May 13, 2025 — Meeting Transcript

Uh, Mr. Murray. Oh, there we go. Yep. Sorry about that. I was

joining as a panelist. Are you all ready for me to begin sharing my screen?

We are good evening. Um, you're going to walk us through the, uh, 2025 citizen survey.

Yes, that is great. Got a copy of the full report with me. I hope I'm sharing just the version of the presentation out here. like it from your chamber. Great, great. All right. Well, thank you so much for having me this evening.

Ryan, can you talk any louder?

Yeah, I can try my best and let me maybe kind of push my... laptop up here. Is that any better?

Yeah, that's a lot better. Thank you.

Good deal. So it's a pleasure to be here again. It's always been a pleasure to work with the city of Clayton. It's been a number of years, probably close to a decade that I've been able to manage or at least work on your guys' project. And I really appreciate the opportunity as does the firm. For those of you who aren't aware or haven't been here in the past when I've been able to present, ETC Institute really is the nation's leader in market research for government organizations. We're based over on the other side of the state, just on the other side the state line in Kansas. It's called Olathe, Kansas, just outside of the Kansas City metropolitan area. And I'm actually located in Missouri, just south of Lee Summit, Missouri and Greenwood, where I actually serve as a city council member myself. And my meeting starts in about an hour here. But we are really happy to be here tonight again to work with the city of Clayton. Our mission and our goal is really to help you all make better decisions through statistically valid data and research. And tonight I'm going to go over the general purpose and methodology for the survey. We'll go through some of the generalized demographics and perceptions. We'll go to opportunities for improvement, additional findings, and then I'll take any questions that you might have. In terms of the purpose and the methodology, I like to make sure that everybody understands that I'm kind of giving you the consultant's point of view here. And so from the consultant's point-of-view this is an objective assessment meant to gather opinions about your city programs and services. We want to collect information that will help you to improve and expand current services and offerings. We want to track your performance over time and utilize our important satisfaction analysis really to focus in on what some opportunities for improvement might be. Now, before we get past this slide, this is the 11th community survey that we've conducted for the city. The results are historically very, very strong and good. Same thing held for this time, which can't really be said the same for other communities nationwide. Over the last two or three years, really since your last survey, we've seen What I would describe as a massive decline in overall positive perceptions with places as a place to live, raise children, specifically value for taxes. And some of those areas have really come to the forefront of dissatisfaction in these community surveys over the last few years. And Clayton's results are still really strong. We'll go through those opportunities. But we administered the survey to a random sample of your residents throughout the city. We administered first by mailing a survey to respondents and it followed up via email, text messages, social media. We conducted and completed 403 surveys to give us a margin of error just below 5% at about 4.7% at the 95% level of confidence. And what that means is if we have a yes-no question where 50% of people are yes and 50% are no, The margin of error tells us that the results are reliable to a point, and that point is suggesting that the results could be as high as about 55% yes or as low as 55% yes in any given instance, so 95 out of 100 times. So the results are very reliable for decision-making, but we also want to make sure that as researchers and consultants, we're letting everybody know that there's a calculation of the margin of error on those results. When we're doing demographics, we're also looking at geographics. And it's really important to note that we're trying to make sure that we're getting a good distribution of responses from throughout the city. We're also making sure that these dots aren't directly placed on top of anybody's specific home and more so our generalized points in the general vicinity of those responses. A lot of those are doubled up because some folks would live on the same street and then be kind of merged to their nearest block group, but only one survey per household was able to be completed and we made sure that there was a random selection of households who received the survey. Overall, your results are consistent with past results. And while I've already mentioned that we've seen a sharp decline in overall perceptions, you've continued to perform exceptionally well compared to your past results where other communities just have not kept up. The city of Clayton continues to set the standard. You rated above the national and regional averages in all areas assessed again. So again, you're providing a very high quality level of service, well above national and regional standards. But our priorities are consistent with declines in satisfaction that we've seen in other areas across the country. Condition of city sidewalks, quality of street repair services, and the overall maintenance of city streets. In communities that are moving in the right direction and generally have high perceptions across the board, we will find that infrastructure-related items tend to be our highest priorities for improvement. Now, general satisfaction is already very high in your community. So it's more of an upkeep and maintenance of those particular activities versus some communities that we go to and say, hey, you really need to start investing here. City of Clayton is more, you're on the right path, continue to do what you know is working for your residents, and it will continue to serve you well. The survey acting more as kind of a guidepost to ensure that we're still rating well, we're still serving evolving resident needs. And overall, you'll find that our overall perceptions are extremely positive. You either beat or meet all averages that we have for all perception items that we're able to compare in our database. While we see down towards the bottom how well the city's planning or managing for redevelopment, we might just say to ourselves, well, 52% isn't that great. Well, looking more regionally and then nationally, we see that 52% is actually pretty positive. When you have about half or more than half of your respondents saying, hey, I'm satisfied with how you're planning and managing redevelopment, we're doing a pretty good job. The reason that one, I kind of like to point that one out, it's one of the lower items rated here, but it's also one of those items that it's kind of an eye of the beholder. If you really hoped to get a Whataburger in your community and you did, you're happy. If you really didn't want to see more fast food and that's what came to town, then you're going to be a little bit upset. And that's just an example that I'm using. I hope, I don't believe that you've had any Whataburger in town, but... Just in case that was just an example. When we talk about efforts to support diversity, that's where we're more along those US averages and Plains regional averages. But when we talk about communication, feelings of safety, overall image, and most importantly, the overall quality of life in the community, you're way above Plains and US regional averages. When we talk about being way above an average or in comparison to prior results, what we're looking for is escaping our margin of error. And if you remember our margin of error hub is about 5%. So there are a couple of areas from 2021, or excuse me, 2023 to 2025 where we saw Significant decreases or close to significant decreases. The best example of this is probably in the quality of new residential development, similar to prior examples with development. It's all in the eye of the beholder. The city knows that multifamily is always needed or a healthy mix of different housing types are needed in order to ensure that our economy is healthy in our community. Well, new residential development can rub people different ways and we see a little bit of a decline in our overall satisfaction from 2023 to 2025. When we talk about overall perceptions, I'm highlighting the feeling of safety in the community because it's remained strong and historical results are showing how strong you've stayed in those areas. And feelings of safety, perceptions against police and things like that have also dropped over the last couple of years. And so I wanted to highlight that one specifically where you've actually had a 4% increase in overall satisfaction. When we talk about opportunities, we're really relying and leaning on our important satisfaction analysis. The analysis really is pushing the idea that respondents are gonna have their needs met the most or at least we're gonna have the biggest chance to impact overall satisfaction if we focus on areas that are below average satisfaction in above average importance. While we see the overall value received for taxes and fees and the overall maintenance of city streets kind of hovering in the middle of satisfaction there, please note that overall satisfaction with all of the major services that we rated on the survey were 68% satisfaction and above. When we as researchers interpret these results, we also look at those neutrals as passing grades where respondents weren't either negatively or positively impacted by the given service. So what I'm really looking at here is the proportion of dissatisfied responses to everything else. And as you can see, it's about 87% to 13% with some of the areas that are the toughest to really reach those areas on such as overall flow of traffic and congestion management. Really tough area, especially in the part of the community where you are in, or you're kind of surrounded by these county roads or other major thoroughfares. You're performing exceptionally well, and that can't be undercut. But the analysis is built into the survey. It's part of the survey design. And even if 100% of folks were satisfied, which they almost are with public safety services, we would still find opportunities for improvement based on the forced ranking question. So the second part of the analysis is that importance or which services should receive the most emphasis over the next couple of years. I'm sure you're already investing in the overall maintenance of your city streets. And the other item that kind of popped up this year was the overall value received for city tax dollars and fees. As I mentioned, that's been a difficult item nationally. The city of Clayton was not immune to that particular item. It's really a communications issue almost for the most part, though. It's tough to kind of reiterate value for taxes and dollars, especially when we know cities and municipalities in the state of Missouri tend to receive less than their fair share of county taxes when they're levied. So I just want to kind of make that note that even though value received for city tax dollars and fees is a higher priority or higher opportunity for us for improvement, it seems to be more of a conversation, a communication piece at the same time that we need to understand that perceptions have shifted. And if we remember the election last year, there was a lot of talk about inflation and how far the dollar was going. So there's been a national discourse, not just local, about value for taxes, about the effectiveness of our governments. And we see that in some of our results here. The reason I kind of hang on that for a moment is I don't want electeds and I don't want staff to think Hey, we're not proving our worth or we're not showing the value that you're receiving. It really does seem to be a perceptions issue with where we've studied this other places nationally and what we're really probably looking at in terms of service categories would be maintenance of streets and congestion management in terms of opportunities for improvement. But again, the thing that I said earlier and the thing that hopefully these slides reiterates is that you're performing exceptionally well. Overall maintenance of city streets when we average the responses across your census block groups across your city, overall satisfaction is very high. When we talk about additional maintenance and repair options or repair items that we asked respondents to rate their satisfaction with, we found that it was street repair services and sidewalks were kind of the two biggest issues. The areas where dissatisfaction seems to grow and importance was most certainly there. We see that those are the two most areas or the two highest selected areas when asked which should receive the most emphasis. And so in our important satisfaction analysis, those are the two areas highlighted. And this time I've highlighted in yellow the adequacy of residential street lighting It's just one of those areas that you could potentially see a lowering of satisfaction. It could possibly push the importance up. But again, the city's performing exceptionally well. We're looking at more than two-thirds or about two-thirds of respondents being satisfied with both of the items shaded in red. Sidewalks and streets are just really expensive, long-term items that we're always constantly feeling like, at least in our city, we're always constantly talking about. We talk about condition of city sidewalks. This is where the maps can prove a little bit more insightful, where we see a couple of areas of the community seem to be slightly less satisfied than the aggregate with the overall condition of sidewalks. And the same story for the overall quality of street repair services, even though those are slightly different block groups that we're looking at. So a couple of those groups shaded back to blue, one shaded to dark blue, and then we had a couple in yellow still. So overall, the maps can be very useful for staff. I like to make sure that in these presentations we're interpreting them or at least discussing them with everybody so folks know how to use them. But always please take them with a grain of salt. There are fewer responses in each one of the census block groups, so we're diluting the sample a little bit, which can heighten our margin of error. And again, your results are very strong. The other area that we assess in your survey frequently is parks and recreation. I wanted to make sure that we supplied some trends overall holding very strong. The area that seemed to have decreases in satisfaction, which is just interesting as a person who does about 150 parks and recreation surveys a year, Fewer people participate in programs and they visit our athletic fields or city parks. And so to see such high ratings on things that we know people use more frequently and slightly lower ratings on things we know people don't use so frequently, again, just kind of keep that in mind as you interpret the results. But the overall results are really strong. Anytime you're 75% satisfaction with a fitness program, you're doing very well. When you think about the fact that 94% of respondents rate your maintenance of city parks is either satisfied or very satisfied. That's an astronomical rating. Nationally, that holds at about 80%. So 14 percentage points above that national average in our park surveys. We talk about some of the unique questions that we'll ask in your surveys year over year. We see program interest, adult programming is typically shown as the highest item and some of our needs met ratings. As I mentioned, I do a lot of these surveys per year but context can really help. And so what I took it upon myself to do this year was really run that question by your household composition. There's a really goofy question in your survey and all my clients seem to ask about it. I think Andrea at this point has really come to accept that I really like it. But it really helps us align to make sure that even though maybe the respondents are older, we're still capturing households with children of certain ages and households without children that are younger. And what we've done here is basically in each one of those four columns out to the right, we've determined what those levels of interest in different programming types are for households under 10. And we can see the shift. It shifts from adult programming more to youth sports, youth swim lessons, youth nature-based programming. As our children begin to age, we look back at some adult personal training. Adult fitness is kind of our primary items. And as we get into those other older households, we see that trend continue with a few drop-in activities or nature-based activities. And so the context of the results is that, hey, we know that they're accurate. We know there's a certain margin of error to them. While in aggregate, we might say, hey, there's just a huge need for adult drop-in, adult nature-based, adult personal training, adult fitness, and everybody who completed the survey had to be an adult. But taking apart the results a little bit, looking at those through the household lens can really tell us that, hey, you know, we represented the community well. There are needs in our sports leagues or other activities that we can offer that are beyond the adult athletic items. Some additional noteworthy findings from your 2025 results. We asked respondents to indicate how much effort they think the city makes to keep them informed about news events and services within the city. Almost everybody says, hey, you're making some or a significant effort. In fact, a majority think we're making a significant effort. And again, I'm looking at intensity and proportion, and I'm seeing 94% against 6% saying little to no effort. We talk about the effectiveness of various communication methods. I've highlighted the communication methods that are the most used, which include your rec guide, your newsletter and direct mail from the city. The most effective sources are overlapped there and we can see the intensity is matching. So direct mail from the City of Clayton, really high level of five responses. Same with the city newsletter and the city parks and recreation guide. So you're continuing to communicate in the places where folks are expecting you to, and they're saying that communication is effective. Looking back at the opportunity with the value for taxes received, it's an excellent opportunity to start pushing out some of that, hey, this is where your tax dollars are going. Really trying to bring that home or start messaging on that particular item. Now, if the inflation argument continues to exist and we continue to find ourselves pinched for money in two years when we do this survey again, we should probably expect some of those feelings to remain the same. But we would hope that over the next couple of years, we would have come out of that type of discourse. In question 18, we asked about the enforcement of property maintenance codes can be a really difficult item. And the reason that I like to kind of bring this stuff up is that when we asked about folks, only 7% of respondents have contacted the city over the past year to report a codes violation. And so it's a really small proportion of the population who's actually contacting you for this stuff. So I wanted to kind of, again, put that into context on some of those other items. Satisfaction isn't quite as high here as it is in other areas, but it's still exceptionally high. We asked what types of areas that they support the city's use of financial incentives to attract or expand. We see arts and culture venues or retail. And there's a lot of retail nearby, but a definite arts and culture venue seems to be really popular. And this is kind of, you know, financial incentives. What they probably wouldn't want to see is more downtown or high density type stuff, offices or affordable housing. We talk about satisfaction with customer service. Again, fewer proportion of our respondents, only 35%, about one in three indicated they contacted us in the past year. But overall, those ratings are phenomenal. And I would just like to make sure that we're giving credit where credit is due. You have a lot of county roads in your community. The city of St. Louis as a whole seems to kind of... the boundaries blend. And I know as residents, we might know what city we live in, but I do wonder as we're driving through the middle of town, do we know that we're driving, you know, through U City and to Clayton? Is that U City or is that Clayton? And so there's these issues that can occur and we might call city staff for them. I have a feeling that if you call city of Clayton staff and you hear, hey, that's University of City or University Cities problem, call them and You're not going to be as satisfied as if you're really handled well. So what I think this chart displays to us is that your forward-facing customer service staff in the city are handling everything very well. We should expect a proportion of folks to always be dissatisfied. Sometimes we got to send them to the DOT, to the county, to the city, to another city. But when we see such high intensity numbers, almost 50% up in the dark blue with another 20 to 30% in the light blue, we know that your staff are treating residents very well, which is going to lead to continued brand loyalty down the line. To summarize, the results are consistent with past results which goes against our national trend of lower satisfaction. You continue to set the standard which means that not only have your results remained consistent where others have haven't but you've remained consistently high. Priorities are again consistent and I'm gonna really wear out that term here But overall, what we're really looking at is a continuation of the investment that you're currently making. We shouldn't pull back on street maintenance, but there's not really a calling in the survey to suggest that we need to really, really, really devote additional resources to it. It is more of a situation where what you're currently doing is meeting expectations, which is causing high levels of satisfaction. And while those priorities exist, I've already kind of ate up that last line there. So we should focus on maintaining current service levels. But when we talk about consistency of the 44 areas directly comparable to your 23 survey, 20 either saw an increase or a significant increase. And so we've seen some really strong results where other communities have not. which makes these presentations a whole lot easier. With that, I'll take any questions. I've got a copy of the report with me. If I can't answer anything honestly and concisely this evening, I'll get you a written response back through Andrea tomorrow.

Great. Thank you, Ryan, very much. That was very complete. Do any members of the board have any comments or questions?

It was... That was a wonderful presentation. What I've been focusing on when I looked at it, of course, is exactly what you pointed out, the continuity and where have we changed perceptions or something else. And there's a lot of information in there. I'll be looking forward to hearing how staff is interpreting what to plan to do with it. But I don't have any questions specifically for you. I think you addressed them very well.

Thanks a lot. The things that I thought were interesting, I believe that we have work in progress in a lot of the areas that were identified for opportunity, right? So pedestrian access, bike lanes, we have data on what people want about that. from our planning processes and the ability to do that. Residential street lighting, I wonder about whether like that is going to be improved across the city through the work that we have in our future capital projects or if it might be something we want to consider differently.

That's the big one that's out there in those future years. Yeah, that's what I thought. That we know we'll be tackling in about 10 years or so. So until we get to that point where we can fund that large-scale improvement throughout the city, we're going to continue to have these spotty outages that we're going out and taking care of.

It's a

system that we know it's going to need to be addressed. The worst areas, though, some of the lighting in White Island Forest and some of those others that we have... slated to be fixed out of the bond construction funds. Those should be taken care of, you know, within the next year or so with that larger project to go into all of the neighborhoods and make sure that we have all of our lines and conduit that all the baluster update updated. That's about 10 years out. So we're doing the best we can with the system we have, which is quite old. And again, when it was installed, they just direct buried cable and it's becoming more and more unreliable all the time.

Yeah. Thank you. So just to recap, the worst, the areas that we assess as the worst or like least well-served in residential street lighting have plans for improvements in the next couple of years.

And

then the larger improvement is about 10 years out based on the

That's correct. And I believe our public works staff has a really good handle on where those problem areas are, and they address those as quickly as they can. But we do have outages from time to time.

Right. I thought it was interesting, the highlighting of adult sports leagues. I don't know what adult sport leagues we offer or how much, and so we can find out about that. But I was thinking about that in combination with One of my takeaways from the comprehensive plan data, which was that we actually do have a significant number of like millennial aged residents. And so if we have those people and a large percentage of them like want to be involved in sports leagues, I mean, that's a great way to increase like connection to your city and staying here and being invested in the community and stuff. So that kind of strikes me as something worth considering. further. I don't know what.

Yeah, that's a good point. Maybe something Parks and Recreation Commission can discuss as well. We do have adult sports leagues. Softball is really, really popular. It's probably our most popular. The toughest thing I think for us though is being that almost all of our sports fields are concentrated in Shell Park and that youth sports are so popular that finding additional time to program it for adult use

gets

to be a little tough, but it's something Parks and Rec can look at.

Okay. And then the other thing that actually most surprised me was the 9% decline in the effectiveness of fire prevention and safety programs. So I don't know what people think those are and if we've made any changes in that area that could be perceived that way. I don't know.

Only change I can think of is car seat installation would be one that we discontinued since the last survey, but that's really been operationally, I think, the only

change.

Yeah. Unless you know of anything else. Go ahead, Ryan. I'm sorry.

I apologize. And I just, I hate to speak out of turn here, but I wanted to provide a little bit of context on that specific one council member. That's one I fight with all the time. Just in terms of do we keep it or do we not? And I'm going to share my screen real quickly here. And this is from the tabular data section of your report. So if you haven't received that yet, I'm sure it'll be out from staff here soon. But we've got this section that shows you all the percentages, including those don't know percentages. And while there might have

been

some of satisfied and very satisfied, nobody provided dissatisfied and almost half of people didn't provide a response. And then when we search down to without the don't knows, So now kind of what are we looking at without them? We can see effectiveness of fire safety programs. Really strong response. It's just most likely folks went to the neutral this time because they weren't sure. Yeah,

most people are like, I don't actually know what this even means and I don't think I've done it. So I'm going to say don't know. Chief, did we...

Well,

and I was wondering, did

we stop the movie nights at the fire station in the last year?

We did not stop them, but we have done them before. We've noticed a pretty significant decline on the amount of children and families that are going. We're still going to have them. We're going to have one a year instead of two, but it has declined. I just wasn't sure if that was somehow related.

Yeah.

Yeah, and Mr. David Gipson's correct. We did stop doing the car seat installations because the certification process was very expensive to keep those up, and we found we definitely want to do that mission, no doubt about it. But we were having residents outside the city scheduling, and we just can't tell them no, right? That just goes against our DNA. And our call volume is significantly increasing as we go. So I think part of it is the opportunities to go out and do the training and do the risk reduction. The hazard mitigation classes are a challenge for us because the calls keep going up and as busy as we are. So that could be a part two. But we've not changed anything other than maybe the opportunity to do it more is limited based on our operational capability. Okay.

Yeah, and Mr. Gibson's correct. We did stop doing the car seat installations because the certification process was very expensive to keep those up, and we found we definitely want to do that mission, no doubt about it. But we were having residents outside the city scheduling, and we just can't tell them no, right? That just goes against our DNA. And our call volume is significantly increasing as we go. So I think part of it is the opportunities to go out and do the training and do the risk reduction. The hazard mitigation classes are a challenge for us because the calls keep going up and as busy as we are. So that could be a part two. But we've not changed anything other than maybe the opportunity to do it more is limited based on our operational capability. Okay.

Thanks.

You're

welcome. It helps to see that it isn't actually like a dissatisfaction. It's just like a lower response rate kind of, or more neutral. Especially, I mean, I'm also thinking about it combined with the fact that like we just passed a fire safety tax and I think it got a quite strong percentage of the vote. So like, I think we have a generally very positive response perception of our fire department. So thank you, chief. Thanks. That's all I have. Alderman Gary Feder.

welcome. It helps to see that it isn't actually like a dissatisfaction. It's just like a lower response rate kind of, or more neutral. Especially, I mean, I'm also thinking about it combined with the fact that like we just passed a fire safety tax and I think it got a quite strong percentage of the vote. So like, I think we have a generally very positive response perception of our fire department. So thank you, chief. Thanks. That's all I have. Alderman Fader.

So I think I went through the same process this year as I did two years ago, which is I read the report from the beginning to the end. And until I got to the end, I thought, God, everybody loves us. Then we get to the open-ended responses, which I noted there were numerous ones that basically said, I just sort of categorized them. They started with the words, need more, too many, and too much. Now, the question I have is you've got 400 surveys and I think I remember the answer from two years ago. But the open ended responses sometimes are misleading because if someone has generally a lot of bones to pick with Clayton and they write eight or 10 responses, you get them all. So I guess my question is, do you know that? I didn't count them, but there are a lot of open ended responses. Do you know how many people actually contributed to that so we get some perspective?

Yeah, I'm pulling that up right as we speak. My Excel is giving me a little bit of trouble. That's why did you move here? So in this year's survey, we had a couple of questions. So, maybe the best way to do this is kind of walk through the open-ended questions themselves. Question 17A, I believe, is our first big one. And that was based on if the city's moving in the right direction. If you answered no, please explain why. And so right off the bat, and just to kind of build upon what the Alderman already mentioned, we're taking a hyper-focused view now at why do you say negative things about us? And so it's not a reason to avoid or ignore any of the open-ended comments, but 137 individuals left comments compared to our 400 responses. So less than half. In question 21A, we asked respondents if they were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied to explain why. So another based on your dissatisfaction, explain why only 14, excuse me, 13 respondents asked or at least provided us with negative responses there. Question 23A asks for the department that was most contacted most recently. And then question 28 was an other response. And question 30 was, if you've lived in Clayton for less than 10 years, why did you move here? And that one had a total of 124 respondents. So to the alderman's point, Please always understand that unless we're seeing like 400 people tell us very negative things or the same things, you're really exactly as they mentioned. We're taking a hyper focused look at kind of an individual personal response to the survey. And if we give them the opportunity to tell us if we didn't meet your needs, why they're going to let us know why we didn't meet those needs as well. But exactly right. Just like in years past.

Thank you. Well, I think that helps and puts things in a much more positive framework. I think you alluded to this, but the one question that related to leadership by local officials, which I think is us, the percentage wasn't terribly high, although I understand it's higher than nationally or regionally. I don't know if you have any thoughts. One of the things I would hope maybe two years from now, I'm still looking for some questions that say things like, have you ever dealt with your Your representative on the Board of Aldermen, was that a positive experience? Have you ever had a communication with the mayor and was that positive? Is going to the Board of Alderman, is that a good experience? There's little of that in here. And I think it's as best I could tell most of the questions that relate to the leadership by, let's say, the Board of Alderman seems to be in the development process. That is... if you were applying for some type of zoning, that you not only went to the plan commission, but you wound up in front of the board of aldermen. That seems to be what's being tested, which is interesting, but it's still just a snapshot of what we do. So I would just hope next time around, we could add some questions that would give us a better feeling about, are we doing a good job? Because I don't get that from here. And just final couple, yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead.

And to your point, you know, 62%. And when you're looking at this stacked up to your 96%, they're satisfied with the quality of life here. I could see as an elected official, as an alderman myself, actually, you know, Hey, what's going on with our performance? Well, There's a whole list of issues with us as elected officials, including the fact that maybe we don't involve them enough, that they don't know exactly what's going on. And I've always told councils and boards, unless we take the meetings to their front doors, it'll always be a lack of communication, I think, in our communities. Same with the city's efforts to be transparent. This meeting, I'm sure, is going to be online later. The agenda was made available 24 hours in advance. The city's, I'm sure made all efforts to be transparent, we still see lower than level lower than what we'd like to see satisfaction. But again, the context is overly important here to note like Clayton is a completely different story than half of the communities in the Plains region that we study or our national average. And while that's not a great thing just to say, oh, well, we're better than everybody else. It's really interesting to begin to kind of build this profile of the city of Clayton consistently performing. I'm sorry, I'm trying to find the trends consistently performing well above national and regional averages. And even though. We might see some areas where we're slightly below, and it might be here. I apologize. I was not 100% ready here. I'm gonna skip looking for the trends, but even though we might see a slight decline in the trends, I still think that the contextual comparisons are really great. The one thing that I like to note about these surveys is that it's a random sample. And what I would love to have the opportunity to do is maybe look at another list of people that have interact with the city more frequently. And we could maybe even just do like an all online four or five question survey about the interactions with the alderman. How do you think the board is effective? All of those good things that are really more pertinent Similar to the fire safety programs. Most people have no idea. And that's unfortunate, but most people don't come to my meetings. And so I just don't feel like the average resident in my city has a really great idea of what we're doing on a weekly or monthly basis. And I do think that maybe the results would be more powerful if we received them from a group that has interacted with you. And if not, we could still try a poll survey or something else to get some of that information. But what I'm always fearful of doing is diluting a sample, increasing margins of error, and then really misrepresenting what those opinions are saying. And the fire safety one's an excellent example of where it can kind of be a little bit misrepresented in the decline, considering there was no dissatisfaction with that specific item. So a really long road to maybe a short thought there, but thank you very much for your comments, Alderman.

One final comment that struck me on communication is I noted that almost half of our population doesn't seem to subscribe to Clayton Connection or other things that require going to a link on a computer. The stuff they get in the mail, they can't avoid. They get it. But it did strike me that's an awful lot of people. And most of all, 72% of those who said they didn't subscribe said they didn't even know those existed. So, again, I don't know how representative that is, but I think it does, again, point out to all of us that we need to do a better job somehow figuring out a way to get people hopefully interested in what we do or knowing what we do, because I think there's still an awful lot of people who just aren't interested and, in part, don't even know where to go if they were interested. But other than that, I thought the survey was very useful, and thank you.

Mind if I interject just one comment on that too? It's interesting with people wanting to be informed how we have found that the actual physical signs in our streets, if there's a meeting or something, are far more effective going back to old school. Because you're right, people do see it. They get it in the mail and that surprisingly does work for a lot of the population.

Great. I've got a couple of survey-oriented questions. The first one, Ryan, while it's great to see the regional and national data, I wonder if there is a data set of communities that have similar characteristics to ours, and that may be difficult on what that definition is, but I'm wondering if the results, the comparison results might be somewhat different if we looked at the data that way.

Yeah, population is usually going to be one of the better ones, you know, trying to serve similar boundaries. What I did for a community similar to Clayton in the North Chicagoland area is I used median household income and I went through my database of applicable communities and I kind of compared both population and income to kind of build that database as high as I could. And then I could easily provide some what we call performance range measures to you all.

Yeah, I think that'd be helpful. My thesis is that we may have residents with higher expectations, perhaps as correlated to the household income, but I'd be curious to see if that was true. And then regarding surveys going forward, somewhat related to Gary's comment, I just wonder if you can offer some insight on survey design. If we were to significantly change some questions or add new questions about I know there's value in the linear data as we look back over it, but some of this data may not be as relevant. And I haven't reviewed it that carefully, but just your input on the thoughts of changing questions.

some of your core satisfaction questions should remain the same perceptions or city services when we get into the more specialized items like the you know the fire engagement stuff that's where i think that we could really gut a large proportion of the survey without losing any performance measures that are really meant to compare and contrast and really to make sure that you're on the right path um i think that benchmarking is probably in my mind i'm always going to proceed or you know trump the um trend importance so even though we've been asking about your communication methods or been asking about parks and recreation some of the core quality of life items that are most concerning for your residents seem to be around utilities and so not utilities that's a bad job street maintenance really is probably the best way to put it and so i would maybe even consider a focus on that The other option that we could have is a truncated survey that goes out twice a year. And there's a bunch of different options we could discuss with staff and really confuse things up and down. But the big thing is for your survey, it's a little long. It's about seven pages. um most communities have kind of shifted to about a six page survey so i would always you know implore every client to look at what they're not using and gut that out but that for me as the consultant is more of a response rate situation alderman in terms of what you're thinking i think that we can gut questions that we're not using simply and that would be kind of a staff direction so staff will What questions on here are nice to know but not need to know? You know, run that by the consultants. Make sure we're not missing something that they see. And then from there, we could kind of go bare bones and build it up from that.

Great. And then just a couple of observations. One of the things that surprised me when we reviewed this last time, we talked about resident dissatisfaction with travel and negotiating travel across our community. And we attributed that to all the construction and the construction-oriented traffic, especially in our central business district. That's largely gone, yet the ease of travel trends seem to actually decline. So that surprised me. So Not sure what to draw from that. The other observation was that it seems like every organization I've ever been with, you can always communicate more no matter how good your communication is. And so taking that thought in addition to what Becky was talking about regarding issues regarding online walking, quality of sidewalks, streets, streetlights. This is an opportunity. Since we're addressing it, I think we could do an even better job of communicating what we're doing and when we're doing it in a much more bold way than perhaps we might otherwise do. Let's let people know that we're addressing the key issues in the community. That's it. Thanks.

So a couple of things. One, I was pleasantly surprised that the demographic information of the people responding was actually a larger cross-section than I frankly would have expected it to be. The one thing that does scream to me a little bit is on question 30, 112 people were all had lived in Clayton 31 years or longer. I'm not sure to what extent It's more of just a statement for everybody than anything else. I'm not sure to what extent that would skew some of the data as it relates to what, if not the younger population, because there is a decent demographic of age, but in terms of the people that are moving here. and what they may want compared to longstanding opinions of people who've been here forever. The one thing, and I apologize, Ryan, I was a few minutes late. Did you cover how many people we actually sent the survey out to? Like what our response rate was? I know you said 400 was enough for us to, you know, it was to meet the minimum to make it a valid survey, but what was the number of people we asked?

Got that right now. I think we had 404 completed responses. We mailed out 2,500.

Okay. And that's 2,500 out of 17,000. Is that our population? Well, we would use the household to be better.

Yes. Right around 6,000. So we got a third of your households a little bit more and received 400. Okay.

So I would concur in the sense of length. I had multiple people tell me that they got about one page in and just gave up. They were like, it's just too long. I don't want to do it. So again, I was given that walking in, I was surprised in a good way of the demographics still seem to be broken out. Okay. But I would do it. It is something to be said where We may not necessarily be getting as much of a cross-reference as we'd like just given the length, and people might not want to fill it out. There's no way of proving that. It's just kind of anecdotal. The last part of it that – and it's kind of a little bit taken with Susan and Gary we're talking about was I was surprised at how many people – had little to no interest in getting any information from the city related to social media, whether it be Twitter or slash X, whether it be Instagram. And I feel like we spend a lot of time on this board talking to staff about how are we going to communicate stuff to the community and how are we going get them to events and how are we gonna do all this? And we have a cross section of the population that's telling us we don't want it that way. So I don't know what that means from a social media hire. What does that mean from a social media communication? But I do think when we especially start thinking about different events, the relying on the, well, we'll put it on social media and that'll get it out. That may not be as successful as we think it's going to be at least given, you know, the survey. And if you buy into the demographics and all of that, that come with the survey. So.

and then and we recognize that and it was a little bit surprising to see the number that low um it'd be interesting to see the how it actually broke it out uh by age group and what their preference is as far as those communication methods but uh we recognize this and this is really consistent with past surveys and that's why when we do communicate we use every form still so you know you're going to see all the events in city views you're going to on the weekly e-newsletter, you're going to see the events on banners physically out throughout the community. So we'll do everything we can to try to communicate this in different ways because we recognize through the survey and what we're hearing from residents that everybody's preferred method is really all over the place. But at the end of the day, it's the city views that comes in the mail that people are really looking at and using that to inform them of what's going on in the city.

In the social media, I mean, I know we have to pay for some ads for that and some other stuff. So it's not free to do it, but I'd be interested too. I don't know, Ryan, if that data is available, but it'd be kind of interesting to see kind of the responses to how people like to receive communications relative to age. Like you would, I think we'd all assume that the younger you are, the more likely you'd want it on social media, but that may not actually be the case. And it may... It'd be interesting to know because it may drive what emphasis we put on what mode of delivery, depending on what the event is. Like Wine and Cheese Festival, not that people need to remind them when that is, or Wine and Jazz Festival. But it may be like, okay, we need to focus more on paper for social media or like the Day of the Dead. It'll be interesting to see the data. So that was all I had. Thank you. Thanks.

Yeah, I mean, thanks everybody for everyone's comments. I was a little disappointed as well that everybody seems to really relish the activity guide because I would like to be more sustainable, but I think people still get overwhelmed. a lot of their information in that catalog that comes in the mail. So I don't think we can stop that anytime soon. But I think it's a good point that we just have to continue to use every communication method. I did appreciate that it seemed like a lot of people at least see that we're trying to get information out. You know, I don't think they're always getting it, but they're at least they see that we're yeah but does anybody have any other comments or ryan do you have any further thoughts

no but i will get back to staff um the options for the benchmarking maybe staff can make that decision or pass it along to the board for for reply and i can make those cross or those uh benchmarks and then i will get the cross tabulations by age and i'll just run that for everything and i'll probably just run it by that household type too so you can kind of see the differences there as well

great thank you very much we appreciate it

Thank you, Mayor and Board. We have a great meeting. Thank you all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. We've got about 10 more minutes. Just we have our second discussion item just related to our judicial selection process. David, I don't know if you're just going to remind us what that process is.

So we have a two year term for the judge that's coming up here in the next month or so. The question really is whether or not we want to go through the judge selection process that we used last time, which was a panel that we put together. that interviews applicants for judge. So if you want to go that direction June will advertise for municipal judge with the requirements that we have in the city charter. I know that last time we posted it through all of our regular channels and then put it in Missouri lawyers media I think a couple of times, and the run up to that, that process and then we would get the applications and go through all of that. So that's all. I just wanted to see if the board wanted to go through that process where at that two-year interval, you could always, of course, just retain the current judge without going through it. But I know there was a lot of – the charter isn't clear on how you do this. And so the selection process really came out of the Equity Commission. It was a recommendation there. passed a resolution, basically establishes it. And I just wanted to make sure you wanted to go through that process again. And if so, June will advertise it and we'll start to put dates together as well as a panel.

Okay. I mean, I would, I think we established a pretty significant process two years ago. So I'd at least be in favor of going through that process. Does anybody have any other thoughts?

I think that I would support that as well simply because one of the original areas that the that the Equity Commission wanted to work on was making sure that the entire community knew of the opportunities to be involved to do things to make sure we publish all of our commissions and boards and all that kind of stuff regularly, and that we had clear processes. So it wasn't just a an internal tap a friend on the back. And we started on that path, we've moved along very well. And it probably is very good to continue that.

yeah i agree in the absence of some reason not right yeah

well i'm a little mixed on this i mean you know my sense is that it's fine to have an open process um for almost everyone in in the city terms are typically three years multiple terms. From what I know of the current judge and being on the Equity Commission, I think best I can tell the Equity Commission is all very happy with the current judge. He's met in front of the Equity Commission. I think the commission is very pleased with the direction he's taken us. I haven't heard any complaints. So I think to some extent it's an unnecessary process. I don't know that it's really necessary every two years to go through this if we have someone who is an incumbent, who people who deal with him are satisfied. I asked David. I think there was an issue early on in Judge Strum's tenure where there was some concern about how he was handling things, but I think... that's been resolved. So I think, I think all of it has been very positive. So while I wouldn't object to the process, I also think it's probably unnecessary, but I wouldn't object it, but that would be my, my thought.

Um, I just think that, um, we saw a need for this process and we established it. It seemed makes a lot of sense to me. I would be supportive of continuing the process.

I guess I'd be the – which isn't shocking. I'm probably the lone one who probably disagrees, but I also wasn't here. Like, I guess I'm a little concerned with the two-year term in terms of what continuity that creates or lack of continuity that creates in structure and order and decision-making and all that stuff that you want judges to be consistent. And that's hard to do if you – in theory, are replacing them every two years. You don't have to, but that could be a fallout of a two-year process. I also think that, clearly, if there's a problem, we need to have a process to evaluate judges. I guess I would disagree on the two-year term more than anything else. I feel like that four years, five, like there's, you can do it sooner if need be. I probably would have structured it differently than every two years. So my concern is the continuity piece. And then my other concern is if we're really going to do it every two years, regardless, does that create some sort of weird incentive for the people applying to judges and how they rule based on the fact that granted, you're not getting paid a ton of money for this. It's not like a full-time job but what kind of incentive does that create for folks that every two years are going to be re-evaluated and does that affect or not affect the way decisions are made and the way they interact with um residents and people before them instead of trying to make consistent decisions that are best for the city irrespective of what the political winds may be every two years so all right

Is the term set by

charter? So what I would say with all of this is, you know, I think it's totally fine to do the process. But if we are looking at charter items in the future, I think it is probably something to take a look at. You know, when we reference concerns early on, that sort of thing, we had a judge that hadn't been a municipal judge before. And there's a learning curve. component to that, just like anything else where you have to go and get state mandated training and go through all of that. And that doesn't happen right away when our judge comes in. So you've kind of got this gap where they need to get up to speed. The judge is also in complete control of the court. So from an administrative standpoint, everything. Andrea provides support where she's really the conduit to the city, but The judges in charge of your court and how it operates, and so, when you turn that over two years if you get into that pattern. it's really difficult and then it probably takes a year to get up to speed with your court running under a new individual. And then that's really just, you know, a one year sample set you're working with as far as how the judge is doing. So I'm not saying that as an argument for or against retaining the current judge. I'm just saying in the future, I think if we're going to look at charter components, I think it's probably worth a look at that term because that first year really is getting up to speed process and it's disruptive somewhat from an administrative standpoint for your court to have to start over and do things a different way every time you have a new judge.

When I mean, I think we're trying to find this you know I understand what you're saying Jeff because I feel like we're trying to. Find this middle ground where before we just kept a rubber stamping like every two years and then we got to a place where we probably needed to make a change, you know so. coming up with this process, I think was a great idea. But I agree with you. But I think continuity and whether or not Judge Strom is retained is something I'm sure. I mean, he indicates that he wants to reapply. I think he's shared that with everybody. So I'm sure the panel will certainly consider that as a reason to keep him or not keep him. And that's one of the factors they'll consider.

I don't disagree with that. Looking at the term is probably a very wise thing. And I'm hoping there are charter things that we need to look at, and I'm hoping maybe at the retreat we can see the list of those things because

at

some point in time we have to get out there, and something like this should be addressed sooner than later. A couple things are important to get changed. Right.

Because, I mean, I agree. I think it takes a long time to get up to speed. I mean, it takes a year just to figure out how things work.

Yeah, and you could extend the term and build an impeachment or some sort of process so that you're not having a judge sitting there for seven years you can't get rid of. But I just think, yeah, I'd be concerned that... whatever the judge is that seems to be doing fine gets a weird set of panel and all of a sudden it's not recommended. And then like, I don't know what that process is. And then you're dealing with this whole turnover thing. So

yeah. Does the mayor recommend the panel and we approve it? I forget what the, I think we approve the judge. Yeah. So we

doesn't come back to us, right?

Yes.

I

mean, I think

it does come back to us.

We could always make a different decision than the panel if we should. Yeah,

we could.

Again, I will reluctantly vote in favor of this, but I think to the point that David made is I understand that the Supreme Court after Ferguson basically told municipalities, basically don't try to regulate your municipal courts because they really have to be totally independent. And the idea that we're going to do this every two years in particular, I think, in a sense runs afoul of that because we're really not supposed to oversee the quality of the work of the judge or give direction to the judge in terms of how he does things. So I mostly think that if we want to go forward with this, it's fine. But we really need to take a hard look at how long these terms are, because I think if we do it every two years, we're pushing our luck.

And I think something we have to do with the charter. Yeah, I mean, I think we've just got to really take a good look at the charter. So great. Okay. Sounds good. Looks like it's just about seven o'clock. So we'll go ahead and start our seven o'clock meeting. June, would you take the role?

Alderman Boos. Here. Alderman Patel. Here. Aldermen Gary Feder.

Alderman Boos. Here. Alderman Patel. Here. Aldermen Fader.

Here.

Aldeman Rick Hummell. Alderman Jeffery Yorg.

Aldeman Hummel. Alderman York.

Here.

Mayor McAndrew. Here. City Manager David Gipson.

Mayor McAndrew. Here. City Manager Gibson.

Here.

City Attorney O'Keefe. Here. Thank you.

We don't have to use them anymore.

No. Yeah. And everybody's here.

Right. Can

I ask a random question as to why we're not using them anymore?

It was a request of the prior mayor, and I didn't think that we needed them. Got it. All right. At this time, if there are any public requests and petitions about something that's not on our agenda, you are welcome to come up and address us. Good evening, Mr. Burroughs.

Good evening, Mayor McAndrew, and congratulations. Thank you. We're going to miss you. Thankfully, we still have Barry. Thankfully, yeah.

Thanks

to all of you. And also, congratulations on the survey. I have a couple of suggestions. Last Sunday, I took a walk around downtown, basically between Maryland and Forest Park Parkway. I counted 33 vacant. And I'm not talking office space. These are office space. My question is, where do we building space together and find ways for them didn't want revenue to cover their property taxes even when they get now are they discouraging small businesses from How about a sales tax reduction for new businesses? How about petitioning ? I'm sitting on property taxes for new businesses. New businesses means more . I've said some of the property tax reduction. If you look at Webster Groves in Kirkwood, we used to learn that Webster Groves Five years ago, we've been here. Back then, it was not very impressive. Quite a vibrant downtown. As far as how they were able to be revitalized by the little downtown. Stayed to the 30-plus vacancies it probably was. Most of the vacant properties were off. They used to have white paper on the corner of this thing, and it's really good luck. Some of you will remember the building on the Forsyth curve. It used to be a nice window covering of a sort of garden-like vision, partially disguised. I've raised this before. Well, that's the owners and we can't force them to do anything. I think it's a real problem for our community to live here and move here. I suppose in the long run, if it's not fixed, it could start to deteriorate our property value. Number two, my favorite topic, the bike paths. And well, I know this is here since they've been in place, and I can probably count on two hands the number of wipes I've seen used. I don't understand how that, removing them isn't. But can we, not four quotes in a row that are straight, and they really are rather unsightly and neither necessary. How much money are we wasting by paying ? They've been removed along Maryland by the new FEMA system. And everybody seems to know how to park there. I haven't seen new cars parked over the line. I go out that area every day . Those who don't park properly will get Chief Smith and his guys to give them a ticket. And there's other ways to mark these bypass. I think I sent a picture from another state. Parts of the whole bypass area with three. So thank you for listening. One of these days, the white folks will be gone. Thanks again for everything you do.

Thank you, Steve. I mean, I have a lot of responses to your questions, but maybe we can get together and talk about it. Okay, sounds good. Thank you. Does anybody else have a comment on something that's not on the agenda? It looks like there's two. Ma'am, do you want to come up first? So you'll just tell us your name and address for the record, if you don't mind.

She's beautiful.

7730.

That's okay. Just talk to us.

Okay. I walked up to the counter. I was a little hesitant, but I placed an order. And she started telling me that, you know, one more person would do it.

They were not talking to total tones, that language about how there were no I wanted to say They wouldn't listen. I became . The

gal

who was from .

Anyway, I think. Public label, please. Thank you. I don't think so. on social media. .

what the law is. And if somebody walks in with a service animal, you need to be respectful. You need to know that you're not allowed to treat somebody the way that they treated us. One of the gentlemen that I was sitting talking to on the other side of the doors before we came in, he said, are you still boiling hot about it? And I said, no. I'm astonished. It's not right. And there are people who have got really severe issues. They can't ambulate and get around the way that I can. Have they treated that poorly when they go into a place like that? Clayton's got a better reputation than this. So is it okay if I'm asking you, and do you have the right to do that even though it's privately owned? Can you offer training or something for these people?

I mean, as I understand it, one of our officers did follow up with them. I mean, I'm happy to allow David to respond, but as I understand it an officer did follow up to make sure they understand the law. So I think that was a step in the right direction.

Okay, great.

Yeah, Chief Smith, did you want to address it?

Hi.

Well, I'm sorry. So this is actually our, we had this happen a few years ago with another business. And this was a learning experience the first time. And

with the same business too.

That's right. Yeah. So it was a learning experience. I think it was under different ownership back then. Um, but it's been a few years. So it was, like I said, it was learning experience for the police department as well. Um, you know, it's covered under the Americans with Disability Act. So it's a federal law. There's no statutory law for us to enforce. At the time we were told we could write a report. Our officers should mediate it, try to help, you know, build some understanding here. Um, but if that doesn't work, we can definitely document it with a report. That's what we did this, the last time and this time. And, um, you can use that with, there's a state agency. I think it's the, um, I'm drawing a blank on the state agency that would investigate this, but it'd be not a criminal offense, but a more of an administrative defense. Same with the Department of Justice. You could also file a complaint with the U.S. Attorney's Office and be an administrative action.

And you know what? My life as a doctor of psychology, mind-body medicine and well-being and health and all that, I look at this whole situation, and I thought I would come and talk to a civilized group of wonderful people. You were fabulous that day. You were fabulous. Officer Robinson was fabulous that day. I don't want to chase this around. I'll never go in there again. I won't order from there. But that's about the end of it for me. I'm happy to answer any questions or whatever.

I mean, I would just say thank you for your comments and I hope that it doesn't happen again. I hope that you don't feel that way again. So, but thank you for coming here tonight and sharing your story.

And Jesus says, thank you too.

Have a good night.

Yep.

thank you for letting me talk i'm john milton and i live in ladue but i've got a long history of a relationship with uh with clayton i was the medical director for clayton for 20 years probably but i'm here today on behalf of the trees of clayton and and surrounding areas and i'm a tree keeper a volunteer for forest relief and i plant i planted hundreds of trees and I'm really upset about this mulch business because the communities and private people will hire mulch companies. And the mulch companies say to their workers, okay, mulch those trees. And they do, but they mulch it in such a way that it's going to kill the trees. And so if people put a, or whoever, the workers put a volcano of mulch around the tree, it's going to rot the base of the tree and the tree is going to die. And if the companies are told to, you know, cut and trim the grass, what they do is they use a weed whacker and they whack the base of the trunk of the tree and it takes all the bark off and the tree will die. And it's driving me nuts. So I've been in touch with different communities to, you know I don't know if it'll do any good or not but I thought I'd come here and start my work. My campaign, and I do have something to post if you want to do that. Can I give this to you? Sure. I don't need correct mulching, but if you see the donut way that we're supposed to mulch, you can tell that that little tree has been weed whacked, and that's going to kill the tree. So, you know, I think it would save money for the city of Clayton and for homeowners to direct the mulch companies to mulch correctly. And if they're going to weed whack, don't weed whack the trunks of the trees. That's all I got.

Great. Well, I mean, I appreciate your comment. I didn't know that. So I appreciate you sharing that with us. Yes.

Okay. All right. If I can respond real quickly too. Just a thought. I'm glad you brought that to us. We do have a committee, a sustainability group that looks at things like the NOMO May, which we've decided really we're not doing here, but things like that that we can bring that to. And they try to get publications out. Just did you know? in publications out and this is something i'll certainly share with that group and see if there's something we can get out to the community that would

be good i went over to i take took some photos that you know i couldn't i don't have a thumb drive or anything but of trees that um i know with the clayton high school administrative building or something right next to the beautiful uh park and uh sure enough they had volcanoes and i dug a little bit and they had weed wax cars and uh it's just It's too bad. I really feel bad for the trees, and it's also very expensive for the homeowners that hire folks only to have these people kill the trees. Thank

you. Thank you.

Got that, Mr. Bliss? Anybody else? All right. The first item on our agenda, I'm going to open the public hearing is a resolution. There's a conditional use permit for 7632 Westmoreland.

Yes, Mayor. This is a public hearing and subsequent resolution to consider granting a conditional use permit to MRM Manlin Development Group, owner of 7632 Westmorelan Avenue, to allow for the construction of a detached garage containing a 558 square foot accessory dwelling unit or ADU. The property has a zoning designation of R2 single family dwelling district. The plan commission approved the site plan on April 7th, 2025. The architectural review board approved the architecture and the plan commission approved the CUP and recommended approval of the CUP to the Board of Aldermen on April 21st, 2025. An accessory dwelling unit is a type of accessory structure, either attached or detached, which provides complete independent living facilities for one or more persons and is located on the same site as the principal residence. Staff recommends that the Board of Aldermen conduct a public hearing and consider approving the resolution granting a conditional use permit for a 558 square foot detached ADU at 7632 Westmoreland Avenue.

Thank you. I'll open the discussion. Does any member of the Board of Aldermen have any questions or comments?

Yeah, just a couple. What I think that is in the survey and other places, one thing that we hear a lot about, I don't have any particular problem with this particular project, but it is the overbuilding. So when we look at this and even if the footprint is the same, I think we've all seen the garages that go up and get taller and taller and it does impact neighbors and runoff and everything else. So just that we always keep aware of that, and as we look at what our codes provide and how their use are done, we do need to look at that because you do see a lot of hike coming up. The other question I also had was this talked about we do have a restriction with our ADUs that the occupant be either employed on the property or relative. I don't quite know how we enforce that, and as long as we still want that there, that's fine, but it's something we should stay aware of. And that if there is a change in occupancy, that's reported to the city, I believe. Do we actually do inspections like an occupancy permit at those changes? Or how is that all handled?

We do not.

i mean i'm guessing if there's you know i'm sure this is probably particular i mean it's probably complaint driven you know if one of the neighbors recognizes that it's being rented out in some fashion then that's likely how it would happen

yeah which which is the again it's not this project in particular but if we have something that we have that that we that we say is a restriction or even indeed restriction um Do we have the mechanisms to know and to enforce it and keep it uniform around the city just being aware of that, as we continue to evolve our codes and regulations so. that's that's all i've got on that otherwise it looks it looks great.

Yeah, I mean, I will say I was on the plan commission when this was originally approved. There is a representative. I know the architect. I can see him in the audience. I think there's still a question as to whether or not they're even going to finish the... Is that still the case? Whether you're still actually going to have an ADU. I mean, they're here to get the approval, but I think it sounds like it's something if... It's still a spec house. It hasn't been sold yet. So I as I understand it, if it is purchased by somebody who wants it to be finished, it will be but I think it's still somewhat to be determined whether or not it will function as a finished space. Any comments, questions, Becky? No, thank you. Very

The only thing that occurs to me is if we don't exactly know what it's going to be. It seems a little odd to approve something when we don't have a commitment from somebody who actually is going to do it, but that seems a little odd

I mean, I think the idea was that they had the ability to finish it and allow it to be a finished space versus an unfinished garage space, basically.

I mean, I assume if they do it, then the deed restriction and all the other conditions will have to be complied with. So it's not like we'll totally lose control of it in the future because the conditions will still have to be satisfied. That's

correct. We'll definitely be aware because I'll have to apply for the building permit to finish that space out.

Alderman Rick Hummell. I presume our process is for all to notify all the adjoining neighbors or is it go beyond that? So that's fine. It's just whatever it is. What my question really is, is was there any feedback or concern expressed by any of the neighbors at the meeting?

Alderman Hummel. I presume our process is for all to notify all the adjoining neighbors or is it go beyond that? So that's fine. It's just whatever it is. What my question really is, is was there any feedback or concern expressed by any of the neighbors at the meeting?

No,

not at the meeting and not by writing. Okay. Thank you.

I did get a letter too.

My only comment is the same one Susan has. It's not directly related to this. It's just a larger question as we're starting to re-look at zoning. Do we want to say you can only have ADUs with your lot size over a certain number just to make sure you're not... Or setbacks, some stuff I'm sure we already have. I just want to make sure that we're not losing the point Susan's getting to, which is because we have a couple in our neighborhood that are going up that I can't imagine the neighbors would be all that happy about. They may not have commented. They may just not be there. So just a larger comment for us to keep in mind. But otherwise, it's

fine. Does anybody in the audience have any comments or questions about this? I will close the public hearing. Alderwoman Buse?

Sorry? I move that the board approve resolution number 202509, granting a conditional use permit for 7632 Westmoreland to allow for an accessory dwelling unit. Second. Second.

Any discussion comments all those in favor

aye

any opposed. Great. The next item on the agenda is our consent agenda, we have some minutes there's a resolution, as well as some boards and commissions automatic assignments does anybody have any comments or questions on any of those.

Great. Alderman Buse? I move that the board approve the consent agenda.

Second.

Alderwoman Buse?

Aye. Alderwoman Patel? Aye. Alderman Gary Feder?

Aye. Alderwoman Patel? Aye. Alderman Fader?

Aye.

Aldermen Rick Hummell?

Aldermen Hummel?

Aye.

Aldeman Jeffery Yorg?

Aldeman York?

Aye.

Mayor McAndrew?

Aye. Thank you. Great. The next item is a resolution related to the Central Corps Fire Training Center. David?

Yes, ma'am. On April 25th, 2025, the Central Core Fire Training Center Commission met and Navigate Building Solutions presented the construction bid results for the Central Core Fire training center. If you recall, this will be located in Shrewsbury. Based upon the recommendations of Navigate Building solutions, the commission approved four contracts to construct the fire training center and an additional $60,000 in contingency funds to be split equally among the four cities that make up the commission. That's $15,000 per city. The additional contingency amount will be funded out of the capital improvement fund and included in an upcoming budget amendment. Based on the construction bids and additional contingency, the total project cost is now $2,027,570. This is $150,205 higher than the initial cost estimate. The overrun is due to the remediation of poor soil and loose fill, which was not anticipated until further site investigation was completed. $90,205 of the overrun will be funded by the Central Corps Training Division Fund Balance. Brentwood and Richmond Heights ratified the commission's actions on May 5th, 2025. A resolution for ratification is on the Maplewood City Council agenda for this evening, May 13th, 2025, and staff recommends the Clayton Board of Aldermen approve the resolution ratifying the commission's approval of the contracts and costs for the construction of the Central Core Fire Training Center. We do have Chief Jason Hildebrandt here this evening who's been managing this project and is the training chief for Clayton, Brentwood, Richmond Heights, and Maplewood.

Great. Thanks. I'll open the discussion. Does anybody have any questions or comments from the board?

No, thank you.

Not on this. Just where do we stand on construction? When will it be available for operation?

So we're looking at construction, hopefully starting later this summer, potentially in July and she filled the brand.

Correct. So, um, The general contractor should mobilize in late July, early August. And the site construction will be completed beginning of November. And then we have about a four to five month wait period for the vendor fabricating the training facility to mobilize on site. And that is scheduled to be delivered the end of March. And we should be operating in the facility April of 26th.

thank you no other questions remind me again how we paint how we're paying for this so we

are paying our portion out of the capital improvement fund okay so there's roughly five hundred thousand dollars that the city of clayton's contributing uh one city has to sign all their contracts for the construction or is responsible for those uh through the commission and so that's that's clayton essentially um where we fund it and then they're actually reimbursing us from those other cities so That's 500,000 and then we'll, there'll be $1.5 million coming in from the other three member cities and is that

governed by some inner inner city agreement separately is an intergovernmental

agreement that established the fire training center commission. And so each of the city managers is a commission member. We voted to approve the contracts, and now each of the elected bodies is ratifying the contracts for those to go into effect. And that's all laid out in the bylaws.

And I know two of them have done it. What happens if – what did you say? It's on the – Maplewood. Maplewood. What happens if Maplewood says no? Are we on the hook for that there at $500,000? Or is – No. Yeah.

that yeah if they don't want to move forward it has to be a unanimous decision uh amongst all cities otherwise nothing moves forward otherwise it's denied until we

can get there gotcha okay cool thanks

thanks jason the woman abuse

i know that the board approved resolution number two zero two five eleven ratifying the commission's approval of contracts and costs for the construction of the central core fire training center

second any discussion All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great. That was pretty

quick. Even with half the meeting being public comments. I

know, that's true. Why don't we go around? Jeff, you want to start tonight?

Sure. I'm so used to being last.

I know. I thought you'd appreciate going first.

So we had EDAC today that mayor was at. Mr. Alderman Gary Feder there decided to crash as well. Our annual meeting budget was approved. I mean, Gary Cardinal would kind of present some of that when he goes to the larger budget. There was some discussion about what EDAC will look like going forward, whether that becomes a larger economic development advisory board, my words, not theirs, or whether we think about a whole separate economic development advisory board on top of EDAC and leave EDAC really as a body that's there to look at the property taxes that are dedicated to downtown. Um, you know, it wasn't a lot of development to talk about, as we all know, in years past when I've sat on this commission, we would spend a good portion of time talking with all the different projects that are going on in the city, which, as we know, there isn't a ton, but we did kind of fill everybody in. I would like to figure out a way to get the group more together a bit more often only because I feel like they come in once a year and we spend half the time kind of filling them back in on what happened last year. But that's, I think something for us to talk about during retreat or, you know, is Gary and Rick continue to work on their stuff. But otherwise that went well. There was a park and recs meeting this week that I was unable to attend. So I don't have a lot of feedback for that one, but otherwise it's kind of all I got at the moment.

So we had EDAC today that mayor was at. Mr. Alderman Fader there decided to crash as well. Our annual meeting budget was approved. I mean, Gary Cardinal would kind of present some of that when he goes to the larger budget. There was some discussion about what EDAC will look like going forward, whether that becomes a larger economic development advisory board, my words, not theirs, or whether we think about a whole separate economic development advisory board on top of EDAC and leave EDAC really as a body that's there to look at the property taxes that are dedicated to downtown. Um, you know, it wasn't a lot of development to talk about, as we all know, in years past when I've sat on this commission, we would spend a good portion of time talking with all the different projects that are going on in the city, which, as we know, there isn't a ton, but we did kind of fill everybody in. I would like to figure out a way to get the group more together a bit more often only because I feel like they come in once a year and we spend half the time kind of filling them back in on what happened last year. But that's, I think something for us to talk about during retreat or, you know, is Gary and Rick continue to work on their stuff. But otherwise that went well. There was a park and recs meeting this week that I was unable to attend. So I don't have a lot of feedback for that one, but otherwise it's kind of all I got at the moment.

We all had the meeting with the school board, the breakfast and then Becky and I also had one with Ben and Kim. And so I would just say having regular interaction is something all collectively we encouraged and think is a good idea. We have a CCF executive committee meeting early tomorrow morning. And then yesterday we did have the non-uniformed retirement fund. The funds at 24 million, the 10 year return is a little below that five year return as well above our actuarial requirements. So the trends are very positive and we have some new members as we indicated at a prior meeting. We lost one of our members last, Kathy. And so John Wolf has taken her place and then we'll have a new aldermanic member at our next meeting. So that's my report.

Thanks. Alderman Gary Feder.

Thanks. Alderman Fader.

did in fact crash the EDAC meeting in part because since Alderman Rick Hummell and I have sort of suggested the possibility of reorganizing it, I thought it might be nice if I attended, which I hadn't done in a while. So I actually thought it was a well-run meeting, but my thought continues to be that there are things that ought to be done to make it a better meeting. the um i did attend as as all of us did i think or most of us did the school board get together i think it's a great idea i wish it was a little more there was a little more substance to it i think just sitting around is of some value but having some figure out some way to have some meaningful discussion as a group would be would be definitely worthwhile um Becky and I met with Lauren Goldstein, who's the new chair now of the Equity Commission. I think the mayor met with her separately. I guess I would mostly say that there's a lot of moving pieces now. And I think Lauren's going to take the lead in trying to meet with a bunch of people, the current commission members, Dr. Ward, who's been involved with the task force and use the summer to maybe figure out where this is all is, is all going. So I attended the uniform pension board meeting, which was scintillating as always. And the main thing seemed to be stay the course and things are looking good. So. I think that's it for now. I guess the final thing, which we'll talk about on Friday, is I've been involved with the process of reviewing the potential designers for the former ice rink site. I know we're going to talk more about it, but it's been a good process as we're kind of trying to get closer to determining who the designer should be. But I'm sure we'll talk more about that on Friday.

did in fact crash the EDAC meeting in part because since Alderman Hummel and I have sort of suggested the possibility of reorganizing it, I thought it might be nice if I attended, which I hadn't done in a while. So I actually thought it was a well-run meeting, but my thought continues to be that there are things that ought to be done to make it a better meeting. the um i did attend as as all of us did i think or most of us did the school board get together i think it's a great idea i wish it was a little more there was a little more substance to it i think just sitting around is of some value but having some figure out some way to have some meaningful discussion as a group would be would be definitely worthwhile um Becky and I met with Lauren Goldstein, who's the new chair now of the Equity Commission. I think the mayor met with her separately. I guess I would mostly say that there's a lot of moving pieces now. And I think Lauren's going to take the lead in trying to meet with a bunch of people, the current commission members, Dr. Ward, who's been involved with the task force and use the summer to maybe figure out where this is all is, is all going. So I attended the uniform pension board meeting, which was scintillating as always. And the main thing seemed to be stay the course and things are looking good. So. I think that's it for now. I guess the final thing, which we'll talk about on Friday, is I've been involved with the process of reviewing the potential designers for the former ice rink site. I know we're going to talk more about it, but it's been a good process as we're kind of trying to get closer to determining who the designer should be. But I'm sure we'll talk more about that on Friday.

I felt like I was going to sneeze as soon as it was my time to talk. I think the only thing I have to mention that hasn't been mentioned yet is that some of us went on the municipal garage tour. So appreciate Matt taking the time to... show us around and David being there to help explain kind of how it operates today and imagine how it could operate more effectively in the future to take better care of our employees and staff as they care for the city. So I think that was great. Thanks.

Okay. With Gary, I attended the Uniform Employees Retirement Fund meeting and yeah, we continue to do well and be the top 5% of those plans. So there have been a little bit, we're below the accrued liabilities right now with additional employee costs. But otherwise things are looking good with the, even with the uncertainties going on is that typical hold the course advice. So that, that was reassuring. I also had a, we also had a clabrak park neighborhood meeting that I attended and it Reminded me tonight when we were talking about the bike lanes and things, something that is being requested is we do have a stop sign that's in an unusual spot that tends to get run, which makes it very dangerous. And the conversation at the meeting really was, can we at least paint a white line as people approach it so there's another visual cue to stop? The other interesting topic that came up, especially in some areas of Claverac, is the tree selection that the city gives students gives to different residents. And as we're trying to get increased canopy and things like that, and as our older trees continue to age, are there areas where it'd be appropriate to require the larger trees to be planted versus some of the smaller dogwoods and things like that? Something that will actually begin to replace the canopy as these other trees come out. Does it have to be the same across the city or can it be site-specific to better protect the the nature of the area um those are things of interest from there that's all i got

um i'll just say i've been meeting with lots of people um meeting with you know members of our boards and commissions um I enjoyed the garage tour. I'll say the chief was very kind to invite myself, and he had an extra ticket, so my dad got to go as well to the police memorial breakfast that was out at the St. Charles Convention Center. My dad was a prosecutor for 40 years, so he often interacted with police and detectives. They often would come to our house, so it was very meaningful to him. So thanks again, chief, for doing that. It was a wonderful event. Unfortunately, I think as everybody knows we did lose an officer in the area from the city of St. Louis so there was a big video dedicated to him which was very moving so I also was lucky enough Gary and I actually went to opera theaters 50th anniversary gala last week, which was quite an event, and certainly makes me more and more excited for the, and hopeful. that something will happen in Clayton. So that was, that was very exciting. Lots of people saying which was really beautiful and, you know, it's just interesting to hear from speakers I again I'm still just learning about the opera theater so it was exciting to hear from people what a Nash, what a nationally renowned, you know, you know institution our opera theater is so it was it was great um and i think that's about it oh i did attend a ribbon cutting there's a new um wellness center i think primarily geared for geared toward women uh that opened up in the sevens building um called sanctuary um so that was really exciting so um i that's about it david do you have anything more for us

No, I don't think so. We do have the meeting on Friday as a reminder, so we'll talk a little more about zoning and then like Alderman Gary Feder, I'm excited to talk about the Shell Park project and what we intend to do with

No, I don't think so. We do have the meeting on Friday as a reminder, so we'll talk a little more about zoning and then like Alderman Fader, I'm excited to talk about the Shell Park project and what we intend to do with

that. Great. Wonderful. I move that we adjourn. Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Great.