Planning and Parks Committee - Regular Meeting

It's creepy and just creepy to think. So, we'll see. Always. We are live on YouTube. Go. All right, guys. Well, uh, thank you everybody for being here this beautiful, cool Monday on July 21st for the, uh, planning and parks committee meeting for the city of Wildwood. Um, can we do roll call, please? Chair Galani, here. Council member Robleski here. Council member Trot here here. Council member Autenberg. Council member McCutchen here. Council member Dodwell here. Council member Rambo here. Council member Crance here.

And we have Cororum. Awesome. Well, thank you everybody for being here. And uh we'll move on next to take a motion for approval of the minutes from the committee's meeting on Tuesday, June 17, 2025. Council member Dodwell second. Council member Hutchin. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Any abstensions? All right. Awesome. Thank you guys. And um that takes us into public participation. Do we have anybody? It doesn't look like we have anybody here in person. Do we have anybody online? If there's anyone online that would like to speak during uh public comments, please do use the raise hand feature and we will promote you to a panelist.

Does not appear so. Okay, seeing none, that'll move us right into the next item on the agenda, which is action items. And we'll start with parks matters. We have six items ready for consideration. The first one will be the rebidding process for the Essen log cabin reassembly results and recommendations for ward 8 and director.

Thank you chair Galani. First of all before I begin the presentation on the agenda item I do want to thank you for accommodating the range of meeting schedules over the last couple of months. As you know, it's kind of a quirk in the calendar that puts the city council meeting on the second Monday, which is immediately then followed by our meeting on the third Tuesday. So, it's a little ownorous for us to try to produce two packets. So, we appreciate it very much. Thank you again. The item first on the agenda tonight, Mr. chair, members of the committee is the rebidding process in association with assembly and its reasssembly green phase one. As you know, there was a rebidding process that concluded with bid openings at the end of January 2025 and through the months of February, March and April, this committee was presented with information relating to those bids. Ultimately, the committee in meeting with the old bidder at the time um her testimony relative to some potential cost savings. That testimony from the the bidder before a contract had been signed created concerns for our city attorney. City attorney recommended purposes of our discussion that we remid the process and start a new with that direction and come of awareness. Exactly what we did. We revised the bid to add three ad alternates. that was at alternates where ultimately reduced the cost of the project occurred last Tuesday and there were three biders. One of the biders was bombshell construction, the other legacy and the third sharet

creek excavator. The bids were open and the results of the bidding process were identified on page two of the memorandum range from a high of $386,000 to a low of $280,000. The low bid was Sheret Creek Excavating which is also in consideration when we were doing the first review first set of bids from the January. The three ad alternates generally speaking other than the legacy contracting group were either deduct or slight increases and the deducts were anticipated hoped for when we did the second round of bidding. The deducts relate to using a manufactured stone versus a native stone to basically screen a new foundation wall that the cabin would be placed upon. The second is using thin setic synthetic shingles versus the natural cedar types. And then the third is using the excess pavers. We have this is the natural stone gym which has to be cut and set by masons which is part of the expense. All in all bid at $280,000 is a significant savings over what we originally received in terms of the responses to the first round. and Sheret Creek also participated in the visit to Gayy's yard to review the logs to basically make determinations of appropriateness etc. So they have participated in problem. So tonight the department is recommending that Chet Creek that

recommendation come from the committee to city council. There any questions? department there. I thought there been 308. Am I You said it's 280. Yes. To the right. The total amount to the right. Yeah. But then there's the deduct. So,

so the base bit reflects the natural stone and that being cut by masons and then the natural cedar shaped shingles and then using again natural stone for the walk from the village green. So the base bid is as was originally advertised both in January and now in July. So the deducts were the add alternates and the intent was to try to save money and it appears at least with Shere Creek excavating to reduce the cost substantially.

So are we using actual stone? Are we using fake stone and moving it around?

It's a manufactured stone. So it can be manufactured to the shape we need. Therefore, masons don't need to basically be on site and cut it, set it. And so it's a cost savings in just in terms of the manu manufacturer process making it easier to install. So Steve Scott, pardon me now. Steve Scott, who's an architect that was on our historic preservation commission for years, now is the advisor, actually thought that the natural stone, excuse me, the manufacturer stone might be even better because again, it's screening just a slight area of the foundation wall that's visible above the cabin and finish grade. Council member Dadwell.

I'll make a motion to approve and send towards council. Do we have a second? Council Rambo. Sure. All right. So, we've got a motion and a second to approve it. Uh, and that's with the Shered Creek Excavating. Yes. Okay. Red Creek. Have we used them before?

Actually, the city council authorized a preparation of legislation for them to do the trash enclosure at the end of Bwood Avenue. So if this were to move forward, they would have two contracts with the city. We did do some verification of references right creek excavating done a number of cabin reassemblies down in the Herman area and the gentleman seems to have a good knowledge and so we feel comfortable as you know we we're at a point where contractor can basically meet the requirements of the bidding process. We're more than willing to consider it.

Comment. Um I know there's a lot of great passion um around the SNL log cabin. I've heard it listening to the meetings. I'm struggling with the cost overruns of our street construction, the village green. Um we have other log cabins in nearby communities that are already there. um difficulty at this point given that the log cabin is no longer all the parts to the log cabin um really is this a priority project at this time and that's really what I'm struggling with um in voting tonight anybody else council Donald

hasn't this set of logs been sitting around for 10 or 15 years it's 10 plus years now we've had them in storage the last year with all the weather has been probably the most challenging because of the storms. Actually,

tornado that went through in March um blew off the tarp. We bought another tarp, another storm. So, I think my point to the committee over the past couple of months is if we're if we're going to do the reassembly, it's probably the time. We have all the components in place with village green site being prepared by the first contractor for the second contractor for the reassembly. So I understand there's a cost component and I like to think always first in line trying to figure out what projects can be deferred to years future years but and that's probably why we've been talking about SML cabinet for 10 years.

Yeah. And then one other question. Did we not uh remove something from um your desired budget for 2025 so that we could complete this task?

That's correct. Bner Park had $100,000 for design and engineering. We spent well less than that. So some of that excess will go toward the reassembly, approximately $60,000. So, we'll still have $40,000 to begin the design and engineering work apart presented to this committee and support it and then forward it to council. So, we're spending we're trying to spread our our capital improvement program monies at least for parks and planning as far as we can. Council Rambo.

Yeah, the um uh Joe's right. We need to do it or or not do it. I think this is a real a an important addition to uh the um village green area. It's just the it's the most going to be the most prominent feature other than the the kids park which may be a couple years to go. But the um department did its job driving the costs down um despite inflation and so on and so forth. This is seems like a pretty reasonable reconstruction cost and we're getting what I think are better materials. these fake stones. It looks just like the real thing except you got a real foundation to build on. You don't have to be, you know, shimming things and doing that. And then the um the roof will be tons more durable than a natural uh cedar shake roof would be. So, it's a I think it's a good value and and we're all concerned about spend money in this particular environment, but less than 300k, we get it done. It's been a promise to lots of the comm community for a long long time. And I think this is the time to make it happen. And Sharet Creek, they've been vetted to death on log cabins um by the department and so forth. So I really do think it's um it makes sense and it's worth doing. I just want to make that statement as well.

Council McCutchen, did you Yeah. So will this bring our co overall cost above what we're allowed to spend for one project? Again, Village Green, if you look at it as the total pie, so to speak, remember the charter, the charter language specifies its city tax dollars or city funds. And we have grants.

Yeah. So Melanie has been very good at getting $575,000 grants for both phases of Village Green. So that's an immediate deduct off the cost. So in terms of the cost of the playground, the cost of this project, we're about roughly at three and a half million. Subtract out about 1.2 million. So we're well within the that I think John Young said we're kind of getting close to $4 million now. I think it's almost 4.3 4.3 million. Thank you, Mr. Farmer. So I think we're on solid ground. The grants help greatly and obviously

Yeah. Glad no money has a way of making that work. No, that's that's great. Correct. That if we do not do this within the next 12 months, the grants will dissipate. Well, we're on the we're village green needs to be done by the end of the year. Confident it will. The playground will have till June July time frame. about a year from now, 2026. Okay. Now, with the legislation that we talked about at the council meeting last Monday, go ahead and purchase the equipment,

really the the I think the thing that's going to slow us down is the design and engineering because that won't be to us until September, the contract for that. But my my my experience with the the Municipal Park Grant Commission has always been if the work is underway and you're past the deadline, that's okay. It's when the work isn't even started. Yeah. Okay.

And I would say too that with the SML cabin, it it's definitely an expense. Um and we're always trying to be cost conscious and but we've been holding out on this for a long time. And the other thing about it is that to Counciloman Rambo's point, it's going to be here for a long time. This isn't like some thing we're putting together that's going to have to be readressed in five years or something. So with the additional durability of the materials we're using and everything. Um, and you know, here in W 8, even where Village Green's going to be, I have constituents that regularly ask about the yes and log cabin as part of the village green. So, I do think that there is uh the community is aware of the fact that we've been talking about this for a long time and that we have the materials and that we're planning to do it. So, with those things being said, I think u it's going to look awesome when it's done. And it it's still 300 grand, don't get me wrong. I mean, we're not looking for ways to look at it as a shocking $300,000 for a cabin. And I talked to some neighbors about that. Why would we spend that kind of money? And uh so it it's a tough sale for

I mean history of the city partially it is but at the same time too I also think Wildwood is different as a municipality in the sense that we we base different. Yeah. But we base a lot of our culture and who we are as far as our parks, our history, our notoriety. We have a historic preservation committee. We I talk about ourselves as being a focal point of people wanting to learn history about the county and the area. I don't have a problem with it. It's just very costly. That's my No, I'm not saying it's not. I mean, it'll be a nice fit. I mean, I I So, anyway, that's part of the culture of my opinion, of course, it is by the council. We'll see. That's something to do.

So, all right. So, we've got a motion to approve the committee or to approve the department's recommendations for construction to move forward um with legislation to take this to council. We've got a second on the floor. We've had some good discussion. Um at this point, all in favor of the motion, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? All right. One opposed. I'll move it forward. Okay. So, we've got one opposed. Any abstensions? All right. Council member.

All right. Thank you very much, guys. Good conversation and good discussion. Which will take us into our next item on the agenda, which is the Hamilton car greenway, the trail relocation project with green great rivers greenway. Director Munich.

Thank you again, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair and members of the committee, this may sound a little familiar to you, but earlier this year, the department presented to the committee members a proposal from Great Rivers Greenway to do a creek stabilization project along Park Creek. Due to the fact that there is erosion that's occurring, the erosion now has reached a point critical point where it's threatening the Hamilton car greenway. The department presented the proposal which was to do cost sharing to the committee. The department was not an advocate for that cost sharing because it was concerned about cost and that cost concern was legitimate. Great Rivers Greenway received an estimate from the engineer and it was in excess of a million dollars and it was a limited area where the restoration was to occur. Great Rivers Greenway took that cost under consideration and decided not to proceed forward with the restoration of the creek. In the middle of that though, we still have the problem and the problem is erosion along that section of Car Creek is starting to fail. The good news is several years ago Mark Brown who used to live on Old State Road subdivision now is called Old State Place donated to Great Rivers Greenway all the properties that the city has included down to that particular area. So, Great Rivers Greenway has additional land area and now their thought is to relocate the trail, let the creek do what it's going to do for the future. It's a good solution. The land's available at no

cost. The cost of the project has yet to be determined, but for the most part, we're going to be able to save the trail, keep it in use, and not have to spend inward money creek restoration that's always could always be called in question because of its proximity to the Marramac River. So this section of creek gets backflow from the Marramac River when it floods and it also gets flash flooding from the area up in Witz for. So tonight the department is advising you of the change in process and is also requesting to be able to sit at the table with GRG as they go through their process and make sure we present a reasonable trail relocation. the cost and those costs are reasonable bring back to you at least what we think our rule should be.

Thank you. Alpha Morbo. Yeah, the there out of this money there seems to be a significant element of stream bank restoration effort that's included. Um, and it seems as though you don't have any sort of handle on what what moving the trail is going to cost versus the improvements to this to the um to the drainage system. Is that an accurate assumption? We know that the drainage was over $1 million to redo the restoration or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. That that was that's separate. We had talked about that earlier this year. Okay. So, you're still referring back to that project we talked about a year ago. Yep.

And that was the expense was too much even for Great Rivers Greenway. And so the second the solution to the problem was to relocate the trail. If I were to offer a guess, just knowing what I know from our past trail projects, it's probably going to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but not over near a million plus dollars to move the project to move the trail itself without the storm water.

Wow. Okay. Um, well, I think I'm pretty sure that's why Mr. Farmer is here is to discuss this topic, the the the drainage component versus the trail component. Did you have anything to I'm actually here to talk about something else, but I'm happy to talk about this when it comes, right?

Um uh yeah. So, so I don't think we have enough information to do anything other than ask you to go sit at the table and talk with them. So, it makes perfect sense to me to just authorize that because it's a no cost. It's a no cost effort and you can find out a lot more info and maybe next time come back with a rough a better rough estimate of what our component would be. But I wouldn't see that Wildwood would have any um if we move the trail then the the storm water problem becomes something for the future. I mean, it's not it's not ongoing. It's not going away. It's not going away.

No. Yeah. Yes. Of course, it's not going away, right? But is it the most critical of our storm water uh management projects? And I I think quite likely not. Yeah. So, I don't want to interrupt, but this is part of the this is part of that group, right, that we had the big like Sumbaya meeting in here that one day.

Yes. The Open Space Council is doing stormwater management study in the Hamilton car Hamilton car creek watershed. Um they kind of did that without providing knowledge to the city. So they got through all the different hoops and then finally realized oh this is in Wildwood we probably ought to know what we're doing.

Mr. farmer and several of the Department of Planning and Department of Public Works team members attended a meeting with the Open Space Council. This is just to save the trail because if the trail were to collapse into the creek, we'd have this we'd have very expensive tunnel under Old State Road that would not lead to anywhere and then we'd have people obviously making their own trail. So the idea here is to address it in an appropriate manner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just it's a it's a lot of money. But um I would joke I don't I don't know the cost. I'm just telling you.

Yeah. No. Yeah. I mean we're we're you you're asking for the authority to go and discuss this further and come back with more information. So my question to you, you probably know um Hamilton Carr, my sense of it is that it's our least threatened watershed of all of them. Is that is that Yeah. I mean I I would say this the most rural it's probably the most rural.

Yeah. I mean I will say that all of us and I can perhaps speak a little bit more freely than Mr. Vunich. All of us were shocked to hear about this whole exercise that was going on when they showed up and said hey we have a bunch of money to figure this out. And we did go to the meeting and there was a lot of other uh stakeholders there. I think there was 13 different organizations or something crazy. And what I got out of the meeting was they wanted to have another plan to get another chunk of money to continue looking at the problem rather than addressing it. So

already have a pile of money. You said they got feel about log cabins. Did they right? I mean it was it was a it was a significant amount of money and they were going to go get more of it. So I I mean I would say this obviously fixing the wershed stuff is super important. If it was up to to me I would say that we should maybe approach this as this is a trail thing and the watershed thing while it is within our city there are other people that have invested an enormous amount of money and somewhat ignored us even though it was very clear what was one of the people was a consultant that came to talk to us about putting a master plan together. It wasn't that they didn't know we were doing any of this stuff. Mhm.

So, I think they've let them handle that. Not to abandon our neighbors there on Hamilton car, but like let them do their thing. We should focus on our trail and and that's it. Yeah. And it'll take it a while to eat 100 feet into the woods. Yeah, that's going to be my question. So, um Okay. So, everybody, nobody's had else had a chance to speak besides me. So, I was going to make a motion, but I will uh wait. You can make the motion discuss. Yeah. Go ahead. I um I move that we authorize the department to go forward with discussions and come back with better numbers and a better feel for what what's what's possible in Wildwood's environment and with our budget. Okay. So, we've got a motion.

Oh, no. I got Anybody like to second the motion? Then we can have discussion. Council D will second the motion. So, we've got the motion on the floor for the department to go have further conversations and bring back more information and numbers. So, uh, that's the motion second. So, discussion on the floor, council member McCutchen. Yeah. So, Joe, when you were talking about that area backing up because of the mayor Mac,

so is this reasonable to move the trail or are we going to have a flooding incident when it rains and pours like it does sometimes? Well, that whole area basically from the tunnel at Old State Road in Route 109 down to the river floods when it gets to a certain crest. And so no matter where we put the trail down in that area, it's going to go underwater. Uh we take that into account with the design. Um but it is flood plane and it actually floods. So yes. Dadwell,

real quickly, are you looking to put this into the 2026 budget or you don't know the answer to that yet? I don't know the time frame, the exact time frame of Great Rivers Greenway. Okay. If they're farther ahead than I I think they are, then yes, it could be part of our discussion. Okay. Tom and Mr. Farmer will be talking about our capital improvements 2026 process tonight. And so from that perspective, starting a lot earlier, at least that's what the administration public works committee wants to do and start talking sooner than

I would just ask that when you discuss with them, find out what their timeline is both on a safety perspective from is this going to collapse in six months or is it going to collapse in the next possibly two years or something. So, we have some sense of I don't think they'll be able to use Okay, that that's kind of where we're at with a lot of this stuff. Okay, it's just okay. It's in bad shape. Is 100 feet and here's my last question. Is 100 feet or 100 yards um even enough? That is 100 feet doesn't sound like enough to me. But

that is a question I would pose for you to the engineering team. Okay. Okay. If we know the rate of erosion that's occurred since this research identified till now and if that were to continue, how what's been the rate of a reasonable distance so that we're not back here in a couple of years. Okay. So, I will tell you that we have had to put a emergency fencing along the edge of the trail. Uh, we had a photograph that was taken by one of the GRG team members and I think it's about 18 inches from the edge of this the trail right now. Okay. So, it's pretty close. That's one storm. That's Yeah,

your line doesn't reflect reality. It's just here's where the general area is. Is that Yeah. Okay. All right. So, we have a motion on the floor for Director Vunich and the department to go um have a further conversation and get some more information about the details of what's looking to be done and what the numbers are going to play out to be so that we can have a more robust conversation about what makes sense and how we want to approach it because I think right now we have a general idea, but we're kind of shooting in the dark as far as being able to have a a detailed conversation. So with that being said, in favor of the motion, please say I. I.

Any opposed? Any obstensions? All right. Thank you very much. That takes us to the next item on the agenda, which is Village Green phase one update here in W 8 and director Rudish.

Thank you again, Mr. Chair. Mr. chair and members of the committee as has been the practice of the department since the construction of village green phase one began the monthly report is being provided tonight there are some good news in the report u first and foremost as of uh July 17th which was last Tuesday the representative from Ammer Missouri was contacted responded back we expect to have ember Missouri personnel out uh at the site latter part of this week or next week um beginning the undergrounding of the overhead utility line. The second part of that good news is based upon Amir Missouri's work and their decision to change from using duckbanked to underground line to a switch gear through the origin of the overhead lines that cost reduction is about $100,000 and so that's a pretty significant savings on this particular change order. The change order was presented in the form or the purchase agree the purchase order with Amry Missouri for the work was presented to city council a week ago Monday. It's authorized by two readings. So good news we're moving forward. Also, as you can see, if you took a ride back or walked back high street, the flat work contractor subcontractor has been forming out a lot of the additional around the utility lines in anticipation of that work beginning here very shortly. So once the utility lines are removed, I've been promised by our contractor that a lot of what you see what they're permitting will get underway pretty quickly because they've done the pre-work in advance of it. Um,

just in terms of change orders, we're I think up to I counted with up to about 10, nine, 10, 11. And the 11th one is just we're trying to figure out the final designs relative to the relocation of the mayor's groves. And then finally, um, as the days paid out half million dollars for the work that's been completed and just as a reminder, the majority of that amount. Don't know a particular percentage was spent early on when we did the storm water management system, which included several large areas of underground detention improvements. Those were expensive. Obviously, the benefit of underground detention, as you know, if we did surface detention, that would have created basically a moat that would have precluded people coming off a future main street into the park directly. They would have had to walk to one end or the other. And secondly, it gives us more space for more use. And so that's the update tonight. As I say, pray every morning that I see a bunch of ammon Missouri trucks at the end of Main Street when I come to work. Someday that uh prayer will be answered. Um hopefully Mr. Talia in Missouri over in the Ellisville district has a good feel or pulse on what their careers are able to do. There any questions and I'd be glad.

Thank you for the update. Does anybody have any questions related to that please? Awesome. Well, that's great news on the generator. You know, utilities are utilities, but in this particular case, I can only say that they really stepped up and did a well with a great service and the switch gear will be a good solution. It's a good solution for the future even inclusive of phase two and any future phases and when Main Street is finally constructed. Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much. Which takes us into the village green phase two update here.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. Um so, uh this of course is a a feel-good project, so it's fun to present on. um at the uh city council meeting on July 14th, uh unlimited play was approved as uh a single source contractor. So um things are moving on the back end as far as engineering and design are concerned on that. Um but what the department has been busy working on ourselves is more of the fundraising component and uh the department reached out to Paula Van um our communications and economic development manager and um her enthusiasm might just carry this all the way through. She has been a delight to work with and has reached out to the parents that came to that first meeting um to you bring this to the committee's attention and they were thrilled to hear you know about us moving forward and everything that's going on and you know it was very wellreceived and sent us quotes and photographs of children and I included some of them um in your pamphlet. Uh it was really heartwarming to talk to them and read all the things. We also included uh a list of notes just kind of takeaways that she got out of having conversations and so she also plans to include things like this in you know promoting it like you know monthly or whatnot. These are things that can be discussed with the committee. Um and so it is it's super exciting. Um, and we took that information along with all of the feedback that we received from the committee on the brochure and they managed to knock this out pretty quickly. And if you took a look through it, they included some of the quotes and photographs in the very beginning of our brochure. Um, which was one of the comments from the committee that it it needed to be more personalized and uh,

Wildwood speaks. I I liked that touch as well. Um, and then this did not change. This is still uh kind of the background of the village screen and and how it's supposed to be a place for everyone. Now it truly will be. Um, and then they use some of the blank space to include some photographs of, you know, kids on the actual all-inclusive equipment. Um, these have not changed. These still have the same uh sponsorship levels, sponsorship amounts. Um and then the final the final page is where the majority of the changes um took place. So, we left in I think we eliminated one tier on here, but you'll see that there are different tiers and then we also included what the recognition would be in this and so people knew what they were, you know, like what they were sponsoring, what they'd be getting out of it. And so, um, each tier they would get, you know, the same recognition as the other tiers below it. It would be like an adding to instead of this is only it. And we came up with the idea of since we're going to have those fabulous new light fixtures in the in the village green, maybe having grand opening banners because, you know, I love my banners and actually leave them up for a year or so or for however long. But so that was one of those grand opening banners in Village Green. And then for the higher levels, it would be like a commemorative brick would be included and for the highest level would be commemorative signage. Um, and they sent over some examples of signage used in some of their parks. And, um, they have, you know, the Grand Archway going into at least one of their parks, but this was kind of what I think is is your more traditional, you know, the membership levels on that. You can't see it real well in here. Um but on the

fence they have carved into it sponsor levels which you know I thought wasn't um it was subtle enough and so uh but then they also have you know more of a plaque kind of feature and so these things don't need to be decided today these things can be decided at a later date but while uh the department was discussing this um but maybe if we could work out these are sculptures that came from sculpture on on the move and uh thought that maybe we could work it in like kind of like along the pathway going into the park if we could meet with one of the local sculptors or whatnot and see if we could potentially add, you know, a name, a logo, something, you know, a sponsor to the flowers going in. So then it would also add community art along the way into it and be our own original kind of statement for like the top donors or something like that. Either way, again, um I don't want to get you too sidetracked with this because we have time to decide on that. We literally put in the brochure signage and so we can investigate and see what our options are and bring that back at a later date. I was just excited and thought I'd share. So, that was that. Um but I think that they uh took a lot of our um interest and everything into mind. um the uh landing page for unlimited play. You can go to their website and if you go to parks uh there's actually uh the village green is on there already. It has just a very brief backstory and once the uh brochure has been approved that will go in there and we can start taking donations as soon as we're ready to go. Um but uh and they also have a flyover uh which I was hoping to have tonight to show you but it's not quite ready and they said it'll be done in a couple of weeks so probably another week from now. Um but that will also be it'll be you know the really cool flyover of the equipment you know as you're going

through the park and then it also shows all of the equipment and such and so it'll be a great little donation like page leading into it. Um and so we're making real progress. Uh, also in the process of reaching out to, um, our residents that came and spoke that night, um, uh, Paula also asked them if they'd be so inclined to, you know, help in this fundraising committee, which would be an informal committee that mean, you know, once a month or as needed. It might be more often at the beginning while while the training is happening because unlimited play will train everyone in how to deliver the message and the best ways to um you know approach people or the best you know organizations and stuff like this to approach. And so, um, that being said, we, uh, had three of the parents, um, Chelsea Bellow, uh, Kathy Lorocco, and Valerie Peterson, I'll say that they would be most interested in in assisting with this. Um, council member Riski, Rebli, Rebli, I'm sorry. Um, also volunteered to be a part of this. And Paula, I don't think that you could keep her off of the committee. Like, she is so excited about it. It's fantastic. And so they've they've definitely all um said that they'd be interested. And there were a few others that we hadn't heard back from yet. So I don't know if they have interest as well. But um as far as unlimited play was saying, uh you know, five to 10, you know, people on the committee and people can also join later if they if we find people that are interested in being a part of it. And it's an unofficial kind of committee. So therefore, we don't need to have appointment by the council. and so we can take people in and um and such. And so that being said, um we are well on our way and a limited place so that they are ready to go when we're ready to go. And so that is also a bonus. Um so

tonight, uh the department is seeking feedback on the revised for sure if we can move forward with this. if the committee members that um we listed were were also um okay as far as moving forward with that and or if there were any other suggestions of people that um would like to be or should be a part of this. Uh and so that being said, um that concludes the department's presentation, but if you have any questions, Director Bunacher, I are happy to take them.

I got Council Rambo first. Did um did Unlimited Play lend their expertise to these um sponsorship levels? There's a there's a big there's a gulf between Park Pal at 10K and Park Pro at 50. And the only thing spanning it is a commemorative brick and village green. And so I if if if the upper 250 and 100K plus are for corporate sponsors, that's seems fine. But we could we should, you know, sort of spell that out because there's not going to be a lot of citizens able to come up with 50. There's some that can probably come up with 10, but it seems a little

it's it seems like maybe Go ahead. I I think it's high. I would divide this by two is what I would do. Okay. Like your Park Hero make it that 50, Park Pro 25. Yeah. can be the still the hundred and the thousand can still be fine but then five grand 10 grand something like that.

So the thoughts um behind it when discussing it with unlimited unlimited play is is it's more about recognition like somebody could um donate $101. It's just that once you hit the $100 then you get recognition on the website which would then capture our say smaller businesses that you know they still get recognition on the website and then um the higher ones you can donate 25,000 there's nothing that's stopping that it's suggesting um finer gradations between and and I that's what what I was trying to point out as well that

and we also have the uh equipment that provides more of you know some of those are a thousand some of them 5,000 some of 500. And so there's there's more diversity there. Like could barely afford a brick at Old Pond School. The bricks were cheap. You look above. Yeah. It was just one of those things that when it comes down to, you know, the bricks like those are, you know, $200 for us to like purchase. And so when you want like when uh you the higher donations tend to go with that. We actually significantly lowered what they originally had. Really?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. They have one of the top one is $450,000. Yeah. It's um and so I think that I think that they set their aspiration levels pretty high. But if you notice on the I'm going to interrupt here just so everybody understands. If you notice on the uh the donation agreement page, you can give a one-time donation of any amount, any amount,

a recurring contribution, you can select an equipment piece specifically. Uh and then if you have a business, you could have an or you have um the ability to get donations from the company that you work for. I was just going to say maybe that inind gift. Um, is there any any way to put a reminder on there that says if you're giving to this notfor-profit organization,

remember to ask AB for a benefit from that as well. A lot of companies if you donate something they'll donate 50% towards the same cause or 25% or something like that. So I would just make sure that we put something that Yeah. But the way this is laid out it it certainly gives people the ability to make any kind of donation they choose. Sure. But it's it was about rec the recognition thereof. Right. That's the that's that's what I'm trying to drill down to.

Okay. I mean, so if anybody does anywhere between 10,000 and $49.99, they're going to get the banner in Village Green, right? And then from 50 to 100, they're going to get the brick. So they'll still get the commemorative banner and then they would also get

generous enough to give 40k. There's got to be something in between there. And you can't it can't be every dollar gets you something more. But I'm suggesting that from 10 to 50 is a big jump and from 50 to 100 is a big jump. And if we're having a separate corporate sponsorship thing, we can offer a few higher level incentives to the Deerbergs of the world that would love to have their corporate logo there, right? And that's separate from folks that just want to be generous and, you know, donate for kids to have a place to play. Sure. And like Yeah. their thoughts behind it were like $100 like that gets people recognized $1,000 like that's might be affordable as well. The others were more corporate based and and you don't want signage all over the place per se.

Sure. Sure. Um but I if they're completely flexible and I was even thinking the park hero because we don't really know what kind of donations are going to come in. We could even have it as like top five donors or something like that rather than having it at 100,000. um you know that way it's it's whoever donates the most. Um, and so and I mean up to the up to 10,000 those are just either digital recognitions or just grand opening, right? So that's nothing permanent that's going in the park. Correct. It's only when you get to the 10,000 plus, but so maybe you put in there because I can see what you're talking about, Council Ram. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe you throw in a 25,000 between the 10 and the 50 and maybe a five

just to add something different. But of course, the 5,000 would also be another temporary. It wouldn't be a permanent thing, right? Because even the 10,000 is not permanent. It's a grand opening banner. Well, the prices on the public art that we were looking at separately, those are like in the five grand range. And um we could, you know, if people want to buy one of those, it's it adds to the park. I mean, it doesn't doesn't buy a piece of equipment, but it it's something that that way we can, you know, we'll have it permanently, for example. We won't have to go back to them every year and try to rent these things for two years at a time.

Sure. Well, and that was kind of the thought process behind us. Maybe we could work with one of these like artists to actually incorporate signage into it in a way that doesn't look like it's just glued onto the artwork. Yeah. I was following up on on your Yeah. Yeah. And so that was kind of the thought behind it was you know but like reserving that for like the top you know say five donors or something because they are pricey for those sculptures some of them you know and are the people that like so if somebody puts on here like it says for equipment piece and you get like 30 people that sponsor an equipment piece right the it would be broken down the same way that that bracket is like if the equipment is oh it's still based on the cost.

Yeah. then the recognition is still based on the sponsorship like level based on what Michael just said. So if if a group of people go in for a donation uh then how are they recognized? Um the organization they represent. That's what I was going to say is usually like in that in the brochure it says for recognition purposes please list how you'd like your gift acknowledged. And so, you know, we would have to limit the number of like words. Yeah. I mean, if it's if it's like a neighborhood or you know, friends that get together get together, right? So, how are you going to acknowledge that? I mean,

well, we would have to limit the number of characters um you know, for which is standard for any kind of recognition. like you're not going to list out everybody's name in set organization, but it could be, you know, Belleview Farms HOA or something like that. Um, so they would have to figure out how they want to be recognized and we would just have to limit the characters based on space. Yeah, space. Because I mean, you couldn't fit all those names on a brick anyway. Um, it would be challenging. It' be a lot of bricks. Just build a digital ad board and run a ticker all the time. digital signs, you know, can individuals still buy a brick?

Oh, yeah. So, the bricks are still available through the village green period. This was just kind of a a bonus, you know, for, you know, contributing. You get permanent recognition in the parks for the I don't think Jim Cran got to speak. Did you? You asked your question earlier, Jim, didn't you? Did you? You were asking about the levels. Yeah. I I just think it's high. the spons sponsorship. Okay. I just wanted to make sure you got to speak before I made a comment. Um the did we ever hear back officially if they would allow us to put a link for the bricks on their site on unlimited play?

So we discussed it and uh it's challenging for them to do so. they have done it for other cities but um yeah it it's it's complicated when they do the bricks and since we already had the brick the bricks in um like in place for the celebrate wildwood um uh going through that is just easier you know and then that way we can order a brick through the same organization that's doing them anyway rather than having them listed in multiple places and so having them as kind of two separate entities piece uh was kind of the idea.

And then my only other comment was I feel like if you donate $10,000, you should at least get a $200 at a lower level. We can work on the, you know, to consider what they get as part of the breaks. Yeah, that's what I was just getting ready to say. A lot of breaks out there. We Well, and maybe that's a discussion for the committee. Yeah. You know, um like the subcommittee, the the fundraising group to, you know, iron out those details. Um, but I So, what's your timeline here to get this going to see how much money you're going to generate? The sooner the better. Like that's that's it is that, you know, every month that goes by, we're losing that month. Um,

if it keeps coming in, we will jack the price up, right? Yeah. And so again, we were, you know, hoping that to get this moving forward that uh that that we could actually work on the fundraising component and and the committee can meet with unlimited play, get their training and uh and get this up on the website and up and running. I can make a motion to move it forward. Yeah. Do we have a second? Second, Council General. The motion is to move forward with establishing the fundraising committee and then taking the feedback you've gotten from this committee today to present to that committee and then let them work with unlimited play on implementing all these things and perfect.

All right. So that's the motion on the floor and we've had some good discussions. Anybody have anything additional to add? Just one more thing. Yeah. are could we please get this committee to put together some kind of a flyer, some kind of a um notification to the citizens before Celebrate Wildwood so that at that event we have the ability to get more funds from the public. Nice. Thanks. Um and so they don't get their name on something, it doesn't really What do you think of the business cards that we did for the survey? Like do you think that something like that would be helpful to have for people when people are chatting about it to have it in their pocket? It's too tiny.

Okay. Because we'll have a QR code that will take people to the landing page that will take them to all of this information. Like that's our goal is to get people there and sell. they can click on the U. So are are we have like a booth at Celebrate Wildwood and you know sometimes they have those little tiny miniature I don't know what you want to call it of the playground equipment

and if we could have some of that maybe at the booth and then have have a booth and somebody could stand there and talk to him about it. If nothing else, we can definitely like blow up images and have them like easels. We can make this definitely a conversation. Um, and that again, I would I would hope the committee, you know, would want to participate and hopefully we get some of the parents there and they could like share their stories because I mean, I was almost sobbing during that planning parks meeting. So, I feel like I feel like putting that personal touch in it also helps, you know, and knowing the director. I think if you can I mean, they'll give out those little models. You know what I'm talking about, right? Reach out to them and see if they have something like that. That could be fun for sure.

Yeah. And I think that might get somebody to say, "Oh, I'm going to donate." Because they can actually see except it's smaller than what it's going to be, but I think that would help. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We'll see what we can find. Council member Farmer. Yeah. I was just going to suggest I I would try our best not to like over complicate this thing too much. You know, when you go to, you know, museums or whatever it is, there's a plaque on a wall that says, "These are our platinum people with names and these are this with names." Yeah.

We don't have to expend $200 a brick to take that out of that money. I would also say celebrate Wildwood. We've got a great communicator as the mayor. Have him go up there and talk about this thing from the stage. If we can get these kids, have them go up on stage, have a QR code, and I don't know legally, maybe Tom or or John or somebody can figure this out. Like this should be something as simple as like almost like a GoFundMe thing where it's just people are dumping money in like tomorrow. This should be strictly digital stuff put out on our Facebook pages. Let Paula do her thing, but like business cards and all that are just going to be it's just an expense to get what they're going to do anyways.

Sure. And that was kind of the thought is that you know like having the lower levels it would be recognition on our social media and Paula would run like a spotlight via social media for say the business or whoever. And I don't know if you need to do that. I'm saying like when you walk into the park there's a a nice you know carve however we however we want to do it pictures. talked about who those things are and because I think people, you know, a lot of times, you know, they're anything that we're spending money on to give them a recognition of this is just taking that amount of money away from whatever they were giving us. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, but I feel like at $50,000, we can take $200 for a brick.

Yeah. But at the same But at the same time, like, you know, if somebody's giving us $50,000 Sure. they don't care if they're getting They don't care. Yeah. Well, and again, I think that the committee could probably narrow this down and fine-tune it a bit. Um, I think that we had a big discussion about a kiosk 2 by3 2 inch by 3 in. Here's your name. And if you're in the in the um the the bronze group or

Well, and maybe it's just digital recognition for the $100 or so. that I think was mostly just for small businesses that that aren't getting us the thousand dollars, but we would still like to recognize because you don't want a thousand names on there, but they do like, you know, we could do something like this that has the different, you know, levels shown on it and show all the people. We have no idea what we're getting. And so just having signage on there kind of let that need to come to the meetings. I agree with that in the sense that it's got to be simple. Yeah. Yeah, straightforward, nothing elaborate because it's just you're giving some recognition, but you're not spending thousands building this thing out for it. But yeah, at the end of the day, that's a conversation that the committee is going to be having working. We don't have to decide all that tonight.

The committee is going to be working on this with unlimited play to figure out what the best plan's going to be. But I would take these points into consideration on the committee um to to move forward. But um Okay. Question. Thanks. Yes, Council Member Graham. Um, as long as people can find their name, they don't care if it's small as long as their peers are equally small. That's what I think. But, um, um, I was asked to to ask you if the city is planning to give folks tax receipts for a nonprofit donation. Um, is that is has that been discussed or I may not even be asking that right, but

it has not been discussed. I assume that Unlimited Play, who will be taking all the donations, has a means of doing that. That is a very good question that we need. We will we will have that conversation want to know that. Yeah. So we do especially the ones donating tens. Yeah. Have hundreds of thousands. Thanks. We got uh we've got a motion on the floor and a second to establish the committee to move forward with unlimited play. I'm working on this having these conversations taking all this feedback and uh filling out a really cool fundraising plan. So with that being said, all in favor of the motion, please say I. I. I any opposed? Any abstensions? Thank you so much. Good work. Thank you.

Nice work. Very good. Um the last items on the parks matters are for information purposes, the wild recreation programming update and facility reservations. Does anybody have any questions, concerns, input? All right. Well, that will then wrap up our parks matters and take us into our planning matters which we have six items for consideration. First being the historic preservation plan openhouse focus groups including all awards and director.

Thank you again Mr. Chair, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. This is anformational item part of the memorandum. There's an itinerary that's attached relative to our consultant for the historic preservation plan. This consultant will be in town starting late Wednesday arriving from Colorado. We'll be working Thursday and Friday. The itinerary sets forth a number of different meetings and focus group encounters. So if you're interested in any of them, please feel free to attend. Otherwise, the open house, the community open house is Thursday, July 24th, 5:30. Um, excuse me, to 700 p.m. held over in the council chambers. There's any questions?

What's a city tour about? The two consultants from will be coming into town. Robin and I and maybe someone else will take them out in the van and show them different communities, the major landmarks such as Big Chief, etc. Just to give them an idea. They've seen it in photographs and different things, but it's not the same unless you kind of step out of the van and can touch it. Okay. Hey, that's

I was just going to say, can we send it out as an email to C city council because I noticed in the report it said inviting city council, but if I wouldn't have read that report, I wouldn't have probably realized. And if you sent something already, I totally missed it. But it might be a good reminder for city council if they have the ability to fill on Thursday to send a note. Not do it the first thing tomorrow morning, but it'll be on the top of the list. So, we'll get something out about the open. Thanks. Awesome. All right. Thank you. Thank you, director. Takes us to our next item, which is standardized monthly reporting template for code enforcement and also includes municipal court and police activities. City administrator Lee.

Thank you, Council Chair Galani. Um, this is an item that's been discussed at the administration public works committee and we wanted to bring it on over to the planning and parks committee for consideration as well considering the code enforcement would fall under planning. Uh we also have the chair of the administration public works committee uh chair farmer here with us tonight. Um but we really wanted to just go over what we are currently working on and what we're planning on presenting to the council in the upcoming month. Uh we are reformatting some of our reporting for both court and also for our uh code enforcement. Right now the council receives the standardized police reporting that there's an example attached to the uh to the agenda tonight that shows what the the officers are currently providing. Um that said, we're almost trying to mimic this this kind of longitudial longitudal way of looking at the data for also code enforcement and court reporting. So kind of seeing how all of these things funnel together. Even though there are some discrepancies with, you know, if someone gets, you know, gets pulled over or something like that, you get a call, it doesn't always necessarily result in a in a court case. And the same can go for a call that's a code enforcement violation. So, um, that said, we're trying to look at it from a standardized way and be able to provide that on a monthly basis and then show pretty much a year-to-ate breakdown and then also show the month before comparison. So, to kind of show that immediate trend and then also show more of a long-term um long-term change. So, that is expected here in August to start kind of rank uh sending these out. This would go out with just a CA report that goes out would be attached to the council agenda as well. Uh the other item just items that are getting covered uh under code enforcement would be pretty high level but there would also be an kind of an executive summary under each that kind of shows some of the trends that we're seeing. You know over the winter we typically see code enforcement issues die down a bit but over the summer it spikes up and takes up quite a bit of time. Um that said what would be covered would be reported violations. the actual number of uh

working violations we're calling it is what has been reported and is now currently being investigated by our code enforcement team and but it hasn't necessarily gotten to court or has had a resolution. U the number of corrected violations in that period of time uh it's termed invalid violations that said um what that actually means is that there was a report done and didn't end up having any issue. It was not correct. uh the total violations in general and then just the number of inspections that are occurring. What like I said with this reporting we would hope to have some an executive summary included that shows the general trends of it but not necessarily getting into too much detail because we can't get into you know until it goes to court. We don't want to be providing information on the individual that's being called on just because uh that could result in some legal issues uh on the court side and adding on to it. Uh this would also get a little bit more of a boost in the reporting just showing a breakdown of the type of cases. Right now in the monthly reporting it does show the case the number of cases total but we're going to break that out into the four categories that they're coded as uh traffic code enforcement general ordinance violations which um you know can be anything from you know noise violation etc. And then domestic assault that is another category um that we don't have too much here in Wildwood luckily. And then the other items would be a little bit more high level but the number of convictions, number of active cases, number of new tickets, the summons filed, uh, warrants issued that month, and the number of closed cases during that same period. So the idea would be to also have this show the month-to-month change, but also year-to date. So we could kind of highlight trends and look at the overall uh impact court's making, but also having some type of really high level executive summary that's showing what are the types of cases that are coming to the uh to the court most often. U just to give a little bit more of a high level overview and help the council make appropriate decisions on how we should under courts, but also help with the

code enforcement side too. Um, I know Chair Farmer from AdminPW is also here tonight, so I don't want to if the chair is happy with it, we can have him discuss as well, but uh, this would be expected to be turned in in August, but we wanted to get initial feedback and, uh, see what the count the committee thinks. Thank you. Thank you, city administrator Lee. Council Farmer.

Uh, yeah. So, basically, uh, Tom and the mayor and I have had some conversations with our, um, city prosecutor. We've talked with Mr. Vunish about some code enforcement stuff and uh I've had conversations with Katherine Mandell about the police reports and the idea is like wherever we are having more information is always better and transparent information really works well but especially like when it comes to a police contract and things like that where it's a really enormous amount of money we need to have some clarity of what the data they're giving us actually means. Uh the same thing when it comes to like um like some code enforcement stuff like we don't need to get into the like specifics about this house had a chicken or whatever it was but it would be nice to know hey in W 4 we wrote 85 things and 43 of them have been taken care of and 26 of them have been taken to court and uh when we wrote these things like this house had 17 of these things written on it. we're not giving you the specific address but just know a lot have been done and then that way um at least I know for myself I get a lot of calls from people about like what is going on with a code situation and I don't I don't really know there's certain things we can't get so we wanted to try to figure out a way to say hey this is what's going on and and in the same way with um with Frank and Brian our code enforcement guys like give them the ability to actually communicate what is going on so there's a couple like particulars that we're working on in admin W where you know right now there's a legal process that they have to go through on some of this stuff which obviously we're not going to change but the idea would be you know we can get them a sort of thermal printer that's in the truck so they can leave a notice saying they're not maybe able to hand it directly to somebody but go hey here's what's going on and then it triggers a thing that sends out a a letter immediately so that they can get going. So it's just it's designed to kind of make our process a little bit more clear and then get the information we want. Same thing with the with the court

report. Like right now our court report is just a financial component which especially based on everything that happened in Ferguson a few years ago that is literally like the last possible thing that we should be concerned about. So it should be more like you know we wrote 175 speeding tickets this month. Last month we wrote 53 and then we get to go why

why is that happening? Um, so it's just designed to kind of give us all a very clear picture of what's going on without um, you know, some vagory because just like we have there are reasons that we don't get specific information from from code enforcement, there are also reasons that when code enforcement escalates it to a certain point, they aren't getting certain information back from the courts. And so, as much as possible, we want to try to keep that information as clear as we can while not blurring the responsibility lines of who gets to say what. So, that's that's the goal. Cool. Did anybody have any questions?

Did Did we consider any sort of geographic or map of of this data? Um I know you probably can't, you know, depending on what the issue is, pinpoint it on a particular location or address, but maybe by word or the word thing is what we're the word thing is really kind of where it's going to be. And I and I mean the expectation and we haven't really talked a lot about this, but like you know in WS 2 and four there's probably going to be a lot more issues with like length of grass than out in W six. They're just going to be sort of different stuff and that's okay. But we also want to make sure that like you know one of the things that sort of comes back a lot is we will have certain properties where it's the same problem every year at a certain time. And so kind of as a reminder to be like hey we are out talking to these people. We've started this conversation again. Um because the truth of the matter is the vast majority of our citizens do great with all of this stuff. There are a few people that you know think slip between the cracks or whatever you want to call it and that just happens. And then there are other ones as I'm sure Mr. Bunage and Melanie can attest to that just don't care about any of these things. And those are the ones that I think is important where it's not necessarily calling them out publicly, but it's important for us to know, hey, yes, this this property that everybody knows is an issue did in fact have 45 code enforcement things written on it.

Um I I had that uh like last week, I had a woman that called and was really upset because she had 12 code violations and thought that the HOA had something to do with it. And I was like, "Not the HOA, but as your city representative, I can tell you they probably came out to talk to you about one thing and they happen to find all these other things." And so they wanted you to address them all at once rather than going, "Thanks for fixing that. Now, here's the next thing." Um, so that's kind of what we're trying to do is to get it where especially when it comes to the budgetary stuff, which we're going to talk about here in a minute. Like some of these data points we just need to be able to have to make the best financial decisions that we can. It's it's not really about making people feel bad. has just given us the tools to understand what we're dealing with.

Yeah. I think it's also when you you can have intelligent conversations with people when they bring up concern say, "Hey, you've had 25 violations in the past 12 months. I don't think it's the city is the problem. Maybe it's you." Right. We ran into that problem with the issue in Point Clayton and that one house that we discussed last year around this time that hasn't been upkeeping their house. Things are falling down in it. You you can look in the windows and there's nobody living in that house. And so

typically if you have somebody that's a repeat offender of violating code ordinances, they'll have their own set of facts when you talk to them about what's actually happened or not. if you could sit there and be like here we've got a list of the citations. And this also helps too because as it goes up the line like the push back that we've not push back the the response that they give the court when somebody's brought to court their response is almost always I didn't know I couldn't do that or I didn't know that this was a problem. And so when we have better data to go hey we've talked to you about this

20 times 20 times six years in a row then that also allows the the judge and our prosecutor to understand what's going on. This isn't to say we want you know him to roll with an iron fist or whatever you want to call it but you know it is important for us to understand hey this this number of things went this direction this number didn't and we are really very limited in in how we can find things. So there are certain issues that it is honestly cheaper for them to just pay their fine violations than to fix the problem. And that's what a lot of people are going to do. And that's okay. Then it just helps us to know, hey, these are these situations. So like be forthcoming with your neighbors. That thing is going to be there because there's nothing we can do about it, right? Um it should help with those kind of conversations

for sure. Coun. Yeah. So I I don't quite follow it. I mean, the departments get that information and they're the ones that have the authority to do something about it. I mean, as council members, you know, we can't go knock on the door and say, "You got six violations." No, we're not going to.

You know, I mean, so I don't really understand why you think it's important that the council members have this information. Well, I mean, it's important for me as a council person to know that in my ward, somebody wrote 175 violations and in W 6, they wrote 800 or three, I don't I don't know, doesn't matter. But it it helps to see where the activity is happening. It helps for us to be able to communicate to our residents, hey guys, in the spring, like let's make sure we're cutting the grass because, you know, it used to be we needed to start cutting it in May and now we need to start cutting it in March so we don't get all these violations or whatever it is. It's it's just a tool for and it's even a tool for our our HOA representatives to understand what's going on because they all have, you know, rules that are more or less uninforceable. And so being able to say, "Hey, this is the stuff that can be done. This is the things that can't be done." and just being transparent about what's what's happening. I mean, it's important. I think it's important when we are uh specific to the police, when we're paying them upwards of $6 million and we have no understanding of whether what they're doing is good or bad as an I'm not saying they're doing anything wrong. You guys are doing a great job. But, you know, like I noticed, for instance, we had a report in May where I think Tom, I don't know if you'll remember, I think we talked about this. there was like a 50% drop in something

in what? It was uh like police action or or something something that seems like it shouldn't have a 50% drop or if it did maybe a sentence about why because you know where we're at from a city standpoint if if that information which is public was was picked up and misinterpreted by the public. You know, this year we dropped our number of police officers by two because they just changed the way that they do their hours. But if you're looking at a report and now all of a sudden something is 50% less, it raised a small red flag to me to just be like, hey, what's what's up with this? Manage your data,

right? So, it's just it's just a data point to be able to go, hey, this is what's really this is what's happening. This is kind of an encapsulation of what's going on. Um, and you know, if you don't if it if that's not something that really floats your boat, that's okay. If it is, then great. But it it gives us the tools right now that we don't have. And it puts puts a level of consistency across all of our kind of uh enforcement data, whether it's the courts or the police or our code guys. Like it's all kind of a they're different but similar. And so we should report them in the same way. But we already get that information. Well, we get some of that information. We get very little of that information. Well, we already get the court information. We already get the police information. They put out reports every so often.

They're very bad. And the court information tells us how much money we make, which is not what we're supposed to be looking at. No, we're we're looking at what kind I I mean, we're not an enforcement agency that I'm having trouble with that. We are not an enforcement agency. That's okay. You can have trouble with it all you'd like.

It's just data. It's just data. Have trouble, too. I mean, it's I think I think what council member farmer was talking about as far as just providing us the ability if you want to dive into it and learn more and understand more about what's going on and these details, you can. You're not going to get tested on it or required to to know all those details. I think being able to have as a council member, if I have people from W 8 where we have a lot of traffic and in businesses and I have someone from Cherry Hills that comes to me and says, "Hey, how come there was 35 tickets written or like we were saying like there's a discrepancy, right?

And maybe there was a sign that just got installed or something that I wasn't aware of like in some corner of the neighborhood. But now, if I have that data at my fingertips, I can go peruse it on a semi-regular basis. Or if somebody asks me a question or sends me an email, I know where to go really quick to have some of that data to say, "Hey, well, this is what happened or we've done this." you know, just it's just more data at your fingertips to be able to make educated decisions and conversations, but it's not something that you have to sit there and look at and and well, I'm not even I just

it's just more details on what we already get versus the monetary component to say here's the actual why of what happened that led to the revenue that we're seeing. Compare the from last year and like Jean said, you see a drop. Why is that happening? Um, yeah. I mean, there could there's I'm certain a very good reason. It's just it's an important thing to share. So, so I'll make a motion move this forward. Is there you looking for a motion or is this just an update?

Yeah. I mean, so this is just you know what we're trying to do is by the time it gets to the council because the idea is with a lot of these things to try to move them relatively quickly because the sooner we do it the better and like the common these guys would like to start getting this spun out like next month. Yeah. So really it's just to try to have any conversations that seem or or highlight any big issues. I guess the question is is that what will come up in the council if not here now is what's is there a cost to implement any of this or is this just part of the everyday? It's really I mean there's no

there's no cost. The only the only cost that could happen down the road is if we do the printers in the truck and we are doing that. But even then, like without having the data available to go, hey, we tried to talk to these people, right? Nobody's ever home or whatever it is, it's hard for me to go, "Well, then we should spend $1,200 on an incar thermal printer because I don't know if we need it or not." For the for the time being right now, we're just util utilizing the assets and resources we have to just provide additional data to be reviewed. Correct. So, I mean, I can't it can't hurt anybody. For sure. The data, I think, is going to be more important to the city staff. That's why

if you're an a code enforcement person, it would be nice to be able to look up and go, "Okay, I know I've been here many times. How many times have I been here?" I can walk into that up to that person's door and say, "I've talked to you about this 10 times. This is getting old." Or they can go to the HOA or their council member and say, "This has happened 10 times. Can we put together a game plan on how we can work with this particular resident so that we don't have this happening anymore? Um, is it and it helps perceptions. I mean, I I I haven't spoken a ton to Frank and Brian. I know I've talked to Joe a lot about it. I mean,

that is code enforcement is just by nature an incredibly thankless job. And so when you are writing when you're doing this and you're doing it to the best of your ability and all you hear from the residents or council members or whatever is you're not doing enough, that's not good. At the same time, if you're doing your work and you're sending it to the court and then these things are going to the court and just stalling or whatever, that also means you know why at what point do you just go, what am I doing this for? And so trying to get those pieces of information to see this is how this all flows together.

That's important. But we have I mean there's a pri a process it has to if if they're given so many and I don't know what the number is so many um code violations at some point it has to go to the court. So it's it's per violation and it goes to the court but then it's what happens when it gets there because the concern now is not much. I mean there's not a whole lot that can happen. That's not going to change because you have piece of paper with information on it. It's still going to be the same. It it will give I I mean I don't know Mr. Brun you tell me because you were going to go talk to the court or just sit there and see what happens. I mean the argument is always the same and giving them better information is seemingly better.

There's a bit of a disconnect right now between code enforcement prosecuting attorney and the municipal judge. And oftentimes it may be more so between the first two and the latter because I've been told by the prosecuting attorney no that's incorrect. the court administrator that people will come up to the judge after we've done a thorough investigation and determined a violation and say, "Well, nobody told me." Well, there's reams of paper in file about this, but the judge for the most part will give them the benefit of the doubt and extend the period to address compliance. So, I think having the information does derive a benefit. It deres a benefit of that if you get asked well why aren't they doing something and we can say we are we've been to the property x amount of times

they can't claim ignorance if if it's one visit they can say I didn't know no one told me okay maybe give them another chance but if we've been there 20 times and written them then they can't come up and just make that claim the judge will be like well they visited you 20 times you can't say You can't tell me what you're telling me cuz it's not true. So, is the information about x number of times we've knocked on their door with the code code enforcer, does that not go into the court report before they go to the judge? It does, but the prosecuting attorney isn't in the courtroom when the judge talks to defendant. So,

why not? I guess that's the rule of the court. I don't know because I know instances where that has occurred. The prosecuting attorney has been there. Yeah, it depends on the level of what they're prosecuting.

When Miss Pro, the court administrator and I met, that's how it was explained to me. That's why the judge is sometime working on best available information and that may be the testimony of the defendant to him. whereas we have a file full of photographs and inspection reports that is to the contrary. So all I'm saying is is that there is a bit of a disconnect and I understand the origin of it. Anybody that is in court on a summon relative to code enforcement can ask for a change of venue and go to St. County Associate Circuit Court or Circuit Court. And so there's a balance here trying just to get compliance and not lose the case to that myriad of different things that happened in St. Louis County. So it's just tough. Mr. Farmer and I were discussing this. it was on a particular instance where something was happening and it's like I wasn't able to give him a good answer because I hadn't gotten an answer from code enforcement yet and it's like well there better be there there's got to be a better way. So if you call Melanie and I can answer your question and they don't have to wait a day or two or more. So

So in a lot of this I mean you you guys have started to see some of these things that we've moved through here before. This is kind of a part one of some other things that are coming down the line in terms of just our general court code enforcement process and philosophy and how that works. But making sure that we have a good standard and a lot of this came from the prosecuting attorney herself that said, "Hey, we you know this would be helpful to have better data. We were working on this with uh in public safety for a year when you know the the police reports we're getting now are way better than the police reports that we got. But even at this point, like Katherine Mandell and the guys aren't making this in the building. This goes to like the information department at St. Louis County and they just sort of give us whatever they think is appropriate rather than us saying, "No, this is specifically the items that we would like to have. And if we don't have these because you can't provide them, that's okay. But then just tell us why we can't have them. Are you not tracking them? Is it, you know, a legal thing that it's not appropriate?" And there'll be certain times I think um in some of the new code enforcement stuff where you know it very it very possibly like some of our other legal things that we have to deal with like there are certain properties that we all know that hey we got to have a conversation you know with an attorney there and whatever. Um but getting a clear picture of this is what we have going on is is the whole goal behind this thing.

Rambo.

Yeah. I just um as long as collection is not unduly burdensome, more data are always better. It's just it's just um even if you don't use it very often, it's invaluable when you do have to use it. Like my truck has a tachometer and it's an automatic. I don't drive with that. It's not a race car or anything like that, but aircraft's actually a better example. um you know their cylinder head temperature, exhaust gas temperature, even rudimentary aircraft. You have to keep an eye on those things constantly. It's called your scan. And you only only once in a blue moon do you ever have to react to that gauge, but it if you don't have that information, you're going to, you know, spiral into the ground, right? So, so that's an extreme ca extreme example, but I I fully support this because it would be handy for me to to to have, you know, some of those data.

Excellent. All right. Thank you guys for bringing that uh to the table and we'll look forward to seeing that implemented. Um all right. Well, next on the agenda is the review of the 2026 capital improvement projects to these all wards and city administrator Lee.

Thank you, Chair Galani. I appreciate this the opportunity to speak with the committee tonight. Also, uh this is something that also has been discussed by the administration public works committee uh covering the road and bridge component of the of the actual capital improvement plan for 2026. But there obviously is the trail and uh park development portion of the uh the budget. That said, we wanted to get this out to the committee and the council in general as soon as possible this year so we can start getting kind of geared and focused up for our strategic plan. um not our strategic plan but our strate strategic priorities for 2026. So tonight what's been provided is kind of an outline of what we're looking to do for 2026 but also kind of looking at where we're at in 25 some of the changes that have been discussed during the year. One being um so I actually go by column the fiscal year 2025 budget and then the anticipated column. So these are both 2025 but the anticipated takes into account one critical component. It takes into account that payment that was made to MDOT midway through the year for the J turns project and the left turn lanes project. That being said, what was decided upon by the council to help offset those costs were the postponement of three different smaller scale projects. One being the Green Pines Park Connector Trail, uh the construction of it anyways, the trail development, resurfacing repair. So that's just general um resurfacing of our trails in multiple different areas. uh we had some money set aside this year to go after that and then also the resurfacing of the parking lot and the drive aisle within Anniversary Park. So those three items were postponed to 2026. So you'll see in the second column under anticipated that those have been blocked off. Um the other item that it was just listed for tonight, but is the internet project phase 2. We do not have that currently uh an agreement in hand. What we do have is our satellite internet rebate program that's been approved by the council. That said, we are still

working with uh Spectrum and a couple other actual internet service providers to see if they could come up with a proposal for us. That said, right now uh getting that a full project on the board for the price that was listed in our budget uh is is somewhat um not going to happen in 2025. It seems it seems like we would have something that would come up after the bead program in early 2026. So that is something we're taking into consideration. Wanted to show that difference. But really what we're trying to focus in on is the 2026 columns here. And we have the current, which is just basically what we had approved under the 5-year capital improvement plan within 2025 when we had that review process. the 2026 anticipated which is the second column under 2026 which outlines the postponement of those three projects which is um parking lot resurfacing the trail resurfacing and the pushing back of the connector trail construction those have been pushed back here and then the fiscal year 2026 what we're calling it is version 2v2 which is what really asking the question I know this was mentioned during last year's budgeting cycle of what is absolutely critical to have listed in our capital budget. Where should we start from as we need to spend this money to protect critical funding sources? Really meaning do we have a external grant that is funding a large portion or a decent percentage of the project and if that is the case then to to market and call that out. So when you take that into consideration it takes quite a few projects off the board. Tonight the department was is just more so wanting to provide this information get some generalized feedback on the on the process this year. Uh but the goal and what came out of the administration and public works committee was that the department heads and myself would be meeting and going through kind of a priority matrix process for each individual project that's not listed with grant funding tied to it to categorize it and then also break down which project should be listed and to

come back with a recommendation uh to both the administration public works committee and then the planning parks committee as well. Uh department's available for any questions but that's really we wanted to start the process tonight and just get some generalized feedback. Thank you. Council Morbo.

Yeah. Uh I was told by Director Brown two weeks ago that uh we were talking about the traffic on 100. It's been abysmal and so forth, but it's um we're happy to see progress. uh he said that um MODOT has been um so efficient and they're working faster than anticipated and the entire project will be done including the resurfacing in 2025 which is absolute music to everyone's ears that sits for a half hour in traffic just on the way home. Um, my question to you is th this your spreadsheet seems to show and I I I don't I I there may be some details that I'm missing, but it seems to show that $975,000 of our Highway 100 budgetary funds are in fiscal year 2026. And my question is, are we obligated for those monies in 2025? Are we waiting to do we get to wait and save a million dollars until 2026?

No. So, that's a great question and it should be listed just in 2025. Um, all payments for the Route 100 J turns and left turn lanes project are specifically dedicated to 2025 alone. That will not carry over to 2026. So when that additional payment was authorized to proceed with the project because what we were told at least from mod was that they were going to shelf the project unless we were able to fork up the the additional funding was back that was back in April. Um and in this case that's all spent in fiscal year 25. What could happen in 26 is that there is a final accounting that takes place at the end of the project. And that was the whole discrepancy is was that the the department of public works but also the department of administration believed that we would most likely receive some additional credits or we they were underestimating the credits that would be associated with our engineering cost that we had and that's usually calculated at the end which should have lessened the overall payment that we had to make midyear. So, we may, and I don't want to make a promise here, but at the when the final tally is done, the anticipation is that we could receive a little bit money back, but we would not be spending additional money unless the project goes completely overboard. And at this time, that is not anticipated.

Okay. I was This is small and I was looking at Valley Road resurfacing 975K and it was the next line down was Route 100 Journ. So, um uh I was um uh misled, but but that's I I appreciate your answer. Thank you. I have a question. City administrator Lee on the main street extension to construction for 1.5 million and 26. What I mean we can't do that now that we declined that project. So we don't have the

right I mean it's Crest's private drive. The north side is totally private. We own up through Village Green on the south side. But with the um latitude project being declined, we don't have the ability to it's coming back, huh? Latitude's coming back. But there's no way that that would ever even if it came back and it went through the 30 process of talking about it. We wouldn't even looking at it

28 29. So I mean just saying the odds of needing that 1.5 and 26 are zero. And that's exactly what we're trying to get at here is that and if you look at the last column for the V2 and that's kind of the the golden goose here that we're looking at uh what projects absolutely need to get done in 26 and we have funding tied to one that you know is struck out net zero is that 1.5 million that was dedicated towards Main Street in 2024 when we were planning for the fiscal year 2025 budget. There was an anticipation with that proposal on deck and the fact that we we could very well need to move forward that we put that money aside. That said, we do have engineering going on currently for that project. It's just more so actually going out to construct it. We don't have the easements necessary both on the north side and the south side of the road. So in that case, yeah, it that would be a that when we go through the priority matrix uh for each project and I have I could share my screen and show that today too, but kind of going

as of right now, we know that there's 0% chance that we would need in 2026 100%. Yes. I mean that's I mean I think that fixes our deficit right there, right? Because we're 155 over budget according to this. So you take that 15 out, we're 50 grand that we got to worry about versus

Yes. I'd have to do the exact calculation after removing that but the understanding would be that would be one of the projects as the department heads come together and we come back with a firm recommendation that would be one that's not feasible for 2026 alone and the idea is to focus in on this upcoming year and this year itself but then obviously we'll start incorporating outward which is going to be 2027 28 and 29 but yeah that is not council mutin

yeah um Mr. made a a comment about projects and uh tied to funding or grants and still putting those aside. I think I think the what do you call it the trail by Green Pines? Isn't that got a a a funding bought with it? So if that is one of those that have funding and you can't put those aside, then why is that being put aside? It was a decision made by the council that said it it can be completed in 2026. So that was discussed when we had the payments for mod. It can be completed by year end in 2026.

So it's not necessarily pushing that off and it does have federal funds tied to it. 267,000 of the $500,000 anticipated expense would be attributed directly to federal funding. So he's got there's the federal funding in and then yeah that's included in the it's included for so the plan it would be to that the project actually is anticipated to go out first thing in the spring of 2026 after a moratorum on trees on grading permits.

All right. Anybody else? Council Dwell, I just real quickly have um the Do we have any update on the Strucker Road sidewalk access to the um right ofway? You don't have to give me a a yes or no answer. We have it. Uh just have you heard anything back from Yes. And we will be having, just as a heads up, we'll be having a discussion with the mayor's permission of course at the next council meeting in a in a close session discussing that item. Thank you, Council Mr. Um, you want feedback on some of these projects listed is what you're asking for.

That is tonight. Yeah, some of the projects specifically focusing really on parks and the trails items, but that's at any you know, it's it's going to go to council alto together. So tonight get some feedback the dollars. Cone Park is not a park in my opinion. What's $100,000 for Cone Park? The intent of the funding was to address right of way that holds water as well as to basically better drain the park so it could be used for something in the future. A bridge would probably better but uh uh is that necessary this for next year?

When we do the priority matrix will either keep it in at a much lesser charge or it'll be part of a fiveyear plan. Okay. The the other park that I have a problem with Belleview Park. I tried to find that not too long ago. I couldn't find it. Uh is it being used? This is this year. It is currently closed to the public, but we have a volunteer group along with the city and basically restoring to a healthy condition.

But this is okay. This isn't a park that we own. We lease it from [Music] you have it down there for $175,000 for this year to basically street. Is that something feels necessary? We have a committed group of volunteers.

I just got a couple more. Um the pickle ball cart half a million dollars. Is that something we can afford next year? I guess that's something that's going to be under intense scrutiny and the administration public works committee brought that same item up. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. And this golf course, Gleno Park, 20 grand. I just Are these our priorities? I mean, we got storm water. We got I could maybe I can maybe help with this. So, we we had this conversation at PW and because we got the same list. I'm concerned that we don't have enough money.

Yeah. No. So, we we got the same list and what what um what we advise Tom and and Rick and Joe to go back and do is to because we have kind of a couple things that have come together and created some issues and conflict. So, one of them is a couple years ago, several of us that are still on here helped to kind of come up with like our city priority list, which didn't really function as a city priority list. It was just sort of a list of projects that we all thought were cool. And so that has kind of created a level of a little bit of a level of confusion and bloat with a lot of this stuff. So what we suggested was the kind of V2 budget is like these are the items that are tied to like specific funding that if we don't spend it we lose.

And so that's not to say necessarily that because we might lose that money we absolutely need to do those things. That's just to say, let's get give us the answer of, hey, if we don't do the Green Pines Trail, theoretically, this is going to cost us $300,000 more. Should we do this down the road? What we suggested was to have the departments come back with a list of kind of their sort of three tiered projects. One being like, these are absolutely missionritical things that we just like there there can be no debate. The other the next one is like, hey, these are things that would be really great if we could do them. And so then the conversation is, you know, if pickle ball happened to fall in that space, do we want $500,000 for pickle ball or do we want $500,000 to fix some road from caving in or whatever it is. And then the tier three is like, you know, if we had some magic pot of money that showed up and we could do everything we wanted, that's where these things are going to fall. And so rather than us going through line item each thing, it was like, hey, why don't you guys come back? This is a great step one. come back with these tears and then we can have a real conversation to know like because I don't have I mean I have my own thoughts on how some of these things work but like you know one of the things we talked to Rick about is you know I struggle with how many rounds of engineering is necessary for something because we wind up talking about it for six years and it's like I thought we already did the engineering and so getting some clarity on those points and being able to figure out like these things like not at all to diminish what these guys are doing with the parks department but like there are certain like parks Maintenance is certainly more important than park than getting $100,000 to Cone Park or whatever it is. If we got an extra hundred grand laying around, I'm all for it. But let's let's look at it with those pieces of information rather than kind of a collection of numbers that we get to talk about what makes us feel good. Like just give us the facts. These are the things that we can't not do. These are the things that you have a choice on and these are the things that you know you also have a choice on, but there are other options involved. That was what

our advisement was. So they're going to come back with that next month. I would suggest the same thing for landing and parks. It's be consistent across our committees. That was that was the intent. Thank you.

Yes. So, um following along the um the maintenance park maintenance point, um we had we spent uh 15K this year for the design for Partner Park and there's nothing in it the budget for 2026 and um regardless of what we do, it's a city asset and the the the pond um will fail. We just don't know when if we don't stabilize the dam and the spillway. there's some problems out there and we need to include money for that maintenance uh issue because otherwise uh it will it will cost us a fortune to reconstruct the park if we ever get around to doing that. So um

the wise I guess and yeah and if you don't mind with your permission chair uh on that note we had in 2027 I believe I had to reference the full fiveyear to build the entirety of Portner Park. So that's being said, you're only seeing that slice of 2026, but we could most definitely that would be something that would be considered if if if we still plan to do the park, though. That would be also need to be considered.

Yeah. Well, regardless of what we what happens to the land shortterm, um the the pond is is a feature. It's Wildwood's only water feature, and it needs to be um needs to um get some maintenance. Not glamorous, but it's mandatory. We can definitely we'll include that in the in the upcoming report.

Issue in W seven is old state road because it's dangerous. The county has no money. What would make residents happy and it also affects port 8. You have a lot of young kids going to school down there. We know it's dangerous and the county will tell you it's dangerous, but we got to have more fatalities than they would chip in some money, which is horrible because we we did these J turns too late and we had a fatality, you know. Uh so waiting for fatalities is not a good criteria to use. I'm just wondering if we could set some money aside. I don't know how much, but for the future, uh, and kind of work it up, like have a little account for it. Uh, and doesn't have to be a lot of money, maybe a couple hundred,000 or something. And, uh, we can get the the county on board eventually because they said they want to do something there. You can also get Ellisville owns part of that, too. So you could have three partners to do something, but it is a safety issue and I think safety is very important more than parts. You know, we got a lot of parts. Uh and so I would recommend some kind of a number there that's reasonable to get it started and then work work on a goal of a roundabout at that school. Are you talking Are you talking about the roundabout at Bridge?

Bridge, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right there. Uh uh it's just something I'm I need to bring up. Uh yeah, I live I live off ridge. So, yeah, I'm fully aware. I have to make a right turn sometimes to make a left turn, but but we could we could we could fund that and maybe in three or four years you have some money there to to cut a deal. Maybe the the county will come up with more money, but they I've talked to them before and they said they know it's bad and it's just not enough accidents, which is not the way to look at it. I mean, we have obligations.

I don't I don't disagree with what you're saying, but at the end of the day, the countyy's not going to stop looking at it the way they look at it. And if I'd love to see a roundabout there, probably more than anybody else because I live right there. But at the end of the day, too, I think you can't you just can't drop it because of the safety issue. I mean I I uh I mean we had we had already worked with Ellisville and each committed 250. Well, the county county helped us out earlier on that uh surface well treatment. Uh I mean we we spent 400 grand on it, but they they did Well, it it's up to the county. I'm just the council. I'm just uh advocating it because that's what my constituents are concerned about.

No, mine too. I'm including if you want to say, "Hey, we don't care as a city about safety," that's not good either. So, um, no, I don't disagree. I just think when you're talking about the budget for 26, we got to talk about this. All asking is just put something aside for it. That's all. And and it will keep a dialogue going. Things can change. You know, we know that.

I think I will say I'll just say this because this is something we talked about this even before. Council member Bro used to bring this up and we've got our $18 million reserve, right, which I think everyone agrees is more than what we need for a city of our size and with the budget that we have. So to what you're saying, I mean, it's one of these things where we can continue. I know we've applied for grants. We had Ellisville on board to kick in 250. We were going to kick in 250. we were applying for a grant for like 1.5 or something and we got we kept getting declined on those grants because of the safety situation or the lack of where

right but what I'm saying is is we can continue to apply for those grants right and if we get approved for those grants then whatever that amount that we have to kick in if it's not in the budget and we have to do it within that time then that's something that I think you know when we come to issues like that storm water and other things we can make allocations to talk about saying if we've got 18 million in the budget in in the reserve our reserve we only need nine or I'm just making up random numbers we spend that we have way too much money in our reserves we got $18 million whole another conversation yeah but but that money needs to be used

so that that was also part of the conversation what we were talking about along with this and and the watershed and things like that is um you know Mr. Bunage and I and Mr. have had a long conversation. We had a very long conversation with Edmond and PW that more than more than likely whether we expended the reserve and we did all these other things. Um we were talking about the 250,000 that got vetoed by the governor on the water stuff. More than likely, no matter what we do, we're going to have to have a parks and storm water tax that at least gets asked of the residents and whether they accept it or not

is up to them. But we need to do our best effort to kind of make the case for that. That being said, you know, I while I was frustrated, and I said this at my admin PW meeting, while I was frustrated that the governor vetoed our $250,000 for our watershed issue, it's insane to me that we were asking the state for $250,000 because we don't have any money to do this and we're going to spend half a million dollars on a pickle ball court that nobody seems to care about. So, what that kind of drove was this conversation where what we need to do is get our our budget prioritized correctly. We need to look at what we have in the reserves and go, hey, because a number of us all voted a bunch of years ago now to say we're going to spend $3 million on the internet and $3 million on the wershed and then overnight it was $7 million from the federal government on the wershed. And I don't know what you're talking about with the rest of that conversation.

And so what what we need to do as a city in my opinion and that's what we're kind of working toward doing on this is these items whether that be you know this ridge road situation that requires a a county match. Applying for the grants is great. We've had that now with the roundabout at 109 and BA, which I think is like an insanely dangerous intersection. And I think a roundabout is probably the best solution. But we voted to spend $300,000 to do it. It's now going to cost us what, Tom? $1.4 million.

Yeah, it's know three years ago or six years ago, whatever, whatever it was. And so we have to be careful. We've spent an enormous amount of money on a lot of these kind of like low funding projects where we are spending way more than any other municipality and we just need to go hey you know in at Ridge Road if it's $200,000 from us or 250 and 250 from Ellisville and the county needs to match that and whatever that's fine we are we are ready to act and I would say that's kind of one of those things in a budget where we can say if if the county decides they have money to do this we have $250,000 that is ready tomorrow to go do this thing Um, that doesn't necessarily mean that we need to lock this up in a long-term capital improvement situation, I don't think, because that almost handcuffs us more than anything. I mean, I'm like you, Katie, I'm I'm all for getting a sidewalk in on Striker Road. And perhaps we'll get a different understanding on that. But I'm not holding my breath. And for I don't know how many years we've had $250,000 sitting on the budget for something that is not ever going to get built.

Well, they can be put in a five-year program. Can can it? Yeah, but it's been in a five program for It's been there for five years. Hey, we can do a five-year program on it as a suggestion. That's we could. But the idea would be if you don't want to do it,

if we're going to go to our residents at some point, whether it's for parks and storm water or anything else, and say, "Hey, we think we need to ask you for a half a cent of something." Then we certainly can't have $18 million sitting in the bank. We can't have $500,000 going to something that is not a necessity. That's not to say we shouldn't do it if we can do those things. But we need to get our spending priorities figured out before we go to the residents and ask them for anymore. That's not to say I don't think we need it because we do. But we just need to do some reconfiguration on this. And our capital improvement budget as we talked about last year is like it's insane in what is it Tom? In two years it is like some enormous amount of money. That is I think more than we have in the budget period. So we we need to fix this stuff. And one of the things the mayor and I and Tom are working on is you know we're going to have a a conversation now with our new council people about reconfiguring what that priority list actually means. not a list of projects, but like a philosophy thing.

And then helping our department heads or hoping our department heads come back with our kind of very simple tiered system that can be changed that says these are things that can't move, these are things that can. And I mean last year we asked basically just take everything off the capital improvement budget and start at nothing. And we're kind of working not exactly at that level, but we're working towards that to be able to say, hey, these are the things that are important and this is what we got to have. Could you could you also have Mr. Galani participate in that discussion? Yes, we're going to talk about that in the next item, I think. Okay. Awesome. Well, then that great segment. We'll just go into the next one. Go into the next one. Communication protocol for substantive changes to committee motion. Mr. Lee,

thank you, chair. And this is another Sorry, guys, for all these admin crossovers, but we wanted to make sure everyone was kept informed. Um in this case uh for the last admin PW committee meeting we did have a discussion about having specific callouts to substantive changes to motions made within planning and parks and administration public works economic development any committee really that's going to council. So specific document that's referenced out of committee to council. Say there is and there mostly is in these cases. We'll have a motion to prepare legislation for introduction to council or a motion to put a report together that includes legislation or an agreement. Uh but once we go to our city attorney or if we do legal research and we find out, okay, this the city can't legally require X, Y, or Z, what this motion and policy would really implement would be that when it goes to council, that substantive change, say the policy requirement or a different vendor, that's never going to happen. But if it's something that's drastically different than what was discussed at the the committee meeting that that would be called out in red ink and shown and also discussed verbally and brought up kind of as a point item of hey there x y and z change was made from this meeting to this meeting and it's being presented to you tonight. So tonight um it's just really more so formalizing that policy and carrying it over providing you input uh providing you chance to have input before it would go to council. Anybody have questions? I think it's great.

That's a great idea. Awesome. Thank you. Uh the next item is communication standards for city. Did you take a motion? Project development adjacent activity. Mr. Lee. Hey. Um it's up to you. So on at MNPW with the substantive change thing, we've made that a motion to go through. Okay. Um if you guys want to I'm happy to explain. I think all of you are aware why we're doing it, but I'm happy to explain why I wrote it the way that I did. Um, if anybody has any questions on it. Yeah, you make a motion. Quick faith in you. I'm going to make a motion. I'll second. All right, we got a motion, a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor of the motion, please say I. I.

Any opposed? Any obstessions? All right, perfect. All right, city administrator Lee. I'm

sorry, one second here. had my other had to switch back for a second. Okay. Um so going back to the so just to recap, we are now talking about the communication standards for city projects and development adjacent activities. Uh this is also another item that was discussed at administration public works and we're wanting to make sure that the planning and parks committee has read in and has a chance to provide input um on when the city, you know, engages and activates its communication. uh we'll be working to put together and tonight the department of planning and uh administration has put together a a overview of what types of activities are going to be communicated not only to the public uh one main consideration is you know we see that uh Amron's doing some work maybe they didn't report that they're just doing some general maintenance if we see it we would report it up the chain to our communications professional we get that information out on the website and social media we typically do that uh but the idea would be to keep an eye on it but also asking our council members for consideration, too, if they see some work occurring and doesn't seem like it's been communicated to let us know so we can get the messaging out there and get to the bottom of it unless they get a permit. In some cases, they don't. They'll just do the work. Um, it is somewhat tedious because then we're we're answering calls uh when really that call should be going to the relevant utility company. So, that's one part of it is communicating with residents through our spotlights on our social media uh on our website, also on our social media, through Facebook, Instagram, and our YouTube page. But, this is really what we do on our YouTube. and then also having it included in our e newswsletter. Typically, if it happens on a Friday, that's when it's most concurrent. Uh the other component though is really making a call out and what what rises to the level to be included in an official report to the council. So, is you know a a water mane break? Do we have a direct communication to the council saying this water man broke, here's the timeline for anticipated completion of their repairs? Sometimes we don't have the information but it's more so just putting a policy together that would easily and clearly identify when that needs to be communicated to the council. Um the last component is kind of covering two other

different projects. One would be timelines that we are aware of as a city of developments that are occurring out you know this could include the reserve could include the point at brightleaf um could include all kinds of different projects. even a home that's, you know, doing a very large driveway, if it if it seems to really impact um, you know, day-to-day and we think a resident may give a call for it, then we would want to commun communicate that out just like we do in our development trends document that's included on tonight's report. Uh the next item would also be in including any large if we find out that and we already do this but if a new business is moving in we get a business license application a sign application for a new business we're going to communicate that both the economic development committee also to the full city council um but also uh if there's just a purchase of land if there's something that a large plot of land has been purchased by an entity that you know maybe is unknown if it has been owned by another or organization for a long time and it's transferring ownership we're wanting to call that out and then communicate that to the the to the council as well. And then also we're providing that information to the to the public explaining, hey, this plot of land has been purchased, but it's currently zoned like this, obviously in accordance with zoning law, but and in under console from director of planning and also our city attorney. But communicating to our residents and to the council, here is what the possibility is for that property now that it's on the market. Um really the hope is to quell fears from residents that hey this property is going to go you know become apartment buildings tomorrow. Um that is mostly most likely not the case. Um and really just kind of get ahead of some of these items. But really a big concern we have u with staff or for our staff is that sometimes these things aren't communicated to us. If it's a permit if we get something in then we'll include it in our recent trends. But the one thing we'll have to just keep an eye on is if the council does notice some work that's being completed that doesn't look right or it just doesn't seem like it was communicated from us, please let us know. We want to make sure we're on top of it. They have the proper documents necessary to to actually carry out the work. The department's available for any

questions though. And are you looking for action on this or this doesn't? The idea would be to bring either an endorsement of the policy, add additions to the policy. It's included tonight. Uh but overall, if if if we're okay with it, then it would be to bring the policy forward to council. Council member, I'll make a motion to bring it forward to council and that we approve it at the next council meeting. We can always make adjustments. It's a living document. Okay, we've got a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing Council Farmer,

I'm just I'll just I mean I wrote I wrote this one, too. So, um, you know, the idea is, uh, and we had this situation just like last week on Clayton Road where the county was putting asphalt coverages on sidewalks, which is not something that is normal. Yeah. So, we, you know, Tom reached Tom and I Tom reached out, I piggybacked on it. So, we've started an entirely different kind of conversation that we've had with the county based on this. But the idea is, you know, we do have a lot of um utility partners that do a exceptionally terrible job of telling us what is going on.

And so having this is kind of one of those data points of like having the ability to go, hey, every time they're American Water does a great job. I'm not picking on them, but like every time the water company comes out to do something, we don't ever have any idea what's going on and they're ripping up a road or whatever it is. So when it's within the city's purview, we want to do a better job of saying like, you know, the example Tom was talking about I gave, which was the Lasal property that's for sale, like it's for sale. We as a city can't do anything about that. What we can say is should somebody buy it, the only thing they can put there, I think, is like 30 houses or whatever it's zoned for. And if they want to put something else there, it has to come to city council. If they don't, they can do whatever they want. It's their property. But we're not going to put an apartment building there. We're not advocating they put a Walmart or whatever people freak out about is going to be there. It's just like this is the information that we have. This is what's going on. Um, and it's just clearly communicating to the best of our ability to the residents and to us like this is what's happening. So, from a public works standpoint, which is not something you guys see every day, but you know, like if if we're going to go out and resurface a subdivision in your neighborhood, as I've said to Rick, like we know that much earlier than the day they show up to do it. So, maybe like

just send a little put a little post up somewhere saying, "Hey, in the next two weeks we're doing, you know, Timber Ridge Estates or whatever it is." So then that HOA and those res residents can understand, oh, this is going to be inconvenient for two weeks. And if it's going to be more than two weeks, then we go, "Hey, based on the weather, we had to do this outside with Taylor Road. Supposed to be one thing." And we had all these storms. Now it's something else. Nobody's fault. We're just letting everybody know what's up. That's the whole idea. Perfect. All in favor of the motion, please say I. I did. We get a second on that.

Just wanted to confirm that we got a second on that. I know Miss Dodwell had had a G given the first. Oh, okay. Thank you. Yeah. Uh bring us to the last item on the agenda under planning matters which is the recent development trends. Does anybody have any questions? Director Vish.

Thank you Mr. Chair. Just to advise the first item under projects is Westland Acres discussion. The development and zoning review committee held a meeting on June 23rd with the developer family members um that reside or have resided in Westland Acres. They had asked for expedited reviews. Um we've yet to receive the zoning application fee and preliminary development plan. So if there is some conversation out the community about us delaying it, we actually reached out to developer um week or so ago advising them if they wanted to be on a public hearing in August. We needed this information by the 17th. We didn't receive it. So the earliest it'll be at planning and zoning commission even under the best of conditions would be September. So, the Bergen Temple is very close to being ready to release their site development plan improvement plans. Um, it's been about a three and a half year process to get to this point. Um, I met with the homeowners association today to go over the plans. They're disappointed that it's not as clear-cut as they would like. Meaning the temple's going to build in phases and they wanted definitive timeline timelines associated with the phases can't provide that. It's all based upon fundraising as far as I know. So just a couple of projects that are kind of out there that u have drawn attention. But if you have any other questions, Melanie and I would be glad to try to answer them regarding the other items.

Oh, one last thing. Our $50 fee is getting us near $19,000 a year. So the $50 fee budgetary problems to the cabin. Thank you. I will $50 heard that Mr. Clant to the cabin. All right. Does anyone have any $50 fee? Pardon? A $50 fee. So, as part of our program budget committee, which you were a member of, you went through all the fees that we provide. Oh, yeah. The town zoning authorizations for free. And so, we said at least we should charge something.

Probably should have been $100, but given that it was 23, four years of not charging, we started at 50. So each time we authorize a project, we get a $50 fee up to $18,200 or so. This is from June. We're in a busy July. So we are drawing some we are bringing in for zoning authorization. When we look at Raiden raising that because 100 seems like that that's it's a re very recent

requires well over 100. Typical zoning authorization starts in the department of planning. It goes to the department of public works for engineering review. It goes to our arborist now and then it comes back to planning and then there's multiple calls to other agencies to fire district. Yeah, it's a lot. It's like two bucks an hour for city city staff time. And some would say that's too much for what they're getting from us. But we wanted to tear it. So you got a plan to look at it. And it's probably in Joe's committee because he does. It's not. It's in his computer eventually.

No, I think he was talking about an $18,000 Christmas party. Council McCussen. Yeah, I do have one more question. So I know the HOA list is not always up to date. Sure. What can we do about that? We talked about that too. You did. Yeah. So, we've had with your permission share.

Um, so we've had a couple different endeavors to reach out to the HOAs proactively. We had a we have the form online obviously that they can go to if they go to residents HOA um they can update it at any time. But we've actually done a couple substantial efforts and does result in a couple different updates. Uh, one other thing we do is we try to reach out to the HOA and have them create one dedicated email. The best advice we can give is, especially since if they're not using a professional organization to oversee it, they're a group of trustees, if they had a shared Gmail account that can be passed on to the president each time where it's not directly connected to the individual's personal accounts, then that can become a living way to contact that HOA. So, we do give that advisement. Um the other item though is when we do those far f far far-fetched reachouts through social, through our e newswsletter, um through all of our different communication mechanisms, it doesn't necessarily result in a large return. So you're putting in a lot of effort, um a lot of staff time in order to get, you know, three or four. Last time we did a run on it, it was late 2024 and we saw about six different uh HOAs that updated, which is great, but you know, we put that's probably a good, you know, two, three hours of work to put together all the graphics and things along those lines. So I would almost say we'd almost just want to communicate the same graphic we have and just keep pressing that button on the e newswsletter and social media

and then obviously when residents come by that's something too if we're meeting with an HOA we want to get their information that's typically when it's when it's updated on our end. Yeah I know I talked to one lady who said she was president of HOA and I went back to her for something. Oh no she's not and it's this person. You go to this person. Oh no it's that person. So just trying to, you know, chase them down for something. Yeah,

we we talked about trying to um reinstitute. They used we used the city used to do like a pretty limited like semi-regular meeting of HOAs for like tips and things. So when it comes to like watershed and mowing practices and whatever, we've talked about trying to reinstitute that. Um and that's coming on the other side of it. So it'll get to you guys here shortly. But the idea would be to um do what Tom's talking about in terms of the digital footprint, but also try to get like you know some some physical bodies in the building to talk about what's going on. So then we can actually have those kinds of real conversations with people and update it that way because

you know as the trustee like you don't you're not paying attention to a lot of that stuff. Director, just as a point of information or history, when the council and planning and zoning commission met twice a month, the first month of the new year that had a fifth Monday, we would hold the trustee meeting and we would fill up the chambers. So, you can just do that again. Maybe we should do that again. That makes sense. Yeah. And I think the one where we had the training along with it, I know more people that came to that than probably would not have if it hadn't been for the training.

There's several attorneys that'll be glad to come and basically kind of talk about here's some free advice, so to speak. Yeah. And our and we've talked with our city attorney. We could have that scheduled. It would cost some money, but it wouldn't it wouldn't be anything it wouldn't be anything too crazy. It would just be the time for the actual presentation. echoes our Christmas. Council member Wilks, I was just going to say I've attended the ones that St. Louis County does that Mark Carter does and has speakers and they're pretty well attended um by folks from the HOAs and I think it would be a great addition if the city did it. As I said, we used to fill the chambers. Yeah.

All right. Um thank you for the updates on the development trends. Good discussion. uh takes us to our next item which is executive session which we don't have and then not ready for action items. I got a quick question on that. Go ahead if you don't mind. Sure.

Um as we're going through the budgetary process um there are some things that are going to impact or would need a budgetary assignment to them. There's also some things that need some planning etc um around them. So, could we as a committee perhaps set aside a couple of council members to work on this stuff or a couple of council members to work on that stuff so that we can knock out some of these things and I'm not saying which ones tonight, but I'm I'm just trying to think about We keep adding things to this list.

Oh, he does everything anyway. We keep adding things to this list and we just keep kind of keep kicking them down the road and I'd rather we get them done. So rather than what we did two years ago, which was we took everything off the list and said we're not going to do them because we haven't done them in two years. Um and so now there several of them are back here again and the permission of the chair I can give you updates at the August meeting all of these. Okay.

How long have they been on the agenda so to speak? Why there's been a delay or why they've returned as you just well several of them actually probably will be on the agenda for more action. Um, speaking of the memorandum of understanding those kinds of things, right, just I I just think many of us at this table would be more than happy to sit down and kind of knock through some of this stuff a little bit to get it done. Sure. Sure. Go ahead. And this is not something necessarily I feel great about, but landscaping and the plantings. I was just gonna ask. Yeah,

that was my question. has pulled together a draft. It's pretty much in I think almost presentable form. Maybe you can describe it. Um I feel like it's in it's in a presentable form to the landscape and planning committee um to just kind of run through it. But there were there were like stopping points and and areas in which I thought would need to be discussed by the committee to uh decide where to go from that. But it's it's it's looking pretty good. I think and we got the tree code into it. We need to have a subcommittee meeting for that so that we can finish that up.

She's being modest. It's in a it's in a booklet format. It's got great graphics. It's got very appealing to it. Um we haven't had time with everything else to kind of talk through it as group in the planning department and with Mike Walsh and our arborist. Yes, I think the subcommittee deserves to see it. It's I think it's come a long way since we kind of uncoupled with the consulting game brought in house. Yeah, good job. Thank you. You could share that and the website.

So, we have pages set up on the back end of the website that are not visible to the outside and I didn't want to go through and start connecting pages to it until it was at a final point because then we'd have to go through and undo it and redo it. So, um, but I think that that's also ready to move forward as soon as the rest of it is. The key component is anything in the manual you can get on the website. It's probably is easier to work from the website than the manual types. Correct. Correct. But it'll all take you into like, you know, the same PDF or possibly break it down into separate PDFs just depending on how easy it is to maneuver through it. Yeah. Yeah,

but then you could maneuver through it on the back end or on the front end with the website, but it'll get you to where you need to go. We've talked about a lot of different possibilities. Curious as to where we were at with that. Council Morbo. Yeah, that's that's awesome news that it's made significant progress. I would suggest sort of a working meeting where you don't have everything completely polished because there's a lot to be said. It's been a long time since we met. There have been some developments, even some legislative developments and so forth. And I would strongly suggest that Miss Clark be um a participant even though she's no longer a a council member. Absolutely. So, I'm volunteering more work for her, but she's um and a resident.

The subcommittee had already authorized Miss Clark to kind of stay on as a Okay, I forgot that. We have Okay, I forgot that. And I would with the permission of two of the subcommittee members. Sure. I would like to obviously loop in Mike Walsh to be part of Absolutely. I I meant to say that. Stealing my thunder there. Have to do that. Sorry. No, that's great. Cool. Awesome. Good. Anybody else? Miscellaneous. You're late.

Um, one item which was something you had on the council meeting the last time which was, you know, coordinating the chairs and what's going on kind of a thing. So, um, the last several months I've been working on basically at the end of every admin and PW meeting, I have AI help me make a recap for what's going on. And we are using a motion tracker so we know like, hey, this thing is going this place or this thing comes back in 60 days or whatever it is. Um, and so I was thinking that it would make sense at least in the near term here for I can help show you how to do it. It's not very hard, but you know, you and me and Scott who's out of town with EDC and some of these other things to try to create a thing where sort of like Tom's message that goes out like here's the CA report like here's the stuff that's moving through and what's going on and how it affects you guys or vice versa because I think while it makes sense that half of us are on one committee and half of us are on the other committee and you know some of us talk more than others talk or whatever like there are certain things that you know some people don't realize are important of somebody else or whatever. So getting this information out there to be like this is what's moving and here's why helps especially selfishly I guess for myself because we're putting things together now where it's like two and three-part systems that need to go like we need they need to go this way or it doesn't work. Um and so getting that information out a more concise way

while getting around the idea of like we can't just email everybody because then we have quum issues and that kind of stuff. So we have to figure that part. That was my thought. Yeah, I think that's great. Just let me know. Cool. Connect on it. Uh, cool. Anybody else? All right. Well, we do have the next meeting which is uh Monday, August 18, 2025, and the department's requesting a new date. Well, have that situation again where it's the third Tuesday is this after the second Monday is fall. And so it we're wondering if we could beg upon your kindness one more time. I think this last time in 2025.

So what's the date? Monday, August 18th. Move it from the 12th to the 18th. I'm cool with that. Yeah. Everybody good with that? Thanks much. Yeah. Monday the 18th. It is very much appreciated. Yeah. Thank you. Everybody everybody good on it? Yep. Do you do you need a motion to formally change it or if you'd like to be fine? We can we get a motion. Council Rambo. Seconded by Council Member Dodwell. This is a motion to change the parks committee meeting for August from Mon Tuesday the 12th to Monday the 18th. Um all in fa any discussion on the motion?

Wait a minute. That's Oh, okay. I'm sorry. That's six days. Fine. U sorry. All in favor please say I. I. Any opposed? Any abstension? All right. Well, thanks guys for the great discussion as always. Good participation and uh seeing a lot of good things being done and things getting handled and great to see all aspects of the city working together. So, as always, thank you. Have a great rest of the week. Stay cool. It actually wasn't that hot in here. No, sun went down tomorrow. Wednesday, I got the grill. So, uh, the new asphalt here at the town center is gonna be fun to walk on. So, take a nice walk. Yeah.

Uh, but anyway, um, I'll take a motion to adjurnn. Council Morambo second. All in favor of the motion, please say I. I. Hi. I'm