Wow. I am from St. Louis. I left about 12 years ago as because of a total lack of any technical opportunity (especially for folks that look like me). I was interviewing for every tech low level support position I could find, while going home at night building openmosix clusters from P2s. I took a job at office depot, saved every scrap and moved to upstate NY. Within weeks I had a job working for a large ISP. FF --> 10 years, I work as a linux admin for profitable/stable enough NYC startup and have popped that 6 figure bubble. My point is, St. Louis burned itself down 10 years ago by forcing anyone that could to flee. I experienced blatant racism, ageism, ism-ism, you name it. You can't find anyone that isn't terrible because you ran them (or their brethren) out of town years ago. Talk to your city leadership to turn things around, and consider actually training the right person that has no skills. You could be turning that persons life around, and thusly improving us all (humanity).