Multiple people arrested after protesters disrupt St. Louis mayor's first State of the City 75%
By Rachel Lippmann0% Lacretia Wimbley0%
4/18/2026, 12:36:52 AM
Topics: St Louis
BS Summary: This article contains 37 faulty reasoning types, including Optimism Bias, Self-Serving Bias, and Appeal to Authority, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 17.9% saturation with 239 hits. Analysis detected 2,113 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,338 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 67.7% and a BS Rank of 75% (4,270 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 74.60% of the article peer group.
Multiple people were arrested Friday after protesters disrupted the opening of St.
Louis Mayor Cara Spencer's first State of the City address.
The groups were there to demand more funding for recovery for residents of north St.
Louis who were impacted by the May 2025 tornado.
“[Residents] are sitting in tents one year later!”
a protester could be heard yelling.
“What is wrong with you?"
“To everyone who came tonight to hear the State of the City, the state of our city includes a lot of pain and a lot of hurt,” Spencer said in remarks that were not part of the speech provided in advance to St.
Louis Public Radio and other media outlets.
“It includes lifetimes of disinvestment and a lifetime of work ahead of us."
Many of the protesters had been part of an event billed as “The People's State of the City” on the steps of City Hall ahead of the address by the mayor.
“We’re just trying to give an accurate description of what’s really going on in the city,” said Michael McLemore, the electoral justice organizer with Action St.
Louis.
“There’s just a number of different things that are failing around the city.”
McLemore pointed to deaths and allegations of medical neglect in the City Justice Center and ongoing battles over a large data center in Midtown.
Melanie Marie, an organizer with Action St.
Louis’ People’s Response, said the counterevent was to make sure city leaders “know that we are self-deployed, self-determined and we’re not going anywhere.”
Action St.
Louis was among the first nonprofits to bring direct resources to north St.
Louis in the aftermath of the tornado.
Despite the mayor’s acknowledgement of the city’s pain, the speech, which got underway after about 20 minutes of disruption, was light on specifics to address the needs of north St.
Louis.
While there is broad community support for directing the entirety of the remaining Rams settlement funds to tornado recovery, Spencer said she preferred to divide it among infrastructure, north St.
Louis and downtown.
A deal with similar outlines collapsed in February 2025.
“It must do all three,” Spencer said.
“Without all three, our city has no chance – none – of growing or succeeding.
Let’s introduce a bill in May and let’s get it done.”
The speech was an acknowledgement of what was a tough first year in office for Spencer, with economic and population headwinds continuing.
“This is not a feel-good speech,” Spencer said.
“We are here to talk about the work, the reality we inherited, and the decisive, operational change that is now underway.”
Spencer came into office pledging to do the basics of city government better.
But less than a month into her term, an EF3 tornado killed four people and caused almost $2 billion in damage.
The storm killed a fifth person in Carondelet Park the same day.
“Our team’s focus shifted overnight from core services to a full-scale, emergency response that our city, simply put, was not prepared for,” she said.
The gaps were apparent immediately, as the outdoor warning sirens failed to sound due to human error.
While the Board of Aldermen was able to work quickly to set aside $30 million in interest from the Rams settlement funds, the money was slow to reach residents, and many were denied.
The city only recently began demolishing homes that were damaged by the storm, and FEMA will not cover the cost to tear down many buildings in the tornado zone.
But there was good to come out of the storm, Spencer said.
“In the aftermath, we saw the absolute best of St.
Louis,” she said.
“We saw people who were truly with the city.
We saw neighbors helping neighbors, and thousands of volunteers.
We saw our nonprofit community mobilize."
Fixing ongoing challenges
Despite the challenges of the tornado’s aftermath, Spencer said she was able to make progress on her campaign promises of improving city services.
“The change has started.
Our city is on the path to a turnaround, and we are not nearly as far away as some people think,” she said.
The mayor touted the new response protocol to winter storms that boosted the city’s plowing capacity and directed more resources to individuals experiencing homelessness.
She defended her decision to eliminate alley recycling, saying the change gave refuse drivers more time to run regular trash routes and saved the city money by reducing contamination in recyclable material.
“By making our refuse drivers pick up alley recycling, more than half of which was far too contaminated to be recycled anyway, we were wasting taxpayer dollars and our drivers' time and recycling very little,” she said.
Companies can now apply for building permits online, Spencer said, and the administration has finally launched a promised dashboard that tracks quarterly data of city services.
“We are finally dragging City Hall into the 21st century — not gradually, but with urgency to make this government work for you with as little red tape as possible,” the mayor said.
Spencer is also seeking a minimum of 3% pay raises for city employees, the first concrete step toward implementing the results of a study that found its employees make less than their public and private sector counterparts.
She is also boosting minimum pay for the lowest-paid workers and giving most workers a $1,000 one-time payment in a June paycheck.
But Spencer acknowledged the headwinds for the city are real.
The year ahead
“We can be optimistic, decisive and action-oriented, but we must also be honest,” she said.
Chief among the problems is population loss.
While recent census data showed the St.
Louis area gained 3,000 people in 2025, it still saw more deaths than births and was last in growth among the largest growing metropolitan areas.
“We can’t settle for last,” Spencer said.
“We need to be aiming for first.”
The city also needs to fix an aging water system – the department responded to a major main break overnight Thursday.
“Yes, we’ve used ARPA money for some fixes, but we absolutely must invest in the system,” Spencer said.
“Not just to patch it up, but to right-size the water system for future generations of St.
Louisans.”
That will require a rate increase, the mayor said.
"No mayor wants to stand before city residents and share that prices for city services are going up,” she said.
“However, that is the harsh reality of where we are today.
Our water department has been operating in the red, and we must increase the price of water if we want to save our system.”
Water rate hikes, pay raises for employees and the spending of the Rams money also come as the city has to figure out its budget for the next fiscal year.
Departments have asked for more than $135 million more than the city has available in revenue, and it remains unclear how much will have to be spent on the police force.
It all adds up to tricky maneuvering for aldermen, half of whom are heading into an election in 2027.
Laura Keys, the alderwoman for the 11th Ward, said she did not want to see the city spend the entirety of the Rams money in one go, regardless of where the funds are directed.
“We do need that money generated from the interest,” she said.
“I’m hopeful that they’ve come up with a plan that will work for us as a city but still generate revenue for future projections."
Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier of the 7th Ward, who led previous negotiations over Rams money allocation, did not want to be interviewed after spending much of Spencer's speech trying to calm tensions between police and protesters after the arrests.
Board President Megan Green also did not comment.
See more photos from the address by St.
Louis Public Radio Visuals Editor Brian Munoz below.
This story was updated with additional remarks from Spencer, members of the Board of Aldermen and activists.
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