Not long ago, the big question surrounding St. Louis’ North Side economic development grant program was: What are the recipients planning to do with the money? Outrageously enough, city officials and recipients in many cases simply wouldn’t say.
At last, there are some answers — though they’re not good ones.
The Post-Dispatch’s Austin Huguelet has traced some of the pending grants to their listed addresses. Which, as it turns out, include putative “businesses†that are actually just vacant, shuttered-up houses.
It’s only the latest of multiple indications that a grant program involving tens of millions of dollars in public money has been deeply corrupted by insider influence, waste, secrecy and even potential criminality.
Enough. If Mayor Tishaura O. Jones doesn’t get in front of this mess by immediately demanding a fully independent audit of the grant awards, the Board of Aldermen and other city leaders must.
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The grant program is a core element of Jones’ vow to revive St. Louis’ long-neglected North Side. Using some $37 million worth of federal pandemic funds, the idea is to give businesses, nonprofits and other entities the resources to build and thrive in an area of the city where the local economy has all but collapsed.
It’s a valid premise, but its execution has been uneven, to say the least. First, the program, initially conceived three years ago but mired in bureaucracy, didn’t get off the ground until this summer, with the first of the grant approvals through the St. Louis Development Corp., a city agency.
Then (as the Post-Dispatch has previously reported) much of the money was earmarked for entities with family ties and other connections to city government insiders. Worse, the SLDC has withheld information from the public about exactly what all the money is being used for, citing a loophole in the Missouri Sunshine Law that doesn’t reasonably apply to a city economic grant program.
That’s all bad enough. But what has come out this week is worse.
As Huguelet reported Thursday, some of the grants are set to bolster supposed business or nonprofit ventures at properties that evidently ²¹°ù±ð²Ô’t businesses or nonprofits.
Upon going to addresses listed for projects that are set to receive grants, Huguelet found that some weren’t what the documents described. For example, the “St. Louis Mississippi River Museum,†set to receive a $25,000 city grant, is actually just a multifamily home surrounded by overgrown weeds where no one answers the door.
Another “business†in line for a $25,000 grant is a boarded-up two-story building in the Ville neighborhood with trash in the yard and five years’ worth of unpaid property taxes.
Another property, purporting to be a “life skills†school for ex-cons and gang members — a venture in line for a $50,000 expansion grant — is, at the moment, a one-room structure with peeling paint and a “KEEP OUT†sign in the window. The purveyor told Huguelet she does indeed counsel people in need, but meets them at places like McDonald’s.
Still another address connected to this North Side program isn’t even on the North Side; the owner told Huguelet he just has some storage space there. The owner wouldn’t reveal what he plans to do with the $50,000 he is set to receive from the city.
So many questions. Yet the SLDC has refused to even release applications for the program. This is in keeping with its apparent mantra of hiding details about public expenditures from the public.
As Huguelet notes in his reporting, much of the grant money has also been earmarked for apparently legitimate ventures, both large and small. But that doesn’t mitigate evidence of some of the funds being steered — under cover of inappropriate official secrecy — to what sure look like phantom projects.
Only a fully independent audit will get to the bottom of this. The city shouldn’t earmark or pay out another dime until that happens.