July Policy Newsletter
It has been several weeks since
the tornado struck St. Louis,
and the work continues to clean up and rebuild. The City is grappling with a disaster far beyond the scale that any municipal government can handle alone, but during the first few weeks, we were alone. I appreciate everyone’s patience as we clear debris, connect people with aid, and move to repair and rebuild. It will be a long and difficult road, so we will need good leadership to guide us, and knowledge of what lies ahead. To understand the path forward, I took a look at the response to the tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri over a decade ago.
In a report published in 2013, Joplin Pays it Forward, community members, including city, state, and federal officials, wrote their memories and advice following the EF5 tornado that ripped through the small midwestern city. The storm hit on the evening of May 22, 2011, killing 161 people as it carved a path through Joplin, causing almost $3 billion in damage. Within 15 hours, the Deputy Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was on the ground, and the federal government jumped into action. A week later, President Obama visited the city to survey the damage himself and give hope to the community.
FEMA arrived in Joplin with a mission to help the city recover and heal. They provided teams of experts and coordinated the recovery, including the people of Joplin in the process by setting up a Citizens Advisory Recovery Team (CART). FEMA would end up serving as operational support all the way into the fall. Distribution points, shelters, and volunteers were coordinated and managed by federal teams. The Army Corps of Engineers contracted the removal of debris, and Americorps managed shelters and volunteer reception centers, processing 67,000 volunteers.
Joplin also saw strong support from the State of Missouri. Governor Jay Nixon sent many resources and people to help, including search teams, the National Guard, and experts in disaster recovery. The Missouri Humane Society even stepped in to help reunite more than 400 pets with their families. The incredible response from the federal and state governments helped give hope to the people of Joplin even as a mile wide path of destruction scarred their city.
Joplin’s local government did its part, clearing the streets of debris in a few days and coordinating with non-profits to organize volunteers and donations. Local police maintained order utilizing a curfew, and coordinated with nearly 200 police departments that came to the city’s aid to effect a thorough search and rescue effort in the immediate aftermath.
Federal, state, and local governments, in addition to non-profits, worked together to help Joplin rebuild. A year later, President Obama returned to the city to attend high school graduation, and a year after that, Joplin cut the ribbon on a brand new high school, aptly named Hope.
But today, everything is different. Hope is harder to find. FEMA took three and a half weeks to arrive in St. Louis. They arrived as a shadow of what they used to be. President Trump took his time approving a disaster declaration for our region, and since he took office in January, his administration has gutted FEMA and Americorps, relinquishing the federal government’s role in disaster response.
Our local government and non-profits have had to pick the slack, rewriting the playbook as we go. Not only has disaster response evolved since 2011, but setting up an effective strategy means needing to understand certain givens. In the past, that has included reliable state and federal response. The City’s playbook wasn’t as effective as it should have been because our partners were missing.
Despite that, we are doing what we can. The Board of Aldermen passed a $30 million dollar relief package aimed at helping people, whether it is cleaning up debris, stabilizing homes, or storing belongings and finding people safe housing. The Mayor’s Office has gone above and beyond to respond to this disaster, and they will be in charge of spending that relief package.
In early June, the state of Missouri passed a $100 million dollar relief package, the largest disaster response in our state’s history, but they conditioned it on the passage of a bill to fund new stadiums for privately owned sports teams like the Royals, Chiefs, and Cardinals. That bill will cost hundreds of millions of dollars for state taxpayers, and was the focus of the legislature’s special session, not tornado relief. Help for St. Louis was an add-on, and while we appreciate our area Senators and Representatives for getting the most they could for our city, they faced pressure to support a deal for billionaires just to get the help that our city needed. As I write this, our governor is slashing our state’s revenue by a half billion dollars at the same time that the federal government is taking a giant step back from responding to disasters.
As we now look to move from response to recovery, we should remember the lessons from Joplin. While we may not have received the federal help that they did, we can identify objectives and tools from their response and recovery that will help us. In “Joplin Pays it Forward,” Former Regional FEMA Branch Chief Steve Castaner wrote that “recovery is not the same thing to all people and all organizations. Every person and organization has a perception of what is recovery and when it is accomplished…The one place that should bring them all together is a recovery vision. Joplin used the Citizens Advisory Response Team (CART) to lead and to support this effort. The platform was used to remind us that everyone in the community plays a vital part in its success.”
As St. Louis rebuilds with limited resources, our recovery will be decided by how well we can work together. Involving the people in the process will be necessary to make sure that we don’t just rebuild, but that we also heal. St. Louis should utilize something like CART to ensure that our city’s recovery includes our communities that were affected by this disaster. Leadership must act with honesty, transparency, and understanding. Most importantly, we must have hope. Our best chance for recovery is together, and the work has just begun.
Lindell Boulevard Improvements
As your Alderman, I am committed to making our streets safer for everyone who uses them. Over the past few months, I have been working with the Lochmueller Group and our city’s Board of Public Service, Streets Department, and Planning and Urban Design Agency to conduct a thorough traffic study for Lindell Blvd. The study has identified three possibilities for the design, and we would like to hear your feedback! You can fill out the survey here.
Note: this will not be the only engagement. A public meeting will be held at a later date with more details after results from this survey are used to narrow down the design options.
What happened at Grove Pride?
Pride month is deeply important to so many people who call our city home, both for members of our LGBTQ+ community and the allies who wish to support and celebrate our friends and neighbors. Pride St. Louis is the largest official “sanctioned” event during Pride month - a parade which takes place downtown with a special event permit and a secured festival area. The Grove is not a part of the Pride festivities downtown and does not receive resources or help from the Pride St. Louis festival, which had its own budget constraints this year due to sponsors pulling out.
In the Grove, the last weekend of Pride is a chance for LGBTQ+ people and their allies to gather at many bars and restaurants that are excited to welcome them. It’s a tradition that has existed as long as the Grove has called itself home to the queer community. From Platypus and Prism on the west end of Manchester Avenue, to Rehab, Just John, Handlebar, and more on the east end, the bars are open as they are every weekend, but expect slightly larger crowds than normal because of the area’s reputation as a destination for queer nightlife.
In recent years, it has become a bigger occasion, and the community has taken different approaches to make sure that the night is safe and enjoyable for all. In 2024, the last Saturday night of June featured what is called a “cage,” which simply means that the street is closed with checkpoints where people are screened, carded, and checked for weapons. There was a small charge to enter to help cover the cost of the extra security. Unfortunately, there were long lines due to understaffing of the checkpoints. However, the night was violence free. The checkpoints worked. Over 40 guns were stopped from being brought into the event.
Sunday night in 2024 was different. There was no cage, and the street had to be cleared by police due to a street takeover by an outside group. It was a foreboding sign of a growing challenge in cities across the country, and one that would hurt the Grove the following year.
In 2025, the local Community Improvement District and the bars along Manchester did not have the resources to “cage” the street. Realizing this in advance, representatives from the community, including the bar owners, the local Community Improvement District (The Grove CID), and Park Central Development met with SLMPD and The City’s Finest on multiple occasions to come up with a plan. I attended three of those meetings myself: two at the police headquarters and one at Handlebar.
We discussed what it would take to close the street to vehicle traffic, but the police argued that without checkpoints, a street closure would encourage crowds and increase the potential for chaos and violence. In every meeting, the need for security was clearly communicated. We tried to work together to ensure that Grove Pride would be safe.
A plan was put in place using the resources that were available. The City’s Finest would take the lead on patrolling Manchester, keeping the street clear of people and traffic moving. If the street became snarled, the secondary police would use their vehicles to block the street in one direction until the traffic and people could be cleared out of the street. SLMPD would be ready on the periphery in case the City’s Finest needed help. The police asked that the bars close earlier than their usual 3 am closing time in order to alleviate staffing demands during those nights, and the bars agreed.
But when the weekend arrived, everything did not go as planned. On Saturday and Sunday nights, the Grove became the victim of a street takeover. A large crowd filled Manchester Avenue, mostly between Boyle and Sarah. The crowd in the street was different from the usual Pride crowd. This crowd stayed mostly in the street. It ranged in age from pre-teens to adults in their 30’s, and numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands at its peak. They were not patronizing the bars on Manchester. Instead, they brought their own alcohol, drugs, and weapons. The police stood by while the crowd grew to an unmanageable size. People climbed buildings, got in fights, and danced on top of cars, including a Metrobus that was just trying to run its route.
Saturday night, around 10 p.m.
To be clear, this was not an event sanctioned by the city, the Grove CID, or the bar owners. There was no street festival, no outside alcohol sales, no event that a permit could be applied for. The bar owners opened their establishments as they always do, employing extra security to ensure that they did not become a problem. By all accounts, the scene inside the bars was peaceful. But the other crowd created their own party, and it got out of hand quickly. Saturday night concluded when two people got shot, right around the pre-established early closing time.
In response, the Mayor’s Office helped negotiate an even earlier closing time for the bars on Sunday night. Police doubled their numbers and started the evening by closing the street with their vehicles. But by 7 pm, the crowd was back, drinking in the street and climbing on buildings. The night ended around 10 pm when fireworks were shot into the crowd, an arrest ensued, a police officer was hurt, and another was tackled by a man with a rifle in his waistband.
Sunday night, around 7 p.m.
I walked down Manchester on both nights that weekend. I saw the chaos firsthand where people were openly drinking and fighting in the street. On both nights, it was evident that the night was going to end poorly hours before it actually did. The Police were quick to blame the bar owners, but the community did everything it could reasonably do to prepare for that weekend, short of throwing a festival that it couldn’t afford. Ultimately, the bars cannot be responsible for what happens outside their property and on public streets - that is the job of our police department, who we communicated with repeatedly before the weekend.
If this year brought any lessons, it’s that none of us - not the community, not the city, not the police - can do the same thing next year and expect a different result. The police made their position clear: they believe a permit should be acquired, whether you’re throwing an event or not, and that the community must shoulder the cost of securing the area. The Grove businesses already pay city taxes and a special tax that goes in part to providing security. Because of a state takeover, the City no longer has control over its own police department, but we still pay over a quarter of our budget to them for public safety. The police need to figure out an answer to street takeovers, because as KSDK’s Mark Maxwell put it: “large, unruly crowds don’t usually think to ask for a permit in advance.” If an uninvited crowd descends on your community, who can you call if not the police?
As we plan for next year, my hope is that the city and our police department can work together to make sure we don’t see these headlines again. If securing the street for a festival is what it takes to protect Pride weekend, then someone has to pay for it. If the community can only afford so much, then the rest has to come from the city and the police. Otherwise, there is a breakdown in the social contract when the public safety we already pay for is only available at an extra premium price.
The Grove is known for its LGBTQ+ nightlife. It is a safe, welcoming space with a storied history. Whether you identify as queer or as an ally, Manchester Avenue between Vandeventer and Kingshighway will always be a place where you are celebrated and loved. The Grove and the surrounding Forest Park Southeast neighborhood is your community, too, whether you live here or just frequent its establishments. We have pride in our community, and that’s what the last weekend in June is all about. We’ve learned a lot of lessons from the last two years. We know there is work to be done, and we’re starting now.
