Thursday, the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council web presence, http://www.ewgateway.org/, crashed due to an overwhelming number of hits to the site. Further investigation by East-West found an interesting link to the City of Overland.

"We did an IP lookup on the thousands of unexpected hits," explained D Humphreys, Information System Analyst for East-West. "A large majority were coming from users in the City of Overland."

Maybe not coincidentally, the East-West Gateway announced the opening of nominations for its Outstanding Local Government Achievement Awards. This award recognizes the extraordinary work of municipal, county, special purpose and school district officials in the St. Louis region.

Les Sterman, Executive Director of East-West explained further. "We can only guess that with the popularity of Overland's Mayor, many people are trying to download the application to nominate her." Such interest may have also been sparked by recent propaganda efforts by the Overland Recovery Team who has leafleted many Overland neighborhoods in support of Mayor Ann Purzner.

Nominations for the Outstanding Local Government Achievement Awards are being accepted now through October 6, 2006. Applications are available online at
http://www.ewgateway.org/pdffiles/amtg06/olgabrochure.pdf