September 27, 2022 — Meeting Transcript

Hello. Yeah,

yeah, that's why I said we can get started.

Are we ready or are we waiting on something?

We're ready. Okay. Fire away. Oh, that was bad.

Good evening, everybody. My name is Paul Mercurio. I'm the Assistant Chief Fire Marshal, and I really appreciate the opportunity this evening to share what is going on in the international code world. And I believe that we staff will be proposing later this month for consideration to adopt the 2021 international code cycle. The fire department enforces the international fire code and the building department does other model codes. So you'll be getting a brief presentation tonight, but I've been asked to talk about the proposed international fire codes. And what I wanted to do is just kind of review a little bit about the international codes. They come out every three years and the city of Clayton typically adopts the new code cycle every three years but with COVID and some changes that we have going on, we missed the 2018 cycle. So the next cycle that's up right now is the 2021 and that's what I'm going to be referring to tonight so hopefully later this month when That information is in front of you. If you have questions about it, you'll reach out to myself or the building department to ask about these things. But I'm briefly going to go over the international fire code and I'm going to try to run through it and give some time for the building department also. very informal, please ask questions, please stop me. I don't want to go at a fast pace, but yet codes are boring to a lot of people. So, but I just want to highlight some things in the National Fire Code, how they directly reflect and will affect us here in Clayton. These are things that I feel that probably you're going to have the buzz or talk about them. So we'll get started. So emergency responder communications, that's something that's came out a few years ago. It actually came out after 9-11. It's been in the code for a couple of years, but they're expanding it to certain critical areas. Sprinkle requirements for new parking garages. If you're familiar with Clayton, that's something we have a lot of is parking garages. So it's going to affect new parking garages, okay? Um, sprinkler design for residential buildings above 30 feet. We have a lot of buildings. We have two buildings going on right now that are above 30 feet. So there's new design criteria for, um, that. low frequency alarms in sleeping rooms. Over the years, studies have been done about people that are sleeping and when the smoke detector goes off, they're not able to hear it. It's usually within children or elderly people. Those low frequencies aren't there. So all new smoke detectors in buildings that the International Fire Code comes up with is actually hotels and multifamilies will have to have the low frequency smoke detectors installed. CO detection, they've expanded that. Carbon monoxide detectors, even though it's in the fire code and the building code, we both enforce that. And here's one that's really been expanded is buildings under construction. If you notice, we have a lot of buildings under construction. The one that's over here beam is in place, that's going to be wood construction. They really are trying to focus on while those buildings are being constructed, fire safety has been taken taken into account because while they're under construction, they don't have fire protection. They're basically lumber yards. So if something happens there, the fire could get out of control and spread to other buildings. And under this is developing safety plans and how they're storing their combustibles, water supplies. One thing that the contractors aren't having an issue with is having an available water supply while the building's going up. So I use Bemis in a place over here as an example. it's taken up a whole city block and there's four fire hydrants around it. So they're not having an issue having the available water supply there while the buildings are in construction. That's not the case in all areas. You know, the water system isn't in, but here it's in and we have plenty of it. So they'll be able to comply with that. And then here's a couple that I'll probably get some questions back from the board. These three items here are local modifications that we're putting in, but we're doing it as a region. In other words, so are all the fire marshals in this area are putting this in their code and it's called premise identification. tents and membranes, and I wish Gary was here tonight because that affects him a little bit about when we issue tent permits. And then the third thing is mobile food preparation, which we call them food trucks. So what I'm gonna be presenting or you'll be presented with in a couple of weeks, those are model ordinances that the region are also looking to adopt so we can have one unified code with that. And where I'm coming with this is we want how food trucks operate in the city of St. Louis and in Chesterfield and in Richmond Heights and Brentwood all the same. So they're not going to each jurisdiction and having to comply with different things. We've picked the code, we've adopted it, and we modified it and we think it's a way to go. So- This is nothing, I've talked about emergency coverage. They just expanded it. Now we have to have it in the fire command rooms and the elevators. It's not nothing that you probably need to talk about. But again, when buildings are erected, you used to have to have fire phones in them for the firemen to talk. Now we go with our radio systems, that's the 800 megahertz. Well, with the antenna systems we put in, we're pretty much able to get anywhere in those buildings with the interior antennas. So that really doesn't affect it. But here's the second thing I was talking about is parking garages. Can anybody identify these two buildings we have here in Clayton? These two buildings with parking garages inside of them. The one on the left is the sevens building and the one on the right is 212 South Merrimack. If these buildings were being erected today, the code tells them now that they're going to have to sprinkle those garages. Both of those are open parking garages and open parking garage is defined where you have the perimeter is open, it's not enclosed. So both of those have open parking garages. If they were building them today, they would have to be sprinkled. They've actually done some studies about enclosed parking garages. Here's another one that we had. It's an open parking garage. This is the La Meridian. You know, they just did a remodel over there and they have two levels of parking and surface parking. Well, it goes over 12,000 square foot, all that parking. So that would be another one. If they were building it today, they'd have to sprinkle those parking garages.

If they were to do, I mean, we have some older buildings in Clayton. If they were going to come in and do those buildings, any of them a redo? You know, like a complete remodel like this was.

No, it's only for new buildings coming out of the

ground. Okay.

Yeah.

We had those new regulations. How many of those are only for new construction?

All of them. All of them. Yeah, I'll let you know which any are retro or retrofit would be retrofit. So here, this is something that's new also below R3 use groups. The sevens building, R3 is a residential use group, okay? This building right here, does anybody recognize that building? 17, right across the street, 7700. If they were building that building today, they'd have to put fire sprinklers in that building. There's not a fire sprinkler in that building at grade level. Now there's three levels below grade that have fire sprinklers, but that building would have to have fire sprinklers in it today. Does anybody want to guess why they're requiring sprinklers in these huge garages?

Electric vehicles.

Electric vehicles is one, yes. Electric vehicles, they do cause more of a hazard when they catch on fire. But the car manufacturers, many more cars are made out of plastic on the outside, plastic fenders, everything is plastic. So when a car catches fire, when it gets to the outside, it radiates to the next car. So we have cars in parking lots, open parking lots before we get there, there'll be two, three cars on fire because they just the radiant heat sets the next one on fire. So we know that we need to try to contain these fires in these parking garages before they catch multiple cars on fire. Now, unfortunately, sprinklers in garages, they're not going to extinguish the fire because the tendency when a car catches fire, it's in two locations. It's underneath the hood in the engine compartment or it's in the passenger compartment. Sprinklers on top of the car very seldom put the fire out. The firemen have to get there and open the doors or break the windows or lift the hood to extinguish it. But this is to contain it to that car so it doesn't spread to other cars. We talked about residential construction and design criteria. This is something that's this type of construction, the platform construction where they put on grade is a concrete structure. And then they build the wood structure on top of it. They have different design. These buildings always had to be have fire suppression, fire sprinklers, but they were able to get by with putting a 13 R system, which meant you didn't have to. sprinkle the attics because they let you go 30 foot. But now they're saying no more than 60 foot and four floors are not eligible to use a 13R. You have to use a regular full sprinkler system. Low frequency alarms, I pitched on this a little while ago about smoke detectors going in with a low frequency. You know, it's funny, we've been having low frequencies on our, if you ever heard our ambulance go down the road, I think the police cars may have them too. It's that low, it's kind of like the boom box sound. You know, you can tell these low frequencies, so they're putting them in smoke detectors now. It talks about there's the studies that came back that said these individuals in that broad range there were having a problem with those higher frequencies, so they're putting them on lower frequencies to wake them up. CO detection, we talked about that. They're just expanding it. I1, I2, and I4 youth groups. Those are institutional youth groups. Those were assisted living care, residential groups, and educational groups. They're requiring CO detectors in educational schools now because they're running generators and doing things like that. They want to put them in there. But the good thing about installing these CO detectors, you don't have to go back and do a whole system. They are allowing the CO detectors that you would plug right into an outlet or battery operated smoke detector so it's not a huge cost for these places to put smoke detectors in the locations where you have fuel fired items. Now here's, this is the construction safety plans. So anytime somebody's building a building, the code now requires the fire department to go out and make sure they have a site safety plan. They've always had to have them before, but they're really cracking down on where are you putting your combustible waste, where's your dumpsters, where's this and that. storage of flammable and combustible liquids, where are you putting your propane tanks? Everybody in this wintertime has multiple propane tanks on these construction sites. We always encourage them to get natural gas most of the time they can, but we're really being a little more stringent on these things. And the site safety plan, they have to come up with a site safety plan. And as that construction develops and the site develops, if it's monthly, weekly, that's the plan changes. It has to be reviewed with the fire department. Here's an example. This building was coming on board when I first started here 14 years ago. This is the Danforth Center down at Warshue. And I just put these slides in here because I wanted to look at this. This is a construction site just looking straight in. And As you can see, it's congested, but it's not like any typical construction site. There's the fire department connection and that connection is for the four-story underground parking that's right where that white truck is. So there's parking underneath that building of that level. And you can see how the fire department connection is blocked. That's the only way we could get to that connection. It's the only way we could get to that fire suppression system if a car caught fire there. And then the next day, I come out and I ask them to move it, and the site looks like this. And there's the fire hydrant. That's the fire hydrants that we use to get to that supply the water to it. And you can see it's in an area we can't get to, but we can't see the fire department connection. And then they put the dumpster in there. So my issue is these sites are working, they're working sites and the code now requires for the contractor have a site safety plan, have it reviewed by the fire department, and they're required to have a safety officer or person there to monitor and make sure it's being done. And it always kills me because Clayco was always, they put their safety first signs, but trying to get them to comply with that was a real nightmare. So type five construction, whenever you see type five construction, that means combustible, wood construction. If you've been reading anything about new construction, there's a new classification, it's called mass timber. You can go up to 18, 19 stories with mass timber. I think it's really interesting because the finishes are all wood finished and the inside is mass timber. It's really interesting. It's, it's popular in Europe right now and it's coming to, I think the city of St. Louis is getting an 18 story mass timber building I heard from one of their inspectors. So just basically five wood construction is coming back. Okay. And we see a lot of it here. This is something you'll see this is right here we seen this up the Barton. We also seen this on the salon of the street the opus project platform with wood being on top. So what the change is, is this is after you go six stories, once you go six stories out of the ground and guess what? This one is only six over here. So they're going to be okay. You have to start putting a protection between the two while the building's being built. These things catch on fire and they just go up So they're asking them to put fire separation because there's not a big building collapse. So we really don't have any wood buildings that are going above six stories, but you got to have the required water supply. You got to have the stand pipes. We've always had this. Any construction that goes up, once you go more than 40 foot, you have to have your stand pipes in. temporary standpipes for the fire department to get that. So foresight point, every time they went up to four stories, they had to have their standpipe go up to that 40 feet. What another 40 feet had to have standpipes build it as it goes. So if something happens while it's under construction, we can have the water to get to the floors to put out whatever's on fire.

What is the layer that non combustible protection that

They're usually going to usually put concrete or drywall or whatever. It's going to be non-combustible. They have to put something. Most of those buildings are all lightweight, light concrete they put across. You know, that's up to the engineer. What can hold it? What they can do? I'm not certain, but it has to be non- combustible. Yeah. So there's an example, you know, the third floor is below grade. And once you get up to seven right there, you have to start putting separations. There we go, I think it was one. There was the question. One layer of non-combustible protection for fallible below, so mass timber. So here's something that we see a lot in the city of Clayton and type one and type two construction. That's construction that the structural materials don't burn. Wood and concrete, I mean, steel and concrete. Most of all of our buildings like the higher foresight point is a type one construction or two construction. Most of it is all concrete up there. But here's what's happening. Whenever they start construction, okay? Let's use an example. Let's use Commerce Bank. If they go and they start construction in that building next week, there now has to be a separation between the tenant space and the construction area. So if you look at this diagram here, Office B, and they're expanding, and it's a type one, a non-combustible construction and the floor is occupied. This is how they used to, this is how they are still today separating. So you have the tenants on one side of the plastic and you have plastic stuff like this. The code's not going to allow that anymore because this is what we end up with. So to do construction on that floor, they have to turn the sprinkler system off to the whole whole floor they just can't turn it off to half of it so this is what we've been ending up with where we have all this combustible stuff and we have people working just on the other side of that plastic the new 2021 international fire code says if you're going to do that you have to put some type of fire rated or non-combustible partition separating where the people are working and the construction area. So this is something new. It's in the code. It's not something that my office came up with. It's internationally. It's really for protection of the people that are working in those offices. They just don't have a lot of protection. They're working in an area where contractors are using torches. They're cutting, they're grinding, they're doing all types of stuff. With the sprinkler system been off, it's just not a good environment. So I'm going to be working with the building department to make sure that the contractors, when they start to work, they know that they're going to have to do this unless the occupant wants to move their tenants to a different floor. But if they're working on the floor, they have to do that.

So was that only in commercial or like workspaces?

It's only in type one and type two construction. So that means if your building is made of steel and concrete, That's what you have to do. Unfortunately, if it's wood, it's not an issue. But type one and type two, because type one and type to construction is not separated in the matters that would, you can only build a wood building so big, and you can only you can only separate it so much. But in these buildings, there's no corridor separation that you get by with building them. Since they're non combustible, the code gives you more leeway on what you can and can't do, travel distances and so forth. That's why contractors like to build buildings of non-combustible construction. They can build them bigger and less codes with them. Thank you. So now we're done with the 2021 code. This is something I talked about earlier about model ordinances that the local fire marshals are talking about. And there's three items, premise identifications for schools. And let me tell you in schools, schools are anything from two and a half and up. So not daycares, but preschools. So if they have students that are above the age of two and a half, those are called educational use groups. And then you have the food trucks and you have tents and membranes. And these are operational permits. When Kevin was reviewing this for me, he wanted to know the difference between an operational permit and a construction permit. An operational permit is something anybody comes to the city and wants to do something for a period of time. That would be, I want to have a, when we have art fair, all those tents are issued under an operational permit. If somebody is going to do some hot work at their building, they come and get an operational permit. So these are all operational permits. So when somebody wants a food truck permit, it's an operational permit. Okay. about a year ago, local law enforcement met with the schools and they developed a safety task force. And what they came up with was try to how to identify these buildings in case there was an incident where they, I think they call them an active killer now, but nobody really wants to, you know, we really don't want to talk about, you know, what all these incidents always turn out in bad. But what they have found with is when somebody comes into a building and the law enforcement comes, they're trying to figure out where the person in the building. Well, I'm in Mrs. Smith's kindergarten room. Well, if we had an incident up at Merrimack Elementary, I think Lieutenant will tell us right now that not only the Clayton Police Department comes, but so do all the other law enforcement agencies. And they don't know that school. They don't know where Mrs. Smith's kindergarten room is. They may not even know where the cafeteria is. So they said, we need to be able to have a universal way to identify these rooms. So this task force came up with premise identification. And here's three examples. They're marking the corridors, they're marking the rooms, and they're marking things to where it's universal. But what they're doing in the center picture there, you see arrows that says the blue hall is this way, the orange hall is this way. And if you look, you'll see blue 234, you can stand down a corridor and see that that's room blue 234. When you're in the room, maybe sheltering in place, you can be in the room and look up and say, get on your cell phone, I'm in room 234. I think that person, so it's a way for people, whoever you are in that, if you're a visitor, if you're substitute teacher, if you're and people will be able to know that. So there's other things in here. So all corridors need to have striping that represents. So in this picture right here, that's going to be the green hall. See that stripe going down the hall? That's going to be a green stripe, and that's the green hallway. When you come to that intersection, it's showing the blue halls that way, the yellow halls that way, Here we talked about inside the room. All rooms and areas need to be identified. So we talked about why they need to be identified so you can look down the corridor, that's the room. Then they're also going to be identifying the exterior windows and doors. So when the police department is walking around the building and said, we know that room 234 is All the kids are safe or that's the room we want to go into. They can walk around the building and know that blue 234 is that window right there. Same thing with the exterior doors. All the exterior doors are going to be identified. Now, again, this was a task force that was set up through law enforcement and school agencies. They came up with this idea and they said, okay, who's going to enforce it? Let's ask the fire department to do that because we already have premise identification in the international fire code. We already oversee the fire drills and the school emergency evacuations by code they're required to do them. So they thought, why don't we ask to put it in and would you enforce it? This is gonna be an operational permit. So let's take for example, let's say the board approves our 2021 international fire code. When you look through the ordinance, you'll see the premise identification has a clause in there that's an operational permit. So just because you adopt the code maybe at the end of the year, that doesn't mean premise identification goes into effect right away. There's a date in there. We work with all of the schools to say, Can this get done this year, next year, the year after, or how many years is it going to take to get it done? So we know there's resources needed to do this. Number one, money, and number two. Now, we've talked with the Clayton School District. They're on board with this. But don't forget, we have other schools. We have the Wilson School. We also have Central Christian School. We have St. Michael, St. George. And Foresight School is not ours, though. It's in the city of St. Louis. Yeah, it's 62, yeah. They have four side schools in the city of St. Louis.

So even like the Clayton Early Childhood Center in Okinawa would qualify though because they have kids

over two and a half. Because they're both. They're actually, they have students two and a half above, but they also have toddlers there too. Yeah. Yeah.

So there'll be numbers then in all of our elementary school windows at some point? Because I didn't really necessarily know what those are. They're already in Flynn Elementary in New City, so it's

nice to know. I started 15 years ago, and at that point, Clayton School District already was identifying their exterior doors. They were doing that for years. And I think that's because... When they did their evacuation, they'd say everybody go in or out door two. But again, this was brought to us by the school safety task force, which comprised of law enforcement and school administrators. We are just the ones that were asked to put it in the code of enforcement because it made the most sense. I think it's an outstanding means to make our schools safer. for our first responders and actually for the occupants. I think it's a great way. And I think it's going to be, I think once it's there for a while, people are going to be able to find where they're going in schools too. Hey, go down Orange 322. Well, you can get it that way. Next one is tents and membranes so we're trying to this if Gary was here, it used to be 700 square foot before anybody had to get a permit. We're going to go up the 900 square foot now so if you're going to get a tent unless you get the 900 square foot you don't need to get a permit from the fire department because that's what we're doing regionally okay. Food trucks. Boy, you know, just Google food truck fires. You can just see them over and over and over. So we're trying to make sure that when somebody comes to the city of Clayton and we track it, you know, you have a food truck ordinance. So, you know, we can watch it very closely. But when they have food trucks, we're going to make sure that they're complying regionally. And we've been doing it for the past year and a half. We just haven't been doing it officially. So the city of St. Louis has a wonderful food truck program. They license and they permit anybody that comes through the city of St Louis. They take it one step further. They also use their health department. So when someone says, I have a food truck and I want to operate in the city of St Lewis, they bring their truck down. The inspector looks at it. And if they meet all those requirements, they give them a sticker and they're done. Now they have a list of things they have to have on it. but it's things that fall into the international fire code. Extinguishers, hood suppression system, where's your propane tank? Do you have fire extinguishers? So they can do that. If they get a sticker from the city of St. Louis and that sticker is good for one year, I think it's a $25 fee, they can operate then anywhere that has adopted the mobile food. So they can come to Clayton, they can go to Kirkwood, they can go wherever they wanna go without having to get a permit from the fire department. Now, the other thing that they can if they don't want to, you know, participate in the city St. Louis, they can come and get an operational permit for me, and I do exactly the same thing. And then they're good for the period they're doing it. So, if you read the initial fire code it talks about how far you get, you know, more than one food truck where they park it I mean. food truck people, they just sometimes don't understand the importance of... It's getting better, but some of that... I mean, we'll go out Sunday and they'll have their gas cans in the front seat of their truck. And it's a hot day, the windows are closed, you know, and they're in the back preparing food with all kinds of open flames. Or they haven't secured their propane tank. I mean, that's usually what happens is they... They just don't know some of the potential things that can happen. And a lot of times we have food trucks, you can't get the fire apparatus to it. So it spreads to multiple food trucks. So we're doing something regionally. We think it works and I think you're going to get a positive feedback on us doing the food trucks. Other than that, I'm done. I'd like to answer any questions. I know it was fast. I don't want to bore you, but there's not a lot going on with this code cycle. There's really not.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, Was there any new code for existing buildings any retro fitting that's coming out with this code.

What I will tell you in the 2021, if you remember back in the 2015 code, we adopted the appendix, which talked about all high-rise buildings had to be retrofitted within 12 years. They have now take that out of the appendix and it's in the 2021. And it says, if you did not have some type of an agreement, you now have to have your building sprinkled within five years. So it is a retrofit. Some of the local building agents, and I'm talking the ones in the condos who came into an agreement with us, they really did a good thing because they were going to have to sprinkle them with 25 years. So we only have four buildings right now that are not in the process of of getting their buildings fully sprinkled. So we adopted this what, four or five years ago? And those buildings are 710 North Hanley, 230 South Brentwood, 41 South Central and 7711 Bonham. Those are four buildings that have not started putting fire sprinklers in their buildings and they only have five more years to get it done. So all the rest have are almost more than 80% done. So, and I think it's something that's coming for a long time, but high rise buildings are not safe unless they have fire sprinklers and Clayton was on the leading, leading edge of that I know we jumped into it and I'm glad we did because we're a leader with that. And we get acknowledged that a lot about, we stepped in and made, made them. So if the city of St. Louis adopts the 21, 2021, and I think they will, they're going to have all of them will have to be sprinkled in the city of St Louis, all their high rise buildings within 12 years.

So Paul, what, what, um, what happens if they don't, they're not done in five years? What are, what's our, what's the recourse for us?

I wrote, we'll, we'll go back to the international fire code. We'll look at talks when it talks about when you're not compliant with codes, um, that will probably go to the, um, our, uh, coding, you know, we, we have a, we have a prosecuting attorney. Um, it will, it will go to code enforcement, you know, housing court. Um, but how the ordinance reads, um, if they are in violation, if they are on violation of any code, um, they can be fined up to $1,000 a day for every violation they're not compliant with. That's what the code says. Now I've never seen the prosecuting attorney or the judge charge anybody $1,000 per day for not being compliant, but this will come to head. This will come to head if for some reason they're not compliant, we're gonna have to look really close and let a judge and a prosecutor decide how that's going to happen.

Have you spoken with any of those building owners or condo boards about what their plan is? Are they planning to do it, or are they under protest?

Yes. I won't say they're under protest, but when we enacted this code, they had to give us a code compliance letter. They all gave us a letter stating that they were aware of the code and they would comply with it. So we have a letter from them stating that. We did make some modifications to the residential high rises. That was four of our residential high rises. It was 200 South Brentwood, 900 South Hanley and 710 South Hanley. 200 South Brentwood and 900 South Hanley are complete. They're done. But 710 South Hanley is still in limbo.

Okay, thanks. Thanks for

that. Does the retrofitting of the buildings that we've talked about, does that now include the garages or is that handled separately?

It's handled separately. It's only new buildings coming out of the ground. So if you have a building and you're retrofitting the garage and retrofitting the building, the sprinkler ordinance does not come in. It's only for new buildings coming out the ground.

So these buildings we're talking about that are going to undergo hopefully within five years retrofitting, they may not include the garages. They may include the rest of the building.

Depends. Um, the sevens building, for example, they are sprinkling the entire building, including the garage because we entered into a building modification agreement with them. Um, a building modification agreement is both sides look at the building and the type of building and probably the code hardships they're having. And we make an agreement, say if you do A, B, and C, we'll consider your building X, Y, Z. In the seven, we had a couple of buildings. We had 130 South Beamiston. We had 222 South Central. We had the Claris building. And we also have the Sevens building where if we agree to something, we say the building is fully sprinkled today. So they get their breaks on not having rated corridors, not having to do certain things they would if the building wasn't sprinkled. And that happens now, but they have... The agreement we went in with the Sevens building, their building won't be fully sprinkled including the garage until 2027. But they have fully sprinkled all of the occupied area in the Sevens building. But the garage is not completed yet. That was part of our agreement.

So when you say agreement, you really mean giving additional time? Not so much that your variance is from the code requirements or some?

No agreement. Kevin, correct me if I'm wrong. It was a contract. We entered an agreement with them.

Right. And it includes coming into conformity. It's not just a delay in time, but it's time to conform.

Right. But there's not a, it's not an agreement that you don't have to comply with. No, no, no.

It's actually accelerated. It helps them. It makes their buildings more tenable. In other words, they, in the example of Pierre Laclede one, you know, the St. Louis club is what we hear is moving out. Those three floors are not protected with an automatic sprinkler system. So that building's not fully sprinkled. So every time they do a tenant finish somewhere in the building, they have to do more than what they would to do construction wise because the building is not fully sprinkled so we entered a building modification room and we say okay if you get your building sprinkled by a certain amount of time. we'll consider it fully sprinkled now in the areas that it is. And it saves, it works really well for both parties. And that was being done when I started here 15 years ago. Somebody started, the board must've started it years ago and it's been really good for the community. I think that's why we have success with some of our commercial buildings. They see the code enforcement people here are willing to work with building owners.

I have a question on the sustainability committee we've been talking about. Like how we allow solar panels on roofs and my understanding is that some of the guidelines that we have in place, there are related to fire safety in terms of like firefighters being able to access or get on the roof or something can you. Is that topic addressed in the code? Yes. That we're talking

about here? Yeah, the international fire code was the place or the placeholder when solar panels first came out. If you wanted to know exactly what the code read, you had to go to the fire code. Three years later, they took certain sections of the fire code and they put them over in the residential code. So people didn't have to look to places because typically a single family home builder didn't go to the international fire code to look at certain things. So they took those sections, but what's in the international residential code is identical to what's in the national fire code about the clearances and how much you need to have on roofs for solar panels. And it has changed over the years. but the last two code cycles, it's been consistent. So if I'm going to build a home, single family home, I opened up the international residential code and I followed that section about solar panels. If you were building a multifamily, you open up the international fire code and look about solar panels. They're exactly this, the code sections are the same. There's no discrepancies. There's clearances, heights, flat roofs, you know, And in the international fire code, it's the same as the resident code. The fire code official has the authority to come out and say, you don't have to do something with them because if the fire department can't get a ladder or can't get their fire truck on certain sides of the buildings, they would be exempt from, they could go ahead and put, they could put panels on that side. Okay.

Thank you.

Anything else? Thank you. Ana, do you need me to get out of this or?

Thanks, Chief.

I'd like to say that was a great presentation, and thank you, Paul.

Yes, agreed. All right,

I will try to go through this. Some of the stuff that you'll see on some of these slides is really similar to items that Paul talked about. Like you mentioned...

It's not on.

Oh.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so

as Paul mentioned, the International Code Council, that's ICC, has all these series of codes. So on the right hand column, it lists everything within the building division that we adopt. So building code, which covers multifamily and commercial, residential, mechanical, plumbing, fuel gas that kind of covers like gaseous piping and venting and some of those aspects related to different equipment. The Energy Conservation Code, this has commercial and residential components similar to what Paul was talking about with solar panels. The Energy Conservation code sections that apply to residential are kind of repeated in the IRC as well. um existing building code swimming pool and spa and then property maintenance so currently we're under the 2015 and just like with the fire code for all of these we also have local amendments the difference is that the majority of our local amendments when it comes to this list you see on the screen here are specific to the community of clayton we don't have the same kind of regional aspects that some of the fire code has So the building official has kind of highlighted some of the changes for you. I'll go through those quickly on some of the stuff that you might be familiar with. The local amendments then covers fee structures and our enforcement powers. This relates to how we post maybe a stop work order on a property that isn't complying with setbacks and references that how they relate to our zoning code, because those two in a lot of ways kind of work together. And then also some of our historical characteristics elements like the fence what the height of a fence and those sorts of things, those are local amendments. So here's a couple of examples of impacts to atrium design. So we see a lot of these in our office buildings, so you might walk into a lobby that has multiple stories that are open to each other. So there's a few different elements that kind of piggyback on some fire safety as well related to how somebody could construct that now depending on the height of the atrium and where it's located. there's smoke control, and then also the exit stairways and the design of those. So we do see a lot of this kind of atrium style design in a lot of buildings these days to kind of make that lobby feel bigger. So this is a code section we anticipate will come into play. Occupied roofs, that is another thing that we, the trend right now is occupying those roof spaces. And so there's been additional clarification regulation within this IBC as to what would be triggered as far as sprinklers with that occupied roof, depending on how it's constructed with the floor below and the size. As Paul mentioned, mass timbers identified in this IBC to not exceed 18 stories. And we would not be surprised if we see some mass timber construction come to the Clayton area.

When you talk about occupancy on a roof, are you just talking about like where a roof is used and accessible to the public? Like Sasha's rooftop or rooftops of places or is there something else?

Yes, that would be an example of that. Thanks. So a big one here is the occupant load calculation. So you can see that the load factor for the business use areas has changed from one person per 100 square feet to one per 150. Occupant load calculations are used in triggering the number of bathrooms that might be, toilets that might be required, exits, those sorts of things. So this calculation will impact a lot of our smaller commercial spaces like the restaurants and some of those with the different calculation here. electrical vehicle charging stations. So this is something that's obviously a growing trend and we have a lot of our more recent larger projects have been approved with components for electric vehicle charging stations. There are some requirements within the code and then also some exceptions related to the use type for some of those multifamily And then the vehicle space size, this will require that accessible spaces, not just van accessible spaces have that extra aisle for access. So this will impact probably a lot of the layouts that you might see within parking garages.

On the charging stations, what is the requirement that those residential zonings are exempted from? The specifics of the electric vehicle? That one we'll

have to

identify. Is there a way to understand it? I mean, is it some kind of weird electrical thing that I wouldn't understand? Or is it like... Yeah,

the... All of the electric permits themselves are still contracted through St. Louis County. So this is not related to the electric permit, but I can get the language from the building official for you. I'm just

curious why electric charging stations would be different in a different type of building. I think it's a

different type of thing.

Yeah, I'm just wondering what they're exempt from. Yeah, right. Thanks.

A new thing within our toilet facilities is outlining is not requiring separate facilities. So this allows if somebody wanted to do more of a gender neutral style bathroom where you would have the separate stalls for the urinals that have to be screened, but otherwise you could have what they call water closet or a typical stall for toilets and then shared areas for your sinks and other things like that. That's contemplated here within the code now. And then there's also accessibility when it comes to the emergency elevator communication system. So now there'll be that requirement to make things more accessible for adding the visual text-based and video-based component as opposed to just having the speaker where somebody in the elevator can hear. These are real, you know, Paul kind of covered some of this with the fire code, but some of the increased requirements for under sites that are under construction, as well as when they can be occupied depending on what's required as far as sprinkling. That one as well. So the residential code, there's not really a lot of really significant changes that should impact, especially given some of the single family development style that we see. But there are a few that relate to how the emergency escape and rescue areas might be accessed. And then stories above grade also mentioned within the residential code. In the energy code, a big part of what's changed there is actually increasing the R values, which are the insulation. That insulation value for the envelope is significantly higher, so it's an R60. So that will require much thicker insulation, which can have kind of ripple effects on certain elements such as the actual thickness of a wall, which then impacts what type of materials on the outside and how it's attached to the wall. So we would anticipate that there might be an increase in use of the foam insulation because that doesn't have as, instead of just adding thickness layers so you're rigid insulation. So that might impact some of our residential or single family development, that energy code requirement. So this kind of talks about that same thing. So the insulation at the ceilings of R60. So an example of that, a lower sloped roof might not be able to accommodate the thickness required for that R60 at a ceiling. So it could be that we see, you know, a different type of insulation with a foam insulation used or a higher pitch of a roof to accommodate more ceiling height to meet that R value. And that is my really quick summary.

Very well done.

Questions, guys?

All right. So we're done with our discussion session then. Does anyone need a break before we go ahead and do the regular meeting? Okay, to start? Okay, very good. All right. We're still recording, I assume? Yep. All right, well, welcome to the September 27th Board of Aldermen meeting. Will the city clerk call the roll, please? Alderman Lentz?

Alderman Berkowitz?

Here.

Alderman McAndrew? Here. Alderwoman Buse? Here. Aldermen Patel?

Here.

Aldeman Fado? Here. Mayor Harris? Here. City Manager David Gipson?

Aldeman Fado? Here. Mayor Harris? Here. City Manager Gibson?

Here.

City Attorney O'Keefe?

Here.

Very good. Now we'd like to approve the minutes from September 13th. Do you have a motion for that? I will move to approve the minutes From September 13th. All right. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Very good. Now's the time in the agenda when we take public requests. and petitions from the audience in person or the audience online. So I'd like to invite anyone who's here to talk about something that's not on our agenda tonight to come forward or raise your hand up online. Okay, seeing none, we will move on to our first item. And are we going to do the liquor license first?

I thought we were gonna do the public hearings first.

I think we said we might wanna, yeah, I think we said, we would move it up just so they don't have to sit through that whole thing.

Mayor, are you or David, are we going to handle anything related to the recognition? That's worth announcing. Okay, thank you for saying

that. Yes, so we were going to have a proposal and a presentation from the Clayton Equity Commission and they have asked to postpone that so they will not be presenting tonight and we won't be discussing that item. So if anybody's here for that and it was slated for the end of the agenda too. We won't be doing it. Okay, so in order to be kind to some of our visitors, we're gonna do the liquor license for seeds first, Mr. Sabine.

Yes, so this is a reinstatement of a liquor license. Seeds Cafe is requesting reinstatement of their liquor license to sell all kinds of intoxicating liquor at retail by the drink, including Sundays at 6344 South Roseberry Avenue. Liquor license renewals for license year 2022-2023 were due on July 31st, 2022. The renewal application for seeds was submitted on August 17th, 2022, so after the deadline. Staff has requested that a representative from SEEDS be in attendance at the meeting. We do have them here. Staff recommends passing a motion to approve reinstatement of the liquor license to sell all kinds of intoxicating liquor at retail by the drink, including Sundays.

Okay, thank you. I would like to open the discussion for anybody in the audience. And also, I would like to invite you to just come forward and introduce yourselves because I'm not sure I've ever met you.

Is the mic on? Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, I say that all over again.

Montgomery Gralnick from Seeds Cafe. We've been in business over that location for 10 years as of February and it's been a real pleasure.

Yeah, I know. It's a very popular spot. Yeah. Okay, great

partner care.

Nice to meet you guys. Um, Any questions for these guys while they're up at the podium,

folks? I assume this was just an oversight and you're anxious to get it back or is there anything

else we should know? It's actually already been taken care of and paid, but yes, we did come as per request. Yeah.

Okay, okay. Well, I'm one of your aldermen. I'm really glad to have you in the neighborhood. I know I think Seeds is one of, because it's relatively unique, definitely a restaurant in Clayton that draws people from all over the community. So thanks.

Yes. Very good. Thank you so much.

Pleasure.

Okay. May we have a motion to reinstate the liquor license?

I

think there's a bill for this.

I'm sorry.

I believe there's a bill is a bill number 6911. Okay.

Okay, if we look under the city manager report. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. It doesn't say a bill. It

is a motion. I apologize. I'd like to move to reinstate the liquor license proceeds cafe located at 6344. That's all it says, 6344. I'm sure there's a street that I don't remember what street.

Roseberry. South Roseberry.

South Rosemary.

Second. Just wanted to see if you were awake, Ira. Okay, we have a second. So any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, congratulations. You're off to sell all kinds of intoxicating liquor as we like to say. Okay, we will. Okay, so now we can go back to the regular agenda and we have a public hearing for lot consolidation on Brentwood Boulevard. So I will open the public hearing and request proof of publication.

Thank you, Mayor. This is a public hearing and subsequent ordinance to consider approving a subdivision plat for the consolidation of Lot 3 and Lot 4 of the Old Town West subdivision of the City of Clayton to create one lot. All lots have a zoning designation of R4, low-density multiple family dwelling district. The subject properties are located on the east side of North Brentwood Boulevard between Kingsbury Boulevard and Maryland Avenue. The property currently addressed 132 North Brentwood Boulevard measures 6,303 square feet and has improved with a single family house. The property currently addressed 128 North Brentwood Boulevards measures 6,979 square feet and is vacant. The owner purchased the Northern lot and the house under construction before later purchasing the vacant lot with the goal of combining the two lots for additional yard area. The consolidation would increase the side yard setback from five feet to 10 feet, resulting in a non-conforming condition where the existing house would not meet the north side yard setback. On September 1st, 2022, the Board of Adjustment unanimously approved a variance from the side yard set back for the existing home. The plan commission considered this request at its September 6th, 2022 meeting and voted unanimously to recommend approval with two conditions. Staff recommends that the Board of Aldermen approve with conditions set forth in the ordinance for adoption.

Very good. I'll open the discussion. Any questions from the audience first? None online. So great. Any any discussion up here? Anyone? Okay, very good. I will then close the public hearing and request introducing the bill.

I'd like to introduce bill number 6913, an ordinance to approve a lot consolidation and plat for 128 and 132 North Brentwood Boulevard to be read for the first time by title only.

Second. Very good. Any discussion? Okay, Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6913, first reading an ordinance providing for the approval of a plat to consolidate certain property located on North Brentwood Bouleuard in the city of Clayton, Missouri.

Great, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, Alderman Berkowitz.

I move that the board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of bill number 6913 on the day of its introduction.

Second. All those in favor? Any opposed? Okay, great. Let the minutes reflect the board has given unanimous consent. Alderman Berkowicz.

Like to introduce bill number 6913 in ordinance to approve a lot consolidation and plan for 128 dash 132 North Brentwood Boulevard three red for the second time by title only.

Second. Question. City Attorney

Bill number 6913, second reading and consideration for adoption. An ordinance providing for the approval of a flat to consolidate certain property located on North Brentwood Boulevard in the city of Clayton, Missouri.

Alderman Berkowitz.

Aye.

Alderman McAndrew. Aye. Alderwoman Buse. Aye. Aldermen Patel.

Aye.

Aldeman Gary Feder. Aye. And Mayor Harris. Aye. Thank you.

Aldeman Fader. Aye. And Mayor Harris. Aye. Thank you.

All right. The next thing is the amendment to the special development district plan for 8125, is it? Forsyth Boulevard? Yep. Mr. Sidney, I'll open the public hearing and request proof of publication first. Now, Mr. City Manager. Thank you, Mayor.

This is a 0.52 acre site located on the north side of Forsyth Boulevoir between Brentwood Boulevard and Maryland Avenue. Has a zoning designation of Special Development District or SDD. On October 13th, 2020, the Board of Alderman approved the sub-district development plan for the subject property to allow for the hotel development currently under construction. This is the residence in. This is a request to amend the final development plan to revise the streetscape plan. The approved plan calls for nine trees to be planted as part of the city's standard streetscape. The applicant is proposing to plant five street trees. The proposed amendment is considered a major amendment to the streetscape plan and therefore requires a public hearing and review by the Board of Aldermen. The latest streetscape plan from the applicant shows the removal of two eastern trees and the two western trees. The applicant has also noted the location of various utility lines located within the right-of-way. Due to the location of these utility lines, the applicant believes that there is not enough space to successfully install and maintain all of the street trees as originally approved. The public works department has reviewed the plans and agrees that there are conflicts resulting from the placement of utility lines that would negatively impact the life of the trees. The city's tree and landscape regulations require replacement of trees removed as a part of a new development. When trees cannot be replaced as part of a new, there's an option to pay a fee into the city's forestry fund to support planting of replacement trees at a different location in the city. This fee structure is intended to help maintain a minimum tree canopy in the city when direct replacement of trees is not possible. The applicant was proposing to plant four Elm trees at three caliber inches per tree. The replacement deficiency fee for non-residential projects is $250 per caliber inch, resulting in a deficiency fee for the subject property of $3,000. Staff recommends that the Board of Aldermen approve this item with the condition that the applicant pays a tree replacement deficiency fee of $3,00 into the city's forestry fund. And this evening we do have Matt Malik, our director of public works on remotely. Our director of planning development services on a crane is here and we do have a representative for the applicant as well.

Okay, very good. I'll open the discussion. Any questions or comments from our audience either in person or online? No, okay. How about from the board? Questions, comments?

Go ahead, Bridgette. David, I was just going to ask, this isn't directly related. I mean, I guess I appreciate the fact that our public works department has agreed with you that it's hard to plant that many trees. I was just since we're talking about trees, and I don't remember asking this when we were approving the hotel when you were getting the condominium development approved across the street, you had said that you hope to put in a little bit more irrigation to make sure the trees grow. Do you anticipate doing that here with the trees that will go in?

No, because the utilities that are there, I mean, there's literally fiber optic lines underneath us as well as other utility lines, gas, obviously everything is underneath there. I can't do it in this space. There was there was, I believe, seven trees there before I if I remember correctly. So we thought we could increase it to nine when we did the original planning. But then once we got into the site, we realized that every all the utilities run on our side of the street there. And so it's, it's quite the jungle underneath there. So it's not that we don't want to plant the trees, it's we can't plant all the trees. So

but the ones that are left over, do you think you'll be able to keep them alive with

I think that

like the with those bags and stuff that you can fill with water. I don't remember what you said you were going to do. Yeah, we're gonna we're

gonna so on the other side, we're actually irrigating it. Okay, so we're kind of past the point of no return. And plus, we can't, we just can't do with all those utilities underneath there. We couldn't they would not be good. So I mean, it's in our best interest to keep the trees alive. They're in our front door. Okay. I mean, we got a brand new $40 million building there. We want the trees to look nice. So we're gonna do our best to take care of them.

Okay, thanks. Other questions?

Were the utilities underneath a surprise? I mean, you didn't know about that.

We didn't know all the utilities were there, no ma'am. So when they did the original site survey, they weren't all identified. It wasn't until later that we found out that there were additional utilities underneath the site.

I guess the other question may not be as much for you as for the city is when the money goes into the forestry fund, the idea is to keep our canopy, right? Is that the actual cost of us putting those trees somewhere else and does that happen or does it get put in the fund? How does that all come about? So we're protecting canopy.

I'm gonna ask Ana or David to answer if it's based on the actual cost or what. And I can wait too if

people have more questions for you but that

was a

concern.

Go ahead. So Matt's also online, so he can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but he did verify the cost of trees so that the fee right now is based on the caliper inch. So that technically only covers the cost of purchasing the tree. It doesn't cover the cost of installing streetscape, city standard streetscapes or digging a tree well, et cetera, but it will help replace or plant new trees.

I read, did you have any questions at this point? Okay. We can always come back. Okay. I

do think we should charge more than what we're charging them. It sounds like we're not really make recouping the expense of actually putting trees elsewhere.

Yeah.

Um, I believe I'm unmuted. Uh,

sorry. There you are, man. Hi.

Sorry. I didn't realize I was on here. Um, I checked the bids for our last tree replacements and the average cost for a two to three inch tree did result in about 60% of this. Therefore, the remainder would be the soft and labor costs associated with the planting. Again, as I stated, that doesn't account for any streetscape elements, but based on the prices that I identified through those bids, it felt like the replacement of a tree at another location, this would be captured with this cost.

Thank you. That's a good answer, thank you. Becky, did you have a question?

So I had the exact same questions that Susan did and I want to just follow up actually on the first one about the like surprise utilities. Is that like a survey done by our people, your people? How do we, is there like a process improvement so that doesn't happen again?

What's the... I mean, the initial survey did not show all the utilities. I don't really, I'm not an engineer. Okay, so, but like some of the, it was really the fiber optics that really didn't show up underneath there. And I don't know if that's AT&T or who that is at charter, whoever it is, but that did not show up. So I don't really. have a finger to point at anybody. I don't really know, it just wasn't on the survey. So that was based on the information we had at the time. We were actually increasing the trees in the space from what it was originally. So we're going, I know we're going back four from what we proposed, but we're going back two, I believe, from what was originally in the site. The other thing is that we are also having drop-off area right in front now for the hotel. So we will be... paying for those spaces, that valet space. So it does work out nice to have that space open for people to get in and out rather than trampling across the landscaping area. Okay,

thank you. Alderman Gary Feder, anything from

thank you. Alderman Fader, anything from

you? My only question is since it's a special development district, it does seem to me that there's a lot of potential bargaining that is still available in this process. And since the green space is less than what we anticipated, I'm not blaming you, David, because I think obviously just the way it worked out, can't do anything about it. But I do sort of feel like the quid pro quo here is a little bit light. I mean, I think we're sort of winding up with a technical just give us a few thousand bucks and we'll be fine. And I'm not sure that's entirely enough here. I sort of feel like given the parameters of special development district, it's almost like we ought to have a little bit more enhancement somewhere of the project to compensate for this. Again, not your fault, but still seems to me we're giving something up here and what we're getting in return doesn't sort of match up with what we're losing. But that's just my-

No, I understand. Just being honest, I didn't come up with the fee. That was something that was calculated. I'm not trying to be unfair. If the fee's not right, we'll pay a little more. I'm not tryin' to be a nickel and dime here. This doesn't move the needle on my project. I just can't plant all the trees, okay? And it's not that I don't want to, I can't. I

was actually not thinking so much about more of a fee but something else, something that is an enhancement to the project that makes up for the fact that there's a diminished green type of element to the project. And so it's not really a matter of money, it's just how can we sort of offset this in a way that's more meaningful?

Okay, so that couldn't be more perfect as a segue into an idea I was going to share with you tonight. So we have kind of started a program and it's had a slow start, but it started of hanging some flower baskets from streetlights. And I wanted to see if I agree with, you know, it would be nice to have some more green stuff along that walkway there. And I understand David had mentioned to me, I asked about some planters and I think there's limited space for those as well in the right of way. So I wondered if you'd be willing to consider putting up a number of these flower baskets along there from your streetlights. They're really wonderful looking. There's four of them right out here at Bemison and Forsyth. I know

exactly what you're talking about. We're fine doing that. I mean, we proposed the planters and staff turned that down. Okay. So that was not us making that decision because I think the maintenance technically falls on the city after we plant these things. So they weren't comfortable maintaining the planters. Yeah. So, but I'm fine with, I know exactly what you're talking about.

We can talk about the details. Matt, of course, is intimately familiar with this little project. So we can talk about it and see if that's something that's workable. I think that would really enhance the streetscape

there. Right. We're good with that. I don't have a problem with that at all.

Hey, Matt, you can yell at me later.

I was going to add that the initial area we looked at was between Brentwood and Hanley. We'd have to look at those poles. I know the thing we ran into before was the weight restriction on the poles, being that those aren't the steel quad poles. That's just something we would have to look at to see if it was being possible.

Yeah, definitely. I realize that. Okay, so we'll look at it. I think, I don't know if you could hear him, but he wants to make sure that the lampposts can support the baskets. Yes,

I think the lamppost were saved and are going back up. Is that correct, Matt?

I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah, the poles are going back up. I'm getting very detailed here. I know there are two light poles. Our singles and our two light poles are aluminum where the quads on the corners were steel and able to support the heavier loads. That's why we kind of focused them on there with this program. So will it

work? We'll look at it. That's what he's saying. We hope it'll work. They're very small, actually, baskets.

So I was just consulting with our city attorney here. And so if we're going to go down the path of exploring these flower baskets, we'd like to have that as a condition, if that's something we're going to add. However, without having a chance to research it, we're uncomfortable just throwing a number or something else in there if the polls don't work out. So I think the best way to go about this would probably be to first read the item this evening and then work with work with the developer and public works staff, and then come back at the next meeting for the second reading. And we can add the condition at that time. I

mean, I thought we were working with you, Dave. So, I mean, we've been okay. Yeah, we can come back. That's fine.

Well, I, I just think we need to take a look at it again. I'd like to add it as a condition and I'm not sure that

we. In fairness to you and to make sure everybody, no, I understand. It's clear. Right. We, we think we ought to discuss

it with you before we, try and craft language. I understand it's changing what we talked about or what was on the document. Sorry

about that.

You have a time problem? Does this

delay work?

We're going to open in a couple months, but we're working trying to get the project open.

The features that we're talking about would appear to be late project features. You're right. Clearly you've not heard thus far, at least any significant opposition to the adoption of the change. So I think it is in everyone's best

interest

that we

get it

right.

No, I don't disagree. I'm not trying to be negative at all. I just, we just need to figure it out. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. I understand you'd like to be one and done. I get that. Okay. Um, all right. So any, if there are any other comments, no other comments, I will close the public hearing Alderman Berkowitz.

I would like to introduce bill number 6 9 1 4 to approve an ordinance amending the special development district sub-district plan for 81 26 Foresight Boulevard and repealing ordinance number 6 6 7 and any other conflicting ordinances to be read for the first time by title only.

Okay. Any discussion? All right, Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6914, first reading an ordinance approving an amended sub-district development plan for sub-district phase five of the Forsyth Center Special Development District, repealing conflicting ordinances and other actions related thereto.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Do we want to, we're just postponing until the next time the second reading so we don't that's all we need to do with this. It'll be on the

next agenda and we'll work with the developer in the meantime.

Thank you very much, David. Really appreciate it.

So what you're suggesting is the purchase of the baskets and the city maintains them?

Well, we would have to water them. like we do the ones out here.

I think that's the discussion we need to have is exactly what this looks like, the types of baskets or self-watering baskets are all types of things we can take a look at.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. The next thing will be to go into the city manager's report and do the property levies for fiscal two.

Yes, each year the city must approve property tax levies, which are then submitted to St. Louis County for billing. Calendar year 2022 is not a reassessment year. Therefore, there is little change to continuing assessments. The city experienced significant new construction growth and residential assessed values increased by $11.9 million. subject to the maximum voter approved rate of tax levy, the city is allowed to receive additional revenue for existing properties up to the lower of 5% or the consumer price index CPI, which was 7% for this year. And we also received the full value of new construction. For the fiscal year 2023 proposed budget plan, we are submitting the maximal allowable rates for your approval. As part of the property tax levy process, the Board held a public hearing to seek public input on the proposed tax rates on September 13th, 2022. All 2022 property tax levy recommendations for budget year 2023 are included in the packet and ordinance. Staff recommends that the Board of Aldermen have a second and final reading of an ordinance setting the annual property tax rates for calendar year 2022, which is fiscal year 2023 at the rates referenced in the ordinance.

Very good. I'll open the discussion. Is there anyone here in the audience that has questions or comments about these tax rates or anybody online? Seeing none, Alderman Berkowitz.

I'd like to introduce bill number 6911, an ordinance to approve the property tax levies for tax year 2022, fiscal year 2023, to be read for the second time by title only.

Second. Any discussion? All right, Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6911, second reading and consideration for adoption. An ordinance levying and establishing the rate of annual taxes for general municipal purposes, police building debt service, general obligation debt service, and special business district purposes to be collected by the city of Clayton, Missouri for the year 2022.

Alderman Berkowitz? Aye. Alderman McAndrew? Aye. Alderwoman Buess. Aye. Alderwoman Patel. Aye. Alderman Gary Feder. Aye. And Mayor Harris. Aye. Thank you.

Alderman Berkowitz? Aye. Alderman McAndrew? Aye. Alderwoman Buess. Aye. Alderwoman Patel. Aye. Alderman Fader. Aye. And Mayor Harris. Aye. Thank you.

All right. We'll move on to the operating capital improvement budget second reading. Mr. City Manager.

Yes. In July, the Board of Aldermen received the City Manager's proposed fiscal year 2023 capital improvements budget. And in August, the Board received the proposed fiscal year 2023 operating budget. As part of the budget process, the board is required to hold a public hearing to seek public input prior to formal budget adoption. The public hearing was held at the Board of Aldermen meeting on September 13th, 2022. The board also reviewed the proposed budget during public meetings on July 26th and August 12th, 2022. We believe the proposed budget maintains the current service levels traditionally provided by the city. The Board of Aldermens has studied this proposed budget and the public has had ample opportunity for review of the budget document. The attached ordinance approves the fiscal year 2023 operating capital improvements budget is presented for a second reading and final approval. Staff recommends that the Board of Aldermen have the second reading of an ordinance approving the fiscal 2023 operating and capital improvements budget. And there was one outstanding question from the last meeting that came from Alderwoman Patel. I sent out an email earlier today that shows our projections for new construction and how that's calculated. Also, there was a follow-up question about 2023. The only new building and it was incorporated in the property tax levy is the Clarendale. In 2022, there was not any new large construction, but you can see we have quite a bit that's coming online in 2024 and 2025 on that spreadsheet. And we'll go through that in a lot of detail as we talk about our financial projections at the Friday session coming up on September the 30th. Take any additional questions and also Karen Dilber, our director of finances here this evening.

All right. I'll open the discussion, ask if there is anyone in the audience or online that has a question or comment. How about our board? Do you have any questions, comments? Like you might be the only one.

Yeah, I just want to say, I think I am comfortable approving this budget. And in the next year, I believe we must identify service reductions and or revenue increases that will stop us from operating in a deficit and doing the transfer that we're doing. Like I'm not okay with continuing that. And I know we've been talking about it and I know that staff has some plans to present options to us. But I just can't impress enough that I really like, I will not approve a budget that maintains the same next year without us actually getting into those discussions. Like we need to and we need to do them like I know and I know we're planning to. I just really want to emphasize it needs to happen. I'm not comfortable with this.

Okay, well, I'm glad you stated pretty much how everyone feels. Yes, I just want to be clear about

it,

get it from the record. And as you said, we are this Friday going to be digging into those details now. There's a timeliness to all of this and we followed a process that I think is really, really exemplary led by our very capable city manager. So I think it goes without saying that none of us want to continue in a 2 million plus deficit annually. Okay, all right. Any other discussion? All right, Alderman Berkowitz. I'd

like to introduce bill number 6912, an ordinance to approve the fiscal year 2023 operating and capital improvements budget to be read for the second time by title only.

Second. Okay, further questions or discussion? All right Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6912, second reading in consideration for adoption. An ordinance admitting, excuse me, adopting an annual budget for fiscal year 2023 commencing on October 1, 2022 and appropriating funds pursuant thereto.

Alderman Berkowitz.

Aye.

Alderwoman McAndrew. Aye. Alderman Buse. Aye. Aldermen Patel. Aye. Aldeman Gary Feder. Aye. Aye.

Alderwoman McAndrew. Aye. Alderman Buse. Aye. Aldermen Patel. Aye. Aldeman Fader. Aye. Aye.

Okay, moving on. Bill number 6915, the MOU for police wage increases. Mr. City Manager.

Yes, the City of Clayton and Police Department employees represented by the Fraternal Order of Police or FOP Lodge 15 previously agreed to meet and bargain fiscal year 2023 wages. Negotiations occurred during the summer and fall of 2022. The City and FOP had tentatively agreed to the following wage increases and provisions for fiscal year 2023. Employees will receive a 3% increase and the parties agree and understand a step increase will also be available to only the employees that are eligible for a step increase as of October 1st, 2022. Secondly, on an annual basis, non-exempt sworn police officers shall receive 88 hours of holiday leave in lieu of guaranteed time off on city holidays. At the employee's option, 88 hours of leave 88 of the hours can be converted to cash based on the employees hourly rate and to be paid to the employee, the first pay period in December. Utilization of the leave hours will be arranged between the employee and their supervisor. Officers who are not employed by the city for a full year will receive a prorated number of holiday leave hours based on the number of holidays during which they are employed in the shift position. Staff recommends approval of the attached ordinance, approving a memorandum of understanding between the City of Clayton and the Eastern Missouri Coalition of Police, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 15 for fiscal year 2023 wage increases and revised holiday provision.

Okay, I will open the discussion. Any questions from our audience or online audience? Mr. Bliss. would you wanna come up to the podium, say who you are, your address and then yeah, we've already got your question. Yeah, exactly.

Rick Bliss 7515 Westmoreland Avenue. I'm just curious why this is just a one year agreement. Is there not some way to do it out three to five years?

That's what we typically do. So the CBA was a three year CBA. We will go through the collective bargaining agreement in whole this coming year. So in June, we'll start bargaining for the next version of the CBA. Due to the economic uncertainty with the pandemic and not knowing how much of an increase we could give, rather than having a three-year increase, which is typical in a CBA, we decided to do it on a year-by-year basis and look at revenues and expenditures and basically bargain those wages each one of the three years in the CBA. So next year, when we do the entire document again, if you read through that, you'll probably see the standard increase over a period of years.

Okay, so one more question, not this item or the next one, but the one following references something called drop, DROP, and that was not defined anywhere in the write-up, if you will. If you can, when you get to it, if you can define what a drop is, I would appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you.

And I think it's relevant. We are also gonna do a compensation study. So again, that'll give us a lot more information as to what kind of wage increases we need to use over the next three to five years. Yeah. Okay. I think that's all the discussion.

So Alderman Berkowitz, please. I'd like to introduce bill

number 6915, to approve an MOU between the City of Clayton and the Eastern Missouri Coalition of Police, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 15 for fiscal year 2023, wage increases and revised holiday provision. We read for the first time by title only.

Second. Okay, any further discussion? All right, Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6915, first reading and ordinance authorizing the city manager to execute a memorandum of understanding between the City of Clayton and the Eastern Missouri, excuse me, Eastern Missouri Coalition of Police Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 15 for the fiscal year 2023 wage increases and a revised holiday provision.

Okay, very good. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right, Alderman Berkowitz?

I move that the board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of bill number 6915 on day of its introduction.

Second. All those in favor? Aye. All right, let the minutes reflect. The board has given unanimous consent. Mr. Berkowitz. I'd

like to introduce bill number 6915 to approve MOU between the city of Clayton and the Eastern Missouri Coalition of Police Returnal Order of Police, Lodge 15 for fiscal year 2023 wage increases and revised holiday provision to be read for the second time by title only.

Second. Any further discussion? All right, Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6915, second reading in consideration for adoption and ordinance authorizing the city manager to execute a memorandum of understanding between the city of Clayton and the Eastern Missouri Coalition of Police, Internal Order of Police Lodge 15 for the fiscal year 2023 wage increases and a revised holiday provision.

Alderman Berkowitz? Aye. Alderwoman McAndrew? Aye. Alderman Buse? Aye. Aldermen Patel? Aye. Alderman Gary Feder? Aye. Mayor Harris? Aye. Thank

Alderman Berkowitz? Aye. Alderwoman McAndrew? Aye. Alderman Buse? Aye. Aldermen Patel? Aye. Alderman Fader? Aye. Mayor Harris? Aye. Thank

you. All right, next we have the MOU for fire with fiscal 23.

Yes, the City of Clayton and Fire Department employees represented by the International Association of Firefighters Local 2665 previously agreed to meet and bargain fiscal year 2023 wages. Negotiations occurred during the summer and early fall of 2022. The city and fire union have tentatively agreed to the following wage increases and provisions for fiscal year 2023. a 3% across the board adjustment shall be applied to all steps in the pay scales referenced in the collective bargaining agreement. And the parties agree and understand a step increase will only be available to the employees that are eligible for a step increase as of October 1st, 2022. Staff recommends approval of the attached ordinance approving a memorandum of understanding between the City of Clayton and the International Association of Firefighters Local 2665 for fiscal year 2023 wage increases.

Okay, thank you. I'll open the discussion. Any questions, comments from the audience? Okay, seeing none, any questions or comments from the board? All right, Alderman Berkowitz.

I'd like to introduce bill number 6916. to approve a memorandum of understanding between the city of Clayton and the International Association of Firefighters, Local 2665, for fiscal year 2023 wage increases to be read for the first time by title only.

Second. Okay. Further discussion? All right. Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6916, first reading in ordinance authorizing the city manager to execute a memorandum of understanding between the city of Clayton and the International Association of Firefighters Local 2665 for fiscal year 2023 wage increases.

All right, all those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Alderman Berkowitz. I'd

like to move that the board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of bill number 6916 on the day of its introduction.

Second. Very good. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Let the minutes reflect. The board has given unanimous consent. Alderman Berkowitz.

I'd like to introduce bill number 6916 to approve a memorandum of understanding between the city of Clayton and the International Association of Firefighters, local 2665 for fiscal year 2023 wage increases to be read for the second time by title only.

Second. Any further discussion? Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6916, second reading in consideration for adoption, an ordinance authorizing the city manager to execute a memorandum of understanding between the city of Clayton and the International Association of Firefighters, Local 2665, for fiscal year 2023 wage increases.

Alderman Berkowitz?

Aye.

Alderwoman McAndrew? Aye. Alderman Buse? Aye. Aldermen Patel?

Aye.

Aldeman Gary Feder? Aye. Mayor Harris?

Aldeman Fader? Aye. Mayor Harris?

Aye. Okay, last thing on our agenda. Bill number 6917, the MOU with police and fire for uniform employee retirement fund enhancements. Mr. City Manager.

Yes, the city of Clayton Police Department employees represented by the fraternal order of police lodge 15 fire department employees represented by the International Association of Firefighters Local 2665 met and discussed possible pension enhancements. negotiations occurred during the summer and early fall of 2022 the city and both unions have tentatively agreed to the pension enhancements as follows. Allowance of the purchase of military service credits and then a forward and backdrop program with a suggested 60 days notice requirement. If approved city staff will work with the pension plan managers and attorney to perform a final analysis determine the process needed to implement the pension enhancements. It is anticipated that the proposed enhancements will result in a reduced pension contributions from the city of Clayton. Staff recommends approval of the ordinance, proving the attached memorandum of understanding between the city of Claydon, the International Association of Firefighters Local 2665 and the Eastern Missouri Coalition of Police, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 15 for the specified pension enhancements. And so as for what the drop is, It's a deferred retirement program where if you reach your normal eligibility for retirement, so you've reached 50 years with 25 years of service, you can on the forward drop declare a retirement date up to five years out. And so you will stop contributing to your pension. The city will continue to pay into your pension like they did previously. but rather that being used for your pension calculation, that money piles up for that three years. And when that retirement date hits, you receive a lump sum. So you'll get your normal retirement plus three years that has accumulated as a cash out on that last day. And that's how the forward drop works. So that's something we don't have right now and that's a piece of the program. The other one is considered a backdrop, so it's backward looking. So if I'm eligible for normal retirement, and I have been for the last three years, and three years is as far as you can go back, what you can do is you can take all the money that the city had put in towards your pension over that three years, and within six months, you would have to retire. So from six months of that program being implemented. So say we do it on January 1, you have until June 30 to retire and set your retirement date. But on that retirement day, you'll receive a lump sum that looks backwards to that eligibility date up to three years, and you'll receive that as a lump sum. So there's a forward element for those that are eligible right now and might want to work a few more years and accumulate a drop. And there's also and that would be a permanent program in place. And then there's also a backdrop program where if you're beyond your eligible retirement date, you could look backwards in time and then receive a lump sum for a period you've already worked and still receive your normal retirement. So I'm trying to state it as simply as possible. Hopefully that- And

that's just a temporary-

That is a one-time program. The backdrop is a one- time program. So you'll have to declare right away and then retire within six months once the program is implemented. Feel free to.

Rick Bliss again. Is there an actuarial determination of what it's going to cost?

There is. There's actually savings for both of those on the preliminary assessment. The next step, if the board approves this this evening, is to go back to the actuary. They have to provide a final analysis for us. They'll make a determination as to what the plan modification, if any, will look like. And then we have to put that in place. So that's going to take a couple of months here to put together. The savings were nominal. I can pull up the exact amount here.

Have those who will be eligible, have they been pulled even informally to see who's thinking of,

going down those paths? So we've looked at how many employees would be eligible for the drop programs. We're looking at single digits in both departments, including those with the forward drop. The forward drop is a nice tool for us from a succession planning standpoint. So if we know somebody's going out two years from now, we can kind of time those recruitments and things. Sure. But yes, it's not a huge number where everybody took the backdrop. All of a sudden, you know, we'd lose a third of a department. It's nothing to that extent.

Okay.

Thank you.

Very good. All right, you've finished your report. I'll open for further discussion. Anybody? All right. Alderman Berkowitz.

Let's introduce Bill number 6917 to approve a memorandum of understanding between the City of Clayton and the International Association of Firefighters, Local 2665 and the Eastern Missouri Coalition of Police. Returnal Order of Police Lodge 15. for the Uniformed Employee Retirement Fund enhancements to be read for the first time by title only.

Second. Any discussion? Okay, Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6917, first reading an ordinance authorizing the city manager to execute a memorandum of understanding between the city of Clayton the International Association of Firefighters Local 2665, and the Eastern Missouri Coalition of Police Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 15 for specified pension enhancements.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, Alderman Berkowitz.

I'd like to move that the board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of bill number 6917 on the day of its introduction.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Let the minutes reflect the board has given unanimous consent. Alderman Berkowitz. I'd

like to introduce bill number 6917 to approve an MOU between the City of Clayton and the International Association of Firefighters, Local 2665, and the Eastern Missouri Coalition of Police, Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 15, for the Uniformed Employee Retirement Fund enhancements to be read for the second time by title only.

Second. Any discussion? City Attorney.

Bill number 6917, second reading in consideration for adoption. Excuse me. An ordinance authorizing the City Manager to execute a memorandum of understanding between the City of Clayton, the International Association of Firefighters, Local 2665, and the Eastern Missouri Coalition of Police, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 15, for specified pension enhancements.

Alderman Berkowitz?

Aye.

Alderwoman McAndrew? Aye. Alderman Buse? Aye. Alderman Patel. Aye. Alderman Gary Feder. Aye. Mayor Harris.

Alderwoman McAndrew? Aye. Alderman Buse? Aye. Alderman Patel. Aye. Alderman Fader. Aye. Mayor Harris.

Aye.

Thank you.

Okay, that closes our business for tonight and we are gonna spend a minute here just doing our little round table which we usually do to see if anybody has done anything they wanna share with the rest of the board, city related or otherwise in the past couple weeks since we've met and you're welcome to stay for that and then we will be going into a closed session after that so um i'll start with alderman berkowitz if you have anything to tell us about

um nothing of any note uh at the last arb meeting um so nothing to report

all right thank you uh i guess bridget nothing all right um alderman booth

had several things um I got in line for paper shredding day by the Chamber of Commerce, a very well attended event. And so that was great. Then I wanted to thank Chief Smith and Captain Tewitt, the sophomore had a sophomore neighborhood as a task force on safety. And they had asked our officers to come over and us as aldermen to come over and talk with them about what they could do. And I think that our police presence and the openness with information, which things have really, crime has pretty much stayed the same aside from a few key is being stolen, things like that. But you know, valid concerns. And I think once again impressed with how our police officers handled it, and I think made the neighborhood feel better and continue to offer support in bringing us to where we want to be. So that was great. Gary and I went to the Municipally. And Michelle Steed. And they had a legal presentation there which was probably, it was actually very interesting. They talked about the state bill that passed that eliminated the options for a non-voto ID for voting, which is being contested fairly widely, I think, and the impact of that and to be aware of that. And they talked about the taxes, telephone taxes, and how charter and all these other alternative ways of communicating, the actions going on to try to get those back into our revenue loop. and a little bit about the Second Amendment Preservation Act, which is that state law that local police cannot cooperate with federal arms legislation and the impact and the issues of that starts, that that causes. So it was a good meeting. Then as you all know, the Equity Commission's recommendations have been postponed. I just want to mention as well As they worked on that recommendation, some other ideas came up primarily brought up and explained by our city manager, one being a PUD option, giving points for offering some housing. And another one that I think was a surprise to me, and Gary might have already been aware of this, is that the existing duplexes by ordinance have a lot of restrictions and any improvements they can do. And that is something that we could just consider, maybe you can go to the planning commission. I would suggest earlier than later to see if we wanted to change that so that the existing, if you own a duplex, you can fix it up and do the major renovations to keep it to the standards that we might want in our neighborhoods. So I don't know why that would have to wait on the recommendation that could go on to the planning commission, I hope sometime soon. last thing is the fun stuff. Musical nights was great, could have been better attended, but it was really fun. It was a beautiful night. And then the jazz festival was really well attended and really, really fun. And yeah, I think it's a great, it brought in people from that I didn't recognize. I think it was a very, yeah, a wide, a diverse crowd in age and area and ethnicity and everything. It was a really fun night. So good for us. It was really great for Clayton and everybody who worked on that. So thank you.

OK, Alderman Patel. Thanks. Rich and I had a word coffee. Thanks to Sasha for hosting us and the handful of folks who showed up. No burning hot topics, but it was a good opportunity to connect with some of our constituents and residents. We had a really great sustainability meeting The committee made a recommendation that the city join the Midwest Climate Collaborative, which is a really interesting project. So we'll be hearing more about that at a future meeting. And then a number of other interesting things going on, a potential partnership with a class at WashU to help us with the project. a study related to energy efficiency and energy use and planning. And then we are hoping to have some folks at the October 17th Plan Commission ARB meeting from sustainability. So some folks are going to go to enter into discussion there about the solar panel topic, so I think we're expecting that meeting to have a report out from staff maybe on some options or recommendations and then some discussion around that so that's really. kind of the biggest hot topic there. The last thing i'll mention is the. High Point Neighborhood had their, I think it's an annual block party. And one of the fun things about, so two things I want to highlight. One is that Corporal Schwartz was there with her service dog, Jade. which was super fun and neat um and to learn more about that program and also one of the fun things i think about ward one is that we have neighborhoods that span um the city of clayton and st louis city and overwhelmingly we see those neighborhoods operate like as you know one neighborhood and so we get people um together and it's just really nice so there was you know there were elected officials from the city of st louis there too and it's just a really nice thing just one of many things that makes ward one so exceptional so thanks okay

alderman Gary Feder anything for us

alderman fader anything for us

um as alderman view said the uh the municipal league uh function last week was uh It was very productive, I thought. It's always nice to see people from other cities. We sat with a couple of people from North County cities and someone from Richmond Heights. And in addition to the items that Alderman Buse mentioned, there was also discussion of the Creve Coeur conditional use permit litigation, which has gone on for a long time. And I think it's certainly relevant to us to the extent we deal fairly frequently with conditional use permits. Alderwoman McAndrew and I reinitiated our monthly three coffees at Starbucks. after a couple of months hiatus. And we had our usual folks who attend, but we always get new people and we always get 12 or 15 people. So it's really, it's a great discussion. We had, again, a meeting with the Barkley House residents, Mulroney, Buse and I and the mayor and other key staff people and answered questions for their residents. And we're doing the same thing on October 6th. at the Park Tower. So we've been doing a lot of that. And also Jazz Fest was great. It truly is a diverse population and it just, it's a great evening. And finally, even though it wasn't in Clayton, we went to Shakespeare in the Street, which was in the city. an alumni, so of course I try to go to all the Shakespeare in the street, but I do think it's neat that of all the places that they've had it, Clayton is one of them. So I think that's a, it's really a nice tradition. And finally, just as a little piece of trivia, Ben Hockman was a Clayton High School grad and the Clayton resident has been designated as the playwright for next year's production. So he's, of course, the sports columnist for the Post-Dispatch. Oh,

that's fun.

That's very exciting.

Okay, wonderful. Well, just a couple of things from me. One is I'm, some of you know, I'm on the board of the Zoo Museum District. It's a long name, the ZMD. And the ZMD is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. In 1972, the taxes started being collected that are now allocated by the ZMD to the five really important sub-districts for this region, which would be the art museum, the history museum, the botanical gardens, the science center, and have I left something out? The zoo, the zoo. And, you know, we... distribute close to $80 million every year to those institutions based on certain percentages that are in the statute. But it's the 50th anniversary. Every institution is celebrating it. They're having ZMD days. They're giving out special stuff, discounts, everything. Tell your friends. Ask them if they know what ZMD means. Because I think... It's a really unique thing that we have in St Louis city and county that we all contribute to a special property tax that keeps these. These venues free for everyone, and that is something that you just don't see I don't think I think it's unique in the country pretty much so that's that and then I the i'm wearing my anniversary pins. font bond bring their hundredth anniversary, so I went to their celebration and spoke, and I just wanted to say that it's really they have really turned themselves around in terms of their financials and the kinds of programs they're offering now and they even have instituted a football team. which amazes me, but they're doing really, really well. They kept talking about a particular phrase I really wanted to share with you guys because it really hit me. And I said this in my remarks there, but we're doing a lot of work in our own way with equity and diversity. And they have a little phrase they use on a lot of their materials and they talk about it a lot. And it's something that was coined in the late 1600s by some nuns, sisters. Nevertheless, I think it applies to how we wanna think about our community and how we wanna really be members of our community every day, how we want to be in the world. The phrase is interesting. It is that they will be caring for the dear neighbor. I just love that part, the dear neighbor without distinction. So everybody's the same and we treat everyone the same and we care for them the same with respect and caring and so forth and generosity. So I thought that was really, really cool. I wanted to share it with you guys. We will be going to see the, we're going to a meeting, David and I, with the entire Clayton-Coundell Board Association later this week to talk about the budget. And so some of the same things we talked about tonight and that we've been talking about all along and how we're gonna balance the budget going forward. And so getting their input, but also sharing some of our ideas. This will be in advance of our Friday meeting. So we might have some good input at that meeting for you. And the last thing is I too have to just say the Jazz Fest was wonderful for not that much of an investment by the city What we got was incredible. And I just, Matt, you're still with us. Matt, the public works effort on that was huge and it really was effective. I'm telling you the lights over the street were wonderful and that just is a game changer for everything. So you'll be getting requests from me now to do that a lot more. So anyway, it was just, it was fabulous. You all deserve, staff deserve a lot of compliments for how that came off. It was wonderful. That's it for me. Okay, now we are going to go into closed session and if Alderman Gary Feder would read our closed session. I would.

Okay, wonderful. Well, just a couple of things from me. One is I'm, some of you know, I'm on the board of the Zoo Museum District. It's a long name, the ZMD. And the ZMD is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. In 1972, the taxes started being collected that are now allocated by the ZMD to the five really important sub-districts for this region, which would be the art museum, the history museum, the botanical gardens, the science center, and have I left something out? The zoo, the zoo. And, you know, we... distribute close to $80 million every year to those institutions based on certain percentages that are in the statute. But it's the 50th anniversary. Every institution is celebrating it. They're having ZMD days. They're giving out special stuff, discounts, everything. Tell your friends. Ask them if they know what ZMD means. Because I think... It's a really unique thing that we have in St Louis city and county that we all contribute to a special property tax that keeps these. These venues free for everyone, and that is something that you just don't see I don't think I think it's unique in the country pretty much so that's that and then I the i'm wearing my anniversary pins. font bond bring their hundredth anniversary, so I went to their celebration and spoke, and I just wanted to say that it's really they have really turned themselves around in terms of their financials and the kinds of programs they're offering now and they even have instituted a football team. which amazes me, but they're doing really, really well. They kept talking about a particular phrase I really wanted to share with you guys because it really hit me. And I said this in my remarks there, but we're doing a lot of work in our own way with equity and diversity. And they have a little phrase they use on a lot of their materials and they talk about it a lot. And it's something that was coined in the late 1600s by some nuns, sisters. Nevertheless, I think it applies to how we wanna think about our community and how we wanna really be members of our community every day, how we want to be in the world. The phrase is interesting. It is that they will be caring for the dear neighbor. I just love that part, the dear neighbor without distinction. So everybody's the same and we treat everyone the same and we care for them the same with respect and caring and so forth and generosity. So I thought that was really, really cool. I wanted to share it with you guys. We will be going to see the, we're going to a meeting, David and I, with the entire Clayton-Coundell Board Association later this week to talk about the budget. And so some of the same things we talked about tonight and that we've been talking about all along and how we're gonna balance the budget going forward. And so getting their input, but also sharing some of our ideas. This will be in advance of our Friday meeting. So we might have some good input at that meeting for you. And the last thing is I too have to just say the Jazz Fest was wonderful for not that much of an investment by the city What we got was incredible. And I just, Matt, you're still with us. Matt, the public works effort on that was huge and it really was effective. I'm telling you the lights over the street were wonderful and that just is a game changer for everything. So you'll be getting requests from me now to do that a lot more. So anyway, it was just, it was fabulous. You all deserve, staff deserve a lot of compliments for how that came off. It was wonderful. That's it for me. Okay, now we are going to go into closed session and if Alderman Fader would read our closed session. I would.

I move that the Board of Aldermen hold a closed meeting with a closed vote and record as authorized by Section 610.021, Subsections 1, 2, and 3, Revised Statutes of Missouri relating to legal issues, real estate and or personnel negotiation of a contract pursuant to Section 610.01, Subsection 12, and or proprietary information pursuant to section 610.021 subsection 15, and or information related to public safety and security measures pursuant to sections 610.020 subsections 18 and 19.

Second. Thank you very much. Alderman Berkowitz.

Aye.

Alderwoman McAndrew. Aye. Alderman Buse. Aye. Aldermen Battelle. Aye. Aldeman Gary Feder.

Alderwoman McAndrew. Aye. Alderman Buse. Aye. Aldermen Battelle. Aye. Aldeman Fader.

Aye.

Mayor Harris. Aye. Thank

you. Where would we like to adjourn to?

Hey, Ira, you'll be going into a different Zoom. Okay. David would have sent you an invite.

He did, I'm sure. I'm sure I'll find it. Thank you.

We'll

see you in a minute. It went out today.