At the end of a very long ballot in St. Louis, voters will find three proposals to rewrite parts of the city’s charter.
All of them were products of meetings of the St. Louis Charter Commission, which reviews the charter every decade and makes recommendations for updates. The document last underwent a major rewrite in 1914, although there have been piecemeal changes since then.
Each needs 60% approval to pass.
Proposition B
Proposition B was one of five recommendations forwarded by the commission to the Board of Aldermen. It was handled at the board by Rasheen Aldridge of the 14th Ward.
The measure would increase the power of the aldermen to make changes in the city’s budget. Right now, the board is free to make cuts to the budget without any additional oversight. But increases to a line item are simply recommendations that then require the approval of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, a fiscal oversight board made up of the mayor, the aldermanic president and the comptroller. If E&A does not meet in time for the aldermen to pass a budget by June 30, or rejects the increase, it is not adopted.
Proposition B would remove the need for E&A to improve budget increases. Aldermen would be able to boost spending for a department as long as the budget remains balanced.
Aldridge, a former state representative who served on the House Budget Committee, told attendees at an Oct. 14 town hall on the proposals that he and his colleagues deserve the same budgeting authority as he had in Jefferson City, and as their counterparts on the St. Louis County Council have.
“We only get the budget one time a year. And that’s what we’re asking, during that one time, to be able to advocate on behalf of you to make sure that dollars are going into the right department,” he said.
Mayor Tishaura Jones refused to sign the legislation, with a spokesman saying at the time that it would likely lead to more earmarks — spending on specific projects from aldermen — and could hurt the credit rating of the city. Comptroller Darlene Green expressed similar concerns about the proposal at a committee meeting in July.
“The current policy that we have that governs the budget process provides for a layer of structural protection and accountability in local government finances that strengthens the city’s credit rating,” Green said.
Proposition T
Proposition T was also among the recommendations forwarded to the aldermen by the charter commission. Its champion at the board was Michael Browning, the alderman of the 9th Ward.
“Our streets right now are dangerous, and they are poorly maintained,” he said at the Oct. 14 town hall. “And that is partially because we have a very fragmented structure for handling these things, as well as different departments that have different responsibilities. But there is no single department in the city of St. Louis whose responsibility is your safety out on our streets.”
If adopted by voters, the current Department of Streets would transition by 2029 to the Department of Transportation, with responsibility over every mode of transportation from cars to bicycles to foot traffic. Consolidating things like street paving would also allow the department to better use its limited funding, Browning said.
Simply passing the proposition would not provide the new department with the funding and staffing needed to take on the expanded duties. That would require action from either the current or future Board of Aldermen. That lack of additional funding was part of the reason Jones chose not to sign the measure.
Proposition V
Proposition V was not among the recommendations forwarded by the charter commission, although it did come out of testimony to the commission from Peter Hoffman of Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. Alderwoman Daniela Velazquez of the 6th Ward sponsored the legislation to put it on the ballot.
Proposition V would eliminate the current caps on fines and fees for violations of ordinances governing illegal dumping, unpermitted demolitions and vacant or deteriorating properties not occupied by the owner. Aldermen would then pass bills setting new fines and fees.
The key phrase in the proposal is “non-owner occupied,” Velazquez said. The target isn’t an older homeowner who cannot afford to make repairs on a property they have lived in for decades.
“We really want to go after companies, out-of-state, out-of-city owners who aren’t seeing what that disinvestment does on that block day to day,” she said.
Residents voted overwhelmingly in 2022 to boost the cap on fines for illegal dumping to $1,000.
Early versions of Proposition V lifted that cap on all fines and fees, but Velazquez and others acknowledged that would have been inappropriate in the post-Ferguson era.
While Jones supported the idea of lifting fines and fees to punish absent landlords, a spokesman said in July that she chose not to sign Velazquez’s bill because it was not a Charter Commission recommendation and the legislative process did not allow for “significant public input.”
