Жители Сент-Луиса надеются на новые данные для контроля за покосом заброшенных участков

To cut down on unmowed vacant lots, St. Louis City looks to data, as North City resident discusses wait ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - A north St. Louis resident said an overgrown, city-owned vacant lot next to her home was finally cleared this week, after months of calls to the city. It is an issue First Alert 4 has been following. Mary McClung lives on Cote Brilliante in the Wells Goodfellow neighborhood. She said the Land Reutilization Authority lot beside her home had weeds growing to eight feet tall or more in places, making it hard to use the sidewalk or sit on her front porch. “I couldn’t walk on the sidewalk. I couldn’t sit on the front without all the critters bothering you. And then I don’t know if the mice were coming from the vacant lot or where, but I’ve caught 30,” McClung said. McClung said it’s been LRA-owned for years and maintained regularly by the city through the summer months. But this year, she said, no crew had come out to mow. She said she called the Forestry Division three times and Citizen Service once before contacting her alderwoman and First Alert 4. First Alert 4 reached out to the city about the lot. A Forestry crew arrived Wednesday morning. She said they had a mower and about five weed eaters. “I’m just glad it’s down. It makes a big difference,” McClung said. The City of St. Louis launched CityStat earlier this year to track the performance of city services, including Forestry’s mowing of vacant lots. The program pulls data into dashboards used at internal operational meetings and published on the city’s website. Alex Price, CityStat program manager, said the program is designed to answer a core question about each city department. “CityStat is a program that looks at data for all city departments. Specifically, we are asking ourselves, what is the service or services that this department delivers to residents? How can we tell if they’re doing it well?” Price said. Current data shows that wards 10 through 14, which cover north St. Louis and have the highest concentration of vacant lots, have an average clearance rate of just over 60 percent. That data was through the end of June. Vacant lots are tracked separately from vacant lots with buildings, as they require different equipment. “If Forestry comes around and they see that lot is already mowed, and the weeds are not overgrown, they might skip that lot. So let’s say, 30% of that 40% that’s not mowed might be already maintained,” said Price. Price said the status of the remaining lots is the next problem CityStat is working to solve. “There are certainly some that are being just missed for, you know, due to error, or sometimes it can be unclear where, like, an address or parcel starts and stops. That might be the culprit. It might also be there was debris or some blockage, some reason they weren’t able to access that lot,” Price said. Price said the city plans to implement a tracking system that would require crews to log the status of every lot they visit, whether it was mowed, already maintained or inaccessible due to debris. “What we’re working on with them now, and this is hopefully coming in the next couple of weeks, is a way to actually track for any given lot on rotation when they went to visit it and what its status was,” Price said. Price said the long-term goal is to shift from reacting to resident complaints to catching skipped or missed lots before calls come in. “Once we have this better data and better follow-up, we’re going to, first of all, receive fewer requests because residents are going to see the lots on their block are mowed more frequently. That one that has been missed five times last year, next year it’s not missed at all because we have that continuous feedback loop,” Price said. She said CityStat also reflects the mayor’s commitment to transparency and accountability. “I think one thing that CityStat allows us to do is to show very honestly where we see a problem. We aren’t sure what’s going on with these numbers, and that’s why we’re taking these steps to get better data, to know the answers, and then to take action on it,” Price said. In a statement, the St. Louis Forestry Division said it schedules vacant property grass cutting on a ward-by-ward rotation across 14 wards. Under normal staffing, vacant buildings are typically cut three times per season between April and October, while vacant lots are typically cut five to six times per season during that same period. The division said it currently has more than 20,000 vacant properties on its rotation. Forestry said it is operating at approximately 60 percent of its seasonal grass-cutting staffing capacity. The division said staffing levels and inclement weather can affect mowing production. Crews are working six days a week on vacant properties across the city, according to the statement. McClung said she hopes the clearance holds. “Maybe I can start back walking now,” she said. Copyright 2026 KMOV. All rights reserved.