More Master Plan woes!

I was talking with a friend this weekend, Mr. Tom Durst, owner of Wentzville's Dairy Queen. He has conserns about the Church Street improvements scheduled to begin in 2011. According to the master plan, there will be a six foot sidewalk on the west side of Church Street and a nine foot sidewalk on Dairy Queen's side. The result is the city commandeering about another six feet of his property. In addition to the nine foot extension of the sidewalk there will be a bike rack and a bench. This all sounds very cosmopolitan except that Tom stated that the sidewalk would come right up to his sign standard.

The obvious question is why is the City planning on building the nine foot sidewalk on the east side where there are homes and businesses and not on the west side where there is mostly parking lots for most of the street. Well, this is just a guess but, the path of leat resistance may be why. Since the west side of Church Street is mostly parking lots, at first glance it would be the best choice to expand the sidewalk. But after looking at it, the path of least resistance may be considerably more expensive. It would mean removing the fences from St. Patrick's and MFA properties and rebuilding them which in the long run may be more expensive than taking the property from Mr. Durst and a whole block of homes and businesses where there are no fences.

I've found that most of the decisions made by the city is based on money. If you find the money, you find the reason. The problem which Mr. Durst and a host of others on the east side of the street could be facing is that the engineering may be complete and in that case, it would cost the City even more money changing the engineering and paying for a new fence or two. It's a catch 22. It amazes me how little thought goes into these major projects and how little consideration is given to residents and busineses of Wentzville.

I hope the folks on the east side of the street go before the Board of Alderman and lodge their complaints, it'll be a lot easier to fix now before the City starts breaking ground.