Planning Commission - 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 September 14th. City Council will meet for a special session Wednesday night at 6 in Council Chambers and City Hall to discuss municipal court compensation. Once the meeting materials have been finalized, they will be posted on Legistar. Meetings are open to the public or watched live on the City's YouTube channel. If you can't watch, catch the recorded meeting on demand on the YouTube channel or by subscribing to the Council Debrief newsletter. Subscribe at cityofls.net. Volunteer for Stream Team and help protect our local streamside habitats by removing litter and debris from streams within the city's parks. This event will take place on October 10th from 10 a.m. to noon at Langsford Park. Trash bags and gloves are provided. Student and Scout community service hours are available. Volunteers must register and sign a waiver before the event. Learn more at cityofls.net slash greenls. And this week is jam-packed with activities at Green Street. From a variety of fitness classes to a fashion show from Kansas City Fashion Week, there is something for everyone. See what's coming up on the calendar at greenstreetls.com slash events. Thanks for listening and have a great week.

Want to know what's coming to Lee's Summit?

The Development Minute is here to help.

Meadows 3 North is coming to John Knox Village. The five-story apartment building will have 47 units and includes an underbuilding garage. Meadows 3 North is targeted to open in summer 2027. Country Club Estates Villa 2 is permitted for construction in John Knox Village. The four-story building contains 15 dwelling units and an underground parking garage. Villa 2 is scheduled for completion next summer. ProDeo Youth Center is under construction at 9th and Douglas. The 6,000 square foot facility will double the nonprofit's capacity to empower local youth through academic support, mental health resources, and community engagement. ProDeo Youth Center is on track to open in late December. A brand new Bank of America building will replace the old one on Northwest Chipman Road. The new 5,000 square foot facility will feature a contemporary design of brick, stucco, and aluminum composite. The new building is set to open in Spring 2027.

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 departments. 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 is 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 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.

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.

Thank you. you So,

budget committee meeting for Tuesday September 15th to order could I have roll call please?

Councilmember Frazier present councilmember funk president chair Carlisle president Next thing we have is approval of the agenda.

Do I have a motion?

Sure, I move to approve the agenda as published I

Thank you. I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as published. Next, we have public comment. Did we have any public comments online?

Can we vote on the agenda?

Oh, I guess we do have to roll call vote on the agenda. Sorry. Let's go ahead and do that.

Council Member Funk? Aye. Council Member Frazier? Aye. Chair Carlisle?

Aye.

For the record, I don't get to correct Carlisle very often.

For the record, that passes. We can move on. Next, we have public comment. Do we have any public commenters?

No public comments.

Okay, and I see none in the audience. Thank you. We will go to business. Item A, 2026-7835, approval of the August 3rd Finance and Budget Committee Action Letter. Do I have a motion?

Chair, I move to approve the August 3rd, 2026 Finance and Budget Committee Action Letter.

I have a second.

Chair moved to second.

Thank you. I have a motion by Council Member Funk and a second by Council Member Frazier to approve the August 3rd Action Letter. Could I have a roll call, please?

Council Member Funk? Aye. Council Member Frazier? Aye. Chair Carlisle?

Aye. Motion passes. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm on line. Sorry. Oh, okay. Council Member Atkins is joining us at whatever time it is, 4.33 p.m. Okay, so we are on item B, TMP 3746, an ordinance authorizing the purchase of one Public Works F-550 truck and associated equipment using current contracts for the purchase for a total cost of $136,621 and authorizing the city manager to execute all related and necessary documents. Mike Anderson.

Good afternoon, Mike Anderson, Deputy Director of Public Works Operations. This F-550 is replacing a 2019 F-550 as part of the routine vehicle equipment replacement program. It's being replaced via existing contracts, the cabin chassis from Shawnee Mission Ford contract and the The flatbed and the snow equipment from American Equipment is part of the approved contract. So really, it's pretty routine. With that, I'd be glad to answer any questions.

Thank you. So this is coming out of your ERP for...

Yes, this is coming out of the VERP.

Okay. Do I have any other questions?

Question. What do you do with the 2019s?

It is sold, so we will salvage that off, and we'll probably get somewhere in the range of $20,000, $25,000, and that revenue goes back into the VERB.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Any other questions? Okay. Could I have a motion?

Chair. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

Chair, I have a motion to approve... I have to read that. Oh, TMP 3746. Second.

I have a motion by Council Member Frazier to approve TMP 3746 and move on to City Council. A second by Council Member Funk. Could I have a roll call, please?

Council Member Adkins.

Aye.

Council Member Frazier. Aye. Council Member Funk. Aye. Chair Carlisle. Aye.

Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Next item we have is TMP 3764, an ordinance approving the execution of a memorandum of understanding between the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the City of Lee Summit for the use of Midwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Award funds and authorizing the Mayor to execute the same on behalf of the City. Major Bryan Wilson.

Yes. Major Ryan Wilson, Lisa police department oversee ID. Um, we've got two awards, one that'll, uh, run from, it's running from 2025 to the end of this year for 77,398. And then we'll have a second award that is, um, it's currently operating, but it runs through, um, 2027 and we'll get another one. They overlap and it pays for all the, uh, Salary benefits and stuff for our agent that our detective will sign out to the DEA Okay, any questions do you have to come back in front of us for the second one or no? It's it's both of them in there on this award since they're overlapping and it's money that we get reimbursed for salary benefits Thank you Thank you, so it covers all salary benefits

Everything for the officer.

Yeah, it'll, it'll cover the salary and benefits up to 77, three 98. However, we will get to exhaust the rest of the 77,000 between now and December and the new one will start and that'll carry us through until the next award. So it, in the sense we'll cover the detective salary and lease vehicle and just one person. Yes.

Okay. Any other questions? Thank you. Could I have a motion?

Please I recommend TMP three seven six four to the full council for approval Second Thank you.

I have a motion from councilmember funk and a second by councilmember Frazier to move TMP three seven six four on the full council with a recommendation of approval could have a roll call, please I

Councilmember Funk. Aye. Councilmember Frazier. Aye. Councilmember Adkins. Aye. Chair Carlisle.

Aye. Thank you. Motion passes. Next we have TMP 3740, an ordinance approving a license agreement between Merriam North Bell LLC, Station Merriam I-35 slash 63 LLC, Summit Fair Investors 2025 LLC, Papa K&M dash SF LLC, DeSoto Farms LLC, Compton Farms LLC, and the city of Lee Summit, Missouri for the operation of a Lee Summit Police Department substation at Summit Fair and authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement. Major Brian Wilson, we could just make that a little bit longer. It'd be fantastic.

Yeah, this is evidently all their LLCs compact in. Long story short, Summit Fair has, where their offices are, they're going to dedicate 500 square feet and we'll have a secured facility and allow our retail theft detectives to operate out of there when they're over in that area. They can it'll keep our retail theft detectives and that unit out in the field versus back at the PD So our two main shopping areas is summit woods and summit fair and this puts them right over in summit fair we can Have the housing and stuff like that because it's 500 square feet and the only cost that they've asked is a split on utilities of just a flat hundred fifty dollars a month and per year this is 24 months with an additional 12 months at a time to extend the lease we've already got office furniture that will move in there so the cost is pretty much the utilities of 150 a month to keep them in the field okay fantastic any questions okay

The cost for this for this year since I don't see a budget amendment attached. Where's that coming from? They'll be out of my professional services out of my division Okay, do I have a motion chair a motion to approve TMP 3740 Second I have a motion to approve TMP 3740 and move it on to full council with a second from councilmember funk I Could I have a roll call, please?

Council Member Adkins? Aye. Council Member Frazier? Aye. Council Member Funk?

Aye.

Chair Carlisle?

Aye. Thank you.

All right. Thank you.

Next on the agenda, we have TMP 3753, an ordinance authorizing the execution of two grant agreements between the State of Missouri through its Department of Transportation, Traffic, and Highway Safety Division and the City of Lee Senate for the Missouri Highway Safety Program. Deputy Chief, thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Council. Yeah, this is one you all have seen annually. This helps fund the overtime rate of officers working extra details for state highway safety grants. This is state-maintained roadways. The locations are determined through data-driven analysis with height crash total. Excuse me. high crash locations to select those locations. It also allows us to use the funds for impaired driving enforcement as well.

Okay, thank you. Do we have any questions? Okay, I see none. Do I have a motion?

Chair?

Please.

I recommend TMP 3753 to full council with approval.

I have a motion for recommendation of TMP 3753 to move on to full council with a recommendation of approval. Do I have a second?

I have a second for approval.

Thank you. Could I have a roll call, please?

Council Member Funk?

Aye.

Council Member Adkins? Aye. Council Member Frazier? Aye. Chair Carlisle?

Aye. Thank you. Next, we have TMP 3755, an ordinance authorizing the purchase of equipment to outfit 11 police vehicles that are up for replacement using current equipment contracts for the purchase and for the total estimated cost of $88,875.89 and authorizing the city manager to execute all related and necessary documents. Now, you do not look like Major Walters.

Oh, disappointingly a little less attractive, but yeah, you get John Bunker again. Okay. And you're correct. This is a, we do, it's a current provider, KCOM. They're an annual, or I'm sorry, they're a registered vendor with our city. The per policy the total max for that contract 75,000 and then what we're asking is for the spending authority up to $88,875.89 which is in our current budget. annually we have vehicles that are swapped out. Um, the new vehicles come in, the old equipment goes back into the new vehicles and that's what this out outfitter does for us. Um, it is difficult to know how many we're going to have each year. COVID set us back. Um, I know we're still catching up from that, but, uh, so that's what this Delta is. So, but just to be clear, there's, we're not asking for additional funds. They're already in our authorized budget. We're just asking for that spending authority tonight.

Thank you. Do I have any questions? Do I have a motion?

I have a motion for approval for TMP 3755 to move to full council.

Thank you. I have a motion to move TMP 3755 to full council with a recommendation of approval.

I'll second.

Second from Council Member Funk. Could I have a roll call, please?

Council Member Frazier? Aye. Council Member Adkins?

Aye.

Council Member Funk? Aye. Chair Carlisle?

Aye. Thank you. Motion passes. Next we have TMP 3763, an ordinance approving the calendar year 2027 Employee Benefits Program, approving agreements for services by and between the City of Lee Summit, Missouri and Cigna Health and Life Insurance Company. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Hartford Life and Accident Insurance Company, Cura Link, LLC and PA Group and Allstate Insurance Company authorizing the city manager to execute agreements and other documents as necessary to administer employee benefits for the calendar year 2027 by and on behalf of the city. Ms. Fargo. I'm telling you guys, you guys are making these really long today.

Thank you, Chair. Jennifer Vargo, Human Resources Director. And just those are all the same vendors that we currently have. So we did make any changes. So good job rating all those vendors.

Thank you.

So we're here today to show you our final recommendation for calendar year 2027. and asked for approval to send to council. As you know, we've been in front of you for the past several months talking about especially our medical benefits for employees, anticipating what we thought would be a fairly high increase from Cigna. We were very pleasantly surprised when they came back with what we thought was a fantastic, much better than what we thought. And so, Alliant has been working closely with Cigna and with staff. We feel like we have a really good plan. You know, we didn't have to make any vendor changes or anything. And so, keeping in mind our goal to get our plan healthy, to still have competitive plans that, you know, go with the benchmark, and so you're going to see a little bit of that data, and to kind of put the expenses where we see the expenses in our plan. And so that's what Matt is going to share with you, and then obviously we're here for any questions that you'll have. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Matt Cohen.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Good to see everyone again. So we'll just jump right in. We're going to start a little bit with the financial update. We'll do it briefly. As Jennifer mentioned, we've gone through those over the last few months. We'll have an update a month here for you. Then we want to go through kind of the process just briefly. You guys are part of some of it, but also want to make sure you're aware of kind of what the process was, and then we'll jump right into the renewals and all the things. Okay. So as far as the financials, we had a nice three-month run there of some good claims month. As you recall, if you look at that top graph there, the dark black line is 100% loss ratio, meaning claims and premium are essentially equal. The red line is the target line. That is Cigna's target of 91% loss ratio. Anything below that is obviously the most positive experience we can have. Under the black line, still it's okay, but we went under the red dotted line. So you'll see for March through May, we had some pretty good months. We were pretty excited going into the renewal process. Then we had a few bad months back-to-back, also leading again to our thought of the higher renewal with Cigna. August, we did have a little bit better month. It came in at 99%, so just under that black line. Again, not a great month, not a terrible month. It's just the normal month right at the 100%, a little bit below. Year-to-date loss ratio. Oops. Sorry, I clicked too much there. He just wants to help. Prior year, we had 130% loss ratio. Year to date, we're at 107%. Our rolling 12, meaning the last 12 months, not just the plan year, is also at 107%. So definitely better than we were the previous plan year. Still some work to do, but again, better shape than we were last year. Here are just some of the details that I just kind of went through. I'm not going to go through each line here, but it does kind of give some more breakdown of where it came from, the employee costs versus the city costs, whether it's medical or pharmacy. Again, overall, better than the previous year. Again, still some work to do, but on a better path. A lot of our claimants, a lot of our costs are coming from large claimants. A quick breakdown of the large claimants. We have 24 members with claims over 100,000 in the last 12 months. It's equaling 6.9 million in claims. There's a breakdown of employees and spouses and independent children. Ultimately, it's about 41% of total cost is coming from these large claimants. Any questions on the financials? You said 41? Forty-one percent. Yeah, it's down there in the blue on the bottom there.

Okay.

So, as we kind of went through this process, obviously we've been up here in front of you, but we've also had many meetings with what I call the leadership team of Mark and Brianna and Jennifer. We've also met with the management team, the department heads, multiple times as well, getting feedback, concerns, questions. going through the process, our thoughts, and where kind of their thoughts were to kind of hone in on a recommendation. We've met with Cigna in person as well. We talked about the MRP. We met with that vendor and discussed some things with them as well. But also we looked at a number of different options from the renewal itself, different plan alternates with Cigna, The MRP option, we looked at level funded, which is a partially self-funded type plan with Cigna. We looked at multiple contribution modeling as well, so what would come out of the paychecks of employees. HSA funding, so how much is the city funding the HSA piece of it? How much do you guys support the members in the HSA? And then we have some benchmarking projects we did as well. All that is part of the process. Really, the goal is How do we get the best plans that are in line with our competitors? But also, how do we make this sustainable long term? And then the third piece is, how does this affect employees from a day-to-day standpoint? Not only from a benefits standpoint, but out of their paychecks. We wanted to look at all those things and how do we sustain that long term. Some of the things we had to do was, and we'll talk about it a little later, is kind of right size or appropriately price the risk of certain areas. And so you'll see that as we go through the contributions where they're not all equal across every plan and tier. But we did that on purpose, right, of really setting the goal for long term of If we were to get higher renewals in the future, we have the structure and setup to more easily be flexible and adjust to that versus having some of the structure we had before. So a lot of stuff here. This is the overall renewal summary. This is all of the different plans that go through the city here. So at the top is the different carriers and the lines of coverage, so the medical, dental, vision, life, and disability. The next section is the employer cost, which is the city cost, then the employee cost, and then total cost. As you can remember, you're probably more well aware than I am, the budget for benefits this year was a 10% budget increase. So what we're recommending, well, before we get there, Cigna came in with a pretty good renewal compared to what we thought, right? We were thinking mid-20s. Ultimately, that's where the number should have been. Cigna did come in with the original renewal at a 12.2%. 2%, excuse me, 12.3%. A lot of that has to do with the partnership that they want to keep with the city. They're making an investment in the city for a long-term partnership as well. So we do appreciate that from them. They've worked well with us as far as adjusting some of the rates and tiers and plan designs and things like that. But that was a decision made by them. I think that was in part of open communication with them along the way, kind of understanding what our needs were, what the city's needs were, and communicating that up front, and they came to the table when it came to renewal time. So our recommendation would be on this bottom column, and we'll go through what exactly that looks like, but from this pure number standpoint, that top side, that puts us at 9.6 increase for the city, so just below. Give this a little room in case, you know, some things change from enrollment standpoint or some different things within the plan. There's a little bit of room there in just the 10%. Overall, total costs would go up 10.8%, but to the city it would be 9.6. So here's the plan design we are recommending. I will say the renewal, instead of being exactly the same as the current plan design, the IRS every year adjusts the high deductible health plan, HSA is what qualifies minimum levels. It's going from 3,400 to 3,500 So that was automatically included in the renewal. What we're recommending is a little bit higher on the PPO base plan. And again, this is for both the broad network and the local network, the narrow network. Same plan design for each of the networks. So what we're recommending on the base PPO is going from a $750 deductible to a $1,250 deductible, so up $500 for an individual, up $1,000 for a family. The individual out-of-pocket max is going up $500, and the family out-of-pocket is going up $1,000, so corresponding with that deductible. The rest of the benefits are staying the same except for MDLive is virtual visits. I have a slide on that in the next page, but essentially that's virtual visits. Today there is $25 copay on the PPO and then it goes towards your deductible on the high deductible health plan. Going towards zero cost there gives more access to these providers, adds convenience, and it takes away a barrier, right, of getting care at an affordable cost, right, of zero. So we wanted to include that as we're adjusting plan designs. We wanted to make some improvements on, excuse me, Some improvements on the plan design as well to help those members get access, get that care. The more you can get the little visits up front and people seen, the goal is to avoid bigger, larger claims in the future. So the more access they have to providers is the goal there. We did basis off of a number of things, but one being the benchmarking of your comparator group. It's the same comparator group you use on the compensation review. So we'll look at that in just a little bit. Here's some additional information on those virtual visits. These are all the things you can do. There's more, but it's not an all-inclusive list, but it gives you a good idea. of some of those visits and things you can do virtually. Again, you can do this from an office here at work. You can do it from home. There's lots of places you can do without having to take half a day off work, going to the doctor. Also trying to schedule it is tough these days. Particularly on the mental health side, it's hard to get a provider. This gives you better access as well in that space. And again, the no cost removes one of those barriers for people to get access to care. So from a benchmarking standpoint, again, this is the same comparator group as we looked at at the comp study, and this is publicly available from usually websites or other public sites that have the benefits on there. This is from 2025, so I'm sure all of these cities and counties are going through the same process. So as we look at this, this page here is the PPO, and so The red line is the average across all the different comparators. I will say some of these cities and counties have multiple plans. I didn't squeeze all of them in here, but if you average them all together, for an individual deductible on the PPO, it's $1,286. So the $1,250 is right in line with what the 2025 comparator group is doing. Somewhere on the family side, going up to a $2,500 deductible, the average is $2,732. Again, right in line. Out-of-pocket maximum, we're looking at $4,000 for the city, and the average is $3,933. And then $8,000 on the family out-of-pocket, where the average is $7,908. So it puts us right in line with what the average is of the comparator group. On the high deductible health plan, there's a little bit difference there. There's a couple ways to set these plans up to be IRS eligible. I won't go into too much detail, but one is an aggregate and one's embedded. It's the way that the deductible works. So you'll see that while the city is a little bit higher on the individual deductibles, because it's an embedded plan and there's 100% coinsurance after the deductible, you'll see on the out-of-pocket maximum, the city's actually still in a better spot than what the comparator group would do. So for an individual deductible, it's 2732, we're at 3500 a day. Based off the plan design you have today, 3500 is the minimum. Family deductible is 5614, where we'd be at 7000. But again, on the individual out-of-pocket maximum, we would still be at $3,500 to match that deductible, where the average for the comparator group is $3,933. And then on the family, we would be at $7,000, where the average is $7,908. So if you think about out-of-pocket max as the worst-case scenario, we're still under what the comparator group would do there. Any questions or thoughts there? So a lot of numbers on this slide here, but this is what the contribution modeling is, meaning here's what the monthly premium is, here's what employees would pay, and here's what the city would pay. So the left side is current, and the right side is the recommended option for 2027. Now, this year we did on the contribution modeling, we looked at what's called defined contribution, where you pick a plan, usually it's the lowest cost plan, and you say this is what the city will pay for each of these tiers on this plan. So if you look at the bottom right there, the medical Cigna HDHP local, and you see the company contribution column. If you go up that whole slide there, they're the exact same in each of those different benefits. That's why it's a defined contribution. It says we will pay, the city's gonna pay this amount on all the plans. If you so choose, we are offering you opportunity for other plan options based off your needs. However, you will pay the difference in the cost. The reason for that is it more appropriately prices the risk and the cost and the value of those plans. We've also adjusted the employee spouse and employee child. They used to be the same rate. We moved that to a four-tier, a true four-tier, where they have a little bit higher on the spouse, a little bit lower on the child. Again, the risk on that, spouses in general cost a lot more than employees and children dependent, specifically to the city. In 2025, spouses cost 63% more than employees. Even if you remove the high-cost claimants, they may skew it a little bit. They're still 16% higher. So that's why you adjust for that. Children were much lower than employees and spouses. So you see some of these are not, because we're moving to the defined contribution, it's not an even distribution. increase across plans and tiers. We did that so that going forward we can adjust more appropriately. We also were valuing the local network more and then the high deductible health plan more. We think that's more sustainable. We're getting better discounts from Cigna on the local plus network. High deductible health plan is also a great way to keep that sustainable as well. And again, we also had the constraint of the 10% that we needed to stay under as well. One other thing here, and we'll look at some benchmarking. We looked at the company HSA contribution, so the very far right column there, two plans, the second and the bottom one there. Today you have $50 a month that you give to each employee on that plan, regardless of if they're employee, employee spouse, children, or family. Going forward, the recommendation would be to have two different, and I'll show you on the next slide here, we'd have two different contribution funding between the two different plans, the broad and the local plus. So today you're seeing $600 annually on both plans. What we're recommending is moving on the broad HDHP to keep that at 600 for an individual, but bump it up to 900. to a family, anyone that has more than one person. But on the local high-deductible health plan, moving that to 900 for the individual and 1,800 for the family. So essentially that reduces that out-of-pocket max, which is already lower than what the competitors are doing, to even have more of a leverage there because of the funding from the HSA. Excuse me. There is some benchmarking there. If you see in the middle there, AGOV and MGOV. A stands for Alliant, so that's our benchmarking. We also pulled in some outside benchmarking from Mercer. They do a lot of studies as well. But from a comparison standpoint right there in the middle, what we're seeing from the Alliant government clients is on average they're doing $1,169 a year. And on families it's $1,450. This gets you more in line with what we're seeing in government space. That was related on the medical. The others are pretty quick. If you want to stop here, we can go through them real quick and come back with questions.

Do we have any questions so far? Council Member Frazier. Go ahead.

What is the, and you may have had this on here, what is the breakdown between selection of HSA and non-HSA?

What is the breakdown?

Like percentage, how many employees?

Oh, how many employees? Yes. Yes, so it's right there in the...

Okay.

Yeah, so it's fairly even. So the top one is 175. That's the PPO. And the third one is 149 versus 195 and 189. So a little bit higher on the HDHP today. But I don't have the exact number, but off the top of my head, I'd call it 5545. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you.

Go ahead and move forward.

Okay. All right, so dental, we are on, with Cigna, there is a rate cap, so meaning they're capped their renewal at 7.5%. You did get the 7.5%. Loss ratio on that is running above 100 on that one as well. 7.5, while it's not a huge number from a percentage standpoint, it's also not a huge dollar amount. If you look there at the bottom, as far as cost increase to employees, it would be zero for an employee. For family, it's $1.56 a month. So minimal change there. No change in the plan design itself. Vision with VSP. Excuse me, MetLife, but VSP Network. No change from plan design or costs on that one as well. And then all the rest of the, here's kind of a breakdown of all, all the rest of them are under rate guarantee until next January, January of 2028. So we have another year plus on those plans. So those are just continue to renew as is and stay where they are.

So next year we're going to have a lot of work, too, is what you're saying?

Potentially, yes. It depends, but yes.

Okay, thank you. Is that it?

That is it.

All right. Did we have any questions from the committee on this overall presentation?

I do have one question. Will you be able to provide an update, like your very first slide on the financial part of it? Can we get that on a regular basis? Just a quick update to see how we're, if we're coming down at all? Absolutely. Okay. Thank you.

So you want that on like a monthly update? Yeah, we can do a monthly update.

It doesn't have to be a full presentation. Just something that could go to the committee to say, hey, we're still coming down or we're planning back up so we kind of know what's happening.

I don't think we've talked through all that. We do this on a monthly basis, so I'm sure they can share with you. But also I think on a periodic basis, right, we want to get back in front of you and give you a chance to ask questions and let you know kind of high level what's going on financially.

And what we see coming forward for the next. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Anything else? Well, this was really a lot better than we expected it to be. And thank goodness. Um, so I'm excited for that. You guys did a great job. Thank you so much. Um, but yeah, let's just, let's just keep our fingers crossed for next year, right?

Yeah, there's, there's still plenty of work to do, right? It's, it's a long-term, um, deal here, but, uh, I think for this year was, was the ideal way to, uh, get to that, that place.

Yeah. And I think, you know, we've, have a good partner in Alliant, and with Cigna, obviously, they are in this, you know, yeah, and if we continue to see what we're seeing with the local networks, it is making a difference. You know, we did have a couple of months there that went back up, but hopefully, long-term, we're going to see these local networks and the high deductibles really working for our plan, which is again, that long-term plan of getting our plant healthy and, and, you know, maybe considering self-funding someday. So, um, yeah, we'll continue to come back periodically and just keep having these conversations because I think it's been beneficial. I hope you guys do too.

So, well, yeah, it lets us know what to expect, you know, when it comes time to budget. And so we're not slammed in the face of 25%, right. So, Yeah, that's always helpful. Thank you very much. Council Member Frazier has one more thing.

One more thing. I think as you go into, and I'm sure you already know this, as you go into open season and so forth, that slide that identified the things that you could do the virtual visit on is crucial. And I think now as we're moving to the right, there are many more justifications or reasoning for a virtual visit, convenience, of course, being one of them, but then just awareness and knowledge that you can see, you know, a provider for certain conditions and to the point that it can reduce the first time visit in urgent care or, you know, and reduce the price or the cost, not only for the members, but also for, you know, the city. I think that's fantastic. So I'm sure the communications folks are going to kind of whip that up into some documentation that can be shared.

We are currently in the process of putting some learning tools together, some learning documents, working with our new CPI to get those things out. We have a health and wellness fair that's coming up in October. We plan to share it there. We'll have a benefit guide that we plan on sharing it there. So, yeah, we are going to really hit that. And it's a great benefit. We're super excited about it. It is. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Thank you guys very much.

Thank you.

Okay. Next on the agenda, we have TMP. Are you not going to?

You'll need to vote on this order.

Please. Getting ahead of myself.

Okay. I guess we approve of this, right?

Two today, Carla.

I don't sleep. You guys have had me up until way too late, way too many nights. Okay. Do I have a motion to move TMP 376? on to full council with a recommendation of approval.

Chair.

Please.

I recommend to full council approval of TMP 3763.

Do I have a second?

You have a second.

I have a motion and a second to move TMP 3763 on to full council with a recommendation of approval. Could I have a roll call, please?

Council Member Adkins. Aye. Council Member Funk.

Aye.

Council Member Frazier. Aye. Chair Carlisle.

Aye. Thank you. Motion passes. Okay, now next on the agenda, TMP 3766, an ordinance approving amendment number three to the budget for fiscal year ending June 30th, 2027 as adopted by ordinance 10400, 10401, and 10402 by amending the authorized expenditures for the city of Lee Summit, Missouri. Rick Gentry, budget manager.

Good afternoon. Thank you. Chair, committee members, Rick Gentry, budget manager. And this item before us is, uh, the third amendment to our current FY 27, uh, fiscal year budget. It contains, uh, several different, uh, items within it. Uh, the first ones we're doing a pay correction and the budget on the budget side budgeting appropriately for the, uh, uh, the roles of the mayor, the city council members. municipal judges remember back in january of 2024 and what the ordinance 9828 uh pay increases were put in place at that time and so we went through two election cycles and then the rages went in effect this past may so we're putting those in a place in effect so that was a 33 pay percent pay increase for those positions because they had not been increased in many years So that was put in place the money to offset the increase in the budget is coming from a position that It was filled was we went through the budget process and right before the end of the year We had a person that transferred to another department within the organization from the Treasury cashier and That so that position has not been filled. So we had that position is now closed So we're taking the savings of that position to cover the increase in needed to cover this so there's no impact or increase to the general fund budget at this time.

Okay, so we had to eliminate a position to cover our raises, but we didn't let anybody go.

Correct. It was a position that was already closed, and we used that money to cover this, yes.

Well, that makes me feel better. Thank you.

Okay. The second item is the airport. As they continue to grow out there, and I've added Hangar 2, they're needing some additional support staff for some of their busier times. Excuse me. And this is just additional hours. The FTE count increases, but it's mainly just hours. So they can increase the number of hours for people. And they may hire additional staff because most all the employees out there, other than full-time staff, are part-time. And so it's requesting to add some additional FTEs for the airport attendants to do most of the working. And then since they have Hangar 2, which is across the runways from Hangar 1, and then you add that airport service attendant, which kind of oversees and manages things. And then also as part of the budgeting process, they needed to increase the other existing positions. Some of the data did not come across, so we're correcting and aligning that with what was actually approved as far as FTEs and an additional $64,000 to their budget to cover those personnel that are already in place. So that's an overall increase of $145,000 to the airport budget for the additional FTEs and to cover the existing personnel.

Okay. So that 64, the additional 64,000 is for the hours that we need to approve additional That was for the FTE that got approved but didn't get moved over.

Correct. Yeah, that's for the addition. Yeah, the $64,000 for staff already there because it didn't come across correctly. And then there's an additional $80-some thousand, I believe, for the other positions for the new FTEs.

Okay, so up to an X dollar amount but only as needed.

Correct, yes.

Perfect, thank you.

And they did a very good job managing it because they are one of our enterprise funds. The next two items will be transfers. The first one's a transfer from the asset forfeiture funds that the city receives that go to the use for the police department. They've identified they'd like to use an existing contract at the city back in November of 2025. Our IT folks brought forth a contract for council approval, which was doing to do updates to our audiovisual technology within our conference rooms around the city. And the plan at that time was is the council approved the contract with the vendor to use that vendor. And as funding became available and was identified, then those projects would move forward. So this is for projects at the police department for their conference rooms to update the audiovisual equipment. And as we shared with the last year, we started the process of moving capital expenditures for equipment and things like that. It'll have a value and appreciation. We're putting those into the, for public safety, into the public safety equipment replacement fund. That way that will live over in that fund. So this is transferring $156,000, almost $157,000 from general fund where the asset forfeiture funds are over to the public safety equipment replacement fund and increasing that fund for that purchase.

Okay, thank you.

All right. And the next one is the similar we're purchasing, the police department's purchasing a telehealth station, which is a pretty much a mobile station with a laptop on top of it for mobile, for telehealth. And so that is purchased, it's using some of the opioid settlement funds, which are in the grant and settlement fund. So it's just as similar to the last one. It's transferring those funds over to the public safety equipment replacement fund so they can make that purchase and that asset will live over there. The next one, this was originally approved as part of Budget Amendment No. 4 in the FY26 year. They had some equipment repairs to their communications equipment for public safety communications over the Shearer Water Tower. That did get it completed, but did not get finalized and invoiced and everything until after we started the FY27 year was not included in the budget. So this is just bringing that authority over into the FY27 budget for that amount of $34,477. So they got the exact amount. I think we did $35,000 on the amendment. So got it down to the dollar now. And then the last item, this is something new we'll be doing, is we make updates to the CIP, which is approved along with the budget, and we do the budget presentation each year. The Public Works has identified a study they would like to do is for doing a study along I-470 corridor from Highway 50 up to I-70, improving that to six lanes, three lanes each way through there. So it's an estimated cost as a matter of fact the contract was went through first reading last night at Public Works for just under $500,000 so that's what I do is bring this so there is a in the packet attached a new CIP page for This project and like to add that to the CIP plan to the plan for 27 and and then also they'll be closing out, which is not part of the plan, they'll be ending one of their other projects that was a shared resource, had multiple resources shared with it, and the savings from that is a little over $331,000, with the remainder coming in part of the FY28 plan next year as they go through the study, which will take quite a bit of time to complete. With that, any questions about budget amendments?

Council Member Frazier?

I know I'm splitting hairs here, but ISO on this screen, it says improve six lanes from 50 to I-70. I-470. For here, it says from 50 to I-70. And in my mind, that's what I've always thought, but I also heard it referred to to 40. Is this the same?

We have the expert in the room. We'll have him come down and answer that.

Yes, good afternoon. Michael Park, Director of Public Works. So this is US 50 to 40. There's a separate MoDOT project that's already begun some study and planning that is between 39th and 40, which includes the I-70 junction. So this kind of picks up at the south end of where that project ends and carries it all the way to 50 Highway.

Okay, perfect, thank you. And then my other question is, can you elaborate just a little bit about the telehealth?

I don't understand what that... We're fortunate we have the man in the room with the answer.

Sure. John Bunker. When we say telehealth, we are referring to mental health. And so, as you know, we have co-responders as well as the 988 team that are embedded with our police department. And so some of that is in our detention facility a lot of times.

Got it. Got it. Okay. Thank you very much. You bet. Thank you, Chair.

Okay. Any other questions?

She just answered my question.

Okay. I don't think I had any. Let me just make sure. Okay, looks good. Just so we can be clear, so all of these amendments, it's really just shuffling money. We're not using new money except for the hours for the airport?

That would be correct, yes.

Okay, thank you. Okay, with all of that, do I have a motion?

Chair, I have a motion to move to full council 2026-7828. Chair, I have a motion to move to full council approval TMP 3766.

Second.

Thank you. I have a motion and a second to move TMP 3766 to full council with a recommendation for approval. Could I have a roll call, please?

Council Member Adkins.

Aye.

Council Member Frazier. Aye. Council Member Funk. Aye. Chair Carlisle.

Aye. Thank you. Motion passes. Next on the agenda, we have 2026-7828, presentation of the FY27 budget versus actual report and the FY28 budget calendar year. Oh, sorry. Now I guess I know who's going to do this. Mr. Stoyanov.

Stoyanov. Close.

Thank you. The budget manager. I'll get there.

ERIC STOYANOV, BUDGET MANAGER. AS YOU MENTIONED, TODAY WE'LL BE LOOKING AT THE ACTUALS VERSUS BUDGET UPDATE FOR THE MONTH OF JULY. THIS ONE FALLS AT A LITTLE BIT OF A WEIRD TIME, SO WE WILL FOLLOW UP AND PROVIDE JULY AND AUGUST YEAR TO DATE FOR THE SEPTEMBER MEETING. SO THE AGENDA HERE IS THE GENERAL FUND REVENUE. WE'LL TALK ABOUT THAT FIRST. Then follow up with the general fund expense, and then finish up with public safety sales tax, and then we'll jump into the FY28 planning. You've seen this slide before. This is the budget outlook overview, looking for positive outlooks for all categories. And then yellow indicates cautious. Red is negative. Luckily, no negative on this presentation. So starting off with the revenue. Did include property tax. It's pretty minimal until we get into December, January, February timeframe, but wanted to include it because it is one of our major budgeted sources. Sales and use tax is 8.6 percent of our budget utilized so far. It is up 11.6 percent year over year. So, sales tax in July was up 4.8 percent. Use tax was up 41 percent. And then this category also includes the marijuana tax. We just don't specifically label that out, And that includes economic activity taxes, which are paid for incentive districts. We do have data through September, and so our trend is still staying pretty strong. Sales tax is up 5.8% still. Use tax is up 14.8. Overall, as a category, about 8.6% up year to date through September. So the trend is staying strong for sales and use tax so far. Motor vehicle tax, this includes the fuel tax, the license tax, and then the sales tax. We had projected fuel tax to drop because we don't have the projected increases anymore with the fuel tax, but it is staying strong. It's up 6.3 percent year over year. License tax was down slightly, and then sales tax was up 2.5 percent. So, overall, exceeding our budget estimate for this timeframe. Franchise tax is about the same. Electric is 65 percent of this category, and it's exceeded the past year so far. Natural gas is the other largest one, but it's pretty minimal at this point. It's seasonal, so it goes up in the winter months. But electric is up 14.4% year over year. Fines and forfeitures, we're seeing strong revenue amounts in there. Licenses and permits, 12.3% of budget utilized. I did talk with development services. They said that it's seasonal trends is what they're experiencing, so it's not like we're just going crazy with development and revenues are coming in way better than expected. It normally comes in a lot during the summer months and then kicks back up in the spring and lowers a little bit in the winter months. But still strong growth overall and a good way to start the fiscal year. And then charges for service, 80% of that is ambulance fees, which are performing strongly. The other biggest category in this charges for service is the EMS dispatch contracts. Those are billed out typically in January, so the revenue comes in February. So that's not there yet, but still overall as a category we're exceeding so far. The other revenue section, these are things that come in, I guess, not as frequently. It includes investment earnings, which we do on a quarterly basis, so it's not reflected yet. It also includes our refunds, which are, one is the GEMT program that we've talked about before. We are still, I guess, experiencing uncertainty with the GEMT program, and I know we've hired outside attorneys to look into that for us, but as of right now, we haven't received any money for that program in several years, and That's why it's more of a cautious outlook there. Some of them ebb and flow like school resource officer investment earnings, but we are cautious just because of the GEMT revenue being in that category. And then the transfers in reason, or these are just regularly scheduled transfers in for GNA purposes. So overall, This shows 5.9 percent, which is below 8.3. If you exclude the property tax amount, we're right at 8.5 percent overall, with the other categories slightly above where we would expect the budget to be at this point on the revenue side.

Female Speaker 1 Okay. Do we have any questions on this slide? Okay, thank you.

Male Speaker 1 So, then on the expense side, So for most of these categories performing well, I did want to note personnel running a little bit high on the overtime again. So we're at about 12% utilized for the month of July. And then overtime was up about 22% compared to last year for overtime in July. And that trend has been continuing so far. So it is something to note and just continue to track. Supplies and services, nothing, too noteworthy. These are just supplies and services we buy in the course of business under that 8.3% ebb and flow throughout the year. I did want to note on fees, claims, and disbursements. So this includes bad debt write-off, which is related to our EMS billing. We budgeted a million dollars for the year. Recent, well, this week we were told that they are doing cleanup, the consultant that we use. And so we have significantly more bad debt write-off coming in this category than we anticipated. SO FAR WE'RE ABOUT $800,000 OF EXPENSES AND WE BUDGET A MILLION FOR THE YEAR AND WE'VE BEEN TOLD THAT ANOTHER LARGE WRITE OFF IS COMING IN THE COMING MONTHS. AND SO I KNOW THIS IS A JULY PRESENTATION BUT JUST WANTED TO BRING IT TO YOUR ATTENTION BECAUSE WE WILL HAVE TO BRING A BUDGET AMENDMENT FORWARD BECAUSE THAT ONE IN PARTICULAR WE WILL BE GOING ABOVE BUDGET. THE OTHER CATEGORIES HERE. NOTHING TOO NOTEWORTHY. TRANSFERS OUT IS AT 66%, BUT THAT IS BECAUSE A LOT OF THOSE TRANSFERS, LIKE EQUIPMENT REPLACEMENT PROGRAM, SOME PUMPER AND AMBULANCE LEASES AND PRINCIPAL PAYMENTS, THOSE ARE ALL DONE AT ONE TIME IN JULY. SO THE REMAINING ONES ARE RECURRING JOURNAL ENTRIES FOR OVERHEAD AMOUNTS FOR ITS, CBS, AND FLEET. SO EVEN THOUGH IT LOOKS LIKE 66%, IT'S ON PACE WITH HOW IT'S BUDGETED. AND SO OVERALL, ON THE EXPENSE Few things of caution, but overall for July, we're in a pretty good spot. And I will pause there for any questions on the general fund side before we get into the public safety sales tax.

Any questions?

Kim?

Okay.

So for public safety sales tax, similar story to what we're seeing in the general fund. Sales and use tax is at 8.6%. This does not include the marijuana tax and the actually just marijuana tax. So seeing good trends there. Other revenue, that's investment earnings. So similar story with the general fund. We do those entries on a quarterly basis, so nothing is reflected so far. And then budget versus actuals for the expenditure side. Everything is well within target with the exception of repairs and maintenance. That one is what Rick just mentioned in the budget amendment for the Shearer Tower repairs and maintenance. So that will look a little bit better. Transfers out, again, is a similar story. There's the one-time transfers that happen in July, and then the recurring ones are the ones that remain throughout the rest of the year. So overall in PSST, we are also in a good spot through July. And as I mentioned, we'll bring the August numbers at our upcoming finance and budget And that's all I have for PSST. Any questions on either of those?

Do we have any questions? I do have one question. Well, kind of two questions. Okay, so first of all, you said personnel is up and our overtime is up 22% year over year?

In July, yes.

Yeah, for the month of July, 22%. And we haven't even gotten into snow weather yet.

Correct, yes.

So... Do we know who our, I guess, offenders are with that?

As of right now, the fire department is our one that is over budget the most. Fire and police are the two departments that are the majority of our budgeted overtime. We do have other departments that have various overtime amounts associated with them, but they're smaller amounts. Municipal court, for example, is one. We didn't budget any overtime. They're at about $6,000, but overall, that's portion of the entire general fund. It's not a huge, huge dollar amount. Similar story with some other smaller departments. They do have some public works budgets, a decent amount, but they're well within their range as of right now. But like you said, a lot of that for the operations side kind of comes in the colder weather for snow. I'd say right now fire is the one that's running the highest at the moment.

Okay. Do we have any fire people here? No, I don't see any. Is anybody hiding back there? Okay. Okay, well, I guess for their future reference, to be up this much year over year for one month is troubling for me. So if maybe we can keep an eye on overtime a bit closer and for any department that is outside of their overtime budget, if they could just come forward to the committee with the reasoning of what's going on and it was scheduled something or we know it is and we're keeping an eye on it. It's going to come back, you know, just whatever that might be.

Yep.

Perfect. Thank you. Okay. Then second of all, bad debt. So you say that our vendors writing stuff off, but then, um, on the other side of that, you said we were, our ambulance fees are up overall.

Yes.

So maybe the amount that they're up is gonna, Go ahead and.

That's a tougher one to answer. I was going to say, because right now, I mean, right now I'd say we're about 1.3 million in unexpected write-offs that they've let us know recently. I don't know. We budget like 8-ish million for ambulance fees, so I don't know if we'll come in that much over. Okay. Um, so yes, and this was not, we just learned of this while we saw a significant transaction in August and reached out and then they notified us about what they're doing and it's cleaning up age accounts receivable and trying to, I guess, clean up their books and it's hitting us unexpectedly. Maybe we asked them for a heads-up when they're gonna plan on doing that Yes, and they did tell us I know take it with a grain of salt But they did tell us that this is expected to be kind of a one-time deal and that once they do this cleanup that It should be more regular moving forward, but we did have a significant cleanup not that long ago, too So it's just okay, I guess we'll wait and see Okay, that's all my questions councilmember Frazier.

Thank you. I Just to echo what Chair Carlisle said, if we could kind of drill down to the overtime issues that related to a particular date range, a particular event or something like that, hindsight, if we could do that for those unplanned hours, I'd be curious to see what that looked like. And it could be an outlier or a one-off, but just curious about that. The other thing is you mentioned the municipal court was not budgeted overtime for municipal court. Has it ever been budgeted?

I would have to go back and check. I will say we were a little bit in a transition period when we went through the budget process with the court administrator, and they're the ones that typically have led the budget process on their side, so I don't, I'd have to double check for historical purposes, but it may have been overlooked just in the transition of having someone that hadn't done budget before doing the budget.

If you could give us a little bit of background information on that, considering some of the things we're discussing now. I'm curious to see if that's something that needs to be looked at in the future or going forward. Yes. Definitely. Okay, and I was just wondering, you mentioned the bad debt, you know, is that just based on, you said there was cleanup, but I was just wondering if that was based on some of the economic times that, you know, we're in, or if it's attributed to one particular... From the email that we received, they said that it was...

Basically trying to identify what's actually collectible with the accounts receivable and what's not collectible anymore. And so basically cleaning up things that have aged too much that they don't think it's truly collectible. And that's what the cleanup is happening is what we were told through email.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Anything else? No? Okay. Thank you very much. Go ahead.

I'm still going. Since the budget train never stops rolling, we will now talk about the FY28 budget calendar.

Thank you.

Just a little bit longer of me. So this is, got a little bit too. So just for awareness, this is our FY28 budget calendar. January 25th is when we are going to open up budget entry for departments. During that first week of budget entry, we plan as a budget team to meet one-on-one with all departments, kind of talk to them about what they've experienced in the current fiscal year, challenges they may see for the final months of the year, and then also provide guidelines for what we're looking at for the FY28. We are trying to stagger a little bit. We have the internal service funds, so CBS, Fleet, ITS, Those funds impact the overhead amounts for other departments, so we're trying to stagger those a little bit in due dates. And so internal service funds, we're shooting for February 11th is going to be their due date. So then other departments will finish their budget entry on the 25th. So just allow them a little bit of time to have those numbers stabilize and know what they need to do. City manager meetings will take place to discuss all of those requests in the second week of March. We will do our first presentation to you all on April 5th of general fund revenue projections. April 19th, we will come forward with the full budget for FY28 and then targeting May 11th as the public hearing for and first reading of the ordinance for the FY28 budget. a similar layout to what we did for FY27. And hopefully we have another year in the new system. So hopefully it goes a little bit smoother this year and we have a good budget season. Any questions on that?

I mean, it looks promising as long as we can get all the things done we need to do before it goes to council, right? So hopefully we should be good. Yeah, that's good. Anybody else have questions, comments?

No, no, okay. Thank you very much.

Okay. All right. Next on the agenda, we have 2026-7844. Presentation proposed 2027 property tax levy for the City of Lee Summit, Cass and Jackson Counties, Missouri for the calendar year 2026.

I don't think that's right.

Yeah, we already did that one. We don't want to do that again. Sorry.

There we go. All right. Good afternoon. Brianna Brichter, Director of Finance. Today's presentation is to provide an overview of the tax levy process for 2026, as well as share the expected levy to be reviewed at the September 22nd public hearing. I do want to note before I dive into the presentation, there are some edits to this presentation. We'll get it updated online. Really just adding additional context to help make it clear on the slide. Substantially the same, but has changed. Thank you. Specifically, tonight we will review together the assessment and levy process, assess value trends, a quick overview of the Hancock Amendment, the city levy calculation, provide a brief update on Jackson County, a look at the recoupment eligibility for the city, and discuss next steps in the levy process. Okay. The annual assessment and levy process really kicks off in January of every year based off of the property you own as of January 1. Real property is reassessed every odd number year, and personal property is assessed every year. March, we get preliminary assessments from the county. In April, we're required as a city to provide our preliminary levy estimate to the state. July, we get some updates from the county on their assessed values. But the final numbers, where we're at right now, is in September, we received, the 1st of September, we received our final assessed value from Jackson County. And then we schedule our public hearing and update our forms and Have to get that completed before our final certification is due to the county back on October 1st So we do have our public hearing notice posted yesterday in the pulse And then we will have our scheduled public hearing on September 22nd Here's a look at the year-over-year trends and assessed values split by category the city of Lee summit does span two counties with 97% of the assessed value on The left-hand side of the screen sitting in Jackson County and the other 3% remaining in Cass County. If you can kind of tell by all the little bars on here, Jackson County has declined this year 0.5% and that is driven by a 10.8% reduction in commercial assessed value. Um, Cass County had a very, um, average increase of 3.4%, um, this year. So we just thought it was helpful this year to kind of show the differences there. The next slide is what you're used to seeing, which is that combined total assessed value for the city. The total assessed value, averaging those two out, just decreased it by 0.4% compared to 2025. Our total assessed value is sitting at approximately $3.48 billion. And that is, again, a negative decrease of 0.4% for this year. I think it's helpful to understand in the assessment and levy process, um, the Hancock amendment that is in the Missouri constitution. It really helps protect Missouri citizens from excessive, um, revenue growth from cities and property taxes. It establishes limits for the general and parks and recreation funds that limits the growth in your revenue dollars and property taxes by the lower of CPI or 5%, whichever is lower for the 2026. We are not permitted to grow based off of that negative growth of our assessed value. When you plug it into the state tax calculator, you actually see that adjusted negative is actually 2.12% for the city. Technically, the debt service levy is not subject to the Hancock Amendment. However, in alignment with a April 2021 election, we've committed to holding that levy steady at the .3697 bills. This is just the total levy rate calculation formulas for you guys to see. That blue box, we have it separated out by the three separate mill levies we have to do. That is the permitted revenue growth that we are allowed with our forms following that Hancock Amendment. And then you take your total assessed value, and you divide that, and then you times it by 100, and then that gives you your levy rate calc. There's just an inverse relationship between that assessed value. So as assessed values decline, your levy would need to increase to cover that same dollar amount to generate that. So you will see that we do have our levies are increasing slightly, but it really does not. Increase our revenue dollars at all because again that inverse relationship and the asterisks on the slide We do have a voluntary reduction that we have done in the parks and recreation of that point zero zero zero one so we're just noting that and that is Years ago that that adjustment was made and in order to correct it We'd have to bring that forward do an ordinance and you guys would have to authorize us to take that voluntary rollback And then, again, as I had mentioned earlier, that debt service, we do a voluntary reduction of that .0857 to remain and keep that debt levy steady for the citizens at that .3697. So what you would expect to see at the September 22nd public hearing is that rate ceiling at that 1.3075 is what we're proposing at that public hearing. This is an example residential property tax calculation for you all to just kind of help you assess where you might stand. We do try to take the median home value in the community, which right now is sitting at that $357,500. You take that times your residential assessment of 19%, and then You divide that by 100 to get that 679 as your assessed value, and you multiply that then by our levy rate. So for this year, that average home would pay $874 in property tax revenue to the city. In context, that total bill using the 25 numbers is, I don't want to shy away from that total bill is closer to 5,000. It's 4,952. But the city portion of that bill is just that 874. And when you take that divided by 12, that's just 72.83 a month or 239 a day. When I think about the service that we provide the citizens, I really think that that's a pretty outstanding value for covering 30% of the general fund. And then that's just a corresponding pie chart to show you the context of what we're collecting. So this slide is to really kind of give you guys an update. We were hoping maybe we could do a little bit more, but just, um, this is where we are at currently with Jackson county. Um, they have had two orders from the Missouri state tax commission. Um, one in August of 2024, that said the 23 reassessment was systemically had systemic legal issues. that affected residential property and required assessments not to exceed 15%. That then was followed up by a May 2025 order that really kind of outlined the formula required by the county to do their assessed values moving forward and requiring that it either be true market or the lower of the 15%. Jackson County has also, last fall, you might have remembered, we talked a little bit in here about the commercial property assessments. They did adopt an ordinance for commercial property rollbacks. Again, kind of aligning with that state tax commission order, kind of saying that 15% would be their maximum for properties valued less than that $5 million. for commercial. And then most recently in July of this year, they have said that they're going to do the Levota tax program, which is providing credits or reduction in future tax payments for residential assessments that might have been assessed and billed incorrectly. As of this moment, we do not know the impact of those. We have requested that information of the county, um, but we're kind of, we're waiting. I think what we understand is the state tax commission told us to follow up tomorrow. We contacted them. Um, they said, give us two weeks. And then, um, I guess I should say the state auditor told us to follow up, um, because they need an update. The state tax commission has not certified. the tax levy roles that have been provided by the county. So I think the county provided those in July, according to when they were supposed to. Um, but they're still waiting for those to be certified. So the county is not rolling out their plan or how they plan to, um, communicate with us on those tax credits. Um, so we're just kind of in a wait and see, we were really hoping we would have that available for you guys today because it does follow the same timeline for the levy. Um, the recruitment process would follow the same. So what we did go ahead and do, um, was to go ahead and take the information that we had provided. Again, this is not certified information, so it's still subject to the state tax commission's rulings. Um, but we took that information and then plugged it into the state forms that would then have to be certified by the state auditor's office. to look and see about what the impacts would be for the city of Lee summit. I think the key takeaway to me is currently we are not eligible for the recruitment process. However, if we were eligible based off the data that has been provided to us at this moment in time, it doesn't actually show that we collected any more dollars as a city than what was due to us. In fact, we collect less dollars We were eligible to collect almost $400,000 more in property tax than what we did. And so, again, that has to do with that inverse relationship between assessed value and the levy, as well as the permitted growth you're allowed. That massive year of assessed valuation growth, you're still limited by that Hancock Amendment that I referenced earlier. So that 5% is really your limiter, and we abided by that. State auditor certifies our amounts each year. So we didn't collect a penny more than what was due to us as a city. So really any credits would just be reducing our most stable revenue source that we have available to us. So we have asked the county. We're hopeful that they'll pull that information together for us. But as of right now. Nothing we can do. But we will update you. We will reach out to the state auditors tomorrow to see if they've received any updates from the state tax commission as soon as we hear. We'll just shoot you all an email and let you know if we have anything new to share with that. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, so then just the next steps here public hearing notice was published yesterday City Council public hearings scheduled for September 22nd Then we will follow up and provide our certified rights to Jackson and Cass County by that October 1 deadline and then You guys should see it on your bills in November If you all have any questions, I'm happy to take them right now any questions No

I do.

Council Member Atkins?

Thank you. I'm trying to raise my hand on this Zoom. I don't even know where it is. Thanks for letting me ask. Thank you for the presentation. On the slide that has the information about the levies for the last five years, I feel like there's going to be more, anticipate more questions with the residents and here in the next couple of weeks. So for context on that slide, could we add in five years before that? Could we add in the context of what the levy has been before things turned wacky in 2023, just to show continuity and consistency?

Sure. Yeah, I mean, we might not be able to get it all on one slide. We will play around with it, or we can provide maybe two slides, too, if it's too far across on it. But we can definitely.

Maybe just an additional historic slide. Yeah. Just to give the additional information.

Yeah, an additional five years, right?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think that would be great. And I know that category, that column is called revised records. But we didn't actually revise it, right? No. It's a comparison or it's an example of what it would have been.

Yes. If those get certified, that is what we would be able to even plug into the recoupment forms. It's a separate form that we would do within the process. And that would tell us then whether or not we would have any dollars eligible to assess to add to our tax certification, if that makes sense. And so then we would want to have a discussion about that. Just because you can collect more doesn't mean that you necessarily have to authorize us collecting more. We could still hold firm on that and not go through it. So it is a recoupment process that is allowable for you to do if those get certified. However, you guys would be the decision makers around whether or not we would pursue that. And just to give some context, that would be required to be recaptured over a three-year period. And so you're looking at like $132,000 per year. So it's not a win. Yeah, I would question whether or not you want to go back and do the recoupment, but I think it would be a decision point for you guys to have. once we get those final dollar bounce, but we just wanted to provide some context of what that recruitment looks like and from what we have received it doesn't look like it is substantial, but we don't know what that credit piece looks like and how the county is proposing to implement that and the impacts of that.

Okay. Well, thank you for that clarification. So just just for people who might be flipping through the presentation but don't have the benefit of the listening to the audio or hearing the volume, is it possible to split that apart into two slides? So that one slide is just like, here's our actual levees, and then another slide explaining the if and situation, or here's what it would be, but we don't know, like context to separate out things that aren't real.

I think they are two separate slides.

Well, I'm thinking of the slide that has them all next to each other.

Well, that was just to show then what the recoupment would look like. So that's strictly just if recoupment, which we tried to bold and say we are not eligible for this right now. This is not certified information. This is just to provide you. I feel really bad that we don't have information to provide you in a time when we should have information to provide you. So it was just an effort to provide you something based off of the most knowledge that we have at this moment.

Okay. And what is CPI?

What is the rate of CPI? 2.7 is what is allowable in the form.

Well, is that what actual CPI was this year?

Yes.

Yeah. That's what the state is saying we can take. Okay, is that, can you add that in there too? I'm just giving questions that I would want to see if I was looking through in a final draft.

And are these things you want them to update to the presentation that will be in front of full council?

Yeah, I think so. I think that'd be helpful because I feel like more eyes will be on it later and we would just want to have any of those easy clarifying questions handled.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yep.

Thank you. Thank you.

So you don't have to update it and then update it in the packet information for this meeting.

Oh, good point. Yes.

She would just like to see that information at the council presentation. Yes.

Yep.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, no problem.

Anything else?

Not for me. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Okay, anything, ring any questions loose there? No. No?

Okay.

Okay. All right. Okay. Anything else?

Nope. That was it.

All right. Thank you very much for the information. Okay. Next, we are on to roundtable. Do we have roundtable from anyone? Committee? No? No? No?

Nothing going on.

Staff? No? All right, we are adjourned at some time. 5.56 p.m., thank you.

Thank you. you