July 14, 2026 — Meeting Transcript

good evening uh it's our tuesday july 14th city council meeting um we're gonna start um in our six o'clock hour with an update on residential zoning so i'll invite ryan hell who is in our planning department to get us going

ryan are you looking

at my ability All righty. I swear, I've done this before. Now it's working. All righty. So this evening, we're going to start out by giving you sort of an update of where we're at with our residential and zoning residential zoning in terms of implementation of our comprehensive plan. This is just kind of an overview of what we're going to touch on. We're going to give a brief summary of the comprehensive plan findings that led us to where we are. We're going give you a brief summary of residential and infill research that we did to sort of inform where we're going. We're going to give you a brief summary and refresher on a unified development code in terms of the format that our updated zoning is going to take. And then we're going to actually get into the details of what that new residential and infill zoning is going to look like. So coming out of the comprehensive plan, some of our key findings from residents is that they highly value the existing character of their neighborhoods. They are open to development, but they want to make sure that development is context sensitive and that residents are going to favor maintaining existing structures over new construction most of that time. And that gave us a couple of these key results here. One is we want to establish appropriate infill development standards for the building form and materials. And then the key result 2.5 is we're going to modify the lot size and setback regulations to better align with historic neighborhood patterns. That one largely focusing on do our dimensional regulations reflect what those neighborhoods actually look like. So a brief summary of the research we did related to these key results under that dimensions element, looking at setbacks. The only setback we really looked at touching was providing a lesser setback for smaller accessory structures, largely those one-story garages that you see in a lot of older neighborhoods in Clayton. Revising the lot width for the R5 district, the character of that neighborhood is they tend to actually have a lot of 40-foot wide lots rather than the current 50 that it is. Looking at density elements, the only density element we're looking at changing is the dwelling units to lot area ratio in the R3 district because that is actually a bit of a redundant language. The density in that district is equivalent to the lot area minimum, so adding that extra language doesn't really do anything extra. And then through this, we found that the R7 district has a few challenges related to it. It may actually be appropriate to rezone those properties to M3. R7 consists of four properties on South Brentwood between Bonham and Forest Park Parkway. So the effect would be limited. And the goal of that outcome is to bring those properties more in line with the character of the zoning of that area. On the infill side, we wanna look at applying some of our existing height mitigation strategies across the residential districts. So we wanna look at adding an infill section. We already have a lot of good methods in our urban design districts that we can look at adding across residential districts. We wanna add some new strategies in And then we also want to remove ineffective strategies. An example of that is that landscaping is often used as a height mitigation strategy. It's proposed to buffer the height of new structures with old structures, but it's showing to be kind of ineffective. And just kind of a caveat about these infill recommendations is that they're not going to impact urban design districts. So urban design districts, if there's an item that is addressed in the urban design district and the base zoning, that urban design district is going to take priority over that base zoning. But I'd like to reassure you that where we're going with this zoning is to set us up in a really good place where then we can reassess what those urban design districts are doing for us better. So a bit of an overview of where we're going with the format is we want to go to a unified development code for residential. For those of you that were here for the commercial, you might have seen this before, but just kind of give an overview. Right now, a lot of our zoning code is presented in a paragraph form. So if you want to see the maximum height of a building, you're going to read the maximum height is X. The direction that we're going with the Unified Development Code is it brings a lot of that format into, you know, charts and graphs and things. And what that's able to do is really consolidate the amount of language that somebody has to dig through to understand the code. An example of what that looks like for residential is we currently have 95 sections and about 35,000 words across our residential zoning districts. We can talk about the same or more information in about 3,000 words. So a huge difference in what it takes to understand all of these zoning districts. So this page here is going to give a summary, and we'll get into some of these in more detail, of what these sections are going to look like. And I'll give a brief summary of a couple of them that maybe didn't need their own slide. We added in a couple of definitions, just some definitions for Bay and Oriel windows. Those are referenced in our zoning code, but we don't actually define what those are. We also added a definition for half story. Again, we reference half stories, but we don't actually define what that is. Our definition for half story is going to be that uppermost story comprising no more than 60% of the floor below, which is quite generous compared to a lot of half story regulations that you might see out there. And then in residential zoning, the only items I want to touch on is that there was no change to the purpose statements. They were just consolidated into their own section. And then applicability, that largely is just saying are these regulations going to apply to districts R1, R2, R3, et cetera? But let's get into some of the specifics of these other sections. So diving into our dimensional regulations. So this chart on the right is an example of what a unified development code looks like. This isn't the full dimensional section, but I wanted to give you an example of what it looks like while also making it still legible. Some of the changes that you will see is that that R5 with minimum has been revised from 50 to 40 feet. We've removed that R3 dwelling unit ratio. Another few other items, as we've clarified, are front setback requirements. So under the current regulations, the first thing that you're going to read is an R2, your front setback is a minimum of x. Well, there's a subsection that says actually if your block is already developed, then you need to assess what the average of that block is. Well, pretty much every block in Clayton, every residential block is largely built out. So that's the one that most folks end up using. So we made that one the priority, the first thing that you're going to see. So that way people aren't backtracking on their designs. But we still call out if there's an undeveloped block, sort of the process that they can take. We also clarified some items related to front yard fencing. So right now, our zoning language is not the friendliest to navigating front yard fencing, but the Architecture Review Board and staff have sort of been generous with how folks are able to navigate that. Largely, this is going to largely affect a lot of side yards and things where folks are going to run into those second front yards that maybe usually have fencing or something in that area. We also removed some redundant language found in a lot of sections. You're going to see language, you know, in the current zoning that says refer to this section for parking, refer to this section nonconformities. In a unified development code, those are going to be clear and called out. We don't necessarily need to have a section in our residential elements that refer to those sections. And then we also added in a call-out for that reduced setback for accessory structures under 14 feet tall. So if you have a smaller accessory structure, we don't always need to abide by that deeper setback. It also has a buffering distance requirement from other structures. That way you're not going to get two accessory structures right across property lines from each other. Moving into our use regulations, some updates that you'll see here. is we've removed offices from R4. Previously, offices were allowed in R4, but there was really specific language that you can tell it was geared towards specific properties, which now have been developed into residential properties. So it's no longer applicable. Pull that out. Restaurants are currently permitted in R6. R6 is largely the Borlands. Any of the restaurants that you find there, you know, Wydown and Hanley, those are already in a mixed-use non-residential district. So there weren't any restaurants that were being served by being in, or any restaurants in R6 that were served by having that in the regulations. Another element to change is that we are proposing reducing the distance that parking lots can go into residential zoning. So right now, if there's a residential parcel that's within 500 feet of a mixed-use commercial parcel, they can put a parking lot there. That is quite generous. For example, over on Clayton Road, you're talking about allowing parking lots all the way two blocks into San Benito, which is almost the entirety of High Point. We felt that maybe that wasn't the most appropriate distance, so we reduced it to 200 feet, which is still really generous for allowing parking lots adjacent to those commercial uses. And then we reorganized some language around schools, pre-K, university uses in the R1 district. So right now, if you look in the R1 use table, those uses are not permitted. However, there is language sort of in a subsection that says actually you can have those in there in these very specific locations. Those are contradictory. We don't want to have those elements contradicting each other. So we went ahead and added those in as conditional uses as they were in the spelled out language, and then polished that language a little bit to clarify, hey, even though these are conditionally allowed in the R1 district, they're still only allowed in these very specific areas. And it's largely over there on Forsyth adjacent to WashU where those are called out. All right, let's jump over to those infill sections. We're gonna get into all new territory here. So purpose statement, largely the purpose of this is that we want to make sure that we're having good responsible infill in these residential neighborhoods that's compatible with the surrounding area. These are going to be applicable to our R1, R2, and R3 districts. For those of you who were here for some of our previous presentations, I want to call back to what the massing character was in different zoning districts. The R1, R1, R3 districts is where you get a lot of your two-story, a lot of your single family, and they generally have very specific massing of properties where infill is very sensitive. Once you get to your R4, R5, R6, where you have a variety of structures, a lot of multifamily, it's pretty common to have a really wide spread of the size of structures. So infill is less sensitive in those areas. Not to say that it's not important, but we want to make sure that these regulations are appropriate for any of the districts that we say that they're applicable to. We've also added in an alternative compliance section. This is pulled from our urban design districts because a lot of this language is reflective of our urban design districts. We want people to follow these guidelines, but If somebody has a creative idea that the Planning Commission and Architecture Reboard finds to be appropriate, we want to make sure that there's a path for them to explore. In terms of the height scale and massing, we're pulling a lot of language from our urban design districts into this because that language is already very effective. We're removing plantings as a height mitigation tool. And then a big one is where there's an element in the urban design districts where you can get an extra, like five feet in height on your structure for only one foot of setback. We got clear feedback that that's probably not an appropriate ratio. So that's been revised to a one-to-one ratio. If you give a one foot additional setback from what you required, you can go up another foot. So it's a little bit more proportional. We're also looking at adding the finished floor height. So that's that first floor. How much higher is your front door going to look compared to your adjacent neighbors? And what we're saying, that needs to be within one foot of the average of the two adjacent properties. We're adding a basement exposure limit. And so what that's going to do is it's going to address where you have these large lower level facades. You'll probably see in some residential areas particularly where there's a large front-facing garage, they'll say, hey, the maximum height in this area is two stories, but then there'll be so much of the basement exposed it looks like a three-story structure. We want to address that in terms of the height and presentation. So if more than 50% of that street-facing facade on the lowest level is exposed, that's counted as a story in terms of your height calculation. Dormers, we currently don't address dormers in our regulations, but there's been some examples of dormers that were very, very generous in terms of does this count as a floor or not? And so what we're saying here is 50% of the facade is an appropriate maximum. Garage width and location. There's a lot of good language in the urban design districts about the garage width and location. A lot of garages in Clayton, except for specific areas, tend to be rear entry. They tend to be accessory structures. And so we're pulling that in and saying, hey, this is what we want to prioritize here. We're not pulling in the relationship with lot coverage because that's not going to be appropriate in all of our residential districts. But we still have a lot of the other really good language about the placement of garages. And architectural detailing, good language there from the urban design districts. And what it's doing is it's promoting some of those traditional forms and styles that you already see in Clayton. This has kind of been an unwritten rule that new structures in Clayton are best in character whenever they are blending in and complementing the surrounding area. We don't necessarily need every new construction to be you know, the shining star on the block that everybody's always going to see. It doesn't need to be a brand new modern structure. This has been kind of an unwritten rule, but now the architecture e-board is going to have a little bit more of something to lean on in terms of upholding that. All righty. Any questions on those items?

I have some. I think they have a real short one. It's all great work. A One thing I wonder about when you talked about the side yard fencing, and this is because actually we've experienced it. And you start seeing how it does stop the open green neighborhoods when people block off more and more and become more individualized houses versus a neighborhood. How do you see that playing out?

So this doesn't actually, the revised regulations would not actually change the process. Right now in our current regulations, it technically doesn't allow any sort of modification of those front yard fencing requirements. What this is doing is it's cleaning up and aligning with the process that folks have already been doing. So if somebody wants, if somebody has that secondary front yard that what they consider their side yard, but maybe it's facing a street, now we actually have the appropriate language in place to say, you know, come to the architecture view boards. That way they can take a look at this.

Thanks. Yeah, thanks. I want to understand the reduction of the setback for one story garages and accessory structures to one foot. And does that mean that a garage can be one foot from the property line on the side or the back?

So there's a lot of existing garages. There are older garages that are, you know... A lot of them are actually like right on the property line, but we felt a little bit of setback was appropriate. So right now in a lot of places, accessory structures can go up to 20 feet, maybe in some urban design districts to lower it 16 feet. So we wanted to take something even lower at about 14 feet. And OK, if you've got a maybe a smaller structure that's going to be less imposing on the neighbors, something that, you know, you can't put a half story or a second story on top of. then it's maybe more appropriate to have that closer to the property line. Because what we see nowadays is that a lot of folks come to us and they say, hey, I've got my older garage, I want to redo it. And we have to tell them, okay, unfortunately, you can't rebuild it in its same conditions. You need to move it into your property five feet from the rear and the back. On some of those smaller lots, that can take up a decent chunk of the yard space, and it also can make it a lot more difficult for the property owner to maybe accommodate the garage on that side.

okay and so this doesn't um impact where folks like have to look out for um right-of-way things like power lines and stuff like that or does that come into play with like how does how would that like i have power lines on my property line so if i wanted to build my garage right underneath that would i be allowed to do that or would the presence of the Utility easement, presumably, whatever that is.

That is a risk that a property owner takes. So there's likely a utility easement on that property. There are some things that folks can build in their utility easements, but say you built a garage in that and the utility company wanted to do some work, they could knock down your garage. Okay,

but we wouldn't prevent that development.

No, we wouldn't.

Yeah, okay. Okay. I am really interested. Well, let me go with my other garage thing. You said something about not pulling in language of lot coverage for garages.

Yes. Didn't

understand that.

So in our urban design districts, I'm largely thinking of Clayton Gardens and Clay Shire. The amount of lot that you get to cover, or I guess it's sorry, now it's our green space ratio. The amount of green space on your property is largely related to where your garage is. You get bonuses for putting that garage in the rear facing, you know, rear detached side rather than having a front facing garage. pulling that in wouldn't necessarily be appropriate in all of our neighborhoods. Those are effective in a place like Clayton Gardens, but if you look at some of our denser neighborhoods like over in High Point or if you look in White Island Forest, that's probably not going to be feasible on those properties. We can still have language in there that promotes certain things that we can review against, review against the character of the surrounding area, but it probably isn't feasible to tie it directly to lot coverage.

Um, so I think what you're saying is there's in the urban, some urban design districts have something that says, if you put your garage where we want you to like in the back, then we will allow you to cover more of your lot.

Correct.

Okay. And you're not propagating that in this.

Correct. We're encouraging those, um, beer entry and rear detached garages, but we're not, you know, tying it to a lot coverage. Right.

Right. Um, and then my last question, well, really a request. Um, I would love, I'm glad we're on this slide. I would really love to see a line filled in here. Like there's a blank. I know this isn't the real document, um, but that says, um, maximum lot area for some of our zoning districts. So this gets at what we've been talking about where people are consolidating lots and building houses that are out of scale with the character of the neighborhood or that particular zoning district. And so I'd really like to understand whether this would be the place to consider something like that or If not, where would be? What would be the available mechanisms?

Yeah, so Anya and I have discussed this quite a bit and what strategies might be available to us. Kind of the difficult reality of zoning, I'm going to steal her language, is that the evolution of zoning in the United States is that it's largely been to mitigate the challenges that come with increases in density. So even if we created a lot size maximum, We could not stop somebody from doing some of the things that they've done before. Whether they want to build a really big garage for their property, or there was another property a couple years ago that they just tore down the adjacent home to build a bigger driveway. A lot size maximum is not necessarily going to solve that problem. In some communities, and this is very, very rare, this is like you'll find this in maybe Portland or Seattle, there are density minimums. Those tend to be in high-density areas. There's just some structural challenges to trying to do that. Not to say that we couldn't add a line in there, but its effectiveness would probably be really limited. Are

you saying it's not enforceable if we did that?

So say we did a lot size maximum and we prevented somebody from consolidating two lots, they could still purchase the adjacent property and do most of what they wanted with it. If they're putting in a big garage and it needs to be a dwelling unit, a lot of big garages in Clayton, they double as pool houses or ADUs. It'd be really easy to start checking all the boxes that they need to meet their requirements to do what they want.

No, go ahead, yeah. there are communities that require if you have a lot the house has to be no building unless you can leave them empty but if you build you have to be you meet certain minimum requirements on size of house and things like that right

there are there are density minimums in in some locations but again they're like they're largely geared towards like multi-family structures If we were to do, I'm trying to think of what it would look like to present a density minimum in a single family district. Well, it can't be done with dwelling unit unless we're starting to get the duplex regulation. Are we regulating a size of a house? Are we getting into the ratio of garage to dwelling area? That's a bit of uncharted territory.

So I'm actually asking about, like, I understand some of what you're saying in terms of the challenges. And I mean, I believe I remember us having a case before us recently in the last some number of months where like somebody had two lots and just wanted a garage on one of them or something. Is that right? Mm-hmm. And I'm trying to remember if, like, how, what the details of that were. The idea I have in my head is that I actually am not allowed to own a lot and only have a garage on it. But is that not accurate? Like, what's the... Like, I can have a lot and it can be vacant, right? I can have a lot and I can put a house on it and I can add accessory structures and things like that. But I can't have a lot and just build a garage and not have a home that's a dwelling unit if it's in our residential zoning.

If the garage is the only structure on that property, it becomes the primary structure. It needs to meet those primary structure setbacks, in which case this one did. If there's... if there's regulation specific to the certain types of things, like you need to meet the criteria of a dwelling unit, it's, it's not a big stretch to go from just a garage to meeting the criteria of a because

most toilet and

yeah, this happens all the time with like, you know, accessory dwelling units and pool houses. They'll, you know, uh, most of the time it's folks, you know, they take the, they take the kitchen out of the pool house. So that way they can not have to come through the ADU process, but the, uh, Did

they consolidate that lot?

Yes.

So they were. But my point is like if they didn't consolidate the lot, we would have let them do it? Like they'd be allowed to do it?

They'd be able to build a garage, yes.

Like they could build a lot on a garage on a lot that has nothing else on it.

As long as it met all of the qualifications for the primary structure, you could build what's largely a garage, yes?

I just think this is really, I understand what you're saying in terms of challenges. Like I don't, and it feels like a very real issue in our community. And I'm actually not worried about density and multifamily. Cause I think there's like my senses, there's different incentive structures there. Like once something is multifamily, but I just worry that our single family neighborhoods are going to turn into like instead of having 100 single family houses there's 60 and then 50 and then how many and we have such so little population, and so little inventory of. property and

stuff like that so I think is your concern if you take consolidate two lots you're just going to build a big like one big house over both of them and then that would not fit the character of the neighborhood or is it just having like the accessory accessory

no it's it's more like um it is kind of more related to density I think like the idea of like You know, my neighborhood is and I would like it to continue to be mostly 50 and 60 lot with 50 with lots. There's a handful that are 100. Right. But they're quite limited. And I would prefer that not all become 100 foot lots. And I don't know. I mean, I might be like over 100. emphasizing the risk and we can move on so people can ask other questions. This is just something I'm really interested in. Ryan, you're going to

ask this question.

Yeah. He's like, Ana and I talked about it. Well,

basically what Ryan's doing here really focuses on what we're seeing most often. I know that's one case. We're not getting a lot of people who are willing to spend the money that land costs and Clayton trying to do that. But so the priority that we've done here is looking at what we are seeing, which is usually a teardown of a single family for a single family that sort of a process so mining that infill the larger piece though that will that will require more steps it's not there isn't a roadmap in place like for instance right now we allow accessory structures that are not used for operation of business to be permitted in residence so we would have to address the uses that we would allow we'd have to address the lot sizes and then the big pieces that If somebody is willing to spend a certain amount of money, they're probably going to figure out the way to do it. That's kind of what happened up there. So I think that's a bigger piece that requires a much more specific in-depth review to solve than what is here. So if you're all right with it, we'll make that a next project.

Thank you very much. And I just want to say that I support that. Becky, I do too. I mean, I think I would much rather be, even though we might not see people doing it right now, I would rather be proactive about preventing, I think what happened in in our community rather than reactive. It's like, oh shoot, well, this happened once. I don't think it's going to happen again. Well, then all of a sudden it does happen again. It is.

There's a lot of unintended... Yeah, I can

totally... I totally appreciate that. And I don't want to just... That's why I'm like, I'm not going to design it, but... I'm going to keep challenging you. You get to be so creative. We're asking

you. Maintain a certain amount of density, but we also don't want to do what a lot of zoning has done, which is artificially inflated the cost to be a homeowner. You have to have a 5,000 square foot structure to have a home in Clayton. That's going to have a lot of unintended consequences. But those are the things that we'll have to really evaluate.

Thank you very much.

sort of remembering the situation that was described, and I may be conflating things. My recollection was that the homeowner who already had built a big house on one lot wanted to solve their sort of garage driveway situation, didn't think they could do so adequately, so had the funds to buy the property next door, which the unfortunate part was the loss of the building next door. And then that was demoed, and then that was the sort of solution. I remember at the time, I think when Becky brought it up, I'd never heard of maximum loss. I'd always heard about a minimum. So I actually looked it up, and I agree with what Ryan is saying, is that there are places that have dealt with that, but at least what I read about is it is very difficult to accomplish. Doesn't mean we shouldn't. Maybe we should continue to look at it, but... But that was kind of the problem. There was more the loss of the property next door that resulted from the consolidation. And then as the plan evolved, it wasn't that someone then built a mega home on two lots. They had the house. And anyway, I was sort of curious, since we have a lot of the same architects who show up in Clayton all the time, especially Clayton. on single family. We all know there are three or four who seem to show up all the time. I'm just wondering in terms of these new regs, is this something we would at some point kind of run by some of the architects we see a lot just to sort of see their response to it? Because I'm always wondering about the efficiency of the process and And added costs that might be associated with it. That shouldn't be our determination if architects don't like it. It's really what we want. But nonetheless, I'm sort of curious whether you see that as part of the process of at some point trying to sort of gauge attitudes of people we see in front of the ARB a lot.

Yeah, and I hope that any of our architects or regular applicants, they can respond to these items we're presenting just as any residents can. And I hope that those folks that do look at this regularly would provide us some feedback.

And I assume it's probably rhetorical that you think this much shortened, simplified version will be easier for folks to deal with than what we have right now. And when I mean folks, meaning applicants.

Well, if I'm maybe candid for a moment, people don't like reading. And when they see a paragraph, they get really scared. This happens all the time in emails. My hope is that with a unified development code, people are going to be less overwhelmed by all the different sections and all of the layers of words, and it's going to feel a lot more approachable to folks.

Yeah. Jeff?

Yes, I would just, the one I concur with Becky and Susan and others about, I think it's a sticky issue, but I think coming up with some process if we can to help try to control the construction of mega homes, if you will, would be nice if we can get there. Two other questions. One, pick it up on Gary's thing. I'm assuming the answer is yes, but I don't want to assume on this. Will Planning Commission and other folks like that have comments on this or will this be presented to them as well since there's some architects and others on that group?

This will actually be presented to the Planning Commission at their next meeting on Monday.

Okay, cool. And I assume the answer is they're grandfathered in, but for folks that have already put yard fencing in and some of that items, that'll all just stay? We won't require them to make any changes if we put this all through?

Correct. Yeah. So if there's an element of a property that's non-conforming, then, you know, if that were to somehow be affected by a project or something they wanted to do, they could then look at our non-conforming section. But just because we maybe update a regulation doesn't mean that somebody has to then go, you know, tear down something that they've constructed.

Okay. I knew that for like the biggest of hours, thinking of some of the fencing and things like that. So, okay. That was all I had. Thank you, Ryan.

Is that a question about like the roof line? Is that or like the overall roof height of these new constructions? I didn't know that was addressed.

So we pulled in a lot of language from those urban design districts. One of the challenges is getting folks to use it. What this is going to allow us to do, and I'm thinking on minority side here, is whenever I write a staff report, in all of our zoning districts now, I'm going to have a section to refer to, or not just me, whoever's writing the staff report. They're going to have a session to refer to specifically about those roof heights and forms. Kind of an interesting example of this is now in our commercial zoning districts, we have a really robust architectural section. Well, in one of the first projects to go through that, we were actually able to sort of redesign the way that we evaluate those properties and directly respond to each section. Now with, you know, this codified element, we'll have a way to do that. And so, you know, we see example of a lot of shallow, you know, shallow pitched roofs and giant structures. We'll actually have some language to respond to that. And the architecture view board is going to have some really good language to respond to That.

Like, can you give me an example of that? And I'm just asking, cause when I see like a lot of these new builds just surrounded by existing, you know, I'm talking mostly actually, I'm specifically talking about residential. It's just, it's such a draft difference. And then, you know, you just kind of look across a street and it's like, It just sticks out every time. And it's a lot with, and I just remember like when I was on the ARB, it's like the average roof height and all that. But then it would be like, oh, but this one's like 10 feet higher. And it like worked, but I never understood like how we can like bring that down a little bit just so that it does just fit within the characteristics of our existing neighbors.

So a good example, and I'll look on the screen here of that picture. And I guess you could look at both those pictures there. Those are both height mitigation strategies there. We had some what I'll call like scapegoats or like easy outs in like the current Clayton Gardens, Clayshire. That's that, you know, setback, you know, expanded setback ratio. It's the using plantings as a height buffer. There's been a lot of ways that folks could say, well, no, I'm meeting all these regulations. What do you mean? By removing some of those ineffective tools, we can now lean on these other tools more. And we can actually, you know, if a project comes before us, we can put in a staff report, hey, all of these surrounding properties have these high-pitched roofs. They have these dormers. This one has a flat roof. You know, staff are of the opinion, X, Y, Z. But,

like, does roofline get taken into consideration with that?

That's what it would be directly addressing. Okay. We don't have a specific regulation to say your roof pitch has to be X or your roof height has to be within a certain element. But I think the combination of some of these form guidelines and I think the finished floor height is going to do a really good job of addressing a lot of this sort of in a roundabout way.

Yeah, I just think that's like, again, when you like look at a finished product to me, that's like the most drastic thing that people see, you know, even when you're like walking down the street with the height of the street and all that just takes, you know, it's just really important visually. So thank you for addressing that.

Kami, can I, I'm sorry about Seattle, but like, so that would kind of be so in the circumstances where perhaps ARB before has kind of leaned on the idea that, well, this really looks a lot different than the rest of the street. So this is where there would actually be, I guess, some information in our code that you as staff can kind of lean on to be like, you know, these are some of the roof lines throughout the street. Like, you know, roof lines or pitches of the roof, all the things you said. And that's where there would be some information. information that you could lean on, to say that this really looks significantly different. You know, based on even though I think a lot of our neighborhoods, there's homes that look very different from one another. But, you know, there are common elements of homes throughout, this would be where ARB would have that ability to be like, this is, this is kind of what staff is talking about. This is what I mean, is that kind of what we're trying to get at, I guess?

Yeah, so right now in most of our residential areas, ARB only can, they've been leaning on this idea of it feels too tall, but that's really, really hard for an applicant to navigate. And even in, as we kind of talked about in those urban design districts, they can kind of find their way, sort of a roundabout way to meet some of the height mitigation strategies. This is really gonna narrow the scope and it's going to expand where that review scope is sort of applicable. So that way now we're sort of forced to review against these certain elements here. And the ARB doesn't have to just say, oh, it feels a little bit too tall, but we can actually say, well, in our infill guidelines, it says we want to reflect the character of the area and your roof pitch is too shallow and there's no dormers. It doesn't fit in the character of the

somebody submitted a house, I guess, would you guys reach out to them beforehand or would that be something that would just come out in the staff report?

Yeah. So kind of the way our process goes is somebody will submit their design for a house and then we give them feedback. And we talk about a lot of the more ambiguous points, especially good examples. Anytime we've had some of the more modern designs proposed, I always respond to say like, hey, You know, at the end of the day, I want you to pursue whatever you want to pursue. Just know that this has not typically been successful because, you know, folks spend $30,000 on architectural plans. You know, you might want to address this. A lot of times they do take the feedback seriously and sometimes they choose to, you know, pursue their dream and

see how it

works out.

And then you just have to decide, I guess, A or B has to decide, depending on the presentation, whether they want to go forward.

Right. So just to clarify, so there won't be any like numbers associated with the roofline. It'll just be architectural characteristics to help mitigate high or tall rooflines and things like that.

Yeah. These neighborhoods are so dynamic and different. What I don't want to do is dive too far into placing a number on everything. I don't want it to be so reactionary in a recommendation that I kind of, you know, pin us in a corner. I think that there's a lot of good elements out there, such as, you know, our new green space ratios, these infill regulations that are going to change the feel of the way these new houses look. Now we need to see first, you know, can't promise the world, but there's a lot different small strategies that have come together that are going to kind of shape future houses a little bit different. Thanks.

My only question was about parking lots, and I think it was distance from the structure, and you used the example of Clayton Road and Hillcrest. Can you walk me through that again? Because I don't think I really understood what the change is.

Yeah, so in the – oh, where was that regulation – This one. Okay. So basically right now in some areas, there's a distance that is permitted where you're allowed to have a parking lot within a certain distance of a mixed use zone property, a commercially zoned property. That allowed distance is 500 feet. That's pretty far. That's a few blocks.

That's like if I'm building a mixed use property my parking lot can go 500 away from up

to. It doesn't even have to be related. So I'm inferring a little bit here, but my inference is that the intent of that section was to say there might be some areas where we have these commercial uses and they might need a little bit more parking. In the time that I've been here, the only time I've seen it used is for a property owner that tore down a multifamily structure in High Point. to just leave it as a parking lot. There was no associated commercial use. There's probably a benefit to having a regulation like that in there, so that way, you know, if commercial use needs to, you know, figure out parking a little bit, but we don't want it to be so wide that, you know, two blocks, you know, they're not going to put a parking lot two blocks away, per se. Okay,

thank you. Can I just, because now that you said that, I've imagined... that we allowed like we allowed lots to be away so that for example if i'm like the old katie's pizza and you say i need to have 10 parking spots and there's not room for 10 parking spots on my lot i can contract with armbruster to have 10 parking and meet that requirement that way was that it was is that the intent of this provision

The way that the section is currently written, it just says that parking lots are conditionally permitted so long as you are within a distance of a mixed-use zone property. It doesn't have any relation. They're

not related to each other. No,

they are not related. It just says you can do it.

Okay. So that's why you brought up the example of someone just turning their residential lot into a parking lot. Mm-hmm. Okay. That's so interesting. Okay. Yeah.

Can I ask, as long as we're on this slide, you talked about reorganized languages regarding, among other things, university uses in the R1 district. And I was thinking, does that at all relate to Washington U, Concordia, where something like this might occur in the future? Because as I recall, the university's basic intended use of the Concordia site was a permitted use, maybe it was conditional, whatever it was, That wasn't really going to be the issue, was the extent to which we could regulate what they were going to do with it. So I'm trying to maybe if you can sort of go over again, how would that, for example, affect Washington University use of that site or other sites in the R1 district?

Yeah, so none of the... like none of the main university campuses that you think of are zoned R1. There's a series of properties across from Washington University on Forsyth that are all zoned R1, they're big, beautiful houses are there. And so the language that was in this section, you can tell is organized around the uses that are there. And basically what it's allowing is saying, hey, you as WashU, you own these property, it's not WashU, there's like a preschool that's over there, there's other education uses. But, you know, you as a person can operate this use within this residential zoning district, within this what presents as a residential structure. You can operate this education university related use because you own it. It's very specific to those properties. But the language as it's currently written is really contradictory because if it's not in our use table, like if it doesn't say, you know, permitted or conditional, it's not allowed. It's currently not in there. But then you go into a subsection, it says it is. So we just cleaned up that discrepancy of saying, actually, we acknowledge that this is conditionally permitted in the R1 district and then have specific language following that says, hey, these uses that are permitted in this R1 district are limited to X, Y, and Z.

So it's a cleanup, not really a substantive.

Correct.

And the existing universities and such are R2, not R1.

Yeah, so like the...

Like I sometimes forget.

Yeah, like if you're South Florida campus, that's R2.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you. These are all, so none of these necessarily change the Cs and the Ps, like nothing. Like this table just basically brought in, took language from paragraphs and put it in a table.

So we are, you know, our use tables, they're just kind of a list form. The changes that you're going to see are those ones that are listed there. Like we took things out that are no longer relevant. The only thing that we added in there was that conditional use related to some of those uses in R1.

No more. I just had, you said at the beginning, Ryan, about, Ana, is there more though? Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Because I can ask. Go ahead. Yes. I thought maybe we were at the end. No. Oh gosh. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah.

Okay, so I'll go over this really quickly. Okay, so Ryan just explained the Unified Development Code, which is our hard-coded regulations for residential zoning. Then we also have architectural guidelines, which are adopted by the ARB with guidelines. As Ryan explained, these are not hard-coded. So the formal process of requesting relief from Our code of ordinances is either through the variance process from the Board of Adjustment, or we have specific provisions that are outlined under a process of alternative compliance where they can ask for relief or waivers from the ARB for more design-related components rather than the setbacks or the other zoning requirements, dimensional standards of the Board of Adjustments overseas. So the architectural guidelines were adopted by the ARB to try and help decision makers be consistent and also identify to residents and designers what the priorities are. But these ARB guidelines can be waived completely by the ARB without following that process, that kind of burden of proof that an applicant has. for variants or for alternative compliance. So what we're proposing to do is replace these architectural guidelines with neighborhood pattern books, building off of the neighborhood character inventory that we did over the last year. Currently, the guidelines cover all the items listed on the right. The site features are likely to stay the same. A lot of those are the same across neighborhoods. So what kind of driveway pavement do we see? What do we think about retaining wall materials? That's pretty much consistent regardless of what residential neighborhood you're in, what the ARB feels it should be the same. But the building structure features, those are what's going to change. So what we're proposing to do is identify all of our single family and duplex neighborhoods. So there are some neighborhoods like Old Town that have higher density zoning districts, but we're focusing in on single family and dupex properties for this. And we're going to split all the neighborhoods into four different typologies. In this pattern book, each typology will cover and identify character for that type of neighbor, those neighborhoods, the mass and composition proportion pattern that we see in those types. the height roof dormer patterns, architectural features, where our garages and accessory structures are located and how those are designed, and then as well, our primary materials. So this is all building off of that neighborhood typology. So I'm going to go through really quick just type A as an example of how these pattern books are going to be developed. We don't need to go through all the details of every single one. So type A neighborhoods, those are listed below. So the neighborhoods are actually the subdivision names. So for example, we all refer to Polo as a neighborhood, but it's technically a country club place subdivision. So those are listed. Type A includes single family properties that are zoned R1 and R2, but they have a larger width than the typical single family zoning lot, along with other characteristics that they share. So one of the interesting pieces that we look at, and we'll go into this a little bit more, but here's a table that shows the floor error ratio of all the type A homes by the year that they were built. So if you look at all the different neighborhoods that are listed here, Over 68% of the structures that would be identified under Type A were constructed prior to 1930. So that's a really significant number of properties that still exist today. And you can see that over time for Type A neighborhoods, even though there have been more recent redevelopments, there is kind of a consistent cap on the floor air ratio. We'll get into that a little bit more later, but these are one of the elements that helped us kind of group neighborhoods together. For massing composition and proportion, we went through and looked at some of the massing elements that are common to the housing that you'd see. So in the pattern book, we'll have what's shown here, examples of the massing that we would support that would be more appropriate to fit in with the character of those neighborhoods, as well as some examples of massings that would not be compatible. So in this case, we really talk about the... The wider lots allowing for more step downs in the massing on the sides of structures. The wider lots also allow for more variation within the step backs of that facade, but we also maintain a really balanced and proportional facade. So then we kind of go into the height roof and dormers, and that's where we identify maybe what types of features on the massing you could use. So for example, here in the front facade, it's more of an asymmetrical facade, but it still appears very balanced because of how they use different heights and roof lines balancing out with the windows. So we'll kind of identify how those elements would be appropriate based on the typology. For architectural details, we will go into identifying what the common architectural inspirations or kind of influences are. So we don't have an architect that did all this. So again, it's not hard-coded, but we talk about What you can see here is the patterns. So some neighborhoods will have a really consistent pattern. If you zoomed in on the map at Clavarack Park, there's a really, really high number of homes that were influenced under Tudor compared to some of our other neighborhoods like Carswold, where you start to see that influence more of the federal neoclassical neighborhoods. and then you have that mixed Mediterranean, et cetera. So some of the specific neighborhoods will be called out under a type if there is a more specific pattern that's identified within that neighborhood, and then other ones would just fall under that larger category. So here is where we start to look at some of the elements that you were talking about, Kami, where we might pull out specific design elements that would help infill homes match what's happening in the context surrounding them. We'll also go into garage and accessory structures and materials. These are a little bit more standard across the types, but as Ryan talked about that influence of placing the garages in the rear, what do accessory structures look like in terms of their form and their height and their massing? So again, some of the language that Ryan mentioned within our code of ordinances will be a little bit more general. And then the ARB will have these typology books that might help them drill down in specific neighborhoods to pull from for that code. So really more where we're looking for feedback on this is the discussion of floor area ratio. So I know this came up under previous conversations about the neighborhoods, and there was a lot of interest in having some sort of a floor area ratio cap. And we talked about how that might be a little bit difficult with neighborhood variations. What we've landed on is using floor area ratio as one of the tools within a neighborhood pattern book. So this is not a hard code number, so it's not like you're building height, which is in your code of ordinances and says here is the actual codified maximum. Instead, for the different typologies, we are recommending an FAR cap. with some exceptions for certain neighborhoods. So this would be something that doesn't have the process of having to go through the Board of Adjustment to get a variance to change if you were going to construct slightly larger, but it would create more of a platform for the Planning Commission ARB to review the four-year ratio as one of the tools along with the other infill ones. Looking at this chart, the top one includes all four of the neighborhood typologies from the chart I showed you earlier with just type A. The darker blue, that's the type A. The interesting thing here to look at is type B, so this medium blue color. Again, we have a lot of homes that are constructed in the same time period, but all of the homes when you get start around 2000 and later, the floor ratio of those jumps up significantly compared to type a which has been an average of a pretty consistent um uh ratio for ratio over time this lighter color here this is the clay shire and tanglewood neighborhoods so they pretty much have all been built around that same time period really aside from a couple of homes haven't had any constructed here and then Type C, this is where we get into a lot of our duplex neighborhoods. So Old Town, when you look at High Point, so just west of DeMond. So we have some of those duplexes. The similar pattern though with type B and C where the more recent developments have had a larger. size to them. So when we look at our distribution, you can see with Clay Shire, it's easy to set a cap with that type because there's a really tight distribution. So just like the maps we looked at that Ryan created previously when we were looking at flurry ratio and lot size and lot width and all those elements, as we start to get to the higher density areas, the type C, once we're introducing those duplexes, that's where we start to see a really more spread with our flurry ratio. So what I'm proposing here is the cap based on looking at the average and the spread of the neighborhood types. And then we've identified a few exceptions, so some neighborhoods that maybe stray a little bit more from that average of that neighborhood type. So over here's where the dark line identifies the proposed cap for that type A, B, C, and D. And then the dashed lines identify specific neighborhoods where we've proposed an exception to that cap. So in the instance of type A, We're raising that cap a little bit for Ellenwood and Skinker Heights, which are two of the neighborhoods under type A that have the smaller lot sizes, average lot sizes. So that's where we found that under the proposed 0.3 cap, they would be a lot more nonconforming. We don't want to completely tie people so that nobody can ever improve their home, build a screen porch or anything like that. We're not trying to stop that type of development. We're just trying to use this as one of the tools along with something else to really impact the form. So there in type B, we've identified Davis Place Hillcrest as having a slightly lower cap than the rest of type B. And then even lower than that is Moreland's Northmoor Park, which is just this little few properties right here. Remerts, which is this area over here. And then for type C country club court, high point is a caveat. So high point east of DeMunn has a difference. That's where more of the single family compared to west of DeMunn, which is where we see that mixture of duplexes and single families. So we provide that exception for west of DeMynn. So these are the proposed caps and how we would address that. I wanted to zoom in on two different areas to talk about neighborhoods that you probably saw where there's a lot more noncompliance. So the dark parcels are existing homes that would exceed the proposed floor ratio cap. If we zoom in on Clayton Gardens and Clayton Gardens addition, 48% of the existing lots would actually exceed the 0.5 cap that we've proposed. When you look at that, though, the red outline parcels are all parcels that contain homes that have been constructed after 2000. So 81% of our noncompliant homes are those constructed after 2000. One of the most common things that we hear in Clayton Gardens is that the new houses are too big. So clearly, the homes constructed after 2000 are probably bigger than what we want to continue to allow. So in this instance, that higher number of non-conforming properties is probably appropriate because those are the ones that we're trying not to replicate. So that's where we didn't want to adjust that cap. Clavarock Park, we didn't want adjust for a little bit of a different reason. So Clavarock park is a type A neighborhood with a proposed cap of 0.3. 30% of the existing lots would exceed that cap. If we raise the cap and went up to a 0.4, there'd be a substantial number of properties that would be able to get substantially larger from where they are today. This is a neighborhood, as you can see, because of the significantly lower number of red-outlined parcels that has not seen a lot of teardown and rebuild. So what we wouldn't want to do is to accidentally use floor-air ratio as a trigger or maybe an encouragement for somebody to be tearing down homes in Clabrack. So in this instance, having a little bit of a... higher percentage than we might want for a non-compliance with a proposed cap, we're almost incentivizing the maintenance and reinvestment in those homes because somebody wouldn't necessarily be able to build just as much if they tore it down. So there's kind of two reasons for having a little bit more of a higher non-compliance rate in these neighborhoods. That is the actual end of the presentation.

And I feel like I could just like sit with that information for an hour. And I mean, what do you, is there information? I mean, I know that you've given us a recommendation. Is there anybody on the council that I guess would be against that recommendation? And like, because the next step would be for you guys to kind of

Go through and yeah, so we're going to give the same presentation as Ryan mentioned to the plan commission ARB. And then we'll, um, the next step would be to actually follow up with the red line drafts that you guys are used to of the changes. So if this seems like a good direction, we'll continue and codifying it. Um, the one area that I did forget to mention, um, um is up in old town that was a neighborhood that also has a number of properties that would be exceeding the proposed cap one thing that ryan and i discussed and debated here is potentially instead of modifying the cap for this for the beamston neighborhoods would be to actually add an incentive if it's a duplex So in this area, since that's something that you guys have talked about, that would be an incentive to developing a duplex is that your floor ratio would actually be higher if the property is a duplex than if it's a single family. So that was just one other piece that if that is an intriguing direction, then we will go forward with the floor area ratio.

And the floor area ratio, I guess, well, does anybody else, does anybody have any questions? No, I like

the idea you brought up.

The floor area ratio here that you're advocating is are those would those be they wouldn't be advisory. They would be like codified. I mean, they would be required if you were going to build a new house. That would be it wouldn't be something that. we would suggest it would be something that would be.

Yeah. So right now, if the project comes before us and it does not meet the architectural guidelines that are adopted by ARB, then one, the project's not eligible for administrative approval, which So they would have to go to ARB or two, they have to ask ARB to waive it. Now for architectural guidelines, we don't have any sort of burden of proof that the applicant has other than making their case to ARB. So it's a little bit more of an open-ended process compared to something that's codified within the ordinance. So if it's an infill standard in the sections that Ryan was going over, then their process is to actually go through the formal alternative compliance request or there could be other dimensional standards where they have to go through the Board of Adjustment. If floor-air ratio, as we're proposing right now, is just part of our neighborhood pattern book, then they would still have to have that waived by the ARB, but it wouldn't be through the same formal process of alternative compliance.

And the neighborhood pattern book that you keep referencing, what does that look

like? So that would be kind of these slides that we went over. It will replace our architectural guidelines that we have right now. So it's just a PDF document, but it's you know, accepted or adopted, so to speak by the architecture board.

Would it be in our code of ordinances? Or would I mean,

not in the same way that so it's referenced. So basically, it's, it's support that the ARB can use. So they have their purpose statements of, you know, the general terms of character and, you know, meeting high quality materials, etc., So the neighborhood pattern book or today's architectural guidelines are what they can use to support their decision making and their analysis. And staff does the same when we look at projects. So it would be part of that. It wouldn't be adopted through a text amendment process like you all adopt the code of ordinances. And then the ARB is part of the or the plan commissioner are the two that would then enforce it.

And then how do architects look for that?

Everything it's still provided online the same way that our code of ordinances are.

Thank you very much. All right, we have gone a little bit past our six o'clock discussion session, but got some really good information. Ana and Ryan, thank you so much. So we will start our seven o'clock meeting if the city clerk could call the roll.

Council Member Buse? Here. Council Member Patel? Here. Council member Gary Feder?

Council Member Buse? Here. Council Member Patel? Here. Council member Fader?

Here.

Councilmember Yorg?

Here.

Council members Waldman? Here. Council Members Betsy Meyland-Smith? Here. Mayor McAndrew?

Council members Waldman? Here. Council Members Malin-Smith? Here. Mayor McAndrew?

Here.

City Manager David Gipson, Assistant City Manager Burr. Here. City Attorney O'Keefe. Here. Thank you.

City Manager Gibson, Assistant City Manager Burr. Here. City Attorney O'Keefe. Here. Thank you.

Thank you. The first part of our meeting is an opportunity for someone to, it's called the open forum portion of our meeting where someone is welcome to address us about a matter that's not on our agenda. I think we got one speaker card. Natalie Dowd. And Natalie, just a reminder that you have three minutes.

My name is Natalie Dowd, and I'm in Ward 2. I have a list of things that are old and some new items. One, in my opinion, automatic license plate readers are wrongly named. They are automatic vehicle readers. They capture the make, model, license plate, car color, body damage, accessories, added hardware, decals, and stickers of every vehicle. Two, these systems can read the bumper stickers, although companies claim police are blocked from searching based on religion and other protected status markers. uh this does not mean the feds are restricted in the same way three the readers capture pictures of every single vehicle that passes into view every single time this is an insane amount of data flock has lied about the security of the system and they have been hacked by ben jordan and unknown others four flock sells data to the federal government and unknown others five flock allows interagency sharing which means police department in georgia can track the plates of someone in california Six, women and their friends and family have been stalked by former partners in several states, leading to police getting fired and even arrested. Seven, the ACLU is firmly against AI surveillance for reasons they have clearly outlined in multiple publications. Eight, interagency sharing is also... It also means departments with an ICE 287G agreement can share data from areas that have no agreement. Nine, Flock does data hosting for other companies' interior cameras and has been caught creeping on footage of women's exercise classes and girls' gymnastics. Ten, Flock sales reps have reportedly been coaching police on how to hide how much information they can actually access with these cameras. 11. If a license plate is flagged in the flock system, the police will be notified of that person and told to pull them over. But if they are wrongfully put into that flag system and don't have a case number, they may not be able to get the flag removed. In practice, this has resulted in an innocent individual getting pulled over all the time. Twelve, a woman was arrested and held for nearly six months even though AI analysis was the only evidence against her. She had never once been to the state where the crime was committed. Thirteen, Flock has an option for microphones, gunshot detectors that have a high false alarm rate, a distress alert that listens for screams and screeching tires, and they are working on having AI listen to entire crowds and differentiate the conversations to discover criminal activity. Fourteen, surveillance companies are looking to add scanners that detect cell phone signatures, Bluetooth devices, and even dog microchips. Fifteen, police only get still frame photos of vehicles, but Flock is talking about soon offering 15-second clips. This makes it obvious that they are just fully recording video and sending police still frames while having full video footage available for sale. Sixteen, in one town they canceled their contract and took down the cameras. Flock put up new cameras without consent of the city. Seventeen, people keep getting abducted and even killed while driving because ICE knows exactly where their vehicles are. Thank you.

Thank you. The, uh, moving on to our agenda. The first item on our agenda is our consent agenda. Um, I'll open the discussion. Are there any questions or comments on either of the matters on the consent agenda? Seeing none,

uh, council member abuse. I introduced bill number 7 1 6 4. I'm sorry, reading the wrong line there. Um, I moved to approve the consent agenda. Second. Any discussion?

Councilmember Buce? Aye. Councilmember Patel? Aye. Council member Gary Feder?

Councilmember Buce? Aye. Councilmember Patel? Aye. Council member Fader?

Aye.

Council Member Yorg?

Aye.

CouncilMember Waldman? Aye. Councilmember Betsy Meyland-Smith? Aye. Mayor McAndrew?

CouncilMember Waldman? Aye. Councilmember Malin-Smith? Aye. Mayor McAndrew?

Aye. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is appointing some new directors to the Danielle Community Improvement District.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. On February 12th, 2013, the city of Clayton created the Danielle Community Improvement District CID for the property located at 216 North Merrimack Avenue, now operating as a Hampton Inn and Suites. The CID imposes an additional 1% sales tax on the hotel. The CID uses the revenues from the sales tax to reimburse the developer for certain eligible redevelopment costs. CID is governed by a five-member board of directors appointed by the mayor with the consent of the city council. Only authorized representatives of property owners within the CID may be appointed to the Board of Directors. In this case, the developer is the sole property owner within the CID. Current directors are listed below. The CID is requesting the appointment of Christina Williams, replacing Christina Phillips, to serve through February 12th, 2028. Our recommendation is to approve the attached ordinance.

Thank you. I'll open the discussion. Are there any questions or comments from the City Council? There's no one in the audience, and I don't think there's any questions online.

Council Member Buse. I will now introduce Bill No. 7164, approving the appointment to be read for the first time by title only. Second. Any discussion?

Mr. City Attorney.

Bill No. 7144, first reading an ordinance of the City of Clayton, Missouri, approving the employment of the Board of Directors for the Danielle Community Improvement District.

All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye.

Any opposed? Council Member Buse. I move that the council give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of Bill Number 7164 on the day of its introduction. Second. All those

in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The vote passes 7-0. Let the minutes reflect that the council has given unanimous consent. I

introduce Bill Number 7165, approving the appointment to be read for the second time by title only. Second.

Any discussion? Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 7164, second reading and consideration for adoption. An ordinance of the City of Clayton, Missouri approving the appointment to the Board of Directors for the Danielle Community Improvement District.

Council Member Buse. Aye. Council Member Patel. Aye. Council member Gary Feder.

Council Member Buse. Aye. Council Member Patel. Aye. Council member Fader.

Aye.

Councilmember Yorg.

Aye.

Councilmember Waldman. Aye. CouncilMember Maile Smith. Aye. Mayor McAndrew.

Aye. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is a contract extension with Republic Services.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. The city of Clayton entered into contracts with Allied Services LLC doing business as Republic Services of Bridgerton for single family and multifamily waste collection on May 31st, 2023. The multifamily contract was subsequently amended on September 29th, 2023. The services provided through the contracts began on October 1st, 2023 and will expire on September 30th, 2026. The attached ordinance would exercise the options in the existing contracts to extend the contracts for two additional one-year periods through September 30th, 2028. The rates established by the amended extended contracts are increased by 1% over the original option rates established in 2023. This increase is due to increased labor and fuel costs experienced by the waste hauler as well as revenue losses related to a reduction of multifamily containers. All other contract terms remain unchanged. Recommendation is to approve the first amendment to the single family waste management contract and the second amendment to the multifamily waste management contract between the city of Clayton, Missouri and allied services, LLC.

Thank you all up in the discussion. Are there any questions or comments from the council? Council Member Buse.

I introduce Bill No. 7165, approving the contract extension with Republic Services to be read for the first time by title only. Second.

Any discussion? Mr. City Attorney.

Bill No. 7 165, first reading. An ordinance approving amendments and extensions to waste management contracts between the City of Clayton, Missouri and Allied Services LLC doing business as Republic Services abridged to

All those in favor? Aye.

Any opposed? I move that the council give unanimous consent to consideration for adoption of bill number 7165 on the day of this introduction. Second.

All those in favor. Aye. Opposed? The vote passes seven to zero. Let the minutes reflect that the council has given unanimous consent.

I introduce bill number 716 5 approving the contract extensions with your public services to be read for the second time by title only.

Second. Any discussion? Mr. City Attorney.

Bill number 7165, second reading in consideration for adoption, an ordinance approving amendments and extensions to waste management contracts between the City of Clayton, Missouri and Allied Services LLC doing business as Republic Services of Bridgeton.

Council Member Buse? Aye. Council Member Patel? Aye. Council member Gary Feder?

Council Member Buse? Aye. Council Member Patel? Aye. Council member Fader?

Aye.

Councilmember Yorg?

Aye.

Councilmember Waldman? Aye. CouncilMember Betsy Meyland-Smith? Aye. Mayor McAndrew?

Councilmember Waldman? Aye. CouncilMember Malin-Smith? Aye. Mayor McAndrew?

Aye.

Thank

you. The next item on our agenda is the purchase of some new HVAC equipment. Mr. Burr.

Staff recommends that the City Council approve a motion authorizing the City Manager to execute purchase orders with Dyken TMI Holdings Inc. through the Omnia Cooperative Purchasing Program for the acquisition of two VRV HVAC systems in a total amount not to exceed $212,352. The replacement of these units was included in the adopted fiscal year 27 CIP. The reason for this request is the lead time for this equipment can be long, and we are attempting to schedule repairs for the fall of 2026 when outside temperatures are more moderate. to allow for the HVAC system to be shut down during the replacements. Council approval is required because this purchase constitutes a capital expenditure and commits facility equipment replacement fund dollars from future fiscal years in advance of those budget years to accommodate extended manufacturing lead times. Public Works has obtained quotes from Daikin TMI Holdings utilizing Omnia Cooperative Purchasing pricing for $193,052. The proposed fiscal year 27 CIP includes $221,000 for this project. The quote from Daikin totaled to $193,052 resulting in a lower than planned cost. This request includes a 10% contingency for unforeseen expenses since some of the scope of work is in enclosed areas. Recommendation is to approve a motion authorizing the city manager to execute purchase orders with Dyken TMI Holdings Inc. through Omnia Cooperative Purchasing for the purchase of two VRV HVAC systems in an amount not to exceed $212,352. Thank

you. I'll open the discussion. Are there any questions or comments from the City Council?

This is at the police building?

Yes. Right. Yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

And do we know...

Oh, go ahead, Jeff. Go

ahead. Do we know how old the ones are that we're replacing?

Matt's making his way up to the podium.

Great question. I don't have that information. I feel like these units have been in place for a very long time whenever we did a rehab at that location, but I I don't have the year. I was wanting to say early 2000s, but I'd hate to guess.

Okay. And are they still operating okay or are they failing and that's part of the need?

They'll need occasional maintenance more frequently, and there are eight of these units in total. So that's why it is a four-year phased project. And when these units are replaced, we have to reconfigure some space. There was mention about the confined space. The new units are a little bit larger, have different requirements. But in order to not have such a big impact, we've phased these in. So they're still operational, but we're just anticipating... as we get more maintenance requirements on them that we should be replacing them.

Okay, thank you.

Matt, are we replacing ones that are the worst performing or are you just replacing them? I mean, you said these are only two of eight.

Correct, it's two of eight. It'd be the ones that we've had the most problems with as far as any maintenance. So yes, it would be hopefully to cut down the maintenance bill and then the next three years we'd replace the others.

So are all eight of them the same vintage?

I believe so, yes.

So we can look forward to this coming. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Just one more, Mayor. Matt, I assume each of these will operate independently of each other, or is there a risk that the new ones will overpower the other ones and cause larger problems if they all work integrated together?

They do work integrated together, but not in a fashion that that is a concern. The system over there is more complex than I've ever cared to even learn about, and I don't know at all. But that isn't a concern, but it does work as a system. But it is zoned. I'm not sure if it's two per zone, but we're not aware of that being a concern.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other discussion?

Council Member Buse. to approve authorizing the city manager to execute purchase orders for the acquisition of two VRV HVAC systems. Second.

Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The vote passes 7-0. All right. We have come to the end of our agenda. Why don't we we haven't done a roundtable in a little bit. If anybody has anything they'd like to talk to us about any committees or

it's been a busy summer, but I can't think of anything for this. For this moment.

Unfortunately, the Equity Commission meeting last week was canceled due to lack of quorum but it's a summertime affliction i guess um and uh susan and i met with some folks to talk more about flock and hear some concerns and follow up on our immigration discussions at that equity commission so um that's the primary highlights

mr vader

um the small business subcommittee met and and generally also reviewed with gary some of the other work of the other subcommittees that make up the broader economic development committee and i'm very encouraged that i think we we seem to have energized a lot of the efforts in this area and so we have another meeting of the entire committee next week so i look forward to that and i think some good things are going to come out of that uh that process

Mr. Yorg, do you have any? No,

I mean, Gary talked about the small business one. The Citizen Finance Committee met. David did a good job, along with Karen, of walking through the budget and the capital budgets are at least starting to, right? And I think that conversation will continue. And I think it's helpful to level set with them. I think more to come. We actually have a meeting, I think, next Friday. to kind of continue that conversation. So nothing imminent, if you will, yet, but know that they are taking it seriously, similar to the way Gary described the Small Business Committee. And we'll see what happens as we go through the full budget process. It looks like we're generally doing it either probably right after we've all talked about it as more of an educational component at this point, But we'll see where that goes as we continue to talk about revenue and expenses for the city down the line. So that was it.

Yeah, so the Special Business District Committee met, and we had a great introduction to, it's called Placer AI, which allows us to gather some information just based on people's locations, just like how they communicate come in and out of our city, where they attend events, where do they go afterwards. So very excited to hopefully see some good information from that. And then our Parks and Rec we had last week and got a lot of great updates for some of the finished projects that they had done, which included like The pool grates have all been replaced down at the pool. All the attendance lights are finally completed and done, and they're all, you know, dark sky. All the requirements for dark sky are there. And then the Oak Noel Park lights have been ordered. We're still waiting a little bit for that to be installed. The Hanley House exterior, they completed the foundation and the masonry repairs, so that's exciting. And then... That's wonderful. Oh, and then we had a parking subcommittee today, and we saw some new signs that we're hoping can be put on all of the private garages, but that allow public parking so that when you drive through the city, you know where public parking is available, even though it looks like a private garage. So that's exciting. And then just a little bit on a personal note, I just wanted to send a heartfelt thank you to Chief Rhodes, our fire chief, and all of the Clayton first responders who traveled to Southern Missouri to assist with the rescues and evacuations during the devastating floods. I get emotional. Two of my sons had to be airlifted out of their camp, and they both came back smiling and described it as more of an adventure than anything. And so the fact that they never realized the true danger is a testament to the professionalism, care, and calm that our first responders brought to a very scary situation. And I'm just so grateful for all they did. And Clayton is just so incredibly fortunate to have, you know, them serving our community. So thank you. Appreciate it.

Kami stole all my updates. I'm teasing. But I want to echo everything that she said because two of my kids and three of my sister's kids were also at camp and were airlifted out, and I know that I had attempted to reach Chief Rhodes not knowing that he was – going to be leading the effort down there. And I had no sooner sent a text to him that he appeared on my television in the press conference, and it was like an immediate calm sort of washed over me knowing that our leadership was leading the charge down there too. not only the chief and the folks from the Clayton Fire Department that helped out, but the camp staff and all the first responders and the volunteers that were at the school giving the kids stuffed animals and Chick-fil-A. So anyway, very, very grateful that it did not turn out differently.

Thank you. I don't have any big updates. I've been going to a lot of meetings, a lot of subcommittee meetings. I will tell everybody I went to an art fair board meeting last week and the art fair is right around the corner. Everyone's invited to the reveal, which is mid-August. I don't know, June, did you send around that reveal? So hopefully everybody got that. It's a fun event. So hopefully, um, everybody can go. It's a nice kind of beginning to the art fair season. So yeah, Susan,

I did forget one thing much on a much lighter, but very community note, um, with our police dog, of course, being the star of the event, but we didn't have your award to award to block party. I didn't have any business meetings this last week, but I didn't have the party. Um, the word to block party was, uh, very successful. We, um, We were over there and from, you know, young children to people even older than me and just people that I ran into, whatever. It was just very, very neighborhoodly. And people really enjoyed having it right in our in our neighborhood. So that's it. That's a great move. We have some local musicians that I hopefully next year versus a DJ, we can have them perform, which would add a whole other layer to it. But a very successful event. And thanks to all the staff and everyone who made that happen.

Great. Thank you. All right. So I will, I think we are going to go into executive session. So if I could ask council member Betsy Meyland-Smith to make a motion.

Great. Thank you. All right. So I will, I think we are going to go into executive session. So if I could ask council member Malin Smith to make a motion.

I move that the council hold a closed meeting with a closed vote and record as authorized by Section 610.0211, 2 and 3, revised statutes of Missouri relating to legal issues, real estate and or personnel, negotiation of a contract pursuant to Section 610.0212 RSMO. and or proprietary information pursuant to Section 610.02115, and or information related to public safety and security measures pursuant to Sections 610.0 2118 and 19 RSMO.

Councilmember Buse? Aye. Councilmember Patel? Aye. Council member Gary Feder? Aye. Council Member Jeffery Yorg?

Councilmember Buse? Aye. Councilmember Patel? Aye. Council member Fader? Aye. Council Member York?

Aye.

Council Member Waldman. Aye. Council Member Mayland-Smith. Aye. And Mayor McAndrew. Aye. Thank you. Thank you.

Mr. Raffato, we will be closing this Zoom session, so you'll have to log on to the Zoom session link that was sent out earlier this afternoon.

You should have gotten that Zoom link as well. So it's a separate Zoom link. Yep. Okay.

I have it. I'm going to log off now and log back on.