City Commission - Regular Meeting

We'll now call to order the August 10th, 2026 City of Abilene City Commission meeting. Shayla, may we please have a roll call?

Mayor Ryan?

Here.

Commissioner Taylor? Here. Commissioner Kohlhoff?

Here.

Commissioner Lytle? Here. Commissioner Meisenberg? Here. Roll call complete.

Okay, thank you. If we could please stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one by All right, and our first item is approval of today's agenda.

We'll make a motion to approve it as written.

I'll second.

Motion has been moved and seconded. Do we have any commission discussion? Seeing none, we'll do roll call vote. Vice Mayor Taylor? Yes. Commissioner Kolhoff? Commissioner Kolhoff?

Aye.

Okay. Commissioner Lytle? Yes. Commissioner Meisenberg? Yes. Myself, yes. Motion carries. Our next item is a consent agenda, which consists of the meeting minutes for the July 27, 2026 regular meeting, appropriation ordinance A-081026-26, and the AP payment register.

Make a motion to approve as written.

I'll second.

Motion has been moved and seconded. Do we have any commission discussion? Seeing none, I'm going to roll call vote. Commissioner Kolhoff?

Aye.

Commissioner Lytle? Yes. Commissioner Meisenberg? Yes. Vice Mayor Taylor? Yes. Myself, yes. Motion carries. Our next item under Heading 6, Public Comments and Communications, is 6A, a public forum. If there's anyone that would like to address the commission on an item not on our current agenda, they may do so at this time. Please just state your name.

Jenny Hyatt. 907 North Olive. Okay, it is my great honor as president of the Sister City Board to present this special gift from our sister city, Omitama, Japan, to the city of Abilene. This beautiful crystal piece has been thoughtfully engraved with two meaningful symbols. The sunflower represents the city of Abilene, while the cherry blossoms represent the city of Ometoma. Together, these images beautifully reflect the friendship, respect, and enduring partnership between the two communities. Sunflowers symbolize warmth, strength, and hope, qualities that have long characterized the people of . Cherry blossoms, cherished throughout Japan, symbolize the beauty of friendship, renewal, and the importance of appreciating the moments we share. Engraved together in crystal, these symbols remind us that although thousands of miles separate us, our communities are united by a lasting bond. For many years, our sister city relationship has brought people together through student exchanges, cultural experiences, and lifelong friendships. Most recently, we had the privilege of hosting four student delegates, two boys and two girls, as well as two young adult leaders from Momitama. They arrived the evening of July 22nd and returned home on August 4th. During their stay, they experienced life in our community, shared their culture with us, and formed friendships that will last a lifetime. Their visit is a wonderful example of the people-to-people connections that are the heart of the Sister City program. This gift is more than a beautiful work of art. commitment that continues to strengthen the relationship between Omitama and Abilene. May this gift always remind us of the friendship we cherish and inspire future generations to continue building bridges of understanding between our two cities. Mayor Ryan, I'll present this to you.

Thank you. And do you guys all want to come up for a picture together? You wore the soy sauce shirt. You have to.

Okay, that's already pretty interesting. That is, that is really great.

Thank you. Do we have anyone else that would like to address a commission on an item not on our current agenda? Seeing none, we will move to heading 8, new business 8A is discussion regarding the neighborhood revitalization program. I'm assuming we're sending it over to Carrie Zook.

Okay. Is this on? Yes. Okay. So, all right. I'll try to multitask and I'm going to throw a lot of information out to you guys. So bear with me and I apologize. Okay, the current NRP, the Neighborhood Revitalization Program 2022 to 2026, will sunset on December 31st, 2026. At that time, the program will expire unless the City Commission reauthorizes it. So in the agenda packet, I have included a link to our website. So you probably saw all of that, the details for the NRP program, along with the attachments to each specific file on that page. So we've got the district map, the application and instructions, the current NRP plan and interlocal agreement. And I've also included examples from other cities. I did quick Google search to see which other ones as we get further down on this. But the city of Ellis, Iola and Wellington are also attached. So just a brief overview. The NRP is a tax rebate incentive for qualifying properties on the increased appraised value after improvements have been made. For example, if the pre-value certification is $100,000 on the property, improvements are made, and then the post-value certification on that property is $175,000, the property owner will receive a percentage rebate on that increased $75,000 portion. So we'll get to that and the percentages here, but just kind of an example so you kind of have an idea. Residents with an active NRP still pay their property taxes per usual in December or May to the county, and then they receive a rebate check from the county treasurer's office after the May date. So currently, I don't know if you guys have that pulled up or if there's one handy. There are three revitalization districts within the city limits, the north, central and downtown. Each district has its own unique eligibility requirements and differing percentages, property tax rebates over the 10 year period. So they're all for the 10 years. And an interlocal agreement is in effect with Dickinson County and USD 435. So overall, in order to qualify for the NRP, a property must do these certain things. And I have seven listed here that are on some of those attachments. One is be located in one of the three designated districts. So the central, north, or downtown. Invest a minimum of $25,000. And the increased appraised value of the property has to increase by 10% for residential and 5% for commercial. And that's determined by the county appraiser's office. We do have a few properties that don't require building permits, but in the instance they do, they do not. A lot of them are interior remodels, so we do ask the applicants to keep all receipts to be able to prove that they invested the $25,000 because the appraiser may not be able to see that increase from the exterior if it's all mostly interior. An NRP application must be filed with the county within 60 days of issuance of a building permit. Properties eligible for property tax exemptions or other property tax incentives under any other program pursuant to statutory or constitutional authority shall not be eligible for program participation. So essentially no stacking on certain incentives. property for which any existing taxes or assessments are delinquent shall not be eligible and construction of a building or expansion of an existing building must not exceed 60,000 square feet in floor space. So this program and its rebates are transferable if a property were to be sold, it stays with the property for the full 10 years. So quick overview of the districts and their eligibility requirements. So the north is a 75% for 10 years on commercial and multifamily residential. Residential development must construct or rehab a structure with more than four dwelling units in the building. And then commercial industrial projects are eligible for any new construction or rehabs additions to existing structures. The central revitalization district is the larger district, mostly residential properties. If you're a commercial in that district, if you create new, you get a 50% rebate for years 1 through 5, 25% for years 6 through 10. Or if you rehab, you get 100% rebate for years 1 through 5, or a 50% rebate for years 6 through 10. And that's any new construction or rehabs to existing structures. The residential side of the central district... If you build new, it's a 100% rebate for years 1 through 5, 50% for years 6 through 10. If you rehab, it's 50% rebate for years 1 through 5, 25% rebate for years 6 through 10. And rehabs in existing residential structures or construction of any new residential structure qualify. And here's where a lot of people get kicked out is improvements to existing or construction of new residential detached accessory structures, including garages, storage buildings, workshops, swimming pools, et cetera, shall not be eligible. So it's primary dwelling. And then we have the downtown revitalization district, which a lot of our properties, we try to get that in on their incentive package, is 90% for 10 years. Commercial, it's rehabs to existing or constructing new. And then residential, it's rehabs to existing units or development of new residential units above the ground floor only. So in this instance, this would not be able to be stacked with the new RHID that we have downtown because the RHID for downtown is the upper story. So you wouldn't be able to get both incentives for that. So here's where we can take a turn, if you guys so choose. Kansas House Bill 2470 allows municipalities with fewer than 10,000 in population to place their entire city limit boundaries inside a neighborhood revitalization zone. Governor Kelly signed this law back on April 6th and it went into effect July 1st. So the current population of the city is approximately 6,500, so Abilene would qualify under this new legislation. Okay, the goal of this update to the Kansas Neighborhood Revitalization Act is to help local governments promote economic development, fix up older buildings, and encourage new investments across the whole community. The full designation of the city limit boundaries allows local leaders to bypass older rules that required targeting only specific rundown or dilapidated blocks or districts. And if you can see here on our central district, a big portion of Northwest 3rd Street is not in that district. And if you know by driving down that street, it's a very historic area, so I believe it's Currently, as it states, I think it's a disservice to a lot of those homes because there's no incentive there for them to do that. By designating the entirety of the city limits, it gives small towns more freedom to drive local economic growth and aims to boost new housing and businesses by making tax rebates easier to obtain for all citizens. So here's what we're seeking from you guys today. Just to start thinking over it, obviously we don't need a full answer today, but just we have some time and I wanted to get this in front of you just to get your thoughts. We can continue with this existing approach, update the current plan as necessary. We've seen a couple of revisions that need to be made on this current plan with just a couple properties that were excluded accidentally on the mapping. And then we can adopt a new five-year plan for 2027 to 2031. The second option is you can establish a citywide program. basically doing all of our limit boundaries. We have a boundary resolution in place that already has all of that existing, so it'd be easy to drop in. And I'll give you a few brief points from what I saw on the city's examples. So with the city of Ellis, their population is roughly 2,000. They have their entire boundary of the city as a revitalization district. The minimum investment for them is $15,000 for residential, $25,000 for commercial, and that's determined by the appraiser's office, the Ellis County. They have a 95% rebate for 10 years. In this, I really like this little point that they have. The properties on the National or Kansas Historical Registries are eligible for a 100% rebate, so that might be a great incentive for our larger historic homes to have that. And then they have a non-refundable application fee of $100. We currently do not have an application fee whatsoever. City of Iola, they have a population of 5,240, their entire boundary of the city, excluding all properties owned by the City of Iola, Allen County, USD 257, and Allen County Community College. It must be a minimum increase in appraised value of $5,000 for residential, commercial, and industrial properties. They have a 100% rebate for years 1 through 6, 80% for year 7, 60% for year 8, 40% for year 9, and 20% for year 10. They have a sliding scale on theirs. They have an application fee of $25. And then 5% of each rebate is retained by Allen County to cover the annual administration cost of administering the program, which we could look at something like that because Dickinson County does the bulk of the work on here. We just administered the application process. And then the city of Wellington... Population is 7,541. Their entire boundary of the city receives a 95% rebate for five years on qualifying new residential, commercial, and industrial developments and existing residential, commercial, and industrial developments with improvements of $5,000 or greater. they have two exceptions to that. Their downtown district receives a 95% rebate for 10 years for commercially zoned properties. And then they also have a East U S one 60 corridor that gets 95% rebate for five years and will only apply to the first $500,000 of the increased properties market value in the commercial zone. So, um, with this, um, If at any time during the duration of the plan, property within this district is annexed into the city, that property will qualify under these guidelines. They have $100 filing fee and they also work with Sumner County appraiser's office. And then the third is to discontinue the program You can allow the current neighborhood revitalization plan to expire on December 31st, 2026, without adopting a successor plan. So those are your three options. I did receive current statistics from Dickinson County Appraisers Office, Lisa Berg. She has been fantastic to work with on this. Her and I kind of bounce back and forth. So I appreciate the good working relationship with her. There are currently 27 active properties on the NRP in the city. 13 of those are residential. 14 are multifamily and nine single family. 14 of those are commercial, two of them being downtown. Six properties just dropped off from the 10-year rebate in 2025. That's not included in the 27 figure that I just gave you. And I don't have dialed in numbers to present you as far as rebate amounts, how that impacts the taxing entities of the city, county, and schools. I don't have that today. Staff recommends the City Commission discuss the future of the neighborhood revitalization program and provide direction regarding the preferred approach for development of the 2027-2031 plan or discontinuation of the program. I know that was a lot of information. I apologize, but I wanted to throw it all out. I'd prefer you guys think it over. We can talk about it in the next meeting, or if you want to bring it to a study session, that'll just give you some time. I feel like we just presented this back with Jane when she was here, but it's already been five years. So here we go again. And the last one that we had coming into this was three individual plans that were kind of scattered over the years. So that was my first big task that Jane assigned me was compile all those and put it into one. So this has been very helpful, especially for getting information out to applicants, property owners, and then DKDC, obviously, so they can present that in their incentive package. This is one incentive that is administered by the city staff. DKDC really kind of doesn't have anything to do with it. We deal with it with the county. And then as applicants come in, those are all approved on a staff-level basis and don't come to you guys individually. You just administer the approval of the program. essentially so there's that if you have any questions please let me know but we'll start there we have a couple months to kind of figure out what you guys want or what direction you can push me in so Gary I had a couple questions on your criteria how many of those are statutory meaning I'm sorry

Um, on the seven criteria you gave us, there's some of them that I think are pretty obviously vary from, um, city to city. So I'm guessing those aren't statutory.

I would have, yeah. John, I'll have to look back at that. I'm not sure exactly which ones are all through that. I know a lot of these are most likely in-house, um, qualifications that were set forth in the past. I know the three that we had before this consolidated plan all had each different thing. So we kind of just brought them all into the one. So that can definitely be looked at as well. But I do know that the top three, the locating in one of the districts, investment of 25 and your increased appraised value has to go up a certain percentage. I think those probably need to stay, but those others could probably be looked at.

I guess, you know, the 60,000 square foot one is just kind of a little bit out there, I think. But most of those people are probably going to be doing an IRB anyway. So I don't know how much that matters. I guess I've been thinking about this probably for the better part of 15 years. And so I'm glad that we have some flexibility that we didn't have previously. But I guess I'd just like to throw something out, I guess, Carrie, for you to consider and the rest of the commission here. I think some other cities have kind of taken the lead here, but I'd be in favor of doing 95%. I'd also be interested in lowering the minimum investment. And I don't know if that's 10,000, but just maybe a topic for discussion there. And I'm open to maybe cutting that percentage as well, whether that's 5% across the board, I would like it to be as uniform as possible too. So I know the current one is obviously it's complex and I think that's maybe unnecessarily confusing for some of our applicants. But I guess if you guys want to maybe let me know your thoughts, I'd like to see what you thought about a 95% with like a 10,000 minimum and a 5% increase across the board.

I had similar thoughts, too. I was thinking 15,000 in my head, and then I was also thinking I would like to expand it to at least the red district to citywide also, just expand that to butt up against the north district and include, yeah, I'm in favor of citywide.

Okay. So basically keeping the downtown district and the north and then the central just expanding to the remaining of the city limits? Okay. Okay.

And Carrie, just so I'm clear, I think the districts even kind of make it a little bit confusing. So if we just go citywide at 95%, I don't think that there's any reason to have more than one district.

I'm open either way that's kind of where my brain was at too is having it one cohesive district because when I was looking through it it's like I mean blight's not confined to a certain area of town so I'd be fine just opening it up and and taking a look at the minimum investment amount and the reimbursement rates I think it's a We don't have a ton of tools that don't cost us money to rehab these properties. So anything we can do to make that process better for homeowners and commercial property owners, I think is best. Yeah, simplified and efficient. It's as simple as possible. I think we run into economic development or development tools in general and they get so convoluted. Most people just say it's not even worth it.

I agree. I don't want somebody to say it's not worth the hassle to go for. Yeah.

Okay. So what I'm hearing, just making sure I'm kind of on the same path of you guys, 95% for the full 10 years still? Yeah.

I'd be okay with that.

And then lowering to $10,000 minimum investment. And then a 5% increased value for both residential and commercial. And then expanding that to all citywide. And then, Commissioner Koloff, I can look at the statutory requirements on that to see, and we can maybe dive into those a little bit more of what you guys either want to add, remove. Like I said, I really like that one that one of the cities had as far as... the national historic program. Cause I think that would be very beneficial. We're always trying to get involvement from those property owners. And as you know, it's probably, it's very expensive to rehab those in the correct way. So we do have people reach out to us and a lot of those homes do not fit in our current districts.

I would say that having a historical registry carve out would be something I'd be okay to do.

Because realistically, you said it, 95% across the board for residential, and it's another 5%. It's going to be pretty negligible.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I can start working on this. I'll bring this back to you guys just for your review as I'm working on it. Just keep in mind, once you all approve it towards the end of the year, then we'll take it to, it'll have to be approved by the county because the county is another entity that's also giving up some of their appraised value property tax dollars. And then it'll go to the school board too for the USD 435 approval. So, okay. That goes in a good direction today. Yeah, John.

Just kind of in keeping with the statutory requirements, my goal would be to have that as broad as possible. So if there are any statutory requirements, that our requirements are no more restrictive than what the statute requires.

Okay. That works. Okay. Thank you all.

Any further questions, comments, thoughts on that?

I do think we can amend this at any time, right? So if for some reason we decide we want to change this in 2028, we're able to do that, correct?

Yes. Yeah, you guys can do that at any time. From what I'm understanding, unless Aaron says differently, I don't want to...

Generally, yes. If we have an interlocal agreement with the county and school district, we would want to make sure that they're in agreement with whatever the amendment is, if required. And if it's helpful, I also looked, the statute gives the city broad latitude to determine the criteria for which we look to in determining whether property is eligible so as long as it's in the area all of those other criteria as far as I can tell are self-imposed for whatever policy reason so I don't think there will be any really other than being within the district we'll double check that but otherwise the statute makes clear that we are to develop the criteria for determining what property is eligible

And to redo this plan, we had to do this with the last one, but we do have to put out a notice of public hearing that your guys are going to be reviewing the newest. So there'll be a couple of notices that go out. And then of course there'll be the resolution for the notice of public hearing. And then once you guys approve it, the resolution, and then we'll take it on to the county and that. So we'll follow all those statutory procedures.

Just one more point here. It seems like we can actually go up to 100% just looking at, it seems like it's a pretty minimal burden. For the city. And that was the justification for that 5% I think for Alice. Anyway, would it make sense just to do 100% across the board. And again, I think if we can go back and change it at any time. I think You know, I don't, I don't see us being taken advantage of And that would probably be a good thing if that was happening. Any thoughts from the commission.

Yeah, I mean, I think, like you said, it's probably fairly negligible from 95 to 100. I didn't know on the commercial side if that would... But I guess you can't couple it with other...

Right, yeah.

It would really be for smaller commercial or multifamily, so it probably wouldn't. I'm just trying to chew on it as I'm talking.

The majority of the commercial projects that we've had are just additions onto the existing. One that we did have recently was the PIC1 cleaners. When they built new their building, they did get approved on this NRP program.

Yeah, I think my biggest goal, and I think this is where Commissioner Koloff is at too, and pretty much everyone is just making it as streamlined as possible and simple as possible.

Yeah, because right now it's kind of all over the place, as I was reading through the news we have.

Very few people actually take advantage of it. So if we can make it easier, people might actually...

see that incentive to to rehab yeah and i think we do a good job in-house in our community development office when people come through we recognize when we put their permit in or anything like that it prompts if they're in the nrp in what district so we try to capture that but i do want to once we do get this revamped or updated however we're going to move forward well how we're going to move forward with it we'll try a new marketing tool with it and try to get it out to more people as an incentive so they're aware OK, well, I think I have good direction. Do you want me to stick in the 100 and we'll just roll with it?

Yeah, fine with that.

Yeah, I do think it would be helpful to maybe look at this more than every five years. If we do feel like there is a need to kind of pull the reins back, we can do that. But I think that's wide open here to get started.

Yeah, and I do believe that some of them that I did see have a three-year. So it's however you guys want to go with what direction you want to do. If you want to do three, five, however that works. So we can alter that as I continue making amendments to this. Okay. Thank you.

Okay.

Anything further on that?

Okay.

Hearing none, I would consider a motion to adjourn with our study session beginning at City Hall at 445. Make a motion to adjourn.

I'll second.

Motion has been moved and seconded. Do we have any commission discussion? Seeing none, I'm going to roll call vote. Commissioner Lytle? Yes. Commissioner Meisenberg? Yes. Vice Mayor Taylor? Yes. Commissioner Kolhoff? Aye. Myself, yes. Motion carries. We're adjourned.