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And I will say it's nice and cool here in the uh Donnybrook studio thanks to Design Aire, Seth Goldcamp and his team.

So, thank you very much.

Joe, what a story today.

your efforts to try and get the most simple of information from city hall and you started in mid-day and you keep asking repeatedly for something which is your right to have freedom of of information laws and access apply here and uh for a mayor who was running on transparency there's not too much transparency here you know it goes back I wrote a story on May 22nd I'll try to keep it brief that talked about that the day that the tornado struck May 16th that the entire staff of the city's emergency management agency was hosting a workshop and that there was nobody actually in the office.

Okay, I wrote the story.

That same day that it ran, I asked for records just to verify and I asked for very simple stuff.

Table of organization for SEMA.

There's only six people there.

So, that's a little piece of paper.

Uh how many of them attended that workshop?

And then I asked for any money that the city spent for the workshop.

Even though the mayor's office had said the people presenting the workshop secured a grant, so the city didn't pay for that.

So, what I was looking for was, well, how much did they divvy out uh pay out on sandwiches, soft drinks, whatever.

See what it was.

So, I send it off.

I immediately said, "Thank you for sending the request.

We'll put it through the proper channels."

And I thought, you know, there's just been a tornado.

I'm not holding anybody's feet to the fire.

So, I don't even think about it really for a month.

And every week I would get an email from them saying, "Uh, well, we're looking.

It has more time."

Finally, after about five weeks, I start reading them and realize all they're doing is changing the date.

The earliest we can have information from you is May 28th, June 6th, June, whatever the dates were.

They just kept kicking it up a week and a week and a week.

So, here we are seven weeks, you know, on something I probably if they'd have spent $1,200 on sandwiches and $100 on some cases of soda, I probably wouldn't have written a story.

I mean, you know, but it was but it what became the story was seven weeks in and yet another government agency that when they change, they promise transparency.

None of them ever do.

Once they get in office, it never uh it never gets better.

And then I'm getting emails from people who are saying, "Oh, seven weeks.

I've had a request in for 12 weeks.

I've had one from 16 weeks.

Had a couple of our own reporters that work with Bill and I are like, oh wow, wow, wow.

We've been waiting for nine weeks for information."

God.

So, when do you actually make public information public?

Well, okay.

Um, when the school board announced that they were going to consider not school board, when the superintendent announced they were going to merge these schools for the beginning of the year, I immediately sent an email and said like, uh, I have several questions for the superintendent.

One was, will the teachers, all of the teachers transfer or just some of them?

Will the security and you know, like the police officer or whatever they call the police officers that are in the schools, will they all transfer?

What is how are we gonna how are you going to handle class size?

Like three questions.

I have yet to receive any answer.

This was weeks before the labor union actually came out and you said this and what I would say to you know the SLPS if you had just answered these questions you might not find yourself in the situation that you're are now because it was almost like literally put your head in the sand and it will go away.

It's not going away.

I don't think they have I just don't think they have the qualified people.

I I don't think the numbers of people we are all from a previous paleozoic era where there were you know there were offices dedicated to getting information to the to the press and those aren't there anymore.

Well, and another problem is the the press in a certain way has expanded like people who you know it used to be almost clubbish you know there was there was the newspaper the radio station couple TV now anybody can say I'm a reporter and I want a freedom of information on this this and this and back in the days when we had beats Joe and you know like this would have been the city hall person beat you wouldn't have needed to put a request in it's like you know the police you didn't have to try to had some PR person.

You walked around the building.

Yeah.

And now the governments have all told everybody, "Don't talk to the press.

Don't help them out at all.

And we'll just stonewall them."

And and where the story comes in, because I really don't want it to seem like, oh, here's a reporter complaining.

I get paid to bother the city.

What about people who legitimately have a need for records, who have other real jobs to do?

I mean, I can spend my day sending them emails.

I get paid for that.

That's part of my job.

Is it possible, playing the devil's advocate here, that since May 16th at city hall, all hands on deck have been dedicated to North St. Louis and tornado recovery and that uh other things are fallible.

It's plausible, but I mean, how how long does a fiveminute phone call take?

5 minutes on it is not like, oh, we're going to have to I wasn't asking for the budget of SEMA for the last two years.

I get that.

Okay.

And the acting or the director was Sarah Russell.

She's on paid leave.

Maybe when she's on paid leave, is she allowed to answer questions?

No, I doubt that.

Seriously, her attorney would probably say, "No, don't answer my questions.

We go."

Okay.

So, maybe she's the one who had the answers.

Excuse me.

You know, and and she's not reachable.

I don't know.

I I I I'm just I mean, I thought that's devil's advocate.

I don't know.

And then uh Okay, Bill, I want to ask you about uh Brentwood, the city of warmth.

We talked last week about how there were 19 geese in Brentwood Park and 13 of the young ones were were transferred because they were leaving their droppings all over and it was possibly po posing a health hazard.

Six were euthanized and we were told that the meat from the geese was going to be turned into food for food banks that would be enjoyed we presume by the indigen.

All right.

Well, it turns out this week your newspaper reported that no, that uh we don't know exactly where the departed geese are.

Were they incinerated?

Are they in a landfill?

But they were not donated to hungry people.

What's your analysis here?

Well, I was just very disappointed because it sounded so much like something out of Charles Dickens, you know, with a tiny Tim and and here's a goose that we're presenting you.

And it was disheartening to hear that what they actually did was just get rid of the geese in the oldfashioned way.

We're not sure how they have they've yet to release the information.

Sam Taton and intern did the follow-up reporting.

First, there's a couple things about this.

One, I'm not surprised at all.

The other one is is when I always hear that thing where someone says, "And they were given to a food bank."

It reminds me of where you tell the kid, "We took our family dog to a family with a farm."

you know, and what it meant was spot's dead, you know.

So, I figured what they did, these geese are dead.

They're either grilling them up behind Brentwood City Hall or they threw them away.

But instead, we come up and this is where it comes in to where government just their absolute hesitancy to be honest.

If they'd have just went up and said, "Yeah, we killed them."

That's their immediate reaction.

Let's come up with something that's going to put people off.

Then when it all falls apart, then they just don't talk at all.

That's right.

That's right.

And then the other thing that I thought was so I thought it was so interesting.

Dan Zarlinga from the Missouri Department of Conservation, great guy.

He said, "Did anybody else like even if there is a bird flu, which of course to me that means disease, if if I go to the grocery store and it says this animal could have been exposed to a bird flu, some kind of disease, but if you cook it long enough, and I thought, you know, there are a lot of people all around the world who would be happy to have that, but I just thought, yuck.

I don't want if if there is any kind of potential disease, whether it's bird flu or a sinus infection, I don't want that being served to human beings.

Well, I just didn't want overreacting.

I was just kind of like, oh no, that's here another animal.

That sounds fishy to me, right?

And you're right.

If they had said, listen, wait, the goose had to go.

They're in goose heaven and we disposed of them properly.

We we might have debated did you really have to kill the the geese?

They're with the bison with the bison in bison heaven frolicking around and the 19 dogs at the shelter who were killed by virus.

It's been a bad summer for animals.

I agree and I I actually think it's not a good sign for our region.

I mean it's like we're killing geese, we're killing bison, we're killing dogs.

I don't think No, I agree with you, Charlie, in that it seems that we're a little too 1960ish when it comes to handling problems like this.

Now, I'm not saying that, you know, you don't euthanize animals and you don't, you know, like they should be allowed to just roam free and all that, but but there's an element of carelessness in each of these.

That's what I'm saying.

That's exactly what I'm saying.

Well, and some of it's the responsibility of the owner.

I think there first of all, who's going to eat?

You know, somebody said to me, "Would you like to try some goose?"

Well, maybe.

Where did you get it?

From Brentwood Park because it pooped too much.

I'm good.

Yeah, I'm good.

I'm going to pass on that vegetarian this week.

But how about governments just tell How about governments just tell you the truth right up front.

The truth.

You don't have to just do that.

And we can all debate on could they have handled the geese differently.

That issue doesn't go away.

Well, and also it, like I said, this amplifies the initial decision of killing the geese by lying to us about what you did with the geese.

What else you lying about?

But I'm still I'm still more concerned about the people who were the victims of the tornado who are sleeping under plastic sheets.

I mean that I and I'm not trying to be heartless because I do care about the animals.

Your words are the last ones for this program.

Thanks so much for joining us uh for Last Call.

We appreciate it.

We'll see you next week.