The Jefferson City Public Works and Planning committee voted Thursday to indefinitely table a public infrastructure project that would improve parking and safety around the Jefferson City Community Center. The center is a gathering place on Dunklin Street in the city’s historic Black neighborhood, often called The Foot.
In 2023, the Jefferson City Council approved the use of federal grant funds from the federal Community Block Development Program (CDBG) to restore street parking and redesign a crosswalk in front of the community center. The goal was to reinstate safe parking options and make the building more accessible, after widening and adding a left turn lane to Dunklin Street in 2014 took away street parking spaces.
But in January, the city’s public works and planning committee tabled the project after learning it would cost around $156,000 — more than double the 2023 estimate of $55,000 to $60,000. The committee has since offered less expensive options that narrow the project’s scope.
But several community members, including Jefferson City Community Center Executive Board President Patsy Johnson, came to Thursday’s meeting to insist the committee honor the original proposal.
“They're ignoring the fact that the city government created an unsafe environment when they took away all the parking from a specific area of town and they narrowed the streets,” Johnson said.
The city most recently proposed a public use parking lot on the center’s property that the city would maintain for 15 years. But the community center board declined that offer partly because they were concerned about the potential drawbacks of offering more of their property for public use.
“You put people right up on your property, you got to worry about vandalism, all kinds of stuff,” Johnson said. “And we already have problems with people understanding that we own the property, not Parks and Rec, and they can't just go put up any and everything, bounce houses, you know, just take over everything.”
Johnson added the board did not want to have to maintain the lot and protect it from littering and loitering after the city’s lease ends.
Residents who spoke during the meeting echoed concerns that the city’s proposal to take more community center property for public use could repeat and proliferate the existing encroachments upon the historic Foot District since urban renewal. Some Jefferson City Community Center property was nearly taken by eminent domain in 2014. And Johnson said previous board members have already given ownership of some of the land to the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.
“In light of gradual but steady encroachment over the years since 1960 and urban renewal, it is understandable, I think, for members of the community center board to be wary of any proposals beyond the original proposal that did offer ADA accessible parking and also additional spots on the street,” Fifth Ward resident Natasia Sexton said during the meeting.
But seeing that the community center board was not interested in the parking lot option, Public and Planning Works Committee Vice Chair Randy Hoselton moved to indefinitely table the project discussion once more.
"If somebody came to me and asked for $3 for parking spaces, and I told them 'I got one better for you, I'll give you nine,' and they turned me down, I would say that person no longer wants a solution," Hoselton said.
Several attendees immediately voiced their objections and left the meeting after the board voted in favor of Hoselton’s motion, with some decrying Hoselton’s choice to refer indirectly to them, and others saying the committee's actions amount to an act of systemic racism.
“(Your) arrogance is really getting to me, so you keep that, sir,” Earnette Smith said to Hoselton on his way out. Most other attendees followed Smith once the vote ended.
Using CDBG funds
Jefferson City Neighborhood Services Manager Rachel Senzee said the city typically receives about $275,000-$300,000 a year from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, and while the Jefferson City Community Center's parking request met all federal requirements for the city's public infrastructure project, the exact amount and scope of the construction was not guaranteed because of those approvals.
“We would never earmark funds for a project simply because, you know, nothing personality-wise, nothing even as far as like making it a city-wide priority, it's just sometimes it's down to eligibility, and if the project meets all those requirements to even make it to a contracting phase,” Senzee said.
City director of planning and protective services Dave Helmick said many projects do not end up going forward after the city learns the project’s true cost.
“This isn't the first grant project that is stalled out at the pricing stage,” Helmick said. “At that point, then, staff starts looking for additional options that we can still make an improvement, which is kind of where we're at now.”
Hoselton said safety, and not cost, was a driving factor for his preference of the parking lot option.
“The counter proposal was for something that was safer: isolated parking lot, no moving traffic to mess with, and more parking spots,” Hoselton said. “So, I would have never chosen the original proposal in the first place.”
Hoselton, along with council members Cody Holt, Shane Kampeter and Julie Allen voted Thursday to indefinitely table the project. Only councilman Derek Thomas voted against.
“I would just make the comment that, to the best of my knowledge, all we were asked to do a few meetings ago was to approve this grant that had already been studied, planned, financing was pretty much in place, and we've now spent several weeks running rings around it,” Thomas said. “I'm just really disappointed that, you know, this is not how the community can trust the process, can trust city government, our accountability and follow through."
Hoselton said he does not know the future timeline for the Jefferson City Community Center’s parking construction plan. The construction was originally planned to start this summer.
