Government

The Richmond Heights City Council is composed of a Mayor and eight City Council Members who provide ever-improving and progressive services (tempered by the city’s strong sense of heritage and tradition) to the city’s residents and businesses.

The City Council meets to conduct city business on the first and third Monday of each month. In turn, the City Manager implements the Council’s actions through the day-to-day operations of eight municipal departments: Police, Fire, Public Works, Building, Finance, Office of the City Manager, and the Parks and Recreation department. The Richmond Heights Memorial Library is a separate taxing and operational entity.

Richmond Heights prides itself on being a “free service” city. In addition to the invaluable daily services provided by the departments listed above, the city is also able to provide residents with curbside solid waste disposal and recycling services, curbside leaf vacuuming in the fall, street maintenance, and many other value-added services and programs at no additional charge to residents. All of this is being accomplished while the city maintains one of the lowest municipal property tax rates in St. Louis County.

Richmond Heights’ new Public Safety Building (which houses Police, Fire and Municipal Court personnel and their equipment) is home to the East-Central Dispatch Center (ECDC). Through an innovative agreement involving five cities, the ECDC is able to provide emergency police, fire and emergency medical dispatching services for residents of five communities from one location. Facilities in this one dispatching center enable participating municipalities to share state-of-the-art dispatching technologies and equipment, thus providing their constituents top-notch service at a lower cost per city than would be possible if provided by each city individually.

In 2002, Richmond Heights and its neighbors to the north and south – the cities of Clayton and Maplewood – entered a cooperative effort by passing resolutions to study all opportunities to cooperate, share, partner and combine information, services, departments and facilities in order to improve their respective communities. Since then, the three cities have worked together to take a number of specific, cooperative actions that have resulted in cost-savings, expanded services and improved operations in the various communities – including metered parking enforcement, street resurfacing bids and increased sharing of parks and recreation activities and services.

For more details about the history, development, services and operations of the City, visit www.richmondheights.org.