St. Louis residents offered their perspectives Wednesday night on how the city should allocate $277.2 million from the Rams settlement.
The hearing by the Board of Aldermen’s Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee comes after previous ones where members began to pull apart the specifics of two pieces of legislation that lay out different visions on how to spend the money.
The separate proposals by Ward 7 Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier and Ward 13 Alderwoman Pamela Boyd share some similarities, like dedicated funding for citywide water infrastructure, a focus on the repair and rehabilitation of city streets and sidewalks and provisions for housing.
The two diverge, too, with Boyd’s bill specifically dedicating funds for disinvested neighborhoods in north and southeast St. Louis, as well as downtown. Sonnier’s bill proposes support for the city’s public workforce and an endowment fund that supports youth opportunities and affordable child care.
Several public comments from city residents expressed support for the latter, including those by Ward 12 resident Paula-Breonne Vickers.
“I really hope we can start having conversations around how we as a community can care for our children and how that benefits our community as a whole,” she said. “We have issues with people not wanting to stay in St. Louis because they’ve had bad experiences. Investing in early childhood gives us the opportunity to keep businesses open.”
Ward 6 resident Christopher Ottolino added that Sonnier’s proposal offered an opportunity for the city government to further invest in the people who already live in St. Louis.
“There are a lot of pieces of this bill that start to offer that that aren’t just giving money to certain parts of the city to possibly grow,” he said. “This is about returning very specific things like child care, postsecondary education, that we know can improve the lives of people, not just this generation but going forward.”
The support wasn’t universal. Ward 1 resident Tim O’Neil said he didn’t like that child care and postsecondary assistance would be exclusively for city employees when rolled out.
“Please concentrate on the core issues of a public city: public works, public safety, public health,” he said. “That’s what you’re here for. We didn’t ask you to do child care programs.”
Other speakers called for money under the proposed community development innovation fund to offer specific carve-outs to support community development corporations. North Newstead Association Executive Director Constance Siu said those organizations fill an important role at the intersection of housing and community development.
“Our ability to do this vital work has been hindered by significant funding cuts, increased administrative hurdles of accessing resources and overall increasing costs of doing business,” she said. “Without a carve-out for CDCs, this bill risks overlooking the organizations that are best positioned to deliver long-term resident-led neighborhood transforming results.”
There were also concerns that historically disinvested neighborhoods, particularly those on the north side, would be passed over again.
“We need to focus on all the problems in north city,” said Ward 3 resident Tabitha Hunt, who moved to north St. Louis about three years ago. “I lived in south city for 25 years as an adult [and there was] nothing in south city that we asked for that we didn’t get. I’ve been in north city, and we can’t get anything.”
A quirk in the government process meant that residents could only offer public comment on Sonnier’s bill since Boyd hadn’t asked for her proposal to also be heard Wednesday night. But there was plenty of support for that legislation at Tuesday’s hearing.
Most of the comments then touched on the specific dedication of funding to downtown and parts of north and southeast city in Boyd’s bill.
“I have seen the needs of [these areas] up close and personal,” said former Alderman James Page, executive director of the St. Louis Downtown Neighborhood Association. “You have before us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a difference to help with these needs.”
Other supporters of funding for downtown noted its outsize economic role in the region.
“We have an opportunity to make a catalytic investment with these funds in that core,” said Gateway Arch Park Foundation Executive Director Ryan McClure. “Downtown needs the investment of these public dollars now and think of what can be accomplished if we match those funds and they’re leveraged against private funding.”
After the public comment concluded on Wednesday night, Sonnier, who has led the committee of the whole process to determine how to use the Rams funding, reiterated her desire to find common ground.
“Something that I think is exciting as we have these hearings and conversations, it seems like we’re starting to get closer to each other,” she said. “Nobody gets everything they want, but there are a lot of scenarios where everybody can get something.”
Board President Megan Green agreed.
“We don’t need two bills fighting each other,” she said. “We don’t need child care groups fighting against business groups. It is possible for us to all come together and rally around one bill.”
She said it’s something she hopes will happen before the board breaks on Feb. 8 for the spring elections.
“This is what we promised the public and rallied them around for the past 14 months,” she said. “All members of the Board of Aldermen have been engaged in this process, it would be great to wrap it up with this current board.”
