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New Wildwood City Council to form new citizen-based City Hall Committee

By Adam Lampel

The city of Wildwood is moving forward with plans to form a new City Hall Committee to help figure out a solution to the existing city hall facility issue. The issue remains in limbo since voters shot down the city’s former plan to build a new one.

The committee will consist mostly of citizens, which will differ from the previous version of the committee. There also may be representation from the Wildwood Architectural Review Board, the Planning and Zoning Commission, the City Council and the mayor.

“The goal of the committee is to provide a recommendation to the City Council on the direction in which we should head for a future city hall for Wildwood,” said newly-elected Wildwood Mayor Tim Woerther.

Woerther said a lot of information had been gathered by the prior committee and some of that should be useful in this group’s efforts.

“In particular, I hope that the citizens’ committee gets an opportunity to hold open meetings to solicit ideas, comments, like and dislikes of the residents from around the city,” Woerther said.

This new approach should be a welcome change for many Wildwood residents. During the previous effort to plan the creation of a new Wildwood City Hall, many residents were outraged over what they felt was their exclusion from the process.

Woerther said he believes that there are opportunities in the current real estate market that did not exist 18 months ago when those plans were being designed.

Up until a few weeks ago, Jean Vedvig was among the disgruntled residents, but now she sits on the City Council and is pleased with the new direction.

“There was a general consensus among council members that a citizens’ committee should be established, modeled along the lines of the Master Plan Advisory Group and Citizens’ Committee for Park Progress, to provide guidance and input on a project plan for a city hall to address the long-term needs of the city,” Vedvig said.

Wildwood City Council member Bart Cohn said it is important to recognize where the city is in regards to a new facility.

“Previous attempts failed to build a city hall failed for lack of adequate citizen input opportunities in the planning process,” Cohn said. “Ultimately this lack of citizen input led to an over-budget, ill-conceived proposal that was rejected by 62 percent of the voters in August of 2007.”

Cohn said he does believe that citizens generally are in favor of the construction of a city-owned facility.

“I think most residents would support a city-owned city hall so long as it was achieved with adequate citizen input and in a fiscally-responsible manner,” Cohn added.

Making the issue more complicated is the fact that the city also must find a new home for the St. Louis County Police Departments Wildwood precinct. The goal is to eventually have the police and government facilities in one location, but that creates a lot of pre-requisites when trying to find a solution.

At this point it appears that due to the urgency in finding a new home for the police, the two entities for the time being may take separate paths with the hope that they can be housed at the same location in the future.