Overland Town Hall Meeting 10/15/2007

The City of Overland held a Town Hall meeting to consider the perceived rodent problem in our city. I say perceived because though it is definitely a substantial problem for those who are affected by it, as the representatives from Rottler Pest Control correctly pointed out, the issues with rodents in our area are no worse than the average older, inner-ring suburb in our area. While this meeting can be seen by some as being proactive in trying to address an issue for residents, it can also be seen as unnecessarily bringing more negative publicity to our City. It's simply a matter of perspective.

While there were about 60 residents in attendance it's hard to say how many might have attended if the public had been directly notified about this meeting well in advance. I believe it was the September 17th, 2007 Workshop meeting where the Council decided to have this Town Hall event. At the same meeting they decided to send out a mailer to pass along helpful information related to the issue and invite residents to attend and speak on the issue. Unfortunately, that mailer went out too late as no one in attendance had received one, and all the residents that I have talked to who have received it, got it on October 16th or later (I still have not received one). I am hoping that City Hall learns from this experience. Unless you're willing to foot the bill for First Class stamps it can take weeks to get a mailing into the recipients' hands. This is a manageable problem with proper planning and execution.

At the meeting several representatives of Rottler Pest Control offered a host of suggestions, the most interesting of which was examining ways to bait (poison) the sewers. There are a number of considerations here. Will MSD allow it, what poisons to use to avoid secondary casualties (predators eating the rats and the like), etc. However, they made it clear to the Council that they could not present a plan or realistic estimate without detailed information on where the problems are.

Acting Public Works Director Chuck Boone was asked about this information. Interestingly, though he had told the Council that they didn't have the data at an earlier meeting, he stated at this meeting that they did have the information. At issue here was that Mr. Boone probably didn't think of the log book that is used when residents sign for the free bait boxes as a source of statistical information when he was asked the first time. Mr. Boone offered to provide statistics on this from log that covered August - October. The Council agreed that this was not enough data to be able to plan from and ultimately asked for a year of data from this log to be entered into a database so it could be analyzed to determine were the problems were and start seeking bids to address them. Mr. Boone told the Council that neither he, nor any of his staff have the time for that. One interesting suggestion, raised by Councilperson Cuminale after the meeting was that we hire a temp to do the data entry. Also, Councilperson Colon offered to donate some of her time to get this done as well.

This seems to be a recurring problem in Overland (and likely most smaller municipalities). Frequently when a solution to a problem or a new need is raised the department heads point to the difficulty of finding the time to accomplish the task. While I sympathize with having a heavy workload, our government has to start thinking outside the box a bit. The tasks that are currently taking up the bulk of the city's time are, for the most part, business as usual. Overland's revenues and growth have been flat for years, perhaps it's time to start evaluating business as usual and eliminating or at least changing the procedures that are not working. The time saved could potentially be put to use on new solutions that resolve rather than manage the issues facing our community.

Ultimately the Council took the information gathered under advisement. I suspect that this will be an agenda item at a future workshop, and perhaps, as Councilperson Conlon suggested, another Town Hall meeting.

What follows is the complete video of this meeting. The Special Council meeting that followed is not included and will be the subject of the next article.