Thirty days into her tenure as mayor, Cara Spencer is touting success in paving roads and filling potholes. She’s also reiterating her intention to get tough on reckless driving after a weekend that saw more than its fair share.
At a press conference today, Spencer said that the backlog of requests to fill potholes had been reduced by about 80 percent and that major paving projects had begun on North Kingshighway, Union, and 7th Street. She said her administration has closed 1,000 Citizen Service Bureau requests. She’s also chipped away at a backlog of requests for handicapped parking signs. She said all those efforts are in line with the message at the crux of her campaign: “Delivering higher quality city services.”
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She credited much of this success to her new streets director, Jim Suelmann, whom she described as a “steady hand.” He worked as streets director for more than 20 years until 2006, and recently came out of retirement to tackle the job on an interim basis.
Even so, Spencer said that the Streets Department’s past failures can be chalked up in part to a lack of an “ongoing, reliable funding stream” for the department. Specifically, she says, more money from parking meters needs to actually make its way back into the streets. ”It’s crazy that the parking fees don’t go into the general fund, and they need to,” she told SLM. She pointed to a controversial, multi-million dollar contract awarded to a political donor to then-Treasurer Tishaura Jones as an example of what she called “a host of things” where money collected by the city from the streets is not going back into them.
She also addressed the incident that began in Holly Hills Sunday night, in which the neighborhood’s streets were taken over by dozens of cars performing doughnuts and burnouts as part of an organized illegal event. Police say they spiked 50 cars, half of them at a second location, but residents complained of long response times to 911 calls and a paltry number of arrests.
Spencer called the display “wildly dangerous” and, referencing the relatively small number of arrests compared to the number of people involved, said it is “my intention is to be more serious and have a stronger response.”
She added, “We’re looking at ways of impounding vehicles, sending a very, very clear signal.”
That naturally led to questions about the tow lot, which any impounded vehicle would go to. It’s reportedly under federal investigation after city audits found that $5 million worth of cars went missing from the facility. Spencer said that vehicle auctions at the lot have been paused and “there are no cash payments going through our tow lot.”
Looking forward, Spencer said that the city is preparing to take over operations of the city animal control facility, which is currently run by the nonprofit CareSTL. The mayor said she learned just this week that, despite the expiration of CareSTL’s contract on the horizon, necessitating new staffers to run the facility, “We have no one hired.” She added: “We’re fast tracking the hiring process.
Spencer has held roughly one media briefing like today’s each week since being elected, with the atmosphere being slightly more informal than that of the briefings held by her predecessor.
The mayor kept her cool even as the smartphone belonging to former KTVI reporter-turned-citizen-journalist Elliott Davis repeatedly emitted an alarmingly loud ring that at least one reporter mistook at first for a fire alarm. Afterwards, Spencer jokingly thanked everyone for silencing their devices. Davis himself said he now knows about his phone’s “do not disturb” setting. He too gave the mayor high marks for remaining unfazed throughout the disruptions.
