Nov. 24 marks five years since the grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer responsible for the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. Ferguson received a lot of attention during and after the unrest, but the town of Dellwood also experienced upheaval.
After the grand jury decision, five of Dellwood’s stores were looted and 13 businesses were set on fire.
“It was a very traumatic event emotionally to our community, but I’m just glad we have rebounded from that,” said Dellwood Mayor Reggie Jones on Monday’s St. Louis on the Air.
Jones said the city was not offered financial assistance but was able to receive funding for recovering businesses via a bond issue.
“The only financial assistance for those businesses were loans,” he said. “We passed a $7 million bond issue, the residents passed [it] with 70% of the vote, so we could do some infrastructure projects on our own. We realized we weren’t going to get money from the government, so we had to get some ourselves, and that’s what we decided to do to influx revenue into our city.”
Business owner Kurtis Barks of Complete Auto Body and Repair joined the discussion.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is hosted by Sarah Fenske and produced by Alex Heuer, Emily Woodbury, Evie Hemphill, Lara Hamdan and Tonina Saputo. The engineer is Aaron Doerr, and production assistance is provided by Charlie McDonald.
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