ST. LOUIS — The city’s Estimate Board on Thursday approved budget boosts for the city communications division and the Circuit Attorney’s Office.
The extra $536,000 for the prosecutor’s office, taken from surplus public safety sales tax money, is expected to help hire additional support staff for the office, and an attorney for the recently revived Conviction Integrity Unit, which reviews cases where people claim they were wrongfully convicted.
The additional $82,000 for the communications division, taken from other citywide accounts, is supposed to help cover equipment costs and some extra overtime. The division, which livestreams the city’s public meetings, ran out of overtime money this year. Officials scheduled more events in the evenings to make them more convenient for residents who work during the day, and division’s funding couldn’t keep up.
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The Estimate Board — composed of Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, Comptroller Darlene Green, and Aldermanic President Megan Green — also moved some positions around in the trash division budget.
The trash commissioner, Randy Breitenfeld, complained to aldermen in a budget hearing last month that the proposed budget cut nine trash truck driver positions, leaving him without enough to effectively cover all of the daily routes even if he could fill all of his vacant positions. That raised alarms: Trash pickup is one of the city’s bread-and-butter functions, and aldermen have been getting an earful from constituents in the last few years as a short-staffed refuse department has struggled to maintain consistent service.
The administration initially responded by assuring aldermen that Breitenfeld was incorrect, and that the budget would have enough drivers to cover all of the routes. It would just be a little tight: The division would have to continue picking up seven days per week instead of the traditional four.
On Thursday, however, the Estimate Board reallocated money to pay for more trash truck drivers. But the board accomplished it by nixing a plan to hire more drivers used for bulk pickup, another service that has drawn an inordinate number of complaints in recent years, albeit with a lower profile.
Aldermen first requested the changes last week, but they proposed using money from unfilled positions in the police and jail divisions to pay for increases to the prosecutor’s office and the communications division. And they asked the Estimate Board to restore the trash truck driver positions without cuts elsewhere.
View life in St. Louis through the Post-Dispatch photographers’ lenses. Edited by Jenna Jones.
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