City officials say only $4 million of the $30 million Rams settlement fund set aside to assist victims of the May 16 tornado has been spent.
Tornado recovery staff provided an update on the spending to members of the Board of Aldermen's Budget and Public Employees Committee on Wednesday night, eliciting strong responses from members of the public present at the meeting.
“People in the north are living this every single day, and barely any money has actually been spent helping folks with this major housing crisis,” said Ward 6 resident Casey Fowler.
Jim Hill, the city’s chief financial recovery officer, reported to the committee that roughly $23 million of the funding has been contracted in the nearly six months since the tornado struck. Hill said actual spending of those funds has been slow due to administrative and bureaucratic issues.
As a result, only four tornado-damaged buildings have been fully repaired with the funds, Hill said, with 22 additional home repairs currently in progress.
Community Development Administration Executive Director Nahuel Fefer said that’s a small fraction of the estimated 5,000 homes that need significant repairs in the tornado-impacted area.
“This is a $1-$2 billion disaster and so the true need — recognizing that it's in excess of our available resources — is for home repair in excess of $250 million and for housing, more broadly, in excess of half a billion,” Fefer said.
The $30 million in funds comes from a $280 million trove awarded to the city by Rams owner Stan Kroenke and other NFL teams.
Mayor Cara Spencer signed a bill allocating the funds to tornado recovery in the weeks following destruction in north city caused by the EF3 tornado.
City spending must go through a sometimes lengthy process that involves requests for proposals, approvals and more. Hill said much of the money is still in that process.
Roughly $12.5 million of the Rams settlement funds will go toward supporting people impacted by the tornado, $10.5 million toward housing, $5 million toward debris removal and $1 million toward administrative costs.
The city has allocated a total of $94.8 million in Rams settlement and other funding to the recovery, and another $280 million is expected from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Missouri Senate Bill 1.
Hill said the need far exceeds that total, however. City officials have estimated the tornado recovery could cost between $1 billion and $2 billion in total. The tornado damaged more than 10,000 properties, according to city officials.
Aldermanic President Megan Green attended the committee meeting. She said there’s no excuse for the slow rollout of funds.
“We've known that since Day 1 (or) 2 we move way too slow, and we can stand up here and talk process all day long and all the rules we're required to go through because of charter ordinances or whatever,” Green said. “But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter; we’re not getting it out the door fast enough.”
Several members of the public called on the city to allocate all of the money the city received through the Rams settlement — $280 million.
“Every minute the city delays is another minute a family continues to suffer without the support that they desperately need,” said Ward 10 resident Isla Frazier. “St Louis is sitting on more than 250 million from the Rams settlement money that could be putting people back in homes, reopening libraries and helping neighborhoods rebuild.”
Others shared Frazier’s sentiments, complaining the city has done little to address the damage to north city in the months following the tornado.
Melanie Marie, a St. Louis resident, called on the city to cut red tape.
“Five months later, what we've gotten from the city is not relief, it's rhetoric,” she said. “We can keep debating over $30 million like it's some prize, or we can finally do the right thing by the people and allocate the remaining Rams fund directly to rebuilding, to stabilization and impacted homeowners, to renters and to those left behind by decades of systemic neglect.”
Marie pointed most of her criticism toward Spencer’s administration, a thread that ran through many of the residents’ complaints at the meeting. She, too, called for the city to spend the full amount of settlement money on tornado relief.
“It's not the Rams' money,” Marie added. “It's the people's money.”
Hill said the city continues to work on speeding up the spending process through outsourcing grant management, creating a fast-track process for proposals, launching weekly contract meetings and an online contract signing process.
He noted that reducing the time it takes to spend funds is a major focus of the recovery office.
