St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones offered few specifics in her pitch Tuesday to spend $150 million in federal money in north city, saying that the funds would "begin bridging the racial wealth gap that splits our city into two."
Asked for more detail about the plan to utilize additional funds from St. Louis' allocation from the American Rescue Plan Act, a spokesman for Jones said Wednesday that "we are continuing to do community engagement, including town halls, roundtables, and surveys online and on paper, to help ensure these federal funds strengthen our communities for generations to come." He added that the administration has received more than 3,000 responses to its survey.
The city's legislative leader, Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, is now publicly offering ideas for north city. The Board of Aldermen must allocate the spending of ARPA funds. The city got about $500 million from ARPA, which must be obligated by the end of 2024 and spent by the end of 2026. Last year, the Board of Aldermen allocated $168 million, which, after a dispute with the mayor, ended up including $37 million for small businesses, nonprofits and neighborhood economic development in north city.
But Reed said more must be done to permanently improve the north side's built environment, which suffers with thousands of vacant structures.
He said the city should use no more ARPA funds for direct payments to residents. The city last year allocated $5 million for $500 payments to 10,000 people. If that led to permanent change, Reed said, the north side would be flourishing after those payments and other pandemic-related direct aid.
It would be less popular, but north city actually needs "long-term, transformational, structural changes — those big, one-time expenses that we will never (again) be able to put together this amount of capital to be able to address in a one-time operation," Reed said. "If we build this business environment in the neighborhoods in and around north St. Louis, everybody wins. Half of our potential tax bases is there, and it's not generating the revenue that it could generate if we invested in it."
Reed said he'll introduce a new spending bill in the next couple weeks, and it could then change throughout the legislative process. He didn't specify a dollar figure. Anything approved by the Board of Aldermen must also get the OK from a three-person fiscal Board of Estimate and Apportionment, made up of Reed but also Jones and her political ally, Comptroller Darlene Green.
Reed said his bill could include incentives for so-called development zones near the site of the new National-Geospatial Intelligence Agency western headquarters, which is under construction in St. Louis Place. Those could allow individuals or families to fix up vacant properties and make them energy efficient, he said.
Youth job programs could also be expanded, Reed said, along with "outreach efforts so that we're connecting and getting to the people." He mentioned the nonprofit Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis as an entity that could help in that regard.
And the north side's recreation centers badly need investment, Reed said. "They're in deplorable shape."
The government should also consider making further streetscape improvements and targeting clusters of vacant structures for rehabilitation, he said.
Businesses could be helped, Reed said, with more grants and the expansion of broadband. "If we can establish broadband corridors throughout business districts we're working to revitalize, we won't just revitalize that stretch of business district, we'll impact neighborhoods and everything around it."
Though the north side's challenges are greater than those overcome in past south side turnaround projects, Reed cited improvements to Lafayette Square in the 1990s and Washington Avenue later as evidence that neighborhoods can improve with investment. Federal infrastructure dollars, plus the city's share of the $512.6 million National Football League settlement, will also eventually flow to the government.
But Reed indicated it may not be easy to convince Jones to agree to invest in programs that will alter the physical environment, and criticized the disclosure in February that the city had spent just 2% of the ARPA funds allocated. The Jones administration has cited the city’s procurement regulations and federal rules as part of the reason, plus ongoing programs that dole out money.
"When we think about these built environments and establishing them and marketing them to make a difference, it's going to take a minute to do it correctly under this current administration. We have to bring them a long way in terms of where our priorities are and where theirs seem to be," Reed said, citing the direct payments to residents championed by Jones and a Jones plan, as yet not fulfilled, to set up an “intentional encampment” for homeless people.
The Jones spokesman didn't immediately respond to the criticism.
