A Blueprint for Change — But Where Are the Resources?

Something to ponder while we wait for St. Louis' big ‘Wow Moment.’”

The July 2025 "Change for STL" Transition Advisory Committees Report deserves real credit. In an era of performative politics and shallow vision statements, this is a serious, ambitious document. Drawing from over 45 civic and sector leaders, it outlines a bold roadmap for St. Louis across six vital areas: city services, neighborhood transformation, commercial revitalization, public safety, inclusive economy, and education/workforce development. And it does so with urgency, equity, and creativity. The integration of disaster recovery across all sections is particularly praiseworthy—a rare example of turning catastrophe into coherent planning.

(As night falls in St. Louis. A potent symbol of the city’s situation.)

This is a city ready to act, not merely react.

So why am I skeptical about the plan’s chances for success?

Across its 60-plus pages and dozens of recommendations, the report occasionally stumbles into a familiar trap: bold vision, vague execution. Too often, it proposes new offices, dashboards, task forces, and working groups without accounting for how they will be staffed, funded, or coordinated. Many ideas require significant investment—a workforce innovation fund, a capital pool for CDCs, green infrastructure upgrades, housing expansion, trauma-informed services—but there's little clarity on where that money comes from. Even the calls for new revenue (invest in the riverfront! grow the population!) are abstract and unsupported by strategy or modeling. This is the 2020s, Trump is president, reactionaries run the state house. I shouldn’t have to remind everyone about this.

At the same time, the report leans heavily on buzzwords without defining them. Equity, sustainability, transformation, resilience—these recur across committees, but without shared metrics or a common framework. That makes tracking actual progress across departments difficult and risks turning meaningful concepts into hollow slogans. The same goes for performance measurement: many action items measure success by whether a process is launched (a meeting held, a plan drafted), not by whether outcomes change on the ground (fewer evictions, more children in quality pre-K, reduced homicide rates).

I’m not into bureaucrat-bashing, but there's also a proliferation of bureaucracy without a clear-eyed plan for capacity. Each section recommends new roles: a Resilience Coordinator here, a Neighborhood Transformation Officer there. But who supports them? How do they relate to existing departments? Will they have authority, or will they be symbolic? If we're creating new structures, we must also consider consolidation, clarity, and long-term governance. Also, who is going to pay for these new officials?

And while every section emphasizes community engagement, it rarely moves beyond the rhetoric. There are few mechanisms for actual power-sharing. Will neighborhood residents help set priorities, or simply provide input? How are their voices resourced and protected? Engagement isn't meaningful unless it comes with transparency, support, and the ability to influence outcomes. There are some real models out there of other cities doing this. There is no indication that the report has considered these.

Finally, the most politically difficult items are often treated as technocratic tweaks: charter reform, city-county coordination, regaining local control of SLMPD. These will require not just policy, but politics. The report largely sidesteps how to build coalitions, navigate resistance, or avoid past failures like Better Together. This is a guarantee that nothing will happen—which seems to be the region’s default position.

Still, it's far better to start with ambition than timidity. "Change for STL" offers a strong foundation. The next step is to sharpen, specify, and budget. What's needed now is not another report, but a focused implementation strategy: What can we do in the next 6 months? What will it cost? Who will lead? How will we know if it's working?

This document shows us the city St. Louis wants to become. The question is whether we will equip ourselves to build it.