ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — Hopes on hold. That's what several mayors are saying when it comes to redevelopment in their communities. They're blaming the St. Louis County Executive for putting a hold on a plan to clear blight and abandoned homes.
"As the mayor, it’s embarrassing when someone visits your city, they make a turn, go down the street, visit a neighbor and they see these properties,” Jennings Mayor Gary Johnson said.
He is trying to do something. This year the city created a vacancy task force to identify all abandoned properties in the city to either rehab them or tear them down.
"When you tear it down, you see opportunity," Johnson said.
A government program makes that easier, allowing localities to purchase properties from St. Louis County at a major discount, cheaper than investors could purchase them. The abandoned properties have to be behind on tax payments.
This year, Jennings applied to do this for some 90 properties but during the process, Mayor Johnson learned they couldn’t.
"It was suddenly halted … There was no explanation, anything,” he said.
He and other town leaders in North County can't take any action right now.
"North County deserves to have long-neglected properties redeveloped. That's why we are doing an audit to ensure that these properties are being redeveloped and not sitting idle. Any municipality that has a redevelopment plan in place for any of these properties should submit them and they will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis,” Doug Moore with St. Louis County said in a statement.
Now, a state representative is speaking out, saying the plan in Jennings shouldn't be interrupted.
"It's a safety issue. We have children walking to school and we have all these abandoned buildings,” Rep. Yolanda Fountain Henderson said.
Johnson says he has developers ready to go.
"It's like a slap in the face … it's like someone coming in your house and telling you what to do. It's like someone coming into your house and pulling your electric panel off switch off,” Johnson said.
Moore says the county is conducting an audit to determine how many properties are still sitting vacant after communities purchased them at a discounted rate.
Mayor Johnson says new initiatives in Jennings are in place to prevent that from happening in the future.
Tuesday afternoon, he and other leaders from localities in North County attended a St. Louis County Committee of the Whole meeting to make county leaders aware of their concerns.