Administration / Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

Sorry.

It is 532, so we'll go ahead and get started. I am going to kick off the meeting and just explain how this process will go a little bit, considering this is a new meeting of the Administration Public Works Committee. It's a new term. That said, the way that these meetings start without the chair being elected is that it goes by the individual named first on the actual appointment sheet, which in this case, it was done by Ward. So it would have been Mr. Owen, who is by Zoom today. So you would default to the second on the list, which would be Mr. Trottier, who's on Zoom today too. So that said, that... leads to the person here, person in person here, which is Mr. Ottenberg, who is named third on that list, who will take over the meeting until a chair is elected. So at that point, I can hand it over to the de facto chair for this meeting at this time and then the agenda. But Wiss wanted to explain that. So it didn't seem confusing on the front end.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Well, um, welcome everyone to a meeting of the administration and public works committee Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026 at 5 30 PM during the community room. Uh, first on the agenda is the call to order. So Ms. Mathis, would you please take role?

Council member Owen here. Council member Trotty. Yeah. Present council member Attenberg here. Council member, council person Dodwell. Here, you can say council member. Council member Means. Council member Rambo. Council member Kranz. Council member Alders.

All right. Thank you very much. We do have a quorum.

So I'll try again. I'm sorry. No, that's all right. I think there's some confusion there because he asked me.

Okay. So moving on to item number three on the agenda, the election of chair and vice chair. So at this time we'll take nominations for chair of the committee.

With your permission, chair.

Yes.

Do you mind if I add a little, just how to go about, it's similar to what we did at the council level. Thank you. Just wanted to note that's, We will take nominations here tonight. And once the nominations are met, if there's one individual, then it could be done by a voice vote. But if there are multiple nominations for the chair seat, then when we go to vote, it would be roll call. And instead of voting aye or nay for an individual, it would just be stating that individual. We would do that if it was two, three, four, whomever. That said, if there's a tie, then we can break out that procedure as well. We have options there too, but just wanted to point that out up front that the vote would be, if it's just one nomination, could be done via voice vote. But if there are two nominations, that there would be a roll call and individuals would list out the chair of their choice.

Thank you. All right. Thank you. So hearing that, then I will entertain nominations for the position of chair, council member Kranz. I'll nominate council member Scott Attenberg. All right. Thank you. Do we have any other nominations? Seeing none, I guess then we will proceed with a roll call vote, correct? Yes or no?

We can do a voice vote, but roll call would be fine. Okay. All right.

Ms. Mathis.

Council Member Owen.

Scott Attenberg.

Council Member Trottier.

Scott Attenberg.

Council Member Attenberg.

I will vote for myself. Thank you.

Council member Dadwell. Council member Means. Council member Rambo.

Scott Ottenberg.

Council member Kranz. Scott Ottenberg. Council member Alvers.

Ottenberg. All right. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Now we'll go to the nomination for vice chair. So I would like to nominate, if I can start off with nominating Cliff Albers for vice chair. I think he's the only member of admin PW committee this term that is continuing from the last term. Two terms. Okay, perfect. Okay, good, good, good. Any other nominations for vice chair? All right. Seeing none, we'll proceed again. We can do a voice vote. We can do a voice vote. All right. So everyone in favor of approving Council Member Cliff Albers as Vice Chair of the Committee, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? All right. Congratulations, Vice Chair Albers. Good luck. Now we will move on to approval of the minutes from the May 5th, 2026 meeting. Does anyone have any questions regarding the minutes from that meeting?

If we weren't on committee, we'd need to abstain.

In this case, so with the, for minutes, since it's noted in the minutes, who was present, who was absent, by voting yay on a set of minutes, you're not necessarily endorsing the action of that committee. You're just validating that the document itself is factually correct.

Okay, thank you. Yeah. All right, very good. So if no one has any questions on the minutes, I do have one or two that I'd like some clarification on, please. And if we take a look at the minutes and we take a look under numeral five under administration for action, item number two, police services contract. And a motion was made by council member Albers to reduce by four the officers currently serving in the Wildwood Precinct. Now, my question is this next moves on to the council for consideration.

Is that correct? Currently, it is to go to the Board of Public Safety. And then those two recommendations would go to the city council.

All right. Perfect.

That's all I needed to know.

Can I comment on that? Absolutely. I did that with really the support of the captain. Okay. He mentioned that was something they could handle. And I asked before I made the motion if he was okay with it. So that's just so everybody knows where it's coming from. He was the one that came forth with that motion. It wasn't something I dreamt Okay. All right.

Perfect. Yeah. Yep. All right. Thank you. Then the other question I have, and again, this is under Roman numeral five administration item a number one, forgive me, but I don't, I know what it is, but I don't know what RRFB stands for.

Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacon. And that is a county project that was noticed to us back in February of 25 at the entrance of Lafayette High School where Dartmouth Crest is. There's currently a traffic signal at one intersection, the primary intersection to the primary entrance to the high school, but the residents in Dartmouth had requested consideration from the county or a flashing beacon. It's one of those signs that flickers on, if you will, to notify motorists that people will be crossing at that junction. And the county had established that they would include it as part of their neighborhood improvement projects that they're doing in 2025. There was a little concern at a moment that that project was no longer being funded by the county. But since then, the county councilman had said that they were going to be utilizing RAM settlement funds to backfill some of their neighborhood projects and they should have an update on it by the fall of 26. So we'll be coming back. If anything else changes, we'll let this committee know first. But nonetheless, it seems as if things are proceeding at this time.

Just a quick question. Absolutely. And that's just a rapid beacon. It's not a stoplight?

No, it's just a rapid beacon.

Okay. Yep.

All right. Very good. Are there any other questions or comments regarding the minutes from the May meeting? Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion for approval of the minutes by Council Member Albers. Anyone like to make a second to that?

Well, can I make a second?

Yeah, Council Member Krantz. Okay, so motion and a second for approval of the minutes. All those in favor of approval of the minutes, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? I'm abstaining.

And that is. It's Rob Rambo. I'm sorry. I just didn't get a chance to read them because I hadn't been there before. Not a problem. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

Okay. Now we move on to public participation. So do we have a number of gentlemen in the room? Are we observing tonight or do we have public comments tonight? Okay.

Lou Solomons.

Let's go first, though. All right, thank you. And congratulations on the new board. I hope everything goes well with the proceedings with the deer issue. I know number one is to get an ordinance to reduce the acreage size. Years ago when I hunted Wildwood, if you didn't know this, so I'll just repeat it again if you're new to the board, there was an ordinance and you didn't have to have any size property. We hunted all over and then they changed the ordinance to mirror the gun hunting ordinance and then A lot of our property owners receive letters. You can't hunt, let somebody hunt unless you have three acres by yourself. So we lost a lot of properties of that. They're like, sorry, Lou, our hands are tied. We would like to do this, but our hands are tied. So hopefully that's number one. And I wish you all the success in the world doing that. And number two is I hope to provide information if somebody's looking for really important information on how this would work. And if you just do an ordinance and that alone, and it's my idea that besides the ordinance, you also need management and that'll cost you money. My competitors said they will do it for free. I refute that and I say without pouring resources into it, it's a failure. And I have questions, I have concerns, and we all need to work together. important thing is if there is an ordinance and everybody works together and inclusive of everyone, then maybe this could succeed. So I have a question and my question is directed at Mr. Sherman. Mr. Sherman, if we were hunting your neighbor's property and your subdivision, would you give us advanced permission to retrieve a dead deer that would have gone on your property? Which city? What city? Which city?

So, sir, I appreciate you here for public comment, but this is not really a forum for a debate with you and Mr. Sherman.

Well, I'm not trying to make it a debate. If you would confine your comments to the committee, we would appreciate it. So I want you to understand that there's competitiveness, and I don't know if you're... ordinance alone will succeed without collaboration. We have hunting spots around Mr. Sherman's house, and the residents are telling us, and this is all new to me in the last week, that my members have acquired permission there. There's too many deer. So my question is, if They say they can manage all the deer and do it all, and they're not managing it in his own neighborhood. How is that to succeed? I have so much more information to give you that could be of concern to you if it just goes down this path without some management. So it's there, and I'm not going to go into it today, but there's very important information to know about how their operation works, how my operation works. how we can collaborate and make this work. Thank you very much.

Thank you for being here. So what I would say is if you have additional information that you would think would be of value to this committee, please by all means forward it to us.

It's not public information that I could forward to you. It's highly sensitive. And it's just a major concern that if anyone is interested, I have the information. Just an understanding of how hunting works, how competitiveness works, and how some people are treated during the hunting process. And for Manchester, for example, we're basically the only group that hunted in Manchester. There might be one resident that hunts. It's just my group. And when this all went down, of course, you know, an anonymous letter was sent to the mayor and to the city council trying to berate my group. So there's competitiveness and there's a lot more competition. Besides that, make you understand how things work. And I don't really want to get into it here, but it's just an example of like, is this going to work? Or is this going to be inclusive? Or is it going to be, you know, just, it's kind of hard to explain. It's very complicated, but I've seen it over the course of 20 something years. And if anybody thinks it's important, I have. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next.

Tom Mitchell.

Okay, just to reiterate what Mr. Solomon said, do you mind if I say that? There's no competition. This is not about hunting, never was about hunting. I don't hunt here. I hunt my farm in Northeast Missouri, okay? This was about preventing the overkill of white-tailed deer in Wildwood. Our group, me, my friends, my colleagues were never opposed to the culling. We weren't opposed to it. We're opposed to the overkilling of the animals. And when you have a contractor come into pocketed areas and kill multiple animals in one small pocketed area, you disrupt that herd. You literally disrupt the genetic gene pool. And that's what our objective is. Our objective is never to get hunting rights. There is no competition. It's bizarre that you would say that. That being said, I'm here to talk about the survey and the survey is outstanding, much improved over the previous draft. So thank you for that. The one couple of things I would add, I think I sent some drafts to some of the council members to review on the cost issue. It's really important. to be crystal clear with the public about not just what the costs were, but what the costs are going to be. So I would strongly suggest you include future budget costs into that survey so that the public knows exactly what they're voting for. Because they're not voting for what happened in the past, obviously. They're voting for what is going to happen in the future. Second portion, and there's several points in there, is regarding the accident reduction rate. That is really outstanding. And there's no doubt, if you kill more deer, you're going to hit fewer deer with your car. Now, deer aren't always the cause of car accidents. Speeding, weather, distracted driving, et cetera, can also cause deer collisions. But there's no doubt, when you kill multiple deer, you're going to have reduced car accidents. I think it's fine to put that in there. What I would suggest is balance it so it doesn't bias the survey respondents. By balancing, give the opposing viewpoint. that by using a culling operation, you do risk over killing deer and taking, for lack of a better word, the rights of property owners for the quiet enjoyment of their property to not only observe wildlife, but for hunters to hunt that wildlife. Believe it or not, hunters rely on venison for their protein source, and it's a remarkable protein source. We should actually bring some to you guys some night. It's delicious when you prepare it the right way. So I would balance that. That's the only thing. The rest of the comments are in the survey. I think it's really important, especially at the last question, to repeat the cost one last time for the very last question. Because it's a dogmatic question, very direct, looking for a really direct answer. So give them the summary. And this is not a bias. The summary is the city will spend roughly $600,000 over the next three years culling and literally no direct costs for hunting program, which I will guarantee you will be successful. And the reason why it will be successful is because this is not a competition. This Marine right here knows how to get it done. His group took 126 with 10 hunters. And we have 40 or so hunters we're gonna meet tomorrow night to vet some of these hunters tomorrow. we're moving forward on it and I promise you it'll be successful. Thank you for correcting the survey. Hopefully you listen to my inputs and we go from there. Congratulations, Scott. Thank you. Appreciate it. Next.

Trent Boateng.

Boateng.

Boateng. Excuse me.

Trent Boateng, Ward 1. stood before this committee as well as city council on multiple occasions. One thing that may not be particularly clear is I'm not opposed to deer management. I do oppose being lied to to achieve the manner in which that's done. Deer didn't cause COVID. and we didn't save $400,000 last year because of our past efforts. I walked through that logic before and don't need to take the time to repeat it here. What we should be doing though is looking for every tool at our disposal to achieve this goal, giving preference to low cost or no cost alternatives. And one of the programs that's available that I don't recall ever hearing anyone talk about is the Missouri Deer Assistance, Deer Management Assistance Program. This is sponsored by the Department of Conservation. Everything I'm gonna say tonight is available on their website. It is a program which enables hunters not culling efforts, but hunters, which is authorized in our city to take deer above the state numbers. And that would be a good thing because it would further reduce the population here in Wildwood. One of the benefits of this program to a concern that's been voiced in the various meetings is The program provides liability insurance for the participants. And the city wouldn't have to do anything. The city wouldn't have to take on any responsibility, but they could promote this. And that wouldn't expose them to any litigation or liability in doing so. It's a readily available program that already exists. The other thing that this program does that other efforts haven't is it limits the take to female deer, which is what you want to focus on when you're looking to manage a population. The culling effort of white buffalo took place after the season, which is also the same time in which you shed antlers, making it difficult for them to identify or distinguish between buck and doe. And this resulted in like 45% of their take being male deer. And that is 45% wasted when we should be focusing on the female of the species. This is also a program that would allow the participants the full span of the hunting season from September through January, because it's not limited to firearms or archery. And firearms take a lot more deer than archery without a concerted effort, but just in the general hunting aspect of it. So if we were to support and promote such a program, we would have a significant increase in the deer hunting take within our city limits of the right species over a longer period of time. And that would reduce the pressure on what is required post-season. And in such a scenario, the activities of a sponsored culling activity are numbers those numbers would be significantly lower. So I encourage this body to investigate this as a tool and promote it in the larger deer management effort. I appreciate your time.

All right, thank you. And that again was the Deer Management Assistance Program. Deer Management Assistance Program, I believe. Okay. I know you and I had discussed that. You had mentioned that in the past. Say again? I said I know you had mentioned that in the past. Yes. And we will definitely take a look at that.

Yeah.

Are you with a specific group or just an individual? I'm with the City of Wildwood. Okay. I see them. I talk to them, but I am not a member of their group. That's what I thought.

I think you called me too, right? He asked if you called him. Yeah. Did we talk once? Say again? Did we talk once? Did you call me once? It's impossible.

Okay. That's fine. It's impossible. I ran for Ward 1 last time, so I engaged with several people.

Okay. I'm sorry. That's fine. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. I just want to see who you were affiliated with. All right.

Okay. Very good. Anyone else? Anyone remotely for public comment?

You're online and would like to speak if you'd like to use the raise hand feature that would be the appropriate thing to do at this time.

All right, very good. Thank you everyone for public comment.

It's always appreciated and thank you for being here.

All right, moving on to the next item on the agenda. And it is an overview of city revenue sources and funding of municipal operations. This is an informational item. So I'm guessing for this one, I turn this over to the city administrator.

That's correct. Thank you, Chair. I wanted to provide this for two reasons. One is regarding administration item B. It's also an informational item, but also with new council members being elected, I'm having a turnover here with terms. I also wanted to provide a general summary of how does the city receive its revenue, where does that revenue come from, and then how does it get dispersed? Is there any restrictions and whatnot that go with it? So I wanted to quickly go through some of these. It's included in the report tonight, some of the major drivers of our revenue. But that said, another big reason for presenting this tonight, we'll get into a little bit more detail, is to give a backdrop for the next item for discussion, which is potentially the elimination of the income tax and how that could affect future sales tax rates. But overall, I wanted to point out first and foremost that the city of Wildwood does not have a property tax. We do not levy one ourselves. We rely most heavily on sales tax in order to fund our operations. In general as well, we have one of the lower sales tax rates in the region at 8.021, whereas the state average is 8.41%. So generally, we're a pretty low tax city. We rely specifically for our operating fund on sales tax that's collected throughout the whole county and also our utility tax gross receipts tax. So that's tax on the electric bill or gas bill that individuals get each month. But I wanted to point this out because the sales tax component goes a little bit further too. Back in 2017, we actually had the public safety sales tax that was approved by the St. Louis County as well. It's a half cent tax that's levied across the St. Louis County area. And about 37.5% of that is retained and then distributed, not 37, 62.5% of that is distributed to different cities throughout the county, similar to the pool tax, but using a different formula. Overall, it's very helpful to us. We utilize almost 100% of those funds on the police service contract. So any adjustments to that funding source could be detrimental to our ability to keep funding the police services. So I wanted to point that out, but then jumping into the larger revenue pool, which is our sales tax, the pool tax program that takes place within St. Louis County. It's an interesting system. We don't necessarily have good examples across the United States for this. It's pretty rare. But what it is, is there's two different types of city in St. Louis County. There's Pool A and Pool B cities. Pool A cities, an example would be something like Chesterfield. They retain a large percentage of their at point of sale income that they get from their sales tax. But a large portion of it actually goes to the county and the state. And then it's distributed to other cities that don't have as much of a commercial base, which would be one of those, a Pool B city. And it gets it based off a per capita basis. So it does every 10 years. In 2020, it's the number they're using last. So the 35,417 residents is what we base it off of. And we get roughly about 2% of that pool money. So there's about 91 municipalities included in the pool, and we get approximately 2% of that. So I wanted to point that out. Those are the big drivers. And if you tie the other main one for our operating fund is really it's our utility gross receipts tax. So the city has in levies a 5% gross receipts tax for it. It's paid out by Ameren. It's paid out by Spire. It's paid out by your utility provider. And that's just based off the consumption. So if someone has $100 bill for electric, which is hard to believe these days, but say there's $100 bill for electric in a month, $5 would be charged in taxes for that utility. That said, one note of interest here was back in 2023, we did have an increase to the gas utility in General Spire and the commission actually increased their rates and the city in these cases are given the option to either not act. And at that point, it just stays at 5%, no change. Or the city can make an active decision to reduce its rate to make it consistent with what the rate was prior. And the city of Wawa did do that. So that's the only one that's not 5%. For the gas tax, we actually lowered that to 4.86% to make it consistent with the rate that was levied prior. Other than that, though, for water telephone, One note, we talked about this during budgeting too, but our telephone utility tax has seen a pretty drastic decrease over the last couple of years with people moving to unlimited plans and moving kind of away from your call by the minute type of plans that people usually would invest in. So just a quick note there, it has decreased. We had seen upwards of $500,000 from that revenue source in its heyday, and it's down to about $2,000. So Tom, what about cell phone tax? So that's included here. So the thing is, it's somewhat getting phased out. Not in the way you think, though. It's not like an active legislation thing from the state. It's more so the way that they're packaging the cell service. It's like this unlimited plan. Instead of doing it by the minute, how state statute would call for it and be able to charge on it, it's actually done in these unlimited packages of data. And that really state statute hasn't caught up to make the change there. So you lose out. Really, you can look at it as if you're paying by the minute or paying by the text message when plans used to be like that. We were actually getting a higher tax rate.

My representative is not working on that.

Well, they are, but we'll get to the other thing too, which there's quite a few things the state are doing that could affect us very much. Then another quick one too, and we've seen a decrease. This one is caused directly by the state is the video cable franchise fee. We've seen a decrease in this account, this revenue amount as well, year over year. And this was done by active litigation from the state. So what happened here was it used to be 5% consistent with other utility gross receipts tax. That said- what happened was back in 23 they started a process where each year it would decrease by 0.5 percent each year until it was down to 2.5 which would be the new floor and the uh the basement if you will um in 2027 so we're really close to getting to the 2.5 rate we're currently at three but what that's charging the cable franchise is when folks have cable installed to their home they use the right-of-way to deliver that service and the city receives a tax for the utilization of said right-of-way The state has been pretty adamant about kind of releasing internet and cable companies from some of these fees and taxes to make it more attractive to expand. So that was part of the reasoning that was stated at the time for having to generally decrease. So those really covered the primary funding mechanisms for our capital, not capital, our general operating fund. There's a couple others in there. We have interest revenue, cigarette tax, which has gone down year over year, licensing and permits, et cetera. But really the three big ones when thinking about our operating fund is utility, gross receipt, sales tax from the pool, and then our public safety sales tax as well. So those make up the big ones. Okay. And then I really quickly I'll touch upon the capital improvement sales tax fund That primarily is driven by a half cent sales tax that's levied within just the city of Wildwood. So when you purchase a good in the city, there's a half cent tax that's levied. And what occurs at that point is that that money was passed by the voters and it has to be used for specific reasons for improvements to existing or new infrastructure within the city. So there's restrictions that are placed on that. We get about $3 million each year from that funding source. And something the city's been very good at, and Mr. Brown could touch upon, but we've been able to leverage this $3 million we get each year, roughly, with federal income from grants. So that's where the Transportation Improvement Program really comes in handy, because really, given the size and the amount of assets that we have to maintain without the federal government to be able to help us with about 80, they do 80, 20 matches, that $3 million has been stretched even further in minutes.

Are you anticipating any reduction in the federal funding sources?

Not from, I mean, Mr. Brown could speak to it if he's seeing anything different, but from the tip apps that we typically would do, it seems like those are relatively untouched in this time. Unless, Mr. Brown, is there anything?

Well, I think Long-term, the effect of electric vehicles could have an impact, but I don't think that's going to be felt significantly in the near term, but long-term for sure, unless something happens. Yeah, because of the motor. Most of those really are going to have an impact.

Well, I think you'll see changes in the taxing structure that would cause some taxes to go on to electric vehicle usage, since they put a pretty heavy load on our roads.

Well, in that case too, and that's kind of similar to, you know, somewhat kind of going back to the telephone utility gross receipts tax. There is something where to be said about, you know, the federal government, but also the state government, where if they don't update their legislation, they don't update their schedules, if you will, and technology changes, like you have the elimination of using gas as much to fill up the car, or in instances where you're just not using telephone service, home telephone, like we used to, or having by the minute calling. If you don't update it on the back end, then that revenue source can dwindle without really anybody paying too much attention to it, really. Because the state doesn't derive all too much income from the telephone tax. The gas tax, they will notice that. So I'm assuming that will probably preface a change on their part. And great bringing that up, too, because that jumps in and covers our capital improvement sales tax fund but we also have our road bridge fund and now it's fun to really cover up on today and if there's any questions about the rest of the report i'd be happy to answer uh parma would be happy to answer but the two revenue sources that fund our road ridge fund come from the motor fuel tax and the vehicle sales tax and then there's also a county that's allowed by the state a mandated tax to really maintain our roads each year this was just approved via resolution at the last council meeting each year we approve a resolution practically stating that any money from the road and bridge tax that's levied by the county, our distribution, we will spend it on maintenance of roads, which we do through our capital improvement, through our concrete street slab replacement project and our asphalt resurfacing program, et cetera, associated activities. So nonetheless, these funding sources are very important because we get approximately $3 million from those sources as well. And How you can kind of look at it is we do a lot of our maintenance program itself is funded from our road and bridge fund. But when we do a new project, like we're replacing a bridge for bridge 386, 387, when we're doing the roundabout at 109 and BA, that's usually coming from our capital improvement sales tax fund. But things that are more routine maintenance, but also some general maintenance projects, you know, including our annual concrete street slab replacement project and our asphalt resurfacing program. Both of those are actually done through our road and bridge program. So all these funding mechanisms are extremely important. If we didn't have them, then we would be we would see our program not be able to do as much each year. And we're actually gearing up for a pretty large effort here in the next couple of weeks as we do our annual concrete streets lab project. So I wanted to point this out though, just because we'll get into the next item, of course, but nonetheless wanted to make sure there was a basis given to the committee here. And as we kind of go through this year and we get into budgeting and whatnot, this will help kind of show and tie some pieces together as we go through the process.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Any questions or comments regarding Mr. Lee's presentation?

I would just recommend we all take this off and stick it in our binder or whatever that we bring to every council meeting so that when the questions come up, we have a quick little syllabus to look at. So thank you very much. This is a very well written document.

In fact, can I suggest you send that out to the entire council, please?

Definitely could we get if we don't want to get a motion for that to that effect.

I think that motion.

And Mister Cransell seconded. All those in favor aye opposed. And motion carries. Will do that tonight. I do have one question on your presentation of the revenue sources. And that is under the public safety sales tax. Fiscal year 2026 estimate is $2,340,000. What is the estimated value of our 2026 police contract?

I'll get the exact number, but it's approaching about $6 million. Let's see here. But the majority of that is funded through our general fund, through really the pool and That said, let me get you the exact number, 2026. Karen, specifically for 2026. Oh, 5, uh, 2026, $5,375,976. Oh, one more time. A little more slowly. Sorry. Uh, $5,375,976. And then 77 cents. That's for the police service contract for 2026. So we are looking at, um,

Public safety sales tax actually provides less than half the cost of our police contract that's good. All right, very good. Thank you. Council members.

I'm sorry, I was gonna bring it up at the end the police and track again is that coming to Council next.

week. I know it will be at the reason why is we have by monthly for public safety meetings we have the board public safety meeting next week they'll review it and then the anticipation of the marriage approval would be in July.

Can you put in there that this was supported by captain Mundell and also I didn't mention it would not create any loss of jobs here either. You know, by reducing for people, those people go into the pool somewhere else. So nobody loses their job. I think that's important to note when it comes to the full council.

And if they're, excuse me, if they're reducing by four people, does that reduce this 5 million, almost $6 million contract to a lower amount?

Or does it keep it there? It keeps us good for two years.

So that's a consideration too. So right now we don't have the firm costs from St. Louis County. It's a little early. But we have that requested, especially given the fact that last year they had originally anticipated a higher amount. It ended up going down to 3% versus 5%. But then... they said, hey, you know, we're going to give you more notice next year, but be anticipating we're trying to catch up to counties going through their own fiscal issues. But nonetheless. Right now, we can anticipate worst case scenario, the contract allows a maximum of a 5% increase. So when we did that math, it's roughly about two officers. So in that case, if you were to remove four, you would practically be able to absorb a 5% increase for two years, which would then, you're practically buying two years.

That's what it is. And have they, I'm sorry, I keep asking. No, that's all right. Have they done any analysis of what the reduction in two officers is going to do to A, the workload, B, the coverage, and three, the safety?

Yes. So the captain said anything over four would be, four is the max. But that said, that they could still deliver quality service. And they're looking at it from this perspective that, and I can't speak perfectly. So that leaves a total of five officers. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" A five shift, so no there would still be, they would be at best times maintaining their five beats. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" But at some points, they would be going down to four right now we maintain five beats almost regularly unless there's a certain situation that occurs that causes. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" someone to be out for a longer period of time, etc, but nonetheless, this would move us a little bit closer to more average of a four feet shift okay. That said, there's an interesting note there, too, is that typically we maintain five beads, but we also have two park officers. We have two traffic officers. We have a neighborhood police officer. And we also have an administrative official that works within the police department as well. So there's a couple of different pockets, if you will.

I've seen some of those respond to off-site issues. Grand and crazy situations. So they can develop a little bit of the slack. Councilmember Krantz, your train is leaving without you.

I need to depart right now.

So I think probably the biggest question that will come up is, In council, when we consider the motion to reduce by four officers, how exactly is that accomplished? And just making sure that we aren't, as Council Member Godwell mentioned, ending up with any holes somewhere. So I think that's where we'll probably have a little bit of discussion.

I think he mentioned he has some flex officers to cover.

absences or along our disability and things like that too they do calculate that out um to ensure because the thing is with with the when you look at the numbers for the police servicing is that you have to look at it from a perspective of uh having staff on site you know 24 hours a day seven days a week 365 right um and in that case as well What does happen, what I think you're referring to, Mr. Albers, is during the summer months, we have a couple of police resource officers that are over at the Rockwood School District and Eureka High School, Lafayette Eureka High School. And those officers actually are absorbed into Captain Mundell's wing, we don't pay for those officers, which is a great benefit to us. The schools offset those costs for us, but they are able to assist. They do work within some community and school events, but a lot of the times they are available to captain to be able to utilize and respond to incidents in cover.

Very good. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Seeing none, we will move on to An update on the proposed Missouri Constitutional Amendment 5 originating from H.J.R. 173 slash 174 regarding the elimination of the state income tax. This is an informational item. No action is taken on this item tonight. So I guess, again, we turn things back over to the city administrator.

Thank you, Chair. wanted to provide this report, given that it's a state initiative and the city can't necessarily, we have spoken with our legislative consultant to work on this issue, but we wanted to just call attention to it from the council. In and of itself, Amendment 5 and the elimination of the state income tax won't necessarily overnight affect the city's revenue sources, but given time and the directive that's incorporated in the amendment, it could lead to a flurry of additional actions taken by the state legislature in the future, which then could jeopardize our funding sources, which a lot of those questions haven't been fully spelled out of what they plan to do. But it's another reason why I really wanted to tie in how our revenue sources are structured and how we are pretty dependent on sales tax as the primary driver for day-to-day operations. So I wanted to call that out upfront, give you a little background of this first and foremost. Back in March, they started talking about this and February actually was discussed at the committee level of the state, but the state house had approved a resolution practically adding an amendment to the constitution that the voters would choose on, would vote on that would eliminate the state income tax over a period of time, pretty much forced the state to do so and then never enact a state income tax moving forward. That in and of itself went to the State Senate. They made some slight adjustments and then it came back to the House and that got approved. Just recently, just last week, Governor Mike Kehoe had made the announcement that it's going to be placed on the primary ballot August of this year. So this is going to be coming quicker than anticipated. It was originally thought that it would be on the November ballot. So just wanted to point out it is coming up in the next two months. And to give a quick insight, the official ballot language will state something along the lines that Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to phase out the individual income tax based on revenue growth, reduce personal property and other local taxes when local revenues increase, modify the sales and use tax to eliminate income tax and reduce local taxes, and protect... local funding for public schools and other purposes. That's the official title language at this time. But the two things I wanted to point out there is how this really works is that over time, they plan to phase out the income tax based on the progressive tax system currently. And they're going to phase it out towards the lower income earners and then slowly phase out the higher income earners. That said, the proposal state doesn't necessarily do that right now. It says, hey, we'll do this in the next couple of years. And one thing we'll have to do is go in and expand our state sales tax to make up for revenues. that would be lost because of the loss of income tax. There is about a 4% income tax currently paid out by corporations, and it's roughly 4.3%, if I'm correct, for the state if you're a consumer buying a good. So we're around that 8% mark right now. uh, not 8%, we're around 8%, but 3.5 of it goes to the County and that's part of the pool. And then the city has its 0.5%. And then the state gets the other half. Um, what this is saying, I mean, they don't really have an estimate for what they would be increasing the sales tax rate by, uh, to be able to accommodate for it, but it's practically consolidating quite a bit of control into, uh, the state auditor's office and whatnot to look at each year. Um, you know, here is where, you know, certain sales tax rates are, uh, property tax rates are. Um, and we can make, they practically would come in and be able to add in their own version of a sales tax. So you'd see that go from property approximately 4% right now. Um, there's just ranges. I don't want to name a specific percentage, but it could go up, you know, it could definitely double. Let's just say that to be able to keep up. Uh, so what that does though, and with at least the, at least what's being proposed by the state is that, Hey, um, We're going to eliminate the income tax that's going to attract business to come here, especially with the 4% income tax that's charged to corporations. That's going to bring new business to the state. So they're effectively trying to, at least this is the arguments made, grow the pie, and then cities and the state would pretty much have the same percentage of the pie, but the pie gets bigger. There is a specific provision that calls for the cities, if we were to get, say there was an influx of development and there was a new we were able to piggyback on a new sales tax source in the future that comes from this. They haven't approved anything yet, and they would have to get this approved first. The city would have to return proceeds and net proceeds of equal to 97% of whatever that is. So say there, and it's hard to really explain a lot of this because they haven't proposed any of the subsequent legislation. Now it's just pretty much saying a directive from the voters and voters pass it. Then they'll come in and give specifics. But right now it's, how you can look at it is they're going to be expecting, they don't want to necessarily just drop a large increase in the sales tax amongst the entire state. And if the cities and the counties were to keep their rates similar to what they are today, and then they add their portion in, that's going to create possibly one of the higher tax sales tax rates in the country, which, you know, you're trying to make it more consumption based, but what that, they don't want to see that. So what they're trying to say is upfront, is that we're going to actually have the cities and local municipalities and local counties adjust, whether it be their sales tax or it could be their property tax, it could be their use tax they might have open, it could be any type of actual tax levy under the Hancock Amendment. We're going to have them lower it to commiserate the amount that they're adding so that no one's necessarily growing, that the city's not necessarily adding its own revenue sources. The state is just getting a larger piece.

We do not have

that all that much information right now. But we do think with Wildwood being not the largest commercial corridor, we probably won't necessarily see the influx of rapid development. Residents don't necessarily want to see an influx of rapid development in Wildwood. So the one thing we wanted to call out is that if we don't have that to offset what changes may come, We could see possible changes to the pool tax. It could include changes to our half-set capital improvement tax. It could be a few things. We don't have any of that right now. None of this is confirmed, and the voters have to decide first. But I wanted to just at least call attention to this, make sure that everyone was keeping an eye on it, too. We'll have plenty of information as they go through the process. But first and foremost, they're going to be putting it up on the ballot for August, and then we'll tend to know more. available to answer questions, but it is somewhat, the report goes in depth a little bit more in detail, but there's a lot of unknowns right now. But wanted to make sure we both knew where the revenues were coming from here for the city, and then also looking at what could possibly be impacted in the future if they were to make some changes. All right.

Council Member Dodwell.

Question lady. How much of this information are we going to put out to the public so that they know what they're voting on?

So we have to be, well, we have this report published for the agenda. We can discuss with the city attorney what we can share because it is a valid initiative. The thing is there's restrictions that get applied 100% if it was our own ballot initiative. But with the state, in theory, I mean, we've had, there's been cities that have came out and spoken against this when it was being proposed. There just hasn't been as much since it's been put on the ballot. So we would have maybe some fine lines there, but we could get that information and come back.

I'd like to make a motion that We investigate with our city attorney what our options are, at least to let the public know this is the potential impact, and we're asking you to vote on something that hasn't been fully defined other than we're going to remove this tax, and we haven't figured out what tax we're going to pay to cover it.

All right, so we have a motion on the floor from Council Member Doddwell to contact the city attorney to get some advice on what we can share regarding this proposed elimination of the income tax with the residents of the city. So do we have a second for that? Second, Ben. Okay, so second from Council Member Means. Any discussion?

So we really don't know all the... answers to our questions. So how would you phrase that without confusing the public?

So I guess, I mean, it is difficult right now because we don't have, we just don't have the answers. All they're saying in the amendment is practically we do need to We're going to phase out the income tax, but we're going to implement a higher sales tax. Also, we're going to keep local municipalities and counties from monitoring their, not monitoring, from changing their sales tax rates.

And that's not going to be on the ballot in November?

No, in August. August. There was talks that it would be on the November ballot, but then the governor has made the announcement. So you can't come up with something that's persuasive?

No.

Well, that's the question, I think, and if we could refine a little bit, I think that's the question here is going to the attorney to say, hey, you know, given this is a ballot initiative and the city can't necessarily show favor one way or the other, and we might be able to, but nonetheless. what can we share and can it be bias or does it have to be strictly for information, which typically in these cases, it has to be. You can share factual data, but we can ask most definitely if there is any additional flexibility given it's not our ballot initiative.

In the long run, there are other states that are doing this and they're quite successful with it. I just feel like We're kind of putting the cart before the horse on some of this, and we need to let the public know either here's what we know today, and the state will get back to us on further details later, or we somehow need to give them clearer understanding of what they're voting for. and how to understand what they're voting for.

So my own suggestion would be, if we're going to have something that we're going to release to the public, that we adopt former Mayor Boland's advice, which is less is more, keep it short, simple, and to the point.

The longer it is, the less likely it is people are going to read it. This memo is great for us, but I wouldn't take this memo and send it out to the public. Who's the sponsor of this?

I have that in here. I think it was mentioned in here somewhere.

It was. That's all right. They're probably putting it in August, hoping for a low turnout. I'm sure.

Sure. First of November. Oh, an interesting fact, too. Sorry. That's OK. I'll dig in here, and I can find it. I have the end. Representative Bishop Davis. But an interesting fact, just to add in there. And I wish I had this included in the other report, but I broke out the, the department broke out the way that the pool tax is broken up and where the actual percentages lie so this actually pairs really nicely if you take that component um given that there was directive to send it to the entire council uh as long as there's no one that objects the committee i mean the department will go in and add that piece to break out here's what the pool tax is and where it actually goes i just wanted to add that in um but nonetheless we'll have to learn more and we can, and the motion I have here with your permission, but would be to investigate what information the city can share regarding amendment number five and to receive that advice from the attorney.

Councilman remains. Did you have your hand up? No. Okay. All right. Thank you. One request I have for city staff, if you could help me out by keeping an eye on the screen, because with my back, I can't see if the other council members who are zooming in remotely have their hands up. So I don't want to leave anybody hanging for a long time if they have a question. All right. So that takes care of. Oh, I don't think we voted on the motion. Oh, okay. So now time to vote on the motion. So all those in favor. All right. Opposed. Abstain. Motion carries. Thank you. Okay, moving on to consideration. I see consideration of a dedicated communication platform for elected officials. This is an action item. So with that, I guess, again, City Administrator Lee.

Yes, thank you, Chair. All right, so this is a proposal coming from the department just doing some research recently and kind of as a response to onboarding, you know, three new council members over the last couple months and kind of just making sure we do a check in Charlie on this to see what the committee where the committee's at and where the council would want to be at on this. Quick update, too. We do have in our possession the 17 new Lenovo tablets that we purchased for the council to have access to a newer handheld device. It's not as, let's just say that some of the iPads were having some issues.

So my question there is, why did you buy Chinese tablets? They were the cheapest. Pardon? They were the cheapest tablets that were available.

I didn't hear you. They were the cheapest tablets for the best deal. They are not necessarily all tied to China, but most computers.

I wouldn't be buying Chinese products. That's all. That's my opinion.

All right. Well, that said, we do have those tablets coming out. And the plan will be to disperse those. We're actually at the next council meeting. We're going to be sending an email. We're waiting on a couple of case coverings to make sure that they're safe once they're distributed. Nonetheless, they'll have a keyboard. They'll be a little bit more user-friendly. And we actually have a software to be able to help remotely if someone were to have issues with the device or accessing items. So I wanted to point that out. A couple of council members had mentioned that the iPads were getting a little bit outdated and that some of the apps were not functioning properly. So we're happy to be able to make some improvements there. But on the side of that same development going through and updating all of that, we wanted to look at the current system we have in place for council communication and how they really whether or not council would like to have the current system, which is a resident may call city hall at any time, and we can direct them to your voice mailbox. They then can leave a message to your voice mailbox, and then you get an immediate email sent to your city email account. And, you know, you can listen to it and choose to do what you wish. That said, your phone system, the furniture, The phone system currently doesn't have the feature to be able to call a resident under the city's phone line or to text or to message in any way other than your, your email. So the idea would be in technology was kind of slowly catching up to this because originally it was not very difficult to add a call feature, but what was more difficult was including SMS. And there's still, you know, Microsoft Teams and RingCentral. There are some really good products out there that do this type of thing. But the SMS component has always been an issue. That said, Zoom has recently come out with a full platform that allows practically, when you use your Zoom app for getting onto these meetings, it would use the same app. Each council member, in theory, would have a dedicated new phone number. You would be able to use your personal device or your one that are going to be issued. You'd be able to use that device. You would open up the Zoom app, and that would effectively give you a new phone number. It would still be your phone or device, but you'd have a VOIP number, which then could allow you to text and would allow you to make phone calls. So instead of calling from a personal device and it's showing your personal cell phone number, it would actually show up as a dedicated line associated with the city. We would have specific lines for it. You'd use your Lenovo to do that. You could use your Lenovo to do that, but you could use your personal cell too. And the good news on that front is if, you know, for record retention purposes, instead of having to track down a council member or have to worry about a council member saying, hey, I made this call, here's the record, et cetera, it cleans that system up a lot and makes it just a lot easier for folks to be able to communicate freely and feel comfortable that everything's going, that everything's being recorded, if you will, because then it's got to be sunshine. The good news is, though, too, is that even if you had that application on a personal device, if you're functioning within the app, then it's really like a communication hub. The thing that we were waiting on and wanted to do further research on was that uh, zoom came out, they have a partner, uh, and they have a compliance manager portal, uh, that complies with the same, uh, functions and features that the, uh, the current, well, it's called e-discovery and outlook and Microsoft that allows you to do the comprehensive search that sometimes we have to do for a record request. So you can do that, but do it through zoom, uh, and then get that text message feature and the call feature. So generally, uh, There's a lot of improvements, but what's the downside here? It would cost for 17 dedicated lines approximately $4,488 per year. So there is a price tag associated with it, about $22 per user for 17 users. And that's what we're looking at currently as the base cost. There are usually some FCC fees that get tied in there. Those are usually in the hundreds of dollars a year. So that said, we wanted to provide a base. We didn't want to do all too much research into this and start pulling costs unless the council wanted us to further explore it. So we wanted to first bring it to committee for consideration. Thank you.

Questions or comments for Mr. Lee and Ms. Donwell?

Well, there's somebody up on the mic there.

Phil?

Yeah, this is Phil Owen. Yeah, I would say I brought this up to Thomas when he did my orientation. I asked the question of how we call back out to city... The residents and I'm not going to share my cell phone number with city residents because I don't want them calling me at all hours of the day and in all days of the week. I don't mind them having access to me, but I want to be able to control that. I also having worked at Edward Jones, where we have very regulated industry. have seen situations where there is request for information and that request for information can get into, you know, personal devices and would prefer to have all my city business done on a city device so that when They do have a discovery of some kind. We can go back to a single device. That's why I'm glad we're getting the Lenovo's. This would give us the ability to make calls out. And then you would have not necessarily a recording of the call, but a record of the call going out through the city device and then not having to get into your personal phone. calls to figure out which of those phone calls might have been for city business. So that to me is a benefit for each one of us. And I think also when there is a record retention request, it will also make it significantly easier for the city to comply with that. And that cost of $4,500 could be quite a bit of it recouped through reduction of city time spent on complying with the request if they do come in.

All right. Thank you. So I think one thing just to emphasize here is we are not talking about people having to carry a second cell phone.

No, no. It would practically just be an application on a device. It could be a personal device or it could be your Lenovo tablet. You could actually make the call. Or it could be the app on its own cell phone. Yep. It all lives within the current new map. It would all live within that environment. All right. Very good. Ms. Donwell.

I appreciate the work that was done and the recommendation by council member Owens on this. It's always been a scare of mine. I was just on the phone with a resident the other day, called into the city, but I had to call them out on my personal phone. And not that I don't want to help people, but that's a personal phone. So I'll make a motion that we move forward with this ASAP so that we can provide safety for those of us in office.

And I'll second that motion.

All right, perfect. So we have a motion and a second to continue with consideration of the dedicated communication platform for elected officials. Any other questions or comments before the vote is taken?

Can we get this implemented next by the end of this month?

That will be a little difficult, just because we'll have to we have to still go out and solicit some proposals from others. But I see a bid request. Yeah, the plan would be to forward meeting. The plan would be to forward this with the recommendation to city council work session next week with the mayor's or the agenda. But then after that, it would be a recommendation to draft legislation on boarding technology.

Okay.

But we would expedite it as fast as we can.

Okay.

All right. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Motion carries unanimously. Mr. Owen, thank you for that suggestion.

You're welcome.

Okay, so it takes care of another item on the agenda. Next, we move on to item D, archery hunting regulations and deer management policy survey. So this is an action item, and this is an update and discussion regarding the development of the city's archery hunting regulations and deer management policy. This includes an overview of the revised project timeline, proposed distribution strategy, and very importantly, a draft version of the survey instrument for committee review. So again, I think, Mr. Lee, we're giving you a workout tonight. This goes back over to you. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. Okay, so I wanted to go over quickly tonight. We do have the draft survey instrument. One quick note on this is that it has now been shared with the Missouri Department of Conservation for their feedback as well, and we'll plan to incorporate any of that feedback we receive when we forward this to the council if that's what the committee wants to do so choose tonight um but one note i did want to say timing wise is that professor naines uh we kind of caught him in a sweet spot if you will with him having some availability in june and july given that the the school season's out um and they that that schedule does pick up quite a bit as we get into july and in august uh so i did want to point out that the plan would be to have some type of survey this survey tonight with feedback provided to the council next week to get some recommendations and if necessary uh make changes after that but the hope would be to get this published this month we'd have the surveys sent out to residents this month Nonetheless, we took the feedback from the last city council meeting. A quick note before we jump in there. Professor's names did provide his scope of services and it would be approximately 4,000 for him to conduct the work. So I just wanted to point that out up front too. And that's going through monitoring, really doing all the backend stuff. So the city, the only thing the city would be responsible for would be mailing out the actual survey itself, all the data handling and monitoring review and report analysis, things along those lines would be conducted and completed by the consultant. That said, kind of getting to the meat and potatoes of it with the survey instrument, the directive from the council, we had three different branches that were included in the motion, if you will. One was to include the pricing for the first two years of utilizing a sharpshooting consultant. The second was to ask a question gauging about the use of thermal drone surveys. And the third was you having some way of differentiating between one acre properties, one to three acre properties and over three acre properties. We believe that the survey instrument provided tonight covers those items, but also kind of gets some of the key issues here. it provides a pretty lengthy intro uh that said you know we looked at it almost from the perspective of if a person you know just randomly got this that which is going to happen it's going to be based off random sampling how could you catch them up as quickly as you can one thing that's not included in the draft tonight would be a link to the deer management page of the city website we could include something like that i noticed that when we were coming down tonight but nonetheless IT GIVES A LENGTHY INTRODUCTION, BUT I THINK IT'S NECESSARY TO THEN ANSWER A COUPLE CRITICAL QUESTIONS. I'LL KIND OF JUST JUMP IN HERE AND GO THROUGH THIS WITH YOUR PERMISSION, CHAIR, IF THAT'S ALL RIGHT.

CAN I ASK A QUESTION FIRST? WITH THIS INTRODUCTION, DO YOU SEE THAT BEING PART OF THE SURVEY? MM-HMM. CORRECT. OKAY.

YES. What the resident would get would be a letter that would come with this and we're working to finalize it. The letter would be very similar, just more so saying, hey, you were randomly selected. City Council is doing this and practically be a summary of what was included in the introduction here. But when the individual scans the key, because they're going to get a one page document, they're going to scan a QR code or visit a direct URL. They'll have a special access code when they receive that. And then they'll go in and they'll actually see all this, this survey you're seeing on a paper format. They'll see it online. They'll actually answer all this online. Once they upload their response, we'll have that data, you know, and we'll professor names would have that data from.

the for perpetuity at that point so it's it's it's much improved and since it's only six questions i was hoping we could maybe review each question and take feedback as you go if that's possible that was the hope tonight okay yes i just made a comment in the introduction i think the public needs to know that right now we only open about a third of our

land to honey. If we go to one to three acres, that adds another two thirds, which means you can kill more deer and you'd have less accidents. I think that needs to be relayed to the public. That's really one of the reasons we're trying to open it up to manage the deer. and reduce car accidents.

So let me ask one city administrator one point of clarification. So we may have some number of suggestions here tonight for revisions to the survey. What is the best way for us to consider those? Do we need to vote on each recommended change or?

I would say, yeah, if there's, I would, we could either, I can note them while we're talking here and then we can vote on them at the end. Um, or we could go, I know we were planning to go by it, uh, one question at a time. We could also do that kind of have each question have its own, um, and then also have a general notes, if you will, if there's something else that might be caught. okay so what method would you prefer in terms of you keeping track of all the suggestions as long as the committee is comfortable i can take notes while we have this discussion and then i can repeat these one at a time and see if you know they'll want to be included in the overall motion and then we can if one doesn't we'll vote on it separately because i just got that from mr kranz that we would add in the percentage of land that is three acres versus one to three acres versus less

Can I add one more? These are my concerns. The drone survey, I think, is very important. And when you talk to these other cities, that's the first thing they do. And what that does, that gives you an accurate count of your deer population. So you know exactly, approximately how many deer you have. With sample distancing, we can't get into all the areas. And do the drone survey when the leaves are off the trees. But you'd get an accurate count of your deer. So when you go out to kill them, you know you're not doing an overkill. It's just information. Data, I think, is very important that you really know how many deer you have out there. And I don't think we do a good guess, but we don't have an accurate number. And I think it's important we do a drone survey. And if you want to get an estimate of cost to let the taxpayers know, I'm okay with that. But I think it's important because we're in charge of our deer population. And we have that responsibility to make sure we're not over killing them. And I'm saying that because we've had bull hunters that have told us, residents have told us they don't see the deer anymore. So I think that's very important. All right.

So before we go any further, Is the group comfortable with the process that Mr. Lee suggested for keeping track of suggested changes and where we have a suggested change over which there may be some discussion or disagreement, you know, we can vote on that one separately, but the idea would be to try to collect a number where we're all in agreement and then vote on this.

Oh, he can sort that out.

Yeah. Okay. Council member Dodwell.

Um, I'm talking about the introduction section here can we please put a statement in here somewhere that indicates that while we did call dear in any one. 2 years ago 3 years ago now. That population has increased and that this will be an ongoing process that we go through because we're not killing every single deer in the city of Wildwood, we're killing some of the deer and the deer increase over time. I just want somehow for the resident who's filling this survey out to know that this is going to be, need to be an ongoing process.

We could put in there, I'm trying to think here, at least for showing like changes, observed changes, we do have data, we didn't include this, we do have a percentage from 2024, not percentage, a number for anyone in 2024 that we did from distance sampling that we kind of reference here. We say, hey, in March of 2025, approximately 58.8 deer per square mile. That showed a 20% decrease from 2024, but it doesn't have 2024's estimate. So would you say to include the 2024 estimates as well for any one and any two, and then maybe have a general, I'm trying to think with the statement, it's a continuous process.

I just want to make sure residents understand that this Yeah, continue. So I'll leave it to you, Thomas. I think you've got the gist of it. So Council Member Owen has his hand up.

Yeah, I do. So following up on Council Member Doddwell, I think there was something in the deer hunting report that was originally published that talked about what happens with deer populations if you don't control them, what the general increase in populations is, and I think that could provide the information that Mr. Doddwell was wanting to include so that you know if we don't do anything what we anticipate the population growing to and then the other thing that following up on the other comments about the drone survey i do agree that in section four uh the introduction of section four we need to be somewhat clear with people that that ten thousand dollar survey is now going to be you know fifty or sixty thousand dollars based on the amount of land we may need to survey at 70 square miles where up in the intro, we talked about six and a half square miles was 10,000. If we're going to do 30 now, then you could easily anticipate 50 to 60. And I think people need to understand that, you know, that's the kind of money we would be planning to spend if we're going to do a drone survey on 30 square miles.

All right. Thank you. Um, And I just wanted to add to that under the thermal drone survey, since we're on that topic. The last sentence in that paragraph, it says conducting thermal drone surveys across all six study areas would therefore be expected to cost substantially more than the city's 2025 survey efforts. So the word substantially is a subjective term. What does substantially mean? Does that mean it costs 10% more, 30% more? We don't have an estimate.

We didn't want to include. It's a question mark, right? Because we definitely know it's not going to be less than 10,000, but we know it's just over. We can do this. I mean, the quick math of it is that you had approximately six acres covered. You had about six acres covered within that first survey. Maybe put that in the sentences that we've surveyed six acres. So in that case, we do have here, we have here too that, and we referenced the NE1 and a portion of NE2, but we can restate. I think that actually might help us here. It says in 2025, the city conducted a thermal drone survey covering the NE1 study area and a portion of the NE2 study area at a cost of approximately $10,000. If we include it there... the actual acreage for those two places saying that cost $10,000 and then say we're now looking at $30,000, that then prefaces it. The rough math is $50,000 to $60,000, which is correct from Mr. Owens' perspective. Would that be acceptable?

I think even a rough estimate is better than using the word substantially.

We can definitely rule substantially. The one thing that was mentioned was that If you had, there was mentioning from Professor Names, if you want to put an estimate in there, you want to make sure you have the estimate because you don't want to potentially skew substantially could skew it too but you don't want to substantially skew the survey results because of a price tag that what if you came out and got a revised quote was actually 30,000 versus your 60 which directly could impact that there he was just saying be careful with the way we worded it unless you get a firm quote which we could request I guess it's just my engineering nature I want an exact number yeah

Yeah, and I think you could put up to 50,000, and that way you've prefaced it. But making people do that math in their head I don't think is appropriate. I think we need to have a number on the sheet. that gives them some idea of what they're responding to versus saying substantially or making them do the math of, you know, six acres was 10. So that's, you know, six times five is 30, 30 times 10 is 60, you know, or 50. I don't think we should make people do math. Let's put a number up there and say up to, or something to that manner.

Yeah.

So within so much, I think we're all pretty much in agreement with that councilman.

Well, we're making good points, but I might want to make a suggestion. we're on number four and we haven't gone one, two, or three yet. I'm just thinking. We were doing the intro. Yeah. We're all over the board here. I'd say let's Take it in order, get that section finished, and then go to the next question. I'm taking things in order. Who would have thought? Well, I mean, I don't agree. I don't disagree with anything we're saying about the drones, but we haven't.

I understand. We got to the drones, but there's things that I think that need to be told to the residents in that intro.

How about we start there then with the intro? Okay. Let's stay within the intro right now. Okay. All the way back to the intro.

Can I do one more or am I done? All right. Really, all this is is a service to people that own one to three acres and have a deer problem. And they want to get rid of their deer. It's a service. And it helps us manage the deer population. And that service requires an agreement between the bow hunter and the landowner. They provide insurance, so there's no liability on the city. The public needs to understand that, that not everybody's going to get registered. Just the people that are going to bow hunt, uh, one to three acres are required to get this agreement. It had signed, get the insurance proof of insurance. Take to the city and you get your permit and we track the number of deer killed. It's a service and opens up a lot more property to hunt on, which is what we're trying to do, eliminate deer. So I just wanted to say that.

We could kind of not hear, but Half of that question. I think we could have a statement in there that states to clarify that this doesn't necessarily include your entire, like every house is going to have this operation that takes place. We could just have the disclaimer we put in communications that say,

This comes on real formal, you know, we're doing this big deer calling and the names of dollars, but really break it down. It's a service to the landowners. That's what we're providing. And it's free. Uh, that's the important thing as well.

That's where I was going. The second last sentence in the intro about considering. you know, the, uh, archery hunting, I think it should be mentioned there that this service would be no charge free to, to the city, you know, should be something. And that might be something we put in here several times to make an impression on that. It's beneficial to the city.

Coming from a much more densely populated area in the city, um, Somehow we're going to have to word that so that those individuals that get a survey that live in those areas aren't going to be concerned that Bob down the street and Bill down the street decide that they want to include Mary and Todd's property in theirs and then they don't tell Mary and Todd and then they shoot the deer and it ends up over in Phil and Margaret's yard which is a half a mile away, how do we communicate all of that to these more densely populated subdivisions? Are we talking about doing this archery in those areas too?

The main question that this is asking, and there's six questions, but the primary question here.

I don't mean to make it complicated.

I think that's part of the process that you have to notify the adjoining property.

You get permission from the adjoining properties. You tell them. You tell them when you're going to hunt. You're going to hunt in the morning. You're going to hunt in the evening. You have your deer stand. You're going to shoot the arrow down. You can't shoot the arrow over. It should stay on the property. Yeah, you're going to have some deer that will escape, and that's going to happen. But you talk to the surrounding cities. They will tell you they work really well with these bow hunters. They're very professional, and they really have no problems with bow hunting. in these residential areas. They all do it. Chesterfield, Sunset Hills, Baldwin, Eureka. I've talked to all of them.

How do they announce it to the residents in those areas?

They've had no claims. They'll have a few claims where the deer got away. But they don't hunt when people are out there. They'll cancel the hunting. They're very careful about that. I understand that. So it's rare. what I'm saying.

I'm just trying to understand the communication.

So I think one of the things that we can do to address that concern about how we announce this is I think we have some people probably here like Mr. Sherman has worked with other municipalities. Right. He's got the expertise. I think we have a good source for information there that we can use.

Are you comfortable with that?

I'll submit it.

And one thing too, I mean, just to add to that, and this is a very fair point brought up, we don't have, in question four, under section three, question four, it asks a little bit more. We didn't want to have 15 questions asking every specific, but we could include in there as one of the, that's a multiple selection, like which ones do you agree with type question. We could add in there. uh, require notification to surrounding property owners as one of those items. So that would be the resident saying, I would, if this, if you do change, um, the current archery hunting or not, uh, we would like to have that included as part of the registration process. So I think that's part of it.

And then you have my, you have my suggestion about no, no charge, no cost kind of thing, right? To that second, last line.

Yes. I have it noted here. Um, I think we, that may kind of set up the cert. We would probably want to maybe talk about it in the sense of, Hey, we're just talking about our regulations right now. And that said, like we're, We don't want to say that we're having a free program because technically they're going to be the ones that go out and recruit property owners to be able to participate because the minute the city gets involved, then we carry some of the liability there. So that said, we could state it in kind of back to the service to the community type thing where this is a, right now it's currently offered in three acres. What we're doing is considering whether or not that should be modified, that three acre minimum versus everything else.

Wouldn't it be for the aspect of this where we're talking about, where we're considering reducing the minimum acreage down to one acre, that's not really a deer management program.

That's a change to our sport. Yep, that's correct. That's where we're trying to, I'm trying to point out here is that If we say the word free and things like that, that's kind of mentioning that, hey, we're onboarding a new program or something like that, or we're soliciting or inviting an actual paid, not paid, free, doesn't have paid.

I think it's in charge of a group, and we're not in charge of a group.

Yes, that's correct. So in that case, we could have something like a preface to the, and maybe it's still included in that section, but it states, this survey is not covering whether or not And it does have one question at the end. What's your approach to deer management? But this is not specifically saying, hey, we're going to engage with this group or this company, whatever it might be. But is it simply looking at the regulations associated with archery hunting in Wildwood today and potentially making modifications to it?

I just think it needs to be stated somewhere. We're stating the other costs. by Buffalo. No charge to taxpayers. You know, this should be stated somewhere. And I think in the preface is the place to put it.

I think there's actually a place where we can do that a little further on in some of the other questions. Okay. I mean, I'm open to that. Okay. All right. Perfect. Any other proposed changes in the introduction here?

I've had my hand up since the beginning. Can I make a comment? Yeah, I'll just I'll be brief here. The introduction needs to be factual. And I the intent of this survey is to assess the efficacy of of reducing our minimum acreage down to one acre. I have no problem with that whatsoever because it will not affect me and Ward 6. Our properties are three acre minimum in the first place. We still have a deer problem and there's been 80 years of hunting out here, but that's another completely separate question. What I would suggest is, Tom, if you can just... accurately assess the objective facts as you put them into the introduction one good example is um is uh the claim has been made that somehow we're going to have two-thirds more hunting area in wildwood if we open it up to one acre or uh sub three acre parcels and the as far as i understood it it was less than three additional square miles out of our 68 square miles and 54 or 55 of them are already fully open to deer hunting. All you have to do is get your permission, which really comes, when it comes right down to it, is part of the problem here. And so The claim that we're going to kill all these extra deer because we've got two-thirds more area is just not valid. And so I'll leave that alone until later. But the other observation is the drone surveys. Distance sampling... I'm sorry?

Oh, never mind.

Yeah, okay. Very quickly, the distance sampling, it's a proven methodology over decades, and it was bastardized by being conflated with spotlight counting, which couldn't be further from the truth. It's highly sophisticated and scientific, and it works. But no one understood that, and so we decided, okay, we're going to spend 10K at the last minute to do a drone survey. I think we should have the best possible count I'd like to know, down to the last deer, what we have and where we have them. But we decided to do the drone thing, or some of us did, and MDC couldn't help us. They gave us a list of names or whatever. I think Tom called all of them and couldn't get... any that would agree to do it because they didn't know how to do it. Their job, their business model is to find lost deer for archers that can't otherwise find them, recover the deer. So we had to get a company out of Connecticut, and I don't know how Tom found them exactly, but they're highly qualified and they did the count. They did a great job. But it's no better than distance sampling. Matter of fact, we had a distance sampling count from the cops and verified by Missouri Conservation Department and the white buffalo folks, roughly 40 deer per square mile minimum. 95% chance it was at least 40. And the way the standard deviations work out, it was probably 60 and maybe 80. And then there's slop at both ends. And lo and behold, the guys that came in to count, they gave us every... photograph of every deer on, you know, that they saw on infrared. And guess what? They come up with a minimum of 40 deer per square mile. Exactly what distance sampling did, you know, pretty much exactly what distance sampling did. And so we can save a lot of money just by not recommending distance, or drone survey. But at minimum, we should say, a scientifically valid count, because instead of 60K, if it's 30, part of this initiative is to save money. And I think we're barking up the wrong tree if we insist on a drone survey, because there's other techniques. As a matter of fact, the final point is, one hot topic in wildlife biology is a way to figure out how to do distance sampling from drones instead of cars. So, I mean, it's as valid as they come. And so I want to make sure that our introduction is accurate. I'll save the rest of my comments. Thanks.

All right, thank you very much.

Council Member Kranz. Yeah, I think the intro should be informative, not necessarily all factual. We're informing the public. And I remember our last meeting about the two-thirds. I heard 11,000 properties would be opened up for hunting, potentially. Is that what you said? It was a very substantial amount. 1,600.

1,600 between, yeah, that's correct.

Was that three acres?

Roughly around eight, a little bit over eight.

That was roughly two-thirds more land Available. That's where I got the figure from the last meeting.

No. So the way it breaks out right now is that a lot of it's park property, but we don't have the exact number of the percentage for three acre versus one to three acre versus one less than one acre. What it breaks down to is over three acres. We're roughly around three, a little bit around 3000 properties. for less than an acre you're over 8 000 properties and one to three acre you have 1600 properties so if you were to reduce it to one acre or more you would effectively be adding 1600 properties to the pool but we did a rough math of it and we saw that the three acres actually make up approximately 70 of the city's land mass outside of the parks so it'd be percentage-wise since it's less land it isn't as big as adding 80% of the land, if that makes sense. We can get those numbers, though. We plan to do so.

But it was a substantial...

I mean, it's a lot of land. You could open up. If it's over the base number just alone, if you're one to three acres, it's $1,600. That's a lot.

Hey, Tom, you hit a map. Why don't you just drag out the map?

We can do that. Why don't you just set $1,600?

Yeah, but counting a penny is not the same as counting a dollar.

So I think we can probably come up with a number that accurately reflects the increase in available land that we would have access to should we reduce the minimum acreage down to one acre.

That'll work.

We'll get to it in a second. That's fine. It's okay, Tom. Let's get through this. I think we're good if you can come up with a way that's acceptable to the group to describe the increase in land that would be available if we reduce the minimum acreage down to one.

I will say that the only thing that we tried doing that originally, but we're going to have to go in and practically add up every parcel. We're going to have to go individually and go through the county parcel viewer and add up every property individually, and it's fine to do. It's going to take some staff. There's about 13,000 parcels, so we will have to hand count them.

Tom, can't you just publish your map? Can't you just put your map on the introduction?

We'll put it on. Can I do that? Yeah, absolutely.

Because it does, the map shows. That way people know if they're affected or not. It's a good move on all fronts.

We could share. Would that be something that we'll share the map here? I'm going to jump in here, Brendan, so I can share my screen. This is from the ability report we did. And I know there's a slide with it, but just ignore that. The main thing is in blue is our three acre minimums. Here's our parks, the Rockwood Range, Baddler. But in, it's hard to see with this camera, but in red, those are the parcels that are less than one acre. And then the green spots here, those are your one acre parcels. One to three.

Yeah, less than three acres, but more than one. So can we use the map in lieu of spending a lot of city staff time? Yeah, parking lot size. Okay, whatever. All right. Make it easy. All right. Good. We have to talk about it. Okay. Very good. And Council Member Rambo, I appreciate your comments on the drone survey. I don't think anywhere here in the survey, we necessarily call into question the efficacy of using the spot method. I think all we're doing is asking the residents if they want us to consider a drone survey.

Yeah, but they don't understand what a drone, the differences because council members don't even understand the differences. I've had a difficult time. And again, I mean, the more deer that are taken, the better, as long as, uh, as long as hunting doesn't get in the way of, of, uh, culling, because I think we're going to need both no matter what people are saying. And so I'm just hoping to get the best for the least and, um, a, uh, we're telling them hey should we get a drone survey well people don't understand the alternatives and they're just thinking oh drone it's a modern technology um and the count is no more accurate no more effective but it's more costly um than distance sampling or maybe we could have a hybrid approach where every other every other count we every other count in a particular area we do a drone versus a um a distance sampling i mean there's some advantages to doing it um using both methods. And if we want to do drones, fine. It's just going to be a bit more costly and a little bit more cumbersome. But it will provide an equal number. But the problems with drones, there's different problems with drones. It takes different training. Is that a heat pump or is that a deer? You know, those kinds of things. And I believe in math and I believe in statistics. And I've seen many results from many studies that verify or validate distance sampling. So that's all I'm going to say about it. We can do whatever the heck everybody wants to do.

All right, thank you. So are we finished with the introduction? I think we are. Okay, all right. I'm done. Okay, all right, very good. So now we take the questions one by one. So section one, about your property, what is the approximate size of the parcel where you live or own property in Wildwood? That one seems... Pretty straightforward. Does anybody have any issues with that one? No. Okay. So that takes care of that. There's a hand up. Rob, where was that from before?

Okay. I'm very sorry. That was from before I just got sidetracked. My mind's not working well. I told you I had a bad blood pressure problem. That's why I'm not in person, which I usually am. So sorry.

Well, we hope you're feeling better soon. Thank you. All right. Section two, property size requirements. Does anyone have any suggestions or questions or comments here?

Were we going to aggregate the parcels? I thought we decided for one acre only and not combined small lots. That could be a discussion tonight.

If that wants to be done, that would.

Is that something we talked about? Just one acre?

That wasn't included in the motion, but I know we did. It was mentioned at the last council meeting, but it wasn't incorporated in the motion.

Yeah.

So in question two, option D is to reduce to one acre and allow parcel aggregation. And same with option C and D would practically be eliminated from that question if that were to happen.

I think that's what we wanted to do. We had that discussion that we didn't want to parcel properties to get that acre. You'd have like four property owners going in together. And we thought that'd be too much of a problem.

In that case, if there's a motion tonight, we can discuss that. The one thing I would mention, though, is for option C, it's kind of a middle ground if the reduction wouldn't occur because it's saying, hey, we'll keep the three acre minimum, but we would allow multiple properties to meet that three acre minimum as long as it doesn't, it's contiguous. So in that case, maybe it's just eliminating option D. Yes. And I'll present this question in its full form. And then whatever the committee comes up with tonight, that will be kind of a red line would be shared with the council.

Okay, so here's the question I have on question number two. So it gives four options here currently. And the very first one is to keep the three acre minimum. My experience has been in putting together surveys that people are naturally resistant to change. And when they see that the very first question is not to, or the very first option is not to make any change. In other words, here, keep a three acre minimum, no change to current law. they'll automatically check that one without reading the other options that are available. My suggestion would be that we move option A to the end, and let them read through the other options first. And then if they decide to keep the three acre minimum, they can check that appropriate. That's a good idea.

That's a good idea. That's one thing too.

Our, our survey consultant will pass it on. And also, I think there's a, the one reason why I would bring this up is that there is a way within the survey monkey is the software that you can actually randomize the response, the, Each question will randomize their responses to the question, as long as it makes sense. If it's something that wouldn't make sense, like your, well, most of these would make sense.

Everybody's okay with that one?

Yes, sir. I'll add that in, though.

All right. Okay, very good. Anything else on question number two at this point in time? Get rid of D. Yeah, can I get that?

Oh, actually, I have it on my notes here. Are you just going to put that under the things to be aggregated? Yeah, I've got it on my notes here. But I have, first and foremost, eliminate option D, so the parcel aggregation for one acre. And then somehow move option A down the line.

Yeah.

Option B would become option A, option C would become B, et cetera. And then option A would become what? I guess option C, if you're eliminating D.

Yeah. Yeah. The one thing I would want to mention is that I would think we probably want to have to keep them, keep the minimum, the option A before the no preference, they need more information option, just because that usually you end a question with that, that response, unless we randomize it.

Okay.

There's a way we might be able to do that. Yeah.

All right. Okay. I think we move on to section three.

We've got question three.

Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. How strongly do you support or oppose reducing the minimum acreage requirement from three acres to one acre? So how does this change based on the change that we're considering here to question number two?

It doesn't.

It doesn't. It's more so just testing their veracity in their control mechanism.

We move on to section number three, additional archery hunting requirements. I'm sorry. I'll mention one here. So some neighboring communities have adopted additional local requirements such as hunter registration, notification requirements, liability requirements, and local deer harvest reporting. To me, this is, again, a very ambiguous statement. When we say some neighboring communities, are we talking about two? Are we talking five? Are we talking seven? Have seven communities adopted hunter registration? Has one or two communities adopted hunter registration?

I don't think that matters.

I think I should say most instead of some. Don't you think? I mean...

I think it's just implying that this has been implemented in other cities. Think about it and read this question.

I guess my concern is by saying some, again, it's just kind of a subject surrounding cities.

That infers that all of them.

I always use a statement that almost all west and southwest cities communities are doing some form of deer management. So some is not the right, I agree, some is not the right adjective. And I guess you don't want to say all, but at least most.

We say across the United States, many communities, and then it's not pointing to any one city in the city.

Actually, you just kind of nailed it. What about across St. Louis County, many communities?

Yes.

Would that be okay to everybody? Across St. Louis County, many communities versus some? Yeah.

Hey, my hand's been up a while.

All right. Sorry, Rob.

No, no, that's okay. I just real very quickly. I think we know the surrounding communities. And if not, we can know in maximum an hour. I think it's documented already which ones have additional requirements and which ones do not. I think every other community around us, with the exception of Chesterfield, is mostly one acre and below. So they have different needs, different requirements, and it was worth it. for them to reassure citizens by having additional requirements. Wildwood, out here in the Wild West, we're on three acre minimum. People would go ballistic if suddenly they had to get a permit from the city and so on and so forth just to hunt their own land or their neighbor's land or just whatever. I mean, it's a different, we're really talking about two communities here. The change that we're contemplating is one acre minimum, which is in wards three, four, you know, kind of in the eastern suburbs where folks will be hunting on, you know, tiny little yards in, you know, in built up areas. And the concern is the disruption for the rest of the community that may not cotton to hunting. But out here it's different. And so I think we need to consider that we're going to turn a whole lot of people off out here if we suddenly decide to require a permit and so on and so forth. And I don't know how that fits in with our desire to increase hunting opportunities for the bow hunters. So that's just a comment. I don't know how to incorporate that. Maybe it goes in the introduction as well, but the introduction is getting bigger already. So it was worth making that statement. Thanks.

Well, no, I think you bring up an interesting comment here because I don't know that we've had an in-depth discussion to decide where we want some of these additional requirements. I'm assuming, and again, assuming it's very dangerous, I know that we would only want these additional requirements for lot sizes that are smaller than three acres.

So I thought the attorney said that we had to do it citywide. I may be mistaken on that point. We've talked to deer management a whole lot, but the reality is we're not sanctioning We're hunting on one acre minimum for the elite only, which includes the folks that have faithfully come to our meetings. We're talking about everybody, including somebody that bought a bow yesterday, and a lot of them now are using crossbows, which is a source. almost scary thought for me in densely populated areas. So there's a little bit more to it. If we have a permit process, we have an opportunity to do further vetting to the city standards. And it makes some sense. But by the same token, out here in the wilderness, nobody's going to like it. So it's a tough problem. I thought it was worth throwing out.

All right, so I appreciate that, but I'm wondering, is the survey the appropriate place to be talking about this particular subject or is that something for discussion when we get to the point where we're actually putting together a change to the city ordinance?

Maybe not, except that we were talking about permits. We were talking about additional requirements and it seemed appropriate to at least broach the subject.

All right, very good, thank you. So city administrator, can you clarify that point?

The city attorney had looked at it. It would be very difficult to implement a set of regulations for over three acres and a set of regulations for less than one. It could pose a potential legal challenge. He said it could be done possibly, but it would be difficult. There would be some claims.

I would keep it as it is for number four. You want to see none of the above or none would apply and then we can see how many of those come in versus individuals who want to see registration and permits and all that kind of stuff.

And one thing, too, and we talked about this a little bit earlier, but just wanted to confirm once while we were here. One of the options that the department noticed while we were here tonight, we want to add in, so add this as an option, notification, require notification to surrounding property. I agree.

Excellent.

Just wanted to make sure that was. Okay, and then the other item we had was, It currently states some neighboring communities have adopted blank. Now, it'll be replaced with across St. Louis County, many communities have adopted additional local requirements. So that's going to be solved out.

Okay. All right. Very good. Anything else regarding question number four? Okay. So I guess we'll move on then to section four, the thermal drone surveys. But before we do that, I just have a... Don D' kind of a general question just within the past day or two i've received some suggestions for modifications to survey from residents and have looked through those and and then i've also received some information from Councilman Rambo regarding deer management. haven't really had the time to get that information out to everybody so that we can all take a look at it. So if we want to incorporate any possible changes that may come from that information that's come from the residents or from the council member, how do we do that after tonight? Would that be done in a general council meeting?

Yeah, that would be the appropriate place. But I would also say that if possible, you could send it over to myself or Colleen and I can disperse it to the full council. Yeah. The one thing is we are strapped for time. We're going to write. So that's. If possible, you can distribute it to me or. Preferably Colleen who could then send it out to the full council, or maybe we can set a timeline to like, Hey, everybody submit their stuff. If there is anything you can just forward it to me. All right. I'll send it out. All right.

Perfect. Yeah. So I want to keep us on the timeline, but I don't want to miss the opportunity to get some further input.

Yeah, that would be fine.

All right. Very good.

Oh, Rob. No, that's okay. I just, I think we ought to count them. We ought to know our deer population and we can agonize over the methodology a little bit later. I had another comment, but we already moved on. So thanks.

All right. Thank you. All right. So section four, drone surveys.

I did have a note here from Council Member Owen that he would like some type of not to exceed number versus the math that would need to take place. Okay. Even if it does skew, that's okay.

Yeah, he had to leave.

Yeah, so Council Member Owen deserves a real attaboy because he is zooming in while he is on his 10th wedding anniversary trip with his wife down in the Caribbean. We should present a plaque to him at the next council meeting. All right.

Is Matt gone too? Yeah. Yeah, Matt left a long time ago.

All right. So what are we going to say about the drone survey again? So the thermal drone survey. So city administrator Lee, if you please repeat that. I think council member Owen wanted to have a not to exceed date. figure there, John?

Originally, there was a discussion of, hey, it's kind of vague, but then it was saying, well, what if you include the acreage of what we did do in December of 25, and then just say that was 10,000, they could do the math. But then Councilor Rowan had brought up that we should, in fact, just provide a rough estimate, which if we do that rough math, it's math, it's $50,000 to $60,000.

And the council would still have the option if it came in at $62,000, we could either accept it or reject it.

We can say approximately, but the one thing is that could be viewed as skewing because it somewhat, you don't have that. If we had a quote, it would be nicer to say, hey, this is exactly how much it would cost. But I think approximately 50 to 60 would be a fairest. Okay, perfect.

The distance sampling is accurate, but the problem is there's property owners that don't let you go into their property. And so you don't really get an accurate count. And you don't go into the high density areas. So a drone survey does give you an accurate count of your deer. And again, the purpose is so we take our responsibility of our deer population and we don't overkill. If we're going to reduce them, we really want to know the number out there. And that would be crucial, I would think. That's true data. And so I just want to emphasize that. It's accurate data, complete data.

Okay.

Councilman Rodaro, did you have a... Do they have to get permission to drive a Durham over some of these properties?

No, they don't. They do have, there are considerations for the portions of the NE2 region and also portions of the NE1. They have to set it up specially because we have the airport up in the Chesterfield Valley, which has different height requirements for altitude.

Rob, you have your hand up? Yes, sir. I do. Thank you. Two things. First of all, I guess Tom is doing the math on counting the entire city, which would include 12 square miles of parkland, et cetera. And we can get a drone survey done for quite likely for less than that, because it costs us 10K for seven miles. And if we're talking about the 30 square miles of the original culled, you know, One through six. We're only talking about, you know, four and a quarter times seven, which is roughly, you know, 30 K. And so it's it may be cheaper. But I do want to push back that they. If there is a misunderstanding or a lack of understanding of distance sampling, it's perfectly accurate. You can't get in everywhere, but you can get in enough areas. That's what it's for. It's a statistically it's statistical validation of samples. That's why it's called distance sampling. And you have a particular transact sample. Tom and I have talked about it, so he understands. Maybe he can explain it better than I in my addled state. But distance sampling is perfectly valid. And if we should probably look at both methods for cost savings and so forth, we'd be more likely to find qualified biologists to help us with the distance sampling than with the drone count. But I don't care at all. which way we count, maybe a hybrid method or something like that. But I don't I just don't think we should discount distance sampling just because we don't understand it. And that's my comment.

Thank you. I'm for. Oh, yeah, we could. We've gone past.

But that would be curious.

I don't mind.

But is spotlight different in distance?

So spotlighting is just literally collecting the raw data and then starting. I've heard spotlight is pretty accurate.

Okay. Very good. To frigging muddy it up even more.

All right, so I think some of the discussion we just had is addressed in question number five, where it says a full drone survey of all six study areas should be conducted first, but only in targeted areas where deer management activities are being considered. Current methods are sufficient. I think some perspective residents will have some pause on a drone survey when they see what the potential cost would be. So I think there's kind of a fair balance of information here that is in my mind that lets them consider the various options that are available to them. All right. Very good.

So in that case, the one change we're going to make here for question five would be to have it listed, but we're going to actually list out that kind of a cost estimate. We'll include this information, but then say a city anticipates that a survey of the entire six study area section of 30 square miles could cost approximately $50,000 to $60,000. Yes. Okay.

All right. Council Member Alvers. Could I make a suggestion that we, if you don't mind, just if we asked our audience here, just a quick, what would they prefer? Just not a whole explanation, just give us your opinion. What would you recommend we do as best counting method here. If you don't want to agree to that, that's fine. No, I'll do it. Just 30 seconds each one.

Not even that. I'll just say this one thing. The only reason why I pushed for the drone survey was because of the white buffalo culling. There was originally 427 deer scheduled to be killed per the city's disclosure. There were 661 deer killed. I was trying to find the solution of why there was an overkill. That's why I suggested the drone survey. In my personal opinion, there's no need for a drone survey. None.

Mr. Sherman, did you want to comment? I agree somewhat. There's no need for any surveys. In his area where they had the problem, if they want to maybe go in there and do it, but there's no need to go in Rambo's area and do it there. Just in the zone where there's high density, where you could drive around, you can maybe do a spotlight survey. I would agree with that. But not everywhere in your whole city. Forget that. It's not needed. You'll get too many deer numbers there. It's too complicated. It's not worth it. I've seen it all over other cities before. It's just not needed. NBC will approve it because their biologist is making money doing it. So don't rely on them to see anything.

The survey is not important for me from the hunter perspective. I'm not a drone expert, so I'm not going to comment on that. I will say, I think the metric that's most important is the deer that are harvested from my group, people like Lou's group, and whatever other hunters that the permit process allows.

Either of you other gentlemen, I'll give you 30 seconds.

I think it's important that you know how many deer you have before you embark upon a killing season. Because if you can't articulate what your current population is and what your target call is to achieve an end state, you're just haphazardly killing animals. Could I add to that?

I disagree with that.

We're not going to kill too many. We're not here for a debate if it's free. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Okay.

I was going to withdraw, but I think all the other cities do it to get an accurate account. That's all. The sampling, you don't get to go into all these properties. They don't allow it. And I just think it's important we know how many deer we have out there. I think that's our responsibility as a city. We manage our deer. We've got to know how many we have. And that money is well worth it, in my opinion. So that's it.

Thank you. So before we go to Councilman Rambo, The final decision on what type of a survey, we'll do the survey here regarding using drones, but the final decision regarding using drones will be made by the entire city council. Yeah, that'd be an expenditure and go through our traditional works. Council Member Ramel, back to you.

Yeah, very quickly. Okay. I've had I had calls literally from folks eight miles away from the nearest cull area claiming that there were no deer. And I have we're overrun with deer out here. I wish, you know, we could get rid of, you know, two thirds or more of them and bring the ecology back into balance. That's just my personal opinion. But I will say that we're getting we get we get. It's the nature of the beast that we sometimes get legal assertions from non-attorneys. My personal gripe is that we get scientific assertions from non-scientists, and we're throwing a lot of information out there that's just really not relevant to this survey or to the question of whether we should open things up to more hunters. We kind of decide on a conclusion and then work the facts to fit it instead of doing it the other way around. And so I will say that, once again, distance sampling is perfectly legitimate, perfectly valid. It works perfectly well. And, you know, whatever way we can count the deer accurately is the way we ought to do it. That's it.

All right. Thank you. All right. Anything else on Section 4? Okay, moving on to section five, deer management approach. And question six, the preferred approach to deer management. We have a couple of options here. Primarily rely on recreational archery by residents, including possible changes to acreage requirements. Resume professional deer management, such as contracted sharpshooting programs as the primary tool while maintaining different hunting regulations. Use a combination of both recreational archery and professional culling, including possible changes to acreage requirements for archery hunting. Do not support active deer population management. And then last but not least, it says no preference slash not sure. So does anyone have any questions, comments, or suggest changes here?

Councilmember Alderman. Just the only thing like you stated before, I just want the no costs for archery put in here somewhere. You thought there'd be a better place for it, you said. I don't know if it's there at the choices and Q6, you know, preferred approach. I think that's important to state somewhere in the survey.

Could you put a note? By recreational, we mean no charge or?

Something along the lines, I guess it would be primarily rely on recreational archery hunting by residents who would provide their service free of charge. Unless you leave it to Tam.

Unless you leave it for Tam's expert.

to put that on there. Yeah, I can, I can ask him, but the thing is with the, when you say free, that's once again, it's prefacing that idea that we're going to be engaging in hiring a group, whereas this is more so than any regulation. So if we, um, I think we can include it somehow, but I would almost say no cost to the city or something like that, or it would just be kind of saying, doubling down on the same statement that, you know,

Why don't you take a look at it from the legal standpoint and see if you can incorporate something that addresses Council Member Albers' suggestion.

I will definitely. Maybe change it to primarily rely on recreational archery hunting by residents on their own property or something along those lines. So it's they're not moving from property to property there.

Sorry. I'm just looking at it from being fiscally responsible here. You know, that's, that's my whole thing here. No, that's good.

That's good. All right. Thank you. Welcome. Um, let's see section six general feedback. I guess there's nothing really that needs to be changed here on thinking. Um, So I guess where we are at now is for Mr. Lee to recap for us the suggested changes and see if we can vote in aggregate to incorporate these suggested changes into the survey.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask a quick question, please?

Absolutely. Ask away.

Thanks very much. I appreciate it. I know I'm talking a lot here and my mind is addled. But yeah, so we need to, maybe or maybe not, but I think we need to mention or consider the concept that archery tackle, there is no distinction made any longer, it used to be, between a crossbow, And and a long bow and, you know, compound bow and this and that recurve, whatever. Now it's it's all just, you know, whatever you want to hunt with. And the purists use, you know, some of them use long, you know, recurve. So I'm use whatever. It doesn't matter. But the fact is the. Ethical archers, they use a crossbow if they're getting older or whatever. It gives them a flatter trajectory and so on and so forth, and they can aim them better, typically. They are quite often cocked ahead of time instead of you knock an arrow and draw when you see the deer. That's a concern, but that's for a future discussion. future discussion, the more important concern is that a lot of newbies just use a crossbow because they can reach out further and it gives them a greater range. And with that comes more wounded deer and more travel and so on and so forth. And deer can travel, you know, there's a circle. You maybe a quarter mile to even a half mile, conservation department recommends waiting for 15 minutes if it's a plainly a heart double lung shot, which is the gold standard. And it recommends waiting 12 to 24 hours If it's a bad shot to let the deer lay down and bleed out, which is all well and good, unless you live in the neighborhood. And that means 25 or 50 properties need to be notified. And I don't think we have addressed that. And it's not putting the thumb on the scale to tell people. that you need to expect a little bit greater presence of unpleasant activities in your neighborhood if you approve this. And, oh, by the way, it's not going to be just bows. It's going to be crossbows as well. Those are important points. I don't know where they belong, but maybe in the introduction. That's it.

All right. Thank you. All right. If there's nothing else, then I guess, Mr. Lee, it's up to you to recap all the suggested changes. And then we will entertain a motion, possibly, to approve all the suggested changes in aggregate.

TODD BANDUCCI- Yeah, that would be and we'll go through these. But real quick, I just A way to maybe phrase that free item. Maybe it's like a disclaimer somewhere in the survey that says amending the code to allow archery hunting on smaller parcels will not result in any direct cost to the city from individual hunters or hunting groups. You okay with that?

All right.

Good. Thank you.

No problem.

We'll probably work that into the introductions if that's okay. All right.

Oh, and before you recap that, just to kind of mention what I mentioned before, some of the information that I've just received within about the past 48 hours regarding other suggested changes, I will get that to you later. And then those suggested changes can be considered when this goes before the council.

Yep, there would be, there would have to be a motion by a council member to entertain those changes. But if they can, as specific as they can possibly be, so we could make those changes.

Most of them are pretty specific. So I will get that to you either tonight or first thing in the morning.

Can you share that with council? Yes.

Yeah, I'll get it to him and then he will send it out to everyone. Okay.

Sounds good. Okay. Can I go? Absolutely. All right. We originally had this note, but then we changed it to the map, but to include that map that shows the three acre parcels the one to three acre parcels and less than one acre parcels with the descriptor next to it we'll have that somehow incorporated into the intro or possibly in the near the question that has the acreage requirement discussion but that would block out the percentage of land that is three acres one to three acres and less than one acre so that map covers that so that's one we'll include that um Having in the intro, having some type of statement that explains what happens. This was from Mr. Owen and Dr. Rambo. We had a statement that explains what happens if you don't mitigate deer overpopulation, really kind of going into what is the standard recruitment rate that was mentioned that would be included in the introduction. Next one was... clearly outlining, we'll get to that one actually later, but just the drone survey costs. Incorporating in some fashion that, in the intro, that this is, that by lowering the acreage, that it's a service to landowners, and that ties into the free, which we'll change by saying by amending the code, will not allow. So service to landowners component. Now going through question by question, there's also, we're here. There was mentioning about, we didn't have a direct motion on it. There are no, but there was mentioning that distance sampling is fine. Um, but we did not change that question. Question one, we had no changes and that was the question. It's a question about the size of the property. Question two asks the exact requirements of what we're changing, what we're considering to change. We're going to be, at least in the red line, eliminating option D, which was reduce to one acre and allow parcel aggregation. We'll keep the rest of the options and then randomize or move option A down the list. Question three, there were no changes. It's just a Enthusiasm question. Question four. We had two changes. We are going to be adding an option, which one is add notification to surrounding property owners as a requirement that they could select. And then in the descriptor in section three, it says some neighboring communities. We will be changing that to across St. Louis County. Many communities have adopted additional local requirements. So that's all for option. Question four. Question five is... We will include the exact cost, an approximate cost for the survey, which we are stating and agreeing to at the committee here. That would be approximately $50,000 to $60,000 to cover all six service areas. Question six. That was all for question five. Actually, by having that statement about how there will not be any direct expenses incurred, from changing the archery hunting regulations that actually was covered and it's going to be included introduction. So question six would have no direct changes. Okay. All right.

Everybody good. In that case, I will entertain a motion to approve these suggested changes in Africa made by councilman Kranz. Do we have a second by council member means Any further discussion? Excuse me. Seeing none, all those in favor of adopting the changes in aggregate, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Abstentions? Motion carries. All right, very good. We got through this. So it is... 10 till 8. How is everybody doing? Because I would not be opposed to entertaining a motion to take a five-minute break if people felt the need to take a five-minute break. Shall we do that? All right. Okay. So I guess we need a formal motion on that or can we just do it? All right. Five-minute break.

Hey, don't hesitate to stay. We enjoy it. It's interesting. Mr. Donwell, I can answer all those questions for you.

Mr. Brown, we're going to give you a prize to for having to sit through all this. Yeah, exactly.

The one that actually gives you a good chance to do this. And okay, it's a little bit It's a long drive home.

Popcorn.

Okay. We could probably put resident names or something. I don't want to hold you up. Okay. You always draw the short shot. So Fisher, he was seven. And I got seven.

And I'm on until 11.

So instead of him staying. Let's not do our job. And over time. Represent people's thinkers. Now we're going to do a survey.

Is there really anybody there? This is an open classroom.

over the parks and stuff. Yeah. It just depends.

I've caught groups of women out there doing yoga at like 8 o'clock at night.

Well, it's not dark, so I guess that's the way they look at it.

It's dark then. This was like November, December time.

Oh, okay.

That's a little crazy. Yeah, but all kinds of just... You never know. You never know the rate of people through there, so...

Look at this.

It was 1-0.

He just homered.

Did he really? If the city were to murder... I was watching before I was checking it. I thought he struck out. I was like, oh, that's shocking.

I could be watching.

You know who Blaze Jordan is?

No, but my son keeps telling me. He's like, what are they going to call Steve Jordan? He said they could get rid of him. So what started as a

But the same thing happened when they're like, oh, call up Jimmy Crooks. He's doing terrible. We haven't done nothing. But Landon still wants to register. Did he hit tonight?

Jimmy Crooks? Oh, well, now he grounded out. So what do you mean by billiards? Clearly not.

I'm a hunter still alive. You don't need to pay. No, I don't. Those are steps. This is steps. Yes, I think it was Mr. Rambo who commented.

He was in a section of the city. I don't want to pay your time. I know. Keep it rolling. At least Rick's quick. I'm going to set a timer. It is jinxed.

Just for informational until you get to the last one.

It should be a couple of minutes. We'll post that until next month. We can. I'd be open to that if that's what we want to do.

I didn't know there was such a thing.

Frankly, Rick, we just need to cover the CSA. That's the main one now.

Amy, you broke down every word everybody said over the last two hours.

I would not go that far. But if I could say yes and make myself sound good.

I would say the right if we want to. I would actually prefer a little time to breathe.

people rent out this room i'm assuming some kids came with a sewing group or something somebody that's true like pretty joy meetings right yeah that's probably a kid that came up with the uh yeah i don't know going after you yeah

Thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you for sharing.

You know, that's like, I don't what they were saying. So it's like, Oh, yeah. So you still host to use Rick wants me to share. I was never the best. I, you know, I haven't heard these. If we don't push it to go in there and

You know, show us what they can do, you know? Yeah. And, you know, to come back, I'll say, hey, we hunted on these 50 acres and that. Well, who's on the bigger orders?

My concern, again, on one of those here for years.

I worked right on half an acre.

That's the largest property. So most of them are less than... And... Worked over here. If you shoot a deer, it's going to go wandering into somebody else's yard. And so a process has to be put in place. It's not time-sensitive at this point.

That was the other action. And I was so worried about this issue. because somebody on 25 acres was hunting deer ran off and died in their driveway.

monetize their joint.

Yep. We're getting ready to litigate against the city for that. That said, we can answer questions. Okay. Let's just relax. Hold on.

You're all in. Well, you're all ABC Smile. That one's not time sensitive. Okay. And with this, you're still kind of person. Yeah.

Okay.

All right. So everybody back. All right. So we will reconvene and we are moving on now to section seven under public works.

And I've just had a conference with city administrator Lee. Items A, B, and C are informational items only. So they do not have to be covered tonight and could be deferred to the July meeting. Item E, code revision. City Administrator Lee mentioned there still may be some things that they want to tweak with the information there. So we could entertain a motion to defer A, B, C, and E to the July meeting, which means the only thing that we would have to consider under public works would be item number D, which is an action item where we definitely need to take some action tonight. So would everybody be okay with that?

Makes the motion.

All right. So Council Member Dodd-Raw makes the motion to defer items A, B, C... and E to the July meeting. Do I have a second? Council Member Alvers. All right. Very good. All those in favor, please.

Discussion. Discussion. I just wanted to comment on the Main Street proposal. You know, when I look at it, I see parking along the village green. I see no parking along the all-inclusive park ground. I'm concerned about children that need our special needs and they need help. I think we should have parking along Main Street. I also know that that is an area that's going to be probably congested, so maybe parking on the other side as well, since you have a village green there and we are short on park. I'm just making that as a suggestion. a thought that concerns me.

If the motion was to bring it back, then we'll certainly have the opportunity to talk about it in more detail, but should make the comment. Okay. All right.

Very good. Okay. Super. All right. Any other further discussion on the motion? I'm seeing none. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Opposed? Abstentions? Motion carries. So Director Brown, we're going to go easy on you tonight. I guess all we have is item D. So I guess we turn things over to you.

Thank you, Council Members. Item D is the Consultant Services Agreement Request for Green Pines Connector Path. That is the new path that we have been designing and we are rapidly approaching point of bidding that project. In fact, Monday night at your council meeting, we expect to have legislation in front of you relative to the acquisition of the right-of-way necessary from the Hickory Manor Common Ground. So we are moving forward. And after we complete the acquisition of that piece of property, we want to move forward to bidding the project for construction. As you, I think, are aware, this is a federally funded improvement project. We do have about 213,600 available for construction costs for reimbursement. So because we get the federal funding, it does bring a lot of red tape and extra needs in terms of monitoring the contract, materials testing, and reporting to MoDOT. So traditionally, we have been hiring a consulting engineering firm to help us with that work. We just don't have the internal resources capability of getting that done. So tonight we are giving a recommendation to you to hire Cochrane as that entity, the engineering firm that would do the construction engineering services that are required by the federal funding through MoDOT. So Cochrane has worked with us on a number of projects and they are actually currently working with us on the Old State Road shared use path and they've done a good job for us. We found them to be technically capable and fairly cost effective as well compared to other firms. So we've been utilizing them for some time. So they did provide us a proposal for this project, which we reviewed. It's consistent with past projects that we've worked with them on. Tonight we are recommending an agreement with Cochrane to do the construction engineering services for the Green Pines Park Path Project for the not to exceed amount of $32,000 And I think with that, if there's any additional questions that you may have, I'd be glad to do my best to address them at this time.

So questions, comments for Director Brown, Council Member Dahlgren?

I'm sorry, I'm catching up on a lot of this stuff since I just, it's my first night on this committee for a couple of years. Is that $32,000 included in the overall budget for the project, Rick?

We have about, we have half a million dollars budgeted currently. Okay. Okay.

Okay, I just want to make sure. I'll make a motion to approve.

Okay, motion to approve. Do you have a second? I'll second. Okay, Council Member Means, seconds. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Motion carries. Then we move on to topics for inclusion on future agenda. Preliminary review of the 2027 capital improvement plan and five-year capital improvement plan. Workforce analysis, city staffing needs, and associated budget implications.

I'll give you a quick update. We'll have the current existing capital improvement plan to catch up at the next month's meeting. We'll most likely have some considerations to include there and then we'll go over the scoring matrix. And then as we go into August, we'll start prepping more and get it through the pipeline. That said, the workforce analysis we are currently working on as well. And we'll plan to have somewhat of an outline of certain positions that could be used here at City Hall, along with the price tag associated with it. So when we do get to budgeting, we would have, we'd be able to make some decisions, even if they might be expensive. All right.

Very good. Um, uh, item number nine, miscellaneous, it says none, but one thing I'll just mention briefly, um, uh, city administrator was nice enough to send to me a PowerPoint presentation outlining the, um, I guess I'll call it emergency operations protocol that the city has. Should there be a significant natural disaster of some sort, you know, think of the new Madrid fault opening up significantly, something of that sort. FEMA has to come in, uh, that sort of thing. It's a very well done report. It was reviewed by a resident who's a retired army Lieutenant Colonel who was involved in disaster response in the Army. And he gave it his blessing, which is he doesn't give his blessing to too many things. But so the city administrator is nice enough to send it to me. I've asked him to send it out to all the members of this committee because if there's a natural disaster like that and it requires an emergency response, it's going to have significant impact on city infrastructure. And we would all probably end up getting involved at some point or another.

Mm-hmm.

I think it's New Madrid. Pardon? I think it's New Madrid. New Madrid. Okay.

All right. Next meeting is Tuesday, July. Hey, Scott.

Yes. I have just a miscellaneous item, a follow-on to what you said, actually. There is an organization, well, there's a training venue called CERT, C-E-R-T, Community Emergency Response Team, and I I went through it a few years ago. It was local. It was right there in City Hall and had a number of local folks in the training. I felt it was useful. It wasn't rocket science, but it was very handy. And it was only a couple of weekends. And then you get on a list of folks that will be called in the event of an emergency. And they took down my, you know, a list of my equipment, you know, like a gator and the couple of the hottest chainsaws in Wildwood for what that's worth and other stuff. And so I'm suggesting that, you know, as part of this discussion, we consider, you know, urging council members or at least making the opportunity available to attend CERT training because it really was, it was, here's how you safely put out a fire with a partner and, you know, it's, you know, how you turn gas off and whatnot. But I found it useful. So anyway, thought it worth making that sales pitch.

All right. Thank you. Council Member Dodwell.

Just real quickly, I have a question regarding e-bike enforcement. I didn't have a chance to go through our current requirements on those, but is there a speed limit associated with those? And is there a location that they are allowed to for e-bikes. And then number three, if we've got somebody that is, or some buddies that is creating havoc in a location, as far as the citizens are concerned, do we reach out to the police? Do we call the city? What do we do? Call the police immediately.

That said a couple of things, and this has been a problem we've been trying to address. And we do have laws in the books. Currently we're about to put out some messaging for it. Nonetheless, there's a big difference between an e-bike and a motorized electric bicycle that is pedal-infused. If you have pedals, we have a different set of regulations, but if it's one of the mini-motorcycles or pocket rockets or mini-bikes, those are absolutely prohibited on sidewalks, trails, parks, unless explicitly stated. We don't have any... E-bikes are. Let's treat them separately. Like little tiny electric scooters, electric skateboards. They have these tiny little motorcycles that are practically motorcycles. We call them mini bikes. Yep, mini bikes. Yep. Everyone's got a new name for them now. Mini bikes, though, that said, you can legally ride one. You need a driver's license on the road, and you can't ride it on the sidewalk. So there's some definite requirements there. So that's one. Two, if anybody notices them, this goes to the public, too, if you notice kids on these that don't look 16, then call the police, especially if they're just walking home. If they're driving around, they shouldn't. E-bikes, though, the limit is 15 miles per hour. And there's also one horsepower is supposed to be the maximum power presented from the eco bike. It needs to have pedals. Very important. If it doesn't have pedals, it's not a bike. Not that kind of bike. And there are certain we have regulations in the code. That state that the city has rights at any time to bar the use of electric bicycles on any segment of trail that we deem fit is just based off of need for public safe. So also you got to be 16 years or older.

Can you just do me a favor and direct me to which part of the city code that's in? So one thing you can do that tomorrow, Thomas.

So one thing that may be helpful for council member Dodd. Well, in fact, maybe the entire council is to forward out in the, we have an officer in the room here. I don't know if he's carrying one tonight, but there's those cards that I think the officers carry. It's kind of a brief, I'll call it a cheat sheet for lack of a better term. that they can hand out to residents or people that they may find in violation of the law regarding their bikes. We can get you a PDF of that. And if you have residents calling in and asking questions, you can forward this on to the residents. That'd be perfect too.

Please send that out via email.

Yeah.

Yep. City administrator will do that.

That'd be great. Okay. Kids are off school and there's a lot more activity going on. I'm getting more complaints.

Scooters are freaking everywhere.

All right. Next meeting date, Tuesday, July 7th, 2026 at 5.30 p.m. Now, the section that's everyone's favorite, section number 11, adjournment. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn from Council Member Kranz. Do I have a second? Council Member Rameens. Okay. This is non-debatable. Thank goodness. All those in favor, please.