Calling to order the public infrastructure and utilities committee meeting for Wednesday, July 8th, 2026.

It is 3:33 p.m.

Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Present.

Present.

What's that?

Thank you.

Present.

Thank you.

With that, um, well, I believe Alderman Cox Antwee texted me.

She should be on.

So I called it by the board and not the board or not.

Uh with that, we'll keep moving.

Uh and go ahead and approve the minutes.

Uh so I'll take a motion to approve the minutes from Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026.

June 24th.

I move to approve the minutes from June 24th, 2026.

Second.

Madam Clerk, please call roll.

I meant the I meant the minutes from the twenty-fourth, and the Alderman from the first corrected and made the right motion.

Audible woman Boyd.

Aye.

Audible McClark Hubbard.

Aye.

Five stress white sir.

Aye.

Audible in the vote.

Audible McCock Santui.

Aye.

Chair Browning.

Aye.

We have five eye votes.

Thank you.

With that, uh, we will move on to board bills for review.

We have two board bills for review today, and then we have a committee discussion, which will include a uh presentation by Aaron Dehone uh on trash pickup and volunteer efforts that uh he's been heading up, and we're really excited to hear about that because we really appreciate all of our citizen volunteers in our city.

Uh so we'll start with uh Alderman Aldridge, your board bill, uh board bill number thirteen.

Uh you are recognized.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, members of the uh public infrastructure committee.

Uh Board Bill 14 is various speed humps and the 14th ward.

I do have a committee sub in front of us as well as an amendment.

Um we haven't done any, we didn't do any speed humps last session.

Um, so it is a lot in this one because I've been compiling streets working with uh residents to try to get uh a large list of speed humps instead of kind of doing them uh here and there.

So um uh would entertain uh maybe a member adopting the committee sub for board bill thirteen.

Thank you.

I'll accept a motion to accept the committee sub for board bill thirteen.

Second.

It's moved by the alder woman from the tenth, seconded by the autumn from the first.

Um Madam Cork, please call roll.

Audible boy.

Aye.

Audible McClark Hubbard.

Aye.

Vice Chair Sweitzer, aye.

Alderman Devoty.

Audible McCock Sentwee.

Aye.

Chair Browning.

Aye.

We have five aye votes.

Thank you.

And with that, Alderman, uh, you also have an amendment to make to the suit.

Yes, just want to be clear.

So the committee sub is uh um the when we file board bill 13.

It's kind of almost like a placeholder because we knew we were gonna do some uh speed hump.

So the committee sub is a completely different version of what is filed.

And then the amendment uh for uh board bill 13 committee sub is uh as we was compiling um the streets, we left off um two areas in the St.

Louis Place neighborhood around the St.

Louis Place Park.

Um that would go um on North 21st Street and also Rosh and Bach.

The park kind of does a U-turn.

So we want to put some speed humps around the park to slow down traffic.

Uh and with that, Mr.

Chairman, unless anybody got questions on the committee sub.

Um we hope somebody would entertain a motion to accept amendment number one to board bill 13 committee substitute as in committee.

Thank you.

Some vote uh second moved by the alderman from the 10th, seconded by the all one from the first.

Anyone want to call previous previous roll?

Okay, thank you.

Uh previous roll is called, hearing no objection.

Amendment one is now um added to uh board bill 13 committee substitute as amended.

All right.

Uh uh, I would just ask for do pass recommendation on unless anybody got questions on board bill 13 committee substitute as amended in the I'll go around and see if we have any questions from the committee.

I'm just gonna look up and see if anyone alder one Schweitzer.

Um there's two spots that say subsection one, so I guess that just needs to be changed.

Um to uh one need to be subsection three.

Seems like a scriptner's error more than an amendment, and it says speed bumps instead of speed humps throughout the bill, which is another probably just typing.

Yes, so the subsection one, um, so those are part of the amendment for the two speed bumps or humps.

However, we we can clarify that to be one.

The the two that are in there are actually in um section subsection one, subsection one.

I guess it so the the amendment language is going into the St.

Louis Place bucket, but um it's going into subsection one.

Yeah, it just says subsection one, St.

Louis Place, subsection two, Hyde Park, subsection one, college hill.

So I just think it should say three.

I think that's oh okay, I get what you said.

The college here wants to say subsection three, yes.

I don't think it it doesn't change anything substantive with the bill, so I think it's just like a typo more than anything else.

I will make sure because this bill will have to go through uh engrossment since it's being changed that I work with the clerks and make sure that that is fixed.

Thanks for catching that, Alderwoman.

And uh yeah, the thank you.

There is a difference between a speed hump and a speed bump, believe it or not.

So um might be something to correct too.

And eventually we'll get a bill to make sure we don't have to do board bills for these anymore.

Um so with that, uh any other questions or comments from the committee.

Seeing none, I'll take a motion to uh pass board bill 13 committee substitute as amended with a due pass recommendation.

So move.

Second previous roll hearing no objection, and I also forgot to ask if there's any members from the public.

Is there anyone signed up on this bill?

We have none.

Okay.

Um and with that, uh board bill 13, committee substitute as amended is passed out of committee with the do pass recommendation.

Thanks.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, members of the committee.

Uh our next item on the agenda is board bill 58 for Alderwoman Schweitzer.

You are recognized.

Thank you.

Chairman Browning, members of the committee.

Uh this bill is also a speed hump bill.

It's uh 401 on Pennsylvania.

They did the petition signature, you know, gathering process, and uh it was a vastly um popular thing to put a speed hump there.

We have some some speeding issues in that part of uh Crownette.

So with that, I hope to earn your recommendation for a due pass recommendation of board bill 58.

Thank you.

Uh do any members of the committee have any questions on board bill 58?

Seeing none, do we have any members of the public signed up to testify?

We have none.

Thank you.

Uh with that, uh I Alderwoman, do you have any closing comments?

Yeah.

Um with that, I'll accept a motion to pass board bill number 58 with a due pass recommendation.

So move.

Second, previous.

It's moved by the Alderman from the 10th, seconded by the other one from the first, and a call for previous roll from the other one from the first.

Hearing no objection.

We have passed board bill number 58.

And with that, we'll move on to the next item.

Our agenda.

We have no resolution review.

And we do have one eight.

Oh my boy, could you move your microphone?

Or were you commenting to us?

Okay.

I'm sorry.

No worries.

Thank you.

With that, we'll move on to the committee discussions and we'll start with the only item there, discussion item number one.

Aaron, uh, you are uh welcome to come up at this time and uh present.

So uh at one point in my life I was a teacher, and so I have guided for you guys and then there will be a pop quiz at the end, and the person who answers correctly gets which I'm gonna call it.

I hope that's not a bribe.

I think we can accept that.

Um, and uh if you just want to start by introducing yourself, uh, and um we're we're excited to hear from you.

Great.

Well, I'm very uh thankful and happy that you all were able to have me.

I greatly appreciate it.

So I will try to pull this up.

Um everything looking good?

Okay, cool.

So um and you said like 10 15 minutes or for the presentation around there, something that'd be great.

Okay, great.

Um so my name's Aaron Dohan, and I'm the founder and director at Trash Retrees.

We're um uh city group.

We focus on planting trees uh and picking up litter, so pretty straightforward there.

And I'm here to present to you some of the findings of our group over the past five years that we've been working and uh volunteering in the city.

And so this is about the cost of cleaning up St.

Louis, um, how 7200 can pick up 560 bags of litter.

Okay.

Okay, cool.

So the first couple slides we have here are just gonna be pictures showing uh some of our work in the last year, uh 25 2025 to 2026.

Um it's us, uh trash retrees with the clean crew, um, which is um a group of individuals without homes who get paid to pick up litter.

Uh and I'll speak about them a little more later on in the presentation.

Uh one of the neighborhoods we focused on this year was the Gravoy Park neighborhood.

This is us um with a big pile of illegal dumping behind us on the right hand side.

So that's what it looks like right there.

Um near an alleyway.

We learned that a person had just moved out, and they put all their stuff right there.

Okay.

I think this is Miami.

This is off Miami Avenue.

This is what it looked like whenever we finished.

Um so you could see we had a small group there, um, 10, 12 people.

We worked from about 9 30 to 11 30.

We had a U-Haul.

We filled it up.

Okay.

15-foot U-Haw.

Here goes us again.

I'm in the middle there.

The person next to me is Andre Cole.

He is the director at the bounce back project, which finds the people to make up the clean crew.

So he goes out, finds the individuals who get paid after we pick up litter to help us.

So this is us there.

There's about eight of us.

This was a mess.

Um, so this is one alleyway.

Um, maybe you guys have seen similar stuff like this.

Uh, we had a group there, you know, about eight of us or so.

We worked a couple hours, 16 hours in total.

And that's what it looked like whenever we worked.

So it just kind of goes to show before we get into like sort of the numbers and the depth of this presentation, what you can do with a small group of people and some dedication.

So, like I said, we're trash retrees, we pick up litter, we plant trees, we focus on St.

Louis City, we're St.

Louis City focused.

I live in the fourth ward, uh, Lindenwood Park neighborhood.

And so this presentation is gonna focus on the litter aspect of trash for trees.

Okay, so since 2022, we've operated in 14 neighborhoods.

Each neighborhood we've spent about two to three months in.

So pilot year was Princeton Heights, worked out well.

We got a couple sponsors.

We moved forward.

We did Clifton Heights, Tower Grove South, Forest Park, Southeast.

The following year we did Boulevard Heights, Holly Hills Patch, Carondolette, then Bevo Mill, Dutchtown Marine Villa, and then this past year we did Mount Pleasant Gravely Park and Biton Park West.

So, like I said, we spend about three months in each one of those neighborhoods.

Um, and we get to know the neighborhoods pretty well.

We get to know the streets and the alleys that do have a lot of litter.

We focus mainly on those arterial streets, those big streets, uh Gravoy, Morgan Ford, stuff like that.

But whenever we had the clean crew with us, we focused on alleys where we could really do a lot of good.

These are the all-time stats for trash retrees going back to from 2022 to this year.

We've picked up over half a million pieces of litter.

We count each piece of litter we picked up, and I'll get into that here in a little bit.

We add them up, we keep track of them.

That equaled about 1,700 bags of litter, 33 gallon size bags of litter.

Okay.

So we take these bags of litter.

Sometimes we take them to the dump.

Sometimes we have 10 bags, and you can kind of throw a couple in your own roll off trash can, and then you can spread them out among alley dumpsters.

So we always want to take the litter out with us.

That way it doesn't get pulled out of the dumpster again, put back on the ground.

So we never refill the dumpsters up in the alleys where we operate.

We had about 850 volunteers engaged.

Each person who shows up counts as one volunteer.

1,400 volunteer hours, so about 180 pickups.

And for the trees, we've planted about 300 native trees in the yards of homeowners.

Okay.

This is just a map to kind of show where we were.

We've been working our way north.

So about three years ago, we went deep South City in the Patch neighborhood.

And we start we started working our way north.

So we have done Dutch Town as well.

We've done Marine Villa.

And then this year coming up, we're gonna do uh Biton Park and Sioux Lard.

So we're just gonna do two neighborhoods.

So hopefully make contact with the Alders whenever we we start up again in September.

Um so litter pickup stats for this past year.

Uh we had about 480 hours that we worked.

Um we had about 214 volunteers.

We picked up, it was our most ever year.

Um, I guess you could call it success, but we picked up 176,000 pieces of litter.

Um and it equaled about 366 pieces of litter per hour.

Okay.

Um sometimes you pick up a lot of cigarette butts, which we count as one piece, sometimes you pick up a lot of pieces of plastic, which count as one piece.

So that count can in that size can influence how much fills your bag.

Um, yeah.

Okay, so this is just to put a little note with the clean crew because the relationship with them was really great.

Um, like I said, Andre Cole is the director there, and he put a post out on Facebook, I guess, in response to one of mine.

And I was like, this is what I've kind of been looking for.

So we worked together, we started doing some fundraising for them, and they were able to come out with us on the spot, and they did about eight of these cleanups with us.

And um uh yeah, he would bring five guys each time.

They'd work total of 15 hours just for that crew, and whenever we had them, we would have 10, 12 people, and so we would go hidden alley.

I'd rent a U-Haul truck, we take it to the city dump, um, and that would be if we take before and after pictures, like you saw that way.

We could post all this on the Facebook group trash retrees to let people know what we're doing, um, and to get you know support essentially for it.

Um, good.

And like I said, those guys got paid about 13 bucks an hour, which really made me think after this last year.

Okay, what can we do if we did if if we had money devoted to picking up litter on a grander scale.

I wanna, excuse me.

I want to make mention of keep America Beautiful.

This is where I get my stats.

I know it's a little cut off, not too much though.

Um, they've done these massive litter studies across America.

They've been in operation since 1953.

They're pretty much the number one trash pickup organization in the country because they organize so many other people.

So they've done three major litter studies, one in 2009, one in 2020, and one in 2026.

And they have shown decreases in the amount of litter um in the US.

But 35 billion pieces of litter in 2026, it's a ton of litter.

Okay.

And what that found was divided by the population of our country, it's about 96 pieces of litter per person.

So that helps inform us because it gives us a metric of like success.

Okay.

We've all picked up litter before.

We go back the next week, the streets dirty.

It's it's disheartening in a way.

But whenever you know that you did your part, it can help you feel a little better, and it can help give you a little bit of encouragement to keep going.

So you can have fun with it, and you'd be like, I'll pick up litter for everybody in my family.

And then you pick up 960 pieces of litter.

Okay, and so then it just kind of you can kind of I don't know, get carried away in a fun way, sort of sort of thing.

Okay.

Do people hate litter?

Absolutely.

95% of people in the Keep America Beautiful study found that litter is a problem.

And one in four people discussed it with a friend in the past year.

So, what does this tell us?

This tells us that our work is valuable.

This tells us that no matter what party you vote for, uh who you are as a person, or how you grew up or whatever, you think litter is a problem, probably.

So it goes to show that people who pick up litter are valued, people want to see litter picked up, and that possibly putting funds towards picking up litter could also be valued by society.

How much litter is there in St.

Louis?

Well, if you do the math, um, we have a city about the size of 280,000, I believe.

If you times that by 96,000, or I'm sorry, 96 pieces per person, uh, you have about 26 million pieces of litter.

So it's a lot, okay?

It's a lot.

And maybe it's too much to pick up in one year.

And that's not really what I'm trying to say with this presentation.

Okay.

How can we fix the problem?

There are two main ways you go about picking up litter.

One's through education and one's through action.

At Trash Retrees, we focus on action, so that's what I can speak to most clearly, even though education is as important.

Um, but action at scale does require funding.

And so let's just hypothetically, or not hypothetically, but let's put it out there.

How much would it cost to pick up all of the litter in the city?

And we're looking at about 1.1 million dollars.

That's a lot of money.

And I'm not sure that's something that the board wants to put money towards.

And that's not really what I'm here to say either.

I'm here to say that is what we have.

Let's think of it creatively.

Let's think of it as how we can tackle this challenge of litter in a creative way, making a visual impact, something that's good for the environment, and something that we can build off of.

Which was we spent about 480 hours, we picked up about 560 bags of litter, 176,000 pieces roughly.

And so when I started thinking about these numbers at the end of the year, I was started thinking, okay, what could happen if we did this in one ward?

What would happen if we did it in three wards?

What if we did it in all 14 wards?

What would this look like?

How much actually would it cost?

Let's just do some rough, let's do some easy math, okay.

So if we were to do this with just one ward, the cost is about $7200, paying someone $15 an hour to pick up litter.

You get 560 bags off the street or off the alley.

Um, if you try to do it in three wards, kind of like the trash or trees model, you're looking at about 21,000.

You're picking up 1700 bags of litter.

And if you were to implement this across all wards, you're looking at about 100,000, you're gonna get close to 8,000 bags of litter off the street.

You're out there every week, people are seeing it.

Um, this is for some tips for how to get the work done.

This is like the thinking creatively piece.

Okay, let's say we do devote some funds to it, something like that.

How would this look in reality?

Okay, for my experience, I can speak a little bit to that.

Let's say you get three workers out there each week, okay?

They're each putting in three hours, so you get about 10 hours right there.

Uh and you have 480 hours to allocate across this one ward.

You're out there 50 weeks, you're putting in 10 hours of picking up litter in one ward for almost the entire year.

It's very visible.

People are gonna see that, they're gonna see the progress.

Neighbors are gonna see it, the people picking up litter are gonna see it.

It's gonna create a sort of positive reinforcement cycle.

And don't spread your workers out, have the workers work together because A, you may have really heavy stuff.

We picked up a lot of mattresses this year.

You needed two people to put that in the U-Haul, okay?

It's also more fulfilling, okay?

No one likes cleaning their house by themselves.

It's always better to do it with somebody else because you get the work done faster.

It's motivating, it's empowering, and then whenever you go back and do it again the next time, you realize how much you were able to get done with that small group.

Okay.

Also, one thing to think about is is that once you do start cleaning up litter, um, one of the main things that they found in the study by Keep America Beautiful is that people litter, one of the main reasons they litter is because a place already has litter in it.

So if you are working to keep a spot clean and cleaner and cleaner, over time you should see results that show that spot is actually staying cleaner.

How do you get those funds?

This is the magical question.

Um, and just a couple suggestions here.

Let's say you were to use some ward capital funds.

$7200 is less than one percent of ward capital funds, and you're getting 560 bags off the street right there.

If ward capital funds can't be used in this way, could the definition of ward capital funds changed?

Just a suggestion.

Second way, could you charge one dollar per household for a city beautification fund, a kind of pilot project to see how this would work.

We have about I think 130,000 households in the city that would pay to do this across all wards.

You would you would hit your numbers.

You would pick up, you know, the I forget the bags of litter on that slide, but you would pick up so many bags of litter, you pick up thousands of pieces of litter.

Okay.

I wouldn't recommend rolling it out across all 14 wards in a pilot project.

I would start with one ward and see how it works from there.

But just to say it's a one dollar buy-in, or you could even make it optional, kind of like the reparations fund was.

And I guarantee if 95% of people think that litter is a problem in the city.

You're gonna have people who say, Yeah, I want to devote a dollar to this.

Can I devote $10 to this?

And then you might see a lot of money come in for something like this.

Okay.

One of the last slides, implementations.

You know, what does this look like?

Okay.

So let's say, boom, we're gonna do $70, $7200.

We're gonna devote some money to it.

Okay.

Uh we're gonna pick a ward, all right.

Whatever ward that might be.

Uh, where do we start?

Okay.

You may need to do a little assessment of that ward, but some some general places, alleys are a great place to start.

We all know alleys get a lot of litter, illegal dumping.

You could do residential areas.

Everyone likes a clean neighborhood.

Could focus on school zones.

We have a lot of beautiful schools in the city, a lot of neighborhoods around those areas.

Beautifying them is great.

Could be on business districts as well.

And you could get buy-in from businesses and have a kind of public pro public private partnership with this.

Umce you pick up that litter, let people know about it.

Use your social media tools, use your Facebook accounts, use your Instagrams, send out your monthly emails that the all years do.

Let people know what you do with government programs.

We got to tell people what we're doing, or else they're gonna think the money's being wasted.

So if their one dollar goes towards picking up litter, then show them all the bags of litter that they have.

Use that Facebook account to update it every week that they're out there before after photos, before after, so that they can see the difference.

Um, and then of course you can use those moments to educate people about the importance of not littering, which is that education tool.

In summary, in 2025-2026, Trasher Trees worked 480 hours and picked up about 500 bags of litter with volunteer labor and donated funds.

At 15 bucks an hour, it costs about 7200.

And I think if your wards replicated this model, you can make some meaningful visual progress with minimal investment.

And if you guys needed help rolling out this project in the city, I would gladly help with that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh I I really really appreciated this.

Um, not only do you are you doing great work and I love the idea of trash for trees, uh, both of those things are uh really important.

But um I I do trash cleanups in my neighborhood uh where I live, and I encourage all my neighborhoods to to do it because it's what I call a fill your cup activity.

Uh you always hear the saying you can't pour from an empty cup.

And one of the ways to really make yourself, as you said, feel better about your neighborhood, uh, feel proud of your neighborhood, and feel like you've spent your effort worthwhile uh is to go out and pick up that trash because when you look at the bags at the end of the uh at the end of the effort, you can see very clearly how much trash is no longer on the street.

And so every little tiny piece you pick up, and sometimes you find it buried in the mud.

And so you know it's been there for a while.

Uh, and you know that you know, that pass that you did will keep it clean for several months because the trash you picked up was several months old.

So you feel like you're making progress.

I know some people might think this is a sisophean task and that people are just gonna litter again, but I appreciate you mentioning that uh one of the reasons people litter is when they feel like there's already litter in that spot.

Uh and so you can really deter littering and other kinds of uh I think vandalism dumping uh graffiti stuff like that by making sure you're cleaning these areas up and keeping them clean.

Uh so this is absolutely a problem in the city.

And I think that the city would feel a lot more proud of itself if we could get something like this going.

So I really appreciate not only the proposal, but the the really good data on this.

Um I'm gonna go through the committee to see if anybody else has any questions or comments, uh, starting with uh Alder Woman Boyd.

Uh thank you, Beth.

It was a great presentation.

Ironically, I think I met one of the young men that was working on this project.

So uh thank you for the information.

And and I, as Alderman Browning, we have cleanups in our community.

And so we what we found out is when people consistently keep going back to a dumping site, then people figure out they're not gonna, you know, accept that dumping in that area.

So I think this is good information, and I really appreciate you bringing it to us.

Thank you.

All the one core cupboard.

Thank you so much.

First of all, I think I won.

So I want the watch Mikali because that's a good note.

So I want the watch Makala because I took good notes on your paper.

I I have it, I was just gonna ask one question.

I have I haven't asked the question yet.

I'll wait till all the okay.

I'm just saying.

Thank you.

This was this was fun to do too.

But I uh uh a couple of things really stood out um to me.

And just want you to know, first of all, as you're moving north, I would love to host you in a neighborhood or area in a tenth ward.

Yeah, so you're getting close.

Yeah, I know in the neighborhoods that you've hit.

And um, it's really inspiring, you know, this commitment.

This is a very unique way to be committed um to your city.

My children know one of my pet peeves is littering, like when people litter out their cars, they say, Mommy, don't say nothing, don't say nothing, you know.

A hawk and other things, but um, you know, that I just think it's you know, it's just it's beyond disheartening and just trifling, you know, to for lack of better words to say when people just throw trash out on the ground.

So uh, you know, what I will note also is that I met Andre Cole um one time when I was volunteering down at 10 city, he is amazing.

So to know that you're partnering with him alone, I'm sure that really build capacity in there.

Can you tell me if you think the people, the volunteers that he bring in, are they unhoused?

Um I do know some other stories.

I know um one person is unhoused.

Um I know one person had um like um um housing, but it was temporary.

Yeah, um so yeah, I mean, one person was really yeah, there's like some hard stories, you know.

There are some hard stories when you're working with IJ Call, and that's why I was thinking that's another added value, right?

To a program like this because people always try to devalue unhoused um neighbors, and so to be able to put them, give them some work like this to do um without the barriers of an application or having a house, you know, and things of their nature IDs, which we know he gives IDs, gets them IDs, but um the way that he works with them, I think that's an extra added value as you advocate for a program like this is to say, you know, this also reaches into this need that we know um is big in the city of St.

Louis.

I did have one additional question.

Who rents the U-Hauls?

And is that average, is that cost average into this um 7200 per water?

Not no the 7200 dollars is is probably a low ball.

Okay, they'd probably be higher than that, to be honest.

Um, for my experience renting the U-Hall was about 75.

Yeah, and it ended up being about a four-hour rental.

Um, I'd pick it up in the morning, bring it back in the afternoon, you know, you gotta sweep it out and everything.

Um, and then you gotta, you know, but that does include like gas costs as well.

Yeah.

So um, because you gotta like put it back wherever the meter was in the car.

So yeah, um, I know there are definitely some details missed on that.

Um, I think my goal in presenting these numbers was to have like a start.

Yeah.

So like this can this is a base number.

And yes, it's gonna go up from here, but with that pilot project, you're gonna learn.

Okay, you're gonna learn what works, what doesn't work, you're gonna learn what's more expensive, what's less expensive.

Could you for the city, you guys wouldn't need to go get a U-Haul truck.

So that so going there and taking it back wouldn't be part of your time.

Your crew could just pick it up from their starting place in the morning, and then they would that would be their vehicle for the day.

The way I was trying to think about this creatively was like, let's say you have this group of three guys and they're out for the day.

The first thing they do is they go hit up this alley for three hours and then they pick up that litter.

And it is certainly important that they are able to have photos to report back because they're gonna be on their own, and we would need to know that that litter actually got picked up.

Yeah.

So having those photos kind of as evidence of a job well done, really important.

You know, as taxpayers, we want to know our money is going to something that's actually happening.

And so, and we want the litter picked up.

So, yeah.

Where do you dump the litter?

So, like I said, whenever we get a big haul like that, okay, we're going to like you can't take some large loads to the south side dump.

I've been turned away before.

So, but the north side dump, I don't know if you've been there, it's humongous.

They take anything.

Yeah.

So whenever we have like multiple uh beds or mattresses, we're going to the north side immediately.

But if we have like 15 bags, we'll take it to the south side.

Now, let's say um we're done for the day, we have like six bags of litter, then I'll take them home and I'll just put two in my own like green rollout cart, and then I'll go in the alley and put two in one dumpster and two in the other dumpster.

And since it's not filling up the dumpsters and I'm on good terms with my neighbors, it's not a big deal.

But if I filled up a dumpster with a bunch of trash bags, they probably wouldn't be so we definitely avoid doing that.

And then one of the things I I did learn this year firsthand was just seeing the dumpsters where we were picking up litter and how they get ravaged through and people are in there looking for clothes.

Yeah.

And so all that litter that they pull out in the search for what they want is left on the ground.

And so that's the importance of us making sure that we take our litter with us, or else one of our bags could be strewn across the ground and then all of our work was for nothing.

Do you have to pay when you use the city dump?

No, no, city dump is totally free.

It's awesome.

That's do you use your 12 free or is it some I know every resident gets 12 free dumps?

Are you using your personal I haven't maxed out okay?

My 12 free dumps.

So yeah.

So for me, just why I'm asking these questions, Erin, is even before if we could get something like this really started in the pilot that you think of, I'd see ways that the city could do a public-private type partnership on a program like this.

I see the value in, you know, if you don't have to run a U-Ha, but one of our dump trucks follows your crew or is with their crew and takes it right there.

I see the value in of course you not having to pay um for the dump.

So that that happened a couple times by accident.

We were out while the dump trunk were making their runs.

And so uh we took all of our we just started emptying bags, like our bags, not empty.

We started throwing our bags into dumpsters into the trash can.

Yeah, sorry, the dump truck, because he was there on the spot and they were good with it.

And after that, I was like, man, this is a genius idea.

So I reached out to the refuse commission, deputy refuse commissioner Randy Brightonfeld, who's a great partner, by the way.

Absolutely.

And uh he it didn't happen because it was kind of the end of the year, but he was gonna get me the routes so that we could like set up our trash pickups at the time that the dump trucks are there, so we would just like throw our stuff into the dump trucks because they're only they could pick up the dumpster full of stuff around that are a kids play things, broken chairs, you know, a sink, like all the stuff that we're getting.

So we were able to get all of that into the dump truck.

So it was great happenstance.

Great luck.

Yeah.

That that is great.

And listen, I know Randy who needs the cheerleader right now more than ever.

Uh, he know he has one in me.

Um, I'm definitely gonna share this with him.

You know, the work that's already organically been happening because we know that our staffing is doesn't have the capacity to do this kind of work, it just doesn't.

And I don't think people understand that it's different crews, right?

That does the crew that comes with the dump truck, he doesn't get off his truck.

So um he comes through the alley and he goes to the alley.

But to your point, the stuff is still left there, and then we get the calls, right?

On the stuff that's left, and we have to send the other bulk crews or other people outside.

You know, this is amazing.

And just the fact that you know, you hear ideas like this, but to see you put it into work and have the data to prove it is just very inspiring and count me as a champion cheerleader.

Um when you take it to whatever we take it to.

But again, I see some immediate ways that we can help support um support this program and thank you for the 480 hours that you've already given to the city.

You're welcome.

And one last point to that picking up litter in the alleys, we would literally have people step out of their back porch say thank you for doing that because it's been there, it's been there, it's been there.

Yeah, it's never gone away.

So thank you for doing it.

So I can imagine.

Like we got more people saying thank you whenever we picked up litter um in alleys and then in any other spot in the city.

Yeah.

So it's really great.

That's great.

Thank you.

Yeah, shout out to to Randy.

Um we're certainly lucky to have a lot of city employees here at the city that really care about the work they do.

And Randy is one of those people.

Absolutely.

Uh other one choice here.

Thank you for being here.

It's always great to see you.

Um I feel very lucky to have had so much all of my ward as part of this program at uh different times over the years.

And um I love the you know, picking up trash to uh get sponsorships so that trees can be planted in there.

I mean, people in my ward have really loved that, and a lot's been planted, a lot's been picked up, so it's been it's been a great program.

Um I guess this is are you um interested in continuing to run this program, or you kind of feel like you're ready to pass it off to the next iteration.

I mean, where do you see this going from like a you know, because you're kind of making a proposal for the city to to to do some of this work, but you know, you have such a wonderful organization that's you know could grow and be sponsored and get grants and do it like you know, the nonprofit route.

So I guess how do you see that future for yourself?

Yeah, I mean, um it's been like slow growth, you could say.

So um, you know, we have a good group of volunteers who show up all the time, about six to eight of them.

And um, so yeah, I do can I do plan on continuing this um in the future as much as I can.

Uh this isn't a presentation to like hand it off to somebody and you know, creatively, let's say that the city started sending out crews to do this kind of work, you know, and if that matched up with where trash retrees was at the same time, could we actually work together in that sort of like volunteer city way uh to make a bigger impact?

That's one way to think about this as well.

Um so yeah, I mean I'm just looking to continue on and do the work that we can.

You know, I've always tried to reassure myself along the way that we're doing good work because we're not getting all the litter.

Absolutely not.

And we know that microplastics are beginning to affect humans in really harmful ways.

And I wish we could do more.

Um But I just know that uh like you were saying, your cup gets full, you know.

And then the question I kind of asked myself was what am I gonna do the time with the time given to me?

So I'm Lord of the Rings fan, it's a Gandalf quote.

But you know, I have time, I'm I'm a stay-at-home dad.

Uh, my son goes to school, I drop him off.

What can I do after that?

And so um this just seemed like a really good use of my time.

Um, and that's what I like to put it towards.

And if it doesn't become anything besides a group of 10 volunteers getting together once a week and picking up litter, then that's great.

But I would like to see something taken to the next to the next level.

I think there's a lot of benefits.

I think there's a lot of great benefits health-wise, environmentally, uh, for the look of our neighborhoods.

And I think it's a sign of good government to invest in stuff like this when you know 95% of people are see litter as a problem.

Um, it's a win-win, you know.

I think there's a lot of great partnership opportunities out there.

There's some other pickup partners at the bottom of your uh of your guided notes there.

Open space STL is is the top uh nonprofit in the area picking up litter.

Their Merrimack Stream Clean is coming up next month, but they also do too that are heavily focused in the city, the River to Pear Trash Bash and the Confluence Trash Bash.

Um beyond housing is a big player, and then the aquarium foundation, about seven pickups along the river, uh with one being at the end of this month.

So they're all important partners, you know.

The Aquarium Foundation also has a great uh educational aspect of their program, which uh is great for kids.

It's focused on kids, which is really where you gotta go on with education.

Uh this year at Mason Elementary where my uh son goes, we started the uh Missouri official trash trash hater badge.

And kids who picked up 152 pieces of litter were recognized by their state representative Nick Kimball uh at a school-wide assembly this year.

And so we were able to get about 13 kids to pick up that amount of litter and it was a great assembly, and it got kids.

I mean, we had first graders more than any other grade, but the most litter.

That's so sweet.

So yeah, it was wonderful.

That's not trash or trees related, that's just my passion for hating trash.

Sure, fair enough.

Um, I also hate trash.

Uh I it's been just such an honor working with you over the last several years on this and being a being able to volunteer and to support however I can.

And um, you know, I'm here for whatever you want to do with this and however you want to move it.

Um, you know, I I I definitely could see your nonprofit growing and um, you know, there's uh requests for proposals and and different grant opportunities that could uh help fund capacity and you know, sometimes you need letters of support from your elected officials for those things.

And I to Alderman Clark Hubbard's point, you know, there's a lot of ways for us to support this and support the work that you do um from a lot of different standpoints.

So uh appreciate the the presentation today.

I was so invested in the presentation.

I didn't see this handout until late too late, and I saw Alderman Browning had all of them answers filled out.

So I I failed uh my class today.

Um I shouldn't try to compete with Alderman Browning and Alderman Clark Hubbard on being the star student.

So um I'll pass that uh accolade to them.

But thank you for being here.

It's really great to see you.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Aldo and Coxantui.

All right.

I would just like to echo my colleagues first and foremost and say thank you, Aaron, for for being here and for this phenomenal presentation.

I think your uh Gandalf quote was well placed.

I know it's a lot of time and a lot of hours that you've been dedicating to this.

Um, but I I would also like to say I think it's really, really great time, well spent and certainly worth it uh for all of the residents in the city of our in our city that you are benefiting um by bringing people together to to do this and to clean up our neighborhoods.

Um I did hear uh and see in your little chart that you've got one A Ford A neighborhood and a couple on the way.

Uh you mentioned Sularn and Benton Park sometime in September.

So please let's get together.

Um I I would love to talk to you about that because I agree with my colleagues that um I I think my ward and many of the other in the city would benefit by a program like this growing um and and expanding in whatever way uh that looks like as Alder Woman Sweitcher articulated.

I think you can add me as a as a champion to help support in uh whatever that looks like for you.

Um, but I think when there are great leaders like yourself that have gotten something so fantastic going, um, of course, we want to see you continue to be um a part of that effort in any way that you would like to be.

Um, so I think that's very important, you know, and whatever way you're envisioning this expanding that, we just support you in that effort.

Um, because I do think it's it's really great and a testament to your leadership in terms of how well this has expanded over the years that you've been running uh the program.

I um I had a couple questions, but I think they honestly got answered.

Um, and Alder Woman Clark Hubbard's question just about kind of the the the dollars that you're spending and and the cost.

I know you focused the cost today that you put forward um in your presentation on the cost of what you're uh estimating to support each individual in person um that is participating in the program.

Um and I think that's great, by the way, because I think you know, one of the huge values of something like this is that you're bringing people in and you're bringing community in, um, especially for um individuals that may be going through hard times um and looking for a place to belong and a community to belong to.

So I certainly don't want to diminish that effort, but I know if if there is discussion about how the city can support and partner and maybe future grant programs that uh this program might be looking to apply to that you guys kind of put together those holistic numbers of things like trucks and and what that might look like just to make sure that you guys are getting this the full support that you're going to need to expand this, right?

Um, so I did uh just want to call that out.

That was one question that I think you you already answered.

Um, but that's kind of why I I think it may be on our minds because we just want to make sure that we're supporting you and getting every single thing that you need uh to make a program like this work.

So um I I don't have anything further beyond that, but again, just thank you so much for coming.

And I'm looking forward to seeing how this grows and and help in any way I can to bring it to more of my neighborhoods as well.

All right, great, great, thank you.

I think other one cox hand we said it.

You said the words great leader.

Um, and I think leadership is uh what I think of when I think this effort, I think you're um the the War of the Rings quote was apt.

Uh it's I'm also a big fan, and um I'm trying not to nerd out here, but uh I I think there's a lot of things I could reference here.

Um, but it is about being that person that steps up and does what needs to be done.

Uh there's uh no one else who's going to reach out and you know pick up that piece of trash if they don't see someone else doing it.

And it's one of those things that you're right, when you're out there cleaning things up, people do come out and they thank you, or sometimes they'll even spontaneously join you.

We had someone do that on one of our cleanups recently where he just came out of his house and was like, Oh, I'll help.

And um it looked exactly like one of those pictures you showed where it was a dumpster full of just trash and and debris, and after we were done, it was all clean and it's kind of stayed clean too.

It's been a few months and it's more or less stayed clean because we we made that effort and people can see that we made that effort.

Um similarly, you know, we know illegal dumping is a huge problem in the city.

We have bulk pickup and a pretty great bulk pickup program here in the city.

Uh, but that means that people come into the city and use our our alleys as dumping spots, which is strange when you consider that the dumps are free.

Uh that you can just take it to the dump to the right spot.

So I disagree with my colleagues in that.

I don't hate trash.

I love trash when it is disposed properly.

Uh I I think it's great to see, as I said before, the result at the end of one of any of these efforts, not only the result on the ground, but looking at what's in your bag and realizing that's no longer on the street.

Uh so I really encourage people to go out, volunteer your time uh in your neighborhoods.

It's one of the best things you can do for your neighborhood.

People are always asking me how can I get involved.

And I'm not trying to be dismissive when I say go pick out trash.

I mean that's one of the best ways you can get involved.

Uh so you're seeing a problem and you're going out there and fixing it.

And I just think that's amazing.

Um you have one last thing for us, I believe.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm gonna say two quick things.

Um, possibly your number one ally in the public in the private sector is gonna be real because uh Garcia Properties Anna Garcia is my main funder.

She has been for five years in a row.

Realtors want to sell houses that look nice, they want the properties to look nice.

So they want the trash to be gone.

So um any kind of public-private partnership, I would reach out to whatever St.

Louis Real Literature Association or whatever it is, because they they want to see things clean as well.

They have a vested interest in making sure that they sell a house that doesn't have plastic bottles in front of it the day it gets sold or the day that it gets seen.

Another way that I tried to get in people involved this year was just by doing it was a little bit of investment, but I would hook people up with a bat with um uh five-gallon bucket, trash grabber, gloves, and bags.

And uh I connected like six people in Park West neighborhood that way.

So they're all connected via Facebook now.

They all kind of live similarly, like uh close to each other, but they all have the tools now to do these pickups, and some of them have been doing these pickups.

So that can be a little bit of um uh you know a block to prevent people from getting into this.

Like people like the trash grabber, it helps a lot.

It can be like 20 bucks.

So that's just on a very individual level, just food for thought in that one in that regard.

But yes, the last thing is um I do have a pop quiz question for you guys, and the question is about how many people in the US think litter is a problem.

90 percent.

95 percent.

95%.

That's on the test.

That's right.

It is 95%.

And Alderman Browning answered first.

So he does get our shoot.

He's the chair.

Congratulations.

He's gonna share with us just like I am I I am a sharing mood, too.

That's my favorite thing.

Thank you.

This is this is a great candy, too.

Wow, that is cute.

That's how you get them to listen to you.

Okay.

You get them to salt scenes before every class.

The crackers?

Yeah.

Wow, what's the theory?

They're cheap.

They're cheap, and kids are always hungry.

So they just want to eat, you know.

So then they listen to you because you know why they love their parents?

Because they feed them.

So they just feed them.

Cool.

I I think you're probably as good of a teacher as you are as a leader in this effort as well.

Um thank you so much.

I really appreciate and and I really um just so everyone knows.

Aaron reached out um and his aldermen connected him with me.

Uh, and I really just appreciate because this is information that needs to be shared.

And uh, this is one of the more fun things our committee gets to do is uh you know, hear about need efforts in the city and be able to share that publicly.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

Um yeah, thanks to my alder one uh alderman uh Narayan and thanks to Alderman Browning and then everyone else who was really great in having me today and nice and um um I hope something can come of this and please reach out to me with any questions and um uh we'll see where it goes from here.

Thank you.

Right.

Thanks, Aaron.

With that, um we uh move on to the next item on our agenda, which is uh do you have any written testimony?

We have not.

Thank you.

Uh does any member of the committee have any announcements?

Uh I do have one announcement.

There is uh uh East West Gateway event at the foundry this afternoon uh from uh 4 30 to 6 30.

So starting here in a few minutes.

Um so uh that is in coordination with Great Rivers Greenway.

Uh this should update on some of their transportation projects.

So um that's over again at the city foundry.

Uh I'm guessing it's probably in the um routine rails space at the back of the food hall.

Uh so uh I'll be going over there and uh I hope to see people there.

Uh any other announcements?

Seeing none.

Um all members will I would like to excuse the alderman from the fifth uh for necessary absence.

And uh with that, uh I will accept a motion to adjourn.

So second previous role.

Moved by the Alderman from the 13th, uh seconded by the Alderman from the first, the call for previous role from the other one for the first.

Hearing no objection, we are adjourned.