After much fanfare over a compromise between competing visions of how to spend $294 million in Rams settlement money on Tuesday, members of the Board of Aldermen are moving the legislation forward.
Members of the Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee voted 5-2 to move the newly revised Transform STL Act back to the full Board of Aldermen after adopting several amendments to the legislation.
Ward 1 Alderwoman Anne Schweitzer and Ward 9 Alderman Michael Browning were the dissenting votes.
This was the third public committee hearing on resolutions to allocate the city’s portion of money from the Rams settlement, and the first for a bill that consolidated previous proposals sponsored by Ward 7 Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier and Ward 13 Alderwoman Pamela Boyd. For most of the 4½-hour hearing, Boyd and Sonnier shared the podium and fielded questions from their colleagues together.
“One of the things that we heard over and over again in previous committee hearings was, ‘We really would like you all to come together [and] collaborate,’” Sonnier said. “We did something that I think happens too rarely in the City of St. Louis; we came together.”
Boyd added: “It’s not about who’s right or who’s wrong. It’s about the city as a whole and how we can rebuild our city.”
The compromise to reach a single piece of legislation meant reorganizing finite funds, including cutting support for neighborhood development down to $15 million and affordable housing development down to $35 million. At the same time, funds specific to north St. Louis and downtown were allocated $40 million and $74 million, respectively.
The funding for downtown was later amended to $60 million, with $5 million each going to the funds for affordable housing development and neighborhood development, and $4 million added to the $30 million set aside to seed an endowment fund for child care.
Browning specifically referenced the endowment fund whose interest would be used to pilot a child care subsidization program for city workers. He voiced concern over a lack of metrics detailing how many city employees may use such a program, how much it may potentially cost on an annual basis and which part of the city government would administer it.
“We do this a lot at the Board of Aldermen, we pass these great-sounding programs, but then the funding isn’t there, so we scramble to find funding and, of course, it’s not enough, because we’re a municipal government with a shrinking tax base,” Browning said.
He also raised concerns about potentially expanding it to non-city workers after two years. Sonnier countered that expanding such a program would have to be something the Board of Aldermen voted to pursue.
She also didn’t specify how many city employees had young children who would conceivably qualify for support but defended the utility of offsetting child care costs.
“$500 off a child care bill a month could be quite significant and could be a huge help,” Sonnier said. “I know for a fact that there are a lot of parents and families that certainly would love to be receiving that support and that kind of benefit.”
The alderwoman’s point was punctuated by the majority of public comments advocating using some of the money to support making child care in the city more affordable.
Javia Sanford, who runs a cocktail bar downtown, said she exited the workforce in 2022 and has found it challenging to reenter when child care costs approach $1,400 a month for her and her husband.
“The issue is I never intended to stay at home,” she said. “I've always wanted to be a relevant part of the workforce. That is extremely difficult when you don't have affordable or accessible child care.”
Mary Foshage shared how her husband had been a third-generation city worker but opted to stop working for the city because of the cost of child care.
“He made the really tough decision to leave and get a job in the corporate world,” she said. “We are still extremely big advocates for city workers and support the child care stipend or benefit that would come from these bills.”
Schweitzer articulated the other key concern among those on the committee: that the dilution of dollars available to the entire city wouldn't go far enough.
“It seems like in compromising, it’s just spreading the money out so thinly that I don’t know that the neighborhoods or the things that we need to see big changes in are going to see it,” Schweitzer said, adding she was disappointed to see her south St. Louis ward and ones around it no longer prioritized to receive funds as they had under previous proposals.
Some amendments to the bill later added explicit references to neighborhoods in southeast St. Louis that face some of the same challenges as parts of north St. Louis.
Boyd acknowledged that merging her priorities with those of Sonnier was challenging and that some specifics would be missed in combining bills.
“This is a big challenge for us, as legislators, to look at this one-time money and try to get it as right as we can,” Boyd said. “We’re not perfect. We’re not going to say we got everything [right].”
Ward 14 Alderman Rasheen Aldridge brought up that the city has many more issues than it has funding to address.
“There would never be enough money to do what we need to do in the city,” he said. “If that’s the case, let’s invest all this money in[to] the north side, because if we really want to talk about how much we want to see the north side do well or be so beautiful, put your money where your mouth is and it still won’t be enough.”
Browning also raised concerns about the funding being spread too thin, to the point where the city couldn’t deliver on promises made under the legislation.
“To you and me, $300 million is a ton of money, but it’s not even a quarter of our city’s annual budget,” he said. “I want to make sure that when we are offering a benefit, that we are able to actually offer that benefit and not mislead people about what they might get.”
He also indicated that the board may be moving too quickly in considering legislation that still needed details to be ironed out and suggested any bill didn’t need to be passed before the break for the election season on Feb. 8.
Board President Megan Green pushed back on that notion, though, since the current board and mayor have been engaged for 14 months gathering feedback on how the city should spend Rams money.
“I think it makes the most sense that it is this board that this board and this mayor make the decisions because we’ve actually been at the table listening to the community for the last 14 months,” she said.
The bill now heads back to the full Board of Aldermen, where three meetings are left before the break for the spring election season.
