City Council - Regular Meeting

Lee Summit has lots of local destinations, but where do you start? Green Street, a vibrant community space in the heart of downtown, is where Lee Summit comes together. Its three dynamic areas have something for everyone. Green Street Market is a modern event venue and home to the downtown Lee's Summit Farmers Market. Green Street Lawn is a covered performance space hosting live music, family activities, and more. Green Street Grove is a mixture of gathering spaces, an immersive playground, and bold architectural features. And all three areas host community events year round. So the next time you set out to enjoy the city you love, remember, meet at Green Street.

Hello Lee Summit, I'm Jordan. Here's your flash briefing for the week of July 13th. City Council will meet for a regular session Tuesday night at 6 in Council Chambers and City Hall. Meetings are open to the public or watched live on the City's YouTube channel. If you can't watch, catch the recorded meeting on demand on the YouTube channel or by subscribing to the Council debrief newsletter, which breaks down three to four key agenda items. Subscribe at cityofls.net. Downtown Lee Summit Main Street is hosting a sidewalk sale this Saturday, July 18th from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Shop local and see all that downtown merchants have to offer. Learn more at downtownls.org. If you see a pothole, report it on LS Connect. It's a quick and easy way for residents to report common non-emergency concerns, such as potholes and streetlights. Simply snap a photo, mark the location, and submit the report. The LS Connect app is free to download on any Apple or Android device. LS Connect is also available online at cityofls.net. Thanks for listening, and have a great week.

Every time you turn on a tap, high quality water is ready. But where does it come from? In Lee's Summit, water flows from two trusted sources, the Missouri River and its surrounding aquifer. This water is collected and treated in the cities of Independence and Kansas City. In Independence, the Courtney Bend Water Treatment Plant operates 42 water wells. These wells reach 85 to 125 feet underground, drawing water up from the Missouri River Aquifer, an underground water source that naturally filters water through layers of soil and rock. The facility filters, cleans, and softens the water before pumping up to 7.5 million gallons a day to Lee's Summit. In Kansas City, the KC Water Treatment Plant draws water from the aquifer and the surface of the Missouri River. It then filters, cleans, and softens the water before pumping up to 25 million gallons per day to Lee's Summit. In Lee's Summit, Water Utilities controls the flow of these sources into the local system. Advanced software monitors the entire system, including three pumping stations and eight water storage tanks. which maintain the water's pressure as it moves through 639 miles of water mains, carrying it to your home and the homes of more than 100,000 citizens. Water utility staff collect samples from throughout the system and send them for extensive laboratory testing, ensuring your water is safe, meeting or exceeding state and federal standards. When you turn on a tap, you're accessing a vast system spanning hundreds of miles, each foot carefully planned and strategically maintained. A system that leverages innovation to harness nature, turning a vital life source into an ordinary convenience, bringing you safe, reliable, high-quality water 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. To learn more about Lee's Summit Water, visit lswater.net.

Want to know what's coming to Lee's Summit? The Development Minute is here to help. Costco is being built at the southeast corner of 50 and 291. Costco is a membership-based warehouse retailer offering bulk goods, groceries, services, and discounted products. Costco marks phase one of the East Village development and is projected to open in late August. Seven Brew Drive-Thru Coffee is coming to the corner of 291 and Southeast 5th Street. Seven Brew is a drive-thru beverage destination serving coffee, teas, energy drinks, and smoothies. Seven Brew is in final development plan and building permit review. Ovation, a mixed-use development, is in the early stages of construction at 150 and 291. Ovation is a master-planned community featuring housing, commercial development, and neighborhood amenities. Phase one of Ovation is targeted for completion this fall. 5-4 Drafthouse is under construction in the new Oldham Village development. The next generation of 54th Street, 5-4 offers updated spaces, drafts, and dining. 5-4 is slated to open this fall.

All of the city's storm system end up either in a creek or a lake. We have five or six lakes in the city. We have numerous creeks in the city. All of that is open conveyance, which means there is no treatment. If it goes into the curb inlet, it will end up in a creek or a stream or a lake with zero treatment. Things that people don't know they should not put down the storm sewer system. Grass clippings. We cannot be blowing grass clippings off of your lawn, into the street, from the street, into the storm inlet. Yard waste. leaves, trash, washing your car. If you have a commercial vehicle, the city by code requires that you wash your commercial vehicle at a commercial car wash. If you're washing your car in your driveway, your personal vehicle, you can wash your car in your driveway by code. Keep in mind though that all of the soaps, the detergents, everything you use, the waxes on your car will discharge down into the storm sewer. So we would recommend that you use an actual car wash to just get all of that captured properly and it will then be discharged and managed properly as opposed to potentially impacting the streams that are nearby. Fourth of July comes along, people shoot off their fireworks, they leave them at the edge of their driveway, which is a good place temporarily, let them cool down. But at the end of that, they do not belong in the street to get washed down the street, swept down the street into the storm system. If you don't want to swim in a lake full of trash, we don't recommend you discard your trash that way.

The city of Lee's Summit has hundreds of traffic lights across its more than 1,000 lane miles, all managed by the city's public works traffic technicians. The work happens inside those metal boxes on the side of each intersection. Inside, technicians program a device called the controller. The controller communicates directly with each signal head via underground wires, telling each light when to turn on and off based on a program cycle. City traffic engineers design this cycle to allow traffic to flow as efficiently as possible for that particular intersection. In order to best match current traffic patterns, they install something called a detection system. Detection systems have taken many forms over the years, from sensors in the pavement to radar boxes. But in Lee's Summit, they primarily consist of cameras, which workers mount above the traffic signals. These cameras don't record video or your speed. Instead, they monitor the spaces at the front of the intersection and identify when a vehicle is present in a specific spot. Once a vehicle is identified, the detection system sends a message to the controller, which then adapts its standard cycle to best serve the cars that are present. The pedestrian button works in a similar way. When the button is pressed, the controller receives a signal requesting that it allow that section of the pedestrian walkway to go, which it then inserts into the signal pattern. Technicians also install something called a conflict monitor. The conflict monitor is a device in which they program all the potential patterns of lights that would lead to a collision. If the other systems mistakenly trigger those patterns, the conflict monitor sends the intersection into flash. causing all lights to flash red and directing drivers to treat it like an all-way stop. City traffic technicians implement and maintain these systems so effectively, we rarely consider them. But every time we safely pass through a signal-controlled intersection, it's all thanks to their work. So the next time you're waiting at a red light, remember the delicate coordination of super smart systems that move you through that space safely and efficiently every day.

Officers enroute, 9-14, armed drovers.

So, Bye. you Thank you.

Can I have everyone please stand for the invocation and remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance?

Let's take a moment to reflect on the work before us tonight. May we approach our decisions with open minds, engage in respectful dialogue, and work together for the betterment of our city. May all of our decisions be guided by what is best for all of our residents in a spirit of community. Amen. Welcome everyone.

I'd like to call to order the City Council regular session number eight. Can I please have roll call?

Council Member Frazier. Present. Council Member Rader. Council Member Cravens.

Present.

Council Member Funk.

Present.

Council Member Carlisle. Present. Council Member Pryor. Present. Council Member Adkins.

Present.

Mayor Pro Tem Shields.

Here.

Mayor Lopez.

Here. So just... For information purposes, we have two council people not here tonight, and we have one that is with us virtually. So if you hear her voice, she will be casting her vote verbally. So thank you. All right. So we move on with the agenda. We need to approve the agenda. We have a motion made by Mayor Tim Shields and a second by Council Member Cravens. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote.

Aye. Aye.

And the computer's stuck. Aye. We'll just wait till she... Is the vote cast up?

It's not up.

We can be verbal until you get it going. Is that all right? Reboot.

OK, is it up now? Is there a motion showing?

No. Yes. Well, the motion's shown, but not. There you go. There you go. The agenda is approved. 7-0. Please record that vote. Thank you. Takes us to the consent agenda. We have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote.

Missing one.

Here we go. Consent agenda is approved 7-0. Please record that. Thank you. All right. Takes us to Council Roundtable. Anything you all want to bring up from this past week? Yes, Mayor Pro Tem Shields.

Downtown Main Street will be having their sidewalk sale 2026 this weekend. So Saturday from 10 to 5.

Great. Thank you. Council Member Funk.

Thank you, Mayor. Today I attended the ribbon cutting to the new store, Bricks and Mini Figs, which is a Lego store, and they have all kinds of extra parts and pieces for Legos as well as new Legos and things like that. So all of us adults who stepped on our kids' Lego pieces and threw them somewhere we could never find, they have all the added pieces for them over there. Thank you.

Very good. Thank you. Appreciate you. All right, so that takes us to proclamation. We have a really cool proclamation tonight. Do you all want to meet me up front? Everyone with Blue Springs South boys baseball team.

This proclamation recognizes the Blue Springs South High School varsity baseball team for their hard work, strong teamwork, and successful 2026 season. The team earned a 28-10 record, advanced to the playoffs, and won their second consecutive Missouri Class 6 state championship on June 6, 2026. So now I...

get a few applauses tonight. So now I, Beto Lopez, by virtue of the authority vested in me as mayor for the city of Lee Summit, Missouri, do hereby present this proclamation to the Blue Springs South Jaguars baseball team in honor of their triumphant win as the 2026 Missouri State Champions Class 6 division and congratulate each team member, the coaches, and the parents of the Jaguar baseball team on their well-earned and outstanding victory. All right, one more clap, come on. Before I have coach introduce himself, I have to give a little personal tidbit. I have three Jaguars that graduated in my house. And so the last time we stood up here celebrating a Jaguar victory was with my daughter on the softball team, and they won their second back-to-back title also. So congratulations. I know that's a lot of hard work. I know the coaches, you all put a lot of time into this as well. And you guys deserve it. I know in the off season, it's not just showing up to practice it's y'all work on your own hitting defense I coach girls softball but I play baseball as well and it's not easy and to do it two years in a row is pretty impressive very proud of that so let's go and introduce each other I'm Clint Longwell assistant coach Sean Callahan assistant coach Ben Behr I'm the head coach I'd like to say one thing real quick about this group of guys these group of young men they were

They showed up every day to work. They played for each other. It's something in our society that you don't really see a whole lot of anymore. It's about the individual. These guys showed up every day, and they worked for each other. It's a great group of guys. Jamie Billups.

Parker Ward. Lucas Hanlon. Archie Butram. Zayden Hamm. Wyatt Taylor. DeAndre Roberson. Griffin Robertson. Mylon Bristow. Bennett Collins. Cooper Callahan. Nathan Hickman.

Isaac Rausch.

Blake Morgan. Thanks, guys. How many of you live in Lee's Summit? There you go. That's why they're here, early summer residents. So I want to just congratulate you again, and how about let's take a photo. Want to do that?

Let's do it. Bunch up, guys.

Might have to do like a split row, squish type. Yeah, want the tall guys in the back and the short guys up front. I'm sorry coach we step in just a bit more Trying to get everybody's heads Thank you.

Y'all are welcome to stay for the whole meeting.

Now they earned it. You know council member funksons went to blue springs out to right so it's kind of cool. All right, so we're going to proceed with the agenda. That takes us to the public comments. Part of the agenda and we have a number of people that want to speak and we just go in the order that I got the packet so we have Thomas par. Yes, right there, sir.

How far from the Newberry neighborhood?

Your address, please. You can state your address as well. Your address as well.

1613 Southeast Dalton Drive.

Great, thank you.

Speaking of baseball, those guys did great, but there's a practice baseball field by the new middle school behind our neighborhood. I haven't seen anybody use it yet, but I've never been told that I was quiet. All right, thank you. three nice neighborhoods around there and no kids out playing baseball on that practice field. I was just curious as to what it would take to open that up to give some of the kids in the Lee summit, a place to go play like with the new, uh, developments that are coming around. Maybe we could put a tennis court or a baseball field in there where the kids could go play, have something to do besides take care of the problem in downtown Lee Summit where they seem to go on these rampages. Which brings me to my second point. Used to live in Redlands, California, right across the highway, Interstate 10 from San Bernardino, the highest parolee population in the state of California was in San Bernardino. We had lots of outdoor fairs, downtown activities, a lot of cool things going on. One thing we did have was about 10 Belgian Malinois on the police force down there. They did some interesting things, brought the news cameras out about twice a year to show what they were capable of. And whenever we had a big gathering in town, we patrolled with them. And son of a gun, we didn't have that much problem with people running rampant. I'm really disappointed that we collapsed after the downtown days incident Which brings me to I would like to know if we can find out what I understand seven juveniles have been charged I'd like to know how that's progressing. I'd also like to know about the shooting over at the Fitness Center that they built next to our neighborhood in Newberry the convicted felon that showed up to play basketball with a pistol in his pocket I'm kind of curious. I haven't heard much about that but other than my neighbors, all of us talking about what's going on in Lee Summit, that's what we hear about. And that's really all I wanted to say about it. And I'd like to know how we're going to pay for all of the expansion for all the apartment buildings because if they're going to hire their own private security and fire department and water service, that's fine. If they're not, then they need to bear their fair share. That's all I got to say.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. We'll go with Mr. Alshawish.

You know, Mr. Parr has a great comment he made there because I've thought about that a lot myself. So I coach youth athletes and I called the city not too long ago and I said, hey, I want to do some sprint training with some kids. Is there a field that you guys have that isn't under lock and key where we can just go sprint or like maybe on Thanksgiving when school's out we can play soccer or toss a football around? And they said no. They referred me to private organizations. So a city as big as 110,000 people, we've got no place where kids can just go out and run on like a flat field where they're not going to roll their ankles and that's something that needs to be addressed. But that's not what I'm here to talk about today. I want to talk about the court audit that's on the agenda tonight. So back in November, our judges came before the last council and described a problem. You know, they said, we have the same court structure as we did in 1980s when our population was 33,000. It only offers two days per week. And now, you know, our population is not 33,000. It's 110,000, but we still have that same two day per week. They wanted to move it up to four days a week, which would match neighboring municipalities, probably be a little bit less than some of our neighboring municipalities. And they said in order to do that, you know, we just need a pay bump, right? We can't work four days a week for $38,000 a year. We'll starve. Which, you know, I think that's perfectly sensible, perfectly logical thing to do. You guys said no, no, we're not going to pay you. Instead, we're going to pay a third party to do a study. And the study took around eight months and we're back here now. And so we basically kicked the can down the road and And we've arrived to the day where we have it as a presentation, but I guess there's nothing you can vote on tonight. Maybe you'll call for a vote on something to increase these court days per week. But they shared the data. The pay they're asking for is not outrageous. The court days per week are needed. We have folks that are waiting a long time for courts, and they're just not being processed efficiently, and it's probably very frustrating to them. So, but what I find really interesting about this is it's kind of a microcosm of what's happening in the entire city, right? We want growth, and we push for growth aggressively with all these big subsidies, and we give so much away that we can't pay for the infrastructure to support it, right? We can't pay for stormwater. You gotta come to us again for stormwater. We can't pay for the courts. You know, the 70,000 a year they're asking for is too much. We have to have the same court system as when we had 80,000 less people. And so this is what we're seeing everywhere. We're seeing it with public services. We can't mow this year. We're only going to mow half as much this year. And so I think you guys really have to think about this. We know growth can be a good thing. We know that financially it could be a benefit. But when you stack 40 of these on top of each other in a few years with over a billion dollars, all that money that's going to the developer lining their pockets should be paying for these public services. It should be a no-brainer to expand court operations to be on par with cities that are also 110,000 people. It should be no problem to pay for the stormwater. Which, by the way, how do you think we have this stormwater problem? You think maybe when we remove trees and grass and replace it with concrete, the water has nowhere to go? And so you guys have to figure out what you're going to do to keep up with infrastructure and services because it's not working. Thank you.

Thank you. Ms. Carol Lewis.

Thank you.

I just saw a post on Facebook this afternoon about the hotel that's supposed to go in here sometime soon. So I just have a couple questions, real quick. Is a view of Red Racks the dream of a client at a posh hotel? Is a Wednesday or Saturday morning view of trucks emptying out crates of produce for sale the dream of a posh hotel plant? If not, why are we putting that hotel there? Had downtown... days not been canceled, with the clients of this posh hotel looked forward to the sounds of carnival barkers and carnival rides on several nights during their stay. And as I looked at the rendering of the hotel this afternoon, I was really flabbergasted. That's the best word that I can use to describe my feelings, that a nice hotel would be crammed in to such a space. The farmer's market area is very pretty, although it seems somewhat pricey. So why, why would we want to cram this nice hotel into that space, taking up most of the green space, or maybe the two buildings that are there? But I just don't understand at all, where are people going to park? It just seems ill-advised, in my opinion. Thanks.

Thank you. Chip Floyd.

Hello. I don't know any of you personally at all, except for maybe Cinda a little, because we campaign together. But I've heard some things about some of you, but I don't know that that's true until I see it or hear it for myself. The things that you say and the things that you do inform my judgment about you as a mayor and a council. You earn your reputation with me. Recently, I asked the council this question, quote, do you believe that accepting a $500 campaign donation constitutes a conflict of interest when that same applicant comes to you asking for a vote? The answer I got paraphrased is, This land was purchased 40 years ago. They spent the last seven years making plans for our city. There's going to be parks and trails and commercial and single family and missing middle. And oh my, there's going to be lots of jobs and revenue and salaries. We helped this developer build sewers. We used economic tools to get this passed. And by gum, it was a unanimous vote by the council. So what's your problem? Thank you for your interest. Love and kisses, council. Okay. You just sent me 169 words of a non-answer. You dodged the question. I have my answer now, okay? I understand the dodge. The dodge is disappointing. The dodge is not corrupt. The dodge is disappointing. And by the way, the Citizens United decision has nothing at all to do with individual donations in local elections. It's behavior like this that informs my judgment of you as a council. Whatever place you occupy on the continuum of saint or villain is yours to earn with me. Every comment, every opinion, every vote you cast shows me, little by little, who you are or who you are going to be as a public official. I don't have to rely on somebody else to tell me what to think. About 17,000 people voted in the last election. I am just one little bitty voter. You are accountable to us, to me. The lack of any real accountability, not accountability printed on a flyer or a sign, not accountability spoken into a microphone, but the lack of real accountability continues to be a problem here. Be accountable. the ruination of transparency was bad enough and was not a good start. Let's get that back. I criticized the council for that what I believe to be conflict of interest vote. I criticized hard. But we still have dialogue, myself and that council. You can have dissent and criticism and dialogue. I intend to maintain dialogue with all of you. That's it. Thank you.

Ms. Teresa Vollenweider.

Teresa Vollenweider, 5201 Northeast Maybrook Road. I'm going to start off by asking about this Breeden plat again. Would the people in the district of Northeast Tudor Road, which I think is where this was, 1650 Northeast Tudor Road, would you all check on this and find out, is there now a plat? Or was this all for no reason at all? November 4th, 2022, when I walked down from my barn, I noticed this work being done. It started at about 9, so I figured the guys probably started earlier than that, maybe 8 or even as early as 7. It appeared to be that they were working on a water line. Here they're setting up lights, so they're gonna work late. This was the city of Lee's Summit Water Utilities. This was not a private contractor. This was the city. This was taxpayer dollars at work. And it didn't stop on November 4th. It continued to November 15th, and then I think even after that. I did ask a fella on November 15th, did you all move those two things into that other deal over there? And he said, well, we moved one of them. He said the water meter went over there, and we got rid of the air release, the blow-off valve. So I guess what I want to ask or yes, what I want to ask is would some of you ask for a work order and see what that was all about? Was it for public or was it for private? How was our money being used? Because as you know, We have a 1% increase in sales tax coming up for stormwater. And so the people would like to know how their money's being spent.

Thank you. We have Mr. Daniel Harden.

Nope. Daniel Harden, 3514 Southwest Winsong Drive. I'm here about the public hearings and how long they go on for. I've watched on YouTube quite a bit and I was here last week to see how long that went on for. We were all here until about 11 o'clock at night. Right here on your procedures page and website, it says applicants that are allowed 15 minutes to to show their proposal for applicants for rezoning special use permits and development plans and things like that. And individuals are given three minutes, which you could see a counter over there for everybody, all the individuals anyway, but everybody else that comes up here to do their presentations, there is no timer going on. And then after all the individuals get their three minutes, the presentations, they get five more minutes or they're supposed to be allowed five more minutes, but those keep going on. And that's why we were here for so long last week and on the YouTube videos that I watch. I've never seen anything get cut off at the 15 minute mark and I really don't have anything else to say at this point. I just give somebody else my extra minute and a half here. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. We're going to proceed. A few more comments. Uh, Vanessa Maxwell Lopez.

Good evening. My name is Vanessa Maxwell Lopez. I'm 10 Northeast Tudor. I'm one of the Lee's Summit Municipal Court judges. I've worked in the Lee's Summit Municipal Court for over 19 years, so I have lots of institutional knowledge of the city of Lee's Summit Municipal Court, its functions, its growth over the last 19 years, how other courts function, and how similar cities structure the municipal courts. The Lee Summit Municipal Court judge position is a part-time position. I also work in the City of Kansas City Municipal Court as a pro tem judge, and I have contracts in two other municipal cities to provide legal work for their municipal courts. Lee Summit's current structure of two court dates a week is woefully inadequate. We've had two court dates per week since 1981. We've had no organizational changes to the court for over 45 years since we only had about 33,000 citizens. Now we're at 108,000, over 108,000. Since 1981, the number of tickets being written has skyrocketed. People are waiting over three hours to be seen. We do not have enough staff to handle the caseload. We don't have enough probation officers to handle the caseload. Officers and employees are working countless overtime hours to keep up. As judges, we're having to rush through dockets. We often can't get to scheduled trials due to the number of defendants waiting to be seen. Our courtroom often fills up to the point where we have to have defendants waiting in the lobby until space clears. Our parking lots are also full. For the last two plus years, we have asked for help. We have talked to the city multiple times. We have appeared twice in front of the Budget and Finance Committee. We have then, on November 4th, we made a presentation to you all, showing you our numbers and asking for you to give us additional court dates so we can better serve the people of Lee Summit. All of you but one, Ms. Cravens, were present when we spoke to the city council on November 4th. Some of you were present as city council people and some of you were in the audience. A couple of you were not convinced by our presentation, and you stated that you wanted to see an independent audit confirm the numbers and the information that we had presented to you. This city hired an outside auditor. They are here tonight, and they're going to present their findings to you. This audit, which is labeled an operational overview, confirmed as accurate everything we stated to you on November 4th. The audit shows the court needs to be restructured. The audit shows we need more court dates and more staff. The audit shows Lisa is behind all of the cities our size and smaller. The audit shows for the number of tickets being written, we need 16 clerks. We have six. The audit shows for the number of tickets being written, we need 5.4 court dates per week. We have two. For the number of people we were putting on probation, the audit showed our probation officers need help and additional staff members. The audit confirmed that the numbers we presented to you on November 4th were accurate. Our court is drowning and we need to figure this out now. We can't wait another two years because we are under water now. The city likes to plan ahead for the public safety needs of our community by building new fire stations, hiring more police and firemen, and making sure they have the tools to protect us all. Thank you.

Thank you. William Marshall.

Mr. Mayor, council members, Mr. Dunning.

My name is William Marshall. I live here, I reside here in Lee's Summit and prior to working for the court, I spent over 27 years working in corrections, 13 of which I was a supervisor and chief administrative officer for a state probation and parole office. What I've observed in my brief tenure working in Lee's Summit is that the criminal justice system is administered primarily at the municipal level and quality of life and property offenses such as domestic violence, DWI, stealing and shoplifting, assault and trespassing, resisting arrest, Drug offenses, driving while revoked, and no insurance are by and large adjudicated through the city court. At the court, we want the roles we play to be impactful and to serve as a positive change in the individuals we work with so that there are fewer victims created by the same offenders. We also want to simultaneously serve as a deterrent in the community in an effort to redirect the behavior of potential future offenders. Currently, we operate under constant pressure. 60% of the work week consists of court duty and a weekly client report day. And with no support staff, we are responsible for all the data entry and maintaining all the legal records involving the probation cases. There is little time left in the work week to meaningfully supervise clients or return calls or emails. Our caseloads are regularly between 600 and 700 and far exceed even the most liberal interpretation of the workload standards that are recognized by the American Probation and Parole Association or the Officer to Client Guidelines utilized by the State Division of Probation and Parole. The Municipal Court operational review being presented this evening should clearly demonstrate the need for additional resources. The current workload placed on our part-time judges and very small number of court and probation staff is unsustainable, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to effectively address our clients' needs and to swiftly intervene and provide the deterrent role or administer sanctions that are the cornerstone of impactful community supervision. Based on the population growth, the volume of daily travelers to the city, and the increases in staffing to other departments that impact our workload, additional court resources is a positive investment in public safety for our city. It is my hope that you'll find the court operational review presentation and other speakers that are here this evening helpful in your decision making. Thank you for your time and attention. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir.

Mr. Brett Morris.

Mayor and council members, thank you for allowing me to speak tonight. My name is Brett Morris, and I'm one of three probation officers for the city. I've had the opportunity to serve the citizens of Lee Summit for 11 years and as a probation officer for the last three. As a probation officer serving this community, I'm proud of the work our team does every single day. We help people rebuild their lives, we hold defenders accountable, and contribute to the safety and well-being of Lee Summit. I care deeply about this job and about the people we supervise. A brief description of my duties as a probation officer include meeting with probationers on a weekly basis, signing up new clients for probation, checking to ensure that offenders are complying with their court-assigned programs, writing probation violations, setting court dates, updating and maintaining important court paperwork such as warrants and continuances, and preparing for court. Most days I'm in the office by 7 a.m., though my shift doesn't start until 8 a.m. I work through lunch and end my days at 5 p.m. On court dates, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I normally stay until 7 p.m. or later due to the size of the court docket. It's not uncommon that most weeks I work 50-plus hours, not because I want to, but because I have to in order to maintain my caseload. I have missed or have been late to many family functions, including my child's football practices, student award ceremonies. Some nights I've even worked from home in order to try to maintain my caseload. To better understand my caseload, I have about 600 clients under supervision. I sign up on average 25 to 40 new clients every week. At any given time, there is 20 to 30 new probation sitting on my desk entering into the court database. With the rising caseload, it has become increasingly difficult to ensure the completion of other important tasks, such as sending failure to report letters, following up on probation completions, writing probation violations, and coordinating with mental health and substance use treatment professionals. Combined, our caseloads are approaching 1,800 clients. My colleagues and I are constantly brainstorming how to become more efficient at our job and how to better serve our clients. But the reality is if we do not hire more probation officers, we won't be able to provide the best service that's expected from us and that we hold ourselves accountable to. I remain optimistic that with additional resources and adjustments to our caseloads, our dedicated team with some help from you can deliver the quality of supervision Lisa expects and deserves. I'm confident that by working together, we can strengthen our probation services and make our community even safer. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Linda Marshall.

Good evening. My name is Linda Marshall. I live at 2431 Northwest Valley View Drive. And I am here to talk about my clients. I'm functioning as a public defender for Lee Summit. And my clients are, many times, I have approximately 200 clients. And about a third of those clients are immunocompromised patients. or they are disabled in some way. They come in in wheelchairs, they come in in walkers, they come in in canes, and they come into a crowded courtroom with people standing along the walls. And there was no place for them to sit. And they often wait for two to three hours to be seen by the court. And it's not the fault of the judges. The judges furiously work through their caseload as best they can. They often work through lunch, as do many of the court staff. And we're at a pace where it's unsustainable. The working through lunch, the staying through late, is affecting everyone. And it's getting to the point where it's just simply unsustainable. I was a prosecutor with Jackson County for seven years. I was a special prosecutor for the Attorney General's office for three years. So I traveled all over the state trying cases. I have never seen such crowded courtrooms before in my life. I've practiced law for 25 years. I've been to all the courtrooms, Kansas City to Independence. Nothing compares to our courtrooms. Our courtrooms are jam-packed all of the time. And it's time to do something about it. I'm imploring you on behalf of my clients. Oftentimes I have an immunocompromised client that comes in you know, for one court date, but can't make it to the next one because they're either in the hospital or they're sick. So on behalf of my clients, I implore you to do something about this. Thank you.

Thank you. Go to Dana Alteri.

My name is Dana Altieri. My address is 10 Northeast Tudor Road in Lee Summit. Over the last two years, we have brought these issues up at least 52 times to the city between Judge Lopez and I. The city includes the city council, law department, and the city manager's office, and nothing has changed. We spent months on the research for our November 4th presentation. Not only did we feel unheard, we felt outright disrespected by two of the members of this council. And that was lost on me considering we have a combined years of experience of over 60 years between the two of us. And just in Lee Summit Court, I've sat on the bench for 17 years and Judge Lopez has worked at the court in different capacities for 19. On December 15th, the same audit that you have was given to the city, which confirmed exactly what we told you the month before. And page one of their report says, and I quote, current staffing levels have not kept pace with city's gross. growth. Analysis indicates an immediate need for additional judicial capacity and increased personnel. Now after hearing our presentation in November and the city receiving that draft in December, I would think that wording would put someone on high alert and things would get moving.

That reports the same one that you were given again in February.

Now, I don't know what your definition of immediate is, but we've been begging for two years and the citizens paid $80,000 or $90,000 for that audit and nothing's been done with it. Now, I was presented to the judges just fine in a Zoom call. I have no idea why we had to delay this thing for months and pay these people, in addition to that $80,000 or $90,000, to pay for their hotel and their airfare and probably their food, I don't know, to bring them in here for it to wait several months. Now, but what has gone on in the meantime is animal control sat on the floor last time because we didn't have enough seats. Judge Lopez had to call me at home so I could run up and help her with her docket. So I sat in the bailiff's seat and we called cases in tandem like a couple of tag team wrestlers because that's the look Lee Summit is giving. People wait, like everyone has said, three hours. The line zigzags. It starts at security, and then it goes down to the police department. It goes down to the men's restroom. It cuts over the front of the building to the women's restroom, where then it hooks outside. So you'll stand in that before you get inside to wait your two to three hours. We break the fire code on a constant basis. I mentioned that in November, I believe. The citizens are turning on us, and I don't blame them because I think we were in charge, too, because they elected us to run the judiciary. But nobody's helping us on these issues, but something the city has done recently is approve $389,000 for a welcome to Lee's Summit Monument to go over there. Now, we hear about fire and police constantly. They're great, but what they do rolls downhill to us, and we have absolutely no resources So something needs to be done. I don't know if you've got to ring a bell or what needs to happen because I can't seem to effectuate any change. But I hope someone up there will step up and give us the change that we need. Thanks.

Thanks. That's Tracy Phan.

Good evening. I'm Judge Tracy Phan. I'm actually the municipal judge in the city of Raytown where I've served there for 26 years. I practiced law for 36 years. I fill in in Lee's Summit as the conflict judge and when needed as pro tem judge. I also represent clients in Lee's Summit court usually one to two times a week. I'm there every week. I went to court last week with a client and he ended up waiting like two hours to be seen. He was not a happy camper. So these situations the judges are telling you about, this is reality. This is what's happening every week in the municipal court at Lee Summit. The statistics that have been thrown out is that the Lee Summit court has six clerks. I am the judge in Raytown. We have a population of 28,000. We have three clerks. Clearly, you can see the numbers don't add up. You need way more clerks and staffing if you're going to continue with this numbers with the population. Your population is continuing to grow. You're building apartments. You're building new subdivisions. In theory, you're going to get more tickets and more citations for the people that are moving in and out of the area. So therefore, the dockets will continue to grow. And because of that, the added dockets need to occur. I understand that there's some talk going on about, well, you can't raise the judge's salary during election term. Well, that is true. You cannot raise the salary. The state statute does allow you to provide payment for additional duties, and that's what these judges are asking for. I've had to ask for it in Raytown. I was lucky. I was fortunate. My counsel granted it immediately when I had to add dockets for my additional duties. And I would implore you to do the same for these ladies. And if you all don't believe that this is what's going on, you need to show up on these court dates. You need to try to park in the parking lot where you can't even find a parking spot. People are parking illegally. Cars are going to end up getting hurt, you know, damaged because of the way people are parking all crazy because there's not enough parking spots. And if you go in there and you have to wait in that security line, as Judge Altieri stated, is going out the door. I took pictures of it when I was there one day. It's not acceptable by any stretch of the imagination. Your litigants should not be having to wait three hours plus to see the judge. It's absolutely not acceptable. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. That ends the public comments part of the agenda and takes us to agenda item number six, which is the actual presentations that we have for tonight. The first one is the municipal court operations review. And for this one, I will recuse myself and Mayor Pro Tem will convene the meeting. So thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. So that takes us to Item 6A-2026-7642, a presentation regarding the Municipal Court Operational Review. I believe Mr. Dunning will be presenting that in conjunction with the consultant who prepared the report. I do just want to say, first of all, thank you. to the people who came to speak during public comment. We all take this really seriously and I appreciate the work that you do for the city and taking time out of your evening to be here. And I understand that you're, excuse me, the judges and the municipal court staff are on hand as subject matter experts to answer any questions from council as we go through this presentation. So I appreciate them all taking time out of their evening. I also want to say that I appreciate the work of the municipal court judges, the city staff, and the consultants preparing this audit, this operational review. I really do believe that we all want to see the court succeed and that this will help give us some tools to make that happen. Understanding that the judges are independent elected officials, that they have their judicial independence. And so I hope tonight that we'll kind of get an idea of how we as the city can support them in running their courts independently since there are things that we can do in terms of providing resources. And then there are things that the judges have kind of discretion over. So I hope this audit will help us to understand that and kind of have a path forward on some additional resources we can provide and some ways to help the court function better. So with that, I will turn it over to Mr. Dunning.

Mark Dunning, City Manager. So here to present the Municipal Court operational review. I'll just tee this up for our consultants who worked diligently on this. So this comes from the City Manager's recommended audit from the fiscal year 26 budget. So this was conducted over the course of the last fiscal year. And the scope and the purpose of this review was to look at the operations, the processes, and get a general review of our current practices and procedures, including docket structures, the overall management, and also look at internal and external measurable outcomes. And so data tells us a lot. So that was one of the goals of this work. We also looked at organizational structure, staffing, for the municipal court, the court practices, procedures, and making sure that we're compliant with Missouri Supreme Court rules and court operating rules, which guide the municipal court functions. There's also component looking at, we call them interdependencies, right? The police department, the prosecutor's office, our finance department, many different stakeholders interact with the municipal court, so we wanted to be mindful of that. And then as well, we looked at just the overall facilities and technology that support the municipal court functions. I want to be very clear, what this scope does not entail is judge compensation. That has been a discussion, but the scope of this municipal court operational review does not, that's not a component of this presentation tonight. That's a separate consideration. I wanted to acknowledge that Judge Maxwell Lopez and Judge Alteri are both here, and of course you heard from municipal... various municipal court staff as well. I will also note that as a scope of this work, there are portions of this work that are considered protected under closed record because they involve things such as financial controls, safety and security. And so through the Missouri State Statutes, there's provisions that allow for that kind of information to be protected and considered closed record. So that's a component that's not out there in the public record, but I wanted to ensure that all of you had that information, so I sent that to you under attorney-client privilege, closed record for your awareness, too. So I wanted to make mention of that. I will also share that since having received the final report from Raftelis, that there have been efforts underway to make improvements based on the recommendations that you'll hear shortly. So I'll be happy to chime in on some of those things that we've done. along the way. So with that, I would like to introduce Jonathan Ingram with Raftelis. He's vice president over organizational assessment. And he also has with him Rebecca Hoskin, who's a senior manager with Raftelis, and Andrea Miller, a senior advisor for Raftelis. And so I'll turn it over for them to provide their review.

Thank you, Mark. Oh, sorry, behind you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. It's good to be with you this evening. As the city manager indicated, my name is Jonathan Ingram. I'm a vice president with Raftelis. I lead our local government organizational assessment practice. So what does that mean in non-consultant speak? Essentially, we are a local government-focused consulting firm. We work exclusively for city and county governments across the United States, everything from accounting to zoos. My role is to lead the efforts on staffing, process improvement assessments, those kinds of things. So in other words, the work that integrates very specifically with the scope and the task that you all have outlined for study for your municipal court. I'll ask my colleagues to introduce themselves as well, and then we'll move into the presentation.

I'm Andrea Miller. I'm also a consultant with Reftelis, but I am maybe a little different than your average consultant. I actually have about 28 or so years of municipal government experience, and I'm also an attorney licensed in the state of California. So my role on the project really was to look at the court rules, the various state statutes, your constitution, your charters, and they ensure that the operational practices of the court were consistent with those operating standards.

Hello, my name is Rebecca Hoskin. I was the project manager on this engagement. I've got about 25 years of experience in local government, about half in direct service in finance and budget in Southern California and also in the city manager's office and other venues. and about half in local government consulting like Jonathan doing reviews around the country for a wide variety of departments and operations.

Okay, so just to start, I want to set the context for what we want to tackle this evening and what we want to share and give you a sense of the flow. So the first piece is we want to give you just some sense of the context of the court so it can feel a little bit like inside baseball. So we want to make sure that you all and members of your community understand kind of the specific task of the court. We also want to highlight what we believe are areas of risk. So when you deal in public safety, there is essentially a risk matrix that you use to evaluate issues and evaluate the urgency of issues. And we want to give you a sense as a governing body of some of those things that elevated for focused attention. that inform some of the recommendations that we've offered. We'll spend some time reviewing our specific analysis and recommendations and, of course, provide a couple concluding points. One of the things that I really want to outline here is the report and the recommendations ultimately recommend a number of adjustments in staffing, process, procedure, and organizational structure. And what we have not done is made a wholesale recommendation to add every conceptual number of staff that you could add because fundamentally there are a number of process improvements that we've identified that can be implemented to generate efficiencies within the court, to generate efficiencies within the docket management process. And there is also a clear need to add capacity and to have a rolling analytical process where you all are making improvements as a community, making improvements as a court. and evaluating where additional resources could be added in the future. So really it's an integrated plan that tackles both capacity, sort of labor hours that you need to get the work done, but also process improvements and very specifically targeting areas of risk with respect to the judicial process that we believe are important for the organization to address. We've also identified a number of areas where we can generate contracted capacity or support to be able to add additional resources to help deal with backlog, deal with peak periods, without necessarily adding full-time folks. So that's some of the context that I want to offer. It will primarily be Rebecca and Andrea, my colleagues here with me this evening, who will be rolling through those risk areas and recommendations. But, of course, if there are questions that will come up, I'm certainly happy to add any context that may be appropriate.

The context is really important because the court has kind of a divide. I'm not good with my text. Is it up or down? Oh, right arrow. Oh, right arrow. Okay. So the court operates within the framework of the various court rules, the state statutes, your constitution.

Can you bring the microphone a little bit closer so we can hear you a little better?

Sure. So we started with the context that the court operated within. And the court is guided by various state statutes, the Constitution, various local rules, court rules. But it's kind of a divided oversight, and it creates kind of a complexity within the situation, which is, I think, part of the fundamental issue here that you're hearing, especially in the public speaker's comments. The circuit court maintains administrative authority over your courts. The Office of State Courts does provide some technology and support services to your courts. Those are state agencies that your court can rely upon At the end of the day, though, the City of Lee Summit oversees your appointment management and compensation of your court employees, but they still have that connection with the presiding judge who ultimately supervises the court officers. The municipal judges themselves are responsible for compliance with the various statutes. They supervise your court administrator, but that's really kind of a shared supervision. And so we'll get into some of that in greater detail, but I think that's part of what is generating kind of the lack of clarity of function and also some lack of accountability. Sorry. There are some trends that we concur with the judges. There are some trends that are impacting the municipal court. Your community is growing. You've seen a tremendous population growth from 1985 to 2025. We confirmed that in some of the earlier studies. Their court workload is growing. The structure has not changed. And you've had a tremendous amount of staff turnover, which has created some additional issues in terms of the processing of cases. It's important to kind of understand where they are today, though, as we begin to analyze what we projected and saw for them in terms of the future. There are some key functions that we looked at, the judicial functions.

Andrew, you have to speak up. They can't hear in the back. Maybe turn that mic off there. There you go.

So we looked at the key functions. Okay, how about if I stand really, really close to it? Second. I'll be really close to it. In fact, I'll move this in a little bit. Is that a little bit better? Yeah. Okay, so we looked at the various functions, the judicial functions, which is really the courtroom officers doing their work, the court administration, which is kind of the processing of cases, making sure that the data entry is appropriate, that the rules and items are being adhered to, and then probation monitoring. Overall, we looked at your clearance rates, and the typical goal for clearance rates is about 100%. During the pandemic, there were some changes, obviously. There were changes to the way the court operated. At the same time, there were a growing caseload and turnover and technology challenges. But overall, your court seemed to function well and seemed to work through the pandemic-related issues, and so your clearance rates actually are fairly good.

I don't know if you want this one. Yeah.

So one of the things we always look at, as John referenced earlier, is areas of risk, right, when we're looking at these kinds of things. And there are really two areas of potential risk related to the court in terms of the audit results. And we just always want to make you aware as part of the basis and the framework for decision-making. And those two areas really revolve around compliance with the revised statutes. Basically, we call it Rule 37 that governs the court, essentially.

You're telling us that. If you can hold it all the way up to your mouth.

I think this one's actually better.

Okay.

I'll do both. Can you hear me now? There we go. All right. We will do better. So there are two areas of potential risk. The first being compliance with the state statutes, Rule 37, that oversees municipal courts and circuit court rules. And the second being some financial management and controls issues. Those are the areas where we felt that the city is exposed in the court to the most risk. In terms of compliance with state rules, that Rule 37, it's important to know. Thank you. It's important to know that there have been two audits by OSCA, the Office of State Court Administration, since 2022, one in 2022 and one in 2025, both of which had findings that were related to compliance with different various pieces of those laws. And so, you know, it's just important to know that there are some audit findings, just like you'd have an audit finding in a financial operation. We've had court audit findings from OSCA, and staff is aware of those. Thank you. The second piece being finance management and controls as well. Both OSCA and the city finance department have done some reviews of those as well and also identified some internal controls weaknesses as did we. Simple things, this is not unusual to find minor things in terms of cash handling, those kinds of things, internal controls and cross-checks, essentially those checks and balances that you would want in your financial system. There were some weaknesses there. And so that's just another area of risk certainly always and something you want to be aware of in order to address. So with that context, we're going to go into our recommendations from our report and talk through those. And Andrea is going to start with a discussion of court supervision and management.

And first, I'm going to note something really important. There is a little flyer here on the screen that shows you how not to hold the microphone and how to hold the microphone. So I'll follow that guidance right there. And it says that I can't hold it like this. I need to hold it like this. And up to my mouth. So we came up with various recommendations. We did try to organize them by function. The first one is staffing. Prioritize implementing a formal management system. It's really important because of the complexity of the relationships that we talked about. There are functions that are within the responsibility of the presiding judge at the circuit court. Your judges themselves have various responsibilities. The city also plays a role with respect to the operation of the municipal court. And so prioritize implementing a relationship and a formal management system connecting the city's court liaison, someone within the city manager's office, to the judges and court administrator. That close link will help to ensure that as the court is dealing with issues and identifying issues, they have someone within the city organization that can assist in addressing them. The second one was an engaged and experienced outside assistance to drive some changes. There's a lot of work that needs to be completed there. There's a tremendous backlog. Rebecca talked about some of the risk that we've seen. Some of that risk is pretty significant and needs to be addressed quickly. Having outside assistance from someone that really has been in that position is really critical to help drive those needed changes. And then establish an internal policy that any reviews of the court that are done by OSCA in particular are shared with the city council, with the city manager's office, so you can assist the court in addressing those concerns. Policy manuals are really important. And one of the challenges that we faced in evaluating your staffing and structure issues was there were no real written procedures manuals that guided the work. And certainly there were none that were reflective of the state of Missouri state law, the Supreme Court rules, and various court rules. They're out there. We don't recommend that you spend a lot of time creating something new. There are plenty of examples out there, but that would be a critical step to make sure that as you onboard new staff members, that you have people that you're cross-training, that they have some kind of a policy manual or something that they can look to to make sure that their work is guided and they're working consistently with what the expectations are. Training was an issue. Training in specific roles and responsibilities is certainly important, but there needs to be cross-training so that if that person is not available that day, the functions continue to be done. And then mandatory supervisory and leadership training for all employees. There needs to be an ongoing process to create self-reflection, to help do things better, and that training for supervisors and how to motivate and train and develop staff is really important. Annual performance evaluations. We talked not about specific evaluations, but really we wanted to see whether those were being completed. opportunity for supervisors to talk to staff about what the expectations are, close the court on specific days because of the tremendous backlog that exists and the training needs that are there, but close them on a specific day maybe each month to allow them to focus on implementation of needed changes to help guide those improvement processes. There were a lot of great ideas that came from your staff. They were willing to share ideas and comments but they need time to actually vet those and then help move those forward and drive that change. And then develop a prioritized plan to address the court backlogs. Not all things are created equally and some of the areas are more critical to address first and so develop a plan to address those backlogs. Super close.

Okay, so then we're going to move on to financial management controls, which is another area of recommendations in our report. And one of these recommendations was to improve the financial internal controls as we talked about, simply requiring the court to comply with the city's finance department procedures for accounting and cash handling. This is an area where that complex relationship, we might want a little more centralized control or input at least on how the court operates in that way so there's consistency across the city. And you also have a great resource there in your finance department that they can draw upon and use to help with that to ensure that control is there and that they can provide guidance on best practices. Another recommendation was to make daily secured cash deposits to the bank. At the time of our review, and this may have changed in the interim, but there was some lag in between the times we were taking in revenues versus the times they were hitting the banks. and daily cash flow is best practice. There's always going to be occasional days, busy days when you have outliers, but the general best practice is to be as close to the time the money comes in as it gets deposited as possible for cash flow purposes and also security. Finally, another one is to provide city finance with access to the court's bank accounts. At the time of our review, there was some concern by finance that they weren't able to see everything and access some of those bank accounts. There were some issues in terms of OSCA's oversight and controls as well, so that was something that we recommended they talk to OSCA and finance about in terms of ensuring that finance has full transparency so that they can help and see things as a cross-check as well as assisting the court when needed. Moving on, we're going to get to staffing and capacity, which is obviously a very important piece of this work. You know, as part of the work, we did a lot of work at peer benchmarkings with other area and regional courts to see what they did and to compare and contrast, you know, Lee's Summit's courts with those others. And this chart is just one simple example of that that's in our report about the court dates. You can see on the left there in the dark green is sort of the number of judges each of those communities has. And then across the top are the number of weekly court dates they have. And as you can see, at least some of it is toward the bottom right, which means that you have two judges with only two court dates, which is toward the lower end of the spectrum. Only O'Fallon and St. Charles were less. They both have one judge, and O'Fallon offers two days a week, and St. Charles has one. So this was just one way to kind of look at where you lie amongst your regional competitors or peers, if you will. One of the key pieces of work we did was to analyze and try to estimate what the capacity needs are. This was difficult, we'll tell you, because there was a lack of data from the systems from the court. So one of the methods we used was the National Center for State Courts. They have some time studies, if you will, for how long specific court tasks take. It's not exactly apples to apples. It's more circuit court level, but we tried to apply that just to get a sense of what it would show. And the result is essentially that on the right there you can see, as was mentioned earlier, the lease summit based upon your court workload would be 5.4 days of court time per week. And that's as contrasted to two days right now. So one of our recommendations in regard to capacity is really to increase that judge on-site time by one court date per judge for a total of four days per week. So we're doubling from two days to four days per week. And to then supplement with an on-call pro tem judge as some of the other communities do. That's essentially an on-call position. There's a couple of reasons for that. That's a good best practice. A, it's not a full-time employee. They're kind of on-call. But secondly, It's great for succession and backfill. If one of your judges is out, they can come in and help pitch in while someone's out. And only a few of those communities had less court days while at the volume. And you are definitely seeing volume growing over time, as Andrea showed in the charts. So we definitely know capacity is required. How much is ideal is yet to be determined. But in our estimate, and we'll discuss this more Again, as John mentioned, there's some process improvements that we would like to see before we go to full staffing capacity. We think there's some incremental steps to occur, but we think doubling it immediately would be certainly a step in the right direction for sure. Another recommendation was to promote a probation compliance officer to a supervisory position to provide some form of oversight for the probation program. Probation is one of your shining stars with the court here. That's something that differentiates Lee's Summit from many of your peers. You have a probation program, and it's very highly regarded and well used. Right now, you essentially have three peer probation officers in that program, and we really think it would be useful to have one elevated position to kind of provide oversight and technical expertise to ensure there's consistency across those positions. As was mentioned earlier as well, caseload for the probation officers is pretty high. We did see that as well. This was self-reported by your staff, but we cross-validated across the different probation officers, and it's pretty consistent, 600 to 800 cases per officer. As was mentioned earlier, ranges and best practice really run from 175 to down to 45, depending on the case type. Obviously, the more complex cases like domestic violence, they take much more manpower, time per case, and so the numbers are much smaller. So your probation officers are definitely dealing with a high caseload, and that needs to be addressed. One of the issues with that is that we noticed in talking to them, there is a lot of administrative work being done by your probation officers, and that's one thing we think we could help to increase their capacity by moving that elsewhere. And so we've recommended that you get one new court clerk position that would support solely the probation program. Right now they have no direct administrative support. And so we really hope that that would help to increase some of their capacity in the short term. And then you'd obviously continue to monitor going forward. Another recommendation is to increase overall court clerk capacity by making one current part-time clerk full-time. And that would assist in providing additional capacity right away as well. Currently, there is another clerk that has provided kind of informal support to probation that if you get the position I just spoke about directly for probation, that frees that up too. So essentially, you're adding over one additional court clerk to their capacity to assist with all the general backlogs and needs for the court as discussed. And finally, another recommendation was to request funding for temporary help. They really do need some help in the short term, a quick dive. We think hiring some temporary help to clear some backlogs, perform special projects, and really dig out of some of these holes would be extremely useful. And those resources would be a valuable use for the budget process. With that, I'm going to turn it back to Andrea for process improvements.

I think one of the really important things that Jonathan mentioned in his comments that can't be reiterated enough is, thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, Jonathan. But I think one of the most important things that Jonathan said was not only were we trying to define the issues for today, but also set up a process for how you can evaluate and make those recommendations into the future. because this is going to be a constant issue as the community evolves and changes. But in the interim, there are some process improvements that should free up some time and would help then with the volume of work that's being handled. Re-evaluate their docket assignments. In our analysis of some of the other courts, they have docket assignments that are intended to balance the workload across the true judges. We did lack some of the data to be able to make some specific recommendations in this area. but they should be working to create docket sizes that are appropriate and fit more closely with what the needs are within the allocated time slots. Also, simple things like taking some of the administrative functions and doing those at the end of the day could help alleviate the time and then reduce the people waiting in your courtrooms. Implement cutoff times for court check-in. Many of your peers, as we mentioned in looking at them, had cutoff times for court check-ins, sometimes within 15 to 30 minutes of the last docket slot. They can limit cases on the docket and establish fixed walk-in periods. There are policies and procedures in 19 and 20 kind of go hand in hand because the circuit court does provide some rules that include deadlines for actions like filing cases and requests for continuance. that could help manage the court flow. We said a moment ago that your probation program is really a shining star. It is one of the premier programs in Lee's Summit. Not many other organizations offered such an important component, helping bring offenders in, giving them the resources and tools to ensure that they don't reoffend. But there should be some shared expectations related to the assignment of cases to those two individuals to make sure that you're not overburdening them and overburdening the system. We want to make sure that they can remain effective and that the volume isn't overwhelming the system. Provide alternative resources to provide information and assistance. There are some great resources within the Lee's Summit community and even beyond that. Judges, we watched them. Rebecca and I had the opportunity to observe court a couple of days, and we saw judges actually trying to find drug rehab programs and other supportive services for individuals, we know your probation officers are doing that, but create a central list so that information is immediately available and then maybe adding some capacity in the future to manage this resource. And then develop an online request option for payment plans. You know, there's an awful lot of work through the relationship with your OSCA where you could do some online payment plans and things of that nature to reduce the actual volume of offenders in your courtroom.

Another area we reviewed was the use of technology in the court. The court, as all of them in the state, were required by the state circuit court several years back to adopt the Show Me Court software system. It's a consistent system used statewide. And we really think that it could be maximized and made to better use. Unfortunately, that implementation kind of occurred at a time when you guys were suffering a lot of turnover and change in the court. And so we really think that there's pieces that aren't being maximized. Some of your staff now came from other courts, and they recognize that there are pieces of things that could be improved or done differently. So we really think it would, again, be a good use of resources in the short term to bring in an IT professional or someone from OSCA, ideally, to ensure that the court is really maximizing the use of the software to the greatest potential possible. There are several specific things in the report that could be done to improve workflows and accountability through the system that aren't being done right now. Also, in terms of technology, we really want to focus the court to become a data-driven decision-making unit. One of the things that struck us when we requested data, there really wasn't much. I think that there's a lack of the reporting in the system, but also just maybe the use of it to that point. Again, people are working as hard as they can every day, and so there just hasn't been that ability to do that. And so we want to encourage the court and the city to push move in that direction to run reports and track metrics so that we can really start managing through that data to really see where those improvements can work and be implemented for best benefit of everyone. The last grouping of recommendations has to do with security and physical environment at the court. We had three recommendations here. One was to reinstate the use of the podium or lectern at a reasonable distance from the judge. One of the things that honestly surprised us and some of our folks who have worked in courts was the proximity of your folks right up at the judge and the potential security concerns, while probably not a huge issue, it's there. And the best practice is really to have some distance between the judges and the folks appearing at court. So we would just, apparently that was done during COVID and then removed. and that's a preference of operations. We personally feel you should reinstate the use of the lectern. Another physical workspace issue was to provide additional equipment at the check-in counter. Right now you have a check-in counter. It's a lovely facility. Folks can come in and check in for the court, and clerk staff have to be up there during court dates to perform that work. Unfortunately, they don't have their normal daily work machines, scanners, and computers up there, so they either have to run between their desk and the front counter or sit at the counter and not do their work, it's inefficient, essentially, is what it boils down to. And so we think that there could be some low-cost investments so that when they're up at the counter for court, they can continue on with their daily work while still serving the customers that come in for court. The last recommendation is to ensure some secured office space or lockers for the court security officer and the contracted security officers of the court. You have folks that play a really important role in the physical security of the court, but they don't have any space right now for their their needs. They don't have lockers. There's not secured office space. In particular, in the past when we were there, the court security officer was working on things like fingerprinting and background checks on behalf of some city departments, and they didn't have a way to lock that up. So those are important privacy concerns, and it's just a minor fix that some lockers could resolve. With that, I'm going to turn it back to John.

So as you've no doubt noticed, we've made a number of recommendations across a series of core areas. Staffing projections, we do want to note that staffing projections are conservative at this point. So we've ultimately offered a number of immediate staffing recommendations. contracted staffing recommendations to generate additional capacity. But we also see a priority to implement those process improvements that we've identified and to generate that capacity to understand and evaluate the impact of those process improvements on case flow, on workload, and ultimately the ability to work through the docket with some of those adjustments that we've articulated to really evaluate at that point what is really the trigger point to start to add additional resources. So we view this as a starting point. But there's some work to be done within the municipal court to achieve some of these process improvement outcomes to set up that really next phase of analysis relative to additional staffing. So our initial recommendation is just high-level summary from what we've articulated. kind of the proposed new municipal organization or municipal court org chart is, so we've recommended essentially moving to four court days for the judges. We recommended an overlap day where they're both in the building. In other words, this creates an opportunity for really close coordination for administrative time, for staff direction that may be required and create some consistency there. So that's an efficiency that can be gained from that process. We've also, it's not articulated here, but we've recommended some strengthened connections between the municipal court and the city's operating departments and the city manager's office, really just to create a greater liaison connection there. We made some recommendations in terms of adding, moving a part-time court clerk to a full-time court clerk, and adding a court clerk to probation as well as creating that probation compliance officer permission as a promotion. So we made obviously some initial significant capacity increase recommendations. The other piece that I just want to highlight, we've also recommended bringing in a subject matter expert on a temporary basis. This could be a former municipal court judge, could be an attorney, could be someone with a connection to the circuit court who can help address some of the backlog and in a more time effective way given the limited staffing resources that you all have as a relatively small organization. to be able to execute some of those process improvements in a timely fashion and give it essentially dedicated energy. But I do want to manage expectations a little bit with respect to process improvements. So when we do this kind of work, you know, it's easy to say, hey, there's 23 recommendations. Let me know how they go in the next year, right? But in reality, when we think about implementation, you all as a community, as a governing body, are balancing resource challenges and resource constraints across multiple departments. There's always more investments than money. That's a consistent trend in your community. It's a consistent trend in every community. We really think about this as really a five-year implementation plan in terms of rollout. But what we want to see is sustained effort toward the process improvement, sort of adding that additional capacity. There's clearly opportunities. There's clearly needs, right? The question is how can you absorb that in an effective way and in a manageable way, but in one that reflects the urgency associated with some of the risks that we highlighted and the opportunities for the organization. So with that, we will pause for any questions you all may have.

Thank you very much. Before we turn it over to council questions, I wondered if Mr. Dunning, if you could speak briefly to what has been implemented so far. I believe we've voted as a council to move an FTE over to the courts, things like that. Can you just kind of recap a few of those things just to give us kind of a baseline of where we are right now?

sure so through our budget process for this fiscal year there were two FTEs within administration that were reallocated to municipal court again having knowledge of this report coming just being mindful of that so that's a step that's been taken. I can tell you that there has been a lot of work on the financial controls side of things, the deposits. I know there's been a lot of work done in that area. I'm trying to think what else. I think there's been some work on just policies and procedures with the court administrator diving into that as well. So those are some that come to mind that we've put efforts behind.

Okay. Thank you. Do we have questions from the committee as to the content of the court operational review at this time? Sorry, from the council? Council Member Carlisle?

Thank you. So reading through this, I saw what you were recommending for additional FTEs, and then You just told us what kind of what your recommendation is thus far. But I felt it odd that. With the workload for the probation officers that you wanted to promote one but not add another. Does it not look like they needed for like I mean? You say that our probation program is the shining star. So I'm assuming they are gonna continue to have the workload that they do. I mean, unless people just stop doing what they do, right? So I think my first thought to that was if we promote one and give them supervisory duties, they're gonna be able to handle less cases, right? So then it's gonna make the other two even heavier. So should we not do both of those things? Understand the question.

When we did interviews, we heard repeatedly, we need a fourth probation officer. And we definitely considered that. And we're not saying it's off the table. Again, this is part of the progressive kind of conservative approach to start somewhere. Again, part of that was adding that specific administrative support. We heard it consistently from your probation officers. They're spending a significant amount of time on this administrative stuff. And we're really hopeful that if you get that administrative support dedicated, and knows it in and out and can take that off their plate, that that's going to build some capacity. Is it enough? We'll have to see. I mean, again, that's part of our wait and see, do this, see how that impacts things. With your growth of cases, unless there's a change in the way the referrals are made, it's very likely you're going to need more going forward. But we didn't want to throw them all at you right away. And we think, you know, the administrative piece is obviously a less cost than the probationary officer.

Right.

So I'll also just add a little bit of additional context there. In addition, the promotion of the probation officer to a supervisory position, you would think of that as a position that would still carry a lower caseload but have supervisory responsibility. So there is an increase in capacity there as well, not a full FTE in terms of an additional officer. But when you look at, again, you look at that administrative support, you look at being able to generate capacity within the existing resources you have with a relatively modest investment, that's the conservative path forward to generate immediate capacity.

Okay. So, and you did say that there is currently a clerk that does help them. And so knows that process, but it's only part-time help. So really just make that go full-time help.

Yeah. It's a full-time position clerk right now that was dedicating. It was hard to know 40 to 60% of her time when she could, and it was available to assist probation with their administrative duties. Okay.

So that wouldn't be, that would be immediate help because she already knows what she's doing. Or he? You said she, right? Yeah, that's what I thought.

And part of this also helps with the technology piece because a big portion of the functions that they have is data entry. And so if we're going to truly make that show me court system more effective and make sure the judges have the information that they need on the bench, that information needs to be input into the system. So we couldn't tell, again, how much time was needed for that, but it was a significant portion of their time each day being spent on a simple task like data entry. And that's for the probation officers? Yes. Okay.

If we can correct something, the probation officers, and they could come down here and speak themselves, they do not have any help. We have three probation officers and probation, that's it. So I think maybe that was what you had suggested, but that has never happened. Well, no, you don't have anyone dedicated. We don't have anybody helping them at all right now. Is that correct? That's my understanding, correct? Mr. Morris, do you want to come on down?

Go ahead. Judge Lopez. And I would just note that our analysis was done based, our comments are based on what we observed and what the comments we received from your probation staff. It may have changed, but they said that they were receiving some support, at least at that time. That was about nine months ago.

Okay. And if I could just interject for a second. So our municipal court judges and a couple of our municipal court employees are here as subject matter experts. So if there's a question that a council member wants to direct to them or some follow-up,

You're welcome to ask but I would respectfully ask that you wait until the question is directed to you, but I So, thank you Okay, so Okay, I think I think I'm good on Put one clerk full-time with the probation officers and then see what relief you get there And then if we need more add another is what you're thinking. That's correct Okay, can you back that up one slide? OK, and then. So Mr Dunning just told us that two FTE's were moved over from admin to the courts. But you wouldn't have seen that change or did that happen when you know you didn't OK? OK. Um? I have a bunch of notes and I'm so sorry. So I was walking through the recommendations and I was trying to figure out Who does what but I think you guys actually did that partially on something that we just received so I haven't had So I'll skip over that because I think that information has already been had And then Where you're recommending that we get help. For the courts, people that already know what they're doing. Does that like are all of those people you're talking about coming from Oscar? Or are you saying maybe we should engage like a retired court administrator or?

Yes, there's significant support available through OSCA, but there are also retired court clerks, even potentially municipal court judges that might be willing to come and assist you. You need someone who's really been in that system, understands how an effective court system works, knows who has the best policies out there. They can bring those into your organization and get those implemented as quickly as possible. So we see that being a short-term fix, and that connection with OSCA or even the circuit court would be of benefit to your court system.

That was my next question was going to be so do you think the circuit court clerk could help or is municipal that much different than circuit that they cannot?

And I apologize because I was having microphone issues at first. I think the chart that will really help you is that one of the first charts that was in my presentation talked about the divided responsibilities. Ultimately your municipal court judges do report to the presiding judge of the circuit court So that's a natural place if they're struggling with something if they need help with an issue that they should go But they can also provide tremendous support and resources to your court Okay Thank you.

Okay. I need to readjust my notes and then I'll come back. Thank you. I

Council Member Carlyle, do you want to yield your time to Council Member Adkins, who's next, and then come back to you?

Yes, please. And then I'll, yeah, thank you.

Council Member Adkins, go ahead.

Hi, thank you. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I had a few different questions. And as I was reading through the online report, you know, the full report, it referenced a lot of procedural differences between the staffing, the court administrator and our assistant city manager And it seemed to reference a breakdown of communication or a breakdown of who's in charge of what internally. And I'm curious about the status of this. Do we have effective leadership in there currently? Employee-wise, staff-wise, is this something that's currently functional or is it recommended that we make changes to staff? What was that portion of the report? I think this would be a question point for Mr. Dunning.

Yeah. Council Member Atkins, Mark Dunning. So that's kind of been, it's come and gone, I would say. That's something we haven't implemented and we need to work on. I would say that over the last couple years that that liaison and those regular meetings have not been occurring. And so we need to get back into that space.

For two years there hasn't been a liaison?

Well, it's been since I've been, well, it's been longer than that. Well, I would say this. Have we had somebody that's available for a liaison? Yes. But has it been fully implemented to the extent that we need to be? No. We need to work on that.

What's the role of a liaison? Like frequency? What is?

Yeah, well, think of what we're working on here is multifaceted, right? Judges oversee the court functions. The court administrator oversees the court staff, but the city oversees supports those operations. So if we're not coordinated on what the needs are to make that overall operation run, then things can get out of whack. And so the more that we're coordinated and synced up, the better the operation runs.

So as we move forward in accepting any of the recommendations that are in the report, is this staffing mechanism something that is I mean, this report came out in February. Is this handled yet? This seems like an internal process that needs supervision. What is happening with this? This seems more problematic than the rest of it. All of it seems problematic, but this lack of liaison or coordination or a staff person fulfilling their role, this seems like a larger problem than the rest of the problems.

Yep, and as we've heard from the judges too, more time for them to have that capacity to have those types of meetings as well, right? So it's a lot of us coming together to make commitments to do this work together.

Because the judges need to have time to meet with the liaison or because the liaison isn't available or what's happening?

Both. The judges are spending their time on those court days per week, numerous hours, as you've heard, and so they don't have that ability to step out of the courtroom and do more of some of these administrative supervisory oversight functions. And that's what you're hearing from the RAFTILIS folks is breaking that workload up more and having more administrative time with the staff, the court staff, and with the liaison.

Okay, and then do the judges need to be present in order for the court administrator to supervise the staff?

No. The court administrator oversees the court staff. The judges in the municipal court functions oversee the court administrator and the staff, though.

Okay, so are the court administrators able to continue to meet with the staff, even if the judges haven't doubled their days yet, or...

Yes, those functions can take place.

But I think generally what we noticed was there was a lack of strategic thinking. And part of that, a big part of it, was no one had the time to actually do that. People recognized that there were needs for policies, better procedures, cross-training, but there really had never been the time to actually sit down and have those discussions. I think the linkage between the city liaison and the courts is an important one because it can help provide that leadership to drive changes. that person can make sure that the court has the resources it needs. If it's a technology need that they have, they're going to be more capable of driving that through the city organization and helping to ensure that that's in the next budget process. They can help them with some of the personnel management issues. So having that time for people to really talk and strategize and develop systems, better systems, is really important.

And Council Member Adkins, it seemed like you were maybe asking sort of two separate questions, one about the liaison role which i believe would be something at like the assistant city manager city manager level and the second one about the on the ground court staffs that are supervised by the um court administrator which they are city employees but it's a separate role from the liaison role that's kind of someone that's more in leadership did you want to ask questions about both of those or i it just seemed like maybe you were kind of getting into both areas yeah i'm just i'm just i'm just looking for clarity that both of those things are being handled

before we even have the resources to hire other people and wondering what would keep us from activating those, from making sure that those staff people are optimized and doing what their roles call for. And if Mr. Downing is saying that part of it is time from the judges to be able to have time during the week to do those things, then that's one thing. But if there's inefficiencies in the way that the staff is currently overseeing the or the administrator or assistant city manager, if there's inefficiencies in the way that they are working with staff that does not have to do with the judges, I just want to make sure that that's happening as quickly as possible. Is it okay if I ask for Judge Lopez to come to the podium?

Certainly.

Yes. Hey, good evening.

Hi. Judge Lopez, would you Would you mind giving feedback about the report in terms of, you know, it's broken down into five major sections. I mean, was this the report that you expected to see? Did it come up with more things that you hadn't even thought of? Or can you give your feedback in terms of if you agree or disagree with each portion of the report?

Well, one thing I wanted to correct is, Mr. Dunne, you mentioned that we had gotten two additional full-time employees. That was kind of surprising to General Terry and I. We used to have six people. Who are the two full-time employees that we have now? I mean, we hired a bailiff, but we already had that bailiff position when our bailiff left. Is that what you're counting, a new full-time employee? I'm just asking. I don't know what...

Sorry, no. So FTEs allocated, not that the employees are over there right now, but through this budget, which just started July 1st, the ability to bring on more clerks and to make the halftime clerk a full-time clerk, things of that nature. So two FTEs allocated to the courts to help with these recommendations.

OK. Well, we were really surprised. We didn't know that. Nobody had communicated it with us. And that kind of goes back to that whole conversation. I know this isn't really answering your question, but I don't really know who our liaison is with the court. We don't have one. We don't have anyone we really can call. There's no meetings that we've... I've never had one meeting with anybody who's a liaison for the court about anything other than we were trying to work on getting the additional court days and things like that. But as far as the report, I think Judge Alteri and I don't agree with... a lot of it, some of it. We feel like if the numbers show we need 5.4 court days per week, we shouldn't be conservative and start at four. The city is continuing to grow. Our numbers are not going to go down. We're continuing to increase our population. We're in the middle of three different highways. People are coming here from all over the city to use our resources, but they're also coming here and getting tickets and and stealing from our stores and things like that. So our numbers are going to continue to go up. And the fact that it's taken us two years to get to this point, I don't think we are able to keep coming back and redoing this with the amount of time that it's taken us to get to this part. I don't want to start conservative. I would like to go with what the numbers say. I don't know that there are any retired judges out there that know the current system. Everything's been updated in the last few years that could come in and help us out. OSCA doesn't have any clerks that can just come out and start working with our court. to help us. We have worked with OSCA. A lot of the things that are on this report, as Mr. Dunning said, we have corrected. We have a new court administrator in place, and she's been working very diligently with this report since December to try to correct some of the deficiencies. A lot of the things that were on here, we've corrected the cash handling. We have somebody from city budget has been sitting over there with us trying to get all of these reports. So our financial management system is in line more with what the city's doing. Our cash handling is more in line with what the city is doing. And I think all of our reports are now going to the city, which they weren't before. We didn't know they weren't before because no one had told us that. We were completely unaware that there were some financial irregularities because nobody had told us. and so we were unaware of that, and as soon as Judge Oletary and I were informed of that, we did get additional support from the city to come over and help us to get all that straightened out. I think they have access to our bank records and all that. You have to realize also there is a... We are part of the judiciary, and so we are... We don't answer to the city finance department. The city finance department doesn't answer to us. Our funds go into the city budget, but they don't have access to all the reports that we generate and OSCA will not provide them because there are some confidentiality things in there. So anyway, we are making all of the documents necessary that they need. available to them and we've given them all the documentation they need and we're trying to accommodate all of their requests and I think we have but the internal process it is it's I don't think the the issues with the liaison have anything to do with Judge Altieri and I because we don't even know who our liaison is and I think if she was up here and if she was to come up here we have really not ever had meetings with anyone at the city to even inform us. I've only been in the judge role for two years now and I've never sat down and met with anyone who's explained how any of the processes work or for them to ask us to provide any documents until, you know, here recently and so to answer your question, you know, we don't really have a liaison. I think somebody was assigned and nothing was happening. I think Mark has, Mr. Dining has kind of taken over that role maybe, but certainly I don't think it should be his responsibility as city manager to be the one coming over to the court and making sure that we have access to the resources we need and access that they are getting access to what they need. I think we should have somebody assigned to us directly that can work with our staff and that can work with the judges. I don't know if that answered our question.

Yeah, that does help a lot. So Mr. Dunning, I assume that we'll We'll be talking about this about who who is the liaison? Who is the liaison? Like why? Why would they not know who their liaison is?

Yep, right now there is liaison, but it's it's not working.

OK, so this is a change that's happening soon quickly in the next month or what is the action plan for addressing that?

I need to develop that plan.

And one other thing, the circuit court Their functions are so different from what we do. I don't know that they're going to be a really great resource for us to come in and help us manage our dockets. Managing our dockets better requires more court dates and more staff and more probation officers. And I agree with what Ms. Carlisle said. If we are running 700 or 800 probationers per probation officer and the standard, is, and I didn't write the number down, I think they said 45 to 100 or something, we do need more probation officers. And I think that would really alleviate their overtime and all the things that they're having to do on their off days and working over the weekends and all that.

Thank you, Judge. If you can hang on, I'd like to ask Ms. Carlisle again to give feedback on what you just said. Ms. Carlisle? Are you going to just remember Carlisle? We don't we don't start. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry the. I want to give the presentation. Yeah, I'm sorry I didn't mean Miss Carlisle. The consultant presenter. If the presenter could please clarify or please respond to what judge said about having clerks available or having judges in the area who would know how to manage the system. What do you think about finding resources of humans that can come?

Under the Missouri state statutes, your municipal court officers report to the presiding judge of the circuit court. I certainly think the circuit court can provide some assistance with dockets. They also have a variety of policies. If they were to implement those, they might help with reducing some of the docket wait times and things of that nature. So developing a procedures manual, which is developed in most courts, you could probably receive a copy of that. I would not suggest that you start from scratch. There's no reason to do that. There are plenty of examples. But setting reasonable deadlines, those are all things that other courtrooms have implemented to help move the case load further.

Sure. But in terms of, yeah, because that is definitely, you know, I did read that in the report that creating the procedures manual is one thing, and so who does that? Is that the court administrator? Is that the liaison?

Well, ideally, you'd be doing it on a regular basis so that your court administrator would be assigning various staff members who had particular expertise, but because there's such a void of policies and procedures, we're suggesting that you bring someone in that can do that for you very quickly. If there's someone on staff that could do that, that would be ideal. But our sense was that there was no one that had the time right now to do it because of the backlog. And that's why we recommended bringing someone in with that expertise to do it and get it done fast. Now that's though a living document. So as things change, someone needs to be looking at those documents and revising them, making sure the policies are still meeting the current needs. But I think you need something to start with pretty quickly sooner than later.

Yeah, I agree. Um,

The other thing I just... Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry, you're a little bit delayed. And with respect to the probation system, we don't disagree that there is a horizon for some of these recommendations. But the probation program also needs to have some policies about when cases are referred to probation. We asked is there a procedure for what kinds of cases specifically go to probation versus those that are not assigned to formal probation. So even having a policy that guides that could help with some of their caseloads.

Okay. And is this the type of thing that you have created a timeline for of a reasonable expectation for how long this timeline could be implemented or just have you communicated with Mr. Dunning about this?

Yeah, so as I illustrated, when we think about this kind of organizational change, and it is significant, we think in terms of five-year blocks, really, to implement the totality of the recommendations. What we would prioritize immediately are the additional capacity adds that the organization has already started moving on, that the multiple conversations and meetings that we've been involved in through the course of this project between both the city manager's office and the municipal court folks, that there's a perceptible movement on those recommendations. Now, whether there's an individual, we don't know what your recruitment market is in terms of bringing in that extra help. So it could be a firm, could be a municipal court judge, could be support from the circuit court. There are multiple avenues that need to be pursued. Ultimately, that needs to be pursued by the municipal court staff, by the court administrator. So, you know, those are critical first pieces. It takes time to fill positions. It takes time to bring those positions up to speed to be fully effective, right? So recognizing that, I just think it's important to understand that there'll be a sequence and timeline to get this done. You can't really flip a switch and all of it's done tomorrow.

Council Member Adkins, I believe Mr. Dunning sort of referenced this earlier. There is an implementation action plan, I believe it's called, It contains some recommendations that are considered a closed record, since they deal with some certain sensitive matters. So that's been emailed to you to review. And that does have some kind of timelines, like we recommend this within X number of months, this within a year, that kind of thing. So that might be something to look at later that gives some more specific recommendations. And I think we'll probably have a chance to discuss that in a closed session at some point, since it does contain some more sensitive

And one of the things that I would just emphasize about that action plan, which we provided, it's our initial cut, but it has to be integrated with all the other work that you're accomplishing as a city, right? So what we would expect, we would characterize that as a draft implementation plan. It would be a living document that your city manager, that your judges would work on together to develop, all right, when are we going to execute what? What resources do we need to commit? What's our core kind of critical path to getting some of these things done? And it's a tool for accountability. How are we really doing in a year, in two years, in six months, a year, two years toward the implementation of those recommendations.

Thank you. So you've laid out a strategic plan for the court improvements. And I did receive the email, but it was about an hour and a half before the meeting started. So I haven't had a chance to read through all of it. And so that plan lays out the next two years worth of implementation. So at this point, do you stay involved as we go forward, or is it a staff issue now?

No, this is the handoff point for us. So we've provided you a path forward. We're certainly available to provide support down the road. I mean, we're not kind of contract municipal attorneys, so we wouldn't fill that role. But in terms of answering questions, clarification, you know, we don't charge for phone calls as maybe a badly timed joke. Okay.

All right. Well, thank you all so far. I have a ton more questions, but I'll wait my turn and let everyone else continue speaking. So thank you all for your time, and thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Carlisle, you had yielded your time earlier. Do you want to keep going on? Council Member Funk, you're next on the list.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Shields. So you guys did not communicate with city staff at all through this process? You just simply reviewed the courts?

We had a number of conversations with city staff and stakeholders and key voices and roles who provide support for the courts, yes. But our focus of our analysis was not on the other departments that provide support. It was on the municipal court.

When you say key stakeholders, are you talking about, like, Mr. Dunning? the finance department, those folks were your key stakeholders with city staff?

Yes.

Okay. When you say we need, I mean, I'm kind of, Judge Lopez mentioned, you know, why do four days when you're telling us to do five? That makes zero sense.

Let me give you the context of why, okay? So the 5.4 that's based off of peer benchmarking. It's based off of benchmarking data, okay? We are always extremely cautious about utilizing benchmarking data to support a firm staffing recommendation because we don't review the operations of those other departments. We don't have a sense of what their workload is, how well they're doing it. It's a starting point and it's a comparator. Our fundamental need to define, all right, what is the specific staffing need that you all have is data from your all's workload, which was lacking, okay? So, um, when we look at benchmarking data and we look at, and we have conversations around what the overall caseload is, we can't really answer the question. Um, are we seeing individual cases or individual cases coming before the court far more often than maybe they are in under another courts, right? So we can't answer those specific questions, which means. We're not going to go out on a limb and say implement a benchmark number of 5.4 because it may be excessive for what your workload drivers are. So that's partly why we think there is capacity need based on all sorts of factors, all sorts of corresponding indicators. The benchmarking indicator is one of many that we look at. And we've made we believe there's a capacity need but we would not at this point Believe we have sufficient data to say that you need 5.4 court days.

I hope that answers it very directly Somewhat I'm sure you looked at The whole ramification of the courts the the finances what the cases are turned in over all that Do you think this court system is self fundable?

We saw generally that, yes, your fine revenue was sufficient to cover the court operations. So generally speaking, yes. But I would just echo what Jonathan said. But there were some data gaps. You know, we were also aware of some findings about funds being held. And so, again, we were conservatively saying, yes, we think that the court can't be self-sustaining.

Okay. And then in some of your studies, this is probably an opinion thing from you, All of the comparators that you used, I don't ever like to compare us to Kansas City, but some of the municipalities that have generally the same population, none of those have elected judges. How often, I mean, is this a rare case? I think there was only two in your study.

There were two in our study. I have experience in California courts where I'm licensed to practice. rare that the municipal courts have elected judges anymore. It was, I think, more common years and years ago, but many organizations are moving to appointed positions.

Mayor Pro Tem, I don't know if you, are we going to travel down the road of We want to save for a closed session get through some other documents that we have and maybe have a little bit longer time to swallow But talk about I mean, I know one of the recommendations is we need to go to five court days and We've had this discussion with the judges openly Do we want to travel down the road of discussing I Know back in November. Mr. Dunning when we had this conversation We were supposed to be hiring a new attorney. I think Mayor Barrett at the time said we needed a new attorney on staff to understand the piece of the rules of where we can compensate and where we can't compensate.

So my thought generally about where we're at with this right now is... Tonight is about understanding the court audit findings. Any discussion of additional compensation or additional FTEs, things that would affect our budget, would probably be a discussion for the Finance and Budget Committee. I was planning to ask Mr. Dunning at the end of this, I wanted to give everybody a chance to weigh in, but to bring us back kind of a tracking chart, more formal status of what each of the recommendations are and some more clarity about who is... who has the authority to implement each of them. I think some of the discussion that we've had is about what can we do as a city, what can we do as a city council versus where are we supporting the judges and decisions that they make. So trying to get some more clarity on that as we continue the discussions too to figure out how we can best be supportive without overstepping into what is the authority of an independently elected branch of government. So I guess the short answer to your question would be we're probably not going to talk about compensation tonight because that's a finance and budget discussion for later.

Okay. I mean, I think Council Member Atkins hit on it, Mr. Dunning. I think one of the largest and fastest action items is we need to get a strong line of communication between City Hall and the court system. I know what your plate looks like that shouldn't be you. That's my recommendation. But I think that would help us get the feedback we need on a regular basis to get this, you know, Mayor Pro Tem is the boss here that can get this on an agenda item in the committee to start talking about the compensation pieces, but I think it would be extremely important to give us a little more time to absorb their action items that we just got, but also to get somebody who's communicating on a regular basis with the court system and saying, hey, you know, this is where we are, this is what's going on, and kind of start talking about those FTEs that have been allotted to them and those kind of things. And I think most generally all of my questions would probably fall towards our conversation that would happen at finance and budget. So I would be done there. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Cravens.

Thanks for the presentation and all of the commentary tonight. I think it was helpful, especially for me, not hearing this for the first time, but kind of being present in this space. I agree. I think the biggest word for me is capacity, the lack of capacity. That is where our breakdown is. When you don't have the adequate capacity, we are not supporting our municipality system. And obviously our judges are screaming to the top of the roof that they need support, they need help. I think that there were a lot of, in my opinion, low-hanging fruit that we should be able to check off within a month or two. I get five year plans and that, you know, it's a progression of things, but we need to be clear on where the needle has already moved because I hear that progress and things have been, um, taken place already, but I'm also reading body language. So I'm looking at everybody in the audience and their expressions. And it doesn't sound like it's been moved a lot. I do think that it is important that city liaison, because there's a disconnect. There just is, like between the city and our judges and our court system. I think that's the first step. getting someone in place who can really understand what is going on, listen to the people who are involved in this process every single day, and have someone help with these processes. It is impossible to ask overworked employees to be a part of making this process work. That's impossible to even think that that should have been happening. So let's get whatever we need to do it first we need to know where our roles what can we help with what is the city's role in helping fix this problem and what should we be focused on as a council to move this needle because I'm embarrassed. I think that that was really painful to hear that you know that the court times how we can't fit into the buildings. We have lines wrapped around because if we expect our citizens to uphold their end of the law, we have to provide a space for them. You know, we have to uphold our responsibility too. So I say all this to say, cause I have a lot of stuff and I don't think that, you know, we have the time to discuss all of this stuff, but this is thanks for the, um, you know, the research and what you've provided today and what you're handing off to us. But the next steps are, what do we do next with this information? And how do we ensure that The employees, the judges are playing a big part in what this looks like moving forward. So that's that's just what I challenge us to do. And I think that that's our next steps is just to see this through. And Mr. Dunning, hopefully you've been wrapping your head around how do we fix this liaison problem? And when can we, you know, get somebody in that space like yesterday? Because I think that if we don't have that and we don't start there, this is going to be slipped down the cracks again. And then we're going to be having another meeting saying how this has been pushed out even further. So that's where I want to see things move here in the next, you know. Month month or so just kind of more conversation about around that piece, but that's all I have Thank you.

Thank you councilmember Next is miss Frazier Thank You mayor Pro Tem.

I echo everything that's been said up here and and something that stood out is What you said first of all, we don't have five years we just don't and I was one of the folks that was sitting in in the audience and was it October or November, I wasn't on the council yet when this was discussed. And I remember saying, oh my goodness. So here's my input. What I've heard is that There are recommendations. Some of those recommendations have been implemented. No one knows what those are. So we need to see that list in order to move forward. Strategically, as we've said, we need to be in a strategic role. We need to look forward as to what's going on or what we want our courts to look like. I also heard that the The typical case for the probation folks is 45, and you guys are doing 600. Am I missing something here? I'm not asking questions. That's what I heard. If that's not correct, let me know. That is not sustainable. I heard that as well. And to echo Council Member Carlisle in that it's interesting to go from, you know, to move one up to a a supervisory position when you have a caseload like that. It's just not sustainable. I have questions. If the Show Me Court software is going to supplement our processes and streamline our processes, let's do it. Let's figure out how we can work within those boundaries as well. But we need someone in that liaison position because the left doesn't know what the right is doing. And we need to be able to move forward. That being said, we also need to address the low-hanging fruit. Whatever we can do now, whatever we can do in the next month or two or whatnot, and I'm going to say whatever we can do in the next two months. For the timeline out there, let's do it for the low-hanging group. We can do things concurrently as well while we're looking for someone, while we're meeting with the budget and finance, you know, to address those particular issues regarding compensation and whatnot. And I know some of these things will be addressed in closed session. But we need to figure out where we can get the biggest bang for the buck. I am strong on suggesting planning, on keeping our staff happy, and that's a general term. We also need to prepare for, you know, I say, you know, we talked about turnover earlier. If one of those folks in probation and If they leave, we're in trouble. And I don't know, from an ordinance standpoint or from a statute standpoint, how you can continue. If we lose a judge, someone wins the lottery, then they're gone. If we lose a probation and parole person, it'll shut down. And that's not fair to our citizens. We are moving past 110, 115,000 members in our community. We know that. We are feeling that all over. So I saw the data that was on there for, I think in comparison for Olathe, they have five days. We have two. Now I think their population is about 150, but don't think we're going to be there too. We need to address this now. I don't understand. Tell me what your ask is for us. And maybe that's something, Mayor Pro Tem, that you can share with us. Tell me what your ask is so that we can hit the ground running.

Do you have any further questions? I don't. Okay. Just as a point of clarification on the probation caseload, because there were a few different numbers thrown around. If I was understanding correctly, it kind of depends on the complexity of the cases, what the recommended caseload is. Can you clarify that just a little bit? Because it sounds like regardless of the complexity level, there's still way over capacity.

Yeah, there's a range. Rebecca's going to find the exact range for you. But it was based on complexity. The 45 cases actually refers to cases involving domestic violence or you know, physical, again, those require much more attention, and she'll provide the high-end number.

Yeah, in the report it talks about this. The low-risk caseloads have a recommended ratio of 200 cases per officer. Administrative or minimal-risk caseloads have a ratio of 175 to 300. Specialty cases, such as domestic violence, is one, however, the 45 to 80 range. So what we'd said in the report was while most of Lee Summitt's cases would be considered low risk, and we've asked some of the probation officers for their assessment, it's hard to know, of course, some are higher risk. Some are the mental illness and the domestic violence cases that have that lower range. So in all cases, it doesn't matter. The caseload is higher than those ratios, of course. Even at the high end of 300, it's, you know, double.

And what would you consider like a low risk or a more administrative? Is that like a A DUI or like just to help us understand.

Like supervising someone on like a drug. They're required to go through some kind of a drug treatment program, supervising that to make sure that that happens. So driving under the influence or something of that nature.

Okay. Okay, thank you.

Are we talking adults?

I'm sorry, just to clarify. Yeah, adults.

This is only an adult court, correct? We don't handle juvenile cases or no?

It's adults. Okay. Yeah.

Hopefully that offers a little bit of clarity. But regardless, they're still well over that number. Okay.

And I still think we want to revisit the idea of what actually is a case that should be referred to probation anyway.

Okay.

Because some of the other recommendations that we've made, really making that support network system that you have available to you, the resource list available, some of that will also help. I think sometimes people are being placed on probation. Some of the officers commented that just so that I could find a resource. Well, we need to have those immediately available to people so that they're not having to find something unique to that individual. There are a lot of programs that are available within the region.

Okay, thank you. I think everyone has had a chance to comment at least once, so we can go back around. Council Member Carlisle, did you have additional questions? Yes, thank you.

And I'm sorry for not thanking you for all of this work earlier and just jumping into my questions, but thank you. I do understand this took a lot because there's a lot in here. So if what I'm hearing after this all went around and came back, If we fully use the technology we have that are mandated by the courts for the court system to use, that's gonna help us. And if we clarify the policies and procedures, so like those need to be our first few things, fully implement technology and get our policy and procedure book written so that everybody knows what's going on, right?

Yes, those are critical.

Okay, and then after that, it will be easier for us to know What we really need like we might need two more probation officers, but we're not going to know that until we have the policies and procedures in place because. Some people are getting recommended for probation and there's no probation for them, so then it's just like a circle.

Right. I think Jonathan started the presentation by talking about, hey, we're also giving you the tools to forecast what your needs might be in the future. And I think probation is a good example of that, but it's also with the judicial bench officers. It's with your court clerk staffing. I think creating those data systems so that you have good information to be able to evaluate what those caseloads truly are having policies in place that determine when something is referred, for instance, to probation, all that will help you then have the tools to forecast into the future what your true needs are.

Okay.

And that's why we try to be pretty conservative.

Right, and those were like, I think that was the very last of your... slides like recommendation 26, 27, and 28. Was that what those were?

And so those really need to be one, two, and three, not... Well, the number of recommendations isn't a...

Isn't the order in which they're going to go through, right.

And we grouped them so that they kind of made sense. Yeah.

I understand. Thank you. Thank you for that. Anything to help us make sense is well needed. Okay. Okay, so then I think really... You've answered anything that I could ask of you. The rest is really just for us and staff and everybody else to kind of figure out within what we do. So thank you so much for your time and all of your hard work on this. And hopefully we won't see you again. I mean, that's horrible for me to say, but I mean, if we're doing good, right?

We may visit.

All right, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Adkins, did you have additional questions?

Yeah, I just wanted to clarify in my Zoom cutout for a second, so I missed some of what Council Member Carlisle said, but I think I was hearing this presentation differently that, yes, the policies and procedures are an extremely important part of moving ahead, but in terms of prioritizing which things happen first, there would be zero reason to delay hiring those two positions that were funded. If Mr. Dunning said there's two positions that got funded through the 2027 budget.

Yes.

We want to see those people hired immediately and based on the numbers that you talked about with the probation officers, get that adjustment. I mean, these numbers that you laid out, I too was in the room in November when these judges came the first time to talk about how dire the situation was. And I couldn't fathom then, six months ago, why you would wait a single day to hire new people or to allow them to work longer. My position on this is I want people to be hired as quickly as possible. I want relief in there as quickly as possible. And the way that you described the means of how you would write out policies and procedures is that no one has the time to write them. So that certainly means the existing staff that's in there now doesn't have time to write them. So there will be no relief until new people are in there to help take the workload off. And so as this moves to finance and budget or wherever it goes next, I could not be more strongly in the opinion that we need to hire people as quickly as possible and start implementing these procedures as quickly as possible and take seriously the request by the judges to have their own timeframe shifted, to be allowed to be in there more often, yes, to increase their pay, which this is not, today's presentation has not been about their pay, but it certainly will need to be impacted. And I want this to take, place quickly, especially since we said in November that we would wait to see the results of this. So here are the results. And I think that we should be moving to take them very seriously and to request a check in for Mr. Dunning every month to the city council to say what's been happening and who's been hired or which seats have been filled or how many check boxes have been done off the strategic plan because it's a 10 page that got emailed earlier today so whatever that is i would like to see monthly updates on on this process um there's lots of other departments in the city that have been improved over the last few years and i'm you know i know that the city has so much to do and at least someone has a lot of pride that so many pieces of the government have been improved over the years and i think this is um the next department and in line to be renovated and i think It's right in front of us, and so hopefully there's no barriers that keep us from implementing quickly. So thank you for the presentation. Thanks, judges, for your patience while this happens. And then thank you, Mayor Prochem-Shields, for helping us to implement it quickly and helping it get to the right committees so we can start taking action.

Thank you, council member. Just a purely procedural, could all the council members clear themselves from the speaking orders so that I can see if anybody still wants to speak? I don't have the mayor's controls up here, so I don't have the ability to clear you guys out. Hit the little withdraw request button. Okay.

I just wanted to make

So now now if you want to make any additional comments Please go ahead and and hit the request to speak button and I can get you to get to you in the order in Which you chime in so councilmember Frazier.

I just wanted to say I also didn't have an opportunity I know it's hard to be in the line of fire there and That doesn't make it any easier, but thank you Councilmember funk.

Thank you for Tim shields. Thank you guys. I appreciate it Thank you to the judges and all the court staff that came and Can we get this to finance and budget as soon as possible and strike up the conversation that we all know needs to be had?

That's me. That's Chair Carlisle, I believe, has that on the agenda. Chair Carlisle, Council Member Carlisle, would you like to?

Yes, thank you. I'm sorry. I had one question I forgot to ask, and because I really haven't had a chance to look over the whole recommendations thing because we just got it. But I saw them in the report. So... You went through the report with the judges and the staff. Did you have buy-in from everybody on those recommendations?

So our task as an independent reviewer is not to acquire buy-in. Our task is to bring our professional expertise to identify through our rigor, through our analytical rigor, what we think the appropriate path forward is within the boundaries or constraints that you all face as a community. We have offered that.

Okay. Thank you. It is not your way to try and get buy-in. It's just this is our professional opinion and do with it what you will. Correct. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Before I chime in with kind of some of my comments, did any council members want to ask any additional questions from our subject matter experts since we do have the judges and probation officers? I think we've heard some from them, but is there anyone who has any follow-up questions for them at this point? I believe we've heard from them in prior meetings, but if you have any further questions, I certainly welcome those. Not seeing any.

May I? Yes, Council Member Atkins. Thank you. I'm sorry. I can't find my button. Would it be okay to ask in general if anyone who had given comments earlier at the beginning of the night, now that the report has been given, is there anyone who would like to follow up with a, is that appropriate? Just because I don't know their names of the people who spoke.

Is there a specific question you want to ask for a judge or probation?

Well, the people that spoke, there was a probation officer. There are people representing different pieces of the court. And so to the extent that the report mentioned their roles, isn't that relevant to find out if there's any additional information they'd like to add now that the report has been given?

Sure. so we can lead off with judges if they have any additional comments and then see if the staff members have any additional comments.

Can I just point a clarification? Yes, please. Are we excused at this point? Yes, yes, thank you. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. Thank you.

I appreciate that question because I'm on my 17th year and no one had a question for me. No one seemed to want my opinion and I don't understand why that occurs because it's repeated and ongoing. With regard to the court liaison, I have sent emails. I have requested someone get assigned. It all falls into a hole. I have complained about that. Please assign us someone. I've pointed out the deficiencies and the breakdown in the relationships and the problems. And so I do feel a breath of fresh air, which I felt in the past. And it didn't work out, so I'm trying to be optimistic with some of the comments that I've heard tonight. Because generally no one listens to me. But... And now I just look stupid standing here, but... I have repeatedly tried to get someone over there. So you can say that we need someone, but look at how everything is broken without one. We talk about our financial issues. Well, instead of saying, well, we've got one of the things is, you know, we're working on the financial processes and that kind of stuff. No, break it down to brass tacks. Our court bailiff quit. We got no notice. Well, we have no backup because who's going to back it up because we have six employees. So we had then a court clerk, unarmed, just taking the court deposits. I didn't think that was smart. So I asked for help. We didn't get any help. So then I said, well, so I just can't let her continue to take it every night. So I would leave my house and drive over and try and get the deposit. So we're switching it up. If you're going to, you know, put a gun to somebody's head, you've got to figure out who you're going to pick and who's got the deposit that night. And then I would run them over to the bank. I asked several times if we could get on the Brinks rotation and couldn't get that accomplished. So she goes over to the police department and says, can you guys take our deposits? I mean, that's how we're spending our time. And so, yes. And that's not how we should be spending our time. So here are these general things about, well, we've got to implement financial process. It's bad. But we couldn't get any help. No one would listen to me. So eventually, we hired a new court bailiff, and he was taking it. And the issues with the finances, meetings went on behind our back. We had no idea that meetings about our budget, the problems, money problems, the judges were out of it. Office of Court State Administrator came in and said the judges are the first line, period. Nothing goes on with these finances without the judges knowing it. And so we then have been able to get involved after someone else pointed that out. Talk about us.

What? I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry to interrupt. Do you think that we'll be able to proceed with the instructions that have been given? Do you think that the instructions that have been given that you'll be able to run with quickly, these are things that are within the scope that we can get handled?

Council Member Atkins, do you mean the list of recommendations from the report? Is that what you're referring to?

Yep. Yeah, exactly.

Well, I think you hit on part of the crux of the problem. You guys got an email an hour and a half before the meeting? Is that right? Or something, and it was protected for some kind of measures? We didn't get it. There's no collaboration. We have no idea what you're referring to. And so I don't know why we wouldn't get it. We're tasked by law with running the judiciary.

Well, it's closed session, so you normally don't receive closed session emails, and so that is why, I'm sure.

Mr. Dunning, just for clarity, I'm trying to recall exactly the title of it, the Implementation Action Plan, is that what it's called, the IAP? Has that been shared with the judges?

No. That was covered with Raftelis when I was at a meeting. It's the IAP, and then we broke out a separate report regarding financial controls and security. So that was covered when Raftelis and myself and the judges and the interim court administrator at the time reviewed this information. So I wanted to be mindful of it, sharing for this discussion.

Certainly. Has that been provided to them electronically so they have copies in their possession to review at a later date? Or was it just provided in person?

I don't recall if that...

I think one thing I've heard from many of my colleagues tonight and the judges is that more open, clear communication is a real, real priority. So maybe that's something, if it hasn't been provided to them in a PDF or a printed version, that could be provided to them so that everybody is working from the same set of recommendations?

Sure.

Okay. Sorry. Please continue, Council Member Atkins or Judge Altieri.

I'll go. Council Member Funk asked a question about whether or not outside counsel was hired after that November 4 presentation. And it was quickly shoved under the table. We're not talking about money tonight. That was not his question. His question was on November 4th, we said we were going to hire an outside counsel, which we think is a waste of money. Judge Fan was in here. She gave her legal opinion. We've given our legal opinion. There was already money spent on another outside counsel. The city hired an attorney that does medical malpractice work and does not do municipal work. And her opinion, I guess, was either unclear or something. We don't understand that. But that night, we were supposed to hire outside counsel. That was in November. I think it was later that month. Or in December, I said, hey, are you hiring that outside counsel? Because I knew the answer. No, nobody does anything. And nope, no one was hired. So that was one of the things in November. So the question that he asked was not about compensation. It was a little more directed to, did we get that done? And no one did it. I don't even think it needs to be done. I think the question's been answered several times. And I don't think you even have to be an attorney, really, to answer it. But no, that wasn't done. And then talk about whether or not we are self-sustaining. We are, and we can bring in revenue. We still, if we had more dockets, it's overlooked that I took stuff and worked at home and brought in $55,000 in a matter of three weeks. That was forfeited bond money that just sits there. It's not taxpayer money. It's not school money. It is money from defendants. If you don't come to court, we are going to take your money and you still get a warrant. And then you'll give us more money and then we might just take that too if you don't come. But we don't even have that docket. I mean, they all know. The defendants know. So it's not like I'm advertising something. They've figured out how we are now. But we can, we're not about bringing in revenue, but we certainly can. I don't understand the process on how things go to probation. We determine what goes to probation if we adopt the prosecutor's recommendation or if we send someone. And I don't know how it was understood. It might be about services or stuff. We do provide services because if the guy that shows up at your house at 3 a.m. with no pants on asking for a sandwich just needs to be medicated. Let's try to get him the medication. We can put him in jail, or we can just try to fix the issue and get him some resources and go. But that's a lot of what the probation department does. But we're not service-oriented, because we max out our jail capacity all the time. We max out both our providers. We max out the Lee's Summit jail. So the process on who goes to probation, and we do have to have a ton of people on probation. There's a lot of talk about how come the parents aren't managing the children. Well, you're looking at them right here because by the time you get to us and you're on probation, if you've got a kid and their mom and dad, you see them come in and they act ridiculous, then you realize nobody's sitting at that table at dinner. So that's when we come in. And then I had, like, I had a dad say, well, can you do that or something? I said, yeah, because you don't do your job. So I'll sit down at the head of the table and I'm going to do it. So I went down and made a list of who his son could and could not be friends with. But I can't do that if we don't have the time. And I do appreciate everyone acknowledging that we have to have the time to have these meetings. So because we come over on our off time all the time. And I've started to throw fits about it because... I have to work other places and it takes away from other income to run over here for stuff. But I feel we should be paid to do it. But there's just another thing I heard was, well, we need to get people who know what they're doing. Those six clerks are doing the work of 16 people and those probation officers, those people know what they're doing. You guys have the best staff over at that courthouse. I mean, they are a machine. And in turn, they get to work late and work through lunch and be stressed to the nines. So we don't need people to come in and necessarily train them. They just need help. They need Resources, and I appreciate the presiding judge stuff. There's just no resources there. I clerk for the presiding judge of Jackson County, and they would love to provide resources. It's a different area, and they provide administrative oversight. We've got a great one right now, but if we went asking for resources, he would try to help us, but he'd try to figure out what he could do because it would kind of be a weird ask. I've asked at one point, we had something hideous going on at the courthouse and I said, can you please just get us over there, give a judge out of duty pay. I know that's a thing because other people have gotten it. That doesn't mean it's permanent. It doesn't mean this is what you're going to get for the next year. It means, can you please get over there and start working so we can figure out what's going on. And then that request, I just got stared at. And a lot of the report, a lot of what concerns me is the, like, you can get by with, and that's our conservative estimate. I don't know. I feel like somebody's talked to them, or they've been influenced. I think they're good people, but I think there's something that's just weird to me. I don't know why we're trying to see what we can get by with. But a lot of the things that we have brought up, I have asked repeatedly. So I feel some sense of encouragement. I feel like there's a breath of fresh air. But I also, I don't know, I just hope things come to fruition. And then I'll just stop. Thank you so much. Thanks. I still need to get some of that out anyway.

I know one of the things, Councilmember Frazier, you asked what is your ask. And I know nobody specifically had us come up to the podium. So I'll tell you what our ask is. It's the same thing it was two years ago. When they published their report on page one, and Judge Alteri quoted it, it says, current staffing levels have not kept pace with the city's growth, and Allison indicates an immediate need for additional judicial capacity and increased personnel. So I learned tonight that we have money budgeted for two new clerks. That's amazing. I would like to hide them right away. I don't remember who said it. Oh, it was Ms. Atkins, Councilman Braskins. I would... Yes, that's great. That will help. It's not an additional 10, but two will help us a lot. An additional judicial capacity. The problems all stem not from whether or not we're using OSCA programs and I will tell you there are a lot of programs through OSCA that we could use if we had the time. That morning when I had 720 defendants and Judge Alteri had to come in and help me and we sat there, both of us, from 8.30 until 12.30 working on 720 people, that would have been like 23 seconds per person. That's not enough time for them to even walk up and I have to move on. So All of this can be helped by having us there more days. We can spread all this out which will also help the rest of the staff if they're not having to do all of their probation violations that are assigned to me in one day or all the Tuesday probation violations and the domestic violence and all this that do take a lot of time for Judge Altieri. You also mix in there. We start our afternoon and custody dockets We might have 15 people on the in custody docket. And that's with us also arraigning people every single day of the week, even when we're not in court. We still might have 15 people on the in custody docket. That might take us two hours to get done. There's a lot of times that I'll start my afternoon docket at 3.30 or 4.00. because we just don't have the capacity to start any quicker because you have to deal with the people in the jail. Our probation officers have to write up all the paperwork for them to get out of the jail or to be sent to another location if they're in our facility. So all of that can be alleviated if we will follow this recommendation they made to us back in December. We have an immediate need for additional judicial capacity. you all can pass an ordinance that says we're going to have court five days a week, not 5.4 obviously, because we don't have any other buildings, five days a week, and we're going to require each judge to do three days per week. We can each have an overlap day. If you want to go with the conservative number at four, we think it's a mistake because our tickets and our population are going to continue to climb. In fact, the numbers that they use today were numbers they used from fiscal 2024. So you know that two years ago, the numbers they used two years ago are already outdated. And the number of dockets that we have are skyrocketing more and more. We have taken off days and tried to let our staff get caught up. And the programs that they're talking about, OSCA, it's ways for us to go in there and take notes. and do things like that, but you cannot pull up every single case when you have 700 cases a day or 500 cases a day. The people in the county, they're seeing maybe, some of the judges see two people in an hour because of the complexity of the case. I'm not saying our parking tickets, our speeding tickets are super complex, but we do have a lot of complex cases like domestic assaults, DWIs, things that do require additional time. We have a lot of mentally ill people in the city of Lee Summit which we have to deal with. We have to figure out resources for them. Yes, we have a lot of resources. They don't always take us. The police department does a great job of finding resources for people also, but it's It's not the same resources that are always available every time we need them. So we spend a lot of time on our own time trying to find additional resources for these people. We don't have the time to do that in the two court dates we're having. Things are not getting done. Things are slipping through the cracks where we just don't have time to use all of the programs that we could use if we were like Kansas City and they maybe see 30 people in an entire hour. And yes, they can use all the bells and whistles. We don't have time to do that. It doesn't work. We have a sheet of paper. We scribble some notes on it. We hand it to the clerk. She puts the notes in the computer. That's all the time that we have to do it when you've got 700 other people sitting on the floor waiting to get in the parking lot, waiting in the lobby to go through security, waiting to get checked in, and then sit there for three hours. I know it sounds like it's a broken record, and I know we do sound like a broken record, but that's what our ask would be. Sit down and figure out how you can get us in there. She can do four days a week or I can do one. Just get more judges in there. Get us in there more often so we can spread this out and that will alleviate most of the burden. And then these policies and procedures, we have reached out to other municipalities. They don't have these books in place. They don't just have books that we can pull from. Our clerks are trained. They know what they're doing. They know and they will email us if they have a question about something. But Again, if we're going to put a policy manual together and we can do that, it will be going from scratch because we couldn't find any other municipalities that had one that they could loan us around town. To answer your question, that would be our ask. We do appreciate you guys taking the time to pay for an auditor and having them come and do this operational review of the court, but If we don't follow up on it, we've just wasted the taxpayers' money. And meanwhile, from the two years I've been there as a judge to now, things have just quadrupled. The number of cases, the number of tickets. And it's not that Lee's Summit is a dangerous community, but there's just a lot of tickets being written because there's a lot of people driving through our city and a lot of people living in our city. So we just hope that you guys will take the time to look at the numbers We are your best resources because we are there every single day. That's what was kind of, I think she was saying, why isn't anybody asking us questions? She's been there 19, 17 years? So we know how things function. We both have so much experience. We both, what do we say, over 60 years combined criminal law legal experience between the two of us and the time we've been out of law school. So I would like to think we know what we're doing. In other courts, we've both worked as judges in Kansas City helping them out, and I'm still doing that. And I would like to think that we know what we're doing and that you guys could come to us and ask us why some of this stuff, you know, does, will work or won't work, and we can... You know, like I said, we've implemented a lot of these changes already because, again, when they were interviewing us, you know, nine or ten months ago, we've changed a lot. We've got a new court administrator, and things are a lot different, and we have improved on a lot of things. What we haven't improved on and what we haven't changed at all are the number of court dates that we have per week that would make a lot of these problems go away. So, thank you.

Thank you, Judge. Mayor Prochamp-Shields, can I follow up with a question, or did it rotate to someone else?

Uh... I would say you can. I do want to be conscious of everyone's time, and we do have another presentation after this. So if you want to ask some follow-up questions or speak with another staff member, certainly, but just kind of being conscious of that.

Thank you so much. I'll make it quick. Judge Lopez, I might ask that if you could, or between the two of you, if you could look at the presentation that was given tonight and go back through and update a draft of with notations on each line item that says whether you did or did not already achieve that line item. That would help for one of the future meetings. I'm not sure which meeting, but it would be a good document for all of us to have so that you could update each line item if you're saying some of those things have been implemented then please be specific about which ones in a document as we move forward and um also council member funk mentioned earlier on that um maybe this the court system was self-funding so my question was going to be is it self-funding now or would it be self-funding with these extra several people hired um and so and i'm hoping the answer was Yes, it would be self-funding after we hired all these recommended people. And if so, let's please do this quickly. And if we need to pass an ordinance to allow them to go to five days a week, I'm all on board for that. I'm ready to, I want us to move as quickly as possible in removing barriers to help us move forward. Whether we need to allocate funds, temporary funds, whether we need to allocate you know, can we have a job description ready by Monday? Can we like, I want to remove barriers and move us forward. So Mayor Prochem Shields, I would defer to you on the quickest way for us to help activate these, these recommendations would be wonderful. Um, but thank you everyone again for your time tonight. And, um, thanks Mayor Prochem Shields for the extra minute.

Thank you. Yes. And we can definitely get you, um, we can definitely go through that and try to get something updated as far as, you know, um, what we have been able to accomplish and what things are still on the table. And then as far as the self-funding issue, and I don't know where it is in the report. They could probably tell me what page, but if you look at the financials of the report, the amount of money that we bring in as far as fines, court costs, probation fees, bond forfeitures, things like that, there enough to pay our salaries, meaning the city is not having to expend additional money on the court. So we're kind of a self-functioning, and I don't know what the exact numbers are. I'd have to go back and find that page and look. But certainly if we are there and we can start doing more regular bond forfeitures and things like that, that will even bring in additional funds. So I don't think it's it's maybe down the road, it might affect the budget, but I don't know what those numbers are. But as far as the numbers that we had at the time there was, and I know there's enough money allocated, um, I believe for those two new positions is what Mr. Dunning said. Those were already allocated. So it would just be additional judge time at this point. And then any additional, um, you know, any additional expenses if we had to hire additional probation officers and stuff like that, but I can't answer that specific question. I don't remember where it is in the slide and how much overage there was, but I think it was about even with what we bring in and what we took out in salaries.

Thank you, Judge. Thank you, Council Member. I think that's something we can dig into a little bit more in Finance and Budget Committee, the exact numbers, but I appreciate that. Okay, thank you. All right, so we're going to get through this. We're almost done. I have a question for, I think, probably for the consultants. When it comes to the, I think it was one of the very first slides that you put up in terms of the court structure, in terms of what the city's role is, the court's role is, that kind of thing, who sets the number of days that the judges are in chambers. I understand there are support resources that the city needs to provide, but to what extent is there judicial independence where they choose that schedule but we provide the clerk support or can the city pass an ordinance to do that? Is that a question that's within the scope of your work or

Generally it is. The municipal courts are to be working in collaboration with the city so the city can provide the needed support to ensure the court runs effectively. So it really needs to be a collaboration between the city and the court on what that court structure looks like, court number of days looks like in order to meet the objective of...

I guess it's just because the judge said you could pass an ordinance to say that we're going to have five court days a week. But my understanding from our prior discussions is that we We can't do that, but I really want to understand what's within the scope of the council's authority.

You have some of that that's written in your charter. So your charter refers to kind of the two judges elected, the tenure, and then you do, if I recall correctly, you have an ordinance that currently sets it at two days. So I do think there may need to be a change to your ordinance.

Is that correct? I've not seen that anywhere.

I'm not aware of an ordinance that I can think of that says, I'm aware of the charter provision that we have two divisions that we run at minimum. We can increase the divisions.

If that's something that could be researched, I would just really like to know if that's something that is set by ordinance or how that is determined.

It's either an ordinance or a policy. We did receive something in writing that it was currently set at two days, so it is in one of your written documents. And we can help him find that because I have all of our source documents. If you could provide that to us.

It doesn't have to be this minute, but I would just really like to understand that better. Most of my questions have been asked. My colleagues have been really thorough, so I'm not going to dig deep into a lot of the specifics of the report. As far as next steps, Mr. Dunning, I realize that it's within the scope of your authority to manage your employees and who you would appoint as a liaison or how that is going to function, so I don't want to overstep here, but I would concur with my colleagues that I would really like to see that role filled very quickly. The most shocking thing that I heard tonight is that the judges didn't realize that two additional FTEs had been allocated to the court. I don't understand how that, I don't want to make any assumptions, but that seems like we are trying, the city staff is CITY MANAGER, YOU'RE TRYING TO ADDRESS THESE DEFICIENCIES BY ALLOCATING THOSE, BY RECOMMENDING THOSE FTE ALLOCATIONS. THE COUNCIL IS TRYING TO SUPPORT THAT RECOMMENDATION BY PASSING THAT IN THE BUDGET. AND I WAS JUST REALLY, REALLY SURPRISED THAT THERE WASN'T ANY PROCESS IN PLACE YET TO HIRE THOSE FOLKS. SO IT SEEMS LIKE GETTING THAT LIAISON POSITION IN PLACE, SOMEONE WHO CAN REALLY GET THOSE LINES OF COMMUNICATION OPEN IS VITAL TO MAKING ANY OF THE REST OF THIS WORK. That was really important takeaway for me. What I would like to see next is to put together some kind of a tracking and status document that says here are the set of recommendations. Here is who has the authority to implement each one because I want to understand what can we do? What can the city council do? What can city staff do? How can we support the judges and what is within their purview? For example, I assume that something like setting a cut-off time for court check-ins, I assume that's purely at the discretion of the judges. I would feel that I was very much overstepping my authority if I said the counsel hereby decrees that cut-off time is set at 10.30 a.m., right? but something like funding an additional probation officer that is within our authority. So I want to kind of break down what can we do, what can you do administratively, what can the judges do, what do we need to collaborate on, and then kind of see how those are being prioritized, what the target timing is, what's already been accomplished, because there's a lot of information tonight, and I want to understand where we're at. And then I think Council Member Adkins had recommended monthly check-ins. If a tracking document like that was put together, I could easily see that being updated and sent out monthly so we can see what's going on and just have awareness, situational awareness of what's happening there. I would like to have us come back in August to kind of give an initial review to that document so we can coordinate on what meeting date would work for that and how quickly that can be put together and then maybe that same evening schedule a closed session to discuss any of the matters that we kind of hinted at, but that we're not able to discuss in full open sessions, that we all have full awareness of those. And then I would defer to Chair Carlisle on the Finance Committee on how she wants to structure those discussions as far as financial resources go. Also keeping in mind that I know Charter Commission is meeting this year, and I don't know if they'll have any way in on the portion of our charter related to judges, but I'm sure we'll all keep an eye on that as well. But that's kind of how I see things right now is getting things going in finance and budget to figure out what additional resources we can have in conjunction with putting together tracking charts to figure out what can we do, how can we help make this work, looking into those finances in terms of what's self-funding or what we might need to find additional resources for, if there's any temporary help that could be provided that was kind of discussed. I'm sorry, you guys can sit down like you're sitting there. I appreciate you. You don't have to keep standing there. If there's additional temporary resources that could be located or maybe pro tem judges that could be hired temporarily to help get through some backlog to figure out what would be considered one-time expenses that we might be able to use fund balance for or what we need to find ongoing revenues for, figure out if the court can self-fund those. More in-depth discussion for finance and budget, but those are kind of the questions that I have is how can we get this ball rolling? How can we pay for it all? And that's, I think, my full brain dump. So unless we have any last minute questions. Mr. Dunne, do you have any final comments?

No, just kind of on the heels of your thoughts, I can easily take that implementation action plan and carve out some of that closed record information and build that tracking sheet and responsibility and timelines and just what you were referencing.

Okay, that would be really helpful. Thank you. Thank you again to the judges. Thank you to the court staff and everyone who came and commented tonight. We are going to go ahead and take, I think, a brief recess because we've all been sitting up here much longer than most of our bladders can take. And we will come back to discuss the downtown hotel with the mayor here in just a minute. Thank you. Thank you all so much.

Ever wondered how the city budget works? The total 2026 budget is over $380 million, which includes funding for daily operations, capital improvements, debt service, internal service, and enterprise operations. For example, the General Fund is the foundation for the City's day-to-day services and investments like road maintenance, public safety, and fire protection. The General Fund is supported by property taxes, sales taxes generated by local businesses, franchise taxes, and other sources like licenses, permits, and fees. For every dollar citizens pay in property tax, the city receives 18 cents. This means the city receives $845 a year in property taxes for a median single family house. These taxes provide public safety, park maintenance, infrastructure, and the best services to keep Lee's Summit going and improving. One of the community's top priorities is infrastructure investment, which is reflected in the capital improvement plan. $113 million of the 2026 budget is invested into the capital improvement plan. The 2026 capital improvement budget includes investments like the 291 and 50 highway interchange, 3rd Street, Ward and Purcells intersection, and Prior Road. The budget process includes guidance from the City Council, citizen input, and critical success factors from the City's IGNITE strategic plan. To learn more about the City's budget, visit cityofls.net backslash budget.

When the person called on the phone, she said that there was a dinosaur walking down her road. Of course, we had to go out and check that out. We get out there, and it was a big African tortoise, probably 60 pounds, walking down the road. When they walk, they really stand up tall, so I could see why she thought it was a dinosaur. I'm Rodney Wagner. I'm the manager of Lee's Summit Animal Control. So as you can see, we've got all sorts of animals here. We've got some guinea pigs off to the side. All the windows up here are animals that are adoptable right now. Every one of these dogs is ready to go and ready for adoption. And the same thing with our cats over here. A lot of cool cats in here now, so... This is our three-acre lot we have out back. This is where we do all the walking of dogs, exercise. We also have a side yard off to the side over there so we can let them run loose. They can run together and we have what's called play groups. Kind of like having a bunch of kids. Here's our vet room. We have a vet that comes out twice a week. This is our sally port where we bring the animals into. This is one of our animal control trucks. And we can hold up to six animals. We have a lift on the other side to put big animals in. We actually have temperature gauges in here and in the truck to tell us how hot it is. Once it gets to a certain temperature, we bring all the animals back here immediately. So this actually has traps in it, but... We do a lot of wildlife trapping. I mean, a lot, so... Bats, pot-bellied pigs, horses, cows, emus, a lot of reptiles. We had a citizen one time that had over 200 reptiles in his basement. Caimans and alligators in here that are four or five feet long, you can't keep those. And people do, and they're surprised when they can't keep them. I'm like, really? You're surprised you can't have an alligator in your house? Our main goal here is public safety and also the safety of the animals, and we have very dedicated people back there, and they definitely stay here for the love of the animals, which also includes getting them adopted out. We'll have about 4,000 impounded animals a year, probably about close to 2,000 are dogs and cats. The cats and dogs, when they get impounded here, they go on a five-day hold, and then after the five days, if the owner doesn't show up, then we can put them up for adoption. Adopt an animal here is actually really simple. You just come in, look for whatever animal you're looking for, find the right pick. You have to go to the adoption room up there and see if you get along with them. You spend as much time as you want to in there. From that point on, it's just a matter of making sure they're spayed or neutered and all their vaccinations up to par and they're good to go. We have a very high adoption rate because we try everything in our power to get animals adopted out. We have Heart of America, a humane society that we do a lot of adoptions through. And then we also have other groups. We have some people that literally will just look all over the country for somewhere for a dog to go. And we sent dogs up into South Dakota, North Dakota, Washington State. So it's actually, it's a huge united effort to get all these animals home.

Tarzan's got lots of energy. Hazel's got a weird bell bell.

She wants nothing to do with the other cats. She'll kind of get her grumpy face going.

And the good thing about the people here is that they get all their friends to get animals too. All of us have probably the limit of all the animals that we can have at home. You know, they are huge animal lovers. If it was up to the people here, we'd have 15 cats running around in here. We had a citizen one time out there, and he was bathing his two nine-foot-long boa constrictors in the front yard. Apparently, I was garnering some attention, and so we went out there and had to talk to him about that. Do I do this job? Oh, dude, I love this job. I grew up on a farm, and taking care of that many animals, you can't help but like animals. This is just like fancy farming. You know, you're just bringing animals in here, taking care of them and find them homes. And yeah, absolutely animal lover.

Traditionally, we think as police officers, those responding to law enforcement needs within the community. But honestly, we are there to serve our citizens, and our citizens do go into crisis. They do have mental health crises, and we're being called to those scenes on a regular basis. In order to help serve those citizens better, we did initiate the Crisis Intervention Team Program. These are officers that are specially trained to de-escalate crisis situations. Recently, we've brought co-responders onto the scene, licensed, qualified mental health professionals housed within our police department. and they respond with those officers directly to those scenes where a crisis is occurring so they can interact with that citizen and get them the help they need right there on that scene.

The co-responders are either a bachelor or master level in a behavioral health related field. They wear plain clothes. They don't carry weapons or anything like that.

I have a police radio that I listen to all day. Listen for, you know, those key words. Mental health, behavioral health, crisis.

There's a lot of officers that just call for me. I have my own radio number.

I also have the ability to self-dispatch to them and say, 982's en route. Officers en route, 914.

So typically, I arrive after they've made it safe. I'll make contact and get kind of the rundown. And then I just kind of jump right in.

Like, hey, you know, my name's Allison. I'm a mental health professional. I'm here to help you. I'm not here to take you to jail or arrest you. Sometimes.

All a person needs is a voice, someone neutral, someone outside that can listen. I do a lot of safety planning, including family, their support network. Who's close to you? If they're home alone, who can come over and hang out with you today? Can we lock away your sharps? Can we put up your meds? Do you need meds? Can we get you over to the urgent care to get you assessed for your medications? Some of them also are like, oh, I'm so glad you came. This made me feel so much better.

Our main goal as the co-responders is to, one, get people connected to the services that they need and also divert from emergency rooms and jails.

And they almost get a different view of the police responding. That lets me know you care and the officers care. Please call the police.

How can we help you?

In 2020, we had 722 mental health related calls for service. 2022, by that time, 1,479. These mental health related calls for service are increasing. How we're responding to that is increasing the number of crisis intervention team officers we have available, as well as the number of co-responders we have available to respond on these calls.

So what I think is important for the community to know about the co-responder program is that we're here, we exist. All you have to do when you call 9-1-1 is ask for us. You know, say, hey, I want a co-responder to respond to this crisis and we'll go. I was really struggling about eight years ago. My personal journey with mental health and I met some amazing social workers and amazing programs that have helped me get to where I am today. I really couldn't see myself doing anything else. We want to help and that's what we love to do.

So I had a client, we got a call, she had some suicidal ideations and she really felt that she had nobody. And you know, in getting to know her story, getting to know who comes around and sees you, well then we found a support person and they responded immediately and we made a plan. I called back and checked on her in an hour and then I checked on her in two hours. We were able to get her into the additional services to where she talks to someone every week or more. I just took a person that really just thought they had nobody and nobody would show up for them and show them you do. And you'll be amazed who is in your corner if you just simply say, I need a little help.

We're going to go ahead and get back on the agenda with the agenda item 6B, which is a second presentation. And this one is a conceptual presentation for the Green Street Boutique Hotel and Restaurants. It's a proposal, an economic development incentive request, Lane 4 Property Group, Inc., and Thrash Group applicants. Mr. Bushek, are you going to get it started?

Yes, thank you. David Bushek, Economic Development Legal Counsel for the City. As you said, this is a conceptual presentation of the city's economic development incentive policy. A brief reminder of the economic development incentive policy and what the city council is doing with this presentation tonight. The policy was adopted in 2015. It's been amended numerous times since then. And the policy embodies the city council's preferences for economic development incentives. The city had about 15 years of history before the policy was first adopted. And the city, as I mentioned, the city's now been using this for 11 years. The economic development incentive policy is essentially the filter that city staff applies when incentive projects or incentive requests come forward. So there's a substantial filtering and discussion that happens before an incentive request even gets to you. And my point is the economic development incentive policy is something that city staff has followed on a regular basis and informs all of these presentations that come forward. And we can talk about that later, depending on which direction the discussion goes. Last week... We discussed extensively one of the primary reasons, arguably the primary reason, that landowners and developers request incentives, and that is public improvement. That's sort of the foundation, and I discussed that with you extensively last week. The other major reason you're going to hear about tonight, and that's financial feasibility. There's not a question of public improvements. The property is right behind me. If it were still light, you'd be able to see the property out the window. Public improvements are not the issue. It's financial feasibility, and that's what the developer is going to be addressing tonight. And I would say that this forum conceptual presentation is unique to Lee's Summit. There's no other city that I work with and that I'm aware of that uses this format. They may from time to time occasionally, but Lee's Summit is unique in that it provides this opportunity for developers to get your feedback. And so that's also a reminder. The economic development incentive policy says this about conceptual presentations. After review of the required submittals and application conferences, which has happened, conceptual presentation is made to the city council to solicit feedback and direction on the proposal. The city council may provide direction to the applicant and staff directly after the conceptual presentation or may choose to request additional information or presentations to be scheduled at a future regular session meeting of the city council. So the point is this is a tool for you to use. It's a tool for the applicants to use, and it's an opportunity for you to give whatever feedback you have about the request tonight. So with that, I will sit down and let the developer provide their initial presentation, and then I will have comments after they're finished.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bushek. My name is Brandon Buckley. I'm with Lane 4 Property Group. I'm joined here tonight by Wes Buckley, also with Lane 4. As you know, we were selected as the master developer for the Green Street project back in 2021. More importantly than us, we're here with Joe Thrash of the Thrash Group, who will be the owner and operator of the hotel project we're here to discuss tonight. This is a huge moment for us, one we've been chasing after for years. We're here today to present an incredibly exciting opportunity for Lee's Summit, being an 84-room hotel with a 4,500-square-foot restaurant. That vision came from significant amount of community engagement to determine a very specific use, being a boutique hotel for this particular site. But first, I want to take a brief moment to trace how we got here. As you know, Green Street opened in the summer of 2025. We're proud to see it thriving, but there's still more work to be done. Green Street will be a generational asset for the City of Lee Summit and its community, and we want to see it reach its maximum potential through the addition of a hotel. From the beginning, attracting a hotel to be the cornerstone to pull all the pieces of the Green Street together because it would enhance the programming options of the market. However, not just any hotel would do. So one of our most important difficult challenges as a master developer was finding the right hotel concept. It was important that the hotel was unique in order to mesh with the existing downtown's vibrant and historic nature. And today, we're proud to present a hotel concept as well as a developer and operator that meets those lofty goals. During the course of our involvement in the Green Street project, we worked with more than 40 hotel operators and developers to find the group who best fits the community's vision for the site. After speaking with a host of qualified groups and doing third-party market study, we realized that this component of the Green Street project would be a challenge to fulfill as it was envisioned in the master plan. They looked at several aspects of the opportunity, and here's the feedback we received. The demand for Thursday through Saturday night was sufficient, but there was low demand Sunday through Wednesday night and low volume business traveler. This lack of highway access and no highway visibility was also a disadvantage to the site. The site is also a challenge due to the size and the fact that it requires four-sided architecture, which is visible from all sides. The nightly rates and occupancies of the hotel stock as determined by the market data indicated there isn't a proven market, particularly not for a unique, unbranded concept. And many of their operators were hung up on this as their primary issue. Luckily, we have an operator here tonight who has the confidence in his product type and has been successful in similar markets and one that is willing to take the risk required to build a quality project. Furthermore, Many saw operational challenges coexisting with the Green Street Farmers Market building next door and without control of that space. I want to note that the thrash group is not requiring complete control of the space. They plan to work collaboratively with the city to maximize programming opportunities. After having so many of these conversations with hotel developers, We had concerns about bringing this master plan's vision to life. However, when we started talking to the Thrash group about their thoughts on this project, it was instantly apparent we had found the group with the right vision. I'll be introducing Joe Thrash in a minute and think it will become apparent that Joe sees opportunity where others see challenges. Where Joe is unique is that he wants to create a hotel that doesn't compete with other Lee's Summit hotels so much as it competes with downtown Kansas City, Crossroads, Overland Park, and the Metro's premier hotel markets. WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF THIS POTENTIAL HOTEL, BY COMPETING WITH OTHER MARKETS OUTSIDE OF THE HOTEL STOCK AND LEASE SUMMIT, IT MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE AND CREATES A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF UPSIDE COMPARED TO OTHER HOTELS WITHIN THE MARKET. WHAT JOE ENVISIONS HERE IS SIMILAR TO WHAT THE CITY OF PRAIRIE VILLAGE ACCOMPLISHED WITH THE INN AT MEADOWBROOK, A HOTEL THAT DOESN'T JUST FIT INTO THE MARKET, BUT ACTUALLY CREATES THE MARKET ITSELF BY RAISING THE BAR. You may be aware that project was able to secure England for the World Cup. It would not have been possible if it weren't for a hotel developer who wanted to do something special and unique, which is something that Joe is planning for downtown Lee's Summit. I also want to note that the Thrash Group secured a World Cup team of their own at the Origin Hotel in Kansas City by the riverfront, which was the home of Lionel Messi and the Argentinian soccer team, who picked their hotel out of many competing options, however, just left yesterday. The thrash group is able to see what a true boutique hotel experience would mean for the area and how it immediately established Lee's Summit as a true destination for visitors who are looking for an experiential hotel stay, one that leverages walkability and vibrancy of downtown to become an economic engine for Lee's Summit downtown and beyond. With that, I'll introduce Joe to share his vision for the hotel and restaurant. Thank you.

All right. Mr. Mayor, City Council, thank you for having me. Brandon, thank you for the introduction. A little bit on me. My name is Joe Thrash with the Thrash Group. Everyone keeps saying it's Joe's Hotel, but really my father started the company in 1986. We actually started out more in the multifamily sphere and then saw an opportunity to branch out and do some more interesting, I would say, hotels in the boutique nature, at least that's the general term people usually use. Okay, we've been largely busy, so these are some of our completed projects. You can see I think they're in about 12 or 13 states. We're probably one of the more active developers you'll meet. In a way, I would consider us almost counter-cyclical. Some of the hotel portfolio is listed below. You can see it's varied. Hotel Tupelo was one of the ones in the earlier image that I thought would be a good fit here. Tupelo, Mississippi is about 50,000 people. And in a way, that hotel is almost like the heartbeat of their downtown. That really, you know, it's a special point of pride for us, that project. And we've always been looking for somewhere else where we can do something similar. Like I said, these are in Lexington, Kentucky, Kansas City, Brandon, Mississippi, Longmont, Colorado. You can see Austin, Texas. They're really, really all over the place. So every one of our hotels is full service and it's boutique in nature. All of them also have their own restaurants that are completely designed from the ground up. So you can see some of these, I mean, every one of them, which we're pretty proud of, looks totally different. I know they're small images, but they look totally different. And there was a ton of emphasis on what we were trying to be with each one. And that's why you can see there are different concepts or different types of food. And, you know, Siren Social Club is actually on there. That's our real pride and joy because it actually went on the Michelin list this year and was on, I think, Esquire's top 30 new restaurants. So we're pretty proud of that one. Really, the first time I came to Lee's Summit was probably like three years ago. And I walked around the downtown, and I think you'd maybe just announced. I'm terrible with time. Maybe it was three years. But you just announced the Green Street project, but it hadn't happened yet. And I was just walking around the downtown, and I loved it. Like I said, a lot of cities would kill to have your downtown. But, you know, the brick and the train tracks and the neon signs and everything, it's just wonderful. And I thought, like, if they ever wanted to do a hotel, this would be a fun one to do. And, yeah. The name is The Novelist. It's actually a name that I came up with years ago, and I just haven't been able to use it yet. Because really, when you're saying novelist, one, I'm kind of a book nerd, so it means a little something special. But also, you really do want to give it to something that's completely wowing somebody. It's a completely groundbreaking kind of thing. It's written for that spot. No one's ever done it before. You couldn't see it coming kind of product. And I think if we were able to do this hotel on that site, I think people would come in and say, I did not see this coming. What an amazing project. This is just over the top. Now, to be fair, it's still approachable. It's not designed to be five stars. What it's designed to do is we've considered every detail and picked it for that space as best we possibly can. I think... You know, the great thing about developing hotels is they really do add a lot. They're just an energy source. So if you were to put one there, there's just more people moving in and around. I think there could be more engagement with the event space. Like I said, there's just more people going into the restaurant, more people going around, walking around, more kids. To us, I always say you can see a great site by how many people walk in front of it. If you're standing there and you see a lot of action, a lot of people are moving back and forth, it's a place with a lot of energy where you can do something special. Okay, this is just a view. I think the wickets originally looked different. But this is just kind of a sense of what it would be. To be fair, we don't know exactly what the exterior would look like if we were to do this. I would leave that to someone with significantly better taste than myself. I feel like it would definitely be something that would fit into downtown, so there's going to be some brick. Ever since I first saw the potential neon sign, that's been a point of excitement. Because I think if you put that out on the main street, it would be pretty amazing. It would be something that when you Google Lee's Summit, you might come across that sign. But this is just a look at it again. Nothing is set with the exterior of this building. The only thing we feel really confident about is the physical massing, the number of rooms, the height, where the restaurant would go. Outside of that, the look really could change significantly. Again, that's the sign I love so much. But this is the northward facing view. You kind of get a sense of it. It really, I believe, adds a lot to that corner. It becomes a nice gateway into the Green Street development. Just another aerial view. I mean, you know, once again, I think it kind of speaks for itself. It's, I believe, a nice front door, if nothing else. And also, when it's done, something that I believe would fit in really nicely with what is here, especially if we design the building the correct way on the exterior. Like Brandon said it's a little tricky because it really is a four-sided facing building Which isn't ideal because you really want to be able to go really grand on a front a front You know entry and then you can be a little more basic This isn't really one of those things because it really is seen from everywhere This would be the first floor layout so this kind of gives you a sense of it you put the restaurant right up in front and The restaurant I think I'm going to get to, I think it's on another one of these slides, but we would have a lot of fun with that like we do with all of our restaurants. You put the restaurant right up in front, lobby's in the middle. You can see it's designed to be kind of a setback, special lobby entry. You would actually drop off on the back, of course, because there's no car on the front of this thing. And then there's also, I think really nice, some outdoor space off of the restaurant and off of the meeting space. These are just some precedent images. This is what we would basically want it to look like. You know, if you took some pictures of some things you really liked, some images that you thought you could use when you were trying to design what this would really look like, this is what they are. So we know brick, we know neon, we think kind of a grand entry. You can see some of these entries on here are interesting. I think a lot of landscaping, that's why you see a lot of plants just tie into what it is, Green Street. These are some of our interiors, and like I said, interior precedent images. This is kind of what we would want it to look like. We would really want the lobby, which has pretty much that image on the left, or the one on the bottom. We'd really want the lobby to kind of overwhelm you a little bit. The truth is, once you get to the floors, there's only so much you can do. So once you get to the floors, but you really want to grab people when they first come in the building. So really like overwhelm them if you can. Again, this is just a restaurant exterior view. We would want to do something approachable but very nice and completely custom. Something that's only going to get... Just like this hotel with the name Novelist. It would get done one time and never done again. You wouldn't have a... I actually think Per Se is a very famous restaurant, so I don't know why they use that name. But if it was Per Se, there's not going to be a Per Se 2. It's done one time. It's done the best we can do it. And then it stays there forever. These are kind of some precedent images. Like I said, really beautiful restaurant. I think a lot of ours kind of focus on a little bit over the top bar, which isn't really pictured here. I think at one point we were thinking Italian. That was a while ago. We would obviously, you know, it's like a running joke. Coming up with a restaurant is much harder than figuring out the hotel because there's just so many options. There's so many things you can do. And then you have to be able to do it. It's like a hotel room. It's a pretty simple thing. A restaurant, we can go a lot of ways. But I think we would spend a lot of time in the market trying to find the best fit we could.

Is this my slide?

Well, I'll just, yeah, I'll just, I'll finish up. You know, I think this kind of gives a general look at it. Like I said, the only thing I feel like would be really set for us would be about the massing, about the size of the building, you know, where we would want to put the restaurant, how those kind of things would work. And I do believe it could be just, you know, a signature hotel, really, I would even say for the state. You know, it's like you don't, Not a lot of these types of hotels get built. We're probably one of the few people that do it. And that's what we enjoy so much about it is it can't really be replicated. So I do believe it would be, like I said, it would create even more gravity around downtown. And I do think our goal would be to not only do something that was just beautiful and kind of overwhelmed people, but also like giving you a different option. Like where people would say, like, I'm going into that area, but I think I'm going to stay in downtown Lee's Summit. You know, so that would really be our goal. I think that was my last slide.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or was it my last slide?

Yeah, you can keep it. We're good.

Sorry.

Thank you. Actually, I'll cue on that one for a minute. I appreciate it, Joe. In addition to creating charming accommodations for downtown Lee's Summit, this hotel will function as an economic engine. Hotels, while serving their hometown in a number of ways and uniquely compared to other commercial projects, almost exclusively bring in outside tax dollars and high-volume visitors from the region. Additionally, this hotel will truly activate the Green Street market building by attracting new uses for the space, ones that complement the existing programming. Green Street Market has already hosted many great events, but we'd all like to see it be busier, livelier, creating more vibrancy, and also more revenue for the city and local businesses. Up to this point, I've painted a broad picture of this hotel's economic impact, but I'd like to get into some specifics that you see now on the screen. I'd like to start with the sales tax on room sales because that is very straightforward and easy to quantify. An estimated $7.2 million over 30 years will be generated for the business and industry tax, also known as the hotel tax. Additionally, over that time span, over $4 million for the city and $1.5 million for the CID on sales taxes on room rentals. I want to repeat, these figures only represent sales tax on room sales alone and do not consider other direct and indirect benefits from this project. These income streams alone represent $12.7 million in direct economic and benefits of the city, city services, and benefactors of the hotel tax and the downtown business interests. These tax revenues will not be touched by the incentive proposal. We commissioned a third-party economic impact study to help quantify the ripple effects of this project, and here are some of the findings. The hotel and restaurant are projected to reduce $37.7 million in new tax revenue to the city alone over 30 years. The net benefit to the city shall be confirmed upon finalizing an incentive structure, if we're able to get to that point. 100,000 new visitors just in the first three years. These visitors will spend money on transportation, food and beverage, entertainment, services, soft goods, et cetera, which, once again, are not included in the $12.7 million figure noted previously. All those are indirect benefits, which will undoubtedly be spent. 106 jobs supported annually between the hotel and restaurant bring in nearly $45 million in labor earnings over the first 10 years, 121 construction jobs during the project's construction phase, and comprehensively, the third-party impact study projects that the project will create $200 million in total economic activity, and that is merely over the first 10 years. I think it's important to note that the impact study did not consider revenues to the city through events held in Green Street, in the Green Street Marketplace building, That the hotel is responsible for attracting such as weddings, corporate events and such. So there's significant upside beyond what is being shared this evening. This slide boils down the incentive structure. The proposal presented tonight is the product of ongoing discussions with the city staff, downtown stakeholders, elected officials to find a solution that is mutually beneficial. The thrash group has listened to concerns and has made significant concessions and adjustments to this incentive request in order to reach an objective of finding a win-win for all parties involved. I'd like to note that their proposal is much more modest than the requirements of other hotel groups that also consider the site. One thing I'd like to emphasize before we get into specifics is that none of the proposed tax incentives on this proposal take a penny away from any sales tax streams that exist today, relying only on new tax streams that the hotel itself creates, while still leaving sales tax on room sales to the taxing jurisdictions and other benefactors. The first component of the request is a municipal loan in the amount of $4 million. Most importantly, this loan will be personally guaranteed by the thrash group. I want to pause on that. Because this is hugely important, the developer is giving their own personal guarantee regardless of project performance. The loan will also generate interest at a rate of 4%, which would equate to over $2.3 million of revenue to the city in addition to the $4 million in principal payments during the term of the loan. The interest rate is in keeping with the rate of return the city receives with other city investments under its current policy, but Those investments do not come with the added benefit of both direct and indirect new tax streams to bolster the true returns to the city, which allows for a balanced risk adjusted return with significant upside. Some may ask why a developer would need a loan for this project, which is a great question. The reason is that this loan will be secondary in position to the primary bank loan and thereby allowing a reduction in equity and improved cash on cash returns, thereby making the project more feasible. This creative structure is a win-win because it allows the city to receive significant upside beyond their typical investment returns while shifting through new taxes generated solely by the project substantially all of the risk back onto the developer. Next up, is the TIF Eats, which once again are limited to sales tax on food and beverage only since room sales are excluded. The majority of the sales tax revenues will come from room rentals. However, there is some food and beverage and that's what's being captured. The developer is proposing that the TIF will be put in place to recapture sales taxes up to 100% of the city and downtown CID taxes and 50% of county and zoo taxes. This was increased from a previous version of the package that we shared to allow the developer to remove the BNI, also known as the hotel tax. As a reminder, the hotel tax will not be redirected under this proposal, nor the sales tax on room sales, which is a huge and significant change based on conversation of city staff, council members, and downtown stakeholders. Next is Chapter 353, Property Tax Abatement. This structure has already been put in place to facilitate the development of Green Street. Currently, there are no taxes being generated by the property since it's owned by the city. Under this plan, the developer would start by paying 50% of the property taxes after 10 years and the full amount after 25, following the language of the existing 353 plan. Next is Sales Tax Exemption on Construction Materials, known as STECM. And finally, Land Donation. the developers proposing a grant of the land used on this property. This avoids the need to grow the municipal loan and the need to redirect any of the BNI, otherwise known as the hotel tax. One thing is for sure, building a hotel here, any hotel, is not going to be possible without some level of public-private partnership and will likely be comparable, if not significantly more, to what is being requested by this proposal if we were to go with another group. Additionally, In this case, you have a developer who is willing to sign a personal guarantee. This page sums up everything I just described in a financial sense. This information is similar to what you will see from David Bushek in the staff presentation showing the incentive ask in relation to project size. In the first table, you will see that we have four components of our incentive request, each expressed in terms of net present value and total dollar amount over a given period of time. Over on the right side of the page, you will see the ratio of incentives to project costs is about 22% in line with previous incentive packages granted by the city. It's very important to note that we have separated out the $4 million loan from the rest of the requests in that calculation of the ratio because it functions differently than a typical incentive. Unlike a property tax abatement which reduces property taxes but never to be paid back, this is a true loan that will be paid back to the city in full with interest along with additional upside to the city that will come from direct and indirect taxes generated by the project, which as mentioned before will be substantial. This slide simply provides a greater detail of the calculation of the proposed sales tax redirection that I mentioned on a previous slide. If you have any questions, we can cover those in the Q&A after the presentation. Moving to the pro forma summary page, this illustrates the developer's expected return on investment. You can see here that the developer is projecting an average daily rental rate to be $160 per room night in year two upon stabilization. That's an average across the week. This chart shows how income, expenses, and net income play together. Really, the main thing I want to show you here on this page is the developer's expected unleveraged return. This is a metric commonly used in the commercial real estate industry to measure a project's viability. 6.14% in year one and 7.03% in year two upon stabilization. And I can tell you these are very slim returns from a project of this type that carries associated risk. As you know, Lane 4 develops properties of our own and we're familiar with market standards for return thresholds. We feel confident that the thrash group's projected returns are lower than market standards for a project of this nature. There's a lot of risk to take on associated with the new development, which can take years and significant amount of money and expense before the hotel is even open and generating revenue, thereby necessitating risk-adjusted returns. As I mentioned before, we spoke with many hotel operators. Nearly all of them were requiring a 9 or 10 percent return, some even more, in order to consider a hotel on that site. Not one of those groups proposed a hotel as quality as the Novelist. For those familiar with real estate finance, the difference between 7 percent return and a 9 to 10 percent return is a huge difference and shows the thrash group's commitment to this project. It also shows a fair and balanced incentive structure that provides for upside for the taxing jurisdictions and significant risk by the developer. Finally, as we wrap up this presentation, I'd like to recap a few highlights of this proposal. We believe that the thrash group has proposed what the thrash group has proposed here tonight is a rare opportunity to complete the master plan's vision for the hotel component of Green Street. They are uniquely positioned through their experience with boutique hotels to counteract some of the market headwinds we covered at the beginning of the presentation, and they are confident in taking on risks that come with a hotel of this quality. Based on years of work on this project, we are also confident that another hotel developer with this vision at this level incentives is not a likely scenario anytime soon. In short, we believe this opportunity represents the highest quality concept we could have envisioned for the site with a much slimmer incentive package than most of today's developers would find acceptable. Thank you to the community and the council tonight for the ability to make this conceptual presentation. We welcome your questions and comments. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Mr. Bushek?

All right, I'll start with the good news, which is I have one slide. But I will discuss each of these components separately so you have a good understanding of what each of these are, and I have some comments about certain of them. So we'll start at the top. And the first component of this request is sales tax exemption on construction materials. The city owns the property today. The technique that we usually use is either through Chapter 100 or through the LCRA to achieve city ownership. So a discussion point, if you give positive feedback and we do move forward, is we will investigate exactly how to structure that piece of it. But the benefit of that to the developer, we're quantifying, That reduced their project cost. It's sales tax exemption on the construction materials to build the facility. And the estimated benefit to the developer is $717,000, which is 2.6% of the total project cost down here. And this is the metric that we typically use that I've analyzed before for you. Tax increment financing. This is a sales tax only TIF that they're proposing. Tax increment financing allows the city to capture two types of revenue. The property tax increment, the increased property taxes, resulting from the added value to the property and 50% of the sales taxes. I'll get to this in a moment, but one of their requests is property tax abatement, so there is no property tax increment to capture. As a result, the TIF request is a sales tax only TIF. The base TIF for sales taxes is 50% capture, which means 50% of all the sales taxes that are imposed by entities besides the state, local sales taxes, which means the county, the city, the zoo district, and the downtown CID, the TIF would operate to capture 50% of those sales tax revenues. TIF does not capture sales tax revenues on hotel rooms. That's a specific exclusion. So that's one of the things that the developer pointed out to you. However, they are requesting that from the city and the CID's contribution for this, the other 50% that's not captured as a matter of state law would be contributed by the city from the food and beverage. The end result of this TIF from the city's perspective is all of the city's sales tax revenues from the rooms would flow as normal, not captured by the TIF. But this TIF would capture 100%, this is their request, 100% of the food and beverage sales tax revenue that results. And that is also the request of the CID. So the downtown CID would also need to consent to that additional 50% capture if you give positive feedback. And that's something that would have to be negotiated. Next, through the 353, they're requesting a land contribution, essentially free land. Value of the land, from the developer's perspective, $576,000, which was the city's acquisition cost. That's 2.1% of the total project cost. And sorry, I didn't quantify the TIF, 1.8 million, which is 6.6%. So that's a substantial amount of the incentive request. And then finally, As far as the incentive request goes, property tax abatement, 100% for 10 years and then 50% for the next 15 years. Under 353, the value of the land is actually taxable in that state. So what the county would do if you ultimately approve a 353 plan for this tax abatement, the county would value the land as it sits today. Taxes would be paid just on the value of the land. and the remaining increased land value and the value added to the property from the improvements, that would all be abated. And so the benefit to the developer is about $2.9 million. That's 10% of total project costs. So to do the apples to apples type of comparison that we typically do when we analyze these incentive requests, Their incentive request for all of these items here is 22% of total project costs, which is at slightly the higher end of the range that we talk about, which is typically between 5% and 25% for incentivized projects. Then we get to the next component of the request. The developer's requesting a loan from the city in the amount of $4 million. A few things that I can tell you about the loan. It would be one typo on my part. They have requested 25 years repayment, not 20. So it would be amortized and repaid over a period of 25 years. It would be subordinate to their primary loan, meaning a mortgage deed of trust on the property would take priority and the city's loan would be second to that primary loan. They are proposing to repay the loan at what they're characterizing as a premium interest to the city. So this 4.25% is slightly more than what the city earns on its investments. The city's Investments, the city's reserves are invested pursuant to state law and city requirements. And the amount that's earned by the city at the moment is around 3.5 to 4%. So their proposal is a premium interest for this loan, which would result in $2.3 million in interest paid to the city over a 25 year period. One of the debates that we had was how to characterize this loan. I initially was thinking when I was preparing this table that this loan would be included as part of the incentive request, but they pointed out what I just said to you, which is the plan is to repay the loan and with a premium interest rate, which means the city would be fully compensated. So their point was it's not really part of the incentive request, but it is something they're requesting, which is why it's listed separately here and I'm talking about it separately. The purpose for the loan, as the developers indicated, is to enhance their equity contribution when they receive their private financing. So when they go receive a private loan, this can be counted as additional equity. And it reduces the developer's risk because it would presumably be at a lower interest rate compared to their private financing. So those are the reasons that the developer's making this request. And you can certainly talk with them about those reasons when we get to the question and discussion. Another question you might have, is there any precedent for the city doing this? We can think of one example, and that is the Longview tax increment financing plan. The city made a $3.65 million loan to the developer in Longview several years ago to stabilize the historic buildings. And if you remember, there used to be a huge hole in one of the barns that was repaired. The farmhouses were stabilized. And that was 3.65 million that the city did loan to the developer to undertake that work. That loan has been fully repaid. And at the time the loan was made, we knew of many years of revenue that the TIF had been generating. For the active businesses and the mansion, all of the projects that had previously been activated before the city provided that loan, we had at least a decade, over a decade of revenue history. And so at the time the city made the loan, we had a fairly high degree of certainty that unless a tornado came through and took out the Longview area, it would continue to produce the revenue as it had been for many years, and the loan was successfully paid off. So there's some precedent for a city loan, but that's really the only example that I can think of. Another point that I will mention is I explained to you that the incentive policy that city staff follows is a filtering mechanism when that comes forward. And one of the developers' requests that we discussed extensively is, was initially would the city consider diverting and contributing the hotel gross receipts tax? That's the business and industry tax. And just for clarity, it's not a sales tax. The way it works is the hotels in the city basically send 5% of all their revenues to the city every month. It's a gross receipts tax. So 5% of whatever they bring in, they send to the city. It's not a sales tax. The developer initially asked, is that something that the city would consider? Staff team had previously considered that request from other projects and the answer was no in those cases. And so the answer was we'd prefer not to do that in this case. So that came out of the request. And that's something that the developer just pointed out in their presentation that the business and industry tax and the city's sales tax revenue on the rooms would continue to flow as normal in addition to all the other spinoff economic benefits that the developer has provided in their revenue study. So business and industry tax is not touched and would flow as normal for whatever purposes you appropriate that money for. I think that concludes all of my initial comments. I think that's a decent explanation of what each of these components are. And I'll stop there and be happy to answer questions or listen to your discussion with the developer.

Great. Thank you. All right. Anybody want to chime in? Mayor for Tim Shields.

Thank you. Let's see. So I think it said in there as far as like the CID abating their portion of the EATS, that would be a discussion with the CID board. Have they been approached about this? Are they supportive?

I do not know. I'd let the developer speak to that.

We have approached them to discuss it with the removal of the B&I, otherwise known as the hotel tax. That was a change that went from 50% to 100%. We also mistakenly assumed that there was no sales tax on the room nights when there was. We thought that was in lieu of what the hotel tax, so that was our mistake. It kind of ended up being an added benefit, so I know I'm planning to attend the CID meeting tomorrow morning with Ryan. I don't know how much detail we'll get into it, but they're obviously an important component to this project, and we want to make sure we have their full support. So that will be discussed in extensive detail with that group. Obviously, there's lots of business owners. We're hopeful that. and they see the value of the hotel and, and we're, we're hoping for their support. So that's something we'll be very transparent and open about as we progress forward. If that's what's determined after tonight.

Okay. Yeah. I would definitely like to see those conversations happen. I know they're an important partner in, Everything that downtown does, so I appreciate that. Absolutely.

Yeah, we look forward to that opportunity.

Also, I want to say thank you for taking the B&I abatement out of the incentive request. As staff mentioned, that's something that we haven't done before, and we're very nervous about setting that kind of precedent. So I appreciate the kind of creative looking at ways to make the numbers work without that. So thank you for following that. As far as the land contribution, if we did that, is there a possibility of having some kind of a reverter clause or something like that so that if the project wasn't built in a certain amount of time that the property would revert back to the city or would it not be conveyed until after it was built or how would that work?

As far as how that's put together, that's up for discussion. To me, that seems reasonable. That's not my ultimate decision here. You're getting a thumbs up, but I think you'll see just from working with Joe, I know we're a little bit of a third-party perspective here, but he seems very agreeable, and we'll consider all this. It's always nice to look at everything as a whole package before you make final decisions or negotiate things one by one, but it sounds like that's something he's open-minded considering.

That's definitely something I would want to see. I think I've seen that when other cities have made land donation as part of a Transaction that that's that's in there to protect the the city. So I would like that and then Would there be any kind of like a right of first refusal if the property was sold within a certain amount of time just thinking in terms of like the term of the loan the term of the incentives would the city have any ability to I Think it's I'm sure there's precedent elsewhere for a discussion like that for sure. I

So once again, I think that's a great thing to kind of have a list, you know Obviously the city's a not only a benefactor of this project, but a partner to a certain degree Being that this is part of the master plan for the Green Street project We're trying to bring the city's vision and the stakeholders that created the master plan. So We see the city as a hotel or as a partner to the hotel Whether it's direct or indirect and so we want to work a mutually beneficial arrangement Okay

You know, looking at the city loan, I know that's something that we don't do very often. I do appreciate the personal guarantee being added to that. I guess it seems like what we're sort of weighing, and maybe, Mr. Bushek, this is a question for you. It seems like we get a little bit higher interest rate, so there's a little bit more income to the city, but obviously a higher risk than just putting money in a treasury for five years, ten years. but then as kind of the developer had in their presentation, more potential upside for the city, whereas if we just put it in treasuries, yeah, we get a guaranteed rate of return, but we don't see that money invested in our community. Is that kind of the balancing act that we're weighing with that? Is there anything missing there?

Yes, and I think you would also naturally, in this situation, what you're doing is sort of putting on the scale the costs, which are these items, and then the benefits, obviously, and the spinoff benefits and the sales tax benefits that would flow through, And then when you get to the city loan, the risk there is obviously interest is compensation to the lending party for their risk of not being repaid. So there's always the risk, however slight, given the personal guarantee that the loan wouldn't be repaid. That's the ultimate risk to the city. And what are the parameters under which that would happen? What's the probability? I don't know. We would have to go through some due diligence. if you provide positive feedback to investigate the wherewithal of that personal guarantee to get comfortable with it. But back to your question, I think you're on the right track, which is you're weighing all of these different factors, both the financial and the non-financial, and the benefits that this would provide if you want to pursue filling this space with a hotel or some other sort of private development. You have to put all of those items on the scale and kind of weigh it out in your decision calculus.

And I was just doing quick calculations with like an amortization calculator. It seems like the difference between our 3.5% or so that we get our investments right now and that 4.25 is roughly $500,000 over the course of the 25 years. Okay. You don't have to. I just thought it was interesting that it actually lines up almost exactly with the value of the land contribution. So just a coincidence, but it actually almost makes me more comfortable with that and that It brings a little bit more revenue into the city, maybe not directly in exchange for that property, but it helps make us whole there as well. I think this is a really interesting and creative package. I love the hotel, just to be really clear, and I've given that feedback when I've met with the developer prior to this. I think it's a great concept. I think it'd be a huge benefit asset to our downtown. I wanted to see the numbers, and I appreciate what's been brought to us, and I think that this is IS REASONABLE, THE TOTAL INCENTIVE REQUEST AND THE ESTIMATED RATE OF RETURN SEEMS VERY REASONABLE. I UNDERSTAND BREAKING THE LOAN OUT IS NOT NECESSARILY INCENTIVE, ALTHOUGH IT KIND OF BENEFITS BOTH, THAT IT'S A LOWER INTEREST RATE THAN DEVELOPER WOULD BE PAYING ON THE PRIVATE MARKET, BUT IT'S HIGHER INTEREST RATE THAN WE WOULD GET INVESTING IN TREASURIES, SO IT KIND OF SEEMS LIKE A WIN-WIN, ASSUMING WE GET REPAID, RIGHT? BUT I WOULD SUPPORT MOVING FORWARD WITH THIS AND CONTINUING sharpen those details, looking at things like making sure that we have a revert or clause for any property that's transferred and things like that and doing more diligence on those guarantees. But overall as a concept, I love the project and I would be comfortable with the incentive package. Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Funk.

Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Shields. Mayor Portum-Shills caught most of my questions. Just one for Mr. Buckley or Mr. Thrash. Is the intentions to use, it was mentioned earlier in the night, the city garage for parking?

Sorry. Realistically, I mean, we're going to valet. So I know I'm sure we would intend some of that parking would go into the city garage. I know we can't have restricted spaces, but one of the great things about a hotel is one of the really positive things is we're pretty much always counterflow on parking. So, you know, our people come in at night and they leave early in the morning. So when people are coming into city hall or whatever, we're really not using up a lot of spaces. But yes, I think, you know, it's like a long running joke. We spend 90% of our time on parking and restaurants, but yeah, I think some of them would be expected to park inside the garage.

Okay. No, I appreciate the answer. Not to repeat anything, Mayor Pro Tem Schill says, I think I'm good, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks. Council Member Frazier.

I like the 106 jobs post-construction. And I appreciate the abatement or lack thereof of the B&I tax. So that piece I'm definitely a fan of. I want to say... I have been to the Origin as part of another project I was working on with World Cup. I've seen it, and you are absolutely correct when you walk in, at least in that particular location, and you say, wow, I didn't see that coming. Totally unexpected. I actually got lost when I was supposed to have an appointment down there, because it's right next to CPKC and what it is, the development that they're doing down there. the vibe was great, the energy was great, as you mentioned. The numbers aren't in yet, but I would venture to say, because I know England was, not England, excuse me, Argentina was staying there, so the numbers aren't in yet, but I know they're very significant to that area down there. I also had the opportunity to look at Meadowbrook, where England was, and as you know, that sits right in the middle of Prairie Village, and... the vibe there was also absolutely wonderful. Those numbers aren't in yet either, but I'd venture to say, and that's actually in, in, in very near, um, residentials, multifamily and single family homes. So, um, those numbers are significant as well. The property is very unique. It's, I'm going to use the word eclectic. It's people were just walking in, just, just to walk in, you know, for the restaurant and so forth. So I, I would definitely be in supportive of this opportunity and Lee Summit because I think, you know, it could only compliment what's happening down near Green Street. I think there were some comment, there was commentary earlier today about, you know, Red Rock and the, excuse me, Red, the, thank you. Yeah, Red Rock. I had Red Rock on my, that, and so I don't know if you can speak to your relationship or, or, with that particular property there or not.

Are you talking about the, sorry, the one we own in Golden? Is that something else?

I've completely lost it. I think you're speaking about red racks across the street, correct? Yes. A separate entity unrelated to Joe obviously owns that. It's a weird coincidence.

You didn't know about that one, did you?

However, a Lane 4 related entity does own that property. We enjoy a long-term lease with that current tenant. We have no intention of breaking that lease. If the tenant were to leave, we would also welcome the opportunity to redevelop it. That's why we initially purchased it. We can't go kick any tenants out. That's not in our best interest. But it is a great piece of ground, and we're hopeful that with everything going on in downtown Lee's Summit that that presents an opportunity in the future. Okay. But, yeah.

Great, great. And just one other quick question. I'm sorry for Mr. Musick. Just one other question about the land contribution. Have we done anything like that before in Lee Summit? I'm just not aware. Okay, not lately.

Nothing coming to mind.

Okay.

That's fine. If we think of it, we'll tell you.

That would be great. I just wondered if there was any kind of precedence for that. But I would be definitely in support of this. I know that there are still some unanswered questions and some things probably you'll have to discuss with, you know, development services and whatnot. But overall, I'm definitely in support of this. I think it's a great idea. I've seen it work.

Great. Thank you. So we have Council Member Atkins. Guess we'll just hear her voice. We can't see her.

Sorry, thanks for putting up with me coming in and out. Would you mind Mr Bushick one more time going over the or maybe it was Mr Buckley. There was a page just on economic benefit. Could you review that one more time? Economic impact. It was just one slide. It was a white slide that talked about the jobs and the different kinds of tax revenue. It was fuzzy on my screen at the time, but could you walk through it one more time?

Yep, I can do that. And can the back room switch back to the podium so I can bring that up? There we go. And I think probably these two slides is what you're talking about, right?

Yep.

Okay, and is it a question for me or the applicant?

I just wondered if you could go over it verbally one more time, if you could, because this is in addition to, and I think the applicant had said it. I can clarify. Because this is, to be clear for us and for anyone who's watching the incentives, these benefits are in addition to the incentives. Yes. They're granting the incentives that have come before, but this is the economic impact that happens after the incentives, which only come after the project is built anyway.

That's correct. I can walk through each of these just to clarify. I'll go ahead and explain what I think each of these means, and then the developer can correct me or add anything they like. But walking through these line by line, the first line, business and industry tax, that's the hotel gross receipts tax that I discussed. That flows as normal, and their estimate is $7.2 million over 30 years to the business and industry tax. That's the 5% gross receipts tax. Then the next line, sales tax on room rentals, All the sales tax charged by the city and the other taxing districts on room rentals will flow as normal because that's not captured as TIF. So in this case, separate room sales tax from the rooms versus sales tax from everything else, food, beverage, and anything, any other products that they might sell like at a gift store or something like that. The room rentals will not be captured by TIF and so they are stating the benefit there on that bullet point. Then the next, Sales tax and room rentals for the CID will also remain untouched over 30 years, so that is a distinct benefit to the CID. Then the next line, economic activity, I think that is a summary of the benefit of the hotel operations and the visitors and what they spend in the community over a period of 10 years, so the spinoff benefits. Then the next, $44.8 million in labor earnings over 10 years, that is from the construction of the project and the jobs that are supported annually by the hotel and the restaurant. New room nights, that's self-explanatory.

Can I actually make one, Claire? And there was actually a typo on that one. It's 16,000 new occupied room nights each year for the first three years. So multiply that by three. Okay. Thank you.

Then number of new visitors is their estimate from the revenue study. Total economic activity. resulting from 121 jobs during construction. Um, that's the economic benefit of those jobs. Um, and then they've stated these other benefits anchors, the green street mixed use project, and the developer will pay the city 3.2 million in interest on the loan. In addition to repayment of the, what did I just say? 2.3 million in interest in addition to the principal amount of the loan repaid to the city. So that's, that's kind of a summary of, of this table that developer presented.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Um, I want to say that earlier when I hadn't received yet a lot of details about the breakdown of how the incentives would work, I was skeptical about why we would choose to put a hotel there if it was hard to find other hotels to come because it was a difficult project, why we would choose to do so. But the more and more that I hear from community leaders, especially downtown Main Street and businesses that have been down there, the more that I hear from them about how passionate they are about bringing this. I had not realized before that this is something that they've all been envisioning for decades because they know what downtowns are supposed to be like when you have old downtowns like we do. And that several of them have said that they believe it would be transformative. They believe it would drive all kinds of extra activity. It could be, staycations or date nights or people coming in for business there at City Hall or there with other clients coming in and out, that it would just drive so much activity and energize it. Almost like Mr. Thrash has done this before, but he knows that it drives energy and creates an environment like that. So I was really pleased to know that so many of the city people wanted this to happen. So many of the business owners down there and that's who I look to for guidance on these types of transformative things. So I appreciate all the details, and I appreciate the emphasis on how the city can benefit directly from it. So I would be in support of moving forward with this project. So thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Council Member Carlisle.

Thank you, Mayor. I am... Think I have one question left that did not get hit. And that is to the. The developer, somebody in the developer. I'm not sure who said it. Or if I heard it correctly, but did somebody say? They're going to need control. Partial control over Green St. Either one.

Ryan Elam, Assistant City Manager. No, they're not going to need control.

Okay.

Key word is not in there. We've had brief conversations, and I was part of talking with a few of the finalists as far as the hotel groups, and I will say the conversations with the thrash group have been more about how to be supportive and helpful over control, which was not the same with some of the other groups overall. Okay.

Great, thank you. So I'll just say you know the pictures you showed are definitely beautiful. There is the wow factor, although I do know that's not really what it's going to look like, but I can see your vision right so I can understand that. Parking concerns me, but you've said you're going to Valley and so you know, I know we can't, you know, However many feet down into the ground to put parking down there so I get it, but that's a concern for me. I appreciate this economic benefit slide. I mean, I get it. I understand all of that. It is a very big ask for me. I'm probably a little bit more conservative than most of us up here so. That is concerning for me to ask. And really, so my biggest concern would be David. You're going to protect us, right so? I know that I know that you will do that and I know that you will work through that. And you will protect us in the best way you can. And then, you know, it's beautiful. It's a wow factor. I just don't know if I can get over the ask, right? So I do also know that on the sales tax slide you had of where you're taking what from and where. you have the public safety sales tax in there to be collected and I would be not for that. I mean, I understand that's one more part of revenue, but Adding that many more people to downtown, we're going to need more feet on the ground down here to protect everything. So I can't see taking that. But I'm also interested in what downtown and the CID have to say. And I know that this is a group effort and a collaboration. So that's where I am.

Thank you for your comments. And I just want to hit on one item as far as the economic benefit. That's something we look forward to being very transparent on. One thing that I feel very confident about is just how hotels, especially one like this that's experiential, it's different than any hotel in Lee's Summit, it's going to bring in those new tax dollars. And when you think about, you're not just adding something else that the community already has. You're just shifting the money around. You're bringing in that new revenue. And so I find it, maybe I'm just a real estate nerd, but I find it very fascinating how these hotels are such economic generators. And so we'll have a fun time digging into the numbers and seeing what it provides. I mean, between Ubers and food and beverage, and services, and let's say somebody comes here for a wedding, and maybe they're at their wedding party, get wedding dresses, whatever it may be, there's a lot of ancillary revenue, and so we look forward to shoring up these numbers and continuing to look at all the income streams. We also, with a third party economic impact study, that individual said he's willing to share his thoughts and whatnot on the hotel project. So want to be fully transparent and make sure you guys have all the information you need.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And I have stayed in boutique hotels before and all over the country. So I do know that they really do provide what you're saying. And another great restaurant is a great thing, yes. It's just a big ask for me. And so I just want to be honest with everybody.

Sorry, I do just want to say one thing.

I mean, the way it's framed is really a true public-private partnership. And on your first statement, yeah, we really see ourselves just as a great support function to the existing space. I mean, just an example, we're going to do a lot of wedding parties. And so all I ever asked was like, hey, can we have like a great, if this ever happens, a great open line of communication to who runs that? Because we could be like your best customer ever. But, yes, just to be clear, in no way were we saying we should control that.

Right.

I just want to be very clear. Yeah, that would probably be a bridge too far for me if I was sitting on the other end of that. No, I just wanted to be clear on that.

All right. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

You good? All right. Council Member Cravens.

Thanks, Mayor. Okay, so I guess my question is around kind of how we shopped this out. So I understand that, you know, the location is unique by itself because it's a smaller, smaller space. As a developer, how many hotels did you kind of look into before we came to this particular?

A lot. I mean, at least 40 by my count. And I do want to mention that Lane 4 owns, the company I'm with owns two hotels. We were just not capable of or confident enough to do what the thrash group does. It was initially envisioned that we would come in and do the hotel component here, but it does require really a specific set of experience and knowledge to operate something like this that's so operations heavy. You're talking about running a restaurant and and doing something unique. I don't want to undersell our own hotel projects, but when you have a branded flag, they come, whether it's Marriott or Hilton or IHG, they say, OK, here's three color palettes to choose from. Pick one. Here's your furniture you're getting. And so they make it easy, which is great, but it's not unique. So it was really important for us to go out and find that group who has done this in a unique way, in terms of having every project be unique. And Thrash just really bubbled to the surface. I mean, it's pretty apparent when we first talked with him. We're also lucky that he has a hotel here in Kansas City that really helped to get him in town to see and experience the downtown. So it was an extensive search. But you talk about the developer pool or operator pool of hotels, if there's You know, out of 100%, there's probably only, I don't know, 5%, maybe not even, that even have the wherewithal to do something this special and unique. So I guess that's where I have a lot of confidence personally in the thrash group and why we brought them forth tonight. We did boil it down to three groups that we thought were all good, good quality groups. And, you know, it's pretty obvious that that thrash group was the best of the three. We had them all come in, make presentations, give us details on how they would handle incentives, how they would handle coordination with Green Street, the marketplace. And so that's where we kind of settled on the thrash group. So it was an extensive search. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does. So what was the biggest separator? So you said it was three...

Joe was the only group, or the thrash group was the only group, who was willing to do something truly unique. The other two groups were, what's the right term for it? Maybe more cookie cutter or common hotels, kind of what I described earlier, where you kind of, you know, pick your color package and things like that, which is fine. It would still be a good hotel experience. It would still bring value to the downtown. It would still bring vibrancy by creating all those new visitor bodies on the street and vibrancy. But I think you heard tonight, Joe has a little bit of a unique perspective where their business model is almost kind of to go over the top and really cement yourself as a key marquee place and be a sense of place. So I think there's a lot of untouched or untapped potential when you talk about the Amtrak line and how people take the Amtrak down to Hermann and just weekend night stays. So, you know, we felt like he just best. Also, we were sitting in a lot of meetings, you know, community stakeholder meetings as far as the different components of the project when we initially started. the Green Street Market layout and master plan, and what a lot of people really wanted was that true boutique hotel, and really, Thrash Group was the only one to propose that.

And then last question. So amongst the three, was the incentive ask as creative as this one? So was it kind of similar and kind of what?

No, in fairness to the other group, we've had a lot more, the other groups, we've had a lot more time to talk about this one. You know, there's, if you're talking about other retail or commercial projects, there's more incentive streams to pull from. We couldn't pull from the sales tax revenue, obviously. That's a big benefit to the city because we can't. But you really, when you think about, another, I think, important point is when you talk about the other hotel groups, they had very, I guess they're restaurant, services was an afterthought. It was maybe some pizzas that went in a convection oven and maybe there was $300,000 to $600,000 in sales. The fact that Joe and the Thresh Group are putting a restaurant in there and they have the capability of having a high volume restaurant, it actually gives us something to pull from to create this incentive stream. So if we were sitting here tonight with a Spring Hill Sweets or a True or some of the other hotels that were thrown out there THAT DIDN'T HAVE THAT FOOD AND BEVERAGE, I DON'T KNOW IF WE WOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO MAKE THE NUMBERS WORK WITHOUT A LARGE LOAN. THAT WAS WHAT WAS DISCUSSED IN SOME OF THE OTHER GROUPS. ONE GROUP, I CAN SAY, JUST WANTED A $7 MILLION LOAN, NO STRINGS ATTACHED, NO GUARANTEE, AND THAT WAS THEIR INCENTIVE ASK. I MEAN, IS THAT A FAIR CHARACTERIZATION? YEAH. You know, once again, in all fairness, we had a little bit more time to whittle it down and try to figure out, okay, what is a true win-win that both sides actually benefit from? And so that's how we came to the model we have today. You good?

Oh, go ahead.

I'll reserve this question.

Okay, thank you. Mayor Bertram Shields.

Yeah, I just had a couple of quick questions. One following up on the parking, which I understand if this moves forward, we'll go through full site review and all that. But I feel like when we had some kind of initial discussions, you were talking about that you might lease some off-site parking or have some kind of off-site agreement to have somewhere to valet to other than just the city parking garage. Is that right? That's right.

We have some options in mind for off-site parking for the valet, so that is something we look to get more detail over as we get a little further along. Obviously, we're so early in the process right now. That's something we've thought about, absolutely, but something we would just need to drill down on the specifics.

The idea isn't just to fill up the city parking garage to look at some other options, too? That's correct. I understand that's kind of a later full design kind of question, so.

We typically have to get creative with parking. I said it earlier, it's like a running joke. It's like restaurants and parking. But it's like the last hotel we did that was similar to this setup. I mean, we leased 10 spaces over here. We leased 15, you know, 100 yards that way. These were for employees, like employee parking. But we had to get creative. I mean, like genuinely, we probably would try and see if we could lease five or 10 spaces at Red Racks or, you know, depending on the time of day. I wouldn't be surprised if we had... you know, patches all over. And we just trained, particularly for employee parking, we kind of trained it in where it made sense. But we always have to get creative though.

Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. And then the other was just a clarifying question. So I saw in different spots, either 4% or 4.25% and 20 or 25 years for the loan term. So what is the current ask, or is that still being refined?

That's still being refined. So I won't negotiate for Joe, but this has all been progressing quickly.

I just saw different numbers in your slides and the city slides, so I just wasn't sure.

So we'll rectify and make sure that's all on the same page next time we come before you should we have next time.

As you drill down, those are kind of details obviously we want to verify. So that's all I have. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Okay. Before I give my comments, you all can sit down for a second. I know it's been a long night, and I don't want to prolong this conversation, but I see some of our partners here in the room, and I know we have Mr. Perry with the EDC. We have... Obviously, downtown Main Street, the director is here, and we have Explore LS representatives as well. I'm not going to ask all of you to come up and speak, but if we could get the downtown Main Street's director to come up, Mr. Donnie, to come up and just perhaps give us your perspective on where you might be. I know there was questions asked of how you feel about kind of what's going on, and we'd love to have your input.

Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. I'll be honest, I'm talking from myself. We've not met as a board yet since the request came out on Friday, but a boutique hotel down here has been something we've dreamed about for a long time, I think. I mean, that was part of the original plan for Green Street is that That was a missing component as well as the farmers market facility. I've talked to a lot of my counterparts in other communities over the last few days, two communities in particular that are dear to my heart, my hometown of Cape Girardeau. And then also downtown Springfield that I spent some time there as well. And both of them brought in similar products, taking a big risk. Both of those products, the Hotel Vandervoort in Springfield, hugely successful. It led to two additional hotels in the downtowns. Cape Girardeau is similar. Courtyard by Marriott project, that brought in an additional hotel in the riverfront area. So I mean, We see the success, and both of those communities will tell you they were huge benefits to their downtown community in bringing new visitors and new money. I know as we talk about incentives, I also get heartburn about looking at it. It's like, okay, we're giving all this, but then the new money it's bringing in, from their calculations of 16,000 room nights, Based on that report, about $160 spent locally on food, beverage, and entertainment, that's, I think, $2.5 million a year just down here. When you go to a place like a boutique hotel like this, you're not just staying in your room. You're going out, you're getting drinks, you're shopping. That's a great opportunity. to support all of our small local businesses here. And so it's just that excitement during COVID. I kind of learned to start since traveling was hard. Like I started taking many staycations. I've stayed at most of the boutique properties in Kansas. They have done the crossroads, the Savoy, the Phillips. I mean, those are all unique experiences. And to have something like this here, I think even our residents would enjoy being able to, you know, be a tourist in their own backyard. And so from an economic standpoint, the incentive request, yes, is much larger than we would typically see. But I think it's also one of those things where it has a much greater impact than anything else we could deal with that piece of land. So thank you.

Appreciate that a whole lot. That's exactly kind of the feedback. That's very helpful. Thanks. Okay. Again, I know it's been a long night. I won't repeat some of the same questions my colleagues already asked, which were all very good questions. I like, I appreciate Mayor Pretem bringing up regarding the land contribution and Mr. Thrash, you being willing to have a reverter clause in there. I think that's something that being that this is a unique ask and it is It could be daunting for some people here in this community. We've not done many of these kind of incentive structures, but that helps. And also the things that I know from early conversations, you're now willing to personally guarantee the loan. I think those are things that are very helpful for us as we make our decision permanently down the road. I think some of the other questions that were asked, since that interest rate's not clearly defined, maybe negotiate a little higher rate for the city for that loan. Maybe that's something that could be worked out. Just to, again, ease our concerns a little bit as far as what the city's exposure might be. Just kind of throwing that out there. But I think overall, I think what Mr. Rogers said, he just nailed it. Exactly kind of where I was going with my thought process and mr. Buckley. Thank you for seeing it up like you did I think you brought up a perspective you and your partners have been with us since day one when we began to dream and When that was just a concept everything the neon lights you see outside was just a concept and we had countless meetings that Involved a lot of our stakeholders and partners and a lot of our residents and citizens that It was a dream, right? And that's what our art piece has outside. Everything begins with a dream. I always get it wrong. Everything changes with a dream. But you get the gist. But I think this type of concept, Mr. Thrash, thank you for coming in town to personally be here to present and for us to get to know you. I think you've been very genuine and very transparent, and we appreciate that. Thank you for being patient with us. I know you've been wanting to come talk to us for some time now. But this fits well with the master plan that was envisioned. And I think this completely complements, I know there's the risk, and that's always scary, but when we had the dream and the vision of what we were going to do with that block across the street, this was a key component. And a boutique, the boutique, whatever that word means, the boutique thing was part of this whole process. And I think your concept would completely complement and enhance what's happening in that building already. And that's a good thing and creates more economic activity. I didn't ask Mr. Perry to speak or Explore LS to speak, but I know what he's thinking. I know Export LS. I mean, we created all those kind of avenues for a reason. And here we have new activity at our airport, for example. I know that's not in this geographic area here, but I was talking to Mr. Buckley recently. And with our new marketing efforts and new branding, I think that's something we're getting so much activity there at the airport with corporate business and visitors. That all needs to be tied in together and could potentially be that much more exponential for us. And so for those reasons, I think we're heading down the right path. I think perhaps you've gotten some feedback from many of us up here. I think you're getting for the most part. I know there's concerns. For the most part, you're getting a consensus that we do want to continue to move forward while you and our team kind of massage some of the data and the numbers a little bit, come back with the polished ask. But I think, again, this is what was dreamt, you know, when we thought about what to do with that property across the street, and this is the key piece from my perspective as well. So... I think you're getting a lot of really good vibes and good feedback from our group. And Mr. Buckley, I hope that's enough for you to kind of continue to move forward with our team and our staff. And let's move forward, Mr. Bushek and Mr. Dunning and your team, Brian. So that's it. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. All right. All right. We have one more. Yeah, I think so. We have one more presentation. This one is for mid-states personal property sales tax exemption for the non-manufacturing equipment requests. Mr. Bushek, is that you again?

I will provide the introduction, but I think Mr. Peterson, I saw him on the Zoom call. Is he still with us?

I'm here when you say to go, David.

Okay, and I'll go ahead, live time, just ask this. Am I clicking through your slides while you talk?

I was going to share them right now and just talk when you say to talk.

Okay. So Mr. Peterson is going to present this item for you. I would say it's an unusual request connected to a project that you have previously approved, you've approved incentives for, and there is a very specific request that the company is making tonight, and I'll let him explain, then I'll provide a few comments when he's finished.

If we could pause one moment, I'm just waiting for sharing rights to be turned on. Otherwise, we'll switch over to a backup plan, David, for you to flip through.

I'm just... Yeah, so I think somebody...

There we go. It just did. It just turned on. Give me one second. Okay. There we go. Okay, we can see the screen.

Yep, we can see you.

Good, thank you, Mayor Bertin. Mayor, Council, this is Kurt Peterson here on behalf of MidStates Distributing LLC. Also, MidStates has one of their local executives in the audience, I hope still, given it's a long meeting, Rick Mez. MidStates Project is a capital investment and job creation project in Southley Summit. Earlier this year, as David said, the project received unanimously all of its approvals from land use, the public-private partnership. And tonight, I really just have one discrete procedural item. David said it right, kind of unusual, as you'll see, related to the project. But before I explain it, I am going to do, with your permission, Mayor, a lightning round because this was approved before the new council came on. So this will be a mini version, much minier version than what the rest of the council that was here heard several times. But I think it's only fair if they can have the quick background. So Unless you cut me off, I will do just that. Go right ahead. Thank you. In 2019, a 64-year-old company bought the former Toys R Us distribution center on 291 South.

Mr. Peterson, just briefly, are you still on the first slide? Because we only see the overall presentation with the first slide. Are you trying to click through? I just don't know if we're seeing you.

I was trying to click through, which means I think I have to do a different sharing. I'm so sorry. Hold on. Let me try it again. I'll do screen share, I think is what it wants me to do instead. We're going to do – see, when I'm in Chambers, IT experts help me. Now I'm on my own. So we want share. Then we want entire screen. I'm going to try that again. And when I forward this, can you see – let's see, almost.

I see the first slide right now. The next slide now. And then if you click – yep, now we're seeing the full thing.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Temp. So back to this company that rebirthed the old Toys R Us building in 2019. That company, which is MidStates today and is based in Fort Worth, Texas, they distribute farm, ranch, and home products to more than 700 retail stores across 32 states. This map gives you a sense of what they're distributing to from Lee's Summit. For the last year, the big question was whether MidStates should yield some pressures they were getting to move their distribution facility, create a brand new one and move it west where they're having tons of growth with stores, or double down and make really what I'd call a generational investment here in Lee's Summit. And thanks to Joe Perry and the EDC team and staff and all the work that went into it, we can now say MidStates has chosen Lee's Summit for this huge investment and job creation and all that. So we're thrilled about that. The current facility you can see on the screen is, like I said, east side of 291 South, just south of Shear, which turns into Thompson Drive on the east side of the highway. It's approximately 650,000 square foot of distribution, 104 dock doors, approximately 165 employees, a formidable facility. The expansion, you can see the building on the screen. That's the existing one today. The expansion is in the yellow area. It'd be almost a 500,000 square foot addition. approximately conservatively 90 new jobs that would be created there. And now how did we get all this to happen through a public private partnership that council approved unanimously? It was a chapter 100. It had a real property and then a personal property tax component. The real property side, as you can see on the screen, was a property tax abatement for 10 years and a sales tax exemption on construction materials. On the personal property side, we had just the black text there, number one, which is a five-year partial property tax abatement on the significant amount of personal property equipment that will be at the new facility. I added the red because this is the procedural little nuance that I wanted to share with you. As I just said, $25 million of new equipment will be purchased over 2026, 27, and 28 to outfit this new facility. And the request that we've been working on With DED, because it's a DED-approved item since last fall, is a sales tax exemption on that $25 million of equipment. And again, it's different than the other incentives that the city has already approved because it's DED by statute that approves it. This summer, we accepted a formal offer from DED for that incentive. Joe Perry, again, I need to call him out, was instrumental in assisting alongside me working with DED and MidStates appreciated it. MidStates accepted formally that proposal from DED. And then the formal paperwork came and the formal paperwork takes a signature from the city saying they acknowledge the application to the state for this incentive. And when we got to that point, Mr. Elam, said that he'd be most comfortable, and Mr. Bushek, if this would come back in front of council to give staff authority to be able to sign this application back to DED for this particular incentive. The overall incentive is formidable. It's, again, since last fall, has been part of the company's overall financial package it's been seeking. You can see it would provide an estimated $1.7 million of Missouri sales and use tax savings there at the top. And then the estimated amount that would come from city use tax is the $687,000 there in the middle part of the screen. I will dispense with going into detail in the next few slides unless any of the new council members want me to. But these are the value proposition side with all of the benefits and jobs and substantial property tax, sales tax, excise tax, park impact fees that would come out of this project moving forward. And I would conclude with saying that this is an incredible success story of not only attracting mid-states here a number of years ago, but now retaining it, causing it to grow in terms of jobs and make this generational investment in the city. The specific ask tonight of council is this. We'd ask that you please authorize staff to execute the DED documentation that allows mid-states to implement the incentive program. of sales tax exemption on this equipment, $25 million of equipment, so that we can move forward with that and then close on the land and start immediately on this project. I know it's late. Thank you for listening to all that. And like usual, I'll be here for any questions anyone might have.

I will be brief with my comments. I do have a few slides, but they are just summary for you. So basically what I will provide, in addition to what Mr. Peterson just said, is sort of bolstering what he said. This is a component of their incentive request that was processed after you made your initial approval. And so looking at this chart here, what we've done, there's two slides here. These slides are identical to the slides that we previously used when the council approved the Chapter 100 plan. And the first line is the new item. So I'll dispense with going through the summary of what you've already approved just to get to the point here, unless you want me to go through the entire incentive package again. But to be clear, you've already acted on these three line items here. The line at the top is the new line item. Sales tax exemption on equipment. It's non-manufacturing equipment. This is provided by the Department of Economic Development. This is the quantification of the benefit to the developer. It's in addition to what you've already approved as 2.2% of the total project cost. So this is so you understand how this incentive component, which they're requesting you to act on, is in addition to what you've already approved. And then this is the more detailed summary slide that we previously provided to you. And the boxes here and down here are quantification of this additional item. So again, I will dispense with describing all of these. You've already acted on all of these components and approved them. And this would, in addition from the state, be sales and use tax exemption on the new equipment only, three installments of new equipment. And the new equipment is $5 million for material sorting, $10 million of equipment for a material handling system, and $10 million a fulfillment processing system. That's technically what the equipment is that they're purchasing. And then we quantify down here also The additional benefit to the developer, kind of a repeat of what I just said on the last slide, the additional benefit resulting in this total benefit to the developer as measured into the total project costs. And then we've quantified the impact of the city down here. And this basically scales out the same way. The city's portion of this incentive request is about the same as the city's portion of the sales tax exemption that you previously approved. So it all kind of scales out equally, and this is a benefit that's being provided by Department of Economic Development and your specific action item. It's not an ordinance. There's just a motion that's in your packet. If you pass this motion, what you're technically doing is authorizing city staff to sign this application. That's it. The actual action that you're undertaking, if you approve this, is it's authorizing staff to sign this application when it's submitted to DED to benefit the property and the project in the way that Mr. Peterson described and I described. So that's my summary. I can go through anything else that you'd like, but I thought I'd keep it short in the interest of time tonight.

So to keep it short, so DED is pretty much ready to move forward. Correct. They just want our authorization.

That's correct. The application to the state has to be signed by the developer and the city. So the city has to certify too. And we thought... the simplest way to do it, to be as thorough as possible is bring that request back to you.

Okay, I think we have one question and then I'll make a comment. Mayor for Tim Shields.

Thank you, Mayor. So this is a Missouri Department of Economic Development incentive tool, but it requires the city's sign-off. Yes. Right, and so typically when we do an incentive package, once we approve it, we don't come back. We sort of say like, you have to give us your full ask upfront, right? So this is different because it was a Missouri DED program, so they didn't know what the ask would be until they went through that process, or like why is this kind of something we don't usually see in terms of going back and modifying the package?

I'd let Mr. Peterson answer that in the, so he can explain the sequence of events that led to this to fully answer your question.

Yes, and I'll start, Mayor Pro Tem, with the somewhat short, but you always know, ask me three more questions if you wish to get into the weeds. But I personally reached out to DED back in the fall. This was before even formally pursuing the incentives of the city because that's what we do. We try to put together the full package. And one of those benefits was Missouri Works, which is a different type of DED benefit. And the other was this sales tax exemption and all this equipment purchasing. And the part I'm dispensing with is, why it took so long between the fall and into the spring but it did and i've talked to staff about for those re about those reasons but by the time we actually got the offer from ded and we accepted it that wasn't until plus or minus 30 days i want to say may or june and so as you can see we had already had the city side approved and then we ended up in this situation if i can do a mea culpa I frankly, I had, Joe, again, played a huge role in this and I appreciated all his help. This quote, in that sense, the city was with me. I forgot that when it ultimately comes down to implementation, even after you've accepted the DED's offer, you have to get a city signature on the application. I don't know if Mr. Bushek even remember that. I mean, it's just, this is not something that's that common. So in that sense, that part was my mistake, but we did start this Mayor Pro Tem back in the fall. It just took a long time to get to this point.

Okay, thank you. I guess going forward, if we know that an application like this is in process, I would like to know that. At the beginning, I realized this is kind of unusual. It's not something that we see a lot, so I can understand why it kind of happened this way. And I feel like the overall thought process behind the incentive package we approved before, which included the sales and use tech exemption on construction materials, kind of the same logic would apply here like if you'd asked me back when we looked at this is the equipment part of the construction materials I would have had to go back and ask and ask someone with better tax knowledge than I have to to clarify that so it's the kind of thing I might have thought was already included although obviously it is a larger line item so I want this project to go forward I think it's a really good project for all the reasons we've discussed before but I do wish that I had known that this was a possibility of coming forward. I'm glad that we're using the state of Missouri tools. I think that's great that they're being connected with Missouri Works and with these programs and that we're making full use of those. But it would be great to have that information up front to the extent that we can.

Yeah, I think it's probably safe to say that if we ever have a project like this where the personal property tax exemption might be pursued, we as the city team will say you need to include that in your initial presentation to the city council, even if it's not going to happen until much later for all the reasons you just said.

Sales tax exemption, right? Yes. Because we already knew about the personal property tax.

And I agree, just to chime in, I agree too. Sorry to interrupt, David. That's a learning lesson for me too on all this.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Good question. Thank you. Okay, that being said, Is there an ordinance here that you want us to approve?

No, it's just a motion that's in the packet. The form of the motion is on page two of the meeting packet.

Mayor Bertin, do you care to...

I see it. Are you having trouble finding the motion in the packet?

We are.

I have it.

You can read it.

I move to authorize staff to certify the application for Chapter 100 sales tax exemption for non-manufacturing equipment related to the Mid-States Warehouse Expansion Project.

Thank you. We have a motion by Mayor for Tim Shields and a second by Council Member Funk. Any further discussion or comments? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Please record the vote. Thank you. Thank you all. Appreciate that. All right. We will proceed on to item number 7, proposed ordinances forwarded from committee. We go to 7A. Mayor Pro Temp-Shields.

Thank you. I move for second reading of Bill number 26-128, an ordinance amending Chapter 13, Fire Prevention and Protection of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Lee Summit, Missouri, by repealing Article 3 of Fire Code and adopting a new Article 3 pertaining to the same subject matter.

Great. Thank you. We have a motion to advance a second reading by Mayor Patel-Shields and a second by Council Member Cravens. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. We're missing one.

Is Melanie Boyce voting?

Melanie, are you still on?

Her vote is on here, or it was.

Okay, so she's in there. Right now we're down to six, so motion passes 6-0. Thank you. All right, Mayor Patem.

Move for adoption of Bill No. 26-128 in Ordinance Mending Chapter 13, Fire Prevention and Protection of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Lee Summit, Missouri, by repealing Article 3 Fire Code and adopting new Article 3 pertaining to the same subject matter.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-128 by Mayor for Tim Shields and a second by Council Member Funk. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. There we go. Motion passes 6-0. Please record the vote. Thank you. Takes us to item B, Mayor Pertem.

Move for second reading of Bill number 26-129, an ordinance amending Chapter 7 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Lee Summit, Missouri, relating to building regulations by adopting certain 2024 international codes of the 2023 National Electrical Code and by revising certain provisions of the city's building and electrical codes.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt Bill number 26-129 by Mayor Pertem Shields and a second by Council Member Funk. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. You want to vote on this one? All votes are in. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Please record the vote. Mayor for town.

I move for adoption of Bill number 26-129, an ordinance amending Chapter 7 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Leisawant, Missouri, relating to building regulations by adopting certain 2024 international codes of the 2023 National Electrical Code and by revising certain provisions of the city's building electrical codes.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-129 by Mayor Patem-Shields and a second by Councilmember Funk. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Please record the vote, Mayor Patem.

I move for second reading of bill number 26-130, an ordinance repealing Chapter 16, Lee Summit Property Maintenance Code. The Code of Ordinances of the City of Lee Summit, Missouri, enacting a new Chapter 16 pertaining to the same subject matter for the City of Lee Summit, Missouri.

We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-130 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Frazier. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. The bill is adopted 7-0.

I think that was second reading, wasn't it?

I think we got ahead. That was for second reading, I'm sorry. Bill number 126-130.

Move for adoption of Bill No. 26-130, an ordinance repealing Chapter 16, Lease Summit Property Maintenance Code of the Code of Ordinances for the City of Lease Summit, Missouri, and enacting a new Chapter 16 pertaining to the same subject matter for the City of Lease Summit, Missouri.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt Bill No. 26-130 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Frazier. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. The bill is adopted 7-0. Please record the vote. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem?

Move for second reading of bill number 26-131. An ordinance approving amendment number date to the budget for fiscal year ending June 30, 2026 is adopted by ordinances 101.3.2, 101.3.3, 101.3.6, 101.3.7, 101.3.8 by amending the authorized expenditures for the City of Lee Summit, Missouri.

Thank you. We have a motion to advance the second reading of bill number 26-131 by Mayor for Tim Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. Motion advances 7-0. Please record the vote. Mayor Pertem.

I move for adoption of Bill No. 26-131, an ordinance approving Amendment No. 8 to the budget for fiscal year ending June 30, 2026, as adopted by Ordinances 101.3.2, 101.3.3, 101.3.6, 101.3.7, and 101.3.8 by amending the authorized expenditures for the City of Lee Summit, Missouri.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt Bill No. 26-131 by Mayor Pertem Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. Bill is adopted 7-0. Please record the vote. Thank you. Mayor Patem.

I move for second reading of bill number 26-132, an ordinance approving amendment number one to the budget for fiscal year ending June 30, 2027, as adopted by ordinances 104-400, 104-01, 104-02, and amending the authorized expenditures for the city.

I have a motion to advance the second reading of bill number 26-132 by Mayor Patem-Shields and a second by Councilmember Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. Motion passes 7-0. Please record the vote. Mayor Pertem.

Move for adoption of bill number 26-132 in ordinance approving amendment number one to the budget for fiscal year ending June 30, 2027 as adopted by ordinances 10400, 10401, 10402 by amending the authorized expenditures for the city.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-132 by Mayor Pertem Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any further discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Please record the vote. Mayor for town.

Move for second reading of bill number 26-133, an ordinance authorizing execution of a workday order agreement to purchase workday success plan and flex credits for ERP support not to exceed $115,044 in accordance with contract number 2024-05-1 by Between the City and Workday, Inc., and authorizing the city manager or information technology director to execute the same.

We have a motion to advance the second reading, Bill number 26-133 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Frazier. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Mayor Pro Tem.

Move for adoption of Bill number 26-133, an ordinance authorizing the execution of a workday order agreement to purchase a workday success plan and flex credits for ERP support not to exceed $115,044 in accordance with contract number 2024-5-1 by Between the City and Workday, Inc.,

authorizing city manager information technology director to execute the same motion to adopt to adopt bill number 26-133 of a mayor for temp shields in a second by councilmember Carlisle any discussion if not, please cast your vote All votes are in Motion passes 7-0 bill is adopted. Please record the vote. Thank you. Do you need a break? You need a sub?

Let's finish it good.

All right next item 26 134

Move for second reading bill number twenty six dash one three four an ordinance approving change order number one to the on-call agreement twenty twenty four dash five seven two r for the construction of southeast fifth storm street storm repair w zero one three one five two seven with weedom and ink for an increase in the contract price of one hundred twenty eight thousand six hundred seventy seven dollars and ninety nine cents for a revised agreement amount of four hundred sixty nine thousand nine hundred twenty eight dollars and ninety nine cents and authorizing city manager to execute an agreement for the same.

We have a motion to advance the second reading bill number twenty six dash one three four by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? Now please cast your vote. One more. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Mayor for Tim.

Move for second reading bill number, or mine on adoption. It's adoption. Move for adoption of bill number. 26-134, an ordinance approving change order number one to the on-call agreement 2024-572R for the construction of Southeast 5th Street Storm Repair W0131527 with weight omitting for an increase in the contract price of $128,677.99 for a revised agreement amount of $469,928.99 and authorized city manager to execute the agreement for the same.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-134 by Mayor Pro Temp Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Please record the vote. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Move for second reading bill number 26-135, an ordinance awarding the bid for project number P-293 for the southeast taxi lane construction to Pyramid Contractors, Inc. in the amount of $3,745,809 and authorizing city manager to execute an agreement for the same.

We have a motion to advance the second reading bill number 26-135 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Frazier. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Mayor Pro Tem.

Move for adoption of Bill No. 26-135, an ordinance awarding the bid for Project No. P-293 for the Southeast Taxi Line Construction to Pyramid Contractors, Inc. in the amount of $3,745,809 and authorizing the City Manager to execute an agreement for the same.

We have a motion to adopt Bill No. 26-135 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any further discussion? If not, please cast your vote. Motion passes 7-0. Mayor Pro Tem.

Move for a second reading of Bill No. 26-136, an ordinance approving award of RFQ 2026-015 to HDR Engineering for the Tudor Force Main Condition Assessment Project in the amount of $1,280,523 and authorizing the City Manager to execute an agreement for the same.

We have a motion to advance the second reading of Bill No. 26-136 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Cravens. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Mayor Pro Tem?

Move for adoption of bill number 26-136 in ordinance approving the award of RFQ 2026-015 to HDR Engineering Inc. for the Tudor Force Main Condition Assessment Project in the amount of $1,280,523 and authorizing the City Manager to execute an agreement for the same.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-136 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any further discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Bill is adopted 7-0. Please record the vote. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem?

Move for second reading of Bill No. 26-137, an ordinance approving the award of RFQ No. 2026-065 and an agreement for professional engineering design services for the Big Creek Excess Flow Holding and Pump Station Project to George Butler Associates, Inc. in the amount of $294,393 and authorizing the City Manager to execute an agreement for the same.

We have a motion to advance the second reading of Bill No. 26-137 by Mayor for Tim Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any further discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Mayor Pro Tem.

Move for adoption of bill number 26-137, an ordinance approving the award of RFQ number 2026-065, an agreement for professional engineering design services for the Big Creek Excess Flow Holding and Pump Station project to George Butler Associates Inc. in the amount of $294,393 and authorizing city managers to execute the same.

We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-137 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Funk. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Bill is adopted 7-0. Please record the vote. Thank you. Mayor Pertem.

Move for a second reading of Bill No. 26-138, an ordinance approving modification No. 1 to the agreement dated March 3, 2026, RFQ No. 2026-014 between the City of Lisa, Missouri and Burns & McDonald Engineering Company, Inc. for professional engineering services for the Cedar Creek Interceptor Phase 4 improvements project for an increase of $446,159 for a total amended amount of $751,912 and authorizing the City Manager to execute the same.

Thank you. We have a motion to advance the second rating bill number 26-138 by Mayor Patem Shields and a second by Council Member Funk. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Thank you, Mayor Patem.

Move for adoption of bill number 26-138, an ordinance approving modification number one to the agreement dated March 3, 2026, RFQ number 2026-014, between the State of Leeds Summit, Missouri, and Burns McDonald Engineering Company, Inc., for professional engineering services for the Cedar Creek Interceptor Phase 4 improvements project for an increase of $446,159 for a total amended amount of $751,912 and authorizing city managers to execute the same.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-138 by Mayor Bertram Shields and a second by Council Member Funk. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Bill is adopted. Please record the vote. Thank you. Mayor Pertem.

Move for a second reading of bill number 26-139, an ordinance awarding bid for project number P-256 for the Cathodic Protection Program FY26 to CP Systems International LLC in the amount of $893,925 and authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement for the same.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-139 by Mayor Pertem Shields and a second by Council Member Frazier. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Mayor Patem?

Move for adoption of Bill No. 26-139, an ordinance awarding the bid for Project No. P-256 for the Cathodic Protection Program FY26 to CP Systems International LLC in the amount of $893,925 and authorizing the City Manager to execute agreement for the same.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt Bill No. 26-139 by Mayor Patem Shields and a second by Council Member Funk. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Bill is adopted 7-0. Please record the vote. Thank you. Takes us to agenda item number eight, proposed ordinances. Second reading, Mayor Pertem.

Move for adoption of bill number 26-121, an ordinance approving petition for establishment of the Arborside Community Improvement District and authorizing and directing further actions in connection therewith.

Thank you. We have motion to adopt bill number 26-121 by Mayor Pertem Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Please record the vote. Thank you. May I pretend?

Move for adoption of amended bill number 26-122, an ordinance approving rezoning from District PI Plan Industrial, RP4 Plan Department Residential, and PO Planned Office to CP2 Plan Community Commercial and Preliminary Development Plan for Dillons on approximately 15.71 acres of land located near the southwest corner of Northeast Tudor Road and Northeast Douglas Street, all in accordance with provisions of Chapter 33, the Unified Development Ordinance of the Code of Ordinances for the City of Lisa, Missouri.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-122 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. One more. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Bill is adopted. Please record the vote. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem?

Move for adoption of bill number 26-124, an ordinance vacating a portion of a certain easement located at 201 Southwest Oldham Parkway in the city of Lee Summit, Missouri.

We have a motion to adopt bill number 26S124 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Frazier. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 7-0. Bill is adopted. Thank you. Appreciate that. All right. Takes us to committee reports. Any committee reports? You guys have been busy. Council Member Funk.

Thank you, Mayor. We had a public works meeting yesterday. Council Member Pryor was on vacation. We did a number of items on tonight's agenda that we just approved. A couple things came up in our roundtable. Mayor Pro Tem, I think we talked about maybe getting it to a committee. Door hangers, we had an issue with some door hangers and residents getting notified of some work being done. And just want to make sure we can put some sort of clause clawback in those contracts that if they don't do this, there's some sort of punishment of some sort. for our residents. And then also we talked about Michael Park spoke a little bit on I-470 and being able to move forward a study. And I think at this body we have enough folks here tonight if we could just kind of maybe, I know it's been a long night, but get a quick blessing to Michael to move forward with that.

So this is related to the efforts that have been ongoing for a while regarding addressing the issue on 470? Yes.

Just doing a study on, you know, what the scope of this is going to be, what the ramifications are going to be. Mr. Park has had some good conversation with MoDOT, and they're supportive as well.

Yeah, and this is something we've been talking about for a long time. Time is of the essence. So anyway, I'll take your comments. Mayor Pertem.

I guess I'm still on to speak for next committee report, but I would be supportive of moving forward with the study. We had a good short discussion in public works about it, and I think to continue our advocacy efforts for 470 would be helpful to have kind of a more clearly defined scope of what we're asking for. Thank you.

Carla, do you want to speak to this? Yes, please.

Just real quick. For those of us who did not get to watch that yet, can I just have like a quick, who's doing the study? Do we know? How much is it going to cost? Yada, yada, yada. Thank you.

So the Public Works Committee last night, we had a discussion of really doing a little more detailed than our current $300 million swag for widening I-470 from 50 highway to 40 highway, as well as some interchange design to actually getting into an actual study. The city would undertake that study. It would be coordinated with MoDOT, but it would be at the city's expense. That's why before we would proceed, we kind of seek that direction from the full council. Break down a little more conceptually what the interchange might look like at 291 and I-470 Colburn Junction. Identify any significant environmental issues that would be associated with both widening I-470 as well as the interchange. come up with more refined estimates based on that little detail and those conceptual designs, break it down into whether or not the project can be phased, what the sequencing of those phases might be. People often refer to this as like a purpose and need study or general scoping study just to better inform you all as well as our lobbyists and anybody else that's going to be carrying forward this project and request for federal funds.

Thank you. Do we have any idea how much this might cost?

We would estimate that it's probably less than a half million dollars. I can't give you an exact amount, but in conversations with MoDOT, we feel confident that it's less than a half million dollars in about a year time frame to work on this study. We do believe it's within the scope of our capital improvement program already. We have capital project planning in there as a program. And then we do believe that there's funds within the CIP sales tax, even some funds that have already been set aside for study of like the little blue watershed area. That project, as we talked about before, we were well underway. It had set up about a half million dollars. And then. reasons beyond the city's control Some of the partners in that project had backed out and that project died and we certainly didn't spend Nearly the budget allocation that was set aside for that study out of the same funding source So I think in working with our city engineer we can identify the funds to make whole the study as if it were to proceed Thank you.

So if I heard you correctly, it's going to cost us around five hundred thousand We already have the money. We do not have to go back to the budget and

I'd need to visit with Ms. Berichter whether or not it requires a budget amendment or not, being that there was a budget allocation out of that fund, CIP sales tax fund, that would probably cover it, but it was also under a line item. I just need to have conversations with her whether or not it requires a budget amendment or not. It depends on the level of budget authorization, whether it was at a fund level or on a project level. But it certainly, and our assessment doesn't require comprehensive plan amendment for revised CIP. We believe it's covered under the capital programming for transportation planning.

Okay, so we're not going to have to find money from the general fund?

Correct.

Okay, nor are we going to have to take out of reserves? Correct. This will be covered under our CIP?

Correct. Under the 2017 CIP sales tax, it was very specific in our commitment to voters that some of the money would go for coordination with MoDOT facilities. That's how we are paying for like 291 interchange, right? So it's in that body of money, and it is an eligible expenditure for studies, particularly studies that lead to eventually you would expect some sort of construction.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Frazier.

Just to clarify, so how soon could you get started once? be approved to push forward? I mean, you said it would take about a year, correct?

We're estimating about a year. I mean, we'll know more when we get a consultant selected to proceed. I would estimate, you know, if we get this direction from council to move forward, we need to figure out if there is any kind of budget amendment required or not, perhaps not. But while we're working on that, we can also be working on the actual request for qualifications to define the scope of services for a professional firm to come in and do this study. And so hopefully we can match things up, and we're only two, three months away from bringing forward a contract for your consideration.

Okay. And did I understand you correctly? You said 50 to 40, 50 highway to 40 highway? That's right. Is that what we're looking at?

Talking to MoDOT, they haven't done really any relevant study over the last 15-plus years of that section south of 40 highway. They have been doing more recent studies of that area of the I-70, 470 junction, 40 highway to 39th. Okay. Thank you, Mayor.

So just to clarify, in lieu of having to go to Public Works for a discussion there, you're asking us as counsel if we're okay with you just pursuing this and finding out what the costs are, and you'll come back to us later.

Yeah, in the next step, we would come back to you with what would either be some sort of a budget amendment or it may just be the contract of a RFQ with a design firm.

Okay. You just want, like, our thumbs up or just an idea? Yeah. Is that good?

As long as we get it clear. You guys okay with that?

All right. We know this is a priority, so.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you for bringing it up. Thank you, Council Member Funk. Okay. Any other committee reports? Council Member Shields, or Mayor Pro Tem Shields.

Thank you. CDC met last week, and we had a good discussion about our existing accessory dwelling unit ordinance and some barriers to folks actually constructing ADUs, and I think we're committee will be recommending some changes to minimum lot size that seems to be holding up a lot of projects so that'll likely be coming through in the next couple of months thank you okay thank you councilmember carla thank you mayor rules committee meets on thursday over zoom during the lunch hour great thank you uh any council comments you guys all needed oh there you go uh councilmember atkins from afar

You there?

Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Sorry. Last thing, um, for me, but our five weeks of, uh, football Fridays ended last week and I just am totally in awe of how amazing everyone did planning this for the last 18 months. All the partners came together. Um, main street, downtown main street chamber, rotary, uh, and uh explore all else but the police and fire have been working so hard they've been working for so long um collaborating with the region and being tapped into kansas city and no one knew what to expect um no one knew how many what the crowds would look like or who would come or what what it would be um and i just i just thought they handled it beautifully i mean they just worked so hard to prepare and never complained and stood by and gave so many extra hours, and I'm just so grateful for everything that they did for our community and to keep us safe and to prepare for it and made it an amazing experience for the rest of us while they were at it. I'm just very, very grateful that the whole thing went well, and I feel really proud of how our city represented.