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ST. LOUIS — Fixing water mains, calming streets and increasing wages for city employees have topped the Board of Aldermen’s poll on how to spend the city’s $250 million share of the NFL Rams settlement, officials said this week.

Nearly 12,000 online voters cast ballots on 20 ideas culled from previous public outreach by Aldermanic President Megan Green’s office. Other top pitches included plans to offer free or low-cost child care to residents, to improve downtown streets and sidewalks, and to finance redevelopment efforts in struggling areas.

But fixing water mains topped them all, leading the second-highest vote-getter by more than 1,000 votes.

The woes of the city’s water system came into focus last spring when officials said they were running out of money to fix broken pipes and equipment. Their request for a 44% water rate increase drew even more interest when it coincided with high-profile pipe breaks that temporarily flooded part of Interstate 64 and left parts of southwest St. Louis without water for days. Aldermen ultimately granted the request, but said more needed to be done to rebuild the department’s infrastructure.

The push to make city streets safer, which got the second-most votes, marked the latest expression of residents’ frustration with roads that grew significantly more deadly for drivers and pedestrians during the pandemic. The annual count of fatal crashes on city streets last year dropped back toward the pre-pandemic average. But Mayor Tishaura O. Jones is still planning more than $40 million in street upgrades approved by aldermen last year, and traffic safety advocates have been pushing officials to go further to make streets safer for cyclists and pedestrians.

The plan to use Rams money to increase pay for city workers, which got the third-most votes, could offer a boost to recruitment efforts as City Hall works to fill hundreds of vacancies across its workforce that have hobbled delivery of key city services, like trash pickup, tree trimming and policing, in recent years.

Green said Friday aldermen will now hold hearings on the top five or six ideas to drill down on how exactly they would work and how much they would cost. Several aldermen are hoping to invest most or all of the settlement and spend only the earnings.

Green said the hearings will likely run through the summer, and that no final decisions will be made before the fall.