ST. LOUIS–On March 4, voters in St. Louis will decide which two candidates in a four-way race for mayor will advance to the April 8 general election. 

“No excuse” absentee voting is already underway using the city’s approval voting system, which allows voters to choose as many candidates as they want in the primary, with the top two candidates moving on to the April election.

Spectrum News extended interview requests to all four candidates–the incumbent, Tishaura Jones, 8th Ward Alderwoman Cara Spencer, Recorder of Deeds Michael Butler and businessman Andrew Jones and is releasing them in the order they were conducted. Questions were edited for clarity.

What are things you would do differently if given the chance to continue in office?

“We want to continue the progress we’ve already made. We’re making progress on crime and homicide reduction and overall violent crime reduction. We’re making progress on making sure that our children have safe spaces to have fun and be kids at our rec centers and continue to repair and rehab our rec centers. I want to continue our progress on taking care of people through our department of health, through the behavioral health bureau… the progress that we’ve made on the CJC. I want to continue our regional efforts to reduce crime through “Save Lives Now” and through our “House Everyone STL” regional effort. There are a whole host of things that we need to continue our progress on.”

At a recent candidate forum, you said “The buck stops with me. Have things been perfect? Absolutely not…I see and feel the potholes just like you do…We can’t keep changing our leaders every four years because nothing will happen. No change will happen.” Is that a way of acknowledging that residents haven’t seen physical signs of improvement over your first term in office?   

“There is physical evidence of what I’ve done in my first four years. If you go to the city’s website and look at our investment map it shows the housing that we’ve built, the projects that we’ve invested in, the new companies that are coming to St. Louis and we want to continue that. We also are continuing  down the line on the Green Line project and getting a new airport so those are the physical thing that we’re doing. THe repaving of our streets, the repairing of our water infrastructure, those are the physical things that we are working on.”

“Is there anything unilateral a mayor can do to address hiring and staffing problems, which in turn, impacts city services?”

“If there was I would have already done it. I don't hire anyone. The personnel department doesn’t report to the mayor. They are their own independent department and that was set up in the city charter back in the 1940s. I did make a recommendation to have the personnel director report directly to the mayor during the recent charter discussion and that didn’t make it to the ballot. But a city only runs as good as the people that are there, so we need to make sure that we are hiring and retaining employees and right now I’ll be honest, we aren’t doing a good job of it. There are cultural things within departments that haven’t been addressed for decades. For instance, for trash we have 55 drivers and at least 40 drivers on a good day so they’re always working overtime and we’re overworking them and I’m sure that they would like to have help, but again for someone to come in and say they’re going to hire somebody and they’re going to make sure that the trash gets picked up, good luck with that, because we’ve been trying that for a long time and the city only works as well as the people who run it.”

The next mayor may not have authority over the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. The Missouri House last week passed legislation that would put the agency under a state-appointed board. The Senate could consider similar legislation on the floor again this week. There are several versions of the legislation but each calls for the mayor to at least be a member of that board. If the mayor could recommend appointees, what would you be looking for?

“It’s gonna be caught in litigation for many many years because there are still so many unanswered questions about the current version that just passed the house or even the version that’s currently being debated in the Senate. No one can tell me how any of those pieces of legislation’s gonna make our city safer but also, they can’t tell us how they’re going to purchase our assets. They can’t just take our stuff without paying for it. So there are going to be a lot of conversations and possibly litigation on those issues.”

Are there deliverables that people in north St. Louis haven’t seen yet or they just don’t know enough about when it comes to fulfilling a promise to end decades of disinvestment?

“Lets start with violent crime. North St. Louis, the sixth district only has one homicide for the year as we’re talking…that’s unseen in North St. Louis so there are violence prevention efforts that are going on in our community that people just don’t see. I would also say that our work on Martin Luther King, a lot of that is foundational in the first term. Putting the land together, assembling the land, assembling the property to be able to return Martin Luther King Drive into something that people can be proud of and that starts with our investment in the old Killark electrical plant which is the Monarch that’s going to open in March.”

Candidates were given the opportunity to address the biggest criticism or misconception about them or their campaign.

“I think the biggest misconception about me is that the mayor is responsible for everything. The mayor is not responsible for everything. There’s one thing that I’ve learned in my term in executive office not only here but also in the treasurer’s office that there are clear delineation and clear offices that the mayor has no control over. We have six citywide or countywide elected officials. I don’t have control over that. I don’t have control over the schools and I would say those are the two issues that really keep coming up through this election. Also, I think the biggest misconception is that I haven’t done anything over the last four years. I would like to take my resume and hold it up against any of my opponents and you’ll see that we have done a lot but a lot of that stuff is behind the scenes. It’s the foundation setting to set the stage for the transformational growth that’s going to come in this city.”

If you’re re-elected, how would you want to be measured in four more years?

“I would like to be measured by our population growth. I’d like to be measured by our investment in marginalized neighborhoods and what those neighborhoods look like now versus when I started in 2021. I’d like to be measured on the progress that we’re making on major projects. So We’re making major progress on the green line or the airport, I’ll be measured on that as well because those projects aren’t slated to be completed until 2031 and I’d like to be measured again on public safety. We’re making great progress and we will continue to make progress on public safety.”