- A couple of highlights from last week's Webster Kirkwood Times:
- On pg. 4, a nice story on Kirkwood's newly strengthened tree ordinance. In addition to adding more protections for existing trees, the ordinance also allows the city to unilaterally plant trees in the city right of way. Street trees are some of the best ways to improve everything from walkability to property values, so I'm excited about this. For more info or to request a street tree via email, visit the city's Forestry Division webpage.
- On pg. 9-B, there's an exciting notice that the city will host an open house for Phase 2 of the Grant's Trail Extension from 4-7pm on June 3rd. Glad to see some signs of life on this project that seems like it's taken an eternity (I first wrote about it in 2019) with very little progress to show for it.
- The April 2nd Council work session meeting minutes revealed that the Council is planning to use up to $60k in Transportation Development District (TDD) funds to repave the East Jefferson city-owned parking lot. We went from these parking lots potentially 1) netting the city $2 million in sale revenue 2) adding hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenue, and 3) helping address Kirkwood's affordability challenges to being a net drain on the city's finances. That's so dumb it makes me angry. Parking will be obsolete in five years. Just a complete waste of money.
- The minutes of the April 16th council work session meeting reveal more details on Kirkwood's upcoming Safer Streets for All (SS4A) grant proposal, as well as a few additional details on last year's failed SS4A proposal:
- First, last year's grant proposal received a score of 3 (recommended) out of a possible 4 (highly recommended), so we weren't that far off
- The biggest feedback the city received was that spending $3.5 million of the $6.8 million total the city was asking for on burying Ann Ave power lines did not meet basic cost-benefit analysis, which was so predictable that I wrote a whole article complaining about it (you can still see how the argument played out in the comment section of that story). While I always love to be completely and utterly vindicated, it's frustrating that this mistake cost us time and money.
- This time around the city is planning on re-running largely the same application as last year's, but minus the Ann Ave power line relocation and the North Kirkwood Rd lane diet (as the Trump administration has not looked favorably on lane diet funding). That's still a bunch of decent traffic calming and sidewalk infill projects. The full project list is available in last year's story.
- The North Kirkwood Road lane diet requires nothing but a fresh paint job and there's no reason the city can't implement it while it awaits funding for more permanent changes. We've waited on this thing for four years. That's far too long for something that costs next to nothing and which we know works.
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That's all for this week! Have a great weekend, everyone!
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