City of Frontenac, Missouri

North West End Park Streets

Some of the residents in North West End Park (i.e. roughly the area bounded by German Blvd. to the south, Lindbergh Blvd. to the east, Donoho Place to the north, and Princess Avenue to the west) have inquired with the City of Frontenac about how to go about improving and maintaining their streets. 

The City maintains the collector streets in Frontenac including Conway, Spoede, Clayton, and Geyer Roads.  All other streets throughout the City must be maintained by the residents directly through subdivisions fees or tax assessments as part of a community improvement district (CID).  Upper West End Park, to the south of North West End Park (NWEP), petitioned to form a community improvement district in 2014 to assess itself to pay for street improvements and ongoing maintenance.  NWEP residents are now inquiring about following a similar procedure to fund the improvement and upkeep of their streets.

The City is being responsive to the questions and interests from residents and will appropriately assist residents in this process; however, the City cannot drive the process or advocate a position.       

Engineering Study

NWEP residents were invited to a meeting at City Hall in June 2019 to discuss the streets.  A presentation was made at that meeting by the City’s legal counsel  about how, if approved by residents, a community improvement district (CID) could be established to fund street improvements.  The group also discussed at that meetings that there are multiple options for improving the streets with differing degrees of pavement life and associated costs.  To help residents determine the most appropriate option, the consensus was that an engineering study would be necessary to evaluate the condition of the streets and provide various options to fix the streets, with a projected life expectancy and cost for each option.  The City subsequently contracted the engineering firm, Lochmueller Group, to conduct the study.  Lochmueller conducted this study over a period of several months.  Although the pandemic delayed the presentation of the results to the residents, a virtual meeting was eventually scheduled for October 1, 2020.  The engineering study, presentation slides form the meeting, and the recording of the meeting are provided below:

Engineering Report of NWEP Streets – September 18, 2020

Presentation Slides form October 1, 2020 NWEP Streets Meeting

Audio/Video Recording of October 1, 2020 NWEP Streets Meeting

https://transcripts.gotomeeting.com/?utm_source=recordingReadyNotification&utm_medium=email#/s/5610e53876edf5d7db7677be8efbc746c08bd77a6ae465e23e79fd44088d3237

Next Steps

With the engineering study complete, the following next steps would be in order:

• Step 1: Gather input from residents and businesses
  • The engineers from Lochmueller Group presented NWEP residents with three options for fixing the streets. Residents are now asked to provide their individual input to the City on which of these three options they would prefer, or if they would prefer to do nothing at this point in time.
  • To ensure that as many residents as possible are contacted and given the opportunity to provide their input, residents will need to be contacted through a variety of means, including virtual meetings, face-to-face meetings, door-to-door contacting, emails, letters, and phone calls. If you are interested in volunteering to go door-to-door to help ensure residents are aware of this process and to encourage them to provide input to the City, please contact City Administrator, Jaysen Christensen,  at jchristensen@cityoffrontenac.org or call (314) 373-6503.
  • Please also share your input with Jaysen regarding which of the three options you prefer to fix the streets or if you prefer to do nothing at this point in time.

• Step 2: Select a street improvement option to present to residents and businesses to vote on, or determine to postpone any further action at this point in time. The option presented will be based directly on the input received from residents and businesses.    
• Step 3: If it is determined to proceed at this time, meetings will be held to allow residents to sign petitions for the CID. Residents may also sign petitions at City Hall.  Petitions must be notarized, and the City will provide this service.   
  • To establish a CID, residents and businesses collectively owning more than 50% by assessed value of property in the CID, and also representing more than 50% per capita of all owners of property in the CID, must sign a petition in support of the CID.
• Step 4: A Board of Aldermen public hearing would need to be held to establish the CID and appoint CID Board of Directors
• Step 5: Execute agreements (CID/Frontenac and Frontenac/County for collection of assessments)
• Step 6: Secure Financing
• Step 7: Approve contractor to repair and rehabilitate the streets, and carry out construction.

Other Resources

Missouri American Watermain Replacement Map

Missouri American Water (MAW) has informed the City of Frontenac that it will be replacing old watermains in North West End Park.  Watermains on Anzeiger and Savannah have already recently been replaced.  MAW is planning to begin construction to replace the watermains on Cable, Dwyer, Arthur, Garibaldi, and  part of German, by late January 2022. 

Replacing watermains requires MAW to dig a two-foot wide trench in the street.  MAW will then restore the street by installing a 6-foot wide strip of 6-inch thick concrete base and a 2-inch “c” mix asphalt over that.

MAW has also offered to install a temporary patch and then contribute $289,000 toward the cost of the larger NWEP street improvement project should the residents wish.  The temporary patch would be 3 to 4 inches of temporary hot mix asphalt with no concrete base and would only be 2-feet wide (not 6 feet as proposed with the typical restoration described above).  The $289,000 represents the cost difference between the temporary patch and normal street restoration cost and is based on bids MAW recently received to do this work. 

Because the watermain replacement project is scheduled to begin in late January 2022, MAW requires that it be informed by no later than February 1, 2022 if the community wishes for it to put down the temporary patch and contribute the $289,000 toward a larger NWEP street improvement project.  Otherwise, MAW will proceed with the typical restoration described above. 

Petition for North West End Park CID

The NWEP petition to establish a community improvement district was based on a similar petition that Upper West End Park approved in 2014 to establish its CID.  Like the UWEP CID, the NWEP CID would comprise only residential properties with the exception of the Frontenac Racquet Club, which has a maintenance driveway access point on Arthur Place.  Commercial property owners fronting Lindbergh and German Blvd have indicated that they would not support the CID and have opted to maintain their commercial sections of streets independent of the CID.  If the CID is established, residential property owners would be assessed an estimated $1,117.99 per year over 20 years.  The final assessment will be based on actual construction bids and financing rates at the time after the CID is formed and construction is bid out. 

Exhibit B – District  Boundary Map

The District Boundary Map outlines all parcels that would be included in the district.  Once again, note that commercial properties have been excluded.

Exhibit C – Assessed Valuation by Parcel

Exhibit C provides the locator number, parcel address, owner name and address, and assessed valuation as reported by the St. Louis County Assessor’s Office for each parcel in the proposed CID. 

NWEP CID Petition Signature Page (individual owner)

Each individual owner of a property in the proposed CID who is in favor of the petition should execute and have notarized an “individual owner” petition signature page.   

NWEP CID Petition Signature Page (corporate owner)

A corporate owner of a property in the proposed CID who is in favor of the petition should execute and have notarized an “corporate owner” petition signature page.

Primer on Community Improvement Districts (CIDs)

This primer outlines what a CID is, how a CID is formed, how a CID is governed. etc. 

Pavement Core Samples Report – 2019

The City obtained pavement core samples to assess the thickness of the streets in 2019.  These core samples shows that the thickness ranged from 2.5 inches of chip seal (CS) and 0 inches of base (e.g. Anzeiger) to 3 inches of chip seal and 6 inches of rock base (e.g. Cable).  No asphalt was found in any of the core samples.  By comparison, a standard street may have 2.5 to 3 inches of asphalt on top of 6 inches of rock base. 

Missouri Court of Appeals – Schilling/Moffat v. Frontenac (2006)

Some residents have inquired about a lawsuit between certain Homeowners in West End Park and the City of Frontenac.  In November 2004, the Homeowners filed a petition, requesting the court to declare the following:  

1. Section 5203.030.B of the Frontenac Code of Ordinances was unreasonable, discriminatory, invalid and constituted a local and special law which denied Homeowners equal protection and due process.  Section 520.030.B provides that expenditures by Frontenac for improvements or maintenance of West End Park streets will be reimbursed to Frontenac by means of special tax bills determined by apportioning the total expenditures on a front foot basis over the streets, which Frontenac has followed for many years to pay for street work, including maintenance, snow removal, salting, and other needed maintenance in the West End Park street right-of-way.    
2. All of the West End Park streets were public.
3. Frontenac was responsible for maintaining and improving the West End Park streets in accordance with the standards it followed with respect to other public streets within its limits.

The court addressed the following:

• The argument that the streets of West End Park should be declared “public.”
• The claim that Section 520.030.B of the City Code is an unconstitutional special law.

The Eastern District of the Missouri Court of Appeals held that the Homeowners were not entitled to a declaration that the streets were “public.”  The court noted that the authority to improve the streets of West End Park and to pay for those improvements by levying special assessments against the adjacent properties.  In light of this authority, there would be no purpose served by declaring eth streets “public.”  In reaching this conclusion the court implicitly acknowledged the that the Homeowners’ complaint wasn’t really about the public nature of the streets but was rather about the City’s unwillingness to pay for the streets out of general revenue: 

Given the vast discretion granted to fourth-class cities regarding the streets within their borders, we conclude that the trial court did not err in denying Homeowners’ request for a declaration that the West End Park streets are public due to a lack of a real, substantial, presently-existing controversy.  The parties here would remain in disagreement over how Frontenac exercises its authorize discretion. 

The Homeowners argued that Section 520.030.B, which applies only to the streets of West End Park, was an illegal “special” law.  The Missouri Constitution prohibits special laws where general laws can be used.  The court held that the Homeowners had failed to prove that a general law could be used in this case, as the West End Park subdivision was unlike the City’s other subdivisions, all of which were private.  Since West End Park was not “similarly situated” to the City’s other subdivisions, Section 520.030.B was not an unconstitutional law.  

As stated above, the City maintains the collector streets including Conway, Spoede, Clayton, and Geyer Roads.  All other streets throughout the City must be maintained by the residents directly through subdivisions fees or tax assessments as part of a community improvement district (CID).    

Please see the above link to read the complete ruling form the Eastern District Missouri Court of Appeals.

Other Community Services

• Free Public Notary (8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily)
• Public Records Request – contact City Clerk Leesa Ross, (314) 373-6504 or email lross@cityoffrontenac.org