City Council - Regular Meeting

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Unutilized. for what it's worth.

Did Charlie get to drive that black truck?

Did Charlie get to drive that black truck? Why do I hear it? Did Charlie get to drive that black truck? Okay, there it is again.

Is this us? Brandon? All good.

I think I have to mute the YouTube video that we just unmuted.

I think we have to mute that. I think you can still do it. I think you can still hear it.

Brandon's doing it, yeah.

Because I've never done that before. It's always been muted there, I think, for this reason. It's been muted, yeah. I think we're good. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I would not put up with that. You have to cancel me.

You are?

OK. All right.

That should do it.

It's good to be needed, though, isn't it?

The cell tower ping is the official one, right?

I don't think I said it when I first plugged in. That just means for a different dimension.

I mean, it used to be, right?

It's only off a minute.

That only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. So it's not important.

Okay, it's seven o'clock. I would like to call the July 2nd DeSoto City Council meeting to order. We'll start with roll call, please. Patterson?

Here.

Bradley? Here. McCracken? Sabo? Here. Lane? Here. Mayor, it looks like Councilmember McCracken is up. Okay, I would invite you all to please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and

and invisible with liberty and justice for all. All right. Our first item tonight is our consent agenda. Would we modify the consent agenda first and then we'll go through and I'll read them all. So I think you all got an email. There was an item inadvertently left off of the consent agenda, which we need to add item 1G, a resolution 2100 authorizing the sale, serving and consumption of CMB and alcoholic liquor at Riverfest Park as part of the July 4 celebration and an item 1H approving temporary use permits for the 4th of July event and the soccer watch party events. Can I have a motion to add those two items to the consent agenda? I'll make a motion.

Second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Okay. Now I'll go through the consent agenda. Tonight on the consent agenda we have item A, approve the minutes from the June 18th special city council meeting. Item B, approve pay ordinance number 1022. Item C, approve access easement to allow city to mow rail spur. Item D, approve quote from Environmental and Process Systems Inc. for new pump at the main lift station. Item E, approve resolution 2098, allowing alcohol consumption at Riverfest Park for the July 19th Soccer Watch Party event. Item F, approve resolution number 2099, allowing installation of a solar panel in City Right-of-Way for a lighted sign at the residence of Lexington. Item 1G, approve Resolution 2100, authorizing self-serving and consumption of CMV and alcoholic liquor at Riverfest Park in conjunction with the July 4th celebration. And Item 1H, approve temporary use permit for 4th of July event and soccer watch party event at Riverfest Park. Is there any item anyone would wish to remove for further discussion?

Yes, Mayor. I just want to remove 1C just to clarify for people who aren't aware of what that entails.

Okay. If there are no other items for discussion, I would ask for a motion to modify the consent agenda as modified, or to approve the consent agenda as modified. We've already modified it.

A motion that we approve the consent agenda as modified, removing item 1C for... I'll second that.

All right. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Patterson?

Yes.

Lane?

Yes.

Sabo?

Yes. Bradley? Yes. Motion carries. All right. Item 1C. Oh, yes on 1H, temporary use permit.

All right.

Thank you. Item 1C, access easement to allow the city to mow the rail spur.

Yes, Mayor. The reason I asked for that to be moved was because I myself was a little unclear until City Administrator Mr. Brunvard explained it to me. And so I just want to make sure that anyone who's in the audience or observing later understands what the purpose of Item 1C is, granting us access to the rail spur to mow it until such time as the deed is transferred. And if you just take a second.

Yeah. Any explanation there? So several months ago, the city enacted a three party agreement with SRL, the state of Kansas, specifically KDOT and the city to enact a transfer of the right of way for the railroad that essentially lies under K-10 so that KDOT could purchase that right-of-way for purposes of a future interchange modification there. So part of that was that since SRL was essentially abandoning The use of the rail, they didn't have any further use for ownership of the rail property north of the highway. So part of that agreement is that they were going to quick clean deed that property over to the city. And then we were going to keep ownership of that. and work with the two users, and to provide for the maintenance, as has been happening historically. So the transfer hasn't exactly happened yet. That's still in the works. But we need to mow it. And so to get our contractors the ability to get on there and mow it, we need just this simple access agreement. And we think we're just a number of months away from the transfer happening. So that's the intent of that.

and just to make sure if this doesn't obligate us to mow it, it just allows us to. So if in the future they decided not to convey the deed, we wouldn't be on the hook for mowing it indefinitely.

Correct, yeah, just allows us, right, yeah.

All right, thank you, that's all the discussion I had.

All right, we'll make a motion to approve it.

Motion that we approve item 1C, approve easement to allow city to mow rail spur.

I'll second.

All right, we have a motion and a second, any discussion? Roll call, please. Lane? Yes. Patterson?

Yes.

Bradley? Yes. Sabo? 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. business not listed end of the comments that are discussed under call to public may or may not be acted on by the council during this meeting there is a four minute time limit please stand and wait to be recognized by the mayor you must when you approach the podium please state your name and address for the record anyone wish to address the council under call to public

Good evening, council members and administration. I just returned from a national bylaws... Could you please state your name and address for the record? Oh, sorry. Murray Caldwell, 841.2 Corliss Road. Thank you. I just returned from a national bylaws meeting with all our state societies. It was amazing, the amount of collaboration, even in disagreement. And why do you think that was? It's because everyone had a voice and everyone felt heard. I do support responsible growth and development, as I have stated many times before you. Realize every vote of a decision you make shapes the community, for our children and grandchildren that they will inherit tomorrow. The decisions being made are not just financial well-being from developmental projects, but rather about future identity and the character of our community. I encourage you to evaluate every project through the lens of what is best for our community, not just today, but 10, 20, 50 years from now when you will not be the ones that will inherit the final result. As you make these decisions, I ask you to focus on some key principles. First, think long-term. While you do have a five-year comprehensive plan, what you are going through right now is reactive and not proactive. Development should strengthen our community's future by supporting infrastructure, protecting resources, and enhancing quality of life for both current and future residents. Second, protect existing residents, and I would also like to say our close neighbors. Growth should not result in increased financial burden through higher taxes, utility costs or infrastructure expenses that ultimately fall on the people who already live here. Are you absolutely sure without a doubt and know that this will not happen despite hearing what is happening in other cities and states. Third, we demand transparency and accountability. Residents deserve clear information about costs, incentives, environmental impacts and expected benefits. which I notice many numbers for water have been redacted on the agreement tonight. There should be laid out an easy thing for residents to understand. Some are really having a difficulty understanding everything. Any commitments made by developers should be documented, measurable, enforceable, and accessible to the public. Fourth, we should be preserving the character of our community. Growth should complement our values, our history, our neighborhoods, and our visions, and the qualities that make this place that we residents can continue to be proud to call home. Finally, listen to the residents. When you don't listen, we have a situation like we have going on now. Like the noise ordinance, which was brought up and not listened to until a council member brought it up. I would like to ask, why is that not on the agenda tonight? I know it's been worked on. Meaningful public input leads to better decisions and a stronger community trust. The people who live here every day do have valuable insight over those that do not live here. Community input on development, as we have done with something like the community center, should be a meaningful part of the decision making process, not simply a procedural requirement. Again, I am not asking you to oppose development, but I am frustrated at the lack of thoughtful direction. I am asking you to ensure that development is thoughtful, responsible, sustainable, and truly serves the long-term interests of our community, not just bringing forth the developers and state representatives considering what is best for our community. We elected you because we trusted you to be the voice of this community. Please remember that trust and be the reason that we can place that trust in you. Thank you.

Anyone else?

Yeah.

Hello, everyone. Good evening, Mayor Walker and council members. My name is Chad and I live in Arbor Ridge Townhomes, about four miles from the proposed site. But that is not the distance I want you to focus on tonight because the school is only two miles away. And that's the number that should worry every parent in this room. because of low-frequency infrasonic sound. You see, low-frequency infrasonic sound does not behave like normal noise. It shakes everything. You can feel it, but you cannot hear it. You know that train that goes by at 2 a.m. every night and it shakes the whole house? Yeah, imagine that, but 24-7 and inside of your body. Our dense bedrock is known to transmit ground-borne vibration more efficiently than soft soil, carrying the mechanical hum from cooling systems and generators directly into home and school foundations with far less attenuation. And also the cooling system, it was supposed to be water cooled, but now it's air cooled, which is significantly louder than air cooling. by the way. And with Beale to the west and Digital Realty to the south, their sound waves can and will overlap, creating amplified hot spots and constant throbbing. Residents near facilities like these have reported sleep loss, headaches, ear pressure, vertigo, anxiety, irritability, and the list actually goes on and on. Now picture that near a building full of children for seven hours a day. Now here's the real problem. Article 6 only measures DBA, which is how you measure sound, which filters out bass frequencies. So a facility like that could shake a school and still pass inspection as quiet. Councilmember Bradley has already flagged this, and I'm asking the council to act now with three fixes. Add DBC and octave band limits. DBC and octave band limits. Not just DBA. At residential and school property lines. Require continuous third-party acoustic monitoring paid for by developers. Which, by the way, we need to get a tonic sound level right now before this thing gets built so we can actually see if it's making a difference or not. And three, we need to set automatic fines and shut down triggers if low frequency limits are exceeded. We are not just protecting homes. We're two miles from a school. Please don't wait until the foundations are poured to find out that we were right. And nobody wants to live here anymore. Thank you.

Anyone else under call to public? All right, I'm not seeing anybody. So we'll move on. I think to Tony's point, we have tried to update the information we have on our website, right, Mike, to make it more easy to find information about, or less confusing about deals. We now have a digital realty data center project pending. So I know you want to walk through those.

Yeah. So we're doing quite a bit of work on this really the last several months, but in earnest, last couple of weeks and we've been putting bits and parts of this up on the website, new landing page, separate landing pages at mayor, as you've mentioned for. data center, so maybe I'll just kind of show it on the screen and step through a little bit of the new information. You know, what we have done is we've listened for the last several months to the concerns that have been voiced here and elsewhere, and what we can't do now is, you know, from this vantage point is defend an entire industry, an entire history of an entire industry. But what we can do is take the questions and concerns that we've heard and localize them to our specific case or cases, and I think provide a very clear explanation a clear narrative and a clear logical sequence that hopefully the public can appreciate why the decisions that have been made already were made and and why we still feel like these projects are an overall great benefit to the community potentially if done right with these correct limitations in place. And so what we wanted to do is get the information out, have a single point of source for that information, and hopefully it answers some of these questions that we've been hearing recently. Again, it's not a complete full-throated endorsement in the entire industry. But it is an endorsement of the careful, legitimate, purposeful, long-range planning that we've been doing, that we've been actively engaged with in this community for at least 20 years, related to not just data centers, but to large-scale industrial development at large, mostly at Astra Enterprise Park, but also on the former Gabriel property. um these things weren't done in a vacuum they were not done carelessly they were not done quickly they were done very deliberately over the course of many uh public involvements and interactions and feedback from the community and otherwise the fact is you know we we have been uh cognizant of the large-scale potential that sunflower the sunflower army ammunition plant represented on our doorstep For generations, we know what that means to have a large scale industrial use out there. And we know there's great benefits to it. But we also know that it could be messed up. I mean, the great example, the Army came in in the 40s. They built the thing. It was a great source of prosperity, opportunity for generations of people who lived in DeSoto and the entire region, and that was great. But there's environmental hazards, right, that were generated there. So the care is not to make the same sins. So while data centers are a good hot topic right now, and nationally, certainly online, in a lot of people's minds. There's a lot of fear around them, a lot of misunderstanding, frankly, a lot of misinformation online in general, and some misunderstanding locally about what we're doing. I think a lot of these arguments that we can say the reason we have confidence in moving forward this way is because We've carefully planned these areas. We've looked at the impact of large-scale industrial use. We're no stranger to it. Panasonic is now built. It's 4 and 1 half million square feet. We've seen the positive impacts in the community from that in terms of infrastructure and revenues and lowering taxes and all the things that come with that. So some of these arguments are just about data centers. But really, if you look at the data center industry, None of this, none of the technology, aside from the computers themselves and the chips themselves, the physical improvements on the land are not new technology. They're nothing exotic. The concentration of energy use, yes. The concentration of the cooling systems and the possible noise impacts from that, yes, they're set aside from other larger users. But there's nothing new about cooling technology. There's nothing new about closed-loop technology. There's nothing new about big developments on landscapes, big buildings, and the impacts that those cause that use a lot of electricity and have a lot of activity around it that needs to be carefully mitigated. So that all that is to say this is kind of focused on data center. But I think you can you can extend it to other large index because Astro Enterprise Park is still there with thousands of acres that are yet to be developed. So just quickly, I want to go through up here by the agendas. There's there are two two handouts. One is a two-sided one-pager specifically on data centers, and I wanted, or generally on data centers, but the other one is a one-pager specifically on the Beale project, the Mount Sunflower project that's the furthest along. Wanted to kind of make, just step through just a little bit, Mayor, and without belaboring a whole lot, these two one-pagers mostly, and just kind of show the council where the information is on our website, you can point directly. So the first of the top 10 questions is our attempt at addressing globally the main concerns that we've heard. And the first one was, why are you allowing a data center to begin with? Can't you just say, look, nobody likes these things. Go away. The fact of the matter in Kansas is that zoning, when you zone a property for an approved use, the owner of that property has a right to develop what is allowed in that zoning district within the parameters of the development standards that the city has in place. And the fact of the matter is, on the Beale site specifically, and also on the Digital Realty site, these properties have been zoned M1, light industrial, which allows by right data centers, along with a host of other industrial uses, including far more impactful uses than data centers. distribution warehouse uses, light manufacturing uses, the types of uses that might introduce truly impactful impacts to neighbors in the form of truck traffic, idling of trucks, massive employment centers, dust, noise vibrations like that. A lot of these uses that are allowed in M1 are far more intense from a local, from a neighbor perspective. than a data center would be the preponderance of the evidence as such. That's pretty clear. So first thing to keep in mind is that as we talked about being deliberate about the community values and about our history and about that, these areas have been zoned for a number of years. The Flint property, the Beale property was annexed years ago, zoned years ago, preliminary platted for 5 million square foot of distribution warehouse type uses when in August of last year, which by the way, August of last year was a couple months before really the national interest in data centers overall really started. the council at the time, staff at the time, and staff still now, feels like the development agreement as a whole, but the development itself, is less impactful than what would have been allowed under the previous warehouse distribution needs. And so we can talk about some of that as we go forward here. But the punchline is, not to belabor it, A data center use is an appropriate use in a light industrial zoning classification. It is far less impactful to neighbors than many of the other uses that could have happened there. Another thing that I want to just point out, a couple other things. Who's making sure data centers don't cause problems? This is the context under which we have a site plan. There's buffering requirements. We know that some data centers can use lots of water. And we know that all of them use lots of power. We are fortunate in this area to the power and the electric rates, which is number four, fortunate to have a very forward-thinking energy partner in Evergy. Last year, Evergy approached. They're a highly regulated private utility that's essentially a monopoly in eastern Kansas. and they're regulated by the Corporation Commission. They approached the Corporation Commission, the Kansas legislature last year to impose a larger tariff on higher end users focusing on data centers, but any large load user that requires them to pay for all their infrastructure they need to support their development and also pay a higher electric rate than other similar customers in order to subsidize electrical improvements, modernization and redundancy that'll be needed for their system. These data centers, this massive data center revenue that Evergy will be seeing, will tend to subsidize improvements elsewhere in the system. It's designed that way. It's law. It's not just the city saying it. It's not just the applicant saying it. It's state law. They have to do this. So not only are they paying for the substation and any lines coming in or out at full cost that doesn't get spread to the users, they're also paying a much higher rate. And they do generate hundreds of millions of dollars, this one project specifically, hundreds of millions of dollars to Avergy specifically as revenue streams that can tend to supplement and normalize maybe other rate increases that might happen over time. That's law. Um, the, the next area I want to go to a little bit is the water. You know, we hear a lot of concerns about water. Um, and you know, there, there's been bad examples of data centers that in the desert that, or, or down Louisiana, I know of one that drilled a bunch of wells on the property. and lowered the local aquifer in the area to the detriment of others around. We can say, and the applicants here, bills here, they're nodding their head. Digital Realty will nod their head as well. There's not going to be any water wells on site to getting any amount of water from the site to take away from the aquifer at all. All the water that will be used and needed and used by data center in DeSoto will be provided by DeSoto, and in Beale's case, in cooperation with Johnson 7. Our water, municipally controlled, it comes from Kansas River or the Kansas River alluvium, gets sent to our treatment distribution, and then distributed out to the residents. We're fully in control of that. There won't be any on-site wells. In addition, Any and all improvements needed to directly serve the site will be fully funded by the developer.

And we have an item later on the agenda that's a good example of that.

We need to build a water line at the site. Developer's going to pay 100% of that water line. Even though we know in the future there's other development along that route that'll benefit from that. They'll be able to tap in at no cost, much like all the Panasonic stuff, by the way. So this is a pretty well-laid path. They'll pay for any of that. If they need a capacity upgrade, they pay for the capacity upgrade. If we need more wells, they pay for more wells. This won't be borne by the citizens of DeSoto. And like the electric rate, there's reason to believe that a high water user whether it's this data center or another, large water users tends to supplement water rates for everybody else. A large user that uses a whole bunch of water, that's a big revenue stream that tends to drive down pressure on costs for everybody else. Regarding the Kansas River and the natural resource, is water scarce or is water abundant in Kansas? The answer is yes. Water is scarce out west. The Ogallala Aquifer, we've all heard, they're running out of water out west. It's a bad deal. We're not running out of water here in eastern Kansas. Kansas River represents a significant renewable natural resource capable of delivering far in excess of any water demand we've ever heard of any data center everywhere. But to put it in perspective, We currently have about 8 million gallons a day of water rights available on the Kansas River. DeSoto has those through a water rights agreement with the SRL. They were obtained by the US Army back in the 1940s, these water rights. They're very senior. They're like the second and third water right on the Kansas River. So the priority rate's very high, but 8 MGD is the quantity. Currently, the city's peak demand is around 1, 1.5. When Panasonic really gets up and going, it might be around 2. So the water rights we have available are ample. Not only that, the base flow in the Kansas River, even on the driest year, the vast majority of it is unallocated. It just goes down into Missouri and gets unused. And thirdly, on top of that, in the 50s and 60s, the Corps of Engineers constructed the reservoirs that are upstream of DeSoto. Tuttle Creek, there's Clinton, there's Perry. Within those reservoirs, the state of Kansas owns water storage that can be released in the time of drought for drought conditions. And the Kansas Water Office actively markets that storage to downstream users. They own a lot of it. They own the equivalent. In an extreme drought condition, there's enough water to supply roughly 175 million gallons a day to the Kansas River. So that kind of gives you some perspective on the order of magnitude about the amount of water, the natural resource, and the amount of water that's there that's available that we already have legal right to, the capacity of the existing system to manage that, and the city's ability to effectively eliminate the water concern from the equation. So that's the message on water. There's other stuff about the noise. Again, addressing the noise concern. I think the public commenter is right. I think there may be an element of low frequency noise impacts that need study. And we're committed to doing that. We're doing that now. I would say that the scientific consensus on that is anything but settled. It is not true to say that this will cause negative impacts, that children are at risk. I think that's an unfair assessment of the state of knowledge about that. Easy to point to anecdotal evidence toward that. Like with all of these things, easy to point to anecdotal evidence where That may have been the case. But I think it's not a fair framing of the picture to say that this is a massive blind spot at this time. We don't know. We'll see where it goes. We're going to get an industry, an unbiased outside industry expert to look into that. So that's the one. And again, Mayor, I said I wouldn't belabor this. And I promise, I promise. Just kind of step through landing page stuff here. Again, come on, vote for me. Well, that's not what I wanted. Let me start over. So we have the main data center's landing page. This is the one pager that I just kind of went through. There's a landing page for digital reality and a landing EGLE infrastructure campus. This main landing page does include quite a topic on FAQs and just general facts about the specific projects that we have here in town, but some of the history about the approvals and the development agreement, what's in it, what's not. This button here on the main page is really a very comprehensive document that in word format, you kind of search through it, everything's all there. So you don't have to go clicking around. This chart here kind of gives a current snapshot of the two projects. Obviously, Digital Realty made a presentation. They do intend to do a project. But we don't have a development agreement yet. There's no incentive agreement yet. Those things are still yet to come. But this does start to talk about this chart, and there's more here in a minute, the community benefits part. Because not only is this an investment that's worth billions of dollars happening, Not only does it provide jobs, both construction jobs, but there is this element of the pure revenue aspect of this. And I think this is important to keep in mind. Within the development agreement, there are payments in lieu of taxes. Yes, there's a tax incentive for property tax for the first 10 years, but there's still payments. There's still over a million dollars worth of payments each year, even under that pilot, that will be represented by the phase, the first two buildings here. In addition to that, the electric franchise fees are estimated at about $5.5 million a year for the project. And on top of that, electric usage from the facility is subject to sales tax. Now, this is different than almost any other manufacturing project you'd have in Kansas. In Kansas, when a manufacturer is making a product for delivery to the market, The energy they use in the manufacturing of that project is not subject to sales tax. However, data center doesn't make a project, a product, a physical product. Therefore, their energy use is fully taxable under state statute. And we've done quite a bit of work on this. The Beale team's done quite a bit of work on this to try and estimate what those are. And I'll show you that in a little bit. But on top of the $5.5 million a year threshold, We do expect somewhere around $4 or $4.5 million in sales tax just to the city of DeSoto from this project. In addition, Johnson County collects sales tax to the tune of almost $4 million, and the state of Kansas will also get sales tax to the tune of $17.3 million a year. So with that, I'm just going to drill down just one more minute, Mayor, and I promise. Okay. I know we want to get a long weekend ahead of us. But the Beale Data Center site Landing page is here. This is a link to Beale's site. That's their site. But we also have a one-pager on the Beale Data Center, and that one's available up here at your places, too. Talks about the development agreement, highlights the location, kind of the general plan for the facility. There's been a couple of significant changes in... and the plan for the project since the development agreement was enacted. When we formulated the development agreement, the plan was for a totally air-cooled facility. And as we know, air-cooled facility uses an enormous amount of water. That would have created the need for the developer to fund a lot of public infrastructure projects. There was a long list of projects. Since then, the developer has committed that they're going to go all air-cooled. and that doesn't create a large demand for large amounts of water. They will need water to the facility for fire suppression and just regular kind of domestic use at the facility. But with that commitment, We no longer need to do a vast amount of public upgrades to the water treatment system. Still, the developers understood that part of the benefit of the development agreement that included all those were these community-wide benefits that we talk about in terms of redundancy and liability and resiliency to the city at large that would have been gained by those projects. So in recognition of that, they have agreed to fund about $10 million worth of improvements to our raw water capacity. And that we'll see later on in the agenda item we should address more formally as we go along. The other thing to keep in mind is when the project was presented initially, when we were discussing this back in August of 2025, there was a proposed layout that showed a little over a million square feet of bill. We know now that phase one is more than that. In phase two, I think we'll be approaching three million square feet. Part of the reason for that expansion was because air-cooled facilities need a larger footprint. So that was part of it. But the other thing to keep, I think, in mind, and it's fair to point out that the development agreement itself never had a maximum square footage of building that was allowed, did not exist in the development agreement, was shown in the presentation materials and was shown on our website that it was going to be a million And for sure, part of the benefit of that was a lessening impact to neighbors because the buildings are smaller. Yeah, absolutely. But still, you know, the fact that the use is a data center and not a distribution warehouse, I think still represents a significant benefit to those who live nearby and close to two miles away. A significant benefit to the community. But it is fair to say that nowhere in the development agreement was there a maximum building size articulated. And further, it wasn't a significant part of the back and forth negotiations as we were putting the development agreement together. It was not. So that's an important thing to keep in mind as we go forward. The punchline of this here is the dollars. So based on the revenue streams that we've carefully analyzed, when you accommodate for the franchise fee, even though it's capped, when you accommodate for the small amount of pilot, but then not small amount of property tax in the future, but then when you also layer in the sales tax element, over the course of 25 years, now I know that's a random time frame, let's continue past 25 years, but if we just look at 25 years, it's $300 million in revenue just to the city of DeSoto. That equates to about $12 million a year. To put that into perspective, our entire general fund for 2026 is only $8.8 million. We're only going to collect about $2 million in property tax this year to fund the general fund, the debt service fund, the law enforcement fund. This is $12 million every year. This is not an insignificant representation of a quality of life changing type of revenues. It allows us to be serious when we go to the community and we engage in a discussion about a community center that might cost $20 million, might cost $30 million, it allows us to seriously engage them with the potential knowledge that we can actually fund something like that. It makes that a lot easier. We can start thinking about things like further property tax reductions, increase in services, well, You know, it's kind of hard to quantify that. But I know money is just money. But when you look at this and you think about what future generations will decide about what this council did and what this community did and didn't do, I think we'd be remiss if we completely discounted the impact of this, of the revenue stream. Mayor, I'm sorry, I went on for too long. But the website has a landing page. It's easily right there. The radio button's on the front page of the data center right there. That's where all that information's available. And the two one-pagers are out by the agendas. All right.

Before we move on, any questions from council before we move on? Website. All right. Not seeing any. We will carry on. Item 3A, under our old business, consider qualifications and selection criteria for noise consultant. We've requested this be tabled. Mike, do you want to run through where we are with it?

Yeah, just quickly. I think the conversation at the last meeting was direction for staff to go out with a more deliberate process on selecting the Specifically selecting the consultant that will help us through that discussion. We just didn't have, we had four working days between that council meeting and when the packets went out last Friday. Just not quite enough time. Brandon's been helping quite a bit on that. So I know that the intent is to get an RFQ process out. So I think we can be able to bring that RFQ back on July 16th. uh for you know approval ahead not to go out to the community we did get a couple of i think maybe one person suggested two or three um uh experts so certainly make sure those two or three folks get that um and that'll be the process moving forward brandon anything you want to add to that

No, I just put together kind of a draft, sent it out to a couple people, just so they could kind of look at it. But I'm hoping to have kind of a final draft to you at the next city council meeting.

All right. Thank you.

Item four is new business. Item A under new business, consider ordinance 2692, proceeding with eminent domains process for sanitary sewer easement over the Powell property.

Yes, Counsel, you recall a few meetings ago you passed a resolution authorizing eminent domain but no specification as to what property owners. The developer, Travis Schramm, is here. He's been successful in negotiating easements for all of the properties except for one. I'm comfortable from talking to Travis that he's made more than a good faith effort to try to voluntarily negotiating easement from the PALs, but they've been non-responsive. So what you have before you is an ordinance that does trigger eminent domain just as to the PAL property. So I'm happy to answer questions, but otherwise would ask that you adopt ordinance 2692 as written. All right.

Questions from council?

If Travis could answer, could we find out how many times did we, did you try to reach out to the Paul family and was there ever a response?

So we probably reached out to them 15 times before we got our first response. We started reaching out to them in December. In, I believe it was March, they retained an attorney to represent them. And so we've been in contact with them, with their attorney since then. But their response through their attorney has been that they don't know what they're going to do. And so they didn't say no, but they didn't say yes either. And we've kind of been following up. I mean, honestly, well over 100 times of back and forth with them just trying to solicit a response. We even negotiated against ourselves a little bit to saying, hey, but what if we went higher than that? We had several conversations with Mrs. Powell's daughter, who basically put us in touch with that attorney. But we never were able to get a response to a request.

And then nothing back from the attorney either, or?

So we were in communications with the attorney. I don't want to put words in their mouth, but it was essentially like, we can't answer you if they won't answer us, if that makes sense.

That's all I have. All right. Anyone else? I will attest, I worked with Travis quite a bit on a couple of these properties, including my own, by the way. I'm very diligent in trying to work things out with people and just a lot of back and forth and a lot of patience to make sure that we could come to resolution on some difficult property decisions for some folks. And I'd like to commend you for your efforts on that, Travis. If there's no other discussion on that, could I have a motion to approve Ordinance 2692 as written?

I move to approve Ordinance number 2692 as written.

Second.

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

Yes. Bradley? Yes. Patterson? Yes. Lane? Yes. Motion carries. All right.

Item 4B, consider agreements with HDR and Garney for the construction of the 99th Street water main to serve the Mount Sunflower site.

Yes, Mayor and Council. The actual action here tonight is agreements between engineers and contractor, but clearly it relates to provision of water service to the Beale Data Center site, Mount Sunflower, also known as Mount Sunflower, with the text agreement, text amendment. As a reminder, so the development agreement that was struck with Beale back in August of 2025, recognized at the time that there's a lot of water improvements to be made, the details of which had to be worked out as we went along the process. So the DA has this mechanism where supplemental agreements would be made as we identify timelines and specific projects to implement. where the developer and city would agree to specifics on them to move forward within the context of the supplemental agreements. There's also notices to proceed that developer can give the city the money and the notice to proceed to proceed with the next step and the thought would being Critical timeline stuff we'll do first. Other bigger stuff maybe later. We had a whole timeline articulated in that. So the action tonight is really kind of the third step in the implementation of the first supplemental agreement, which is actually articulated by the overall development agreement. and really in its nature a pretty administerial and perfunctory step in the furtherance of what has already been agreed to and within the context of the language in the DA, the binding language in the DA act cooperatively and act in good faith to implement the necessary steps of the already agreed to process. So what's before you tonight essentially is notice to proceed three. um in furtherance of supplemental agreement one and what it does is it it it turns loose the funding it it allows the developer to give the city funding to go build one mile of water main between sunflower road and edgerton road along a 99th street alignment so 99th street doesn't exist there it's halfway between 95th and 103rd so it's that half section line We do have in our long-range plans a collector street along that alignment. So part of the initial work that's already been done under NTP1 was preliminary design and route analysis for the distribution loop that's The initial plan was, and still is, for the distribution loop to include a loop that comes from the water tower at 95th Street out to the site and then down into the Astra property, and essentially back down to the water treatment plant, which is in the middle of Astra. This is only a small leg of that loop, and it's needed to get initial service to the property by the summer of next year. In the development agreement, there's a figure that shows where the loop would be. This street, after the initial route analysis, we determined, HDR determined that a 99th Street alignment is far less impactful and would be far better alignment overall for everybody. So the current alignment is 99th Street. It feels recently made public that they've decided, as we discussed, they're going to go all air cooled for the entire facility. And that means that rather than an enormous amount of water, they're only going to need what they estimate now to be a full development need of somewhere around 150,000 to 200,000 gallons a day. Um, that type of use demand is not an insignificant demand, um, but doesn't trigger the overall expansion of a water treatment capacity, um, massive improvements to raw water, massive improvements to that. So, um, Still, in the context of the development agreement, although the development agreement does fully contemplate a full bill out of all this, part of the reason that it's done in steps is to reassess demand needs, changing needs of the client, of the developer, or changing terms and conditions. So part of this is in that context, that now that we don't need all the improvements there's no need to implement a lot of these the follow-on improvements that necessary so but still as a recognition that as I mentioned before a part of the community benefit to these big infrastructure projects was this reliability and modernization the developer has officially, publicly said that they're going to still fund two specific improvements. One of them is a well on the north side of the river, and the other one is the replacement of the river water, the raw water crossing of the Kansas River. In total, that's about $9.4 million in improvements. They've said publicly that they're willing to do that. I'm sure they'll get up here tonight and say that. But I do feel like that needs the reduction in service demand and the commitment to those improvements and possibly others should be articulated in the DA in the form of a supplemental agreement. And I think that's squarely within the framework of how that agreement was supposed to work. So the suggested motion touches at that. Tonight, the action really is kind of two things. First of all, to allow HDR to do the final design on the one mile of water line, and also to allow the contractor, Garney, to come up with a guaranteed maximum price. And their effort in doing that is called pre-construction services, and they've estimated or they've got a proposal in the packet for those services at $25,000. 25-165. So the suggested motion incorporates that. Approval of HDR is an amendment to their existing agreement in the amount of 511-975. And then there's also a proposal from Garney for pre-construction services of 25-165. The mission also conditions that we negotiate, work with Mount Sunflower to negotiate Supplement 2 that articulates the water system improvements and the decline in the water service demand. So just lastly, I would say within the legal context of the development agreement, as I've mentioned before, tonight's action is not a wholesale endorsement of data centers. writ large, it's not a wholesale endorsement of this data center. It is a perfunctory step that's necessary to essentially carry out the intent and the letter of the development agreement. So with that, Mayor, I'm happy to stand for questions.

Did we want to hear from... Oh, yeah.

I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Bill's here. Yeah.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. I am Michelle Kauk. I am the Director of Public Policy and Communications at Beale. Thank you for your time this evening. As has been mentioned earlier in Mike's remarks, our development agreement with the city, we've set forth the anticipated water utility needs and what we call the ramp up, when the project starts to ramp up and grow, what those needs will be, along with the related projects that support those needs. These projects were identified from multiple utility studies as needed for servicing the site, and it was regardless of which type of cooling system was ultimately part of the design. This line that's being discussed tonight is a standard utility connection to serve the domestic water uses on site. And as a reminder, we will be paying 100% for this water line. And when we're speaking to the amount of water that's being used once operational, it was referred to the up to 150,000 to 200,000 for the water use per day per gallons. There's two different water considerations for the site once operational. The first is for daily operational water use. That's the domestic use that you'll hear us refer to. Once that water loop is filled or that closed loop is filled, excuse me, the water use on average per day will be about 15,000 to 20,000 gallons per day. That's going to be similar to a large commercial office building. That's going to be for your kitchens and your bathrooms and your eye washing stations, things like that, health and safety. The other number to consider when referencing that 150,000 to 200,000 is for that industrial fire suppression. This is a requirement for an industrial project of this size for buildings with fire suppression systems like what this project will have. And this industrial pressure flow that is required is that rough 150,000 to 200,000. And again, that is very specific to pressure and flow that's required for that fire suppression system. That's not part of daily operational use. That's only in case of emergencies. Going towards speaking more to this water line, something else that was also brought up that I would want to reiterate is this water line won't just service our project. There will be other uses to have this type of water line for this type of flow and suppression that will benefit other potential developments south of the area. And it was also hit on earlier about the square footage. And so just reiterating the points there that there were changes to that square footage from the initial conceptual designs that are related to the type of cooling system, which is that air cooled closed loop system. And so, as was mentioned, the the amount of square footage has increased, but that also is reflective of that air cooled design. It's also reflective of the increase in the payment in lieu of taxes payments, the pilot payments that will benefit with larger economic impacts. I'm happy to answer any questions that you all may have on this.

All right, any questions from council?

Since the supplemental two has not yet been negotiated, I guess my question would be, are you standing here promising us that you will fulfill the things that are mentioned in this agreement?

In 4B, sir?

Yes.

Yeah, so the agreement is, it's something that we've agreed to. We're paying 100% for the infrastructure upgrades.

Right. Specifically, the almost $10 million in upgrades that, as Mr. Brungardt stated, are not necessary right now, but are being done in good faith because of the changes to the project. You will be doing that?

Yes, Mayor, Council Member Bradley, we actually issued a press release last week indicating that we are committed to this partnership and this $10 million for this project. Yes.

I just wanted to make sure we had a verbal from you as well.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Any other questions? I guess the only one I had, and we alluded to it earlier, was we're providing city water through Rural 7. There is no need to drill wells on your site. You have no intention and will not drill wells on the... Mayor, that is absolutely correct.

Yes, we have no intentions of that. It is not part of the design plan. It's not necessary because of the agreement for water.

Thank you. Anything else from anybody? We have a suggested motion if we're ready to go forward.

I'll make that motion. I move to approve Amendment 1 with HDR. in the amount of $511,975 and accept Garney's proposal for pre-construction services in the amount of $25,165 for the 99th Street main water on the condition that the city work with Mount Sunflower to negotiate the settlement agreement number two for consideration for a future council meeting, establish a reduction in the water demands for the purpose of formalizing Mount Sunflower's commitment to fund reliability, redundancy, and modernization improvement to the city's water system.

All right, we have a motion. Do we have a second? So I guess I'll second it. Thank you. Appreciate that. Any discussion of the motion? Roll call, please.

Lane? Yes. Sabo? Yes. Bradley? Yes. Patterson?

No.

Motion carries.

Okay. Mayor, I didn't get a chance to comment before we voted. May I take just a moment to explain? Yeah. Of course. Because Beal stood and agreed to, you are being recorded, by the way, verbally agreed to the faithful negotiation of supplemental two and to provide the almost standard options mentioned in the amendment, or rather the ordinance. I felt more compelled to vote yes than I would have. Had it been an open, well, maybe we'll do it. But since you've agreed to it, I feel more comfortable with that. And that's all I wanted to note there.

Thank you for that.

Thank you.

All right. Item 4C, budget discussion.

Yes, Mayor, you know how I love my budget discussions. And prolonging discussions right before a long weekend, potentially. Yeah, it's a clumsy introduction to say I'm happy to go over any or all of this that we want to dive into, but tonight's presentation will be abbreviated. Essentially, the last two meetings, we've looked at the general law debt service funds, those ones that are supported primarily by tax revenues. We also looked at the revenue supported funds being the water fund, the sewer fund, and now it's time to look at all the other funds. And we call these kind of special use funds because most of these aren't. funds that exist for particular purposes, like aquatic center maintenance, or water system maintenance, or sewer system maintenance, transient gas tax, kind of the single use, single source, single purpose funds. But they are impactful in many ways. The other thing that's happened since then I do want to spend just a little bit of time on. is that we did get the county's official report of the valuation for the city, and that official report says, hey, here's your total city valuation, and here is your revenue neutral rate, the mill rate that you'll have to meet to meet the revenue neutral criteria um and you know for those that you that remember the past couple of budget cycles uh we're in a particularly challenging time to meet the revenue neutral rate because um with panasonic building built out you know each year they build on the On the facility, there's quite a big growth that hits the assessed valuations. And so in order to collect the same amount of tax we did last year, the mill rate's got to be reduced very substantially. And that wouldn't necessarily be a problem, except that the revenue we collect for Panasonic, we can't use for the general fund ratings. That goes to the TIF mechanism, and it mostly gets refunded back to Panasonic for that incentive. So we're in a challenging part to meet the official revenue neutral rate. That said, what we've done the last two cycles is we've tried to back that out from a number standpoint, back out Panasonic's impact on that revenue neutral rate, and try to arrive at a rate that would essentially hold a typical residential homeowner at the same property tax collection that he saw last year. So we're calling it, it's kind of our revenue neutral rate, discounting for Panasonic. But the intent is to take the average, you know, your residential property, I assume increased in value, you know, unless you burnt half of it down, it increased in value last year. We need to therefore lower our mill levy unless we want to collect more tax from you, right? So that's the intent. And the exercise I kind of went through here, there's this calculus spreadsheet here on your staff report. If we just look at the difference between 26 and 27, so 26 mill levy for the city is 12.94. That equates to an average property tax bill. If you average all the residential property taxes in the whole city, your average property tax bill is about $534. So that's it in 2026. If we want to hold the mill levy the same for 2027, your SES value went up, that'll equate to a tax bill of 568. So your bill would go up by 33 bucks. If we want to hold that residential property harmless, the mill rate's going to have to go down to 12.17. So that, I think, at least the last couple budget cycles, has been a target that we could set for ourselves. And you see that essentially collect the same tax per home that you would before. So that's a good target. But the one thing that we'll face here in July is we need to tell the county whether or not we intend to exceed the revenue neutral rate. uh and so for us i think it's fair to say with the revenue neutral rate being 10 10.81 um you know i i it'd be very difficult for us to to meet that potentially maybe we can you know we'll look at we'll look at the rest of the budget but um for intense uh for purposes of notifying the county if we're are we going to yes or no my recommendation is we notify the county that we do intend to exceed the mill levy rate, and also to get further flexibility, I'd recommend that we have to report what rate we're aiming for. I'd recommend that we aim in that document to still aim at a flat mill rate, even though our goal is lower. So that would be my recommendation. And that is kind of, we kind of need direction. brandon is that date at the end of the month i forget when the 20th is is when we okay so we still have another meeting yeah we still have another meeting um and we'll bring that back we'll bring the form back at the other at the next meeting so that you can but that'll be the recommendation so i think that's as in-depth as i plan on getting uh here tonight um any questions about that we can we can hit them or or or hit them at the next meeting

I just want to make sure that everyone understands that we're not actually, we're actually going to keep residential taxes the same or like a penny lower or something.

Well, I mean, here the suggestion is flat. I mean, yeah, we could take that penny and make it a negative if we need to. Yeah.

Essentially, though, that's the intent.

That's the intent.

And it's not that we actually exceed the revenue neutral rate. It's that we artificially exceed it because of the valuation of Panasonic. We're not really exceeding it, maybe legally, but not...

your explanation it's due to the valuation that we don't actually get the money back from that it's it's that that's the message like we can't we collect it but we can't use it right so this is our revenue neutral rate that i think is a that's that's the intent of the law you know when when the legislature made a revenue neutral rate the intent was that you can't as a city just say hey i'm holding taxes levy just because my millates mill rates the same as it was last year when property values go up you got to lower that mill rate that's the intent And so that's what this does. So it's fair to say we're exceeding the revenue neutral rate legally, but the policy is the impact to the average homeowner, and that's the goal. That's the target.

And our ad valorem tax collection will be the same on existing properties. We will collect taxes on new construction. The idea, the intent is that the amount of ad valorem taxes we collect in 2027 will be the same as what we collect in 2026. Yeah.

And for R&R exceeding, there's a public hearing required?

Yeah, what that does is it requires you, during the budget process, to have really two public hearings, one about the R&R and another about the budget in general.

Do we have any idea when that's going to be yet?

Usually it's in September.

Historically, the second meeting is September. Okay. That's all I had. Thank you.

Okay, good.

OK, well, quickly then I'll just buzz through these. So the special use funds include refuse. Actually, refuse is another revenue source fund that we haven't talked about yet. The others, special highways, special parks, transient gas, water maintenance, sewer maintenance, public, I won't read all these. But these are all the ones. Mostly the revenues for these funds come from transfers from the general fund or from the water fund. So they're special funds. The reason we set them up as special funds is so that their fund balance can survive the budget cycle. We can keep fund balance in them. Without them, we could otherwise put these as line items in the general fund, but the general fund... Um, funding authority kind of zeros out every year. So this way, if we have something say at the, at the pool, say we want to, we want to replace the water slide and it's going to be a big measure. We can save up for a couple of years to do that. So it just kind of allows that sort of, that sort of thing. That's the general intent. Um, or the pool chairs, the pool chairs, uh, we're doing that. Yeah. Uh, we could, we could fund that with this for sure. Yeah, how's that? We got the word those in there.

They're ordered. I don't think they're here. Yeah, should be here. I think first week of August, I think is that right timeline?

All right. Okay, so the refuse fund. You know, we have a contract with Honey Creek Disposal to do that service for us. We collect fees for that. Refuse fund balance is healthy. You know, the projections show it declining over time, but I think that's okay. Not recommending any rate increase or decrease from that fund. The reason we kind of like to keep a budget in here is – One year, there's a provision in the contract for fuel surcharges. And gosh, I can't remember what year it was. We hit it. We hit it. And it was a bit of an impact for the budget. I can't remember who's to blame. which presidential administrations to blame. Yeah, I don't know.

Quick question on that, too. Are we on an indefinite delivery contract, or do we have option years with them, or how is that?

Yeah, it was a 10-year contract. Is that right, 10 years? Yeah. So nearly indefinite, I guess. Special highway fund. These are actually revenues that we get from the state, part of a gas sales tax. The revenue has been pretty stable over time, about $175,000. we're expecting that to kind of to maintain transfers out of the fund some of that goes to debt service but then the rest of it just goes to capital improvements and so this is what the protection on that looks like special parks fund this is one that's actually kind of gained in revenues in the last several years the park board actually in our in our budget uh we budget specifically uh for the park board to kind of allocate and recommend uh improvements for this uh funds come from we have an annual fee for uh from costs and in about ten thousand dollars um and other other transfers from the general fund so uh the allocations recommended for next year are $40,000, and that's up from $30,000. So that's Special Parks Fund. And the Park Board's great at prioritizing that. Really, they can do some really good work with that. Transient Gas Tax Fund is another one. Largely, we allocate these funds to the Chamber EDC because they are specifically for promotion of tourism in the city. The fund revenues have been relatively stable really since Panasonic started operating. really because there's such a demand for hotel stays in town. And there's a set number of hotels in town. Their occupancy rate's been pretty high. So the projected revenues for this year are about $50,000. And so that's what we're projecting for next year. The allocations are to the Chamber EDC for 2027. Actually, last year, we upped it from $32,000 to $65,000. I think we can safely maintain a $55,000 allocation. When we talked about this last year, Historically, that fund had gotten revenues of around 30, and then the allocation to the EDC was around 30. We kept a little fund balance. But since Panasonic started, the revenues are up. So it looks like we can kind of safely, at least for 2027, we know, allocate that 55 grand.

Question. Didn't we recently agree to fund them for an increased amount?

Yeah.

Yeah, so that's in the general fund, and that's a result of the services agreement that we recently enacted. So, yeah, the general fund historically had about $100,000 in allocations. Now with the implementation of the new services agreement, we almost doubled that. It's $190,000 in the general fund. This is in addition to that. This isn't part of that.

So we're up to about $200,000 or $245,000? Yeah. Yep.

That's right.

Okay, what's the next one?

Water maintenance fund. Again, the water maintenance fund, largely, almost exclusively, revenues come from transfers from the water department. We do expect these water maintenance funds with Panasonic starting to use large volumes of water, revenues in the water fund we talked about, we expect those to be increasing. And with that, we expect to be able to increase the annual allocation from the water fund to the water maintenance fund. So that'll allow us to just do more system enhancement kind of implement a more comprehensive asset management program. Not quite there yet. So for this year, and this looks weird because I'm just taking the balance and allocating the balance to improvements and then the rest of the balance is money in, money out. That's a dime that goes out. So there's not really this definitive projection. Whatever revenues we can afford to put in there from the water fund will go into the water maintenance fund. That's why this graph looks a little weird. Sewer maintenance funds, kind of the same story. We expect revenues from Panasonic to start showing up. And they have. And so same story. Money in, money out. Expense allocations in the sewer maintenance fund, part of it does go to debt service, but then $40,000 for system maintenance. And also in the water maintenance fund, part does go to debt service as well on the allocation side. A TECHNOLOGY FUND, I DON'T HAVE A CHART FOR THIS. JUST HAVEN'T DONE ONE, BUT I WILL. THE TECHNOLOGY FUND, WE CREATED THIS IN 2022 BECAUSE PART OF THAT, EACH DEPARTMENT HAD TO ALLOCATE A LINE ITEM FOR COMPUTER AND SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE REFRESHES, AND SO WE HAD ALL THESE ALLOCATIONS IN DIFFERENT FUNDS, AND IF THEY DIDN'T SPEND IT, IT GOT RESET. The technology fund really just takes allocations from the general fund, from the water and sewer fund, puts it all in one place so that we can implement this process of upgrading the computer system, any sort of software contracts we have come out of this fund.

Perhaps repairs to the current AV systems?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Very much so. This would be a great place for that. yeah um so for now of course we haven't talked about budget enhancements so maybe some of those budget enhancement might go into it but you know the base level stuff um just kind of want to carry like we're carrying it as a year-end fund balance after 2027 about 50 grand so That could be used, right? But for what we've already identified throughout the departments citywide, a little over $178,000 in expenses for that, replacements of technology, but also agreements Yeah, we could, as we get into the next discussion we have, will be these budget enhancements. You know, what else can we do? We can talk about, yeah, kind of a new plan on some AV stuff, specifically for this room. um same sort of story on the aquatic center maintenance fund um five-year projections you know the balance isn't it's not critical that we keep a big balance in here but essentially uh forty thousand dollars in expenditures for the product center next year include maybe more chairs who knows

uh there's a repainting that has to happen every uh yeah um often of the pool i can't remember do we i can't remember if that's in this fund or if we we might have a separate it's in cip yeah we left that in the cip yeah it's bigger it's a bigger expense than what we could carry

yeah um so there's that uh park maintenance fund again uh allocations forty forty thousand dollars uh for unspecified uh maintenance so that's that's again for this year so um that's kind of the story on those uh single purpose funds you know as quickly as i could tell it uh there's there's the the attachments include these spreadsheet projections that you've seen maybe have looked at, maybe have not. But this is kind of the Bible of this five-year projection that we always kind of guide and helps guide our policies long term. I would say, just in closing, these revenues that I shared earlier about the data centers and about that, those are all unhatched chickens. None of those are incorporated. We have incorporated, obviously, franchise revenues from Panasonic that we're starting to see, the sales tax stuff we're starting to see. We talked about water and sewer revenues. We've incorporated that, but we've not taken the step to incorporate center stuff.

So that's it, Mayor. Any questions or any more questions?

No, but Mayor, if I may, a point of order. I would like to make a motion to amend agenda item four to add a 4D discussion of potential new ordinances. If I may make that motion.

Sure.

Motion to amend agenda item four to add 4D discussion of potential new ordinances. Second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed. Okay. 4D, your item.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. 4D, we discussed, I did a little bit last time at the last council meeting, but this is really just to make it a little more formal. I wanted to discuss a few ordinance items that I had proposed and continue to add more, in response to some of the concerns of our citizens and research I've done. The first one is the noise ordinance, which we have essentially tabled until our expert consultant is acquired. We have that process laid out. Thank you very much, staff, for working on that. The second item is a non-ordinance but directive component of the package, which proposes a full-time environmental health compliance officer who serves the city's expert on environmental compliance, industrial hygiene, and related health and safety matters. The concept is to create an in-house capacity to review complex development materials, coordinate outside specialists when needed, and provide staff training while minimizing impact on the general fund through industrial fee support and cost shifting mechanisms. The third item of the second ordinance proposed is a developer escrow related to the EHCO or Environmental Health Compliance Officer requiring certain high impact developments to pay for independent third party environmental review through city administered escrow accounts. State of purpose being to give the city access to qualified outside review and construction phase monitoring without placing those costs on local taxpayers. Number four, the third ordinance would be to establish a stronger, an urban forestry ordinance to establish stronger public tree protections and new landscaping and canopy expectations for future development, while grandfathering existing homes and operating businesses, except in cases of major expansion. Proposed intent to preserve community character, improve environmental resilience, and guide growth in a way that maintains DeSoto's rural urban identity. Number five, and the fourth ordinance, Dark Skies Ordinance proposing updated outdoor lighting standards intended to reduce glare, light trespass, and sky glow while preserving safety and allowing flexibility for large-scale industrial sites. The draft also includes a phased compliance structure for existing properties, a longer compliance timeline for municipal fixtures, and limited incentives for small business retrofits. The next last ordinance would be CORA and NDA ordinance, which is intended to protect transparency while still preserving lawful confidentiality. Under the Kansas Open Records Act, public records are open unless otherwise provided by law, and this proposal makes clear that the city may not sign or accept NDAs that create secrecy broader than the exemptions and protections already recognized by Kansas law. The purpose is not to eliminate legitimate confidentiality for proprietary information, attorney-client communications, personnel matters, security-sensitive records, or other lawfully protected information. The additional purpose is to preserve transparency and maintain public trust by preventing any city officer employer agent from executing a non-disclosure agreement that is inconsistent with the ordinance, inconsistent with CORA, or otherwise broader than confidentiality permitted by Kansas law. The ordinance also requires expiration dates for NDAs and creates a city clerk register so the governing body and the public can identify who requested an NDA, who signed it, what legal basis is being claimed, and when the agreement ends. The final ordinance was a well drilling ordinance, which is really legislation designed to protect the city's public health, preserve a local water infrastructure, and secure . As we continue to experience rapid commercial industrial growth, we have to ensure our city remains, or rather retains, absolute sovereign control over who extracts groundwater within our corporate boundaries. Currently water well permitting happens almost entirely at the county and state levels. This means external agencies are making decisions that directly affect our local water tables, our utility revenues, and our infrastructure stability. To solve this, I'm introducing the Comprehensive Water Well Regulation Ordinance, which exercises the SOTO's constitutional home rule authority to assert complete municipal control of well drilling, entirely independent of county or state actions. Establishes three critical protections. First, it creates an absolute connection proximity prohibition, which means any business or entity located within 400 feet of the city water main will be strictly barred from drilling a private water well. They must connect to the SOTO municipal water system. Only blanket exemption here is for our local legitimate agricultural users. Second, for any property that falls outside that 400-foot zone, well drilling will no longer be allowed by right. It will require a rigorous special use permit process. Many large-scale commercial extraction proposal must come before the Planning Commission and receive a final vote of approval from this City Council. Third, it contains ironclad enforcement mechanisms establishing immediate stop work rights, mandating well plugging at the owner's expense via property tax liens, and sets compounding fines each day for industrial corporate violators. Most importantly, to ensure we protect our municipal water sources right now, this ordinance relies heavily on the city's inherent police powers to safeguard public health and welfare. Under Kansas law, this framing ensures the ordinance takes effect immediately upon passage and explicitly supersedes any prior contract incentives or developer agreements. No incoming business can claim a grandfather or vested right to drill a well based on a past agreement. Our municipal water system is a vital community asset. We cannot allow independent, unmonitored commercial well drilling to jeopardize our infrastructure or deplete our public resources. In summary, all of these items present a broad policy framework for balancing economic growth with public health protection, environmental oversight, and long-term community character. In closing, the immediate question for council tonight is whether to direct staff and legal counsel to further review, refine and develop these concepts for possible future action. If so directed by council tonight, I look forward to working with the city attorney or city staff and this council to formally bring this ordinance to a first reading or these ordinances to a first reading at our next meeting. I would entertain a motion to direct city staff and attorney to review, refine, and develop these concepts for possible future action, including first reading of ordinances at the next meeting.

That sounds pretty aggressive, Zach. Yes, sir. So I guess I'd probably prefer that we would maybe have a conversation about some of these. The last one, the water well one, it just brought to mind that the city of Olathe owns property within the city limits of DeSoto.

With their intent, as I understood it, was

purchase that property with the intent of drilling future municipal wells for the city of Olathe. That is the golf course across the river in Leavenworth County that's within our boundaries. I don't know how this, what you've outlined there might impact them and their ability to provide for their future water needs.

I concur. I think that's the point of having the city staff and attorney review, refine, and develop the concepts.

I was going to add on the water wells. Division of Water Resources, they have jurisdiction and oversight over water in Kansas. I see that one as there probably needs to be quite a bit of research done to see where we can do something but without, you know, running afoul of state statutes and permitting through the state of Kansas.

I think that's part of the suggestion, right?

Correct.

Review, refine, and develop. The concern was to bring back an ordinance at the next meeting for first reading and something that, I mean, I would say would take a little bit of time, research to develop that I don't... A long list with a lot of work already in hand.

I don't know that that timeframe is realistic for two weeks' worth of... Well, to be fair, three or four of these were actually provided on June 22nd. So it wouldn't be two weeks. It would be nearly a month for some of them. And again, that's the goal is to bring a first reading at the next meeting not necessarily An adoption. Yeah, but to discuss and in council the first proposals And the one the environmental person and

And I know you supplemented after the meeting on Quora. I know Mike and I talked about the, you know, environmental person, we were fine. You know, with that, but these others, you know, I just, I mean, obviously, I'm willing to do whatever needs to be done. But it's, it's Yeah, it'd be very tight. I just don't think there's sufficient time to have some good work product put forward. Can we just maybe focus on a couple of them and go with that and just knock them down as future meetings? I'm just not.

Sure. Does August 6th sound like enough time? We're looking at over a month.

Yeah, timing wise. And then also, Obviously, you know, I answer to the council as a whole, so if we can get, you know, I'm not hearing anybody object to it, but I do think it's important that everybody's supportive of going, you know, moving forward with these items.

I concur. I think that's one of the...

I think it needs further discussion also, and some stuff, I think, should be in our conference. plan going forward. And, uh, you know, I think it really needs to be discussed by the whole council concur.

And I think that's the intent, um, is to get, uh, some work done on the back end of it. And then, uh, obviously two weeks is a short time period. So August 6th, um, I believe you said would be appropriate for initial review. Um, so I think that's good time.

Yeah, I can commit to giving feedback on all of these. And when I look at it, if it looks like, yeah, there's a path to us passing an ordinance, I'll have that prepared. There may be some of these, like, for example, the water wells. If we're just up against a roadblock, obviously, I want to make sure whatever we're doing is entirely legal and within our power to do. So on those, there may be feedback along the lines of, look, I just don't see a path to us being able to do this.

Personally, I don't see any anything wrong with breaking anything wrong with breaking that down into maybe segments or into pieces so that it's not all asked and everyone has to understand every one of them all at once. So maybe breaking that down into segments as far as what we want to hear that August 6th meeting or the next meeting so we can have a better discussion and better understanding without having to go over seven different ordinances, which I agree with all of them, but I think to better understand each one, if we could chop that up a bit versus all at once.

And so the environmental person, I mean, I don't think that requires an ordinance.

No, that's what I was saying. I don't think it's an ordinance. It's just tied to the ordinance about developer funded escrow to pay for the position. So it's sort of a subtopic of that particular ordinance. And to be clear, the immediate question is not whether we should pass these ordinances, it's whether the council should direct staff and city attorney to further review, refine, and develop those concepts for possible future action. So really that's the immediate question is, does the council want to direct the backend work for this?

more than pass these ordinances on their face as of right now okay yes i would agree with you know agreeing to provide them to do that work but i do still think based on everything else that's going on in the city and other roles they have or what they have going on and there's just so much time. So I think if we can still break that down into sections, that's just my feedback.

So in regards to Rhonda's comments, Mr. Bradley, are you able to put a priority on what you would prefer to have reviewed?

I can, or we can defer to the prioritization based on timelines. I think primarily this is a city attorney review function more than most anything else, because he's the sole person that does the reviews here, and his time is the most restricted or least available. So I would defer to Mr. Eby's recommendation. Prioritization because I don't particularly have a priority on this necessarily So I know I'm not opposed at all to breaking it down that way if we can just set the Breakout and identify when those will be brought forward. So if August 6th for whichever ones and then August 20th, I think for the others however you think I just want to make sure that we tonight that the purpose is to make sure the council directs it if they so choose and that we identify when we're going to come back and revisit it instead of just punting.

Yeah, I understand, you know, and I'll definitely do my best. I mean, I understand the urgency, but it is like we're just starting with digital realty on on. trying to put together a development agreement which is the extent you know be able to you know long long times and there's other developments that are you know we so but yeah do you like to make your ordinance or your ordinance your motion as you i i think i think since you brought the item i would

invite you to make the motion as you see fit rather than having a struggle. Right.

So I think then I would amend my motion to state that the motion is for council to direct staff and city attorney to further review, refine and develop these concepts for possible future action, dividing them into appropriate work groups absent any further guidance I would say the environmental health developer escrow the urban forestry ordinance and the dark skies ordinance being the three previously provided and higher priority and The second batch or tranche of ordinances being the core and NDAs and well drilling, because it seems like the well drilling is going to be the most time consuming, I would say that that and the core NDA ordinance can be extended. So the highest priority would be the, again, dark skies, urban forestry, developer escrow for environmental health compliance officer. So those three.

OK.

don't know if that's too much wording for the order for the motion but that's uh how i would prefer to all right so uh edgar did you get the gist of uh councilman bradley's motion okay thank you i know there's a lot of yeah and i'll rewind okay

So my motion is as stated and to direct as stated the city staff and city attorney to further review, find, and develop in the order proposed.

Okay, there is a motion on the floor. Is there a second?

I'll second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion of the motion?

Roll call, please. Patterson.

Yes.

Bradley. Yes. Sabo. Yes. Lane.

Yes.

Motion carries.

All right. Item five is executive session. We do not have one, so we'll move on to advisory report city administrator.

Nothing mayor tonight. Nothing tonight. Thanks. City attorney.

Just I did look up the contract with Honey Creek goes through Uh, 2028, December 31st, 2028. And then the only other thing, um, we did, uh, receive quick claim needs as to water right. 38 D one from parks and, uh, sunflower. Um, and we had previously received, uh, agency letters from K UK state. So we city does have full, full control over, uh, all of water right. 38. Okay.

All right. City planner. I have a brief report on Brad's behalf. He asked me to, um, he thanks, uh, Zach Ronda for your recommendations for the, uh, comprehensive plan update steering committee. Um, I think he said he was still looking for something for me and Joe. Danny had provided his as well. So reminder to Joe, to me and you, Joe, and Lindsey to respond to provide recommendations for steering committee members. And that's it for the planner. City engineer.

The only update is Sunday we'll be working on building the Astro Water Tower.

Okay.

For purposes of the later viewers, could we clarify that? I'm not sure he was picked up on that.

Oh, yeah. Joe was just saying that we're going to be filling the new water tower out, Astro Water Tower, on Sunday. So that'll be in service. It's quite a milestone. That's quite a ways behind schedule.

Okay. Assistant city administrator. Nothing tonight, mayor. Okay. Council comments. Danny, anything for the group tonight?

I've got two quick things. I wanted to congratulate Brandon on the tax relief program. Got over 34 users, roughly. Is that going pretty well? Is it stopped now, or?

No, the program runs to the end of the year. Okay. We have about 57 applications. I'm still working my way through that next one. Okay. But you should see, you did, in the pay ordinance today, there were 30-something of them. You'll see the next batch at the next pay ordinance. There's still about, after we've hit that 57th, There's still about $3,000 left, so we'll do another round of advertisements to the public.

Well, congratulations on that. And also, I'd like to congratulate the mayor and the city manager on the wastewater ribbon ceremony out there. They did a great job and saved the... residents of desoto a lot of money and increase the reliability and redundancy of the wastewater plant without any uh costs to the city of desoto yeah residents yeah thank you so uh congratulations to the mayor and the city manager on that so that's all i had mayor all right thank you rhonda i want to thank everyone that comes to these meetings i know it's a lot of time and effort so we do appreciate it

And then, I'm not sure who to ask, were we going to be doing council retreats?

I've suggested that. I've asked Mike to try and work on getting that in the schedule. It is in the work plan for this year.

Can I recommend that it be on a weekend?

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, usually when we do those full-day things, yeah, we have them on Saturday. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. Happy Fourth, everyone. Have a safe weekend.

All right.

Thank you, Rhonda. Zach?

Well, I already talked a lot, but thank you for the time. And I want to thank everyone who has been interested in city proceedings. And whether you came here and addressed the council or not, thank you for attending. And I want to thank everyone who's been coming to the hometown table town halls and invite everyone in the city to please come. We really would like more participation. It's your time to have an interactive conversation with the Council and Mayor, the time that you have here for public comment, the four minutes is, for a lot of reasons, a one-way street. It's your time to speak to the council. Whereas the hometown table town halls are your time to speak with the council and engage in two-way communication. And I think they've been really successful so far as far as the engagement. Just the number of participants has been low. And I would encourage more people to come to those. They have, for the next few anywhere, are the last Saturday of the month. And that's all I have, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you.

Joe? I have just a couple of things. The first one would be I'd like to huge thanks out to Joe Johnson and his team. I don't think they're recognized enough for the work they do. Had a close neighbor reach out about some washout in a culvert that ran through their property. Discussed it with Joe and within, I don't know, it was probably less than two weeks, he had a team out there They've been out there and they actually had to tear up an entire section of 84 Terrace because the culvert was washed out all the way under the road. Stopped and spoke with that resident today. are somewhat pleased with the process and progress. And after speaking with Joe, we're just waiting on a pipe to be delivered to wrap up and clean up the project. So, you know, we do pay attention to concerns when they're brought to us. And again, huge thanks to Joe. uh second thing i would have is uh you know i'd just direct a couple of comments uh uh direct to uh miss caldwell um we don't always see eye to eye and i i see you uh you know roll your eyes and tilt your head but i would uh you know i'd commend you for your tact and your professionalism when you come to city council and make your comments And I believe your approach helps strengthen the public dialogue, whether it's here or on our infamous city pages. And then last but not least, I'll just say that You know, we often refer to our small town feel and our city of DeSoto. And I got to experience our small town feel and just how big DeSoto is. My family and I were vacationing last week in Florida and chose to go to Walmart to get our supplies. And as we came through one of the checkouts, There stood a guy wearing a blue shirt with some Kansas City businesses on the back of it and just made brief conversation. And lo and behold, it's a Kill Creek resident. And we were 1,500 miles away. But that's all I have. Hope everybody has a safe and enjoyable Independence Day. Keep all your digits.

All right, thank you, Joe. Yeah, I guess I'll follow along that theme with Independence Day. Invite everybody to the 4th of July celebration at Riverfest Park on Saturday night to enjoy the fireworks show. Walden Company does a great show. We do appreciate it every year and some good music. It's going to be a little hot, some good fireworks, but a good way to celebrate our 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. So that's all I have. I need a motion to adjourn.

I'll make a motion to adjourn.

Second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? We are adjourned.