A wide-ranging, 62-page report compiled by Mayor Cara Spencer’s transition team makes hundreds of recommendations for the city and its new mayor, including everything from better translation of city material into other languages to the need for “a bold ‘wow’ moment” to help change the prevailing narrative downtown.
The recently released report, which outlines a roadmap for reshaping city government under Spencer, was authored by dozens of people across business, law, education, and myriad other specialties, divided into six advisory committees. Their sweeping recommendations include improving basic delivery of city services, giving more money to neighborhood-based community development corporations, streamlining development processes, and modernizing data systems.
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Spencer’s deputy chief of staff Emily Thenhaus says the mayoral administration plans to dive into the report this week and figure out which of its recommendations can be acted on relatively quickly. One theme from the report that Thenhaus says stuck out to her was the need to centralize and streamline processes related to housing and development, which are now “ping-ponging around different city departments.”
“In day-to-day city government life, you can spend 99 percent of your time putting out fires,” said Thenhaus. “And one of the big hopes, I think, with the recommendations in a report like this, is that we’re thinking broader and focusing on the big issues and not just the fire of the day. That’s both the aspiration of this administration and what the city needs.”
She notes that it was important that the report be compiled by a transition team made up of people who have credibility independent of the mayor and who were working outside of the administration. “It’s not like the mayor is telling you, ‘Well, [here’s] what the answer is,’” she says.
Jan Sandweiss, president of the Laclede’s Landing Neighborhood Association, served on the committee dedicated to recommending improvements for city services. She’d previously been outspoken about how she believed the neighborhood was being abandoned by City Hall, even as it continued to bootstrap its re-invention into a cobblestoned district where people live, not just come to party. “I think the transition team was a great asset to her administration,” Sandweiss told SLM. “I haven’t felt heard in a long time.”
The May 16 tornado looms large throughout the report. The portion compiled by the Public Safety and Justice Committee recommended major improvements to the city’s emergency management, including hiring dedicated emergency management staff as well as investing in an early warning system for impending tornadoes and bad weather. Other tornado-adjacent priorities include the city needing to better help school-aged children navigate the collective trauma brought upon by the storm and the city leveraging “post-tornado school closures for long-term community recovery.”
The Public Safety committee also recommends ending plea bargains for those facing major moving violations charges and using mobile skycop units where officer presence is stretched thin, as well as re-implementing traffic enforcement cameras in the city. The Board of Aldermen passed red light camera legislation and solicited vendors to allow for the cameras’ return, but Mayor Tishaura Jones sat on that recommendation. The ball is now in Spencer’s court.
The report also talks about insulating public safety strategies from political interference, but doesn’t make clear whose influence they’re concerned about. With the police going back under the control of a board of commissioners appointed by the governor, the city counselor has warned police oversight board members that doing their job could wind them up in trouble with the attorney general. Is the transition committee worried about activists interfering with the police, or the attorney general interfering with activists? The report is not clear. It does, however, call for pursuing legislation that would restore local control of the police, as well as hiring 200 new officers.
Another eye-catching recommendation is the notion that the city needs highly visible, high-impact initiatives to jumpstart downtown in order to change the narrative about both the neighborhood and the city writ large. “There is a need for a bold ‘wow’ moment—such as a high-profile event—paired with vibrant, creative placemaking efforts like art installations and lighting. These visible wins can uplift morale, attract foot traffic, and affirm that the city is committed to creative and inclusive revitalization,” the report states. Its authors go on to say that if downtown could pull this off, it could also spur similar initiatives at a smaller scale in other neighborhood business districts.
The idea of boosting “civic morale” is a key theme throughout the report. Other suggested ways to achieve this include activating public spaces and storefronts through “art, pop-ups, and cultural programming.”
The report also recommends making the sheriff’s position appointed rather than elected, adopting a neighborhood-by-neighborhood economic development tailored to each locale, re-evaluating the Preservation Board review process, and creating a “data warehouse” integrating disparate data collected by different agencies.
