Council - Regular Meeting

Okay.

Wow. He's in Florida. the cheerleading

cheerleading competition travel cheerleading I looked out my girls didn't cheer softball and basketball This is the

Oh, okay. I would assume. All right, we'll call the meeting to order. If you take a roll, please. Morgan Johnson, first w here. Lucas Danbury, second w. John Lee, third w here. Darl West, fourth word,

present. Mr. Mayor, everybody rise for prayer and pledge of allegiance. Everybody your heads please. We ask you with us today. Make the right decisions and I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right. Can I have a motion to the acceptance of the agenda?

Mr. Mayor, make a motion we accept the agenda as presented. Second. Okay. All in favor? I opposed. Motion passed. Mr. Mayor, make a motion that we accept the consent agenda as presented. Second. All in favor? I opposed. Okay, motion passed. Time for open form form, sorry. Okay, so then move on to regular business. Item A is executive session for contractual to discuss cart path contract.

Mr. Mayor, make a motion we go into executive session for contractual to discuss cart path contract. recommend 10-minute session include mayor, councel, city attorney, city administrator, and public works director. Second. All in favor? I opposed. Okay. Motion passed. that computer.

She forgot to type his I guess so.

All right. Call the meeting back to order. Move on to item B, which is an executive session for n personnel to discuss employee discipline. Mr. Mayor make motion for executive session for non-elected personnel to discuss employee discipline. Recommend 10-minute session including mayor, city council, city attorney, city administrator, and the public works director. Second. Okay. All in favor? I opposed. Okay. the best.

Get in there. Good. Six seconds. Okay. Call the meeting back to order. Mr. Mayor, make a motion executive session for non-elected personnel to discuss employee discipline. Recommend five minute session to include mayor, council, city attorney, administrator, and public works director. Second. Okay. All in favor? Opposed? Okay. Much pass. Did you say five minutes? Yes. Five minutes.

So, the construction start off. Well, we um we're trying to take down flooring and color and all that kind of stuff. Hopefully soon. So, and you know, that's a nice idea. I mean, I hadn't really thought about the safety or any of that, you know. So, Good. So, we're we're we're working on that now. So, hopefully once we get all that picked out, they can nail down and look at their schedule and down their time. So,

so, you know, when you come in or whatever to pay bills and things, there's still an area for the public to kind of get to you guys, right? Yeah. I mean, there'll be a cabinet like Okay, that's nice. 420.

It's a holiday. Okay, we call the meeting back to order. Move on to item C, which is executive section session for knowledge personnel to discuss employee promotional opportunities. Mayor make motion going into executive session for non-elected personnel to discuss employee promotional opportunity. Recommend 10-minute session include mayor, city council, city attorney, city administrator, and public works director and the city clerk. Second. Okay. All in favor? I opposed. Yeah. Motion pass.

Call the meeting back to order. Mr. Mayor make motion for executive session for non-elected personnel to discuss employee promotional opportunity recommend 10-minute session including mayor, city council, city attorney, city administrator, public works director, city clerk. Second. All in favor? I oppose. Okay. Motion pass.

I agree. Well, we would stay open. You took the words right up.

Nice. It is cold. I think we're done with that. All right. Good. All right. Call the meeting back to order. Move on to item D. Approve March 2026 judge report showing total collected $7,465.3 with a total of the city of $7,66.3. Quick comment. That is an anomaly. We got some income tax refund set offs of defendants who owed us a lot of money for a long time. You won't see this every month. Just letting you know. Awesome. Around the three or 3500.

Their ink pens would have run out of ink right now that many tickets. Oh, that's a lot. Here. Mr. Mayor, I make a motion we approve the March 2026 judges report showing total collected of $7,465.3 with a total to the city of $7,66.3. Second. Okay. All in favor? Oppos. Okay. Motion passed. Item E, approve resolution 20267 banking authority. We had to do another resolution because we had a resignation in the city clerk's office. So, that name needs to go off. That's actually going to be your next two or the reason for your next two.

Mr. Mr. Mayor, I make a motion we approve resolution 2026-07, banking authority. A second. Okay. All in favor? I opposed. Okay. Motion pass. Item F, approve resolution 202608 CD authority. Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion to approve the resolution 2026-08 CD authority. Second. Okay. All in favor? I oppose. Okay, motion passed. All right, item G, consider BG consultants agreement.

This is actually within my spend authority, but I kind of wanted to let you guys know what was going on. There's some upgrades we're wanting to make out at the lift stations and the lagoons, and Jackie and I met with a couple of different uh engineering firms. BG consultants comes highly recommended by our CDBG grants administrator who also works with the state revolving loan fund through KDHE which is usually water and sewer stuff. Jackie personally met with um Bruce and Wes I think were their names from BG. Uh we were going to apply for our plan is to apply for SLF funds through KDHE to do some improvements out at the lift stations, bar screen, some muffin monsters, and new pumps. Right, Jackie? And we have to have a tech memo, which is similar to a preliminary engineering report. This is that agreement. Um, the city attorney has reviewed it, of course, wants us to take out some of the indemnification language. Jackie had some modifications he wanted me to make to the scope of the agreement. Um, it's within my spend authority, so I don't think we need a motion. I just wanted to let you guys know what was going on. Is there anything else? Do you think, Steve?

Cleaning up. Yeah. Does that fix all that? Pardon? Does that fix all that? Yes. Okay. Just a few issues I brought to Joanna's attention. I think she's I'll try to get him to resolved with this week with the engineering firm because that um preliminary application for SLF funds is due I think May 1st. I got to get I've got it done. I just got to get some schedule and cost estimate stuff from them. Try this small contract. I thought about just signing it and sending it back with your red lines in it.

So, I mean, we'll figure it out, but I just want to let you guys know what was going on because obviously it's a different engineering firm than we've been using for water and sewer. And that's it on that one. You don't need anything on that. Uhuh. All right. Item H, consider gas franchise ordinance.

This is another one. It's been on the agenda a couple times because we wanted to get some feedback from Kansas Gas. Uh Steve looked up some other towns. I looked up some other towns. Heather had some discussions with Stephanie, who's the Kansas gas rep. I think we're good with the 5% franchise fees, which is what is already listed in the ordinance. However, it is a 20year agreement. Do we want to shorten that to 10? We found some towns that do 10, some that do 20. I know we've had some long agreements for various things and we've looked back and been like, "Hey, why did we do that for so long?"

They seem open to 10 or even five.

I didn't think she didn't express any opposition to it. It didn't seem like So, it's up to you guys. We can go with the 20-y year. We can go with the 10. If you do want the 10 and you approve the this, you can approve this ordinance with the amendment of making it 10 years instead of 20. We can make those changes, give it to Philillip to publish and mayor to sign. So I don't I don't know if you I think we've done our research though and that would be our recommendation. It whatever term you guys want. I don't think we really care either way, but I know we've had some long-term contracts and then later councils will be like, "Oh, I wish we would have done it different and then they have to wait a couple decades to change it again."

So, what I'm hearing is the 10 year would be the way you would prefer to go. I agree. 10 over the five better deal. You're looking. It's a guess on what the market's going to be. I gota I didn't see any fiveyear agreements. Did you? It's 10 or 20. Wow. 10's better than 20. Okay. So, if you guys motion to approve it, you'll need an ordinance number and you'll have to say in your motion to change it to 10. 1402

1402

Mr. considered the gas franchise ordinance to 10 years. No, for 10 years and the ordinance 1402. Second. All in favor? I opposed. Okay. Motion passed. All right. Excuse me. Item I, water distribution project updates. Don't have a huge update. I am still waiting on easements apparently. I think actually We don't have a

Okay, he's gonna say this is okay. Submitts are I'll start with that part. Submittles are almost done and um May 1st date they're supposed to be here. So, I guess that is a huge update. That's before July, right? I'm still Right. That's before July. I still don't have all the easements back. I think we've got like four. So, and how many is there left? I can't remember. Probably like 36, but we haven't even got them finished. We're still waiting. So, uh once those get done, we'll get right on it, though. There's stuff they can do

while we work on those. So, that's really all I have unless you guys have some specific questions about Are they having trouble getting the pipe order? Yeah, the larger pipe. They said two to three more weeks. They actually found a source. The price is 21% higher than when the contract was signed, but they That's less than I thought it would be. They got it for the same price. So, it's ordered. It's a plus. That is a plus. I don't think we've got a signed agreement for over here yet, do we? The lease for a dare. Didn't you send it to them? They've already have they

All right. But we probably need to check on that. Yeah. Oh, I know. I remember what they were waiting on. She called me because she um didn't know about adding us to their Well, May 1st is in 8 days. Yes. She asked what that meant and I might want to get on that. May 1st is only eight days away, right? I talked to her. I think it was like last Friday when she called. So maybe she just hasn't sent it back yet. Yeah, I will call her again. Anything else?

All right, so item J, solar project update. You want a cliff? We had contractor start. What's the time frame to set it up? October. Cool. Middle of June to October. That's been a very wellorganized project, but they have

Yeah. with all their reps and hours. So, they keep us really updated. Even if it's like a 10-minute meeting, they still do it. So, good. I think that's all on that one, too. All right. So item K, discuss city hall updates. I guess we're just um picking out colors of cabinets within the board. So hopefully we'll have those narrow down this week and then I'll let them know.

They wanted to start last week or this week. Well, they wanted to start one day after I was approved. Well, that's a good thing. That never happens. that's usually delayed. We don't even have anything picked out yet. So, um they're excited. Um I'm also trying to get estimates as well as maybe doing an additional three rooms our like Tererry's office, my office, and Kelly's office. We'll see how that comes in. So, then the whole will be Anything else? Good.

All right. So, last item here. Item L is discuss square bumpouts in the poll. All right. That might be uploaded more than once because I was Yeah, having trouble with that document. So, I might have given one some of these I messed up. Hopefully, one of these is the correct one. Jack, you want one of these? You want one of these? Yeah. I didn't bring my coffee. You want one, too? And some of this still No, you're fine. I was just going to pass them out for you.

Oh, here we go.

All right. So, um, these bumpouts up here, I mean, you're kind of a eyesore and a safety issue because of the bushes and stuff now. So, we spent some time with some different options and I was way off on some math because I don't know all that stuff like that with the square footage and the cubic square feet and stuff. All right. So like some options that we put out on a poll which we'll get to in a minute was um either rellandscaping half or all or take or some of them and then or seaming se cementing in parts or all of them and then in several of the comments there was um about like why removal wasn't on there. Um, when I met with Michael Fishner, right, today who actually set up all this landscaping originally and all of that, it was um, so that was like a $ 1.5 million project back 10ish years ago, right? 10.

Yeah, I think we still owe 400,000. 435,000. We still 435,000 on it. Um, and then they replaced the wood chips with rock at one point sometime years ago. Um, and then we found all the um the water irrigation stuff today too. Um, so none of this is cheap and it's all about same options. Cement and tearing the stuff out is about the same price. So, and as a rough estimate on there's three on every three sections on every corner. So, there's four corners in however you want to reverse that. They the bigger ones, which is most of them, it's about $10,000 either tear them out or to put semen in

each.

Each. So it's about 30,000 a corner estimator if you look at 120ish thousand to do all four corners for each corner. Um if um the city takes out all of the bushes and everything and the rock and then has the dirt work ready, you could cement it for 200,000. If this is just a rough estimate, if um you um have somebody come in and tear all that out, it's going to cost about 400,000ish, give or take a little bit. Um I looked at if we cement some of them in. I'm just going to summarize this up. You guys can I'm not going to order. There's I looked at some different options of buying like big flower pots that weigh like 600 lb that people can't move. Those r if you get 16 of the 36 inch diameter ones, it's about $11,500. Um, and that isn't on hand. I just got some of those today. And then another option was a 48 inch diameter one. Those are 18,000. These are 30. Those are 16. And then if you get 32 of either one of those options, you're looking at between 20 like 24 thou hold on. Sorry. You're looking at like $24,000. Um and those are the cheapest ones I could find like big potwise things if that's an option. Um a lot of the other ones were $50 $60,000. Um so if you look through this, which we can post this on some estimates that were supposed to be done today. Um so like if you cement. Um the whole thing you're looking at two to $400,000 depending on what the city does. And then the planters, if we got planters, 32 planters to go along with some benches we can get from a grant. Should be able to get from a grant. You're looking at anywhere from 223 to $423,000

to do that. And then you're like the only maintenance is going to be flowers and then watering those flowers. It should be easier to take care of theoretically. and then you're kind of done and the cement will be pretty much like a sidewalk and then we could lay down down down the road. We look at other options with stamping it and stuff. If you look at another option, if you um just cement the inside corners around the courthouse, that totals like 70. Then I don't know what we do with the outside. I mean, there's all these different options. You guys can look through that. But landscaping wise, um, just to do the four courthouse corners, um, there was a $70,000 estimate and a $40,000 estimate. Still waiting for some other ones. Um, and and that was just for then we come do landscaping. That was with public works of the city removing all those and like leveling that off. If you do the whole thing, you're looking at 80. You look at all the sections, you're looking at 80 to $140,000 for landscaping. that put you back in three, four, five years, we're back to where we are right now. That in my opinion, there's no way it's hard to take care of, right, Dragon? I mean, it's and there's originally there was groups taking care of it. Correct.

Supposed to supposed to. And um you can add That's called an epic fail. Yeah. Because it no group lasted very long.

So, um went over that. And if you tear out the bumpouts, there were different options that people and it if you tear um like in front of going, if you tear out the the two side ones, you're only gaining like three to four parking spaces, what I was told today. So, you're not gaining a lot. And then there might be some issues with the crosswalks. You can't have their K dot. Um and then the middle ones if you take out also going to cost more money because there's fire hydrants and all those and that's where all the main irrigation stuff is if you like remove all of those. It's just I don't know. It's And then we're also looking at redoing this landscaping up here, but those haven't came back yet either. Or we can um let some of us pick stuff out and then um the local boy scout troop can is offered to plant I guess that's still on offer. several months ago to plant all those and then the city would come in and do like the rock or whatever we decide to do. So that would save a lot of money at least up here. They could do that as a service project. So that's a lot into one swoop.

So if we tear out all the vegetation that's in each bumpout and then come back and landscape it with low growing plants. So people in a small car can see around the corner. Is that what you're talking about on the land? That's 80 to$140,000ish dollars. That's with them doing the rock and everything. And we could save money, I'm guessing, if we have them do the plants and then you guys get But then you're still back to the maintenance issue. Yeah. Go ahead, Jackie. You going to say something?

We could probably pull a lot of that out. I don't know. rip the irrigation out with it. We're going to put that back.

I mean, yeah, because they said he said today that most of that should still work theoretically if it's I mean it's all flex or not pecks and stuff. So, I mean, you're going to tear some of that out with those root balls of those great big evergreen things. That's going to tear that stuff up some of it. I mean, those things are huge usually and they've been there for however long, 10, 15, 10, 12, 14 years, right? Just leave catchers. Why not need something that won't catch everything that makes it'll take us two days to clean those out with three or four people right the way they are

right and they're all overgrown and I mean it's just I don't know if you cut big limbs off of those some they don't grow back they don't grow back I guess so too bad we don't have a garden club in town that want to take it over just thought I not making a decision. I'm just This is a bunch of info that ideally our original goal was to try to get as much done as possible before fall festival and some of this may have to be done in um phases phases um for financial reasons.

We'll be paying on that no longer exists. If we took the highest price one, we'd be right back where we were 10 years ago. And the first I think cutting out the bushes would be the first step at least. Well, I mean like if you're in any low car, you can't see on you have to get out there. Yeah. Really become a safety issue. Well, a lot of the corners you got to pull on out anyway because of the bank building or the old building when you're going west around the square. Yeah.

So, after we got the complaints, I drove both of them. And the buildings more in the way than the bushes are, but the bushes are in the way. Of course, I'm in a truck, but in a car, I could see where the bushes would be in the way, but you still got to pull out past the stop sign to see around the corner of the buildings. So, it's a two it's twofold problem. But you're not going to move the building, so we can move the bushes.

So, um I'll go this poll real quick and we can finish. So, we we gave people three options on an online poll. There was 141 people um that voted. So, the three options were cement all the bumpouts. Cement only the outer bumpouts and keep them as they are. There was 65, excuse me, 65 votes for the cement, all the bumpouts, 46.1%. Um, the cement, only the outer bumpouts, it was 34.8% or 49 votes. And then keep them as they are was 19.1% or 27 votes. If I remember right, in like a normal like city like off-year election, there's about 500 people that choke a vote that are over the age of 18. So,

if they were maintained and shorter, maybe there would have been more votes for keep them as they are and the bushes weren't just full of leaves and trash. It's not I was hoping we were hoping it'd be more. Yeah. And then we looked at like we some people were saying on there by the comments tear them out. It's it's $10,000 tear out one section is what Yeah. So, you're looking about the same as if you see a man at unless you have some other 000 at least you could have them up where they look nice. I'm just mumbling.

Oh, I think um I just heard something like Yeah. So, I mean there's really financially there's really no good option, but I feel like we need to do something in the near future. My issue with them is the trees you can't see around in the bushes when I come to work. It's too over too tall. Yeah. Especially when I drove that Prius, I couldn't see. Those are you're coming this way looking to the south. They're that tall. I think cutting them out would be a good first step. Just getting rid of that. I don't know though. I mean those tall trees and something to put in there that's this tall.

But when you take all and we spend a lot of money on water every year too which on irrigation. I I think last two summers. Yeah. Do what, Jackie? We have a backhoe with a grabber on it. We probably just pull them out or we can cut them off the ground level. I would pull them out. My personal I think we need to pull them out because you can't grow any. I mean, especially the evergreens. Yeah, I say rock garden. We could get them out. It's still like 20ish

in January of I want to say January. There's a a grant that we would have a very good shot of getting that would provide that same material that's being used at Winston Park that recycled rubber to around. I was told by several landscape people, I don't know about this because I only use rock that that stuff's horrible. It is. It just spreads everywhere. Like there's no way to keep it in unless I guess you could use that glue stuff. I don't know if they work on them or not. I don't know. That's what I was We were going to We were talking about doing that up here to save money, but then that guy's like there's going to that stuff will be everywhere. We will. I mean, I don't know.

I've used it and I haven't had that problem. We've got it at Winston right now. Yeah. I don't know. At the school pickup line, it was already everywhere. Always everywhere. But I think they maybe used too much. I don't know. I never asked anyone. Do what? They took it all out. Oh yeah, they all out. They got turf. Yeah, don't they? Yeah. Oh yeah, you're right. They do. They did recently turf all the bumpouts. I said rock garden. When I drove to Arizona, there was a lot of gardens and they were like patterned rock gardens. They were pretty. Right.

I'm just saying it was attractive looking. They'd have like checkerboard darker light. But yeah, I don't know what the Should we just remove the big bushes? I think we can. I think that's the first step. And then How about Do we remove everything and including the stuff up here because we wanted to I mean I do have some of that stuff for here that you didn't want to use. I've got a big bundle. Well, I'm not saying we don't use it. I'm just saying that's what that person told me. It's true. That big and about that tall. Can the tall skinny evergreen things be planted somewhere else? They can be moved and they're almost impossible to kill when you move them is what I was told. Pull those out fairly easy. Oh, and

then where are we going to plant them? If we do whatever we do, we need to try to keep on my yard. We need to try to keep the planter things made out of the brick because those were a um we need to try we need to try to keep those. Okay. I was told that from people for multiple reasons. Heather, you want some trees up here? They're better than this stuff over here. True. So, are we looking at like tearing it all out? What What are we thinking here or just I mean like talking about whoever are we making decisions because we're all looking at each other. Deciding. I'll tell you what my dec what what I want to do. Tell us. And Eric talked about it and came back with the recommendation. We just go do it.

Just just go do it. What do What do you think, Nick? Take them out. I agree with you. We're talking about the evergreens that are the problem. We can take those out and then go from there cuz those are going to be the hardest to get out anyway. Do you want all of them out? I would say take all of them out. Okay. Yeah. And then we'll come back with an ideas on what to do. Then we'll just see what it looks like after that too. Like after you take them out, you'll have Johanna's desert landscape. I thought it was cool. No water. But rock, they won't be tall. If you pay a landscape to come and do rock, it will cost like $40,000 to put new rock in all those. I thought that was crazy, but two of them have said that. You just get a dump truck, right? That's what I was thinking. Dump truck and then Yeah,

do what? Rip. Get that big rock then. Get a high aggregate. That stuff's hard to shovel, too. Yeah, we might want to just cut them off at some of them. We'll cut off of the ground level and put some u Yeah, because if you start ripping out the irrigation, that's going to be a big problem. I would think so. The ones that have water lines or electric lines, we'll cut them off. The ones we can pull, we'll pull. Okay, I think that's good. These ones up here. Oh, yeah. Those two department.

No, the ones around here. Well, all of them. We can look at that. I didn't know anything about it. Can we look at taking all everything up? Because the over there we were just going to do rock because those boxwoods, aren't they boxwoods? I think they're boxwood. They're bushes. They're bushes and they're scratching cars. I think it's crazy. It's just put some rock over there and it look clean, right? I mean, that's that's my opinion. Okay. So, stuff out. That's an idea. You're gonna cut them off, right? Or tear them out. Then all this stuff around here, you should be able to tear out, right? Yeah. They should tear out. Okay. There's electric. Then Cliff has to deal with that, huh?

That would be bad. Go from there. Sounds good. Maybe I'll get some more estimates. We just got

Let's Let's just call and locate. Better have some good insurance. Go through one of them, right? Oh, yeah. All right. So, now we'll go. Anybody else have anything they want to add? Nope. Okay. All right. All right. So, now we'll go to governing body comments. I just want to thank the city for all that they do. Jackie, Cliff, Johanna, Heather,

Also, I wanted to remind people that the citywide cleanups this weekend, the 24th and 25th. Bring your city bill with you. And I have been seeing a lot of people using the activity center. It's a good thing. That's all we got, Mr. Mayor. Okay. Lucas in here. Still got Lucas stole my thunder, but uh you got stuff in your yard, get it cleaned up, take it out there. They take pretty much everything, I think. Um, no paint. No paint. No tires. Or tires unless it's in a trash bag or something.

I Nobody's doing that. No, I didn't. We're gonna We're gonna meet your mic. Strike the We need one of those things just goes beep. We need to beep him out. And good luck to Jackie getting all that stuff and clip getting all that stuff done. All right, Darl.

Thanks, city employees um in all departments in the city hall and glad to hear that the uh solar field's coming along. Uh, sounds like it's going smoothly and we're actually going to have some sounds like we're going to have some pipe and people working on our new water lines finally somewhere around May 1st. So, that's great news and um just wish best of luck getting all that done is as in a quick manner and as we said the citywide dump is is it Friday and Saturday and where's that located

behind behind FMI? Yeah, behind FMI on the east side of right across the street as always track. Yeah, right across the railroad tracks from FMI. So, that's about all I have. Thank you. All right. Okay. So, we're working on several um avenues to improve the city. We just talked about the one with the square. Um we have some sidewalk projects. We have the water project start water distribution project starting May the 1st. And then we also have um road patches that will go in when the county can fit those in. The city's going to do some of those that will start this summer also. So, we're moving. It's just it was slow. It's the way it is, unfortunately. All right.

I just want to say I got a text from somebody that said they vote rock garden.

Oh dear. Mr. Mayor, I make a motion we adjourn. Second. All right. All in favor? I opposed. Okay. Motion passed.