U-City Councilmember Offers Apology Over Reappointment Fight

UNIVERSITY CITY, MO — A tense city council meeting last month led to a war of words between some councilmembers over the reappointment of Rosalind Williams to the Plan Commission. Ordinarily, citizens can serve for two terms if they wish, but councilmember Rod Jennings, the council’s liaison to the commission, chose not to reappoint Williams, instead asking fellow councilmember Michael Glickert, whose turn it was to make an appointment, to consider third-ward resident Irene Chaudhry for the seat.

Critics, both citizens and councilmembers, said the coup would have left the city’s second ward with only one representative on the commission and was unfair to Williams, who had volunteered her professional experience to the city for free. Williams has a masters in urban planning from the University of Washington and previously served as director of planning and development for the cities of Kirkwood and Ferguson.

Neither Jennings nor Glickert defended their decision at the council meeting, but in an interview with Patch, Jennings cited concerns over possible conflicts of interest related to Williams’ involvement with private development groups and reservations about her past work on the Meacham Park development project in Kirkwood, which he said displaced many African-American residents from their homes.

Williams denied Jennings accusations, calling them scandalous. "Mr. Jennings' statements regarding a purported conflict of interest are a welter of baseless claims and reprehensible innuendo that borders on libel," she said. "He impugns my integrity and suggests that I have a sub rosa agenda and will use my service on the Plan Commission to conceive, design, and implement development projects from which I will reap financial gains."

She also challenged his understanding of the Meacham Park development and her role in it. "Mr. Jennings amply demonstrates his abysmal ignorance of the impacts and outcomes of the Meacham Park Development Project," she continued.

"Indeed, he implies that the Meacham Park neighborhood was razed and no longer exists. The facts of the issue contradict Mr. Jennings’s bogus claims. All of the owner-occupied and rental properties in Meacham Park were improved. A New $1,000,000 neighborhood park was added to the community’s public-facilities infrastructure. All of the new housing constructed in the neighborhood was offered to existing residents before it was shown to potential outside buyers. Some renters received substantial home-buyer-assistance grants that resulted in a significant increase in the homeownership rate.

"The St. Louis County Housing Authority actively participated in the overall goal of creating an economically integrated neighborhood without displacement of current residents. The Housing Authority sold many of its single-family homes to current residents at very affordable prices. It also replaced a deteriorating multifamily project with a new mixed-income townhouse development.

"All of the Housing Authority homes that were bought out for the commercial-project land clearance were rebuilt in the neighborhood on a one-to-one basis. The Meacham Park neighborhood retained most of the original residents who wished to stay while at the same time raising overall housing values. The property-value increase was made possible by the injection of funds extracted from the commercial development. The arrangement was a unique use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF)," she said.

After talking with friends, colleagues and constituents, Jennings now believes he acted unreasonably. “I respect Rosalind’s abilities and her experience, and I want to unconditionally apologize to her,” he said, adding that he should have talked to Williams about his concerns before recommending against her reappointment. As a conciliatory gesture, he reappointed Williams to the commission at the city council meeting Monday night.

Jennings said he loves his community and wants what’s best for it, and for that reason may have acted too defensively. “Too many times, outsiders have come into our communities — black communities — including the third ward and done development. Some of it has been good. Some of it has been part of the gentrification that people are concerned about. Some folks have told me bald-faced that many people who live in the third ward can’t afford to live in the third ward. That’s disconcerting. That’s scary. And I know that a lot of people here are retired. They’ve come out of the car industry or manufacturing. They’ve downsized or divorced. A lot of urban communities are financially challenged, and a lot of folks don’t like low-income housing, even though many of us were raised in it.

“Low-income people are not the problem,” Jennings continued, saying he would like to see truly diverse communities in University City — not only racially diverse but economically as well. Some of the councilman’s broader concerns remain, but he stressed they aren’t personal, and he wants to give Williams the benefit of the doubt and see what they can accomplish together.

Jennings said he hopes his apology can be an olive branch and that the council can cease to operate in bunker mode. “I don’t like that. I don’t want that to continue. I want to make sure that we have an open, transparent, collaborative process, and I don’t think we’ve had that,” he said, adding that he accepts his share of the blame.

Williams did not seem to accept Jennings' apology when Patch reached out for comment. She also challenged Patch's use of a quote given after the last city council meeting in November. "The reporter seems to have assumed that I had a clear understanding of the reason for my being essentially removed from the Plan Commission," Williams said. "Moreover, he apparently presumed that I was responding to Councilman Jennings’s distorted rant regarding my fitness to serve on the Commission. Councilman Jennings’s outrageous, unfounded assertions were printed in the November 14th edition of Patch, so I could not have responded to his allegations on November 13th."

At the time, Williams said she didn't care for insinuations there might be conflicts of interest in her participation. Patch has apologized for misinterpreting her statement.

“I have a favorite quote,” Jennings said. “Conversations are the way communities think. I look forward to having a conversation with Rosalind and the entire council.”

This story will be updated if Jennings or Williams offer additional comments.

Photo: Rod Jennings, left, and subcontractor Tony Mackey discuss renovations to a house on Partridge Ave. in University City where Jennings spoke with Patch. Jennings is the founder of Miracle Building Group, a construction firm that, among other things, works with real estate investors to flip properties. (J. Ryne Danielson/Patch)