Three Months After The Mayor's Race: A Progress Report

It's been just over three months since voters went to the polls to elect a new Mayor after a lengthy and passionate campaign which extended for more than a year.

In the time since, Mayor Barry Glantz has been going through firsts....ribbon cuttings, recognition ceremonies, and his first council meeting to last under 30 minutes.

. Has it happened? Should it? And how did the city get this way in the first place? Patch takes a look at the political pulse in Creve Coeur.

Mayor Glantz insists he has continued on the path he set out on during the campaign, using his time in office to be a positive leader by example. He points to events, like the Neighborhood Night Out, where he visited with people in the city who supported Laura Bryant in the campaign and didn't feel the "stigma" for having been on the other side of the race.

Mending Fences

But if anyone is expecting a single moment to stick out where city political leaders air their grievances with eachother in an effort to bury hatchets, real or perceived, they will likely be disappointed.

"As far as I’m concerned, I’ve put the election behind me," Glantz said in a recent interview, while at the same time acknowledging that a pair of ethics complaints tied to the campaign, with one aimed at each side, still linger. He repeated earlier pledges to cooperate with the Missouri Ethics Commission.

Glantz said he met Donna Dill, a woman named, at a June event honoring former Mayor Harold Dielmann. It was the first time they'd met, he said. He reiterated to Patch that he had nothing to do with the mailer Dill sent out in the waning days of the campaign and did concede that there could be "a time and a place" for him to gather more information about how the mailer, which he pointed to as a low point in the race, came to exist.

"There’s no question there are two political factions in the city, who for better or worse, bitterly oppose eachother," Ward 4 City Councilman Dr. Scott Saunders told Patch in a May interview. Saunders was elected in 2011 and said he purposefully sought his own support from voters, as opposed to trying to align himself with either faction.

In Saunders' view, those divisions were born out of land use controversies which have played out in what is now , and in the "Thompson Center" property where Delmar Gardens has had designs on development at Ladue Road near Interstate 270. Both of those areas fall within Wards 3 and 4. Saunders cites "a decreased level of sensitivity" when it comes to decisions made on some projects, depending on where the individual is from.

Missed Opportunity?

Saunders was nominated to serve as Council President this spring, along with Ward 3 Councilman Bob Hoffman. Mayor Glantz was forced to cast the tie-breaking vote and chose Hoffman. For Saunders, who noted at the time that Ward 4 had been kept out of the mix when it came to serving as Council President for much of the last 15 years, it felt like a missed opportunity to start mending fences.

The Council President, in addition to running council meetings when the Mayor is not present, is part of the nominating committee, along with the Mayor and city commission chairs, for commission openings. Having a Glantz supporter in Hoffman sitting in the President's position, Saunders said, doesn't do much to show a sense of inclusion.

"I’ve never thought that the seletion of the council president should have fallen on my shoulders," Glantz told Patch recently, adding that he felt some people may have seen the move to choose Hoffman as "more of the same". Still he praised both candidates as worthy of the role and said he hoped the decision would not be seen as a defining moment of his term.

Glantz insists that he doesn't look at city wards or political alliances when considering appointments. "Part of being a leader and part of being mayor of our community is making sure I try and embrace everybody," he said.

We want to hear from you. Do you think there's a "War of the Wards" in Creve Coeur? Is it getting in the way of something important in the city, or is this much ado about nothing? Tell us in the comments.