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Thank you for joining us for Last Call these are the topics that we couldn't get to in the first half and we want to ask you Alvin Reed to talk about since you are Mr Kirkwood everyone knows that uh there's a little brewhaha in Kirkwood between the Greenbriar Country Club and the city and the neighbors Greebrier has constructed some uh pickle ball courts and wants to open them but the neighbors are afraid of noise now when it came to the city of Clayton you sided if I recall correctly I knew you were going to throw this in my face okay I knew it was coming I know you're going to be a consistent on this one um wasu Wanted all sorts of sports facilities on Big Bend and you supported Wash U and not the neighbors do you support the neighbors here or do you support Greenbriar well first of all I'm not a member of Greenbriar Country Club you hear hysterical laughter throughout Kirkwood right all right U but on this one it's my understanding that okay the city of Kirk would have basically said like okay you know build them but they have to pass a a noise you know ordinance or test or and they were they were built and they haven't passed and so that's not uh you know that's not on the city so I have to decide with the neighbors on this one all right you know and it's not like you know nice quiet no further question no further question right I had with the neighbors on this one right I was out there a couple years ago when they had they built the courts and then they were going to be you know tested they had all this sound equipment and there were people playing pickle ball and you could hear it and I thought the poor neighbors you know they're going to lose Greenbriar Country Club is going to win Kirk but Kirkwood said nope too loud so I'm stunned that this is coming back again is there any way I mean that they could buffer I like when you you would think in 2025 when everybody wants to get healthier you encourage that kind of thing and there are pickle ball leagues on every street corner well but on every street there's someone complaining about much and if you you do have to understand that Queen Brer basically sits in a neighborhood though I mean when you talk about the neighbors you've been there and and my oldest daughter had a friend who lived right there too um you're really in the country club almost just like similar to Concordia yeah yes exactly clayon righted intitution yeah no in other words you'd have to build like one of those like Highway noise retaining walls and then it would make it ugly and yeah right I just I I guess I got to be with the country club on this because it seems so weird that they say okay we're going to let you build this and we don't know like how can it possibly we're just going to have to see how it plays out that just feels kind of backwards like don't we have sound Engineers for this sort of thing where somebody could have looked into this ahead of time and said okay you do these three things you can do this this is what's worked elsewhere if you don't you won't now if you don't mind astronomical fees probably attached to you know $1,000 to rent a court me I think that that they just decided that old thing about it's better to ask for forgiveness and permission that you know we're we're the country club we're going to build these things and then you know kind of see what happen somehow I think if the neighbors were allowed to use those pickle ball courts if they were open for public use they would have been approved I'm not so I don't know that might be but I just thought I thought it was kind of just the delicious irony of a country club which usually has its own set of requirements being told that Kirkwood has its own set of requirements interesting point Wendy well let me ask you uh who wants to take on The Marshall Project uh Wendy uh how about you Sarah sure Marshall Project I think was started by a retired Wall Street Journal reporter go into various cities including I think our native Cleveland I'm not mistaken and they look into criminal justice issues so Jesse Bogan formerly the post dispatch and two others one from the Kansas City Star another one from the Boston Globe are going to have a St Louis office and they'll examine penal issues I think it's a good thing more reporters is good what do you think I think it's a great thing you know they are you know these nonprofit Outlets like propublica they like to do like the big projects they're not going to have a guy there at every court hearing or covering you know being on the city council beat that's not how it works but increasingly those are the things that those of us working journalists just don't have time to do is those big projects and so use philanthropic dollars to pay to hire some good reporters put them to work I had the pleasure of uh meeting two of the four people in this Bureau the other day and you know they were talking about their excitement about doing these kinds of projects and I think they're going to be a great addition to the Jess Jess Bogan is a terrific reporter and I mean he's done great stuff and he's able to connect with people that most reporters can't connect with you know he grew up in rural Missouri and I remember story I did about liberal Missouri which is anything but liberal and people will talk to Jess for some reason that won't normally talk to you know reporters from the city he he's excellent guy to have one of the reporters went to KU so I give it the thumb hey uh and Sarah I should point out that you started the River City journalism fund which also funds reporting that might not other otherwise be covered yeah this is more of a homegrown effort we don't have the Wall Street Journal alumni behind us but we've been pretty successful in raising just enough money that we can pay freelance journalists or pay uh you know people who want to work on something at night to do something bigger and we've gotten to do some big projects out of it and it's been a great project anyone want to take a stab at kwmu it was announced this week that uh the radio station which has forever in a day been associated with the University of Missouri St Louis now will be on its own it's going to be a three-year transition but uh all the benefits of being part of state government including probably wages and benefits uh it's one way to get out from under this uh we're gon to crush everything Dei and whatnot if you're your own thing all of a sudden you know the state can't tell you what to do and when to do it so I'm not saying it obviously it seems like they were working on this before the last three weeks but it it it may have it may have some positivity they didn't know they were going to have so quick so when I worked there um it was something that people talked about a lot that people hoped to get out from under umul it was felt that it was too slow moving of a bureaucracy it took a long time to like even post a a help wanted ad and by the time you were ready to hire somebody and then to get umul approval you'd sometimes lose them to a rival outlet and so there were a lot of frustrations that even predated this moment in time and I think that with what's happening politically with how the Missouri legislature feels about things it's going to be very good for that outlet to have separation anything that ensures that Jason has a job because he's our colleague oh yeah seriously he does he does a f he is ferocious when it comes to covering the news and uh I I would as as long as he as long as he's solid then that's fine I don't I don't think Elon Musk likes uh NPR or PBS I mean all of this uh the media that gets a little bit of help from the federal government you know it's back against the wall time yeah but it's if you're an employee at kwmu don't you enjoy a defined benefit pension well that's the thing they have a great pension they had terrific health insurance there were some real benefits of being the being under that umul umbrella that people didn't always acknowledge and it's not easy to run a radio station as we're finding out today from the news at KDHX where there's $7,000 cash on hand and they're thinking about selling the assets in folding yeah I think that for St Louis Public Radio there is a big upside here but I think the community is really going to have to step up because having that backing of umul gave them some Financial Security where they could weather the storm um and I think it's it's going to be you know they will be in a slightly more precarious position although I think being outside of the whims of the legislature they think it's worth it the KDHX thing is really sad I mean it looks like those people who are running it now would rather blow it up yeah than make a deal it's just if you're going to not listen to us we're going to blow up Community radio and isn't that how it happens today you know you hear these things and it comes out and dribs and drabs and then you finally get to where we are today which is scorched Earth and that's really sad I'll run it right into the ground I'll either run it or I'll run it in the ground and it's terrible it's just it's terrible you're right something should have happened but you know they had financial problems when they fire the volunteers yeah I know in a way but that's that's that's the truth are are you going to pay $190 a year to watch the Cardinal stream we