September 24, 2024 — Meeting Transcript

You're now. All righty. So we'll start with our roll call.

Jeff should be here shortly. I

don't know why. I just thought he came in, but he did not. That was you. Never mind. We'll wait. Hi, guys in the back. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Given the late hour, we'll just go ahead and get going. He'll arrive at some point. Go ahead and call the roll, please.

Alderman McAndrew? Here. Alderman Buse? Alderman Patel? Alderman Gary Feder?

Alderman McAndrew? Here. Alderman Buse? Alderman Patel? Alderman Fader?

Here.

Aldeman Rick Hummell?

Aldeman Hummel?

Here.

Aldman Yorg? Mayor Harris? Here. City Manager David Gipson?

Aldman Yorg? Mayor Harris? Here. City Manager Gibson?

Here.

City Attorney O'Keefe? Alderman Yorg?

Here. Nicely done.

Alrighty, now's the time on our agenda for public requests and petitions. So if there's anybody in our audience or on our Zoom audience that has a question or comment about something that's not on our agenda tonight, now's a good time to say your piece. We'll move into our unfinished business portion of our agenda. The first item here is setting the tax rate for our property tax levies for fiscal 2025 budget, and this is our second reading. We went over this at the prior meeting, and now we will do the final and second reading. Mr. City Manager.

Yes, Mayor, that's correct. We held the public hearing for public input at the last meeting, which was held on September 10th, 2024. Since then, we did receive updated assessed value information from the county assessor. Now that the Board of Equalization process is complete, we've updated the calculations accordingly. On the residential side, our assessed values for new construction increased slightly. The assessed values went up a little bit as well on the residential side. On the commercial side, the assessed values actually decreased a little bit and the commercial new construction remained the same. So if you recall at the last meeting we mentioned these numbers could shift a little bit. They have. We updated the tables that were contained in the packet and you'll see that those Changes are really pretty minor. They're typically out to the hundredth of a cent there. So not massive changes. The levies have been revised again to reflect the new values. So it's all contained in the tables and in the ordinance. And so we would need a motion this evening to amend Bill 7040 to 7040.1 as it's shown in the packet. And with that, we recommend approval.

Very good. I'll open discussion from any questions, comments from the audience. Any discussion among the board?

All right. Alderman McAndrew. I'll move to amend bill number 7040 by the text of bill number 7040.1 as provided for in the board packet.

Second.

Any discussion? Okay. All those in favor?

Aye.

The opposed? I'll introduce Bill No. 7040.1, an ordinance setting the tax year 2024 property tax levies for the fiscal year 2025 budget to be read for the second time by title only.

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

Bill number 7040.1, second reading and consideration for adoption, an ordinance levying and establishing the rate of annual taxes for general municipal purposes, police building debt service, general obligation debt service, and special business district purposes to be collected by the city of Clayton, Missouri for the year 2024.

Alderman McAndrew? Aye. Alderman Gary Feder?

Alderman McAndrew? Aye. Alderman Fader?

Aye.

Aldeman Rick Hummell? Aye. Aldman Jeffery Yorg? Aye. Mayor Harris? Aye. Thank you.

Aldeman Hummel? Aye. Aldman York? Aye. Mayor Harris? Aye. Thank you.

Okay, next up is our 2025 budget. The second reading of that, Mr. City Manager.

Yes. So in August, we went over the proposed fiscal year 2025 budget in a work session. We then held the public hearing for the budget at the last Board of Aldermen meeting, which was held on September 10th, 2024. There have been no changes since that last discussion. Everything contained in the packet is current as far as the budget's concerned. Staff recommends the Board of Aldermens approve the fiscal year 2025 operating and capital improvements budget.

very good thank you um any discussion from either the audience or a board all

right alderman mccandu i'll introduce bill number 7041 an ordinance briefing the fiscal year 2025 operating and capital improvement budget to be read for the second time by title only

second

any discussion

City Attorney.

Bill number 7041, second reading and consideration for adoption. An ordinance adopting an annual budget for fiscal year 2025, commencing on October 1, 2024, and appropriating funds pursuant thereto.

Alderman McAndrew? Aye. Alderman Gary Feder?

Alderman McAndrew? Aye. Alderman Fader?

Aye.

Aldeman Rick Hummell?

Aldeman Hummel?

Aye.

Aldman Jeffery Yorg? Aye. Mayor Harris? Aye. Thank you.

Aldman York? Aye. Mayor Harris? Aye. Thank you.

Okay, I will now open the public hearing for 176 Carondelet Boulevard Rooster and request proof of publication. This is for the conditional use permit.

Yes, this is an exciting one. This is a public hearing for consideration of an application for a conditional use permit for Rooster to allow for the operation of a 6,266 square foot restaurant. The subject property is located on the south side of Carondelet Plaza just east of South Hanley Road. Rooster will be open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The restaurant concept is a full service sit down restaurant serving a variety of breakfast, brunch and lunch options. The restaurant will have 140 indoor seats and no outdoor dining is proposed at this time. There is parking that's provided there on site and in adjacent garages. They'll use the existing recycling and garbage pickup associated with the building, but they did mention during the plan commission meeting that they are already members of the Green Dining Alliance and plan to continue operating in conformance with those requirements. The Plan Commission considered the request at its meeting on September 16, 2024, and voted unanimously to recommend approval to the Board of Aldermen. Staff recommends that the conditional use permit for the operation of Rooster, located at 176 Carondelet Plaza, be approved.

Okay, great. I will close the public hearing, but open for discussion among the board or audience. Any questions? Are you Craig? Oh, you're the, you're the owner. So is it, is the, do you want to come up to the, so you're Dave Bailey and you own rooster and Bailey's or is there, is there a restaurant called Bailey's?

There's Bailey's chocolate bar. That's our first restaurant over in Lafayette square. That's having its 20th anniversary this year. And we have a handful of other restaurants around the city as well.

Yeah. That's, it's impressive. Okay. Um, I peeked in the windows and I saw what you are painting on the walls. It is so amazing and beautiful. Thank you. I'll

pass it along to the

artist. Yeah, I mean, really, it's really striking. And we have waited a long time for this particular unit to be full again. And so we're thrilled. When, when are you planning to open? I probably said it here, but I can't

remember. Our goal is October 15th. We've actually already hired a few dozen employees. And so we'll, we're moving forward with final punch list and everything else like that. So once we have our final inspections for building and everything else like we'll start all the finishing touches inside.

Wonderful.

We're almost there.

Any questions or comments?

Can I just, I guess I have this vague recollection that rooster at this location was approved a way ways back. Is that not, or maybe I've just heard about rooster going there for a couple of years. We

did our initial building permit a couple of years back, but we, we didn't start construction right away. And we, we did finally, finally settle on a contractor and, basically the past winter and then started in on all the construction. It was a, uh, a pretty big job. And we're very excited

to have you at that location. Thank you. Yeah. I just want to say as somebody who's going to be working in that building in about a month and a half, I appreciate that it's open. So I have someplace to go for lunch. So that is a mistake house and, and breakfast. Yes. And we'll even bring it up to your office if you need us. Don't tempt me on this one, but that's possible.

Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Alderman McAndrew.

I move to approve resolution number 2024-16 granting a conditional use permit for 176 Garandale Boulevard doing business as Rooster Restaurant.

Second.

Any discussion? All right. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Okay. Very good. You got it. You're welcome. You're welcome

We'll see you around soon. Thank you.

We'll see you at the restaurant. Next on our agenda is the consent agenda. And does anybody have anything within that that they wanted to talk about? Anything with the minutes? Okay. So Alderman McAndrew.

I will move to approve the consent agenda. Second.

Oh, second. I'm sorry. I'm new at this. Any

discussion? Okay. Ms. City Clerk. Alderman McAndrew? Aye. Alderman Gary Feder.

discussion? Okay. Ms. City Clerk. Alderman McAndrew? Aye. Alderman Fader.

Aye.

Alderman Rick Hummell.

Alderman Hummel.

Aye.

Aldeman Jeffery Yorg. Aye. Mayor Harris. Aye. Thank you. All

Aldeman York. Aye. Mayor Harris. Aye. Thank you. All

right. The city manager's report is next, and I think the thing within that is a report from our city municipal judge. Is that right, David? That's the thing there. Yeah. So please come on up and tell us all about what you've been doing.

Good evening, everybody. Thank you for allowing me to talk with you. Please interrupt me with any questions that you have. I do want to talk about sort of my court philosophy, my application of my philosophy and then also to talk about some of the historical numbers of what I've seen over the course of the year. Let me talk first about my philosophy. My philosophy is that the court should show compassion and empathy while at the same time having expectations of compliance. Many of the people that we see in the municipal courts, this is the first time they've ever been in a court. And so I think it's important that they leave if possible with a good impression of what happened. I look at my job here in Clayton as not just someone that is responsible for dispensing justice, but also sort of as a PR. And what I mean by that is we're the county seat. We have a lot of people coming through here. We have a And I think it's important that we give people a good impression. And what I've been told for the last year is that we are the standard of what the other cities should be doing. And that has all been positive comments. Some of the historical information, which some of you may find interesting, maybe not interesting. I had... Some numbers run comparing the previous year with my year and just a few things that I'd like to go over real, real quickly. In terms of the open cases, they have gone up. They've gone from approximately 1,325 traffic violations in the previous year to approximately 1,753 traffic violations. That really has nothing to do with what I'm doing but that's with our wonderful law enforcement. The non-traffic tickets have gone, citations have gone from 224 to about 284. We had over the course of the last year, we actually had four trials. We had a large housing case involving the JP Fields building and then we had one traffic and two non-traffics. In terms of the guilty pleas, alcohol-related, the prior year was 13 and this past year went up to 26. The traffics were approximately the same. They were between 630 in the prior year and 663. The non-traffics, though, were pretty significant change from 30 in the prior year to 97. The dismissals by the court, the prior year was 223 and this year was 558, which is a significant difference. And I will explain to you in my philosophy section. And then the total disposition of cases, not a lot of difference there, probably statistically the same. In terms of bench warrants, yes. Issued was approximately the same. The prior year was about 898. This past year, it's been 827. Those that have been withdrawn, prior year was 339. This year, it was nearly 900. Again, I'll talk a little bit about that. The outstanding bench warrants, though, are about the same. They're right around between 1,200 and 1,300. As you all know, the court is the non-housing court is two nights a week. We changed it to four o'clock from six o'clock to try to enhance participation. I don't know if that has changed. We still tend to get approximately 10 to 15% of the docket that's actually showing up. And then we, of course, have housing court one day a month, which is also the day that we do trials when there are trials. We are offering for those... who plead guilty. We are offering community service to a lot of people and we've given out, I don't know what the numbers are, but we've given out community service on many cases. Typically, the Supreme Court wants us to consider $15 an hour. So if somebody has, let's say, an $85 fine, they'll have community service somewhere between five and six hours. they can select where they want to do their community service. We also have payment plans that we do for people if they need it, and we're very flexible there. Talk a little bit about bench warrants because I know that's been a hot topic over the course of the past few years. When I started approximately 14 months ago, there were 1,500 outstanding bench warrants, and I went through 1,500 files. That took a little bit of time. Approximately 50% of them were recalled because they involved either no tags or no insurance, and I'll talk for a little bit about that. It also, though, going through those files allowed me an opportunity to pull out about 30 to 40 very serious violations. And serious, of course, in the municipal court is assault in the fourth degree or resisting arrest or DUIs. Because those were sort of in the bench world, they were just sitting there. And so we were able to pull them out and give new court dates with the hope that we can have some kind of appearance and disposition on those cases. You know, my getting to my philosophy that I keep mentioning my philosophy is people that do not have tags or insurance. Typically, not always but typically it's for financial reasons. And I'm less than comfortable of issuing bench warrants for people that simply cannot pay the money to have their insurance or their tags. Now that has been my philosophy. It turns out that the state has come up with something a little bit broader than that, that will go into effect on January 1st. And the judges are still trying to get some understanding from the judicial, from the legislatures of how this will be applied. The new law, if you haven't heard it, is that for any municipal traffic violations, there will be no more bench warrants in the state of Missouri. They will be the judge's discretion will be to issue a default judgment with a monetary fine. And so we're trying to get some understanding of how that's going to apply. But it looks like bench warrants for traffic violations is going to come to an end in the state of Missouri. The other issue on bench warrants that I want to just touch on is that typically when someone is pulled over in the city and they have an outstanding bench warrant, they are simply by the officers given a new court date. However, if their charge is either assault in the fourth degree, domestic assault, a DUI, resisting arrest. I note on those at the time that I'm being asked on what to do, I note those as a no recog, which means no recognizance, which means that the police actually take them into custody and I sign a warrant for their arrest and I set the bail for them. And those are charges that I think are serious enough that they should not just be out with a new court date. Another change that I have made, something that I've seen is with a lot of our defendants that are represented by attorneys, the attorneys just simply continue to ask for continuances. And it looks like that's something that they have received for a long time in this city. The concern that I have with that is there's usually a reason for that. And usually the reason is the hope that the officers that are involved will be retired, no longer here, no longer available. So I'm very careful about continuances in cases where there are attorneys representing the defendants. We had one amnesty day a few months ago. It gave everybody notice that had outstanding charges to come to court and to reach a plea and to hopefully get this wiped off their record. And We've had a court monitor. We have Siobhan Harris-Holyfield, who has been with our court and watched it and had wonderful things to say about it. We also had a gentleman by the name of Will Waller, who you may know, who was actually on the selection committee when I was asked to become the judge. He sat through as well, and we had comments afterwards, and he was very happy with the way things were proceeding. So any questions that you all have about the court?

Go ahead, Gary. John, you know, from prior discussion, I find as aldermen, we tend to get, if we get questions about the court system, it's usually not actually about the traffic side. It's more about the housing side. And sometimes residents frustrations with situations involving existing properties that are not well maintained or variations of that. And the difficulty I think you have in the housing court being able to very effectively enforce housing code violations, because what I understand are limits that are imposed on the court without getting into any specifics. I wonder if you could generally talk about where you think we could improve our housing code enforcement

well it's it's tough because you know you're you're hamstrung by by the uh by the state um and so you know there's only so much you can do monetarily when it comes to and and so much i can do monetarily with finding I think the department does a fantastic job of being on top of things. But as you know, and everybody here probably knows, there have been a few buildings here in the city of Clayton that have been a real headache. And we have at least one right now in the downtown area that is an enormous headache for the city that we're dealing with. And that, of course, is the 7-Up building. In terms of changes, I know that there is one neighbor that has at least talked with Ms. Crane and perhaps you and Bridget as well about sort of a change on what you can do from an ordinance standpoint on residential property. And so you're aware of that one. It's unfortunate when you have to talk about making changes because of one particular person or one landowner. But I think it's very important to me, as you personally know with some things that have happened, to be on top of these. Because as you are correct, I mean, these do affect people. They affect their property. And it's very upsetting to these people when they come home and they see these... these buildings and these homes that look like a mess. Yeah. Um, so I'm doing what I can to be on top of it. What, you know, in terms of what you all can do, I think you do have the one discussion to have regarding maybe a modification of the ordinance. Um, and I'm not sure what else can be done because of the financial limits. Unfortunately, sometimes it's difficult to get people to do something without, you know, a, a, a financial penalty. And, you know, we're limited on that. Obviously, I say obviously, you may not know this, but, you know, if somebody doesn't fix whatever it is over a course of three different times, you know, then it gives the prosecutor a chance to go to the county court and do something more. And I think it's incumbent upon the court, it's incumbent upon me to stay on top of it and make sure that that is being done.

Thank

you.

I've got a question, Judge. I'm not sure that I want to get a clarification. I understood regarding tags and insurance, your philosophy, especially regarding bench warrants. But what I wasn't clear on was are the people that are in violation, are those cases simply being dismissed or are they being fined? Or is there some other way that we're getting enforcement?

Yeah, so I probably wasn't clear in terms of the bench warrants. The bench warrants obviously is for one person and one person only. That's the person that doesn't show up to court, okay? I want compliance. So if somebody shows up, they don't have their tags, they were cited for not having their tags, they Were cited for not having a driver's license. They will continue to come back to me until they show me that they have done one of those. Those cases are not being dismissed until they're showing compliance.

Okay, thank you. And then my other question was just to broaden, I guess, Gary's question, which is, my impression is from your report that from your perspective, the court system seems to be working well. From the monitor's perspective, it seems to be working. Well, what about the other players in the process, whether it's enforcement or other forms of ordinance that we have? Is there something that needs to be addressed?

Well, I think that you all have addressed it as well as the Supreme Court allows you to address it. I mean, that's the problem is that the fine system is quite limited. So in terms of the ordinances, certainly you have the one ongoing issue with a piece of property that's not being built on. But I can't think of a way that you all can sort of modify or come up with a new ordinance that's going to fix these problems. The good thing is, is that they are few and far between. I mean, our housing court now sometimes has only got a few things on the docket. Sometimes those are time consuming, but there's really only a few things on a docket. The compliance there in terms of the people showing up is usually pretty good. Our inspection people are very good. They keep on top of this stuff. So I personally at this point can't come up with what you guys can change to make things better.

Thank you.

Jeff, anything from you?

Yeah, just a question. If I heard you right, you mentioned that there's still a large amount of people that don't show up. Yes. So how does... How does the court and how do you sort of kind of handle that? I think you almost said it was probably 85% of the folks don't actually show up, if I heard you right. Chuck, what happens? Like, how do you handle that piece?

Well, for those who are not showing up for tags or insurance, you know, it really does depend on, you know, how many appearances did they miss? It's a combination of how many they missed and what are they charged with, okay? If somebody is charged with, you know, five miles an hour over the speed limit and they haven't shown up once or twice, they may get another opportunity to show up and they get notification from the court. If somebody was going 30 miles an hour over speed limit and didn't show up the first time or the second time, they're getting a bench warrant. Now that's going to possibly change January 1st. And maybe that's going to be good. I don't know. but it may be a default. So I look at the charge, I look at how many times they didn't show up, and then the decision is made on the bench warrants. When I have court, usually it's the next day, perhaps two days later, I have a stack on my desk this big and I got to make a decision what's going to happen with them. It's either a bench warrant or not a bench warrant. Other than that, there's nothing more that the court can do. And how

many of those, again, 85% folks eventually show up?

We really don't have that data. And we don't have a way of keeping track of that data. I mean, unfortunately, what we see a lot of times, I'll get somebody that'll show up on a night and there'll be six failure to appears on the jacket. And I'll say, oh, where have you been? And I didn't know it was going to the wrong address. I was applying for a job or a car or a house and I found out about it. I mean, there's a variety of reasons why.

And on the community service, the only question I have is on the community service piece. And this is just me for learning. It's like who if they can do community service wherever. Yeah. Who is tracking that?

So they have to come back. So the way it is, is I issue the order five hours, 10 hours, whatever it is. They can pick whatever place they want to do it. I tell them you can do a church, you can do animals, you can do kids, you can. any place where it's a not-for-profit, where you can do the community service. They're also told that at the end of it, we have to have a letter with the letterhead of the institution and the signature, and that has to come back to us, at which point we will note that they've done and completed their community service.

Is that a pretty standard way that courts track that? Yes. Okay, thank you.

Judge, I just want to mostly say thank you for coming. We've in my six years on the board, we've never done this. So I appreciate you coming in. And I think it's great. I mean, rightfully so as a board, we don't have a lot of interaction with the court. So I think it's really great that you've come here and just given us an overview and certainly a summary of your first year. I really appreciate it. And I also appreciate your comments about the housing issues. As Gary mentioned, it's something we hear a lot of, especially in the downtown. So But mostly, I just want to thank you for coming and talking with us.

Absolutely. Happy to do it. Anytime. As I've said to the mayor and all of you, if there's ever any questions, please reach out.

Very good. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Oh. Oh, absolutely. Okay. Very nice. Yeah. Of course. Okay. Next on the agenda is another CUP. It's a CUP transfer for Seeds Restaurant, Mr. City Manager.

Yes, Mayor, this is a request to consider an application for a conditional use permit transfer and an amendment submitted by SEEDS. So the new owner of SEEDS Cafe and SEEDS Provisions is requesting transfer of the existing CUP. The existing restaurant measures approximately 800 square feet, and SEEDS provisions, which is the other element here, measures 325 square feet. The existing CUP allows for the operation of a restaurant between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. Again, they have 23 seats in that 800-square-foot space currently, and there aren't really changes to the cafe operation being applied for here. The reason this is triggered to go to the board, the transfer, is because of this expansion for seats provisions. That's described as a coffee shop and provides 10 seats within that space. And the employees will actually be shared between the two and they may eventually rebrand the seeds provision component. The restaurant's located outside of downtown Clayton, therefore parking is required. They do have enough parking that they've obtained there within the neighborhood in order to support the business. So staff does not have any concerns with that. Again, this is considered a major amendment to the CUP because of this expansion. But we do require or we do recommend approval of the CUP transfer and then that subsequent expansion.

Good. Thank you. I'll open the discussion. Anything from our audience? or our board any questions okay nothing from ward one okay oh i just have one

and it's just reading through the memo david it sounds like the original cup they had four parking spots but the building doesn't have parking like is that one is that a big deal it doesn't sound like it is but do we have an idea why did the parking spots go away or did they never have them any idea

I'll defer to Ana here for the specifics on their parking.

Sure. So the current owner of Seeds who's requesting the transfer doesn't know what happened to the parking spaces. According to the landlord, they were never provided for Seeds and they've been operating the same way without those parking spaces for many years. So we don't have any record of large complaints or other issues related specifically to this person. Thanks.

All right, very good. All right, Alderman McAndrew.

I'll move to approve the Conditional Use Permit and Amendment for Seeds Restaurant located at 6344 and 6350 South Roseberry Avenue.

Second.

Okay, any discussion? All right, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, very good. Last on the list, last but not least, presentation from Gary Carter. on Dia de los Muertos, Clayton.

Good evening, Gary Carter, Director of Economic Development, City of Clayton. I do have Alyssa Bender with Hispanic Festival Inc. on the way. She had a commitment downtown at St. Louis City Hall. So she may walk in while we're talking here and I'll let her go into more detail about her organization. But to refresh everyone's memory, we had a conversation about a cultural event during the event presentation and also during the budget presentations. Myself and the mayor had been working with another organization before. that we thought was gonna be able to partner with us and get this across the finish line. Unfortunately, they were not. Mayor through some other connections found the Hispanic Festival Organization and I reached out to him and talked about the discussions we had with the previous organization and they were very enthusiastic about helping us reach this goal here Just to remind everyone real briefly of the event goals that we updated, I think November of last year, if I remember correctly. You know, we were to develop civic pride, promote diversity, spotlight our local businesses and business districts, encourage activity and accessibility, and celebrate vibrancy in downtown Clayton. So keeping those goals in mind. Like I said, we reached out to Hispanic Festival Incorporated. They have been working with the History Museum, other municipalities throughout the city to promote the Hispanic culture, both as a continuance of the culture and education of that purpose. There are volunteers. Their board does meet here in Clayton regularly. Barry Wehmiller offers their boardroom in their old building for them each month, so they are here on a regular basis. And like I said, they do the Greater St. Louis Hispanic Festival. They do a Day of the Dead And they work in, I believe it is Ferguson also to do a event similar to what we're talking about tonight. The event is the Day of the Dead, which is celebrating those family members that have passed in the Hispanic culture. So the event that we are proposing is Saturday, October 26th from 4 to 8 p.m. We would be doing that at our temporary new event location on North Brentwood that has worked out so well for music and wine and weather permitting this Saturday for the Jazz Festival. They do plan to set up a community altar, a pet altar, have live music dancers arts and crafts local artisans and food vendors um at this event i have no idea what has happened to this uh this presentation, but all these scrambled numbers total up to $13,500 for the event that the city would be responsible for. And that includes all those items I just talked about, plus the overtime for our staff, restrooms and some other logistic items that we have involved with just promoting or putting on events on the street in Clayton. in the budget that's on its way to approval or was just approved, we had originally budgeted $20,000. So we are well under that budget amount there. And what we are seeking tonight is everyone's acceptance of this so we may proceed to get this started to marketing and let our partners at Hispanic festivals know that we're on board and ready to go. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. That seems pretty quick is that I mean, do they feel like they can get everything together? They're

confident and We had a few more minutes, she'd show up and probably say the same thing, but they have been there. You know, I don't want to say anything disparaging of the first group that we were working, but this group here is fully engaged, and we text back and forth and call back and forth all the time, and she's more than confident that even though it is October 26, I think is what the date was that they're fully capable of executing on that. They have vendors and artisans and entertainers that they work with on a regular basis. So it's not, you know, like when Kristen and I put an event together, we're going through third parties and pulling things together. This is more of a direct contact. So they are able to rather pivot on a dime.

Yeah. So the, I mean, cause I think what we've talked about before is that, you know, it's a lot for staff to plan these events. So you feel like they would really do pretty much all the planning. I mean, of course we would put it out on our. Yeah. I

mean, we'll be on site either myself or Kristen will be on site the day of the event. We will do the ordering of the restaurants and the power and stuff like that. But to have a partner that brings the expertise to do the community altar and the pedal i mean i can't even paint a bedroom so you know leaving that kind of stuff up to us might not be a great idea but to have a partner like this that already has the connections to the vendors and the artisans and the dancers is really makes this type of of i don't want to say easy but much easier than say like a jazz or a wine and music

And I see that, you know, we do have music, the live band will be there. You know, I think we've talked about that often events are successful because there's alcohol there. Do they plan to have

I have a partner in this planning process that made sure that happened.

Okay. It seems to be an important component of what makes our

festivals.

I just wasn't sure if there would be... Yeah,

we talked to them and they will either be working with one of their usual vendors or we've reached out to, I don't want to say food trucks, but liquor trucks for lack of a better term to have on standby. Yeah. That will be a part of it, although it will be very family-oriented also. Okay, great.

So in addition to attracting people from Clayton, I'm just curious, does this organization anticipate the Hispanic population in St. Louis that they would come to this event?

Yeah, we kind of glanced over their goals and their mission, but that is certainly different. part of their mission is to attract, you know, a Hispanic population also, but also to educate those outside of that culture too. Well, I was going to say,

I mean, I feel positive about it in the sense that it deals with our desire to be inclusive and sort of suggest to people that, you know, we welcome people not just in the business day, but we welcome other communities to come to Clayton and My other comment, and I know nothing about marketing so I probably shouldn't even go there but it concerns me a little bit that for what I guess ought to be a family friendly event to be successful. The theme, you know, the day of the dead and, and rather frightening looking and I realized I've seen this. holiday celebrated. These are traditional sort of masks, but I would just suggest, I think we would have to be very careful with their help to sort of emphasize that it's family friendly because I have at least some grandkids who the thought of a pet altar would actually be kind of a turn off instead of a turn on. So I just think we need to be careful that Given the theme and given some of the accoutrements that are associated with it, that we make it as family-friendly as possible so that people will be anxious to take their family to the event and not be concerned about some of the themes.

Yeah, I think they've already probably thought about that. Well, I certainly had that conversation with them. But just to talk about children in this day of the dead, Disney made a movie about it. So I'm sure it's possible to put the proper – filter on it

yeah and just i'll just throw out there that I found this group, through the history museum and they are doing the same event. With the history museum and there are other vendors, a lot of other vendors involved because. My understanding from the history museum is this event is their biggest event of the year and they've been doing it for a number of years, and so I feel like it's sort of vetted in that way. And again, I think kids are a huge part of this, especially given you know kids familiarity with this holiday. is pretty strong. Disney, if it wasn't already, Disney did it for us. So I think there haven't been, as far as I, and I've asked, there haven't been any issues in that regard with what they've been doing historically at the History Museum. Yeah. Oh, there she is.

And I would just say like on that vein, I mean, I think the Day of the Festival is talked about frequently in our elementary schools. So it would be great, you know, Andrea, I know you're online, but it'd be great, Andrea, if Because maybe you're our, or maybe do we have a new communications person yet? Not yet. So yeah, I think it'd be great to reach out to the schools and have it be published because it is certainly a day that is talked about in for sure the elementary schools.

Would you like to come up and introduce yourself, please?

Hello, I'm Elisa Bender. I am a director with the Hispanic Festival, Inc. And thank you for having me here today.

So we're just kind of, Gary has run through the program. We're just kind of discussing the various aspects of it. And yeah, so maybe I don't know if we

can. No, I was unclear. Maybe you can give us some perspective on this. Is this particular event that we're discussing here replacing one that was somewhere else or in addition to? What's the history and how does this fit in with any other similar festival?

Oh, no, this is an addition to this is something that we're partnering with the city of Clayton to do. We do other Dia de los Muertos events like with the Missouri History Museum. But I mean, to me, more Hispanic events, the better. So and actually that particular weekend, there's nothing going on. That's a Hispanic type event. So this would just be complement all the different events happening around town.

Okay. So this is, but you've done this before. Is this a new location for you then? Or you're doing this in more than one location at the same time?

Well, we're doing a Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead festival at the Missouri History Museum the weekend after. But it's a whole all-day Saturday, all-day Sunday event where it's inside, outside in a museum. I think we have 20 altars, dances all day, music all day. It's a big two-day event. This will be just an evening, four or five hours. To me, it's almost just kind of like a sample of what that big event would be. But like I said, it's an addition. It's not replacing anything. It's just another event that's happening.

Okay. And forgive my ignorance, please. So we're not having it on the actual day or is there an actual day? Because you said it's celebrated on different weekends.

Okay. So like Christmas is December 25th. Dia de los Muertos, the official day, you could say it's November 1st or 2nd. First, they honor children who passed away. On the second, it's everyone else. We do our events on the weekends and it just happens to be November 2nd and 3rd for Missouri History Museum. And actually there's a second huge event coming up that exact same day, November 2nd. But just like having, let's say a Halloween party, you're not going to actually have it all at the 31st. You're going to have it near there when everyone can come. And this is what that will be. It'll be, let's say like a week before.

Got it. Thank you.

Yeah. Anything else? Yeah.

Yeah. Gary, just a question. And I forget what date it is, although I should know with my kids. Like when is the Halloween event in Shell Park this year?

That is a good question. great question and I looks like it's always a Friday someone is scanning the internet right now for that I

think the bigger question is just the question really is like how does this layer into that given in both events if you want to bring families I was just thinking clearly they're not going to compete on the same night I just wasn't sure if they were like a Friday Saturday or with two different weekends or kind of how that played out party in the patch will be October 18th this year there you go okay The other question is, it's a marketing question, is I like all the ideas we've talked about, but is there a need, desire, ability to take some of the, I guess, budgetary savings from what we'd budgeted to what the cost is to put it towards additional marketing, right? To attract more people and make it a little bit more public than trying to send it through schools or send it to the city of you. Yeah. We all want to make it successful, and I'm just wondering whether there's some additional marketing dollars that we could put in, which isn't in the budget at all at the moment.

Well, we have a healthy contingency for a project of this size. Okay. For that very reason, Jeff, is because we weren't... Listen, I haven't spoken that much about the marketing process or what it should look like, but we have staff that's been doing that for other events, and You know, unfortunately, you know, the big ticket items that we used to spend marketing dollars on TV and radio aren't as effective as Instagram and Facebook, which comes with a lower dollar. So I'm comfortable with the amount of money that this event is requesting tonight that would, in addition to cover marketing

okay

also without an additional step

and that makes sense if it's texting contingency i just didn't see it there and i wanted to make sure

i don't like again i don't know what happened to the slide it was formatted at one time okay

thank you

and elisa i'm thank you very much for coming tonight i really appreciate it because i think your enthusiasm just shows And thank you for taking this on. But I'm just wondering, and I think the answer is yes, but you have obviously a network of followers, people that follow your events and follow you. And I'm hoping that you are able to augment our marketing efforts by pushing out that you guys are doing this to your followers. And that I think we've discovered that that's a very key ingredient to a successful event. And Clayton is having a partner that has their own following too.

Exactly. I think one area we will focus more on is anything in Spanish or those who are more bilingual will definitely take the lead on that. But yes, we have a huge following. I don't know if any of you went to the Greater St. Louis Hispanic Festival. We just had it this past weekend. I mean, we had like 50, 60,000 people and most of our marketing is social media. social media and then i think we bought two billboards and that was the extent of it so and right we do have a following where i mean anything and everything we do people show up to i mean they are and i appreciate that city of clayton is wanting to do something um but i think the community in general greater st louis i think they're thirsty for more cultural hispanic events no

Yeah, that was a big when we did our planning effort, the community really wants to see more cultural events in Clayton. So we're so glad.

um any other questions or comments here i think we're just very excited about this um can't wait and uh you know i know you and gary will be coordinating um with let us know let me know anything else i can do maybe gary would say you've done enough but uh anyway uh anyway thank you again so much yeah yeah okay very good i assume everybody is good with this okay Thank you. Enjoy the rest of your evening. Thank you. Oh, I know. I wanted to say that you recently had a Hispanic Heritage Day, right? And you had raised the heritage flag here in Clayton. I wasn't able to show up. I'm sorry.

No, I appreciate you. But you

did it downtown and you did it here.

Yes. Yeah, we spearheaded the Hispanic Heritage Flag creation effort last year. They put it up last year and then this year. Last week it went up Seems like across the street at St. Louis County and the city did it same day last week. And then looks like I don't know if you've ever been to Illinois, Fairmont City. They call it Little Mexico right across the river. They're putting it up next week, too. So another city, Kansas City's got it up already, too, and different places, but more locally. Yeah. Thank you.

Very good. All right. Terrific. Thank you. Okay, I think that- Mayor, I

think you've got a comment.

Sorry, I did not see you waving your hand. Yeah, come on

up.

Do you have questions for Alisa and Gary? Okay, okay. Kind of, yes, kind of.

I think they're fairly straightforward. Is this going to happen basically the booths or whatever it's going to be between Maryland and Forsyth on North Brentwood?

Yes.

OK. And are you going to have all sorts of booths or not all sorts, but are you going to places there for people to come and look at things and perhaps buy from you all and have this be something that people really want to come to? Because I want to see this. And unfortunately, I'm not going to be in town. But OK. Look at the pictures. Yeah. I want to know also. I know you're somewhat aware of this, but we're talking traffic and parking there. So that's, you know, I'm hoping that we're going to have the same kind of turnout, certainly not the same scope of turnout, but a great turnout that brings people into Shaw Park as well as to see what we have going on in Clayton for the Hispanic community. So I'm excited about this and I just want to know. Great, thank you. Oh

yeah, absolutely. Appreciate the questions. Okay, very good. Okay, now I think we're done. So enjoy the rest of your evening. Thank you once again. Okay, that concludes our business for tonight. We can go around, start with our round table. We're starting with Alderman McAndrew.

Sure. I guess it's been a busy couple weeks. We had a five and a half hour plan commission meeting a couple, or was that just one week? So obviously a lot of that was related to the Concordia WashU project. In addition, Concordia presented their plans for their new buildings. Nothing was voted on. It was all very informational with, I would think, the expectation. I think Concordia will come back will they be i don't know they're coming back in two weeks with more specific like architectural plans or um so i would expect that there might be more um or voting that would actually occur um the meetings not this monday but in a week related to that there was um a very full room, including overflow in the conference room downstairs. So I'm not sure we could have fit more people in here. But I'm happy to talk to anybody that has questions about that or is curious about anything that might have transpired. In addition... I'm

sorry to interrupt. So since we had an overflow situation, I mean, I don't know if we would expect to have that same... I would expect that, yes. Okay. And so should we consider a different location for the meeting is my question.

I don't know. I mean, I think people, at least in the overflow, I mean, maybe I would even defer to Ana if she has, you know, I wasn't around. I know, you know, during the centene process, I think there was some meetings were had in like the high

school auditorium.

The reason we chose not to is because the high school isn't set up to run it via Zoom. So we also had a significant number of people who attended the meeting on Zoom and this is set up to accomplish that. And so that was really our main decision. If we go to the high school and coordinate with the school district, then it would only be available to in-person people. Yeah. Okay.

And I would just weigh in. I removed myself from the chambers and went to the other room just to make sure more residents had a chance to be here. And so in some ways, it did feel just like you were on Zoom, just in another room at City Hall. But I think it was Hobie probably or somebody like that. Try to make sure that you had an opportunity to ask questions. And so it was handled well. Most of the people in the room, though, were... um, participants, WashU people and, uh, what have you, as opposed to other citizens. So most citizens actually got to be, um, here. I would add,

we also had, we also had probably 15 to 20 people that were there for another item that was on that agenda. So a large portion of the room was there for another project as well.

Yeah. That's a good point. Cause we also had the one, the 139 North beat. So, okay. That is true.

Yep.

Okay. And I also had a steering committee meeting with the school related to their long-range facilities master plan, and I look forward to those. It's nice to hear about what's going on in the school district. Rick and I also had a special CRSWC meeting where it was just basically related to approving the contract for lifeguards. And... I guess that's

it. We had the Hanley House Festival last Thursday, and I was preceded by a very nice CCF event at the new house that the Rosenblooms have on Westmoreland, a beautiful new house. Very nice. There's very little business conducted, but it was a very nice social event. And then I think we had a record-setting Ward 3 coffee at Starbucks. Liz is one of our regulars, and so I think we may have set a new attendance record. So those continue to, I think, be very productive.

I think there were almost, I mean, there were for sure 25 people there. There might have been hundreds.

Please, let us know what you think you offered. Please don't ever give up on

me. That's it for me. Thank

you. So I attended the plan commission meeting as well. But unlike the members of the plan commission, I got to go home and then watch more of it on zoom. So I appreciate your service. That was a long night. We had a white owned terrace association picnic and there'll be another one in June. High Point DeMunn coming up here shortly. So this is the time of year where those events are coming. So the opportunity to get out and meet with the citizens, the constituents and visit with them is always appreciated. Ward one will be having a coffee on October the 5th And so we targeted that so that it was after one plan commission, but before another and before the board meeting so that we could make sure we facilitate any questions regarding the overlay districts. And then we'll also have an opportunity. One of the things we're contemplating and we're having a meeting here shortly may have to do with some traffic safety issues on DeMond. and some ideas on how to address that. So we are actually having this coffee where we're going to be providing coffee, which we typically had at a place that doesn't have coffees. We're gonna have it at Loeber Hall on the Concordia campus. So they were gracious enough to give us a room there, so.

Good idea.

Yeah. I don't have a lot. I mean, we had the war to coffee, which we had less folks than the 25, but it was a, it was a good group. We had at Oaknell park talked about some beautification efforts talked about, as you'd imagine some of the overlay district and again, kind of the helping people to understand what's, what's what we're trying to accomplish. I think some folks are still even with, with everything that we feel like we've been in it all the, all the time. I think there's a lot of, residents who were just now kind of come up to speed to a lot of what's going on so um a little bit of that you know i i've had some other just meetings with constituents that either called me or i've called them to have similar conversations one-on-one and one-on-two with some of the the south more neighbors some of the brentmore park neighbors that you know are all kind of tangential but are going to be affected directly and direct with it trying to understand kind of what they're thinking and kind of factor that into kind of what we're what what the city generally has been thinking about so i expect those to continue to happen in the next couple weeks so um yeah we'll see how those go so

thank you that's good all right um i i don't have much to talk about so um i will just say i've had some similar things as jeff is experiencing with with various people all over town and trying to No affirm that this overlay is a good thing and talk through it patiently listening to being open to their concerns had a couple ribbon cuttings and mostly. Just had some out of town company that occupied me an entire week, so I think we're we're good. All right, anything else from anybody. Very good. Thank you all. I think that concludes our meeting. David and Andrea, enjoy your last few days at ICMA.

Thank you very much.

Oh, we're going to have a motion. Don't go away yet. Okay, motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Good night. Good

night, everybody.