Notice anything different? We hope so—and we hope you’re as excited about it as we are! As of today, we have merged Wentzville and Lake Saint Louis Patch in an effort to strengthen our coverage of both communities.

Based on the ways we’ve seen you, our faithful readers and advertisers, use the two sites, it was just good common sense to combine them.

Well, let me be the first to introduce myself! My name is Tamara Duncan (Please call me Tammy!) and I've been the Lake Saint Louis Patch editor since December 2010. You may have seen my truck around town with the Lake Saint Louis Patch sign on it.

As of today, I'm the editor of Wentzville Patch, which will also now be covering Lake Saint Louis news.

Instead of asking you to check two sites for the news and information you need from Wentzville and Lake Saint Louis, you’ll have it all in one place: right here on wentzville.patch.com!

Don’t worry: We'll still offer the same robust coverage of everything happening in both towns. We aren’t reducing our focus on either of them! This is meant to help us provide better coverage of the things that matter to residents of both communities, which is something we’re always striving to do!

Lake Saint Louis, as a city, is about as unique as it comes. There's nothing quite like it in the Greater St. Louis-area. And Wentzville is a growing, thriving community.

Together, both towns share a school district and fire district. Residents from each city frequent and enjoy the other's businesses, restaurants and resources. As a recent East-West Gateway presentation demonstrated, cities have a lot to gain from working together and knowing each other better.

Covering both together, on the same site, gives advertisers a great new opportunity to reach readers in both cities. Over the past year or so, we've come to realize we can serve you better by also bringing you news and information from your neighbors.

A few housekeeping notes:

• If you're signed up with the Lake Saint Louis or Wentzville site, you'll still be signed up for the merged site.
• Going to lakesaintlouis.patch.com will redirect to the new merged Wentzville Patch site. 
• Both the Lake Saint Louis and Wentzville newsletters and breaking news alerts will be automatically merged appropriately.
• If you currently like Lake Saint Louis Patch on Facebook, you'll definitely want to like Wentzville Patch on Facebook, as that's where we'll post all our great photos, news, announcements and more!  
• And you'll continue to get the same coverage of the Lake Saint Louis community alongside the coverage of Wentzville.

On a personal level, I’d like to say it's been a wonderful year covering Lake Saint Louis. I've met some truly amazing people and I've been able to cover events like the Polar Plunge (and participate in it, too!), the Fourth of July fireworks on the lake and the ski shows that made the job seem more like Lake Saint Louis' "vacation every day."

And I'm very excited to be covering Wentzville. I shop at Walmart, I buy my horse feed at Charlie's, I've walked in your parades, took my kids to swim at Progress Park and spent a lot of summer days at the flea market. Some of you may remember me from the Greater St. Louis Renaissance Faire, where I was a volunteer for almost 10 years.

I’m truly part of both communities.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at tamara.duncan@patch.com.

Patch is best when it's a conversation. So please, make yourself a regular contributor! 

Among other great features, Patch readers can: 

• Subscribe to our daily newsletter
• Start a blog
• Post an event
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• Upload a photo or video 
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And best of all, all these features are 100 percent free and super easy to use! 

So come on, let's have some fun!