For the beginning of the New Year, we asked local city leaders and school superintendents to send The Record short letters about what’s coming up in 2020. Local leaders were asked to discuss projects or initiatives they’ll be working on, or issues they plan to address in the year to come.

Here's what they had to say:

Warren County R-III Superintendent Dr. Gregg Klinginsmith

“As we enter the new year, there are a lot of things to look forward to in the Warren County R-III School District.

We are now halfway through the first year of our four-day school week, which has helped us to retain more teachers than in the past. Our students continue to perform at a high level, our Care Days have proven to be a wonderful service to be able to offer to the district. They have been fun, educational, and we look forward to continuing with the new schedule next school year.

With our new “Showcase Show” that is appearing on Facebook, we’ve increased community engagement by showing our stakeholders many of the things happening in our schools. Several of these have already appeared on our Facebook page and more are coming. Please be sure to follow our Facebook page to see all of the outstanding things happening in the district.

Prop W is on the ballot in April. This issue can help change the trajectory of the district. While the district is doing outstanding things, we can be better. The key to improvement is attracting and retaining our support staff and teachers. The district simply cannot function without the help of our support staff. Our support staff are key to providing a clean learning environment, a delicious breakfast and lunch, a ride to and from school, and for some students they are the most critical person in the building.

The four day week has helped retain our teachers, but salary still remains an issue. If Prop W would pass then our support staff would see the largest portion of the money, followed by our teachers. Prop W would bring in approximately $1.1 million. Approximately $450,000 would go to hourly staff, $430,000 would go to teachers, $150,000 would go to all other employees (nurses, special education personnel, directors, administrators) and the remaining amount will go toward covering the additional cost of increasing insurance rates. My salary, the superintendent, will remain the same as it is this year regardless if Prop W passes or fails. This is for our kids. 

Our students deserve to be surrounded by experienced teachers and support staff. For more information on Prop W, please visit the district website at www.warrencor3.org.

We appreciate everyone in the Warren County R-III community and look forward to finishing this school year strong."

Truesdale Mayor Christopher Watson

2020 will bring a start for two of our larger projects. Additions will be made to Bruer Park and planning will begin on the storm shelter/community center. We are excited for both projects as the board of alderman are very focused on the community based interaction with the citizens of Truesdale as well as countywide. The city has two years to complete both projects due to the restriction of the grants provided to fund the majority of both the park and safe room.

We will hold several events at the park this year. Concert in the Park, National Night Out and of course our fourth annual Railroad Days event. The board and I would like to add a few more events this year, Movie in the Park and an Easter egg hunt. The city will also be purchasing a large Christmas tree and planting it in the park for a Christmas event. Volunteers, business sponsorships private donors — the community really comes together to make all these events happen.

The city is also going to budget for several street repairs. This is not as glamorous as the community events but very much needed.

The board of aldermen will be working very close with the police department ensuring we have a clean, safe community that our citizens can live and raise their families.

Wright City Mayor Dan Rowden

“2019 has been a great year for the city of Wright City and has been a year of planning and transition to help make sure that the future is even brighter.

Planning and transition involved adding officers to our police department and raising employee salaries to a more comparable level and to stop losing great employees to other cities in our area.

We are at full staff in the police department and things are going well! In conjunction with Wright City R-II schools, we also added a second school resource officer.

We transitioned into our new City Hall, which has been a great addition to our city! The new City Hall has much needed room in the auditorium for the board of aldermen meetings, room for our clerks and administrative staff to have better and more secure work areas. 

The City Hall auditorium also serves as the municipal court chambers, and brings us into compliance with state Supreme Court regulations.

As part of the move, we were able to obtain a grant to review, catalog and microfiche many of the records and historic documents the city must maintain for many years. We were also able to eliminate some documents that are no longer required under the state records retention policy.

As some may know our longtime treasurer/city clerk/economic development director, Karen Girondo has announced her plan to retire in 2020. With this in mind, we employed an assistant treasurer to help with the transition and learn all the procedures and practices needed for this position. She will become our city treasure upon Karen’s retirement, which Karen recently announced will take place in March 2020. Other members of our clerical staff have also taken on additional duties in learning the tasks and procedures for new positions. Abbey Ogborn has been shadowing Karen to become our next city clerk and Denise Queen has assumed the additional duties as payroll and HR clerk, and Marie Hollenbeck servers as our municipal court clerk.

In addition, we hired our first city administrator in 2019, Mr. Jim Schuchmann! Jim is doing an excellent job for the city. He is handling day-to-day administrative leadership. Jim additionally has continued to work hard to complete the old City Hall renovation for the expanded police department facility. Jim has also been shadowing Karen as part of several committees within the community that require city participation. Jim has been approved as the city’s new representative on these vital committees. Jim has also coordinated the numerous projects that are in the works for 2020, via contract development and administration.

The city has engaged an engineering firm to provide a citywide street study and to design specific street renovations for both 2019 and 2020. One of the projects is currently in the construction stage and another is currently in the formal design stage for 2020. We are also working on sidewalk improvements plans for the North Service Road from the Elm Sreet overpass to Westwoods Road. This project should happen in 2020, and will greatly improve the accessibility of persons with disabilities to move about our community.

The city has also engaged an engineering and design firm to develop the Master Plan for the new city park. They will also be doing the design plans for bidding development of the multiple stages of the new park. Once we have the master plan design, the city will hold additional meetings with the park board and citizens before approving the final design of the new park.

Speaking of parks, we have added new playground equipment behind the new City Hall and at Ruge Park. We plan to start the tee ball and soccer field development behind the new City Hall in spring 2020, weather permitting.

The city has joined in a partnership with the Chamber of Commerce to help promote support of local businesses in our city. We started this with a Shop Local Business campaign in November and December. The Christmas parade was another big hit this year and there was an added feature with Chamber members decorating several light poles along the Christmas parade route, which I think was great! We will be doing several other special events throughout 2020. We would also like to highlight two new restaurants in the downtown area that opened in December, St. LouisianaQ and The Railhouse Pub. We are very excited about these new additions to our city! Please support our Local Businesses, new and old!

Well on to 2020. The board of aldermen have approved the 2020 budget at our December 12 board of aldermen meeting. As part of the 2020 budget we are taking on a more long-range planning for capital expenditures. Some of the projects that are being planned include:

E. S. First Street road rebuild project, which should be done in January 2020.

Westwoods Road rebuild project, which design, bid and build we plan to complete in 2020.

Master design plans and future meeting on the new park master plan will occur in 2020.

Completion of the police department facility renovation will occur in 2020.

Ruge Park and Diekroeger Park restroom renovations are planned in 2020.

Storm siren repairs/replacement are being planned while working with other cities and the county to hopefully help all areas have better alerting systems in the future. This is one of the initiatives I introduced to our Local Government Leaders Team, which includes the County Commission, area cities, BRPC, and economic development (staff).

Other long-term items include a new city public works facility, plans for Bell Road expansion project, and Stracks Church overpass development in conjunction with MoDOT.

The city is very proud of the success we have had in recent years, and we look anxiously forward to building an even better future of growth and development for the wonderful citizens of Wright city!”

Wright City R-II Superintendent Dr. David Buck

“In 2020, Wildcat Nation is excited to be adding Registered Youth Apprenticeship and moving toward an increase in industrial arts offerings.”

Innsbrook Village Chairman Jeff Thomsen

“The mission statement for the village of Innsbrook is to promote living in harmony with nature. In keeping with this mission statement, the village of Innsbrook will in 2020 continue to support and assist in any way we can the efforts of a local group of citizens who are seeking to open a no-kill animal shelter to serve all of Warren County. The village will also continue to work with Boonslick Regional Planning Commission in efforts to better recycle trash to keep the environment clean.

Since the its inception in 1998 the village of Innsbrook has continuously sought to hold taxes of our citizens to the lowest possible permitted by law, and for 2020 we pledge to continue to hold taxes. By the same token, since 1998 the village has sought to minimize intrusion into the private lives of our citizens as much as possible, and we intend to continue with that pledge for 2020. 

I am going into my 10th year on the Village Board of Trustees, and during that time the board has made a concerted effort to reach out and participate in events and meetings and issues that have arisen in the community of Warren County that surrounds the village of Innsbrook. Most recently I have become involved in the Warren County Leaders Organization founded by Joe Gildehaus, the Warren County Presiding Commissioner, and comprising all of the Warren County municipal leaders. We meet periodically and discuss how we can as a group address common problems and issues. This is a very beneficial and productive collaborative effort which the village will continue to support.

Lastly, and perhaps most significantly, the Village is exploring options to relocate the Village Hall on land within the village. We have been renting from the Innsbrook Resort (at a very nominal rate) our current Village Hall since 1998, and the board and Innsbrook Resort both feel it is time for a change. We view this challenge with great excitement, as a way we can better serve our citizens.

As chairman of the Board of Trustees for the village of Innsbrook and on behalf of the board, we send to all of the readers of The Record a very happy and prosperous New Year in 2020.”

Warren County Commission: Joseph Gildehaus, Hubie Kluesner, Dan Hampson

“It is truly an honor for us to be able as your elected representatives to advise you on the status of your County and the strides we made this year with your help to make Warren County a better place to live, to locate your business and to enjoy all of the resources with which we have been provided. Warren County made some great strides this year but we still have a long way to go.

We would like to address some of our projects specifically but  we would be remiss if we did not first recognize and thank our greatest assets: the Warren County employees. Our employees are some of the most dedicated around and it is very clear that we, as a county, could not accomplish anything near what we have without their support and assistance. Working daily with dedicated elected officials and employees is a wonderful experience. We thank you.

Some of the major projects we undertook this year are set forth below. We were able to finish several of them and others are well underway. The projects are:

1. Revisions to the Planning & Zoning Code. Redoing the entire P & Z Code is a massive undertaking so we decided to divide it into three projects:

a). Redo the land use charts and definitions: This phase was completed and has now been adopted and is in effect. Doing so allowed us to modernize our list of uses, rethink about the proper location of certain uses and eliminate ambiguities and confusion.

b) Redo the Land Use Map and look at Master Plan. This will be a lengthy project and will involve input from our citizens. Insuring that our Master Plan and Land Use Map meets our needs and growth trends should and will be an ongoing project. We hope to complete this project in 2020.

c) Revise remainder of Zoning Code. We have already started to work on this project. Our goal is to insure that the regulations are clear and easy to follow. In the process of clarifying certain provisions we will also address and eliminate ambiguities and inconsistencies.

Part of the revision/update to the code will involve the specific areas of regulations for solar and wind energy farms. No decision as to whether or not we will implement one or both during 2020 has been made but if have initiated a review of whether or not they would be viable and a benefit to Warren County. We are also looking into the feasibility of creating regulations for “Tiny Homes”. These are very popular right now in certain parts of the country but we must perform our own due diligence in order to insure that if they are permitted we do not adversely impact property values or uses of nearby property.

We are asking a lot from our Planning & Zoning Commission and our Planning & Zoning Administrator but we are certain that they are up to the challenge.

2. Employee Personnel Policy and Handbook. There is no way that we thought that this project could be completed this year but the new policy is completed and is ready to be distributed to the elected officials and department heads. A majority of the content was simply reviewed and rewritten as needed for clarification. Other parts are completely new in order to address new regulations, legal requirements and the world we live in. We hope to adopt the entire policy soon but not implement certain provisions until a future date. Because the elected officials have the right to manage and supervise their respective employees we will need the support and help of the elected officials.

3. Medical Marijuana. Whether we like it or not the legalization of Medical Marijuana is here and we are ready for it. We adopted appropriate and state sanctioned regulations to control the various aspects of this new industry. We ask for everyone’s assistance to insure that it is implemented smoothly.

4. Jail. Under the Sheriff’s guidance and direction the old jail was painted and cleaned. This was a project that was long past due.

5. New and Ongoing Projects. We have a few projects that we have just started and others that are ongoing and are with us from year to year. These projects are:

a) New Phone System. We have just signed a contract with a firm to put in a new phone system. The investigation of our existing phone system resulted our finding that some lines were no longer in use or were not needed. By contracting for a new system we will become a lot more efficient and will save money by replacing equipment and services that are no longer needed.

b) Roads and Bridges. The County is always working to upgrade, improve and maintain our roads and bridges. Two of the projects our Highway Department worked on this year were Smith Creek and a portion of Paul Road. Our goal is to develop a standing plan so that we can better track which roads need to be maintained or upgraded.

The Commission is issuing a challenge to itself and the other elected officials and employees of the County. Our challenges is to make our officials and employees more responsive to our citizens which we think we can accomplish by having us all work more closely with one another as members of the same team. By having the officials and the County employees work as a team we think we can become more efficient and thereby save our taxpayers time and money.”