Mayor Francis G. Slay voted against allocating $300,000 in development funds to a North St. Louis City community education and wellness center Thursday at the St. Louis City Board of Estimate and Apportionment meeting.
The Ujamaa Cultural Arts, Education and Wellness Center is a 15,000-square-foot community center located in the core of the Mark Twain neighborhood at 5076 West Florissant Ave. Ward 1 Alderman Charles Quincy Troupe is leading the center’s planning.
Board of Aldermen President Lewis Reed and Comptroller Darlene Green argued that the center’s progress should not be held up because young people will need a place to “get off the streets” when school ends.
Reed and Green voted in favor of the allocation, and the funds were approved.
Reed questioned whether Slay wanted to hold back the funds because of the scathing September audit from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development stating that the city did not comply with federal stimulus requirements. The audit recommended that the city pay back more than $1.3 million in federal funds, Reed said.
“It has nothing to do with anything else,” Slay said.
Slay waited until after the primary election, where he was running for re-election, to recommend that the community center’s funds be pulled off the agenda, Reed said. Troupe did not support Slay in his race for mayor and about 77 percent of Ward 1 residents voted against Slay in the primary election.
“Now that the city has to pay back that money, I want to make sure we aren’t going to be holding up projects downstream as a way to pay that $1 million back,” Reed said.
Slay said he based his opposition on a March 20, 2013 letter that Jill Claybour, acting director of the Community Development Administration, sent to Eddie Roth, operations director, asking the members to take the approval of Ujamaa funds off the board agenda. However, Claybour was also the person who asked the board to place the allocation on the agenda.
“I didn’t give it the kind of thought that I should have,” Claybour said. “We came to a phase break that would allow us time to regroup and examine where we are. And certainly increase our oversight.”
The funds are not being reallocated to another project, she said.
Reed and Green agreed that allocating the funds to the center shouldn’t mean that the CDA could not increase oversight.
“I support your oversight, and this allocation is not a payout,” Green said. “It was troubling to see that it was withdrawn so quickly. The alderman and the community organization will provide to you the documentation before you go forward with spending those dollars.”
The funds for Ujamaa came from the North Side Initiative, an annual pot of money that’s allocated every year by the Aldermanic Black Caucus. The aldermanic committee has already approved those funds for Ujamaa.
The initiative’s funds come from the annual federal Community Development Block Grant funds.
Claybour said she doesn’t have a sufficient operating budget and needs more concrete plans about how the organization plans to move forward. And if the center does not remain open for five years, the city would have to pay back federal funds allocated to the project.
Various trade unions, such as the Electrical Workers Union, Sheet Metal Workers, and Plumbers & Pipefitters volunteered labor and donated funds for the center. Reed said this may impact how the CDA is looking at the center’s planning process.
“It may look unorganized, but if you were involved in the daily operations and considered how the volunteers were lined up, you may see it differently,” Reed said. “It is an important project, and the center can’t move forward without those resources.”