City Council - Regular Meeting

All in order, please rise and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. Good evening, good evening. All right, we do have a public hearing for the purpose of receiving comments to a request for a waiver of the distance limitation to allow for the sale of alcoholic liquor within 200 feet of a school, church, or library during the Johnson County Fair at the Johnson County Fairground. Do I have a motion to open the public hearing?

So moved. Second.

Motion McNair, second Baldwin. No. Nguyen. Nguyen, I'm sorry. Mark. It was another Mark. Second Mark. Please. It was a Mark. We open the public hearing. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Abstain? The public hearing is now open. If you'd like to speak on this. No one coming forward. I will entertain a motion to close the public hearing.

So moved.

Second.

Motion to make near. Second, Johnson. We close the public hearing. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The public hearing is closed. Now I'll move to public comments. Members of the public are welcome to use this time to make comments about city matters or items on the agenda that are not part of a public hearing. If you wish to come forward, please let me know your comments in five minutes or less. There's a time clock on your left. Please state your name and address for the record. That being said, come forward. The podium is now open.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Ashley Montgomery, and I reside at 1027 East Cottage Creek Circle. I spoke before the council for the very first time last year regarding solicitors, and I truly appreciate the action that was taken. I'm happy to say I haven't been bothered by a solicitor since. But tonight, I'm here to talk about a different topic. I'm here to talk about the F word, fireworks. For some people, that word brings excitement, celebration, and family traditions. For my family, it now brings dread, disruption, sleepless nights, and most recently, a broken wrist. At the risk of being called unpatriotic, labeled a Karen, or being told if you don't like it, just move, I'm here because I want to show my daughters that when something matters, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to use our voices in a respectful and constructive way. I'm also here because I want my family's experience and the experience of so many others to be heard. I want to say this clearly. I'm not here because I don't want people to celebrate Independence Day without fireworks. In fact, a few years ago, we considered opening a fireworks stand here in Gardner. But with that being said, we all know our city currently allows for a three-day window around the 4th of July for legally shooting off fireworks. But in reality, many residents know the noise often begins before those dates and continues after that. This year, on July 1st, before fireworks were legally permitted, my two daughters were riding their bikes on our sidewalk in front of our home when a nearby neighbor unexpectedly set off a large firework of some sort with a powerful explosive report. The blast was so sudden and loud that my husband and I ran outside to find our seven-year-old crying and our 13-year-old startled so badly that she fell off her bike and broke her wrist. One person's decision to celebrate early came at a cost to our family, physically, emotionally, and financially. Like many families, we've tried to prepare for the 4th of July. We buy medication for our dog, we use the noise-canceling headphones, and we turn our sound machines up as loud as they go. But there's only so much you can do when fireworks are unpredictable or when people ignore the legal dates and times. We appreciate Gardner PD putting out the memos to respect your neighbors, but can we be honest? That doesn't happen. While the cutoff time is supposed to be 11 p.m., the large percussion fireworks were still rattling our house until at least 11.30 p.m. every night. With so many lacking consideration, I feel it's the council's time to step in once again to revisit what celebrating the 4th of July looks like here in Gardner. I'm under the impression that council will not completely prohibit fireworks in Gardner due to the tax earnings that the fireworks sales brings to the city, so I want to encourage the council to please consider a couple of options. My first and my strongest suggestion is to please consider prohibiting the loudest consumer fireworks. That includes the aerial shell devices like artillery shells, mortars, and ground salutes. I'm not talking about sparklers, fountains, or the small fireworks that many families can enjoy together on their driveways. I'm talking about the explosive fireworks that shake windows, rattle homes, and cause one to startle, perhaps resulting in injury. I cannot remember from previous years when these loud explosive fireworks routinely set off multiple car alarms throughout my neighborhood as we just experienced this 4th of July. While fireworks have been part of Gardner's 4th of July for years now, these larger explosive fireworks have become increasingly disruptive. The joyful celebration of the 4th of July has shifted from celebrating to enduring repeated house rattling explosions affecting many. Gardner already, so much more to say, I don't have time to share the rest of my feelings.

Just an update on a few things. As far as fireworks calls go, we were down 12 calls in the same time period as last year. Most of our calls for service were shooting fireworks after the 2300, the 11 o'clock hour on the 4th. And then the other majority was outside of the legal dates, so before the 2nd and after the 4th. Update on our ponds and mosquitoes. All of our ponds are in compliance as far as being treated. We had to abate one, which got done last week. So... That's taken care of, and we're still putting a large focus on 199th Street to address the truck issues.

Great, good to hear. Thank you. City Clerk, Renee? I have nothing further. Matt, Finance? Nothing further. Amy?

Nothing tonight.

City Attorney?

Nothing from me.

Mr. Hunter?

No, sir.

Jason, anything at all?

Real quick, excuse me. I just wanted to thank all the department heads and their staff who had a hand in Independence Day Festival. My staff, especially. It's a long day. Put it together. All the acts went off. Fireworks went off. So I just appreciate everybody's help. It's not a Parks and Rec event. PD had a lot of people out there at intersections, crowd control. I know we borrowed from other agencies as well. So really good crowd, everything considered. So thanks to everybody for their help.

Awesome. Thank you, Jason. Dave? Nothing for me tonight. Gallant Public Works? Administrator?

I just want to recognize Jason and his crew for the festival. The weather's always a wild card, and we're going back and forth throughout the day whether to cancel or not, and ultimately made the right decision, so thank you.

Very good.

All right. Councilman McNair?

I just want to say thanks to the entire community for what I saw as a general respect of neighbors and the time limits for fireworks on Saturday night. It was a couple of different neighborhoods. The ones I was at secured at about 10.50. They swept up. They cleaned up. Made sure things were respectful. So I think the vast majority of our citizens comply and voluntarily and willfully do so. So I'm sorry to hear that some of the people, some of your neighbors don't respect their neighbors as much as they could and should. That's a terrible shame. But I think that by and large, and I sat out in my garage Saturday night after we got home, and I didn't hear anything in our neighborhood after about 11.10. So I was very pleased with the way our community responded. Thanks to the police department.

Jason, your crew did an outstanding job Saturday night.

I've had many compliments.

Just wanted to say thank you, and I appreciated all the efforts, and that's all I had.

All right, thank you. Council Member Ween?

I guess I'll thank those who spoke. I know that, as Jennifer knows, we've tried to work hard over the last two years to do some and make some changes. I think there are obviously there's still some folks out there who are faced with the reality that they're just not going to follow the rules. And we have an issue with enforcement, and we always will. I think we can look at doing, making any changes to the ordinance and limiting. I think there's already a little bit of a limit in there. I mean, yeah, yeah, I can't set off like half a stick of dynamite or something like that, but there's nothing about, you know, hype or or or anything like that from what i remember um we definitely you know with danika's help um and and some of i don't know if it was jason or you or kellen your your crews putting out signs um for where it's prohibited um and then the dates we're trying to inform everybody reached out to a lot of the hoas that i could reach out to um got some feedback so hopefully we'll see that increase time over time and and hopefully get the message out that it's the second, third, and the fourth, and those dates only. I know, Jennifer, you'll be quick to tell us if anybody was disrespectful of that part of the ordinance in trying to indicate that it was something more than the second, third, and the fourth, maybe out on Facebook. Also, I know we tried to put the prohibited signs out there, worked with the schools to make sure that they were out there in the areas that we didn't want them. I did go past Gourney slash Wynwood Park and that, it's not funny, but seeing the fireworks right next to the sign that said they were prohibited, right in front of the camera that we have sitting out there is interesting. So I don't know what we can do to help get maybe we need to get the message out earlier. Maybe we need to Sky riders, bigger signs, flashing neon. There'll be more that we can probably do, and we'll talk with Matt. The nice thing is we do have funding associated with, and we can look and see, and we're happy to have you part of the force team, our fireworks ordinance review board. So we'll get out there and see what else we can do before next year.

Are we going to do a wrap-up meeting?

Absolutely.

I think that might be a good idea. Yeah. While they're fresh in our head.

I'll put something on the calendar.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Anything else? No. Council Member Johnson?

I have some fireworks questions too. But thank you to Ashley and to Jennifer for speaking tonight. And to everybody for putting the signs out because I did notice they were everywhere. And that was really nice to have it out there where nobody can say they didn't see it. I do have some questions, especially if we're going to look at possibly changing the ordinance. And if you don't know the answers tonight, that's fine. Just if staff can pull them together so that we have them. But I'm interested to know, I think you said there were 12 fewer calls this year. How many calls does that mean there were? Does that mean that there were two calls and we had 14 last year? Or does that mean there were 150 calls and we had 162 last year? So, or 164, my math is not strong right now. So, like, how many calls that actually is. Also, what kind of, I know we have issues with enforcement. What do we do for enforcement? Is it citations? Is it just warnings? Is it even possible to enforce? Or by the time you get there, the thing's already been set off and whoever set them off is gone? Yeah. Because, you know, you're not talking about necessarily something that the person's still standing there when their firework went off way up in the sky. So it may be hard to, you know, narrow it on where they are. So what does that look like? Did you have any particular issues with, like, recurring issues with people or things that we should be aware of, you know? Yeah.

what's your take on that like i said if you don't have answers for all that tonight that's fine just at some point before we can figure out what we want to do with the ordinance just more information would be great so we had 42 calls last year only 30 calls this year okay enforcement as you suggested is very difficult on our end because the firework goes up and it goes away We primarily and then if we have a repeat issue, then we would resort to citations. There were no citations issued this year. We document all of our fireworks contacts beginning when fireworks sales start through the end of the weekend. So that way they have the addresses of the locations to see if it is a repeat issue. The fourth is probably the most difficult to enforce because we run with our numbers and fireworks everywhere. From leaving Celebration Park at about 11.30, driving back to the station, I addressed three fireworks complaints in that short time. Enforcement is difficult. We definitely do our best to try to do that. And we are seeing a decrease in numbers, which is good. And I feel like compliance is increasing. We just got to keep working on it.

I will say, you know, a lot, and maybe it's not the right time to say, but, you know, I was in Leawood, or Overland Park area, and It's illegal there. There was explosions everywhere. And someone was doing the huge ones, the really loud, booming ones that shake the house. I mean, obviously, it's probably easier. They get them here. They can do them here. But it does take place in communities where it is illegal as well. So sometimes it's hard to, even if they are not legal here, it's really hard to enforce that because people are just going to do what they want to do sometimes, unfortunately. Good for now.

Good for now. Thank you.

Council Vice President.

Yeah, I just want to say thank you to Jason, your team, PD. You guys did amazing. And really, I don't know of a department that's not affected by the Independence Day Festival. So thank you to all city staff that stepped in. I know when we were out there earlier in the day and it was a mad rush to get everything set up, I saw people from numerous departments out there. So it wasn't easy with the rain making everything very difficult, but it was a wonderful show. Josh Ross did amazing. um our fireworks display was really long and very complimented it was very good so thank you guys for all of that i also just want to say thank you to everybody that came out to price shopper to support gardner gold it was rainy and it was a real bummer for our fundraiser that day but we received 799 in tips just people walking out of price shopper to help support gardener gold which was amazing and um if you are interested in learning a little bit more about gardener gold this friday at the pool at 2 30 is our annual duck race final numbers are still coming in but we are over 5 000 ducks will be released into the lazy river for a race and that's one of our fundraisers we do with gardner gold and so i encourage anybody that wants to learn about it or just watch 5 000 ducks go through our lazy river come out to the gardner pool at 2 30 on friday that's it awesome thank you that sounds fun it is fun yeah you should come council president um i don't have anything to add um is there a way uh to and we put it up on the website sure

That'd be cool, because then people that are at work could see it later, and maybe it'd increase support for it in the future. So that's my only suggestion. Matt, can we get that presentation emailed to us, please? Of course. OK. That's it.

And again, thank you to all departments that helped out, and particularly Jason, because I know that's kind of your thing. That's your baby. And I know it's a long week, and especially a long day for you out there. Appreciate everything you do and everything, all the other departments, including IT, who also helped out and saved the day. So thank you. Appreciate it. That's all I have. Entertain a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Second. Motion Deaton. Second McNair. We adjourn. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Abstain? We're adjourned.