Platform

The slogan of our campaign is “Local Focus, Big Picture.” St. Louis is an awesome City with a great future, it just needs a little tweaking to make it the best version of itself. We must continue our work at the local level in developing and supporting strong neighborhood organizations, partnering with our Community Development Corporation, and working with our business districts. We must also think bigger.

One of St. Louis’ biggest problems is its fragmentation. Not just the City/County divide, but also the fragmentation that occurs within the City limits. With 28 wards, each of which has its own traffic planning, tax incentive policies, and business planning, it’s no wonder that the City has frustrating traffic patterns, dwindling revenues, and uneven business planning. By taking a higher level look at some of the issues, developing city-wide plans, and utilizing best practices from similar cities while tailoring them to our needs, we can once again put St. Louis on the Map.

To this end, we will advocate for:

Responsible Development
St. Louis has forgone over $700 million in tax revenues in the last 15 years due to the overuse and non-strategic use of tax incentives. Foregoing such revenues harms our City Schools and makes it more difficult for us to provide quality City services such as trash pickup.
We must:

  • Reign in the use of tax incentives in the City to ensure that development projects receiving public subsidy have a public benefit
  • Supporting City-wide use of Community Benefit Agreements
  • Working with residents to determine which projects in the 15th Ward are eligible for subsidy
  • Implement inclusionary zoning
  • Incentivizing redevelopment in areas of the ward like the wedge that have seen years of disinvestment
  • Assembling the resources and coalition to expand the South Grand Business District to Chippewa
  • Implementing the recommendations of the PFM Study and the East-West Gateway Study on the use of tax incentives

Increasing Public Safety through allocating resources toward prevention (Being Smart on Crime)
Crime is always one of the top issues on the mind of 15th Ward Residents. Crime does not start and stop at ward boundaries, and therefore must have a City-wide plan for reduction. St. Louis’ current model of arrest, incarcerate, release, is not working. If we want to see our crime decrease that means investing in researched based crime prevention programs that address the root causes of crime – poverty, lack of economic opportunity, substance abuse, mental illness. We must:

  • Support the implementation of the Focused Deterrence public safety model
  • Support Homeless rights legislation to decriminalize homelessness and instead invest in drug treatment, housing, and mental health programming. (Making us aligned with the new HUD guidelines)
  • Support efforts to raise the wages of first responders in the City to match that of the County in efforts to aid in hiring and retaining quality employees (The City currently pays $10,000 less that the County, making it difficult to attract and retain quality officers.)
  • Supporting the closure of the workhouse and using the savings to invest in drug treatment and mental health services, two of the main drivers of our crime issues
  • Support carving out public safety taxes from TIFs/tax Abatements to ensure appropriate funding levels
  • Continuing to work with the Ethical Society of Police in implementing their recommendations for changes within the police department to improve police/community relations
  • Support development of a Gun Violence Intervention Program in St. Louis

Standing Up for Racial Justice, Women, Immigrants, and Working Families
For the next 2-4 years, the only place that progressive policies will get done is at the local level. Cities must lead the resistance to Trump agenda. Progressive Cities protect their residents, especially those must vulnerable, to all forms of discrimination. St. Louis must follow the lead of other cities and adopting policies that protect minorities, women, immigrants, and working families from unprecedented attacks coming from the State and National levels. We must:

  • Implement the recommendations of the Ferguson Commission and the For Sake of All
  • Adhere to the racial equity framework for making public policy decisions and support neighborhood organizations in using a racial equity framework in neighborhood decision making
  • Support the implementation of paid-family leave policies
  • Include pregnancy and reproductive health a protected class under the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance to ensure employers and landlords cannot discriminate against women due to their reproductive choices
  • Providing unpaid leave for victims of domestic violence
  • Continuing to work with the International Institute to ensure access to affordable housing for immigrants and refugees in the 15th Ward

Housing

  • Supporting Tenants rights legislation to hold chronically bad landlords accountable for the conditions of their properties and provide more legal recourse for tenants who are caught living in unsafe conditions
  • Supporting inclusionary zoning policies to ensure residents are able to stay in their communities as housing prices increase