Planning & Zoning - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call to order the Kearney Parks and Recreation Park and Tree Board for Tuesday, September 15, 2026. Please stand for the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation,

Eric, have you taken roll?

I have taken roll. We have five members present and we do have a quorum.

I need a motion to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting. I move to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting. Second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Motion carries. I need a motion to approve the minutes from last month's meeting from Tuesday, August 18th, 2026. I'll make a motion. Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Motion carries. Public requests and petitions.

I have none for this evening.

Park updates. Hall Park.

For those of you that were able to attend last Tuesday night at five o'clock for the groundbreaking ceremony, I greatly appreciate it. I know some of you had to work and couldn't get off and that's understandable, but it was nice having several members of the Hall family in attendance. They're really appreciative of it and they're excited just as we are to finally break ground and get that project started. And so I will say if sometimes it was a little hard to hear Patty, but she stated we were one of nine cities in the state of Missouri to receive a grant. This is our fourth LWCF project, technically three from start to end. The fourth one is the Pickleball Court area. since we renovated that that was a LWCF tennis court through the school and it's the largest grant that they've given so we're pretty dang proud of that that's great as you can see we didn't get to do a photo op at the end because everybody was visiting and things so at the end of the meeting I want to get a photo op so we can post that to our social media We've already been, Ryan and I, with the general contractor making some decisions on the shade shelters. It's tough to say the different colors and things of that nature and different aspects. So things are starting to roll. Go ahead, Ryan.

I was just going to say, we're really glad we asked for fabric swatches for the shelters. uh they're gonna be kind of similar to the the ones at lions park with the fabric overlay and everything and uh the uh designer kind of suggested hey maybe you guys ought to look at orange for like a pop of color well i'm glad we got the swatches because that that orange is not how it was on the illustration it's like a safety orange it looks horrible i'm so glad we insisted and we said grab three that the two that we were looking at

So, and one thing about those shade structures, Brian and I said, in the winter months, we'll be able to take them down just like we have these, and we haven't had to replace these since the inception of it.

They hold up well if you take them down for the fall and winter.

Are they pretty easy to get up and down?

They are. 10, 15 mats apiece. Okay, cool. It's not bad at all, honestly. We fold them up and store them and

What was the name of the color? Desert sand. Desert sand. Desert sand.

Okay, good.

Desert sand. Yeah, it's got some color to it instead of just the plain beige. It's got a little color to it.

And so all the poles and the poles on the shelter will be like a bronze color. So it'll look really nice together.

All right. That's all I have on Hull unless you guys have anything else.

In regards to Hull Park, I haven't heard anything about this talked about, but is there anything, any considerations being made for people walking across 92 there or additional traffic right there? Because you're right on the top of that hill, it's kind of blind, it's kind of a treacherous area anyway. Has that been addressed?

That has. To my knowledge, and I will have to ask Shelly because she came to the city from MoDOT, and anything that you do on that, since it's a highway, would have to go through MoDOT, maybe another beacon or something of that nature. But one good thing is we will have access to use the parking lot at the school. In addition, there will be, I think, 11 or 13 stalls, something like that, at the actual site.

Isn't there a crossing at Porter Ridge Apartments?

Yes.

And there's a crossing at 33. And there's a sidewalk from Porter Ridge up that we're putting in.

So you can either cross... Well, there's an actual sidewalk and then ours will have the walking trail. There's already a sidewalk right now.

Yeah, so you could cross there and come up or cross here and go down.

I would say it's definitely something we should look at for the future, but immediately There's definitely no money for it right now, but I think it's a good idea to maybe try to do a beacon or something.

And see if MoDOT, because of that, with the park coming in, get some federal money through MoDOT for that project. So I'll visit with Shelly on that and she'll know more as she deals with MoDOT all the time. But thanks for bringing that up.

Lions Club International Grant.

I know we mentioned to you, we did get the official notification we got that grant. Another feather in our cap, $150,000. That will go to the Board of Aldermen on Monday, September 21st, to accept those funds in addition to the Hall Park with the extra amending the financial agreement that they're giving us another $68,500 for the Hall Park grant. So both of those items will go to the Board of Aldermen, but we just need to accept the funds, the grant funds from Lions Clubs International and then we can start that project. We have two years to complete it. We know it's not going to take that long. So after it gets completed, We're going to start drafting up the information for the main contract, the general contractor that'll take out all the mulch and all the stuff to get it down to where we needed to do that and then do the install. with the equipment, have to order the equipment. So all of that will be going to the Board of Aldermen. Hey, we need to purchase this equipment. Everything will have to go to the Board of Aldermen. And then it states where this money is coming from. It's for the Lions Club Crayons, stuff like that. So we're excited about that. Like I said, we have a two-year window to get that project complete.

Evans Midland Empire Shows.

As we were just briefly chatting about, we will have a carnival. You've seen it on social media. It will be held the 25th, 26th, and 27th. And we were able to talk with Andrew Evans, and they altered their time slots. So Friday after the parade, the carnival will open up at 2 o'clock. So there'll be two sessions on Friday, two sessions on Saturday, and one session on Sunday. So we anticipate, we're thinking, we're hoping that after the parade down here, all those kids will want to go out, do the carnival thing, mess around out there before they go to the homecoming game. And not everybody goes to the homecoming game, so we still think we'll have a good crowd on Friday.

OK.

Kids Fest. Kids Fest, the planning is pretty much done for that. That is Saturday, October 17th. We have inflatables, fun games for the kids. I know parents and teachers are going to be there. Lions Club will be there. Optimus Club is going to be, I got confirmation from Stephanie Dupringer that they will be actually providing the hot dogs and cooking the hot dogs. Carnery Rotary Club is purchasing the pop and water and dispersing that to everyone. It'll just be a fun day for the kids to be out still working on confirmation from the LDS church. They had a great booth last year. I mean, with the face painting and the games that they have. So I've been in contact with Steve Baldwin and trying to reach out to drawing a blank what her name is right now, but hopefully that they come through for us again. So it'll be a fun day. Ryan, do you have anything you want to add on that?

You know, it's always a highlight on our calendar. You know, we love getting to do free events, especially for little, little kids. And, you know, we're looking forward to it. It's always a good time.

How many years?

Well, we took a break for a few years because the funds weren't there, but it started out as Halloween Hollows.

Yeah, when did that start? Like 25 years ago or something.

Yeah, more than 20 years ago.

It was already rip-roaring by the time I got here.

Yeah, and I've been here 24, so about 22 years ago, and then it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and then actually the volunteers fell off, and... We said, well, let's just do a kids' fest, and hopefully next year when we put it in the budget, we want to have some actual carnival rides like we did for a couple of years. And that enhanced it, but budgetary, we didn't have the funds for it, so we're doing what we have, and the kids still have a great time. It's just something we'd like to enhance a little bit more. For sure.

Okay. Jesse James Festival and Oktoberfest.

The Demo Derby was last Saturday evening and then the big weekend that they have is upcoming Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this week. The parade is Saturday. I have received their insurance information and got the Their carnival's insurance today is, we found out yesterday that they are having a carnival. So they moved in overnight last night and I think they're in the process right now of doing some setup out at Jesse James Park. So that's this weekend and I know that they have a disc golf tournament, a fishing tournament, They canceled one of their, I think, the catfish tournament, but they're still having another fish and derby tournament. So I guess they just canceled Friday night of the catfish, but they're still doing Saturday.

Right. That's my understanding. Are they stocking it additionally? No.

That'd be great. That's all I have on Jesse James Festival. Our Oktoberfest is Saturday, October 3rd. I know there's another big car show in town that day as well. But Oktoberfest will be downtown on First Street and Second Street by Lyons Park. That starts at 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Everything is free. I know they'll have some bands, games, inflatables, naturally there'll be a beer garden, some German food, some food trucks. But one thing that We have kind of suggested, and they are doing it this year. I know they got permission through Shanks on that Saturday. The beer garden itself is not going to be in the park, and Ryan and I like that. That's a kid's park, and we don't feel like there should be alcohol in that park at any time. So that is actually going to be on... the north side by shanks, they've got some tents and things of that nature. So we're happy about that.

So then do they have to stay inside that area?

They're going to be having an area, from what I was told, underneath the tent is where that area is going to be located.

So they can't wander through the park with...

I don't think they're supposed to, whether or not, but at least the beer taps things aren't gonna be in the middle of the park so yeah I like it so anybody have any questions on that right now I just echo what you said I've always kind of gritted my teeth when we were serving beer in Lyons Park I mean it's a it's a children's park budget planning and preparation we are to get our budget papers packet of information and ryan and i and ray to start doing our annual preparation of the fiscal year um 28 budget our fiscal year runs april 1 through march 31 and usually that gets presented to the board of aldermen in late february for approval or the first of march just depends So we will be making our requests. Actually, we don't get everything that we request, but we will be asking. And if we can't, we can't. But just some of the capital outlay items or projects that we do know that we are going to be asking for is more trail maintenance repair money. One thing that I will push really hard for is a fence that covers the creek at Lyons Park. We put riprap in there and we can have a hundred signs up. It's not going to matter. The parents are there. They just let their kids go right down there. They build a dam up and then water comes up and we need that for DNR for our regulations. It's got to flow because it goes into a tributary. And that's one of the things why we had to do the dechlorination system a couple of years ago. So this way we can have a fence, put it up, put the signs where if they're going to, and at the end, get it down pretty close to all the rock where they're not going to be able to crawl under and It's something we need. Go ahead, Ryan.

I agree. Yeah, that was a bad design. They're always in it.

Frankly, it's an insurance liability as well. Some of those rocks are not, I mean, you can step on that and slip, and you're not going to fall on grass. You're going to fall, and you're going to cut your head open or crack your head open, and it's a little child.

And the parents are standing right by a sign that says.

Yep.

We don't want that to happen. We run kids out of there.

we've had parents why not sign right here so anyway that's one of the main things that we we are going to push forward another thing is getting rid of the wooden bleachers at Mack Porter Park and getting aluminum bleachers there on fields four and five and six I should say we have aluminum bleachers on fields one two and three so much less maintenance, it's unbelievable. We're replacing boards every year and it will dress the area up as well. Another thing we had that we wanted to do at the end of last year and didn't have the funding is replace the infielder on fields one, two, and three with some new infielder turfists and things like that. We have to do that. We just have too many games that are rained out. We have small staff and there's times where it will rain. overnight and then it clears off. Well, are you having games? We can't because the fields are too wet. You know, we want to try and mitigate. You're always going to have rain outs, but if we can mitigate as much as we possibly can and it's time, that is the same infield dirt. 24 years so it's time to time to update to a higher quality infield type surface so another thing that we wanted to do but our funding is not allowed it because we we think we have to try and prioritize what we think but it's time to get some sunshade shelters at our dog park We go through the year and write down our wish lists, but we'd like to get some shelter. And last Tuesday, as a matter of fact, We had an email that was sent, and Ashton shared with me, and he might have some comment on this, but whether they're wood shelters, as the one at Mack Porter Park is, that we purchased the lumber and had an Eagle Scout project do the construction, or if we buy a metal kit and have those erected. Metal is so much nicer, but the cost is way more than metal. But we have the nice metal ones out at Jesse James Park that was put in when we did the playground, the initial playground. And we put one in there, the pond shelter, and what we call the green space shelter. Those three at the same time, and those have been up since 2007, and they look fabulous.

Do we have an Eagle Scout that's wanting to do it?

We don't know. We'll have to reach out, and David Lehman is... involved with Scouts and so is Police Officer Charles Leach, Sergeant Leach, and we can reach out to those people and see if they can point us in the direction of an Eagle Scout candidate and go about it that way. Anyway, do you have anything you want to add on?

Yeah, John. I just had a question about the budget and the rain. It's raining right now and everything. I had a lot of rain this year. Did you under budget for cutting mowing this year? No. Because typically they'll schedule like, you know, 33 mows or something, you know, like for HOAs or whatever. And I was just curious if you guys.

The thing of it is, is we plan, we took a bunch of, contract mowing out two years ago and it got put back in because there was no funds. Our budget last year from the year before in park maintenance is about $7,000 less in park maintenance from the previous year. But what you're saying is five number of mows.

Yeah. Yeah, see the number of mows increased. So the gas and everything with that, you know, time, you know, all that.

We can't, we can't, we guess how many times we mow. Like our ball fields, for example, it's on a one week rotation. in midsummer and it's on a two week rotation in the spring and fall because of the growing seasons. And we take that all into an account, but we're only one department and everybody's got, you know, gets their share of the pie and we just try and fill it. But the mayor knows, Sheila knows, the board knows that we're taking on another part now. going to request another full-time maintenance person.

That'll be part of the budget request. It will be. Yeah, as it should be.

It will be. And so we're going to request for another full-time position in addition to keeping our summer help that starts late May. And he is now at William Jewell, Cale Davis. He said he's going to be coming back. So he'll have about 500 hours. Our other seasonal position will have 500 hours. And then we have a part time person that gets a thousand hours throughout the whole year. So when, when it rains during the day, we ship them home because we got to keep those hours. Um, and we're very cognizant of, of, uh, how we, um,

about once a month we go through and count up everybody's hours and make sure we're still on track. Right.

Right. How many, you know, I have to do the time sheets and I'm telling Ryan, he's on the adding machine, add these up, add these up, and okay, we're at this. So we don't go, we don't have the money. You know, we can't go over budget on hours. So, and then... We'd like to get a new maintenance building. That maintenance building at Jesse James Park has been there before I got here. And Gary Lawson was in that building probably 15, 20 years before I was here. I think that building was there when they first purchased the Jesse James Park. We just don't have any room. We store our baseball, softball, soccer, our signs that we put up on one side of Mack Porter's building, and then our two field rags are in the other side in that building.

Do you want another building or a new building?

Another new building.

So then you would have to...

Out at Jesse. Yeah, we just don't, because we store a tractor in there and our mowers, our gator. All of our equipment. All of our equipment is in there and it's part, we just have no room.

It's like playing Tetris sometimes when you need a specific piece.

Is that going to be the biggest expense of all your?

That will be. Kind of the dream. Yeah.

I mean.

Will we get it? Who knows? But we have to request it, and that way, down the road, the board knows, hey, we need a building. And then one of our old, old mowers, we're finally catching up with decent mowers. We have one mower, I think it's a 2000 mower. 11 maybe, something like that, that we need to replace. Then the rest of them will be within a five-year period. All of our mowers, I think, will be in a five or six-year period. Then we can start on a rotation basis out. We mow a lot of ground. People don't know, but we mow all of Jesse except the actual amphitheater. We mow all of Mack Porter Park. We mow Hall Park. We took away the contract mowing, and we mow all of Lyons Park now, and we mow the South Campus Trail and the Pickleball Complex. And the 11 acres. And the 11 acres of where the carnival's going to be.

We'll just call it the Carnival Ground. Carnival, yeah. Carnival Ground.

That has to be mowed. it's preferred that it's mowed if not we're gonna get calls because we have people calling I mean we can usually skip a week if we have to but I mean it's it's hard on the bat wing if it gets too tall right and the thing of it is is our code compliance is issuing citations or notices when people don't do they're mowing it there and then they'll say well you know, you guys aren't even maintaining your property. And we've had to get on our contract mower because they missed a week because of the rain. I don't, you know, you gotta plan around the rain and things of that nature.

Let's talk about the cemetery real quick with that. Specifically, you know, we contract mow the cemetery because we do not own mowers that can fit in the rows between the headstones. Plus, that is very time consuming to mow a cemetery.

Oh, for sure. And the thing of it is, they do a good job.

We're able to operate on efficiency by having these 72-inch mowers. And frankly, we wouldn't use a mower that small anywhere else. So that's kind of the reason we haven't invested in one. Um, just cause we need, you know, we need to be as efficient as possible.

And he mows, uh, this contract mows a couple more cemeteries, so they're aware of it. And, um, so those two places for us are the only two contract, uh, locations that we have is the actual amphitheater itself, because they have that smaller mower that's a stand on, on the backside of the amphitheater hill. We're not going to roll one of our mowers down into the pond. They mow that area and the cemetery. Out of the park budget, those are the only two things.

And they do a really good job.

It's a good job.

And you go after new mowers, right?

We do. Not used. We usually get state bid. Well, we can always get state bid, but we usually get better than the state bid.

Because we'll go a source well contract, and usually they beat a statewide contract. On the maintenance building, what size are you looking for? Well, the building out there right now is a 40 by 60. And that would be at least what we would go for, is a 40 by 60 building.

And that would go just right next to the existing?

Yeah, we'd have to do something, move the bullpen to a different location. or put it to the north of the existing, but that's one of the areas we talked about. Well, there's a lot of electrical and things like that. So it's, but since we did the electrical out there, we really, if we do that, then we're going to have to take down three beautiful large pin oaks if we go to the west. So the only really logical place we could go is to the east or to the northeast. the existing building out there.

Or put it in a different location. Right. And we can go to the south, but it would require some dirt work because that slows a fair amount.

Yeah. And where's the shelter being considered location at the dog park?

It would be, one would be in each side. Actually in? Inside. Inside, okay. Inside. That way people watching their pets, they actually have some shade that's the only thing that when we did that we were looking wasn't it 57 or something like that that we constructed that dog park with okay it was right it was just barely below 60. yeah so i mean the fence took up yeah and then the equipment that's in there um and then we had uh we pumped in trenched in so both sides have their own water spigot for the dogs. The only thing really now is we put in a couple of trees and the benches are in there. We just need some shade because it does get, I mean, it's out in the open, not a lot of mature trees there.

How's the grass holding up?

Good. Good. It's thick. It's, uh, if we don't mow that once a week, we have a lot of thatch going on because it's in that area where in, uh, overnight it collects a lot of dew.

It's a slight slope, so it's going to drain to the south east, southeast corner. So it does, it gets a lot of runoff water when it rains too. So it's good thick grass. So we're going to look into Eagle Scouts on a shoulder.

Yes. or a tree? They can donate a tree. The benches that we have, we still have when we took out the playground equipment at Lyons Park. They're not memorial benches, but they're the same type of bench that's right across at the museum and right here on City Hall. On the porch, basically, our front steps, it's the same type of bench there. Before we went to memorial benches, those were the type of benches we installed along the trails and things of that nature. They're heavy, heavy duty. I think there's two more over at the 105 building.

And you're going to put those where?

We can put some more. benches in the dog park. With the shelter? With the shelter. That way if you want to sit in the sun, the bench is already there. And then if you wanted to, we can add some more benches with the shelter.

That's a good plan.

Yeah. So we really don't like picnic tables under that. Reason being, we have a problem Knock on wood, we've had really good luck with the pet waste stations on the trail, but we don't have really good luck with people picking up their pet waste at the dog park. It blows our mind. And we have two pet waste stations, one on each side, right in there. So it's just something that, well, we're in the dog park, they'll get it, you know, that type of deal. But some people do, a lot of people don't. But on the trail, people are using them. We dump them once a week. So those, thank goodness for Kearney Rotary Club. They've been awesome.

Yeah. I mean, everybody uses them. I mean, it's a testament that we have to dump them once a week so they're getting used.

Right. That's amazing.

That's good. And if they put their, you know, if they have a drink in their hand, That's okay that they put them in there too because we dump them once a week. At least they're not throwing the trash along the trail. If you see a little bit, not too much. If we didn't, we'd see a lot more. So thank you to the Rotary Club for doing that a few years ago.

All right. Does that cover the KCMPRDA? Yeah.

Okay. No, this was a session that Ryan and I went to. We haven't been able to go because usually we have meetings here that conflict with that. This one was held pretty much in our backyard. It's the Kansas City Metro Parks and Rec Directors Association. So we met people or We know these people, but we actually got to share stories of what we've got going on and different things of that nature, what they've got going on, their problems, their concerns, and things of that. And it was good, and it was held at Mount Gilead. Ah, neat. It was in the church. It was a fun day. He served his lunch. Ryan and I visited with many of the people we know. I know Smithville was not there. He was at a different meeting. I mean, everybody. Yeah.

Liberty was there. Everybody from the metro area. All the way from Ottawa. Shawnee. Yeah, Ottawa was there. It's nice to be able to get with people, your peers essentially, and kind of talk shop and what works, what doesn't work, that sort of thing.

Did you pick up anything good? Yeah, I think so actually. Yeah. One thing is everybody is vying for, one of the main topics was the connection of all the trails and things of that nature and vine through money through mark and shelley goes to those meetings to try and get us well one of them is the mac porter connector trail that that came from mid-america regional council she's a fantastic advocate yeah she is because she works so not so much um The thing of it is, is when people are saying that they get $400,000 for trail maintenance, and they're saying they don't have enough, and we're like, well, lucky you, pal. But they're larger organizations. Then they say to us, how in the heck, the same people say, how in the heck did you get four LWCF grants? We're lucky. I don't know. They like our projects and we'll have to wait a couple of years to apply again. We'll keep applying. We'll keep applying. That's one thing we're going to do is keep applying.

We're familiar with the grant process. Our friend Steve Casey kind of walked us through the first time. Now we're really comfortable with it. They like shovel-ready projects. patty likes us we're going to keep it that way yes it's good so anyway all right youth adult activities and sports so yeah our fall sports uh have kicked off we're actually a few weeks out from games um we have 627 participants in fall activities right now that's a fantastic number 200 in soccer 110 in flag Three teams worth of tee balls, so about 30 kids there. Only 10 volleyball, but they're a great group of girls, and I've spent some time with them. Again, 16 in martial arts. We talked about the martial arts class last time. It is just going great, and the kids are having a blast. So hopefully we'll be able to have it tomorrow night. I don't know with the rain. 253 in our fall pickleball league and then we were experimenting a little bit with a specifically youth pickleball league not like a team one but a little ended a little younger kids like the preteen age it's not it hasn't gone gangbusters but we have enough kids to have a lead so we're we're pretty happy with that and it's on Saturday mornings we just take up a couple of courts and the kids are having a good time so we're pretty happy with that Pretty much my report for fall. Nick asked me before the meeting when the new scholarship criteria that we kind of talked about last meeting is going to take place, and that's going to be with the winter session. So signups will start around the first week in October. And we'll roll everything out on the website then.

All right. Do we have any board comments? I need a motion to adjourn to our next meeting, which is Tuesday, October 20th, 2026.

So moved.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Meeting is adjourned.