Funding Our Future

The Problem:

Corporate Profits: The payroll expense tax credit allows businesses to evade paying the full one percent tax on corporate profits. Raise an additional $5M/year by limiting this credit to small businesses.
Executive Compensation: Repeal Ordinance 65094, which excluded “stock options, performance shares or performance-based stock related incentive plans” from the earnings tax base, which disproportionately benefits wealthy corporate executives.
Retain and strengthen the earnings tax, which accounts for a third of the city’s general fund revenue, by extending it to capital gains and other forms of investment income.

Pass incentive-linked inclusionary zoning legislation, requiring any new residential developments receiving tax incentives to include affordable housing. Affordable units should include units for households below 30% AMI, as well as units designed to accommodate a wide range of family structures.
Reject all tax increment financing (TIFs), tax abatements, and other local incentives that concentrate resources in the central corridor and gentrifying neighborhoods without income-verified inclusionary zoning standards.
Fully implement Ordinance 71620, which required greater incentive transparency and public input for decisions about TIFs, tax abatements, and other local incentives. Development proposal reports must include clear and full descriptions of public input, particularly the input from the taxing jurisdictions (SLPS).

St. Louis forgoes over $50 million per year in property, sales, and payroll tax revenue from some of the largest tax-exempt entities in the state, including large hospitals and universities. Demand that these wealthy, well-resourced nonprofit institutions help to reduce the massive disparities between conditions on their campuses and in the neighboring community by making payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs).
Repeal the payroll tax exemption for these institutions, which would raise over $10 million annually.
Over one in five SLPS students is insecurely housed. Use PILOTS funding to rehabilitate SLPS-owned buildings into housing for insecurely housed SLPS families, and to increase funding and capacity for the SLPS students-in-transition office to grow support and services for insecurely housed student families.

Expand the County’s Special School District into the City, raising $70M dollars a year to fund renovations, provide mental health and counseling services to St. Louis Public Schools, and transform schools slated for closure into hubs for early childhood, special, technical, and adult education.
Increase funding for early childhood education in the City with a 2% budget set-aside, generating $22 million in funding annually.
Direct all additional educational funding to St. Louis Public Schools and not to charter school systems that divest resources from our public schools.

Require $15/hour minimum wage for all City procurements and contracts.
Protect and promote the right to join a union in order to raise wages, improve working conditions, and create family-sustaining jobs.
Invest in local financial support for worker coops, including revolving loan funds, loan guarantees, and grant programs for both worker cooperative businesses and technical assistance providers.
Support local Black-owned businesses through preferential loan and grant programs.
Increase funding and programming for SLATE job training program, which currently receives no general fund allotment.

The People’s Plan. Building Our St. Louis. The People’s Plan. Building Our St. Louis. The People’s Plan. Building Our St. Louis.