City Council - Regular Meeting

OK. Good evening. The time is 6 o'clock. It is August 27. And I'm calling this meeting back to order. Debbie, can you please call roll?

Here.

I can't hear. Here. Here.

City Administrator Gensby or Matlon, You are on.

Mayor and council tonight, the workshop that we have tonight will just kind of be a culmination of what we have discussed over previous meetings and during previous workshops. Excuse me, input that we've received from the council through our goal setting exercises. Matt Long is here to present it. At the end of this and in the regular meeting, we will ask you to authorize publication of the budget hearing. meeting in no way are we approving the budget all that we will do is do this that the hearing for september this year because we have been able to reduce our budget for mills levied and maintain the revenue rate only need a hearing if we are eating

I guess when was that decided?

Yes.

We haven't even gone through the budget, so I don't, I'm asking the question of when was... We haven't approved it yet, what we're... we haven't gone through the budget to determine whether that is what we're doing or it's not what we're doing we haven't been presented with anything to really go through and determine is everything in the budget what we want or are there changes that need to be made so basically we're just going in blind yes tell me what i'm missing

So well, one thing we're missing is we asked last meeting what would happen to our tax income from sales tax if we stayed at revenue neutral rate versus if we stayed at a flat mill levy versus going to the suggested mill levy that was adopted.

And I mean, I've looked into it, and I can't find anything definitive on what that impact will do. Because again, it's not going to affect your city tax levy, obviously. That'll remain the same. Correct. It'll impact the share of the county tax.

Yes. Correct. So we don't know what the loss is going to be.

I don't believe it's going to have an impact. But again, it's a very difficult thing to measure.

Matt, so this is all forecasting of what we think sales tax always is, but can you give us, could you give us a reasonable range of what kind of impact that would be?

But you're also taking into account the fact that if your sales tax collection next year from the county is also going to be which, I mean, you know, we use a We use a standard based on tracking both expenditure and market-related revenue. We're using a multiplier about 3%. So I don't anticipate that any change to your your mill levy of such a small amount could have an impact on sales tax it would need a forecast that would differ more than three percent i think you're going to get more than three percent but i think anything you would lose in that calculation is not going to it's not going to not going to Well, in less than at least a 3% property tax. Put a large growth assumption on property because it is so tight.

So I guess my question is based on Sedgwick County, they have shown that they expect their sales tax to go down. Their sales tax revenue. Their portion. Their portion. And because our portion is based on their portion, would ours not go down in the same respect?

They are going to receive less of a portion because they're lower than the low.

Correct.

And that will not impact .

Yes, it will.

It does. According to the formula, it does.

According to the formula that's used by the state, 50% is still based on population, and the other 50% is based on this county's property tax.

But they're not lower than the amount of tax that they are levying. it's the county sales tax it's based on the property tax yes but the county the county is a one percent tax that tax is shared between the correct and the cities yes so that but the one percent portion is not changing

it's it's not but the county has also already stated that they were going to lose at least six hundred thousand dollars by only capturing four point two percent and i i don't know what they actually ended up passing yesterday morning it was pro they were trying to go lower of their seven point something percent total assessed value there is a penalty at the state if the county reduces they are projecting they're gonna lose over $600,000 worth of sales tax next year for the county sales tax. My understanding, I've been to a lot of the county budget stuff, and if you don't capture at least what the percentage is that the county captured, you too as a city will lose part of your portion because you've gone lower than they have. So to maintain your same level, you have to capture at least the same amount and if you go higher you get a bigger percentage so that's what i asked last meeting and that's what i'm still asking is what will our loss be by we're not capturing 4.2 percent or whatever they ended up choosing it would have been 4.2 would have been the highest um if we're not capturing that we will have loss to our county sales tax income

Okay, I still am going to say that I don't think that it is gonna be so significant to your budget, but I will show tonight with our, what we anticipate levying, that I don't think that anything you will lose is going to affect the bottom line. I don't think it's going to be so much that you would, I honestly don't think that whether you stay revenue neutral or you go with flat levies, Mayor, I'm not disagreeing with you that it's going to have an impact. I just I still don't think it's significant enough that it's going to. It's going to have such an impact that it would affect the budget.

I just think it's important for council to understand what the loss is.

Is it something that, are we talking about $50 here or are we talking about $250,000? We're not talking about $250,000.

But we're not talking about $50,000 either possibly. We don't know what we're talking about specifically.

This is something that hasn't been discussed before.

What's the range and does it affect whether we adopt it or not? Does it affect us?

And that just was the question that we asked last time because we wanted to be able to be informed to the best of our ability.

I think it would be fair to let Matt and I get into that and give you a figure.

I think we need to acknowledge that anything to do with sales tax is forecasting. Yes. I think it will do. It is forecasting. It is not exact science. Correct. Like the mill levy is or property tax. So if we can have a range of, okay, if everything goes and they don't meet their range, then it's this impact, but I guess I would go a step further and say I don't know how that would affect our decision either way.

I don't either, and that's why I'm saying as far as having a public hearing notice for our budget being published, that's a different, and I know we need to do that, but because we don't know the impact that we're talking about, will that influence are the potential for us to want to not stay at the revenue neutral rate and maybe stay at a flat mill rate. And if that is the case, then we do need to move forward tonight with actually publishing a revenue neutral rate hearing. We can't wait until the next meeting to publish a revenue neutral rate hearing if the information isn't what we expect. So I'm just saying, do we want to hedge our bets and just to be on the safe side and do the revenue neutral rate hearing as well.

The reduction in mill levy is a mill reduction of 4.1%.

anticipated county tax revenue. The difference would be just under $24,000.

That's with a full loss.

I think that would probably be... Which is unlikely. I don't think it would go down that much. I think that would be... What's going to happen is the county is reducing their amount. But, I mean, I don't know what their full tax revenue is every year from that sales tax. I'll have that ready. But, again, I think when I show you tonight that $23,000 is not going to push your budget. You need to. If you're going to look, you're going to look.

So I think that's the, I think that's what we were looking for is, okay, worst case, this goes south. It would cost us $24,000. For me, that's not enough to offset going to a. Okay, that's 20.

You would still like to do, adopt a revenue neutral, a non-revenue neutral mill. I can change that. I can change that very quickly. We can still have both hearings.

So the 24K that you just were referring to, that's the reduction in the mill rate? The mill values?

It's the 4.14% is what the flat mill levy difference is between what the R&R is.

So you're saying that's how much is the difference between staying flat or going neutral? Right. So the number he just gave you has nothing to do with the county sales tax. That's just going revenue neutral.

If we're assuming that we're going to lose whatever reduction in bill levy in the form of county sales tax, and we assume that if we would levy the same rate that we levied last, that would produce the sales tax that we projected, then we're also assuming that if we reduce the bill levy by... that percentage, that would be the maximum that they potentially would hold for county sales tax. Because you're not losing population. The half of it is still based on just the mill levy, and you're only reducing your mill levy by a mill percentage of 4.1%. I still don't think that they could potentially lower you more than that. Now, like I said, if you would like me to just the spreadsheet that I use. So I can easily, you know, produce a budget note with both a revenue neutral rate and a regular budget public hearing. And, you know, it would just be a matter of essentially we would be putting difference in, you know, what the two mil rates would produce back into budget. Quick calculation, I can do it. I can get you back to that. And then it's just a different form. It's on the same spreadsheet that I print out.

That's up to council. Well, let's hear what we have to say tonight, and then we can have more information to make our decision.

I think it's been communicated clearly that our goal is to lower the mill level and stay with the feds. That's what we'll do.

You stated that the reserve funds are healthy. But yet, the last meeting, we were told that the utility funds are low. So are you talking different reserve funds and not the utility reserve?

We've made some adjustments. Let's let Mac present patients.

OK. Do we have a printout of this information? thank you thank you and would you do a favor again and just make sure that mike's really close to you so we pick you up thank you

That's it.

Okay, so the first page we have up here is the budget certificate page, and this is essentially going to reflect everything that we're presenting tonight. It includes the budget authority for each of your Each of your operating funds. And essentially, but what is that's the page you'll essentially sign after adoption and that'll essentially say that those are the limits to the amount of money that you can spend in 2027 from those funds. And This page reflects what the state tells us we get allocated for a motor vehicle tax and how that is split up. So essentially, in one of the input pages to the state forms, you enter the amount that the state says they're going to allocate. And if you had other funds that contained a portion of your mill levy, it would split out a portion of that motor vehicle to those other funds. But since your only mill levy fund is the general fund, it just puts everything in there. But that's just the calculation page used for that. And the only reason I have all this together is because the county insists on every page in the budget form get submitted, whether it applies to you or not. So I did leave out the library page and things like that because you guys don't have a library. But again, when you submit it to them, all that needs to be included. This is the schedule of transfers. These are all reflected in the actual budget pages that we'll get to, but they include all the transfers between funds budgeted for this year. The ones that I want you to take a look at that we'll get into are mostly coming out of the general fund, because the general fund does have a pretty large budget authority based on prior year performance, current year performance, and what we anticipate levying. We will be able to increase some of the transfers. Capital improvement is increasing up to $200,000, just because I know that we You have a very good healthy balance in your capital improvement fund. But again, I've talked about it before. My philosophy is that if you've got funds that you don't plan to use in the budget year, it's good to push them into some sort of reserve or capital fund so they can be used for projects in the future. Same thought there is with the highway fund, essentially pushing money for future highway projects highway operations there. And then, you know, that again, if those monies are not used, they could always be transferred from the highway fund using their that funds budget authority into capital equipment or equipment reserve and things like that.

I have a question. Sure. So with the proposed capital improvement plan that we have been given What is the projection of what the yearly transfers need to be to have a healthy amount of money for some of these projects that are on there so that we aren't bonding everything?

The projects that are for next year, which include facility needs assessment, the strategic plan, are supposed to come out of the capital improvement fund you've got uh almost a million dollars in there right now so there's a million dollars in there now that could be used to pay for that but i know that there may be uh some costs for like the park project and there's like that haven't been spent yet so but i mean i know the parks project so far has been about four hundred thousand dollars i can get you a more accurate number for that um but yeah there's uh there's nothing in the immediate budget for um It would impact in 27 that would not be funded by the capital improvement fund balance now.

I guess I'm asking a broader question. Thank you for that. But even a broader question that we're looking at five years. So what is the forecast of where we're going to need to be to keep healthy funds to be able to be looking at all of these projects that are listed on here?

Well, and it's even broader than that because it's not just your capital improvement fund that's going to be paying for this. Correct. So, yeah, it would require – my recommendation is probably going to be when we get to the end of – probably not this year, but when we get to the end of 2027, any additional fund balance that you have – excuse me, any additional budget authority that you have – that you could be even transferring additional funds into capital improvement, I would probably recommend making like a year-end transfer of some of those funds into your capital improvement fund. I don't have a number for you right now on what it would take to fund just with, you know, with operating cash for all of these over the next couple years because, again, it looks like some of the bigger projects here are going to be, you know, of a nature that it's probably not feasible to use operating funds to pay for them. And even stuff like this, if you're looking at like a WAMPO funding type project, that too is going to differ that calculation. I would say though that through, I would say that at least through 2029, not including probably Yeah, anything utility-related, I mean, if you're just relying on your utility funds, no. You don't have cash on hand for that specifically. Those are going to require, and the benefit of some of those type things is you're eligible for the, you know, especially water and sewer, you're eligible for KDHE, you know, low-cost loans for those. But yeah, we can, I mean, if we were going to build out a, true capital improvement fund budget, we would have to make assumptions about things like grant funding and WEMPA funding and what portion of any of the utility projects that you would want to build out, what portion of those would come from cash and what portion would understandably be bonded.

I just feel like that's important for the Council to be looking at not just next year, but that we're looking ahead so that we have a solid foundation in making decisions of where we're at financially, where we need to be, and like even the The corridor improvements and the sidewalk, I mean, part of that, that's the 1% sales tax that we have. And it's like, where are we with that? Are we starting to pay that back? What's our balance left? When's the forecast of when that's going to be paid off? So those are all questions I think that are important because that was the funding that was used for phase one to begin with. So, and I haven't seen anything. I don't know if anyone else has seen anything that gives us an understanding of where we're at with the debt that was already occurred. Have we started paying? How much is paid off? When are we expected to pay it off with the 1% sales tax that's coming in that's supposed to pay for that? So it's just, I would like that financial information. So it gives us a better understanding. Thank you.

And then here is a statement of indebtedness. This reflects all of your current outstanding GEO bonds in the top section there. And then at the bottom section, your temp notes and the PBC bond pays off actually this year. It looks like the final payment on that will be in November. And so what you're talking about, would be referring to, I'm assuming that's the 24 temp note, is what was, was it 24 temp note?

Yeah, that number looks right, 965,000.

Yeah, I believe that's probably the one we're referring to, the pay for the street improvements that we're gonna be using sales tax to repay. That's the current temp note. The current temp note? Yes. Okay.

So we're not paying on that yet? And so we don't have a forecast of when that's supposed to be paid off?

They just built it into our forecast, I believe, that the information that you had from Pepper Sandler, our debt map summary.

Yeah. Well, so the temp note is, the current temp note, the 2026 temp note, I believe that's being used to fund projects that have already been paid for. Is that what you're saying?

no i i just came on the intersection the intersection project the intersection project because that's supposed to be repaid by the one percent sales tax so i'm asking when are we paying for it when's the forecast of it being paid off because that impacts another project that's on the cip because that's where the money comes from look at that on that so what i'll what i'll do is i'll make a i'll just do a specific schedule that shows

What portion of all of these temp notes are going for? Because I'm assuming that 25 is the development, right? Turtle Creek, is that what it's called?

Yeah, Turtle Creek would have been 25.

Yeah, so the 25 temp note, that's going to be repaid with special assessments.

Is 26 Huffman and Casey's?

Yes.

I guess another question I have, just because we've heard of another city that got themselves into serious debt trouble. went from 23 to 50 million dollars in debt i just want to make sure that we have plenty of debt information so that this council doesn't end up in a similar situation making those kinds of decisions and not realizing how much more in debt we're getting and what the city has to pay back debt wise and what has come through the city for projects and there's someone else paying back well it's not really part of the the um

annual budget adoption. It is more in line with the capital budgeting process. So what I'll do is, like I said, I'll find out which one of these specifically is getting repaid with sales tax funds. And basically what we'll do is show you where uh sales tax money has been uh how it's been allocated so far because basically it's going into it should be accruing at this point because all of that money was supposed to be for the intersection project yes that's what i mean where it's been accruing so it's going into the general fund general funds transferring it to your capital improvement fund to your street fund and then when we get uh when that goes into permanent repayment we'll match make sure that that portion only for that project is specifically going into essentially fund balance from those funds that will be making the debt payment. So we can transfer it into capital improvement. You can pay for it out of your street fund. You can pay for it out of I would probably recommend either the street fund or the bonded interest fund. And you can just it can be as simple as transferring it or if you

It doesn't have its own fund to keep it separated because it was specifically to pay for that project.

It's accounted for separately. Yeah, it's accounted for separately.

Yeah, so shouldn't it have its own fund?

It doesn't need its own fund. It just gets accounted for in its own line item.

I just want accountability for the people of Quichai that they know that this money has been protected and that it is paying back the intersection debt.

It's been accounted for separately. We can track it back as far as we need to go with it. Okay, so this first page of the general fund shows all of the general fund revenue. And this again assumes the You won't see it included here because the way the state form works, they actually this state form is used to generate what the ad valorem tax will be. So we'll see it at the bottom of the next page here. But this is what our assumptions are for all of our revenue sources going forward. Everything above that sort of Personal property line is numbers that we get from the state or from the county, depending on who it is. And then everything below that is your other revenue sources, including county and city sales tax, state liquor tax. State assessed utilities is also, again, a portion of the revenue. generated by the ad valorem tax, but it's not calculated the way that regular ad valorem is. The county gives us advice on how to account for that. And then the bigger lines down at the bottom you'll see is the interest earnings. Those are considerably higher since we moved over to the Intrify fund through enterprise bank and again you just got fairly high you know balances there so it's obviously generating more interest the next one here interest earnings words so it was 192 in 2005 in 2025 and we're looking at 180 this year It's just one of those things I don't like over budgeting revenue line items that I can't be completely reliable on. If I had six months of collections to look at to tell me that you're probably going to end 26 with $200,000, if I saw that again this time next year, I would increase it. But just for purposes being prudent, I didn't do that. And then here is the expenditure side. We have expenditures here by just the way they're categorized on the sheet. In the detail pages you have, you'll see those all breaking down by individual department in the general fund and then again by line item and by category. You see how we get to that bottom number. For the purposes of We put in that cash reserve line in the so that 1.4 million 65 that is essentially carry over fund balance from the prior year that we're budgeting as an expenditure so you have the budget authority to spend all of it if you wanted to which of course I nobody's gonna recommend you do that but also. getting it getting your expenditure amount up to that level is what determines your what your mill levy will be so for instance if we were going to adopt or if you wanted to have a non R&R if you wanted to have a non R&R if you want to have a hearing to exceed the R&R then we would what we would do is we essentially would add back in the amount of property tax that we think that we we estimate that the keeping a flat levy would generally be added into that $1.4 million number. And that's how we would get it up to where that's the specific number that we will change to adjust the mill levy. And the very bottom right corner there, which is 1.311.

a million that's that is the amount of ad valorem tax that the formulas in the state forms generate so it's equal to what you had last year question sure in the cash reserve 2027 column the 1.465 yeah um what is the value left from the cash reserve and moving that over to balance So you're you're you're making a transfer.

Nope. So that like I said, it's just a filler. That is a what we're doing with that number is essentially we are budgeting as an expenditure. Your carry over fund balance, carry over fund balance, and any difference between what you what we budget to spend and what we budget to receive. You know, the state defines a balanced budget as carryover fund balance plus revenue minus expenditure. And whatever's left over, as long as it's zero, you're technically a balanced budget, even though you're spending down everything you had from the year before. For the purposes of establishing the mill levy, we budget that carryover fund balance as an expenditure. And that gets your mill levy to what it would take to essentially generate what to essentially generate that tax then spend down everything that we show we're spending down and get you to zero now of course we're not actually going to spend down to zero we're going to uh essentially that we're not no no there's a line item in your budget that's going to actually get charged to that 1.4 million that's going to stay there and again that's what i'm talking about when you're we're talking about uh You know, at the end of the budget year, looking at where else can we transfer this money for things like capital projects that you talked about. So at that point, we would look, okay, what's our fund balance at now? We'd look at it during the budget year as well. And we'd say, you know, what can we additionally transfer out to capital to any of our other necessary funds where we would want to? essentially pay for projects that we don't have to bond out. So that's the purpose of that one.

So it's not budget authority. Okay. So it's expected to be there at the end of the year.

Technically, it is legally budget authority, but we're not actually going to spend it. It would be it would if you spent that you would spend your fund balance down to zero and risk at that point you would you would be risking a budget amendment or a budget violation so in 2026 we're expecting to actually spend 200,000 of our cash reserves No. Again, it's the same thing there. We're putting it there to essentially carry forward $200,000 additional more in carryover fund balance into the following year. Essentially, it's like a... I mean, again, it's only for the purposes of the state budget form that we're doing this.

But we are giving budget authority to spend it and not hang on to it.

Well, we're applying it in this form to your expenditures. It's not going to, your budget authority is established for 26 last year with the budget. So this would just mean that instead of a, you know, Because you see there, if you look in the middle column, the bottom three lines, you've got total expenditures, undercover cash balance, December 31, and then 25, 22, 27 budget authority. So the middle one, that's 26 budget authority. So we're essentially using that to almost bring your amount of your... expenditure is almost up to what the budget authority is. And we're just putting it in there as an expenditure to essentially not spend it and then carry it forward in fund balance. I can take that out if you want. It's just going to push it into the beginning fund balance line for 2027 and push everything up by $200,000. But this gives you You know, I mean, so the thing that you're always worried about when you're getting into fourth quarter is, you know, do we have budget authority to cover everything we need to pay for? And you have ample budget authority in general fund to do so. But the kind of the purpose of that cash reserve line is if you are not going to be spending all of your budget authority You know, you can either show it as a budget adjustment for the following year, or not a budget adjustment, you can show it as a carryover fund balance for the following year. Again, this is specifically for the budgeting process, or you can put it in as an expenditure like that, and then it'll just, you know, your actual year end will look better than the budget year end. It's all, it'll actually change. Are there any more questions? And then this next page is how the funds are broken down into departments. And actually, in this case, it's not actually departments. It's sort of like cost centers that we've grouped together. But again, if you want the detail, it's in those other pages that Matt printed out for you. Bond and interest fund set up similarly. If you see here, that cash reserve line is $2.3 million. And again, the only way this even works out is because we have built in a $1.9 million bond proceeds line item on the revenue side. And so what that is, essentially, is what would the cost be to retire your temp notes if you had to do it in one year? And so I'm giving you a revenue side calculation for what those would cost. And then on the reverse side, I'm giving you the budget authority to do it if you had to retire both temp notes, the full amount of them. This way, you're not running into timing issues when you do go to retire those. Street fund here. The big thing here you look at is they've got a fairly good carryover as well in that cash reserve line, about $450,000. And again, you know, it's one of the reasons I wanted to, I want to start increasing the transfer into here is so, you know, whether you decide to pay for those, using those sales tax dollars, whether you decide to pay for you know, repayment of that street project out of here or out of, you know, capital improvement or, excuse me, out of bonded interest, this is probably, this fund probably makes the most sense to make those transfers from. So when we do get what the debt service on that's going to be and we start paying it back, we'll make sure that we're matching whatever is flowing into here for that payment to what the debt payment will be.

So since the, so for instance, the 2026 or 2024 temp note will have to be, it expires this year, so we'll have to change it into a permanent bond. Yes. So that 42,000 is going to come out of the, this fund? That's basically the sales tax, and the $965,000 is going to come out of the sales proceeds from when we sell the permanent bond.

Yeah, so which page are you on? I'm sorry.

Well, I'm comparing what you have on page 9 to what you have on page 4.

What are those? I don't have page numbers on my slide sheet. I'm sorry.

The one is the statement of indebtedness and then this current slide. So on the statement of indebtedness, so the Keech I wrote in Oliver, well the template's a temp note 2024, the Keech I wrote in Oliver is basically what that is. Since it expires this year, that $42,219 we will definitely be paying, the $965 is actually coming out of, will be paid by the sale of that bond from a temporary note to a to a full bond. Is that how you're looking at that?

No. 28 is when you'll start repaying that temp note. You'll start paying the permanent bond that that temp note will retire. Yes. That GO bond will retire that temp note, and you'll be repaying that bond beginning in 2028. But the interest. Huh?

But we have to pay the interest. So there's interest listed. So the $42,219, that's what I'm talking about. So the $42,219 is really what will come out of our, is budgeted for general fund to pay for this year.

I believe it's included in the temp note finance. So it'll get paid out of whichever fund the project is located in. Again, I can't tell you what that specific note was for, so I can't tell you exactly how it's going to be repaid. But typically, they capitalize the interest in the temp note. So you borrow the amount that you're going to have to pay in temp note interest, and then when you retire that, They'll do a calculation based on how much of the notes that you actually use and how much of it can be paid back, and so then they'll determine what your permanent bond is going to be, and then the interest on that will be paid as part of the regular debt service. So whichever one of these is referring to the street project, so when they issue that permanent bond, both the interest payment and the principal payment of that is going to be paid for with that sales tax money. And if that is included in that 24 note, then that will begin repayment in 2028. And that's just part of the timing of that project, is making sure that we have that cash reserve. And as you can see, you do have sufficient cash on hand, especially in general fund and in your bond and interest fund, to make those payments. It's just that we need to make sure that whatever specific fund you're going to be using for those payments, we tie the tie the sales tax revenue to that specific payment. But again, that shouldn't impact until 2029 because the principal repayment on the 24 temp note is September of 2027. Thank you. Yeah. So the water revenue side here, you can see where we're projecting. This will be water revenue and expenditure in the same page here. Like I said, you've got the line items there if we want to go over those. I have those as well on my computer if we want to look into them. Cash reserve here is not quite as much. It's only about $50,000. But we were able to get some budget savings here by essentially dialing in the personnel splits for public works. There was a portion of them that were supposed to be paid from both this and the street fund. And we returned that portion The way they're split is pretty complicated, but going forward they'll be split appropriately.

So what is that appropriate split? I mean, what is the new split? Because I'm sorry, I kind of want to...

I have to pull the split schedule, but what we found is that nothing was being pulled from three.

Yeah, but it was only like a portion of one FTE. It wasn't even like a full half FTE. It was just a portion of one. So essentially it was... I don't know when it happened. I know there was no budget or there was no expenditure from that line and street last year, but we're pushing it back into there now, so it'll be allocated there going forward.

Yeah, I'd like to know what the splits were.

Yeah, and honestly, at some point, I think part of the reason Matt wants to look at not only the facilities needs study, but again, something like that could kind of better guide how those positions should be split. Obviously, with... You know, just looking at the budget of your utilities and the impact that, you know, Public Works has for them, it's probably not outside of, it's probably a good idea at some point soon to go and, you know, make sure that... the way they're split currently and, you know, not just how they're split, but how they're, you know, what their specific jobs entail are better tied to the resources in your utility funds.

Well, and I understand that, and I know that we have, over the years, made changes in different directions. I just wanted to know what those changes are.

Yeah, we can get that. Again, the gas utility here has seen increased revenue both this year and we anticipate next year as well. Personnel numbers here still, you know, personnel and commodities tend to be your highest expenditures. You did have a gas project this year that would be paid for out of the capital improvement fund, so it didn't hit the actual operating revenue. If it did, it would have, you know, it was a large project, so it would have eaten up your business. That's why it's getting paid for at a capital improvement. But again, even with, you know, your cost increases, we're still putting a cash reserve of $443,000 going forward for next year. So that's good. Which basically just means you can anticipate that much of a carryover fund balance, which is almost $130,000 more than we're anticipating for the beginning of the year. Sewer, as you can see, is a much tighter budget. It's been declining in... carryover fund balance for at least two years now. The funny thing here is, though, is you've got almost a half a million dollars in sewer reserves. So it's the reserve fund with the largest balance, but on the operating side, it's expenditures, as you can see, typically for personnel and commodities are driving that. So I think Matt has mentioned that it's probably a need for a reassessment of sewer rates and hopefully you can look into that for following year this budget anticipated a minimum a four and a half percent increase for sewer rates The last couple here are, I don't like calling them pass-through funds because they're not quite that simplistic, but, you know, they're much smaller operating funds, solid waste recycling and the stormwater fund. So still, you know, it's not a great fund balance, but percentage-wise it's not bad for a fund of this size. And we still even have a... Pardon me, we still have a cash reserve here, 22,000 going into 27, going at the end of 27. So that's positive. Stormwater, similarly, a very healthy cash reserve, actually, you know, almost 100% of its anticipated expenditure. So, excuse me, not 100% of its carry, almost 100% of its carryover. From the prior year. So it's still operating in a good position. And I did actually build in the $20,000 and $25,000 as project potential project costs for 2627 again, you're probably not going to spend them. And so they'll just carry forward as fund balance. The land bank, that truly is just a, you know, we budgeted an expenditure for the full amount of the carryover fund balance, and that's all we do with that.

Okay, so it's on the stormwater?

Yeah.

Is that more than just the one employee? Does the public works feed into that one as well?

We're taking a little bit of public out of it. Okay. Like 5% because they do.

Well, that's what I just was asking. Okay. Thank you.

And then the opioid settlement fund, Scott still has some money left in it, so I'll just budget the full amount to come out in 2027. It doesn't get spent. It can stay there. We'll just carry it forward. And then Special Parks and Rec Fund receives, I think it's half the state liquor distribution. And then budgeted, I just budget again, budgeted to carry out the fund balance as an expenditure, as a reserve, or I actually put in a commodities line in case there's parks, small-scale park improvement you'd like to do that doesn't require an entire big capital project. So those big capital projects, you like to have them in their own either project fund or run through the capital improvement fund just because there's so many costs involved with it, engineering, potential fees for design and things like that. But smaller projects, like if you're going to buy an amenity that staff can install, things like that on a smaller scale, it's good to use them here and use that money. At some point I would even consider doing a regular transfer of surplus general fund revenue in here just to build that up to where, you know, you can do smaller projects every year, but bank half of what your transfer would be just so after two or three years you have enough to do a, not a big project, but another, you know, significant addition, amenity adding thing to your park system. And it doesn't have to be just, you know, the, you know, like equipment like that. You could also do a something like a, you know, like a, you know, redo, relaying sod on a, not sod, but, you know, relaying mulch on a trail or something like that, that is more than just an every year thing you do, but not quite the scale of a large capital project.

So on the On the capital improvement budget that we saw last time, we have the approximately two mills going to the park improvement program. Is that in just the regular park?

Where does that go? It's going into the capital improvement fund.

It's going to the capital improvement fund. Thank you.

And then for the budget submission, they require you to submit a 2025 actual expenditure revenue for your non-budgeted funds. So beginning with capital improvement, you see there that total receipts, that $177,300, that was essentially two mills plus a $100,000 catch-up from the prior year for the park project. But that was the basis for that. The equipment reserve, you see transfers The various funds go in there. And then not much expenditure out of equipment reserve last year. And that's something else we can go into is I'll start making that part of the regular monthly report is just essentially what the cash balances for these funds look like. So if you have a more up to date regular eye on how they're performing, then it can be used for capital stuff. Water reserve, fairly low fund balance there. Gas reserve, not bad. But again, like I said earlier, sewer reserve, the worst performing utility fund, but it does have the largest reserve there. But that makes sense because sewer replacement stuff is expensive. So it's not a bad thing to have that high of a fund balance.

That's my last slide.

Council, any further discussion or questions for Matlon?

I guess do we need to talk about whether we want to do the? Yep. I mean, I haven't seen anything that could change the way I'm thinking. But if you guys want to keep it open, we can.

So discussion on what you want to do about revenue neutral rate hearing.

Well, can we discuss that in a regular meeting? Since that's where that'll have to happen, and we only have a couple minutes left. I do have a question on the, a couple questions on the capital improvement plan schedule. So last meeting, the police vehicle was slated for 2028, and I notice on this one it's 2027. I thought we had said we were going to put it off.

Yeah, so we just made that update this week. Chief, when we met, we all met this week to go to the final budget. Chief was concerned if they had a car go down, if they have a car go down, they will purchase it. So funds are allocated in the budget for that. I have discussed it. Chief said, if I can hold off, I will, but...

during the budget retreat that was not a priority from the council so i don't know how council wants to resolve that well

I mean, because we also had it where we didn't have the previous vehicle that was replaced after the accident. That was not in the capital improvement budget, but we still did it.

That was an insurance replacement.

We had a portion we had to pay. We had a portion we had to pay.

But I understand what I'm saying. We didn't know we were. no okay i i'll so right now we don't have a plan to replace it but we're going to budget it is is that going to be an ongoing that we just keep a car in the budget well a lot of that depends on our activity now that that's the whole staff there's more miles put on the cars The chief wants to make sure that there's money there if he doesn't buy one.

I have more discussion on CIP, but I'm gonna bring it up during council meeting. Okay. All right. So as far as Matt Lund, do we have anything else for Matt? No. Okay. Thank you so much, Matt.

Thank you, Matt. So if you guys do decide to do the R&R or have the R&R hearing and, you know, exceed the R&R rate, it is a, like I said, it is a simple calculation. I can have it, you know, I can have it to Matt as soon as he notifies me what it will be and, you know, you'll be able to do it whatever way you want.

Thank you, Matt. I appreciate that. Thank you. I would entertain a motion to adjourn if there's no further discussion.

I move that we adjourn. Second.

Motion by Council Member Moreland, second by Council Member Hedstrom. All in favor? Aye. Second question, are you guys ready to turn around and start again or do you want a five-minute break? We want a five-minute break, yeah. Okay, we will return at 7.00.

Oh, let me see what time it is on my actual phone.

We'll return at 7.05 and get started. And I just want to let everybody know that if you are signing up to talk, please make sure you fill out your form and bring it up to Debbie so that she can have those all ready to go. Thank you.

I just wanted to make sure.

Good evening, and welcome to the Keechai City Council meeting. It is Thursday, August 27, 2026, and the time is now 710. Debbie, if you'll please call roll.

Here.

Here. Here.

This evening, I would like to welcome Pastor Doug Wadan to lead the invocation, which will be followed by the pledge. If you would all please rise.

Father, thank you so much for the opportunity we have to live in a free society where we can vote and share our concerns and our goals and dreams and visions. I pray for the council tonight and the staff that you would give them wisdom of Solomon, but also the peace of Christ, and also what Paul said, that we think not of our own interests, but in the interests of others. And thank you for this community. And may we all come together and to make us stronger and better. And we give you all the praise and glory. In Jesus' name we pray and everyone says, Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, okay we'll move on to approval agenda uh Council I would I requested this morning it didn't quite happen um in under new business I would like water discussion move to a please and PEC would then become B And the reason I'm doing that is I'm changing public comment tonight. In public comment, it will be non-water bill in our regular public comment. And the other public comment will become part of the water discussion. I want it all to happen all at the same time. That's for the change. And then I'm going to add CIP to the discussion time. Does council have anything else they would like to add or change?

Do we have an executive session?

I don't. Does anyone else have executive session? OK. So we will scratch 11.

I move that we approve the agenda with changing item A on new business to item B, changing item B to A, and including public comment as a part of the water discussion, adding CIP under council reports, discussion, and requests, and striking item 11.

Second. Motion by Council Member Moreland, second by Council Member Baldrige. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes 3-0. Moving on to community, oh I'm sorry, approval of consent agenda. Is there anything you want that pulled out or are you ready to just approve the consent agenda? Okay, I would entertain a motion.

Move we approve the consent agenda as presented.

Second. Motion by Councilmember Hedstrom, second by Councilmember Baldrige. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes 3-0. Moving on to communication. Are there any Keechai civic groups or committees that are here tonight to speak? I see none. Move on to community announcements. The only thing I'm gonna announce tonight that I have is that this is the last weekend for the Always Patsy Cline over at the Keechai Playhouse. Does anyone else have any announcements for this evening?

we still have our farmers market going on we do and on thursdays from 4 to 6 30 and every tuesday at the methodist church the community dinner those are the places to be during the week uh city minister jen's me anything from the city okay we will move on does anyone have any previous public comments that they would like to address at this time

Okay. Debbie, do we have any non-water public comments tonight? Ms. B. Burkhalter, welcome. Please state your name and address and you'll have five minutes.

BK Burkhalter, 427 Sioux Court, Keechee, Kansas 67067. And first of all, I want to say to the audience here, I'm glad to see Keechee because empty seats make decisions. So I'm really glad to see everyone here. As I stated, empty seats will make decisions. And so my first opportunity that I would like to talk about is the problem that I saw with our convenience store being broken into. I really had a concern about that. I think that's the second time, if I'm not mistaken. I almost thought three times over the 40 years that I've been here, but I do know it has been, too. And I do want to make sure that there is a concern about that, especially with our police department in full to whatever standards they're in. Please, please make sure it's the only convenient and gas store that we have. and so my heart was broken to know that it was broken in too. I also have a concern about not having an open forum, an opportunity for our community to speak in reference to the park or any other kind of activities in front of the council. I know we might have an opportunity to speak with our mayor at some given time when permitted, but we would also like to have the opportunity or some type of free flowing that we can speak to directly to you, that we can get answers from you. I don't know if that's ever permittable, besides this five minutes that you may or may not address, I don't know for sure, but I really would like to see something like that. And then lastly, I also was at the meeting that we had last month, and this remarks to the fact that, If we get our bills, a lot of people are not reading them. And I want to say that my husband was not quite happy about that because he does read his bill. We are not stopping out here to read the sign that we have outside. It's really nice. I love the fact that we've got news as we pass by quickly. But I would also like the fact that if we have any information, that it can be generated through our bills. We are families that read our bills. We have 2,400 people here in Keechai. And I'm sure that there are other residents here that would love to have a stamp spent on them and a one-page copy or some sort placed in the mail so that they can find out what's going on in the city of Keechee. Those are my main priorities that I wanted to share with you, and thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you, Ms. B. Council, do you have any interaction that you would like to have with Ms. B? Any response?

Actually, Ms. B, were you talking about the park being able to present things from the park board to the council?

OK.

I think we, under communications, we have Keech I City groups and committees, and that's kind of where I would expect to have those kind of updates.

I agree. I think what you're actually saying is, so I normally host Let's Talk About it, Keechai, from 6 to 6.45 prior to a council meeting. Is that what you're talking about? Or you can just come in and talk? So two council members can attend as well. So the mayor and up to two council members can attend. If we don't have a budget workshop or some kind of a specialty workshop, which isn't usually the case, I'm normally here at 6 o'clock prior to a council meeting. And it's for 45 minutes. Anyone can come in. The council is invited to come. Two members can attend as well. So it is an opportunity. Before budget season, I did have a regular group of people that were coming in to have conversation. I think that's what you're talking about. And then quarterly I offer community conversation, which is on a Saturday morning from 8 to 10 in the community room. The next one is October 24th from 8 to 10 a.m. Again, the mayor and up to two council members are able to attend, and that is a time for the community to come in and talk about anything. um outside of the council meetings so i'm trying to make more opportunities where we can just have conversation um not necessarily inside a council meeting is that what you were trying to get to okay you're welcome and i think it does bring back what i tried to say at the last meeting um i realized that there's a lot of people that don't read their utility bills and so it feels like the announcements being included it's like what's the point but i have heard from people that are like why don't we get announcements in our utility bill anymore so i think there are people that are reading them and that will be something for the council um to discuss whether tonight or a later time to determine whether um we would like those announcements re-added back into the utility bill so let's see what was the other thing oh the convenience store um i i didn't really hear any more updates from that do we have any other updates that came out of that so there's been no issues since and keychain police department thank you for all that you do and um yeah and i will just keep you updated if we hear anything going on i haven't heard of anything happening since then so you're welcome there any other public comments for general public comment okay i'm going to go ahead and close the public comments section and we will move on to unfinished business which is a park update city administrator jensby mayor council i don't have any updates since the last meeting I do have a question on the park. Have core samples been taken for the soil?

No, they have not. We're waiting on PEC to come out, contract to sign given to PEC.

OK. Is there a reason why there's been such a long delay from May until now and we still don't have any core sampling done?

No, they had to develop the contract to scope the services for it to be reviewed by our legal team.

Council, any other questions on the park or the playground? It's really actually a playground update.

What was the cost of that contract?

Well, with that having in front of me, I think it was $4,000.

Thank you.

Anything else, council? okay we will move on to new business first up is the water bill discussion city administrator ginsby

All right, so I will start, what I'm gonna start with is kind of a review.

Could you do me a favor, please? Your voice is gonna get picked up.

What I'm gonna start with is kind of a review of where we are, where we were, where we are now. Last year, the water rate analysis was presented to the Keechai City Council to increase our water rates. the reason for this is our rates had not been adjusted since twenty sixteen there was a rate analysis done and presented to the council in twenty twenty one for both the water and the sewer, only the sewer rates were adjusted at that time. No water rates were adjusted. So the water utility was becoming insolvent, which means we were going to be upside down in it. When a utility fund like that becomes insolvent, we have to use property taxes to support that fund. We don't want to do that. So a rate study was done. It was presented to the city council, and the city council made adjustments to the water rates. Our old rates for a standard residential meter was $22. For a two-inch commercial meter, it was $87.30. And per gallon use was 1,000 to 10,000 gallons, $7.33 per unit, $10,000 to $15,000, $7.83, $15,000 and up, $10.68. The rates were changed to increase the base rate for a meter, $6.60, which made it $28.60. And we created four different tiers. We had a tiered system before, but we added an additional tier. If you'll remember through those discussions, through our analysis, we found that a majority of people use, on average, between 3,000 and 4,000 gallons per month. That is the average use for a home in Keechai. So these rates were predicated off of that. So the usage rate went from 0 to 5,000 gallons within that average use range to 875 per unit. 5,000 to 10,000, 1095, 10,000 to 25,000, 1645, and 25,000 and up would be 2467 per unit. One of the other factors that played into this is our need to conserve water. Part of the reason for this tiered system was to encourage residents or our customers to conserve water So the more you chose to use the more you would pay This is kind of the way it was set up. So These rates were changed They were adopted and they are currently being used Our commercial water rates were also changed we found that Through our rate study that we were way out of whack from other cities when it came to commercial rates. We were really, really high. So to be competitive, we had to bring those down. So our base rate for a commercial meter changed to 44.35, down 42.95, and the base rate for a commercial meter was reduced $56 to 118.48. Now, our commercial and industrial users, they use a ton of water, depending on what their manufacturing process is. This is in line with what other cities do as well. Those were changed from zero to 100,000 gallons at the same rate that a residence pays, 875, 100,000 to 250, 1095, and 250,000 gallons plus 1645. What was the former usage? I don't have that with me.

It was it matched Their tears were the same as the residential tears Oh if that was your question, that's my question And I also do you mind if I point out that these these rates that are right here that you've just showed These are not the current rates. That's not what we get currently charged. Our rates have been adjusted after with Wichita and

Well, yes. Yes. And these are old slides that were presented last time. So there has been inflationary adjustments to them to make up for what Wichita has increased their water rates for.

I just wanted to point that out. So if somebody is out there going, wait a minute, when I calculated my rate, I'm getting charged a little more than that. Yes, right now, yes, this was when the change was made. I just want to make sure that it's clear.

So everybody in the audience knows the city of Keechai purchases our water from Wichita. We purchase it at a wholesale rate. We mark it up a little bit because we have a system that we have to maintain and run. And that's what we charge for that. So anytime those base rates, those wholesale rates from Wichita change, we have to pass those on to them. And that's part of our agreement.

And that is one of the other things when when we say that there hasn't been any changes to our rates we do not mean that there has been no increases because as you all know there are times where our water rates have increased and that is due to Wichita raising theirs. So since 2016 we had not raised the base rate at all but the tiered usage rate did change. So just to make sure that we're on the same terminology there.

And additionally, that there's a 3% escalation rate that goes into effect every August 1st. Yes. Yes, that wasn't there. Could you explain what the water fund is used for?

Asking it the what?

You talked about the water fund was going to become insolvent. That's why you had to raise the rates.

Yeah, because we weren't charging enough. We were supplementing what we were paying for water.

I understand that. But would you please let people know, what is that fund used for? Why do we need to have money in that fund?

In the water utility fund, yes, we have to have money in there for repairs to the water lines, maintenance of the system, to pay personnel to work on the system, all those things that go with operating the utility.

Thank you.

So this week, we were contacted initially by a couple people on Monday about an increase in water rates. The mayor made us aware of a couple people she had talked to as well. social media got a hold of it and really blew it up so when anything like that happens we here at city hall like to step back and look at things in perspective and that's kind of what this slide is about here uh... we know that there are some issues we absolutely and we're working through those with the people that have contacted us Currently, we've had 28 people contact us here at City Hall about their water bill, questions about it. It may have been too high or they just simply had questions. This is not abnormal, okay? During any billing cycle, we have an average of five people contact us saying, hey, can you explain my water bill to me? It seems a little high. Why would that be? And we walk through that. If we need to go out and check a meter, we recheck a meter, make sure it's functioning properly. We had 28 people contact us. We have 860 utility customers. So when we look at this in perspective, we didn't have a major problem in our system. We had 96% of people who did not report a concern. So all of those people that came in, there were 28 people. Of those 28, there were two accounts that had transposed numbers. uh... one incident was from the public works crew misreading the number on the meter happens when you do meter reads. The other was when we entered the manual read here at City Hall, two numbers were transposed, 74 for 47. Those happen all the time. But the 26 other inquiries that we looked into, all of those were due to increased usage. No problems with our city water system, no bad meters. Increased usage that was reflected on the meter So one thing we've heard from people this week there is no way that I could use that much water and I completely understand so What we have learned through this process by talking to other cities, other water operators, and doing some research ourselves to help people understand where that usage could come from, we just came up with these interesting facts here. A typical residential irrigation zone uses approximately 8 to 15 gallons per minute. depending on the number and type of sprinkler heads. As you can see on the chart up here, for a 20-minute cycle, depending on if your system has 8 gallon per minute, 12 gallon per minute, 15 gallon per minute, they can use a lot of water in a 20-minute period. I didn't understand that, but there's a lot of water that's being dumped on your yard, especially when it's hot out like this. People increase their watering and use a lot more water. So for perspective, a six zone system running 20 minutes per zone every day could use approximately 1,200 to 1,800 gallons a day. And that equates to 36,000 to 54,000 gallons per month. The mayor had asked about some of the ordinances as they relate to water and water utilities and how we handle those when somebody comes in and we deal with these so our ordinance says that on water leaks when a water line leak is located on the city side so that would be from the meter usually to the street the city side the supply side The city is responsible for any repairs and costs to repairs or loss of water. When the leak is from the meter to the house on the customer side, the customer shall be responsible for repairs and water loss that are occurred. We have a city ordinance like most cities that says people will do what's necessary to keep a necessary waste or use of water to a minimum. Check your sprinklers, hydrants, faucets, all other apparatuses in your house that are using water. And many people have asked, can we have our meter tested? Absolutely. We can test your meter, and our city ordinance covers that. Meters shall be tested before being set. All of our meters are certified before they're set in the ground by Public Works. Any other time when they appear to be measuring incorrectly, if a test is required by the customer and the meter is found to be accurate within 2%, the meter will be deemed correct and a charge of, this says 10, I think it's a typo in our ordinance, so we'll say $10 plus the amount equal to the actual cost associated with the testing of said meter. So what that says is if One of our water customers comes to us and says, we really don't think our meter is operating correctly. Would you test it for us? We can test that meter. We will test the meter. If the meter is good and it's operating correctly, the customer is charged for the cost of checking that meter. If the meter is defective, the city incurs the cost on that, and we replace the meter. So we've been looking at a lot of water bills and statements this week. And I kind of wanted to put this up. It's a little bit hard to read. But I'll walk you through it the best I can. So the very top graph there is a customer here in town who said, we use very little water, and our water bill has doubled. We don't know why. We know we don't use water. We don't have many sinks or things in our house that use water. So we pulled up their for a month and we could see that in fact they were very low. I mean right down near zero there. Very, very little consumption. Now you see there's three bar graphs there that pop up very high. Those indicate that Something in the system is drawing water. So the first blue tick mark that comes up is represented. One day. 11 a.m. 11 p.m., something occurred on that system that caused a spike.

Utility operators, that usage was quite

So that goes on. It increases throughout the day. Through the pink bar there, you can see up to 4,800 gallons were used. It drops down to 1,500 gallons. We can see on that bottom chart exactly what happened. We're assuming that, yes, this person did very, very little water use. Somebody's equipment, house open. So what I'm saying is every incident or every resident is different because they have many that could go bad and cause these incidents.

So are all three of

four of those from the same customer all for those crafts yeah that was just to explain that one anomaly okay okay thank you so this graph here shows a customer that came in and they're like there is no way that we could use that much water impossible so we pulled up their account

They didn't realize that was happening.

They didn't realize their system was running so long. They used 12,000.

So where it says the gallons and it's 20, 40, 60, is that?

Have to add a zero to that. Thank you. The system just does not put a zero for whatever reason. Yeah.

OK. Well, I just, when we're giving these amounts and we see 20, 40, 60, I want to make sure that we're aware that that is 200, 400, 600.

Yep. Another scenario here where we look at, they came in, said there were issues with their system. We look at the system. We can see that their usage per week, another, this was probably another sprinkler system, three days a week, their system is burning 800 gallons.

Okay.

So this one says the hundreds, and it is the hundreds. Mm-hmm.

Is that correct? I'm sorry. This one is 8,000.

Okay. Okay. So if that's 8,000, is that 110,000? No, I'm sorry.

This was a different chart. Which equals 11,000 gallons. Okay. Yeah.

So how does a resident know? Because I had a resident send their chart to me. And I don't know if it's actually tens or actual gallons.

Yeah. And that's why we encourage people to come talk to us, because we will walk them through everything that we have.

OK. Yeah.

That's the best way to do it. So other things that we learned during this process. A very small leak can waste thousands of gallons in 30 days. point ten gallon per minute leak which is equal to six tablespoons think of a dripping faucet uses a hundred and forty four gallons a day a thousand gallons in seven days and four thousand three hundred twenty gallons in a month a reverse osmosis system Many people are having them installed in their house. A reverse osmosis system where every one gallon of purified water it puts out, it discharges five gallons of dirty water. You can see how quickly that adds up. So things we know, assurances that we can provide our community in this incident. First and foremost, Our number one responsibility is to provide safe and reliable water through the residential meter. Make sure that our system is working correctly, the water that we are delivering to you is safe and reliable. All of our water meters are certified before being installed. Through this process, we can confirm and prove that our meters are working and that we are selling the water that is sold. What we know is this year we have sold 3 million gallons more in June and July, this billing period that's in question, than we did in 2005. We know that all the water that we've purchased, we've sold. So there's not a surplus of water. H-I does not have the ability to store water. We don't have a water tower. We don't store the water anywhere. So those numbers are consistent. It tells us we don't have a leak in the system, and it tells us that everything that's coming in.

And just for clarification, I know he just said June and July. He meant June 30th to July 31st. It wasn't two different months. It was basically a 30-day period. It was just 3 million gallons one time that we sold.

During that period.

Yes.

Correct. We had a couple of people say, well, we think our meter is inflating the usage. If a meter was inflating the usage, which there are no electronic moving components in it, a meter only monitors what comes through it, the water flow, is accounted by a little spinning wheel in it. It's not hooked to an electric motor or anything like that. It doesn't move unless water is flowing. If meters were inflating the usage, we would have a surplus of water. We know we don't have a surplus of water. We do not have the capability to produce our own water. We purchase from Wichita and sell what we produce. After gathering all this information, I called the mayor. I asked her to come in and sit down with us. And we met for about two hours. And we presented her with all the information that we had. Myself, public works director, utility billing clerk, city clerk, we all sat down. We all discussed this. And at the end of the meeting, we came up with these findings, that all water meters that we checked are functioning properly. After investigation, all complaints of high bills are directly related to customer usage. All meters in question have been rechecked. That extreme dry and heat have contributed to more use by customers. and water purchased and water used are consistent. So those figures, the water that comes through our main meter and the water that we sell are consistent. There's no inconsistencies. And that goes to where we have consumed the system as a whole more than three gallon, three million gallons more.

I'm just gonna make a point of clarification here. These were the findings that were presented to the mayor. These are not my findings. These were the city's findings.

So we as a team agreed that we would put some additional steps in process to help our residential customers. Putting additional information on our social media site, which we have started to do. Start putting door hangers on homes when leaks are observed. Our public works department, when they're just out and about, routinely stops by people's house and if they see a leak, mostly with their irrigation system. They see water running down the driveway or over the curb. They stop. They knock on the door. They try to get a hold of them to tell them, hey, you have a leak. You probably need to look at it. We as a city cannot fix those leaks or anything like that on the resident side of the meter. We do not have the authority to go fix somebody's leak, okay? Put door hangers on when meters are replaced. In the past, when a meter was replaced, Public Works just went out, shut off the water, put the new meter in, hooked it up, turned the water back on, and people usually never knew about it. But we will start notifying people when they have a new meter. The city is continually going through an upgrade meter process. We have, for lack of a better term, our system now, or our old system, had what we called manual read units on it, where the guys would go up, they'd pull the lid up, they'd flip the lid, wipe it off with a little rag, and take the meat down. Now we have a mix of electronic read and manual read. The electronic read sends the signal to City Hall, integrates with our system, and produces the water. There is a future option as we get switched over to this new electronic system for the opportunity for residents to have access to a portal similar to what Wichita does where you pay a small fee and then you can log on each month and you can see updated history of your water. So that's what we're working towards. And last but not least, we want people to know that you can have your water meter tested. And like I said before, these would apply if that meter was in good condition, good operating condition. Okay?

I would like to say that I am appreciative of city staff in doing their investigation. I appreciate that I was included in the meeting to hear their updates and their findings and that there are new steps they're gonna take going forward.

So I talked to Council Member Hedstrom today and trying to wrap our head around, you know, if we have an issue. We're not seeing an issue is what I'm saying on the city side. We don't have any major leaks. What we are seeing when we look at all these accounts is increased usage at the meter. What is causing that increased usage? We don't know. That's what's frustrating for us too. We just don't have the ability to find that out. We like to try to use the tools that we have to help people find out what is occurring. Todd said, is there a way to find out where most of the complaints are coming from? So this afternoon, we threw together a little 10-dot map here of where the complaints are coming from. They're somewhat consolidated up here in this northern area of town off of Oliver. But there's a couple more throughout town. So we will use this information to see if there's been any changes to the system. We have not made any changes to the system. But could it be a pressure issue? Has something increased the pressure in our system that we don't know about that's creating more water to be pushed through sprinkler systems or different appliances. So all of this information, the information we get from citizens when they come in, we use it to try to figure out what's going on. But I think what I want the council to know and what I want a resident Manipulating them. We as a city still have to do this, okay? It doesn't matter.

We still have to do this, okay? It doesn't matter. We still have to do this, okay?

It doesn't matter. We still have to do this, okay? It doesn't matter.

We still have to do this, okay?

It doesn't matter. We still have to do this, okay? It doesn't matter. We still have to do this, okay? It doesn't matter. We still have to do this, okay? It doesn't matter. We still have to do this, okay?

It doesn't matter. We still have to do this, okay?

It doesn't matter. We still have to do this, okay? It doesn't matter. We still have to do this, okay? It doesn't matter. We still have to do this, okay?

It doesn't matter. We still have to do this, okay?

It doesn't matter. We still have to do this, okay?

It doesn't matter.

We still have to do this, okay? It doesn

I will have more to discuss once we get through public comment. Council, do you have anything for City Administrator Gensby?

I'm gonna wait till after a public comment. Okay.

Anyone else? No, not at this time. Thank you for the presentation. I really appreciate it. Okay, for public comment, I kind of put out a warning not knowing how many people are gonna sign up to actually speak. So at this time, the number is low enough. You will each have five minutes when your name is called. When you come to the podium, please speak into the microphone so that it gets recorded and state your name and your address, and then you'll have five minutes to share. Debbie. Welcome.

Jonathan Olson 231 East Kodiak Court.

Do we have the ability to display that?

He sent me over the file and I think it wouldn't.

You couldn't get it to?

This is from Jonathan.

Oh, this is from Jonathan. Yes. Okay, thank you. Yes. Okay, sorry. Thank you. Apologies.

So I wanted it up on the screen so you could all see that, but I will start with this. I did a graph of I don't know the exact years, but the 2021 rates. And I was given the rates now, which are very comparable to yours three months ago. And I just wanted to emphasize the percentages. The basic rate went up 27%, which is reasonable. The 1,000 to 5,000 gallons only went up 20%. The 5,000 to 10,000 went up 50%. 10,000 to 15,000 went up 88%. 15,000 to 25 went up 54%. And for us people that have fescue yards and bigger yards, anything over 25 gallons went up 130%. and all at once that increase to me is very hard to swallow okay now my water bill uh last month it was fifty one thousand dollars thousand dollar bill wait wait excuse me could you say that again please Last month my bill I just got for July was 51,000 gallons So as a thousand dollar bill I came in I do have an electronic meter so I came in and appears my August bill which is the same amount of water three days every week haven't turned it off is gonna be under 40,000 gallons So I'm going to wait till I get my exact bill, and then we'll come and talk. And it looked like my graph, I looked at the graphs for both months, no peaks or leaky toilets or anything like that. So I appreciate, Matt, your openness and willingness to work with people. But anyway, with these rates on a dry month, My bill is going to be $600, $700 a month. So I have a choice. Am I going to pay that amount of money, or am I going to have brown grass? And brown grass is not attractive to people driving through Keech High or thinking about moving in. $500 water bills are not either. And I guess my last comment is supply and demand. At the prices you have set, we as customers have a choice to pay the bill or turn the water off. And some of us will turn the water off, which means less money for you. So that's simple supply and demand. So, thank you very much.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Council, did you have anything you wanted to respond to Jonathan?

Or not at this time? I'm just gonna say I want to hear from everybody that has a concern and I am taking that into account to make sure I ask the correct questions and formulate them at the end. So please don't take it that I'm not asking you because I'm not interested and I'm not listening. I am but I want to kind of get the whole picture.

I would like to ask one question in council that he just brought up. So the recommended high rate on the over 1,000 gallons, is that part of the recommendation that came from Wichita due to conservation, that the higher volume should be charged at a much higher rate to try to get people to water less?

It wasn't necessarily charge a higher rate. It was they asked cities to put the purchase wholesale put conservation. Okay, this was one of many is you'll remember we rebate program for efficient. But this was one of the many.

I think so the do we know what. Well, I'm going to save my question until the end because it will be related to that.

I think as we go through these also, it's important to note that in the tier system, you pay the lower rate for the $5,000. If you use $27,000, you pay the low rate and then the next rate and then the next. I had that question this week. So you don't get charged just because you went over that. You don't get charged for every gallon of usage at that rate.

okay all right go ahead did you have something else oh if you want to pass it around they can look at it yeah you're more than welcome to do that debbie welcome daryl

Daryl Atterbury, 400 East Kodiak. First of all, thank you very much to the city administrator for his presentation. Earlier today, I dropped off a letter with a lot of questions. Working during the day, don't have time to get in here during the day to ask those questions. thought that was a good way to do it to get answers so his presentation answered a lot of those questions and it's good to hear that the city staff is working on trying to find some of the answers to some of the questions already have one thing that I would like to move on to is the The bill itself, as I look at the bill and having talked with friends in Mays, Derby, and Wichita, their bills look a little different and it explains a little different what your usage is. like Councilman Hedstrom said, that you're billed by tier. Well, on those bills, it breaks that out in tiers, exactly what your amount is, so that it's very clear how much you used in each tier and how much your bill should be. One of the things I don't know is, is there an incremental charge for parts of 1,000? We're charged 5,000. Yeah, okay. So I did the calculation on mine, and I used 19 units, and it looks as though they were all charged at the Tier 4 rate. So I'll talk to you about that.

Yeah, just real quick, while it's on my mind, we bill by the thousand. So when they read each month, if it's $999, you don't get billed. That rolls over each month.

Okay, yeah, and I look forward to the opportunity to come in and discuss when we both have time. So with that, I'll conclude, unless you have any questions.

Anybody have any questions, Council? I don't.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for the letter. I haven't finished reading it because we just got it this evening.

I understand that most of those have already been answered. Okay. Or they're going to be answered. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Debbie. Pam, welcome.

Pamela Gerhart, 302 East Cheyenne Court. My husband built our home 27 years ago, and I joined him 13 years ago when I married him. We love Keechai. Along with a lot of my people, I believe, that are still here, we were stunned when we opened our water bill. We have an almost $800 water bill. We've been running 12,000, or 12 units, is that right, 12 units? And we're over 40 now. So our water usage, we don't feel, has changed. uh... we do have uh... we do not have a leak we do not believe that we've checked our toilets over and over we've checked our systems over and over uh... our neighbors had theirs re-read on monday morning and so i went across the street and said would you come read ours bless james hart i've never met james before but bless james hart he came and read our meter he said it's running properly And he said, there are no leaks. Is everything shut off in the house? And I said, yes. And he showed us the little dial that goes and moves. And he said, if there was a leak, that would be moving. And so we thanked him for his kindness. And then I made a way to City Hall. I asked to speak with Thomas, and I got a whole bundle of people. I got Thomas, I got our city administrator, I got Krista, and I got Ben. And we sat down and we had a really nice cordial conversation. But when I left, I realized I still didn't have the why of my water usage. Why is it so high? For 27 years, it hasn't been high. Why now? I came from a plumbing family. I was a plumber's daughter, a commercial plumber. Big, big business here in town or in Wichita. I was married. My late husband was a plumber in big, like Wesley and some of the big hospitals. So I'm not stupid when it comes to water meters and water situations. My engineer husband is not stupid to things now either. He is the Sigmund Southpaw on social media, in case you want to know. But like I said, in talking to our staff, they were very gracious. All I received was this. That's it. I wasn't offered a copy of my bill. I wasn't offered any of that stuff. I was just given this. And so went home, told my husband. I said, let's check the toilets again. Let's check the water. He goes, I'm telling you, I don't think that's what it is. I want to know the why. Why is our water bill so high? So I sat down, and I wrote. an email to every one of you council people. I sent one to you, Mayor. Yes. I sent one to you, Matt.

Thank you.

And I said, you know, I want to know why. Within two hours, Teresa sent me an email back, and it was real interesting because she not only sent me an email, you called me. No, I texted you and you called me. I still have her number from being on fair committee together. No, we connected. We did. We connected. And Teresa began to go down a process of different questions. Were you given this? Were you given that? I said, no, no, no. I was given this. Save water, don't waste it, whatever it is. All right? I got a response from our mayor, and I saw the care. Paul sent me a message. Paul and Todd, you guys sent me a message back, but you were like four minutes apart. I thought, oh, I wonder if they're discussing it. Paul was so gracious. He said, we are aware of the situation. I'm trying to find my notes here. We're aware of the situation. There is a quote, there has been an investigation launched. I was told that in the email. I was told that it would be discussed tonight and that there was concern about it and we would be taking care of things to find out the why. So I felt satisfied. I'd heard from Teresa asking questions. I'd heard from Paul. I got your email, Todd. You were gracious enough to email me back. Thank you for that. Here's the thing. You said Utah started talking about rates. We don't care about the rates. We don't care if there's a 3%. We care about our water usage. That wasn't necessarily addressed, I don't think, in the email. Then you went on to talk about how wonderful our people are here at City Hall. And they are wonderful. But they didn't help me. And so we felt really frustrated, especially after being here for 27 years. So after all of that had happened, I'm trying to find my notes. I'm so sorry. Okay. And I do appreciate all the responses. Everyone that responded, I do appreciate it. But since Monday, I kept hearing over and over and over, if you go through any neighborhood, you can see clusters of little groups of people, of residents saying, what's happening, why is my water bill, I don't care if it's 28, there's gotta be more than that that haven't called you. There are more, I'm telling you, there are more people that are having issues because we're hearing it. Why the increase in the consumption or usage? That's our question. That's my husband's and my question. Why? What has happened? It's more than just toilets. Something's not right. And what's interesting is that we keep hearing the same pat answer, exactly what you said. It's gotta be a leak, something you've done. We saw a wonderful presentation, and I'll go back and share and take that into account. And you talk about the small percentage, only 28 people. I still think there's more. Only 28 people. But those 28 people live in Quichai. And those 28 people may be the elderly person who can't afford their bill. We can. We're blessed enough we can. But they may not be able to afford their bill. What if it's that single mom who's struggling to even buy groceries and now she's got to worry about paying for her water? What about the young family who's already having a hard time paying even their mortgage? There are people that this has caused a big deal within a big hardship in their, in their family. This month's usage, like I said, may have affected 28 people. out of the what, 2,400? But whether there's 28 people or there's all 2,400, every one of these residents matter. And it's time for somebody to care. It really, truly is. We are fortunate enough to know that my husband, like I said, and us can handle it. Not one at the city hall offered me a printout. He said they were available, but I didn't know that I was supposed to ask for it. Nobody offered me a printout.

Not one.

I didn't know I had to ask. And although you guys were kind, you know, told me to check for water leaks, gave me a wonderful little six-inch ruler, then Matt, It threw us under the bus yesterday when you talked about it's all on the residents. We felt so betrayed. As a resident, we felt very betrayed, especially after 27 years in Keechai. My husband couldn't believe it. And that was the clincher. That's why I'm speaking tonight. We're very concerned about what's happening in Keechai. We're here to question and discover the why we have a so-called water usage increase. So council, staff, elected officials, it's time for someone to stand up and truly care and investigate just like paul said there's been an investigation launch has there or is there just some kind of thing or let's pat him on the back and it'll go away this will not go away it will hurt our community something's not right and right now we are angry we're angry We don't want to be. We're kind people. Some of these people back here can tell you that we're kind people. I got neighbors that came on both sides of us that we love dearly. And we want to be good neighbors. But I'm telling you, something needs to be investigated here. Something needs to be checked out. There's more to this than just high usage or toilets that aren't flushing right or sprinkler systems that aren't working properly.

and uh i could have said two more thing two more minutes but i took all that fluff out thank you thank you i really appreciate it i want to clarify something um and this is something i've tried to get clarified online to help people see a little bit differently um we keep saying 28 people in a community of 2400 no no it's 28 meters currently being discussed that represents more than 28 people so we have 28 meters out of what did you say 880 meters so that's we were comparing apples to oranges it needs to be compared that this is 28 meters that are known at this time compared to the 880 more reason why you need to find the why thank you thank you council do you have anything for pam

Okay, and I will just say that, so in that email, as Pam said, I knew that she had addressed her concerns to us, and I literally did send back, I think it was like, what, 10 or 15 questions, what about this, what about that, have you done this, have you done that? because as Matt said these are all individual cases and I don't know who has a sprinkler who doesn't I don't know some of that so that's why and I and because I like I said I've been on committee with Pam before I had her phone number and I said these are my questions I sent them back to her and said if you don't want to type out the answers you got my number So when you guys reach out to us and that's how we hear about it, I'm fine with you using social media because sometimes that's how you find out you're not alone. And so if that's how you find it out, but as Matt said, when you find that out, yeah, reach out. Reach out to Matt, reach out to us. We represent you. You elected, every one of us up here was elected by you. So thank you for reaching out.

Debbie.

Yeah, we have one here. It says, but it has two names. It has Bob and Sam.

welcome could you just state your name and your address please Sam Egelhoff 469 East Kodiak Sam contacted me thank you so two things so one you know I was one of the lucky people that got a 35,000 gallon which was $600 in water And so yeah, I wasn't pleased with that. And then I just checked my meter, and it's going to be another probably 400 or 500 this month.

Because I haven't got the bill yet, right? Because we haven't sent them out yet.

So one thing there is it would be nice if we could get the bill sooner. Because now we're already like three weeks into August, right? Or almost four weeks into August. And I think I just got it last weekend. So it'd be nice if we could get it a little sooner. The mobile app, maybe that would help too. But I like that idea. Now, the interesting thing that is different about mine, so the Bob Clegg part of this, who lives on Dakota, my father-in-law, I checked his, because he's been out of town since June 2nd. And so I looked at, I had him send me his bills, and he's kind of backwards. So he has, and so no one's messed with his, no one's been running toilets, no one's been flushing, no one's been using any water, just sprinkler system, basically. And so his is interesting because, so May 30th to June 30th, he used 10 units, which seems really low for, like, I think he's got like nine zones. It's a big, big yard. And that's got 10 zones, or, yeah, so he used 10 units for that. Then June 30th to July 31st, the month we're talking about, somehow he only used six units. which doesn't make any sense to me at all. So I talked to the guy here this morning. I came in over the lunch hour and got the chart. So the other problem, I guess, that you kind of alluded to, on mine, I got the graph. I got the chart. He's on an older system, I guess, so he can't have a chart. And so I don't know what the deal is there, but it would be helpful to have. I don't know if you guys on the back end can get any more detail. Something doesn't add up there.

Yeah, that's when I spoke about we have mixed meters. The manual read meters do not give the fancy graph, the electronic. As we transition over, that is our goal is to get everybody on there. Yep, for sure. Fancy graphs.

Yep, yep, for sure. So I don't know. That just doesn't make sense to me. I'm not sure how that would work. But I guess we'll figure it out eventually. The other thing I thought that was interesting that I haven't heard referenced today is when I came up today, the guy at the front said that every meter was manually read last month. and that there was a computer system issue and that's why they manually read everything. So I don't know, I'm just saying like a confluence of things altogether doesn't really, it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. So yeah, so I'm just saying, I think I would continue to dive into it. I think based on all the feedback, it sounds like we're hopefully going to. I think the flow rate is an interesting idea. It doesn't solve my father-in-law's issue, but hey, if no one changed their stuff and now it's way more than the previous months or a year, maybe you do have, you're flowing more through there if you didn't change your sprinkler systems and stuff. Yeah, anyway, I think just, you know, I appreciate the time to speak and everything, but just, you know, continue digging into it, please.

Thank you. Anyone have any comments or anything with Sam?

have a question for matt so on those older meters can we still see like a breakdown like you how you showed the no you can't see any like additional so they're manual reads so on those meters our public works guys go out and physically feed them okay on your bill i think there's a graph based off your usage

Month over month compared to last year.

Yeah, for the last year.

OK. We had to try once a year, just like we did this time. We had had server wasn't talking to the system. So we through the year where we physically touched public works guys how to do it. So that . does not change the . The only thing the electronic portion of that does, takes a snapshot of that read .

And Matt, just for everybody, Thomas said they start reading meters on the first, and it takes them a few days. So somewhere between the first and fifth, all of the manual meters should be read. We can't do it anymore.

And as somebody who did your utility billing for about 10 years, I can speak to why we have the system in place and why it takes that long. As we alluded, even when we don't have the manual reads, because there's been, there's usually always some manual reads, even if when we did have all of them on it, we had a different reading system at one point and we switched to Zinner. to make sure that those are entered after they get entered then there's follow-up to make sure that if there is any reads that aren't correct that seem a little off that we would take that time and then your bills are due on the 10th of the month so that kind of puts that person in utility billing kind of in that position to be working on the bills that are coming in instead of the bills that are going out. And so that takes a couple days and then late notices. And then after that process, because we want to make sure that before we send out the next bill, that you have the current bill paid for, because if we're not having that information on there, then you're like, wait a minute, no, did I pay this? Did I not? And that causes confusion itself. so that's why there is a lag between when we send it and I know that like I said I heard those calls for a long time and I was the one up behind the phone explaining those and talking them through so I do get the frustration with when you're like wait a minute if I'd have known And I will say that there was a lot of times where if we could, depending on how things were going, we would say, hey, this was abnormally large. Sometimes we don't notice it because it's not, it depends on the percentage of increase. So I do know that that's why the time limit or the times are what they are on sending out those bills. And that way we also had them sent out at the end of the month like that so people who get paid at the end of the month or within the first week of the month still have the option to be able to pay it in that time period to kind of make it easier on our budgeting process.

Debbie. Dennis. Welcome.

My name's Dennis Spell, 408 Comanche Circle. Been in Keechai for over 25 years. Never met Pam.

It's nice to meet you today.

My concern is, is not the rates. I understand the rates. I understand all the water treatments in Wichita. I understand all that. And I'm perfectly fine with that. It's all to make everything better.

I'm a conservative.

I have a water barrel. I have a $4,000 well. I do water my lawn. We water our beautiful flowers. My wife takes care of them. There are two of us, me and her. And I just recently retired. But I'm still working because I don't know how to quit. So we have had our bill. We looked at our bills for all year long, from January to now. Actually, we looked at our bill for the last 25 years, and everything's been perfect. But somehow this July, something went whack. We now have used 30,000 gallons of water that we've never used. I don't have a swimming pool. I don't use my sprinkler. I use my well. We use our well to water our flowers, all of that. I even had three neighbors, God bless neighbors, came and were looking at my meter as well, and I was running in, shutting off toilets, faucets, water to the house, trying to figure out where could I be losing 30,000 gallons of water? And guess what? No leaks. Every faucet I replaced because I remodeled because I retired. Every toilet or every Item that I have in the house, I've replaced and used and checked. When you lose water, you hear where you're losing water. I do not have neighbors that hook up a garden hose and then just start filling up their swimming pool with it. I do not have spongy ground. I've had sprinklers go bad. And guess what? After a while, the ground gets so spongy, you know you've got a leak. You hear water leaking from a stool or not necessarily the faucet or a garden hose or something of that nature. So I am very upset. It's probably the first time I've ever been this upset living in Keechai. And being here 25 years, building my own house, and selecting Keechai to live in, I think it's my duty to at least voice my opinion of what's going on. Normally, I don't have too many opinions about Keechai other than I love the place. My kids were raised here. And unfortunately, one used to be here but lives somewhere else. But I'm also thankful that I can pay my bills. I'm also thankful that my kids are close. So I went to the city. I asked them about my bill. Talked to the clerk, very friendly. He arranged a work order to have another reading done on my meter. As a matter of fact, I was off that day. So when the worker came out to check the meter, I asked him a lot of questions. He was very polite. And meter checked out. Amazing. I checked my meter to the bill. And then I checked my meter. Two days later, everything just seemed as kosher as hell. I don't know what's going on here. I really don't. I pay bills. If I owe somebody, I pay them. And that's just the honest way to be. But what I don't like is somebody not to check into what my problem is, and I pay for something I shouldn't have to pay for. I give to a hell of a lot of charities, and I think about a lot of people in turn, especially people with fixed incomes. How are they going to manage this? But I'm fortunate enough to be blessed enough to take care of it if I need to, because I have surplus money for emergencies. So I went to the city. He came out, read the meter. He said, there's nothing I can do. He says, you need to come to this meeting, or you need to talk to Thomas. I went back up here and talked to Thomas. And the answer I got was, you have a leak. No I don't. Do you know where my 30,000 gallons of water went? I have no idea, Thomas said. I said, so what does it take to get my meter replaced? Well, it will cost you $250 to have your meter replaced. Huh, I paid for a hookup when I built the house. Why do I have to pay for a meter if I have a suspect meter? Never once was it offered that they test my meter to make sure it was correct. I was told it's correct and that it's functioning. I wasn't offered any charts, any explanation. I didn't even get a ruler, by the way. of what could possibly happen and where this water could be going. I'm telling you, something's not right. I'm not using that kind of water. I have no pool. If I have to pay for this, I'd rather fill somebody's pool up and pay for it. So anyway, I appreciate your concerns of listening to me. I do want you to understand I love Keechai, but This kind of drew a straw. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Does anyone have any follow-up for Dennis? No? OK. OK. Debbie? Debbie Harb? Debbie, welcome.

Debbie Harb, 531 Prairie Creek Drive, Keechai.

I can second everything that's been said. I brought my last three bills. $250 for the month of May, $97 for the month of June, $216 for the month of July. That is a lot of up and down. I did come in and talk to Ben about the $250 bill. I got the same thing. There's nothing wrong. There's nothing going on. I said, can you tell me my water usage? He said, the application that we use is not working right now. And IT is working on getting it fixed. and he did have my meter read and he called and said that it was fine there was nothing wrong with my meter but the app that they use for the graphs was still not working so that was the end of it there was no other follow-up I was gone for a week in July so I you know Why 216? My sprinkler system is on the same timer that it's always been, waters three times a week. And I haven't changed or extended this watering time. I just leave it alone. In the example that Matt gave us of how much a sprinkler system can use, you used five days. We're only allowed to water three days. So that was not a fair comparison because What you showed was five days of watering, and we're not allowed five days of watering. We have a restriction. I've even gone to, and this is pretty silly, but when I'm warming up the shower in the morning, I'm collecting that water until it gets hot, and that's what I'm using to water my flowers outside. You know, so I don't know what else I can do or what I'm doing that is so different that's making these bills go like this. I mean, that is from 250 to 97 to 216. Really? Nothing's changed. How do we know if we have an old meter or a new meter?

OK.

And I would encourage you to go out to Facebook. I know you're saying only 28 people contacted you, but I think it would benefit you to look at the Facebook page regarding this, and you would see a whole lot more than 28 people commenting on this.

And I think that was my plea, is that we can't do anything if we don't know about it. So come talk to us, please.

Well, I did, and I was told nothing was wrong, and that the application that the graphs come from was not working, and they didn't know. He actually said he didn't know if IT would be able to get it. So I did come, and that's what I got in response.

it i'm sorry i was a little confused was that in may that was for the 250 and then the 97 and then 216 is the one i just got that's just for water that's not anything else it's the app is back working now right because we've seen some of that detail yeah or or the the detail if you have the electronic meter

So we should be able to get that to you now. So I don't know which kind of meter I have. And Ben never contacted me and said, hey, it's back up. You can have the information.

What I would suggest is come back in and have them pull it.

OK, I can do that. But I guess my frustration is that it's automatically being stated. It's not key chai. It's the people. It's a problem. And I don't think that that's fair. We can't all be the problem. We can't all have problems with our meter and it not be anything to do with key chai. And I'm not saying it's the personnel. I'm just saying I don't know if it's the software that's reading the meters, if the meters are being read wrong, what the clog is. But there is something, because we can't all have leaks.

Just to address part of that, taking the same approach as Teresa and what we've said, I've got some questions at the end that are more investigative.

Right.

But please know, everything we're seeing, everything Matt's seen, I've talked to Thomas multiple times this week, we can't find a smoking gun. We haven't found a smoking gun. We're still looking to see if there's a system issue. We haven't been able to find one yet. And just like for the other- Everything just go back to usage.

Yeah, and I think that's a very good point, and that's what I was, maybe I didn't communicate it clear enough. We can only act on the information and the facts we have today, okay? What we know today is that we don't have bad media. and there's no problems on the city side. What we know is there's high usage. Okay, we're not saying anybody's at fault, we're just saying that's the information we have. We wanna help you investigate it, that's why I asked. Each case is different. Yeah, sometimes we can't tell you what the usage is from.

But if nothing has changed, my sprinkler system runs the same amount of time, the same days of the week, I'm collecting the shower water. to water the flowers, how come I have such an up and down when nothing has changed?

Yeah, and that's the frustrating thing for the city. We don't know that. Well. We don't have the ability to know that. We don't have what happens once that water goes through our meter. We don't have the ability to know what's going on on the meter or commercial.

I hear what you're saying, but I'm not accepting what you're saying because there's got to be an issue somewhere because we all have the same issue.

We understand, yeah.

I have no water running over my curb, one of the suggestions that you said.

I have no soggy spots in my yard. The information we have today is what we have to work on. That information may change tomorrow, and then we will work off that information. What we're saying today is this is the information we have at hand. We're trying to figure out what's going on. It doesn't mean that information won't change as we start looking. We are going to do our best as a city to figure out what's going on.

i mean i don't know what else to say but there is something going on yeah i think part of the issue i think part of the issue too that has now arisen that i am hearing from people is the fact that on a news story last night you said the people use the water and they need to pay for it that's the problem because you just it's basically saying it's not the city's problem it's the people's problem And I'm listening to them. I mean, I've been accused of not standing up enough for residents. And it's like, no, I'm taking all the information in right now. I am trying to listen. I'm listening to the city. I'm listening to people who contact me. I'm listening to the conversations. and i don't have answers and the more i listen the more questions i have because one of the things is that you've already stated is in a normal month five bills That's your normal month is five bill issues. You now have a minimum of 28 that you are aware of. And there's more that people, I've had people tell me they don't care, why should I tell them? so and i'm like no no no i really need you to go to city hall i need you to log this in with the city but that's part of it too so um it was really difficult i i i didn't even know there was a news story i couldn't defend it last night and i said it's not my words i i don't know what to say he said what he said that's And all we can do is talk about it.

I will make an exception. This is a big issue. I want people to be heard.

Before coming to the city you may want to wait till your August bill because I think mine may be 20% less and I think that would give you better context of Yeah, we may have used the water, but it wasn't our fault so that may be a

i have heard from a number of residents that are saying that when they had their meter re-read by the city to see if it was leaking that they've been told that their number is significantly lower than what their july bill number was and that they're still like six days left so that is creating even more questions like Okay, but if I never, because you didn't get your bill to know you needed to change your watering patterns or that you might have a leak or whatever it could be, or someone left the hose, nobody knew that. going into their August watering and the numbers are significantly lower and most of them I'm hearing are very close to what their numbers had been the month before. It's an anomaly but I heard you say like we usually only have five bills a month. We have a minimum of 28 at this point that have been reported. So for me that creates a massive red flag that something is very much off and we don't have any answers at this point so um if if council doesn't have anything else yet i'm going to go back to debbie and ask for the next person that's it okay i'm going to actually because some people might not have signed up is there anyone else that is attending tonight that would like to speak okay Go ahead, yep, go ahead, come up and just state your name and your address, please. And then if you would, after the meeting, fill out a form for Debbie to have for record.

Thank you.

My name is Joe Thompson, and I'm the only one here that does not live in Keechai, but we own several properties right over here. Is it Rock Point or Rock Spring?

Yes, Rock Point.

Rock Point. And I want to talk about one in particular because it's only three years old. We bought it new in the summer of 2023. And I happen to have information about two different points in time. But before that goes in, we were talking, I think you and I, about the tier system. No, that was Thomas. And I need to talk to him about that. Anyway, I was thinking it was you. I don't remember. Yeah. I want to talk about 2332 East Cheyenne Court. right over here, about two miles. And I want to look at the July 2025 data and the July 2026 data. I'm doing this kind of slow. The usage for the 2025 data was 9,000 gallons, as I understand it. And the total for the water, just the water, was $116.15. That's reasonable, because some of that water went into the house and so forth. Now then, now I want to talk about the one a year later. Now also, that house has been vacant for a year. We haven't been aggressive enough to get it ready to go. We're real picky. I mean, if my wife does this, and if she finds anything, I have to stay outside.

He's mean, small but mean.

All right. What's the matter? I'm trying to be straight.

We can see her face.

The usage for July of this year, and nobody's living in there, is 15, not 9. Now, let me also tell you, I'm the guy that controls the sprinklers. And I, it is year-round, you know, once March gets here, it starts up, and then in October or whenever, we shut it down. But it is the same pattern every time. There's three circuits on it. The first, on both sides, okay, because it's a duplex. And the first circuit runs for eight minutes. it starts at 1215 a.m. on Monday Wednesday and Friday okay at 1230 a.m. circuit two starts eight minutes and then on circuit three it starts 12 uh 12 45 a.m and guess what it's eight minutes on two three three two and for some reason i've got it for 10 minutes on two three three four all right but i'm just talking about two three three two right now because they're the same basically for 2026 for july 2026 I had 15,000 gallons of usage. That can't be right. And I have a beautiful bill here for $216.55. That's almost exactly $100 more than a year ago. And remember, both times, that includes the domestic water that we use in the house, although for this last month and a half, we haven't had a tenant. And to be honest with you, we haven't been very aggressive about getting it, because we've got other things going on. So there's not very much house water being used, other than You know go to the bathroom there, and that's about it. We don't cook anything there. We don't make anything We don't run the dishwasher blah blah blah, but and the and the the Landscaping you know the sprinkler system it ain't changed And anyway, so that's where we are. I don't know what's going on, but when I saw this 216 versus 116 I thought that's wrong Something's crazy about this Anyway, for $500 a piece, I'll take it and I'll be happy. I have a question.

I have a question for you. Yes, ma'am. Because I had to play with this a little bit myself. We were on twice a week watering last year. Is that correct?

No.

Tuesdays and Thursdays last year.

I don't believe so.

Weren't we on that drought restriction last year still too?

I thought we were.

Yeah, I thought we were too. And then this year we're allowed three days a week. so did you change do you remember if you changed your sprinkler ma'am my memory is about as long as my little dog it's just yeah just just trying to just figure things out i'm just trying to figure things out um because i know that because our our city sign was broken and it was stuck telling people to water only on tuesdays and thursdays for a long time even though we had changed to the new watering schedule so i guess there's a possibility that there could be some water change there maybe if you're going from watering two days to three days but i don't know if it would be that much of a difference so i was just asking if you remember if you were doing the two days a week last year to be honest with you i don't remember okay and and personally we have bermuda grass i think that's kind of rare around here okay everybody else my neighbor has it uh you know uh

not fescue you have fescue no you have bermuda my duplexes that we own in bel air those are all fescue and those are the most luscious yards you've ever seen and guess what it runs it it runs three days a week or three nights right we turn it on right after midnight and it's almost now there's four circuits there not three it's a bigger lot and uh it uh it you know it runs eight minutes and eight minutes and then i think nine and then uh for the last one the bigger backyard it's ten minutes right and uh yes and it's staying very close to the 115 to 130 dollar range right well and then you also said that there's no domestic water being used inside the house not inside two three three right now i say that it's not that there's no because like i said My wife and I might work on something. We're washing stuff and so forth, but it's not, you know. Yeah, okay. I've never tried that dishwasher.

Yes, okay, thank you. Okay, I'm gonna put it out again. Is there anyone else that hasn't spoken that would like to speak? Oh, wait one second, wait one second, Doug.

Joe, I'd also encourage you to get ahold of Thomas and make sure he checks for a leak just in case there may be a small leak inside or something. I would still encourage you to have Thomas check the meter for a link and make sure nothing's turning.

Yeah, you should be electronic. Yeah, OK. Thank you. Doug.

Doug Wadan, 392 East Cheyenne Court. I don't know if you guys can answer this, but I watched the news clip last night. But then I watched it on the app, Channel 12 app. And Channel 12 left something out that was on the app. And that was the lady from Carg, whose water usage went from 4,000 to 10,000. And I want to know if anybody's looked into that, or has she come over here to talk about that? They don't have a yard. I'm sure they use water inside. But the jump, I would hate to lose CARG for that. And I've had a couple neighbors, not Pam and Todd, that they want to sell their house if this is going to keep up. And I told one couple, well, you can sell it, but who's going to want to move in if these water rates are so high? And so I didn't know if anybody has had a chance to talk to CARG yet or not. she came tonight she was here she was here for a while okay but i guess it's our fault i guess it's her fault okay we're working through this doug and one last thing on freedom of speech

internet we are free to say whatever we like on that yes you are Thank You Doug come on up Andrea

You're welcome. Angela Lesage, 347 East Kodiak. My husband and I have lived in Keechai for almost 16 years and we own a lovely property that we have almost a half acre and we do water our yard. Well, we did water our yard until this week. My husband yesterday shaved our backyard to the ground and and it is going to stay that way we have shut our water system off and and we two months ago three months ago we had 22 usage two months in a row and then we had 15 when it rained because we didn't we have a sensor we had 36 this month our water alone was a six hundred and sixty some dollars and yes we can pay that but we have shut our system off and we will not turn it on next year we are done, my husband's ready to move but there is something wrong and we know that the meter was read right because we went out and looked and looked at what it was. This month before we shut it off we'd only used 12. Because we have cut back because of the fact that it's so hot that you're not doing much good anyway except frying it. And so I am reading it every day because there's something that wasn't right. We've never used 36,000. My daughter has a swimming pool. It takes 22,000 gallons to fill her pool. My husband said if we had 36,000 gallons that we used, we would see something somewhere. And so when I'm out there looking every day, I get down there on my knees, pull up the thing, we have no leaks because it's not going around. We know that, we know our plumbing in our house is good, we have no leaks. So there is something that has caused that spike. So I think we've had times in the past we've even used 24. But 36 is incredible. So that's all. Thank you for listening. I hope you guys can find something that has caused those meters to spike. Because there are several of us in the same neighborhood. But yet our neighbors, who said they expected their bill to be very high because they had watered every opportunity that they had for the three days, theirs went down. And they said, well, how did your guys spike up that much? And I was like, we have no idea. But anyway, we will not turn our meter on. I hope the city doesn't send us their nasty notes next year on doing our backflow because we're not turning it on. We'll do some sprinkling in the front yard with hand sprinklers. But until there's some kind of resolution, it's ridiculous to pay that kind of water rate. Thank you.

you're welcome thank you okay one last call is there anyone else that wants to speak before yes you may to matt yes yes yes you're correct okay is there anyone else i i just have it hasn't spoken already um i don't see anybody else um i would just like to ask for who is attending is there anyone here who has a high water bill that they did not report it to the city Okay. So we've got more that have not reported to the city. So just even in attendance. Yes, but not for your new one. Okay. So I have one other person that contacted me directly and this comment is out on social media so anyone can see it and I'm actually going to read it because this bill was so outrageous that I was like, I can't wrap my head around this. Their previous reading was six and then it was 62. So This account holder found out that for several months there was zero reading on their bill and a few with just one. There seems to be an issue with them referring to the city reading the meters correctly. know this is an issue that has happened before and obviously it got i guess their bill i i don't know the only thing i can think of is it got caught back up or something um and i know that the city has talked about one of the reasons they took announcements off the utility bills is because people don't read their bills and the people that made this comment i know who they are and are usually very attentive to detail and i think that there's a lot of people who get their bill they see how much it is and they just write their check or they just pay it and they're not necessarily looking at it because it's generally about the same i was very shocked that this detail got missed but however it does tell me that there was at least one bill out there that had not been reading the water readings um and so that is another anomaly in the middle of all of these bills and so i guess part of my question is have we investigated the system to make sure this wasn't happening to at least the 28 that there was not some time where their bill was coming in at zero or one and people had not looked at their bill to see that they did not get a correct read has that been investigated only one account because we just had this happen a few months ago where the council just there was 20 17 or 20 accounts that that had been happening to but they weren't built that's not but they weren't built for their water usage but we had still paid for it Because that had gone on for 20 months. Because, yep, so.

Yeah, I think it was the MIU at the electronic portion.

Okay.

Yeah, let me look back on it.

Okay. So could then, could this have been one of those that got missed in that? Okay, because this person also phoned me regarding her situation and asked me if it is found that we were not properly billing them in the past so that it wasn't recording correctly how much water they were being used regularly. Whether it was the miu or the meter or what was being recorded versus build and now because we did a manual read It was a catch-up for all those months Would they be eligible to be charged at the lower tiered rate? because the lower tiered rate was actually what they were using and then all the sudden and we're playing catch up and we're charging them at the highest tier that we possibly can and i think that based on what we have done in the past that and i told her i would bring it to she had a previous engagement and couldn't come this evening that i would i thought that we would honor that i told her i can't speak for council but given our past um what we had done when that previous situation happened that we did

So another question I had and I requested it was that do we have the ability to run an unusual consumption report that would identify how many accounts had an unusual high usage for the month of July and so far I've been told no that cannot happen. I would think with the software that we have, that's information that any utility should be able to have that information available for all of those reads that how many had an unusual consumption for the month of July and that the city should be able to identify how many meters read exceptionally high, that it's not their normal consumption use in a month. The other question did, and you might have said this, my understanding is that there was a problem with reading last month and it was all read manually. So have we gone back to make sure that the manual recording is the same as what's recorded on each account? okay and have we gone back to the meter to make sure the meter lines up with what was recorded for each of those reads okay so that's already happened um so a question i do have with this billing anomaly is i was made aware that our wichita meter for the total city use um it nearly matched the collective billing for the month of july But there was an anomaly in there that would not have been included in part of that reading. So I guess I would like to see the wichita what's been built from wichita to the city actually over at least three or four months and what was collectively billed to all of our meters to see is everything matching up and i'm asking for that for accountability to the public at this point can i follow up with that go ahead

i know when i was in that position i kept a spreadsheet that showed that so we could see the anomalies on both um what the city billed for water and what the city was billed for water i did the same for sewer so that we could see those is that spreadsheet do you know still being maintained i don't have a yes or no for you okay part of that is we have to So well I just was mentioning because then that if we had that spreadsheet it would have because we actually have two water meters coming from Wichita.

Okay.

I guess of an overall picture though there may be individual anomalies But what Matt presented earlier was, as a community, we use 3 million more gallons than we did the previous month. So there may be some, previous year, excuse me. So overall, at the large level, everything that's going out is the same as what we're coming in. So we've got something going on. It's not like one of them isn't matching up. There may be little anomalies on all the distribution side, But we're bringing in that much and so we're using it someplace. I mean It's going through the meters

And there should be some anomalies because if we're reading on the first through the fourth, our meters from Wichita aren't necessarily being read on the same day. They are, in fact, like I said, we have two meters coming from Wichita. So they are not being read necessarily on the same day. It was also how we found out we had a sewer problem because we started tracking that and saying, whoa, how do we have so much more water going back to Wichita? Every time it rained we had infiltration, but if we keep track of that, that's how we find those things so How many do you know how many meters we have that are not being electronically read that are not on-center I Think Thomas in the meeting this week said he needs to replace 300 still so I'm guessing that basically 300 or not the that would be a good estimate probably

yeah so about 300 need to be replaced before we can open up the zinner monitoring system okay um

So when, and I know that most of you guys had problems with usage, but the tier system got brought up as well. So I was not on council when this current one was adopted. So my question would be, were the tiers that we use, are those similar to the tiers that Wichita uses, or were those ones that were recommended from the water rate study? They were culminating in different, comparing them. So in the water rate study, is that what was recommended to the council? No.

No, and I want to speak to that. So what the WaterWise or WaterGuys. Great Rates. Great Rates.

Yeah, Great Rates.

What they recommended was the three-tier system. And I asked for a lower tier to be put in, the zero to 5,000, so that people in very small households that are really struggling we could get them a lower rate. Because everything of the three existing tiers that we've had was going up. So I asked Matt if he could go back, have them rerun it, add a lower tier for essential use only. And I understand 5,000 is not that much. But it's for the essential use only that people who are really struggling can get the lowest rate possible. In response to that, we had to raise the higher tier. So if you're going over 25,000, that's part of that reason. So that's part of what I asked for. But we did go from three tiers to four tiers.

Thank you. Sure, go ahead. July of 25 yeah and I'm pretty sure it was July of 25 yeah because I actually asked if the escalation rate was going to go up August 1st after the new rates got put into effect last year and it was no you didn't have an extra 3% last year so so when one of the things I would like to say really quick is that I attended the Kansas Water Office local consult today and I talked someone sitting beside me was from a utility company and has been in the utility business for many, many, many years. And in the discussion, Because of the news story, it's already out all over the place that Keechai has this high water issue going on with their bills. This person said, it's almost impossible for a town of our size to suddenly use 3 million gallons more water, especially when 2,400 actually includes Sunnydale and they're on rural water one. So that just, I personally would like an investigation of the whole system. because it's such a strange issue that has come up 28 is the start there's way more than 28 people that have this big huge spike and it's like i think the citizens need to see that the city is going to do everything possible to show them that we care and that we want to do everything we possibly can to make sure something didn't happen some software glitch was there some cyber attack was there i i don't know i mean are these real i mean are these water users really like we can't we literally can't explain them and nothing can be found at all and that that will be a council decision

Yes. So I have already contacted our engineer, the one who provides the information on our system and asked them. Okay, hang on guys. Hang on.

Let him speak. Hang on.

I have already asked them if that is a possibility. Correct. But we need to see if that's not. Okay. Yeah, we've already checked it.

Okay. yes okay okay so pec is our regularly contracted engineering company for the city of quichai so they know us so anyway i'm just going to put that out there and let council continue to discuss the matter um so

I know that residents are, as a whole, make up a great portion of our water use. But we also have several, our highest water users are industrial and commercial. So do we know what their rate, I mean their usage increased over that same period of time so that we can compare what was the consumption amounts by customer type? well I know that okay okay no I I know that we can do the report I just want to know the data from it I mean because I'll be honest I know Debbie knows that we have to have some of that just to file our monthly sales tax we have to know different rates because of because of that Oh, and I wasn't worried about that. What I'm worried, because they have a very high volume before they move up to a tier. So for instance, it was what, 100,000 gallons, up to 100,000 gallons is their first tier. And I understand that they use water for their production and things like that, and that's how they make money. But I also know that when they're watering their grass, Are they being held to the same standard of conserving water for their, for their lawns as we are for our residents? So for instance, meter engineers, how much of their water bill is for their irrigation versus how much of their water bill is for production? Because I know that, I mean they, lot of times there's two separate meters or there had been in the past so when I think of how much water is being used do we have that information that we so when we look at that three million and I know that like you said that's a big anomaly but how much of that is coming from I mean, Valley Floral has got to use, I mean, they use a lot of water because they're plant-based. Okay, they have plants. When we go wash our cars, more Keechai car wash is gonna use more water. And I know that, I mean, so I just wanna see, you know, where is some of that feeding into that? I did write a question about making sure we're running a zero consumption in our high usage reports. We've talked about the watering restrictions. And are we enforcing the watering restrictions? What are, I mean. Okay.

And that was something we talked about too or that could end up with a door hanger and just saying hey reminder Monday Wednesday Friday only between and before 10 or after 6.

And I one of my like said those were some of my questions And again, like I said, with the social media, I understand, and I'm going to say, yeah, when Mr. Jensby's saying he's not going to go investigate social media to see where the complaints are coming from, we need to make sure the complaints are coming to hear when you have them. However, and yes, it is definitely free speech, and I encourage that because I think that there's a lot of you who felt like, is this only me? And you had a different reaction when he's like, okay, and I know several of you came in and talked to him and said, hey, I found out, or I didn't find out, and I still really want to know what's going on. And we really want you to know what's going on because, like I said, whether, I mean, mine is stay steady. I am two units my husband and I we do not water because I have a big yard and I say God waters it when he wants it green and otherwise my I still have to mow it well we don't I don't get that but um so we that we're just a household of two so we are in that lower tier um but I also know that those leaks happen we've had it where it was the toilet that leaked that flapper it it made a big difference so um I want you guys to know that keep talking to each other. Keep being a community, because we need to come together. And even if we're only coming together on social media, we need to come together. We need to feel like we're out there. I'm glad to hear that your neighbors were out talking to each other. I'm sorry it was about this and not about doing a rain dance so we get some rain. But yeah, so make sure you're letting us know, whether it's city council, city hall. We want to hear from you. We want to hear your concerns. that's what we're about so and i i do want to i hope that we can get some some satisfactory answers um i know we had already i had one on here about how our meters tested um that's been answered so but i think my biggest one is you know what do we need to do to work together to instill confidence back to you guys that that you are what what you're being charged is reflective of what you used

okay i've been waiting sorry so um i asked matt this afternoon to put together that map of where the usage was because i've talked to thomas a couple times and he's telling me i'm barking up the wrong tree but of all the people in here who who all is in prairie creek area and and everybody's was higher right okay has and i know Right. I know there's others. I'm just saying it seems like a majority.

Like a cluster.

Has anybody, and I know this is a completely subjective question, but I'm not giving up on it. Has anybody noticed increased pressure or better, not in this case, but better water pressure the last six months-ish? Less? OK. I thought I had noticed ours was higher. And Thomas assured me that, no, the pressure is the same. The reason I ask is I was thinking, OK, if the pressures went up, then those are free-flowing meters. They just meter what's going. If your pressure goes up and you're watering for the same amount of time, then more is going to go through. So I was thinking maybe. Yeah.

Go ahead and come up to the mic so that we can hear what happened.

It's okay.

We already know.

We had a situation that happened, help me.

Two days ago.

Two days ago. Okay, 4 o'clock in the morning, watering time. Doug waters in the morning at 3. I think Todd did his at 3. Did you water? Yeah. whatever Clint does his. And we had the most unusual thing. My husband woke up at 4 o'clock. I didn't want to say this because he's going to say, you're going to say, oh, that's what's going on. No, it's not. But we had the most unusual thing happen. He jumps out of bed, heard something. It was our backflow preventer, blue. I mean, I don't know how to say it. It just came apart. We thought first somebody was tampering with it. But not only did ours do that, but so did Sue's behind us. And then so did Ricky did the same thing all in the same time period.

Have you guys told Thomas that?

No. Not yet? Because I didn't want to find any more about water. But I'm going to tell you something. It all happened in about a three to whatever period. And my husband said, who's an engineer, and like I said, he's smart, right? well and that is what that is why he posted about air in the line yes yes cuz the Park City but the thing is is something happened we know something happened he went out there shut our system down first and he was mad I mean we're getting all new security you know but he said I don't think it's that it's a clip something's clean here we didn't file a police report It came out, it just came out. But Sue had a, or my neighbor behind us, I won't tell you her name, she had a new system put in just recently. Plant went over and was talking to her, right, April? Hold me here. And she had the same situation going on. Then he calls Ricky Bobby and find out that he's had a problem. And they said that is so rare for that to happen.

So yes, I think there was a pressure something. All the valves blew.

So those are the pieces of the puzzle we need to know about to help us.

But do you understand why we didn't? No. Okay, that's fine, because we don't trust you. I'm sorry, but that's exactly what it is.

I know, I know. That's why, that's why people won't, because when they hear that it's their fault, they're like, well, they aren't listening to us, and so they don't want to share anymore. So and it is something we have to rebuild trust which is why I do believe we need an independent investigation and it's and I mean I get PEC knows our system but yet at the same time it's like putting it out for bid for someone to come in and do the investigation.

I don't know if PEC is who we ask for engineering questions obviously because we're contracted with them. I don't know if they have that specialty, but I think that's exactly why I was asking that question. Because to me, it makes sense. A bit of an engineering brain. I'm not an engineer, but I pretend to be one. But to me, there's so many usage increases. Now, we also have to all acknowledge that I beg you guys, do not compare your usage to 2025 because 2025 was wonderful. I hardly ran my sprinkler system at all, the grass was green, it was cool, it was wet. But going back to 2024, 2023 and looking at those usages I think is valid. But what's that? Well, but what I'm saying is Yeah. That's what I'm.

It doesn't make sense.

That's the point. I apologize if I'm not communicating it properly, but that's the point I'm trying to make is the usage, the usage is up. I mean we see it on the intake side and we see it on the output side. So the usage is really up. So to me, in my simple brain, If you're running at an increased pressure, then you're flowing more. That's the way water works. So if we're popping valves, maybe there is something that we're having pressure spikes at night when things are running, because that's when I run mine too. But maybe that pressure is spiking because nobody in Wichita is using it. I don't know. But maybe it's a possibility.

Would Thomas have access to that kind of data on the pressures?

Or does it have to? He told me there's no change in our pressure. But Thomas isn't measuring in the middle of the night. Right. He goes and looks and says that. But I don't know if we have that data.

Well, we had the water study that he

that they gave us recently that talked about the different times and the peak hours and what the what the spikes were right i think it's worth investigating okay do we have pressure spikes are we having an increased system pressure that everything is flowing more yeah well and i think one of the things for me personally because we have an irrigation well and we have a lot of air in our well line that it spits out a lot of air before it gets to water i don't normally have that in my city hose line but i have noticed this summer if i use my regular hose i have a lot more air in my hose line so and so to my house that hooks up to city water because i have two spigots that are city water but i have noticed i'm having more and it's like when it starts up it's like i'm getting a lot of air through it and i'm like what in the world is happening in my city line because my well line does that getting going but my city line doesn't usually do that

So it's just something I noticed this summer and I will say kind of piggybacking on what Todd said that I did when when I asked you guys I said what is your historic usage and I said and don't look at one year because we have one year on the on the bill and Look back if you have that kind of information. And I know some people keep their bills and some people, as soon as you write the check and it clears, it's gone. Like I said, I heard Dennis say he had 25 years worth of bills. I think my husband has about 22. 12 years I don't know when he we every once in a while I'm like okay we don't need that anymore we're good with it but it is good to look back and say what has changed because I can guarantee you that when my three kids moved out yeah my water went down but looking at those and being able to kind of say oh yeah last year was a was a rainy year we didn't have to run the sprinkler where the year before when the water restrictions were very first put into place yeah what did that compare to so that but we when we have that to look at and if you don't and i think that's what the city staff was what was trying to help provide so that you could get that that picture so i know that that's important i do also when we're talking about looking at the system i do think we need to look to make sure that between the electronic reads and the utility billing that there isn't something I mean, I know that there's, there has been times where a new meter gets put in and the truncation for some reason didn't get switched correctly in it. But then those are your one-offs, not a system-wide. But just to make sure that we're, we're checking in and doing our due diligence for you.

so council i guess we're at a point i think we've discussed this pretty well um i'm going to put it out to you are you in agreement would you like to see an independent investigation happen for the system okay yes all right do we need a motion for that okay I'm just just asking what we need and then look for yep and put it out for bid so that's where we are tonight folks I'm sorry we can't answer all your questions but that is where we are tonight we are gonna work on it and we will continue to communicate we can even put updates out if there's something in between meetings the city can put out update if there's something that they have to share otherwise it would potentially be brought up at the next council meeting so are we good thank you all so much and you know what thank you for being respectful thank you for sharing what you needed to share and even though you're angry that you really did it respectfully and I'm really really thankful for all of you Well, it will eventually. It's going to take some time. You know, we aren't going to resolve it tomorrow. But it's like, what?

Well, let's talk about that. Matt, I think one of the things you said was, or maybe mentioned to me, but everybody checking your meter, which I do, regularly, but checking your meter at the first of the month. I know we've talked about it's kind of, we're into it, but make sure you check that. Honestly, I've experienced this a lot of times is like, Every year I get my July water bill, and I'm shutting off the sprinklers. Because we used to have a well when we lived before, and it was wonderful. So I get it. But we are very much looking to try to find what's wrong.

i guess i would request could we go ahead and put something out to the community on the facebook page or even the website that says if you have not reported a high water bill for july please contact city hall i would really appreciate that so we can try to and you know if you have neighbors around you or you haven't reported um you don't necessarily have to come into city hall you could just call right okay so if if it's easier just to call please so we can get as many of these high bills recorded as possible and get your neighbors to do the same thing so we can get a better picture of what is happening so thank you everybody and if anybody hears anything else about spikes or spike issues or or valves or valve blowing please let thomas city know let thomas know as soon as possible because that might that might be part of the puzzle We have a little bit of city business to finish, and if you guys want to take off, please feel free to go. Have a wonderful evening.

What, you don't want to hang out?

Oh, my gosh. Thank you for enduring this far. Thank you. Okay, we have three pretty quick last items. Whoops. And if you could do me a favor, if you guys want to chat, just chat outside so we can finish up, please. Okay, so we're going to move on to the next item, PEC Inspection Contract, Young Industrial, Forth Water and Sewer.

Mayor and Council, this is an inspection agreement for the Young Industrial Forth, which is the seal lab project. The cost of this will be paid through the temp notes that were issued for that project. It's the city's assurance that things

any questions council if not i would entertain a motion and move we approve the pec inspection agreement as presented and authorize the mayor to sign second motion by council member headstrom second by council member baldridge all in favor

motion passes 3-0 moving on to budget hearing publication authorization like we discussed at the at the budget workshop we need to publish the budget hearing for september 10th as part of the budget process this is not adopting the budget this is just publishing

So I guess this is also a discussion if you're only doing one or if you're also adding in the revenue neutral rate hearing.

lower our mill levy by 1.5.

So is it, what was the 4%?

Well, I guess I should say approximate.

Is it, well, no.

It would be taking it down to revenue.

Excuse me. You said it was a 4.1% reduction, and you're saying it's a 1% reduction. Or do you mean one mill? 1.5 mill. Okay, you said percent. 1.5, okay. Oh, that's where? Mills. Okay, so down 1.5 mills to, okay.

Revenue neutral rate.

Yes, okay, but I just, it's like, wait a minute. Okay, I'm hearing things. Okay, so 1.5 mills. I mean, I know personally, I was in favor of the revenue neutral rate. I was concerned when I found out there could be a potential sales tax difference and that's why we asked for that information and we don't have it.

It's not available.

So I don't know. Except council. Whether we want to consider just leaving the flat for now and having a revenue neutral rate hearing giving us time to make sure we have that information or

I'm not opposed to it, but anything, everything Matt has said, I know, and again, it's forecasting, so we don't know what exactly is going to happen. I can't, I didn't hear anything that would make me change my position and go to raising the mill level.

Right. I'm pretty comfortable with all this.

Okay. If you absolutely want that.

Well, I guess I'm just going to say, I just, would have liked to have known what that what that amount looks like when we're looking at the sales tax because our sales tax is a healthy portion of what we get because we're looking at a total of between the the state sales tax the local sales tax because I'm not going to throw the liquor tax into that but we're looking at right now that's just under a million dollars

What you're asking from what he said, I'm confident.

Like I said, is it going to, I'm just, I don't know. If it drops the same percentage, because when I looked up the formula, it's going to be our, it is a ratio of what the county property tax is and what ours is. And so if ours is

and you said theirs was 400,000 and we would be a very small percentage of that.

Yeah, their overall loss was going to be projected to be around 600,000, a little over 600,000.

So we're just a percent of that 600,000.

going forward i would like us to find out what that formula is so that in the future that if we do this again in the future that it's it's something that we actually can forecast pretty well to be like okay we know that we have the possibility of losing this much money in sales tax because this is what we're choosing to do and i mean yeah i'm like i said i was i'm all for the revenue neutral rate

I voted against increasing it to begin with. So I just was asking the questions because at that point in time I didn't know that the sales tax would be impacted or to what degree. So I'm fine and we can live with it.

So we're just doing the one hearing then, is that correct? Okay. Okay. So do we just need a motion to approve that, to authorize publication? Okay.

I move we approve the budget hearing publication authorization as presented.

Second. Presented? Oh, did you second it? Yeah. Okay. Motion by Councilmember Hedstrom, second by Councilmember Baldrige. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes 3-0. Okay. Moving on to item D, LKM voting delegate.

Mayor and council, the mayor had asked us to put this on at the last minute. I looked into it just a little bit, discussed it internally with staff. I guess what I would ask until we get a little more information on this and we have a full council to designate that person a table for the next.

Do we have enough time to still make the deadline?

The deadline is September 17th.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, I don't know if anyone else, I mean, you have to attend the conference in order to be a delegate for your city. So I don't know if anybody else is registered to go.

No, I just, and was this, this was a last minute ad? It was a last minute ad. Okay, because I was going to say, yeah, I didn't have any information on it, so.

So that our city has representation in voting on policy.

Okay.

so okay so do you need a motion to table it or is just tabled okay so a motion to table i make a motion that we table the lkm voting delegate second motion by council member moreland second by council member headstrom all in favor hi motion passes 3-0 moving on to council reports discussion and requests um i brought up several things with the cip last time and I guess I feel like there's no clarification on how we're actually moving forward with this. There's been no discussion with council whether we're leaving it as is. Are we gonna work on this document? Because I mean, I heard Thomas shared that he doesn't really need his items in here until he finds out what's happening with the public works facility. And then there was questions about sidewalk master plan which is in for next year we already have a sidewalk plan with arts and business district as well as the corridor improvements so there's there's just questions about what should be included

But it at least gives us somewhat of a roadmap for planning.

Well, usually you utilize the CIP for determining what plans you're going to pursue. So it is a living document, but at the same time, you are identifying specific projects or equipment that you are planning that's why this is all planned out to purchase at certain times so i guess for me with the corridor improvement and the sidewalk master plan to me that would be like arts and business district phase two i mean it wouldn't be broken we don't need a sidewalk master plan we already have one And that would be, are we gonna change it to monies for PEC to design the next phase? So I'm saying, to me, this does not represent necessarily what we are looking at for our future planning for capital improvement for all of these items. I guess I can state it again. The corridor improvement and the sidewalk master plan, that's the arts and business district phase two. and that would be pursuing WAMPO funding grants. But I also asked the question earlier in the budget workshop, we don't have an idea yet of when the first phase is gonna be paid, when we're gonna start paying for it, and when is the forecast of when it's gonna be paid off. Yes, we're gonna start working potentially on phase two, but we have to know when the first phase

when monies are going to be available and how to forecast when that's feasible with the one percent sales tax so and i know that for not i don't know or we don't know what is our current balance no with our with our one percent what is the balance in that fund i don't know okay well it's just we provide that to council

That's why I said can we pay it off like in three years I mean is that gonna be a fast payoff if you know the sales tax keeps coming in and it's like if that's the case it's like well we need to start thinking about the next phase then.

I mean I see the the sales tax that we receive but is it split out no that's not that's that's that's what i keep asking for is to split out so that's that is not Because it is, it is a separate fund.

Right. And he's, he's given it. I just. He has shared with it separately. The only thing I remember is that it always comes in higher. Right.

Well, and that's where, and the reason I'm bringing that up is because we know that the temp note for that comes due this year.

Mm-hmm.

So how much of that and I know that's going to be a discussion for a later date but it's also a discussion while we're looking at budget is how much of that are we going to spend on reducing the amount of the bond overall. So right now we're saying okay this is how much the bond is going to cost but how much and how much can we do we do need to look at that and so that's where when I looked through here I did not find the line that shows the city portion of the sales tax only. I mean, like I said, the sales tax, the general sales tax on the front, that is not the 1% collected by the city and yeah well and and so I and I guess that's where I that's where I'm struggling we're looking forward to it and and knowing that's part of our CIP that I mean and it's not mentioned on the CIP document that sales tax is even a part of where that funding is going to come from right the other thing that I would ask is when we have I know that we set the parks by policy but just like we estimate I would like to see an estimate of how much annual goes in there just like we have the annual for the highway so we have an amount because I mean I just I don't know how much that and I understand that this because this is a living document that is just going to be an estimate but it would be good to see an estimate there for the spending instead of just well that's policy and I know it's going to change based on the mill rate because it's based on the mill rate but to have basically a general idea and then I'm I know that we have that patrol vehicle in there for 2027. And we had talked about, as a council, not having a replacement vehicle until 2028. And I- And that's true.

That is true. so okay so how do we make

And do we have a, that's why we have equipment reserve.

Right. Does the police department have an equipment reserve that they're building? So how do we... No, I'm just asking how are we building, how is that fund being built? Because like the next time we say that there's not going to be another one until 2031. So...

Well, it was supposed to be.

It said 28 and 31. 28 and 31. And they're changing it to 27 and 31.

Well, and like I said, this is a living, breathing document, and that could change at a moment's notice.

I guess I'm asking how are we, so Public Works has built an equipment fund for many years. So how are we building an equipment reserve fund then for the police department, and what is being budgeted annually to go in there? That's a question that I have.

I'll bring that up.

So and then when we talked about the public works I mean Thomas said that if if we're gonna do an assessment he wouldn't be considering any equipment until a decision is like made after the assessment is done for the utilities so it's like or that for the potential facility and so it's like I mean, I guess I heard him that he's sort of just in a pause until that occurs. So he's not planning to move forward with purchasing any equipment at this time. He even talked about being able to rent something in the meantime. so i guess this has to go to the planning commission i just want to make sure we are presenting to the planning commission for review and approval prior to it coming back to the council and that it reflects what the council's actually looking at doing You took all of them off? Well, the multi-use machine. Oh, because he talked about even the brine. I thought he said he wouldn't do anything until...

Okay.

And then I think we just have generalities regarding the sewer and water system improvements. It's like... Are we going to seek PEC to help us work on some stage information so that we have some idea of general costs for potential expansion of the sewer and water systems? I just feel like those are general numbers and they're gonna be bonded out and it's like we don't really have anything specific that we're talking about.

So is, and is that sewer improvement? So that is not sewer expansion. That is only sewer. It says increased capacity. So that, well, I know. But is that increasing the capacity for the infrastructure we currently have or expanding the infrastructure for new development?

We talked about this many times. Okay. We're playing a. So we're not so we're not saving towards that like we are we like we do with the with the street the streets and

because the $50,000, so like on Woodlawn Overlay, that's $50,000 per year that we're putting into it. So I would ask that if it's something that we are putting in annually to build that fund, that we note it on here that way. So like I said, for instance, that one, yeah, we're putting $50,000 per year every year because we know we're gonna have to have it coming and we want something saved up. And the same with the park that that is how much is and I know it says annual At the beginning but like the woodlawn overlay. Yes, we expect to do it in 2031 But we are still putting in $50,000 per year until that time and we have been for a while.

I Guess how did you determine the numbers for sewer and water? I guess that's a question i have okay and so what is your thinking of yeah like not trying to start building a fund up for that i know that had been talked about a few years ago um that that was when a large mill increase was proposed okay

Okay. Okay. So is there a way that we can put in here that yes, we that because we expect a regular replacement for the vehic police vehicle to be in 2028. but still have something for a contingency? Because I feel like if we look at this and it says, hey, we're getting a new police car in 2027, then we're like, okay, when do we get the police car in 2027? And that's actually part of our plan. I mean, that we are replacing a vehicle in 2027. I would almost... Like wanted to say only in case of an emergency. I mean, I don't know. I just, I feel like we are not, we as a council said that 2028 was the next time we wanted to replace a vehicle. But yes, if something happens and we have to come up with it, I don't want it to not be available. But I don't want it to feel like, oh yes, this is the plan and we're going to, because that's not what we intended the plan to be.

But we would have to approve it anyway. We can't just.

Having it 28 knowing that there's the it will be monies there and if something happens, okay that We're planning on buying one in 28 and Hopefully nothing happens that we need to but okay, so I

Anything else, council?

So this has to go to planning commission prior. Two days before the council. Those changes will be on what they see. Okay, thank you.

If there is nothing else, I would, do you have anything else?

I thought I had a question.

I would then entertain a motion to adjourn please and make a motion to adjourn motion by councilmember Baldrige second by councilmember Hedstrom all in favor motion passes 3-0 we are adjourned thank you everyone have a lovely evening thank you all for coming

Yes. Well, that's where, so I will say a toilet flapper.

Did I bring my keys tonight? I guess I didn't bring my keys.

No, not, I mean, so a flapper being left open though. Hopefully they turned it off. It is, it's going straight down and yeah, and if it's like, so like we have a, we have a bathroom that Chris and I use Bye.