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Alderman Megan Green, one of the city’s most vocal critics of developer tax incentives, was seeking her colleagues’ endorsement of a property tax break for an apartment project in her ward south of Tower Grove Park. It’s a common request that for dozens of new developments every year.

But members of the Housing Urban Development and Zoning Committee were in no mood to rubber-stamp her request.

For almost three hours, they grilled her and the developer on the project’s finances and an associated deal between the prospective builder and the neighborhood, referred to as a community benefits agreement. Even Aldermanic President Lewis Reed made an uncommon appearance for the hearing.

“I believe you’re using this community benefits agreement basically to cover up what I see as fairly hypocritical treatment,” Alderman Jack Coatar, who represents downtown and Soulard, told Green. “You rail against incentive projects everywhere else in the city, but now you’re seeing if you want to do new construction in your ward, it’s pretty expensive. … So in the future, I encourage you to maybe cut your colleagues some slack instead of just constantly railing against projects in their communities.”

With an ongoing debate over the city’s use of developer subsidies, big projects asking for significant incentives can generate heated debate. Yet is hardly a megaproject. The 10-year tax abatement request amounts to about $634,000 over a decade. It received a solid endorsement from the city’s development office.

Instead, the committee’s scolding of Green highlighted the and the consequences of bucking the tradition of aldermanic courtesy — don’t vote against projects in my ward, and I’ll leave the ones in yours alone.

It also elevated the simmering issue of community benefit agreements, which get developers to pay for some public good, such as infrastructure or affordable housing, in exchange for a tax incentive.

Treasurer Tishaura Jones made the concept , and other members of the city’s progressive wing, including Green, have backed the approach. laying out a citywide framework for community benefit agreements, though it has languished in committee.

When a group made up of two California investors and local resident Rob Maltby approached her about the Morganford project, Green said she wouldn’t support abatement without a community benefit agreement. It was something she said her constituents wanted, .

After months of negotiations, the developers ultimately offered to contribute $60,000 to a nonprofit organization that would promote affordable housing in the neighborhood, where property values have jumped in recent years.

While Green has touted the deal reached between the Tower Grove Neighborhood Association as a precedent for “sustainable development,” it drew the ire of the committee. Alderman Scott Ogilvie went so far as to call it “illegal,” citing state conflict of interest law that says official acts shouldn’t be exchanged for money.

“The Pandora’s box we are opening here is that any alderman can negotiate a community benefit agreement in any way they see fit,” Ogilvie said. “They can require payments to friends, associates, family members, business interests. … This type of process is ripe for the exact type of abuse that residents find abhorrent.”

Dave Sweeney, an attorney representing the developers, said they were only following Green’s instructions. And the community benefits agreement isn’t attached to the bill; it’s a private contract between the neighborhood and the developer.

“It’s not before you,” Sweeney said. “We’re talking about it, but you guys have no control.”

By the end of the meeting, though, committee chairman Joe Roddy asked the city’s development office to write up language prohibiting future incentive bills from using third-party community benefit agreements without expressly including them in legislation.

“What I think we need to do, until we develop a community benefit agreement policy for the whole city is preclude those going forward,” he said.

Roddy admitted he has pushed for similar arrangements to fund infrastructure and other projects in his ward, often through Park Central Development, a community development corporation . He called it a “valid criticism” and said such agreements should be “more transparent and accountable.”

“We need to kind of make it relatively easier on the developer, and if there’s money involved, some public entity needs to be kind of the custodian of that money,” he said.

A citywide policy is likely still a long way off. Reed has sponsored his own community benefit agreement bill, and it has drawn enough co-sponsors to pass. But Reed and Roddy say it’s mostly a placeholder for now as the policy details are worked out.

Roddy wants to gather data on metrics such as affordable housing and public school spending per student, and compare it to other cities to decide what sort of services community benefit agreements should fund. He said it’s not even clear the agreements are necessary, pointing to Ogilvie’s argument that simply minimizing property tax breaks in order to support St. Louis Public Schools might be more beneficial.

Reed’s chief of staff, Tom Shepard, said the board president has been meeting with aldermen and community groups to discuss the bill and community benefit agreements. But he said action in the Board of Aldermen wouldn’t happen until “we feel we’ve talked to enough people.”

A citywide process, Shepard said, is necessary “so developers know coming into a deal what’s going on and don’t get hit with something like what happened with this.”

Whether the project moves forward is unclear. Committee members indicated they may support it without the community benefit agreement and instead grant a 90 percent tax abatement instead of a full property tax break.

Green said she would take that proposal back to her neighborhood to see if they would support it.

“It’s clear that there are two different kinds of community benefits agreements,” she said in a statement. “One kind puts all the power in the alderman’s hands. That’s the way it currently is done. The other is a new kind of community benefits agreement. One that can involve the community, and not just the alderman. … That’s what we tried to do in the 15th Ward, to test it out before going citywide, but the system is pushing back. I’m still optimistic that any citywide CBA standard will be truly community-oriented.”