After the Storm

FEMA Assessment Tempers Tornado Clean-up Efforts

St. Louis cities such as Creve Coeur and Hazelwood have offered to help cities affected by the Good Friday storms.

The St. Louis County Municipal League has been coordinating cleanup efforts with the county by contacting and making visits to cities hit this weekend by a devastating tornado, its executive director said Tuesday. But while work is underway in the areas hardest hit, the Municipal League isn't recruiting additional help until applications for funding through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are approved, executive director Tim Fischesser said. "Everybody likes to go slow, until FEMA kind of opens the door," executive director Tim Fischesser said. He said St. Louis County is pursuing a FEMA-approved vendor that would help multiple cities by collecting debris. But the need to go through a bidding process means that vendor's work…

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Election Update: Zimmerman Wins St. Louis County Assessor Race

The Democrat captured nearly 64 percent of the of the vote in the first assessor election in decades.

Jake Zimmerman easily became St. Louis County's first elected assessor in 40 years, gaining 63.67 percent of the vote to 36.15 percent for L.K. "Chip" Woods. The vote total was 73,356 to 41,645 with 207 write-in votes. Zimmerman said he thought the large margin of victory was due to people wanting accountability in the assessor’s office. “The people of St. Louis County are looking for an accountable assessor who will treat people fairly whether their home is worth $50,000 or $500,000,” he said. The first order of business is a top to bottom review of processes in the office,” Zimmerman said. It’s too early to tell if that will solve problems, he said. Zimmerman said he is confident he will find “a lot of people in the assessor’s office …

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