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Hope you all had as amazing a 4th as I did. Quite a bit of news this week so let's jump straight into it. On to some quick hits!
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- Pg. 4-A of last week's Webster- Kirkwood Times had a nice little round up of newsy items around town:
- Kirkwood is taking a smart approach in spending down its Transportation Development District (TDD) tax revenue funds. This sales tax increase only kicked in July 1, so we won't have a lot of actual revenue to spend for a while, and then you can't pave any roads in the fall/winter because it's too cold for the asphalt to set. Instead of waiting until next spring when the funding and weather finally align though, the city is instead planning on using the funding revenue to redo four small concrete streets (which you can do in colder weather) this fall. Smart!
- The city is also debating whether to begin selling alcohol at Kirkwood Ice Rink. I can see the case for both sides, but on the whole, I think i'm in favor. People already tailgate hockey games in the parking lot so if you are going to have folks drinking anyway, the city might as well capture some of the associated revenue. The ice rink is already the most profitable parks asset and I have to imagine selling beers would only make it more so.
- The Mayor says that it's up to the Parks Department whether they want to pursue a dog park and I know for a fact they do not!
- In more disappointing news, the city's grant application to overhaul Argonne with mid-block crosswalks, raised intersections and a new bike lane was rejected by East-west Gateway. It's hard to determine exactly why Kirkwood's project lost out, whether it was too expensive or didn't have a big enough impact or what, but I will say, it's incredibly disappointing to see EWG choose to fund a projects to widen roads and then run out of money to fund good projects like Argonne. Hopefully we can figure out a way to more competitively package the application (ditch some of the redundant mid-bock crosswalks and sharrows to cut costs, convert the unprotected bike lane to a protected one to increase the performance score) and try again.
- The 6/5/25 City Council Work Session minutes revealed a couple of interesting items:
- The city is in the midst of resurfacing Jefferson from Taylor to Van Buren and apparently that project will now include a raised crosswalk between St. Peter School and St. Peter church. The city agreed to pay half of the crosswalk's $24,000 total cost so long as St. Peter matched it with $12,000 of their own. This seems like a great outcome for all involved an outcome that seemed to be in doubt back when the parish was pushing hard to transform Jefferson into a cul-de-sac
- There's also an interesting memo (and a diagram of sorts!) re: the potential for a new bridge over the river linking the Meramec Greenway and Unger Park. Look, if Great Rivers Greenway wants to fund this, who am I to stand in the way, but this seems like a very curious use of resources. A couple of years back we got a pedestrian bridge across the exact same river one mile away and so far no one has taken any action to integrate it with Kirkwood (or any other destination on the East bank for that matter). It seems like maybe GRG would be better off using their money to connect to the bridge we already have instead of blowing it all on another one.
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That's it for this week! The Making Music Concert Series resumes this Saturday with Raised on Radio at the Lions' Amphitheater in Kirkwood Park at 7:30. Have a great weekend, everyone!
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