City Council - Regular Meeting

We're live. Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call the May 26, 2026 regular session of the University City Council meeting to order. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Council Member Dancy? Present. Council Member Tiemann?

Present.

Council Member McMahon?

Here.

Council Member Brenner? Present. Council Member Fuller?

Here.

Council Member Smotherson?

Here.

Mayor Crowe?

Here. Thank you very much. Before you, you have the agenda for tonight's meeting. Is there a motion to approve? Motion made by Council Member McMahon, seconded by Council Member Tiemann. Is there discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Before we move into the approval of the minutes, I know that most of you know that on May 21st, we lost one of our pillars of our community when Joy Lieberman passed away. Having served on the school board for 24 years, she and her husband Larry made University City their home for decades, raised their family here. They were very involved in any number of causes throughout our local community and throughout the community at large. There will be a memorial service at a later date. Her family has conducted Shiva for the past three or four days at her home. Our condolences go out to the family, and we thank all of the children of Larry and Joy for sharing both of them with us for all these many years and making our community a better place to live. Before you, you have the draft minutes of the meeting from April 28th, 2026. Is there a motion to approve? Motion made by Council Member McMahon, seconded by Council Member Fuller. Is there a discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor be certified by saying aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. You have before you the draft special session minutes from May 6th. Is there a motion to approve? Motion made by Council Member McMahon. Is there a second? Seconded by Council Member Dancy. Is there a discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. You have before you the draft special session minutes for May 13th. Is there a motion to approve? Motion made by Council Member Fuller. Is there a second? Seconded by Council Member McMahon. Is there a discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. You have before the May 18th special session meeting minutes. Is there a motion to approve? Motion made by Council Member Dancy. Is there a second? Seconded by Council Member Brenner. Is there a discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor be signified by saying aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. We have no appointments. We have no swearing in. Madam Clerk, do we have any requests to speak on non-agenda items?

There are none.

Thank you very much. that we will move forward to council comments. Are there any council comments at this juncture in the agenda? We have no public hearings. We'll move forward to the consent agenda. You have before you the consent agenda with two items on it, ratification of inter-fund transfer from solid waste to fleet and fire authority study. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? Motion made by council member McMahon. Seconded by council member Fuller. Is there a discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. City Manager Sharp.

Honorable Mayor Crowe, members of the City Council, I have one update for you all tonight. David Lowell with Navigate is in attendance to provide an update on the Driving Range Reconstruction Project. So I'd ask David to step up. He'll give you guys a brief update and then take any questions you may have.

Good evening. Is that better? Can you hear me now? All right. All right. So I wanted to give everybody an update on where we stand with the golf driving range. Obviously, it's a focus of many people in the community. So at this point, we have finalized the RFQ process for the design team. We've issued their RFQ. They were approved back in February and since that time we have started the design process. We did our investigation and our pre-design and that wrapped up in late March. We recently turned the schematic design pages with the Parks and Recreation Department staff on 5-26, and this week we are working on finalizing the preliminary budget estimate that goes along with schematics so we know whether our design is going to be within the budget and help establish the budget for the project. So we will continue to move forward with the design development drawings, which should be done by the end of July, the construction documents are anticipated to be done shortly after that and will be in for permitting and go out for bidding. I missed something here. Oh, bidding will start at the end of July. And the bidding review and award process through council is anticipated to be done by the end of October. And construction would begin immediately after that with the goal of having all of the hard construction work done, being ready for the spring planting season in March. and then to have the course construction complete by Memorial Day in 2027. So the course would then be open for very limited play, and the play could increase over the summer as the sod, grass get fully established so that they're not damaged by the golfers, by the carts, excuse me, by the ball harvesting machine, or by the lawn mowing equipment so that we don't run into the same problems that we had before, which is rutting and erosion and everything sliding down the hill. If you have any specific questions, I would be happy to address those.

Any questions for Navigate? I do think, I'll just throw this out there, and I think you may always regret off-the-cuff questions and remarks at times, but it may be good at some point in time for some of us to simply go visit. And the reason I say that is because you may recall that the dirt was put into the driving range because they needed a place to put the dirt. The driving range had been working prior to that. Then we had some issues with it. So my question is, it's not really a question, it's more of a comment from our former council member, Stacy Clay, who always quoted his mother, who said, do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Meaning that I know we may find some very perfect solutions, but we may want to find some that simply will work for us. And that's one of those things I've kind of been batting around. I've seen the numbers that have been thrown around, which caused me to choke a little bit. But I recognize the construction costs. I'm just trying to determine the options that we will have available to us as we address this issue.

Yeah, so in a broad brush stroke, so what happened is you had some dirt that was placed on the existing driving range, and then it was spread around to take care of some erosion problems. Well, once we were engaged to take a look at that and help come up with a solution, we noticed that you had a number of other issues. There's a detention basin at the bottom of the hill. It is completely silted in. under your MSD agreement that's supposed to be maintained and cleaned regularly. So that needs to be brought back up to spec. The situation is due to the steepness of the previous hill, you had multiple attempts to fix erosion issues as the water sheeted down across the entire hill. We took a different look at it this time, and we've tried to break up that area into yard drains and remove the water from the hillside before it has a chance to build all that kinetic energy and then erode at the bottom, and then those erosion ditches work their way back up the hill. The dirt that was added during the process came from the development has now as much as six to eight, maybe 10 feet in some places, which has rendered the existing irrigation system unusable. It's too deep. So now a new irrigation system will have to be put in at the same time. There is a massive water runoff that comes off of that. One of the things we're going to do is address adding a pinned on concrete curb down the cart path on the west side, which will act as a flume to keep water from entering that area. And it'll go down to some special inlets farther on. All the underground piping that was there from a previous job is now buried too deep. Many of the inlets have been destroyed in the process of spreading the dirt. We were able to camera some of them. They are partially full with silted soil, golf balls, rocks, and stuff like that. So all new underground piping is going to have to be installed as well. So this is unfortunately not just spreading some dirt and putting some grassy down. There are some major, for lack of a better term, structural issues that have to be addressed so that hopefully this time, this will be the last time we have to address this. And of course, the driving range will remain functional ad infinitum.

I sure appreciate that sentiment, but I've been on the council for 18 years, and I've heard about the driving range for all 18 years. It's right up there with the trolley as far as issues that just keep coming back and coming around. By the way, I appreciate and respect your comprehensive answer. Thank you. You bet.

Thank you.

Council Member McMahon.

Yes, sir. Just to back up a little bit, the condition of the driving range before – We accepted the dirt from the project over on Olive before we accepted that dirt. The erosion and the dirt going down and filling the retention, the silt that was in there, that would have continued to happen. And eventually that driving range would have been closed if we did nothing.

That's kind of my understanding. It seems like a logical progression. Yes.

Because we had gone out there and tried to fix it in a piecemeal fashion before you all got involved, before we accepted the dirt and that it didn't, it didn't work. We got more running and we couldn't pick up balls.

Yeah.

Because I keep seeing, as you said, almost mirrored what I've been seeing online. This can't be that hard to fix. Just smooth it and throw grass seed, and you're hitting balls. And I just keep saying to myself, no, because of the topography. And what was involved, we had two choices, either fix it the right way and get it done, or let's not have a driving range. Those were almost our two choices before you all got involved.

Am I reading that wrong? No, that's correct. So to put it in context, you guys are all familiar with Art Hill. Some of you may have sledded down it at some point. It's about a, was it a 12 degree slope? the slope you had on your driving range was six degrees, which is about half of that. So think about how steep Art Hill is, and then by half, it's still pretty steep. And when that much water, when we have these frog strangler storms that dump huge amounts of water in a short period of time, it creates a huge amount of water, which stirs things up and then starts to begin that erosion process. So that's one of the approaches we're taking is we're trying to change how the water leaves the field so it doesn't – cascade all the way down it from the very top to the very bottom. It will be stopped on the way down at several places by berms, go into underground storm sewers, and then be piped down to the detention basin before it's released out to the river to pair. Anything else?

Thank you very much. You're welcome.

Thank you.

Anything else, Brooke? We have no new business. We have any other council reports or council business? Council Member Fuller?

I'd like to do a follow-up. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Is this the time to compliment the Memorial Day run? All right. I just want to say thank you to Eric Karch. And he reminded me yesterday that he was one of nine people on that board that We had a superbly successful Memorial Day run. Festivity yesterday had over 1,500, almost 1,600 runners, highest amount that they've had in years. And that Memorial Day run, so everybody knows, benefits three different organizations, U City and Bloom, the Green Center, and University City Library. And I just want to say thank you and well done.

Thank you very much. Madam Clerk, do we have any more requests to speak?

There are none.

I do want to make sure that we call out and welcome Representative Rachel Prouty, who's in the audience tonight. It's nice to have you here, Representative. Thank you very much for joining us this evening. Are there any other comments from members of council at this time? Hearing none, I would welcome a motion to go into closed session according to Missouri's I statutes 610.021, legal actions, causes of action, litigation involving a public governmental body and any confidential privileged communications between a public governmental body or its representatives or attorneys and hiring a particular employee. Is there such a motion? Motion made by Council Member Tiemann. Is there a second? Seconded by Council Member McMahon. Is there a discussion? Hearing none, Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Council Member Tiemann.

Aye.

Council Member McMahon.

Aye.

Council Member Brenner. Aye. Council Member Fuller. Aye. Council Member Smotherson. Aye. Council Member Dancy. Mayor Crowe.

Aye. Thank you very much for joining us. As I request, we're going to the second floor. Is that correct, Madam Clerk? Thank you very much. There will be at least a five to seven minute recess to get things set up on the second floor. Thank you very much for joining us.