Like where, where, where do utilities sit in this solution?

Yeah, you know, that is one of the biggest questions and concerns for citizens, and rightfully so.

But there's two main utilities that really play a key role in data center development, and that is the water utility and the electrical utility.

On the water side, we own, the city of St. Louis owns our own water department, and that's You know, we have been underwater, pun intended, for some time and that the cost to deliver water is not covered by the water bills that our citizens pay.

And so we've had to influx a large amount of capital from the RAM settlement dollars, from a host of other one-time sources of funds to be able to make our water department whole.

If we had a large water user pool, it would really help the rest of us.

And that's because we produce far more water than we use, and the cost of providing that's really very high.

Yes.

So part of the funds, in addition to the tornado relief going to downtown St. Louis, what would you characterize the importance of that being as far as where you envision those funds going for downtown?

Well, you know, you all know we've got some really exciting things going on downtown from the brick line to the development of the Millennium site, further expansion of Ballpark Village.

You know, and we've got some phenomenal opportunities from the Railway Exchange, the AT&T Tower.

So these funds are really going to be huge.

investing in a way that really sets the stage for private investment.

It's not really going to fill that whole gap.

It's not going to redevelop the railway exchange building, but it can really fill in those financing gaps and help us figure out how to get those things moving in the right direction.

Where would you characterize it as we sit here on July 27th, Mary?

What role does the city play in your mind with these funds as a facilitator or a doer of actually doing the rebuilding?

Well, look, I mean, some of this we're going to be doing.

The infrastructure piece, the walkability, the streetscape, looking at making the one-way to two-way conversions.

These are things that the city needs to play quarterback on.

I mean, we need to be understanding and driving what's in the best interest of the broader vision.

But we don't need to be building private buildings.

We need to be facilitating and filling the gap.

Why haven't we been able to see more agreement on that, maybe behind the scenes and avoid some of this public dispute going back and forth?

And Mayor Kara Spencer says the city didn't have enough time to develop a disaster response while it was in the middle of a disaster.

There is a huge gap in what, uh, residents need and what we've been able to provide.

That is unequivocal.

Um, just an enormous, a gulf of need that we're, we have been unable to meet at this time.

We have secured individual assistance from FEMA of over 50 million dollars that have gone directly to residents.

Not nearly enough to make their lives whole, their homes whole.

Mayor Spencer questions the logic of having every local government be disaster ready.

My argument would be that as a nation, we would be better off, more efficient, and certainly more effective if we centralize and share the resources and expertise across the nation for very unusual events, rather than saddling every single municipal government to being able to respond to what may or may not happen in, in the lifetime of each of those cities.