Nothing personal

Wood, though, said he thought he could do more by agitating from outside the LBD rather than from within, which is why he filed the lawsuit. Beyond a stint on a safety subcommittee, he is a regular meeting attendee and critic.

Many of Wood’s complaints center on Barry Adelstein, the district’s treasurer and a longtime board member and property owner in the district. Some district donations — although small in the larger context of the overall budget — were made to organizations that had ties to Adelstein.

For example, the district gave about $2,500 in both 2014 and 2015 to the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, whose director had once been Adelstein’s tenant. Other donations were meant as event sponsorships. One of the organizations that put on an event was Adelstein’s tenant.

Adelstein testified that he didn’t always recuse himself from votes on such donations but that he didn’t understand it to be a conflict at the time.

Wood initially got involved in the district after two of his tenants were robbed as they were moving in a couple of years ago. He was concerned about security and wanted to find out what the district was doing to improve it.