City Council - Regular Meeting

Hello. What are you doing at the college the other day? Oh, I teach. You do? Saw you there. Thanks, Gary.

I work at the college.

Well, you did walk in class. I better put my Yeah, he sometimes doesn't walk in till the very m last moment though. Phillip You know the big shop. Do you girls go to other city council meetings? Oh, no. You're more than welcome. I'm just curious if you had to

write on several cities or just There's Luke right on time. Lucas. Lucas. All right. Call the meeting to order. Can Heather take a roll, please? Morgan Johnson, first board. Lucas Stanbury, second board, present. John Lee, third board, here. Daryl Wesaw, fourth board. Here. We have a quorum. Mr. Mayor.

All right. Please stand. We'll do a prayer and then the pledge of allegiance. Bow your heads. We thank you for the opportunity to come here and help improve the city and do what's best for the citizard. Help us to make the right decisions. Amen. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. I can have a motion to accept the agenda.

Mr. Mayor, make motion that we accept the agenda as presented. Second. Okay. All in favor? I opposed. Okay. Motion passed. Mr. Mayor, I make motion that on the consent agenda with a change to item G to $17 per hour. F or G manager for say again. It's in the in the consent agenda. Yeah. add $17 per hour. Oh,

okay. Gotcha. I mis understand what you said. Some reason I got omitted. Okay. Anything else on the consent agenda? Second on that motion. Oh, agenda. Gotcha. Then you have to approve the agenda. It's a separate motion. So, okay. So, can I have a second on that? A second. Okay. All in favor? I I opposed. Pass. And now what do we do? Now we're good. No. Okay. No, we just approved the the change.

The change motion to amend. I probably didn't say correctly. But he already approved the motion for Johnson to accept the agenda as presented. prior to what do you want? But then he motion to accept the consent agenda with the addition of $17 an hour. Okay. So he already did it. That's what I That's what we just right. Yes. I'm sorry. I confused. So I think I think we're good. He didn't know what I was talking

the way we're supposed to. You're supposed to have a motion to amend the consent agenda. Then you amend it, then you approve it as amended. I tried to do it all. Yep. We can go back and fine. So, we're good. We good? Okay. All right. Is there anybody in the public forum? No one. Okay. All right. So, I'm not sure how to do this because we need to amend um letter A on the regular business. Um I think somebody can just move to table it. Okay. Table it. Okay.

Mr. Mayor, on regular business, item A, make a motion to table item A due to the representative for the website rebuild is not able to attend tonight and we will reschedu for another meeting. Second. Okay. All in favor? I opposed. Motion passed. All right. Uh, letter B, consider ordinance regarding meeting times. Do you guys need me to explain changing it to 5:30 starting in March or at the March 9th meeting?

You guys good? You guys all good with that? I'm good. I got I have no problem with it. Do you have an ordinance number, Heather?

I kind of looked over. I'm like, she forgot her notebook. I am I motion to approve.

Here she comes. She's ready. Oh dear. So motion to approve ordinance number 1400.

All right. I motion to approve 1400. There you go. Yes, ma'am. Ordinance number 14. times for 5:30. I'll second. Okay. All in favor? I I oppose. Okay. Motion passed. All right. Item C, approve CMBB license for Crawford Hills Golf Course. Heather got the app in to the state and we kind of oddly have to approve our own CMBB. Just do we vote on Just need a motion. Okay.

Mayor, make motion we approve the CNB license for Crawford Hills Golf Course. A second. Okay. All in favor? I oppose. Okay. Motion passed. All right. Um item D, consider deputy chief job description. The fire chief couldn't be here tonight. Sorry. Was somebody else still talking? No, I was going to add the fire department in there. Oh,

okay. Uh, Chief Turner couldn't be here tonight. I told him I would present it for him. He had drafted a job description. I made a few changes to it that he was fine with. We currently don't have a deputy chief. Our fire chief is part-time. He would like to consider appoint hence the job description. There's no um pay structure to go with this because whoever he appoints will stay in their same pay. So, if it's a full-time firefighter, a part-time firefighter, a volunteer, he said it could be anyone, but since he travels a lot, especially in the spring, he wants to appoint someone to that role. Um, so it it's up to you guys. First step would be approving the job descript job description and then at a subsequent meeting, he will probably come with a recommendation for whoever he wants as deputy chief. What was that on here? I forgot to look at that.

Under regular. Yes. Deputy chief. So if he hires someone from within, that's Yeah, I think he's wanting to appoint someone from within. And I asked him if we needed to address the pay scale and structure and he said no because whoever it is whether they're volunteer part-time or full full-time will just stay in that job category and get paid that amount but they'll just have the title of deputy chief. So when he's not here responsibility right for the same month. Yep.

Sounds good to me. Any other questions or comments? Cameron, did you have anything to add? Did I say all that? Well, okay.

We have to we have to second, right? Okay. Can I make a motion then to do that? Second.

A motion to consider deputy chief job description. Hold on a second. All right, you guys are good. We're all learning. Okay, so now you can second. Okay. All in favor? I I Okay, opposed. Okay. Motion passed. All right. Item E, discuss cat generator financing. So, we are getting Do you want to tell them about the cat generator real quick? I don't know. Have we had this discussion? You guys know what that is? I I have I don't know. Do you want to talk about the cat generator for a second, Cliff?

Yeah, we are getting generator power. last week and it probably won't be delivered till like August, right? October. October, maybe.

It uh increases our generating capacity. We have to purchase capacity. We have enough We have to have enough capacity to cover peak load in the city. We don't run the cat generators often. uh when weather gets really bad we do and they kind of they end up saving us a lot of money. Capacity is also expensive to buy off the market. Anyways, this project has already been approved. We are financing this CAT generator with bonds, but the bonds are going to be in the Kansas Municipal Energy Agency's name. I know that that's probably a little bit confusing, too. We just got um finished our solar financing. it was around 3 point something%. They're thinking this is going to be around four 4 and a half. We should be getting all the proposals back by Thursday. What I want to ask you guys is we're wanting to close on it by the end of February at the very latest beginning of March. However, our next meeting isn't until the 23rd. Do you guys want them to come in and present all the proposal packages to you or are you good with Steve, myself, Heather, and Nick maybe approving them so we can get it done earlier? The debt will technically be in KMA's name. And the way the reason we did that was to keep our debt ratio down per state statutes, but we already pay for our energy through the market through KMEA. And so they will hold it and we'll just make they'll make the we'll make the payment to them. They'll make it to the state.

So the bond will issue it hasn't issued yet. No, it'll pretty quick. Right. We're supposed to be getting all of the proposals back by Thursday. Yes. So we have a company that's writing the bond and it'll probably sell the same day. It sells that same morning when they sell and usually you just go with the lowest rate. So it's like it's not that big of a deal.

Local banks can get on it. Other other lending agencies can get on it. And typically they sell the bond. They I was when I first learned about bond financing, I was shocked to learn it happens very quickly. And so we're adding to our power plant to make sure if we have one of those 28 degrees and they call us and say fire up your plant, we can do that and supply our electricity for our citizens. This is a stop measure to help because those those old generators are around a while before everybody in this room I think and so we just want to make sure we're meeting our requirements. How many megawatts you got now? Or can you produce?

We're really close. Now we'll be over. I've got no problem with you guys okay finding the lowest bid okay and uh if the if it does come back wonky or weird for some reason we can always just tell KA hey we would prefer if you'd go explain all this to council but if it's pretty straightforward you guys are fine with Steve and I and Nick maybe approving it so we can get it done quicker

and Gilmore and B is who we're using and they've done a lot of bond financing statewide probably Midwest and we've done a lot of our bond financing work and so we trust yeah usually you have two firms you have the bond council firm that you're required to hire and then you have the firm that markets it out in the bond market so okay do we need a motion on that for them to let us approve that probably uh well the mayor signs it so maybe have a motion where we can review it and the mayor has a Okay. Once we approve it.

So, can we get a motion to allow um city staff to review cat generator financing proposals and for Nick to sign? Uh Mr. Mayor, I make motion that we grant the authority to the city staff, city attorney, city administrator, and the mayor make the decision on the U cat generator financing bonds. Mayor authorized to sign

and mayor authorized to sign. Second. Okay. All in favor? Okay. Opposed? Okay. Motion passed. All right. Excuse me. Letter F. Executive session for personnel discuss officer scheduling.

Mr. Mayor, I make a motion that we go into executive session for non-elected personnel to discuss officer scheduling. recommend a 10-minute session to include mayor, council, city attorney, city administrator, and the chief of police. Second. Second. Okay. All in favor? I oppose. best.

We kind Split it.

Daryl's notary. I think you have 30 seconds to do it. No, we got some today. Here he comes. Okay. Call the meeting back to order. That was the last time. So, we're going to governing body comments. Morgan. Uh, it's nice to have some warm days here.

Finally. Hopefully it sticks around for a little bit. I'd like to thank the city employees for all their hard work getting the roads cleared and working in the cold. I would also like to thank the fire department and police department for keeping our town safe. That's it, Mr. Mayor. Okay, Lucas. Mr. Mayor, I have no comments tonight. Thank you.

All right, John. Excuse me. I'm still available for anybody that needs anything. number's in the phone book, so just give me a call. I'll do what I can. I'm glad the weather's picking up, so hopefully doesn't damage the roads anymore, you know, and so it's about all I have.

Okay, Darl. Um, as everyone else has said, I thank the city employees for all they do and the city staff here in the city hall public works, Jackie, Cliff, and Electric. So, I got two leaks fixed down by my house in my neighborhood this afternoon. So, I have water pressure now. I'm happy. Thank you. And uh one thing I'd like to uh just kind of put out there for for thought once we get this waterline project, which by the way is moving along. It's moving. Maybe snails space, but it's moving. I'd like to see uh I don't know if we need to uh and this is down the road, but some type of revolving fund like we used to have years ago for street repairs and street upkeep. Um I I don't know how we would do it. I don't know if there's any funds available that we could set back once we get the streets waterline done and the streets fixed. That's just something I'd like to put out there for discussion. If anybody in this city has anything to say about it, you can reach me at my home phone number up here, whatever. But it's just an idea I've been tossing around. I think I've brought it up before in this segment. So, it's just a food for thought down the road. And that's all I have. Thank you. Kelly said, "What am I going to talk about?" So, I met with public works for pretty much all day, right? And um went around and toured um some different things. went around and looked at some roads culbert things. So, u we're in the process of starting a street inventory and evaluation condition process which has already kind of been started. Um we're also look at we're also in the process of developing a street work order system and developing improved patching process which is going to start um some people have been told it's going

to be a year and a half, two years. That's not going to happen. We're working on ways to fix what we can right now that's not going to get torn up during the water project. And then also um finishing the sign replacement that hasn't been um completed. All right. Did I cover all that? Okay. All right. Can I have a motion for German? Mr. Mayor motion we adjourn. Second. Okay. All in favor? I opposed. Okay. Meeting adjourned. All right. Don't forget we have