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We're rapidly approaching the April municipal elections, so I wanted to point you to a campaign kickoff three candidates for the Council are hosting this Sunday from 2-4:30 (the perfect pre Super Bowl activity?) on the second floor of the community center (i.e. the building connected to the ice rink):
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There are three Council seats up for grabs; two are open, and the third one is currently occupied by Councilman Rheinnecker, who is also running. The premise of this event is that you should vote for Lavender, Burkett, and Arnold and vote Rheinnecker out. I'm of the same mind, but if you're skeptical or just curious, this is a great chance to meet the three challengers and maybe even ask them a tough question or two!
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- According to last night's P&Z agenda, Lona Lil Eats is applying for an outdoor dining permit for their upcoming Woodbine location. I'm excited to see this stretch of street activated in the near future, but we really need to figure out how we can attract foot traffic to these little patches of urbanism outside of Downtown. I've said it before, but I think one easy thing we could do is allow people to put some housing on the second floor above their businesses in the B-1 neighborhood business district as a permitted rather than special use. People love the idea of shopkeepers living above their businesses! This is such an easy way to make Kirkwood a little more affordable and a little less car-dependent while keeping it quaint.
- A couple of Kirkwood utilities-related items in last week's Webster-Kirkwood Times:
- On pg. 1, there's a story about the Council's efforts to get a grip on Kirkwood Electric's finances. The Council keeps trying to make the case that they aren't responsible for the spending, so I dug through the city council meeting minutes listed on the website and compiled a list of all the Kirkwood Electric expenses this council has directly approved of since they were sworn in in April of 2024. The total? $7.8 million. We also know they were directly engaging with the municipal utility portion of the annual budget despite their claims that they were left in the dark until this fall. How? Well, at their March 6th, 2025 meeting, the Council made several edits to the budget, including eliminating the proposed transfer of $710k from the Water Department to the General Fund. Meanwhile, the $2.5 million in transfers out of the Electric Department were kept unchanged. Seven months later, they'd proclaim that city's finances were in crisis. A couple of months after that, they'd announce the city's credit rating had been downgraded.
- On pg. 6, Councilman Rheinnecker and Schaefer wrote a letter in the mailbag defending their ongoing efforts to privatize Kirkwood Water. It really is starting to seem like, intentionally or unintentionally, the current Council has spiked the city's finances and is now auctioning off its assets. That, my friends, is not a good cycle for a municipality to be in.
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That's it for this week! Have a great weekend, everyone! New story out soon! Roll damn Bills!
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