Mayor Tishaura O. Jones challenged all St. Louisans and city supporters to “Meet me upstream,” during her second delivered State of the City address at Saint Louis University’s Center for Global Citizenship on Tuesday.
“No matter your place in St. Louis, I see you, I hear you, and we are working towards solutions to fix our shared problems,” said Jones.
“St. Louis, we’ve worked hard in the past year to move some major pieces into place to make transformative change in our city, change that residents will see and feel in the years to come. But the kind of long-term, transformative change we’re working on doesn’t happen overnight because St. Louis didn’t get like this overnight.
Jones immediately address the crime situation in St. Louis, saying “At churches across the city, I hear families praying for their loved ones and asking God to make our city safer for their babies.”
“And for those who think that Black elected officials don’t talk enough about crime, we live it every day,” said Jones, who shared that she had just lost a family member to gun violence in Chicago.
The mayor noted creation of the city’s first Office of Violence Prevention, “to marshal all of our public safety resources and youth programs under one umbrella, instead of in a constellation across city departments.”
“I’m proud to report that the office is not only up and running but is a permanent division under the department of public safety.”
With a state takeover of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department looming, Jones said, except for car thefts, crime is trending lower than at this time in 2021 and 2022.
“A state takeover of police would mean a police department more accountable to unelected bureaucrats than the communities they patrol,” said Mayor Jones.
“Kansas City, whose police are still under state control, just experienced their three most violent years on record.
Chief Robert Tracy has just completed his first 100 days with the police department and Jones hailed the fact that the first external police chief in the city’s history has focused on operations, building community relationships at more than 75 events, and [helped reach] a contract agreement approved overwhelmingly by rank-and-file officers.
“Our legislature must not push politics into public safety and instead give our new chief the time he needs to implement proven crime-reduction strategies, like he did in Wilmington,” Jones said.
St. louis demands “a safer future with common sense gun regulations like universal background checks and red flag laws, made all the more urgent by last year’s act of senseless violence at Central Visual and Performing Arts – a tragedy we still mourn six months later,” Jones said.
“To Jefferson City, a 12-year-old receiving gender-affirming healthcare is a bigger threat than a 12-year-old with an assault rifle. We have been vocal about what we need to improve public safety, and a state takeover of SLMPD isn’t it.”
Jones said her office worked with the Board of Aldermen to allocate remaining American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to help support working families, expand access to healthcare, improve and calm our streets, and direct more than $250 million to neglected neighborhoods.
Jones said being a former restaurant owner and serving as treasurer taught her the importance of modernizing city government to improve reliability of services like refuse collection.
The city now has a digital payroll system, done away with typewriters, and the administration is working to streamline services – especially around the liquor license process for small businesses.
“My first brush with City government technology was serving as the Treasurer,” said Jones. “In City government, we’re still using 90’s-era technology like green screens and mainframes. We’re cleaning up our data and service tracking so that we can measure city services.”
“We want all of our departments to work together, break down silos and communicate effectively with the residents we all serve.”
Mayor Jones closed the address emphasizing that just like she did as a reservation and sales agent with TWA, she hears the concerns of residents on city services like refuse collection, 911 consolidation, and public safety. The city also launched a website, www.aftertheworkhouse.com, to solicit feedback on how to use the former Workhouse site, which is currently empty of detainees.
Noting that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had spoke in the same facility on October 12, 1964, two days before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Jones said “I want you to leave here tonight with Dr. King’s words echoing in yours, just as his voice bounced off the walls of this historic building.”
“Dr. King said: ‘We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.’”
“We can reduce crime by reversing poverty. And to build faith in our government, to build faith that we can solve the big problems, we need to tackle the everyday problems we see and feel in our neighborhoods,” Jones said.
“Let’s steer that boat upstream, to stem the tide.”
