Reorganized Galloway CID holds kickoff event

The Galloway Community Improvement District held a kickoff mixer May 26 – significant because the organization has lain mostly fallow since it was formed in 2019.

Wendy Huscher, the CID’s chair since March, said the CID has an available balance of just over $250,000, having made very few expenditures in its lifetime. Those include subscriptions, office expenses and, for a brief period, the salary of a CID manager.

At the event, she said the night was about connecting and sharing ideas for the future of Galloway.

Melanie Bach, the new CID manager, also addressed the crowd to introduce the board. Huscher represents Niji Sushi Bar and Grill, rather than the business she owns, About Faces Photography Inc., which is located outside of the district. Other board members are Jamie Thomas of Edgewood REIT/Quarry Town, Jennifer Bair of The Rock Food and Friends and Denise Allsop of Vine Pairings LLC. Stuart Venable is a nonvoting member who represents the Galloway Village Neighborhood Association.

The Galloway CID collects a 1% sales and use tax for any sales within the district. The funds go through the Missouri Department of Revenue and come back to the CID.

Bach said the CID has not made any improvements, but it hopes to make some impactful projects in the future, starting with banners to be erected in the district. She asked participants to vote on designs that were available on the table in the back of the room.

“Banners are what all the business owners that we’ve talked to want to see happen first,” she said.

The banner designs feature the name Galloway, rather than Galloway Village, and that is an intentional change, Bach said in an interview during the mixer, noting that the name Galloway is most commonly applied when talking about the area.

CID revitalized
Huscher said the board had not had a functioning quorum since May 2020, but in October 2025, Springfield City Council made five appointments to the board to correct that problem. The board was reconfigured again with council appointments in March of this year, resulting in its current membership.

Huscher said the CID had been paying substantial monthly bank fees while keeping nearly $200,000 in a non-interest-bearing account, and she said she pointed that out in an April 2025 board meeting prior to joining the board.

When the new board members were appointed, the work began on fixing problems, according to Huscher.

“From there, the focus became correcting operational issues, restoring compliance, reconciling finances and establishing proper systems and procedures moving forward,” she said via email.

Huscher added that a major part of that involved financial accountability and reconciliation of CID revenues.

“During our review, we discovered significant CID revenue checks that had never been deposited, along with other distributions that had to be tracked down and reconciled,” she said.

Huscher said that historically, the Missouri Department of Revenue had issued checks multiple times because distributions were not being deposited within the time required, and a reconciliation of DOR records against CID bank statements showed distributions were still missing. The DOR subsequently reissued funds that had never been deposited, she said.

“That process helped recover taxpayer dollars that otherwise would have remained unresolved,” she said.

Huscher said the CID now uses direct deposit instead of paper checks, and recurring expenses have been reviewed to eliminate spending that provided little value to the district.

“The overall goal was to rebuild the CID into a properly functioning public entity with accurate records, transparent finances, compliant filings and systems that better protect taxpayer dollars moving forward,” she said.

Chadwick Flyer Trail
During the mixer, Bach introduced Ben Tegeler, executive director of Ozark Greenways Inc., who discussed the future Chadwick Flyer Trail connection through the district.

Tegeler said this is an exciting time for trails in the region with $30 million of trails funded for construction, design and engineering to connect Ozark and Lake Springfield. Meanwhile, he said, trails also connect their users to businesses people want to experience, like Finley Farms, Cassidy Farms and ultimately businesses located in Galloway.

“Tonight necessarily isn’t about the trail; it’s more about that identity, connectivity, access and experience and how the district functions long term, and how the Chadwick can be a piece of it,” he said.

Eventually, the Chadwick Flyer Trail will connect Ozark to Bolivar through Springfield, he said, and Galloway sits directly in the center of the story.

“It’s having nodes in places where people want to be and experience – come get a beer, come get a coffee, come get a massage – it doesn’t matter what it is, but having that mixed-use district where people can live and their front door is the trail is something special that we can offer,” he said.