WE WON’T BE IGNORED: Convention Center Tax Fails a Second Time after STUN Opposition

The Springfield Expo Center will remain in its current form for the present, following the failure of the second proposal to replace it this month. Photo from springfieldexpo.com

This month Springfield voters rejected a bad deal for our city, for a second time. City Council wanted to raise the city’s hotel tax in order to renovate the Springfield Expo Center into a more robust convention center. Their argument was that a convention center would bring business into the city and thereby boost local businesses, at the cost of merely bringing taxes to the same level as other cities our size – a proposal with a certain logic to it, at a glance. But under closer inspection the flaws became apparent: there was no evidence presented of groups clamoring to hold conventions in Springfield, beyond the claims of City Council themselves. There was no evidence of conventions boosting local businesses other than vague trickle-down theory. And a deeper dive into the funding for the project revealed that a sizeable portion of it would actually be coming from the Spring Forward tax that voters approved in 2024 to fund vital public services. In short, it wasn't what Springfield needs right now. That was the message that STUN co-founder Alice Barber sent to Springfield voters in a video released shortly before the election, and perhaps what City Council should have taken away from their failure to pass the measure last November.

Instead, they decided that the problem was the voters not knowing what’s best for ourselves. They put the same issue back on the ballot just five months later and spent the intervening time running PR to try to sway the public consensus. While this did give citizens a chance to bring other concerns to their representatives, there was no ambiguity regarding the main intent. And the end result of their information campaign was that the proposal failed by a wider margin than the first time. Whether that change was due to STUN's messaging, or whether Missouri voters are just tired of having elections thrown out every time the people in power don’t like the results, we can't know. In any case, the matter seems to be settled now, with City Manager David Cameron stating that there will not be a third vote and Mayor Schrag posting “we will respect the will of the voters” on social media – a weird thing to say after forcing a redo in the first place, but OK.

While this election was not directly about housing issues, STUN is chalking it up as a win on account of having taken a public stance in opposition to the measure. Alice's video received wide praise and thousands of views, and while, again, we can't know to what extent it swayed public opinion on the matter, it certainly lines up with the results. Either way, it shows that STUN's opinion is taken seriously in the community, and that's the key takeaway. We can influence policy in Springfield, and we will, until we live in a city where housing is a universal right and tenants hold the power!