ST. LOUIS—Mayor Tishaura Jones on Tuesday reaffirmed her support for plans to use the city’s roughly $250 million portion of the NFL settlement in a way that will be felt for generations, while suggesting that there will still be tough choices to make, and that, like in other issues, there will still be winners and losers.

Monday night, the Board of Aldermen held its final planned Committee of the Whole meeting where it has spent most of the last year listening to the public weigh in on ideas that have garnered support in city surveys. The ideas have ranged from city street design, shoring up aging water mains and downtown infrastructure among some suggestions, to last night’s hearing that focused on the need to address early childhood education.

There is already one specific bill on the table, a plan supported by Greater St. Louis, Inc. that would spend about $230 million on a combination of downtown infrastructure and re-investment in north and southeast St. Louis.

Monday, childcare advocates argued for a $100 million endowment that would improve existing facilities and pay for employees, along with a half-cent sales tax that would fund tuition. 

Jones and Board President Megan Green have said they are collaborating on a plan that will get to the Board in December that will attempt to address the issues which have scored well in the surveys, but also with an eye on some sort of endowment that will live into the future.

The Greater St. Louis Inc. proposal uses almost all of the existing money, something the childcare advocates say would be “insane”.

Will there be enough to make a dent with any of the issues identified over the past year or so?

“We never have enough money in the city for everything that we want to do,” Jones said Tuesday.

“There are always going to be choices that you'll have to make and there will be winners and there will be losers,” she added.

The city’s intent, she said, “is still to use the money in a way that will be used for many, many generations to come, not spend it all in one place or not spend the whole balance in a myriad of places.”

A new potential complication to consider is the incoming Trump administration, with uncertainty about what kind of grant and other funding sources will be available moving forward.

“We have to be really smart and really careful about what we do to appropriate these funds,” Jones said of the NFL money.

“These things do not need to be at need to be at odds at eachother. They need to be able to work together,” said Green. “I don't think it's a question of whether we have enough, I think it's a question of how we design something that really complements eachother so that we can do it all in a way that makes sense that's transformative and lasts for the long term.”