During my campaign for Alderman earlier this year I found it difficult to obtain information on the Board of Alderman. On February first I stated the following my campaign site:
St. Louis’ current system of keeping constituents informed is for aldermen to attend the various neighborhood meetings and give a city hall update to the few people present. Little information is actually communicated – no visuals, no maps, no links to other resources. If you didn’t make it to the meeting you are out of luck. You might get some of the information in a neighborhood newsletter a month or two later – if you are on their mailing list.
The Board of Alderman has 15 standing committees. Do you know what committees your alderman serves on? Do you know when those committees meet? Do you know issues are before those committees? If you read the City Journal each week you might have a clue. But, the City Journal is an official public notice document and therefore not exactly written in english.
At the time when you looked up the Board of Aldermen you simply got a list of Aldermen. I knew they had 15 committees only because a document said so. I couldn’t find online a list of committees much less which aldermen were on which committee.
Today I am happy to report the situation is much different. Under each Alderman you can see which board bills they’ve sponsored as well as which committees they are on. Both the board bills and committees are direct links. From Aldermanic President Jim Shrewsbury:
Welcome to our new Board of Aldermen website. Here you will find any and all information concerning pending legislation in the city of St. Louis. Our intent is to make this information as easy as possible to find.
Each week, as soon as board bills are introduced, they will be available for viewing and printing from this site. You can also track each billÂ’s progress as it moves through committee and on to final passage.
Within a Board Bill you can see the dates when it had various readings and when it became an ordinance, along with the ordinance number. Not bad. In the calendar section you can see upcoming committee meetings like today’s “Neighborhood Development” meeting that was held this morning in room 208. The committee was considering 13 board bills. Tomorrow morning is a “Housing, Urban Development and Zoning” committee meeting. Thursday is a “Streets, Traffic and Refuse” committee meeting. I’m amazed at the number of board bills in this committee to vacating streets and alleys. Then you get bills like naming 7th Street @ Walnut “Dick Weber Lane” (board bill #191).
Check out the new Board of Alderman.
– Steve
