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Politically Speaking: Alderwoman Pamela Boyd says residents working together to ‘rebuild’ 27th Ward

St. Louis Public Radio | By Jason Rosenbaum,
Jo Mannies
Published August 3, 2017 at 11:59 AM CDT
Alderwoman Pamela Boyd, D-27th Ward
Carolina Hidalgo | St. Louis Public Radio
Alderwoman Pamela Boyd, D-27th Ward

On the latest episode of Politically Speaking, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies welcome St. Louis Alderwoman Pamela Boyd to the show for the first time.

Boyd represents the 27th Ward, which takes in five neighborhoods in the northwest part of the city. Boyd’s day job: a dietary manager at a Florissant nursing home.

Alderwoman Pamela Boyd joins the Politically Speaking podcast.

Before she was elected to the board in April, Boyd served as a committeewoman for the 27th Ward. She worked closely behind the scenes with Alderman Greg Carter, who represented the 27th Ward for nearly 20 years before he was killed in August 2012 in a truck accident. She unsuccessfully ran for the 27th Ward seat in 2013.

One of Boyd’s biggest challenges as an alderwoman, she said, is what to do with the nearly 1,100 vacant properties in her ward that are owned by the city’s Land Reutilization Authority. About 375 houses and more than 700 vacant lots in the 27th Ward are more than 10 percent of the roughly 9,500 properties LRA owns.

Here’s what Boyd had to say during the show:

  • She set up a housing committee aimed at reducing the number of vacant properties, adding that residents want to renovate or demolish abandoned homes — especially because the ward long had been a landing place for working-class and middle-class African-Americans. “It’s challenging,” Boyd said. “But it’s not to the point where it’s hopeless. Because they feel if we can bite this elephant one piece at a time, we can rebuild it.”
  • She said crime is a big barrier to getting more people to move into her ward. According to the St. Louis Police Department, there were 18 homicides in June in three of the neighborhoods that Boyd represents.
  • After she lost her 2013 race, Boyd began a years-long process of knocking on every door in her ward. She said that contact with voters prepared her for the  2017 campaign. “What I did learn was determination and persistence is what made it happen,” she said.
  • Boyd joined one of the largest freshmen classes of aldermen in recent memory. So far, she said, the newcomers are working together. “I love it,” she said. “Nobody is territorial. Everyone’s real clear that we have to come together as a team.”


Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter:@jrosenbaum

Follow Jo Mannies on Twitter:@jmannies

Follow Pam Boyd on Twitter:@boydstuff

Music: “Burning in the Skies” and “Waiting for the End” by Linkin Park

Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit St. Louis Public Radio.

Missouri News
Jason Rosenbaum
Since entering the world of professional journalism in 2006, Jason Rosenbaum dove head first into the world of politics, policy and even rock and roll music. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Rosenbaum spent more than four years in the Missouri State Capitol writing for the Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri Lawyers Media and the St. Louis Beacon.
See stories by Jason Rosenbaum
Jo Mannies
Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.
See stories by Jo Mannies