The City of St. Louis cannot succeed if half of it is left to fail. For decades, previous administrations have failed North St. Louis through a lack of investment, attention, and concern. Once thriving neighborhoods like Walnut Park have lost families, small businesses, schools, and vibrancy.
Those of us who were born and raised here don’t have to read a book or see a documentary to understand this decline. I saw it with my own eyes. My grandparents’ home in Hamilton Heights, which used to be my family’s centerpiece of love and laughter, is now a vacant lot.
When I became mayor in 2021, we started the hard work of reversing these decades of disinvestment. I worked with the Board of Aldermen to appropriate more than half of St. Louis’s American Rescue Plan Act (“ARPA”) allocation in disinvested neighborhoods in North St. Louis. So far, we have started a wide range of projects, including demolishing blight, building housing, paving streets, supporting small businesses, reducing violence, and investing in our people and our communities.
The North St. Louis Small Business and Non-Profit Grant program is an ARPA project that has attracted a lot of attention. Approximately $30 million is being used to help North St. Louis businesses and non-profits with stabilization, expansion, building renovation, and other operational support and improvements.
One of the biggest challenges with the North St. Louis Small Business and Non-Profit Grant program has been managing expectations. While $30 million is a historic amount to invest on the North side, the program received over 700 applications with $500 million in funding requests. That means less than 6% of applicants are going to receive the funding they wanted. If an applicant applied for $100,000 to renovate their storefront and only received a $25,000 grant, they would have to find $75,000 from another source to obtain city funding. Quite frankly, $30 million is still too small to reverse decades of disinvestment.
The second challenge with this program is the misconceptions surrounding the approval process. The media has reported on several businesses that received conditional grant awards without explaining what a conditional grant actually means.
Articles about grant recipients “in line” and “still slated” for funding refer to businesses that have not been awarded grant money. Those businesses were conditionally awarded. In other words, they were preapproved. When you buy a house, you have to first get preapproved pending further background checks and vetting, but you can’t move in that day. It’s the same with this program. Pre-approval doesn’t mean these businesses have money in-hand. It means they still need to be vetted.
Per funding agreements that awardees sign, grant money can only be used for eligible uses such as operational support, which includes payroll, mortgage, rent, and or utilities. Grant recipients are required to keep receipts and produce them if asked by SLDC.
After announcing conditional awardees, SLDC continued investigating applicants to ensure they met the program eligibility requirements and verify the accuracy of information in their applications. Based upon this vetting, some conditionally awarded grants have been rescinded, and others are still being vetted.
By far, the biggest challenge to the North St. Louis Small Business and Non-Profit Grant program is the sentiment that North St. Louis doesn’t deserve investment. An opportunistic mayoral candidate recently posted a negative article about the program, and commenters felt comfortable saying the quiet part aloud: that they don’t think North St. Louis is ready or deserving of real investment.
But they’re wrong. North St. Louis deserves a generational commitment and that requires us to get this right. An accounting firm recently released an audit of the program and we continue to review grant applications for compliance. We also launched a transparency portal so the public can view every grant application.
We understand the frustrations businesses are feeling. Some have to find additional money to complete their projects, some have to continue to have to answer SLDC questions about their applications, and some did not receive funding. SLDC plans to make final funding recommendations for conditionally approved recipients this month. Any grant funds that are rescinded will be reallocated to other applicants. We will work to put this money into the community where it can do the most good for the future of our City.
I will not let opportunistic politicians and special interests stop my commitment to investing in North St. Louis.
Tishaura O. Jones is mayor of the City of St. Louis
Thank you for focusing on the needs of the North Side Mayor Jones and thank you St. Louis American for printing this article!
That opportunistic mayoral candidate that posted negative comments about the program and made people feel comfortable saying that North St. Louis is undeserving of the grant should not be voted in. We need to know who said that.
Appreciate your transparency and commitment. Also the progress made during your term as Mayor.
Appreciate the progress Saint Louis city, made during your term as Mayor.
I will like a to vote for Tishaura Jones yard sign.
I need a Re-elect Mayor Tishaura Jones yard sign.
The criticism for the North Side Grant program’s vetting process was echoed by Darlene Green, our Comptroller. There were/are valid concerns. Ms Green asked SLDC to “start over” and even spoke on the floor of the BOA voicing her concerns. Transparency has not been allowed to the Jail Oversight Board to investigate allegations of lack of food, water, adequate housing as well as a record number of 18 deaths.