February 25, 2025 — Meeting Transcript

Good evening. Just a little background on this. We were approached last, not too long ago about potentially hosting this event by the producers and I'll let them step up and introduce themselves but this is our first exposure to this and I'm going to step to the side and let them do the presentation and I'll follow up if you have any questions.

So thank you. Thank you all very much for having us here. And my name is Chuck Justice, and I'm the co-producer, co-director of Taste of St. Louis. And this is Kyle Vogt.

Kyle Vogt, co-diretor, Taste of St.

So I also operate a business that is around special events called Green to Go Rental Power. And both of both of our businesses provide services to the city of Clayton for the events that you all produce. So if it's okay, I would like to explain maybe the first reason that might be everyone wondering why we're here. And Kyle and I have operated this festival now since 2019. And it has been a... good experience for us. And while both of us work in the event industry, that doesn't really set you up to be an event producer. It's sort of like you might sell medical supplies, but that doesn't make you a doctor. And so we have learned a lot through, especially through the 2020 timeframe, trying to maintain a business that's operating a public festival through some really tough times. So Kyle and myself have learned a lot and we have sort of overcome a lot of issues, you know, financial issues and things like that. So, but what that has allowed us to do is continue to produce the event. So ballpark village has been a great supporter, a great sponsor. They have helped us out tremendously. What ballpark village can't do for us is let us expand it cannot let us sell sponsorships that are beyond what the venue has already got in place so for us to continue to expand the festival to do more with the festival. For example, when I say do more with the festival, that doesn't mean Kyle and myself make more money. It means Kyle and I don't need to take a paycheck from the festival, but we also don't want to write a check to keep the festival going. While it's probably St. Louis' greatest food event, for us to write checks for tens of thousands of dollars to keep it going is very difficult. So we have to look for new and expanded opportunities. Being that Kyle and myself are vendors for you and your events here in the city of Clayton, to be honest, this was a little bit born out of my attendance of St. Louis Art Fair last year. And I'm just... kind of literally standing on the street, looking at the people and just watching everything go on. And it just came to me like, why isn't Taste of St. Louis here? And Clayton has become, on the national scene, a contender as it relates to art festivals. So for us to land a culinary experience like Taste of St. in your city is, I don't think it's out of the question. So today we've had a lot of attention from the media And I think some of it may be centered around, well, do you feel like the city of St. Louis is maybe unsafe? Is it a place that you shouldn't be? And I'm just going to address that head on because that would not be the case. We have had no security issues in the city of St Louis. I think we might have had a tub of ice cream stolen one time. But short of that, I mean, there was no significant security issues at all. So the reasoning for pulling the event from the city of St. Louis and trying to move it to a different location has nothing really to do with security. I think that also speaks to the event itself, though, is it's a culmination of cultures, different food tastes, different sort of ethnic choices. People can... come to taste St. Louis and try food from all over the world. And we all love good food. So it's not controversial. This is something that we as a community can get around. So that's one reason. We like to think that That's one reason why we haven't had any security issues with the event. Obviously, planning is a big part of that, and we take that serious. So that's why we've requested that. I mean, the city of Clayton Police knows this space better than anyone. So if it relates to security, we're leaning on the city of Claydon Police to sort of help us navigate those waters. St. Louis Art Fair is a great, great event. And it's safe and it's secure. And it's because of the police here and the work they've done. One of the things that we have requested in here or that we have had talks about was using maybe the public works department to help us with street closures and things like that. I believe we could, if it's okay with you, I'm not sure who that decision falls under. But if it's OK, we can even hire an outside contractor to do that. There's multiple companies that we've used in the past to do that kind of work for us. So I don't feel like it's something that's a it's not a showstopper for us. And I think we're open to again, this is your neighborhood. This is your you all live and work here. We want to make sure that we're. we're running a responsible event in your area. Also, Kyle and I would like to continue to be a contractor for you. So, and I feel like doing a good job on our own festival means a lot, you know, in terms of continuing to do work here in the city of Clayton.

We provided you

think maybe even... Yeah, sorry, I wasn't trying to speak over you. Oh, you're fine. And maybe in the interest of time, if you have questions that are not in the presentation material, or if you, better yet, if you do have questions that are in the presentation material. I can also answer those too. I'm not... There's a lot here. There's 20-something pages of marketing goodness in front of you, so I don't want to take up a lot of your time because in our 30th year, this isn't a new thing. You all have heard of Taste of St. Louis. You're familiar with what the concept is and we're about what we want to do. You hold festivals here, and you understand that. I think what we're here today is to maybe – answer any of those questions that wouldn't be in this material. Or again, if they are in the material, because you may not have had a chance to go through it, happy to answer those.

And I would even extend that to any other businesses. So if someone has maybe a store, a bookstore or just a jewelry store or something like that, and they want to participate in the event, I think we would be... we would completely be open to, you know, offering that discount to them. Our agreement with Ballpark Village is that kind of a similar thing today. Really, Salt and Smoke, I think, is the only one that really takes advantage of it and participates in our event. But if, you know, Oceano Bistro happens to be one of the restaurants that has participated in our event where we were talking about blocking his – You know, we had a street closure right there in front of him. And I was fully expecting to hear about that from him. But when I spoke to him yesterday, it sounds very positive. So it was, I'm glad to hear that. And again, I think we're looking to one of the things I left you a Q&A thing that's you maybe haven't had a chance to look at. That's the kind of the Not quite the marketing piece. It's more of just a Word document. But one of the things that I think we are willing to do is even create an advisory board, you know, from businesses here in the city of Clayton that are affected by maybe street closures and things and hear them out. And Amir from Oceano Bistro, he and I had a good conversation yesterday, and he had some great suggestions and all things that, you know, it was like, Those are fantastic. I want to implement those things. And so I think Kyle and I would tell you, we don't have all the best ideas, you know, so we're humble enough to know that we don't know what we don't know, right? In that we would look to, you know, the folks here in Clayton to make, you know, again, while I know where the electric goes for St. Louis Art Fair, I may not know what's best for Oceana Bistro.

Okay. That's at Ballpark Village. So it's been... bigger, you know, and sometimes. So there's a heavy residential population here, which we don't have in the city of St. Louis. So we kind of think that, you know, that might help, you know, is what we knew. We know that would help because there is one apartment complex there at Bush Stadium that kind of overlooks the ballpark. And we hear from them all the time. They're like, can you do this again next weekend? We're like, no. Right. So, you know, so it's great that, you know, there's lots of folks that live right here and they can just come and enjoy the event. They don't have to park and, you know, it's a benefit to them.

Well, I think that's a little bit me leaning into my St. Louis Art Fair experience. So I've provided the electricity for St. Louis Art fair for probably the last 15 years with various companies.

And I jokingly told her I would love to pass this event on to cultural festivals in the future. And Kyle and I could go back to our real job.

No, they're super. We love working with them.

Could I work with Mike at your city public works with the best way to do that? Matt. Oh, Matt.

Yeah, that's exactly right. So I think the way we would proceed here is if the Board of Aldermen was interested in seeing this event come to Clayton, uh then we would have further discussions with with taste of st louis to go over more of those details uh you know we do have concerns on the on the public works side with the number of weekends that our staff actually comes in and works these events i mean overtime is great everybody loves it for a while but when you have an event going on and we do through the warm months big events that are downtown the events in the parks um we're demanding a lot of our staff and this is another three-day event that would take place on a weekend. So, you know, and it's not like we can just trade, hey, you can have weekdays off and then come in and work the weekend. Instead, we've got all the regular work that needs to happen with our public works crews during the week. So it is a burden on our staff. So In a situation like this, we're looking primarily at road closures and things. As you said, there's traffic control contractors out there that could be helpful in that situation. But anything we do, even with a third party that might come in and assist with that, we want to make sure that we coordinate that with our public works department. So that would be Mike Leidy, our street superintendent, and Matt Malek, our director of public works. And so again, if the board wants to proceed with something like this or wants to explore it further, then we would put together some sort of agreement that sets out very clear expectations both for the festival and for the city, and everybody knows what their parts would be. And then where the city may have some personnel coming into work, just like we will have a police presence there. We will have some overtime, I would think, within the police department that we have the mechanisms in place to get a reimbursement from TASA St. Louis for any of those hours that we're paying for. So yeah, there would be more that would need to be laid out, but we'd be happy to do that. This is something the board wants to entertain.

Mike Leidy is actually, if you see on the page that has the layout, Mike Leidy is the one that suggested the kind of cut the corners, you know, instead of blocking off the whole thing is being able to just, it'd be a slight restriction, but on the weekends, it's not as such, you know, it's not such a problem. So, but that was actually from Mike Leidy's and I have a great working relationship with them as well.

Yeah, thanks very much. And I appreciate the conversation that just happened because obviously how it works with the city, with our staff and then also neighborhoods, residents and the businesses and then including our restaurants as well as helping them promote is really critical for this to be a success. And it seems in your experience with Clayton, knowing Clayton and everything else brings a lot of comfort that this is the way this will go forward. One area that I if it's in here i missed it is um one of our through lines is versus the welcome which obviously this is welcoming people to clayton that's great and another one is sustainability and i don't know what your practices are with respect to sustainability with the restaurants all coming in and you know walking biking things like that

40 restaurants making food mess is that kind of what you're that as well yeah it's a thing yeah i agree with you um our first year we had a recycling program and composting program. And, um, then COVID came and we struggled and it has been hard to get back to a composting program. Um, St. Louis art fair, I think did it this year, I think was the first time I've seen them put together sort of a recycling and, you know, uh, composting program. We would love to be there. I think that that's something that we want to do again. Um, So as a contractor of the city of Clayton, one of the things I did when I took over the electrical for St. Louis Art Fair is I reduced the dependence on diesel fuel and switched to a light carbon fuel. And so that's important to me. That's my business. That's the work I'm in. The company's called Green To Go Rental Power. I'm looking for ways to make things use less of things. And so I'm with you on that. I believe that that's important. I believe here in the city of Clayton, we can get that funded. It's such an expense to do that I think we could find a partner to do that with. We were really limited at Ballpark Village because the trash removal and things really fell on them. They took care of that. So the answer to that is yes, we want to do that.

Okay. In addition to that, and with the composting and recycling, it is amazing how much people need direction. If you go to St. Louis city soccer game, they've got people there or the boy Scouts or somebody kind of helping with that. In addition, um, the bike, you know, bike ability and walkability mentioned the neighborhoods there. And also with the art fair, people will bike in, uh, and do typically provide a way you work with us in providing, um, parking spots for bikes that are secured and things like that. And the other thing that Clayton has, uh, we've made a lot of progress on is limiting plastic and certainly styrofoam with our vendors. So something, and I know this is a big event and I'm just bringing this up now, but is that something that you could work with us on working with vendors to not have

plastic? Sorry, I didn't mean to speak over you. Go ahead. No, what I, in 2019, again, I kind of leaned back to that. That was, we did mandate that the restaurants are using compostable serving trays and compostable silverware, plasticware. not really plastic, whatever it is. That's easy to do. Those are things that I think are really easy to do. So even if these items end up in a landfill, let's say that is an item that is going to degrade over a period of time, unlike styrofoam. So I'm with you on that. That is one of my pet peeves and something that I want to get back to as well. Again, this sort of provides the ability for us to revisit those things. It feels like a... opportunity to sell sponsorships around that you know it's like again for the last three or four years at ballpark village we haven't had the opportunity and it's like we're in survival mode you know i mean it's what it's felt like but kyle and i have managed to pull the thing out of the nosedive you know and managed to to start to come back up again so i'm i'm with you on that i would we

could work with as it all comes together yes

yeah absolutely sorry that's a really long answer to your question oh

that's very helpful i appreciate that i'm with you yeah yeah

Great, thanks. I think the only question I have is probably actually more for David. So David, understanding we think that appetite for overtime within our public work staff would not be sufficient to support the event and you could work out some sort of agreement for that for other folks to come in and do that work. And I'm curious about like how if we do that for any other events or what kind of potential like issues or risks could come up for that.

We don't currently do that for any of the other events, but we are at that point now where I think we're really maxed, especially to take on a full weekend again. Again, we're getting to the point where our staff is incredibly taxed, just trying to find time for them to take off. during the summer months starts to get difficult, and then backfilling that with overtime. So yeah, I mean, we're at the point where if we were to take this on, I think we'd have to look at a contracted third party. I think as long as we're involved in that initial setup, it would have to take place on a Friday as well. We would get a look at how that was actually executed while we have staff here. And so ultimately, I don't think it would be a huge issue. I know that there are specific services in some of those events that's contracted out to a third party, but full-on street closures and things, we typically do a lot of that ourselves, unless Gary has some

Yeah, it was a pretty obscure event a few years ago, but we had a car show here in town where we came across – we started to develop this issue of too much overtime because of the staff size and worked with Matt and Mike. And they basically oversaw a third party come in and do the street closures. So – We don't have a tremendous amount of experience, but we do have a template for that where they review the timing and the placement and the materials used and then sign off on that. And that's what's implemented by the event. So we have one case. It was a rather small event, but we have done that in the past.

Yeah. Thank you. I just would want to make sure because of this, I know people like to have events. I would love to see Taste of St. Louis have a 30th year if it's been going around. So I think it's a good idea. I'm recognizing that even... If it isn't our staff, it will be like it represents us. Right. Even though we're not running it and people will associate potentially negative things that happen or like service experience with the city. So wanting to make sure that we do what we can to protect that. A

way to supervise, even if we had one person here over the weekend, you know, that's much easier to do than to have six or eight that are here throughout the entirety of the event. So I think we can we can figure that out.

And then what about when it comes to safety? Would police officers or firefighters be willing to be providing overtime, or would you view some kind of... private staff doing

that. We're probably looking at some sort of mix with this one, but we're definitely going to want our own police to be present to some extent.

Yeah. I had conversations with the chief as we were developing up until this evening. So it would still be principal security would still be provided by Clayton police department. Okay. In discussion with what the possibilities might be, they will use private security for checkpoints and entry points, but onsite security, um we've had discussions with the police chief that it will probably always be clayton police department

okay great yeah just kind of for similar reasons and then with those um folks who are not, who are like identified as security, but not Clayton police officers, like would they be armed or not armed? No, it's more of like what we call a t-shirt security.

It's like light bag checks, things like that is kind of typically in the event world. That's sort of how we would handle something like that. So yeah, t-shirt security, if that's a, so they're identifiable, but they have a phone and they can call a police officer if there's a problem.

Absolutely. Okay. Thank you.

I would be very enthusiastic about our proceeding with this, I think. The art fair has always been my favorite weekend of the year in Clayton. And I think it's really a great opportunity for us to bring in an event like this that's got a proven track record. We've tried to create some events on our own because our citizenry would like to see us do that. And so that's some of them have had mixed results, but you've got a great track record. I think the emphasis on food, it's a winner. the fact that you have an interest in sort of the ethnic cultures and all that does is part of our desire to attract people from the city of St. Louis, from all of the various surrounding areas, which I'm sure it will. So I would certainly hope we would see you here. And I'm encouraged as well to hear that Sarah Omlaw from the Art Fair is enthusiastic. I think there might theoretically have been some concern that the events are too close together, but I think they're very different and I think both of them will be successful. So I certainly would strongly encourage you all to be here in August.

Thank you for that. And one thing I want to say with Sarah is we had some discussion, Sarah and I sort of talk all year long about just different aspects of their event. And she said, would you mind a little promotion of St. Louis Art Fair at Taste of St. Louis? And we would welcome that. And yes, we would do it because it makes sense, but also because Sarah's a friend. So thank you.

That's all. Thanks.

Great. Thank you. A couple of quick questions. I would echo Gary's comments. I'm excited about the opportunity because it seems consistent with our desire for more vibrant downtown. I am wondering, though, how you might try to staff the various vendors here. Is this meant to be a more regional approach, meaning not only just St. Louis and Clayton, but throughout the Metro East and St. Charles County or Given that you might have more space here, just wondering what your thoughts are about how you would, what kind of restaurants you'd attract.

So I can speak to that. So the restaurants come from everywhere and it's all over the St. Louis area. We have allowed a few chains, but if the chains are locally owned. So for example, a Ruth's Chris who had a presence here in Clayton would have been one that had some amazing little sliders or something they were selling at the time. But as far as regular, like merchandise vendors too we've had merchandise vendors from new Haven, Missouri, if you're familiar with, you know, way, way out and you know, deep Franklin County. So we do attract people from all over. We are, we do try to be picky. I don't, Like a lot of these vendors that are selling the weirdo disposable like neon things to kids. I think it's trashy. And then they leave it on the ground. It's just more stuff to pick up. So we try to limit some of that. But yes, we try to keep and also interesting and thoughtful things. that are related to our mission, you know, of good food and different kinds of food to try. You know, is it something at Taste of St. Louis that folks may not try, you know, food from certain cultures that they're there to try? You know, and it's, so yes, the answer is we're very intentional about making a, you know, unique experience.

So my understanding from your materials is that at least once, maybe more than once, you held the event somewhere else, maybe Chesterfield or something like that. Is there anything that you learned from that experience that is moving it to a different location that would somehow impact us here in Clayton that you've learned from that you either wouldn't do or make sure you do differently the next time?

So the previous ownership of the festival is who had moved it to the city of Chesterfield. And at the time, Chesterfield was, if you're familiar with that location where they had it, where their amphitheater's at, they were trying to develop that and trying to draw quite a bit of attention to that particular area. Well, what has happened is then overlay that with a lot of residential that was built up over the years. And It was, I think the answer to the question is it's a, it's a better benefit that the residential is here now. Because when they found when the residential came in later and they saw this, you know, all of a sudden 50,000 people showing up over the course of a weekend it caused some real issues there. So, I feel like we have it in the right order and Clayton, you know, is there is residential here. It's already established. You already have one of the best art fairs in the country here. They're familiar with it. They know the Monday morning, the stuff's going to be off the streets and you can drive anywhere you want. And so if anything, I think we're learning that, that having the correct venue is important. Ballpark Village has been fine. It's been a safe play for Kyle and myself. There's parking there. People are familiar with it. When you say Ballpark Village, you really don't have to give any other direction. Everybody knows where that's at. So this will require a little bit more education for our customer. But again, I think that's easily done. I think through social medias and We do have quite a social media presence. One of the things that I think is most impressive about this festival is you all get a lot of email, right? And when you get the email or when the Taste of St. Louis email list gets the very first email for the year to say, hey, here's the date and here's the location, 70% open it. That's unheard of opening rate. The regular rates like five percent, if even that. So that just tells me people are looking. They want to know they want to know when the event is, where it is. So that'll give us an opportunity to to sort of zone in on here's where you can park. You know, here's here's how you get to Clayton bike. You know, the biking suggestion that you had made, I think, is a good thing. We haven't had that opportunity at Ballpark Village. You know, it's just bikes is probably not a thing that was going on there. But that is a good suggestion. I like bikes.

I've got a few, Gary. These might be more directed to you. Just a couple of quick questions. So based on what you've learned about this event, would you anticipate the crowd size to be comparable to the art fair, bigger or smaller?

Oh, no, this will be... They're projecting 50,000 over the three days, and I think Art Fair states a number of 150,000. Okay. But in a much smaller footprint than Art Fair also. And I attend

both of those events, and I would say Art Fair is quite a bit bigger.

OK, and then I'm assuming our process would be to bring this back again at some point. And so when we assuming we do that, it would be helpful to me if we could go through some kind of a survey of our downtown businesses, not only the restaurants, which I would think would like this because it would bring a lot of business, but just the impact it might have on other businesses. Are we getting to the point where we're having too many events or not just to get some constructive feedback? Similarly, I think some of these new businesses might see this as a business development opportunity for them. So they might see it as a plus. I'd hope that's the way that they'd look at this. And then infrastructure issues. It looks like you've done a good job trying to anticipate that in terms of the location of this, but just in terms of the long-term effect for anybody, just to make sure that we've anticipated or learned from other events. So if you have any feedback. And then the last thing I have, I'd really like to see us if we do an event like this and or for the art fair, is take a line from the art event in Maplewood where they had signs all over the community showing where parking was. It made it so incredibly easy to park. And so we always say that we know where parking is, but I don't know if we're attracting people from all over the region that they're going to know that. So to the extent that any of the parking lot companies and or companies that have parking garages are willing to modify or make that easier, that would be good to know that information too.

Yes. Well, I mean, the parking is identified, unfortunately, as DOT type signage, the blue sign signage. with a P on it, and I understand. So I think that's an easy communication to the lots that are available. Some kind of temporary signage, but we'd be sure to bring Donna on board for that too.

I'd like to add too, at our event, we bring in multiple LED mobile screens, so we can put that information, and that could be broadcasted throughout the city as well.

So I had a couple of questions. I want to confirm what I understand, which is there's no expected cost to the city. So any services we would need to use either public works or police, you all would be reimbursing us for that. And there's no expectation that the city has to put in either some sort of dollar or in-kind contribution to the project. Is that a correct assumption?

That is that is our assumption of, you know, in talks with Gary, that that's what it would take to do in exchange. And I've mentioned it in a number of media interviews today, which I, too, am surprised the amount of attention that they that this has brought. But and I'm humbled by that, actually, is that, you know, Maybe the city could forego any kind of permitting for closing the streets or anything like that. That would be the only thing that I would ask. And I realize that's probably a fairly minimal cost. So, but that would be helpful for us if, you know, we don't mind picking everything else up to answer your question, if you could help us with that part. If there is even, there may not even be a cost for using the space. But we're just asking, could we use the space in exchange for paying for whatever the public works or the police or those things? Okay.

And that's reasonable. I'll leave that to David and Gary as to how, if they want to work that out or not. But that confirmed kind of what I was thinking. Can you talk a little bit about, we've talked about it in pieces, but How do you envision integrating the residents, the businesses of Clayton and to the extent nonprofits that want to be involved? Like obviously with the art fair, we've got kind of a kid's corner on Saturdays. I'm not saying you need to reproduce that, but I'm just thinking about given we do have a lot of residents with a lot of kids and a bunch of businesses that are located in a relatively small area in Clayton. What have you done or what kind of your plan would be to try to integrate those into this, this event, either by sponsorship. So by reaching out to them, kind of that sort of thing.

Yeah, that's a great question. And, and, and I can lean back on 2019 again, just, I hate to say it, 2021, 22, 23, 24 have been survival mode. Just trying to keep the, you know, pull the airplane out of the nosedive here. But one of the things that we were able to do in 2019 is create a wellness area. And that's kind of that middle area I have on Forsyth. It would incorporate some of the like healthy eating things. And I think we could find sponsors that would say, hey, How do you make foods for kids that taste good, but secretly they're full of kale or quinoa or whatever, which is my least favorite thing, by the way, for the record. But it's sort of and that's something that my wife actually is a champion of. My wife is has already primed the pump for, you know, I have healthy food vendors who want to participate at Taste of St. Louis at Ballpark Village. We never had space for that. We never had the ability to put anybody like that in there. And again, a little bit of how do you get it funded? This opens up those opportunities. Again, Kyle and I are looking for how do we help the community? We're not taking a paycheck from the event. And so I want to be able to do good with it. So and I'm familiar with the kids corner area that you're talking about on Saturdays because I do the electric for it. But it's but it's also it's well attended. you know, it is very well attended. But I would love to do something around food, you know, is, hey, kids, maybe we can, you know, teach them how to do some things. And again, I already have vendors kind of waiting in the wings to do that. So we just need a yes from you. So that's kind of the thing that I think Clayton provides for us. And it's just, it's a great backdrop for that. That's what you all are about. I mean, you're doing that. You know, there's more healthy eating options here in Clayton than, you know, anywhere else in that I can think of, you know, it's like, if you want to find a great quality restaurant, Clayton is a great place to come. Did I answer your question?

It did. So slightly follow up. So is the expectation that you would be trying to find sponsorships from St. Louis businesses, Clayton businesses specifically. And I asked because I'm just thinking about, again, Sarah seems to be okay with this, but I'm thinking about The competition for sponsors for events such as this that are so close together, along with the other events that Clayton may have. So I'm just kind of curious what you're thinking about sponsorships and how you plan on approaching that.

So I think the sponsorships that we have had in the past have... well, I'll just say, again, leaning back on my event experience, you see them at every one of them. It's like if they're doing events, they're doing all of the events. They wanna be a part of all of them because they're making money at them. It's not something that it's costing them money and you don't see that. Sponsorship dollars might be a little bit different, but Clayton, I'm sorry, St. Louis Art Fair is, there's no crossover there You know what I'm saying? And I think that's something that I would want to work with Sarah. You know, the rising tide raises all boats or whatever that analogy is. I want to make sure that Sarah's event is healthy. I want to be sure that St. Louis Art Fair is, you know, we're not taking something away from it. You know, I've said it in a number of media interviews today. Go talk to the organizers of Mardi Gras that's about to happen in Soulard. They're struggling. Go talk to The Great Forest Park Balloon Race, John Nichols and the folks over at Switch. They're struggling You know, Evolution Music Festival. They're struggling. Everybody's struggling. So the health of all the events is going to be very important to us. And again, selfishly, you know, Kyle and I, we that's where we make a living is providing support for these events. So I want to work with Sarah on that and just make sure that we're not, you know, or. better yet there might be opportunities where we could put uh you know maybe audi who's been a longtime sponsor of st louis art fair maybe they want to be a taste you know and maybe i i can give sarah a little something for that you know for for helping us out um does that kind of help does that feel like a it does solid answer

like i mean i'm fully supportive of it for the record i think we as i think gary may have alluded to this um gary oh sorry alderman Gary Feder that um We've been trying to find some other events as well for the city. And I think this is a, I say easy because I don't have to do it, but it's a pretty easy event that's pre-packaged that slides in to a part of the calendar that we were trying to fill anyway. And to the extent that you can meet some of the sustainability issues that Alderman Buse talks about, some healthy living, healthy biking, healthy food part, Again, not a requirement, but I think if you hit some of those, those are some of the other points that we've been trying to solve for at various events anyway. So I think it could be a win-win for everybody. So I'm supportive as long as, again, David and Gary Carter assures me like everybody else that our staff is – we're able to staff it in a way that Clayton does it. to Alderman Patel's standpoint, I don't want it to reflect badly on the city. So as long as we feel that we can staff it either directly or with oversight, then I am fully in support of that because I think it's a good image for the city of Clayton and I think it will show well at the end of the day. So that's all I got.

like i mean i'm fully supportive of it for the record i think we as i think gary may have alluded to this um gary oh sorry alderman fader that um We've been trying to find some other events as well for the city. And I think this is a, I say easy because I don't have to do it, but it's a pretty easy event that's pre-packaged that slides in to a part of the calendar that we were trying to fill anyway. And to the extent that you can meet some of the sustainability issues that Alderman Buse talks about, some healthy living, healthy biking, healthy food part, Again, not a requirement, but I think if you hit some of those, those are some of the other points that we've been trying to solve for at various events anyway. So I think it could be a win-win for everybody. So I'm supportive as long as, again, David and Gary Carter assures me like everybody else that our staff is – we're able to staff it in a way that Clayton does it. to Alderman Patel's standpoint, I don't want it to reflect badly on the city. So as long as we feel that we can staff it either directly or with oversight, then I am fully in support of that because I think it's a good image for the city of Clayton and I think it will show well at the end of the day. So that's all I got.

bring something back to the Board of Aldermen either March 11th or March 25th. It just depends on how much time it takes for us to put an agreement together and have it reviewed by legal and everyone else. So we'll get to work on it right away.

So can we say this is a verbal yes? Is that kind of what I'm hearing or is it? I believe so. Okay, we're excited.

Yeah, well, thank you. And we want to make you proud. And we understand that there's a lot on the line for you all. You know, it's like you're sticking your neck out to your constituents, just making sure that you're doing the responsible thing. And again, I think Kyle and myself have nothing but the best of intentions for doing well in the city of Clayton.

Thank

OK, so the next item is the fiscal year 2025 non-represented salary range adjustments. So back in 2023, fiscal year 23, we had a a very comprehensive study done on our pay system where we look at all of our comparators, comparable cities, and we put the city of Clayton salaries at 85th percentile of the overall market. And when we say 85th percentile, we're talking about the midpoint of our salary ranges up against the midpoint of all these other cities. And we do that for every single position. So it's a very in-depth study. We usually do that every three to five years. What we want to make sure of is between each one of those compensation studies that we keep pace with the broader market. So as we develop this this pay system, along with a consultant and we've talked to the board about it kind of along the way and especially when that was implemented. What we'd like to do is is make those adjustments at the mid year so at April 1 every year. we would have a range adjustment. We picked April so that we could see what the July one cities do and also what the January 1st cities do because fiscal years are different city to city and just make sure that those range increases keep us in the ballpark with the rest of those cities until we do the comp study next time. We found last time that we had slipped quite a bit and then our overall increase was somewhere around 8%. If you look at the comparators here, you can see Brentwood just did a comprehensive study, a salary study And they had a 7.3% increase. So that's what happens when you don't manage this over time. And of course, as we saw last time around, when we didn't keep up our pay scale where we should have, we started to really run into retention issues, which have slowed dramatically here, where we're not losing people to other departments or cities or anything else. The people that are going are generally retiring or just getting out of local government altogether. So that's a good thing where we want to be. So Today, the reason for this discussion is and we would need to bring it back in an ordinance is just trying to set the rate of increase at the mid year for fiscal year 25. As you can see from the table that was included in the packet Andrea surveyed these other cities to see what kind of increases they had given for the current fiscal year. The average was 2.8% the median was 2.5% and just so everyone knows. In the CBA for police and fire, they get 2.5% year-over-year range increases. The reason I bring that up is we have individuals within police and fire. In the police department, everybody at sergeant and above, and in the fire department, the battalion chiefs, the assistant chief, and the chief, they're all on this pay scale with the rest of the nonrepresented employees. So if we increase those amounts at a slower rate than we are everybody else that is represented and guaranteed that two and a half percent, you start to compress your salary ranges where you have corporals that are starting to catch up with sergeants because their increases are happening at a faster rate. So our recommendation would be to give the 2.5% increase. We could go to 2.8, which is the average, but we do think 2.5 keeps pace with those represented employees, keeps pace with the market overall. And so, based on the information we have, that would be our recommendation. We did, when the fiscal year 25 budget was adopted, we had a 2% increase that we'd kind of baked in there. We weren't sure where those July 1 and January 1 cities were going to be as far as their salary increases. We had guessed 2%. It turns out it's closer to 2.5 or so. If we were to increase it 2.5%, it would add It's an additional cost burden to the budget, but that amount would be about $24,000. That includes the benefits and everything else that are loaded along with that extra half a percent increase that was unbudgeted. So with that, I'll answer any questions you have. But again, our recommendation would be to give at least 2.5% in the range adjustment to keep pace with represented employees in the market overall.

Thank you. Yeah, staying, keeping the pace going throughout makes a lot of financial sense. I was a little bit concerned, spoke with David earlier today, that with the percentages, and I don't know my math well enough as I try to think through this, and maybe having both the mean and the average to look at helps, but Brentwood is quite a bit higher. You go from zero to 7.5% as you're coming up with this average, and wondering what the cause of that big of a jump is that then figures into the mean that we're giving So I think we do have to be cautious of that because that's a pretty huge range in a one year.

Yeah, so that's why we gave the median along with it. We were trying to discount those outliers a little bit. So you have some 0% cities in there that just had compensation studies, so they didn't want to have the big range increase. And then you have another city like Brentwood that just implemented it that had the big jump. So- That's why we put the median in as well so if you line up all of those together. The middle increase in there was two and a half percent. So

that's what you think

it's just really hard because everybody's on these different schedules for when they do the comp study that really drives the big increases. And what we're really trying to get at is that those those cities that are like we are where you're maybe a year or two into it, what kind of increases are they giving. to keep up with their market adjustments. And I think looking at this and looking at the median, I think 2.5 is a pretty safe play there.

I feel better about that than the other one for those very reasons. And it's also similar to what other staff are getting. So that was the only thing I wanted to comment on. Thanks.

older woman Patel. Yeah, thanks. I would like to kind of validate my understanding up since this is still kind of a new system for us. So I'm going to compare it to my experience in the private sector where I make these kinds of decisions in a business setting. And so we actually separated our like are two different types of salary increases. One that we do one type of time of year is related to cost of living, and the other that we do is Awarding like promotions for like more performance based right and so I'm trying to think about whether that's analogous here and I know it's different because it's not because we've transitioned to the step system. And so the idea is that on an annual basis, employees move to the next step as long as their performance is meeting or exceeding expectations. And then at the, so that's where they move up a step within their grade. But then this is what we're doing where we're actually kind of looking at the market and shifting the salary range associated with that grade so that it stays in line with like sort of market realities. Is that right?

That is correct. So what we do is All of our positions, each position has what's called a grade. And so that grade is given a letter. So if I'm an engineer, say, and I'm just making this up, I'm not sure exactly what it is, say I'm a grade N. And the range for my position is $75,000 to $95,000. On October 1st every year, with good performance, and there are 10 steps in each one of those grades, I would move from $75,000, for instance, to $77,000. And that happens on October 1st as long as I have a good performance evaluation. What we do at the mid-year on April 1st is we look at that 75,000 to 95,000 and see if the market overall has moved for municipal workers. And so what we found here is that it's gone up about 2.5%. So what we would do is we would add a 2.5% increase to the entire grade. So you're starting instead of 75,000 on that particular grade would move up to 76.5 or whatever it is. subsequently each one of those steps would also be increased by that same amount so that employee ends up getting whatever this increase is they're going to stay on that current step but they are going to get the the range adjustment

and

so we do that every year again on april 1st because we want to get a look at what the january one cities and the july one cities have done because we've largely made that decision by the time the july one city budget information's out there uh and then we want to see what happens in january and then apply that at the mid-year so That brings us to where we are today. But this would add 2.5% to each one of those grades.

Right. And then I believe that we do still intend to do occasional compensation studies. Right. And my understanding of that is that would look kind of like more closely at each, like job families or job descriptions and make sure they're assigned to the right grade.

That's correct. Down to the position.

Yeah. And then we

compare each one of those individual positions. So, for instance, a civil engineer will compare that against the civil engineer at every other city to make sure that our midpoints that whatever percentile the board identifies for our target.

Right. Thank you for going through all of that. And I support the two and a half percent increase. Alderman Gary Feder.

Right. Thank you for going through all of that. And I support the two and a half percent increase. Alderman Fader.

I think we all recognize that we want to retain very qualified people who provide a variety of services. I think that's what we expect. That's what our citizens expect. And we all know it's very competitive out there now competing with the private market and also with other communities. So I think we need to do what we can to make that happen. I know we've had retention problems in the past, which as David said, We've greatly been able to diminish of late because we have made adjustments, and I think this is another one of those adjustments we need to make. So I support the 2.5% adjustment that staff recommended. Thanks.

Great. I was going to say many of the same things Gary just said. So clearly, we want to make sure we have pay equity. We want to make sure that we retain our competitiveness. And David, you had spent a lot of time introducing this structure to us and the goal here was to make sure we address the turnover so we could provide those better service levels. So I'm supportive of all that. That said, I just still have a couple of questions. So when we get this data, I'm wondering how specific is the data we're getting from these other communities? Is it are we having to make some broad generalizations because it's not directly comparable or is everything readily available and very directly comparable?

The way we ask it is directly comparable because it's so general in nature. We asked those cities, what did you do with your overall range adjustment? So the numbers that they gave us, the numbers that you see there. So we're not getting down to that position level or anything else. It's what's the average adjustment that you gave to your grades? And that's what we've plugged in.

Okay, so this is anecdotal. I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with the data, but as Becky brought up before, periodically we'll do a survey and actually make sure we have the actual data from time to time.

The survey would be in fiscal year 27 or 28?

Okay. And then from a process standpoint, again, my understanding, well, let me ask the question this way. What is the approximate percentage difference going from one step to the next step? Is it uniform or does it depend? 0.75,

I believe. Yes.

So what we would then anticipate is an increase, this is a question, we would increase our range by 2.5% across the board and then assuming no attrition and satisfactory performance, we would expect another 2.75% of increase. So we're going to have a 5 point whatever percent increase absent any other unusual factors.

The 2.75% increase, if you got the step, which most employees did, that happened on October 1st. So this would be an additional 2.5% that hits on April 1. Then next October 1st, if you have satisfactory performance, then you would get that next step, which is the 2.75%. And then we'll talk range adjustment next April again.

Right. So I get that the impact in any given fiscal year might be partial, but over the course in the long run, it does accumulate though to approximately 5.25% increase in this case. And so my only concern with that is that rate of increase overall is pretty expensive relative to inflation in the marketplace. I understand we've got to be competitive and if that's how it is, that's how it But what I do think we need to be thinking about then is either learning more about our experience about attrition to see whether or not new employees that do come in, cause the overall pool to not grow as fast as a result. So I want to make sure we learn from that. And then again, the importance of We've added staff, not very many, one or two positions, I think. But this is like a growing part of our budget. And so just the whole concept of collaboration with other communities in order to control these ranges so we can be competitive is just imperative. Absolutely.

I agree. The other thing we can look at doing in the future is we can add a column. that also shows with these other cities, they don't just get the range adjustment. These cities are all either on a step system like we are where they have a merit based system. And so we can indicate that as well because in just about every one of these cases you're seeing them give a step increase in addition to this range adjustment. So The percent increase overall that we're seeing here in Clayton or that we're proposing is in line with what you see throughout the market. The other nice thing, but I mean, part of the attrition, the way we've seen it over the last year, again, most of the employees we've lost have been through retirement or other things. Typically, those employees are going to be further along in that step system. So if you've been here 25 years or so and you're going to retire, you're typically going to be on a step eight or whatever it might be. And we always try to hire those new folks that come in at a step one or two. So you do see significant savings every time we have that retirement and that grade kind of resets for that particular position. And so we've been seeing a lot of that over the last year or so.

Well, one of the questions was Alderman Humboldt has covered, but we're basically giving employees races twice a year. Not necessarily calendar or fiscal year, but they're going to get The 2.75, now this year they're also going to 2.5%. So they're going to get raises twice a year.

So employees are... As far as the step system goes, I think there's some obligation or at least the appearance of an obligation that the city is going to fund the steps every year. When you get to April 1st, that's really where you have the discussion on whether or not you do a range adjustment. Then you really take the budget into account. You see what's going on in the market overall. I would say that that second increase, the one we're talking about right now, that's something that's up for discussion every year. If we had a tight budget year and couldn't make it work, I think our recommendation would be very different than what it is here. It just happens within the current fiscal year, and especially with the market pressure we're seeing, you know, our recommendation is to try to keep pace with that 2.5, but I think we're going to see some massive fluctuation that year over year.

And again, so I echo what Alderman Rick Hummell said. Like, 5%, I mean, it may be what it is, but I don't know many businesses are still giving that out, and I know we're Businesses and government are not the same thing, but I do think there's a continued conversation that probably should be asked that's due for a different night than now about the constant increase, which then leads to my second question, David, maybe you can speak on. The assumption for all of this is we want to keep good people, and it's going to cause attrition if we don't continue to go with the numbers. I'm curious to the extent you know what attrition that Brentwood was seeing before they did their comp study, and if you could talk a little bit about the attrition that I guess Clayton was having before me with the previous pay scale. Absolutely. ahead

And again, so I echo what Alderman Hummel said. Like, 5%, I mean, it may be what it is, but I don't know many businesses are still giving that out, and I know we're Businesses and government are not the same thing, but I do think there's a continued conversation that probably should be asked that's due for a different night than now about the constant increase, which then leads to my second question, David, maybe you can speak on. The assumption for all of this is we want to keep good people, and it's going to cause attrition if we don't continue to go with the numbers. I'm curious to the extent you know what attrition that Brentwood was seeing before they did their comp study, and if you could talk a little bit about the attrition that I guess Clayton was having before me with the previous pay scale. Absolutely. ahead

yeah and i'm not sure what brentwood's turnover has looked out like here recently what i can tell you as far as public versus private salaries uh the increases that you're seeing in the public sector are greater than what you see in the private sector right now and that's almost across the board in local governments and especially those that i provided in that list our list of comparators a big reason for that though is the public sector has lagged the private sector and similar positions for years. And the public sector is really in a catch-up mode right now where if you're an HR professional, if you're in IT, if you're an accountant in a finance department, those are positions where you could work public sector, you could work private sector, your background lends itself to either one of those. And what we found is historically the public sector paid considerably less and that's where our turnover. And when you talk about, you know, where were we at a couple of years ago? I mean, we turned over basically our entire finance department within a two year span. Most of those folks going to the private sector. Within IT where we saw the biggest increases last time we did a compensation study, In our IT department, we didn't have turnover for three or four years and then all of a sudden turned over 75% of that department, every one of those people leaving for the private sector. And so the salary pressure that you're seeing on the public side right now is really the public sector trying to keep pace with the private sector or really catch up in recognition that we've just been losing employees. a lot of talent to the higher salary bands that you see on the private side. So I think you're going to continue to see this for a year or two until the public salaries are really where the private salaries are, especially in those types of professional positions. And then you'll see it start to slow down a little bit. But that's certainly been our experience.

Thanks. Otherwise, I'm fine with the two and a half percent. I think it keeps everything on par. That's fine. I just wanted to continue to have kind of that larger conversation because I think it's As we continue to get into the revenue expense discussions of the city over the next couple years, it's important to at least make sure we always talk about that and keep it in mind. That's all I had.

My hope is certainly that the public sector does catch the private sector, and I think we're getting close to that point where this starts to taper because on the uniform side, that's a whole other story. A whole nother issue, a whole nother point of salary pressure that's not included in this two and a half percent increase. But I know next time that, and I've said this before, next time we start to talk collective bargaining agreements and that sort of thing, we've seen some really, really big increases in comparator cities. And so we know that that's coming as well. Okay. Thank you. Lots of discussions to be had.

I'll bring it back in the form of an ordinance at two and a half percent for the non-represented employees.

Thank

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

Alderwoman Buse? Here. Alderwoman Patel? Here. Alderman Fader?

Aldermen Rick Hummell?

Aldermen Hummel?

Alderman Jeffery Yorg.

Alderman York.

Mayor Harris. Mayor Pro Tem McAndrew.

City Manager David Gipson. Here. City Attorney O'Keefe. Here. Thank you.

City Manager Gibson. Here. City Attorney O'Keefe. Here. Thank you.

I move to approve the consent agenda. Second.

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

Alderwoman Buse. Aye. Alderwoman Patel. Aye. Alderman Fader.

Aldermen Rick Hummell.

Aldermen Hummel.

Aldeman Jeffery Yorg.

Aldeman York.

Mayor Pro Tem McAndrew.

All right, thank you. Site distance issues created by parked vehicles have been a concern on Gay Avenue near its intersection with University Drive. In late 2024, following completion of construction of new townhomes on Gay Avenue, the city began to receive complaints from the residents of that development regarding site visibility for vehicles exiting the north driveway of the development onto Gay Avenue. The city sent out 37 survey forms with sample parking modifications to adjacent residents and received 23 responses. After reviewing the responses and additional information provided by the respondents, it was determined that the majority of residents, or 60%, were opposed to the proposed elimination of parking spaces. City staff has observed the location in the field, performed measurements to evaluate the existing site distance, and calculated site distance requirements. So talking first about the intersection of University Drive and Gay Avenue, staff determined that intersection site distance is restricted at University Drive and Gay avenue and standards for intersection visibility are not currently being met. To meet intersection site distance criteria for the posted speed limit, which is 25 miles per hour, the city would need to remove approximately five parking spaces on the north side of University Drive and six parking spaces on the south side of the intersection. As far as the garage exit from the townhome development, staff evaluated the site visibility at the northerly driveway exit from the town home garage. Current site distances at the driveway do not meet standards. Meeting this criteria would require removal of approximately six parking spaces on the south side of the driveway and two parking spaces on the north side of the driveway. Restricted site distance is common in urban areas and full application of intersection site distance standards at this location would significantly impact parking. Based on engineering standards alone, staff recommends approval of the attached ordinance which amends the traffic table by revising sections of Gay Avenue and reflects the removal of approximately 10 parking spaces. However, if the parking restricted area were to be reduced from the staff recommendation, staff would suggest considering the removal of two parking spaces south of the driveway, two spaces between the driveway and University Drive, and two spaces north of University Drive. This would meet all stopping site distance requirements except for the area south of the driveway and the area would benefit from a four-time increase in site distance to 78 feet, but still be short of the 200-foot target. And with that, I will say we have Matt Malek, our Director of Public Works here, as well as Rich Wilburn, our Senior Civil Engineer, to answer any questions the Board may have regarding site visibility, engineering standards, or anything of that nature.

Well, obviously this is one of those things where we're not going to make everybody happy, but hopefully we can make most people satisfied with trying to come up with something that balances the needs for safety with also the needs of the people who live on gay to have adequate parking. It does seem to me, if you're on the east side of gay or the west side, you have a different thought about this. And even to the extent of where you are on gay, it somehow affects how people feel about what we should do about parking. Just to reiterate, Alderwoman McAndrew and I spent about an hour with residents on Saturday. I think we also responded to a bunch of emails from other people. We spent about an hour, with our staff, on Monday looking at charts and drawings and trying to come up with something that makes sense. I hope we can come up with what I would describe as sort of an incremental approach where we try to do some things. And as Bridget said, treat it to some extent as a trial period, see how some things work. Um, I'm certainly committed, uh, you know, within three months, at least three months after we put this new residential parking signage in place, which I hope will make a difference, but the visit with everybody again and see how we're doing, um, I think enhanced, uh, enforcement is critical if we're going to do this and we're going to put up new signage. And it's a lot of spaces that will be signed for the first time with two hour parking and you've got to have a residential permit. I hopefully that will actually open up some spaces and it is up to us. I think to, and to, to over the next few months, once those signs are up to make sure we ticket people who violate that, um, And I also think in the long run, our staff is not prepared to address that yet. But the thought of speed tables, which are similar to speed bumps, but a little less obtrusive, but definitely effective. That's something I think we can look at. We can look at the speed limit on the street. But those are all things I think we can 10 spaces to eliminate is too many, six spaces is too many, especially if we're trying to balance safety on the one hand with the needs of our residents. But we do think that from our perspective, eliminating four spaces, two to address the access from the townhomes of Clayton, where it does seem to me a very difficult point to exit from that site. And similarly at university, an elimination of two spots there would greatly address that. So I think in the first phase of this, if it is, If we eliminated four spaces, I think we would be both doing the most, what I think is the most important thing, which is addressing safety. But at the same time, we have to be considerate of the needs of the residents. And I think the staff agrees that that would be the appropriate approach at this point. So that would be what I'd like to see. And in the meantime, see what other things we can do to try to improve the whole situation on gate. Thank you.

I very much appreciate both the time you've taken to look at this and to talk with neighbors and before I take a position on anything I'm hoping that people here who have something to say can inform us even better my original thought is that as you pointed out we are in an urban environment and we also want safety so how do you How do you balance those needs? I don't know if there are accidents or any safety reports of which we should be aware at the spot, or it's just an awareness that the visibility is poor. I think Matt was going to check with

To answer the question on accidents, when we were looking at another area, we took some measurements citywide and we reviewed that data today. There's been one accident at the intersection of University and Gay since 2018. Don't have the details on the nature of that accident, but that's the data I was able to collect today on that location.

And I imagine, again, I am anxious to hear what people have to say, the residents have to say, but there are, as was pointed out, there are... If we don't reduce to the full amount suggested, which I don't, it doesn't sound like it's something that's feasible. You know, looking at the speed limit, looking at other ways to increase the safety there would be a compromise.

Elder Roman Patel. Yeah, thanks. That's what I have just two questions that are probably for David. And then I'd like to hear from the folks that are here before having any other insight. I was going to ask kind of what... Alderwoman Buse just alluded to the idea of what else could be done to address this as a safety issue. So I gather from the staff report, the current speed limit is 25 miles per hour. And that the speed limit does correlate to, um, the recommended site distances that an engineer would provide. And so what would it look like for us to treat this street differently with a different speed limit and, or any traffic calming measures that would help, uh, enforce or incentivize that from a safety perspective. That's one thing I'm interested in. And then the other is, I'm curious about the process that the development went through with staff review and plan commission and ARB, like what, if anything in our processes could have or might have intended to identify these issues so that they could have potentially been able to be mitigated during development.

So as far as whether or not traffic calming would have an impact, I would imagine it would change the formula to figure out what the site distance would be, but I'd have to rely on the engineers to tell you whether or not that would be significant.

Yeah, we didn't study speed as part of this process, but you're correct. The stopping site distance and the intersection site distance is a calculation based on the speed. Any measures that have been installed for traffic calming are usually targeted at to bring the traffic to the speed limit, I would note. So when we do an analysis like this, we will look at it at what's called a design speed, which is typically five miles an hour above the posted speed limit when we do the calculation.

Okay. And so, okay. I mean,

I think I, if this may be my second planned commission meeting, I don't remember exactly on the review. I will say though, that the parking has existed on that side of the street. You know, and so if you, you've got existing driveways that are all up and down Gay Avenue already that have cars that park up against those driveways. So typically it's not a dramatic change to the conditions there. I will say, though, that the the concerns at university and gay and and the site visibility there to my understanding predates to some extent the the townhomes that we would receive complaints or concerns uh about that intersection prior to those townhomes even being developed um but didn't want to go through the study process until the townhomes were done until we had really normal conditions again on the street but I'll let Matt talk about that.

That's correct. And at that time, we paused due to the feedback we received from the residents and the different activity we were seeing on the street that we might have in trucks parked too close to the intersection and giving just not a normal usage condition. I would also note since that time, we changed the way we approach these parking requests as well. So in this instance, since we started off with the communication process, not too long ago we tried to keep with that same process that maybe more mirrored what we used to do but in order to um just pick back up with the residents where we left off sort of

I appreciate the time that Bridget, you and Gary spent trying to understand the situation and craft a solution. And so I don't question the details of what that is, provided that we're meeting the needs of the residents and we're addressing the safety issues. I do want to build on Becky's point, though. The whole concept of sight distance, I'm wondering... You know, in our ward, we have a number of multifamily buildings. And so the impact of removing any parking could be very significant throughout the ward. So I'm wondering if this whole site distance concept is a relatively new thing or, you know, do we only sometimes apply it? Or I just don't understand. This seems to be new to me, but perhaps it's not.

I think what's a little more unusual here is the intersection itself as much as the driveway. I mean, you have this condition with driveways all over the place where you have street parking. If you think about the Morelands where you have multifamily with a ton of street parking in all of those driveways, to get full 200-foot sight distance up and down that street, you pretty much eliminate all the street parking, which the Morelands no longer really functions because those buildings don't have enough parking as it is. So it's It's trying to strike that balance. I do think what's a little bit different here is the intersection itself that's problematic. It is difficult to see when you try to make that movement.

Yes, and I would note that each of these situations is a bit unique as things like the slope of the roadway factor into it. And when changes happen, then some of these I think it's parking existed here before with entrances, and it found a way to function. But if a new development were to come through in a new street, I think it's looked at more holistically, but a lot of existing conditions have found kind of their resting spot that works in that balance of keeping parking while providing a safe sight line. It is an urban environment and it can prove difficult. That is why we understood when we looked at these stopping site, or excuse me, intersection site distances for University and Gay that they were quite impactful and we didn't want to just leave it at that as they moved down the street in front of the townhomes and had to impact that parking. So we looked at what's called stopping site distance, which is a shorter distance that can be applied that allows if a vehicle was traveling on the street another vehicle or pedestrian moved into the roadway, how much time would that vehicle traveling on gate need to stop to keep it safe? So we have tried to apply that shorter distance with the idea of trying to maintain as much parking as possible when we were looking at it from the engineering analysis side of things.

Okay, I'm wondering too, if I'm guessing that we did this, but at least I hope that we did that to Becky's point about alternative solutions. So just thinking of if we've got a site problem and or a speed problem, Can those be addressed with other potential solutions like bump outs or making it a fully stop sign oriented intersection? Other potential solutions. And those may not be good answers, but I'm wondering, did we expand the universe of solutions?

When the request came in, it started as a request for removal of space. While we didn't do a full analysis on the other solutions, we considered things to increase the site distance that's out there today. Things would be In this case, there's not a crosswalk where you do a bump out, but widening the roadway so that the vehicle could get closer to the edge of the roadway, widening the lanes. Those are very cost prohibitive type items that we didn't think that would be an approach that would be palatable. The stop sign control, this is an intersection that's not warranted for a stop sign from the perspective of the traffic flow. However, or excuse me, it also is an intersection I would anticipate if a stop sign was installed that it'd be one that people might roll through or run quite a bit just because of not seeing a need to stop because of no traffic coming from the side street. It also includes, or when you have an unwarranted stop sign, we've covered some of this in other locations before that people will maybe, it might increase sound in the area or the residential area for people taking off again at the stop sign. When they're upset, they stopped when they didn't perceive that they needed to. But it's one of the things that can be utilized, but just didn't seem to fit this location.

And I'm not suggesting that it is the answer. Just did we consider it? So it sounds like you did. So, okay. I'm just anxious to hear resident feedback. So I don't have any other questions. Thanks.

No, everybody kind of covered the main ones I had. So I'll stand down at the moment so that we can hear from folks.

Evening.

I'm Gary Baer. I'm at 147 Gay. I'm a new resident here. I just moved in November-ish. And the neat thing about 147 Gay with respect to this question is right across where I look out my bedroom window or my front window, I see that intersection. I'm retired. I see that intersection all the time. So I can also see the traffic coming in and out of the intersection. Trust me, I don't wait for that traffic because none of it ever comes in or out. Maybe one car every two hours or so. So that's what we're talking about. Now we're talking about an accident that happened in 2018, eight years ago or seven years ago, perhaps when construction was going on. I really don't know. I didn't live here then. There hasn't been any since I've been in there, obviously. With regard to that, and Rick, you ask a very good question about where these sight distances, because I was like you, I never heard of sight distances before. I Googled it. I'm retired. I can do this. And my hobby happens to be a bit of research. I'll research anything you want me to research. Just let me know. Serious. But I looked it up and it's a very established practice. And in fact, St. Louis County has a whole section on sight distance. They have some... They have some diagrams of how to calculate it. It says site distance associated with new developments. That's what the address of this is, with new developments. And that actually comes from a book from engineering. I can't tell you what it is right offhand. I've got the site right here, which kind of goes to the same thing and says it's all about new development. And they actually provide some good things to do when construction is going on. They actually have a whole section on that. Not good rating, but I only had to focus on a few sections of it. But that being said, so that's where it came in. That was actually published in 2018. The county adopted those aspects of it in 2020 with respect to new development. That is what it says on there. So I might be wrong, but that's where the site distance came from, from my viewpoint. Now, that being said, we talked about, well, it's inconvenience the visitors a little bit. I love living in Clayton right now. I love it because I can walk everywhere. I walked here tonight. While I walked here tonight, I walked down Maryland Avenue. I crossed three small roads, feeder roads, residential roads coming into Maryland, which I think would be an arterial road if you're into the parlance of this stuff. None of them had any parking spaces restricted at all on either side on Maryland. So obviously those standards aren't being applied widely in the city of Clayton right now. They're not even being applied where it is much more dangerous to cross into an arterial road, particularly when it's two or three lanes and with parking on there and with a driving lane, it's much more dangerous for that than it is for anything else. So I'm a little bit dubious of this whole concept that that really makes a whole lot of sense. Now, because they live right across from university city or university drive, not university city, not university. Anyway, I live right across from there. If I have somebody coming, people to clean my house or any type of service employee, or even just a visitor, I do have visitors occasionally. And some of the other people have a lot more than me. I'm right across from there so what you're basically saying is anything that's even slightly convenient to my residents is now gone. Because we're going to take them out on that side of the intersection, take it out on that side at the intersection. And when you take those out, what happens to the remaining spaces? They get filled up with cars also. So people, the first thing they ask me, where do I park? And I said, well, it's kind of across the street. And they come in and say, wow, I had to park a long way away. And I said, yeah, but there is still parking there. Now, what you're proposing is there are going to be no parking. So that's what I say. But now, I'm very curious about the sequencing of this whole thing, because I read a very nice report on this. It said in late 2022, there was complaints about site visibility. I think the construction was going on then. An initial survey, apparently according to guidelines, which makes a lot of sense. And a number of the residents complained about parking because of the trucks The trucks during the, presumably during all the billing of that. Now, late 24, even they tabled it, very wisely tabled it. And I think that makes a whole lot of sense. And now in 2024, I don't know whether any more complaints have come up. It was very unclear. I assume that there hasn't. We've heard there really wasn't an accident study until tonight. I don't know if any type of traffic volume studies were made, but all this seems like, well, we want to remove some parking places or in my world, you want to inconvenience my visitors. is really what it boils down to. And I think some of the other residents might feel the same. I find that, and it's very interesting because there's these, there's like, okay, we have this. Okay, we're gonna table this. And now we're gonna sit there and we got a few things. So we're gonna put it out for the vote looking to remove, I think three spaces and 60% against which, and 40% for presumably. But if I was down at those new development, I would have voted for it because I'm not worried about the intersection at Gay and University. I'm worried about getting out of my driveway. So we have those as two things instead of bifurcating intelligently in two different issues. Because it's very clearly two different issues. And I would have voted for it if it opened up one space for me down there, because that is a nasty turn. I walked by there too, needless to say. So I'm not too sure what the rationale of that is. But so we get there and 60% of the people say no. So we said, well, I guess that means we should take away more places even. That makes no sense to me. You know, if you want to take away more places and you want to do it right, you address the one issue the way it should be addressed the other way, the way it should and ask the people thing and then decide where they want to thumb your nose at them, because right now that's what you're doing.

Good evening, I'm Steve Hundley and I live at 120 Gay Avenue, right in the heart of this. I want to first start by thanking Gary and Bridget for coming by Saturday. That made a huge difference that you were willing to hear so many of us out. And I feel like listening to what you guys said this evening, that common sense and balance is we're getting going in the right direction already without any of us having had to stand up tonight. I want to make just a couple of quick points. I'm going to make them real quick. I first made a complaint about this in the fall of 2023. Then we exchanged, me and I believe Paul Flotkin and others and Jill back there, exchanged emails with the city and Thomas O'Mara from, probably works for you, came out in April. And I looked at the emails from that right before the meeting, and I'm glad I did. First of all, this has been on the docket a lot longer than, and I mean this respectfully, Mr. David Gipson, but longer than you indicated in your preview. And Thomas came out, and he was pretty balanced. We were talking about a space or two. south of our north driveway exactly what we talked about saturday and he said you know we just in his email he says this was originally residential although somebody else told me it was parking meters so he said this was the point is the ball was dropped and that's why we're here because the ball was dropped after the construction which took so long that a lot of these issues were never addressed The other thing I point out, and I think this gentleman mentioned it on his walk, is there's a bunch of places. Actually, Mr. David Gipson, you said the same thing. I go on a lot of walks. There's plenty of places where if you applied this standard, you'd wipe out a large number of parking spots. I do believe there's more traffic there than what this other gentleman sees. There's 10 of us, 20 of us, because it's couples, right? There's 10 townhouses. And all of us have struggled with turning onto Gay Avenue, making a left out of our garage. There's a high speed. It's people coming out of soccer in the evenings during the nice months, the seasonal months from the gay fields. A lot of people cut through from Del Mar down to Maryland. It's the easiest way to do it. I do it myself. So I think speed is a big issue. And one thing... I like everything you guys said, and I appreciate it. But the one thing, and especially your thoughts on what alternatives there are, I want to challenge these gentlemen right here, these civil engineers, and you guys. That's not something you want to table till later. That's something you want to deal with now. One thing Tom shared with me, Thomas O'Meara, was a cell phone study of how fast people went down Gay Avenue. And it showed 20 miles an hour. You can find it in your own records because you guys gave it to me so you have it somewhere. that's a bad method to measure speed because first you have people walking. Like we used to, unfortunately our dog passed last year, but we walked our dog with our cell phones in our pockets all the time. Plus you got people turning from the very intersection we're talking about now from university on to gay. They're not going more than five miles an hour when they're going up and down gay because they just turned and now they're stopping at the light. So you need a better method to measure speed. When we were, The group of us were out there Saturday morning, and you could see people going 40, 45 miles an hour. It's not safe. We're fortunate that we've only had one accident there. So I like the idea about the two spaces. I think we measured 25 feet south of the driveway, which is the area that's blocked off by the cone that Thomas O'Mara put out there about a year ago. And that seems sufficient. But I would really look at a stop sign or a, I think you'd call it a speed table. I think that would make a huge difference and that that should be on your solution set. Not a year from now, like happened to us on this whole thing, but next week, that should be what you're looking at. Thank you.

Good evening, I'm Steve Hundley and I live at 120 Gay Avenue, right in the heart of this. I want to first start by thanking Gary and Bridget for coming by Saturday. That made a huge difference that you were willing to hear so many of us out. And I feel like listening to what you guys said this evening, that common sense and balance is we're getting going in the right direction already without any of us having had to stand up tonight. I want to make just a couple of quick points. I'm going to make them real quick. I first made a complaint about this in the fall of 2023. Then we exchanged, me and I believe Paul Flotkin and others and Jill back there, exchanged emails with the city and Thomas O'Mara from, probably works for you, came out in April. And I looked at the emails from that right before the meeting, and I'm glad I did. First of all, this has been on the docket a lot longer than, and I mean this respectfully, Mr. Gibson, but longer than you indicated in your preview. And Thomas came out, and he was pretty balanced. We were talking about a space or two. south of our north driveway exactly what we talked about saturday and he said you know we just in his email he says this was originally residential although somebody else told me it was parking meters so he said this was the point is the ball was dropped and that's why we're here because the ball was dropped after the construction which took so long that a lot of these issues were never addressed The other thing I point out, and I think this gentleman mentioned it on his walk, is there's a bunch of places. Actually, Mr. Gibson, you said the same thing. I go on a lot of walks. There's plenty of places where if you applied this standard, you'd wipe out a large number of parking spots. I do believe there's more traffic there than what this other gentleman sees. There's 10 of us, 20 of us, because it's couples, right? There's 10 townhouses. And all of us have struggled with turning onto Gay Avenue, making a left out of our garage. There's a high speed. It's people coming out of soccer in the evenings during the nice months, the seasonal months from the gay fields. A lot of people cut through from Del Mar down to Maryland. It's the easiest way to do it. I do it myself. So I think speed is a big issue. And one thing... I like everything you guys said, and I appreciate it. But the one thing, and especially your thoughts on what alternatives there are, I want to challenge these gentlemen right here, these civil engineers, and you guys. That's not something you want to table till later. That's something you want to deal with now. One thing Tom shared with me, Thomas O'Meara, was a cell phone study of how fast people went down Gay Avenue. And it showed 20 miles an hour. You can find it in your own records because you guys gave it to me so you have it somewhere. that's a bad method to measure speed because first you have people walking. Like we used to, unfortunately our dog passed last year, but we walked our dog with our cell phones in our pockets all the time. Plus you got people turning from the very intersection we're talking about now from university on to gay. They're not going more than five miles an hour when they're going up and down gay because they just turned and now they're stopping at the light. So you need a better method to measure speed. When we were, The group of us were out there Saturday morning, and you could see people going 40, 45 miles an hour. It's not safe. We're fortunate that we've only had one accident there. So I like the idea about the two spaces. I think we measured 25 feet south of the driveway, which is the area that's blocked off by the cone that Thomas O'Mara put out there about a year ago. And that seems sufficient. But I would really look at a stop sign or a, I think you'd call it a speed table. I think that would make a huge difference and that that should be on your solution set. Not a year from now, like happened to us on this whole thing, but next week, that should be what you're looking at. Thank you.

So I did want to clarify just really quickly. We've not performed a speed study in this area. When we do perform a speed study, it's not using cell phone data or anything else.

I'll be happy to send it to

you. No, I understand that. What I'm letting you know is that that's not an official speed study that we would actually perform. It's probably more anecdotal information or just giving you what he has on hand. But yes, that's something that our public works director has noted is we don't have a speed study in the area or a good speed study collecting data the way we typically would. But that's something we can look into.

I'm David Krause, I live at 208 Gay. My wife and I, Neda, we've lived in Clayton since 1980, and we've lived at 208 Gay for three years. It's interesting, I have different views on all this in terms of what I would like to encourage all of you to do, but all the comments that have been made are right on, and many of the comments that many of you have made as well. And so some of this may be repetitious and it'll be very quick. It bewilders me that folks are sitting here talking about this issue because of the fact that it never should have gotten to that point. If there were issues that were raised, then they should have been addressed a lot longer than everybody having to stand in front of the Board of Aldermen. If 60% of the folks have said, no, we like it the way it is, quite honestly, I'm not quite sure why we're necessarily here. Three, there's an ecosystem. There's a parking ecosystem in a public environment. And what the proposal is is going to radically change that ecosystem. This is a picture. I'm happy to give it to you. 845 on Sunday morning. Sunday morning. And the four out of the five spots in front of our townhouse, we live just north of University. four out of the five spots at 8.45 in the morning are already taken, one by a car that's there forever, two construction trucks, and then another person as well. So to take away four, five, eight, nine, 11 spots, you're going to dramatically impact the parking ecosystem. And if you think folks are angry at each other now, they're gonna be even worse once folks start getting into a parking fight. And quite honestly, I don't really understand it. The real problem is not the parking. The problem is the speed. And so with all due respect to the comment of let's change the parking now and we'll deal with the rest, you've got it all backwards, folks. Change the speed on the street. I sent a rather lengthy email to the city in connection with the survey, and none of those issues, none of the solutions were even mildly addressed in the recommendation, which was a draconian approach of just take away 11 spots and we'll cure the problem. The problem is the speed, folks. There are folks going down that street much too fast. And as a result of which, nobody can see what's going on. Cut down the speed, cut down the speed, and you will dramatically increase the amount of safety on that street for everybody who was pulling out of their driveways. And the last point, and thank you, older woman Patel, for raising this. It's on my list, so I'm going to have to do it again. But Four or five years ago when the new townhouse project came into being, I assume you had planning and zoning. I assume you had public works. I assume you have traffic control. I assume you obviously had the Board of Aldermen. And with all due respect, how did everybody miss the fact that a brand-new development of ten townhouses in the middle of a street was not going to cause a problem. How could that possibly have occurred? It is disturbing that that was not thought through. And now you've got folks who are living in there who can't understand why they can't get out of their driveway. This should have been addressed a long time ago. Maybe it should have been addressed by everybody, but by the inflow and outflow of how people get into their spot. go in on the north, come out on the south. Nothing has changed with respect to your standards since that project was approved. Nothing has changed. The street still has an incline to it. There are still people on the street. There's still a school up the block. There are still school events. It is bewildering to me how we could not have imagined that there would be an issue with respect to cars pulling out of that driveway. So I don't really know what your solution is, but if your solution is to take away the spots and then a year or two years from now deal with stop signs and whatever kind of speed controls that may be, putting up a mirror in front of that driveway so that folks can see what's going on, there are more creative solutions than just taking away 11 spots. There are more creative solutions then taking away four spots because you will be impacting what's going on in that neighborhood. Thank you.

My name is Raylene Kelly, and I live in 130 Gay Avenue. And my big concern is when I was looking at the pictures that were taken, if you look at the one that was image number three, there's this white truck that is at the, where we would turn in to our town homes. And there are right there is a fire hydrant. So out of the two spots you want to take away from us, I mean, you could take away those spots because there's nothing because there's people that park right in front of the fire hydrant all the time, which to me is a safety issue. I mean, um, That's one of my issues right there. And my biggest problem is when I come out of the driveway and when I come up, it's not so much looking north, but it's looking where people come in off of Maryland going up because I can't see because of all the cars that are parked in front of the salon, you know, all the ones that actually even right in front of that garage because of the the meters, all those cars. Those are the ones that are the big issue as well as if you put no parking in front of the fire hydrants, that would be helpful. It's that hill coming up. And yes, I have almost been hit because I couldn't see. I had to inch my way up to try to see the cars coming up. And so that's my only concern is primarily that. And thank you for listening to me. Appreciate it so much.

Hello, I'm Bill Kasperson. I'm 153 Gay, and I'm the president of the Homeowners Association for the Clayton Garden Villas, which is a nine-unit townhome community there. You've heard from Gary Baer, who's one of the residents there. I hold our... Our residents yesterday called everyone and it was 100%. I know that some of them didn't respond to the thing, but we were 100% opposed to the changing parking spaces. We're all for public safety and that's gotta be a consideration, but taking the parking spaces away without looking at the other possible remedies is really not a good idea. especially the stop sign idea, the speeds on that street are greater than the speed limit. And mitigation of that would be helpful. Stop sign would slow people down and it would slow the cars down for both university, obviously at the university, you'd have to stop. And for the other residents in the new development, they would slow down for that too. So that would help. The other thing is I agree also that this is actually two issues. And it might be that they should be separated in their evaluation because what's happening at university and what's happening at the driveway of the other townhome development are really two different things. So thank you for your time.

I'm sorry. I hope I can follow up on a couple of things. Something I forgot about. I mean, I've spent a lot of time on this. Again, I just thank Bill for reading. It's a separate problem. We heard one part talking about it. And I said, if I was down there, I'd see the problem turning in and out all the time. There is a lot of traffic coming in from Ladue, whatever that shopping center is there with the two restaurants or three restaurants in there. Something that has been drilled into us very much is that the more wider the streets are it makes speeds faster it's as simple as that um that's why traffic common things are to make the streets narrower to make up that i mean that's reality of it um at least in modern america um so two problems something that wasn't um oh another thing is i found out a really cool way to get to to go out on the maryland avenue i go across you know university i take it down to the next one i make a right turn in there and it's an easy turn And that doesn't have the site line rules either on that one either, but it's an easy way to do it, which is kind of interesting that I started doing that when it snowed because the snow removal didn't really allow a right turn hand lane over there. But anyway, the last thing I did want to say. is that something that I have seen, and according to the state rules or regulations is how people are supposed to stop at a stop sign. You're supposed to be able to pull up in order to have visibility of that. And one way to encourage that actually is to have a stop line that might be a little bit ahead of the stop signs. So to say we haven't thought of anything, we haven't looked at anything else, that's another way that might be considered. I don't know the ramifications of that, but I know that it's something that the state regulations actually talk about, and they also talk to pull up far enough before you make the turn. And, you know, I know we can't educate people in actually following the rules, but sure, it would be nice if we did.

you. Hi, my name is Paul Flotkin. I live at 122 K Avenue in the evil new development that's caused all this aggravation and problem for our whole community of Clayton. I would like to thank our aldermen for the time they've invested. Obviously, when you listen to everybody tonight, there is no solution. And I don't really envy any of you to trying to figure out a solution because nothing is going to make everybody happy. you know everybody's got their own whether you live on the on the east side of the street or the west side of the street it makes a big difference whether you live where we are in the townhouses or you live further north that makes a big difference and everybody's got their particular issue so um i do appreciate the the study that our alderman did into in the idea that they have to try to implement some type of phase in thing i think it's really appropriate to be able to take two spaces here and two spaces here let's see if there we need some other things to do and let's let's you know try to move on because we're never we're never gonna all be happy with what happens here tonight and what's happened um and you know it's We are neighbors and we have to live together. And we cherish the community and we cherish our development as well and the people in it. So thank you for listening. And hopefully some type of a wisdom of Solomon can prevail tonight. So thank you.

Hi, I'm Marsha Nestor. I'm in 132 Gay Avenue. So the parking space that they want to take away is in front of my unit, which is fine. I don't even care if you take two away because turning left out of our driveway and heading south is really hard. I do not see, if you're going to take two spaces away, why you have to take them away to the north. And I voted no. And that's why I voted no. It wasn't because I didn't want no parking in front of my unit. I don't care. There's other parking. But if you take the way to the north, then I'm not going to have any parking. And then they're going to be parking on University. They're going to be So that's why I voted no. And I know a lot of people in my unit are probably mad at me, but I just couldn't see taking away parking spaces to the north. There was never a problem for us pulling out. Now they said, oh, it helped a little bit. What's a little bit? Taking away two spaces helps a little bit. I still think the best solution would be a three-way stop. to slow the traffic down, three-way stop. Take the two parking places away in front of my unit. I don't care. But don't take it from the north. A stop sign, I feel, is the best solution to slow the traffic. So thank you.

I will be brief. My name is Rusty Lambley. My wife and I live at 128 Gay. First of all, Bridget and Gary, I appreciate very much your coming out this weekend to meet with us, spend over an hour on Saturday morning scoping the situation out and listening to our concerns. Appreciate that very much. I would just like to reiterate comments that have been made by others, and that is speed is a real problem, and volume is a problem. Haven't done any studies, but just having lived there, the traffic is high at times, and the speed at which many of the vehicles are going clearly exceeds the speed limit, which makes it more difficult to pull out of either university or the driveway. The other thing is a comment I'd like to make is I thought safety is an issue. Taking away six spaces, I thought was overkill. And I'm much more inagreeable with something which only takes away two spaces. from the south side of the driveway seems to me to be a better, more reasonable solution recognizing that we are in an urban environment. So thank you very much.

Jill, I'm one 18 K Avenue. Okay. So I'm hearing everyone say pretty much the same thing. We already have limited parking, so we don't want to give up all of the parking. Please take that into consideration in the interim. If it is possible for the immediate future to get like a flashing speed sign that shows the speed that people are going. And if you could offer police patrol, we really don't see police up and down our street very often. I know you guys they're busy. but if we could have that occasionally or they could be checking the speed so you could hear what we're saying more clearly, maybe identify the speed is a real issue. With the school down the street, we're concerned with that as well, but we appreciate it. Thank you.

Are you saying the one that's not shaded?

Yeah. I don't know if I, if I didn't already say it, you know, every spot does help and increase the visibility and, This did start, what we tried to illustrate on the report was the hatched areas were the ones that were included in the survey. And this did start with the two based on a request at university and that's what led us to look at this. Once the construction of the townhomes were complete, We were aware of this other concern immediately south of the driveway. When we look at the site distance triangles, they do overlap and is the reason, given their close proximity, they were just included with this. The fact that both of those triangles overlap to the north and probably I'm speculating on the difficulty in signage and enforcement of one space, but more so that the site triangles overlap to the It is cleanest to keep those combined as a no parking area. And that property has adjacent parking. We tried to demonstrate what's available on University Drive as well. Even though it's not immediately as close to the front door, it is very close parking.

devices that are Essentially, pucks that go down or mount on a pole that will measure the speed and take actual volume and speed measurements. They'll do things like throw out the speeds that are below a certain value because it might be something that's not a vehicle traveling at a certain rate of speed. So that is a tool that we've utilized whenever we start evaluating concerns of speeding in certain locations. I'm not doubting what's out there, but sometimes the perception is that it's moving much faster than it is. They could be well moving above the speed limit, but it may not be as fast as we think it is. And the only way to really know that is to collect data on that. So it would be a matter of something we utilize under our traffic calming program is a collection of data using those devices. There was a comment about a flashing speed sign. That's something else the police department has assisted us and that we've utilized to collect data as well as make drivers observant of their speed. That'd be a tool we'd maybe look to utilize as well.

I think every site is unique. I don't know if there's anything specific about this that stands out as unique from another area that may have similar site distance issues. I think this is something when it's brought to our attention, we investigate, but we're not proactively checking site distances at each intersection in town unless there's reason or concern for us to. So I don't think there's anything particularly unique at this intersection of University and Gaye. um i i would imagine that if we did some analysis you would find other similar situations that might exist throughout the city but uh we tried to when we did this it was from the perspective of hey this is what engineering standards say and we wanted to share that because it's also we understood the impact it's going to have and that people would not be happy with that and um again, any space is providing better visibility and safety. And we recognize that a balance may be needed with the community.

This may be just repetitive of what's been said, but it seems to be obviously we're looking for safety as well as keeping a neighborhood together. So maybe looking, and speed does seem to be the issue. And that is a separate issue from parking. In fact, parking can calm speed. So how do you get that balance of keeping the sites? And it sounds like there's some consensus coming through this that there may be two spots that would help with that. Yet it does sound like we definitely need some type of a speed study. You have taught me in prior ones that when you put a stop sign, we had a neighborhood that wanted a stop sign because there were a lot of children going to one of the elementary schools. And the data showing that if cars aren't expecting it, people just go right through it. So does it create more danger than not? So all these other factors and what seems like an easy solution, the data and the studies will show would not actually solve the problem there. But it does sound like we need some type of speed study, especially whoever happened to mention that this is a cut-through spot that people are cutting across. And that tends to be a high rate of speed when that kind of behavior's happening.

Yeah, I know the instance you're referring to. In that case, we did have data that we were making recommendations based off of with regards to speed and volume. In this case, we don't have any right now to make that. So I don't want to say nothing applies, but we're kind of making some assumptions about speed and volume right now without data in hand.

Right, and my point really was we should study it and look to you. I have full confidence in the work that is done with our city staff in coming back with a recommendation. looking at the speed and seeing what the issues really are here in addition to the site limitations.

Yeah, I know it's something we've talked about before too, and I just do want to share that a stop sign, there are warrants for those, but they're not utilized as speed control devices. And we try to put that in our traffic calming program. It doesn't mean it doesn't apply in certain situations, but that's just generally not recognized for slowing speeds.

Yeah. Thanks, Matt. I was also going to restate some of what we've learned in our discussions of traffic calming over the years, one of which you just said, which is that stop signs are not used as traffic calming or to control speed they're like indicated for different reasons. I want to thank all of you who spoke. It's interesting to hear different perspectives, and I also think it can be hard to voice a perspective that might seem unpopular or different than some of your neighbors. And so I appreciate that you all did that in a respectful way and shared your perspective to help us think about this. As I try to think about what we might actually do tonight and what I would feel comfortable voting on, for example, I am not totally clear where I might fall. But what I'm thinking about is that um there does seem to be a case for actual study um to be done and it sounds like our staff is willing to do that study and get more data um on the conditions on the street i'm also thinking about um like what streets this is comparable to. And in that it is essentially a residential street, but has such proximity to businesses and commercial activity that it reminds me a little bit of our situation in Ward 1 with the neighborhoods surrounding DeMunn Avenue. and some of the work that we did there to try to be creative and responsive to neighbor concerns. And so my instinct is to ask us to study this further and like table action now, but there does seem to be some amount of consensus about one or two spots south of the driveway. And so I don't know whether it makes sense to take an interim step of removing one or two of those, and then asking for further study to determine what, if anything, should be done in general. This is what I'm thinking about. So I don't know, David, what you think, and then what the rest of the board thinks.

Yeah, no matter what, I would recommend that you postpone the matter. The ordinance that's attached to the RFPA this evening, the ordinance that's in front of you, it's very specific for the staff recommendation. So if we want to change the number of spaces that would be potentially removed there, We need to go out, and the way the table works is you need an exact measurement of how many feet from the intersection, all that. So we would need to update all of that information and make sure that we have those measurements correct. So no matter what, I would say you don't need to take any formal action this evening, but it would be nice if you could direct staff as to – and it sounds like a speed study is something the board would like to see in that area. And then if you could specify – what spaces, if any, and it sounds like maybe a couple you may want to see removed. That way we can go out and make those measurements, clean up the ordinance while this is postponed and perform that speed study, and then come back with more of a total package.

Is traffic numbers part of the speed study? I know we've done that before. I think it's all on times of day and all that. We'll

collect that data, yes.

see

I know that's down the line because

Yeah, my two-way answer to that is to say, yes, anything, any mile per hour slower does technically, now they go in five mile per hour increments when you look at a table. But the slower you're going, the more sight visibility, or excuse me, the less sight triangle visibility is needed. I would note though that even if vehicles are slowed to the speed limit, The intersection site distance for that intersection is 335 feet at the longest side, 290 feet at the farthest side, which is the extreme version. Even if the traffic was slowed to 20 miles per hour, you're still talking about a significant impact that doesn't meet the federal highway standards. When I say federal highway, that's an organization that has standards that apply to all streets, not just highways, just for clarification. So that's why we did try to look at the stopping site distance. Whenever you would slow traffic there, if it was slowed to 25 as the design parameter, it does shorten those in maybe about 40 feet. You may gain a spot. We hadn't analyzed that. So the engineering answer is it's still... Pretty wide when you look at the standards, but the the me trying to be a realist and not always an engineer is that any any little bit what helps for visibility.

Matt, if I can ask you a question. I think when we met with you on Monday, we talked about your recommended, your prime recommendation was elimination of 10 spaces. Then a potentially acceptable response was six spaces. That was, again, based on engineering standards. After we talked about it for a while, we said, you know... if one grants that there is difficulty getting out of the driveway from the town homes and there is difficulty making a turn from university, would four spaces be an adequate solution? And I believe your answer was yes. And I'm wondering, is your answer any different now?

I wouldn't say it's different. I would still go back to the any spaces help. And while it doesn't meet a standard, those four spaces are going to provide a significant increase in visibility for those people. When you look at the driveway, for instance, the visibility that's there now, just by adding one space, it provides a significant increase. Now it's not meeting the standard, but those four spaces do provide an improvement.

My comments are, it appears we're gonna table this in some fashion because we have to make changes. You know, the fact that 60% said don't do anything I think is totally meaningless because I think various comments have pointed out that different people didn't want spots removed from one place or another. So of course at least 60% voted no. I'm sure everybody on the west side voted no and probably people depending on the east side, depending on where they were, voted no. So that's a meaningless fact. I can only tell you that in addition to meeting with folks there and meeting with staff, I'm not a traffic engineer, but I took my own car and I drove. And this is not the first time I did this in the past. Came out of that driveway of that project, also tried to make turns on university. It's not a scientific study. I only did it a few times. But it was damn difficult to turn out of the driveway from the townhomes and it was damn difficult turn from university, whether it was going south or going north. So it seems to me the four spaces is clear if our goal is to make everybody happy and table this and you know, that's not the way we should do things. But I think we should keep in mind that I think the elimination of these four spaces, keep in mind this is in the face of a recommendation from staff that said 10 spaces and at least six, and we've tried to come up with something that we felt minimally provided safety without being unnecessarily inconvenient. So I don't think that's unreasonable. As far as the timing is concerned, The report only dealt with parking. It was after Bridget and I met with staff, met with the residents, that all of these other issues came up, putting new signs on all of these eight or nine parking spaces that had no signs that now are going to say two-hour parking, residential only, the whole idea of a speed table, all of these things. Of course, as far as I'm concerned, at the end of the day, if you get hit by a car because you can't see where you're going making a left turn, You're still going to have some pretty serious damage, whether that car is driving 15 miles or 20 miles as opposed to 25 miles. Speed is important. We ought to deal with it. We ought to look at all these issues. But I think at the end of the day, it's very clear from a safety perspective that four spaces is the appropriate number that ought to be eliminated. And I hope if we can't get there tonight, we'll get there eventually. Thanks.

I really appreciate the resonant comments, and I kept thinking as I listened to these comments. One of my experiences when. I take my sedan to the Schnucks parking lot and park between two big SUVs. And then I need to back out. And I just hope and pray that somebody isn't going to be speeding down the aisle and nail the side of my car. And so then I think, well, what would be the solution? I can eliminate both of the parking spots on either side of me. And so that'd be great. Except what would Schnucks do? They wouldn't hardly have any parking spots. And so that's a crazy idea. So it's much more effective, it seems to me, to address the speed issue. And so as Becky identified, we studied this greatly in the DeMond neighborhood where there was high traffic. And so it does seem imperative to me that finding an effective solution for the speed issue is something we need to contemplate. And I understand and agree that just merely putting a stop sign there or a reducing the speed that requires compliance. And so a speed table has a far more significant effect. I'm not saying that we need to have a speed table on every street in Clayton, but perhaps this is one because of the hill or something else that we need to consider. So I hope that whatever solution we do pursue takes these factors into account.

I'll be brief. I agree with what everybody else said. I think The big thing for me is it seems that there are multiple problems that we haven't fully studied all of them. And I'd much prefer to vote on a solution that solves – that's a holistic solution than a partial one that has only been studied with the sight lines, not the speed and not the other. So I'm all for the city take it back and kind of look at it. Not more holistically, but definitely in a more in a holistic fashion and then come back with recommendations that may or may not include parking spaces and may not include tables. And we'll try to address the residents' concerns in a manner that deals with all the problems together that may or may still result in some loss of parking spots. But at least we'll know that we've looked at everything and we've chosen the best decisions we can to holistically you know deal with the problem so that's all i've got

i think we really go one of two routes if the board wants to see this again as a total package with a speed study in hand and everything else I would recommend that you just withdraw the bill altogether. We'll go through that process, which takes a considerable amount of time or can because you need to have the speed study out for a number of weeks, do the analysis and come back. If you want to break this into two parts and remove some spaces now and come back with the speed information, the speed study later. then I would just ask that you postpone the bill that's in front of you. We'll come back with the revisions that are required for the ordinance at the next meeting, and then you could take action at that time. So those are the two paths. Withdraw it altogether if you want to do the two things bundled. If you want to break them off separately, then I would just say postpone it this evening.

clarify what the four spots are that you're both talking about? The one

i i would support that also with deference to the two of you the ward three all their persons um as well as the staff it spent so much time looking at this talking with neighbors and really understanding the issue at a depth um definitely with the ward view in time also as far as waiting on everything It's really, it's two related but separate issues. The site problems are going to be site problems regardless of what the speed is. If we're reducing the number of spots taken away, keeping as many parking spots as possible, then we also want to look at speed to increase the safety of the area. But they are two separate considerations. So I would support asking staff to look at taking away reduced to four parking spots then and then later continuing on look at the speed study

okay i could i would just say i i would oppose the total withdrawal i think that's not going to make anybody happy that's kicking the can down the road People have rightfully complained how long it takes for us to get around to it. I think that simply opens up that possibility that nothing will happen for a long time. So I support Mayor McAndrew's, Mayor Pro Tem McAndrew's suggestion that we move forward with the four spaces, but certainly ask our staff to accelerate to the fullest extent possible looking at all of these other issues, including the speed table. Obviously, the signage should go up immediately in any event, the new signage, increased enforcement, all those things ought to happen now. And again, staff should take a hard look at what else can be done to affect the speed in the meantime. And we'll see how these, what impact the elimination of these spaces has. That's the best way to find out where we're going.

move that we table Amendment 2, Table 3A and Table 3.1 of the parking regulations for staff to prepare proposed bill to reduce the parking by four spaces.

Aye.

Thanks, everybody.

Yes, and so I'm not going to read all the paragraphs I have in front of me. Basically, this is the Shaw Park Aquatic Center flooring project that we've been planning for some time. The renovation to the center was in 2003. If you've been in the locker rooms there, the flooring looks pretty rough. It is clean. We clean it on a regular basis, but it's just the nature of the product that's down currently that it just always looks dirty, and it's really looked that way before. since the renovation was done or shortly thereafter. So we're recommending an epoxy coating. We've looked at some different options there. We think that would aesthetically be the best. It's also easy to keep clean. And from a cost standpoint, there's definitely benefit to doing it that way. So we did find a contractor that is part of a purchasing co-op. The budgeted amount that we had was $75,000. The total cost for the projects at 70,815. And then we would have a contingency amount on there as well. that basically brings you to that full 75,000 amount. So we recommend that the Board of Aldermen approve the ordinance allowing the installation of epoxy flooring at Shaw Park Aquatic Center through Technicote Incorporated in the amount of $70,815 plus a contingency of $3,540. And Tony Searing, our Director of Parks and Recreation is here if you have questions.

no this is great

i'm good

um alderman views i move to introduce bill number seven zero six zero approving a contract with technique i think for the shaw park aquatic center flooring project to be read for the first time by title only

Bill number 7060, first reading, an ordinance authorizing a contract with Technicote Incorporated for installation of epoxy flooring system at Shaw Park Aquatic Center.

Aye.

Alderman Buse? I move that the board give unanimous consideration for adoption of bill number 7060 on the day of its introduction. second all

aye

i introduce bill number 7060 approving a contract with technocote inc for the shaw park aquatic center flooring project to be read for the second time by title only second

Bill number 7060, second reading and consideration for adoption. An ordinance authorizing a contract with Technicode Incorporated for installation of epoxy flooring system at Shaw Park Aquatic Center.

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

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

Aye.

Aldermen Rick Hummell? Aye. Aldeman Jeffery Yorg?

Aldermen Hummel? Aye. Aldeman York?

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem McAndrew? Aye. Thank you.

Yes, and I'll start off really quickly here. And we have Karen Dilber, our Director of Finance here this evening, if you have specific questions. So the fourth quarter budget amendment every year is really a reconciliation of everything that was spent throughout the fiscal year. So it's a snapshot of every dollar that came in and every dollar that went out as of September 30th, 2024. So it's little bit different than the other three budget amendments that you see along the way that may add a project here or there, if we have something that changes along the way that we know is going to be a fixed change, then we include that in the first three quarters of the year. For the fourth quarter, you can see, and Karen went through a lot of detail in here of every account that basically changed. What we do is we go through and really solidify our actual amounts for all of our revenues and expenditures. And this is what's used for audit purposes as well. our audit as well underway at this point and should be wrapped up here shortly. So again, this budget amendment has a lot more information than what you would typically see because it is that reconciliation at the end of the year. We did see increases in revenue that were pretty substantial. A lot of that was due to interest rates the way they are. We did really, really well with our investments this year. Some tax categories came in higher than we had anticipated. We had others, if you look through the utility taxes and things where some are up, some are down, it's all over the place. But overall, sales tax, use tax came in higher than budgeted, property tax a little bit higher than budgeted. But a lot of the income or a lot of the extra income came from that interest revenue. On the expenditure side, your biggest savings always an expenditure within the general fund is gonna be staff turnover. At the beginning of the year we budget as if every position will be filled with insurance and with full benefits for the entirety of the year. And of course, as you know, there's attrition throughout the year. There's turnover. We have positions. We have a few that have been vacant for some time looking for people to potentially fill those. So you're always going to have savings, significant savings on the salary line. So that led to a lot of the expenditure decrease within the general fund. And then the big other decreases that you see in here are typically capital items. So you'll see that within the bond fund. You'll see that within capital fund and the equipment replacement fund as well. Those are purchases, major projects, those types of things that were deferred. They weren't completed by September 30th. They hadn't started by September 30th, those will take place in 2025. So I wouldn't look at that as realizing savings because those purchases of vehicles do need to happen. It just happens just so happens that some of the vehicles we can't get right now. Everybody is as soon as a police vehicle comes on the market scrambles to try to pick that up. As you know, we have substantial lead times for specialty equipment, just like our fire trucks that we ordered two and a half years ago that we're still waiting another year for. We've had an ambulance that we've had on order forever. Bucket trucks, all those types of things take a substantial amount of time. So anyhow, I use that as an example of those items that are really rolled forward into 2025 and will show up as expenditures there. So with that being said, and it's kind of a quick explanation, this is the year-end closeout, that snapshot, if you will, of September 30th, 2024, and where we were from a revenue and expenditure standpoint. When we go into budget season for fiscal year 26, the actual amount column that you see for fiscal year 25, these are the numbers that you're going to see in that. And for revenue and everything else, that's what we really use for our projections going forward. So with that, as I said, Karen's here, I'm here, we can answer any questions you have. But there was a lot of really detailed information within the packet.

Nothing here. I've got a few comments. So a couple of different things. I was rather stunned by the number of the investment and return variance. When you total all those funds up, it was we're $2.2 million over budget, meaning it's a very positive variance. It's a wonderful thing, but I don't understand how we could miss that by such a big amount. So the way I got that number was to accumulate all of the various categories that are listed in the detail. And so that's totaled to roughly 2.2 million. So I'm just wondering what happened.

So, you know, the interest rates obviously were higher than we anticipated them to be, but there are a couple of things that are actually book entries that we don't budget for at all because we don't know actually, you know, how it's going to look. And we now have to, we didn't used to have to do this. So this wasn't something that we used to present to you all, but now we have to mark our investments to market value. We used to just carry them at book value and record the interest earnings, but we don't do that anymore. The standards have changed. So now we have to put it at market value and we don't know what that's going to be at the end of the fiscal year. So that's the really big chunk is they're just book audit entries.

So I remember that discussion with our accountant when she was here and going through that. And so so I appreciate that. So I guess what I'm wondering, though, is what, if any, impact will that have on our behavior? Because in some ways it's a recognition of a book improvement in our behavior. financial position, but we aren't necessarily any different off. It's how we're recognizing it. So anyway, I just, I'm happy about it. It's a good thing. It's better than the alternative. But I'm also just concerned that we aren't spending it right away either.

No, those entries, the market value entries are flipped automatically at October 1st. So it's not actually a revenue that we are going to recognize and put in our fund balance. If we were to sell those investments today or at that date, we would absolutely recognize that revenue. But because it's an... And our auditors... I hate to say grade us on it, but they judge us on how close our budget is to our actual, which is why we have all this detail at the end of the fiscal year. And we have to include these entries because if we don't, then we're two point whatever million dollars off and we get written up for being off. But we don't really realize that unless we were to sell it at September 30th, which obviously we didn't do.

Right. Okay. So I appreciate that explanation. Thank you. Then the other thing I noticed, and you referenced this, David, in your comments, but it seemed like our sales tax revenues here were approximately about a million dollars higher than what we had anticipated. Again, summing up all the various categories, and a lot of it was in our capital improvements category. But in any event, what I really want to know is, are we really seeing an increase in the economic vitality of our downtown? Is that what I should conclude from this?

So the big amount in the capital improvement fund is the use tax. So that's the online sales tax so we're seeing a lot of online revenue being generated. We have seen, I would say the sales tax, the sales taxes go with inflation so you know if there's Increasing the cost of things, we see an increase in the sales taxes as well. So yes, there is increased activity because we have the increased sales taxes, but the big jump in the capital improvement fund is the use tax. So that's online sales.

And again, I remember us discussing this. Is this something that it's either relatively new or it's so variable it's hard to predict from year to year? Or help me understand why there's a large variance in that.

The use tax? I think it's both.

Yeah.

So we started collecting that just before the pandemic, so getting clear numbers on that has always been difficult for us, but it is a category where we see fluctuation because not only is it online sales tax, but it's also large capital purchases that, especially in a community like this where you have businesses, if they have large capital purchases and those items come from out of state, if those wherever they're buying it from, doesn't have a presence within the state that hits the books as a use tax. So in those cases, we don't know if somebody that owns a big office tower is going to make major capital improvements that may impact the use tax. So we do see fluctuation there year to year, but it's kind of been a wild card. I mean, we put in place the pandemic hit, then you had the Wayfair tax that went into place that started to establish the online sales tax and we're only one year into that. So yeah.

Yeah. Let me be clear. I am not suggesting we should be anything but conservative in terms of how we budget that. So I'm fine with that. It does though reinforce the observation when the St. Louis County was considering a use tax. And I think the municipal league suggested it could generate something like $50 million a year or some big number in any event. And so it's, it is very impactful. I'm glad we have it. So yeah. It's a substantial tax. I wish they... And my last question is on page 60 on the report, just in terms of reference, under the GO bond, there was a variance for streetscapes of 2.4 million, which I'm assuming we're deferring from one period to the next, which is fine. But I just don't know what that is. What are streetscapes?

That's the lighting project for Dubon and Wydown. Okay. Or DeMond High Point and White Down Forest. Yeah. Okay, terrific. All right,

no other questions. Thank you.

Can I ask one clarification on one of your answers? When you said those market value entries flip on October 1, do they go back to their base or what did you mean by that? They'll go back to book value. So then we'll see it again, assuming the market, if the market does. So this may happen again next year. Then we go back to their... The next October 1, it just keeps flipping back and forth. Is that right?

Sort of. So we don't budget for this. So our October 1, our fiscal 25 budget, we didn't budget for this revenue, for these book entries. We'll see it every September as long as they have this statement in effect that we have to do this. So you'll see it again next about a year from now when I present. Yeah.

But just to my understanding of the impact in this period, so most of our investment holdings are bonds. And so they're directly tied to what happens to interest rates. And in this particular period, interest rates fell, which meant there was appreciation in our bond portfolio. So your question about what happens later is it depends what happens to the interest rates. If they went up instead, we'd actually see a negative number instead.

I'm good.

Fourth quarter budget amendment. I introduce bill number 7061, approving the fiscal year 2024 with the quarter budget amendment to be read for the first time by title only.

Bill number 7061, first reading an ordinance amending the fiscal year 2024 budget and appropriating funds pursuant thereto.

Aye.

Opposed? Alderman Buse? I move that the board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of bill number 7061 on the day of its introduction. Second.

I introduce bill number 7061, approving the fiscal year 2024, the quarter budget amendment to be read for the second time by title only. Second. Any discussion? Mr. City

Bill number 7061, second reading and consideration for adoption. An ordinance amending the fiscal year 2024 budget and appropriating funds pursuant thereto.

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

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

Aye.

Aldeman Rick Hummell? Aye. Aldemann Jeffery Yorg?

Aldeman Hummel? Aye. Aldemann York?

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem McAndrew?

So the proposed resolution provides for the sale of bonds for the purpose of providing funds to finance the costs of certain public improvements, including acquisition, construction, reconstruction, improvement, furnishing and equipping of a municipal garage and maintenance facility. The total estimated amount of the bonds is approximately $13,880,000. The estimated maturity date of the bonds is March of 2044, which is our fiscal year 2045. The city's current bond rating for special obligation bonds has been AA+. City staff, our financial advisor and bond council will participate in a bond rating call on Tuesday, March 4th, 2025. The attached resolution will authorize the issuance and sale of the $13,880,000 in special obligation bonds. In accordance with the notice of bond sale, the sale of bonds will occur at 10 a.m. on March 25th, 2025. We will know the final issuance details at that time. Staff recommends that the Board of Aldermen pass a resolution authorizing the sale of special obligation bonds in the amount of $13,880,000. And with us this evening is Mark Grimm with Gilmore Bell. He's our bond counsel in the room. And then we have Todd online. If you can move him over from Piper Sandler, he is our financial advisor and can answer any questions that you might have.

Yeah, so David got my question to answer. I just wanted to have a better sense of the interest rate changes from – What a geo bond is currently going versus special obligation bond for us, which David provided later today. I think those are kind of the main ones. I also wanted to see the coverage numbers for the debt service for out of the capital improvement fund. Thank you, Todd, for getting those to David. But otherwise, those are kind of

Yeah. So just, Jeff, so the conclusion I drew from the comparison between the special obligation and general obligation bonds is relatively nominal. I assume you drew the same conclusion?

In terms of the interest rate, yeah. Like in terms of the amount of money, it's not – I mean – is not all that consequential. I mean, you all know philosophically where I fall on this, but from a number standpoint, I would agree with you over the life of those bonds, it's not gonna be that much of a difference in money spent.

Okay, so I just have two questions. One, David, just to make sure that there hasn't been any significant change in the scope of the project, that the bond fund issue that we're considering is still considered to be adequate. And that we have ample resources that we were going to spend in addition to the bonds proceeds to take care of the construction.

We do, as it states in the resolution, the project amount is $14,520,000 and some change. There are certain expenses that wouldn't be eligible for the bonds. So I think we talked about construction management early on. we passed the resolution that basically says we can reimburse ourselves but our bond council has advised us that there are certain expenditures that we couldn't be reimbursed for some of those being construction management fees prior to so we do have some of those expenses that are out there and that's why you see the bond amount being less than the total project amount but this is all set based on our latest project. Yeah,

I just want to make sure there wasn't any surprises in the what we're finding in the cost. So okay,

no gap. This is exactly what we had planned for.

And then if our financial advisors could just very briefly address that the timing of the issue just in terms of is this considered an ideal time and adequate time in terms of rate outlook and market conditions?

Sure. Good evening. Todd Goffey with Piper Sandler. Typically, this time of the year is a very light supply, January, February, March. And then as we get past the April elections and into the early part of the summer, we have a tendency to see supply increase. So yes, I believe selling bonds in this time frame is favorable. Interest rates, while not nearly as low as what they were during the COVID years, we're basically right back where we were back in the 2019 range.

That's all. Thank you.

I'd really like to ask my friend Mark Grimm a question so we feel it was worth his being here tonight, but I'm going to pass. I can't really think of anything, but thanks, Mark.

Thanks.

I don't have anything to ask or say. It looks good.

resolution number Tuesday.

No.

Yeah, we had the first Cool Cities STL pop-up meeting this morning. As you recall, this is an organization that has formed for elected officials to kind of weave into the other sustainability efforts in our region and to educate elected officials and significant staff and bring us all together in getting the work done. And David joined me this morning. It was very well done. The presentation started off with a review of just the impact of climate change and environmental change on our region, what we should be expecting, and then we looked at different ways to mitigate that, and then how do you react to prepare your city to handle what's coming. It was very informative. And then they went into Webster, then talked about Webster Groves, talked about the things it's doing. Webster actually has a sustainability coordinator. I can't remember the exact title of the staff person, but she first started there part-time through a grant. And then as sustainability, like in Clayton, is a through line in the work being done they found it to be a very, very valuable position, and she continues to work with the different departments in getting the work done. I'm always amazed at what our staff can do in supporting our sustainability commission or committee on top of their other duties. It truly is a value here, and I can't thank Matt and David and everyone else involved enough for getting things to happen on top of everything else going on and looking at it truly as a through line. Some of the things they talked about... Let's see. Well, they had EV chargers at their, what's it called? Where are we right now? City Hall. City Hall. Thank you. And then they talked about policy, how they support it, the different things and how they make it work in their city. forgetting some of the different things. But we have ours coming up. Clayton will be the next pop-up event, and we'll be talking about benchmarking as well as the use of the crosswalks tool to watch our emissions and look at how we have our carbon imprint. And again, it'll be an hour and a half presentation on the afternoon of April 8th, which is the same as the election date, and that was a date that just happened to work then But hopefully any and all of you can come. That would be wonderful. And we'll continue the work. Great.

Yeah, I think it was just last night that we had the Opera Theater of St. Louis event that was hosted at the Center of Clayton. So I went there and thank you to you, Bridget, for you gave remarks there. But one of the things, it was my second exposure to Opera Theater of St Louis. And while I would not describe myself as someone... with any knowledge or true appreciation for the opera, I've been impressed in both cases with how our Opera Theater of St. Louis appears to be like received and to be actually continuing and even strengthening this art form by like having another world premiere of an opera. Um, anyways, it's just kind of a cool thing. Um, so maybe compelled to go see the opera this year. Um, the high point, uh, neighborhood association invited Rick and I, um, to join them and, um, our, uh, police officers were there also to talk about answer questions for the neighborhood I don't think I can't think of anything really noteworthy it was you know a nice event decently attended on their side and no major issues raised and then I just am compelled to say I actually traveled the last two weekends out of town, which feels unusual to me. But one was to Austin, Texas, and one was to Tulsa. And I was struck in both cases by how some of the most, what I thought were kind of like the most interesting and thriving parts of their communities have a real mix of development style and architecture. And so I've talked about this a little bit before. is how I would, I personally really like seeing when people work on development in older communities like ours. and don't force the new development to look like a new version of what was built 100 years ago, and instead allow modern additions to 100-year-old homes and buildings and stuff. I just think it creates a really much more visually interesting and dynamic community. And my little bit of exposure to our um ARB process is that we do not do any of that and we are very stifling in terms of how we um encourage or expect people to like match certain architectural styles and I don't think it's to the benefit of our community so I'm not really going to do anything else about it right now except tell you all that and encourage you to look at that kind of thing when you're in other communities because I think it's just really cool. Thank you.

I also attended the event, the opera theater event, which it's a mother and daughter who wrote the libretto for a new opera that's going to be premiered at opera theater. And the interesting thing, which I didn't realize was that the mother is a very noted playwright and her play Clydes is currently performing at the repertory theater. And I strongly encourage everybody to go see it.

It

sounds, if you describe it, terribly dreadful because it's all about a woman who owns a cafe and she's a former felon who owns the restaurant. She only hires people who are felons. So it sounds like it would be dreadful, but it's actually a wonderful, really wonderful play. Ron Himes, who's the head of Black Rep. as one of the main roles. Anyways, it was great. It was really a bonus that she actually turned out to be the speaker who was a part of the program. I'll be interested in Rick's comments as well about our last CCF meeting, which was quite unique because it was very little presentation and everybody broke up into small groups. And it was sort of a wild session. I'm not quite sure where it exactly wound up. The only thing I would say is there's still a lot of interest, as best I can tell, in the former ice rink and what's going to happen there and what CCF's past role has been in that process and what it would be in the future. So I think they're obviously very interested in where we're going on that. um rick and i are meeting actually on thursday in our continuing effort to look at our various committees and commissions and we're getting i think close to we've heard from just about the chair of every one of the committees we got some good comments from kevin in terms of legally if we wanted to change things it sort of depends on whether it's a comes out of the charter whether it comes out of our ordinances or both and and how we deal with that. And the final thing on legislation, I think David passed something out, but what's going on in Jeff city, one that didn't get a lot of play in that description, but I know the mayor is aware of is is this sort of reemergence once again, of the proposed exemption of sales tax on food sales. So that bill is kicking around again. And, and generally, I think there's more concern on all these bills because a lot of the the stagnation that existed in the in the house last year because of the far right group that held up everything that's kind of gone away so we're probably going to see a lot more legislation coming out of jeff city so i think our lobbyists are going to have to be very attentive to this whole sales tax issue which is by the way as far as that doesn't affect restaurant sales but it certainly would affect any of our grocery stores or anybody who sells those products thank you

I just wanted to tell you, there is a hearing scheduled on the grocery sales tax. I think it's actually tomorrow. If I'm not mistaken. What's that? Yeah. And our lobbyists will be there and plans to speak in opposition to it.

Excuse me real quick, Bridget. And before Rick, before you go, I'm out of town and I've got to run. I was supposed to meet clients a little while ago. So if that's okay, can I bug out?

okay

thank you all thank

bye jeff um so i would just add to gary's comments on uh ccf that in addition to it being a different meeting there were 25 plus people in attendance that was a good thing lots of new members there's new leadership colleen waterman's taking over for jennifer volk as the president They had a successful fundraising in the final quarter of the year. That said, the frequent feedback is the organization needs better focus, narrowing of focus. I think there's a lot of people are full of good intentions and not exactly sure what to do. So I think they have an opportunity to harness all that energy. There is a concert on May the 8th at Chapman Plaza. So something just to put on your calendar there. We were supposed to have a CRSWC meeting, but we lacked a quorum. I'm not sure what the issue is there. I know we've got a couple of new school board members, so hopefully we'll get that scheduled in the next week or so. The one observation I throw out from the High Point Neighborhood Improvement Association report that I was very pleased to hear is that so often we hear that when our snow plows plow, that they know exactly where the city limit line is. And so that dividing line between the city or U City and our neighboring communities is very present in that. I'm sure some residents are frustrated by that because they still need to walk one way or the other. But our police are collaborating irrespective of the lines. And so they're doing a good job. They both represented, meaning the city and Clayton. It's all about solve the problem. We'll worry about the details later. And the residents seem to really feel that way. And so, substantively, I thought that was a great observation out of all that. And the last thing I throw out there is I listened to, and perhaps all of you did too, the Clayton School Board Capital Facilities discussion last week. And so I'm not going to assess what their program is other than to say it did involve a lot of cooperation potentially with the city and have impacts on the city. And I know a number of you have participated in this, so you're well aware of that. My observation is Um, I'd like us as a city to get ahead of the curve collectively as a board to talk about, um, are any of these kinds of land swaps actually possible? If we would do it, would we consider a sale or a lease? Um, if we did it, what kind of programming impacts, if any, I mean, obviously if it's a slip of ground underneath forest park parkway, that's not a big deal, but if it's, um, gay field and Shaw park, then that could be radically different. And so, um, Before they start making any decisions, I want to make sure that we are at least getting this on our radar.

It is on our radar. I have breakfast with the superintendent tomorrow. We have another meeting scheduled just to go over their facilities plan one more time and some of these potential collaborations or land swaps or whatever it might be to figure out what could feasibly happen or what might actually be in play. So once we have that information, we're armed with that, then I think we can dive into what specific restrictions or other things might be on properties that we own. So this right now is at a purely conceptual level on their side, but we'd like to have some conversations to figure out what's real and what we need to prepare for. As soon as we're armed with information, then we'll get together with the board and figure out a strategy.

We also had a few things that we went administrative with. So we had some retaining wall things that used to hit ARB, and we streamlined that process for a lot of residents that were having to go through a whole meeting process for items that the PC ARB just never even really discussed. So we were able to clean a bunch of that up.

Excellent,

Joe. We need a motion to adjourn. Yeah.

Aye.