St. Louis County still has more than $100 million in Rams settlement money that has not been allocated.
The county received a total of $159 million from the lawsuit against the NFL and Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke after the team left St. Louis in 2016.
There is no deadline for when the money must be spent, and it is currently sitting in a fund collecting interest.
“In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with having this money set aside in an interest-bearing fund until we take our time to come up with a good, solid plan for how we're going to use it,” District 3 Councilman Dennis Hancock, R-Fenton, said.
Of the money in the fund, $56.2 million has been approved for five projects, including street repair and facility maintenance.
Most of these projects are still in the planning stages, but Hancock said there are plans to break ground on many of them next year.
Several ideas have been floated for the use of the remaining money, but none of them has gotten far.
“We really haven’t had any earnest discussion about Rams money usage for six to eight months,” said District 5 Councilwoman Lisa Clancy, D-Maplewood.
Some ideas have been languishing as untouched bills on the council agenda for months. One of these is a proposal from St. Louis County Executive Sam Page to use $17.8 million for improvements to the troubled county animal shelter. This bill was still on the council agenda Dec. 2, but a separate proposal for another $3 million in Rams money for the shelter was not.
Using the money for this purpose is a fairly unpopular idea among council members. Hancock said the Department of Public Health, which manages the shelter, only spends about 80% to 85% of its budget each year.
“They haven’t proven that there’s a need,” Hancock said. “There’s so little credibility within the Department of Public Health that it’s hard to take anything they say at face value.”
Council Chairwoman Rita Days, D-Bel Nor, has also told STLPR that she opposes this use.
Clancy, however, does believe the overcrowded shelter needs improvements but said she does not have a strong opinion on where that money comes from.
The Rev. Larry Rice and his grandson Chris Aaron Rice of the New Life Evangelistic Center have another idea for this $20.8 million Page proposed for the shelter: helping the county’s homeless population.
“You’ve got money for the dogs,” Larry Rice said. “Why can’t you come up with money for the homeless?"
They want to build a walk-in homeless shelter surrounded with safe spaces for unhoused people to park and put up tents. He said he wants the county to acquire the land of two industrial parks in Wellston for New Life to build this facility, or to use the money to support the homeless in other ways.
Chris Aaron Rice said that when New Life had a homeless shelter in St. Louis, about 20% to 30% of people using the shelter were from the county, not the city.
“Across the 90 different municipalities, the resources that are available for people are less than in the city,” he said.
He said most homeless shelters in the county are smaller and primarily cater to women and children, leaving a lot of people to seek help in the city.
New Life’s homeless shelter closed in 2017, and the people it serves are now dispersed among several safe houses in Missouri.
Clancy also supports using some of the funds for housing problems.
“We really need some big investments in affordable housing across the spectrum, from addressing shelter for the unhoused to affordable housing for the middle class,” Clancy said. “Maybe a large investment could help spur tighter collaboration here and some big change to address the growing need for quality affordable housing.”
Another use of Rams funds proposed by Page is to eliminate the county’s massive budget deficit. He suggested using $59 million to help fill the $61 million hole in the general fund.
Page said county residents have told him they don't want significant budget cuts to mend the deficit.
"We have a way to plug the budget gap, and we've listened to the residents," Page said. "That's to use the NFL settlement funds and to not cut the police department or any of the other popular services in St. Louis County."
Hancock said he is “adamantly opposed” to that use of the funds.
“If the county executive were to exercise any restraint whatsoever on his staff and the way they put their budgets together, we wouldn’t have to worry about a budget deficit,” Hancock said.
He said he prefers that the money be used for one-time capital expenditures rather than something that might be a problem again next year.
Clancy would also prefer this but said she believes the budget deficit comes more from a lack of revenue rather than too much spending.
“If we can't figure out how to bring in additional revenue to St. Louis County … then I don't know why we wouldn't tap into Rams money just to continue to provide services at the level we're already at,” Clancy said.
The council must approve its budget by the end of the year.
If Rams money isn’t used toward the budget, the $102 million will continue to collect interest until the council spends it.
