forest park
About 50 turtles—and many amphibians—that made their watery home in the heart of Forest Park have been relocated to make way for a $3.1 million landscape project along the creek officially known as the Muny Tributary, which will feature stepping stones for crossing it! Plus, there will be a brand-new Liberal Arts Bridge to better connect the Boathouse to The Muny for motorists, cyclists, runners and pedestrians who prefer to stay dry. But now for the ‘lead,’ which fellow journalists may say we’ve buried simply to create a peaceful, bucolic scene (cue chirping birds and babbling brook): The bridge is out! The old bridge was slated to come down Sept. 5 in preparation for the new one, a stone arch more in keeping with park architecture. Visitors will need to take a different route through this section of the park—Government Drive to Pagoda Circle—until the new bridge opens this winter. The remainder of the project is slated for completion in late spring or early summer. Funded by donations to Forest Park Forever’s $130 million capital campaign, natural enhancements to the creek and grounds include: removing invasive plant species, creating a meadow, making the creek banks more attractive and accessible, adding the stepping-stone crossing and boulders for sitting, and 42 new trees and plantings of diverse native species. There also will be:
1. Naturalistic stream edges for better water flow
2. New underwater input, remotely activated, to conserve water
3. Additional sidewalk along Government Drive
4. A connection to the popular recreational path used by walkers, runners and cyclists
But what about our displaced water-loving creatures? No worries. The park is making things right via a ‘Wildlife Impact Mitigation and Inventory Plan’—quite a mouthful—created to ensure a better Forest Park for all, including reptiles and amphibians. Forest Park Forever enlisted partners from the Zoo, State Department of Conservation, Fontbonne U. and Chaminade Prep to inventory the critters and relocate them to other sites along the waterway during construction.
st. charles
Nearly 2,500 volunteers worked an assembly line at St. Charles Family Arena to help feed the hungry in the metro. ‘Meals for a Million’ workers packed just shy of 700,000 meals the last weekend in August. Not bad for a first-time event, designed by Beraka Ministries to help fill area food pantries at a time of year when they’re running close to empty. Many people don’t realize that more than 1-in-5 area families struggle with poverty, and food banks work tirelessly year-round to meet that need. Workers packed and sealed pouches with nutritious staples—instant apple cinnamon oatmeal and fortified rice and beans. Each pouch provides a complete meal for six children or four adults. Workers also accepted canned goods and other nonperishable items over two days, but financial and food donations are always needed: just $1 provides four meals. Organizers hope to hold another event in the spring if resources are available.
To learn more, visit mealsforamillion.com.
ballwin
It’s been just over a year since Ballwin police officer Michael Flamion was shot in the neck by a suspect during a routine traffic stop, paralyzing him from the chest down. The department and community continue to rally behind the wounded officer and his wife, Sarah. Nine fellow officers flew to Colorado last fall and surprised him during his recovery at Craig Rehabilitation Hospital near Denver. A ‘smart’ home designed and built to better accommodate Flamion is set for completion in October. But, what to do with the 1,363 uniform patches from first responders in the United States and abroad that Ballwin police have received as a show of support? Parkway South sophomore Luke Ramsey, 15, made ‘Frames for Flamion’ his Eagle Scout community service project. It took Luke and 20 fellow scouts from Troop 792 about 10 hours to arrange the patches in 15 different picture frames, which were displayed at police HQ during a recent reception for Flamion. Someone commented that he might need an extra room in the new house just for the frames!
A smaller frame contained some of the patches from overseas … Germany, France, Italy, as well as some from Quebec and Puerto Rico. Luke felt very strongly about completing a community project that wasn’t ‘the usual’— another handmade bench in another public park. Flamion, wearing a T-shirt that said ‘#ballwinstrong/Hold the Line for Flamion,’ was nearby when Luke announced, “I couldn’t help but be part of the community coming together for him.”
st. louis
Well, that didn’t last long. Minimum wage in the City of St. Louis is now at the maximum state minimum. Again. A city ordinance raising the minimum hourly wage from $7.70 to $10, approved in February, just went into effect in May. Therefore, fast-food workers and other minimum-wage employees had, in effect, time only to enjoy a better-paying ‘summer job.’ But on Aug. 28, the state law establishing $7.70 as the minimum wage throughout Missouri amounted to something like a stock-market correction for minimum-wage workers in the StL who’d enjoyed making $2.30 more per hour for a few months. Some city employers have decided to keep the $10 rate, in part to keep present employees (and customers) satisfied. That, and it just felt like the right thing to do.
Oh, well; that’s that. Unless advocates can get the legislature to push through a gradual wage hike. But, hey … many things are different across the river, on the ‘right’ side of the Mississippi, as they like to say in the metro’s Illinois territories. The statewide minimum wage there is $8.25 an hour! But they have higher gasoline taxes too, so if you drive across the river for work, you’d best gas up here. Also, for a few extra illicit bucks, you could buy cigarettes over here to sell over there—Missouri has the nation’s lowest excise tax on smokes, at 17 cents a pack. (Illinois hiked prices by $1 a pack in 2012.) Of course, if you plan to flout the law for a little more money, you’ll probably need a great algorithm, the Internet, a muscle car and a crack lawyer. Now, if you can wrap your brain around any or all of that, perhaps a minimum-wage job is below your pay grade.
university city
U City in Bloom already has beautified the municipality—from east to west, at North & South and just about everywhere else—with flowering plants. Seventy-two planter boxes accentuate the beautiful gardens that have taken off throughout U. City, and volunteers commit untold hours to keep them watered, notes Judy Prange, the organization’s executive director. And motorists, cyclists, pedestrians and people waiting for the bus can’t have missed another vibrant new addition at numerous signaled intersections along Olive Boulevard from one end of town to the other, most on the north side of the street: colorful metal utility boxes. Those omnipresent containers of switches and all things electric, which keep traffic signals running smoothly, have been brightly painted.
Judges considered submissions for the 10 boxes and selected seven artists to paint them. All were set to have been completed by the end of this week. “They were all just canvases waiting to be painted,” Prange exclaims. Meanwhile, seven bus shelters along Olive have been gussied up, too. Their back panels are adorned with a poster featuring a U City in Bloom garden. On Aug. 29, artist Stephanie Gobby was painting the box at Kingsland and Olive. She’d already laid down several hues of a rainbow as background for the dozens of faces she was outlining: old, young, male, female, white, black. If this is the ‘Neighborhood to the World,’ Gobby was creating a fine portrait of U. City’s diversity.