City Council - Regular Meeting

Right.

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Audubon City Council meeting for July 28th, 2026. Can we please have roll call?

Mayor Brian Lewis is absent. Chairman Pro Tem Kate Pishon-Hellman are also absent. Council Member Sidney Clark.

Here.

Council Member Mike Solomanov.

Here.

Council Member Rob Jurgel.

Here. Okay, we're going to communications. Are there any communications to share today? I have no written communications. Okay, we'll go now with our city manager report.

All right, good evening, everyone.

Good evening. Good evening.

Okay. Just a couple of things. OK, so all of that was ranked number five as the best place to live in Missouri by this organization called Home Snacks. And they they evidently have been doing these kinds of niche rankings as far as. populations and income and crime statistics for a while. So it's pretty exciting that we were ranked number five. And fun fact, one of the founders actually lives in Olivet. And he says so in his write up here, this is the write up that he might be a little biased, because he does in fact live in Olivet. So this is pretty, pretty, pretty fun for today.

Yeah.

Next is all of that night out. So registration is open. It is September 15th, starting around 6pm. So any neighborhood group that would like to do a block party, feel free to register. And again, police department, fire department, city officials break up into groups and visit a number of the parties on that evening. So you can scan the QR code to register. The second annual Olivet and Bloom Garden Tour is happening August 1st from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. You'll visit the gardens at Stacy Park, Veterans Plaza, and on Grandview. These are gardens that Olivet and Bloom maintains. It is a free event, but they would like registration just so that they have a good idea of how many people are coming. So I would encourage you to scan the QR code if you are interested being out and about in the gardens on Saturday. The Dream STEAM Academy, they are hosting a Community Connection Day. They're hosting that with a group called Community Reach and our Olivet Police Department will be there as part of the community organizations. So participants can meet all the police officers, connect with other organizations, and then there will be arts and crafts and ice cream. So go to the gardens and then go to the Community Connection Day. And it is at the Dreamsteams location at 9310 Olive Boulevard. The annual Battle of the Badges is coming up fast, September 3rd here at Olivet City Center from 1 to 5 p.m. This is the annual blood drive and participants can vote for their favorite public safety team, either Team Fire or Team Police. So we encourage people to come out for that. And then I just encourage everyone to sign up for Olivet Weekly to keep abreast of what's going on in the city. And then just some general updates. Our new court administrator started on Monday, so she'll be coming probably August 11th to meet the council. Our building inspector, he's moving from Indiana. There's been some difficulty with the selling of his house, so he'll be starting in August, but he's coming from out of state. I have made a conditional offer to a finance director candidate, so we're working through those pre-employment steps. We are recruiting for two police officers. We had four candidates test. And so their next step, assuming they pass the test, is a panel interview. So we're working through that. And then as I mentioned last time, the inclusion committee is meeting tomorrow. And we'll be following back up with Hicks Carter Hicks for support for implementation. And then these are upcoming meeting dates. And if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

So the.

So the city council work session that's not going to interfere at all with I guess it wouldn't with the elections because by then elections are closed by 7pm so never mind that answer my own question we'll go on to the next item then. Staff reports.

Yeah. This month, the western part of Stacy Park flooded. There was a water main break on Worson Road, which flooded the park. Luckily, there was very little damage.

That's a serious flood.

A lot of water. And then Camp Five Oaks is actually on its final week. We've had a lot of kids enjoying camp, and in fact, We got a very nice compliment from a parent who said her kids had a wonderful time at Five Oaks and were bummed that they were missing out on this last week. And she thought that she might be enrolling them for all eight weeks next year and may have recruited some of her neighbors. So it was a very, very nice compliment to receive. The planning department has been exceptionally busy issuing permits. This is actually, you know, our inspectors and our permit folks. But 9321 is Mercy. They are moving along. They've gotten a demo permit for the interior. We expect to receive the interior finish plans in September, and then PCDC had asked for elevations to be resubmitted. Those are under review by staff, and we expect to be able to take those back to PCDC in August. If you have driven on Olive, you may have noticed that Taco Bell is having some work done and kind of a facelift. So they're doing ADA access work both outside and inside and then they are getting new signage. All of that lanes. So the bowling alley, they have received permits to repair replace 240 plus linear feet of the retaining wall that is at the rear of the property. And we have also asked for some changes to address some of the stormwater. So that has also been part of the permit that has been issued and will be done with this work. Rick's Ace Hardware, which is in the old Party City location, their interior finish work is almost finished and they are hoping to open the first week of August. And then this is just another fun fact. So permits have been issued at 9200 Shortline Drive, which is in the industrial court, to be used as a storage facility for the art museum, for St. Louis Art Museum. And I didn't know this until talking to Carlos. We're also a storage location for the History Museum. So art and culture here and all of that.

Do we get tours?

I don't know. Wouldn't that be fun? Yeah. um okay police department the police department is getting a new patch much work has gone into this new patch this is the existing patch and this is the new one the existing patch is 20 years old so it was time for a little refresh so as you can see it's kind of a less bright a little more dignified, aesthetically pleasing, and simplified. So a group of dedicated police officers worked on this. They've been working on it since 2024 to come up with, with the new patch. So you will be seeing the patches switch over through the course of the next several months. They're also using it already using it on some of their flyers. I was noticing cause I was trying to find a copy of the old patch and I was The switchover has started.

Looks good.

Yeah. Public Works. So this picture here is Dealman Industrial, the section that connects to Olive right by where Mercy is going to go. Infrastructure Management is working on the cost share project there. They paved that section of Dealman Industrial earlier this month. And then today they actually milled Price Road from Olive to Alice and And then the original plan was to mill on Thursday, pave on Friday. But the contractor that does the milling and laying of asphalt Couldn't do that. So they milled today and then they are actually going to lay the asphalt Thursday night and then it'll stay closed through probably Friday. They'll open it up as soon as we can, but we really want that asphalt to cool down, particularly because a lot of tractor trailers use that section. And so we want it to really kind of cool down and harden up before we let those really heavy trucks get on there. But they are absolutely moving along. And the project itself has been a little bit delayed. They found a spire gas line, which was not as deep in the ground as it needs to be. They didn't hit it. So kudos to them. But it does need to be moved because we are putting stormwater structures on top of it. Like that was the plan. So we will be bringing to council an easement to accommodate the move of the gas line. And then the structure we were going to use, we can't use. It's a very long story. So that structure now has to be ordered. It's probably going to be in about three weeks, but they're working as diligently as they can. And so I think that's all I have, unless you have any additional questions for me.

Do we have any questions from our council members? No. Okay. At this point, we'll have our monthly financial report from our interim finance director, Tanya Welch, who will also give us our quarterly investment report as well. Tanya, you have the mic.

Thank you. Good evening, Council. How are you all tonight? We are looking at financials for the month of June, just to close out the fiscal year. If we go from the... Go ahead and go to the next page. From top to bottom, basically middle of that page on down, we're going to look at reserves. We... So just shortly below our budget, budgeted goals for the reserves, but we still remain in compliance. So we're totally good there. Going down to the revenues on the sales tax portion, sales tax ended lower than what we expected it at a negative variance of $200,000. Use tax performed pretty well throughout the year. So we ended there positive $172,000, as well as with property tax up $25,000 for the fiscal year. Utility taxes, they remained kind of mixed throughout the year, so up and down throughout the year, and they ended up pretty much the same way. With electricity and water being up throughout, well, I guess to end the year basically for the summer months and the use of AC inside and, excuse me, water for them to keep cool. Excuse me. And then we go down to the parks and rec portion of the revenue. They ended on a positive note. So $16,000 above budget expectations there in that department. And the remaining categories of medical transport stood out. And those remaining categories, they ended on a positive note with $80,000 over budget. Going down to, do you have a question?

Sorry, if you don't mind. Yes. If we go back up. So we were $400,000 short on revenue. Am I reading that correctly? You are reading that correctly. Yes.

That is true. That takes into consideration the transfers that we did last month. Yeah, transfers that we did in our departments that we did last month. And it also takes into consideration We do what we call a look back with our revenues. What that is, is we get revenues in July and August for sales and use tax that happened in May and June. So we look at that and take that back and it happens every year. So it kind of evens itself out. But at this particular point in time, it ended up just with the way things fell with our sales tax this year kind of put us in pretty bad. A little negative spot. Yeah.

Because I feel like we're pacing pretty well throughout the last couple of months. Yeah. So this is kind of a new development, right? It is. That's far behind.

Definitely. And it's because of those two things I just mentioned that kind of put us in that little turn.

But it's nice that our expenses are low. Yeah.

Expenses are.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's 100%.

Yeah. Yeah. So expenses are below expectations. We ended that 240 up. So that kind of helped us a little bit with that revenue issue there.

So what happens now that we ended the year, I guess, with a deficit of an extra $170,000?

At this point, we see how we do throughout the next couple months to see how we can possibly make that up. So we'll see how the next couple months go with our reports and see if we can come out of that.

So we don't make any adjustments at this point.

We're just going to... Well, adjustments have already been made as far as the budget goes and things like that. It was taken into consideration. At that time, we knew that it was a possibility that revenues were becoming short in that category. So that's already been considered.

Got it.

Right. And these are not audited numbers yet. So this is kind of... We've kind of closed. We're still closing the current... Working through the fiscal year. The fiscal year. So... When the auditors come in and we're finished with all of our reconciliations and the journal entries, then we will have kind of a better, a much better handle on where we actually are.

So this is not final, final.

No, these are not audited. These are the month, just like May, you had the month.

Got it.

Yeah, that's correct.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Yeah. So Tanya is getting things ready for the auditors to come in. They'll probably be coming in in the next couple of months. And then we will get you the audit. We have six months to do the audit.

Okay. Yes, sir.

No. Thank you.

One more thing. We didn't look at our chart. We looked at gasoline, basically gasoline tax for the month. Just wanted to highlight that. I don't think we do too much with it. But just looking at the last couple of years, how they essentially married each other. So the forecasting there has been pretty consistent. And what we brought in has been pretty consistent over the past couple of years. So I just wanted to highlight that as a chart for the month. And that's all I have, unless you have any more questions. All right. Moving forward. Moving forward to investments. Ready? Okay. All right. During our last quarter in investments, we decreased a bit in our overall holdings that we have within our investments. We used some of it for liquidity and some of it we used to purchase the open space that we had within our ladder for a nine month security. So that was the reason why you see Just a little bit of a decrease in that top, the treasury bills part of that selection spreadsheet. In the larger three-month treasury bills, our rates are holding steady at 3.5%. As mentioned, that we use these for when we consider cash flow issues or that we need to pull money back for liquidity-wise. And then in the middle are our 12-month ladders. Those are, with exception, I don't want to highlight it. That's the one I just mentioned. That's the nine-month. Those are automatically renewed. Not automatically, but we automatically choose another security to renew it every year. So that's within a given. It goes over and over and over and over again. And the last bottom five are our long-term investments we have there. Oh, let me go back. In the middle, our percentages that we're holding there in those investments are between 3.6% and 4.0%. sort of doing pretty good to market right now. And then the bottom five or our long-term investments. So we have those look like four years, four to five years. Yeah, four years, four to five years in there. And we have one that's coming up in September. Our goal is to renew that one as well, hoping that the market is still favorable for us and keep us within that 5% range for that long-term. And in total, we have about $13 million in investments here with Commerce Bank. And we also hold a couple of other enterprise ICS. And our repo account holds a little bit of cash in there. And we received about 1.65% on that money. That money there is what we use for liquidity purposes. If we need to pull it for any particular reason, we have direct access to that money immediately. And the only... Money that we hold idle right now is in our pool cash account. It's our daily balance in there. That's what we have, idle cash right now. Everything else is pretty much invested in earning for us. That's all I have, unless you have any questions.

Question from the council? Yeah.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, at this point, we're going to the city council liaison reports. Mr. Solomonov.

I don't have anything to report for today. Okay. Robert.

Yeah, I have attended the Parks Commission. One big thing was Sue Rich, who was the past chair. Yeah, she retired. So that's a, it was kind of a nice celebration and, you know, kind of a discussion with, you know, all her work that she's done. I forgot how many years she was there. It's over 10. I know that 12 years, 12 years. And I mean, she really made a big impact, you know, on that commission. And It's going to be sad for her to leave, but we understand. But hopefully she can be a good mentor to all the other commission members and kind of carry through with all the dedication that she's provided. And I think she's still doing some volunteer work as well, which is just fantastic. That was the big highlight at the Parks Commission. Okay.

And I do not have anything to report this time. So we'll go on to items from council members. I'm not sure what that is. So we'll go on to item nine then. Hearing from citizens. This is the portion of the agenda where anyone presents in person or verbally or virtually may address the city council regarding any topic, including those later in the agenda. Each speaker is allowed up to three minutes to address the mayor and city council. Hearing from citizens is designed for council to receive feedback rather than for direct dialogue. We will take speakers in person first, followed by any online. If you are in person, please complete a speaker card and give it to the clerk. If you have already given your card to the clerk, we will take you in an order in which you have submitted your card. If you are online and wish to speak, please use the raise your hand feature and you will be added as a speaker for all speakers. We will ask that you state your name and address for the record prior to delivering your remarks. So I don't see anyone in here. Do we have anyone online? Okay, we have a Mr. Miller. It doesn't look like he has anything to say. So we'll move on to item number 10. Resolution for 2026-267.

Resolution 2026-267. Resolution for the Olivet City Council endorsing St. Louis County's grant program for the city's waste reduction efforts.

All right.

Good evening, Council. Beth Andruski, Chief of Police. So the Great Olivet Cleanout is back this year. So if you all remember from years past, this is a... super popular item for the city. Our residents all seem to love it and look forward to it, and I think it gets asked about frequently. So this is a resolution for, again, 2026-267 approving a grant application for the St. Louis County Municipal Waste Reduction Program. And this year, the Great Olivet Cleanout will take place on September 30th, 2026 from 3 to 6 p.m. And not only does this program provide residents with the opportunity to discard unused or unwanted electronic items, as well as paper shredding for personal documents, but also allows the city to take a proactive approach to encouraging recycling among residents. This grant application requests reimbursement to the city's expenses to hire both Shred Company and Electronics Recycling Company, which is the same company this year, as well as reimbursement for staff wages during the event. So I would just ask for approval of resolution 2026-267 to authorize the city manager to sign and execute the contract accepting grant funds from St. Louis County Department of Public Health if awarded.

Okay, I'll entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion to approve Resolution 2026-267 to authorize the city manager to sign and execute the contract accepting grant funds from the St. Louis County Department of Public Health, if awarded.

Second. Okay, can we please call the council?

Councilmember Dragal?

Yes.

Councilmember Solomonov?

Yes.

Councilmember Clark?

Yes.

The motion is passed.

Thank you.

And this is at Stacy Park, right? Is that what you said?

So this will be at Five Oaks again this year. We did have it at Stacy Park previous years, but it has grown so much that with traffic and the two lanes just on Old Bonham that we've moved it to Five Oaks. And it was good last year.

Okay, cool. So we'll go on to item 11, Blue Shield Grant Application Authorization. Is there a presentation? I bet there is. Okay.

Just a quick little once over here. So again, Beth Andresky, Chief of Police for the City of Olivet. So if you do recall from back in the spring, the City of Olivet was designated as a Blue Shield City after an application process. So those funds have been made available for Blue Shield Cities now. The total for the Olivet Police Department in FY27 is $28,985. So we are just requesting authorization for the police department to apply for the grant funding through the Missouri Blue Shield program. And with your handouts, you can see the items that we listed. We tried to get up to as close to that $28,985 that we could. So within that request will be a ballistic shield, which is $7,300. Prices went up from when we first got a quote earlier in the year, which came in at $6,900, which is approved in the current budget. There's also, we're including the e-bike. We currently have two e-bikes, a medium and large. We have a little bit of a shorter officer. So a small size e-bike would be ideal for her and potentially other officers in the bike patrol, which is $3,000. Also rifle plate carriers. These are not approved in the FY27 budget, but they are due to expire this fall. The rifle plate carriers are just an extra layer of body armor officers on a day to day basis, or body armor that is only rated for pistol rounds essentially the rifle plates are, you know, God forbid an active shooter situation where there may be a high-power rifle involved. It's an extra layer that officers put over in those situations. And then also tactical medical training supplies, which, again, approved in the FY27 budget. Training mats, which we, excuse me, were approved for $2,910 in the FY27 budget. With these extra Blue Shield funds, we would request four mats instead of three. This is just... We do things like host RAD training with Creve Corps or yearly our officers do defensive tactics trainings and various things where we need a little cushion. Police Legal Sciences is again approved in the FY27 budget. This is online training that officers take. Each of them take two hours of different legal and other types of training every month online. And then also acts on taser battery packs and cartridges. Those are for training purposes and then also duty cartridges. So the recommended action would be for approval of the Olivet Police Department to apply for the grant funding through the Missouri Blue Shield Grant Program for an amount not to exceed $28,985.50. I'm happy to answer any questions. Do we have any questions from the audience? Go ahead.

So some of these items looks like they were already included in the budget, but if we get the grants, we would save those funds, right? Okay. So I understand that. Yes.

So it would be this is a reimbursement grant. So we would pay for them upfront and then have reimbursement from the state once they're purchased.

Is the reimbursement pretty quick? Are we talking months?

The first time that we are applying for these grant funds, so we will see. But from what I understand from other Blue Shield cities, it has been a pretty efficient process, so fingers crossed.

Cool. Go ahead.

Does acceptance of these funds require us to do anything with the state of Missouri, you know?

No, we just, again, applied for the status, went through it last year. And, you know, essentially it was, there was different steps in the application process, but also a commitment from the city supporting their law enforcement agencies. And so there's not, there's not anything that we owe them from it or have to do in addition to other than say, you know, send them basically a receipt saying, yes, this is what we applied for. This is what we purchased. And we now have these pieces of equipment. So great. Yeah. So yeah.

Okay.

Yes.

Well, I'll entertain a motion. I'd like to make a motion to approve for the approval of the Olivet Police Department to apply for grant funding through the Missouri Blue Shield grant program for an amount not to exceed $28,985.50.

Do I have a second? Seconded. Okay. Can we please pull the council?

Council Member Jorgell?

Yes.

Council Member Solomanov?

Yes.

Council Member Clark?

Yes.

The motion is passed.

Thank you, Chief. Thank you. Okay. Well, I'm going to move on to Item 12, Youth Soccer League Uniform Purchase.

Good evening, council members. Beverly Tucker Knight, Parks and Recreation Director. So it's the exciting time of year where we come before you to talk about youth soccer. It's very exciting. We had the coaches meeting last night and the coaches began picking up their balls today for the team. Our office is a wash and balls. Jennifer was up yesterday. There's a lot of balls. So we come before you this evening for authorization to purchase the soccer uniforms. The uniform consists of a jersey that's numbered on the back, has the Olivet logo on the front, matching socks. and shirts for the coaches. And it's a pretty complex bid. We received many submissions this year for the bid, which was great. Many of them were not qualified. And of the ones we received, we have selected Challenger, who is an agency we used a couple of years ago. We haven't used them Probably for about three years. The company we used last year did not submit a bid this year. So we are recommending to go with Challenger. They are located in Kansas City area or actually in Kansas. So they have an excellent shipping process for us because sometimes when we use companies that are on the coast, we get a little delays, particularly with our reorders. We've had excellent shipping. work from them in the past. So we're pleased that they submitted a bid and we think that they will do the best job for us. When the shirts come in, they come in grouped by the team, which is incredibly helpful because we have, you know, hundreds of shirts that come in. They all have to be matched. Mike's smiling because he's been through this. I know Rob's been through this. Sydney, you've probably been through this as well. And it is heartbreaking when a child does not have their jersey for opening day. So, It's a big project, and it costs a lot more money than I ever thought possible when I first started working in sports. So I'm happy to answer any other questions that you have this evening.

Any questions from the council? I have a question.

Do any of these vendors have three-year agreements that we can sign so we don't have to put this out for bid every year and maybe lock in a price?

Well, we could ask for that.

I would love to.

Yeah, we could ask for that in future bids. I say that with some reservations because we know that some of the companies, they fluctuate. Pricing fluctuates. These shirts come from China. There's a lot of volatility in the market. So I don't know. We could try. And then if we have a very bad experience, of course, we would break it and not use them again.

Yeah, I mean, something that would give us an out, but we can at least lock in the price. I can't imagine the prices ever go down.

Right, right, right. So I will bring that back to the staff and we'll talk about it when we send it out next year and see, we can also talk to our vendors. You know, we have relationship with Challenger. We can ask them, you know.

Yeah, that'd be great.

If we have, what do you feel about a three-year bid? It's good for them because it helps them predict their business.

Right.

But they may not wish to do it, but we can ask.

Yeah. Could they charge us more because of the uncertainty of the future years?

Well, then that kind of defeats the purpose, right?

Right, but just something to be careful of.

Yeah, that's true. When you do bid multi-years, sometimes they do build inflation in.

Yeah, I see.

So, yeah, I don't know. It's a big thing. It's our biggest uniform order we do because basketball and baseball aren't this large. And we typically purchase shirts for baseball and basketball from other vendors. They don't all specialize in soccer, which is really interesting. Like Score Sports and Challenger, they pretty much do soccer uniforms. That's what they do. Some of these companies that bid this year clearly had no business bidding on youth sports. Some of the submissions we got were very poor. Yeah, so very, very interesting. But that's a great suggestion. I'll take it back.

Is the number of kids that sign up, is it very consistent?

It's grown substantially, as you know, over the years. Last year, our total number of players was about 1,200, but that did include several teams from U City. So when we do registration, we do it in two ways. One, individual players. are grouped onto teams and that's what the uniforms for. And then we also have groups that register as a team. So for example, Mirawitz Academy sends all of their kids and they all come in as a team. We get teams from MICDS and from IBEX and they come in as a full team. They wear their own uniforms. So It's hard to know sometimes with those team registrations. So for individual players, we are about where we were last year. Our teams are a little bit lower because some of the U City teams have aged out of our league. So they're going to be playing in Clayton because we can only accommodate up to a certain grade level and have them guarantee that they will have a robust season.

Understood.

So I would say that it's pretty standard, but it's still growing.

Which is a good thing.

It is a good thing, yes.

And what is their policy for reordering or ordering additional jerseys?

We try to never do reorders, but they do happen. and Challenger, when we've worked with them in the past, have worked with us really well. Yeah. The gentleman we work with really bends over backwards, excellent customer service. So I think they were very happy to get the bid again this year because they lost out previous years. So I think that helped us with the pricing too.

Okay. Yeah. Great. I'll entertain a motion to approve. I'll make a motion to authorize purchasing the 2026 youth soccer uniforms from Challenger Sportswear not to exceed $15,078. Second. All right.

Can we please poll council?

Council Member Jurgel? Yes. Council Member Solomonov?

Yes.

Council Member Clark?

Yes.

The motion is passed.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And I can't wait to see you out on the field.

All right, so item 13, the hearing from citizens, part two. Are there any citizens who wish to speak, be they here or online? Seeing none, we're going to item number 14, review and acceptance of minutes. Are there any corrections in the minutes that anyone saw?

No.

Okay, well, I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes.

I'll make a motion to approve the minutes that were submitted.

May I have a second, please? Second. That minutes from July 14th.

Thank you.

26. Yeah.

That little bit there. All right. Can we please pull the council?

Council member Dragal. Yes. Council member Solomonov.

Yes.

Council member Clark.

Yes.

Motion is passed.

All right. So now item number 15, city attorney's report.

No report this evening.

All right. So I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. I'd like to make a motion to adjourn. Do you have a second? Second. So moved. What time is it?