Board of Public Safety - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the City of Wildwood Board of Public Safety meeting. Today is Thursday, June 11th. The time is 6.30 p.m. and we will get started. First item of business is roll call, please. Here.

Here. Here. Here.

Thank you. And at this time, I'd like to take a minute to introduce James Vanek as our new city council representative to the board. He is replacing Mr. Marshall, who has moved on to other assignments. So welcome aboard. Next item of business on the agenda is the approval of minutes. The minutes would be from the meeting on April 2nd. I would assume people have had a chance to review them. Do we have any edits or comments suggested? Yes, sir, Mr. Wilson.

There are two references toward the end of the minutes to motions being made by Member Vanek. Member Vanek wasn't a member on April the 2nd. I spoke with Amy this evening, and I think those are supposed to be Member Loyal. So with those two corrections, I would move that the minutes be approved.

Okay, we have a motion for approval of the minutes with the two corrections noted. All in favor, say aye. Any opposed? Motion carries, and thank you, President. Yes, ma'am. Oh, I'm sorry. Did we have a second on that motion?

Second, ma'am.

We have a second. All in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you for the input and the motion has passed. Next item on the agenda is public comments. Do we have any public speakers tonight? Do we have any online, sir? So having no public comment, we'll move on to the For information section, first item under there is an update on the St. Louis County project to install the RRFBs at Lafayette High School. There's a document related to that. Mr. Brown, do you have that or is that Mr. Lee?

All right. That's quite all right. And thank you, Director Brown. Thank you, Marshall. And thank you, board. Just wanted to provide a quick update on this. I think we had discussed this briefly at a previous meeting, and I just wanted to make sure the board was kept informed on the process and a little bit of a hiccup that was caught a couple months ago, but seems to be corrected. Last year in early February, we had some residents come to the city council and request the installation of a rapid rectangular flashing beacon at the intersection of Dartmouth Crest and really the Lafayette and Clayton at Lafayette there. We had had, if you go a little bit more to the west, then you have the actual crosswalk itself and the crossing signal and the traffic light. But the residents here There is a actual crosswalk there, but it does come up on you quick. And one of the residents had requested that this should be better signaled. We did tell them that this is a county road and any project would have to be approved and done by the county, even if the city were to participate financially. Luckily, after reaching out to the county on their behalf and with some assistance from those residents, the county came back to us and said they would study the issue. They came back and said that it does meet the criterion that they placed to be able to add it to a future project. And at the time, they had mentioned that they had added it to a neighborhood safety improvement project that covered the whole span of the county. But specifically, it dealt with projects just like this where you're adding safety signals to different neighborhood subdivisions. Earlier this year, though, we were trying to get a status update, which the county was somewhat reluctant to provide. I think they were working out some of the materials and working out some of their other projects. And it was then confirmed that there was a snag in the funding due to the County shortfall that had recently occurred they had to move some funding around and there was supposedly a Reappropriation that was going to have to occur in order for this project to proceed along with an about another million dollars worth of safety neighborhood safety improvement projects that said uh they had their meeting and and it was originally supposed to be part of this bill that was going to be passed by the county council and after that they actually ended up using ram settlement funds to help backfill and and fund this project along with some other critical infrastructure projects that they had listed so as of right now what's been reported to the city staff is that they will still anticipate to have this done relatively soon this year possibly going into 2027 but the plan would be they have other projects that they're going to bid this with and they would come back to the city once they have more information on the cost and then they would say hey probably around fall they would have more information so right now we're almost in a holding pattern but at least from our county councilman we have been informed that it does seem like the project is still proceeding but originally the anticipated timeline was the end of 2026. I just want to provide an update tonight, but we'll keep you abreast to the situation and make sure you guys are informed throughout the process. But I wanted to point this out and available for any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. And did I hear you say this is a project that would probably run late 26 into 27?

Yeah, it seems originally it was going to be, you know, summer of 26. It looked like it was going to be able to get out the door. But with kind of the shortfall here, the last couple months that they've lost in the planning timeline, it seems like now they're finally getting the bidding package together and bidding this out with a plethora of other projects. okay yes sir yes mr lee do you think we'll have any more better success in maintaining this crossing light than we do with the one at old fairway and manchester road i tend to think well i think we will because we won't have to maintain it it'll be the counties so in this case they will be maintaining it and building it and paying for it and completely

So essentially, you're saying that they will do better at maintaining than we've had the success of maintaining?

Well, that's not guaranteed. But that said, Director Brown could comment a little bit here. But the lights that you're speaking of, the flashing beacons, We do actually have a quote out to repair those and recently took that to the city council. But that said, and this is something I think the board should consider as we, you know, there obviously are uses for these devices, but they are expensive to maintain. And if they are damaged, they are extremely expensive to repair. I think the, correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Brown, but the quote that came in to repair a couple of different items along Manchester, but it was about $70,000. If I remember correctly, it might be, I might be a little bit high there, but. I wanted to call that out because these devices are not cheap to fix once they do break.

And to that point, I would say, why are we encouraging additional ones? We've eliminated one on Manchester Road, and the other one, the solution was to put black electrical tape over where the push button was. So I guess I don't know why we're having additional ones if we can't maintain the ones that exist currently.

I would make the argument if we were paying for this one that we would most definitely want to consider that. That said, I mean, Mr. Brown, do you have any updates on the timeline for the repair for those ones on Manchester?

Yeah, E-Meyer is, not E-Meyer, but Meyer Electric Company is the contractor. We need to reach out and see where they're at, but they should be starting shortly on that improvement project. They're basically replacing the three that we have in place on Manchester Road in its entirety, so... um again we've talked these these installations have a limited lifespan that's what we're finding it's about 10 years so we just have to plan to replace them um and accept that and make sure we program monies to do that which is something that i need to talk about for next year in the budget is that very thing so this case it is the county that's going to maintain to maintain it so there's no liability for the city um in this instance

So in your plan to repair the ones on Manchester, with the one that was eliminated because it was struck multiple times, and I understand that, is that going to still remain not there?

It will remain in that location. We agreed to remove the pole in the center island.

So they're going to reinstall it and have the lights just in a different location. Great.

Thank you.

Yeah. Yes. Any more questions for Mr. Lee? Thank you for that information.

Hey, I do have a question there since we're talking about this topic. Rick, regarding the poles there with those lights that are on the center medians, have you looked at anything? I've seen a device called like a bell bollard, which would be able to deflect if a car is clipping that median there and kind of prevent the poles from getting hit. Are you familiar with that kind of device? And would that be something effective? Because I think the point that Mr. Loyal was saying that they've been hit and probably won't be the last time they've been hit, but if we can get something that really provides an effective barrier to the pole, people hitting it might have more damage, but maybe right now, instead of us bearing the brunt of the damage, you know, it will protect our assets

And unfortunately, I'm not aware of that device, Mayor. We did look into this when it came up previously. And at least as far as the median island, there's not an easy solution there that doesn't basically provide liability to the city. These puddles are intended to be breakaway. They're intended to be hit. And they break away for that reason, because it's safer that way. So doing the opposite and putting an obstacle in the road you intend someone to hit creates liability. So it's kind of backtracking going the opposite direction, frankly.

I think that we're going to probably be back here at some point. As the one that is right by Mr. Loyal, I believe this might be the third time it's been hit. So it sounds like they're not cheap.

Just to be clear, Mayor, we removed the one in the median island at that crosswalk. So that one's not being replaced. It's being reinstalled there.

OK. You're keeping the ones on the sides, though, the two sides?

On the outside, yes. OK.

I think those have been better at outlasting the vehicles that are hitting the ones in the middle. OK.

Yes.

Thanks.

You're welcome, sir. Any other questions?

Moving on to the next item of business is the private street light at Route 100 and Forest Leaf Parkway.

all right thank you marshall and thanks board um this is an item we wanted to bring up it's a verbal update tonight but if the board if it's at the board's interest we can come back with some additional information but this is stemming more so from a request from a group of residents uh specifically an hoa trustee and some individuals that live in that subdivision As you're coming up, and we had recently, I believe it was about 2 years ago. We had restriped the crosswalk at Birch Forest there. And highway 100 and what you'll see when you're up. In that area is a crosswalk. It's our. A crosswalk that goes across the roadway itself, but then also it's part of our trail network. So, nonetheless. There's been concerns at night when motorists are coming in, when they're heading westbound on 100, when they're turning right into the subdivision there to get to their homes, which it does connect to the larger roadway network on that northeastern side of Wildwood. that there's not enough visibility and not enough lighting in order to practically give enough visibility for a crosser, someone that might be crossing the roadway there. There's fears that someone could get hit. Currently, there is a street light that's attached to a utility pole right adjacent to that area, and it does currently provide some visibility. It's not perfect. We did some deep digging here to make sure that It wasn't Ameren's pole, it wasn't Ameren's light, or it wasn't our light. We identified that it was the HOA's light, and they actually are the ones that are metered for it each month. The question, though, that was posed was, could we remove trees? Could the city remove a tree to make that light have a little bit more luminescence onto the roadway? Or could the city possibly work with Ameren and then the HOA in some capacity to replace the light fixture in that current device to make it brighter? Ameren came back to us and said there's only one other light option. It would be to replace it with a brighter LED, but they only allow certain type of lights with certain specs to go in. And they would have to have the HOA actually sign off on that since they bought it. And then there was also discussion and a request to consider having a street light, the street sign that's there on off of 100, the actual street sign itself be lit up almost like the LED light LED signs that we have elsewhere in the city. We had looked at that and saw that the cost to do some of these things would be pretty extensive. There's also the issue of having it being in MoDOT's right of way on Ameren's utility pole. The cost started to be pretty extensive to remove a tree or having to go back and get permits from MoDOT to see if it would be able to be done in the first place. So we looked at a couple cost alternatives, and one thing that came up that could be a cheaper solution that could get the attention that we're looking for here for motorists that are turning in is possibly adding some ballards on that center island. And if you don't mind, Destin, would you mind pulling up the intersection in question here? It's Birch Forest and Highway 100. I think it might help with the discussion. And we can just go on the street view. But overall, the idea would be to put some low cost ballards on this center aisle here that would have a reflective material on it. So when a car is pulling in and going on Westbound 100, they would You know, at least be able to see the median pretty easily, um, would help kind of give some notice to the residents too. That may be crossing there. Um, the traffic counts turning into that subdivision. Usually we're finding that. There are individuals that live in the subdivision, so it's not a massive. At Forest Parkway. Sorry. Yeah. Forest Parkway. Um. It's not a large number of cars that are turning in there at night. But nonetheless, we've had a group of residents come to us, bring this up. HOA trustee had brought this up to us. We wanted to make sure to bring it to the board's attention and seek direction. Either one of the options, if we were to go with about some ballards or we were to remove some trees, We're talking about a couple thousand dollars, so it's not free. So tonight, I wanted to at least bounce the idea off the board tonight before doing further research and bringing a formal packet to you all on this item to get your feedback and see if this is something that the board would want to look into further. And then here, sorry, you might have had this looking at, if you look at the screen now to kind of get reference. So we had striped this few years back. So where you see the crosswalk there that we had actually gone in and made that a little bit brighter. So when you do drive it and I've driven it a couple of times to get a better angle on it and the issue is as a whole that, that did help. It does actually get a little bit of reflectance just from the crosswalk itself, but it's, Destin, if you peep into the subdivision there, just one click, I can show where the light's at. And then turn to the right. It's on that pole right to the right of you, Destin. Perfect. The street light. Oh, it's the other one. Sorry. Not having the controls.

You had the first, the first few was more accurate.

I don't know why you can't see it on. Yeah, so.

Could you share that too over the Zoom so I could see it? Thank you.

So is it?

So it's on the other, it's on the original pull disk.

Yeah. Okay. If you move.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think that's the tree in question.

Yep. And we had trimmed that tree as well to, to assist, but truthfully it, it's still, that tree is causing kind of like a blockage within the visibility. So it would, if you wanted the light to be brighter on the actual roadway itself, you would have to most likely remove the tree, which would take some coordination with Ameren, um, and MoDOT, but Nonetheless, the other option is the island you can see on the right-hand side of your screen. We could also have some reflective posts put there. We're not really necessarily all too concerned about the cars leaving Forest Leaf Parkway. The concerns that were raised were folks that may be going at a high rate of speed and slowing down abruptly and then turning into the subdivision, and then possibly if someone was crossing the roadway there, worried that someone could get struck. Yes, sir.

I'm very familiar with this one. In the picture you got up there, if you looked at the left side, there's a sidewalk also right into that. And you have to go along there actually, right? No curve, anything into that lane to get through the bike. So kids come down on bikes and they're just following the sidewalk. They're right in the middle of cars coming in. But it's tight and cars all the time are flipping close to that corner. where they, you know, I'm not coming out that sidewalk. It just leads them right into it. That makes sense.

Who owns, to give a better term, who owns the tree and all the stuff around there that prevents us from just going in there and cleaning that corner up?

I think the city could pretty easily remove the tree. Arguably, you could say it's within modots right away. However, it's a city street. It could go either way. Easiest thing would be for us to cut the tree down and just see what difference it makes. It's been trimmed. It's in proximity to the wire lines. Everyone would probably prefer that it be removed, frankly.

Has anybody contacted Hammerin to see if they would be interested in getting rid of this thing? Because obviously they have to trim it every once in a while to... Give it, you know.

I would just trim that one. Causing an issue with the wires. I'd just trim that one at the ground.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Totally can remember.

I mean, what I'm getting at is it sounds like if we could, correct me if I'm wrong, the cheapest, easiest first step is to dig out the tree and clear out all the brush and open up your sight lines to the left and the right so that you wouldn't, so that the people on the sidewalk would have some exposure, would be seen easier. I mean, unless I'm missing something there.

And a quick note that that is 1 of the options and then also we did reach out to. They. Would prefer trimming it, so they, they would not want to they would not want to take on the costs of removing the tree itself. They said they would assist, but that we would be paying for it. Share the cost.

Yes, sir, so just clarify the actual light is there the is funding.

Yeah, so the light that it's kind of like it's an interest light.

Right, it's on that pole right there, right?

Yeah, so they said that the HOA had mentioned that they have less than $1,000 that they would be willing to put towards any type of project.

But the current light there, they are paying the bill. Yes, they get a bill. So if we take the tree down and put the balusters in, I walked that area several times a week, not a night, fortunately. Yeah. I think that's a win for public safety, first of all. If we put the balusters up, people are going, obviously, very, very fast there. Any pedestrian traffic is taking them. But if that tree is the issue and the HOA is paying for the light, I think it's a bargain for the city. The balusters, I'm surprised people haven't hit that triangle regularly and caused all kinds of damage. So I think that I would support that as well.

It looks like a pin oak, so it doesn't lose its leaves every year. They stay on all winter long. Mr. Lee, do you know, would Ameren care if we cut it down?

No, there would need to be some coordination, but we work with them for many other projects, especially when storms hit us. So nonetheless, I mean, if we needed to, and we wanted to remove this tree, we would make sure that they were out there with our contractor, but we would be able to do it. It wouldn't be all too much trouble. That's not a huge expense.

Why Ameren would have a concern about a tree removal?

No, they wouldn't. They would be fine. They wouldn't care. They would just want to be there just because it's part of their line. And if there was damage, they would be able to repair it.

Yeah, I'm sure. I agree. I think they would want to be there to protect their interest if that tree goes the wrong way. That's exactly right. Yes, sir.

We had two comments. One, I would be very careful before I went and cut down a tree, make sure that the owner of the property on which the tree is located has given their consent in writing. There's a Missouri statute that provides for travel damages if you cut down a tree on someone's property that you don't have their consent before you cut it down. Second thing is, has anybody considered in addition to this, I think it's a good idea to get rid of the tree, number one. I just would be careful about how you go about doing it. Second thing, has anyone considered signage westbound 100 indicating yield to pedestrians and crosswalk or something along those lines, in addition to cutting down.

Is that a request we would have to make to MoDOT?

The issue there is it's MoDOT's roadway and they're right-of-way, so they have jurisdiction. So we could raise this issue. I think, Captain, you've checked into crash history there. And we usually, as traffic engineers in MoDOT, we look for crash history to guide us in these situations. And I don't believe we've found any indication of crash history. So we're not looking at MoDOT to respond unless there's a defined problem that we can point to. But nonetheless, we could reach out to them again. Well, I don't know if MoDOT's received any complaints. It's really under their jurisdiction, and they have not taken action on it. So I would assume that they don't see it as a problem that rises to the surface.

Thank you. All my information is available.

So, and we'll talk about this with the next item, but MoDOT, as the city does, we follow the manual on uniform traffic devices for signage installation, and it's a very strict policy and procedures manual, 1100 pages worth of every requirement you'd want to know in terms of installing a sign or marking a roadway. Traffic engineers will review these requests. Again, we look for reasons to install signs. We have lots of signs on the streets right now that people don't pay attention to. And putting another sign up generally just creates another one if it's not warranted. So... We follow the guidelines that are in the manual on uniform track devices, and that's exactly what MoDOT does.

They look for data to support decisions and decision making.

Crash statistics are the number one thing they look for. If we're not seeing a pattern of crashes here, I don't believe there's a problem at nighttime either. It's not likely MoDOT's going to respond and spend tax dollars to put up new signs or new markings. The outline of the island is an issue that I'm not totally clear on because it seems to me their policy has been to do that frequently at most intersections. So we have made that request. Captain's made that request. I'm hopeful they will do that, put the delineator posts around the perimeter of the island. That seems to be a policy they have in place now, and it seems like a reasonable action that they would take. So I'm optimistic they will move forward in that way.

And a quick note to on the property, our understanding is that it is on the right of way on city owned property or slash moda property.

So, it's not private, even if it's moda property and you cut it without moda giving you a permit running into problem moda. Thank you.

Marshall. Yes, sir. I'd like to make a motion that we support the removal of the tree at this intersection and the installation of bollards on the dividing island.

So we have a motion to pursue removal of the tree through proper channels and add the installation of bollards to the island to increase pedestrian safety?

Yes.

Do I hear a second? I'll second it.

Yes, sir. Sure. And that the homeowners association be asked.

Of the truth. I would not accept that amendment on my motion.

All right. So let's back this up. Cause we're kind of stuck here. The original conversation started because the intersection has two problems. The light doesn't provide much illumination to the intersection, and because of the vegetation and the tree on the corner, we're affecting the sight lines on the sidewalk trail area. Is that my understanding of what we're looking at? Everybody? I mean, that's what we're looking at? Yes. Mr. Loyal made the motion that the city, through proper channels, pursue removal of the tree and the possible installation of ballards. But we don't have a second on that. I did second it. So if we put it to a vote, we know it's not going to make it. All right. So we do have a motion.

We do have a second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

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Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Well, let's do this. Let's do this. Mr. Brown, Mr. Lee, is there a way we can do a follow-up on this and come back at a future meeting with maybe? Roll call and a vote. All right. Yeah. Roll call and a vote, please. Yes.

No.

Yes.

I was a non-voting member. This is my first meeting. I apologize. So I would vote in favor. In favor. Sorry.

So then the motion carries 3 to 2. Is that correct?

That is correct. 3 to 2.

So out of respect for our two dissenting members, is there a way that we could follow up on this when we have additional information?

We certainly can. And we have had discussions with the HOA. They had mentioned and indicated that they do not have much money to put towards any type of project for this. But they are wanting to see something happen here. So we can re, engage them to see what in. Really come back to this board and say, here's what they ended up contributing to the tree removal and the installation of the ballards.

Because even though I support the motion, Mr motion, I do understand Mr Wilson's concerns and I do think that those are valid concerns that. You know, one of the reasoning behind my voting, supporting the motion is that I feel like the city will do due process and all of this so that we don't have somebody screaming that my tree got cut down. So Mr. Gleason first.

Well, the right way to approach it. As far as their permission, that's not my reasoning. I would just like to see something done on the inside of that corner too. Like I said, the sidewalk on the left to right, you know, goes around. There's no curb or anything to get to the bike path. If you look even a little bit to the right, you'll see the cars don't even use the lane. You can see the grass is all there. They drive right across the sidewalk. And I don't know if there's a way to incorporate some improvement for that also. But essentially, the sidewalk is that asphalt there where you see all the black lines of the cars. And you really run out of any sidewalk going from the subdivision sidewalk

Marshall. Yes, sir. So any question from Mr. Brown? Would this improvement that, I mean, I think it's a great improvement. Is that at the city's cost or at the state?

Well, I think that the linear posts around the perimeter of the raised island would be done at MoDOT expense. Beyond that, it's likely to be our expense, especially if it's relative to the trail.

So, yeah, I think it's a great idea. I think this is a good first step. And then perhaps we can, in the future, hopefully make some sort of improvement to that corner. And this is a good first step. It'll significantly improve the the site distance and improve the safety and the lighting and the whole bit. And then later, if we don't do this now, somebody could get hit. And while we're waiting on this, this improvement to the pavement to to give the bicyclists more room to make this turn and not conflict with the automobiles. So that's my point. Yes, sir, Mr. Lowell.

Just confirming with Mr. Lee that What we approved wasn't to go to the homeowners and say, what are you willing to contribute? It's what we approved is our recommendation to have it removed and installation is valid. Yeah.

Well, and one thing though, to add to that note, to address, try to address everybody's concerns. We will, we were already talking with the HOA. The removal of the tree is not contingent on them contributing money. Um, but if they were wanting to assist, we will most definitely, um, accept any donations towards the process.

Thank you. Thank you. So, and for sleep, there is 40 Parkway is a city on street, right? Yes, because I'm a, along with Mr. Gleason's concerns regarding that asphalt area that's being used as a sidewalk. Is that really a sidewalk or is it just somebody uses that?

Rick might be, Mr. Brown might be able to answer that a little bit better, but the thing is, if you made that a...

I understand what I'm asking there. Is it a sidewalk or is it... A sidewalk.

It's a path.

Right, right, exactly. And the cars are just looking back on it. As you can see, they can go right. They're not going out there with a grab.

I didn't see the sidewalk there until you pointed it out. So, I mean, I agree with you that probably as. If we look forward on the resolution of what appears to be a multitude of issues with this intersection. We kind of start taking all these things into consideration and if they can't all be solved at once, at least they're on the table for future consideration.

Yeah, and one thing too, I mean, if you remove that tree, the thing is it's got the power line and the stabilizing structure there, but you actually might end up making some room there for some extra concrete on the side there, but that would have to be a planned project. Okay. Mr. Brown, could you add some context there? Because the one thing is, that is a pretty tight turn when you're in a vehicle and you're making that right into the subdivision.

So it doesn't show on the aerial, but we did stripe it. So there is an edge stripe out there. So to help delineate from the road to the shoulder where the pedestrians and the bikes are, we put a edge stripe out there last year, I believe. So it doesn't show up in the 2022 street view, but I'm relatively certain that there's one out there. We can double check that. If it's not, we can certainly do it.

And yeah, actually, if you go on 100 and look directly at it, you can see a little bit. There's a . If you move out to 100, it's a whole picture. Jump out there and then look there. You can really see the way it feeds into it. The reality is they go cutting. There's something.

Make that guard reel longer. And that's a good view of the sidebar coming in. I see that.

You go forward on no less than 100%.

Yeah, Mr. Gleason's talking about going on fours.

You can also see all the tire cuts.

I think what we're looking at here with the motion we have and the discussion involving it is that we're going to look at basically kind of an all-encompassing approach at addressing any concerns at that intersection, primarily targeting the tree.

I mean, I look at the intersection. I'm not going to make that complaint, Mr. Gleason, about cutting the corner too tight. I don't know why you would do that in the vehicle. The turn radius there is up to current standards. It's actually quite large. So there's no reason why you would cut the corner per se. But we can certainly look at that. There's plenty of room for both cars and pedestrians, I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know that, you know, she's required to go on the other side and then use the crossbar. It just, it's a concern, but it seems there's some way to improve it to make it safer. There's even some way to possibly help drivers improve on that. Understood.

Okay. Just a quick question. Mr. Brown, could we put plastic ballards as an extension to the guardrail to kind of shepherd the automobiles to not make an early turn?

Potentially, you could do that again. This is MoDOT's right away. So it all goes through MoDOT, unfortunately or fortunately. So we have to consider their jurisdiction in the matter.

Do you present that to them?

We could consider it again. The question is, what is the documented problem we're trying to solve here? And again, we've looked at the crash history. We don't believe we have a crash history here. I mean, we could do this same exercise at pretty much every intersection we have. Right. But we don't because we don't get complaints necessarily. Right. We'll take a look at it and see. We can certainly freshen up the edge stripe going through the intersection. I think we've already freshened up the crosswalk markings as well. I think the delineators around the median would be a good option. And we'll see if we can get MoDOT to do that. And if we cut the tree down, I think you've done a lot right there.

All right, thank you, sir. Any further discussion on that? Moving on to the next item. Under old business, and we have no items under old business. Moving on to new business 1st item is the city adoption of the uniform traffic control devices.

Board members, Mr. Marshall, I wanted to bring this item to you. This pertains to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. And this is essentially the Bible that we use. It's a federal document that provides very explicit guidance on the installation of traffic control devices on the roadway. It's federally mandated, it's followed by every state in the country to some degree, and it filters down to the county level and the municipal level that essentially you are required to follow this document or create a comparable document of your own that you follow. As I said, it's a very comprehensive document. It's 91 years of age. It's updated usually at about a 10-year frequency because things change, technologies change, cars change, users of the road change. So it is a flexible document in that respect. There are provisions to make changes as time goes on. We have a section in the code that says basically section 315.20 that That the city is supposed to install all traffic control sign signals and devices in conformance with the manual and specifications approved by the state highway commission. I've always interpreted this to mean that we follow what mode out follows in the past mode out has always followed the manual on uniform traffic control devices in terms of signs markings and traffic control devices on the roadways. With the most recent addition that they updated in December of 2023, the manual modem decided not to follow the MUTCD. Essentially, they went through it section by section by section, and they made changes. And the changes they made reflect their system, their highways. So it's geared towards high-speed roadways with high traffic volumes. It's not geared towards municipalities like the city of Wildwood. it's not really feasible for us to follow MoDOT's lead at this point in time. The requirements that they've put in place don't work for us. I mean, it would be foolish for us to follow it because we would put up signs that are larger than we need, we would put up sign spacings that don't work for low speed, low volume roads. It's just apples and that's not completely apples and oranges, but it just wouldn't work for us. So at this point, I am recommending to the board that we formally adopt the manual as a standalone document, which is essentially what we've been doing in years past. It's just that we would do it by resolution through the city council. The only other option we would have at some point would be developing a document for ourselves or finding a document that has been created out there. I don't have one at this point in time that I can point to, but it is possible at some point some other city could create a document that works for us better than following the METCD. Right now, I don't have that to point to or suggest. I'm suggesting that we should go forward with the MUTCD at this point in time. If we find there is that document out there, we could certainly fall back and consider implementing it in lieu of the full MUTCD. The MUTCD is very comprehensive, and it provides a lot of general guidance for all types of roadways. It provides flexibility for us. Generally speaking, it works reasonably well. So I think in this case, it would be wise just to move forward and adopt the MUTCD as a matter of policy. And then if you guys approve a motion tonight, we'll take it to city council and have them approve it or request approval through a full resolution. So the recommendation to you all tonight is to essentially adopt the 2023 edition of the MUTCD.

Yes. Is there any time constraint regarding all this? Can we wait and do a month's worth of research and then come back to this committee and And, you know, we could do a search on Springfield and Kansas City and just have, you know, some municipalities within the state of Missouri to, if there's anything else available. Is there a time constraint?

I guess I wouldn't point out an explicit time constraint. Other than if something were to happen, I think the odds of that are very slim. If something were to happen and we needed to strictly identify what we're following, we'd be a little bit hard pressed to say we're following MoDOT right now. So it does put us in a little bit of a liability, but I don't think another month would be too concerning, frankly. If the board would prefer that we do a little more investigation and bring this back, that's fine. I don't have any problem with that.

That is correct, yeah. It's worked reasonably well, yes. Yes, except... All right, yeah.

Well, I'm not aware that we've ever formally passed a resolution. In my mind, I've always followed the MUTCD because MoDOT followed the MUTCD. Now I'm aware that they have updated and created essentially their own version of it, and that's what they're adopting. So if we say we're following MoDOT, technically right now, if we say we're following MoDOT, we're following their manual. And it can lead to... Yeah, I mean, every sign that we have wouldn't would be considered to be. Too small and would need to be upgraded because they, their minimum is signing for a. What what their minimum would be signing for a Clayton road or a route one hundred right? Our minimum is signing for Woods Road or a residential street. They don't have residential streets. Their minimum size might be 36 by 36. Our minimum size might be 30 inches by 30 inches. It's a... it's an important difference because if there's a, if it's ever, if we're ever questioned as to what our policy is, we have dealt with liability. If we don't have the 36 inch sign out there, we have the 30 inch sign and we're not in compliance.

Yeah. Yeah. or resolution adopted by the city. It's something else. So has the city adopted a resolution to the contrary?

No, and that's essentially what I'm asking you to start, is if you approve a motion to adopt the MUTCD, I will then take that to the full council as a resolution for their approval. And the resolution will say the city has adopted the MUTCD.

Now there's no resolution. deviating from what MoDOT or Highways and Transportation Commission. No. That would be an issue.

Mr. Boyle. I'd like to make a motion that we support the adoption of the manual for uniform traffic control devices as recommended by Director Braun.

We have a motion for adoption of the manual. Do I hear a second?

I'll second. It's a recommendation.

Recommendation to adopt. Yes. And we have a second by Mr. Gleason. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries.

Thank you.

Next item of business is consideration of truck restrictions on Wild Horse Creek Road west of Route 109. We have an attachment for the proposed truck restrictions.

Mr. Marshall, board members, this next item is a request for the consideration of the addition of truck restrictions on Wild Horse Creek Road. Now, this would pertain to Wild Horse Creek Road that we maintain as a city roadway, not the section that is Route CC or owned and maintained by MoDOT. So our portion is west of 109 all the way over to Route 100. I don't know if you can put up the exhibit. That might be helpful. Not the map, but the... Yeah. Exhibit A is the one I was going to reference real quick. But the situation that I think has been raised, and Captain and I have discussed this, and Captain, you're welcome to weigh in on this as well, because I think we're on the same page, is with the completion, and really this predates the completion of MoDOT's roundabout project up at Route 109 and Route CC, South Etherton Road, where the service station is. That newer roundabout completed last year, there's a sign, as I showed in my photograph, and it's been in place for some time on South Etherton Road. There is a tractor trailer restriction. So tractor trailers are not supposed to come up South Etherton from the valley. They're not supposed to go north from that roundabout. That's been in place for some time. That is a county roadway, and it's actually in the city of Chesterfield. So it's really not our restriction. I think it's on the county's traffic schedules. So if you are at that location in the roundabout as a truck driver and you want to go to Chesterfield Valley, it, in my mind, would lead you to want to use Wild Horse Creek Road. So instead of going down South Etherton, you go down the city's leg of Wild Horse Creek Road and go west. and the detour route would be wild horse creek road to centaur road now centaur road is a city street as well and it has a restriction in place and we restrict it from semi tractor trucks so it's signed the opposite direction from the valley in that manner But if a truck were to try to detour going northbound, they would essentially get down to Centaur Road and realize they can't get through. So they'd be either forced to ignore the restriction, which is more likely what would happen, or they would, I guess, continue all the way on Wild Horse Creek, maybe to Route 100. Further to the west, Austin-Fort Road does have a restriction in place. We have a number of roadways that have truck restrictions in place already, a number of roadways that have semi-tractor truck restrictions in place already. So what the request to you tonight is to consider a restriction on Wild Horse Creek Road to restrict semi-truck, semi-tractor trailers from Route 109 to Route 100. Now it does include an exception and we've done this with our other restrictions. It includes an exception for essentially trucks delivering or originating from Wildwood properties. So it's designed to discourage the through truck driver from Chesterfield going to Eureka or Pacific. If they're going to Wildwood, they can still use it. If they're leaving from Wildwood, they can still use it. So that is included in the request is that retaining that restriction. So included in the memo is a map that Dustin made just to give you an idea of the other roads that do have restrictions on them. So I think the roads in red have currently some form of a truck or commercial traffic restriction in place. So it's not uncommon that we've done this elsewhere. So I wanted to point that out. Actually, Wild Horse is one of the few that doesn't. I think going into Chesterfield Valley from Shepherd Valley, Strecker, those roads do not either, potentially. But a lot of our rural arterial roadways do have restrictions in place. So that is the request to you tonight, is do we want to consider restricting Wild Horse Creek Road from 109 to Route 100 through tractor trucks, through semi-tractor trailers going forward? Well, the restrictions are not consistent, unfortunately. They've been put in place over many years in some cases by different jurisdictions. I do believe that the county restriction on South Etherton is no through tractor trailers. And that's essentially what we have on Centaur Road, I believe. And that's what we're talking about, in my mind, for Wild Horse Creek Road, is no through tractor trailers, except if they're delivering to a Wildwood property or originating from a Wildwood property.

I think the idea there, there's kind of a gap that a truck right at the moment could legally turn that way. But once they get pretty far down the road, they're kind of stuck. And we did have an incident last year where a tractor trailer, and I want to say he was cutting through from 64 and... I don't know if you saw the signs at South Etherton and Centaur, perhaps. He wound up way back in Wild Horse Creek with his tractor-trailer loaded with... I think it was like composite boards or something. And once he got into the narrow curves of the road, he hit the right curve that was very narrow and he was over the center line. Somebody was coming at him. He swerved and he ended up putting the tractor trailer in a, it was awesome to see, in a ditch on a curve, He basically totaled a brand-new truck tractor and dumped the whole load down into a ditch, and it took him about two days to get that all cleaned out of there. He wasn't very clear on how or why. He's following GPS or something that showed that there was a road, and there was no way he was going to make it through there. So I was in contact with the county highway department. I believe they put some additional signage on – North Everton leading up to that. And Rick put some additional signing on Centaur. So going up the hill as part of, and we have no input on this, going up the hill as part of the 109 roundabout, they also put a guardrail in the curve but they put the guardrail right on the edge of the road. So it's kind of making it impossible. Chesterfield does deal with, with track trailer incidents in there quite a bit. So good for us, not for them, but yeah, Rick and I talked that there should be clear signage if you're northbound on 109 that it clearly shows all tractor trailers must proceed eastbound on Wild Horse Creek because they're not going to make it through the other two areas. So it's really just closing the gap, I think, needs to be done.

Like my son told me, Google will take you the fastest way, but it doesn't know what kind of car you're driving. Mr. Loyal.

That's actually a question Captain Wendell brought up. If we enact this, do the mapping agencies, do we notify them somehow that tractor trailers are not permitted in a certain area? How does that work?

Generally, we don't have a direct line of communication to them. However, I'm pretty comfortable saying that when we put the signs up, over time, they do see the signs. And they reflect it in their mapping. So I think it has a positive effect in that regard. Now, I can't swear to that. But some of these ordinances, the knock on doing it is it is darn near impossible to, in some cases, enforce it right so you know trucks do it uh the one off you're not you're just not going to probably be able to catch now if it's repeat offender you might be able to do something about it but if it does get reflected in those mapping applications that's real value in my mind um so i i do believe they do that just like when you're driving the speed limits get showing up in your in your uh navigation apps and people don't tell them the speed limits they get that strictly from the mapping

Is there anybody that would oppose this?

Yeah, I don't know which mapping service, whether you would go with Google or Siri or there's another one out there, but I do know that if you went on that road... And use Google Maps and you put that as a comment that no tractor trailer trucks allowed. It will update the status of that.

I have done that with Google. I have gone in there and we've made a change. I have reported it because you can do it on Google. So I have done it that way and we can do that here too.

We've had this problem for years on Old State, and we finally got the restriction. But unfortunately, the signs are placed in such a position that after the drivers have pretty much committed to their direction, they are well beyond being able to do anything about it. And we've been asking for the signs to be moved. you know, through the county and the state and the city to all work together. And, you know, it's never come to pass, unfortunately. But the situation with Google and all that is, they'll update, but there are apps out there specifically designed for truckers. And the professional ones and the ones who care will actually use those apps and act accordingly. But there are others that are perhaps not full-time, not professional truckers, just kind of part-time trucker who will use typical Google, typical whatever, and just blast through. And we we still have these massive trucks coming up and down Old State, which is obviously an issue. And, you know, it's just, it's really unfortunate. It's my two cents.

Well, I think it would, you know, go ahead, Mr. Gleeson, you want to say something? No, I think... Then you can go ahead and make the motion.

I think the motion that we... All in favor? Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you.

Rick, I got just a thought, side question. So what happens in the event that a tractor trailer has to deliver something roof truss uh for construction is there any requirement that they get a permit from the city you know which would obviously cause an escort or something for a tractor trailer you know to get from from one spot to the next just because they have to

Captain, my expectation is, yes, they would need a permit from the city. If you ask me to cite you the section of the code, I may not be able to do it at this moment. We can follow up on that later. I have had that come up before where they were trying to deliver like an in-ground fiberglass pool, you know, and they wanted to deliver it to a property in the rural area. And I told them, it's like, you can't deliver it without closing the road. And then, well, it pretty much put an end to that discussion. So if it's an oversized, overweight vehicle, they should come to us and get a permit. And I'm trying to remember, I think there's been other occasions where that, yeah, we've definitely had that occur.

It's transformer just a year or so back.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. We had the Ameren transformer a couple years ago. And, of course, that was a professional outfit. And they knew to reach out to the agencies involved. So they reached out to MoDOT. They reached out to us and a number of folks and got permits.

Well, you could have the same situation with a moving truck. I mean, those are, you know, typical semi-length. And, you know, what are they going to do?

Again, if they're moving to Wildwood and they're delivering to a Wildwood property, doesn't apply. They have an exception.

But is that, have we specified that? I don't know.

Yeah, no, it'll be in the verbiage for the ordinance. And that's what we've done as of late because we recognized that we couldn't outright well we could we just chose not to and this came up in a prior discussion Tom kelp came to the board and he was very adamant about it and he said we have some bit larger larger vehicles and we don't want to be restricted from using the roads when we need to get somewhere so that was a large part why we why we did that so right now that's the way it would be implemented unless you desire something different yes sir

Right, that is correct. on that for sure.

No, I didn't. You're correct. But the signs, the issue with the way we've been doing it, frankly, is the signs don't reflect the true ordinance. So the sign would say no through tractor trailer. So it's intended that if you're delivering on the route, you're allowed to do that. And that is clearly stated in the ordinance. But it also says, and there's a further exception, if you are originating or your destination is a Wildwood property. So it's not in the signs, but it is in the ordinance. If it came up, if a Tom Kelp driver got a ticket because he was driving through Wildwood from one point to the other with a tractor trailer, he could certainly not, he won't get a ticket. It won't hold up. So it's there. It is unfortunately not totally clear on these signs.

Just side on that to the good thing with tractor trailers. They have paperwork to say what they're doing. So. If a truck was in there and got stopped and he's got a load. He should be able to show a document that says I'm delivering to this address or I'm on my way to Eureka. That's a problem, obviously. Same thing if I'm here to pick up a vehicle or something like that. They should have some paperwork that says this is verifies they're going to a specific ad. Yeah.

And correct me if I'm wrong, Captain, but that paperwork has to be submitted upon demand. When a commercial motor vehicle gets stopped, they have an obligation to present that paperwork.

It's not like your normal private vehicle. Yes, and the department has at our disposal a commercial vehicle enforcement unit. And I think two of the guys live in Wildwood, so... They're at our disposal pretty easy if we need them to look at something.

Any further discussion?

Mr. Marshall?

Yes, sir.

I misspoke a little bit relative to the question Mr. Wilson brought up. So we have tried to sign these newer installations where we have the restrictions as no through tractor trailers except Wildwood delivery. So we have added that plate to the signpost. I think in most cases, it'll say no through tractor trailers except Wildwood delivery. And that's intended to reflect that exception. So I apologize for misspeaking.

Thank you. next item of business is police services contract for fiscal year 2027. all right thank you mr marshall and uh captain did you hand this out by chance this

Did you hand this report out by chance?

Okay, good. All right. So I also wanted to note that Captain did pass off a report that they had been working on. St. Louis County Police Department has been working on and Captain, I'll give the floor to with the board's permission here in a moment. But I wanted to provide this to the Board of Public Safety. Something that the Administration and Public Works Committee had been reviewing. is obviously our budget. Last year, we were anticipating, and it does seem like revenues are somewhat where we're at, where we anticipated them to be. And what that produced was a net gain of about $59,000 across all general fund revenue. That said, when you add up all of our expenditures that grow each year with contracted costs, increases in insurance, staffing, overall, it just... there's a broader picture of our revenues were being outpaced by our expenditures that said the city council had taken some action to pull back some of our events that we have some more non-crucial essential services that we offer to the residents to help offset some of those costs that said we're now looking a little bit more towards the future since we're we're not currently planning to add in any current revenue sources and especially given that the state is considering some changes to some tax structures We're wanting to be proactive. So the committee had recommended doing a review of our police services contract to see if we, what is our true number of officers that are needed? They had come to approve a motion that had stated that a reduction of four officers would be recommended and that would eventually go to the city council. Overall, we took a look at it ourselves too, but at the end of the day, we had to make sure that this would come to the Board of Public Safety prior to any consideration by the Council, because in the code, it does state directly that the Board of Public Safety oversees the police services contract. That's one of the primary mechanisms for this board. So we want to make sure to present this information to you tonight. We'll give you a little bit more info. Captain did provide a really helpful document here, too, that I think helps with the discussion. But the idea tonight is to really discuss that recommendation that was made, what the board's approach would be. And then if any changes are recommended from that motion, then we would discuss that tonight and then we'd bring that to the full city council for consideration. Or we could refer it back to the committee if you'd want to have additional consultation. That said, to give a quick snapshot, we currently have about 41.6% of our general fund revenue is spoken for for our police services contract. That said, almost 2.4 million of that is covered with Proposition P funds, which is a 2017 ballot initiative that was passed back in 2017. And that actually helps offset the costs a great deal. And that's when back then we actually added quite a few officers to our police force to make sure we could add the coveted fifth beat, which now we've been able to maintain consistently. And from the operational side, I'll let Captain speak a little bit more, but. overall right now we're having a structure where we're able to have um our six officers that our neighborhood police officer our detective two parks officers two traffic officers and then have a fully staffed five beat service 24 7 365. So to do that, that's the beat officers is what really we ended up having to discuss because no one wanted to discuss, hey, you know, we don't want to get rid of a parks officer. We have a lot of parks here in Wildwood. Traffic officers, traffic's always a key concern for our residents. It's really important to have those out there. Neighborhood policing unit, I think Captain could speak to this. They're a great asset to the team and they really do help kind of get involved in the community and kind of be our connection and bridge to the residents. And then the detective component, it's actually been very helpful for the fact that we've seen a pretty drastic rise in scamming attempts for seniors. And at the end of the day, it's been helpful, I think, talking to a couple of residents that have utilized the services to have somebody that is very knowledgeable in that regard to be able to help them out. And that seems to be one of the crimes that seems to be, unfortunately, peeking its head around. That said, going into this further, the county we had discussed for budgeting last year, originally, we had gotten a proposition to go the max that the contract would allow for that ends in 2031 would allow for a 5% annual increase each year to the contract. The St. Louis County Police Department initially had proposed that, but after discussion, they had actually helped out in this regard and were able to lower that percentage down to 3% for fiscal year 2026. That said, that was a lot due to captain's help to and help and discuss and those negotiations. So to appreciate his help there too. But the idea, though, was looking forward. The county is going to make sure that we get due notice of the increase. But overall, they do anticipate that they're going to be probably around the 5% increase mark year over year. So. When we got that news, we just wanted to make sure we had a transparent discussion. And then the committee started looking at, okay, well, how many officers do we need is the question. Tonight, the staff's report kind of covers what the Administration and Public Works Committee had covered, but I think is a helpful tool here. Captain Mundell and the St. Louis County Police Department has provided their workforce analysis as well. And it seems somewhat closely aligned because in here it has for the beat officer side of things that approximately 27 officers would be needed to ensure that you have the coverage necessary when folks are sick, when folks might be out of work, things along those lines to make sure you have that beat covered to maintain the five. If you add in the six officers that we have for those supplemental roles in the parks, traffic, neighborhood policing, and the detective precinct, that roughly adds up to about 32 officers. We currently have 34 officers. So the recommendation, sorry to throw a million numbers at you, But the recommendation from the committee was to explore the reduction of four police officers, which after speaking with Captain Mundell, we do think that would cause the five beat standard that we typically are able to maintain most days. that that would go down to approximately four feet to a four feet standard. So you would be consistently losing that fifth beat. You would still have it in some instances, but in others when you're not at full staff, you could see that take a step back. Nonetheless, what that actually translates to, we did a projection. We don't have the quote or the proposal for 2027 just yet, but Just given the numbers we do have at our disposal, we were able to do an analysis and see that if the reduction was made, you would practically be at about 94% of what we're currently expending each year of that $5.4 million that is for the contract. So technically, if the reduction was done and let's just say it was a 5% increase and we reduced by four, you would come back in 2027 and we would be approximately at 94% of the expenditures that we have today. So there would be savings, but you would also be losing a beat. So we wanted to present this information. The report goes into quite a bit of detail, and then Captain's recommendation in their report showing that 27 is needed. It kind of shows the difference between the committee, which had recommended four, which Kind of gives us a short gap measure here because long term we may need to start thinking, you know, is there a revenue source that can help fund our police services moving forward? Because it does seem like we've found a good balance with the public safety and residents do seem to be very complimentary and happy with the police services provided. That said, keeping cost in mind and also keeping rising costs across the board in mind, figuring out ways to establish efficiencies, whether it be through finding dual roles or things along those lines to help. The idea behind the four officer reduction is to kind of be a stopgap measure for the next couple of years to work out some of those things. That said, we're tracking revenues right now. They seem like they're going to be right on par with what we anticipated. So overall, with our current revenue structure, the idea here is if we keep seeing increases in a very large expenditure that we have each year, then generally over time, you would see the police service contract take more and more of your general fund. that then takes money away from being able to maintain bridges, make sure the parks are cut. So we are kind of at a critical junction where some tough decisions may need to be made, but at the same time, we're in a good spot because we're planning ahead and we're not quite at the cliff, if you will. I wanted to pass it off to Captain to see if he had any just operational updates because I don't want to speak on behalf of his department. But yeah, I guess with Marshal's permission.

Okay. Mr. Loyal, I'll let you start this.

First of all, I don't want to hear what Captain Mundell has to say, only because I think it's unfair for you to ask the command officer of the agency to justify how he's going to be a better department with less people. I can understand, as a subordinate, being asked to come up with a plan like that, because I've been in that position. But my preference would be that he not have to justify that because there's no way in the world he can tell me that with four less officers he's going to be as efficient or a better department that having been said there's no possible way that this place will be better with four less officers and we will never get them back if we get rid of them and it makes the fact that in the past five years I've been here, when I've approved the plan to increase officers, that I was not educated or I made a bad decision. And I don't think that's the case. I know that when I was the fire chief, if I were to close the fire station, it would have been as a result of something occurring that forced me to do that. I don't know that we've gone to the people and asked them, is it okay if we get rid of four officers? We've had three cities that are, one in town and two perimeters that have had shootings in the last six weeks. The shooting we had on Wild Horse Creek Farm was at a five-beat or four-beat night.

Actually, it was four.

Okay. Well, that's fortunate then because I had an opportunity to watch that and I'm grateful that there was four and two supervisors. That fortunately worked out that way, but I don't want any of these officers to encounter a situation, especially because out here, these are low frequency, but high risk situations. It'd be different if you're working in an area where every night you expect to encounter gunfire. And I don't know your job by any means, but I understand dollars and cents. But we haven't gone to the people to ask them, hey, is your preference to get rid of four officers and leave everything the same? Or can we do something if that means generating revenue through taxes or whatever? So that having been said, I don't think it's fair for Captain Mundell to have to justify reducing his staff. And I will never support getting rid of four officers. Thank you.

I was on the admin and public works when we were discussing this, and correct me if I'm wrong, but if there were trends indicating that because of the reduction we were having issues in the city, that we could reverse this fairly quickly and go back to

At the moment, the contract doesn't really allow for a flip flop back and forth. And I've asked that in the past. You know, you want a solid contract in a perfect world. The department is fully staffed and. we assigned X number of officers to this contract and we wouldn't want to be in a position where, okay, Wildwood decided in the middle of the year that things aren't so good. We want to take away two officers. So right now the department short staff, this is not a problem. I can move two officers and they keep their jobs and they go somewhere else. But bringing them back, as was just said, Now I've got to pull them from somewhere else that's gotten used to having those bodies. The tug-of-war becomes very difficult. But like I said, perfect world, full contract, people would lose their jobs. That's really not the case and hasn't been the case for some time. But we, not speaking on behalf of the chief, but kind of, we don't want to be in that position where we're One month we're pulling in, pulling back, you know, back and forth.

Appreciate it. Thank you for your comments.

I'm going to follow along with Vince there, but, you know, just quick math there. When you talk about the V, when you go five, four, 13 and a half square miles, you go up to almost 17 square miles. Now you're affecting response time, obviously, and support of other officers. It's a 20% increase on each officer on their V.

I look at this. So, you know, the comment made that I can tell you this. If you give up four officers, you give up two officers, you give up one officer, you're never getting them back. Even if you increase the contract to hire them, you're not getting them back. St. Louis County Police Department is suffering the same fate that a lot of police departments are in this country. The police department itself is right at 100 officers short. One of the advantages of having a contract is that you're guaranteed that every seat in that contract is filled. And if you give up those officers, you're never giving them back. Like Mr. Gleason said, if you talk about going from five beats to four beats, you can make the argument it's only one beat. Or you can just, you know, hit the other number and say that our police protection just got decreased by 20 percent. Because that's what we're talking about. The to go from 5 beats to 4 beats means that you only have room for 1 emergency at a time. We're dealing with a city that has a population. I'll get to that in a minute. You guys know the population, but at the end of the day. You take away that 20% of your workforce that you have to pay the bill somewhere, and that's going to be an increased response time, if you even have a response time, because it doesn't take long to burn through four officers when you have a major event. All of that being said, at the same time that we're increasing the population in Wildwood gradually, I believe, and it's a vibrant city. One thing that Wildwood, Captain Mundell and his team have done very well is that they have 67 square miles and they have 28 patrol officers at the current time and you can drive across this city and on most times you're going to see a police car somewhere you can look at other jurisdictions not far away from here who have much greater larger police department and you can't find a police officer when you drive through So, I think we have a very good thing going with our currently staffing with our current police team. That I would put up against any in this country as far as addressing the needs of the community. And I'm very hesitant to support any action to reduce something that's working for us. I think that if the contract could be. Reduced without impacting police services in the city, the county would take the initiative to do it as they did when you went to 12 hour shifts. I believe it was Captain Mondale that came to us when the precinct went to 12 hour shift and said that we have both the 2 extra people. And so I think the county has been a good partner in telling us. How many people we need and telling us when we've had too many. And I'm with Mr loyal and I don't support a reduction in the police contract at all.

I just want to add this workload study. Was initiated by the department for all the precincts a couple of months ago. And it's just. pretty much the beginning of this week. I say, where's our workload studies? So it's going to be done. And so here it is. The number on there, how our, our squads are set up. There's on 12 hour shifts. So there's seven guys that work days and there's seven guys on days that are off. So there's 14 people on days, 14 people on nights. The workload study is, It throws a bunch of stats and averages, and that's how they're coming up with that number. And that factor, the 2.61 factor, we just happen to have 10 beats, so it comes up to 26.1, and they round up to 27.1. I think 26 is very doable, but how I would do it, it's clean to have seven and seven. What we would probably do is have six and seven, and there's kind of one guy that's a floater between the two squads. That's how I would... adjust the numbers or apply the staffing to cover. I have to believe with good faith that our calculations, our stat, our analysis is that that's really what works. Totally unpredictable what can or will happen. We had one of our school officers work in summer school yesterday. fell and is now out injured. So the difference there is our school resource officers assigned in the precinct are, it's a different contract. So they're kind of our extra bodies over the summer. The 0.1, you know, coverage, 0.1, you know, 10% of a person uh you know is covered by our our other resources our traffic officers they they don't just do traffic you know if if they're needed to assist on any call they're going to assist on any call same thing with with our park officers or our neighborhood policing officers so um There's concern about costs. Our costs are, it's based on average officer salaries. Our salaries have gone up. City staff salaries have gone up. Just overall personnel salaries go up. Asking, you know, where can I cut my budget? I can't. My only way to cut budget is by manpower. our, our contract budget doesn't, uh, allot me so much money for cars or gasoline or whatever that's figured into a price. The price of a cop comes with, he's got wheels and the, and the car has gas in it. And if it gets wrecked, we fixed it. Uh, when it gets old, we replace it. Uh, that's not something that we put on our, our contractee, I guess that, uh, We want a new car, so we're going to charge you $50,000 for a new car. That's not how our contracts work. In the admin public works meeting, it was brought up that the county has directed to cut $5 million out of the police department's, the county police department's budget. And I was asked, how does that relate to the Wildwood contract? It doesn't. That directive was given to the department And they looked at where can we save money in our overtime expenses. Our other precincts are short staffed. So there is a lot of generated overtime filling beats. But the department is also proactive in creating what we call a mobile precinct. It's our special response unit. When we transitioned to new pistols this past year, Obviously, officers were going to be gone. They have to be gone for three days of training with new guns. How do we accommodate sending five officers to training because we need to get this done by the end of the year? That mobile precinct, they work days and they work nights. They mirror all the precincts and those bodies filled in. Now, for the the good part, we were able to cover our own shortages. We occasionally have to borrow from that pool, but very rarely. The shooting situation you referred to, that night, that becomes very labor intensive. everybody is involved in that. So we have support from our neighboring precinct, West County Precinct. They provided assistance to us and those mobile precinct SRU officers were also here. So We were able to backfill pretty quick so that we can keep operating with everything else. Just because we had a major event doesn't stop everything else. Everything else keeps happening. So similar to the fire departments, do move-ups. That's kind of what we do. We thin out in other places to continue to cover what we need to cover. I can keep talking about lots of stuff. If you want to ask me questions, I'm happy to answer. We have enjoyed a great working relationship with the city of Wildwood. We've been your police department since the start. We're willing to work with the city and council and this board. We're going to do what you ask us to do, and we're going to do the best we can to do the job once we have our marching orders. So I'll leave it at that, I guess, at this point.

Thank you, Terry, for this estimation. and on the that 9.17 minutes that is for response times and go up by 20. And I think going to the residents and saying, Response time.

Yeah. So response time's a little tricky. This is a big place. And when you have to go to the corner, it takes a while to get to the corner on a two-lane windy road. So I think on most emergency calls, we're going to be pretty quick because our, and I was going to have Dustin put up our beat maps for five beats. And we look at where's our population, where are our calls? The town center area, this area is where. 3 of those beats come together because this is where most of our population is. This is where most of our calls happen most of where the traffic's at. So we are responsive here because. We know this is where we need to be. You know, when something happens pretty far out on a rural road, it's going to take us a minute to get there. So it's a drive, and these aren't easy roads to drive on. We do have beat plans for having four cars, five cars, and six cars. So there's occasion, it's typically during the wintertime when nobody's taking vacation, everybody comes to work and then we got extra bodies. So if we move into summertime, you know, we're guys taking vacation, but we also have the benefit of having our school officers help fill in after the fact. And they're part of our precinct. They could just as easily be moved outside the precinct for the summertime also. So we enjoy the fact that we get to hang on to them too. While it has lots of events, we do about 25 events a year, that's my pool of officers to handle the concerts, things like that. I don't have to go outside of the precinct to try and find bodies to volunteer. I will say I'm proud of the fact we had the tornado last year around this time, and there were five cars on and two supervisors working, and they handled everything within our precinct by themselves without calling in additional resources. What we did, we probably wouldn't have got them, I find out after the fact, because other areas got hit much worse, more populated areas. There's more urgency there, obviously. But it didn't mean that we had issues that we had to deal with, you know, trees, wires, that type of stuff we had to respond to.

I would like to make a motion, as we are the Board of Public Safety, that we oppose the proposal to reduce the staffing on the police department by four officers.

We have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second. We have a roll call vote, sir.

Okay. Calling for a roll call vote on the motion to oppose reduction of the police contract by four officers. Roll call vote.

Marshall Bader.

Agreed.

Board Member Gleason.

Agreed.

Board Member Loyal.

Agreed.

Board Member Wilson. Agreed. Council Liaison Banach.

Agreed.

Motion is passed. Board of Public Safety opposes the reduction of the Wildwood police contract by four officers.

Can I speak? This is the Mayor. Yes, sir. Yeah. And whoever's controlling the Zoom, I'd greatly appreciate if you could switch it back to the camera as I'm not able to see the room. Thank you for that vote. I agree that at this time, I don't believe we're at the point where we have to look to cut. But however, I do want to challenge this board and everyone to look at what are our options so that we can be sustainable as a city to continue to provide the services that we do, including the services with St. Louis County Police. As you may have seen in your report tonight, the police contract represents 41% of the operating budget for our city. So it is a significant budget item for our city. And the reason too that this is a topic of discussion by the council has been because of the increases in costs, not just solely with the police budget, but we're seeing increases with our costs across the board. On the flip side, the revenue is not keeping up with the increases of cost. The council over the last several years has been cutting services. You may not see them as much, but we've eliminated small, low hanging fruit. But at some point we will run out of those small items. and we will then move on to cutting probably more significant items that will affect our residents. So therefore, that is not sustainable. We cannot survive as a city like that. My biggest worry related to the item tonight isn't really the service provided by the St. Louis County Police, it is St. Louis County. As you are aware, the county budget is not in a good place. And what I've seen reported is that they will look at contracts like this in the future. And so I anticipate that the increases that we've been able to tolerate up to now are not going to continue to be this way for us. And that percentage of our budget, which again is a big chunk, the 41% will increase further. So I do agree with a lot of the comments that you said tonight. We cannot sacrifice the service, the police services that are provided to our residents. In fact, I would say we probably could use even more because I think our residents love being protected. And we are very fortunate that we have a great police force with Captain Mundell. I truly appreciate what he does. But I do worry about the future because we're in a point, we're in a path where things are not going to be sustainable across the board. And I think that's a challenge really for everything in our city. It's not just the police contract, but it's other services that are handled by the various departments. So I do believe, as someone mentioned, maybe at some point we will have to go to the voters and say, if you want to continue to get the kind of service, like for example, the police contract, then there will be an additional cost. And I don't believe our voters will say no to that. I mean, I'd like to believe that, but we've also seen over the past year or two, voters say no to the fire district. They've said no to the school districts. So we're not going to be immune with that. I do think that voters, unless the environment changes, they're going to be less inclined to want to give districts, municipalities more money. So we're going to continue to get squeezed. But I do think that this group and as well as the council do need to look at what is the sustainable path going forward to us to be able to handle increases coming from the county as well as the cost increases that we deal with with city services. This past year, we cut items from the budget, not the police budget, but items from the general budget, and small things, things that you may not even notice, like the food that we give away at our concerts, or the printed calendars, or the recycling events, and some of even the recreational events. There's things that have been cut. You may not see them. But again, we will run out. We could only prune so much. So I just want to make sure this group knows that. We've got to figure out what is a sustainable way going forward because we can't cost cut our way all the way through.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate that commentary. It provides a very good background on some of the challenges that our elected officials are facing, and we appreciate your insight on that. Any further discussion? Next item of business is a review of existing regulations for pedal assisted e-bicycles and self-propelled motorized devices.

All right. Thank you. And also, the mayor obviously wanted to join us for a couple items tonight, but this is something I, with the marshal's permission, he's going to want to probably provide some feedback as well, since he's also had a lot of residents reach out. But to give a brief introduction here, and I think everyone's probably heard about these and have seen them in the past, but it seems to be becoming a little bit more of a frequent item for the city and also cities and surrounding municipalities. In the last couple months since, well, about a month and a half since spring break, we've had an increase in the number of calls, complaints from residents that have come in. And it's really a kind of a specific group of folks. It's children that are kind of in that age, sixth grade to eighth grade, you know, 12 to 14 years old. They're usually using a motorized bicycle. Sorry, he's got to be very definitive. Motorized bikes that don't have pedals. and motorized scooters, actual scooters themselves that have a motor on them, a plethora of different devices that don't require any manual input in order to move you forward and transport you wherever you need to go. The city of Wildwood currently has some pretty stark restrictions for those types of devices. So that part, you know, I think some clearer definitions, which is included in the report tonight, most definitely could be done under our current traffic code. That said, where we kind of get into a little bit more ambiguous area that is a little bit more difficult to regulate, just given the guidance from the state, but also asking the question, if you ban it for one person, does the 80-year-old that uses the e-bicycle to ride up a hill that they are no longer able to ride, maybe it keeps them into the biking game for a little bit longer. whether or not those should be regulated further. Because right now, when it comes to e-bicycles, we treat them as long as they're not equipped with a motor that's making them go 50 miles per hour, which typically they're not. They're these class ones. If it's less than a horsepower, typically we'll treat them as if they're a normal bicycle, as long as they have pedals, as long as they have pedals. That said, what we want to do and what we've done in the past two weeks, some other cities have done some promotional efforts. They put some things out on their websites and social media. The city has kind of followed suit with our own policies. We're trying to figure out, and when we did a review here, we worked with the police department to put together kind of a one-sheeter, if you will. When they visit and they stop one of these kids that may be riding one of these illegal devices on a trail or on a sidewalk, they're able to, when they get back to the parents, they have kind of like a cheat sheet of what our code states. These have been pretty effective, I think. You know, it's obviously a foreign information, but clearly the parent had bought the device for the child. So they're going to probably take it pretty seriously when the cops are knocking on the door with their child and the device. But nonetheless, it kind of gets a mixed reaction when you go to someone in residence because they're the ones that have bought the devices for their kids. And there's always that argument that, hey, kids will be kids. But We also are getting the flip side of that argument from the resident that's driving their vehicle down the street and a child. There was a lady that had called the department just last week, and she was upset about a child that was on one of these motorized scooters that had used the crosswalk, actually on Manchester, had used the crosswalk and had really kind of beamed out of nowhere, was on the sidewalk and with how mobile these devices are was able to kind of go off the curb and then cross over and kind of did a quick cut um she was driving her car and she you know was she was concerned she almost hit the child so at the end of the day she was very concerned that these kids are not following the proper traffic protocol in this case she had said that she didn't think it was an actual e-bicycle it's actual little moped looking thing um but that said the idea is right now our code has multiple provisions that outline and ban some of this so just as a reminder in case residents are listening at home if you don't have pedal assist so no pedals on the device and it has an electric motor that needs to be registered it's just like any other vehicle it's a motor vehicle under the eyes of the city code so you would need to be a valid driver have a valid driver's license have it registered and then also have proof of financial stewardship so some type of insurance for the device Where the department thinks we could possibly clean that up is just adding some definitions for motor vehicle to more clearly specify these devices. The state actually has some pretty helpful definitions, but once again, they kind of default back. If it doesn't have pedals, they're defaulting to the definition of motor vehicle. So that's where we derive our power in the first place. So that's one. So we could add some additional information there. In the report, we have a bunch of different links in there to give you the exact code provisions we have. But a lot of these are actually included under our parks and recreation code. And an idea that we had talking with the team was possibly taking these code provisions that we have spread out within our parks and recreation code, then we obviously have the provision about the motorized devices within our traffic code, Possibly creating or adding to an existing chapter, all the regulations about these, these additional motor vehicles in 1 place. So, when a resident goes to look it up. Or if they need to reference it, it's all very easy to digest very easy to understand. It's all there and it uses the state's framework as a guide with their definitions. Give everybody a little bit of an update there on the state side. The electric bicycle side, there's three different types. There's Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3 e-bikes. The Class 1 e-bikes, those have pedals, and they don't have a throttle or anything along those lines. You practically can ride, and as you push the lever as you're pedaling, it produces additional energy, and you can go up to about 20 miles per hour on a flat surface without any additional assistance. The class two e-bikes, which in those ones, just a quick note, they're not necessarily as much of a concern. And I think the state treats them just as if they were a normal bicycle because they do have that kind of the sweet spot of adding the benefit for the individual that wants to still ride their bike, but maybe they can't ride like they used to. This kind of allows them to kind of equal out, if you will. The next two, the E-Class 2 and the Class 3, they're a little bit different. So the Class 2, they have pedals too, so they're still normal. That said, they also, when you're pedaling, that doesn't necessarily matter there. It has a throttle that will allow the individual, if they're pedaling or not, to move that device forward. And they also have a governor at 20 miles per hour, so at least it does cap off the max speed. Um, so you won't be able to throttle any further if you're going over 20. So if you're going down a hill, it would kind of stop you in your tracks other than the natural velocity of going down the hill. Uh, the class three are the other one that is somewhat concerning. And these kind of, these include, um, pretty much the faster models. These are the probably the more expensive ones out there, but they are getting cheaper every day. They are the same as Class 1 in every respect as you have to pedal to get the e-motor to kick on. But these can go up to 28 miles per hour. So these are starting to get closer to a roadway speed. So something we did when the state had approved these regulations back in 2021, we did approve and the state provision was very clear that the cities have quite a bit of control on pathways and trailways. So we did go in and we regulated the use of these. We didn't necessarily call them class one e-bikes because we didn't have that definition down pat, but we called them e-bicycles with overall horsepower. So 750 watts of electricity that the motor had. If they are over that limit, then they were not allowed on our trails nonetheless. But if they were less than that, which would kind of encompass the class one e-bike, that whole subsection, then those could go on the trail. But there were some provisions that were included, something like you can't have multiple riders riding on the trail with that type of e-bike. You can't have someone under the age of 16 without a parent or guardian watching out for them. um you couldn't have uh in this case too you could you had to follow really you defaulted back to all the bike etiquette that's currently in the code you would need to make a noise or some type of signal when you're coming up behind someone when you're going around it kind of just helped kind of polish out and improve how these class one e-bikes should be used on our trails. So the department wanted to bring this up, kind of give some background tonight, open it up to the board here too, but we believe it might be a better, a good idea to go in and do a couple things. One, make sure that it's very clear because we did do a post on our social media page the other day and there was confusion amongst what is an e-bike and what is an e-bicycle? What is a, you know, mini bike? What is an e-scooter? all these different terms, some folks thought that, oh, we ban and you need a license to ride a class one e-bike in Wildwood. Well, that's not necessarily the case. Right now you can ride a class one e-bicycle that's less than 750 watts. That said, when you talk about the small, like almost looks like a miniaturized motorcycle that doesn't have pedals, then yes, those are banned unless you have a license to drive it. And usually those cannot become street league. So there are some issues there. That said, the request here is that we would go in and pretty much provide better definitions for what these devices are, and then take the code provisions that exist, build off them, and come back to this board with a recommendation, most likely going to be, just some clear code provisions and also having them all probably move to their own subsection of the code so that possibly moving it under the traffic code too for enforcement reasons instead of the Parks and Recreation Code. But doing that, we might be able to help with the public transparency side of being able to communicate the message to parents, hey, this is what we've been telling them, please learn about our code and learn about the law with these devices before you go out and buy one. for your kid and then turn them loose. That said, the department's open to suggestions. We wanted to at least kick it off, and the plan would be with the board's consideration and approval, we'd come back with some recommended changes, modifications, and some language to possibly regulate the use of these, even Class 1s throughout the community, but at the same time, having better definitions for the Class 2, Class 3, and then the e-minibikes slash e-scooters. Thank you.

Before you discuss it, if I could just follow up with what Tom's comments are. Chair, is that okay?

My mic was off. Yes, go ahead. I'm sorry, Mayor.

Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to just make a couple of comments too. And Tom had mentioned this just before. This has been a very hot topic lately. And it's not just in the city of Wildwood. But, you know, if you looked at the post-dispatch, there was a story earlier in the week, which actually featured Wildwood. The picture was taken in town center. And the story was about these types of devices, e-bikes, scooters, and how cities are trying to tackle some of the concerns that are being brought up. by the residents. So I think that the most important thing, and even I myself am guilty of this, is that we have to educate ourselves on all these different types of devices. And I use the word devices because even I was corrected when I was on social media, you know, e-bikes and scooters, there's also different types. But anyway, the... I think it's good for us to make sure that we all have a common understanding of it and then develop a way that's simple to communicate what the decisions are. I do think it's also important that we have to find the right balance because not everyone is breaking the rules. We have good law abiding citizens that are respectful, that will follow the laws. And so we have to find that right balance between making sure that we create a safe environment, but also one that people can enjoy our trails and recreation in the city of Wildwood. So I do foresee something where we probably will develop something. I'm just going to share something I just use as an example that I saw published by a city out in the state of Illinois where they publish information. So there's good clear definition regarding the different types of devices that are out there. So everyone has a common definition of what they are, the different types of scooters and et cetera, mopeds. But I do think we need to develop, and several cities have already done this in our area, They've developed a good table that then shows you, based on the different type of device, where it's allowed, where it's not allowed, the different types of roads, surfaces, sidewalks, etc. So my hope is that we'll be able to create something that really simplifies it, and then everyone knows exactly what is a Class 1 e-bike, for example, and where it's allowed, etc., So I don't think we're going to solve that tonight, but I do think if we all get educated. And again, I even got an email today from a student who was sharing how he follows the rules, had bought himself a scooter with his money from mowing lawns and wanted to ride it, was riding it. And when he became aware that it wasn't allowed on the sidewalk, he stopped riding it. but then he felt it wasn't fair because he saw other kids riding it. So we're getting a lot of feedback from people and there's a lot of concern too. So we're trying to address that as well. That's all I've got to say, but I'll let you all continue the discussion. I just wanted to make sure you heard that. We're hearing it from our people.

Mr. Mayor, thank you for those comments. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it's your opinion that the city, and I don't mean opinion, but your position, I guess, that the city ought to look at educational effort as a part of this picture to resolve the problems?

I do think so. I do think not everyone is aware of all the different types of devices that are out there and the classifications. And so what some, you know, what I may call a scooter, actually, what I was corrected, you know, I referred to an e-bike scooter. it was actually a bike without pedals. So it was more of like a motor, I guess, maybe it's a moto scooter or moto motorcycle. See that, there it goes. It tells you, I don't even know all the references, but there's a difference if it doesn't have pedals versus one that has pedals and whether it's battery powered versus not. And so I think we have to make sure we address them all because otherwise there'll be clear confusion.

Thank you, sir. The topic's open for discussion.

Any discussion?

So as the mayor indicated, I think we're heavily into education with this. We have some pre-printed items. We just got another supply from them from the city. The overall majority of the kids are trying to do the right thing. They're not really causing problems. This is how they can get from point A. They can get a further distance from point A to point B pretty quickly. We noticed, you know, we've had a presence in town center, and I noticed that since it got really hot, there's not as many kids out. Now, I'd like to think it was because the police presence is there, but I think it's probably because it's really hot. But the mayor hit it. There needs to be a balance. You know, we're not writing tickets to every kid we run into. This is a small group, you know, probably 14 or younger into middle school, so maybe 11, 12, you know. So it's a small group of kids. I initiated a contact with... one of our neighboring police chiefs, to bring this topic forward as a group of police chiefs to the family court. What's their spin on this? You know, what can they... lend to this discussion because I haven't really heard anything from Family Court, and I'm sure they're sitting back watching that this is so widespread across the county. It was at a staff meeting yesterday, and the commander in Jennings said it's the same problem in Jennings, in South County, in West County, in Kirkwood, you name it, everybody's dealing with it, so they're out there. So our attack right now is education. Some are well-received, some are not. A lot of times they're going to run because they know if they see us, we see them, and they don't want to talk to us. And what we don't want is somebody getting hurt trying to get away from a police officer. These are... really minor violations to begin with, but there's certainly serious concerns that, you know, there's kind of three different things. As the mayor said, we have e-bikes, that's, we thought we knew what an e-bike was. Now all of a sudden, no, there's four different kinds of e-bikes. The motorized motorcycles, that's, They're really cool. And you see the kids, they got these great helmets. So we don't know who they are generally if they take off. And then certainly the scooters, there's, you know, these younger kids are not... you know, educated or familiar with operating in and around traffic. And they're oblivious to, I'm in the crosswalk and I'm cutting across the street, but hey, the cross traffic has a green light and you need it to stop. And, you know, there's a definite possibility that somebody can get hurt. They're shooting through the parking lots, not paying attention to cars starting, backing up. you know, all that kind of stuff. So a lot of the complaints we are getting are about the close calls that, that they're just oblivious to, to the world around them and they're, they're doing their thing. So, uh, we're, we're trying to stick with education, you know, up to this point, I don't believe we've written any, any tickets referring to court. Um, family court deals with a lot of serious stuff. So, uh, This may not be appropriate to dump a pile of these traffic tickets in the family court's lap when there's a better way to handle it.

Well, I'm going to clarify what you're saying as far as not being enforced. Anyway, what I meant is we talked about other...

It's being addressed. We'll say it's being addressed.

Yeah. Talking about ordinance, sometimes it's like, well, is it yours to enforce or is it the city's to enforce? weaves through there, it seems, as to who's really responsible, not that it's not happening, but as we develop something, who owns trying to implement it?

Well, and that, you bring up a good point there, and that's kind of getting back to, if we were to want to make some changes, the current code with it being under Parks and Recreation, the police can definitely still enforce that code, but it gives it a little bit more teeth if it was something that was placed under the traffic code. So that's just something to consider too. But typically, unless it's, this would usually be a police matter. If there was a call, even to the city, we would tell them to call the police.

I like the educational aspect of it that the mayor brought up. I think that's a strong push in that direction. I shy away from a strong enforcement effort because they're 12, 13, 14-year-old kids, and I don't think that we're anticipating a good response if we light up the red lights behind them. And if they take off, we're sure not going to pursue them, I wouldn't think. I do have a question kind of in relation to all this as an ongoing educational campaign. Do we anticipate this becoming some sort of issue when school starts again this fall?

Well, I would say, I mean, it seems like it kind of peeks its head around the most during the summer. That's when I seem to get a couple of calls myself.

I think they're a great Christmas presents. And they're affordable, apparently.

Maybe we reach out to Rockwood at some point and give them a chance to voice their opinion on whether these devices are even going to be allowed on campus.

So that's 1 thing to the department has, um, we've reached out to their communications officer, Mary to see if we can get them. The idea would be to have. Them share our current code, we put together a page on the city website. It's on the home page right now that kind of breaks breaks down a different code and then links it so they can read it themselves. But. Um, the idea would be to take something like that and also with the marriage shown kind of something that's very simple to understand pictures of what these devices look like. And then a little chart matrix that kind of shows, hey. Don't write it here. You can write this device here, et cetera. Um, and then have that shared with the. With the school district to send it out to the parents distribution list for middle school specifically, because it seems. Captain can attest to this. When they get to high school and they get to 15, 16, they usually got a buddy that picks them up for school. They're driving vehicles. So in that case, they're getting a license. They're doing the thing that they need to do to be driving legally. And they're not, these are kind of replacing the old, back in the day where it would just be a bicycle or skateboards. It's kind of the new wave, but these things have a little bit more of a kick to them. They can go a little bit faster.

One more thing. I mean, they are great transportation. And I'd be curious to see what Rockwood is going to have input on this. Because with the reduction of school buses, this is how kids get to school. If mom and dad isn't driving them, having a good, reliable scooter or motorcycle. And we were seeing more and more bike-type things around the school at the end of the school year. that that's how the kids are getting to school. It gets them there quickly, efficiently, and pretty reliably as opposed to walking or, you know, pedal and bike. So, yeah, we are, you know, looking to talk with school district and hope they have some support and input on this too.

Are you looking for the board to provide a motion to support ongoing education efforts or...

That would be helpful. And then if just a further review and then come back some recommendation to come back to the board with some recommendations, either if the code needs to be cleaned up just the review of the code to make sure everything's down pat. And then also with that, we can bring back what. some of this communication effort can look like. I know it's on our website now, but it's literally just stating the code. The department really does appreciate the mayor's input on this too, because the pictures and the kind of ease of looking at it, we want to tailor that more towards like Missouri's law and then what we have on top of it. But I think having something like that where it's a simple one-sheeter where these things are allowed and not allowed and clearly defining which devices are which, I think could help in the long run. And then folks hopefully use that to do their Christmas shopping.

Awesome. Any other discussion? Are we ready for a motion? Yes, sir. Take it away.

I'll make a motion to proceed with review. Specific review also, you know, definition, enforcement, responsibility. What's that mean? One of the ways, I mean, it's the parents. It's really who we have to be to. It's parents and enabling them, not being responsible. That's where it's at. That's a tough one to crack.

That is. So I'm going to narrow this down and say the motion has been made to support the city's ongoing effort regarding education and selected enforcement, if necessary, of existing ordinances.

Is that sufficient for you?

Yeah, if you don't mind adding the code component in there.

Okay, I can remember what I said. All right, we're going to make a motion that the board will support the city's effort regarding e-bikes related to ongoing education, clarification of existing rules, and exploration of the city's code.

Perfect.

All those in favor?

Aye.

I'm sorry, I need a second for that. Okay. Second by Mr. Loyal. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. That closes up our section on new business. We have no items under miscellaneous. Our proposed next meeting date is August 13th of 2026. Minutes need to reflect that Mr. Loyal will not make that meeting. Do I have a motion for adjournment?

Motion to adjourn.

I have a second. All in favor of adjournment? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. The meeting is adjourned.