Cool Valley Mayor Ousted After Impeachment Hearing

Jayson Stewart, 32, began his political career nearly three years ago vowing to bring jobs and better government to the financially ailing village of Cool Valley, a north county town of 1,200 people near Lambert International Airport.

But after more than two years as mayor, Stewart’s abysmal track record became too much for the Cool Valley City Council. To all of it — the broken promises, erratic behavior, pie-in-the-sky schemes, city hall dysfunction, petty insults, penchant for going MIA and refusing to obey aldermen, the inexplicable failure to provide even the most basic city services — the council said enough.

The council voted 3-1 Wednesday night to remove Stewart from office after finding him guilty on six charges of insubordination and malfeasance, including the refusal to return a city-owned car, to draft a 2022-23 city budget, and to turn over bank passwords and records necessary to track down $230,000 in badly needed federal COVID-relief funds.

Defiant to the end, and adamant that his enemies not have the pleasure of seeing him brought low, Stewart emailed the council and city attorney five minutes before the impeachment hearing was set to begin, informing them he “was retiring from politics.” Since his email and its terminology did not adhere to state law governing how an elected official resigns, the council went ahead with Stewart’s impeachment hearing anyway.

Stewart did not return calls seeking comment.

Floyd Blackwell, one of Stewart’s main antagonists, took over as interim mayor by virtue of his role as aldermanic president. Blackwell could barely conceal his glee as he took repeated victory laps around Stewart’s political corpse.


At the end of the council meeting that followed the hearing, Blackwell told the audience that he and other council members had spent the past year “trying to right the ship. And yet there are so many leaks all over the place…I’m tired of playing games. I’m ready to move forward.”

Stewart, a graduate of the prestigious John Burroughs School in Ladue, leaves behind a town in even worse shape than he found it, with the Missouri auditor’s office actively pursuing an investigation of the city’s finances after a whistleblower complaint and rumors of a federal investigation swirling around the missing COVID-relief funds.

Paul Martin, the attorney the city hired to prosecute the impeachment case against Stewart, led witnesses through a 90-minute hearing that was a road map of Stewart’s malfeasance and dereliction of duty.

“There were several missteps by the mayor,” Martin said during his summation. “He interfered with a business license when he had no authority to do that. He kept a city car for many, many months when the board clearly indicated they wanted the car returned…And he obviously hasn’t provided or attempted to provide financial information to the board so that the board could understand finances and get a budget passed on a timely basis.”

Stewart, a self-described multimillionaire businessman, won the Cool Valley mayoral race in a landslide in April 2020 after campaigning on a platform of reform and bringing employers to the beleaguered town. Cool Valley lost its two main employers — a Schnucks supermarket and DRS, a defense contractor — in recent years, at a cost of hundreds of jobs.

Instead, Stewart focused on things most city residents found irrelevant, such as a hydroponic garden that provides leafy greens to a few St. Louis restaurants, and a nebulous pledge to give every city resident $1,000 worth of bitcoin. The latter promise garnered lots of national attention and even led to an invitation to speak at Harvard University Law School, but so far has failed to result in anything tangible.

Meanwhile, Stewart showed an utter indifference to the nuts-and-bolts of small town governance, turning even his staunchest partisans against him. Grass on city properties went uncut, trash uncollected, snow unplowed and giant potholes unfilled after years of neglect.

Stewart, officially at least, does not become ex-mayor until February 22, when the council is set to vote on the hearing’s findings of fact.

Stewart’s impeachment and ouster from office culminated a nearly year-long process that began with a concerted citizen campaign to remove him. Also leading the charge was Alderman Jermaine Matthew, who, along with his wife Melanie, relentlessly demanded accountability from Stewart, a master of double-speak and verbal evasion.

Alderman Matthew looked visibly relieved over Stewart’s removal, but expressed none of Blackwell’s glee.

“I just hate that we had to go through this in the first place,” Matthew said.

Mike Fitzgerald can be reached at [email protected]

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