ST. LOUIS • A $760 million sales tax increase that would revitalize parks, build trails and overhaul the Gateway Arch grounds jumped its first major hurdle Thursday, and looks to be headed to city voters for approval in April.
The aldermen’s parks committee passed the bill, 7-1, pushing it on to the full board in coming weeks for final passage. Only Alderman Antonio French voted against it.
“We threw some more money at a dream,” French said. “It was clear to almost anyone watching that it was not thoroughly thought out.”
The bill, sponsored by downtown Alderman Phyllis Young, is the first of three parallel measures to be considered by lawmakers in St. Louis, St. Louis County and St. Charles County, respectively. If passed, the bills would increase sales taxes by three-sixteenths of 1 cent, or less than 2 cents on a $10 purchase, and together raise about $38 million a year over the next 20 years.
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The tax increase was approved by the state Legislature in May but will take effect only if passed by voters in St. Louis County, which has the largest tax base, plus those in one of the two other counties.
Thirty percent of the increase is slated for Arch grounds expansion, 30 percent for the Great Rivers Greenway trail system and 40 percent for parks in each county.
If voters in individual counties don’t pass the tax, their parks won’t get funding.
The effort to pass the city’s bill, however, got uncomfortable for a while during Thursday’s four-hour committee meeting. The crux came in a short exchange between three aldermen and Maggie Hales, head of the CityArchRiver 2015 Foundation, charged with leading the Arch grounds renovations.
First, committee Chair Joe Roddy asked Hales if CityArchRiver had a citizen’s advisory board overseeing its use of the tax dollars. It did not.
Then Alderman Donna Baringer asked for the names of the nonprofit agency’s trustees, who would be overseeing the use of a projected $210 million in private donations. Hales said her board wasn’t “fully formed.”
Finally, Joe Vaccaro quipped: “So, it’s a fairly new agency, that doesn’t have a full board yet. How did you end up getting this project?”
French said after the meeting that the “cool, transformative part” — the park running from Fourth Street over Interstate 70 and up to the Arch — has already been funded. “If we throw an extra $200 million in there and we don’t get something that’s really amazing,” he said, “then you’re going to have a lot of people really disappointed.”
Worse, French said, by passing the bill out of committee, aldermen have given up any leverage they had to learn more.
By the end of the meeting, however, Alderman Tom Villa said that, despite all of the question marks, the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” was too great to deny. Turning their backs now, he said, would be “shortsighted.”
Roddy agreed. “I view this as a remarkable opportunity to garner support from outside our geographical boundaries,” he said. “The idea of St. Charles County supporting a project on our riverfront is pretty remarkable.”
Small doubts, he said, cannot possibly supersede the larger benefits.
David Hunn covers St. Louis government and politics. Follow him on Twitter @davidhunn.
