August 26, 2025 — Meeting Transcript

All right. Good evening, everybody. It's August 26th. We are going to start tonight's meeting with an update on stormwater regulations from our planning director, Anna Crain.

Okay, thank you, Mary. So I'm just going to do a fairly quick update. I want to just run you through some of the additions and changes after our last discussion. So just to start, we'll remind ourselves what the principles and goals of the lot coverage regulations are. So right now we're really addressing preservation of open space related to the character and well-being, stormwater runoff, and then also reducing the heat island effect. So a combination of kind of character fueling and also environmental impacts. So we held a discussion session with the planning commission and with the board. We had some good comments and questions that were made there. Then staff had follow-up discussion with MSD where we kind of went through some of the larger regional initiatives, some of how they would approach the smaller sites, talked about the specifics of the issues that we're trying to address in Clayton and how we can do so in a way that works well with what MSD is doing in the larger site areas. And then we've had multiple discussions with our consultants in Tuition Logic who are helping us with this text amendment and also dove into the green space regulations. So a big question that kind of came out of the discussions that we've had after the last presentation, I think one way to frame the stormwater is to really think about what we're trying to address with these regulations. Stormwater regulations in general tend to go for either addressing peak flow rate or addressing volume. There's some overlap there, but those are two distinct ways that stormwater is what it's going to regulate. Peak flow rate is looking at the speed of water that's leaving the site during a storm event. And the high peak flows, those can overwhelm our sewer systems, which leads to flooding. So it can either lead to flooding because of that peak flow and the rates going across the property into somebody else's house or the actual sewer system itself can have backups and then that results in flooding. The best way to address the peak flow rate is actually through a retention or a detention basin where you're collecting water and you're holding it and you're slowly releasing it over time. So the same volume of water that eventually gets into the sewer system, it would be the same before and after the storm. It's just the timing of how that water enters the system during a storm event. So dry wells, that type of a system is not as good at impacting our peak flow rate because dry wells... have a different outlet source. So the dry well actually collects the water to allow it to be infiltrated into the ground rather than holding it for that slower release rate. Once the dry well is full, then the overflow of the dry well is just running straight through as if the dry well didn't exist. So that flow rate on the surface is the same. There's not any mitigation of that flow rate. The other thing that you address is the volume of stormwater leaving the site. So this is just the cubic feet or the gallons. So with volume, some of the impacts we're really looking to address are relating to the stormwater quality. So as the volume of water leaves the site, is it clean? And then also recharging that groundwater supply. So the volume of the flow actually restores kind of the natural way being of the water getting into the ground system rather than into a piping system. And so volume is really a little bit more directly related to the actual impervious surface. So if you reduce the driveways and you reduce the roof, you're reducing the volume. Whereas the peak flow, it's again about that rate, but it doesn't change the actual volume that leaves. So drywalls can be an effective tool for volume because we're getting the water into the ground. So when we keep both of those in mind, I'll come back to them in a second. But I wanted to touch on the green space recommendations because this is where most of the change has come. So previous discussions, we talked about how we were going to move from a lot coverage maximum to a green space ratio. So the primary goal here is to separate that green space, the character, the natural character protections from the stormwater regulations. So the graph that is on your screen actually looks at the existing stormwater impervious coverage. This was data that we got through the comprehensive plan that then we have refiltered with a giant pivot table to look at that coverage by neighborhood and then subcategory of the zoning. So the light white, the light yellow here, those are all the R1s. The more medium yellow is R2 district. And then as you get darker and orange, you go up to our actual multifamily districts. The dots here, that's at 55%. So that's our current maximum impervious coverage. So you can see our maximum coverage. Most of our R1 and R2 residential neighborhoods are actually below the maximum coverage when you look at the existing. So this is the existing average. So we have obviously some lots that are over coverage and some that are under, but most of them are meeting. What we did is we actually then started to look at the specific neighborhoods and found that more of the newer houses are the ones that are bringing that average up. So if you look at the top R2 districts, aside from High Point, which is our smallest lot area for R2, our Old Town, Clayton Gardens, they've seen substantial rebuild. So they're trending towards getting above that 55%. And then our multifamily, with the exception of the Clayshire R4 area, is actually exceeding that 55%. So when we look at trying to address the green space ratio and the neighborhood character, what we're recommending is that we reduce the, we change it from a block coverage maximum, and we switched to a minimum green space requirement. For the purposes of this chart, because it's looking at impervious coverage, the dots show where or the lines show where impervious coverage would be. So for R1, we want to go from a 45% green space to 55% green space, and that is the kind of grayish line here. So you can see that still, even with that reduction, that would align with most of our R1 districts. They're still going to be below that. So we're not creating a significant amount of nonconformity in those neighborhoods. We're more so starting to align with where they are. In R2, we're proposing to go from 45% green space to 50% green space. which is the middle black line here. So there are a few neighborhoods that would have an average impervious coverage that would exceed that new threshold, but that's just the average. There'd still be a decent amount of homes, the majority of our two homes that would be compliant with this green space ratio. We want to revise the maximum front yard coverage to align with that. So part of the front yard coverage will come in a secondary text amendment because we are getting all that data for with our neighborhood analysis. So we'll have a better idea of where to place that number at a later date. And then we want to establish a green space definition. So this is where we'll be very clear that permeable pavement, decks, pools, anything that is not actual green space would not count towards your green space ratio. So it doesn't really matter whether or not that area is letting water infiltrate. It's not considered green space. So that's the biggest difference is really separating out those two goals. So for stormwater regulations, with the idea in mind of the volume versus peak flow, I want to walk through a couple of changes or areas that we've kind of added or enhanced. So with the smaller lots that we have, the lot sizes that we have in our residential district, it's much more feasible for us to try and address the volume versus the peak flow. flow. Peak flow requires the larger detention areas to slow the water down so it can be stored during a storm event and our smaller sites just, it will become quite burdensome we feel to address that. So we think that some of the right sizing that we're doing with our coverage requirements, green space, everything that I'll go through here is going to do a good job of addressing volume and some of the lesser benefits of those is also to address peak flow. So the yellow areas I've highlighted, these are the ones that are either new or changed in response to some of the questions that came up in the discussion. So I'm just going to touch on those instead of all of the other areas, unless there's a follow-up question. We had a lot of discussion with MSD about how we want to do the differential detention requirement. We are going to increase the calculation area, so that will increase whatever their their storage volume that they have to mitigate on their site is. But because we're separating out the green space ratio, we're able to actually follow the MSD definitions for impervious material. And this will be important. And we want to do this to create consistency as the larger lots. So a new subdivision or a site over an acre will go through the MSD regulations. It makes a lot of sense for us on our smaller lots to use similar calculation methods. So we're going to use their definitions for impervious material as it relates to stormwater, but we'll have our own definition for green space ratio with the character. There was a lot of discussion and question about the pop-ups being located 10 feet from the property. And does that really address the downslopes and the issues that we have with neighbors? So we've added a couple of additional guidelines for how those will be located. Discharging on a slope must include erosion protection measures. So that will help with that overland flow. So we won't get those ruts that are created from a pop-up that's constantly working when the the ground is kind of eroded and that increases the actual flow rate of the water that comes out as that erosion happens. And then secondly, adding in some more specific requirements so that somebody who is uphill from their neighbor couldn't essentially pave where their overland flow is. So the overland flow is when the water comes out of the pop-up emitter and and it's just running across the surface, and it's following the natural grade. So adding a requirement that if you're uphill, your natural grade where your water is flowing couldn't go on to a driveway or a sidewalk or something that's intentionally trying to get that water at a quicker rate to the neighboring property.

I can ask a question on that number three. My recollection is that when we discussed this before, one of the potential solutions was if there was it was to run the water to the street. And I'm guessing MSD doesn't want that to be the case given the 10 foot setback. So is that what you found?

Yes. So a lot of the MSD regulations would prevent us from dumping it right onto their street. So again, attaching it. There are instances where they might approve a direct connection to a sewer. We're not going to get involved in that. That's up to their discretion. But we have a lot of property where there is a natural slope to a rear yard of somebody's property. It would take a lot of mechanics to try and fight that to get the water out to the street water is going to just naturally find the easiest path so even if we were to require the pop-up to be in the front yard there's still going to be a lot of water that would flow into the rear yard so the 10 foot setback aligns with what msd's requirements are but then adding these little caveats almost depending on the type of location we hope will help some of the impacts for those downhill neighbors

Anna, do you think like the 10 foot setback is good for, I mean, do you think that'll be significant enough when there is a severe slope in preventing like Like, for instance, what's going on on Topton where we've got pop-ups that are constantly discharging into the street. And they're all

on relative hills. So we've added some other design guidelines that will get into play with that. If you increase the setback, again, water is powerful. It's going to find the easiest way. So even if you increase that setback. If you don't have some intervention in the volume or the flow rate, it might take two seconds longer, but the same volume is going to end up at the same point at the sidewalk. That's why we have some other elements that I'll get into that will try and address the slowing of that water. during the storm events or do you require then a dry well

in those places where there's like a

slope okay so some of the issues that we have in topton other areas are actually where there's um some pumps attached to them so those pop-up emitters that you're seeing are related to are actually attached to a sump pump or some sort of pumping mechanism that's taking water out of an area where it's kind of stagnant and so that's where if that was the condition that would be proposed there will be some additional requirements that they'll have to place To address it. Great.

On a question for you. So on number one, increasing that will do what for development?

So we ran some example numbers. Essentially what it will do is the actual differential volume that they have to mitigate on site will go up. Not so much that we think it will be infeasible or overburdensome for our smaller lots, but it will be higher. The coefficient, the actual rate that's attached to a 100-year storm event is actually lower than the 15-year, but because we're requiring the capture size for a 60-minute event, it goes back up again. It basically means just a little bit more volume of water will have to be captured.

So does that mean for potentially like a new subdivision being built, would that mean they would need a larger building? piece of property that was unbuildable in order to retain the water or how does it?

Yeah. So with a full new subdivision, that would fall under MSD subdivision requirements as they plot that out. So they, that's where we went through and went back and forth with them on their subdivision requirements and the sizing of their detention basins and their larger detention ponds. That really addresses the peak flow. So that would be under MSD's guidelines. In going back and forth, it didn't seem we didn't want to get involved with some of that. But for our smaller site issues, it would. So if somebody is using a dry well, if they're building a rain garden, that sort of thing, they would have to have more capacity. One of the questions that was also asked previously was about the requirement for water table testing. So we got a little bit more information from our consultants about that. So essentially, if there's an area where we know there's a water table issue, so we have sump pumps that are constantly running, so we think there might be a high ground groundwater or a site where they're going to have significant excavation below grade. So if they're building a below-grade garage, they're probably going to be excavating more than 12 feet into the ground. We're going to require a water table test. This will essentially determine that if they're going to be drawing groundwater with whatever pumping mechanism they have to protect their basement area. We want to know that because we'll be increasing the requirements. But this test, as you can see here, adds to the timeline and the cost for the project. So we don't want to just require it for every project. It's their estimation, not being the geotechnical engineers that actually perform the work, but they estimate it's probably somewhere around $2,000 to $5,000, depending on the test, and could add an average of 30 days. Okay. because they're needing to actually test where that water is. So that's why we've kind of narrowed it down to the types of projects that we think might actually need to have that water table test versus just every house.

So one of the things that's come up that I've heard from residents is kind of the ambiguity of the current process or confusion on the part of applicants. And so it seems like a number of the things that you've worked on will really help with that. So that's awesome. Thank you. This one I'm trying to understand like how clear it's going to be this determination of like what is a high priority. groundwater level area? I almost wonder if you could map those out in advance or how do you intend to do that? At what point would a resident be able to know that their property is subject to this?

Subject to it. Yeah, that's actually a good question. There are some mapping tools that we've discussed with our consultant and with MSD. We don't have a groundwater study that goes and i don't think that it would really be worth us spending the money to try to do that across everywhere so we have starting points because we have the areas that we're seeing the constantly running pop-up emitters which is a sign that they probably or could be drawing from groundwater and that's why the pop-ups running every day of the year um so looking at things like that but then there's actually a tool and um msd said that they are confident enough they use the same data source If you go on realtor.com, one of the layers you can actually pull up on the map, it will mark some flood zone, some flood prone areas. And so we found some data, we got some data and MSD has some data that's from the same sources of what they're doing. And so one of the MSD recommendations was to kind of in a policy, not in our code, reference that. That's something that they have utilized with um throughout their area so it's very transparent because the community could go ahead and look at that map and look at their address too and it would highlight an area

does it potentially change over time like as climate changes or land changes or

it could and excuse me and the groundwater will fluctuate just throughout different times of year so yeah thanks So design guidelines, this is kind of going into.

Remind me the distinction you made between the white and the orange.

The orange are areas that have either been added or revised slightly since our last discussion. And last discussion. Yep.

Thank you.

So what we've added here is building off of the idea of, are we trying to capture peak flow versus volume? We're starting to address that here with the dry wells and then the retention cells for the larger areas where we really want to cap that aligns with what MSD is doing. I will also mention that MSD is moving away from dry wells, especially on smaller sites in Missouri because they're finding our soil types make it difficult for those. So it's, No surprise that we're going through this process of having to evaluate them much more significantly. One area that we recommend referencing, so generally in Chapter 430, our stormwater control regulations, we reference back to a lot of MSD guidelines as our starting point, but we don't really highlight specific regulations from MSD. Number four is one that I think is a key one for us to highlight given some of our areas. They actually have a provision within their code that basically gives MSD the district, the right to deny sump or basement garages. So they have some pretty high standards as to when they would approve them are smaller projects go through their review, but our projects are not really triggering the large-scale review of a full subdivision. So by having this reference within our code, then we would be able to also be a little bit stricter in how we're enforcing it. Essentially, they require people who want to have a below-grade garage to go through an additional analysis to show how the flooding of that garage would be handled, where you could use your driveway or your garage as the pond zone, essentially. And it also requires the use of gravity drains and basically prohibits the use of pumps as a way of, you know, through the mechanics of getting the water out of your driveway, which is something that we actually see a lot of. So this will give us more power and authority to actually evaluate the overflow of below grade garages and how those driveways collect the water and how they're discharging it and potentially deny them through MSD.

So would that rule out sump pumps then for below grass?

So it doesn't necessarily rule out the sump pump, but there's the... So when there's a sump driveway and it's allowed by the district, then they also have to have these gravity drains. So essentially they're trying to intercept the water before it flows all the way down to the base of the driveway and then pump it all out that way. And so... They're the pumped discharges disallowed, meaning you can't just create a giant pit and then pump it out is what they're saying. But we had a lot of conversations with them because obviously in the last five years we we've had a lot of below grade garages that rely on some pumps constructed And they have MSDP numbers, so they're going through the MSD approval rate. So this was a section that we talked to them pretty extensively about and decided after consulting with them and our own consultants that this would be an area that we could request the additional analysis the same way MSD does as part of our process to get an idea of what's happening. Okay.

i want to clarify that i understand the language here so um i'm a little like the use of the word sump and the discussion of basement versus garage like what the like i have a basement i have a back a rear under garage and it's the same grade as my basement. Yes. Is that what we're talking about here? We actually talking about the basement and the garage being on different grades.

So over requirement is that if the, if the, if MSD does allow the, A sump garage, which is a basement garage. So they're saying it relies on some home. Then they don't allow the garage to be at the same elevation as your basement level. because the garage essentially acts as the ponding area if there was a storm event. So what they're trying to do is say the garage, because it's below grade in the driveway that collects so much water during an event, they don't want that water to hit the same level as their sewer inlet drain that's in your basement, because then that's just going to overflow their sewer even more because of how much water would be collected through that. So they want to make sure they're at different levels. So if your garage floods, it doesn't flood your basement and then also get into their sewer inlets, which are at a higher elevation.

Okay. So it sort of sounded like they were like worried about protecting my garage, but they're worried about that because they don't want the garage to flood into the basement, which connects to their space.

They don't want to flood into the

And it does collect a lot of water.

And then the last one that we've added is the overland flow path. So again, as I kind of referenced earlier, when we talk about volume, that's something that is most feasible for us to address on our smaller sites that we have in our residential areas. But the important part is then to look at your overland flow path because when we're addressing volume, again, we're still going to have during those peak storm events, we're going to have surface flow and it's going to go over the property lines. So one other recommendation is pulling from that idea of the knowing that your sump or your drywall is going to be running, especially your drywall is probably reach capacity during a high storm event, which means that all of, you know, it's not collecting any water during the storm event. So I, the idea there is to design a buffer area, which can act as kind of a micro detention area. So almost like a small rain garden or some sort of depression at grade that's directly where that overflow of the pop-up is going to go before it hits the property line that would act as a mini slow mini peak flow mechanism there that would slow it during a larger storm event to again the volume of water is still likely to eventually cross the property line but hopefully it will slow it a little bit during those peak events And it wouldn't be designed to be a full retention basin, which would be significantly larger. So it's almost like the reverse of a speed bump, you know, just be a small little ravine.

So that's the only piece that addresses peak flow for the smaller properties is keeping it.

Right. That's really the only way you're going to do it is if you have some sort of detention area. So having some sort of micro detention area is what we're recommending at this point. We didn't change any of the recommendations on how you would actually design the sump pump. That's pretty much, we felt that we really did, the consultants took us in the right direction the first time there and we didn't have a lot of questions about sump pumps previously other than what we've addressed on the previous slide. And then for dry wells, we added a few more. So we wanted to have our design goals for the actual capture. So the 90th percentile, we'll be able to reference as we adopt all of the MSD guidelines so they'll know exactly what that 90th percentile rain capture is. And then another guideline that we've added in here is to really encourage the use of multiple drywall locations or multiple discharge points that avoid the saturation. And again, will allow for multiple overland flow paths. So in the event of a higher storm, if your drywall fills up instead of all of the water from the entire roof of a new house being led to one overflow pop-up emitter, we would have multiple to try and disperse the flow across a larger area. So the next steps are to actually draft the text amendment. Everything you've seen on the previous slides is going to impact multiple chapters, articles, sections of our code right now. Some of this is within chapter 405, which is our zoning regulations. So there'll be some amendments to our definitions, to our process and requirements and triggers for site plan review, and then to our actual coverage regulations within our zoning districts. Similarly in chapter 410, where we've got some urban design districts, we will modify the law coverage in those. And then in Chapter 430, where you have stormwater control and land disturbance requirements, we will modify that to instead of just generally referencing some MSD guidelines, we'll start to pull in some of those specific design guidelines and post-construction maintenance requirements.

it

great uh thanks anna very much um i don't know about everybody else but i look forward to trying to understand that a little bit more um and then uh we'll move on i think chief's going to give

us one question sure I was curious about how existing properties that exceed the guidelines we're going to put in will be handled when they have, obviously, they're grandfathered in in their current state. But if they want to do something in the future... Do we allow them to maintain the level that they

have? Under our non-conforming protections, it would depend on what they were doing and what protection they trigger for that. So if they're doing an addition or pulling out a house or if they're removing a driveway and they're going to put in a new driveway, there's different protection levels depending on replacement, expansion, etc., Um, so they wouldn't necessarily say, oh, my house right now covers 60% of the lot. And I'm going to tear that down and build a new house. So I get to then have 60% of the law. No, no, they, the new house would have to conform. But there are some smaller protections, depending on different scenarios that they might have under the

like a teardown would trigger or like a really significant change is more likely to trigger compliance with the new guidelines.

Yeah, or, or a minor change I mean the. So we can, when we come back with a text amendment I can provide you some examples of different ones that would come but there's. Essentially, if you're removing or relocating your non-conforming feature of a property, it has to go back to meet the current regulations.

For example, if you have two driveways and one's a little bit higher intentionally to run into the neighbor's driveway, if they ever replace that driveway or expand it, is that something where you could enforce

these things? Yes. likely yes so i would depending on how we write these we'll look at it i don't know if that driveway would necessarily trigger some of the new requirements i have in here today unless they were discharging some pop-up emitters on to that slanted driveway to then get to their neighbor's property okay

and is there any i guess whenever is there any way to make sure that that neighbors concerns are are i guess neighbors get noticed and everything else and have a chance to make comments if somebody's doing certain types of developments but that's probably really important with stormwater you hear the backyard neighbor saying you know what's going on they can't do that yet they never figure out how to get that voice or that concern looked into okay so i hope as we look at that we stay um aware of that as well okay and i guess so this is really for going forward and right sizing is going to be a much bigger challenge because we don't have the ability to get in and change existing structures right right okay all right thank you sooner the better i

just i just have one clarification question sure i see we're talking about changing r2 r3 r4 and r5 but i also saw the more lenses in r6 but i didn't see it accounted for

Yes. So I think I'd probably just left it on the side, but all of those higher multifamilies right now, we're just leaving them as that's what we're proposing. Yep. And in the neighborhood analysis, we're also looking at percentage of building footprint on a lot and overall size square footage. So those will come in the next level. Yep.

All right, Chief. We're ready for you. Very

good. Good evening. Thanks for having me here today and here to talk about the Blue Shield grant. We were just awarded funds from that grant. I'm going to explain how we plan on spending those funds. Also, we had some questions come up about FLOC safety, the license plate recognition database. So I'm here to talk about that as well. Ana, are you controlling the PowerPoint for me? Thank you. First of all, just to recap on the Blue Shield grant, the Missouri Department of Public Safety established this program earlier in the year. Law enforcement agencies meeting the grant standards are eligible for grant funding. That included community policing initiatives, proactive policing practices, data-driven policing strategies, technology-based strategies, collaborative and specialized units, and also a resolution which you passed on May 13th supporting police are involved in this program. Next slide. So in July, we were notified that the Clayton PD was awarded $50,000 for this grant, which was more than we expected. However, the deadline to submit a grant proposal is September 2nd. We only had about two months to figure out how we're going to spend this money. So that's next Tuesday. Some of the allowable items to use with the fund were license plate readers, mobile data terminals, which are in-car computers, body-worn cameras, body armor, dash cams, security and surveillance systems, gunshot detection systems, justice information sharing technology, communication systems, hardware and software. One of the things we saw there that... that could be a need for us were surveillance systems, camera systems in public spaces. If you show the next slide here, we've been discussing this for 10 years. It's just never come to fruition, mainly because of funding. That's a picture from our command post during Ferguson when we, in November of 2014, we were preparing for the grand jury announcement over here at the Justice Center The FBI provided us with 30 cameras, public space cameras. And we saw the value in having those cameras and deterring crime recording activity because at that time we were under threat of civil unrest and domestic terrorism. Fortunately, none of that stuff happened here. But we had those 30 cameras and they were very useful, a very useful resource. So in the last 10 years, we've been discussing getting cameras in public spaces. We just never had the funding. Next slide, please. So in big cities, you see public safety cameras are pretty common. On the left there, you see St. Louis City. That's a common site there, that system, two cameras that has the arch and the city badge on it. You'll see that in downtown, Central West End, other neighborhoods, areas where it's high pedestrian traffic or high crime areas. The picture on the left, that's in Baltimore. I took that when I was in my conference earlier this month. That's a historic cathedral, but they had some public space cameras there when I was sightseeing, just took a picture of that. But you go to Chicago, New Jeffery Yorg, any big city, you're going to see those cameras. They've had them for a long time. Next slide. But some of our neighboring cities, even smaller cities than us have public space cameras. That image on the left, that's Maplewood. That's at Sutton and Manchester, the Blue Duck restaurant. Maplewood has cameras up and down their Manchester business district, and they have agreements with private property owners to install their cameras on the property. The image on the right, that's the That's outside of Vintage Vinyl on the Del Mar Loop. U City Police, they have cameras on the Del Mar loop. So it's not uncommon in smaller cities to have these cameras in vibrant downtown areas. Next slide, please. So in the last, we do have a lot of coverage with private cameras. And I had my detectives send me some images of recent cases where cameras in the public space helped solve crimes. That image on the left, that was a suspect who was stalking women in Shaw Park. We were able to get his image off an apartment building here. You can see in the bottom part there, that's a redacted image of the victim. He was following her that close from Shaw Park into downtown Clayton to her apartment building. Having that image, we're able to share that with other law enforcement agencies and identify that suspect. We're eventually able to catch up to him and arrest him at another park in St. Louis County. stalking a woman there. The images in the middle, that's from our recent robbery in Old Town back in July. Those images are high quality from a couple of buildings here in town, Beamston Place and the M1 Bank. So those images, like I said, they have a lot of detail there. Once we had those images, we knew we would find these suspects. We put those on social media and the news media. Within a couple hours, we were getting tips on who they were and we positively identified them. The image on the right, that's actually from the Clayton PD cameras. We do have cameras around our facility. That suspect was breaking into the Barry Waymiller building when it was under construction, stealing construction equipment. He didn't realize he was next to a police building. So to his surprise, when he got arrested, that he was committing burglaries, and we took that personally, but we found him. We were able to use those images to identify him and his truck. We were able put his truck into the flock system, identify and find him. out of town. Next image, please. And again, here's some examples of public space cameras owned by private companies. That's the Bemis in place. Those two red circles are the cameras that captured the robbery suspects. The one on the right, that's the Commerce Bank building at Foresight Point. What's interesting about that camera, last art fair, we had one of our officers get assaulted by an intoxicated person and that camera right there captured the assault and we were able to use that in prosecution. Next image, please. So this this map right here shows some of the areas where we have private cameras on our public spaces. It's not all encompassing. That's just some of the cameras that we've used recently. There'll be the area shaded in that pink beige kind of color. That's where we have coverage from private buildings. The ends are various crimes that have occurred in the last year and a half. Those are not all our calls. Those are actually reports that we've had. And then the blue, the white cameras, the blue outline, that's where we're proposing putting some public space cameras. And I'll go one by one and explain why we're doing them there. Why we're proposing that. At the camera on the far left, that would be at Brentwood and Forsyth. It's shaded along Brentwood there actually, but the Forsyth Point building only provides coverage of the sidewalk. We're going to have a lot of events there. We're already having events there for festivals. So it'd be nice to have some... ability to monitor those activities when they occur. At Forsyth and Central, we get a lot of disturbance calls at the restaurants there at Chipotle and Starbucks. We've had some problems there with disturbances and assaults. If you go south of there, down the Central and Carondelet, right there is the... the parking lot for the Justice Center. We often get disturbance calls with people who are facing each other in court. You have divorce hearings, child custody hearings. Sometimes our parking ambassadors receive problems from people who are upset about getting tickets. So we've had issues there. We've also had, in the last six months, we've had two cars stolen from that lot, from inmates released from the jail who walked into the lot and found cars with keys inside. So we'd like to provide some kind of coverage for the people coming to court, coming to visit Clayton so they have some element of safety, and it would probably be a deterrent. Also, We're proposing putting a camera there at Central and Bonham and Merrimack and Bonham. We have a lot of foot traffic there because of the use of the Metrolink. And then finally, one right here at Bemis and Forsyth. We'd like to have some coverage where our city hall is to keep you all safe. And so next one. So we were looking at Flock safety cameras because they provide, it's a recent product. They're providing video cameras as well as the LPRs. We already have the Flock platform for the LPRs, it's installed on our computers. It'll be seamless integration for us. That's what their cameras will look like. They're not cameras designed to attract a lot of attention like the ones you see in St. Louis City often with flashing lights on them. Next slide please. That gives you an idea. They are high quality, high resolution cameras. If you can put them at a wide angle like that, set them for a wide angle and you can get much of an intersection or you can zoom in on them. Of course, if you're actually monitoring it in real time, you can zoom in and zoom out. Next slide, please. Some of the details, annual price covers hardware, software, maintenance and support. That's one of the attributes that makes Flock an attractive product. They handle all of the maintenance and setup for us. There are other companies out there, larger companies like Motorola and Genetech, but they sell you the service and then you have to find a third party to install it. These would be solar-powered and are hardwired if there's an electrical source there. Video sharing must be approved by Clayton PD. We're going to talk about the LPR sharing, but with this, I don't see a reason to share these videos with other agencies. If a crime is connected to something in Clayton, obviously they can come watch it. We've done that with our robbery case. We had The robbery in Old Town, those suspects committed robberies in U City and Normandy, and we had video of the robbery at Normandy. So something like that, we want to work together and build a prosecution. The cameras are $3,000 per camera annually. The Blue Shield grant will cover three years of service with flock for those cameras. Um, currently like, uh, local cities using the flock video are creep core Ferguson, St. Peter's and Wentzville. I would anticipate that that's going to increase with this blue shield. Other, other cities are using, looking to use these funds for this purpose. So I went through that kind of quickly for you. Do you have anybody have questions about what we're trying to accomplish here?

good. Good evening. Thanks for having me here today and here to talk about the Blue Shield grant. We were just awarded funds from that grant. I'm going to explain how we plan on spending those funds. Also, we had some questions come up about FLOC safety, the license plate recognition database. So I'm here to talk about that as well. Ana, are you controlling the PowerPoint for me? Thank you. First of all, just to recap on the Blue Shield grant, the Missouri Department of Public Safety established this program earlier in the year. Law enforcement agencies meeting the grant standards are eligible for grant funding. That included community policing initiatives, proactive policing practices, data-driven policing strategies, technology-based strategies, collaborative and specialized units, and also a resolution which you passed on May 13th supporting police are involved in this program. Next slide. So in July, we were notified that the Clayton PD was awarded $50,000 for this grant, which was more than we expected. However, the deadline to submit a grant proposal is September 2nd. We only had about two months to figure out how we're going to spend this money. So that's next Tuesday. Some of the allowable items to use with the fund were license plate readers, mobile data terminals, which are in-car computers, body-worn cameras, body armor, dash cams, security and surveillance systems, gunshot detection systems, justice information sharing technology, communication systems, hardware and software. One of the things we saw there that... that could be a need for us were surveillance systems, camera systems in public spaces. If you show the next slide here, we've been discussing this for 10 years. It's just never come to fruition, mainly because of funding. That's a picture from our command post during Ferguson when we, in November of 2014, we were preparing for the grand jury announcement over here at the Justice Center The FBI provided us with 30 cameras, public space cameras. And we saw the value in having those cameras and deterring crime recording activity because at that time we were under threat of civil unrest and domestic terrorism. Fortunately, none of that stuff happened here. But we had those 30 cameras and they were very useful, a very useful resource. So in the last 10 years, we've been discussing getting cameras in public spaces. We just never had the funding. Next slide, please. So in big cities, you see public safety cameras are pretty common. On the left there, you see St. Louis City. That's a common site there, that system, two cameras that has the arch and the city badge on it. You'll see that in downtown, Central West End, other neighborhoods, areas where it's high pedestrian traffic or high crime areas. The picture on the left, that's in Baltimore. I took that when I was in my conference earlier this month. That's a historic cathedral, but they had some public space cameras there when I was sightseeing, just took a picture of that. But you go to Chicago, New York, any big city, you're going to see those cameras. They've had them for a long time. Next slide. But some of our neighboring cities, even smaller cities than us have public space cameras. That image on the left, that's Maplewood. That's at Sutton and Manchester, the Blue Duck restaurant. Maplewood has cameras up and down their Manchester business district, and they have agreements with private property owners to install their cameras on the property. The image on the right, that's the That's outside of Vintage Vinyl on the Del Mar Loop. U City Police, they have cameras on the Del Mar loop. So it's not uncommon in smaller cities to have these cameras in vibrant downtown areas. Next slide, please. So in the last, we do have a lot of coverage with private cameras. And I had my detectives send me some images of recent cases where cameras in the public space helped solve crimes. That image on the left, that was a suspect who was stalking women in Shaw Park. We were able to get his image off an apartment building here. You can see in the bottom part there, that's a redacted image of the victim. He was following her that close from Shaw Park into downtown Clayton to her apartment building. Having that image, we're able to share that with other law enforcement agencies and identify that suspect. We're eventually able to catch up to him and arrest him at another park in St. Louis County. stalking a woman there. The images in the middle, that's from our recent robbery in Old Town back in July. Those images are high quality from a couple of buildings here in town, Beamston Place and the M1 Bank. So those images, like I said, they have a lot of detail there. Once we had those images, we knew we would find these suspects. We put those on social media and the news media. Within a couple hours, we were getting tips on who they were and we positively identified them. The image on the right, that's actually from the Clayton PD cameras. We do have cameras around our facility. That suspect was breaking into the Barry Waymiller building when it was under construction, stealing construction equipment. He didn't realize he was next to a police building. So to his surprise, when he got arrested, that he was committing burglaries, and we took that personally, but we found him. We were able to use those images to identify him and his truck. We were able put his truck into the flock system, identify and find him. out of town. Next image, please. And again, here's some examples of public space cameras owned by private companies. That's the Bemis in place. Those two red circles are the cameras that captured the robbery suspects. The one on the right, that's the Commerce Bank building at Foresight Point. What's interesting about that camera, last art fair, we had one of our officers get assaulted by an intoxicated person and that camera right there captured the assault and we were able to use that in prosecution. Next image, please. So this this map right here shows some of the areas where we have private cameras on our public spaces. It's not all encompassing. That's just some of the cameras that we've used recently. There'll be the area shaded in that pink beige kind of color. That's where we have coverage from private buildings. The ends are various crimes that have occurred in the last year and a half. Those are not all our calls. Those are actually reports that we've had. And then the blue, the white cameras, the blue outline, that's where we're proposing putting some public space cameras. And I'll go one by one and explain why we're doing them there. Why we're proposing that. At the camera on the far left, that would be at Brentwood and Forsyth. It's shaded along Brentwood there actually, but the Forsyth Point building only provides coverage of the sidewalk. We're going to have a lot of events there. We're already having events there for festivals. So it'd be nice to have some... ability to monitor those activities when they occur. At Forsyth and Central, we get a lot of disturbance calls at the restaurants there at Chipotle and Starbucks. We've had some problems there with disturbances and assaults. If you go south of there, down the Central and Carondelet, right there is the... the parking lot for the Justice Center. We often get disturbance calls with people who are facing each other in court. You have divorce hearings, child custody hearings. Sometimes our parking ambassadors receive problems from people who are upset about getting tickets. So we've had issues there. We've also had, in the last six months, we've had two cars stolen from that lot, from inmates released from the jail who walked into the lot and found cars with keys inside. So we'd like to provide some kind of coverage for the people coming to court, coming to visit Clayton so they have some element of safety, and it would probably be a deterrent. Also, We're proposing putting a camera there at Central and Bonham and Merrimack and Bonham. We have a lot of foot traffic there because of the use of the Metrolink. And then finally, one right here at Bemis and Forsyth. We'd like to have some coverage where our city hall is to keep you all safe. And so next one. So we were looking at Flock safety cameras because they provide, it's a recent product. They're providing video cameras as well as the LPRs. We already have the Flock platform for the LPRs, it's installed on our computers. It'll be seamless integration for us. That's what their cameras will look like. They're not cameras designed to attract a lot of attention like the ones you see in St. Louis City often with flashing lights on them. Next slide please. That gives you an idea. They are high quality, high resolution cameras. If you can put them at a wide angle like that, set them for a wide angle and you can get much of an intersection or you can zoom in on them. Of course, if you're actually monitoring it in real time, you can zoom in and zoom out. Next slide, please. Some of the details, annual price covers hardware, software, maintenance and support. That's one of the attributes that makes Flock an attractive product. They handle all of the maintenance and setup for us. There are other companies out there, larger companies like Motorola and Genetech, but they sell you the service and then you have to find a third party to install it. These would be solar-powered and are hardwired if there's an electrical source there. Video sharing must be approved by Clayton PD. We're going to talk about the LPR sharing, but with this, I don't see a reason to share these videos with other agencies. If a crime is connected to something in Clayton, obviously they can come watch it. We've done that with our robbery case. We had The robbery in Old Town, those suspects committed robberies in U City and Normandy, and we had video of the robbery at Normandy. So something like that, we want to work together and build a prosecution. The cameras are $3,000 per camera annually. The Blue Shield grant will cover three years of service with flock for those cameras. Um, currently like, uh, local cities using the flock video are creep core Ferguson, St. Peter's and Wentzville. I would anticipate that that's going to increase with this blue shield. Other, other cities are using, looking to use these funds for this purpose. So I went through that kind of quickly for you. Do you have anybody have questions about what we're trying to accomplish here?

Hi. Yeah, I do. So Well, for the first question with the Justice Center, who's responsible for monitoring that parking lot?

Well, we are. That's our jurisdiction. I talked to the captain in charge of security services. and they do have an old system. They have surveillance cameras around their facilities, around the PD building, the courts, the admin building, but it doesn't reach out into the parking lot, and they have no plans to upgrade that or add more. We do all the enforcement there. Just like if a crime occurs inside the jail, an inmate insults another inmate, we have to do that investigation.

Okay, and then if the grant covers, you said three years, what is the contract period?

Oh, it'd be three years.

It'd be a three-year contract, and then we decided we'd renew.

Yeah, we did it so it'd be $50,000 total. So we got into

that. And then the question, of course, on privacy issues, who actually... You said that the video sharing must be approved by Clayton PD. Where is that housed? Who has it? Who manages the data?

It would be up in the cloud kind of thing, and so we would only have our officers would have access to it, and if somebody requested to see it, we would have to grant them access.

But FLOC, okay, it's totally within the control of the Clayton PD. Yes. All right.

Thanks. I think everybody, I don't know that you got a chance because I didn't send it until last night, but I shared information that I learned about at the conference I was at about a month ago and Chief Smith was gracious to spend time with me. over last week to talk in a little more detail about the flock system. And so one thing that you may all realize is we're not actually being asked to approve this and we don't have to, right? This is just for discussion. And I'm not suggesting that we don't do it. But one of the things about this that's different from our existing LPRs is that it isn't automatically hooked up into a network that other agencies can access, right? And so I know we're close to time for our regular meeting to start, but the concerns about the FLOC LPR, I think are something that we should discuss as a board to make time for that. Because I think what I learned like the short story of my takeaway was that the nature of the way that FLOC has established the network and sharing options makes it challenging for us To ensure that the policies and practices that our department puts in place and adheres to are sufficient to protect the data once we put it into that network right so. There are. things that I think we could do to investigate, like what is our radius and who are we auto approving to look at our stuff? And then in like audit, what kind of searches are people doing of our data and how, what kind of justification are they providing and what do we think about that? And we can make some decisions. I have an

update as far as the federal government concerned. Apparently, I don't know if you saw the news, FLOC has halted their program, their data sharing with Homeland Security and Border Protection Services because of concerns that you brought up. I guess they're receiving a lot of feedback like this. So right now they're – I'll send you the article. I saw it on ABC. It popped up. Well, it was in social media. Now they're spying on us. It's popped up this morning. So they are not going to follow through with a – they had a pilot program where they were going to monitor – fentanyl and human trafficking kind of thing. I mean, that's what Homeland Security does. However, because the concern is being brought up, they're going to pause that and try to figure out a way to make sure privacy is honored there. And then also with the federal agencies, they're not going to be able to do a blanket search anymore. They're going to do a one-on-one search. So if they want our data, they got to search specifically Clayton or wherever they're going. Because I think one of your big concerns was the blanket searches, correct? Yeah.

yeah a little bit and then i think it's the other thing is that like we have this retention period that we put in place but the system allows anyone with access to our network to download the data and i just think that in our current environment it's actually um like we don't have it's not far-fetched to imagine that there are agencies local agencies agencies in our own state and neighboring counties that would be very happy to support the administration's goals of creating this one big, beautiful database with all kinds of data on it. And so I just think that's something we need to think about and talk about more and understand more. How it aligns with like the protections that we think we put in place and that our department is adhering to, but the system might allow mechanisms for that to be basically bypassed.

I mean, given the time constraints, maybe if anybody has any questions for Chief Smith related to just the cameras in downtown. And then if we want to talk about just flock cameras specifically or not, I mean, the flock system, I guess we can just put that on a different discussion time or.

We

speak to a flock rep today about your concern, and she thought that was an interesting concern about the ability to download and circumvent the safeguards in place. And she's going to bring that up to her support team.

That's great.

So I do see that, you know, a flock, their technology, the accountability they put in place is evolving, right, as they catch up to the technology. Yeah,

fantastic. Were you looking for some action from the board to authorize the use of grant funds?

I just think it was just an effort to be transparent so you understand why we're doing this, why we're putting this in place. You're doing it, right?

So I just have a question in terms of, since you are going to make the application in terms of how we intend to use this and where I'm coming from is additional costs that might be incurred to use it. So you showed a picture of what I would describe active monitoring during the pandemic. Ferguson situation. And I'm thinking that normally we would use this in more of a post event kind of, okay, something happened, let's go back and check it. So I'm just wondering if we intend to have, you know, allocate personnel to actively watch these cameras, especially during like, let's say an art fair or some other big event.

So during the art fair, we actually do have a command post similar to what you saw for Ferguson. We have a command post at the, at the police department with fire and police, and there would be people that are monitoring that. And so right now for like this art fair coming up here, we have access to two security trailers, you know, the towers, they had them at the taste of St. Louis event. There was four of them there. So we'll have access to those. But in the future, if we get these cameras, we're going to be able to watch them from our command post.

Okay. But we won't need, in order to make this work, on a routine basis, actively monitor this or staff

it? Like I mentioned, U-City and Maplewood, they don't. Now, we do have an officer in the station who we call our patrol services officer. He handles people who come in for reports, walk-in reports, handles booking and processing. He would have the ability to do that, you know, during his downtime. But 24-7, that probably wouldn't happen. But during events like the Jazz Fest and the Art Fair, we would monitor.

Jeff, do you have any questions? Great. Chief, I think it's a great idea. I think that's one of the reasons people love it here is they feel safe. So I'm certainly in favor of moving forward with the grant application. So thank you for the presentation. And then we'll talk more about black cameras as needed moving forward.

Very good. Thank you.

Thanks. All right. Great. So it is after 7 o'clock. So we will start our 7 o'clock meeting If the city clerk could call the roll.

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

Alderman Buse? Here. Alderman Patel? Here. Aldeman Fader?

Here.

Alderman Rick Hummell?

Alderman Hummel?

Alderon Jeffery Yorg?

Alderon York?

Mayor McAndrew? Here. City Manager David Gipson?

Mayor McAndrew? Here. City Manager Gibson?

City Attorney O'Keefe?

I'm not sure if anybody's online, but this is the time in our meeting where if there's anybody that's here to address us about something that's not on the agenda, they can address us now. Looks like there's nobody online. So we will go forward. The first item on the agenda is the consent agenda. Does anybody have any comments or questions on the consent agenda? All right, Alderwoman

Buse. I move that the board approve the consent agenda.

Second. Any discussion?

Alderwoman Buss. Aye. Alderwoman Patel. Aye. Alderman Gary Feder.

Alderwoman Buss. Aye. Alderwoman Patel. Aye. Alderman Fader.

Aye.

Aldermen Rick Hummell.

Aldermen Hummel.

Aye.

Aldeman Jeffery Yorg. Aye. Mayor McAndrew.

Aldeman York. Aye. Mayor McAndrew.

Aye.

Thank you.

Great. Well, as part of that consent agenda, we approved the August 5th, 2025 election results. So that means we get to swear in a new Ward 3 older person.

You can

take this.

Yay.

Take your seat. Yeah. Welcome.

Sorry.

Oh, yeah.

Okay. So we'll be calling the roll again. Alderman Patel. I'm sorry. Alderman Buse. Here. Alderman Patal. Here. Alderman Gary Feder.

Okay. So we'll be calling the roll again. Alderman Patel. I'm sorry. Alderman Buse. Here. Alderman Patal. Here. Alderman Fader.

Aldermen Rick Hummell.

Aldermen Hummel.

Alderon Jeffery Yorg.

Alderon York.

Alderwoman Waldman. Here. Mayor McAndrew. Here. City Manager David Gipson. Here. City Attorney O'Keefe. Here. Thank you.

Alderwoman Waldman. Here. Mayor McAndrew. Here. City Manager Gibson. Here. City Attorney O'Keefe. Here. Thank you.

All right, great. So the next item on our agenda is a CUP for Zensai Coffee at 8121 Maryland. I will open the public hearing and request proof of publication.

Great Thank you i'll open the discussion does anybody have any anybody up here have any questions or comments I don't know if the applicants here.

My only comment was the applicant was at the plan commission and very well received, and everyone was excited for the shop to get open. It seems well thought through and attractive and had the support there. Great.

Was there any – are they a franchise? I mean, was there any

– No, it was a – I think it's a single business bringing in David, was it Colombian coffee, specialized coffee?

Yeah, sounds very good. Yes. Great.

Um, I'm personally hopeful that they use the amount of time that they have like requested to be open. Because it's actually really hard to find coffee shops open before seven or eight that are very good. So love to see a 6am or 6.30 open time. Alderman Gary Feder, any comments or questions?

Um, I'm personally hopeful that they use the amount of time that they have like requested to be open. Because it's actually really hard to find coffee shops open before seven or eight that are very good. So love to see a 6am or 6.30 open time. Alderman Fader, any comments or questions?

My wife thinks I don't do anything except go to have coffee with people. That's probably true. So I'm very happy to have another place to add to the list. Welcome. Great.

No questions.

I may have missed this, but Susan, the planning commission, they talk about, are they providing food? Do they have a plan? Because it sounds like they want to stay open later at night. And I'm not a coffee drinker, but that seems late to just serve coffee. I

don't recall an extensive food menu at

all.

It looked like they were going to apply for a liquor permit. Like they

were going to have

plans to have some food elements and probably come in for a liquor license at some point. Similar to what Ivy Cafe did.

All right. Great. I will. Nobody online. I will close the public hearing. Alderman Buse.

I move that the board approve resolution number 2025-23, granting a conditional use permit for Zenzia Coffee located at 8121 Maryland Avenue. Second. Second.

Any discussion, all those in favor. opposed right great do we know when they're opening today have any sort of timeline very soon

they if they just needed this approval for their occupancy.

Great right sounds great websites

up because they had to look it up to the websites up and running

to find out from Gary if there's a ribbon cunning scheduled. Um, all right. So, um, we'll move into the city manager's report. Um, the next item on our agenda is related to our new municipal garage project. Um, and it's a contract for the general contractor.

Great, thank you. I will open the discussion. Does anybody have any questions or comments for Matt or Navigate?

Just the start date and more importantly, when will these things most significantly impact us in terms of either dislocation or operations?

David, the school district's providing some haven too, or what are they? So the school district's giving

Yeah, they've been very accommodating over there. It's been nice. We'll get a schedule once we get an executed contract. However, preliminary discussions sound like we're probably looking at closer into October before they actually get rolling. It's going to depend on some lead time items and how they structure their schedule so that they don't have any downtime, but we're probably at least a month out before construction beginning earnest on site.

Just want to make sure that that's working in terms of what you had anticipated, especially regarding weather. I mean, is that, I remember we talked about timing and that could affect things. So is this a best case scenario, worst case scenario? How is it playing out?

The more it pushes, yeah, it's great. It's closer to getting snow plows and spreaders on and leaving them for the year. But no, there's still hanging over there. And I think the reality is, and we accounted for this in the budget, is we're going to have to accommodate a temporary installation location for those spreaders, which is one of the things we just haven't moved off the site yet. But that'll be something we'll sort out and we'll make work. I don't have any concerns with that. It's just the last big heavy thing we've left on site right

now. Okay. Um, just confirmation. The $200,000 is a cumulative, right? So so cumulative, we need change orders above that, then we would come back to us. That's an aggregate amount. The other question is just on have we built in any sort of callbacks? Or how do we deal with the fact that they just take way longer than we expect them to get it done? Like I know there's a my presumption is we're paying them over time so it's not that we're going to outlay all this money but let's say they take a year and a half two years to do this like is there some mechanism by which to either call money back or anything like that so this doesn't become a they have to perform

elder woman wildman do you have any questions I'm assuming there's nobody online.

All right, Alderman Buse. I move the board introduce bill number 7087, approving a contract with the Lawrence Group LLC doing business as integrate construction partners to be read for the first time by title only.

Second. Any discussion? Mr. City Attorney?

Bill number 7087, first reading. An ordinance approving a contract with the Lawrence Group LLC doing business as integrate construction partners for general contractor and construction services related to the Clayton Municipal Maintenance Facility project.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Move the board give unanimous consent and consideration for adoption of bill number 7087 on the day of its introduction. Second. those in favor

aye opposed let the minutes reflect that the board has given unanimous unanimous consent

i introduced bill number 7087 approving a contract with the lawrence group llc doing business as integrate construction partners to be read for the second time by title only second question mr city attorney

Bill number 7087, second reading and consideration for adoption. An ordinance approving a contract with the Lawrence Group LLC doing business as integrate construction partners for general contractor and construction services related to the Clayton Municipal Maintenance Facility Project.

Alderman Buse. Aye. Alderman Patel. Aye. Aldeman Gary Feder.

Alderman Buse. Aye. Alderman Patel. Aye. Aldeman Fader.

Aye.

Aldman Rick Hummell.

Aldman Hummel.

Aye.

Alderman Jeffery Yorg.

Alderman York.

Aye.

Aldermen Waldman. Mayor McAndrew. Aye. Thank

you. All right. The next item is another agreement that's needed for our new municipal facility.

um i'll open the discussion does anybody have any questions or comments with respect to

the event one like i mean did they have the they could have said no right so yeah okay thanks

Yeah, just David and I had a chance to talk about this but now I've got more questions so this can't remember is there still there. There's no, there is or isn't a metro incline there, or is it just the highway.

Okay. So the first question is, is there any costs? Did we have to pay any meaningful consideration for this? And are we assuming any liabilities? Like if that were to slide, like we have to retain it in a certain condition so that, you know, I just wonder if we have any responsibilities to the, to buy state.

Yeah, it's along the highway and the old rail and GRG trail. There are some AMR lines that run overhead that are in their, I believe, their own separate easement, but the portion we're getting an easement for isn't an exclusive easement, and the language of the document doesn't carry any maintenance responsibilities with it.

Okay. Yeah, I remember walking the site and seeing the need for this and accepting that I just want to make sure we aren't assuming some unknown liability for a mudslide and replacing the trail and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

And we're going to build just to shape. So we're actually going to build on the easement or we just need the easement to like move trucks and stuff around.

It's moving things around, allowing for some hardscape work potentially, but buildings and such. No, those, those remain fully on the property. Yep. All

right. Alderman abuse. I'll introduce bill number 7088, approving an easement agreement with Bi-State Metro related to the municipal garage project to be read for the first time by title only.

Second. Any discussion? Mr. City Attorney?

Bill number 7088, first reading, an ordinance approving execution of a permanent easement agreement with bi-state development agency related to the Clayton Municipal Maintenance Facility project at 8300 Shaw Park Drive.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Alderwoman Buse?

I move that the board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of bill number 7088 on the day of its introduction. Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed to let the minutes reflect that the board has given unanimous consent.

Alderwoman Buses? I introduce bill number 7088, approving an easement agreement with Bi-State Metro related to the Municipal Garage Project to be read for the second time by title only. Second. Any discussion?

Mr. City Attorney?

Bill number 7088, second reading and consideration for adoption. An ordinance approving execution of a permanent easement agreement with bi-state development agency related to the Clayton Municipal Maintenance Facility project at 8300 Shaw Park Drive.

Alderman Buse Aye Alderman Patel Aye Alderman Gary Feder Aye Alderman Rick Hummell Aye Alderman Jeffery Yorg

Alderman Buse Aye Alderman Patel Aye Alderman Fader Aye Alderman Hummel Aye Alderman York

Aye

Alderman Waldman Aye Mayor McAndrew

Aye Sorry The next item on the agenda is a change order for our 10 South Brentwood Boulevard garage.

I'll open the discussion. So stuff like that is why we do, why we're doing material testing when we're laying the cement in our new municipal garage so that we don't have cement that has high concentrations of what is, what was in it? Chloride. Chloride. Okay. Does anybody have any questions or comments?

I was just going to say, I appreciate the investigation and like identification of the root cause so that we can try to mitigate it going forward. That's great.

There's a movie, Mr. Blanding's dream house where you start spending money and then you keep spending more, but all that being noted, it sounds like something we've had to do. So I have no objection.

I'm trying to remember. I knew that this was something we were going to do in phases. Is this project going to come back for another floor? So what do we anticipate there? Do we have an anticipation?

And then when you address that, Matt, I guess what I'm wondering is what's the useful life when we're done investing in this parking garage?

So the short answer, I don't have that number in front of me on the second floor repairs. They're not as extensive. It's more about the overhead. What happened on this garage is when we when the garage was built, best we could tell was the late 80s. We took it over in 2014. A coating had never been applied to the top surface and salt had been applied over the years for treatment of snow that allowed the chloride to get into the concrete and eat away. So we installed a liner in 2014 that was just due for repair again. And the rusting in the steel is what caused some of the concrete to pop. So the chloride inhibitor is going to hopefully neutralize that aspect of it. And then we'd put this coating on that would be good hopefully for 10 years is the plan. Now, we can do interim coatings, which aren't the full thickness of the coating. They should be cheaper coatings, kind of like microsurfacing versus milling overlay on the streets. But the short answer is I was giving you a bunch of other information because I didn't have your original question first. Sorry, I don't know that budget number for the next phase.

Oh, okay. But we would anticipate it to be a considerable number in the hundreds of thousands of dollars?

No, it's not. It won't be as much as this one from what I recall. I think it was even lower than the original estimate for this project on the next phase of that.

Okay.

I can get that number for you. I apologize. That's

okay. I just wanted to anticipate... how much this garage was going to cost us. That's all

understood.

It's the gold plated

grass. So Matt, just some understanding. So what we think happened is that the chloride from the salt seeped into the concrete. So the idea of putting this inhibitor in is going to counteract the Basically, what's left of the old salt. And then we're going to put a new cap on it to stop future salt from seeping in. Am I understanding this correctly?

The only thing I would add to that is future salt and moisture from activating with that salt or activating with that chloride that's in the concrete.

And I know we haven't investigated yet, but on to Rick's question, do we think there was a similar salt chloride infiltration problem on the other part of the deck that we're looking to do going forward?

No, it's covered so it doesn't get treated in the wintertime.

Okay. So provided it was chloride issues, we probably don't have much of that to deal with. Presumably they didn't salt a bunch and we know we haven't salted much of it.

Right. It'd be on your exposed sections, which are usually your top levels. Okay.

Thank you.

I just can't recall. Does anybody other than our police department, I mean, I know other agencies in that building, does anybody else use that garage? Like, for instance, like people who might lease it from Commerce or something like that?

We've had agreements over the years. I don't know that any are in place right now, but I think on occasion. It might be IT sometimes uses it. Other equipment may get stored up there, but I think it's rarely

And it's not public? We have a lot of excess capacity there.

Do we have

excess capacity there?

Yeah, us and the police department and IT are clamoring for those spaces right now, so I apologize to the PD again.

Is there... I assume the answer is no, but given that we kind of split an IT department, and if I remember right, the FBI may be there. Is there any way to get some of this reimbursed by, in effect, the tenants or the other municipalities? It won't be a lot, but is there a way to recoup any of that? There's nothing in the contract

up. Alderman Buse? I introduce Bill No. 7089, approving a change order No. 2 with Western Specialty Contractors for the garage repairs at 10 South Brentwood Boulevard to be read for the first time by title only. Second.

Any discussion? Mr. City Attorney?

Bill number 7089, first reading and ordinance approving a change order to the contract with Western Waterproofing Company Incorporated doing business as Western specialty contractors for the eastern phase of the 10 South Brentwood third level parking garage repair project.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

All the women abuse? I move that the board give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of bill number 7089 on the day of its introduction. Second.

All those in

favor. Aye.

Any opposed. Let the minutes reflect that the board is giving unanimous consent.

Introduce bill number 7089 approving a change order number two with Western specialty contractors for the garage repairs at 10 South Brentwood Boulevard to be read for the second time by title only. Second.

Any discussion, Mr. City Attorney?

Bill number 7089, second reading and consideration for adoption. An ordinance approving a change order to the contract with Western Waterproofing Company Incorporated doing business as Western specialty contractors for the eastern phase of the 10 South Brentwood third level parking garage repair project.

Alderman Buse. Aye. Alderman Patel. Aye. Aldeman Gary Feder. Aye. Alderman Rick Hummell. Aye. Aldermen Jeffery Yorg. Aye. Aldernan Waldman. Aye. Mayor McAndrew. Aye. Thank

Alderman Buse. Aye. Alderman Patel. Aye. Aldeman Fader. Aye. Alderman Hummel. Aye. Aldermen York. Aye. Aldernan Waldman. Aye. Mayor McAndrew. Aye. Thank

you. The last item on our agenda is putting Alderman Waldman on some committees, commissions, boards.

Do you have any comments or questions on that? Look forward to serving with you.

For the pensions.

Smirch that. That is a very important thing. All right.

Alderwoman Buse? I move to approve the appointment of Alderwoman Waldman as the Aldermanic Representative to the Plan Commission. Oh, no. I know this is wrong. Yeah, that's okay. Sustainability Advisory Committee, Uniformed Employees Retirement Fund Board, and Parks and Recreation Commission. We just wanted her to stay on the other one. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Great. All right. Congratulations. Yep. We have come to the end of our agenda. Anybody wants to go around and just kind of highlight if there's anything significant that's happened to them in the last couple weeks? No.

pertaining to the board right yes

pertaining

um

committee or commission

well with the sustain sustainability advisory commission meeting and there's some there's some important issues going on and and staff and the committee are just they're so impressive uh lights out campaign during the migration and hopefully you all saw the banner out in front it's twice a year in the spring and the fall as birds migrate through this path and um encouraging, well, the city participating and encouraging businesses. Any of you who have contacts or are part of a business in a larger building, if you can help advocate for turning the lights out during that short period of time during the migration, it does make a huge impact. We don't want the impact. It makes a huge difference for our birds. We're also still working on the urban dark skies for Oak Mill Park, running to some, I don't know, you know, some lighting issues that we'd hoped we'd gotten past. So still working on that. Fall recycling events coming up December 5th. And then I think we also talked about rolling out the communications for the building performance standards that are coming up. I think, David, it's the first of the year we start rolling, people start coming online.

Then there's also a plan commission meeting And, um, I'll let, um, Alderman Walton add to this when it comes around to her turn as well. Uh, Berry, Berry Box, which is a restaurant on Forsyth, uh, has a, has a sign that everyone's seen that was over our sign ordinance regulations that was approved by everybody. Um, there's also discussion with the, as we talk about water and retention and everything else, we had a residence that was approved that, uh, that went right to the impervious surfaces limits. And by doing things like doing the, what's the stripe driveway called? The ribbon driveway and not having a path to recycling and things like that. And no trees on the property. So I am very anxious to see us update for our neighborhood health these standards that the ordinances that we have. And that's all I've got.

Thanks. I wanted to say I've seen some sidewalk repair happening in Hillcrest and other areas out there. So thanks to, I assume that's Public Works for getting on that, making it safe as the tornado recovery continues. I went to a program about Complete Streets at Paraquad that was co-hosted by TrailNet, and there were City of St. Louis elected officials there. They were talking very specifically about what... the St. Louis City is trying to do as it relates. They have an official Complete Streets policy and how they're looking at that and what they're trying to implement, and they were looking to get feedback from Paraquad in particular about access issues that folks with different types of disabilities face and trying to meet that. um that was great i think we we don't have a complete streets or we do have a complete street policy we do a

complete trees ordinance yeah ordinance

all right great thank you and then um oakland music nights was this past sunday and it was like the most beautiful i mean it's i always say it's one of the best places to be even when it's really hot out because it's it's a very like well-tempered park i think because of the environment and the trees and stuff but the weather was so great. It was really wonderful, really well attended. And there was a special performance by two great egrets that were hanging out in a pond and in the trees and flying around. And it was just really nice. And then the last thing, and I've never asked about this, but it does seem kind of silly how we talk about our folks who write tickets as parking ambassadors. I'd love to find out what, like if there's, if we've thought about changing that. So that's all.

Yeah. That would probably be a question for, well, Gary's not here either, but yeah. And David, I don't know when

things will

get repainted.

I'm not making a motion. I just want to be clear. Good

to know.

I'm just like, it just does sound silly. Alderman Gary Feder.

I'm just like, it just does sound silly. Alderman Fader.

I noticed on my calendar that I think on August 26, 2021, I was brought into this group. So it's my fourth anniversary. And I do want to say how much I appreciate the mayor being my partner in Ward 3 for almost four years and how much I look forward to having Kami be part of this team. It's a lonely job when you're the only, you know, representative, especially in a quiet summer where all we have is a tornado. But anyway, we will we will have our first coffee together on September 13 so look forward to that. Actually, by the way, I think I would say since I've liked being here so much, I guess I'm kicking off my campaign tonight for reelection, even though I hope not to do anything. But I am kicking it off tonight. So look forward to getting reelected and being able to serve with you all. We Robin and I went to the Taste of St. Louis a couple of times on an evening and on a Sunday afternoon. I'm interested how everybody who went, what everybody thought about it. But anyway, it was worth checking out and I guess my bottom line, it's probably worth doing again. We went to the Festival of Nations, which is in Tower Grove Park, which was great. A couple of things. I think the mayor and David and I, I'm not sure anybody else for the board was there at the House Committee, the House Committee on Property Tax Reform, which was held last week at the center. And I think it was great that the City of Clayton hosted that. It was a massive crowd. I thought there would be six people there, and there were like 250. That was definitely standing room only. I think the very nature of the committee made the whole evening a little bit disorganized because it was everything from people talking about Jake Zimmerman talking about how St. Louis County does its assessments to individuals getting up and talking about how their basement shouldn't have been included in their assessment. So When it's that wide-ranging a topic, it's pretty hard to know exactly what the point is. And that sort of leads into the last thing I wanted to mention was I attended, it's my second year on the County Municipal League, their legislative committee, which was this afternoon at Frontenac, where I saw Andrea, who says hi to everyone. She sat in. But it's a well-run committee. Pat Kelly is executive director, and this time of the year is usually spent with trying to help the County Municipal League figure out what it should focus on in the upcoming legislative session process. I think I heard today that there were like 600, almost 2000 pre bills that are pre filed. Almost none of them ever make it to the floor or make it all the way through to a vote but this particular committee is actually following 600 of those. to varying degrees. The big priority items, as it was last year, is always about tax and property tax, sales tax. The general sense, at least from this group, is that people in Jeff City really are not very concerned about what happens in the local communities, don't seem to care very much about how we raise revenue or what revenue sources we have. Um, so there is the perennial, uh, bill. There will be bills to eliminate a tax on foods, which would be devastating, um, significant potential changes to property tax, which are, it's even worse for our school district than for us, but certainly bad enough. And, um, questions about how, if the Jeff city is thinking about getting rid of some taxes, what they're going to replace it with, what are going to be the revenue sources, um, interesting as well um discussions um about vaping and that whole issue of control over substances that are not marijuana um as i'm learning more every week uh there are efforts at the county level to try to deal with this issue there are also efforts at the state level to try to with these various products uh hemp um the various delta 8 delta 9 all of these things and um I will say, I know a lot of people in Ward 3 are very interested in how we are going to respond in the next few weeks to how else we can regulate the particular establishment that's opened up on Clayton Road. So anyway, a very important committee and I'm glad to be part of it and I think By the end of the year, the idea is to pretty much give the league and its lobbyists, Mr. Dalton, a lot of direction on what things St. Louis County is most concerned about in the upcoming session. The one final comment was a lot depends on what the state is planning to do about redistricting. We know that the president has targeted Missouri as one of those states where he would like to see substantial redistricting. And the thought is in the next month, we will know probably where Jeff City is going to go on that. Will it follow that path? In which case, it will take a lot of the energy out of the room for everything else. So it's kind of good news and bad news, but we don't know yet exactly what will come with that. So anyway, a lot of important issues in Jeff City. Thanks.

Thank you.

Great. So Jeff and I both participated in a CRSWC meeting on August the 15th, and we had two major agenda items. And so I'm going to briefly review those. Both of them will be part of our discussion. joint meeting on September the 3rd. So I want to give you a couple of things to think about before we have that meeting. Um, the first was a, um, a presentation or interaction we had with opera theater, St. Louis, uh, Nicole Freber, Freber and Andrew Jorgensen, uh, who are, um, uh, directors of that organization were there. And so what they shared with us is that, um, they are, um, They are going through the process of designing everything. They're still fundraising, and they are essentially approaching us to see if we are willing to consider parking. So they're short on specifics and just looking for flexibility, but what they do know are the following, that the theater that they want to construct would have seating for 800 to 850 people. It would be available for year-round use. Their season is primarily from May 1st to July 15th, which is when they think the most intense use would take place. They're going to put 250 parking spots on their site, but they have a significant need for offsite parking. Currently they're by Webster University and they have access to over 1400 spots from the university there so they don't have an issue where they are there. What they would like is something in the range of 200 to 300 spots somewhere within the Clayton, center of Clayton footprint. And so... We had the discussion and I would expect that what we're going to end up having is some type of an iterative process. At this point, what they're looking for is a level of interest to see if we're willing to consider something, but they don't exactly know how to provide all the details. So we need to first establish that we have a level of interest And then my goal would be that we start thinking about the questions, conditions, limits, requirements, anything that we might have so we can provide them some constructive feedback and then they can take that and bring it back to us. So I would anticipate something like that going back and forth. Based on the feedback that I got from the school board members of the CRSWC, I think they're incredibly eager to make this happen in every possible way because they want access to the theater. So my point being... We may have different lenses in terms of who's using the parking lot, how intensely they're using the parking lot. And so we need to be prepared for that. I think there's a willingness to be creative and flexible. I just think we may have at times different perspectives. The big concern from the school standpoint is that the peak season may overlap with graduation and some of their ceremonies. So they've got some concerns about that. um so the things to think about um that just come to my mind would be you know which lot are spaces and can we even define those or make that available and there are ways to address that but that some may be less convenient to them to others how might we monitor or control this it became apparent that one of the members was very concerned that they want to make sure that parking is accommodated because they didn't want people parking in the neighborhoods to the north And so that's another thing for consideration. We are worried about how this might affect center programming, especially on peak days. And so how do we address that? Their primary need generally is after 5 p.m., they say, but we don't know how they intend to use their facility. And could they use it differently than what they're telling us right now? Do we want a formal agreement, an informal agreement? Do we want to provide this free to give them flexibility? That's essentially what they want because they're looking for reduction in costs so they don't have to build structured parking on their site. Or do we want to charge something for this? So lots of things to think about. Our goal at the meeting on September 3rd is merely to make sure that whether we as a group have interest in moving forward and then give them feedback, and then give them questions. So I'd ask you to think about that. The second thing is we'll talk about the budget. The board of the CRSWC approved the budget. One of the big things that I would say that's in there relative to expectations are we've been involved in considerable marketing to drive additional membership. and we're not really meeting our plan, although that marketing initiative was somewhat delayed. So as we look at the budget, and again, I gave you these numbers last time, but our fiscal 25 budget projected a shortfall of $442,000, and right now, As we've gone through the year, we're looking at it being much less than that at about 250,000. And that's because of we had all the number of personnel openings. The budget for 26 is going to project just shy of a $500,000 deficit. And you may recall that the school district representatives in the past have frequently wanted that number to continue to get closer to zero. And we are operating at a very high cost recovery relative to other centers. So we may have some friction on that. So anyway, I won't steal the thunder in terms of the other budget highlights. I'll let Tony and Val talk about those, but those were the major highlights.

One of the fun parts of following Rick when we serve on all the same committees is for the most part, Rick details everything before I get a chance to say anything, which is great. The only thing I would add, and I think we talked a little bit this last time, is... Because I won't be there at the meeting next week because I'll be out of town, is... the conversation that we need to start having is, we all need to get on the same page as to, is it a community asset? How much are we willing to pay for it? Because I think the school district and the city need to slowly start getting used to the fact that if we want to keep this center, it's going to cost more every year because costs are going up, right? There's only so many people we can memberships, we can sell all of that. So, and I'm not sure if both boards are exactly on the same page as to how they view it, but it's something that I think the conversation needs to start percolating up in a more distinct way than maybe we have in the past, because as you'll learn more when we talk about the budget next week, Like our budget here, costs are just going up faster than we can create revenue for that given the rates we charge and the market we sit in. So we're going to get to the point where it's going to just cost us more every year, and we're either okay with that or we're not. And I think having that conversation and starting that with the school district will be helpful to figure out three, four years down the line what we have to kind of figure out. So otherwise, it's all – the only other thing I'd add other than what Rick kind of talked about.

Thank you. Amy, do you want to say anything?

I just wanted to say that I'm very excited to serve on the board with everybody and just very honored to serve our great city. So that's

it. I will say, Gary, it has been a pleasure to be your partner the last four years. You are a great partner. And it's odd to now that because I feel like I've kind of remained your partner, the last few months because I haven't really been able to let it go but now I'll have to kind of let it go a little bit because, you know, so but yeah it's it's really been an honor to serve with you and. Yes. So thank you. I will say that I went to PBS, our local PBS station invited me to come to a tornado town hall that was held at, I think it's called the... Like it's not O'Fallon, but it's the O'Fallin part of the city of St. Louis. It's a Y, but it's also I think they call it like an O'Fallan Rec Center slash YMCA. But it was held there. Carol Daniels hosted basically a town hall with a number of people that submitted questions. Of course, the mayor, Kara Spencer, was there. I was not asked any questions, which is not surprising. The focus was definitely largely on the city of St., But it was great to be there. It was great to hear from people in the city who are still very affected, certainly concerned about the city's response. It was broadcast on PBS, I believe it was yesterday. So if you're interested, I'm sure I could send it to you. But it was great. It was an honor to be a part of it. And again, just very... It was great to you know, how the day went, certainly how the response has been. So I was also, David did a great job giving the employees the town hall on, I guess that was last Thursday, talked all about the budget, allowed me to tell everybody that they were going to get a $600 retention bonus so that they stick around until October 1st. And I just wanted to let everybody know that I got a lot of feedback Thanks from that. So I wanted to pass on everybody's appreciation for that retention bonus. And then I was also at the tax reform thing. We also did just so everybody's aware, we did an employee pool party at Shaw Park, the Shaw Park pool this past Friday. There wasn't a ton of people there, but it also was a beautiful evening. And I hope we'll do it again because I know the people that were there really enjoyed it. So that was great. It was just for employees and their families. So. And then also there was a police and fire alumni barbecue in Shaw Park on Saturday. Also a beautiful day. I think it was well attended from what, from what I saw. Former police chief Kevin Murphy was there. So it was nice to see him. He was the police chief when I first came on. He looks great. He's obviously doing really well. So it was

Can I ask a quick question? On FEMA, how does reimbursement work? Is it rolling as we get different parts of the project in, or is it all

so things like

Thanks. I move we adjourn. Second. All those in favor?

Aye.