City Council - Regular Meeting

Call the meeting to order.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Roll call, please.

Mayor Larkey?

Here.

Council Members White?

Here.

Thompson? Here. Davidson? Yes. Bryan?

Here.

Lawson? Here. Richardson?

Here.

McCallum?

Here.

Johnson?

Here. We have a quorum. No personal appearances. Appeals to the City Council 1 Stephen Baca 214 West Belton. West North Avenue Belton's written statement has been put into the agenda. He will not be here tonight. Uh, and it's also online for people to see if you haven't seen it. So you want to take a minute to read that and then we'll act upon that if you have not read it already. All right, everybody good? Proceeding with that, is there a motion? I'll make a motion. We have a motion. Is there a second? Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion?

I would again note for the council, just for the voting procedures, all of our motions are stated in the affirmative. So a yes would be a vote to waive the fees by determining that this is in the interest of the public by providing information about the operations of the city and not in the commercial interest of the requester. So yes is to waive, no is to not. You up?

Yeah, I'll just put out a general question, and I apologize. You might have to answer it, because I would ask Andrea if she was here. A request like this, it is not entirely dissimilar to his last request. Are you able to speak to what the back end of that request, like fulfilling it, looks like?

Are you talking about the time commitment or the work itself?

Both. Just give us a general sense of when we get something like this, what does staff then have to do?

Yeah, so we do typically start with the IT query, and so they'll look for the number of hits. They will pull the files for the city clerk's office to go through. We will then go through each file to determine whether or not it is actually relevant to the request, or responsive I think is the term we use. And so we do have to go through each file individually. Depending on the number of files, as you can imagine, that does take us quite a bit of time.

Yeah, so then part two of my question for the city attorney, he mentions in his appeal, I don't want to misphrase it, but basically that if anything's being redacted or the city attorney has to sign, is that working?

It didn't sound like it, but you are.

Could you just weigh in on legal's role in reviewing these things if it was a pending real estate transaction or something that is privileged information?

Yeah. So again, there's a difference between privileged and closed. Privileged is attorney-client communications between me and you all or me and members of staff. That is an absolute privilege that I cannot waive. Only the council arguably can waive it. There's even an argument that you can't waive it. So my role in these sorts of situations, obviously Andrea and Julia have a very good understanding of what is closed and what is open under the Sunshine Law. They will usually consult with me if there are any concerns questionable or, hey, is this closed? Has this real estate transaction wrapped up? Is it now open? Stuff like that. Realistically, again, with a city of your size and with your city clerk's office knowing already the law as it sits pretty well when it comes to Sunshine Law, I'm usually brought in at the beginning in trying to figure out how do we actually respond to this request, especially a request of this size, because obviously requests of this size, one of the major things is it is basically just an IT problem for compiling the documents. So it's determining what are the search terms, what Boolean connectors do we utilize to try and limit overly broad returns from the server. And then, once again, Julia and Andrea have already done an initial review. They'll send it to me for kind of a final pass to make sure that they didn't potentially miss anything that would be closed under either real estate, personnel, or attorney-client communications, as those are the kind of big three.

Gotcha. Thank you.

Go ahead. I know I stated last time when we did this that the only time I can remember before that that we waived the fees was for the paper. And I think that was something with, I think Johnson said that it was media, but he sold the paper to make money with this article, so I don't think this guy's doing that. I'm just like, we waived it for him so he could sell more papers, but I just feel like we do it once, we've got to do it for everybody.

Anybody else? Go ahead. I didn't say he did it to sell papers. I said he was a journalist. And I felt more that it was in the public interest coming from a journalist rather than someone who has a beef with the city.

Well, right. But it went in his paper. I'm sure he sold papers because people wanted to see what he found. So... Go ahead.

At some point, these fees will become a true burden to the taxpayers, right? At some point, there is at some point we may be, you know... taking up more time and resources than our clerk's office has, right? I don't know where that point is. Um, and without Andrea sitting here, I'm not trying to put you on the spot for that. So, um, you know, my question is at what point do we hit that? I mean, where do we draw that line? Where do we think that line should be appropriately drawn? Um, because it's not just about consistency on that front. The other concern I have with this request is part of it is potentially arguably similar to the previous request, but part of it is not in my opinion. There is a part of it that is specifically requesting to look at information that the clerk's office worked on in regards to the previous request. Uh, and that is, um, that seems less about public interest and more about a, uh, Oh, I'm not sure. More about a, a personal concern. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. It just seems less to be public interest as opposed to pulling documents related to North Cass or whatever the topic may be. So that's kind of where I feel that there are, potentially differences here that I think we should consider.

Go ahead. I have another follow-up question just generally for staff. The third part of the request is communications between city staff and representatives of Scannell Properties, Wilson & Company, and Graham Efforts Landowners Agents. Some of these names are familiar, right? We've used Wilson & Company. We've interacted with some of these groups multiple times over many years. So... maybe Patrick wants to weigh in, like, how realistic is it to go through and find relevant and that when we review it and say, yes, this is relevant to the topic you're discussing versus just a tranche of references to things that have nothing to do with what he's trying to find out?

I do believe that this Sunshine Law request does have a timeframe in the first paragraph, so that is at least something that we base all of it off of. But when someone does submit a Sunshine Law request without a timeframe in it, the first response back will be you need to most likely put a timeframe in it or this could take months, if not more. For example, again, I think everybody here knows how old the city of Belton is, because we had a birthday party celebrating it. But regularly, we will receive requests regarding any residential developments in the city, period. All right, well, then we're going back to 1862, 1872, because we're going to have to look at all the paper records as well. requests that do have a time frame, I will just be very blunt. So as to avoid any potential violation of the Sunshine Law, we're most likely going in favor of, yeah, it's close, so we're going to provide it. So you will get more information the less articulate the time frame and other restrictions are, just because we don't want to end up in a situation where something wasn't provided that somebody does determine was relevant.

Maybe I'm missing it. What time frame was this request stated for? I'm not sure.

It might be on the very first paragraph. Because I remember at least one of them. This is not the request. This is just the appeal. But regardless, if somebody doesn't put a date on it, the first response back from the city clerk's office is to ask for a date because the Sunshine Law, the court cases say that they do not require that the city clerk go and hunt. They require that the city clerk be able to reasonably determine with specificity what records or documents somebody is requesting so that they can go and pull them. I'm sure Councilmember Johnson is just having nightmare flashbacks to discovery disputes when use of the term any or all is utilized. And I will say any or all are words that in Sunshine Law requests, depending on the breadth, could easily be determined to not state with reasonable specificity. and could be turned around to, no, you need to provide us some more information on what you're looking for.

Julia, do you know the date range this request is for? I'm not seeing it in the appeal.

It's not stated in the appeal, I don't believe.

Do you remember?

That's a detail I would like to know before waiting.

I would say, I mean, I'm not sure that's entirely relevant. He's asked for a, there is a date because we wouldn't be able to give him a price and be able to give him a number of hours that we would have to work to provide this unless there was some sort of a range determined. Unfortunately, Andrea is out of town this week, or out of town, she's off this week, and so she's the one who generally directly deals with these. I'm sure we could find that, but again, I don't know that it's entirely relevant. in terms of he's asked for a specific period of time or else we wouldn't have been able to give him a price. If that makes any sense.

I think it's relevant. I'd like to know.

Go ahead. I just want to be clear too. I know that we all know this, but I guess I want to go back to some of what I was mentioning here for just public discourse. There's not a question of whether and because- Can I jump in?

I did just find the date. It is January 1st, 2024 through the date of the request.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

There's a lot of what you were saying, Patrick, actually backs up kind of what my thought process was here, which is there's not a question about whether or not this person or any person should be entitled to this information. The answer is yes, they should be entitled to this information. Legally, they are. And there is no background with the city of Belton not providing information. And we do, from my understanding, a pretty darn good job between the clerk's office and the attorney's office. So I just don't see the, again, the reasonable doubt there that may occur based on that request. So I just, again, I want to be clear. We're talking about waiving fees. We're not talking about not giving information out. We're not talking about anything of that nature. I just want to be very clear where I stand on that. So go ahead.

I just want to make one point in the information that was submitted to be included with the council records. And in this submission today on the appeal, the email is from native Prairie outfitters and it's native Prairie outfitters at gmail.com, not from the organization that he says he's requesting it for the native Prairie veterans foundation. So I just wanted to point that out. I think that makes a question of, is it for commercial interests or for personal or for the benefit of the public?

Go ahead. Mr. Mayor, I would ask the council to at least consider, if you look on your agenda, the statute that's being utilized to ask for this waiver. There is a point in there that says that if you determine the fee is in the public or reducing the fee or waiving the fee is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to the public understanding of the operation or activities of the public governmental body. I think that's a relevant question to ask. There have been a lot of claims made by the individual specifically online and emails. Every time the correct information is provided, there's no correction of the record. In fact, it's the other way. It's an argument. It's you're wrong. It's you're hiding. I would question that anybody has seen any actual contribution to the public understanding of what the city operation, how it occurs and what's going on. And so there is no concern for accuracy in these posts. And so obviously the information is available. I would never request that we not provide it because we are a government entity and all of our operations should be transparent. But to actually fund this person's quest with manpower from the city when there has been zero evidence that he's actually trying to provide accurate information would, in my opinion, create a bit of a burden on the taxpayer.

Go ahead.

And just for context, we have now waived, in the whatever six years I've been on the council, two requests for Sunshine Record waivers. And people have also paid without requesting a waiver. It is not unusual for staff to. collect fees for the effort. I think there's a misconception that we always waive them. We don't. We have recently waived two. Typically, we don't. Not everyone even asks for a waiver. So just putting it out there for context.

CHRIS RODGERS. All right. I want to speak a little bit with this. Two weeks ago, I voted no on that. It's not because I don't want people to have the documents or any information that's in them. It's not my angle. My angle is this individual has put on Facebook that what he's doing is a vendetta against the city and myself. And then he's also openly admitted that he's using artificial intelligence AI to produce these documents that goes along with what the city manager said is, you know, he's twisting the facts. And then when you give him the facts, there's no, there's no recourse to what he does. Uh, I've reached out to him several times to try to sit down with him wherever he wants to with whoever he wants to be at these meetings. And he has refused. And so, I mean, that's why I'm not going to support this again. So I'm just letting everybody know.

Go ahead. Councilman Callum asked when this becomes a burden. I think it's already there. It's my understanding he asked for help with the first sunshine law, that it was too much for him and he couldn't decipher it all. So he publicly said, I can't go through all this. Who's going to help me? So at this point, I think he's just trying to waste funds and our time. So I'll be voting no again.

Anybody else?

I'm struggling with this one because of the need for transparency, what's all been being floated around. I agree with you 100%. I do. And so I'm very struggling with this one. And I'm not sure how I want to vote.

So look. You, the council, has probably heard me preach about transparency more than just about anybody else in this town. I agree with you completely on the transparency piece, and that's really difficult from a philosophical standpoint there. But it's not, again, about the transparency. It's not that we're trying to not be transparent. It's about that we're making sure that the tax dollars are being used appropriately. And at some point, we can... Like I said, at some point, it does become a burden. At some point, if it's paying for, you know, if it's an entire salary of somebody, I mean, it's clearly, you know, a burden then. So where's the gray area? I don't know. You know, it is tough. But again, I want to be clear that that's why I made the comments I did. It's not about trying to hide anything, you know.

Anybody? Go ahead.

Uh, part of my struggle is, is he does make arguments for community.

Uh, it's just not all, um, any, it's just, it's not a rant. It's not, um, selfish motives. I mean, he, it's the way he writes this. There is, uh, elements of, uh, for the community. That's my struggle is, is that where's the balance of, um, relevance to the community versus I would almost just like to post them on.

But I'll be quiet. Anybody else? Go ahead.

I'm going to have to say I'm leaning towards yes because of the transparency. If we probably wouldn't have waived the first one for Alan, I would feel different. But once we waive it for one, I almost feel we need to waive it for everyone because it's just not fair.

To be clear, as was pointed out, not everyone has even made that request. There's been many requests that have been 100% paid for and not even asked for a waiver. We're opening ourselves up to a pretty big liability if we say, yep, carte blanche. That's why the fees are enacted in the first place.

I would also note just before the council votes, as the city manager briefly stated, the The determination that is necessary before a waiver or reduction is that doing that, waiving or reducing, is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the public governmental body. So that is, again, the first threshold issue is By doing this, by waiving the fees, do you contribute significantly to the public understanding of what goes on at the city?

My initial response is, does the release of the documents

So it's not the release. It is the waiver or reduction of the fees.

But we have to determine whether it's for community.

Well, no. So you have to determine the first. The documents are not what's at play, realistically. It is whether or not, by you waiving the fee, then the public interest is served via understanding of significant contribution to the understanding of the operations or activities.

So the release of the documents, does that lead to the community understanding?

I haven't reviewed this. No, no, no. That's unrevealed. Well, I would argue that every single Sunshine Law request ever

Well, unless it's more personal about their own...

Potentially, but every document that is not already published online is an internal operational document, realistically.

But is it the document itself, or is it the person's interpretation of the documents that we have to consider?

Well, again, I would note, because again, it's all about the This is typically put in when somebody will request. And again, this is also the Sunshine Law is significantly outdated. This had to do significantly more with the waiver or reduction of copying fees, because copying fees are $0.10 per page. And when somebody would request a budget, A request of your all city budget, your budget is very long and would be $20 just to get that. So that is more what this is directed to. There is even an interpretation that the staff time is unwaivable. We have taken the position to try and be more open that we will even waive the staff time.

I would even say what you just said is that you could look at both of what you just said, the person or the entity that's requesting it and the documents that they're requesting. Go ahead.

Earlier, you said that we could reduce. OK. That's what I'm. Go ahead.

I've received a bunch of phone calls about this, and there's not been clarity. with the stuff that's been published, it has not made anything more clear for the public. As a matter of fact, the people that have contacted me said it just gets murkier and murkier, so that's my stance on it.

Go ahead.

I have talked, actually I can think now, now that I'm thinking about this, I've talked to more than one, I was going to say one person, but I have talked to more than one person that have actually said the opposite. which has said they disagree with the waiver of fees because they see that as a waste of tax dollars because it is costing the city. It's their tax dollars costing the city money to do. So they were actually upset with me for voting yes on the first request. Well, however you want to look at it. But the first request from this individual. So there is absolutely another side to that coin. Anybody else?

If there wasn't, I wouldn't be struggling.

Is there something we can do in the future to maybe have a set fee maybe the first time it's waived and then kind of go down?

No, not really. So the fees are all, again, set by the Sunshine Law. The waiver of fees, it says that the public governmental body can waive the fees. Nobody else but you nine acting is the public governmental body. You could, I guess, adopt an ordinance clarifying something. But realistically, given the difference in every single Sunshine Law request, whether that be amount of documents requested, the type of documents requested, it would be borderline impossible. I always have nightmares about somebody requesting a document from the 60s at one of my smaller communities that I represent that does not have the laser fish or gone through the process of digitizing all of those and them having to send the clerk down to down to the caves to try and identify some documents in boxes that are yellow.

CHRIS RODGERS. You done?

You done? JAMES CAVANAUGH. I see the point of both sides. And so in sake of, I don't know what I'm going to say next, but I'm curious about how I would go about proposing that we would reduce the fees To basically half. CHRIS RODGERS.

That would be a motion to amend the motion on the floor to reduce the fees by half of the estimated amount for the request. Everything else stays the same because you still have to determine that it's in the public interest as that it will significantly contribute to the public understanding of the operations and not in the commercial interest.

What he said. Is that your motion? That's my motion. We have a motion on the floor. Is there a second? Motion fails for lack of a second. We're back to the original motion as presented. Anything else? Oh, sorry.

I go back to the original one we did back with the paper and There was money made off that. He's not really putting this in anything, making money, unless Facebook's paying him to be on here. But that's kind of where I'm at. Real quick.

Go ahead.

I don't mean this sincerely, but to me, the idea that your first one's free, you are welcome to request these things if you have something you need to flesh out. We will entertain your first request at a waived or reduced amount, but my fear is, especially this gentleman, is going to keep requesting things as long as he wants, and I don't know that any of it is going to bear out benefit or clear understanding for the community. So I'm gonna, yeah.

I'll just note since I already said it, the Sunshine Law is incredibly outdated. The one thing that the Missouri legislature did change is because Council Member Lawson is right, there has been a trend over the past five or six years of what we have called fictitious Sunshine Law requests, where essentially a person would file the request, cause a city, maybe not of your size, but a slightly smaller one to basically have to shut down operations to try and identify all the records. and then not pay. And so the city did all the work. The, you know, records are never released and it just sits there because they don't want to come in and pay and that's been determined not to waive. Um, so that is why the fees, that is kind of one of the things that they do and the Missouri legislature is recognized stand as a way to stop that kind of repeated requests. Cause I have had clients that are smaller than you guys that for weeks and weeks on end have had to, essentially stop all city business to try and comply with Sunshine Law requests. Obviously, I don't believe that this is one of them from the breadth and size of it, but I have seen them in the past.

CHRIS RODGERS. Anybody? Go ahead. CHRIS RODGERS. I just want to reiterate that the issue isn't whether or not he's going to make money off of it, although I think that's an open question. It's whether or not this is going to lead significantly to the public's understanding of the operations of their city government. And that's the question we have to answer before we say yes or no on this. And I think, in my mind, I think the answer is no, it does not. Because I've had to answer a lot of questions from people who are extremely confused about what's being put out on Facebook and what is really happening in the city.

VICE CHAIRMAN MILLER- Anybody else? Hearing none, roll call, please. VICE CHAIRMAN MILLER- Council Member Pryan?

VICE CHAIRMAN MILLER- No. VICE CHAIRMAN MILLER- Council Member Davidson? Yes. Council Member McAllen?

No.

Council Member Lawson? No. Council Member Thompson? No. Council Member White?

Yes.

Council Member Johnson? No. Council Member Richardson?

Aye.

Mayor Larkey?

No. Motion fails. Unfinished business, one motion to approve the first reading of the bill, or final reading of the bill, 2026-28.

An ordinance authorizing the appropriation and revision of the City of Belton fiscal year 2026 adopted budget.

Present. Second. A motion and a second. Any questions? Hearing none, roll call, please.

Council Members White?

Yes.

Richardson?

Aye.

McCallum?

Aye.

Johnson? Aye. Thompson? Yes. Pryan?

Aye.

Lawson? Aye. Mayor Larkey?

Yes.

And Davidson?

Yes.

Motion passes. Item two, this ordinance was scheduled for final reading, but has been removed from tonight's agenda. The item may be brought back for consideration at a future meeting. And the same with item three. There is some confusion as... to item two, whether they were Western castles ready or not. So that's why we're pulling that in item three. I'm just pulling that. So there's no confusion of either one of them.

So can I, can I ask? Yeah. So just to be clear, this is basically being pulled from their side, not ours.

Yes.

Well, They haven't approved it yet. They haven't approved it yet.

They were supposed to have approved it at this point, and that's why we do things on a timeline. We try to come up, present it in a work session, especially if it's an ordinance. We've got a couple of readings. And so we get on a timeline with the understanding when we have kind of the framework of an agreement in place that they're going to approve it and that we can approve it on the backside. That first approval has not taken place yet, so we're giving that time to take place.

Makes perfect sense. I guess my... Is that... Is that approval just based on a timing thing, or is there something else going on? Do we know?

I'm not sure about that.

Okay.

Any other questions? All right. Item 4, motion approved and final reading of Bill 2026-31.

An ordinance amending Chapter 3, intoxicating liquor, and Appendix A, schedule of fees and charges of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Belton, Missouri, by removing the liquor license application investigation fee.

Present. Second. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Hearing none, roll call.

Council members, Pryan?

Aye.

Mayor Larkey?

Yes.

Lawson? Aye. Johnson? Aye. Thompson? Yes. McCallum?

Aye.

Davidson?

Yes.

White?

Aye.

Richardson?

Aye. Motion passes. New business, one motion approving first reading of bill number 2026-32.

An ordinance approving a cooperative agreement for the public infrastructure with Cass County and accepting funds relating to design and construction of North Cass Parkway in Cass County.

Present. Second. Motion and a second. You're up. So most of you know we are working on a project right now to build Northcast Parkway in between Peculiar Drive and Mullen Road. This is a job that is being done through the Belton Cast Regional Transportation Development District, or most people call it the TDD out there. The TDD has been building roads for 15 years more or less. Basically building Mullen Road down south and then in their scope is also to build North Cass. This has been in the plans for many, many years. Um, following, uh, COVID and the different monies that the County got, the County decided to pledge money toward, uh, Northcast Parkway. And they came up with this agreement to, uh, pass money to the city to allow us to allow them to contribute to the construction of that road. And so this agreement is structured basically to, uh, give the money to the city to allow us to, uh, uh, to add, to help pay for Northcast Parkway. Um, uh, In it, it does have in the whereases. The project is listed as Northcast Parkway. And in Section 1, it does talk about $500,000 county funds, and it has within X days. I know this is going to be asked. X days. They did not put a date in there of when the city actually needed to expend the funds. The project is under construction, and so the project is scheduled to be completed by October, and so they will be expended by October. So there's really not, I know there's not a date in there, but it's not really a question of when it will be done because it's under construction and the project's going to be done. And so it's very clear that this is where the funds go, and I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have.

I want to just make everyone clear that this is being all funded by the county and the TDD and not city funds. Go ahead.

You beat me to it. There was at some point some mention of there being the city having a risk or exposure, I think was the word. Either way, I think it's an important point that the The risk isn't necessarily with the city. It's really with the TDD and now with this money with the county, essentially, that ensuring the project is going forward as appropriate. I do have a couple of things. Could you talk to us a little bit, because there's been some concern about this project and from an environmental impact. Can you talk about if we have completed all of those things or if the TDD has or how that works?

So basically, so it was a clear understanding how this is working. The TDD is building the project. Back, I think in 2012, the city agreed to be the engineer for the TDD. So that helps answer the question of why is the TDD paying for it? Why is the city involved in it? The other thing about the funds that really needs to be clear is that it does appear in our budget. We do pay the bills, and then the TDD does reimburse us for funding. And Casey's not here tonight, but she goes through and explains to me that when an asset becomes the city's asset, the city has to pay for that asset, and then we get reimbursed. It's no different than when we do a federal job, that we get reimbursed because when we add that asset to our books, we have to pay for that asset. And that gets into whole world accounting, which I don't want to venture into because I'll get into the deep end really fast. So as far as other things are going on the project, there's been a lot made about environmental things on this project. And so there's actually, in order to build a project like this, it's no different than when we build a marquee parkway or something else. There's only... two permits that the city needs to have to build a project. One is a 404 authorization, and that's a nationwide permit number 14. So there's 50 different nationwide permits. We get permit number 14, and that's for a linear project. So when you build a road, it's a linear project. It falls under nationwide permit number 14. The city goes out, and we get this permit, and I actually have it right here if you guys want to read it. It's 91 pages. And it goes through all the different environmental steps we had to go through, and that permit covers everything that's required of us to build a job. And so we have the permit. This is our permit nationwide, uh, permit number 14 to build the project. So we have that permit. The city goes out and attains that permit. The only other permit that's required to build this job is a land disturbance permit. And that's comes from the Missouri department of natural resources. Um, on this project, they pulled two of them. One of them is the general permit. It's called a general master permit, and the number of it is MO-RA-000000. And that's what they have, and they posted it out there. There's also a site-specific land disturbance permit, and it is right here. That's out on the job, and this is posted on the job. for land disturbance. And so both of these permits are, so they have all the, we have all the necessary permits to build a job, which means all the environmental regulations for this job. There is nothing that we don't have.

Thank you. And I have one other thing unless somebody else wants to jump in on that environmental stuff. Okay. Um, This is not intended to be a trick question, so please bear with me through this. But I see on this ordinance, it states that the total project is, I'm going to round for the sake of this, is approximately 3.45 million. Can you clarify how we get to that number for this project?

CHRIS JERRAMSEN. Or North Cache Parkway? CHRIS JERRAMSEN. Yeah. CHRIS JERRAMSEN. That is strictly the bid that the contractor bid for the project?

So I guess where my concern is is that that's really not the total project cost then, right?

That is correct. So in addition to the construction of the project, there's also design fees that we paid and were reimbursed by the TDD. There's also construction inspection that's going on because it's a drilled shaft bridge project, and so we don't have the expertise in that to inspect it. So there are fees being paid from the TDD to pay for those inspections, and they also paid for procurement of the right-of-way.

So I guess, and I don't know if this is where you jump in, but I guess I know I talked to Casey about this with finance. From her perspective, she said, well, that's really the project cost for this budget year, because there have been other project costs in previous budget years that, again, were reimbursed by the TDD, as you pointed out. But when it says something like this is the total project costs, it, to me, seems a little misleading.

CHRIS JERRAMSEN. So we can't include those other project costs in a contract with a governmental entity. To enter into a contract with a governmental entity, the consideration has to occur post-execution of the contract. All of those things happened pre-execution of the contract. The only thing to occur post is the construction. CHRIS JERRAMSEN.

But is there anything we could put in our ordinance to maybe help clarify that is where I'm going, like say, hey, this is what it is for this budget year or this is, you know what I mean?

CHRIS JERRAMSEN. I would suggest not because we don't want the contract to all of a sudden create or because the ordinance becomes part of the contract, I don't want to create ambiguity with what the county is paying us for because if we put in those additional costs, somebody could seek to invalidate the contract as having consideration that occurred prior to execution which would violate 432.070.

There's a bunch of legalese as to why we should and cannot do that. I can totally understand, especially even from my perspective, why that would be a little confusing. I just wish there was a way to make that more clear. Go ahead.

Okay, and you've already kind of touched on my question because my concern was all the Xs where the date's supposed to be. I have some concerns about that. I understand the project's going to be done the fall of this year, and the county ordinance says they're going to pay us, but there's nothing in the contract that says they have to pay us by a certain date, and I just have a concern about that. Is there anything we can do to include a date on that? Wait, is it too late for that?

At this point, because, again, we're talking about contracting with a governmental entity, we would have to send it back to the county for their approval. Again, that's why we typically sign last. It takes longer for you all to approve than it would a private party, since here we have two governmental entities, my suggestion would be to move forward in the good faith that the county has executed a contract saying that they will pay us this amount of money for this project for the construction of it. So I'm guessing as soon as Greg gets some bills together, you can send them over to the county and tell them, here's what your $500,000 is going to. Please release the funds.

Thank you. So I guess I have a follow-up then on that. So is there a possibility, based on how it's written, that they say, yeah, yeah, we're going to pay you, and then five years goes by, 10 years? I mean, I'm just saying, is that possible?

I mean, technically, but reasonableness is always interpreted into a contract. If we enter into a contract to build a house and I don't pay you for 25 years or 35 years until I've paid off the mortgage, that would not be considered reasonable. There's also good faith and fair dealing, which is a clause that isn't read into every single contract where you can't do stuff like exactly what you said because that would not be done in good faith or fair dealing where you were trying to just pull one over on somebody.

Perfect. Thank you for that explanation. I would also just point out that the county, you know, I know the county is participating in the TDD, right? So it's a joint venture, if you will, so I have very little reason to believe they wouldn't stick to their word, but it's good to know there's some legalese to back us up as well. Anybody else?

Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Item two, motion approving resolution 2026-061.

A resolution approving the engagement of Swindle, Jansen, Hawk, and Lloyd to audit the city financial records for fiscal years 2026 to 2028. Present. Second.

We have a motion and a second. You're up, sir.

Mr. Mayor and Council, every year, as you all know, we are obligated by state statute and by our charter to perform an external audit of our funds and finances and our financial procedures and processes. And so we do those every fiscal year. You'll recall that when we started, we got way behind on the audits during a period of turnover in the finance department. And then some cleanup of some stuff that needed to be cleaned up from previous years. We are in a place now, finally, where we are on a realistic and reasonable schedule with our audits. And so this is essentially an engagement letter with Swindoll, Jansen, Hawk, and Lodi, which used to be BT & Co., which was the company that we hired to do the last three audits to help us get us caught up. and this is for the next three fiscal years if you're interested in pursuing this relationship any further as staff feels like they are very thorough. They're not easy on us. They're quite hard on us, but they are fair, and they're very professional, and so that's why we are recommending that you approve this engagement with this firm. I'll stand for any questions. Any questions? Go ahead.

In your professional opinion, how frequent should a city of our size change our audit firm?

Well, it depends. It depends on a lot of circumstances, I would assume. I think that it's always good to look at other firms potentially. I also know there are fewer and fewer firms in the space, so sometimes changing for the sake of changing isn't always the best case scenario. And so If you don't have a lot of questions in your financial reporting and in your financial processes, then it's not quite as big of a glaring need to change, I would say. If there are some questions in your financial reporting and your processes and your finances in general, then you ought to at least look at making a change. I think that it's in the city's best interest every once in a while to go out for a bit anyway when we're dealing with long-term relationships with companies. This is still fairly fresh. I mean, we're three years, but we've done those three years in about less than two. Um, and now we're just extending this out for the next three years if possible. That's a fair question.

Yeah. I just think like the whole point of an audit is to have a second set of eyes on something, right? So it's never a bad idea to have a new second set of eyes on something that said at three years goes by very quickly. So I can, uh, and, and they have been pretty, um, detailed with us so I guess I can get behind that. I just think at some point we do need to consider going out to bid again even if it ends up the same audit firm just to make sure that we are being true to what the purpose of an audit is.

I agree with that and I will attest that they have been great to work with. They even kept me updated throughout this process the last two years whereas the prior firm never heard from, so I will attest to that. Anybody else? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Item three, motion approving resolution 2026-62.

A resolution approving a contract for services with Havens Construction Company Inc. for the sewer main replacement project in the amount of $459,080. Present. Second.

We have a motion and a second. You're up. So as part of our routine sanitary sewer operations, we have a camera that we put through the sewer lines. And as we go through sewer lines, we see different things, things that we can fix or jet and clean as we go. And then for once in a while, we run into areas that cannot be cleaned where the pipe is actually completely collapsed down. Roots have gone through where we just have broken the pipe or actually the pipe is completely as a clay pipe that's just completely disintegrated. So over the last year, um, we have found six locations where the pipes need to be fixed and one of them is just located right here behind city hall. And uh, and when this happens, it makes the sewers drain very slowly, can cause backups and also can allow the sewage to go into the ground. And so, uh, these are beyond point repairs where it's just a small spot where we can just dig up and just put a piece of pipe and be done. These are larger sections. Um, and these sections include the area behind city hall. There's an alley between Ella and Walnut and second and third street. There's one behind Pacific. There's one behind Prairie lane. There's one behind Hawthorne. That one runs underneath. several people put sheds and fences out there and in the easement and um, there's also one on a whisper and cactus that we need to go out and actually fix. Um, the way we've proposed to do it is a thing called pipe bursting and basically what they do is they, they call it a big bullet and they stick it in the front and they just pull it through the pipe and expands and breaks the pipe. Then you pull another pipe right behind it and then use tying the services back into that pipe. And so that is what our proposal is to do as you do that work. Of course no sewage can go through the pipe. So we hook up what we call a bypass. So where the sewage is coming down, there's a pump that pumps it up on into a hose that goes on top of the ground and goes bypasses it and connects it the other end so people can continue to flush as we're doing the work. And so we went out for bid for this. We got a, as you can see on there, several bids on a very wide range of prices. um, for 400, basically $460,000 from $1.3 million. And so we're recommending using Haven's construction to repair these six pipes. I'd be happy to answer your questions that you have. Any questions? Go ahead.

How many, I know that you've been doing this for years, but how many more places do we have? I mean, we've got a lot of these that could come up, right?

So we keep, we, we have always been, going to the same places because we know where there's a lot of grease buildup or the pipes are a little flatter in the slope, and so they tend to build up sediment faster. So in the past, we've gone through and looked at the same places over and over again, keeping things clean. So now we put that in a regular jetting cycle. We just go out there and jet them. So now we've traveled further and further throughout the system looking for them. So since we've done this contract, yes, we have found another one that we need to add and do another one. And so as we continue to camera the system, we'll continue to find them. But now as we do in our I and I work and we go through and we are fixing our pipes, it's, we're reducing the amount of these things that we find. And so it's continuing doing this work. I mean it's, it's vigilance and continue to camera all your lines to, to keep repairing them and keep lining them and we'll end up with a better and better system.

And you're not concerned about the low bid being that low? I mean, that's a pretty significant difference.

So we have contacted the people who have, because we haven't used havens here for many years. Since all the time I've been here, we've never used them. So we contacted other towns that have used them for this exact type of work. And so for this type of work, they had a very good review. And so we're going to use them.

And then once you reline them or re-pipe them, the lifespan of that is how long?

So it'll be a complete pipe replacement. So we're going to go back with PVC pipe. So it should last 50 years, unless it gets crushed by somebody.

Go ahead. Just curious, how long does it take to camera all of them?

The whole city? I have no idea. I've never done it.

So there could be a lot more out there.

There could be more out there. But generally, people call up with backups. And that's how we generally find things. But we don't have very many backups in our city at all.

CHRIS JERRAMSEN. Anybody else? Go ahead. CHRIS JERRAMSEN. Can you confirm it's within the budget planned for this?

CHRIS JERRAMSEN. Yes, it's actually, with this price meeting, it's significantly below it. So we're hoping that one that we did find, we might be able to add it onto this contract.

CHRIS JERRAMSEN.

Anybody else? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Consent agenda, one motion not available to approve recommendation noted. Any member of the council may ask for an item to be taken from the consent agenda for discussion and separate action. Present.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion?

Go ahead.

Number two, please. Number two. Any other discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Motion approving resolution 2026-63.

A resolution approving the purchase of four dispatched consoles and workstations in the amount of $95,180.73 from Zybex Systems for the Belton Police Department. Present.

Second. CHRIS RODGERS, JR.: We have a motion and a second. And I wouldn't call that Zybex, but go ahead.

I believe I have relatively simple questions on this, hopefully. I read through it. I understand it sounds like we have enough space for four. We currently have three, is that correct? And we have enough space to have four now?

CHRIS RODGERS, JR.: Yes. We have only space for four, and then we're built out.

Um, and then because I know we've had discussion in the past about dispatch, um, and limited space and potential need for growth in that area and all that stuff. Um, I'm assuming my understanding of what these exists or what these consist of is primarily monitors and a computer system. Um, maybe there's more to it, but where my questions going is, uh, is this the type of thing that's, um, if we were to update or upgrade or change our space that can be moved?

Yes, if we do move dispatch to another location, these consoles would just break down and we would take them along with the other equipment. Some of the equipment that's in, the majority of the equipment that's related to it is owned by MARC and so we have it through a cost share agreement. I have a request that I've submitted this week to MARC to outfit the fourth station and that would come up on, I think in November when they go through their budget for next year. But we won't know if we'll be able to outfit that fourth station until that is done. But we'll have four stations, three of them completed. Thank you. Anybody else?

Hearing none?

Oh, sorry. Are any of these from the three prior ones that we're replacing from the water damage when the roof leaked?

No, none of them were damaged from the water or the roof leak. They're just old.

Some of them got wet, though, didn't they?

We got onto it pretty fast and put up tarps and got the equipment tore down. Mark came in and helped us get an IT, our city IT, helped us break stuff down so it didn't get destroyed by that.

And is the roof still leaking in that same spot?

No, there was emergency repairs to the roof. We've been monitoring it, especially with the construction project on the new roof this year. We've been very sensitive and been checking it pretty vigilantly. Okay, thanks.

Sorry, anybody else? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Sports and Information, Court Report, Communication, City Council. Council Member Johnson.

Just want to wish everyone a safe and happy 4th of July. Remembering this is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and all that means for our country and hope everyone stays safe.

That's all. Council Member McCallum.

All right, I get to do this again. Hi, Dad. I hope everybody had a great relaxing Father's Day and I hope you know I just hope I guess I'll just say happy Father's Day to everyone I hope it was a good Father's Day I do want to say as well I'll echo you know happy 4th of July to everybody as well as we come across a pretty big milestone as a country I do want to give a couple updates related to the TDD board. There have been several delays on the construction due to weather, specifically on Northcast Parkway. But as you heard, we're still on track to have that completed sometime in the fall this year. So that's still taking place, just slower than hoped. TODD BANDUCCI. Oh, sorry. Going to parks update. A few things. I've been racking my brain about how to be a good liaison in general for our things with the council. One of the things with parks specifically, I thought what might be helpful is to try and look at maybe upcoming things or other things discussed or passed during the park board meetings instead of just providing all the upcoming events. Just a couple of things that I thought I'd make you all aware of. is that there is a new play area plan for Markey Park, and the idea behind that is to give something more for the kids who aren't currently actively playing baseball, to give them something else to do out there, and to help rectify an otherwise boring situation. I think you're probably all aware, but if you aren't, there is new flooring going in at High Blue right now for the fitness equipment. The other big thing they're working on is lighting for the pickleball courts. And it sounds like, based on my understanding anyways, and I can get corrected if I'm wrong here, but it sounds like the lighting for the pickleball courts might actually come in under budget enough to the point where they will potentially be able to also light up the skate park. So that's a pretty big win, I think. That's good news. And... Uh, and then the other thing going on is, uh, they will be voting for the park board treasurer. I believe that's planned for the next meeting was my understanding. Um, okay. Then moving on to the events, piece of things, uh, sign ups for little sluggers, which is kids three to five learning how to bat, throw and catch that kind of thing that's currently open. Uh, fall sports registration, believe it or not, fall sports registration is now open as well. And of course, the farmer's market is still ongoing. That's every Thursday from 4 to 7. And then we have some upcoming events. July 10 is a floating sound bath at High Blue, a relaxation event. There is July 18. Sorry, I'm hoping I'm not going too fast there for you. July 18 is another kids night out. They've done those before in the past. And that, again, is at High Blue. August 7, that is Rave in the Wave and Adults Only Water Party, which I believe was done previously as well. So that shouldn't be, OK, yeah. drastically new or different on that front and then August 9th is pages in the park book fair with some local authors and things of that nature going on so just of course as always more events things to do coming up with parks so that's everything I have councilmember Richardson

The only thing I got is the Chamber's doing their 250th party this Friday. I know she's sold out of all the tickets, but they are doing a fireworks show out there, so it's open for anybody who wants to come out and watch it. So I'm not sure what time that's going to be, but probably around 9, so that's all I got.

Council Member Lawson?

Council Member Bryan?

I have nothing. Council Member Davison? Thompson?

I would like to also wish everybody a happy Fourth of July. We had a good turnout on the train for Father's Day, so that was nice. And I had a very pleasant visit with Animal Control this week, so I appreciate the fact that he's super sweet every time he comes to my house. So thank you very much.

Council Member White. We will be having a Ward 4 meeting sometime in July. I need to schedule it, so just letting you all know.

I don't have anything other than happy 4th of July to everybody.

So, city manager? Mr. Mayor, I have two things. One is on July 3rd, which is Friday before 4th of July, city offices will be closed to recognize 4th of July since it's on a weekend this year. And the second thing is we are not going to workshop this because there's a lot of discussion about this in previous years, but we will have a resolution for you at the next meeting for us to... consider approval of a contract to do a time allocation study. I know we had talked about doing this for many years. Um, former council member Powell when he was on the council was definitely a huge advocate in doing this study. Um, the intention was never to not do this study. The intention was to allow our finance staff time to get caught up on everything, including audits before doing a study. Since we have diligently done that work and now are caught up on our audits and are working on a normal schedule, um, we feel like now is the time to do so. The former company that we had inquired and contracted with has gone radio silent on us in our attempts to try and renew that discussion and so I've sought another agency and looked around and I found one that we can Bring forth to you guys for consideration for the contract It's not nearly as expensive as the previous firm was going to be so that's a that could be a public win They've got some experience doing this type of work with other cities in different different formats and so I'm excited to announce that we will be doing that and discussing that and considering that at the next council meeting That's all I've got anybody else All right items review and discussion one

built KPI solutions and development.

Yes. So the, uh, we have received several development applications from built KCI or KPI, um, KPI solutions, which is located at 801 West Marquis road. Um, so this is the, um, property, um, west of Markey Park, north of the public works facility. The existing development also owns six and a half acres to the south, outlined there on the map, where they acquired that from the city back in 2017 and are requesting to rezone that property to business park restricted and have submitted a preliminary development plan for 99,000 square foot warehouse building addition with associated site improvements. That process also includes a final plat replat. Currently, there's two lots there. They're going to keep the two lots, but they're going to add the appropriate easements and shared access with the main access being through the existing site out to Markey Road. and an emergency access point along CB Road for emergency services only. The current zoning on that property is PR, which is the Parks, Recreation, and Public Use Zoning District. However, this property has been identified as a business park for many years, and it was sold to them in 2017 with the intent that this would be a future expansion for their development. This item is coming before planning commission on July 7th with a public hearing for the rezoning, the preliminary development plan. There's the site plan on the screen with some conceptual building elevations that have been provided and happy to answer any questions you may have.

Any questions?

I do.

Go ahead. So this was never a park though.

This was never identified officially as parkland.

I just want to make sure that our park director is in agreement with that.

We had no use of that property.

No intentions of using it. I know this is a loaded question. I still got to ask it. Why didn't we change the zoning? Then if that was not, I don't know.

I looked back through the records and there was no, no mention of the zoning at the time. Um, I will say with the development code update, which is currently in draft, um, we are trying to split the, there's a park record rep parks, recreation and public use zoning district right now. We're trying to split that. So there's a separate overlay for parks. to distinguish that from the other public facilities to reduce that confusion and complication going forward.

Go ahead. Could we go back on the presentation? I don't know if you're driving that. Yeah, okay. So Council Member McCallum, I think you just pointed out that the play area at Markey Park was getting an update, which right now that's on the other side of the road from this proposed development, correct?

No, well, Kevin, why don't you?

No, that's the playground. The play area that we will be installing is right by the concession area. It's kind of those rain garden area.

Gotcha, okay.

So this is kind of separate from that. We've kind of realized that that location for that playground is not the best location for families out there. So in the future, we will be moving that playground.

Okay, that helps. Just visually, if I was at the ball fields with my kids and had my littlest one playing with that as a backdrop, it's not ideal. But I'm glad to hear that there's kind of a pivot away from where the current play area is.

Anybody else? Thank you. Item two, re-imagine, re-imagine, re-imagine, Main Street. I'm going to try a third time. Yeah.

Yeah, so city staff held an open house, which many of the council members attended as well back in February. Part of our building belt and town hall series, specifically focusing on Main Street and Old Town with this meeting to talk through potential future improvements and needs specifically on Main Street, but also surrounding blocks. So we invited residents, property owners, and businesses to come out and discuss their vision for future public spaces, businesses, railroad enhancements, connectivity, and development opportunities. And we do have a summary of all the feedback that we received, including the rankings of the visual preference surveys that we had on the community development webpage on the city's website. You can find that under the public hearings and community meetings tab. This is just an example here on the right of what those boards look like, where we took the images and we put the ranking and the second number is the number of votes that were received for each one of those. So just kind of go through real quick, um, kind of the top priorities based on the number of votes for each one, um, on the park priorities, shade structures, landscaping and lighting were the top three items. Really the top two items, landscaping and lighting, were tied for number two. On beautification, we had a lot of interest in public art and wall murals. And then the Main Street Arch was third. There were some concerns about the cost of that, so we did receive that in some of the comments. Connectivity, neighborhood sidewalks on surrounding blocks was the number one priority. And then the second was Cedar Street. which would be something we'd have to work with MoDOT on, but there's a lot of concerns about the lack of sidewalks and the fact that that is a major street that has to be crossed in a dividing line in the middle of Old Town. And then we also included some questions about city hall priorities for future potential improvements there. By far, the number one was the community space, considering we had to hold that community meeting offsite because we don't have an adequate facility here at city hall to hold those public meetings.

Sorry, real quick while we're on the topic. This was prior to us. So specifically the connectivity and Cedar street, this was prior to us putting in the blinky flashy light or, uh, no, I believe that was already installed.

So there's still concerns. Um, and it's, there's also crossings at commercial street that go to the parks, um, that are difficult to cross. but a lot of the ones we heard about were specifically the intersection where I believe it's a D Street, Lillard, all those come together right there at Quick Trip where there's five different streets and there's a lot of pedestrian activity walking in the ditch in that area as well. And then staff counters and lobby improvements for City Hall. And then probably the biggest topic of the event, we're specifically talking about Main Street street designs and streetscape priorities. We had two different options proposed for the street design. We only have 60 feet of right of way to work with, so we have a very narrow right of way compared to other Main Streets to try to squeeze in sidewalk improvements on both sides while still maintaining traffic and parking. And so the two different design options that were presented for consideration was in order to widen the sidewalks to meet ADA, we essentially have to remove one side of angled parking to make that work. There was a second option of wider sidewalks with reducing with eliminating angle parking and putting parallel parking on both sides, that was definitely only favored by two of the votes that were cast there. 17 for the other option. There were a number of people who still wanted us to figure out a way of keeping angle parking on both sides, but in order to make the sidewalks work, that is a very difficult challenge. Overall, angled parking was a slightly higher priority compared to wider and usable sidewalks. And then the priorities for Main Street businesses, number one was more sit-down restaurants, second was retail boutiques, and third was more outdoor seating. So generally all things that we've heard before. And the Main Street design option one is something that is currently being explored. And then the last thing that we presented as part of that open house was an updated railroad concept. City staff worked with the railroad a few years ago on a concept plan that was added to the 2050 comprehensive plan. And based on some additional feedback and ongoing development in downtown, we made a few modifications to this, added some more housing, specifically along Commercial Street, did a few different modifications, moved the farmers market down a block, and had some other opportunities for retail restaurant spaces around the Railroad Depot. So that was very well received. Generally, we had positive comments across the board on that revised concept. People really liked the opportunity or the idea for potentially locating a farmer's market back downtown, the potential for the trail improvements and adding more housing along Commercial Street. So that's the summary. I'm happy to answer any questions or clarifications or any additional comments or feedback Council has or has heard from residents on this.

Go ahead.

It is not super often that we get to have say and how do I want to, it is not super often that we can control a feel of something just based on a simple thing like parking on Main Street. But in my opinion, now this is a time when I would love to hear what people whose family have lived here their whole lives, looking at you Mr. Mayor, In my opinion, the parking, the angled parking in that situation just somehow makes us that small town charm and feel. I don't know. I don't know if I'm the only one that feels that way, but that's just... No, I think you're correct there.

I mean, I would hate to lose any parking on Main Street, and I know that's been difficult with that plan that they're trying to come up with. But, yeah, I mean, I think the angled parking gives it more of a feel. I mean, I can remember when traffic... went the other way for the longest time. And I remember when it went the way it's going before it went the other way. So it's been a mixture of things over my 59 years.

It's just a lot of times when things are brought to us, it's like, this just seems to me like an easy small town feel thing. To me, it just seems like. and I know I get it. Uh, there is reasons, um, to look at it otherwise, especially from ADA compliance and whatnot. But gosh, that just, go ahead.

I actually stood there for that whole meeting and the, the positive attitudes and inputs that we had for that meeting was very surprising to me. They were, People were very interested in us doing something different. They want to be able to spend their money downtown. They really liked the connectivity that we could do to make, I don't know why you can't find the railroad, but to make that a walking destination. And the whole night was extremely positive. I was very encouraged by that.

CHRIS JERRAMSEN.

Anybody else? CHRIS JERRAMSEN. Can you help me what we're workshopping here? Are you just kind of recapping what was discussed? Because I know we have a budgetary item to work on these things. Is there something that we're looking to prioritize or?

So there are a couple of items so wanted to give one of this information to be back in front of council from the town hall also at your place tonight is the kind of early responses from a survey we put out to all the main street businesses this past week with the conversation ongoing about downtown events and street closers on main street just wanted to kind of. kind of bring the conversation back up to the forefront, but wanted to also give council a chance to look at some of the data that we've already collected from some of those businesses about mainstream of main street events. Um, as council is going to be having that come back before you've based on some direction to staff to bring back the process, the MOU and other items that council had previously approved. And so, Wanted to, again, just get the information and the data in front of you to give you some time to digest. And if you had questions, give you some time to ask those questions based on what you're seeing tonight before we brought those things back to council for approval.

Curious how long we might think things are brought back to us before things are brought back.

I believe we were bringing things back here in the next month.

Oh, okay. Cause I was going to say we moved slow enough. I mean not we, but I'm just saying government, I was, you know, the sooner sounds good cause it, it sounds like there's a lot of, I mean from what,

You're describing mad and whatever there sounds like there's a lot of interest in this so there are and the other part of this that I think you know what we've downplayed a little bit is based on the feedback that we have received through the Reimagined Main Street Town Hall we have other departments whether it's in public works starting on the engineering public art committee working and looking at some of those art places as well as just trying to continue to engage whether it's groups, businesses, whatever it may be along main street to continue to kind of move forward with this vision and also continue to get feedback from council. If these are still kind of in line with what council sees moving forward.

Okay, go ahead.

And we're not losing the angle parking altogether. That's, that's just, part of the concept is to have part of it on one side and then parallel parking on the other side, perhaps. Correct.

Yeah, there would still be angled on one side. And one thing that we have shown here on the railroad concept is commercial street with future improvements has a lot of opportunity to make up for any loss of parking directly on main street. But there's also a lot of side streets that have, um, parking as well that can be utilized. Um, but ultimately commercial street with future development, um, can eventually take on that same look and feel as main street with the parking.

It's way underused too, right?

Yeah. I mean during, especially during the day it's, there's not, it's not heavily used.

And were we planning to move the dumpster? Cause, do something with the dumpster issue because that takes up a lot of the parking on this road.

That is another item that we had presented. Didn't have a lot of feedback, but everybody generally knew that that is a need. It's just we haven't quite identified how to work through that and what all partnerships seem to be brought in to make something like that work.

Just To clarify, I just want to make sure the city owns that space though, right? Where the dumpsters are. I understand the city might not be doing the dumpsters, but I'm just saying the city owns that space. The city owns Loop Road. Okay.

Anybody else? Thank you. Great job. Item 3, Acquisition and Condemnation of Markey Parkway.

As you might know, we have received a grant from Market Parkway from North Scott to West of Westover to reconstruct the road and basically continue the road that you see right now. As part of the grant, part of our job is to design the road, and then we're going to have to acquire the property and then construct the road. We currently have gone through the process where we have designed the road, got right-of-way plans approved. We're about to turn in our final plans to MoDOT, and now we're going to go into the acquisition phase of the project. So when you go through this project, there are, as you know, when you leave the new market parkway that we just constructed, it leads you right to Zedd's gas station. Right to the front door. And we've talked to him. He understands the project's coming. And he has been trying to relocate and find another spot along North Scott to move his business. But we're going to have to acquire that property, the property behind it, and then a sliver of the property behind it, a sliver of the property of Comfort Solutions, and then the warehousing. I'm not exactly sure what their business is next to it. on the north side of the road as we bring the road through in a curve. There's also property as we go through strips of little bits of right-of-way here and there that we have to achieve. There's also construction easements. Construction easements are where we have to grade the ground or we're going to raise or lower the road, and so we have to go into people's front yards to make it match the existing grades in front of their properties. So as part of this process, we have to get an ordinance from the city authorizing the Public Works Department to acquire the property, and if the resident or business chooses not to participate with us and negotiate with us, then we have to go through the condemnation process to purchase the property. At this point, after holding a public hearing and after talking to several property owners, we can only see that there's one property owner that is resistant to the project. He's been resistant to every change that's happened out there. When Spire and Evergy tried to bring new lines in front of his property, both Spire and Evergy had to condemn him in order to put their lines out front of them. So it's no surprise to us that he is not wanting to participate with us. Everyone else seems to be open-minded to work with us to get it done. However, as Patrick will tell you, is that as we go about this, we go ahead and put everybody on the list, and we prepare everything just in case people at the last minute go, no, or they think their property is worth a million dollars a square foot, right? And so just to kind of walk you through the process of what's going to happen is that we've already got right-of-way plans approved. The next big thing is getting environmental approved. In this job, since it is a federal job, we have to reach the federal nexus of environmental approvals. So MoDOT and several other federal agencies have to go through and approve everything. We're down to our last one, which is SHPO, the State Historic Preservation Office, to make sure that we're not damaging any historic... And so once we have that approval, then we'll be able to get what they call an A date, acquisition date, and be able to start negotiating prices with the actual landowners. Part of our process is we go through and get what they call an O&E report, ownership and encumbrances, so we know who the actual owner of every property is. Because you think you know who owns the property, but you'd be surprised when you actually do a title search and find out who actually owns the property and if they owe money on the property. Because when you buy a property, if there's money owed on it, we cannot pay the owner of the property the money. We have to give the money to the person who is owed money on the property. Then we go through, we get legal descriptions made by surveyors and then we get appraisals done. Part of the federal process requires us to get the appraisals then reappraised, re-review they call them, to make sure that the appraisals are correct. So they have two sets of appraisers look at every single property. If the property is owned by a corporation, we're also required to get the article of incorporation for every corporation that may own property along. the rights so we know exactly who is authorized to sign for that corporation. That's another exciting thing that we have found out that when you guys know local developers who have built different things throughout town and then when you go to sign an agreement, you say, let me see your articles in corporation, it turns out they have no power to buy or sell property on that piece of property. It's a very interesting thing and that's why the state forces you to go through every one of these steps to make sure you don't miss anything. After we have all that information, we make a good faith offer to every person along it based exactly upon the legal descriptions, the appraisals, and the reappraisals that we have. We cannot offer anything less than what the appraisals are, so we offer exactly what the appraisals are to start with, and normally they come back and try to negotiate with us what that is. And I'll tell you, sometimes we negotiate in different ways. So sometimes somebody has a driveway that's in poor shape, and they said, instead of paying us money, can you fix, pave my driveway? And so we'll make an exchange of paving someone's driveway in exchange for actually paying the money. So there's different agreements that we come up with, different ways to make everybody happy in the process. If they, when we give them an offer letter and they decide not to cooperate with us, then we give them what's called a 60-day letter. It's a letter with a packet of information that MoDOT requires us to give as federal requirements to say this is the process we're going through and you're going through the condemnation process. So you're giving 60 days notice that we're going to take you to court. And then after 30 days, you get a 30-day letter, which gives you the same basic information once again. Those are all created by our attorney, and we send those out again. If we cannot, usually by the time they get those two letters, most people will negotiate with us and settle with us. We know that one will not. Then we'll end up going to court. The court process, I don't know if anybody's familiar with that, but basically the court process, we have to prove that we have the need to build this road. Once the judge approves it, Then they have three, I don't think they call them commissioners anymore, that go out, three, it's basically real estate people go out and appraise it to what they believe it's worth. They decide what it is. They talk to both sides. They come up with a price. They give it to the judge. And then we pay the judge the amount of money. We pay the court the amount of money that's owed for that. And then the property is ours. And that's the process we go through. The court process can take anywhere from, I don't know how long it takes to get on the docket, but what it takes to get on the docket, go through that, getting the commissioners, the real estate agents out there, reviewing it, getting the court to approve it. It can take from three to six months to get that process completed. And so that's what we're going to be bringing to you. And we'll have the exact map so you can see all the pieces of property. So I just want you aware of what we're about to do next. Any questions? Go ahead.

Ben, that was a very good overview. I appreciate that. You said you've gotten approval through all the federal pieces of the puzzle except for one. I was almost surprised that one wasn't the STB. So does this extend far? I would be remiss with the other hat I wear. Does this extend to the railroad tracks?

This project? Yes. This project will cross the railroad tracks and it will go all the way to, almost to the park, Market Park. And has that, so the approval from the STB has occurred for that? There's an agreement that is being worked out with the railroad on how to- OK.

So I better understand what you are getting at there.

OK. So when it comes to, especially, you guys have multiple railroad crossings. This wouldn't be the first one. This would honestly just be an alteration of an existing crossing under Missouri law. And the STP were allowed to enter into what are called crossing agreements. There are several of those already existing between the city and the Smoky Hill Historic Society.

We've recently had a change in name.

Okay. That's just the name on the crossing agreement.

That was very recent that there was a name change there. Largely, that's not because that hasn't occurred. It's because there's an agreement being worked out. I understand. I just wanted that clarification. Thank you.

Anybody else? All right, hearing none, item four, camping ordinance.

CHRIS RODGERS. Yes. Couple of months ago, I believe there was a question regarding whether or not the city could act to prohibit camping on private property. At the time, the response was essentially no because it could gobble up too much of just your normal activity. Following that meeting, staff talked about it. It was like, all right, let's at least find something to be able to present it to council. I went ahead and did a Review of the law as of now when it comes to camping there has been a change but following that we went ahead and drafted up an ordinance there is kind of an existing on the next page but so basically what the proposed ordinance would do would prohibit I keep it here for now would be no person can camp or allow a person to camp on any property within the city there are exceptions specifically exceptions for when it is permitted by the Parks and Recreation Department because they do have a kind of camping permit or when it is approved by you all for a special event or their emergency first responders or so on and so forth Obviously, like I said at the last meeting, one of the issues here was going to be making sure we didn't take up too much stuff with our definitions and all of a sudden be prohibiting a whole bunch of work. So we do have kind of a narrow definition that camping only is overnight sleeping from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Outdoors or in a temporary shelter. It does not. I had to specifically put it in there just so we didn't. somebody to never ask it, but it does not prohibit napping on your front porch during the day. I know I have a big covered front porch, and I've been known to take a nap out there from time to time. Picnicking or limited use by residents and a guest. And now I'm ready for the... Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Sorry, will you jump back a slide real quick? So I'm reading two things that seem not to match up. The core rule being no person shall camp or permit another person to camp. And then next to it says regulating outdoor camping on public property, private property without the owner's consent.

Yeah, it's all about. So when you're on private property, you can camp there either as the guest or with their written consent. So like, for example, if you had, If you wanted to allow somebody to camp on your property, you could say yes, and they would have a certain time frame that they could camp on your property. The other example, the reason why I drafted it, was let's say your kids and one of their friends wanted to set up a tent in the backyard. So you can camp on private property with the consent of the property owner, either being yourself or your kids' friends or something like that.

We have additional questions, but I'll hold off for now.

I have additional questions related to that or potentially, but one right now, what is the limited? Is that what you just described? The limited residential?

It'll be next. That was just the introduction. One of the reasons for this switch was For a long time, we've been kind of all following under the Martin v. City of Boise case, which was not out of our circuit, but it was the most on-point case that kind of everybody followed that was subjected ordinances related to camping to some pretty strict scrutiny that would most likely never get to the point of being able to pass it because they viewed camping prohibitions as prohibitions against the state of being homeless. However, in 2024, the Supreme Court finally took up a case regarding camping ordinances and came to the decision that camping ordinances, when they are tailored properly, are not looking to criminalize homelessness, but are instead looking at the activity of camping. And there is a provision from Justice Sotomayor's dissent that kind of gives us the roadmap of what we can do. And that is you have to have due process, meaning you have to provide notice of what is going on. And you cannot violate what are the excessive fines clause, because that is something that pretty significantly has come up in all of the camping sort of regulation is just excessively fining people that are homeless or houseless or unhoused. to the point where they can no longer pay them. They are having to serve time in jail because they cannot pay the fines that are being levied against them. Now to the final slide. Again, this is our narrow definition. It is overnight camping, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., daytime napping, picnicking, and recreation are excluded from the definition that prohibits it. There is one thing, the residential carve-out, if the council wants to move forward with this, this is where you have the most leeway, but its owners, tenants, and invited guests may sleep on private residential property, and it's written confusing, but up to three consecutive nights in any 30-day period. Obviously, those two things don't make sense because you have two options. You can either look to prohibit it from a consecutive night standpoint where you cannot spend more than three consecutive nights camping on somebody's property, or you set it as you can't have camping for more than four nights in a 30-day period. So it's either you regulate it consecutively or you regulate it on a 30-day rolling clock. There are, again, a significant number of exceptions as drafted right now, but emergency personnel, emergency shelter, RV parks, and city-approved permits. And then the notice that due process clause was right now it's written and it's mirrored off the grant pass ordinance, but it's, they have 30 minutes oral written notice. If somebody is camping in violation of the section, a code enforcement officer or potentially a police enforcement or law enforcement officer would have to give the person 30 minutes to remove their camping supplies or materials from the property. And I will note already you guys prohibit camping on public property unless it is in parks property specifically, unless it is permitted by the parks department under a policy that they have.

Any questions? Go ahead.

So as of now, if I wanted to have there as, as of right now,

If I wanted to have people just sleep in my front yard, they could do it.

Yes, there would obviously could potentially be some issues when it relates to zoning, but that would take some very extended uses to make it to the point where it would violate the land use provisions, the UDC.

I know me and Joe have talked about this a little bit and then I got an email. We've emailed back and forth, but that we do have a camping in public areas addressed. But the big issue is private property. And as he said, the city pushing an ordinance to limit private property rights is unlikely to be well received by the residents. But codes can come around and write code violations for having their car being worked on or their car not having license plates or having your grass too tall. Aren't we talking about the same type of situation? I mean, because if you got somebody sleeping on a porch or in a church way, church porch, and they're blocking an entrance or they have all their belongings sitting up there,

So obviously, I feel like that's the same situation. And most cities did. And then they ran up against the Boise case, which basically meant that those sort of ordinances that could be directly tied to what courts viewed as the criminalization of homelessness. And so that was why the grant pass decision was such a significant change. Obviously, when it comes to a constitutional limitation or constitutional review, working on your car is not a constitutionally protected right. I mean, a city could ban cars if they wanted to. There's no constitutionally protected right to a car. There is a-. It wouldn't be smart to do, but- But there is a constitutionally protected right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness sort of stuff. And that is what the- those original sort of pre-grant pass ordinances all ran up against was there's a constitutional right to just yourself. And the blanket criminalization of the state of homelessness was viewed as unconstitutional. So up until... under a year and a half ago, there was realistically no route forward for something involving private property like that. Now obviously if somebody, again going back to the UDC, if somebody were trying to utilize their property as like, for example, a campground, That being the primary use, there would be issues there. If somebody were trying to set up a homeless shelter but instead used tents instead of an interior structure, there would be obviously some issues there. But just the one-off prohibition against camping or sleeping up until grant pass was viewed with significant hesitation from courts.

So there's also a safety issue here, though, also. Yeah, and that was noted on the first slide. Yeah, as the incident that I'm referring to here up on Main Street, that there is a person out there, and a lot of people don't feel safe walking their kids past or whatnot, and that a church has allowed her to sleep on the front porch.

And I would just, again, note this is kind of a council discussion. Staff, we went off our initial blush of what had been the law for the past 40 years, kind of changed that once we did a deeper dive. But it's really staff will adopt the most constitutional ordinance we can regulating this conduct if that is what the council wants to see.

CHRIS JERRAM, JR.: Go ahead. I'd like to better understand specifically the residential carve out. Is it only that there that it's either the four days within 30 or is there something else?

It's whatever you guys want it to be. Again, this is just a presentation to you. Staff is really just taking a backseat saying this is what we came up with based on the grant pass case. you guys can kind of decide if you want to regulate this and then if you want to regulate it, how you want to regulate it.

But if we were to look to regulate something like that and someone decided to have their primary property, their primary house, but they said, you know, I got enough room to host a... Short-term rental, that would still be under the short-term rental problem. You know what I mean?

It would depend on if it's a structure. Again, that's why the camping is looking at temporary shelters, which would be tents, things like that. just a sleeping bag. If somebody were to pull an RV in and try and utilize that as a secondary dwelling for commercial purposes, that would fall into UDC territory. If you were to try and rent out your front yard for camps, that would also again fall into that UDC territory because that is beginning the commercial activity in a residential area. However, just somebody camping like in their backyard or something like that, does not necessarily pull in those sort of non-UDC compliant uses.

And, okay, because I know that the scouts do use church, actually, specifically churches. I know at least one of the troops here uses... A church to do a camp out every year And they I think they couple that with a fundraiser they do if I remember correctly But anyways, I do know that's like a legitimate thing that scouts do here and then Well, I'll if someone else wants to talk I'll I'll hold off I Guess I'm somewhat

Not confused, but concerned about what we're really trying to accomplish. Because if the homeowner, if the business wants to let them, then as long as they've given permission, they're letting them. And so I'm not... Again...

That is a policy decision. Staff just prepared what has been determined by courts as legally okay. Obviously, if, again, when it comes to commercial property, if you were to try and let somebody sleep overnight or utilize it as an Airbnb or a residence, that could fall and be volatile of the UDC, but again, this is related more towards Obviously, you need to make sure that your doors and entryways are clear while in operation. That is part of the IRC and IBC. But again, this is just a staff-level compilation of stuff that has passed constitutional muster.

Go ahead. Are we assuming that there's going to be some sort of written permission from the homeowner if we're looking at the residential? Because we're giving 30-minute notice.

It could be that. It could be the homeowner is there. It could be you contact the homeowner over. You give them a call if they're out of town. They say, yes, I'm who I say I am, that sort of thing. But that would be kind of the enforcement guidelines that I would follow under.

I was just thinking that could get a little tricky in trying to enforce that if law enforcement comes out, if code enforcement comes out, neighborhood improvement comes out, and we don't have that information available to us.

Yeah, I think that's why the consecutive nights or nights in a 30-day window is kind of key from a code enforcement or law enforcement perspective, so that if you just see somebody camping for one night, you can... basically operate under the assumption, okay, camp out with some kids or whatever. Once it gets to, oh, I've noticed this now four nights in a row, five nights in a row, however many nights in a 30-day time period, okay, now I need to go and ask, do you have the homeowner's consent? You're outside this window. What's going on?

Go ahead. I know we've got a homeless committee. Have they ran it by the homeless committee to see like what their thoughts are on this?

Again, this is just brand new. Well, yeah, it's one of those things. If you guys didn't want it or want to regulate it, it wouldn't make sense to bring it to a homeless committee at that point.

Are you on the homeless committee? And do you know where they're trying to go with this? Not lately. This is first time.

Nobody's trying to go anywhere with this. There was a concern brought up. And so we looked into the legalities of what can be done, what can't be done. This is a response to that concern that was brought up in the community. And we're bringing it to you to say, do you want To pursue this any further, this is the only avenue we potentially may have to do so. If you don't want to do so, that's fine. Staff at this point hasn't made any recommendation, and I don't believe we're going to make a recommendation. We're going to let you guys tell us how you want us to proceed.

Well, I think 100% we need to do something because otherwise we're going to have people. I mean, we could have people sleeping in front yards of everybody's house. I mean, then we're turning into a Los Angeles, and nothing can happen because we don't have anything in place to fix it. So I'm trying to keep property values up, trying to, I mean, you guys want to reinvent or reimagine Main Street and change this, but if we don't do something and allow people to just sleep in private properties out in front yards or wherever, it's going to turn out bad. So there is something we need to do. Go ahead.

I'm on the homeless committee, and we haven't met since, I want to say, last November. They pretty much have canceled all meetings.

We've met in the spring.

I do have another person that's actually called me in our ward that has a pickup truck parked in their front driveway. It's covered with a tarp. They have a window air conditioner in the driver's window and an extension cord running in the house to air condition the truck out in front. And I believe they've called codes, and I don't know where they're at on it. And we should have a policy on that where you can't have an RV parked in the front yard and live out of it.

We do have codes already on the books to deal with certain situations similar to that.

Right. Go ahead. City approved permits. Do we already have those in place and is that just parks or is there something else?

Well, there's just parks, but obviously again, if there was an event that for some reason it wasn't on park property, but the city wanted to allow camping, just making it so that you guys could do that.

So that might be something helpful for an organization like the scouts. If they were to do a camp out at somewhere that has a large piece of property like a church or something, um, they could, You could get a temporary permit.

That's easy. That's an easy fix. I just know that we've had business owners on Main Street complaining with not much results.

We have nothing to provide results. That's why this is here, Council Member Richardson. You can complain about there not being any results. There's nothing we could legally do about it until we decide if we want to as a council. If you all decide you want to as a council to create this ordinance, then we have something to enforce. Until then, we can't legally.

I'm for making an ordinance for it.

Go ahead.

I don't disagree with doing something. Right now, just to focus on the specific issue on Main Street or concern, I don't want to call it an issue, but the specific concern on Main Street, it's not... really a city issue. It's more of a residential issue, right? But it could very easily become one if that person were to have a medical emergency or there was some type of, you know, the city would be the one responding to that. And, you know, um, and I understand that could happen anywhere, right? But I'm just saying that there is, There is an element, indirectly, of safety and concern in that regard. So I don't disagree with doing something to help ensure we have appropriate safety guards, but I... My concern comes back to just people that want to camp out in their backyard or organizations that want to do the outdoor thing and whatever. That's where my thought is. CHRIS JERRAMSEN.

So if you ever had somebody out there sleeping in their front yard for three to four months, going to the bathroom out there in the grass, you're OK with your kids seeing that every day? CHRIS JERRAMSEN. I'm not. CHRIS JERRAMSEN.

Chris, didn't I just agree with you?

CHRIS JERRAMSEN. Well, right.

It isn't just Main Street either. There's been businesses throughout Belton that have made comments about trying to get people not sleeping on their property because they broke in.

I would note, if there is no consent from the property owner, it's trespass. So if you are a business owner and there's somebody sleeping on your private property that you have not consented to, that is already handled, you can contact... PD or code? Scott, would that be PD trespass? I'm guessing, yes. You could contact PD at the non-emergency number or the emergency number, depending on the circumstances, and they can come out and resolve that or help you attempt to resolve that.

Attempt to. Go ahead. So what are you looking for from us? It sounds like we all want something. Do you want to meet one-on-one in our individual meetings with you?

If there's enough support to this, we can bring back an ordinance for discussion. We have a draft already. And we can start discussing what the parameters would want you, that the council would want.

That would be my suggestion. I'm good at that. Sounds like we all want it. We can talk to you in our individual meetings.

You can give suggestions and we'll bring something and then it'll be debated publicly anyway.

Sure. For me, the big concern is just going to be it's hard. I understand the purpose of this. I do. But it's hard to have a good discussion about if something makes sense or if something doesn't make sense without us having better parameters locked down. That's how I feel about it.

You good with that?

Well, at least now you all understand the issue, the framework that we're having to try to work within, and how this could maybe potentially look. And so now you can have at least the thought process of what is reasonable for our community. So we can bring it back and we can have that debate.

Perfect. Sounds great. All right. Item G, motion to enter an executive session to discuss matters pertaining to legal actions according to Missouri State Statute 610.021.1, pertaining to the leasing, purchase, sale of real estate according to Missouri State Statute 610.021.2, pertaining to the hiring and prior discipline and promotion of personnel according to Missouri State Statute 610.021.3, pertaining to negotiated contracts according to Missouri State Statute 610.021.12, and that the record be closed and the meeting adjourned from there. Present. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Hearing none, roll call.

Council members White?

Yes.

Davidson? Yes. Thompson? Yes. Lawson? Yes. Johnson? Yes. McCallum? Yes. Mayor Larkey? Aye. Richardson?

Aye.

Bryan?

Aye.