ST. LOUIS — Todd Waelterman, a longtime civil servant who rose to become a top aide to multiple mayors, died Monday. He was 59.
His wife, Julie Waelterman, said the cause was not yet clear.
Waelterman was born in St. Louis in 1964. He went to Lindbergh High School, earned an engineering degree at the University of Missouri-Rolla and then put it to work at the city’s Board of Public Service.
After a few years there, he moved to the Streets Department, where he worked on some of the more prominent functions of city government: filling potholes, plowing snow-covered streets and cleaning up after storms. He also worked to prepare the city for Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1999.
In 2006, Mayor Francis Slay named him Streets Department director over hundreds of employees who fixed roads, towed cars and emptied the city’s trash dumpsters.
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He helped prepare for the Highway 40 (Interstate 64) reconstruction and kickstarted the city’s residential recycling program. He organized Fair St. Louis’ move to Forest Park from the Gateway Arch grounds during the latter’s renovations. And he continued to oversee the snow plows and street repairs.
Jeff Rainford, Slay’s longtime chief of staff, described Waelterman as what every civil servant should be: He worked hard and got things done.
Even when the asks were more like stunts. Once, under pressure to do something about the city’s pockmarked streets, the administration said that all pothole complaints would be addressed within 48 hours, Rainford said. But he made it work — at least well enough to avoid contradictory headlines.
With Waelterman, Rainford said, “If there was any chance that it could be done, it would get done.”
In 2015, Slay named Waelterman his operations director, over a vast swath of the city’s departments. Mayor Lyda Krewson kept him there when she took over two years later. And she remembered him in much the same way Rainford did:
He knew the city, he had friends everywhere and could negotiate across bureaucracies like few others could.
“I’m going to miss him,” she said.
Waelterman fell out of favor under Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, who hired a new operations director and removed Waelterman as refuse commissioner amid widespread problems with trash pickup last summer.
Critics of the administration said Waelterman was unfairly blamed. The pickup problems began shortly after the administration restarted regular recycling collection despite an ongoing shortage of trash truck drivers.
Waelterman is survived by his wife, five children, brother Curt Waelterman, and mother Joy Waelterman, among others.
No funeral services have been announced.
A selection of photos from 2022 by David Carson a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for the Post-Dispatch. In 22 years on staff he’s covered everything from war in Iraq and Afghanistan to pet of the week in St. Charles. He appreciates his family who puts up with his love for chasing news at all hours. See more of his photographs from 2022.
