West Newsmagazine 9-9-20

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September 9, 2020
WEST NEWSMAGAZINE
New committee brings strife to Wildwood City Council
I NEWS I 21
By CATHY LENNY
Debate over the formation of the newly
created Community Outreach Task Force
in Wildwood took more than an hour for
the 16-member City Council.
The task force was proposed by council
member Ken Remy (Ward 3) to address
community outreach opportunities for
residents. His goals were to improve community
engagement by identifying barriers
to involvement and to discover ways to
increase participation by partnering with
civic organizations and nonprofits.
It was designed to have eight voting
community members and three city council
voting members, along with ad hoc members
with content expertise, city employees
and citizens. The mayor makes the appointments
with city council approval.
At the Aug. 24 city council meeting,
Mayor Jim Bowlin brought forth his list
of proposed candidates for the task force.
Those include a Lafayette High student Aashish
Allu (see westnewsmagazinenetwork.
com for a story on Allu), a pastor, a city
marshal, a past commissioner of St. Louis
County Police, an operations manager, a
software architect, a former Wildwood city
council member and a former Wildwood
mayor. City council members assigned to
the committee are Remy, Katie Dodwell
(Ward 4) and Dan Flaschar (Ward 7).
However, there was a lengthy debate
regarding the proposed committee members,
all but one of whom are male.
Council member Dave Bertolino (Ward
5) suggested that there needed to be more
women on the committee and asked if a
quota could be added. But City Attorney
John Young stated that the appointees
should be based on merit and not gender
and that it could be deemed discriminatory
to have an arbitrary statement of 50%
women, 50% men.
Council member Don Bartoni (Ward
2) pointed out that he and Lauren Edens
(Ward 2) did ask two women to serve on
the committee but they declined.
In addition to wanting to see more
women on the committee, Edens proposed
adding another four to eight members to
the list, noting that it was difficult to get
people to commit to serving.
Council member Larry Brost (Ward 1)
thought that a task force made up of 19 people
was just too many. Brost, Bartoni, Edens and
Joe Farmer (Ward 4) voted against an amendment
to add eight committee members, rather
than to add between four and eight.
Remy offered his full support of increasing
the number of committee members, but
wanted to wait to vote on the entire group,
rather than doing it piecemeal.
“The original intent I had for this committee
was to have a group that would be
reflective of our city,” he said. “I believe
that with that level of diversity is how
we’re going to impact engaging the most
people in this city involved in city activities
and our greater civic organizations.”
Remy made a motion to postpone the
vote. However, Bowlin said the delay could
affect the current list of nominees and city
council members appointed to the committee.
Because of this, McCune said she felt
the council was being forced to vote on the
list, or risk having it changed.
“We don’t have any guarantee moving
forward tonight that there’s going to be
more women,” she said. “This is unfortunate.
I think it’s a positive thing and council
member Remy brought this forward and
for some reason, it has taken a left turn that
I don’t like.”
“With all due respect, nothing has taken
a left turn with this committee,” Bowlin
retorted. He reminded McCune that since
2016 there have been more planning and
zoning representatives that are women in
the entire history of the city and the first
woman ever was appointed to the board of
public safety.
“I am always mindful of any background,”
Bowlin said. “First and foremost, I look at
the merit of the individual and whether
they want to take the time to be on the
committee and to represent our residents.”
McCune interjected that she was just
referring to the Community Outreach Task
Force and acknowledged that other committees
of the city did have more diversity.
Not everyone was in favor of postponing
the vote. Brost said there would always be
people being added or deleted to the committee
once it was up and running.
“It’s a moving, dynamic process,” Brost
said. “We’re going to have changes on it two
to three times a year with this many people.”
Remy agreed to withdraw his motion
if he was given the latitude to work with
council members to put together a list of
additional potential candidates.
Bowlin thought that was an excellent
idea and said he has never refused a meeting
with any council member, but that he
wants to meet with the potential committee
members himself as well.
With that, the current list of candidates
was unanimously approved.