October 24, 2023 — Meeting Transcript

Well, welcome everyone to our, I can't believe it's October 24th meeting. And we'll start our discussion session off with our esteemed head of sustainability, Deb Grossman. Thank you for coming and sharing with us.

Thank you, Michelle, Mayor. I'm going to have actually two presentations tonight. The mayor asked me to update everybody on what was going on with SoulSmart. And so I'm going to take about five or seven minutes to address that. And then the rest of the time, we'll talk about building performance standards and where we stand with that. So the first thing I want to do is just recognize how much work went into SolSmart and specifically by the members of the staff. A real big shout out to Anna Krane, who's here somewhere. Anna who made a lot of this happened happen as well as Erica Ajay who was our summer intern from WashU and part of that work that Erica did to help us get to the bronze level is now being picked up by Shelby Ngozian who's here in the second row she is our fall intern from Washington University so again just a shout out to all the people who worked on this it was not um It seems pretty straightforward, but it still took a lot of effort. So do you have a way to click the slides or? Yeah. All right. So the first piece that I wanted to remind this group of was back in the spring. I came in after the committee put together a strategic plan and we made a priority looking at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And for the purposes of my discussions tonight, that's the only piece of the plan I'm really gonna touch on. We had sections for existing buildings, for new buildings, and then for all buildings. And one piece of the all buildings was making sure that we encourage the use of solar by residents as well as other entities, but making it easier for people to put in place solar power. So to that end, we decided to pursue the SolSmart application. So you can click the next one for me. We're going to fly through these. Clearly the benefits are things that you are already aware of just clean renewable energy is a great thing cost savings for the people who implement it is a wonderful thing. One of the big challenges people who are trying to put solar into play meet is the soft costs and the hassle of trying to put solar in. And so one aspect that we can improve is updating our policies for permitting, planning, and zoning, financing, and more. So next slide. but that's what SolSmart is. SolSmart is a program that's funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. They basically provide no cost to our community technical assistance. So this is a series of consultants who are really well-versed in solar energy, and they look at each community on its own. So they come to Clayton, they look at everything we have in place, and they tailor their program to us and what do we need to change in order to make ourselves a more solar-friendly city. There are three, four, I guess now levels, there were three, but now there's four. They've added platinum, bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. And so different ways that you can get to each of those designations. Let me flip the next chart. Why SolSmart for us? Again, it's going after best practices. So we all know solar is a great idea, but what are the best practices and how do we stack up to those best practices? And then really working to improve and promote solar projects in Clayton and give us that reputation of being a little bit more on the cutting edge, a little bit more solar friendly when it comes to how we manage these things. Next slide. This is a picture that's gonna, yeah, there's the focus of cities that are already soul smart cities. And what you might see is this big absence in Missouri on the east side and Illinois on the south and west side. But now there's another dot and I don't have the most up-to-date map. There's a big old dot right where St. Louis lives because that's us. We've now filled that gap and we have our bronze level. Next slide, please. There's over 400 communities nationwide that have those designation and often they come in clusters. So you might have somebody like Kansas City, who was the first one in the state, get the soul smart and then all the surrounding suburbs would do the same thing. I would love to see us be that first one, what we already are, but then just encourage other people to adopt the same thing and potentially get greater impact. impact with the county and have them pick up some of the slack as well. We're going to skip this slide. We're going skip the next two slides. Yep. Just because... Yep, that's perfect. Nope, go back one. There we go. So the categories we had to work in are really five different categories. Two of them are foundational. Three of them are special focus. But we were awarded our bronze designation on... August 22nd, this summer. So we satisfied all the achievements in five different categories. It was everything from putting up a checklist on our website of what needs to be done. We provided an online process for solar permitting submissions. We got points for post solar PV inspection requirements online. We did a lot of training with the staff. We had zoning reviews that we updated and Anna looked at all of this, reviewed it and got us up to date. So I think Anna needs a round of applause. Anna and Matt, yes, yes. So lots of detail. If anybody's really dying to know all the detail of what we did and how we did it, let us know. Next slide. Okay, so we kind of did a soft media on this one because my hope is that we're going to get silver by the end of the year. That's that next level up designation. It's a little bit bigger deal. But we still thought, you know what? We had some good news. Let's put out some good news. So there was a press release that went out September 15th. There'll be a quarter of a page ad in the Clayton City Views in the winter edition. It's up on the SoulSmart website and their LinkedIn page, and it's going out in their upcoming monthly newsletter. So those are all sort of the soft things we're gonna do. And then when we get to silver, we'll make a bigger deal out of silver. Frankly, I like gold, but we're gonna have a hard time getting gold because gold requires changes at the county level for the electrical permitting and that's out of our control. So we've already sent letters to the county. I reached into One St. Louis, the East West Gateway, had conversations with them. They've reached back to the county. I've had conversations with the county and has sent, um, an email over to her cohort. Shelby's worked on this. We're trying to get to the county, persuading them. If you would like,

Thank you, Michelle, Mayor. I'm going to have actually two presentations tonight. The mayor asked me to update everybody on what was going on with SoulSmart. And so I'm going to take about five or seven minutes to address that. And then the rest of the time, we'll talk about building performance standards and where we stand with that. So the first thing I want to do is just recognize how much work went into SolSmart and specifically by the members of the staff. A real big shout out to Anna Crane, who's here somewhere. Anna who made a lot of this happened happen as well as Erica Ajay who was our summer intern from WashU and part of that work that Erica did to help us get to the bronze level is now being picked up by Shelby Ngozian who's here in the second row she is our fall intern from Washington University so again just a shout out to all the people who worked on this it was not um It seems pretty straightforward, but it still took a lot of effort. So do you have a way to click the slides or? Yeah. All right. So the first piece that I wanted to remind this group of was back in the spring. I came in after the committee put together a strategic plan and we made a priority looking at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And for the purposes of my discussions tonight, that's the only piece of the plan I'm really gonna touch on. We had sections for existing buildings, for new buildings, and then for all buildings. And one piece of the all buildings was making sure that we encourage the use of solar by residents as well as other entities, but making it easier for people to put in place solar power. So to that end, we decided to pursue the SolSmart application. So you can click the next one for me. We're going to fly through these. Clearly the benefits are things that you are already aware of just clean renewable energy is a great thing cost savings for the people who implement it is a wonderful thing. One of the big challenges people who are trying to put solar into play meet is the soft costs and the hassle of trying to put solar in. And so one aspect that we can improve is updating our policies for permitting, planning, and zoning, financing, and more. So next slide. but that's what SolSmart is. SolSmart is a program that's funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. They basically provide no cost to our community technical assistance. So this is a series of consultants who are really well-versed in solar energy, and they look at each community on its own. So they come to Clayton, they look at everything we have in place, and they tailor their program to us and what do we need to change in order to make ourselves a more solar-friendly city. There are three, four, I guess now levels, there were three, but now there's four. They've added platinum, bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. And so different ways that you can get to each of those designations. Let me flip the next chart. Why SolSmart for us? Again, it's going after best practices. So we all know solar is a great idea, but what are the best practices and how do we stack up to those best practices? And then really working to improve and promote solar projects in Clayton and give us that reputation of being a little bit more on the cutting edge, a little bit more solar friendly when it comes to how we manage these things. Next slide. This is a picture that's gonna, yeah, there's the focus of cities that are already soul smart cities. And what you might see is this big absence in Missouri on the east side and Illinois on the south and west side. But now there's another dot and I don't have the most up-to-date map. There's a big old dot right where St. Louis lives because that's us. We've now filled that gap and we have our bronze level. Next slide, please. There's over 400 communities nationwide that have those designation and often they come in clusters. So you might have somebody like Kansas City, who was the first one in the state, get the soul smart and then all the surrounding suburbs would do the same thing. I would love to see us be that first one, what we already are, but then just encourage other people to adopt the same thing and potentially get greater impact. impact with the county and have them pick up some of the slack as well. We're going to skip this slide. We're going skip the next two slides. Yep. Just because... Yep, that's perfect. Nope, go back one. There we go. So the categories we had to work in are really five different categories. Two of them are foundational. Three of them are special focus. But we were awarded our bronze designation on... August 22nd, this summer. So we satisfied all the achievements in five different categories. It was everything from putting up a checklist on our website of what needs to be done. We provided an online process for solar permitting submissions. We got points for post solar PV inspection requirements online. We did a lot of training with the staff. We had zoning reviews that we updated and Anna looked at all of this, reviewed it and got us up to date. So I think Anna needs a round of applause. Anna and Matt, yes, yes. So lots of detail. If anybody's really dying to know all the detail of what we did and how we did it, let us know. Next slide. Okay, so we kind of did a soft media on this one because my hope is that we're going to get silver by the end of the year. That's that next level up designation. It's a little bit bigger deal. But we still thought, you know what? We had some good news. Let's put out some good news. So there was a press release that went out September 15th. There'll be a quarter of a page ad in the Clayton City Views in the winter edition. It's up on the SoulSmart website and their LinkedIn page, and it's going out in their upcoming monthly newsletter. So those are all sort of the soft things we're gonna do. And then when we get to silver, we'll make a bigger deal out of silver. Frankly, I like gold, but we're gonna have a hard time getting gold because gold requires changes at the county level for the electrical permitting and that's out of our control. So we've already sent letters to the county. I reached into One St. Louis, the East West Gateway, had conversations with them. They've reached back to the county. I've had conversations with the county and has sent, um, an email over to her cohort. Shelby's worked on this. We're trying to get to the county, persuading them. If you would like,

I can send a letter to Sam Page and our county council rep. So if you want to shoot me an email with whatever words you've been using or I want to be consistent. We can draft that

for you. No problem. All right. So next slide, please. But because I'm not sure how we'll get to gold or how quickly we will get to gold, we'll make a bigger deal out of silver. And then when we get to gold, well, take another run around the bases. Silver is in progress. One of the big things is having a solar landing page on our website. Shelby has been working on that. We're pretty close. We'll definitely have that ready before the end of November. There's certain staff training, additional staff training that has to happen and I'm very hopeful that that will be in November. And there's also some inspection training modules. Part of what Anna did was invite the county to participate in the training. So they don't have to be part of Soul Smart yet, but they could come over and get trained with our people or we could give them access to that. All that's been approved by the Soul Smart people. So we have all of that going on. So that's it for Soul Smart. Questions, concerns?

Great job. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And

Erica, who's not here. All right. So this next one is building energy usage. And so while we're pulling that up, just remember a few seconds ago when I talked about our strategic plan and where we were going to put our focus and our emphasis was going to be on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the number one piece that we can, the biggest chunk that we can change has to do with building energy use. And the reason why, if you flip to the next slide, 87% of our energy usage is from buildings. And most of that is commercial. About 20% of that is residential. And 30% of that building energy is wasted because of inefficiency. So if there's some things we can do to encourage people to do the right thing with some of our buildings, commercial buildings, we want to get behind that. So let's move on from that to the next page. We're going to talk about two different things that I want you to keep in mind. Benchmarking is one thing, and building performance standards is the other. If you will, benchmarking is where you start. Building performance standards is a whole other layer of complexity. What I'm really focused on tonight is benchmarking. it's kind of the gateway drug for saving energy, the first place to start. In this case, it's a good drug, I want a new drug. All right, so benchmarking today, saving tomorrow, why do we wanna benchmark? you're going to identify underperforming buildings. You're going to identify what are the best practices, what should we be doing, what could be implemented and what are the investment priorities? So like everybody else who's ever had a capital budget and you got to figure out where you're going to spend the money that you have, the resources that you have, you're going to have to rack and stack your projects. This is a way to help us say this is what should come first, second or third. I'm going to flip it to the next one. The communities that have implemented building energy, you can't really read that line because of the top banner, but what it says is 2023 building energy policies across the United States. And again, you can see Kansas City has been very proactive, but so has the city of St. Louis. The city of St. Lewis in 2017 adopted the benchmarking. You all heard that in presentation in December. When we heard from Emily Andrews and the Green Building Council, as well as the city of St. Louis, I think everybody was here. Were you here then? Yes. Okay, good. And then in 2020, the city adopted the building performance standards. So what's, again, the difference between the two? Next slide. The benchmarking is just measuring and comparing your energy level to similar buildings or to your own building where was it the year before. So a reference point, the energy performance standards require you to not only benchmark it but then meet specific improvement targets. That is the harder level. Next one. I think the only reason this slide is up here is to just point out that St. Louis did it in 2017 and sort of how did they manage around it. They looked initially at buildings over 50,000 square feet, reporting both energy and water consumption in Energy Star Portfolio Manager, which is A tool out of the Department of Energy. They had about 900 buildings that they were trying to cover with that. Next slide. Part of what they reason they were able to do it is they had a huge grant from Bloomberg, and that paid for it and continued to pay for it for a couple of years. They were one of the top cities that Bloomberg selected, and therefore one of the earliest people to adopt this. As we did some of our research on this over the summer, we took a look at all the different smaller cities that had done benchmarking because we're not the size of the city of St. Louis. And you can see some of those listed there. and a little bit about what their population size was, how many properties they actually tackled and what square footage was the minimums. Which when you go to design some sort of resolution or ordinance or whatever the next steps we may choose to do, that's gonna be important. So just flagging that for you. And again, St. Louis City, it took them four people once they actually got to the best to manage that. So next slide. things that we considered. Yeah, I think we're gonna skip this one, I'm sorry. Friend looking at my time. So for Clayton, what kinds of things did we consider? What kinds of things did the sustainability advisory committee look at and say, what do we wanna bring to you? Was, do we wanna do benchmarking or do we wanna do building energy performance standards? Who should it apply to? It should apply to everybody. Should it apply to just commercial, multi-resident, multifamily residential? When should we kick it into place? What's the coverage? I think at some point there was a sense of maybe we should do it only downtown, or there's the option of citywide. My personal favorite. Next slide. Building types and sizes. One of the projects Erica worked on for me this summer was looking at how many buildings we have in Clayton and how big are they and what square footage, which we didn't have that as an easily accessible spreadsheet. I don't know why that doesn't exist, but apparently it doesn't. So she did a lot of work with the county government trying to look at different addresses and what size and coming up with these numbers. I say that as a way of saying, this is our best guess I'm not gonna tell you this is exactly 100% right, but our best guess is for a hundred thousand square feet or above, we've got one city property, eight county owned properties, 63 taxable and three nonprofit. We sliced and diced this at multiple different levels. First looking at 20,000, what's 50,000 and trying to get to a small enough number that we can make a difference as a starting place and yet a big enough property that it will matter. So that's that chart. Next slide. So this is the busiest slide and I'm sorry about that, but if you'll just bear with me, it really kind of has three big parts. The first paragraph just says the sustainability advisory committee wants to raise awareness on energy usage and it can do it through this kind of program. So it's an awareness of our goal to reduce emissions. And here's what we think will help. We think it's the benchmarking. So again, I think it's always wise to start with something small and then build on it. I'd love to just swing for the rafters and say BEPS, but I don't see us having the staff, et cetera, for that.

Yes. Well, you know, when I proposed this way back when, after I heard about the city of St. Louis, I thought that you had to do the benchmarking first and establish that. And then you would come back after you see what energy is being used. And after everybody, the targeted buildings have developed their benchmarking history. Then you come back and go ahead and do the standards of performance. Is that not what? Yes, but you

could set it up as we are going straight for the building performance. And that would be the steps you would do. But you would also lock in. Here's kind of what we think the penalties might be. I think the smarter way is to do it in steps. Some communities have done it.

Okay. The

other way. I don't think that's smart for us.

Gotcha.

Yeah. But either, either direction you would still have to, where am I today? And then what kinds of things do we want to do? Yep. Um, so we're proposing the, the benchmarking initially and the last paragraph is sort of, um, That's the wish list. We'd love to, in year one, look at the Clayton City-owned properties. So what do we have? And let's do our own homework first. So before we talk to anybody else, we know whether this is a huge ask or whether this is an easy ask. and where some of the resources are that people could use. Now, a lot of people that owned property in Clayton also have properties downtown or somewhere else. So for example, Washington University already does the building improvement program with the city of St. Louis because a lot of their medical school is in the city of St Louis. So they do it and they even do it for the South 40, which is in Clayton. And they do it for the West Campus, which is in Clayton. So we already have some people we can learn from. And I'm guessing that a lot of the other major building commercial owners also have properties that are downtown. So this is our suggestion. This is a recommendation that the committee passed.

Sorry to have so many questions. Matt, haven't we been doing benchmarking or didn't we do it for a while already? I mean, is this a new thing for us?

Looking back through the records and speaking with some people, staff, we have used Energy Star Portfolio Manager in the past to input some of this information. We also use a project called Energy Manager right now just for tracking our bills throughout the city. But one thing with those bills, it's tough to get them in the correct order to delineate the exact location. So we have used it in the past, but it's not an ongoing annual effort to get it into this format. And it's 2016. I haven't even said 19. I think 2017 to 18 is the date it was last input.

Yeah, 2017 is kind of what I saw. So

I see on here it says that you're talking about that the city policy shall address the confidentiality of all reports. I imagine that's strategic. Is that so that you get more people to volunteer and not feel like they have to be exposed for what their buildings are doing? Or is there another reason for that? If I'm a

building owner, I don't want my electrical bill to be out there. I mean, I think it's just really protecting the privacy of the property owners and something to just think about up front rather than saying everything that comes into the city is then available online. Does that answer your question or are you after something else?

Yeah, I'm just curious what the protection was. Well,

and I think that's part of what we would ask Kevin to look at as we move through this is sort of what's going to be the best proposal for Clayton and how do you want to handle that? But I think the privacy is an issue. It would be for me.

My concern is I'm not sure it's possible. That's the only thing.

Other communities have had that. So yeah, so this draft or this proposal comes from looking at many other people's proposals. We didn't just like do that. St. Louis and Kansas City. are the two. Those would be the two main ones. So if you were looking it up, take a look at

the city. And

you can. I mean, you can look it up right now on the city's website and pull it because I did it from my kitchen. So I know you can.

And so those are the two things we want to dial in. First, the confidentiality and whether or not the Sunshine Law would apply. So the second they turn that into us, does it become a public record that it's indiscoverable? So that's something we'll look into. The second thing is the specific dates that are in here. We just want to make sure that those targets work for us. So we want to play around with it a little bit, try to figure out how much lead time we would need to advertise it, how much lead time it would take for all the building owners to actually join it, get the portfolio manager and start to make those inputs. So those two things I think need to be refined a little bit. The rest of it's pretty straightforward.

So can you flip to that last page? Really, the things I would think in terms of next steps is figuring out those policy elements. When does it kick into place? I would argue that 2024 is a good year to start collecting data for the city-owned properties and figuring out where we are and what changes we might want to make, but then looking at what other support you might need before you roll that out to the rest of the commercial property owners. I think before we ever did that, we need to engage them and figure out kind of where they are. That's a whole nother chunk of time. And at this point in time, where we're also trying to come up with our long range planning, not only for the city, but also for parks and recs and ped. That's a lot to ask of staff. So I'm just going to put that out there. We need to do it and I'm advocating for it, but I think we need to be mindful. Then there's legislation that needs to be drafted before we roll any of this out. So it's a longer term project. It's not a quick, yeah, we're going to do it tomorrow.

But we can do our own benchmarking to kind of work through kind of the quirks of that Energy Star system and whatever without going through getting everything done. We can start. Is that what you said? I'm not staff, so I will leave that to staff. But it seems like we've already done it.

It certainly starts. It seems like we've уже done that. There is obviously time always associated with any new task, but yes.

Okay, cool. And I just wanted to build on that too because in 2017, if I remember correctly, we did have the system in place and we were getting data and it was there. And so a lot of, if we're in that, I don't know what it looks like. And of course I was on the fringes of it, but hopefully it's something that we can jump into more quickly without reinventing the wheel. It also emphasizes how important is to get it into a drafted policy so that as people change it, the work isn't just lost. So yeah, I think that we'd be ready to move forward. And I even wonder if the city based upon whatever's still there from 2017 would be ready to have its, that second stage, the, um, you know, the actual, what we're striving for. I can't remember your words, but even though I agree that performance standards, there we go. Even though when he rolled out to the larger community, which I think was involved in 2017, I don't remember though, but we should take it more step-by-step because I don't know what the cost or the time what is required?

As I said, I didn't believe the city had anything as far as building performance standards at that time. And one thing from looking through the portfolio manager back in 2017, we had a lot of specialty uses that didn't exactly plug in for how they measure the metrics like for a fire station, for instance, but we're hoping that's more developed now at this point. So you got those plug and play uses. And I mentioned the utility bills earlier. We'll get like, for instance, a water bill that has more multiple water bills for addresses. So making sure we get that data kind of cleansed to the right location is the real effort on our end so that that of the you know 115 water bills we get which ones are associated with this building sounds like it would be simple but it's not

i'm gonna echo that it all sounds pretty simple and pretty straightforward but in talking to some of my um my friends who have gone through this work one person who's over at washu phil balco who runs their sustainability effort said when he first started doing some of this work on that campus, they had like one meter for the whole of South 40. So there's absolutely no way to say this building versus that building versus that building who was wasting and who was conserving their energy. So they first had to get everything remetered. I mean, the devil's in the details. It's not as simple as it may seem, but this is the first step. So

Deb, I'm unclear. About this, what is there to induce people to participate other than the city, the private sector? Are they required to do this or what do they get out of doing, participating in this?

So this is another one of those things where advocacy is going to be super important. But if you passed an ordinance that said thou shall, then thou shall, right? And you could, and some communities have some penalties put around it. But the initial part with just the benchmarking That's something you're going to encourage them to do and say, your report is due by this period of time. We're proposing that it only be for commercial properties over 100,000 square feet. We're not going after the residential. There are a lot of incentives. In fact, I just sent a note off to Gabby this morning saying, look, there's, or this afternoon, here's a number of programs that are available to help residential property owners. Can we promote that in Clayton? Because here's tax benefits and here's some Ameren benefits and credits that you can get if you're going to winterize your house, if you're going wrap your pipes, whatever you're going to do, put in new storm windows, et cetera.

And what happens with all of this information? Is this looked at by somebody or is it just going to this master database so that it's comparative data? What happens to it?

Or you're, we're going to figure that out is my real honest answer. But what I believe happens is if you're doing just the benchmarking, they're taking a look at what is their data. They're putting it into Energy Star and they can compare on their own building year over year and make the changes they need to make. Yeah. That's just benchmarking. Then once you do performance standards and you say, I want you to improve by this amount, that's when there's a little more teeth in it. But that's not what we're proposing today. But that is what the city of St. Louis does. They have a staff that then works with those building owners that goes out and says, here's best practices. Here's what you should be doing. Here's a method that you should use to improve. Drive down your air conditioning costs, your HVAC costs, whatever. And they look at the reports and go out and work with those people. Thank you. yeah

one question um is the recommendation suggested um a timeline of of april is there significance to april like how

did the so april to me aside by that time everybody's got their year-end numbers done because they're trying to get their taxes in

so it's like uh but due by april for the last previous

calendar year okay thank you i mean it if you all decide you'd like June better because everybody's deferred their taxes, I don't think we care. Okay. Yeah. I was just curious. So we put that in here. Yeah.

Yep.

I'm about two minutes over time. That's okay. Really great presentation. I'm personally grateful that you guys have, when I brought this to you, thank you for taking this ball and running with it so fast and far. I think this could really be great for Clayton and we can set a great example and get the broader community. If all of the years down the road, if all of the bigger buildings are tracking and reducing energies according to some standards, it will be really impactful for our region. Yeah.

I can add one thing kind of in response to Rick's question too. I remember last time when this was presented in 2017, the savings, I mean, a lot of the marketing communication was the incredible savings that the businesses make. So it's not just you have to give us something as a city to be sustainable. It's sustainability is also profitable for you.

Yeah, it's money in their pocket. I mean, that's the incentive for them once they get that figured out. Nobody likes to be told, oh gosh, you need to do this. But once they find out they could cut their bill by 20% or 25%, that's real money on a big building. Sure.

Thank you so much. Thank

you.

Hope to hear from you soon.

May I ask, what is the action we will need to take? Will this come on to an agenda and we'll approve this bill? recommendation in some form?

Correct. Yeah. I mean, if we end up doing it externally, we would certainly need to do an ordinance in order to accomplish that. But

we're starting with our own. So

yeah, we need to refine that. We need to see what kind of data we have, get the portfolio manager going again. So let us look at the dates a little bit and then also the issue with confidentiality. So as Deb said, if we're going to go live with this thing in the community, we also need to take some time to educate the public on why we're doing this. convene all of those property managers that we've talked to about various issues, uh, and walk through this with them as well. So

some

work to be done.

I just want to be clear. I believe the recommendation from the sustainability committee is that we actually like pass something right. That we make it a matter of like ordinance policy, not just something we talked about so that it is like becomes a systemic activity that we continue.

Yeah. Good. Again, if you'll allow me, I think you could bifurcate it right you could take the piece that says we're going to look at the city of Clayton and pass that piece of it. And then you could take more time to figure out what you want to do on the other side, but we could get started with 2024 collecting data.

And

I don't think it's premature. to think about that.

That's exactly how we would proceed. It's two separate actions. That

would be best because we'll learn a lot from collecting our own data, which we can use to inform whatever we decide to do, you know, to do next. So that's perfect. Yeah.

So our next meeting is going to be in November and we'd love to tell the whole team about whatever you decide by then. Okay.

Well,

we will

work on it. Thank you so much. Okay. Next would be the construction parking plan.

Good evening. So in your packet was a draft policy that staff has put together. It still has a lot of refinement to go. We're still working with Kevin on some of the penalties and the actual language of any legislation that would go along. And then Ana and I have been discussing some refinements to this document that would better meld with the existing procedures and policies within the planning department. But at the simplest premise, the concept before you tonight is whether you would be interested in having established some kind of parking management policy for larger construction projects. I'm sure all of you take phone calls regarding parking. I assure you none of you take as many phone calls about parking as I do. And the target we're trying to hit with this policy is, as you've seen all the development going on downtown, we have an immense amount of random parking with the subs and contractors. And in some places, it's not an issue. It's not heavily trafficked by shoppers at our stores or use of facilities such as the library and so forth. So it's always a delicate balance. But keep in mind that we have three enforcement officers for parking. So And we cover the whole city. So when we hotspot an area, we're not working on other hotspots and we have several hotspots in Clayton. So kind of toss this around with David a few weeks ago about potentially putting this in front of you and seeing if you'd like to take this to legislation. But at the core of it is having the developer and principal contractor acknowledge that they are to come up with a parking plan for all these construction workers whether it be on-site or through leased facilities and garages or off-site facilities with transportation it's really their issue to resolve but If you go down Maryland Avenue about three o'clock in the afternoon, you will see the line of construction workers leaving Bemis in place, taking the ticket off their car and leaving for the day. And this is what we're trying to address as this type of issue. So at the base of the policy would be that the developer and the contractor would acknowledge that this is part of it. There would be some kind of penalty for each infraction that we could document, i.e., parking ambassador watching someone leave from Bemis in place, getting in their car and leaving after the car had been there all day, and then tying that into their building permit. permit where there would be a suspension of work until they resolve this issue. And that's really the key because we can ticket individual employees, but it never gets up to the top. And it is a hard hard item for them to address once the project is started without this type of plan because there is no communication all the way down to individual employees about where to park if we implement this with the building permit and have them develop a plan up front there'll be a document that everyone can point to happy to take any questions you may have

So would we need an ordinance for this, or would this just be rules that you could promulgate through the planning department?

We would need actual an ordinance. You would?

Okay. And as of now, we don't have anything like this when these developments get submitted. We don't have any plan for parking at all for any of these people?

No, not required.

Well, that's crazy. Okay. I'm glad we're doing it now.

Yeah. I think that's often asked at ARB or whatever, but it's not... There's no

formal mechanism to require it. I had no idea. I thought there was.

All right. And then as far as it goes, when you're saying that you've got A, B, C, D, and E on the offenses... it'll be issued to both the contractor and the property owner. So is that, I mean, you're going to have, you'll have 16 different subs on the project. Would it be the subcontractor, the general contractor or the owner of the property? Who gets the fine?

Owner of the property and the general contractor at this point in time. I mean, they're ultimately responsible. I mean, there's a lot of work behind this to develop legislation and actually formalize a plan that's actually going to work but the general concept is to draw the attention of the most vested party which would be the GC and the property owner.

So how do you know when a A car that happens to be parked in a particular area. How do you know that it belongs to a construction worker.

Well, I mean, a lot of the times you'd have to rely on a visual spot but like I was up in front of the library at three o'clock this afternoon, and you can you can look down the row of Maryland and all the cars had tickets on them for violating the two hours. I think it is over there. So, and at three o'clock you see the exodus of orange shirts coming from being missed in place, pulling the ticket off their car and getting in. So, I mean, that's fairly easy to document there randomly without a person say at 10 o'clock in the morning, it'd be hard to document.

You'd have somebody there at the car when the guy comes back in his, you know.

Well, most of our work is done responsibly. So, you know, whether it's a resident or a business owner saying, you know, this car continually parks in front of here all day. And we get that call as well. three times a day, no matter if it's in ward one, two, or three. And then we go and look into it. But I mean, the construction sites are easy to see because this activity has been going on for, and I'm not picking on this one. This one's just right across city hall. So it's easy to see, but As the different phases of construction have gone on, you can see the impact that it's had on Bemiston and Maryland parking situation. Because on a typical day before that construction started, there's a handful of cars on Bemiston. Now it's lined up all the way when they're not actually digging the street up.

is there always something available for them to use I mean it is does it come a time when oh my gosh this is nowhere anything near like within a half a mile or a mile of the site is that they're always

potentially I made a case but there's there's so much so much garage parking and um you know other facilities and other surface parking lots within the area that you know different Like Clarendel, when they did theirs, they, I think, leased the old Layton's spot for their construction employees and they had a shuttle that brought them in. Yeah. And really, we're only proposing this. I've plugged in a $2.5 million construction value because I didn't want to impact single-family homes. But in some cases, they may get that. I was

going to say, you might have to raise that

up. But this is for substantial projects because we've experienced this now with the residence in, Bemis in place. To a certain extent, the... um ac hotel the former police station and we you know we still have sterling bank world news and world trade on the books along with the condos on on four sides so and you know for example the the townhomes on the townhome condos on day have been a literal parking nightmare since day one and and that in its entirety would have met that threshold um to come up with a plan because we spent a disproportionate amount of time enforcing up on that street during that during the busiest part of that construction

gary i remember you um giving a presentation about some contractors, perhaps renting parking spaces from the city, like spots on the street or whatever, where it reduces our meter revenue, but we get revenue another way. So in that program, that's more of an opportunity for a contractor to take care of parking. This is more of a policy that requires them. Is that the way to differentiate those two things?

Well, I mean, Matt's here and he can address, but I think, I don't know if I ever gave that presentation, but Matt maybe did, and it was probably referencing like when a construction company is happening uh where there was meters the requirement is that they they rent those meters during the construction process it is not part of a parking plan they they're not to park vehicles there it's because they're being taken out because the construction fence has to go there or something like that it's lost revenue i

see so that's just um an unused space it's not a solution to a parking problem exactly okay

exactly

Becky, did you

have

a comment that

you... I just had a couple of questions. So the...

I know you've been wanting to say something.

Yeah, no, thanks. The application process, I imagine that that would... It talks about it being 10 days to process it, et cetera. I'm assuming that that's going to be able to happen parallel to a whole bunch of other processes that people are doing and should not actually... like delay their ability to start their work.

I mean, this is really meaningless. We would tie it into their already existing process. So the actual onsite parking could be incorporated to a plan they're already requiring or something. There's a lot of efficiencies to be gained. Just the takeaway for this evening was just to get something in front of you and said, hey, we think we see this issue or problem in the city and this is how we think we would address it. Do you want to, do you want us to further refine that and develop some policies and some legislation to go along? Yeah.

And it would apply. You'd be, we would be able to apply it to projects that are what already in process or they would have to be not yet permitted. Yes. So like the projects that you mentioned that have already been approved by ARB, have they been permitted? Like the permitting happens pretty close to when they actually start. I

don't think any of the future ones that I referenced with the ones coming up have been permitted yet. So if we get this done in time, we would catch those. But the ones going on now, we're already in a relationship. Right.

Okay, that's those are my question like the first if he has already so we've kind of lost our ability to do anything with them okay. Just because they had like such I mean their subs park up and down along the park like because it's the same construction group doing that that did the residents in so yeah it's

just. Anything

I think a lot.

Okay

well well yeah I think it's great and the sooner the better. I am curious, though, when there is a problem, even if somebody is already permitted, how much we can refer to it. But the sooner we get it in place, the better and give you

all. And we try to... We do our best. Ron Milton, the parking supervisor, goes into a lot of these places and speaks with the general contractor or whoever is in charge on that site. But just filtering down through the subs and everything is... is difficult.

No, I just, Gary, thank you for doing this. I mean, I think this is really, I mean, I it's really important that we do this. So thank you for getting going on this.

I'm just curious, Gary, did you get any of the ideas or the verbiage here from any other city that has done this? And more importantly, I'm just wondering if we can learn from the experience of other cities about what enforcement works better or what penalties work or what verbiage works better.

Yeah, this was inspired by another community.

I'm wondering since these are such big dollar projects.

Turn on your mic.

Since these are such big-dollar projects, there always seems to be the notion that some builders would rather just live with fines then it's cheaper for them to just pay a fine than it is to just do what they want to do. So I'm just wondering, are we satisfied that the teeth, the enforcement of this is significant? I realize you can get a stop work order and that's a bad. So I guess that's the key to this.

I think the stop work order is the ultimate hammer in their situation because that is just time and money.

Yeah. I would remind you also that the city has a code provision which says that anyone who is applying for a permit that is currently in violation of any ordinance of the city can't get another permit. Now, that can also be a very effective tool.

Thank you. The monetary fines are just to get remind and get attention. It's the

stop work order that matters.

You get people's attention real fast when that happens.

Very good. Thanks. All right. So we will,

we'll start preparing something.

Absolutely. Okay. That is all for our discussion session. So we have a couple of minutes to do whatever you like and we'll reconvene at seven. I just had the opportunity to bang the gavel and I don't get it very often. Okay. We're about ready to start our 7 p.m. meeting. Will the city clerk call the roll? Alderman Berkowitz.

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

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

Aye.

Aldeman Rick Hummell.

Aldeman Hummel.

Aye.

Mayor Harris. Aye. City Manager David Gipson.

Mayor Harris. Aye. City Manager Gibson.

Here.

City Attorney O'Keefe. Here. Thank you.

All right, now's the time for public requests and petitions. And from the audience, I don't know if we have anyone online. I do see our MIAC person here. Hey, how you doing? Good. Welcome. And so I don't see anybody with a request for anything not on our agenda. So we can move on to the city manager report.

Yes, we have one ordinance this evening. The Public Works Department is requesting approval of a three-year custodial services contract extension to clean the police station and municipal building at 10 South Brentwood Boulevard, City Hall at 10 North Beamiston Avenue, and the municipal garage at 8300 Shaw Park Drive. The contract approved in March 2021 with building stars expired at the end of September 2023. The bid documents provided for two three-year extensions upon terms agreeable to both parties. Building Stars has agreed to hold the fiscal year 23 pricing for both fiscal years 24 and 25, with a 6.4% increase in fiscal year 26. Staff recommends that the Board of Aldermen approve the ordinance authorizing a three-year contract extension with Building Stars and the amount of $297,049.08 plus a contingency of $29,706.91 totaling $326,753.99 for the custodial services contract extension. And we do have Matt Malik, our director of public works here this evening if you have any questions.

OK, I'll open the discussion. Any questions for Matt or anybody? Yeah, Susan.

Yeah, I have one thing coming on the heels of Deb Grossman's sustainability report. Is there any way that we can put into that contract something about a sustainability pledge? Of course, I did my quick Google and pulled up one that a company uses And it could be as general as raising the awareness that we strive to use recycled products and reduce the consumption of whatever, but just some awareness that we can take forward and put into the contract.

Under their contract, the consumable products we use are actually purchased by the city. There are some cleaning products that they do purchase, but most of the consumables are purchased by the city So there may be an opportunity in other areas, but that would fall under the city purchasing

policy. Okay, so that would be from trash bags to cleaning products to everything else. Okay, well, I guess that's something else. We can directly impact that. Talking with the city. Okay, thank you very much. Any other

questions? Okay, Alderman Berkowitz.

I'd like to introduce Bill No. 6997 to approve an extension of the contract with Building Stars for custodial services to be read for the first time by title only.

Second. Any discussion? Mr. City Attorney.

Bill No. 6987, first reading. An ordinance approving a contract extension of Building Stars for the custodial services contract for city-owned facilities at 10 South Brentwood Boulevard and 10 North Phoenix, Manhattan and 8300 Shaw Park Drive.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Mr. Berkowitz.

Move that the Board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of Bill No. 6997 on the day of its introduction.

Second. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Let the minister reflect. The board has given unanimous consent.

Let's introduce bill number, bill, bill number, bill number? Oh, 6997 to approve an extension of the contract with Building Stars for custodial services to be read for the second time by title only.

Second. Any discussion? Any attorney?

Bill number 6997, second reading and consideration for adoption. An ordinance approving a contract extension with Building Stars for the custodial services contract for city-owned facilities at 10 South Brentwood Boulevard, 10 North Davidson Avenue, and 8300 Shaw Park Drive.

Alderman Berkowitz.

Aye.

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

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

Aye.

Aldemann Rick Hummell.

Aldemann Hummel.

Aye.

Neal Harris. Aye. Thank you. Aye.

Agenda.

Only item on there is approval of the minutes from October 10th.

Any discussion or questions to the minutes? All right. Alderman Berkowitz.

I move to approve the consent agenda.

Second. Any

discussion? Alderman Berkowicz.

Aye.

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

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

Aye.

Aldemann Rick Hummell. Aye. Mayor Harris.

Aldemann Hummel. Aye. Mayor Harris.

Aye.

Thank you.

okay we're ready for uh our show and tell events

i'm back so um a few months ago we talked about special events we do that typically every year as we prepare the budget to make sure we're on the same page with you with our special events and so we had a that we're bringing back the PowerPoint. I'm sorry. So, the first one is just reminding you of what events that we do have in this year's budget. Blues Home Opener, which took place, which was really popular again this year. Our next one will be the winter edition of the Clayton Restaurant Week, and Gabby and Kristen are working on that now. And then the next one will be The Soccer Home Opener. They haven't announced their date, but typically that's in March. Cardinals have announced their date, so that'll be October, April 4th, and then followed by Music and Wine, the summer edition of Clayton Restaurant Week and the Jazz Festival later in the year in September. You want to advance it, Andrea? And so one of the open items from the last presentation was I asked the question if we wanted to look at our event goals because we've been operating from circa 2013. These are those, again, the board at that time had interest in promoting retail and restaurant sales, generating good pedestrian traffic, having good attendance at the event, brand building and placemaking, engaged participants in drawing benefits to the special business district. And I think the discussion last time was that We wanted to see if we could do a little bit better or enhance those or evolve those or whatever the terminology may be. So if you'll go to the next one, Andrew. So this is a staff proposal. We've talked about developing civic pride. promoting diversity in Clayton and a sense of welcoming in Clayton, spotlight local businesses in the special business district, encourage activity, accessibility, and unity, and celebrate vibrancy and create a festive environment in downtown. So that is our proposed launching point for you. I don't know if you want to have a discussion now or if there's something you want to think about in the future, but

there they are. Can you remind me, I think the emphasis on downtown and is because the budget for this comes from the tax that is specifically levied in that area, right? So that's why that's appropriate. Part of me is like, why only downtown? And then I'm like, oh wait, I didn't remember why. So the money we use for

special events is coming from the special business tax, which has a geography of basically downtown.

Could you explain what activity accessibility and unity means?

Well, that the activity would be that we are promoting something probably outside of the 8 to 5 work hour or work day. Accessibility is inclusive for every ability to access the event.

And then Unity is- Wouldn't we have that anyway?

Pardon me?

Wouldn't we have it anyway? Have what?

Not necessarily like the challenge for running upstairs for the firehouse or something. That's

not an

accessibility-oriented event.

There's some power in saying it.

And it could also be that there's no barrier to entry, really. I mean, these events are free. We open it up completely to the public. They're not pre-ticketed events or anything like that, so they are accessible in that sense as well.

And then unity.

Representing diverse group of individuals.

Well, I think I read it. I didn't talk to you about it before this, but when I read it, it made me think of bringing the community together and generating a sense of community together. That's kind of how I interpreted it. An activity I interpreted as generating lots of activity. That's what we want. That's how I interpreted that, too. Me. I don't know how you guys would, but

Part of, like, I think when we think about stuff like this, we want to think about, like, I, I think we want to think what have we already, like, said, written, and stated about, like, the goals that we have as a city, right? And so we have, I think we call it our mission statement. And it specifically talks about, like, welcoming and diversity. So that is really... straightforward to me that it makes sense for us to be have that as a goal um i think the um i think the one that the line that ira is highlighting is probably the one that is like either to me either redundant with things in other areas or um kind of like not something we've already like talked about and established as a priority. So, I mean, cause sometimes we talk about actually our, our events, you know, really wanting to bring people in from outside versus like, you know, so I don't know. Like, I think that to me is the one that feels a little bit like activity is vibrancy. Accessibility is welcoming to all people of all like abilities and whatever. And unity is like, yeah actually right so

i will say yes and um i think the idea of bringing people in from the outside appeals to me it's a specific goal um and it it what it does is it it um helps us uh helps us achieve the goal of communicating that we're welcoming if we are It helps us achieve that by exposing our city and what we're doing to others that don't live here. And I kind of like that as a piece of a goal somehow.

So you think the fourth goal that starts with encourage... is speaking to inviting people from outside of Clayton into Clayton?

Well, I mean, I don't get that from it. I'm saying that that would be a good goal.

Okay.

I mean, a goal that would be not, I mean, including unification of our own community, but also attracting people from other communities, a variety of other communities to experience Clayton. something like that

yeah i just wasn't sure how we're all defining all this and you know i mean it's fine i get i get that yeah it's good for discussion um i was at the jazz fest and and i i will tell you i mean it was incredibly inclusive but i had a hard time with accessibility there

like getting around yeah well that's why it's moving i

think too though that that these are um The setup is nice too with the develop, promote, spotlight and courage. Not every event is going to hit each one if we are effective in targeting a lot of different constituencies. So these are things to guide the work and not necessarily be there. And I think that the openness of the language also gives us a leeway to structure what seems appropriate for the time.

It'd be good if we had a mall with each event, but I realize we may not be able to. But it's always an aspiration, I would think.

I had a quick question on the special business district. Are the funds from that required to go toward events? It seems like at one point we're talking about some of the street workers. This is

just... It has

to be in the area. nobody else the only other topic that I wondered if we wanted to include because I just tried to put permission statement I failed but sustainability is there anything we want to put in there about sustainability I'm not quite sure where it would fit but was another way if we get all the other check marks from the mission statement that would be

I recall we don't actually have anything about sustainability because I've looked at that before

yeah and I've got it here so the mission is to foster a diverse and inclusive community with a vital balance of neighborhoods businesses commercial and government centers educational institutions and a healthy environment through an open equitable accessible and fiscally responsible government

a healthy environment thing

Healthy environment is all we have

in there. That can be in the more details of each event if you wanted to say let's make sure it's sustainable.

It's kind of like the benchmarking. Unless we put it somewhere so it carries forward, sometimes they do get lost. If there's some way to work that in with some of these events, that would be something that I think would strengthen this. Otherwise, I like the layout and it's very helpful. Gary, you want to say something?

Gary, I was just wondering with the sports-oriented events, which I think are great, but I'm just curious whether you have any sense of whether these events in the last year or so, sort of post-COVID, do they draw as well as they did in, let's say, 2019, just given that there are many fewer people in the offices? Yeah.

okay yeah

we're running out of things

Some of the construction workers took some of the slack off the office dwellers.

Yeah, our initial food order was for about 500 people and we blew past that in a little over an hour for a two-hour event.

If they can only find a place to park, I guess.

So I'll just go back to this. I think this is really great. I'm going to just circle back and see if we want to make any change with the fourth one to say something about you know um bringing in uh people from other places whatever that verbiage is

i'm all in on promote i mean yeah it covers it and i think it's fine it's

great and i would add sustainability to the four you probably would fit in this fourth one if you don't mind going beyond the magic three and listing four things I

would suggest that we, I just, I'm not a fan of introducing like a new word that is not clearly understood in like a goal statement. So I would like question the inclusion of unity. Like it's just not a word that we've talked about before. I don't know what it really means. And so like, I don't like, like establishing strategy in 10 minutes like this, you know? And so I would suggest maybe even removing unity and putting in sustainability because that is something that we have prioritized and that we invest in and we know what we think it means. But that's my take.

You could replace unity with healthy environment. encourage a healthy environment at the end of that so activity accessibility and a healthy environment then you're pulling accessibility and healthy environment straight from the mission statement

right that's a concern at all yeah like that that's fine

i throw out togetherness is a better word than unity i think unity somehow is misplaced but i think the point is bringing people together i think that's what the intent was here

Well, another word for that is building community. So, you know, that's something we talk about often. But it's getting

long.

And

referencing the mission statement is good. Capturing those same ideas.

So the fourth one becomes encourage activity, accessibility, and healthy environment. That's correct.

And a

healthy environment. And we'll take out one of the inclaytons and under-promote as well, just to condense it.

It's something to shoot for. I mean, it's not something we've done before in terms of thinking in that respect, but I think maybe it gives us something to shoot for in the events that we talk about.

Okay. Okay.

we good this will replace the 2013 goals is that right yes okay

that's correct

okay

moving on

there yeah

okay so as the mayor let out of the bag We discussed this last time that the, and as Ira found out himself the hard way, it was very difficult to move during the Jazz Festival this year. The median, while a nice aesthetic is a logistic nightmare, um and we have those two events the music and wine and the jazz festival have really just outgrown that space with all the um back of house stuff that has to go on with toilets and food trucks and power generators and ice boxes we've just outgrown that we did have a conversation We're invited conversation with the restaurants on North Brentwood, Herbie's City Coffee House and Amar at Oceano. And they're receptive to it down there. It's a nice big street, so we'll be able to section it off and grow more as the years go on. We'll be able to artificially shorten it with the stage towards the Forsyth Inn, and we can keep pushing back to the intersection as the event grows. So we set those plans in motion.

Great.

And then so the next item to discuss is we also at the last meeting had taken a few suggestions from this group here about events to add and those were the longest table, the open streets concept in a cultural event. So we have formulated a plan for each one of those in a budget to go along with that so we can start to move in uh with this the longest table and the mayor's been involved with with setting this plan here but basically it's the concept of one long table people dining together and and community discussion um we have a tentatively worked with the North Merrimack between Forsyth and Maryland on a Sunday evening. Ivy and Avenue are closed at that time, and Seven has come in for catering services roughly at the same amount as outside sources would. So that's a good use of the business that's on the street that would be impacted for logistic standpoints. Mayor, I don't know if you want

to... Well, no, you can just... I mean, you can keep going through this if you

like. Yeah, so eventually... wanting to limit the size to not impact costs that great, but it would basically be a table length of Merrimack that seat roughly 100 people. We potentially partner with the city of Florissant, invite different community members and leaders of different backgrounds to have conversation at the table. Tables would have facilitators at each section with discussion topics. handed out the table to help break the ice this particular concept that you're looking at at Wash U was random seating so you couldn't go with a friend and sit next to a friend and have your typical discussion about school or work or

they had assigned colors and so you had to sit at that color table and there was a facilitator there as well

Yeah. And the typical partners that we would have in this would be the Community Foundation, the Equity Commission, the School District and Florissant community groups and other local community members. It would be an invited group of individuals. And again, it would be targeting the Clayton and Florissant community. You want to go to the next page, Andrea? It would be a buffet-style dinner. We've looked at numerous versions. This is the one that keeps the cost the lowest. Again, I mentioned the conversation starters, table facilitators. We would have some acute... I can't say it, non-amplified music available. Just kind of break the ice there. We do have the ability with our work that we've done with the Jazz Festival and the Wine and Music. We do now have some operational bistro lights that we can string across streets relatively easily. depending on who you ask, and then space heaters, depending on the event. But we would probably be looking at October if it's best in the schedule. And the all-in budget for that is roughly $24,000.

I can add a little bit of more information. So I've talked to a number of you about these types of events that really happen all over the country. It's not a new idea. But the goal or the idea or the purpose would really be to just bring people together with diverse backgrounds and perspectives and have them start sharing ideas about their environments and how our community as a region acts and build the relationships that support working together down the road. I mean, I think we would certainly invite some of our people from let's say our equity commission or people that in the community that are really interested in this sort of thing and some of our community leaders to be facilitators. And then obviously the costs would be split with our partner city. And actually, just as happenstance in sort of talking about this to someone yesterday, we probably could get some decent sponsorships around it too. So I think this is also an event that I think is PR worthy that talks about community building and talks about cities working together trying to solve problems. We clearly would have to develop a discussion guide that fits our purposes and Florissant's purposes. Do you have that picture? You know, you don't sit down at these things and just have random conversations. There's a guide about what we want people to talk about. This is what was provided for the WashU version. And they also had... some cards printed out that would say, okay, so now we've talked about this. Here's what I plan to do about it myself and go forth. So that's kind of the concept and I'll just leave it at that.

Can I ask a question about this? I think the event sounds like a fine event. And I know we're talking about events generally, but is this event meant to be funded from the special business district budget? So that's the part I'm wondering about. These other events broadly benefit the special business district in some way. I'm trying to understand how an invited guests of this makeup that we have, how we get that to fit in in that context of benefiting that business district.

Well, one would be utilizing the Sevens restaurant to facilitate the event. And then other than that, it's the location.

Yeah, I just think that's kind of narrow. I have no problem with the city using other budgeted funds. So I'm not opposed to the project. I'm just not sure whether it fits that particular budget.

I think it goes to the goal of being more welcoming and understanding how to do that. And if that benefits our special business district so that other people want to come there, maybe. But I understand what you're saying. So in the end, I don't think it's going to cost us very much. So perhaps it comes from a different budget. I, of course, support doing it. But yeah.

I'm not opposed to it. I'm just thinking about it from the lens of various business owners who are paying the taxes and then want to review what their taxes are being used for, and then wondering how this fits in with that overall mission. That's all.

I'm wondering, is it when you, in doing this would be Flores, is Flores going to be our partner every year? No, no, it's just, it would be different partners.

I'm not saying it's an annual event. I'm not. I don't know if it depends, right? If it's successful and how we all feel about it. I think that in my conversations with them, with their mayor, I think they would like to host the event the following year. And so maybe we would be the partner, maybe not. It's not decided. I just want to

ask why are we looking at Florissant? I mean, it's It's 60% white in Florissant, and why not another community that would be entirely African American?

I think it just comes down to it's 60% white, but it's a lot less white than Clayton. It's a successful community. It's a community where, you know, I've kind of, I have the relationship to work with that mayor to get this done. And it's the first time out. I think you want to be able to have a good reliable partner in it um other communities bring with them some issues perhaps that may overshadow the goals of an event like this so I I mean we can certainly consider other communities I will say that they want to do it and so that's that's key and i will also say that florissant is my hometown so that's another reason why people but it is irrelevant to the objectives yeah so um yeah so i don't know if you wanna have any more questions about this we can move on and you know we don't have to decide anything like this at the moment

yeah i It sounds worthwhile, and I think that having relationships already and building on those is a good thing to do. Bringing the cost down. You're really saying that half that cost is what we're looking at because it would be sharing. Worst case scenario and whole business sponsorship. I do agree that I wonder if it's a benefit to the special business district, if it should be funded otherwise or work on those sponsorships some more. But as far as bringing people together, that's great. I will never understand the longest table because when I go to a dinner party, I do much better if it's a round table and you can talk to more people. But This has a lot of, you know. It's a big thing, right? So that's fine. I don't get it doesn't matter, but it's like great. And I don't know how you handle and people smarter than me can do that. Who that invitation list if it's invited guests. And that's another problem if it's within the special business district. If somebody's left out who feels they should be included because of what's funding it, et cetera. So tread carefully on those issues. The idea itself is a good, I think it could be a positive

force. And I was trying to get a small group together to build some ideas before tonight so I could at least share some further specific ideas that come up, but not necessarily would be happening. But I think my thought would be to gather together some individuals that are good at this You know, I can think of if I can go by name, Chris Meese on our equity commission. She is she could, you know, whip this out just on her own. But we can have Sean Doherty, our former superintendent, has volunteered to be on the team. Of course, we have, you know, the folks from Florissant. There are just people in our community who I think can really help make this special. Washington University is volunteering to help. And of course, all of these, the Gebhardt Institute put this on and they have some individuals that volunteer for them that have volunteered to advise us. So I think we definitely, I mean, what you're seeing is just the basic idea and would need to be really fine-tuned for Clayton and Florissant and to make it meaningful for the community. So just... All right, should we, anybody else have comments about this or questions? Okay.

Okay, so we'll move on to the next one, which is open streets, which I think has been discussed for the last two or three years. So we have put a plan together. Again, we're talking about a Sunday morning. We're looking at the area of Brentwood between Bonham and Forsyth Avenue. And we would use some of the internal trails within the Sharp Park itself. If you want to advance the screen, Andrea. Yeah. So we would be trying to promote a healthy lifestyle and physical activity within the community, educate the public on safety and fire prevention, create family-friendly environment that showcases Clayton's amenities. We would be looking with partnering with the Center of Clayton, school district, PTO groups, local bike shops. I believe Kristen and Gabby had preliminary discussions with Big Shark and Maplewood. bicycle Clayton police fire departments also we'd be looking to target local families cycling and fitness enthusiasts casual gym goers and potential center of Clayton members did you talk to trail net we did talk to trail net I talked to them last year or the year before and it wasn't a fruitful discussion They didn't really want to take on the event. And it kind of evolved into a... They

want to promote more riding, right? It became

the kids triathlon on the street is basically what the evolution of that was.

Like this to me, because when I see open streets, I do think of something more where people are like riding. You know, a street is being closed, which I understand is difficult here. Whereas here, it just seems maybe kids are riding in a street that's closed. And I guess into the park. And then there's more of like booths, it sounds like, where people explore like fitness opportunities. Health and fitness, yeah.

We have that on the next slide.

Which is that I just, I mean, I'd be interested in digging into a little bit more of that. Cause I mean, I've been involved in some discussions with TrailNet on this topic. And I can't remember if it was like at a sustainability meeting or some other meeting where we've done, yeah, we were on it together. And so I don't, I mean, I know that they came with an idea to partner it with the kids triathlon, but my impression was not that that was the only idea they were open to. So I guess I'm concerned that we that like they're a leader in this space it's what they it's a thing that they do and have expertise in and that we aren't trying to leverage that and work with them that and and I don't know if no I mean I'm happy to participate in another meeting if yeah like we need to like reboot that relationship or something I'd be happy to be a part of it

Yeah, for them, it was more like closing a long street. It was like closing Y down or closing, you know, and... I

don't even really remember necessarily what the distance is supposed to be, but...

Well, they thought eventually, yes, once the bike lanes got up that we would somehow incorporate... Like a closed area to promote the bike lanes, which I understand is problematic. So it's just so that was their thought was to once it came open that we would promote this bike ride through Clayton through the bike lane. So

I still think that's a good idea. yeah I mean somehow but we I mean as you said it's problematic now because we've got a lot of construction over there now right

yeah

they'll have for a little bit so you know I'm over the years 15 years I'm talking about this kind of stuff with trail not at sustainability committee meetings etc and I just have to say I think they they're very enthusiastic about us doing this but in at least Historically, they have not been able to help us in terms of financial support or really volunteers. they can promote it to their members is what they've offered mostly. And again, that could change. But we're

talking about stuff that we're going to fund to meet our city's special event goals. And so that doesn't concern me. Like the fact that they could bring expertise and then amplify the event in their network, which is pretty significant, I think is worth reviewing. I can't

imagine doing anything like this without their input. Yeah. No brainer. on through the rest of the event

we well we can move on to a i'll get i'll get with uh becky and yeah we'll get a hold of trail net and revise this

page with the cost that you have

yeah so if you want to skip to that last page and yeah so we came up with roughly twenty thousand dollars in cost for that

Did we explore the school district or CRSWC or anybody else partnering with us on this? Because it seems to benefit those organizations as much. Not

monetarily. We were relying heavily on the center for the different fitness classes that we had programmed in there and to spotlight them, but we did not come up with financial partners.

I mean, this is really a general overview to see if the board's supportive of these things. And if so, then we can dive into those details with those other entities. But if the board didn't want to do the concept generally, we didn't want to have advanced discussions on their participation. But we would certainly... have them participate as you can see here we've got them listed as you know potentially having a booth or some other participation but if we could have them directly involved that would be great but we wanted to make sure that the board is okay with putting funds towards that type of event before we get too far

yeah and the other the other part is just given the timing with liberal communities planning and all that and if we're focusing on accessibility and Viking and all those things. It seems that that should be part of it somehow too. I don't know how, but you can't, this isolated from that feels disingenuous. Yeah. And

that's on this education booth item as well. So we would certainly have something set up and try to get.

Yeah, we did. We did work with Matt and Anna's teams to coordinate with, with that piece of it to make sure that was still peace was still going on at this time. So.

I mean, I think there's an activity, an event like this. I appreciate you digging into the idea and generating some specifics around what it could look like. So thank you for doing that. And to me, this meets a lot of our goals. and with a different audience than the other events that we do. Because like, and, you know, we're talking about not just like the office community or people that are in downtown, you know, and we're talking about like getting our families, that big millennial population that we can't figure out where they are and what they're doing. Like, you know, things that, and helping people figure out like the different ways that they can get to Clayton. Like I can bike to downtown Clayton from my house and I do sometimes, but I think a lot of people don't realize that they can do that. And so like making that just more visible and creating, I think, I mean, I,

Yeah, I wonder if there was a way that we could involve TrailNet because it seems like a lot of what TrailNet does too is they take people on rides. So if you were to organize people to travel find themselves at the corner of Skinker and Wydown and they bike to this event. I don't know. Yeah, like

they could map recommended routes from different neighborhoods for us or something, you know, to show people like that would be, that is likely something that would be like in their wheelhouse of what they can do. That would be like a cool support.

And one of the major points made when the Clayton Tomorrow team reported to the sustainability committee this last week was that people choose to drive and not walk between so many, or bike between so many points in Clayton. And that's a primary area of focus. So involving TrailNet and helping us get over that too would fit with that, whether it be this or related activity with TrailNet.

I think this hits on a lot of, like Becky said, it hits on a lot our goals and I think it sounds, it looks good. I would like to see if maybe incorporate just because I think about this all the time is the accessibility part. Maybe there's something more we could do for that. It looks like it would also still be good for someone in a wheelchair but maybe we could provide more something activity wise for that individual. Otherwise, I think it's

great. Yes. The final one was a cultural event. Again, we would be targeting either May or October, which fits in the existing event calendar. Again, we're looking at Brentwood Boulevard, it's very wide, easy to set up on just like Music and Wine and Jazz Festival. We would be showcasing international artistic and culinary expression, bringing together visual and performing artists, fashion, jewelry designers, artisans, food, and the local community. We would have art expositions, live art demonstration performances. and food involved. We would be looking to partner with the Clayton Community Foundation, local schools and studios, nonprofits focused on international artisans such as COCA and international festivals.

Could I interject one thing? I'm sorry. I think just in terms of the event goal, as it's stated here, if you think about how the goals were stated for Open Streets or other what goals are. I think the goals for this are really not about the description of the event, but they could be, and these can change, but things like promoting diversity, educating our community on other cultures, bringing other cultures, other communities into our community for the experience, things like that. Those are goals. And again, those don't have to be the goals, but that's the kind of thing I think should be bodied in the goals here.

Go ahead. Yeah, sorry. Thanks for adding that there. And that was an oversight on our part. The other Other events had actual listed goals and this was more of an event description, but obviously what the mayor said about exposing different cultures is obviously the goal of the event. And Andrea, if you'd like to move to the next slide. So we partner with local performers, schools and studios and nonprofits to secure talent. We've had some preliminary discussions and have interest in it, but just like all the previous two events we have until something has been blessed by this board, there's not a lot of concrete conversation to be had, but we have had interest in that. Running with that, we head down the path of of a rented stage for the dance and musical performances, and then a smaller band stage for the smaller performances. and then booths with merchants to sell different crafts and merchandise, and then the entertainment component taking place on those stages. And some of the preliminary discussions you can see on the right-hand side of this slide here, the step team, the Egyptian group, and so forth. With all the back of house and staging, we estimate this budget to be roughly about $37,000. Gary, do

you feel like the calendar has the capacity to support all these? I feel like we're very October focused, understandably. Or May. I know you said May.

The summer is hard to put on events with

No, I understand. I just mean, I understand why you're picking those months. I'm just wondering if there is.

Yeah, I mean, so Gabby and Kristen had conversations with our most primarily our public works department is whose staffs these. So these are proposed at times. If we do all three of these, that may be a little taxing on staff. Yeah, I'm just wondering.

Just Gabby and Kristen. I'm really concerned about. staff as well event staff because the event staff is our communication staff who still have all their communications duty and like, for instance, this cultural event here, you can see all the different entities that would need to be coordinated along with all the facilities that you need to bring in order to make the event work. That's a lot for them to try to take on, especially with the two other events that we're talking about coordinating as well. So that's something we would need to figure out whether that's some sort of outside management help for those specific events or, you know, part-time person or what that looks like. We haven't had a chance to really dive into the staffing level, but I do have concerns about trying to do this with the two full-time communications slash events

yeah i can tell you that you know music and wine and jazz festival are are almost year-round behind the scene coordinations and so this cultural event and the um The open streets event is quite a lot of moving pieces. The open streets probably not as detailed as the cultural event, but a considerable amount of behind-the-scenes work. I

think May would be

tight. I'm just curious if you feel like maybe we should be picking a couple of these rather than

Well, I mean, I think the implication is David stated that, you know, it potentially has unforeseen impacts in other places, whether it's, you know, part-time staff or outside management or additional resources. So, and these budgets are not inclusive of those numbers. Yeah. i just and

none

of this was budgeted in the budget

we just approved

we did we added additional event money uh

through the special business

district it was we

had like some that was unallocated not allocated to us an additional

50 000 i believe it was 50 50

000 right 50 000 for all

50 what we

allocated this 50 or 55 000 yeah

thank you um Right. So we need to try to figure out that that staffing component. The other thing that we need to understand is they also do the marketing for the center and we have the marketing plan. You know, that was a big conversation with the school district was getting that marketing plan up and off the ground. So we're going to try to saturate that first part of next year. And then we've got the events on top of it. It's just it's going to be a lot. So just want to make everyone aware of that.

We should stay within our capacity and whatever we do, obviously do well. We want to do

it really well. And we want to do all of these things really well. And that's where it gets a little bit concerning. Could we pull it off? Yes. Could we do all of it to the level we would all desire on this? I think that's something we need to look at.

Well, and it also may be that we want to stage, I mean, phase it in to maybe not do everything next year, but maybe one, and then recognize that we would be phasing in, if you want to do all three, phasing in the other three in the next year or two after that. I

mean, I can see not necessarily doing like an open streets event every year, you know, so if we were to do the longest table in the open streets next year, and then eventually phase in the cultural event. I just, I don't feel the need to, I guess, accomplish all three next year.

No, and that wasn't the, I mean, so how this started was that individually or as a group, parts of this board would come to staff or David and say, you know, what about this event? What about this event? And we took the opportunity at the last meeting to say, Hey, we've received all of these. Do you want us to, do you want to do this? And do you want us to look into it? And at that time you said, yeah, look into it. So, you know, we've, we've brought these forward to you without the staff to say, do these or not.

Right. No, I know. I'm just trying to, I think they all sound great, but I, it sounds like we would be pressed for time and staff and also money to accomplish all three.

May would be rough, but October one, but if you do one in October, there's still plenty of time to accommodate that and allow the marketing team to still accomplish their goals with the center. But adding all three is, I hate to have that conversation tomorrow morning with them.

Well, So if I could just elaborate a little bit more on this last one, because I did propose it. But and again, you're right, we could do it. We can stage these. I never expected we could do all of these in one summer or one year. But we have sort of begun building some critical mass around diversity communications and about saying that we're more welcoming and trying to show the world that we're more welcome. And so that's what made me think of doing something like this is to build on that while we are kind of, if you will, on a little bit of a roll. We have our equity commission and they've had a lot of impact. We have the landscape task force in full swing. There's impact there. I do think the jazz festival is something that has added to that feeling of us inviting other communities in And I was just thinking, hey, you know, if we did an international festival of some kind that would just really build on that. And as a former marketing person, impact gets the point across a lot better than just piecemeal stuff. So that's what made me think of it, just so you kind of have that idea. Yeah. if that's meaningful to you or not whatever but

i just would would have the comment i think historically cultural festivals which puts on the art fair has has also done some other type of event the prior jazz event and then the the book oriented event none of which were successful ultimately for a variety of reasons but i mean when i when i saw this what it mostly reminded me of was the art fair because it has art, it has food, it has music, which first of all made me wonder why our partners wouldn't include the art fair because I think Sarah Umloff probably knows more about putting on this kind of event than anybody else. But I do think the point still is that they spend pretty much the whole year trying to put on the art fair Because it's a big deal. I mean, it's a tremendous amount of work. The coordination over the weekend is incredible. You need vast amount of volunteers. So on the other hand, I always think when we have the art fair, I think to myself, gee, I wish we could have something else at some other time of the year that was similar because the art fair is, I think, one of the best weekends we have in Clayton. It draws people from all over St. Louis County. And so it's a great idea. It's just the logistics of it are kind of frightening.

But clearly we're talking about 2,000 people, not 200,000 people. It's really different in

scope.

But food and entertainment and music does pull people out. But really, I'm just giving you guys a background on my thinking. That doesn't have to affect your... I

think this would be great if we could build on it. I think it's a... a great idea for us to do. I think it would be, you know, I went to the international festival they had in Tower Grove. It was about six weeks ago, maybe more. I don't know, but it was, and it was, it just wasn't that good. I mean, it was a lot of food. That's, you know,

a lot of booths too selling stuff

selling stuff right clothing and whatever from different countries and that's fine it's all good stuff but it was just not it wasn't entertaining it wasn't it wasn't a lot of what I see here which I think is is really what we need to highlight you know um you're talking about stuff on stages i kind of like to see some of this just street type dancing and all that i mean even get it off the stage you know and get it into the crowd you know let people really experience some of the uh the culture that we'll bring i think it's fantastic i think uh we should really figure out how to do it what drives what drives the budget what drives the 37 000 for this as opposed to 25 000 let's say for some of the others gary

just

The stage is the biggest thing. Right, right. Well, I'm with Gary. It'd be good to have another signature event in Clayton. You know, the Greek festival I always go to in the city. I know it's going to happen every year. I know it'll be there and all that. And I think it would be having another signature event for Clayton. I think this could be it if we did it right.

I worry about our ability to do it right. I mean, if the, and I haven't been to the one in Tower Grove Park in a while. And so hearing you say like, I mean, that's an established event that's been happening for years. And if they're struggling, maybe, I mean, I don't, we don't know. I don't know if we know how it's run, but if like, we're not seeing that they're able to like do it, what makes us think we could, or, you know?

Yeah, I hear that, but I will tell you, it was really crowded. I mean, yeah, no, I believe that. Yeah. It's because

everybody knows about it. I

think it was successful. He didn't find it particularly. I

didn't find it interesting, but I think, but I, it was considered successful. There were a ton of people there and it was the same weekend as they had that, um, that the festival in the park for the music festival.

Yeah.

It was the same weekend, the same thing going on. And there were droves of people at the entire growth. So, But I think we could do it better. I mean, I really do. I think this could be way more interesting if we do it the way I think it's being outlined here and add on to it.

They're at a much bigger scale than what we have here, just doing the one block. They're organized a lot like the Art Fair. I mean, that is a year-round foundation nonprofit that runs all of that. Yeah. an incredible list of sponsors, that's a huge undertaking to put that on. So I can't imagine this would be quite to that scale. It doesn't need to be. Maybe we're close to that, but yeah.

No, it makes me think, you mentioned this earlier, but it makes me think of when we were at Glenridge and I think every elementary school does an international event festival and i i always everybody came out for those and everybody loved it and and i think about all the different like when when my kids were at glenridge unbelievably 70 countries were represented there i just think uh i i think something about that feels good to me to to to embrace that and celebrate it with our with our with our own community as well as bringing in all these other folks i don't know it's just a feel-good thing yeah

i think The way it's outlined here in the elements, it looks, it sounds so promising and so good. And distinguished from the art fairy, I guess because you're right it's the same idea of art and performances and things like that. It's local, and it's more international and looking at that element of bringing in these different performers. Yeah. And to me, it is a matter of capacity. You know, our staff already worked so hard. Can we do it? Or we should work on doing it, but to expect it within the next year. If you all think we can, you know, more power to you. But I don't it's a lot. It's it looks great. And it's a lot

of the three. This is the hardest one to pull off, especially with that that time frame. I mean, typically we're if we have an event that's that's i mean we're yeah we're six months out um typically we're pretty advanced in our planning for things like jazz festival and music and wine and those things at this point

yeah the only way this is achievable is is later in the year next year if are you saying

october or what what's later

yeah october would be the other choice but um Which is next fiscal year, anyways.

And it's two weeks after Festival of Nations. I think we need to be aware of that, too. Yeah, so then you'll want to think

about whether it actually should be like in May of 25. And

school events in October. I mean, you've got homecoming. But May is hard, too.

No, I mean, I don't...

I would rather have another year to implement this than do it next year. That way we can run it through calendars and prepare for it. The other two are I think easier to achieve next year depending on our conversations with TrailNet about the open streets, but certainly the longest table is... The hardest thing is getting the the mix of people, right? And that's not a logistic issue. So I won't be involved. So I don't care. But we can rent tables and have them show up on the street Sunday night. And I can work with seven gables to get the buffet going. But this has a lot of more moving parts with the overlapping events or similar events and timing of different things. So

I'm just thinking this through quickly. Targeting something like October of 25?

Well, I mean, it could be May of 25.

It's

just May of 24 is impossible.

No, that's impossible.

Yeah, if three people stop what they do now and only work on that until May, which David may find complicated.

I mean, I hope we all would not want that to happen because we've established priorities for our staff to work on and we're not going to change. I mean, we don't want

to. That's cool. Selfishly, I'd love to have it happen while I'm still on the board, but if it can't plan it and I want it to be good, so.

Can I throw out one other thing? And I couldn't remember, I thought it was 50,000 that was budgeted. And the reason I asked the question earlier, I didn't think that the money was dedicated to events. I know that the Equity Commission has investigated and promoted having bilingual or multilingual signings, especially in the downtown area to find the courthouse, to find businesses, things like that. Is that something that could be looked at with the same budget for the same area?

Wayfinding that's out there now was done with SBD funds.

Yeah, that's a great point. Right. That's a priority that they've been recommending now. They care a lot about that. And it's the

money that has stopped them pursuing that further. So even as we replace signs and whether we can access this budget or not, that's kind of my question. And if people would want to do that.

What language were you thinking?

They weren't asking me. They actually said multilingual. There's

a way you can put your phone up to like a QR code depending on what language you want it.

While you're driving. Those are interesting ideas, yeah.

Well, I think the city does it in some areas. Yeah, we're not, we would not be the first to be doing this, but I know that they care a lot about that particular topic.

I mean, I think when we look at these events and we look at the goals of the fund and the event goals that we've established, I would advocate for open streets as soon as possible. It'd be amazing if we could get that so that we could leverage the community engagement for our master planning. I don't know whether the timing is realistic or not. And then looking at something bigger for when we have the capacity to plan for it.

You know, I think you know what my preference is, and if I misunderstood, I thought maybe you could do a cultural event in October. But maybe if you

can't,

then... No, but one other. Yeah. I mean, I could make just pros and cons. I could I could say the open streets would be a great way to celebrate the outcome of our bike and pedestrian plan when the construction is over on Maryland, and we can also celebrate our own bike lane. I mean, I could make that case that that would be a great to showcase and create impact around multimodal strategies and attributes that we've developed here in Clayton. but I understand that it could be good for gaining input for that plan too. It's just that we don't have our bike lane available to be part of it. So that's a little bit of a detriment in my mind, or sort of a missed opportunity. So...

Next, yeah. So this coming July...

I question the appropriateness of the use of funds for the longest table and like the cost per person impacted. I mean, I'm not necessarily opposed to an event like that happening, but it doesn't feel to me to be in line with what we're supposed to be doing with this fund and with these events. I mean, it wouldn't be accessible. It wouldn't be open to all. It'd be open to at most 50 people from Clayton or associated with Clayton. So it has a, like, it's a, I'm not saying it's not a good program, but I don't think it is a program that fits within this like scope.

Well, I think it certainly highlights certain event goals though. I understand what you mean about it because it will, because I immediately thought, wow, who's going to get to go to this? Like, well, I get to go to you know, so I mean,

we take up half the table if we didn't know we can't like,

I mean, I mean, it's certainly, I mean, there are various events do not accomplish all of our goals and it certainly accomplishes a couple of them. I mean, I would say, you know, like, you know, even like the lose home opener we're not you know there's that's not necessarily promoting diversity and I mean I'm just saying not every event is going to accomplish every goal so um I mean I do think it's a great event I I mean I would certainly be supportive of it and I think it certainly accomplishes goals that are stated here but I mean I understand the who would get to go part of it. It sounds like everyone supports

it. It's a source of funding for it. That

event could be done. It's

not a good event. I'm saying I don't think it aligns with these.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be full. It's not that hard to pull together. I mean, I know that there's public work scheduling and all that, but in terms of planning it, there aren't that many moving parts. And so if we don't want to put it in this budget, I would say that the most it could cost is whatever half of what Gary proposed. And I would, I would, I feel pretty sure that we could get some sponsorship, so it would be even less than that. But, you know, that's not a guarantee at the moment. So if we want to move it out of this budget, maybe I could ask if there's other places it could go?

It would be in this budget line. It would still be in the general fund under events. We just wouldn't use the funds that were transferred from the special business district board. We would just pay it purely out of the general fund.

so i don't i don't mind it it's just if it's in the way of maybe doing the open streets or the cultural event then i would really feel like that maybe maybe that shouldn't be in the way you know i mean it should be something that if we could handle doing figuring out how in the next year and a half we can figure in all three that's great but if one has to go i would probably it would be the long table probably just because i think it has less of our goals involved in it And it is somewhat restrictive in terms of participation. And that bothers me a little bit, so.

What I like about the open table is like a community equity commission. There's been a reach out to Kirkwood. There's been to reach out to Webster grows, to find out what other communities are doing. And part of why that's inviting is I think there's this sense that Clayton really doesn't care what anybody else do because we're the best. We don't need to talk to anybody else. And I think we've demonstrated by reaching out to these other cities that we do care about what other people are doing. And to that extent, especially since Florissant is not exactly what might come to mind as someone we would reach out to. I think it does definitely serve that goal of reaching out and making us more inviting because we do care about what people in Florissant think, just like we care about what Kirkwood or Webster Groves is doing about affordable housing. So it's certainly different than the cultural event, but I think it's very worthwhile. And it's also... Obviously, I think the easiest to pull off of any of these. So I think that's a good reason why we ought to pursue it.

And if the amount is not the $24,000, there's a smaller amount from this budget that probably does serve some of our goals. If it's a smaller expense, whatever budget it comes from, it sounds like a worthwhile event for all those reasons. And we should get it done. It does not. over tax our staff and we can put together a good event in our capacity. The question is just how would we fund it and when would it happen?

capacity-wise just looking at all this and looking at the calendar and how things might fall i mean open streets is probably something we could pull off maybe late spring um i would think it's it's not as intense as something like the cultural festival longest table um is again an easier one you know we've had october um listed here we don't really have events in october for the most part and then uh as far from a budget standpoint, you know, we would be in the next fiscal year, 25, and then we could budget that directly from the general fund to pick up that event at that time. But the cultural festival is obviously the monster here. And that's something we would need a lot of advanced planning for. So if we wanted to do that, you know, maybe spring and of 25 where open streets is slotted in spring of 24 to kind of replace that. Open streets makes a lot of sense in the late spring, just because of that livable communities master plan effort that's underway. And I think, you know, that's, that's the time to kind of strike with that one. If you do October with open streets, you're really too late into that process because they're going to be wrapping up at that point. So just looking at the timing, I think it makes the most sense if you were to pick, you It would be open streets in late spring, longest table in October, budgeted as fiscal year 25 through the general fund. And then we can have ongoing discussions about what that cultural festival might look like. And if we needed a budget for that, that would be an item in 25 as well. So just a thought.

Sounds like a plan.

If it all fits in that schedule, that'd

be great. We need to agree that or not, but we need to agree that we want to do the cultural festival. It's going to take that much advanced planning. We don't want to start planning it in a future time when we don't have time to plan it. So you need to start working on it. We would

need to start figuring that out internally so that when we get around to budget time, we have some idea of what that actually looks like. And we'll start

to agree that we want to focus on it, devote time to focus on it as well.

Yes. We're just going to have to fit that in with putting on the other two actual events and doing the marketing plan and everything else. So that's where from a staff standpoint, I need to sit down with Andrea who supervises communications and events and sit down with Gary. And we really need to take a look at what's our workload for the year. How's that going to filter out and see what we can get done

now just bring it up one more time I this does seem like an appropriate fund and I don't know what form I should be saying this thing because I didn't really thought through it that well um it would be an appropriate fund to help get some of the signage to to be yeah

I'm glad you thought about Susan

because it has and again I think that the city of St Louis and other places have already done it but um that would be a good move

but we're not taking signs down right

The most logical thing, obviously, is signs need to be replaced. We update them. Or I don't know if we do or not.

I mean, I feel like they haven't been up that long, right? The signs are downtown. I like the Q square idea.

The

wayfinding

signs?

Yeah.

They've been up for a while.

I don't think anyone's proposing taking any signs down. We're talking about, like, replacing or potentially replacing signs that are there with ones that are bilingual. I mean, it's...

That was before I was on the board.

1617, I think. I just want to remind everybody about these outdoor events too. So the money is spent by the day of the event, 98%. So when it rains and wipes it out, there is no rescheduling without spending, in this case, another $37,000. Why did you

remind us of that?

just because we're dealing with outside and, and the date we've been fairly lucky, but, uh, Gary brought up, um, Sarah and the art fair. And a couple of years ago, I think Friday night was wiped out. And I think that may have been the devise of the jazz festival when they did it or, um, The restaurant thing that they did in Shaw Park, I think the last year of that was a washout and that killed that.

October is

such a great month. Usually early October, it's usually fairly dry. Yeah, so that's a good pick there.

If it's all right, I'd like to take the next few weeks here to sit down with staff and try to figure this out and get it dialed in a little bit, and then we can come back to the board with a proposed schedule for things to see what we can do.

Can you tent the long table?

Yeah, we can tent the longest table, for sure. You can

tent that. Not for $24,000.

David, regarding the time that you're asking for, I'd like you to think about or include in your discussion whether this cultural event that we're talking about is the kind of thing that would be organized solely by us and then we'd have to come up with perhaps a different culture each year or each time we would do the event or Are there other organizations that would love to come to our streets and use them and organize it and put it on and we would help fund it? To me, that would be a whole lot less work on our part and easier to implement.

That's part of the conversation we want to have. So, you know, we just wanted to make sure before we again get too deep into that, that the board is okay with the concept generally. If we can find an outside party that could come in and utilize our setup and, and, put it on, that would be ideal. We just haven't had a chance to really explore that in depth. So that's what we need to talk about.

Yeah. I mean, we've had preliminary discussions to that effect and either you're in a situation where you are stealing an event from another location or Or a lot of these organizations, as Gary pointed out with Cultural Fest, are one-off, unique, nonprofit organizations. What their only purpose is is Festival of Nations or so forth. And the mayor had shared a... Hispanic organization with us too. And Gabby did reach out to them and they do one event a year and they do it at, in Soulard. So, I mean, I think that it's still worth exploring, but yeah, Like a few years ago when we were into barbecue events, we tried that also. And they're fairly specific and tied to the location. But that's not to say that there's not something out there that

looks like that. And you don't know this, but in my efforts to help out, I did talk to Sarah Umloff about this idea. And she did come up with a couple of names of people who do events like this. And they might be available online. So I haven't heard back from her as she was going to talk to them, but I can pass those names to you, which I haven't as yet. But I think there's still opportunity to look into that. And that was the original concept that we talked about was finding a turnkey festival, which doesn't really exist that we know of, but we continue to look. The International Institute that really uh helps guide the uh International Festival in Tower Grove um I think I don't know if we've talked to them in particular like somehow they would be a really great resource and helping to plan something like this having lots of connections and stuff all right that's that's what it is um are we done with this whole discussion Thank you, guys, for all your thoughts and input. Thank you, Gary. And then do we want to have a, yeah, thank you, Gary, and also pass on our thanks to Gabby and Kristen for their hard work. Thanks so much. Want to have a little roundtable? Okay, go ahead.

I'm going to go back four weeks now.

Okay, go four weeks.

We had a parks and rec meeting about, I guess, three weeks ago. And they mainly just talked in terms of their day camp apparently was an incredible success last summer. And they had the most campers ever. So I just thought I'd announce that. There's going to be some work going on, some roof work going on, on some of the facilities. and uh that will come up i guess soon um other than that uh nothing of importance at that um i did go i said to the jazz fest it was an amazing event um the music was simply amazing bach to the future was was really well performed and everybody was in it um and and all that uh And, and it was, it was great. It was really crowded. And I came away thinking, we need to reconfigure this so that more people can be, you know, can get around and see it and whatever. And then first thing I do is talk to David. And he says, Oh, yeah, no, we've already decided to move it. So So that was good to hear because it is an amazing event. The inclusivity at that event really meets our goals. I mean, it was just amazing. It was just very, very, I'll call it eclectic crowd. I mean, there was a lot of people, young, old, of all different colors. It was ethnic backgrounds. You could see it and it was really well done. So yeah. I'm really proud of us for doing that. It's a great event. Um, I also went to the blues home opener as David said, and you know, I, um, I thought I was going to be flipping hamburgers or hot dogs and it turns out they're food trucks. So I didn't have to. And I was very glad for that. And, uh, The lines were, you know, huge. And so this is an event that people obviously like. And they came to and there was a lot of people sitting at around tables who didn't know anybody, anyone else. And they had the table set up on the firehouse and people sit down and I saw conversations going on with people who didn't know each other. And I think it had some benefit in that respect as well. So, yeah. I think it was a good event. So there's that. I'm going to bring this up again because I brought it up once before. I'll bring it up again just to keep it up on the table here. The issue, we talked a little bit about doing something more of a better together thing about various things. The city doing things with other communities and what could we do with that? And I still think we should be looking at this issue of our dispatch system because I'm reading more and more about the city of St. Louis that has, again, a very failed system for its dispatch in terms of people calling, needing help, needing emergency services, and simply not getting them. And I don't read this as like, okay, we're Clayton. That's great. We don't have to worry about that because we do have to worry about If I'm in Forest Park and I'm running or I'm biking and I end up needing emergency services, I'm not sure I'll be all that happy knowing that I'm dealing with the city of St. Louis. And I think our citizens, our residents, I think we all have We are all doing things outside of Clayton. And to think that we're somehow immune from this very, very poor system. So my suggestion again is that we look into it. I've talked to David about this. David's in a unique position, I think, to actually help with this. And that is to bring in... bringing more and more communities, including the city of St. Louis, into a dispatch system that covers the entire area and is actually viable. So I'm just bringing that up again because I think it's a serious issue in our area.

this something the city managers could take on as a as a research project or

to some extent i mean we're all in different dispatch centers as it is so some are dispatched through the county some are dispatched for fire through central county and then you have all of these just like east central dispatch west central and smaller dispatches that are out there um so everybody is partially consolidated right now. The problem is those systems don't talk to one another. So to have a regionalized system would be a pretty big undertaking, but it's certainly a conversation we could start because I think there's just concerns generally with the systems not talking to each other. So we all rely on mutual aid and use cities on a different system than we are. So we can hear what's going on in Brentwood and Maplewood and Richmond Heights if they're on our same you know, radio channels to police, for instance. But when it comes to U City, something might come into our dispatch, our dispatch that they need mutual aid from them has to actually call over there or make contact another way. And then they have to dispatch and that all takes time. You know, it's not automatic. If you're in one system, they can just send whoever they need, you know, on the fly. And that doesn't necessarily happen in St. Louis County or St. Louis City because St. Louis City's system doesn't talk to anyone. So, you know, the way the city works right now is if somebody picks up and can dispatch somebody, that's great, but there is no failover, you know, to St. Louis County so I think that's where all of Berkowitz's concerns come from. I know it was well reported after they had the incident where the tree had fallen on the woman in a car that just couldn't get through to anyone to help. So that's where a lot of these conversations kind of started. And as people started looking at it, I mean, it is a very, very fragmented system. So it's certainly a conversation worth having, but it's a big one to undertake.

Long-term solution.

Absolutely. But it should be a regional priority because the system doesn't work as well as it should. And I'm not sure that people understand that there are all these different dispatch centers out there that don't necessarily seamlessly work together.

no no i understand that i did no question about it i'm bringing it up because you got to start somewhere yeah that's true you know so it's a matter of of getting enough interest in looking at it and and if we can add if we have excess capacity perhaps in our system i think david you said that might be possible in the near future uh that maybe we could help out with that i don't know but uh Yeah.

We just started a new CAD system computer, so it's our dispatch software essentially. So we're still working out some of the kinks with that. I've talked to the executive director already about this at East Central, so what that capacity looks like, really don't know. It's not a lot, especially if you're taking failover calls from St. Louis City, but if you could get this more regionalized where it's failing over to multiple dispatch centers, then maybe that's helpful. But As you said, it's a conversation starter. Thank

you. We had, I think, definitely the shortest playing commission meeting I've ever been involved in last week, so that was nice. We just had one really big addition on a house in Polo that was very well done. I want to do a shout out. Tony's not here, but I took Clara and a bunch of her friends to Party in the Patch, which is a Halloween event that we partner with Brentwood and it was just so well done. So, um, Tony did a great job. Staff did a great job, anybody that was involved, I'm sure event staff was involved and, um, it was just a really, really nice event. They did a great job are police officers and, uh, I mean, I know I saw Corporal Schwartz there. I think I was, you know, I saw people there. I think the chief might have been there too. But, you know, they're just talking to kids and playing games. So it was just a really nice event for the young families in our community. But again, you could see, I mean, there were people, clearly people there from Brentwood. And I mean, it was, yeah, it was very nice event. Um, I had a lot of fun on the homecoming in the homecoming parade. It was fun to finally be able to do that after five years. So that was great. And I did not realize that Alderman Rick Hummell's daughter was like one of the most loved, like she was like an intern or she was a teaching assistant at Merrimack. And I was like, I can't believe that's your daughter. And it did never occur to me that Miss Rick Hummell is your daughter. So it was funny we realized that at the parade because she was standing on the side and yeah, so it was exciting. Gary and I had the Davis Place meeting last night, and it was nice. It was great. David and the mayor were there, Chief was there. So it was... David, thank you for always being there. Chief, thank you for being there. I would have liked to have had it be better attended. But it's a tough

you. We had, I think, definitely the shortest playing commission meeting I've ever been involved in last week, so that was nice. We just had one really big addition on a house in Polo that was very well done. I want to do a shout out. Tony's not here, but I took Clara and a bunch of her friends to Party in the Patch, which is a Halloween event that we partner with Brentwood and it was just so well done. So, um, Tony did a great job. Staff did a great job, anybody that was involved, I'm sure event staff was involved and, um, it was just a really, really nice event. They did a great job are police officers and, uh, I mean, I know I saw Corporal Schwartz there. I think I was, you know, I saw people there. I think the chief might have been there too. But, you know, they're just talking to kids and playing games. So it was just a really nice event for the young families in our community. But again, you could see, I mean, there were people, clearly people there from Brentwood. And I mean, it was, yeah, it was very nice event. Um, I had a lot of fun on the homecoming in the homecoming parade. It was fun to finally be able to do that after five years. So that was great. And I did not realize that Alderman Hummel's daughter was like one of the most loved, like she was like an intern or she was a teaching assistant at Merrimack. And I was like, I can't believe that's your daughter. And it did never occur to me that Miss Hummel is your daughter. So it was funny we realized that at the parade because she was standing on the side and yeah, so it was exciting. Gary and I had the Davis Place meeting last night, and it was nice. It was great. David and the mayor were there, Chief was there. So it was... David, thank you for always being there. Chief, thank you for being there. I would have liked to have had it be better attended. But it's a tough

night.

There were still lots of questions. It's just for a neighborhood that's so involved and it's always surprising to me that it it's not better. I mean, it was, it's been in June the last couple of years and there's not very many more people that come in June. So so that was a little disappointing, but still nice that people were there at all, I guess. So The last thing was there was a steering committee meeting for the comprehensive plan today. It was one of the more exciting meetings. I mean, I enjoyed the discussion because they were talking about different land use parcels like Calaris, the eastern area, like of Centene, all the vacant area by Centene, and then kind of looking at all the office space, like the class three office space that's along Forest Park Parkway, kind of an off a bottom, you know, just talking about what could go there. Um, so that was, you know, a good discussion. They'll kind of take our comments and then come back to us about some proposals. Um, But I also wanted to just remind everybody that there's ward-specific meetings at the Center of Clayton. So if you have an email list that goes out to your Ward 1 people and your Ward 2 people, if you could remind them of that, that would be great. Ward 1 is November 30th. Ward 2 is November 13th. Ward 3 is this upcoming Monday. I guess they tried to schedule the meeting in Ward 1, but we're not really getting any sort of communication back like in terms of like or having a space I don't know if they were going to have it at Wash U or Concordia but they had trouble scheduling it so that's why it's at the center of Clayton because there were just some comments about um you know just making sure it's as easy and as available to people um so so we'll see if that happens but Um, but I think too, just so that we're all still, if you have a contact list of people in your ward, like encourage them to go to these meetings and be involved in the survey and stuff like that. Cause I think we're getting, we're getting comments back, but still not as much as we would like.

Okay. Uh, first I join in one, I would support prioritizing. trying to get some dispatch coordination. That would be great. I know it's a huge undertaking in coordinating people, but it's got to happen someday if the area is such a mess and it's a real problem. Then we had a sustainability meeting, which I've already mentioned with the Clayton tomorrow presentation. Some of the highlights were again, the transportation accessibility and why people walk between spots or drive toward the shortest distances. And we have to look at that and the connectivity throughout the city. Somebody suggested starting walking carpools like tour schools and things like that, which was a term I hadn't heard before. There's also discussion that for that plan, sustainability isn't defined. You know, are we talking about a sustainable city that lasts forever? Are we talking about environment? What are we talking about? And so there was some discussion on that. The discussion also then went to we need a city point person. If you look at organizations, like I think when Deb was talking about St. Louis, didn't she say four people working on helping the benchmarking of the city buildings. So thinking about that, food waste is one of the biggest issues that we have. I was surprised it didn't come up in the presentation. Either one of the things that came up for a bunch of the people around the table was that residents try to get solar paneling and you either have tile roofs or you have too much shade because we want our tree canopy. And that was another topic that we keep wanting to expand. So there are those challenges there looking for somebody who can address those issues Communication is key, teaching people what we already have, bringing back information on bringing native plantings. And what else was there? There was discussion on moving Clayton toward the fleet vehicles to electric. And let's see. With the communications, one thing that would be powerful is continue to feature people who are doing doing things well. We can't ban certain things under Missouri law, but we can certainly give shout outs to the people who are doing Green Dining Alliance or something like that. Personally, I know that I go to Al's Why Down Cleaners because, I don't know, seven years ago, I saw an article probably in the Clayton publication that as far as dry cleaning goes, they're environmentally responsible and you can get your own green garment bag. see there was discussion too about talking with different businesses and have them share what they do for sustainability made me kind of think of the equity commission and bringing together businesses and what they're doing on the equity front and that type of coordination around the city then jean ponzi came and talked about biodiversity and showed us a native plant ordinance that she supports talking with david we have a lot of that already in our ordinances but we have that plan to look at as well I was also contacted then by a woman who has started a sustainability organization in Olivet, and immediately I think they've got several hundred people already on their email. And once again, I have such appreciation for our community and for our government and staff because it's so hard to get the attention of anything that even that big of a citizen group who have gone to meetings together, they don't have – We have wonderful mechanisms to be heard and to be listened to and get the work done behind it, the research and things like that, to make things a reality and to make them really effective. And every time I meet with somebody outside of Clayton, it's that, whoa, we really have wonderful people that we work with, and that's great. What else did I do? We went to the Best of Clayton that the Chamber put on. Gary and Becky were there that I saw. Maybe other people were as well, and a lot of our staff were there. And again, not just with kids, but watching our staff mix so well with everybody and be so gracious and warm is another thing that really is wonderful that we have. One thing I learned is that we do have a meeting space here in June. When we look at things, we met to the woman who's running Serendipity, I think it's called, meeting rooms up to 40 people. And then the last thing I'm going to mention is that something else I'm really impressed with, and June, you've done this really well, is we don't have plastic bottles around here. We have these cups. I think when we do catering, there's an awareness of sustainable packaging. When I was with the school board for many, many years, we eventually got to the point by the time that I'd left that the elementary schools and why down did not have any more plastic bottles. And in the administrative buildings, everything was with cups and dispensers and things like that. And that was pretty much the standard practice. But by when we went back to our joint meeting, we were all given a plastic bottle when we sat down, not only is that it does that. I think it's important, not only because, um, of the impact of those individual bottles, but we're the leaders, especially in the school district. It was the kids are watching us. What are we teaching them as they grow? And so, you know, again, thank you that we don't have things here if we need to get it into a policy or something. So it carries on beyond the people in this room. That would be great, but we're doing it well now. And I really do appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thanks. I'll just report two things from the Equity Commission, the bilingual signage recommendation was referenced so we'll see what if or what I don't know precisely how that might come to us. And then we have a new faith-based community rep, Sarah Rugenstone, from the gathering. So she was able to join the group. So that's all I've got.

Gary?

Vesta Clayton, I think, actually was a nice location, easier to get to, and lots of parking. So that was a good event. Davis place for me, the biggest thing about the meeting last night was I discovered having been gone for two weeks at the school district had installed a very large pole light right by the back of the school. Cause I was asking earlier in the day, one of the trustees how we were going to have a meeting at six 30 when it's dark at six 30, but the light was quite adequate thanks to the school district. So, and we did have some interesting questions. Nobody asked about trash. So I thought that was a positive thing. And we do have an upcoming, Bridget and I and the Chief and David, although I think there's some conflicts, we are meeting with the Polo subdivision on November 2nd. And after a long summer hiatus, Bridget andI are going to reinstitute the Ward 3 coffees at Starbucks on November 11th. So that's my news.

I generally get to say ditto to all the things that have already been said. And in that regard, I attended the Best of Clayton event as well. So I would just echo your comments. The homecoming parade, I would note that, as Gary noted to us, that you can't predict the weather. And so it dropped about 10 degrees and started raining and became a hazard for some of our fellow aldermen. Hopefully, Ira isn't still impaired. The Jazz Fest. I thought maybe Paul had a picture of it. I wasn't sure. Yeah, I would echo Ira's comments regarding the Jazz Fest. I think that is a particularly great event, not so much necessarily for the music, which is great, but for bringing a very different crowd to Clayton and supporting Clayton businesses that were involved in it. So I just thought it was very well done. We have a CCF executive committee meeting tomorrow, so no news till after that. Um, regarding Clayton tomorrow, our trustee and our subdivision, um, put on his email out right away the same day. So I was getting multiple communications. So I think that is working. Um, and then, um, Becky and I will be meeting with Anna and David tomorrow to continue the conversation about the WashU Concordia situation. Becky and I have had additional meetings with some of our citizens, and that is top of mind. And everybody has a solution that will not adversely affect them but adversely affect some other neighbor. And so how we get around that, I'm not sure, but that's what I have.

That's great. Thank you. I don't have much. A lot of what I've been doing has already been mentioned too. I would like to say, uh, I did enjoy coming to the Davis place event. So thank you for including me. Um, and, uh, to let you know that the landscape task force group is trying desperately to move on to, uh, commemorate the Osage, um, nation, the Osage people as they spend time living here way before any of the rest of us. And I finally made contact. It's been terribly hard and I found out why. So I went to a commemoration of the Osage in Tower Grove Park and they have a what's the right word? A monument isn't really the right word but they've done a whole thing that includes a stream, a running stream and different symbolic little sculptures and different plantings and all this stuff. So the woman from the Osage Nation, one of the women came and gave a lecture about what they had. And it was really, really, really neat. i i don't expect us to ever do anything quite that extensive but um they're interested in working with us and that'll be good the reason why they've been so hard to just get a hold of is because they've been all about um killers of the flower moon that movie i don't know if you realize it but it is this true story of what happened when the osage uh discovered oil on their reservation in Oklahoma and what ensued after that which is very horrible but they've been working with the people on the movie and then they've been working about the movie and they've been doing all these movie events and they just haven't been available for anything and so I think I was glad to realize that they just didn't like us anymore or something but yeah so anyway it was very interesting and really cool and you should go to Tower Grove and see it if you can um also i know that a number of us have been getting emails about the unhoused and clayton and i just want to let you know there are just a number of things exploratory things trying to be more educated about what can be done uh in the works that i know that chief does on his own but also that we're participating in we've got a meeting coming up with uh um catholic charities and just different things that we're exploring so i will respond to those emails with a sort of a more comprehensive note so that um if we can i can say these things that we are trying to explore and we're not there yet but essentially but we're we're working hard on it and lots of other communities as i've mentioned before are working hard on this too City of St. Louis has got a consultant in that they're working trying to solve their issue and hopefully that'll be extrapolated to the county but I mean there's a lot going on it's just that's not visible because a lot of learning yet to do so I'll be I'll reach out on that

yeah. Shell can you share that with all of us so that we know on the same page and again kudos to the city and to chief because every time this has come up any responses I've seen have been very humane, very respectful of everybody involved.

Good. Okay. Anything else from your end? Okay. All right. Can I have a motion to adjourn? Someone? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Have a good night all.