City Council - Regular Meeting

MONDAY, JULY 20th, 20th, 26th. I'D LIKE TO CALL OUR MEETING TO ORDER, AND WE'LL START WITH THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE. NEW SPEAKER I pledge allegiance to the I'd like to invite Pastor Philip Augustine from the Christ Lutheran Church to open us in prayer.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, council members, privileged to be with you and to ask God's blessing upon this assembly tonight. Let us pray. Eternal Lord, ruler of all, your word informs us of that which is good. And for this gathering of community leaders tonight, we pray for them to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly in your ways. Graciously regard the mayor and council members and all those who have been in positions of authority among us. that guided by your spirit they may be high in purpose wise in counsel firm and good resolution and unwavering in duty that under them we may be governed well for the greater good of our city guide their thoughts and spirits that we may live in peace with you o lord and especially with one another let your blessing rest upon this meeting tonight that all that is said and done be according to your will knowing that you work all things to the good of your people and the glory of your holy name We pray this in the precious and holy name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, Pastor. With that, we'll look at approving our Council Minute meetings, the minutes from July 13th and July 6th.

Mr. Brown, make a motion to approve the minutes of the July 6th, 2026 City Council meeting. Second. And the July 13th, 2026 Special Council meeting. Second.

Got a motion and a second. Any questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Let's now look at our appropriation ordinance number 7A and get it approved.

I move for the approval of the appropriation ordinance number 7A dated July 15, 2026. Second.

Got a motion and a second. Were there any questions? All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries. That moves us to our visitor section, and our first item is we would like to have some employee recognition, and I will call our chief safety officer up here, and he'll handle it.

Good evening. Tonight, it's my honor to present a recognition to an employee with 50 years. And I have Ray and his wife, please come forward. Not often do you see somebody that dedicates this much time of their life to himself, to this community, to training these very people right here. He is the epitome of a public servant. And we've been totally blessed to have Ray for this many years. I've only known Ray for about four and a half years and I've learned more from him about fire than I have in all my career. It's amazing. And Ray, the mayor will present you with 50 year plaque.

You want to say anything, Rick? No, I'm good.

Go on to the next one.

Keep going.

We have a second presentation tonight. I'd like to introduce Buck Buchanan. He is the chief over in Andover. He is also the chair of the Law Enforcement Accreditation Commission here in Kansas. The accreditation we've been working on for three years to get. And I'd like to invite Marla Rojas. You have to help me with your last name on that one. We had a core committee, also Kim and Kaylee, Major Marbot, Lieutenant Johnston, and Highbarger that did this. And here, when we're done, we're going to take a picture of all of us. But we couldn't have done it without Marla's taking it on and keep pushing. and sometimes irritating the heck out of the rest of us to get it done. But we got it done after three years. And I don't know how many of us in Kansas now have them, but it's a very big feat than one of the promises that we made when I started here. And we have now scratched that one off our list as well.

So I'm gonna turn it over to Buck for right now. Mayor and Council, thanks for having me tonight. This is actually an honor for me to be here. For those that know, the Chief and I both have a good working relationship in many ways, which is important. And a big part of what accreditation is about is those networkings, those relationships, best practices. We've gone through this for many years with a national accreditation. I know when the state came in and said, hey, we would like to develop our own. It was a lot of work that went into it. So to start from the scratch up is a lot of work that you should be proud of the department and all the workers. It's not just one person. And it takes many years to do this. I don't have the exact number. I apologize tonight. I wish I did have that. I think number four or five, somewhere in there, just to show you of people that are agencies that have been awarded this accreditation. There's about 70, close to 70 we have right now signed up. That's impressive because it's not just given. We've had agencies that have dropped out of this because it was too hard. And they look past the toughness of it. As you can tell, a lot of people, every officer, everyone on this department had to have their hand in it some way or another. So with pride for my part is getting that great relationship. I'm like, hey, I want this one as a as a commission member saying this is all I get to do. This is it right here. And I'm honored to be able to present the city of Augusta, Augusta Police Department Public Safety with the initial accreditation award from the clip. Awesome.

Awesome.

And we're gonna bring all the officers up, take a quick picture with you guys standing in front of you.

We've all had a part in this.

I don't know. that's all i have mr mayor thank you thank you this one's probably ripe for new wheels or casters or something There's no use asking if there's visitors here for something else because there's no one left.

well kevin's not a visitor though let's move on to our first item of business which is an ordinance establishing rates and charges for water and water services so staff i'll turn it over to you that's all you give the audience just a few more seconds to clear out the stairway yeah

okay uh mayor and council thank you very much uh this ordinance tonight is related to uh our water rates as you recall we uh is that any better can you hear me a little bit early all right i'll just i'll just try to speak louder if that's possible All right. Mayor and Council, this ordinance here tonight is the culmination of a variety of different work sessions, strategic retreats where you've been discussing our various utilities. As you will recall, the water utility faced some unique challenges in 2025 and this year that we have not faced in the long time that I've been here. I had some emergency projects that sprung up. For the longest time, we've had a few structural issues in that fund, and we've been able to manage that until the emergency projects sprung up. And so we did everything we could over the past year to try to manage that budget. You actually planned for us to do some type of rate increase for 2026, but we did a lot of other maneuvers to try to mitigate that as much as possible. We just couldn't wait any longer. We had a major project last year that sprung up on the transmission line. The service is one of our wholesale customers. We're responsible under our contract to that wholesale customer to repair that line. Took us the better part of the year working through the permitting with the railroad. And as a result of that project, not only did we have the project cost, but we had all of the lost revenue from that customer from not servicing them for the better part of a year. And combined, those two things cost our utility between 500 and $700,000, depending on how you wanna count those numbers. And that ate away most of our fund balances. And as you're aware from recent communications we've had, we have another leak that we are currently navigating right now that is underneath Highway 77 on the same line. And we are still working through that, trying to get numbers pinned down. But that is a leak at a time when we don't have revenues on hand to address it. And so we've kind of reached the point where we don't have many other options other than to do some sort of rate adjustment in order for us to navigate that and try to stabilize the utility. This may or may not be the last adjustment that we have to do, as we discussed during the work sessions and the strategic retreat. The plan is for this to buy us time to help stabilize the utility and then to work with an actual consultant to do an evaluation of our water rates. We haven't done a wholesale evaluation of those in more than a decade, probably longer if you look at like really substantive structural changes. And there's a lot of different ways of structuring water rates now that other communities have done that we do not have built into our ordinances. And as we have these responsibilities for capital projects, infrastructure, we have our own future capital projects coming up. We need to make sure to make recommendations to you all about rate structures that cover all of those necessary items that you're doing. And so, This is the first step in a process to stabilize the fund. When we did our comparisons with other communities, it looked like to us that our rates do trend lower than many other communities. There's a lot, there's so much variation in water rate ordinances though, And if you're on a wholesale contract with another community that's a service provider, there's a lot of different tiering structures that really impact that. But even comparing to other cities that don't have that, we believe that we're below average both on our base rate and our per thousand gallon usage rates. And so this ordinance is the culmination of those discussions where we looked at those different rates and made recommendations based on what we were seeing. And the recommendation involved a base rate increase of $7 per month. And in addition to that, we applied a 3% escalator to the per thousand gallon charges. Those have not been adjusted historically. Our rate ordinance does have a base escalator, but that only applies to the base portion of the rate. It has not applied historically to the per thousand gallons. With the newest change in this ordinance, that 3% would actually apply to the per thousand gallons as well going forward. The reason for doing that is it's meant to try to keep up with inflation. which inflation has been trending between 3% and 4% for the better part of the last decade. And our actual revenue growth has been trending closer to 2%. And so we've been losing ground just to inflation, even without the emergency projects. We were able to manage that for a long time. and make other choices operationally to deal with that without passing along substantive increases. But with these emergency projects that we're dealing with, we simply don't have the cash to keep up with them, maintain our reserve balances, and address all the other operating needs that we have in the utility. coming out of our strategic retreat and out of our budget work sessions we did prepare some informational material we put that out to the community to let them know what the discussion was going to be tonight there is an informational flyer that went through that background explained all of the reasoning showcase what the projected rates were going to be and letting the community know that there would be a vote tonight SO WITH THAT, MAYOR AND COUNSEL, I WILL TURN IT OVER TO YOU. THIS IS A VOTE ON AN ORDINANCE. SO IF YOU'RE COMFORTABLE WITH THE ORDINANCE, THEN IT WOULD BE DONE BY A ROLL CALL. AND IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, STAFF IS HERE TO ANSWER THEM FOR YOU. NEW SPEAKER.

Can you just remind me of maybe some of citizens that are also just unaware of this Mulvane contract that we have that is costing us the bulk of our money. Just the reasoning that we can't cancel that contract or what would happen if we tried to renegotiate with Mulvane to try to eliminate some of that financial burden we're carrying that does not impact our citizens in any positive way.

Yeah. So there's a lot of history with the contract. It was implemented in 1991. It expires in 2031. So there's only a few years left on it before it expires. There has been past action. There has been other court action and stuff that we have entered into with Mulvane to no avail. It did not change the nature of the contract. The language in the contract explicitly states who is responsible for maintaining the lines. And so we have been maintaining that pursuant to our responsibility under the contract. And it's really just been that simple for us. We all know how effective the terms are for us and how much strain that puts on our utility. And these are the biggest repairs that we've had since I've been here. A lot of the others have been on a smaller scale. These happened in really inopportune places. And then the interaction with the railroad on the permitting side added a layer of complication and cost that we had just never dealt with before. And so hopefully those sort of challenges are one time and we don't have to deal with them again. There's never any guarantee with that sort of thing, but we are nearing the end of that contract and then we'll see what happens once it's up.

BREAKING THAT CONTRACT WOULD CAUSE A LAWSUIT, I'M ASSUMING? WHAT WOULD BE THE NEGATIVE REPERCUSSIONS OF US SAYING FINANCIALLY WHERE YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THE CONTRACT ANYMORE?

NEW SPEAKER I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN ADVISE ON THAT RIGHT NOW. THAT'S SOMETHING I WOULD HAVE TO RESEARCH FOR YOU AND PROVIDE SOME ADVICE ON.

NEW SPEAKER JOSH, FOR THE VIEWING AUDIENCE AND THE CITIZENS, COULD YOU JUST recap a couple of the key points of what led us here so the the emergency repair on the one that you had to cooperate with the railroad on so from initial awareness of the leak to completion of the repair that time frame was how long the

I want to say the better part of 10 months, um, the actual repair itself took a few days and then there was, there was some back and forth after that though, because even once the initial repair got done, there was still, there was still some seal issues and other things that a couple of the joints. So the contractor had to come out a couple of different times, but the main portion of the delay was about a 10 month period, uh, From what I recall from when the initial submittal happened, but the repair took a few days and we presented it as an emergency repair, but could not get approval for that entire time.

And when you say could not get approval, that was working through the process of getting approval from the railroad, correct? Correct.

Yes. So the railroad, the way that they work right away is they actually have a third party vendor, third party provider. Oftentimes you're not even working with the railroad. You're working with their third party attorneys that manage all of their right of way stuff. And so they have designated people that the permits get routed to and then those work their way through the desk. However, that happens. with those companies. And then eventually you get authorization of some type. We have other permits that we've had out there for a long time as well. We're still waiting on that. That one took about 10 months.

Okay. Thanks.

And I will say for the public that doesn't know the line that we have, both our portion that goes between our water plant and Eldorado and our water plant and servicing Mulvane, pretty much exist entirely within the railroad right away. And whenever you have infrastructure in the railroad right away, you're subject to their contracts and their terms and their lease agreements. And so we have to follow that whenever we do repairs, which has a lot of cost and time implications because you have to deal with their internal bidding processes when they have union workers and you have to have flag men and all of that sort of stuff as well. So it's more complicated than it would be if it wasn't in the right of way. Yeah. Thank you.

Just for general information, There is nobody on the city council or on our city staff that was here in the late 80s when that contract was negotiated. So we're dealing with something we had nothing to do with. And unfortunately, it has reared an ugly head and spit on us, I guess. So it's a bad deal.

I'm kind of with Allison. I'd like to know what the fallout would be if we did break that. What kind of penalties are we subject to?

And as I said, I don't think I could answer that tonight. I'm sorry? As I said before, I don't think I can answer that tonight.

All I can say is I know we talked about it and The response from Mulvane was unpleasant, negative years ago.

They have a contract, and that's all the court has said as well. You're under a contract, follow the contract terms. That's what everybody has said. So that's where we're at.

In your last conversations with them, have you talked about, is it too early to talk about renegotiating that?

We've started that in the past. We have not settled it because, again, we've been running into these issues constantly. It's hard to talk to folks about services when you're dealing with them not getting water from us for the past year.

make a motion to approve ordinance number 2267 establishing rates and charges for water and water services classifying the users of such water and water services providing for the effective date of such rates and charges and amending chapter 15 article 2 section 220 of the code of the city of augusta and repealing ordinance number 2122 second got a motion in a second erica would you call the roll please

Yes. Yes.

Bailey?

Yes.

Scott?

Yes.

Richardson?

Yes.

Davis?

Yes.

Whitey? No. Maher?

Yes.

Motion carries.

Thank you all. It's a tough deal, but we have to keep our city financially stable, so that's where we're at. We're responsible for that.

Yeah, I think it's important, Mr. Mayor, that the public understands. You said it, that nobody sitting on this council or in the city staff was a part of that contract negotiation or signing that contract. And contracts are contracts, and you can't litigate them in this setting. The question that Council Member Weedy asked you to investigate, certainly can be investigated offline, but as far as litigating that up here, that's not gonna happen. And I think the truth of the matter is we're all citizens and utility payers here. No one's looking to raise utilities on themselves voluntarily. And yet we have a utility that if we don't stabilize it, and you said the word stabilize, that does not bode well for the future of that utility and and this is a city that provides several utilities to its residents and so we have a responsibility to do that so okay let's move to item two an agreement with jeo for preliminary engineering

for sidewalk projects for the CDBG grant process.

Staff? Yes, Mayor and Council, as you recall, when the community voted on the most recent sales tax ordinance, that sales tax ordinance had a change in its language that allowed its use for maintaining, upgrading sidewalks within the community. That language did not exist prior to that vote that the community took. Subsequent to that vote, we prepared a plan for the council on how you could go about trying to maximize those dollars and get as many of your sidewalk existing sidewalks repaired and rehabilitated as possible. And that plan involved us going after CDBG grant funding. Their community facilities category has a higher possible grant than other times that we've applied for CDBG. And it made sense to staff for us to utilize some of the sales tax money as our local match and then go after CDBG to try to scale up the size of that project. As you'll recall, we previously contracted with a consultant, Ransom Financial, to do income surveys in town because in order to qualify for CDBG, you have to verify that the area that is the recipient of the project meets the income guidelines, and that is considered low to moderate income guidelines. We started with a voluntary survey, did not get enough participation. So the consultant ended up having to go door to door. We did manage to qualify. Got that verified with the state. The state authorized us to move forward with the pre-application process where we had initial estimates prepared and provided. And now that they've reviewed that, the state has authorized us to move forward with our actual application. So there's a lot of steps in the process even to get to the application. So you're not guaranteed a grant yet. You're just further along than other folks that have not been approved to even apply. So this is a step in the actual application and it is the preliminary engineering report. So basically those early estimates that are based off of limited design are gonna get refined and there's gonna be a lot more data and some engineering added to that to enhance that report. It's only a $9,200 cost. So it's not like fully designing the project out. But it's really beefing up the level of detail and investigation for the sake of the application. This will get us the preliminary engineering report that we can submit with our application. And hopefully this coming fall around, we can qualify for that CDBG grant and then have a big sidewalk package as part of our street sales tax grouping of projects going forward. As you will recall, I think everybody has seen this map previously. The yellow area was the area served by the income survey. So technically we could go after projects in any of that area. We had the engineer prepare cost estimates to see how far the money could possibly stretch if we got the grant. And the area that was identified in the dash is what we're current sorry and the blue coloring and the blue dashed line that's what we're suggesting that we currently target which is kinda the heart of all of those neighborhoods We don't have enough money. The grant's not big enough based on the cost to do all of the sidewalks all at once. So we can apply in the future. We also don't have to go after CDBG. We can just use cash on hand to try to continue to address it. So you can see this knocks out a big chunk of the network if we're able to do all of these, but it doesn't It doesn't cover the entire thing in the planning area. We have some flexibility. If for some reason you think you would want to modify this, we kept it centrally located, connects a lot of the schools and things that are in that area. A lot of the residential neighborhoods working their way down towards the commercial area and the downtown. So we thought that that was appropriate to start with. It's also some of the worst rated roads, the reddish, brownish, and blackish color basically means that those sidewalks are failed. And so this is addressing most of that failed network. So that's the current project that we're looking at. And again, the reason it is scaled like that is because that's as far as the initial cost estimate stretched. If the engineer discovers that they think they can stretch that further through the preliminary engineering report, we may be able to modify this a little but this would be subject to some discussion with council if you had other priorities, or again, we could just use cash rather than be a part of the grant of this project to try to tackle other areas. So with that, I'll turn it over to council if you have any questions. The agreement itself, the $9,250 would be paid out of the street sales tax fund, the engineering line item. So with that, I'll turn it over to you for any questions you may have.

Josh, what street is that top line there with the dots going across there?

Shouldn't be high street. I want to say it's, yeah, so 12th is up here, so I believe that's high street.

So does that not include the north side of high street based on where the dotted line is?

It doesn't right now, no.

So my question, Josh, is a couple things. So I know the blue dotted line comes over into Ohio and I know those sidewalks were redone with that South Ohio project. And then it also includes sidewalks in front of Garfield that should be part of what the bond issue that the schools are working on for the parking lot right there. So is there any way to take it? Well, first question, do those need to be included based on those two things? And if not, could that complete that north side of High Street?

Yeah, well, in all likelihood, those north south on state and Ohio probably aren't. It's just the way that the box looks on there. I think it is primarily the east west roads and the north south that are interior. If you look on those outer edges, I would not include Ohio and State Street at the moment. Originally, we were looking at the TEAP study on the middle school crossing, but because the survey area didn't cover both sides of State Street, we think that may make sense under different programs. potentially the safe routes program or the safe streets for all grants that we go after. There may be other suitable options for those projects. Basically what we can tell the consultant is if you can stretch the money, if council is comfortable with that and you can get high street included, we would like that included. And I can ask them, I don't know if they're gonna know that until they do a little bit more work in the engineering report.

And then the second question, because I don't want to assume is, these sidewalks that would potentially get replaced in this section are going to bring them up to the ADA standard that would line up with the study?

You would be required to. It's not just ADA. There's pro-ag requirements through the state, which is also why your money doesn't stretch very far, because when you follow all of those requirements and the CDBG requirements, you have to dump a bunch of money just into engineering. to make sure this stuff is acquired. So going through those grant programs, your money is not technically getting you as much as if you were doing it with cash. The problem is you don't have the cash on hand. That's what the grant does. The grant gives you a large chunk of cash at once. So that's the trade off. So I'm not sure if I answered the question, but. just putting a bug in here if there's any way we can get ada worked into that package it'd be great in school street too there are no sidewalks on ada they need them well there are not are we looking on both sides of the streets or just within anything that is in this box i would say except for ohio street and states because those are better conditions, so I would prioritize in the box. So if it's in this box, then that's what's included. All of those color lines are sidewalks.

The school street, you have it on one side, on the east side, from high to 12th.

I don't know if it goes past that or not.

And those were actually new, put in in 2012.

Right.

That was put in as part of the streetwalk. If we're putting in new ones, I don't see why we need them on both sides of the street.

This is not adding new sidewalks. This is replacing what's existing. Okay. I was thinking about adding. Okay. I thought it was a mixture. No, if it's a color line on there, that is an existing sidewalk.

Okay.

Yeah, so this is School Street with the... Oh, see, Google doesn't even recognize what it doesn't look like. This may be an old Google image because I think those sidewalks are in a little bit better condition than that, but that's School Street with the sidewalks on one side, and that corresponds, I believe...

I think that's the way they are now.

Yeah.

That's the way School Street is.

I think that's this one up here. And you can see those colorings are actually better than some of the other sidewalks that have failed. So I think the idea is one, you want to try to have it as a tight grouping wherever you choose to put the grouping because it makes your mobilization easier for a contractor that impacts your costs. if they're jumping around to a lot of separate areas, then that can drive your costs up if they're having to move equipment and stuff like that. This allows them to go in some really long straight lines. But I can tell you one of the things you're gonna have to evaluate is the urban forestry. And the thing about your sidewalks is a lot of that damage is caused by trees and tree roots, but you have a lot of mature trees. And there is a significant trade-off if you choose sidewalks over trees. And so one of the things that's going to have to happen is you're going to need to have some discussions at some point with the engineers and make decisions in some of these neighborhoods which thing you think brings the greater value. If you have to remove a whole lot of mature urban trees in order to put a sidewalk back in, how do you feel about that? Or do we need to choose different locations and and move this box around a little bit. So this is kind of a starting point for that, but that's hopefully what you want to get some more detail on in that preliminary engineering report, zooming in on what project you're going to apply for. But right now, this was the area identified, unless you want us to change it. And the other thing we can probably do, again, we have add alternate, so that happens as well. So if we end up getting really good bids and there's money left over, you can potentially add to the project. We've done projects that way too. It's just we don't know exactly how that pricing looks yet.

Council?

I move for the approval of an agreement with JEO in the amount of $9,250 for development of a preliminary engineering report for submittal with our CDBG application for sidewalk improvements.

Second. Got a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Motion carries.

MR. MAYOR, REAL QUICK, JOSH, WHILE WE'RE ON THIS TOPIC, COULD YOU JUST REMIND THE PUBLIC AS WELL ABOUT THE CITY'S SIDEWALK PROGRAM THAT'S AVAILABLE TO CITIZENS?

IF I REMEMBERED ALL THE DETAILS PERFECTLY WELL OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD, I WOULD GIVE THEM A REALLY GOOD EXPLANATION. WE DO HAVE A SIDEWALK REPAIR program i think the council budgets something to the tune of like thirty to forty thousand dollars a year out of the capital improvement fund and so when citizens are having to make improvements to their sidewalks they can actually apply and the city will do a cost match if we have funding available and i want to say it's a 50 50 cost match we may have increased that in the past my memory is a little bit vague on it and it may have like an upper limit on it as well. They're telling me $500, which again, doesn't go very far. We probably need to relook at that at some point to see if you want to change some of those numbers, but we do try to cost share with citizens through that program, but it's, it's limited in scale and you can see the size of our problem. And rather, rather than going, you know, one house at a time for eight or 900 houses, where we're trying to do a bigger area at once as part of the project. That's the whole concept we're working on.

Yeah. Great. Thanks.

Okay. Let's move down to item number three. An ordinance authorizing and directing electrical utility system improvements and the issuance of general obligation bonds. A resolution authorizing the offering for sale of geotemporary notes series 2026-1.

Yes, Mayor and Council, Kevin Cowan, our bond counsel from Gilmore and Bell and I are going to kind of tag team this. There are two steps for you tonight, an ordinance and a resolution. I'll let Kevin explain the difference and why we have both of those, just a reminder for the public. During the budget retreat process, the budget work sessions, council had discussions about the electric system and our grid and the reliability of that system. And if you look back over the last couple of years, it's been one of the biggest priorities that citizens have raised to staff and to this council, talking about outages in their neighborhood and how that impacts their quality of life. And so once our revenues and the utility stabilized and we had enough funding, our immediate recommendation to council was that you put that back into the grid to try to address problems that we have. One of the biggest projects in that electric grid is the low voltage system. We essentially maintain two separate grids. The low voltage system is getting to the point where there's a lot of parts to it, including substation, transformers, other things that are obsolete. and you either have to start investing significantly to maintain that or now you make the decision to transition over and standardize it with the rest of your grid and that's the choice that we're recommending is you transition that over and standardize it so i won't go into any more detail than that because that'll rehash a lot of meetings that you've had previously there is an informational flyer that went out to the public when we started this discussion. If you go back a little over 60 days, you had a vote on a charter ordinance. You had a vote on, I believe, another resolution or something that were related to the actual financings for us to do this project. And the reason this item is coming to you tonight is the time period for the protest petition on the charter ordinance has now passed. And so if you recall, the charter ordinance allows us to do this as general obligation funding, even though the payments are ultimately going to be made from the electric utility. The reason that mattered is we expect that to save us a tremendous amount of cost compared to making it an electric utility revenue bond. So that was the history. That timeline is now up. And so now we're taking action to move forward WITH THE FINANCING. SO KEVIN, I'LL TURN IT OVER TO YOU. CAN YOU WALK US THROUGH THE DETAILS ON THE ORDINANCE, THE RESOLUTION, WHAT STEPS THE COUNCIL HAS TONIGHT?

NEW SPEAKER Sure. GOOD EVENING. KEVIN COWEN, CITIES BOND COUNCIL. As Josh said, this is sort of the culmination of an authorizing process which involved a charter ordinance. I do want to point out, and I know we talked about this at the time, the distinction between using general obligation bonds and electric utility system revenue bonds. is that those revenue bonds are special obligations and you all can only pledge utility system revenues. That's viewed as not as secure as a general obligation. So it's going to save you money to be able to do it this way. The charter ordinance has become effective. It's now law in the city as it relates to this sort of project. You may recall it was very, very surgical and specific and only addresses this project. And what it says is that you can proceed with general obligation financing for this project if you authorize and direct the issuance of general obligation bonds in an amount not to exceed $7 million by December 31st of 2026. So the idea was being specific. This is something we're doing now. After December 31st of 2026, we can't use that provision so the ordinance is what does that if you've looked at it at all it authorizes and directs it authorizes the project then it authorizes and directs the issuance of general obligation bonds in an amount not to exceed seven million dollars to finance those costs second part of this uh resolution authorizing the sale of temporary notes That's a temporary financing. And the idea is this is construction financing. We don't know all of the costs yet. Let's use temporary financing to do that. and then later we'll have the permanent general obligation bonds. Once you authorize the general obligation bonds under the ordinance, there is a separate statute that says if you've authorized general obligation bonds, you are by statute authorized to issue temporary notes in lieu thereof as temporary financing. So that's kind of the background. We have to use the ordinance to authorize the bonds and the project under the charter ordinance. With that authorization, a statute says you can do temporary financing for it. The resolution calls for that, and we just call it our sale resolution. It authorizes all the necessary steps to be able to sell the notes and at some point come back to you in, August with sale results and a number of things that have to happen. An offering document or prospectus has to be drafted for investors to use. We have to give notice of the sale. So that's, it's a very short resolution, but it just authorizes those sort of steps. So after tonight, if you take action on both of these documents, the next time you'll be talking about this will be in connection with the results of the sale. Last thing, it's a temporary note. So there will be a permanent financing in the future subject to the same charter ordinance and authorizing ordinance. The issue amount will not be more than $7 million. And so we've worked through all of those details, sort of the marching orders. And you may have seen some numbers that are different than $7 million in particular in the resolution where it references 6,765,000. That's an estimate and it's based on what Piper Sandler, your financial advisor thinks can be sold to maximize your project fund deposit now, but also still leave enough space in the future to issue 7 million in permanent bonds. There are some finance costs and things. So working through those details, but the goal is to issue a little less than 7 million, but maximize the amount that gets to your project fund to be able to pay for these things in the coming months.

And if I may counsel for your benefit, for the benefit of anyone listening at home, the reason we're using that strategy is this project involves the electric grid infrastructure. So there's a lot of poles, transformers, lines, substations, stuff like that. You can get known costs for that. We can price those things. Now we know what we have to invest. In order to replace the system though, you're going to be contracting with a private contractor to be clearing miles and miles of tree limbs and overgrowth and things out of the alleyways to make room for the improvements and the installation to be done. So you have some costs that are known, and then you have a question mark on that contractor portion. So the idea with the financing is, You start with the temporary notes that allows us to get under contract, get our bids in, know what our actual costs are going to be. And then once those costs are actually known from the bidding and you're far enough into the project to know how good the estimates are, then you can issue the long-term debt off of known cost rather than simply estimates. So that's the reason we suggested the temporary note process. You had budgeted for us to have payments this year. So you have more than enough capacity already budgeted. It's been built in through your financial planning for us to cover these notes. So now we're just pulling the trigger to move forward and get the project started. At a prior meeting, you had authorized JEO to do work regarding kind of laying out some of that installation, staking sheets, all that stuff they discussed. Again, some of that's going to be engineered so that you can direct the contractor in a bidding document. Here's where the poles go. Here's what you're taking out. Here's where you need to clean up. Again, that's why you have the process that you have. The long-term financing ultimately could be 12 to 13 years to pay that off. Hopefully we can make that shorter. It'll depend on how the bids come in. I can tell you that the vendor we were really hoping to work with on the tree contract is no longer available. They accepted a huge contract out in Western Kansas. And we worked with them. We did test runs and pilot projects here in town, had really good results, had great costs compared to some other vendors that we had priced before. They are not available now. So we really need to see how the bid process is going to play out. And we'll move from there. So with that, Mayor and Council, I'll turn it over to you if you have any questions.

Did you say the term on the long part financing would be maybe 13 years or something like that? Not fixed yet.

That's what Piper had estimated for us at this time, once we actually get the bids in. We'll see, but we're expecting it to be pushing that 12 to 13-year time frame. Do you have an estimate of when that time is going to start? Three to four years out from now. So the temp notes can't go any further than four years, right? But I think that we're trying to do this maybe in three-ish. Yes.

So the temporary note maturity is in three years.

I can't hear you. I'm sorry.

Temporary note maturity is in three years. It will be 2029. uh they're they'll be callable early so if some circumstances change interest rates plummet you want to lock in you know the deal sooner you can but the latest that would happen is in three years in terms of going to permanent financing is there any penalties for a prepayment if it wants to be paid off early in the long term there won't be uh the way this is is proposed to be structured as those notes could be prepaid early at your option in one year so in 2027 anytime thereafter until the final maturity in 2029 you all have that option you have to give 30 days notice to the note holders but no penalty that's at 100 of principal amounts

I'll make a motion to approve ordinance number 2268, authorizing direct electric utility system improvements and issuance of general obligation bonds of the city of Augusta to pay costs of such improvements. Second.

Got a motion and a second to approve this ordinance number 2268. So Erica, could you call the roll?

Martin?

Yes.

Licklider?

Yes.

Bailey?

Yes. Scott?

Yes. Richardson? Yes. Davis? Yes. Whitey? Yes. Maher?

Yes.

Motion carries.

The resolution, there's a typo on it. It said, I think it said 2206-10. It should be 2026-10 is the corrected number.

Motion of approval of resolution number 2020-10. 6-10 authorizing the offering or sale of general obligation temporary notes series 2026-1 of the City of Augusta, Kansas.

Second.

Got a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. Okay. So we need to schedule a work session to begin discussions with Wichita State Public Policy and Management Center on Augusta's new housing strategy. Got any dates available?

Mayor and council, I'll turn it over to Cammy real quick. But as a reminder, during our strategic retreats and budget work sessions, One of the things we talked about was how do you prioritize housing? How do you develop a strategic approach around that? And Kami came up with this idea of working with Wichita State's Public Policy Management Center to do that. And now you got to move forward with the process. So I think Kami has two ask or pitches to you tonight. One of them just being dates for a meeting, the other about as possible help serving. So Kami, can you explain what you need council to do?

Yes, so the first item, which isn't on the agenda, and there's no pressure to make a decision today, but there is a steering committee that'll be formed to kind of kick off the project and keep it moving and to provide some additional insight. That steering committee is proposed to be myself and Josh as the city manager, and then two council members to also serve on that steering committee. in conjunction with us. That time commitment would be, I mean, I'm guessing like five hours ten hours maybe some zoom meetings probably a lot of these meetings will be held with zoom with ppmc but we'd need someone that would be able to jump on a zoom meeting with us during office hours during the day that could be available for that and help us prioritize what those initiatives and action items could be so that's the first ask i guess is we'll eventually need two council members to be appointed to the steering committee um the second ask and then i'll let you guys kind of discuss some more um is after the steering committee meets and has that initial kickoff meeting with ppmc there will be a city council workshop to be scheduled with everyone from the council obviously so we are tentatively proposing august 24th for that initial workshop with just the city council and i say tentative because again we have to have the steering committee meet first So I'm not asking for a vote on scheduling that workshop today. I'm asking you to pencil it in. And if we're able to get everything lined up, we will bring you an official motion at the next council meeting to schedule the 24th, August 24th.

And then so on the steering committee piece, when would you need a decision on that?

um i mean i guess we have about a month like the end of the week within a week would you need more than a week i mean i guess i i wouldn't think you would but if you do please well there we go we got it or if you're comfortable this evening yeah i say appropriate as well sooner the better i'd be more than happy to i'm usually pretty available so

Can you have three on the steering committee?

I mean, in our contract it says two, so I can double check. But it wouldn't violate any open meeting issues that we would have.

If you can, I'm in.

Okay. Council, do you want to formalize those appointments?

And then I can just let you know if there is an issue.

i think three would be fine so i need a motion second with names i move for shane scott and myself to be on the steering committee with jake maher possibly too if that's possible

Second. Got a motion and a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, gentlemen.

And again, just pencil in August 24th right now, and then we'll get it more formalized in the next couple weeks.

Okay. So we'll go down to call for other matters. And so, Mr. Martin, if you got anything tonight?

I've had a couple of calls on this parking lot over here to the south of our building. There's some, looks like a couple of body jobs getting ready to be done on some BMWs or something like that. And there's car store part out here on this parking lot. And I didn't know if that's supposed to be done in that parking lot or not. It looks to me like there's two cars being worked on over there in them.

parking lot you know the city parking lot and uh i don't have anything else other than that mr mayor thank you nothing mr mayor um i was contacted about the property on osage and 12 that needs to be cleaned up a bit if you could have somebody check into that that'd be great i sent josh some pictures that were sent to me

Kenny, I just sent you the same pictures that he's talking about.

Okay. Thank you.

Josh, the street sweeper, are we good with it? It's working and everything? I'll have to check. I've had a couple people call me. It's not my ward, but I thought I'd throw it out there up in the Kneebler addition. There's a lot of sand and stuff in the streets, so I thought I'd just throw it out there.

Allison.

Nothing, Mr. Mayor.

Kami, do we have any ongoing activity on that recurring property on East Clark, 300 block of East Clark, that's had multiple complaints? I don't have the exact address, but it sits three houses in from Dearborn, north side of the road. THE ONE WHERE YOU HAD VEHICLES PARKED ON THE SIDEWALK, REFRIGERATORS IN THE YARD.

I CAN SEND COUNSEL AN E-MAIL UPDATE TOMORROW AFTER WE CHECK AND ANSWER A COUPLE OF THESE QUESTIONS AND SEND YOU SOME UPDATES.

IT LOOKS TO BE RECURRING AGAIN.

YEAH. AND WE, STAFF AND I SPENT SOME TIME DISCUSSING THAT THIS MORNING AND NOT ADDRESS SPECIFIC BUT THAT TOPIC um this morning in our staff meeting about we have some properties that are recurring and I know since I've been here there's at least two specific properties we've cleaned up a few times and if maybe we need to take a different approach to not go through the abatement process and maybe approach taking it through court instead. Just an option. I don't have a process for that. We don't have any process or paperwork or documentation, like all of that would have to be created. I just, it's discouraging to continue to bring the same property back when we know that we don't have a great rate of people reimbursing the city for that fee. So I hate to continue to charge that to the property tax payers to pay, to clean up these properties over and over and over again. Um, but it's either we use property tax money to clean them up, or we try and find a way to maybe push it through court. And maybe that'll have a little bit more teeth than what we're able to do through the abatement process. So I'm just throwing it out there. Um, obviously staff wouldn't move forward with something like that without, making sure that's an appropriate way to handle those that the city council would like to seem handled that way but i just wanted you know we are thinking about those properties that continue to buy could you check into can you park a boat between the curb and the sidewalk a large boat can you do that on grass just printed out our 30-page PowerPoint slide of parking regulations for our staff. We'll defer to that PowerPoint slide.

Well, it just reminded me that I'd been hit up about that. There's just violations all over town, I'm pretty sure.

There are, and there's only so much capacity. So we obviously like to prioritize those issues with the ones that create a safety and health hazard concern versus ones that might just be aesthetically unpleasing. Especially the abatement process is labor intensive.

Nothing more, Mr. Mayor.

I make a motion to adjourn.

Second. Got a motion and a second to adjourn. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you.