Dear Mayor Slay and the St. Louis Board of Aldermen,

We are everything you would expect residents of a diverse mid-western city to be. We are people of all types and background living in the city, trying to raise a family, trying to have fun, trying to do good work, and trying to make better this place we call home. We are here for many reasons: some of us were born here, some of us sought out life in the city, and others simply landed here. We stay, too, for many reasons: some of us love this place, some see vast potential, some find beauty, and others love all the unique quirky facets of our city.

Far too often, though, it feels as though we residents are fighting against our city. Some of us see a constant battle against institutional mediocrity. Others feel unheard. Some are angered by crime and schools. Still others see a misallocation of resources.

Spending any public money on a new stadium for the Rams is another in a long list of examples of this misallocation of resources. It has been shown, time and time again, that public funding for wealthy sports teams does not return the investment to the city. In our case, we are a city with many needs; none of which will be solved by the addition of yet another stadium and the abandonment of yet more real-estate in our downtown core.  Further, the construction of a new stadium is completely unnecessary, unsustainable, and, without county funding, will further deplete and degrade the already struggling city’s finances.  Police regularly complain of a lack of resources at neighborhood meetings and community centers are reducing staff and hours.  The city has huge infrastructure needs.  Crime and schools are on the forefront of everyone’s mind.  So it angers city residents to think about giving money away to wealthy sports teams and their backers.  Essentially, the city is giving away the barn while the house crumbles.  Literally.  Look at City Hall.  “That’s your city hall? It looks like it’s in pretty sad shape,” commented one visitor while recently riding around town. This individual was patently unaware of the allegory embedded within their statement.

We, as residents, don’t get tax breaks. We pay our earnings tax, our property tax, and our sales tax. No one has offered any of us discounts on any of these things to stay in the city. So why should we? Why should our parks, our streets, our community centers, our schools, our social programs, our police department, and our city services suffer even more so that we can give money to out of town interests? This is yet another example of the City of St. Louis siphoning off the resident’s interests in favor of pipe dreams. The irony that the city struggles to maintain the building that is at the core of civic life, City Hall, while giving away millions to out of town interests is not lost on us. The city should not be the playground for out of towners at the expense of those who live here. The city is a vibrant place filled with real people.  And it has real needs.  A stadium is not one of them.  No parent ever said, “We are leaving the city because the football stadium is 20 years old and should be replaced.”  Rather, the common refrain is, “We are leaving the city because of the crime and poor schools but all the city can think about is a new stadium.”

We hear mounting frustrations at community meetings, playgrounds, and parties. When people begin discussing the city there is an underlying sense that the out-of-touch leadership here threatens to negate the progress the city has made in the past decades. Many residents have “flight plans” in place.  These residents often mention not only the usual suspects – crime, schools, and infrastructure – but are increasingly touching on the stadium proposal as an example of the banal and pathetic inability of the city to commit to its residents and think toward the future.

For these reasons and more we, the undersigned, urge the City of St. Louis to abandon the idea of putting any more of the city’s financial resources toward the private interests of NFL football and a new stadium here. It is bad economic policy, bad civic policy, and bad political policy. We don’t see a need for publicly funding a portion of a very profitable private endeavor.  We don’t see the need to offer tax incentives to those who simply believe they shouldn’t have to pay their fair share.  NFL football is a 9 billion dollar industry. Most team owners are on the Forbes list of richest Americans.  ESPN columnist Gregg Easterbrook estimates the NFL fleeces taxpayers in the U.S. for about 1 billion dollars a year.  While thinking of shiny, grandiose new stadiums may be popular and fanciful, it is very far from the thinking that needs to be happening in order to make our city a safer, cleaner, fairer, and more equitable place for all of our residents to live.

Sincerely,

The residents of the City of St. Louis, Missouri