City Beat: Council enacts campaign finance reform for city elections

Last edited 11:26 a.m., May 11, 2026 [Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct the building's height; it remains four stories in the front.]

The city now has a campaign finance reform ordinance, following a unanimous Springfield City Council vote May 4.

Under the measure, the contribution limit from one donor for a candidate in a city election is $2,825.

The meeting included a second public hearing on the measure, required because of Mayor Jeff Schrag’s changes to a bill presented at the April 20 meeting.

Schrag’s substitute ordinance replaced one brought forward to council by the body’s Plans and Policies Committee after 10 months of work. The chief revision was to assign finance oversight to an existing city committee, the Citizens’ Tax Oversight Committee, rather than establishing a nine-member city ethics commission, as the committee recommended.

Schrag introduced his revision shortly before the April 20 meeting, giving council little time to review it, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting.

While the committee version would have addressed a failure to report contributions, Schrag’s version leaves that up to the Missouri Ethics Commission. That body has operated without a quorum on and off since 2022, according to the Columbia Missourian, though Gov. Mike Kehoe announced an appointment May 5 to restore it to its minimum functioning level.

The revised ordinance also will not allow acceptance of complaints by the Citizens’ Tax Oversight Committee within 15 days before an election, in keeping with MEC rules. This is referred to in the council bill as “15-day preelection silence.” Additionally, the measure sets up a 180-day time frame for any complaint to be investigated and a ruling to be offered; past that time, the complaint is dismissed.

Of the six people who participated in the public hearing on the bill, all supported the principle of campaign finance reform, but some expressed reservations about the revisions.

Daniel Meadows said his confidence in the measure was diminished by the quick substitution of the amendment to the full council, bypassing the council committee that had worked on it.

“It felt rushed, dismissive of the Plans and (Policies) Committee’s work and dismissive of standard process,” Meadows said.

He added that he favors review by a city ethics commission rather than by a state committee that at the time of Meadows’ remarks did not appear to have enough members to function. However, he said, he supports the measure as a starting point.

Councilmember Brandon Jenson offered his reserved support for the bill.

“Although the introduction of the substitute bill did result in a fundamentally weaker policy and a reduced gain in trust that I had hoped this bill would achieve with our community, I still believe that this bill is better than no bill,” he said.

Councilmember Craig Hosmer said council has been trying to get campaign finance reform enacted for six years.

“That is one of the things that makes people distrust government – when they see things happen quickly,” Hosmer said.

Schrag said he will be interested to see the impact of the legislation a year from now in the first municipal election following the measure’s passage.

“It is sincerely my hope that we see a notable increase in voter turnout,” he said.

Missing-middle housing
Council also decided where and how to include missing-middle housing in the city’s land development code and zoning map.

The policy is partially the result of a series of neighborhood meetings held May-July 2025 to seek resident input on which parcels in their neighborhoods should allow missing-middle housing. Staff filtered those recommendations for eligibility of parcels, and the result was some 3,600 parcels being identified for R-MX1 zoning.

R-MX1 is a new low-density mixed neighborhood zoning designation that allows missing-middle housing, which is higher density than single-family homes but less than a typical apartment building. Examples are accessory dwelling units, duplexes or townhomes, according to past SBJ reporting.

When the citywide rezoning legislation was in front of the city’s Planning & Zoning Commission on March 26, that body voted to recommend a scaled-back version of the shift from single-family residential to R-MX1, limiting the new zoning designation to corridors and neighborhood perimeters and keeping it out of the centers of neighborhoods. That scaled-back plan, which would shift only 1,009 parcels from single-family to R-MX1, was the subject of the council bill.

Councilmember Monica Horton began the discussion of the bill by offering a substitute that reverted to council’s original plan, with missing-middle housing permitted in the centers of neighborhoods.

The vote on Horton’s motion failed 6-3, with Jenson and Bruce Adib-Yazdi also supporting it. A subsequent vote on the scaled-back map passed, and a vote that followed allowed nine properties to opt out of the new designation.

In arguing for a return to the proposal created with feedback from neighborhood residents, Horton asked her fellow council members to weigh the merits of the original recommendation through the lenses of livability for residents and of ability to attract business, both aspects of the city’s Forward SGF comprehensive plan.

“The alternate map not only shortchanges the community engagement process, but the restrictive map contributes to undermining the city’s efforts to wipe out the housing shortage,” she said.

Councilmember Derek Lee said he did not support Horton’s substitute map because homeownership is important, and the scaled-back map still offers more than 1,000 opportunities for higher-density housing.

He added that it’s the city of Springfield making the changes, and not an individual developer.

“This is the city of Springfield coming in and really flooding these neighborhoods with rental property,” Lee said.

As an engineer who designs missing-middle developments, Lee said he has done hundreds of those properties, all resulting in only rentals.

“The vast majority of this will be developers who in the center of neighborhoods are going to put rental property,” he said, adding, “I’m just asking that we do some restraint in the very center of neighborhoods for the sake of homeownership.”

Hosmer said it’s not often that he agrees with Lee, but he said it doesn’t make sense to start out with 3,600 parcels when council could start with just 1,000 to see how it works.

“It doesn’t seem like you go full-bore into a change that we don’t know what the impact is,” he said. “The very reasonable impact is that this is devastating to single-family home-ownership neighborhoods.”

Medical Mile project OK’d
An apartment development called The Reserve at Medical Mile was given the go-ahead by following some changes to the project’s scope by the developer.

The proposed multifamily development is on 7.6 acres bordered on the east by heavily traveled National Avenue with its commercial and medical properties, but on the west it abuts the High Meadow East neighborhood, which is composed of single-family houses.

Concerns by High Meadow East residents about the lack of transition between multifamily and single-family parcels led the developer, Bibi Oaks LLC, to propose six changes to its proposal for The Reserve at Medical Mile, chief among them a reduction in height from four stories to three for most of the length of the building's sides. The structure remains four stories where it fronts Walnut Lawn Street.

Council approved the changes to the project at a special meeting on April 27. The others are a reduction of units to 182 from 198, a shift of the building location toward National Avenue to the east, removal of an access point to the property from Maryland Avenue, facilitating neighborhood backyard access to their properties by adding 10 gates along Kings Avenue and adding trees along Walnut Lawn Street.

The measure passed 7-2, with two council members, Jenson and Hosmer, opposed.

Abbigale Haralson was among those voicing neighborhood opposition in the public hearing, which was required following a hearing on April 20 because the bill was amended. Her objection was partially based on what she viewed as a lack of adherence to the city’s Forward SGF comprehensive plan.

“I stand here … as a person who believes a city is only as strong as the promises it keeps,” she said.

Haralson said the community is left questioning who the body represents.

“It is a shameful day for a city when a homeowners’ association is forced to sue their own city simply to compel their elected officials to follow their own comprehensive plan,” she said.

Haralson was referring to a lawsuit filed by the Cooper Estates Property Owners Association against the city to challenge a separate 510-unit planned development by East Division Development LLC located near the city’s eastern limit. That suit alleges that council’s approval of the development does not conform to Forward SGF and that it must do so under state law, according to past SBJ reporting.

Haralson said Forward SGF is a promise made to the city’s residents.

“When you ignore it to accommodate developers, you aren’t just moving dirt; you are breaking a contract with the families who invested their lives and their savings into this community,” she said. “We have to ask, who does this council serve?”

Present at the meeting with the developer, architect Brian Kubik of Buxton Kubik Dodd Design Collective showed council members a slide demonstrating that the building that is proposed is substantially lower than the allowable bulk plane, and he pointed to the reduction in height and the number of units as revisions that are aimed at addressing neighbors’ concerns.

Horton voiced her support for the project, noting that the city needs more workforce housing. She noted the project is in a higher-trafficked area already, making the location ideal for it.

Jenson said his objection was based partly on the issue of transition between houses and higher-density structures.

“We still have a three-story blank wall surrounded by a donut of parking, and so I don’t see that reflection in the urban design,” he said.

Other action items
• The annexation of 9 acres of private property in the 3500 block of North Farm Road 151 was approved for Maranatha Village Inc., which plans to build a development consistent with retirement community Maranatha Village to the south.

• A $550,000 appropriation was approved from retained earnings of the city’s clean water enterprise fund to replace sanitary sewer line segments near Elm Arcade Street and Broadway Avenue. Additionally, a $950,000 appropriation from the solid waste management enterprise fund was OK’d to buy an articulated haul truck for the city landfill.

• A bill to appropriate $185,000 in funds from the Commercial Street tax increment financing fund was amended with shifts in planned expenditures by Horton, who wanted the city to return to C-Street stakeholders for more input and to have another public hearing. Horton said the stakeholders did not get notification of the measure before the last meeting.

• Council approved the city’s application for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant funds of $1.4 million and Home Investment Partnerships Program funds of $1 million. The submission deadline is June 3.

• A proposed annexation of 1 acre at 2852 W. Republic Road into the city would make way for a commercial development – specifically, a coffee shop – at the request of applicant Coorts Coffee 1 LLC. Council is set to vote on the measure May 18.

• Applicant John Barrerra of Barrera Family Properties LLC told council he plans to build “a nice little duplex” on 1/5 of an acre at 1125 E. Thoman St. if a rezoning to R-MX1 from heavy manufacturing is approved May 18.

• Council will vote May 18 on whether to approve a five-year renewal of a mapped-out east-west arterial route south of the city.