ST. LOUIS, Missouri — The St. Louis Board of Aldermen this week passed a $1.41 billion budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, an increase of 0.4% over the current year, while separately advancing a $255 million plan to spend the city’s Rams settlement money and continuing to seek federal aid for last year’s deadly tornado.
The budget holds overall spending nearly flat, but the police department’s general fund rose 7.9%, or about $11.5 million, almost entirely in salaries and benefits, according to a comparison of the adopted budgets. Total police spending across all funds rose 1.6%, to $252 million, as pension and dedicated-fund costs declined.
The increase comes as the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department reports significant vacancies. “Our fully staffed commissioned levels are 1,128 positions,” the department said. “We currently have 835 commissioned staff in our ranks and 19 recruits in the academy.” The figures indicate 293 vacant commissioned positions.
The Board of Police Commissioners had certified a $250 million operating need. The city funded $215.6 million in operating dollars, a difference of $34.4 million. Retirement costs of about $36 million are funded separately. The city funded $208.4 million in operating dollars the prior year and says about $8 million of that amount went unspent.
In a separate measure, aldermen advanced a plan to appropriate $255 million in Rams settlement funds. The plan directs $120 million to North St. Louis, including $89 million for long-term tornado recovery; $80 million to citywide infrastructure; and $55 million to downtown. The bill, sponsored by Board President Megan Green and cosponsored by Mayor Cara Spencer and Aldermen Rasheen Aldridge and Jami Cox Antwi, stalled on a clerical error. The bill text appropriates $255 million, while an attached fiscal note lists $230 million, a discrepancy the city’s Budget Division had not verified.
Alderman Bret Narayan voted against the measure, citing the city’s handling of earlier federal pandemic relief. “When we look at the grants that came out of the ARPA funds, they just weren’t handled well,” Narayan said. “There was essentially just corruption happening there and these dollars have even less restrictions on them, and I’m just concerned that the same people doing the same things are going to lead to the same results.” The Rams bill includes provisions for audits, quarterly public reporting, administrative-cost caps and, for North St. Louis spending, approval by a Board of Aldermen resolution.
The city is directing settlement money to tornado recovery as it awaits federal funds that have not arrived. An EF3 tornado on May 16, 2025, killed five people and displaced thousands. Long-term recovery aid through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery program requires a congressional appropriation. The last such appropriation passed in December 2024, before the storm. Missouri received $110 million after the 2011 Joplin tornado and $82 million after 2022 flooding. St. Louis has received no disaster-recovery funds for the 2025 tornado.
Spencer traveled to Washington to seek the funding. The city has requested between $1 billion and $1.5 billion. “I don’t know that I can say that we’re necessarily closer from a timeline perspective, but we are solidifying alignment there,” Spencer said, adding that “the disaster relief community development block grant funding doesn’t have a regular cadence with funding” and that “unfortunately, in this situation, there are no guarantees.”…