Okay, seven o'clock.

I call is to December 9th, 2025 Board of Alderman meeting to order.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God and invisible with liberty and justice for all.

City Clerk, can you please take roll?

Alderman Zavis.

Alderman Morrison?

Alderman Ballas.

Here.

Excused.

Alderman Hall.

Here.

Alderman Maybe.

Here.

Alderman Sebben.

Here.

Alderman Jadala.

Seven are here.

You have a quorum, Your Honor.

Very good.

Under uh presentations, communications, and appointment, we have one item, and that is a year-end review, and that is me.

Um I was speaking with uh city clerk earlier today, and we were just commenting that how you know we all just kind of put our head down and work through every day, and we're kind of focused on what we're working on, and it's good, particularly at the end of the year to kind of take a step back and review all the accomplishments that we've done this year.

And uh 2025 had quite a few.

Um last year I put together a PowerPoint presentation that lasted 20 minutes.

Uh this year we are will have an eight-minute video.

So here we go.

Hi, I'm Scott Shipley, Mayor of Presswood.

As we wrap up another year together, let's take a minute to talk about the moments and the projects and the people that made 2025 one of the most active years our city has seen in a long time.

We've got a lot to cover, so let's get started.

But here at Crestwood, our public works and parks employees worked around the clock for an entire week, plowing and treating nearly a hundred lane miles of our pavement.

It said, so glad to be a Crestwood resident.

So let's keep going.

So it seemed fitting to not only have our board Wallerman and city staff participate in the groundbreaking, but everyone who attended was invited to step up and toss a shovel full of dirt.

It was the entire community that helped celebrate that moment, and to me that's how it should be.

Soon after that, the big equipment got busy to prep the site, foundations were poured, exterior walls and structural steel started going up, and for the first time you can now see the building starting to take shape.

It'll be fun to continue to watch the progress, and every day we get a little bit closer to completion.

Growth continued across our parks.

After extensive community input, the new playground at Crestwood Park opened this spring and immediately became a daily destination for families.

We also completed the new parking lot and restrooms to serve the White Cliff Quarry area.

And guided by our new conservation consultant, we launched the multi-year Back to Nature Habitat Restoration at Crestwood Park.

This stewardship will benefit residents and our natural community for many years.

Recreation programs brought renewed energy in 2025 with events for all ages.

One of the big changes was at our annual Suncrest Fest.

This year we moved this great community event to October to take advantage of better weather, and we updated the format to make it more family-friendly and I think better represent our hometown by.

Other great events included touch a truck, movies in the park, concerts in the park, blues and brews at the quarry, our citywide garage sale, and of course the kids' garage sale where our young entrepreneurs hosted their own sales.

And there was plenty of fun at the Aquatics Center too, where we kicked off the season with Splash Tacular and later had events like Christmas in July, a doggy dive, the cardboard boat race, which was part of the aquatics camp, and Cliff's Kids Triathlon, where our young athletes swam, cycled, and ran to the finish line.

And we even saw a return of Cliff, the official aquatic center mascot.

All in all, this year was filled with fun events for kids, families, and adults, and they all brought us together as a community.

And speaking of community, community involvement was strong yet again in 2025.

Residents from all around the city stepped up and volunteered for honeysuckle hack events, creek cleanups, garden restorations, tree plantings, and really came through and filled our food donation collection sites.

Our public works team also assisted with tornado cleanup in neighboring communities.

Our police and fire continued their outreach through Crestwood Night Out, Dare, Cops and Bobbers, Movies in the Firehouse, Fire Prevention Day, and of course their smoke alarm programs.

Your engagement, questions, and feedback throughout the year really helped to guide our work, and that's why we've made major strides in how we communicate with you.

In 2025, we created a brand new role in Crestwood and hired our first ever communications manager.

And with these new talents and skills, the city significantly expanded our social media updates, improved our printed newsletter, started a monthly citywide e-newsletter, a monthly recreation e-newsletter, and started a lot of new video outreach.

This all helped to create a stronger connection with you and improve clarity and transparency.

And if you haven't signed up yet to receive those monthly e-newsletters, visit the new communications hub page on the city's updated website and check it out.

You know, your elected officials and city staff know that you work hard for your tax dollars, so we work hard to make them go as far as we can.

And in 2025, those efforts resulted in more than $5 million in cost savings and investment returns to the city.

We were able to negotiate significant savings to reduce costs, bring extra funding back to the city through grants for sidewalks, the White Cliff Bridge, park expansions, and public safety improvements.

And we also wisely invested our fund balances in stable and safe ways while still realizing great returns.