June 23, 2026 — Meeting Transcript

Good evening. It's Tuesday, June 23. We are here for our city council meeting. We're going to start out with a discussion session. And the first item is our fiscal year 27 special event. Discussion. Welcome, Gary Carter.

Thank you, Mayor. Gary Carter, Director of Economic Development. So tonight, we'll be going through the proposed fiscal year 27 special events. As a reminder, we typically do this presentation in advance of the budget preparation, so we make sure we hit the mark with those numbers. A little bit different deviation from this year than in the past, this presentation has gone to the special business district advisory board, actually twice in the last two months for their comments and their considerations. And they did make some changes and we'll discuss those as we go through this. Since we do have another discussion item tonight, I'll try to move through these slides relatively quickly because unfortunately I do have several. So if you have a comment or question as we go along, please don't hesitate to ask for more explanation. So this is kind of what we operate from every year since these have been in place for the last several now. The event goals that the council handed to us, I want to say four or five years ago now at this point. So these are the marks that we try to meet as we go through our planning process. Just as a reminder, because this comes up several times about I will only be presenting a few events, but this is just a reminder as we flip through the calendar here that we also have parks events and other community events going on. So most of the time in good weather, our calendar is relatively full, keeping in mind that we also are utilizing the same police department and public works staff to help us with all of these events. The family oriented events are in blue, the all ages events are in yellow. We also have some other events going on without confirmed dates as of yet. So you can see the open house, the vehicle fair and the Chapman Plaza for October. In November, the only event that we will be proposing is the block series And then December, we've also tried to identify the community events going on. So the Clayton School District break is on there. Clayton Restaurant Week again, we do that twice a year. So there's a winter and summer edition. February, we will not have any events proposed. March is the spring break. So we avoid that primarily also. and the scavenger hunt through the parks and rec. The new one that we'll talk about in a few minutes is the Central Social. That's a new event that we're proposing for this year. And you'll see that it's a series, so it'll be April, May, and June. In our music and wine that we just had this year here recently, I think was relatively successful and will be proposing that again. And here's the summer series of of restaurant week. And then August in September. The Special Advisory Board to the Special Business District had some questions that we tried to address with these slides here about how we are marketing these events. So we are using the website, the Clayton Connection social media, online community calendars. Kristen tries to go out to all the online community calendars and get our events added to those. City views, we still are doing the banners here at City Hall, Shaw Park, and Oak Knoll. Yard signs was a request of some of the city council members a couple years ago, so we are putting those out in the neighborhoods to make sure our residents are familiar with those. We do posters for the businesses. try to promote those at a Coffee with a Cop and our Ward Coffee, excuse me, and then try to partner with the school district, the library, and local businesses to promote our events too. So what we will be talking about here next is what was actually recommended by the Special Business District Advisory Board. The first one is the central social. This is kind of a curated monthly happy hour that we're proposing for the months of April, May and June. Hard to see. It says central social. That's all right. That's fine. That's fine, Myron. Thank you. I just had a conversation with the owners of Luso this afternoon, and the first... One, they didn't talk about parking, which I took as a win. And the second thing is they want events back down there. So I explained that the Music and Wine and Jazz Festival has outgrown the location, particularly because of the median down there. But I did think of this one here as a potential for locating down there. And Kristen was right. Things that will work very well down there. In fact, we may rotate it to the different business districts within downtown just kind of spread the. Spread the event around so while it says central social, it may or may not be on central. We believe it does align with those goals, and I won't take you through each one, but we can address that if you have questions later. The next one we are proposing again, the Clayton Restaurant Week. I personally think this is one of the most successful and low-cost events that we could offer throughout the city. As you can see, it's... excuse me, 5,000 each time. But I think the return on the estimated attendance is high. Again, this was another question from the advisory group about how we're marketing this. One of the things that we do in this one we started a couple years ago is using influencers. We're currently using Alexis Zotos who used to be on one of the local channels here. But as you can see, her promotion goes beyond even what we're able to do here within City Hall. This CPM, I had to ask myself what that was. Basically that's a cost per 1,000 impressions. So for every 1,000 impressions or screen time that we get in front of someone it's $15. So we will be doing the same thing with the influencer if this is approved. We're also gonna do many videos featuring chef interviews. We also will be sending out media kits to the restaurants that will have the logos, the messaging and photos for them to share through their own channels. And starting in the winter with this event, we will be having a contingency plan. This past winter, we had a snowstorm during restaurant week. And some of the restaurants came to us and said, hey, can we move it to next weekend? Well, we don't necessarily have the funds available to rerun the ads. So baked into the dollars I showed you earlier is a contingency in case we need to move that event to a later time so they can still have that. We don't anticipate it so much with the summer event, but it could happen. Still proposing music and wine festival. I think it's highly successful. I think our estimated attendance here is probably low from what I saw this last time, given the course of the event and the space that was consumed. Again, the jazz festival, which is very similar to the music and wine. The difference on the cost here is really since we are partnering with the Silverman Brothers, they are providing the entertainment at no cost to the city. So very much a win-win situation there. One of the events that we proposed and was not recommended by the Special Business District Advisory Board was the Day of the Dead event that we've tried a couple times. In the past, it was the 1st event was not very well attended. The 2nd event had a rain out, but this board felt as though this may not be a good fit for city. For the city of Clayton and didn't want to recommend it to this group here. We had increased the budget considerably for this event trying to make it fit more of the mold of our successful events with more entertainment. But nonetheless, not recommended.

Um, I guess I'm confused about why. So I understand it didn't, it wasn't like a huge success its first year, but not a lot of things are, I don't think, I don't know. And then it got rained out. So what can anyone speak? I don't know if anyone hears in that discussion, like what leads it to leads us to say, that's not a good fit for Clayton. Like

Well, I can speak because I was there. It was just more, I don't think it was necessarily like the event itself not being a good fit. I think when they looked at the cost per person and when we looked at it compared to all the other events, it was, and I don't know if you have that chart somewhere, Gary, it was like a hundred, it was, it was incredible. Like what a, and I think when they were just like looking of like compared to like what the other events costs is just stood out as like a, a huge expense per person and there was concern about that.

Yeah, I think this is treating your question here during the discussion. This is the number that kind of stood out to everyone. I think absent of the conversation that it was new.

My recollection last time we talked about this event and said let's go ahead and look at it was could we get more support from the school district because It has, even though it's obviously not Halloween, but it's the same week and it has at least some of the same themes and that there was some thought like if we could get the school district to be supportive, it might work. There are others, I understand, other groups in town that do a Day of the Dead event. And I think when this was first brought to us, when Mayor Harris brought it to us, it was that there were certain Latin American groups who supported these kinds of events and would support this. I don't think we got a lot of that support, at least as I recall. So my understanding was if we can gin up a lot of support from whatever you call them, whatever partners, then it might be worth pursuing. But I haven't heard that happening. And so I wasn't part of this recent discussion, but It wasn't very successful. If there was a way to make it much more likely to be successful, like with these partners, I would still support it. But short of that, I would agree with the decision that there are better ways to spend our money.

Yeah. And I think there was, I think the Hispanic festivals does a large celebration that is at the history museum every year. So I, which always, I mean, of course it doesn't fall or it went to fall and on October 24th, but a lot of their, I mean, not that they weren't providing partnership and efforts with ours, but I think people may have chosen to go to the celebration at the history museum. I mean, I don't know what that was that I know that that had come up as well.

Do we have any sense of the Hispanic festivals' interest in this continuing? I mean, do they want to do it? Are they willing to do it? Yes. Are they really motivated?

Yes, to all of the above. Okay. The person that we've been working with have been waiting for tonight to find out the fate of this event, so they are ready to go. But like I said, this number here represents a deviation from the past years trying to make it more offerings and more entertainment where the last couple of events have been more ground situation with some interactive activities going on, but lacking that big stage and that more entertainment component.

Are they willing to lower the $14,000 they require from our budget?

I don't think so.

And they're probably not making a profit, I assume. I don't know how the organization works.

Yeah, it's very much a volunteer organization. So this is more that $14,000, you know, I don't want to speak for them and they're not here, but, you know, it's covering the vendors that they're bringing too.

Yeah. I guess I'm just thinking, I mean, it feels to me like we haven't really given this a chance and you have ideas about how to do it better, address some of what might've been some of the shortcomings before and the cost per person isn't actually the highest on the sheet. And it's consistent with a handful of other from what I saw. So I guess I just don't love that idea. Like I don't, I'm not compelled to cut this. I'd be interested in giving it another

shot. If we put this back in, Gary, what does that do for the rest of the budget?

I'm going to come to

that. What I'm curious is was this cut in order to pay for the socials?

Well, and I don't want to speak for the advisory board, but whoever was there can also correct me. But I think it wasn't necessarily, it was some of the event that we just discussed, but I think it was also the elevation and what we had been spending in previous years that may have caused the committee pause on spending additional dollars and perhaps looking for a place to cut.

Okay. And I guess I'm curious, like what need they felt to cut? Like what, you know, so and maybe you're going to get to that a little more like the overall.

What is the difference between last year and like how big of a change is it?

So this slide here shows the differences. So the first column there is the year that we're operating now. The next column is what the advisory group proposed, and then the far right-hand column is inclusive of that Day of the Dead event.

I think an important thing to note is that in the larger discussion that SBD was having, they've got their big chunk of money. It's $530,000 or so in revenue. What they were really looking to do in the end, I think, is free up some money to use for some other items. So the illuminated parking signs is something that came up quite a bit. And if you look at the SBD budget, without taking out the staff expenses and events, there really isn't much there to play with. So... this particular event, as Gary had mentioned, just kind of stood out based on that cost per attendee and that sort of thing. So that I think was one of the big drivers is let's take the $34,000 or whatever the amount was, I think it was $34,000 for the event, and let's put that towards the illuminated parking signs because they're really looking for additional money to put there. I think if SBD was here, they would probably be telling you as a group that that's maybe their biggest priority going into next year, more so than the

event? Yeah. I appreciate that context. I think it's important for us to understand that. And I guess my point is when we are planning events as a city, we don't only have the Central Business District fund to spend. And so I think it's our job. They're talking about what... I believe that we expect them to talk about how to allocate the special business district fund. And so totally makes sense that they would make a recommendation to do that. I'm saying as a city council, I'd like us to consider adding back in the event. That doesn't mean we have to cut the parking signs. I'd like to see how that shakes out or consider what else we might cut if that's an issue. This is really something that our community is interested in and we've got a willing partner and an opportunity to try it. I don't know how to say.

If I may add, this is why we have shown it this way, because we originally proposed it. They didn't recommend it. I still wanted to give you that information that is out there.

So in the SBD budget, How much over would it be if we did all of it plus the illuminated signs? I could make it. I mean, I think David and I talked about this earlier. I think there's a larger conversation about what we should be paying for out of the SBD budget, whether we should be paying salaries or we should be paying street signs like that. To me, that's a city cost. But I think that's a bigger discussion for us to have during the budget season and through the year.

Yeah.

For this one, though, how far over would we be if we did everything? I

don't know that there's enough money in there currently to pay for the parking signs, to pay for all of them. Even if you cut this particular event, the fund balance isn't what we thought it was the last meeting. So I still don't know that they can pay for all the signs by making... So if you add this back in, I mean, there's very little you can do.

I guess in my... A different way to ask the question is how much would we as a city have to eat if we wanted to do all of that? If to do everything, they needed $30,000 extra bucks, it's going to come out of our general fund budget. Right, just goes into the general fund. And that's what I'm trying to figure out. What's that number? Is that $30,000? Is that $60,000? Is it $80,000? Do we have any sense?

I think it's this $34,000 plus whatever the overage is for the signs.

We don't have pricing on the signs yet.

We don't, but it's... I mean, by the time you get all of those installed and wired up, they're going to be pretty pricey. I mean, we saw the price that we paid for the sign at 10 South Brentwood that isn't illuminated. It's costly.

And there were other items in the special business district budget that we talked about that were not related to events. So, I mean, adding in potential items, so.

I would just add, I don't think it's only about money. I sort of analogize it like with the taste of St. Louis after they were here the first time. I think Gary pointed out, well, the This could have been done better. The owner agreed this thing was, you know, there were numerous aspects that we went and we said, well, if we could address these three or four things that were clearly problems the first time around, it could be a successful event. So we gave the go-ahead, they pulled out. So that's a different story. I don't know that this event necessarily, I realize it's just one person's experience. Robin and I went to the event. The weather was decent. There weren't just a whole lot of people there. I haven't heard anything tonight from Gary that says, well, it's bound to be different this time because of this or this, and therefore it's much more likely to be successful. I didn't hear that. And so that coupled with the economics to me would suggest that we move on to a different event.

I actually thought he did suggest like that the staff has made some recommendations on how to make it a more potentially like interesting event that will draw more people. That's why it's going to be more expensive as proposed. And so, I mean, I think the way it's advertised here is very different than what was advertised the first year, which was the only year it had a chance to try to perform. So I'm.

Yeah, I mean, Gary, can you just maybe you can expand a little bit on what how it would be? I mean, do you feel like it may be

different? We are adding to the entertainment component. okay is how we're adding to it um and like an additional

band or

there would be like band in an actual stage

okay there wasn't a lot of it before was just um stands right where people could do like yes okay okay i mean i i do think you know everybody loves music so i feel like that is i mean that is certainly an important ad you know so that it would you know

I mean, that was the component that has not been in the previous two years of this budget.

I mean, that's the thing that catches eyes like in advertising. And so I think those kinds of things and like the performers themselves have crowds that draw people like all of

that. not to oversimplify it but i think we have a good model with music and wine and jazz festival and they oddly look similar um this is a different component by adding the hispanic festival ink in this this conversation but at the end of the day it is it came in food and drink yeah

Has the school district shown any interest or have we reached out to them to see if they would?

We typically reach out to them on all events. And I mean, they do what they can. They put it in their email distributions. They make sure that families and students are aware of it.

I think the Spanish program would, I mean, I don't know. I think about the Spanish program goes all the way through the elementary schools, so. Feels to me. I mean, I've listened to a lot of meetings where the council talks about how excited they are about cultural events in Clayton specifically. And I agree. I think, you know, I mean, the shamrock enroll, I went, there was like nobody there this year and it's going to be on spring break weekend. And we're not, you know, nobody's really talking about that. I'm sure the expense is far less than what what this is, but I would hate to see us lose a cultural event like this and add a bunch of the social pieces. It just feels like a little bit disjointed to me. Is

there any plan to market it differently? I mean, I know it's early. You'll probably wait until we say yes or no, but that's the one thing I haven't heard is it's I hear about the extra ban and all of that, but if we can't get people there, it doesn't matter.

Finding an influencer

here would be a

really

good idea. The engagement of the influencer has been very helpful to all of our events, and that's relatively new. So that will be a component of basically all of our events going forward, probably with the exception of the neighborhood parties that don't necessarily need that.

Okay. Well, I guess my thinking – if it was rained out last year, which it was, I kind of feel like you need to give it one more year because that's what we were trying to do last year. And because of rain, it didn't work. But I think that I also want to be thoughtful. We've got this special business district committee who has basically told us they don't want to... It could be interpreted that they have told us that they don't want the money that they're contributing to this fund to be used for this event. So if we as a city want to pay for the event, then we should just put it in our general fund budget and And then, again, over the course of a year, we have a larger discussion as to why salaries are in the SBD budget versus just events. And maybe it all shakes out. But I think that, to me, is the thing. If they don't want it, I get it. I can respect it. That's part of what we look for them for. But if we want to have it another year, then we just ask David and team to put it in our general fund budget and figure out how the numbers work.

Second. No, I think that's it. It's important that the special business district – committee has the opportunity to identify what they believe are priorities for that funding. Totally in favor of that. But I don't think that means that we have to step back on investment we made to try to really meet what was a need that we heard from our community. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so based on this, we'll add it into the general fund under the event budget. And then we'll have a conversation with SBD about whether or not they want to fund it. If they don't, it'll still be there within the event budget and SBD will go to cover other things.

What will we evaluate next year? Like I would hope that we would have better attendance.

Yeah, but I think, yeah.

I at least will be in a different position assuming I'm here for next year when we have this discussion, so.

And I do think, as everyone has said, I think we do probably have to have a larger discussion on the budget for the SBD and considering what it gets used for and what it doesn't get used for.

That group actually meets this Thursday. Yes. It'll be a fresh conversation for them. So speaking of general fund proposed events, the block parties remain again proposed for next year. We think they are being successful and basically will be continuing with the same format as before.

One question, Gary. I saw the attendance earlier. I like the Black Party idea, but I also recognize that Ward 2 had 25 people, I think, at their last one. How many years have we done these now?

This is the second year.

We've got a few years yet before. At some point, I love the idea, but if we can't get people to show up, I want to be honest about the budget like we just did about stuff. Second year, we're good. I don't know.

So I believe the next one coming up is at Wydown Park. So I think that will be a good measure heading into next year.

Gary, can I ask about on locations of these? I realize the three are somewhat similar sized parks and they're neighborhood parks. It does occur to me always going to the Ward 3-1 in Taylor Park. There are an awful lot of people in Ward 3 who don't even know where Taylor Park is, which is unfortunate. But I would guarantee if we had the Ward 3 party somewhere in Shaw Park, it would draw a lot better. Now, maybe that's not consistent with the idea here because it's very different than DeMond Park or Wydown Park. But Taylor Park, you know, I think I've gone every year. we don't get a great attendance. And, um, I do think about the fact that you could pick an awful lot of places, pavilions in Shaw park where you would draw a lot more people, but I just throw that out as a, as a question as to the location of the ward three. I mean,

that's certainly something I can talk to Christian about. We can work harder on that. I also think that perhaps working with the school district and using Merrimack, um, maybe a potential, um, attendance increase

also. I would say it was not a huge group at Taylor Park, but I thought it was well attended. Again, the first year, it felt very neighborhood-y for the group of people around Taylor Park that I think You know, don't always, there's not a lot of things always in Old Town, like events. And I think it, I think the event actually suited that size really well. But, you know, certainly open to other locations. Merrimack's a great idea.

And I think your word neighborhood-y. is spot on. I mean, trying to encourage those people that live immediately around there just to walk there like they do in DeMond, which is obviously a little bit different setting than we're looking at in these other two locations. Perhaps Wydown Park will be a

I do think Taylor Park would work, but again, I remember when we had it, it did occur to me there didn't seem to be much signage. You know, if you look at the other end of town, Davis Place Polo, I'm not sure most people who aren't somehow linked into city government even knew that this event was going on in Taylor Park. So we can keep it in Taylor Park. I just think we need to recognize it's a big ward and we need to advertise it a little better for so that everybody in that ward knows where it is.

Yeah, I was going to say, I thought the Taylor Park location was good. But to your point, I think that a lot of like Davis Place and Clay Shire and all those neighborhoods didn't know about it. But I did hear a lot of feedback from the people around Taylor Park saying, this is so great. We don't get events around here. And so they really liked it. So I don't know if you can please everybody, but it seemed like a good fit for the amount of people. But I do think advertising maybe in the other neighborhoods would help with that.

We can certainly add advertising and potential location change to the to-do list. So I think we've already gone through the scorecard, but you can see the results to date so far. There's that Clayton Restaurant Week at 75 cents. Bargain. I like that one. we've gone through this in the past, but for those of you that this is new to, just the different ranges of the cost per attendees just depends on the size of the event and then how much entertainment. That's the variable we're talking about on the day of debt event where in the first two years we didn't have a more structured entertainment process. Now we're adding that so the cost per Attendee potentially could go up, but unless we get a lot of attendees and then it'll go down. And then the amenities and infrastructure. I mean, this is where that Shell Park potential area there in the future is going to help because we'll have electricity, we'll have bathrooms, we don't need to be renting that stuff all the time. So we've already gone through this page, but this is the difference between what we're spending this year, what the advisory group is proposing and then inclusive of all the

events. Before we leave central socials. Theories, what day of the week were you thinking? Has it gotten to that point yet, this particular type of

event? I don't think we've gotten to that point. We're showing it on Thursdays, but I

don't know if you've really decided that or not. I went through the calendar and that's what it looked

like. Okay.

Yeah, on the calendar. That's where we're leaning to. But once we get this approved, then we really find the plans. We may find working with Luso and the merchants on Central and the merchants on Brentwood a better day.

I think it's a great idea. My only concern is if we go back to when the Chamber of Commerce did their parties in the park or parties in the street, they were very successful pre-COVID. Then, of course, post-COVID, they were very unsuccessful because suddenly people weren't sticking around until 5 o'clock on a Thursday. And even as people started moving back into the office, they were only working three days a week. So the whole concept of these kind of events in downtown... is at least it remains to be seen whether that will work in a post-COVID environment because people have gone back to the office for the most part, but they also leave at 3 o'clock because they can, et cetera, et cetera. So that's my only concern is whether a Thursday event or Wednesday event, whether that's going to really be successful because it just didn't prove to be for a number of years. But again, I would certainly be willing to give that a chance to see how it works, but I would have some concern that... The world has changed.

I do, too. And I intentionally didn't use the words party in the park to associate with this one either, hoping that it was a little bit

reminiscent, though

it is very reminiscent.

Well, it's actually interesting to think about what if you started earlier? And what if it starts at like three? I don't know what time you're thinking about starting.

Well, since we've said it once, parties in the park kind of rotated at the end there too. I mean, we are very conscious of that and we are trying to make that change. And this is really that bridge of entertainment for the community until we get our Mr. Myers up and running and potentially another location. on Forsyth up and running. So we are trying to fill that entertainment gap and at least recognize Clayton as a entertainment venue until we have brick-and-mortar establishments. And then it may be that this type of event is not needed in the future once we have three or four entertainment venues above and beyond the Flight Club and Five Iron currently.

The only other thing I would say is somebody who does that every day in Clayton It may sound good on paper to have it on Central or someplace else, but the closer you can make this event to where the actual office buildings are, the more likely people are going to walk out. Like I'm thinking where my office is, like you can walk out on Crown the Lit. But if you're even a block or two away, people are not going to – they're no longer going to walk out of the building and walk over there for three blocks and then walk back to their place. I agree. As you're just thinking about locations –

Definitely moving it around, I think might be a good idea.

Kristen and I had that conversation earlier this afternoon about after my discussion with Luso about potentially moving it around. And that was I had the same concern about I think central is very central to the city. But unfortunately, we are in the Midwest. So office two blocks away might as well be an Uber right away. Right. Unfortunately,

it almost made more sense, for example, Merrimack, because you're right next to Forsyth Point, like places where we just walk down, have a drink for 45 minutes, go back up, grab the car and go may make more sense from a numbers standpoint.

I mean, realistically, I think it may be one or two on Cronulla and one or two on Brentwood, but that's yet to be determined, but something we are conscious of.

I know we have, Gary, do you have, just because I know we have one more thing to talk about, are we?

I can be done at any moment. Are

there any other decisions that you feel like?

No, so we will add back the Day of the Dead to the general fund and you can work through that through your budgeting process. Okay. And I will let the special advisory board know on Thursday.

Okay.

Of this direction.

Thank you. Thank

you.

Brian, do you have sufficient time to talk about trees? Okay.

I suppose we'll find out if we get to the end.

Yeah.

Alrighty. So we're going to go over landscape regulations in the context of what our comprehensive plan has set out for the next evolution of these regulations in Clayton. I can get this to work. So I'm going to kind of break this down into a few different pieces. First, I'm going to talk about how our comprehensive plan talks about what we need to look at for the evolution of our landscape regulations. I'm going to give you a little bit of our landscape 101. How do we actually review landscape plans in Clayton? What are some of our existing conditions? Additionally, I'm going give a brief summary of the report and recommendations from Brad Goss, who worked with us a little bit over the past year. And then I'll go over and kind of summarize some of the possible changes that we're looking at. So to kind of summarize our findings, they're a little bit all over the place, but they do have some key themes. So largely the landscape regulations, even though they might apply to a variety of landscape items, they're largely focusing on trees and it's largely split between those public and private spaces. The city's policies are more progressive and thorough than what is common for a lot of other zoning regulations, which is kind of cool to find out about Clayton. And this was also a little bit reinforced. I was lucky enough to go to the National Planning Conference this year in Detroit. I went to a session about what New Jeffery Yorg City is doing for the next step of their landscape plans, and they just kept talking about things that we're already doing, which is awesome. So it's exciting to see that we're kind of ahead of the curve on that. Additionally, there was just consistent themes of residents highly value canopy coverage and they're always going to support more trees. They think that we should not necessarily provide trade-offs, that being a good environmental steward is something that we should kind of do out the gate. And so, what are the key results that came out of these? It largely is falling under, you know, the quality of our neighborhoods and sustainability. That first key result there just talks about prioritizing the green space and trees, which kind of weaves its way throughout regulations. But then that second one is actually saying, hey, let's take a step back, actually look at our regulations and see where we can make those specific improvements. So before we get into some of the more specific stuff, let's talk about what reviewing landscape actually looks like in Clayton. So our current regulations, they were adopted in 2016 with the goal largely to preserve trees and preserve tree canopy, that canopy being how far do those leaves and branches extend. So that actually sets quantitative goals for our residential zoning districts. For the residential uses in those residential zoning districts, that's where we have those canopy coverage goals. If it's a non-residential use, that's usually something like a school or a church, those are subject to caliper inch replacements. And those operate very differently. So for canopy coverage, where we're looking at the extent of those branches and leaves, there is a specific quantity goal, and it is equal to a percent of the lot area. That percentage is going to change depending on the zoning district. And so it's about maintaining that minimum. Additionally, when we're calculating canopy coverage, we're calculating canopy into the future because when you plant a tree, you're not going to get that full benefit of the canopy right now. It needs to sort of grow and thrive over time. The caliper inch replacement is very different. The caliper inches measuring the diameter of that tree. If you remove caliper inches, you have to replace those caliper inches exactly at the time of planting. So if you remove 20 caliper inches, you got to find a way to replace it, whether you find one tree or you find five trees to make that work. And what that's going to naturally result is sort of a pattern of growth over time as you're constantly having to replant more than you remove on those sites. So don't be afraid by all of the Excel things that you see right here. I promise I can break it down and explain it. So the process of reviewing these is going to start with a landscape architect or certified arborist from the applicant taking a tree chart file that we already have at the city. We give that to them, and they fill it out. It precalculates lots of things real easy for everybody. But it gives us three different charts that we've got to pay attention to. existing trees, proposed trees and total calculations. So they go and they survey all the existing trees on site. You know, what type of tree are they? How big are they? How old are they? What kind of condition are they in? And then we need to mark, okay, what trees are being removed so we can keep track of that kind of stuff. And then what are our proposed trees that we're putting in? If you look at like the canopy coverage, I realize you might not be able to see clearly on here, but if you look under like existing trees, canopy coverage, it's all variety of different numbers to calculate that canopy coverage. Under our proposed trees, those numbers are very consistent. We have an approved tree list with the city that breaks things down into very specific categories of tree. You have your evergreen and deciduous. You have your small, medium, and large. All small evergreens are going to have that same canopy calculation. All large evergreens are gonna have that same canopy coverage calculation, which is why those numbers look the same. So then that third chart takes all that information and punches out where you'll see that green box right down the corner. That is, are we above or are we below our projected canopy calculation? If you fall below, that box is going to show up red and it's going to populate a fee right below that. If you don't meet the canopy coverage requirement, you have to pay a fee that goes into the city's forestry fund that supports tree plantings in other locations. So our process is we get this tree chart along with a landscape plan. We send that off to a contracted landscape reviewer. They take a look at it. They provide comments as time has gone on and we've become more comfortable in house looking at stuff. We also take a look at some of those plans. We send comments back to the applicant. They then have to revise.

Alrighty. So we're going to go over landscape regulations in the context of what our comprehensive plan has set out for the next evolution of these regulations in Clayton. I can get this to work. So I'm going to kind of break this down into a few different pieces. First, I'm going to talk about how our comprehensive plan talks about what we need to look at for the evolution of our landscape regulations. I'm going to give you a little bit of our landscape 101. How do we actually review landscape plans in Clayton? What are some of our existing conditions? Additionally, I'm going give a brief summary of the report and recommendations from Brad Goss, who worked with us a little bit over the past year. And then I'll go over and kind of summarize some of the possible changes that we're looking at. So to kind of summarize our findings, they're a little bit all over the place, but they do have some key themes. So largely the landscape regulations, even though they might apply to a variety of landscape items, they're largely focusing on trees and it's largely split between those public and private spaces. The city's policies are more progressive and thorough than what is common for a lot of other zoning regulations, which is kind of cool to find out about Clayton. And this was also a little bit reinforced. I was lucky enough to go to the National Planning Conference this year in Detroit. I went to a session about what New York City is doing for the next step of their landscape plans, and they just kept talking about things that we're already doing, which is awesome. So it's exciting to see that we're kind of ahead of the curve on that. Additionally, there was just consistent themes of residents highly value canopy coverage and they're always going to support more trees. They think that we should not necessarily provide trade-offs, that being a good environmental steward is something that we should kind of do out the gate. And so, what are the key results that came out of these? It largely is falling under, you know, the quality of our neighborhoods and sustainability. That first key result there just talks about prioritizing the green space and trees, which kind of weaves its way throughout regulations. But then that second one is actually saying, hey, let's take a step back, actually look at our regulations and see where we can make those specific improvements. So before we get into some of the more specific stuff, let's talk about what reviewing landscape actually looks like in Clayton. So our current regulations, they were adopted in 2016 with the goal largely to preserve trees and preserve tree canopy, that canopy being how far do those leaves and branches extend. So that actually sets quantitative goals for our residential zoning districts. For the residential uses in those residential zoning districts, that's where we have those canopy coverage goals. If it's a non-residential use, that's usually something like a school or a church, those are subject to caliper inch replacements. And those operate very differently. So for canopy coverage, where we're looking at the extent of those branches and leaves, there is a specific quantity goal, and it is equal to a percent of the lot area. That percentage is going to change depending on the zoning district. And so it's about maintaining that minimum. Additionally, when we're calculating canopy coverage, we're calculating canopy into the future because when you plant a tree, you're not going to get that full benefit of the canopy right now. It needs to sort of grow and thrive over time. The caliper inch replacement is very different. The caliper inches measuring the diameter of that tree. If you remove caliper inches, you have to replace those caliper inches exactly at the time of planting. So if you remove 20 caliper inches, you got to find a way to replace it, whether you find one tree or you find five trees to make that work. And what that's going to naturally result is sort of a pattern of growth over time as you're constantly having to replant more than you remove on those sites. So don't be afraid by all of the Excel things that you see right here. I promise I can break it down and explain it. So the process of reviewing these is going to start with a landscape architect or certified arborist from the applicant taking a tree chart file that we already have at the city. We give that to them, and they fill it out. It precalculates lots of things real easy for everybody. But it gives us three different charts that we've got to pay attention to. existing trees, proposed trees and total calculations. So they go and they survey all the existing trees on site. You know, what type of tree are they? How big are they? How old are they? What kind of condition are they in? And then we need to mark, okay, what trees are being removed so we can keep track of that kind of stuff. And then what are our proposed trees that we're putting in? If you look at like the canopy coverage, I realize you might not be able to see clearly on here, but if you look under like existing trees, canopy coverage, it's all variety of different numbers to calculate that canopy coverage. Under our proposed trees, those numbers are very consistent. We have an approved tree list with the city that breaks things down into very specific categories of tree. You have your evergreen and deciduous. You have your small, medium, and large. All small evergreens are going to have that same canopy calculation. All large evergreens are gonna have that same canopy coverage calculation, which is why those numbers look the same. So then that third chart takes all that information and punches out where you'll see that green box right down the corner. That is, are we above or are we below our projected canopy calculation? If you fall below, that box is going to show up red and it's going to populate a fee right below that. If you don't meet the canopy coverage requirement, you have to pay a fee that goes into the city's forestry fund that supports tree plantings in other locations. So our process is we get this tree chart along with a landscape plan. We send that off to a contracted landscape reviewer. They take a look at it. They provide comments as time has gone on and we've become more comfortable in house looking at stuff. We also take a look at some of those plans. We send comments back to the applicant. They then have to revise.

So these are a couple of samples. Two questions on that chart. And it's also a process too. So, There could be a situation where we lose a bunch of canopy because it's on like just big old trees. And it's from a caliber inch standpoint, it's replaced, but it's being replaced with a bunch of ornamental trees that are never going to provide the same canopy coverage as a tree that was cut down.

If we are on a residentially zoned property with a residential use, I mean, they can cut down any trees that they want, but then they have to... Plant enough trees that the projected canopy coverage is going to meet those goals. So there's actually we'll kind of talk about the existing conditions in the future. But the idea is that if you have a property now that may not meet canopy coverage in the future, it's going to.

And that makes sense. I guess what I'm concerned about is places like downtown where it's like, OK, you may cut down a tree that's. The canopy coverage is decent because it's a bigger tree. Okay, it's 20 inches and they don't want to, they just put like, making numbers up here, five ornamental trees that are never going to provide the same shade, but they technically meet the caliper inch requirement.

I would say that there's layers to that. If you're cutting down an oak tree and you're planting a bunch of smaller trees, no, they're never going to grow to the size of the oak tree. But we will talk about that in some of the coming slides. Then the other

question is on this number at the bottom. going back to what what some of the residents said from a survey standpoint which was they don't want us to be doing a trade-off it seems like right now we are doing that where if they're not if they're cutting down more than they're providing we're just billing them a set of numbers so it's is is it is it proper to think about it this way where like a developer just makes a decision like it's cheaper for me to write the check than it is to put the trees in and is that if that's the case is that really just a trade-off we're doing Or am I misunderstanding what this number means?

The number at the bottom right there, that total?

Yeah. If a developer said, you know what, I just don't feel like it, they're just going to write the check instead. That happens. Okay. So going back to what the residents have asked for, which is they don't really want that trade-off, we currently have a system where we're allowing developers to make a trade-off between... having trees or not having trees, but just how much they want to write a check for.

Does that

make sense?

Yeah, that's a discussion that we can definitely get into. And actually, this example on the left is an example we can talk about here related to that point. So this is an example of a couple different type of landscape plans that we get. The one on the right I would describe as a little bit cleaner. It has a two existing trees that are proposed to remain that are rather big. It shows some tree protection fencing, shows some proposed trees, understory plantings, That plane on the left is exactly what you talk about there of maybe a developer just being fine with writing the check. This plane on the left was not the final product for this site, but it illustrates a couple of issues. We have two examples of trees that are proposed right over utility lines. We have some crowding of trees in the back. We have the houses just designed over the structural root zone of a neighboring tree. We do get... you know, it depends on the type of developer, but I, they're either intentional or they're not.

Was it sometimes too, Ryan? Cause then oftentimes we're getting bigger houses, so we can't put, I guess we're never going to be able to put in because they're covering more space on the lot. We're never going to get enough trees back in that removed too. So that's why they ended up paying in the forestry fund or is that only?

Yeah, specifically to this site on the left. Um, You know, you got to pick your battles with every kind of development. With that site, I specifically had a conversation. I've had this conversation multiple times with landscape architects where I say, I get that you're trying to meet a canopy coverage goal here. You're crowding trees on that site. Are those trees going to live? Are they going to grow to their full canopy coverage? And they'll be honest with me and they'll say, no, probably not. I'm like, okay, I would rather you propose something that those trees are actually going to live. And I'll advocate for that, but if you're telling me that these trees aren't going to survive and you're just trying to meet the number, I'm not going to advocate that for you. It is... The size of houses have definitely been a discussion, and that is something that is very much linked to this process. But at the end of the day, people who are building new houses make their money on the square footage of the house. They don't always think about the benefit that beautiful oak tree plays in the redevelopment of that site.

Is there a way, once you have the leftover space, like the green space leftover, to then make calculations? And like requirements then? Because, you know, we're setting the standard of how big these houses can be now, which means we have the leftover space. Is it then you make the calculation or is it just based on what was there before?

The calculation, the amount of canopy that you have to provide is based on a percentage of the site. So if I'm trying to recall off the top of my head what R2 might be, it might be 30 something, 40 something.

We might want, because I think you're getting beyond. Right. Yeah. We're going to provide an overview of how our regulations operate right now, and then he's going to identify the opportunities for improvement. which will include some of that. So yeah, he has a good presentation that I want to direct. We're all going to be quiet

until Brian finishes. Okay. No,

it's a fun discussion that can go in so many directions. They're all good points. But we get both of these types of landscape plans. We get ones on the right that are a little bit more intentional. We get ones the developer at the end goes, oh, I have to care about the trees and we have to navigate both of those processes. So let's jump into how that leads to some of our existing conditions. So this map is showing data from 2022, and this is showing whether or not properties are actually meeting their canopy coverage goals. So right now, most of our properties, which you see in the orange there, they're not meeting the canopy coverage goals. I think about 10% of our properties overall are exempt from meeting the canopy coverage goal. That's in quantity, like that's in the quantity of properties, not in the land area of properties. And then right now, about 25% of those are actually meeting the canopy coverage. We have had a lot of new construction since these regulations were adopted in 2016. And so again, we're not gonna see the benefit of that canopy for properties that may have not met it before. We're not gonna see that for a long time. So although this map is showing you, hey, there's a lot of properties that don't meet it, 10, 20 years down the road, there's probably gonna be some properties that look better in the long term. This map is from 2016 when these regulations were adopted. I kind of just want you to pay attention to this for a second because we're going to do a little back and forth between some more current data. Let's see, where's my mouse at here? I can't even see it on the screen. There it is. Okay. I'm going to hover here over like the Carswold and Brentmore neighborhoods. Just kind of keep your eye on that. Where you see darker green, that's a higher concentration of canopy coverage. Where you see a lighter color, that's less canopy coverage. So if we go back and forth here, you can see when we jump to some newer data, this is 2022 data, we see that canopy's actually kind of gone down. Let's go to the east a little bit and let's look over at like Ellenwood Cecil. It's gone down a little bit. Jump down to Tuscany Park. down a little bit. Unfortunately, one of the themes that we're seeing as time has gone on is that our canopy coverage is declining. So from our comprehensive plan data, I'm seeing that about 28%, we had 28% canopy coverage across the land area of Clayton in 2022, whereas in 2016 it was, what is that, like 30, it would go 37%. That was a big drop. So I tried to find a third party number and tree equity score had about 34% in 2023, but we are seeing a decline. Some of that could be new construction. This is also pre-tornado data. So I'm guessing that we've probably gone down since then. But the reality is that clear cutting is common. There's nothing that makes the city review the process of cutting down every single tree. So if people want to cut down trees, they can. If a developer wants to come in and clear cut a site, they can. So let's pivot for a second and let's talk about what Brad Goss did. I'll go ahead and preface this as saying Brad Goss knows his material better than I do, but I will do my best to do a very quick summary. So Brad Goss provided a report to the city council in November of 2025, and it was performed as part of education requirements he was doing. If I recall, he was doing a horticulture program. I think it was through Meramec. It was separate from this comprehensive planning process. However, it did have a lot of overlap that is very helpful. There's a lot of great information in that work that he did. He evaluated and compared Clayton's tree and landscape regulations to some of our peer communities, as well as the Morton Arboretum to provide a nice standard The findings that he provided to us is he identified a lot of inconsistencies and gaps across our landscape regulations. He identified a lot of strengths in the communities, and then the recommendations that he had, they had an ecological focus on keystone species of trees. What is a keystone species? I will do my best to try to explain this. It is a tree species that is going to have an outsized impact on the surrounding ecosystem. He specifically focused on those insects. One thing that he really leaned into is that insects and pollinators are part of the broader ecological cycle. If we don't have insects, we don't have our plants surviving. We don't have animals surviving. We lose food production. We're all gone. One thing that he leaned into is that certain types of trees are going to support pollinators better than others. Right now, our tree chart doesn't have an ecological function. Our approved tree list doesn't have an ecological function. They're all weighted the same. However, some trees are going to be supported over others. So Brad's recommendation advocates for the requirement for keystone species along with our canopy coverage and caliper inch requirements. How would that change the way our landscape regulations function? One, we would update the tree chart to actually identify what those keystone species are. And he provided us a list and it's actually quite comprehensive. There's more than I expected. It's not just five trees. There's actually quite a few options on there. But then it would also require that a minimum number of trees on that site be these keystone species. And that's going to change the type of tree that you see. I'm going on about four years with the City of Clayton. I don't think on any single landscape plan I've seen an oak tree ever. And it's probably because when you, we love an oak tree, it's big and it's beautiful. But a lot of times developers are saying, how can I get the most bang for my buck in terms of canopy coverage? So they're probably purchasing cheaper, smaller trees that are going to give them a greater amount of canopy to hit that target. They're not necessarily looking for the more expensive oak tree that's going to take a lot longer to meet its canopy. So with that, let's pivot back to some possible changes that we're looking at. The first thing we want is robust tree protection. Citizens had a lot of concerns, especially during construction. I'm sure any of you have heard if there's a house being built near you, there's big concerns about construction equipment driving over trees. And we do not want that. We've had problems with that previously. So we want to make sure that we have robust tree protection. We want a revised fee for not meeting the canopy coverage. Sometimes that trade-off has to happen. Right now, it's not a lot. I've never seen a canopy coverage fee that hit $1,000 or was over that. When you're talking about a home that somebody's going to sell for a million dollars or more, they're not worried about that $1,000 fee. So we want to make sure that we're getting a good trade if somebody's not going to meet that canopy coverage role. We're also looking at revising our native minimums for trees and plants. Right now, we require 33% of trees to be native. We could probably go higher. We've heard back from folks that they would approve something higher. Right now, don't have any kind of minimum native requirement for plants. We're not going to go with a native plant list because that would probably become far too extensive. However, we have some language, we have some soft language in the code currently that says You should have native plants. And every time we make that comment to folks, to applicants, they're like, it doesn't give me a number I don't want to. So providing some kind of minimum there is probably going to be really beneficial for the area, especially given our concerns with stormwater, because those native Missouri plants are going to be really, really good at getting their roots deep into clay soil and helping drain water a lot better. We're also going to want to revise our tree list. Times change, and we don't know if maybe that tree list was as refined as it need to be. Is there something we need to add? Is there something that we need to take away from that list? And then in all that, we're also going to need our revised tree chart that we provide to applicants. In part of our next steps, we'll start drafting what some of these regulations look like, but we also want to get some consultant expertise. Although we've learned a lot about this in-house, this is somewhat out of our wheelhouse. And so we want to make sure that there's experts providing feedback on the regulations that we're drafting up. But the key components above all is should Clayton's landscape regulations move in the direction of that ecological focus and focus on keystone species that were in Brad Goss' recommendation? With that,

we can

dive into the discussion.

Yes. Yeah, Ryan, great job. You talked really wonderful job and you talked so quickly, but you did a great job. I would say yes, for me, I would say absolutely yes. I'd certainly be interested on how like requiring keystone species on new development would somehow maybe reduce like certain requirements, you know, in order to, again, support the focus on keystone species. So I don't know if anybody has it just because we're a little bit over time. Does anybody have any quick questions or quick comments to guide Ryan?

My only other question was, and I think I got when it says robust tree protection, you're talking primarily about like in a construction plan.

Correct.

And I believe there are some communities that like restrict people's ability to cut down trees, even if they're not doing development.

Correct.

And I don't think we do that. Is that correct?

We do not require somebody to get a permit to cut down a tree if they're cutting down trees as part of a broader project. If they cut down those trees within a year of doing something that's going to require a site plan review, we're going to require documentation of those trees. But if you just want to go cut down a tree on your property, you don't need a permit for that.

Yeah. So I don't know what we think about that and if that's something people would want to understand, like how are other communities doing it or and whether we'd want to or not. I mean, I had to cut down trees because they were like dead and um but i didn't have to no i i mean i have big open i don't have any canopy covers

yeah i mean i i agree with you becky though i've heard from um residents who have been concerned because they're like all of a sudden my neighbor cut down the tree really a healthy tree but because they didn't want to rake the leaves or because they're concerned about the tree falling on their house during another tornado so i yeah i mean i'd be interested to hear if there's a way to I don't know how we do that. I mean, I understand it's private property, but thinking about how we then require them to plant a new tree or whatever the case may be. So yeah.

And the work that Brad Goss did within his report, within some of his presentations too, he actually dove into that a little bit. There are some peer communities that require it. There's definitely trade-offs with that. So there's things to consider, but if you'd like some more concrete feedback next time about what those would be, we can dive into that.

Thank you.

I mean, I am for anything that stops trees from getting cut down, unless they have to be.

I

agree. The more I just have lived in Clayton, the more I realize how beneficial the trees are that I wouldn't have realized before. The only other thing I would add is as you're working through this, I want to be really thoughtful about how we make sure we have legitimate canopy coverage for non-residential construction. Because it bothers me to be in downtown and I see all these trees and I know full well they're never actually going to grow more than the little ornamentals they've got and provide no coverage at all.

So that's going to be unfortunately that's going to Be a different discussion because if you're talking about street Trees downtown that's going to fall within the realm of Public works and really wouldn't We wouldn't touch on that in these residential things But you know if that's Something that this group wants to discuss that's Something that you can discuss with public Works for sure

Yeah. And I mean, I do just, I would say, yeah, raising our native requirements, all the things, because I think we heard over and over again from our residents during the comprehensive plan, canopy coverage, concern for the environment, sustainability. Those were big themes that came out that people would like us to continue to be more thoughtful about. So you guys.

thoughts

or

yeah i think it's it's smart it all sounds good i mean i've heard brad's um presentation and yeah keystone species seems to really really be important um so i'm glad we're uh looking into that and i you know i appreciate you know you know when new construction happens but i would like to see if we can somehow help keep you know property owners from tearing down old trees so

I'm fine with all that, but as long as we're talking about things that are green briefly and we're talking about yards, I know just of late we have people who are concerned about how people treat their yards, particularly because of it. desire not to use pesticides. And so you see now yards, some yards that are nice green grass, some of them are a mixture of what used to be grass and other things that are green. But I would used to call them weeds, but at least they're their, their mode. So I'm just curious, do we have a policy now on what is appropriate for, uh, that type of landscaping in a, in sort of a narrow sense? Are you referring to the types of, uh, like lawn alternatives? I mean, apparently we have, I guess we're doing a little tour of it this week of one of our neighborhoods where people are complaining about what, what people are doing with their front yards. Um, And again, some of that I even observe in my neighborhood where it appears that grass is not always the preferred green item, but other things that are green. Now, maybe that's just the way it is and we don't regulate that, but I am curious if there is anything that we've looked at about that.

We don't have any regulations that specifically pertain, like they don't specifically call out lawn alternatives. I know that kind of gets messy when we start getting a property maintenance code, but we don't have anything like that currently that hasn't been a part of this discussion.

Are you talking more about like, because I have a number of neighbors who've done things like they've eliminated their lawn. They don't have turf. They have like plantings and other things. And it's actually like a much better environment. Yeah, I think it's like, and

I think it's the perception by neighbors in particular neighbors. Yeah, there may or may

not be.

Yeah, where there's kind of concern about what are, are they growing something here? Are they not growing something? I think, you know, like, yes, like upkeep of alternative forms of, yes.

I think that was what I was talking about. I'm not, I'm not trying to be judgmental that one is acceptable and one isn't. I'm just wondering, is that something we just, we'd look for uniformity or we let people do whatever they want as long

as it's arguably green. My experience at a nice little brick border and a little sign that says native garden, it'll save you a lot of headache.

All right. Thank you, Ryan. Do you have enough kind of information from us? It sounds like.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thanks guys.

Great. Thank you. All right. It looks like it's 7 0 7 0 8. So we will move forward with our regular agenda. If the city clerk could call the roll.

Council Member Buse. Council Member Patel. Here. Council Member Gary Feder. Here. Council Members Waldman.

Council Member Buse. Council Member Patel. Here. Council Member Fader. Here. Council Members Waldman.

Here.

Mayor McAndrew. Here. City Attorney Lumley. Thank you.

All right, the first item on our agenda is our open forum where anyone's welcome to talk to us about something that's not on the agenda. I don't see anyone in chambers. Is there anyone online? It looks like there's nobody online. In the future, if somebody online wants to speak on an item, feel free to raise your hand and we will allow you to speak. We'll move into the first portion of our meeting, which is our public hearing. I will, related to our PUD ordinance, I will open the public hearing and request proof of publication.

Yes, Mayor. So this is a public hearing on the PUD revisions. We had a public hearing on May 26th. We went ahead and re-advertised it for the meeting this evening. There were a number of questions that were raised at that meeting. Ana has addressed most of those. She does have a few slides that she's going to cover this evening as it relates to LEED. The LEED certification requirement, silver versus gold, was a big part of that conversation. And she did include information in the packet, but she'll review that with you shortly. But the other items with preservation of the building, canopy coverage, and the early feedback from elected officials, all of that has been addressed. She also, in the RFCA, states white were a little bit reluctant on requiring the white box of those spaces in the consumer emphasis areas due to the fact that We don't know what the end user is going to be. And in most cases, they're going to end up tearing all of that stuff out in order to make the improvements. So then you're just adding demolition costs in the end. So we would like to stay away from that. But Ana's going to talk a little bit about some of the changes or talk about the LEED certification levels and what her research has shown there. Outside of that, we continue to recommend approval of the PUD requirements with the modifications that I just discussed. and with the recommendation from the Planning Commission.

Yep. Okay. So as David just mentioned, so there are a few discussion topics that we'll go into a little bit more in detail with LEAD specifically. If you want to touch more on white box, we can expand that. And then there were three updates that were actually made in the proposed ordinance as a result of the conversations at the previous meeting. So I'm going to just briefly go over the slides that were included in the packet, providing an overview of LEED in the context of our proposed PUD regulations. So when we're looking at the updates to the planning and development, there are a few things that we had in mind as staff as kind of considerations and overall goals for those. The biggest one being that we wanted to really direct projects to incorporate city goals. So some of those are mandates and then other ones are really narrowing focus on those top priorities. We've talked about that a few times, but we wanted to provide a framework that does have some flexibility for future council members and also developers to achieve priorities that do align with the vision because as we all know that there will be trends and other changes over time. So we want to make sure that our framework stays relevant with that flexibility. And really at the end of the day, when it comes to requirements and public benefits, we're trying to find that balance between requiring the elevation of projects while still facilitating the development itself. So that's really where a lot of the dollars and cents kind of conversation comes into play of are the requirements or the benefits that we're Seeking from those developments, are we going to see those? Does the public really identify those as benefits? And are they kind of where we want the developers to spend those extra dollars that we're requiring? So if our city requirements go too far away from the goals of the developer and those costs then become too high and they don't align with the kind of goals that the developer has or the revenue projections that the developer has, then we're not likely to see that development actually occur. And that's when we've gone wrong. We've gone too far. Our hand is a little too heavy in development. And so I don't think our goal as a city is to stop development. Again, we want to enhance that creativity by providing them a path forward. So in light of all of that, we have some overview of LEED. So how LEED works into the proposed regulations as they are drafted today is that we have a design requirement. So a PUD project should be designed to meet LEED Silver. We do not have the requirement that they actually go through the certification process. but they should incorporate the points and provide the matrix that shows where they feel they would be getting points to meet LEED Silver. And then within our public benefit tiers, we've identified a few options that are somewhat repetitive with points that they might choose within LEED. The goal there being these are ones that we see are either important to us as a community or they're items that our community residents might care about. And are visible, so they can kind of see that that progress is happening. A little bit of a summary of previously approved planning and developments looked back through when we first started this process have a table of all them. There were 12 mixed use projects that were done under the last two iterations of our pod regulation, so the one before there were points or a few. Then we added the point system, a few were developed under that. And then now we're looking at a new system. Eight of the 12 projects that we looked at over the last 10 years or so have actually been constructed or under construction. All 12 were a mixed use project type. So when we look at that project size, this will come back again later. So we're now over 200,000, almost 300,000 gross square feet for the project size. So they're pretty large projects of these mixed use developments. And out of the four that were not constructed and are not under construction, all of those have cited in one form or another gaps in their construction. So in their pro forma, there has been financial gaps. Some have come to the city to request help closing. Some have not. The reasons for those gaps are the exact numbers. That's going to really vary depending on the type of project. But I do think it's important to have that context in mind that just the incentives of a PUD for increased density alone are are not enough to cover all the financial gaps for these types of projects. Okay, so LEED. I think some of us, there's probably a range of familiarity with LEED, but it's been around for a decent amount of time. So this is one managed by the United States Green Building Council, and it's a program that certifies and tries to reinforce LEED green building designs and uses a rating system that you can find across the world. The actual project types and the points opportunities are varied. So for us, I really focused in on the building design and construction category because that covers most of the types of projects that we would see here moving forward. And then the verification and review process results in points awarded. So there's a whole matrix of points, depending on the version of lead that you're evaluating a project against, those might differ. But the developers actually in the design team, they're able to select what points they're going for, they present that to LEED and then as the project is actually constructed, those points are verified and ultimately at the end of the project, they're certified at a certain level depending on how many points they've actually earned. So our recommendations with PUD have a project designing to LEED Silver, so that's the second tier out of the four options. Lead v5 is the latest version, and that was launched in 2025. This does represent a pretty significant shift from previous versions of lead, and it really focuses on the operational efficiency of projects, rather than just looking at When you first build it, where does your construction material come from? So a lot of the requirements within LEED v5, they go towards the longevity of the project. So they even get into tenant agreements for how tenant spaces might be built out and operated. They get into mechanical systems and everything else. So there is a pretty substantial initial ask that comes from LEED v5 regardless of if you're going for certification up through Platinum. So a table that I thought kind of helped outlines how V5 kind of categorizes its points. So the majority of points under V5 fall into the decarbonization goal that they have, which I think aligns pretty well with a lot of the conversations that this council has been having about decarbonization. So it aligns really well with what we're looking for in the V5 program. The points overview, it provided a little bit more of a detailed table. The biggest takeaway here is there are a lot of options for people and how that they're going to acquire the points. But there's also a significant number of prerequisites within the V5 program. And a lot of that is just basic analysis or assessments. It might be about the specific building project that they have or some elements of the surrounding area. So looking at maybe some potential hazards. So what type of storms might we be susceptible to in this region? How can they design for those? They could look for heat, water, all sorts of things, air quality. et cetera. So just to even get to lead anything, there's a lot more analysis and study and intentionality that has to go into the design and analysis to start with. So I think that the biggest takeaway from this is because there are so many options. and there's a lot of prerequisites, we could potentially just by asking somebody to go from lead to gold as our minimum, we might be asking them to do that. And they might be choosing a whole lot of points that we really don't care about as a community. So that benefit is that really something when we look at the dollar and cents, is it really worth having them spend their dollars on that if we don't really view that as a benefit? So I'll go back to that point in a second. Looking at how does the cost of LEED requirements actually impact projects? With LEED v5 being so new, there are not a lot of studies out about the direct dollar amount impact that that might have. But there were a couple of studies I found and one I pulled a table from here. Um, WSP was contracted by the city of Alexandria, Virginia to do an analysis very similar to what you all were talking about. Um, so they looked at the project types and the impacts of, of lead requirements on the dollar amount. So they looked at city projects through private developer. Um, so when we try to translate those impacts that was under the various requirements for V4. and also net zero, which is a different program that we are not looking at. But when we look at the patterns that came from this table, there is a pretty substantial dollar jump when you go from lead silver to lead gold. And especially when we start to look at the size and the project type that we most likely see with those larger mixed-use projects. I think given that there are some differences with the V5, I think it's... it's easy to assume that there would be some increase in the soft costs under V5 because of some of those additional assessments that they would have to do for a project. But there's also potential for cost savings for more of the hard costs because more and more products know You know more about the products than those being certified in the mechanical systems, and so there's access to products that might lower some of your hard costs potentially to account for some of those savings. And then obviously under both programs, there's going to be operational costs that should be the returns on your investment, so to speak, as you move forward. So I took this data and I looked at it in the context of our projects. So going back to the size, so 50,000 square feet is the minimum size of a building to qualify for a PUD project. And 280,000 square feet, is the average size of the projects from projects that either have either been approved or constructed within our city. So looking here with, if we have the office with retail on the first floor, which is a common mixed use type that we have or multifamily with retail, excuse me, retail on the first. Um, the jump is pretty significant. So if we were acquired lead silver design, you're under a million for that type one project. But if we go up to gold, you're almost at 2 million. So that's a pretty big dollar jump for us having really little oversight. on what points they choose to make that jump. So the biggest takeaway for me is if there are elements of elevating a project that might bring it up to lead goal that are important to us, I think it would be more appropriate to pull out some of those requirements or point opportunities from the lead structure and put those specifically as benefits within our strategy rather than saying we're going to make them go to gold. That's the quick overview of LEED, if you have any questions.

Anybody have any questions about LEED? I mean, I was going to ask on us, so that recommendation that you just talked about, like putting some of the things that, you know, like you set up the carbonization things that I think we've talked about how buildings are the biggest CO2 producers in downtown Clayton. Yeah. How can we think, and maybe that's more office buildings, but how can we think about doing what you just suggested? Like putting some of those, I mean, maybe, and some of them probably already in there. So do you feel like you've identified the ones that would be really, would really appeal to us? And do you feel like they're already in the... ud

like an option generally i think that that we've kind of covered it so we have um the ev chargers which i know some people don't necessarily want and some people do but i've heard a lot about even chargers so we have that as a benefit requirement we have the extraordinary landscaping for pollinators which is also talked an option for people and also the storm green infrastructure for storm water management as well as the higher efficiency mechanical systems. So we have them in more general terms pulled out of LEED. Now, in that larger table I shared with you with some notes, they get really specific in different categories. I think keeping some flexibility, like I mentioned, it will help this code stay relevant longer. But if there are more specific categories pieces that you would like to incorporate, we can do that in the future. But I think the higher level kind of identified under the PUD key result within the comp plan have already been incorporated in the proposed regulations.

And there's always an opportunity for a developer, I think I remember, that could propose something right to us that we could evaluate and give them points so they could come up with something that would be, you know, they think would be really beneficial, that would be a long term benefit to tenants or whatever the case may be that they could propose.

Right.

Question. So you had mentioned on one of the earlier slides about we don't require them to go through the process. We require them to do everything to meet it. So especially with V5, How does your staff look at that? Are you all physically collecting all the assessments or are you taking their word for it? How do we verify that it's actually

happening? We don't have any projects that have gone through this under V5 yet, but they will have to provide all of that. So one of the requirements in the proposed regulations is that they actually have a member who has the LEED certification certificate. will fill out the same scorecards that they would through LEAD, and they'll provide those to us for review as well as those assessments. So when they apply for their PUD, that would all be part of their submission packet for us to look at. And I do think we will probably learn a lot as the first few under the V5 are provided to us, and so that will... That might highlight some opportunities for us to change some language related to lead in here. But as of right now, I think keeping it a little bit higher level would be good. I

just had a question about the white boxing because you mentioned that for like temporary or pop up spaces, that's a public benefit for tier three. So why would we not want to do that for? I get like if you come into a space and like tear it up, but like why are we then wanting to do it sometimes?

If they are specifically wanting to provide temporary or pop-up space, then we want them to white box that out for that use because those potential users, the tenant or the business or whoever might be the pop-up for a temporary amount of time. It's more appealing if the space has a lot of the finishes in place and the MEP is all set up and they just have to do cosmetic tweaks and other little things and work arounds compared to a permanent tenant. who is basically going to start from scratch every time. So the dollar investment on behalf of the developer is not necessarily making the space more marketable or more to a long-term tenant but it definitely would be helping them if their goal is a short-term tenant got it okay thank you

as far as lead before v5 is it um is it like obvious that folks have to apply the like latest version of lead or could someone come to us and say like oh i'm silver under v4 I don't see how specifying that. We did

not require the minimum being V5, but I think if we already know that that's an absolute, then that might be a good modification to put in that section. Because otherwise you would let people choose? We would always tell them the latest, but... For sake of that being very clear, it might be a good idea to just put V5 in there on that same line.

Okay. Or would we want to say like the latest version? Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Yeah.

Gary, do you have any questions? I

don't have any questions on LEED. I think what you said makes a lot of sense. It's neither black nor white, and I guess it's neither gold nor silver. I mean, it's... Whatever you come up with, I think I'll be interested to see it work, but I think it's a good point. I do have a couple of other questions about the PUD, but I don't know if we're there

yet. Any other questions about LEED? I guess if we don't have any other LEED questions, Gary or Becky, do you have questions? I just have

one question on the discussion around addressing the concern that by the time projects get to us, they're like... pretty baked. You referenced in the staff report, I think what you're suggesting is the ability to participate in the conceptual review in order to provide early feedback. Am I interpreting that correctly as how you address that? So just thinking that that would be the best place for us to go learn about a project and either speak Like it would, would you consider it then appropriate for us to speak directly to the developer and or the plan commission architectural review board?

Right. So, so the idea behind that is it's a public meeting and how we operate it right now. And it's a non-binding discussion. Um, so we would solicit comments from planning commission, ARB, the public can speak and you all would also be invited to attend that meeting. So I think that's a kind of a nice one because I know, well, we have one member of the planning commission here, but I think it is helpful for them as well if there are public comments. that are voiced during that time, that also helps as we move forward with the project when they review it. So that would be my recommendation rather than having you in a, in some sort of a binding way, jump up in the process.

Yeah, that I had a question about that too. So there is, so rather than, and I misread the, so it's not like there would be a separate presentation before the city council. We would just be invited to come to the conceptual review and I guess we would work out the details later on what that would look like. You mean how many people? Yeah, and I guess that would come later. But I wasn't quite sure how that was going to work.

Yeah, we would just do one.

We really want to avoid the separate review that's just the city council because then it works the opposite way and the public's going to think that everything's been baked in because you've already had the discussion here.

I just, yeah, I just didn't understand how it was logistically going to

work. And I think I got confused in my head. I was conceptual review is, is a formal process at plan commission ARB. Correct. And the thing that's like the general community meeting is

Yeah, just the community

meeting. That's earlier than that typically or it's after

that? Yeah, so staff stays away from the community

meeting. I was thinking as I was reading this, I was like, I usually don't do that community conference. It's a separate thing. You're not asking us to start

No, we require the developer to provide the time, place, date information so that we can put that on our website. And so it's identified. And then we provide them with the list of property owners within the radius of their property and they do their own outreach to those property owners and have their own discussion. So we just require as part of them could proceeding through the process that they provide an affidavit that they actually hosted that meeting to move forward.

And does conceptual review result in a formal vote to move forward or it's really just an open? It's a

completely non-binding discussion.

All right. I think that feels good. Thank you very much.

My question is related. No, it's not surprisingly a lawyer footnotes on page 12 and 13. We have some rather interesting discussion of what architectural distinction. which is worth discussing because I know in the past, the former board always seemed to have debates about whether a project was architecturally distinct. I would just suggest not trying to get a long discussion that after I read the discussion of architectural distinction, I wrote in my margin, huh? With a question mark, because I find it very confusing as to what that actually says about architectural distinction At the planning and zoning level, it seems to say a couple of different things. And then when it gets to the city council, which gets to review architectural distinction, it seems to have different standards. It's almost like, well, notwithstanding what the plan commission said, the city council can decide something else based on some other factors, some of the same and some that are not. So I would just point out, I find that confusing right now. Yeah, so that

was the definition there, the Architecture Review Board, we did have some discussions and tweaks about that for this. So the Architecture Review Board does have the authority to review the architectures. The section that we're referencing is that they have the authority They have the ability and have to sign off on the exterior of any building, but that doesn't mean that it's risen to the level of architectural distinction for a public benefit. So the ARB does their review as the ARB and they provide an approval or denial or however they might act upon the exterior appearance of of the building as authorized by that section reference. And then they'll provide, you know, the plan commission will provide a recommendation to you all about the public benefits if that PUD progresses. And then you might evaluate or you have the authority as the council to evaluate whether or not architectural distinction is met in terms of a public benefit.

Okay, I understood that. I didn't understand what it says in the footnote. So you might just want to take a look at that. My other one is a

bet. I'm glad you brought it up. Is the ARB going to vote or weigh in on architectural distinction under the current proposal?

Right. So the Planning Commission ARB will continue to provide, they always provide a recommendation to you all as part of the rezoning PUD process. The ARB, when they vote about the appearance of the building, they have the end authority in that. So I know it is a little bit tricky, but our architecture review board is set up. So if we were to read section 400.1, 110, it gives the context by which the architecture review board has to decide that the design is compatible and appropriate with the surrounding character. So they look at that. But you all as a city council have the end authority to approve a planned unit development and the rezoning that occurs along with that. So that's where the two items are a little bit different. They have to rule on the ARB, but they'll provide you a recommendation as it relates to the PUD. And that's where architectural distinction comes into play. Not every project is going to propose architectural distinction as part of how they're gonna meet their minimum public benefit points. So it might not come up every time, but looking at the past 12 projects that we reviewed, it did come up every time and there was a lot of discussion about what architectural distinction actually was. And so that's the goal of providing this definition, so to speak of architectural distinction is to try and help that.

to the extent that the council can look at culturally rooted design or distinctive massing. Now, those are not things that are mentioned in the discussion about the ARB. Is that to suggest that the council can have a more worldly view of this and it's not that neat, but it's culturally rooted, whatever that might be? Is it to say we just have broader standards at the council? No, it's not

broader standards. It's a different lens. So there's just the ARB's goal of purely the aesthetics, the compatibility, the quality of the materials as it relates to architectural review of any project in the city. So those same standards and authority that's granted the ARB, that same language applies to a single family house, a detached garage of new 10-story building in downtown Clayton. But architectural distinction has a specific tie to a public benefit outlined in this regulation for a planned unit development. So that's where the two lenses are. So in order to try and provide developers and designers with an idea of what we mean by architectural distinction and how that goes above just a compatible, nice looking building, we pulled language from some of how the AIA, so the architects, how they evaluate projects for awards. So we looked at different standards for awards across the country. We looked at different standards just basic kind of, you know, I looked at like WashU and what do their teachers talk about when they look at architecture and other architecture schools across the country. So that's where those words came from for architecture distinction.

And on the difference between workforce housing and affordable housing, and I think I was reading this too literally. I'm sure this wasn't the intent, but it says, for example, affordable housing units shall be permanently available for residents with a qualifying income. I assume that does not mean that you have to be a resident of Clayton first in order to qualify. It just means that if you're going to live in this project and therefore you become a resident, you could come from Brentwood or U City or somewhere else. That language of resident is not meant to be that narrowly defined as I just did.

No, this is pulled directly from HUD, so that's the resident of that unit. They use

it

interchangeably with occupant.

And I've always thought of the term workforce housing to mean, for example, the workforce would be people who work for the city of Clayton, work for the Clayton School District. They constantly, the police department, they are the workforce. But as I read this here, that has nothing to do with it. It's just you either qualify as affordable housing based on how your income relates to a standard housing And workforce relates to a different percentage, but it has nothing to word workforce doesn't mean what how I just defined it that it's not limited to a particular scope of people who are employed by the city, the school district, etc. Right.

That's correct, yeah. So the term workforce as it's defined here aligns with the terminology of the language across the board when it comes to these types of projects. So if you Google search workforce housing, it's going to say something very similar to this where it's aligning with that 100% of area median income compared to 80% for affordable.

My last one is there's something in here about If you agree to have certain spaces for certain uses, you've only got a certain amount of time to actually comply with that. I think the last one of the footnotes talks about CEA spaces qualifying must be occupied within six months of issuance of the first occupancy permit. It raises the question I've raised before, which is I'm still concerned about enforcement that when we approve a plan and it's based on the developer agreeing to do something, particularly in a multi-use sort of setting, they agree to put whether it's retail, however we define it on the first floor. They have to do it within a certain amount of time. I still am not entirely clear what our penalty is because in theory, If you told Clarendale said they were going to put something on the first floor and they weren't supposed to do that five years ago. And I think they're about to do something, but we really didn't have any enforcement mechanism. I think in a more recent project we approved, we said basically you got to do this with one year. I'm still not clear what happens when the one year is over because if Clarendale had started moving people into their facility, we wouldn't have told them all to move out. Is it going to be a financial penalty? What is it going to be when someone doesn't comply that's actually practical that we actually can enforce? And maybe that goes back to our municipal court, which then becomes kind of a circular discussion, but... Any further thoughts on how we make this enforcement more realistic in the future? Right.

I mean, I think there's always going to be an element of we have to decide how you enforce any regulation that a city has. You hope that the people that are in your community are going to comply. But with the majority of the projects that we see, we have our traditional path, so we would be able to enforce our ordinances per the regulations of a city. A big one that we identified with the Clarendale and others, if we had had similar language about a timeline associated with their occupancy, we would be able to withhold issuing any additional permits because they would be in violation of an ordinance. So we do have that within our municipal code. If they're actively in violation of municipal ordinance, we have the right to withhold other other approvals and permits so most of the projects that we have are residential upstairs um so that gives us a lot of opportunity to deny permits um so we wouldn't necessarily start by kicking everybody out but we might say you can't move anybody else in as another form of enforcement be it you know outside of our traditional methods through municipal court etc

i'm done

I just had one quick question about the contribution to an affordable CEA space through provisions, that one. It's a little bit open-ended. Is that just so that they can present just kind of what their thoughts might be on that?

Yep.

Okay. And then is that only on the consumer emphasis streets? Yes. that were requiring that, or

is it just any? So they could, so we refer back to the consumer emphasis uses because we've identified those specifically in a use table. So they could, if it was a PUD that was proposed and it's on one of our consumer emphasis treats, they would already need to provide consumer emphasis uses on the first floor, so they might then elevate a public benefit by doing one of these options of building it out or providing lower rent or something of that nature. But if the project was not on a CEA street, but it would still need to be mixed use, for example, most of the projects would be, then they could qualify by providing those CEA spaces on the first floor. Okay, got it.

Thank you. I just wanted to say thank you for the work that you did clarifying the lead levels in that process. That study was really helpful, and I appreciate it.

Great. Anyone else? So I think it looks like we're just going to proceed with the recommendations as you've outlined them. Unless...

I had a motion to amend the section on LEED, which is... Section 405 1370 general requirements. Section C one, we want to note that the lead that we are referring to the latest version of lead certification.

And that's the only that's the only change or the only outstanding. Okay.

Second,

All those in favor?

All

those in favor, aye. Any opposed? All right, so we'll introduce the bill and then as amended. Council member? Yes. If there's no further comment, no comments from the audience. I will close the public hearing. Council Member Patel.

Yes, I introduce Bill No. 7156.1 as amended. Second. Approving an amendment to Section 405.390, Article X, Planned Unit Development District to add new definitions and establish new regulations to be read for the first time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion? Mr. City Attorney.

Ordinance amending Chapter 405 of the Clayton City Code to add new definitions and adopt new regulations for planned unit development districts.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Council Member Patel.

I move that the council give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of Bill No. 7156.1 as amended on the day of its introduction.

Second.

All those in favor.

Aye. Any opposed. The vote passes six to zero. Let the minutes reflect that the council has given unanimous consent.

I introduce Bill No. 7156.1 as amended, approving an amendment to Section 405.390, Article X, Planned Unit Development District, to add new definitions and establish new regulations to be read for the second time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion?

Mr. City Attorney.

An ordinance amending Chapter 405 of the Clayton City Code to add new definitions, and adopt new regulations for planned unit development districts.

Council Member Patel. Aye. Council Member Gary Feder.

Council Member Patel. Aye. Council Member Fader.

Aye.

Council member Jeffery Yorg.

Council member York.

Aye.

Councilmember Waldman. Aye. Council. Member Betsy Meyland-Smith. Aye. Mayor McAndrew. Aye. Thank you.

Councilmember Waldman. Aye. Council. Member Malin Smith. Aye. Mayor McAndrew. Aye. Thank you.

The next item on our agenda is our consent agenda. Open the discussion. Are there any questions or comments from the council or the audience?

I said a quick adjustment to the meeting notes. It said that I was there, but I wasn't.

Would you say? Oh, you weren't. Yeah.

Okay.

That's up to you. Did you get that, June? Yes. Anyone else? Council Member

Patel. I move to approve the consent agenda.

Second.

Any discussion?

Sorry. Council Member Patel? Aye. Councilmember Gary Feder?

Sorry. Council Member Patel? Aye. Councilmember Fader?

Aye.

Councilmember Jeffery Yorg? Aye. Councilmember Waldman? Aye. Council member Betsy Meyland-Smith?

Councilmember York? Aye. Councilmember Waldman? Aye. Council member Malin-Smith?

Aye.

Mayor McAndrew?

Aye. Thank you. All right. Our no old business, but we've got some new business related to the budget.

Yes. So we have our finance director, Karen Dilber, here this evening to go over the budget amendment and the financial report. I will mention as she comes up, so we did have turnover within the finance department, and the priority was to get last year's audit done. So last year's audit is late in being finalized, but it's done now. So we're moving on and cleaning up the first quarter and the second quarter, the budget amendments, and then following up with the financial reports. That's what we're doing this evening. And for those of you that have been on the council for a while, you'll know that this is later than we typically do it. So the tough thing is mentally at this point is we're halfway through fiscal year 26. We're already talking about fiscal year 27 and starting that budgeting process. Now we're asking you to go all the way back in your minds to October 1st of 2026 of last fall. when a lot of these things move over. And what you'll see is a lot of those one-time expense items, in particular capital projects that moved from fiscal year 25 that were not complete to fiscal year 26. So the vast majority of the things you're going to see on that list are those projects that are moving from one fiscal year to the next. For example, council chamber security, those types of projects, you just approved the contract for those, but this budget amendment's moving that project from fiscal 25 to fiscal 26 and ultimately funding it. So I just wanted to point that out that it is later than normal. So it's a little hard mentally to go back in time to that point in time. But finance has done a really great job of detailing all of these, all of these items that are contained within this budget amendment in the packet. So Karen's going to go through that here in just a second, but thank you for organizing all this and working with the department heads. And it was an extremely challenging time in finance. So I'm really happy with the work product in the end. So.

Yes. So we have our finance director, Karen Dilger, here this evening to go over the budget amendment and the financial report. I will mention as she comes up, so we did have turnover within the finance department, and the priority was to get last year's audit done. So last year's audit is late in being finalized, but it's done now. So we're moving on and cleaning up the first quarter and the second quarter, the budget amendments, and then following up with the financial reports. That's what we're doing this evening. And for those of you that have been on the council for a while, you'll know that this is later than we typically do it. So the tough thing is mentally at this point is we're halfway through fiscal year 26. We're already talking about fiscal year 27 and starting that budgeting process. Now we're asking you to go all the way back in your minds to October 1st of 2026 of last fall. when a lot of these things move over. And what you'll see is a lot of those one-time expense items, in particular capital projects that moved from fiscal year 25 that were not complete to fiscal year 26. So the vast majority of the things you're going to see on that list are those projects that are moving from one fiscal year to the next. For example, council chamber security, those types of projects, you just approved the contract for those, but this budget amendment's moving that project from fiscal 25 to fiscal 26 and ultimately funding it. So I just wanted to point that out that it is later than normal. So it's a little hard mentally to go back in time to that point in time. But finance has done a really great job of detailing all of these, all of these items that are contained within this budget amendment in the packet. So Karen's going to go through that here in just a second, but thank you for organizing all this and working with the department heads. And it was an extremely challenging time in finance. So I'm really happy with the work product in the end. So.

And Karen, you're fully staffed again. I mean, everybody's back. Yes. It wasn't so much turnovers. We had two people. I'm sorry. But

yeah, we have two people that were out for extended periods.

Well, and in addition to that, too, we had an added FEMA, you know, action item, action item that, you know, but that was in addition to, you know, things. I mean, that was an unexpected time. element as well.

Correct. Thank you. Thank you very much. So this budget amendment covers the first and second quarters. I tried to lay out absolutely everything I could except for the minutiae within the amendment itself. I know there was a question about the increase in anticipated building and plumbing permits, which I have been informed is for the Wash U dorm project, and for the 121 South Merrimack project. Otherwise, everything else I pretty much outlined in this amendment. So if you've had a chance to look at it, if you have any questions.

You can go around. Does anybody have any questions?

One other thing I'll say really quickly, sorry to jump in there, Council Member Patel, but the numbers that you saw at the retreat reflect what you see here. So this isn't like new information. We got to go back and fix all of that. So what you've been working off of the past couple of months is the updated information that you see tonight. Thank you. This is just cleaning all of that up.

I did also put together a reconciliation of the fiscal 26 beginning fund balance to what we anticipated the fiscal 26 beginning fun balance would be, which would have been our fiscal 25 ending fund balance in a separate document that outlines. This is what we thought. These are all the budget amendments that happened last year. And this is where we ended up, which then again correlates to our fiscal 26 beginning fund. So there are no questions about that.

Thanks. I know this is complicated. It's complicated for me. It's obviously your expertise. I would just say I appreciate the clarity. I think I understand everything. It all looks like projects I know we made intentional decisions about and I feel good about. It's always a bummer to have it all have so much decrease in revenue and increase in expenditures, but I don't have any other questions or comments. Thank you.

I don't have many questions either. I mean, I think I've been through this a couple of times and I realize there's a lot of cycles here and you can look at this as a particular point in time and say, oh my gosh, and then It basically fixes itself because of various factors that change within three or four months. So this all made sense to me. I didn't see anything to be concerned about. So I have no other questions or comments.

On the Capital Improvement Fund, I see my favorite 10 South Brownwood multiple line items of construction projects. It got me thinking, in that fund specifically, how much of all of that was expected as part of our CIP plan and how much wasn't? I'm assuming most of 10 South Brownwood wasn't because we had to approve that separate, but... Because that seems to be driving most of the overall expense change.

So there are really two things in here that we didn't anticipate. One was on that third level garage repairs. If you remember, we came back for multiple change orders. As we tore into that, we had to replace all the reinforcement and it was a mess. So That cost was much higher than we thought. Waterproofing was a planned project. The exterior improvements were a planned project. Garage security, a planned project. Although we're having trouble finding a contractor that will actually do the work. We've put it out to bid a couple of times and we're not getting responses. The exterior signage was not an expense that we foresaw. We had had some conversations about it years ago, but if you recall when we approved that a couple months ago, it was really the the court monitor that came and required that work to be done. And that's why it was later added. And then that that's it for 10 South Brentwood. So a couple of those were unanticipated, but for the most part we knew they were coming.

So, so if I look at, so I'm looking at the front page when it's showing the first quarter amendment of the 2.8 million of expenses, most of that was expected, right? Or budgeted through our CIP plan. That's what I was trying to get at. If you look at the general fund expense numbers, there isn't a ton. They're not new

items that we were adding. They were projects that were deferred or didn't get done in fiscal 25 or they were equipment purchases that we already knew about 25 that were ordered that's that sort of thing so

the important thing for me is like we had already talked about them and

budgeted for them that's correct there are no surprises in here and we're we're very clear and we always will be in the rfca if you're approving something that's going to be in a future budget amendment we're always cool okay thoughtful about lining that out for you

that's all i had

I didn't have any questions, but thank you for all the detail and it really helped me go through it all. So thanks.

Same. My main question was, is there anything in here that we aren't, you know, that we need to be focused on? And it seems like we've covered it all. So

thank

you.

I would like to point out in this particular budget amendment on the 10 South Brentwood project, the exterior signage and then the 10 North Bemiston Council Chamber security. Those are actually doubled. So we're going to reverse those two, half of those two in the third quarter budget amendment. So you will see those again. Two departments submitted them both at the same time. And we did a double check to make sure things weren't being duplicated and the wording and the amounts were different, just different enough that It passed through three different people. So you'll be seeing that again. I just

want to just, it'll be amended again. Yes.

Yes. About $70,000. And

thank you for the, I think, is this kind of new, this, what you did about like you referred to putting together the FY25 program? anticipated fund balance to what it actually was, right? Yes. Because that's been such a source of confusion before for me. And so I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. It's amazing how many differences there can be. I mean... yeah

well and it's hard to remember you know we do four budget amendments well this year we'll do three and so you know from one starting point like david said you're going all the way back and you know what did we pass and what didn't we pass so i thought it might be helpful to see them all in one place

thank you yep thank you karen and please express our thanks to kayla as well because i know she worked hard too so absolutely thank you If there are no other questions or comments on the first and second quarter budget amendments, I will... Council Member Patel.

I introduce Bill No. 7162, approving the first and second-quarter FY26 budget amendments to be read for the first time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion?

Mr. City Attorney.

I mean, the fiscal year...

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

I move that the council give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of bill number 7162 on the day of its introduction.

Second. All those in favor. Aye. Any opposed to vote passes six to zero. Let the minutes reflect that the council has given unanimous consent.

I introduce bill number 7162, approving the first and second quarter FY26 budget amendments to be read for the second time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion? Mr. City

Attorney?

Amending the fiscal year 2026 budget and appropriating.

Council Member Patel? Aye. Council Member Gary Feder?

Council Member Patel? Aye. Council Member Fader?

Aye.

Council member Yorg?

Aye.

Council members Waldman? Aye. Councilmember Betsy Meyland-Smith? Aye. Mayor McAndrew? Aye.

Council members Waldman? Aye. Councilmember Malin-Smith? Aye. Mayor McAndrew? Aye.

All right, and then you're going to provide us with a financial report for fiscal year 2026. I

am. So because we're doing both of them together, I will touch on both, but I'm going to kind of cover overall. Overall through March, so these two reports go through December 31st of 2025, that's the first quarter, and March 31st of 2026, which is the second quarter. We are rapidly approaching the third quarter, but you'll see that information later. So the sales tax revenue has been strong over both quarters. In the first quarter, the sales tax revenue across all funds increased by 5.5% year over year. And then in the second quarter, so encompassing both, It increased by 10.4%. So that 10.4 incorporates the 5.5 in it. So sales taxes are doing really well. Now, a big portion of that is the new fire sales tax revenue. So it's not like we're like, yay, we're super flush with all this money now. It's that we passed that additional tax, which began collecting October 1st.

Right, because existing sales taxes are quite a bit flatter.

Yes, the existing sales taxes are flat, but it is really exciting to see those big numbers. So if you look at the, as you make your way through the report, you'll see that the restaurants, the hotels, the grocery pharmacy and liquor and different specialty retails, those collections are up. But again, we're going to correlate that to our new fire sales tax. Any questions about sales tax at this time? No. So the use tax in the first quarter, that was down by about 4.8%. But then in the second quarter, it went up by 3.6%. So, you know, use tax, that's the online, that's the, you know, people from businesses ordering from different places. And that's what the use tax represents.

The use tax goes to the capital fund, just as a reminder. And we do see fluctuation there. So that's not uncommon from one quarter to the next to see big fluctuation based upon those major purchases from the corporate entities here in town.

And as far as those purchases go, we don't really know when they're going to make them. So it just, you know, we're as surprised as you are when it happens. So any questions about these taxes? So then the property taxes, if you look at the first quarter financial report, you're going to see that the receipts were lower than fiscal 25, but that was a timing issue. And so in the second quarter, the receipts came back up, which it's 7% year over year. And then so by that point, we will have collected the majority of them this year. It's usually May or June. We receive like a final big disbursement, which is usually the ones that are kind of in disputed status. The preliminary disputed status, like the whole disputed status, Kevin has told us is a much longer process. But we'll receive a final big deposit usually in May or June. And we got that in May this year. So you'll see additional information in the third quarter report. But as of second quarter, we had collected most of the property taxes that we were going to get. They usually come in December or January. So that was a timing issue. Questions about property taxes?

So just confirming that explanation ties to the 6.9% lower that you got quoted.

Yes. In quarter one, the 6.9%, lower it's, it was a timing

issue. Okay.

Yeah.

I just want to make sure what I was looking at and what you were saying, I was tying the two together. Okay. Absolutely.

Any questions about that? No. Okay. So utility taxes in quarter one, they had increased by 10.1% year over year. And by the end of quarter two, they were 7.5%. So basically like a dip and they've At the end of March, they were at 7.5% overall year over year. And that just correlates to, did we have a cold winter? Was it warmer than anticipated? There were some rate increases, so that's also going to be a correlating factor. Questions about any of that? Parking revenue. So parking revenue is slightly declined. In quarter one, it had decreased by 4.1% year over year. It's up in quarter two by 3% year over year, so that's not quite a wash. So basically we're down by 1.1%, you know, overall between those two quarters, but cumulatively we're up. It's stabilized, but it just depends on our people here. Are they utilizing our parking services? Are they parking in a parking garage? That kind of thing. So we're doing our best to try to predict it. Historically, when we would do budgeting, we would predict roughly two percent increase but because these numbers have been fluctuating so much we're we're watching the trends when we do our budgeting we're trying to take a five-year average but you know at this point five years we kind of maybe we factored a little bit of covid because we were really down then so you know we're just we're just watching it i guess is what i'm trying to tell you it's slightly down but we're watching it questions about that okay So now I'm going to hit on the expenditures because the other ones are kind of smaller revenue accounts. The general fund is where we're going to see a lot of our expenditures. We've already talked about capital. Those are big dollars. In quarter one, the general fund expenditures were $754,301 higher than the same period in fiscal 25. personnel costs, which is our biggest expense rose by 6%, which is consistent with the, you know, personnel increases and benefit increases that we anticipated with this budget year. In quarter two, they were $1.4 million higher, and that is personnel cost was $740,000 and some change higher, and contractual was $599,000 and some chance higher. This is personnel costs were 6.7% increased from year over year, which again, that's in line with what we budgeted. So the contractual services, the increase, a lot of that is tornado-driven and inflation-driven. Questions about that? Okay, and then overall expenditures. So quarter one, overall expenditures and financing uses, they were slightly lower than fiscal 25, but by quarter two, we had increased that. There were 1.9 million higher year over year, and that's debt payments and capital projects is like the big portion of that. So that's our two quarter financial reports in a nutshell. Any questions about any of that?

Any thoughts? Questions? No, thank you.

Just one. Sorry, Gary. Go

ahead,

please. So after looking through the fiscal one, if I'm looking at the general fund summary, we were down about $688,000 in the negative. We had it jumped up in the quarter two and looks like most of it's a revenue jump. I'm assuming that's just... the fire tax collection, property tax collection. I'm just trying to figure out how we went from the swing from negative 688 to now it looks like 1.3 million in there.

So the general fund is where we typically, we will see our our property taxes, the majority of our property taxes there. So when we were down in December compared to our December of fiscal 25, that's going to be the big portion. It's going to be a timing. So that could be – the fire sales taxes are also collected in that fund, but that 6% is going to correlate mostly to the property

taxes. No, no, no. I'm actually looking at like – I guess it's page 96 and 81. I don't know which docs you're looking at. It just looked like – It's an actual paper. Okay. So it says fiscal year 26 actual through first quarter, we were just had a deficit of 688 grand, but it looks like fiscal 2026 through the end of second quarter, we're up 1.3 million. I was just curious as to what drove the swing because it looks like the expenses stayed pretty steady, but the revenues went up in Q2 more than they went up in Q1. I just didn't know if that was a sales tax thing, if that was a, property tax collection thing.

Can you tell me what page you're on?

You're talking about the increase in revenue of about $900,000. No. So if you're at...

What page are you on,

Jeff? So if you look at 81 of the Q1. Okay, you're at Q1.

I went to 96 in the packet.

Yeah, so we were down 688, which is fine. I see that. Then when you go to page 96 in the Q2 packet, it looks like revenues went up $8 million, which is kind of what they were in Q1. So I'd expect them to do in Q2. But then the revenues went up Instead of 7 million, which is what they were through Q1, they went up 10 plus million. And I was just curious what was driving that. Does that make sense, Karen? And it's not a big deal. It was just more of a curiosity question.

We'll pull it and send it out.

Yeah, it's not a make or break thing. I saw the first one and I was like, oh, we've got deficits already. And then I was like, Oh, wait a minute. Now there's a swing of, what is it? Almost $2 million if my math is right. I just kind of want to know what it is. It could be those property tax receipts, but we'll take a look. We'll email

out the answer.

That was all I had. I just happened to see that because I was... trying to figure out where we are in our crossing of our expense and revenue lines and when they were starting. Do

you have any questions? Okay. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Karen. Great. The last item on our agenda is a contract for some pavement marking.

So the Public Works Department is requesting approval of construction contract for pavement marking 2026 project with Traymar Contracting Incorporated. This will refresh the existing pavement markings throughout the city, as well as add additional bike lane markings on Maryland Avenue. Two bids were open on May 29th. Trademark Contracting submitted the lowest responsive responsible base bid. The amount was $199,473.73, and they had an ad alternate A for a total of $25,545. That is the bike lane markings and then what they'll call Mike boxes, I believe. So that was the ad alternate and the project had an estimated cost of seven $70,400 so this came in significantly over budget. So public works staff went back to the contractor to try to reduce the scope to get it closer to the budgeted amount. There are some in house work that we're going to be able to do. with our staff, the long line markings we can't do at this point in time. We're really disrupted with the work that's going on at the municipal garage. So paint striping is typically something we would undertake ourselves, but we simply can't do all of that at this point. So that's the reason for the contract. We do recommend approval of the reduced scope construction contract with Tremar. The total amount has been reduced to $80,013.73. and then we're asking for another $4,000 to approve change orders. That's a total amount of $84,013.73, and we recommend approval of the ordinance. There was an email that went out this week. I got quite a few questions about the bike lane markings and what those actually look like. So Matt had a really good schematic that I sent out that showed basically that the bike lane markings are primarily at conflict points and intersections along that stretch. We had a long conversation about a year and a half ago about why we didn't want to do the solid green striping all the way down and picked out particular areas where it's most effective. So what you see there is really what the initial engineers had called for. And in large part, this is replacing the pole delineators that we had out there for some time. So that's it. I'll have Matt come up if you have any questions, but we're excited to get the markings on the ground.

Thank you. I will open the discussion. Are there any questions or comments from the council?

Yeah, I wonder if you could pull up the picture of the marking and just kind of we can see what it looks like. If you give us just a minute. Yeah, take a minute. I mean, I only was able to look at it on my phone, and it was confusing to me a little bit. So I think what I want to understand is, are we the reduction in the scope of the contract for the purpose of meeting or getting closer to budget? Does that actually mean we're doing less pavement marking or we're doing more of it in-house or some combination of that? What's the, I don't know. So when we

put the number together to put into the budget for FY26, we hadn't developed really this plan. We'd never bid this out. So we went back about nine years, compiled quantities from all of our different paving cycle projects, came up with an estimate. Depending on that project, if it had a low quantity, the quantity for that unit may have been very high. So we did our estimate, the engineer's estimate for this work in total would have been about $178,000 with a bid came in at 199. Sorry, we didn't include that on the bid tabulation. But now come back to forward. When the bid came in that much higher than our budget, we said, okay, we don't have the long line machine right now and we're displaced, as David said. So let's get the contractor to do that, which are the cheaper items and the things that are the more stencil work, the wider stripes, the things we can do in-house. We'll try to have a combination of our staff doing things we can do um performing the long line work so that in the end we still get a completed restriped city if you will so it's a combination of contractor work and city staff work

okay answer the

question it

um yeah so i think the markings you were hoping to get done will all get done in the end

Yes. We just hoped it would be all contractor. Yeah.

Yeah. Does that mean it's just going to take longer or will you have to give up like, or will we pay overtime?

Because

I know your teams are busy.

Yeah, there may be some overtime associated with it. Usually what we'll do is we will shift schedules. But given the type of work we're doing here for the templates, we might have some overtime, but we'll try to shift schedules and some of this stuff can be done during the day. The long line work was typically what we would do overnight and that's when we'd shift schedules.

And so that's helpful because for some reason I was thinking that the image was designed to specifically show just like the green pavement marking, but it's showing everything that the contractor is going to do.

No, sorry. I didn't create this just for this evening. This was created for the Maryland Avenue project when it was designed back in 2019.

oh

and this was the entire striping project or pages for that project it was just a good graphical representation of the green portions at the bike box where you transition on the west end at Forsyth back to a shared lane and then the different crossings at the maybe places where you wouldn't quite expect to encounter a bicycle where you're pulling out at the driveways as you uh if you scroll a page or two down So

what we're going to see, what's relevant here to what will be done under this contract is what's green in this schematic or is it

pretty close? Everything else that you see in here that's black on here basically, that's already in place.

Right. That's what I thought. Okay. So that doesn't need to be redone or some of it will be refreshed.

It'll all be refreshed between us and the contractor. We do that every year as much as we can, but the green is really just the new addition that's not there now. Because once we put the green down, we have to come back with the white on top of it to border for the conflict marking strips through the driveways. Yeah.

And so I just want to be clear about where it's green and why. And so the slashes are not actually intersections. It's like driveways typically or alleys or something like that.

You might not expect pedestrians or other traffic crossing the roadway as you're pulling out. Okay. That was a suggestion of our engineers at the

time. Yeah, like that's why we don't have green at Brentwood Boulevard. and maryland avenue because people are going to be like really aware they're there right i'm not i mean yeah it's the engineer's recommendation i don't yeah

this is really for people pulling out of those garages yeah you see them on these pages those are all garage entrances

right and then is that it basically or is there anything else at intersections i thought there was

some

alleys i believe um

like this

here down to like the third or fourth page or whatever I think it's there's one where we have that sweeping right turn at Merrimack coming out. So that's technically an intersection on the north side. And then as you're coming off Hanley. But I think those are just because a little less of immediately in the middle of the intersection. If I'm channeling the designers on this.

yeah thank you um okay and the um you mentioned something at the end of your report that i didn't think was related or in scope did you mention polls the polls or something is something happening with those

discussion we had a year and a half ago is that we weren't going to put them back in after this winter. So, you know, the big thing was that that was letting people know there's a bike lane, don't park across it at this time, especially over the winter as we monitored it, there's been enough behavior change where people that park on a regular basis on the street kind of know where to start. We might have some cars occasionally cross that line, but at the same time that the poles, uh, the base where they screw in, We were starting to have issues with that. Some of the poles would get hit or removed. It was a pain to put them in and then take them out every year so that we could plow snow and do that sort of thing. Yeah, so they're

gone.

That's correct. And

they're not going to go back, and we don't have a plan for them to go back. That's what I thought. I just wanted to confirm. Is it technically a protected bike lane without the poles? Yes.

It's parking protected

by the parking is what we say. Okay. I don't have anything else. Thank you.

I think when we had this discussion a year and a half ago, I indicated I was not a big fan of the bike lanes. I'm still not a big fan But I think at the time, I said that if we could do things to make this area safer, then I would support that. I know one of the things that triggered this concern roughly a year and a half ago was – and we haven't fortunately had incidents – was the one gentleman who was biking and the person getting out of their passenger side of the car opened the door without looking and hit the bicyclist, the cyclist, the cyclists went down. So a part of the theory I think was adding green paint in some places will remind people, which is especially important because the poles are gone and I'm all for that, but we'll remind people that these are bike lanes and that there are theoretically at least people on bicycles going by. So I am generally supportive of this, including this provision. But I guess I would note for the record that the fact that I would support spending more money on the bike lanes does not mean I'm a convert. And I still hope we will have a day where we will decide whether it's related to repaving the street or whatever we do, that there will be some future council will have an opportunity whether to maintain the bike lanes going forward. Yeah. So I will begrudgingly vote yes, because I hate, frankly, to spend more money on these. On the other hand, if there's a chance it'll make it safer, then I'm also in favor of it.

Yeah, and I mean, just to kind of piggyback on that statement, Gary, I think there will be a time where there will have to be a discussion as to whether to keep them because we will have to microsurface the street. And I think there's a question as to when, which I've told people, you know, normally we would do it every seven to eight years, microsurface, so that would... put us around 2028, 2029. But there's a pavement rejuvenator that we put on the street that could extend the life of the street before we microsurface. So I think it's kind of a bit of a question mark as to whether or not as to when we might have to actually make that determination. But I think eventually, yes, there will have to be a decision as to when we keep them because we'll have to microsurface at some point. Is that accurate,

Matt? That's accurate. And I'd say we're probably looking at that 2030 to 2031 range now, if I had to guess, but it's all going to be based on how it continues to perform. So I don't want to put an exact date on it. And I'll remind back to the conversation we had in December of 24 about this. We did look at two options. This is the waterborne, the cheaper of the two options. There was one that was another product that had a much longer life, but given that we were already so far into the pavement cycle, We weren't going to pay to install that to then have to mill it off, grind it off and Microsoft over it. So

yeah, this will

be a waterborne paint that will require annual maintenance for now. At a future date, we may decide on a different product.

That answers one of my questions. I would say with Gary, I don't particularly like the bike lanes, but it's more because they don't go anywhere. So I think the councils between now and 2030 to 2031 need to either bite the bullet and put money in to build more bike lanes or eventually decide that this isn't a bike lane we need. But again, that's a debate for either us or people over the next six years. The green paint was one question I had, Matt. The other one... Can we make sure that since we don't have the pillars, can we make sure parking enforcement's on that and just make sure to the extent we haven't over-enforced that? The only other question is the long line painter. And I saw it in there. I think that's the one that we sold. We sold one.

Yeah, we liquidated it as part of our move out of the garage. It was due to be replaced anyway. And we were moving out of the garage and didn't have a

great place for it. So would that be one of those where we could maybe, instead of buying it, partner up with one of our sister or brother cities, if you will, and just borrow theirs when we need it? As opposed to having to sink money into buying a new one?

Right now, I'm... unaware of any of the typical partner cities we utilize that have a long line striper. They have this smaller type work, but a lot of these other cities around us contract out. We do have another meeting that Maplewood's trying to put together with the central core cities again to talk about equipment sharing and things. This is something that's going to be a part of that conversation.

I figured that would be the case or hopefully this would be one of those where nobody, but people don't have to buy it long. Okay. That's all I had. We're

looking into that as well because this is a factor in our FY27 budget too. Great. Thanks, Matt.

I guess I'm in agreement with Gary on the bike lanes and I hate to see more money being poured into it and I get the safety of it, but I just know all of our, you know, Ward 3 constituents are not going to be happy when they see us like highlighting and redoing something that they hate so much. So that's just so I can be on the record that I'm not loving this. And then the 20, so in like five years, we might be able to redo it.

Okay. That'll be when we microsurface again. So that's when we have to decide whether to restrike. That's a time

where we would cover the existing pavement with another thin layer of asphalt and repaint the roadway. So whatever we go back with at that time.

Okay, and so the green paint, you said there's going to be a little bit more work that has to be done over, I guess, the next five years? Yeah,

instead of being something that would last seven or eight years, it's going to be an annual application. So you're going to see this fade out a lot quicker than maybe some other green paint that you've seen on the east end of Y-Down or something down on Skinker, where that's a thicker product that's kind of like an epoxy. This is a waterborne paint that has... angular aggregate in it for traction, but it's still going to fade like the other street lines.

Right, so then this cost of, is it $10,000 or is it $18,000 for the green

paint? $18,000 plus $7,000 for the bike box, it looks like. Yeah, so this brings it up to $25,000. Yeah, and $18,000 is just the marking that I saw that the $7,000 is for the bike

box. So it's going to be $25,000 every year for the next five years for the green paint, or no? Unless we

have, with the aggregate, we have to explore ways if we can take that in-house to do that. Okay. This is because it's contractual, yeah. Okay.

Darn it.

If we can do it in-house, we will.

I don't think I hate the bike lanes.

The problem is all the people that like the bike lanes don't say anything about it.

Yeah. I'm fine with the bike lanes. And I'm happy to hear that behavior has changed. So mind with us. Thank you.

right there's no other questions or comments council member patel

i introduce bill number 7163 approving a contract with tramar contracting inc for the pavement marking project to be read for the first time by title only

second

any discussion mr city attorney All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

I move that the Council give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of Bill No. 7163 on the day of its introduction.

Second. All those in favor. Aye. Opposed? The vote passes 6-0. Let the minutes reflect that the Council has given unanimous consent.

I introduce bill number 7163, approving a contract with Traymar Contracting, Inc. for the pavement marking project to be read for the second time by title only.

Second.

Any discussion? Mr. City Attorney.

Council Member Patel. Aye. Council Member Gary Feder. Aye.

Council Member Patel. Aye. Council Member Fader. Aye.

Council member Waldman. Aye. Councilmember Smith. Aye. Mayor McAndrew?

Aye. Thank you. We have come to the end of our agenda. Given that we still have to go into an executive session, I'm just going to suggest that we skip our roundtable for tonight. Council Member Betsy Meyland-Smith, do you have what you need to read? You may not. Yeah, open up the drawer. This might be the first.

Aye. Thank you. We have come to the end of our agenda. Given that we still have to go into an executive session, I'm just going to suggest that we skip our roundtable for tonight. Council Member Malin-Smith, do you have what you need to read? You may not. Yeah, open up the drawer. This might be the first.

It's what you do when you're a rookie.

It's the rookies, Jerry.

Yeah. I move that the city council hold a closed meeting with a closed vote and record as authorized by Section 610.021, 1, 2, and 3, revised statutes of Missouri relating to legal issues, real estate and or personnel negotiation of a contract pursuant to Section 610. 610.02112 RSMO and or proprietary information pursuant to section 610.0 2115 and or information related to public safety and security measures pursuant to sections 610.0 2, 1 18 and 19 RSMO. Second

council member Patel. I council member Gary Feder. I council member Jeffery Yorg.

council member Patel. I council member Fader. I council member York.

I

council member Waldman. I council member mailing Smith.

I

Mayor McAndrew.

Aye.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. That brings us to the end of our meeting.