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Session 170 I, Minutes July 7, 1997 3_1 Mr. Dan Simpson, 7140 Pershing Avenue, said that Mr. Wagner made many good points. He said that he was only seventeen years old. He said that he had not voted before, but he would be in November. Today is his first look at real life politics and he is very disappointed. He does not want to move away from his home of fitteen years. From the window of his room, he can see the Forest Park Parkway. It is not that bad. What he does mind, is having a train running where he has some trees, behind their alley in the street. That would be bad. He thinks that the citizens that should be standing up for their rights and property are being easily pushed around by local organizations, for example, Washington University. This is the only group, as he sees, that will benefrt from the MetroLink Expansion. He agrees with Mr. Wagner, but he ~inds the Mayor's comments tonight distasteful. (Applause) Mr. Jim Fredericks, 7300 Westmoreland, wished to acknowledge the effort to correct the error that the Mayor and some of the Councilmembers made back on June 23rd. He wants everyone to know, however, that it is the position of the Historic Neighborhood Association that such effort is still inadequate. The association definitely applauds the strength and integrity of Mr. Wagner and other Councilmembers who have come forward to correct the problem. It should not be missed, that the issue of the Upreference" to go down Millbrook is still not the preference of what the Association believes is the large majority of the constituents of University City. The Association would like to know what process has been made to determine this preference. The Association has provided the Council and the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council with information regarding what the people in this community and St. Louis want. 2,000 petitions were provided. The Association has results of surveys taken from independent investigators. Clearly the preference is not to go down Millbrook. He urged Council to take a vote on the route preference. Find out what the people want before Council quotes that this route is the preference of University City. Mr. Taulby Roach, 6205 McPherson, is a transit advocate and is very much in favor of MetroLink. He feels that the issue of cost should be discussed. He said that we do not have a big bucket of federal money to build a light rail system. We have limited tax dollars which was voted for overwhelmingly with Proposition M funds in favor of expanding MetroLink. Those funds are limited to $300 million dollars and cost is a very important consideration as we go to expand this system. He cautions Council to watch those costs that are associated with the expansion. In particular, the cut and cover or tunnel construction through University City. It is a nice idea, but it is a very expensive one. According to the numbers of the Sverdrup proposal, he estimates this cost to be approximately $9.2 million extra dollars for the University City portion. This kind of money is not available in the current Proposition M tax revenue. Some communities fund a portion of these extra costs themselves. Some other communities that have done this are: East St. Louis, Illinois - $2.8 million, Fairview Heights, II - $2 million, St. Clair County, II - $2.9 million, Village of Swansea, II - $ 1.5 million like-kind exchange in property. These extensions involved at-grade light rail. He asked Council, when contemplating changes in the resolution that will lead to some up charge, to keep the dollars in mind. Mr. Joe Edwards, 6309 McPherson, is here tonight representing the group, Neighbors for MetroLink. He wished to complement the Council and the Mayor on how they have handled the MetroLink investigation from the very beginning. He has been attending meetings for over two years to find more about it. He can not imagine how many hundreds of hours Mayor Adams has put in as representative of University City looking into MetroLink. Council has asked the hundreds of questions and then some. He wants to make everyone aware of an unsigned flyer that was distributed last week in several University City neighborhoods. After Councilmember Wagner pointed out that the recent resolution on MetroLink had omitted several key points, the Councilmembers agreed that it was an oversight and would be corrected tonight. Mayor Adams made that very clear as did the Councilmembers. Despite that fact, the flyer implied that the Council tried to pull the wool over the eyes of the people of University City. It is unfortunate that someone would make this implication, especially without putting their name on it. Neighbors for MetroLink supports the basic changes to the resolution offered by Councilmember Wagner, all of which we have agreed with from the very beginning. They are in favor of no park and ride lots in University City, that there be no commuter parking on adjacent streets and that there will be no forced home or property sales because of MetroLink. His group does feel that the issue of subterranean construction does need to be clarified. Until recently, the discussions about the hybrid route through Forest Park talked exclusively about a tunnel. Now, however, we are hearing talk about coming through the park on the surface or with cut and cover construction. The reason for this talk is cost. Supporters of the Forest Park route have realized the tremendous cost of the tunnel and he