City Council - Regular Meeting

Good morning, Witchaw, and good morning to all of you. Thank you for joining us for this morning's city council meeting on April 28th. I call this meeting to order. Can you please stand for the pledge of allegiance? To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you all. Madame clerk, please call the first item. approve the minutes of the regular meeting April 14th, 2026 and April 21st, 2026. Council members, any items to be edited? I see none. I move to approve the minutes for the regular meetings for April 20 14th and April 21st.

Second. Motion second. Discussion. See none. All those in favor say I.

I. All those opposed, same sign. Motion passes. 70. Madame clerk, please call the next item. Public agenda. We now come to public agenda. The public agenda allows for up to five speakers to have five minutes each to address the city council. Please bear in mind that this is not a period of dialogue with council or a question and answer period. This is your opportunity to address the city council with your concerns. I ask that you address your remarks to the city council as a body and not to any individual council member. No action will be taken relative to items on the public agenda other than referral to the city manager for information as necessary. Speakers will please speak into the microphone. Please state their name and address for the record. A time clock will display the speaker's remaining time to speak. Order and rules of decorum will be observed. The first speaker is Brad Heekler. Flock camera implementation. Good morning, council members. I'm here today to address the use of flock safety uh license plate readers in our city. Uh now, I'm not going to waste anybody's time with the implementation side of this as we've already gone well beyond that. Um, however, while I acknowledge that their potential in aiding law enforcement, uh, I'm deeply concerned about the lack of strong oversight, uh, first, we have to recognize the risk surface. These cameras are network connected and deployed in public spaces, which means

any system like this is a potential target. Their design, including external ports, creates vulnerabilities that must be independently audited. rather than relying solely on vendor asurances. Second, au authentication is a critical gap. Uh Flock doesn't currently require multiffactor authentication and and network credentials are hardcoded in an unencrypted manner. Even if consumer accounts have stronger safeguards, shouldn't our law enforcement at least meet those standards, if not exceed them? Third, we have to address the transparency and data retention. Uh while it's claimed that not only vehicle data is captured and stored briefly, independent studies show that images of people are sometimes stored longer, sometimes even months. Uh without certainty on what is collected and how long it's stored, we cannot have public confidence in these systems. Finally, we have already seen misuse in our own region. Officers in Kichchi and Cedric have abused these systems for personal reasons, proving this risk is real, not theoretical. Even if these systems stay in place, they must be governed by transparency, accountability, and independent oversight. Without that, we risk not only privacy, but also the integrity of our justice system. Thank you.

Thank you, Brad. We have space for four other individuals who would like to address the council. I see none. We'll now move it back to the bench. With that, I see no comments from council members. Madame clerk, please call the next item. Consent agenda items 1 through 11.

Council members, any items to be pulled? I only have one item and I'm only pulling it because of a of a inaccuracy. That item is agenda item number 10. With that, um I will go ahead and move to approve consent agenda items 1 through 11. Second. Motion second. Discussion. See none. All those in favor say I.

I. All those opposed, same sign. Motion passes. 6. Uh item number 10 actually resides in district number one, not district number three. Um 828 North Popppler is in Council Member Sheepard's district. I just want to highlight that items 9101 are all housing items. uh all of these properties were valued uh below the price that the individuals paid for. So uh this is positive uh as these properties are selling for more than what they're appraised. Um just wanted to highlight again item number 10. Uh this is a property built in 1996 with three bedrooms and it was valued at $69,000 and the uh buyer bought it for $78,000. So again uh just want to highlight that uh people are buying these affordable homes and under uh $100,000. So again, uh, I see no further comments regarding this item because I pulled it. That allows for anyone in the public who would like to speak on this item to speak on it. I see no one in the public who would like to speak on this item. I'm bringing it back to the bench. With that, I go ahead and move to approve consent agenda item number 10 with the correction that it's in district number one.

Second.

Motion. Second. Discussion. See none. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed, same sign. Motion passes. 70. Madame clerk, please call the next item. Board of bids and contracts. Good morning, mayors, city council members. Jason Rob, Department of Finance Board of Bids convened yesterday, uh, Monday, April 27th for the following bids. Justice for engineering, we have storm water drain number 552, sewer sanitary improvements for Cedar Village, second edition, rejecting all bids. We have 2026 outsource payment preservation program CIP ultra thin bonded overlay recommending conspect inc businesses Kansas paving for2,538,47. We have 2026 W which police department parking lot reconstruction recommending conspect inc business Kansas paving for 136,000 for purchasing. We have six 39,000 gross vehicle weight rating dump trucks recommending Rush Truck Centers of Kansas Incorporated for aggregate total of1,171,6308. We have 16,000 gross vehicle weight 4x4 cabin chassis with herbicide spray rig recommending opex technologies and LLC for $171,225.50. 50s. We have tree and stump removal

recommending Shauny Mission Tree Service Incorporated for aggregate total of $148,575. We have three Pierce velocity pumper and one Pierce Velocity Rescue fire engines recommending Conrad fire equipment for 5,44,86827. We have Lucidity Asset Management Software Renewal from June 8th, 2026 through June 7th, 2027 for Central Square Technologies LLC for $118,36010. We have housing elite software annual housing and maintenance renewal from January 1, 2026 through December 31st, 2026 for emphasis computer solutions for $160,976. We have removal of mattresses and box springsings for recycling change order mid Kansas service LLC for an amount of $120,000. We have liquid chlorine bulk delivery change order REMAC Southwest Incorporated a min amount of 3 million 513,24. We have ground maintenance service services for production pumping change order asking to extend this contract for choice industries. We have identity verication subscription change order onlineformational services incorporated for an annual usage of $30,000. This is how to become a vendor with the city of red city of Witchah. These are current uh business opportunities. We're working with vendors through either small business that we're either hosting or being a part of. This is current uh opportunities we have out on the street right now. And I recommend you approve the recommendations and I'll stand for any questions.

Council members, questions for staff. I just have one regarding uh slide number five, the parking lot reconstruction. Where is this located?

Um I'll let Captain Kie talk. Morning, mayor, city council. Jason Kulie, captain WPD. Uh this is the central bureau parking lot. So the building we just uh we we've been in it for a while, but that we just purchased from uh HUD and from housing. Uh the parking lot needs to be taken down um to the surface level and then built back up. Thank you, Captain Kulie.

Any other questions? I see none. With that, I move to approve the board of bids and contracts dated April 27th, 2026. Second.

Motion second. Discussion. See none. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed, same sign. Motion passes. 70. Madame clerk, please call the next item. Petitions for public improvements. Good morning, mayor, city council members. Paul Gonzelman, public works and utilities. For the record, I have a few petitions for your consideration this morning. The signatures on the petitions represent 100% of the improvement districts and the petitions are valid per Kansas statute. New petitions craner edition located in district 5. The project will provide water and sanitary sewer improvements required for a new residential development. Craner addition located five district 5. Again, on September 5th, 2023, the city council approved water and sewer improvements required for a existing residential development. The developer has submitted revised petitions with revised improvement districts and the budgets remain as previously approved. Northgate fifth edition. On November 25th, 2025, city council approved water, storm water, sewer, sanitary sewer, and paving improvements for a new residential development. The developer has submitted revised petitions with revised improvement districts, and the budget remains as previously approved except for the sanitary sewer, which has been revised. Reber second and third edition located in district two. On May 20th, 2025, the

city council approved drainage and paving improvements required for an existing residential development. The developer has submitted revised petitions with revised improvement districts and the budget remains as previously approved. It is recommended that the city council approve the new and revised petitions and new budgets. Adopt the new and amending resolutions and authorize the necessary signatures. I will stand for questions. Thank you. Questions for staff? See none. Move to approve the petitions for public improvements. Second. Motion second. Discussion. See none. All those in favor say I.

I. All those opposed, same sign. Motion passes. 70. Madame clerk, please call the next item. Council member agenda. Council members, any appointments? I see none. Council member, any comments? I see none. We cannot adjourn this meeting because we will have an executive session. So at this time I will move to continue with uh workshop and we will then proceed with our executive session after city manager Dennis Marstall.

Thank you mayor and council. We have a few items for you today workshop. These have been um some of the items that you all have had conversations about or want to have more conversations about. So we have a host or a variety of topics for you but we will start as we have uh done in practice with the waterworks April update. So we do our monthly update starting with Gary Jansen our director of public works. Thank you Mr. Manager. Uh good morning mayor and council members. Gary Jansen public works and utilities. As we do each month we wanted to provide you an update on where we're at with Witchaw Waterworks our new water treatment plant. uh work is progressing uh nicely on repairs to the clarifiers. We've had uh lots of discussion, weekly discussions about where we go next, what's happening with performance testing once the clarifiers have been repaired. Um we're working closely with Witchaw Water Partners on a variety of issues that we need to address prior to um City of Witchaw taking over the plant. always just like to remind you that the the facility is still currently in the possession of Witto Water Partners until we get to a point of the clarifiers being repaired. Uh the appropriate performance testing completed uh and a variety of other issues that we've got to work through. Uh and we're going to get there. We're making progress. We've had some great conversations as of late. Um we feel good about the repairs that are being made. So, I'm going to let Ron Coker, as we've done in the past, he's going to walk you through uh some specifics on where we're at with the repairs and what the schedule looks like going forward.

Good morning, mayor, members of the council. Ron Coker with Burns Mack. Um I'm going to skip a few slides here and go down to one at the end that I think it's easier to get the the bigger picture and then we'll back up and walk walk through each one. So, uh, we're working on all six of the clarifiers currently. Uh, we've received the materials for clarifiers one, two, one, excuse me, 1, three, four, and six. Uh, one, three, and and four are com. The repairs are complete. We're just down to coatings. Uh, repairs are currently happening on six. And then, uh, clarifier 2, the repair materials for clarifier 2 are expected on site this week. Uh we'll start that one uh as soon as they arrive. And then clarifier five, which is the one that we're temporarily operating, will be the last clarifier to be fixed. So sorry, the order is a bit jumbled when we go through. So 1, three, four repairs are complete. We're down to coding. Six repairs are underway. Two and five repairs are still to be done. All right. Okay. So we're just walking down through each then. This is one. Uh it'll be the second repair uh second clarifier completed. We're down to uh coating work. Coating work since we're outside is highly dependent upon weather. We've had a lot of moisture in the air which is not good for coating. Uh so uh if it dries up, we'll uh progress pretty well. If it stays wet, uh the coating process will take a little bit longer here for the next uh 30 days or so as as we finish out the spring. Uh SEC2 uh repairs are complete and we are working on uh coding. Sorry, that's not correct. Uh we're still doing rake arm repairs on SEC2. SEC3 will be the first clarifier put back into operation. Uh we are down to top coating applications this week.

Here's what that clarifier looks like with the repaired upper draft tube. Uh looks much better if you remember the pictures that I showed you uh previously. uh much um I think much more stout uh in its uh in its construction. So uh you can see that it's uh comprised of 16 sections uh that are that are connected together uh for this repair. Remember that was four originally and the reason they went to 16 from four was just because there was so much equipment now around the clarifier. It wasn't feasible to drop them in those big uh those big four piece sections. Uh but because the 16 have uh have a connection on the edge of each, it actually makes them stiffer. So it'll make that clarifier that upper draft tube stiffer. Uh which is uh which was what we were trying to get corrected from the previous uh installation. Uh as I mentioned, uh four is complete, repairs are complete, and we're just working on uh coding uh for that clarifier. Five is uh the clarifier that we're in interim operations on. Remember, we modified this clarifier to simulate uh the repairs. Uh but it's still working with the old upper draft tube just uh but it looks but it looks a lot like the new one. Uh that data has been collected now gosh for two months. Dan, uh the the thing I can tell you is that the data trends uh look like they did previously. That was one of the concerns, right? Can can we depend on this new design to look uh to to uh perform like the old design did? Uh the data does trend with the pre-repaired SEC. Uh we've had lots of great time for Witchaw operators and support staff to be working on the plant and training uh which is something that needed to occur. So that's uh this is uh turned out to be a blessing with respect to that element.

Uh we've seen significant improvement on the process as well. So remember when we were shut down uh we we had planned to do a uh optimization a chemical optimization study uh after the city had taken over when we had the failure and we shut down we went ahead and did that chemical optimization study uh which is really just looking at different combinations of chemicals uh and how they might treat uh the different uh water sources that you have. So in while we've been running SEC5, we've been testing those optimizations, different types of optimization to see if they scale up from uh a desktop test to a clarifier. Uh what we've seen uh we've got some really good data I think on several of those uh on several of those. So uh that's again something the city would do over time when they operate a water treatment plant. uh this is just trying to put them in the best position, their operators in the best position they can be in when they start up the plant. Uh so we've seen good performance there. Uh we're currently testing an alternate polymer. Uh what that means a polymer is essentially an aid to help pull the to help the solids come out of the water. Uh and they have there's different types of polymers that uh that do that. Uh the city we've thus far we've been testing exactly what the city uses on their main water treatment plant. Uh this is an ultimate polymer that uh that showed some promise when we did jar testing during the optimization study. Uh I think it's probably been less than optimal in running maybe is the way to say it. Uh it's not that there's not some good things in it but I don't think it's way better than what the city was uh what the city was previously using. So, we will transition back to uh the the same polymer that the city currently uses uh when we get ready to start testing uh final uh performance

testing that Gary mentioned. Uh what you can see in this is this is a good picture of the mixing zone and then the clarification zone inside that solids contact clarifier. So, um in the center where you can't see is the mixer that we're repairing. Uh what you see that outer edge is the outside of the what I would call the skirt. Uh so inside that is where the mixing takes place. Outside of that skirt is where the clarification process where the solids really fall out uh and the water and the clean water goes onto the uh to the filter. So good good example of uh what that should look like. Uh in the process you want a clearly defined mixing zone. Okay. Okay. And then SEC6, again, this is one that we will be uh we'll be working on. We're working on currently and we'll start the upper draft tube installation this week. And then this is the slide I told you previously. Any any questions on any of that? Yes.

Yeah. Sorry. Um how long does it take for the coating to cure out? Dan, what's the cure time on the coating? Yeah. So, so again, Dan Baker is our project manager uh on the operations. So, the cure time is 7 to 10 days depending on the weather. Okay. Appreciate it.

It's a slow process. It's and it's and it's it's even slower when you're doing it in place uh than when you're in a shop and you can control all the variables uh around uh the piece of equipment that you're coding. So, we are very weather dependent. Remember the schedule that we showed you to kick off had no weather days in it. So, um, so we're we're definitely, uh, we're definitely, I would guess, out maybe 30 days from where we'd hoped to be coding wise. Uh, but if we get good weather, we can do things like go to a second shift and and, uh, and try and pull that schedule back forward. We're really just trying to wait till we get to a good weather stretch to look at those kinds of or to implement those kinds of things.

Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you. Other questions? Just a quick one. So just high level, when do you currently now with some weather days expect this to be completed?

Yeah, so we're working with that with the city right now. Uh, a lot of that depends on where we end up on a testing regime after repairs are complete. Uh, we I I think it's safe to say we would expect the repairs to be complete this summer. um probably early summer uh time frame and then testing through the summer and then depending on where we end up with the city uh on testing and the test results, I would expect the fall uh is probably the where the city should be thinking about uh taking over operation of the plant. that that could vary mayor from early fall to late fall depending on how long it takes us to get through the coding and then on on the testing protocols and performance as well. Gary, I I didn't I wasn't too optimistic in that was I

I might add just a little bit to that. Thank you, Ron. Mayor and council, our we're targeting right now, our hope uh if everything continues on the pace that it is with the clarifier repairs and we can work through uh testing protocols, we are looking at modifying um the performance testing requirements from the original contract. It makes sense at this point um based on where we've been and try to get moving towards how we're going to operate the plant. So, working through all of that and some of the other things I talked about, in an ideal world, we would take this plant over somewhere around September. Um, as I've talked about before, our goal all along has been once we have the plant in our possession is to we're planning to need to operate for about six months before we can go live to the system. Um, and I so ideally if we can take over in September and be ready to come online early next spring, that's going to be a lot better than waiting till summer when we're in peak demand, right? So, um, the sooner we can be ready to go next spring, we're going to be better off. But there is a lot that has to fall in place between now and then. U, obviously keep you updated as we go. There's a lot of things happening behind the scenes with other issues that we're working through. uh when all is said and done, we still have to get a permit to operate from KDHE, which is probably going to be the easy part at that point. There is some work I I would mention real quick again too, just so that this all follows as we keep going. There is some work that still has to be completed uh right before we go to the system uh to connect the dots. It has pump station. That's work that we've known from the very beginning that was going to continue basically past what we would call final completion. All of that will be wrapped together uh in one final package that we'll bring to the council once we get through these next steps. So, more to come, more details as we go, and we'll keep filling in the dots, but we're targeting September right now to take over the plant.

Thank you, Gary and Ron.

Okay, thanks. And I I just might add when we get to next month, I'll change the presentation up so that you can see just what's left to do versus what's been accomplished. I think that'll make it a little easier as we get to that point. Uh so thank you very much for the time mayor. For our next item, we have information to give you update on the ballpark district. We have representatives from WBD here to talk about the mixed juice. And so we have a PowerPoint presentation. And Austin, if you want to come forward, I appreciate you being here. Good morning, mayor, members of the council. Um Austin Bradley with EPC Real Estate Group. Also, uh here Justin El Corey with with Murphin, part of the development team. So, um appreciate the opportunity. I think it's a great idea uh city manager had. I think given some of the style of questions we got over the last couple weeks at council, we thought it would be helpful just to let's break this thing apart. Let's go level by level on this plan so we can understand where the pool is, where the garage is, where the hotel is, all those kind of things. probably very redundant from some of you or for some of you I should say. So, apologize for that, but I can kind of fly through that and give you some updates, you know, relative to dates um along the way if that works and and happy to answer any questions along the way. So, please please jump in. Um just high level overview here. Of course, we're looking west, you can see the baseball stadium, just getting your bearings. Um right there at the the corner, kind of that um more more purple color, if you will, is the mixeduse building. And we'll kind of break that apart here in a moment. Um, right along the river in in blue, uh, is the hotel. Um, site plan. Let's go ahead and blow this thing up. Um, so you have Maple going, uh, left to right there at the bottom of the page. MLAN uh, going north to south. Uh, again, on the right side of MLAN, we have the hotel. You can see the riverfront improvements that are underway. Uh, the drop off for the hotel. And then on the west side of MLAN, between the street and the baseball stadium, uh, the mixeduse uh,

project, which has the retail, the garage, and the apartments. uh itself. Um starting there. Uh so we've rotated north is right. Uh so on the left side of the page you have Maple. Uh on the bottom going left to right you have MLAN. Um this is the ground level. You can see the garage um kind of right there in the center of the page. Uh on the south side which is left on the page you have apartments that clad the garage. Access into that garage uh is there on the top uh which would access from the existing surface lot um as part of the baseball uh ballpark I should say. And then along McLean at the bottom and in orange you have the retail uh essentially we have three retail uh spaces that make up that 10,000 ft. Uh in kind of sandwiched between retail A and B is our primary entry point uh for the apartments down there. We'd have leasing offices, uh lobby, mail, package room, uh etc. um breaking apart retail B and C is that existing uh vehicular access point up to the concourse uh of the ballpark which will bridge over. And as you head right um we're introducing some uh two-story walk up more kind of row home style apartments uh which are labeled L1 there. That'll be between Retail C and the uh existing team office building and museum. We'll go ahead and kind of work our way up to the second level here. You can see how the apartments start stacking. Uh you can see that vehicular access point. uh is is still in place. That's a two-story uh pass through from uh MLAN up to the ballpark concourse. Uh again, you're going to see a lot of the stacking with these apartments, how we're cladding the garage. Um and and again, your uh your garage kind of in gray there, right in the center of the page. I'll start moving a little bit quicker here. Uh level three, stack again. Uh level four, we stack. Level five, this is where uh a few weeks ago at council, we were talking about the uh pool sitting on top of the garage. Uh this is the core amenity level uh for the mixeduse project. Uh so in orange you can see the clubhouse and the fitness uh which would be right there on

MLAN. Again, keep in mind you're five floors in the air. Uh and you can see the pool uh that sits on top of that garage. Um and you're introducing some additional apartments here. Um without getting into the details on on how these stack, but this is where you're going to get a lot of your density on levels five, six, and seven of the apartment project. So those that were asking questions about where does the pool sit, again, the pool's right on top of the garage. It'll overlook the uh the ballpark and the field down below, which I'll show you here in just a moment. Um but the main amenity level is is level five here. And as we go forward, level six and seven, again, the apartments continue to stack uh as we round out the level plans. Um a few uh renderings here. Uh again, there's a lot more detail that that is forthcoming here, but just to give you a sense of scale and context, uh this is at Maple and Mlan looking northwest. uh have that anchor restaurant right at the hard corner. Uh to the right of that is your entry um to the apartment lobby as you head left on Maple. Uh you have twotory town homes that again will will screen and clad that parking garage. A lot of brick. Um you know, keeping with that a little bit more uh industrial kind of gritty uh theme of of Deleno as a whole. Um top left image here, kind of work our way around the the four images here. The top left is looking northwest. you get a little bit of the hotel on the right in the foreground. Um, again, that hard corner with the anchor restaurant or retail. Um, and entry point to the apartments. Um, on the top right, this is if you're essentially hovering over the ballpark. Um, you know, looking back, I guess that would be southeast. Um, you can see how we're skinning that garage, you know, with combination of landscaping and trees, foliage, uh, and brick as well. Um, you can see the amenity level on top of that garage. It's a good viewpoint of that. Um bottom left here, this is uh across the street, Maple looking north. Uh so on the right side is is the retail anchor restaurant. On the left, uh you'd start to see some of the uh existing surface lot of the

ballpark. You're looking straight ahead at those two-story row homes. Um and then on the right, uh essentially if you're on MLAN looking south, uh just give you a feel for the streetscape uh as the hotel and the mixeduse project start to frame that uh that street. Few other images here. Um the top two are of that uh that pool deck amenity level. Um the top left is looking back towards our clubhouse which is on level five. Uh the top right is if you're on the pool deck uh overlooking the the ball field. So this would be some pretty dynamic uh relationships and views, you know, down onto the field itself. Uh you know, some of those cabanas we're thinking, you know, by by day, non-game day, it's obviously pool cabanas. Um you know, potentially on on game days, they become little like tailgate suites for the residents. So a really unique amenity for us. Um on the lower left, this is essentially if you're on the main concourse looking back to the building. Uh and then the bottom right, similar view to what we already went over. Um few elevations here. Again, these these certainly do not do the architecture justice. Uh and we are making some additional refinements based on some feedback we've gotten. Um gives you a sense of scale. Uh that top one is the east elevation. You can see that break in the building. That's the vehicular access point up onto the concourse. Um that lower um is essentially Maple Street looking north. um you know the the mural on the bottom left which is existing today on on the ballpark um just gives you a sense of kind of where we're at. Um so that that wraps up the mixed use. Um on this one in particular, the team is uh working on the updated footing and foundation package today which will include the structural columns and so that'll be part of going vertical here this summer. Uh both projects will mobilize in June is where we're at right now. Uh we will stagger this um and create several packages. There'll probably be uh anywhere between two and four different packages from the design team submitted to MABCD. Uh so it'll be uh important to work with them diligently to streamline those reviews. Um but from a timing standpoint, that's

that's the misuse component. Switching gears, I'll kind of Well, do we have the hotel loaded in here as well? Oh, it is. Okay. Yeah, we got some much better images on the hotel. Is there any way to email?

Can we take a five minute pause?

opera presentation on the screen. Absolutely.

Okay. Um, moving on to hotel. Um, so before I get into this, you know, there's been a lot of press on this and we were not uh didn't have the liberty to kind of talk about the brand pivot uh during council a few weeks ago. So now uh you know, we're officially pivoting away from what was originally Dream Hotel Group. Um Hyatt acquired Dream Hotel Group. Uh we've since uh terminated our agreement with Hyatt and are now bringing on and have brought on Marriott, which will be a tribute by Marriott. Um there's a brand new tribute in in Kansas City as part of the Country Club Plaza just as a quick reference point called the Cascade. Uh Joe Morrison, who's now on the EPC team, he he really shephered that entire project. So just as a if you want to get a sense of quality and scale and what is this going to look like, um that'd be a great reference point. um the tribute. What we like about that is is it's everything that we've been talking about relative to Dream Hotel Group and that it's um very custom, very localized, you know, high design, high quality, and we think we can really leverage kind of what Deleno is and what downtown Witchaw is, inject that. So, this isn't a cookie cutter hotel, but it's also got the horsepower of, you know, Marriott and the Bonboy system behind you. So, we think it's a huge um benefit um and and you know, much better uh compared to kind of where we were. So, we're super excited about that. It's been a ton of our focus over the last few months, candidly. Um so nonetheless you're going to start seeing some Marriott uh references here throughout. Um pivoting to the hotel. So similarly we'll go through the level plans. Um north is left. Uh the river is running left right here on the top of the page. Uh MLAN Boulevard. Uh and the mixeduse piece is just across the street. Uh we have our drop off on the right which is south uh primary lobby. We got some admin back house spaces. We know, you know, to the Delena neighborhood, having some transparency kind of through this ground level floor and, you know, not having a big solid wall is is critical and key and we totally agree. So, it's always been at the forefront of designing this main level. Um, we'll have a a really dynamic bar, public bar kind of right off the riverfront with expansive patios. So, think, you know, kind of some soft seating and fire pits hitting

right right hovering above the water, uh, which would be really unique, just a way to activate the river that Witchaw's really not doing right now. Um, and then towards the north end, we'll have some event space and, you know, really kind of provide some optionality on how we program that based on, you know, game days or non-game days. That'll be a rental space. It can be meeting space. Again, that'll have that adjacency to the river. Um, and then a covered patio here on the north. So, again, on on game days, we can really activate the north side. If it's a non-game day, maybe the attention focus is back to the patio. So, the idea is really leverage, you know, the riverfront adjacency. Um, you know, I think there's a a ton of opportunity here. Um, and then in gray, this is just some of the back house space, just support the hotel operations. Um, level plans. Uh, this will be kind of your typical level plan, uh, for the hotel. Um, it's now up to 160 keys. You know, through the, uh, coordination with Marriott, we've optimized, you know, these plans, been able to squeeze in two more keys. It was previously 158 for reference. Um, you know, for the most part, these are standard suites. Um, you know, we do have, you know, kind of a more call it a a party suite for lack of a better term here on the south side where you have its own patio. So, there's some uh custom, you know, unique uh uh units in here, but you know, for the most part, kind of your typical um you know, key count, key mix, so to speak, you know, based on the the Witchaw market performance. Um, moving up to the top floor, which I think is, you know, probably what we're most excited about. Um, you know, on the on the south side is is more event space. Uh so I think you know big big uh ballroom if you will in pre-unction. Uh there'll be an outdoor patio here. So I mean there's there's a million different events that you know this can be used for and that's the intent. Um the elevator bank will be in the middle. Um you know we'll have a dedicated uh elevator for the public. So you know if you're saying hey after game we want to come over and have a drink. Uh you pop in you know right in the middle right off MLAN Boulevard. You go in your certain elevator, uh, which is, um, dedicated to the public, not not not hotel patrons, if you will, who are staying there. Um, jump up to the top floor. Um, you get off your elevator.

Uh, you have a host kind of waiting for you there that ushers you into this uh, the north side, which will be more of that rooftop bar that we've been talking about. Um, I think we're going to flip the bar uh to the, uh, east side um, of the hotel itself. And so I think you're sitting at the bar kind of overlooking um the the river and the the skyline itself. You know, you turn around, you got views down into the ballpark. Um this north side will be that terrace. Uh so it'll be out outside and and covered. Again, you know, think fire pits and uh you a little bit of green roof. Um again, just you know, having views not only the skyline, but also, you know, to the west across the ballpark. It'll be a pretty pretty dynamic area. Um we got just kind of your typical uh room layouts as part of this presentation. probably not as uh not as relevant to this conversation. Um some of the images here uh which we're pretty excited about. Again, this is complimentary architecture to not only you know Deleno downtown Witchaw, but you know, the mixeduse uh development across the street. Um so on the top you got the river here in the foreground. Um you know, a lot of metal panels, a lot of glazing, a lot of glass. You know, there's a really unique mural opportunity here uh on the south side of the building. Uh you're seeing all those public riverfront uh improvements here uh in the foreground as well with those trees and again that elevated patio. If you can kind of track my my cursor here, that'll connect uh some of the event space on the north, you know, over to that public bar component uh towards the south. Uh that'll provide that connectivity across the board. Um lower left here, you know, this is on the north end of the building. So, you know, that existing um entry point and center field for the ballpark. If you're looking back to the south, um at the top here, you're seeing that covered rooftop patio. um you know down at grade uh you're you're seeing a uh at grade uh patio which again is is more flex based based on you know the event that's happening. Uh gives you a sense of scale and how we're starting to frame that streetscape. I mean MLAN's going to change a ton in a great way you know once these buildings are up. Um and then lastly on the right here this is uh on the south side of the building you're seeing this uh overhang you know and this drop off for the the hotel lobby itself. Um and similarly you're seeing

how we're framing uh framing MLAN as as you you stare north. You're seeing the Hyatt in the uh off to the right here just as a a frame of reference um gives you some context. So um this uh similarly to the mixed use our footing foundation package which will include the structural columns on level one. This package should be going to MABCD here in two weeks. Um and so the uh the team is is on track to mobilize here in June on the hotel. Uh as well terms of completion dates both are on track to complete in Q2 of 28. You know that that milestone is I think July 31st to 28. So we got a little bit of buffer in there. So both are on track from a completion standpoint, which obviously is paramount in regard to this conversation. So with that, happy to answer any questions. I know it's a lot of information. I thought it was just kind of relevant to walk through this in detail and kind of share these plans and kind of where this sits.

Thank you very much, Austin, for sharing both the apartments as well as the hotel. Uh, one more time, can you just share uh you mentioned that the packages will be going to MABC really soon. Um, so June 2026 is when we're uh expected to see some of that footing. Kind of just explain a little bit more.

Yeah, so our contractors on track to remobilize in June uh of this summer. Um, in terms of completion, you know, both are on track for Q2 of 2028. So the hotel itself should take approximately 16 to 18 months. Uh, the multif family should take somewhere in the 20 to 22 month range. Um, and and both, like I said, will be complete by that Q2. In terms of the packages, the hotel footing and foundation package is on track to to be submitted in early May. Uh the mixed use uh that same footing foundation package will trail by about 30 days. Um and so I think that's the the detail you're looking for relative to those packages.

I go okay just real quick. So the hotel's the the first thing or the first project that's going vertical potentially. We're still working through the means and methods. the footing and foundation package for the hotel is is um further advanced than the mixed use footing and foundation package at this point. They're within 30 days of each other, so they're relatively similar. Okay, appreciate that. And and we're still on track for vertical by end of July. It's going to be extremely tight, just to be candid with you. And and that was intentional. We didn't build in much of a buffer there, but yeah, we're on track right now.

Okay. I'd love to see that. Um, also the 60 keys to the hotel, how much was um how many rooms in the um apartment building? Um, 192 apartments. Yeah, thank you for asking that. Um, it previous wasund uh I think it was 181 initially. We've gotten that up to 192 and that was just based on what's performing in the market, what we're seeing up the street at our project at 225 Sycamore. Um, the hotel went up to 160 keys from 158 keys. So, both the program has increased on both fronts, I guess. Um, any concern with additional parking? Where where where are you guys looking for? No. No, no concerns there. No.

Okay. Appreciate it. Let me question. Quick question. Um, I I maybe I'm wrong, but I I thought the completion date was going to be July 31 of 2027. Now you say it's Q2 of 28. Yeah, it's it's always been July 31st of 28. Okay. Okay. Yeah. We'd love it for me to be in July 22nd. When does our star bond payment

begin? Good morning, council member. What's your question? When does uh when's our star bond payment on on phase two of the star bonds? When does it uh hit us. Probably the more relevant question would be when does phase one expire? Phase one is going to expire in March of 27. Uh so there'll be a little bit of a lag period before we generate the the additional revenue in phase two. A little over a year then.

Yeah, we make payments in March and in September of each year on our star bonds. So, you know, uh you know, the September of 27 payment uh would be probably the primary one that might occur during the transitional period between phase one expiring and and phase two gearing up. Okay. Even even March of 28 if they're ready in Q2, there's a lag time between collection and time you get it. So, the March payment is interest only. So, the March payments are the smaller ones. So, the March payment 28 will be relatively small. Okay. How will we fund that? Through general fund or

Well, there's several mechanisms. Our trustee does hold some funds in reserve. Uh now, I cannot tell you whether there'll be any funds held in reserve for that payment. Uh but as you know, the city in the past has pledged each year in its operating budget to backs stop any shortfalls in the Starbond district. And I would presume that that pledge would be included in the 2028 proposed budget which you would develop a year from now. And if that is the case, uh if the trustee is short, then the city would have the uh uh ability or obligation slashobligation to provide funds to the trustee to help make that interest payment. And what's that interest pay? What's that September payment?

Uh the September payment is principal and interest. And I'm going by memory. I'm thinking it's in the neighborhood of about 2 and a half million in principal and about 600,000 in interest. So somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.1 million. The spring payment is interest only which is in the neighborhood of 600,000. Okay. So So we're looking at almost 4 million. We have to back stop and then we'll gain it on the back side. Right.

Yes. That's right. The district the district expires in 2038 and it's just like a tiff district. Sometimes tiffs underperform in earlier years as the development ramps up and they typically overperform in the out years. And so yes, the city will have the ability to recover from the star bond district any amounts that we have to front early on if we do in fact have to front any amounts. Okay.

Okay. Thank you. Would that be something Mark we look at potentially I know this is the buzzword here recently but tapping into a reserve but then filling that obligation so that way whenever we do make it up on the back end it it will go and replace that. Uh there's a variety of options we're looking at in order to uh accomplish this if this does in fact occur. Uh we'll probably be presenting some of those to you during the budget development process later on this year. Uh the reason I'm being a little bit uh koi is there's some legalities we need to work through. But yes, I think we have a number of options if we if we have to uh provide any funding uh in the future for this.

Okay. Because that'd be quite a quite a blow to the go if we pull from that. It' definitely be a challenge, but again, we have some options. Okay, appreciate it. Mayor, if I may. Um, I just I don't know who can answer this, and really this is just for my awareness because this is one of the first times I'm having the conversation. Um, but it sounds like we are leveraging our financing tools to support this project. Would that be correct? I heard starbond. So I just that's why I wanted to clarify for those who

may be not sure what does that mean or

the the star bond commitment was made in 2018 when we launched ourselves down this road which of course was what seven years ago now. Uh now it was based on a variety of projections at the time but uh the pandemic didn't exactly help us out. We didn't forecast a pandemic in our in our projections when we issued the star bonds in 2018. Uh now, so far the district has performed pretty well. In fact, we've uh paid down over $10 million of our debt. So, we're ahead of schedule. We're actually like three years ahead of schedule on on paying down the Starbond debt that we issued in 2018. Uh our challenge is cash flows during this interim period. you know, the timing didn't exactly line up how we would have preferred, but again, that's due to many many factors. Uh, you know, we had some challenges originally in this area, but uh, yeah, like I said, our our primary challenge is just that some of our cash flows aren't lining up as we originally expected, but over time, to council member Johnston's point, over time, we believe the district will have the capacity to fully cover all its costs, just like most tiffs typically do as well. So,

thank you. I appreciate you explaining that. Um, are there any other financing tools that we're leveraging or incentives that we're providing outside of Starbonds? Uh, for the baseball uh stadium, yes, we used for this particular project. Uh, this project is important for us because it is in the tiff district and is in the SID district and those are resources that are being used to finance the stadium. So, that's why this project's very it's in the Starbond district too obviously. Yeah. That's why this develop is important for the city financially because it will generate significant cash flows that will help us with the tiff and the sid and the star that is integral to the financing of the baseball stadium and some of the other improvements in that area.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. I completely understand folks taking um I guess advantage wouldn't be the right word but tapping into the resource of the tools that we have available. Um, with that though, I do have the question about the particular uh housing piece. Is are any of them dedicated for affordable housing or any set aides at all? No. No, they're not. So, with that being said, what would be the average price of the rent? Uh, I don't have that memorized to be honest with you, but happy to share that with you. Would it be market value? It'll be market. It'll be commensurate with our project at 225 Sigmore. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. and no opportunity to to think about any units being dedicated to affordable housing at all. It was that was not baked into the underwriting up front when we asked for the incentive. So, I mean, it's it's all a direct relationships, right? I mean, we want a little bit of that. The incentive request is going to go up, too. So, I mean, it's I appreciate you sharing that. Thank you so much.

I see no further questions. Again, thank you very much for the presentation. Um, and so we understand construction is uh commencing June of this year. We're on track to mobilize in June. Thank you very much. Don't go anywhere, Mark. You're next.

And mayor, for our next topic, we're going to have Mark come back up. We're going to start our kind of kickoff a little bit about budget planning. Um we're getting into a lot of the budget discussions with departments. Um but we want to give you the higher level about the CIP. So you see some things about our CIP process as well as a cost recovery model that has been implemented in the past that Mark as our director of finance Manning will highlight for you.

Good morning. I'm Mark Manning with the uh department of finance. Uh as the manager said today we want to provide you with an update on the budget process but we want to take a little bit different twist today and update you on several processes that are intricral to the development of the budget and that is as the manager mentioned the capital improvement program and we'll also talk about two items that are included in the strategic plan that you approved last year in the budget which is our cost recovery uh strategy and our centralization strategy. Again both of those will be intertwined in our budget development this year. Uh so I wanted to spend a little bit of time today and drill down on those so that you uh when you see those later particularly probably at the May workshop you'll have a better understanding of what we're trying to accomplish. Now the capital improvement program as you know is a 10-year plan for improvements for our community. It's also a 10-year financial plan on how we uh how we believe we can finance those improvements for our community. And that's developed alongside the operating budget. There's a lot of ties to the operating budget. They are very integrated and that's very important to understand. Now the CIP in holistic view is is designed based around two parameters. We want to align it to our city strategic plan. Again the linkage to the operating budget but we also want to align it to the community investments plan which some people call the comp plan. In the old days we would call that the comp plan. That is the 20 to 25 year plan developed by the metropolitan planning department that provides the longer term vision for our community. Uh again, we want to be aware of the operating impact of the capital improvement program. And the final point I'd make is recognize there's a variety of funding sources in the CIP and I'll talk about those briefly in just a second. So why is the community investment plan very important for us? Because it outlines three broad priorities for our capital improvement plan. Priority number one is maintenance. We take that very seriously. So that's where that that comes from. The second priority is

enhancement and the third priority is expansion. So we're going to tilt the CIP during the development phase towards the maintenance side. Uh now we will have some expansion and enhancement and we'll we'll categorize all these for you but just recognize this is what drives staff to develop the CIP tilted towards the maintenance side. I also mentioned it's very aligned to the operating budget. That's because the operating budget and the CIP basically have the same objective to provide outcomes to our residents. One just finances the capital side of that equation and the other finances the operating side of that equation. So one to use police for example, the operating budget is going to finance the weekly or bi-weekly salaries of police officers. The CIP is going to fund the police stations that are going to last for 50 years that our police officers are going to use. So they're very heavily integrated. So, I won't go through every source, but I did uh pull out one pie slice, and that is the geo at large pie slice. That's probably the most important pie slice for a couple reasons. That is the pie slice over which you have the most discretion. Uh you can control the revenues because it's property tax revenues. So, uh we can set the mill levy at whatever is the appropriate level. It's historically been flat at about seven mills, but again, you have that latitude. But more importantly, uh it's much more discretionary in how you choose to spend the geo at large. Now, traditionally, we've used it for things like public safety and quality of life and park projects and things of that nature. Uh, but again, that slice is probably the most important to you because it is by far the most discretionary. For example, water and sewer, $900 million, you're going to spend that for one thing, water and sewer improvements. Local sales tax, by your ordinance, you're going to spend on roads, bridges, and freeways. Special assessments is only going to be spent on petition projects. And most of the grant funding is very specific for specific projects. So again, you will hear us talk primarily about GEO at large when

we talk about the CIP and that's because that's the one that is most uh most uh funible and most discretionary. I won't go through this. This is the traditional uh areas. By the way, both these are from last year's CIP. Generally, they look the same year toear in proportion. So I haven't updated it yet. But again, you're going to spend most of our geo uh at large on heavy equipment, which is bulldozers and dump trucks for public works. You're going to spend it on park and recreation for the most part, and you're going to spend it on public safety, which by the way is over half of your go at large is spent on the public safety area. And then there's a little bit mixed into public facilities. You'll see some money in there uh for libraries and parks and things of that nature. So, we determine what projects should be in the CIP and we're going to align that again to our strategic plan and our comp community investments plan. But how do we determine how much of those projects we can afford and in what year we can afford them? Well, to do that, we look at the capacity of the debt service fund over the 10-year period. And we manage debt service fund around two parameters. We want to maintain a stable fund balance within our policy minimums, which is generally around 20%. We want a lot of liquidity in the debt service fund. That's important to our rating agencies. We also want to target approximately 5050 on cash and debt each year as we fund capital improvement projects. Now, we've talked about that a lot. Uh I would tell you that's a holistic measure. We don't fund a single project 50% cash and 50% debt. We choose certain projects that are more appropriate for cash funding and we pay cash for them. And we'll choose certain projects that maybe have longer lifespans like buildings and we'll typically debt finance. But the point is whenever we do our financing each year, uh we are aiming for a mixture of approximately 5050 on our debt and on our cash. So that's what's going to tell us what our capacity is and that's what's going to dictate the recommendation on when projects are

timed. Yes, we'd like to do every project this year if we could because we have a lot of needed improvements in the capital improvement plan, but we don't have the capacity and dev service fund. So when you hear about project timing and why is this project in 28 and this project's in 27, that's because we're trying to prioritize important projects within the uh scope of our uh financial capacity. So that's kind of the challenge in in developing the CIP. Hey Mark, is that considered um best practices? Is that what most municipalities do that 50/50 split?

Well, actually the benchmark that we use is 67%. Uh we study and this is a little stale. We need to redo this. But several years ago, we studied AAA cities. This before we were actually AAA. And a lot of AAA cities will go as high as 33% 67% 1/3 2/3 67% debt or cash. They'll debt for twothirds of their projects. Wow. Uh so technically that is our benchmark, but our target is to be 5050. That gives you more flexibility. The less you spend on debt service, the more flexibility the governing body has and the less risk you have. And that's better for the bond ratings is the 5050 over the 6733.

Certainly provides a more favorable view the lower our debt limits, our debt levels are. So yeah, it helps us in that regard too. But yeah, great point. 50/50 is our target. 67% is our benchmark. So I mean it's your policy. So we could in increase our leverage in the CIP, which means we could accelerate projects. The downside of that is you would have far less flexibility and capacity in the out years. And we we try and maintain a steady debt level. So if we went to 6733, we would still have that same debt level that we're trying to fit in. So we would actually, I think, maybe get less done.

Fundamentally, yes, you're correct. We we try to keep our debt levels relatively stable. It's a challenge because we have maturities occurring at different times, but yes, conceptually, what you're saying is is what we attempt to do. Okay, sir. Appreciate that.

Yeah. And I do want to jump in here and say that I am impressed with the financial policies you've all established and how Mark and the finance team are managing it because in many jurisdictions you do find a lot more debt and not cash payment as we're doing here. Um but also when you look at the what we call the debt service millage is a lot of jurisdictions that's the only amount of money they have to pay off their bonds is what a millage is dedicated towards debt service. And so it does fluctuate. Some years you can only do a few projects, but when you roll some off, then you have more money that you take on bigger projects. Keeping it smooth or flat like we're doing here, I think is a key for our overall program. And so I you all should take comfort that we've got a good CIP funding model here that I think speaks well. But when you look across the country, you see a lot more reliance on the debt, not the cash.

The manager said that better than I tried to. He said it much briefer but he's exactly right. You have much greater flexibility uh if we only use a modicon of debt which is approximately 5050. It provides you as a governing body much greater flexibility in the future. So let's talk about our development. Uh so far the staff the development of the capital improvement program has been at the staff level. We've have a committee with all the key players in the CIP which is public works, airport, park, police, fire, library. Uh so we go we actually literally review every single project that's submitted. The committee provides recommendations and ultimately they will help us come up with a draft and then finance will get involved and again as I noted try to adjust the timing so that we can maintain within the appropriate capacity and then when we are done with that we will have a decent draft that we will be prepared to share with the city manager's office and the city council. that should be forthcoming certainly by the May workshop. But that's that'll be our responsibility to do that between now and the May workshop. Uh so we will have a deliverable where we we will have a draft CIP. We will also provide you information about all the projects that were requested but that were not included in the draft CIP. And then typically we update you on any fundamental changes from the last CIP. I mean projects move around a little bit each year for a variety of reasons. Uh a lot of times that's logistical. we just can't get them done. Sometimes they move for financial, but we also update you on that. So, that should be forthcoming within the next two or three weeks. We're right at the process of being prepared to do that. Uh, I will tell you though that maintenance projects will be prioritized in the draft that you will see from staff. There will be some new projects. There probably some new projects that are not included. Uh, a large one, for example, is police requested, I believe, $30 million for a downtown police headquarters. that project is going to be very large. So, we'll probably need policy direction if the will of the body is to include that. But that's just one example of a large project that'll probably be a challenge

for us to include at least in the initial draft. So, after we have a draft, our next step will be considering the impact on the operating budget. We talked about this at the retreat. uh we will do a better job of disclosing potential liabilities in the future that could impact the long-term financial plan of the general fund. One of those, as I believe we talked about at the retreat, will be operating costs associated with capital improvement projects. Uh so, and there will be some, for example, I believe we have a new fire station or two uh scheduled. So we will uh do a better job of of giving you an idea of what the impact on the operating budget may be based on the capital improvement projects that are included uh in the plan. Another thing that will impact us just like the general fund sess valuation we won't know that until June. Uh so likely we'll make a tweak on on the capacity of debt service fund in June which will you know provide us another opportunity to reevaluate things again. We'll continually look at what should be included and when should it be timed and that discussion will be revolving around your feedback but also as as we continue to look at the capacity of the debt service fund and manage it based on the parameters that we mentioned earlier. So that's a very high level overview of the CIP. Again, I just wanted to prep you for what will be coming up in the not too distant future so you're prepared for it. And again, we will do that between now and the May workshop. And I'm sure we'll have a active discussion about this at the May workshop. So in the remainder of my time and I'll try to be brief because you've got a long day here. I want to talk about two strategies in the operating budget that we're working on in the finance department and we're super excited about. Uh one is centralization which as you know we actually started in the 25 adopted budget and then we refined it in the 26 adopted budget. I want to give you an update on that, tell you what you probably will see during our budget development process this year. And then I'll touch on cost recovery a little bit. We've been talking about that for a while, so I'll

talk about that. Why are we doing centralization? We believe we can achieve five objectives. We believe we can enhance our organizational efficiency. In fact, I think we have a spending target reduction of about $850,000, which we believe we're on track to reach. Uh we believe this will increase accountability and reduce risk both of which in my business are very good things. Uh we also see a lot of opportunities to enhance our cost accounting. Uh that should be important to you because that will allow us to give you better information so that you can make better uh decisions that impact our finances. So we're going to revamp uh we have opportunity to revamp our cost accounting uh because of our centralization initiative. And finally, we believe this will significantly enhance our customer service levels that we provide. Now, we serve two customers. We serve internal customers, which is our operating departments, but we also serve external customers in our financial services business. That's vendors, that's people that we collect money from. It's a variety of people. We believe that we can serve those customers much better with a centralized approach. Uh these are the components. We won't get all these done on day one. We'll phase them in. You've heard a lot about a lot of these in the past. Some of these we've already made quite a bit of progress on. Probably accounts receivable is the one we've made the most progress on. Uh Shayla's done a fantastic job there. She's been working on that actually for about the last 12 to 14 months. So, we've made great strides there. We've chose that one because frankly that was probably one of the less complex ones for us to take. Uh uh payroll uh you know we implemented our electronic timekeeping actually this week. Uh so we're we're in the beginning stage of that. Uh we'll probably tackle accounts payable next once we're appropriately staffed for that and then we'll uh look at the others. I mentioned internal audit down at the bottom. Uh we are not going to centralize internal audit. I put that on there because we work very closely with the internal

audit team and the city manager's office and they are a very important partner for us in the centralization initiative. Uh so it's very important for us to include them as a partner because a lot of what we're doing is going to integrate with a lot of what they do. So we'll have some excellent opportunities to partner together which I think will strengthen uh them as much as it'll strengthen us. So we're pretty excited about that too. So I I threw them on this slide. So just conceptually how are we going to accomplish centralization? The first thing we need to do is build our capacity internally primarily in the finance department. uh and we'll be coming with you uh to to you for proposals for that. We cannot absorb all of the centralization load without resources. As I noted, Shayla has done some preliminary work. She was able to accomplish that. But fundamentally, we need to establish the capacity in the finance department. And then we'll start transitioning dollars basically from operating departments to the finance department as their workload diminishes and our workload increases and there'll be a net on that and that's where we're going to generate most of our savings. Uh we're also going to develop memorandums of agreements orus with each department. We've already drafted those in consult consultation with departments. Basically theou says here's what we do and here's what you do. And that's important for a couple reasons. One it provides clarity but secondly it provides a mechanism to hold us accountable us in the finance department because you will have a document that explicitly says here's what you said you are going to do. So that's important to us because a we want to be held accountable but we also want clarification on what our responsibility is and what your responsibility is. You're being a department and their responsibility is going to be very limited which is the whole point of our centralization initiative. Uh we take this as an opportunity to examine all our procedures and processes and finance. We love procedures. We are procedurriven. We have many, many procedures, but this provides a good opportunity for us just to look under the hood again and make sure everything

we're doing is appropriate and and uh doesn't need to be tweaked based on centralization. And finally, the last one, as I noted, likely in the budget preparation process, you will see a new fund that we will propose uh an internal service fund. And I won't go into the weeds about that, but the objective is for us to better cost account our administrative cost, which again helps you hold me responsible because you'll see exactly what we're spending. But more importantly, it allows us to fully cost out our costs of all our services. That's very important to us because again, it'll help you make better decisions. So that's why we're a big advocate of doing that. Uh and I'm about to wind down here, I think, so I'll try to accelerate the pace. How are we going to determine how many positions we need in finance and how many we can pull out of departments? We used a consultant which you approved I think in October, November last year, McConnell Jones, we call them MJ. They've been fantastic. They've studied our organization. They studied 160 positions. They interviewed staff, they interviewed supervisors, they got job requirements, and they have made recommendations guiding us through this process. So, they have recommendations on where they think the savings are and what they think our capacity will be. We didn't stop there. We did our own analysis in the finance department from a little bit different tilt. We did ours more empirically because we know every time somebody touches our system. So we use that as a gauge to know who is active and who is less active. And so we use that kind of as a double check to MJ's where it basically came out to a very similar place. But that approach will guide our recommendation for resources for finance and savings in operating departments. Very empirical, very analytical. We've tried to keep departments up to speed on this. I don't know that we've shared all the details yet because we haven't gotten our final recommendation from MJ, but that is how we will make recommendations to you for amounts that we would propose to save in departments and that we would propose to staff with finance.

Just off the top of your head, Mark, and I know it's speculation at this point, do you view that as being um employee neutral? Um do you think that there will be positions eliminated? And would that be more by attrition as people retire or we have openings that are uh essentially eliminated that we haven't been able to backfill?

That's a great question. I do not believe it will be employee neutral. I mean, in order for us to generate the savings that we need to generate, uh most likely it will involve displacements. I can't tell you how many of those displacements will be. We'll have that soon. But to your second point, uh we have a long history here at the city of always trying to place employees. Uh, I cannot tell you today that every single displaced employee will be placed somewhere else, but I can tell you this. I think a lot of them will be on the lower tier of the scale, which makes it much easier to place them. We're talking maybe about account clerks or administrative aids. Those positions are relatively funible and they're much easier to place. There may be some higher level administrative positions uh which will not, you know, be necessary in the future. Again, I can't tell you that all of those will be placed. I can tell you that it will be our policy to attempt to place them. So, if that answers your question, I'm just I'm trying to be as candid as I can.

No, I I appreciate that. Yeah, it's something I guess we'll have to keep paying attention to as this is developed. And again, we will work with departments. Our objective is to give them a spending target during the development of the budget and have you incorporate that in the operating budget. Our objective is not to tell the department, okay, here's the three positions you need to get rid of tomorrow. That's not the route we're going to go. We're going to tell them based on all our calculations, we estimate you can save $142,000 or whatever. And we're going to leave it to them to determine how they shrink that out of their budget with the hope that that will occur prior to the beginning of fiscal 27.

But if there if there are positions that open up in your department for this, it they would move over essentially. Conceptually, that's certainly possible. Uh again, I'm not going to guarantee you that every displaced position is going to find a home in our centralized model for a couple reasons. The classifications may be different. And secondly, uh we're going to use it as a process to interview both internal and external. But certainly, any displaced person would be considered as a candidate for those jobs. Yes, sir.

But again, that's all coming up. Uh we haven't got to that stage yet, but certainly we probably will in a couple months. So, uh, I'm gonna blast through the most of the rest because I've I've talked long enough and getting into a lot of accounting theory, but just be aware that you may see a new fund. We'll explain this to you during the budget process. Uh, again, it'll just be primarily designed to account for our uh, administrative costs so we can uh, better uh, fully cost those operations, which we think is a good thing. Cost recovery is another thing uh, that's very important conceptually. We've launched a concept we call the cost pyramid. Uh this graphic is way too small probably for you to see. But the concept of the cost pyramid which we've used conceptually here for several years is if it if we provide a service that is a communitywide benefit i.e. the uh red color down at the bottom there community benefit one we generally do not believe that it's appropriate to cost recover those benefits. That's provided to everyone. So we're generally not going to seek to recover those costs. at the very top, the uh dark blue triangle at the very top. Those are highly individualized benefits. Those are the types of benefits based on the pyramid design that we feel is most appropriate to fully recover our costs. And then you can see there's a variety of layers in between. And obviously all this is subjective, but this is the concept that we believe will guide our recommendations. Again, uh you know, that's contingent upon you uh approving a policy that will guide us in this direction. But that's the concept. The greater the individual benefit, the higher our cost recovery should be and vice versa. So, we worked with staff last six months. We've inventoried a variety of activities the city has. We've worked with them to place them conceptually on the cost pyramid. And you again you can I'll try to blow this up and give you a better version because it's hard to see. But that's our objective is try to identify where our

various services align on our cost benefit benefit pyramid because that will that will direct our recommendations. We also have a fee inventory now which is something we didn't have much of in the past. We have an inventory of all our fees or most of our fees. We know how they're approved. We know what they're set at. And again, that'll be very useful information as we come to you with recommendations in the future. Now, the good news is some of those fees are have been updated periodically. The bad news is, as the last bullet shows, there are some that haven't been updated for many, many, many, many years. Uh, so again, that'll drive some of our recommendations. Mark, while you're at that slide of 40 years of not looking at those costs, does that mean that may maybe some of those fees have not been um adequate to uh cost recovery?

I Yes, ma'am. Mayor, I think that's exactly what that means. It means the city has been subsidizing those services. Whether that's right or wrong uh for many, many, many, many, many years, we will provide you the information to determine if that is still an appropriate strategy. I'll put it that way. We won't necessarily tell you these fees need to be increased, but we'll put them on the cost pyramid. We'll align them to your policy guidance, which will allow you to make an informed decision as to whether it's appropriate to increase those in the future.

Uh yes, sir. Can you give can you give us an example of maybe some of those fees that have been I don't expect you to name all 200 but like if you can give us three or two examples because I think we often talk about the city subsidizing things but I also think we have to balance out what what it is folks are bringing to our community that we need. I think we often times speak about that from the development lens, having finance tools to help provide development, right? But there are some fees that I would argue we we need to subsidize because it helps with quality of life. So, I just want to paint that picture for my colleagues as well.

Yeah, that's a great point. There's a lot of gray in this area. We're trying to provide a policy to you to provide us some guidance, but it is a rather subjective process with some gray areas on it. Uh you ask about some fees. Uh I'll give you just a hodgepodge of some. Uh we have industrial revenue bond fees each year. 2500 bucks. That hasn't changed in many many years. To your point, should it be more? Should it be less? Again, that's a subjective policy question, but we'll provide a policy mechanism for you to have that discussion and provide us appropriate feedback. Uh license fees, there's variety of license fees that we've adjusted over time. Again, we'll have a better mechanism to show you what the actual cost of those licenses are. uh you know there's variety of them for a variety of different purposes. You know what should daycare license fees be? I don't know what should massage therapist license fees be. So there's many many many many decisions that need to be made. Our objective is to provide you with a mechanism to provide us that policy feedback.

I appreciate that and I and I hope that we'll take into into consideration you use childcare licensing fees. We also know we have a child care shortage. Uh my colleague um council member Tedle has been very passionate about that and so I would hope as we're reflecting on some of these fees that we're not making it more difficult uh to help fill some of these critical gaps that we have in our city. Mark, do we have a business licensing permit fee? We do not. So we we're not charging our businesses for opening.

No, we do not business license fee a specific business license fee or I should say specific a generic business license fee. We do not. But if that were the case, could it be possible to look at um as those fees come in, if we were to create fees, that they're being allocated to particular things such as an economic development tool to support minority or small business entrepreneurs.

Some of our fees are allocated. For example, in my IRB example, those go into the economic development fund and they help finance our activities in that area. So, a lot of our fees actually are for specific areas, some are not. uh license fees for the most part go into the general fund other than some of the engineering fees that they charge. Uh so there's a variety of different things to consider, but again our objective is to provide you with as much information as possible so you can provide us policy direction and we will provide you recommendations, but it's going to it's not a it's not a black and white process. There's a lot of gray and a lot of subjectivity and we will follow your policy guidance. Thank you for naming that. It's not black and white. There's a lot of gray and we need to be thinking methodically about that. Appreciate it.

One quick followup to maybe my colleagueu's question as well. If we don't rely on a feebased structure for users of any particular thing, so industrial revenue bond fee for example, then that is going to be supplemented by general tax dollars which come from property tax dollars which come from residents. And so it's coming either from the user of the system or it's coming from the general resident through property tax dollars.

That is correct. And for example, in that case, I would be very surprised if we recover our costs for issuing IRBs based on our current fee level. And you're right, the policy question is should we who benefits from that? Is it an individualized benefit, which would lead you to believe it should be higher on the cost pyramid, or is it a communitywide benefit? And you know, you can argue both ways, but that's the kind of discussion we'd like to have so we can make an empirical decision on where those fees should be set. Thank you. I appreciated the pyramid, too. Uh that was the first time I'd seen that in one of these presentations, and I think that's a clear indicator. So, um, I'm very interested in terms of, uh, advancement of that conversation and thank you for your work on it.

We'll try to make the graphic a little read more readable next time. It's it's hard to jam all that information onto one page. So, uh, I think I'm going to try to wrap up here really quick. By the way, our efforts at full cost recovery will help you make your determination on fees because it'll give you a better idea of what we're actually spending to to to provide some of this service. And our hope is all this will get wrapped into our discussions this fall and will drive recommendations in the 2027 proposed budget. Uh second to last slide here, just where we're at on process. We're getting ready to bunch launch the budget simulator. Uh it's going to be a little bit better than last year. We made some modifications. Uh so I I'll just tease that out there. But I think it's a little bit more robust which will get us better feedback. We're continuing the engagement processes. We're visiting with the district advisory boards. I think we've already visited with district 3 and uh we have some more coming up. Uh we'll continue to work on the CIP and at some point we'll be ready to uh interface with the manager's office and with you on the details of the CIP. We continue to work through the operating budget. Right now departments are meeting with the city manager and when we're through with that we'll have a list of the items that they have requested for your consideration. We continue to monitor revenues. I'm not even going to go there today. I would just tell you two things. Interest earnings we talk about every time. every time when I think I know what's going to happen, something happens and contrary rates are higher. Rates are higher longer with the conflict in the Middle East. Good for us. You know, I won't, you know, probably not bad for society, but interest rates are staying higher than what we thought. So, we again on the short-term basis, we'll probably have some recommendations there for you at some point, too. Uh I see the governor vetoed uh the bill in the legislature that would have mitigated some of our property tax growth. So that'll probably impact our forecast that we provide you at some point. But again, we'll do all that in May. We'll update all that in our May workshop. Uh and I think I mentioned this already. So I'm going to go right to the final slide and apologize for the length. Uh just wanted to I probably get a little

wrapped up. Some of this stuff's super exciting to us in the finance department. So I apologize if I got a little uh a little wrapped up in it, but happy to answer any questions. I just want to give you big kudos to you, your team, Shaylin, also uh internal audit team. Thank you for pointing that out. Um I think sometimes we gloss over this is the most important part. Um I really appreciate um the consideration towards greater efficiency, greater transparency and greater communication. Um even when count vice mayor mentioned the pyramid this is something that community um appreciate seeing understanding that there are things that are subsidized for all then there are things that are not subsidized and are userbased um and I think clearly communi communicating um what those benefits are and who is paying for what is important um and I think that I just encourage you to continue communicating about this you are not taking up uh time it is very important important and critical. So, thank you for doing that work.

Thank you, Mayor

Mark. I I don't want to let you off the hook just yet, but as the mayor mentioned, clearly communicating so that people have accurate information. So, just a couple of questions if you can say this is accurate or not. So, the bulk of the CIP is it u a line particularly the bulk for public works meaning bridges, streets, heavy fleet equipment, public facilities, water, sewer and storm water? Uh yes, public works administers the vast majority of the CIP. They run the water utilities, which is a third of our CIP. They're responsible for our freeways and streets. So if you try to align the CIP by department, the vast majority of it is public works, but having said that, public works also serves internal customers. A lot of the maintenance side they do, they do for others. So we typically haven't allocated it by department. Certainly, we could attempt to do that if that's the desire, but uh the vast majority of the CIP does is administered by the public works department. there. And is this accurate that there is money in there for park and recreation, roughly around 5 million, 9 million for fire, uh 5 million for police, and those departments allocate where they want those CIP dollars to go?

Uh, sorry, council member, what was the beginning part of your question? That there are dollars for park and recreation for about 5 million, 9 million for fire, and 5 million for police. Oh, yes. Yes, sir. Uh, that's that's true. uh you can look at it a 10 year or one-year basis but I I believe if you look at 2026 yes sir that is approximately correct those are the amounts that are allocated to those departments okay and who determines the projects that those dollars are to go

departments submit requests to the committee for example park department will say here's all the things we would like to spend money on and they'll give us approximate years and police and fire and everybody else will do that and then it's the committee's job to evaluate those look at how they integrate which public works is very helpful at because they have a holistic view. So we'll try to integrate them all and then in finance we'll try to align them with the capacity of our debt service funds. So those three things all intersect integration department request financial capacity and that kind of drives what projects are included and where they're placed in the CIP. So it's a data driven decision

I'd say very much so. Yes sir. So if there was a theory and or a narrative that only one particular district is being focused on in terms of CIP, it's fair to say that these are data driven decisions and not by preference or preferential treatment of a particular district. Uh I would say that is our desired outcome to be data driven. Thank you.

Thank you Mark. Moving on to our next topic that we have for you today. We're going to talk about the sidewalk construction and maintenance policy with our city engineer Paul Gunzelman.

Thank you, manager. start uh with sidewalk. Um I know there's been questions uh as I have presented on projects regarding sidewalk especially on CIP projects or arterial streets. So um I'll go through some slides here um starting with uh uh the first page from the ordinance that was uh published in October of 1979. And then down there at the bottom, I've highlighted at large improvements per the ordinance, uh, sidewalk improvements shall be installed by the city abuing both sides of all arterial streets. And it goes on to say, financing for such improvements shall be provided by the city at large, state or federal funds.

Can you address in 1979 what was the um was there a requirement or what was the norm regarding the size of sidewalks? Boy, mayor, that is a tough question. But I can say um just look at you know pictures I've taken driving through part of the city probably 4 foot at that time. Um and then I know looking at um some digital files that we have uh arterial streets since 2010. I know um 119th Street from Kellogg to Maple um that constructed a six-foot sidewalk on one side of the street and a 10-ft multi-use path on the other. So, I think we've been doing six foot sidewalks at least since 2010. I didn't date back any further than that, but and as I mentioned, you know, this ordinance really needs to be updated as it mentions the traffic commission as well, which has been disbanded years ago um when uh district advisory boards were put into place. So, um it's more than just, you know, the ordinance needs to be updated on various other reasons as well. some of the design guidance from the American ASHTTO American Association State Highway and Transportation Officials ASHTTO pedestrian facilities guide um urban collectors and arterials. Sidewalk should be provided on each side of the street along collectors and arterials whenever frontage is developed. The minimum clear width for a sidewalk is 4 feet not including any attached curb. If sidewalk is less than five feet wide, a passing space is to be is to be provided at intervals not greater than 200 feet and they recommend six to 8 foot sidewalk width or rec along arterial streets. The ADA guidelines also speak

to a minimum width of 36 in for wheelchair access. And then and again, if an accessible route has less than 60 in clear or 5 ft, then passing spaces at least 5T by 5t shall be located at reasonable inter intervals again not to exceed 200 feet. The NACTO guidelines sidewalks have a desired minimum through zone of six feet and an absolute minimum of five feet. Where sidewalk is directly adjacent to moving traffic, the desired minimum is 8. Can I uh go back to that last slide? Yes, sir. It says um ADA is 36 in. So, so 3 feet on each side.

That would be that would be for like if there is a utility pole or a box that might be located within the sidewalk. We need to have a 36 inch minimum clearance space and or downtown maybe where there's some sidewalk outdoor sidewalk cafes outside of that we need to maintain a 36 inch clearance space for wheelchairs to pass by those obstacles and then again noto um again six feet absolute minimum of five feet and then where it's adjacent or directly to the back adjacent or back a curb. The desired minimum is 8 ft, which we also have been uh designing for the 2014 pedestrian plan that was adopted or um endorsed by the city council in November of 2014. Some of the goals of that plan were to provide a safe and welcoming pedestrian network, improve community accessibility and connections for pedestrians, and promote a citywide culture of walking. Arterial streets, it had mentioned uh providing sidewalks along arterial streets and install missing sections of sidewalk in conjunction with development, redevelopment, and roadway construction projects. additional planning requirements. Um, community unit development plans uh typically ask for a pedestrian uh connection from the buildings within the CUP to an arterial sidewalk. And on the picture on the left that shows some connections to the arterial sidewalk along Maze Road and the rectangular boxes. And then also um as an example on the east side of town Green Witch Road, it

also provided some uh sidewalk connections to the arterial street. Quick question. I'm confused by the image on the left. What is What am I seeing here? And how is that connectivity? Because you have to walk. That's the This is along Yeah, this is along the Green Witch Road. The left side. Sorry. No. So this the Sorry, the left photo. Left photo. Okay. This is along Maze Road. Yes. That you actually have to like cross the street for the connectivity to the sidewalk. No, it's a sidewalks here and it leads into the parking lot. Oh, the box is just extending over the entire street. Extended. Yeah. Apologize. I You're good. I was like that doesn't see connectivity. You have to walk across road. So,

just those connections. Yeah.

Thank you. And we must have had a pretty large grade difference here along Green Witch Road because we had to, you know, do a switch back uh sidewalk connection to that development area. Additional um planning or subdivision regulations and we have been working with uh as some of you may know to uh Scott Wade with planning has been leading an effort to update the subdivision regulations. So, we have been meeting with, you know, that includes planning, public works, MABCD, and Witchto Fire have been having regular meetings to review those. The, uh, subdivision regulations, uh, speak to sidewalk requirements. Um, and it refers to the sidewalk ordinance. Again, as we go through, you know, develop or updating the ordinance, some of these items will be included as well as the ordinance states. Now um subdivision sidewalk is con required or constructed on collector streets which are designated at the time of platting on one side of a continuous street which is platted to permit 48 48 or more dwelling units abuing the sides intersecting with a collector arterial street. So an example would be Cababella on either side of culde-sac or loop streets when either intersecting with collector or arterial streets again when there's 48 dwelling units um along that section or roadway. The ordinance really gets kind of technical. We want to we've had discussion is the 48 dwelling units the appropriate amount with the um depending on what type of residential units they are could be duplexes etc. So maybe we're kind of looking at especially on culde-sacs the length of the culde-sacs as to when maybe sidewalk would be required.

Oh, I'm sorry. Is this being enforced currently? There are there waiverss that are granted in some of these? Not that I'm aware of. Okay. Appreciate that.

And we're also looking at um you know providing more connections uh within the subdivisions such as you know these culde-sacs at Willow Green Circle and uh Cababella Court. Would it make sense to connect these with the just the pedestrian access so that folks can walk through to access the arterial street? Does it make sense to provide a a a pedestrian access from the culde-sac to the arterial street so folks don't have to walk all the way through the neighborhood to get to the arterial street?

Who would have to pay for that? that would be as part of the special assessment cost. Um again, this is this is located this is at the northwest corner of the intersection of Pony and 127th Street. Southeast High School is just south of Panee. Um we do have um you know, again, the subdivision regulations provide these stubs to the arterial street so that they can be connected when the arterial sidewalk is constructed. The uh picture in the lower right is the uh I happened to catch a student that was uh walking down Terara Falls Street, stopped across Ponyie and then he he um went on to Southeast High School campus. Some design guidance on multi-use paths. The again the ASHTTO guide for the design of bicycle facilities um requires or minimum paved width of a shared use path should be 10 feet may be reduced to 8t for short distances and then pathways with higher traffic are typically 14 feet which would be similar to what we would be doing on the red trail as well as the the lower level of the path along the river corridor. I think we have 14 feet in those areas. As we uh design arterial streets, uh we do refer back to the 2024 uh bicycle master plan. And if if the roadway or the map uh includes a roadway that is either on the priority bike network or the long-term network, we look at what type of facility, bicycle facility, uh should that be? Well, we have space for and then um if a multi-use path is recommended, then that concept is presented to the city council um including the 10-ft path.

The next few slides, I'm going to compare a a any sidewalk or multi-use path that we construct with a capital improvement project versus any standalone sidewalk that we've put in with arterial um arterial uh sidewalk funding. So looking at 135th Street from Central to 13th Street that has been a recently bid uh project and the table shows the quantity of the sidewalk as well as and multi-use path down at the bottom portion of the table as well as the unit price that the the awarded contractor bid for that project. and then equating that to a cost per mile for both the sidewalk and the multi-use path. As you notice, there is also a sidewalk thickening line item. Um that is uh we typically thicken the sidewalk adjacent to the back of curb, that edge that's adjacent to the back of curb for durability and to prevent that from uh settling in the future.

Paul, I have a quick question on this slide. So, we're saying from going from a six foot sidewalk to a 10-ft sidewalk for the same length would cost us $129,000 more. Am I seeing that correct? It would um you it probably council member Glazak, I might um have you kind of look at maybe the unit price bid um because you know the the square footage is a little bit different. So, um I I Is the square footage different because it's wider?

It is. A part of it the width and part of is the multi-use paths we do an extra thickness one inch. So a little bit wider. Yeah. Sidewalks 4 in the multi-use path are 5 inch. It's a little bit thicker. So but still saying that if we go from six foot sidewalk to 10 foot multi-use same length it will cost an additional $129,000. They well they bid per this example they bid additional $2 per square foot for the multi-use pass. So equating that out you know it depends on you know they also look at the unit cost that they bid which kind of affects the price as well.

So 40% higher approximately for this for this project particular project. Yes. So two options theoretically on the table. When I hear from residents it's not about the size of the sidewalks. It's that there's not even a sidewalk there. That's usually what I hear from people. Okay. So, there's maybe two outcomes. One, we make wider sidewalks in less number of areas. Or option two, more sidewalks with a little bit a little bit less wide. Those would be theoretically two could be two options.

And then, yeah, could be. However, we still have the, you know, the other bicycle master plan that we look at as well, which, you know, again, if for routes along those segments, we would do the 10-ft and or on street bicycle lanes. Thank you for the clarification on this. I have a follow-up question. So, obviously construct more. I I'm in favor of sidewalks. I want people utilizing sidewalks. However, I want to know, is that the greatest demand from consumers or residents? Is that what we hear the most, sidewalks, or are they asking for more repairs to streets?

Uh, I think it's probably pretty equal. We do get requests for sidewalks, and I'll I'll show some examples that we've had requests for later in the presentation. Um, and then follow up, one more question. uh building more sidewalks means maintaining more sidewalk. Is that the responsibility of the city or is that the responsibility of the residents who are abudded next to that sidewalk

within the within the subdivisions? That would be the responsibility of the residents abudding that sidewalk on the arterial streets. Um it could be a combination of both dependent on the situation. We have shared in the cost of multi-use paths. We have we have um maintained sidewalk. Um if it's along an arterial street, the houses back up to that arterial street and they have sidewalk in their front yard, they would be assessed for the sidewalk repairs in their front yard. We would we would repair the sidewalk along the arterial street.

And lastly, we have 55 or say 5,000 lane miles of street to maintain. How many uh lane miles of sidewalk does the city have to maintain?

I think I and boy, I'd have to look at that number again, mayor. I I I think I looked that up one time and if it was 5 feet wide, if we did the square footage, I think it was a little over 1,200 uh miles and I think there's 30 miles within downtown. So, Again, this is the 135th Street from Central to 13th project that had recently bid. Um, and we would be constructing a 10-ft multi-use path on the west side of 135th Street with a six-foot sidewalk on the east side. And this would constructing these segments would provide connectivity from just north of Kellogg all the way up to 21st Street. Again, um it would connect where the red circles are. It would connect the existing sidewalk that was built within the while during the construction of the subdivision. Looking at another project that we had recently um opened bids on was the 140 143rd Street project from Kellogg to Harry. Um, looking at the square or unit prices, you know, it's about $4.70. That was the awarded contractor bid for 4 inch sidewalk, $5 a square foot for the 10-ft multi-use path. And then we have an additional bid item that I accounted for within here um to construct the sidewalk would be the sidewalk protection curve that is needed um along a portion of the project due to how grades uh work out. Comparing that to some standalone projects that we constructed with arterial uh sidewalk program funding. Um this 29th Street west of Green Witch

near the uh Striker uh complex. Um again, six foot sidewalk, 4 in thick. The contractor bid that at $7.50 a square foot. Um we did have some tree removals or at least one tree removal with them that project. We try to work around the trees as much as possible as we construct sidewalk in existing areas. However, at times we just can't work around them. So again, equating that cost per mile, you know, is $7.50 per square foot, uh, equates to approximately $261,000 per square mile. This is the location of that sidewalk area as a reference. and the contractor would have additional mob, you know, they would have mobilization cost on a standalone project whereas that mobilization cost on a CIP project would be all tied together. A recently uh requested project that we had uh constructed sidewalk was on uh North Meridian north of 54th Street or north of 53rd. Um again, sixoot sidewalk. Um and that was request from area residents to be able to walk down to the Walmart and other commercial development there on the corner of 53rd and 53rd and Meridian. We did have a retaining wall that was also needed for this and eight tree removals as well. And again, contractor bid this at $6 a square foot. And so this was because it was next to an arterial, it was city paid, not residents and specials. Is that accurate?

That's correct. Yes, that is accurate.

It was paid for by the arterial sidewalk program. And this is a picture of the sidewalk that was constructed along the west side and the retaining wall that was required uh to be constructed due to the burming in that area. So to wrap up those past half a dozen slides as a comparison with the four projects I spoke about the capital improvement you know when sidewalk is constructed with the capital improvement program we're we're getting um and multi-use path we're getting bids approximately three to $6 per square foot versus the when it's completed with the standalone arterial sidewalk program, we're looking at a little over $8 a square foot due to the other existing conditions that we have to work around trees, uh, protection curb, mobilization, etc.

So, would it be accurate because I know that this came up because of, um, some of the construction that will happen on Web Road between Central and 13th Street. So, would that be more on the $8 range or the $3 range? be more between the three and $5 range. There are exceptions within the sidewalk ordinance and I want to mention that um nothing in this I won't read it all but it does say the first sentence nothing in this policy shall be construed as requiring the installation of sidewalk improvements when there is a design constraint or impediment which would render such installation impractical impractical. And then down below, further where sidewalk might be required on both sides of a street and said street is adjacent to a drainage way, freeway or similar design constraint, sidewalks shall be required on only one side of such street. And I do have some examples of that on some uh past projects. Uh the first example is 127th Street from 13th to 21st Street. um sidewalk was only constructed on the west side of 127th Street due to the um branch of Four Mile Creek as shown on the picture on the right. See the floodway goes up to the street. So we we elected not to construct sidewalk on that side of the street. However, the uh 127th Street does have on street bike lanes to accommodate cyclists for that stretch of roadway. The other example is on East Harry Greenwich to 127th Street. Again, a similar uh situation where the uh Spring

Branch Creek located on the north side of Harry uh and adjacent to Harry um was a design constraint um in order to get sidewalk on that side. We do have a 10-ft multi-use path on the south side of Harry Street through that mile. The next few slides are some pictures that I had taken within a few days on my way from work to the East Y on the way home from there out to Andover for an event. Um, and just kind of drive around. It took me a couple days to get these. Um, I won't make a good stalker because it kind of made me feel uncomfortable getting some of these, but we got them. So, um the first picture is on Douglas Street West in Lyndon. Um it's a six-foot sidewalk. This, uh lady had been walking, um towards the east, gets to the intersection of Lynden and Douglas and then the sidewalk ends. So, she made the uh ef, you know, conscious decision to walk down Douglas Parkway in lie of walking in in Douglas. So, um, we've had requests for sidewalk to or request, yeah, to extend that sidewalk to web road, but as you can see, there are quite a few trees that u make that difficult to do. And that that's a sixoot sidewalk she was utilizing. Um, this gentleman was walking Douglas east of Terra on a 4ft sidewalk. Um, a couple examples of a um on East Terry, west of Cranbrook. This was a family uh pushing a stroller um walking their dog utilizing a 10-ft multi-use path which provided um the ability for them to walk side by side as opposed to

the uh couple people there on the uh right side of the screen um had to walk staggered um due to the narrowness of the 4-foot walk. So Paul, I'm I'm really glad that you shared this because I had it written down as a question to wait to ask at the end. Um but this is a great example of what concerns me. Um, when we think about which decision is best, thinking about one our friends who are blind and visually impaired, thinking about our friends with ADA and accessibility needs, uh, and even the the curb cutouts that we need. I mean, families who have a stroller and they're walking with their family instead of having to walk behind one another, walking side by side. I'm assuming this is something that needs to be taken into consideration or you all take into consideration when you decide which route to go.

We I'm not sure I understood that last question, but we do Well, go ahead. I might need clarification. I mean, that's that's the reason, you know, we do the 10 foot and the sixoot pathway on the arterial streets

and provide that comfortable. So, going back to an earlier conversation about cost and is this what folks are asking for? Are they asking for street uh maintenance? I I just want to point out I mean sometimes you just because your voices are not in the majority of what you are asking for doesn't mean that the need is not just as great. And I think it makes a world of a difference in the quality of life when a family can walk down the street and not have to readjust or someone who has a wheelchair or someone who's blind and visually impaired doesn't have to readjust because we have taken it upon us to incorporate that into every decision. So I just want to make that comment.

I'd be interested in going to the next slide that I think shows a 4ft sidewalk with two people walking

and again. Yep. So this is a 4ft walk. Um again um you know ideally you know they the minimums five foot required per national guidelines otherwise you have to have a passing space. But again these were some pictures I taken with uh students accessing either USD259 bus stops or transit stops uh to get to school. This picture is a you know it's probably not the greatest. I tried to, you know, as I was taking these pictures, I didn't want to take them as I was driving for sure. So, I takes a little bit of time to get in a good position, but there was a woman um at the bus stop that had boarded this bus and then by the time I turned around and came back, it's the same bus and that gentleman had gotten off the bus uh and then was continuing walking west. So, um sidewalks are utilized to get to transit stops as well. I know in the past when I've a question from the you know it's been asked you know how often do people you know meet when they're on the sidewalk. Um this was couple pictures I had taken from a mom and daughter running um on East Central on the sidewalk on the north side. um they were running westbound and then there was a gentleman walking his dog on the same side of the street um as they were as he was walking eastbound and they met there at that location. This picture, as you can tell by now, I live on the southeast side of town with all these locations, but this picture is on Web Road. Um, just north of Harry, we had a a a man jogging on the six-foot sidewalk on the east side of Web Road with a family on the right uh picture there um out, you know, pushing a stroller, three kids on the little scooters and then had um again you can see this gentleman running

and this is that same family on the other side of the street. So again, they would have met as well if they were on both sides of the street. Could that happen with the 4 inch? I just I just know we went back to view that 4 inch. I don't I'm not sure what the point of that was, but could a family be running and multiple activities happening on a 4 inch in the same way on a 4ft sidewalk? No.

Somebody would have to step into the grass. this uh young man. I had seen him and I've seen him a couple times now after I've taken this picture on various different days. He was walking down on the uh west side of Edgemore um in the grass. He gets to Douglas um utilizes the push button on the north west corner, crosses street and continues south. um you know looking at how how could we add sidewalk to this and look at the constraints that we have with the existing trees. Um the picture on the left is right there at the intersection looking back north where you had seen this traffic equipment in this area. And then driving further north on Edgemore to second street you can see um you know if sidewalk were to be extended it would uh impact uh trees. So, there's a push button, but there's no sidewalk.

We need to address that probably. Yes. Just wanting to You're observant. I caught the same thing. So, yes,

we have had um a request for sidewalk along Cica uh down near um Campus High School. Um Cica Street is improved between 55th and and 63rd Street. However, you can see in the pictures that the drainage structure that was constructed with the project, it was probably most likely a county project, that drainage structure was only constructed wide enough to accommodate the vehicular traffic. So, um we do have this project uh in design um and you know our design consultants looking at you know what it would take to extend that box in order to get sidewalk um within this area. We are also looking for outside funding for construction of this project and we have put in an application through the uh WMO um in hopes to get transportation alternative funding for this uh section of sidewalk. The request was also along 55th Street um west of Synica to I believe it's Charles Street because then I think west of there it connects up to sidewalk that leads into Campus High. So, this is a request that we had received in the past and we are trying to address that concern and to provide a way for students to walk to campus high school. And then the last few slides I have are I found I again as I was driving home I saw this gentleman in the wheel wheelchair. I picked him up probably I saw him probably about where that that line on the on the south end of that picture is. He was traversing north on the east side of the rock road along the sidewalk. This gentleman was walking behind him quite a ways. He did catch up to him and and continued north. So they

weren't together. The guy in the wheelchair got up to the intersection of Funston and Rock Road and he sat there waiting for a gap in traffic and he did get a gap in traffic and he continued across uh Rock Road um at Funston. I was sitting in the parking lot there kind of. So then I I left the park parking lot and found him again and I think he continued north on that sidewalk. went maybe on sidewalk along OC, but I did find him again as he was traversing through the parking lot and to his final destination. So, you know, uh folks use sidewalk on each side of the street and it also um you know, I think we're doing a good thing as we design projects to include midmile crossings as we have provided concepts for along West Maple 19th Street. We would do something similar there on Pawn Street near Southeast High to um get, you know, folks um from one side of the street to the other. And that is my last slide of my presentation and I can stand for questions.

Thank you, Paul. Paul, I just I have a few comments and then I have a question. Um first of all, thank you for all your work on this and thanks for meeting with me. When I knew this was going to come up, I wanted to make sure that I understood the ordinance. I understood what the professional organizations um recommend. Um thank you again for your not good stalking. Appreciate that. Um I also want to thank Bike Witchah. I see that Allan is here. I also met with you in advance of this to make sure that I was hearing what constituents are asking for especially for people who are um maybe transit dependent but also just want to be able to traverse around our community in different ways. So, thank you for your time and for being here today. Um, I also just want to again applaud our community. It was something I was involved in before I was in council and then we revised it in 2024 24. But the master bicycle p plan and the master pedestrian plan um those plans were driven by community a community asking us to be able to be forward thinking and to be strategic in how we are developing the infrastructure. Not everybody has a car. Not everybody wants a car. Not everyone can afford a car. People may have cars but they still want to traverse around the community in different ways. So, I I really appreciate the development of the master bicycle plan and the master pedestrian plan and all your work in trying to make those come to fruition. My question is this last year in the legislative session, one of the things that was passed was allowing golf carts to be on sidewalks. And so, um you know, a golf cart can't probably traverse well on a six-foot sidewalk. Does that change at the state um require I don't know what the word is but will we be changing anything or thinking about that when we're looking at new sidewalk projects because of the possibility that now golf carts can be

on sidewalks. Thank you Paul. You know that's a good question and I see Sharon sitting back there. Sharon and I had a brief conversation about something else and this this item did come up. So I will be working with Sharon as we go through this. So to I don't know that I have an answer on that yet. You know what what are widths of golf carts, what what needs to be accommodated by that, but yes, I will have not to call her out, but I will have discussions with her as we move forward.

And and the will of this body was to, you know, to move forward with golf carts on sidewalks and that's fine. But my fear is is if sidewalks aren't wide enough, then it's going to make people if they don't feel comfortable driving a golf cart on a sidewalk because it's not wide enough, they're going to be more inclined to go into the street. And that's always been my fear is we don't develop our streets for golf carts, right? So, um I'm glad you're always one step ahead of me. So, thank you.

I can address that. Uh, council member, um, the spirit of the golf carts to be able to get the golf cart to the golf course. So, it may be only a mile radius around the golf courses and the the golf carts would have to yield all pedestrian traffic and bicycle traffic, wheelchairs, everything. Now, uh, the workaround that residents have done now is not to go into the streets. the workaround they are are now since it's illegal it was illegal or still is illegal in the city of Witchaw to go on the sidewalk they are going on the grass so they're riding next to the sidewalk where they could be riding instead of doing that because the police pull them over they go on the grass going over the public grass so I don't think we want people doing that either so but they have to they have to yield to all pedestrians and that would be the spirit of the ordinance would be yield to all pedestrians Yeah, and I understand that and and I really appreciate that. That's why I'm thinking the wider sidewalks make sense because if I'm in a wheelchair or my bike or walking and you know it's me in a golf cart, they would have to go in the grass. But if the sides sidewalk is wider, then they might not have to, right? Because otherwise Yeah. It's kind of like Yeah,

we we probably can't retrofit those sidewalks, Steve. No, no, no. I don't Hills. Thank you for clarifying that. I'm not asking at all to retrofit. But I'm just thinking about in the future since a state law changed, does that mean we also need to change our philosophy? Thank you for clarifying. No, I wasn't at all implying that we would retrofit past. So, thank you. I appreciate that. No, it makes sense. So, I've also got a couple comments and a and a request.

Um, comments. I was talking to a resident on 21st Street, which you're well aware of, Paul, uh, between 119th 135th. the resident one did not want a sidewalk on the side of that street. And so we pulled off into the to the grass area along that street and he was advocating why there never he never sees any bicycles on that bicycle path. And and right then a family of six come riding their bicycle against the traffic on the other side of the street. And I point to him that oh yes, apparently they do because there's a family right there not riding. and he says, "Yes, but nobody ever walks on on the in this area." And about 2 minutes later, I point out that well, there's a couple walking on the street because there was no sidewalk. So, there is a need for sidewalks on on interior streets. My request is, and this is personal, um the road, this is in in district six, um the sidewalk along, is it called windmill road

from zoo to 21st to get to the river? Yes. I've almost been hit on that a couple times because people are on their stupid phones, not looking. They weave into the bike path. Um I've almost had to jump into the ditch once. Um, but is there I know that's a highway there, 254. Is there is there an option to put a sidewalk on that road? I would bike path. I'm afraid I'd have to talk to our friends from Cedric County because I believe that is within Cedric County's jurisdiction of that roadway. If I recall correctly, Windmill Road is from zoo curving around to 13th Street. I I'll double check that, but yeah.

Yeah. As you come from Cedric County Park, we go from Cedric County Park, go along there. There's a narrow sidewalk along that street. It's only 4 foot. It's hard to ride on. Um, and then you get to that bike path along the road, which is really dangerous to get to the river and it's a nice stretch of river to ride on, but it's very hard to get to. So, if we could look into that, I' I'd appreciate it. So,

uh, just a couple of quick comments here as well. Um, I appreciate Council Member Sheepard's um observations. Uh, we have a diverse crowd that lives with us throughout the entire city and we need to make sure that we have accommodations for everybody if we want to truly be inclusive. Um, also safe routes to school. That's been one of the things that I've really like to um for us to focus on. Uh, we've done a good job with WAMPO of identifying a lot of places. Uh some of those we've already been forward thinking like crosswalks by South High, um sidewalks by South High. Um I I want to make sure that we have these practices as far as safe routes to school in the CIP and plans going forward wherever we possibly can. Um we had the discussion not too long ago about uh bus routes, taking kids to school and hoping to normalize bus routes. Um, one of the issues we have with um, just like a congestion around pickup lines in school, and I can account for this firsthand, the frustration is um, the schools have expanded their footprint so much. Uh, they used to be neighborhood schools where kids could walk to and from school easily. Um, that does not really exist as much anymore. So, if we really want to cut down on some of the dangers around the pickup lines, um making those more efficient, and I get a ton of those calls every year, I do think that safe routes to and from schools, um sidewalks in the neighborhoods is a must. And again, get kids adapted to that so that way they continue those healthy practices in the future. Um, the main complaints I ever hear, actually the only complaints about sidewalks is, uh, people having to pay for those, the replacements. Um, I would like to see if there's other avenues we could explore to help with that. Um, I know one of the

things I do hear is city trees when the roots start taking up sidewalk sections. Um, I I I concur with a lot of my residents that that's unfair, that they have to account for city trees. um the messing up the sidewalk. So, I think of everything with the sidewalks, that's probably the main thing I hear from my residents and one of my concerns as well is how do we pay or how do we help them pay um to maintain those.

I'm going to echo on that um what council member Hohheisel has said. It's basically infrastructure that's already there, sidewalks that need repairing. So, so it goes back to this very conversation as we build more sidewalk. And again, I think um reasonleness is the six-foot sidewalks. I I'm looking right now at our consent agenda and consent agenda items 6A and 6B. 6A is going to construct a 6-foot and a 10-ft. 6B is going to construct a six-foot on both sides. So, I think that there's a reasonleness to building sidewalks, but my main um I guess uh concern from residents is maintenance of current sidewalks. How do they pay for them? And when I tell them if it it's if it's a budget to your home, you have to pay for it and they believe that that it should be the city. However, can you just maybe law just explain the sidewalk ordinance and whose responsibility it is because we do have a lot of sidewalk. Uh I think you mentioned 1,200 miles of sidewalk that's city maintained. That doesn't include the ones from neighborhoods and what people maintain.

Sorry, that was all the sidewalk. Yep. Sorry. Total. Yep. Yep. Can you break that down? Uh I'd like to see how much of the 1,200 miles of sidewalk the city has to maintain versus community has to maintain through their uh properties.

Mayor and council, I'm sorry to jump in. And I know Paul can handle this and and I never want to step in front of our city attorney, but I might put a little bit of a fine point on this question because we've had a lot of discussion over the years and and I I know you know this, but just as a reminder and and I'll jump to the last question you asked, mayor, and we can separate that out. There are very few miles that the city maintains. Uh with our current sidewalk maintenance program, what we set aside is basically intersections. anything with what we would consider within the confines of an intersection which we would consider as everyone. So the ramps, the connections there, those are generally funded by the program. Everything else is assessed to adjacent property owners. This is a charter ordinance has been in place for many, many years. This is supported by state law. We are not unique. Most communities around the state uh for what it's worth uh have the exact same program in place. I will grant you it is not popular. uh over my course of time when I was in Paul's position for 10 or 11 years and even now in this position we hear a lot of concerns and I get that in the absence of making a wholesale change um this is where we're at. This is the program we have. I will tell you the city of Kansas City made a decision several years ago to take on all sidewalk maintenance. I'm not offering that we're comparable to Kansas City. Their current budget includes over $30 million a year dedicated just to sidewalks. That that's what we're we're talking about on on the level for a bigger city. Right now, our current budget authority is around a million dollars a year uh to be able to make repairs. Again, this is uh on a reporting system only. We don't go out and inspect sidewalks. We hear from those that are using them. Uh we have criteria that's established by ordinance of what a trip hazard is. We offer the opportunity for them to make repairs or by economy of

scale, we can usually do it cheaper with our contractor. I'll I'll mention one more quick thing without going too far into the weeds and the deal about city trees. This has always been a challenge and and I I get it. I get it. So, we we all know and and just as a reminder, trees that are in public rightway are the responsibility of the city to maintain. And I'm not going to speak for our park department. Uh but if pruning is needed, if a tree is dead, it's their responsibility. They will take care of that. Um here's what I have encountered for many, many years. And and this is with all due respect to property owners and the process. Uh nobody wants that city tree removed. Absolutely not. They talk about the value it brings to their property. They talk about what they want for shade. Nobody has ever asked to remove a city tree unless it was dead, at least in my experience. So, there's been this challenge with us of if a city tree roots cause issues with the sidewalk to buckle, which we've seen happen. Uh, I paid for sidewalk assessment for that very reason. For what it's worth, those things unfortunately happen. I didn't want that city tree coming out. No way. Nor did I want those tree roots damaged. I'll take that on again. That's just me. But I've never had anybody say that. In fact, um uh because of the value that those city trees bring, that's where it's been a hard challenge for us to we have examined and evaluated the idea of of maybe trying to participate with costs. Um it starts to add up. Um so far we haven't gone to that point, but if that's something we would like to look at in a future discussion that we can. Um, I think there's a a a big emphasis put on the fact that it's a city tree. Uh, when there is so much value for those city trees and and I know you have all heard it. Uh, we've had I've been a part of these

discussions. I've heard you discuss it about the desire to put in more trees within the rideway which starts to compound this issue. I'm not sure what the fair balance is of that. Uh but I would just tell you again there's uh we had a discussion with some folks in a neighborhood an older neighborhood a couple of years ago uh about the impact of city trees on sidewalk. Once they figured out that likely to take care of the issue, a lot of those trees would come out. They said never mind forget that we said anything and we're good. I only mention that again because I just don't think it's so easy as to say it's a city tree and so the city taxpayers at large should be responsible for that cost whether anybody likes the program or not. I know it's not popular. I think we just need to be very careful about where we go with that whole part of the city tree issue. So

well I I guess thank you for letting me but in

maybe maybe here's the the thought and the concern here. Um it's mostly I I can I'm with you. I can afford to take care of sidewalk replacement, put it on the specials or I pay for it upfront. Uh the concern is for people who can't. Namely, in a lot of these areas there are elderly people who have lived in their homes for so long, limited income. Finding a way to help with that cost. Um, also I I'm unaware part of the reason we do um put that burden on people is in a lot of cases they don't take care of the sidewalk. Um I'm unaware of any way to maintain a sidewalk with a city tree where the roots are getting in to where the property owner can actually address that in a proactive situation without um it eventually getting to the place it is. So that's I guess that's my thoughts on the city trees is if we put a city tree there, yes, it adds to their property value and it helps them with energy costs and whatnot, but there's not really a proactive way to address those issues to where they can actually maintain that sidewalk without the root system eventually destroying that sidewalk.

Great point. Uh and not all trees do. Uh we've obviously worked with uh park department Paul and his staff do a great job with it on arterial street projects now and looking at the species and the variety and the size and the impact uh and spacing within the ride ofway. One more thing I'll mention if we even if we kind of set aside trees for a moment just the overall program uh we do allow a special assessment over the period of five years for sidewalks um which I hope helps um and there is a hardship deferral program just like with any special assessment um it's it's a pretty low threshold that has to be met for household income but there is uh the same program that's in place for all special assessments is in place for sidewalks also for those who meet the the bottom of that income threshold.

Is is that with the um the home loan program or is that separate? It's separate from that, but it's similar to to everything else that we apply across special assessment because I know that cost for sidewalk repair is eligible under the home loan program. is just such a low priority that essentially nobody who puts in for sidewalk repair will ever get um a part of the home loan for that. So that might be something else we take a look at. Sure. We can continue to do that. Okay. Appreciate it.

I just want to hop in as we kind of close out conversation as well regarding um sidewalks and we talk about the city will pay for it. That is the general taxpayer dollars will pay for it through property taxes. That's the transition that we have. In addition, when we're talking about maintenance of sidewalks and we're talking about neighbors, especially when it comes to trees, I'm thinking of the project on Douglas where neighbors did not want expansion on the sidewalk because of the trees and it's a 4-foot sidewalk. I'm a runner. I run up and down that road every single day. I have maybe had one time that I ever crossed a human when I have ran down Maple. So, we're talking about crossing. There are areas of the city that we do cross a lot. When you think of Oldtown, you think of downtown, you think of Deleno, one of residential areas, there's far less. I just pulled up I've had the privilege to travel a lot. And I pulled up some of the cities that I know are the most walkable cities I've ever been to. And looking at the average clear walking zone for those sidewalks, New York City 6 1/2 ft. Uh Brooklyn 6 feet. London 8T. Paris 8T. Barcelona is higher at 10 feet. Um Seoul 8t. Madrid 8 feet. And I'm thinking of the density and the number of people that are actually using those sidewalks. We have far less people that are going to be using those sidewalks than in every single place that I've visited with the average clear and walking zone. And so there's always a trade-off in this job. And the trade-off is we build 10ft sidewalks and we get less number of sidewalks. We build sixoot sidewalks, we get more sidewalks. And when I hear from residents, they want more sidewalks. They want sidewalks maintained as well, but they also want more sidewalks. And I think there's the image over there of the gentleman trying to cross the street where there's not even a sidewalk possible. I'm sure he would love a 6ft sidewalk rather than a 10-ft sidewalk just be able to cross the street. There are areas that 10 foot makes sense. I voted from this bench for 10ft sidewalks where it makes sense. I voted against I think we had a 12ft sidewalk come back. Um at one point it was a very small I think it was a mile but it was 12 feet.

Um, and so I just want to recognize that there is a trade-off in this rule of we can get more if we build them a little bit uh less wide or we can get less. And when I hear from residents is that they want more and they want more accessibility. And I want more walkability in this city. That's why I live in Deleno. It's because I walk down that street every single day. And so I'm a fan of walkability and sidewalks. But there is a a happy medium that we can have to be able to encourage this in our community. I'm just curious what what's what's our data? I mean, we talk a lot about what we hear from constituents. What's the data say in terms of what the residents want? Do you have that data?

I'm going to give you a quick comment and I'll let Paul jump back in here from a couple things that I've heard. And to a point that Council Member Johnston made, we we it's interesting when we hear from folks that say, "I've never seen anybody walk here." Well, the reason why you haven't is because there's no sidewalk. And I think a lot of us can come to that conclusion pretty quick. we see along the sides of the road what we call a cow path. It's an old term, right, where you can see people have been walking trying to get off the street. Um the the question was asked multiple times about do we hear about sidewalks, do we hear about street maintenance? The answer is all of the above. Uh and you know we I I think we do a great job, of course I'm partial to it and would tell you that I think we do a really good job with u preservation of our streets with the resources that we have. Um, we're not unlike other communities. We're at about $16 million this year in direct spending for outsourced pavement preservation. Uh, I think we could spend $und00 million this year and still hear a lot of those same complaints. Honestly, it's just it's just the nature of of of a larger city uh and what we're trying to do with our streets. We also hear a lot of requests for sidewalk. And if we set aside the width for a moment, um, one of the benefits, real benefits of building the sidewalk with these arterial street projects is we can fund that through LST, which is a big value. And, and the other even bigger benefit is everything that Paul talked about and the cost factor later, and having to come back and deal with building retaining walls with existing trees. Uh so hopefully we we can all recognize that there's real value to get these done up front. Paul showed a picture of Pawne earlier out east towards 127th Street when Southeast High School was built. Uh phones blew up and and council member Tuttle can attest to this and council member Miser at the

time about what are you going to do to get sidewalks to high school? We still don't have sidewalks to that school because we've got roads with ditches. there's nowhere to build the sidewalk. And so there's so much value when we improve these roads, put those sidewalks in. Sounds like we need to still keep talking about what width makes sense. But we're getting these built. Um I don't think that we're horribly in a bad place as far as saying from resource perspective, we can't get them built. We've had a um line item in the CIP for many years that Paul talked about to to build sidewalk on arterial streets and those are generally based on request. As we've annexed streets over the years that were in the county, generally they there was either no sidewalk or it was put on one side and it's invariable that we end up hearing from the people on the other side saying we want sidewalk too and then we're left with that challenge of how do we get it in? Now, there is last thing I'll say real quick. Not that you need to hear any more examples, but I'm just making the pitch to make sure we try to keep sidewalks in these new projects, especially, and I think we're doing a pretty good job of covering it all if we can decide on what makes most sense width widthwise. There's a bridge in Council Member Ballard's district on 37th Street of the Little Ark River where the big floodway comes through. It's a long bridge. We get asked once a year to put sidewalk on that bridge through that neighborhood. Just to put sidewalk on that bridge alone is over a million dollars just to connect it to the bridge, let alone through the neighborhood. I I mention that for the very reason we've got to stay ahead of this and we need to get sidewalk built now when we're making improvements in these areas because it's just so haunting to us later. And we are hearing back to your question, I don't have the data, but but I can tell you and when I get out into the public, the things we hear about is speeding, sidewalks, and street maintenance. Uh, and those things are not going to change. And this the reason I also mentioned the speeding

part is people don't want to have to walk on the streets. They want to be able to get off of there, especially in areas where there are no sidewalk because those two go hand in hand. So, thank you. Sorry for the extra.

Nope. You're you're fine, Gary. Thank you for that. I just I think it's important as we say, I don't like when we speak for the collective because if we don't have the data to back that up, back that up, then it's a dangerous thing to do. And I too believe in walkable walkability. I ran on walkability. I live downtown. And the reality is as you look at Jeff Specs, walkable cities, Jeff Speck also mentions that you build a walkable city for everyone. not just those who are physically able to walk, but those who need ADA accessibility, those who have children, those who have families. And so, as we often talk about um the intellectual interest that we have as individuals and so we go and we learn and we read, I think, you know, Jeff Spec is very clear about what it is that's being asked of us. And I know that you can get more with 6-in sidewalks, but more doesn't always mean that it's equitable in where we are putting those sidewalks or who we are building the sidewalks for. I would also argue that Bikewalk Witchaw has a blog and they do a lot of research and in fact my district is the district that is probably the most walkable by Dr. Glende Park but does not have sidewalks. Right. And then also you all know this. I connected you all with the resident who was hit with a $900 assessment to fix a sidewalk because it resulted in someone trying to use a wheelchair and it was not maintained for that person in a wheelchair. Um, and so it's important for us to think about this from a holistic point of view and not just what is always costefficient. Are there any questions? Oh, I just wanted to make sure you all didn't have any questions because I heard some commentary. Okay, thank you. You don't have any Oh, I just heard. You sure? Okay. You know, play that. Thank you.

Okay. So, if you're ready to move on, uh I know it's been a long morning for you. I'm sure we can get through parking discussion in a matter of minutes. So, I'm going to kick this off and and let Stephanie So, we're going to start with talking about uh backhand parking. Um, and and this is not unique to Witchah. And Stephanie is going to provide some details. I know some of you have had uh concerns expressed about because with what we have moving forward with our parking program now and what's in place with car park uh and and how they're helping uh monitor and and effectively oversee and run our our holistic parking program. Uh it's been illegal to back into parking stalls on uh in the city for many many years. And and we'll talk about that some more and Stephanie will get to that. I'm not going to go into the details right now. There's some reasons why it it we hope that we can continue moving forward with this. For right now, we have put a hold on issuing any citations until we could have this discussion with you. Um we've had some discussions with Police Department that Stephanie will talk about. Uh but there's uh a couple things that happened that I'll just hit on at a high level. um is the efficiency of the license plate reading and how how much that means for our program and the effectiveness going forward. That's the same in other cities. You can see that a lot of folks do this and they use the same technology and so so it makes sense to not allow backend parking. Stephanie's also going to show you some pictures and I've been directly involved in this quite a bit with our facilities group. We've seen a lot of damage over the years, especially in areas like Oldtown from backend parking backing into fences, uh, concrete pillars, planters, whatever it might be. That's been a real challenge for us and has really started add up cost. And generally, we can see it is from people backing in. And newer vehicles have cameras, but I'm still not sure that that keeps people from doing that. So, we're going to start with this part. Uh, and then we'll talk about city hall

parking. But I would I would just mention something to to I'd hope for all of us to keep in mind and Mark's timing was tremendous on his cost recovery pyramid. So I'm going to capitalize on that real quick. Our goal uh with our parking program and you know we just started implementation of it last summer. So we're not even a year in but we're seeing progress. I had the opportunity to talk to some business owners this sat Saturday when we were down there for the downtown cleanup about how things are going. hear some of the same messaging about we need to improve signage. Uh we need to keep communications out there, but we're seeing progress. We're seeing an an increase in revenue. We're seeing people that are parking uh downtown. U but but we continue the communications. I had some over the weekend through several council members. Just a few nuances here and there that I think we're working through, but to the point of the cost recovery pyramid, we are trying to create uh an enterprise fund. We are trying to create uh through with the parking program and the parking fund one that is similar to what you saw with the landfill with the utility. We're we hope in time to recover all necessary costs from the users of the parking program through those fees uh would allow us to operate the program which includes Stephanie's position which has been a huge value to us to get to where we are now. But what I really want to hit on is the maintenance of the system because that a lot of things have not been happening. She's going to show you some pictures even just related to city hall parking lot. On the second item, we need a sustainable fund so that we can maintain the system. We can maintain the assets so we can provide, you heard Troy talk about it a lot, clean and safe. We need security for uh our all of our parking assets all over downtown that are part of the parking program. Right now, all we're doing is paying the bills at best, and we're not able to look ahead and develop a long-term

maintenance plan. We want to get to that point. We hope to get there, but the only way to do that is to make this be a sustainable fund and a sustainable program through fees. And I just tell you that because both the items we're going to talk about are very dependent on making sure that we have the ability to recover the fees for the parking fund. So, with that, I'm going to let Stephanie talk about backend parking first and then we'll hit on city hall. So, Gary did an awesome job. I'm not sure where to go from here. So, but let's focus first on uh back in parking um across the downtown area here in Witchah. The first slide um Gary touched on just a little bit. Making sure that we were all on the same page with understanding the purpose of our parking program that we were that we're we're putting in place. Three bullet points here. We could probably add another couple, but primarily we want to capture our user revenue to create a self-supporting enterprise system that covers all of our expenses. The maintenance, the security, the cleaning, the operations, uh the billing, and the admin support to do that. The other key part of our parking program is to pro maintain parking infrastructure through preventative maintenance programs. And it's preventative maintenance programs, yes, for the garage, but also for our surface lots and our on street parking. All three of those components make up our parking system the way we know it now. And there has not been enough ongoing dedicated maintenance uh money to help with that. And then finally, because we're going to be creating this self-supporting enterprise system, that will decrease our reliance on general fund money and property taxes. Specifically, getting into backing into parking stalls. The first bullet point here talks about what does the uh ordinance say about what you can do and

what you can't do. 11.52.02 number 29. It's unlawful for any person to park in a parking stall with a vehicle backed into the parking space. Vehicle shall be p parked with the front of the vehicle headed toward the front of the parking stall. On the research that we've been able to do, this ordinance has been in place since around 2008. The difference is now there's enforcement going on right now through car park. Um we have existing signage scattered throughout um the downtown area and here are some examples. Specifically on the 401 South water that is the surface lot south of the Hyatt there are uh four or five different signs scattered throughout the uh street light posts that are there right now. In terms of how many citations have been issued, um I went back um these numbers are from municipal court and you can see starting in the year 2015 we have citations issued for chapter 11. Technically it's 11.20 that deals with parking. And you can see how those numbers have decreased over the years until you get to 2024. 2024 was the year that section 29 was added to the municipal court system and we could actually count how many citations were issued specifically for backing in rather than just the generic chapter 11.2 and this data I got from municipal court and it seems to kind of fall in line with people's knowledge and historical memories of how ticket citations went through here at city hall. So

hold on. Yeah, I'm sorry. During during CO, there was 161 citations for backing in 2020. That's 2026. That's for 2026. Sorry, those numbers are on the right for that other call. Oh, 202. Okay. Yeah. Okay. A lot of data up there. Okay. I probably didn't structure the two different Okay. It's confusing, but Okay. Thank you. So, oh yeah, sorry. Toward me.

Microphone lessons today, too. Thanks, Mr. Manager. The other thing uh that is interesting uh in the year 2025 which is when car park started writing citations um out in the community they wrote 120 citations for backing into parking stalls and PD didn't write any. And then so far this year um till about two or three weeks ago car park had written 161 citations for backing in. And the numbers from municipal quart are showing that PD um wrote 17.

Was there um quick question when it was starting to be enforced? Was there communication regarding this? Um I have uh worked with communications team to develop a pretty good website parkwitchah.com and I've used that website as the key communications method uh that that we have and and so has our communications department. If you're asking, was there a specific news release that talked about parking, uh, not being able to park through a news release or anything, we didn't do that. Um, we didn't do a Facebook post or anything like that. I think probably the reason it didn't happen is because there are so many parking rules that you could remind people what to do and what not to do. It's a little overwhelming and if, you know, we had known this was going to be a bigger issue than it was, we probably would have done it differently. some of the lessons learned um in implementing a new system. One of my favorite sayings is everybody's learning how to park, pay to park in Witchah, and that includes staff learning the tricks and how to implement a whole new brand system. Um this slide tries to convey um how how well let's just read the slide. Um the current revenue projections are based on the use of electronic license plate readers. That's what Car Park uses is they drive by. They uh have a tool kind of like a a gun that they shine on license plates on on cars. Here in Kansas, we only have plates on the rear um of our cars. We don't have license plate on both front and rear of our

cars. These uh license plate readers allow parking enforcement to cover a lot more area per person on a day while they can stay in their vehicle. They don't have to get out and they Yes, they do get out to write citations, but primarily everybody does a good job of following the parking rule so they can stay in their vehicle and just cover more ground. We also know that the more times a person gets in and out of a car to write tickets, they just lose efficiency. uh they lose uh time if they have to get in and out of their car frequently to go get out, walk around to the back of a vehicle and do the license plate reading and then write a citation. If we have reduced revenue and we realize a reduced revenue through the number of citations being uh written, we know that that will be a concern when we start to put together our self-sufficient funds. we would have to figure out another way to make up that revenue if there was a big decrease in revenue from these kinds of citations through all citations just not being able to write so many. And we also know that there are locations now that if a car backs up, you can't get behind the car to even read the license plate number because there's an obstruction that's in the way. a number of obstructions, be they wiggy walls or another car or, you know, trash corral or signage or whatever the case may be. There's just times and places if a car backs up, you just can't get to the rear tag to look at it in the first place. We also know that um if allow a car is allowed, a vehicle is allowed to back up into parking spots, we're probably going to see more damage to city property. Gary gave the example of planters and decorative walls in Oldtown. There's also signage. Uh people run into signs. People don't know how to back up, hit other vehicles. That's not the city's, you know, issue if somebody hits another

vehicle, but we do get damage on our city properties. Some examples in Oldtown. You can see damage here to the decorative fences and the fencing. Um, pretty major damage going on there in those PE pictures. Uh, yes. Oh, just whenever you're done with this. Sorry. Want me to go back one?

No, no, you're good. You're good. I just jumped the gun aside. Sorry. So part of the staff recommendations on how to move this issue forward or to help concerns throughout the comm uh community is to be able is to ask car park to start to issue warning citations for the first time offenders if someone's parked in the stall incorrectly. Just issue a a courtesy warning a warning and there is a way that their automated system can keep track of those license plate numbers that have been issued a warning. And so the second time they could get issued um a standalone ticket. And then also we will continue to figure out ways to add signage throughout the community or do more communications, do different communications, do better communications on this topic as well as any other topic that we may have.

Okay. Thank you. Um just a couple of thoughts here. I I don't foresee um an increase in damage because quite frankly nobody it seems like Mu or has taken don't back into parking or pull through seriously. So I I don't know that if we allowed it there would be an increase in it. I think it would just kind of maintain the status quo. Um also you guys point out Oldtown quite a bit even though we don't have the car park going through Oldtown quite yet. Um the main places I've heard about this has been around um Century 2. So I don't know if there is signage there or do we need to increase signage at Century 2 to help address some of these concerns. Um is mostly like trailer shows, gun shows, and whatnot.

Um and then also here's here's a thought kind of a question. Um is there an option for um owner car owners to get two plates from the state so that way if they do have a plate in the front they would be able to back in. I'm sure it'd be an added cost to them through the state. I'm just not sure if that's um an option that we could explore. I have no idea if that is a feas if that's possible or not for individual car owners to buy a second plate for their vehicle. I just came to mind just just now. So, I'm sorry I didn't prepare or anything.

And as I think through an implementation of how that would work, I'm trying to picture the signs that would come into the city limits of Witchah. Welcome to Witchah. You need two license plates. I don't know if you want to back in. I mean, that's the thing is it's specifically if you want to be able to back into a parking spot, you have to have a front facing facing plate. So, just a thought.

Any other questions? You still haven't answered the question about Sentry 2 parking and signage. Um, so at Century 2 on that surface lot south of south of the Hyatt. Um, is that what you're talking about?

Um, I agree. There is no signage there that says you can't back in the lot south of the Hyatt. There is four or five signs there already. So signage placement is very sporadic. I would agree with that. I'm concerned for residents that did not get good communication from this city. Um, and you've already alluded to we would have done it differently end quote from you. So, I I think that it's back to communication. Um, for a long time this was not being enforced and then all of a sudden in 2024 when chapter 29 was added and I understand you said that there were lots of things that got added. Well, I would hope that now the lesson here is I'd like to know what got added. Uh residents probably want to know besides the backing in

um what in 29 was added and really clearly communicate this is being enforced. Um because again for a long period of time there was no enforcement of it. Therefore, residents assumed or did not know. And we do have a lot of new residents in our community, by the way. And so, I would appreciate communication uh from the city side to residents.

Um, and so it does go back to council member Hohheisel's question about signage, especially at the lot that gets utilized often, which is the one abunded century 2. And I think that's where we got a lot of um our emails of people upset um that they did not think that that was being enforced and then all of a sudden it was being enforced. And so we're we're on behalf of residents bringing up these issues that are of concern.

I use the Google real quick, Stephanie, and Council Member Holisil, just FYI. Um, per state law, you can only get one license plate per passenger vehicle and it must be displayed in the rear. So, thank you for your brainstorm. I'm putting JB on that one. Oh, he's gone. So, he's had success, probably the only success in getting the state to do anything for us. So, hey. Hey, wateries.

Wateries. I keep forgetting. I also have a concern about a certain um verbiage that was used and and I like efficiency. Um however, you said something about um well then they won't be able to issue citations or cover more ground fast enough.

What is the purpose of this parking plan then? Is it to encourage people to pay for parking because they're utilizing that um road, that space, or is it to find people? So, a managed parking plan includes a lot of different forms of revenue and all of those combined make a sustainable uh parking fund. That revenue can come from leasing stalls like in our parking garages um on a long-term basis or a short-term basis. Some of that revenue comes from uh paying to park on the street and in the surface lots. You know, just a different variation of of paying to use the system. Another source of revenue that's a piece of it is event parking which we'll be talking about in the future. Um and and a continuation of that program that's been in place since the arena opened and how does that change now that we're further along the line. And then um citations is a piece of the puzzle also. So all of the revenue streams that we have uh all make up the pie that we have to figure out how the right way to spend it is.

Sorry,

I'm gonna add one quick comment and and I think Stephanie explained that well, but mayor to your question, I would tell you our emphasis is on the former. Uh our goal is for everybody to understand what the rules are. We're not we're not here to find people. Um it it does become a part of of the overall program. We're not counting on revenue from fines. We in a perfect world, we want everybody to understand what the rules are so we can have again a self-supporting sustainable fund from the fees that are paid to park legally. Um, we do I I don't want to overplay it uh because there's no way to project it, but we we were going to lose efficiencies if there's a lot of people backed in and and just making sure that people have a parking session started, that they've paid for parking. That's the goal first and foremost, not to find people because they backed in. It gets in the way of us uh creating that efficient program that everybody understands. So the we missed the communication on when we when we knew that we were going to start enforcing back-end parking. In hindsight, if we could go back, we would have done a lot more then. And I can tell you going forward, working with Comm's team, not only on back-end parking, but we're going to make sure there's nothing else we're missing here. We're going to be very loud and clear about this, that it's anywhere and everywhere, not just signage, but with public outreach and communications, uh, because it's important that everybody understands the rules. And our intent wasn't just to start putting the hammer on folks when in areas like Century 2, it's really no signage out there for you to know. We can and will make improvements on that. There's no doubt. Um, I don't think that there's going to be too many other things that jump out at us right now. You know, I mentioned that we started uh really with the implementation of the parking program back in July. There's still some growing pains. We're getting there. Um these are steps that we've got to take. I'm not portraying that as meaning that it's ideal and I I I don't

assume that we want to have a few other things to deal with along the way. Uh, I was thinking about this the other day and even though the the cost factor is not the same, I remember when we were first going into watering restrictions for the drought and there was a lot of growing pains and there was a lot of concerns from citizens and folks about how do we make adjustments? How does this uh how does this tie to HOAs and we got there it took some time. We got there we kept the communication open. We kept the outreach open. I'm confident the same thing will happen with this parking program and I think we're making progress but these conversations are wonderful to have and we've seen a lot of places where we can make improvements already.

I have a question about data. Um back to the slide 127. Um and this goes back to what Gary you just said. The goal here is for people to pay for their session. So, be a user if you're a user of the system to pay for the um spot. Um, however, I wanted to know of the 120 people who backed in and got a ticket and of the 161 of the individuals who got a ticket, did they start a session? So, do you know if they had paid for parking, so did they pay number one, did they comply? You said that the number one thing you want is people to comply to pay for a session. So, if these are people that paid for a session but didn't know that backing into a spot was a problem, I guess I would like to see more data on these 120 and 161. If they started a session, that means they paid for parking yet they still got a ticket for yes, there was a new or new enforcement that was um happening. I'd like to see the numbers of the 120 and 161.

So, I can answer that right now. The very first thing that Park Park looks for is did you start a parking session? So if you started a parking session, great. Then they go on to the rest of the rest of their enforcement checklist that of the ordinances that they're approved to enforce. So we already we know that um all these people paid to park. They didn't get a ticket for that. They got a ticket for backing in. But they could have just I think to the mayor's question they they did all pay for parking then is that the answer?

Yes, they all paid to park. Okay. So out of the 161 um in that So does that mean that they weren't enforcing I I'm confused of how do we have 100% how do we have 100% of they they get a ticket for paying or not backing in but they paid for parking. So does that mean we had nobody back in that didn't pay for parking? Yeah, at that point. So, let me I want to ask you because that doesn't seem accurate because I think maybe I heard what you said, but let me ask for clarification here.

If if someone's backed in and car park finds that they haven't paid for parking session, will they site them just for the no parking and let go of the or do they get two tickets? They don't get two they don't get two citations. Maybe I I was assuming what I heard you say was that if they haven't started a parking session, it stops right there. Yeah, that that's the citation they would get. I think that's what I you superseding citation over the other one. Does it? So, which one would come first? So, let's say you back into the no parking session would come first. That would come first. And so, you don't get an additional one. Correct.

You would not get both. Okay. not get both because you pay to park. So let's say you did pay to park though and you backed in. Yeah. You get you're going to get a citation for backing in for that. Okay. So maybe the data that's missing is how many folks got backed into a parking spot but did not pay for a session. I'm going to have to Yes. So that's the data that's missing. If you're saying that, we'll have to see if they even kept track of that because it stops there. If you don't have a parking session, that citation takes precedent is what I think I'm hearing. But we'll check. We'll check.

I think again it's data matters because I I'm going to read this email because I do believe that that's part of the reason why there's frustration. I attended an event today on April 14th at the Kansas Leadership Center pertaining to my duties with the Kansas Department of Corrections and I parked my vehicle at a designated parking stall near the KLC building. I paid for 8 hours to attend my training as and as the day ended I came back to find a citation on my windshield. I opened the envelope and saw that I was given a citation for $50. This would have been good knowledge to to me to have had a sign being posted and I would have lawfully followed this order talking about 1152.02. I took photographs of the area to protest no sign warning me that this was illegal. I would like to request a warning for this incident as a firsttime offender. If I need to go through legal proceedings and face an additional $81 fine, I will follow those directives. My hope is that this message is received and signs are posted in downtown to ensure citizens are aware that this is a violation. I was unaware of this ordinance when the day began and it would have been financially beneficial for me had there been a sign and this was sent to all of us on April 14th. So again, I appreciate you're saying that this has been halted for the time being. But again, this is where the frustration with community has been rising. um if they are complying with doing what I think Gary said was number one compliance of paying for a session um I guess my question I know is in hindsight now but these 120 and 161 people who did do what you're asking them to do which was number one pay for your session I guess

what communication can be given to these now 200 81 people. You mean the people that have already received a citation this year and last year? One of those.

So that process is if you want to appeal your citation, there is a phone number on each of the citations to municipal court. That's the only phone number that's on the citation. And then if you then you call the number and the customer service representative tells you you need to send an e email to the city prosecutor's office, provide proof of payment, and provide your citation photos of those citations. That process goes through what I call an administrative review through the city prosecutor's office. That whole process that I just described shows up on both the parkwitch.com website and municipal court website.

Thank you for that response to the resident who emailed all of us. So then my question now will be to legal. Of the 120 and 161 who have been given citations, what's the percentage of individuals who have uh gone through the process of asking that that be omitted? Mayor, I'd have to check on how many have challenged their tickets. We've prosecuted them consistently. Um, but I'd have to check to see how many. Maybe Sharon knows off the top of her head if she's here. But just Yeah, I don't think we know. We would just have to check with municipal court.

Again, I think it goes back to if we're a very datadriven organization. I appreciate this information, but there's missing information that tells the whole story. And that's why residents who reach out to us who are frustrated, I'm speaking on their behalf because they can't be at these meetings and workshops are really for council members to raise these concerns. And so I'm speaking really on behalf of 281 people who have been issued a citation. What communication are we giving to them? Um so that's really because that's this is a resident 414. Um, I need to give a response to her.

I can tell you that on parkwitch.com right now there's a whole series of numbers of of information uh performance from each month that says the total number of citations issued and the total number of citations that were dismissed through one form or another being dismissed. It doesn't break the dismissals down between all of the different kinds of citations. It's just a a big number. So, I mean, that's already out there on the website. But we absolutely can find out these back in citations.

We can and and I just would recommit and then say, mayor, I just want to make sure you understand. Message received loud and clear. And we not to diminish your question about the data related to these what what I will commit to you and and I spoke I reached out to the reference to the one you talked about. I'll just add a quick nuance and I only say this because we're there's not a perfect answer to everything. Uh that person backed into an on street parking stall. I don't think I've ever seen somebody back into an on street parking stall. It's fine. I'm not questioning that. I don't know that we would have ever thought to put up signs behind the curb for on street parking saying no back in because no one backs in. That's I'm just mentioning that because we're here's what our commitment is going forward. Uh and and already that that we've been working on. First and foremost, working with our comm's team, my belief is is we're going to really get the word out there. You cannot back into a parking stall. That's where I think we're going to have the most impact. We're going to work on signage as quick as we can. You saw that there is signage in a lot of parking lots already. Um whether it's Oldtown and some of the others, you saw in some of the garages on the pillars, there are signs that says you cannot back in. I've seen people literally back in right next to the sign. And I don't know if that's out of defiance or that they just knew it wasn't enforced, but to that point, in fairness, we were not trying to surprise anybody here, catch anybody off guard. we can make uh I'm confident we can make this work going forward. I'm confident that we can provide uh communications. Um I think the warning by itself should take care of this issue because everybody uh going forward if we stay the path when they back in they're going to get a warning. They're not going to get a citation or going to get a warning that

says you cannot back into a parking stall. If they choose to do it again I don't know what to say for anybody. That part alone I think really theoretically solves this issue when everybody gets a warning.

And I just want to follow up Gary and I also want to thank you and thank you Stephanie. Um when I received the email also I forward it to you and I know that you had multiple communications with the person who received the warning and um they sent more pictures and and all the things. So that that one email I know was brought up today, but it was also I I think maybe four or five interactions with you responding to them. So um I do applaud staff for trying to make sure that you know in this process that we're trying to not only communicate with residents upfront um so they know what the new guidelines are, but then also when they have an issue, we're trying to be responsive and demonstrate great customer service. I do also want to say thank you for bringing up the analogy of the drought last year because as district 2 probably got the majority of the complaints about the water restrictions, the exact same customer service was applied to them and that's how we were able to get more compliance is, you know, people maybe didn't know the rule, they didn't understand the rule, maybe they just didn't like the rule, but we communicated with them the reason why, the rationale for why we're doing it. And oftentimes it would come to people understanding maybe still not liking it but saying okay you know I understand now why we're doing what we're doing. So again, just a kudos to staff for trying to communicate with our residents before something happens and then if it does. I'm the one that brought this up, so um I'm going to I don't know if there's even an appetite. Um but I would like to see this ordinance removed. So, I want to know if any of my colleagues would like to see this ordinance removed.

Sure. That's a solution if we find a reasonable way to enact it. And that's why I was asking about the state.

I'd probably keep it in place just because the damage to to signs and structures. I think that the warning will be a great thing to if you get a warning, then if they do it, that's their own fault. So, I I think I' I'd prefer to keep it in place. Where are we at with the signage that I know that we have been asking about? Not to derail from the conversation, but weren't we talking about putting signage up for just general awareness in regards to the times that you have to pay for parking and different things of that nature? So is that already in pro process?

What we have done so far is have changed the messaging that comes across the mobile apps. Okay. The park mobile and the pay by phone. The pay by phone messaging hasn't been complete yet, but I expect that to be done in the next couple of days. Okay. Um, also, um, on the pay station that you walk up to to pay, um, that's been programmed so that it no longer accepts money after the enforcement hour stop. Awesome. Um, and that was done I want to say about a week ago. Progress. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Now, now up here it says has the vast majority those are car park. Are there plans for WPD to increase enforcement as well, like in a Dylan's parking lot when you pull through so it's easier to pull out or

So that specific example is a private parking lot and PD doesn't enforce on private parking lots. Car park wouldn't either. These this is all about public parking. Um if you're asking is PD going to increase enforcement on public parking areas? I have not had that kind of conversation with PD. Maybe other people have, but I have not had that. Okay. Appreciate that. I'd be more interested in terms of the education aspect and just how are we educating people on it. Um, I see justifications for keeping it, but I also see

that we probably just need to do a better job at educating. Are there barriers to doing this? I'm I'm sorry. I feel like we weren't talking about the particulars towards the solution of what the mayor is asking for and I'm again I am supportive of eliminating the um backing into the parking stall. Are there barriers to like what that would mean for the parking company who manages that? like would they have to get out of their car and check the license plate instead of being able to drive through and scan the license plate? I'm just trying to think of the logistical barriers.

So, if uh backing into a parking style was now legal here in city limits of Witchah, it would absolutely impact the efficiency of parking enforcement. they would have to physically get out of their car, walk around to the back of the parked car, read the license plate, um, and then issue whatever citation may be in place at that time, but or at least to verify whether they've started a parking session. Right. And I'll tell you real quick, too, and start it.

No, you're fine. And and I might go uh and I'm sorry, council member, if we I wanted to hit on this again real quick because this slide does talk about your to you the core of your question. Um we I've looked to see what other communities do and and the the no the prohibition on backing in is a lot of it's in place for this very reason for the efficiency of reading license plates. Um, we're again the goal of our program isn't to to find people and find those people backing in. It's to be able to get through all of our parking assets, make sure people are paying to park as that is the revenue we need to maintain these resources. That's what's important. There are places in our parking lots that people just for what it's worth that you could park right now and there is no chance to see the license plate. It doesn't matter if you get out or not. There are places that you cannot get to the license plate if people are backed in. It starts to really becomes an issue. It's no different in garages. Uh garages in particular, you want to back up far enough, you could back into a garage all day long and never pay. Uh because you're not going to see the license plates. You can back up all the way to the wall. And and I'm not assuming people are going to take advantage of it. That's not the point. But there are a lot of reasons why and a lot of barriers what I see. uh against removing the prohibition on backend parking.

Well, given that given that I really appreciate it and that's why I asked uh because again I said, "Yeah, this sounds great. It's let's make it easier for people to park, but I also think it's important to consider the barriers. And I don't want to do that because I think if we if we make it difficult for the folks who are, you know, enforcing that to get the parking revenue that we need, which we know we've not been doing that, which is part of the reason why we're here now. Um, it defeats the purpose. So, what I would say is my colleagues have already said this about the education piece. I appreciate that. I would be supportive of that. In the meantime, um to help support the mayor's desire, I think it would be important if there would be an opportunity to outline what those barriers were so that as we are engaging with constituents, we can at least respond to them and say, "We've looked into this. Here's what makes it difficult." I I would be supportive of that solution moving forward just so we're able to mobilize the decision of why we are not changing the ordinance right now. I agree. And you know, our hope uh I don't want to overplay this, but I just think the whole warning thing is so important and makes a lot of sense. I mean, that's the first thing we thought of is how do you get the word out to everybody? Well, you do that by giving everybody warning. That doesn't mean everyone's going to agree with it, but I I personally don't know that we have to give anybody the right to back into a parking stall. We've heard from some folks that say they think it's safer. It's certainly safer when you pull out. Um, but there's uh there's other issues associated with back-end parking and safety within parking lots. If you've ever uh and I'm not trying to give you more excuses, but or reasons, I shouldn't say excuses, but but I do want to talk about one real quick. If you've I think we've all probably experienced following somebody behind somebody in a parking lot and all of a sudden their backup lights come on because they drove past the open stall and they're going to

start to back in. You can see some communities have really hung their hat on that because of the higher incident of accidents and efficiency and then you got everybody trying to back up. It doesn't work. Uh and that's a lot of the reason why people do front-end parking also. So, we would need to say we'd like to see it stay in place. There's a lot of things that we can do going forward right now. The warning is a great tool. Uh additional signage will help. Working with our comm's team. You know, I appreciate the comment about we want to make sure the public understands why we're doing this, too. This isn't just to be difficult. This isn't to create an undue burden. There are reasons, especially outlined right here, why this makes sense. The damage to our assets is real. And sometimes uh we we've seen some really expensive fixes in certain areas, especially depending on what's there for landscaping, fence improvements, uh specialized materials, and the costs and and we don't know necessarily who did it either. So,

I'm just going to add one quick, I guess, maybe question. in parking garages. Are there no longer the arms then at our parking garages, which then don't you have to pay to get in there? So, the parking garages do have parking arms. Real similar to what we have here at city hall. You pull a ticket, the arm goes up, and you pull in to park. Um, and then when you leave, you insert your ticket and it calculates how much you pay. You pay, the second arm goes up, and you exit. Sorry, mayor. Bad example. Thank you. After I said that, the the my point about backing in in a parking garage is not relevant in this case.

No, we get a lot of people that back into our parking garages. We do. You'd be surprised. Well, but to the mayor's point, we're not reading license plates and parking garage. True. Thank you. You caught that. So, would a compromise be or a step to eliminate it in the parking garages, but not for on street? with that. I didn't hear the first part of that. I'm sorry. I think his question is maybe maybe for the reason that the mayor brought up. We're not reading license plates in parking garages. Could we allow backin parking in garages?

So, one of the reasons we're not reading license plate in parking garages is because car park is not currently authorized by municipal code to do that. We're going to have a series of code adjustments that come in front of you that kind of clarify some of these weird things now that we've got a parking program with enforcement. I will wait and I I I think we all should wait then. Thank you to that question and maybe I missed this in the entire presentation out. Can we go back to how many citations were offered? Um how many of those were in garages verse street? None. None because car park doesn't auth

I don't know the answer to that. I would assume PD is authorized to issue citations in parking garages but I've never had whether or not they're doing it or not. Okay. Thank you. Um thank you. I would really like to see what was um all of the changes in uh chapter 11. Okay. 29. That'll take some time.

Yes. Because I think that will be again helpful as communications will start have having to have a strategic plan on communicating this information. Mayor, as we move into our next topic on this one, I want to make sure I'm uh caught up on different information requests if they're still standing. On this one, for instance, um as we said, going forward, there will be no more citations, only warnings issued from Car Park. WPD can still issue some if warranted. And again, some of the questions we do got to dig a little bit more in that data about if it was pulled from the court system, the parking code, was it the actual backend in that the citation was for or something else? But um for the purposes of going forward, we're talking about 160 tickets that um we know were issued by car park. Some have been appealed. We don't know how many, whatever. But looking forward, we are doing the warnings. So that's our process going forward. So my question to you is, is everyone comfortable? Is there any other data you need going forward? There will be no citations for backing in from car park. Correct,

manager. Just to clarify. So correct. That's a correct that that's the first time only. The first time. Right. Right. Right. Right. Correct. For first time after the first time we they would be issuing citations. Sorry. I just want to be very clear about that. So, but then also going back to the sidewalk conversation, I thought there was some requests for information about sidewalks as well. I got to be sensitive to the different questions or different requests piling up here if there are. So, if there's no requests for parking for more information, check. Okay. there, but I want to make sure we're we're capturing if there's some follow-up requested from any of our topics so far.

Mayor, I I have that you wanted municipal court data on how many cases had been challenged. I see Nathan Emery here. I don't know if you're able to speak to that yet or just here to share anecdotally. Nathan, I see you here. I don't want to put you on the spot, but maybe you have some thoughts on that. I think he was just wanting to duck out of the office for a little bit and enjoy our company down here. I don't have that information with me, but I can certainly get that. Uh, we haven't had a whole lot of cases challenged to date uh out of the car park tunch of of of citations. Uh, but uh I can certainly pull that data.

So, we can get data on how many citations have gone through an administrative approval um and been dismissed. And then there's another number that Nathan can get in terms of how many citations have gone through in front of the municipal judge related only to backing in. Related only to backing in. Okay. And then anything back to the sidewalk conversation. Was there any request? Okay. Just making sure. Now we've got another parking topic for you. City Hall parking. Stephanie, if that went good enough,

I'm going to start this off again really fast and then get out of the way. Sorry. I appreciate you letting us tag team this. Um, one of the things I want to mention about this topic, and there's a lot to discuss, I'm going let Stephanie get to it, is to keep in mind what I mentioned before about our overall parking program and our parking system. All of this plays together. um whatever we decide to do with city hall parking and the revenue we need from city hall parking to maintain the assets that's not just for this lot that's not just for this garage it goes into the overall parking program um you know I'd mention it because Austin was here and talked about the ballpark development and you previously had discussions about what would be the new garage there the the the revenue from that new garage doesn't go just into that new garage. Um, it is part of the overall system and the revenues we need uh based on our estimates to to maintain safe clean to maintain the assets for our parking program and our parking system. I just wanted to mention that again real quick uh as a matter of perspective. So, so even looking at again fees that we charge here aren't just to take care of this. Stephanie is going to show you where we need revenue specific to these parking assets. But that doesn't mean we capture that only from the people who park here. Uh wherever that ends up, it is a systemwide program. We want it to be an enterprise program. We want it to support itself uh at the top of that uh pyramid for cost recovery. So with that, I'll let her talk about where we've been and and

I'm sure we'll have lots of questions.

I'm sure. Okay. Um, city hall parking, the equipment and the signage that we've installed here at city hall has been consistent with all of the other locations throughout downtown for surface lots. It's been the same payment methods in terms of credit and debit and cash. It's the same enforcement hours Monday through Thursday 8 to 6, Friday, Saturday 8 to nine, free on Sunday. The rates are all the same as all the other surface lots. It's a dollar an hour, $5 a day max. And as Gary um has mentioned, the user fees that are collected here are needed for maintenance, security, and cleaning um of our assets. In terms of activation, we came up and developed some processes for validation. Those processes that we're using were required to meet our internal compliance rules for using city purchasing cards and the processes for visitors and how they pay for parking. The mobile apps crash credit refunds have have been established. Uh so those are working and are in place right now. departments. Um when we were working with the individual departments, they um who whomever the departments are who have elected to validate parking have for their visitors and guests. They have already received their validation code and are using those right now and they've had those since April the 1. So almost a month now. the soft opening as it next bullet point here is the soft opening phase began on April the 2nd. Um and we've we're allowing several months here to let departments get used to how to use the validation codes and make sure they've got their proper people identified and trained up. Since April

the 2nd, I have only received one notification from any of the departments that a validation code wasn't working. Um, and between myself and Car Park, we were able to get that fixed and working basically the next day. And so we called them up and did a quick turnaround on that. Our current target date for full opening here at city hall um is July 1. Have you got time for a quick question? What if somebody pays cash? Do they get a refund? Does a department give them a cash refund or if you can hang on, I applied for that. Okay,

here are is a quick description of how all of these different payment methods work and payment processes. If you use a Park mobile app, which means you're using a credit or a debit card when you download the app, those next several bullet points explain how you how you do that. Um, the pay station, there's bullet points there to describe if you walk up to the pay station, pay with a credit or a debit card. This is how you do that. Um, validations um are explained in here also, and I can spend a lot more time on this if you would like me to, but there's a lot of info here. Um, pay station if paying with cash. There's the bullet points on how you do that and how you get your validation code from the department. If you are choosing to pay cash, um you're working with a department and go past the first floor express office and you can get reimbursed with your cash that way. And we even came up with a process in case a visitor came to city hall and they got here and kind of figured out at the last minute they're they made a mistake and they didn't want to be here at city hall, we're just giving a straight reimbursement and there's a process just to do a straight reimbursement through our first floor express office that way. um kind of a quick slide to help understand what kind of expenses we see here at city hall. And this is just city hall, but you can see annually how much the city hall uh surface and garage pay for electricity and for our elevator inspections, our snow removal, water, internet. We need a 247 answering service because of the elevators. That's what we're able to pay for right now. um out of the parking fund. What we're not able to parking pay for out of the parking fund are a lot of different

maintenance items. We are not able to pay for pavement markings or clear storm water drainage uh and the drainage inlets. We're not able to do any type of asphalt or concrete maintenance, change out a lot of lighting infrastructure. Um get a lot of concerns about how dark the parking garage is right now and tree trimming and landscaping. were not able to pay for out of the parking fund. We call on other departments for assistance on that. So, different pictures here at city hall and that's condition of our surface lot. It'd be awesome to be able to help fix that up. Um, in these several locations here, our employee garage has some concerning rust starting between the rebar and the concrete. uh not able to do that type of maintenance to prevent that from happening. Um and then the stairways and uh some concrete major concrete spalling above one of our sliding doors in our employee garage. Also, when we look at uh the surface lot that's out there right now, um we think to the best of our ability, uh in 2025, we lost revenue from validations of around $182,000. Um some of the lost revenue we can't really account because the gates were lifted up so people couldn't even register that they had a validation sticker. It was just free free exiting without documentation basically. Um we also know that there were individual validations. The cost of how of these validation tickets range between 25 cents and $6. the whole gamut of how

much the city validated parking for. And a quick little summary here of yeartoate 2026 revenue for here at city hall. Those are our different funding sources right now. Um we have leases um at the rounds and porter and in our garage. The city hall metered lot that was how much money we gathered before the meters went away uh earlier this year. Um, south of the employee garage this year in January and February, we collected around $2,200. The employee parking garage, we have revenue of around 31,000 so far this year, and that's from employee uh taking money out of employee paychecks every every every paycheck. So, that number will increase too. Um the slide here tries to summarize all sorts of options to move forward. I know there's been concerns about whether or not we want to continue to collect revenue, pay for parking here. Um these were the ideas that I had heard when putting together um this slideshow. I had heard an option maybe is to provide free parking on Tuesdays, to provide free parking on Saturdays to go and correspond with our already free parking on Sundays. And then the last option uh is to do a transfer from the general fund of about $168,000 and not even have people pay to park at all here at city hall. I if I may, why do we have free parking on Sundays and why would we have it on Saturdays if city hall's not open?

So the free parking on Sunday is consistent with all the other slots when when the hours were set up um about a year ago. There was no parking paid parking anywhere on Sundays. Okay. Yeah. I I I'm not sure on the Saturday one because that if we're not open, they're not coming to do business at the city. So, so there are several departments that are open 247. Uh police department being the main uh department that's open 247. Um I could probably come up with another one if I thought real hard, but it was a lot of police police action going.

Okay. All right. That makes sense. One of the challenges we've heard uh throughout this is from departments and the stresses on their budgets, right? And it's something we've talked to the manager about. You've heard us discuss and revenue got to come from somewhere. This isn't just folks coming to city hall. It is a lot of us. It's vendors. It's uh I know police has folks that are in the lot sat on Saturdays. Um and that was something that had come from them. And so this was just a thought as we've walked through this of considering different places we might go ideally for us to be able to maintain this system. So

you've heard me play that a lot. The revenue needs to come from somewhere. We're just trying to figure out what makes the most sense here. So, does the the funds that we do the funds that we get from the employees parking in the parking garage, does that cover maintenance cost for city hall parking lot and the parking garage? No. No. No. How what's that gap? Because if we've collected $31,000 the first quarter of 2026, you take that number times four. So 125ish.

We we're also not doing other maintenance items here. So there's that. But then also remember we're looking at a systemwide Well, I'm not talking about the system. I mean, that's that's where I'm getting at is we're asking people to pay to come and petition their government to cover costs outside of the maintenance for city hall parking. So, I I guess that's kind of an issue that I have there. The Could we go back to the other slide you were on a second ago?

Yeah. No, one more maybe. Okay. So, this one item number 3B is theoretically what's happening now in terms of the general fund is covering the cost currently. So asis would be 3B, but taking that and making sure it's in the parking fund. So it's at least making the parking fund whole, taking out the general fund, realizing, hey, these are the costs of the general taxpayers, but because the building, if the building's free, the general tax dollars are still paying for it's just not a user fee to be able to pay for it's just the general tax dollars paying for it to come to the building. So item 3B would do what we do now, but making the parking fund whole. Correct. The concern I would have just the only concern I would have with that would be if I go out there right now, I can guarantee you I find maybe 20 spots that are employees parking or city vehicles parking in our lot. So, when you look at the total number of parking stalls, I would either want a crackdown on the number of city vehicles being in there because I don't think that should be paid by that fund. And so, and I know we haven't necessarily done a good job at keeping city vehicles out of the lot, especially now that it's completely open as well. So, that would just be one concern I would have 3B. If that could be mitigated where we don't have city cars parked out there, I would be open to a 3B as just the simplest solution, but also still making the parking fund whole, which is really what the objective is for both of you is just how do we make this fund whole. I don't think you guys care where it comes from as long as the parking fund is made whole in the process of that. Yes, I care to some extent because it may depend on how difficult it is to make number 3B happen in reality. And I don't know if I've really

kind of understood what would be required to do that either of city employees or of the county. We have lease agreements with the county that works over at the Ronald Reagan building to park in our city lots and and some of those are official vehicles. Okay. Yeah. My concern would be the official vehicles right now. And so item 3B theor theoretically would have to be part of the manager's budget. Correct. Uh it wouldn't just be able to be a a policy decision from here without us budgeting it from the general fund. It'd be included in the budget as a proposal.

That was the way. What I would worry about that is if I'm a city employee, do I pay $20 a month to park in the garage or just go park out in this lot for free? Yeah, that was my concern. I mean, it'll fill up. The mitigation of making sure that we don't have city cars out there would be my concern with 3B. So, if that can't be mitigated, then I think 3B is fruitless because you're going to have that happen. I think it's going to fill up with city employees and save 20 bucks. Does the 168,000 cover every like every day of the week? 168,000 is for 280 stalls at 6 that $600. Yes. That's for a year. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we charge for parking now.

Mhm. So, I would agree. I would not be in favor of that. Um my my my concern has always been on Tuesdays and I think the mayor has during her time as mayor has opened the gates specifically when we knew that there were hot topic issues and I think that that's important because to council member Hohheisel's point we don't want to create barriers for people's voices to be heard. You already have the time barrier. you there are just so many barriers.

So I I don't know what that what it looks like to look at opening the gate on so many times a year or or what that could look like. And especially for those who are coming to visit WPD, I actually had a a constituent who um serves on one of the citizens review boards or police standard bureau investigations and works with our WPD. And and you can't estimate how much time that always will take um and felt very

overwhelmed with the idea of like pulling out your phone in a meeting and where your phone shouldn't necessarily be out and having to increase that parking. So I just I would really like to see particular departments in the media WPD have some sort of validation code where it's not coming from their budget because we should be supporting those victims who are coming in and already you know wrestling with the tough time. not making it difficult for the media to get information out about what's happening in the people's building to the public and figuring out how we create a cadence where city council meeting days are free.

Um I know that um communications has distributed validation codes to the media pretty much effective April the 2nd. Now, I haven't reached out to communications to see how well it's working from their end, but I do know that they've not contacted me with their questions or their concerns about how that is working. So, I do know that. Um, are they paying that from their budget, though? They are paying for it from somebody's budget. I assume it's theirs. You made me laugh, which was good.

The city manager's office, you know, I don't know that. Um there are also uh the police department has they they've been one of the biggest users in the past of validation codes for all sorts of witnesses that come in to give testimony and taking statements and that sort of thing. I again I've not heard from PD with questions um or things that aren't working well. They've been able to figure it out. Municipal court sends out subpoenas. uh they have a fund if you come to if you're subpoenaed to come to city hall they have a fund that's set up through court fines that they pay from also

yeah I'd be curious to hear from my colleagues what thoughts they have but I appreciate you being here and answering all the questions I might suggest a number four um that maybe make free parking at rounds and porter right now the sign says permit required for that lot um have signs at these lots to say paid parking but free parking available at Rounds and Porter. It's only 100 yards more walk and we can make that free and still charge for parking here. I just solution and if it doesn't work, we can come back and revisit that too. You know, we could

I mean, but there's spots available over there.

I would propose an option five. Um if if you if you do that, you just make rounds in Porter for employee parking the park the employees that are parking out of here with vehicles and just make it far more directive so people they can park over there. So when somebody comes in and they're just coming into city hall for 5 minutes, adding a distance may be a challenge. But staff that are going to be here for theoretically 5 hours or let's say they come in for a couple hours, it makes sense for them to park around support. And maybe that's what's supposed to be happening right now and they're just not doing it. Um that could be the challenge. I just want as simple as possible. We just as simple as possible and to make the parking uh fund whole. Those are my two objectives. Make it simple for residents. Make sure they feel like this is their building that they can come into. And then also just try to make sure we make it whole. So, as long as we hit those objectives, I think there's wiggle room for me.

The employees are parking in rounds in Porter now that don't want to pay $20, which would be me. I would walk the extra not to pay $20, but uh I I think we need a I think we do need a free option for people. I do think we need a free Council Member Johnston, I would be very supportive of your suggestion. I think that's a happy medium. It's a compromise and and I I think we heard we can at least use it as a trial period to see what's going well, what's not going well and adjust as we need to and leave it to

staff to report back. But I would be supportive of that. And I would suggest that a a trial period is a number of months because it'll take take some time to get some signage updated out there as well as people changing habits takes some time too with even with internal communication and and all that and and signage. Habit changing takes a while. And on that when we talk about free options, um I think the the one area that specifically needs to be addressed and focused on is for uh victims working with PD to make sure that that parking is available and easy as possible. Um many of the victims have issues with uh being able to pay um issues with maybe some mobility issues. So, just making sure that they have options as close to the building as possible.

Yeah, I'll find out what their plan is and what they've been doing and what's been working for them.

I have a question actually for city manager. If we went with option three or anything beyond that where uh general fund would have to come and kick in, where would you find the dollars? As of now, we would look a couple different ways within budgets because we do assign it to department budgets, but we will have the conversation about projected revenue. And so, we've got money programmed in for what we think revenues will be. We'll do that. Again, it depends upon how much assessed value council wants to quote unquote capture from the sales or from the property tax um growth. So that will be part of our conversation with overall revenue to the general fund. So and on that note, that's not a requirement. That's kind of a projection that we put together as to what we want to take in for parking, but we are not beholden to that. So, I'd like to remind my fellow council members that that number it might be a goal, but if we want to use that money elsewhere and the parking fund suffers a little bit from that, that's something we've dealt with for years anyway. So, just keep that in mind.

I will tag along with that conversation and say that's why we are in this position though because the parking fund has not been made whole. the users that have been using the system have not been fully paying their fair share. Therefore, we are in this hole. Uh so that is a reminder that kicking the can down the road. We are at the road, end of the road right now. We're here. And so I guess that's why I asked that question more poignantly to the city manager. Where are you going to find 168,000? Um, and I think your answer is one that we'll have to wrestle with because assessed valuations have continued to be a source of contention from many of our residents who have told us that they don't want to see their property taxes go up. Well, this is where the rubber meets the road and we're going to have that conversation. Um, and I guess I just want to point that out that that's where we're going to either take in full assessments uh as they have been increasing. And then the city manager will have more flexibility with those dollars or we answer to many of residents who've told us that they don't want us to increase their taxes. And so that will be we're only a portion of their property taxes. Again, about a quarter of property taxes are city. So, we get a quarter of that say coming up in the next few months.

Yeah. But there's also other options that we're still exploring. Um other areas that we need to kind of cross that bridge, other avenues to actually take in more money for the parking fund. Um I know we're still looking at what are we doing with Oldtown, what are we doing with Deleno? Um holding some of those businesses to increasing their fees uh for their parking spots they have they have designated. So, this is still a work in progress here. Um, again, I just wanted to remind council that that number is not something that's going to affect our credit rating, for example, or anything like that. So, we just need to keep that in mind as we work through this.

Yeah. I think Council Member Johnson's recommendation is a great one for the meantime, and I agree. Let's not make any financial decisions right now and go from there. And maybe that could be a trial period. Six months. Yep. It'll probably take that to really get a good feel for how things are reacting to these changes. It really How soon would it get take to get signs up to direct people to the free parking and say free parking? That pro that part won't take very long. Taking down signs won't take very long. Changing some communications won't take very long. It's some of the other means. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right.

Okay. Thank you. It was a good reminder. I'd like to know when are we going to have the conversation about the rest of the parking system? I think council member Johnson just mentioned it. I think coun oh sorry council member Shepard and council member Hohheisel both mentioned it. Um because right now it's just downtown and I think that there's supposed to be other conversations. We bring that back.

Yeah, we're gonna I think that probably would work. We've got We're coming back to Oldtown soon with the manager. In fact, we've got a meeting tomorrow to talk about that some things so we can figure out what's happening in Oldtown. And then we'll I think May could probably work. We we will have item coming to council at some point to talk about uh parking garage support biomed. And so that'll provide an opportunity to discuss more of the overall system too. So, uh, along with event fees, we've got to talk about at some point in time, too. So, more to come soon.

I just want to go on record saying I think we have enough parking garages. I've heard that from residents consistently since we approved the last one. Um, I know city staff promised a parking garage to biomed. I don't think with a council approval or cons consultation that I've heard of. Um, I don't think that's right. Um, we have unutilized parking garages that have been promised to people who are not using them and I think we need to work through those options before we do any parking garage. And we our transit system can be more robust. I know it's going to cost but the young people they like transit, they want transit and that's a lot of people who are going to be using that biomid center. That's just my opinion. I'm only one

and that'll be part of that discussion. We do have data related to our existing garages. Uh and and just to one quick point, we'll talk we'll talk about this when we bring that forward.

U the whole notion you mentioned of we have spaces under contract that may not being used. That's a tough one to overcome. That's a really tough one to overcome. Uh to consider throwing people out to say even though you're paying, you're not using it. I don't even know how we would begin that conversation because right now just to finish that thought real quick and so we can move on to the next part. Um because that's a good point. Um our our what I would call our primary garages in the core area uh that would support biomed are all but full based on current contracts. Well, there's 200 spaces available at the Emporia garage

and I asked for data from our city auditor on that and all has listed is business one, business two, business. We're compiling additional data and I know you would request it. We don't have that right now. I I appreciate we'll we'll have that information when we come forward. Uh and I don't want to to beat that point too much. 200 spots is less than 25% of the agreement we have to provide. There's another 100 another spots or the the center coming down forward when we when we talk about the the proposal for possibly additional we've got 400 spots coming at our new transit center and lots of options. Thank you. I agree with mainly of council member Johnston's points there.

Okay.

All right. Thank you for the input on that. We'll come back with you in May with some more definition on that. And now for our last topic of the day after before executive session. Um we have some options about your proclamation process. So Shana Workine has been working on this for a while. She's a lead on some of this of late and she'll walk you through our current process and then some options for your consideration. Shana. Okay. Thank you, Dennis. So, I have some proposed revisions to the proclamation approval and presentation process. Why now? Um, several of you have asked for this. We are starting to have longer meetings and this is an opportunity to perhaps cut down the time in some of our meetings. We do have a new staff member who is being hired in the city council office. And this process has grown over 88% in three years. So, it's just really not become sustainable with our current practices. Um, given the number of the amount of staff time, the meeting time, and the risk of error, it is time that we need some more clear policy guard rails. So, our goal today is to help streamline the administration and address the city council meeting links uh through better managing our proclamations. Going to run through this really quickly because I think it's something you've probably seen before. This is information straight from our website. Um, these are the guidelines and information provided to those interested in submitting a proclamation. Um, I want to point out that the proclamation should have meaningful relevance to the submitter. This should be a time that's really exciting and meaningful and educational to the submitter. Uh, this may be one of their first times ever attending a council meeting and getting civically engaged. So this is something that is important. It is exciting. Um and we also need to remember that they

are honorary. They don't constitute or imply an endorsement of anyone. This is something special essentially for the submitter. More information from our website. Um proclamations aren't guaranteed right now. According to um MUN code, they must be approved by a quorum. we can decline them for basically any reason and we do edit the proclamations. Now, this is something that's changed a little bit over time. Um, at one point we were factchecking. We were almost rewriting proclamations um because of some grammar issues or length. Um, right now we have actually added a little clause to the end of a proclamation that states that this is how it was submitted by the group on what date and time. So that helps reduce our need to fact check the proclamations which has saved probably at least 20 minutes on some of our proclamations if not even um an hour or more depending on how lengthy those proclamations are. Again, from our website, proclamations can recognize a day, a week, or a month. They're only supposed to come in once per calendar year. And this is even if a proclamation comes in from two different entities. So, I know for Pride Month, that has been an issue the past couple of years. We've had multiple um submissions for the same topic, and those are reviewed on a first come first-s serve basis. If the first one is approved, the second one is automatically declined. Um there are always exceptions. So um the third one here, proclamations will not be issued to honor individuals. There are times that there's a significant individual from our community that we do want to honor and at that point then it would be the will of the council to be able to go ahead and make that exception.

Another fairly new um requirement is that submissions for the current year may be requested beginning January 1st. It's fascinating to me that we already have proclamation requests for proclamations that will be issued in November or December of this year. In the past, we started receiving those in June, July of last year. And so we did put this requirement that please hold on to your things until January 1st and then begin submitting for the current year. One of the things that I want to point out with all of this information, it's probably too much information really. You don't need to know all of this behind the scenes except again we could get proclamations a year in advance. They must be submitted four weeks in advance. However, sometimes they're not. um if they come in all the way down to two weeks in advance, we want people to have their moment in the sun. We want to honor them. We want to accommodate them, but there's just a lot of administration that occurs. So, we're a little waffly on some of our dates here. One of the guidelines that I know we've discussed earlier this year is this last bullet. Um we need to define what um this means. An alternative to this statement very well could be proclamations will not be issued to promote a commercial business. Again, we need some definition around what does that mean? We have accepted proclamations for associations and for churches celebrating their anniversaries, for instance. Um, there are some national months that are applicable to businesses. So thinking about what guidelines might be around that last one is probably something that we need to consider. There is an ordinance regarding

proclamations. However, this absolutely needs to be updated. Um it talks about providing your fax number if you would like a proclamation issued. And currently our practice does not mirror the ordinance. So this absolutely needs to be revised. If you look at the back of your packet, the ordinance is there in a little bit larger font. And then there's also a redlinined document. Um the red lines are the items that truly must be updated. The highlighted are decision points that need to be made regarding this ordinance. So for our current submission process, you've read all the rules and you're ready. You're going to submit your proclamation. There is a proclamation request form. I'm going to pop over to that briefly so that you can see what that is. Um, over time we have done a lot of work on this proclamation form. Um, really trying to explain to our residents what a proclamation is and how to write it. Um, we have examples on this form telling them this is what a where whereas clause is. This is an example of how you might write that and trying to get all of the details from the get-go. Um, that will help us streamline the proclamation process. Excuse me. So, once we receive that proclamation request form, we review the submission. Um, there's oftent times some back and forth that occurs at this point. Oh, you didn't put this information in or this isn't clear or it's come across garbled. Can you better explain? So, there's some back and forth emails that occur. Um, the information is placed in an email

for council to vote and then your votes start coming in. So, all we need is a quorum. All we need is four. But who doesn't want a 70 proclamation? I mean, people want a 70 proclamation, and we like to say this is passed 70. So, once we receive our four votes um in favor, then we'll start processing. That being said, we're still tracking the rest of the votes as they come in. That means we need to color code our documentation. And there's a lot that goes on just administratively. You don't really need to know the process other than to know there is a lot of administration that happens in the background. We communicate with the submitter. We schedule it. We communicate with the clerk. We get things an agenda report of the votes. We do some editing of the proclamation. We process it for printing. We send out reminders. We coordinate the date that they will show up. Um, minimally each proclamation takes one to two hours of interrupted staff time. So, you don't sit down and focus on a proclamation. You get a vote, you record it. You get a vote, you record it. You get edits, you record them. So, there's a lot of interrupted staff time that occurs. Before presented, a proclamation touches at least 13 hands. Again, this is just a little bit of a backside of what this administrative process looks like. These are very real proclamations that have been submitted for this year um in April, May, June, July, and we do already have proclamations submitted all the way until December. We schedule the date. Sometimes it is not the date that they've requested. Um sometimes they're just pickup, no presentation. We track by yes votes, no votes, abstensions, and then who hasn't voted. Um, I'm not sure

in the past how much how many reminders were sent out. Again, I think it's nice when we have a 70 vote. Um, but again, that's your personal preference. We won't always. Um, but I'll I'll normally remind you if I haven't received your vote. Um, we then notify the recipient that it's passed. We schedule it and we send our votes to the clerk. Again, the key here really is just there's a lot of back and forth. Um, and sometimes we have folks who um have a certain date that they want their proclamation. We've already got three on that date. So, at that point, then a request is made of the mayor. Would you like to add a fourth? And I think she generally wants to accommodate because again, this is a a positive thing. Um, on top of all this, sometimes they're picked up, sometimes there is a presentation that occurs elsewhere. So, it's not always happening just at the council meeting as well. This gives you a little bit of a look as to proclamations presented by year 21 and 20 lower numbers partially attributed to CO 19 growth over time from 22 to 25 that's 126 proclamations an 88% increase in the number of proclamations we're issuing a year. 26 where we're at already on pace. We have 30 presented this year thus far. maybe actually a few more since this was put together. Um, an additional 22 requests currently in process and that changes daily.

Have have the number of requests gone up as well or has that been relatively static? They have gone up as well. We don't often decline them, but we do sometimes decline them as well. So, yes, I would say equally on track. I also before 2020 and you may not have this information to obviously 2020 was different. People probably weren't wanting celebratory proclamations during that time and probably even in 2021. Were 2019 numbers higher 2018 was it more reflective of what we're seeing now or was it closer to that maybe 44 67 mark?

We definitely had a dip in 20 and 21 but they were not we we weren't at 126. So you're looking probably more like the 67 80 range, right? Uh probably closer 40 to 60 range. Okay. I think some of this is people are more aware of the process. Um I think too we do have repeat proclamations, folks that are coming in every single year. So once they've done it once, oh that was great. I'd love to do it again and they resubmit. Okay. Thank you.

So you full well know our current process. Um, we have Tuesday presentations, three approval required for a fourth. Um, right now we read the full proclamations. The submitter has an opportunity to speak. We take their photo. You could have your proclamation read offsite. Um, this does require a little bit more work on the part of the submitter. They do require we do require a public appearance request form to be completed and then we um manage the date and location. And as I said before, some are printed and mailed and picked up. Again, from the administrative side, we are happy to accommodate, but these are all different processes. So, it creates some administrative work on the back end depending on which type of presentation occurs. So we did look at some of our peer cities and the way other folks other places do proclamations for Seduit County. The big thing to note here is essentially the commission votes from the bench and they vote to receive and file. So they're not approving a proclamation. All they're doing is saying got it filing it. Um so the vote is not necessarily topical or anything else. it's receive and file. Um, other places the proclamations would be issued by the mayor's office as a courtesy. The mayor would make the final decision and proclamations are read from the bench. Um, in Lawrence, the presenter, the submitter actually comes to the mic, they have one minute, they speak for a minute, and then the proclamation is read from the bench. Um, there are all kinds of ways that this can occur. I like that Austin um basically mostly mails their proclamations out. However, if there are some that are of particular

interest or um significance, then they would be presented in a council meeting. These are the challenges that we're really facing right now. We do have some manual vote counting. Um we've talked several times about the time consuming process. Um vote delays or requests for clarity sometimes take some extra back and forth and time. Um the desire for that 70 uh versus the quorum adds some complexity. Capacity bottleneck when we have people wanting a certain date we're bumping them back. Um creates some challenges here. Um the submission timeline variances again not very good about just sticking to our guns on the timeline. um the meeting time impact uh regarding the meetings, the business meetings that you all sit through, proclamations alone can add 45 minutes to even an hour to your business meetings. Off-site coordination is a challenge and because of all the administrative work, there's some accuracy risk that we face. So really what we're looking for is an updated MUN code that will reflect the practice and a streamlined uh process um with these proclamations.

If I can stop you real quick here. Yep. Yep. what what all of this of these um challenges or the suggestions you have would help you guys and staff because I think that's one of my main concerns is the amount of time that you guys have to spend on this as opposed to I mean I don't want to add me time onto our meetings but yeah that's a lesser concern to me than trying to help you guys out.

Sure. I've got all kinds of options and suggestions for you. So the first one, these are I guess the three areas where decisions could be made and the first one is the approval model that would most likely help us administratively the most um council member. So these are the three areas and I'll get into them. I have other on here too because I'm certain you all have some additional ideas that may help. So the first options that go with how we're approving. Um, one option would be, uh, the topics are on the consent agenda. If you're a no, what you're voting on is receiving and filing. So, you may not be well, with a proclamation, you're never endorsing the topic. All you're doing really is receiving and filing. So, we could put an agenda report together that has the requests, and your vote would be to receive and file. Once received and filed, then we would move forward and we would schedule the presentation for a future meeting. We could bring up every single proclamation as a bench vote. Um, that way there aren't the emails going back and forth. It would simply be a a bench vote. I know that you all have talked about sponsorship. Um, one thing that we could do with our form is we could have folks request their particular mayor or council member they would like the proclamation to go to. You would then decide if you would like to be the sponsor or not once you choose to sponsor it. That is the approval needed to get onto the agenda and it would be received and filed by everyone else. So, those are some thoughts as to how we could change the um current vote tracking process that would save um some back and forth on the vote delays, the extra process layers, the bottleneck,

manual tracking, and the timelines. So, if we did not want to vote for that proclamation or if we had an issue with that proclamation, how would we go about voting no or nay on that? Yeah, it depends on which one you want. If you're doing consent agenda, you pull it off of the consent agenda. If you're doing a bench vote, you vote no. If you're doing a sponsorship, you're voting to receive and file. And so, um, you know, you will be receiving it. We will be filing it. But if you wanted to say no, you could. Um, the actual onus of it would be the council member or mayor who is sponsoring that proclamation.

Does that make sense? Thank you.

Okay. So, this is I guess option two or something else to think about. This one really gets a little bit more to meeting time and um I appreciate that you said you know we want to give these it's not our time is certainly valuable um but you're willing to spend the time for this kind of thing. Um it is also staff time who are spent in the meetings. So I think that um your generosity is fa fabulous. It does also take away from others ability to get things done during that that time. So, one possible suggestion is no longer reading the entire proclamation. You would read a summary only. And that's what this next page is kind of showing. On the left is a full proclamation that is currently read. On the right, and obviously the font sizes are much different, basically says the same thing. You're not reading the where's you're basically reading a two to three sentence um summary of the proclamation. So that would be one suggestion. Um, another would be we do have the clocks in every single space. You could limit your submitter speaking time. You could set the clock and have them speak. You know, Lawrence does one minute. We do five minutes for um addressing the council. Perhaps for proclamations, you limit it to two, maybe three. So you significantly reduce the amount of time. Right now they have no limit. And I think we have seen several people present on a proclamation um beyond five minutes. Another option would be presenting all the proclamations at once. If you do this, there is no limit to the number of proclamations you could issue. Essentially, you bring all the submitters up front and it is stated today we would like to recognize women

in sports day. We would like to recognize uh breast cancer awareness month. We would like to recognize yada yada yada. You list all of the proclamations off. Thank you for being here. You hand them their proclamations and we move on. One of the great things about that is you do announce the month, week, day. Um, and they have their moment in the sun. They still receive their proclamation and it does away with the bottlenecks alto together. Uh because again you could do as many as we could fit on that front row. We could do proclamations at alternate venues. I will say administratively this does create a little bit more organization planning um to be able to get people to the proper venue for the uh presentation, but certainly an option. You could say your uh council meetings are business meetings and you could do your proclamations earlier 8 am to 9:00 am or 8:30 to 9:00 am. This creates a little bit of a challenge in terms of who goes, who has to be there, who's presenting them. Um you could say that we're only going to present proclamations once. We have quite a few proclamations that are presented both onsite at a venue and at a council meeting. uh we could say, you know, we're we're going to present once. And then finally, if a proclamation was presented the year prior, um it could be issued. We could give them a nice printed copy of their proclamation, but we will not read it again. And we could set whatever parameter you want. If that's every other year, every five years, um that would dramatically cut down on the number red. We can still issue them, but it would cut down on the number red. All right, I've got one more page of proposed options.

So, this is our volume management. Um, this is if we want to do four, we do four. We're just doing it. Um, that would be an ordinance change. Um, or we could say no, we're never doing a fourth or very, very rarely. Um, we could adhere strictly to timelines and limits. Essentially, what this does is I start to tell people, "No, more often. I'm sorry. You submitted this within a month of it. We're not going to accommodate you. We can't. We must stick directly to the timelines." Um, and again, as I just said, just cutting down on the number of proclamations by only doing them every other year, every five years, something like that. There are a couple of, I guess, other things that we can consider. Um, photos. Maybe we take those prior to the city council meeting and then proclamations are read from the bench. Maybe we don't take photos at all. I actually watched quite a few other uh meetings and it's kind of rare that people come off the bench to have a photo taken. Although, I will say I think it's nice for the folks that are there as well. This is really what we need to do at this point. Administrative procedures, I mean, we can change with uh some direction and your thoughts. Uh we would make a website update. We would very likely grandfather in those who've already submitted. Um and then we could change that presentation format or, you know, we don't even have to grandfather folks in. we could just let them know our our process has changed. Now, the ordinance does need to be changed at a city council meeting since it's an ordinance. So, we um would need to submit that as well. Basically, we could implement administrative changes immediately. We

could update the website and the submission form pretty much immediately and then the ordinance revisions could be brought to you by midmay. So that is what I have for you today. What questions do you have?

There is um this is if if I were to say I think this would make the most difference overall. This is these are the three recommendations I would make. Moving it to consent agenda. What you're agreeing to is receiving and filing. You're not endorsing. You're not accepting the content. You're receiving and filing. Um the if if for some reason I I know at one point we had a proclamation submitted on proclamations and that was one that you know it it really doesn't meet our guidelines. So those types of proclamation requests those would never come to you. Those would never appear on the consent agenda. there would still be a stop gap at the beginning um to where I guess things that are con um that that might have some um issue to them would never appear on the consent agenda. The presentation um I personally like the summary reading and a one to three minute presentation by the submitter, the photos, the reading from the bench. It would cut time. It also probably cuts into how meaningful the presentation might be to the submitter. Um, and then capacity, just making sure that we do enforce the timelines and limit repeats. I think this helps administratively and it helps with the amount of time that we spend at meetings.

I'll hop in first. I want to thank Council Member Shepard for bringing this up. This is something a conversation we had last year and I think it was a good conversation. and I'm glad that he's leading the charge this year on it. I love a lot of your suggestions. Um I think consent agenda makes sense. Perhaps if we kept the current um way to vote, maybe if it gets 7 to0, that's what's read from the bench. Uh so then elevate certain proclamations be read from the branch. Otherwise, I like the consent agenda uh perspective. I'm still a big fan of sponsors. I think we're really the only entity of government that doesn't have somebody sponsor something beforehand. And so I'd be very interested in the sponsorship aspect. Um one minute for presentations for people I think is will suffice maybe two minutes just to be able to do an intro. Um because sometimes after one minute it's hard to intro yourself. I like the if it's on-site don't do off-site. One thing I thought might be really interesting is I I like the 8 to9 and how can we maybe do that where we just host like an informal coffee with hey if you're going to be rec recognized by the city council we just want to say thank you. they can be involved in the community. We just have like coffee in here and whatever council members can attend can attend. If you can't attend I remember last year uh young professionals of Witchdaw hosted one and that was a great uh time and it was a conversation and maybe we just we host it. We invite people in and say hey thank you this we're announcing your proclamation from the bench today and we just want to say thank you. We could do photo ops in here beforehand. Whoever can make it can make it. Whoever doesn't doesn't and they can still get their photo. They can still get interaction. But I think that might be a way to cut down on the staff time, also cut down on the presentation uh before the council, still go out to the community, and then still provide like a thank you in some way. So, I don't know if that hopefully doesn't add more burden. Maybe putting up coffee uh might be the only additional burden. Um but I think that might be a way to wrap all this in a bow, but I'd be interested in hearing my colleagues ideas as well. Um, Council

Member Glass Clock, one of the things we do right now is we ask folks to make it to city hall by 8:30 and we offer coffee and water in the council office. So, essentially that practice is somewhat in place already. Wouldn't add extra labor. Yeah. We could just come over and invite us to go and hang out and talk to them for a little bit, too. Yeah. And that I mean, and that's anybody that has any city business, too. I think there's just something uh positive about, let's say they're coming to talk about parking later in the meeting. if they want to come and they can have a conversation with us one-on-one as well. They can still come and speak before the bench, but they can also have that one-on-one conversation with us individually beforehand, which I think is uh super helpful and accessible to the public.

I'll jump in real quick. Um, thank you Shana and and I want to thank you not just for today's presentation but for filling the gap and then out there in the world the past folks who staff who have worked on this because I don't think I realized how cumbersome it had begun become until recently. Um, so I I'm going to disagree a little bit. I I worry because I think y'all are going to get probably well now there's one less of us but six different you know move forward with this but I like doing them during the meeting. I really do as a count as a community member who used to receive proclamations. It was an education awareness experience. It meant a lot to our organization. So um having it beforehand I think kind of diminishes that. Um I like having three. we get three and you know unless there's an extremely rare rare situation that puts some of the accountability back on the folks who were who who want the proclamation. Um I think having anything that means less staff time is crucial. My other thing is I would like to see every council member have to vote on every proclamation. So if that means doing it from the bench, I'm totally fine with that. Um, I also have a concern, um, when there was an recently an abstension from a proclamation, and I've talked to Jennifer about this. You abstain when there's a conflict of interest. And if it is just a receive and file, then it should be up or down. And I know when you send us the emails, you say yes, no, or abstain. And I always think, why would you abstain? I mean, there's there's not a conflict of interest because it's a receiving file. So, I think that needs to be cleaned up. And then um I had asked uh city manager Marshall a couple months ago because a proclamation came through and it was for a business who was trying to sell something and in our policy. So when

we're cleaning all this up, this is an additional cleanup opportunity in and it says it on the website and it's in the ordinance that if you are using your company name or trying to sell something, it has to be approved by communications, which to me didn't make any sense at all. It should just be no. You cannot use a proclamation to sell a product or a good. I also last week we had somebody who came before us and they had great comments, but they prefaced it by uh stating their political ambitions and that they were going to run for a campaign. I think this is a good time to clean that up too and say that you cannot, you know, use our city hall proclamation time, our public comment time to run for a public office. So, um, less staff. Yay. Everyone votes. Yay. Can't abstain. Yay. Let's clean it up with the selling products and running for office. Thanks.

And I I I would like to just clarify a little bit. In our current process, you are not receiving and filing. You are approving to go onto the agenda. So that would be a difference between our current process and future process. Um at least in my mind. Gotcha. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying. I appreciate that. Standing corrected.

Yes. No. And and I think um I apologize if I didn't make that clear. I think that this you're absolutely correct needs to be I don't know why communications needs to be involved in this process at all. If it's clearly a business interest then you know we should not be uh having that as a proclamation. Again there's some clarity there. So churches are they okay for their 90th birthday? Is an association okay for their 75th birthday? um you know that that is something to consider. The last piece that you mentioned regarding the abstensions, that is my way of hearing from everyone so that I'm not continuing to chase votes. So that's where I come from on the abstension and I appreciate the clarity on you know why somebody may or may not abstain. Yeah, I think that's important to continue to discuss.

So de facto no used to be just ignore it, right? And you want to hear from people. Well, if I don't hear from you, I'm assuming that I'm sending you seven emails a day and you may have missed it. And so, it's just my way of saying, "Hey, did you miss this?" You know, yes, no, abstain. And if you abstain, I'm going to quit chasing you. I know that you're not just ignoring it. Yeah.

Well, I'll jump in. Um, I'm okay with the consent agenda. That would be fine. I think it only should be read if it's 70. I agree with that. There'd only be a few. I think the response time has gotten out of hand. I think some people are going five to seven minutes and talking about everything under the sun. So, I think a one minute, maybe a two-minute response time would be adequate. Uh I'm not in favor of 8 to nine. And and honestly, I have a breakfast meeting at Tuesday mornings with a large group. Um 50 60 people and I would miss that every Tuesday. So I like that group. I like going. So it doesn't get over till 8:30. So by the time I get here, it's 8:40. So I would I would not be for that. Um yeah, that's about it. So yeah, we need to clean it up. I want to clean up staff time to doesn't take so much time. I want to clean up time during the meeting, too. I mean, our meeting time is also staff time. You we have a number of staff sitting out there listening to this the whole time. And it's take it's we never get we rarely get started before 10 o'clock on our meeting. So it's usually an hour by time you get five minutes people talking five people for five minutes talking you get all the proclamations read the responses read it's usually 9:55 10:00 before we even get started with the meeting and uh I just I'd rather get started with our meeting and get to the the meat of the business what we should be talking about. So

could could you all talk I'm sorry. No, go ahead Sam. Well, I'm I'm curious about the reading a summary versus reading the whole or presenting to all at once based on what the title is. If we go 70, there wouldn't be as many. So either way is fine with me. And that's if we keep the current voting system. If we go to just a consent agenda, I'd be just fine with the, hey, it is, you know, I don't know, whatever proclamation we offer and then just one big presentation. I I would be for that, too. Just list each one, have them all stand up there. Would be on the website. The full language would be on the website.

People go read it if they'd like. And if they want individual photos, then if we had like an 8:30 just coffee with people beforehand, they could grab individual photos of whatever council people are here right before we go into the meeting. I I just wanted to jump in super quick. I don't think it should be a 70. We don't do anything else within this body that it has to be a 70 to be able to pass. And so I I that's that's an issue for me. Again, I do like having them during the meeting. I know we're not all going to get everything that we want obviously, but the 70 part really bothers me because nothing else requires 70 vote and I I I agree with council member Tuttle. That's what I was going to say is maybe a super majority is in order for those to be read.

I would only say the seven no if it's actually the whole proclamation is read. You know, four four votes to have the proclamation. and they go up, stand up, get the proclamation for the, you know, dog day or whatever it is, you know, but you don't read the whole proclamation. So either way is fine with me.

Okay, that gives me some, I think, direction and ideas I can put together for either further discussion or for making the final decision on process. Um, and then we can work on the ordinance as well. Thank you so much. So, as we uh wind down the meeting, um make sure I hear on that last one, too. Would you rather us come back again and may or bring you ordinance change proposal at a at a meeting? I would prefer that you bring us an ordinance change proposal to consider. Um, my intention on bringing this up was really watching staff go through the process and as I was responding to emails, I was just like, my god, how how this is not a good use of their time and touching 13 hands is way too much. Um, so I trust them to propose the best solution possible incorporating the thoughts from the council that they heard today.

Okay. I I think the city manager I think we don't need another workshop. I think you can clo kind of get those votes. We'll craft a draft. When you get to four, then you know it's it's good. So, sounds good. We will take it forward to bring you back a draft to consider at a coming May council meeting. Um, that concludes our workshop topics today. We have one executive session left for the regular meeting and our attorney or mayor want to read that.

Thank you to everyone who presented today. I know that there were seven presentations. So, I appreciate the staff time it took for the research and then for allowing the discussion amongst the council members to provide direction to staff. With that, I move that the city council recess into executive session for 20 minutes to receive information about a construction project pursuant to KSA75-4319B2 for legal consultation with the city attorney which would be deemed privileged in the attorney client relationship. potential litigation and legal advice. The executive session is required to protect attorney client privilege and the public interest. This executive session will begin. Do you want to begin immediately after? How about at 1:45?

We could eat lunch while we do it. Yes. Eat lunch while we do this as well. Maybe we start at 1:45 just so we can get organized. Okay. 1:45 p.m. and 20 minutes. So, 2:05. Thank you. We will return at 2:5.