking into it. We document it. We look at it like anything else." He added that he wasn't aware of letters sent to former Councilwoman Bryant, noting that it would have included a period of time before he was the Chief of Police. Original Story: Creepy. Definitely personal. A veiled threat. Those were some of the words Creve Coeur City Councilwoman Jeanne Rhoades used Monday night to describe an anonymous letter she received within the last few weeks. The typed letter, in a plan white envelope, also typed, which she said she told City …
Monday, July 9, 2012
Is Creve Coeur a city divided by local politics? You tell us.
It's been just over three months since Creve Coeur voters went to the polls to elect a new Mayor after a lengthy and passionate campaign which extended for more than a year. In the time since, Mayor Barry Glantz has been going through firsts....ribbon cuttings, recognition ceremonies, and his first council meeting to last under 30 minutes. He's also had to take his first vote to break a tie, in just his second meeting as Mayor, to elect Dr. Bob Hoffman as Council President. On election night, there was talk of the need for healing political divisions in the city. Has it happened? Should it? And how did the city get this way in the first place? Patch takes a look at the political pulse in Creve Coeur. Mayor Glantz insists he has continued …
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Controversy over access to email records is a topic addressed in the city's July newsletter.
Creve Coeur Ward 4 Councilmembers Jeanne Rhoades and Scott Saunders are using their column in the city's July newsletter to clear up what they feel are lingering misconceptions from the April 2012 campaign season regarding use of city email databases. Editor's Note: In the Mayor's race, Barry Glantz criticized Laura Bryant for her campaign's use of those email addresses, accusing her of using city records and and converting them for her own political use. The following column is republished with permission from the City of Creve Coeur's July newsletter. We are entering the dog days of summer and the April elections seem long passed. However, a few controversies that arose during the recent campaign season still remain outstanding. One …
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Glantz acknowledged at least one area where campaign disclosure could have been better, but calls Ward 4 Councilwoman Jeanne Rhoades "obsessed".
Creve Coeur Ward 4 Councilwoman Jeanne Rhoades announced Wednesday evening that she had amended claims in an ethics complaint filed last month against newly elected Mayor Barry Glantz related to the just-completed campaign. Rhoades filed the initial complaint with the Missouri Ethics Commission in early May, accusing the Glantz campaign of failing to properly disclose the employer of its biggest donor. Garrick Hamilton is General Counsel for the Koman Group, a fact Glantz did not deny in a May interview with Patch. Hamilton's donations, including a $2,000 check, came from a Yogurt firm's account, and not the developer with long and sometimes complicated ties to city politics and infrastructure projects, including the Olive Boulevard …
Friday, May 11, 2012
Creve Coeur City Councilwoman Jeanne Rhoades filed a complaint Thursday with the Missouri Ethics Commission.
Creve Coeur Mayor Barry Glantz will chair only his second City Council meeting Monday since being elected last month, but he will do so under the cloud of an ethics complaint filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission Thursday. Councilwoman Jeanne Rhoades filed the query with the agency and in the 9 page report, accuses Glantz of "misrepresenting the primary affiliation (employer) of his single largest contributor." It also alleges that a woman behind a last-minute mailer in the campaign "misrepresented and/or omitted key information" in order to benefit the Glantz campaign. It further states that Glantz and or his supporters may have colluded "to deliberately and fraudulently confuse and distract voters." By Missouri law, the Missouri …
Scott Simon
1:33 pm on Tuesday, May 14, 2013
It's amazing that complainers try to mine message ideal as some sort of personal intellectual property. It's been used in poltical debate and analysis for decades by both parties here and across the world. The claim of "I didn't know" is disingenous. The "wink wink" culture continues to flourish in Creve Coeur for self-selected insiders. And you really want us to sign up for this "For the Love of… more ›