May 10, 2022 — Meeting Transcript

OK, welcome everybody. Glad to see some people in our listening audience for a change. It's exciting. Sorry about that. That wasn't me, I guess. Anyway, we're just kind of getting used to our new combo format here. And so we've got some people on the screen and some people that are here. And we're really glad to see some of your faces here in person. So thank you for coming. So I think we'll begin and the city

clerk will call the roll. Alderman Lentz.

Here.

Alderman Berkowitz.

Here.

Alderwoman McAndrew. Here. Alderaan Buse. Here. Alderna Patel. Here. Aldermen Gary Feder.

Alderwoman McAndrew. Here. Alderaan Buse. Here. Alderna Patel. Here. Aldermen Fader.

Here.

Mayor Harris. Here. City Manager David Gipson.

Mayor Harris. Here. City Manager Gibson.

Here.

The Attorney O'Keefe.

Here.

Thank you.

Very good. I'd like to now see if we can approve the minutes from April 26th.

I will move to approve the minutes from April 26th.

Second.

All in

favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Any minutes are approved. Next on the agenda would be the time for public requests and petitions. So if there's anyone here tonight or zooming in that has questions or comments about something that's not on our agenda tonight, now's your chance. Nobody, okay. All right, we'll move on from there and we're ready for the city manager's report.

Thank you, Mayor. So the first item on the agenda this evening is a presentation on our emergency medical services. And to give that presentation, you have in front of you Chief Ernie Rhodes, Lieutenant John Herr, and Dr. Tan with Washington University. So I'll turn it over to Chief Rhodes to introduce his group and they'll have a presentation for the board.

Okay, thank you, Mr. David Gipson. Madam Mayor, good evening, board. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about the fire department and to kind of give a quick update on what we're doing in the fire department as far as emergency medical services are concerned. So if I can go back to the 2021 satisfaction survey for quality of EMS, we are rated at a 94%. So our citizens who take in the survey are pretty pleased with the amount of emergency medical services that we provide them. But as a fire chief, I say, I ask myself, how can I make it better, right? I want to make it better. And so most would be satisfied with, hey, 94% is a pretty good bar, right? But we want to raise that bar. And one of the reasons we want to raise preserving life and property through teamwork, exceptional performance, and professionalism. And so tonight, we're going to tell you how we think we're going to move the bar, how we want to move the bar. 94% is a pretty good bar to beat. We can move it to 95, 96, 100%, that'd be great. But we're going to try it, right? We're going to try and so we're going to talk about some of our initiatives. And by the way, This is at no cost to the budget. This is just something we're reengineering. We're taking a hard focus on what we're going to do internally to move towards our mission statement. All of these are absolutely strategically connected to teamwork, exceptional performance, and professionalism. And so what I'm going to do now is turn it over to Dr. Tan and Lieutenant Herr for the presentation, and then I'll come back in to answer any questions we may have. Okay?

Okay, thank you, Mr. Gibson. Madam Mayor, good evening, board. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about the fire department and to kind of give a quick update on what we're doing in the fire department as far as emergency medical services are concerned. So if I can go back to the 2021 satisfaction survey for quality of EMS, we are rated at a 94%. So our citizens who take in the survey are pretty pleased with the amount of emergency medical services that we provide them. But as a fire chief, I say, I ask myself, how can I make it better, right? I want to make it better. And so most would be satisfied with, hey, 94% is a pretty good bar, right? But we want to raise that bar. And one of the reasons we want to raise preserving life and property through teamwork, exceptional performance, and professionalism. And so tonight, we're going to tell you how we think we're going to move the bar, how we want to move the bar. 94% is a pretty good bar to beat. We can move it to 95, 96, 100%, that'd be great. But we're going to try it, right? We're going to try and so we're going to talk about some of our initiatives. And by the way, This is at no cost to the budget. This is just something we're reengineering. We're taking a hard focus on what we're going to do internally to move towards our mission statement. All of these are absolutely strategically connected to teamwork, exceptional performance, and professionalism. And so what I'm going to do now is turn it over to Dr. Tan and Lieutenant Herr for the presentation, and then I'll come back in to answer any questions we may have. Okay?

Good evening. Thank

you for this opportunity. I'll have the next slide. My name is Dr. David Tan and I serve as the medical director for the Clayton Fire Department. And as Chief Rhodes mentioned, we try to tie everything we do to our mission statement devoted to preserving life and property through teamwork, exceptional performance and professionalism. Next slide. One of the ways that we're doing this is establishing a quality and medical oversight team. Internally, we call it the MedOps group, and this consists of our medical officers who are lieutenants, myself, and Chief Rhodes. We've decided that in order to keep pushing this bar, we need to keep moving our objectives forward. The best way to do that is to hold ourselves accountable by meeting on a regular basis. We meet the first Monday of every month where we review clinical operations data and we seek areas to improve and share growth. Next slide. This illustration is to just demonstrate the overall percentage of EMS calls to our call line. If you notice, the darker bars are the total number of runs, whereas the gold bars are the proportionate number of those runs that are EMS-related or where a medical patient care report is generated. What you will notice is that since 2011, that percentage has decreased. overall grown. In fact, in 2017 and 2018, almost two thirds of our total run volume consisted of medical calls. You will notice a little dip in 2020 and 2021. This little thing called COVID happened and it caused quite a ruckus. And it actually did bring some of that volume a little bit down. But as you can see, it is slowly rising once again. Next slide. One of the things that has been exciting for me over the last couple of years, I've been trying to get the fire department personnel really to see themselves as what they are, that being part of a high reliability organization or an HRO. So what exactly is an HRO? An HRO is an organization that can operate in very complicated situations. high hazard domains for extensive operational periods, yet with very few catastrophic failures or serious accidents. And the prototypical HROs really are groups like aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, air traffic controllers, commercial aviation, high hazard complex domains, very few catastrophic failures. And the reason why they can achieve this is because they don't necessarily focus on if an outcome was good or bad. I mean, they do, but what they really focus in on is the process and reliability of that organization. What's that focus? We have a preoccupation with failure, which on the face of it kind of sounds weird, but what that means is We think about what can go wrong. And if it's predictable, it's preventable. So from a medical standpoint, what are the things that we can predict that we might be able to prevent in the first place? Reluctance to simplify simply means we don't look at success or failures superficially. We really want to find out what makes something work and what causes failure. Third, sensitivity operations. This simply means that while everybody has a job to do, we do have to have a global understanding of how the entire organization works together. Fourth, a commitment to resilience. Even if something bad happens, if a mistake does happen, we don't let it destroy us. We learn from it. We bounce back and we get better because of it. And finally, a deference to expertise. This means that we know that not everyone can be an expert at everything. And regardless of seniority, regardless of rank, regardless of position, we look at what is the task in front of us? Who is the best person to make that successful? And we let that person lead. Those are the five overall traits of an HRO. And this is what we're trying to adopt into our everyday practice as well. Next slide. One of the things that we have noticed is as part of being a high reliability organization is relying less on our mutual aid partners. And what I mean by that is sometimes if our ambulance is out already on a call and our engine company or ladder truck responds to a medical emergency, very often we would rely on that mutual aid ambulance coming in to take over the care and to essentially do the work of the assessment and medical evaluation of that patient. We would of course be there to help start and stabilize things, but it had been the normal practice to let that incoming ambulance then take over. One of the things that we've decided to do is these are our patients. These are our citizens in Clayton. These are our guests, our patients, our care without delay. What does that mean? That means our paramedics, advanced life support pumpers and ladder trucks have the capability and responsibility to take care of our citizens and our guests in our city. And so they do the drug administration, start the IVs, do the EKG monitoring, and it really gives us an even greater opportunity to serve. But what it also gives us is data. Before we didn't have, we would lose some of that data because the visiting ambulance or mutual aid ambulance would do a lot of that work. And we didn't know how good our paramedics on the truck or the pumper were. So now they get credit for the work they do, and we are able to make sure that the care that they give is also on par with our goals as being an HRO. I'd like to introduce Lieutenant Herr who's gonna talk about our opportunities here. Next slide please.

So the big areas that we noticed that we wanted to have the improvement on were our clinical areas of improvements, our community outreach, including public education, the medical advisory board like Dr. Tan talked about shortly, and then simulation labs along with community care paramedicine. So next slide, please. So the first one we're going to start with is the clinical areas of improvements. So we've dictated that these six interventions are key to what our job is. This is the bread and butter of the EMS industry. So that includes cardiac arrest, trauma care, sepsis, which is SARS, strokes, advanced airway intervention, and acute coronary syndrome, otherwise known as a heart attack. So for our cardiac arrest survivability, the big thing is why paramedics were brought into the workforce was because of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. So in 2021, Clayton responded to 13 cardiac arrests. Of those 13, 61 of those patients had a return of a pulse in the field and were transported to the hospital. 25% of those walked out of the hospital without any complications at all, which is amazing. And then as a whole, the Clayton Fire Department has a 15% survivability rate. The national average is only 9%. So we're definitely headed in the right direction. And our goal is that we want to beat King County, Washington, which is where Seattle is. And the reason that their survivability percentage is 22% is because one in three people in King County know CPR. So that's what something that we decided as a whole is we want to improve that number and we want to beat that number. So we're definitely headed in the right direction. Next slide. So one thing that we added to our program with our cardiac monitors is called the Zoll software. So when we're running our cardiac arrest events, everything is tracked by data. Data gives us everything we need to know and everything we want to know. So on this slide up here, you can see it looks like a lot of dots and squiggly lines. But the basics of what this information is, is are we doing as good as we think we're doing in this? Where do we need to improve? What do we not need to improve upon? As you can see on here, for the most part, we stay very close to perfect. So what we try to do is the measurable steps up here are going to be your depth. So when you're doing your chest compressions, how deep you're pushing your target heart rates, which we want between 100 and 120. and then our circulation. And the big thing also is we have, it's called a compression fraction. So what the compression fraction is, is basically it is what the time that you're performing CPR on the patient, we try to strive for at least 75%. The reason that there'd be pauses, it would be if we're checking for a pulse, if we're using our cardiac monitors to shock the patient to restart their heart or any other interventions that take some time that we need to stop. So our goal is to be off the chest No longer than 10 seconds at a time and an increase at 75%. So one way that we can definitely work to improve this is this public education and public CPR. Fortunately, Mayor Harris has actually joined us in one of our CPR classes. So the last Saturday of every month, we host CPR training here at the city hall from nine to noon. If you're interested in joining us on any of those days, my contact information's up there. Please just send me an email if it's not required. We just try to get a head count just to make sure we have enough room for it. So when we're doing these, what we're doing is we're teaching hands-only CPR. The studies are showing that a lot of people used to be afraid to do CPR in patients because they're afraid to do mouth-to-mouth. Well, what the current studies are finding that just doing compressions on somebody is enough to circulate enough oxygen to the brain instead of having to give them mouth-to- mouth. So our goal is to get help to those patients as fast as possible. Dr. Dean's going to talk on trauma.

Just let you know those CPR classes are open to anybody, not just Clayton residents. So anybody can join. It was really good.

Thank you, ma'am. Very good point. We welcome as many people as possible to come to these community CPR classes. The more the better for sure. Continuing our theme about time-critical diagnoses is trauma care. Our average scene time is 14 minutes and 31 seconds for major trauma. The reason why that's important is because the state requires that anything more than 20 minutes, when we upload our trauma data, we actually have to explain why, what were some of the contributing factors to why we were there for 20 minutes or more. But we're able to extricate, stabilize, and get people to a trauma center in 1431. We also want to make sure that part of the interventions for our citizens and guests in the city of Clayton is pain management. Traumatic injuries hurt, of course, and so 88.8% of the time with pharmaceutical intervention we've been able to demonstrate a reduction in people's suffering one other way we're able to do that is introduced a non narcotic pain medication called portal. There are a lot of people who otherwise would want pain medication, but because of. either a discomfort with or a past history of problems with opioids, and you're all familiar with that problem. We never had an alternative, a non-narcotic alternative. We now do, and that's just one more way that we can help our patients who may not feel comfortable or may not want an opioid, and they still had suffered a traumatic injury. Next slide. Systemic inflammatory response syndrome, or SIRS, is also a time critical diagnosis because what that means is your bloodstream has bugs in it, bacteria, viruses. You can get septic from various infections. And what's really interesting is that a study several years ago showed that ambulance services who did only three things, three single things, we got them early fluids, of course, early recognition of this condition with high flow oxygen. And the third thing is early notification of the hospital that we're coming in with a septic patient. Those three things alone, I know it doesn't sound very high tech at all, very simple, but those three things help reduce overall morbidity and mortality from this killer. About one in four patients with sepsis, all comers don't actually survive the event. So by doing these three things, helping to kickstart early treatment once they get to the hospital is a huge opportunity to serve and reduce morbidity and mortality. In fact, when we looked at the first quarter of 2022, we have shown an overall reduction by 12.6 days reduction on average in hospital admission time. Using an average of multiple sources for what a day in the hospital costs, we estimate that to be about $32,000 saved per patient just by doing those three things. So again, it's one of those time critical diagnoses that we focus on and make sure that we maintain a high standard on. Next slide. The other time critical diagnosis, of course, is a stroke. Immediate recognition, especially for the lay public is a little more difficult, we try to educate people on early signs and symptoms of a stroke. We also look for mimics like low blood sugar that's a reversible cause certainly not a stroke but. Having just a few minutes to make the split second decision is very important and something that our paramedics are very good at doing. We want to initiate early transport and similar to SIRS, let the hospital know that we're coming in with a possible stroke patient. And by doing that, we hopefully can get them to either definitive intervention or care a little bit faster by getting them to a stroke center. Next slide. Lieutenant Herr will talk about our airway interventions.

So one of the big things that paramedics utilize is our airway interventions, which we call an IGL and an ET tube or endotracheal tube. And this is one of the big keys of being a paramedic. And one thing that we found is this is probably the most difficult skill that we have to perform. Before, we used the conventional standards, which is just a handle with a little blade and a flashlight on it. Fortunately, the city received some COVID money and we were able to purchase video laryngoscopes. But the big difference with these video laryngoscope, it gives direct feed that we can see a lot bit clearer picture. It actually records this information for again, for our QI purposes that we can make sure our team's doing a great job as far as making sure our skills are improved. Since we've implemented this, we actually had a 40% increase in innovation success. The national average is about 40 to 50%. So we're definitely headed in the right direction by utilizing the appropriate tools and giving this information to our paramedics. Another intervention we use is called CPAP. A lot of people use that at night. when they're sleeping for sleep apnea. What this helps to do is give oxygen into their lungs. With that, we've had 100% success rate anytime we've used that, which is amazing. So the medical interventions along with airway interventions are key. The next one is the acute coronary syndrome. So this is your heart attacks. And like Dr. Tan said, this is another one of those time-critical diagnosis information. So with heart attacks, the big thing that we have versus BLS services is we have cardiac monitoring that we can take a picture, we can look at their heart rhythms and see what their heart's doing. So those stickers and those leads that they're carrying lay out on the patient's chest, and we can get a good picture of their heart. So again, our goal is to be on the scene for less than 20 minutes. That's our benchmark for most calls. So our average scene times is 15 minutes and 12 seconds. So we're definitely headed in the right direction with that. And then our average time to get a 12 lead. So when 911 is called, sometimes the information is not relayed to us of what's going on exactly. So that takes a few minutes to talk to the patient to figure out what's going on. And we get our 12 leads within five minutes and 23 seconds. Again, that's something that we want to be done in the first 10 minutes. So we're definitely doing really good with that. And then recognition and treatment. So we've had a 31% increase in treatment and recognition of cardiac events since we've started pulling this data and information. Dr. Tian, back to you.

You know, there's only so many times that you can tabletop or talk about emergency medical procedures. Sometimes you just have to go hands-on and actually do it. And one of the most exciting things we've started doing is introducing high fidelity simulation. What you're seeing on the screen is a scenario where a pregnant patient falls down the stairs. So it's a trauma, number one, number two. She fell because she was rushing out the door to get to the doctor because she was having contractions, gonna have this baby. Well, now she's having this baby at the bottom of the stairs. There's no better way to train for a precipitous deliveries than by actually going through the motions and doing with high fidelity simulation. It's hard to tell with this, but there's a motor inside the belly where the baby actually does come out and you have to deliver it. You can make it breach, you can make it stuck with shoulder dystocia, you can do all kinds of things with it. This was a partnership with BJC's neonatology outreach program and it was a great success. And after doing this several times, I tell you the crew will tell you that they feel much more comfortable with the OB emergency. So we're gonna try to do this at least once a year. But by partnering with regional providers, this kind of really ties into our focus on time critical diagnoses and getting real hands-on experience with some of these less common but critical emergencies. We've partnered with WashU, BJC, West County Fire and EMS and SSL's medical control as well to come up with really great scenarios and really put these medics through their paces for a number of time-critical diagnoses. One of the things that we're really focusing in on in the sim lab as well is the acute coronary syndrome. In fact, that's what we're doing this week at West County's high fidelity simulation lab. We are taking crews and putting them through their paces as far as recognizing patient changes and intervening within 10 seconds, acute coronary syndrome intervention within five minutes, 12 lead acquisition and transmission within 10 minutes and CPR that meets appropriate depth, rhythm and rate 90% of the time or better. And again, just talking through it, talking about it. You can only do that so much, but actually doing that on the floor with the mannequin in real time really puts a fine edge on their skills. Next slide. The Medical Advisory Board is something also new. We had our first one just a few weeks ago where this is a quarterly meeting where we kind of hold ourselves accountable and share a little bit of dirty laundry, so to speak, and show them some of our statistics and ask feedback from our partners about what do you think we're doing well? What can we do better? We've invited medical officers and physicians from Melville Fire, Richmond Heights, University City Fire, St. Charles County Ambulance District, and that list is growing. We totally believe that this process holds us accountable when we know we have to present our quarterly data about time-critical diagnoses and about patient care and processes. And our first meeting went incredibly well, and I think it's going to only help us move that needle forward. Next slide. Now, I know we've talked a lot about 911 responses, but what we've done, which is also very exciting, is we flipped the paradigm a bit through our community care team. What does that mean? Well, it means instead of being, we actually are waiting for 911 to be activated and going out there, our paramedics are out there on our streets in the city of Clayton day in and day out. They get to know people. and they get to know those with special needs. They've identified high risk patients that you know what, if we just did a few interventions with this patient, we could prevent the need to call 911 in the first place. The value proposition of it is this, that now instead of waiting for them to get hurt or fall or suffer an emergency, we can proactively manage some of these high risk factors and prevent the emergency in the first place. We can connect them to things they need. Maybe they need home health, maybe they actually need hospice care, maybe they need a more holistic view of their disease process or just education as to what these pills mean and how to correct it. Something as simple as that. We do it with compassion, we enhance therefore community risk reduction, and it really is a form of mobile integrated health. and the patients, the citizens that we've helped appreciate it immensely. But again, it goes to our mission statement, to preserve life and property through teamwork, exceptional performance, and professionalism. Bye.

Chief Rhodes.

Thanks, Dr. Tan and Lieutenant Hurst. So, I mean, I'm really excited to see what we're doing at the fire department. Just the community care team alone is that we're going when there's not emergencies to prevent emergency. That is really impacting the quality of life for our citizens. But 25% of our citizens who have suffered cardiac arrest, which means they're clinically dead and deceased, Walk away with no neurological deficits. That's a big deal. We are preventing, we are decreasing hospital stays by 12.6 days, saving $32,000 per patient. So we think that what we're doing is we're really trying to raise our bar. We know the vision of the city is to have a livable community, to find strategic relationships, which we are doing by finding our sim labs, our high fidelity sim labs, so we can put our crews in these high pressure cookers. And then Dr. Tan tells them what they need to get better at right then and there. That's huge, right? So we're looking at, we're taking advantage of those, that technology at sim lab We know that if we're a good fire department, we're going to support economic development in a vibrant downtown. And we know that another cornerstone of our city's vision is exceptional services. And we're chasing that. We're chasing that hard. We think we're on the right track. We have a lot of work to do. This is just a sample of our clinical outcomes we're looking for. There's so much more to do. So with that, I can answer any questions. I really truly appreciate your time this evening and I can answer your questions.

What's the role of the AEDs and are we still using PulsePoint?

We do. Yes, we are. And so there's so much to talk about, right? We only got a few minutes, but yet we still use our AEDs. They are critical and a critical part of the survivability of the cardiac arrest chain link of survivability. So we do that. We still use false points. And as Lieutenant Hurst said, you know, we're going to make a push to get more CPR training out there because it's important. And we'll also be teaching the AED too.

And is that part of the Saturday training, the AEDs? It is. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, that was really impressive. I'm curious though, with the community care team, how do you make that contact and then how do you know what follow-up you need to prevent the emergency call?

That's a really good question. You can call the fire department's non-emergency office line. If you call 911, they'll get the information and we can get that too. But you would want to call the non-emergency line. And it's really, it's not for a medical emergency per se, call 911. But if you're having trouble, like how can I do hospice care, right? We can come in and help you and get resources. But what we really find out is when we have a reoccurring call at a patient, we kick it to the community care team and we go, okay, what's going on? And so we reach out to them and we go in and we help them navigate the causes of the frequent calls for 911. So we're really reaching out to them before they're reaching out to us.

Other questions, comments? Yeah, I had one question.

So I had an incident where I... I'm

sorry, Ira, I can barely see you on my little screen, but it's all right. Go ahead.

Should I make myself bigger somehow?

No, no, I'm sorry. I just didn't see that you were trying to say something.

That's all right. I had an incident of a grape going down the wrong windpipe. And luckily somebody was there who knew how to do a Heimlich maneuver. Is that something we also teach

Yes, they teach that in the CPR

class. Very helpful. It was very helpful. I wish everybody knew it because you can't call an ambulance for it. It's too late.

You had

something. Chief, thanks so much and thank you both. It was a great presentation. It's just so nice to hear about all the innovative things you guys are doing. I was just going to ask With respect to the CPR classes, how old? Like I was just kind of thinking, are high school students able to go or?

So the big thing is we've had them anywhere from 10 to 12 years old. We want them a little bit older that they can understand it. But a lot of it is any of the kids that are starting to be in that babysitting age is what we're actually one of our target areas as well.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Thanks so much.

Absolutely. Anybody's

welcome. So yes, we want to fill these classes up big time.

I have a question. I'm thinking about new firefighters and EMS personnel that are coming through the academy or coming up. Are they getting these kinds of trainings that I thought this, what did you call it? The virtual real life, you had a name for it. Simulate. High fidelity. Are they getting any of these kinds of training Sue? Okay.

I mean, we really are pushing hard kind of thinking out of the box. Sim labs have been around for several years, but, you know, we're taking it as serious as our training is for fire and rescue and hazmat as EMS. And so you don't get the sim lab, the high fidelity lab in the academy.

Well, I think this is a great presentation. You guys are really inspiring with all the stuff that you're working on and doing. And I'm wondering if we could do a CPR training during a discussion session here.

We'd love that. We would

love to have any staff and all of us. I mean, I thought it was really, it was very informative. I just feel better. My husband is older than me. I felt like I need to take it. I'm going to take it again. You know, it's just, you learn, you learn all kinds of great stuff. So I think we might, we'll try to schedule that if everybody's okay with it. We'll have to get on the floor. Okay. Thank you. You can wear your golf skirt again. Okay. All right. Thank you so much, madam mayor. Thank you. Thank you guys. Okay. Very good. I think we're in good hands in the city of Clayton. All right. So now we have more from the city manager, the parking regulations.

Yes, Mayor. This is an ordinance that would amend Table 3A of the parking regulations and Title 3 of the Clayton City Code. The attached ordinance amends Title 3 traffic code by revising the parking restrictions to match current schedules for residential leaf collection and street sweeping. Prior leaf collection and street sleeping schedules required parking restrictions on multiple days for the months of October through December. The current leaf collection schedule has one collection per month, which aligns with the street sweeping schedule and the parking restriction for the third week of the month are no longer required. This ordinance revision and associated infield signage will simplify the parking rate restrictions to a single day per month, which will remain constant year round. A list of streets that will have parking restrictions modified with this revision was included in the packet. Staff recommends that the Board of Aldermen approve the ordinance. And we do have Matt Malik present to answer any questions you may have about the code change.

Okay. I don't know if there are any questions about it. I know we have some amended verbiage. Am I right? Or is that already covered in the bid pay? That would be covered. And we don't have to do a motion to amend?

That's correct.

Very good. Okay. Any discussion? Any discussion or questions from our audience?

I was just gonna say, I think it's great. I know we've had conversations in the past from citizens complaining about the convoluted signs. So this is a great step forward for

us. Great simplification, yeah. Any questions out there now?

Okay, very good. Alderman Lentz. All right. Introduce Bill

6898 to approve an amendment to Table 3A, Parking Regulations, to be read for the first time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion? All right. Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6898, first reading and ordinance amending Table 3A of the Parking Regulations and Title 3 of the Clayton City Code. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Okay, Alderman Lentz.

I move that the board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of Bill 6898 on the day of its introduction.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? All right, let the minutes reflect. The board has given unanimous consent.

Then I'll introduce Bill 6898 to approve an amendment to Table 3A, parking regulations to be read for the second time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion? City attorney.

Bill number 6898, second reading and consideration for adoption and ordinance amending table 3A of the parking regulations in title three of the Clayton City Code.

Alderman Lentz.

Aye.

Alderman Berkowitz.

Aye.

Alderwoman McAndrew. Aye. Aldermen Buse. Aye. Aldemann Patel. Aye. Aldeman Gary Feder. Aye. Aldernan Harris.

Alderwoman McAndrew. Aye. Aldermen Buse. Aye. Aldemann Patel. Aye. Aldeman Fader. Aye. Aldernan Harris.

Aye. Hey, since Chief just came back into the room, I forgot to mention one thing. But I'm really impressed that you have memorized our strategy goals from See the Future in 2013. That was an exact quote. As a

department of the city, we've got to support that so we can succeed, so we do see the value.

Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks. Okay, I think we are on to the funding agreement for CRG, Mr. City Manager.

That's correct. CRG, a real estate development firm associated with Clayco, has informed the city of its intention to consolidate and redevelop the properties located at 61 Topton Way, 8300 Maryland Avenue, and 8400 Maryland Avenue. The site is currently owned and is the headquarters for Calaris. The proposed development includes office, hotel, commercial, and residential uses. To offset a portion of the anticipated The request is limited in scope to sales use tax exemption and the creation of certain special taxing districts such as a transportation development district and a community improvement district. Real property tax abatement is not being requested. Staff is requesting CRG enter into a funding agreement to pay certain preliminary startup costs in connection with the city's consideration of establishing the proposed the proposed redevelopment area and economic development incentives. If the initial funds are depleted before execution of a redevelopment agreement, the developer must deposit additional funds with the city. The proposed ordinance would authorize the execution would not approve any incentives, changes to the existing zoning, or establish a development plan for the subject property. Staff recommends that the Board of Aldermen approve the ordinance. And we do have Mr. Gary Carter, our Director of Economic Development, present in the room this evening, and we have some representatives from the CRG

Calaris team as well.

Very good. Let me see if there's any discussion. First, I'm going to just turn to anybody in the audience or listening if you have any comments or questions right now. I don't see any. So, oh, I'm sorry. Yes.

Elizabeth and I live on Brighton Way. I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, and I admit that right off the top. So this whole prospect of all of these phrases and organizations were a little above my pay grade, but I'm concerned about any kind of financial obligation that the city of Clayton would have in going into this agreement, entering into this agreement with CRG and it is CRG. and Claris on this because I live near this planned change as I live near Forsyth Point, as I live near the hotel, as I live the upcoming Clayton or Forsyth Curve condominiums. And this is a rather impressive development It's an incredibly impressive development, which will put that end of the city of Clayton in turmoil traffic wise, noise wise, and just basic everyday life wise for three or four or five years, which we have been experiencing. I have been experiencing with two of the three others that I've just mentioned. So I'm concerned that there is going to be some kind of financial loss to Clayton or some kind of obligation that will have to be met by the people, the residents of Clayton because Claris and CRG will not be getting, will not be paying their fair share. So I don't understand this well enough to know if this is an issue I should even be bringing up. But when I read through this three times today, I did not understand it any three times, any of those times. And I would really like if this information could be put in bullet points that would be very, very clear to those people of my age and my lesser mental ability to understand exactly what CRG is asking of the city of Clayton and why you all seem to be ready to leap on it.

Well, if

I

could, I'll make a couple comments and then I welcome anybody else's comments. I just, first of all, I'm going to try to put your mind at ease a little bit. I understand your concerns and I hear a lot of your concerns about what the development will actually be, what it will look like and the impact on the city. And that is not something that we're, even talking about now because they have not yet brought their plans forward to the plan commission. But what we are talking about here is simply hiring a firm to help us evaluate any cost to the project, to the city, any potential incentives that they might ask for some outside firm that will help us evaluate a financial firm, evaluate all of those all of those factors. And all we are doing is approving our contract with that firm tonight. So we definitely want- And having

CRG pay for

it. And CRG will be paying for that. So we really want the expert help and advice because like you, we're not financial experts either. So we want that expert opinion and that's what we're approving tonight.

Will the company be recommended by CRG or is this a company that we have found on our

own? If I may, this agreement is nothing. The original question was whether this is going to cost the city money. The point of all of this is that CRG, we're entering into an agreement with CRG to pay any and all costs we choose to incur to evaluate anything they may ask for. So it is no commitment to do anything. And it ensures the city against costs to deal with. We will then select the consultants that will advise the city.

Thank you. Yeah, that was very, thank you guys for bringing it down to my level. I really appreciate it because there's a lot of pages here. Yeah, and it's a lot of leaves. Confused my issues.

And when we get to the development, there'll be lots of opportunities to come and see exactly what the plan is. Give us your input. and help us evaluate what's best for the city. Thank you. Yeah, you are welcome. Oh, could you state your full name and address so that we can get it in our minutes?

I don't ever do that. You know her already. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. All right, I didn't know. All right. Okay, so do we have any comments from the board or questions? Okay, very good. Alderman Lentz.

I'll introduce Bill 6899 to approve preliminary funding agreement for CRG Acquisitions LLC to be read for the first time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion? Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6899, first reading an ordinance authorizing the city manager to execute a funding agreement with CRG Acquisition LLC. in connection with the proposed redevelopment project at 61 Topton Way, 8300 Maryland Avenue and 8400 Maryland Avenue.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? All right, Alderman Lentz.

I move the Board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of Bill 6899 on the day of its introduction.

Second.

All those in favour?

Aye.

Any opposed? Okay, let the rents reflect. The board has given unanimous consent.

Then I'll introduce Bill 6899 to approve preliminary funding agreement with CRG Acquisitions LLC to be read for the second time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion? Okay.

Mr. City Attorney. Bill number 6899, second reading in consideration for adoption and ordinance authorizing the city manager to execute a funding agreement with CRG Acquisition LLC in connection with the proposed redevelopment project at 61 Topton Way, 8300 Maryland Avenue and 8400 Maryland Avenue.

Alderman Lentz.

Aye.

Alderman Berkowitz.

Aye.

Aye. Alderwoman Bruce. Aye. Aldermen Patel. Aye. Aldeman Bader.

Aye.

All right, the second quarter budget amendment. Mr. City Manager.

Yes, Mayor. I'll turn it over to Ms. Karen Dilber, our Finance Director, the next two items. So that is the budget

amendment and also the second quarter financial report. Good evening.

Good evening. Can everyone hear me? Yes. OK, so I am going to just fill you in on the highlights from the second quarter budget amendment. It is a rather small amendment. Most of the items indicated are due to delayed projects from last fiscal year or projects that are being delayed in this fiscal year due to various reasons. The revenues, the park playground grant revenue has increased to reflect activity that's taking place in this fiscal year that was carried over from last fiscal year. And other grants and donations have been updated to reflect grants from CCF for the specific projects that are listed within the budget amendment itself. The expenses have been updated to reflect projects that were delayed from last year, and those are specifically the playground and rink teardown in Shaw Park, the Oak Knoll Park Pond. The Maryland property demolition was delayed due to permitting in last fiscal year. The projects that are being delayed that were originally budgeted in this fiscal year are the Shaw Park Aquatic Center pool painting, excuse me, oak knoll fence replacement and the master plan. And then also within this budget amendment, we have an increase in the city's contributions to the CRSWC for the city's portion of the repair for the pool roof. And that's this budget amendment in a nutshell. Do

you have any questions? Any questions, comments?

Okay. No, I think we're good on that. We can move on to the financial report. Do

we need to approve the amendment? That's correct. We'll need approval of the ordinance. Oh,

sorry.

I'll introduce Bill 6900. Wow, 6900. To approve the fiscal year 22 second quarter budget amendment to be read for the first time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion? Okay, Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6900, first reading and ordinance amending the fiscal year 2022 budget and appropriating funds pursuant thereto.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Be opposed. Okay.

I'll move the board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of Bill 6900 on the day of its introduction.

Second.

All those in favour?

Aye.

Opposed? Let the minutes reflect the Board has given unanimous consent.

I'll introduce Bill 6900 to approve fiscal year 22 second quarter budget amendment to be read for the second time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion? All right, Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 6900, second reading and consideration for adoption an ordinance amending the fiscal year 2022 budget and appropriating funds pursuant thereto.

Alderman Lins. Aye. Alderman Berkowitz.

Aye.

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

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

Okay, now the financial report.

In general, the property tax overall has increased by 4.9%, which would be consistent with an increase in property values in a reassessment year, which would have been 2021. Sales taxes are up significantly over last year and are up compared to this time pre-pandemic. The average increase, there's a chart in the packet of information you were given, the average increase among the sales taxes is 7.98% when compared to fiscal year 19-20, which was our last pre-pandemics fiscal year. And this would be consistent with the effects of inflation on our economy. I think the last I heard inflation is 8, 8.5%, something like that. Sales tax by industry is up in all areas except restaurants, which is down by 0.2%. And again, this is compared to our last full pre-pandemic fiscal year. And in the other category, which is down bei 24.7%. And as a reminder, other consists of banks, business services, education, finance, fitness, manufacturing, media, social services, technical services and vehicle rentals. Use taxes are up significantly by twenty nine point five percent. People are returning to the office, so we've seen an increase in utility taxes and parking revenues. And then The parks and recreation revenues are reflecting lower, but there's a couple reasons for this. The first is that the ECC lease has been reclassified from last fiscal year to property leases, which we classify as miscellaneous revenue as opposed to a parks and recreation revenue. So that's making it look less, even though it's actually really not. And then in the Youth Sports League revenues, they had not posted them by the end of March. They anticipate posting them in April. So by our next quarter, you should see those revenues increase. Excuse me. Overall expenditures across all funds are up by 8.4%, which is also consistent with inflation. And then specifically within the general fund, our expenses are up by 4.12% overall, but broken down by category and personnel, we're up by 2.6% from last fiscal year. Contractual services are up by 7.2%, again, from last fiscal year, and commodities are up by 17.7% from last fiscal years. And commodities include supplies, which is office supplies, uniforms, construction materials, snow and ice control materials, and medical supplies. Does anyone have any questions about any of that information?

Go

ahead. Your comment about I think you said sales tax in restaurants has not gotten back to the pre-pandemic levels. Is that correct?

Correct. It's just shy.

I'm looking at the graph. It's almost even.

It's so close. It's 0.2%. Sure. Okay.

And is that, does that count was 20 or the 19-20 fiscal year? Was there any part of that where we were under lockdown?

That's my question too. Is fiscal 19-20 actually a whole pre-pandemic year? I think it's- Because

it seems like we started in like March, March, April. And so the summer was probably down from the previous year.

Through two quarters, we hadn't experienced the lockdown yet. So if you start to look at a 19-20 comparison on the third quarter, you'll see a significant the third quarter of 1920.

That's good. I guess my point that I was going to get to is if we are pretty much even with where we were pre-lockdown when everybody was still in their offices, that's pretty good that we're back to essentially the level even with the number of people that are not coming back into the office. I mean, there's something going on. I mean, maybe it's inflation, but still, I'm encouraged by that. Thanks.

I think a lot of it is inflation, you know, because restaurants and hotels, you can tell that especially hotels is still lagging. They're not full. Business travel is not back. One thing that's really helping us here is our use tax. Our use tax is, I don't know, I think it's kind of driving that percent, which is internet sales. So we're lucky we have that. As you know, some cities tried to pass it this year and didn't get it done. We did it a while back and that was really fortuitous. Any other questions or comments? Yeah, Mr. Gary Feder. I

I think a lot of it is inflation, you know, because restaurants and hotels, you can tell that especially hotels is still lagging. They're not full. Business travel is not back. One thing that's really helping us here is our use tax. Our use tax is, I don't know, I think it's kind of driving that percent, which is internet sales. So we're lucky we have that. As you know, some cities tried to pass it this year and didn't get it done. We did it a while back and that was really fortuitous. Any other questions or comments? Yeah, Mr. Fader. I

just want to ask on parks and rec, the discussion starts off, we're down by 48.7%. And I think by the end, it seems to say, but don't worry about it because that's all explainable. Is that really what it's saying is that that is a meaningless 48.7% because everything has an explanation?

Yes. Are we

really somewhat down?

No, we're really not down. If you look at the data later on in the packet, It appears as though we're down. And I'm trying to explain that even though it appears that we're down, there's an explanation for it. We're not actually really down in this quarter. For this period ending, it looks like we're down. One bit of revenue has been moved to another category, which looks higher. compared to last fiscal year. And the other one is just a timing issue. So yes, we're down, but by the time you see the next quarter, you'll see specifically the youth sports league. They've taken in that money. They just didn't take it in by the end of that quarter.

Thank

you. I was just going to Karen, have we with our commodities, like the gasoline that we have to, you know, So have we accounted for like the huge increase in gasoline? I mean, has that been taken into account yet or has that not quite hit us yet?

We have not yet, but City Manager David Gipson may be able

We have not yet, but City Manager Gibson may be able

to. We know that's going to trend upwards. And so we buy our fuel in bulk. We have basically a filling station at the municipal garage. So we buy in such a quantity that any big increases in gas prices that we've seen lately, they really lag for us. So once those tanks are empty and we replenish it, then we'll pay a higher cost. Same with rock salt. So we were buying rock salt. before the commodity boom. So that hasn't hit us so hard just yet. So it'll come around. It's going to happen in this third and fourth quarter as we start to buy more of that. What's driving the use tax up is really construction materials. That's where a lot of the use tax comes from. And just like we saw in the Maryland Park bid opening, we came in 30% to 40% higher than our estimate. So we're seeing the increased construction costs pushing our use tax up, which is great. The other factor that I would throw out there is kind of interesting is the personnel number is up overall. However, we're down, it could be down, I don't even know that the current rate, it's probably between 12 and 15% of our workforce. We're seeing turnover at a level we've never seen. And it's all over the city and every department. And this is common for a lot of employers right now. So while personnel is up slightly, that's in a situation where our actual headcount, our employee headcount is dramatically lower than it was at this time during 1920. So if we were to fill those spots, on the personnel side because we're still a year off from doing a comp study. Everybody's been raising their salaries to try to get employees because everybody's hiring right now. So what we're seeing is rather than hiring new employees closer to that starting point on a grade, we're having to go closer to midpoint. So we're paying more for the new individuals that are coming in through the door. So I think you're going to see in the third and fourth quarter, those personnel numbers start to shoot up, especially if we can stabilize with employee retention. So they're just factors at play all over the place right now. And through two quarters, as Alderman Lentz said, the revenue numbers are encouraging. But we do have a little bit of lag on the expense side with some of these personnel and commodities that are out there. And it'll be really interesting to see through three quarters when we really get into our operational budgeting for the next fiscal year where we stand at that point.

Good questions. All right. Do you need anything from us on this? It was just to hear it, right?

No, ma'am. No action needed there.

All right. In that case, that's our main business. We can go around starting with our Mayor Pro Tem and see if we've got anything to report.

Sure. We had pension committees just yesterday. And the bad news is that the markets, as everybody probably knows, have gone down quite dramatically this year. So we've essentially given back all the gains that we the extraordinary gains we got last year. So we're down. That said, there's an unusual situation going on in at least in the uniform pension committee because we had the actuaries in to give their report also yesterday. So while the results were down for this year so far, The fund is actually, through the wonders of actuarial accounting, at 107% funded. So it's sort of an unusual situation. But anyway, they're still both very, very strong. And we were talking a little bit about asset allocations because of the the projected returns going forward. We did not have an official sustainability meeting this month. We had an unofficial one because we couldn't get a quorum. We continue to talk about what we need to do to get that committee moving better. I actually had lunch with the chairman the other day We came up with some ideas, so we're working on it.

Good, thank you. Are you, you want us to pass on you? Oh, Ira's next. Oh, Ira. Hey, Ira, do you have anything to tell us?

Just we had an ARB meeting last week. We had the new development that is for the Forsyth curve. It's a condominium development. I'm thinking it's 80 units. I don't know. Maybe I'd be wrong, but I think it's an 80 unit building. 42, I believe. 42. There you go. I don't know why I thought 80 anyway. But, and, you know, it's, they had done a presentation for us before, and this one was markedly better. The building looks better. They had, they've done some things, both for sustainability and for other things. So it's a better project than it was. We went through the point system. For some reason, I keep talking about point system every time I talk about the ARP. But we're back to the point system. And one of the glitches that we came up with, or at least I did, was dealing with giving points for artwork when they had nothing to present to us. We didn't know what they were going to do, and they needed the three points in order to make it over the threshold. And so it was a difficult discussion because I think we all would like to see the project move along. But I think what the end result is, is that hopefully they will have artwork before it gets to the Board of Aldermen so that the Board of Alderman will then be able to appraise whether or not three points is adequate or appropriate. So we ended up pushing it along and it was approved at the ARB level. I am hopeful that there will still be discussions with the developer about maybe still improving the design a little bit. I think it needs some work. I think the development needs a little more work and I hope there's still room for that to happen. And I think, I think the whole, everyone on the ARB also believes that that would be important. So that, that was a major issue. So that was it.

Turn my mic on, thank you. All right, now I believe it's your turn.

I had a Parks and Rec meeting. We talked about increasing fees for rentals, primarily at the Shaw Park Aquatic Center, which we'll likely do. We talked about the pond at Oak Knoll, and they were hoping to finish the pond and the pavilion, but of course the pavilion piece is delayed So that will be delayed for a couple months, unfortunately. So they're hoping July. I think they were originally hoping maybe June and it'll at least be July because that pavilion piece is just delayed like everything else. So that's unfortunate. David alluded to this, but the bids that came in to redo Maryland Park were $180,000 over budget. So Tony is in discussions with the lowest bidder to kind of talk about what we can do. We had some discussions about asking for more grant money, but of course then that would delay the project significantly. So, you know, certainly issues were obviously talking to CCF and a little disappointing, but we'll see. The last thing we talked about was the dog parks moving along. So hopefully it will open in June, which is great. So I also had a, CRSWC finance meeting, and we had a pretty lengthy discussion about just increasing fees at the center of Clayton. So that will go to the main commission in May. We also had a discussion about increasing getting up to minute, you know, increasing salaries for our employees at the center. So both really important discussions. And again, it'll go to the main commission in May and then our boards will hear about it in the fall.

Any transfer of memberships? Not really a transfer, but pick up since Wellbridge is kind of- Yeah, actually

that was something that Tony talked about. We are seeing a definite increase. You know, people are kind of walking in saying, wow, this looks great. Yeah, because yeah, so absolutely. Really- There's kind of that steady increase in, I don't know if I wrote it down, but there's definitely, we're seeing a steady increase in monthly memberships. It'll pick up again too. It always picks up at the summer because people come in because they want to get their pool passes at the last minute. So, but yeah, things are looking better. Super, super good

news.

Older woman abuse. Okay, Aya, the only thing to add to the parks and rec conversation was Tony was bouncing off the group of possibly putting a cover over the north pad at Oak Knoll because it's highly used. I don't know how we've used

it.

And so just putting a cover that would not get that expensive, but she was just kind of testing the interest and we'll talk with CCF and see where that goes. But I thought that was an interesting potential. And with Parks and Rec and some, guys, pickleball always comes up, just so everyone's aware of that. We're going to be faced with having pickleball courts permanently somewhere. The only other thing I can think of is CCF had the All That Glitters celebration at the park. It was chilly, but a very warm gathering and they had some great jazz musicians, I think high school kids, not from here, but young, very talented musicians played and you know, talked about Patty and all that. It was a really nice event. It really was. Great.

Yeah, Becky. I don't have anything to report on that hasn't. Thank you. All right. Alderman Gary Feder, anything from you?

Yeah, Becky. I don't have anything to report on that hasn't. Thank you. All right. Alderman Fader, anything from you?

I mean, the only thing I think I would mention is I did attend the plan commission meeting and it was lengthy. I think the process on that project, the Forsyth Curve, is working well, given the various meetings that have been held. I think that the project has moved forward and I think the citizen comments have are greatly diminished from where they were previously, but there still are some issues. And I think all are, when McAndrew and I are meeting with staff on some open issues still so that I think we can continue to address concerns, particularly people who live in the Brighton, Topton, that area that surrounds the Forsyth curve project. So hopefully we can continue to dress those before it makes it to the board of Alderman.

Very good. Yes. I hope you'll take care of all of that. That would be good. All right. And Ana to the rescue. We'll do the two. All right, well I don't have a whole lot either. I would just add something that I went to last week was the ribbon cutting for the Clarendale, which may seem like a late time ribbon cutting but there are quite a few, you know, a lot of people living there now and it was a, it was a huge event, this ribbon cutting, and they had the very first resident spoke and that was really, that was fun. So anyway, it's I think that's a development that's worked out really well for the city and I was glad to be there. And other than that, any other David, do you have anything else for us? I

do not.

Okay. Well, the only thing left to say is let's go blues. Two to two.

Have a great night, everybody.

How about let's, I guess we'll have a motion to adjourn. June is insisting.

Motion to

adjourn.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Okay, great. Thank you. All right, thank you all.