Administration / Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay, take it. Test volume if it has if anybody that's on this see that test test because we can't hear because I turned the speaker back.

All right. Well, hopefully it's Okay, I can get all doesn't sound like it is. So, I think we're good. Okay. Uh, welcome everybody to the May meeting of the City of Wildwoods Administration and Public Works Committee. Um, this is the last meeting theoretically of this group of people. So, uh, I just wanted to say a real quick thanks to everybody who made it out and all for all the work and stuff we've done here for the last year. I think we've accomplished quite a bit and some of us may be back and some of us may not. We never know. We'll find out here in a few days. But, um, you guys have worked really hard to do a lot of great stuff. So, I'm appreciative of everything that we have been working through. Uh we've got a pretty decent agenda here tonight, so I won't take up too much time with any uh long speeches or anything. So we'll just start with our roll call.

Council member Preston, Council Member Mabberry here. Council member Nyian here. Council member Farmer here. Council member Marshall present. Council member Bockart. Council member Vanic here. Council member Alers here. All right. Uh, with that, that brings us to the approval of minutes. I didn't really see anything that jumped out at me. Mr. Marshall, you got any notes? I'll make the motion to approve the minutes as submitted. All right. Motion made by Mr. Marshall. Anybody care to second the motion to approve the minutes? Seconded by Mr. Mabry. All those in favor, please say I.

I. Anyone abstain? Anybody? Mr. Vanic will abstain. Anyone say no. All right. Motion passes. That brings us to uh public participation. I know we have a couple folks here in the room. I don't think that we have anybody online. [clears throat and cough] Uh we have one online. Okay. Um so for those of you in the room or online um if you I know most of you have probably already spoken at city council and things basically it's the same kind of a deal. Just uh please give your uh your ward if you're a Wildwood resident or where you're from if you're not. Um it's a time for you to speak and us to listen. So there's not a whole lot of engagement, but if you can keep your remarks to about five minutes, that would be great. And if you feel like somebody's already said what you're about to say, that's okay, too. You can just say, "Hey, I agree with whomever." And we can move on or you can say it again. However you want to do it. Um, so with that, we'll start our public participation.

Michael Sherman, we'll go do online first or after. We'll do those last. We'll do that last. Yeah, we'll do a pin.

All right. Good evening and thanks for the opportunity to address the committee. Once again, Michael Sherman here, Ward One. And I think you all know that I lead the group certified bow hunters of St. Louis County and we provide no cost management by archery hunting for individual property owners, subdivisions, and businesses across the county. Um, I believe the takeaway for this committee from the last city council meeting was to survey residents on their opinion for establishing archery only hunting on properties of one to less than three acres. if that's correct. And I have a few questions and concerns with the survey as it was currently written based on what was published in the agenda for this evening's meeting. For the most part, um, asking people, we're asking people to provide uneducated opinions. So, I ask that you please consider my recommendations so our residents at least have more information easily available to them as they form their opinions. In the introduction section, I strongly recommend we start with an overview of how the city council suspended spending our city dollars on contracted out of town sharpshooters to cold deer. So, the city could assess the possibility of using local bow hunters and save the city money while still managing our deer population. I also recommend we let the citizens know the city determined they would not contract or actively support using bow hunters mainly due to liability concerns. But the city is considering establishing archery only regulations or one to less than three acre properties. I think this option for individual property owners to use bull hunters if they choose is a good one. Um, and I believe in doing this will give them a more detailed background on why they're getting the survey to begin with. Next, I just want to talk about section nine of the survey regulations and oversight. With the current questions, we may gain a little insight, but I don't see a scenario, nor do I recommend one, where we do not establish requirements if we allow hunting on one to three acres. I

think any lawyer representing the city would agree. I have previously recommended we establish regulations like our neighboring cities to protect the city and the property owner. I also have concerns with these questions being deep into the survey causing people to have the impression there will be no regulations or oversight when they're answering the previous questions. Going back to the property diagrams, um they do provide a good visual for the people being surveyed based on property size, but without further references in my opinion and based on actual experience, they very um they are very anti-archery hunting biased. The note at the bottom, in my opinion, is also very biased, and I'll read it. After being struck by an arrow, deer may continue moving a significant distance before stopping. using the word struck. I mean, arrows don't strike deer. They're shot through a deer. And as worded, significant distance, in my opinion, intentionally exaggerates uncertainty and creates a false impression for potential negative outcomes. There are probably very few people in this room who have any experience in how far a deer will travel after being lethally hit by an experienced bow hunter. And based on my experience and having harvested over 200 deer in an urban environment, deer typically go 10 to 150 ft. And if we include in the regulations the recommendations I previously made will eliminate any issues when there are exceptions. It is good to note though that the example of the hunt stand location in those pictures actually complies with the setback requirements of all of our neighboring cities and they do successfully allow archery hunting um on those same size properties. After the images, we list a link for Wildwood's current hunting regulations which currently do not address hunting archery specific hunting on 1 to three acres. again with a focus on those one to three acres. I recommend we inform

our residents and that our surrounding cities actually allow hunting on one to three acres and maybe we could even add some additional context like to successfully help manage their deer. Put this in a more positive spin. I also recommend we include the links of each city's regulations so at least our residents have the opportunity to go and review them um for the factual information as they do their research. and section five. Didn't we already survey people about using white buffalo? I don't understand why this is in here at all and because the scope of the survey was to to get information about the 1 to three acres and I think their support for sharpshooting in our city came back at like 16 to 18% if I recall. regardless of whether or not it's in there. Please add a similar question for archery hunting like do you support the city developing regulations to allow archery only hunting on one to three acres including requirements and oversight similar to our neighboring cities? That would be a good example of how I would read the question. And in my opinion, this would be a very informative question and target what the committee was asked to do for section six and seven archery hunting regulations and partial combinations. Again, I think people need to know there would most likely be additional regulations and oversight like our neighboring cities. This is where I recommend we move the questions from section 9. For questions 12, 13, and 14, I also strongly recommend we add wording to include rid permission from the property owner. This takes away any concerns people may have with perceived trespassing. Also question 12 the third option says do not allow archery hunting in res residential areas. This needs to be removed as residential area is clearly defined. Instead we include the question asking if they support or not the city establishing archery only regulations and you'll get the answer

that I think you're looking for. In my opinion, question 12 could be better worded as, if you were to provide written permission to an archery hunter to hunt your property, what minimum property size should be required? And their response option should be three acres, 1 acre, or unsure. The last recommendation I have is to keep response options across their survey or like questions consistent. The white buffalo question has five different responses ranging from strongly support to strongly oppose. So make it the same way for the other questions where it would apply. Finally, by establishing archery hunting regulations for one to three acres, we give individual property owners a means and actually some responsibility to help manage our deer herd. If they choose, they could find and work with bow hunters they are comfortable with. It's simpler. it is. It's simply another tool in their toolbox and we wouldn't be forcing anyone to use it and there would be no contracting or direct relationship with the city. On the contrary, we can continue with the status quo then we can expect we can't expect a better outcome when it comes to managing our deer or being fiscally responsible for our city dollars. Again, appreciate the opportunity to talk and um happy to answer any questions. So, thank you

Schumacher. All right, good evening. My name is Luke Schumacher. Uh I live in Chesterfield Wildwood. I'm right off Wildarts Creek uh in Badler Forest neighborhood. So sometimes my address is Wildwood, sometimes just says Chesterfield. So um thanks for having uh me today. Uh I am also a group uh me man manager for the Spurban Bow Hunters in the Wildwood area. Uh my main goal is to propose a return to the fundamental principles of hunting and wild wildlife management within the city of Wildwood with a renewed focus on deer management efforts and revolve around ethical hunting practices and accurate harvest numbers. As suburban bow hunters of St. Louis County, we pride ourselves on being deer hunters, not colers. A key component uh of this proposal would be an implementation of a mandatory deer check-in system following each harvest in the city of Wildwood. This process would allow the city to accurately track harvest numbers, population trends, uh ensure compliance with lo local regulations, collect valuable data to inform future wildlife uh management decisions, and to promote transparency and accountability within the program. This sorry the system would also require hunters to report key information following each harvest such as date of harvest hunter's name the ward in which the deer was taken sex of the deer and photo if possible you'll see that a lot and that's kind of what we already do with art valleywin chesterfield. Uh this data collection process would also give the city uh a clear and more complete understanding of total harvest activity across all areas. With accurate and consistent reporting, the city can better monitor population trends, making make infor management decisions, and ensure the health and stability of the deer population for years to come. We believe that a well- reggulated bow hunting program paired with a robust robust reporting system can provide an effective and ethical solution to managing the deer population

while also engaging responsible members of the community. A great start to this would be to seriously look at the minimum acreage for bow hunting. I understand that Wildwood has many lots with more acreage over Chesterfield and Bowwin. However, to have bow hunters and rifle hunters abiding by the same minimum eight minimum acreage rule is crazy. The only difference now that I see is stay in location to houses, which makes sense. You got a firearm needs to be farther away from a house compared to a bow. Um, any change here would be a great win for bow hunters and in the end would really help us to get into more of the heavily populated deer areas. If we can't make one acre happen, then even a twoacre minimum would be a plus if we're able to add parcels together. Uh the past city's deer calling programs accounts only for deer removed through those efforts and does not include harvest by local deer hunters. This incomplete data creates a misleading picture of total deer removal, increasing the risk of overh harvest or improperly targeted management actions. As a result, current practices may unintentionally contribute to the to the decline or imbalance of local deer population rather than supporting its long-term health and sust sustainability. At its core, hunting has always served as a primary and effective tool for managing wildlife populations in a sustainable and ethical manner. By util by utilizing all deer hunters who who hunt within wildwood, the city has an opportunity to shift towards a more natural and balanced approach to deer management. one that prioritizes conservation, stewardship, and community involvement. We would welcome the opportunity to work with the city to help develop this program, including establishing guidelines, safety protocols, and reporting procedures to ensure its success. Thank you for your time.

I'm gonna pass it on to James. James,

thank you all for your time. Um, I'm James and I'm from Ward B for Pacific. So, I'm not quite here, but I'm real close. Um, I'm also with the Suburban Bow Hunters and there's two things that I'd like to talk to to you about tonight and they're both on the U deer hunting feasibility report that that you all put on your website and uh first is you'll hear that there's a common theme it seems like with everyone here. It's reducing the the minimum requirement for three acres to to one or something lower to make it more feasible for us to to get in these uh spots where we need to be able to harvest deer. Uh you should have a map And this map should look familiar to you because it's two of the maps that you provide on your website just combined. And these are known deer accidents that have happened where the deer either was euthanized or not, but there was a car accident and all these dots. And it's overlaid over the top of the map that shows the red zones here where we don't allow deer hunting because the parcels are too small. So, you'll notice there's a ton of car accidents that are happening in the areas where we need to be taking deer out. So, um, one of the the takeaways, and I thought the report was great, by the way, the defeasibility report, but I just thought that this was something that might be able to help change your mind on this part of it, um, as far as us being able to do that safely and where we need to. So um the second piece that I wanted to talk about also was uh reconsidering recommendation. The recommendation at the end was that you the liability that might come in with contracting uh local hunters or local hunting group to be able to help you know take deer and thin the population. um our group uh we have a lot of experience in the neighboring areas and uh what you need is a specific thing done which is you need folks that have skills and ability to to take deer out

on these smaller parcels next to roadways and um our group does that year in and year out and been doing it for decades. So um we have a lot of skills in that area and we're well suited for the job. So, um, with the liability as well, the liability concern that was in the in the report, uh, the city's already shown that they can safely partner with a wildlife management organization. A wild white buffalo um reported they removed 661 deer with 661 shots and no incidents. So, uh, the difference is they're using firearms. So, um, as far as partnering with a group like ours, well, you're already you're partnering with a group. you have in the past. So, um, as far as liability is concerned, I I don't see how that would be increased. In fact, I feel like it would be decreased. Um, the reason why they're using high-owered weapons and what we're using is bow and arrow. Um, this room is not much further wide than the shots we're taking is a deer. Um, in a typical deer stand setup, we're shooting from elevated position and the arrow might travel, it might be 10 feet behind the deer and into the ground. So where a bullet can travel miles. So I mean there's a there's a a big difference between what we're doing and what we can accomplish both safely but also more effectively because we have a lot more people and a lot more time. So we can we can deploy people into these red zone areas and thin the herd with a lot more hands and help what they can do over a week or weekend with a corn pile. So, um I believe partnering with us would be a wise choice for the safety of Wildwood. Um another thing to consider too is their insurance policy. Their insurance policy is the $2 million policy that we have. So, White Buffalo, as far as liability is concerned, um from the report saying that there would be a liability with working with local hunters or local hunting group. I I

believe there wouldn't be. I believe that it it would be the same liability you've already taken on, but it just at a lesser degree. So, uh, something that would help us. So, should you choose to change the property requirements from 3 to one acres, we don't need you to go and coordinate and ask for permission from the folks at these properties, but something that would help us some collateral. Essentially, what we're going to need to do is solicit, you know, a vast number of people in these areas to see if they want to participate in this program and allow us to thin deer to decrease accidents in Wildwood. And in order to do that, um, what would help us is a little piece of collateral, just a little note from the city saying that we have a deer problem and and participating in this program would help us solve it, you know. Uh, so that doesn't directly put you in some type of liability, saying no, we we asked these folks directly called them or whatever it might be, but but encouraging them it would be a good idea to help wouldn't be the worst thing. Just a small letter like that would help us sell people on the idea of being involved in this program and ultimately you know protect the cars and citizens of Wildwood from being in deer related accidents. So that's all I have. Thank you for your time.

Thank you

Lou Solomon. Uh thank you for your work you done on the uh the report. I want to thank Luke and James for their information that was from them not from me. Um, I'm going to give you a proposal. Sperm Bo Hunter proposes a two-year management plan. Per this contract, we manage and oversee every aspect of the proposal, understanding that this proposal would need to be in the form of an ordinance passed by the full city council. Per that we initiate contact with existing and probable locations for deer hunting activity. We engage them of the benefits of following our plan which is we're not dear callers. A lot of people are not happy with with the calling and a lot of people are not going to be happy with future calling. So I think they would be happier with this be I have friends that live in Wildwood and they tell me stuff like well they're not going to come in here and manage our area because we're not going to let them in. We're a private community. They're not going to get in here. So it made me realize a lot of stuff that's important and helping people and and and giving them their our goals and their goals working with them will make this successful. We work with existing hunters and land owners to meet or exceed their management goals. We'll work with high within the high density uh areas to meet the city management goals. We'll collect all the harvest data. We'll verify authenticity and send timely reports to city officials. perform annual we'll perform our operations only during legal hunting season September 15th January 15th we'll perform operations only by legal methods per MDC regulations no cheating our group does not cheat we're a very moral group we supply will supply the admin public works committee with with a

detailed year-end report and make available the board members and Wildwood area managers that would do this to answer questions about the management plan and the implementation. That's $250 a deer per deer harvest up to an agreed harvest quota paid after our year-end report is approved by whoever's on the public uh the admin of public works committee after their February meeting. That's it. That's a proposal and we could submit that legally to the city if it's put in form of a u um a um proposal, an ordinance. We are a proactive group. We're not reactive. We were here before the sharpshooter. That that's how we operate. We're an open group. James and Luke are very new to this group. I've always interviewed people on my back porch on the patio and got to know people. So, this is not new to us. We've been doing this for 20 years. We verify a lot of stuff before people come into our group. Hunting is a very competitive thing. I want you to know that hunting access to get spots. It's like gold to some people. We We have a lot of gold. I'm sorry. We we have been on the forefront and this is why it's very competitive. Back in 2004 when I approached Clarkson Valley, all the competitive nature came out right after that. Um, you know, character attacks, lies, um, right now there's no proof, a way to verify deer harvest since 2005. So, let me pull out my thing again. Whenever you harvest a deer before 2005, you get these tags to put on your deer

when you take them and check them in. This is from 2004. That was that color. So, this was prior to that. So, there's no way to verify it. So, what I do on my Facebook page is I post photos of deer hats that have been harvested. That's one way to verify, but we have many other ways and that's in our proposal. Okay. So, um, recently somebody made a post. We got about 30 seconds.

They will do no kill photos, no blood, no redneck. I think it's a direct attack on us. Everybody looks at us in a competitive nature and they want to try to like make us look bad so they're successful. So, they acquire hunting spots. And are you going to know the results if that goes that way? I don't know. But if we do it our way, you will have verification of everything that happens in Wildwood. And even property owners that like my friend that lives in a subdivision, oh, we're private. We don't want anybody to know. We would work with them to convince them. People probably don't want to tell that they harvest as deer. Deer harvest. So you know exactly what is going on in your neighborhood. Thank you. All right. Uh, I guess. All right, Mr. Mitchell, I assume that's you.

Oh, I'm sorry. I can't I don't know how to turn on my video. I apologize. So, forgive my fingerlight image. So, number one, thank you for uh putting that survey together. Look, it's a good survey. it's the right thing to do. Uh it is obviously very emotionally leading to the recipient. Uh the questions are extremely biased to um foster answers in my opinion that will not give really a true unbiased clear answer from the recipient. So my suggestion is to modify that survey and not lead with these questions. just ask the question and give them the options as Michael Sherman said about strongly opposed to strongly agree etc. So you get a more of a range versus the dogmatic question. So um you know not happy about the survey the way it's put together. I don't know who wrote it but it's put together in a way that's going to elicit certain responses that really won't give the city a really clear understanding without um with with an unbiased response. So hopefully you'll take that under consideration. I do want to speak about the reporting of the deer. I do I do think it's important that Wildwood knows how many deer are taken uh by uh bow hunting or other hunting methods within the city of Wildwood. And the best way to do that is going to be to partner with the Missouri Department of Conservation. Uh all deer are checked electronically on their hunting app. And the city, excuse me, the the MDC could easily put an additional menu on their app if somebody checks a deer. Because when you check your deer on the app, you designate which county the deer was taken in. And if it's taken in St. Louis County, then the Department of Conservation could list a series of cities, Wildwood, Chesterfield, Clarkson Valley, and then group the others into another category to track how many deer are killed in Wildwood. That will give you a really

good clear report from another government agency that would be accurate because most hunters are not going to report to the city on the deer that they kill uh voluntarily within any program or voluntarily through the through uh their own valition. The second part going back to the survey is I think it's really important that the city gives the citizens of this community a clear understanding of the cost differential between sharp shooting with white buffalo versus a hunting program. So I would request that the city starts including those costs. Currently they were I think estimated at $900 per deer so the citizens of the community can make an informed decision on which method they'd like to choose. And the last thing I'll comment on is what is the endgame of the survey? What's the objective? Now, that's obviously in this meeting, in this uh environment, a rhetorical question. But what is the endgame? What are you really looking for? If you're looking for a basis to determine if you should lower the acreage to one, then that basis should be 16%. Because that is the number of respondents, the percentage of respondents who agreed with a sharpshooter program. 16% agreed with it yet the city moved forward with it and so that means 84% did not agree to it. So that'd be my last comment. Make sure that you include the cost and decide what is the basis for moving to one acre. And I will promise you even white buffalo can't get on these smaller parcels. This is where you need to take care of these deers in these smaller parcels that are more densely populated by subdivisions, HOAs, etc. and archery hunting is definitely the most practical method to do that and that's already been proven through Mike Sherman and his group uh with the surrounding communities. That's all I've got. Thank you.

All righty. Thank you. Um Miss Clark, I see you're online. I don't know if if Put your hand up if you wanted to talk. I don't know if you were just watching as usual. All right. Well, we'll assume that she's just watching. Uh so if there's nobody else then we'll go ahead and close our uh our public comment. Thank you everybody for coming out this evening and and sharing your thoughts. Um there is a couple of quick things I do want to do uh just to get the right facts and figures out there. So Mr. Lee, because this has been a thing that has happened now a couple times, I think it's important that you explain how these proposals actually happen.

Yes. Uh thank you, Chair. Uh just a quick note on that. So typically if the city were to receive a proposal or were to solicit proposals for um any type of service for the city u it's under a low enough expenditure threshold it could be something that's solicited. We typically get three we solicit for three responses we hope to get three back. uh we can make a choice. But if it's over that expenditure threshold, which this type of program and also the White Buffalo program would be, um what usually would occur is that the city would go out, we would solicit for a proposal, and then we would collect proposals in. We typically would not collect them during an open meeting or during a public conference or if we don't ask for them.

Yeah. If we don't ask for them, then we can't accept them. Right. So, that's not to say that the proposals aren't good or anything like that, but this is this kind of gets back to the beginning of this whole thing where in order

at a citywide level, in order to have any type of proposal, I mean, it could be somebody that wants to cut the grass in the park. It doesn't really matter what it is. The city can't just take whatever piece of paper is handed to them and just go with that. It's like it's a whole procurement policy and process to make sure everything is done the right way. So, while I'm c who whomever is certainly free to give whatever proposals they want. You got to understand how that actually works and how in some cases by I would suggest in trying to not go through the kind of standard process with that, it can wind up biting you on the back end unintentionally because it just gets weird. So, I would in I would encourage anybody on any subject that is wanting to do this stuff, showing up to city hall and handing Mr. a piece of paper or one of the council members a piece of paper with a proposal on it is probably not the best way to get these things going. It it's definitely problematic when it comes to trying to then figure out how to put the RFPs and things like that out. So, I'm just cautioning everybody to very carefully read that process and try to understand it because it's it's a slippery thing very quickly. Um, okay. Uh, any other things you want to clarify about any of the stuff? I did hear a note about the percentage from the last survey. Could I clarify that?

Sure. So, there was a question in the last survey. Um, do you think it's important that we get the survey out support of the council efforts to do so? But of the 16% that is mentioned that there were multiple options provided on a question in that survey that asked if uh residents support a sharpshooter or trap and euthanized program. 16.3% supported just a sharpshooter program. 7.4% 4% support a trap and euthanize program only. And then there was another option that said either program which included 46.8% of the respondents. So when you add those all up supporting one of those two types of approaches was about 72%. Okay. Just one.

Okay. Great. Okay. With that we will close our public comment and we will move on to uh our first uh item which I think should take just a little bit of time. Then we'll get to the deer thing which you guys are hanging out for. So, first thing up is the update on the uh reflective beacon, I guess, flashing beacon at Clayton and Dartmouth over by Lafayette.

Thank you, chair. And this honestly could have most likely been put under public works. Sorry about that, Rick. But, um, just want to provide more of an administrative update since it's intergovernmental. Uh, last year in February, I'll go a little bit further back. In late 2024, we had a group of residents that came out and requested a uh deinsulate well to look at the safety conditions at a crosswalk at Dartmouth Crest and Clayton Road. Um from there, obviously that being a county road, we had reached out to the county on behalf of the resident and had been trying to get the county to add it to a uh it's also at Lafayette High School. Yes. Yeah. So, two groups,

two groups. Yes. uh but neighborhood safe they had a neighborhood safety improvement program uh that they were going to bundle this project potentially eventually they got back to us in February of 25 uh confirmed that this project was added to their their list of improvements uh was supposed to be scheduled to be completed before the end of 2026 so at that point uh we allowed them to kind of get the time and u you know flexibility they needed to get their ducks in a row and bundle the projects accordingly we had not heard back from the county and the city team had been reaching out to them a few times to get an update on the status. Uh I'm going to give bad news and then some good news came out recently, but uh back about a week or so ago, we received a communication saying that they are more than happy to do it. They are still wanting to do it, but they needed funds reappropriated from the county council um to complete not only this project, but a whole plethora of other projects. It was about a million dollars uh that was supposed to be reappropriated. It was under bill number 53 from the county council. uh that night we heard about it was actually on their agenda. They held that bill. Uh so then you know the city had reached out to the uh our county councilman to request information on what the status was and if there's any traction on pre moving that project forward and we did get a response back that uh it is going to take place as of right now. Uh the only thing is bill number 53 didn't necessarily get passed but there was another funding allocation that took place uh reappropriation if you will that was broad enough that could include a project like this is about a million dollars uh and the plan will be to bundle this project into that program now. So it seems that they're going to be using the RAM settlement funds that they have to fill a backs stop here. Uh that said, what was told to us is that they are currently working to put these projects that are included in the overall package out to bid. Um and that they're hoping to have a solid

update for us for a construction timeline. Hopefully construction by uh September or October of this year. So just a quick update, kind of a whirlwind of emotions. I know that middle of the school year. It's a good time to do that. Great time to do it. Cool. Just two more comments on it. Um the year that that first request came through, there was actually a car t-bone there. Yeah. a after school. But the bigger issue, too, was the county came in and painted a crosswalk there that never existed before. They just didn't put any lights up. So, that just kind of created another problem. So, a lot of that burden was back on the county. The the school district and the city couldn't do much as the county's issue, but hopefully they'll do something. [clears throat] But, there has been a serious accident and they painted to crosswalks about four years ago. So,

Mr. IC. So, the county says that they've come up with this $1 million for projects across the county. Yes. And the RRFB RF just a portion of that $1 million. How much is the RRFB going into the RFB? I mean, it can we've done one before. It's t I would say not more than $30,000 for the whole set. That would be probably a pretty conservative 50,000.

But that million dollars, that's the one piece of it which is part of the million. Quite a bit more that they're doing. All right. Anybody have anything else? Do you need any?

No action. We'll uh but we will keep an eye on this and as we see updates in it, uh we'll keep informed if we hear anything negative. The reason why we wanted to include this originally was to make sure that uh if they did decide not to pass anything that uh we were going to recommend having some type of resolution or something to request that it be added back in, but seems like it's being handled. Okay. Um all right, that brings us to our deer management and hunting uh regulation survey. And uh Mr. Lee and I were talking a little bit about this before the meeting. So I just did want to clarify a couple things because I know we did have a couple comments uh about it. So the survey that you're seeing is the idea of the survey. It's not the actual survey. So all of those questions and the ordering and all of that comes down the line here once we get this other side figured out. Um so it's really less about our the goal of the survey in my opinion based on what was passed was to try to keep this as neutral as possible. So, um, that's that would be my recommendation with any of these questions is to try to keep it as straightforward as it possibly can be. Um, but I'll let Mr. Lee take it away.

Yes. Uh, just to hit on that same point. Yes, these, uh, the survey is not ordered in the way it's going to be. This is not like the final draft or anything. The idea tonight was the department was putting together information that to give the committee here and eventually the council an understanding of what does this survey look like? tonight. There's a question on here that hey, let's strike that or let's rephrase it. We want to hear that feedback tonight. That's a big portion of uh tonight's purpose. Uh so, thank I do appreciate the uh feedback from the the group and everyone that came in for public comment. But just to provide a little background, uh you know, at the last meeting, we had the feasibility uh report. We reviewed that, went to council. Um key conclusion there was that we would not be necessarily engaging and contracting with the local archery hunters but um the other side is that that side of it was we wouldn't also go after and get property access for them. On the flip side, uh there was a discussion about the oneacre minimum rule about our current regulations with regard to archery hunting and a lot of the council had asked, you know, we just don't have a lot of the data u that maybe want to fill in the gaps to see if this is something the community would want to would want to pursue. U so that said the report the motion from the last meeting at the council was to try to get a third party involved to handle the statistical side of this also the framing of it. Um, and then also try to find a third party to help with drafting of questions. We've done one of the two. We've tried to first, but we're work trying to get a hold of MDC to help review the survey questions that have been listed here tonight um to see if there's any feedback that they would give and we bring that back to you uh to this group as well. But then the secondary component was we had a solar survey that was conducted back in 2024. Um, a professor over at St. Louis University had been kind enough to work with us on that and u the survey actually ended up working really well.

We were able to get the answers we needed. Uh we the city itself didn't handle the data input for these mailedback surveys which we'll get into and generally uh the sampling and everything was done by this third party to keep the control mechanism outside of the city. Uh that said uh Dr. Nains actually has he's gotten a promotion. he currently is working um for the University of Chicago. Uh he did confirm that he would be able to run some type of survey model in June of 2026. So just a quick note there. So his timeline does get a little bit more uh his timing gets a little bit more hairy whenever you get into the July would also be okay, but as you get back into the school year, it gets a little bit more difficult. Uh

no, no. That said, uh generally he would be able to help us with the random sampling which is going to be tricky here because we have to balance two needs. You know, we want to get equal sampling of all eight wards, but also we want to also achieve equal sampling of 1 acre properties, one to three acre properties, less than one acre properties, and over three acre properties. So, Professor Nine said he could provide some some options for the council to be able to accomplish that. Uh also he would be willing to provide you know consultation on not necessarily the questions themselves. He did mention that he is not you know an expert in the conservation field. So he doesn't want to necessarily overstep in that regard but he would help with the framing of questions since his expertise is serve conducting surveys. Um so he would be able to structure it to be as non-bias as possible if you will and also making sure that the survey is designed in a way to hopefully get the highest response rate possible for the folks that we reach out to. Uh that said, they would have uh just given his time constraints, he would coordinate to have a um I'll kind of go back here for a second. The way we did it and we got a really high response rate for the solar survey is we sent out a letter inviting folks to to respond to the survey, but we also included a a QR code that would take them to the online survey. They could take it there. Great. Then they have a unique identification code. We get that code. That's perfect. Uh the flip side of that though is we actually mailed out a physical copy of the survey as well and that the resident was then it was already postmarked so they could just put it back in the envelope and then mail it back to the city or at that point it was actually mailed back to Dr. N's office um to be able to collect it and then the data input was taken care of by a u a graduate student. So that would be a similar approach here.

Can I interject maybe so I clarify? Weren't you talking about putting it online originally or or is this going to be a mail?

So, it would be it would be online. So, it'd be hosted on Survey Monkey would be the would be the the website, but what you would do is you'd have two different options. You would you would hope that the the goal would be for residents to fill it out online. That would be ideal. Uh that said, we the reason why we bring this up is when we did this with the solar survey, we had I think it was around 50% of the respondents actually mailed their survey back in. So if you take out something about them filling it out in paper, I guess was something that made people want to respond to it. Uh so that was the question we we can ask tonight. You know, if it's something we want to keep online only, we'd still send a letter out to invite them because the key here is having this unique identification code and then IP address tracking. So, when someone submits a survey, we'll be able to see, you know, in their letter, it'll have here is your unique identification code. We really want you to take the survey, but make sure you fill this in and make sure it's correct u with what's on the letter. And then second, we'll be able to see on the back end, professor names will be able to see if uh you know, one IP address, which is one computer, were to complete the survey 40 times. So, that would skew the results. Um, same with the access code. If you had 40 submissions under one access code, you know, it's the same individual.

[clears throat] The reason I asked this because our long discussion last meeting I a good point that I took well advice that we don't want to mess with the people with the large properties right so I if we work to mail I I don't think we even should mail it to those people you know three plus I think I don't necessarily disagree but I think the only concern is if we if we wound up doing something for the smaller parcels, the likelihood of having to bring in permitting becomes stronger and having not gotten feedback yet from the city attorney as to whether we can well that was partially do that

that was in my questions if we can yeah and still no answer. So I think the qu I mean I think the biggest I think the biggest question is what we definitely don't want to do is I don't know if disenfranchise is the right word but what we definitely don't want to do is disrupt people that as Ed said last time have been doing this for decades on their large properties and now we add a whole another layer of stuff into it and then there's also the confusion which

we see all the time which is well if you only have it in one place and not the other place some people don't know which one is what and then who is doing the enforcement and what winds up happening it becomes I mean I I would suggest kind of regardless of what John says from a legal standpoint, from an enforcement standpoint, I think it becomes really difficult for people to wrap their heads around. This if we mailed it, I don't think they should should get it. And if they would, I think it has to be abundantly clear to them that this does not affect your property. you know, these large parcels. It, you know, it has to be has to be clear because I'm just taking this from I know Ed, you you really made a strong point about that that you don't want to mess with these people that

I think that's the problem is legally, right? We can't say because you live in W four and five, you have to file these documents and if you live in W six, you don't have to file with the city any permits or anything else. That I don't think you're allowed to do. It's kind of like we call it dependent upon on which ward you live in. I'm just I'm just saying that that it's the acreage, but you can't just survey wards that have small acreage. You got to go to all of them to do the same thing. Maybe they can come out with a different way. We can't seem to do it on Heights of Brass or anything.

I would I think and I mean you you I think you were the second for this motion if I remember right, Cliff. So I I mean I what I took out of it was at the end of the day what we want is a a neutral survey that answers these kinds of sets of questions that are coming back from the right number of respondents necessary to generate an actual opinion so to speak. So I I think that my guess would be from a mathematical standpoint you would perhaps survey less of those people in the larger parcels because there just are technically less of them. But I'm not the the survey mathematician, so I don't know.

And if I'm jumping the gun here too much, let me know if if it's it's there's going to be some type of beginning statement on this. I think it should say what the city has been doing and how much it has costed the city to do this and and all the numbers of the deer that have been cold and everything like that. and uh and then also work that in towards why we're doing this because there's another alternative to this by the bow hunters. And I I I also would like maybe some information stated that most of the cities around us are doing deer management successfully too. I think maybe Wildwood residents would be uh happy to know that Chesterfield has been doing it successfully for 20 years, you know, and so on and so on. You know, you know, we can tell a story about every city and West and Southwest County, you know, we're the only ones kind of are kind of like the rogue here, so to speak, you know. So I I would appreciate some kind of introductory statement if possible to describe why we're here, so to speak, you know.

So I mean, yeah, Tracy, go ahead. I was just going to piggy back on that. I think we I'm not opposed to doing that, but I think we have to be careful that it's not too much information because people's attention spans are zero. They like, well, we're not going to read all this to get to the survey. and then they just don't I'm afraid that would dissuade some people from filling it out. Not saying don't put it. I'm just saying don't make it too wor too much.

We could have something that's a little bit more brief um maybe a little bit more expensive what's currently there. But the question I would have is you know we could have a maybe we put a dedicated we have a dedicated web page to it already but maybe we can link them to our website for more information. Maybe that's a secondary QR code but that's when we start getting to survey responsiveness. you can you're going to see your rate of return um decrease if it's a longer survey if you have you know a lot of information up front. Um the same could be said for you even the like I said this is not a final survey u here at all. So there's most likely going to be a reduction in the number of questions because you want to keep that sweet spot between about five to eight minutes of completion. If you go anywhere above that you tend to see diminishing returns on the number of people responding to the survey. And and we still are waiting for an answer from the city attorney. See if we can legally just change

section of the there from the city attorney. From what has been said, there has been a formal written, you know, analysis of it, but it seems like it possibly could be done, but it would be very it would we'd be the first ones to do it. So, it'd be completely neutral book.

So, I mean, I'm h if you guys want to go through each one of these questions, that's fine. I I would suggest that what we what I think would work best is we answer for the department who developed the stuff and generally I think they did a pretty good job. There's definitely some some tweaking and stuff but I think we need to answer like the philosophical questions of what we would like to try to get at rather than these specific things. And then I am very much in favor like I'm a little nervous about the survey monkey thing because like I can do that from my house. I think that's I mean there's got to be a better way to do it than survey monkey. Like there just has to be and I think that you know we want to make sure that we're getting the right answers because as Tom said there's issues when it comes to responsiveness. There's also issues you know when you ask people what they want to name the boat they call it voting boat phase because it's online and it's easy to do and they think it's a joke and so we we have to kind of balance this. I I really think the amount of time and energy and effort that a whole lot of people have put into this thing, I think we need to ask I think we need to find a a very qualified neutral party to create this for us and get the answers that we need because there needs to be I think no I I think bias in any direction one way or the other on this is just not a great thing. And so I don't know how there are, you know, like certainly our bow hunter friends that are in the room with us, they have an objective, they want to get more hunting done. There are people on the council that have an objective, they want to spend less money. There are people that on the council that have a different objective. And all that is great, but at the end of the day, what I think we want to develop is just a coherent and cohesive policy that applies to the city as a whole. And this is one of those questions where I think we take the feedback from the residents and you know we interpret that however we want to interpret it. But in some cases I think you know that will be very informative. I remember I think Tracy and I are the only two that were on here when we did the solar thing. It

was not vague the answer that came back. So it made decisions sure very very easy. Whoever would construct the survey, they would have to be made of everything involved. Correct. I mean, they would have to know all the sides what what's going on to be able to create this survey. I guess I mean I would think that a person that does that for a living is able to provide and say, "Hey, this is the type of like what is your current program? What are the costs? What is this? What is that? What are these ordinances?" and then they just go.

Well, I guess that's kind of what what I'm getting at is [clears throat] does the does the person constructing the survey know there's a a bow hunting group? Do do they know we got 80% of the city that's above three acres? There's there's Yeah, I think all of I mean I would give them all of that information. That's all I'm and say to them it is your job to turn this into a neutral question. There are I mean however many there's 20 people in here. I'm sure there are [clears throat] 20 opinions on how this should work. It's this person, whoever that group's job is. And I'm my suggestion would be

pay the right people to do it the right way. Don't we don't have to like halfass it. We can we can whole ass this whole thing.

So, one of the challenges is if you try to do do it only electronically, we don't have access to the emails to properties. So that's going to have to force it to be a postcard with a QR reader so that the random sampling and how many solar I was hanging around when that was going on because everybody kept saying I want it I want it. Those people never saw it. I mean so the random sampling of where it's going to go uh is that could be done with a postcard uh in order to get that and then they could go online and and do the QR part with it. So you wouldn't have to really send a whole paper survey because I mean you're gonna get I mean it's 71 cents now right for an envelope. So by the time you start adding 10 or 12 pages to it. I think that would become somewhat overwhelming that most people would not even get it out of their mailbox. They just

and then you can if it's an online thing then you would just make sure that we able to see not specifically who but at least where they're responding. It would that would trigger then to go back to their IP address. So you could eliminate people trying to pick up speed, right? Doing it multiple times. And you get to have the you have that access code too that it's a unique code that you can have that in the survey. You can actually program it to if they don't have a code that matches one of your codes or it's already been used, it can go to you can pretty much default it to you can't open the survey if they don't. That's the first question. It has a conditional response to it. I also think it just needs to be short and simple because people are not going to become experts on it. No.

So I guess does anybody have any Yes, sir. Mr. B. Yeah, I guess I'm I might be the only one that believes this, but I would think that a subcommittee of city council people could be formed where two people who have advocated one way or advocated the other way or do you get two from one side, two from the other side and Mr. Lee is kind of the independent arbitrator and that you could actually come up with reasonable questions that would be fair to both sides. But [clears throat] that's just me. I I I think that could be done, but maybe I that's a factory.

Well, the council's going to have to approve whatever it is. Yeah. So, yeah, it still ends up seeing 16. I think that could be done. So, you think it could be done? I suggested it. Yeah, I I think it could be done. Uh um I think uh I I would just suggest I mean every I'm not opposed to subcommittees, but everyone I've ever seen takes I think we had a subcommittee on internet for 17 years. No, we've had a subcommittee on the watershed for seven. Lock them in a room and you I think you get four to six people for one meeting. You could get Oh, yeah.

But the issue, this is my only this would be my only concern on that is the four people coming out of that room very well could reach an agreement. They have to then convince the other Oh, sure. 12 or a larger portion of that.

Oh, yeah. which, you know, I I somewhat think and I I could be wrong on this, that if we're investing in an outside group, which is what we do on a lot of stuff, and that is their that is what we pay them to do, I think that [clears throat] council members are more than likely going to have a more difficult time delaying whatever that is because they just don't like the answers that come back or whatever. But, I mean, as Ed said, I mean, I think we could we can certainly ask. I don't know. I don't know. And I would just caution you that I've never seen a subcommittee move. Subcommittee could give those their findings to the survey people and let them take it from here. Yeah. I guess.

Right. Right. I I'm just saying that's one extra step in the I'm just I'm for for people that are very concerned about the expeditious nature of this specific thing. Right. That is a good way to slow it down. Well, that would be my suggestion. But chair. Yes sir.

Just comment. Um I hadn't seen the survey of the solar effort. Uh I'd be confident that the general the general um conclusion would be that statisticians and those on his team her team had come up with an order of magnitude larger issues of how to weed out a couple of those very common forms of bias and not only protected against them but had very quickly been able to take statistical information that they had determined was mathematically sound not funny some of the stuff that we've heard uh and they'd have it covered four ways against Tuesday and that's their job and so we as lay here who we all are whether we have benefit of some goofy mast's programs and statistics and probability and stuff. Um, we're we're brainstorming. There's no such thing as a bad idea in brainstorming, but the statisticians, the companies that sound like provided us legitimate information in the past, they can clean our clock in this in their sleep covering these issues. Um, and we're going to end up doing nothing more than having them forced to weather us while they still try to do their job the way they know they have to do it to begin with. Uh, I have no relatives and I have no subsidies that I get for recommending them, but they've their practices impress me in occasions where I've had to have dealings with it. So,

two comments. I mean two two quick comments. Uh the initial survey that was I guess generated by some doctor. No, Tom did this. Oh, this is Tom. This is you. This is not by the way. This is not the final. This is this is what you Yeah, these are questions that the idea was to go through these and kind of pick and choose which ones we want, but it's too long. I thought this was generated by some professor or saw or whatever. That's probably that's good because I was going to

instead of slamming him and nothing personal nothing personal I was going to give this uh somewhere between a D and an F. Uh but you know Jim this is nowhere close to the survey that you're going to see come.

Okay. So, but the other thing is the the the initial deer survey in the 16% or 18% or whatever that was just if you there's confusion in the results of that one particular question because you could read it and rightfully so. look at it and say, "Hey, only 16% of the population wants sharpshooters." I mean, that's not beyond reason for somebody to think that way. That question is horrible. The answers are horrible. I'm not talking about what the results were necessarily, but there's so much confusion in that one question. I don't know who developed that question. But that's a perfect example of of you know

these these things have got to be done correctly and and with a with an eye to be to be uh fair on both sides of the issue which I tried to do in the past in my ward long story between me and Mr. farmer. Remember that? Yeah. [laughter] Okay. How many responses came back on the shoulder or for Oh, no. No. This is this is the difference. Here one there was 949 responses. You have to be so so careful with the way you word things. Well, that

if you want an if you want something to be viewed, you know, in a way to be fair to both sides and it takes a lot of effort and you have to have, you know, a little wisdom and you have to have knowledge of the situation and uh uh I just think um I'm not sure if professor and some hybrid league school somewhere do it personally. I mean, so I'm just looking at the two different surveys and I will say that the the one that was done with this group is the solar one and the questions are

significantly clearer and the deer. Well, I mean the deer like so this go this goes a little bit back to when we were talking about your thing which is you know like deer can cause damage to lawns and landscaping. Have you experienced damage to your lawn and landscaping from a deer in the last three years? I guess it's I'm not sure what I mean no that's the silly question in my opinion I don't know why we would even ask that because it's somewhat immaterial to the the question at hand. I think the other thing is um

you know this is these respondents on the deer management one were heavily 60 almost 62% were in the smaller parcels. So, I mean, that's a good chunk of who would open up this new thing anyways. So, I mean, I would almost include if we were to do this, I would give this to whomever if it's the group you guys want to have or whatever and just be like, "This is the information that we have." And I don't know that a lot of this is super helpful anyways. Um, but the the solar one is is certainly formatted and framed significantly easier to understand.

Yes. And that is the better way to do it. And I think part of it too and and I think Tom has done a good job here like the thing about the solar survey is there were like actual images and stuff in it that make it it's not a conceptual idea. It's just this is what it is. Yeah. Um and I don't know I think you have to do that for sure. Um the front of the house the Yeah. Whatever it like you know like with solar panels all over the garage door was something we were hearing a lot about. Um so yeah. So I mean I I that's what I would suggest to you and I don't remember it's been a number of years now. I kind of think that this deer survey was created by it was it was a subcommittee of the it was a subcommittee for deer. Right.

So the deer study was commit was created by people that did not know what they were doing. Yes. And the other one Oh yeah. was not. Yeah. But [clears throat] I would be interested to know who was on the subcommittee that developed it, you know. And I mean it would have I don't was raising your hand. It was residents, was it? No, it was it was a subcommittee of the board of public safety, but Rick obviously was there as I I'd be curious to know if they were pro deer hunter or anti just let these I think you just let the experts do it and doesn't mean we have to agree with it, you know. So, I think I mean I would suggest and Tom tell me if if

you would like something different. I mean, I I think it's important that we give Tom the very general concepts of what we want to have answered and then let I would suggest letting the experts figure it out from there, but that's a different conversation and we can have that. We can't make that decision anyways. That comes from the council. Um, so I mean I would say it probably makes sense for us um the council. Well, that but just to say here's philosophically these are like the five things or whatever it is we we think are important to get across and if you guys if the full council agrees with that great if they want to add other stuff in also great and then we can figure out how you want to do that if it's a subcommittee going to the expert guy or just the expert or

how many questions were on the sur the solar survey there was like it was less than a p it was like one page and I think that's I think that was one of the reasons you got such a big return people look at it really quick I'm interested, not interested. And even then, when the results all come back, you still got to convince 16 council people which way you're going to go. I mean, that was a big push back then, you know, and that's just a couple percentage of our population. It was three questions, right? I mean, that responded, right? Yeah. So, for the if we got a 5% response rate, that would be um So, that's the importance of random sampling.

So, with the random sampling, it was a five question. Here's how it worked. It was a five question survey of residents. [snorts] They created the survey and then the city council approved what the survey was going to be. So, it's not like we just set it and forget it. They came back before it went out. Um, it was implemented by the independent consultant. Uh, representative sample of 676 residents had a 56% response rate. Randomly selected 150 households in each of eight wards. Mailed le letter of invitation. Option to take the survey online or via a provided paper copy which was pre-stamped. um opt-in survey available to all interested respondents. Link link was posted to the city website. Um and then there was I mean really pretty basic qu questions and I mean I don't know that I I don't know that it needs to be more complicated than five or six questions anyways. Um but I would say that's up to I mean I would lean on these people to tell us this is what you need to be able to get the right kind of answer. Um, so that's just I mean

it's got to be really clear to people who don't know. I mean it's it's kind of like the fact that you you're not going to be able to question people about their concerns about how you deer hunting. Yeah. So like one of the questions is in your opinion should residents in your neighborhood be allowed to install traditional roof mounted solar panels on the front of their homes if those panels are visible from the street? Yes. No. No opinion. And it was a very resounding yes. But like that's the simple like sometimes I think when you get into the we too much into the weeds and you provide too much of an answer capacity you're going to just get a whole bunch of like it's we're going to give you one to five. Well everybody picked three so now what do we do? Um,

so I would maybe maybe what we do or I might suggest if you guys think this is a good idea is you know these surveys we could just put them in the in the packet for whenever we're going to talk about it and just say you know this is what we think we would lean towards. But it's I mean that's what the work session's for is figuring that all out. Well, I mean I would have to interject if we leave it like this. I I I would be affected by this survey if it told me the h a little bit of why we're doing this and the history and kind of what's caused us to generate this survey, you know, if if it's just if it's just put out like this and there's

I think that's what the letter of in I think that's what the letter of invitation is is it's explaining what like why are you getting this? Yeah, that's where I think that comes. Okay. If there's no mention about we've used white buffalo and you know we we're pursuing maybe we're being pursued that used bow hunters now you know I think obviously there should be some kind of explanation of how we got here to present this survey not all of a sudden here's a survey that asks five questions and nobody knows really the the base behind When to change your mind, Bob?

Um, do you know all those facts? What have the the the questionnaire is what do people want? What do people favor? And they're going to have grown to however old they are in years.

Yeah. And we're not going to re-educate them successfully. We're going to attempt to re-educate them. We're going to attempt to provide them an immense amount of insightful background that that they that we think they should really appreciate, but they're never going to they're never really going to understand it. They don't want to understand it. They got a lot more important things in life to do. So, what um I said I I said I was turning the preaches off, but the but people who do statistical analysis, there's nothing random about it. It's it's it's scientific and it's people in ivory towers. Uh, as much as we get a kick out of criticizing them,

um, I'm just saying if if I was presented with a simple survey like this without any background, but if you're saying there's a letter that comes with it, then I'll leave it like that and hope that explains some of the things I'm concerned about. Best thing I think that could happen to the bow hunters, to White Buffalo, to the citizens, residents of the city,

and to the council and making the decision is get out of this business of trying to second guessess what a good questionnaire is going to be to get valid responses back. No outside influences, no fuzzy math, no dog whistle barking words at anybody. um it's it's handed off and and admit the fact that they know what they're doing and that us meddling in it is just going to cloud up the results. It really is.

Yeah. So, I'm I mean I don't I think we should probably if we can we should probably find like what the actual invitation was previously, but what this is suggesting based on some of um I guess it's Dr. 's previous stuff is um dear Wildwood resident, the city of Wildwood is conducting a resident survey to gather community input on deer management and archery hunting regulations. Your household has been randomly selected to participate as part of a statistically valid sampling process designed to represent residents across all eight wards and range of property sizes. Your response will be used to inform future city council deliberate deliberations. No decision has been made regarding any changes to any current regulations. The purpose of this survey is to solely understand resident perspectives before any policy action is considered. This survey was developed with the assistance of Professor Matthew Na, associate director of the department of political science at the University of Chicago, who will conduct independent statistical analysis of the results. Your participation is voluntary. Responses are anonymous. Only one response per household will be accepted using the unique access code provided below. The survey takes approximately 5 to seven minutes to complete and can be submitted online uh or by returning an enclosed hard copy to the pre in the prepaid mailing envelope. Your unique access code is this. To complete the survey online, visit here. The survey will remain open through this date. Results will be presented to the city council at its [clears throat] upcoming meeting and will be made available to the public following that presentation. Thank you for participating in this proc process. Sincerely, the city of Wildwood administration and public works department.

Yeah, chair. Yeah. The next sentence, the last sentence is there's a more detailed uh online website. Yeah. Source of information for additional background for anybody who gives a breath to ask. Yeah. I mean, I I I mean, I am I am someone of the opinion, and I could be wrong, that these these guys are going to uh send out a survey, and it'll be like this. I mean, there weren't a huge number of people clamoring about this solar thing like publicly. And so they set this out and I mean the results happen to be what I figured they would be. But I mean I'm with it like I I never I never talked to anybody that got

and it was right at the same time when the state said the homeowners association couldn't control it anymore.

Right. There was that and then there was like some kind of attack thing too. So but like I don't know that the issue was particularly well. That's kind of this thing. It's like, you know, the question isn't the question isn't are we changing we're not changing hunting regulations necessarily unless we want to do this that hunting regulations are what they are. We want to make sure that people don't realize it's not like it's not that people can't hunt. It's just whatever. I I would just I mean my opinion and I'm I'm one of 16. I I would let the professionals figure this thing out because that's what we pay them to do. But that's just I wouldn't confuse it between sharpshooters and hunting and trying to get people to understand if they're on one acre or two acre. I just keep it to the focus. The question is should it consider should the city consider reducing the size of hunting from its current three acres to that other side. But I think you have to ask the people that have three acres whether they think that's a problem or not. Right.

But I don't think that you need to get into shooting or calling versus that because that's not the question. The question [clears throat] is to reduce Why do you want to do this? Why do I want to do what? Why do you want to reduce this? Why do you want to make this change? That's what I That's what my question would be. Want to So, well, I'm just saying that's what I would think if I'm reading that Yeah. questionnaire. Why Why does the city want to change this? They haven't told me why they want to change this. Yeah. But I would say I mean technically the city's not asking to change it. The bow hunters are. So there's nobody that I mean we've had bow hunting all along. It's just not in small small

lines. You just mentioned a question and I I'm I'm stating that I would want to know why the city is asking that question. Isn't that though? I mean is that not that covered in what reducing the size? Uh well no. Uh hold on. I'm I'm just asking because I I mean I think that's a good question. I'm not even considering this survey. No, no. I'm saying if we if this letter that they send out, this introductory letter is something similar to what this is. If it is city of Wildwood is conducting a resident survey to gather community input on deer management and archery hunting regulations. That's why we're asking the question. Okay. I mean that that would be my take on it, but I could be wrong. Um

it's non it's I guess it's just non-specific as all of us see it here, you know. Yeah. I mean I think I think part of the issue though is you know we are too close. Everybody in this room is very close to this and most people are are not and for whatever reason it doesn't really matter all that much on what it is. You will have people that are either very very much for something or very much against something and those two groups are usually significantly smaller than the people in the middle that practically don't care. They just want it to function, right? Um so I think that's kind of more the direction but I mean so yeah. So okay. So Tom, what do you need?

Um yes. So, wanted to get uh direction. Well, we got direction on some of the questions, but I from what I'm hearing tonight, you know, having the cover letter, I think the council should review the cover letter with it. So, everyone Well, I mean, I'm just like I would get it from the guy. This is just I'm not send. to get to summarize the committee's opinion here though I'm I'm thinking that quite frankly we can kind of get rid of a lot of this and which was the goal anyways but more so focus just on the should we just be focusing on the acreage rule and the aggregation or should we leave out the partial aggregation question alto together u I I I mean I would include the question simply because that's the next inevitable question that will happen

so if the answer comes back as yes let's go to one acre then in three years or whatever it is the question will come back. Can we go to can we put a bunch of acre parcels together? Like get the if we're asking if we're spending the money to get the answers, we should get them. So that way if they come back and people are like overwhelmingly yes and combine however many houses we want, we don't care. Great. Then we don't have to have that conversation.

That makes sense. And then I mean at the end of the day though, u I think if we just focus on that, that reduces your question count probably down to around five, which keeps it very straightforward. Do we want to also have in there? I'm assuming we would um these questions about, you know, the other regulations, not maybe the general one, but the registration requirement, the uh proof of land owner permission, liability insurance, and the deer harvest questions. Uh should those be technically the comment earlier is correct. If it was going to one acre minimums, then you're we're most likely going to be considering those very quickly. That said,

I would ask I mean that's a good qu I mean the question I would just say the question is do you think the city of Wildwoods whatever we want to call those should align with neighboring communities I mean all of these other places that's a good that's a good do a version of this they won't know but what I'm saying but you put it in there so it's like you know do you think that this should align with neighboring communities which means you know we're reporting where this happens we're you know it's a put on a website or what whatever um it helps to track those things. I I mean because that applies to me that would then apply across the city regardless of parcel size. So that's probably a good thing. Yes, ma'am.

I do think you need to mention without getting into the weeds too much, but that property owners have to give permission. In other words, people read this and they're like, "Oh my goodness. Oh yeah, I'm fine with one acre. Wait a minute. I don't know if I'm fine with one acre. Can they come on mine?" Like, so without getting too detailed, but yep, this requires, you know, written permission and notification of neighbors and whatever. That was the next I mean, but I think that to me that's like a pretty easy like two sentence question and the answer is yes or no because whatever that comes back and decides the council is going to have to finalize all that stuff, right? So,

and there's and there's certainly going to be things like I I think it would be great if the MDC would put the city in, but we can ask. We don't have any control over it. Um, generally speaking, I don't know that we find them particularly helpful. sign that should we sign for the light road,

right? Um, so I mean, but like so there's things that we can control, there's things that we can't, but that I would just describe it as a more generalized thing. Same thing like, you know, do you I would say, you know, it's like do you um should the city of Wildwood alter its um parcel size from its current 3acre minimum to a 1acre minimum? That's a yes or no question. And then the next pretty quick one or followup is should parcels regardless of size be able to be aggregated because you might have you know the answer might be we don't want to do this but we do want to I guess if you get to the one and then aggregate you really don't need to do the two question

right or but you if you if you if the answer is we don't want to go to the one but we do want to aggregate it then you could have three oneacre parcels add up to one 3acre parcel like that way I think you could go in both directions with it. I don't know that that would happen but

I think regard this is just department opinion though the one question that we did really come together really liked here is that you and I think you should ask them kind of separately but the question that asked which approach do you and it could be rewarded but that question avoids that uh nonclarity from that one answer of like 16% showed sharp shooting only versus sharp shooting and you trap and euthanize this one is four you got an unsure too but four different answers if you choose one you can't choose the the other it's it will give you exact and it describes the four outcomes we're looking at and you could even add in the the reporting requirements or the regulations added on top but it asks simply maintain a threeacre minimum no parcel combination maintain threeacre minimum allow parcel combination reduce one acre reduce to one acre minimum no parcel combination reduce to 1acre minimum allow partial combination so that shows all that's really the question that is the question we're asking that what of those four outcomes would the residents want to see I think maybe we can localize this a little bit more um and just focus in on that specific component of it and then just kind of wrap I mean there's we'll we can we can follow up with that but that said the question tonight too is the meth methodology of the survey you know is that sounding appropriate uh you know using professor names again is that a good track are we looking in the right direction there uh working with MDC to help you know kind of file these down as the kind of the survey reviewer if you will to help get some of these questions to be in a better space. Um, and then also, uh, timeline too. So, the idea would be the survey would be going either to council upcoming week, but seems like there may be some more work needed. So, it's probably

in June, in June, and then at that point, the council's agrees with the way the survey is written in the letter, uh, that it would then be mailed out kind of late June. It's a little bit later than what was listed here, and then would be out for about a month. You need about a month to get responses because you'll do a follow-up letter and then we would probably look to have some type of report. July is very hopeful, but I would most likely say we'd get a report back with the results in August. So, that's the the current timeline estimated right now. What would be the uh amount of surveys to be sent out then? Uh that would be something to turn. We did uh 1,200 back for the solar survey. We sent out 1,200. We got uh it was over 700 or so.

Yeah. 676. Yeah. Of valid responses. And of that, I actually wanted to note this too because that just a random thing. Yeah. So that that's where the consultant come that's where the professor comes in. They by ward how many? Okay. Yeah. So it's the same it's sent out. The idea is you want to get the same amount of responses from each ward.

And just so you know too, the city what the city's going to do here is we're going to have an Excel document. we have a document that shows every parcel in the city that has u a house on it. So that's really what we're looking at. We don't want to have a parcel that just has, you know, a corn field. U we're going to send that. We'll also have two identifiers. It'll have the address. It'll show which ward the address is in. It'll also show the size of the parcel. That data will be sent over to Professor Nains. And Professor Nains will run his random sampling model. The city won't have anything to do with who gets selected, whatever. and then all of a sudden that's that's who gets the we're not going to have a say in who actually gets it, but we will give them the full piece of the pie to break down that uh that initial list. Okay.

But a note too on the mailing, we did get 412 of those uh 676 responses back via return mail. So that was just that was something that we found. So over half of the respondents from the solar survey mailed their survey back in.

I think maybe we do. I mean, I would just suggest you could probably figure out the math. If it was we, you know, we're going to try to save the 70 cents or whatever it is on postage, then you probably need to send out more postcards to get the number of responses appropriately online and just figure out what that is. And then I don't know. I mean, I would guess the biggest difference I think between the solar one and this is the solar one was was a set policy across the city to begin with. There wasn't one group that was kind of out, which is what it is now. So my I'm going to I would assume that they would over sample changing places versus the ones that are already there, but that's I would say that's up to whatever their math says. Yeah. I think they'd have to take a mix of the makeup.

Yeah. Rather than like it's an equal number from each ward. It would probably be whatever the mathemat is of parcel size or the math. That's that was another thing too that we're when discussing with the preliminary discussion, Professor Nays was that there does become some discrepancies when you have equal representation of WS and equal representation of all parcels because that's what that's going to do effectively. You know, W six and W one, you're going to end up all three acre parcels out of those two wards and then all your less than one acres are going to be coming from another another. So it's it it can kind clarifiers. He had a couple ideas to fix that. But I would almost just take the word the wards are somewhat immaterial. It's more the parcel.

So and that's that's another question. So is the ward component not as important here? I know that's something we've always kind of focused on. I don't think it I mean I think so each ward each ward is designed to have the same number of citizens basically. So that balances it out in one way. But I but the but the vast number of parcels are in the smaller section of you know a different section of board. So I I would just I mean I would just ask him to see if there's something we need to do to correct for that. But I would assume that I don't know that makes sense.

And is the committee here agreeing with that that it's not as strict as that you know we don't have to have equal representation of wars. It's more important to get the equal representation of all parcel size. Right. I mean that's what I would do. I'd have to I'd ask him because I think it does it will skew it. He thought he thought the more important thing was parcel size. Um having that correctly distributed, but want to make sure it's also respons. Well, because I mean there's what a there's like 1,700 3acre parcels and like 9,000 Yep. smaller ones. So, I don't know how you have any like it's just not equal to start with.

Yes. Hey Tom, I'm trying to search for it, but you had put an update after uh White Buffalo was terminated. Somewhere on the website there's an update on permanent, right? Yeah. Can you provide maybe another possible update talking about where we're going with the survey and why and things like that. I don't know how many people are seeing that, but I I I maybe appreciate if you could do that also. Can we ever see how many people go to these pages? Yes, that would also be a good thing. Yes, we can because well, people going there via Google, which is the majority.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But like it'd be interesting to know if there's something that we don't ever talk about that everybody is looking at. Trash recycling. Uh, okay. What What else do you need from us? Anything? Um really just kind of and the idea tonight was not the survey to be approved or anything like that. It was this there's a lot of questions here. Um I think we got the direction we need to start heading there. Uh but just wanted to make sure that using professor names again working with MDC to kind of file some of these down. Uh that is the approach we'll plan to have at least from our perspective. We'll probably have something at the June meeting like a you know a firmed up survey and then we'll go from there. But we'll most likely be engaging Professor Nays in some type of agreement for this scope of work. Okay. Do you need a motion for that?

Uh it's under my most likely under my expenditure threshold, but it wouldn't hurt to have Does anybody have any input or anything they want to add to that before we go with that? Good. I'd go with what you're doing and then come back. I'm gonna have to come back to getward. Yeah. Okay. So, all right. Well, good. And then we'll move forward. Um All right. Thanks, guys. You're more than welcome to hang out with the rest of it. It's going to be super exciting as I'm sure you have seen in the agenda. Um, if you want to take a nap, now would be a good time to start. Just kidding. We're going to talk about uh our police services contract review, I assume. Is that you, Tom? Or are you joining us? Two. Um,

okay. Main thing is tonight we wanted to kind of highlight [clears throat] uh what the changes would be if you know originally when we discussed this you know looking at other cities the percentage spend of the general fund that resulted in a discussion of well what does it look like if you cut a million dollars from the budget and then we had a discussion what does it look like if we just can't accept the 5% increase if that were to happen um etc. I I wanted to bring captain here to make sure that he could adequately explain, you know, what would happen in those cases, but from our discussions, it would seem that say we got a and it's not confirmed that it would happen like this, but if we were to get a 5% quote for the increase in the contract service uh cost for 2027, it seems that that would roughly be about two officers from standing. Um, so that the idea tonight is just to show kind of and let Captain explain a little bit what that means operationally. Right now we have five beats maintained out the field on paper and every now and then you might not have that fully fold up but most of the time we're supposed to have five beats. Uh that said too, you've got the two parks officers, you've got two traffic officers, you've got a neighborhood detective and neighborhood police officer and you got our detective, our local precinct detective. U and then you have sergeants that are filled in as well. That said, you know, the question tonight is if we really start adjusting it, we can't accept the the cost increase, things like that. It does seem like it's affecting bodies at this point. And the idea is just at least know what does that look like if you start peeling back the bodies. So,

okay, I can let Kathy answer a little bit, but just from perspective to kind of show that two what the two officers would be compared to, you know, like the math I did, it would be like eight to 10 officers if you if you did the million.

Oh, yeah. you had three options in in your report. A lot of good information there. Uh uh well written. Uh so I I can say right now, you know, we talked about uh removing two two positions. Um that would not be a problem. I I wouldn't perceive a big problem with that. Um I I think I mentioned the first time around we have four squads. There's two day squads and two night squads. And when one is off, the other other one is the one working. Uh so there are seven officers in each of those. So that helps maintain uh those five beats. Um the department is in the process of doing a workload assessment. It's been some time since they they've done one of those. Uh I've I've seen the draft and it would suggest that 26 officers instead of 28 would work uh to cover the cover those beats. It it's a little cleaner having seven and seven um because there's the odd guy. So if we have 13 people on days and 13 on nights, there's one guy who's kind of a floater who works between uh the two squads. So that's where it would fall. Um the alternative, you know, push it up a step further. Uh we could probably be all right reducing by four officers. Uh so we put six officers on each on each squad and we're maintaining those those six officers in the specialized area and and they're really the the workhorse of um the special events and the other things that that the city wants done. those two traffic officers. They're they are the ticket writers, but they also

handle all the uh uh deploying of equipment, uh data analysis, uh data reporting, the crash analysis report, all that is is on those two guys that are when they're not out on the road doing doing that work, they're in the office, you know, when it's raining, uh doing data work. So, uh, we just finished the, uh, the annual crash report. Those two guys pretty much have gone through every every accident report, uh, for the entire year to, make sure they're classified, right? So, capture those numbers correctly. There's usually over 400, you know, crash reports. So, it's it's pretty time consuming. On top of that, uh, two park officers. Uh, you guys like parks. Uh we have we have lots of city parks. Um you know the new uh Village Green certainly property that's been purchased off Panken Road and I believe there's property purchased off of Old State Road too. Uh or was it Old State or Ridge? Old Old State.

Yeah.

So your your parks very popular uh and and those officers, you know, out on the trails are are well received. people like seeing them out there and that was a request um made by the city of the past that uh events happen out there on the trails and you know having somebody out there familiar with the trails is important. The last two guys are the uh one neighborhood policing officer and one precinct detective who's also a neighborhood policing officer. They handle all our our public relations uh um special investigations, you know, unusual stuff that that comes our way. They're the troubleshooters that that take that stuff off and spend the time working on stuff. So, uh Tom proposed leaving it as is. There would be a 5% increase. if if we remove two two positions, you basically keep keep it where it's at this year. Uh but you know, I could suggest that that we do an additional two two positions, which basically the the two positions equals 5%. So, uh but how long are you kicking the can down the road? You can't every year start removing people because at some point we're we're in a spot where this this is not sufficient, you know, to to sustain you know what we do this is a big place uh you know covering we're the same size the city of St. close. We're doing it with with five officers and usually a supervisor. So, um you know, obviously, you know, it's it's up to you and your recommendation of what what you want to do. And as I said before, you tell us what you want. Um, you know, there was a number thrown out, you know, a million dollars. That's that's really 10 bodies, right? And that

cuts us to the bone. And, you know, my NPO group is gone. those six officers are will no long we will not do data collection and all that kind of stuff. We just we just can't. We're going to have to focus on, you know, having staff to respond to to calls and and handle our day-to-day operations. If if you're eliminating to whatever the number is, they go back into the pool if the job, right?

Exactly. Uh it we're in in a perfect world. Uh the department is fully staffed and and you know there'd be more push back because that would mean we're going to lay off two people or we're going to eliminate two jobs. And unfortunately in the big picture, uh, you know, law enforcement's, you know, suffered some some blows and and the the applicants just aren't there like they used to used to be. Uh, and every agency is, you know, looking at that. Um, we fight over the same candidates really. Um, and as as we get people in, uh, you know, every week we have we have staff meetings and our personnel office says, you know, this is what we're hiring. Uh, the next academy class, we're looking to have 25 officers in there. Well, academy class lasts six months. In that time frame, how many people are going to leave to go to some other job or go to a a federal job or retire or just decide they don't want to do this job anymore? And it's one step forward sometimes and two steps back. And you know, we're fighting that constantly. So, uh, but to your question, uh, if we remove those those officers, they're going to filter into other positions in the department, whether it's, uh, you know, a detective spot or a specialized unit or another precinct. So,

thank you. I appreciate you thinking of that because nobody wants to lose their job, you know, anyway. So yeah, I think I mean I think that's a great point. I I also think it's important, you know, while we're having this conversation, you know, the city is dealing with some budgetary constraints. Obviously, the county is dealing with some budgetary constraints, the police force is dealing with some budgetary constraints, and I'm fairly certain that the contract that you guys offer to us and some of the other municipalities is not profitable to begin with. So it creates, you know, we're we're all sort of um put into a very

difficult position to figure out which direction things need to go. I mean, I'm well, I think, you know, we we I remember right when we had a couple officers retired, we were we reduced from down to like a couple years ago, whatever it was. And you know, my my main question I think and something for us to think about with all of this is to get a real understanding and obviously that's subject to change if something goes on. But um you know I think like right now we're based on we have a number of officers based on the number of residents, right? That's kind of how we figure this out. No, it's it's uh by the area to be covered and it's by the physical area to be

by the physical area to be covered based on on our call volume. Now, the one beat is going to cover a huge area because there's nothing there, you know, but things happen out there. There's there's domestic calls that happen. They're not as frequent as they are in a populated area. So,

kind of around the town center area, 109 100 area, that's where most of them kind of come together because they have to rely on on a backup car. So, they they touch in that way. Yeah, the ratio to just the NA and that's we're not the same as the national average, but national average from the FBI's data was 2.4 and then we're half of that. Then just a comp from down the street, Bowens is at 1.93. So we're kind of around that but a little bit less. So um so does anybody have any other questions? I didn't I had a couple but I don't want to like monopolize the whole thing.

I'm just curious. It popped up today in the paper that the city has gone bonkers. Their percent of general revenue is 23% this year, 24% next year, and 25% on the police budget out of their general revenue fund. So, it kind of puts it in perspective as to why they're struggling with it because they don't have that kind of money because of all the other revenue losses. Likewise, right?

And we're possibly dealing with even more of those. figure out how this goes. Um, so one question just because I do get it a lot from residents and I guess it's a it's not really a contract question necessarily, but it kind of I guess it's associated with it. So the way that you we have it broken out, we have two officers that are dedicated traffic officers. Yes. That does not mean unless I'm misunderstanding that the other officers are not also in dealing with traffic issues. Cap certainly they do. Okay. uh they are certainly capable of. I think that's important for anybody that might be listening to understand that it we don't just have we have 30 traffic guys out there. You're they're right

the traffic guys obviously do do a lion share of of that.

I mean I would I would and again not an expert in any way on this but I mean unless I'm misunderstanding I kind of feel like the biggest issue we have in our city at the moment is traffic. And so I don't know if regardless of however we do the contract if it maybe is worth looking at just I don't know how you guys figure out who does what. I mean I assume that there's a very specific way that you do it but I at least all I have ever hear from people is about traffic. And so you know I have that conversation a lot that it's a you know it's a matter of enforcement. We can't be everywhere all the time. All that kind of stuff. But um

we'll touch that I think in in one of the next topics which is it's it's uh it is kind of eye opening. Um you get it's a it's verbal complaints. It's it's it's their storytelling. I I don't want to say storytelling like these are lies. They're not. This is the perception that this is what's happening. And we are responsive to that. uh you know we have equipment covert equipment that we put out and it's just data collection that tells us hey over this week's time this is the volume of cars that that went through here and this is who's feeding so those those numbers uh you know Thunderhead Canyon and Westland Farms are are low. So, I I'm putting a traffic officer in there in response,

you know, to [clears throat] complaints. Uh they're not writing a lot of speeding tickets because there's really not speeding problems on most of these streets. Someone could fly through there at 70. Oh my god, we got a speeding problem. No, you got a an individual that probably needs to be addressed, right? uh the big scheme of things when you know 1% of the traffic that goes through a down street is is a speed problem other 99% are doing what we expect them to do uh parking a guy there for hours at a time it doesn't make any sense

to really do nothing but be present and watch the street when you know the traffic guys would certainly rather be sitting where there's there's violations they they do want to write tickets so they sit on Highway 100, they come in with with a stack of tickets, but uh we do have to be responsive to to the residents and and what they see just to to check us that hey, did something change, right? Um that for some reason all of a sudden there is a problem. Well, look at that.

Yeah, I I I think and I you know, we're going to talk about that here in a second, but I've had that conversation at length with a lot of people. I mean, we dealt in in a certain regard, we dealt with that with the Turnberry folks where what we found was there is one person that is creating a problem that is now affecting a whole bunch of people. And so, I mean, to me, I think there there's more a question about the amount of traffic, not necessarily the speed of the traffic. I think, you know, there's enough cars and delivery trucks and everything else parked along. Ed lives on the road. He's out there yelling at people for speeding all the time. Yeah, I do. I throw stuff at him. Right. Um, so, okay. So, we'll get to that in a minute. Does anybody have any other thoughts or questions or concerns on the lease contract situation? Have a question? Yes, sir.

Thank you. Um, we hear about all the noise of AI, AI this and AI that, and they're replacing people. Um, I don't want to have AI meddled in policing in the city. Why? I don't have scientific basis for it and I don't have proof. Just hate. Please be in the movies. It never works out. Robo.

Yes. 100 more. They never work out. How do we uh how do we make the business ca case to keep uh anything that smacks of artificial anything from insinuating itself in in cost cutting or in replacement of what I consider to be I'm not blowing smoke up your skirt, believe me. Um, keeping keeping our our police force intact and not have it compromised by budget cuts where we're forced to pick how many concerts we want to have and how much free hot dogs we give away compared to one cup because that'll save us a half a million somethings. That's just the most brutal way I can bring it up.

Um, I mean, I don't know. I would think the only AI stuff would maybe be in the data management stuff which could theoretically help get people out on the road more often, but I don't know that we're I mean we don't use a lot of flot cameras and stuff, right? We do. I mean, we have a couple, but there's a hand handful of cameras. They are very beneficial.

Yeah. As far as AI, our communications bureau probably has made that step that when you you call in, uh, you can be directed instead of talking to someone if you're looking for information. It it [clears throat] directs you to to the information that you really don't have to uh speak to somebody. If if the recording can give it to you or you want to file a report, you know, it it can put you there. We do reports. you can go online and and file a police report if you know I can't wait at home I gota I got to go to work whatever uh that can be done so the the virtual stuff is there but you know policing is is hands-on for for the most part so

here's an example and I was trying to what's an example uh you call Wildwood precinct you get a human if you want one call St. County 615 exchange. The whole exchange is brain dead. It can take three or four minutes to say enough times what you want to get past the the brain dead perpetual loop bot that just won't let you. You can call 911, but that's not going to get you much help at at county hall. So, uh, has have you either here at this level or do you feel that or do you know that at the county level they're being pressurized are being put under pressure to uh how do we how do we how do we replace you? I don't think it replacing as far as our staffing levels, you know, have have decreased and, you know, it's a challenge, I know, for our bureau communication to deal with lots of incoming calls. So, that was a step to, you know, try and get services where they need to go by other means. Um, I I hate it, too. Uh we are switching to another phone system and we we have some input on hey when you call the precinct and it's it's this number that you know the recording's there you do this this or this and probably unfortunately a lot of the calls to to our precinct are for city business. They need to talk to the court clerk. We're not the court. we need to talk to uh we have a public works issue that that's not the police department. So, a lot of our if you listen to our recording, it's it's deferring to to the court or to the prosecutor's office or or to our our

record section. Hey, I need a copy of a police report. You don't need to talk to someone. Uh you push the button, it tells you what to do, how to get your report, and and you move on. Um, I mean that's just one of the things we're we live in the same house here with uh with the city hall. So we we've made our adjustments to to support you know the operation city hall too. Uh I I don't know that that that happened a long time ago and you know as far as transitioning to press one for this, press one for this, well everyone hates this. Uh but it's it is a way to manage incoming calls. Um and we talked uh hey why don't we have a desk officer 24 hours a day. Uh so a desk officer is different than than our communications bureau. Yes, we can have calls dispatched and it's a CAD terminal. I can enter a call and it goes to dispatcher and they they assign it where it needs to go. uh to have a desk officer 24 hours a day. That's that's like five five bodies. Uh right now we we basically do it with with one we'll say one and a half. Uh so we have our our uh civilian clerk who works during the day. Uh, so she handles that until, you know, into the afternoon and then it's covered by an officer from from NPO unit for an hour or two until five o'clock end of business and then everything is is going to communications. Um, if we have an officer on limited duty, which we have right now, then they'll work kind of an afternoon shift and and cover the desk for us. But, uh, yeah, that was determined a long time ago. There's no need for for someone to sit at the desk at two o'clock in the morning. There's nobody showing up here to file a report. If they do, there's a there's a phone outside. They pick it up. That goes right to the dispatcher. We'll have an

officer come contact you at city hall. There's there's no need to we we don't have a lot of prisoners. Uh in other precincts, the the 24-hour coverage in in our other precincts, they're running more prisoners through there. So, somebody's got to keep an eye on somebody when they're sitting in a cell until they can get transferred to the jail. Uh, it's I I I worked in a North County precinct. Wild is nothing like the North County precinct. Absolutely. That is uh a a very busy place and and it's a beehive. So, uh you know, we we enjoy a much different environment here. Um All right. Anybody have any other questions, concerns, or thoughts? Hi,

Mr. Lee. What do you So, tonight from us, the department want to describe this. Quite frankly, we don't have a official estimate of what they're proposing, but the the department was recommending that right now we should either raise the expenditure cap, not necessarily go down by a million dollars. That was the re u that said, the committee tonight could make the motion to continue and wait for that quote to come in, which we anticipate getting sooner this year. I mean, it' probably come in the next couple months. Um, the the [clears throat] quote you said the quote for 2027, right? The numbers we're throwing around here are thinking out loud. That's not the official one.

That's right. Um, so we can take action tonight or we could wait for that number to come in, but also maybe kind of try to organize this and then also look at is there anything else too to look at with the traffic officer component? if if we're going to change numbers, the the the contract would have to be amended. So, we'd probably want to get into that before October or November, right? So, okay. So, let me correct me if I'm wrong because I think this is now I think this is what we're actually deciding on. So, option we'll call it option one is a 3 to 5% increase roughly roughly in the next year.

I figure on five honestly. So we'll say a 5% increase for 2027 which would get us what we currently have. Yes. Unchanged basically. Well with a 5% increase. Yeah. So more money but the exact like same number of officers all all that remains what it is.

So that's option one. Option two is we freeze the expenditure to what it is now. And the guess would be that reduces by two officers in 2027, which certainly I think works budgetary wise in the near term, but as Captain Mandelle said, and I agree wholeheartedly, that does not work for very long. So I don't while it saves us a budget number, I don't know that it fixes the problem. Um I don't know that there's an option number three. I I feel like those are the two options. The option three would be of like a further reduction, which would be Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen. You said four, too.

I I Yeah, I I think we'd be comfortable with with four and can make that work. Um, that drops you back a little bit more, but you know, like we're we're saying, we're kind of kicking the can down the road, right? So, I mean, I guess my question would be, and I'm not or maybe this is the thing, if if the um if the professional opinion is the city could function appropriately with four less people, then I guess option three would be we do that and then I'm going to assume that after we do that then there's going to still be this 5% increase that kicks back in anyways.

Yes. So it buys us an extra two years two years to test this which I don't know I mean and I I don't know I you guys talked originally about you know 5% every year you know for eternity I don't think that is going to happen. It's got to even out at at some point um you know where that is. Somebody has to figure that out. So, um I I here's something I was thinking about our not that the contract technically ends in 2031, right? Is that is that just us or is that all the other municipalities too?

Uh I think pretty much all of them switched now [clears throat] the reasoning for that was everything was good and why do we got to revisit this every year because everything's pretty much the same. Well, then COVID happened and nobody saw that coming and that that did a lot. The Prop Poney did a lot and then, you know, the fact that uh online purchasing, you know, skyrocketed and you know, sales tax. So, I have dropped. So, now everybody's in the same boat.

I work I work hard on this, but I have a tendency to gravitate towards sometimes scary thoughts. And so my question would be knowing the budgetary constraints that the county has and knowing the nonprofitability of these contracts, if all of them line up in 2031, what are the odds that this contract just ceases to function in that way? That is not a question for me. [laughter] I don't think they're all on the same timeline. You know, they renew at different times. So, you know, there there could be a year, but I'm pretty sure we're the biggest one, right? Yes.

Yeah. So, I I that's just something else to think about is that, you know, that's not something we get to have input in, but you know, they people decide to cut the money we're getting on a whole bunch of stuff real fast. It's a better place to be than some of the others. That's true. Um, so, okay, so we have our three options. Maybe do you want a recommendation of those three? Which Okay. Would anybody care to make a motion for any of the three options or present a new one and we can move that forward to the council? Need to go to the public safety board. Okay, we can go to the board of public safety. Wasn't that backwards? Shouldn't they be doing it? They technically review.

It's specifically stated that they review service contract and then approve the board of public safety. Yeah, but don't you want to get the opinion of what we want to do before they review it? Well, yeah. Well, what do you mean? So, if we say we want to do this and then it goes to the public board of public safety and they say no, then what happens? Well, I guess that is true because then if it comes back, if this is the the direction that's I mean this is not necessarily we're not getting I'm not saying we do it. I'm saying you should go to the council and get their answer and then go back. Yes. Because aren't we then presenting saying hey give this is what we think making a suggestion to public safety and does public safety agree

yeah or we're saying hey this is what the council is suggesting that we're going to I'm not saying that so we're going to go with the reduce by four and keep the number whatever then you create that contract and then that contract is what's brought to public safety right yes or is it the philosophy of the contract no that that that contract would go back to public so that would so then isn't that when they get it doesn't matter to me I just want to make sure we're sending it to the right Well, the code technically does state that the board of safety oversees the administration of the police service contract or the police department, whichever you have, which we have. They typically review it first. When we do the budgeting, they review it initially comes to this committee. It goes to the full It doesn't. Yeah. I'm just wondering I don't I don't think we need to have another conversation about it. I'm saying we send it to the

I just think that's another part that charter needs to be changed. Back when that was put together, the Bill Friedri was the marsh. He sat there and worked out the whole budget. That point on, it's a whole different process than it was now. But the charter was written that that marshall the Marshall position would be responsible for for doing that. And we haven't done that in 25 years. So I'm all for having that conversation, but that's not unfortunately not this conversation. No, I I agree. Um, so okay. So whatever. You need an you need a direction from us that goes somewhere. Yes, I need a direction. And I reading this real quick, but that said, I would I would or should we be offering it? Shouldn't this then just go straight to them? Why are we

Well, because it's going to be it's originating from this committee and then it would go to them and then it would go to council. So, I mean, in theory, this is the portion of the council. It's just the charter does. Let's make a motion. Cliff, I will make the four if it's okay with Captain Mandelle and if this is two years, then I would make the motion for the four people. Okay. So, we have a motion to reduce by four and that theoretically buys us a little bit of time. Anybody care to make a second or have any I can make a second, but then I wanted to add a couple comments. Yes, sir. Because we would do this as a second. I also think it's really really important that we identify what we want to measure,

the [clears throat] response times, the challenges that that you have with the shift because next year we'll come back and we can go and say, "Okay, we're going to do these two." But I think the hardest part for new council members is kind of understand where we came from and all the things that you manage you monitor those things now. And I think that would be an important part of putting it internally that we know what we're measuring against because if we have to change it then we just have to go back and change the budget. So So that's a good question. So in the in the contract currently I don't think it calls for any like like unique reporting or anything, right? It's just whatever you guys give us. Yeah. I mean, we we basically give you whatever you want.

Yeah. Okay. So, but then but it would make sense to spell out specifically what those things would be. I I would say not to put response times in a contract because we will never meet a number of response time because there's just too many factors in in getting to something. Well, and all I'm saying is I think that you need to help us understand how to explain what what the service levels are, the expectations are so that that we in turn can support that and and likewise make sure that if there's other things that we should be doing that that we're doing that too. So I'm not saying we're going to come up with stuff to tell you what to do. You tell us what you can efficiently report back. Okay?

Uh and that we could use that to to monitor. Here's what it was when we had four more. Here's, you know, these we're not seeing the big changes in some of these or boy would that that was a big difference.

Way to be able to give us an anata and policing, they don't really mesh because this is not a a a routine. Everything is going to happen the same every day. uh you know, we we you know, we talked about the other day we had an officer uh involved in a shooting. That hasn't happened uh since since Ed was mayor. So, uh so those are things that they're really unpredictable and they're very taxing on on staffing and response. But you kind of picked the things because part of it is make it easier for us to know right

as we go forward and it just say well we just we wiped out a half a million dollars. That's not really a good way to justify what we're doing. We're trying to figure out can we maintain the efficiencies right uh through public safety in doing that. So so we need to figure out how we would gauge if there is a negative impact to this is probably the best way I would describe it. So it's not I would say it's not like we're not saying you have to respond in four minutes or anything like that. It's just like hey we you know when when we had this our response time was around here. We've reduced it and now it's 10 minutes longer. That seems like a problem.

Yeah. When you get into a bind you got to shuffle people around and you kind of write it down. So we know that's that's something that we could have incurred differently or we would notice a difference but not not reporting on. I'll comment on our workload. That is all numbers and stats and on average this is what happens. Hey, you have x number of uh burglar alarm calls and they should hand they should be handled within, you know, 15 minutes from response time to whatever. This is all good and you don't have that many, you know, it's when, hey, the tornado blows through. Yeah.

And everything is is out the window. And uh I I know on response times we can make a mistake that you know it's a priority call and the officer goes to the call and handles it and is out there and oh I forgot to arrive right I was there I handled it and when they clear the call is when they arrived

which that could be 30 minutes. All of a sudden our response time went up 30 minutes for because he didn't push a button on his computer or he didn't tell dispatcher he was there. I'm wondering if and Ed correct me if this is kind of maybe also what you're asking like when I have conversations with people about the traffic stuff. I don't know that they are necessarily implying that you guys are not enforcing traffic rules but that's oftentimes what it sounds like to me. And so it would be helpful for me to be able to better tell your guys story better because like I think I think you know when we have an officer involved shooting which is very rare or we have kind of a large scale carb breaking thing which thankfully is also very rare out here those are outliers that happen and most of the time like I just think people don't they just don't really realize what is actually happening because we we don't do a very good job of explaining that's what it is. You know, when we have our events and we have a bunch of officers and the and the road blocks and all that kind of stuff, that's all great, but I I kind of think that is the singular time that most of our residents are interacting with our police department. And so that's just what they think is happening and that is I don't think what is happening every day. I think you guys are out doing lots of other important things.

That's true. So I just think we need to it would be great if we could figure out some metrics where we could tell the story better so that people understand this is what we are getting and this is why we're getting it and this is why this contract regardless of the size is worth it and that's why you know as council people we're going to say hey this year we're going to have three concerts instead of four because we have to move you know if we want to continue to have police services that's how this works and it's not Captain Mandelle's fault he's not out here you know driving around a diamond plated police car. I I am sometimes. [clears throat] Is that Is that kind of what you're saying?

I just think we we ought to think about that as we lay it out to say these are the kind of things that would be helpful for next year and the year after that. Yes, I made my second. So, all right. So, we have a first and second. Anybody want to add any conversation, questions, anything at all? Okay. All those in favor of reducing the number in 2027 down four officers and ostensibly is that a freeze of the expenses or is that go down? That should lead to well I don't know how well that works mathematically a reduction. Yeah, mathematically it can't it would be a reduction from

it come back up to where it was in 2027. It would the way this rough math it would be, you know, if you did do this down four, it would be down and then it would go 2027, you would see it u actually be lower and then 2028 you would see it probably be back up to where we're at and then 29 it would be higher than where we're currently at. Okay. Uh, so the only other question I would have with this motion is since we do this every year in maybe the the only other question I would have is if we were to go down let's say we were to go down four and then we've learned very quickly that that was a bad decision. [laughter] [snorts]

That creates obviously an adjustment in the contract. But from a difficult a difficulty perspective, how difficult is it to re-engage, you know, one or two officers or whatever it may be from a practical standpoint? Well, I was I was thinking about that. uh you know I I think we probably need to have something added added in the contract that that you know gives us and I'm not wording the contract gives us that opportunity that halfway through the year uh this happens and we can we can drop two or this happens and hey we really need to add add to right

uh that that there's some some wiggle room in there without you know spending the months going through a formal uh it it basically allows us to get through the end of the year and then at the end of the year that's when the contract could adjust the number or something like that. So okay, do you need do we need specific motion language for that or is that pretty self-explanatory? That's pretty self. Everybody's good with that. Okay, everybody's clear on our motion. Okay. All those in favor of reducing the number down four officers and theoretically saving us a little bit of money for a relatively short period of time, please say I. I. I.

Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? Okay, that will go to or post wherever it needs to go. Excellent. Okay. Um, moving on. That brings us to um an update on capital improvement projects. Right. I guess that's you. Yes, that's what we do every month. Council members, I've prepared the update for your current projects that are ongoing around the city. If there's any specific questions about projects that are underway or planned in the near future, I'd be glad to entertain them at this time. All right. Anybody have any questions or concerns?

Well, I guess, you know, I I've been gone for a month and u I was expecting to see a lot of Oh, I was back. Oh, it's going to be a lot of work done on Old State and come back and zip has been done on Old State and uh you should be see something. We've said that last month, I'm sure. But I do honestly believe you could have seen something soon. We didn't start or tomorrow. Oh boy. We said that now for at least a week, but the rain bad weather been a bad weather month. Is that rain now? Okay. St. those counties really uh gave us some difficulty. Their their government has gave us a lot of difficulty.

So they they didn't have the uh what they needed to start as far as they gave us approval, conceptual approval, and then said, "No, we're not giving giving you full approval. You got to do jump through a bunch of hoops." That's

I mean, couldn't they have couldn't they have said that before? The issue that we're facing right now is not St. Louis County. Let's just be clear. We we have to get a special use permit from the county to [clears throat] work on their rightway. Um we have lots of work we can do off of their rideway. Um that we can move forward with which Tehill has not chosen to start work on. Um so when they they do start work, they're going to work strictly off of the county highway rightway which is the vast majority of the project. We do have to work out details to get our special use permit from the county, but we have time to do that. Although it is getting uh very frustrating if we can say that from our perspective at this point in time. Sure.

So there's plenty of work to be done and it's relatively overall a relatively small improvement project for them to undertake and get completed. So Oh yeah, Ellisville still plenty of time. years hellfall. I mean hell through hell. So well and in the end of the day though we've St. Louis County did review these uh the [clears throat] issues that they're having now. They reviewed it. They didn't approve the final portion of it, but they they've been kind of holding back two pieces of the whole project, but nonetheless contractor is ready to go. We have all of our ducks in a row to just push it through once the minute they say it's okay. We've actually

we've given the contractor green light to work. Yep. We have not told them not to work. Just to be clear, they have chosen not to work. And part more recently, the weather has delayed them because every time they make plans to start, it rains. So, it's it is that time of year where the weather can have a pretty good impact. So, okay. Should see them soon. Any day now, they'll be there. Always another month. Uh,

all right. Anybody have any other questions or concerns on capital improvement stuff? Okay. Uh, that brings us to review of traffic conditions on connecting streets. Um, Rick, if you don't mind, you guys did a good job putting this thing together. I just wanted to explain why we're having the conversation more than anything because um, we've talked a little bit about it on a couple different issues tonight, but I do get um, a lot of questions and and concerns about Thunderhead and Westland Farms and all of that. And um I've explained we were going to have some residents come out this evening and I've I've kind of explained to them, you know, let's look at the data and figure it out. And some of this data is unexpected. I mean, to me, I think the real issue that we have there is the quantity of cars, not necessarily the speed of cars. And so I started to kind of think through this concept because we're having other areas of the city that are being built out now that have not in the past. Um over by the reserve and obviously our apartment complex here and some new stuff. And so this is a good I think situation where we can look back and see what was recommended at a time. And so the time would be like as Bright Leaf was coming online what was recommended versus what happened which are two different things. What is happening now is what was expected or was not expected. That's I think is a good thing to talk about because um you know when I listen and I know you sit on these a lot when when I listen to PNZ stuff there's always a conversation about traffic. it is it is the driver of everything that we have in our city and we have I think a pretty easy and unique way to look at this where we can answer some questions questions very quickly and then I also think and I I had him throw them in here um over the last couple years we've added in a lot of parking restrictions and we've added in a lot of you know keep kids alive stuff which are which are all great tools to have but they also require not that you guys aren't doing this on purpose but like they require enforcement if it is necessary

and so I personally I would like to get us out of a place as a city where you know we're not just kind of throwing optic band-aids on everything. It's stuff that actually functions and works and things like that. And so this uh I think we have a real good microcosm of a scenario here that has perhaps plant [clears throat] gone exactly as it was supposed to go and it's just the unfortunate reality or things might be off. And so this is one of these unique spaces and we have another couple places around town where the city of Wildwood wasn't responsible for building any of these roads. They was accumulated when the city was created and they are now utilized kind of in a way that they weren't actually designed to be used. And so I think that that's a good opportunity for us to have a conversation and look at how we might want to apply that in other areas if there's unique fixes we can do here because I mean we've tried a bunch. There's the bumpouts over by Ed. there's different signages and whatever and it doesn't it never really seems to solve the problem. Um, and we have new things. We've had the roundabouts come online. We've had all this different stuff happen. The bus has changed at Rockwood. So, I think it's a good time for us to really look at this area closely and then be able to apply that knowledge hopefully to other places where these things are going to start happening again. Because, you know, when we connect Main Street, that's going to be dumping a bunch of cars through a new neighborhood. And we have what is it 138 houses in the reserve. 150

150 and then another if this thing goes through another 60 or 70 whatever it is that that's a lot on school that's a lot and so you know I think there there is often times I think questions about you know we aren't looking at this the right way or whatever in this specific case and Rick I don't know if you were you probably maybe just started with this I mean my understanding of the Brightly situation is there was a recommendation that was made that was not followed and now we have what we have and that's the council's perview at the time. But that is something to consider that when we have people that like actually know this stuff and go you might want to go this way maybe we maybe we listen just because we find out what happens. The option was to take 30% of the traffic off of Westland.

It would have been a Yeah. Why would you want to do that? Crazy. Um all right. So that was just a setup. Mr. Brown or Mr. Lee, however you guys want to move forward, please do. I'll defer a little bit to Rick, but really we just pulled and I know we had uh Captain Mell kind to join us for two items tonight. He had pulled some data that was requested. Um but overall um so we we actually have gotten a few complaints from Thunderhead Canyon specifically. So Kathell actually did have his traffic counter uh out there. Did we is that part of the data you got here? Yeah, I do have some.

Perfect. Uh so we actually did get that uh [clears throat] and yes uh I don't know if it was a firm recommendation to support but there was data to suggest when uh the pond grover loop road was proposed in villages of bright leaf was discussed uh that that would overall reduce congestion during those peak morning hours. That seems to be the the biggest concern that we hear is that during the It almost seems like it's even easier in the afternoon, but during the morning hours, that's where we tend to see the the highest number of vehicles, which makes sense. Um that said, something that was discussed, brought up by Mr. farmer was that and this has been observed too is that households that may have been going south uh you would think go to Eureka High or a school to the south in general maybe they're going to Green Pines maybe they're going to Lafayette maybe they're going to Babler and a lot of the times they might be picking up a kid they might be you know stopping at some space before but they're usually using those uh connector roads the art now arterials through our mastery plan um that go northbound up to Clayton Road to cut through uh Something that usually we had also kind of discussed is that is that what the maps are showing when you have that on your phone during those peak times. But the idea is uh you know is this something that's also being heard from other residents and is this something that you know at 109 really it's kind of encompassed by 109 to the uh to the west uh 100 to the south Clayton Road to the north to the city line. It's kind of the area that is encompassed by really bad morning traffic. Uh but that's kind of a setup. I do want to hear because these are fresh fresh data some of the data that captain has because he did poll some of the number traffic counts and then some of the speeding counts that we have uh which I think will support the might be a number of car issue versus the speeding issue.

Cool. Mind touching on that? Okay. What what do you got for us Kathy Mandell? You got a hand out.

Uh you wanted to go back to 2019. Um, so when we do a a a data survey, that's the box. Uh, and those are sporadic. You know, for us, those are uh fast food. We'll put one up, you know, on a Wednesday, and we come back later, a week later on Wednesday, and we pull it down, and we it's so it's a spot check on on data, so it's not a longterm over quarter or a month or anything like that. Uh, Thunderhead Canyon. We did several of those. Uh, one, two, three, four. We did eight of them since 2019. So, not a lot. Um, we also do speed surveys, which is the physical. The officer went and sat there with a radar gun looking for the speeders. Um I think and I don't remember Rick if you can tell me when uh when we put in that permanent sign.

It was around 2020 I believe. Yeah, this was in front of board of public safety in 2019 2020 21 believe we looked at it quite heavily at that time. And the radar one um we looked at speeding traffic and traffic volumes on Thunderhead Canyon pretty extensively during those years. Ultimately, we did put up the LED radar sign to cut through traffic from Clayton over to Route 100 at the same time. Try to get a handle on the the degree of cut through traffic that was occurring.

So, you you have more data out of that. It's very similar devices that that what we use. So, in our spot checks, that short street does take a lot of traffic. Uh the highest number I saw was almost 15,000 cars and that's both directions. It's about 2,000 cars a day. Yeah. Which is about the same as Westland farms to the west. The lowest I saw was uh and I don't know why 9,500. Um and I don't remember. I'd have to look to see when multiple day period though. That was probably over a three or 4 day period, I'm guessing.

So this this equipment will does do data analysis. So it does time frames. It tells us when these these things are happening. The 85th percentile, the highest it ever was was 30 miles an hour. Um, I don't know how you go much faster because you're going to wind up in somebody's house. Yeah, there there's a stop sign in the middle there. Um, and we look at, you know, how many violations, which would be we're looking at who's going 10 over the speed limit. Um, and we were talking minute, you know, less than 1% of of the traffic going through there is they may look fast or I I saw the guy that went through with 37, you know, and and then they they give you a call.

Yeah. Uh but when we sit up there, we're not writing uh speeding tickets, honestly. Uh the majority of tickets they're writing in there are are stop sign violations. Uh if they're sitting in there, um there there's just it's a short street. There are not a lot of tickets written in there. Um the uh and I forget what you call it, safe the safe keep kids safe. I think that's a good deterrent. And like you said, it's a tool. I doubt if we've ever written, right, because we're not writing speeding tickets in there, so it it's not really going to apply. Now, if some we catch somebody buzzing through there at 50, then yeah, fine.

They're they're going to be the example that that uses that. Um I I think they're they're good tools. It's good uh notice to the public that you need to pay attention in here. And and for the most part, appears that they do. uh the the uh display signs uh you know that makes people think too. Some think that this it's got a camera on it. It's taking pictures. Obviously, you know, that that stuff's not happening, right? But it it's good feedback. We have the portable uh version of that which is a smaller sign that, you know, runs on a battery that we we hook. Yeah. I know you guys use that down on the far end park and stuff. It works. You'll see people put the brakes on.

Yeah. So, I mean, those are are tools. They're good shortterm. Um, you know, we can't leave it out there forever. They just go dead. Especially you we get into winter time, the batteries just don't last, you know, the week or however long we try and put it out there. So,

so maybe the question then, and uh, thank you for getting that stuff. Um but I mean so Rick Tom and I talked a little bit about this where like when you're talking about um Pon Grover Parkway or Taylor Road there are no houses that are on those directly on those roads which is different than the rest of these and so and I mean obviously Pine River Parkway is looks like it's built like a highway. I mean it's gigantic in comparison to the rest of the road. So, how many roads are how many cars are supposed to be going down roads like this the way that they were designed? Like a thousand. Well, I guess

there is certainly a value in people's minds that they feel like once the traffic volume has exceeded on the residential street, it's just too high. And clearly, I say a thousand cars per day is about that number. Um, and that was the case I made with Thunderhead Canyon, even a lot of West Glenn Farms. There's too much traffic. People don't like the volume of traffic. Those streets can handle the the level of traffic relatively okay,

but people just don't like the number of cars going by. And that's why when you get into most subdivisions now, we try to design them. We try to provide collector streets that that handle those higher volume traffic. Most of those collector streets are generally not loaded with driveways.

They're [clears throat] old fairways, right? Pont Parkway, um, Pierside Drive, Bills Parkway. Those are the roads that should be designed with no driveways accessing them directly, just streets that that handle the higher volumes of of traffic that are collected street. And that's the mistake in my opinion that was made with your area farms. For whatever reason, when those subdivisions were plotted by the county, they did not do that. Um, there should have been there, it's just plain as the nose of my face. There should have been a collector street from 100 to Clayton Road

that [clears throat] was designed at least like old fairway or even Taylor we've built through for through Bright Leaf, but it wasn't done. And we've we've lived with that mistake now forever.

And and that's what I I've explained that to the residents and I've also explained like short of us buying up all of these houses and putting a road in which is not ever going to happen. Like it's a good to me this is a good exercise to see this is how this is a lesson we've learned. We don't do this in other places. We didn't do it in the first place. But then also to see how some of these other uh additions to the area um because you know West Glenn comes through mine and Ed's and um I know the bumpouts I don't remember when they did those but that was everybody argued about them. Yeah. I mean I remember in high school some some kid wound up in somebody's roof of their house because they jumped off that

and the idea was you put those at strategically where they're located and you know even now that is a safe place to park if you're on the other side of that. So, but they uh they claimed it was going a lot faster. I didn't live over there then,

but um I I mean I I think what I see there certainly are a handful of as saying there are certainly a handful of people that are speeding. I don't think that it's as a widespread problem. I think people are certainly at the speed limit. I think there's a lot of cars. I think that there's a now a lot more delivery cars. There's a lot more, you know, landscaping trailers and things. The buses come in and out. The school kids walking around. For whatever reason, I'm assuming it's a delivery between Parkside Grill and Biardas. There's semi-truckss that come down Thunderhead Canyon, which I don't think are supposed to be there, and probably not registered for the bridge that they go across. Um, but the big issue, I think, is we have this ability to now look and see what was proposed, what has happened, and where we're at to try to confirm and maybe quell some of the issues that we get in other parts of the city. That is a pretty common refrain of like there's just going to be too many cars. It might be the case, but if we do it the right way, that might not be the case. So, if we were to my my thought would be to look at this as a like how I know that some of it is in here, but I mean [clears throat] how would we compare and contrast Rick what was actually recommended whenever that was that bright was approved or whatever we call it and then what what has happened and what what those two differences actually equated out to. Well, if it's the council's desire, there could be a study done that essentially revisited that issue if that's the desire. And you know, when Bright Leaf was constructed, the original proposal district put Rover Loop Road in the money that was not done. There was a committee that looked at it at the time. Mr. Marshall was part of that. Um, ultimately did not not get approved. Um, there was a study that was done. And I think Tom tried to provide it in the in the information that

looked at the impact of building that road and what it would have what impact would occur on West Co farms I guess for Leaf Parkway those streets. Certainly that could be revisited I suppose to try to determine if how that played out essentially. Yeah. I mean I'm not

I'm not saying we should build build a road or anything. I'm just saying I think it's important for people when we were looking at new subdivisions and things coming on to say, you know, I don't know if these are the right numbers. I didn't but like had we done it, the estimate was a 30% reduction. What we have instead is a 28% increase or whatever it winds up being. And then that I think can help inform, you know, certainly new council members when they come on when they're looking at these things because if you've never looked at it or done one from the beginning to end, it's really hard to keep track of if it's not something you do. I imagine it's hard to keep track of. It is something you do all the time. Um, but if you aren't doing it all the time, it is very hard to keep track of. you'd almost need to like do a whole copying of the traffic study that took place back in 2016 to replicate that data then see if you can reproduce it.

I've never really thought to do that or whether that's something we could do on our own with counting tools that we have. We have a very um helpful traffic camera now that we can put out and get very detailed traffic counts on what Captain can do. So, um I I mean I guess I could take a we could probably hit those intersections, but it would take it would take some time. It would take a little bit of work. Yeah. Um I mean I'm not It doesn't have to be done. Just so much work. But

and also I mean we talked a little bit about it. When school is out it's a whole different deal. So I I I my thought would be you know my suggestion would be to try to come up with whatever this might look like what we can do and then it's while I would love to be able to find a solution to these issues I'm aware enough that I'm not sure that there is one but I do think it's important to get this information for some of these other larger things that are coming on line because that's going to arrive here quickly and right every development first thing the traffic the traffic to traffic. They have a really good point, right? But we also know that as that development is going to go in, we have a pretty good idea of what that traffic should be,

right? And now we have the ability to say this is what we thought it was going to be and this is in fact what it is or it is not. And then we can figure that out because I mean all of those roads in my, you know, I'm with you. They should have done it that way, but there was no uh there were no roundabouts. There was no extra neighborhoods. There was none of I mean there was nothing out there. There was nothing out there when that stuff got built. Yeah. if it was a big huge farm around a bunch of houses and I would say that I think it's fair fair to say that department of planning when these things these developments are proposed it's almost generally accepted that he will require or Joe will require traffic impact study to be done

right even on the smaller developments. Yeah. And I know I know he does. And my worry is always and and I mostly because probably because as a even as a council member you're somewhat illinformed on this stuff. You know when we were talking about the reserve in the apartment building both that's two different developers they did if I remember right two different traffic studies and I think at the time I asked are they are they factoring in if one is built and the other is not. How how does this work? And when Tom and I would have these conversations, it was, well, the idea is is if everything is built, which is cool, but if that's the case, then we should be pretty easily able to apply this math and go, hey, we were spot on with this number. We we got it. I think he's referencing the town center,

right? So, and I was going to mention that too. So, we had a in 2018, we did a town center traffic study, which the intent there was to look at town center area and estimate the traffic that would be generated by the buildout of town center,

right? every parcel developed, the way we zoned it or allowed the zoning would allow, how much traffic would be generated, what road improvements would be necessary. And when we did that, by and large, it was pretty favorable. I mean, we identified some things out of that study that needed to be done. And one of them was potentially capacity upgrades at Manchester and 109, which um with that development last night at planning and zoning, they're they had traffic to that location. So that might get flagged when they do that traffic impact study frankly. Um but by and large that that was one of the tools that we can use to identify the hot spots when it lands when property develops. You know it's going to create this issue here potentially that issue there. We haven't done it [clears throat] outside the town center. Um but those kind of things are really excellent tools in my opinion um to identify problems to be proactive to try to get ahead of the curve per se.

And I know I mean same with there we I mean we have the added complex complexity of like there's a state there's state roads and county roads that frame all of this stuff that we have very little control over. And so you know we have we can only do what we can do. the other entities have to do their part if they're willing or able or whatever.

Now, it in your area, frank reality is that the tool that has been used is traffic calming, right? There's there's limited limits to what you can do. Once you've built the road and it's there and it's in place, traffic calming has been one of the things that we've looked at and implemented and had some success with. Maybe that's something that could be looked at as well. Like if I remember I mean we had those are those speed bones still on forest leave. No took it out. Yeah. Because they didn't work right. Right. They were killing everybody's cars. Well, they weren't that were complaining before and the stop sign was there and kids weren't really crossing there anymore because they could go up to Green Pine without crossing.

By the way, I I would I think it would be a great I think it would be a good thing to try to do one of these studies, especially because we haven't done one outside of the town center and there's a lot of components. I mean, there's three schools with Rockwood in there. There's a state road, there's county roads, there's all kinds of stuff happening. Um, we have new houses that have been built. I don't know that very many of the 35 houses that are going to get added in there are going to come around that way. But even on even off of those roads when you're going to turn off of Taylor, you know, there's some complexities and things with the roundabout that probably affect some level of traffic. So, people are perhaps cutting down through uh Sandalwood or the condos and all that kind of stuff. So, if we could do that, how what is I mean, do we we have the basic tools to do this on our own, right?

We could replicate I'm assuming Rick can answer this better than I, but I'm assuming it with some time we could replicate some of the collection. But when it comes down to, you know, some of the more advanced work that on looking at HR Green that did this, there's Lock Mueller that did the Pine Loop. We got a couple different folks that

and typically something of that that scope and size we would hire a firm to do it and you know we would be involved in that process. Um we could assist um we'd certainly guide it and then rely on them to to crunch the numbers put report together and report back. So you know that's that's a cost go through that process with a firm if that's the direction we we were to go. I mean, do you see practical value to that information? Here's what I'm not looking for. Although I love to make residents happy and I'd love to have the information myself. This [clears throat] is this is a practical question that is answering a larger issue I think we have in this area. While I'd love to put in two stop signs and reduce the speed limit by 5 miles an hour or whatever it is, I think that those would be very minimally impactful to what is actually going on. I'm happy to be wrong about that and I'm super happy if you guys want to go throw some new stop signs out there. But this is to me a bigger question that is being asked about this specific part of town which is not really just these two roads. It is a big chunk. I I feel as if the city has kind of done an ad hoc approach to that area over the years. And I'm not trying to say anything was done wrong necessarily, but certainly there was no big picture planning that was judging. It was, you know, we responded here, we responded there, we responded here, we've implemented this, we've implemented that. So it, you know, if you wanted to step back at a thousand foot and try to say, okay, this whole area bounded by Clayton over to Lafayette or whatever the boundary is down to 100, we're going to study it. we're going to take a high level look at it and say this is what was done. This is what maybe we could now do that would be an improvement. That kind of I guess that's what I hear you saying. Maybe we should try to do that and here's some strategies that we might be able to implement in the

future. Even if it means maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Yeah. It's not going to go so far as say hung over Parkway. No, but but I mean like I I think what I keep what I've said to residents, what I'm seeing, and I see this a lot, is we did an an we did a one-off ad hoc thing at a bunch of places. We put some band-aids on what is sort of a very broken. We tried different things every place. Streker Road, we decided to put trees down the middle, right, and took a lane out of there. I'm not sure how much that helped either, but I mean then we West Glenn, we did the pop outs. That seemed to really please the people back then. It slowed it down, right? Um, but you're right, people were driving right over them in the beginning.

Yeah. So, I I mean that's what I would suggest. I think it's a good opportunity. I think it affects a very large number of houses that are in there. Um, I mean I I'm pretty sure between my section and that section, it's like a I think it's over a thousand houses. Um, so I I I just think it's better for us to have good information and understand so that we don't keep saying, "Hey, yeah, we'll put this thing out here and it only cost us $25,000 to do it and it doesn't do anything, but it's going to make you feel really good." I mean, when we have an extra 25 grand, I'm all for doing that. But when we're reducing four police officers and we don't have hot dogs anymore, like, we got to get this thing figured out. So, um, that would be my suggestion. I don't know if

maybe look at it and come back with a couple ideas that you think would because I mean even some of those old studies I'm sure you could find what the traffic counts were before the bumpouts were put in there. Sure. And and be able to say, "Hey, this is one solution. Here's those streets were wide enough that by doing that, but now with so many delivery trucks in there, it really is a it's a whole different animal." But maybe find a few to test it see if there's a big difference. We do have we've tried everything and every time something come up what about this you know right put trees down the middle of it that would help.

So yeah so I guess then would a motion be to come back with I I mean you I think you get what we're what I'm talking about if you see real value in it. I think that that's something we should pursue. I certainly see that is something that could be pursued and would have some value. Yes. Okay. So I guess we need a motion. Not do we need a motion? Okay. So we'll do a motion to come back with some come back with some recommendations,

some options on what to look for and how to how that all maps out. Okay, that you guys get the gist on that. Okay, so Mr. Marshall's going to make the motion. Anybody care to second it? All right, second by Miss Nan. Any further discussion? Any questions, concerns? Okay. All those in favor, please say I. I. Anyone opposed? Any [clears throat] abstensions? Okay. That brings us to last but not least, a proposed professional services agreement for on call engineering. Mr. Brown, I assume that would be you. I guess. Thanks, Captain.

Thanks. chair. Um council members, um this last item on the agenda is a request to move forward uh with um professional service agreements with three um firms uh to do to provide potential on call engineering services to the department potentially department of planning as well. Uh we've done this in the past um with other firms and um incidentally each year around the beginning of the year we do advertise and request that firms that are interested in working for the city submit their qualifications to us to have them on file. Um that's part of the qualifications based selection process that we're supposed to follow when we choose um civil engineering firms to do work for us. So that's an annual process that we complete and we try to utilize those submitts for the basis at least the starting point in terms of choosing firms potentially for projects throughout the year. So um we did complete that work early this year. We had 23 firms that submitted their qualifications to us to do work and um we'd like to move forward with at least three agreements with three firms and the idea here is they would be on call agreements. So, as things arise um throughout the course of the year, we have some flexibility to engage a firm to do rather minimal work um and address concerns as they arise. So, I was talking to council member Mabberry earlier today about a covert on Athetherton Road that clogs. It's undersized. So, this would be an example of I can call one of these firms and say, "Hey, would you engineer would you design a new covert for us for that location?" So there's a certain amount of survey work that would be done. We'd essentially if that was the case, I would ask them to put a quick proposal together to do it. It would usually be

something on the order of $5,000 maybe might involve survey. They would put a plan together, do some engineering to size the covert. They do a profile so we know how to stake it and place it in the ground. So there's a certain amount of engineering that goes into that. This allows me to address those kind of concerns rather quickly. just to give you an idea. Um we've used them also for um design of crosswalks. We've had these flashing beacon lights, things like that. Um just lowcost items that are small projects that are quick hits that come up throughout the course of the year. So um the recommendation is to move forward with three firms. Intuition and logic, locker group, and uees which was formerly geotechnology. And primarily Intuition and Logic, we've worked with them before. their strong suit in my opinion is first and foremost um storm water resources um drainage hydrarology those kind of things locker group um it's very strong they're a larger Midwest firm they have large capabilities across the board but they've done a lot of work for us from the fabic standpoint but they can also do rightway acquisition um we needed some quick u appraisal work they could even do that for us potentially um as well as just um just regular roadway design, that kind of thing. Um and then UES is a more of a specialty firm. They're a larger company, but they do geotechnical and environmental engineering primarily. And so that would be the the the role that I would see them playing. Um I would say the other area that I didn't mention that we'd like to utilize at least potentially intuition logic and maybe locker group is permit review. So, we get permit projects that come across our desk that sometimes require a little bit extra engineering and Brenda may not have that expertise. He may not have the the skill

or the time to do it and know so we can call one of these guys and say, "Hey, would you provide us your review of this item? Would you do a quick flood study? Would you quickly review this covert and provide us your opinion of it?" And then we can use that as the basis of our permit review. So it provides us that flexibility, that ability to have extra engineering expertise on staff for permanent reviews when necessary. That's not every permit, but if it's a larger one that's more important or more potentially controversial, it allows us that flexibility to pull in a third party. So that's the other area that it' be very helpful. So, one other thing with that too, sorry Rick to interrupt, but if we were to go ahead and proceed with that, we can track it and then we come back to you all with a provision to our permit cost um because we can have a fee that's commiserate with the cost that it takes the city to actually review the permit. It helps kind of other than just staff time, which is sometimes difficult to prove and is not as legally defensible unless you really track it to the second. uh this type of charge for a specific plan review can be translated into an additional fee later when we might come back for looking at our zoning authorization fee potentially rightway fee etc. Just want to add that.

Yep. No, thank you. The um recognition is again for the three firms the value of each contract would not exceed $25,000. So all right, Mr. Vic, right now we don't have anything like this or is this a continuation? It's an annual It's an annual process more or less. So, we've done these, but generally I've done them under the city administrator administrator's discretion, which is $10,000. Um, so we've done a few of them here and there. I think I've had a couple on the books for last year, but I will tell you to be quite frank, the $10,000 ceiling is getting a little hard to stay under. Well, it's not 10 grand anymore, but I get your point.

So, this point I' I'd just bring it and run it through the council and try to get a little bit higher ceiling. So all three of these have been used by the city before. We have all we have worked with all three of these firms on multiple projects in the past. Yes. And you had 23 bid on it, right? 23 different That's pretty impressive. Yeah, it is very impressive. And um especially right now when there's so many firms that are um that are pretty busy right now. So um I don't know of the 23 how many of them have worked with us in the past but quite a few of those programs have but but I would imagine a fair amount have not yet.

So is this going to increase budget? I mean no. So they where I would fund this would be we have a budget item for other engineering services which I typically utilize for consultant services. So it would come out of that budget item. All right. Anybody have any other questions or concerns or care to make a motion to approve Mr. Brown's plan? All right. Mr. Mabry will make it. Anybody care to second it? Miss second it. Any uh other conversation? It's a good report. Yeah. Okay. All those in favor, please say I. I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? All right. That one passes. [clears throat]

Thank you. Um, does anybody have any miscellaneous stuff? Mr. Alers, quick question. This is how often and what is the process to count residents in each ward? How how often does that every 10 years? Every 10 years. We have the census and the census and we we actually form a redistricting committee. I I was just wondering how that I think we just did it what like two so it would have been done after 2020. Do we usually make adjustments? We did we did read the charter. Yeah. There's a a committee appointed with one person from each ward. Okay.

And then they get together as a group and they take the number of people in the ward. Actually, that'd be kind of interesting if you've never seen it. Yeah. is maybe Thomas could send you the last census and say how many some WS I don't think W two changed at all last year I don't think the last time it stayed the same three and four I W four got a subdivision just shift it a little bit but yeah so you'll see like one and they go through and try to make sure they don't break up any subdivisions just to balance the number I just I know it's a number saying it's just always weird that they're all pretty close that wid goes over to old state you know you you know, you know, it's kind of silly, but and um

because then, you know, all those some of those houses on Fairway aren't old fairy aren't in you know where it's like what I I would guess on the next time when the uh apartments and stuff come in that it would probably shift back. Just just wondering I've been wondering that any concrete. Yeah, no big deal. It's it's kind of interesting and you do you try to move a whole subdivision, right? So over the years I can tell you like in W two that whole part went to W three and then yeah okay

I just have a really quick question on AT&T stuff is now they turn their sprinklers on and they've been in my neighborhood and the neighborhoods to either side of me and I'm starting to hear more from people. What's the best way to do it? Just call the number on the website. Is that the best way or does the city need to know if someone has a problem? like are you keeping track and do you want to know or do we if it's a if it's just like a sprinkler head issue and I would recommend going to our website and calling that phone number. But if it's something where like they completely wrecked your yard and they're not listening to you and they're not if you're not getting a positive response from the from the utility provider, they that's when they should escalate it to the side. Okay. First try those resources.

I will tell you when they came through it took them a while for them to get going, but once they did then they were taken care of stuff. Yeah. I think they've been pretty responsive. I think some people aren't happy with the way they like with their driveway or whatever, but I haven't heard too much. If there is damage to the driveway or something along those lines, they did take pictures of them prior so we can compare like if there was obvious damage, we'll be able to get a rough sense of it and we do hold escrow funds. So, so that's something to kind of give them guarantee that we have that over them. If they want to keep doing work in Wildwood, they they'll keep being responsive. I think they actually for uh star um I believe that's I something happened where one individual wasn't being very responsive and that person no longer is

they just swapped out their their leaders [clears throat] because they were because they were not answering quick enough. They are. It seems like they're just know need to know because of the escro thing or whatever. If they're not getting satisfaction, let us know. Okay. Because that's what we need. We need to hear it.

Yes. And we will also when we go to close that permit out, we're going to be walking along the right way there. And if if there's clearly, you know, a root of a tree showing a tree is clearly dying. I mean that's where and that's another weird one we get is with residents that have damage to a tree but it might not be seen usually I would say you know and Mr. Walsh is very busy but you know he tries to make time for those types of requests too. So if we can get that kind of thing where it's a little bit more advanced he can let us know we can try to help out but u generally first step talk to the the business that's working. [clears throat] Thank you.

Okay. Anything else? Yes sir. We're talking about crash survey. That's Thomas. The Is that the 2025 uh crash survey? The crash survey crash. Oh, sorry. That's Yeah, that's already out. 2025. Is it posted on? It's not posted just yet. I think we saw the had a few final revisions, but it's close. There is a draft one on the last uh board of public safety meeting agenda, but we have not gotten the final version. They were wanting to do a few tweaks. That's the one that showed a reduction in a during accidents on cars. Yes.

But that said, uh you I can send you the link. I just don't want you to lock in on that data. If you want, I can either send you a link now or I can I can send you the final version when we get Sure. All right. Anything else? All right. Well, this was our last meeting. I wanted Oh, Mr. I thought you were looking for a motion. Nope. That's coming up in just a second. I just wanted to thank you guys all again for all of the work and thank you. uh having gotten to do this for the last two years has been a lot of fun and a and a great honor and I appreciate you guys letting me do this for a little bit. Good job. Great job. Uh and so with that, a motion to adjurnn would be appropriate. Made by Mr. Alers, seconded by Mr. Vanic. All those in favor, please say I. I.

Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? All right. Uh the next meeting, which may or may not contain some andor all of us, will be on Tuesday till June 2nd.