Francis Slay for Mayor of St. Louis

If a mayor is to take full credit and blame for everything within the city limits over their tenure, this is likely an argument for Mayor Slay. While St. Louis has many problems, and nextSTL continues to highlight quite a few of them, the reality is that the chief executive of this city is juggling macro trends of urban disinvestment, loss of manufacturing jobs and the billion dollar subsidies of suburban growth. Without dumbing down our expectations, success in St. Louis is going to look different than success in Boston, San Francisco and elsewhere.

The list of successes in St. Louis over the past decade are numerous. Neighborhoods from Old North to Wells-Goodfellow to The Grove have experienced a resurgence. Washington Avenue, Downtown West, the Central West End, all more vibrant than a decade ago. A secure source of funding for the Metro transit agency is in place. The Peabody Opera House is open. The first new bridge across the Mississippi, which will create a new northern entrance to downtown is nearly complete. Cherokee Street is a major cultural destination. Forest Park hasn’t looked so good since 1904. The mayor didn’t make these happen single-handedly by any means, but it’s happening on his watch.

Crime continues on the mayor’s watch as well, but just shouting “crime!” at an incumbent isn’t going to cut it. Is there too much crime? Yes. Always. Is crime spiraling out of control? No. We have asked quite a number of open-ended questions about crime on this site. We’ve highlighted the incredible racial disparity in homicides, for just one example. The knee-jerk defensiveness of the mayor’s office has been unnecessary and even misleading, but a fair reading of crime trends in the city does show increases that might point to negligence or incompetence. To his credit, Slay has pushed to return local control of the city’s police department for the first time since 1861. Oddly, this has managed to make him some enemies.