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Special Meeting <br />June 7, 2005 <br /> <br /> <br />idea was a rogue part of the process and he does not agree with their <br />recommendations. That subcommittee did not have a charter to talk about the Loop or <br />the Metrolink at Big Bend; their charter was to talk about the I-170 corridor and by <br />proximity, the McKnight school. The report contained horrible language which caused <br />perceptions about tearing down people’s homes and that there was better and higher <br />uses of the land than being people’s homes. That is his neighborhood and it is hard for <br />him to divorce where he lives from those poorly chosen words that that rogue committee <br />put in there and he will have absolutely nothing to do with that being part of the Plan. <br /> <br />Mr. Ollendorff just wanted the Council to understand that there was some community <br />tension surrounding the idea of an International District. Some time needs to be spent <br />talking about this idea some more to try to gain some clarification regarding its <br />opposition. He directed the Council to page 44 of the Plan. He noted that Lehman <br />Walker and he feel that it is important to not only encourage international businesses to <br />come into the community, but to help them find ways to integrate into the community. <br />He thinks that this is an important statement. Council agrees with this. The Mayor <br />received several phone calls about this, including some from Ames Place, from those <br />who were extremely upset with some of these concepts. Ms. Brungardt is glad that this <br />sentence is in there. The thing that she is most concerned about is that we do not <br />understand the depth of this complex problem. She and her family love the level of <br />diversity in University City, especially on her street. One of the problems in the United <br />States now is that the Civil Rights era took us to a certain point and people today are <br />having a hard time with notions of integration that her parents fought for. She believes <br />the nation has regressed in ways that she hopes that University City can deal with. The <br />new generation of prejudices is a little less obvious and a little more insidious. The <br />ideals of classism play a part in extreme racial tension. We need to have a really strong <br />civics campaign on tolerance. This is serious business and we need to do a better job in <br />the schools. <br /> <br />Mayor Adams said that if the Council wants to get citizen buy-in on anything, a special <br />committee must be formed for that buy-in to happen. He sees certain areas of <br />University City that will never be able to buy-in to most of this; because they think that <br />they were excluded from this process. It doesn’t matter what type of exclusion they <br />think has occurred, there only is their perception that something is being forced on <br />certain areas. To deny that is going on is sticking one’s head in the sand. Ms. Welsch <br />disagreed that anyone was denying anything. She further said that no one on this <br />Council, when ABEP was formed, questioned the makeup of the Council. Each <br />member of the Council was asked to appoint someone; we made a real effort and <br />received names from the entire Council and put the word out to the full community. We <br />made certain that we had the same number of people from each ward. We also had <br />businessmen throughout the community. The Council decided that the group would be <br />limited to 25, which was very well publicized. No one denies the reality of the process, <br />but when it is insinuated that this was something that it wasn’t, like Mr. Docket did, we <br />Page 11 <br /> <br />