The Commonspace > February 2001

The conventional wisdom suggests that the winner in the Democratic Mayoral primary will go on to victory in the general election. Granted, it's been some five decades since a Republican held the top job on Tucker. Even with that fact in mind, the amount of attention payed to this year's two Republican candidates is truly low. In the interests of stirring the pot and getting a wide range of information out there, we're publishing the platform statements of both Republican candidates — Michael Chance and Francis Wildhaber.

Mike Chance's Major Campaign Positions

Economic Development
- Push for implementation of Downtown Now! Plan
- Work to bring more retail shopping and restaurants to downtown
- Restoring neighborhood business districts
- Aggressively pursue both high tech and traditional businesses, concentrating on small and mid-sized companies
- Transform riverfront into major residential/tourist destination
- Attract new office buildings and hotels to downtown
Neighborhood Residential Development
- Promote home ownership and home repair programs
- Strengthen historic rehab programs and encourage creation of neighborhood historic districts
- Encourage historically sensitive in-fill housing
- Property tax relief and home maintenance assistance for senior citizens
- Streamline residential improvement building permit process
- Encourage more mixed income housing projects
Education
- Push for higher standards
- Tuition assistance/student loan guarantees/forgivable loans for substitute teachers who want to obtain teaching certification
- Assistance assembling, clearing, doing environmental cleanup of land for new schools
- Stronger efforts to promote adult literacy programs
- Stronger support for corporate partnerships with SLPS for mentoring, tutoring programs
Environmental Issues
- Implement extensive recycling program in all city departments
- Mandate use of recycled materials (paper products, plastics, etc.) as the rule rather than the exception
- Use of biodiesel fuels (at least 20%) for all city maintained diesel vehicles
- Promote the continuation of the biodiesel program by Bi-State Transit
- Develop a workable lead abatement program that balances needs and resources of occupants, property owners, paint/varnish manufacturers, and government
- Find ways to accelerate the environmental cleanup of brownfield sites
- New development of Fairgrounds, O'Fallon, and Carondelet Parks, better maintenance and amenities at other parks; more use of parks for city events and festivals.
Government Structure
- Strong support for passage of Home Rule amendment
- Will assemble blue-ribbon commission to review existing city government structure for streamlining/improvement
- Upon passage of Home Rule, will work for new city charter that balances an effective, responsive Mayor and executive branch with a deliberative Board of Aldermen
- Expand City Planning division
- Re-structure City Development Agency, with strong support for any necessary enabling legislation
Health and Safety Issues
- Develop a workable replacement for ConnectCare, emphasizing preventative care and making it a funding priority
- Facilitating insurance co-operatives for small and mid-size businesses to be able to afford to provide better health care coverage for employees
- Increasing funding for police department
- Working to return control of the police department to the city
Social Issues
- Strong enforcement of civil rights laws
- "Color blind" hiring and contracting policy
- Develop "bootstrap" programs for certified minority-owned businesses
Transportation
- State maintenance of major arterial roads
- Accelerate Metro-Link North and South route construction
- Support MCU transportation priority
- Work for state constitutional amendment to permit fuel and road use tax revenue to be used for mass transit funding

Mike Chance is 39 years old and has been married to his wife, Sandra, for 17 years. They have a 13-year-old daughter and are expecting their second child in August of 2001.

Mike is a 10 year resident of St. Louis City and currently works for SBC Services as a Programmer/Analyst. Mike is a 10 year veteran of the Air Force where he received an A.S. in Data Processing from the Community College of the Air Force.