City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Yes, sir. Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

It's going to be very handy. Yes.

I guess next Thursday. So when we get back from the tours, jackets.

Hopefully there's not a ton of traffic. Yeah.

So there was some discussion on a page earlier this week YouTube is still not...

Yes. So we are... We didn't announce it because we want to make sure. But yesterday we had the people that set up all this AV equipment out here to fix the AV issue, the audio issue. The issue is not if you're in the room, it's if you go to YouTube. Couldn't really hear you on the YouTube stream. Right. So what, the mics weren't picked up? It wasn't... on the GoToWebinar control panel to allow attendees to hear you. This system will notify you once you begin your broadcast. Yes, I know. He's like, he's got the wrist. Hopefully. They track me. It's funny, because I think Ben, my sixth-year-old, he tracks me more than anyone else. And my husband, he's like a little mother hen. It's the privacy aspect of it.

And in Josh's time, one of the Navy had to track him off.

But we don't. Oh, yes, yes, yes. It's not the goatee. It's not the goatee.

And what was happening was, you were finding the ring, and what you were hearing when you were off was the sound coming from the ring.

There was a mic somewhere, I can't see if it was a mic somewhere that picks up the general audience, but that was picking up the mic. So what was happening is it was going through the computer, the go-to meeting, it wasn't coming back after two minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know. So that was the issue. I think we had a chance. We're pushing it to go to the meeting today.

I guess we'll find out tonight.

Yeah. We were pushing the Facebook post that we needed to use. Hey, go to the meeting. I did see that. Yeah, I'm a good friend of yours, so I'm starting to reach out to you. I'm a good friend of yours. I'm a good friend of yours. Welcome to the webinar. I didn't get back to you today. I meant to.

Yeah, I mean, that's heartbreaking, but they wouldn't have, like, who knows how long I'm going to take in the business.

I don't know.

What are these?

What are these?

Okay. How many of you are into that kind of stuff? Yes. That's good. I'm glad we asked a little bit. Good to see you. All right. That's a shame. Oh, well, I heard they were good, so. Anybody else? Okay. Okay. Well, thank you.

No, this is the way that we set up. We don't, we do.

We just kind of throw it out there and hope you guys like it.

Yeah, I think it's good.

Lots already happened. I just want to finish. I don't know.

I've never taken a vacation where I didn't have to respond to emails.

Yes. I've been asking for one. Jack, do you want a medium?

Yeah, that's what I want. I did, thank you. Oh.

Yeah, Rhonda, how was your trip?

It's supposed to rain all day Tuesday and Wednesday next week when we're gone.

You know what our plans are?

Is this what you're coming for? I was, yeah. Thank you. Is that where the school is then? Is that us? Thank you.

Did I read that wrong? No, you didn't.

I just said the wrong thing. Oh, okay.

Again, that'd be fine. You just pick the time.

Okay.

I want you to work around your schedule.

Well, we need to work around Linda's to-do list, probably. That would be great. Something could come up. Yeah. Oh, yeah? Would you like to do that?

That's a really good job.

I had that done two years ago.

Yeah.

Did you hear anything about that? I'll have to ask Alex. Oh, okay.

Yeah, if you find out something, send me something. Okay.

The broadcast is now starting.

All attendees are in listen only mode.

Did Brad have a package for me to take to Linda?

I didn't see one.

I was wanting to check. He said he'd find out.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. We're ready. He's a . He's a . He's a .

Is that what Patrick said?

Did you say we should table 4B? No, we can't.

Can't?

No. Oh, okay.

Okay, I didn't get through it all, so...

Sorry. Cameron's memo pretty much covered everything we're thinking.

Oh, okay.

Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Oh. Okay, perfect.

Now we got two downloads, yeah? Okay, good. I won't resend it.

Or you can try it.

Go ahead, I'm gonna try it.

Well, mine's separate. They don't want to read, uh... You know what? yeah yeah

Thank you. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I got all the school people in my family.

Thank you. Thank you. Uh, I will try.

I'm back here in a green shirt.

Tom?

Oh.

I got an eye for it here.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, it is 7.30. I'd like to call the June 18th DeSoto City Council meeting to order. We'll start with roll call, please. Patterson?

Here.

Sabo? Here. Bradley? Here. Lane? Here. McCracken?

Here.

All are present. All right. I would invite you all to please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag and the United States of America, and to the republic for All right, our first item tonight is our consent agenda. Tonight on the consent agenda, we have item A, approve the minutes from the June 4th city council meeting. Item B, approve ordinance number 1021. Item C, accept deed of dedication from Digital Realty for 10-foot strip of land that will be part of relocated Springtown Road. And item D, approve amendment number two to HDR agreement for work on Wells 7 and 11. Is there any item anyone would wish to remove for further discussion? Hearing none, can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Second.

Any discussion of the motion? Roll call, please. Kraken?

Yes.

Bradley? Yes. Patterson? Yes. Sabo? Yes. Lane? Yes. Motion carries. All right. Item two is call to public. Members of the public are welcome to use this time to comment about any matter relating to city business. The comments that are discussed under call to public may or may not be acted on by the council during tonight's meeting. There is a four-minute time limit. Please stand and wait to be recognized by the mayor when you come to the podium. State your name and address, please. Anyone wish to address the council under call to public?

Tony Caldwell, or Marie Caldwell, 8412 Corliss Road, DeSoto, Kansas. So good evening council members and staff. I would like to address a significant gap in our current approach to industrial development. The absence of comprehensive environmental impact study for the industrial area, particularly regarding the data centers. If a study does exist, and we do have it, I have not been able to locate it. Has the city requested one from any of the companies operating in this zone? While I understand that the state of Kansas does not require an environmental impact study, that lack of requirement leaves communities like ours vulnerable to companies that take advantage of our minimal oversight. KDHE does not review certain elements through its permitting process, but air quality water and wastewater analysis and environmental site assessment focuses on some of the past contamination, but these are also initial limited assessments, not full evaluations of long-term environmental impact. In other cities, when data centers are asked to complete a full environmental impact study, they've chose not to proceed. The pattern should prompt us to ask why. What are they avoiding and what risk might we be accepting on behalf of our residents? For these reasons, I strongly recommend that the city require comprehensive environmental studies for major industrial projects. Additionally, I believe the city would benefit from employing a dedicated environmental professional who would evaluate these issues on an ongoing basis and ensure that our community's interests are protected. Second, I would like to offer some thoughts on the noise ordinance. I want to begin by acknowledging the intern's work. He's done a commendable job gathering information and helping this process move forward. Thank you. At the same time, I have reservations about the company being recommended for the noise study. After reviewing their website, I'm not confident they are the best fit for the study that will have long-term implications for our residents. Your priority should be ensuring that developer is thoroughly elevated, evaluated, not inadvertently helping them meet minimal requirements. There are several well-qualified noise experts in our area who routinely conduct these studies and provide expert testimony. I believe the City of DeSoto would benefit from considering those options. To support your work on this, I've compiled a list of questions that I think are important when we develop a comprehensive noise ordinance. I'm going to distribute copies so that I don't have to go through every question. And they're grouped kind of in several key categories for easier review. And so I'm going to kind of touch on those areas. Measurements and standards. Those standards should cover all decibels and measurements and should be taken different times of days and seasons. Residential impacts. This should include more than just the property line. Data center and industrial applications, all industrial but especially data centers. This should be addressed by frequency, duration, time of day. Enforcement, who's gonna be checking? Because most government agencies in our city will probably not be after the initial checks. What are the consequences to noncompliance? Do we have any of those in our regulations? Do we list any? Future proofing, can we deny based on this or can we account for future industrial technologies that might be in our future? My final ask to you to ask yourself, if a resident can clearly hear or feel low frequency noise inside their homes at night, but the facility in compliance with the ordinance DBA limit, what protections would that ordinance provide? If the answer is essentially none, then the audience may not be accomplishing your goal of protecting residents from low frequency industrial noise. That single question often gets to the heart of whether an ordinance is focused on real world impacts versus numerical compliance. Thank you.

Anyone else under call to public?

Trying to follow the rules. Sarah Vandercreek, 8175 Ravenswood Lane. Well, here we are again. It's Tony and me and other people and got a nice group of people, but I know it was stated on the city's page that the Beale community meeting was not an official city event. They wouldn't make an event for it on Facebook, for example. But I have some reflections and then I have some other thoughts real quick. That meeting was not very effective. We were led to believe that we would be able to ask our questions and get the answers we're looking for. Instead, we got a meeting that was geared a lot towards our families and our children. There were balloon artists, there were face painters, and that's all nice and good but didn't serve the purpose that we need. It was more of a publicity opportunity for Beale. They were taking pictures and videos. And there was no new information that I got from asking my questions, not anything. So the complaint I hear from city leaders is that people keep sharing false information about data centers and about things going on within the city. And I ask you, like I've asked before, where do you want us to get the information? If you think you know better, where do you want us to get it? Where's the studies? Where's the information that we can go and take and understand what you think makes the best choice for our community because you chose this for us and we didn't get much notice and we didn't get a voice. Actions speak louder than words. Stop deflecting when we ask questions. Answer them directly. Stop acting in ways that show disregard and disrespect. Your interests need to come after the community's interests. DeSoto deserves better. We sprinted to the starting line of a race without being prepared. We are not prepared for the type of developments that you're bringing into our community. A runner takes time to train. They have the supplies that they need. We are not that runner. We, they have the right water, they have the right gear. The city has done very little to prepare. We need a dark sky ordinance. We need environmental protections. We need a better noise ordinance. And I appreciate Zach, the work that you've been doing on that. You may have prepared to run a sprint, but we are in a marathon and we are just not ready.

Anyone else under call to public?

Good evening. City Council Mayor, Attorney Raby. My name is Jennifer Sharp. I live at 8220 Hill Circle. I don't really have a speech prepared tonight like I did the other day because I didn't have time. I'm really busy. I'm a mom. I'm a nanny. And I've been here since 2007. I just want to, I guess I just want to know why Digital Realty and Beale get more incentives than our teachers. Thank you. My daughter's a teacher for the school district and the end of this year she sent me, I couldn't even read them, I tried. She sent me pictures of the letters that her students wrote her for her senior students who were leaving and they were very emotional. I couldn't get through them. Very hard to read, these children thanked my daughter for saving their lives. They thanked her for being a wonderful teacher. They thanked her for being there just someone to listen because they don't have a mom at home to listen or their home life is not good. And the time and materials and everything our teachers spend on our kids, our future, that you guys, I believe, in my opinion, and I have a very strong opinion about this, are ruining their future by allowing these in here. They didn't get anything out of this. Why? Why? Why do our teachers who help raise our kids not get a thing? My daughter's saving kids' lives, and the school district doesn't get anything for that. Why? Why do these people get a free ride? I feel like this whole entire situation has been incredibly mishandled by our attorney, our city council, our mayor. Appalled, I am appalled. I feel like if you guys truly care, if you have any kind of heart in this town whatsoever, or heart at all, or children, or grown children who have your grandbabies like I do, and if you care, I think there are stipulations that everybody could put in place to make Beale, for one, the dishonest company who has lawsuits, which they did admit at the high school just a little while ago, that they're currently under. and digital realty, there are things that you guys can put in place, I believe, to make them leave, especially if our attorney mishandled a deal as a scale, a large scale as this is. They got $50 billion in tax incentives. Why? Our school district got what? They still don't know who's going to occupy the building and they still don't, what is DeSoto getting out of it? New infrastructure? A new water tank for them to use? Good day.

Hi. Abby Baker, 8400 Edgerton Road. I really don't know what I'm going to say. I didn't plan on saying anything, and I've been here and just not said anything. You guys see people here that haven't been here. I mean, let's be honest. I'm on YouTube on our meetings a lot, and there's four people, right, for years. You guys understand that people don't want this and you guys are putting it in place. Now, I wish we would have known when you were running for mayor because I think it would have changed the outcome. I think you really need to take a look. at the people that are really trying to make a difference in this place and trying to tell you we don't want it. We're not trying to kick you out as mayor or council or anything. We're trying to explain that this is not something that we want in our town. We've tried to explain, I will say, going to that meeting today, finding out that we're guinea pigs, do you guys know that Beale has not actually made one data center? And they told us that today. They were very, very PC about everything. They told us everything that you guys tell us. But then we find out other information as we dig deeper, and it's not fair. We're not getting the answers. And like Jennifer said, how do you want us to get the information if you're not telling us? Because all we're gonna do, there's UK, like we can look in China, we can look at the UK and all these other places that there's data centers, there's issues. And we're not paying attention to them so we can only get the information from what we're finding on the internet because you aren't telling us that. We want transparency. If you guys have really good information for us, then we want that. Because honestly, none of us wanna be here upset. We don't. We'd rather feel as good about it apparently as you guys, but we don't because we keep trying to find information and we're not finding good information. So my ask of you, my call of action to you is to please be more transparent, to please give us your studies. Please tell us why you feel good about it and why it's coming into our small community so that we can feel better about it because we don't want to go to bed sleeping at night thinking about this and being concerned. We want that information. That is my call of action to you.

Anyone else under call to public?

Howdy, my name is Sterling Ozark. I'm actually a resident of Lawrence, Kansas. I'm here today because I'm worried about my neighbors. This fight has been getting fought a lot and Tonganoxie and Ossawatomie are doing it. They're putting it to them. I'm here today because your community is under attack. I'm talking to you folks, not them. They have their minds made up. This isn't democracy. You voted them in, but they're not going to let you vote on it because every single one of you doesn't want to do it. So what I would recommend is clean and shop. Get these guys out of here. Get some new politicians who know what they're going to do for the community. The power's in your hands. We have over 70 people that just signed for the next petition. Okay, we're going to put a pause to this. We're going to talk to legal counsel, and we're going to get the ball rolling because I'm tired of them walking all over you. They had four people talk for three minutes at the last meeting, and then they decided it was good. I mean, that's disgusting. That in one week, that's all the time you had to do to represent your community. Every other community in Kansas is not like that. All right, so I'm trying to rally you guys. I'm not here to talk to them. I'm not part of this community, but I'm here to support you guys any way possible. Okay, so that's what I like to say.

Anyone else under call to public?

Don't be scared, guys. Get in there.

Hi, Cindy O'Connor, 8655 Lynn Road. I just wanted to share with everyone, because we're not, when we do ask questions, when we do get answers, they don't seem to be the same answers. Tonight, when I spoke with representatives from Bill, One of my questions was, when did you all decide, since you presented to our city council and stuff, that you were going to build this size of a complex? There were going to be four buildings this size. When did you decide that you were going to double the size of them? Why did you decide that? And when did you decide that you weren't going to build a water treatment plant? And my answer from this representative, and his name was, I have it written down, I want to say Mark Day. He said, well, the size didn't change from the original plans. And I looked him in the face and said, BS. I don't know what our planning commission approved the second time around then or why it was even necessary to have a second plan approved and I said well tell me about the water treatment plant because I thought that was one of the things that would benefit the city because I'm not seeing any a lot of anything else that's going to benefit the city and he said well the people that are gonna lease the building from us, they had three options as to their cooling system. And they decided that they were gonna pick the option that didn't need, it's not necessary for us to build a water treatment plant. So now we're not going to. And I said, well, when did you all know that the people that were gonna lease the building had three options. Were those presented to our city ever? Well, he couldn't answer that. I said, you know, and visiting with them, and so this gentleman said, I said, well, so as a citizen of a city, what would you tell me to do if I don't want the data center here? or I don't believe that your company is upfront and honest because and he said well the people that were before us in the beginning they're not here anymore and they didn't do the right thing and I looked at him in the face and I said so basically you have new people you're telling me there's new people in Beale now and what the people did before just kind of screwed us and there's nothing we can do? He said, yes ma'am. And I have this gentleman's name. So I do not trust this company for anything. I also did not get to ask him, but I saw in print that Bill has put in some responses out and they asked you all and one other city to sign an NDA. And they're saying now that their new policy is that won't be done anymore. That was their old way of doing things. So I still have never got an answer. Why in the world anyone in this room or anyone that's not in this room anymore but is in our Economic Development Council would sign an NDA? All that. And what was on the NDA? And why is that not a public record? Why can that not be gotten? That's all I have to say. I have too many questions and we are getting, when we do get answers, No matter, you can ask three different people and get three different answers. And I think it's totally BS because evidently they told you guys different things than they had planned all along. I don't think we should move forward with this company.

My name is Jennifer Delgado. I live at 33844 West 88th Street. I'm here because I came to a, oh gosh, what was it called? Table talk or whatever it was, town talk. And I asked you, Mayor Rick Walker, I said, what would change your mind? I asked you, what would change your mind? And you said, well, if I had evidence that it is gonna cause the noise pollution, the air pollution, the water pollution. So my job is in research and teaching, so I'm able to pull from peer-reviewed articles. I have two sources from peer reviewed. It's harder to get for the closed-loop water system. So for that, I have from a company. They don't know what they're going to put in our water yet in terms of specifics. So this is going to stay pretty general for that last thing. But I'd just like to read you quotes. First is from Health Implications of the Rapid Rise of Data Centers in Virginia, an Exploratory Assessment, 2026. This is peer reviewed. I'd be ecstatic to give you the source. This is the quote. The health impacts of noise pollution include long-term risks such as heart disease, permanent hearing loss, and tinnitus, chronic effects such as hypertension and endocrine disruption, and acute effects like decreased sleep quality and temporary hearing changes. Studies have found that children in noisy environments defined by the U.S. EPA as chronic exposure above 55 decibels day-night average, that's DBA, exhibit poor school performance, increased stress and behavioral issues, with noise pollution also being linked to a decreased learning, lower reading comprehension, and concentration deficits.

Three miles from our school. One mile from me. Two miles.

The second source is health consequences of large data centers, air pollution, noise, and water use, and environmental justice, 2026. Again, I'd be ecstatic to share the original source. The first part is not the quote. This is to provide context. Data centers require backup diesel generators. These generators are very loud, noisy, and produce incredible toxic pollutants. This is the quote. Diesel exhaust presents a particular hazard at the facilities with large generator fleets. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified diesel engine exhaust as group one carcinogenic to humans in a 2012 IARC monograph, volume 105, 2014, with sufficient evidence of elevated lung cancer risk. Beyond carcinogenity, diesel exhaust is associated with elevated cardiovascular disease risk. Communities located downwind of data center generation testing events are exposed to episodic but potentially high concentration diesel exhaust plumes. This last one, as I said, is not from a peer-reviewed source. It's from a company that specializes in catering to closed-loop water systems, which is as best we know given what they just told us what we're going to get. I talked to the environmental engineer who is in charge of deciding what will go into these closed-loop water systems. She doesn't know and won't know for 12 months what specifically they will put into the water. So we won't know for another year. And then it could take another three months after that before they start putting it actually into their water. This is the quote from this website. It's a company. It's KADOS. And again, I'd be happy to provide you their website. It's harder to get because the closed-loop systems are newer technology. So it's harder to get information on it. I'll keep looking. This is the quote. Closed-loop systems rely on a cocktail of additives such as corrosion inhibitors, biocides, and antifreeze blends to keep water doing its job. Salts, metals, and treatment chemicals keep increasing in concentration with each recycling round and frequently reach concentrations that move well beyond established limits. Operators bleed a small fraction of water each month to keep these levels in check, a practice known as blowdown. The bigger worry sits outside the fence. When blowdown finally leaves the site, it can carry nitrate, glycol, and heavy metals at thousands of times the limit set for surface waters. In other words, the water saved today may return tomorrow as a very different kind of liability. Again, I'd be ecstatic to provide these sources and others. I thank you for your time.

Any other commenters tonight?

Don't be scared. Come on up. Let's make it a long night, guys.

Brenda Newman, 8575 Hilltop Road. We've been here seven years. The reason I say this is for credibility purposes. I've been a registered nurse for 40 years. I was an occupational health RN for a decade. And everything that this young lady that just stepped away said is correct because I worked with industries and companies to minimize their occupational exposure to noise. and certified in audiology, et cetera, et cetera. So the other thing I want to say is I don't know that this is correct, but if there was a contract with Beale and that's not being adhered to, doesn't that mean a broken contract? Am I missing something? I could be. I think that the... the chemical water from these closed-loop systems is going to have to go somewhere. It's not going to, you know, unless you have a treatment to counteract it. I don't know the whole science of it, but it's going to go somewhere. There's even angel investors that are losing money, like in Utah, because they're fighting back and not letting them build data center there. And this is big money. The other thing I want to say is that I'm concerned for the economic impact to the residents. Because this is going to cast a shadow over DeSoto, where people are not going to want to buy homes here. And it's going to be hard to sell a home. You're going to lose home value. And that means a lot to some of us who have put a lot of work and money into our homes and into the town. So I just want to say I mean no disrespect. I just don't think this is a good idea. So I agree with everybody that's talked.

Thank you.

My name is Cindy Bell. I live at 8475 Weah. The reason I'm coming up here is I came and I voted when it was election time. You guys are all up here because you were elected by your citizens. I'm asking you as a representative, as one of the citizens, to please listen to your people. We are saying we don't want these here. They haven't had enough studies to show if they've got problems with our health. We haven't seen enough studies, and we don't want them. I'm asking you instead of just listening to us to do something about it. I know in any job, if you just listen to your... client and don't do anything about it, you're going to get fired. I'm asking you to listen to your people. We don't want them here.

Thank you.

Steve Marcotte, 8629 Primrose Street. And I heard that we did build a new water treatment plant. But I tell you what I think is real funny right now. They said it's bottled water instead of cups of water.

Our water isn't good.

It's not fit to drink. And now we're going to bring in a data center?

Yeah. Yeah.

Hi, my name is Lindsay Billinger. I live off Coronado Circle. I'm actually very nervous about this and I had to write it down and then I had to rewrite it 12 times. I don't even know if what I'm going to say is even going to make sense to this point. But I am coming up here to say that two things can be true. I can appreciate the good things happening in DeSoto and still have concerns. I can be thankful and still ask questions. Wanting accountability and answers doesn't mean I'm against growth. It means I care about protecting the community I call home. I want to personally thank the City Council and a few special council members who stepped in and made contact with the DeSoto Parks and Rec. The condition of the pool chairs has been a concern for years and I was so pleased to hear that the pool would be getting new chairs. Thank you. On the flip side, when questions go unanswered, people get louder. That's not opposition, it's frustration. It's residents who care deeply about the future of DeSoto and want to know their concerns are being heard. If I want to build a garage on my property, I have to follow the rules. I have to meet setbacks, size requirements, design standards, and make sure everything complies with the city regulations or I do not get my plans approved. If I change the footprint or I change the height of my building, it has to go back to the city for re-approval. So why does it feel that there's a different standard for these developers? Field has significantly expanded beyond what many residents originally understood was being proposed. Panasonic came back and removed roughly 75% of the landscaping that was presented. Time and again, it feels that the projects are approved one way and then they change. Why aren't we getting tougher on these developers? Why aren't we holding them to the same standards that residents are expected to follow? Growth is coming, and I understand that. But your job is not just to improve growth. It's to protect the people who already live here and the future of this community. Strong regulations only matter if they are enforced. Promises only matter if there is accountability. Please stop asking us to trust the process and start showing us that the process will protect us. Thank you.

Anyone else under call to public?

Good evening. My name is Earl Bunce, and I live off of Cedar Creek Road, which I'm quite a ways away from where this data center is proposed to be. But I'm still completely against it for every reason that everyone out here has said. I do want to thank Brad for answering some questions from me. And if I'm not mistaken, there was an email or a portion on Facebook that said if things had changed, like other people have said, things have changed in the contract, that it is supposed to go back and reevaluate it. And I think that needs to be done 100%. I don't think you guys are listening. to the public. Everybody has told you over and over and over again that we don't want it. And I do believe, could be wrong, but I do believe there are ways that we can get out from underneath this. But it takes you guys doing your job to make it happen. And I, you know, I'm asking for you, please, do your diligence, listen to the people, Do away with these data centers. We don't need them. Nobody needs them. So that's all I've got to say.

Thank you.

My name is Marge Morse. I didn't plan on speaking at all, so this is right off the top of my head. I live at 322950 West 85th Terrace. This is the problem I see. I was EDC Director and Chamber of Commerce President when we brought in InterVet. We certainly didn't have this many people that had disapproved of it. I didn't know of anybody that disapproved of it. So there's got to be something wrong, guys. I don't know what it is. I have never heard this town so upset. And I'm really disappointed. I mean, Merck is one of the biggest manufacturing company in DeSoto and building. And who knows what Bill will do. From what I went to today, I was disgusted. I thought we were gonna have a meeting and people were gonna talk. But no, they had food, tried to wine and dine you and talk to you. And I didn't like it. So anyway, for what it's worth, I've been here for 75 years, and this is the worst I've heard. That's what I've got to say.

Anyone else under call to public?

Hi, my name is Kelsey Garten, 8501 Primrose Street. Obviously, I agree with what everyone else has said here. But what I find interesting at the Beale event tonight, I was talking to their VP of development. With some of the concerns of potential pollution from air, sound, water, I was concerned of the proximity of the school. So I asked him to pull up where they're zoned to the proximity of the school, and he told me 4 and 1 half miles. I said that's road miles, how far is it actually? Because the pollution doesn't care, it doesn't follow the road, right? So between the school to the actual facility is approximately two miles. So my question to you is with the research presented today, the research readily available online that you can see publicly, How in good faith does this council, the mayor, our attorney, go to our public events, see our children running around, and then willingly subject our kids to be science experiments? And that's all I have.

Anyone else under call to public?

I'll keep this short. My name's Alan Meckley, 8955 Oak Country Lane. I went to the Beale song and dance tonight. Wasn't at all what I expected. I talked to four of Beale's representatives. Two of them hadn't been with the company for six weeks. One of them was their safety manager. And then I talked to one other person who I think actually knew a little bit about what they were doing. But those three people didn't even know what infrasound was, had never heard of it. I had to explain it to them. That's all I got to say. Anyone else?

Yeah.

Wayne Light, 9535 Waverly Road. Wasn't going to say anything, but I grew up in DeSoto about the time you did, Rick, and went to DeSoto High School. Went away to the military, spent subsequent 20, 25 years operationalizing data centers all around the world. So I know this space quite well. You know, I hear our citizens, and I'm proud of DeSoto when I left, and I'm moving back to DeSoto as we speak. continue to be proud of the community and what we're doing here. I fully support the data center going here. I think there's a lot of misunderstandings. I think the public deserves some of the answers that they're asking for. And I know there's plenty of data to support why you made the decision that you did. So I only ask that, you know, you provide the public the data that they need to get to determine, you know, what impact the data center is going to have. But I can tell you I support it. I'm a cattle rancher here. My dad's been a cattle rancher for a long time. I'm a neighbor to the data center. And again, I'll just go on the record as supporting what you're doing here.

Thank you.

He's entitled to his opinions, even if he is wrong.

Any other commenters tonight? All right, we'll move on in our agenda. Old business, we don't have any, so we will move on to item 4A. Consider agreement with Roland, Woolworth, and Associates for noise regulation consultation services.

Yes, counsel. We've discussed this at a couple past council meetings about the specific topic of noise regulation and the... the potential that there may be a blind spot in many noise regulation ordinances throughout the country and how noise is measured and mitigated and regulated throughout the community, specifically with regard to lower frequencies, infrastructure, specifically, and how that is effectively managed in large industrial settings. So to include data centers, but also This would also... Oh, thank you. Okay, thanks, Brandon. So with that, we did do some research on the topic. There have been a number of communities around the nation who have recently looked at this in detail, one of which was Prince William County in Virginia, which is adjacent to Loudoun County, Virginia, where I think it's generally commonly known there are the a concentration of large-scale data centers in that community who are also very close to residential, lots of residential uses there. So there was an acute need to look at this issue in depth in that part of the country. So I was able to make contact with the experts that were hired by those, Prince William County specifically, Have good discussion with them about that. Unfortunately, the state of the industry now, the experts who are the people who have expertise in this are, one, very busy these days, or two, some are employed by data center developers. So trying to find one who has the expertise, who's not already employed by data center developers, and is willing to take on additional work. Wasn't particularly an easy task. The two in Prince William County, one is retiring here in a couple weeks. But they did give me some references from other parts of the country, three or four different ones. And I was able to have several good conversations with David Woolworth of Ronald Woolworth and Associates for noise consultation services. So on the agenda tonight, I'm asking for your approval to engage with with Ronald Woolworth and associates on an hourly basis to help us through this regulatory discussion. It could result in study, actual studies and some abatement measures there, but I think in general to determine what is the state of the industry, what is the state of the known science associated with specifically with low frequency noise to help us through this discussion as to whether or not there is a blind spot, specifically with how you regulate the lower frequency. So the intent tonight is really to ask for your approval to engage with him, to have him help us with this on an hourly basis for an amount not to exceed $20,000 to help us in the next few months through that discussion.

There's not one study completed anymore.

I'm sorry, . So there's also a need. There's a number of, in exhibit A, to your staff report, outline some of the specific areas that might be considered and that have been considered in other parts of the country. I didn't want to, you know, don't present this as this is what we're necessarily considering or specific limits or any of that, but this is just a general guide about the types of things that we'll be looking into. Don't know how long this effort might take, but there is urgency there. asking for your approval to authorize and engage the consultant.

Questions from council? I think the intent is to get some guidance and some expertise to help us modify our ordinance or provide some input on how we might need to modify the ordinance to account for the low frequency sound.

I know that there were some speakers earlier. Please. Go ahead. I know that there were some concerns earlier. Some people mentioned local companies, and I understand that there's a lot of acoustical engineers maybe in the area. Are there any qualified, and how do we qualify them even this company, to do work in the infrasound and low-frequency noise arena?

Sure. Yeah. We don't have a set process for specifically qualifying this area. It's a new field of study. It's relatively new. So if you wish, we can do a more robust selection process and delay this process by, you know, Casting a wider net, if you will, having consultants in. I thought Mr. Woolworth does have expertise in this area, has helped other municipalities, has worked for advocacy groups, neighbor groups. My discussions with him, I'm confident he has the technical expertise to help us. At least the next step of the way, if we find out during this process we need some other expertise, we'll get it. But I thought expediency was important here. I thought being able to... to react to this with speed that it desires, I think this is a good first step.

I think Mr. Woolworth is on the line if we would have any specific questions for Mr. Woolworth. Ask him to unmute and you could ask a question.

One thing, can we, and I know it's important to understand the background, perhaps it's hard to find, but a curricula vitae of sorts, just a list of some of his previous clients, if he's willing and they're willing to disclose, perhaps some of his municipal and other group clients, I think that may assuage some of the concerns that he may not be qualified.

Okay, sure. Yeah, if you want to table the item, we can bring that back.

I was going to ask the same thing as far as because I did look on their site but that would be great for to find out some of the history maybe that background that he's had and then I mean I don't know if it might be worth whether if it's somebody local you know with everything else we do we do get bids you know we're trying to you know identify what might be the best option but I also understand We want to get this done as soon as possible, so I do appreciate you finding this gentleman. But I don't know if there might be someone else that can, or others, some... Oh, my gosh, am I not even on? But if there might be somebody, somebody knows, but also trying to find someone that doesn't have any preferences, kind of like you had mentioned as well, but... Just wanted to follow up.

I think just the only follow-up question I would have is, it says with the amount not to exceed $20,000, and you mentioned if there were other sound studies needed. something where there would be scheduled check-ins so that if we did need additional information, we could loop that in?

Yeah. Whatever the services wind up being, we approach that. Of course, we'll come back and articulate what the studies might be. This scope doesn't really contemplate necessarily field investigation, but obviously if we need that, we find that we need that, that'll be a next step. Okay.

And I don't want to make it sound like I was impugning Mr. Woolworth's qualifications, just that, and to your point of it being a fairly new field, perhaps we should identify if we're going to do a request for quotations or bids, that we can identify what qualifications are needed. for those. I don't know if that thought has been put into what kind of qualifications we're looking for for this particular.

Well, certainly, yeah. If we want to do a more robust, like typically in professional services, we'll submit a request for qualifications and we'll select based on the qualifications. If you want to do that, we can certainly put the pause on this and we can... We can head in that direction as well.

Yeah.

I would feel better with more than one. I would feel better with more than one consultant on this situation. You know, this is a good first step, but I feel that we need more than... So... I would kind of like to table it until we could get a few more requests in, and then with some qualifications, letters, and what other municipalities they may have checked and worked with.

Sure, happy to do that.

Can citizens make recommendations?

If anybody has suggestions, certainly.

Well, not at this moment, but like if we can do research and find some experts that are in this area, can we send that information to the city council? Yeah, we'd be happy to.

Evaluate the data?

Yeah, we'd be happy to take those suggestions.

I don't know of anybody here that's an acoustical engineer, so, I mean, yeah, I think it'd be great to have the input from citizens, because... I'm not an acoustical engineer, and I'd sure like to know what your opinions are, and surely somebody knows more about this stuff than I do.

Well, we know somebody who's done a lot of research on that, and so they might be able to point us in the direction of some experts that that's what their job is. I understand this is a new area.

I believe Mr. Woolworth is an expert. I concur.

I'm not imputing him. I would say I would like to make a motion that we...

If we wish to table it, well, to move forward, we need a motion of some sort.

I would like to make a motion that we table it until the next council meeting. In the interim, we direct city staff to acquire more information related to the necessary qualifications of any potential... and that that information be presented at the next council meeting. Certainly not before then, but that the information is presented then.

Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second. Any discussion of the motion?

I would say I would like to thank Mike for working on that, because I know that's not anything that's something easy to do with everything going on. So I definitely appreciate the end. Definitely appreciate the... Mr. Woolworth?

Yes.

Woolworth, also, for taking his time.

Yes, I do appreciate him being online for us to answer questions, and it's certainly not anything against him that this motion was made.

All right. Roll call, please. Lane? Yes. Sabo? Yes. McCracken? Yes. Bradley? Yes. Patterson? Yes. Motion carries. Item B, consider Ordinance 2689, Amending City Code Related to 2018 International Residential Code.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This legislative session this spring, Kansas Senate passed Senate Bill 418. which largely related to buy-right zoning and use of land for residential purposes. However, there was a provision within that bill that regulated code implementation on homes under 2,500 square feet. Basically, what it stated is any home under 2,500 500 square feet, the city shall allow the use of the 2018 International Residential Code or as most recently adopted. The city has been working over the last two years towards an adoption of the 2024 International Residential Code, along with most of the metropolitan jurisdictions. This Senate bill, we were waiting to see where this one shook out before any of us made a move. With this bill and looking at the housing currently being constructed in DeSoto, I believe the number... was close to 90% of our homes that are forecast for the next year are under that 2,500 square foot threshold, largely driven by the DR Horton project out at Astra and Energy Way. With that, and meeting with the Johnson County Building Officials Task Force, which is a group of all the building officials in Johnson County who go through the codes and try to, if nothing else, try to get in line on most of the amendments for codes. That way, contractors working within Johnson County have a standard set of rules city to city, nothing different. wildly out of line from one jurisdiction to the other. In meeting with them after the passage of that Senate bill, most of the Johnson County jurisdictions that are still building smaller homes, workforce housing, entry-level homes, however you want to categorize it, are proceeding with the same path that I'm proposing here, which would be the 2018 residential code staying on that code. Sean E. had actually already adopted the 24 and they rolled theirs back and now they're back under the 2018 because of the Senate bill. With that, the law takes effect July 1 and in the provisions of that law it states that the 2018 as most recently amended. We felt it was the right time and it was correct the correct thing to do for building safety and occupant safety to take a look at our amendments that we had for the twenty eighteen code which were done uh... eight years ago now and take a look at them and what technologies have changed uh events have happened since what other jurisdictions have done to make sure that the set of rules that these builders are being held to is in line with the rest of johnson county as well as providing the safest home possible without while also balancing the dynamic of of cost you know we didn't want to put in a bunch of amendments that were going to instantly drive the cost up So before you is an updated amendment with those revisions, an overview of those changes. The main items, most of the revisions were cleaning up language from our adoption in 2018 just to be more in line with other jurisdictions to make it very clear to where it's not open for interpretation one way or the other to prevent disputes, to where it's familiar language. It's something they're all comfortable with, they're all familiar with. However, there were a few changes that we felt necessary to include. Two-family dwelling fire separation. This amendment would require all two-family dwellings to be separated by a two-hour firewall as opposed to the code-allowable one-hour firewall. The code does require sprinkler systems in residential homes. The state of Kansas does not allow that to be mandated so we do not require sprinkler systems. A lot of the larger jurisdictions that see a lot of these duplex projects have had this amendment for a number of years. Speaking with our largest or all of our duplex builders here in DeSoto, all of them are currently building this way anyways because the engineers are designing it with that two-hour wall and none of them had any negative feedback on that change. Under stair protection, this would require half inch drywall to be placed on the underside of every set of stairs, whether it's enclosed or not. This is in response to a 2022 house fire in Shawnee that left two fire crews trapped in a basement when the stairs collapsed while they were trying to change crews out. Luckily, they were able to get everybody out. Shawnee put that amendment in immediately. Most of Johnson County, aside from just a couple of cities up in the northeast that didn't see it as an issue that they actually see in the field, are planning to adopt a similar amendment or currently already have that amendment. Cost for that, in speaking with the builders, is only a couple hundred dollars, and all of them seemed in support of that because of the level of safety that it would provide for those homes. Heat detectors in garages. This amendment would require heat detectors to be installed in all new residential garages that are interconnected with the smoke and CO detectors within the home. Within the last eight years, there has been a large increase in garage fires, largely driven by power tool batteries, micromobility devices, scooters, e-bikes, things of that nature, where people may or may not be Practicing safe charging practices or buying legitimate batteries. Everybody has seen the knockoff Milwaukee battery on Amazon that may or may not cause an issue. Fire departments in the Kansas City region have seen an increase in garage fires. Shawnee has had this amendment since 2018 and has seen no pushback and it has actually saved a couple of homes. The primary concern is most people charge those batteries overnight while you're in your home asleep. That heat detector would set off the smoke detectors in the home to notify you while you're sleeping that there's an issue before it burns through that fire rated wall between your garage and your home to allow you time to get yourself and your family out of the home. Once again, that's around a $500 cost to builders is what we were we received from builders on feedback on that. For energy storage systems, in 2018, the language is very vague. Batteries in homes for battery backups or solar overproduction to store that battery power to use it at an off time when your solar system's not producing, really wasn't widely seen other than incredibly high-end homes just due to the cost of them. In the last eight years, that market has seen a lot of competition. Those costs have come down. We felt it appropriate to amend that language to mimic the 2024 code provisions, which is the most current information related to energy storage systems as far as it relates to fire and life safety of those systems within homes. The big thing it prevents is installing those energy storage systems just in an unfinished basement. If those batteries were to go into thermal runaway, the new language would require them to either be in your garage, which has a fire rated separation to the rest of the home, on the outside of your house, which Almost all of these manufacturers produce a weather rated battery that can be installed on the outside or in a room in your basement that is fire protected to where if it were to go into thermal runaway, the intense heat and gases that that system puts off could limit your time to get yourself and your family out of your home. So we felt it appropriate to pull that 2024 language back down. There are a handful of other jurisdictions that are seeing a lot of these batteries installed that are planning to do the same or have already done it. As far as the energy code goes, because I know that that's the question that all the builders were really interested in, is what we were going to do on the 2018 energy code, whether we were going to... go with 24 or not. We have not changed anything to our energy code adoption. We would be under the same standards that we've seen since 2018. We did make some changes to the way that the amendment is done. Some of the other cities in Johnson County amended different sections than we did in 2018 and through discussion the reason they did it that way is because of other code sections that may have contradicted that in certain people's minds so we fell in line with them to where it's a a little cleaner way of amending that. So with all those changes, we're looking at a total increase in a new construction cost of less than $1,000. And that number comes directly from polling every builder in DeSoto who has built a home within the last five years. We sent an email to these builders, asked them, hey, we're looking at doing these amendments. Can you provide us any feedback, positive, negative, any info on cost? And all of them came back in support of the presented amendments tonight. So with that, I'll stand for any questions.

Any questions for Cameron?

I don't have a question, but thank you for reaching out to other communities to kind of get some feedback from them, see what they're doing, and figuring out what is best for us.

Yeah, for DeSoto, it makes a lot of sense to rely on the larger cities with a little more resources to learn some information from and save us some time on things versus going down rabbit holes that may not actually exist.

Cameron, this one might sound silly. So with the heat detectors, so the wording says any integral or attached garage to the main house shall be provided with a single heat detector. But then it also goes on to say at the end there that the required heat detector is not required to incorporate audible alarm notification or audible notification device is required in the garage.

So the heat detectors that are on the market do not actually put a noise off like your smoke detectors in your home?

But you're going to require it to be hardwired to the rest of the smoke alarms.

So no different than your home where you have one smoke detector go off and they would all go off, that heat detector would essentially be one more device in that interconnected system. So...

Thank you.

Yep. Any other questions? Ready for a motion.

I move that we accept the Ordinance 2689, Amending City Code Related to 2018 International Residential Code. Am I missing something else?

Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion of the motion? Roll call, please. Lane? No. Patterson? Yes. Bradley? Yes. Crackin? Yes. Sabo?

Yes.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

Item C, consider Ordinance 2690, rezoning 22 acres along 89th Street from R1 to R1A.

All right, thank you, Mayor and Council. You have before you a request to rezone a property from R1 to R1A. There's also a very similar rezoning request in your packet in the same developer, same group, same area, requesting rezoning from R1 to R2. So basically, essentially the same staff report, but you do have two different rezoning requests, so there's two separate ordinances that Council will have to take action on. So we went through our standard process of notifying owners in the area or the affected owners within 200 feet of the requested to be zoned property, also most things on legal record, and put up a sign on the property about the potential rezoning at the Planning Commission meeting. As you can see on page two of the staff report, this tract is adjacent to the Arbor Ridge to subdivision. As you can see, the R1A area is 22 acres. The R2A area is 14 acres, and it will be interconnected with the Arbor Ridge subdivision. It's actually going to be the plats called Arbor Ridge 5, so this is actually part of the Arbor Ridge development. However, Arbor Ridge was actually zoned PD many years ago, maybe over 20 years ago, so it's now finally got to the point where stage five on new properties or new vacant properties are available to be expanded. And that's where we're at right now. I went through a lot of discussion. Also wanted to point out in looking at the area that you can see the Arbor Ridge subdivision does have R2 within it already. It's in the very far north portion of the area. There's also some townhomes intermixed and some multifamily as well, kind of in the hilltop area when you first come in on Arbor. Valley spring drive so it is a area that is used to having different types of housing types within it And have not received any comments from any neighbors about this potential rezoning We did get some comments during the preliminary plat that was more about where's the sidewalk going? Where's where's the road entrance going and some of the issues surrounding? improvements to 89th Street But this, before we die, really is just the rezoning request itself. So just briefly, I'm gonna go through our standard procedures, but once again, kind of think about both the R1 and the R2. Really the difference between the R1A is a 50 foot wide lot width single family home. The R2 is a 60 foot wide lot width and it is basically a duplex. So there will be some interspersed and there are some slight differences obviously. The types of use is very similar. They're residential but a little bit higher density with the R2. So the character of the neighborhood, as I explained there in the Arbor Ridge subdivision, there's R2 and town homes in this area and also some multifamily. So it is a good mix of the three different types of homes that we do have being built in this area. So we do feel like it's compatible with the surrounding zoning as well. Property certainly could be built as R1A. However, the developer feels like they can maximize efficiencies and also provide improvements. There are some significant improvements that will be happening to 89th Street that will help mitigate traffic issues because there will potentially be residents from Arbor Ridge's phases one through four going to the south and then getting to 89th Street and accessing Kill Creek Road from there. So there is a improvement plan to widen the bridge, to improve the road, build sidewalks, curbs, and gutters, and then also improve from the edge of this property, which will be a city share to Waverly Drive. So there are some significant improvements going on to 89th Street as well. The property has been vacant for quite some time. Once again, the extent of need in the community, that there isn't a specific need. But one thing that when we look at planning in general, variety of homes, newer homes, different price points are all good things to have. You can have different mixes of individuals, different families, things like that. And different choices of lifestyle, basically. So we feel confident that that's a good thing. staff opinion on this item. As far as required utilities and services, there is a benefit district to the formation of a sanitary sewer. It does not exist at this point, but it is gonna actually go from the interchange at Kill Creek and K10 all the way down to a lift station on 83rd Street, so that's where a lot of the sewer for this development will come from. There is water available in the area, and of course there's electricity as well. I don't see a lot of impact to the police and fire. There will be some, more residents. I mean, there will be some more calls, more things like that, but I haven't really seen any of them. As you've known previously from sheriff reports, there's not a lot of crime, things like that in DeSoto. But once again, you have more people, there is more potential chances of incidents. Talked about the road improvements. I don't see any effects or adverse effects from this as long as 89th Street, which is improved, which is under design at this point. Don't see that there's any environmental harm going from R1 to R1A. And then also I'd mentioned economic impact. Don't see a significant change, but once again, there's increased property values, increased sales tax, things like that from additional residents. And then the R1A, once again, is single family. R2 is duplexes. And as I've said before, there's a good mix of these properties in this area. So overall, staff's opinion is positive. It is consistent with our comprehensive plan. And... Presented all this information in the Planning Commission. They held a public hearing on both the R1 rezoning and the R2 rezoning. Didn't receive any significant comments. You do have the minutes in your staff report. So at this point, I will stand for any questions you may have. All right. Questions for Brad?

One question. I know that there is a lot of watershed area along there, but this particular area didn't seem to include any. Is that correct? east side and west side of the subdivision.

Yeah, there were a couple drainage basins that both sort of converged down towards 83rd Street, but no, there wasn't a need for any additional detention because it does flow into those detention basins and then quickly exits into the Kill Creek and into the Kansas River. Mike, if you wanted to elaborate any more on some of those drainage studies.

Within a regulator's provision, if you're low within the watershed, the premise is if you're in the lower parts of the watershed, you don't want to detain water because it exacerbates the problem. That's what's going on here. So the northern part of Arbor Ridge, it's already built. There's no detention in there because it's so close to kill breaking the river. that you want to freely discharge that. So, of course, storm sewer elements have to be sized appropriately for all that, and they are in the subdivision design. So that's why you don't see detention facilities on either the existing part or on this new part.

And this is for Phase 5? Correct. I don't think it's a problem, but point of order for the city attorney. I live in Phase 2... Does that... Do I need to recuse myself? I have no interest. I just live in Phase 2.

Yeah. So you didn't... Yeah, so this would be considered a legislative action, so no, you don't have to... Just want to be transparent.

Any other questions?

Yeah, I just had a quick question. Sure. I don't know that you would know. As far as... the construction of the bridge, if that is prior to development, during, or towards the end? That's going to be a...

The bridge, we approved the contract for the design at our last meeting.

I'm just curious, is it going to be... Because that's going to be a big thing.

Do you want to speak to that?

Can I speak? Sure.

The developer's here, Rick Odom.

Hi, guys.

I'm Rick Odo. I'm the developer of this site and landowner. So one, I don't think you have to recuse yourself because it's a completely different ownership. We just happen to be carrying the name. So that's my opinion as an engineer, not as an attorney. Anyway, second part, the bridge, we are building phase four. We're in for building permits. We're able to pick them now. We have building permits ready. I only tell you that we're holding off on starting four until I get approval for five because I want to put the backbone, Valley Springs, to take me from four to 89th Street as soon as physically possible. So while I'm doing my cut and fill on phase four, I'm gonna build the main street to 89th Street so that we can use 89th as our street as much as possible instead of coming through 83rd and going through subdivisions the first few phases. And we are working together with the city, as Mike said, to get the 89th Street and the bridge and the culvert all built as soon as possible. Chances are we'll probably break ground in that March, April next year, you think? Yeah, it'll be next year. Yeah, I don't see us having all the permits in place and designed. We signed our part about three weeks ago. By the time we get it all through into permitting, I don't see us starting before winter happening this year, so I would assume March. So our goal is to get that done as soon as possible. because we feel like we need that for our front door as well. But I do need or want, if you respectfully, Phase 5 done so that I can get that Valley Spring built right now as soon as possible. If you have any more questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Any other questions? Ready for a motion.

I'll make the motion to approve ordinance 2690, rezoning 22 acres to R1A moderate density residential.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion of the motion? Roll call, please. Patterson?

Yes.

Bradley?

Yes. McCracken? Yes. Savo? Yes. Lane? Yes. Mayor Walker? Yes.

Motion carries.

All right.

Item D, consider ordinance 2691, rezoning 14 acres along 89th Street from R1 to R2.

All right, thank you, Council Mayor. I mean, very similar staff report. Your questions are very related to the R2, so I'll stand for any questions you may have on the R2. Questions? Questions?

Just a quick one. I don't know if you know yet. Do you see this as a for-sale product on the new places or a rental?

We're building it primarily as for sale. We do believe a lot of people might buy one side, rent the other side. We will always set it up so if the need be, we can. But our intentions right now are to sell the lots to builders so they can sell the buildings. All right.

Great.

Thank you. Thank you.

Any other questions?

Ready for a motion.

I move to approve agenda item 4D. With rezoning 14 acres along 89th Street to R2.

Second.

All right. We have a motion to approve ordinance 2691, rezoning 14 acres along 89th Street from R1 to R2. Any discussion of the motion? Roll call, please. Lane?

Here.

Yes. Sable? Yes. Patterson?

Yes.

Mayor Walker? Yes. Bradley? Yes. McCracken? Yes. Motion carried. All right. Thank you. Item E, conduct homeowner requested hearing regarding weed violation at 8575 Hilltop Road.

Yes, counsel.

As part of our city code on property violations, code violations, we do have a provision in the code that allows the person who receives a notice of violation an opportunity for a hearing. Normally that's to dispute the alleged violation or to contest the notice here prior to or immediately after getting the notice that the lawn was mowed. So currently there is not a code violation at issue, but I understand the property owner wanted to address you about the notice he received. And we also have Drew... code enforcement officer here as well. Okay.

My name is Joel Newman. I'm at 8575 Hilltop Road and we're part-time residents here and seeking to be and do my retirement here. I asked Mr. Drew about having a CV so I know what my audience is because they taught us that in college, that you have to know your audience, you know? So I would just like to ask, you know, if there's, how many farmers are in here? How many people with ag backgrounds? Okay, you got an ad. Very good. After trying to restore this house and all the difficulties that have gone along with it, all Mr. Drew had to do was come and talk to us. Just had to stop something. So I'm gonna offer kind of a complaint, but at the same time, I'm gonna offer a solution to that particular issue. Got this letter in the mail the day before I was getting ready to go ahead and mow the lawn. I had allowed this certain portion of my lawn that I'm trying to rehabilitate in order to get the lawn situated back in there. It's only 10% of the lot. We have three quarters of an acre and it was 30 by 80 feet. So I allowed it and everybody knows what genetics is and you do genetic selection. So genetic selection is where you allow whatever grows. I put 50 pounds of seed on there and then I got about a five pounds worth of actual plants growing on it. So that's how the soil is. After reading this, I mean, it reads just threat after threat after threat in this document. And it starts out with blighted, but yet The gentleman didn't know how far that that piece of property has gone and how much work I've put into it. I started that process when I was 65 years old. I'm 71 years old right now, and I'm still digging out the tree stumps from all the stuff that was left over there. And to give you, and I asked the gentleman for a CV so I knew what it was, I'll give you my CV. I got 61 years in the trades. I have two college degrees. One is in agriculture. I have managed a 1,980 acre wheat ranch and been on cattle ranches with 6,000 head. I have a little bit of a background. I've machined parts for the MX Missiles, So I know I have some skills. So anyway, kind of looking through this, talking about fire menace. Did you see the picture in there? The picture is green.

And this is the principle of the, it's not just about grass. It's the principle about being micromanaged with land that we own and we pay taxes on. And he's growing a small patch to reseed, which is a safe, environmentally safe way to do it without chemicals. And when you cut that grass, you have to let it grow two weeks in this small patch. and then when you cut it, it re-seeds the lawn, and the lawn already looks a lot better. So I just felt, I think it's the principle of the matter of it's our land, we pay taxes, we are rule followers, but we don't need to be micromanaged, and we do not need to be threatened. In fact, I'll rewrite this letter and send it back to you so you can look at it. It should be a lot nicer of a letter.

If the gentleman knew his agriculture, he would know that all the exemptions that are in here for having, it's an ornamental grass. It goes back to having all these things grown seasonally. Actually, the next door neighbor's chickens come over and feed on it. So we have quite a bit of stuff going on. It's not really an agricultural practice, but it's something to rejuvenate this property. And then he would have also known, if he'd known me, he would know that I dug and sifted 30 tons worth of rock out of there. I dug two trees that I had to use two reeds just to get one of them out. He would know that I hand dug the ditch in front of the house and put the drainage in front of the house to keep the water from coming into the house and put up the retaining wall there. All he had to do is come, knock on the door and say, instead of I'm the enforcer, which is written in here, I'm the ambassador for our city. What can I do to help you? This particular thing talks about my friends, my community. I was in a small town community where there was 150 people on the weekends when the bars were full. So I know about small communities and that's the reason we bought here. small community really seems to have gotten out of hand. So you kind of have a choice. You can have a choice as an enforcer going around. And what does enforcer sound like? Guy with Storm Trooper stuff on and he's got his hobnail boots stepping on people? That's ridiculous. All he had to do was come and knock on the door, and he would have known. If he had any agriculture, he would have known that it was in the hard dough stage, and then I was going to cut it, actually, the next day. That's all he had to do. Knock on the door. Say, hey, I'm the code ambassador. What can we do to get this? But all the threats in this is ridiculous. That's not a community. That's some authoritarian society. And that's ridiculous. So that's all I'm trying to say is, you guys got a choice.

You can have a codes enforcer or you can have a codes ambassador.

And I'm sure that instead of the city having to go and mow all this stuff and do it for the whole calendar year, do it for the whole calendar year, one of the churches here probably has people that'll do that. There's guys on YouTube all the time that are going and helping people. All he had to do was come, knock on the door. Like this, be my friend. Be part of the community. Sorry.

Sorry, if I can just clarify one thing. The letter you're referencing, what's in the letter is copied from our city code. So it's not as if Drew... wrote these things up to threaten you. He simply copied what's in the city code that talks about the basis for us having this ordinance. And as to the natural native grasses, that is something that you can apply for an exemption. And we've done that on other properties. But if you don't have that exemption, the ordinance is pretty clear that You know, your grass cannot be taller than a certain length. And I don't know, Drew maybe can address it. We normally only enforce by complaint. So normally you won't get a violation unless one of your neighbors made a complaint or if the code enforcement officer specifically observes that you're out of compliance. So I think it's important to just make that part of the record.

It was never specified though whether it's the flower that's at the top of the stalk or the grass itself. That's not specified here.

Yeah, it's just the principle that, you know, it's made us not feel... Welcome.

Codes enforcement is always a challenge. If we're too lax in it, we see a lot of people telling us, why aren't you enforcing codes? If we're too rigid, then it's the situation where people feel like they're being micromanaged or you're living in a... Frankly, you know, I've gotten codes letters and, you know, your first response, you get a little bit defensive, a little bit angry. And I felt that as well, you know. But I know Drew had no ill will. He's just doing his job trying to enforce the codes as we, the governing body, have told him to do.

Totally understand that. That's your choice between a codes enforcer or somebody who's an ambassador.

Thank you. My question would be, to your point of a friendly relationship with the city, and I think you mentioned it early on, if the code enforcement officer, which is just what we call them, I know what you're saying about being friendly, but if he had knocked and asked and talked to you, perhaps the letter wouldn't have been issued.

Never would have been.

I think, to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, your complaint really is that we didn't We jumped ahead of the first step of talking. Is that right?

Yeah, I think so.

Any scientific people will use and look for data first. You make a hypothesis and then you collect data. That's what a scientist does. But if you go ahead and you go to the conclusion first, you haven't done your study yet. You haven't done your work ahead of time.

And there was no neighbors that complained. I was told by Drew that I said I'd take my walks around the neighborhood, you know, at least two and a half miles at a time. And people that have 75 bikes on their front porch, that's a rat hazard there. I don't care. They can have a thousand bikes. I don't care. It's their yard. But then and I was told that. Those are complaint-based, but the grass is not. The grass is not complaint-based. So none of our neighbors complained. It wasn't a fire hazard. So that's all I have to say, and I think we stated our case.

Thank you. Thank you for coming up and sharing. I will certainly review the letter. Maybe there is a way or a policy we can create. It's people skills. That's all it is. Simple people skills.

With your permission, can I say a few words? Agree with the sentiment. This should be an ambassador. I do like the term ambassador. I will say for Drew, he is uniquely, his character is unique to this position. He is generally, he's very good at working solutions with people. He does not take, in general, this attitude of enforcement like nobody wants. I mean, I think He's well-suited for that. He's done a great job. I'm sure he has. And we hope, you know, assume this is one of those things that we do proactively enforce. You know, it's his job to go around. We have a policy about that. We can have a look at those policies. But I don't want anybody to think that Drew is in any way combative or, you know, has any sort of lacking in public relations ability. Because he really, he does a great job. He really does.

Yeah. Well, I did have an issue with him before when we were working on our deck. If anybody's ever seen our deck, you know, they know it's a mess, okay?

We bought it that way.

And we bought it that way. And we knew we were going to repair it and stuff like that. But now we're into that, all the red flags with that and the zoning. And, I mean, I can't believe all the things on it. And one of the issues was just a simple issue. I mean, it's just simple. When you have a cantilever, you have the choice between two foot on centers joist and or 12 inch centers on joist. If you read what Johnson County has in their codes thing is they have the two foot on centers. You can have a greater overhang than you have when you have it on 12 inch centers. I told him, I says, the top part of the chart is completely wrong, it's flipped. The new one came out, and it's still not changed. If you can't have attention to little details, you know? I mean, anybody, everybody knows that three is bigger than two. It's simple. I mean, and that's... But that's Johnson County. That's their regulations. That, you know, they should be... Just check that. They did something, and they should have... You know, turned it around. Just simple things. Thank you very much, Amy.

I apologize. These are the things we should be focusing on. These are the community things I think people want to see the council work on, not on. We shouldn't be bogged down with things that are not community-based. And I think this is very much that way. And I think that, to their points, I think we should look at perhaps amending the policy to have maybe a knock and talk first before we send a letter. just to give them an opportunity to talk with them. And I understand that if they can't talk to them, they've got to sit down, whatever, but just an opportunity.

Yeah, let's have a look at the policy. I mean, it'll be good to have a look at it, see what it is in the policy, because we do. I mean, we've had this discussion, you know, 10 years ago, probably, we implemented kind of this. This is how we're handling this. And that's where we have it's mostly complaint-based, but we do have proactive enforcement on some specific areas. So happy to bring that back.

No, you're good. I just didn't know if you wanted to say anything.

No, just a couple things. I've sent 71 grassletters so far this year, this year to date. It's kind of a lot. It'd be a lot to knock. I also am a building inspector for residential. I get it. I mean, knocking would be something we could look into and see. Just give them that like, hey, you know, mowing anytime soon. If not, you know, letter will be coming your way. So, yeah. All right.

Thank you, Drew. Thank you.

All right.

Actually, can we have Drew's?

Drew, can we have you stay, please? I'd like him to stay for the end of the meeting. Okay.

You're paying him overtime, though. Okay.

We just have a few questions at the end.

Okay. All right. 2027 budget discussion.

This council, this is kind of the first in-depth or second in-depth discussion we've had about the budget for next year. We are working our way toward a calendar that has us wrapping this issue up in September. This is roughly the same calendar that we've had the last couple years. There's several steps. Intermediate steps we'll have to take. One of them is in July when we have to tell the county clerk whether or not we might exceed the revenue neutral rate on the taxation, so we'll be having that discussion in July. But as a reminder, what we did last meeting was we looked at the general fund specifically. The general fund is the largest fund within the city budget. It's the one that is, well, actually, we looked at the general fund, the law enforcement fund, and the debt service fund. Those three funds are specifically ones that are supported by property, partially by property tax. We're reaching a point less and less of the revenues supporting those funds are from property tax and more and more are from excise tax and sales tax and revenues generated from franchise fees from electric. and cable providers. So we looked at those kind of property tax budgets and those have implications for mill levy and the whole property tax discussion. Now we're going to look at our two big revenue-based funds, which are the water and the sewer funds. So these are funds that are largely supported by just commodity charges that we charge people for water and sewer. As we did last week with the other funds, we're presenting right now mostly the discussion on the revenue picture side because we have to project what the revenue is going to be throughout this year and also what the revenue picture looks like next year so that we can see what sort of expense budget would be appropriate and levels of service might be appropriate. So it'll be focused on that, but also the projections that you have shown are baseline budgets. And so when you say baseline, essentially this is the same levels of service that are projected or anticipated in 2026. We've kind of carried those through to 2027 with some inflationary factors incorporated in that, but it doesn't include what might come later in terms of budget enhancement or enhanced levels of service or programs or capital expenditures or some other budgetary increases that we might see later on. So I did want to just... Explain that, that the budget expense recommendations aren't necessarily what will be the final ones, but this is a baseline budget so that we can kind of see what the revenues pictures will be. So the also, the background part of this discussion here mirrors what we had at the last council meeting on the general fund. in that the revenue picture right now, really the last several years, has been more difficult than usual to project because we know that the revenues for the water and sewer are going to increase in a very substantial way as Panasonic ramps up production. So we've known this since we know in Panasonic we're going to come to town, that they'll have a water need. Once they're in production, they'll have water needs, they'll have sewer needs. And those all relate to revenues in those two. But the actual ramp up of those production timelines has shifted quite a bit over the last three or four years with Panasonic adjusting their production lines coming online and just their production ramp up. So the good news on all that is that we have always been very conservative, specifically with the timing about future revenues. the premise of not counting those chickens before they've hatched. We've been very conservative and that's served us well because on the general fund side, we know that franchise fees from the electric sales at the Panasonic facility will be substantial in the millions of dollars per year once they're fully operational. There will also be sales tax on that electric usage that we'll be able to collect that will also rival in the millions of dollars. It hasn't quite happened yet, but it's sort of similar on the water. Of course, we're not going to get the water revenues until they start producing, so they're using a lot of water. July of last year, they did start production on the first two lines. Those lines have been in operation since then. And they expect to bring on two more production lines yet this year. That'll bring them up to about half capacity. So we know kind of where that's going. We have a little better understanding. And we've started to see those upticks, specifically with the franchise fee revenues. The monthly franchise fees have just really taken the climb. And we're starting now to see it on the water and the sewer revenues. So all that is to say the revenue projections are still tricky. We know that there's a time coming when the revenues essentially could double for our system. But in the next year or so, we expect the water production to increase by 50%. The sewer flows to increase by about 30%. So that will affect the revenue projections. increases in those two things. All this is at the time when we were having really our first full year of production at these new facilities. So Panasonic paid to completely reconstruct the water treatment facility. We started that operation actually last fall, so we've been able, we don't have a year of operational history there yet. Same sort of message on the sewer. We started the new treatment plant, the doubling of its capacity, but we don't yet have a full year of operations to really know exactly where those expenses are coming in. So that adds another kind of level of complexity too. And probably another reason to remain pretty less aggressive about our projections there. So as a result of that uncertainty, what we decided last year was that yet again for, I haven't gone back, I think it's almost a decade now, we've not. We not raised the water rates in town. Operational efficiencies and revenues have been enough to support that fund. Same on the sewer fund. So the punchline then on the water fund is I still don't recommend a rate increase for this year, although the fund balance has been decreasing over the last several years. We've had to increase staff levels at the water plant to accommodate the new, the coming increases in demand, but I think the recommendation still is yet to forego a water rate increase. So on the revenue side, on the specifics then on the revenue side, for 2026, we budgeted about $2.5 million in revenues, plus an additional $650,000 in revenues specifically for Panasonic. So we've been watching that very closely this year. It looks like we're going to meet that projection toward the end of this year, so that's good news. We didn't quite meet those revenues projections last year because The facility was delayed in operating. It does look like we're going to meet those projections this year. So in total revenues, about $3.15 million looks like we'll meet those for this year. We're also on pace to meet, yeah, on the sewer side is a similar story. We're starting to see those revenues increase. So we're on pace to meet the budgetary projections for this year. For the 27 budget on the water side, we talk about how much usage Panasonic's going to wind up needing eventually. We continue to work with them to get better projections, more current projections on that. Currently, it does look like they will continue to increase their water usage, about 400,000 gallons a day. By the end of 2027, we think that number will reach about 750,000 gallons a day. So that equates to a revenue of about $1.3 million. So we think the revenues for 2027, a reasonable projection for that, is about $1.25 million in Panasonic revenues for 2027. The projection year is 28 through 32. Eventually, we feel like that facility will produce about $2.4 million in annual revenue, but we're being conservative with those projections and only showing about $1.6 million through the projection period. So, although year and fund balances for last year and this year will be below our 30% target, recommending keep an eye on that but not including a rate increase for this year on the expense side again this is the baseline budget for water we include in the projections we're including variable cost items so not knowing exactly how much water we're going to have to produce We don't exactly really know how much chemical and electric use, some of those variable costs. We've shown those separately in our projections to kind of be able to track them. So you'll see that in the projections. On the personnel side, in the water department, there's currently 11 positions. We have a field operations manager, meter reader, water and sewer maintenance workers, both of those positions are currently vacant. Distribution worker, two of those positions are filled, one's vacant. And the water plant operator, four positions with one current vacancy. So we have a number of vacancies that we could fill. They're incorporated into the budget for this year and next year. We haven't filled some of those positions, and we're probably going to delay a few of those until later in the year, until the revenue projections come into line. Another big item in the water fund specifically is the transfers from the water fund to the water maintenance fund. We implemented this water maintenance fund as a long-term kind of an asset management fund for for the department to provide revenue streams for system replacement, replacement of water lines, replacement of components that might wear out in the treatment plant. Historically, we've had a baseline transfer to the maintenance fund of $45,000. The 27 budget includes an additional transfer of $50,000. So you'll see that through. And that's specifically related to the Panasonic revenues. So if those Panasonic revenues don't occur, we won't make that transfer. But right now, it's budgeted because the revenue is budgeted. So in 2027, we're showing the transfers to that fund to continue $50,000 throughout the projection period. So we've talked a lot about these projections. So here in the five-year on that next page in your staff report, you can see that the 2025 actual year-end fund balance in the fund was below 500. It's like $380,000. The 26 projection brings that above somewhere around $600,000. And the proposed budget, the baseline budget that I'm showing here, would bring the fund balance up to the 30% of revenues that's their fund balance target for 2027. So that's the main focus of the 2027 budget was to be, by the end of 2027, bring that fund balance up to a point where it meets that target of $30,000. The sewer fund is a lot of the same sort of message there with the revenue. We do have budgeted historically and with this year and even throughout the projection period a 2.5% rate increase. is currently budgeted, and I've shown those as projections. We might not need to do that this year. We might not need to do it next year. We're going to continue to monitor that. But it's going to depend a lot on the Panasonic. projections as well. So similarly, we predict that the Panasonic revenues for this year will meet our targeted $300,000. We projected that last year. It currently looks like we're on target to meet that. The most recent projections given by Panasonic would suggest that in 2027, the revenue streams from that will increase to about $400,000. So that's what we've put in the projection. And also, you know, the other, just the base user projections would increase accordingly. So in the out years, we're again remaining conservative in the Panasonic projections and in our other revenue projections. So, but Compiling, boiling all that down, it does look like a sewer service increase might be needed this year, but again, we'll keep an eye on that. On the expenses, personnel, there's only four positions in the sewer department. Those are all full right now. So we're not looking necessarily to add to that. Again, there's a sewer maintenance fund that we'll be contributing funds to. Not quite as much as the water, but also a fund there to contribute Two, here's what the projections looks like in the sewer fund. So the 26 fund currently looks like it'll end this year almost $291,000, but then by the end of next year would slightly exceed that fund balance target of 30%. three hundred and seventy two thousand dollars there so the rest of the report are the numbers the spreadsheets they'll kind of make your eyes cross a little bit on that so if you have any questions with that certainly happy to answer those again baseline budget the revenue projections pictures part of this so that's the that's the story for that for tonight at the next meeting we'll be looking at the remaining funds They're kind of everything else. The refuse is the biggest one, but we have things like transient gas tax. Law enforcement. Well, we did the law enforcement last year. All the kind of the miscellaneous funds, capital improvements, one of those, but we should be good there. So all the other funds we'll have a look at next week, and then July we'll be ready to have that revenue neutral rate discussion. And then August, further refinement of more than baseline. If we want a service, we have budget enhancements that we want from the department heads. We'll be talking about those in August. OK. Questions?

All right. No executive session, so we'll carry on. Mike, advisory reports? No, nothing. No reports. City attorney?

No.

City planner?

Nothing tonight, Mayor.

City engineer? I saw Joe Walker. Good night. Assistant city administrator?

I'll round us out. Nothing to report.

All right. Council comments? Danny, you want to start tonight?

Yeah, I'm here. I'd like to thank the work that they did along Cedar Creek. We had a weed problem and three or four of the people called in and gave it to Joe. He put it on his schedule, mowing schedule, and I know the grass was going crazy because of the intermittent rains and things, but they did a good job out there and cleaned it all up. Even took care of some of the dumping of illegal brush out there and I know they took care of that too. So very well done. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you.

Yes, I was just going to say I think it's important to recognize that differing perspectives are natural and that thoughtful discussion and conversations can help us make stronger decisions for our community. So I appreciate everyone coming out again. At the same time, I think it's important to recognize there are a lot of positive things happening in DeSoto, and it's easy to get focused on an individual issue, but I think we should also take a minute or take some time to appreciate the bigger picture and everything that's going on and all of the awesome things that are happening in DeSoto, including, I believe, a watch party tomorrow night. Tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow afternoon. Yes. And then I was thankful that Joe asked Drew to come back because you saved me an email. I'm an assistant principal in a high school. And I want now to add the word enforcement officer to my title. But I just know that with that on your job title, I know that it's probably a thankless job at times. So thank you for everything that you do.

Thank you, Lindsay. Rhonda?

I also want to thank everyone for coming in tonight and that I know there have been several emails that have come through our mailboxes. I've personally been out for a couple weeks on vacation, so if you haven't heard from me, I am getting to those, but I'm also trying to learn as I reply to help answer any questions that I can, but I just wanted to make that note that, oh, it was sent and nothing happened. a thanks to the park and rec department for addressing pool needs, not just the pool chairs, but I know there was some issue with the bottom or side. I know there's a real proper term probably for what's going on there, but I appreciate them taking time to make sure and address that. And a lot of times we don't know some of those things are happening until someone does let us know. So we appreciate that. For those that don't know, I also want to thank the crew for extending the brush side hours. But that now goes until 2 o'clock, in case you aren't aware, instead of noon. So, Lindsay, to your point, some of the things that have been able to make some changes like that. So, appreciate that crew for doing that. And then my last one is, because I have a challenge with social media, whether or not to... reply or not, or comment or not, and so based on a meeting that some of us went to several months ago for a, I'm gonna probably say it wrong, City Leadership Academy, is that what we went to? There was a lot of conversation with COMA, the Kansas Open Meetings Act, and so I am still learning more about that, but I just wanted to get clarification with coma and social media and what can be done or can't be done around that to not get ourselves in any concerning situations or the city in general. And I don't know who would respond to that. I don't know if that's you, Patrick, or who that might be.

Well, I sent out an email to the council earlier today and just, you know, the interactive... interactive meeting you know it could be via phone calls social media so essentially any time in our case with this council there are three council members that interact about city business that constitutes a meeting that should have been preceded by notice to the public that the meeting is going to occur so those are really the elements Three council members and city business. That constitutes a meeting. So we just need to make sure we're avoiding those interactions. Even if it's just simply liking someone's post, that would be considered you communicating with another council member. The same would be true if you are posting and you share something about the conversation you had with another council member or share their position on something. That could also be construed as an interactive communication violation of the serial meetings. So I think it is good to keep in mind just to make sure. Because the Open Meetings Act, there could be personal fines assessed against individual council members. There could be fines or directives aimed at the city in general. Usually it's more training is usually what the Kansas Attorney General or the District Attorney orders, but it is something good to keep in mind.

More training? I'm just kidding.

All right. Well, thank you.

Anything else wrong there?

No, thank you.

All right. Zach?

Yes. So I discussed with you earlier, Mike, and I think I mentioned to you the other day, Mayor, a few things. I know we heard some earlier from some citizens who expressed some things. Actually, I was going to already plan to talk about tonight. A couple of things. You know, we're currently experiencing unprecedented expansion and growth driven by Astra. all sorts of other things, but it doesn't just have to be Asher, it should be anywhere that we have growth. There's some things that need to happen. Although the growth brings substantial economic benefits, it also introduces a lot of public health concerns. Environmental monitoring, industrial hygiene challenges, things like that. I think we need to proactively address our residents' concerns regarding long-term public health without straining the city's general fund. So I have a proposal for that that I'm going to send to Mike and the other council members through review. Blind carbon copying similar applies all to avoid the meeting problem, but everyone will have it for review. I think that's okay, right?

Yeah, that's fine as long as no one replies.

Right. So to do that, some things that I think could happen is some regulatory updates, some ordinance changes, and some internal capacity changes. Basically, the problem is that with the complex chemical storage, stormwater footprints, occupational settings, our traditional building inspectors, thank you, building inspectors, for doing the building inspection stuff, They're not necessarily trained in all of the, while they are trained in structural, electrical, and plumbing codes, they're not necessarily trained in evaluating industrial hygiene plans, fence line air monitoring arrays, or complex environmental site assessments. I think that presents a vulnerability for us, which would be relying solely on developers' self-reported environmental impact data, and that's an inherent conflict of interest, and it risks public trust. Conversely, if we hire ad hoc private consultants for every planning commission meeting or section, that's just inefficient and costly to taxpayers. So, to me, the solution is an in-house technical expert acting as a city's shield. Appearing in an internal compliance manager with a developer pays mechanism, we secure high or even elite level scientific oversight at a net neutral or negligible cost to them. I think that there's legal and regulatory framework for that, which I'll of course forward to our city attorney to review. Essentially under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation Recovery Act, the federal agencies mandate that localized compliance regarding emissions, national pollutant discharge elimination systems, stormwater permits, and hazardous materials. Our internal officer would be able to ensure local projects don't inadvertently expose the city to federal environmental liabilities. Under state laws, KSA 12-741, that grants Kansas municipalities broad planning and zoning powers to protect the public health, safety, comfort, and general welfare. Furthermore, 65-101 established a co-regulatory framework between the state, KDHE, and local entities for environmental conditions that threaten public health. Local Home Rule Authority Article 12, Section 5 of the Kansas Constitution empowers us to pass local ordinances and restructure our fee schedules to fund local administrative oversight, provided it doesn't conflict with uniform state laws. So how would it be funded? Essentially, the impact on our general fund is designed to be minimal or self-mitigating through cost-shifting structure. That is, four revenue sources, developer escrow accounts, 100% direct bill, earmarked industrial permit fees, which are temporary, internal contract consultant displacement savings, and federal, state, environmental, and smart growth grants. With the developer-funded escrow, 100% of the cost for high-level specialized engineering reviews and specialized industrial hygiene audits will be billed directly to developers through project-specific escrow audits. the FTE, or full-time employee salary justification. The initial compensation for your animal health and compliance officer will be offset by allocating a small dedicated fraction of incoming commercial building permit fees for major industrial parks. The cost displacement, it eliminates existing expenditures on external contractors for low-level tasks, including basic indoor air quality testing in municipal buildings, routine noise ordinance monitoring, stormwater runoff tracking, and mandatory staff safety HAZCOM training, as well as maintaining the city's respiratory protection program and other OSHA-required programs. I recommend the next steps for council action to advance this public health plan initiative for Actually, five items. One, integrate the Environmental Health Compliance Officer full-time equivalent position job description, which I will attach, into the upcoming fiscal year's personnel allocations. Prioritizing funding from industrial development and administrative fee lines. Use attachment A, this job description, as an example from which to base staff recommendations to the City Council. Second item. Schedule an informational workshop with representatives from the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment to define the boundaries between county-level health duties and our proposed internal city officer. Item 3, I'm also going to attach, the developer-funded peer review ordinance, which, of course, the city attorney will review. Item 4, I have a proposal which ties into this as a model dark sky ordinance, which And then the fifth item is a proposal for a model Arbor Day tree city ordinance, which would adjust some of our codes to match the model tree city ordinance. One of the benefits of this is the reduction of heat island effect on the city, which could be experienced from a data center or any other really industrial development that in places concrete, concrete causes heat islands, right? It's not natural vegetation. And this would help eliminate some of those heat islands. One of the things that I talked a little bit about the environmental health compliance officer, about 40% of their duties would be developer oversight, 20% would be contract and project management, 20% would be general environmental science and field duties, and 20% would be internal training and program development. Qualifications would be a bachelor's degree from an accredited university, environmental science, public health, environmental engineering, industrial hygiene, and closely related scientific field. They would need three to five years progressive professional experience in industrial compliance, municipal code enforcement, environmental consulting, or corporate environmental health and safety. And of course, driver's license. Gotta get around. So I'm not gonna go through all the ordinances in depth, but I do want to send to you guys for review. staff review and attorney review, and for the council's awareness, which I don't know how that would work after the review is complete by you. I guess you can say that back, right? Because you're staff. Yeah, staff. then the council would receive staff commentary on it. So that is where I am right now. I will provide some of this to the public as well. I'll share with you guys once I get some of the feedback back to make sure it's, you know... legal and everything. I don't want to be putting stuff out there that's absolutely wrong. But I do want to make sure that you guys are kept in the loop. These are some things that I've heard from our citizens, some things our citizens want. I think that we should be doing. So thank you very much for indulging my time. I appreciate it.

All right, Drew. I know you're getting paid overtime. I want to address a couple other letters that went out this week and just have some understanding. I saw one of the letters, and I'll talk about that one second, but the letter I didn't see revolves around somebody that was given notice about an overhang on a porch, if you're familiar with that. So I asked to see a copy of that letter and I just, I don't think I've received it yet. I have not seen it. But could you kind of explain what the code enforcement and the purpose of that letter, behind that letter was? Because I'd like to communicate with this person, make sure they have a fair understanding of the reason behind it. You know, was it the construction? Was it because it was too close to the road?

Yeah, so it was an unpermitted structure, for one, so we didn't have a permit on it, and two, it is in the front setback.

Okay, so...

So, Joe, I can provide a little warning. Yeah, please. Thank you, Cameron. I was the one that noticed it and directed Drew to write the letter as the code enforcement officer.

Porch overhangs, any attached roofs that have occupiable space underneath them require a building permit. That's underneath... The residential code that's unamended straight out of the code the way it was written. That structure was a porch roof regardless of size. I know that it's a rather small structure. No permit was pulled and no inspections before it was constructed. So that's why we wrote the letter was for work without a permit. Once they came in, in that work without a permit letter, it states that if you can come in, if a permit can be issued, that's the easiest remedy. Once they came in with their application and their plot plan, it is within the front setback that's against the zoning regulations in the city of DeSoto, and that's where the need for that to be abated came from.

Okay, so they did come for a permit or they have not?

So they came to talk to us about getting a permit after receiving the letter. That's when they provided us with a plot plan showing where it's going to be in relation to other structures, property lines, things of that nature. And that's where their measurements to the front setback were found to be not in compliance with the zoning regulations.

Okay. So... All right, the second one, Drew, 8235 Oak Drive. This was a letter that was received regarding parking. Um, and so I, I did get to read that letter and in that letter it, it stated, uh, you know, pay versus non-paid surfaces. Uh, and, and I myself took a drive and went and looked at this property. And when I see it, like, I don't know, 75% of the property is there stone everywhere. Um, and there is no. I guess what you would say a marked driveway or a marked parking area. And according to the landlord, he allows the people to park anywhere in the stone gravel. So. My question for you was what was the purpose or what was the complaint that arose to bring that letter just because when I look at it, it looks like the entire space is a parking area.

Yeah. So, again, we received a complaint on that one. When I drove by and did my initial inspection on the property, it looked like there were two or three cars, I can't remember off the top of my head, parked in the back that to me looked like grass. Now, if there's gravel or crushed stone that's in there, that's fine. They just need to keep it maintained. So kill the weeds, knock it off, make sure that the gravel is still there and it can be seen.

Because to me, it just looked like it was parked on the grass.

So that's, you know, I thought they were parked on the grass.

Yeah, I would agree. I think there is a little bit of overgrowth there, but... Again, probably, and I know this was a rental property, so knocking on the residence might only get you the rental occupant and not the owner, but I would be... heavily in favor of, you know, moving towards that knock first kind of approach, but thank you for staying because I want to communicate directly with the owner of both properties and just kind of help. Yeah, of course. All right. Thanks, Drew.

Anything else?

That's all I have, Mayor.

So I would, I guess, repeat Lindsey's notice. Tomorrow at 1.30, we'll start the soccer watch party in the gymnasium. So I think there's going to be some... Activities for kids, and then the game, I think, starts at 2, 2 to 4. I think Frenzel's going to be doing some hot dogs down here, popcorn and the like. And then just I wanted to comment on our, we had a great concert last Friday night. I think it was probably one of our bigger crowds. We had a great band, great turnout, beautiful night, and just had a great time in downtown DeSoto. And that's all I got tonight.

I have one alibi. Mayor, we were talking earlier about the Capron Animal Supply Store downtown and the goat mural on the side and the fact that we have a Kevin and Steve goat ordinance. Can we consider adopting the goat as the official mascot? Just a consideration. All right.

Under advisement. Thank you. I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

I move we adjourn.

Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? All right, we're adjourned.