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 August 17th. 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 watch 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. Mayor Lopez will deliver his State of the City address on Friday, August 21st at Green Street at noon, reflecting on the legacy that has shaped Lee Summit and looking ahead to the future of our community. The event is open to the public. Come be a part of this special community gathering. The address will be livestreamed on the City's YouTube channel, youtube.com slash at City of LS. And grab your tickets to the fabulous Freddie Mercury, a tribute to Queen. This concert is August 22nd at Legacy Park Amphitheater. The concert begins at 8 p.m. Visit lsparks.net for tickets. Thanks for listening and have a great week.

Keeping Our City Beautiful is a collaborative effort for all citizens. The City of Lee Summit supports these efforts with a set of guidelines or ordinances. And the City's Neighborhood Services Team helps put those guidelines into practice. These guidelines ensure grass stays trimmed, fences are maintained, home exteriors are kept up, and much more. We can all help out by first making sure our property meets these guidelines. If you notice potential violation on a neighbor's property, first check the guidelines on the city's website. If it is a violation, the next step is to communicate with your neighbor directly. If that is not possible, or if the problem persists, it can be reported through LS Connect. LS Connect is an online platform for submitting issues to the city. You can access it on the city website or by downloading the app through your mobile device's app store. Once you submit an issue, it is reviewed by the neighborhood services team. A neighborhood services officer will then visit the site. For any violations found, the neighborhood services officer will leave a notice and speak with the property owner if possible. The officer's goal is to help the property owner solve or abate the problem as quickly as possible. After a 10-day period, the officer will inspect the site to see if the issue has been abated. Normally, by this point, the issue has been resolved. If not, depending on the type of issue, an extension could be granted, or the city might fix the problem at the owner's expense. In rare cases, if all other measures have been applied, the issue will be resolved in the municipal court. Neighborhood services officers work hard to resolve problems quickly and positively. They are here to support the community as we work together to keep our city beautiful.

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.

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.

Welcome to the Leaf Summit sign department. We are going to walk you through our process from start to finish. We make signs as needed here. It's not like we just go out into the field and place the speed limit sign here, no parking here. Our traffic engineers, they go through and they'll do field studies. They'll send us down an engineering work order for us to go out, place new signs or remove signs as needed. Coming from the material, our blanks come in and they're just aluminum blanks. We can put our white our red, our fluorescent yellow, green, whatever. And basically what it looks like is just that there. Throw it up into the roller. And once we got it covered, take it to our work table here and Tim will cut the corners, cut all the access off to where it's lined up right. As far as the plotter and the software that we use, there's a street name sign there and he's gonna go ahead and print that out on the plotter so you can see the plotter and how it operates and runs. There's standards for the height, even just on letters on the signboard. Basically what we have on the computer there is it's pretty much set up to those. And it goes through, it's got a very small but sharp needle that goes through and cuts everything out letter by letter. Once that's done cutting, our next stage would be bringing it over here. Currently picking out the sign letters right now. We call it weeding or picking or however you want to call it. Next putting it on the transfer tape. Then after it's taped, we bring it over to the roller. That's where we apply it to the actual sign blank. And we'll roll it through one time just to get the air bubbles out. And the last stage is basically just Taking the transfer tape off the front of it. And there's a finished product of street name signs. We'll take you out to the field and show you our process that we go through. We're going to go out and follow our sign guys, get something installed for you. This is where we check our underground utilities. Tim, you got AT&T?

AT&T is back here.

We should be good to go. We normally put all of our stuff together out in the field. Then once the base is installed, we'll go ahead and put the post in there. Perfect. And that's how we do it. Simple. Quick.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you you

Rise for the invocation and stay standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Heavenly Father, thank you for our community and for the opportunity to serve. Tonight, we are especially grateful for every person who helps make our city operate, from city staff to the first responders and to our public works crews, volunteers, and everyone who works behind the scenes each day. Please give us wisdom, patience, and good judgment as we make decisions that serve our community. Help us always remember the people we represent and lead with kindness, integrity, and gratitude. Amen.

Thank you.

I'd like to call to order the City Council regular session number 11. Can I please have roll call?

Council Member Frazier? Present. Council Member Cravens?

Here.

Council Member Adkins? Present. Council Member Funk?

Present.

Council Member Pryor? Here. Council Member Carlisle? Present. Mayor Pro Tem Shields? Here. Mayor Lopez?

Here. All right. Now we need to approve the agenda as presented. We have a motion that has been made by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Funk. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote.

Mayor, I'm an aye. I will need to voice vote for a little bit. I don't know how long. Thank you.

Thank you. All votes are in. Agenda is approved. Eight yes. Thank you. All right. Takes us to the consent agenda.

Okay.

Motion has been made by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Cravens. Any questions or discussion? If not, please cast your vote.

I'm an aye.

Thank you. All votes are in. Agenda is approved 8-0. Thank you. All right. Takes us to Council Roundtable. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem Shields.

Thank you, Mayor. Not to steal your thunder on this one, but it is happening in my district. The Mayor's State of the City is going to be this Friday at Green Street, so I'm really excited to see what the State of the City is. Hopefully strong. Yeah.

Me too. Thank you. Council Member Pryor.

Thank you, Mayor. So I know Council Roundtable is not the right place to do this, but I did just want to give everyone a heads up that I will be directing staff to bring forward an ordinance during Council comments to approve the requested pay for the judges. And so I will be looking for a second and then we'll vote on it. So thank you.

Thank you. Okay, see no other people wanting to speak, so we'll proceed with proclamation. We have a proclamation, don't we? Thank you.

This proclamation, I apologize, this proclamation is for the Star-Spangled Banner Day, so anybody that is here to receive that? And this proclamation recognizes September 14th, 2026 as a day honoring the Star Spangled Banner and its historical significance commemorating Francis Scott Key's inspiration during the Battle of Fort McHenry in 1814 and the anthem's designation as the National Anthem in 1931. It also highlights the public's enduring respect for the anthem and connects the observance to the 250th anniversary of the United States.

Thank you. Now, I, therefore, J. Bethel Lopez, by virtue of the authority vested in me as mayor of the City of Lee Summit, Missouri, do hereby proclaim September 14th, 2026 as Star-Spangled Banner Day and encourage citizens of the City of Lee Summit to join in honoring the importance and history in our national anthem and to teach future generations the meaning behind this patriotic song. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Banner. Do you want to introduce yourself?

Hi, I'm Julie Ferguson. I'm president of our Kansas City area United States Daughters of 1812, and we thank you for this honor, Mayor Lopez. Absolutely.

Thank you. Let's take a photo. All right, thank you. All right, takes us to the public comments section. So we have a few. We will start with Dana Altieri.

Thank you. My name is Dana Altieri. My address is 10 Northeast Tudor Road, Lee Summit, Missouri. You'll have to excuse me if my comments are all over the place. I just got off the bench and then ran over here. I can't believe that Judge Lopez and I began asking for help at the courthouse over two years ago. Those early requests started back in the summer of 2024. We both began asking City Manager Mark Dunning for help with our dockets. Judge Lopez reached out to Council Member Shields directly in the summer of 2024, telling her that we need help. We didn't get anything. We still don't have anything. What we... do have, I don't know why, but Council Member Shields, the first one contacted, keeps trying to divert us into committees or avoid this coming up for a vote, and I'm not sure why. I do know that we haven't gotten anything, but the city's gotten its complaints. I know everybody's received complaints, considering our court is still operating at the level of when we had 33,000 citizens. Now we're over 100,000 citizens. Our staff came in here and explained how horrible it is to work at the courthouse. It was disgusting for me to sit back there and watch them because I saw people that I work with every day getting out of their comfort zone in an effort to be heard and it doesn't appear like they were unless the council decides to take some kind of action. I watched them try to put their hands in their pockets because they were shaking because they were terrified to talk to all of you, but they still came here and did it trying to get some change. I know an attorney came in here explaining how he came to court but he had to leave because he circled the block so many times and couldn't get a handicapped spot. Our public defender told you it was broken. Two other judges came in and told you how terribly our court how terrible our court is in comparison to others. Now, I am absolutely no more important than any other person in this room or in this city, but I am the longest elected official in that I've been elected to 20 consecutive years of service. So that means the citizens have put me in office for five consecutive four-year terms to run the judiciary and I've came here for over two years trying to tell you I cannot do the job that they have elected me to do. They have elected me to serve them and I cannot serve them unless this branch will support us. We've been to budget and finance twice. We even had the city come over in the fall of 2024 and tell us we're going to get new dockets, helped us plan the new dockets, and we have absolutely nothing. I don't know why the city wants to be in the news. I've had request requests. from the media to do interviews on this, and I've refrained from doing it. I just wanted to work toward the professional resolution, yet I see the city gets on the news, so I did it myself today at 5.30. I'd rather spend my time working on dockets and issues at the court than being here.

Thank you. Mr. Boswick.

Hi, I was here last week and I presented a plan for getting more time so that I could explain the number of issues that have been ongoing in Lee's Summit. and I don't think we're gonna get a resolution on that. I think it's very important to focus on process and systems because one of the things that has gotten me interested in government is the exploitation of my children and how the legal system has lost touch with what originally created it. We talk about the Star-Spangled Banner, but a lot of people forget that that was about war and how we navigated military conflict and the celebrations that are fireworks are meant to defer our desires to fight and to yell. So talking to the press is a good thing. I don't necessarily think it's bad that the judge felt that she needed to talk to reporters to get a resolution. What I think is an issue is that the agenda for an action plan for the court is there today. And hopefully we'll see some resolutions. But the important thing is to make sure that there's accountability linked with financial incentives. So that if we're gonna give money to people, There's an accountability that that money is for resolving things effectively and doing due diligence. I personally have tried to protest in the city of Lee summit and I've had just wood in my yard to navigate that. And even that protest wasn't really understood. It was supposed to be an artistic process. expression of basically how we have fences in our backyards and when they're gone no one says anything. The irony was that I was expecting it to go for 10 years where no one would comment on my fence and then my son would get older and he and I would mend fences together. But I was never really allowed to do that because the city decided to use a neighborhood HOA code They passed an ordinance on an HOA code, and that HOA code is now being enforced as city ordinances, which is a whole other set of problems. Just as my neighborhood had sewage waste in its yard, and I couldn't come to the city and talk about how there was literal sewage down the street because of development plans that were made, that were made with an organization that left, and I intentionally never wanted to live in an HOA. So I don't live in an HOA, but I'm now having to navigate the city's behavior with that, and those are the people that have to go to court. I had to go to court to just have wood in my yard, and that's a larger point of what's going on actually at the courts. I think talking about why we wanted committees and why we want those things, those are to work towards resolutions, but the lack of transparency and accountability for those solutions are what prevent us from being able to make progress so that the courts don't just spend money targeting people that doesn't yield any benefit to society. Doesn't yield a whole bunch of benefit to make sure somebody's on insurance forever spending thousands of dollars. You could just pay for the insurance cheaper than you could going after somebody endlessly. And that's my time, which I've already tried to get more.

Thank you. Chip Lloyd.

First, I want to thank the staff. There are several of the staff and counsel that have helped me recently, and I want to thank them for their assistance. I appreciate it. I hope that you believe that I appreciate it. Your honors, June 9th of 1973, a generational thoroughbred champion named Secretariat won the Triple Crown, actually seized it His victory at the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths is described as a perfect moment in sports history. Breathtaking. People were moved to tears, not because they won a bet, but because they just witnessed quintessence. I have an affinity for Secretariat. It's what I named my Cadillac outside. And a fun fact, quiet. A fun fact, I currently have a part interest in two thoroughbreds right now. They race, but not on a track, and their distance isn't measured in furlongs, it's measured in human traffic, and they set records every week. I reviewed Manager Dunning's presentation tonight. It looked to me like a report of a summary of a summary of a report of a study which affirmed repeated expert witness, counsel, and stakeholder testimony of a dumpster fire. What we haven't seen yet is progress, but I am certain, I'm confident, and I'm convinced that progress can be made tonight. What I have in my hand here is a figurative ball. Written on it is the word progress. It's coming down now, but only the glove of leadership can catch it. And I know that one or more of you, except the mayor, on the dais, wears that glove tonight. Somebody please catch this ball. And somebody back them up. My thoroughbreds wear black robes, and they are listed on your racing program as the honorable Altieri and Lopez. And they've been at the starting gate for quite a while. It's post time tonight. Let them run. Let them run.

Thank you. Vanessa Maxwell Lopez.

Good evening. At the Ruff Tellus presentation on July 14th, Mark Dunning was tasked with presenting an implementation plan to council as to how the city planned to begin carrying out the Ruff Tellus recommendations to overall our current court structure due to inefficiencies created by overcrowded dockets and a surge in our population since the court was last updated 40 years ago. We understand he is doing that tonight. At that presentation, you also asked the judges for an update on those existing recommendations which had been accomplished since the audit was first started last fall. Within a few days, I sent all of you the update of those items the court had already completed, and most of the recommendations tasked to us have been resolved. At the time the audit was released, we had an interim court administrator who has now been named court administrator, and after the findings Raftel has presented to this city and our staff in December, she immediately began implementing and addressing many of those issues. Raftela stated in December that there was an immediate need for judicial capacity and recommended increasing the judge's on-site time and having the law department identify and prepare any necessary ordinances to request funding for additional judge time of two days per week per judge. Since it is unclear if we are going to be allowed to speak after Mr. Dunning's presentation, I wanted to use my three minutes to present what will happen if the council passes an ordinance to increase compensation to the judges to allow us to begin implementing the Raftelis recommendations to provide for an immediate judicial presence in the courthouse. Judge Altieri and I have discussed this extensively for the last two years, and if the city council passes such ordinance, we will have a judge at the courthouse the next day and we'll start running additional dockets and plotting and planning for specialty dockets immediately. Very quickly we'll see dockets being held at least four days per week as we begin the process of reducing docket sizes to more manageable numbers. We will work with the police department to immediately have officers begin writing tickets for those additional days and we'll work with the city to figure out how they can begin implementing the additional recommendations for additional personnel, which would include new probation officers, a probation supervisor, and additional clerks. Since the Raftelis presentation last month, we have lost both a probation officer and a court clerk, creating further backlog and additional work for the remaining staff. Getting us in there for additional days is the first step in the most needed overall of the court, as recommended by Raftelis. Passing such an ordinance will accomplish the need for immediate judicial presence. As we've been trying to implement change for over two years, we would like to see the city immediately establish a task force of city and court staff to collaborate on additional steps and actions which will need to be implemented and carried out for the rest of the recommendations that we agree need to happen. Thank you.

Thank you. Teresa Bollenweider.

Teresa Vollenweider, 5201 Northeast Maybrook Road. My question tonight is, how many times can a property with a meets and bounds description get transferred before someone at the city says, you got a plat? I started using AI a little bit. If you guys aren't using it, I would suggest trying it, but be careful with it. It can exaggerate, but in this case, it was spot on. Illegal lots created informally or meets and bounds divided without going through the city's required platting or subdivision review process. Hector knew it. He knew that that started in 1976. The city will not approve and issue any building permits for any additional improvements on parcels divided via meets and bounds description without being platted. Need to be platted. There is even a little section under property descriptions, property review, that says illegal lot or legal lot. Was 5261 a legal lot or an illegal lot? Well, Derek Collins, when he filled out his rezoning app, put that the legal description of his property was 5261 Northeast Maybrook Road, Lee's Summit, Missouri. Well, now that makes it look like that property may have been platted. Maybe. Who knows? First division, hamline to horn. meets and bounds. There's the original survey right there could have been easily planted using that survey. Derek Collins and Stephanie Mullins. Meets and bounds.

All right, thank you.

The ordinance used meets and bounds. let me just finish up there were several more to the contractor example point make your point quickly do you see how many permits were issued and nobody at the city said now why okay because some of those were buildings

We will now proceed to item number six, which is the presentation section. We do have a presentation, item A, that involves a municipal court implementation action plan by Mr. Mark Dunning. For the record, I will excuse myself and stay out of this conversation and presentation. So Mayor Tim Shields will convene this part of the meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. As the Mayor said, next item on our agenda, 2026-7797, the presentation about the Municipal Court Implementation Action Plan. I don't want to steal Mr. Dunning's thunder, so I'm sure he's going to touch on some of this, but I do think it's helpful to kind of briefly set the table for this discussion. We have had extensive discussions regarding the court on this dais over the past year. Judges Lopez and Altieri, who are here tonight, have made multiple presentations to the City Council and the Finance and Budget Committee, as has been mentioned. And they identified issues facing the court, including a substantial case backlog and a need for additional court capacity. IN RESPONSE TO THOSE CONCERNS, THE CITY COMMISSIONED A MUNICIPAL COURT OPERATIONAL REVIEW OR COURT AUDIT TO HELP US BETTER UNDERSTAND THE STATE OF THE COURT, IDENTIFY BEST PRACTICES, AND FIND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENTS. THIS REPORT WAS PRESENTED TO THE COUNCIL LAST MONTH. IT INCLUDED A NUMBER OF RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVING COURT OPERATIONS ALONG WITH THE DRAFT IMPLEMENTATION ACTION PLAN AND PROPOSED TIMELINES FOR VARIOUS ACTIONS. I BELIEVE MR. JOHNING WILL SPEAK MORE TO WHAT THAT IMPLEMENTATION ACTION PLAN IS. I think it's been clear through this whole process, through all these discussions from the council, from the judges, from court staff, from the city manager, that we do share the goal of improving court operations and making sure the court is able to effectively serve our community. I asked for tonight's update so that we can understand what progress has been made on these recommendations, and importantly, which items are within the authority or responsibility of the court, which depend on city staff, and which require council action. My hope is that this gives us a shared understanding of where things stand and particularly what items are within the council's ability to address so that we can do our part in moving this work forward. With that, I will turn it over to Mr. Dunning.

Thank you, Mayor Procham. Mark Dunning, City Manager. And as you mentioned, this is a request from the council from some of the dialogue at the July 14th presentation in which Ref Tellis, the consultant that did the municipal court operational review, provided their presentation. I will note, as I pull this up, this presentation is not in your packet, but I will make sure that I get this to the city clerk so that we can attach this to the packet. What's in the packet is the implementation plan that Raftelis provided, which was not presented at the July 14th meeting, for reasons there was some level of information in there that was considered protected relating to financial control, safety and security, things of that nature. So what I did with that implementation action plan is take what Raftelis drafted, clearly just drafted as a recommendation to consider, and I'll say took some of that sensitive information out in order to present what's in the packet. In addition to that, we also received feedback from Judge Maxwell Lopez that's incorporated into that, and then I, as the city manager, incorporated comments into that as well. And then also within that spreadsheet, what the implementation action plan what Rafteles identified for us was who would be the lead to lead these implementation of these recommendations and I took that and expanded that out to say okay well somebody may be the lead but who else may need to be providing assistance or involvement in those initiatives. So that's that framework for that implementation action plan that's in the packet. I didn't think it'd be a great idea to scroll through a spreadsheet in trying to do a presentation. So what I've put together here is hopefully just reflective of what's in that implementation action plan, but a much easier way to present and digest the information. So I'd be happy to pull up either. I've got the implementation action plan here as well. It is not my, I'll make this very clear, it's not my intention to speak on behalf of the judges. That's not my role, that's not my purview. Nor the court administrator, for that matter, or yourselves as counsel, right? As we get into this presentation, you'll see there are roles and responsibilities lanes, if you will, in which we operate in order to make some of these recommendations come to fruition. And hopefully that will become clear. So while I'm representing information here, as I go through this, it's based on feedback that I've received and is in that spreadsheet that's reflective of Judge Maxwell Lopez's feedback. But I don't want to speak on behalf of her if there's questions or things that could be further clarified.

And Mr. Dunning, just for clarity, while we didn't see the actual implementation action plan at the last meeting, the recommendations that were in it were kind of similar to what the recommendations in the court audit presentation. So, like, the implementation action plan is kind of a larger spreadsheet that takes those recommendations and has timelines and responsible parties, but we have seen a lot of the information in terms of what the actual recommendations themselves were.

That's correct.

And now this is taking those and putting them into a framework of timelines and who's doing what and that kind of thing, right?

That's correct. Okay, thank you.

Please go on.

And thank you. I should say, feel free to ask questions as we go along the way. I'm comfortable with that. You don't need to save questions or comments until the end. So what I hope to achieve with this presentation is I'll cover briefly what's in that implementation action plan, the contents of that. The first few slides will be reporting out on what progress has been made since the receipt of the final report. Now, when I say receipt of that final report, We, when I say we, myself and the judges and the court administrator received that final report in February. We didn't get the presentation in front of the council until July, so we've had this information. That's what I mean by receipt, right? Since receipt to that final report. As I mentioned, roles and responsibilities, I've taken and expanded that out so that we can see, again, with the recommendations, who may have a responsibility or a role in implementing some of these recommendations. And then also, I put the latest slide in there about what I'll call deferred recommendations. So these are ones that the consultant thought would be a good recommendation, but clearly it's left up to us collectively to determine whether we implement or whether that sparks another idea and we pursue a different path. So I want to touch on those as well. So that's kind of the flow of the presentation. So Implementation Action Plan, IAP. What RAF TELUS did was provide recommendations, high level recommendations to pursue, for us to consider. And then suggestions to implement those recommendations. Again, suggestions. And then they assigned responsibility and had a timeframe generally a month, two months, things like that, and then assigned a priority level, thinking through if you were to take this set of recommendations, where should you start and what should you start to do in order to create some of those efficiencies and effectiveness within the municipal court. Within this presentation, you can see if it relates to the judges, it's a J, a court administrator, a CA, city manager, city staff, CM, and city council, CC. So as I go through this, I'll try to hit on how that's laid out in the presentation. So that's kind of that framework of that implementation action plan to take those recommendations, put that kind of a lens to these recommendations. So let's talk about progress that's been made. And many of these is based on feedback that we've received from Judge Maxwell Lopez. So add one new court clerk position. I can tell you that that new, this is the new court clerk position, is currently advertised right now. So that's something that was approved in the This year's budget in in July. I know that over in court. There's been some Promotions and things and they're methodically working through the vacancies and filling the positions in court But I can tell you that that's currently advertised as well as the you heard reference to another clerk Leaving both of those are out for advertisement right now So that's in in progress Increasing that part-time. Well, I should back up so you can see the acronyms here Judges are the the primary party responsible for that But let's face it along the way the court administrator plays a role City manager played a role in that because it's a it's an expansion position City Council played a role in that to approve the budget That's how that's how this framework is working as we get through these recommendations Increasing that part-time clerk to full-time, that's completed. We did that through a budget amendment with the fiscal year 26 budget, late in the budget, to increase that position to a full-time position. As you can see, everybody had a role in that one, playing a part in that process. Re-evaluating docket assignments. This is showing as completed. That's a court administrator and judge function. The city manager does not play a role in that. The city council does not play a role In assigning the dockets, however, these are grayed out, and here's why. We could be involved, depending on how dockets are structured and whether additional resources are needed to support that docket structure, more staff and things like that. So that's how I've presented this. Grayed them out. It's not our lane, council or city manager, but we could have involvement depending on how those dockets are structured. So hopefully that makes sense. Implement cut-off times for court check-in. That's clearly a judicial function that lies within the court administrator and the judges. That's completed. Improving financial internal controls. This is mostly completed. Joint effort between the city manager, the judges, and the court administrator, and this is a lot of work. If you've heard the term OSCA, Office of State Court Administrators, we're working a lot with OSCA in order to complete that, but that's mostly completed. Continued progress then, making sure our financial deposits are in accordance with best practices, that's completed. There was a time where we didn't have court security officer, I think is the term, that was helping with that, and we do have one on board now, and they're assisting with that, so that's completed. Additional equipment recommendation for court check-in processes, that's completed as well. Internal policies, so this is... A policy with regard to external reviews and sharing those with the city. Again, tying back to OSCA, OSCA works with the judges. OSCA does not report information to us at the city. They work with the judiciary. When those types of audits come out, it was suggested that a policy be created that that information be shared with the city as the court is a function within the city providing services on behalf of this community. So that's partially completed as far as that policy goes. I can tell you as the city manager, I have not seen that yet. That's something that the court administrator and judges would need to be comfortable with before they presented that to the city for consideration. The recommendation about court staff providing training and providing an environment where not all eggs are in one basket, if you will. If you have one employee that only knows how to do a court function and they're not there, you don't want to be in that position. That's where this backup and making sure we're cross-trained and having a good awareness so that the team functions. That's court administrator and judge role, and that's completed. Closing court on specific days to allow time for that administrative and training and implementation of changes or policies and systems and things of that nature. That's showing completed. That's a judge and court administrator role. The city, the judges have the ability to close court days for certain reasons. I know that they have closed court days on certain previous to today in order to accomplish some of this and they still have that ability moving forward too. So that's something that's completed and can be can continue if necessary. A plan to address backlog. This is partially complete. So this is court functions, lies within the court administrator and judge environment. The city manager could be called upon in this recommendation if there are additional resources that are needed or other technology or temporary help. There's a whole slew of things that So think additional budget requests, things of that equipment, things of that nature that could come into play. Depending on that level of a plan to address backlog, if it gets above the city manager's authority, council could get involved, but I didn't envision it getting to that level, so that's why I represented it in that fashion. Establishing policies with respect to requests for continuances. I know there's reference to case filing, and Judge Maxwell Lopez shared some concern about a policy about case filing, and I'll be the first to admit that's not my area of expertise. I don't pretend to be an attorney, and I'm not one, so I don't know the legalities behind that. But what I understand out of that space is it's partially complete. That's a judicial function that the City Manager Council don't have involvement in. Providing the city with access to court bank accounts, that is completed. So that ties in with that OSCA system in which Show Me Courts and the court tracks their work over there and it ties into the city's accounts. Providing dedicated space for... sensitive materials in court security and the like and this is one that I skinnied down a little bit. My understanding is that's completed. Court administrator and judges worked through that. Shows the city manager here if needed but there was no request of the city manager in order to additional resources or anything that was needed in order to complete that. Providing alternate resources and information on assistive resources and programs. So this is outside the court. How can we find folks help uh... connect them to resources that's something the court already does uh... it's showing partially complete i know we're always searching for additional resources and the capacity to find that help for folks that need it so that's an ongoing uh... process uh... is what that recommendations related to uh... online request options for payment plans that's completed that's uh... part of the judicial functions so That one is put in place. So that's a good summary of what's been completed, partially completed, near completion from the recommendations that Raftelis presented. So now I'll roll into, okay, what's still out there, and then I've tried to organize this in the sense of, okay, where's the city manager? have that lead role in order to facilitate the implementation. So here you go. So implementing that formal management system, that's something in the city manager's lane that facilitate bringing together the city's court liaison, the court administrator, the judges, and ultimately could be other, we used to call it justice partners meetings, right? Police department may need to have involvement if we're thinking about dockets and restructuring and things of that nature. So that's one that it's a high priority. We need to get that done. We need to start those meetings. Increase judge on-site time by one court day per judge. And that's mixed in with the thought of having an on-call pro tem judge to get through peak workloads and get back to better days. So that's one. The city manager is recognized as a lead, but the city manager does not have the authority to to require the judges to work more, to be on-site more. That's clearly a judicial function that's left up to the judges. The council does not have the ability to require or demand that the judges be on-site or be there for more court days. The city manager and the council help facilitate that consideration. But that is purely up to the judges as to how much time they spend on site, how they structure their dockets, and how many court days they have per week. That's a judicial function determined by them working with the court administrator. So city manager has a role in that. Council will have a role in that. That's the way that's presented in the recommendation. Supervisory leadership training supervisory leadership training. That's something that we here at the city. We have been on a mission we do provide supervisors meetings and supervisors training we now have a training learning and development specialist within HR so we can connect folks with growth opportunities with good training that could be provided. So that's something that we owe to the court administrator and anybody else that is in need of that type of training. The judges can work with the court administrator as the supervisor of the court administrator on any types of training. So that's a mixed bag. The court administrator can work with the court supervisor and other staff on training. So there's numerous roles in implementing that recommendation. I don't have the council in here. That's something that we would bring through budget requests. But clearly, through our annual budgets, you would have a role in that. With regard to the recommendation on timely annual performance reviews, So this is one, you see the city manager as the lead there. That is something that here at the city, yes, we want every employee to have an annual performance review, and that's left up to the supervisors to make sure that those reviews are done. So in this case, the judges are the supervisor of the court administrator through the ordinance that's been adopted. That performance review of the court administrator is done by the judges. So the court administrator then has responsibilities to complete annual performance reviews for the court clerk supervisor and any other court employees that report to them. And then I would guess the court supervisor may have responsibilities for some court staff too. So you can see where I'm going with this. Whoever the supervisor is has responsibility to make sure an annual performance review is conducted. Okay, switching gears, then, the court administrator involvement, where the court administrator's been identified as the lead, if you will. So developing an overall policy manual for, I'll say, overall court operations. That's one that's clearly in a judicial function. Court administrator and judges would establish that. developing a culture of data-driven decisions and establishing performance metrics. This is one where data helps us and when we can see, I think about the rest of the organization and my time as a code official, And I could see how many inspections we were doing in the codes administration days. And I could gauge whether or not we needed more resources. And I could see what was coming down the pipeline. That's the kind of data that is extremely helpful when we look at resource allocation and what the data is telling us that would be extremely helpful as we help get the court to better days. So this recommendation is not intended to drive certain outcomes at the court. It's to provide data for us to manage the court and the resources that are needed, ideally, so we don't end up in another situation like we're in. Okay, and switching gears then to where the municipal judges are the lead, this is one you just heard. Promote one probation officer to a manager or a lead position. That was Ref Tellis' recommendation. Take one of the existing probation officers, make him a lead. I know Judge Maxwell-Lopez didn't feel that was the right step to take right now, and I know that through, we do have a vacancy in the probation officer position, position right now based on some changes that are taking place over there. But that's one that could be necessary, right? That's a resource request. But I think if I understand the recommendation right now, I would agree that we need to get another probation officer in place Perhaps before we look to bring on a some type of a manager or lead in that position based on workloads The city manager and the City Council is great out here But that could be an expansion request budget request resource request and that's the reason those are great out Hiring temporary help to clear backlogs and perform special projects. That, in my mind, is related to court functions. Judges and court administrator can bring forward the thoughts on hiring temporary help. I know we've had interns over there helping with some administrative things that they could be helpful with. Again, city manager, city council, grayed out. If there's resources, budget needs there, we would play a part in that. Reviewing judge standards for assigning cases to probation and public defender, clearly a judicial function. That's not a lane for us as council or as a city manager to be in that space. Re-evaluating, so this is one that's not in the, I need to make this very clear, this is not in the RAFTELIS report, but knowing that capacity is an issue and knowing that docket schedules have changed already. and that they probably need to change further, this is me just thinking. Re-evaluating the docket schedules if additional court days are established, because that will have impacts on how we support that change again. So this is one just thinking down the road. Judges establish those docket schedules. with the court administrator if additional resources are needed to support that, city manager, city council. So that's how I framed that recommendation. But I wanted to make that clear. That's not in the Raftelis report. That's just as I was going through this, thinking down the road, that would be something that would be necessary. Okay, so we get to the council involvement. And as I showed in some of those previous slides, if it's a consideration of a personnel expansion request, it's not already authorized in the budget, you would play a role in that. If it's an expansion of the current budget, that needs a budget amendment and things like that, or technology, things like that, that would likely come before you as well. The notion of the on-call pro tem judge is one, and again, this is where I know enough to be dangerous, In my understanding of a pro tem judge, if a pro tem judge is used, we need to establish what that compensation is for the pro tem judge. That's something the council would have involvement in. And then this, not within the scope of this operational review, but I know it swirls in this space, is judge compensation. It's very, very clear. That's established by the council. So that's where the council would play, have a role in judge compensation as well. Okay, so with that, now moving into some recommendations that Raf Tellis brought forward that maybe it's a pause or just we don't know that we need it given some changes that have taken place. One of those recommendations was engaging an experienced outside person for assistance. So think a retired court administrator. As you heard previously, we do have a different court administrator than when we started this operational review, and it's my understanding the court administrator is doing an excellent job in show-me courts and other things, so we've made tremendous strides in this space, and at this point in time, we don't know that it's... I'll just speak on behalf of me. I don't feel, based on what I've heard, that we need to seek that outside, experienced... court administrator position at this time, but it's always a recommendation that could be utilized if needed. Engaging an IT professional in getting, they call it show me courts, it's the OSCA program by which the court functions and reports to the state. Utilizing that technology to its greatest extent and utilizing that for reporting and other data is one that the raft Ellis recommended But again, I think with the court administrator and what we're seeing I think we're doing a better job in that space. So speaking again for myself My understanding is maybe not at this point time. Is that needed either? I Now, I referenced that the city manager and city council could be called upon. Again, that's resource allocation budget if we need to make these recommendations happen. And then the last one is reinstating the use of a courtroom podium or lectern that's in the courtroom. That's something the judge and the court administrator have full ability to do. And I don't know what that would take to reinstate that, but that's not anything that I would weigh on as city manager. So those are some of those deferred recommendations. And with that, hopefully that kind of put together a spreadsheet in a way that was better understood and can understand kind of overall status in what we have as far as recommendations and roles or responsibilities. Happy to answer questions.

Thank you, Mr. Dunning. First, I'm going to apologize in advance to my colleagues. I've had, I think, some allergies or something that's given me kind of a scratchy throat. I actually had to step out of an EDC meeting earlier today because I was coughing. So if I start doing that, just apologies in advance. It's not intended as commentary on anything we're talking about tonight. I have cough drops. I have three bottles of water. I'm going to do my best. So anyway, I have some kind of remarks prepared that I want to go through before we start going around and hearing from everyone. So I'm just going to start by saying I really appreciate the update and the work that's been done to clarify where we're at with these recommendations from the operational review. And again, really importantly, which decisions are for the municipal judges and which are the responsibility of city staff and which require action by this council. I'm sure a lot of us want to weigh in on this, and I'll open things up in a moment. But given the complexity of this issue and the many conversations we've had about it on the dais, I wanted to take some time to lay out my current thinking and the roadmap that I see for carrying this issue forward. For me, the problem that we're trying to solve is broader than how many days our current judges should be in court or what they should be paid. The question is, what does Lee Summit need in order to have a well-functioning and sustainable municipal court for the long term? As we attempt to answer that, I believe it's important to remain clear about our respective roles. Our municipal court is a separate branch of government. The judges are elected by the voters of Lee Summit, and neither the city council nor the city manager has supervisory authority over them. The judges have authority over their courts and their dockets, including setting their court and office days and performing other judicial functions. Judge Altieri made this point clearly in a recent email to counsel when she said, there is not a written city policy or ordinance about our days because it should not exist. Such an ordinance would exceed the authority of the council and is overreaching. The judges are the only people who have the authority to set our days and dockets. Sorry, to set days and dockets. I respect that independence, and I really don't believe it's the role of this council to tell the judges how to run the court, just as it's not the role of the judiciary to direct council how to conduct its legislative business. Rather, our responsibility as council is to make sure the court has the resources necessary to function effectively and serve our residents. That includes facilities, technology, administrative and support staffing, and appropriate funding. I think tonight's update showed that progress has been made through the efforts of the municipal judges, city staff, and this council, who've been working through these recommendations with a shared goal of improving court operations. But several recommendations do remain outstanding, including some that require council action. Based on what I've heard from the judges, from our staff, from my colleagues, I think one area where we have broad agreement is that we should move forward on the court's immediate operational needs now. For those items, I believe finance and budget is the appropriate place to determine what resources are needed, what they'll cost, and how we can fund them and bring recommendations back to council. As one council member put it to me, we need to get the low-hanging fruit first. That may include additional FTEs, whether clerks or probation officers or other support staff. could be technology improvements, additional temporary pro tem judicial capacity to address existing backlogs or other resources. And I strongly support addressing these immediate operational needs. We do not need to resolve every long-term question about the structure of our municipal court before we provide resources to address the problems that exist today. And as those recommendations are implemented, I think we should continue to assess whether additional operational resources are needed. This isn't a one and done. But to me, that leads us to a separate question, which is how should we evaluate the long-term structure of the municipal court, including compensation of the municipal judges? I'm going to take my water real quick. Compensation for elected officials, including the mayor, city council members, and municipal judges, was last adjusted by ordinance in January of 2024. Because our terms are staggered, the new compensation didn't become effective until May of this year, after each elected office had gone through an election. Our current ordinance requires compensation to be reviewed not less than every four years, so in the ordinary course, we would take this up again in 2028. Given the operational incapacity issues raised by the judges and documented through the operational review, I do think there's a reasonable basis for beginning a review this year rather than waiting until 2028. But I think that review should be broader than simply asking whether our current judges should receive a particular increase. I want us to step back and ask what we want our municipal court to look like for the long term within the framework established by our charter. That doesn't mean defining how our judges perform their judicial functions. Those decisions remain within their authority. But counsel does have responsibility for decisions involving the structure and resources of the court, including whether additional judicial divisions should be established and what compensation and benefits are appropriate for elected offices. To make those decisions responsibly, we need good comparative information on caseloads and time commitments, judicial compensation and benefits, the number of divisions, use of pro tem judges, and the financial impact of the different options available to us. As far as the process for that broader review, I think there are at least two reasonable options for the council to consider. We could follow our normal committee process and refer the manager to finance and budget. Or if council believes that some independent citizen involvement would be valuable, we could consider establishing a citizen-led task force similar to the housing task force and incentive policy review task force that we've been discussing this year. Maybe 2026 is the year of the Task Force and Lee Summit. I could see merit in either approach. This is inherently a legislative decision, and it would be perfectly reasonable to send this to do the work through finance and budget. On the other hand, we're potentially considering long-term decisions about the structure and compensation of an independent branch of city government. And given the mayor's recusal from this issue and the close working and personal relationships that naturally exist among members of city government, I think an independent task force could provide valuable citizen input and help reinforce public confidence that this review is being conducted carefully, transparently, and with a long-term interest of the community at the forefront. Any recommendations from a task force would, of course, come back to council for consideration and action. I'm open to either approach, and I'd like to hear what my colleagues think and how this work could best be done. What matters to me is that the review is deliberate and that we separate the long-term questions from the immediate operational needs of the court. I recognize that some of my colleagues would prefer to act on compensation immediately. I disagree with that approach, but I respect the position. I understand the argument for it. And I understand from Councilmember Pryor that she'll make a motion later this evening to bring that to a future agenda to act in a more expeditious manner. But for my own part, I'm unable to support an increase in judicial compensation taking effect during the current terms. Both the Missouri Constitution and our city charter place restrictions on changes to the compensation of elected officials during their terms. Section 7.2i of the charter states specifically, no change in compensation of an incumbent municipal judge shall become effective during that judge's term of office. I understand that there are legal arguments that additional compensation may be permissible when additional duties are imposed, and I recognize that reasonable people can disagree about whether that exception applies here. But I keep coming back to the plain language of our charter and the principle behind it. For me, that principle is straightforward. I would not vote for an increase in my own compensation that became effective during my current term, and I cannot apply a different standard to another elected official. Particularly when we have other tools available to address the immediate capacity problem, I'm not comfortable relying on an exception to that prohibition in order to act now. That's my position, but this is not my decision alone. It's the decision of this council, and I want to hear the views of my colleagues before we determine the appropriate next step. We may not leave tonight agreeing on every question, and I don't think we need to, but I do hope we can leave with a clear path forward on the things where there is common ground and a process for working through the issues where there is not. We can address the immediate operational and capacity needs, staffing, technology, Pro Tem judicial capacity, and other appropriate resources without waiting for every other question to be resolved. We can also begin a broader review of the long-term structure of compensation of the municipal court, whether council ultimately believes that work is best done through finance and budget or with the assistance of a citizen task force. I'm almost done, I promise. We have a responsibility to support the court, respect the independence of the judiciary, and follow our charter in the state constitution, and be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. And I believe that there is a path forward for us to do those things together, and I really do look forward to the perspective of my colleagues. Those are my very long remarks. Just a very little bit of housekeeping. Since I don't have the mayor's controls, I'm just going to ask when each person finishes speaking that they clear their own names so that I can see who's up next and that kind of thing. I know that we can have a respectful dialogue about this. I know we don't all see perfectly eye to eye on the exact route to get where we need to be, but I know that we all have the same goal of helping this court function. So with that, I will open it up to Council Member Pryor. I believe it's first on my list.

Thank you. Respectfully, I do not believe any of that addresses the immediate need. And the immediate need is, well, two weeks ago, two weeks ago, no, before my vacation, I got a phone call from a lady that needed to pick her child up from preschool. She was crying. She had not been seen yet. She was worried she was going to get a warrant for her arrest because she had been waiting for hours and needed to pick her child up. It shouldn't be that way in our city. We should not be treating visitors this way that may get a ticket in our city. She couldn't afford an attorney because she's a single mom. And it shouldn't be that way for people that live here. Our court system should not operate that way. And I feel like everything that's been suggested, I feel like it's just words because we've not taken any action. So at this point, I feel like it's just a lot of talk. And I don't know if right now is the time you're asking for direction. I don't know. I feel like the way we can address it immediately is getting the judges in there extra days. And the best way to do that, I wouldn't work for free. If someone was asking me to work for free, I don't think anyone in here would want to work for free. So I think the best way to do that is to direct staff for an ordinance to approve. Well, should I go ahead and read it now since you're asking for direction or should I wait during council comments?

Um, just procedurally, I think that would be for council comments, but if I'm wrong, would a motion be appropriate at this time?

You could make a motion like that at any point, essentially. I mean, it's sort of up to you and the chair.

You want to do discussion? Okay, as long as I will actually be able to do it, that's what I'm worried about.

Council Member Pryor, just to be really clear, I'm not here to block what a majority of the council wants. If you want to make a motion tonight and if there's support to put it on an agenda, absolutely. But I would like to have a chance to hear from everyone and then maybe make the motion after everybody's had a chance to speak. Is that acceptable? That works for me. Thank you. Next up, we have Council Member Funk.

Thank you, Madam Attorney Shields. I'm with councilman Carlisle. I'm looking at the implementation plan and a Priority number one. I think it was recommendation number ten. I think it's Mr. Dunning did a great job of getting this these big spreadsheets, but the words didn't get big enough for my eyes But I can pull it up if it'd be helpful. No, no, I think I can lean down and The priority number one is to increase the judges days I know judge Maxwell Lopez She provided her comments the city manager provided his comments the judges, you know Picking up three days a week each Staffs our court it goes to the more than the 5.4 days in a sense because they would both be there it would be six days I guess in a matter of speaking five days in reality. But I think the way that I'm looking at that is I can look down this dais and see a couple of council folks that I talked to when they were attempting their thoughts of, tempting their thoughts of running for election and Council Member Frazier and I had a long conversation one day about what the time commitment is. Our time commitment is spelled out that we're here at Council, you know three Tuesdays a month we have some committees that we attend and I feel like if we were asked to double that and Double our committee assignments double our liaison assignments That would be a change in duties of what we are asked to do I feel like the judges We're one brand here at the city of the summit, whether it be public works, our police department, our judicial branch, whether it be our fire department. No, it's the fire department here. But I think we all need to work together. I know it is not our duty to tell the judges what to do. We're all very well versed in that manner. But the judges have spelled out what they're willing to do. And this is beyond the duties of what They signed up for. I mean, our city is growing. It's growing every day. It's awesome. It's incredible. I think an action does need to be taken. on compensation for the judges. I think we've kicked the can down the road as far as we can go, and it is a priority number one. A lot of the things that we need to assist the judges in doing are also priority number one, but I think we can continue to do that, and I think serving the citizens of Lee Summit who elected me and put me here that I have heard from about the courts. This is important that we get this done. And Council Member Pryor, if you make a motion, I would be glad to second that motion. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Funk. My computer keeps going a little bit wonky. I think Council Member Adkins was up next, but it's showing Council Member Cravens. Council Member Cravens, do you object if Council Member Adkins goes?

Thank you, Mayor Portem. I bumped my name out. Yeah, I am in strong agreement with Council Member Pryor and Council Member Funk because this whole project, all the implementation plans that we're seeing, everything that Mayor Pritam Shields listed before, those are all fantastic things to do in the next couple of years. Those are all fantastic, they should all be done. We should figure out how to help the judges do what they need to maximize their operations, continue to hire clerks. I thought we need 16 clerks and we're at six or there's some crazy number of how many more, I mean there's a lot of work to do to help operationally. But what we are not, what keeps getting lost from this conversation is how long this has been an emergency level status with our citizens. They should not be waiting three and a half hours or four hours or five hours. There should not be 900 people per day coming through the courts. I cannot find words to say how we are like the frog in the pot that is boiling. How did it get this way and why are we not solving it immediately? The immediate step is to grant the motion that the judges requested in November which is to increase their compensation because they do have a plan to go in six days a week and three days with each other and to balance out their time in there and to speed through these dockets. Our charter... The last time that we changed anything around our courts was 1985. That's before we had a charter. 1985 was Judge Bill Lewis, who was a one judge with one day a week, and it got to be 33,000 people in the city. And he was like, hold on, I need support. I'm going to need help. And he asked for a second judge. So he got a second judge and then there was two days a week of court. And it has been that way for 40 years. We have not increased our capacity of judges or what they have to work with in 40 years. And I understand that there have been cost of living increases and that's fantastic, but that is not the same as are we allowing them to operationally increase their time and increase the services to the citizens. In that same amount of time, the police force has been more than doubled. And that's fantastic. It should be. We want to increase our public safety. We want these things to happen. But whatever it is, we are missing the forest for the trees here and not just getting our judges in. They asked for this in November. This project, this Ref's Tell Us project was already underway. They were already doing an audit because they'd been asking for a year and a half at that point. They'd been almost asking for a year and a half. Two years ago is when they started asking. So yes, the audit was underway. And then we didn't find out about the audit till December. And then it was produced in February. And then we didn't get to hear it till July. The lack of attention to the citizens and how their lives are impacted is beyond reasonable. So yes, let's do this whole spreadsheet. Let's think it out. Let's think maybe every four years we should look at population. Maybe every ten years we should add an extra day of court or encourage them to do so. Maybe we should provide resources that increase with our population over time because it cannot increase with caseload. That's what keeps us honest in making sure we're not trying to increase caseload but population matters. And so I think we should spend lots of time planning for the future and analyzing and doing salary comparisons, but you guys already did your own salary comparisons six months ago and they're probably way outdated. If we give you $105,000 tonight, that's probably too low. I think that we need to do the compensation immediately to get you into court tomorrow or as soon as we can sign the paperwork, but the other stuff should be done, but I do not trust this is going to be a speedy process. I do not accept that we're just now getting started doing a salary comp. Why haven't we done an official salary comp in two years if that's a piece of the puzzle? Why have these things not been done in two years? I do not accept that all of a sudden we're in a hurry and this is the best we can do. I think compensation comes first immediately within days, weeks, and then we dive into the rest of this and take our long slow time doing all these things but that's the missing link for our citizens so that is my so i will support your motion council member prior when you're ready thank you council member adkins uh council member cravens okay um

I really wish that this was a simple, easy conversation to have. And I know that for us newer people, it is just really disheartening for this to kind of be dumped in our laps after a couple of years of concerns. One of the things that I do want to highlight, because I think it hadn't been said yet, is the fact that We are here two years later, and then even more recent, a February audit action plan was presented. The first thing that is on this action plan list is the communication piece between our city and our court. The recommendation was for that to be solved within two months. So that meant, you know, kind of figuring out some type of plan where we can communicate better on who's kind of overseeing what's going on in the court so the city can be aware, so we can provide resources, so on and so forth. That was recommended in February. As we just saw, that's not completed. Part of why we are here today is because of that disconnect. Now, where I am having a really hard time understanding is for that to be listed as a high priority, which it is, I think we have not really gotten to the answer what the obstacle is there. Is it a matter of we're having a hard time, you know, relationships have been severed to the point no one wants to talk to each other? Is it a matter of data is not being completed so we don't really know where we stand on the city side so we can't really provide assistance and we don't know, you know, the right hand isn't talking to the left. So if we're talking about kind of fixing the capacity issue, but not also talking about how do we fix the infrastructure of Role in the courts role and how we work together so that we don't get to this place We'll find ourselves back here at some point whether it's talking about compensation Whether it's still talking about lines around the block whether it's still talking about we don't have enough staff to do the job that we need That has to be Priority number one we have to know that how to assist the courts. That's our job. I think that's our main job. If we don't know what the issues are because it's not being communicated to us or we're not reaching out or the liaison isn't overseeing what the city needs to know to be supportive, then I don't think just fixing the days in the court is going to fix our overarching problem. Now, that's going to provide relief, sure. But then we probably even could have started way back two years ago adding one day to see what that looks like, adding a pro tem to see what that looks like.

But we didn't even take any of those actions because what?

I don't know what that barrier, that blockage was. So now we are sitting here having to figure out how do we plan for the short term and the long term? Now we're here having to figure out how do we go around a charter that is in place that says this is kind of how we should govern, but then now it's an immediate need. Because, like my colleague said, we cannot have our citizens suffering because we didn't do our due diligence. And for me, that's the most frustrating part. Because now I have to figure out something in this short amount of time that's going to solve for a capacity issue in our courts that our citizens are suffering from. And it really doesn't even give us time to bake out kind of what that could look like if we had time to massage this whole issue and you know, get extra additional help in. What does that look like? We have all of these recommendations, and it's timeframes on this. Some of them are 12 months. Do we have 12 months if there's three-hour docket, you know, people waiting for three hours? We have not utilized the time that we had two years ago to put some processes or some plans in place so that we now could make a very good informed decision because then we have data to go from. We could say, well, we tried the extra day and that did give relief and maybe that fixed the problem. Or, you know, we can see one more day to this. Or maybe the one day plus the judge pro tem. But again, this is the unfortunate, unfair part for us. is because none of that pre-work was, whether it was listened to, whether it was communicated appropriately, we don't have the data or the experience that could have come from that communication to make a good informed decision. So with that being said, I personally, and I know we still have to discuss what does that look like in terms of capacity and all of that. But I personally think that while we're figuring that part out, that other part, that's broken. And we're going to, this is going to keep the problems and the issues with our municipal court if we don't figure out how to talk to each other. If we are supposed to provide resources and we're not providing those resources because we don't know the resources to provide, it didn't take them to tell us that. I mean, if we are short-staffed, we didn't need a third party to tell us we were short-staffed. We just go in the courts and see that. And then we work together with HR, with the clerk administration, and we fill those gaps. I'm frustrated. So I'm going to leave it at that. I think things have already been said that we have a capacity issue. We have to get more days or more help. So what that looks like, we probably need the experts to figure that out. Who that is, I don't know. I mean, the experts would be the people in the court, I would think. But then also, because we have a responsibility to provide resources There has to be some type of bridge there. So that's all I have right now, my comments.

Thank you, Council Member Cravens. Council Member Atkins, are you wishing to speak again? Yes, thank you, Mayor Projem. Do other council members who haven't spoken yet, does anybody want a turn before we go back around?

Council Member Frazier, do you have anything to say?

Then we'll go back around.

Turn my mic on. First of all, I appreciate the update that the city has provided in the action plan, if you would. For those of you who don't know, I spent a couple of days at the court because we wanted to see firsthand what was going on. And I will speak for most of us and those that are relatively new on the council. We did not have the benefit of the history. And we don't have the benefit of the history as to what has taken place over the last two years, over the last 10 years. So what we are going with, which is what has been presented in front of us today, Now, I will say that in November, October, I sat in the audience when, I don't believe it was the first presentation, but when the judges made the presentation last fall. My priority, I will say this, is to the citizens of Lee Summit. However we get there, I may not agree with how we get there, but that is my priority. I saw things, you know, you're right, they stayed. I mean, sometimes at 8.30 docket didn't get there until, you know, early afternoon. completely understand that. But as Mayor Pro Tem Shields said, what I've always said in my capacity is let's address the low hanging fruit. What can we, and it seems that what keeps coming to the top is the fact that we need to address the backlog. How can we address the backlog today, right? Even if we vote in an increase in compensation, is that going to address the backlog? Okay, it might. If we utilize the services of a judge pro tem, I'm calling it an interim judge, that's not going to address the backlog any different than increasing the capacity and having, excuse me, increasing the compensation and having the judges start tomorrow. We could have an interim judge start tomorrow. What I want to avoid more than anything is to have to go through this process again. It is not fair. I'm going to say for myself, I feel like you are putting us in an impossible situation because we don't have all of the information. That being said, we shouldn't take another year to come to a resolution for this. So to the extent we can do two things at the same time, I think it is incumbent upon us to do it. I recognize the proposal of the ordinance. that will work. I also recognize that if we had an interim judge, and I asked that question before and I apologize, I don't remember if I got the complete answer on that, but it seems as if that is something within our lane from a finance and budget standpoint that we could do in the interim. I want to do it right. I don't want to come back here again and have to go through this. I will back up a little bit. Initially in the action plan, there were several recommendations on things that could be done in terms of policy and process that were in the purview, in the lane of the court. be it the court administrator or the judges and whatnot. And we know that those can be improved. I saw on some of the updates that some of those have been addressed and some of those have not. So I think we need to give them time to do that so that we can see those changes take effect while we are addressing, because I think there's a difference of opinion here in terms of what we can do as a council in terms of compensation increase and what we can't. I don't know that legal has weighed in. We have different interpretations. The other thing, and this speaks to one of the gentleman's comment, we are a data, we have to be a data-driven society. We have to be. And the only two, correct me if I'm wrong, the only two jurisdictions in the state of Missouri that have an elective judge are St. Charles and Lee Summit. Correct me if I'm wrong. So those are the two, we have to look at the data there. We also look at their, we look at projected residents and how many citizens we're gonna have. And we know that that is changing. Today at 710 is going to be different next month. So we need to take that into consideration again, so we're not reinventing the wheel and having to come back. every two years to make this change. We need to make it flexible enough so that we can move forward. All that being said, I just think there are things that we will continue to do. To the point of communication, it makes absolutely no sense to me why this has been continued to go on. And whoever dropped the ball, whenever they drop the ball, we need to pick that up right now. the left is not talking to the right and we've seen at other levels of government well that simply does not work and the folks that it doesn't work for are the citizens so my suggestion is that we do have a clear plan to go forward and a plan with timelines associated with it anybody that provides an update a status says if you have a goal a goal and objective has to have a completion date, has to have a status attached to it. So if you say, we're going to do something in two months, then two months, by golly, we will get back together. We need an update on that. We need progress. So I'm all for moving forward with some interim solution to address the backlog. Because to me, that's the low-hanging fruit, to address the backlog. But at the same time, we need to work on the processes. And when I say work on it, that means the court has to work on the processes with the city as well. There was one thing that Mr. Dunning, I think, you know, the fact that we have no performance metrics or, you know, no evaluations, that baffles me. And I believe you all just got an ERP system. Workday does that. I don't know if we have the modules. You know, I've installed those before. I don't know if we have the modules, you know, that we have contracted for. But Workday does that. It's a I say it's simple if it's installed right. It's simple. But that's an easy fix. That's a low-hanging fruit. And that's something that could be addressed, I'm thinking, in this particular calendar year. So, again, we need to talk. We need to talk. And, again, I think we all have the same goal in mind. Unfortunately, it's just how we get there. And I want to ask... the judges, I want to say, we hear you. We have heard you. And I really want to do what's right. I am uncomfortable today because I don't feel like I have, again, enough information. I'm uncomfortable saying, absolutely, we're going to, you know, double your, and I'm using the word compensation, today. I'm uncomfortable doing that without any clear metrics tied to that, right? I can't just say, hey, here it is, because what I haven't heard is, okay, we're going to do that, we're going to clear out the backlog, but you can't tell me when and how you're gonna clear out the backlog, other than adding another day, which is something that can be accomplished, at least in the interim, by a judge, another interim judge. I don't know if that money is in the budget, and that's something I think for finance and budget to discuss. But again, I just think, I think we can agree that we have come together, that we understand, we know what we want to do. We know that we are all working for the citizens. We just need to come together to figure out how to do that. I don't know at this point really, I do. I don't know if we're going to have a solution today, but it needs to be addressed and we just need to have all information in front of us in order to do so. I am committed through, I sit on the finance and budget committee to do whatever we need to do. I think the next meeting is September 10th to make one of these happen. WHATEVER WE DECIDE.

THANK YOU. JUST BEFORE WE HIT ANYONE ELSE, THERE WERE A COUPLE OF POINTS THAT I JUST WANTED CLARIFICATION ON. THERE WAS A QUESTION YOU SAID, CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG, US AND ONE OTHER CITY, THE ONLY ONCE ELECTED JUDGES. I THINK THAT WAS JUST OF THE SAMPLE THAT THE REPORT INCLUDED

13 or so jurisdictions we relate to but I don't know that means that we're the only two in the state I don't I don't think that that's the case I just just want to clarify to make sure we're all working with the same that's my understanding to when Raph tell us did their review looking at pure or similar cities with similar characteristics out of that grouping there are two I Can't I can't attest to in the state. I don't know Okay, thank you and then

COUNCILMEMBER, YOU WERE MENTIONING SOME THINGS THAT WORKDAY COULD BE USED FOR. I JUST REALLY WASN'T CLEAR ON WHAT YOU WERE REFERRING TO THERE. I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE, AGAIN, THAT I UNDERSTAND WHAT YOUR COMMENTS ARE.

I'M SORRY. SO WE WERE TALKING ABOUT PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES AND DOING EVALUATIONS ON EMPLOYEE AND STAFF, AND I ABSOLUTELY THINK THOSE BELONG WITH THE JUDGES AND WITH THE COURT. BUT WITHIN THE WORKDAY MODULES, THAT IS SOMETHING, AND AGAIN, I DON'T KNOW IF WE AS A CITY HAVE PURCHASED THAT PARTICULAR PIECE OR NOT, BUT WITHIN THE WORKDAY MODULES, IT'S ALREADY THERE. THEY CAN PERFORM IT. THE ISSUE IS TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE JUDGES AND THE CITY.

SO MAYBE SOME TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES THAT WE CAN BE PROVIDING TO HELP THEM AS THEY EVALUATE THEIR STAFF AND THEIR OPERATIONS. I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE I UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT. SO THANK YOU. I THINK THAT'S FOR ME. THANK YOU. COUNCIL MEMBER CARLOW, I THINK YOU'RE THE ONE THAT HASN'T HAD ANYTHING YET. DID YOU WANT TO COMMENT BEFORE WE GO BACK AROUND?

Okay, I councilman Bradkins you were next on my list. Thank you mayor perch. I'm shields a few things that I want to Weigh in on is that I've heard a couple times that no one wants to go through this process again But I want to be clear that we should go through this over and over and over as a routine Compensation is supposed to be done every four years. Anyway, I And I don't know why it got neglected the last 10 cycles. But in future cycles, I think the population should be addressed. This is not going to be a one and done solution. We're not going to make a decision tonight and then never, ever have to touch it again. It should be touched again frequently as the city changes, just like the staff levels at our public safety, just like how they renew contracts all the time, just how our capacity increases, and then we make adjustments accordingly. So there is no such world where this is tonight's final decision and then it's over. What I do think needs to happen, and Judge Lopez, before you leave. Okay, quickly please. I think that it's, I think that, now that I was gonna have her speak, that part of the communication issue is very telling because they have not been a part of the agenda on the nights that this has been discussed. They are the directors of their departments, and by comparison, a couple of months ago when the communications department had their consultant come and spend six months assessing their department, the consultant came from out of state or online and gave the presentation, and then Ms. Dillard, who is the director of that department, followed up, and gave feedback and said, thank you very much for the presentation. Here's how we're going to implement it in our department because she's the director of the department. But for some reason, our judges are not treated with that same courtesy. They are the directors of their department. And the city liaison has not been speaking on their behalf. There is zero communication from the city on their behalf at all. And each time that this has been on the agenda, they have been ignored or looked over or not invited to, I don't know why they weren't listed as the second speakers tonight on the agenda, why they wouldn't have been included to give their own presentation or their own assessment. And I don't know whether this packet was communicated with, I don't know if your presentation included collaborating with them. I want to hear from them what they think about the operational increases. We are in the middle of a dysfunctional communication system right this second because they're not being included in this presentation. I want to hear from them when this is over. Like I would like to hear from you guys about what you think about this presentation. Can we have them come and speak? on these issues because there's a lot of, and to one more thing, Council Member Frazier, you said that you don't think legal had weighed in on this. Yes, they recused themselves and have not brought forward more council and when they did bring forward council for the $9,000, that council agreed in writing that it was okay to give a compensation increase. So the packet that was presented today, this PowerPoint, was 10 pages of PowerPoint reviewing the operational stuff, and then the very last thing on the last page was, oh, yes, and compensation, and that's not in our scope. So we're dealing with two very separate things. Operational stuff is great. Compensation, totally separate. And the only way to move forward and to keep our judges from walking out in the middle of a term, because why wouldn't they? You cannot serve 900 people per day. The citizens don't deserve that. There's nothing preventing us from granting their compensation that they requested back in November and getting that past us and then carrying forward with the rest of the operational stuff. And I know that there is a reference to our charter and how it says don't do that, but there's also six attorneys on record saying that the Missouri Supreme Court would let it slide. That it is not, that in this circumstances, It is an exceptional case. There have been multiple extra duties applied where the Supreme Court would absolutely allow this exception, not only extra duties and the fact that they're going to add on all these extra dockets, which also, by the way, it's not our job for them to tell us that. We know that they're going to do dockets because it's their job to do that, and it's very disrespectful to assume that they wouldn't. We grant the compensation, they get their bags in and they start going to work. And the Missouri Supreme Court has many, many case law examples where they approve that as an exception. The other change in duties that has occurred in the last 40 years was that they get to be in charge of the court administrator, which was not how it started out. They're in charge of the court administrator now because of the Ferguson trials years ago in St. Louis. And that impacted the Missouri state statutes, which impacted the city statutes. So now they get to be in charge of everybody. So that's extra duties that was not there when the two days of court was established under Mr. Lewis 40 years ago. So there are many, many, many duty changes that have happened that the Supreme Court says counts as exceptional duties. So there is no written, there has been no written information to tell us not to move ahead with this. So again, my point of view is to grant the compensation tonight because that's very separate than operational stuff. And then, heck yes, next time there's another compensation cycle, review it again and then again and then again because that should be a part of our scope. We should be doing that every time. and making sure it never gets through the cracks again like it was. If it's okay, Mayor Burnham, Schiphol, Shields, I would like to invite them to the podium since they have not, since they were not on the agenda, I would like to include them as subject matter experts to comment on the, you could go through each slide one at a time and talk about it. You can go through the PowerPoint. I'd like to hear your feedback. That's what I would request.

Okay, thank you, Council Member. So just to be clear, I requested an update tonight from the city manager on this report in large part because I want to know what's in the scope of the council to address and what's in the scope of the city manager to address because I don't direct the judges. I appreciate that the city manager included all of Judge Lopez's comments in the spreadsheet. And then also as we went through those recommendations, noted which ones the judges indicate are complete or which ones the judges have indicated they don't wish to pursue. So I feel like there feedback was incorporated. But I feel like at this point, the reason why I'm saying this is that I feel like the judges have made their thoughts on a lot of this really, really clear.

And so now we're at the point of trying to... We haven't talked about mere pro tem judges, like extra judges being added in half time. That hasn't come up from them. We haven't got to hear that yet.

And at this point, I feel like we're hitting the point where we have to make some policy decisions.

You're going to exclude them from talking about temporary judges coming in?

So I feel like if there's a specific question that we want to ask a subject matter expert, I'm not opposed to that. But I really did just want to understand what things are in our ability to act on right now and how we want to proceed on those. If there is some consensus on moving forward with some resources like pro tem judge time, then that would go through committee and there would be additional opportunities to weigh in on that. Again, I'm not saying that we can't have some questions addressed tonight. But just to let you know, that's why I structured the update this way is because I want to understand what we can do and what city staff that reports to us can do, whereas I don't but in respecting the judge's ability to run their courts. As far as outside counsel goes that you brought up, if there's a consensus on the dais to move forward with an increase in compensation, we're not able to vote on that tonight. It'll have to come back to us. And while that's coming back to us, I would instruct city staff to Get outside counsel to advise us on the exact Legality since the circumstances have changed time has passed for example the additional administrative additional supervisory duties There's been an increase in compensation since those were imposed so I would just I would just want an updated opinion I'm not saying that I would block anything just I would ask to have an updated opinion as we discuss those proposed ordinances and And then one other point that I wanted to make is that part of why I'm trying to separate out the question of the long-term structure of the court is because I'm focused on what our two divisions are in charge of, not what the two current judges are doing. Because if one of the judges chooses to leave that position or isn't reelected or whatever. Like Judge Jones or Judge Smith, someday someone who is not Judge Altieri and Judge Lopez will be in that seat. They will also have the ability to structure their days in dockets. They could go back to one day a week. We don't set that. So I want to say bigger picture, what is the position and what should the compensation be without regard for exactly what the current office holders say they'll do. I'm not saying that more compensation is the wrong answer. I'm just saying that what the current judge says they will do doesn't necessarily obligate the next judge. So I think that we have to kind of remove it as much as we can from that because we're just talking about what the structure of each division is and what the compensation of each division is. That's my perspective. Again, if there's consensus to move forward with this, I'm not going to stop you. I will ask staff to obtain outside counsel to make sure that we have a current up-to-date legal opinion to base, to inform decisions. But that's where I'm at on that. As far as If we have consensus, I'm trying to think. So may I ask a specific question then? Yeah, I'd rather not go through the entire presentation, but if you have a specific question, I'm sure.

Thank you. So since the opening remarks by Mayor Pro Tem Shields offered a second solution, or you spent a long time talking about your opening remarks and what you would like to achieve, and part of your recommendation was to have Pro Tem judges or part-time judges come in as a stopgap. I wish that they could go over the entire presentation because it is pretty dysfunctional that has not been included in any of these visits. However, can I ask the two of you to talk specifically on that topic? What would be the implications of keeping the two of you and then bringing in pro tem judges on top of you, and what would the timeline be if that were to be implemented? Are there judges around available to serve in that capacity? What is the local feasibility of that happening? What's your feedback?

we're not sure why the idea of a pro tem judge keeps coming around other than it was something that was mentioned in the report. I don't, We don't know why when you have two judges that have been elected by the citizens who want to come in and work, there would be a notion to grab John Doe off the street who was not elected and not chosen to do the work that your two current sitting judges are wanting to do. and are clawing at the doors to do. So not quite sure how that comes in, Lee's Summit. She did a lot of the research on the pro tem judges, so she'll have some information on that with other jurisdictions. But we've never had one. One won't be utilized unless we decide to utilize it. We don't want one. It's extra money. We have no idea why we would give anyone any more money to be here. And I think it's been introduced, frankly, by someone that doesn't like us. Well, you don't have to like us, but we were elected to oversee the judiciary. So we don't know why there would be this. I mean, it's a fair question because it makes sense. Like, well, how can we help? Can we help with the backlog if someone else comes in and helps you? Absolutely a fair question. It's kind of something that I would think would be a reasonable solution. But it's our work that we want to do, and it's our cases. And bringing in another judge just isn't going to get us there. And we cover for each other. And any time that there is a conflict, so, for example, someone threatens both of us, we're going to kill you. I don't know. I think my tires got slashed today at the courthouse, to be honest. But if there's something where we're both conflicted off, I'm going to kill both of you, well, we can't hear that case. There is a provision where that case is then sent to the presiding judge of Jackson County for reassignment. and then a judge is reassigned. We've had the judge from Raytown, for example, reassigned to our court, who comes in and sits and hears that case. So whether there's conflicts or whatnot, it's already provided for. But the idea of adding a third party and forcing that on the voters, which is contrary, it's not set forth in the charter, but it just doesn't make sense to us whenever We need to be in there. So, you did the research on those other jurisdictions, if you want to talk.

Ms. So, I really wish we were allowed to address a lot of the specifics of the audit. We are supposed to be subject matter experts for the court, not Mark Dunning. We are supposed to be subject matter experts on how the court is run, not Mark Dunning, not you all. We know how the court runs. We know how things work. We don't want to bring in additional judges to try to ... Right now, I'm the presiding judge. If we bring in a third judge, I don't even know how that would work. So are they going to start, are we going to reassign them to certain days of the week? Because the RAF tell us that we need three days a week extra. So are we going to have them start doing three days a week and then pay somebody three days a week? We are not asking you guys to triple our salaries for triple the work. We're just asking you to basically provide compensation equivalent with everybody else. I did extensive research. Nobody came back and said that research was flawed. Everything that I did in the research came back from Raftalis as they confirmed it. So providing additional outside judges, I don't even know who we would get. Tracy Fan does not have three days a week to give us. None of the judges around here have three days a week to give us. You can't just pull a random person off the street. It has to be a person and a judge. And that would have to go through the presiding judge of Jackson County. So I agree with her. I don't understand why that is necessary. I agree. To me, the most low-hanging fruit is to get us in there. It is not like we don't have a plan. It is not like it's not going to reduce the backlog. It will immediately reduce the backlog because instead of cramming 800 people or 900 people in one day, we can spread those same amount of people over five days. It reduces the backlog greatly, plus we are in there. We're in there ruling on motions and things like that. I wish I was allowed. I don't know why we're not allowed as representatives of the court, as the people who run the court, why we're not allowed to give our perspective on the report that was just given about our court and the audit that was done about our court at a huge amount of money. There was also already a study done by somebody that, thanks to Mr. Foley, we found out you guys paid nine, not you guys, but the city paid $9,000, almost $9,000 for an attorney to come in and say what we have been saying. And we keep going back to what is the law, what is the law? The law allows for exceptions. The law has the Supreme Court of Missouri and the Constitution of Missouri set forth certain rules. We have adopted a charter. We cannot circumvent what the Supreme Court has said in Missouri, and a number of times, over and over again, they have said additional duties, there can be compensation for additional duties. So as she said, we are willing to come do the additional duties. You had two judges who I'm quite sure would not come here and lie to you about what the law said. For some reason, that is lost on me how we keep going back to that. Two judges came here and spoke to you And they both said the exact same thing. Judge Fannin-Raytown is elected. They've had to increase her compensation multiple times during her last 25, 27 years in office. I said this last time. She said it can be done, and it has been done multiple times. So I don't understand why that keeps coming back to being the reason for not moving forward. As several of you said, this has been going on for over two years. I did email you over two years ago. I said, please help us. We are drowning over here. Nothing has happened. We have not gotten any more employees. We are in the process of getting one new employee. But in the meantime, guess what? We've lost another secretary. We've lost another court clerk. So we have five court clerks right now. And we were scraping by with six. And one of the ones that left was one of the ones that knew the most because she'd worked in other locations. So now we have five. And while we are trying to get somebody else in there right now, now we have two positions to fill because luckily we have one more position. But we've lost a probation officer. So now we have two probation officers. So we are continuing to drown. And I don't see if sending it to finance and budget an additional time is going to do any good. When we went to finance and budget, You said yourself, we can't do anything because of this law. And you guys kicked it back to council, and here we are. Now we're here over two years later. I understand somebody was here a couple weeks ago and said the city's now gone to 113. That's like 6,000 more people committing 6,000 more traffic offenses since we were here the first time. Since we did our budget, the preparation that we did was based on numbers from 2024. The numbers that Ref Talis used are from 2024. We are continuing to grow. We are continuing to expand. The court is continuing to see more and more cases, more and more traffic tickets, DUIs, assaults. You know, it's still a very, very safe city. We only had two murders the whole last year. I mean, we have a very, very safe city still. But we do have a lot of traffic tickets. We do have a lot of speeding tickets. We are inundated with work. We cannot, on the two days that we're there, we cannot handle everything that needs to be done. We have our court supervisor and our court administrator. They would love to come down here and tell you if you would allow them to speak about how dysfunctional the court is. We had both of those judges. We had outside attorneys, our probation officers, come and tell you we are begging you for help. I can't believe we're here begging you. And we are literally begging you. We've been begging for two years for some kind of help. Yes, there's a huge disconnect. We have been put in a silo. and we have been ignored. The whole time I've been here, it has been horrible. We do not have help that there's a huge disconnect between us and the city. And that is very true. Several of you mentioned that. And that has not gone anywhere. That has not gotten any better. You know, we were basically not invited to a function where our entire staff was invited, the entire legal department, our probation officers were all invited to a party. We were not invited to it. They gave awards to our staff and the reason given to us by the city as to why we're not invited was because we're not employees. Even though we run the court and we, then guess what? Same thing happened the second year. We were not invited to the second year, to these awards ceremonies. So the reason was, hey, you're elected officials. So we don't understand the disconnect. I'm sorry? Oh, yeah, and we've been to budget and finance several times. Oh, and okay, yeah, and she's mentioning there were budget meetings we didn't even know about behind our back. We didn't even know that they were happening, and there was significant issues going on in the court. We were not even contacted by the city. They didn't explain to us what was going on until there was a huge, huge issue. We knew nothing about it. They were having all these meetings. It was going on for months and months affecting our court. We were not even consulted or... notified by the city, by the finance department, or anything. So you are very right. There is a huge disconnect. I don't know how to fix it because we have been asking the city for two years for help. And if you guys kick it off again tonight, kick it in a different direction, it's going to be another months and months and months and months before something gets resolved. So I hope that you all will, you know, if you would like to hear from them, they would love to come down here and talk to you. And I don't know how you can have a discussion about something affecting one branch of the court without allowing the people that run that one branch of the city to... to have a presentation without allowing the people who actually run that branch of the city to come respond or to come. And we don't necessarily agree with everything in that report. We necessarily agree, and we told you that in the beginning. We don't necessarily agree that everything in that report has to happen. Did you have something else?

No, I think you killed it.

So, I mean, that's where we're at, you know, and, you know, it's... From day one, for the last two years, we have been ignored. And the citizens are the ones that have suffered and have to spend three hours of time. You had the attorney that came a few weeks ago that's handicapped. He had to leave because he couldn't even find a parking spot. So I'm quite sure, I don't understand if you guys, if we're not being believed or if we're just, I don't know what this situation is. We've had judges down here and they have told you how bad it is in Lee's Summit and they go all over the place and they've never seen anything like Lee's Summit. And why we have not done anything in the last 40 years, especially the last two years that we've been asking, is beyond me. Now, I took extensive notes, which apparently I'm not allowed to go through the presentation and discuss with you. So, but I would, I guess, use the word beg. You guys to please do something tonight that will get us in there so that when we get in there and we can start picking and, you know, reducing and we're not... We're telling you we're going to do it. I don't think anybody is going to run for a job where it's been held for three days a week and then say, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to only come one day a week. And, you know, we've got voted on just like you do. So if we come up here and tell you what we're going to do, and then we're like, thanks for the money, thanks for the additional compensation, but we're not going to do those additional duties that we promised to do by having additional court dates, we are going to be run out of town. So you have anything else? Nope. Thank you.

Thank you, Judge. To kind of reiterate something that I said earlier, I think we really are all in agreement that we need to address operational issues at the court. The reason why, part of why I didn't feel that additional updates from the judges were necessary because I understand, I think they've made their position really clear. They've established a problem, they have explained what that is, and now it's up to the city council to decide what resources should be allocated to help address that. One possible solution is to increase the compensation of the current incumbent judges. There are other possible solutions, and I'm trying to find out what the consensus of the council is as to what solutions we want to pursue. So I understand and respect what the judges are saying, but I'm trying to find out what the consensus of the council is so that we can actually start taking those actions that need to be taken. Council Member Badkins, do you have additional questions?

No, thank you.

OK.

Council okay, I think councilmember Carlisle is on and she has not spoken yet So I'm going to go to her and then we'll continue going around to folks who've already had a chance to speak Thank you So first I do want to say that I have heard everything the judges had to say numerous times now and I I get it that you're tired of repeating yourself I do get it and it's not that I personally don't believe you and what you're saying and what's happening in the court and My issue is that regardless of what case law or what argument can be had by attorneys or what any of that is, our charter specifically says we cannot give an elected official a raise, any elected official, a raise during the term in which they are seated. So we can go through the process of getting you a raise and doing all those things, but it won't take effect until both of you have sat for election again. That's how I see it. And that's not me interpreting the law. That's me reading the plain language of the charter. So that's where my issue comes in. I know that we continue to discuss this and discuss this, but I do agree with Mayor Pro Tem and there is a process. The reason that this process needs to go to budget is because I know many of you know the budget place we are in and we have to figure out what if we have any additional funds and if we do, where are we going to get those from? to help the courts and give them more people more staff more space more whatever it is they need so that's why it has to go to budget um as far as everything tonight i appreciate the update from staff um on this iap i appreciate the judges comments that were also on this that they emailed us but i really think it's time to move on past this so I mean, if there's anything obviously anybody else has to say, let's let it be heard, but I think we need to get our motion on the floor if that's what we're going to do, and let's move on. Thank you.

Thank you. So if there are more questions, I'm very happy to continue going around if there are more discussion, but if we're going to continue to kind of repeat the same points, then it might be time to just have a motion, see where we're at, and then... Yeah, so I think everyone has spoken at least once. Do you guys want to continue going around having this? I am totally fine with that. I have a couple questions, please. But if there are some additional questions, absolutely. So, Council Member Pryor, you're next.

Thank you. Okay, this is actually for the judges. If you guys could come back up here, please. Just a couple things. I want to... I feel like... even even even if anyone votes yes for this motion, I'm going to make tonight that is addressing them being in the court and and making things more functional and better for the people that live here and that is not saying that we can't still have discussions and figuring everything else out because absolutely there's a lot to figure out but i feel like this is that the most pressing need the most eminent need right now and that is getting them into the court for more days so i just don't want to touch a little bit on that uh... it was mentioned Somebody would come in and possibly do one day a week. What would that look like for people elected after you? What would that look like one day a week? They'd be in the same situation you guys are in. That wouldn't be a possibility.

That's not a... No.

Okay, so what I'm asking is... Can I interject just really briefly?

Oh, of course. No, I... I think to clarify what we're talking about is what has been suggested, and this would have to actually go through committee to see what it would look like, but is as a temporary bridge Okay. If that's not, that's fine.

So what I mean is it's not possible. So you guys being in there one day a week has gotten us into a mess. I mean, you guys aren't in there enough. So what I'm saying is it's not the likelihood of, say you guys don't run again and we elect someone else, they come in, they say, oh, I only want to be there for one day a week. It's not feasible. That's not something that can be done. There's too many cases. That's not something that we should even be worried about because that's not something... That's going to be done. They're not going to just be able to be like, okay, I just want to be in there one day a week. So...

So, yeah. It's a weird thing in that And tonight, we have not provided all of our thoughts. And frankly, you might love us all day long. Nobody loves us at 8 o'clock at night when this has just been going on and on. Nobody wants much of our thoughts at this point. But Mr. Dunning presented, which we thought it was interesting, the Municipal Court Implementation Action Plan. And he reports to the legislative branch that we should be the ones with a plan working with the city and council member Cravens was spot on with the lack of communication. But I feel like part of this confusion, and I just, we keep fielding weird questions. Like there must have been something mentioned to make you ask about adding another judge. You know, there's a lot of conversations going around where, that are, that are just easily solved by us getting in there. You can play the what-if game all day, but if a judge in the future, we've told you what we're going to do, but same thing, what if you have a council member come in who doesn't do anything? Everybody's going to hate them. They're going to get kicked out. We actually have a higher standard. We have judicial canons that we have to answer to that govern us and whether or not we are responsible impairing the confidence in the judiciary. So we have to answer to that. We have Missouri Supreme Court reporting requirements that we have to answer to. We have all kinds of things that structures our behavior that I wouldn't expect you to be aware of because it's not your wheelhouse, it's ours. Like I have no idea how you do your job. So there's bringing in anyone else would just be pointless. If nothing happens here tonight, we're done, we're dead. This will die in budget and finance. If anyone hasn't figured that one out, then I don't know how to spell it out for you. This whole thing will be done if nothing happens tonight. And I'll just, I got all kinds of notes, but probably don't get to talk about them. But we did the research. We came back that we needed to be here spot on with what the study said. We researched the law. We came spot on with what the outside attorney and the other judges and stuff that have been here. We did the salary research. We gave exactly what the reasonable compensation is, average, not higher, not lower, nothing to the other cities.

Okay, so we shouldn't worry about it. I know it was mentioned up here, but you being... judges being elected after you, we shouldn't worry about one day a week. That's not a worry that we should have because that's not something that would sustain the court if they just came one day a week. Okay, I just wanted to clarify that.

They're going to get in so much trouble with the state.

Okay, good. Perfect.

Sorry.

And that... Go ahead. I mean, not council member, sorry, Judge Lopez. And then my other question is, okay, say we brought in a pro tem judge. it obviously wouldn't be permanent. So as soon as they left, how long would it take to get back into this situation?

Well, the reality is Ralph Tellis did a very, very expensive study, and they said with the number of tickets being written, and we all know, I mean, everybody said how great Lee's Summit is tonight, and it's great, it's growing, it's, you know, everything, great things are happening. With the number of people driving through our cities, shopping in our areas, living in our cities, the increased population has continued to increase the number of tickets being written. So if we... We will never be able to go back to two days a week as the city continues to grow. The police officers, unless they stop writing tickets, unless people stop getting in trouble, we're never going to be able to go back to two days a week. So bringing in somebody part-time to get us through the backlog, it's not that we have a backlog because we're behind. There's a backlog because we can't because of the number of cases that we're seeing. And so that is not going to change unless people decide to start moving out in great droves or something. So that's not going to change. So just having somebody temporarily is really not going to fix anything.

Okay, that was the clarifying answer that I was looking for.

Thank you so much.

That's all.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member, I have Council Member, sorry, I have Council Member Cravens and Frazier. I don't see Council Member Adkins, but I know she had wanted to chime in earlier, so I'm not sure who's in what order. Council Member Adkins, are you still wanting to chime in at some point?

Okay.

Okay. Council Member Cravens is next.

Okay. So, my question, so that we are not kind of just stuck with the the motion of the ordinance is going to be presented and we kind of can see what other path forward we're going to take. I want to be kind of clear here. So we'll have a motion that is, um, suggesting that we vote on having more days for the court. Okay. Or more. Oh, compensation. Cause you guys create your days. So compensation to have more capacity. If we cannot come to that today, and we have to kind of talk this out, whether it has to go through budget and finance, because our budget and finance chair said we have to find the money for these things. It's not as easy to say, you know, here's the money, go. We have to make sure that we have it. That's being fiscally responsible. It seems like the judges are saying we don't even want to explore the option of a pro tem. But if that provides relief, why would that not be on the table to give you some type of relief in the interim if we have to kind of figure this thing out just a little bit longer because I want to be clear in what I vote for. And just so we know, I 1000% think that we need more capacity. That is not the question for me. I also want to make sure that as we are making this decision, this decision can actually be made. You know, we can say, okay, let's just give this extra money compensation, but If our budget doesn't allow for that to take place tomorrow or right now, and we have to plan for the next term, then we have to respect that process too. But in the time being, I want to know if we can also commit to saying within a certain amount of time that you are going to get relief, whether that relief is in you know, us both meeting each other halfway. Maybe, you know, you increase a day or a half a day both and we also get a pro tem. I don't know what that looks like. So don't, but I'm just saying options. I don't like the fact that, you know, we're saying the pro tem is out the question because what I do know is that as I'm looking at the list of cities that the third party had considered, you know, there are, More than, you know, there are several of them who operate with two judges and the pro tem, which allows them to have more working days. But I also acknowledge that there are, of all of the two judge cities, we're the only ones with two days and everybody else has more. So that's glaring and that's obvious that we need you know, more days. So my question right now to you, to the judges, is what, if we can't get you to where we know you probably, and you know you need to be right now, will that still, is that an option that will provide some relief for the courts immediately, or at least in this temporary space until we can bake out

So you made quite a few points. So one of them was, do we have the money right now? We believe we do. We are sitting on several hundred thousand dollars of money that we have not forfeited for many years. I think I mentioned this to somebody the other day, but I just forfeited $30,000 in one day just because I just wanted to see how we could do it. Now, the clerk that spent all the time doing that is no longer with us, so I don't know how we're going to be able to do that before, but a lot of these dockets that we don't have time to have, like the bond forfeiture docket, would bring in additional money to the city that we are not able to give right now. Pretty much the money that comes in is the money spent on You know, we're not a money-making entity, but the money that comes in is enough to sustain us, according to Ruff Tellis. As far as whether it can be done now or not, you guys took the time to, and I mentioned this earlier, but it got brought up again. You all mentioned the time. You took the time to hire an attorney, paid her almost $9,000. to come and say, yes, you can increase the judicial pay without an intervening election for additional duties being imposed on the judges. That was somebody that you all chose to come in and tell you that. We also have two local judges that came in that are very knowledgeable in the law that both said that. And as we said, it doesn't matter what the law says. It is how it was interpreted by the Supreme Court. of Missouri multiple times have allowed for exceptions to that law. So yes, it can be done. Yes, it can be done now. There's no reason we have to wait six more years until she's reelected again before those can kick in. Again, I don't understand why that keeps continuing to be brought up by people who are not attorneys when people that you all pay a lot of money for and people that are attorneys that are judges, you've got four judges saying the same thing, why that continues to be an issue. But, you know, as far as getting a pro tem judge, we would have to figure out how do we utilize pro tem judge. Now, cities use pro tem judges, they are... What's the word I'm looking for? They can be somebody just like a substitute, like she was mentioning earlier. Somebody that can come in and just do a docket for an hour or two. But we don't even cost the city any money as far as that goes. We cover for each other. We have never had to have a pro tem judge because one of us could not be there. The pro tem judges that we have used are for very specific reasons and for a very specific case. We would have to go locate somebody who could come in. Then you're dealing with three judges in a very small area. Nobody uses three judges in our size city. If you get into like Kansas City, Wichita, some of the other bigger cities that I did in the study, they have pro tem judges that they are hired to come in half a day maybe just to do like a domestic violence docket or something like that. But nobody uses pro tem judges consistently just for backlog. The people that did the study are from California where things are very, very different there. So I don't even think that's really an option for us with how the court system works around here. Because Raftelis is saying we need be having 5.4 court dates per week. So that would mean that her and I would continue to do one, and we would have to somehow organize and restructure the whole court to have somebody else doing three-fourths of the work. So I don't think that that is even a possibility, and it's not going to get us caught up. It's just going to help people having those cases heard on different days a little quicker, which is what we would be doing if we were there all the time.

Well, and I would advance, like, who is it? We were elected and chosen. So what if you get some whack job who comes in here? Things are worse. We've gone so far backwards if that were to happen. You know, and there's something in the law about predictability and being able to understand or expect certain things to happen. Then you've got someone who I can only think would have to maybe be a brand new judge that we would crown a judge or something and then try to figure out what they're going to do on their rulings. I think it would honestly create mass confusion at the courts. At least some of us never had one. I just go back to the presentation said we need to be there, and we already did the study on the salary.

Okay, cool. Thanks for that. So, I mean, that's all I have, but I just feel like if we are going to have this motion that we'll talk through today, you know, if it passes, great, then I think that solves that. But then if it doesn't, we have to have some sort of backup. And I don't know, you know, if that means that's today or immediately, you know, whether we have to do closed session. I don't know what that looks like, but I don't think that it's fair that we keep wasting, you know, time discussing the same thing, and that is prolonging the citizens' wait time as well. And so...

And if you guys, I know somebody said that you didn't have enough information. I mean, we can give you whatever information you need. We've, you know, we've had the Raftella study. We've had our presentation. We've been to finance and budget multiple times. So if you need any additional information tonight, but if we were to get in there, as I said in my three minutes, because I didn't even know that we were going to allow it. And luckily, you know, you pushed and we finally got allowed to come up. But I I think if we can get in there and start reorganizing and then, as she said, this is not going to be a problem that goes away because we are going to continue to grow. At some point, when we're 140,000 people, if you look at my initial study, 100% of those courts are having courts five days a week and most of them have at least two judges working five days a week. We're going to need a new courthouse. We're going to need, as the police department keeps adding more police officers, we're going to need to have you know, more capacity other than the one courtroom that we have right now. So this is going to have to be a bigger discussion and we're going to have to be talking with the city on once we get these dockets restructured, what is that going to look like for how many more probation officers are we going to have and things like that. So it's going to be a continuous process that you're going to have to go through down the road. It can't just, you know, it's not like a one and done where we fix this tonight and then nothing else is going to have to go forward.

Thank You councilmember councilmember Frazier is next on the list We in comments Questions are you I'm sorry.

What was your question councilmember? I said are we in comments or questions?

Oh It's this isn't a public hearing so you can make comments or ask questions. Okay.

Okay first of all Stop saying that somebody doesn't like you and that's why we're not ignoring you. We are trying up here. We are. So that is one thing. The other thing is, regardless of what we do, we have to, even if we say, hey, we want to grant you that, the additional compensation, or even if we want to have additional Judge Pro Tem or interim judge, we still have to find the money for that, too. I think everybody is trying to do the right thing, and that is to allow some relief. You said it yourself. We want relief. So that's why we're asking about what can we do. We know, okay, that, you know, if we even voted today and they approved the compensation, that's not going to happen tomorrow. If we approve additional judge, that's not going to happen tomorrow. We're just trying. We're just trying to come up with options. That's all we're trying to do. Budget and finance has to look at, regardless of what we do, it has to go through budget and finance anyway. Right? We have to find the money. If we don't, I mean, we can say, yeah, but we have to find the money from somewhere, right? Even if you guys have it, we have to approve it or budget and finance has to say, yay, or the city has to say, yay. And it is not disrespectful for me to ask for what is going to happen when we approve this. It's not disrespectful. I can't say, hey, double my compensation and... I'll tell you later what I'm going to do about it. That's a fair ask. And you guys have responded. I appreciate that. But that's a fair ask. It is not being disrespectful at all. So the other thing is... I don't think we were trying to say you were being disrespectful at all. No, no, no. I knew you guys for it. The other thing is... We are looking for direction. You guys are attorneys. You run your court, and that's exactly who needs to run the court. What we don't have up here is, in my opinion, legal, when I made the comment about where legal weighs in, we don't have that. You yourself said that we've had different emails, and that's BS before Sherry. different emails that have come back. Our attorneys recuse themselves, so who's providing that city legal perspective? That's what we want. Not that we don't believe it, because we do, but we're just looking for direction from both sides. And Communication is pivotal. I mean, honestly, I think we need to get into a room and figure out the process.

And if I may, Bill Barrett, back in November when he gave that presentation, he said we need an attorney that will show up that can answer us those questions. That has yet to happen from last November. And our legal department is not recused from writing ordinances that you direct them to make. They work for you. So if you guys direct them to write an ordinance tonight, they have to write the ordinance at your direction with the terms that you specify. Okay.

And they've written the last two on our compensation, same department. So it would be no different. You said they've written the last two that adjusted our compensation back in 16. And then I guess back in 2022, it's the same thing. Not being asked for legal opinion, but rather, hey, can you write this is what we want. We fail to see how anybody else needs to be paid to do that.

And we certainly appreciate the predicament that you guys are in. And I think one of you said, you know, this is getting dumped on us. We agree. We would have liked to have this done several years ago. And, you know, it's really kind of demeaning to have to come here and beg for something that is for benefit of the city. This is not for me. I'm not going to be here in 10 years. You guys are probably not going to be here in 10 years. She won't be here in 10 years. This is a problem at the court that needs the city council to fix. We can't fix this by ourselves. We asked in November, I said, please collaborate with us. Let's get something figured out. And we're in the exact same position we were. Except the cities have under out almost $100,000 now for all these additional studies and attorneys recommendations about the court itself Nothing has changed for us. We're in the exact same position and now we have even less employees that we did before Thank You chair councilmember Frazier you saw the floor do you have any other questions or comments No, I'm done.

Thank you

And again, just to reiterate, if there's consensus of the body to move forward with immediate compensation, which is the item which we had outside counsel to advise on, I'll make sure that we get outside counsel in to advise as needed. If there wasn't consensus for that, the question of whether to give a raise after a term, there's no question that we have the authority to do that. So I don't want us to spend money on outside counsel. until we know that there's something we actually need an opinion on. But I'm not saying no just to figure out where we're at first. Council Member Funk is next and Council Member Adkins is after him. Council Member Pryor is asking if she should go ahead and make a motion. Council Members Funk and Adkins, do you want to comment again or do you want Council Member Pryor to make a motion and then speak to the motion?

I have a quick question and then I'm good with the motion. Just Google research, a pro tem judge seems to be about $650 to $1,000 a day paid based on their experience. So we're looking at, if you split some hairs there, we're looking at between 48 and $52,000 a year to meet what this report says the city of Lee Summit needs to do, and that is 5.4 days a week. So they're each here one day a week. So we would need someone here the other three days a week, which would basically be the term of adding another judge that is not elected, that wouldn't play a role in this court staff supervision, probation officers supervision. Do you feel that is, am I saying that correctly, that this person would just show up, do dockets, and go home?

Yes.

Just for everybody's clarification, that's the cost ramification for adding a pro tem that would not have anything to do with the operations of the court would cost us, say, between $48,000 and $60,000 a year.

To me, what the audit says, that we would be there one day a week, they would actually be there two.

But technically three. Because this is 5.4. If you're their one and she's their one, that's two to make the five. They're going to be there three days a week. They're going to be there more than you. Close in that nature, depending on what kind of caliber of pro tem judge that we would, not we, that you would go get. But I just wanted to share that information. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Council Member Adkins, did you have additional comments before a motion is made or did you want to comment once a motion is made?

Yeah, I mean, I can do it afterwards too, but I just wanted to point out that we do have, we did hire counsel and they did say it was okay to do it despite the charter. And so the emergency notion of getting the compensation done is something that they recommended that we go ahead and do. They did say that was okay, as did all the other judges. In terms of the finance and finding the money, as Judge Lopez already said, this is a self-funding court, and the funds are in there. So we might have to give direction to the staff to type it into the budget. But you're self-funding, and there's money sitting there that's not been allocated yet. So I think that the bump in salary, which would only drip out. I mean, it's not going to be a lump sum that happens in one day. It's going to drip out over two-week periods for eternity. The budget in the next several months would not be, I mean, we are self-funding, so there would not be an impact on the larger budget. What we would have to figure out is all the extra clerks and the bailiffs and all the other probation officers, which you do definitely need, which does impact budget, but that is something that we should go through finance and budget for after we stop the bleeding. Stop the bleeding tonight, get the compensation done so they can get in there, and then spend lots of time in finance and budget flushing out all their operations and flushing out the clerks and adding on extra people and getting you up to full capacity. But tonight is about stopping the bleeding and then carrying forward with all the rest of the stuff and hashing it out over and over until it's been exhausted. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Adkins, before council, I gave you a resolution with some, a bill with some blanks in it. Can I have, I had only printed one copy, so I'm just gonna ask for that back from you.

Do you all need us any longer or should we sit back down?

Yeah, if there's additional questions, we'll bring you Councilmember prior. This is purely for your convenience. I took the last ordinance That we passed for compensation. I took out all the language about mayor Okay I'm just giving it to you for use. I took out the language about mayor and council put in blanks. So if you want to say, I want you to write an ordinance like this, but filling in blanks for amounts or effective date, it's just for your use because I want to make sure we have a productive conversation.

Okay. Thank you very much. So I guess, does that mean I can do this? We need, we have to go to the bathroom. So we're going to, I'm going to hurry.

Actually, can... I promise, promise, promise we will hear this motion. Can we take a five-minute recess so that everybody can use the restroom and then we can discuss the motion when we come back in five minutes? Good? Okay. We're going to take a five-minute recess, which will bring us back here at 8.32. Thank you.

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, Third 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, that 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 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 on 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 and 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.

So we are calling this meeting back to order. I believe before a motion is made, Councilmember Adkins had requested if the court administrator could come up and give any thoughts on the use of pro tem judges by the court before we move on to this next topic. If not, that's fine. But if you'd like to give any additional comments on that, thank you.

So my name is Amanda Squires. I'm the court administrator. I have with me Katie Robinson, who is our new court supervisor. We just wanted to provide a little bit of feedback regarding the pro tem judges that were being discussed. I think one of the things that is being missed in this discussion is the administrative backlog that a pro tem judge would create. With the two judges that we have, I think you've noticed they're very different. They like things differently, and that weighs on all of our clerks because we have to do things differently for both of our judges. So introducing a third judge means someone else that we have to learn how to do things differently for. And that judge, whether they're a judge somewhere else or a brand new judge, has to learn how our system works. Our judges already know that. They're familiar with how our systems work. They're familiar with our staff, with our intricacies, with all of that. And they're going to be able to help us do that. There's also the matter of assigning all of those cases to that new judge. I will tell you that I still come across cases to this day that are assigned to Judge Tobin because they never got reassigned to Judge Lopez. Because that is such a huge backlog to simply move those cases over. It seems like a simple thing to do. It probably should be a simple thing to do. But in practice, it's not. And so that creates an additional backlog by just having a different judge in that seat. I'm gonna let Katie add more. That was all that I had on the top of my brain, but I think she had something else.

Could you just state your own name for the record as well?

My name's Katie Robinson and I'm the new court supervisor. I used to be and still do the duties of a probation officer for the court. I've been working here for about seven and a half years. And I was gonna say that Well, I understand your intention. The practical application of that would be extremely onerous to the clerks and the staff. There's a lot of extra paperwork. I think Mark, Mr. Dunning, indicated that OSCA, Office of State Court Administrators, is involved in the court. And they have a lot of documents that we use on a regular basis. And every judge that we have has a signature and they have to have their name on all the letterhead. And it's a monumental task to get all of that changed and added. Not to mention, you know, There are different, whenever you're making the docket entries and making the notes about what this judge ordered or what that judge did, you have to pick the right judge for each case and adding more judges would make that more onerous on the staff.

Thank you.

Thank you.

OK. I don't see anyone else on my docket to speak right now. So I think that Council Member Pryor, if you wish to make a motion, you're welcome to.

Thank you. I had to pull up my notes out because I've been working on this. All right, so I'm going to read it from my notes app. Based on the findings and recommendations contained in the Raftelis Municipal Court Operational Review, I would like to direct staff to prepare an ordinance for council consideration addressing municipal judge compensation. The Raftelis study identified a weekly judicial workload equivalent to approximately 5.4 court days based on new case filings and pending cases. The study recommends increasing judge on-site time by one court day per judge. Under the proposed schedule, Lee Summit would move from two court days per week to four court days per week, with both municipal judges on-site three days per week to provide the additional court capacity and dockets. The study characterizes its staffing recommendations as conservative and concludes that the court needs additional capacity. The judges have indicated that they are prepared to meet an even greater workload up to six days per week. I believe that if we are asking our municipal judges to provide additional court and onsite time in response to this identified workload, they should be fairly and appropriately compensated for that work. I move to direct staff to bring forward an ordinance establishing municipal judge compensation of $105,502 per judge annually. along with all of the benefits and allowances they currently receive. This is consistent with the request of the judges in their November presentation. I am not directing staff as to the specific legal language or structure of the ordinance, nor am I seeking to direct the judges in the exercise of their judicial functions. I am asking staff to bring forward the appropriate legislative action concerning compensation consistent with the city's responsibility for judge compensation and funding of court operations. The Raftelis study itself identifies the city as responsible for settling compensation of judges and funding court operations. Please have the proposed ordinance placed on a council agenda for consideration within the next 30 days so that council can take action on this matter. Thank you.

Councilmember prior just Since I think this is obviously one of the major areas of debate. What effective date would you want the new compensation to have?

So do I need to have an effective date or do I can I leave that up to the mayor on as long as it's oh Do I need an effective date for the compensation?

or that would like would you want it to be effective as of October 1st November 1st or 2030 like what so I guess that depends so if it's within

If they bring the ordinance within, and the reason I say that 30 days is that way it gives the mayor some flexibility with our agenda within 30 days. So it's September 18th, I mean, it's August 18th. So I guess I would like an effective date of would anyone want to weigh in? I mean, is there a date?

I want to say maybe within so many days of the adoption of the ordinance, just so that we, like, I think that would give staff enough direction of what we're. staff, would that give you an understanding of what's being requested to be effective within two weeks of final adoption of the ordinance?

Is there a date that makes sense better than other dates, Mr. Head?

I understand we can't backdate it. Backdated compensation is not allowed. Well, that's why I'm saying within so many days after adoption.

It fully depends on when it ends up in front of council as far as what it is. I mean, you could set it for a date certain, assuming that it's going to get to the council prior to that date. If you wish to, or you could as the Mayor Pro Tem suggested, it could be within so many days of adoption. Either way is appropriate. So you could say October 15, November 1, 14 days after adoption. Any of those would probably be doable.

Are you asking is it me or mayor? It's your it's your motion. So I was asking you to clarify the motion I think I think the next pay period after adoption Seems I think that seems a lot.

I think that seems like a good Okay Okay, I think that staff does that give you adequate notice to understand what you're being asked to do Okay, we have a motion by councilmember prior and a second by councilmember funk. Do we have discussion on this motion? I I'm not seeing anyone dialing in. I will just reiterate that I am here to facilitate this process. I don't feel that I can support this motion. I don't think it's consistent with the language of our charter, with the language of our state constitution. I understand that reasonable people can disagree about whether an exception exists, but I can't support it. It's not a policy that I could support, but I will facilitate having whatever meetings we need to have if there's consensus with the council to move forward on this. So those are my comments. Council Member Adkins, do you have comments? You're chimed in on my screen.

Thank you. Yes, and I would like to reiterate that I think the purpose of the charter is to serve the residents of Lee's Summit. And I think that when the charter was written, they did not intend for us to sit with the citizens in this environment and withhold an immediate reaction. I wish it had been done sooner. I wish it had been done multiple times over the last 40 years. I'm not sure why it wasn't. But I'm here to move forward and stop GAP and fix the problem that's in front of us and move forward, but not keep continuing the problem over and over. I would like to vote yes, move it forward, and then continue to adopt what's there in the spirit of the charter, which is to serve the residents. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Does anyone else wish to chime in? Just a technological question. I have had the ability to clear speakers and that kind of thing. Will I be able to see the votes if we do voting by device, or do we need to do a voice vote on this?

I have made you chair, so you should be able to see everything.

Okay. Then I would call for the vote. Looks like all votes all votes are in the motion passes by a vote of five yay to nay and one recusal So that will come to an agenda for discussion sometime within the next 30 days That takes us to resolutions which the mayor is not recused on so I will go and get him so he can continue leading this meeting I

Thank you Mayor Pro Tem Shields for facilitating.

I'm trying to log on. Can you go ahead and read the resolution, please?

Resolution number 26-15, a resolution canvassing and declaring the results of the August 4th, 2026 election on whether or not to impose a stormwater management sales tax of one quarter of one percent authorized by section 644.032 of the revised statutes of Missouri for the purpose of providing funding for stormwater management and flood mitigation for the municipality of Lee Summit.

Thank you. We have resolution number 26-15. Motion has been made to advance and adopt by Mayor Pro Tem Shields. We have a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Thank you. Please record the vote. All right. Takes us to item number eight on the agenda, proposed ordinances forwarded from committee. Mayor Pro Tem.

I move for second reading bill number 26-140 in ordinance for amendment number two of the budget for fiscal year ending June 30, 2027 is adopted by ordinances 10400, 10401, and 10402 by amending the authorized expenditures for the city.

Thank you. We have a motion for second reading of Resolution 26-140 by Mayor Tim Shields and a second by Council Member Atkins. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. There we go. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Move for adoption of bill number 26-140 and ordinance approving amendment number two to the budget for fiscal year ending June 30, 2027 is adopted by ordinances 10400, 10401, and 1402 by amending the authorized expenditures for the city.

We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-140 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Thank you. Takes us to item bill 26-141. Mayor for Tim.

Move for second reading bill number 26-141. An ordinance approving amendment number nine. It's the budget for fiscal year ending June 30, 2026. It's adopted by ordinances 101-32, 101-33, 101-36, 101-37, and 101-38. By amending the authorized expenditures for the city of Lisa, Missouri.

Thank you. We have a motion for a second reading by Mayor for Tim Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Move for adoption of bill number 26-141 in ordinance approving amendment number 9 to the budget for fiscal year end of June 30, 2026 adopted by ordinances 101-32, 101-33, 101-36, 101-37, and 101-38 by amending the authorized expenditures for the city of Lee Summit, Missouri.

We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-141 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Let's see, we're still on, are we on 101.42?

Yeah, 126.142, yes.

Move for second reading bill number 26-142, an ordinance authorizing the purchase of one EnviroSight RX SATII combo CCTV system camera truck through the user-approved source while contract number 120721-SCA and authorizing the city to manage to execute all related and necessary documents for the city of Leasemont, Missouri.

Thank you. We have a motion for a second reading of Bill 26-142 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 8-0. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Move for adoption of bill number 26-142, an ordinance authorizing the purchase of one EnviroSight RX SATII combo CCTV camera system truck through the use of approved source while contract number 120721-SCA and authorizing the city manager to execute all related necessary documents for the city of Lee Summit, Missouri.

We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-142 by Mayor Patem Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Thank you. Please record the vote. Mayor Patem.

Move for second reading of bill number 26-143, an ordinance proving an increase in the authorized contract amount from $124,000 to $174,000 for professional services with Bellisage Partners to provide supplemental payroll support and workday payroll system fixes and authorizing the city manager to execute the same for the city of Leeson, Missouri.

Thank you. We have a motion for second reading of bill number 26-143 by Mayor Patem Shields and a second by Councilmember Frazier. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Thank you. Mayor Patem.

Move for adoption of Bill No. 26-143, an ordinance approving an increase in the authorized contract amount from $124,000 to $174,000 for professional services with LSAGE partners to provide supplemental payroll support and workday payroll system fixes and authorize the city manager to execute the Sanford City Lease Summit, Missouri.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt Bill No. 26-143 by Mayor Patem Shields and a second by Councilmember Pryor. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Thank you. Mayor for Tim.

Move for second reading bill number 26-144, an ordinance reading modification number one to an agreement for professional services for the Southeast Douglas Street Improvements Blue Parkway to 4th Street RFQ number 2025-011 between the City of Lee Summit, Missouri and Wilson and Company Inc. for an increase of $99,424 with an amended not to exceed amount of $897,354 and authorizing the City Manager to execute an agreement for the same.

Thank you. We have a motion for second reading of bill number 26-144 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Mayor Pro Tem.

I move for adoption of Bill No. 26-144, an ordinance approving modification No. 1 to an agreement for professional engineering services for the Southeast Douglas Street Improvements Blue Parkway to 4th Street RFQ No. 2025-011 between the City of Lee Summit, Missouri and Wilson & Company Inc. for an increase of $99,424 to the amended not to exceed amount of $897,354 and authorizing City Manager to execute an agreement for the same.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-144 by Mayor Patem-Shields and a second by Councilmember Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote.

Mayor? Yes. My computer just did something weird, so I need to voice vote.

Okay.

I'm in.

Thank you.

I'm a yay.

I think we're all stuck. There you go. There, you're in. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Thank you, Mayor Patem, for adoption.

That was it.

Okay. Thank you. Okay 26 145 It's easy to get lost in these long list, isn't it?

I move for saying reading bill number 26 dash 145 an ordinance approving a sole source agreement between the staveley summit and Clarkson construction company for the construction of the mouse creek trail tunnel for an amount not to exceed two million nine hundred seventy two thousand one hundred thirty four dollars and 26 cents an authorizing city manager execute an agreement for the same Thank you.

We have motion for second reading by mayor for Tim Shields and a second by councilmember Craven any discussion Yeah.

Mayor, my computer's doing it again, so I'm a yay.

Okay. Hearing no more questions, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Thank you. Mayor Pertem.

Move for adoption of Bill No. 26-145, an ordinance approving a sole source agreement between the City of Lee Summit and Clarkson Construction Company for the construction of the Mouse Creek Trail Tunnel for an amount not to exceed $2,972,134.26 and authorizing City Manager to execute an agreement for the same.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt Bill No. 26-145 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Craven. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote.

I do, but I can't.

I think she had a discussion.

No, okay, there, it just reset. But no... Yeah, go ahead. Yes, this is actually really neat. I was wondering if Mr. Park could come up and just elaborate on this a little bit and reiterate that it's not going to increase the timeline of prior road.

So we currently have the second, and we were starting to vote, but... It's okay.

Sorry.

You have to quickly address your question. Michael Park, Director of Public Works. This is actually a really good grade-separated tunnel below Prior Road for crossing of pedestrians and cyclists. It connects to the Mouse Creek Trail that the Parks Department is working on, a separate project connecting to the rest of our greenway system, trails that are being built up along Prior Road. And so, yes, it's being incorporated within the overall project schedule that Clarkson Construction is building, Prior Road.

And we had, correct me if I'm wrong, we had the money for this because we had additional grant money?

So, yes. It's a little bit confusing in that sense that we got additional grant money. We were actually awarded about $10 million in grant monies earlier, and that money went to the Prior Road Project, which allowed us to take the local dollars we had in the Prior Road Project to fund this tunnel, which had always been contemplated, but at the time we went to bid, it just wasn't within the budget until we received additional federal funds.

Good thank you.

Good question and we like grants. Alright, so we're missing one vote. Are you alright? OK, so all votes are in and motion passes 80. Thank you.

That was adoption.

That was for adoption.

Go to the next one.

Yes, 26 dash 146 please.

Move for a second reading of Bill No. 26-146, an ordinance approving modification No. 7 to an agreement for professional engineering services for the prior road improvements from Longview Road to Hook Road, RFQ No. 2020-046 between the City of Lee Summit, Missouri and GFT Infrastructure, for an increase of $83,124 that is amended not to exceed amount of $1,821,520 and authorizing the City to manage and execute an agreement for the same.

Thank you. We have a motion for second reading of Bill number 26-146 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Frazier. Any discussion or any questions? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem for adoption.

Move for adoption of Bill No. 26-146, an ordinance approving modification No. 72, an agreement for professional engineering services for the prior road improvements from Longview Road to Hook Road, RFQ No. 2020-046, between the City of Lee Summit, Missouri, and GFT Infrastructure, for an increase of $83,124 to the amended, not to exceed amount of $1,821,520, and authorizing the City Manager to execute an agreement for the same.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt Bill No. 26-146 by Mayor Patem Shields and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0 for adoption. Thank you. Mayor Pertem, 26- No, actually, that was for second reading. This is for adoption.

No, that was adoption.

We're getting confused up here. Yes, now it's 26-147. Thank you. It's okay. That's what happens when we sit back there for two hours.

I move for second reading bill number 26-147 in ordinance awarding the bid for project number P197 for the Public Works DOC renovation to harming construction in the amount of $169,694 and authorizing city manager to execute an agreement for the same.

Thank you. We have a motion for second reading of bill number 26-147 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 8-0. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Move for adoption of Bill No. 26-147, an ordinance awarding the benefit for Project No. 1P-197 for the Public Works DOC renovation to Harmon Construction in the amount of $169,694 and authorizing the City Manager to execute an agreement for the same.

We have a motion to adopt Bill No. 26-147 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Cravens. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Bill is adopted 8-0. Thank you. Please record the vote. Mayor Bertin.

Move for second reading of bill number 26-148, an ordinance authorizing the execution of a work order in accordance with the city's on-call wastewater facility and improvement agreement contract 2026-0792 with Mega KC Corporation for the replacement of the Scruggs Road pump station 24-inch valve in the amount of $138,028.51 and authorizing the city manager to execute all necessary documents.

Thank you. We have a motion for a second reading of Bill number 26-148 by Mayor Patem-Shields and a second by Councilmember Cravens. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. One more. That'd be me. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Mayor Patem for adoption.

Move for adoption of bill number 26-148, an ordinance authorizing the execution of a work order in accordance with the city's on-call wastewater facility and improvement agreement contract 20260792 with Mega KC Corporation for the replacement of the Scruggs Road Pump Station 24-inch valve in the amount of $138,028.51 and authorizing the city manager to execute all necessary documents.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-148 by Mayor Patem Shields and a second by Council Member Funk. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion bill is adopted 8-0. Thank you. Please record the vote. Mayor Pro Tem.

I move for second reading of bill number 26-149, an ordinance authorizing the execution of a work order in accordance with the city's on-call construction services agreement contract 2024-0571 with T.C. Fuller Construction LLC for the decommissioning of the HCA excess flow holding basin in the amount of $171,331.43 and authorizing the city manager to execute all necessary documents.

Thank you. We have a motion for second reading of Bill number 26, S149 by Mayor Pretend Shields and a second by Council Member Funk. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Mayor Pretend for adoption.

Move for adoption of Bill No. 26-149, an ordinance authorizing the execution of a work order in accordance with the City's On-Call Construction Services Agreement Contract 2020-40571 with the T.C. Fuller Construction LLC for the decommissioning of the HCA excess flow holding basin in the amount of $171,331.43 and authorizing the City Manager to execute all necessary documents.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt Bill No. 26-149 by Mayor Pro Tem Shields and a second by Council Member Funk. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. One more. All votes are in motion. Is adopted 8-0. Thank you. Mayor Patel.

Move for second reading of bill number 26-150 in ordinance reading amendment number one to contract SCON 1547 with HDR Engineering Inc. for final design of the Giacomo Basin pump stations in the amount of $1,389,611 and authorized city manager to execute the same.

We have a motion for a second reading of Bill number 26-150 by Mayor Potem Shields and a second by Council Member Funk. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. Sure, absolutely. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Thank you.

For adoption, bill number 26-150, an ordinance approving Amendment 1 to contract SCON 1547 with HDR Engineering, Inc. for final design of the Giacomo Basin pump stations in the amount of $1,389,611 and authorizing the city manager to execute the same.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt bill 26-150 by Council Member Atkins, second by Mayor Patem Shields. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Bill is adopted. Thank you. Council Member Atkins?

For adoption, bill number 26-1. For second reading. For second reading, sorry. Okay, for second reading, bill number 26-151, an ordinance approving change order number one to the agreement for the construction of project number P-154 for the water main replacement fiscal year 25 project to Wiedenman, Inc. for an increase in the contract price of $983,166 for revised agreement amount of $6,441,862, and to increase the project timeline by 180 days and authorizing the city manager to execute the same.

Thank you. We have a motion for second reading of bill number 26-151 by Councilmember Atkins and a second by Mayor Patem Shields. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes 8-0. Council Member Atkins.

Second reading again. For second reading, Bill number 26-151, an ordinance approving change order number one to the agreement for the construction of project number P-154 for the water main replacement.

Is that the same one? You said for adoption, right? For second reading. Which was for adoption. For adoption. I'm so sorry. Should I start over?

You said for adoption.

For adoption. For the water main replacement fiscal year 25 project to Wiedenman Inc. for an increase in the contract price of $983,166 for a revised agreement amount of $6,441,862 and to increase the project timeline by 180 days and authorizing the city manager to execute the same.

Thank you. We have a motion to adopt bill number 26-151 by Councilmember Atkins and a second by Mayor Pro Tem Shields. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes. Bill is adopted. Thank you. Takes us to proposed ordinances first reading. You want to keep it going? Okay.

For first reading, proposed ordinance for first reading bill number 26.152, an ordinance approving the award of RFP 2026-083A to David E. Ross Construction Company for the CMAR services for Giacomo Pump Stations and Force Mains Project in the amount of $52,378. and authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement for the same.

Thank you. We have a motion to advance the second reading, bill number 26-152. Any discussion? Yes. Council Member Funk.

Thank you, Mayor. I will be voting no on this project as the CMR at risk in this specific case is discussed at Public Works. We're allowing the actual construction manager at risk self-perform and bid on some of the work, and I don't like that idea. So I will be voting no on that. Thank you. Mayor for Tim Shields.

I just wonder if... I appreciate Councilmember Funk's comment. Could city staff maybe just explain that bid process just briefly so that we understand what the possible disagreement is here, or at least what the position is? Thank you.

Mr. Thorne.

Good evening. Jeff Thorne, Director of Water Utilities. Before you is an ordinance for a construction manager at risk contract. The process we went through on this was set by state statute and mirrored by the purchasing policy. So it's a two-step process in selecting a construction manager at risk. First, we went through and solicited qualifications from our construction managers. We went through and scored those. They scored out very closely. Then we asked for cost estimates based on percentage of what they would charge for fees in the design portion of the support of the project, and that's what this contract represents, is strictly the design support of the projects for the Tacoma pump stations up along Lake Tacoma. The concern on this is that the CMAR can bid against other folks for the work that they're doing, and I understand that. Any bid that they do would have to come in separately. They wouldn't get to see the other bids before they come in. It's a separate envelope to us. And usually, as we spelled out the day before, so they have to turn in their numbers before the others do. And then any bids that we do will be advertised through the city in its standards formats, through the CMAR, and also through our consultant, HDR. So we will be soliciting bids for competitive bids on this project. And yes, David E. Ross can bid in that process.

Thank you for that explanation. Any further questions? So the construction manager at risk manages his own work? Let me ask a follow-up question first. Go ahead.

Is that a process we've used in other cases if we ever had where CMAR bids on that same work? Or is that normal in other jurisdictions?

It's pretty standard, specifically in the water-wastewater world. I don't know if the other CMAR projects with the fire stations and some of that, if those guys bid, did they do some of their work? In the operations center, did they bid on any of the project? I'm not entirely sure if they did in our cases, but it's not unusual in this arena to do it this way.

Okay, thank you. That's all I have, Mayor. I yield to anyone else.

Thank you, Mayor Pertin.

Yeah, Council Member Funk. Not worth it. Sure?

Sure.

Okay. Any additional questions or comments? If not, I will call for the vote. All votes are in. Motion passes. Six yes, two nay. Thank you all. All right. Takes us to committee reports. Mayor for Tim.

Thank you. We had a really good CEDC meeting last week. As we kind of previewed before, we discussed the incentive policy review process and kind of came to consensus to do... sort of two groups so that we would have a small group of kind of subject matter experts and then a larger community group to kind of hear the proposals that the subject matter experts develop. This would all of course still come back through the council for review and final approval and I'm sure that we'll have a resolution at some point to establish all that I believe but I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that that's kind of what we're looking at so that council members would be able to appoint members of that citizen kind of advisory group. We thought of it as sort of a focus group to hear the proposals that are being prepared just to make sure that they are in line with what our community is looking for before they come to council for final consideration. We also discussed ADUs, and there will be an ordinance coming back to council to lift the current one-acre minimum size, which is consistent with what most of our surrounding municipalities, consistent with the policies that they have as well. And then we discussed liquor licenses and raising the liquor sale cap or lowering the food cap, however you want to look at it, to give a little bit more flexibility, especially to some of our downtown businesses that with all the special events, sometimes end up a little bit higher percentages of liquor sales and would allow them to maintain that restaurant status. So that will come back to council as well.

Thank you. Great. Thank you. Council Member Carlyle.

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to let everybody know we're having a Rules Committee meeting on Thursday via Zoom. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Council Member Funk.

Thank you, Mayor. Monday, we held a legislative intergovernmental relations meeting, committee meeting, and we discussed and moved our lobbyist RFP Forward and then also we discussed getting together with our Eastern Jackson County counterparts mayor's council members and we are working with staff to Evolve that into something that's gonna happen here soon. Thank you mayor.

That's a good meeting. Thank you Okay, see no other committee reports council comments any council comments Councilmember funk

Thank you, Mayor. I know Chief Forbes was kind of made aware of this, but if he could kind of give us a brief update on the flock camera system. Are we good to do it now, Mark, or do you want to wait until roundtable, Mr. Denning?

I'm going to request it now. We can do it now.

Yeah, if you don't mind, Chief.

And while he's coming up, Chief did forward some information to all of us earlier today. So he's going to kind of give us an update on that and make it transparent in public.

You betcha. Thank you, Mayor and members of council. So this is a very important topic. I'll try to keep it brief, but it's an extremely important issue. Essentially, artificial intelligence is here. I mean, it is definitely in everyone's life. And it's true in the police sector as anywhere else. And so we have to make a decision about what technology to use and how to use it appropriately. not a new decision for us about the data concerns that exist. We've had access to protected Data for I mean as long as I've been in law enforcement and that's been a while. I'm getting kind of old So it's it's been around a long time. So certainly data can be misused and We have to have good strong safeguards against that and that's what we've really attempted to do and have done with our use of flock data, so and when I make decisions about technology, I think about all of our citizens for sure and but I have a soft spot for crime victims. And the amount of crimes that we have seen flocks solve has been impressive. And it's really helped maintain what I've always wanted, and that's keeping Lee's Summit extremely safe and not being the path of least resistance to being a community that can be victimized. Crime victims are too often forgotten about, so they weigh pretty heavy in this decision-making for me. What we have decided is to use this technology and again use it in a very careful way to make sure that the data that we have is protected. And again, it's not the only data that we have that we have to have that consideration. It has helped with homicide cases. In Lee's Summit, specifically, robberies, child exploitation, and just a little over a week ago, an Amber Alert that we had that originated in Lee's Summit and I thought was helpful in locating the child in Blue Springs. So it's a practical tool that helps develop leads on serious crimes and time-sensitive crimes, too. We maintain a public transparency hub on our website that you can access. The data that we have is owned by the police department in the city and used only for legitimate law enforcement purposes only. We do not sell any of our data. The private sector does not have access to our data. By the way, I want to remind everybody the city of Lee summit is extremely unique for a city of our size To have an attorney assigned to the police department and her official title is the chief counsel public safety and civil rights, so she she and I always have good conversations whether it's reviewing this contract or our department policies because she always takes that position of advocating for the civil rights of our residents. And I'm appreciative of that. And that's pretty unique for a city to have the foresight to have those legal protections, and she was definitely involved in review of the flock contract when we did this. The system obviously detects license plates and vehicles. It doesn't use facial recognition, which I know can be controversial. It doesn't identify people by race, gender, or other personal characteristics either. Prohibited uses in our policy. include immigration enforcement, traffic enforcement, harassment, personal use, and any action based solely on protected class. Every search requires a valid reason and is permanently logged. Essentially, every keystroke in the flock system is logged and pretty easy to find, and we run audits regularly. Hot list alerts must be human verified before any action is taken. I mean, frankly, we have been trained on this for years, that in order to develop probable cause for an arrest or a stop or reasonable suspicion, depending upon the case, I'm getting into Fourth Amendment stuff here, but you have to verify. So we get lots of information, and we don't take flock hits as the gospel, that this is the only thing that we're hanging a case on. Our officers know that, and we train that regularly, and that's part of the audits that we do. Since we've had flock, we've had no violations of the policy. I know there have been violations nationwide. I'm encouraged to see those violations handled appropriately by the departments where they've occurred up to and including legal action against the individual. Again, the data that we handle, yeah, flock data is very sensitive. I can think of more sensitive data that we have at our hands. And the violations of that data, misuse of that data, it would meet with equal consequences for the officer who violates that policy. I'd pick up the phone and I'd call the prosecutor and say, do we have a criminal violation? Because it's a serious issue. So we understand the seriousness and the privacy concerns. So misuse of that protected data will be handled through our investigation, discipline, and legal action, if warranted. So if we are going to use this type of technology, which again is prevalent, and I can't stress that enough. For example, Flock is purpose-built for license plate recognition. So that's what it does. It's cameras that read license plates. AI is advanced to the point, if I have video footage and it's clear enough, I can put it in AI, including commercially available AI that any person on the dais could sign up for, and it will do the same thing. I can say, could you find if this license plate is in this image or this video, and commercially available AI from any video source that is good enough can do it. So, I mean, yes, Flock is purposely built this way, But we have cameras throughout this city. I just stepped outside to check our parking garage, as I tend to do during council meetings. There's cameras all over the place, just looking around there, and for good reason. Some of them are city, some of them are not. So AI has the ability to do some pretty incredible things. So with that in mind, we have to have these good policies in place. We have to get good supervision, good policy, good oversight, good audits. And we do. And so even if we decide flock is not what we want to use or something, I mean, AI is still out there. Camera footage is still out there. All these things are still out there. So we're going to continue to monitor both the effectiveness of the system and the adequacy of our privacy controls. And our focus, again, is using available tools responsibly to protect the community and serve our crime victims. And the technology... I mean, yes, it's here, and we can't ignore the fact that it's here, but it's hardly fully realized. I mean, some of the capabilities of technology, I think many of us have trouble wrapping our heads around. So we have to have these good measures in place. And so I understand the privacy concerns, but I also understand the type of shop that we run. and how we take this extremely seriously. And we want to make sure that we use it for criminal purposes only, and that if there's citizen data in there, that that doesn't get mixed in or used inappropriately. So I'll take any questions you have. That's a broad overview, essentially, of our use of the system. But we follow these nationally recognized standards. Again, a great benefit to being an accredited agency on top of that.

Thank you, Chief. I mean, I think, Mayor, I think this would be great. Mr. Dunning, if we had the opportunity to collaborate with our communications department and, you know, maybe put something out to the citizens of how all this is working and what we're doing that we don't sell our data. We hold our data in house and that kind of thing. I mean, thanks chief for giving us an overview. I know great job sending us the email and we were able to catch up on it, but I think it's important that the community sees in here is everything that we're trying to do to protect the community. Thank you, mayor. Thank you. Yeah.

Another question. Council member Frazier. Thank you.

I would just like to echo that. Thank you. This was absolutely wonderful and I think at least in our district we've had members that have requested additional information, clarity on the policy, how it's going to be used, how it's not going to be used. So I appreciate that and I do echo Councilmember Funk's suggestion is give us something and honestly we can take the footage that you just share with us so that we can share with our residents because it's a hot topic and I think you've provided a great deal of clarity on how, again, how we use, at least in Lee's Summit, how we're going to use it. I also thank you for bringing the The example most recently with the Amber Alert, to be honest, because that was one of the things that we had discussed previously, how it can be and was used for the benefit of our residents. And we had a happy ending there. So thank you.

Thank you, Chief. Thank you. I don't want to sound redundant, but this is very helpful information, and thank you for taking time. Appreciate that. Thank you. All right. All right. Any other? Council Member Funk?

I'm going to let you take this one, but Chief Snyder's here. If we wanted to recognize him for his...

Absolutely. So...

He's been hiding back there.

Yeah, Chief Snyder. YOU RECEIVED A PRETTY HIGH HONOR THIS PAST WEEK, AND HE WAS NAMED AS PRESIDENT OF THE IAFF, IS THAT CORRECT? SECOND VICE. WILL BE PRESIDENT NEXT YEAR, AND HE GOT SWORN IN TWO YEARS, AND I WAS THERE. HE GOT SWORN IN THIS PAST WEEK, AND IT'S SUCH AN EXTREMELY HIGH HONOR TO HAVE ONE OF OUR OWN BE RECOGNIZED AND THOUGHT OF ON A NATIONAL LEVEL, INTERNATIONAL LEVEL. So on behalf of all of us up here, we want to congratulate you again publicly. and tell all of our citizens that are out there watching still how blessed and fortunate we are in our community to have such, Chief Forbes, you as well, you and your team, all your team, Chief Snyder, everything you all do and the highly accredited rankings that we have or things that don't happen by luck. It's a lot of good intention and a lot of good leadership. So thank you and we commend you. And let's do a round of applause. How about that? Thank you. All right. Any other? Yes. Council Member Frazier.

I just wanted to just to share that the process that we went through tonight was absolutely wonderful. We don't always agree on how we're going to get there, but I can honestly say I believe everyone had the same intention. as to what our end goal was, that we were doing the best that we could and wanted to do what was best for the citizens of Lee's Summit. I want to take a minute. We had a number of questions, especially, again, I'll speak for myself, the newbies, if you would, a number of questions to not only our colleagues on the dais, but also staff, is how do we do this? Please direct us accordingly so we can do the best job ever. We've had comments. I think everyone's had comments from the community and I can, the process works. I can honestly say that, you know, tonight was eye-opening for me, but it was also quite beneficial in that, again, I believe we walk away thinking that we did what was best or will do what's best for the citizens of Lee Summit. So I appreciate that. Thanks for all the support to everyone here. Again, we don't always have to agree, but I think we have the end goal in mind. So just wanted to comment on that.

Thank you all. Any other comments? If not, Mr. Dunning.

Thank you, Mayor. Some quick hits here. We've been notified from Jackson County that we've been awarded through the legislature some what was previously ARPA funding, but they had claimed and now they're allocating out to communities and other municipalities. $150,000. We applied for that to... acquire equipment for the Joseph Dyke playground. That's the fully accessible playground at Legacy Park. So we'll be bringing that forward for an intergovernmental agreement. We've also been notified that the legislature passed the tax collection agreement. So we are awaiting the executed dot agreement back here to the city and I understand we're working on that implementation date. I don't want to throw a date out there without verifying what that date is though. So things progressing in that space as well. Um, you mentioned chief Snyder and some recognition with the green street project, uh, at the downtown main Lee summit, downtown Lee summit main street. Um, annual meeting. Green Street was recognized for the best exterior signage in downtown. It was recognized for an outstanding special project. The Football Fridays events that LS Gold 26 put on were was recognized for the top special event. We know we had some staff on that leadership team with Corey Day and Donna Lake and former Mayor Baird was recognized for outstanding public officials. So a lot of good recognition around that city had involvement in and supporting our community partner there. So that was pretty awesome to see.

That's it, Mayor. Thank you. Good stuff. Thank you, Mr. Dunning. Any other questions or comments? Yeah, we do. We're going to have to stick around a little bit longer, Council. Council Member Carlisle, can you read us into... Please.

I would not like to read us into closed session. And if I could just ask that we don't go for this many sections again, because this is a lot of words. Pursuant to Section 610.021, one of the revised statutes of the State of Missouri pertaining to legal actions, causes of action, or litigation involving a public governmental body and a confidential or privileged communication between a public governmental body or its representatives and its attorneys, and pursuant to Section 610.2119 , security measures, global positioning system data, investigative information, or investigative or surveillance techniques of any public agency responsible for law enforcement or public safety that, if disclosed, has the potential to endanger the health or safety of an individual or the public, D, operational guidelines, policies and specific response plans developed, adopted or maintained by any public agency responsible for law enforcement, public safety, first response or public health for use in responding to or preventing any critical incident in which has the potential to endanger individual or public safety or health. Financial records related to the procurement or expenditures relating to operational guidelines, policies, or plans purchased with public funds shall be open. When seeking to close information pursuant to this exception, the public governmental body shall affirmatively state in writing that disclosure would impair the public governmental body's ability to protect the security or safety of persons or real property. Shout in the same writing state that public interest in non-disclosure outweighs the public interest in disclosure of the records Well done. I move for closed session Second the motion did made we have a second.

Can we please have roll call?

What's a member Carlisle no? Councilmember funk Hi Councilmember Frazier. Aye. Councilmember Adkins. Aye. Councilmember Pryor. Aye. Councilmember Cravens. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Shields. No. And Mayor Lopez.

Aye. Thank you guys for the enthusiasm. Thank you. Meeting is adjourned.

Thank you. you