Sooner or later the unbridled growth of Wentzville over the past decade had to come back and bite us in our asses. With thousands of homes, miles and miles of streets plus everything that goes along with them, the recession is teaching us—the only thing that can support growth is more growth.
About five years ago Mayor Lambi forecasted that by the year 2010 Wentzville would have a population of 50,000 and that by 2015 the number would increase to 80,000 residents. Gearing up for this anticipated growth he continued the vision of his predecessor (Vickie Boedeker) and became the vanguard of Wentzville's resource expansion: A larger police force and oversized-illconcieved law enforcement center; then you have the acquisition of parkland which begs more equipment and personnel; all of this means more infrastructure hence the need for a larger public works operation i.e. more equipment and manpower; finally, increased resources equates to more administration and personnel to support the city. When the housing bubble burst, Wentzville was left with unbuilt subdivisions, empty streets, and aging infrastructure that must be maintained. Today with a population of 29,000 some hard choices are having to be made in city hall—where to cut the budget and still maintain necessary services. This subject will be addressed in another blog in the very near future.
Now it's time to talk about just one instance of our street maintenance that was seen last week while driving to Walgreens at the corner of Meyer Road at the Wentzville Parkway. Noticing signs and cones across the Parkway on Bridlespur and being the nosy person I am, I drove on over and entered the Fox Run subdivision. Wow, what a mess. It seems the city is replacing many of the street slabs there and for some reason they decided to remove all of them at one time. They took out slabs in front of peoples driveways throughout the subdivision resulting in complaints and phone calls to their aldermen. I don't know the thought process behind this project but I do know that the residents of Fox Run subdivision should swarm to city hall for the next Board of Alderman meeting. Since Mayor Lambi is the Chief Executive Officer and governs all of the things that happen regarding the city, he needs to hear from the citizens first hand about how he has been handling projects in our city, the buck stops with him. He loves to take credit for everything positive in the city, whether he had anything to do with it or not, so give him credit where credit is due.
Rumors:
Dianna Wright is going to run for Alderman of Ward 2.
Forrest Gossett will run for Alderman of Ward 1.
Matt Garvey will oppose Rick Stokes for Alderman of Ward 3. There is supposed to be a campaign kick-off planned for Thursday September 29th, 7:00 PM at the Olde Towne Pub. If it's true, there might be some interesting conversations.
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