In this episode of the Orbit, learn about the city’s government, future plans, and what’s next for Clayton schools as host Elias Kilbridge speaks with Clayton’s newly elected mayor: Bridget McAndrew.
Transcript:
KILBRIDGE: Hello, and welcome back to the Orbit. I’m your host, Elias Kilbridge, and today we have a very exciting episode. We have Clayton’s recently elected mayor, Bridget McAndrew. Thank you so much for joining me.
MCANDREW: Thank you very much for inviting me. Happy to be here.
KILBRIDGE: Yeah, thank you. And so just to start the episode, would you just like to speak a little bit to our listeners who don’t know, what does the mayor really do in Clayton? What is their role? How are they involved in government? What’s your power here?
MCANDREW: So, yeah, a lot of people don’t really know how the Clayton government is set up, um, but we are Clayton’s divided into three wards, so Ward 1 is basically what comprises Captain. It’s easiest to just talk about it in terms of elementary schools, because I think that’s what people know. So Ward 1 is kind of the captain community. Ward 2 is the Glenridge community and Ward 3 is generally like the Meramec community. So there’s two Aldermen in each ward. So there’s six Aldermen and then there’s a mayor. So each Alderman is elected by their Ward. And then the mayoral position, much like how the school board is elected, is a citywide election. So in Clayton, we’re a city manager form of government, which means that the city manager is really the person. We, the board of Aldermen, hire the city manager, but the city manager is in charge of just the day-to-day operations of the city. So if there’s something wrong on a city street or if something happens with the police or fire department, the city manager again handles the day-to-day affairs and the budget. The board of Aldermen, including the mayor, is a policy-making board. So we don’t don’t tell our public works director what to do, our city manager does that. We certainly bring issues to our staff. If something comes up, you know, people often tell me if there’s some problem in downtown or some problem on their city street in their neighborhood, and we bring that to the attention of our city manager and our staff. As the mayor, I don’t have any special voting power. We are seven votes. So I don’t have a double vote or anything like that. I’m just one vote out of seven.
KILBRIDGE: That’s very cool. You talked about policy making and community involvement… How do you see yourself being involved in the community as mayor? How do you really want to develop your role and, you know, just community outreach and stuff like that?
MCANDREW: Yeah, we are very lucky in Clayton. We have lots of people. We have a very bright citizenry, people that want to be involved, people that are interested. So it is certainly always my goal to do better at communication, making sure that our citizens know what’s happening at the Board of Aldermen. Every time I’m at a neighborhood meeting or I meet with people, or anything, I tell them to subscribe to our emails. Every Friday, there’s an email that comes out that talks about what’s happening in the city. So, of course, communication is key. So, making sure that our communication only gets better, you know, is something that’s certainly important to me. As a ward three elder person, you go to all these neighborhood meetings, or I would have monthly coffees with Gary Feder, who’s my co-Ward 3 Alder person. So continuing to do that, continuing to meet with people, whether it’s meeting with, you know, school groups, whether it’s meeting with groups of citizens, whether it’s meeting with business owners, developers who are interested in coming to Clayton, small business owners. Those are all just things I look forward to doing.
KILBRIDGE: For sure. Obviously, a big part of our community is the school district. That’s a big draw to people to come to our community, to move here, and just a great pride of our community. How do you see yourself being involved? I mean, obviously, you have children in the school district. How do you see yourself staying involved as a mayor?
MCANDREW: Yeah, no, I mean I’ve said it before. I think the school district is the city’s, absolutely, our most important or most important partner, you know, Elias, you said it, I think a big reason that people moved to Clayton is because they want their kids to go to our wonderful Clayton schools. So I feel like I have great relationships across the school board. I certainly had a lot of support. Many of my endorsers included members who were on the school board, which I was very grateful to have and I have been president of the CRSWC for the last four years, um, which is the commission that jointly runs the center of Clayton with the school district so I feel like I’ve already had a really good collaborative relationship, not with just school board members, but also with superintendents, obviously right now, Dr. Patel, people that, you know, John Brazeal, the school district’s finance person, so I feel lucky that I know a lot of the people that are already very much the decision makers in the school district. I’m also very excited to see how the city can, you know, the school district just went through their Long-Range Facilities Plan, and I was on the steering committee. So it was really interesting to hear from the consultants, hear from all the buildings, principals, and people that work in, you know, students, parents, to hear about what the school district is hoping to accomplish in the years to come. So I think anything the city can do to help facilitate them or help, you know, help them accomplish the goals that they end up, you know, whatever they decide to do first or long range, you know, what we can do to help them accomplish that, I look forward to being able to do that.
KILBRIDGE: That’s great. Just looking forward, is there anything that you want to tell listeners to look out for, anything that they should know just for the future?
MCANDREW: Yeah, I mean, I will just say, you know, we did just finish our comprehensive plan for the city. It was adopted last year both for land use throughout the city, but also our Parks & Rec master plan so we are definitely in the weeds of trying to implement different parts of that, which is really exciting. One of the things that we are doing, which I think is exciting to students, exciting to younger people, is that we decided some time ago that we weren’t gonna rebuild our ice rink the way it was. So we’ve solicited RFQs for requests for qualifications from firms around town who will help us figure out what’s going to go with the old Ice Rink site. So that’s something that’s happening right now—I think it’s exciting, you know. I’m hoping that it will have some sort of pickleball component. because I don’t think pickleball is going away—which people of all ages really enjoy doing. I think and hope that it will also include some sort of flexible event space, gathering space. I just look forward to trying to create more social infrastructure in Clayton for people to gather and enjoy our parks, enjoy our streets. I also, you know, part of what a lot of what came out of our comprehensive plan is people want to see more vibrancy in downtown Clayton, so how we can support our commercial notes, whether that’s in Demun, whether that’s on Clayton Road, whether that’s at Wydown & Hanley, and in downtown. Finding ways to just improve our vibrancy and support more small businesses I think will be great. So, I look forward to trying to do that.
KILBRIDGE: Well, it sounds like the future is very bright. Once again, congratulations on the recent election.
MCANDREW: Thank you
KILBRIDGE: Thank you so much for joining me today. Do you have any parting words to the community?
MCANDREW: No, I would just say good luck to the graduating seniors, 2025 seniors. I’m sure–I know—that they all have bright futures ahead of them, and thank you, Elias, for inviting me.
KILBRIDGE: Of course. Thank you.
