Newly-Elected Mayor of Cape Girardeau, Stacy Kinder, talked about upcoming and ongoing plans for the city. Among the topics were ARPA funds, which will be used to demolish dangerous buildings; usage of a newly implemented system called 'ShotSpotter', and use of MoDOT's TEAP Grant to study the traffic in Cape Girardeau.
'ShotSpotter' is a system that uses sensors that detect sounds of gunfire. With Cape Girardeau's three-year contract, the goal is to assist the police departments to distinguish between gunshots and sounds that are often reported as gunfire. It also aims to pinpoint where the shots are being fired in a more exact location in comparison to generalized reports of gunfire.
Kinder says after the testing period is over, an evaluation will take place to see if the usage of Shot Spotter has improved Cape Girardeau in any way and will determine if they continue using the system.
"We have a three-year contract and at the end of that, we will be able to evaluate as to how well this works here in Cape. Has it brought a lot of benefit to our police department and have we seen some kind of betterment in the whole public safety issue because of it?"
The City of Cape Girardeau received roughly 8 million dollars in ARPA Funds. Mayor Kinder, as well as the City Council, agreed that the best thing to do with those funds is put them to demolish the multiple buildings deemed unsafe. Due to either the buildings either posing a safety hazard or people using them when the buildings shouldn't be used.
"What we know is that some of these buildings pose a huge safety hazard. Vagrants and some homeless people are using these facilities. They're not safe to be in, number one. And then we're realizing that there is some criminal activity happening in them as well"
To assist with traffic, MoDOT gives different cities a grant to finance studies that could be used to improve traffic. For the city of Cape Girardeau, that funding went to improve stoplights, which have since been adjusted accordingly.
"We were awarded that grant, it's a grant from MoDOT which allows municipalities to get assistance in traffic studies. Particularly, we were awarded that grant to study the timing of the traffic signals along Broadway".
Other city plans for Cape Girardeau include continuing street repair, which Kinder has said has been in place since before she was elected, during Bob Fox's term. She also says that due to the multitude of streets that need to be repaired, it will be a long process.
