Administration / Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

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You don't need to turn. Okay. Uh welcome everybody to the April meeting of the administration and public works committee. Uh this is our second to last meeting here before the next induction and some of us may be here, some of us may not. So we've got quite a bit of stuff left here on the agenda um tonight. So I won't take too much of your time. Um we'll go ahead and get started with a roll call. Council member Preston, Council Member Mabberry

here, Council Member Ny here, Council Member Farmer here. Council member Marshall present. Council member Bashert, Council Member Vanick, Council Member Alers here. All right. Uh, with that, we would do uh the approval of minutes. If anybody cares to make a motion to approve the minutes made by Mr. Marshall. Anybody care to second it? Seconded by Mr. Mabry. Any questions or concerns before we vote? Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the minutes, please say I.

I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? All right. The minutes uh from last month pass. That brings us to public participation. I know we have one gentleman in the room. That was me. My apologies. All of a sudden, the audio clicked on. Uh I don't know that we have anybody attendees. Um so do we? No, I don't think so. Um okay, Mr. Sherman, I assume you would like Yes, sir. to speak. Okay. You've done this before, I know, but just as a reminder, try to keep it to about five minutes and we'll go from there.

Yes, sir. Michael Sherman, 17511 Summit View Place Cove. I'm here today obviously representing the bow hunters. Um, I lead the group called Certified Bow Hunters of St. Louis County that does deer management for all of the cities, you know, around us. Um, so first off, uh, I read the, uh, formal, um, assessment that, uh, was completed. I I pulled it and, uh, read most of it. Uh obviously I'm very familiar with a lot of the regulations that the other cities have incorporated and uh I've been operating under those regulations very successfully with my group for you know since it's been existence over 20 years. So I'm glad to see the effort and I appreciate the effort going out to coordinate with them and to get that research so we can understand what's being done out there you know without spending taxpayer dollars. I will say there's a couple concerns that I have when I read the document. Um I I understand the city's desire not to like approach that from a contract perspective. Um one the risk and stuff that you stayed in there is is obviously highlighted, but the frustration is that's exactly what you did with the people who were in the backyards with rifles shooting deer in the head um at night. And it you've done the work. You've obviously done what's needed to protect the city in that situation. So it shouldn't be much different at least from my perspective for a group of bow hunters. The other concern is the there's no real mention about you know giving us a fair chance at this. You know you went out and you got additional permits the nuisance permits from the Missouri Department of Conservation. You extended the hunting season. You allowed baiting. All of those things. The way I read the report, it basically assumes that we're just going to let the bow hunter asis status quo follow the Missouri Department of Conservation seasons. If you truly want this program to be effective with no cost to the

taxpayer dollars, I think at least a little effort would be appreciated. Um, again, I understand some of the complexities around this. I deal with it with a lot of the other cities as well. Uh, we get some support, more support than others. Um, I really appreciate uh several of the council members who called me and personally asked for my input. Gives me a voice um and uh some input so at least I know we're being heard. I'm just asking for, you know, some additional consideration. And then the one final thing that I would say that's extremely important is reducing the acreage minimum. There's it'd be easy to incorporate or shouldn't be too hard to incorporate a less than three acres to one acre archery only portion into the regulations where we can get access to those concentrated areas where the deer are where that have not really been touched and that's what makes it effective in a lot of the other areas. These deer are living in microhabitats and having access to them is is extremely important. There's a bunch of safety concerns listed. You know, the danger of archery and things of that nature. Um, trespassing. I am more than willing to take time if somebody wants, I'll stick around for tonight and I can share with you a lot of the tools that we use and the measures that we my group puts in place to ensure bad things don't happen. It I'm not going to stand up here and lie to you and pretend that accidents will never happen, but in the 20 plus years that the group's been in existence, we've never had an insurance claim. We've never had a major issue. Sure, there's been some discussions with property owners that just don't like deer hunters. We get that, but it's a very safe and can be very effective. So, again, appreciate your time tonight. Try to keep it short and I'll stay until the end if anybody has any questions for me or happy to answer them whenever it comes up.

Great. Great. Thank you.

Uh I don't see any other attendees online. So with that um we will close our public participation um which brings us uh to the item that Mr. Sherman was speaking about which is the uh formal assessment of incorporating bow hunters into future deer calling efforts. And uh as we have had this issue been being discussed in various capacities over the last several months um it I I became a bit of a lightning rod I guess so to speak on this issue. So to try to ensure that uh you know this report is what it needs to be to the council in the right capacity all those things I have asked uh our vice chair uh Mr. Marshall to take over this issue and he and Tom are going to tell us everything that they put together uh mostly Tom put together here with our our large memo and our presentation and everything else. So Mr. Marshall take it away.

Sounds good. Thank you. Going to do the whole memo. Are you?

Yeah. Line by line actually. Yeah. And I'm a really slow reader. CL but thank you for your comments. Um I think we're trying to compress this. So, we're still going to have to go to the to the council and somehow get it to the point there's just tons of really good information there. Um, but if people don't want to read it, they don't want to accept it, you're never going to change that. So, trying to make it as simple. So, maybe the goal as we go through this tonight is we could be able to finish up as we forward the staff's recommendation. We can decide what's important in the presentation to the rest of the council. Um I there wasn't anything that we hadn't done and unfortunately I I've been around it for 28 years. So there's a lot of stuff out there and there's a lot of unfortunately bad feelings with a lot of the residents that just didn't have a great experience. So I think that that part of that is we've got to really respect the fact that u I always thought that deer hunting was a part of our program. We never had a way to count it. So that's the unfortunate part because who knows maybe there's a thousand uh thousand headed deer coming out a year from the bow hunters and the gun hunters and we know that many of them many of the people have u several people come in on their property. So we have no way to know that but we do know what we've surveyed and then what we've done. So Mr. Lee would you like to start us through from the beginning?

Yes. Thank you so much uh vice chair and uh thank you committee. I wanted to first and foremost thank everybody for uh put l and this department to put this presentation together and the report was pretty intensive. The staff report itself was 29 pages. There was a lot of uh code that was used and cited within the report. So that was included as well. So it's not as bad as it looks. It's the 70s where it was at. But um in order to kind of consolidate even though it's still a little bit of a long presentation, we decided to put together um a PowerPoint just to go through. Uh so I'm going to share my screen here just so the folks at home can also see it and then the council can also the committee can also see it as well. But the idea would be to go through these and then at the end there is a recommendation slide from the department and as Mr. Marshall had mentioned uh a key component that would be very helpful to the department is given the fact that there is a lot of information on this. If we're able to possibly pick out the best components that would be best for the council to understand and get that forwarded over then we can most definitely alter what's presented tonight to kind of bring it to a little bit more of a happy medium of you know good information but also digestible content. So without further ado, we'll go ahead and share this. And so couple uh visual items, too, that'll help kind of explain some of the things we're talking about. One second here. Okay, so first and foremost wanted to go over the purpose of the report. We'll dive into these and fortunately a lot of information needs to be covered so it's going to take a second but think it's all worth it. Um so back in December to kind of get the basis of where we're coming from. Back in December, the council did not approve the White

Buffalo contract, which was part of our initial program, um, deer calling program. And part of that u was it was a vote on a on an actual contract itself. So, it wasn't necessarily a vote on deer management as a whole. It was a vote on just that contract. That said, that contract was effectively carrying out the work that we had proposed for the last couple of years. So, when that contract was denied, um, the program was effectively paused. The regulations that are currently on the books within Wildwood uh city code are still applicable today. Nothing of in that like has changed as of right now. Um the direction from the council after that vote and when the the ordinance failed was to refer to the administration and public works committee and then to look into the feasibility of incorporating local bow hunters into future deer management efforts. So the question that was posed and the purpose of this analysis is really to answer that exact question. and can we incorporate local bow hunters uh into future deer calling efforts and then also uh identify some of the more nuanced items that would come with that. So, first and foremost, we got actually a quick answer here on this, but this kind of goes something Mr. Marshall had just mentioned, but as of from the department's perspective and at least from what the current regulatory framework suggests is that yes, we we definitely want bow hunters incorporated in the program. and they're an instrumental part to deer management across the city. Currently, it is legal to hunt in wildwood. Uh it is, as mentioned by a public comment today, it is limited to three acre lot minimums. We'll go through a parcel map today that shows the parcels that are eligible, if you will, as long as you meet all the other requirements. Um, but not only that, just to point out kind of a numerical item here at 3,881 properties uh exceed that 3acre minimum threshold throughout the city and they make up the vast majority of the city's land mass. It's over 70% or 3acre parcels. Um, that

said, uh, getting back to the meat and potatoes of this, when a archery hunter goes out and legally takes a deer, that harvest is contributing to the overall population reduction and is helping our efforts. That said, uh, one thing that we found and one thing that's included in the recommendation is that we haven't really had a good way to quantify it, uh, that the reason why I was running a little late to this meeting is we actually did find that the managed hunts did post the um, the quotas that quotas and what actually the outcomes of the most recent hunt. So, we'll be able to break that information down a little bit. We didn't have a ch too much time to analyze it, but we did incorporate in tonight's presentation, but nonetheless, uh, when they were hunting in Babler, you know, that's more of a managed hunt. will go through, but Babler Rockwoods or if they're hunting on a threeacre lot of a friend or you know it's their own property. All of those efforts contribute to deer management. In the recommendation, we'll see what really would help the city to start understanding its impact is possibly requiring or requesting uh that bow hunters report their harvest information. Whether it be the two key components that we would need. Um there's more that we could wish for, but two big ones are, you know, where did you kill the deer and, you know, did you kill the deer? And then getting the information from that hunter. That said, a key factor of this report that that you'll see quite a bit is the word voluntary and the difference between voluntary hunting and uh a contracted hunt. That those have ramifications and we can break down and address some of the comments made from the public. Uh that said, also looking at it from the perspective of right now the city is a regulator of hunting activity, but if we were to contract and we have in the past with White Buffalo, you become an active participant in whatever operations take place after that. So we'll go through that a little bit, but overall wanted to give a quick answer here, you know, from the start and just say that yes, we can incorporate local bow hunters into

future deer calling efforts. They can hunt right now. uh well not right now but during the upcoming bow hunting season uh and that data that if we were able to get the data from them we would actually be able to better track what activity is taking place within the city and you know truthfully u you know th those impacts and breaking it down based off our population estimates. So to give a little background here just to kind of set the stage I wanted to go over and include in the presentation. This wasn't necessarily as covered in depth uh in the report but where we are at how' we get here we explain the uh the motion that was made etc but really kind of going into what we've done thus far and the success the the initial program and where we go from here. So real quick this image here uh hopefully this is helpful. It shows the six map areas that make up approximately 44% of the city that were studied. The reason why these areas were chosen was the denser residential nature of the homes and lots that are included within them. And then also the other major consideration which kind of started this whole conversation um is the major roadways that run through these map areas. So you'll see here that highway 100 and highway 109 uh are featured prominently. Uh, and then also as you go on, you got Old State Road, you have Allen, a portion of Allen. There's quite a bit. Nonetheless, to kind of break it down of where we've operated in the past, we were hunting in the NE1 and any two map areas, which you'll see here in red and blue on the northeastern portion of the city. First year was NE1, second year was NE2. Um, going into the study back, we're and just so you know for this data, the data we're using is pulled from, you know, multiple sources of our the cities. one being uh for the SE1 uh SE2 west one and west two regions that's from the 2020 distance sampling survey but we actually have more fresh data on the NE2 map area any one map area and the SE1 map area so I wanted to point out where the data is coming from for the consolidated uh picture here but nonetheless uh we were trying to put together a better

understanding of we'll get to the next slide where it shows what we actually have to remove each year at a very conservative level just to maintain the population at its current levels Um so right now uh we were at back in 2020 when we did the initial study at least six areas we were at 71.5 deer per square mile um across this 30.48 square miles of the city. After the two first years of operations we got that down to approximately 57.6 deer per square mile. Uh that is an estimate. That said, uh the trend data and seeing that over time does go to show that it was red effectively reducing the population across the study area. Uh that is still quite off from what the Missouri Department recommendation and most white papers on the matter would suggest would would be around 15 to 20 deer per square mile and the initial goal of the city being 40 deer. And then the idea was to get to that point and then that was really supposed to be the set target up front and then also see how we could further reduce and get it closer to the ecologically balanced approach of 15 to 20 deer. uh did also want to point out uh that the act just going back to the these population estimates that are included here. These are very conservative because the next slide will show we're using from cited literature the most conservative estimate possible uh at a 20% annual growth rate for the deer population that grows each year. that you can almost picture it as this. If you have, you know, a hundred deer in an area and you don't do anything, you don't introduce any type of hunting activity or calling activity and you let it be, typically, unless there's some contributing factors that would stagnate growth, you would see about 20% deer, uh you see about 20 deer that would be added to the population year-over-year. That said, uh we've seen studies, there was a study in southeast Illinois, uh that showed all the way up to 73% annual growth. There's also been studies that suggest a little

bit closer to 40 to 50%. That was actually a study conducted by University of Montana and they had suggested they studied suburban population deer populations within the state of Missouri. That said, we're using the most conservative estimate possible just to show a baseline understanding of what needs to be done each year just to keep the population at current levels. So, go in here real quick just to kind of show what we were planning on doing originally too is that the most recent operations we're planning on going into the northeast one, northeast two regions that go into areas that we may not have had access to pri previously. And then we're also going to be expanding into the SC1 region including uh a portion of state route 109 adjacent to anyone any two and southeast one and also Old State Road. So going on here uh this is kind of going back to that annual population growth. Uh we can assume at least 20% annual population growth each year. uh and really and kind of get more specific with the most recent thermal drone survey that we conducted in the NE1 region that showed approximately 47 deer in that area which was also conservative given the fact that there could be deer that were under evergreen forest. That is 100% confirmed 47 deer per mile in the northeast one region per that study. That said, um just in that area alone, just to keep the population where it is, it's about 52 deer that you have to call each year just for Northeast One. When you expand that same calculus out for all six map areas, and like I said, this is only 44% of the city, we'd have to remove roughly 351 deer each year. So, when you look at what we had done the first couple years, 300 361, uh we were actually we were targeting it, and that's the reason why we did it that way, is that we're targeting in a very specific area because if you did that across the entire city, it really wouldn't see an effect. You would just be controlling for the the population that's going to be growing in the next year. So that said, the main approach and why we want to share this is that

each year we have to at least remove 351 if we want to have a deer management program and sustain the population. At least 351 deer should be removed each year. Also, you would still want to keep monitoring uh and doing distance sampling or thermal drone surveys, whatever the council would choose, but you would want to keep constant constant tax on uh how many deer you have in these areas because that's the best way to do it because it is not necessarily the data that comes in the first time. It still is accurate and is statistically valid. It has a confidence interval that's provided. There is a methodology behind it. That said, if you keep doing it year-over-year, you're able to study the trend of that data. So, just wanted to point that out as well is that, you know, even though I'm providing these numbers that are that are approximations and estimates, I do want to just mention that this is conservative and quite frankly, we we need to keep studying the population to know more. All right. Uh, so jumping in here. So going back kind of the the point at hand here the existing role of bow hunters existing role of bow hunters um going back to the same point we they are already currently a part of it. One thing we are missing is data collection. We do not currently have the reporting necessary to know the true impact of archery hunting that takes place or sharpshooting hunting that takes place within the entire city. Um right now the and we'll get into our regulations versus others. We don't require uh any hunter to actually notify the city of the hunting activity as long as they're meeting the requirements. Um they're they're clear to go as long as they're meeting MDC and city requirements. That said, uh if someone were to call the police and say there is an individual that has a firearm or a bow um in my backyard that's hunting and an officer were to be dispatched and they got with that person and they didn't have permission um to hunt, then that would pose its own its own risk. So, it's almost a trust but verify uh setup that we have here in Wildwood which helps

reduce administrative burden but also um the fact that we have the 3acre parcel minimum does allow us to kind of keep that framework in place because um it's been it has been working over the last 30 years. That said, uh e I just want to keep hitting this point, but right now every time a bow hunter or sharpshooting hunter takes a deer, if we know that information, we can incorporate that into our model. Uh that said, the best case scenario is that we can start getting some of this information moving forward here. Okay, so this is an important factor too and it'll get into our liability discussion. uh the difference between professional calling and hunting. So professional calling is more of a targeted and outcome driven setup where you take a limited amount of space. Uh in our case for the first two years, we took the NE1 and NE2 regions. Uh we set defined goals of how many deer we wanted to call within that within that year and then also what was the impact anticipated on the population. And when we did that, our estimates that came back tended to support the amount of deer, the the population levels that we would target based off the number that we removed. So, I just wanted to point that out because it's not necessarily hunting citywide. It's finding very localized areas and slowly chipping away at the problem using contiguous land mass as you saw any one any two down south to southeast one. The idea behind it was to slowly chip away at the problem starting with the most densely populated area at 94 back in 94 deer per square mile back in 2020 and then bringing it around and eventually getting out to west one and west two. Um hunting by contrast is is a decentralized and organic recreational activity. That said, can it have a positive impact on our uh production efforts? Yes, 100%. Nonetheless, it's really important to understand this concept when we get to whether or not we should contract with local bow hunters.

So, I just wanted to kind of set the stage here before we jump in. Um, and then real quickly, we'll go over what the city had done the last two years and we'll kind of compare that to where we go for forward. Um, so back a little history. Back in 2023, the city initiated a 5-year deer management program. Um the idea was to reduce the deer population density from about 71.5 deer per square mile to roughly 40 deer within that five-year period. Um that was supposed to be the initial target. And then overall the idea was to have bow hunting activity take place throughout that entire time to help keep the the population maintained kind of hit at those 351 deer that need to be removed each year generally um while also going in almost the spearhead of of the assault if you will on lowering the population. we were kind of serving as that point with White Buffalo. Also on that same note when we worked with White Buffalo uh the reason why uh reason why we did that was for certainty about outcomes because one thing that we were able to learn after working with them but also from the references that we worked with as well is that when they would go out there was a guarantee of absolute safety. So we know if the resident that provided permission for property allowed that permission that the individual hunter was going to be out there and they were going to fire their discharge their weapon on that property the bullet sorry to be graphic here would hit the deer on that property and the deer would drop on that property. There was well just for example there were 661 deer cold within the first two years of our program and there were 661 shots fired with no safety safety incidents reported. I think that's a very key factor here because when we get to some of the scenarios and the liability that can come up if you contract with just the whole hunting community, it it starts to open up a few doors. That said, um that's really where a lot of this came from where, you know, we're trying to

reduce the population while also guaranteeing safety and outcome uh across the program. So, a quick summary of what was done the first two years. Um, and to kind of give a visual representation, I have shown the N1 and N2 region again and some of our major roadways to kind of point out the the GE geography. But in 2024, we called 300 deer. The target was 300 um in the NE1 region. In 2025, we operated across any one and any two. Uh, and we were able to call 661 uh 361 deer. There's actually six more deer more than what was originally targeted. uh which resulted in donations to local food pantries in the St. Louis Zoo. Reason why I bring this up is not necessarily just to show that you know city did help quite a few families uh but also helped out the St. Louis zoo quite a bit. The red wolf sanctuary just as a FYI they need u raw carcass they can't have processed meat. So that was helpful to them. Uh, but this is mentioned here because it explains, you know, we could actually save approximately $200 on each deer that we call, but the council decided actively to donate this meat, not only to be compliant with MDC, um, and be able to get the baiting uh, the baiting permit, but also in order to, you know, be able to say, hey, we're not just disposing of these carcasses at the local trash uh, facility. That there's a lot of, you know, baggage that comes with that, too. When we're talking about the expenses, we're trying to show why it might have been so expensive.

It's 21,000 pounds of meat. That's correct. It was it a lot. It's a lot of money. A lot of families fed and tons.

Yes. But nonetheless, um just wanted to point this out because, you know, there is a way where you can save some money doing either either or, you know, it depends how you're going to dispose of the meat. Um that said, that is explains a decent portion of the cost that were being exhibited. Uh, also this is probably one of the most important updates tonight I really wanted to hit on because it kind of it's finally the data is catching up with some of the work that was completed. Uh, this was recently published with our annual crash analysis with the board of public safety. Uh, we did not have this data until last week. So, um, want to thank the St. Louis County Police Department for their work in this, but uh, kind of measuring the impact of the work. And when we first started this, one of the things that we we wanted to be able to measure outcomes here. And the outcome of having, you know, 71.5 deer per square mile in that highly dens densely populated and highly trafficked areas is it leads to car accidents. And over the last, you can look back 15 years. U every year it's well over 200 deer that are struck by cars each year. Uh it varies each year a little bit. This is a conservative baseline too because when this data is being reported, we know 100% that a deer had been hit because the police respond to it. We don't include anecdotal u reports and that helps keep a baseline conservative estimate once again. So we can 100% say that that happened. Um so we're not possibly overselling any data because we want to work with conservative estimates. That said, uh happy to report that this most recent year, uh when we look at the last from 2018 to 2024, it was 239 deer on average were getting struck by cars in Wildwood in those in across the city. And 2025, the most recent year where you have about 10 months of the impact of both the first year of operations, the second year, we saw that reduced down to 177. That was the first time in over 15 years where we

had less than 200 deer accidents per per year. That said, uh that's that's huge. 62 incidents were saved from the average. That is a that that's the data we were looking for. We didn't necessarily see it as directly in 2024. Uh but that only half the work had been completed at that time. So overall from our overall goal, we were only 40% through the program. So, I just wanted to point that out and say, you know, from what we were trying to achieve up front when it comes to reducing the population it we were doing that and now it's starting to show within the deer vehicle collision stats that are being recorded. And just as an example here, this is a very recent estimate of how much this is costing the motorists that come through Wildwood, but more so the residents because that's where a lot of these accidents happen. That's who's impacted. Um $6,466 is estimated for each repair uh for every deer that's hit by a car. And that is borne by the individual that ends up hitting the deer. And I can anecdotally say that the majority of the staff here in Wildwood has hit a deer on their way home from work um have had a lot of close calls. So it is something that that was one of the main things we were trying to achieve is lowering those counts. Um, so when you actually multiply that out by the number of deer accidents that were saved, hopefully contributed to what uh attributed to what we had done, um, it could be around $400,000 in savings from damages. So that's a I I department personally believes that was a really great finding. We're happy to see that. Um, and it did show kind of a reward for the work that had been done thus far. um a little bit more of a specific amp example because there was two years of operations kind of getting back to the coing versus hunting across the whole city and just the any one area alone to kind of see that decrease over time. Um in 2023 before any operations had taken place there were 71 deer strikes that occurred in 2024 that went down to 54 and then back in 2025 this most recent year we saw that decrease further to 43. So it shows that consistent downward

trend which also aligns with the downward trend we had seen with the deer density. So it helps support that that conclusion that as you lower the deer population density, you also lower the number of deer collisions that take place within the city. Um so going back to the program effectiveness, the only reason why I wanted to point this little note out at the bottom was that this took a sustained targeted effort to to get to where we are now. Um, I just want to, you know, point out too that, you know, should we not do anything, you would have recruitment that does take place, which is population growth, and those deer would increase unless you can effectively say that at least 351 are being removed each year, and it's most likely very much more than that. Um, but just wanted to point out that sometimes the data takes a second to catch up, but we hope that the most recent deer vehicle collision analysis uh kind of helps illustrate, you know, the purpose of what we were doing over the past two years. Okay, so we already kind of mentioned this, but just a quick note u about the program currently. Back in December, it was halted uh and the council did not approve the initial the contract with White Buffalo. Uh that said, local bow hunters did continue hunting naturally. So hunting activity still work, still occurred. There was sharpshooting, hunting activity. Uh we didn't get any of the data, though. That's an important piece that we'll get to at the end. But at the end of the day, it was just the city's, you know, professional sharpshooting program that was halted. And you know, the motion to put the feasibility report together, we're talking about that now. And then we plan to take the recommendations tonight and present that to the full council on April 13th on Monday. So going into the regulatory framework where Wildwood is now and kind of comparing it to some of our u some of our neighbors. Uh just wanted to point out to that in the report uh at the end there is that chart that helps illustrate some of the differences between some of the other municipalities

regulations and Wildwoods. Uh to kind of lay a little bit get a better understanding up front. Um the state of Missouri, they govern they don't necessarily govern some of the specifics that you know you would you might think they would. Uh they do govern when lawful seasons can take place. Uh what kind of permitting methods take place u the tags that hunters are able to get. They they govern all of those components. That said, uh the city is more so in charge of the operational component. So, we are the a couple key factors of ours includes the threeacre lot minimum, the fact that you can't have uh you can't fire an arrow within 200 feet of a school or structure or anything like that without written permission. And then also uh just as another finding too, we if a school is in session, it has to be down to 100 feet. That said, when you look at other cities that are surrounding Wildwood in the near region, I just wanted to point out that they do allow uh archery hunting, um firearm hunting, I know, not firearm, archery hunting specifically on parcels as small as one acre. And they, a lot of them do allow multiple property owners as long as they don't cross a street to aggregate their parcels to meet minimum parcel size requirements and setback requirements. Um, that said, the trade-off here is Wildwood currently allows hunting on threeacre minimums, but we don't necessarily have a notification or regulatory framework that forces them to submit a bunch of paperwork to the city saying they're doing it and reporting on the harvest data. Other all the other cities that do have the 1acre minimums, they also require mandatory property owner permission. So, the city actually gets a letter from the property owner saying, "Hey, this individual can hunt on the property." They usually require uh individuals to submit actual certificates of insurance whether they be made up of the property owner themselves, the hunter or combination of

both. Uh the city actually needs that physical copy of insurance on on hand. The city all the other cities typically require either a permitting system which difference between a permit and just a notification. One is just you have to notify the city, the other is you actually have to wait for the permission from the city. Uh and then usually you see that uh hunters have to report their their take within 48 hours of their of the kill. Uh so there's some other regulations that could be helpful too that you know the field dressing regulations where when um how quickly you need to be able to get the deer off the site, how you should do that. Also, some other cities actually show uh a little bit more tangible and proactive regulations in the sense that you have to have deer deer height stands at a certain height. Um have it some get as crazy as saying here's the trajectory. You can't fire a bow an arrow at this angle. It gets pretty minute. That said, the reason why I bring this up is that the key difference between Wildwood and these other cities is really the minimum acreage requirement, the setback requirement that kind of goes naturally with it and then also flip side of that is all the requirements that come with having that smaller uh that small p smaller parcel requirement. Uh, one point I did want to point out and we've talked to multiple cities and we've looked through all the codes that are provided uh, all the city codes that are provided in the report tonight. No other city and uh, actually contracts with bow hunters. They do have a permitting system where they go in and they allow um, bow hunters, bow hunting groups, anything to come in, they submit their paperwork and then they're able to, you know, you know, operate within the city effective. That was a really key finding because we did talk with the Missouri Department of Conservation too and they confirmed that there bow hunting is occurring all across the state in many many areas. That said, when it comes to actually contracting

with um local hunters in your area, there is no example or precedent set by other cities in our area, but also across the state of Missouri. There's been a couple examples that the city's been able to find of uh other municipalities having managed hunts on their own local park grounds, which we'll cover a little bit here. Uh that said, it's not to the extent of hey, the city is going to go out and retrieve private property access for anyone who wants to participate or even a group that wants to participate in the bow hunting. Uh so just wanted to point that out. And going in here, another point that I wanted to wanted to be made is just kind of compare. We wanted to look at the regulations which are very important and learning from our neighbors is very important too. Nonetheless, I think it's important to understand the scale of Wildwood as well because we are somewhat different from the cities that are nearby that have a lot of these programs and the oneacre minimum too and something we could discuss but uh nonetheless I think it would be something we' need to most likely get a lot of feedback from the residents from. Uh but city wall was 68 square miles in size. So when you think about that, if you're running a permitting program for all the hunting activity that's taking place, the amount of actual permits that would need to be processed, you can attribute that and you'll see that naturally increase by the amount of land that's eligible for hunting. So Wildwood's 68 square miles, the closest is our neighbor Chesterfield at 31. I just want to remind folks of this because, you know, when you look at a lot of these other cities, I mean, they range from two to 10 square miles. Um, Wildwood has a very very large footprint and we'll show it in the map that a lot of it is threeacre parcels. So, right now hunting is allowed in the majority of the city. That said, you know, in these other cities there's not many threeacre parcels left. So, really their only option is to allow 1acre parcels. So, I just wanted to point that out up front um so that we kind of understand at least the magnitude and scope because if we were to want to look into our code

a little bit further and possibly revise it, that's something we're going to have to keep in mind moving forward. Um going in here just about the parkland as well. Um and this is where we actually got some recent new data today. Uh but when we look at some of our state and county parks and in the map that was provided in the report, you'll see Greensfelder, you'll see Babbler, you'll see Rockwoods Reservation and Rockwoods Range. All four of those parks, one being a county, Greensfelder. Uh all of those parks actually have managed hunts take place within them each year. We get notifications from the county for Greensfelder. We also get notifications from the state when they're operating in the other areas. Um, that said, I did want to note that Babler doesn't do archery, a managed archery hunt. They do uh a muzzle loader and cabin ball, but nonetheless, they do have a managed hunt there. And the way it works, it's 11 square miles of the city are made up of these massive parks. And you know, these parks are open to any hunter that would potentially want to participate. And the most recent data that was came out from the 2025 2026 hunts uh actually 88 deer were successfully harvested within all these these parks which is great to see. Uh that said uh there were 288 hunters that got the lottery drawn. They ended up participating and of them 65 were successful. Uh so just wanted to point out kind of the effectiveness of those. And I just want to remind everyone to the sheer size. I mean 11 square miles of the 68 that we're talking here are all parkland that are open and right now hunters could as long as they're registered with MDC they can actually sign up and possibly get drawn to participate hunting in those areas. We don't have any control over the hunting that takes place within these parks. Um that said when we look at city owned land so if we want to duplicate those efforts we tried to look at that as well because that could be a tool and we've seen other cities do it. That said, when you look at it, the city doesn't own very much land. It's just it's just true.

Even though it's a city of Wild with 68 square miles, it's huge city. We really own this parcel here. We own Community Park. We have Portner Park, which is a little bit of an outlier, but and we own uh Anniversary Park. Those are the real options that we have. And when you map those out in our city, you'll see that they're a little bit spread out, but they don't give you the adequate coverage you need to just say, "Hey, we're going to hunt these park properties." I think there could be something where you do that as a supplement to what you would naturally do. But if you just were to say, "All right, how we're going to approach this issue is we're just going to have manage hunts in our park property." You're not going to have uh the infiltration necessary across the entire area that needs to be cold um in order to actually have a meaningful impact. You will see a reduction around the park, which is great. But if you're looking at a citywide approach, I just want to keep hitting this home today uh tonight, is that the city is very large and you're going to need more than just the park properties owned by the city in order to effectively reduce it and get to even numbers that we were able to start approaching u over the last two years. So, a moment on that too and then uh I did also want to point out too that whatever program or whatever steps the city does take, we're going to need private property owners to help uh to help out pitch in. And just as a note to that too, when we talked to a lot of the private property owners that have worked with us over the past couple years, a lot of them are already allowing bow hunting activity and sharpshooting activity in some instances when they were uh east west of 109. Um they already allowed that activity on their their site. We've actually had a couple instances where you actually had them almost lined up and we had to create a buffer zone between the two because they can impact each other. the amount of deer that are kind of native and and naturally inclined to come to this debate after operations take place and normal hunting takes place. That said, uh I I just think I I I really want to

hit home tonight that, you know, we definitely have some properties that meet the threeacre minimum. We could set something up. But when you start looking at it about the amount of investment and resources and time that would be necessary to set up a managed hunt on those properties and talking with our partners with the county and MDC about what it takes to set one of these up uh for themselves, it it would be a great supplement and something we could explore, but it's not going to solve the problem. That's the main point I want to bring up. It's a tool in the tool belt. Okay. Uh so another thing, I know it's a long presentation and I appreciate everybody's patience tonight. Uh but kind of going into these these differences in definitions, I just wanted to point this out too. And going back to permitting versus contracting. Um couple points here that you know property access when when it when we're permitting the activity, which right now we do permit it. We don't have an actual permit that's issued. We permit the activity. The property access is secured by the hunter himself or you know as a property owner that calls a hunter whatever it might be. uh the hunters and land owners, they assume the responsibility for compliance, safety, and liability. Everything that happens out there is attainable to those individuals, and if the city were to get a call, depending on what the issue was, we would treat it as such. But nonetheless, it doesn't tie into the city, and it doesn't give any additional risk to the city liability wise. Um, when it comes to what we do, I mean, we do have an administrative framework in the sense that we have guidelines that they have to follow and if we find out they're not following it, we could prove it. There is there's repercussions. Um, and that's why, you know, we do have prohibitions that we you can't shoot over roadways. There's certain things in our code, too, and other codes that can't shoot within 200 feet with a a structure, etc., but we don't necessarily go out there and watch folks hunt while they're doing it. Um, when a city contracts a hunter or contracts an individual, a group, um, the city's assuming the liability. That is 100% true. And at the end of the day, whoever is hunting on behalf of the

city, you almost can think of it like this. Whatever action takes place that the city helped guide, the city is liable for it. There's a way to tie the city back into the liability. And from a municipal risk standpoint, you need guarantee of public safety. You need guarantee that nothing, no property damage will occur, that no disputes will happen across neighbors. Um, things can get dicey very quickly if you have a lot of operations taking place with a lot of people over a lot of time. Um that said too, you know, there is ways to control for some of this with liability insurance, etc. But nonetheless, there are there are there is case study out there that hunter goes out and I have some scenarios in the report. I put a couple in here too. But uh hunter goes out on the property, you know, hits a deer, the deer is not dead, it runs out into the road, gets hit by a car. that person driving the car has every right to sue the city because the city directed and helped guide that hunt to take place. And if we were the reason why the permission of the property took place uh happened, then they can effectively make the case that we are the reason why they hit the deer in the first place. So that's just one example. We have a couple more, but I just want to point that out because contracting is different than permitting. And quite frankly, if we permit it and we help record some of the data and we can even look at some of our code provisions um to see if there's some ways to increase opportunity. I think all that department thinks it's a great way to you know help support the effort. That said when we contract we just need to understand the amount of liability and risk that we are taking on because it is risk and even with White Buffalo there was risk associated with it. What calmed those fears was that the experience that they had and the fact that we had a lot of data from other municipalities but also other vendors across the country. But the the thing that's kind of gets down to the nuts and bolts of this is when they pulled the trigger, the deer was hit in the head and the deer dropped right there. The deer didn't leave the property line. So that was the key factor that makes it so yeah, you could

say the city definitely did help with the access component, but we'd almost need a guarantee from whoever would take that mantle to say, I can guarantee to you that the deer will not leave the property after it struck or after the activity takes place. That is something to to really ring true and keep keep in mind as we go through this. Um, and real quickly here. Okay. Uh so getting to what we were just talking about the difference between being a regulator and versus being an active participant. So right now we are a regulator. When hunting activity takes place within the city um we are effectively enforcing our code. People call the police or call the city. Uh we would we would dispatch police or code enforcement whatever it might be out to assess the situation and be able to site individuals if necessary. But when it comes to liability the risk is on the individual and the property owner. Um, if we are to contract, we become the active participant. We are actively guiding and overseeing the operation, meaning anything White Buffalo would have done, but also anything that, you know, a group of hunters would do, that's on the city. It's directly tied to us, and we could be held accountable for any actions that take place. All right, couple hypotheticals. I I'll skip over this because it was in the report, but you know, it kind of goes into some of the more nuance situations that could take place. I mean, you know, I wanted to provide a couple examples, not only because, you know, you do you have the obvious situation where deer gets hit, doesn't pass away, and continues running, crosses property lines, and then possibly a trespass issue. I think that's what comes to mind when most people think about it. But going back to what we were just talking about, you could have one where, you know, a deer is struck and then a car, it might not even be the fact that the deer ran out in front of the car, but the car hits the deer somehow. the city somehow tied is is now tied into that situation because we helped get the property access and we're contracting with the entity that's acting as an agent of the city. Moreover, if you have an individual that you know possibly the

city's, you know, administering the program, we confirm this property line, but you know, maybe there's a miscommunication somewhere in between and then maybe a a discharge occurs off a property that we actually had access to it. happens on another property or the arrow crosses or a bullet crosses whatever it might be onto a property that you didn't have access to that property owner wants to hold the city account hold whoever accountable they could hold the city accountable too. It just goes to show like think about it anything that happens after you turn individuals into agents of the city the city can be tied back to and be held liable for. So from a mis risk management perspective you need guarantees that those incidents will never happen. Not it might not happen or it could happen but it's not likely it can never happen because if it does not only does the liability come in and the city is in jeopardy legally and financially but also I mean just from a trust in perspect trust perspective from the public we're tied to one of an incident like that it's something that the city would have a lot of trouble with and it it that said just wanted to bring that up because there is a plethora of different things that could go wrong. Uh that said, you know, I know a lot of hunting activity occurs every day. We don't hear anything about it. So that said, it's more so the risk, the outstanding risk that sits there dayto-day. Not not saying though, at the end of the day, we need all these bow hunting activities. It's just a question of do we want to be an active participant in the activity or do we want to be a regulator like we are today? uh going on here and this is I think a very cre uh every area in blue on the presentation shown here is currently three acres or more. So if you see that that's where when I was saying 70% or more of the city is three acres or greater that is currently the situation we're faced with. And quite frankly, if you look at the green areas and the red uh green represents 1 to 3 acres and then the red areas represent 1 acre or

less. So when you break those down by number, 388 uh 3881 uh parcels that are over three acres, you would add effectively if you reduced it to one acre or more, you would add effectively 1,600 or so uh parcels to the mix. That said, most of the parcels that are 1 acre or more, you'll notice, at least the ones that are east of 109, they're directly adjacent or almost even connected to subdivisions that are less than one acre. So, just getting into a footprint of deer that may be running after being struck. Uh you you may want to take that into account. That said, uh also wanted to point out just once again, the city does not have much land suitable for, you know, active hunting activities. So it's not like we have, you know, perfectly placed properties where we could go do this because that would actually be the best case scenario. We'd be able to control for risk the most in that case. So kind of hitting back, we need help from the people, the parcels, the property owners, people that own the properties in blue here. That's who we require and need help from to make any program, whether it be through hunting or through a program ran by the city, that's who we need help from. um looking at it, you know, if you want to aggregate parcels, that's something that is in other cities as well. If you do that, it it does create some additional uh all the areas in red would highlight uh would would come into play potentially. And one note that we wanted to point out tonight, we recently just saw this when we were reviewing a set of indentures, is that some HOAs actually have prohibitions against hunting within the within their HOAs, uh within their subdivisions. doesn't mean necessarily that we don't enforce indentures as a city, but it just kind of adds another wrinkle into this whole calculation of, you know, you start getting into some of the more denser subdivisions. Typically, they outlaw um any kind of hunting activity in the subdivision. If that's just another scenario where we could be put directly at odds. We permit an individual to allow this activity.

We're serving an a an agent of the city is now on that property actively hunting. Um and then all of a sudden the HOA comes out and says, "Hey, we never approve this activity even though we don't enforce indentures and legally we are in the right because state code uh state uh city code trumps the HOA indentures. That said, now we put the property owner who's willing to participate in the line of fire of their HOA." So it's just once again adding another little nuance point to this this whole calculation. Uh and then further uh just kind of getting back to the point of voluntary participation because right now hunting activity is occurring on a lot of these properties. So especially the three the 11 square miles of park property that are noted here. Um you've got managed hunts taking place there. Um I think there could be an argument to be had maybe Babler incorporates some archery hunting. They have muzzle loader right now, but that could be a discussion with MDC still. Nonetheless, those properties are not managed by the city and the other properties are blue. Those are private property owners and they they have to be the one to guide any decision. Even if the city were to participate, they have to say yes. And then quite frankly, if you think the deer might cross over a property line, if you don't have enough uh distance to meet the setback requirements, then you need access to the adjacent property owner as well, which creates administrative burden and quite frankly would need quite a bit of staff time and resources to be able to oversee. Uh okay, so kind of sorry long-winded presentation tonight. apologize but wanted to make sure this was given the time and um effort that was necessary to really kick off and do this right. Um, nonetheless, you know, couple items just wanted to point out again. You know, we are currently and we support as a city local bow hunting throughout the entire city. Everywhere in blue, going back everywhere in blue, we'd love to see bow hunting happen as soon as deer archery season begins. And honestly, if they could tell us the number of deer that they they take each year, that would be excellent. if we

could incorporate that into the data that we already have and then compare that to if we do distance sampling in the future that could then play a role and help shape how we got those numbers. Um not only that but is currently permitted under our current regulations and we have you know public land that's available um that individuals can sign up for and are currently signing up for. Um and then also just wanted to point out that hunting is currently provided that MDC regulations and city regulations are met. Uh hunting hunters are currently contributing to the population reduction efforts we've seen. So when we saw those uh reduction in deer collisions that was you know a lot of what the city did but I don't want to underscore the fact that we want hunters out there working in these areas because if they go out and they hunt on these threeacre parcels they are doing our job for us. So it's a good thing nonetheless helpful if they could help with some they could submit reporting to the city showing what takes they take that take place also just showing at the end of the day really you know it when when it comes down to it uh contracting private hunters you know it can it be done legally? Yes it can. But if we do, we are taking on a significant amount of liability unless whoever that entity is can be able to say that and guaranteed to the city that the deer will not leave the property at which they're they're uh they get hit or that no property disputes are going to occur that they have all that taken in place and that we're not going to be at risk. Uh that said, getting to the recommendations for tonight um and moving into the council meeting. Uh the department's recommending that we maintain the current regulatory framework for now. Um which allows hunting on threeacre minimums and has been working and has been in place for approximately 30 years. Um we do think that if we were going to make a code

change, the best thing we could do is require or strong work with the bow hunters to have them report harvest data to the city specifically. Um age, not age, but sex, location of the kill. Uh that kind of information could really help us out. map that we showed tonight for the parcel parcels by acre, we could actually pinpoint all those hunts and also those kills across and it could be very helpful in our analysis. Uh so that's another component. Then also uh big one number three is that we should not be contracting with local hunters to or facilitating property access. Those two things dramatically increase liability. Um and the risks just strictly they outweigh the benefits from our analysis. Uh there is another component here where we could consider permitting our notification requirements that are similar to other cities. Um something we could definitely most we could look at. That said, I just want to remind everybody of the scale of Wildwood versus those cities. Then last u this is just mentioned because other cities do have this in place. Uh review the minimum acreage requirements that the city currently has and then figure out if is the city of Wildwood a place that needs to have you know threeacre minimums. Do we want to look at that? I think further study could be done. Nonetheless, I think anything we do, if we're going to reduce the acreage requirements, you know, when you look at that map again, uh, and you look at the green, especially if you allow aggregation of parcels, I think it would be of utmost importance to get direct feedback from the residents that would be added to the program effectively and their neighbors if we were to make that type of change. So, uh, that little component, just wanted to add the asterisk next to it that if we wanted to look at that further, I think direct input from the individuals that live there would be astute and would help guide that decision. Uh, but nonetheless, um, I just want to say at the end of it too, you know, to any bow hunters possibly listening, please continue bow hunting in Wildwood. We we do need your help because we have too many deer. Thank you and available for any questions. Sorry for the long presentation.

No, that's there's a lot of data there. Um, we'll go to some questions because then I have two or three that kind of sparked as I watched through it. Cliff, well, I have a little bit to say if that's okay. He had what?

I don't have that. Um, you know, um, I know we're much bigger than everybody else, but I think we really have to take a look at using bow hunters in our area because really everybody around us is is doing it. And it doesn't mean we have to, but they're they're making it work. Um, uh, couple meetings ago, Mr. Sherman talked and thought he was very professional and uh and and very uh um respectful in his presentation. Same thing tonight, which a lot of those presentations weren't very respectful over the last six months. So, uh we've talked a few times and shared things and uh I just want to go over some things. I've talked to the cities around us and found out more things than I that I didn't know. And Tom, everything you put together was great. This this spreadsheet's really great here. This this says a lot, you know. Uh but just uh um Michael's group certified bow hunters. There's 10 of them, right?

Correct.

And and and they and they took out 125 deer last season themselves, which is pretty remarkable. I I I didn't think that that small a group could do that many. But uh and he uh he did that mostly in Eureka. Eureka uses them almost exclusively for all their all their areas, their parks and the Legends Golf Course. So his group comes pretty respected from Eureka Ballwin and Sunset Hills and and probably more, but those are the ones I got down. You know, interestingly enough, Chesterfield's been using bow hunting for 20 years and had no idea. The uh the person I talked there said they only had to take out 50 to 75 deer last year. So I guess they got they had a problem under control. Bowwin has been using it for a few years, but they took out 30 deer last year. Clark Clarkson Valley 10 to 15 last year. Ellisville no program. But it just seems like the bigger city square miles us Chesterfield Eureka can kind of compare them a little bit more than the other ones. And uh you know just in hearing what Tom's saying with the re recommendations, I'm not recommending for any um hiring or contracting, right? I I I would think a permitting uh program would work good for us here. And uh you know, I I certainly would advocate for Michael to to uh to meet with us to see if if if he could help serve us in this area. I think he's the the right person for the job from what I've seen in talking to people. And from what I understand, if we do a permit program,

the city would have to have a packet of of files, you know, with insurance and all this stuff on file at the city and then the bow hunters have to report each deer taken out to that particular city and the bow hunting and I'm sorry, conservation department. Right. So, I don't know if there's anything more to it that we would have to do as a city, but if it's fairly simple like that, I I think that's really worth pursuing. Uh I also think we should do a drone survey before the season and I I would want the other side to agree they will accept the results, so to speak. I don't know if not Michael but Mr. Mitchell never accepted anything that we said to him. So I would want to make sure it's accepted by the other side. And uh you know at the end of it you know with missing this season we may need both groups to to make this work. We may you know we might find we need to take out four or 500 deer next year. I don't know. Um, and uh, I think you made the point you were looking for help from the city to communicate with residents, right? And I don't know if there's anything possible that way, but I I did tell Michael that we do have some strain relationships with some of our residents because Mr. Mitchell sent out letters to them and got some some people upset, you know. So, there's some some repair work to do with some of those residents because of this. And uh lastly, I know some of our fellow council members are going to make the motion to

go to one acre. And I'm not sure at this point, good or bad. I don't know if I'm there yet with that. Okay. And I know some of our council member are going to suggest getting our police department involved in it too, which I don't know if if that works, but apparently maybe some other communities do that way. But uh I uh just long summary, short summary here, just uh I'm I'm really for his group getting involved with this and see if we can make something work, you know. So I'm not allowed to talk, am I? Not yet. No. Okay. Can I ask questions of your comments? Yeah. Yeah.

Um, so when you listed those other cities that Yeah. participate like you're saying by participate, they don't contract. They just require the permits. Okay. It's all it's it's all on here, too. You know what? Yeah. But then is anyone like when you talk about Mr. insurance group, but if you're doing permits through the city, anybody could come and get a permit. Like, right. I'm asking that like you can't say only this group can come and get No, no, no. We need we need more than his tenant. He probably has access to getting more, you know? I just wanted to clarify that because I don't understand. And then is all are is all of that all those hunters required when they get the permit required to donate

or are they allowed to keep some? because I just know from comments and council meetings some of the people that were speaking and I'm not blaming them for wanting to keep what they right get. So I don't know if that would make a difference in them reporting it because if they want to keep it they're not going to want to report it obviously because because they don't want to have to donate it. Oh but I don't know what other communities do if the donation part of it is required. Keep my stuff in. I know the answer to that. can answer. Sure. I just want to make sure we keep we got right. No, I know there's lot to but go ahead then and answer

under the Missouri Department of Conservation's construct. If I'm buying the tag, which is what we typically do, and it's in a normal season, the hunter has the option to keep the deer. In my case, my hunters decide whether they keep it or they donate it to several different programs. If we're using the nuisance tag, which is what they issue to White Buffalo, the deer has to be donated. All the entire deer, horns, hoops, everything. Thanks. More questions. Tracy? Nope. Sorry.

Make sure anything in way of question. It's going to be the first and highest priority number one. And it's going to be the next five highest priority number ones that the city shall not cannot will not ever ever be drawn into the exposure to what could could so quickly we can't comprehend it a liability that we are elected to protect the residents of the city against any probability or possibility by contracting out to what was an acceptably certified, acceptably qualified, acceptably records kept to prove, not just trust, but verified, but already have verified without having to trust anything. That's what the city contracted for. And I don't know what the verbiage or what the five pages or 7,000 pages of the contract was and what bonding agency, what what insurance agency it was, but it was enough to satisfy the concern, my overriding concern that who we contract with, and I didn't say who we permit with or who we team with, or anything else who we contract and never allow our residents to be exposed to even a penny's worth of either injury, which to me is worse than financial wreckage.

It's it's something we're charged with and we're going to be letting our residents down. all whatever 30 35,000 of them there are

whether they like hunting whether they like deer whether they live on one acre three acres or six acres or 200 acres that's that's it that's really all it is and bow hunters and rifle hunters shotgun hunters are by definition not automatically required to have it already established a insurance bond or a certification of proficiency or a record of not having ever armed an animal they did not retrieve and it bled out or that they did not run across property to someone else's to just a few feet to pick up the deer that they butt shot. It just it just does not calculate to logic to me in my role protecting the residents, my role of protecting the the the their right to protection. That's all, Mr. Furmer.

Yeah. I just So, uh, Tom, I just want to say that was a very long presentation and thank you thank you for making it. I'm going to recommend that we take a break probably shorten that a little bit for Monday night. Um, but I know that you have spent a lot of time and energy on it and so I I appreciate you doing that. Um, I guess maybe I maybe this a question for you, Cliff, just so I can understand. Um, at least what I heard was outside of the green and red parcels, people can go hunt however they want as long as they're doing it during the season or whatever. they can do whatever they want, get permission. Um,

so my I'm I'm I guess I'm unclear if we were to if we were to kind of choose a group, I'm afraid that that would then preclude anybody else from being interested in doing it. And from what I I mean from what I understand, and I could be wrong about this, but looking at that um graph of the different cities outside of the parcel size, it looks to me like Wildwood is the most open, easy to do this in. So, I think if like I'm all for getting the data points, I think that's an important thing. And if we can find a way to do that easily, I think that's great. Um I mean, a drone survey for the entire city is going to be like 8,000 $80,000 or something crazy. So, I mean, I guess if we want to spend $80,000 to do that, we could.

We have saved the money from not doing any We did, but now we're going to have, however we do it, we're going to have ground to make up. I mean, like to me, and you know, we'll I'm sure we'll talk about this later, but to me, we we've done this distance surveying. I think we probably should be continuing to do that just so we know what's going on. Right.

Um I think it's also important to distinguish the difference between the two areas where we have done work and the rest of the city where we have not. But when we did the drone survey the last time that basically confirmed the numbers that we thought we were having. So to me, if you're it I think it is objectively impossible to go count every deer in the city anyways. So it's all going to wind up being a math equation. And so if we can figure out a way to have that math equation pretty close without spending $80,000, I think I'd be probably more inclined on that. But whatever. Um, but I'm I'm I guess to me I'm the only difference that I can see that PE that it is really to be considered is do we change this parcel size which is not exactly the question that we're trying to answer here. Although it's a fine question to ask, but I do think just like we did with the solar survey a couple years ago or whatever it is, you know, when you're going to incorporate, you know, 90 whatever it is, 9300 additional properties, I think it certainly is that to me is one of those times when we probably should ask the residents what they want because there is I mean I I know after this letter that you're referring to went out, I got calls from HOAs saying I I don't want I don't want anybody doing anything. I don't care who it is. Nobody is invited back. So I I think it is going to be difficult for the It took us a number of years to get this ball rolling.

Yeah. The brakes have been slammed on this ball and it has been pushed back up the hill. So like it whatever we wind up doing, we got a lot of ground to cover. Um so I mean I would just say like Tom I think this is a great comprehensive report. I would I would put it in the background so people can see it, but I would keep it to a relatively small number of bullet points. And from what I'm hearing, your recommendation is more or less keep it keep it the way that it is and figure out how we can get data back to see if who is hunting what and how that's working out.

Joe, just clarify, I'm not advocating that Mr. Sherman's group is the only one to do it. We need some kind of leadership of the group and he might he might be willing to do that, but I would assume a lot of the people that have been coming to the meetings, they they're in the same network, you know, so you know.

Yeah. I I mean I know I I've I've gone out I went out to it was in Bowwin with with a bow hunter and I w you know I walked through where he was hunting and I I got how they were doing it. Um you know I mean I think that there's plenty of guys out there. The difficult the difficult thing is you know getting access to private property which the city can't really do anything. I mean there's nothing we can do. We can't make people do it. And the more we would, I think, push beyond anything to encourage it, the more, as Mr. Mabry said, the more responsibility for things. Come on. I mean, I I think that, you know, one of the things I I look at and and we I don't it was long. I apologize Tom if I missed this or forgot it but you know I was looking at this these numbers that we got back on these managed hunts and you know there's a lottery system of some kind where they're kind of drawing names so you don't really get to know who is doing what um but some some of those numbers don't look very like they look I'm sure they're excellent hunters or whatever they're just not returning a lot of of deer and so I mean I'm I'm a little I would be a little concerned learned it if we go out and do a a distance survey and we figure out that through the vast majority of the city where we've had operation, you know, guys can go out and do whatever they want for the last 30 years and the deer count is in the 70s. I don't know. I mean, I think at the end of the day, I remember when we did this the first time, the concept was, you know, deer culling and deer hunting are two, the result is the same and that you have a dead animal, but the concepts are two different things. And so when you're trying to get these astronomical numbers that we have under control,

I think you have to be able to do that in an effective way. And and if we were to go out and get even the proposal that got put forward back in December, you know, if we took 300 deer out of the city, that still means the city's growing by 200 deer. So not looking, you know, that's that's the difference between doing those two things. And I think, you know, getting this crash data back is a good thing. you know, we know that that's a way under reported number already, but I mean that's that's a pretty significant drop in accidents and and you know, cost

cost and risk. I mean, you know, thankfully, to my knowledge, I don't know, Kevin Mandela, if you'll remember this, I don't think anybody's been killed by a deer hitting it, but it's certainly a possibility. Um, you know, I mean, I've seen some pretty bad deers through windshield accidents and things like that. So, um I mean I I think I I think we need to get it a little bit more compressed, but I mean the fact that most of that map is blue, I don't know what else.

And and to interject, you you brought up surveys, I wasn't going to bring that up tonight. Tom and I talked about it and he said it probably would be brought up if somebody does make the motion to go to the one acres then I think you said we would owe a survey to go out to those one to three acre people and that's not a tremendous amount of money to do that right it was I think doing Yeah. So, well, we can't even do it in most of that, right? The airport. Oh, he's talking about a resident survey. Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh I I thought that too. That that said to clarify, I think what Mr. Roberts is saying that on if if say a motion was made to do just like one acre and not allow parcel aggregation, which I that's a key factor here, too. We need to think about that. Um, but if you just did the one, yeah, where you combine lots where you could take two half acre lots that are contiguous and put them together and they count as one and then they all share some type of COI if you have a permitting process. Uh, that said, if we did just if there if we wanted to get feedback from the oneacre residents, it's about 1,600 pe households, which feasibly we can send a mailer out to those folks. So that's where I was talking about that that would be realistic in cost. But I was saying when you talk about partial aggregation and you have a situation where it's not only the u one acre loss, but we're going to allow less than one acres to combine to meet that one acre. That opens the door. Now we're talking 10,000 properties. And that that survey is a little bit tougher to do. And I think the idea would be probably to do some type of random sampling if that was really the the

I mean we did it with we did the solar thing, right? Yeah, that's what we did on the sto. I mean, how many people I don't mean to interrupt. I I I would just think if we're going to pay to do if we're going to pay to do a survey, we should probably do it so that we get the answers the answers as compared to being like, well, we got this answer and now we should probably go back and figure out this other question. Yes, I have a few questions I was going to ask.

You're in charge. Let everybody else throw their stuff out there. So, one note, and again, I think it needs to be brought up again, is the Missouri Department of Consort, they want 20 a deer, and we were targeting for 40, right? So, I mean, we're still leaving twice what they're wanting on there. So, with us trying to tell them what to do, they in turn have been very clear and our number 40 is too high. Next up I have is the accidents and this would be Captain Mandelle and the lieutenant that if all of the indications I can find is less than 50% of the people report a deer hit uh unless the car is so bad. U they just don't they don't report it and and so those numbers of things if we say we saved out of the ones that were hit, imagine how many other people may have been hit that we didn't have anything from in order to do that as well. The the next one I have, and this is where I I really think we got a big problem, is the fact that all of those people that have three acre plots and greater than that, they're having friends come in and hunt, they're having, if we do a permitting program, everybody in a city. So if if I have my three brother-in-laws come in, I have to do all the permitting for those people on my property. I got to tell you, those people in six and one, there is no way they want to be part of that. And if they don't want to fill out anything and they're the ones that said, "Oh yeah, I got five buddies that come in. I went to college. They come in and bow hunt on our property, but they couldn't do that if we had a permitting process that then has to be done for all of those private property owners."

Well, I think they'd have to also get insurance, right? Yeah. They'd have to Well, it depends on what the code says, but most likely. I I I own property in Pennsylvania. Had friends that fly from Missouri there to to hunt, but that was part of the problem is you don't have to do any paperwork. they got they had to get an out of state permit to do it. Um so I think that's a bigger issue with permitting that we're not talking about is those people who live on three acres or bigger now that have avid hunters both gun and bow and arrow that suddenly now we're going to go to them and say now you all have to fill out these permits. Would it have to be that way? I don't think you have a choice. You can't pick out either permits or not hunt on your own property.

You still have to permit And there's all these farmers. I mean, and I know more over his area. What if what if it was changed to just one to three acres for permits for instituting permits? Yeah. So, if you just implemented a permit for one to three, I I think that could be done. That said, I think it's still I would have to look into that to see if there's if you can split that up legally because I don't I don't I've never seen a code that says like, "Hey, over three we don't require anything, but under three we require all this information." I think the enforcement would get real weird because who know?

I just think that that's the one question I have is the people that over the years that I've done, they perfectly happy to bring all their family and friends in to bow hunt and and to hunt on their properties, but they're not in our subdivisions. I don't think these bow hunters are going to the larger properties now. They're not. I don't know. I don't think they are. Are they? I think the ones I've talked to You wouldn't know about it. That's what I'm saying is they I don't know either. I don't know. I know. The ones I've talked to all have, you know, their little hunting spots around town that they go to. They're on these big They own They own it, right? No, they're they're going to somebody else's place. They know the person and the person will

lease their like there's people that lease their land out and like larger acreage thing over they're over three acres a lot of six acres.

Well, I guess I understand that then that's why I'm saying maybe we can be set up for one to three acres for these bow hunters to participate in them. Yeah, just a comment that just that just immediately struck me as as illegal. You you can't legally, no matter who you are, you can't put up you you'd get you'd be not only inviting, you'd be compelling property owners that you're making a restrictive um code that whether it's emotionally, financially, constitutionally, you're infringing on my rights because I couldn't afford to buy three acres. I was constrained to buying a house in a subdivision with only one acre. And now you're curtailing my my civil liberties. I'm just being Yeah, I sure too. It's not that I would ever do it. It's not what I mean.

Because like if you opened up It's not what I mean. It's what a million other people if you opened it up to say, "Okay, we're going to let people with one acre hunting now, right? But though but but you now also can have to have permits, but only only this group of people." Right. Yeah. I I think we would probably I mean I I don't know. It's certainly a question for John, but I I think that that would be probably a difficult hurdle to get over. It would I I just think that the legal advice would probably be you either have permits or you do not have permits, but it's not typically the standard is treat everyone exactly the same unless there's something very quantifiable that's making the difference. But

well, I don't know enough to say how it's been done elsewhere that has a mixture of properties like Yeah. I mean, either way, I I would think if we were to even I mean, I I kind of think in general, if we were to even consider something like that, I you still then go back to ask like taking a survey of residents and, you know, figuring all that stuff out. And, you know, I think if you do I think if you do a survey of residents and, you know, the answers aren't what many of us would expect, right? Then that's worth a conversation. If you do a survey of residents and the answers come back as would be expected, then you know, then the question becomes Why do you keep spending money to do this? Right.

I guess the other question would be is, and if you wouldn't mind, um, how did the other cities tell the property owners? That's what I was just gonna ask. You could come and hunt on I mean, I got to tell you, I don't even think we could put it in the gazette. Uh, because you can't we can't advertise without that liability. So, how do they know to contact you? So we have to fill out most cases an application to hunt and it lists all the properties that we have worked with the landowner on got their signature giving us written permission and then my group in my case submits that to the city but the city's not get you're getting the permission and providing it to the city not the other way.

Yeah. And I think that's where the distinction is between and and I appreciate you calling this out between hunting versus calling. So, you know, obviously, and I don't want to take us way back, but the intent was not to use people shooting rifles to call a deer. Use your bow hunters. That's the expanded season, the baiting. Um, and the access the general hunting perspective, obviously, access to that less than three acres would be ideal. The the variance there from Wildwood, which makes them different from most of the other cities, is they don't allow the discharge of any firearms. Ballwind, Sunset Hills. So there's no question about, you know, people shooting their rifles or their muzzle loaders in in how our our regulations are currently set up. It's just very restrictive for anybody less than three acwood unless three acres. Um,

and that's the way we've done it for 30 years because of those challenges. I'm not arguing with I just my question would be is I I literally probably know 30 people who love to have people come and hunt on their property, but all you need to do is go and knock on their door and do what they want to do. We would never know about it. Uh and so that's been the challenge is the fact that and they don't really want to tell us who's hunting on their property in order to do it. So it would be great if we had some way, but the city can't get involved and say, "Hey, call Michael's group. I don't think we can legally do that without having to do some other steps of how did you get connected? So I don't know you guys use Facebook, you do your own thing.

Exactly. But I think from a city perspective having a specific set of regulations for that one to three acres is probably a smart choice and you know and again appreciate the collaboration here. One of the other things um Mr. that I really suggest if you especially if you're going to consider that one acre is that the city require notification of the continuous neighbors. All the other cities do that and that helps the city one because you're you know the property owner has to notify their their neighbors and two it helps us is the bow hunters because the way I do it is I do the notifications in some cases knock on doors other cases mail letters and I put on their question will you allow us to retrieve a deer if it goes onto your property and they check yes sir they check no so I have that written approval before a deer is ever being harvested. um things and that's where I went and we can have all kinds of conversations. I want to take up your time about the little things that make the group that I lead professional bow hunters and understanding those um intricacies about urban deer and urban environments that makes make us much more.

I just think there's a lot of things we could maybe help you with on the three acre and above. I I'm just really struggling because I know in my ward to five and I I think I know too probably as well as anyone else. People are just really hesitant about people coming on to do bow hunting and it's all I know it's they're all mistakes and stuff like that but that's just a been a real fear for them. So if we're if if anybody thinks that we want to get into that type of thing, I just think we need to do a whole lot more homework to to try to identify and I think that you you will just shock a whole lot of people that have three acres or more when you start trying to do any kind of permitting. And I don't believe you can do permitting to say residential versus urban or non-urban. I don't think you can break it out by zoning categories either. uh it's a permit and that's pretty much the state requiring the permits and then our municipality has that rights to in how you would enforce it in the state. I just don't how many houses. So if you have a less than one acre, what distance do you have to get permission for?

You got five or six houses around there. If usually they come to us and there'll be a group of three or four that get over the acreage and then and this again there's a lot of people that want us to deer hunt but we don't because it's not safe you know you'd be surprised u I go out and I walk every property and like we can't do this um just from a safety perspective. So we have some of the smaller groups where they do and again do they have the trees? Can we shoot down at an angle so there's no deflection? There's a lot of things that go into it before you say yes because this is my reputation. It's my insurance, you know, it's my bill. Yeah.

So, we we my group takes it personally. But if if they can do that in a safe environment, um you know, there's a place in Bowwin where I've got four homeowners that back up to each other and they're all elevated lower creek bottom. They have a huge deer problem and you know we hunt it safe and they're I don't know they're probably a third of an acre each. Yeah. Unfortunately, we just don't know where all where all those are. So, but but thank you so much for your comments. I guess as we want to try to get out of here before we go to technical guest

just one would it would not that we need more meetings but would it be appropriate to have some kind of subcommittee on this with maybe couple council people couple bow hunting people to try to

I'll give you my two cents worth but you could certainly make a motion for that I've done this for like 25 years and we've had subcommittee we've had reticent resident committees and everything gets down the fact the scope of what the problem is, how to manage that, and how to work through it. So, you can have any kind of committee you want, but you saw exactly what happens in a committee meeting, somebody's going to throw up and make a motion, and then if they get enough votes for it, the city is going to be stuck in a position of either legally having to say can't do it or something else. So, the more you try it, just my opinion, that's why it's coming through this committee, right? and then whatever recommendation we want to send forward. Again, I never knew that we weren't doing active bow hunting because I know bunches of people that do. I just never when everybody came in and said, "Oh, you can't hunt wildwood." We've been hunting in Wildwood before it was Wildwood. So,

I'm just, you know, we're getting a lot of great information from him him tonight, which I think in a smaller group maybe we did and I understand what you're saying. Um but uh I just and I mean and we can make a decision as a committee but then you can go to the council and say hey I'm recommending a task force out there and you know see if people will because it takes a ton of time of his time and our time and

and the deer are out there getting born. Um, I I and I just I just think we we have a growing problem and we got a growing financial problem to be concerned about and we've got, you know, a lot of people with eyes on the money we're spending, you know, and honestly, again, that's the reason that that million-doll lawsuit was targeted to go to a fiveyear because we knew going in, you can't do what we've just done, right? You can't do two years and stop it. We were depending on the deer hunters to help all the way through the process. This was to address those major areas with accidents. And honestly, it tells me it's working now. It may not make every boat.

Also, I mean, there was nothing that stopped guys from hunting on the properties that were there before. They still been doing it. I mean, I I talked to I talked to a guy at Larry's. I think he said he got, you know, six deer at at the property he goes to. So, you know, that that's that that's the level of this where I think that it gets a little bit it is the mechan it is the mechanations of a city that makes this very difficult to do because we we've never stopped anybody from hunting outside of that acreage mark. And I mean I don't Mr. Sherman. I mean, I I'm not a hunter, so I don't really like I'm reading this and it looks to me outside of the physical parcel size. We are way more open on this stuff than a lot of these other places that are requiring permission from notifying neighbors and permits and all these other things, right? Yes, sir. So, I mean, my my concern, and you know, I I've vo voiced this to several bow hunters, the the the more down this road we go, the more restrictive it gets for everybody, which is not actually going to help us in what we want to have happen, which is to get our crash numbers down and get all these other things down. I mean, I I I think that I think that we have invested an inordinate amount of time and energy on an issue that everybody knows what the solution is. They just don't like the solution, and it's not going to change. Ed's been doing it for 25 years. Tracy and I have been doing it for six or seven or whatever it is. The answer is we got way too many deer everywhere, regardless of where it is. And the more people we can get in to do it, the better. But I also think we have to try to do this in in the most expeditious time frame. Like that's that's why this thing has worked and why we had the five-year plan. I mean, this was I'm not hearing anything different than what the five-year plan was to begin with, other than we aren't doing this.

We're a year off, right? Let me What? Two things and I'll kind of shut up. Uh did we have any deer management program before that? No, because it was that was a problem and every time we try to get so far I'm just clarifying we can't afford it. Okay, so the last two not this year the two years before that is the only actual deer management that's been done. If if we would do if we were if we were able to do this white buffalo for the five consecutive years would our problem be eliminated? No, it's never going to get eliminated. Then what would we what we have done? you get the number down to a point that then bow hunters hopefully the bow hunters can come in and then you still are going to have to do maintenance on various the way it was written up

yeah it also had it looked at this I mean at the end of the day what was causing the lack of it happening was that or it was having to come out of operating and that was throwing we just every year was a problem yeah if we keep that in operating during budget it just there's no room for that type of expenditure that said the council they in 23 they created that that fund after we got some money back from the from a charter settlement that took place. Yeah. Because for two years we tried to do it and the answer was well you can't because we don't have it in the operation. We don't have any money the program back to Yeah. And so we did that. Um, we got started once we, you know, sorry, I lost.

Um, you're just talking about how like before there wasn't a plan. I mean, it was a little bit like I think you came in on the tail end of the of the internet thing. Like there was

decades of meeting after meeting and this and that and public task force every task force imaginable and then what it came down to was th this is the best course of action according to practicality and science. And then it was two years of well we don't have any money because it's in the operating budget. And so then we had that windfall settlement that came in and and it was like, okay, well, we can do this for 5 years that gets this under control and that allows these guys to be able to hopefully maintain a functional level of deer where it's not ballooning out of control the way it does. And I think that that's where I was going with that. That the original intent was to get it down to 40 deer per square mile and that was a target because realistically even if you had a professional calling service that came in and did it like we had been, you know, you're not going to be you were not going to be able to get to 15 to 20. That was the intent was to get to a point so we could actually say, "Yeah, we accomplished that goal." But it still was off from the ecological balance that's recommended by most most conservation departments. That said, the whole point of it was having uh you know was actually having the 40 like was having enough money over time in order to actually get it down to 20 to 15. I know that was mentioned that we initially said 40, but the whole goal was always looking at it at 15 to 20 was the recommended,

right? And you know, I don't mean to keep this going on and we can move on with whatever we have to do. And I I you know I'm just thinking if we can look at doing something with the 1acre or the one to three acre if and if you don't want to make that recommendation now that's fine. Um it it not necessarily going to be me but there's other council members that are going to make the motions that I've previously stated. I I know that's going to happen. You know they have a right to make that. No, I'm just saying that you know it just takes nine votes. So if they have nine people who don't believe any of this then Well, I don't know if it's not believing it. It's just another alternative, you know.

Well, and I think that this ties in too with the reporting requirement, uh, not requirement or if we could get reporting, I think to make sure that everybody's complying, I think requiring it could be something to look at. Uh that said, if we were able to know where all this hunting occurred, that would help us in establishing can you know, say it just we allow whatever we allow, we track that over a year and we were able to look at the numbers that they're posting. We would be able to see can that effectively curb the growth after we would complete a program and get it down to 40 because then we'd actually have the data necessary to say, can this be sustained? If we can if we can be the spearhead to not this problem back, can they keep it back after that after five years? That would probably that would help. I think that data would be very helpful.

Just a quick, can can the PowerPoint and this attachment be sent to everyone on council like now, like tomorrow, way before Monday because it's a lot to absorb and then I don't want to say if they want to come on the website, right? They can get it right now, but I don't even know if a lot of people don't know it's there or they're not looking for it or if it's just right there. Just that would help because everybody would have it ahead of time and plenty of time. Yeah. So, I'm thinking I I mean I might suggest this Cliff if that if if this is a direction that you want to go. So, my understanding Tom Kirk if I'm wrong, we have to I guess approve this report to move to the council, right? Yes.

So, we would need to have a motion to approve the report as present accept the department's recommendation to move it to the council or how whatever. But you could you you could additionally add into that because he they're suggesting it in here a you know it would be I think probably practically easy to do a voluntary report um portal so to speak on the website where if somebody's out hunting you know they can capture the you know put in the address or the area whatever and the number and kind of deer. So then we can start to get that in without going through all of the other hoops and stuff that be necessary. And then additionally, if you if you think that looking at the um parcel size is the right choice, that's fine. I would pretty strongly suggest that you attach to that asking those residents because I think that if you make that motion and make that change without talking to people, I I I have a sense that there's going to perhaps be a lot of people that are pretty confused andor unhappy about that.

Okay. So, I'm that would be my suggestion. I I'm I'm just interested in working with somebody that's very reasonable seems like to work with, you know, that could help us with some of our issues. May not solve everything. Yeah. But the only pro I mean, and that's where we get back to the city because I agree. I think Mr. Sherman, I think you're a stand-up guy. You've done a an excellent job of presenting. You've always, as Cliff said, you've always been respectful and all those things. That's wonderful. But we as a city can't run all of this through Mr. Sherman. I

and anybody that wants to do this can do it if we change what if we make any changes that applies to everybody. So I think what perhaps unless correct me if I'm wrong here Mr. Marshall like that has been the issue forever is I think it is excellent. I've had conversations with other cities that have worked with Mr. Sherman. Everybody has said, you know, does a great job and I am convinced that he does.

But there's a lot of people out there and we are not, it would not be legal for us to say, well, these guys can do it, but nobody else can do it. And we're comfortable here, but we're not comfortable there unless we go down the road of contracting, which then opens up an entire can of worms that we can't deal with. That's that's the unfortunate reality of that's that is why I think that this thing constantly circles back because the answers are just not ever good. We're picking the best of a set of bad and it only takes one bad accident then everybody turns angry. Uh and we've had that over the years.

Yeah. Um so anyways that that's what I got. So Thomas question comment. Oh yeah, I was just going to make the uh a point though too just given kind of the functionality of it. The uh recommendation in the the report but also in the slideshow it does say hey the department's recommendation is to maintain the current regulatory framework but the point five did mention that a review of that minimum acreage could take place uh with a very important note that we should in involve affected residents and ensure community input changes. So that if if say you approved department's recommendation as as mentioned tonight, it would include that that component.

So then the only additional thing you would need to add then is the self-reporting website function. Uh not not spec. There's something in here that says encourage or require harvest reporting if we but it doesn't have the specifics of adding it to the website. We could do that very easily though and I think but would you want that in the motion or do you feel like you understand that that's what that means? If we have that there's a in the report and on the presentation there's a slide for recommendations. If everyone's comfortable with that I could share my screen again real quick. That's right before the discussion right before the discussion p component. If everyone's comfortable with those bullet points then I would be I'll make sure that that that's communicated obviously with the notes taken tonight too. So here

I did think one of the questions I have on the voluntary stuff is I really do believe that that's going to take a legal opinion as to because you're not going to force people to report it. It'll just be if they want to do it, right? If they want to do it, then we'll just know where they killed us. So be it be like just a t a template would come up and there' be like five questions probably be like two and and I mean to me they won't even know where they are. I mean they'll generally know but to me it's a little bit like our crash data. Like we know what is being

but we also know that there's a whole lot that isn't reported. So to me getting some is better than having none. And if we could get it all great but we're not ever going to be able to do that. I think there is there is there is importance to it. I mean because we just never have had that data. So if you have a situation where you know a year goes by it was interesting seeing the manage hunt data. I mean if you have a situation where you have thousand deer killed that's not happening. But that said that's a big difference and we get a report we get reporting back and we know only you know 16 which that never would happen either. But like if you would be able to track that over time and if we see fluctuations, we'd be able to better understand like what is going on with our bow hunting population, but also sharpshooting population. I think either way, if you you kill a deer in Wildwood, if there's a way we could do it where super simple on the we could have it where it's accessible on your phone on the city's website.

Report they killed it with their Tesla. Yeah, that that my phone in theory that could be a a pretty funny submission, but I think that would be extremely helpful because it it gives us a sense of what are our natural capabilities, which right now we just don't know. I I personally I also just think it's it's really important to get the the distance sampling data so that we don't have like huge gaps like right now outside correct me if I'm wrong outside of any one and any two our data is like So three half of our information is and I don't understand why we would want to do any drone surveys in one six and those

because they're hunting on those properties anyway. I mean our goal for the drones was to try to we couldn't promote anybody that we couldn't promote a group to to hunt in those areas. Right. Well, they're already being hired. Well, no. right individuals. So, we wouldn't be sending uh permitted people to those areas, right? Yeah. Because we don't have the permit. I mean, that right now and Mr. Sh, he can go to one of these homeowners associations with over three acres, talk to the homeowners, do whatever they want to do, right? That's where I think that, you know, those those are some of those opportunities. But

reporting would really make a difference on numbers. I just don't know spending money for drone surveys in areas that are three acres and bigger would even be worth the investment. Well, I mean to me and maybe this is maybe this is the last question for you Mr. Sherman. I hope because it is getting where you

um you know one of the question one of the conversations I've had with a couple different bow hunting folks is like to me we just have we have to come up with some type of a baseline understanding of like this is ostensively what the deer population is. And so I was fine with the distance sampling because that's what most people recommend. Then we did the additional drone survey which then validated that that number for the most part. So I'm I'm I was comfortable with the number to begin with. I'm extra comfortable with it now. Yeah.

But I don't know. I mean that seems to be sort of this bone of contention. So I don't know if you got if you Mr. Sherman think that deer counts are of value knowing the population is worthwhile. If if you know I mean I know that there was a request to have a drone survey that can you know tell us what color eyes the deer have or whatever it is. Mike, I want to speak for Tom Mitchell, but I from my perspective, I think that drone count was pushed so that we could validate that they overh harvest in those two areas. From my perspective as a bow hunter, and I have, you know, ways of knowing when there's deer on the property, which we have a lot of deer. There's deer all over St. Louis County. And if there's deer there and they're using the property, then, you know, my team will harvest them.

Sure. Um, will we harvest them all? Absolutely not. because they get smart and they move off and go somewhere else. So, as a taxpayer, if you know, you ask my opinion on spending whatever the amount is, $80,000 survey, I'd say we got better things to spend our money on. Me, the the the result of success is how many deer are harvested. That's really the bottom line,

right? And those harvest rates will typically go down once properties are hunted obviously because you're reducing the herd and the deer getting smarter and dispersing. So, and that's where hunting is a little bit more complicated and less effective than callulling when you can expand your season when they're the hungriest of the year and put a pile of corn. Right. I have a suggestion on the go ahead gathering though. Sure.

The data gathering. So you everybody held up their phone. Missouri Department of Conservation has a very good app. If every deer harvested is mandatory reporting in the state, the only problem is is they only record it down to the county level. They had no problem a few years ago adding whether you hunted a deer with a crossbow or regular archery gear. Question.

It may be worthwhile to reach out to NBC and say, "Hey, if St. a Louisis County is selected and you would think, you know, Aaron Shank and the biologists that work within St. Louis County would want this detail information. Then at a second drop-own menu for the townships or cities within St. Louis County and then you you know Wildwood is there. Of course, it's going to be at the bottom because it's a W, but that that makes it fall into the mandatory deer reporting process of MDC. And then you get a report from them just like you did for

and they would get data that they don't have currently. A should love that data because there's all these questions around what's the deer population and harvest rates within the city limit specifically. Obviously, there's a lot of unincorporated sit they have a copy of our and point taken and we've we've tried to push them on that and they made the argument that we do it for us then they're going to do it for everybody and they can do it right. It's a spreadsheet. I know and it it's been quite annoying quite frankly. But that said, they the thing is they are interested in our data because they take the distance sampling surveys that we have. So it's like help us help you. I mean quite frankly have it be a two-way street. I keep saying the last question here but

it's all right. Could we like advertise maybe not advertise could we could we communicate to our residents? Do you got if you got a deer problem on your property? Here's a group that can help you. I think you got to advertise everybody. Yeah. That's the problem is we don't like if if we were this is one of these posted on the website won't do it. Well, but the issue becomes if we put oh 20 people on there and there's 25 people then those five people are going to come back and be like, "Hey, we can't say we're just No. Okay. Yeah. That's the

I mean that's been the problem all along is there there are people and and I'm sure that you know some of these people they love to have the people come out and do the calling bow hunting but the city could never get involved in it because that's not something that okay we we actually can match people. So then we can talk we can try to I mean we can try to pressure MDC we can make some phone calls and things like that. I I agree. I think seeing the number of deers coming out is certainly of great importance, but I I als I mean unless I'm understanding you incorrectly, I mean there is still value in knowing theoretically how many we have, right? Or does that not make any difference? I think you have as good of idea as you need that we have a lot of deer. You have past survey numbers. This is just my personal opinion.

Yeah. I'm trying to think because, you know, even even with members of our of the council, we've we've had council members that are very convinced that there aren't any deer at their house anymore. And I keep saying to them, we were nowhere near that there. So, I don't know where maybe the bow hunt maybe you guys have done fantastic job. I don't I don't know. Well, and this is where it's frustrating too with MDC because we we've had some significant um disease die offs where I have gone out and removed a lot of deer from properties that I either hunt or I know the people um and they don't necessarily recognize that. So, that's a whole different can of worms, but there there are deer diseases that can easily wipe out a large portion of the population each year. and you know how that gets played into your growth and all that year-to-year dependent, drought dependent. There's a lot of factors, but

that was included in your contract as well with White Buffalo. Every they had to test u that they don't they don't the biggest killer is EHD, not CWD. Um

but the population, you know, in the places that I hunt that are neighboring to where you called, there's a lot less deer. I right on the other side of Kurs Mill Road in Clarkson Valley from anyone and we killed a significantly less amount of deer this year than we have in the past and we saw a lot less deer and we have persistent presence on properties from the time right before the season opens in September until at least January 15th. We run cellular trail cameras so we're not just out there you know for a short period of time. We've mentioned man and hunt. Manage hunts not allowed to run cell cams on the very departmentation property. So the hunters are born in blind. We have we use cell cameras. So we have that persistent presence over there when the deer are there.

So we we know that area has got a lot less deer. Well should we? Absolutely. Yeah. You shot 300 whatever deer out of it. That was the intent. All right. Thanks. So my question would be is if Mr. establish is correct. Whatever recommendation we send, somebody will is going to make a motion that we change all of our ordinances to to do that.

I would be I would be more than happy to make sure as we put that recommendation forward if they want to bring that up and they want to make it. I just don't know how we would do it. So I the next question is if we go through with this recommendation if we have a majority that said hey we we we've seen this we've studied it we think this is you know where we should be there's other opportunity we can do down the road but I think at this point our job was to report back can it be and as I said that night it has always been but everybody's like oh we we're not allowed to hunt yeah you are and we have hundreds of people hunting in wildwood on private property of people who are the residents of owning that property.

Yeah, I think I mean you've been doing this a lot longer than I have been doing this. My understanding of the motion was we need to return this report by this next meeting with whatever recommendation we come up with or Tom comes up with and then whatever comes after that is the next question. I that's that's how I kind of see it. Does that everyone else? That's this is this is as far as we can go right now. So, thanks for entertaining me.

So, is this is this acceptable as a recommendation or should we do we want to tailor changes at all because we can make it's up to the committee. I just want to make sure it's it's effectively getting the message across from the committee point just because it came up. Are we are we entertaining a change or edit or an add to the first five? Are we coming up? Are we thinking about leaving five alone and doing a number six for me to think about? Yeah, right now it's just the five that we have and it's asking, you know, quite frankly the discussion we've had, you know, I think this actually quite frankly covers it. I know five is an important year. I I would want to make a motion that we don't tolerate a number six.

Yeah, I think that's everything that we've talked about, right? I mean, I think it that covers it leaves a little wiggle room there. But like, you know, just for a basis, too. I mean, if someone makes a motion to say we're going to go, hey, you know, just drop it to one acre, we we would have to go through a whole another process because we have it. We'd have to change our code. So, that's going to be going from work session to public uh regular session. So, here's the question. We get ready to to bring this recommendation forward and a motion then is made. Well, we have to go back and change that. I would vote against that if they're going to try to override and put one acre in there. So, that could easily fail

based on voting no because they're forcing one acre. If they say we have to make everything at one acre, it would have to be a vote. But, I mean, correct correct me if I'm wrong on this. What we are voting for here would be the acceptance of this report and the acceptance of these recommendations. We're not doing any outside of that. We're not doing anything. So I think if if it it should be that way, but we saw that break down the last time where they allowed to make a motion on top of this. That's up to the mayor and the attorney.

And that's where that's where the whole thing goes haywire. And then you'll say, "Well, why are you voting against it?" because what you did is you jumped your motion in front of that. So I I'm good with the recommendation. I I know I personally would vote against that because I think that that's one I think it's procedurally out of order, but two I think that I would go back to number five here, which is if we're going to consider that, we probably need to ask some people. But that's how the votes work. I mean, people are going to vote the way they're going to vote. So I I mean to me I just think this should be said is can to me this whole thing is the report that's going back is can we as a city contract with boat owners period I would say

and that's what this says no okay if that answer is no and I don't know that anybody after looking at all this as much as we might want to do that like I I don't know that anybody could say well let's just ignore all this and we can't they canopia Then that's move on and then let's fine tune it or so my my question then would be Tom for you and I'm not I'm not trying to skew your answer. He doesn't work on any contract with any contracts. You know, I know that's what keep saying and that's what I feel like this is is just are we going to contract or not, right? So I feel like we were asked to decide. Yeah. So my question would be after that let's see what we can do. That is could be a recommended. I mean I'm not number three. Number three. Yeah. I might just make that number

number one because you never know. But also I'm just I'm just curious because I know we're talking about it because we think it's going to happen. But in here number five is review minimum acreage requirements evaluate potential to reduce 3 acres to 1 acre or allow parcel aggregation with community input. I think that that is a good recommendation if we are going to do that but I am asking are you the way that I am reading this you are recommending that we do that. Uh is that what you I'm recommending right now without any like top of the top of the hat we're we should not change our code right now. But that said, what's that saying is so if we do that,

if we do that, it's kind of like a safety valve. If we do that, then I would say we probably need to send a mailer out to the residents, get some input back from the folks that are going to be impacted. I I would just suggest that we need to find a way to say that because right now your recommendation is to review minimum acreage acreage requirements and I don't if that is your recommendation that's fine and I'm still happy to pass the report along.

Well, and I think that the I totally agree. I I guess think that down one through four is exactly what we're coming out of committee. This is like, well, here's something else more we could do, but I don't think you want to offer more to do with the recommendation of the first one through four. Two separate. I I think Yeah. I mean, I just keep I know this is so I'm sure Mr. Sherman, this is the most frustrating thing in the world for people that don't have to sit in these meetings all the time. Like the the procedural nature of the question that we were asked is those first four items, which is what we are supposed to return. We can have the conversation about the fifth one. Yes,

but that's a different it can happen immediately following if that's what needs to happen, but that is a different question and that would be great wording if they said we think you should review it and do it then that's what you would like to see that motion come forward. That so that actually makes quite a bit of sense. So almost saying one through four and move three to one but one through four move forward as five really I would strike five and you have that and you're you know

because we all think that that motion is going to occur but we don't really know and so until you know while that is valuable information to have that is not what was being asked of us. Yes. And because the right now and just as a FYI the department's you know idea here is that you know obviously with other cities doing that you know it's clear that that was a a conclusion that people might come to. So the idea would be if we're going to do that the safeguard I wanted to really the most important part of number five is actually you know should involve affected residents and ensure community input is fully incorporated because I that triggers you know let's go do a survey and get Yeah. And then I think you I mean I think you make that point should that motion come up.

Yes. And then I mean I I also think if I mean it might be difficult. I know maybe you've done this already. I mean my understanding in having talked to a lot of these other cities is their their parcel size is that size because that was the biggest size that they had. Yes. That's that's Yes, that's true. um the majority of the other cities they well they're not as big as Wildwood and they they do not have the inventory of

so I I mean I just to me like everyone we do a big we do a job of trying to communicate to people all the time that yes most of the city is three acres except for this very small part where it's not three acres and so I think the most people out in the world just assume everything out here is and looking at that map I mean if you I think if you factor in the parks what 80% of the city is that Yeah, it's it's so any that would be my that would be my suggestion is to take five. One other comment that I think you needs to be tweaked up their front is if you are going to do any type of a permitted regulation all pro I mean you might check with the attorney

in the past everybody private owners everybody will have to do that and I think that at least the people in six and one need to to realize that those people who live on these big plots if they have somebody doing the hunting they are going to be required to have that hunter fill out the per the key thing if if we wouldn't have to do that then it but we don't have a ch I don't think we have a choice you know more than I do. I'm just saying if that's a key factor to find that out for sure. Yeah. I mean I would again that to me is one of those pieces of information like it's good to get it in advance. Yes sir. Why could you not do a 1 to three acre regulation? Would we not do

why could you not have a separate set of regulations that just affect those people on 1 to three acres. So everybody that's right now outside hunting with their rifles are not affected, but it establishes more access to the deer specifically for archery. Um you you do that with firearms today. You have portions of the city where you shoot and you cannot.

So my question would be from the bohing perspective is why could you not focus in on that one to three acres and put strict requirements around it like what the other cities do? Leave the three plus acres alone. then you don't upset all the people who have people coming in to hunt the larger property owners where it's safer for firearms, muzzle loaders, whatever it is. Or if they choose bull hunting and then just focus on the one and three acres. Can I give you that? Because the people who call me asking for my help, nine times out of 10 are less than three acres. I would. Yes. In Wildwood.

I would say the honest answer is we don't know. That's where the attorney comes in. So, it's very possible that the city attorney goes, "Sure, it's no big deal. It's a B permit or whatever, whatever it is." And then that's fine. And then we I would say, "Then great. Then we kick it back to let's let's have a conversation with these 1600 people 1600 people." I would I am a fan of just finishing conversations. So I would advocate have a just have the full conversation right now because if we go from inevitably if we make the adjustment to one acre within a handful of years we're going to come back and go well we think we should make now we want to make this adjustment for whatever take off that limit

whatever reason it is so you might as well get the information you're paying for it already get it once get it right similar type thing is we can't control the height of grass that was one oh you got keep her grass what four inch or five inches high and everybody in six and one went berserk right you know we have to pay to mow along side of the roads so I mean it's just amazing what you can't do yeah in many cases because of the way the legislation is laid out in order to do that so I I know that that's probably not a super satisfying answer but that's just the way like these are the things where you know no I understand the attorney can give us the advice and whatever it is it is and

certainly it's possible that people will ignore ignore that advice anyways. You never you never know how it's going to go. So, um so yeah, we land owner option because the bottom line is it's the land owner's choice. It is right now, but it's under the municipality codes for the size u if it's authorized by the city. It's it's still the landowner's choice. Doesn't mean hunters can walk in. Oh, absolutely. And that's what they're going to tell you and those strict regulations come in. All right. Any more questions, comments? No, that's question coming. So the attorney can give us that info by Monday. We will see one hope. Yeah. So we we're looking for a motion. Who would like to make a motion? How do you want me to say it? Would you like to make your motion?

I think it would just be to accept the department's recommendation with the first four numbers, right? What was that? The motion would be accept your the first four items. Accept the first four. But um I mean quite frankly if you guys do we want to do we want to modify that pore that was talking about um the permitting portion. It was it was saying look at it but it honestly with Wildwood setup I think instead of permitting what would be nicer would be getting just a requiring reporting like not Yeah. I just think I I'm gonna keep I keep going back to this like survey we have to a we have to ask we have to answer the question that was asked with the rules that currently exist. Yeah. So we can make a suggestion down the road to change the rules but yeah

that's a different thing. Yep. We weren't asked to do that right second part of it. So I kind of think we need to stick with what we were told to do. Maybe Tom, maybe a meeting Monday, you can, you know, you're going to give this report. Everybody's going to have this report, but I don't know if you can preamble some of this with I would get it to five minutes or less, which should be pretty easy to do, I would think. Yeah. Go ahead. He's stuck. I because like like I would say like we provide I'm with Tracy. I would email this stuff out tonight. It's good stuff.

They've already had access to it and whatever whatever the thing was with the numbers that you said you didn't have get a chance to drop in yet or whatever. It was the I we got him in as I was walking. I think it was the manage hunt. So that's what I would do. And then you know part of being on the council is you got to do your homework. So if people don't read it, that's well and I I think going back to your point though about answering the question directly uh you know I I think that you know four and five become trickier and maybe it's you move three to one and then yes you move those are the three things and the other ones you have in your

I think that's the answer to the question that was that doesn't mean this other stuff won't come up but if it does come up then I think this group as a committee can say, "Hey, here's some other things that we were thinking about." And the in the when I send this out, they'll have all five. They'll get this presentation as showed tonight. But that said, in the actual recommendation with the report would only show one through three. I would suggest you send it out because that's the motion that is I assume the motion is going to be made. Correct. Yes. And then when somebody goes, "Well, what happened to four and five?" Then we can go here's what happened to four and five. They're not gone. They just That's not part of the question. That's what I So,

after two hours and 45 minutes, let's do this thing. I I think that's answering the question, though. And I mean, I can go back and look at what they ask us to do. And again, yes, they've always been part of it. But I think those are the the first steps that everybody else needs to weigh in on and that answers it back and then they can give us direction from there. Yeah. And I think that still allows people to if they want to throw stuff out there, then we're not going to screw up the part. I think they're just different questions. What do I know? Any other Yeah. Any other comments, Mr. Neighbor?

I' I'd go with as as not short and sweet, but as concise and succinct. Well, I'm making that motion to go with this. Okay. And let's move on. Go with this what with the recommendation coming out here. I feel I was cut off, but I I said was one through three. Um because that's what's the most concise and succinct of what direction we were given. So that was my comment. So are you making that a motion then? Um I would not want to supersede or circumvent Mr. Al. I'm saying the same thing. Well, we need a we're first and second so we can You guys want to arm wrestle? Yeah. You're going to flip a coin.

All right. So, I would I would like to credit and assign the motion to Mr. Alers. You're good with the motion? You good? Mr. Alers, make the motion be fine. And second by Okay. Any other discussion? All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? None. So, the motion passes. The recommendation will go on to the council for Monday's meeting. Will that be on the work session? Yes. Thank you. That's not gonna be enough time. The first work session or the second

third. I I will say a lot of great work there. It really makes you stop and think and it really shows you how helpless we are and things that seem to be so simple. Yeah. In today's world of litigation and all those other challenges. So, a lot of scary stuff out. I'm coming for Mr. Michael looking to sue. I can't comprehend how patient and tolerant and non plus you've been through this meeting. We go through this too often, but coming in cold. Can't believe you did as well as you did. Nice job. All right, next item. Our favorite. Say take five.

Suggesting it. Yeah. Anybody need to go to the bathroom? I actually think maybe I'll go to down and try to get coffee. No, I'm good. Yeah. Want to take five minutes? Let's do that and uh give us a chance and apologize to my wife. Oh, I'm going to turn that. I got to tell you a funny story though. The other night she said, "I don't know what happened." I was upstairs and she said, "I don't know what's happened." She said, "I can't turn the TV off in the family room." She said, "But when I was sitting there, I went moved my arm and the remote went somewhere. I can't find it. Well, it's Samsung in that room. Well, in the bedroom, there's another. I said, okay. Well, I went in and got hurry up and I can shut it off.

I said, "Where could it be?" I looked through everything under the floor, under everything. So, I said, "Just go ahead and order another one." I thought she ordered one. It's like eight bucks. It'll be another one come in because I tried to use hers and I couldn't get it to turn on the big skin of Korean family room. So, today I'm trying to think where I was. I was someplace and and maybe I get a text says I found it. She when she hit it like that, it went over and she had a pair of black shoes and it went down in the left foot in the shoe and this morning she was getting ready to go out. She put her shoe in and said, "What's in there?" And that remote was stuck in the But that stuff drives you crazy because you know it has to be there.

I mean, I'm underneath the couch. I'm turning it over and it's like, "You got to be kidding me." And I said, "So, where was it?" She said, "Shoes I have on today." That's hilar. She just put them in the closet, never put her foot in. They weren't like winter shoes and she put them away and she never Yeah, I know.

But I got to tell you, I spent a whole lot of time looking under stuff that I never planned on. I was going to mention to Tom aside that I think I heard that he was going to go about a level of subtrauge and insinuating what he thought was five, but then what we turned out in last two minutes to say was four and five. Sort of weedle that in sideways into his report, but then the final recommendation ended three. Yeah, that's what I thought I was hearing.

Yeah. I didn't want to say them to him because then that had ran him out to everyone, but if he snuck that in dandy. Yeah. I mean, I This is kind of one of those things where like I just think it's really hard. Like, you know, I know you did this at the county level with the stuff, but like it's this procedural questions things that are just like You think I fight people now? Oh, I can't, man. It's just disturb. It just like the order of these things drives me crazy. And like I just I just don't think that these are they're just not really conducive for like actual conversations. Like it's just it's hard to do this the way you're supposed to do it.

Stuck me at the last second I go numbers we have the easier any one thing will either pass like a landslide like an avalanche or the call the six or whoever they are picking and dicing it. There it's going to take four hours. I I kind of think too like I mean I'm sure Cliff's right and somebody will make a motion or whatever it is, but like if we can if we can do our best to say look this this was the question that we were asked. These are the answers to that question. There's a million other questions to answer but this is always

and then you bring these other pieces in. So like cuz I think if you if you add in these other things at the beginning now you're sort of inviting weird motion point I get at is this flippity floppity thing where it's the city attorney to me that said that no it's inappropriate to be changing the motion adding amendments to make the vote I go what did I even just hear this guy say? Yeah.

Or do you think he was sitting in his car? Could be. No, he called out radio. So he's a good dude. No. Yeah. Who's he? You mean Marshall? He's a nice guy. He's German. Said I think we missed the changing of the Well, I would hope I've made a remark to someone who's an avid hunter, right? And it was a point of uh All right, Captain Wendell, you have 35 seconds to talk. Thank you. Thank you both for being here. I told you to leave. You said you stay in for the Bi. So, a lot of excitement. Um, should we How do you want to start?

All right. Can we take back over Ed?

Yeah, that's fine. We're gonna We got our motion. We got accepted. So now we're going to move forward with the conversation on the police services contracts and budget reductions which is a continuation from our conversation last month. So Tom I don't know if you want to take it away or we want to give a quick note but at the last meeting um we had talked about how obviously we we talked about this for the last year or so about the fact that operational costs are increasing uh our revenues aren't really necessarily keeping pace. So understanding that county's also having that same issue uh with their expenses that the contract is likely to be uh higher than typical at probably 5%. The committee last month given direction to begin the process of working with the police department u to really understand the impact if there was to be a reduction if we didn't increase for year-over-year. What does that do? Kind of giving some more operational perspective. That's still underway. The idea tonight though was to bring uh Kath Mandell who graciously offered to come in and share but really to offer an opportunity to the council to hear from Kathmandell directly kind of what that impact could look like but also ask direct questions as we kind of work through this. But uh officially we'll have something come back after we work a little bit more with the St. Louis County Police Department. But that was a nice little intro teed it up for you.

All right.

Happy to answer questions as we go through. Uh first foremost uh obviously we've been a partner with Wildwood since the start 30 years. Uh so we are certainly interested in working through whatever we need to work through to maintain that partnership and and make things happen or uh come up with the best plan to to continue services. Uh the the amount of officers assigned Wildwood has changed over the years. I think Ed has alluded to that. Um, I did watch your your video. You guys were kind of all over the place with stuff. Uh, so I'm going to try and address everything that was brought up. Um, but you hit a lot of key points and it's obvious, you know, you you guys have a good idea what's uh what's happening or not happening. Um, you know, first and foremost, uh, yes, the county is is uh in the same boat, probably a worse boat uh than than Wildwood. They're looking at the same thing that that they have challenges with uh with revenues and and money coming in to take care of of services they offer. Um Ed, you mentioned in that other meeting that uh the county government has put a a $5 million uh uh

reduction

reduction in our our police budget. Where that money uh is coming from is from our overtime. uh this being a contract, it's fully staffed. So, our overtime really relates to our uh to your events. Uh new budget for that. So, that doesn't impact us at all. That's in our other precincts where they're using they're short-handed. They're using overtime to uh to fill but or fill fill beats. Um, a year or so ago, about two years ago, we created a uh we had a a special response unit. We've kind of rebranded what what they do. They're in our our patrol division. Also, uh they become a mobile precinct. It's really ready manpower. So, those precincts that are short, uh if they need a body, they have they have people that are scheduled on duty. You're going to work in this precinct today. you're going to that one tomorrow. Uh there's somebody in training or something, you go fill in there. So that that's how the department has has worked to uh try and overcome some of those those challenges. Again, we don't face those those challenges here. Um I I think I have a lot I could say or will say. Um you know, first and foremost that the precinct, you know, for us should be looked at. We're the the tip of the iceberg. Uh what you see is the day-to-day operation police officers, the uniform officers out there in the cars, but behind us or or under us is as a an iceberg is is the the rest of the department. Um we're an accredited department. We have, you know, policies and practices that are that are in place. Best practices are always looked at. We have a total a unit that that's

what they do is they look at at what uh what's good that's going on out there and how we should have our policies in line with that. uh that come up in the past when something controversial happens. Uh the powers of be uh start emailing and and challenging, you know, police should do this, police should do that. And you know, going back to uh 2019 or so when when some of those incidents happened, um these individuals out there would would throw stuff at council people. random email from someone who doesn't live here, doesn't live in the state. Uh their job is to provoke things and then I'm getting phone calls, which which are fine, saying, "Hey, do you have a policy on this? Do you have a policy on Well, absolutely we do. Our policies are online. You can look at at anything you want. Um if there's something that needs to be adjusted, you know, we do that again based on best practices and, you know, what's legal and what's right." So, uh, we have a board of police commissioners that that oversees our our operations. Uh, they are civilian members that basically chief of police answers to the police board. Um, one of them happens to live in in Wildwood. So, there's a there's a connection there. Uh, another thing we're looking at is is a workload uh, study. We do this periodically anyway. Oh, and that's something I did uh probably two years ago when we re reduced our manpower. Uh you know, we started the contract on 8 hour shifts and it was staffed that way. The department moved to 10-hour shifts and pretty much the national trend is 12-h hour shifts. Uh so the guys get half we do a two-eek pay period, so half the

days are working and half the days are not. So, uh, we're set up in four squads. There's two day squads. So, when one of them is off, the other one is is filled on days. And same thing at for for the night shift. So, as far as precinct operations, I kind of have two two groups, almost three two groups. Uh, so there's the the patrol group, that's that's the uh the guys that are answering radio calls 24 hours a day. And then we have our our neighborhood uh policing group. Um that's comprised of two traffic officers, two park officers, uh and two neighborhood policing officers and our our clerk uh at the front desk. Uh kind of a third group. They're counted in the neighborhood policing group, but they are uh our school resource officers that are so totally separate contract uh from the from the precinct contract. They're assigned to us, assigned to me. Um, they answered to us in our structure here. They're they're my bodies basically. Uh, but they answered to Rockwood School District on that on that contract. So, I'm the leaison there obviously for our for their issues, our issues here. Um, in the summertime, those officers are not assigned to school obviously, so I generally get to keep them. uh you do not pay for them. Um so there's kind of a list of things um you know based on our long-term relationship that we do a lot you get a lot that you don't you don't pay for. It's not spelled out and that's that's one of the items. Uh it's kind of free manpower. It helps me that I get to keep them because other people are on vacation. So I got these bodies that can can fill in. The department could certainly, and I can't really oppose it, say, "You know what? We need

those four guys to to work in the North County precinct." And and that's where they would go. They wouldn't like it, but they would go. Um,

so, you know, you've mentioned that your your city staff is small. Um, we fill in a lot of gaps, you know, with that uh afterhour stuff. We're here. We're here 24 hours a day. So, if the uh carpet cleaner needs to get let in at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, we're already here. We open the door, we get them in, we take care take care of that for you. That though, and if you had your own police department, that would happen anyway. So, you know, I I think we we fill in there. We've had a a great rapport and relationship that whatever you guys need, we we go above and beyond to to make sure that happens. Uh there was a lot of deer talk. Um I I came here in 2018 and this was already in motion for five years prior to me getting here. So if I've watched this uh develop um a lot of discussion has been had a lot of committees have have I mean this has been beaten up and beaten up and beaten up and you kind of change faces and people and you you keep going down the same road. So at a point a couple years ago when we or city the staff came to here's the plan. It's like hallelujah, you have a uh you have an answer and a direction and and it I I think it was going very well. So, uh unfortunately, it's back in your hands to to think about it some more. So, uh from that, uh our department was was involved with it quite a bit. Uh we did a lot of the research. We've always done the the deer counts. Um, Sergeant Wendling was the was the expert. Uh, he's still a phone call away. Uh,

our our planning section, did a lot of the data crunching. Um, they wrote the uh the survey that was sent sent out to residents several years ago. Um, so we've we did some work for you behind the scenes. Again, that's not a separate bill that hey, we did this or that. It comes with the with the uh department. So, uh, I think we did a lot to to get to to where you need to be as far as making decisions. So, um, just examples. Uh, talked about uh, Prop P. So, the the Prop P money, I don't know all the background of it. I inherited that when I walked in the door. Uh, that was all voted and decided. There was a plan developed by the the previous previous captain uh on what to do how to improve our services and the result of that was with the Prop T funds we're going to add two sergeants and six police officers. The six police officers was the the staffing factor to add a beat. So we had worked with four beats the size of Wildwood as you know was same size as the city of St. Louis. uh have another car out there certainly, you know, would be beneficial. So that uh was a determining factor for the number of officers. The the supervisors, Wildwood did not have enough supervisors for 24-hour supervision. I worked in the West County precinct, which is the next door neighbor, and many times I was sent to Wildwood in the middle of the night because something happened and there's no supervisor working. I had to fill in. I called myself the west region commander because I had LA Park, Clinton, Wildwood, and the unincorporated area, West County. So, I was the boss of a huge area and didn't know half the guys working out

here, but or where I'm driving to in the middle of the night. So, it it worked out fine. You know, my job was to ensure policies are followed that, you know, we handle incidents correctly, and it didn't happen a lot, but it it did happen. So having your own in-house super supervisors was is important that they're familiar, they know what's going on. Uh the the officers have have somebody on hand to answer questions or or give them guidance if needed. So uh that that was the Prop P funds and and how they were played out. And again, that was uh you know, city administrator and and the police staff uh you know, came to that conclusion on how how they were going to spend those funds. Uh the residual money that that usually comes up is used for uh some minor equipment stuff that, you know, is is still owned by the city. We have access to it. We have use of it. Uh, a couple examples. Um, pretty much daily we use, uh, uh, radar equipment for doing speed surveys, collecting traffic data, that type of thing. Um, speed display signs for for speed feedback. Uh, that that's all good. It's tools that we can use to to uh, you know, let us know how how we can uh, you know, deploy our officers. uh as I mentioned enjoy a uh a low crime rate. Um I think we're we're pretty good at addressing uh you know cit citizen concerns. They may not always agree with how uh the police assess something. Um but we're kind of disinterested disinterested as far as we're we're in the middle. You said this happened. You said this happened. we mediate that. Um, what tends to happen occasionally is

when you guys get get the email that they're trying to convince you they want something done and you know, I appreciate the fact that uh it it rarely happens that that a council person will contact us and say, "Hey, you should have handled it this way." Because there's always two sides of the story. And that's generally what happens is you get their side and they want to convince you to uh take their side and and and make their point. So, uh you know, it's important that that the officers have have their discretion in handling calls. They do it right. We have I was going to bring in as a prop uh our our books of uh of uh general orders and procedures and and manuals. Uh unfortunately our our books are outdated because there's so much there. It's all online. So that's that's where we look our stuff up at this point. Um beyond our day-to-day operations, as I mentioned, uh events. So you roughly have about 25 events that we staff. Um the the staff that I currently have, we pretty much can handle everything that that comes our way. and and I think it's been proven. Very proud of the fact that when we had the tornado a year or so ago, um we had five officers on and I I don't remember if there were two supervisors or one uh working that particular night. They handled everything on their own without us calling in other resources from one of the other precincts or from our special operations division. and at, you know, 9 10 o'clock at night. Uh, yeah, we can call up uh backup for that. It's going to take a while to mobilize people to come. What we didn't know, and I was with Rick that night, was what happened beyond uh where we're at in Wildwood that there were far

worse things that were happening and we probably wouldn't have got those resources. We just didn't know it. So, uh, you know, it's it's running call to call, handling these little assignments, and then moving on to the next thing, they kept pace with it. And really by, you know, 10 or 11:00 that night, everything was pretty much handled there. There's nothing else we can do. If a road was blocked by trees, you know, Rick had your contractor on the way to to deal with it. If there were power lines down, that was just going to stay that way until Amaran could get out and do something about it. So, um, you know, as far as staffing, I think, uh, we're we're in good shape. Can we make some changes? Absolutely. Uh, I was going to go over pretty much the whole department and tell you, you know, what what I have behind me. Uh, I'll I'll kind of do it briefly. We have a public information office that handles press releases. So, if there is a major event, we have people that deal with that. uh it's not on on time to figure something out or you know get whoever you have to do your normal stuff

or the mayor to explain how somebody got shot somebody get shot for that it happened right

and and there that's a good example you know we we've had couple serious incidents uh it's handled by our patrol officers initially but we end up with with 10 or 12 detectives that are involved in this that that roll in and take it over and take on you know, all the challenges that come with that. Uh, the department has, you know, 60 plus contracts with multiple municipalities. Uh, some are full service contracts. I already mentioned we have, uh, you know, Blackjack and Jennings and Valley Park and, uh, what else are there? Twin Oaks, uh, Fenton. Um a lot of the smaller municipalities will contract with us just for for uh patrol functions which is like uh kinlock they do uh you know so many patrols during during a shift or during a day that's how they they pay their contract but they they don't have all the other resources that that are here in hand for you. Uh we have an internal affairs section. Um, so complaints generally are not hap happening here as far as uh us handling them. We'll do some preliminary work on it, but it it's it's out of my hands. So, you know, we're not trying to talk anyone out of a problem. If they think an officer has done something that they shouldn't do, there's a mechanism for that to to to be investigated and it's it happens out of the chief's office in Edmore. So, uh, I mentioned our analysis unit, a lot of our research data, number crunching. Uh, they do it. There's a staff that, uh, they research policy, they write policy. They do a lot of our our number crunching for us. Far as patrol, we have eight precincts and our our transit division, our transit bureau, which is Metroink basically. Um, we pretty much support each other. So, if I have a major incident, you know

that I I need staffing, uh, you know, we're neighbored with the West County precinct, so I can I can borrow people from them, provided that they have people available to send me. Um, you know, the only time we're going to be really taxed is if there's some kind of a major weather event like like I said with a with a tornado that uh, you know, rips through the through through the metro area. then it's everybody's got to figure out what they're going to do and how we're going to help each other to get through it. So, we have investigation divisions. They handle robberies, homicides, child abuse, domestic assaults, uh special investigations related to like human trafficking, uh computer type crimes. our property crimes uh bureau, frauds, burglaries, arson, autotheft, uh criminal identification bureau is our crime lab, crime scene unit, fingerprint section, warrant section, property control. They handle all our evidence. Uh so we're we're talking, you know, hundreds of people basically behind the scenes that that we have at our our disposal for support. our special operations division. You mentioned the helicopter. There is no we don't get to call for the helicopter. It's if I need a helicopter, we get the helicopter. Uh problem properties unit, K9 unit, uh our highway safety unit, commercial vehicle inspection unit. Uh we have a detail that's the the police force basically for Spirit Airport. That's that's a county police group. Even though it's in Chesterfield, there's there's a uh a county police contingent down there. and our uh crisis intervention team which handles uh mental health cases. We have quite a few of those that that happen here in Wildwood. We do the initial work on it, then it's turned over to them for followup, uh referral for services, that that type of stuff.

And that that unit is is grant funded a lot. And there's actually, I believe, uh, an Ellisville police officer that's now detached to that unit, you know, assisting uh, countywide. So, uh, you know, those partnerships exist all over the place. Uh, emergency management, they gave a presentation a few weeks ago. They handle uh warn the warning sirens, um event planning, disaster planning, disaster response, disaster resources. Uh the night of the tornado, our emergency management office was up and running and I was in communication with them. Uh once that door is open, uh Rick and I stumbled across uh county uh transportation uh dump truck and crew clearing a road, a side road in Wildwood and like who is this? Why are you here? You know, we've we've never seen this. This is not a county road. So, uh they were sent out to deal with it. They came out and dealt with it. So that meant, you know, bringing out a front loader and and getting some large trees because this this particular subdivision was was totally blocked off. So, uh, you know, that that partnership and that support extends beyond just us. Uh, record sections, uh, reporting, they handle all our sunshine requests. So, you can't show up at our window and say, "I need a copy of a police report." You can go online, you handle it that way. that that group screens for what should or should not be released based on sunshine law. So then our personnel section handles our hiring. Um, you know, another advantage of the contract is if if someone is uh promoted or if someone leaves the department, uh,

someone retires, instead of me having to find someone and hire them,

I basically tell my boss and he transfers something and uh, and we just had the good example, uh, officer Adrien Washington got promoted recently and was transferred to another precinct, which is pretty much typically how we how we do that. And the day he leaves, uh there was a new officer walking in the door to fill the fill the slot. So, uh no downtime for us there. Uh let's see. We you asked about beats. There are five beats. Uh they really have nothing to do with your wards because your wards, you know, change based on population. our our beats are assessed by our our calls for service. Um, and that's going to relate pretty closely to population. So, if you got a lot of people here, there's a lot of people calling the police here. If you have very few people out here, we rarely get calls out in the rural areas, like I said. Uh, so of those five beats, three of them kind of come together here in town center so that if something happens here, one of those cars is is close by. the far western side of the precinct is more rural, more forested. Uh that's one car handles handles a lot of that area or covers that area. And then obviously if if one car is out a service on something, the the CAD system uh recommends who who's the next one to uh handle and fill in. Uh we assess that every couple years. Um our our beat maps were made in 2019, the most recent one, but we've looked at that in 22. Um and we haven't had any huge development or or population increases uh where that would need to be adjusted at this point. So it'll be looked at, you know, again in the near future. Uh cost per officer

is about $139,000. Uh, and what that is is salary benefits. Um, there's I haven't gotten the breakdown of what that totally is, but the use of a vehicle is in there. Um, you know, I found old documents on on the contract when they said, you know, Wildwood will pay for nine cars. So, the nine vehicles, that's what they got. Now, we're in a position now. We know everybody has to have a car that's here working. Um, our our collective bargaining agreements have have put us in a situation where all supervisors have a car assigned to them. So, the department obviously has to provide those to to them. So, we have a good fleet of of vehicles, but I can say at any time we probably have two that are out of service for whatever reason. um whether it's an accident, engine problem, catalytic converters. Uh we founded that uh side note, uh we got some new cars in 20 21 maybe that were basically something with Ford Explorers was a problem. And we've had an engine blow up for really no reason. Uh we're dealing with a couple of them now that are down for they knew this existed. They didn't recall and they it's a it's a gamble of is is your car one of them and we have we have a handful of them here and there. So uh so we have those other vehicles. Uh there's about a fleet of 12 vehicles that are that are uh our pool vehicles here. Um with two of those being down or if somebody's at court, we we know that our our uh beat cars have vehicles at their disposal to uh to handle what we need to handle. Um

going to talk about deer program already did. Uh, I will add that we occasionally hit deer uh with our police cars and it is not cheap and there's an an example of if it's got $5,000 of damage, it's going to go sit in a shop for however long it takes for them to fix it and get parts and do whatever. So something simple, you'd think a simple gear accident where you didn't total it, uh, but it causes some damage, you know, we can miss a car for for a month or better without, uh, you know, having those wheels. Um, no, I think, let me interject just a little bit because I I do think I I think I'm done actually. So, I

I just wanted to say and and I know we said this before and I want I want to say it again and I know we've talked about this outside of the meeting too. Like the the work that you guys do for us is tremendous and we are very appreciative of everything that you guys do. It has been a very I think uh valuable and and fruitful partnership since the city started this arrangement probably back when we started. So I I think that there is no no real doubt and I don't even think there's a minimal consideration really about you know trying to figure out a different police entity to work with in in this capacity. I think the biggest part of it is as we said at the beginning you know the county is certainly going through some financial issues. I I've heard through some other folks that, you know, their other police departments that they're a little bit unsure how some of these other statewide taxing things are going to start affecting things. Um, so there's a lot of a lot of flux that is happening.

Absolutely. And so I I think it's it's reassuring to hear that, you know, as these things come and go, the city and and the county police are are are going to do the very best to try to work together on this stuff. So, you know, obviously costs go up, they go up on everything that we do. And I think the most important thing, and correct me if I'm wrong, Tom, is that, you know, we there certainly might might be a point where we have to say, hey, this is this is how much money we have, and so we need to make some adjustments.

So, I think it's a good thing to hear that we can we can make those to the best of our ability. Um, does anybody have any specific questions? I know we talked a lot about this last month, and obviously we've got Captain Mandelle here. Um, anybody have anything in particular they want to ask or or any of that? Yes, sir. Mr. Marshall,

I guess my question would be, and this is just as much of a city project because we're going to talk about that in a little bit, technology and the computer improvement stuff like that. I know it takes you forever to get the reporting for all the money and the people they're trying to cut. Is anybody talking about moving forward with faster technology that the reporting is coming out quicker? I mean, we look at it as a city. we keep it's very expensive having humans, you know, and yet we still have limited amounts of of data. And so as we look at what what we're going to do in the future, are there any things from a technology standpoint that we can do as a city that would improve what you all are doing or are the the county and the police department doing anything? I know they're cutting jobs and all that kind of stuff, but is there any way they're going to try? I think the biggest thing we can do for our residents is to communicate how great of a job you guys are doing and and unfortunately they never see that,

right? And and so part of that is how can we get reports back to let the people know? Uh I I just think that that's one of the opportunities we both have is how do we let people know because the stuff that you shared with tonight for at least this old guy, I remember most of those things happening. The problem is you sit down in a council meeting, suddenly make a motion that we outsource this to Chesterfield or to Eureka because they heard it's less money and you get people voting for stuff and they don't have a clue. Yeah. And so I think part of we have to do is to really get a better understanding of of and I I think that the writeups and I'd love to see you on TV and yours. Um but I think that we had to do it last time. So all right, you guys both did a great job.

Congratulations. But I think it's so important that we get it out there to the people because I just know when you do uh homeowners association meetings, they really do value it. But in many cases, they don't have a clue of what all is being done. So whether that's us with our technology or you all with your technology, I just like to see if somebody's got a plan from a year or two from now to where we can start saying, "Okay, through technology, we have fewer people involved in it or we get it faster or we're communicating it better." So

technology, we've we've jumped ahead quite a bit with with technology. Um, you know, every every officer has, you know, has a laptop and it used to be it was assigned to the car and then they moved forward that everybody really needs to have their own. So every officer has their their own piece of equipment. Um, but that came with a with a price too. So, initially we created a reporting system, police report system where you called in, you dictated your report. They'd ask you the questions, they'd fill in the blanks for you and they'd print it off and there you go. You don't have to handwrite or type up your own report. Well, that kept transitioning. A lot of that data entry now is on is on the cop. Uh our we call it a care unit uh computerated report entry. Um that was our invention. uh you know we have in in-house IT section that built that over the past you know 30 plus years and is now being used uh countywide really. So, as far as data, uh, you know, when I do that data report,

I I call our planning section. I said, "Hey, I need this." And there's only like one or two municipalities that don't use it. So, they have to go through a different database at the state level to find their crime stats, but we have everything to report back and it's all public information obviously. So, uh, technology has moved us forward. Uh but there's there's so much stuff at your fingertips now that um you know mapping and just available data to do stuff and to find out uh you know crime stuff. Uh and we've had different different programs that there's there's one in our north precinct shot spotter which may or may not you know be controversial some there's a price tag attached to that. uh it would not be of any value in Wildwood. Uh

we could figure out where deer hunting's happening. Well, that that's the truth. Uh but it it obviously, you know, basically it's microphone system that reports back that you know within seconds that hey, here's multiple shots and it actually records them. So the officer can get on his laptop and say this just clued up. They can hear the shots and say that's an assault rifle. There was 25 shots from an assault rifle and that's where we're heading to and we discover, you know, several homicides pretty regularly uh just based on that. Nobody's calling 911, right?

That system is is telling us and we're able to intervene and sometimes, you know, we're getting there quick enough that this is the only car leaving really fast. So, they're probably involved in in whatever just happened. So, uh, yes, the technology is there. Um, are you talking like social media stuff or

I I guess the bigger issue is we're all looking at how do we get things faster and how do we look at doing it with fewer people because everybody's got turnover issues. Uh, are there any short-term plans from the police standpoint? Because we're going to be talking tonight about all the additional money we have to spend on technology, right? And we still don't have any really any more revenue coming in, right? So the challenge then is do we pay technology uh up to the point that the federal government says you have to do this uh in order to do this. I'm just kind of curious. I mean I know that with all the stuff that going on and I know the big election coming up. Uh that will probably change some of it but it just seems that there's somebody's got to have a big plan for that.

Yeah, it's certainly there and we are you know looking at there's we got people doing that. I'm not doing it. But uh you know there's there's staff that certainly looks at how can we streamline stuff whe whether you I'm not a big fan of it myself but you know you call 911 we just you know went to a text to 911 system. So, it gets the information in there into queue faster sometimes or if the person, you know, can't can't be on the phone, you know, having a conversation. It's still we're still getting what we need to get, you know, officers on the way to to handle stuff. Uh the, you know, press one for this, press two for this, say what you want. You know, uh I certainly like when somebody answers the phone, you can have a conversation, but

you know, when you have a big event like a tornado, uh and everybody's calling or there's an accident on the highway and who's got a cell phone, right? Everybody's got a cell phone. So, everybody's calling in. They get inundated with 25 calls. Well, people get angry because, hey, they didn't hand answer my call, so they hang up. uh if you drop out of queue and then you recall, you don't get back where you were. You go back to the end of the line and and you start in. So the good thing is a lot of people call stuff in and we're we're on it by the time we get to you. Okay. One last question then. Yeah.

So, as we were building to get to the different beats and and the coverage on it, we used to on certain days either Monday, low accident days, we didn't have people 24 hours, seven days a week and we had to manage backwards. God forbid something happens. But right do you have a plan in mind that if suddenly we don't have those resources as to how you would step that back the way I mean I remember we hired back um we did the cop grant and I think we hired three officers we had to keep them for five years so I mean that was 70,000 bucks a year but it made the difference for us to be able to do that right

so if you had to back down and you don't have to share that with us tonight but I guess that would just be another one of those issues that here's some potential things that we could do to to bring it down if we needed to. Oh,

absolutely. Absolutely. And Lieutenant and I have already had some conversation. Um I want to back up to to cost as far as you know cost per officer. Tom did a good job, you know, looking around. Uh the the industry is what the industry is. Uh you're going to find that that most police officers were kind of in in the in the median range. I think maybe a little higher than the median, but uh if you had a casino perhaps uh in Wildwood that you'd be flush with money, right? So, uh those agencies that have that

that uh extra revenue, you know, certainly benefit from it. Um but, you know, again, we're kind of all in the same boat. Same training. Uh everybody's trying to be competitive as far as salaries. So, you know, our what what we, you know, are are charging, you know, in our contract, uh, is not for a profit. You know, uh, you know, I don't want any a misconception that, hey, the countyy's having having a financial issue, so we're just going to, you know, extra bill or overcharge our our clients and and get them to pay. It's not. Our our uh contract has always been uh with the idea to break even. We don't break even. You know, uh guarantee we we pretty much have a loss every time. Uh historically,

are we the largest police contract? I'm sorry. Are is Wildwood the largest police contract the county? Um yes. As far as Yes. Uh Jennings is I think about 10 officers short or 10 officers less than us. Fenton I want to say might be 15 plus uh fewer than we have. Um Metroink even is is only about 25 officers. So

I think you guys do a great job. I just I think those are the kind of things that we need to be prepared as we try to get into the budgets to keep accidents from happening where people just eliminate this or eliminate that. No, we need to really think through it and come up with different ways. you know, you you basically need to tell me, someone needs to tell me this is what needs to happen. And you know, you you spoke about our our uh you know, yes, you have the contract and then there's the the cost sheet. The cost sheet was developed over years of streamlining this so that you're not saying, hey, you can only have six cars and this year we need to cut you only get five cars, so try to work through that. So it it was maybe too specific and you know through just development of of how to improve it and streamline it so that it's it's more or less the same for for anyone you know that's contracting with us. It's it's based on you want a body. This is this is what it costs to supply the body. Uh supervision is rolled into there. Like I said, vehicle uh some of the uh uh investigative support that's that's figured into that that total number for that officer. So, um you know, like Tom and I have had a brief conversation. We have not gone into any any uh deep detail about what the expectation is. I I need you to tell me or someone at some point to say this is this is what we want to do. you know, you kicked around a number of a million dollars. That's that's a lot. Uh the only way I can cut budget is is people. Um and that's it's really all all it is. I can't say that we're not going to buy two new cars this year or something like that. It that's a drop in the bucket. Uh you mentioned about buying cars. I we just put a brand new car in service

today. Um it has 150 miles on it. Uh, and rolled up in the uh, glove box was the sticker, which I was surprised. Usually they toss that when they start outfitting the car. Uh, so for a Ford Explorer police package vehicle, the sticker price was $50,000. Now, I don't think we paid 50,000 because they're there state contracts where that's bid out. Uh, we probably pay closer to 35 or $40,000. But that was eye opening to me because I remember in the past uh dealing with other uh units that I was involved in, we'd get grant money, you can buy a car, an Impala at the time cost uh $23,000 and a Crown Victoria was like $28,000. So what are you going to get? I can get more impels than Crown Victoria is. Uh, but you really have to double the price of the car because, yeah, you bought the car and it's just the car. You're going to put decals on it. You're going to put a light bar on it that's about $2,000. A siren system. Uh, a radio systems about $5,000. A laptop computer that went in the car was about $5,000. Uh, a radar system was about $2,000. So, it quickly starts adding up that it's it's double the price. So, I had gotten grant money and we said, "Okay, here's the bill uh from the state, $60,000." And they're like, "What kind of car are you getting? There's no car that costs $60,000." I said, "You're right. It's a police car, but you got to put all this stuff in it to make it a police car." And they're like, "Okay, that makes sense." So, that's what they that's what they paid us. So, uh Mr. Farmer, I know you you mentioned uh traffic and and deer problems. Uh, I don't really want to be involved in the deer. Uh,

I don't I don't want to be involved in the deer problem. So, uh, I've hit one,

you know, we're talking about cutting a significant number of staff, but then coming up with uh with how the police department's going to take on some responsibility. Uh, it's counterintuitive to that, uh, we're going to get included in in trying to manage that. I think it's I think it's it's good that you say that because I do think it is important and Ed brought it up that you know a lot of times council members and I'm probably guilty of this myself like think they've got a great idea and they're like let's just do you guys handle the deer thing also not that we're doing this but we're going to cut a million dollars out of your budget so fix both of those things for us. I I think it's important to let our residents know and our council members know and and everybody that like the work that you know I I I would assume I could be wrong that if you guys wrote a million tickets a year, our residents would some residents would think we still don't write enough. Other residents would think that we write way too many, right?

So I know that you guys are very often put in, you know, it's just a lose-lose deal and and it is what it is. So, I I appreciate you coming in tonight and giving the details on that. I think it's important for people to realize what that money goes towards. I think it's also important to realize and be open and honest before it becomes a real problem that you know we are aware the county has an issue and now there's a state thing that might affect everybody that we don't know how that's going to work and we have our own uh budgetary com you know pressures that we're feeling. Um, I think one question I had is and uh, you know, we have our new multif family building that is coming online here shortly. We've got some the the the reserve that's getting built out. So, there's going to kind of rapidly be a significantly larger amount of people around. I would just think it would be great if you might say that you guys are aware of that and are making adjustments accordingly if that is in case the truth. Well, absolutely. I I don't know, you know, how long before that subdivision exists, right? And how many people are going to move in there? How many people are going to move in there with kids? It was the same thing you guys talked about with, hey, we're going to build these apartments over here and they're going to be x number of kids. Well, how do you know that? You know, you're just guessing on averaging that there's going to be families moving in there and there should be 2.5 kids, you know, per per household or whatever. Uh, you know, the reality is we we don't know uh, you know, if it's if it's uh, you know, a these are higher priced homes. So, are there going to be families? Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Are these going to be retired people? Are these going to be, you know, multi-member family? I I don't know. Uh, it's trying to predict what could possibly happen.

I think the idea is That's exactly my point is like until it happens, you don't really know what's going on. But but I think it's important for our res residents to understand that when it does occur, that is something that you guys take into account and it isn't always just business as usual. Like I assume, I could be wrong that when you know I'm old enough to remember before Bright Leaf came in, it was just a big field. I imagine you guys didn't patrol very much over there. Not much to do. Now you do,

but but even there, that's a good example. There's not a lot of calls that that happen in there. And you know, I don't know the the makeup of of the residents that are in there. Are they older people that, you know, take care of themselves? Are they elderly people that our calls will end up being, you know, our number one call is is like a medical assist call. You know, we're responding with the with the with the fire department or ambulances. Um, burglar alarms, those are those are up there. The majority of burglar alarms are usually false alarms. So, do you need, you know, if we get a burglar alarm, we send one guy. You know, other departments send send two guys on the chance that, and maybe we're looking at it wrong, that this is a burglary in progress. We're going to catch somebody in the house when generally, no, it's not. They they left the door open. Uh, the dog knocked over uh the base in the house and set off the alarm. And you were the eighth call.

Yeah. After call the police. Yeah. Unpredictable. Uh yes, we'd keep an eye on that. I know. I was asked, you know, if if this is going to be rental property, you know, up the street here if that ever were to be developed in that in that fashion, you know, how how would that influence our calls? Well, I don't know. until they happen. It only takes the one the one bad uh neighbor that you don't want to have that either gets the police called on them or they're uh dysfunctional and they have to have a lot of police inter intervention or that never happens and there's we never have calls. Bright Leaf is perfect. We rarely have calls in there.

I get several calls from them but don't worry about it. All right. Does anybody have any anything else for the captain? Okay. just as a captain and I think I already said it.

What are you looking for? You know, we can certainly downsize in in different manners, but you got to keep that in mind. If I got fewer guys out there and something happens, it it it's going to look different. And and I had that that conversation with the mayor just when we were reducing by two people. He's like, "Are we going to see a difference?" Well, no. Yes, because everybody loves Steve the Gelder. uh you're going to see a difference because Steve's gone. So, but as far as what we do and how we do it, it that that hasn't changed.

So, maybe then one good question and you don't have to have an exact answer on this, but I know um we've talked over the last year that you know we want to try to have if we if we need to make adjustments and things to the budget, no matter what the pro what no matter what it is for, we want to try to do that before December.

Absolutely. So, from from the police perspective, and like I said, I doubt that that's a thing that we're probably going to do, but you know, we have a new group of people or whatever it is, when is a good time for Tom and to cut like for us for Tom to come to us for advice on what we think he needs to do and then come to you to be able to start having these conversations where it's not scrambling behind the scenes,

right? and that that was kind of unfair, you know, and that's partially what led to the to to how we changed things at the end of last year that this is the end of the year and it's like, hey, guess what? You know, that in my eyes that wasn't fair. So, uh I I went to bat for that and you know, the chief agreed that this is how we should do this. Uh if we're going to have this conversation, we need to when everybody's ready to to look at big picture, you know, far in advance. So, you know, certainly before, you know, we get too far into the summer because there will probably need to be an amendment to the contract. Uh, but it's it's a simple thing. I think, you know, it's it's more that what's what's the number because, you know, I know the Prop T funds, I don't understand how you apply them. Uh, that's going to figure into it. So, if you want to save this, there will be some increase that we know, right? Uh so if we reduce it, there's going to be some increase. So what's who's doing the math? That's that's the question for the guy at headquarters. We say this is what it is. Uh and and he's the the contract guy. He's not a police officer. Uh that's why, you know, my boss said this is this is me. This is, you know, you're in charge of the precinct. You need to be the one in there, you know, having this discussion. And then, you know, I go back through them, through the chief, uh and then he's going to do the paperwork. this is what you want and this is this is what it's how it's going to look you know when we finish

and I know that you might not may not even be on this committee but I believe this committee should have a budget finalized sometime like early September yeah as we start putting stuff in into our budget because this is one it's very difficult but once it's done there shouldn't be a lot of discussion if we do it right so that would be you know from the summertime and then to look at when should we start narrowing down and taking pieces of that budget so I I don't though I don't know that any of us will be here so we don't is isn't really up to us but I guess you know probably the July time frame is I feel

we don't need to put a date on it you know how you're progressing naturally I think just like you said so that we're not all in a crunch at the end of the year and oh we got to amend these these contracts because for us to amend it you know it has to go to the county counselor's office and they you know adjust it or or whatever and it's approved on on that side to get it back and forth between the two entities. So, all right. Well, then hopefully we'll know what we need to do in July. We'll come back um and cabin will talk. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody have anything else? My pleasure. You don't need any action, right? Tonight, there's tonight. Thank you very much. We greatly appreciate all you guys are doing for us. Um All right.

I'm not making them all on the deer. It's not me. Okay. All right. Uh Let me ask this question, guys, because it's starting to get a little bit late. Not that I necessarily want to cut some things off, but we got a handful of items left. Is there any that are more important than others? I see Destin is here and so I'm assuming that we want to do the GIS thing. Yeah, honestly, every Well, yeah. I mean, I'm not saying we can't get through this very quickly. I don't know. All the the video gambling item is information like these other ones areformational. I mean, just the one thing we did want to the municipal management software would be pretty quick. The recommendation is that we don't do anything.

Yeah. Because we're gonna show you what we've been doing and it's working. Just it's working. Okay. It's not perfect, but it's better than spending $800. That was a great presentation. Well done. Yeah. Okay. So, I guess I mean I would say this if we if I had to make make my pick of the letter, I'd say let Dustin uh give his de. That's the next thing, right? You still want to do it. Thomas can grow because he did this. So I can do it. Um that's fine. Um before I say anything, Dustin did not come prepared to present you anything tonight. Oh, that's okay. So just be aware of that. He has been with us for two years.

Yeah, August will be two years. So he's been making great strides with GIS. He has bachelor's degree from Ohio State in JS. Okay. Ohio. Yeah. I don't really I mean I don't unless somebody really wants a I I've seen some of the stuff you guys are doing. I think it's great. I mean, if you need if you want to show us some stuff, cool. If you have Totally up to you. If you have uh some things that you need advice or our direction on, certainly we can help you with that. Um but I think I I think the stuff you guys have been doing is really good. So

well and the reason why we we wanted to show the progress too first and foremost but also we wanted to tie it in because I wanted to make sure that we didn't just with the MMS the municipal management software we didn't just say oh well it didn't get a good price so we're not trying anything we have been it's more so there's like almost two features that has been doing a really good job at with the GIS I mean he's been first and foremost cat cataloging all of our assets in a way that we just did not have before which gives a great and eventually we'll have this I think in a way that can be shared publicly to show the residents here's how much stuff we maintain on a day-to-day basis. And I I hope that helps illustrate to them um that it's not you know tough decisions like that's the reason why the hot dogs can't go because we have to make sure the certain

are the hot dogs on the map. Hot dogs they're not on the map. We could put them on everybody who ever ate one. Yeah. Yeah. But that said

it would be something that they can see you know kind of the you know government in a geospatial way. The other thing is uh we do have the ability to trickle micica reports through uh GIS to then highlight resident complaints and eventually you know we're still tweaking it but we'd like to have a system where residents could see that there's a little traffic cone near the issue where they report it. So it would be able to clearly see not even from a myio perspective that's great too but then they would also be able to know like oh they physically have this on this map and then it usually shows it does shows when we have what contractor we have assigned to it and when we're going to be out there fixing it then once it's done there's the ability to add pictures it's pretty impressive. Um

I would just I could do a quick demo. I used to do this all the time in my last job. So you need to share your screen though. Yeah. Do you uh you able to add me as a panelist? Yes. Are you in probably under attendees?

No, I I came here and I went to college. So the guy want I got I got

those trays and left them flat. And it's autographed by both coaches. Pretty cool. I have one of one of four heads. I have about two or three dozen of the trays and materials. All right. Uh what we're looking at here,

uh if you guys have ever been to county's website, they have a uh RGis experience and that's how they show all the parcel information if you were on counties. Um there was a few minor local complaints about it, so I just made our own. Um just so you wouldn't have to keep going to counties. Uh differences on mine. Every Zoom tries to give you a little bit of different information. So like uh from further out, all the blobs outside of the Wildwood border parks. I figure if you live in Wildwood, every park within 50 miles is still or 25 miles is still your park. So I just added all those in there. Um, as you can see, I got wards, the town center, and the city border. As you zoom in, uh, point of interest show up. This one's I'm still building. So, I have like school locations, the police station, uh, fountains, our salt points where we, uh, store our salt for winter. Uh, restrooms, park benches. I'm working on getting everything in there. Working with Chris over in parks. Some of the stuff though, real quick note, uh, like bridges, we're not going to be able to note

publicly. Publicly, we have we have them internally. That's good. Yeah. Just wanted to note that we're this could be something that's consumed by the public. That said, we're taking close action to make sure that we're protecting the information that needs to be protected.

Sorry. Yes. So the more you zoom in, uh if you see the roads are of different colors, that's to classify them to what's an arterial, what's a major collector, minor collector, local road. This helps with like, uh prioritizing the streets for snow removal or how it's written in our master plan. Um if we go in again, uh we have the So I have St. Louis County's parcel data coming in here. Uh, prior to me coming on, we paid for like four different copies of the same data um on our online version. Now, we don't pay for any of them because I just live connect to everything in St. Louis County. On that note, if you go and since we're in the northwest corner of uh St. Louis County, if you come over here, the cayenne blue is St. Charles's data, the orange is St. Louis County's data, and the yellow is Franklin County's data. So, I just pulled them all in. So, you know, I have to go to three different websites to see the same data.

That's great. Yep. Are you able to count the deer with this thing? Uh, no. I can't count deer with this, but I can I can have some summary information. And then I think, hold on real quick. If we had them report their location and who did it, we would be able to put every kill on this map. It would be nice. That's why we just have the deer areas in there, though. Yeah. you have a deer the interactive deer uh well he made this map too but also the interactive deer map that we've shown you he developed it

uh can I ask I don't know if this is a Rick question or you question Dustin but I just noticed when you flipped through it so um this on the roads like the darker brown I assume is an arterial road yeah the darkest uh like smoky red is a arterial road I'm just curious uh why Is Thunderhead Canyon an arterial road, but Westland Farms Drive is not? That's just currently how it's written on the master plan. So, I'm just copying the And I know that Joe is working to update the master plan. Wow. But it's easier when you can see the colors on the roads and

Yeah. That's why I was like, that's weird. How is there an art? I mean, I get it. Coming off Clayton, that makes sense. But then I was like, do they just stop at the corner and then we're not floating through there anymore. Yeah. Okay.

Yep. Interesting. Um, also if you can see the little beaded lines that surround the streets, that's all the sidewalks. Uh, with open street maps help, I got every sidewalk in, uh, Wildwood mapped. We have 168 miles, unless I need to adjust some things. I think I'm within like 99%. Um, if you zoom in again on here, you get MSD data. That's the red and blue lines. So, I live copy their data so that we don't pay for storage because I I'm not a fan. Um, I'd rather just let them update their own data and not have us do it. Um, so, uh, get out of the selection. I would just suggest, not to interrupt or anything, but like when you guys are feeling, this looks great already, but when you're feeling really good about it, I would start to push this out so that people know that this is

the hope is that people are just going to push it out and tell residents, explore it. That's what I'm saying because I just don't know that people are even going to notice to know where to look to get to it. We haven't we haven't put on the gas just yet, just as an FYI. So, we have we will though. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not I wouldn't like wait till you're ready to go, but I'm just Yeah, like the trustees would would be a big help. This little line here, I do differentiate between if it crosses a street or if it's continuous sidewalk, so I can add them up a little differently. Is it possible, Speaking of trustes, is it I don't know. Is it possible to mark out subdivisions? Yeah, he already did in a different So, we have a couple of

uh Let me turn that on. So, I also have public mowing in here. So every location where we cut the grass, do the landscaping. Uh I'll go over to 109. So I have the the green space for that. I also have the minute the uh zoning um information in here. It's just there's so much data. I can't have it all on or else it would be completely unusable. You want to talk about saving money like this? Yeah. Yeah. Doing the the square footage of the grass that we cut and being able to Yeah, we did a very rough version of that in our HOA and it was like, oh yeah, that that helped. Yeah, that was us just drawing little circles in Google Maps.

Well, and the same can go for the sidewalks, too. I mean, just quantifying this information, the street lights coming down next when we can really like it helps hold contractors accountable, which is important. And that said, you know, we're able to kind of reframe how we do a lot of our RFPs using this data. So, obviously there's going to be a resident public interaction component, but a lot of this will also be used by the team and staff to help, you know, guide them in their job and get stuff put together for the council. So, so does it is it map street lights? Yeah. Uh, so if I were to in the that the city or in subdivision council Yeah, the city city.

Uh, I I would like to sign an NDA and ask Amron for that information because they already have it. You got to send me a file and I can we have 29. I just have to count them. Get the numbers off and tell them to set number out. Numbers council. If we did do that, the council had agreed to approve the NDA. I think that's because we didn't want to do that with uh Spire as well. Where is it? They said they fire once. Yeah, they would let us do it if they got an NDA and they'd let us mark their gas. That would probably dark to do it as they're doing that NDA stuff. You don't need our approval to do that.

Especially with that organization overseen by the PSC. It would be an inter cooperation agreement between you have to do I would maybe ask John if you have to do that every time or if we could just say go get all these. We could probably do like an umbrella. I think though it have it would have to have some type of sunset clause on it. because you can't you can't have it for perpetuity. Then that creates problem. If you sign the NDA and they're and you connect to them and they're updating it, you only need to sign it to get the connection. Yeah. But at one that's where they might push back, we have to have some type of provision that would allow it to suck how I share that information back out. Yep.

Like I have to say I won't. Uh, alternatively, so less public facing data that uh that I have for this, I have I like I I pull in MDOT's data. So like I have their live traffic feed information. Um, I have the the fire companies districts are on here too. That's the red outline. You see the green lines going up like 109. That's MDOT's live traffic data and their projects. Um, it's really great during the winter because they have a lot more information. Uh, but if you zoom in, uh, I did a tour of of Wildwood. I drove up and down every subdivision that has sidewalks and just noted problems if it was a little uneven, if it was really uneven, if it looked like it holds water. Um, so those are all the white dots that are grouped. They're all they're clustered. So if you zoom in, they break apart. There's even they just keep expanding out,

keep multiplying. Yeah. Uh, but so this just just helps me issue out sidewalks so that I can say, "All right, I got these many problems. I can package this group and get it done for the cheapest amount because if you make a um concrete truck pull up the sleds, it's pretty expensive, right?"

Um, and then all of the cones are non-sidewalk related things that hit public works that I'm keeping track of and I add colors with them, run them through statuses. I have some code on there for some of the steps that it'll automatically grab time and date. So, if I switched it from open to issued, the date and time is already copied for me. I don't have to go and do that independently. It prevents from uh bad data collection. Um, but same thing in here uh on this map. The more you zoom in, the more you see. I think this one I have FEMA's 2025 data as well. So, like the flood plane information is in there. Uh, but if you guys know any public source information, I will find the live link to it and add it to a map so that we don't have to pay to see it.

Cool. That's great. Great. Well, it's been very effective and all

the residents are going to be able to access some type of version of this soon and we'll be pushing this because the main thing is we do want to help really. I mean, you saw those issues with the sidewalks. Like that's the hope is that some folks could poke around in here as they're looking up a street light or something, whatever it might be, or reporting an issue and they can see just the sheer amount of stuff that gets maintained by the city so that they're just more realistic sometimes with the the response time to get that sidewalk when it's just a small crack in it. Why that didn't get fixed? Well, there's 56, you know, hundred different instances where we should be going first. And that's why we try to prioritize and package them to make it more costefficient. Excellent work. Yeah, very good work.

Uh, and you guys were asking about street lights. Got this Zoom thing in my way. But, uh, if we were to go in far enough to town center and I have the all the parks lights as well. So, those are the ones we pay for. Yes. So, you have to zoom in far enough for it, but I went around and I can mark outages. So, like over on Grover Ridge. Am I not sharing the right one? I'm not. Yeah.

So, if you were over in Grover Ridge, uh I can click on a dot, turn it red because it's out, and then I can send that all to our our electrical contractor to get fixed. I did that last week. We had 37 outages, and I sent them all over the next day to Tom to get them all fixed. Wow. We can track and you can actually take these and attach invoices to them. You can we can keep a a live record of the maintenance on a given night. So it's that's awesome. Digitizing our entire maintenance program. Good stuff. Excellent. Yeah. The things that happen behind closed doors. We want to make sure the residents kind of stuff that we need to make sure people understand. That's what we

Yeah. And that's why I'm happy that Dustin's sharing this and and we're going to really try to do some pushing on it. So once it's available, we'll be sure to let the council know and then we can kind of distribute that out to count uh to the residents. We'll make a very use as as user friendly as it can be uh version for the residents. Then we'll push it pretty hard promotion wise. You know, I think you'll get a lot of feedback from trustees willing to help you do things. When you say, "Hey, we have this problem." They'll do it because there's something in for them. Yeah. When when all you do is do things and then they're they're not gonna offer do that. They got enough other stuff to do. Yeah. Is the uh twoft increment grades topography included in this initiative or was something else we had

uh designed approved? Are no the So you're talking about the grade of the streets the the topography down to two foot. Yeah. We bought maps. Oh. Oh, that is that is layered. We'll have that by the end of the year. So it's not yet. No, but it it will be um yeah, we'll get new aerial photographs out of it and contours that we and that'll be pulled into it and you'll be able to turn on a layer that shows elevations. The the last two foot uh contour lines that I could find were from 2012. So 14 years. We had a million. We had a million four budgeted for that. What's his cut? Yeah. All right. Uh you guys need any action on that either, right? No, that was just a

Okay. Well, thank you uh for your work that's good stuff. We're excited to have it keep rolling out. Looks really, really good. Other than that, chair, I I mean, if you without the with the committee's endorsement, I would be fine with just doing it the municipal management software real quick. And did you need anything on the gambling and stuff? They'reformational. Oh, okay. They originally the gambling one we might have had to do something, but got advice from the city attorney did not need an update on that. Sure. So, if you saw the news within the last day or so, uh the one of the main companies that home here, right,

uh has consented to own all their stuff out. There are two businesses in Wildwood that had them. Uh we checked on them today. They are in the process of removing them. Nice. Um this spun up locally. Uh St. County prosecutor said, "This is potentially a felony. Serve notice to these to your businesses that have them." We did that a week or so ago and they are We knew one was Larry's. What was the second one? Uh gas station uh BP at 109 and Wild Horse Creek. There we go. So, they're both in the process of removing. Surprise me. Yeah, there should be a non-issue at this

big mobile station's got like four and one. There's more. Oh, there's some in the front and in the back. Yeah. No, no, I just Okay. Um, I do a So, that one's good. We don't need to do the web thing. We will do that eventually, but not It's okay. Okay.

Which is read. I recommend everybody read that though because that's going to be a lot that stuff update on its own. We'll have our Civic Plus will be able to do a lot of it, but the way we like the way you have to format like the docu I'm worried about our agenda center and like it everything we upload is going to be technically you know possibly not compliant and it's just going to be a costly endeavor whether it be through like a consultant coming and helping us or having staff have to do everything they learn posting things on the website. And the federal government has not really said anything and they're just not guidance other than just Dustin. You can see he's very techsavvy. He's

sounds like Dustin's going to get good at uploading. I don't I don't I don't know if this I mean making RFBs recently to our senator. Oh, I this one is one of those things where I I would shake a cane at like come on let's figure this one out. It's that's bad. It's We'll learn more soon. But if you were over 50,000, you had to have it. You have to have it done this month. And I would bet you right now that there's not a senator out there who even knows what this is. Yes. And there's a ton of consultants right now that are trying to pick up scraps for it. You know, I'm getting emails like every day saying, "Oh, you need help with this?" Because I think we're over 50,000 and they know people are panicking. Most cities are either already engaged consultants or just they don't know what this is. It's it's pretty catastrophic.

Classic government stuff. Love it. that should be on like we'll do an update from month to month just to kind of know as we know more and also we'll be because we'll have to come back with if if it might cost some money to do it you know it doesn't specific plus there's got to I've been looking through it and I haven't found something specifically that states it but there is there has to be a requirement for them to keep their they have to be compliant yes they that's their business to do it too

they provide it to municipalities so it would behoove move them to obviously being to make all their websites because they're portals that allow us to upload and it's not, you know, I could teach everyone here how to kind of mess around with the website. It's not as crazy. It's not like we're coding back there. We're it's a formatted template kind of like Squarespace or something if you're familiar with the private sector and it allows people that may not be coding individuals, they can throw things in and make it I think it'd be fair to say, "Hey, we're faced with this. What's your plan?" Yeah. From us to them as the vendor. We we already that's we have to tell us what how you're going to deal with it. That's we're waiting on a the formal plan. Well, I don't think they would be able to give you best practices on what we need to do to upload stuff.

No, that that part we're going to have to fix because it's I know we'd have to fix it, but the idea would be because they are the web provider, they have to be compliant in order for them to be compliant. They then have to tell us what to do to be compliant. Yes. But also, we are the one that ends up holding the bag at the end of the day. Just a different way to scan things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That part I'm not as worried about, but needs to be done anyway. All right. Well, then let's get to the um management software. I guess that's the Yes. last thing. Okay.

Yep. Um so, we'll do that one. Uh reason why we're bringing this up. It was kind of sat down for a while, but we have had some of the uh vendors reach out to us just kind of, you know, tugging at us. We want the original motion was to go ahead and put ice on this for now because we had at the time made some progress with MGV who's actually we've we've done we kind of cut the services that weren't um working for us. We've saved quite a bit of money uh 22,000 a year now. Uh we're using GIS now for a lot of of the uh cataloging and asset management components and uh vendor management components. So I think we've got a solid plan in place. It would be great to onboard, you know, one of these softwares that could kind of do it all for us. But as you can see with the price tags associated with them, I mean, they have very heavy upfront costs and then long-term costs along with having to ensure that the entire staff that just getting them on board with my gov and like learning the software, it's a process. So switching that, you almost need a guarantee that it's going to be I don't we don't want to do it again is the bottom line. Uh and the other thing that kind of hit us as we were going through this last year is that there were a lot of advancements. That's when, you know, a newer AI uh version had come out where it really kind of unlocked the doors on quite a few things where I think quite frankly a lot of these products are going to be somewhat either updated substantially and and they're actually going to incorporate AI or they're going to be obsolete. So at least from the department's perspective,

I'm going to bet most of them are going to be obsolete.

Yeah. And it's and it's something where right now I think it's safe to say let's reject all bids and then as we see some of the like who becomes the dominant vendor like the Civic Plus of the world but in the AI space because there are companies trying to go through like automate permitting automate u you know site plan review that they're starting to get pretty advanced with their propositions. they haven't done it yet, but there will eventually be kind of a master software, I think, that will help with daily workflow, do a lot of the things that were covered in their proposals, uh, but also, you know, take out, you know, a lot of the human error and function from it, too. So, nonetheless, I think right now, uh, the department thinks we should kind of wait and see. Um, my gov is still, you know, it's working and and it's doing better. And then with the GIS, u, and then as we push that out, I think that's going to serve as a really good supplement. uh the department would recommend rejecting all tonight.

I'm sure you're keeping track of this, but I really believe this is the kind of stuff you need to be putting out into next year's budget to say, "Hey, these are costs that we're not seeing them right now, but these are the extraneous costs that we're going to have to deal with in the next year or the following year." Because otherwise, it's like, "Oh, yeah. We knew about, but we didn't think about." Are you are you talking about the ADA stuff? Yeah. Okay. So that so that we're not sitting there saying, "Oh, well, now we didn't know that. we know it. Let's at least put a dollar out there to say these are upcoming things that we need that the ADA stuff has definitely been noted because we we don't have a price tag yet but once we do it will be and we All right. So then we want to you would like a motion to reject all the bids. Yes.

Okay. Does anybody Mr. Marshall will make that Marsh motion? Does N will second it? Uh any conversation questions debate? All right. All those in favor please say I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? All right, that passes. I would Tom, I would just suggest on on something like this when you if you present it or whatever in the work session, I would present it as we went and looked at this. It is not worth looking at for the foreseeable future and check that box and be done with it. Okay. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I get you. Because I I mean, yeah, in two years, none of this is going to make any difference. It

I agree with that a lot. Okay. Um, that brings us, I guess, to end to you, Mr. Brown. You got any new stuff for us?

I just have the update for you this month. Um, if there's any questions about it, happy to address them as best I can. The 109 roundabout is in progress as you've probably seen if you've driven through there. It's moving along very well right now. and um Old State Road Share News Path is getting ready to start. We have been going back and forth with St. Louis County. A little frustrations there trying to get a special use permit from them. Um part of that will be a maintenance agreement that I'm trying to get on the agenda for council Monday night. Um so essentially guaranteeing that we will maintain the trail where it is on their rideway. It's only on their rightway. small portion um but they still have to work through that with them. So um we should be seeing construction started on that project um very soon trees have been brought down and um we'll start breaking ground shortly. All right. Anybody have any questions or concerns? I know it's not really our deal, but uh I have noticed because I was feel like I've been driving by it a lot. the the roundabout and the temple, the signage. There's a lot of signs.

Yeah. And there's a seemingly a lot of confusion as to where people are supposed to be. I actually told somebody to call in today to ask for you. Um said it twice. They almost got hit

when they were coming around the roundabout and the people didn't see the other sign or they were they were trying to cut in front of them and said not only once but then a little bit later she had her husband with her and it happened happened again and it was like where the signs were placed that other people coming in were were very close to having an accident there. So I I don't know enough about it but I thought you'd be a great person to answer that. Well, we've we have tried to add additional signage. Um, but there could be, you know, we'll continue to do what we can to improve it for sure. I been suspecting that there's visitors to Babler Park that may be getting, you know, coming out for the first time or the first visit, you know, and they haven't experienced it yet. And so, they're

first time through is always the toughest. Really is. And once they've done it, they understand it. that first first answer. Do we know how long that detour is going to be there like that? I know it'll be different configurations, but that particular one, we don't know. Um I'll have to check the schedule, but I'm expecting it to be there through Memorial Day. Okay. At this point, do we did we do any no parking stuff on that little cut through back? Because I know I mean there were a lot of people parking over there for the temple. I don't I didn't see them this weekend, but

in our traffic schedule, you're saying? Well, I'm just like, you know, because it they I've seen a lot of people parking on the road in the past rather than like parking in the vacant church or whatever it is next door and like it just seems like they stacked up along the back side of the building and with all the people going through there now and then like there's the mod signs, there's the temple signs like as soon as one person parks and everybody else think that's where they're supposed to park. Right. So, I just didn't know if we we don't have anything. I don't I don't Is that our Can we do something there or is that all a mod thing?

No, the road that goes Oh, that's that's our road. So, we could now we we did meet with the the temple leadership and they were surprisingly cooperative. Um and they gave us some suggestions and things they wanted seen and the signs were there in part based on some of the feedback we got from them. So they've been my I was really surprised very how very um cooperative they were and receptive they were and supportive of the frugal. So well we got a couple more months to get through it. I guess people get used to it. It is there's a lot happening over that's for sure. School buses. Okay. Any anybody have anything else?

Yes sir. Yeah. I would like to make a motion that we begin to uh start publishing the council and committee attendance records again. They can't make it into the gazette. The mayor said to put them on the website and I just think it's an important thing that residents see. Uh, I used to look at them all the time anyway, right? Mhm. But the Gazette is only going to come out one time anyway. So, yeah, it's so But it's too late for the gazette.

Oh, I know that. But now you could put them on the website for, you know, it would be uh May of 25 through April of 26 the e bulletins on the weekly on one of the weekly e bulletins. Is it I mean I think it's great one or the other. Is it better to do it? Like I always thought it was a little silly that it was like, "Hey, here's the year recap." And then you're like, "Oh, this person never showed up." That would have been nice to know while it was happening. We first started doing that back when you were doing six gazettes, right? If you do it like

put it out monthly as a Facebook post or something. We could we could we could also just have like a standing page on the website. If you if you do it in May, it shows the year results and and some of the I would be I would prefer I I I will be honest for from a resource perspective. I mean I would be very thrilled to you know we could put a QR code on the gazette next year but also on the website just have a page we update it each like almost like every we we had briefly talked about this like a council session like there is uh you know we're about to swear in new folks that is a new session of the council almost like yeah so Maya April

Maya April type thing and then we'd show that and then you know when May April comes back up boom we'll post the year's results and you know maybe it's like a six-month thing just to keep it I mean it's a little trivial thing but I always when I wasn't account you know seeing if my people are showing up and things like that you know we could have it you know dep I mean give us the direction tonight we could put it wherever you Nobody in here's got anything to worry about you could put it most places when do you want to where do you when and how do you want to put it up out I did no but I mean be specific be specific when and where you want to put it what are my options

do you want to website you know have a page on the website. Do you want to have it in the e newswsletter or would you I I think Facebook may be a little direct, but uh well I I I would say I mean I'm I would say you should pick whatever you want. I I am a I am a fan of transparency. So if like I don't it is what it is. People show up, they don't show up. That's how it works. Yeah, I think so too. have the standard web page on this website pretty front and center thing is it's just traffic then including that in the weekly news would probably be pretty effective. That's fine. That's fine. So I'll make it a motion. All right. So we have a motion for that. Anybody care to second it? Seconded by Mr. Marshall.

Uh any questions, concerns, or discussion? Okay. Then that motion passes and we'll get an updated attendance for the last council year or whatever we want to call it. Right. Okay. Is this for the pri is this for the six is this 12 months prior? Yeah. My my understanding too last year's record my understanding last terms record. Yeah council and three standing committees through HPC and all the other side attendance record will know to dress up their is my understand their second year of their I mean because those are all appointed officials. Hey Joe, you didn't vote on it though. We haven't voted yet but still talking. Well, I couldn't hear what he

I was saying when we published it in the gazette, we'd publish it for the council and the three standing committees because those were council members that obviously get elected. Um, and I mean, we could publish for all commissions, boards, and whatnot. It's a lot. And it's a lot and it and it I don't think residents are necessar like maybe planning and zoning, but I don't think they're going to be really keeping an eye. I think planning and zoning would be okay. So, those four maybe instead of doing Yeah. I mean, I just think if it's people can look in the agendas and I get or in the minutes to see if people are there, but I mean, regard people don't know that committees are going on. They don't know that they want to be on a committee. Like I I think if people are if we have a committee, we should be telling people if if the if it's meeting, if people are showing up. Yeah,

that's just me. So, you'd probably want to put a designation in there that or just a footnote that if the person is present, they could be Zoom. Sure. They he said they would not take that with an aster. I just know planning and zoning w five rep in my last three four years she's never been inside the building for a meeting. She zooms in for every meeting. Can they do it? She she can't get to work. She can't get there from work. Yeah. For everything for what? P&Z for council. Oh for every other committee. Yes.

Okay. which I find out somewhat shocking uh that in a whole well two years, three years she she's not been able to come. I don't know that she has any intention to do that, but I find it frustrating for P&Z because you sat in there and then people come in yelling and screaming at you and suddenly she just disappears. Still there but blacks it out. I know that's not our problem, but I mean, I just think those are the types of things that really do uh make a difference for people who are trying to do it the right way and the people who uh make it more convenient to to do it that way.

Right. So then we I mean So Cliff, do you want to do all of them or just specifically? Well, I mean council and the three committees and P&Z I think would be fine. That would be that'd be preferred. Yeah, that's my time management. Okay. Right. Okay. Now you need a vote. All right. So motion is going to be for council the the three standing committees. So admin PW parks and planning EDC and PNC. Okay. All those in favor eulletin or our our website or both or what? Where where are these where do people see this stuff?

Once it's on the website, we'll put it on we'll have it published. It probably take it's going to take a day or a couple days to track it all down, but then we'll have it on the e newswsletter at the next subsequent edition. Both will be above. Both. Okay. All those in favor, please say I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? All right. Anything else? Okay. Then uh a motion to adjurnn made by Mr. Albert, seconded by Mr. Marshall. All those in favor, please say I. I. Anyone opposed? Any obstensions? Great. next meeting and our last meeting of this group will be Tuesday, May 5th.