City Commission - Regular Meeting

Jason, would you call the role, please? Mayor Adam, I'm here. Commissioner Mcola, here. Commissioner Fox, here. Commissioner Morrison, here. Commissioner von Little here. You have a quorum. Thank you. Will you please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance? Thank you. Uh commissioners, any comments? Any news to share.

I just want to thank all the public servants that helped with fake Patty's Day. So, that was a it's a lot of overtime, I'm sure, for some of them. Thank you, Commissioner Marcy. Fox,

this is International Women's Month and the AW and Usha Ready had a wonderful dinner last Sunday night um with four panelists who are all amazing young women at K State some international um just amazing what they're doing in their research. It's mindboggling. Also, the the Discovery Center has a a maker week, so you can go in and see people doing all kinds of interesting things from quilting to woodwork. Uh, it's free to go in that part of the museum. If you want to see the museum, you have to pay your usual payment. Thank you. Um, I would like to just uh mention that this afternoon I had the pleasure of attending the groundbreaking for the Yuma Street Cultural Center um at the corner of 10th and Yuma. Um the church that has been there since 1917 is going to be repurposed as um the the offices of Black Entrepreneurs of the Flint Hills. And there will be additional uh there will be a culinary kitchen there. There will be um youth programming. There will be opportunities for uh counseling or or classes on personal finance on home buying. Um different things like this. There will be um events where entrepreneurs will be able to showcase their wares. Um and what a lovely date to do this. so much different from the housing project last week which was in cold and 30°ree weather rain and etc. The other thing I'd like to mention is um this past week uh General Monte Ran the um commanding general of the first infantry division traveled to Washington to witness the postumous um awarding of a medal of

honor uh to command sergeant major Terry Richardson. Um, ma uh, Sergeant Major Richardson is the 39th member of the first, um, infantry division to receive the Medal of Honor. He served in Vietnam, drafted in 1967. He was a platoon leader. Um he was in an instance where he came under intense fire, rescued three wounded soldiers, climbed a hill to call in tactical air support and realized that he was as he went over the hill that the Vietkong were on the other side of the hill. Nevertheless, um he stayed for seven hours, called in 32 strikes, and is considered to be responsible for saving the lives of 85 people in his platoon. Um so we we talk about our relationship with Fort Riley, I think it would just be uh it's appropriate to acknowledge uh that honor. Um I actually heard it on national radio as well and so it it was nice to have that recognition. All right, thank you all. Um tonight is a work session. Our first uh presentation will be from Marshia Roselle on our visit Manhattan quarterly update. Good evening, mayor, commissioners. Marcia Roselle, executive director of Visit Manhattan. Okay, I don't think I have this open as a slideshow. There we go. Uh, is there a way to make this full screen?

My It's going Thank you, Jason. Okay. Uh, just a reminder, the mission of Visit Manhattan is to inspire and attract outside visitors that will come and spend dollars in our community. As the destination marketing organization, our role encompasses six areas of focus. We promote the destination brand to attract visitors through advertisement, digital marketing, public relations, content creation, and storytelling. The goal is to shape the perspect perception and inspire the travel demand. We actively sell the destination for meetings, conferences, sports, and special events while working with planners, submitting bids, and promoting local venues. This, excuse me, this drives high value visitation with economic impact. Once the groups are booked, we provide exceptional service support such as welcome materials, marketing assistance, and on the ground logistics to ensure successful events and repeat business. We connect visitors with hotels, attractions, restaurants, and local business through our website, itineraries, references, and trip planning tools. Acting as an unbiased

information hub, we engage our hospitality partners to align efforts and broadcast our amazing amenities. We collect, analyze, and report tourism data such as visitor volume, economic impact, room nights, and market trends. The data um guides strategy, demonstrates ROI, and informs decision making. This evening, I would like to provide an overview of Manhattan's tourism performance. One of the data resources that we utilize is Placer. It's a leading analytical platform that uses cell phone and credit card data to deliver detailed visitor insight. The three the next three sides summarize 2025 visitation patterns which include total trip volume, the average length of stay and visitor origin markets. In 2025, Manhattan recorded approximately 1.4 1.4 million inbound trips which does include repeat visitation. Um total visit visitor spending uh reached 162.6 million and twothirds of our visitors stayed overnight while the one-third that visited for the day were for at least five hours. Visitor spending occurs in lodge in lodging, retail and dining establishments as noted and the top origin markets were Kansas City, Missouri, Witchita and Topeka. The average length of stay is 3.2 days and we have a strong weekendbased travel pattern among our visitors.

This data illustrates the distribution of overnight stays compared to the day trips. It is important to note that all not not all visitors stay in hotels. Many choose short-term rentals or stay with family and friends. Among our competition set, Witchah, Overland Park, and Topeka, Manhattan ranks fifth in the state for the total trip volume. Also note, uh Manhattan ranks first in the average length of stay with that 3.2 days. This data is sourced from the Smith Travel Research and AirDNA. two primary reporting tools that we use to provide you with monthly lodging metrics. On the one graph shows the transient guest tax collection from our 13 hotel properties, while the other illustrates collections from the short-term rentals. In 2025, the total TGT collection reached 3.1 million. Of that amount, 21% was generated by short-term rentals. This is an increase from two years ago when it was 17% of the TTT collected. Overall occupancy for 25 was at 56% and you can see the data point there for January uh we were at 44%. The average daily rate for 20 in 25 was $123, consistent with 2024 and in January the average daily rate was $107. Our Visit Manhattan team currently includes three dedicated staff members. Myself, Jen Alli, who leads our convention sales efforts, and Logan Lynn, our newly hired service coordinator. Together, we focus on attracting and supporting meetings, conferences, sports, and special events

that drive the economic impact for the community. We are entering 2026 with a strong momentum. We have already secured several conferences, sports, and special events. And our pipeline continues to grow as we work proactively with partners and planners to provide business to to to bring in additional business to Manhattan. As you can see, both January and February of this year showed an increase in the conferences compared to the past two years. The spike in March of 2025 was due to 21 conferences which include DECA which again returned this year and Kansas hosta the future health professionals. They each had over 800 attendees. The sports events are tracking closely with 2025. The notable spike there in March of 24 reflects when K State hosted the NCAA women's basketball first and second rounds. The next three slides present more data on short-term rentals. While we at VA Visit Manhattan do not proactively promote short-term rentals, we do have a resource on our website that lists where you can get short-term rentals. We do track this sector to understand the visitors behavior and its imple and its impact on overall the overall lodging market. Many visitors choose short-term rentals for a variety of reasons. This data helps us monitor that trend. This slide compares January of 2026 to January of 2025 and there is 333 available listings for 2025. The 8 8.4 million year-toate revenue

equates to $643,000 into the transient and guest tax funds. This bar cha graph illustrates the number of available listings accompanied by a line graph that shows the year-over-year percent changes. In 2025, the market averaged 337 available listings per month. In addition, uh any additional um details, if you would like any additional details, I'm happy to provide those from AirDNA or actually um arrange a meeting with our account manager to address any specific questions you have regarding short-term rental property performance in Manhattan. I'm happy to answer any questions. So, how do we track how many VRBOs there are short-term rentals?

So, um, AirDNA is a platform that uses both, um, Airbnb, VBRRO, there's also a couple other ones that are smaller and they track that for us. So, they're not all necessarily on there then, I assume. Well, those that are listed, right? Those are that that are registered through those platforms. Marshia, are they registered with the city as well? Are they registered say with um Not to my knowledge. Not to my knowledge. No.

One of the comments I've heard is what some reasons they're popular. We don't inspect. So, we don't know if they're four people or 20 people in a house they rent privately. Is that something we ought to be concerned about? Um, life safety. Sure. Tourism. It it it is something to be concerned about. Yes. And so, are you suggesting that it would be appropriate that we do such? I'm not suggesting that at all, sir. Mayor Adam, before we move on, I wanted to um respond to your question. We do uh require uh those short-term rentals to register as a limited use. However, we only have 58 currently registered.

Yeah, you know, I I can see the the um the cons for short-term rental. I mean, if you live in a neighborhood and all of a sudden your neighbor decides she or he wants to, you know, have that be a Airbnb or that kind of thing with no kind of number qualifications or cost qualifications and also we're going to be talking about housing later on this evening. And um obviously that's um 330 places which might be available to rent you know by the year instead of by the evening. So it's kind of a quandry that we're in. Obviously, we like the sales tax dollars, but

um given that disparity between uh the number that we think are on the market and 58 being registered, how are we collecting the TGT from those entities? That's a that's a good question. I I know that the information that I presented that's the collections and and I don't know what the radius is around Manhattan. It might be larger than the city proper. It could be the region. Um but that is what's being reported um through AirDNA.

In my experience, uh Airbnb, VBO, those platforms collect uh the transient guest tax on our behalf and then they distribute it through the state. Okay. Thank you. When I'm looking at the uh the data, it it seems like we're kind of flat like on the visitors and and like a lot of our our metrics. It what and I always feel like if we do the same thing over and over again, we're going to get the same results. So, Sure. So, looking for what what new ideas we're kind of looking at or what what what would be good go going forward.

Sure. We are always looking at the u industry standards best practices. We are looking more towards the digital marketing because people have cell phones in their hands. Um certainly we've got major events coming up with the World Cup this summer. So we are marketing in the Kansas City area specifically this year because of those international visitors that'll be coming for the World Cup. So those are some of the the um things that we are doing differently. Um, another question. So, on conferences, like what is our

kind of turnover rate, I guess, is how I'd call it, but a conference that comes in 2024 and then returns in 25 and 26, you know, like is there what's do we have a good number on? There's a lot of patterns with our conferences. We have a lot of annual conferences that come year after year, which we are grateful for, and we still provide them quality service so that they that they stay here in Manhattan. We have some conferences that will book three years at a at a rotation. We have some conferences that rotate every year. And there's a a couple of different destinations in Kansas that some of the state associations rotate towards. Um we are always in that list of where people want to come and stay for conferences, which is a great thing.

Well, I'll ask the embarrassing question. How much money did you get from the city through this guest tax? And proportionately of the six opportunities he used to help us. How is it spent? So um it is spent very wisely and well I would assume that as your responsor you wouldn't have any money. So right I guess my question is sure what are those numbers? because I see from the information given to us that over the last 20 years that tax has gone up from 2% to what 7.5 or something like that now or more.

Uh so the collection is 7 and a half% at the at the at the hotel um and and Airbnbs. Um so commissioner, you receive every month a detaile accounting for where our financial records are at. I'm happy to go over those any time with you. Um, I would say that 37% of our budget is spent on uh on staff. Um um part of the cost savings to be at the chamber is we share staff. So that's a that's a positive. 48% I believe of our budget goes to marketing. And all of that marketing, those prices are going up year after year after year. So what it takes to um use digital marketing has gone up. Um and um certainly we want our assets that we have promoting um we've spent a lot of of of our dollars on on photographs, videos because we know that as things change in the community, we need to keep it um correct and accurate. Um so I believe that that that we we receive 1.5 million of the transient gas tax.

Thank you. Okay. Sure. I think we talked about like uh was there a recent change to the website? A big one? We did. Yes. Last year we upgraded our website and did a rehaul and then we kind of saw just a kind of a collapse in the numbers of visitors for like in the transition. Is that how I would frame? Uh so some of the metrics that we showed of our website had been lagging behind which was why we did the redesign. So we should see those numbers go up. Are we already starting to hopefully see

Yes. Yes. Uh let's see. I can bring up January's numbers, but we are seeing more um hit uh traction on our website because one thing that I've kind of learned even through campaigning and everything that you know a website digitally I mean that's a It's one of the cheaper ways to go to reach a lot of people. Uh yes, we went up um from 13,000 to 17,000 uh engagements on our website just in the month of January over year. So,

thank you, Marcia. Commissioners, I realized I neglected to ask if we wanted to allow public comment tonight. So, can do we have a motion to uh So, move second. Commissioner McCulla? Yes. Commissioner Fox? Yes. Commissioner Morrison? Yes. Commissioner Von LTO? Yes. Mayor Adam? Thank you. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Is there anyone who would like to make public comment on this presentation? All right. Seeing no one, I will close. P I'm seeing one person.

I was trying to find a really tiny number in the It's It's a very small presentation. Um, Amber Starling, 408 Houston Street. Uh, I had a couple questions. I'm sure they won't be answered tonight. Um, but I did notice uh on slide nine, we had 64 booked conferences and events for Q1. That would put us at about 256 for the year if all numbers were equal. I know that they're not. Um there's like some up and down in it. Um but I know that we're not expecting that big boom in March for sports or events this year because of an event that rotates back and forth and sports events that aren't happening. Um what I would kind of like to know is um you know, Commissioner Von Lintal pointed out that that visitors are kind of flat. Uh you see that in the slide where they showed it across the board in different cities. It's also been kind of flat in the state. So, what are we doing to try and, you know, correct the ship on that? Um, and then I also recognize that gas prices have spiked 17%. Um, just as a result of the conflict in Iran. Um, I would like to know how the CVB anticipates that those fuel increases will impact our local tourism industry and what operational changes or strategies they are looking into to mitigate losses. Thank you. Marcia, would you like to respond to either of those?

Uh, yes. So, I'm sorry, Amber. Um, I was thinking of one. Um, can you refresh remind me what Yeah. Yeah. So, with us not having because the I know that the physicians conference goes back and forth. So, we don't get them this year, we'll get them next year. Sure. And then we're not uh hosting the basketball. Sure. Yeah. So with that the number of and and that slide is always what we're booking towards the future. Yeah. And so it varies obviously but um uh sometimes with conferences we're booking three years out. So

yeah. So we're still looking at like 256 for the year which would be low. So I was just wondering what strategies you guys were implementing to kind of write that ship. Um so continuing to reach out to the planners and uh the make new contacts throughout the state. Certainly there are regional events that um rotate you know in the multiple state district. Um so we hope to to gain some of those but gorgeous. And then the other mayor Adam check I would uh caution us against having a back and forth with a member of the public and I'm our presenter this evening. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, I guess I'll get you the other questions. Yes. Okay. Perfect.

Thank you. That thought crossed my mind. Um, thank you, Marcia. Moving on, we will consider the Anderson Avenue. Sorry.

Sorry. Can I just under public comment still? Is that okay? Okay. Jason Smith, I'm Manhattan Area Chamber of Commerce. I just want to address a couple of things. Number one, in relation to Commissioner Morrison's question, yes, those dollar figures have or those the percentages have gone up every year. I will remind you all and the public that that the CVB has gone from getting 100% of the TGT tax to now we're around 50% of the TGT tax. And those additional funds that have come in have funded things like the turf at Annenburgg and the expansion at the conference center. And so as we've increased our tourism, it's also allowed us to to add to our infrastructure uh going forward. And and I want to add a couple other things because Marshia is not real good at bragging on themselves, but but for I want to give an example of of like the livestock association that was a conference that we got back in 24. We thought we might get it for a year and get in a rotation. They appreciated the the response they got from this community, including the CVB, but also Kate and others so much that that they have now booked two two su uh successive years. And so we'll be getting our third successive Kansas Livestock Conference Association, which is our now second largest conference that we have in the community on an annual basis. And so I just want to say I watch I watch what they do every day. And we are we're going to add a sports person and I know I know Commissioner McCulla and Madame Czech have both talked about their excitement about this the strategy around sports tourism and we're about to we're looking at adding our sports person and I'm excited about the opportunities we have there and I have I'm every conf I have every confidence that the numbers that uh that were talked about we're going to we're going to hit. So uh one last thing we all knew 23 was an exceptional year. I mean, as as as someone mentioned, um we were it was those are very high numbers across the board in multiple jurisdictions just like there were here. In fact, we thought we might see a significant drop

in 24 and 25. And in fact, we the fact that we've held flat, I think, is a testament to to our community and the things that we do to attract visitors. And so, I just wanted to add that. So, thank you all very much. Thank you, Jason. Um, anybody else? All right, we will close that segment of public hearing uh public comments and director Brian Johnson will brief us on Anderson Avenue and an possible intersection study update.

Yeah. Thank you, Commissioner Mayor. Uh Brian Johnson, director of public works engineer. Real quick before I get into Anderson Avenue, I want to give you an update on Wintertorm Fern, which impacted our area back into January. We do have some final numbers on that as far as costs and hours worked, those sorts of things. So, I want to give the commission a quick update on that. Uh, so winter storm for impacted our area the end of January. We went to a uh we got about eight and a half inches of snow total. We went to 24-hour operation Saturday, January 24th, and we continued through Monday, January 26, about 72 hours straight of operations. Uh, starting on Tuesday the 27th and Wednesday the 28th, we went back to eight hour operations. Uh, total cost for the storm, $147,000. Uh, we had 5,500 miles driven with our uh, snow vehicles, about 20 of them. We spread about 430 tons of salt and about 7600 gallons of calcium chloride because we pre-treated this storm. It was cold. They didn't talk snow or I'm sorry, they didn't talk rain, so we pre-treated on Friday. Uh we did also pick up snow in downtown in Aville. The city picked it up. We didn't have a contractor do it. Typically, if it's over about four or five inches, we will have a contractor do it, but the way this snow happened to work out, we actually had crews available. So, we did it oursel, saved ourselves a little bit of money. Uh, the only bad news out of the storm is our snowb blower, our 1983 snowblower broke. Uh, we have been actively looking on eBay for parts since then, and we are not having a lot of luck finding them. So, I have asked our street superintendent to see if he can find a very gently used one. So, if anybody in

the public or is listening has a 7 foot tall 400 horsepower snowblower for sale, let us know. We'd love to come over this weekend and take a look at it. Any questions from that storm event? Brian, are these significant parts that need to be replaced? Are we talking engines or Yeah, injection engines. Yep. They're just they're just dated. Um I ask only because there's um the is it technology development institute that's over in on McCall Road is available to help with retrofitting parts.

Um yeah and so it might just be a resource if it's not

something as complete as a full engine u that they might be able to assist. And what that does when that breaks, we actually have to load our trucks downtown in an Aggieville by skid loaders and tractors, which is a it triples the amount of time it takes to do that. So downtown Aguville, we plow everything to the center and then we come back at night, we load the trucks with snowblowers, and uh when that thing's broken, it just it increases your time and uh your operations. So that's why that piece of equipment's needed. Brian, the figure that you cited 147,000 um is that just for materials and supplies?

No, that's total. That's materials, supplies, labor, depreciation on vehicles, mileage on vehicles, that's everything. So, um Danielle, the the figure that we've talked about in terms of being closer to threequarters of a million, what else was co included in that? So, that was that was I'll let you answer. You sure? Yep. Okay. I'm sorry. Uh that was last year's That was last year. That was Sorry. Sorry. The much more significant snow we had to ask for help. Yeah. Yep. Okay. My bad. Sorry.

That 25 to $30,000 an inch, that's pretty standard around the country when you look at other cities. It's about what it costs. Uh two or three inch snow will cost more than that per inch because you got to mobilize all your people and equipment. You're not dividing it out among four days, but roughly roughly speaking, that's about what you're looking at in the Midwest. So when you say labor and fuel, I assume the labor is the overtime from the guys. Correct. Not the normal budgeted, correct? Fuel is the extra fuel.

And those eight hours Tuesday, Wednesday, they're accounted for in that snowstorm, but we were to pay that labor either way. That's correct. But that's duties that are being done for snowplow that are now not being done for other things. They're not patching potholes or not fixing streets, those sorts of things. Any other questions on winter storm? Hopefully, we're in March and the weather's going to turn. We actually last Friday we went through and did our uh spring storm update. So, we go from one season to another. Okay, back to Anderson Avenue. Um, so want to give you a quick update tonight on where we're at, kind of where we're headed. Uh, we are working on phase one, uh, 1 A and 1B and then also phase two. Uh, just for the commission's update. Uh, last year we when the property was being platted, uh, there was quite a bit of discussion about traffic in that area. Uh, we did get a traffic impact study. uh traffic impact study indicates that during the peak hours there's actually less vehicles now than what was in the younger property before uh the younger property. Remember when you're talking about traffic studies now you're talking about peak hours. So businesses create a lot of peak hour traffic because people work 8 to5. So they're going to work in the peak hour and they're going home in the peak hour. Apartments residential not so much. People leave at 8:30, at 9, 9:30. They get home at 2:30, 3, 3:30. So they're not counted in those peak hours. So peak hours uh the existing property actually generates more traffic than what the residential does. Uh and that's traffic study was reviewed by us uh last summer and then we had a discussion about it during the younger process. So again project management team Karen Becker's here uh with us tonight.

Whitney Hel is project manager current work. So, the south lanes, two lanes of Anderson are done in 1A. You're driving on them currently headtohead. Those will be the future eastbound dual lanes. Uh the westbound lane is pretty much removed. Uh the vast majority of it is gone. And then they're doing quite a bit of water main work uh in phase 2 A and also in the purple phase B or phase five, excuse me. Future Timberlane intersection. So, when it's all said and done, this is what this intersection will look like. Uh we did sneak a little turn lane in up here off Anderson and then a little turn lane here off Timberlane and then the future Bell Haven intersection. Uh this is Bell Haven, this is Willard stop controlled intersections. So we did do a level of service study for both of those intersections. Anderson Avenue study indicated a signal would have low levels of service and from that study also the volumes of traffic appear not to warrant a traffic signal at either intersection. So we looked at a roundabout option. Uh two roundabouts were explored. One near Anderson Avenue and College Heights and a second one at Bell Haven and Anderson. This is the one at Timberlane. It's uh the intersection is slid a little bit to the east and a little bit south of where it is currently. We're trying to get farther away from that curve and we're trying to get up on the hill more so that you're not going around the roundabout on a hill. You can see we've actually curved College Heights Road in a little bit to try to get farther away from that hill and that curve here is the existing College Heights. This is the Bell Haven Anderson uh roundabout, the east one. We slid this one here a little bit farther uh south

and a little bit farther west than what was shown last year. We also are relocating Willard Avenue here and then also the parking lot for the church here and then closing these driveways and bringing these folks up here. And in a minute, I'll just show you an accident map and you'll see why we were trying to close as many intersections as possible. Uh on this property here where the church is, we would provide a gate here. A gate that would close that the uh church would have a key to much like what athletics has on Kimell Avenue. So the church could close and lock this gate, use it on Sundays if they wanted to or during events or they could leave it closed at their option. So overall recommendation, uh do not add a traffic signal either at either intersections because of the low level of service and volumes. Don't meet warrants. Uh at this time we our recommendation is not to construct a roundabout at either intersection. Uh while these are recommended they are considerable cost and will require significant rightaway acquisition. We would like to close the driveways at anger and along the church also. Then we'd like to monitor the roadway for accidents over the next several years. If we do have an accident issue, we could apply for a safety grant and try to get Kate to help us with some funding. So, with that, I will stand for questions. This is the accident map along Anderson Avenue. So, every one of those little red dots are an accident. You can see they're jumbled around parking lots, driveways, again, driveways, driveways to the church, driveways to hunger, again, driveways to the church, and then of course the intersections. Ryan, it would appear that at the south end of that little map, all those wrecks appear to be coming out of that office complex driveway.

Yes. Rather than the intersection. Yeah. And that's why we showed this connector road here, Commissioner. We would close these driveways and bring those folks up this way. That's why this connector road shown there. Some of these also are lefthand turners that are trying to get into either Willard or to Bell Haven. So they're out in the intersection also. Um Brian is Yes. What period of time are those accident is that year? They are 2018 to 2024.

Thank you. I would just say having having worked out of Anger Hall for 15 years, I I would hate to see that driveway closed because personally I would far rather use that driveway than go down to the intersection at Timberlane. Sure. Or the other one, Bell. I mean, Bell Heaven's a little better. You have a little better line of sight, but Timberlane was terrible. Uh I I you have a much better line of sight coming out of the driveway in front of Hall.

Okay. Real quick, we'll go on to a second uh proposal here that we got from the contractor, then we'll open it up for questions to the public. So, buyer construction, the prime contractor has requested to close Anderson Avenue from Timberlane Drive to about uh Wickham Road through the summer, so May through August. Their proposal also would request a few five-day uh closures after the summer. So, this fall when they're in their paving operations. The exact number of those we don't know yet. It kind of depend on what they got done this summer. Uh these would be random closures with at least a week of pre-notice. And in return for those closures, they're offering us a $72,000 reduction in the cost of the project. Uh it also will reduce overall project timeline because anytime you do a full closure it is quicker. Representative from buyer construction are here. They can certainly talk more about that.

Could could you show us that on the map and how do people get to Edertton and West you know? Sure. Yeah.

So here's the overall map. So, they would close uh from where they're at now down to just over in this area. Uh you could get to everything uh from College Heights Road. Everything north of Anderson, you could come off College Heights Road and get to it. Remember, College Heights Road would be open at that time. Uh if you're coming from the west, you could come up Anderson Avenue now and get into Timberlane and then down to Bell Haven. Three of us weren't here when this was designed and approved and established, but what was the overall project timeline to complete?

Okay. Yeah, great question. Uh overall project timeline is about 16 to 18 months. And how we're into what now? Nine months. No, not about six. It was last fall. And so how much do they think they would save in time if we did that? And I would leave that up to the contractor because they know their operations better than we do. Uh they can certainly come up and talk about it.

But the reason I ask is if if we do that and it cuts their time substantially, 72,000 is the pittance for what they're going to save and expedite for our community. And I'm thinking, you know, I don't what was the budget for this? uh is about $11 million 10 and change and they're here tonight. They can certainly ask or answer all of those questions.

There's always an answer I have. The question is what do we get out of it for 72,000 out of a 11 million contract? I mean, they're not going to be moving traffic signs. They're not going to be having people drive through it. They're not going to have all that equipment garbage to put up with moving. 72,000. I mean, that doesn't even cover those costs, let alone any expedition for time. And those are great questions, Commissioner. Yes. I Is there any late penalty for not being done on time? Yeah, we have penalties for being late. Yes. Thank you. Yeah.

Commissioner, would you like to hear from Bear or their representative? One quick second. Um I just But Willard and uh Wildwood on the south side. Yeah. Yeah. So, are you guys not closing it all the way to that or

No, they probably do some sort of temporary crossing there. So, you could come down College Heights and then cross just at that intersection. I I again, I hate to speak for the contractor because it's their means and methods, but um that would be my assumption. That's how they would get them in. Yeah, it just it just looks like it's probably about 14 properties that we still need to have access for. So I don't

two on that southside. Correct. Yes. So with that, I think we'll talk about Anderson and then I'll come back and I'll give you an update on street maintenance for this year. Good evening, commissioners. This is Peter Clark with Buyer Construction. Um, being willing to answer any questions you may have about our proposal. We would like obviously to be able to have this closure over the summertime and while we're doing major concrete paving operations. I think it will definitely add value to the project. uh the $72,000 that we're wanting to offer up as a deduct to the contract um allows that is a savings that we think that the project can achieve because of primarily the way we would pave the concrete. So as the way the the streets are set up, it's very narrow and it's hard to be able to get a concrete paving machine in there while there's still traffic. Um, if we are able to close the road for both the summertime and those periodic oneweek closures that Brian mentioned, that allows us to be able to pave a 20 and a half foot wide swath versus those 10-ft swasts we've been doing up to this point. And that would definitely create a not just an operational savings to the project, but it would also save some time. You would have less time performing the concrete paving process. So that savings in our labor and equipment uh is captured in that $72,000 deduct to the contract that we're offering up. We're hoping that that would be mutually beneficial us be able to speed up have our people be safer during the closure and also the contract in the city to be able to achieve some savings and hopefully speed things up a little bit. We were very cautious because Brian asked very detailed

questions. How many days, how many months is this going to save? When we bid the project, we identified that there's a lot of rock underground and the whole project primarily is a waterline project in a storm sewer project which happens to be underneath the pavement. That's why we're replacing the pavement. But so much of the work is underground. We don't know yet exactly how much rock we're going to encounter. We've spent probably double the amount of time in the Timberlane Carl and Michael subdivision because of the rock. We were we thought we'd be in and out of there in about a month and a half. We've been up there for over four months putting the water line in that section because it is just solid rock through there trying to hammer rock out in between people's sewer laterals and water services trying to keep them into service while we're putting new stuff into place. It's been it's been fun, but thankfully the neighborhood has been very cooperative in the process. And also to add to the the questions about access, we we are committed throughout the entire project to make sure that everybody gets access to their properties at every point in time. There may be, you know, an hour or two while we are maybe paving a road or extending a pipe across a driveway where there's a period of time where it's not easy to get in and out and we might have to provide a spot for somebody to get close to their property. But the vast majority of the time, everyone's getting to and from work in and out in the mornings every day. There's a little bit of help even with trash collection. our people helping bring tra their people's trash cans to the curb or to the places where they need to be so we can get that taken care of for folks. What what questions would you buy I have for buyer construction?

So you're you're saving at least a couple of weeks, two or three weeks. We're hoping so. I think that if this goes the way we think it's going to go, I think it's it could save up to a month. That being said, I'm very cautious to add a deduct in time to the contract. One of the things we have, we can we we can negotiate the dollars in the contract and the time in the contract. I'm very hesitant to give up that time yet, not knowing there's still a lot of pipe to put in the ground. We have a very large 24inch water line that's going to go down Oakdale that also could have a lot of rock. Sound like if you're doing one 20 foot swath versus two 10-ft swaths, you're saving a week of curing time. Just correct. save the paving process could definitely be expedited,

but the critical path for the entire project is not the paving. It's how fast can you get the water in the ground with the rock you have to get. I guess I'd echo Commissioner Morrison that 72,000 seems pretty small for

sounds like you're saving a lot. Well, throughout you look at all the phases of the project and all the the concrete that is left, we had put a number together. Basically, that is a summation of how much per square foot that we're going to save or per how many how many dollars per square yard. And I can't remember the exact number off the top of my head. I think it was like $560 something per square yard that it would be less to be able to pave 20 foot wide versus the 10 foot wide at a time. the the big part of concrete paving is the material cost and that is the the majority of concrete paving.

Um Pete, you finished? Um Peter, we're doing this in the summer because we have less traffic, fewer people in town, that kind of thing. So, what happens if we have a monsoon summer and it rains on you every day and you know, does that push us into fall and still keeping it closed or I mean what?

Regardless of what the weather does to us over the summer, the ask is to give us that give us that period. give us an opportunity to do what we can over the summer, regardless of what the weather gives us, and then open it back up back in the fall. And we would continue going and then when it gets to those weeks when it's time to pave that section in front of, you know, whichever business or whatever neighborhood, we're going to close for a week to get that section paved and then open it back up to traffic again. And that's that will that process will repeat probably four or five times as we continue through the rest of the project and into 2027. And that's primarily for the stuff on Anderson specifically.

I I'm supportive of this, but I think we could have a maybe a little better signage than we had um before because it was kind of complicated as where do you go to get around Anderson, so to speak.

Sure. We'll look at our traffic control. Uh, back to your question about the the weather. If they get a monsoon season, which we certainly hope they don't, that would just push more of those closures back into the fall. So, instead of one or two, maybe you got three or four. Uh, we're going to have to come back to you in July, August, and talk about those fall closures so that the public's aware of them. But that's what it would really do. It push those closures back into the fall. Um, this is just an aside, but talking about the signage, um, I think the orange cones that are near the the electric sign on, uh, Seth Child Yeah.

need to be replaced. They're not very reflective at night any longer. So, can you put that on your to-do list? Sure, we'll do. My question is I assume we had the standard whether the industry calls a contingency fee on this project. Sure. Yeah, we have a contingency. And what was it? Well, we had a 5% contingency for the contract. Are you talking about days? Well, I'll get to that in a minute. Have we used any of that contingency? Very little. And the the angst over rock has not caused us to spend money out of the contingency. Is that correct?

No. No. I I would say that we we budgeted that we would need to be hammering through rock to get through there. Uh that was part of our our bidding process to determine how much rock we we anticipated. I still think there's a lot of rock to have to hammer through to finish the job based on my estimation, based on our our geotechnical report and our review of everything. So there's there's no change order anticipated because of rocking being encountered. I think that's just part of what we're going to have to deal with to get the job done. But that significantly affects his calendar, which goes back to your question about saving time,

which is his concern is he gets to phase two and three and suddenly he's hitting a bunch of rock. That month that he's going to save this summer can get eaten up really quick in phase three. That's his concern. Well, my inclination is, you know, speed is important. We like to get things done. Um, and I suppose most of our drivers are trainable to avoid Anderson Avenue, but with your accident reports, I'm not sure they're that trainable. They are human beings. So, why? Let's ask the traffic engineer here. What do you think? They are all very they're very human. That's

So what are we getting for $72,000 other than more inconvenience for our traffic and our taxpayers who aren't really excited anyway? Well, I would say you're not this is money that we're giving back to the contract. This is not this is not an ask of spending 72,000 to let us do this. This is us saying we want to give you $72,000 back to the city to let us close the road, which is different than what was in the contract. The contract said we were supposed to stay open the entire time. We re recognize that's a an inconvenience to the public to close it for any period of time and we're hoping that by allowing us that or giving that inconvenience to the public that we can get that we give you that $72,000 back.

Obviously, I'm not a street contractor and don't understand engineering with rock and all, but $72,000 seems to me be on the flyweight side of what you're going to get for a benefit for us getting out of your way so you can do your work. That's all I'm saying. That ought to be reconsidered or discussed with our city engineer or city staff in my opinion.

Uh Peter, I just wanted your take on the Willard and Wildwood like how because I just have a feeling someone's going to email me and asking how you're going to block this off. How how am I supposed to get to my house? As you you've probably driven down Anderson a couple times in during the project, as you've noticed, a lot of the houses that are right adjacent to where we've been working, you know, we have we use a lot of temporary gravel to get access from the paved sections of Anderson into those properties where they have their their driveways. We will continue to do that process while we're working. We, you know, during the middle of the day, during the evenings and mornings, we are putting down temporary gravel to create a path, a a I wouldn't say clean path necessarily, but a a

temporary surface. Yeah. A surface that they can drive on without having to get rudded or worried about whether that they're going to be able to get emergency vehicles in. We're constantly maintaining those access points so that everyone can get in and out. And that'll be the case for Willard, for uh for Wildwood. We're going to make sure that those access points are there. We had to I think they acquired some easements on Wildwood specifically so that because there's a water line, we have to be able to put down this right at the entrance of Wildwood and still be able to get traffic around where we're working right at the very entrance down into the neighborhood. So, we're going to have it's going to get a little bit wider as we demo out the bit of pavement and vegetation that's there.

Thank you. Well, I would vastly support you're getting it done as quickly as you can and I think closing it makes sense. Um, even when it was open, the drop off was I thought rather frightening on Anderson Avenue. You know, the it wasn't the usual when you're repaving something couple inches. It was just, you know, and I think a lot of people didn't even want to drive on Anderson when that was going on. So, I don't I don't think this would discombobulate too many people. They just have to figure a way around and be patient.

We try to keep that time frame from when we go. We have the the dirt there while we're doing the utility work and it usually stays fairly close to to the paved grade. But that that time frame when we have to cut their dirt out to get it below to the bottom grade and then add the rock back and then pave. You know, that's a couple weeks where you got that, you know, a foot plus of of distance from the paved surface down to the dirt. It is It is precipitous. Okay.

I would comment I think they've done a remarkable job keeping access to some of those properties and yet having to, you know, down several feet to replace pipe and and yet maintain access. So, I would compliment them. I give the credit to my crews. They work very hard to establish a good relationship with the neighbors. There's snow shovels with our crews on their trucks and they engage during certain activities to help make friends and uh keep people happy as much as possible while we're down there. Thank you for that. Thank you for standing for questions. So, mayor, do you want to open this up for public comment and then we'll come back on the street issues?

Uh, yeah. Is that what you'd like to do? I think that's a good idea. I mean that's the street issues are separate. Yes, that's fine. Yeah, I think they're separate too. Okay, thank you. Is there anyone Sorry. Do you have a suggestion? Nope. I was just going to say as anyone who is interested in addressing the governing body on this topic this evening makes their way to the podium. I just wanted to note uh for Commissioner Morrison, while we have not used our contingency on Anderson Avenue, um your second meeting, we did have a $266,000 change order uh to replace those storm water inlets. I just wanted to make sure we address that for transparency. So,

thank you, Daniel. Is there anyone who would like to make public comment on this presentation? Hi, I'm John Ball, 3107 Harry Hay Ridge here in Manhattan, speaking for College Heights Baptist Church at 2320 Anderson. Just wanted to let you know uh we've been kept informed by buyer and by the city on all the construction. So, there's been no issues. Uh we uh we also understand that when you're going to do the north side of the road, they'll temporarily block off our two entryways off of Anderson. Uh I heard a recommendation tonight for the first time permanently closing those. There needs to be some discussion on those because those entryways do have value to uh College Heights Baptist Church. Uh as far as I noticed there's some traffic accidents. I've been there 17 years. There hasn't been any member of College that's had a traffic accident going on to Anderson. However, we do have people cut from College Heights through our through our parking lots to Anderson and they're not necessarily always particularly observant of cutting across there. Uh I think the project's been going fine. I know it's kind of an inconvenience. Uh but whenever you're doing major improvements, there is some ina inconvenience involved. So just want to let you know we've been kept informed. We keep our congregation informed so we let them know uh which interest is to come around and how to you know back back their way into the church property. Okay.

Great. Thank you, John. John, would you please sign in at the uh over here where the yellow sign is? Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to make comment on this topic? All right. Oh, taking Carol Baldwin 755 College Heights Circle and this is about the roundabout issue. Um this was brought up um last spring and we were told that that was a site of a high number of traffic accidents and I did follow up with the police department. It is not. It the highest traffic accidents Manhattan highest number is on the fourth street roundabout. So roundabouts do not decrease accidents. It's very poorly located to put it here. I'm happy that the public works came to the conclusion that it was not warranted, but they did leave it open that they would revisit. I just want to say it's very easy for public works to suggest a roundabout. It's very hard to gather the kind of community support that came against the roundabout last year. So, just just keep in mind that it's a lot harder when you put the burden on the citizens to stop something. Thank you. Thank you. And any other comments? All right. Seeing none, we will close this portion of public comment. And Brian, would you return to the podium?

Thank you, mayor, commissioners. Uh real quick, um going to talk about some other traffic impacts for the summer, what we are anticipating. Um these are locations where street maintenance is going to happen this year. The blue is our mill and overlay. The red is our concrete. Uh some work up in Northfield. Uh some work again on Hudson. Some work on Browning Highland. uh Milan Overlay over in the Miller Ranch type area, Stag Hill, Westwood, uh 11th Street, and then Levven North and Fifth. Uh this is just a snapshot of this summer, obviously, two weeks from tonight. Um we do have the new uh pavement condition index report. I'll bring that back before you on the 24th, so we can talk in more detail about that and then also what the long range plans are. But I did want to get this out to the public, get it to the commission just to see where those areas of impact are this year.

Brian, I had an encounter with a citizen today who asked about uh Yuma Street, which we did, I think, Milan overlay for five or six blocks. And fourth to 10th, and she was curious about whether there are plans to continue through to Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Yes, I got the same question from Amanda last fall. Uh right now, so there's a large storm zero project we're working on that comes up South Manhattan from uh Wildcat Creek all the way to points, very large box sections going to replace pretty much all of South Manhattan. There'll be fingers that go off of that up Yuma, up Colorado, up Houston. So, we stopped where we did because we think that's where that wershed's going to start. I wasn't sure if it was going to be part of the MLK uh Fort Riley Boulevard intersection. No. No. When do you anticipate this u other large infrastructure project?

So, we're getting actually Olsson's here. So, we're getting some a proposal from Olsen. We have a concept that we've gone through in a routing analysis. incredibly expensive project. We've been working with the core on it. We've been working with the railroad on it, with Kadon on it. We have a concept of where we want to go and what we want to do. We're working with Olsson now to get a final scope and feed to get through design and to get to permitting because permitting is probably going to take a couple years easy uh to get through the railroad again. Probably 28 29 sometime in that time frame. 27 28 if we're really lucky. Ryan, one area I really question, sorry. One area I really question your map on here is Hudson Avenue. I know we've talked that uh Hudson from Claflin south to Anderson is going to be replaced.

That's awarded, correct? Which is awarded, but the strip from Dickens north to Kimble is terrible. Yes. But yet you're showing some of the side streets being replaced before that's replaced. Uh why wouldn't Hudson be a priority? That is a great question. So Hudson Avenue from Dickens to Kimble is going to get some pretty large water man improvements. We are working through that water man design now. We hope by the end of the year, first part of next year to have that done and then bid that next year.

Um Ry's Oh, there he is. my my colleague uh Mr. Dit is working on some large water mane work through there and switching some zones. So pretty complicated project actually and we're working through that I think next spring. Is that correct? Sure. Actually here within the next month or so you'll see an engineering services agreement with Bartlett and West to do the waterline design in Hudson. Uh city staff are working on the street design in house. Yeah.

Currently. And so we're going to collaborate with Bartlett and West utilizing our survey information. They will be doing the water line and I think it even gets into maybe the Kimble intersection a little bit as well. Yeah. So we're going to do Hudson next year. Then we'll probably come back and do Kimble the following year. I have to have Hudson done before I can close Kimble. I can't have them both closed at the same time because that's my detour route. So Hudson is next up on the list. Don't disagree with the need. might might be good just to make that known to the public on why

I get lots of calls about lots of streets that are really bad and I don't disagree with most of the phone calls I get. They are bad. It just it takes revenue to get them fixed. The amount of money you intend to spend this year to do what you've got on your map is what? What's shown on this map's about $3 million? And you're going to finance it out of the sales tax money. do you anticipate getting or other funding?

This is all shown as sales tax. Last year we got burnt on the gas tax because we didn't get our gas tax money back till October. Uh and we were very concerned about bouncing checks because typically that money comes back in about April. So I'm going to be a little bit more cautious this year before I bid a gas tax project. I want to make for sure I have that money in hand. is and that's about $3 million. Is that No, gas tax is about No, not the the total amount of tax money you're expecting. Sales tax is three million. It's about three. Correct. Just a whisper over. How much are we putting in from the standard city budget to do paving if any this year? General fund budget zero. Okay.

Uh there's general fund supports our operations and our crews out of street departments. Uh that's typically a million and change about two million I think it is getting close to two million that that funds our operations. It funds those guys. They're actually going to go up to uh zone three up to HOBS in these areas here in red. They're going to hit those this summer. Has there been any other thought about my audacious comment that maybe we ought to bond and get about twice as much done? We'll talk about that in two weeks. Good. I'll be happy to hear what you say. Okay.

Yes, that's one of the topics. But I wanted to get this out now because these are areas we know we have funding for, areas that we know we're going to go to bid soon on. And so I wanted the public to see these as soon as possible because orange cone season is upon us. Can we afford buying more orange cones or do we get to use what we got? Well, I'm gonna have to go buy some 3M tape from Home Depot and apparently get the get the cones out on Seth Child this evening when I go home. Um, Brian, can you just for anyone who is looking at this in the packet or on their computers? Um, can you just very quickly remind us what the other color streets are?

So, the the blue are asphalt. They're mill and overlay. The red are concrete full depth replacements, right? But the the what's the difference between orange and yellow, for example? Oh, so the the shaded the un the unshaded uh so those are the uh ratings in the PCI. So red is obviously below 40, yellow is okay 40 to a 60 so so on so forth. Okay, again two weeks you're going to have all sorts of information. We just got the report here within the last week. Oxley I thought it was done very well. Karen managed that project for us. You did a great job and lots and lots and lots of data.

Thank you. Karen, did you have I just wanted to ask the Miller Ranch um Millan overlay that we're going to do. Um are those specials paid off yet? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that was before I got here. Okay. Thanks. the buyer proposal. Thoughts on their proposal? Do you want me to talk some more with them and bring something back? I guess I'm looking for some direction from you folks so that they can set their summer schedule.

I'd be fine with closing it and getting it done faster. I'd like to see a bigger number than 72,000, but you know, where we can get get it done faster. Okay, I concur. I concur. So, keep talking with them about dollars and uh overall we're okay with the closure. I will say, and I didn't have my presentation, if we do have closures this fall, we're going to work with them. We won't do it on a, you know, football weekend, on a big traffic weekend, those sorts of things. They know that. They're local. But, uh, we'll we'll keep talking with him and come back with you. Great. Thank you, Brian. I didn't say yes because I'm a I'm a hesitant. Probably not. Okay.

It's not worth 72,000 for what we as a community like to use for Anderson Avenue for a thoroughfare, but I I can count so I know where the support is. Okay. And the roundabouts, put them on the shelf for now. I I thought I'd heard the statement from some of the staff that they were dead dead and buried and that's where they need to be as far as I am concerned. Okay. It's not worth taking property for those roundabouts for little or no benefit that your survey people said would help. I would not be in favor of the roundabouts, either one of them. Or the closings.

You mean the driveway? The driveway closings. Gotcha. Okay. So, I'm hearing shelves the roundabouts for now. When the roadway opens, we'll keep in a What makes the public nervous for now? Well, that means I understand a new engineer, a new idea, a new community need can change what it is. But that tells me the back door is still open and we don't have it shut. And I'm I'm saying I think those two need to be shut. Okay.

I I disagree. Um, I think it remains to be seen. I appreciate your comment, Brian, about um the usage of the younger property um as a business as an office space had um peak hours of utilization. That may change when it becomes residential. Um, I think it would be unfair to our community to not say we are going to monitor that situation and should accidents be occurring that we will take corrective action. Um, I'm a pro roundabout person. Brian knows that. But I I do think often the public doesn't understand roundabouts as much as they are coming to perhaps. Yeah.

Um, you know, there may be more accidents um at um Tel Creek Boulevard and Lumont, but I doubt that any of them are serious injury accidents. There are only eight points of contact when you hit somebody in a roundabout. They're 36 in an intersection. So, you have a lot better opportunity to kill somebody. And we have seen that at um University and um Kimble Avenues where we should have put a roundabout in. It was a million dollars cheaper and we've had two traffic fatalities there.

I would also add that Fourth and Blummont is one of the most busiest intersections in the city. So you're comparing a thoroughfare compared to local street. So are there more accidents there? Absolutely there are. Are there more when you look at the volume of vehicles you have there? That I would debate.

Yeah. Well, I thought the busy the worst weekend um um was Fort Riley Boulevard in Martin Luther King, but that was the worst one in in town. Anyway, I um I think at this point it's good to um go on with what we've got, but we should not um forget to think about the traffic safety. Um and maybe we can educate a little better. And we review accidents every year. So, you know, if something pops up in the future, who knows what happens to Anderson Avenue in the future. If it doubles in numbers, you know, you're going to be back with an accident problem. Okay. I do get the direction though. Thank you.

I I would just point out an Unger Hall property when that was operating as an office building, there were over 200 people working there, coming and going all day long. Uh the units under construction now there are 190 bedrooms uh being constructed. Of course there may or may not be 190 residents. So uh it is not going to be any busier than it was when it was operating as an office building. So but we can certainly monitor that's what we'll do. Uh the traffic.

I understand the direction. Thank you. Uh so next item up uh from public works campus creek and downtown wersheds. Uh I do want to inform the commission we just received a grant from the core of engineers to do modeling in the downtown wershed. $115,000 grant. So we're very appreciative of our federal partners and them coming to give us a hand on some modeling. Uh this item and let me start with Kansas State University does not have to detain a drop of water on their property. They are a state entity and I have no authority or leverage over their property. So the fact that they're coming to us and asking us if we would partner with them and look at some detention is I think a great testament to the community partners that they want to be. Uh Campus Creek, this is from the uh Kansas State down or Kansas State's um recently released master plan. Uh Campus Creek runs from Bill Schneider Stadium. So up here all the way down through the watershed uh down and then on uh north Manhattan total about 410 acres. Uh we the city completed a downtown east and west wershed study in 2012. The study indicated overflows of campus creek and trans start at about an inch and a half of rain. So not a whole lot of rain and they over top and start running down thirsten carnivir and blumont. Here's just a few of the pictures uh of the flooding event. Uh this is actually a really great slide. Campus Creek overflows, comes down north Manhattan. Some of it's diverted to Carney. Some of it's diverted to Blummont. This green arrow here is actually that north or south Manhattan project. So this is that leg that over tops and runs down south Manhattan. But you can see we obviously have a pretty significant

flooding issue uh around east side of campus Blummont. Uh obviously that all runs down to Third Street and down to Fourth Street down to the roundabout. Uh this picture here is actually from Sonic. This is actually from Dairy Queen. This obviously Bluemont North Manhattan. So in total uh the downtown east west wershed identified 14 projects total costs of over hund00 million. Uh CIP2 and three have been completed or are being completed. This is the TCB north ditch that's under construction. CIP2 was done with the levy as a betterment. We got help from the core of engineers on that project. Uh CIP1 has been completed. Um, and I think CIP1 is a really great testament to um, you know, if you invest in your infrastructure, you get good things that happen. Uh, I would suggest you talk with downtown Manhattan. They can certainly tell you how well that project's been working for them. If CIP 2348 and 9 were complete, so these through here and then 89, we'd lower water surface elevations at third and carne by several feet. CIP2 is completed. CIP3 is under contract. So, previous work completed in 2020 is CIP1. This intercepted flows on Points Avenue, random down Fifth and Sixth Street, and then over and tied into the outfall down by MCM that goes through the levy. The one thing I do want to back up here and just mention to everybody, anything that falls in this watershed at one point or another has to go through the levey. That's why the levey is so so critical because all of this water at one point or another has to run through the levey. So back to this project uh station or

project two was completed with the levy. It was a much larger drainage structure. Uh the existing structure was a 96 inch corrugated metal pipe. We replaced it with some 8 by8 RCB boxes. Again some more previous work. So, with the North Campus project, uh, working with athletics, working with the foundation, Commissioner Fox, you were with the foundation at that time. We actually took some of the, uh, downtown watershed water and we collected it and we actually sent it north to go up into the Marlat Ditch. So, we took about 20ish acres off the campus creek plan and ran it to the north. Uh, athletics did that. uh the foundation did that. We split the cost of a couple of ponds over here and over here also. So here's the two new ponds. One is here, one is there again through a partnership a three-way split with foundation in Kansas State athletics. Uh detention basin number two, you can see here 40% reduction in flows in a 100red-year event, 31% reduction in flows in a 10-year event. Basin four 20% reduction in a 100red-year event. All of that water runs down to Marlat and then it runs past Anthony or Eisenhower Middle School and then it goes east on Marlat ditch underneath casement. So all of those folks along that ditch are going to see a pretty substantial benefit in water surface elevations. Current work. So this is the uh lime pits that we're working on. Uh Ry's doing some work up here for the line pits for us and then we're regrading this channel. The goal is to carry as much water from downtown north and keep it out of the Walmart ditch as much as possible. Walmart ditch is significantly unders sized. So current work uh we have issued a fee

and loo uh for the detention policy since 2020 in this wershed. So, if you're going to redevelop and you want to redevelop in this watershed, you do have the option to pay us directly instead of building detention and then we take those dollars and we build these CIP projects with them. Again, due to flat topography east and north Manhattan and incredibly limited space, new developments can pay that fee and we've had that since about 2020. Uh, again, projects 48 and 9 when completed, lower water service elevations at Third and Carney. So again, this is back to KState's master plan, what they um are showing for a transformation in Campus Creek and the ability to detain water along Campus Creek in order to uh reduce the size of that infrastructure downstream. That infrastructure downstream is incredibly expensive. You're probably in the 12 to $15,000 a foot range. So any any amount of water that you can hold back on campus is going to save you a considerable amount of water downstream. Uh again, we are just awarded a1,000 $110,000 grant from the core of engineers. Uh this request is to partner with the city and KSU to re to review options to reduce flows along Campus Creek. Uh and increasing mobility between North Manhattan and Dennis. Reducing flows out of Campus Creek could reduce size and scope of projects downstream. We anticipate the cost of study somewhere in the $400,000 range. That's our best guess. Um and we are requesting the uh permission to issue an RFQ for that. Um members from Kansas State University would be on that selection committee as well as potentially some members of the commission.

So with that stand for questions? Yes, Commissioner. Does the survey tell us more about what you're going to have to do for those seven, eight, nine channel water programs to get through the city or is it just how to deal with K State the survey? You mean the the RFQ, right? Yeah. Yeah, that would be the goal is to I mean ultimately the goal is to figure out how much water we can detain on campus. And because I have lower flows downstream now my box goes from 10 x 10 to 8 by six. But will this engineering study of professional engineering standards tell us that? Yeah, it'll make recommendations for that. Yes.

Just to clarify. Um, so the 110,000 would go towards the 400,000. Is that what you're So the 110,000 is in uh inlue fee for uh modeling. So the core isn't writing us a check for 110, but they're going to do the modeling for us. We originally thought this study would be between 5 and 600,000. We brought that down a little bit now because we have that modeling. So it still would cost 200k for the city of this 200 each. Yes.

So are the funds that we charge people for in lie of doing detention or retention on their property are they appropriate and do we need to review those? Yeah, they would be appropriate for this. Uh, I'd have to talk with Reena. I believe there's about 300,000 in that account right now. Uh, we did have this project in a CIP for last year and we didn't do it because K State said they were working on their master plan. So, we wanted to hold off to see if there was a potential to partner, but we had $600,000 budgeted last year to do this master plan. Additionally, Commissioner Morrison, during our budget uh discussions, we will talk through what our storm water rates are um and what those um uh fees in lie of are we can set those each year.

So, since we didn't spend the 600,000 last year, do we still have 600,000 laying somewhere or it just to be rebudgeted? No, it's in the utility fund, so it stays in that fund. The storm water fund generates revenue that has to be spent on storm water. That's in the founding ordinance from the mid 90s.

Um does do the um you know they're they're planning all kinds of things in the edge district um the stables and the track and that kind of thing. Is that going to impact the Marlet ditch and no the No, there'll still be all those places to have. So, two or three years ago when we were talking about the edge district and what it could become, the foundation athletics and the city got together and looked at potential runoff of that area and then we we built these ponds in advance of that. So, these ponds are built for a full buildout of both the foundation and athletics. Yep. A little pre-planning there.

Good on you. It saves you a lot of money if you, you know, go in and work in a dirt field as compared to working between a bunch of houses like buyer is doing right now. It's incredibly cheaper. That's why watershed master plans are so critical. Thank you for the presentation. And uh one more thing about the Marlat Ditch. Um the county owns part of that, right? I mean the casement um bridge and all casement. No, the casement bridge is ours. Okay. Once things get over the casement bridge. When they go to the east, then they are the county. When it's west of TCB, it's county also. Okay. Thank you.

We just have that section between TCB and Casement. Okay. And we updated or upgraded that Casement bridge 12 15 years ago now. It's been a while. Yeah. So, I thought the county did something with a covert there or something like that. No. Okay. Sorry, I don't recall that. Sorry.

Thank you, Brian. Is there any public comment on this topic? All right. Seeing none, we will move on to discussing housing policies. Uh Stephanie Peterson will make a presentation. Good evening. Uh our last item of this evening. Uh so I put together just this overview. We're going to cover a lot of ground. Some of this you are already familiar with, but really just trying to start at the beginning with our housing market analysis and work our way through how we arrived at the policies that we currently have and then uh receive your feedback and direction on how you would like to move forward.

So, this is probably a familiar table at this point, but in 2022, the city conducted a housing market analysis. It was our first one in over 20 years. Um, and so this is a graphic that we use quite often from that analysis. Uh what you're looking at is each of the different bars um kind of on the bottom part of this graph. Those represent the number of rental units we need. Those are represented in green. And the number of for sale units represented in blue. Um I would ask that you ignore the price points that are within those. This has since been updated. So every year HUD puts out additional information. We adjust our numbers to reflect what that new area median income is. Um but really the point of this is to show that over the next 20 years we need between 2,00 and 3600 new uh dwelling units in our community. And then the you can see how many of those we need in each of the different income categories. One of the other things that we asked our consultant to do uh during the housing market analysis was to put together these household profiles. Um when we talk about you know 60% AMI or 100% AMI, it's really hard to relate that back to just everyday humans. And so these profiles again, they're from 2022. So some of these numbers have been updated, but it begins to give you an understanding of who we're talking about when we talk about different AMI categories. Uh for example, if we had two, let's say two school teachers, they made about $55,000 a piece, those two school teachers would be within about the 100% area median income. U maybe just even approaching that 120% area median income. So, uh, those are these are the the types of professions and folks we're talking about when we say workforce housing. The housing market analysis had a steering committee that helped to guide that project. Um, that committee was appointed by the city commission. There was a commissioner that served on it. I was not here for majority of that, so I can't tell you who it was. Um, but we did have representation from the

commission as well as the planning board. Um, I would also note that we had Kansas State University and Fort Riley serve on this committee as well. Um, they recognized the importance of having housing within our community and how that impacts everything that they do. After that housing market analysis was adopted, um, that committee that guided that initiative, they were dismissed and then a new committee was appointed by the commission. This was the workforce housing sales tax steering committee. And in your packet, there was a summary document that was put together. Um, that committee met about four times. Um, and really what they kind of what kind of it boiled down to was recommendations in three different categories. Uh, so regulation, policy, and then the funding allocation of that sales tax. The green check marks you see here are initiatives that we feel like we made either really good progress on or they uh we accomplished those. Um, so under regulation, we did revise the MDC. We um, John Adam, our assistant director, made a lot of changes after consulting with the development community and the planning board for several months. Um, on the policy side, we uh, part of the MDC amendments was to revise our parking uh, requirements and so we accomplished that. And then also at the very bottom, it was to create the housing incentive policies. That was something that this committee really wanted to see occur. And then a majority I would say of the time and focus was probably on that funding allocation. How do we want to use that sales tax? Um I won't go through all of these. I'll just highlight a few of again just supporting how we arrived at the policies that we currently have. First they wanted to focus on infill. Uh recognizing the cost of of new construction in Greenfield, especially with extending infrastructure. They felt like the dollars would go further if we focused on infill. um they wanted to make sure that whenever was possible we could leverage the workforce housing sales tax

for other grants. We've successfully done that with um the MIH grant that we have and then uh three of the projects all three of our projects that received workforce housing also had IRBs. One of those had that MIH. Uh so one of them that we didn't accomplish but I wanted to kind of touch on was under this uh the the type of projects that they wanted to focus on and fund. It was deliver the highest number of units. So this is a pretty subjective uh criteria. It really kind of depends on on how you want to define that. But I wanted to provide a little bit of context in um in how we were able to I feel like accomplish that task. Uh so we did 184 units uh over pretty much just 2025. Uh it averaged out to about $35,000 per unit is what that average incentive was. When uh when we look at workforce housing specifically, we did 62 units and it was about $29,000 per unit is what uh the workforce housing portion made up of it. When we look at Greenfield, um again, this is just for context and in part of the recommendation of this committee. When we look at Greenfield, we can assume that it's roughly about $2 million in infrastructure for a 30 unit subdivision. That would be about uh $66,000 per unit. So almost double of what we've been allocating for some of those workforce housing projects that have been um an infill type of product. Uh and then the last one was the second to the bottom of targeting this missing middle type of housing. So missing middle is really a trend word. It's something that we see across the country. Even some of the legislation that's going at the national level. And really what that means is rather so we we know that developers will build single family houses. We have more single family houses than any other dwelling type. Um but so this missing middle is the idea of two to five unit

town homes. It's looking at higher density type of single family. So you might think of cottage clusters like just this really unique kind of spin on a single family type of product and then multif family is a great way to get that missing middle. Um typically when we have smaller or higher density single family or these multi-unit type of structures um they are less expensive to deliver than a single family uh detached house. So then kind of jumping into workforce, we we went through something similar to this at the retreat. Um but to kind of just recap that. So when we talk about workforce, who are we talking about? Well, the state defines it differently than we do locally. The state says it's any household that's between 60 and 150% area median income. um they of course are serving a statewide population and so they've expanded that definition uh in order to uh to kind of be flexible across multiple different communities. When we talk about low-income housing tax credits or LITC and we have two recent examples of LITC, uh Sunflower Flats and then the Cypress Ridge up in Grand Mir, those are both lit projects. Those are rental projects. Um and that population is anywhere between 50 and 80% area median income. So when we talk about and these projects are heavily I'll say heavily subsidized with these tax credits. Um I think Sunflower Flats was a like a 15 million uh LITC uh award that they received from KHRC. So that is uh that that occurs at the state level. Oh, wrong way. Um and then when we talk about lowincome or public assisted housing, these are units that Manhattan Area Housing Partnership or the Manhattan Housing Authority that they manage. Um a majority of all the units that we have in our community are typically rental within this range. Um, and this is when we say lowinccome, this is typically the the type of product um

or the individual that is served by these programs. And then, uh, what we're seeing right now based on building building permit data and just conversations with developers is that this is an area that the free market can deliver. We see housing units being built within these price points. Um, and uh, so there's not a concern. And then the housing tools that we currently have in place, they were uh they were prepared to address the 60 to 120. And so when we layer all of these different product or all of these different um programs and what the free market can can provide, we we end up with this gap. And it was really that gap that we were trying to address with the housing incentive policies that we currently have. um in that gap, you could argue that um you know, if you needed an owner occupied product that goes down to the 60% AMI, there's not also any programs that are currently helping to to build those. Um again, the LITC is really just a rental product. And so, um this is something that I put together between our conversation at the retreat and now to try to show how, uh it's it's difficult for us to compare ourselves to other communities. And we're going to start down here at this bottom quadrant. Um, so what I did is I looked up the, and this is all data, census data from 2023. It's the most recent. I looked up the average household income, uh, which is different than area median income, but I looked up the average household income of these communities and the average property value. And so you can see that, uh, so Junction City, Salina, KCK, Ogden, they all have very low median household incomes, but they also have very low property values. Um, so it's, you know, even though the income's low, the the properties there are still attainable because it's, uh, the property values are also low. When we move up to this quadrant here with Riley, Topeka, and Dodge City, um, these are really unique scenarios in which they have high income, um, but their property values are low. So, your buying power is

actually more powerful in these communities than it would be in ours. And then in this quadrant, so we have kind of Wamigo and Derby on the the lower end of the spectrum, but we're really what stands out is the Casey metro area in the Johnson County. They have high incomes, but they also have high property values. Um, I just thought it was unique that the three communities I looked up in in the Kansas City metro, with the exception of KCK, all fell within this. And then we have uh this last quadrant uh which I I notice is all college communities. Uh Fort Hayes state has a pretty heavy presence in Hayes and then obviously Manhattan and Lawrence. Um we have low median income and we have high property values meaning that your ability to obtain housing is more difficult just because of the income um that individuals are making. Um so Salina they are I work closely with their director. They are a great uh community that shows us how these different tools can be used. Um, and one thing I would point out is that Salina has a almost $100,000 less median property value. Um, but they have a higher income than us. And so there's it's hard for Manhattan to compare ourselves to other Kansas communities because we're one of three that are in a situation where our income is actually lower than what our our property value is. Uh, our income is low compared to our property value. Um so kind of to further show when I I showed that the um the free market is able to address certain types of housing uh we use this building permit slide quite a bit. So just uh again kind of a recap the all of the permit all the dots on this chart are represent permits. The pink are single family uh the the orange brownish color those are smaller multif family. So think kind of town home type of units. Um the blue are single family homes that have been permitted in Blue Township and then that gray bar that's

going across the screen that represents our workforce housing range. And so as you can see so this is all in 2020 2025 inflation's already been um accounted for and you can see that um in the early 2000s even mid 2000s uh we we see a lot of our single family within that workforce range. And then you can see the trend line continue to go up as you get further out. And then by 2022 uh or 2023, we were no longer seeing any single family building permits pulled in Manhattan city limits uh with workforce range. There are a couple still um in the the blue uh the Green Valley area or the Blue Township area uh but not many. Most of those are are well above that workforce housing range. Uh so this is a new slide for you, but this is where um permits are issued. So this data is from 2014 to 2023. You can see that a majority of all of our single family homes are on the perimeter. Uh so kind of out uh to the northeast and then to the west of our community. Those are all new subdivisions. Um, it's, uh, Brian kind of alluded to it earlier, but it's cheaper to for developers to go on, um, sometimes to go on new land, uh, to actually build that infrastructure and wrap it into the to the benefit district than it is to try to wrestle around with getting a product within as an infill type of product. Um, and then you can see Blue Township. This would only have been repres. So, Blue Township permits would only have been from 2020 onward because that's when we started permitting in Blue Township. Um, this is the a similar our chart, but this is just looking at the last um from 2022 to February of 2025. Um, we actually permitted more single family homes in Blue Township than we did within city limits. Um, and then you can see of the single family homes that we did permit. Again, uh quite a few of them are still on the west side of our

community. a couple up in the uh just north of the North View area. And then uh there's some infill uh type of products. Uh so the the green dots that you see here, those are multif family. Uh there's only a handful of those, but they represent about 67 of the new housing units that we received in that uh 14month period of time. Oh, I guess that's more than that. Uh in about two and a half years. Uh so we were we're going to go through the housing policies again uh just to kind of recap what's there and then to get feedback on what you would like to see differently if anything. Um and so here's the four policies that we will go over. Um before we do that though I wanted to um provide kind of an overview of how these different tools could be used. Um so here we have the different programs or the different tools that we have in place and then there's different categories of how they can be used. So um for example the workforce housing sales tax that can be a rental or an owneroccupied product. You guys have all the flexibility that you want to because that's a local sales tax. You get to control what type of units you want. However, for IRBs they have to be rental. We don't have any flexibility with that. Um as we'll see later on with this policy control column the state is state statute dictates how those can be used. Um same thing with RHID it can be rental or it can be owner occupied. Some flexibility there. Uh when we look at vertical construction or infrastructure what we mean by that is can you actually pay for the price of building that home or can it only go towards the public infrastructure component. workforce housing sales tax. You have a lot of flexibility um for IRBs and for the infill uh part of IR RHID. It can only pay for the vertical construction. It cannot pay for uh for infrastructure. Uh when we get to um the green field RHID,

that can only be used for infrastructure. It cannot be used for um for vertical construction. That comes from state statute. I realized I made an error here on the structure type. Um, so this the IRB it should say single family attached. Um, so IRBs require a multifamily and when they define multifamily it's two or more units. So um they this would be a single family attached or a multif family unit has to be built with IRBs but the other programs you have flexibility to do single family attached detached or multif family. We have the max duration that's spelled out in state statute for the for um the three programs that um that would uh apply there. And then the state uh state statute controls four of the five policies that are currently adopted. And then the very last column just says whether you would need uh county or USD approval or the lack of a veto that only applies to RHID. So hopefully that's helpful in knowing how some of these tools can be used and then crafting those tools for the pro the product that you would like to see. Um I plan to run through this pretty quickly, but if you have any questions, uh let me know. I know we've talked about it before at your retreat. Um so each of the policies, they have an objective of what they're trying to achieve. Right now the sales tax exemption encourages rental housing of all income ranges. Um, so there's there's no cap there and there's no ge geographic cap of where that could be uh used.

Stephanie, I I meant to email a couple of our developers and I didn't get to it. Do we have an idea? I know there's a lot of things that they do purchase out of state. Do we have any idea what the what the mix is in terms of local sales tax that they're not paying versus what they are you know what what are they buying at me lumber versus what are you know an HVAC that they're bringing in from Nebraska or Texas or something.

I've only talked to I would say two developers just to get an understanding of that. Those are the two that we saw the most frequent applications from. And a majority of all of their sales tax related items they're either having shipped to a Manhattan address like shipped to the site which is within city limits um or it's uh they're purchasing it here in Manhattan. So based on those two, I think a majority of their of their purchases would be sales tax. Uh they would be paying sales tax on if they didn't have the exemption. Um, I'm sure that there's exceptions to that that I'm not aware of. Okay.

Just for clarification so everyone understands, when it is bought out of state and shipped to a Manhattan address, that's when we get our compensating use tax. So, we do collect sales tax on that.

I think the example we had previously was like Genesis. They may have hired a Witchita company to build Genesis. Where did they have those materials shipped? Were they shipped to Witchah and then truck to Manhattan or were they shipped to the address in Manhattan? That would make a difference on where the sales tax were basically exempt. Um so there there are some unique circumstances where you can get an out of town contractor and it's really a matter of where do they have that material shipped as to where the exemption would take place.

Thank you. Thank you. So, I've observed we spend a lot of time on these IRB processes going through the the process just to get a sales tax exemption. If we don't want to do a tax property tax abatement, if we just want to give a sales tax abatement, do we have to go through all that or can we just say this project doesn't have to pay sales tax?

We still have to go through the IRB process that's outlined in state statute. I would say the sales tax exemption is the most it's the most simple process that we go through. Bond council does a lot of the heavy lifting. I accept an application. I review it just to make sure it meets the criteria. I send it on to Sarah Steel with Gilmore and Bell. She's the one that prepares the ordinance, all of the materials, does the notice. Um, so you do not have to do both of these. You could have a policy that just says sales tax exemption is the only IRB that we're interested in because they never end up getting the bonds. Neither of these would actually go through all that. Yeah. Supposedly for bonds, but they never do it. Yeah. It's

so you've spent a lot of money on attorneys and all this for

the the applicant themselves pays bond counsel and that can range anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000 to leverage the sales tax. exemption. The state law requires us to go through a resolution process to allow for the project to qualify and then the construction timeline takes place. Before we can actually issue the bonds to certify that their cost were exempt, those sales tax, they have to have all their vendors paid. The project has to be complete and they're certifying that back through bond counsel. if they don't pay all their vendors, if they don't complete their project, they will pay sales tax in the state and in Manhattan. So, the process really is a front-sided a resolution of intent and then by the time you get to the end is when you actually issue the ordinance, but it is a conversion of the state law into a process. So, you're right that you you technically issue bonds, but you we're not issuing any debt or bonds, nor is the the developer. It is a mechanism to leverage that sales tax exemption.

So you're spending 15 to 30,000 in attorney fees to save 30 to 50,000 in sales tax. So we'll show you some examples, but there's some substantial sales tax exemptions, but there are some circumstances where they didn't net a whole lot.

And just to be clear again um that the applicant um pays for those attorney fees, the city does not. Uh okay. So then for property tax abatement the objective was workforce housing projects uh that utilize existing infrastructure and they were within a certain geographic area. Um so we uh for the so the sales tax exemption it's only on construction related materials and then the property tax abate property tax abatement can only be up to 10 years. Again rental projects only. Uh as I mentioned the sales tax exemption process is pretty straightforward. We just ask that they generate at least a net of two or more units. Um, and that they either own or have a purchase agreement for the project, which is consistent throughout the other tools as well. For the property tax abatement, uh, we broke that up into a couple different steps. Um, again, same kind of criteria as the exemption. Um, but however, this one we say has to be within this residential incentive zone. Um, this is uh there's a couple of recommendations. If it sounds like maybe we don't want to keep the abatement process, if we did, I would have some recommendations of how to make this a little bit more simplified both for staff and for the developers. Um, and so then after that uh preliminary application was received, then the applicant works with bond counsel um and uh then they also hire a um an individual or a company to do a costbenefit analysis. Again, that's something that they have to pay for and then that's presented to the city commission. All of our property tax abatements that we've awarded, well, there's been three. Um, they all have performance metrics in them. They had a minimum minimum investment that had to be um uh for the project as well as a a rental cap on how much they could charge for rent. Um they also included a payment in lie of taxes to make sure

that we received um most of them have about a 5% escalator yearover-year on what they would pay in lie of taxes for the the term of the abatement. Stephanie, can you remind us which three projects those are? Uh so there well I'm going to mess this. There we go. Um, so it's this 827 Morrow 716 Morrow Flats and then the MHK Infill Housing, which is um Little Kitten Town Homes. Thanks.

Uh, and then this is something that requires ongoing monitoring. So the property owner provides me with a copy of the lease for each of their units. Um, at the end of the fiscal year, I make sure that the rental rate that's within that lease, it's within the range of the agreement. Um and then we end up certifying to the county that all the requirements are met and that's how they receive their abatement. Uh so this is something this table was in your that housing report that you received before the retreat. And one thing I wanted to note is so uh when we look at sales tax exemption and the the estimated value um it shows about $ 1.9 million which can uh be a little bit surprising. One thing I wanted to point out that a majority of that is actually the state's revenue. So about 1.3 million of it and about 400,000 of that would be attributed uh potentially to the city. Again, a couple of things if the materials were bought or shipped to a Manhattan address and if the project were to still proceed without receiving um that sales tax exemption. And then the same thing with the abatement. So there's been $2.3 million of potential uh taxes, property taxes abated. However, about 282,000 of that is what the city would have received during that 10-year period. So that is collective. Each of these numbers is collective over that full 10-year abatement. And that's assuming that they meet all of the criteria on the ongoing performance for those. Uh so diving into RHID. Uh again, there's an infill policy we have in a green field. One of them utilizes existing public infrastructure. One of them is intended to help build it. Um they work very similarly to a TIFF, but they can go up to 25 years. A TIF goes up to 20. Um and then a uh they can help to uh finance any of the the uh the items that you see here. Most of those have to do with site preparation and infrastructure. Uh there is a stipulation in statute that's fairly new uh from I think 2022

that says if it's an infill project, which means that the infrastructure is more than 10 years old or the property is already included in a benefit district, that's when you can help pay for the vertical construction of a site. Um the green field is uh that would be used to help pay to use the property taxes generated from the RHID to pay for infrastructure or what we call specials. Uh and then the last uh tool that we have is the workforce housing sales tax. Um again the the objective just really to create a variety of different housing types throughout the community within that defined workforce housing range. Um there's five different ways in which those funds could be used. Uh really the focus of of this evening, unless you wanted to dive into a couple of these other ones, uh was this grants for private workforce housing projects. Um those are the the three projects that have received workforce housing. They've all applied under under this. Um the only different uh requirement here than the others is that we do require the site to be properly zoned prior to the formal application. I would say it wouldn't be a bad idea to have the other sites also be properly zoned. Um so you don't have to make a zoning determination after you've already awarded um incentives. Um and then the as it stands right now, the workforce housing applications are only accepted in April and October. Um I've heard from a lot of different people that this isn't ideal because construction doesn't just happen in April and October. Um, and so I I agree that we should probably lift those uh those time periods and allow it to be open year round if it's something the commission wants to move forward with. And then there are certain limitations uh wrapped into this. So the idea behind having these limitations was trying to kind of spread these projects out over different uh you know maybe it's 30 different projects over the course of the 10 years rather than just having a

couple of big projects that utilize uh most of it. Um, the one that we hear the most and the one that I've seen is that this 10% total project cost, that's what projects keep bumping up against. That's the limiting factor in the three different projects that we have awarded workforce housing sales tax to. Uh, so this slide here, uh, we'll include it every time that we're talking to you about workforce housing sales tax. Um, I believe you've received a copy, but I did a a kind of a, um, an update to it. Any numbers that are estimates that have not been paid out yet are now reflected in blue. So you can actually see um anything in black means that it's been paid. If it's in blue, that means that it is just an estimate. Um I've had so like the 716 Morrow I kind of had a guess on how much of it would be spent in 2026 and 2027, but um when we look at the available cash balance that $60,000 being in one year versus the next isn't going to it's not going to impact anything. Um, so go ahead.

Question on when this when is the money paid out? When when we approve a payment to a developer, at what point do they get the money? So, it kind of depends. Um, it depends on how the agreement's written. Um, the So, like the Sunflower Flats one, um, those were paid out as soon as the commission had awarded them. Yeah, that was that was for solar stuff.

Uh, this is this is a different this is a little bit different. the solar hasn't been paid out. So if we look at how about I use I'll use the MHK infill housing. So the way that that agreement was structured is that a certain portion of the funds get paid at uh when it uh the footings and foundation of the structure is complete and then the remaining funds get uh paid out when there's a certificate of occupancy for that unit. That's how 716 MHK infill housing that is how both of those are structured. Um, and this 1,00 Morrow, uh, the Cypress Ridge, that LITC, that was to pay for, uh, connection fees. I believe that was either that or building permit fees. So, that's paid when that permit is issued. Uh, and then Sunflower Flats, the way that that agreement is written, they have to show uh, proof. We'll have inspectors go out and actually make sure the solar is installed before they receive that payment. This slide really tries to address the comment comments and conversation we had a few weeks ago. If you look at the total commitment out to the right, what is that? 2.8 million. 2.9 Stephanie.

Oh, 2. Yeah, 2.9. So, when we would talk about that and there were comments that, well, you only have 1.2 or 1.7 million. It stretched out over time. So, we put this together to show you the available cash is never in a negative situation. We are always well over a million dollars. Yeah. In available cash. So, thank you. Yeah, that's the very last line is the available cash in any given year.

Um, okay. So, then that leaves me with a lot of questions for you. Uh, first one, if there's any clarifying questions that I can provide on any of the material, um, if there's any thoughts that you want to share, which I hope you have thoughts because we're looking for direction on how you want to proceed. Um we have we're supposed to open up our April round of workforce housing sales tax um just in a few weeks and so we have developers asking if that's going to continue to happen. Um if there's any additional information you feel like you need in order to make a decision, we're happy to get that for you. Um and then we staff would always be happy to come back, you know, based on your direction with recommendations on how to update the policies to fit your desires. Mayor, Adam Czech, I would recommend that you go ahead and take um public comment on this item before the commission asks questions and shares any of their discussion points.

Uh, sure. It's just about 8:00. I'd like to call a 10-minute recess and um bathroom break, snack break, whatever people need. Uh we will reconvene at 8:10. He's doing it It's good to see you.

Are you at all? already.

Yeah, I had it. Was it the sinus pressure too?

That's fair. Most people who got it tell me Was it your date night? Test test test. Yeah, she was They got lost.

That was good. Yes. Assistant 250.

Stay in the hospital. Yeah. I mean, if you drive through town,

go in. Yeah, I forgot to mention it when I gave my comment, but I do think we should try.

Well, they I think they something we did last time was I think of Waters Hall.

I mean There were always people

really hard to prove it. you know, you can't do a a study with seven people with the same kind of cancer or something, you know. No, I think

Yeah. about the next floor all the work.

Yeah, that was cool. myself. I don't think and everything stacked up in the right.

So I do have a two weeks and normally she comes Tuesday. But um I was I had an MRI last week and

yeah, they wrote they told me to instead of It is 8:10. We will reconvene the March 10th city commission meeting. Uh we were about to respond to Stephanie's questions of which she posed many.

Oh no. I'm sorry. Sorry. We are we were going to have public comment. So keep me on track people. I appreciate it. Would anyone like to make public comment on the previous presentation? Good evening, Mel Boris, 1918 Humble Street. And um I've I've been trying to learn how the various components and tools work in this uh uh workforce uh housing policy uh situation. And I do notice that uh one of the uh recommendations of the uh task force and uh we see up on the screen was to uh utilize renovation and rehab and reuse of existing housing stock. And um I was um visiting with Josh uh Brewer about you know how their uh habitat organization is is uh you know starting to address that. Josh told me that the um they're limited to owner occupied structures. and u um he he he agrees with me that there's a whole lot of other uh existing structures house house structures that could benefit from this program uh uh or these funds that if if uh the rule of owner occupied might be uh relaxed on that. So that was u one of the things that I'd like to uh to comment on and uh I remember the housing study identified housing stock is offering the most uh uh potential uh to gain housing units. And

so uh as you know I I'm all for uh preservation and and not wasting the housing stock that we have here. And one last comment is that it's puzzling to me uh to um travel the streets after dark in the older neighborhoods and see so many uh homes that are dark. And it's it's it's puzzling why that why that is. I don't know if it's because of, you know, I have a friend that has a home here that's unoccupied and they hope to come back to live in at one time, but uh he's not so concerned about it being empty right now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mel. Please sign.

Good evening. Josh Brewer, Habitat for Humanity. Since Mel called me out, I'll I'll go up next. I do appreciate the uh social 10 minutes in between public comment. You get together and come up with some interesting ideas. Um so, thanks for that. Um I think that u I appreciate staff presentation. Um I would be fully in support of moving the the window that the applications are accepted um from a uh a bianual application period to a year round application period. I remember when we first set that that was because um on the workforce housing steering committee we thought that suddenly there might just be a barrage of applications and didn't want to overburden staff of those applications so we put them into the periods. I don't think that we saw that and and you know yes as Stephanie said um you know construction doesn't follow that exact schedule. So that's something we've tripped over as well. So if we could uh stretch that out year round that'd be super helpful. Um, and to to Mel's point, maybe reconsidering those eligible uses, expanding them a little bit. Um, in there's been a lot of energy around u accessory dwelling units, for example. You know, that could be an eligible use that homeowners could apply to add a backyard cottage, for example. Um, that's not currently allowed under u policy. Um, land acquisition is another potential eligible use. Um we had talked at one point about uh on the steering committee you know the difference between land banks and community land trust. That group uh one of their uh findings was we need a community land trust here in the community. So Habitat started that. Um so that steering committee was immensely helpful for our organization to hear from other builders, developers and organizations. um if there you know if land acquisition and placement into a community land trust mechanism some sort of stewardship mechanism was an eligible use that would be something we would support um and

would be kind of a natural finding from that steering committee and if there ever is interest in reforming that steering committee I know that's something that I would support um like I said I found that that group was um incredibly u collegial and helpful and um there's a couple of us here Tonight we stay very engaged in this conversation. So if you ever feel like you need that group to come back together, I I think that those individuals would be happy to serve. Thank you. Thank you, Josh.

Amber Starling, 408 Houston Street. A couple notes. I know that we're looking at this moving forward. Um, property values would cool if short-term rentals weren't competing with residents. When I sold my house in St. George, I had a short-term rental investor sniffing around and they were looking at a full price offer cash with them paying all closing costs. How can any regular person compete with that? Earlier today, when Jason Smith, the director of the Chamber of Commerce, spoke, he did not have to give his address and city staff never started the clock. As we look at the workforce housing steering committee, we had a chamber member and exeicio chamber staff. Out of 12 members, that's two being chamber reps. The chamber is a special interest group. They get contracts and taxpayer funding. They get treated like city staff at commission meetings and they got twice the representation on this committee as any other organization moving forward. If you resurrect the workforce housing steering committee I would like to see more equity. Using existing infrastructure is good. Using it efficiently is better. I know in the past we haven't been able to focus as much on getting the maximum number of units, but I would suggest it. We're not going to fill a need for hundreds of workforce housing units two at a time. That's it's a drop in the bucket compared to the need. And we're not going to fix this workforce housing crisis by just focusing on missing middle. Um, since we're looking forward and we're doing some imagining here, I would like you to imagine building a tower like a a large facility um with

the housing authority or Habitat or others. And why shouldn't the foundation help? The foundation wants city support and Flint Hills place so that they can move forward with the Edge3 district. The public does not want just the value of that land. We want a replacement of the resource. Thank you. Thank you, Amber.

Good evening. Um Lindsey Lopey, 3821 Silverleaf Drive here in Manhattan. Um the current policy I encourage you to look at it as real world local data that you have at your disposal. Um it's pretty consistent in what builders and developers will were able to build um through this policy. They resemble each other in regards to unit type um rental occupied price range um towards that upper AMI level and even bedroom and bathroom counts. Um, if you're looking for projects that might change, gear more towards the lower AMI levels, um, some policy amendments could help achieve that. Possibly by funding projects on a per unit type instead of the 10% overall cap would help reach those lower AMI levels. I would also encourage you to keep um, the policy open yearround while keeping the April 2026 um, application period still open for opportunities. um opportunities come along throughout the year at different times and the twice a year application period really kind of creates a potential bottleneck in projects. I feel the policy has benefited our community and through some additional policy amendments to help reach those lower AMI levels. Um it can be a critical component in increasing our housing inventory in Manhattan. I would also ask the commission to consider the logistics of what the home ownership piece of that might look like um and the sample developer and builder draft agreements with that since all the previous projects have been rental occupied units. Thank you. I don't I don't think all of the units are going to be rental, particularly in the Manhattan Infill project is part rental and part uh for sale.

That is correct, mayor.

So Danielle is correct. Um they were um so Manhattan Infville does have the rental portion and the owner occupied but the way that that workforce housing agreement was written um we really utilized the MIH agreement with the state to monitor and to provide the direction for the owner occupied units and it was the the rental component is really what guide the workforce housing sales tax addressed. So, I think uh the the point that Lindsay was making is that we don't currently have a workforce housing sales tax agreement that was written to provide ongoing monitoring of owner occupied type of units since we defaulted to the NIH. Great. Thank you for that clarification. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Craig Lai, 3821 Silverleaf Drive, Manhattan, Kansas. Uh I'm with new place development and great lane homes. So development and builder. Um I'm going to an approach of supporting what Lindsay which wonderful spouse um that I'm going to take the building side of it. Um with the policy uh changes that I do advocate for as well that she mentioned um the 10% cap. If you look at projects that are based and trying to achieve the 80 to 100%, the 10% cap ultimately kicks those projects out. And so if you if you were wanting to make policy changes to that um you could maybe put caps for specific AMI levels um would be some recommendations that I would bring forward. um that would allow maybe to fund further to meet that 80 to 100% uh more than what has been stated which was what 34 and 29,000 on average. Um you may be able to achieve those. Uh two from the building side you got to build them differently. Um I think you're seeing up on Gohane and some other locations uh in town uh shrinking it down and going up does drive your price down from a build perspective. However, that doesn't change the cost to actually get to that 80 to 100% AMI uh in full. Um because if you were to build a shotgun house, slab on grade, uh concrete costs a lot, roofs cost a lot, trusses cost a lot, the cost to build still does doesn't change uh incrementally enough to help support the need um to meet that 80 to 100% AMI. So, I do recommend from a building perspective um that uh you take in consideration that that 10% cap will potentially annex those uh out of the

ability to be built. Um, and so with that, I do uh again want to read open up uh the year round policy uh or year year- round application process and I do advocate for coming up with a new policy uh so that uh the April one can be opened. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Anybody else like to offer any public comment? Or I should say, do either of the other two people want to make any comments? All right, seeing none, we will close public comment. And uh Stephanie, if you would come back to the podium. Mayor, I would apologize on the timer. I did not get Amber or Jason started uh at the beginning of the meeting. So that is on me. We need Jared back as soon as possible.

Where would you like to start? Can you put that little bar graph back up? The the 60 to 80, 80 to 120. This one. Okay. No. Do you want the one with Do you want the one with the boxes around the levels?

So, I I would I'll start off here. I mean, I've I've got so many thoughts on this, so many things to say that I'm not going to say them all tonight, but I lay awake lay awake at night, can't sleep because I'm thinking about all this. But I guess my first thought is that where we've gone to date is we've either built uh more student housing east of Agieville uh one-bedroom condos uh apartment building or we've built $325,000 duplex units on the west side of town. um which as I as I look at workforce housing in this block uh even in the 80 to 120% the price range is 160,000 to 250,000. Uh I guess in my my thoughts that uh we if we're going to subsidize workforce housing, we need to be helping in that 200,000 range. the 200 to 250,000 range, not 300,000. That That's my first thought. Second thought is that when the voters of Manhattan approved the special sales tax uh that provided the workforce housing money, first of all, that 10% was probably an afterthought. They were voting on all the other things that that that money went towards, but uh we have that that 10%. I don't think they ever expected it to be combined with tax abatements that provided an additional 25,000 to 50,000 per unit support for those units. Uh I feel like if if we're

going to be putting money up front for subsidizing housing, that housing ought to be provide ought to be supporting our tax base. immediately, not 10 years from now, not 25 years from now. Um, so with those two things in mind, I feel like if we're going to subsidize housing to the tune of 25 to $50,000 a unit, then we are in partnership with that developer. We're not just throwing money at them to go build something. We don't care how much you make on this. We don't care how much equity you end up with uh on the MH on the little kitten project. Uh you know, those guys with all the different subsidies are ending up with tremendous equity in the units they end up with. Um, I feel like if if we're if we're going to subsidize these projects, then if if they're going to be sold, then the developer should make a reasonable profit, not exorbitant, not open-ended. Um, but cost should be verified. They shouldn't probably have to endure a lot of risk. uh if they're going to be in this program, then they ought to be guaranteed a certain level of profit and maybe the workforce housing funds uh incur the risk. But if we're selling these units at below market, there shouldn't be any risk. They ought to sell immediately. Uh if they're rental units, then the developer ought to have to be limited to a certain amount of equity in the end. We ought to look at the cost they have in it, how much subsidy they've gotten,

and what the ultimate value of that apartment building or whatever it is they're building is in the end. But they shouldn't walk away with more than, you know, a a 15 20% equity in the property at the cities, you know, with subsidies and everything. and to the thought of of selling these houses below market if if we're trying to help people uh get into housing. Uh we're pricing them below what they might otherwise sell. Then like Josh does with with his uh improvements, we have some kind of a a mortgage or a a deed restriction that if they sell them within the first year uh then they're entitled to 10% of the profit. If they sell them within the second year, 20% and so on out to, you know, 10 years or whatever, uh they can't turn around and make a lot of money off selling these things. So, um, but there's got to be some kind of a partnership that costs are verified, values are verified, the developer gets a reasonable profit, um, or a reasonable equity if he's building rental rental properties. Um, I guess I would stop stop there. And that's I I would encourage us to to go back to that set up that committee again and relook at relook at all the workforce housing committee and and relook at all this stuff. Those are my thoughts.

Uh if I could ask, so we talked quite a bit about workforce housing sales tax, right? Then would you mind giving thoughts on IRB's RHID and where you would like those policies to go? I don't think Manhattan when our HIDs were developed. I don't I don't think Manhattan was is appropriate for those. I mean, those those are for smaller communities that have a hard time getting people to build houses in them. Uh I don't think Manhattan has a hard time getting people to to build houses. We've got a lot of developers out there. Um, I I I I wasn't in favor of the RHID that that was approved last year and I'm uh I was not unhappy to see it uh rejected by the county. I will just say that. So, because again, it had tax abatement for 20 years. Um and I just as I say the residential units if they need to start helping our tax base immediately. U now I will say for commercial properties tax abayments are a whole different thing and and you know they they create jobs they provide homes for jobs. So, I'm not going to sit here and say we shouldn't have commercial tax abatements, but I am not in favor of residential tax abatements in any way, shape, or form.

So, if I uh I asked this because we have developers calling frequently saying, "Can I apply for this?" And we wanted to have this conversation with I'm sure you do. Yeah. You've been giving them away for the last year. So, prior to that, you didn't. Can we Is it safe to say that you're looking to repeal the RHID policy as well as the IRB abatement? Why do we have to look? I think we need to hear from all the commissioners on that topic. Um I'm just trying to get tell. Yeah. For RHID, no. For IRBs, no. And then no. No. You're in favor of repealing the policy or no, you don't want to use them. I mean, if they come to me, I'll just vote no for them. Vote no on those issues. RHID and IRB. Yeah.

For IRB, was it sales tax exemption and abatement? Right. Sales tax exemption and abatement. And abatement. Okay. And then um on the um workforce housing sales tax that's been approved by the voters. So I would be supporting and look in looking to into a steering committee and trying to figure out what we're going to do. I kind of like the land trust idea.

Andrew, I appreciate your um openness. It's a little distressing to hear that you are um taking several of these tools out of our arsenal without full consideration of projects where they might be applied.

If if you guys have three votes, do them. But I'm just telling you right now, I'm going to be like how county vetoed on RHID, I'll be doing the same thing. I'll be voting no on those. My question is maybe a little different angle. Do we have proper zoning classes and programs to allow some of these newer programs of construction, housing, smaller lots, different setbacks? Do we have that in place or do you have to use some kind of PUD to do those? We'll have to use a PUD. PUD.

Yes. Um yeah. So, but those that's really what a PUD is for is for a very for an instance like that where you don't meet general spec spec standards that the city has for unique developments. And the other thing I would say far as I'm concerned our sales tax money for helping housing has to go at least in my opinion fairly at least 50% owner occupied. We cannot use IRBs. I'm not talking about I mean workforce housing. Oh, sorry. Okay. Housing. Okay.

Is for ought to be more for people giving a chance to build up some equity in their home. Presumably a little more pride in their home and also have a chance to get some of the equity back for what the taxpayers gave them benefit for. And are you uh when you say that, are you speaking of new units or rehabbing existing units? I'm old and only partially deaf and I'm losing. You have a soft voice at times. Um, when you are you referring to any sorry new units that are being constructed or rehabbing existing units? All of them. Okay.

There's a place for rentals. I understand that. But I think we need to put more emphasis on owner occupied to give us a base of having a growing community. Sure. And some people either don't understand or want to do that or can't afford it, but they ought to have equal shot as tenants. Okay. Stephanie, go ahead.

I hate to see us make um sort of blanket. I will or I won't do this or that because I think we need to look at everything that comes to us um on its own merit. Um I kind of wonder if we expand the um proposal time to be anytime if that would sort of limit our ability to see um to measure different groups against each other. I mean, if we get six proposals in in April, we can look at them and say, "Well, this is really what we think fits the the premise of what we wanted to do." If they come in during the year, we're not going to be able to say, "Well, we gave all the money away in August." Um, we love your idea, but, you know, do you see what I'm saying? we get a better picture of what's out there if we have these I I can understand the developers point of view too but um this is you know taxpayers dollars and I just really feel if if we could sort of see what the general um activity is now I do think we need to kind of zero in on the 200,000 houses and you know I'm surprised we haven't looked at sort of different ideas um prefab houses. Uh you know, maybe we get some KState students to talk to us about what what's out there. I know um Hillsboro has I'm not suggesting this, but they built housing out of these container, you know, giant container things and they look really quite nice. I'm so surprised. Now, I'm not suggesting that we bring in a bunch of, but um there are different kinds of of buildings and building materials. Um, and I wonder too if there's any way um to look at so somebody that comes to us and says, "I can I'm going to build you

some two-bedroom single families um for $150,000, but I really need more help than I'd be getting if I were building the 300." You know what I'm saying? There's no question to me if I'm a developer, I want to build something that has a better return. I mean, that just makes economic sense. is not bad practice or anything, but to try and encourage people to look at these perhaps um lower return properties. You know, obviously if you build something for 150,000, if that's even possible, um you're not going to get 20% back, you know, that kind of thing. I don't I don't know if that's you know I do think that um we need to look at our housing stock and and it would be good if we could somehow get sort of a figure on these BNBs and maybe even um have a registration fee for them you know if they're going to because I think um you know it's right that some of these neighborhoods you drive by and they are dark and I don't know if that's just because they only rent them on the weekends or you know what's going on but just to get an idea We've talked again and again about accessory de developments, you know. Um I I think that's something we ought to consider. You know, the mother-in-law's in the garage or something after you fix it up. Uh anyway, uh you know, these are just things that keep sort of reappearing and I I don't know, you know, what the pro I'm just open to hearing planning, you know, talking about it. I don't know if that's a difficult for fire engines or, you know, I I just really think that that's a possibility that that people, you know, have suggested. Um anyway, so uh you know, we kind of need more houses in the 200,000K.

Uh I don't know if we have any way to work more with our Chudo here in Manhattan. Um I know we're I'm on that board and we're building 30 30 units I think out there mayor for 199,000. So you know this is tax credits that isn't the city. So right uh so they so One thing I would say about the LITC, there was just another round that KHRC awarded. We did not have any developers interested in pursuing a LITC project. So that's really

um it's really development driven or developer driven on if they feel like they would be successful with that round. Um there's only about two sites left that they that have shown interest at some time. They just didn't really score well um when they went to the state and they compared against other projects. Sure. Well, I know you have to go, but we have built quite a few units using those those things. Anyway, that's kind of where I am. Um I I just hope we can explore new possibilities and that kind of thing and tiny houses. I don't know. But um at least um be more receptive to some kind of new and innovative ideas.

Sure. All right. I'm going to be very um lowlevel here. Okay. Um I would like us to I I appreciate Karen's uh comment about the application time. Um I do think though that I agree it should be open for a longer period than just twice a year. Um we only received seven applications. We did we receive we've actually only received two the first round and then one in the October round. So we've received a total of three.

Um we did have other interest from developers but because of the timing they some of them were right here just north of of where we are today. Uh because of the timing they elected to move forward and charge higher rents than we would have received with the workforce housing sales tax in place.

And so I you know what is the impact on city staff of that? What if we did it four times a year? Um would that be helpful for the developers? Um I know in some discussions about uh going into place if if a developer needs to level a property, what is that's currently being rented, what is the rental term? and you know are would that property become available at a time when they could in fact do construction work. Yeah.

Um I'd like to revisit our scoring criteria. Um in part I think that I don't have that page written out but I believe the minimum number of units of the projects that we have provided some support for was seven. Is that of the ones that were awarded? Yeah. Yes. Corre uh correct. So, um I think I would uh like to consider do we want to have a net gain greater than one unit is was the thinking with that that we would have a lot that could possibly take a duplex. Correct. Instead,

uh actually it would have so it would either be a vacant lot that could have a duplex or it would be say a single family house that has a one unit in it. They could do a a three-unit town home. So in all the policies you had to have a net of two or more units. What we didn't want was someone doing a one for one. So they have a house, they tear it down, they put back a house. We don't gain any units in that situation.

Okay. I guess my thought is should we make it a requirement that it be greater than two? But um if we're also trying to promote infill, then I can see where that would be the minimum that could be could be placed. Um, one of the things that I think the last application really underscored, I don't doubt that several of these will be or could possibly be used for student housing, but I think that the proposal that came in for four bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms was very clearly oriented to student housing. So, I'm wondering if we need to um take another look at how do we how do we limit those applications? Um, and I know that the h the incentive district has a certain geographic boundary and that project did fall within that boundary. You know, it met the letter of the law. I don't think it met the spirit of the policy in in what they were pro proposing. Um so what can we do to limit that kind of application coming through and ultimately not being approved? Um, I'm not sure I agree with Mel's comment about expanding the rehab opportunities beyond owner occupied um housing. I I think again we've spoken several times tonight about the use of taxpayer dollars. I don't think taxpayers would be very uh amendable to

us underwriting the costs of a private landlord to maintain property. Now I I don't know when speaking about owner occupied if I own a property but my child is living in it does that preclude the the opportunity to do any correction work corrective work on that property? Josh is nodding his head, but you know, maybe we need to look at some of the nuances of that uh restriction for the rehab uh portion of that. Okay.

Um I'm I'm willing to continue the discussion about uh the land a land bank or a land acquisition. Um, Larry brought this up, I think, during our retreat as a possible use of of funds. I'd be okay with that. Um, I I'm not ready to just say yes, it's let's eliminate the 10% cap per project, but I'd like to know I'd like to work out a couple of scenarios about what that might look like. um how was it applied to the projects that we already have supported and what would could you take a couple of these and run some numbers to see how it might look different if we did took those caps away? Um and I thought I had one more but it's uh eluding me now. Um I am not uh ready to give up the ghost on the using any public funding mechanism that we have to support housing. So, um I I happen to think that the uh our HID project was a good use of infill uh building and that was one of the major reasons why why I was able willing to support it. Um it may be that in the future we need to have some more discussions with the county about um their perspectives on within city limit projects versus those in other parts of the county where building costs may be a little bit less. Certainly land acquisition costs might be less. Um but I'm not willing to throw those out alto together.

Okay. Could I just add the RHID? I think, you know, that's the seventh step of getting something done and that's the county step. I think we probably need to somehow talk to them about projects at the second step, not the end. You know, if they're going to say no, staff time and our time and everybody's time is kind of wasted. And I don't know if they plan to go project to project or if they just have a general feeling that this is a not a good way to build housing. So, um maybe you know at the city county meeting we could talk about that sometimes. Just what their philosophy is on those. Okay. I appreciate that feedback. I I do think that we need some uh immediate direction on how to proceed with the April round. call it. Is that appropriate? Okay. So, we are supposed to open up the April round of workforce housing sales tax. Um, preliminary applications have to be to us by March 31st. April 1 through April 30th is when they can submit their uh uh full application. We need to know if that is something that you would like to move forward with and if so, if there's any direction to applicants um so that they know that they're presenting projects that is are favorable potentially to the commission. I would be in favor of continuing with the April application date. Um, people have been operating under that uh assumption or that guidance for a year and a half now. I think that it's uh not appropriate to close it on three weeks notice.

Okay.

Yeah, I'd be in favor in that. I just want to point out a couple of observations that that I have here. I thought about I listed 11 construction projects going on in Manhattan at various phases right now and I will admit that two of these are retirement communities building building units but still those people are many of them are going to be selling houses in town opening up. Uh but of those 11 projects, they contain 417 units, 725 bedrooms. So when when I I hear the the comment that Manhattan has a housing crisis, I I just I have a hard time with that. We have always needed housing. We're a growing community, but I wouldn't call it a crisis. and these 11 projects certainly don't represent everything that's going on in town. So, I mean, we have a lot of construction going on. So, uh that's that's one observation. The other is that there were recently two duplexes completed on Avenue north of Kimble. Uh those two duplexes are probably similar, maybe a little larger to what's being built on Little Kitten. uh that we uh subsidized. Uh I just I came across the county records that those four units are now done. One of them sold for $370ome,000 and they show the owner as being that living at that unit. The other three sold for something over a million dollars. And the county shows that owner living in Great Ben, Kansas. So those three are obviously

not owner occupied. I don't know if they'll be VBOS's or rentals, but that's just the kind of things we're we're dealing with in Manhattan when we develop uh you know, these $300,000 properties. uh uh many of them are getting bought up by folks out of town that want to own property here in Manhattan. So uh but they're they're not that's just that's what I've observed and I find it interesting

as far as April goes. Uh, I would I would like to see the steering committee come back and have us pause and wait for the steering committee to make the new policy. But if not, then April's fine with me. Um, just to be clear, the the uh the steering committee, did they direct the development of this resolution that we approved? Yes. Is this

so that was based on um let me go back this the funding allocation that that biggest box we took their recommendation and that's what led to that policy that also led to RHID and IRB. So I would say if you want to resurrect that steering committee or a version of it you should probably be very clear on their direction on where what you're wanting them to address. If there's feedback like we would prefer owner occupancy, we want to look at land acquisition, we need to be very specific with that. Um otherwise, I think we're going to have a repeat of what we heard last time from that group.

I would like to pause on constituting that steering committee for the time being. Um, I think I'd prefer to let staff mull over what we have just talked about for the last hour and um, see if there are any gaps in the guidance that we have given them tonight. Um, what are the operational implications for what we have spoken about tonight and what are the remaining questions? Where do we need additional guidance such that it would be appropriate to reconstitute that committee?

That that would be my recommendation. Well, it's my Stephanie is there. Oh, go ahead. Nope. You first. It's my observation. We don't have that committee anymore.

Correct. And if we do have, I think we need to create it in a way that is more artful for resolution than hodgepodge of members we had with all the various interests that are not focused on what we need to do with tax dollars and what we're trying to get to. I mean, the committee was like 15 people, I think. Didn't I see a list? And we had everybody except the janitor has to take care of all this stuff on that committee and not geared to city staff recommendation, professional recommendations in this commission's observations.

I I I don't agree. I mean, I think that the people who are listed on this committee, the planning, the urban area planning board, the Flynn Hills Builders Association, Association of Realators, develop independent developers, a bank, housing related nonprofit, which I assume was Josh, um, property management. I mean, at that those are the people who are building properties, or financing properties, or managing properties. Those are the experts in our community. Who who would you who I mean there's no janitor listed here.

Well, if I need and maybe maybe they for multi-unit buildings, they need a janitor. Maybe there should be one on here, but well, the committee is too big to be making reasonable progress in my opinion on where we ought to go. um committee that size has a horrible time of meeting focusing and resolution that establishment. Um I don't know that I can tell you which one of those I wouldn't have on there. I don't think it's a combination that is helping us or would help us come up with decisions. I I understand you disagree. I disagree. Well, we agree.

Don't you do you think we need to Could you go back to that? I mean I I mean what would we add to the recommendations that you don't see up there except maybe accessory dwelling units? I mean seems like they met and these are the things that we just all talked about and I don't know that we need to study it again you know I mean well I mean I guess was the the 10% was one of the issues right? I honestly no I think that was I can't remember. It was too far along ago. I'd have to go back and look at some meeting minutes to see if 10% came out of this committee or if it was uh direction from the commission back to staff. Oh, okay.

So, what I think I mentioned this earlier, but really the steering committee, there were a lot of different action items in the housing market analysis. This committee was tasked with figuring out how can workforce housing sales tax address some of those action items. Um, there wasn't a lot of direction given. So that's kind of why we see a variety of of different things here. That's where I just say if if you want to resurrect that committee, we should have very clear direction on what their goal and and purpose is.

Well, since I agreed to disagree with our mayor, maybe we just don't need a committee and just wing it from here with your recommendation and people who come and argue their their case and the commission decision and we just let her die and stay dead. I that may be the easiest way to solve that disagreement to disagree. I guess my concern is like so they brought us a well we believed it would be a college you know you occupied by college students right on that last project. So if we leave the rules all the same way, then I would suspect more projects like that or maybe they would I guess

which is why I asked that Stephanie give some consideration to how do we make it more specific in the guidelines that that's not what we're looking for. Okay? And so don't even come up to us with

we don't need a committee. Just add that and then then proceed forward. When when we saw both the first and the second proposal for that project, if I was thinking of myself as an individual working in this community, that was not the environment I could see myself living in. Now, some of the other town home projects that are a little bit further away from Aggieville might be a little bit more attractive to um an individual even if there are some college students living in one of the adjacent units. But as that was presented to us, it was pretty clear it was not going to be uh you know some a bank teller from one of the banks. it wasn't going to be a teacher living those units. And so that's why, you know, I would like you to give some thought to how can we specify that partic and maybe it goes to um Commissioner Fox's comment about being more restrictive in terms of uh owner occupied housing as opposed to rentals.

Sure. Um, I think both I think both are needed. Um, but I don't want to see a developer put a lot of time and effort into architectural plans and, you know, doing all that upfront work that they need to do before they even get here for us to say, "Sorry, we're not going to fund this." Sure. Yeah. we can we can take the feedback that we received tonight and bring back a couple of different options to see if that uh kind of gets to the intent that you're of where you're wanting to go.

And if if we're not there, then we revisit this idea of a committee of experts. And you know, I'm not throwing that out with not throwing that out alto together. I'm just saying I don't think we're there yet to be specific enough to say what we want them to do. Let's appreciate the talent we have in the development office and uh in city management and move forward with these modifications. See where that leaves us. Can we agree on most of the changes that they bring to us? And if not, do we need to get more technical assistance? I'm withdrawing my idea of resurrecting the steering committee this time.

Thank you. Did I beat you down enough there? Um I I certainly appreciate uh commissioner's um forthcoming umness with your direction this evening. I think you've given us a lot to um talk about. I know I have a whole page and a half of notes over here. I'm sure Stephanie does too. Uh I do think are there are some common themes um amongst you all and so we will certainly uh take this feedback and direction and synthesize and bring back a recommendation for you all to discuss again at another meeting. Thank you again. Sure. Danielle, do you have any up briefings or updates for us tonight?

The only thing um I was going to update you all on is uh just letting you know our next work session is on March 24th. You will be hearing from the Riley County Police Department. Um an update from them. You will again, as Brian, our uh public works director Johnson alluded to, uh you will hear uh the final report of our pavement condition index and then also uh talking through what our debt repayment and issuance uh schedule looks like and then also having that discussion if we were to um uh Commissioner Morrison's audacious idea of bonding um street maintenance. So uh that is what we have on the agenda for the next uh work session. And then of course you have your uh upcoming meetings and invitations list um in front of you at the dis and um please let Lauren and Chelsea know if you will be attending or not attending and we will uh get you registered and get you paid for and um make sure we're dotting our eyes and crossing our tees there.

Other than that, I have nothing else this evening. Thank you. Thank you very much. Commissioners, do we have a motion to adjurnn? Move to adjurnn. Second. All in favor? I. Thank you all for your work tonight.

I should have got walked around at 8:00. I'm getting unit.