The final plan isn’t where they started — and it properly allows the MetroLink proposal to stand on its own — but to say they’re disconnected ignores the context that led to Alderman Christine Ingrassia filing the two bills that could lead to one or both of the proposals being voted on in April.

The MetroLink and soccer stadium proposals aren’t just connected in 2016, they can’t be separated from the events of the election that first elevated Slay to power.

Slay’s chief of staff in 2001 was Jeff Rainford, and it was Rainford who took the lead on gaining support for the Cardinals’ subsidy. Rainford is now a consultant, and he was directly involved in the sometimes heated SC STL negotiations with the mayor’s office. And the use tax wouldn’t even be available as an avenue to raise money for a soccer stadium if Slay hadn’t asked voters a year into his first term to expand the ability of the city to apply use tax proceeds to other purposes.

That tax, Slay says, “has done more than we ever anticipated.”