Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Get started with some And now

I can now I can share my screen.

Okay. We're gonna get started with some preliminary matters. I am Andrea Boo, chair of finance, governance, and public safety committee. I will call the May, 03/31/2026 meeting to order. I'll ask my colleagues to introduce themselves.

Quentin Lucas, the mayor.

West Rogers, 2nd District. Crispin Ray, 4th District.

Darrell Curls, 5th District At Large.

And if staff will introduce themselves.

Bertha Ross, city clerk's office.

Tammy Queen, city manager's office.

William Choi, interim director

of finance.

Sam Miller, assistant city attorney.

Alright. We have a couple of items that we're gonna hold. First of all, item two six zero zero seven one. This relates to the Midtown Justice Campus. It is on held in committee. Mayor, what two weeks? Yep. We will hold that for two weeks unless there's objection from the committee. That's two six zero zero seven one under held in committee. Then we also have, item two six zero two eight six.

This is relating to, prevailing wage and the affordable housing set aside. A mayor, one week hold on that. There's no objection. Those are the only two items that, we will be holding. I am going to, as you can see, if you look around, this is not the ideal setting, but it's my understanding that, the 26th Floor is like an oven and is very uncomfortable.

So that's why we moved down to the 10th Floor. What we're going to do, we're going to take an item two six zero two two two, and then we're going to take the single serve alcohol ordinance. There are a lot of people that I think are interested in the single serve item. If if you are not on the agenda right now and would want to step out on the hall, I'm just asking for convenience, we will come and get you when your item is up just to make room for everyone that's interested in the item. And you will probably see a mass exodus after that item is taken up.

But we will do 260222, and then we will do 260250. Obviously, you are more than welcome to stay in and listen to both of those items, but I just wanted to give information. I will assure you I will come and get you for any subsequent items. So, Ms. Honeycutt, if you will proceed, 260222.

Yes, thank you so much. Ms. I'm sorry. Yes.

I apologize. They're saying there's no audio online.

This is just, I mean, can I just say something while they work on it, and I'll speak to the assistant city manager? I want to know more about, first of all, how a contractor nicks a water line that takes out three floors, four floors of a building. The audio doesn't work. I mean, all of these people deserve better. Everyone else deserves better.

We've put millions into the building, and we're kind of shrugging our shoulders when we have 80 people sitting in here in a chamber that's probably smaller than Smithville City Council. I mean, this is a major city, and we can't pull off a meeting. It's it is wholly unacceptable. And I may ask for a business session on how we actually have a screw up that helps half destroy a 90 year old building that then leads to where we are now. So, I mean, I hope we can get it figured out, but this is unfair to literally everybody who's here, and I'm sorry for that. But we'll just wait, I guess.

Apparently there's audio on YouTube. Is it do we know what audio we don't have?

Joe just came and sent me a message.

Okay.

It's from someone. I believe it's, Councilman Patterson. I mean, Councilwoman Patterson. She said that there was On Zoom? On Zoom.

So the story is probably that people need to watch on on YouTube rather than Zoom to get some audio.

Ask her if it works. Okay.

I'm worried that that's maybe the problem. Is that because I'm a promoter, it's taking the sound from my computer, perhaps. Maybe that's the issue with the sound. Why don't I log out and let's see if

this sounds

You just need to mute it from the computer.

I did. Okay. I did.

Okay. Can we confirm whether we have sound? Is there someone on Zoom that can confirm whether we have sound? Councilman Duncan, do we have sound? Can you hear us? Let me text him. I guess if he can't hear us, he can't tell me where he has sound.

I'm asking him.

He has no sound. Nope.

I think I should

log out.

On Zoom.

I'm gonna log out. Probably not. Let me know if the sound is back now. I have a feeling that's the issue.

Okay. Can you hear us now, Councilman Duncan? Nope. He can't hear Okay. Us Okay.

How you doing?

I'm alright. Good.

Do we have any Zoom experts in the room? I

hear our YouTube sound is good, though.

Yes. So that means it's in the room, right?

Yep.

So it's just a Zoom problem.

Progress.

All right.

You want to hold it?

I don't think it's I mean, we still are going to have to have the Zoom work.

Just want make sure.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

If I may, Madam Chair, it's always a good time for a debate on virtual meetings versus not. We used to just do it all in person?

We did.

Not over there.

Worked one hundred and forty five years.

Doesn't need to be on the the council chamber. Council.

Jonathan said he could hear on the TV. I don't know what that means.

Tells YouTube. But they can't hear on here.

If they can hear on TV and they can hear on

YouTube.

Okay. So it's coming from the sound booth.

This never happens in TI.

No, No, we were upstairs.

Ms. Oh, good to see you. Ms. She's taken care of that already.

Oh, here she goes. Ms. There she comes.

But you'd like to.

Ms. I would.

Oh, the TV in his office.

Can I just say something? No, I don't want to. It's an attendee.

Well, I mean, we don't have to have a Zoom.

We don't.

We can have a committee meeting without Zoom, I

guess. Correct.

Noticed a Zoom link?

Oh, that's a good question, Sam.

We probably noticed a Zoom link.

We noticed a Zoom meeting, didn't we?

Always on there.

Yeah, and it looks like we have 40 participants on Zoom.

While they look at that, can we do housekeeping again? Said we're going to do two two first, and,

two two two and two five zero. Two five zero second?

Yes. Thank you so much.

Now we could always just go with stump the lawyer and ask what the notice requirement really means. The notice suggests the requirement suggests that we can't have a meeting without providing sufficient notice. But nothing ever prohibits you from theoretically canceling a meeting without notice. And so to the extent you cancel the form of types of participation, does that run afoul?

I would think even simpler than that, having noticed the meeting for in person and given reasonable opportunity for that twenty four hour period ahead of time, you can still hold the in person meeting and you can cancel the online portion, so to speak.

That's a lot of people. That's That's 30 people.

That's four attendees. But what

it's worth, what I learned during the pandemic actually is that like anybody for background needs to be visible during at least our meetings if we are to vote or other such things, just a reminder to City Council. I don't know if we put the same on. And actually, don't see anyone's face on the Zoom. Could

that's to

Tim that if you're not visual or if you're not visible, then you're not in the meeting in its fullest sense under state law.

But that's only because we haven't promoted them

Haven't promoted for public comment.

Oh, but so, for example, Councilman Duncan's

But he

can't vote anyway in our committee.

I

mean, we actually got a good idea. Restart the Zoom? I did. And

I I can't I logged out in my

We could just go to 26 and send

me 26. I mean, if if we don't think we can do it, can just go, you know, move back to 26. Okay. How long will it take us to get set up on '26?

I will be down there and blow the elevator.

Is it? No, that may take time to. Does anybody so what's the problem? It's you're not getting the sound. Is it does sound come through Ms. Honeycutt's computer?

Yeah, whose computer? Is it is the room's computer?

It's It doesn't matter. Does sound come through the computer sitting next to For Zoom.

It's Zoom, period. It's not her.

But Zoom's not just broken. Who's like, is is the sound not being picked up from a computer here? Is there a device somewhere that, like the one next

All devices here should be muted except the mics, and the mics are the only thing going through the sound room, So it's from the sound room to Zoom.

So I'm 21.

Okay. Joel

here? I can text him.

I I messaged him, but I

know he's gotten away right

here.

Except Joe is not here today.

Joe is not here today. Shane is here.

Shane is here. I can Shane too. I think he knows. He was down here.

We'll just call him even.

Yeah.

You know? And we have, like, at least 10 city employees here. Somebody can find this, Shane or Joel or whomever.

Hey. Hey. So what's the issue with the sound output?

Okay.

I understand. So what is the issue with the sound input or output?

Better than I forgot. Yeah.

Didn't get it done last year, so you're gonna do it this year. So

it's an issue with something, a device down here on 10.

O'Neil, you're the one that convinced So me to come

why don't you come down here and maybe we can troubleshoot. Is Joel there or maybe

can go start setting up.

Is Miko there?

Is there somebody else That would

be great. Would love that. Thank you so much. Bye bye. Good Monica. Ahead. We have someone up in 21 who will be up there monitoring that, and then another person will come down and try to fix the problem down here.

Do we have an ETA? I mean, do we need to go

He doesn't I think we should probably just go, honestly. Twenty six? Yeah, just because he's going to have to troubleshoot whatever the problem is, and I don't want to waste anyone's time. We don't know. That's the problem. We don't know what device it is, and so he's gonna have to come down and

figure out

what the output problem is.

The 26

Floor It's about 82 degrees up there. So hard

to hear with the HVAC. Like, So

our building doesn't work. Our computers don't work. And the people I mean, it's

I I think it's about to get Can hear on my now? My now?

Oh, is it is?

Yes. We can hear through Zoom. You can hear now?

You can hear now?

Yes. With your microphone. With my microphone.

With my

microphone. Okay. So everybody else is on Zoom because it's it's gonna Right

now, I turned the sound off on the speaker.

Still, think there's an echo though.

There's something happening on Zoom happening on Zoom.

Okay. Jonathan, can you hear us now?

When you unmute it. If you turn this, you sound because remember I said it was one computer.

I'm not I

wonder if you mute. Chamber. So if you mute that and unmute yourself.

Nope. Nope. He can't hear us.

Can mute the council chamber?

Oh, you already just turned that. That's what we're doing now.

That's what

we're doing now.

Somebody else is picking that up.

I don't know.

If you mute

it at the very bottom one. I don't think it's What is what is that attendee? It's Can you remove it? Or remove from the call? Or

Can I help?

And then under yourself.

I

don't know what that is.

It's something. It's another microphone or something.

Can you

hear me? Can you

hear me? So

if I unmute, they can hear me, but it's

Decrease the echo.

But I don't know what might.

Finance. Okay, thank you. You can just change on my calendar and I'm near a microphone. So I'll call you back, but I just wanna let you know that's where I am. Okay. Thank you. Bye bye.

Recording in progress.

Hearing all these indentures.

I know. Like we are having a roommate

Can we hear now? Can some miss Monica, can you hear?

I'm muted and the

volume Whatever is the audio mute thing is.

Can you hear me?

Can you

hear me? Can you hear me?

Madam Clerk, there are a great many brilliant people, so I hate to throw out ideas. Can we just unmute the audio indicator in the bottom left corner of your screen? On the bottom left corner, which typically would allow us to because you are the Monica's orders. I think It it sounds bad, but I think that's Zoom audio. We're following the rule with it. Figure out our own way to kill that sound while Well, let

me try. Hold on one second. I don't know. You may have some sense to that. Let me see if this does this.

Can you hear me?

Can you

hear me?

Do you hear me? Do you hear me?

Controlling the speaker.

I know. It's 21.

Can we just mute that?

Can you mute 21? Can 21 mute? Can we mute 21?

Oh,

hey, Shane.

So that's good. So we've half solved it. So they can hear us.

Can you hear us now online?

Marilyn Sanders writes, you have sound.

Well that's good.

That was a minute ago I think.

That was one. That was one. Oh that was before that.

Okay. So we have sound. We could mute ourselves because somebody could then get also get the sound from YouTube. If someone wants to participate, we can unmute this room when they need to participate via Zoom. Right? So we're off to the races, kind of. Sound is available on a computer or a phone through a different means. If you want to participate later, you can raise your hand, and we can unmute, and we can let the whole system go. I feel like we're good

to go.

So do have we communicated that to the people on Zoom so they

know what to do?

Send a message on the Zoom to say, if you want to speak, then you need or you need to get your audio Female from

YouTube, but if you want to speak Female Put it in those in chat? Female Great. Female Male Are they still going to have that

Yes. When they speak, probably.

When they speak, we'd have it. Well, that's great. Okay.

Is there a link for YouTube

Yeah, where they could set they could put your question in there.

You can go to the clerk's website and find the channel two link.

If the clerk can put that in the link.

Yeah, sure.

That's what I was asking. I just need to know the link.

If they're sitting on their phone or computer, it's really just YouTube, Kansas City, government. But I can hop on the Zoom and

Yeah, I can probably do that right now. Okay.

All turn your camera off. The camera is showing down

here. Okay, give

me two seconds.

So we will still

have that echo, unfortunately. Don't know when I'm hitting the camera. Because

I think they have to kill all of our mics to not have that echo.

They're gonna record from upstairs with audio. Audio.

Okay. Can we proceed? Alright.

May I share my screen?

Next time, we're gonna stay up on 26 where it's hot.

Alright. Sheree? Okay. Hi. I'm Sheree Honeycutt, press secretary and city spokeswoman for the city, and I'm here to discuss match ready k c. The mayor put forward a resolution, for the special use permit or the the event permit. And I wanted to show you instead of giving you a presentation, I wanted to show you what's live on our website right now. Let me know. Can you see the website as it is? Great. So this is on our hero page. It's on our home page. So you'll click there. And this is our match ready website. It is a living document.

So any feedback you have, please let me know and changes can be made as needed. But right now, this is where it is. We wanted to make sure that people know that we're open for business, and that is the number one thing you see after the brand. And it goes into a lot of the things that were asked for in the resolution. So when you click on that, you go to the page and it gives you information about planning your event, the FAQ page, city permitting contracts by department, and also a link to Casey Event Hub, which has a calendar for events that have permits.

So then it also has information about the special zone or the special time period for, the World Cup. And so let me minimize this. Move that down so you can see a little better. So we have this from June 1 to July 12. And then we have a list of who's affected. You know, people need to know, is this me? Am I the one part of this? So we have a list of, you know, general things that people would file a permit for. And then we go into a little bit about what is restricted and we have that listed there. We also have a little more information that they need to know about what kinds of things need that special permit.

We also have a list of exceptions. So for emergency infrastructure repairs, public safety related construction, and events coordinated with the city's World Cup host committee. So then there's applying for a permit within the special zone. So this talks about the things that you'll need if you want to get a permit. These are the general, documents that are asked for for specifics.

Now when they go to Casey Event Hub and they file that permit it will walk them through that process as well. This is just information to help them be prepared before they log in, and just let them know as they're planning what their needs are. But we anticipate any extremely large event would have already filed for their permit, just be because of planning nature. Then we have some additional requirements, and we talk a little bit about the fees, and then what is a designated zone. So we've defined some things.

Now this is something, that I was very excited that we did. Let me see if I can zoom out. So you can see here we have a lit we have a map, and the council districts, and the special permit zone is here. And so people can look at this map and figure out, am I in that special permit zone? Now before you apply, keep these things in mind. We have some helpful definitions that was requested of us in the resolution to define certain things. And then, FAQs. So we have that FAQ. We also have questions at the bottom of the page, and then it just reiterates that we're open for business. I will also go to Casey Event Hub.

So I know there were some questions the last time I presented about an event in Waldo, which we were able to reconcile, and then we were also able to change some of the language on the website that, was was, causing confusion. So if you haven't seen it, this is caseyeventhub.org. It is a website where people can, apply for a permit for their event. We have on this website a timeline of how you go from logging in to getting your final status. It does go into a system where they fill out and it walks them through that. And, there's an FAQ on here. So we have this. You drop down. This is how do you apply, which is great. But then also if you go I can't see because of this.

To the about page, there's a whole FAQ that is very long and very, you know, detailed, but you can also search at the top of it. So if you have a keyword like parade, it will narrow down the questions that would be relevant to you based on those. And just to show you the calendar really quick because I don't wanna take up a lot of your time, You go to the calendar, and this shows all of the events that people have applied for a permit through us. So you can see the Saint Patrick's Day parade is on there. And then as you go towards the World Cup, so let's go to June.

You can see that there is a lot more events. There's a lot more going on. So those are the basics of both the open for business site and, the Casey event hub, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Alright. I'm not sure we read this resolution.

Madam Clerk, did we I don't think we did.

So go ahead and read it. I apologize. No. That's okay. Go ahead and read it.

071.

Okay. Ordinance 260222. Ordinance 222. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Is that the correct one? Okay. Directing the city manager to develop and implement and implement a public communication plan, including the publication of a frequently asked questions document or similar communication process to educate residents, businesses, and other stakeholders about the special permit area policy and declaring the that the policy will be in place from June 1 through 07/02/2026. Okay.

Are there any questions from the committee? Is there any public testimony for resolution 260,222?

There's no public testimony on record currently.

Madam chair, I move that item number 260,222 be reported to full council with the recommendation of advance and do pass. Second.

It's been moved and seconded that resolution 260,222 be reported out of committee with the recommendation of advance and do pass. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. The motion passes. We'll hear it on Thursday.

Thank you. Thank you.

Resolution two six zero two five zero. Amending chapter 10 code of ordinance alcohol beverages enacting a new section 10 through 10 dash two sixteen and ten dash three three six for the purpose of designating certain geographic areas within the city experiencing acute dementia detrimental public safety and public health impacts from the retail packaging sale of alcohol as a retail alcohol impact areas and placing certain certain conditions on retail package licenses within such designated areas.

I think this is an ordinance. I believe you said a resolution, but just for clarification. An ordinance.

This is the ordinance? Yes. This is ordinance.

Okay. Okay. Alright. Go ahead.

Good morning, madam chair, honorable mayor, committee members. My name is Lace Klein, and I am the assistant city manager for public safety, and I'm joined by my colleague, Joe Williamson, director of the multidisciplinary public safety task force. On March 3, we presented on ordinance number two six zero two five zero, which would amend chapter 10 by creating new sections that would create a retail alcohol impact area in designated areas. Following that committee presentation, we provided a supplemental memorandum on March 12 answering questions that arose during and following the March 3 committee.

Alright.

Are

there Councilwoman Robinson, did you want to add something? Go ahead.

Thank you, madam chair, and to the committee. I'm Melissa Robinson, 3rd District. I I'm asking our colleagues to please vote yes on this today. I wanna thank the mayor for his leadership. We, as council members, we call on our staff day in and day out to address issues related to crime and violence, things that are happening in our community, and we ask our staff to respond and try to figure out structural ways to address these issues.

This is one structural way to address the issues that we call time and time again. When we have our community meetings, one of the the first things that people talk about is crime and violence. And we asked mister Williamson. He's gone on hundreds of calls to hot spots in our community, and we've asked him what can we do to address this from a structural issue. This is not an ordinance that, you know, I came up with, and I'm not gonna speak for the mayor, but to my understanding, this came, specifically from staff to say this is one thing that we have to do to go upstream to address the issues.

I cannot walk in the community without seeing these airplane bottles on the ground. There are a lot of issues as it relates to crime and violence. This is one thing that we can do amongst other things. This is one tool. And so we encourage you to please vote yes so that we can address the issues that are happening in our community. And when we call our staff, that they know that we're going to listen to them, and we're going to follow their professional expertise as we move forward. Thank you.

You know, may just add this, and I look forward to robust discussion perhaps from my colleagues, or maybe you want to say something or maybe you don't, but, a lot of us have lived with this issue for the entirety of our lives, the entirety of our lives. The streets that I grew up on and around who had a great deal of liquor stores, and we're not here to talk about that now, but the but the litter that relates to it, the nuisance issues that relate to it. And I'm frankly kind of frustrated that the same thing that eight year old Quentin was walking by, much older version of me, is seeing new generations address and deal with it. And by the way, the people ask and have asked why not invest in other things? We just increased the Kansas City Police Department budget by a good deal this year.

We continue to, I think, work in a number of different areas. There is no goal that this is the only solution to how we address some of these issues, but anybody who is being real about how these things work, recognize that there's a problem. And I don't always take things, you know, off social media, but a man wrote on my page today, he said, do you know how many liquor stores there are within a mile and a half of where there was a recent press conference? Twenty seventh in Brooklyn, twenty seventh in Prospect, thirty fifth in Prospect, Tom Stew, thirty first in Woodland, Lynnwood and Harrison, thirty fifth thirty fourth in Truce, 31st in Cleveland, Truman in Brooklyn, Truman in Prospect, eighteenth in Benton. This comes from a community that is asking for assistance and help, and I'll throw myself under the bus even more.

Grew up in the 3rd District, spent most of my life in the 3rd District. Don't live there now. I live actually, frankly, just off Lynnwood, just a little bit to the west, where my community is so protected, we're zoned so you can't even really have commercial development, let alone a liquor establishment or something of that sort. Many other communities in this city have those same very types of protections. I think this is some communities in our city just saying, we want to do this small little thing to make it so that we can not see the bottles everywhere, so that we cannot see the ongoing nuisance issues, so we cannot see some of the criminal calls that come from it.

And for those of us, and miss Klein, I know has been one of them, councilwoman Robinson and others who show up to things after things happen weekend after weekend and week after week when KCPD says, Yeah, we've been called dozens of times here, sometimes 70 times, sometimes 100. When others of our staff say, Yeah, we've been called a lot, we come back, we do this, we have that back and forth. That's where it comes from. And I just ask us, as we consider this, allow communities that have shared what their concerns are to try to come up with a solution for. This is communities that are trying to say, Look, we don't wanna have to live like this and with this every day so that another forty years from now, you got a new city council sitting around and wondering why we have the same concern.

And as a sponsor, just one more thing. Just to add what the mayor is saying, in in terms of this is the conditions we live with. I was just at 31st And Prospect for an extended amount of time just yesterday, and it's a place where it's not okay. There were 30 people on the bus stop not riding the bus, doing all kinds of sorts of things. And what you're saying when you vote no, if you vote no, you're saying it's okay.

You're telling my 17 year old son who goes to the library to do his work, the blooper, it's okay for him to to, have to deal with those conditions in the community. It's okay for you to not be able to take a walk without having all of these bottles and liquors liquor along the streets. It's okay for us to continue to live in this distress. And so I have a lot of respect for each of you, friendly with everyone, and when I look at you in the face, I want to be able to see you say back to me that this is not okay. The conditions that you're living in, your children are having to live in, is not okay.

And again, this is a referee peer journal researched approach that other cities are taking that have said when this is not okay, this is one step we're going to take. So please consider our young people. Would you, when you leave here today, especially if you vote no, if you leave here today, go by Blueford Library and see if you would allow your children to go and participate in the many services. And it's still one of the highest ranked used libraries in the city, and our kids are having to go through this every day, and it's not okay.

Yes. Yes.

So please vote yes. I

don't disagree. The the issue that I have is this is in multiple areas of the city. It covers, you know, it covers what I calculated almost 34 square miles of primarily commercial areas, and the state of Washington, which is highly cited in your research, has very specific criteria on how these alcohol impact areas. And Mr. Mayor, you're talking about the information that's coming from the community.

I don't disagree. The number of liquor stores that you're talking about goes to density. And so what I'm saying, I'm not saying no, I'm saying how do we tailor this in a way that addresses the issues you're talking about? But you know, this covers areas in the 5th District, in the 6th District, in the 4th District. So I'm not saying no to the 3rd District, I'm just saying how does this impact all of us?

And so is there a way that we could tailor this in a way that addresses exactly what you and the mayor are talking about? How does it best fit? But, you know, the way that the the state of Washington set this up is very specific. It doesn't say, let's look at all the calls for service that are not alcohol related. I mean, we have not tied alcohol related calls to all of these impact areas, and I'm not talking about those in the 3rd District, or even parts of the 5th District, I'm talking about the ones in the 6th District.

So how do we make sure that our ordinance is narrowly tailored to address these specific concerns that you and the mayor are talking about? Because I do not dispute that. What I'm talking about is how does it impact the other areas of the city as well, because I don't think that we can just paint a broad brush over everywhere that this ordinance impacts.

I I will just say this to start and then I'll move to a position of perhaps where do we get some agreement. I actually, I greatly respect, I know you do too, the work that Mr. Williamson, Ms. Klein and others did. The way they got to the areas relates to incidents in all of the areas.

So you're right, it's not just a 3rd District issue. I think if you did a ride along with a KCPD officer, as I've done, many of you have done, you know intersections and corners where there are issues a lot. And a lot of the way that this was built out was saying where do you look to a steady number of calls for service, right, plus where you had complaints, 311 and other services, and frankly where you're seeing a sufficient density to create that issue long term. And I think that's where we came to it. I'm elected at large, have been the whole time I've been here, so I care about it in every space.

Think Councilwoman Robinson makes a very good point about one area of acute concern. We have heard about it and indeed here in the 4th District not far from us, we've heard from downtown council which submitted a letter in support of this ordinance, by the way, about this very issue and certain establishments that exist just in this area too. And so I'm content with the tailoring. I understand others may not. And what I would welcome from anyone is an effort to tailor it more narrowly.

I don't know if I would love just tailoring it so that it's, you know, just the 3rd District. I think there are these issues in other districts. I think there are these issues in different parts of our city. And I think frankly what staff has been asked to do was not just a prospect only type thing. Instead it was a let's look at the data, let's look all at all the different steps because what this ordinance is not as you know is mayor woke up one day, called councilman Robinson and we said we're just gonna get done with problems with thirty fifth and prospect.

Although people pushed us to do that a year ago, two years, I mean it's regular. What we tried to do, and I think what staff has done over the last six months, is an approach that said, all right, let's look other cities, let's look at ways that we have density that adds to calls, that frankly where we see that we can come up with a formula for how we enact it. I think that's how we have the ordinance before us today.

All of the other cities, or at least the state of Washington, ties the calls of service to single service alcohol use, the alcohol use. The information that was presented was all the calls for service. And so, I don't think that you can make that nexus. Secondly, I'm not saying just tie it to the prospect area, I'm just saying I would like to see more information. And secondly, I think some of the, you know, there was a group that wasn't communication with on how that affects.

I think that was stated last time, not until it got to ABAG. And so, you know, I think there's more work that can be done. We could sit right here and, you know, work out a solution, and I'm happy to do that. Frankly, I've been focused on the budget the last few weeks, but we could sit here and probably figure out a way to do this right now. Happy to do that. Think that there's evidence that it could be done. I think there is a path in some of the data that was shown, but I don't think that showing all calls for service for every crime that's committed in these areas is the nexus that's needed.

So I agree with the chairwoman for sure. I just add, you know, I own a business in Dog Patch, so I drive driven road at least once or twice a day from City Hall all the way through the 3rd District. My cup of coffee this morning came from the 3rd District, and I and I get I'm completely on board with addressing the issues that that are being presented here, and I think that there's a lot of ways to I'm concerned about the the current ordinance as drafted, but not not the big picture of coming up with a solution we can all live with. And the second piece being a northlander, if you ever go to a corner at any major intersection in the Northland and pick it up and and help the people clean up the trash, These liquor bottles are everywhere, and it's gross, and it's a public safety issue. It's a public health issue.

It's not just isolated to these side of our cities. So, anyway, I I I share your concerns, I also share a commitment to try to come up with an ordinance that would make us a better, cleaner, safer city.

I mean, if I may, I would say this on behalf of my cosponsor and I. We introduced an ordinance. I forget when it was introduced. You know, the way we do that discussion is to introduce an ordinance. And from what I understand, there is no amendment. That's something I do all the time, and you're used to me on this committee, coming up with amended language or other ideas. We have done that. We have heard from, and I'm sorry for not pulling up, all the neighborhoods that send us support letters, because you're right, I see Hyde Park here too. I'll get all the others. I know Santa Fe, downtown council, and, you know, I just, we have presented that sort of thing.

I will say just on the research point too, Ms. Klein has done lots of work. I've almost thought the emails are too long in terms of what are all the steps, what are all the what's all the research. There can be a disagreement in terms of what the merits of it are, but frankly I will say in our multidisciplinary public safety task force, just back on that point briefly, we do look at total calls for service as it relates to any number of issues, bar activity and others, because this is where I want us to get to our common sense, right? Don't I'm not getting all y'all's business, but how many of us live right next door to a liquor store?

I don't. I I I didn't want to. I don't live next door to a club. Why? Not because I don't like music or people or what have you, but because you get all of these different secondary effects and issues.

Litter, people who were there all day, crime, all those sorts of issues. And so I think it is just common sense for us, frankly, to say, alright, how can a neighborhood and neighborhoods that are looking to try to address issues that are concerns for the kid walking to the library somebody trying to get somewhere and not looking to step over bottles or walk by a dozen, two dozen, three dozen people on a nice day sitting next to the same shop where the issues always happen. I think that's where we're coming from and that's where you've seen all this abundance of work. I'm not saying that we can always be more particular, but I think that's where this basis has come from, and I think frankly in terms of the ordinances we've brought of late, this is some of the best work I've seen and I commend Ms. Klein for.

I think she did an excellent job and it's almost law journal worthy of the footnotes. But I'm just saying that I have approached you and suggested several options to amend this ordinance and I have not gotten a response. So I think I have and frankly I don't know that, you know, I get myself in the middle of a lot of other people's ordinances to try to make things better. And, you know, I I did try to suggest ways to make this better, and I wanna make it better because I think there is room. I mean, cities have tried to do this, and I'm certainly willing to try to do this.

I just think that in doing so, let's follow the lead of other cities. I have made suggestions in my email that I I mean, I'm probably responsible for a lot of these questions that I ask of Ms. Klein, to say, have we thought of this option? Have we looked at these others? Because I looked at the journal articles, the other things to say, is there an opportunity to make this different?

Because frankly, I didn't even know I found out about this ordinance being introduced from people outside of the city because I didn't know anything about it, you know, and as chair of the committee, is going to. So, you know, I'm playing a little bit of a catch up because other people, you know, knew about it before. And so, you know, I'm happy to help, or I'm happy to, you know, I'm happy to vote on it right now. Councilman Gurles.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think we all can agree that we have a problem. And I'm not sure if we are here to create policy, and we try to create the best policy as possible. And I'm not sure the way that this is written that this is the best policy. Granted, you know, we know that the liquor industry has always targeted minority communities.

Communities. That's a fact. And and I say that to to address the liquor industry because there's data that shows that they have targeted minority communities. That's another story within itself. How do we address the issues that we are wanting to address, whether it's trash and litter in the streets, whether it's people loitering at gas stations or liquor stores, I I I would suggest to you that it it's a bigger problem than just banning miniature bottles of liquor.

We have a problem in our community, the 3rd And The 5th, and I'll get on my soapbox again, and that is is that we do not invest enough money in the 3rd And The 5th District to create opportunities to make our our, areas safe or clean or to give people, like Jesse Jackson used to say, keep hope alive. We don't give them that opportunity to keep hope alive because we are not investing in the 3rd And the 5th District. That's why we don't have anything but liquor stores and gas stations. When I first came on to this council, one of my first ordinance was to address liquor stores and the proliferation of it of liquor stores. So I'm not sitting here saying that I support liquor stores or that I support the issues that we have because I have already gone on record trying to address it from a ordinance standpoint and trying to prevent the proliferation of liquor stores in our community.

Yes. We need to address it in a much better way, and yes, we need to look at how we can make this better for our community so that your son doesn't walk by Buford. My grandchildren don't walk by these areas and see this. But is this the best possible way of doing this? I think that there's room for collaboration.

I'm all about working with compromises, trying to come up with a solution that helps put the best policy forward that that helps everybody. I know that the liquor store community and and, some of the, other area other stores have said that they'd be willing to work with us. I think they put a plan together. I don't know if anybody's ever looked at this plan. I kinda looked at it.

It seems somewhat reasonable to me. It's not out of the stretch or out of the realm, but none of that is included in this. We talk about how we can make it better. How about enforcement? We're not doing anything to make enforcement in these areas. You know? We're not doing anything to provide mental health services for some of these people because some of these people have mental health issues, and we need to address that. We need to address housing. We're working on that as well. But I just think that trying to ban small bottles of liquor is gonna solve the problem. I just don't think that's it.

Councilman Duncan then will do councilman.

Thank you. Thank you, madam chair. Can we not? Thank you, madam chair. I tend to I tend to agree with portions of councilman Kearl's.

However, I see this ordinance as an extension of the moratorium that councilman Kearls put forward. The the we can't remove the liquor stores that are already over proliferated in in in poor working class neighborhoods, mostly concentrated in the 3rd And The 5th District, but we can reduce their harm. And while I agree that I don't think that this ordinance is perfect, that this is the perfect policy, where I don't want us to be is suffering from what I often see us do is paralysis through analysis of just simply saying, well, it's not quite there yet. How long do we how long do we have to wait? And so, you know, I don't have a vote on this committee, but I do hope that we move something forward because I think it's important that we do.

Thank you, miss Madam Chair. So first, when you talked about the Washington, D. C. Ordinance or the State. Washington state.

You talked about, I guess, 30 ours is 30 something plus square miles, which is about 10% of our overall square miles. So we do have to keep that in mind that this is very it is narrowly tailored when you look at three eighteen square miles. And we're talking about around 10% of that. The other issue is the conditions that are existing in the 3rd District and other places are not just it is a huge problem. But how do you take care of a huge problem?

You take it one bite at a time. And this is one solution amongst other solutions to address the issues that we're facing. And so I also want you to understand the connection to economic development. Many of us on this committee, or many of you on the committee, talk about small business and economic development and seeing cranes in the air, where if you have these conditions in the community, the businesses are not going to come. We talk about a quit trip.

We don't have a quit trip in the 3rd District. Wish we did, but we don't. And so how do we make sure that we're, again, addressing these policies piece by piece to make sure that we have a greater whole? And so I would encourage you all to please vote for this. And really do take issues with and again this is personal for me because I have two young sons. But when we talk about things like keeping hope alive, well these are real people. Driving by. They're living in these communities. We are living in these communities. And when we're having to deal with these conditions, it's very hard to keep hope alive.

And when we talk about enforcement, the neighborhoods have fought and fought and fought every time we get a letter to address a new establishment opening up. It's the onus of the neighbors to have to do that fight. And even further, this body, last term, we even voted on not allowing churches and schools to have a veto. Like we're continually putting these things in place to say we're open for business and allowing these proliferation of services and retail sales in our community. So yes, no, it's not going to address the whole full problem.

It's one piece of the problem. And in the city manager's evaluation and what we asked him to do, we asked him to come to come with policies. And I know that miss Klein worked for the mayor when she introduced this, but this is a policy by staff that they came up with so that we can again address some of the root causes of the issue. But please let's not say that, oh, you know, this isn't perfect and, you know, we need another solution. There is no silver bullet.

This is one component of it. I would love for you, mister chair, madam chair, to go on record with some of the changes. I don't know what those changes are. We are certainly open to making changes and compromising. The industry, the retail industry did come together. They did come up with a plan. I did read it all. It's great. It's wonderful. They are poised and ready to to help us with this, and we welcome that.

But the policy comes first, and an MOU is not enforceable. And so we need the policy to help us first and to guide this, and we will continue to work with the industry, and we will continue to work together to address this.

First of all, would just wanna comment the the These areas being 10% of the city as a whole, I think you have to take out residential areas.

There are a lot of liquor stores in the residential area in the 3rd District. We can't go to a corner. We have to go from our house to get to our school, and in our community, they're on the corners. They're not just in

Well, shouldn't be in residential areas. You can't have a liquor store in a residential area.

Well, what I'm what I'm sharing with you, there there are liquor stores across from people's houses. Okay. That's what I'm telling you. Okay. Well,

And that's part of the problem, where the stores are located, the density. I that's something we really and I know Councilman Kearls tried to focus on that. I know the mayor wants to say some things, and I will provide and I I I wanna ask assistant city manager Klein some questions because I can I can offer some things that I had asked her and some suggestions on maybe how I would suggest some changes, but I know the mayor wanted to say some things?

I mean, I'm tempted to let you go first. I will note one that we noted though was amending the geographic boundaries. I understand rationale behind that, although I do see frankly the work that staff did, and the consistency of issues in some areas as a real thing. And as I'm going through more of our letters, one of the letters, good half six district organization, the Plaza Westport Neighborhood Association, and frankly, their letter is on point in noting they have concerns and see and support this ordinance by noting a reduction of immediate public consumption for those who speak to what difference does the amount make, reduction in loitering and alcohol related crime. Again, this is coming from six district groups, 4th District groups, 3rd District ones.

The litter and the bottles issue is one that they, noted. And frankly, a lot of these organizations going back to downtown council actually referenced councilman curls the economic development impact. Say what we will about economic development, but councilwoman Robinson's a 100% right. Right? You can spend, and God bless us, we've done that, you can spend $30,000,000 on a corner, but if you still got crime, loitering, littering, every challenge known to man, that is your thirty first and Prospect story.

So it's not LACA. We spent some money on that when I was on city council when we voted to spend 17,000,000 and we spent more over the years, right? This is why this has become something that isn't just as simple as, right, we can put money somewhere and we avoid the concern. And so I I I I would just want us to look to that. The other thing that I want us to look at, and I hate to be redundant, but, yeah, let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And I'm gonna stand up actually for city council because it's easy to bash ourselves sometimes. We spend a lot of money on our enforcement agency, the Kansas City Police Department. We increase funding on that. We call them every time after there's an incident. We do a lot of work with that.

We are building a detention center. Right? We spend money on regulated industries and others. We actually gave land to the state of Missouri to build a mental health institution. We are doing a lot.

We spent $75,000,000 on a housing trust fund to build thousands of units, including on Prospect, including in the 3rd and the 5th District. So, I mean, I've been here for ten and a half years, we haven't solved it, which is partially probably why you're seeing this ordinance today, but we do a lot, and we will continue to do a lot. And yes, there are problems that exist, but to just, let's say, suggest that we can't do one thing because there are a bunch of other things that remain issues, I don't think looks to how we can realistically set policy because we have concerns, acute concerns now in the communities. And I ask you this, and maybe it's because I get called to account. When we are sitting at 35th And Prospect on July 10 and everybody's telling us to do something, are we just gonna say, hey.

Alright. We'll we'll show up. We'll do another press conference. We're gonna tell you, alright. We we gonna do this. Make the police chief show up, make the mayor, the council members, the prosecutor, then we're come back and just do it again. I've been mayor of this city for almost seven years now. That's what we have done seven times. I lived at 19th And Paseo for years. I did that for years and years there too until we start addressing what are some of the issues that cause the repeat problems, then we might as well just tell the people we ain't really going to do nothing, whatever, just you know, best of luck.

And when they all move out, as we've had declining populations in these communities for years, and everybody who talks to me, they don't bring up to say, oh, y'all didn't build something new. They bring up there was a shooting right there. I'm tired of people shouting at me. I'm tired of my kids being around this. That's why I left the 3rd District, I'll be quite honest. I didn't want to. I don't like living. I looked at a nice house right off of 31st And Troost, but there was a store right bottom. I'm like, yeah, I've been around too long to know what's going to come up with that. That's the sort of thing that we keep seeing and I think we keep forcing the community into if we don't make changes.

And my two sons are just as important as his two sons. Amen. So just FYI. So these are these are policy positions we're taking. Just like who is important to us? That's we have to take those issues up and be real about it.

So mayor, why would the grocery store that we put $17,000,000 $20,000,000 in being exempted from this.

And I'll I'll ask miss Klein, our our

draft The grocery store okay. I'm sorry. The grocery store has elected not to do it themselves. They they're not

But why would be why would we be why would we exempt it? So any future grocery store, we would allow them.

I think that the go ahead and but they

Yes. So, madam chair, the grocery store exemption was to, an attempt to create the balance. Grocery stores typically have a different, layout, and square footage compared to, smaller stores like convenience stores, gas stations, or pure liquor stores. And so that changes, one, how easily accessible products are. People typically go in a grocery stores to buy other products. And when we also looked at where do we typically see issues in the

But with the grocery store that the city puts the Linwood grocery store is exempt from this ordinance?

Yes. It is exempt from the ordinance as written.

All grocery stores

are.

Not just this one.

I know. But the I mean, he's he's talking about the grocery store that we put $17,000,000 in, but we're gonna exempt it.

They're not going to sell it. It's in their they're they're not selling these. They it's in their I don't know if it's in their their agreement their written agreement, but they have elected not to sell these items.

Alright. But still any grocery store is exempt from doing this?

I'm happy to talk about if you wanna expand the limits. I think that what Ms. Klein was trying to do to the many people from different industries is after the ABAC meeting suggesting to them, alright, we're we're not trying to do blanket prohibition. We're trying to be acute and narrowly tailored in the concern. To councilman Rogers point into yours. Look. I'm a just be honest with y'all. Yeah. If we didn't want this anywhere in the city, I'm down with it. Because I live close enough to other jurisdictions where there are almost none of these same concerns.

And, yeah, you can get to Prairie Village, Raytown, Independence, all these other spots all around Kansas City. But because people told me we need to make sure that you can still get it here, alright. That that's one thing. And I think the direction that she had after ABAC, after other steps was how do we nail more narrowly tailor? How do we not hit every product? How do we do all those sorts of things? I mean, it's you you take the bitter with the sweet. If we want us to be narrowly tailored, then, yeah, people get cut out. If you want us to take a broad stroke, we can sledgehammer it and do even more, but I think at the core of it, it is let's try to actually make sure we address the concern, even if there are other concerns that may be elsewhere in the community.

Councilman Gearls.

Thank you, madam chair. Just a question to the sponsors, and and I I think that the mayor mentioned that, nobody had submitted any committee subs or amendments to this. Would you be amicable to maybe looking at some type of agreement that we could come up with that everybody could kinda look at? And I don't know, to the chair's point, I guess we could sit here today and do that, but, I mean, that may take some time, or would it be an opportunity for us, and I know that we've held it already for an extended period of time, but maybe hold it again, have those conversations about looking at what we could come up with as a committee sub that might be amicable to everybody. Would that be something that the sponsors would entertain?

I'm always willing to entertain more discussion, but if it's gonna if it's productive. The to the extent that I've had discussion with the council with the chairwoman, it was, would we exempt other geographic areas? I'm the mayor for the Prospect Corridor in the Northeast and downtown in here, and so I'd still like an ordinance does that. I'm also the mayor for Midtown too and the Northern part of the 6th District and all of those steps. So I don't necessarily want to exempt them when I've heard from a lot of neighborhood associations that say they have issues. That being said, if that's the amendment that we're interested in

May I ask a question? Of there there are five alcohol impact areas, correct? Of those five alcohol impact areas, which are the highest that have single serve alcohol as a meaningful driver of the disorder in each of those areas?

I'm not able to answer that because, as mentioned during the March 3 presentation, there are a number of environmental and social conditions that contribute to crime. What we did is, the task force frequently goes out to a variety type of establishments to address issues, and these products are frequently identified as, being correlated to crime. And then, of course, the subsequent research, into what other cities were doing to address this, took place.

And I think that's that's part of the problem that I have with the ordinance that or with the approach here is because what I'm trying to tie alcohol related disorder to these single serve and because I'm wanting to say what I would love to do is say, let's have pilot programs in the areas that are the highest impact to this use. So let's say, let's pick, you know, two, three of these areas. Let's maybe not do five of them. And say let's focus on these areas and get some meaningful data. But if you can't even if we can't even say, you know, we've identified either through anecdotal evidence or whatever that these are the areas that have the highest association.

And tell me if I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, because if you say there's a lot of other, you know, factors that go into the calls for service, because that's the whole point I was trying to make in the first place is that the calls for service that you gave us that range from everything from trespass to homicide, that you're associating with these areas aren't tied to the alcohol. And in the state of Washington, they, you know, in their state statute, the impact areas are specifically tied to that alcohol. And I I think that we can do that in these areas, but that's that's what I that's what I want to do is say because I think Councilwoman Robinson's probably put on evidence here in this chamber that, you know, there are areas that this it it's clearly the fact. I mean, the mayor has even said, you know, he walks by this. So what are in these five areas that we've identified that we can say, let's have a pilot program.

Let's do this, do we do it for only chilled beverages, which other cities have done, do we do it through these certain hours of sales where loitering and littering is the highest. And I'm not saying that we have to do it in all these different things, but these are what other cities have done. And, you know, I I did ask those questions and you've, you know, you've addressed those, but those are the kind of things that I'm looking at to not necessarily go, you know, all the way to this ordinance the way this this ordinance is done. And I that's that's just those are the things I'm looking at. Councilman Raya.

Thank you, madam chair. Yeah. So a couple additional thoughts, you know, being one of those kids that grew up down the street from a liquor store Mhmm. Then becoming a prosecutor that charged a lot of crime at liquor stores. I do think this nexus that councilwoman Boo is describing is important. You know, I tried a homicide case, I think, in 2017, shooting that occurred at the I think it was a Conoco at 27th in Indiana. And, you know, there was no there was no alcohol nexus to that crime. I don't even think the two guys that were in the store that started arguing were buying alcohol. They didn't even know each other. One of them was talking loudly on the phone.

The other guy didn't like that. They exchanged words. They went out to their cars. They both pulled guns and they shot at each other. One of them got killed.

That's very different than the active loitering or, you know, the the domestic violence incident that might recur occur a block and a half away after someone has bought an alcohol at a business. And I think I think we should be able to distinguish between those two situations if we're gonna create an enforcement mechanism against a business owner. And, you know, I don't I mean, our common sense tells us we know where the problem locations are. We've heard the complaints. That's why I got the letter, and that's why we got the letter from the downtown council because I could list three of them off right now that have been a major, major problem and have been an impediment to economic development or would continue to be.

But I I and at those locations, I think there's absolutely a nexus between the alcohol incidents where the incidents and and the alcohol. But, you know, I I still struggle with not having that nexus as part of how we drew these lines. And and the the the the way we drew these lines was both arbitrary and not arbitrary. It's both objective and and subjective. You know, we started with some data, and then we cut some businesses out, and then we put them back in, and then we cut them back out, and we're talking about do we wanna change it so that this liquor store is not in and I just I I really don't like that way of creating a zone.

It seems it seems fluid. It seems like any one of us can come and change it at any time. And I know you need some flexibility in in in what your research showed. I think you had suggested that we reevaluate every two or three years, but it can become very subjective and driven by other factors, think, as time moves on. And so, you know, when I when I asked my questions of the interim director of regulated industries, is that his position?

I was very unsatisfied with the answers. I made that clear, but then we did get a memo that was included exhibit b with the memo that miss Klein sent on March. And, you know, there was something here that that really caught my attention because what I what again, what I suggested in in my recent conversation with you, councilwoman, was, you know, we make this something that applies citywide, but that is triggered by certain incidents. Whether it's three three strikes, whether it's two strikes, whatever it is. You know, this this exhibit b really outlines the leverage that we have through regulated industries.

I think this could probably be tweaked to include more such as violence, but we've got four subsections that include condition of premises, disorderliness, disorderliness, indecency or obscenity, illegal drugs, and nuisances that allow us to oh, I'm sorry, and lewd and indecent conduct five that allow us to impose fines and fees and revoke licenses. You know, my question was why regulated industries wasn't already doing this for the problematic locations. Didn't really get

an

answer. The exhibit does include some roadblocks to enforcement that maybe do make those those cases challenging. I think that's some of the frustration we run into. But I I still think we've got some of the tools here that we could tweak and be more strategic with or, and this is what I would suggest if we're gonna revisit this and continue to try and figure something out. One of the last recommendations in this exhibit was to require for those of you on your phones, I I want to make sure you hear this.

I'm listening. Mhmm.

I'm Require an additional enhanced license for the sale of individual containers citywide that could be implemented through an accelerated process for waiving in any existing sales by package licensees with no major violations in the past two years. That to me would create a special licensing that would allow us to regulate this. If we're gonna waive some of that process for folks that haven't had any nuisance or activity that we've documented within the last two years, that allows us to enforce against some of those problematic folks. And we could talk about under what circumstances you lose that licensing to sell these these items, and you tie it to the work these folks are doing. You tie it to the calls for service, to the action center calls, to the police calls, to the complaints you hear from neighborhoods, and I have no doubt that some of these problematic actors would would be enforced against and not able to not able to sell some of this stuff.

And and we wouldn't have to do it just in certain districts that can kinda change in a fluid way. We can do it in the locations that councilman Rogers mentioned North Of The River. And so I throw that out there for consideration, not that we need to pick it apart right now because I think there'll be some more questions there. But that is a thought that I would suggest.

Councilwoman Patterson Avenue. Thank you, chairwoman Boo. Just listening to the discussion, a couple of things I want to point out that I noticed over the course of talking about the potential ban. The I guess there was a press conference in my district earlier that talked about the the amount of money that will be lost. I think it was something was it $30,000,000? What was the

$30,000,000? Oh.

$130,000,000 was the suggestion. That is a lot of alcohol being sold in a small geographic area. Feels like everybody's drunk all the time with those kind of numbers, which can't be safe. And so but I think there's another issue that I have been trying to raise over the course of being elected, and it's the notion of a concentration. So when you are in a community like mine, you know, there's there's a limited there's a limited amount of political capital on the front end.

And so what you see is that list of liquor stores that are all kind of in walking distance from each other. And so it's not that it's something that necessarily people want and enjoy and appreciate, it's it's the political capital is is just is limited. So if we

look

at one of my favorite neighborhoods, Southmoreland, you know, they do a really good job of getting ahead of things that they don't want to happen in their neighborhood. And they are very, very aggressive and assertive, as they should be, whenever they're trying to place parameters on behavior in their neighborhood. And there's a handful of neighborhoods that are like that. They just have an incredible amount of political capital that they've built up over years, social capital that they've built up over years. And so you have these projects that happen that you know, are not profitable, but because of the political capital, we we pay for them.

We offset them. We're we're very on board with these projects happening. They're on our balance sheet for twenty, thirty years into the future. But because of the political capital, we do it anyway. And so what I feel like we're having to take such a drastic measure in this instance because of that lap lack of political capital in certain areas in the city, and the 3rd District is one of them. So I talk about the concentration of poverty all the time. We are overrepresented in deeply affordable housing, and we want to have deeply affordable housing. We're overrepresented in homeless facing services and transitional housing. We have the most of it. Why?

Because we're welcoming, and we wanna have that available in Kansas City. We are overrepresented by areas where you can go and get free food. And so what happens? You have a line down the street. You have people that leave their trash.

But guess what? We do it anyway because the main thing is people gotta eat, and we wanna make sure that people eat. So if you have one area of the city that is overburdened, then sometimes as policymakers, we have to step in and do something just as drastic. And so that's why I think this is a worthwhile effort because for some reason, over the course of twenty five years, we've allowed 10 liquor stores to open in walking distance of each other, and policymakers of now and the past didn't catch that that was going on and didn't interrupt it, didn't do anything about it, just let it happen because, yay, small business, and it's blasphemy to say anything against small businesses. We can't dare do that.

And so we just let it happen. And so now we're here in 2026, and there's a proliferation. And there's one more thing I want to say. This notion of connecting alcohol directly to a crime, and those of us that went to school, higher education, there's no two things that you can correlate that closely to each other. That type of research doesn't exist.

You can say these things seem to be related to each other. You can say these variables seem to be attached, but you cannot guarantee that these two things are related to each other because that's not how life works. There's all kind of stuff that's in the way. And so I think that's kind of unfair to say these two things must be correlated to each other. But I'll tell you one thing that is true.

If you live there and you can't afford to move like our good mayor here, then you have to live by it. You can't pack your bags and say, you know what? Don't wanna live by these five liquor stores anymore because everybody's sleeping by the bridge drunk, and they go back and get some more when they sober sober up, and then they go back. And I can't have my kid walk to the store because look at what she gotta walk through. And there are many people that cannot afford to pick up and move to a better neighborhood.

And my guess is 90% of you do not live by that. And you have little kids, not you anymore, but the rest of y'all over here, you two, you three have little kids, small kids, elementary school kids, that you would not allow to live near this because you can afford to make that choice. And there are a lot of people who cannot afford to make that choice. So keep that in mind. Putting yourself in other people's shoes only goes so far when you know you can pack your stuff up and leave.

And some people cannot pack up and leave. And so we have to create an environment that's better for where they are. I cannot on any day send my 13 my prized possession to walk to the liquor store for me because I do wanna go to the liquor store to get something, but I can't send

her to

go because of what she gotta meander in order to get there. Mhmm. And so those things are related to each other. So if this feels drastic, put yourself in Addison's shoes that she can't walk to the store in her neighborhood unattended.

Madam chair?

Yeah. Oh, sorry, councilman Duncan.

Thank you. I I agree with councilman Patterson Hasley. You know, this for me is a crime prevention by environmental design. Councilwoman Patterson Hasley talked about an environment. I think it's sick, frankly, that the press conference stated there's a $130,000,000 potentially lost in a very highly concentrated area that's that's full of poor and working class black and brown people, and that they're they're proud to be profiting off that, off the sickness and the illness of a people.

And so, you know, I don't think it's drastic, honestly. I think a lot of time and effort was put into it by by ACM Klein and and Joe Williamson. And I think oftentimes, we don't take big swings enough as a council. I brought it up, you know, in regards to how we fund things, and I brought it up. But this this this seems logical.

Earlier, I sponsored an ordinance to remove the what essentially were illegal gambling machines, gaming machines, because we knew the type of environment that created for the surrounding neighborhood. We took steps and efforts to remove dangerous substances like kratom because we knew what type of environment that created for the neighborhoods. And I think this is a step in a similar direction, And I think, you know, let's take a swing and see what happens and reevaluate after six months and then again in a year. I don't disagree with councilman Raya's opinion about stair stepping things, but I have some serious concerns about our ability to enforce something like that. I think for me, you know, we could we can talk this we can talk this to death.

I think we should just take an action.

Mayor?

Madam chair, and thank and thank you all for engaging on the discussion too. I'll make one brief kind of comment set of comments, and then I'll come back to the where we should go or motion or anything like that. I'm very sympathetic to what council members Robinson and Patterson Hasley raised. It's why we love having council members from every district and all of that because they lay it out perfectly. Because when I was growing up in the 3rd And The 5th District, right, that was the sort of stuff that my mom would start saying don't go by that one, don't walk this way, don't deal with that.

It breaks my heart that her 13 year old, her probably 17 year old, and I ain't gonna pretend any other ages, still dealing with that a generation later. I mean that's my issue. And then if somebody, I invite you to go on a walk with me, I'm trying to get my son in a track, so I'll take him to Central to run. We live basically right off of 31st Street, Linwood, right? Just the change in neighborhoods drastically over like a mile and a half, two miles, it's crazy.

Home values, development, everything under the sun. I could just sit back and say, hey, know, it's the way it is. I got the good job, right, all of but I think it is so unfair. And by the way, I'll go one step further. We live in the same type of housing stock that's the neighborhoods over right by Central High School. But why do they deal with more vacancies? Why do they deal with more issues? But they got a whole lot more liquor stores than I got within, let's say, a two block radius of me, which I have none. So I just would say, this is where it comes from. The ask I would have of city council or this committee is just very much this, heard on the point of let's work on something.

That being said, I would think that evolving this conversation to the full council and our colleagues is worthwhile. If we did a do pass, or you could just do a no recommendation, do a do not pass, I don't really worry about it. You can't right. But letting us get to the point where I think some of the articulable discussion and where we're coming from could be helpful. Because I will also say this, and thank you, professor Patterson Hasley, for the point that you raised. Miss Klein, who was trained as a lawyer, I think did her level best with the research material she had. When we got the 60 slide presentation, it may seem amorphous how they came up with the districts, but I they went through a lot of work to do. They went through a lot of work to do it. They did look at calls or service. They did I was just looking at the map.

It sure seems like there is a cognizable basis for how they got there. Is it a perfect professorial type of thing? I don't I don't know. I'm not I'm not trained in that either. But I think they sure did a lot of work that I would expect from an attorney who's an assistant city manager, our director of our multidisciplinary public safety task force who talked to cops, social workers, EMTs, firefighters, neighborhoods, businesses every day. That's what I get from that. To councilor Raya's point, heard on the idea on is there a way to impact licensure? This is the one area where I as a lawyer start to get concerned, and you deal with them too. I've dealt with alcohol lawyers. Right?

I maybe they will be willing to give up or modify their client's license. I I've worked with them. I haven't seen them willing to do so. That's how we have this type of licensure. That's why when people come to me and say, why don't y'all get rid of the all of them there? They have a due process right to keep it. If everybody's gonna waive their litigation ability against the city and just say, oh, yeah. We'll just start it anew, and we'll allot these in the right place, it's cool. I don't think we'll get to that MOU. And so this is the swing that we have to take to try to do something.

So I would ask her on a council member's point, although I I I won't be greedy. I would just ask for a do not pass, pardon me, a no recommendation out of committee, regular recommendation that gives us a week and a half to continue to look at written, structured, amended changes that we can actually read and review, that we'd be able to share to the other part of the community that's saying we want y'all to do something before we give up all of the work that they've been trying to do. I can make that motion unless somebody

Make that motion.

I'll move that, this item be reported to the full council with no recommendation. Second.

It's been moved and seconded that ordinance number 260,250 be reported out of committee without recommendation and do pass. All those in favor please say aye.

Aye. Aye.

With the due process

It would be no recommendation. Just just recommendations.

Without recommendations. No advance.

Okay. You're saying no. Correct.

Yes. I did screw that up. Just no advance is the point. Was. Okay. So it will be at full council a week from Thursday.

You keep talking to us. We appreciate it.

Alright. Thank you. Thank you. So we will, let's move to the top of the top agenda. Of

Yeah.

If you all will please clear the chambers.

Do you

want to? If we can please clear the chambers so we can go ahead and move on to 260293.

2626O.

You

ready? Go ahead and read it.

Okay. 260293. Authorizing a director of general services to enter into a license agreement with Jackson County, Missouri for the tower located at 53015301 East 27th Street for a period of ten years.

Which one did you just That's right.

Good morning, chair and committee. My name is Ashley Wise. I'm the real estate manager with the general service department. This is a ten year license agreement, for Jackson County to attach a, radio system to one of our city owned cell towers. The old East Patrol campus on 27th And Van Brunt has a city owned radio tower on it, and Jackson County needs to attach some equipment to it that will, help them with their detention center that they're building on 40. So this is a ten year license agreement, and let me know if you have

any questions.

Quick question for you. Yes. And, actually, I'm gonna ask councilwoman Patterson Hasley first. We've been talking about potentially surplus in the old police station for a while and all of that. I'd still love force a surplus, but I know there was a talk actually from your predecessor and others about doing something different. Only reason I ask now is if we keep the radio tower, we could still look to surplus the building someday if we wish or something like that.

So I went through the entire surplus process years ago, and part of that was we got a survey to cut out the radio tower so we could sell the campus on its own, and the radio tower will still be attached to the mechanic portion of KCPD back half of that lot.

Yeah. Question. Thank you, chairpersons. So does that mean that they need vehicles over there? Like, what what what would the tower cause them by way of needing to use the parking lot or any of the facilities? Because if we repurposed, I could foresee them not not that they don't wanna share, but just like when it comes time to share, it might be a problem.

Are you are you

talking about Jackson County, like, this?

Yeah. Like, if they have ten years worth of we need to access this tower because of whatever, and then we choose to surplus it and do something else with it, does it preclude us from a new whatever accessing the entire site without restriction from them. Right.

I understand now. Okay. So it it should not affect it in any way. So this this tower has multiple, like, networks on it, like T Mobile, Sprint. So this will just be another one added to it. So any any time they would need to access, it would be for some kind of maintenance, which is really, really rare usually.

Okay. Alright.

Any other questions? Any public testimony for ordinance number two six zero two nine three?

No public testimony.

Madam chair, I move that we, recommend advanced due pass and placement on the consent agenda because miss Wise does such good work. Ordinance two six zero two nine three.

Second. Been moved and seconded that ordinance number two six zero two nine three be reported out of Kennedy with the recommendation advance and do pass and place on the consent agenda. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes. Thank you so much.

Ordinance two six zero two six two declaring a moratorium until January '97.

I'm sorry.

Nine seven.

Two nine seven.

Top of the page two.

Oh, my apologies. I was on the third page. I apologize. Ordinance two six zero two nine seven, approving the fourth amendment to the Metro North crossing tax increment finance financing plan.

Thank you. The, the password, if you don't mind. You have a slide? I do. Okay. We'll try our best to get to you. If not, I assume we'll approve whatever it is that and I can Yeah. Tell us. Is it going well?

Submit this file.

No. Just you you know, we're gonna talk through it. Sure. Alright. So you need to certify to us adequate performance. Correct? We're alright, madam clerk. Okay. You just need to certify to us adequate performance? Okay. Well, the Fourth Amendment to the Metro North Crossing TIF plan? Yep. Yep. Yes. Mayor Lucas, my name is David Leader. I work for the Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City, Missouri here on behalf of the TIF Commission. Thank you for having me. The fourth Yeah. We lost our quorum. Yeah. But he's still here. Hit me here.

Hit me at this

It's alright. I'm just gonna pass it real quick. So we're not even having him really present.

I'll need a copy of

it in. Understood. Okay. Alright. I'll just ask this. Are there any questions on ordinance two six zero two seven eight? Do you certify, by the way, that you've

Two nine seven.

The committee said that you fulfilled all the statutory requirements and notice Yes. I have. Been submitted to counsel. Great. Is there any public testimony on ordinance two six zero two nine seven?

No public testimony.

Alright. Hearing none, we'll entertain a recommendation probably for advanced to pass and placement on consent agenda. Two nine seven two six zero two nine seven. Top of page two.

Mister mayor, I move that ordinance number two six zero two nine seven be advanced out of committee with the recommendation of Vincent do pass. Consent agenda too. And placed on a consent agenda. Second.

Moved and second. All in favor indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed? Motion passes. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you. Y'all have a great day. You too. Alright. 260300. 260300. Alright.

260300. Accepting the assignment and assumption agreement from the Maintenance Reserve Corporation appropriating $404,221 from the unappropriated fund. Balance of the Maintenance Reserve Corporation is estimating the same as revenue in the Housing Trust Fund and closing on the books of the city fund number 66930 Maintenance Reserve Corp Fund.

Sure. Honorable mayor, members of the committee, Zach Beyer, city controller. Today, I'm presenting on this ordinance, which is, asking you to accept the assignment agreement from the Maintenance Reserve Corporation. The MRC is a nonprofit corporation component unit of the city that was formed in 1975 with the purpose of revitalizing urban areas, was originally funded through HUD and general fund support and has, funded many revitalization projects over the years. Since its inception, it has been made somewhat redundant by things like the Housing Trust Fund and no longer has any sustainable revenue sources.

And so the Board of the MRC, the President of which is Assistant City Manager of Queen, decided to vote to dissolve the organization and recommend that the remaining fund balance in the Maintenance Reserve Corporation be transferred to the Housing Trust Fund, for their use through their process. Included in the presentation is a slide that compares the purpose of the Maintenance Reserve Corporation with one of the purposes of the Housing Trust Fund, and you can see how both are very, very similar, which is why, we feel transferring these funds to that organization would be the best use of, these resources. So in terms of next steps, once this ordinance is passed, the city manager can execute the assignment agreement, and then we are just waiting for approval from the, state attorney general, to dissolve the organization, and we'll transfer the funds over to the housing trust fund.

All right. Any questions? Is there any public testimony for ordinance number two six zero three zero zero? No public testimony.

Madam chair, I move that ordinance number two six zero three zero zero be reported to the full council with the recommendation of advanced two pass and placement on the consent agenda. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes. We're here on Thursday.

You very much.

Thanks.

I think we're 262622.

2262.

And I think we

have a committee sub. There's

Or there's

criminal justice one. We do.

Yes. I think it was emailed.

Okay. You got it? Okay. Perfect.

Oh, here it is right here. Yes.

Ordinance two six zero, two six two, committee sub declaring the moratorium until 01/15/2031 on all city approvals for detention facilities to evaluate the effectiveness of the regional criminal justice ecosystem and reevaluating the approval process for detention facilities.

Madam chair, this, arises out of our earlier action as it related to potential detention facilities and different edges of our city that were going to be of several thousand persons and all of that. On recommendation from city staff, city planning and development and others, we went through the city planning commission process to address these issues, creating what is a fair and objective process for any applicant to know what the city's rules are. I consider this to be more of a belts and suspenders type of piece of legislation, and I thank our planning staff, law department staff, and others for getting us to that. So that's the nature of it all.

Alright. Are there any questions for committee substitute for ordinance number two six zero two six two? Is there any public testimony for?

No public testimony.

Madam chair, I move that this item two six zero two six two be reported full council advance to pass placement on the consent agenda.

It's been moved and seconded. The committee substitute for ordinance two six zero two six two be reported on the committee with the recommendation of advance and to pass and be placed on the consent agenda. All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? The motion passes. Two seven six.

Two six zero two seven six. Authorizing the director of general services to execute a license agreement with the with Port Authority of Kansas City, Missouri for fifteen years for the display of the co owned sculpture River Cloud.

Madam chair, mister mayor, council members, James Martin. I'm the public art administrator in the general services department. What you're seeing before you is three different views of the same sculpture. We are seeking to place this on the property of Port KC down at the Berkeley Riverfront Park. And need a license agreement to execute that for fifteen years.

Alright. Are there any questions?

I just have a quick question, and it's ironic that I'm asking you this two hours into a meeting. It seems like there was a lengthy delay in getting us to this point, at least as to this ordinance now, because I read somewhere that, we once were thinking about installation on in November 2025. Can you speak to that delay and why we're just here now and how we might be able to avoid that in the

Yes, sir. Well, part of it, I will say is my learning curve on the permit process. We've run into a situation where we had not needed a permit for this For this sculpture and then I'm new to the permitting process. Understood.

Yeah. Okay. That's

You were coordinating with, port on where to put it to.

Yeah, there was some coordination with port where to place it.

Should should do an ordinance text, but I have permitting for city things too, but I know that's controversial. I know people may get mad at us in the world. Anyway, guess

there's Alright.

Public testimony.

Is there any public testimony for ordinance number two six zero two seven six?

No public testimony.

Madam chair, I move, item two six zero two seven six be reported for advance to pass to full council.

Second. It's been moved and seconded that ordinance number two six zero two seven six be reported out of committee with recommendation of advance to pass. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes.

Thank you. Thank you. Alright.

Ordinance two six zero two seven eight, authorizing the manager of procurement services to execute a contract amendment to EV three eight five one with TentTreener Inc. For design professional services related to the permanent detention facility in an amount to not exceed $1,292,000 from previously appropriated funds and recognizing this ordinance is having an accelerated effect today.

Good morning. Katie Bolden, assistant chief procurement officer. I have with me Rakshauna Reyes, the city architect. This ordinance is for the design services of the Community Corrections and Rehabilitation Center, the CRC, located at Front Street. Some history on the contract.

Procurement Services issued this RFQ late in 2024, receiving submission from four different teams in mid January twenty twenty five. Once the public safety sales tax was passed in April 2025, Trainer was selected. A contract in the amount of 3 or $399,999.99 was executed in September 2025 to begin programming the temporary detention center in advance of the permanent detention facility. Amendment one for site work design, staff planning, and coordination was executed in late October twenty twenty five in the amount of $1,513,837. Amendment two for a feasibility study to relocate the CCRC to Front Street was executed in late November twenty twenty five in the amount of $865,650 Today, we are requesting Amendment three in the amount of $1,252,200 for developing a concept study for both the CCRC and the relocated tow lot, community engagement, presentations, and cost estimates as directed by ordinance two six zero zero six one, which passed on 01/15/2026.

Amendment three will be funded by ordinance two six zero two three eight, which appropriated $5,000,000 towards the design of the CRC, which passed on 03/05/2026. Rakshana will now provide details on the next steps of the process.

Good morning Good afternoon, everyone. So you guys know most of this, but the next steps on the permanent facility, we're in the community outreach and engagement portion now. We are coordinating between the design team for the community resource center and the permanent facility permanent detention facility. Today, we're doing our ordinance to authorize the next design phase with trainer that was directed in the previous ordinance from mid January. In spring, we will be issuing a RFQ for ownership services for for public safety sales tax funded projects.

And then, summer of this year, we'll be reissuing that RFP for construction manager at risk, Centimeters at risk, for the permanent facility. And then the last slide there, this we will be you know, we kinda gotta start from page one here, but these are some renderings from what we had ventured for the Highway 40 site. So, this this illustrates the level that we are aspiring to for the permanent facility, but we will have our own version for Front Street. And we have a a representative from Trainer Architects here too.

So I'll advise you, this is a different committee perhaps than what you dealt with a few weeks ago where there were concerns about the aesthetics. My concern is in some way going be the exact opposite, right? I'm interested in how you integrate for frankly a cost savings purpose to the taxpayer with what is already being built on the site. I think that is some of the background as to why City Council has you evaluating this site. So the statement in this slide may be, while true, I frankly think City Council would really appreciate the opportunity to understand how we can yield the best taxpayer savings while still having a strong facility, And I think that's all I will say to that.

That's my view. I'm going to recommend a do pass for this after our public comment just so perhaps there's any time for us to evaluate that to the extent necessary on

Alright. Are there any other questions from the committee? Councilman Gearls.

Just, excuse me. Just a quick question on the, relocation of the tow lot. Have you identified a location or a place for that yet?

We have a couple contenders. This process will help us narrow that down. One of the top contenders is the the Old Ash Lagoon by

The what do you call it?

An an Ash Lagoon. So previously, water water department burned the waste, but now there's a different process. So there's a a piece of property the city owns. I'm trying to describe it.

It's not in the 5th District, right? No. That's my question. Where is that at? Fair enough.

We got Jeff here. He could speak to the Ash Lagoon.

Yeah. Good afternoon. Jeff Martin, city manager's office. One of the sites looked at is an actual, the Old Ash Lagoon, which is directly to the north of the Blue River Wastewater Treatment Plant. It is a facility that was a site that was utilized to to fill the ash from the old biosolids incineration process. So it has been cleared through DNR to leave that ash in place and has been capped. And so we could do limited, limited construction on it basically without doing any, depth where we're disturbing that ash, which a surface parking lot actually fits that relatively well. So it's one of the sites that's being considered with it. And it is in the 4th District, I believe.

Alright. Any other questions? Is this in a hard copy? Is it what?

The hard copy of the presentation?

There it Yeah. It's right.

There it is.

That's it. Oh, no.

Oh. No.

No. That's not it. That's not it.

Underneath that. Yeah. That's it.

No. I mean, those those pictures. Yeah. It's on the

It's on the back.

Oh. Right here.

Oh. Yeah.

I'll ask for public testimony and we'll come back to you if you want. Is there any public testimony for ordinance number 260,278?

So this is a

CCRC?

No. I guess we have Yeah. A different What does CCRC mean?

That stands for Community Corrections and Rehabilitation Center.

Not to be confused with the CRC.

That's actually that's real.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah. Got it. Yep.

Yeah, I'm going make a recommendation. I will just say like you probably are using the name CCRC because it all relates back to the original study that had the CRC with the detention center, and it looks like you're trying to build the 40 Highway plan right on Front Street. You know? I know. Y'all y'all hear a lot of things from us, and it's difficult. But I might encourage you to just be clear about what we're building here. We're building detention center. If this is the detention center, let's build that here. Yes. If city council moved you to this detention center, which I believe we did by a 10 to two vote or something like that, then where are there cost savings that relate to it rather than just shoehorning in everything you did before to make I'll it kind of the recommend do pass for this ordinance.

Second. It's been moved and seconded that all ordinance number two six zero two seven eight be reported out of committee with the recommendation of it do pass. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes.

And just for the record, there's no public testimony.

Oh, did I not ask you?

She asked for

public testimony. I think I did it.

She asked for it. She asked. You just missed. She just Alright. You just asked. You're saying there nobody

Oh, there's no She there's no public we were talking about the one that's coming up next. Okay. But there's no public testimony for this ordinance. Alright.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay.

So two six zero two eight two, waiving certain requirements of the city code chapter three for the Columbus Park tax increment financing plan.

Madam chair, Tammy Queen, assistant city manager. Morgan Holacheck is on her way down, but I'm I don't know if you if we necessarily need that. This would waive the MWBE requirements for the private improvements for this redevelopment. There are public and private improvements within the redevelopment plan. This waves the MBE only for the private infrastructure improvements.