July 8, 2025 — Meeting Transcript

Good evening, everybody. This is our July 8th Board of Aldermen meeting at six o'clock. We're going to have a discussion session and I believe Ryan's going to give us some information on commercial zoning and then we're going to have

Strange place. It's safer back there behind the

desk.

Yes. All righty. Good evening, everyone. Good to see you all again. Tonight we're going to be going over You guys got it in front of you? Okay, awesome. So tonight we're going to be taking a look at some possible revisions to commercial zoning as a response to some items that came out of the comprehensive plan. But how did we get here? So this kind of started as an evaluation of TODs. One of the goals of the comprehensive plan or objectives of the comprehensive plan was to take a look at TODs and see how effective they would be in Clayton. We found, looking at it there, TODs were... not the most effective tool that we were using, but the analysis kind of expanded to encapsulate the other overlays and design districts around downtown as well as the base zoning district. Some of the takeaways from that was that the Maryland Gateway overlay proved to be an effective tool for promoting a retail and pedestrian friendly corridor and that the northeast downtown overlay was good at promoting good retail spaces but didn't necessarily carry a lot of architectural weight as it was intended to do other than that the other overlays around downtown clayton were proven to be effective or no longer relevant since their implementation Additionally, we found that the combination of the base zoning districts and the overlay districts was often pushing folks towards a PUD, which is what led us to evaluate possible revisions to our base zoning districts.

Hey, Ryan, really quickly. Just so everyone understands, does everyone know what a TOD is? We don't talk about it too much in our downtown zoning.

Transportation-oriented district.

I just want to make sure everybody understands with that. Okay, great.

So to get started on the changes that you might see coming for commercial zoning districts is there's gonna be some common changes among all of those zoning districts. There's three, we have our neighborhood commercial, our general commercial and our high density commercial. With all of those, we're looking at reducing repetition between the base and the overlays. So it's pretty common if you look at a base zoning district, you might see, okay, there's a height of X in this zoning district. But in this special location, we're going to call it a height here. Another special location, we were seeing that we'd have these call outs in the base zoning district that was giving us the same function as an overlay district. So what we wanted to do is we wanted to remove that repetition, that redundancy. It's not necessarily removing the change that that overlay was trying to implement in that space, but it's just reducing that redundancy. We also want to remove some outdated sections with block-specific language scattered throughout the commercial districts. There is call out to very specific blocks. You'll see, okay, on Maryland between X Street and Y Street, you can only build this. And then you take a look at that site and you see, well, this is already developed and it is something completely unrelated to what the goal of this space is here. and maybe the goal of that specific callout is not within the character of the area. So we want to remove that block-specific language. Then we're also looking at moving the height restrictions out of the use tables. Something that's pretty common to see throughout all of our zoning districts is you'll have a height section, but if you scroll down to your use tables, you'll see that there's special height callouts there. What we want to do is we want to consolidate that information all in one place. Additionally, what we're looking at doing is having height encroachments so in the same way that in a residential zoning district in a rear setback you might have a deck that can encroach into that rear setback we want to call out some height encroachment in areas that were kind of ambiguous before just to make it clear so something like a mechanical penthouse an elevator shaft or rooftop deck saying does this contribute to the height of the building we want to call that stuff out so that way it's clear going into the future Another thing that you're going to see is allowing mixed-use residential with no minimum unit size. So mixed-use residential is permitted in all these zoning districts, but there are some stumbling blocks on the way to achieving that. Pretty commonly, it's going to require either going through a PUD process, having a conditional use permit, and there's a minimum unit size of 750 square feet, which would be a very generous requirement. at least size one bedroom or very small two bedroom, but it's pretty common among new developments to see studios in one bedrooms that go four to 500 square feet. That's a common stumbling block that sends folks to a PUD. So what we wanna say in the future is yes, it is a goal of the city to have these mixed use residential components and we wanna make sure that you're not burdened by a minimum unit size as well. The last item on this page is updating some of our names and descriptions for these different districts. We right now, all the names are geared towards commercial. However, these have a mixed use character in all of their spaces. The goals that came out of the comprehensive plan was to send it in a mixed use direction. Most notably, there's a common theme of thinking about downtown as a neighborhood. And so what we want to do is we want to update the names and descriptions to reflect that. So instead of commercial You know, neighborhood commercial, neighborhood mixed use, general commercial to general mixed use. And these names were just kind of pulled from what other folks are doing around the country. You know, if anybody has any strong opinions about the names, it's not a hill that any of us are wanting to die on, but haven't had any comments on it so far. So let's get into some of the specifics and we'll start by looking at C1 and C2. So C1, looking at the rear setbacks right now, it's 25 feet. What we want to do is we want to kind of right size that. So C1 has the least density, the least intensity of the commercial zoning districts, but it does vary significantly. throughout the different areas. There's some areas where you might have a 25-foot rear setback. There's probably areas where you have no setback whatsoever. So we wanted to take that to 10% of the depth of the lot with a 10-foot minimum. That brings it on par with C2. It also provides a little bit of buffer because all of these are up against an alley, which are up against residential neighborhoods that have single-family homes. So we're still leaving a little bit of Taking a look at step backs, so that's probably not something that you guys have commonly seen with developments that have come through. Step backs in C1 are only relevant in the context of a PUD because C1 doesn't go above the third floor. When you go above the third and C1 in a PUD, We say, hey, we want to provide a 15 foot step back. But right now under the current code, it's really wishy-washy. Somebody can come in and there's not really clear language about how firm the planning commission needs to be. They can just ask for it to be waived. It's not clear. But all of these C1 properties, they are up against single family zoned areas. We want to make sure we're having a respectable transition of height and density. So we want to make firm that 15 foot step back at the third floor and higher. Last item for C1 is looking at surface parking. Surface parking varies throughout C1, but there are areas along Clayton Road where it does exist and it is in the character of the area that is a more auto-oriented area. And so instead of right now where we have no surface parking permitted, we wanted to create guidelines and guidance for surface parking in those spaces. And we're predominantly looking at west of Hanley in that area.

Ryan, just differentiate a setback and a step back.

Yes. So a setback is how far your building is going to be from the street. Your step back, think of it as stepping back as you go up.

So it's for upper floors?

Correct. So for that step backs that are only relevant in the PUD under C1, once you get to that third floor or higher, you're going to need to bring the building back an additional 15 feet.

The entire building or just the third floor?

The entire building from the third floor up.

First two floors can be whatever goes to within 10 feet or 10% of the property, but third floor and up has to be 15 feet back from just like the rear or all sides or the front? Like what's the...

It would be that rear setback or a setback, which is I'd have to double check because I believe I double check the language on it. But I believe I wrote it to be any setback which faces like is up against a single family zone property. So you would have on your first two levels, you would be okay. We have to be at least 10 feet back from that property line. We get to floor three and higher. We're coming back an additional 15 feet. So a total of 25 feet away from that property line, this is

primarily, if you think about that commercial area on Clayton road, that abuts Davis place. So as those would be redeveloped, if it was taller than three stories, then it would impact those. And what you're trying to do is push that building further away from the neighborhood.

So it's not from the street, it's from the rear property line or the abutting, whatever abuts the residential.

Correct. Which kind of takes us into C2. So C2 can go higher than three floors and they also have that step back provision in there. But again, the language is real wishy-washy. We want to be firm about that because... Most C2 zone properties, again, are up against these residential neighborhoods. And we're being specific and we're saying R1, R2, and R3 properties because we want to make sure that those zonings which have single family homes, which cap out at about two stories, we want to make The last item on this page for C2, floor area ratio. And we're going to get into floor area in a little bit, but we're taking it from 1.5 to 5. We'll dive into floor area ratio in a couple slides.

Before you go on, is it the when facing R1, R2, or R3 properties, would it be accurate to say that what you're proposing would actually have that phrase at the end under C1M1 also? Like you talked about it just being where it is a budding or neighboring residential.

Correct. That's the goal. That's the intention of it. I didn't take a look back at where it's at right now, but we can make sure that that is specific to make it. We can make sure that's specific, that those zoning districts, which have single family homes in them, that those have that step back.

Okay. So you're saying that C1 currently it's all residential behind there.

which is not

included in that part of it.

Yeah, because if I recall, if I double check C1, I want to say every single, almost every single C1 is going to back up to a single family property with the exception of those properties into MUN.

Okay. Thank you. I was trying to figure out if it was what it meant that it was called out in the two, but not the one.

But the proposed though for C1, which is like, as you said, there's always like single family, which I always just kind of see As David said, the property is along Clayton Road between Hanley and almost to Brentwood. So the proposal, because right now the height limit's three floors there.

Correct.

So is there a proposal to potentially increase that beyond three floors?

No. So what this is doing is... solidifying the procedure or solidifying the policy. If somebody were to do a PUD right now, somebody could do a PUD in C1 and they could go above that third floor. And they, the code asks them to provide the step back and it says, but the plan commission can waive it. So we want to take out that piece that says the plan commission can just waive it because we believe that that is an important piece of that zoning district.

Okay. Got it. Thank you.

All right, so let's dive into the high density commercial changes. There's going to be a couple slides on this, but we'll start with these items here. So the first thing is that the only setback you're going to find in HDC is the front setback, which is presently 10 feet. The actual setback, the actual observed setback out there in the wild varies block to block. So what we want to do is say the average of the block, which is what both C1 and C2 do. So it is in the character of our commercial districts. We don't necessarily want to force everybody to come to that 10 feet because it's a pretty common occurrence that when folks go, have tried to develop in downtown previously, they see that and it sends them to a PUD. Oftentimes too, they're matching the character of the block. I think an example would be like Ceylon or Bemis in place. Both of those would have been subjected to an additional 10 foot setback, but as constructed, they're actually meeting the building line of all the other buildings on the block, which is more in character of the area. Another item that you're going to see is a change with the multifamily residential uses. So right now it's permitted as mixed use. What we're going to look at is allowing an exclusive use. And so to clarify, if somebody would want to build an apartment building in downtown Clayton, they would not need to have an additional use along with that. And that is going to be in specific locations, which we will get into in a second, with a minimum unit density of 120 units per acre. Now, to clarify on that minimum unit density, that is just for this exclusive use that we're looking at. If somebody wants to come into downtown and they want to build just an apartment building, want to make sure that we're getting a good density of folks to contribute to all the retail that's around there, you wouldn't want somebody coming in on a big lot and just putting up four units. 120 units per acre, what does that look like? That's actually on the low end of the bell curve for unit density downtown. I put on that lower chart there some of the other examples of units per acre that you can find around. There probably are a couple examples of places that fall below that 120. It's kind of hard to tell. Some of the condo buildings like the Crescent and such may be slightly under there. However... If somebody wanted to come in and do something mixed use, they're not subject to this requirement. So if somebody wanted to build on the former JP Field spot and they said, I just want to do two stories with the second floor having a couple units of residential, it's mixed use, so they're not subject. The minimum unit requirement is just for the exclusive residential use. And then the last item on this page is we want to expand the ARB guidelines section. So believe it or not, there is actually an ARB guidelines section within the high density commercial zoning district. We just never see it because everything goes to a PUD and there's some good stuff in there. But we wanted to expand upon that. We wanted to take in items from the Northeast downtown overlay that we thought were effective. We also wanted to expand it based on some of the items that we'd seen as PUDs came through. What we want to avoid in the future is the recurring conversation of, we love that you want to build something here, but it's a glass box and the playing commission's not in love with it. So what this is going to allow us, since we have ARB guidelines, which are already codified and we are adding to it, expanding upon it, is we'll actually have guidelines. It'll have some teeth. So when folks come here and they want to build something, we have first a roadmap for them, and then we have something to effectively evaluate against.

Ryan, I think Jeff has a... Jeff, do you have a question?

I

do. Can you guys hear me okay?

Yep.

Ryan, my question on the setbacks is, my concern is if for some reason we disagree with the setbacks allowed for previous parts of the block, by moving from the 10 feet to the average on the block, we may be perpetuating a problem in terms of not enough setback going forward. Does that statement make sense? And am I correct in that thinking?

I mean, if that's an item that you guys are concerned about, we can definitely take a look at that. If there's examples of blocks where you're saying, hey, and correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing is there might be spaces where you've got five feet of sidewalk building street and you want some more space for sidewalk. Is that what you're referring to?

Yeah, so I think there are cases downtown and I can go back and actually look at the exact streets that I feel like the buildings have gotten too tall and too close to the road that they feel a little bit like some of the centene places. They feel like they're a little bit towering over folks and my concern would be if we go with the proposal of the block then we would be allowing that that concern to perpetuate itself down the rest of the block. Whereas if we kept with an actual setback, even though it may not look as right, we at least have a better chance of being able to, in my opinion, right the wrong if previous boards allowed setbacks to be too not far enough back. I guess that's my concern. That's good. We can take a look at that.

Yeah, we can look at it. I think there's a couple important points, though. In feedback from the comprehensive plan, we heard about the desire for some intentional planned plazas, but we also know that there's a lot of downside to requiring those plazas when they aren't actually activated. Then you just have kind of these dead zones on the block. So in a dense urban area, you want that build to... You want the buildings to come up to the sidewalks more so. So if the concern is that some of the office towers are getting too tall, then I might say that that would be more appropriate to look at building step backs. So you would have the shorter couple stories that potentially would be closer to the sidewalk and then the height where that's resulting in the shadow or other things could be stepped back further. But we don't want... That's part of the urban environment. I wouldn't want us to just start creating larger setbacks in our urban areas. I

guess my point is, I agree with the step backs as well. I think of Bemis in place. I feel like their sidewalks are wide enough that it feels still inviting, whereas there's other places that it may not. I just want to be careful that we don't inadvertently perpetuate some of these other concerns I have that simply because we changed it to an average on the block.

I will jump in on that too. I think that's a really good point because we have talked before about, you know, when, if there's a restaurant and outdoor dining or with, with bicycles and people walking and wanting it on the streets, we want to be sure we maintain the sidewalk, the welcome of the streets, how that plays in on each block. I have no idea. Yeah,

I mean, that's a tough one because what we're trying to do here is avoid the PUD process. So even if we had a step, if we had a setback that's greater to allow for outdoor dining, we don't have the requirement that we have to do outdoor dining. So they could choose to put other things in that front yard setback that they're creating that doesn't result in a wider sidewalk. So that's kind of – if we have certain goals about widening our streetscape, so to speak, then I think that's a larger discussion to have because if we just decide we're going to have a larger setback, we're going to not necessarily get what we want out of it. And what we've found is that most people are – Do not want to have the 10 foot setback. They have it in areas. So there might be sections where they have that, you know, the entryways or Bemis in place carved out a little bit of area for their restaurant to do a kind of a covered outdoor dining near that corner. So there's sections of it that are set back. But if we're going to potentially have more projects that go through our base zoning process and don't go through the PUD process, then we might not have that opportunity to have that back and forth to require the widening of the sidewalk as the use of space.

Right. And once the building is built, that's what the street is. That's the thing. There has to be a reason for us to do it. We have to have a vision. Right.

And for me, whether it's a setback or I don't know whether what you're talking about is rethinking the larger streetscape, I feel like that there are portions of what Bemis in place did well on the entrance and stuff. It felt wider and it felt more welcoming than some of the other spots in the city. And again, my concern is I don't want to perpetuate some of the unwelcomingness that I feel for some of the other buildings simply because they're all in the same block. Everybody else feels like they can use use it and i want to kind of be thinking forward and say look that stuff's done but how do we make a better welcoming um streetscape and sidewalkscape if you will going forward irrespective of what may be done in the past

how would this be um how would this be calculated or determined in a case where a development is using the entire block So, because I get it, like if we're like infilling a building in a block, like I think the average makes tons of sense. Like it doesn't make sense to ask them to deviate significantly unless they have a design intent or a use intent that works for the developer and the plan. But what would, how would this be applied to a whole new block?

Right. So typically the way this is written is it would say if over 50 or over 25% of the block is developed, then you would use an average of the block face. Okay. If they were essentially tearing everything down and starting from scratch, then we would have the build two line that we could establish. So for example, in our single family residential district, it's 35 feet, or if there's a average block, then it becomes that as the setback. Yeah. that's kind of how it was set up this is um what we have here is obviously that's just showing you the bigger items that are changing well we have to actually show you the text the full text to get in some of the gaps that you're talking about

So from a philosophical standpoint, what I'm getting from this, among other things, is how can we rewrite the code to avoid more frequent use of PUD process? And so I'm guessing the reason for that is it's Well, I'd like you to articulate the reasons for that. That's number one. And then number two, it may be that some situations are better suited for the PUD process. If Jeff's concern in this example has to do with trying to write what he might perceive to be wrongs along the way, maybe this is an issue where we say it's okay if it ends up going to a PUD. I'm not recommending that. I'm just throwing that as an example. But anyway, if you could answer my first question.

Sure. So there's a lot of reasons why it's better to have a code that actually outlines the development that you want to see from the start. So that's the biggest piece of what we have started here with our review of all of our overlays in our base zoning district because you always want the code to say what you want to build. And so we've gotten into some trouble because there's some conflicts and there's other opinions between our overlay and our base zoning and what we see and how we're responding to the PUDs. And so we're ending up pushing everything into a PUD route, which creates a lot of unpredictability for the developers. So that adds cost essentially to what they're doing. And then we have just on top of the PUD process, the points, again, another added cost that is not necessarily resulting in projects that are more of what we want. So we're adding all of these kind of uncertainties that make development a little bit harder to approach for people, especially in the smaller scale development, because they have to kind of piece a bunch of stuff together to get that scale to work. So we want to create the base zoning district that just from the start tells everybody what we want to see developed there. So that's part of where Ryan was talking about. making it more clear what we don't want waivers to be. And then on the flip side of that, in the PUD process, something that we will have with the point system once we get this established, there might be points. So in a specific project, if it does need to go through the PUD process that would be a great example of where the increased setback to have an activated plaza would be a way that they could get some points because that's a public benefit. and through a pud process we would have the ability to put conditions and other regulations on the actual ordinance that governs the pud to have that plaza intentionally activated or used or designed in a certain manner that we wouldn't just through the base zoning district so that's where we're trying to better establish what we want in our base zoning district and then we can also better establish those added public benefits that take projects up another level through the pud process

Thank you. I have a question real quick. As far as the setbacks concerned, Ryan, is this written as a minimum setback or a required setback?

The average of the block would be the minimum.

So you have the option to go deeper if you wanted to. If you wanted to put a plaza or something else, this wouldn't preclude you from doing it. I just want to make sure we're clear on that too, that it's not a required set like actual setback, but it's a minimum setback.

And I would say if there are blocks within downtown that you're concerned about, Jeff, send those to us because then Ryan can do a quick study to see if that block were redeveloped, what might happen based on our new zoning. And so we could then kind of identify what we want to replicate or don't want to replicate based on what you're seeing today.

Great. Well, I will do that. Thank you.

A lot of the blocks have significantly less than 10 foot setbacks.

It varies depending on the area they're in. If you go more to the north side of downtown, you're going to find more. I shouldn't say that because I'm thinking of the shops in Maryland. Actually, no, those are C1 and C2 sometimes. For HDC, yeah, a lot of the north side of the downtown is going to be more up against that zero setback line. As you get further south in downtown, it's sort of a wild card as to what your setback is going to be.

Yeah, but I think that's the perfect example because there are areas in south of downtown that have the buildings are set back, but the sidewalks aren't any wider. So that's kind of where there's two issues that we would need to kind of think through to solve. Partially we can solve that in the zoning code that governs private property and partially we might need to solve that in how we govern our public property.

Yeah, I mean when we talk a lot about wanting wider sidewalks and I think there's a lot of advantages to them like even just from an ADA perspective and a safety perspective. But it strikes me that when we talk about that what we're really talking about is either wanting to narrow the streets or take property away from the businesses the property owners which like it to the extent that we are allowed to do that if we prioritize that or however we do it that's one thing but um i just think like it'd be interesting i'm curious Like what our sidewalk width is and is it standard and consistent? And do we actually want to talk about it being different and really think about how to do that versus like hoping each development gives us something that feels like more sidewalk, even though it's not our property. Yeah.

I mean, that's

what we have to figure out.

Yeah. Think about the other communities that you walk through. So Maplewood, downtown Kirkwood, downtown Webster, their buildings are right up against the sidewalk. The difference is that they're stopping after three or four stories that's why i kind of brought up that step back issue and ryan will get into some other building height slides later that will help you with areas we've identified that we want to cap at a lower height to keep them really pedestrians friendly but that's where i think there might be an opportunity for us outside of a setback requirement to introduce other design elements that will help you feel more of less dwarfed uh as you walk down the sidewalk

all righty let's press on so as we go over the next few slides something i want you guys to think about is the evolution of the northeast downtown overlay because there's a lot of love and energy that went into that there's some good things that came out of it there's also some things that we found that weren't the most effective but we want to retain those good things so what we're going to do is we're going to look at an area we're going to call retail emphasis streets and the intent of that area is it's going to be sort of informed by the same intent of the northeast downtown overlay overlay which is to create really good pedestrian friendly retail spaces and the location of that northeast downtown overlay is also what has informed some floor area ratio call outs that we're going to have those retail infrastructure some height caps A lot of the some some of those architectural items which we kind of touched on before those were translated over from northeast downtown overlay into the high density commercial zoning district. And then the specific ground floor retail designs that you have seen implemented, for example on central we think that stuff is great and we want to make sure that that is represented across downtown as well, so we'll get into some specifics on these items. Retail emphasis streets. Retail likes to co-locate with other retail. And so what we would like to do is we would like to emphasize, it's kind of a push to get developers to do retail sometimes. So if we're going to push and we're going to fight for it, let's fight for it in areas where we already see effective retail. And so we want to call out two areas where we're seeing retail already. In the orange, we have the primary. And then in the blue, we have the secondary. In that primary, it's kind of modeled after the Maryland Gateway Overlay District, which has done kind of an effective job at promoting good retail. And so what we want to do is say 50% of that ground floor needs to be restaurant, retail, personal care services. Those are items that are really good at activating the street. On that secondary one, we're just saying you just need to have a mixed-use component, which is like what you've seen probably in a lot of the PUDs that have come through. So if somebody wants to come up here on an orange street, the frontage that fronts that street, 50% of that is going to have to provide that retail personal care, restaurant, something like that's going to have to have that component. They can have other uses. If they want to have a ground floor office or a bank or something on the other 50%, they can do that over there. It's just 50% has to meet that criteria. On this secondary street, That can just be anything. If they want to put an office on the ground floor in an apartment building or it's an office building and they want to just stick a restaurant down there, something as long as you have that mixed use component. The streets not highlighted that don't have that frontage requirement, that's where you could see that single use residential that we talked about.

And so just going back to that, so the hotel that was proposed at the World News site, I'm guessing that, you know, it wouldn't have any, well, it could have had some, I guess, retail. He was going to put a jazz club or something in. But my question is, could they simply construct a hotel with no other purpose on there? That would be nonconforming in this case?

Correct. So if this was implemented in the hotel, wanted to go back in that space, actually on both of their frontages, they would be required to have 50% meet that requirement. And this area that you see highlighted is it's partially the northeast downtown overlay, but a lot of it's just where's their retail entrances already. So you can see these green dots. Those are doors that go into those retail spaces. So we included that space in there specifically because there's nothing built there yet. It's in the character of the area. We would like to retain that character right there.

And so I'm just more going from a process standpoint. So if they wanted to propose it without that, then they'd have to go through the PUD process. Is that the alternative or would they have to ask for some waiver or what would be the process?

I don't know, would that fall into the PUD category?

Yeah, so they would go through a PUD. They did have jazz club restaurants. They would, on at least one frontage, they probably with their old design would have gotten the 50 on one, but that's exactly right. So the idea of us narrowing down our focus of we say retail emphasis, but as he listed out all of that, we need more than just retail, but we want those active uses of So by narrowing it down to these streets, we're truly identifying our priority zones. And so then that for us as staff would be something that we think we want to require but could potentially trigger a PUD. And then if we have our benefits set up with that PUD, there would be a way to elevate it. And I think that will help us focus on these areas to start. So then in other portions of the city, we wouldn't have such a hyper focus on those vibrant uses. Okay.

question real quick. I assume we would have to define retail, or is that just something that we're comfortable with everybody knowing kind of what it means in terms of these restrictions?

So as part of this process, I have gone through the beautiful joy of reading all of the definitions that the federal government has for all of the possible uses that you could conceive of. So as part of that, as part of this update some of our language so that way we're being really clear and specific or just so that we can refer refer back to these. These federal definitions already in places that were might not be so clear.

Okay, great thanks.

Already so. taking a look at building height. So presently in HDC, there is no maximum height and we'll largely retain that with the exception of a couple of call-outs. So on this map you see here on the bottom left, those darker highlighted areas, that's where we're going to have a height cap. It starts to follow the form of that Northeast downtown overlay. It's also an area where we would have, where we have a lot of these older properties that we want to preserve that retail character. And so if somebody comes into the space and they want to build something in this area, we're going to say, hey, a height of three stories. Or if you have a setback or a step back, you can increase. But what we want is to incentivize preserving these properties or a high barrier to entry such that if somebody were to replace these properties, they're replacing it with something that kind of meets the character of that area as it is. We also want to look at a two-story minimum. There's presently no minimum, so if somebody wanted to come in and tear down Centene's Tower, they could put in a one-story something right there. So a two-story Minimum throughout Identity Commercial.

And then just for context, on the bottom right image, that's an aerial of today. The red lines, those represent approximately the depth of the step back that we have built into the code. So if you can picture that one corner of Ceylon that has an upper floor patio... It's roughly that much of a step back. The reason we've gone back and forth with this step back, we want it to be enough that you feel the impact of that step back when you're walking along the sidewalk. But as Ryan mentioned, we also really want to reinforce new development continuing to meet the character of the area. And one of the issues that we felt is existing with the Northeast Downtown Overlay is that the step back requirements cut off such a large percentage of the depth of some of our smaller lots. It pushes people to needing to combine a lot of lots to get that larger massing option and so we wanted to try so you can see on the east side of the block we wanted to try and have that step back still leave enough building portion behind it that people could get enough square footage in the buildings that they might construct new

question on the maryland shops specifically and it's I'm reading this to say that we're going to require three stories, but we're going to allow them if they want to rebuild one of those shops to go up to seven stories as long as they have a step back. Am I am I understanding that right?

The Maryland shops, just to clarify, you're talking about on the north side of Maryland.

Correct. The dark black ones in your your map.

So there's nothing highlighted here on the north side of Maryland in those Maryland shops, which would be about where my mouse is. Those are C1.

Okay,

I'm looking at the map wrong. Okay, I got you. All righty. So let's talk about floor area ratio for a moment because that is a big part of these changes. Floor area ratio is a relationship between the gross square footage of a building and the gross square footage a lot. And I want you to think of this as managing the density or bulk of a structure. It's going to allow more flexibility in design and control of that density in the way that your height or setbacks are not going to do. It's going scale well with the property. This visual that you see here on this slide, think of this as displaying a floor area ratio of one. So on this one on the left here, you have one story tall of one block, one to one, your floor area shows one. This is also a floor area ratio one. It takes up half that space but it's two stories and so on. So this density here is not changing, but it allows folks to be flexible with the form of a building. So what we're looking at with floor area ratio changes, there's presently no floor area ratio in C1, no proposed change to that. C2, looking at going from 1.5 to 5, and then in HDC from 3 to 13. Now the goal with this is not to actually increase the floor area ratio in terms of what people see on the street right now. What we want to do is actually right-size it. So in C2, it's not that everything is presently below 1.5 and we want to have them go up to 5. It's that there's a lot of things ranging between 0 and 5 right now. We want to make sure that folks can continue to develop within the character of the area, same with HTC. The vast majority of things that folks see are far above three and the floor area ratio of buildings as folks have gone through the PUD process has not been an item of concern. Sometimes you've had folks talk about height or if something's in C2 and up against a residential area, maybe the intensity up against that, but the overall floor area ratio has not been an Discussion. So what does floor area ratio look like presently? So everything you see on this map highlighted in orange exceeds that maximum of three. And then you can see on the right, the floor area ratios of various buildings throughout town. So the only item on my list I have on the side that is below three is City Hall. Something like Chipotle over there, that building is gonna be below three, but most of what you see around you is gonna exceed three. And so then this map in front of you shows how floor area ratio is dispersed around downtown. So as you can see, there's not really a clustering of floor area ratios. It's not like we would say, oh, all the tall floor area ratios are in the center of downtown and that's where you wanna concentrate it. They're really quite spread out. And so increasing the floor area ratio is going to go well with the character of a lot of these different spaces in downtown. Do you have any questions on floor area ratio?

The prior slide, there was a except one more back. It was like 13 with a call out for three, five with step back. If you explained that, I missed it. Can you?

Yeah. So in that same area that we discussed previously where we would have a shorter height of three stories, we don't want to just leave the floor area ratio in that space still 13. We want a floor area ratio that matches that height that we're looking for in those spaces. So that's what that call out is it's the same area that we saw on the this previous slide it just has that the floor air ratio to match the height that we're looking for. So

the highlighted area would be.

Correct

thing else would allow.

Correct. So in this highlighted area, not just a floor area ratio of three, but also that lower height and those step back requirements that we talked about.

Yeah. And this one's a big one that Ryan did a lot of analysis like on the 3D models to show you the patterns because one of the biggest conflicts that we have in our zoning right now is no height maximum, but then we have a maximum floor area ratio of threes. But then we have a majority of the buildings in downtown that are greater than the floor ratio of three. So that's another one where we're sending people into this PUD route for essentially building buildings that have the density that we want to reinforce within our PUD. And so it kind of creates this loop, and that's what we wanted to right-size.

All righty, so the next steps that we'd be looking at is actually drafting that text amendment, getting feedback from city attorney on that item, doing some public engagement, getting feedback from folks like yourselves, and then actually presenting that text amendment to the Planning Commission and Board of Aldermen for approval. All right, I know I just threw a lot of information at you guys.

Anybody have any questions?

The public engagement part, would part of our goal be to make sure that we're highly inclusive of the downtown property owners and or developers to get their feedback? What audience are we trying to engage with?

Trying to engage with anybody that would you know, would interact with downtown. So we're not just going to we're not just gonna send it to the plan Commission post for a public hearing we're going to use things like engage clayton we're going to take advantage of feedback in that circumstance we're going to make sure that. presentations like this or once given to the plan Commission are accessible to folks and that they can reach out to myself or honor and provide their feedback.

I'm just wondering, I know you guys know this backwards and forwards. I'm just wondering if we've sought the feedback of some of the larger property owners in Clayton just to see if they have any initial pushback before we actually take it to the next step. Have we gotten any feedback?

Yeah, so we will send it out. That's kind of the next step on that one. But we did get a lot of feedback from developers and commercial property owners and commercial real estate people and just general residents through the comprehensive plan process. So pretty much everything that Ryan's outlining here is us implementing the comprehensive plan. Now, we don't want to still just surprise everybody and have a new code tomorrow. So we're going to let them know that Here is the translation of that general feedback of our procedures and regulations. We've now translated that into new code, take a look at it and provide some feedback. But really most of what the changes are pretty direct response to the feedback that we got through those engagements, surveys, when our consultants had interviews directly with them, that sort of thing.

Yeah, and I think it'll be helpful like in that public engagement to really articulate what some of that feedback was because some of this is pretty complicated planning processes. So people understand, well, I would like to see more retail. So this is a way to begin to try to accomplish that. Or why do we always have PUDs? And so again, this is like a way to try to accomplish Thank you, Ryan.

All right. Thanks,

everybody. Looks like we got about 10 minutes for a break before we start again. Good evening, everybody. We are here for our July 8th Board of Aldermen meeting. Madam Clerk, if you could call the roll.

Alderwoman Buse? Here. Alderwoman Patel? Here. Alderman Gary Feder? Here. Aldermen Rick Hummell?

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

Here.

Aldeman Jeffery Yorg? Can you say out loud? He's muted.

Aldeman York? Can you say out loud? He's muted.

could do it jeff there we go can you hear me now

yeah

yes it was i wasn't moved over to panelists i'm here

mayor mcandrew here city manager David Gipson here city attorney o'keefe here thank you

mayor mcandrew here city manager gibson here city attorney o'keefe here thank you

All right, great. Thank you. I would just like to say, you know, I think there's been a lot of information that everybody's seen in the news about the flooding in Texas, which is just absolutely devastated, devastating. But I also just wanted to commend our chief, our fire chief is there assisting in the recovery efforts there. So I just want to commend him for Is somebody else there?

Yeah, Captain Brian Brailmire is there as

well. And Captain Brian Brailmeier is also there. So I just want to commend both of them for those efforts. If there are any public requests and petitions, I don't know if there's anybody in the audience that wants to talk to us about something that's not on our agenda, you are welcome to approach us. You'll just want to say, make sure the green light is on at the bottom and say just your name and address for the record.

Sure. Hey, good evening, everyone. My name is Jomo Castro. I'm with AT&T. Address is 1010 Pine Street, St. Louis, Moe, 63101. First of all, I just wanted to say good evening. And really, I have no ask, no comment. No business specifically before this body tonight, but I did want to just introduce myself. I've been engaged on a couple of issues in Clayton recently, one with the city over a permit delay and one with the school over an internet outage. Both of these issues are resolved, but because of that, I just wanted to really make myself available as a resource to the Clayton leaders and pass around my business cards at the end of my remarks for issues that may arise. So let me just introduce myself, Jomo Castro. I'm the regional director of external affairs and basically I do government and community affairs for the company. I focus on the city of St. Louis, St. Louis County, and St. Charles. So I've been with the company coming up on 25 years, been in this type of role for about 10. And right now, fiber is where we have most of our activity in doing these fiber builds. And obviously, this does impact the city. That's what I was called into on a permit issue. It was around one of our fiber builds. So and that's where you're going to see continued activity from AT&T. So and fiber is our AT&T fiber is our best product. It enables super fast symmetrical speeds for Internet and streaming. The only complaint we get about our fiber is that it's not in my neighborhood. Right. And now it's coming to your neighborhoods. So it's also very strategically important to us as we build our network of the future. We're also transitioning from our old copper network. We've stated publicly that we will largely exit our legacy copper service network. We will be retiring it by the end of 2029. So again, this is a huge corporate effort. We have access to 30 million homes across the country. We just crossed that milestone with a stated goal of 60 million by the end of 2030. So we do have a fiber building motion here in Clayton and two more planned to begin later in fourth quarter. One in North Clayton between Maryland and Kingsbury. One just north of Clayton Road and east of 170. So again, I work a lot with our construction teams, but they're, as you can imagine, they're really busy laying out this fiber. Our associate director that manages the fiber build, he has half the state. So a lot of times when we have an issue with restoration or something like that, um you know again we'll if the escalation is in order i come into the picture and and again we we aim to restore property exactly how we found it or as close to it as we can right and we we definitely go we try to go above and beyond uh and of course but but obviously we also work with a lot of subcontractors so things happen especially when you do things in scale uh Last thing I'll mention is, of course, wireless is AT&T's other big product with our cell phones. Our wireless coverage in the city is very good. We have about eight different sites that are actually feeding the city of Clayton. So our wireless coverage is excellent really throughout the area. So again, and again, that's just... it's a complimentary product to our fiber. You know, it's always best bundled. So again, I'm just going to pass around my business cards and say thank you for having me tonight.

Thank you, Mr. Castro, for coming and introducing yourself. I don't know if anybody has any questions for him at all.

yeah i just uh we've had a number of issues um after our tornado with down lines and occasional poles that either are down or need to be replaced and sometimes there's multiple utilities that share these so i guess i'm wondering will there be some kind of pole implication with all of this rebuild as you go forward

So not with, there shouldn't be. Now, if a storm comes through, if we're not working on it or if lines come down and you're not sure where to go with it, I can be your liaison. I can get those, have a tech assigned and have a crew out. often same day. We do coordinate with Ameren, particularly through the tornado relief efforts. We were in lockstep with them. They were turning on power. We were coming back in right behind them doing restoration. So, but if there's something specific, you know, that there could have been a line that dropped or sagging that maybe we weren't made aware of, if you want to bring that to my attention, I can make sure it gets cared for. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. No, but I mean, like, I get a lot of the weird stuff, right, where people don't know where to go with their issues, right? They get lost in customer service. So if that happens to you, call me and I'll manage through it and get the problem solved.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

All right. I think the first item on our agenda is we're going to get a presentation with respect to our audit.

Good evening. Is somebody able to pull up the PowerPoint? Yeah,

it's

in the package here.

Thank you.

My name is Victoria Daly with Sikich and we're the audit firm for the city. So I will go over three of the reports tonight. So the annual comprehensive financial report, our single audit report, and finally our communication to those charged with governance. So the first one is the larger of the three reports, which is the annual comprehensive financial report. Thank you. Next slide, please. So within the annual comprehensive financial report is our independent auditor's report. And this is a report on the financial statements as of September 30, 2024. And the most important part of this report is that there is an unmodified opinion, which is a clean opinion stating that this financial statements are fairly presented with no material misstatements. So this means that the financial statements are materially correct, so the numbers are materially correct. The financial statements are fairly presented, which is the disclosures and presentation, and that the financial statements conform with GAAP. It does not mean that the audit is not designed to provide assurance about internal controls. It's not designed to detect immaterial errors or fraud. Next slide, please. So there is a new paragraph in this report. It's an emphasis of matter paragraph, and it just states that the city corrected errors from prior periods in the reporting of its custodial funds, which is really CRSWC. The correction had no effect on net position, and there's no opinion commodification. So it didn't change the clean unmodified opinion. The report also goes over management's responsibility for the fair presentation of the financial statements and our responsibility as auditors to audit those financial statements. So the next part of that report is independent auditors report on internal control over financial reporting and on compliance and other matters. Based on an audit, financial statements performed in accordance with government auditing standards. So this previously was included within the single audit report, and auditing standards changed, and now it's included in the ACFER. It's required due to the level of grant expenditures during the fiscal year, and it's a report on internal control over financial reporting. So it does state that there's no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies identified, which is important to note, and that no instances of noncompliance were noted. Next slide, please. Then the next part of the report is the management's discussion and analysis. And this presents a really good overview of the financial activities during the year for the city. It provides an analysis of the overall financial position and results of the previous year's operations to determine whether the city's finances have improved or deteriorated. And it's also to be read in conjunction with the city's financial statements. So just going over a few of the financial results. The government-wide financial statements, so this combines all the funds and it's on the full accrual basis. The governmental activities had $176.5 million in total assets and deferred outflows, $55.1 million in total liabilities and deferred inflows, leaving a net position of $121.4 million. Of that net position, 24.3 is unrestricted and net position increased 8.9 million. With capital assets, there was 94.4 million in total capital assets, which capital assets decreased about 1.6%, which is not much. So it pretty much stayed similar to last year. There was an increase in CIP of $1.7 million due to the Central Business District resurfacing, Maryland Park improvements, and Shaw Park fields and some other smaller projects. Regarding debt, this decreased $2.6 million, and there was no new debt. Some changes from last year, there was an increase in total revenues of $3.5 million, which is approximately 8.8%. And this was due to an increase in operating grants, which was 348,000 or 17.9% due to an increase staff reimbursements, which were related to the school resource officer and technology reimbursements with the city of Brentwood and city of Richmond Heights. Increase in capital grants. So those vary based on year, based on timing of projects, 987,000 or 70.9% due the increased federal funding related to the central business district project An increase in investment income, which is 1.5 million or 76% due to an increase in interest rates and improve market conditions so large increase in investment income. A decrease in total expenses on the government wide of 2.8 million so that includes like any changes for pension expense and capital assets. So there was a decrease due to uniform pension expense and delays in purchases and capital asset replacements. There was also a decrease in total expenses on the fund level, too, on the modified accrual basis. So a decrease in total expense on both. On the fund financial statements, the general fund had an overall unassigned fund balance of $27 million. which increased 3.6 million. The capital improvement fund had 7.4 million in restricted fund balance and it increased 990,000. The equipment replacement fund had 4.6 million in restricted fund balanced and 6.9 million in assigned fund balance and it increase 2.1 million. Total governmental funds, so all the funds combined had 52.3 million in fund balance and it increases 7.3 million. Uh, the city also has some fiduciary funds. So there's pension trust funds related to the non-uniformed and uniform plans. Um, those had 86.5 million in restricted net position, uh, 10.9 million increase in net position, um, a 7 million increase in net investment income, which was 111%, a large increase in investment income due to the increased interest rates, improved market conditions, um, And then there's some custodial funds that are new this year. So the Central Core Fire Training Center Commission and Clayton Recreation Sports and Wellness Commission, and those had no ending net position. It's basically just recording the ins and outs since the city collects funds for those entities. Then following that is the notes to the financial statements. So it goes over the city's summary of significant accounting policies. There's a lot of detailed disclosures in there. There's on cash and investments. So it's important to note that cash was entirely secured or collateralized at year end. There's also lots of details on the investments and the pension trust fund investments as well, too. You can see maturity rates. timing of maturities, fair value levels. And it's broken out by investment type as well. Capital assets has more detail by type of capital assets. The 1.5 million decrease in capital assets and there was 5.4 million depreciation expense. There's also detailed disclosures on long-term debt. So there's no new debt in current year, and you can see there's maturities of the debt and the debt footnote as well. So there's lots of details in the note disclosures. They don't generally change too much except for the numbers. After that is pension. So there's the two pension plans, the non-uniform plan and the uniform plan. So the non-unform plan had 231 members, a decrease in net pension liability from 2.2 million to 1.7 million, and an increase in net investment income, which caused that decrease really. There was no benefit plan changes in either plan. The uniform plan has 186 members, and it decreased 6.9 million, so it went from a liability of 3.6 million to an asset of 3.2 million. And this had a large impact was due to the increase in investment income. And the reasons why those are a little different is the uniform plan has a September 30 year end and the non-uniform plan has a June 30 year end. So there's a little timing on the investment market activity So one plan, the uniform plan, experienced greater gains due to the timing of the year end. And they also had more investable balances as well. And there's no changes in benefits or assumption changes in that plan either. The city's OPEB plan provides health care benefits to city retirees until they reach Medicare eligibility age. There was 197 members, and OPEB liability just increased slightly from $1.2 million to $1.3 million. And this was due to the decrease in the discount rate, which increased the liability slightly. There's a disclosure on the city's joint venture. and it's disclosed that the city contributed $150,000 to CRSWC for its annual operating subsidy, $50,000 for its capital subsidy, and $51,000 for its share of the commission's deficit. There's a tax abatement disclosure, too, for the city's taxable industrial revenue bonds. And it's disclosed that $257,000 of city property taxes were abated in fiscal year 24. And there is a new disclosure for a subsequent event just stating that the city issued special obligation bonds in the amount of $13,785,000 after year end. The next section of the report is required supplementary information. And this provides a lot of budget to actual schedules, detailed disclosures on the loggers and OPEB trend information. So there's 10-year information on that. And then the notes to the RSI. And the important part of those, that is the budget to actual schedules that the city's expenditures were under budget for all of the funds presented in that section. So that's important to note. The next section is the supplementary information, and this provides more information on the city's non-major funds. And it provides budget to actual schedules on those. And it is disclosed that the 2021 Special Obligation Debt Service Fund had expenditures over budget by $136. So very small over budget. The rest of the funds were under budget. And then following that section is the statistical section. And this has a lot of 10-year trend information that's really interesting to kind of see where the city was 10 years ago and where it is now. So that's a lot of good information if you're ever interested in looking at that. The second report, does anybody have any questions on that larger report first before I go into the other two reports?

I've got some big picture type questions, but I think in the context it would be to ask those once you're finished with everything else, if that's all right.

Sure. The second one is the auditor's communication to the board and those charged with governments. So in that report, we go over if there were any new accounting pronouncements that were implemented and there was on GASB statement number 100, accounting changes and error corrections. So this had no financial impact. It just revised the disclosure and some of the wording regarding any error corrections. It discloses the city's most sensitive estimates, which are depreciation, the pension and OPEB liability assumptions, the investment fair values, and the allowance. We would disclose if there were any difficulties in performing the audit, and there were none. Any corrected and uncorrected misstatements. So there was one corrected misstatement, and then there was an uncorrected misstatement that was immaterial to the financial statements. There were no disagreements with management or consultations with other accountants, and those would be disclosed if there were. And then next in that report is the management letter, and we just had one comment to note that regarding the city not properly reporting CRSWC in the prior years act for as a custodial fund, which won't carry forward next year since we've fixed that. And then the final report is a single audit report. And so this is required if the city expends more than $750,000 in federal funding. So it's our opinion on compliance for each major federal program, report on internal control over compliance, and report on the schedule of expenditures of federal rewards. The schedule of federal rewards, also known as the SIFA, the city's major program was due to MoDOT, so it was due to the funds for the Central Business District. district project and about 89% of the city's federal funds were, um, expended from, from MoDOT funding. Um, it's also noted that, um, there was an unmodified audit opinion. So it's a clean audit opinion. Um, the city wasn't a low risk oddity just because it didn't meet, um, some of the qualifications. The city needs a single audit within like the past two years. And, um, It doesn't really change much except for just our testing, we have to retest more and also there was no findings on the single audit so that's important to note as well. Now any questions.

So several. So first you've been doing this, your firm has been doing this for at least a couple of years. And so you were new to us and we were new to you. I know that we had some challenges just in terms of making sure that we communicated well with each other early on, just in terms of the data, the volume of data. So I'm looking for your feedback on any observations you have about the Our processes and how we're doing and what you've observed as you've worked on this audit.

I've observed that there's been turnover that has created challenges in the finance department. I think they have a really good handle of their processes going forward, as long as they can retain staff and everything. I think they've adopted new procedures for bank recs, which is important. We've got the pension funds squared away. Those present sometimes of a challenge. So I think that the processes are in a much better place.

Okay. And I'm assuming that you do work for other municipalities. Are there any major recommendations you would have for us on how we can improve?

We've, we kind of go through like some of those during the audit process we're going to have audit planning meetings to at the beginning to kind of iron out timing and actuary information. But the city has a lot of good policies and procedures in place. We've kind of, you know, helped address any questions along the way but I think the city's in a good place right now.

Okay. You referenced in the supplementary materials, one of the tables says the budget to actual and how we were generally under budget. On the other hand, we modify our budget every quarter to make sure that we're right online. And so that seems to be an unusual practice to me, but maybe it's not unusual at all. And so I'm wondering what do you find in other municipalities regarding that practice?

So we do find a little bit of a mixed opinion on that. But state statutes do not allow cities to expend more than appropriated. So we do find that the best practice would be to amend your budget if things change, expenditures change, because you know that and you can amend your budget. Some cities don't do that, and they just don't amend their budget, and they say this is what the budget is, we're sticking to it. But then the city's not supposed to expend more than appropriate in So then we have other cities that only like maybe amend the expenditures and don't amend the revenues, which is fine as well. There's not a particular practice that's right or wrong, but you just want to overall make sure that the city is not expending more than the budgeted amounts. Yeah.

Then just a couple of observations. Maybe they don't necessarily pertain to you per se, but there's a section in here and there's a tremendous amount of detail in this. And so I'm impressed by that. It's also kind of overwhelming. But there's a section about reporting entities and one of them calls out the fact that we have an industrial development authority. And so we've issued through with Centene a number of bonds. But it talks about how we have um directors that are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the board of aldermen and so we just did this committee review and this is on page 18 just so you know and so i'm just wondering should we be doing something like actually having a board um is there any work or are we i just want to know what our responsibility is here regarding this matter

I don't believe they have any ongoing responsibility once those are issued. A lot of cities will end up carrying an IDA or some even carry like a standing TIF commission so that if the development were to come up, they can act right away because those individuals have already been appointed and it stood up. but there's nothing for them to do on a regular basis relative to anything that's been issued in the past.

And I get that, but we refer to it as if this exists and we have all these things, yet we don't have these things yet, and it exists. It's just something to think about. You don't need to answer it now.

But we don't utilize it on an ongoing basis. Yes, exactly.

I get it from a substance standpoint. I would just then encourage everyone to also look at the supplementary details, specifically if you had the report in front of you, page 97, which is where the 10-year data is. And I would just jump to my conclusion but look at it yourself, which will show how important sales tax and investment income is to us over that 10 year period, and how property tax has been relatively flat. and then when we talk to the public you can also see in this 10-year data that the assessed values for our community have increased by 55 but our property tax income has only gone up by 20 which is because we continue we have to roll back our rate so our constituents will continue to feel the effect of um all the other entities that are taxing there the effect of those higher um taxes Yet we're not getting much of that, especially from property tax. So I want to go back to the importance of the sales tax and why we need the vibrant downtown and why we need to make that a priority. I think that chart does a really good job of it. The other thing the chart does a really great job of is showing how the school district has done a really good job increasing their rate so that they continue to get a lot of money. And so, again, our constituents are feeling the effects of that. And we're just such a tiny part of that. So important information is in there just for future reference when talking to our constituents.

Thank you. Yeah, Rick, thank you very much for pointing that out. Does anybody else have any questions, comments? Jeff?

Oh, he's...

No, I don't think so. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me tonight. We appreciate

it. Thank you. And thank you to Karen and Kayla in the finance department for all the work they put into the audit as well. Everybody in the finance department.

Yes.

Great job.

Thank you

very

The next item on our agenda is related to the short-term rentals, which we will re-advertise for a public hearing and it'll be heard on August 12th. And then the next issue is our consent agenda. If anybody has any comments on the consent agenda, I will open the discussion.

I just have a question to see if anyone can add any insight. I found it to be a... sort of a contradiction for Totspot to get a full liquor license. And so I'm just wondering if they shared how they intend to use their liquor license. Do we have any insight on that?

I mean, they, so the owner was at, I don't know if staff has something to say that is more informative, but the owner was at the ward neighborhood party and And so I talked to them at that point. I did not realize they were coming for us for a liquor license, but I would say that this seems consistent with how the goal of the place was described to me was that it would be a place where parents could bring their children and the children could play in a safe space and the adults could talk to adults while that happened. And perhaps then also drink. Yeah.

So I just wondered if my real point was it's consistent with their business model as opposed to they're looking to branch out into a second business that's going to have the sale of liquor as a primary source.

Yeah, I think it'll be all... Yeah, they have in the setup area. So it's kind of... I think I was talking to some of the staff. It's kind of like a Chuck E. Cheese, but a modern, smaller version of that. So there's contained areas for the children and then there's seating areas and then there will be a food and bar area. And this was not a daycare because the adults who... bring the children stay in the premise and are still responsible for their child that is playing within it they don't leave it with a caregiver or anything like that

so they need a liquor license because they're going to sell it is that right they're

going to solve it

okay thank you

outside of that does anybody else have any other questions on the consent agenda um if not other women abuse

i move that we approve the consent agenda Second. Discussion? Alderman Buse? Aye. Alderman Patel? Aye. Aldeman Gary Feder? Aye. Aldman Rick Hummell?

i move that we approve the consent agenda Second. Discussion? Alderman Buse? Aye. Alderman Patel? Aye. Aldeman Fader? Aye. Aldman Hummel?

Aye.

Aldaman Yorg?

He says he can't talk.

Aye.

You got it.

Yeah, once I mute it, it doesn't come back off of mute, but I'll figure it out on my own. But aye.

Mayor McAndrew? Aye. Thank you.

Great. The next matter on our agenda is a task order for the Central Business District light pole inspection. Our city manager will report.

Yes, Mayor. In September of 2023, the City of Clayton entered into an on-call services agreement with TWM to provide streetscape, lighting, and landscape architecture services. As part of our ongoing maintenance operations, the Public Works Department is initiating a program to investigate the condition of existing steel streetlight poles throughout the Central Business District. We requested a proposal from TWM to observe the existing condition of 190 steel light poles that were installed from 1995 to 2000 to evaluate their condition and identify maintenance needs. TWM will provide a variety of services during the project which are detailed in the provided scope of work. Under this task order, TWM will complete the outline scope of services by September 30th of this year. The fee for conducting the inspections and preparing a summary report is $110,600. We are also requesting a contingency of $5,000 to cover any additional services or additional poll inspections deemed necessary to successfully complete the project. Staff is requesting funding in the amount of $115,600 to complete this project. We also submit a budget amendment to the Board of Aldermen for fiscal year 2025 capital improvement fund to address this issue at a later time. Staff recommends that the Board of Alderman approve the ordinance.

Great, thank you. I'll open the discussion. Does anybody have any questions or comments with respect to this?

I do. I'm always proud... The amounts we pay for the initial analysis always just takes me back versus investing it in. But I understand it's professional work. And so is all of this in addition, was there anything in the budget for this? Or is this all a...

This was an unforeseen expense. But due to the condition of these polls, it's necessary that we do this in an expedited manner.

Okay, thank you.

The scope, it's at 190. Is this all Central Business District or is this all streetlight poles? What's the area being covered?

This is all within the Central Business District. These were the poles that were installed between 1995 and 2000. So the poles that we've examined and found to be in potentially poor condition were all installed during that particular time frame. So as we look at those, if for some reason we think we need to go beyond that timeframe with installation, then we'll start pulling those as well.

Okay. I

just phoned in on that five years.

Yeah. I just wondered where they were primarily located.

Just all throughout the central

business district. Okay. Thank you.

So David, I know it says the general fund, but did I hear you right? That eventually we'll get it. The capital funds will pay for this or will they just pay for the actual repair of the lights if we need them?

Yeah. So we'll talk about the capital fund here in just a little bit. Okay. for the five-year CIP. And as I mentioned at the retreat, we don't have anything in the capital fund right now to go for streetlight replacement. And so when we talk about the fund balance that we have in the capital fund, that's really what we're going to target if this turns into a larger replacement project. So we'll end up charging these design services along with any replacements to the capital fund is just one large project. Okay, great. Thanks.

Great. Thank you. Alderman Buse.

I move to approve resolution number 2025-17, approving a task order for the Central Business District light pole inspection project.

Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great. Now we're going to talk about our capital CIPs.

So I just want to go through a few slides here. We adopt this every year by resolution. It's a five-year capital improvement plan. And so I do want to make it clear that when we approve that resolution for the five-year CIP, it doesn't actually appropriate any money. That's done within the annual budget that the board will consider in September. But this really sets out, this is our guide here for the next five years as far as our capital expenditures are concerned. Just looking at the number up top. So this, yeah, this goes all the way from 25 to 34. Actually, that's mislabeled on there. We're going from 24 actual out to projected fiscal year 30. That's a 10-year projection heading that we had used previously. So my apologies for that. But the numbers here, if you look at the actual years, these are all accurate. So the things I really want to point out are the major changes that you see year over year here. Let me flip down to this. Actually, on this first slide, I apologize. That heading threw me off. On the ending fund balance, let's look at that. And we're going to look at this in more detail in just a moment. So the ending fund balance you can see here, pretty sizable in fiscal year 25 at the end of 25 at $6 million there. This bottom line, that's our internal fund balance target, which is 25% of ongoing revenue for the capital fund. And so you can see we're well above that mark currently. But over time, this number really diminishes significantly. and as we talked about at the retreat if i were to project this out an additional five years or even additional two years you start to see a lot of those street improvement projects come back onto the cip so just know that just beyond the horizon here we've got some major expenses that are going to hit uh and i'm sure have conversations that that particular point in time about potentially going for some sort of general obligation bond, just like we did back in 2014 when we did all the road reconstruction at that time. So just know that that kind of looms on the backend here. So while we see this fund balance that looks rather comfortable, know that big expenses are on the way. And then the short term, the biggest risk we have, we just talked about which are the streetlights in our downtown area. We'll have this analysis performed. If we need to go in and replace a substantial amount of street lighting, it's going to add up very, very quickly. So we have decorative fixtures that are north of $15,000. They're $20,000 if you have to replace the base. And then you could have the electrical work that goes along with that. So that could very quickly add up. and really eat into this fund balance that we have within the capital funds. So it's very good that we have it, but just know that it might be tapped here in the near future. So as we look at ongoing revenues, You can see the capital improvement sales tax, and it looks like it really falls off a cliff here. That's because of the debt service that is now going to the municipal garage. So we're shaving that right out of that line there. It's being diverted over to a debt service fund that pays the note essentially for the municipal garage project. So it doesn't show up within the capital improvement fund anymore. Sales tax, we're just, you know, year over year, we're really seeing this start to kind of plateau. We don't have big new users that are coming online. And while we've seen some strength with inflation, because when you have prices going up, that's reflected in your sales tax, we're not seeing a whole lot of new growth and activities. So this number is holding relatively steady. We're increasing really to 2% to 3% rate year over year within sales tax. Use tax is a little more volatile. We're trying to figure that out still. It's a newer tax. It was just implemented in 2020, and it's kind of been up and down and all over the place the past few years. So we're trying to get a handle on that. So I imagine these numbers get smoothed in the out years a little bit more as we get a more steady trend when we get past the seven- to eight-year mark. But anyhow, we've got that plugged in and we're pretty confident that those numbers will continue to come in over $1.8 million. Interest has been a big one for us. So what we're carrying in the bank, our interest income, as you just heard during the audit, it's been really strong here in recent years. I don't know that we'll enjoy that in the future the way we have in the present. Nobody can really gauge or tell where that's going to go. But in the meantime, you can see it was great in 24, 331,000. The fiscal year 25, 250,000 is the estimate there. We're using 120 there. It could be light if these rates hold. The Fed talks about cutting them from time to time, but we'll see if that actually materializes. I know there's a lot at play with tariffs and other things that will impact what they do with interest rates. But 120 is the number we have plugged in at the moment. When you look at these grants, these are revenues that come in to offset major projects. In this particular case, the project you're looking at under federal grants is the Central Business District Resurfacing Phase 2 project, which will be on the agenda in a couple of meetings for approval of the contract to get that going. So the remaining pinkish asphalt streets that you see within the CBD, those will all be replaced and then we'll have nice new asphalt throughout the entire downtown area. So that project is one that's underway. The state and local grants that you see here are primarily municipal park grants. And you can see we try to max that out every year, which is that 1,050,000 number. We have 525,000 here in fiscal year 28. So we do try to max that on a regular basis to offset some of those parks infrastructure costs. Finally, we do have a transfer in from special obligation bond project fund of $608,000 And so that That was actually in 25. My apologies, not going forward into 26. On the expenditure side, you can see the debt service that we have here. This debt goes through 2032 on the police buildings. So we're going to continue to make that payment a couple years off the page here. CRSWC, that's one that's been a little bit all over the board. We've had some projects that we know need to be done. So we do anticipate an increased contribution in 2026 at $345,000. Beyond that, we've normalized that at $100,000, which seems to be a pretty good running number right now. But we do see fluctuation year over year with that. You'll note with the transfer to general fund for operations, that's been cut off in fiscal year 26. The reason for that being we passed the fire sales tax. So that was a priority of the Board of Aldermen if the fire sales tax were to pass, that we shut off that transfer and keep that money within the capital fund. And that's what's helping to fuel that fund balance that we see within the capital fund so it's a good thing we have it, knowing that we potentially have this streetlight project coming up. We have the transfer to the equipment replacement fund. That number continues to increase every year. Every time we go in and update the numbers for what we think vehicles and everything else will cost, that number continues to rise. And for anybody that may be listening or watching this later, the equipment replacement fund is basically a sinking fund. It's an area where we save for future purchases to replace equipment here throughout the city, vehicles, major IT components, those and building components. We do have the ice rink, which is now totally paid off. And when I say paid off, I mean all of the design expenses that were incurred during 2019 to 2020. Those have all been retired now as of the end of fiscal year 2025, so that no longer carries forward. And then again, as I mentioned, expenses continue to go up in the IRF. We know that we have a funding gap, so we dedicate $100,000 every year to go to fund that gap and plug that out. Can I ask a question

before you move on? I'm real curious about revenue. So you talked about how you're showing revenue decreasing in future years because of transfers for the municipal garage debt. And I'm curious... why it's being represented as decreased revenues, as opposed to revenues staying what they are from the capital improvement sales tax and an expenditure going out to that fund like the others?

So we do that with another one of the debt service funds, if I'm not mistaken already. Yeah. And so we have a separate fund set up completely for that particular project. We could do it the other way. I don't know why we couldn't do the transfer rather than diverting it like this. Karen, do you want to? From an accounting standpoint, did you want to answer that question?

Just from an accounting standpoint, it's just cleaner if we keep track of it all in one fund. instead of doing transfer here and transfer there. We can do it that way. It's just more entries.

So, I mean, I hear what you're saying. And what I'm trying to think about is like when I think about the money we bring in through our capital revenue sources and the things that we spend money on for capital, like I think this actually doesn't represent that super well based on what we're doing. where, where will I see? Like it will be like a separate fund report in the budget. Is that right? And yeah, I mean, I'm just,

I don't

know. I

mean, you'll actually see it right here. It

won't be in the capital improvement budget. So in our regular budget, um, when we put the debt service funds together, because it's a debt service fund and we actually do this with parks and stormwater fund for our parks and, uh, parks debt. Um, it you'll see the revenue there it's not going to be in the cip budget it'll be in the full main budget

any other

thoughts on that

yeah i appreciate you bringing that up because very often when i look at these i just see it all how the tax collection is doing under our different categories right and we lose that communication of our income when it's just taken out and put somewhere else because The effectiveness of that tax and what's coming to the city is not clear.

So because that money is already committed to that debt, we've put it in a separate fund to make sure that we have sufficient funding to cover those debt payments. The money that's allocated here, we're showing as money that's available to spend on capital improvement-related items as opposed to that debt service.

So one of the things that's inconsistent, I think, at least it appears inconsistent to me would be we are showing debt service on here for the police buildings. Why didn't we create a separate fund for that? So why did we treat that differently than we're treating all these other funds?

I can't speak to that because I wasn't here when it was set up. I can just tell you that from an accounting standpoint, depositing the money when it comes in in that debt service fund is just cleaner. When the money comes in, we put it in there and then we can pay the debt out of it. I get

that. It seems odd that we show one form of debt service here and then we show other forms of debt service in other funds.

Yeah. I'm just not, I don't know how this was set up. It, this predates me. So unfortunately I don't know this was set up and I don't know why this was set up this way. But, um, I do know that with the park set that we, that's how we do it now. We just have it in a separate debt service fund. And when we present the regular budget document, it's listed in there. So you can see that going in there.

I mean, but Becky, because it does make it seem like we're all of a sudden losing a substantial amount of tax, which makes you question why. Agreed. And we're not. It's just committed to that debt service. So I think we have to all understand. But then it is harder to then communicate to the public and be reminded, oh, wow, why did capital improvement sales tax go down so much oh no we're allocating that money to the municipal garage

and if you'd like us to include the debt service schedule the amortization so you can see where that money is going with the cip we're happy to do it but the amount that's being moved is simply the amount to cover the debt service i

think one of the things i'm curious about is um how like because if um one of our responsibilities is to review and approve the budget and I'm so I'm just curious about like when we passed the um when we authorized the debt for the municipal garage did we specify that we were going to set up a separate fund and divert a certain amount of the tax into that fund like have we already taken an action like a like a legislative governmental action that causes you to do it this way or because do you understand what i'm saying like

just what you're saying yeah what you passed initially was the ordinance that authorized the sale of the bonds and we received the revenue That last budget amendment, we did have the expenditures in there for the municipal garage. And in that budget amendment, we probably sent that to debt service, the debt service fund, correct?

We did.

So it's not something that you couldn't undo.

Yeah, and I don't... It's just hard, like, as we think about all this stuff and we try to understand our finances and think about what revenue we get. Like, I don't know. And how much are we looking at this in a vacuum? Because we're just looking at the capital improvement plan today. I don't know, but I just don't like it when something shows up like that, that is scary, confusing, hard to understand. It's like, oh my God, we're losing half a million dollars every year. in revenue. Like, whereas if it was there and it was going to the debt service fund, it would be very clear. We're actually still bringing in the same amount of money, but we've allocated it. We've already allocated it to this other thing. So it's not really available. So I don't know enough about accounting and like what other options we have to do it. I don't want to make your job harder. Go ahead, Jeff.

No, I was just going to say, so I feel like part of the challenge here is the city is talking accounting and we're talking presentation. And Karen, I completely get the accounting reason for why it's set up that way. I feel like the challenge is when we only look at the capital budget presentation from an accounting standpoint, which is what we're looking at, it just seems odd to not see the revenue there. And I wonder if there's a way to present this that isn't necessarily full-on accounting structure, but more like... non-accounting speak where like it should, like to Becky's point, it's showing all the revenue coming in. It's showing where all the revenue is going. I think that's the more informative piece for us, less about how it may show from a purely inflow outflow of the capital improvement fund accounting perspective. So I don't know if there's a way to get both or to have like a corollary document. It just shows again, kind of what Becky's asking for. Here's all the money that is dedicated to capital improvement somehow. Here's where it's all

going. Go ahead, David. I think what we could probably do here is this is the capital improvement plan. So this is how we intend to spend the capital money that comes in. And as Karen mentioned, this is set up this way so that you know really what's available for capital improvements going forward. being that this isn't the budget document, this isn't appropriating any money. I'm sure we could find a way to denote that somehow that there is capital improvement sales tax money that's coming in that's being diverted over to the debt service fund because this document here doesn't this isn't your budget that you're approving here. This is a resolution that approves of a five-year plan for those capital expenditures. So there's gotta be a way we can do that. We're making that change on this particular document. Doesn't change anything from an accounting standpoint, but on the backend, when you get the actual annual budget, then at that point in time, you know, the board will be approving the, that capital improvement sales tax money going into that debt service fund to make that payment. But find a way to denote that within the plan so that you know as you're doing that, because this is the document we always use to talk about capital improvements. You know that money is there and going a different direction. Would that be helpful to do it that way? I mean, Karen, does that help you?

And we do in the main budget document that everyone passes in those debt service funds, we do specify the funding sources. So the capital improvement sales tax revenue will be in there, just like the parks and stormwater sales tax revenue and the property tax revenue for the different you know, the different debt issuances that we

have.

Jeff are pointing out is it's this thing about like, I don't want to dictate how you do accounting transactions and things. And I want like a clear, Clear view. I mean, it takes me back to our previous discussions about some of the budget stuff that I had questions about like where like it just kind of is it's confusing and it requires too much explanation for someone who's not an accountant. Yeah.

So maybe this is what you're thinking, David. But my suggestion is, or the way I think about it is, this is what we have available. This report is telling us what we have available to spend on capital improvement projects. And all the other money that we have is already dedicated somewhere else. So maybe the way to do it is to say, what's the big picture? Where's all the money coming in and where's it going? And then this is a subset of that. which is the amount we have that's free or available dedicated to these kinds of things. So one could be sort of like a summary statement, and then this is the more detailed one.

I mean, and then there's a line at the bottom, though, under expenditures, it says municipal garage debt service. Why wouldn't there be numbers in there? Yeah, when

I saw that, I was like, wait a minute.

Because then wouldn't there be an amount that would basically be what was why the why the amount decreases so much from 25 to 26. And wouldn't that be amount

there? We're showing that because we showed that in past years, but we also showed municipal garage expenditures on here, which you're not going to see because all the expenditures are contained within this separate construction fund that's been set up. So when we get to the municipal garage bond construction fund, here's where you see the expenditures related to that particular project and then the fund balance. So that's the money that came in, you know, with our, with the actual issues. That's your proceeds. So anyhow, we've got a separate fund that's set up to track the expenditures for that. So that's why that line went blank. But again, being that this is just a plan and this isn't an actual budget document in the end, there's got to be a way to denote that that transfer, not really a transfer, but that diversion is taking place.

Could you go back to what you

just showed? We can figure

that out. The debt survey, what you just showed at the municipal garage, where was that chart done? Go a little further. So if the revenue is being put into this bond fund?

They're not. This is the construction fund, so this is the proceeds of the debt issuance, and this is where we're going to keep track of all the expenditures that we apply towards the money we got from all the bonds that we issued.

So the money, the revenues that were just taken out from above, where do those show up again?

Those are going to show up in a debt service fund. So this is the construction fund. The other is the debt service fund where we keep track of the payments that we make to the lending agency.

So yeah, we're not seeing where that revenue is and we're not seeing the debt service. Those two pieces of information aren't in this packet.

Okay.

Yeah. And these bond construction funds, you definitely want to set these up. This is absolutely best practice to show that all the expenditures from those proceeds are going directly to that project.

And if we're audited ever on that, we need to have it separate and have the detail available. Right.

And you can see on that, sorry, the reimbursement.

That service though too.

That's correct. Those are

two separate things.

Yeah.

Okay, that's those are all good points I understand the concern when you look at the revenue numbers and you see that drop off and there's no explanation here as to why that occurred so we can have conversations about how we. We show that going forward. Any other questions on that before I get into the actual projects for fiscal year 26. Okay, so the projects that you'll see within the next fiscal year, we got a Shaw Park Tennis Center lighting project at $700,000. That is going to be offset by a Municipal Park Grant. You'll see the Municipal Park Grant applications on the agenda on the August, I think at the August or the next meeting, July 22nd. August 1st is the deadline for those applications. But Shaw Park Tennis Centre lighting is one of the projects that we're going to be applying for and we intend to do. Here's the Central Business District resurfacing phase two project. That's the $1.1 million and some change that you see there in fiscal year 26. There will be some money expended this year and then the bulk of the project happening within the next fiscal year. Sidewalks, curbs, and accessibility improvements. You can see that we do that every year. We have $120,000 plugged in for the next few years on that one. fire training facility. We had the groundbreaking today, which was great. The second half of that project is going to bleed over into fiscal year 26. So we have that project split. So that's 213,000. But just to remind everybody, we're on the hook for a quarter of that. So three quarters will be reimbursed by our partners at Richmond Heights, Brentwood and Maplewood. O'Connell lighting upgrades. That's a $685,000 construction project again offset with municipal park grant funding that we're making application for. We've got concrete repairs at 10 South Brentwood on garage levels one and two right now we're doing the top level of that deck. We had a change order that we took to the board of aldermen at the last meeting and you can see that amount here. So about 108,000 we anticipate for next year. A lot of subdivision monuments are coming due. So we have $240,000 set aside in capital funds for that. And again, we're starting with those that are in the worst condition first. So quite a big expense there. We've got traffic signal maintenance and replacement. We have items that come up every year. So we budget $50,000 for that. And then we start to get into some of the street lighting. So we have 465,000 that will be funded out of the CIP fund. The remainder of that project is going to be paid for out of the general obligation fund balance that we still have. So when we issued that debt back in 2014 to reconstruct streets and sidewalks, street lighting was included in that. There was still a bit of a balance there. So we're going to throw all of that at this really first phase of our larger street lighting project, supplement that with $465,000 from the capital improvement fund and get that done. So that's going to be over in Y down forest. And I think there's a section in high point demand that will be done through that larger project as well. And then we have some minor sewer projects that we anticipate that will hit in fiscal year 26. That's at $350,000. So those are the projects that you'll see coming to you as we bid those out throughout the year. So

I'm wondering whether we should have any kind of a line item for... the contribution we need to make for restoration of all of our infrastructure after the tornadoes. So the non-FEMA portion, just anticipating that we may have a lot of sidewalk disruption or what about the whole, where do trees fit in? Is that a whole separate fund or is that part of this fund?

We are setting that completely aside. We'll do that through the operating budget, so all that's going to be paid out of general fund balance and then reimbursed by FEMA, and then we'll put that money back in essentially to the general fund balance. So when we get into operating, we'll talk about money that we'll allocate in fiscal year 26 for that, but we don't plan to use the capital fund for any of those restoration projects. Okay.

And would that include David, would that include even like sidewalk repairs and things like that? Like you would do that all through the general fund. That's not covered by FEMA.

Anything storm related for now we're budgeting from the general fund balance. Yeah. We want to carry the capital fund balance that we have and leave that alone knowing that we have these potential streetlight replacements within the downtown. So we're going to work completely out of just the, the operating fund, the general fund balance okay. One

other question since I've already asked, sorry for going out of order, but yeah, I assume that if we don't get the municipal park grants, we will not be doing those projects for this year. Are they contingent on getting those grants or not?

That's a conversation we'll have with the board of Alderman. There's nothing to suggest that we wouldn't get that funding. We're pretty confident that we will, but if we don't, then we'll definitely talk about that before we approve any contracts for those projects. Gotcha. Okay. Otherwise we do intend to do those. And I'll point out again with capital improvements. I think I say this every year. you're really not seeing new items within the capital fund. So outside of really the fire training center, this is really just maintenance and upkeep of facilities and infrastructure that we already have here in the city. So always important to point that out.

Thank you.

The bond construction fund, as I said, we still have some balance that you can see here. That's the debt that was issued back in 2014. So that money is all being expended and high point demand and wide on force to get those streetlight projects done. So a little bit of a supplement coming from the capital fund to shore that up. But that will be completely expended by the end of fiscal year 26. Moving down, here's that municipal garage bond construction fund. So again, you can see the proceeds here and you'll see the expenditures start to hit some in 2025. That's a lot of the pre-construction costs for the project. the design work, that sort of thing. And then we'll get into some actual construction, hopefully here in the not too distant future. So we're bidding out multiple items right now. You're going to see contracts in front of you here at the next few meetings for things like asbestos abatement, moving our storage that we have. If you've been through there, you know, we have a ton of items stored, moving those to different areas so that we can get this project going. So bond construction fund is really going to heat up in fiscal year 26.

David, can you go back up to the bond construction? Okay. I wanted to look at the old bond construction fund to see if there was a debt service. No, it's the construction fund piece. There's not. Never mind.

Just your proceeds and your running fund

balance. Got it.

Do we actually expect to complete the municipal garage construction on FY26? Or do we not have a good enough schedule yet? We

do. We think we can get that done.

Great.

Thanks. David, the...

We're hopeful that we can

get back on. The 2014 GO bonds, I know, so that could only be used like for roadways, which we've largely used it for. And then it had to be used for streetlights too. I mean, obviously, I mean, it was a narrow...

Yes, that's correct. If it's streets, sidewalks, streetlights, monuments, really anything between your tree lawns would count. So we wrote that intentionally broad when it went to the voters for the approval.

And there's not a reason, I mean, I'm not suggesting that we not use or replace the lights, but is there a reason that we are going out to of start some of the street lighting replacement rather than holding on to the money to you know fix the roads that come due in the next couple of years in different neighborhoods or

we we really need to expend this i know that's something that comes up with the auditors every year is hey you all got this money in 2014 it's 11 years later and you still haven't spent your bond construction funds. It's a question we have to answer on a regular basis. And those street lighting projects that you see there, those are really high priority areas for us where we're seeing frequent outages and they really need to be addressed. So we rather take the balance that we have here and go ahead and throw it at it. And we'll deal with this

later. You know, lighting will be a bigger project. So rather than just loop the whole city into something.

Yeah. We figured since we already have the general obligation money there, we'd go ahead and use it for that.

Can that money also be used or was used for the downtown lights if we have to replace a bunch of them instead of pulling it out of the CIP? If that's the bigger emergency because they're falling down?

I would imagine it would probably qualify for this.

Okay. I'm just thinking if we wind up getting this report with a million dollars or so worth of downtown lights that we're afraid are going to fall down, In terms of where we want to pull the money, it may or may not. I'm just thinking through the options for that. Yeah, I

understand. I mean, even if it came back, though, and we had $2 million in expenses that needed to happen within the downtown area, I would be hesitant to defer these two projects much further, much longer. So I think either way, you end up paying that amount out of your fund balance. Okay, fair. Okay.

And when we do these street lighting replacements, are we standardizing the light poles and stuff?

That's a conversation that we're going to be

having. We need

to get to the point where we standardize those throughout the city.

Thanks. Yeah, Matt's definitely looking. Yeah, that's what I thought.

I just have one other comment, which is compared to lighting and things like that, but CRSWC I think it's pretty optimistic to think that it will level out at a hundred thousand additional expenses as it continues to aid

yeah as far as known big expenditures that are coming up I don't know that we have any beyond this year a lot of those improvements were made and we're paying those right now through that debt service that went towards the center renovations but again I think we've got some of these things that are

I would say

to the page or coming down the road.

Yes. Coming down the road, I would say about four or five years, we will probably have a very hefty HVAC renovate or replacement for the units that were not done during the renovation.

But that's five years out.

I think it's four or five. I was just looking at that today. I don't know the exact number,

but yeah. So those are conversations we'll need to have with CRSWC as well. Are those the full pack units? Those full packs are in the renovation, right?

Correct. It's the gym units.

All right.

Great. Unless

there are any other questions?

I move to approve resolution number 2025-18, adopting the FY2026 to fiscal year 2030 capital improvements projects.

Second. Any discussion? All those in favor?

Aye. Any

opposed? Great. So the last item on our agenda is the appointment of our municipal judge. I think. just for the audience and anybody that might be listening, we started a new process a couple of years ago where we had a panel where we solicited volunteers from the community who had experience. In addition, we also had an elected representative, Alderman Gary Feder, joined the panel this year. And then we also had somebody from our equity commission. So that process was followed again. The panel met I guess that was just yesterday. And Alderman Gary Feder is going to give us a brief report on what transpired.

opposed? Great. So the last item on our agenda is the appointment of our municipal judge. I think. just for the audience and anybody that might be listening, we started a new process a couple of years ago where we had a panel where we solicited volunteers from the community who had experience. In addition, we also had an elected representative, Alderman Fader, joined the panel this year. And then we also had somebody from our equity commission. So that process was followed again. The panel met I guess that was just yesterday. And Alderman Fader is going to give us a brief report on what transpired.

Okay, thank you. In as much as I sent a written report to the board and the mayor earlier today, I think Rather than paraphrase, I'll just read. It's fairly brief. It was a memo from me as the aldermanic representative on the municipal judge selection panel dated today and said essentially as follows. The panel of four members met at City Hall yesterday afternoon, July 7, 2025. During the meeting, three judicial applicants were interviewed by panel members for one hour each. The applicants were Brian Sanger, Joseph Dooley, and Stephen Strum. Between interviews, the panel discussed each candidate. At the end of the interviews and concluding discussion, the panel was polled. The panel unanimously recommends that Stephen Strum be reappointed as Clayton's municipal judge for an additional two-year term. The panel was very impressed with the qualifications and temperament of each applicant. However, it was concluded that having only served as municipal judge for the past two years, Judge Strum's demonstrated commitment and performance warranted a further term in the city's municipal court, respectively committed, submitted by Gary Feder. So that was the report. And I think it pretty well summarizes what occurred yesterday. And we were fortunate that the timing was such we could get it on the agenda still this evening. And so that is the recommendation of the interview committee. And I think that We put it on the agenda because it was supported by the mayor. And so we simply at this point need approval by the board of aldermen.

Okay, thank you. In as much as I sent a written report to the board and the mayor earlier today, I think Rather than paraphrase, I'll just read. It's fairly brief. It was a memo from me as the aldermanic representative on the municipal judge selection panel dated today and said essentially as follows. The panel of four members met at City Hall yesterday afternoon, July 7, 2025. During the meeting, three judicial applicants were interviewed by panel members for one hour each. The applicants were Brian Sanger, Joseph Dooley, and Stephen Strum. Between interviews, the panel discussed each candidate. At the end of the interviews and concluding discussion, the panel was polled. The panel unanimously recommends that Stephen Strum be reappointed as Clayton's municipal judge for an additional two-year term. The panel was very impressed with the qualifications and temperament of each applicant. However, it was concluded that having only served as municipal judge for the past two years, Judge Strum's demonstrated commitment and performance warranted a further term in the city's municipal court, respectively committed, submitted by Gary Fader. So that was the report. And I think it pretty well summarizes what occurred yesterday. And we were fortunate that the timing was such we could get it on the agenda still this evening. And so that is the recommendation of the interview committee. And I think that We put it on the agenda because it was supported by the mayor. And so we simply at this point need approval by the board of aldermen.

Thank you very much. Is there any discussion or questions from anybody on the board?

I'm just curious, Gary, this is, if I remember right, the first time you served on this, any feedback on process, you know, is this a, is there anything we can do to improve the process? Is it a good process? Anything you'd change?

No, I thought it was a good process. You know, one of our members who has, one of the members of the interviewing committee said, who works extensively in this field and works with a lot of cities, actually complimented the panel at the end of the session saying this is really unique among cities in St. Louis County to do this kind of process, particularly the makeup of the interview committee and the very fact that we obviously interviewed each candidate. And so he was very complimentary. And so it seems to me it worked very well.

Great. Anybody else? I'll just comment that I very much appreciate everybody's work in getting this done, the Equity Commission putting it forward, and then the execution of the selection process. It does seem to be a model that's going to work well for us and maybe be copied by other people. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Alderman Gary Feder, and much thanks, obviously, to the people on the panel for taking time out of their day to do that.

Yes, thank you, Alderman Fader, and much thanks, obviously, to the people on the panel for taking time out of their day to do that.

And also the applicants.

yes absolutely

um if there's nothing else uh alderwoman abuse i move to accept the appointment of stephen strum as municipal judge for an additional two-year term second any discussion

all those in favor aye aye any opposed great so we will have judge strum um as our municipal judge for the next couple of years

And he's online, so he knows.

Congratulations, Judge Stroup. Thank you for your service. Great. So that brings us to the end of our agenda. If anybody would like to go around briefly and talk about anything they have done interesting in the last couple weeks?

Sure. I'll start with, I forwarded to each of you the announcement that Webster Grove's has attained the certification as a green dining district, and there are now five green dining districts in the metropolitan area. Hopefully we can all continue to remind our restaurants that we do support this effort, and I think that there's a standard that we should be meeting. Also we had a planning commission meeting last night, architecture review board, one of the applicants was looking to build a pool and it was over the impervious surface limitations and so that was probably the most discussion on that and our city manager Mr. David Gipson probably had the comment that probably put it into the best perspective because these these types of requests are coming before us. People are wanting to have more impervious surface and mitigate it with engineering things, you know, the pop-ups, the dry wells and things like that. And I think your comment was, and you can correct me if I misstated, was that we can't have everyone over-engineering to get beyond the limits that the city has felt are best for our community. So that was that meeting. And then today I had the pleasure of going to the groundbreaking for the fire training center and got to use our shovels and put on our hats and some of our fire staff complimented us and thanked us for supporting moving forward in this area. And it seemed like a reverse thanks to me because the fact that our staff and you, David, found this opportunity for us to make us even better and the constant improvement and going forward and being excited about continuing to develop professionally and work with our surrounding communities I think is really awesome. And they just gave us the opportunity to support them in doing that. And even cost-wise, very fiscally responsible and the participation with our surrounding communities is really a great way for us all to move forward.

Sure. I'll start with, I forwarded to each of you the announcement that Webster Grove's has attained the certification as a green dining district, and there are now five green dining districts in the metropolitan area. Hopefully we can all continue to remind our restaurants that we do support this effort, and I think that there's a standard that we should be meeting. Also we had a planning commission meeting last night, architecture review board, one of the applicants was looking to build a pool and it was over the impervious surface limitations and so that was probably the most discussion on that and our city manager Mr. Gibson probably had the comment that probably put it into the best perspective because these these types of requests are coming before us. People are wanting to have more impervious surface and mitigate it with engineering things, you know, the pop-ups, the dry wells and things like that. And I think your comment was, and you can correct me if I misstated, was that we can't have everyone over-engineering to get beyond the limits that the city has felt are best for our community. So that was that meeting. And then today I had the pleasure of going to the groundbreaking for the fire training center and got to use our shovels and put on our hats and some of our fire staff complimented us and thanked us for supporting moving forward in this area. And it seemed like a reverse thanks to me because the fact that our staff and you, David, found this opportunity for us to make us even better and the constant improvement and going forward and being excited about continuing to develop professionally and work with our surrounding communities I think is really awesome. And they just gave us the opportunity to support them in doing that. And even cost-wise, very fiscally responsible and the participation with our surrounding communities is really a great way for us all to move forward.

Thanks. We had a parks and rec meeting last night. There were lots of different topics, many kind of budget related in a way. The There's a subcommittee working on expanding the scholarship program that is funded through CCF. So that's a pretty cool effort that Tony and Valerie Eagle are working on to increase the... marketing of it, awareness of it, eligibility and the amount that we can actually support families who want to participate in our programs but might have a need for support to do so. And then we talked about I forgot my notes and my daughter took a picture of them and sent them to me. So that's why I have to keep looking at my phone. She's been really helpful today. So We can enter that into the record. CCF is looking to pull its sponsorship of parks events. What these are specifically is the musical nights at Oak Knoll park and Shaw park social, which is the renaming of picnic in the park and show park. So I think that's interesting. I'm, I have to say I'm not totally surprised because CCF's involvement and commitment at the musical nights at Oakville Park has been significantly diminished over the last handful of years. The Parks and Rec Commission was enthusiastic about these events, is recommending that we continue them. So it will be something for us to consider as a board at budget time and also maybe to consider how actively we encourage CCF to actually try to solicit sponsorship for these specifically or what that might look like. So my colleagues who liaise to CCF might be able to provide thoughts on that. Yeah. So that's that. The Remembrance Park subcommittee is getting stood up to work on what will be displayed there. And the commission, based on feedback from the board, was actually really interested in meeting in person as we brought up that topic. Since they're, I think, one of the few groups commissions that had stayed fully remote since the pandemic. And so a lot of enthusiasm about meeting in person and we are going to try to accommodate it at the same time, same date and time at the center and explore options for participation remotely, even if it might not be ideal. There was openness to that. So thanks to Tony for working through that with everybody. The other things I would talk about is the Ward 1 Neighborhood Party, which I referenced before. I came at the tail end. I thought it was really well attended. The feedback was very positive. People seemed to enjoy it, kids and adults. The businesses on DeMunn, it was in DeMunn Park at the playground, and businesses along DeMunn were really interested in being a part of it. like the salon strands, like heard it was happening at five o'clock. They learned about it and they like pulled together stuff to like kind of make a presence and like give stuff out to people and just kind of be there. So I think that's a note for us to take potentially going forward is to think about offering or requesting opportunities for engagement from businesses. It's different, maybe in the different wards. But ward one is pretty straightforward in terms of who's there, what businesses are there and what they might do, I think. I think that's all. Thank you.

CCF, I think, has not met for a while. I think in part impacted by the tornado impact. I thought we were meeting this week, but Rick pointed out to me that was the regularly scheduled meeting of CCF, which actually got pushed off to August. Which is a good thing because it's the same night and the same time as the Equity Commission is meeting, so I won't have to run between meetings. And I can report on what the Equity Commission does at a future time. The mayor and I had an interesting conversation with a gentleman by the name of Michael Wall who lives in Davis Place in Ward 3. He's a professor at the business school at Wash U dealing with a lot of issues of entrepreneurship and other topics. But actually what he wanted to talk about was trees, and particularly sort of an interesting aspect of trees for a future discussion. His concern is he's had a couple of situations with neighbors who have chosen to take down trees in their own yards, either because they thought they didn't like the tree provided too much shade or the latest was concerned of taking down a tree because they are fearful that in the next storm it will fall on their house. And so with some input from staff, we kind of let him know that we don't really have any policies that really restrict trees on your own property. And so that was something that perhaps we need to look at that we you know we have tree replacement when you do when you build a new project. You add on if you impact trees so we've had that whole policy, but the whole idea that someone in their backyard simply chooses to take a tree down. And he was pointing out, particularly in light of how many trees we've lost that the thought of even more trees coming down. is uh is a problem and so it's it's i i think something we need to sort of put on a list for future discussion in terms of how we might address that in the future recognizing people's rights to private property with trees that are under obviously in their backyards but nonetheless have an impact if they come down on the general treescape of our of our community so interesting topic for future discussion. And we hope to get, we've added Mr. Wall, by the way, to the long list of people that we have who people who would like to serve on committees, which again, the list keeps growing. And so hopefully we can find opportunities for a lot of those people in the next few months. That's all I got. Thank you. I don't

have anything to report.

Wow. Alderman Jeffery Yorg, how's Michigan?

Wow. Alderman York, how's Michigan?

It's good. Sun just went down. Um, but we're doing well. I don't have anything to report really either. We've got a, um, CRSWC meeting. If I got those initials right, I'm still learning, um, in about a week. So I'll have more to report then. Um, but otherwise other than, you know, Susan and I have been dealing with a couple, um, resonant questions about some hedges and some other speed issues that the chief and matt and david were helpful and kind of walked thinking through but otherwise not much else report

Great I also enjoyed going to the word one black party, it was a lot of fun and like Susan I it was really meaningful to be at the fire training Center break groundbreaking today. it's always neat to just you know see all these other communities coming together. So that was that was great it's really exciting and it truly is because you kind of wonder where you're going to put a fire training facility, because you, you know. you know, with people like all the crews and maybe things are lighting, you know, there's smoke. You wonder, well, aren't people going to be paranoid? I mean, it is truly sandwiched between the highway and railroad tracks and like, so it's really, truly the perfect place for it. So, um, so yeah, so that was great, but that's all I have. What about you, David?

Just a quick update on Tornado and FEMA items. So we did submit our FEMA application for reimbursement. So all that material has been sent to them. The deadline's tomorrow. We got it in a few few days ago got the initial application and last week they've acknowledged receipt of that waiting for a case manager to reach out to us, and once we have a manager assigned. That will put together the scope of a project, then we have 60 days to refine that project and then. We should start to receive funding and get going on it so that process is well underway at this point we've taken down all of the hazardous trees that were marked throughout the city at this point, so I think the last one came down today or yesterday. So really good progress there. We are finding hangers all over the place. So any residents that see a hanger, if they're concerned about it, have them send it in on QAlert, continue to use QAlert, our report a concern system. That's the best way for us to track that. But we're going throughout the city and pulling those down and cutting them out wherever we can. They're really easy to spot now because they browned in the trees. And it's amazing. You know, we thought we had most of these. And then when you look at it now that those those branches are dead, they're really, really standing out. So a lot of work to be done there. We're working through right now a few different things, one of those being the just the tree replanting strategy. So we're engaging with the Department of Conservation on how to go about that and using some other resources there. So our foresters are having those conversations and try to put together a phased approach for trees going back in. And before trees can go back in, stumps have to come out. So those are all things that we're coordinating. But that's not going to be a very fast process. So we urge everybody to be patient with us as we do it. And as we talked about at the retreat, tree replanting is not something that's reimbursable by FEMA. So that's a cost that we will bear. Although, as you saw with the audit report and as we've talked about, you know, the general fund balance is strong and that's exactly why we keep it at that particular level so that we can go in and restore things when something like this happens. sidewalk replacement and pavement replacement out to bid right now. So that process, that goes for another 17 days or so. I think we close on the 25th. Then we'll review those applications that come in. But we have to go through a very specific bidding process to make sure that we meet the FEMA requirements and get reimbursement for the sidewalk and pavement replacement. So I know that If you're a resident and you have a piece of sidewalk

that came up

with a tree and you've just got that kind of dirt patch that's uneven and unsightly, we do want to address those. But we have to go through this particular process to make sure that we check all the FEMA boxes and get that done. So that is underway. That's out to bid. And the Board of Aldermen will see that contract. uh when we finally get the bid numbers back we've identified all of those sidewalk pieces throughout the city in the public right away that need to be replaced all of those were included in the scope so hopefully we get that pricing soon so that's another big thing that that's underway right now so

Just a question on that. So I noticed on along Whiteown, sometimes it's beyond simply the fact that a tree disrupted the sidewalk. Sometimes you see exposed utilities. So I'm wondering, is that going to just in terms of giving feedback to the residents, is that going cause any additional delays because of coordination with the utilities or how do we work that out? So it's a timely process.

Yeah. So all of those areas where we've removed those sidewalk sections, we've already gone in with the utility companies to make sure that when we pulled those up, we didn't disrupt it any further. Uh, when we go to do a lot of those replacements, we'll have to have the utility companies come back out and mark everything again. Uh, the one unknown and something we need to figure out how to address is, is the street lighting cable that was impacted. And so our street lighting system is just a mess. Uh, we're still trying to get a handle on that before that goes out to bid. We have some areas like for instance, um, the northern section of the 7400 block and then the moorlands so parkdale byron those particular streets are uh they really just saw um you know massive trees come down all throughout that area. So the streetlights, just a mess over there, the street lighting system. Most of it is still off. The cables have been ripped out. So when we talk about standardizing streetlights and doing those things, there are going to be larger projects that are kind of embedded within this FEMA project where we really need to go in and replace systems. So we're getting a really good handle on that. We have all of that mapped as well. So that'll be another big thing to bid out and something we're going to have to work with our FEMA manager on. But yeah, all that stuff's coming. The utility work right now, again, if things have been pulled out, utility companies come out and everything should be intact for the time being.

Can you provide an update on the YDOWN reimagined?

Yes, so yeah, that was the other thing I meant to mention. So we did meet with an on-call landscape architect that we have last week and talked about getting together three concept plans for the section essentially from university to the city limits. And so we expect to have their proposal hopefully by the end of the week. And so we'll negotiate a price on that. We'll bring a task order to the Board of Aldermen and then the landscape architect will put together three really high-level concepts. So one is going back with what we had, and then two will be more imaginative with a lot of the things we've heard from the community. And then we'll utilize Engage Clayton and do some public engagement, figure out what to do, and then we'll have to go out and get an actual designer to do the project in coordination with the street lighting and everything else. But that is underway.

We can expect to see that at our next meeting.

um hopefully i'm thinking probably i'm thinking probably august but

i don't know what the date is august that's got it

august 12th

yeah thank you

yeah and then hopefully have some sort of you know forum i can't remember if we talked about end of september or something like that

depending on how quickly they can get those concepts down right

maybe october All right,

great. Any other questions about tornado recovery? And also, if you haven't seen it, if you go on the storm updates, the story map is up and live. And it's really, really cool. So you can click through maps. You can see pictures. You can see the whole progression of how we did the debris removal, all of it. It was incredibly well done. So thank you to Anna and her staff for putting that together. And for all of our staff that took pictures and collected information about uh throughout this entire process that was then fed into this but um it's a really really cool tool and and really i mean we have a story to tell with our residents uh we need it's something we need to promote and put out there so people can go on and see exactly what occurred uh through that process so we'll update as we'll update as that as we restore things throughout the city and we get our larger restoration project underway That's it.

I move to adjourn. Second. All those in favor? Aye.