May 27, 2025 — Meeting Transcript

Ready?

Good evening, everybody. This is our May 27th Board of Aldermen meeting. There is no discussion session tonight. So June, if you could go ahead and call the roll. Here.

Here.

Here

Here.

Here.

Good evening, everybody. I don't know if there's anybody online or in our audience. This is a time where if there's any public requests and petitions that anybody would like to talk to us about that's not on the agenda, you are welcome to come forth. Not seeing anybody. I guess, you know, it's hard to just kind of go forth and start this meeting without at least recognizing what, and I know that we'll continue to recognize it and talk about it, but, you know, we had an EF3 tornado yesterday. come through the city of Clayton 11 days ago. It was unbelievable. I mean, I think so many people will talk about this or talk about where they were when it happened or talk about just anything that really affected them at the time. I think our schools, our students certainly will remember being in the various schools that they were in. Yeah. You know, I just want to talk about like the collective effort of our citizens. You know, I think there has been so much resilience on behalf of you know our community going through this. I think the kindness that our citizens have shown one another, helping one another out. There's so many stories. You know, there was a story about somebody pulling, you know, a chainsaw on somebody's back just to bike to somebody's house to help them to help clear their driveway and to clear their street. And I know that we will continue to hear about many other stories like that. I think there will be stories of heroism that we will hear about that I'm excited to celebrate and talk about because I think people need to hear that. I also just want to recognize our staff. It was unbelievable to be here day after day and see our city manager, David Gipson, our fire chief ernie rhodes our police chief mark smith and all of our executive team and it just trickles down and down to the staff that just came day in and day out and didn't blink you know you had people coming there stayed late friday night and then literally worked i mean public works and park staff worked how many days in a row 12 days in a row i think before they got a day off um and these were long days they were 12 hour days so And every morning you came in, this was our command center, and every morning you came and nobody ever, we talked about it today, nobody ever was grouchy or nobody ever snapped at one another. Everybody just kept doing the work. It was really unbelievable and it was incredible to see. So I just wanted to recognize that. I wanted to just say thank you to our staff. Thank you to our community. We have a lot to do going forward. There are so many people who are still very displaced in their homes, because they don't have hot water. or any number of things. I know that our community, the city of St. Louis is also tremendously hurting. So I hope we can find ways to help them going forward as well. But it was just, it was a Herculean effort by our staff. And I'm just, I'm very proud to be the city's mayor. So thank you, all of you. With that, we will start our agenda. I think our first item is our consent agenda.

Good evening, everybody. I don't know if there's anybody online or in our audience. This is a time where if there's any public requests and petitions that anybody would like to talk to us about that's not on the agenda, you are welcome to come forth. Not seeing anybody. I guess, you know, it's hard to just kind of go forth and start this meeting without at least recognizing what, and I know that we'll continue to recognize it and talk about it, but, you know, we had an EF3 tornado yesterday. come through the city of Clayton 11 days ago. It was unbelievable. I mean, I think so many people will talk about this or talk about where they were when it happened or talk about just anything that really affected them at the time. I think our schools, our students certainly will remember being in the various schools that they were in. Yeah. You know, I just want to talk about like the collective effort of our citizens. You know, I think there has been so much resilience on behalf of you know our community going through this. I think the kindness that our citizens have shown one another, helping one another out. There's so many stories. You know, there was a story about somebody pulling, you know, a chainsaw on somebody's back just to bike to somebody's house to help them to help clear their driveway and to clear their street. And I know that we will continue to hear about many other stories like that. I think there will be stories of heroism that we will hear about that I'm excited to celebrate and talk about because I think people need to hear that. I also just want to recognize our staff. It was unbelievable to be here day after day and see our city manager, David Gibson, our fire chief ernie rhodes our police chief mark smith and all of our executive team and it just trickles down and down to the staff that just came day in and day out and didn't blink you know you had people coming there stayed late friday night and then literally worked i mean public works and park staff worked how many days in a row 12 days in a row i think before they got a day off um and these were long days they were 12 hour days so And every morning you came in, this was our command center, and every morning you came and nobody ever, we talked about it today, nobody ever was grouchy or nobody ever snapped at one another. Everybody just kept doing the work. It was really unbelievable and it was incredible to see. So I just wanted to recognize that. I wanted to just say thank you to our staff. Thank you to our community. We have a lot to do going forward. There are so many people who are still very displaced in their homes, because they don't have hot water. or any number of things. I know that our community, the city of St. Louis is also tremendously hurting. So I hope we can find ways to help them going forward as well. But it was just, it was a Herculean effort by our staff. And I'm just, I'm very proud to be the city's mayor. So thank you, all of you. With that, we will start our agenda. I think our first item is our consent agenda.

So I move to approve the consent agenda.

Second.

All in favor?

Oh,

sorry, June, go

ahead. Roll call.

Alderman Patel. Aye. Alderman Gary Feder. Aye. Aldeman Jeffery Yorg. Aye. Mayor McAndrew. Aye. Thank you.

Alderman Patel. Aye. Alderman Fader. Aye. Aldeman York. Aye. Mayor McAndrew. Aye. Thank you.

And then I think our first item is our city manager is going to give us an update on our recovery effort.

Thank you, Mayor. So I'm going to go over kind of a recap of what happened, where we are today and where we're going next. And that next is going to take several months. So we'll talk about what that looks like as we started that planning today. So as everybody knows, on Friday, May 16th, we were hit with a storm. At 2.45 p.m., there was straight-line wind damage that started around Enterprise Campus, went through Davis Place, really in a straight line through Polo into the Moorlands. And then an EF3 tornado spun up just around Claverack and traveled in a northeast direction. into the city of St. Louis, leaving a pretty big path of damage through the city of Clayton, especially on the eastern end of town. So again, that tornado hit around 2.45. We were actually scheduled to have a meeting here with the Board of Aldermen at 3 o'clock to talk about a couple of items. Some of us sheltered in the basement. The basement is where the gym for the firefighters is at. And you can actually hear the calls as they come in. So we were down in the basement and you heard those first calls about the tornado damage. There was one firefighter that was actually working out at the time and went running upstairs. And we thought, oh, this could be something. And then everybody's phones started going off with tales of the damage at homes or students that were trapped at school. So we knew we had a problem. We had a problem on our hands, a pretty big situation. We went upstairs and we had a command post that was established on the ramp outside of the fire department by three o'clock. So within 15 minutes, the back hatch of a Tahoe was opening up and we were getting to work with this. We had a USAR strike team come through, that's Urban Search and Rescue. They covered the entire city to assess structural damage. We did identify 13 structures that weren't inhabitable. Parks and public works, parks right away. We held that staff. They got in trucks with chainsaws and went out into the field as did the firefighters that were on duty. They were responding to calls and also cutting trees and doing things to open up roadways. And they worked to clear those roadways all night. We had other fire departments that came in and helped. We also had St. Louis County Parks come in that first night to help us out and get the roadways open. And that first night, that was really the goal, was to just try to get the streets passable for emergency vehicles where we didn't have power lines down. The police department called the Code 1000, so we utilized our mutual aid there. We had police personnel coming in from all over the metro area for both traffic control and for just general assistance. So very grateful to everybody that responded to the Code 1000 here. We did suspend our work at dark that first day. We had an inability to see downed lines. Also, it's dangerous to work with the chainsaws at night. But again, by the end of the first night, every street that didn't have downed power lines was at least open to emergency vehicles. So for us, that was a major goal that we accomplished right away. And we were comfortable going to bed that night knowing that everything was open, at least for emergency vehicles. And we knew that we were going to tackle it and hit it hard first thing the next morning, which we did. So on Saturday, May 17th, we established an emergency operations center here in the council chambers at City Hall. That's where we lived for the last 10 days until this afternoon when we shut it down. And Mayor McAndrew declared a state of emergency, which basically put... Ernie Rhodes, our fire chief in charge of emergency operations. So for a seven day period, he had the ability to amend ordinances, sign contracts and do other things that are necessary to handle that emergency and speed up that entire process. So thank you, Chief Rhodes for serving in that capacity. Chief Rhodes also is an expert in ICS or Incident Command. He does this work with FEMA all around the country as an operations lead. We are incredibly fortunate to have him here in Clayton because he was able to implement that system right away. Without that, I think we would have struggled mightily with organizations. So we were organized out of the gate under his direction and again, couldn't be more grateful for that. Republic Services, we called them Friday night. By Saturday morning, they were already placing roll-off dumpsters amid all the debris. They somehow got through and were able to place 15 of those throughout the city so that residents that were cutting their own material could take those someplace because residents, of course, were eager to get that debris off of their property. So we had dumpsters in place. We had crews everywhere that were working on this. Our comms team went to work, communications, and they set up a dedicated storm update page. It's still up today, and that's the best place to get all of the information. It's really easy to find on our website. Throughout the week, we actually ended up handing out flyers with QR codes that would lead you to it. Neighborhood signs are all over the place with QR codes to get to it. Really good job getting the information out there and available and easy to find right away. The building department completed inspections of all of those buildings that had structural damage by the end of Saturday, May 17th. So again, really quick turnaround for them. So we knew exactly what we were dealing with from a structural standpoint. PD increased their patrols right away in the neighborhoods and during the overnight hours because we had concerns without streetlights and without power. that you could have looting or other things. I know that was a big concern that our residents had. So PD brought in additional resources. And if you were in the neighborhoods while they were dark, you saw the patrols coming through with their bright 360 lights, really lighting up those neighborhoods and letting everybody know that they were there to protect them. So really grateful to them for that. But the big thing while this was going on was establishing that first objective for us. And we did that on Saturday, the 17th, which was to open all the streets, not just to emergency vehicles, but try to get them to a full width so that traffic could easily get through. and then remove any immediate hazards with the picture in mind that students could go back to school as quickly as possible. At the time the tornado hit, we only had two full weeks of school remaining. We wanted to get the kids back. We knew that the school district was close on the number of days that they could have before they had to extend the year into the end of the summer. So that was a huge priority for us. We were really proud when on May 19th, we had gotten to the point where the schools could reopen and they did that on May 20th. They only missed one day of school. So we had an EF3 tornado on a Friday and our schools reopened on Tuesday. So incredibly proud of everybody involved in meeting that objective because that was a very, very aggressive timeline that we gave everybody. And I know the school district was grateful as is everyone in the community for that. We also, on May 19th, started our large-scale debris removal efforts. So we had all of our mutual aid partners here and I can't thank them enough. These are the trucks you saw from other cities, really every city in the region it seemed. We put out a call for mutual aid and they brought it. So we had... tree crews coming in with saws, with bobcats, with dump trucks, with bucket trucks, all sorts of things to assist with this effort. So we saw public works trucks. I think the farthest one away came up from Crystal City. So, I mean, we really had a lot of outreach from those other communities and a lot of help. But on May 19th, we started that large scale debris clearing effort, which again was just three days after the storm. We were past that emergency, let's get it open. And we were already working on getting the debris out because it was everywhere. We had dump sites that we established, two of those. One was at Shaw Park, it's still there. The other one is at Concordia that will be shut down most likely tomorrow. We had tub grinders there. So as we brought the debris, we could shred it, basically mulch it. load it into trucks and haul it out of town. So those both of those sites were basically a factory over the last week or so, just working through all that material. And again, great effort by our logistics team, which was set up. So we had a a special group that did nothing but get resources for us. So if we said we needed something, we were able to focus on our tasks and they just went out and got it and it showed up every time. So if we need 10 chainsaw crews over here, they brought it. If we said we need two tub grinders, they showed up somehow. Those huge grapple trucks that you saw throughout the community, big 65 foot long trucks with an arm that grabs everything. We were able to procure eight of those quickly. to come into the city to help. So our logistics team did a great job bringing in those resources. That was really important on May 21st, which we internally called D-Day here. And D-Day was our big debris removal day. This is where we started a really ambitious plan where we were going to work one task force from the east side of the city and one from the west side and meet in the middle somewhere clearing all of the debris out along the way. And this was an extremely coordinated effort. And each of those task force had 23 people that were working with them from various departments. We had some contractors, police escorts everywhere those trucks would go. Police would actually shut down the neighborhoods and enforce a no parking order. So we ordered all the cars off the street. We would shut down the area and those crews could go in and just focus on debris removal. And while that's temporarily disruptive for those residents, it allowed us to go in and quickly get it done in one pass. And we thought that process was gonna take somewhere between two and four weeks to actually complete. And we did that in five working days, the entire city, all of that debris that was basically in the tree lawn. So from sidewalk to sidewalk, We cleared all of that citywide in five days using that particular plan. And so really happy, again, with our communications folks that went out there. The mayor actually had a group of volunteers that were knocking on doors and handing out flyers, letting people know their streets were going to be shut down. We only had to tow two cars through that entire process with the no parking order, which is quite incredible given the amount of street parking that we have here in the city, especially in really dense areas like the Moorlands. I think we towed one car out of the 7,500 block of the Morelands, which if you're familiar with that area, those streets are lined on both sides with cars 24 hours a day. So really, really great effort there. So that debris removal, all of it was completed today. So we had the initial big push where we had basically five working days where we were shutting down neighborhoods. Today was the last day of that. We had a map that showed all of the debris in the city as it was being collected and that map turned green, which meant we're good. We've gone through and every bit of right away in the city has been cleared. Um, power has been restored citywide and all the schools are now open as of tomorrow. Uh, students are going back to white on and captain, which were the last two. Uh, they're still waiting on a little bit of internet service, but I think they found a workaround in the meantime. Uh, but, uh, you know, here we are again, uh, a week later and everything's open back up here in the city, which is, which is quite incredible. Today, we shut down the EOC, as I mentioned earlier here in the chambers. That state of emergency has ended. And then we'll be reducing the number of those dumpsters that you see out in the community later this week. Our staff, thankfully, we were able to rest them over the weekend. They did so much great work that we were able to give our public works operations staff a full three-day weekend with the holiday, which was well-deserved. They had worked 90 hours up to that point. Many of those high in the air, suspended in a bucket with a chainsaw with all the noise and vibration and everything else that comes along with that. Really, really difficult, technical, brutal work that they came in every day, as the mayor said, smiling and ready to go. And they did that for 90 hours over that stretch. And so we were able to rest them, which is great. And now they're going back to their regular shifts, which is even better. So they have a chance to recover here. But our focus overall is now on recovery. So we're switching from that emergency response mode, where it was let's get everything opened up, let's get all the power back, let's get the schools back, and let's get the debris out to recovery, which is where we are now. And so we have FEMA assessment teams that were here last week to assess damage for individual assistance. And when I say individual assistance, it is assistance to homeowners that were affected by the storm. It's still unclear whether or not we met the threshold to receive any sort of FEMA assistance as far as that goes. One thing that may work against us here is the number of properties that are insured, which is basically all of them. Typically those individual assessment declarations that you see a lot of times those in areas where you have underinsured populations and there's no other way for them to get the capital they need to fix their properties. But they will be here tomorrow as well. We'll wait for the ruling on it, but they will be here as well to assess for public assistance or PA we call it. This is a really big one for us and this is whether or not FEMA is going to reimburse the city for our costs for this emergency response that's been performed, but also to help us with the recovery going forward. So we've prepared and we're ready to provide to them a really detailed estimate of our damages. The total figure exceeds $4.5 million at this point, could be more by the time it's all said and done. Uh, but if we're successful in getting that assistance, uh, FEMA actually pays along with SEMA 87.5% of those costs. Um, so that would be a huge offset for us. Obviously that's a really big deal to try to get that. Um, and so we're going to be working hard tomorrow to, to show them the damage in the city, um, And we're going to have to rely a lot on pictures. We've actually cleaned the place up so well that when you crawl out to the east side of town, you see a lot of broken trees and maybe where trees used to be. But you say, where's the damage? We actually have cleared most of that out, which is quite remarkable. But we have really good documentation actually plugged into maps. Everything is geocoded and you can see all that damage. So we feel like we're really well prepared for that. And then we talked about our priorities going forward today through this recovery process. We are gonna require some sort of project manager to help us with this. So we'll probably contract for that because now that the mutual aid is gone and now that a lot of the contractors are gone, we're back down to our regular public work staff, back to our regular city hall staff. And our staff is basically right-sized for our daily operations. And so now you're adding on to that managing this entire recovery effort. And underneath that recovery effort, we have some priorities. First are the trees here in the city. There's so much pride in these cities. Initially, everybody just wanted the debris out, but you could really see the hurt on people. The last few days where they saw Y down for the first time with no trees and the sun beating down on the street, which you've never seen before. It's like that in a lot of these neighborhoods, street trees are just damaged all over the city. And it, really started to set in that, you know, things are going to look different here for generations. And so we need to prepare for that portion of the recovery. We estimate we have well over 700 damaged trees that need to be dealt with still. So again, we've gotten a lot of the immediate hazards out, but we have over 350 that are going to require pruning or rebalancing. So we need to make sure that they're stable going forward. And over 300 that are going to need to be removed. Some of those have been removed already, but we're going to see a lot of trees come down in the city. As you're driving around, you'll see green ribbons on some trees, and that means that that tree needs to be pruned or rebalanced. Or you'll see a red X or a red dot Unfortunately, those trees will need to be removed and there are a lot of them in certain areas. It's most of the trees on the street. So again, our community is going to look very different when this process is over and we'll do our best to recover from that as quickly as possible. The first thing you're going to see with trees is stump removal. So you'll see this all over town as well. You drive down Wydown in particular, in Moreland's different areas, you'll see where trees went down and pulled up large sections of the sidewalk. Those stumps are still there. That's a technical removal because underneath those is a lot of utilities. And so we need to have all of those utilities located and we need to be really careful about digging those out. So next we'll start to work on that stump removal. That'll take place over the next days and weeks here as we work with some of those other trees. This is all gonna require help from contractors, and that's something we're working on now is the procurement of that. We do have on-call contractors that we're gonna utilize to some extent, but we're gonna need outside help because again, our staff is right sized for our daily operations. Our forestry staff is two arborists and then one that helps with them quite a bit. So really a forestry staff of three can't manage over 700 trees that need to be dealt with. Next will be sidewalks and curbs. So as I said, we've got a lot of sidewalks that have been pulled up by trees that went down. We're going to have to get those fixed and replaced. We do have an on-call contractor for that or a standing contract we hope to utilize for the sidewalk replacement. Same with the curbs that accompany those sidewalks in a lot of areas. Signs are another thing that need to be addressed. We have street signs that are down throughout the city, so we're going to work to restore those. We're going to go with the critical signs first, which are the intersection signs, any stop signs that are down, that sort of thing. We do those in-house, so we won't have to contract for that, but we will need more materials as we work through that process. we are assessing our lighting system, which took a big hit here. So as those big trees went down and the roots pulled up, they damaged those underground power lines that we have that hook up all of those streetlights. So on the east end of the city, you'll notice that a lot of the streetlights are out, a large portion of that system. So we need to assess that damage and see exactly what that will entail. As you know, street lighting has been a concern for us for a while. But now we have large portions of the city that are completely out and a lot of street lights that are down or that are broken. So we're going to work through our lighting plan and recovering in that regard. Now, then we have damaged monuments to some of the neighborhoods. So we're going go through and assess that and work through a plan, although that's a much lower priority than the trees in the sidewalks and some of those other things. And then finally, we have irrigation systems, especially on Y down that were significantly impacted by this. And so we're going to have a lot of irrigation work that needs to take place in order to get that median area back in the shape it was. So our target for all of this, and this is pretty ambitious, we were just kind of talking through how long we think this would take with contracted help. We're going to try to have this part of the recovery done by the end of the year, by the end of calendar year, so six months, to deal with over 700 trees, repair the sidewalks, at least have the lighting plan in place for that restoration. and the irrigation systems back in place so we think that is probably an aggressive timeline but we've set what we thought were aggressive timelines and we've we've we've more than pulled that off to this point uh so i'm confident moving forward that we can get this done as well so that's where we've been that's where we're going a big part of this again is comes down to what fema's role in this will be as far as how we're paying for all of this um If they're paying 87 and a half percent, that conversation is very different than if this is all coming out of the city's basically the general fund. It's going to have to come out of our reserves. Thankfully, we put ourselves in a position where we have strong reserves. We've maintained strong reserves for a long time. There's a reason we have a AAA credit rating. And we have quite a bit of cushion before we get to that 50% goal that the city has. So really hoping the FEMA thing works because we have a lot of other projects, a lot of other things that we want to do here. And without that FEMA reimbursement, all of those things are put into jeopardy. And we're going to be running our basic operations and restoring what we have. So to carry out our plans and implement a lot of things we've been talking about, it's going to require that reimbursement. So really critical meeting tomorrow. We'll do our best with that. But again, I just want to say I can't thank our staff enough in every department, and I don't want to start naming individual departments or individuals because I really don't want to miss everybody because this was an entire team effort. I couldn't be more proud of this organization. It's the best thing I've ever personally been involved with. It's a terrible tragedy, but from a local government standpoint, I've never seen – anything operate this way um it was absolutely beautiful to watch all these people come to work every day and and hit it really really hard we were all tired um still tired and uh we're gonna we're gonna keep at it but but just amazing and uh couldn't be more proud so um yep it's quite quite a quite a 10 11 days that's all i got also i can answer any questions you have

I just want to say thank you, Mayor David and all the staff. I was like decently impacted. I'm not back in my house yet. And so it's really hard. And it's I know it's hard for some of the kids, like my daughter's struggling, you know, because it's like a third of the city had this like really terrible impact and like not everybody else did. And so, yeah. Anyways, just appreciate the wonderful work and communication and dedication. It's just really helps. And just a reminder that it is, and I think for some time, I really was hit by this today. Sunday when I did yoga and today when I went in to work, like, It's like I feel it in my body. And I'm sure many of you did who were impacted or involved in the recovery. But it's like it's going to be a real big part of our lives. psyche and our experience and just how we are able to like show up and stuff so just continuing um like just remind a reminder for all of us to um continue the care that we've been showing and the grace that we've been giving people and stuff like that um is really appreciated so um I have two questions. One is if FEMA is coming tomorrow, when do you expect to hear from them? Like when do they make a decision? Do we know? We

don't know.

Okay. Yeah.

Traditionally, they've been pretty fast with this. From what we've heard from communities that have dealt with this process lately, it sounds like it's taking a little bit longer than it has historically. So we're hoping to hear something. help. I would love to hear something by the end of the week, hopefully within the next couple weeks, because that answer dictates a lot about how we do things. And so when you're going through the FEMA process or FEMA reimbursements involved, there's a lot of extra steps that you need to go through in order to qualify for that reimbursement. If the reimbursement isn't going to happen, then it removes some of those hurdles i'll call them um so we'll see how this goes um but i'll let you know as soon as i hear something hopefully hopefully soon

thanks i just wanted to know for the upset and expectation as much as we can um and where does all that mulch debris go

that you have i know there's there's a site in maryland heights is that where it's at where they've been bringing this

location plenty of them

I mean, how many like truckloads was it? Did you keep track?

It's written down.

Yeah, no, that's fine.

You're like trying to block it out. About a five to one. They're going to two different sites, but it's St. Louis Composting and Hanson's Tree Care and Landscaping. It ends up getting reused, but I've got load tickets I can show you sometime, but we're still calculating all those and they're still running them.

Thank you so much. Thanks.

Well, I would just echo some things that have already been said. I did hear from a fair amount of people over the last 10 days. I'm sure many fewer than the mayor heard from. And with a couple of exceptions, and there were a couple who were complaining why Ameren hadn't turned their power on yet. But with that exception, I was very pleased how many people said this effort is just astounding. and it really was. I think I've been here almost now 60 years since I started at Washington U, and I think naively I knew this sort of thing will never happen to Clayton. And so it's significant to see this happen. It really is. But I hope that, and the first priority obviously is restoration. I hope that in the next six months we'll still be able to somehow find a way to go forward with other projects that, you know, our world will not come to a stop because if it does, you know, I think we will regress and that's not something we want to do. My question, again, would relate to FEMA. I think, David, you mentioned that for individuals, the fact that the population is pretty much 100% insured makes it much harder for individuals to get recovery. Do we know to what extent FEMA looks at Clayton and our general economic situation and that that has an impact or is that irrelevant to how they respond to a claim?

I would, I would imagine that that's a factor. Um, I had heard, I'd heard that that mentioned at some point, uh, not from the FEMA people, but, um, somebody else that was on that tour. I can't remember who, but yeah, I would imagine. That factors in along with the insurance part, which is actually the bigger part of the two. And just so you know, what the way individual assistance and public assistance both work is they're not just looking at Clayton and a bubble there. They're looking at all of St. Louis County. It just so happens that the Clayton in a, you know, a portion of Richmond Heights, a little bit of Brentwood and a little bit of U city were the ones that took the hit here. And so the entire County has to meet a threshold in order to get assistance. And all of that damage is concentrated in a very small area. So our damage has to be enough to qualify the entire County for that assistance both in the individual and in the property assessment side. And so if you look at the city of St. Louis where they had the longer track, they're looked at separately from St. Louis County. And that's, of course, the nature of things here in St. Louis. So it crosses an invisible line and you actually have two different declarations that need to happen when they're looking at this assessment. It's a pretty big number we need to hit at St. Louis County that all has to be concentrated in this small area. But I know that one of the factors they're going to look at is on the impacted properties, what's the insurance, and I imagine they're going to

And my only second question is, certainly driving around, I mean, there's many individual properties that have been severely damaged and very sympathetic to all those people. It's kind of ironic. I tell people, I was lucky. I just had a 100-year-old tree fall on my neighbor's house, which fortunately was only a corner of the house and only knocked out our fence. But so we have all these kind of individual things and seeing all the rooftops, but clearly the worst devastation is driving down, Y-down, and just seeing that whole area devastated. And I'm clearly not an arborist, but I keep thinking to myself, how in the world do you ever fix the loss of that many historic trees? You don't go buy 100-year-old trees and plant them. So I think that will be a great challenge, that whole question about what do we do with the Y-down median and And you've indicated, you know, obviously we're going to need help from other arborists. But I think that will be a real challenge is what in the world do we do to get that to look even halfway as decent in the next year or five years? I mean, it really is a generational problem.

yeah that's that's going to be the challenge and i know we'll have a lot of discussions on what why don't looks like we definitely want to do that before we go out there and and plant a bunch of three inch caliber trees that will be um what they were 80 years from now so we'll for now we just need to get it cleared out and get the irrigation kind of back in place and then we'll we'll figure out what why down looks like thank you

and again i More than ever, I'm very proud to be part of Clayton and to all of you in the audience and all of our staff. It's incredible what you all have done.

So it's funny, as Becky was talking about something earlier about affecting psyche and saying it was a weirdest thing for me to drive around because most of the community was fine. Like I went to the dentist on Wednesday and everybody's going about their business because this is the first – first time I had lived through anything like this, it wasn't like community wide, like think a big snowstorm. I lived through the floods of 93. Y'all kind of knew they were coming. Like this was a very localized thing that I even went to the work, work, went in the work, which is in Clayton and most people don't live here. And they were all like, it was like nothing ever happened because to them nothing happened. So it was very weird, like mental mind change or whatever word you want to use, trying to like cope with that. Um, You know, the other part was obviously you all saw. Like it was to walk out of your house and see like the bewilderment of everybody's face. And the Morelands weren't even hit as bad as the east part. But just everybody just kind of walked out kind of somewhat dazed, somewhat confused, to quote a movie. Like it was this weird look. And the one... The one thing is people just were like, this is going to take months. Like how are we going to get back? And the, one of the things that I felt comfortable telling them even only been in this role in a year was like, The city will take care of this. We'll have the roads open in a couple of days and we'll probably be good to go in a couple of weeks. And thank you all for like making me not a liar out of that. I appreciate that. But what I truly felt like given the way that I have seen the city function from top to bottom was that it didn't seem all that unrealistic to think that we could get there. And, you know, I give all of you from top down, from folks grabbing lunches to folks cutting trees to war room folks, to people who were coordinating to get other municipalities in here. It was, it was impressive as we've all said, but it was also something that, that I trusted we could do because I knew the kind of people Clayton maintained. So, you know, congrats seems like a weird phrase in this sort of thing, but for lack of a better one, you know, congrats for being able to achieve what you guys achieved in the short amount of time. We've got a long way to go, but the, the getting back to normalcy, um, to get people back faster. Um, the kids, for example, I had two kids that could go with the school. One kid goes to white homes as she was at home and striving or crazy, but, um, being able to even get them back, I think is good for the psyche for the kids and good psyche for frankly, just other folks. So, um, The only question I had, and Gary talked about part of this, is – and again, conversation for more later – but what we do with YDON. And while I agree it's a challenge, I also don't want us to lose sight of the fact that it's an opportunity in a weird sort of way where – We would have never reimagined that space if the trees would have been there. But we can reimagine it, either plant trees the way it was before, or it could be a part with artwork with less trees. We could put trees in different places. There's an opportunity for us to reimagine what we want that to look like as part of our larger community plan over the next 50, 60, 70 years. I would encourage us all to kind of have that thinking, not just, hey, let's get it back the way it was because we'll all be moved on to a different place by the time those trees are there. So just kind of keep in mind that. So I guess it turned out to be less of a question and more of a statement. David, so you're off the hook. Thanks, Mayor.

Wonderful. Thank you. Anybody in the audience? Yep.

I just wanted to come out today, tonight, and thank you all. And it's already all been said, the amount of work that went into the past recovery effort is just amazing. I live in the first ward I'm on Alexander Drive we had huge trees across our street they were inaccessible until late Friday night. And I saw not only the professional community come together, but I saw all of Clayton come together. From the littlest kids that were out there with brooms sweeping up all of the glass and broken slate and debris in the streets to the dads who called their friends in Richmond Heights to get them to go to Home Depot and buy every chainsaw that was gas powered that they could find to clear it out. We have really, really come together as a community and I have never been so proud to be part of Clayton before. I do think I want to echo the whole reason I came out tonight was just to say, we can build back better. We need to be very hopeful about our future. Not only the trees and Y down, we have opportunities to take that lighting plant that next best level. And we can look at what we do next time. to recover in a better, more effective way. I would just applaud all of you. Thank you. And I don't want to take any more of your time, but just it meant a lot to me to be able to say to all of you, all of you, even though you weren't here, all of you for what you've done. That's it.

Thank you, Deb. All right, I think we'll move into the city manager's report or the second item would really do a sales tax increase for the fire department.

Yes, Mayor. On April 8th, 2025, an election was held in the city of Clayton and a majority of the voters approved a one quarter of one cent sales tax increase for the operations of the Clayton Fire Department from one quarter percent to 0.5%. The sales tax will apply to all retail sales made within the city subject to taxation. The city must now adopt an ordinance levying the new sales tax for it to commence. If approved, the new sales tax will be effective on August 1st, 2025. Staff recommend approval of the ordinance, authorizing the city to implement an additional one quarter of one cent sales tax for the operations of the Clayton Fire Department. And our city attorney did hand out a revised copy of the ordinance this evening. Each member of the Board of Aldermen was handed a copy. There are also some for public inspection if anyone would like to take a look. The changes are not substantive but do correct the language in the adopting ordinance.

Thank you. I'll open the discussion. Does any member of our board have a question or comment on the revised ordinance?

I just got one, and it's more of a clarification, Kevin. It looks like the language in Section 3 was tweaked, and I don't know if it was excluding sale of domestic utilities or whether... Okay. So the way it read before, it obviously included it in that, that is not caught up? Correct.

When we originally adopted the... uh, fire sales tax in 2014. Uh, we had the language that is, was originally printed in the bill and the Missouri department of revenue called to our attention that the, whether we were intended to tax utilities, we did not, we adopted an amendment, uh, to the original sales tax. And this change in this bill reflects the amended, uh, ordinance from 2014 so we are consistent in this bill as we were 10 years ago okay excluding utilities

and if we wanted to tax utilities we couldn't because this is just an increase of the other one or is it more just we could but we've decided not to

we do tax utilities but we can't impose a sales tax on utilities

okay

right we already have a

gross receipts tax

yes like Okay. I just was clarifying from what you said, whether it was something that we had just chosen not to lay the sales tax over it or whether it's something we can't do.

We cannot levy a sales tax on utilities.

That was all I had.

Anybody else? I will introduce bill number 7, 0, 6, 9, imposing a sales tax increase for the operations of the Clayton fire department to be read for the first time by title only.

Second. Any discussion? Mr. City attorney.

Bill number 7, 0 6, 9. First reading an ordinance of the city of Clayton, Missouri, levying a sales tax increase or operations of the Claytons fire department.

All those in favor.

Any opposed? Alderwoman Patel. I move that the board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of Bill 7069 on the day of its introduction.

Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Let the minutes reflect that the board has given unanimous consent. Alderwoman Patil.

Yeah, I introduce Bill number 7069 imposing a sales tax increase for the operations of the Clayton Fire Department to be read for the second time by title only.

Second.

Any

discussion? Mr. City Attorney?

Bill number 7069, second reading and consideration for adoption, an ordinance of the City of Clayton, Missouri, levying a sales tax increase for operations of the Clayton Fire Department.

Alderman Patel? Aye. Alderman Gary Feder?

Alderman Patel? Aye. Alderman Fader?

Aye.

Aldeman Jeffery Yorg? Aye. Mayor McAndrew? Aye. Thank you.

Aldeman York? Aye. Mayor McAndrew? Aye. Thank you.

The next item on our agenda is an intergovernmental agreement with MSD.

Yes, the Metropolitan Sewer District, or MSD, is undertaking a... Project necessary for MSD to comply with an EPA consent decree. The project aims to reduce basement backups and sewer overflows by replacing approximately 9,200 feet of undersized wastewater sewers and 4,200 feet of under sized stormwater sewers in Clayton and Richmond Heights. Construction is estimated to begin early to mid 2025 and last approximately three and a half years. The city of Clayton portion of this project begins at Clayton Road and South Bemiston Avenue, and runs up Bemiston Avenue. There is also a smaller sewer line originating from the west on the private property which ties to the Bemiston Line. These two sewer lines converge at the alley on Bemiston just north of Clayton Road and extend up Bemiston to Davis Place. The sewer line improvement on private property will impact the parking and access for businesses at 7801, 7807, and 7811 Clayton Road during phases of the project. To make accommodations for the businesses, city staff have worked with MSD to provide a temporary parking area along South Central Avenue during this phase of construction. There's an intergovernmental agreement attached that provides details for the construction and restoration of this temporary parking area. Staff recommends that the Board of Aldermen approve authorization of the attached ordinance, authorizing execution of the intergovernmental agreement with the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District. And we do have representatives from MSD here this evening if you have any questions about their project.

I will open the discussion. We'll just kind of go around. Any questions? Alderman Vader?

I would just say anecdotally, since this property is in Ward 3, I think I first heard about concerns a couple years ago, I think from the owner of the buildings where Alex Walbart and others are located. And I remember having a number of exchanges with Matt about, you know, what kind of solution could we have that would both satisfy MSD and the owner of the building and the tenants. And I think it took a while to get there, but obviously it looks like we got to the right place. And I appreciate MSD's efforts in getting it done and Matt's efforts. And I know Alex Walbart will be happy and my wife will be happy because I get a lot of flowers there on important occasions. So it's important to keep them happy. So it's all good as far as I'm concerned. Thanks.

Alderman Jeffery Yorg, any questions? Yeah, I would just like to echo Alderman Gary Feder. Matt, I appreciate all the effort. I know you had a lot of discussions to try to remedy the parking situation over there. And I know that all the affected property owners, I'm sure are well aware. So just, I think as long as we keep communication going so they know what to expect, that's what, you know, I think people are okay as long as they are given some advance warning. So Thank you, MSD, for making sure that we know what's going on. So great. Anybody else in the audience?

Alderman York, any questions? Yeah, I would just like to echo Alderman Fader. Matt, I appreciate all the effort. I know you had a lot of discussions to try to remedy the parking situation over there. And I know that all the affected property owners, I'm sure are well aware. So just, I think as long as we keep communication going so they know what to expect, that's what, you know, I think people are okay as long as they are given some advance warning. So Thank you, MSD, for making sure that we know what's going on. So great. Anybody else in the audience?

Alderman Patel. I introduce bill number 7070, approving an intergovernmental agreement with Metropolitan Sewer District for temporary parking to be read for the first time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion? Mr. City

Attorney.

Bill number 7070, first reading and ordinance authorizing an intergovernmental agreement with the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? I move that the Board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of Bill No. 7070 on the day of its introduction.

Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Let the minutes reflect that the board has given unanimous consent.

I introduce bill number 7070, approving an intergovernmental agreement with Metropolitan Sewer District for temporary parking to be read for the second time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion? Mr. City Attorney?

Bill number 7070, second reading and consideration for adoption. An ordinance authorizing an intergovernmental agreement with the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District.

Alderman Patel? Aye. Alderman Gary Feder?

Alderman Patel? Aye. Alderman Fader?

Aye.

Aldeman Jeffery Yorg?

Aldeman York?

Aye.

Mayor McAndrew? Aye. Thank you.

All right, last item on our agenda is related to a deck ceiling project at 10 South Brentwood. Mr. City Manager.

Yes, a heavy rainfall event on April 4th resulted in water infiltration to the lower level of the 10 South Brentwood facility, which is the police department. specifically originating from the concrete plaza deck located between the main building and the parking garage. This is not the first time that water is infiltrated at the lower level during significant rain events, but this infiltration now poses a threat to critical building infrastructure, including electrical and mechanical equipment, city records, and the police department workout space. To mitigate this problem, a proposal has been obtained from Western Waterproofing Company doing business as Western specialty contractors through the TIPS Cooperative Purchasing Program totaling $45,000. This proposal includes installing a new deck coating, various caulking services and partial depth repairs that may be uncovered during the project to address the water infiltration issue at the plaza level. A contingency of $2,500 is recommended to cover this potential additional partial depth repair. Staff will submit a proposed budget amendment to the Capital Improvement Fund to the Board of Aldermen for the fiscal year 2025, Capital Improvement Fund, to address this issue at a later time. Staff recommends that the Board of Alderman approve the ordinance.

Thank you. I'll open the discussion. Does anybody have any questions? No,

thank you. David, I can't remember how long we've been in this building, but is it Is this to be expected for the length of time we've been in it, or is it some kind of failure from the renovations? I guess I wouldn't have expected this much water infiltration because I don't feel like we've been in this building that long. Mr. Malik, I have a better idea of history there.

This is a 10 South Brentwood police building. So whenever it was reconstructed, the area between the parking garage and the building, whenever it was rehabbed, excuse me, I think it was around early 2000s, 2000 to 2005, there was a concrete plaza area built over an existing concrete area. When it was built in its current condition, there wasn't a seal put on at that time. Water's infiltrated through cracks in the pavement and has worked its way down to this lower level and into the building. So what we're proposing is something like you'll see on our parking deck outside here that caulks and fills those joints and provides a seal that over time will need to be replaced, but it's not currently in its current state. It's just bare concrete right now.

Okay. So it's not something that failed sooner than needed. It was something that was just never done. As best you can tell.

That's just another preventative measure. We'll expect to be there between seven to 10 years to probably recoat this at that time. But this is the first primary installation. Subsequent installations will be thinner coats and just maintenance. Got you. Thank you.

Alderman Patel.

I introduce bill number 7071, approving a contract with Western Specialty Contractors for the duct sealing project at 10 South Brentwood Boulevard to be read for the first time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion? Mr.

City Attorney.

Bill number 7071, first reading. An ordinance approving a contract with Western Waterproofing Company Incorporated doing business as Western specialty contractors for joint repair and waterproofing at the 10 South Brentwood facility.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Alderwoman Patel. I move that the board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of bill number 7071 on the day of its introduction.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye. Opposed? Let the minutes reflect that the board has given unanimous consent.

Alderman, I move. I wait, I introduced bill number 7071 approving a contract with Western specialty contractors for the deck ceiling project at 10 South Brentwood Boulevard to be read for the second time by title only.

Second.

New discussion, Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 7071, second reading and consideration for adoption. An ordinance approving a contract with Western Waterproofing Company Incorporated doing business as Western specialty contractors for joint repair and waterproofing at the 10 South Brentwood facility.

Alderman Patel. Aye. Alderman Gary Feder. Aye. Aldeman Yorg.

Alderman Patel. Aye. Alderman Fader. Aye. Aldeman Yorg.

Aye.

Mayor McAndrew. Aye.

Well, that completes our agenda for this evening. I'm not sure if anybody else has anything else to report

that they've... In the midst of all of it, I actually had two different banquet dinners last week. What? One was the Jewish Community Relations Council SEDEC Awards, where at least a couple of our residents were honored for their work for social justice and community work. One was Laura Horwitz, who was awarded the Emerging Leader Award. And Stephanie Gross was also recognized as an alumni of a student-to-student program that they do. So... So that was really great. And then on next night, I think it was we had the Municipal League installation dinner and our former mayor Michelle Harris was awarded the Bud West Buzz Westfall Award which is a real honor she was surprised. And it was just great to see recognition of all her hard work and passion for our community, but also the larger community and our partner cities that we work with.

So I also attended that dinner. And what really struck me, as it has in the past, is it's really remarkable to see all the various cities come together and be at an event like that. And it really struck home thinking about the fact that during these last couple of weeks, we've seen all of these cities pitch in to help us in this very difficult time. So it was very meaningful to walk through that room and see all the tables with the names of all the various cities and all the people who were there. And, uh, so it was great to see the mayor honored, but it was also great to see everybody come together. And I think there was optimism that, that, uh, you know, the communities will continue to work together. And what we've had here in Clayton is a good example of how extremely important that is.

Thank you. Um,

I will echo the dinner conversations that they said, but an additional thought was, so we sat with some folks from Beverly Hills, which is a very small community relative to us, but it was interesting. They have similar challenges that we do just on a different scale and it was kind of an interesting scope perspective. But it also, to Gary's point, you looked around in the room and besides the fact that they're all helping us and we hope one day if they need it, we can help them, but it also... helped me realize that it is an organization that, you know, Clayton has a place to play in it. And I think Clayton has an important place to play in that organization. And as we continue to think about how Clayton evolves again and continues to evolve. Like what our place is in an organization like that, that while we're a separate municipality, we aren't in so many regards as this last week showed us and how we can be, um, we can help lead and help, um, provide the expertise we may have to communities who may need it. And I think the bigger you build that relationship through organizations like that, the better. So it just was a reinforcement of, of the kind of places we should be involved with. So.

Yeah, I think that I know our fire chief mentioned throughout the last week and a half, and David has as well, just how somewhat unprepared we were in terms of like a coordinated effort. I mean, we're lucky that Chief Rhodes is here and knew how to kind of organize everything. But in terms of you know, if this had really occurred through across many municipalities, you know, rather than really just being very focused. You know, I think like you said, it'll be interesting to try to, Chief Rhodes can start getting on the speaking circuit and start talking about, I'm sure he'd love to do that. So, but yeah, yeah. He looks thrilled that I volunteered him to do that. But I will say 18 municipalities, including St. Louis County, helped us. Um, so obviously a huge number. So, um, I'll just say that the day before, um, the tornado, we had a great word three block party. Um, so that was really fun. Um, Kristen did a great job organizing it. Um, so it was very nice. It was a little warm, um, but we had a good turnout. So I think it was, I think it was a nice event and I look forward to seeing what other ward block parties look like as well. So, um. And then right beforehand, actually Deb Grossman and myself and Susan Buse toured. I mean, I guess it was like, it's a huge WashU has built this huge facility for all their newly electric vehicles as they kind of transition. And they have a lot of excess space. So we're kind of thinking about ways that we could perhaps partner with them. So we'll see. We got a lot of other things to talk about, but it was really neat. It was a really cool space. I mean, it's really neat what they've done. They had to finish it before 2024, December 31st. And so it was a big effort to get it done, but they did, but it was, it was really neat to see. And lastly, I have a high school graduate, so that was exciting. So yeah. So well, great. David, do you have anything else to add? Okay. All right.

Motion

to adjourn. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Thanks, everybody.