A city staff member told the Wildwood Board of Public Safety the city is preparing for the start of the school year with stepped-up school safety patrols and coordination with Rockwood School District.
The staff member said, “The Wildwood Precinct has 4 school resource officers that are contracted with the Rockwood School District. One is at each of the middle schools... and one is at the high school,” and added that the district has hired additional armed security officers who patrol elementary schools.
Staff said the precinct will provide officers at school arrival and dismissal for the first week or two to identify recurring traffic or safety issues and decide whether to add enforcement, radar trailers or other countermeasures. The city also maintains liaison arrangements for private schools and said the community college operates its own police department.
Board members raised several recurring traffic-safety items: a recent serious pedestrian crash (nonfatal) at Westland Drive and Highway 100; traffic-signal coordination issues at the Pearside/Highway 100 intersection tied to MoDOT timing and occasional disruptions from large vehicles; and failing or aging solar-powered flashing-beacon crosswalk systems.
On beacons, staff said the infrastructure is about 10 years old and that failures now appear to stem from aging hardware, batteries and communications modules. Staff proposed planning for a lifecycle replacement of these flashers on a roughly ten-year schedule and training the city’s right‑of‑way contractor in troubleshooting to reduce reliance on larger electrical firms that have been slow to respond.
On signal timing, staff reported upgrades to GPS-linked timing clocks and said synchronization with the MoDOT controller should be closer now, though large trucks or heavy vehicles passing through can temporarily disrupt the coordination and require observation and recalibration.
The board asked staff to report back on crosswalk repairs and to provide an update at the next meeting. Staff also noted the city has an opt-in enewsletter system that has been used for weather and traffic notices but cautioned that 24/7 automated mass-messaging tied to field sensors may require dedicated staffing and raise legal and operational issues.