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August 12, 2013

To St. Louis City Residents and Elected Officials:

On July 31st, a coalition of groups and individuals turned in over 36,000 signatures to the St.

Louis Board of Elections for the Take Back St. Louis petition. Today, the Board of Electionsannounced that we did in fact meet the legal requirements to get on the ballot. We are excited tobe in the next stage of this campaign, and one step closer to our goal of creating a sustainable andjust St. Louis.

During the last nine months, over one hundred volunteers collected signatures for the petition,hoping to create a sustainable green economy by changing how development dollars are spent.For years, many groups and individuals in the Take Back St. Louis coalition have beenconcerned with the allocation of tax breaks and other incentives to large corporations, and inparticular to corporations that are contributing to the climate crisis. We believe that the currentdevelopment paradigm fails to create more jobs for the region; instead, it just seeks to shuffle

them around in a race to the bottom. We want to move the flow of development dollars awayfrom corporations and into a green economy that uses vacant land for sustainability projects andrenewable energy.

Already, we have seen the opposition vow to try to keep the initiative off the ballot and awayfrom voters. We expect these attacks to continue; this petition is an attempt to change the statusquo in St. Louis, so it is not surprising that businesses benefiting from the current developmentparadigm will spend money to stop democracy and promulgate fabrications about the petition. Itmakes sense that a former Peabody lobbyist is at the forefront of these claims.

Let us be clear on what the Take Back St. Louis initiative will do. There are two pieces of theSustainable Energy Law (Section 2). Section 2(a) of the initiative states The city shall not grantany Public Financial Incentives to any Unsustainable Energy Producer. Unsustainable energyproducers are defined as entities that mine or extract fossil fuels, and any entity that does $1million or more of business per year with an entity that mines fossil fuels. For example, in thecity of St. Louis, the largest fossil fuel extractor is Peabody Energy. We do not believe thatcompanies like Peabody Coal who profit off of the destruction of the environment and theirworkers deserve our taxpayer dollars. Similarly, we do not believe that those who supportPeabody and other extraction companies deserve our money.

Recent controversies surrounding Peabody have raised even more reasons why Peabody shouldnot receive our public money. In the past year, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)has marched downtown many times, demanding Peabody provide the healthcare benefits owedto 10,000 retired miners. Dine (Navajo) from Black Mesa, Arizona have travelled all the way toSt. Louis to insist, after decades of exploitation, that Peabody stop its forced relocation of Dinefamilies to expand coal mining operations. Peabody is also under investigation by the Securitiesand Exchange Commission about its role in the development of the Prairie State Energy Campusthat has left Missouri towns like Marceline and Hannibal on the hook for large electricity rateincreases. We can no longer treat Peabody as if it is a good neighbor to St. Louis while, just

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beyond the city limits, Peabody is exploiting miners and communities. Peabodys dishonorablebusiness model is not one on which to base our local economy.

We included in the definition of Unsustainable Energy Producer the $1 million mark because webelieve that companies able to exchange $1 million in transactions can afford to operate without

taxpayer subsidies. Indeed, the purpose of tax breaks is to stimulate new sectors of the economy,just what we are trying to do with the green economy. By including these companies, we aim tochange the dominant paradigm of development, reorienting the flow of incentives away fromcorporations and into neighborhoods. In 2011, a report from the East-West Gateway found thatthe use of these tax incentives has been ineffective as an economic development strategy.1 Wewant a new strategy that stimulates small businesses and sustainable development.

The opposition has claimed that this initiative would impact those who purchase $1 million ofelectricity from a utility company. This is not true. While the main utilities in St. Louis doexchange $1 million with extraction companies, those exchanging $1 million with these utilitieswould not have their financial incentives influenced by Section 2(a). This is because utilities like

Ameren or Laclede Gas do not engage primarily in the mining or extraction of fossil fuels. Theoppositions claims that the initiative would stop the city from turning on the lights in city hallare obfuscation and fear mongering at its most extreme.

The definition of Public Financial Incentives came from extensive research about how the St.Louis Development Corporation and the city charter has defined different tax breaks andincentive benefits. The petition specially calls out incentives, not basic city services. Again,here the opposition is obfuscating the truth to stop a real conversation from happening about thespending of taxpayer dollars on incentive programs. There is no intention in the initiative to cutoff city services, only to realign the allocation of tax breaks.

Section 2(b) calls for the creation of a Sustainable Energy Plan that looks at opening up PublicFinancial Incentives and city-owned property for Renewable Energy Producers and SustainableEnergy Initiatives. We define sustainable energy initiatives as projects that would decrease theconsumption of energy in the City of St. Louis and/or increase the amount of renewable energyproduced. This year, we have already seen a couple of these types of initiatives emerge, such asthe Sustainable Land Labs competition and the Sustainable Neighborhood Small GrantCompetition. To see more of these projects, on a scale that could provide jobs for city residents,we need resources; those resources are exactly what the Mayors Sustainability Plan is lacking.We aim to create a distributed green economy, but to do so, we need to realign our money, awayfrom corporations and into investments in our land.

While we collected signatures on this campaign, we had thousands of conversations with cityresidents about where taxpayer dollars were going and the need for a new kind of economy. Itwas the vision of a new economy that uses our vacant land as an asset to create green jobs thatexcited most people. In fact, in a poll conducted by Public Policy Polling on the specifics of thepetition, 72% of those polled believed that vacant land should be used for renewable energy and

1East-West Gateway Council of Governments, An Assessment of the Effectiveness and Fiscal

Impacts of the Use of Development Incentives in the St. Louis Region, January 2011.

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sustainability initiatives. This is what the future must look like for St. Louis to become a 21stcentury sustainable city.

Over 36,000 people believed that the voters of the city of St. Louis should have an opportunity tovoice their opinion on the direction of development in the city. The Take Back St. Louis ballot

initiative is an example of democracy at its finest, with citizens putting forth a solution toproblems they have seen. We hope that the ideas in the Take Back St. Louis initiative will begiven careful and thoughtful consideration. Please feel free to contact us at 314-862-2249.

Thank you,

Members of the Take Back St. Louis Coalition:

Montague Simmons, Organization for Black StruggleShona Clarkson, Interfaith Committee on Latin AmericaJames Meinert, New Roots Urban Farm

Alice Floros, Young Activists United St. LouisDell Breeland, Missourians Organizing for Reform and EmpowermentCaroline Burney, Missourians Organizing for Reform and EmpowermentJustin Harris, Missourians Organizing for Reform and EmpowermentSam Holden, Missourians Organizing for Reform and EmpowermentSadie Hill, Missourians Organizing for Reform and EmpowermentCheyenne Thomas, Missourians Organizing for Reform and EmpowermentReginald Rounds, Missourians Organizing for Reform and EmpowermentLynn Oldham, Missourians Organizing for Reform and EmpowermentDave Scott, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment

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