City Council - Regular Meeting

with a parade that starts at 6 o'clock in downtown Wichita because today is the first day of Riverfest. With that, can we please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

City Manager Dennis Marstall.

Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. Happy Friday. A couple of things to recap from our four-day week after the Memorial holiday. One, thank you for your time during the budget workshop this week, where for those who may tuned in, we had the opportunity to give you some of the preliminary budget information, talking about assessed valuation, looking at the number of requests from departments related to personnel, as well as operating budgets, so wanted to make sure that you all had that information, and then we will continue to refine the budget. We will have another budget workshop June, I believe June 23rd, working towards my recommendation that I'll present in early July. Also this week, I wanted to highlight we did have Our town hall here at City Hall related to the budget as well as the sales tax kind of review. And we have our last town hall tomorrow, 9 a.m., in Ms. Ballard's district. And so I want to highlight those who want one last opportunity to come out. It'll be at the Evergreen Community Center tomorrow at 9 a.m., and that will be our last one and then we will compile all the comments left and generated from all the town halls and have one report to share. And then of course we also want to highlight we had big news in the history of Wichita this week where we did the soft opening or public preview of the transit hub. So happy to have that if you've not seen the artwork and other features of the transit hub encourage everyone to stop by. then we will have full operations beginning on June 6 I'm looking at the agenda for June 2nd today I think when the there are some planning items on there some vacates some easements we do have an airport technology upgrade agenda item for you but probably the biggest interest item on the second is the Discussion about back-end parking. I do want to highlight it is not a recommendation of staff that we would change the existing policy where back-end parking is prohibited. But that will be council conversation and we'll highlight different things since back-end parking ordinance was established I believe in 2008. And for your consideration, we do have the little summary for you for the agenda item. So have that deliberation next week.

I do have one question regarding that. This only shows 2025 and 2026 citations regarding backing into a parking stall. Since this ordinance was passed in 2008, how many total citations have been issued since 2008 regarding backup? parking.

We do have that in the paragraph. We have 2,933 citations have been issued since 2008 with 340 being issued since the inception of our parking program which was in August of 2025. So we do have that historical information there on the background section since 2008. So we've got that for you. If there's any other questions or additional information that you all need between now and Tuesday, just let me know and we'll be glad to get that information for you.

City Manager, I do have a question. Is there a way to include perhaps the if we were to keep this ordinance as is, how would that impact maybe some of the other municipalities coming in and are required by their insurance to back in? I've learned recently that some insurance companies require company vehicles to back in because of the liability and or risk. So I think that that's important as well as we look at this.

Yeah, and one of the things that we'll highlight in the PowerPoint presentation is kind of some of the genesis behind where this came. What are the pros and cons of backing in? Are there safety issues? Are there efficiency issues? What it may be. So we'll give you a little bit of background on that. I've not heard specifically about some of the insurance adjustments or what that could mean. So thank you for the heads up. We'll do some research on that and have that for the presentation on Tuesday.

Dennis, that's only for the paid parking, correct? It's not, if you're at town east, you can't back in?

Not private lots, but city lots. Yeah, not private lots. So any city lots outside the paid parking area to technically are not supposed to have drive-through or back-end parking.

Okay. Correct, so I'm trying to think of an example. I mean, even our parking lots for our cultural arts facilities, that would apply there. Although we don't have paid parking in those locations, it does apply to those.

They would apply to libraries too, correct?

Correct, yep. So that's the items for January 2nd. Then we also will probably have an executive session for you on June 2nd related to land acquisition or property purchases for your consideration. That will be on June 2nd. Then when you look ahead on June 9th, um there are more property acquisitions in terms of temporary construction easements you will also see on there we have a couple of irb proposals coming before you for some economic development qualifiers so we'll bring those forward and then while not on the agenda we are looking to have the dad district advisory board Youth appointment discussion as well for June 9th And then we will also bring forward per your request on the civility pledge From NLC and we will use the exact draft from the NLC for your consideration as a resolution So we'll have that on the June 9th agenda is what we're headed towards and And so those are the agenda items of note. If you need some more information between now and then, please let me know. And then we have, as always, the update for the week on some of the requests that staff has worked on from council meetings or other meetings with council. So that completes my information to share. Let me know if you need any additional resources. Dennis I if we could move the zoning case yes June 9th meeting on North Clara to the next week that would be great just because I'm gonna be out of town gotcha so June 9th councilmember Ballard will not be in attendance and we'll push that if there's no I don't think the developer I don't think anyone has any concerns with moving the zoning We're glad to do that. Anything else otherwise? Mayor, that concludes my information.

Thank you all very much.

Would you like to just invite people to your home? Yep. Just a reminder, tomorrow is the last town hall meeting. We saved the best for last in District 6 tomorrow at Evergreen at 9 a.m. So come and share all of your thoughts and bring a friend. Yes, we'll have food.

Also tomorrow at the Firefighter Memorial Park on Lincoln and Broadway, we are having Neighbor Fest. Invite anybody out. It starts at 10 o'clock, goes until question mark, so we'll see how crazy it gets, but anybody, welcome to come out and plenty of things to do out there. I know it's gonna be a busy day anyway with River Fest, but it's always a great time to go and spend some time at that park.

I will share that we had a very successful redlining event last night at Hopping Dome Brewery. We had roughly close to 70 individuals in attendance. And thanks to Vice Mayor Glasscock and Council Member Hoheisel for showing up being in attendance and for all of my colleagues for being supportive. We were very busy as a council, so we were kind of spread out all over the city. But also just want to take a note to celebrate some of the remarkable things that has been done in the housing department. One of the things that I stressed last night at the event is that oftentimes we hear from citizens that the city's not doing anything or the city's not doing enough and I wanted to share that things are happening and but just want to highlight some of the great facts that in regards to six seven two one four 375 home repair projects completed in 67214 over the past 25 years, provided development subsidy and down payment assistance for 147 Habitat for Humanity homes in 67214 since 2014. And the last one I will share, although there are several more, but $9.6 million invested into the Dunbar Theater for planning, rehabilitation and operations as a community center as well from the housing department the city of wichita as well so i want to give kudos to sally stang as well as the entire housing department within the city of wichita and again as we continue to talk about things that we need to do better i hope that we also complement that with the things that we have done very well because i think that it's a yes and so

Thank you all very much. See you at Riverfest today. Parade, 6 o'clock. Grand opening, 11.30.