The South Side could get its first taste of new affordable housing since a state program began more than 20 years ago.

Mike Dalsing will start working an eight-hour shift for the first time in 29 years.
On Friday, City Manager Vince Capell announced that Mr. Dalsing will take over as the city’s fire chief in September. Mr. Dalsing, 51, is a St. Joseph native and a 29-year veteran of the St. Joseph Fire Department.
“I’m pretty excited about it — of course a little nervous,” Mr. Dalsing said Friday after the news became official. “There’s a lot of responsibility involved, and we’ve got a lot of exciting things going on.”

The talk of unrelated city and county hotel/motel taxes has grown louder and more complicated.
Both the city of St. Joseph and Buchanan County want to increase the current 3 percent city hotel/motel tax by 5 percent, although the city will not seek the increase on the November ballot.
Even as the two defend their uses of the tax dollars as “tourism promotion” to satisfy legal requirements, the taxes still could end up in legal trouble. The city is prepared to “challenge” if the county gets voter approval to raise the tax.

Vince Capell is set to receive a raise at Monday night’s City Council meeting, but for the third straight year, his performance evaluation either has not been completed or has not been made public. The council will vote on a 4 percent raise for Mr. Capell — the same as all other city employees receive this year — to bring his base salary to $124,035. The city also pays a $5,400 car allowance, $8,000 in deferred compensation and, like all city employees, covers his health insurance premiums.

It’s not the heat. It’s the stupidity.
I love that line. I think I first heard it from a mechanic I used to work with. He was explaining why people in Florida are so crazy. It works for Florida.
It works for St. Louis, too.

A new recreation center and fire station get quick starts under the St. Joseph’s new capital improvements program, or CIP, but road and bridge projects could take years to complete.
Voters in November renewed the city’s half-cent CIP sales tax for five years. The CIP covers an array of parks, public safety and public works projects into 2014.
The next year should see a relatively large number of projects, with about $11.8 million to be spent from the CIP sales tax. Big-ticket items include infrastructure at the new Eastowne Business Park ($4.1 million), a new fire aerial truck ($1.1 million) and the expansion/rebuilding of the Fairview Golf Course clubhouse ($1.1 million).

The Landmark Commission approved Save Our Heritage grants for six historic properties Tuesday night, including $45,000 for the United Building at Sixth and Felix streets Downtown.

The city of St. Joseph is restarting a helpful but controversial historic preservation grant program today.

Let the climb begin.
Residential sewer rates will likely increase 15 percent in October, or about $2.70 a month for the average St. Joseph household. Those double-digit increases will continue for at least five years, during which time rates will compound to nearly double what they are now.
“This is serious rate-increase time,” Craig Brown, the city’s sewer rate consultant from Black & Veatch, told City Council members Monday. “I don’t want to hide it.”

A judge ordered a prominent historic preservationist to repay $2,000 to St. Joseph Preservation Inc. for not finishing a roofing project funded by a city grant. Nigh Johnson is chairman of the city’s Landmark Commission, has served on the board for the Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation and has participated in numerous projects in St. Joseph, including one that won a state preservation award earlier this year.