ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — The St. Louis County Council on Tuesday approved $14 million in cuts to next year's budget, days after St. Louis County Executive Sam Page warned council members their package of proposed cuts could come with costly consequences.
Ahead of Tuesday’s St. Louis County Council meeting County Executive Sam Page sent a letter to the council saying if they passed their proposed budget cuts ARPA funded projects will be put on hold, there would be cuts to the teams who deal with problem properties, the senior tax freeze would also be on hold and tax bills would no longer be mailed to residents.
"I am writing to help you understand the impact to programs and services that may be important to you and our residents," Page said in his Dec. 8 letter.
Page was not at the meeting Tuesday and many of the council members were critical of the letter saying Page’s budget would hurt the county and taxpayers.
"Unfortunately instead of taking our input and working together on that plan, we recently received a budget request that increases spending and also increases taxes. That is not fiscally responsible," Councilman Dennis Hancock (R-District 3) said.
Council members in favor of the cuts, such as Councilman Mark Harder (R-District 7), have in turn argued the county could no longer keep "kicking the can down the road" and ignore a $40 million annual budget deficit.
"Unfortunately, we're not like the federal government," Harder said on Monday. "We can't print money. So we have bills to pay and we have deadlines."
Harder says he considered this letter from Page to be a threat to the very projects many of them worked on.
"It seems that he was saying if we vote against it then we will somehow save those projects around the county so I thought it was very disappointing. That's the word that comes to mind when it comes to this," Harder said.
County Council Chairwoman Shalonda Webb (D-District 4) called Page's budget bluff a "disingenuous" act of "retaliation."
Page's letter also warned members of the council that if they go through with their plan without raising any new taxes, it could block parks upgrades to playgrounds in north county's Castle Point neighborhood.
"The positions are already there," Webb said, rejecting Page's claims that spending cuts would produce collateral damage to ARPA-funded projects.
The county council’s amended budget proposed cuts to several offices including to Public Administrator Tim Weaks' office, which he said during public comment would be detrimental to helping vulnerable children who age out of the state's care and elderly abandoned by family.
"This office is fully staffed and uses almost every dollar that we’ve been allotted in our 2023 budget and we intend to continue that in 2024 but if these cuts are allowed to proceed that will severely hinder our ability to do so," Weaks said.
The council’s amended budget would also cut money from public health and public works.
"Roads and sidewalks are the most common topic for a constituent comments and complaints because our safe streets and sidewalks have long since been our county's points of pride. Yet we are being asked to cut more than $2 million out of the public works budget," Councilwoman Lisa Clancy (D-District 5) said
Councilwoman Clancy is the only one who voted 'no' against the main bill pushing the council's budget cuts forward.
Webb says there will be an opportunity next year to reevaluate these cuts that were largely passed by a majority of members on Tuesday night.
"In the second quarter, we can have some conversations about supplement funds. Yes, this is hard but we are not afraid of hard. We do hard but we can do it better if we work together, honestly, open and transparent with each other, and stop trying to legislate with headlines and threats," Webb said.