City Council - Regular Meeting

No. Thank you.

We will get going. We have invocation tonight by Bishop Calvin Burke.

Heavenly Father, we come before you today with gratitude for this opportunity to gather, to serve, and to seek the good of this community. Thank you for the city representatives here, for its people, its families, its workers, and its future. Lord, we acknowledge that everything that we do considers you. Everything that is going on is because of you. We ask for your wisdom. As these leaders face important decisions, we ask that you Grant them clarity of mind, integrity of heart, and unity of purpose. Keep them, help them to lead, not for personal gain, but for the well-being of all those that they represent, especially the vulnerable and the unheard and those who are in the greatest need. We pray for peace in every discussion, respect in every disagreement, and shared commitment to what is right and just. May truth guide every conversation and compassion shape every outcome. Father, we also recognize our need for you, not just in this room, but in the lives in our city. We ask that your presence would be known here, bringing light where there is uncertainty and hope where there is concern. May your wisdom prevail over our own understanding And may the decisions made today reflect justice, mercy, and humility. We ask all of these things in your son Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Welcome, council and residents. We have a couple of study session items. Before we open this up on the statistician, I want to point out that I brought this beautification idea back. And part of this is that as a wee young pup 25 years ago, I kind of cut my teeth on a beautification committee with the chamber. And then it went from the chamber, and then it went back to the city. And I was a liaison to that beautification committee here at City of Cape. until Julia Jones passed away. That was a big deal to Julia. And so I wanted us to discuss that again. I think that I'm extremely proud. It's very important to me that we have a clean city. I think there's many different ways that we could tackle something like this. It's just a matter of do we want to tackle that and ask staff to look into that. I would like us to ask staff to see what that looks like. In a perfect world, I would love for the beautification committee to go like it was before, under Parks and Rec, and maybe even utilize the foundation to raise some funds for cleanups and some different things like that. With that being said, I did talk with Dr. Haskins about some of the abatement issues and we've taken that and that's a totally different thing for another day. This is merely, we want to see another beautification committee and cleaning up certain areas of our city and that. So I'll let you all jump in and either tell me I'm way off base or somebody might agree with me. So we'll go from there.

So you've sent a couple emails, or actually one email, a couple different options, different cities and municipalities around the region. And looking at it, the one that personally, to me, made the most sense was Carbondale's model. Carbondale does a 501c3 sort of staging. You know, non-for-profit, it puts it together. And one of the things that I really liked about it was we had a closed session after the last meeting in regards to ending the location. You know, against the city, I think it made the most sense because anyone who would be doing the work, who would be helping out, you know, we could, the city could maybe help provide some things like trash bags and things like that. But we don't have to worry about litigation in that respect. I don't know how long ago you said you were on the board, but that may be something that, as far as how the lawsuits come about, whether it's being from stray rocks from weed eaters or lawn mowers or things of that nature, that would be my only concern. Because the Carbondales looked like it had very strong presence over there. I don't think that might work.

Mark? Oh, well, and looking at this, I got to thinking, you know, I talked to you today. I think if you're looking at beautification thing, I think something like what MoDOT does with, you know, they have the adopt a highway thing. I think something like that's okay. I still think that and when it comes to beautification i mean you have the parks that can beautify the parks i actually think constructing streets is a city beautification thing but i i think that for the most part that Beautification is best done by the private sector and not by the city. And I think something like adopt a street or something like that, that could work out fine. The city can provide trash bags and that kind of thing. But I think that would be better than establishing a beautification committee. just having a committee, I don't know.

That's my question. I would just point out it would be reestablishing a committee that it went away. Go ahead.

Yeah, I'm completely in agreement with it and how we're thinking about structuring. I know Doug's got his hands full, and this may be even an ability to alleviate some of that. Beautification, I mean, everyone here drives around quite a bit, and you can see some things that need tending to that may not fall under the Park and Recs. I think it's important that we have a structure. I think we consult legal. We have a sit down with Doug and Park and Recs and the Park and Rec Foundation Board and get some of their thoughts. Collectively, I think everyone wants the best for Cape. And a beautiful Cape is what everybody wants for various reasons, not just for the citizens, but for economic growth and everything else. And it's not the police's job either. So I'm all for it. I would gladly be part of the convening board, if you will, of that, sit down with the various groups. to discuss the best way forward, but I fully support that idea of marriage.

I guess I feel like it needs to, there needs to be a more clearly defined vision as to what exactly the mission and responsibilities of this board would be. You know, you mentioned the Councilman Schaaf's comment earlier. You mentioned the liability of if there's If there's, you know, rocks or window or peat or chip or whatever. So are they going to be doing active, like, yard cleanup and trimming or landscaping? Or are they just doing trash pickup, which then you have needle sticks and things like that that may happen? So it's, are they just a group that are going to go out themselves and clean up things? Or are they organizing other small groups to go up and clean up things? is it just going to be public areas and parks and roadways and alleyways or will it be somehow interacting with private property and individuals which is a whole other ball of wax and so i feel like it that part needs to be defined as far as what the mission of this is instead of just giving them a note appointing people to a committee and giving them an open canvas so of unknowns of how they're going to address it.

And I think you bring up a valid point, which is merely what my thought is, is that it has been under Parks and Rec before. There was a blueprint. There was a mission. Do things need to be changed on how that was in the past? I mean, I don't even know. I'm not even sure if anybody here was on council when we had that. Yeah.

You know, but and so

to ask staff what what is this going to look like what what works best for staff how many committee members would you would would be appropriate um the reason why i bring up public or uh parks and rec is because they do have the foundation component which could be a fundraising uh effort for that group but i really it's merely do we want to do we want to ask the staff to explore this and do some research and come back to us with the help of a few of us and staff to come up with an idea and a mission statement and a set of ground rules, or do we not? And that's merely what I'm asking and wanted us to have a discussion. Do we want to ask staff to do that and come up with an idea? Because like I said earlier, we all have many different ideas on what this could look like. I mean, frankly, I had some ideas on my whiteboard and got chopped down on some of those. So let's put it in the professionals and say, hey, we either would like to have a beautification committee, and staff, let us know what that looks like. Or no, we don't. We are fine.

I would like to say, i'm all about going to do this because that's how i live most of my life and try to implement them but um i think uh one thing we should do we haven't had our budget meeting yet um the budget meeting determined the priority of the city um and that deals equivalent to dollars of what's needed in the advancement of the city so i think we should have our budget committee so we can know what the priority is from dr haskin and regards to the head of the department, I know the beautification committee maybe disbanded or I wasn't sure maybe why it's not here. Maybe the department, that department or the police department or other departments are doing some of the same things that because of maybe changes and things that happen. So I would recommend we know what the budget priorities is and it's a beautification of top priority for us at this time to do something at that level. Secondly, are we asking more work of the staff outside of the leadership of Dr. Haskins to implement something that we haven't assessed or eval or I know you mentioned riding around different things but have there been a lot of counseling inquiries about Things that's not going on in the city, I don't know, but I've submitted quite a few of them. But I'd rather us have a budget meeting, talk about the priorities, and it is a department, so whatever questions that you may have, some of the departments may be doing them, or if they need certain support, we may be aware of them before we just, hey, let's find another job for everybody to do. That's been my whole life, too, and so I think we need to be considerate of that as we understand what the city priorities are before we establish committees. at this time. That's my assessment of everything.

I just have one last out of line. And I don't think it's, I don't think the beautification process, I don't think it's going to be a lot of money. This is, we're talking man hours. And I'm not talking about staff man hours, I'm talking about volunteers. people that volunteer to do this because I know a handful of people that would be on that committee just since conversations I've had since you brought it to my attention mayor and here's and here's just a personal experience there's a demographic out there that needs help and that is uh our older and when we were when they were doing Mount Auburn Road for seemed like a year construction of it I had to go side streets And I passed this one house several times wondering why that homeowner left those limbs and those leaves in abundance in a pile. Why didn't he finish the job? Why didn't they finish the job? Finally, I was like, well, this is my war. I need to ask. So I stopped one day and this isn't about me. This is just about experience that supports why I support this. Stopped by and went up and knocked on the door. Took a while, but I could hear some rustling. Figured maybe it was an old person taking it. Came to the door in a walker, single man, 78, 79 years old, on oxygen in a walker. And it completely changed my, the narrative I was going to have with him. And I said, sir, I see you have, this is sitting here for weeks. Would you allow me to remove this for you? I have a trailer and a shop, a place to take it, right? And he said, well, I sure would. I've called a few people that I thought could help. And he goes, and I've never had any success with it. So when you talked about this to me, it's not just about beautification. It's helping our citizens and that demographic or physically challenged or whatever demographic to beautify their own. Yes, I believe, as Mark said, it's a citizen. You should take care of your property, your streets, and so forth. But some people just can't.

And I think this might be a submission for that beautification.

A place that people can call and have guys like me with the truck and trailer and when we can get to them, we get to them. And it not only helps keep your beautification, but it helps our citizens. And that is why I support this.

I will say that whenever I had mentioned this, it was amazing the amount of people that I had reach out to me. I think of Luke Ray, who mows property down here. He said, man, I already mow a couple. I'd love to help out more. Well, we're missing a council member tonight. So we're going to go ahead and bring this up. We're missing a council member tonight. But to your point, Tamika, being able to talk about it in the board, we are going to have a great afternoon discussion. So what we'll probably do is just go ahead and continue that discussion there. And we'll talk about, at bare minimum, maybe we could ask staff to see what they thought that would actually cost.

Well, I think, absolutely, cost is one thing, manpower and time is another. And I think that I've had some conversations briefly with parts. Mayor, I understand why they disbanded it before. There were major concerns there. I think a lot of early issues mentioned already, along with staff and lack of vision. And frankly, the group got together and they just wanted to tell staff what to do. Staff, you go out and you do this. You go out and you do that. And that was a disaster. And Parks quickly disbanded that group. And it led us to partner with this group. And I know that they're struggling right now with a lot of other things that are doing. And to add this to that team would be in their opinions, birth. And the Bible wants you to read the commentary. That makes a lot of sense. I really like that idea. And they have buy-in at that point.

I mean, I guess, guys, I sent you all examples. It wouldn't be like we were, and we'll bring it up another year. But it's not like there are not communities out there. I gave you all examples of communities that have this that are not non-profit. So if we're not going to do it, that's fine. We'll move on. But I just thought as a city of our caliber, to not have something like this in place just felt like a loss. It just was like, you know, we can do better. Obviously, there's not buy-in right now because of the heartburn of some of the things that happened in the past. That's fine. We'll keep charging and try to find out a different way to tackle this.

I just, I don't think anybody up here is against beautification. No, no, I wouldn't ask at all. I wouldn't ask at all. And so it's a great discussion because we all want this to be more beautiful, you know, and I didn't get that. And so I think just looking internally within our, what is already budgeted in our staff and our departments, you have all the departments have some element, I think, of beautification intertwined in their operations, whether that's Parks and Rec, obviously, with our beautiful parks, or whether it's public works and cleaning up the streets and the alleyways, all of that, you know, and there's streets division. To Melissa's point earlier, you know, like just creating new streets, beautification. So we have an element of it there, not to mention there's a beautification committee, I believe, on Old Town Cape. There's multiple churches that do this. There's other civic organizations that take this on. And so is it, and I go back to what I said, I agree, I don't think there has to be a lot of resources, actual financial resources around this, potentially, not knowing what the mission of this specifically is, and into what depth that mission is, because maybe it is just a group that, and I guess I'm also a believer in small governments, and I'm like, do we need to have this, or do we just need to have a group of informed citizens Because to your point earlier, Councilman Cantrell's point earlier, I mean, there's nothing stopping anybody from being a good neighbor and going up to their neighbors. But do they feel like they can't? And can they be informed by a well-informed group of individuals, an advisory group, of how they can, within their own neighborhoods, go and help out those that are less fortunate, have a broader cleanup amongst their neighborhood or neighboring communities, and go about and activate that way just by educating that small group of interested individuals. I guess that goes back to just continuing the conversation of what would this actually truly definitively look like as opposed to being you know to the point that he said earlier with it's just a group that points out what staff needs to do versus using instilling a culture amongst our citizens of being good neighbors and being involved and invested in our community and maybe this is something that if in further if the if the uh

Parks and Rec Foundation or the Parks and Recreation Board, if they want to tackle this, that they can bring this back up to us at a later date. I think that's appropriate if they want to.

And we could also have, you know, there's a number of non-profits that do a lot of good work and get charged. And there are churches, and there may be a way to, you know, get them to do things that, you know, that can have a lot of different Oh, yeah, that's part of the reason why Rotary, downtown Rotary was one. Yeah, they could get involved.

There's a way for essentially if it's siloed out, so we have all these churches and we have organizations that do things, is there a way that can be facilitated to tie a list of things that need to be done together. So you have an older couple that can't do their group list. Is there a place that they can sign up for that to be taken care of? So there are these different organizations. I know with our church they do things like that. How do we facilitate that without having to you know, put the city at potentially more implications and just within the dollars and cents. And I know the Parks Department is, we were the CBB, they are, with all the different things going on, they have a lot going on, I know they do. So I think that's just echoing The city itself, we've heard so many people want to get involved. We want them to get involved. How do we help facilitate that through these other important sessions?

All right. Well, we beat that dead horse. Okay, Shad Werner, CMO Ready. We have an apprenticeship program presentation. Shad Werner, thank you for showing up tonight.

Yeah, thank you for having me. And no fear, no worries, I will not talk about unification when we arrive to apprenticeship. So we can stay on that. Shad Werner, I'm the CEO of CMO Ready. And the mayor asked me to come and talk about a program we just launched. Recently, I'll share a little bit of a vision. I have a handout here and happy to answer any questions on it. So when I first started with SEMO Ready, one of the things that we identified as a real challenge was the lack of regionalism that we have throughout southeast Missouri. So we have individual silos of communities, counties, and groups that are trying to do things, but we lack a cohesive vision. And when we look at the economic trends for Cape Girardeau, It doesn't happen in isolation. What happens throughout all of southeast Missouri is really critical to the whole future of the region and to this city as well. So I know that's not apprenticeships yet, but I promise I'm getting there. So one of the things that we tried to figure out was what are the ways we can work together as a region, that Sykeston and Perryville and Cape and the Boot Hill can all come together and identify things that we can do collectively to move the ball forward. And an idea that came ahead was apprenticeships. It's a very non-threatening way for us to work with Sykeston. We may always compete with Sykeston, with Perryville on projects coming in, but it's a competition, right? What benefits Sykeston, what benefits CAKE, what benefits Perryville, what benefits all of us. But one way we could always work together is to try to help improve the workforce throughout our communities. And we can do that, whether that's a business with 2,000 employees or a business with 10 employees, whether it's manufacturing or hospitality or healthcare, um, apprenticeships and workforce development has a place in all of that. So we kind of set the vision as I started talking to our education providers, as I talked to other, um, economic development groups and chambers throughout the region, uh, they all agreed that this could be a good thing. And I said, well, what would change in our narrative? If we could say that Southeast Missouri was the number one region in the country for apprenticeships. And I know that sounds a little grandiose, but let me tell you why I think it's achievable. Missouri is a top five state for apprenticeships, has been for a long time. Southeast Missouri shares a little bit more than our population on per capita on the number of apprenticeships we have. We have a little over 1500 apprentices in Southeast Missouri right now. So there's a lot of them that already exist. So it's not as far fetched as you think that we could be the number one region in the country. So we said this, we started talking to folks and we launched this program without a clear path Because we want to iterate and understand, but we wanted a way to start having that dialogue with our businesses. So we went ahead and launched this program. We named it SEMO Works. We got it out there a few weeks ago. We launched it. We started hearing back from businesses already. And the goal now is to define how we get there. How do we meet that vision? And how do we become really good at apprenticeships and workforce pipelines so that our existing companies can improve because they have better pathways for their workers? And it becomes a recruitment tool for us. When I go to Indianapolis or Lucas goes to Dallas, Lucas Preston on our team and tries to recruit a company to say come here, the conversation changes if we can say we have our workforce figured out. We have the pipelines in place. We know how to do this. That conversation changes dramatically because otherwise we're just saying we got a really good city here. You'll like it. We're friendly. We're right on the river. A thousand other people are saying that. So what's our differentiator that says to come here. So that's the vision we kind of laid out. Here's the path we're on today. We have a three-pronged approach that we want to tackle this with. First is the network. We have to grow the network. We have to all be talking about this. We have to have our educators talking to our businesses. This is happening in different parts. SEMO's here. They're talking to businesses. Mineral Area College is talking to businesses. Three Rivers is. There's no common dialogue. When we got the educators in the room to talk about this, The people doing our apprenticeships at Mineral Area College and SEMO, they had never really been in the room talking about it together, so we need to all be collectively talking about it, because each of these institutions are at different places. Mineral Area College has 200-plus apprentices. Three Rivers is still thinking about whether or not how they do that. So there's different places that we can help bring that all together. So the network, I think, is the first part. The second part is that we have to honor what's happening that may not be the DOL registered apprenticeship, which is a four year program. So to get to that registered apprenticeship program, that's a really high bar. Well, you all have businesses or you work in businesses and you may know that maybe you just need a six month program to get somebody up to where you want them to be, where you need them to be in your business. Right now, there's no way to honor that, so we need to create our own certification, our own system to honor that, to talk about it, to highlight for our region that we have really good workforce programs, that Councilman Cantrell's business is a great place to work, and we have designated it as such. And then finally, the last part of that approach is that we need to be that resource for businesses. If you want to become a DOL registered apprenticeship program, we need to have the knowledge on our team to be able to help you work through that, do the paperwork, get that done, Business and bureaucracy don't always mix, so we can be the middle part of that to help get that done. And the other pieces, whether that's apprenticeships or job shadowing and help you set those kinds of things up. So that's the vision. That's where we are today. We're just starting to talk about this. We're shopping it around the rest of the region, getting folks in alignment, and hopefully we'll see good growth on that in the weeks, months, years to come. Happy to answer any questions about the program, and I'll hand this out as your thank you.

Okay. So the apprenticeship program that you're working to develop and implement is the opportunity to build programs for businesses that are already here to hopefully set up a pipeline. And the second question would be attracting more businesses. If that's the case, what type of businesses that are in need to come to this community? How do you establish that type of pipeline? Or have you gotten that far yet?

Yeah, well, maybe. So I'm happy to answer your question. So first of all, I think this is really important. We don't see it as our job to walk into your business and tell you what apprenticeships you should or should not have. What we want to do is walk in and say, what do you need help with? What's working well? What's not working well? How many people are you hiring in this role? Oh, did you know that you can get a state tax credit if you have an apprenticeship for that role that you're already almost there, you're doing the training. So let us help you get there so that you can actually take advantage of that tax credit. So to me, It's open to all businesses that exist here of almost any kind as long as they have employees. And then we would help support get that across the finish line. Now to your other question about who do we try to recruit and bring in, I think that we have to be really specific about our recruitment efforts. So for instance, we just brought on Camoin, which is a national company, to help us with some of our recruitment efforts. And they're helping us identify specific businesses that might be in a position to expand. And so we had to start narrowing that down. Through the conversation, we learned that, let's think about this. Who can we target? I think there's a couple areas. One is we have a direct flight to Chicago. Well, there's companies headquartered in Chicago that might need new manufacturing operations. And maybe they could do that here with their headquarters right across the road at the Seymour Industrial Park. So is there a way to cooperate and have that working? Another is we have a university with hundreds hundreds of cybersecurity majors in this town. And we have very few places for those individuals to go work once they graduate. Robbie and I have had this conversation, the mayor and I have had this conversation before, where we try to find a role for someone. We need to be recruiting people who need that pipeline of work here already. So that's broader than apprenticeships. That's our normal recruitment strategy that we're thinking through, that we're working on every day. But apprenticeships, I think,

sweetens the pot on that it makes it a little bit easier if you're saying bring your company down plus we have this really cool apprenticeship pipeline program that we can help you implement one more question when you look into other areas in the united states what's the economic impact of having an apprenticeship program in the town such as this this size do you know some of those numbers Does that look like in other places?

Yeah, I don't have a good economic impact number, but I can tell you that studies show that about 90% of people who go through an apprenticeship program stay in the region where they do it. Now, considering the population trends of southeast Missouri, Cape County is up 19% over the last 20 years, but a lot of that's older generations, and we have in-region migrations. When you look at some of our counties south of us, I mean, they're losing people like crazy. So how do we keep more of those folks in southeast Missouri so that they come and shop here, they use our health care, they use our educational institutions? We've got to find ways. And this is one way that we can explore to do that. I don't know what the total economic impact is. I think it's varied, and there's a lot of factors that go into it. But I know it's positive.

When you said Missouri was one of the top five state for apprenticeships in the United States, was that the quantity of it?

Quantity. When I say we want to be the number one, I don't think quantity is the only measure. I think quality is another measure we have to look at. How are we judging the quality of our apprenticeship programs, our workforce pipelines? There's various ways we need to get together and define what that is, what that target is. I'm just casting a vision at this point, but we gotta nail it down.

I was just curious if it was pure whole quantity or quantity per capita or how that worked there. We'd have to go per capita. Okay, yeah, obviously. And then also looking at the SEMA Works certification, the original credential, credentializing our organization, is there a cost associated with that? Is that what the economic model is or no?

It would not, in my opinion, would not be. We wouldn't be asking a company to pay. We would just be asking a company to demonstrate that they're doing pipeline of work apprenticeship or career training in some manner that meets a qualification that we've all agreed to as a minimum threshold. So we haven't defined what that is yet. We have just said we think this could be a neat way to get involved. So I don't want to come back here in six months and say, you know what, turns out the certification thing was a bad idea. I've heard from everybody since I started talking about it that it's not the way to go. We're just trying to lay the vision and figure out what works best right now.

So this program is just going to be subsumed within the SEMO Ready operating budget as is for this part? Yeah.

And there's no additional funding coming in? Yeah, for now. We'll definitely fund it as we get it going. There might be other funding mechanisms. There's certainly grants we could go after. There's other ways to explore funding. Thank you.

Just one thing. Chad, thanks for bringing this up. I think your creativity. I know you've got a tough, very competitive job in bringing economic growth. I went and attended the SEMO graduation. Our son graduated. couple of Saturdays ago and I was looking at 500 or 500, 600 or so students and I was actually thinking, I wonder how many of them are staying and how many are leaving based upon the opportunities for work. Cape stays at, I don't know, since I was a kid, 40,000. How is it not, with all that we have, how is it not growing? And I see those students Not just, I mean, at SEMO, but you've got the others that you spoke of. And how does that not grow our city? Well, they've got to have jobs to go to. And so I know you guys got a tough job. Please keep building blocks like this. And now I know why Preston and I were having coffee Wednesday morning. Thanks, Chad. Thank you.

Anyone else? Chad, thank you. I would just, for the council and for residents, Dr. Haskin and I both sit on the CMO Ready board. I have sat on that board since 2017, and then when I was, before I was off council, my banking institution, I will tell you, over the last six years, to see that group transform from just public entities to now public private and the amount of resources and business owners committed to the cmo ready model is tremendous and i'm extremely proud of what you and the rest of the board has done and i look forward to hearing more about this chat thank you sir appreciate it All right, moving along, I don't think we have any presentations. How about communications and reports, council?

Make sure these guys help me. I'll call you back here tomorrow.

We do have the, for our Shawnee youth, let me try to say it right. River cutting, this Thursday. That's so exciting, that's happening on board, too, and Doug and his team, and Dr. Haskin, and so, Robbie said, I will be staying every March.

So, I'm excited for that. So, thank you. That's a big deal, and Doug, sorry, my apologies for not being able to make that weather change, but thank you to make it, for stepping in.

Yeah, piggybacking on that, if you get the opportunity to go out and take a look at this complex, because it is, I'm new to the youth baseball world, I fought it for a long time, and now the little guy's playing baseball, but I didn't realize how big of a deal it is. And to see those fields, the caliber of having the turf in fields, it's a big deal for being able to run, be competitive in hosting these tournaments and being able to run a successful tournament. And kudos to the vision of Parks and Rec always for for doing that not only with the new fields but then the old fields that are part of the larger complex got some of those or half of them or one part of them got turf in fields as well so it just really enables them to post their tournaments and it is really a neat facility and top notch compared to some of them that i've seen over the last couple weekends so Kudos to that and also just a blanket statement congrats to all the graduates to the point that we just talked about with apprenticeships and and who's leaving who's not but to the SEMO graduates obviously but then also to all the high school graduates of all the area high schools some of them going to college some of them going into the workforce and just wish the best of luck to them.

I would say Cantrell and I can say that we've come a long way with those fields compared to getting chips in your teeth from a rough infield arena. Or getting flooded out, right?

Hey, I just wanted to say, Bishop, I want to thank you. I want to thank all those that come in and provide us our invocation. I know you're taking time out of your day, and I quickly jotted down some of the things that you said that were very thought-provoking. And I just wanted to thank you and you and all the others. to come in and do that. I've never heard anybody thank you, but I certainly do appreciate it.

I know everybody does. I'm fine. To me, you did such a good job. I'm just going to double down on graduations.

I, over the last two weeks, had my youngest daughter and youngest son graduate seeing them out in Notre Dame and just getting to spend some time with all these young individuals that are coming up and going to different colleges, going to different towns, bringing those experiences back to Cape, hopefully keeping them here through different economic means. But it's just an exciting time.

um it's been a crazy little bit of the restaurant so i was going to say i'm ready i hope that reservation book is back yeah so i'm ready to go back into the normalcy for now well i've got a couple of things uh first adam blake chief blake i want to uh i want to commend you um our police chief for having the utmost integrity uh with respect to the seymour christian academy Doing what is right is not when no one is looking and having the conviction to stand up tall and say something is not easy. And I just want you to know that it did not go unnoticed in our community. Thank you. um old town cape i had a meeting with interim director jocelyn anderson i will be having a future meeting with simo ready the chamber and old town cape and myself to discuss some of our i know mark bliss is this is big on his agenda some of our inventory that's vacant downtown and some ideas that maybe can get some financial institutions involved bring those groups together to see what we can do to clean up to fix some of those buildings as councilman shuff says it's hard to say that again

It's hard to build a house when your cornerstones are crumbling. So right now, some of our cornerstones are downtown, physically and emotionally crumbling.

So that is something that's near and dear to my heart and their heart. I will say that in that meeting, they look to have, by the end of July, the new director in place for Old Town Cape. So very excited about that. Still having a lot of one-on-ones. I met with the Chamber, Rob Gilligan, Dr. Howard Binion, Josh Crowley, his successor, Rob Crowley. I would say that all of these partnerships and people that I'm meeting with are crucial to our overall success and I know that we all value those strong partnerships. As far as out and about, I gave you all an opportunity. This last weekend, downtown, the outdoor flea market. Oh my gosh, I had never seen that many people. Between the farmer's market and the outdoor flea market, there were thousands of people downtown. It was amazing. I really enjoyed that and saw a lot of people. That was just pretty cool. Whenever you see something like that, and I didn't even know it was going on. I went down to the farmer's market and said, what's going on over there? So that was pretty cool.

We've got one alibi around talking about great things going on. You don't have to make plans for July 4th. You can stay right here in Cape Girardeau. You'll be seeing some funny videos and other information coming out about the July 4th 250th celebration. that we're going to have here in Cape. It's going to begin with the Avenue of Flags. It's one of the things going on. If you've never seen a ceremony, induction of one of our Cape County veterans, that's a veteran of the foreign war that has since deceased, I invite you, I urge you to come up and watch one of those ceremonies. It will not only make you proud to be in Cape County, but a very proud American as well. Following that, I think we've got 16 flags being inducted now. Following that, we're going to have a ribbon cutting for our Patriot Pavilion, a 90 by 40 pavilion we've been building for about 10 years, it seems like. We're going to have a ribbon cutting for it. I've ordered 150 pork butts, and we're going to feed everybody a pulled pork sandwich, chips, and a drink. Cost you nothing, come up there and get a little bit of lunch, and then begin at 3 o'clock downtown. It's going to be a huge street party, if you will, with food and entertainment and cold drinks, and then an amazing fireworks display that's going to be shot off from the river again, the tub, like the old days I remember, and it's going to be a presentation like you've never seen before.

so uh don't go to the lake don't go anywhere stay right here in kate july 4th hope to see you there i would just add chief morris they are not going to blow up the downtown no that's awesome i'm looking forward to that um items up for discussion appearances by advisory board members can we have anybody or applicants i should say do we have anyone here tonight Seeing none, how about the Planning and Zoning Commission, Chairman Martin. Hello, Nicholas. Good evening, everyone.

Nicholas, am I in trouble? Sorry, it's actually John. It is John. Now I'm really in trouble. Okay, so a few things this evening from our last meeting. First item from our last meeting on May 13th was 2090 North Sprigg Street is a special use permit request for a special use permit to construct, maintain, and operate a vehicle fueling station and convenience store with carryout basket. If you guys are familiar with the property, this is the vacant property currently right now undeveloped at Sprigg and Lexington. So the first motion was made to approve and it failed with a vote of one in favor and seven in opposition. After some discussion between the commission, a second motion was made adding conditions to limit the hours of operation to 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. This motion also failed with a tie vote of four in favor and four in opposition. Happy to answer any questions you guys might have.

What was the reason for that position, David?

Yeah, so there was multiple reasons. One, so the package that was submitted to the commission, basically there's architectural features and some things like that that we did take into consideration. It was basically a metal building that they were planning on constructing there. The owner was not there to discuss any of this interaction on some of the architectural features or anything. That was one. We had some pushback from neighbors. received a couple letters and some people came to me to speak in opposition of it that were single family residents around that area and so they you know in in their mind um you know with hawks nest and they were concerned about some crime and things like that adding the gas station 24 hours was um you know a gas station operated 24 hours was also something that there were many the people i think on the commission and some of the public were concerned with and uh so um Like I said, that discussion kind of led to us saying, okay, well, what about something that we kind of limit some hours? And so that was what the 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. came up with, and that still just came closer. It's high vote, but it still failed.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

And that, I know it's been a while. Will that come back to us, or is that dead now?

I don't think they appeal it, right? No, it comes before. There will be a motion on your consent agenda.

I think Brian can talk about that. A hearing and a motion. Motion will be to accept their recommendation of denial. At the next council meeting.

June 1st. Okay. Thank you. We'll talk about that. That's one of those weird double... like reverse negative acceptance of the .

Any further questions? All right, we'll move on. Just a quick question.

Were they not the ability to appeal at some point or not?

It comes before the city council to make a decision. So they can, the city council can decide, accept the recommendation of the P&C commission for the council to choose to approve the special needs program. The council is the one that actually decides the special needs program. Okay. Thank you. All right, thanks. Second item is that 2801 Hopper Road fence extension was an exception. They've seen the maximum height of the fence in the front yard, approved four foot high, decorative aluminum fence in the front yard. This was an easy one. It was an eight in favor, zero opposition. Any questions? Red Hawk Heights subdivision record flat. the black reconfigures two lots into four lots for the development of four townhomes units on murray street motion recommended for approval subject staff comments being successfully addressed is passed with an eight eight and zero brian albert baldwin drives subdivision record plat Platt splits off a five-acre track from a larger parcel off of Baldwin Drive. The newly created lot will continue to be used as farmland. It is currently farmland. They just need to remarshall. Motion to recommend approval subject to staff comments being successfully addressed and a pass with a vote of eight in favor and zero in opposition. Questions? CPC subdivision record plat. This plat divides Marshall into two lots for future commercial development. I don't have the address on this off the top of my head, but I can find that real quick if you need it. A motion to recommend approval subject to staff's comments being successfully addressed. Pass with a vote of eight in favor and zero in opposition. Do we need an address or anything on that? And finally, ninth subdivision record flat reconfigures several lots into two new lots for future development on North Main Street. Not too far from here. Motion to recommend approval subject to staff's comments being successfully addressed. Pass with a vote of eight in favor and zero in opposition.

That's all. All right. Thank you, Nick. Questions? Good. Thanks, Hank. Thank you. All right.

I'm going to go to the assistant general. Thank you, Mayor. Council, we get a D3, D4, and D5. D3 is basically an L&I request to enter into an agreement with CMO on Paris improvements in the normal avenue right of way. D-4, a request to now accept the public improvements made to serve as promise of one subdivision. And finally, D-5, another request to accept the public improvements to serve Deer Run State's 52. Where do I close the review?

Okay. Well, we will get into regular session and call this meeting to order. Roll call.

Mr. Bliss?

Here.

Mr. Pinchrell?

Here. Mayor Clark?

Here. Mr. Johnson? Here. Mr. Randall? Here. Mr. Shaw? Here. Mr. Thomas? Here. All right, thank you.

I need a motion to adopt the agenda. So moved. Second. A first and a second by both of them down there. All those in favor say goodbye by stating aye. Aye. All right we do have a public hearing tonight. A public hearing to consider proposed amendment to chapter 30 of the code of ordinances of the city of Cape Girardeau, Missouri regarding CBD Central Business District and C1 General Commercial District. Is anyone here to speak in favor or in opposition of our public hearing? Seeing none, I will close that public hearing and we will have the consent agenda read by Greg Young. All right, you have the consent agenda before you.

I would entertain a motion.

So second. First by Thomas, second by Randall. Any discussion? All those in favor, say goodbye by stating aye. Aye. Opposed? I messed that up again, but it's only third meeting in. We do have one item removed from the consent agenda, and that is And ordinance amending Chapter 30 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Cape Girardeau, Missouri by changing the zoning property located on North Main Street in the City and County of Cape Girardeau, Missouri from N1 to CBD. Bill number 26-42, an ordinance amending Chapter 30 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Cape Girardeau, Missouri by changing zoning of property located on North Main Street in the City and County of Cape Girardeau, Missouri from M1 to CBD. I would entertain a motion. So is it. Second. I vote first by Schaffa, second by Cantrell. All those in favor, signify by stating aye. Aye. Any discussion? Seeing none, we will go to new ordinances. Looks like Brian's triumphant. We have an ordinance made in Chapter 25 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of KJR Missouri regarding billboards. First reading. Brian's triumphant. Now there's been a bunch of discussion.

Okay, so this is the first of two code amendments related to billboards. Both of the changes are in this one, Chapter 25, also known as the Development Code. I did give a presentation on this, I think about a month ago. I just wanted to give an overview of the changes that have been made since that time. If you do have questions, I'd be happy to answer them. But again, the intent of this is to expand the areas where billboards could go in terms of zoning districts and corridors and also to create a downtown billboards category. So in a nutshell, that's kind of the main changes to this amendment. One of the changes we did make and that was based on subsequent conversations with the outdoor advertising agencies is with regard to allowing motion on digital images, really motion in general on billboards. We had proposed a change to kind of loosen that language to align it more with non-billboard signs, which does allow motion as long as it's not deemed to be unsafe. That was met with some concerns for the outdoor advertising agencies. They had presented some information on studies that had been shown that showed that that has the potential to really be dangerous. So we're proposing now to keep the language the way it is, other than just the whole wording change. Instead of saying, can in any manner imitate movement, we're saying can in any manner convey motion. So that's one change. Another change pertains to the subsection on prohibition of billboards or where billboards cannot be permitted to remain or to be erected. We just provided some clarifying language with regard to billboards that were lawfully erected before the billboard regulations were established, i.e., non-conforming. So if a billboard was erected without a building permit before these regulations went in place, this is not saying you don't have to go tear it down. So it's making some provision for billboards that lawfully were erected at the time. Now, if a non-conforming billboard is damaged more than 60% of its value, then it has to come down and it cannot be rebuilt unless the special use permits have taken it. If nothing happens to the billboard and it's not conforming, it's allowed to continue. So that's really just clarifying language. With regard to the billboard, the downtown billboards, there was a request to consider increasing that distance requirement. We were proposing 500 feet. which is still beyond the typical downtown block. But again, there's just concern that they might open the window too much for too many downtown billboards. So we have changed that distance to 1,000 feet. For regular billboards, it's 1,400 feet. So for downtown billboards, it would be 1,000 feet. And then we have one additional stipulation on downtown billboards that are monument style, okay? And this would limit those. They could only go on quarter lots at intersections along those street sections where they're allowed. So that's kind of a summary of the changes that have been made since this presentation was given to you about a month ago. So I'd be happy to answer any questions, explain anything.

So with the intersections of the monument, is it any intersection or is it an intersection with a four-way stop? That's been my biggest concern, is we have a four-way stop with any amount of visual impairment. Going down that street, I go all the time, and I walk. That's my biggest concern, that we have a large amount of youth that walks through there. You have families at Discovery Playhouse. You have students that are coming through. You have international students and people and visitors. And trying to cross those streets, my biggest concern is that The current monument is at a four-way intersection that has a four-way stop. That's my personal belief, is that we really need to watch for the safety of our citizens and our visitors, and just watch on that.

So the way it's written, it would be for any intersection along those corridors. Whether it's a two-way stop, four-way stop. And is that just, is that an alleyway? We really don't have, like on Broadway, we don't have any four-way stops other than these traffic signals. So that really cuts it down if you're only allowing it where there's a four-way road. Well, in downtown Maine, where we currently have a lot. Yeah, that's true. That is not a signal, but there's only a couple locations if you do that.

Does that include alleyway intersections, or does it have to be two main roads? No, it has to be street intersections.

Would you assess... this is case individual or business or entity you know case-by-case basis right somebody say hey billboard um and those things that the money share would be in consideration is this a good place or not those assessments will be considered that's all provided for the special use permit process okay it would still have to be a specialist yeah right right so that's the

which do i do you appreciate that that special use mermen on it i i i do i do appreciate the special use i just like i said i'm very concerned just with

The amount of people that I deal with, you know, people walk around, they walk down the ebb and flow, they come and produce again. They go to celebrations. I deal with this traffic all the time. And it's already a street that people have problems navigating on foot. And I just think this is something that adds another layer because it's allowed to be, what, 10 feet wide and the monument is up to 12 feet tall. That's just a lot of space that can potentially... obstruct someone, whether it's an immediate stop sign or anything, I just, I really have pause whenever it's not at a four-way stop, where everyone has to stop and take their time. Because if you have the motion going downtown, and there are people that go flying through there, it's supposed to be, what, a speed limit of 30, which honestly I wish it was 25, because then it gets more sensible. But at 30 miles an hour, I guarantee you, every day there's no less than 20 cars that go almost 50 through there. And if you have a child that's at Discovery Playhouse, and somebody doesn't see them because of a monument sign, and they get hit 50, that's very different than if they get hit four or five coming off of a subsection.

Well, and I would say that's exactly why it's going to require special use permit. We can avoid that. This California can avoid that in future councils. Anybody else? Right. Is that it? Okay. Is anybody here to speak in favor or in opposition of bill number 46-40? All right. Seeing none, I will entertain a motion to approve. So moved. Second. All those in favor, signify by stating aye. Aye. Opposed? No. Okay. So A's have it to, or I's have it, sorry. It's been a long Monday. 4-2. Okay. We've got you up here again, Ryan Dunby. Bill number 26-41, an ordinance amending Chapter 30 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, regarding CVV, Central Business District, and C1, General Commercial District. First reading, Ryan Sherman.

So the Chapter 25 amendment added C1 to the list of zoning districts where billboards would be of special use. And then the downtown billboards section, provides for those zoning districts and the CBD as well, since most of the downtown is CBD. So this ordinance goes into chapter 30, which is zoning into the CBD and C-1 sections and events the special uses list to add in billboards. Formality.

Is anyone here to speak in favor or in opposition of 26-41? Seeing none, I would entertain a motion. So moved. Second. First by Thomas, second by Randall. All those in favor, say goodbye by saying aye. Aye. Any discussion, council? Seeing none, we will get into bill number 26-43, an ordinance approving the record by Presley's edition. First reading, Mr. Sherman.

This plaque combines three tracks into one line at the southwest corner of Southford Street and Morgan Street. Very self explanatory.

I have a bill 26-43 to entertain a motion. So moved. The first by , second by Mr. Bliss. All those in favor signify . Oh, it's first reading. Sorry, first reading. First reading. I would open it up. Does anyone here speak in favor and opposition of 26-43? Seeing none. Now I'll entertain a motion to start with that, first by Cantrell, and second by Bliss. All those in favor, state your body by stating aye. Aye. Opposed, any discussion? Seeing none, I don't believe we have any other business. Appearances regarding items not on the agenda, we did have one. You have a point. Oh, sorry, I skipped that as well. All over the place. Appointments. It looks like we have a tree advisory board recommendation of Ashley Roney. I would entertain a motion. So moved. Second. First by Thomas, second by Randall. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay, and then I think we are not, we are not appointed or am I? Is this G2? Am I doing anything? I didn't vote on it. It was still on there, that was the discussion.

Right, right. I think what we can do is make a recommendation.

Yeah, I think we had talked about this. I emailed you all, Dr. Haskett. I would make a recommendation of John Eric Klein to be appointed to the downtown Cape Girardeau Community Improvement District Board of Directors. Salute. Second. I have a first and a second. Can I get a vote? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any discussion? I would mention that with the downtown CID the intent was for John Eric to take your spot and then for you to be a liaison to that group if you would. That is correct. Perfect. All right, thank you all. Other business? I think there's two reappointments as well. There are two more. There are two reappointments.

Oh, yes. There's two reappointments. I didn't know that.

I'm sorry. Can I have those names? I'm going to make a motion to appoint both of those. So moved. Second. Person second. Can I get all those in favor signify by saying aye? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Sorry about that. I thought we were pulling that one off the agenda. My bad. Now I'll go to other business. Third time's a charm. Any other business? We do have one person signed up, but I do not see Mr. Allen here this evening. So I would entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye.