The Crestwood Board of Aldermen unanimously passed an ordinance that repealed the city’s code, replacing it with an updated version, at its July 23 meeting.
“This updates most of the city’s code,” Mayor Scott Shipley said. “It includes clarifying language and updating references back and forth that kind of got out of sync over the years.”
According to a memo from Crestwood City Administrator Kris Simpson, the city worked with General Code – an organization with expertise in municipal codes – to perform an editorial and legal review of Crestwood’s Municipal Code in 2023. The scope of the review covered a few categories including: comparing the code to state law, ensuring references were up to date; identifying redundancies and outdated cross-references; and “recommending the City to review Code sections that ha(d)n’t been updated in some time, to ensure current practices are consistent with what is stated in the Code.”
The analysis, identifying hundreds of items to review, was received by the city from General Code in April of 2023. City staff subsequently established an internal Code Revision Steering Committee – consisting of Simpson, Shipley, City Clerk Helen Ingold and Deputy City Administrator Jeff Faust – to review each item. This committee met every two weeks between May and September 2023, assigning review items and meeting with department heads, relevant staff and the city attorney as needed. The review was then returned to General Code, who processed the results and assembled a final draft of the updated code.
Before opening discussion on the ordinance itself, Shipley informed the board that after reviewing the language of the ordinance, Ingold and city attorney Lisa Stump requested that the board make an amendment to it.
“The amendment would be to add a Section 9 to the ordinance to clarify that while this ordinance replaces all of the other ordinances, we’ll make sure it’s clear that it doesn’t replace the ordinances that we have passed since this specific ordinance was written (in February),” Shipley said. “It’s just very specifically stating that we are not getting rid of the ordinances that we’ve already passed (since February), just because this big ordinance is going to replace all of our city code, but we don’t want to wipe out the good work we’ve done since (February).”
“It’s about 50 ordinances between when this code amending ordinance was drafted and today. And it’s those 50 ordinances that if we did not adopt this amendment that could theoretically just be wiped out because they’re not incorporated into this,” Simpson added.
The seven aldermen in attendance – Ward 1 Alderman Jesse Morrison was absent from the meeting – unanimously voted in favor of the amendment.
The conversation then shifted to the ordinance itself.
“I support the amendment. The purpose behind it makes good sense,” Ward 3 Alderman Grant Mabie said. “But in general, it’s a massive ordinance. I think the red line we got was 567 pages – that’s the longest ordinance I’ve ever seen by magnitudes. A lot of good updates throughout. I think doing the comprehensive update is great, but this idea of amending the code in one fell swoop, I’m not personally a fan. But here we are.”
Shipley responded that because of the size of the ordinance, it has to pass together in “one fell swoop.”
“We can’t amend it, it’s just too big,” he said. “But we can create a follow-up ordinance that will come right behind it and fix anything that we think needs to be fixed.”
Mabie next listed approximately 15 different things he had issues with in the ordinance to be added to a follow-up ordinance and/or to get clarification on at a later date. As no other aldermen had any questions, comments or concerns, the ordinance was read for a second time, passing unanimously, 7-0.