The resignation of John Nations, President and CEO of Bi-State Development is “regrettable and a predictable reaction to the lack of cooperation from the St. Louis County Executive,” according to Democrat candidate for St. Louis County Executive Mark Mantovani. “Any reasonable CEO would be frustrated by the County Executive’s failure to effectively address crime and public safety on the MetroLink.”
County Executive Stenger took responsibility for MetroLink security in a Memorandum of Understanding dated May 17, 2017 and he has failed to achieve a regional solution as the St. Louis County police department assumed primary responsibility for coordinating security. The memorandum was signed by all regional leaders involved with MetroLink.
Just last month, St. Louis County Police Captain, Scott Melies, pronounced the MetroLink system “… safe; we just need to get that message out to people.”
“Unfortunately that’s just not accurate and until security on MetroLink improves, the opinions of riders will not change,” Mantovani said. ”Steve Stenger made the job of policing MetroLink vastly more difficult than it should have been, and this has frustrated the efforts of John Nations and his entire team.”
“John Nations has been one of the most successful regional leaders we have,” Mantovani said. “Stenger’s political power-plays and failure to secure our mass transit system at the expense of effective public safety has put the massive and important regional investment in mass transit at great risk.”
The Democratic Primary for St. Louis County Executive will be held on August 7, 2018. For more information about Mark Mantovani and his campaign visit markforstl.com.