Over the past year, St. Louis area residents saw demolition begin at the venerable Chesterfield Mall, dealt with deadly flash flooding and were awed by a solar eclipse and the northern lights.
Here’s a look at some of the other top stories in the St. Louis area and Missouri for 2024:
School leader ousted
St. Louis Public Schools Superintendent Keisha Scarlett dances at a staff pep rally ahead of the school year at Enterprise Center on Aug. 4, 2023. St. Louis native William Stanford Davis, right, who plays janitor Mr. Johnson on “Abbott Elementary,” spoke at the event.
The St. Louis city schools became engulfed in controversy over the brief one-year tenure of Superintendent Keisha Scarlett, who was ousted by the school board in July amid criticism of her handing out jobs and contracts to a long list of people she had connections to.
Many were from the Seattle area, where Scarlett had previously worked. An audit report released earlier this month said school district policies were bypassed in the awarding of at least $3 million in salaries and contracts to friends and colleagues from Seattle.
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The audit, by an accounting firm hired by the board, said Scarlett received a monthly car allowance of $800 in addition to a district-owned car, in violation of her contract. The audit also said four credit cards issued to Scarlett and three staffers who reported to her showed the former superintendent racking up $88,500 in questionable charges.
Scarlett’s attorney said the audit report was biased and lacks credibility; Scarlett earlier had said she intended to sue the city schools for wrongful termination.
Meanwhile, a Post-Dispatch review of charges on 21 credit cards issued to the district, including various people and departments, showed spending of $1.6 million during Scarlett’s tenure. The bulk of the charges were for travel, food and entertainment expenses unrelated to academics or operations.
The statements reveal spending on airline upgrades, luxury hotels and restaurants from Hawaii to Georgia.
The district also had other problems during Scarlett’s tenure. The district’s operating budget dropped from a surplus of $17 million to a projected deficit of $35 million, which was mostly attributed to staff raises and added transportation costs.
And the district’s school bus vendor terminated its contract, forcing the district to patch together a mix of buses, taxis and rideshares from 19 vendors plus regularly scheduled Metro Transit buses to get students to and from school.
Bell unseats Bush
St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell speaks to supporters after winning his election to represent Missouri’s 1st Congressional District.
In perhaps the year’s biggest local political development, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell soundly defeated U.S. Rep. Cori Bush in the August Democratic primary after an expensive campaign featuring numerous TV ads for both sides.
Bell went on to easily defeat Republican Andrew Jones in the heavily Democratic 1st Congressional District in the November general election.
Bell’s campaign got key support from a pro-Israel committee upset with Bush’s outspoken views on the Israel-Hamas war, spending more than $8.4 million promoting Bell or opposing Bush and soliciting more than $2.3 million in donations for Bell’s campaign.
In the days after Hamas launched an attack on Israel in October 2023, Bush had called for ending U.S. support for “Israeli military occupation and apartheid.” Bell, in announcing his switch from a U.S. Senate bid to running against Bush, had said “we can’t give aid and comfort to terrorists, and Hamas is a terrorist organization.”
Bell also got outspoken support from a coalition of local Jewish religious leaders. And he won the backing of the Ecumenical Leadership Council of Missouri, a coalition of about 400 Black churches active on social justice issues.
Bell’s campaign also was aided by building and industrial trade unions upset with Bush’s vote in 2021 against a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that included several major projects for the St. Louis area. She had said her vote was a protest against the failure to also have a vote on a separate bill addressing universal preschool, climate change and other proposals.
Meanwhile, farther west in the metro area, former state Sen. Bob Onder, a Lake Saint Louis Republican, was elected to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Republican from the 3rd District.
Abortion ban overturned
Mallory Schwarz, executive director of Abortion Access MO, speaks to supporters who are celebrating the passage of Amendment 3, guaranteeing reproductive rights in the state.
Two years after Missouri imposed one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans, the state’s voters got rid of it in the Nov. 5 election.
A constitutional amendment pushed by abortion-rights advocates passed with 51.6% support.
The new measure legalizes abortion up to the point of fetal viability, which can occur at about 24 weeks of pregnancy. But because the amendment didn’t explicitly overturn any laws, abortion rights advocates had to go to court to do so; that process is still underway.
The amendment’s passage came the same day Republican statewide candidates opposed to abortion rights won lopsided victories in Missouri.
Since 2022, the state had prohibited abortions except in cases of a medical emergency, with no exceptions for rape or incest. The ban was passed by the GOP-dominated Missouri Legislature in 2019, triggered to go into effect if and when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
Within minutes after that happened in 2022, then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt issued an opinion that put the state ban in effect.
Despite the November vote results and ongoing legal maneuvers, Republican lawmakers are expected to launch new efforts to restrict abortion when the Legislature’s 2025 session begins Jan. 8.
Changes to or repeal of the newly passed constitutional provision would need to get another majority vote at an election, requiring legislators to put a new question on the ballot.
Abortion legislation seeking to change state law, without requiring a public vote, also could be filed, possibly setting up new court battles.
Dueling county prosecutors
St. Louis County and the state took their battle over the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney pick to the courts on Dec. 18, 2024. St. Louis County argues that it should have control over current prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell’s replacement, while the state says the governor has the right.
When Wesley Bell was elected to Congress, St. Louis County Executive Sam Page assumed he would need only to get County Council approval — not a sure bet — for his choice to fill the last two years of Bell’s term as county prosecutor.
Page wasn’t counting on Gov. Mike Parson jumping into the issue. Just days after the election, the governor insisted that he had the authority to pick a new prosecutor, despite a county charter provision giving the task to the county executive.
Parson’s view was upheld Dec. 20 by Circuit Judge Brian May, who said the prosecutor is a state officer and not an officer merely for the county in which he is elected. Page immediately said he’d take the issue to the Missouri Court of Appeals, continuing the legal battle.
Even before the judge ruled, Parson and Page had announced their prosecutor choices, who are both Democrats.
The Republican governor named Melissa Price Smith, a longtime assistant prosecutor under Bell and his predecessor, Bob McCulloch. The Democratic county executive said he’d tap Cort VanOstran, a former federal prosecutor and unsuccessful U.S. House candidate in 2018.
Meanwhile, five of the seven council members in a committee vote signaled that they would reject VanOstran’s nomination should Page ultimately prevail in court.
In another legal tussle, Page argues he has the power to seat VanOstran as an “acting” prosecutor without the council’s approval — a point disputed by council members.
At this point, the only thing that’s certain is that Bell will be sworn into the U.S. House on Friday.
Freed after 34 years
Christopher Dunn reunites with his mother, Martha Dunn, after walking out of the Carnahan Courthouse a free man on Tuesday, July 30, 2024.
After 34 years in prison, Christopher Dunn was freed in July after a St. Louis circuit judge found him innocent of a 1990 killing.
The finding occurred after the state’s key eyewitnesses, a 12-year-old boy and 14-year-old boy at the time, recanted their testimony as adults.
Dunn had maintained his innocence for more than three decades in the murder of Ricco Rogers, 15, in the city’s Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood.
Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore had filed “a motion to vacate” in the prosecution, using a legal procedure created by the Missouri Legislature in 2021 to deal with certain people who remained in prison despite solid evidence of innocence. The legal team pushing for his release also included the Midwest Innocence Project.
Dunn’s release last summer came despite the opposition of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, whose office argued that the witnesses were coerced into backing off their original testimony.
Who’s getting pandemic aid?
Ward 8 Alderwoman Cara Spencer, a candidate for mayor, questioned Mayor Tishaura O. Jones after the mayor addressed concerns about the controversial North Side grant program at a meeting of the Board of Aldermen on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024.
The planned distribution of more than $33 million in federal pandemic aid to businesses and nonprofits in north St. Louis neighborhoods became mired in controversy after revelations by the Post-Dispatch.
After the city’s development arm unveiled the grant winners last summer, Post-Dispatch reporters disclosed that one announced winner — a computer services business scheduled to get $50,000 — was working out of an office in Shrewsbury in south St. Louis County. Several others listed addresses in vacant buildings. In addition, dozens owed the city back real estate taxes despite a requirement that they be paid up.
The Post-Dispatch also reported that three awards worth nearly $1.3 million were slated to go to entities with ties to the family of Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard, who sits on the board of the city agency involved — St. Louis Development Corp. She also sponsored a bill authorizing the grants.
The series of events spurred the city’s comptroller, Darlene Green, to call for “an immediate do-over” of the grant award process and U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., to complain to the U.S. Treasury Department about the city program.
Another critic has been Alderwoman Cara Spencer, one of Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ opponents as she seeks reelection next year. Moreover, concerns over the grants are among reasons cited by an organizer of a petition drive seeking a new state audit of the city.
Throughout the controversy, Jones and SLDC chief Neal Richardson have defended the program, which is aimed at building up long-neglected parts of the city and reversing decades of disinvestment. They acknowledged that the agency made mistakes in checking out businesses but was working to correct them.
On Dec. 18, the agency rescinded more than $1.7 million in grants previously awarded, citing technical problems with the organizations’ plans for the money. The rescinded amounts included a $739,000 Hubbard family-related grant.
Grants to more than a dozen questionable businesses remained pending.
Downtown problems
A graffiti-covered pedestrian bridge connects the old Railway Exchange parking garage to the Kiener Plaza West garage, right, near Pine and Seventh streets in downtown St. Louis on Aug. 5, 2024.
Downtown St. Louis’ ongoing struggles to recover from the pandemic and erase an image of lawlessness again made news in 2024.
Among the issues were the future of two large but long-empty structures and an architecturally significant state office building that Missouri officials said they would vacate and sell.
The city government went to court to use its eminent domain authority to acquire the Railway Exchange Building at 615 Olive Street after battling an absentee owner that failed to keep trespassers, thieves and homeless people from getting in.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit Gateway Arch Park Foundation announced plans to buy the 780-room Millennium Hotel on the riverfront, which has been vacant for a decade.
And Greater St. Louis Inc., the region’s main business booster group, said its real estate investment fund would buy the Wainwright Building, at North Seventh and Chestnut streets, from the state.
The goal in each case: clear the way for redevelopment that could aid the downtown economy and help the area rebound from the pandemic.
As for crime, year-to-date police statistics through Dec. 15 for the city’s Downtown and Downtown West neighborhoods showed murders had increased to 11 from 7 in 2023 but that many other violent and property crimes dropped.
However, individual incidents still drew attention, such as a spate of shootings and fireworks mayhem, much of it involving young people, during the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
To try to make the area safer and feel more secure, downtown leaders successfully filed suit to shut down a gas station that had been a magnet for crime. They also launched a program of unarmed employees to walk, ride bikes and patrol the area. That supplemented extra police patrols funded by a private foundation.
Other news included the announcement by FleishmanHillard, a prominent public relations firm, that it would leave downtown after 70 years for new digs in Clayton.
But there were bright spots as well. Work continued on multiple projects, including the rehab of the mammoth Jefferson Arms building on Tucker Boulevard for apartments, a hotel and retail.
And work finally began on a long-planned revamp and beautification of Seventh Street between Ballpark Village and America’s Center, the downtown convention center.
St. Charles County library in flux
A mall walker passes the branch of the St. Charles City-County library in Mid Rivers Mall on Oct. 16, 2024.
The board of the St. Charles City-County Library system dropped a surprise plan to close three of 12 branches last June after critics packed board meetings and wrote hundreds of letters and emails in protest.
The board began work on possible alternatives after scuttling the plan, which was proposed by CEO Jason Kuhl to deal with budget woes and the need to boost wages for lower-paid employees.
Kuhl and board president Staci Alvarez later apologized for the proposal, saying that they fell short on communicating “the seriousness of our situation.” A new plan has yet to be announced.
A few months later, in October, Kuhl left to take the top job at a library system in the Oklahoma City area.
Kuhl also had been the target of anger at meetings from some residents over certain books they contended were too sexually explicit to be in the library. Those sessions, mainly in 2023, also drew some supporters of the library’s policies.
There also has been a shakeup on the board, with several longtime members resigning or being replaced by St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann and St. Charles Mayor Dan Borgmeyer.
