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Grudge City

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Nothing sums up the gap between O'Fallon's feuding parties like The Legend of the 9/11 Steel. A memorial to the victims of the terrorist attacks, the steel is a twisted rusting mass that rests behind city hall, encircled by flower beds and a wrought-iron fence. The legend begins not on that fateful day, but in April 2005 when Paul Renaud was about to give up his mayoral post.

The steel was stored in a particle-board shed behind the locked gates of the sewage treatment plant, as it had been since 2002. That year, Renaud, then-assistant to city administrator John Griesenauer, and an artist traveled to New York to find material for a memorial. MasterCard paid for the trip.

Griesenauer, one of the few city employees remaining from Renaud's years, recalls how they started out at the Fresh Kills landfill. They found some smaller pieces, but it was pretty well picked over by other memorial-builders. (One of the small pieces today resides in a glass case inside city hall. The rest of it is part of a memorial at the intersection of WingHaven Boulevard and Highway 40, near MasterCard headquarters.)

The O'Fallon team headed to a scrap yard in New Jersey. There, they met the man in charge, who was so touched by the small Midwestern city's desire to create a memorial that he donated a twenty-ton piece of steel. The steel was trucked to O'Fallon, but there was just one problem with the plan: The city had set no money aside to pay for it. When Renaud floated the idea, some residents wondered why a September 11 memorial in O'Fallon was even necessary.

A few days before the April 2005 election, two men showed up at the locked gates of the sewage treatment plant. They wanted to take the 9/11 steel. A supervisor phoned city hall to get the OK.

Meanwhile, alderman Lyn Schipper received a tip about what was going on. Schipper tried to intervene with city hall staff. In the end, Renaud gave the green light. Once Renaud was out of office, the city launched an investigation. Schipper and O'Fallon officer Dave Buehrle flew to New York to find out where the steel came from, how it was meant to be used and where it ended up. Buehrle tracked the steel to a construction yard in St. Louis. Its final destination was to be the entrance of a new subdivision by one of Renaud's main supporters, WingHaven developer Paul McKee Jr.

St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas brought the matter before a grand jury, which issued no indictments. Banas chalked it up to political feuding. But the city had paid the freight bill for the steel's cross-country trip, Morrow says, and McKee's company voluntarily sent it back. As far as Morrow is concerned, enough was enough. "Was there crime and corruption? Yeah. It was taken. But we got it back. We found the steel. What is it that they want?"

Schipper, again, is not satisfied. Noting that Buehrle was not asked to testify before the grand jury, he believes Banas caved to political pressure. "Paul's last executive order was to give the City of New York and O'Fallon the middle finger all for Paul McKee's sake," he says.

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