Property owner sues City to block Kroenke-backed special sales tax

A property owner in the city of Wentzville is asking a court to kill a special taxing district established by the city and backed by companies affiliated with developer Stan Kroenke.

Attorneys for the Desco Group, which owns a Schnucks-anchored shopping center on Wentzville Parkway, filed suit on Friday in St. Charles County Circuit Court. The suit accuses the city and the Kroenke-backed community improvement district of not giving Desco enough notice before forming the district and imposing a 1% sales tax.

“It is evident that this Community Improvement District was not lawfully created,” said Capes Sokol attorney Amy Fehr, who is representing Desco.

This is similar to special legislation introduced by Inglewood Assemblymember Autumn Burke for a “people connector” from the Crenshaw/LAX rail to Kroenke’s NFL stadium in Inglewood.

AB-1060 Enhanced infrastructure financing districts was introduced February 2017 but died in January 2018 due to lack of support.

The city of Inglewood has revived talks, to finance the project, through property tax money’s. The city is scrambling to get this people mover funded and built due to an extreme lack of parking spaces for Kroenke’s nearly 80,000 seat stadium.

Inglewood has released a notice of preparation for the project’s draft environmental impact report. Residents learned about the proposal at a scoping meeting held July 26th at the Inglewood Senior Center.

The city also launched a new website for the proposal at www.envisioninglewood.org. The final EIR will be ready late 2019.

Inglewood is developing the potential transit system independently at this point. Metro did not support a proposal to expand its light rail system to cover the Inglewood venues. The regional authority deemed the idea “not feasible due to the costs and operational impacts on the regional system,” the report states. No funds have been earmarked in Measure M, Metro’s transportation measure passed in 2016, or Metro’s Long Range Transportation Plan, for Inglewood’s transit system.

How does Inglewood Mayor James Butts continue to spout that no public money is being used to Stan Kroenke’s project when documents say otherwise?