ST. LOUIS — The city’s top fiscal body is set Thursday to consider changes to next year’s budget that would take money from the police and jail to bolster the Circuit Attorney’s office, the trash division and the city TV station.
The Board of Aldermen’s budget committee forwarded the recommendations to the city’s Estimate Board last week.
A proposal from Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier, of Tower Grove East, advises taking $163,000 from the $190 million police budget and splitting it between the trash and communications divisions.
The police department is not expected to use all of its personnel budget because it won’t fill all of its many vacant positions.
The trash division has been piling on overtime in recent years as it works through a staffing shortage.
And the communications division, which livestreams the city’s public meetings, has run out of overtime this year trying to keep up with an increase in events scheduled in the evenings to be more convenient for residents.
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Another proposal from Alderman Rasheen Aldridge, of downtown, advises freeing up a little more than $500,000 to help the Circuit Attorney's Office staff hire additional support staff, and an attorney for the newly revived Conviction Integrity Unit, which reviews cases where people claim they were wrongfully convicted.
Roughly $236,000 would come from the city's jail budget, which Aldridge said will likely go unused because the city won't fill all of the jail's vacant jobs. The rest of the money would come from elsewhere in the Circuit Attorney's budget.
And budget committee chair Cara Spencer, of Marine Villa, asked the city’s Estimate Board to find $90,000 to pay for more trash truck driver positions. Refuse Commissioner Randy Breitenfeld told the committee last month that the proposed budget doesn’t cover all the positions needed to pick up all of the city’s garbage.
The Estimate Board, which includes Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, Comptroller Darlene Green, and Aldermanic President Megan Green, must approve any additions to the budget.
Their meeting is set for 2 p.m. on Zoom. The link to the meeting is .
Editor's note: A previous version misstated the specifics of Alderman Rasheen Aldridge's amendment.Â
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