East-West Gateway Council of Governments, the St. Louis metropolitan regional planning agency, has come out with a new logo, new name, and new digs at One Memorial Drive overlooking the Arch, in the past six months or so.

The staff leadership is still pretty much the same - Les Sterman, is still executive director as he has been for nearly 20 years now. Of course, the board of directors is seeing some reshuffling, as longtime Madison County board chair Rudy Papa was replaced by Alan Dunstan; with the passing of Buzz Westfall, St. Louis County has new representation by Charlie Dooley; and with both St. Clair County executive John Baricevic and St. Charles County executive Joe Ortwerth slated to leave office soon, Baricevic to seek a judgeship and Ortwerth to continue his evangelical pursuits (as he once said in response to questioning by infamous local TV reporter Elliott Davis, "Jesus loves you, Elliott").

Although transportation planning is the traditional bailiwick of EWG, they have tried to branch out into regional planning for issues such as workforce development.

However, when you click on the link for Economic and Fiscal Policy, you get:

"The page cannot be found"

Hmmm... meanwhile, EWG does tell us in periodic updates to its magnum opus document Where We Stand, that St. Louis ranks worst of 35 "peer metros" in asthma, and fourth worst in springtime allergies.

Hey, my nose could've told me that! But at least we're not Atlanta: that southern metropolis scores a full 100 points on a 100 point scale for allergy suffers. St. Louis only gets 91 points.

I guess all those danged peach trees must put out an awful lot of pollen... :-)