Administration / Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, welcome everybody uh to the to the June meeting of the um advent of public works committee for the city of Wildwood. Um it is 5:29. We will start with our roll call. Council member Preston, Council Member Mabrief here. Council member Nyan here. Council member Farmer here. Excuse me. Council member Marshall present. Council member Bert present. Council member Vanick here. Council member Als. I am here. All right. That brings us to a quum. Uh so I don't have much of a welcome message really or anything here this evening. I did uh send out a memo just kind of welcoming all of our new members just to kind of give you guys a general idea at least for the last year or so how we've been doing stuff. Um as many of you, this is kind of your first go here with city council work. Um from what I have seen and some of our other uh members here that have been around a little bit can probably attest to this, our committee does an awful lot pretty quickly in comparison to other places. So um a lot of our stuff is contract based. You know, Rick and the guys need to get stuff approved right away. Um, and then we're also trying to solve some problems on the fly. So, um, everything that we try to do in here, or at least I've tried to get us to do in the last year or so, uh, is about keeping the motion going. So, we want to have real good discussions, which we've had, um, but have them for the right reasons. Like, we want to always be kind of moving forward with that stuff. So, um, that's all I've got for our welcome. That brings us to the technical aspect of electing a chair and a vice chair. Um, I guess we'll open the floor to anybody that wants to nominate anybody or be nominated or however you guys want

to do that. Um, Mr. Marshall, I'd like to nominate you, but you can't decline. Okay. Uh, would anybody else care to nominate anybody else? All right. Um, then I guess I am the nominee for the chair. U made by Mr. Marshall and then seconded by Miss Nyam. Um since there are no other nominations, uh technically I guess we can do this by a voice vote, I assume, right? Um so we'll do we'll do this by a voice vote. All those in favor of me as the chair, please say I. I. Anyone opposed? And I will abstain because I feel weird voting for myself. You really don't want to, do you? Um that brings us to uh a vice chair. Um, if anybody ha cares to make a motion for that or if anybody's interested in doing it, um, basically for those of you that are new here, all that entails for the most part is if I happen to not be available, it's kind of like being the mayor prom, you take over the meeting. Um, Lauren Edens, who is no longer on council, served last year as the chair. She did a good job when she took over for that one meeting I wasn't here for. So it's Yeah, it's pretty rare, but um technically we need to have one. So if anybody cares to make uh any nominations, that would be super cool. What's it pay probably more than the chair does, but uh it's way below minimum. Yeah, way way below minimum for sure. Mr. Alers, I'd like to nominate Mr. Marshall for that position. All right, we've got a nomination for Mr. Marshall. Anybody care to second it? Second. Seconded by Mr. Mabry. Any other nominations? All right. Uh, with that, all those in favor of Mr. Marshall to serve as our vice chair, please say I. I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? All right. Mr. Marshall, welcome to being vice chair. Um, that takes us to the approval of minutes. And again, for those of you that are new, we

had some clarification on this the last time. Um, you are okay to vote for these if you feel like this seems right. If not, you are okay to abstain from them. I don't think it kills us one way or the other. Um, right. Yeah. Quick note on that if you don't mind here. Um, it's just that the minutes reflect that you weren't at that meeting, you weren't serving it in that capacity. But Robert's rules does actually uh you can abstain, but it it calls for folks to vote yes or no. Um, doesn't mean you can't abstain, but it typically says you should vote. It's the duty to vote. Mr. Lee, I just thought of something. Chair. Sure. Um does does the vote I mean theoretically there are four that would be abstaining theoretically and there is one problem because he wasn't here yet. All right. U so if a quorum of those attending is not reached that vote or is it just a simple majority of those attending? So it's a it's a simple majority of those attending that night. So it depend. So in this case we have seven. So you need four to approve. So I So all those could abstain and it still wouldn't count as a no. We have four, right? We have four. But as Tom said, basically it just says according to the minutes, you were not here and you are in agreement for that. Um so anybody cares to make a motion to approve the minutes? I was at the meeting. I'll make that. All right. Mr. Marshall makes the motion. Tracy seconds the motion. All those in favor, unless we have any discussion on the minutes, they look pretty good to me. Um all those in favor of the minutes from our May meeting, please say I. I. I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? Extension. All right. Mr. Mabry will abstain. So, the motion carries. Um, that brings us to public participation. I There's no one in the room. I don't see anybody online. Is there anybody online, Brandon? Okay. Uh, well, since there's no one here and there's no one online, unless any of us want to make some sort sort of a public

decree, I think we can move on past that. um into our administration section and that is the master plan questionnaire as a for information item. Mr. Lee, I assume that is you. Yes, thank you, chair. Uh this is a quick quick little note. We had this uh questionnaire created back in March of 2025. Right now, uh the citizen oversight group for the master plan 2026 is meeting monthly to review each element within the city's 2016 update of the master plan. Um something we've kind of found uh as successful in getting direct feedback. We've done this now at the economic development committee for the economic development element and we're planning to do so for the parks uh and planning committee as well is to provide the elements that are kind of overseen and implemented by the co co corresponding u group and in this case admin falling well within the purview would be the community services and the transportation elements. Uh earlier this week, the department sent out an email just revising. It's the same questionnaire, but just sending it out to the new members. The hope is that the new members, but also previous members have filled it out and then would fill it out by the next month meeting. So then we could review the transportation and the community services element and then review the responses to that as well. So right now it's just an update and then showing, you know, kind of directions on how to fill it out. Um and then showing an example of what it is. Uh if you don't mind going through that and filling out the questionnaire. I'll send out another email after tonight's meeting. Just send out a reminder with the link and just if you have any issues, feel free to contact the department. We'll be happy to help. But overall, the goal would be to go through each goal, objective, and policy and then provide specific input. We'd review that at the next meeting uh going through each goal, objective, and policy. And then that feedback would be consolidated and provided to the citizen oversight group. So when they get to the community services and the transportation elements, they already have feedback from eight city council me council members and available for any

questions. Chair, Mr. Marshall. So for those of us I think and I was going to ask you I think I've done this if you've already filled it out then. But how do we know that other than getting in and doing? I can I can check it. Okay. Yeah. And the question would be the other four that aren't with us anymore. Did they do it? I can confirm that as well. I how we've how we've proposed and put this out as the responses. We don't want to call it and we can if it's something motion we can entertain tonight. If we want to have the council member's name next to the response that we get that's fine. What we did for economic development committee just uh for reference we put response one two three four knowing that an individual with that committee answered it but not specifically tying it to the council member uh that said it. You could try. I mean the way we did that other survey it that we all well the new you guys didn't do it yet but you put in there obviously who you are. Yeah. Um but then it's anonymized after that and I don't find it easy to save that and see really difficult. So then I go back I wonder how I answer that. So maybe we could try I mean I can help you figure that out. And also if you'd like I can go in there too. Anyway, so if someone would like the response I could print it out word doc or something like that. When was this? I don't remember if I if I didn't do it. It was approved. Yeah, I can send out an email after this. But it was approved back in March, but then um it was sent out in an email and then I sent out an email earlier this week with the link just with the new committee uh makeup, but other than that, it hasn't been something we've been hounding on, but we are getting closer to the community services element. So, I'm just wanted to It's fine if we we don't need to go through it this month, but if we want to tackle it next month, it'd be very helpful for the I think maybe just look and see if you can see who's done it and and I can send that out. Whoever hasn't just is is the whole committee here comfortable with me saying who has and hasn't. Okay. In that case, we can both be a lot easier. Yeah. I'm rat out those who haven't taken. Yeah. Try try to avoid that. Uh all

right. Any other questions on the master plan stuff? Okay. Um that brings us to kind of this next couple items are actually sort of all interrelated. Um they stem from a conversation that uh administrator Lee and the mayor and I had with our prosecuting attorney. Um and that's kind of an initiative that Mayor Garano is wanting to do. Every few months he's kind of asked to meet with Molly. um not to like twist her arm or anything on it on any of that stuff, but to just make sure that, you know, we as a city council are doing whatever we can to kind of help facilitate what they need to do. And then just kind of philosophically making sure every everybody's um working together. We did talk to her, although the um citations haven't started coming to her yet, but all of the safe street stuff that we've done the last, you know, couple months, that's all now starting to make their way through. So, one of the um issues that uh Mayor Garitano and I brought up was uh the kind of ongoing excessive noise that seems to happen up and down 100 and certain parts of Clayton and and I'm sure it's in other areas too, but we get a lot of calls about those kinds of things. So, one of the suggestions that um our prosecuting attorney made was for us to look into the idea of creating a municipal ordinance against excessive vehicle noise. that would basically be, you know, more or less it's loud engines and things, but it could also apply to loud stereos and stuff like that. Um, we can certainly go through the memo. Uh, the memo was I I kind of made the memo uh based on kind of standard best practices for municipalities in general, but then specifically ones around us. So, the idea is in an ideal world, like if we outfit the police with a decibel meter, basically that's great. Their body cameras function more or less the same way. So, um I don't know I don't I think like some of the things we've also done in the past, I don't know that we're going to go out

and just start immediately writing a million tickets about loud cars. But the idea is, you know, for as we kind of talked about with a lot of these items. There are a handful of residents that we have in our city and visitors that come through that just don't really seem to care about sort of the general philosophy of what we do around here. So, this is maybe more to help facilitate those conversations. So, um, if anybody has any questions or concerns, want to talk a little bit more about it, we certainly can. It basically lays out, um, different offenses, how that all works. Um, John Young, obviously, our city attorney, will check this to make sure that it is correct before it goes to the full council. But, um, I'm pretty confident that this is pretty solid. Um, Tom, you got anything you want to add? Yeah, we do. And just a quick note, we do have a current uh section of our city code that outlaws noise in some capacity. How it works though is that it's based off the decibb uh the decel reading from the property line and it's based off a continuity of time. So it it stretches anywhere from 2 minutes and you can be louder for two minutes, but then it goes all the way up to 60 minutes and 60 minutes of sustained noise. Um at that point, it's the lowest threshold to really get to get started. Um that said, this is would be a little bit more geared towards moving vehicles. What it what the other ordinance was looking to do was, you know, trying to outlaw, you know, loud businesses from operating after hours. It changes at night. Has a little bit more stricter uh decimal readings and allows us to have some type of mechanism. If we're standing at the edge of the property line, how much noise is that business producing? Same goes, that's why it has the timing mechanism. A lot of thought went into that part was that, you know, if somebody has an accident or something that occurs at night that, you know, it's a quick bang and u, you know, maybe they drop something. It's not, you're not going to get the police necessarily called on you just for that. But this is more so figuring out a way to gear it towards supplying our officers with a way to monitor noise coming from a

vehicle and then also looking at the modified exhaust system. Um, and being able to write the ticket for it, having that almost be an addend of an add-on to what might other ticket when they're pulling over. So, this is more so geared towards vehicles. Yeah. Just cars. So, over the years, we've had a tremendous challenge with people with motorcycles out in fields and property they don't live on, but nobody else could stand it. U, people with swimming pools with really loud sound systems on them. So, I know we have an ordinance for that. This would be more specific for a moving violation for an automobile and not one for a residential violation or a Yeah, I mean I think like the motorcycle would still apply because it is a vehicle. Um the problem was there it was not a public street. That's okay. It was in a field and they had to the police then had to be careful because they were trespassing into the field to try to get the monitors to work. So I I would say I mean the way I kind of have understood this from Molly's explanation was basically this would enable an officer if somebody called and said hey somebody's like revving their dirt bike in this field or whatever. This would enable an officer to show up more or less have probable cause that this vehicle is louder than the 85 dB that it says it can be and then right have that conversation. Yeah. Um, but I think more more than anything this is going to be for those guys that are racing up and down 100 and you know I just think as you we explained to the council we need to get some clarity there as to what it is and what it isn't because I think we have certainly mushed them together over the years. Same way with power lines the noise under a power line where there was a whole separate bunch of ordinances trying to how do you quiet down Amaran's power lines because there people just gone crazy with the noise. Yeah, I'm I'm all for kind of tackling. I mean, we've had a lot of sound studies and different things and people complaining and you know, to me, I a lot of the stuff that we do in here, I don't

usually like band-aids to fix stuff. Um, but this is one she felt pretty confident was very necessary in our chat. Um, so yeah, I think we can have a wider conversation, but I think it's something to pursue for sure. Yes, sir. I was going to just ask uh with the level of detail we've got from this synopsis um and then the recommendation second from last and then the proposed motion. Is it time for a motion? If anybody if anybody would like one more question I guess uh this is an addition to what we currently Yeah. It's not replacing anything. It's in in addition to so all of the regular noise stuff stays put. And then the city attorney would also just make sure that when they're lining this these kind of framework up that it would be only to vehicles. So moving and I mean we could make it so it's only on public right away if we want to identify it that way in the definitions. Um but also tying it directly to uh it's a little bit different because it's the 85 dB or it gives the a little bit of a different perspective if the police officer can hear the noise 150 ft away. That's different than our current code. So it would we'll make sure it lines up with our current existing code, but this would be different. It should make it a little easier less they don't have to put a decimal point. So yeah, if anybody has anything else, great. If not, Mr. Mabry, did you want to make a motion? I'll motion for approval of this proposal. All right. So Mr. Mabry makes the motion to approve the draft excessive vehicle noise ordinance for legal review by the city attorney, authorize staff to initiate uh enforcement tools and officer training blah blah blah and schedule the ordinance for reading for the city council. Amy, I can send all this to you. Anybody care to second? Mr. Alers will second. All those in favor of moving our noise uh ordinance forward, please say I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? All right, that motion one note. I know we just voted, but uh one thing this may entertain as we kind of get into well, we'll have to get through

it with reviewing and drafting the ordinance, but one thing that might come up is we may need more decibel readers to issue with our police officers. So, just something that would potentially come up in the future is, hey, we want to enforce this. We might need the equipment to do so. So, we have one that works well. We technically have two, but one that works decently reliably. Um, so in this case, if we want to make sure all officers are outfitted with it, that's where I do think it's really important that audible noise at 150 ft. They got that camera that turns on and you know the judge could look at it and see it's 150 ft clearly then u that hopefully you know kind of sets that apart because the decibel it does get a little bit wonky whenever right now with the noise if it's 2 minutes versus 60 minutes it it just gets a little too technical. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I I would say like this motion that I will send over to Amy basically says for you guys to figure out how much that costs if that's what we need. So then that's and whether we really need to buy them all at one time. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Question after this all said and done. would would this and I because I have no idea what 85 dB is what's going to register at that is this more like vehicles that have been altered and not like a big huge pickup truck that drives through the subdivision and lives down the street from you and I exhaust could be too high. Yeah, this is more for like altered exhaust or or big mostly altered exhaust but it could also be like big stereo systems and things like that. I Okay, that's good. I'd like a clarification then from Mr. Lee. Um, a a big manly uh mega truck rolling cold can sound at 115 dB if it feels like it and it can be 60 dB if if the individual is human. So, this would apply to a coal rolling mega truck. It would be up to the officer discretion, but yeah, it would apply if they wanted. That thing's going to be a lot more than any 85 dB if he's got his foot stomped off the stoplight. I think the idea would be it it gives the officers the discretion to

have that kind I mean if it's a if it's a truck that is you know it's just loud that's whatever but if this is more for people that are stopping off the line and and zipping up and down at 85 miles an hour and this will let them know that there is a ticket involved correct slow down just didn't catch that level distinction you know it's kind of designed towards we started this conversation a little bit last meeting uh Lauren brought it up where like you know some of the exhaust stuff that some of the kids are putting on now. I've got a young man right from my house that has a super loud car and I'm sure it's really cool. It's just not that cool at 2 o'clock in the morning. Why asked? Um so yeah, so that's kind of what it's for. Um okay, that brings us to our uh our next piece which also came from this conversation with Molly, which is um basically a proposed data transparency policy. And what that is saying is whether it's the municipal court or the enhanced reporting that we're working on with our police partners or even some code enforcement things, it's defining specifically the type of information that we can get and how to um basically safely transport that over so that it's not being improperly used by anybody. Uh it's also there are certain areas um as all of you know when we have close session that are having legal conversations. Some of this may blend into that if it's necessary. Um, but this is basically to talk about some of the new reporting for code enforcement that we're going to work on this year and our enhanced court reporting. Right now, for those of you guys that are new, um, it's like every month we get a report from the court, which is more or less an accounting report. It's just kind of talks about how much money we're bringing in or not, which is not really what we care about. It's not what we're about. So, this is going to help to we're going to work with our court clerk to get this defined a little bit better so we can kind of get a better picture of um you know, is code enforcement

sending 200 violations to the court and then the court is figuring out 165 of them and then another 45 do this and then they're in big court for these other things. Like, it's just helping us get the information we need um basically by ward, not by street or by address or anything like that so we can figure this stuff out. The other thing that um especially our code enforcement things uh we'll talk about is what we're going to get to at the end which is this code harmony situation we're going to try to put together. Um but basically what we got from Mali and what we've had conversations with with Mr. Vunich and our code enforcement people is um after the uh events in 2014 in Ferguson, there was a lot of rules that got changed at the state level that altered how cities are able to enforce certain things. Um, and in my personal opinion, I think probably that was a good thing, but also it we have not modernized what we're doing after that. So, we're still we are still stuck in a system that doesn't actually work anymore. So, now we're going to try to shift a little bit of that. And what a big part of that is is getting some some real data that's coming in. So, um, I know at least a couple of us get the police report that we see at public safety and it's in the other thing. It's gotten better from where it was. it's going to continue to get better. Um, and that way we're able to kind of communicate to our residents what are going on. At at the end of the day, um, you know, for those of you that are new to the council, you'll get some calls from people about code enforcement issues and currently it kind of like goes into a bit of a black hole. It's like I don't we talked to them, that's all we know. Um, this is supposed to kind of help that a little bit and also help some efficiency stuff. So, um, Tom, anything you want to add? just that we're also looking to kind of retool the toolbox uh with how we can automate this uh and that's going to involve doing an RFP which will come back here done we're going to publish that

probably within the next week and we have some vendors we talked about it a couple months ago but uh couple vendors that look promising because they can integrate GIS data so it helps with geospatial uh it really really what it does it points out code violations reported code violations so we can look at it on a app if our code enforcement officers which we we do currently have two and one wears two hats um as a code inspector as well that individual is able that they ride together for safety purposes as well to ensure that you know just with the nature of the job we can kind of circle out with a map hey I have five violations that have been reported over in the western portion of wildwood today maybe we knock those out so that's the helpful tool of it is you can go in there and then you can actually update it with some of these tools uh you can update it with a tablet or something that's in the So the hope is then to be able to print out a ticket right then and there as well which will involve uh some equipment but overall will really help streamline efficiency. Yeah. So this is like we have done with our financial changes previously. So this is sort of like part one of a multi-art thing. The first part being this is the type of data that we would like to receive and then we report that out to our partners and then we in theory start receiving that data. Um, so anybody have any questions or concerns on that? Not. Um, we have Yes, sir. Yeah, a couple. I think this is fantastic. But the the one concern I have is all of these reports being done quarterly and before a budget. I think what happens is if we do this, we end up then waiting until December or late before we get into the budget and it's like, well, we don't know how to budget that. I would just throw out a suggestion that maybe we look at like a trimester reporting where you've got four months of history and you can project that out to try to get us to where we don't have a dozen reports that you're waiting for staff to get done before we can say we want to put something in the budget or not. So just more or less a different way of looking at how to report it so that

we're not dumping it all at the everybody because it's hard enough to get people to come to a budget meeting. budget's got to be done by November, you know, technically before we get to December. To wait for that fourth quarter wouldn't really be very meaningful this year. My in my in kind of my ideal scenario, I think what this is is like we will get actually monthly reports and then the the culmination is hey, here's the TR the quarterly report is these are the trends that we're seeing. Absolutely. So, we don't have to do that. Well, I think the other thing is when you sit down with a prosecutor, you sit down with a judge to do the evaluations, they're asking what you know what can you do? We don't have anything to share with them. sitting there saying, "Well, what do you think we should do?" I think having the information would be great. So, that's my only concern is everything is to be done on a quarterly basis. That takes a lot of manpower. Not if we get it all automated, but we've got to start somewhere. So, Yep. Um, all right. So, we have a proposed motion in here. If anybody I'm happy to read it. We can change it however you guys want. Um, but the proposed motion is to move to adopt the municipal data transparency policy as outlined in this memo. direct staff to begin issuing monthly reports in a specified format starting next month and require the admin and public works committee to conduct an annual policy review each December based on fourth quarter data to assess performance recommended adjustments and support continuity into the following year. We can certainly change that if you guys want at the end but um the general just Yes sir. has a motional um well that'll hog the floor but I'll make a motion for it with the change. Okay. And you want to do the change to trimesters or I want to do the change that we're making decisions not policy annual policy review in December which is the month of deadline for budgets. I'd like to move this back to September of each year. Okay. So we're making decisions about this in September so that we've got three months to budget it and it doesn't get lost in the shuffle. You said you think we should get monthly reports on Yeah. So well basically we're going to

get monthly reports. The review part is as a committee we are going to look at this whole plan and then figure out like do we like what's happening? Do we need to make a change? Do we need to alter what's going on? So it's really just a matter of when do we want to would we get them in conjunction with this meeting? We'll get them my idea the thought would be the same way Tom sends them out now. They'll just be in in they can be the idea right now would be to conclude it with the C the weekly CA report and it would be since it's monthly you it'll just be attached the same report would probably be attached four weeks in a row but then that fifth week I would call out hey the updated reports here okay and then we could have it as a standing item for information too if you wanted to do that that's not a problem. Yeah, I mean the the hope and and I've looked into it and as Tom said they're looking into it too like we should be able to get a pretty easily understandable dashboard together pretty quickly and we can do it at the end of the day. I we would like to have a public facing one so residents can actually kind of look this up. Not that we don't want them to call us but sometimes that's just one more step they got to make. Um so yeah so the real question then the only difference is we can review it in September if that's what we want to do that I don't doesn't matter to me. It it this this thing about the December made me think about the whole thing about all different um department specialties, public safety. Yep. Um historic preservation reviews and that having everything pile up in December uh uh can't work. Correct. And we have to triage to make something number one. You can't have 12 number ones. So, public safety um and then named a couple others and even though I'm on historical preservation commission committee commission um it's not number one that takes the money that's left over after public safety and and public administration and things that are important. So change this to September so that we can have our

numbers by October and it's in ahead of the game before historical preservation which can wait till December. Sure. But I'm I'm not that kind of a policy maker in this committee. So I just wondered how much logical sense that makes to everybody. Have to start somewhere. Yeah, makes sense to me. So uh Amy, I'll email this to you, too. But um so we're basically going to approve the memo as outlined with the change being that review will happen in September instead of December. Mr. Mabry has made the motion. Anybody care to second it? Second. All right, Mr. Becks it. All those in fa or any discussion on further discussion? Okay. All those in favor, please say I. I. I. Anyone opposed? And any abstensions? Okay. Um that brings us to the next phase of this which is our um court reporting framework. So um again we had this conversation with Molly. We're going to have a conversation with our um court clerk to just kind of work through how to make this look better. Um but this is sort of laying out more or less what we want. And then um we're going to do something similar. We've already I've already started having some conversations with Captain Mandel on the police side of it and I've had conversations with Mr. Bunage on the code enforcement side of it. So, um this is basically just a framework to lock in and then we can have the conversation to get it put together. So, if anybody has any questions or concerns or thoughts on the framework, we can certainly do that. Tommy, you got anything you want to add to it? No. Other than if any questions? Um, if not, we're I'm happy to take a motion that would be to adopt our monthly court reporting framework as part of the data transparency policy starting next month. Um, and then Tom and our city clerk and probably me will work together to get that figured out. Um, and then the idea would be the reports will come, as we said, they'll come every month. They

will create a quarterly sort of trending thing and then annual All right. Go ahead. Motion made by Nyian, seconded by Mr. Alers. And the motion is to adopt the proposed monthly court reporting framework as part of the data transparency policy starting in July of 2025 and to designate the court clerk and city administrator to coordinate implementation and require quarterly summary memos and a December annual well actually we'll roll that back to September September annual review to assess trends performance and alignment with city policy goals. Any questions before we go forward? All right. All those in favor, please say I. I. Anyone opposed. Any abstensions? Okay. Uh, this last piece, um, I've had some pretty extensive conversations with Mr. um, Voonage about it. So, for our new members, um, as Tom said, we've got a couple code enforcement officers. They technically report to Melanie and then to Joe. It's kind of a thing. Um, but, uh, in having a lot of conversations with Mr. Vunage um the thing he thinks would be most helpful and I agree and then he will actually probably join us next month for our meeting to talk more specifics on how this is going to work. But um what he wanted to really try to lock down and then from us and then have it move to the council pretty quickly is a sort of guiding principle on how we as a city want to look at code enforcement. Um you know obviously codes are there for a reason and they need to be enforced on all of those things. Um, but the code policy, the principle that we came up with was code enforcement in Wildwood exists to maintain property standards, protect neighborhood character, and promote safety, not to generate revenue or create unnecessary hardship. This

principle reinforces that enforcement is about protecting community integrity, not punishment. So, um, we have some key pillars in here on how that will work. Um, this is all going to be part of a much larger conversation that at the moment I came up with code harmony, which I thought sounded fun and people might like it. Um, but basically we're kind of looking at more or less rebooting how we handle our enforcement. So, we've talked about at a certain point getting um like printers in the trucks. So, right now it's like a lot of back and forth if the guys go out and they find a violation and they technically have to give it to a person or go through this whole process. So the idea would be they can get their pictures, print it right off. If they're there, they hand it to them. If not, they leave it and then they can mark in the system. This wasn't a handoff and then an immediate certified mail is sent. So it's a lot less like manual back and forth labor. um which I think will help because according to Molly and we haven't had a full conversation with our city judge yet, but kind of the overwhelming conversation that they had when a code enforcement issue gets to the court is basically like I don't understand what they want me to do. And I I believe wholeheartedly when Mr. Vunich says there's no possible way that that is true. Um, and so he is actually going to go to the next code enforcement court just to listen to hear what's going on. But, um, I know at least in my word, this is a like one of the biggest things I hear about. I know it's a huge deal to Mayor Garano to get this code enforcement thing sorted out in a way that works for everybody. And I just think um as we said like from what Molly was telling us, we've been operating under a very misguided outdated way of doing this um since at least 2014. So we just need to kind of look at it and this is the first

part. So um happy to Tom you can add anything if you'd like but um happy to talk about the philosophy or if you guys like it we can send that for a bigger conversation. Yes ma'am. I just have a question. So, and you're right, this is an issue. This is probably the number one thing I you hear about is people call you and say this and this, my neighbor's doing that, whatever. But, and I know they're super busy. So, will this going forward? And is it is it now only when a resident brings an issue to mind or is code enforcement out and they're somewhere and they see something else over here? The one that pops to my mind because I hear about it all the time is trash cans. Yeah. like out in front of someone's garage in their forward facing drive. Now, I'm not going to like go around and take down numbers and like I'm not here to be the trash can police, but that's my question. When code enforcement is, do they ever just go out and about and give random? I'm not saying I want them to. I'm just asking like if they notice something's illegal, they'll site them if they're out there. So yeah, that's but with a trash can that example. So according to director Vunage, which again he's he's been at this for a very long time. So I I have all the trust in the world that he is doing this to the very best of his ability. Our philosophy as a city is almost exclusively the code enforcement issues are resident generated. So, one of the things that we're working on is like I have a couple residents in my ward that have the same issue every single year at the same time. And so, rather than having to call and report that, the system is going to try to kind of queue up a situation where it's like, hey, these are the f these are the issues that need to happen. And so, um, you know, we don't we don't need to be the people that are driving like we don't want them, as I told Joe and he agrees, I don't want these guys out there with like a ruler measuring grass

and things like that. Um, but when we have people that are kind of like if if you go by one week and the trash cans are out, like maybe something happened. If you go by a couple weeks and they're still out, probably just go and remind those people, hey, just put these behind your house. That's what we have this thing for. Um, this is I think we have a I know we have a situation where these guys are really very swamped with what is going on and they're pulled in a lot of different directions and it's philosophically it is a rough go. I mean it's it's an unfund I have to imagine job in the world to do. Um, but this giving them the right tools and figuring out and also having the budget conversation on, you know, is two people the right number? Should it be because right now we technically have two, but it's really like one and a half. And so, you know, we just need to figure this out and we're going to do this more and more with a lot of these things where it's a it's a question of this is what we've budgeted. These are the resources that we've been using, but is this the right resources that we're using? And if it's not, then we just need to have those kinds of conversations. So, you know, to me, I am a big believer in like you got to be able to do you got to be able to keep, you know, Rick does a great job of keeping the roads not full of potholes where he can. We have to be able to do the day-to-day stuff before we can do whatever other cool stuff we want to do. So, I'm a big fan of free hot dogs and concerts and events and all these things. I think it's all great, all the parks, but, you know, we got to be able to pay for the things that we need to get run first. Yes, sir. Uh, it's probably been done before, but can we communicate the the highlights of code enforcement like in the gazette going forward or Yeah. Yeah. So, I I've had some conversations and I know Tom has as well with Paula who's our new uh director of communications to try to really kind of

like genuinely frame some of these things. We were just talking about this with the whatever they're doing at Green Pines. Like I'm sure it's great. would have been super awesome to know ahead of time to be able to give people a heads up. Nice. So, we're going to try to do a much better job of that. You know, be along the same lines people I know you can go online to do it, but like permit or no permit, you know, and things I mean that you you probably get that sometimes, right? Hey, my my neighbor is building a shed in his backyard or something like that, you know. So, and typically we can look it up and see they've got a permit. We know for sure, right? But it just wouldn't be a good idea to highlight it in some of our Yeah. And I think talking about those issues like the trash can thing that's just a conversation piece that you know, put out a post, you know, put out a code enforcement Wednesday or whatever we want to call it post like, hey, just a reminder, put your trash cans behind your house. That's a rule. Here's the rule. And when I and you might absolutely when I think of communication on on this to residents I mean we can use the data uh creatively I mean we can see you know what are the top five issues that are repeat customers here in Wildwood like is it are we citing people for trash is it for tall grass whatever it might be it's probably going to be some of the you know traditional suspects but communicating that in the gazette like hey over the last six months or the last year here are the the items that we are finding in the community be on the lookout because it's it's against the law. That kind of messaging. Also, there's a way you can do it where you also say, "Hey, it's not just against the law. It's helping you maintain your property value, too." So, it's the it's the flip side of it as well. It's not always painting doom and gloom. Mr. V, I'm I'm certain certain you guys triage these things. Yeah. as far as importance goes. But in my neighborhood, just for example, we had a pod units out in the street.

Not weeks, but months. And now we're talking an issue with Oh, a moving pad. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. And now we're talking an issue as far as firet truck access and stuff like that. I mean, safety issue and I was no longer a member of the homeowners association at the time, but I got the impression from the people that were still on the board that they were they felt like nothing could be done and that the city didn't do much either. No, that's an easy one to to address. If you just give us a call, we'll take care of you. Yeah, we we had a pod try to be quickly as the big the big issue that we found in the pod thing came up because we I have a gentleman in my neighborhood that has a landscaping company and every winter he puts a pod and loads all his stuff in and every spring he gets rid of the pod, unloads his stuff and it is less expensive for him to do it that way and pay his code violations and go to court and do all the stuff than to do what he should be doing. Hopefully he's not your neighbor. He is not, but he is close. Yeah. And so it's, you know, that that was part of this conversation we were having with Molly where um we do need to start looking kind of creatively at how we do this because um after the Ferguson incidents like there really there really are like genuine handcuffs that have been put on cities, not just ours, as to how much you can charge people and all these things. So, in the case, just cuz we did the math of the resident in my ward, you know, it's $1,200 worth of fines and I am certain that for the 6 months that that thing was out there, that is less money than it would have taken to put it. Yeah. 300 bucks a month for storage. So, so it's, you know, to them it's a cost of doing business and then, you know, we just have to figure out another a better way to do it, I guess. Leans on the house. Yeah, I think at a certain point we can do leans and

things like that. But I mean right now you know there are some um reviews that we will do. I I I think the big thing will be we want to try to make it very clear that there there are just certain residents that don't care. They don't care about code enforcement. They don't care about any of that stuff. Most the vast majority of our residents do and get it. Um, you know, we had a conversation, we'll talk about this when he comes to join us, but, um, you know, we have homes that require abatement because, you know, the residents are elderly or they just can't, you know, afford to do whatever it is. And so, you know, we have a limited amount of money that Mr. Vunage taps in to do those kinds of things. I want to do a better job of tracking how that works. um so that our our residents understand like you know we want to make it clear from a communication standpoint this is the process and as much as this process quite frankly kind of sucks like this is what it is. So the you know this this property perhaps has had you know 70 code violations written on it. We've talked there's some you know unique characters in our city that have all kinds of stuff going on at their propert. They know the rules better than we do. That's right. And they're happy to try to exploit them the best they can. So in this case, what we're wanting to do is make sure that from our committee that this philosophy makes sense. We'll have that larger conversation at the council level and then we build our policy basically based on that. So you know to me based on Mr. Vunage's conversation and you know the best way I can describe it like we don't want the code enforcement Gustapo out there checking light bulbs and whatever it is but when we do have these areas that need real assistance that's where we need good communication and flow um so we're going to build those parts out but this is part one yes sir yes thanks I'd heard before from director about the deploy bolts and and episodes with code

enforcement and exactly types of challenges. It's cheaper to pay the fines. Um, so what I looked for in this was what could be used as legally defensible escalating schedule of discipline common with children or patients. Um, I didn't see that. Mr. Lee, I can answer that. How it works in a traditional sense, if someone's a repeat offender, they're causing a lot of issues or just not addressing the matter. Typically, what you're going to want to do is cite them, go through the court process, have them rule that yes, it was illegal, and then to rectify it. They don't do that, site them again. You'll get a double you'll double the fine at that one time, which brings it to like 500 bucks, but then after that, it stays consistent at that 500 500 change. So, then go through the process again. site them again, go through the process again, do that for six months and have multiple convictions. At that point, you can then you then are now suing. You're taking it out and going into more so a circuit case and you're going to go get an injunction from the circuit judge to have the mediator do whatever you need to do to rectify the situation. So, typically you're proving six months worth of convictions and then carrying that forth to a separate judge. What you just described, is that a Missouri thing? Is that a federal thing? Is that a is that a statistical monetary return? It's a Missouri thing, but it's also more of like an informal policy, too. It's like you need enough backup because a circuit judge is not going to if if you don't have that at history where there's multiple convictions where you you have to show that you've been using the tools you have at your disposal. It's not working. Now, I'm escalating it to you. If they see that proof, just like how Mr. has communicated that maybe the judge sometimes gets the Saab story and then takes takes and I don't know uh the judge can't communicate with the

judge from the uh city administrator's perspective but um that information we got to make sure it's airtight and then the judge has nothing to question either then oh there's four convictions here you still haven't fixed the issue I'm going to write an injunction for you to remove it then the sheriff's department would go out to effectuate that change unfortunate but sometimes that I was just going to say most subdivisions, this is dealing with a resident, aren't in a position to go to a lawsuit. They don't have the funds for that. And that's like you were saying, these guys know more than we do. And I'm kind of speaking from some direct experience here lately, but uh you know, most subdivision don't have the funds to go to court and if they lose pay for all the court fees then. So it's uh yeah, I mean it's a big issue. We we have you know the the the thing that uh Mr. Vunage said to about this which I think is very true is you know he said if you if you look at the city of St. Louis so like downtown St. He said at a certain point people just stopped caring about a lot of those properties, right? And so his feeling is, you know, obviously we're a long ways away from that here, but that you don't know where that point is. And so what we don't want to have is people that are able to kind of like game the system and drag this stuff out and then the other people around them are like, well, this guy doesn't do anything. Why do I have to do this either? And so our kind of process here is to try to highlight the in a way the rarity of the like handful of people that are there all of the time. And one of the things that I know uh Mayor Gitano wants to do and well city administrator is very correct like we don't get to influence the judge on this stuff but we can explain to him our philosophy which is hey you know we're not about penalizing people that can't pay for things. That's not what we're

talking about. But if we have a person who just doesn't like clearly is playing a game here, we don't need to extend this time frame out anymore. And from our city stand our city process flow, we want to minimize that as much as we can, too. So, right now, we want to make sure if a if an enforcement thing is put the next the next visit is in 5 days or whatever it is, and there's a report that says they were there, it's still not fixed. Here's the next step. And so, we can report that back and forth. Whereas right now it just kind of is like it's going through the system. Mr. Marshall, you got something? Yeah, a couple things. So, this must have been before Florison or before Ferguson. We actually had police officers that were assigned to go out and do code enforcement with the code enforcement officer because they were able to write a citation for them. Did that go away Ferguson regulations? So, you can't take it to that next step. police police don't have anything to do with it anymore. Well, in some cases though, I mean, if we have an issue where we're short staffed or if we have an emergency where it's kind of it's going to be a public safety issue, then we will call in the police even though I mean they I know that we went through a process of making sure they were certified y to do that and then they weren't they realized it wasn't a criminal thing. It was a compliance issue that seemed to work better than with the judge back at that point. Typically, it's one of those things where it's it's got to be that individual who's doing whatever has to be kind of emerging into that gray area. Yeah. And if that happens, then we can typically call upon our our police partners, but most most cases need to be handled by dedicated staff that are So, I guess my next question would be, and I think this is where it just always comes down to the communication. I end up spending so much time trying to explain to trustees what the city can and can't do. M I think if we could do a couple things as a city now that we have a communications person is like one Wednesday a month send get the email

addresses from the trustees and just send them facts about what the city can do and facts about how they can do what they can do and they look at their indentures when they were put in because honest to god they don't know most of their indentures are invalid now anyway and they don't want to argue over it's like I had no idea okay so I mean part of that communication I think in this whole situation because I did have somebody call me back and they they were so excited because they received the acknowledgement back that somebody in the subdivision applied for a permit. Said that is just fantastic. We've never had that before. So I mean I think that there it's at a point where we could use this whole thing to our advantage to really try to get the trustees in the because they have right next to the compliance officer. they have the worst job of everybody complaining and nobody wanting to take any accountability for it. So, increasing the communication to them about what they can and can't do. The subdivision I live in, Babler Parks Estates, they actually have on their website, you can click right on it, it goes right into all the city codes on on what that you can and can't do, and you'll still find one where they're questionable. But I think the more we could do to build that reliance back with the trustees and not fight them or not put them in those those situations would be a real gain for getting the support um of the trustees and and the homeowners in a lot of these areas because there's nothing worse than them trying to figure out what to do to the jerk down the street. So yeah, and and I mean a lot of the homes, at least where we're at, were all built mostly by the same people. And so those indentures are just sort of copies of the same thing. and having redone ours a couple years ago, many of them were nowhere close to being legally appropriate. And even then, back it's kind of goes back to this Ferguson situation. Like there's not a whole lot of enforcement we can do. We I mean, at least I know in my subdivision, we have city and village that takes care of a lot of our stuff. They do a lot of the

ones around town. They do ours there. It used to be if you don't pay your dues, they put a lean on your house. Now it's if you don't pay your dues for five years, they put a lean on your house. And it's like, well, what happens between then and now? And they're like, I don't know. So, um, I do think putting some resources together for HOAs and and a resident just say, hey, these are the things that, you know, an HOA is responsible for. These are the things that a city could be responsible for, and quite frankly, these are things that nobody can do anything about. Years and years ago, we used the first Monday of a five Monday month had it open for trustees. Standing room only in city hall. you couldn't get in there because they had we didn't have the internet capabilities to look up everything, but they were just they were like sponges. Well, how would we do this? I'm brand new as a trustee. I have no idea. So, I mean, part of that communication is they're out there dealing with it. And I think we could be a much bigger value to our residents and and them to support us on some of these other issues if we figure out how to to bring them into the loop. And I think part of that would be establishing, you know, if they're so excited about getting the notification of the permits, then we need to get their email addresses. So when they start doing the right things, yeah, but I think they don't realize what they're getting if they if they do that and that's just part of communicating to who who they are. So I think it's great. I I think it's a real opportunity to really close the circle and get more communication with them. So you on the indenture, you're saying a lot of them are not appropriate because they're 20 to 30 years old. Yeah. I mean a lot of them and and I mean this is even more so in municipalities that are older than ours like they have really weird provisions in there that you can't do. some of our stuff is like we don't the the HOA doesn't have any enforcement mechanism and then it's not a code thing so the city doesn't have any enforcement mechanism so it's just nothing um you know we found in some for some reason like we had conflicts to city codes they were opposite of what the city wanted so it you know it's expensive and timeconuming to get those fixed and like the people just like you know sort of like us in a way like they're just

volunteering to do this they don't have any idea how to do this They came in last at the meeting and they're right. But see, one one of the things that is kind of interesting is the indentures for years trumped the city ordinances. The problem was all you had as a a trustee was to go file small claims court, right? But the city could write tickets. So, I mean, once we became a city, that was a big difference in how you could enforce that stuff. But it it's a big problem. I had people that and we only had 26 homes, but they would not pay their assessment dues until December 31st when I'd already filed the lean on their property. Yeah, once the guy went to prison, we were good. There you go. All right, so that brings us back to our motion. Uh, unless anybody wants to make any uh changes to our philosophy, the motion suggested is uh moved to adopt the uh the code enforcement philosophy statement as presented. Direct staff to incorporate this framework into all enforcement related operational procedures, software evaluations, and council briefings related to the code harmony initiative. So moved. Mr. Marshall makes the motion. Mr. Albert seconds it. All those in favor, please say I. I. Anyone opposed? Any discussion? Question. Sure. So, when we do this, will we as council people get any feedback about what happened from the code enforcement stuff? When you when you I I have a challenge with chicken coops. Not allowed to have them. Well, do you call back? Well, we talked to them about it and then somebody else has one. Well, I have one because but I never get anything back. I mean, I have to call and then Joe said, "Well, I'll get with Brian or you know, I'll get with Frank. We're going to get reporting." I mean something that lets us know because when trustes call to complain you'd like to be at least say hey I did hear. So two answers on that. One would be the high level reporting showing that it should be part of those statistics and if it becomes part of a trend it would be part of the the description but the automated system is where that comes in because right now it's a little clunky and that's why it's been embraced as well as it could but we want to get to a a place and there's a couple I'm not going to use technology because we have to do RP but there's a

couple technologies out there that as long as the resident's willing to embrace the tech they could go to a link on our website they put in the address where the issue is occurring uh they put in some other pertinent information so we can contact them email specific and they should get notifications throughout the process. So when someone edits the ticket, you can call it like a service ticket with it. When someone edits the ticket, they should get a notice that hey, someone's reviewing this, they just made they they did a site visit. It'll have like a a triage stepbystep process and they should get the notification all the way up until citation issued and then at that point it is cut off because now it's a court matter. So they would have to refer to that. That would be just great to be able to let the trustees know that there's something because otherwise all they do is call you every week. Yeah. Right. Like, well, I don't know. Frank's on vacation. We'll see if Brian's going to do it next week. So, you just don't know. Y Yeah, this is going to be a much this is going to be a real like a real reboot of what's been happening. Um, so I'm I'm excited about that. Um, okay, that then brings us to our public works section. So, um, Mr. Brown. Let's hear about our improvement projects. I guess um chair and council members, the first item is the summary of the current projects mod and city as well um provided to you for your informationational item. Hold on. We'll go back and vote. I rudely interrupted the discussion. You did. Let's vote then. So all those in favor of our motion to accept our code enforcement philosophy in the beginning of code harmony, I will send you the actual motion there. Amy, please say I. I. I anyone opposed? Any abstensions? All right. Back to you, Mr. Brown. All right. Thank you. Again, this first item is anformational item. So, it's an update of the current status of mod city projects, road projects around Wildwood. We have a very busy period of time right now. There's road construction pretty much everywhere you go. So, um I didn't intend to go through this in particular or detail. If there's any specific

questions you might have about projects that are underway or soon to be started, um be glad to entertain them right now. The link didn't work, did it? Which link in the agenda? I take a look. I couldn't get it to open up this afternoon, so I thought it was just No, it's a dead link. It just goes The link currently is for update on MDOT and city projects. The link, the agenda wasn't city. It took you to the website. Yeah, it just goes to the website. Yeah, I just works for me. I don't I got it good working right now. Mine came up code 404 under the website. Well, I'm sure it's all going great. No, I'm sure it's a problem is in the computer, not in the You might try refreshing your browser and the computer. We updated the memo and that's what's going on. We did update the memo today. So, you might have the Yeah, old one. Yeah, that could be it. Um it's refresh your browser when you reopen that window. So might have a new assuming everybody's got a glance at does anybody have any questions on any any questions or concerns? Excuse sir. Yeah. Uh just any updates from the uh yeah I didn't have I didn't have I think it's prejudge panel it's going to render some decision as far as um just today it would come up for this will be discussed probably in more detail will be discussed at least my expectation is Monday night at city council and probably in close session. Um Rick, are are there any place I mean this isn't really the stuff that we're this is more are there any issues that you are seeing we're running into a lot any problems you know on 100 I know that they're closing a lot of the you know obviously starting date work and all that kind of stuff any anything that we need to be more aware of than something else. Um, nothing's jumping out at me right now, frankly, unless there's concerns you're aware of. I know again there's a lot

going on and we were on Manchester Road resurfacing today. I assume they are wrapping up or have just wrapped up. They'll be headed down Streker Road. Um, weather permitting later or next. And that's going to be anytime we resurface roads east of 109, I get very nervous just because people get impatient if they're patient. It it works out pretty well generally speaking. But all right. Yes, ma'am. I just I foresee this being an issue and at the roundabout at Wild Horse and 109, it's great now because it's moving really fast because nobody can go like there's no other traffic coming from focus. But I know when Wild Horse closes, which I believe will only be for about a week. Oh, 14 days. 14 days. Um I'm just suggesting like some extra enforcement maybe on Old Etherton because people are going to be there to get from 109 to Wild Horse Creek instead of they do now. But I'm saying if that's the only way other than going centaur and all the way around or totally going a different way. I'm just feeling in advance for a lot of those people that that is going to be a major cut through and it's kind of dangerous because it's narrow and it's so just throwing that out there. Something that they'll want to watch as far as people because it's a no cut through street but people do it all the time or or I mean I don't know how that works with the traffic code. Is it is it better? I mean, I'm I'm all for trying to enforce it, but I it's all going to be hard to get police and pull them over on the road to stop them. So, I'm wondering if if it is possible in a temporary way to allow it to allow it, but try to manage that in a much safe fashion than one. That's going to be a tricky one. Like, I don't know how you're going to get places. I I live that Yeah. intersection have that acute angle and around a blind turn on top of it on a descending grade. Yeah, it's hard. They're brushing the way. Five perfect strikes. Surprised more people

aren't Yeah. Yeah. Dead. The only way that's going to work is a 100% full-time police officer stopping and allowing traffic to go by one way at a time. People who are not used to that intersection at the Heatherton shortcut, call it, they're not going to know the rules. They're not going to know the game or how to how to navigate that get killed. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I don't I don't know, Rick. What do you What do you think? Is there Is it better? I mean, people are going to go that way for sure. Well, I I guess I'd like to believe the roundabout will be far enough along in construction that it'll operate, and I' I'd have to check the plans in the standing to be 100% sure of that. Um, I guess I could do that and get back to you. But if that roundabout is far enough along and it's construction and it operates as a roundabout, it may it may not be a problem whatsoever because the next phase is just the final connection of Ethereum. So I think that they may well have the traffic in the circular pattern on the on the roundabout in that phase, but just not being able to turn onto you just won't be able to access wild. Correct. But I mean that's a I mean to go down either way if you're going down the back way or to centaur that's a long drive to get back around to. So people are going to I mean people are definitely going to make that cut through. Yes sir. A question for for Rick. Is it aside from being legal, is it feasible to have the gas station involved in a in a temporary bypass to accomplish anything safer than than that acute turn down there at shortcut relative to Hton Road? Well, just for that two week period of time. Sorry about like letting them use that parking lot as like a cut through. I

mean, it's private property, so I think that's highly unlikely. Quite frank, they've not been explorers in the past. Well, it's it's yeah, it's not designed for mod didn't approach them. They need the temporary easement and and those are things that have to get worked out over many months in advance. So, I I wouldn't expect that that would be an option unless we know someone with the the service station is really really looking to be a friend of the city. Is there is there anyone who knows whether there's going to be a detour sign forcing use of that shortcut? I don't think they No, we're not we're not going to sign them on to Old Ethereon. So that there will be a I have to check. When Wild Horse is closed, the the the detour would be to take Southton Road into Sunpower Road. Where are they going to close Wild Horse? Like how how are people gonna how far down roundabout it's going to be shut going west? Yeah. Yeah. Like what happens if you get down there? Well, how far are you? Like if you're if you're if you're trying to go west on Wild Horse. Yeah. Ask the roundabout. Right. I mean I I just what I know is that that is an incredibly complicated intersection and they are not planning on getting this done until December. Right. That's when they had they're going they're not doing this particularly quickly. Yeah. And um like I'm I'm shocked there weren't more accidents before when everybody was like the wild west and everybody know I mean I didn't even know how stop signs work there because everybody was coming from a different direction. So I I'm just wondering if like we I I I'm all for hoping for the best but I would like to maybe if we can just plan for the worst. So I don't know if it's a matter of like logistically speaking as much as they shouldn't people are going to use that cut through. That is that is 100% what people are going to do. So do we need to

look at putting officers there or something else? Why why would they use the I guess I'm confused why they would be inclined to use the cut through. I just think I've seen people using it now because it backs up using it now. That's one thing but I don't know they'd be more inclined to use it when lot horses closed. I don't I don't know they understand that. I think I think people that are going that way are just going to get they're they're going to get confused and their ways is going to tell them to go like if you live 109 like by the Ralphs by that farm you know what I'm talking about where the horses are and all that if you live in one of those subdivisions Pine Creek whatever across there and you need to go to Lafayette High School how are you going to get there? You're on 109. What? Yeah, but that's only avail. Yeah. So it's it's just it's just west. It's just west. So yeah, the old fire station. They're closing that just down past McGawan's house. It's just going down a little bit further and that's all the fur. So they're just doing that taper as I look at it. I think it's just a taper on the west side. Is finishing the west north or south. The way it's going to work is they're going to open up South Athetherton. Obviously, this looks a lot different now, but yeah, you're going to be able to pretty much come up here and get down 109. Go. You can also go down south etherton. You just won't be able to continue going west. Okay. So, then you'll have to go. Yeah. You'll have to go down go down and then come. What are they building? Is that the uh construction that like old brown house bits there? They were building Are they building a new parking lot or something in there for him? They were laying the cement in there today. They replaced their parking lot for that one residence. Yeah. To to reestablish his parking lot and few years ago. Oh, really? It's Chesterfield. That thing is like in the middle of That's crazy. I can't believe they didn't buy that guy's. I mean, sorry. Never mind. All right. Well, then we're good. They will

have some way for emergency responders to get through supposedly, too. It But it's just that leg of it. And then once that's done, should be a couple weeks. And then was that I mean two weeks what were they just doing like the the approach I guess to the roundabout from that side so to speak to taper into the roundabout is what I understood to me that roundabout seems gigantic compared to the other ones. Is that the same size as you drive over it now? Is the way it is generally I believe it is cutting down the dirt. It's just weirdly it's it's just everything around it so tight. That thing feels huge when you're driving around it. Um okay so we're good on that. Um, any anybody have any other questions on any of that stuff? Okay. Um, resurfacing of Clayton. Did you already do this one, Rick? Resurfacing of Clayton from Streker to Black Canyon. Do you want to take it this? Yeah, sure. Um, thank you. With your permission, chair. Sure. U, chair, this is something that was brought up by a couple quite a few residents now, but also has been uh supported by the mayor. Um, we have gotten time and time again, this is another one of those situations where the city is getting calls and complaints about road conditions for a road that we just we we're not responsible for. Um, so a stretch that is getting consistent attention, but we've really gotten some some uh residents upset about it lately is the stretch of Clayton Road pretty much from Strucker if you're heading east uh down all the way to about Black Canyon is where they stopped when they did that last project there in front of Lafayette. Yeah. Um, it is very bad. It is not in great shape. And one thing is, and this is reported by residents, but it seems like it was supported the tonight the department has provided a kind of an email that was sent to the um Department of Transportation. I believe it's in there um requesting them to provide information or figure out when when is this programmed? Are you guys got any plans here? And right now, they're pretty much saying, "Hey, be an

advocate for it." So, that's what we're doing. Uh, we wanted to bring it forth from Streker on Clayton Road from Streker to east of Black Canyon. Um, it's in terrible shape. Our city department and I I can let our traffic engineer speak on that, but it is in bad shape and it's getting to a point where the road's probably going to need to be reconstructed if they just don't let do anything in the next five years. U, that said, you know, and that obviously increases cost uh very much. And the residents that have reached out to the county, they have all stated that there's no nothing in the plans currently to resurface or touch up that road. They will patch it and do some shoddy work here or there, but it's not going to actually address the the mainframe issue here. And and we're looking at all these capital improvement projects that we're doing as a city, but also partnering with different entities, and we're saying, "Hey, it's finally we're kind of getting to a point. Obviously, roads kind of deteriorate over time. That's naturally what they do. But this is kind of the last real squeaky wheel other than, you know, some other spots, but this part of Clayton Road is in really bad shape. And an overlay could really do a lot of work and it doesn't seem like too much. So tonight the department is requesting um a motion to bring a resolution to the council pretty much stating that the council looks at this stretch and is requesting consideration immediately to fund um not with the city funding but to fund the resurfacing of this stretch of Clayton Road as soon as possible or program it and then provide a report back. This would be distributed to the county council um along with the uh their department of transportation their director. So that's something that their director told us is that we need to be an advocate for it and just put a spotlight on it. Uh so then because it seemed like the transportation director actually might have agreed. So in that case that's the idea is let's do it. Okay. Uh any discussion? Yes sir. Yeah I I think to write I think it's a great idea but I think it needs to be written up the fact that that section from Streker up to the top of the hill is the

original Clayton Road before Lafayette High School ever opened up. So everything else, the old Clayton Road back to Valley, I mean that went through transitions 20ome years ago, but it was two-lane road, that's all new stuff. So we got new on both ends. And that section of concrete in the middle, it's probably 25 years old. So I think maybe justifying it that way about 40 years old. Yeah. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know when I first moved here, Lafayette wasn't open and the road stopped right up there at West Glenn. So, that was in got to be I moved here 25 years ago when it was open and was there. So, so so at least maybe 35 40 years old, but I think didn't Rick a few years ago, didn't we take the grates out that were across Clayton Road at one point? The drainage. I think you're right. They probably did that work on it, but no, they because we kept forcing them because the grates were rusting out and then they came in and put culverts on the two side. I think two places up along here, but I think it'd be really worth the how long it's been. Yeah. Well, I mean that and then there's a section by like maybe sundown or something with the road actually starting to buckle. Buckle. Yeah. Um I make a motion we do this. Quick question. When you were talking to the county, were they talking about getting this funding through Eastwood Gateway or were they going to do it themselves or they didn't specify? They did not specify. They said we need to start spearheading it if we want it done because it's I mean it it was just a very strange response to a very specific question. But it it right now I can definitely confirm it's not in their their immediate plans or even long-term plan. We had her come out when her spokesperson came out a couple months ago to the council meeting. Right. The new woman. Yeah. She was she was I think I brought that part of the road up. She was a representative with the county executive's office work. Okay. Um to go east west gateway it's going to take five years. Yep. So that's So I mean the hope would be they could probably work

it into something sooner, but it that they could put it on the same timeline as the crosswalk sign. Yeah, that's only three years away. Try not to do it at the same time. Um that's the heroes of the county do move very slow. That said, I mean um we've seen before that if we can get enough attention on something then it can it can pick up steam. The main thing is we the one thing that the city's the city team is noticing is that we keep getting these calls and we have to explain to residents that it's just not our road and it just happens to be a main arterial road for many many many people. Yes. And that that's it. I mean it just quite frankly it's like well I'll I'll leave it there. Um I got unless you have a specific motion that I got one that we could Yeah. Go for it. All right. So, uh, I move that the city council formally request immediate interim repairs and accelerated full reconstruction of the Clayton Road corridor between Streker Road and, uh, Black Canyon Court from the St. Louis County Department of Transportation and authorized the mayor to transmit this resolution to the county executive, county council members representing districts three and seven, and the Department of Transportation director along with documentation of resident complaints and condition assessments. That's fine. I would say the one thing is if we ask for reconstruction they that's a lot more expensive. I we might want to ask for everything and maybe get a little but if we ask for reconstruction that's a lot more expensive than just an overlay. So we might want to we can talk about that. Do we want to ask for the whole pie or a piece? I mean my my thing is you can if we ask for all of it and they go well we can resurface it. Take it. Yeah. Okay. I mean I I don't know Rick you Rick how bad I mean I drive that road all the time. It's horrible. So should that I mean yes we could in theory you could overlay it and that would probably work for a period of time but much like what they're doing at Lafayette I mean I'm hopeful that these guys finally fix the pothole that had literally been there for 30 years since I went to school there till a real car falls in

there. Yeah. Right. Um I mean how bad is the road really? I mean there are some sections when you go down that hill that are approaching the need to rebuild it in my opinion. Definitely the whole road segment is not that bad, right? But some of it is concerning to me. So maybe we just designate those specific areas and you know or I mean I don't know what do you what's the traffic count on because I mean with school coming back in um the traffic count is high. Really? At least 2,000 kids drive to school every day, right? Chair. Yes, sir. just dawn on me just listening to you be um covering the most bases with the fewest words just by saying provide all necessary rebuilding and the remainder overlay so that they know that we know that there's two components to answer to and simple overlay isn't going to cut it. Sure. Yeah, we can make that change. That makes sense to you, Rick. I mean, as we know, the county is not real forthcoming with anything. So we're on record. Yeah, that's knowing. That's just something too. I mean, even if they don't do something, especially they're not going to do something immediately, but if we can, you know, start beating the drum, but and also have something easily to point out when a resident calls us and say, "Hey, check out this resolution where we've already distributed this, but feel free to show up to the next county council meeting, reach out to council member." Yep. And have that directly just easy like, "Hey, make sure to put this over here. Contact this person, please. Here's her his uh secretary's number and also here's his." Sure there was a good chance he drove down that part of the road when he was at the community college the other day. He very well he probably did. I mean that's probably aware of it. Um okay. Well, would anybody care to make that motion? We can make the suggestion Bob offered. Mr. Marshall, that's fine. All right. Anybody you want to second it? Grace will second it. So, um Amy, I'm happy to email it to you as well, but um

everybody good with what we're we got going? Okay. Uh, all those in favor of boosting this up to the council so we can get word in front of the county on Clayton Road, please say I. I. Any uh objections? Mr. Vanic will abstain. All right, one abstension. So, the motion passes. Uh, okay. That brings us to the small vehicular bridge inspections. Chair and council members. Um this next item is presented for your recommendation and your approval. Um the department is wanted to move forward with the inspection of our small vehicular bridges in the city of Wildwood. We have about 33 of those structures um in existence. These are typically small box coververt type structures over creeks. Um, so they're they're important structures and and they are expensive to replace unfortunately. So, um, we have been on a five-year inspection rotation. So, it's last time we did it was 2020. So, we'd like to do that work again this year. And we do have some monies budgeted to do that. And so, with the hopes of moving forward, we reached out to GBA um, the consulting firm that had done this in 2020 for us. and as as well in 2016, I believe they finished the prior one. So, um we've been working with them on our bridge uh inspections. In the past, they've been doing a good job for us, and so they did put together a proposal to uh reinspect those 33 structures for 2025. The cost of their proposal was $30,000. Brendan and I have reviewed it and we are satisfied that it meets our needs. So tonight we are recommending moving forward with a consultant services agreement with GBA to do the 2020 2025 reinspections of our small vehicular bridges. The cost of

that agreement would not exceed $30,000. So that is the request to you tonight and I'll wrap up and answer any questions if you have them. Yes. Yes sir. Um seems like a cheap price under $1,000 each for 30 of these things. What? Twoman crew in a in a pickup truck with a with a sight level and a that's that's about it. Some pictures or is there anything a lot more elaborate than that? Price seems pretty reasonable. Well, I will say the last time we did it, they charged us, I believe, 25,000. So, it's gone up a little bit in the five years. Of course, um it's um it's not super complicated. I mean, they primarily rely, and correct me if I misspeak, on a visual examination of the structure. They're looking for deficiencies that need to be corrected or addressed since the last prior inspection. Um, erosion around the structure, things like that. Um, so yeah, it's it's a pickup truck. It's a handheld GPS device potentially. It's it's um taking notes in a picture or two of the structure, you know, pulling up the prior inspection report to see if it's still valid, that kind of thing. It's it's not it really isn't rocket science. Um unless they find something wrong, then that might entail more work potentially. Um and we have had that in the past, but the the basic inspection process is is not real complicated. I'm and I'm really just learning the process of inspection for this item. Are there any that of these 33 where um a senior a senior member of the department could do a driveby and and give it a green dot and say this one's going five years without anybody looking at it and then pick it up again later. And my my goal is not to knock $10,000 off this $30,000 bill, but are there some that are in such good shape that we're going to be

looking skinny at why anybody even looked at it? are do they all deserve um an eye on? Well, I think that's the point of doing it is to take the time to look at them because we only do this once every five years. So, um I don't have any in particular. Only one of the 33 has been replaced within the last 20 years. So, I think it would be good to look at them all. So, it's doing the inspections every five years. It keep the record down to just replacing one every 33 years. It's probably a darn I think it's a good idea to look at this one. Yeah, I really do. You want to have that for your record keeping that you can prove it's been done. Bum bum bum bum. Right. That's a weird one. I mean, if you have failure of a bridge, right? And at least this, you know, you would get notified that, hey, you need to act on this ASAP. And if not, then it's kind of like we're we shouldn't own the structures if we can't keep a close eye on them and keep good records on. Mr. Marshall just said the weather that we've had come through here lately too, you know, tornadoes and severe rains. They like I mean do they give us like grades or something on them? The structural evaluation rating. So do we I I imagine if they don't give it to us, could we could if it's going to be the same guys, can they give us like this was an A and now it's a 10 years later it's a B minus or whatever it is. So maybe we can roll some of that even into like our erosion stuff where we're seeing where there's maybe problematic flows or something. Well, they certainly could do that. In fact, um they necessarily would provide that data. They might even provide that for us in the report. Frankly, it said they do the comparison of the old previous new report. They should have it. Yeah, they should have it. That's one of the beauty of having GB do the work force again because they have their way of Yeah, they got doing the inspection. So we'll we'll have that consistency from

frankly 2016 to 2025. Okay. Anybody have anything else? Yes, sir. Make a motion that we approve the GDA bid as discussed uh in written. Nice. Second. The no-brainer. All right. Seconded by Mr. Mabry. Uh all those in favor of approving the bid, please say I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? Excellent. All right. Could we ask them to start it as soon as possible so we'd have it before we do budgeting? Yeah, that would be good. How how fast do they do something like that usually, Rick? Well, we can certainly ask and and um I suspect that the timeline they quoted us was probably um conservative. They said six months, I think, for completion. Be glad to make that request. And I just think we should ask to have it before we do budgeting. Well, is this the same thing like the those two wild horse bridges? Is this that same kind of like the ones that were a couple like those were really expensive to fix if I remember. Well, we Yes, I think you're correct in saying that we have a couple well really three structures I believe on Wild Horse that fall into this category. Okay. So, I mean if one of these hopefully won't be the case, but if one were to come back as being in bad shape, I mean that is not an insignificant release potentially. Correct. Um, so we'll be glad to make that request and see if we can get it helps you with the budget. Yep. All right. Um, that brings us to proposed revisions to city code regarding maintenance responsibilities for property owners adjacent to public right ofway. chair and council members. Um this next item was presented originally back I believe in April to um the committee at that time uh to try to get some feedback uh relative to whether we should move forward and I think the consensus of the committee at that time was that the desire was to address this issue was was positive and

so we bring we're bringing it back to you tonight um with some more information and a proposed change or amendment to our code. And so this item is kind of twofold and it relates to our ability to manage the roadside and and to clarify the department's responsibilities and the expectations relative to the adjacent property owner. So again, there's kind of two two um aspects to this item. first primarily was relative to personal property on the public rightway and I think we talked about it the last meeting. We do have um very commonly uh the installation of irrigation systems and even invisible fences on our rightway that have been installed by property owners. Um this is not done under a permit. Typically it's done in without our knowledge quite frankly. And then what occurs is there's resulted damage to the irrigation system sometimes to the invisible fence that is caused um by a contractor that's working for us. Uh typically either they're grinding the stump on a tree or replanting a tree. Um, the other occasion that occurs is when we do our concrete street replacement project and we're replacing the street and we may be saw cutting out the slab and the saw hits the line, the irrigation line that's laid up right next to the concrete pavement. And so typically required our contractors to repair those items as part of their improvements. And they've done that in the past consistently. Um, and it usually isn't a huge expense, I don't expect, but it does occur pretty routinely when we do tree replanting or concrete street replacement. The hard part is when the harder part to address becomes when snow plows

hit a sprinkler head that might be located just off the back of the curb or off the edge of the road. and or we don't get notified about damage until many months later when the resident turns on the irrigation and they say, "Oh my gosh, it doesn't work." Or they might have their irrigation company come out and they fix it and they point the finger back at the city. City the resident calls us and says, "Hey, would you pay for my repair?" And so we're kind of stuck with how do we best address this situation? Um, what I wanted to point out was we didn't mention this in April, but we actually do have an existing section under our code. Um, and I provided a provided that that that portion to you. Section 210.490 does essentially prohibit the placement of personal property on the rideway. So, in a sense, we've already said to residents, you're not supposed to be doing that. But regardless, it happens and it's happened frequently in the past. So, we do have some provisions in the code that that allow us to deny those claims when they are made. I guess I'm really looking for a little bit more clarity from committee in terms of how we should how we should be best be addressing these situations as they arise. Do we continue to require our contractors to repair those damage, the damage when they occur at no expense to the resident? And when we get these claims submitted to us, and we've got a handful right now, maybe four, how should we handle them? we move forward and compensate the property owner if they can provide us some clarity on the cost and the the cost of repair or should we just take a a simpler approach and deny the claim and say it wasn't supposed to be there to begin with. Yeah. Do that a few times and run for office. They love you. Right. So I guess

my question would be is this has been going on now since we incorporated. I guess the challenge I have is if you're not allowed to put them there, which I understand that the problem is then everybody can see how much water you're wasting because now you're watering the sidewalk out to the curb line and people look at it and say that's just stupid. So, and I guess the question would be is on a dollar amount, how much do we do every year in repairing that? The one that I'm familiar with, I talked to them two or three times this week, is took a tree out, put a new tree in and cut the sprinkler system. It wasn't in front of anybody's house. It was in their common area, but now when they go to activate your sprinkler system, they can't turn it on. But they didn't take the city tree out. They didn't put the new tree in. So, that's just one of those examples. But the question would be is I think there's a a way to correct it much bigger, but it's not going to be cheaper. I mean, I think we could go back and do that. We know anybody who has a sprinkler, and this is just a sprinkler, so it doesn't talk about electric or fences for dogs. We know exactly who has sprinkler systems. The county has that fall. If you're going to make it an ordinance and and put it in as our ordinance, then it should go in as an ordinance effective with a 2025 date. and then everybody is notified that if they have a sprinkler system, the city's not responsible for that. Um, even if it was put in 20ome years ago, I've had two houses with sprinkler systems. Yeah, you're right. The snow plow will hit one or something like that. But I'm not I don't think we're unique. I just The question would be is how do you go back now and say, "Well, we have an ordinance. We're not going to do that when it was our contractor." And I I the snow one I think is a little bit more challenging. But if we know that and and and we do it, I just think there's got to be a middle ground there instead of just saying, "Well, sorry. You know, our contractor is not responsible for when they do the sidewalk or where they do

the the trees." That's uh we're not going to be responsible for that. So that's my two cents. Mr. Mry. Yes. Thanks, Mr. Brown. When I read 210490, I'm going that's that's good. It looks to me like it has all three clauses under a included only in the case of eviction and only in the case of uh something to do with placement. Does it say underground including personal property in eviction from rental and sidewalk and the main title of it placement of personal property on the public rightway prohibited uh the personal property being the the irrigation lines. So I I just wondered how did this apply to what the improvement was supposed to end up if it's only for eviction and it's only for placing something because people are going to get amateur lawyers in five minutes say I didn't place it there I I dug it underneath and it's okay then that's not clean placed on. Well, I would tend to concur that the quoting this segment of the code probably isn't it's not worded directly to address this situation. It could be worded better. I would I would say um and you know that could be something that was considered a more explicitly clear section of the code that addresses this situation. And then again, that could be how we move forward is trying to provide a more clear, concisely worded section of the code. And maybe it addresses the situation where the damage does occur. Again, I'm bringing it to you because we get these fairly frequently and we always kind of struggle with what should we be doing when they when we get the complaint. Can um I've just thought why in the world is something like a contractor because these people don't go and dig these lines for the most part themselves. It's much more costefficient to get a contract come in and lay it all in

today. I think I don't Do you get a lot of homeowners putting in their own irrigation systems? Can they don't come to us for permits when they put them in? But I I believe mostly they're done by private companies. I'm going to cut it quick. I I don't know why in 2025 we don't make it a $10 building permit to install anything install not just lay it on the ground but install anything on the city's public rightway an ement that that's that's uh capacity and I don't know whether it's has to cost $500 for that permit because it takes that much clerical and administrative effort at the city or whether it can just be a $10 but then every contractor who puts these in who's certified um those they need a building permit to put an irrigation system that has anything to do with the city's right away and all those uh back those pickup truck contractors little privateeers they don't know and then the contractor is mad but then we just say well it's it's been a requirement for building permit um we're in the 21st century now is they have to get a permit for a sprinkler system from the County from the county. They got to get backflow, right? Yeah. Then a licensed plumber has to do it. The county gets Oh, okay. Then it's illegal to put in a system without a county permit. Yeah. But in this particular case, they probably aren't even aware. They're just doing it. They're just doing it. The contractor, the contractor, the homeowner saying, "I want the sprinkler system in." And they just go ahead and put it in the rightway. If it doesn't require a St. this county building permit. Then why is the city liable for anything at all under any guys? Right. Rick saying we're not. The problem is you have people who have sprinkler systems and nobody's ever told them that you're going to be responsible for anything in that easement. Uh uh and instead of the illogic of all this, I'd rather have just one mad resident who

has learned a lesson and he gets to go out and get his his irrigation line repaired for $200. That's exactly the price. He gets to be mad at the contractor for not getting the building permit. Marshall got one right now. I got one we can talk to you tonight. I call I had to replace mine. I mean the snow plow I don't know there any way you're going to get around that. But when they do you do a tree replacement that to me is just a little bit over the line. We pay a contractor we pay for the tree and they cut that and they never said anything to anybody. Mr. Becker just to understand the scope of what we're talking about and back to what Mr. Marshall asked like five minutes ago, "What are we talking about dollar-wise? You said there's four on the table. Is this a $200 deal we're talking about? Is this a $10,000 deal?" Like, we're talking a lot. Like, I'm just trying to understand. You're talking hundreds of dollars, not thousands of dollars per repair usually. But how many of them? 300. And I would say less than 10 a year. It's hard for me to know like, do you have an idea with the concrete street project? I tell you what, with the concrete street replacement project, there's eight to 10. Eight to 10 for each year. 2500 bucks. There's the trees and then there's the snow plowing. So maybe maybe two to three dozen. What What if we looked at it this way? Because I don't think I mean I'm all for putting a policy in place, but I I also like I didn't like the way they did this when AT&T came in through through my neighborhood. But I do think like with these tree removals and things like that, we do just sort of like seemingly spring that on people. And I don't know that it would be difficult for us. I don't think it would be difficult for us to get, you know, some kind of a door hanger or something that we put on the on the house saying, "Hey, in the next couple weeks, somebody's gonna That's exactly what we do." That's exactly what we do. And we do tell them, "If you have irrigation, please let us know." And some do, but inevitably we still have a handful of repairs that slip through for whatever. The ones that are like in a

common ground, which is unique, there's no door to hang anything on, right? That was a unique one. So that's private property too. Yeah. But then you reach out to the HOA people. That shouldn't be a big deal. Well, he but he's been a trustee. He is in the system. So, but nobody apparently he didn't know that it was even broken until they tried to get it turned on. And it wasn't just us. I understand there was an electrical problem too with the electric company. So he's not saying it's all our fault. He's just trying to say help me figure out because our subdivision we didn't plan on this. We didn't want the tree to start with. I mean, so all of those type of things which and you explain to them that you are going to have the trees because that was your development plan. this is your property and oh okay well we didn't know that but I'm just thinking from a preventative standpoint uh you know but if you were to try to notify everybody have to send them a letter telling them that this is the the law and then I agree if you if everybody knew it then you can walk away from it but you need to notify everybody and then the homeowners association because you just create a lot of bad will especially over the years of having them in there um I mean I am I'm all for enforcing my general philosophy in this is if this is costing has $3,000 a year. I don't know why we're care. I mean, especially if some of those are are truly our contractor did it. Yeah. Right. Well, that's what I mean like I don't I I my sprinkler system got cut a long time ago. So, it doesn't work. But, I mean, also I have a guy in my ward that was really upset that we broke a sprinkler head off when we took a tree out and put one in and he didn't want. I was like, I don't know what to tell you, man. That's how it works. So, I mean, I I am I'm all for putting policies in place, and if you guys if you think this is the best way to go, I I just think that this seems like a pretty small problem to me, but I don't I could be wrong. It just it's never going to go away until we do something about it. I think And then it won't go away. It'll still be people. Yeah. I mean, there's still going to be people mad about it. So, even even if we fix it, it's now it's like, well, now we lean back on the

policy of still making people upset. Yeah. And I had just thought, yeah, this fell right in the pile of the stuff we're trying to do to improve the broken code enforcement and this this is 100% that it didn't mean I didn't even register the $3,000 or the 12 times a year. It's it's we fix the root cause of an issue. U and and we do it logically and we do it consistently, methodically, and logically. That's the way city's supposed to run. And then the people are going to look at it and go, "They got me 12 ways against yesterday. So maybe it's time for me to adult and uh and wise up and go find out what building permits are required for what and pay attention to door hangers on doors, whatever else it takes for adulting to occur. Because the more of them that you learn that to, the more of them they're going to communicate that to their neighbor. They're going to gripe about it. But now all of a sudden that neighbor that got an earful from a neighbor is going to know that my golly if I want an irrigation line or a dog fence. I better know I now know that I need a building permit. So I don't want to get all mad and high blood pressure because my neighbor did because he didn't feel like paying attention. Yeah. I mean you got one more now new educated resident. We also have the reality at least in probably at least for sure in mine and Ed's wards but like I learned this when the fiber came through that I mean it is a right of way from the street almost to my door. They can do whatever they want all the way through my neighbors all the way through my front yard. They don't have to care about any of it. They come in 20 feet a lot of times. It's I believe it's 22 feet and 22 and a half or something. Right, Rick? Is that Yeah. that's beyond the rideway tends to take it almost to your front yard. It is like to the front step. So any landscaping, anything you put in, they will just come rip it right out. They It's a pretty easy thing for any homeowner to know. If it's outside your front door, you need a building permit for it. Yeah. But even

if you That's what I'm saying. Even if you had a permit, it that permit doesn't protect any of those things. The utilities will come in and take it all out. They don't care. And they will unlike it's unlikely that they will replace it. That's the broken part. Yeah. If you got a building permit, then every utility that comes there needs to respect that building. Yeah. forewarned them. They're going to be doing something. What do we What's the bottom line here? What do we need? Well, I apologize. I I really wanted to get your feedback in terms of what's the best approach for the department. Now, we can continue doing what we're doing, which is to require our contractors to repair them where they're aware of the damage. I think the harder issue is when we get notified after the fact, several months, do we write the resident a check? You can verify even if it's two months later, three months later, you can verify your contractor put that tree in, right? Generally, we can as long as they can system shut off, you put the tree in the fall to get the best growth out of it. They wouldn't know till they get ready to activate the system in April that it's broken, right? So, in that particular case, they didn't dig the hole. They didn't do it. It was our contractor who did the tree. So, does every city contractor have to call 811 every time they're going to do anything anywhere? I think so. Maybe. I don't know. What they're doing? They're hand digging. They probably You think they call trees out there? Not calling necessarily, but I know for stump granite they call locates. Yeah. Okay. But those will those ping sprinkler systems? No. Right. Um I would maybe say I mean we can come up with a philosophy on how to do this. I I would just say maybe we figure out how many of these damaged claims are we like aware of in advance versus how many are coming through. So if like our contractor if we have 20 of these a year and and 16 of them our contractor goes, "Yeah, we definitely popped a line there." And then we have four of them that straggle. You know, I I think that that's maybe a better way to look at it

because I I think you're going to do this through a couple parts of the city. And I think it's maybe even in only a handful of areas that are going to have these in the other side of the rightway. I think some of these newer neighborhoods that don't have that. I would assume they all got sprinkler systems when they were built. Right. Yeah. Not sure. I'm following you talking about uh like Main Street Crossing. Yeah. like Main Street or Bright Leaf or like wherever if like at a certain point when we are like if we're planning a new neighborhood, most of those I think are probably going to get their sprinkler systems like as the house is being built. So that's a matter of a planning conversation about not putting them across the the That's a that's a great idea. Bright Leaf's got a bunch of sprinklers. Are they in the wrong places? Well, so I mean that's the other nuance issue is that a lot of the HOAs have systems that went in with the subdivision. Well, that's really what happened on Pong Parkway. That was not a private residence. That was installed by a developer and then it was taken over by the HOA probably. So, is that a different animal? I don't know. Um, but they all exist. So we got to kind of figure out how we want to I just think we got to be really careful but just about dumping it back on them when they we didn't go to them and ask them about I think maybe I mean you guys treat this now as like is it like a case by case thing or is it just like if we break something we pay for that someone like case by case but most of the time it gets paid out once we get our contract and I I kind of feel like on one hand it's it isn't a lot of money over the course of the year and when you do it for resident they sure do appreciate it, right? So, it is a small way to ease that concern. And I would think I mean to me just thinking about the street tree thing like if you are busting a sprinkler system next to a new tree that's getting put in that we want to have watered anyways, you probably want to have that sprinkler system working because it's cheaper than

replacing the tree at a certain point. That is part of the argument. Yeah. I don't know. I I mean I I to me I I am I'm more of the opinion that this is I mean I'd like to help you out however you guys need to but this doesn't seem like this seems like a thing we're just going to it's like hitting a hornets's nest for no reason. I know like um I do think though this an opportunity for us and I I guess and I'll make a motion that we do it but when we get to the concrete replacement to me the easiest hit there would be you know what houses you're going to do that with run the county list on who has sprinkler systems and then and I know you say you hang the thing on the door or whatever but I mean that really puts notice out there because if we know we're going to tear up in front of that house and we know that their sprinkler system is on the right hand side of the house, it shouldn't be that hard for them to be able to to ask the person to identify those sprinkler heads and you're not you're not cutting them. I just don't I think that's one of those issues where we don't think about how easy it would be for them to do something versus and then we wouldn't have to take care of it. But just and if and if they don't do something then then it becomes the case by case thing of like hey I don't know I mean maybe the question is how much effort do we want do you do we want you guys to go into to notifying people that this work is happening like I I I am like we had that thing whole thing with AT&T they said they put door hangers up everywhere they did not and then we've now gone through a different solution to try to get sure that that's happening. Yeah. Um I just think you're going to do concrete they're going to know. Yeah. I I think in a lot of cases they probably do know um it's but it may be a situation where they can't avoid the damage. No, that's true. I on the streets replacement project I think typically that works fine. The contractor has the ability to repair those things on site and it's not a huge deal. Um I'm not that concerned about

it. The snowplow ones are kind of tough sometimes because we don't know about it till later and then they send us an invoice. So if you guys want us to pay the invoice, I'm happy to follow through with that. I think we just want some clarification. We just felt so I I'll be honest. I'll take some take it on the chin here. It says it in our code not that that they're responsible for it. They shouldn't be doing it, but we were paying these. So it was more of a question of a contradiction. But if we want to continue to ease the pain on these things, I'm I think the staff here would be fine with that. It's not a lot of money each year. Well, it appears to me that every time this happens, the people had no idea we have a code. Yeah. So, it's not like something that when you buy a house, here's your indentures and oh, by the way, that's your responsibility. So, when you don't know, then you just suddenly get nailed with a bill and it's like, I didn't do anything, you know? What if what if our policy was to split the costs? Yeah. What if it got ugly? You'd have the right to Yeah. I mean, then it's like, hey, this is 50/50 coverage. You know, you're not supposed to. Just so you know, maybe the repair is we're going to shut this part of your sprinkler system off so we don't have this problem. Again, I don't know how that works, but I'm sure it's possible. Just watering our tree. You don't I mean, you know, the other side of is like if it is really watering the tree, which is that is I mean, I would balance out how I know we've replaced a lot of trees because they weren't properly watered. So, I I would balance maybe those things out too. And by the way, you do have to mow that grass six inches, right? Don't be spooing around with it. Well, that's not in our code current. So, that's something we actually that's kind of the sidebar here. We wanted to add that in. That's part two of this question. Yeah. Yeah. So, I say we pay the repairs and then send them a uh little rent rent due bill about that because you install it under in within the right way.

Well, what you got, Mr. Al? I was thinking of the shared cost, you know, 5050 or something like that. And we could do that as more like an internal policy. The main thing is I don't want to like if we do 50/50, but then there's also that option if it gets really ugly, we just pay it. Yeah, that's bad. That's that's terrible. Yeah. hope is that they're not watching this video because then we just we do 50/50, but then the staff could know that, you know, there's some discretion, but maybe right at least you might be getting some of that money compared to none of it now, right? Well, I what if we just said it's 50/50 and there is no discretion. Okay. Yeah. Like if somebody because the policy the policy is 50/50 and if somebody has like a genuine hardship, we're going to put a process in place where somebody can identify that that is a real thing. then that that comes out of a different part of the budget, so to speak. Um, but I think you make it a I think you make it a 50-50 policy and you make it very clear, hey, look, just so you know, you're not like it, you know, you didn't put the sprinkler system in, but it's not supposed to be here. And that takes out the favoritism. Yeah. Issue. That's reasonable, right? That's common sense. Okay. I like cookie cut, but do you like the I don't like it at all. I'll vote no because I don't think our contractors should go in and tear out somebody's sprinkler system. No, this would still require like our contracts try to stipulate that the contractor if they damage the right of way they have to put it back fix it. So typically if we identify it during the acceptable time frame so in the contract the the contractor has to fix it if we can tie it to them. But if it's four months later and how we still I mean they did the tree how they we would not know that they did it. because the sprinkler was shut off. So they do but I'm saying like if if the sprinkler if it worked and then we did a tree and now it and the resident goes well now it doesn't work. I mean, their sprinkler repair guy comes out and says, "Well,

this was cut here." Yeah. Where this new tree is, right? But nobody ever reported it. But the people who put the tree in obviously didn't know. No. When How long is the statute of limitations on the Well, typically, I mean, you could chase them down, but I mean, at the end of the day, if you're if you're reporting this four months later, it's just it's going to take now you're talking about more staff time. You shut your system down in October and you don't turn it back on until April or May. Okay. So, that that's what's happening. any and we plan to trade the trees in October because they're going to grow better. How how many of these do the contractors pay for versus how many do we pay for? What do you think? Well, on this on the concrete street project, most of them get addressed by the contractor. I think it's fair to say we do have a few strikers with the tree planting. Again, we when we do the tree planting, we send postcards. We notify the residents we're going to be out there. We ask them to notify us of irrigation. And then sometimes in the past we basically said if we damage your irrigation we're not going to pay for it. We try to so we try to discourage us being on the hook for it. But frankly if our contractors out there and they know about it they typically have the ability to fix the simple stuff and they'll just do it and be done with it. So So and I have no problem continuing that. It's just when the invoice comes in six months later but they don't know they have a problem Rick. That's all they're saying. Maybe I'm wondering if like you know I would say then it should be incumbent on the contractor to know if they have created a level of damage and so just like we do with some of these like other escros and things like that. Can't we just say to a tree I mean tree vendor is making a pretty decent amount of money putting in trees for us I would assume. Right. Could I put that back on Omni? Yes, I probably could. I guess what I'm saying is like if we if we know that it's generally like the tree guys in the fall that cause this problem. Like if it's a small amount of money, just put it like that's just part of the their cost of doing business with the contractor. It just sits in this account for the cycle time for however like if you're turning your sprinkler on, you

know, this is it's a one-year thing or whatever we say it should be. I don't know how often sprinklers are supposed to go on. We ask them the tree. How long we ask them to burn at the tree? Is it two years? One year. So they yeah they they very well may be working to address those kind of things and in yeah within that time frame maybe the one I'm talking about though these are the trustees they didn't know about the tree they they say they didn't know about it all they know is the system was working last year when they shut it down. Yeah. This year when they got ready to activate it their sprinkler company come out and said hey that cut where that new tree was put in. They didn't put the tree in. So but they have to pay that in order to get their sprinklers activated to get them running again. So, it's one of where they really didn't have any decisions in the process, they're just the ones that are stuck now with paying the bill to get their sprinkler systems up and running for something they had no no say on. So, then maybe our policy is instead of it being a resident thing, it's just an issue that we put in with our contractors to say, "Hey, that we're going to I mean, this again, this still doesn't sound like very much money to me for anybody." So, it's like if the cont if I had a contractor that was coming out to do work on my house and they broke something, my general expectation would be that they fix it. So, I don't know why it wouldn't apply in this way. That's just me. They just they didn't they weren't making the contract with the contractor. No, I'm saying we made the contract with them. So, then our expectation should be you you like we pay you. We don't pay you to come through and chop up these lines. like you're here to fix the trees. So I'm sorry this lion's here. That's but that's also kind of like part of the job. I I would think. Yeah. Agree. Um so okay. So then so then what we're talking about is we want to put do you guys does it make sense we put a provision into our with our contractor agreements on the tree. So now we're holding like a separate amount of money or having I don't care if we hold it, but like we're

just saying to them like, "Hey, this is a there's a 12-month period of time." Like our expectation is you're going to report this damage back to us. They seem to do that most in most cases. Like this to me seems like something that is just like the normal course of their business. They probably repair it right there. Yeah. They see it broken, they repair it. So it doesn't cost them anything. I would assume they would prefer to generally address it right when they're there, you know. And again, the rub is these come back to us many months removed. The contractor get they get the bill that's already been done by another contractor. So they're paying probably more than they would have otherwise if they could have just addressed the situation. And we don't really have a lot of leeway to say, okay, you're required to pay it. Um most of our contractors, frankly, would do it. I'm sure they would because that's they're good contractors and as long as there's no reasonable doubt that they didn't pause the situation, I'm sure they would they would address it for us. Yeah. I mean, or or maybe the idea is like the expectation is the contractor is going to take care of this. In the event, which seems relatively unlikely that they don't, then the city also understands like there's going to be a handful of things that we have to take care of and it's under as long as it's under your spending threshold. Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is. But that's just me. Jason, you got something else you want to add? No, I'm good. All right. Um, make sense? I don't know if it gets what they they're looking for, though. I mean, I get they ask what Well, I think what I'm hearing is she wants to take care of these one way or the other. It is our responsibility of the city. If your contractor goes in and does something and then it affects that personal property whether it should have been there or not, your contractor did it and they didn't know anything about it, then they're stuck. I mean, anybody's been a trustee before, you just don't have an extra money sitting there for something

you had no say over or couldn't avoid it. What would happen if like a mailbox or something got crushed? And usually the contractor that's something they not they see that right then and there. So, but like that's also in I mean that what I'm saying is that's also in the right of way. Yep. Well, that's a receptacle for official communicate the postal service, too. It's important to have some kind of receptacle. Oh, yeah. Mailboxes will get replaced or repaired by our storm contractors as necessary. Those can be kind of challenging. Well, and I know I mean the problem is you're shutting the system off, so there's no really way for them to know they hit it. When I've hit one that's charged, I know I hit the sprinkler line. So, they are in a different situation there. But, I don't know. I just I think that we probably need to look at the contractors taking care of it and for those others make sure that we're doing all the things that that that we can do and it sounds like you're doing a good job. I mean it's not like we're getting hundreds of people but So we didn't have a specific motion tied to this one, did we? This was just a lot of discussion. I mean there's no motion at the moment because we're a little bit on the fence on what we want to do. It sounds like Yeah, I didn't bring you a specific recommendation here. here. I wanted to get some feedback and so we this one we can kind of maybe punt and we'll figure this out. We can work on this a little bit more to see what we want to do. But um would there be a way I mean this is more research but when they do have to use a licensed plumber to get their sprinkler permit from the county? Is there not a way for us to have a notice that anybody who's putting one in in Wildwood area that they know that you're counting on the county to do that? Well, it's just one more step that you know, if you sell a house, you have to have it. You have to have it back. Yep. You got to have it every year. You got to have it inspected. Yeah. So, they know you have it because if you don't do it, they'll start sending you letters. And if they inspect it, they know it doesn't work, right? Even if it has to be inspected. If it's not working, but what I'm saying is like if you like they h you have to get a backflow annually. They will not send you letters if you

don't get one. No, but but if if you are doing the backflow, Yeah. it's going to indicate that the system doesn't work. And when you say it doesn't work anymore, then you have to prove it was taken out. So your option there is, you know, I can say it wasn't done, but because it was turned in and you said, "Well, I don't use it anymore." That you have to prove to them that you've taken the system out, removed it, and then they'll take you off the list, and they won't send it to you anymore. But you have to prove that you had a licensed plumber take the system out is how it's been explained to me over the years. That's the way it's supposed to work. I just don't Yeah, this is all right. Well, Rick, I wish I could give you a better answer on this, but I don't think we're gonna get see. So, what what else would you like to talk about? Fine. Part two of this u tonight we have time to go through it is a little more specific. Um and basically I working with our city attorney John Young. I am proposing a amendment to the code. Now, this second part is a little more general and it it's more relative to the maintenance of the roadside um adjacent to a property. And if you read the uh recommend the recommended code amendment, it's basically got three main parts um in it. And the first part relative to the request is clarifying the responsibilities or what is not allowed relative to the maintenance of the sidewalk in the rightway if you have a sidewalk abuing your property. And basically what we're saying I do want to be real clear on this because John Young threw in snow removal which is probably something that should be considered very thoroughly. Um but the intent is

that property owner or person who controls the property um should not put obstructions on the sidewalk. Um should limit debris on the sidewalk and that sort of thing. But John Young also did put in should keep the lot clear of snow or ice. So that's an important consideration that we could very easily strike if you'd like us to do that in this recommended amendment to the code. Um the second part of it just clarified is that as a resident if you have a driveway that it's your responsibility to keep it in good repair. So effectively it's not the city's responsibility to maintain your driveway. It's your responsibility as a property owner to maintain that driveway and keep it in good repair free of irregularities or offsets from the surface thereof which may render the sidewalk unsafe or the may render it unsafe the driveway unsafe for use. And the third part really pertains to mowing the roadside. So it does say that as a property owner that you shall keep the lawn or yard on any rightway or easement adjacent to your property that does belong to the city mowed within a height of 6 in essentially. So it's it's putting that in the code to say to the property that it is your responsibility to mow that area adjacent to the to the runway which most people do without questioning it. but it does throw a six inch maximum height on that. So when those issues come up, we can address it with the property owner and say, "Look, it's really ultimately your responsibility to do that." So again, this was put together working with John Young. This is his recommendation and again, these are areas that I think would help provide some clarity to these issues as we deal with them um from time to time. So, um, if you'd like some time to ponder this

and we'd like like us to bring it back to you next meeting, we could do that. If you want to move forward with it and send it to city council, we certainly do. Snowing ice on the sidewalk. Is that just acknowledging it's not the city's responsibility to do it, but it's not saying that the homeowner has to do. It's saying they shall. It's saying this that says they're supposed to do it. Public side. Yeah. Well, also we had giving you the giving you the legal responsibility if somebody slips and falls. Yeah. And then that's there's that. And then also it kind of gets rid of the argument we get from residents that, hey, you missed my apron. Come over here and touch this up, which that starts adding significant cost. So that what was that? It's not saying that the homeowner has to go out there and clear the sidewalk. That's what I'm We're not going to go out there and necessarily like be looking for it to sight them. But if it's like if they call us to clear it, then we we might go out there and visit. Well, it's your responsibility. If somebody's out walking their dog and two people have their sidewalk shovel, then that does it. We don't do trails. We don't. Yeah. So, we don't do trails or sidewalks. Yeah. And again, the philosophy of it's hard to get out of your driveway for some people. So I'm I'm happy that we strike then out of the I mean I'm not saying it's just you never enforce it. You think about like if someone is elderly and like they can't get out like we don't want to force them to to get out there and cause damage to themselves potentially. So yeah could cause damage to myself. Yeah, this is more so like I don't think this is ne like it definitely gives us a mechanism, but I also think it's there must be a different way of a different mechanism that you can use that doesn't use this wordage. We can we can work on the verbiage there where it's pretty much saying hey the city isn't going to clear off the sidewalks. You're going to start getting calls from people like they didn't show the sidewalk. Yeah. And that's we don't want that. So I'm going to protect Jason on this one. For years

we fought about 6 inch grass in the rural areas. Nobody is going to meet that requirement. So it used to say residential subdivisions had to be 6 in. But when you get outside of the suburban or residential development, there's nothing mowing up to the road at 6 in. Um because you people will try to do that but to enforce it. So poor Ron James, he used to argue with that constantly. and Vern Hudson, man, they were fighting constantly because Vern wanted four inches of grass in Ward five and Ron said, "Look, we're lucky to get people to mow the rideway alongside the roads in in six and up in one." So, I think maybe that that distance maybe be something if it's and again, I know you have sidewalks, which you don't necessarily have in the rural areas, but the 6 inch thing used to be you could only do the six inches in the subdivisions. uh for the height of the grass but not in the suburban or the rural areas. Is that a get out? Is there any more or not? Right now if it's over six inches for their property like if there's someone's grass is over six inches we're typically sighting them. Okay. What is the regular code for grass that's lower than six inch? Is it six inches? Six inches. Thought it was 10 inches frankly. Yeah, I thought it was. So along our trails we can go up to 10, right? I believe that's correct. I just think we have to be somewhat consistent. Yeah. What we do, Mr. Mayor. What do you got? Yes. Um, I had heard recently that if you take one shovel stroke at your sidewalk, you're responsible for every lawsuit that comes after that. If you don't touch your sidewalk, you're not liable for anything. I don't know where I heard it, but that

struck me when I read this. And that portion of to me was worded perfectly. City is not responsible to maintain your sidewalks, your driveways or your driveway aprons or the sidewalk across your driveways. If it has to be that redundant and that brain dead, then that's exactly the way we we should word it to show anyone who comes back at us that no, we had even your most trit and childish condition already covered because we knew you were coming. The next feature is that uh we would change that wording from what it was about shall cut the grass in the in the street side of the curb side. I thought of it much more streamlined and much more u encompassing that the the owner property owner shall be responsible for 100% of the maintenance repair and upkeep of all of their property of all of their propert private property all of their private property. This includes any easements, any pertinances, improvements or anything in the easements. That's it. And then they have nothing to come back and say, "Well, you didn't say the word grasps." No, that's an impertinence or an improvement or a portion of your private property which says it includes all these. So, it it's just a way of very cleanly everything and not weakening the city's position because it forgot a word. Yeah, I'm that makes sense. I'm I'm thinking we need to look at what the code is for the grass. 10 inches. It's so we can't like it's got to be consistent. We will admit that our city attorney did draft the that second component up for us. So we will we'll correct that at 10 to make it consistent. 10 inches is really high in my opinion. But um that is pretty high. That's

pretty high. That's real high. That's a thing that's neat about 10 inches is you can't quibble about it after it's 10 inches because everyone knows six inches is civil. So when you get up to egregiously ridiculous percentages. You just have to mail it. You're more than overdue to cut it to something. Got to bring the coats in. The goats. I'm sorry. For all. All right. So, I would say maybe I mean I guess we could do a motion on this, but I feel like we need to do a little bit of work on some of this thing. And I'm just going to suggest I know that John's had his hands really full lately, but might not be a bad idea to check the new regulations off the existing ones just to make, you know, if we're going to make changes, it should be a blanket change. So, if we're going to go if we want this to be six, then the code should be six across the board because I don't know how we tell people you can have 10inch grass here, but you got to have six inch grass there. I also doubt we're going to enforce any of that. Um, and I will say the driveway thing why I mean I agree we should people should have nice driveways but I don't know how we are going to figure that out or enforce that. I think the driveway thing is more so about saying that we're not going to clear your driveway. Yeah, but isn't there a thing about like keeping it in like good shape? Well, that's more so too. So, think about it like this. That's trying to cover a sidewalk that is going in a in a dense subdivision that's got the tree lawns, right? So you have that sidewalk, then you have the aprons that stretch past the sidewalk, technically the sidewalk is part of their driveway. And this would pretty much say, hey, if it's that segment that's in front of your driveway or connected to your driveway, if that gets out of whack and someone trips and falls, that's on you, not the city, because you're responsible for maintaining it. Even though when we're doing, you know, when we're shaving down sidewalks say, don't we shave them down? And I mean, thought we were taking care of that. We do. We do. and we we do maintain the

area through the approach for a driveway. Um, so that would be the city's. It's just everything else is the residents responsible. So I would say this because I noticed that somebody in my neighborhood got their driveway done and they did like they did the driveway and then they did half of the slabs of the sidewalks off of the driveway, which I thought was odd because either don't do the slabs or do do the slabs. They went halfway, but I'm also thinking like, you know, we had those issues with the the driveways buckling when they were boring underneath them and stuff. Yeah. So, you know, if somebody's driveways in disrepair, which we ran into a lot, then how do we explain that process to them? I just I don't I mean, I'm all for people having nice driveways because the driveways look bad, but I mean, there are people that have gravel driveways. I just think that I don't know how we define I don't I don't know how we define or enforce anything. possible we can do it by like different zoning designations like certain types residential. Maybe we want to just get a couple more specifics on this because you know this is this all of these things seem like the kind of issues that we've run into a lot where you know not to like split the city up but like it there are things that are just factually different in parts of one part of the city versus the other. And so having a blanket policy like this, like 10-inch, if people had 10inch grass in my neighborhood, people would light their heads on fire. So the fact that we can't get a code in for like it's no wonder we don't get very many grass. Well, and I will say that a little bit different than the old stuff. This does say if you have a sidewalk. So from a rural standpoint, if it's just, you know, you're down to the road or whatever, you don't have a sidewalk. So that really wouldn't apply to it. It's just before we were trying to say that you need to cut the rideway along the road before we as a city were even doing

that and there just there's hundreds of miles of of of area where people were being told that you're going to have to cut that. Well, and also don't we have a subdivision that isn't cutting their grass there that we take that on? Do I imagine that? We have a few exceptions here and there. Yes. That's partly why nice to have some code to say, look, it's not our responsibility. doesn't mean we can't choose to do it but ultimately it falls back on the property is being that responsible. So we can say that's not our job that's that is your job to maintain it but I think it needs to be 10. So, so this would be my question. How do you comm let's say we did that? How do you communicate it to those specific suburban people? When they say that it's your job, city, yeah, we tell them no, it's not. And then then we have this argument because we don't have any specific language in the code that we could fall back on. I mean, usually these are when the new subdivisions turned over to the city. We take the streets. We kind of went through this with Main Street crossing. So, we currently cut that, right? cut. So, we made a deal. We cut up to the sidewalks, but they take care of the medians. Like, we're not going to just keep cutting the median. I think you have rules for regular subdivisions and then the rest of Wildwood. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like you're I think what you're kind of alluding to. The intent was with this was more for traditional subdivisions and not the rural roads, but be clarified. Maybe we do this then where we will say that I mean I think it's I think it's a fine thing to say yes sir. Is there a way to put an acre exception there? Meaning obviously if someone has 5 10 15 20 acres they're functioning in a way different kind of world than what we're talking about here. So could that be a way to accommodate kind of what you guys were saying and still have some teeth? We can do that. We we in the past it was

residential versus rural. It's kind of it kind. Yeah. And I think five acres is good because three is probably two. There's three acre. There's three, but there but there's a bunch of them, right? And those are still residential, still have sidewalks. Fewer when you get to five, right? Yeah. And there are very few. Yeah. That would work. I think I mean I would say too if you guys are if this is more designed to fix that issue with that specific subdivision. Yeah, let's fix that. We don't I mean I don't know how many other ho how many other places are not cutting the rightway. Well, we have a lot of places we cut the rightway that we choose to do it. Um a lot. And I think that's partly why I feel like it should be in here because it's not clear, you know, who's who's responsible. Why is one subdivision HOA doing it here, but we're doing I mean, my submission does it. I'm super happy to let you guys take it over. And that's what we're trying to avoid is that slippery slope where everybody just starts piling it on because that that's what this should be doing is that hey you it is so if we but then again with those subdivisions th those those people have landscaping contracts that are in place for sometimes multiple years. So how do we communicate to them oh by the way we are we are not cutting your right of way starting tomorrow. Well, you could technically say it's against the law. I mean, not guess. No, not that the intent here is to back out of any existing arrangements or agreements that we're doing. It's it's really in the future or if somebody changes the subdivision comes and says, "Hey, we're we don't want to mow this city. You mow it." No, we're not going to take it over. That's your responsibility. It's not intended to to go to all these HOAs and suddenly tell them, "Hey, you got to take this over from us." It's not my intent whatsoever. How did the city end up taking over some of these? Well, I imagine a lot of them were from

the from the get-go, frankly, they date back to when we took over the streets, their arrangements or things occurred at that point of time. Um, but it's hard it's hard to really know. Um, there's a lot of unique things. Obviously, wouldn't be anything that's new or new subdivisions in the last 20 years. you wouldn't be taking over anybody's that way, would you? Well, again, we just went through this with Main Street Crossing um to a degree across the street with mowing in those areas and having this in the code would help us to say, "Look, this isn't really the city's responsibility. We shouldn't be doing this." But we don't. There's a lot of nuances here that, you know, people like me are just completely unaware of and that you've dealt with for years and I think probably the most most appropriate thing would be to for you guys to come up with some ideas that would be consistent and fair and perhaps grandfather in people who already have but then make allowances for what happens in the future. But for me to come up with a plan for you guys, I mean, I'm I'm at a loss how to help you. And I think going forward, it's probably, like I said, best for you guys to come up with a plan and then explain it to us and then we can vote on it in person. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe what we want to do is is if you guys can do it, which I imagine you can, we need I would like to see some of like an audited report that tells us where are we in gray areas on wherever those are and to the best of our ability why are we in it

and then we can try to unravel what's going on because I I'm of the opinion you know we probably shouldn't be cutting the right way of of any and but I think part of it is once you have that list then to lay it out and say okay this year we're you know a third, a third, a third, so they can budget. Yeah. Themselves to take it over and and we can minimize our cost associated with the one and uh would make those people a lot happier so that there's no free ride. But you didn't just take I mean like I know for mine we do three to five year contracts and our contracts are up next year. So if I was one of these people then I would really like to know like well we can fix it now or we can fix it in five years because that's the ability I've got. Again wasn't my intent to reneg on any existing agreements. No, all I'm saying is you're never going to we'll never get out of it unless we come up with a plan down the road to transition out of some old things that we're stuck with. Yeah. Just because we've been doing it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do either, right? Yeah. So, I think I mean I think if you guys can just come up with like let us know where we're talking about that would be very helpful. And if if it is more helpful because of that sort of contractual phase, we could do that in five or four or two or because I'm sure I'm sure they're all of course. All right. So, that was a lot. Um I think unless you got anything else hidden in here, Rick, I know we he wanted some you were hoping for some things there. We'll get we'll get working on it, but uh Yes, sir. Could we are we going to discuss anything more as far as the next steps for the uh the road street closings or the that stuff? I mean, we kind of left it out there at the council meeting that it was going to go back and the staff was going to come up with a recommendation on Turnberry and these others and we got the one over here. The

obstructions in the right way. Yeah, that's supposed to go back to council and ordinance should come back Monday night gate and or next barriers. Well, it's obstructions and there's technically a it would be a policy to to look at each one by case by case that said um is it an official question? Can I answer? The department has heard some feedback. The turnberry residents are not thrilled about the idea of the policy. So, spreading the word, huh? start spreading the word that should Could you do this for me or Mr. from Avery, if you don't mind, if we could return word to the residents of Turnberry, we'd love for them to fix the ugly part of their road that they're responsible for. Since we're going to do an assessment and part of the assessment is does this look bad or not? Well, my only question was are we we're not going to see it before it's just going to come to the full council. That was the idea of it from the So, I guess the challenge would be full counsel be cautious of what happens. I mean, unfortunately, that's not always the best way to work out the stuff. Yeah. And Mr. I'm sorry. So we we have to get the gate thing passed before we can move to Turnberry. Yeah. The gate the gates the gate got uh denied. But this is more so a policy for criticizing and reviewing obstructions in the right of way. Once that's passed that would give direction to look and so what what's going on with Ashley Grove then? So that should come back to the we had the first reading right on the gate. There's two readings on that. There's a point that we postponed it till we come up with an answer for the gate. Yeah. That said, there's an they govern the gate. It's now Ballards and it is the ballards are technically located on the property. That's an interesting loophole for what we This is a heads up. There's a really interesting article in the Eureka paper. Legends Highway. Both the police and fire department said they

lose 15 minutes with the gates on the end of it. They're taking them out. Here's what I would say. I've had plenty of conversations. There is zero chance that there are going to be that this gate thing is not pass passing like the second that thing hits it there. I don't even think there's going to be a conversation about it. So, that needs to come. I will be happy to have a conversation with the mayor on that. that needs to come at the next meeting. The the flip the other thing that we can work on which we already have a framework for and a study of most of them is the framework for how do we assess some of these things and basically going back through the notes. I mean genuinely I think we're talking about like three to five places right? I mean, we have like Hidden Valley doesn't that's kind of a different thing and you know there's private ones but when we're talking about public obstructions gates and things like Turnberry there's Turnberry and there's one on Joe's way Joe's way is a fire gate those are obstructions not on the public right away but the idea is all of these things so if we if if we put a prohibition on the gates and the obstructions on roads that's step one right that happens then we go and assess what's going on so you know the gate Firegate at Joe's Way I'm familiar with. It appears to be functional and in good shape. So, it would not score highly on like the idea would be if we're going to take this out at some point, it's going to cost us $20,000. But currently, there's no reason to do that. Yeah. There's no road. And there's no road. That gate's on private property though, too, the Joe's Way one. Yeah. And it's a secondary entrance. It's not a primary entrance. So the idea is to not like the idea is to evenly assess everything and then put so like as an example there's the one in the back of wild horse subdivision and I think I said in the last meeting that looks fine if someone were

to drive a car through it and then the question is are we fixing this or taking it out once the prohibition goes in place and we have our scoring mechanism then it's like yeah we're not spending $40,000 whatever it is to fix the gate we don't have anymore because we don't it's not our to start with whatever. Yeah. So when we're but you know in this instance you know like we've had in other places Turnberry is a very unique situation and you know I I was Mr. Vanic and I were on the board of public safety when we talked about it and the fire department and police were I was there when it was closed the first time. I it should never have been. So I mean and the roads have been changed since that too. So I I'll talk to the mayor and we'll get this I mean we got to get that stuff moving forward. I just don't want it to lay out there and nobody does it. It needs to get done. Uh can you confirm for me that the status of this gate thing that I heard several versions of right now. The first reading was to deny installation of the gate. First reading. There is no readings of these are all work session items. There was a motion to draft legislation implementing the policy and then there was also a separate motion second and a separate consideration under the work session to review the proposals for the gate. The gate got denied in work session and that and that's was not a motion and seconded and voted on to deny the installation of the gate. It was it was a motion to deny accepting the bid. Yeah. because the bid had been called. Bob, there was a first reading on Ashley Grove and then the second one got postponed last meeting because the situation had changed from the board of public safety. So, the two kind of tie together that way. And that was my reason for postponing it is it's silly for us to go ahead and have them do it and then turn around and say, "Oh, now we have to take it out when the fire department and the police don't want it

in there anyway." So if we So so the policy is it's supposed to work where at our next meeting the policy comes forward no more gates or obstructions that should then answer although there's maybe some flexibility because it's on private property or whatever but there's no more gates and obstructions and we do have a framework in place unless you guys want to alter it to score what these existing gates are language we ran it through the city attorneys it's got to be public streets too. Yeah, it's publicary fire exits in Monarch are not you can't public street. Yeah. So that's fine. So I mean at the only public street the only place that this applies is one one place. So for the benefit of the the the residents of Turnberry and the residents of W 2 and the residents of W 4 and everybody else that has had this conversation for almost 25 years, we should I it's insane to me that this is still going Bright Leaf. Bright Leaf would have been like there. Yeah. I mean that's that's when it should be assessed. So if some like if somebody goes through there and knocks down all those things if I would assume if if this thing passes then we just don't put more things back in. I mean that's those are technically on common ground in an easement. Yeah. But they're blocking the public street both ways. Birch forest and or birch. Yeah. But that I mean that road was a court. That was the other that was that was the other part. So we were talking through like the other side of this is public. It should either be courts or through streets, not these kind of like t-turn weird whatever because you know we spend options are so much more expensive than just connecting the streets. I mean Rick, do you remember how much we spent on that birch forest turnaround? That was like hundreds of thousands of dollars twice. Yeah, I think about 100 and a quarter I think was the original

bid. So 100. If we would have done it the first time, the developer would have had to pay for it. Well, we could have had the developer connect. Exactly. instead of us eating it. I mean, that's my problem. Yeah. So, the idea would be moving forward any of these new subdivisions that is just not a conversation like they either can they either connect or they don't. This isn't a like we typically the idea is to connect streets in town center especially. We we proposed to them and we say the idea is to connect streets for use. But then groups, small pockets of residents come out and say we don't want the street to connect and then the planning and commission deres off and says well let's do this. That's why we took it to Portland say this that's I mean I think we're the best place we've ever been. Yeah. And it's just getting to be a bigger issue. That's why I said that with Eureka legends are saying well you know that that's costing 15 minutes in response time. They're taking those gates down and opening it up again. So, and the people will go crazy because it was a private road. So, yeah, but I I think that I just my only concern I know we left it postponed and when you only be once a month if we don't get something gone. So, it's it's it's coming good. That that's gonna I I I will have a conversation with the mayor and implore him that that needs to happen now. So, we're probably going to see a Turnberry residence Monday, right? very possibly. And I hope that they come out. I think it'll be great. I'd love for them to come out. That's how this whole thing works. Pretty motivated, huh? They seem pretty motivated. Cool. Do they? Great. Makes for a longer meeting. Um, okay. Anything else? Thank you. No. All right. Excellent. So, we've got some more items uh down the way, but we don't have to talk about those this time. Um I guess we're

to nothing miscellaneous. Uh adjournment. Anybody care to make it a motion? Mr. Marshall makes a motion. Mr. Backard seconds it. All those in favor, please say I. Anyone opposed? Any abstensions? All right.