City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you very much. Okay. . . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We'll close, sir. So yeah. Okay. Yeah.

All right, I'll go ahead and call to order tonight's council meeting for Monday, August 17th, 2026.

We'll start with the pledge.

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. Our Heavenly Father, we ask you to please be with us this evening. Be with everyone here. Please bless them. Give them your wisdom, your guidance, your grace. We ask all of us in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, and our Savior. Amen.

I DO HAVE ONE AMENDMENT TO THE AGENDA THAT I NEED TO MAKE, AND THAT IS TO ADD AN UNFINISHED BUSINESS R&R HEARING. ARE THERE ANY OTHER AMENDMENTS THAT WE KNOW OF THAT WE NEED TO ADD TO THE AGENDA? OKAY. IF I CAN GET A MOTION TO ACCEPT THE AMENDED AGENDA. Sorry, our attorney got a little turned around. He'll be here shortly. Okay, there was a motion to accept the amended agenda and seconds. All in favor? With that, if I can get a motion to approve the consent agenda. All in favor? It's so hard to see. Okay, for public comment, I'll remind everybody as you come up, you have three minutes. Please state your name and address and then take your three minutes. When the timer goes off, please conclude your speaking so that we can have time for everybody that wants to speak. Actually, would the council prefer to do our guest speakers first, people who public comment? Because that might actually answer a lot of the questions that people have. We're going to go to our guest speakers first for water pumps. See here.

Hello, my name's Richard Smith. The company I work for is Letts Van Kirk. We're here looking at the situation that's going on in your city right now. To be honest with you guys, it doesn't look good right now. We have a temporary fix we're working on to kind of help you guys out. I have a big diesel pump out there right now. Guys are hooking up and they're putting all the tubing into the water to get you guys some type of water flow going through this town. We think there may be a plug somewhere in the main line going to your water plant. So we've got an oversized pump. We're going to put a lot of pressure behind it and we're going to try to push the, um, the, whatever the, it is impacting the flow. See if we can't push that through. So I do have a, a temporary fix for you guys. Um, again, they're out there right now, but their needs is seriously need to have a permanent fix on this. This temporary fix is a pump that's driven by a diesel gas motor. It's got to be filled with fuel. It's very expensive to rent this thing. So like I said, we're doing the best we can to get you guys up and running. There's got to be a permanent solution made. We do have that sent in, I believe. I don't know if you guys have a quote for that or not. But we have a permanent solution idea of what we want to do. We just got to have you guys approve it. And let's get you guys back up and running.

If you blow that plug out, will it go through the water plant?

It's going to go through the water plant. And there's no design in that water plant to be able to pull it to the side or to be able to kick it out anywhere. What happens? It goes through your plant.

And we got to destroy things in the plant?

It shouldn't destroy, but it's definitely going to need to have all hands on deck and pull through whatever the rest of that is. It's going to go through a clarifier. A clarifier is made to pull waste and stuff like that out and over to the side. So it's going to go through that.

Will it go through to the rest of this?

It will not.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

What's the maximum pressure of that line?

What's that?

What's the maximum pressure and size of that line? Okay.

We have no idea, to be totally honest with you, because there is no plans anywhere of anything in this town.

So how much pressure are you going to put on?

I'm going to put 110 pounds. It's running 80 now. It's running 80 now. So we're going to do 110. If that kicks through, great. If not, I might go to 125. I'm going to go check with my guy after this. But there are no plans of anything in this town. There's no plans of water lines. There's no plans of pumps. There's no engineering. It's just we're shooting from the hip.

So, just a moment. This is our city engineer that we've been working with. He wants to speak into that too.

Yeah, do you want me to talk right now? Yes. I was going to let his public comment go first.

No, I mean, just say if you can. Sure, sure. And where we are with any of that. Sure. And that too. All right.

My name's Jason Hoskinson, engineer with BG Consultants. And so real quick, a couple of things to what the gentleman was just talking about here. Typically 110 PSI, I mean, yeah, that's probably more than what your town's operating at, but that's not, not severe on a water system. So yeah, it depends on the construction of the pipe. Uh, what would happen, you know, kind of playing out some hypotheticals. If they put that pressure on there, that pressure is only going to be from the plant or I'm sorry, from the lake to the plant. So it's not, it's not treated water. It's not into the houses. the pressure would change once it goes through the plant and then out to the tower so so this is just trying to identify how do you get the water from the lake to the plant to where then you can treat it and get it out to the community within the system in a safe fashion um I might just, well, I'm going to jump through real quick what I provided to the council because I think this will kind of help with a number of items here. So we've got a number of projects going with the council. I've provided the council an update on some of the different projects. I'm going to focus mostly tonight on the water system type work that we're looking at. And so the first number or the first item is the the roof on the filter building at the water plant so Back earlier this year City identified some concerns with the roof. We were brought in we had identified that the roof is in a bad shape the city's gone through a design and They bid and contracted with a contractor to replace the roof. We met with the contractor last week. The mayor, Josh, and I met with the contractor last week. They are getting their materials in place. They're hopeful to have those materials in early September with a notice to proceed. And they're going to get in and get out. They're working with Josh on a plan to coordinate so that the water plant is running minus maybe a day to take the roof off and put the new roof up. So we've got all that kind of in the works and in play here. Should be sometime in September, they'll be getting to the roof, and that will protect all the equipment and the processes underneath the water plant, underneath the roof.

That's our one bid, right? The only bid that came through?

Yeah, it was publicly advertised.

$210,000?

Yeah, that was the one bid we received.

So we didn't go back out for another bid, I guess is where I'm going at. Correct.

So the other item that I provided a memo to the council last week is regarding the backup water supply from public wholesale. I want to just hit some highlights on that. That is a viable backup water supply option, in my opinion, to connect in to the city to provide a backup. Right now you have no backup. So your water comes from the East Lake. If anything happens with the pumps or anything out there, like what we're experiencing right now, you have no way of getting water to the plant. There may be some minor temporary interim fixes that could be done to make that happen, but generally speaking, you don't have a good way to get water to the plant. then goes through the water plant treats that water to potable drinking water and then that's pushed out into the system if there's anything that goes wrong within the plant that can't treat the water you don't have a potable water supply to a backup supply to the community right now so it's all contingent on getting your water from the lake treating it at the plant and getting it to your community okay Now you have reservoir storages, the tower and the tank at the plant that can help with some of those fluctuations in time when you've got some demand and you've got to replace some pumps, things like that. That's common with a plant. What you don't have is a backup water supply, which is recommended, it's suggested. Pub Coalsale has provided some preliminary information. Pub Coalsale 13 has provided some preliminary information. I wouldn't consider it necessarily a formal request or an agreement proposal, but it's a, hey, we can get you a certain amount of water at a certain pressure to the south side of town. I think that is a viable solution if the council wants to pursue a backup water supply. They did stress to me, you know, they have their own issues with their water plant and their supply. It's an emergency use only. It's not a hook up and use it all day every day for in perpetuity. I think As we roadmap this going forward, we could have those discussions with them as you start talking about, okay, well, what would an agreement look like? Who's going to bear all the costs? I think right now their perception would be that the city council or the city of Pleasanton bears the cost to hook up, and then they'll provide a wholesale rate or some rate that is agreed upon for the city to purchase water from them. in those conversations if we take that the next step in those conversations and negotiations we can talk to them about well what does it look like if it's an emergency backup only used every once in a while versus what if this is permanent what if this is in perpetuity and we just don't deal with our water plant that could be a conversation that's had There's a lot of moving parts to all this. There are some grant funds out there. There's some regionalization grant dollars that are available for hooking up to other supplies. Kansas Water Office has a grant program that's actually out for applications right now. A lot of that stuff requires some initial upfront legwork that the city, quite frankly, doesn't have right now because we've been reacting to a lot of things that have all arisen. My suggestion tonight is for the city to consider applying to the Water Office for a technical assistance grant. that would help you identify where your plant's operating right now, let's look at the equipment, let's look through the processes, let's see how the performance is, let's see where your pressure's at, your flow rates are at, and kind of figure a lot of this stuff out with some dollar amounts to that. That's gonna be needed to then apply for construction dollar grants. The CDBG regionalization grant that I talked to you about or that I mentioned, it's a 50% grant, 50% local match. So you can get a pretty significant amount and then there's other grant and loan funding agencies out there that could be identified through this process to help put a project together to upgrade your system to get you the next 10 to 20 years down the road.

Now, would that be fair at all with moving ahead with the pumps in any way, or would that be clear once we do that?

Right. So my understanding right now is you've got the intake pumps that are problematic and you need to get those replaced. Typically with these grant dollars, you can't contract to replace that stuff and have it grant eligible unless you do that after the contract for the grant has been provided. Um, the water office grant, it's not going to be announced until spring of next year. Um, so you'd be looking at replacing the pumps in summertime. So we'd have to do the backup pumping for, six, eight months, something like that, if you win.

Did you send the other proposal for stuff? Because I haven't gotten it yet. We're working on that. I don't need to go back and forth. No, that's okay. We work with these guys all the time.

No, I talked to Kevin out there and he didn't because there's a difference and he'll be able to explain it more as an engineer. There's a difference in what we're going to find, right? If we get to blow this line clear and we knock your PSI down to say 50, it's running at 80 now. So that's going to be a different pump than what we're going to need than if we can't blow that through and we find out that we just need that much pressure. So then we got to have a pump that can have that much more pressure. So the way we figure pumps is gallons per minute and head pressure, right? So i'm going to need to know gallons per minute and head pressure before we can figure out the cost for those pumps now we do have something quoted to him now on an idea basis of what that gallons per minute and head pressure is i'm not sure we will know that here shortly how shortly he's out there at the lake right now putting it together, and he's going to turn it on any minute. He had to get line into the water. We had to bolt up to get line into your city. Is he going to blow it out tonight? Oh, yeah. We've got to get going on this.

We might know before the end of this meeting.

We might know by the end of this meeting.

What is your question?

I was just wondering, as an engineer, he sat there and said something about hooking up with 13 to supply down here. quite a bit my days and right now they're sitting there saying they don't know I mean as emergency situation yeah but not for very very long so we're gonna be spending a lot of money hooking up to their line for a questionable emergency backup we need to figure out how to utilize Stegi Lake somehow

So just to clarify a couple things. Yes, I did acknowledge that it was only an emergency backup supply. The public wholesale, I'm sure they'd be looking through as they add users or need more water use or water supply to supply more users. It would only behoove them to look at what improvements they need to make to provide that supply. The one thing I mentioned about connecting to Public Wholesale 13 is it provides you a potable water supply. You can bypass a plant if you need to and still provide your citizens with water. The issue we had with the roof was, You've got all these members that are cracked up in there. The structure is damaged. You get a heavy snowfall and that roof comes down. You can't even treat the water. So even if you could get it out of Steggy Lake or the East Lake or the Meredithine River, it doesn't matter. You can't treat it. You don't have a way to treat it. You have to have a potable backup water supply. That's why I was suggesting to go through public wholesale number 13. They're the only... I shouldn't say only, but they're the most feasible, likely option for you.

Is that why it's so expensive? I thought our roofs got done back in 2014. Why are they in such bad shape? I know chlorine and stuff eats away material, but it wasn't your guys' engineering firm that was supposed to replace all of that the treatment or the the intake pumps it was your guys's engineering firm no no it wasn't no it was a different engineering firm um but the scope of that i'm sorry he's bg bg consultants my bad e.g okay yeah yeah i'm sorry i'm sorry no worries but yeah we need to go back to that old engineering firm and figure out why they cut costs where our rope is caving in 10, 15 years later, because our roof shouldn't be this bad right now.

I have a question. So my question is, has anybody reached out to Royal Water Team and talked to them? I mean, we've heard that they're not, but has anybody ever reached out to them to talk to them about that?

I personally haven't, no. We could certainly do that. But they're provided by 13, right?

Yeah, most of the rural water districts around here supply it.

I think it's...

There's just a couple lines. One on the north end of town and then one over here on 14th Street. They're not enough to supply the water we need.

Let me add one more thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, let me add one more thing too. A community can't provide other community water or other source of water as a backup supply or anything without approval through KDHE. So you have to go through a permitting process to make this happen. It's not like you just hook up and turn a valve. There's a permitting process that has to go through. KDHE has to approve it. They'll need to see all the design plan specs. You're gonna wanna see chemical analysis analyses. They're going to want to have an understanding of the interaction of how that water is going to interact with your piping system. It's no less than a four to six month process once you start. And that's assuming everything works well.

Who are we supplying water to? Which district for a long time? Which is the same now?

No. So two stopped receiving water from us and started receiving water from 13. 10 years ago, under 10 years ago.

So two could supply us through 13 because we got their line. Our plants are still on our contract as a backup.

I'm not aware.

We have lines that run by Pleasant and feed people that are technically in the city limits like Chenal's is and the lake right by Stege. All those are rural water too. There's a couple others.

Does the lake need to be dredged as well?

I haven't done an analysis on whether the lake needs to be dredged. If there's a lot of sediment buildup, which is typical of most lakes, yeah, at some point you need to dredge it. That's a common problem in Kansas.

Yeah, I'm not 100% sure.

So with that said, okay, so You've got a few very urgent needs right now. The roof replacement, the pumps at the lake, and I believe we've got a path forward with the roof replacement. I think you're working on a solution, if I remember right, to get the pumps replaced, if I'm understanding correctly, to replace the pumps at the lake to get water to the plant. That should get you back into a position where you're functioning reasonably well moving forward. My suggestion though is to apply for a water office grant to basically do a preliminary engineering report which would study the regionalization component of connecting with Wholesale 13 in more detail. It would help provide KDHE the information they would need if you were to go apply for them, apply to KDHE for a backup. It would help you identify different funding sources. Like I mentioned, the CDBG regionalization grant might be eligible. There's a normal CDBG grant out there, their regular round that could be eligible for this project. There may be others out there. Most of those are going to be tied though to some type of having some type of an agreement in place or at least a path forward with the with a discussion with that board of where you're headed on a backup water supply. The grant funding through the Water Office is up to 100% grant if you want to go for that. And it would help with all that preliminary effort that would then allow you to apply for grants in the future on other improvements and maybe there's some additional needs at the plant. I know Josh has talked about this, maybe needs some TLC, you know, and everything over time deteriorates and needs to be replaced and rehabbed, and you might be to that point. We can help identify that with this preliminary engineering report. So it's 100% grant, the city could, If you wanted to sweeten the pot, so to speak, offer 5,000 or something. If you wanted to go for like a 90-10 match or something like that. But if that's something you're interested in, I can help work with the mayor to get an application in on that for you. right well yes special Just to be clear, you could just go for 100% grant. You don't have to put money in. It's a 100% grant program, but they do, you know, if they're looking at two communities with an equal grant application and one's going to pitch a little money in and the other's not, lots of times that other funding, that other agency gets the grant. You've got some serious problems though, so I mean, you've got that going for you.

Are you suggesting that they go for these grants to replace their pumps?

No, this is just planning, you know, it's been a year of react, react, react. And this would help you be a little more proactive to really understand how this whole thing's working and also to better understand Funding opportunities, grant opportunities to connect in with Wholesale 13 and what a backup could look like and any other kind of improvements that you can make to your system to make it work better. The intake pumps, short of a KDHE loan, that's about all I'm aware of that's out there, having done this for 20, 25 years in our realm. Most of the emergency need grants are all tied to disasters. So floods, things like that.

This grant would basically not the pumps, but would tell us the rest of the system, town, and connection for backups and so forth. Correct. In addition to that, would it take longer than what we need for the pumps to get through? Yes. So do we want to make a motion to proceed with this so that we can really find out where our system is in the bowl and our full options? I believe we should. If we do go connecting to other people's water lines and everything like that, it's going to raise

But there is a way to probably co-exist with Supply 13 supplying the south side of town and Water 2, even though they're the same fed. Water 2 does got a big six inch out by Stege that we could probably tap into and a couple other I think it's a four inch right there north side of town that would probably be adequate feed to get at least water to the civilians. There'd be like at least three different connection points within the system of 13 and rural water too. So it's not going to be just hey we're going to connect to one water line. It will be several different water lines you'll probably have to connect to with different meters and probably I would think PRVs, but that 6-inch is running pretty hot out there. It comes down the hill and it's running at least 120 psi through it.

So this study would tell us the fullness of what we can do with that?

This study would identify all that. So right now there's a lot of unknowns and it would make known the unknowns. It would also at a high level look at user rates and how grant and loans and things like that affect user rates or don't affect Well, it's a $50,000 grant.

Yeah, but I mean, for the preliminary stuff, does it cost the city any money?

No. The grant's 100% grant, so it's state dollars to help communities with this very specific thing. Well, there's multiple studies in that. It's going to depend on the scope. $50,000 will cover it. I'm confident of that.

For the city?

The $50,000 of grant dollars, if they get the grant, it will cover all the preliminary engineering reports and analysis to figure out where you're at and where you're going forward and what you need to go forward and how to fund it. Yeah, no construction. I will mention something else because there's a couple of times it's been mentioned bringing water from Steady Lake over. Your plant is set up to treat surface water. I would caution you, though, Steggy Lake is not identified by the Division of Water Resources as a public water supply. They look at public water supply dams differently to a higher degree than just recreational dams. In my opinion, I think you should inform DWR. If you go to pull water out of Stege Lake and treat it, you'd need to let KEHE know that you're doing that so that they know what's going on. You'd also probably need to let DWR know as the jurisdiction, the agency that has jurisdiction and the regulations over that, so.

Hard to say.

I don't know. It is a competitive grant, but it's a starting point. You've got to start somewhere. Are there any other questions that the council has of me?

I'll stick around tonight.

I'd be happy to address questions as they come up if you need me to.

In respect to what he was talking about, water lines, what they are, how they are, what they run, not having a lot of that, is there anything that you have that could make it easier for them as they're looking at this pump situation of sending water to the plant?

No, I don't, unfortunately. I've got a copy of the prior construction plans when they modify, well, when they put the the permanganate, the chemical building out at the lake, and it shows kind of where the line is between the booster pump or the intake pumps and the chemical building, but nothing from there.

So that 2014 project, that was just to put that building in. They didn't do anything to the intake pumps, did they?

It doesn't look like there was anything done to the intake pumps. There might have been some routine maintenance, could have been something replaced. I don't have...

How much did we pay for that? Where is it all written down at?

Yeah, that's what the whole grant was supposed to do for us. And the money went where? That's what the question was.

So if we can go back over to you. Yeah, so I think he could vouch for that.

I think, let me explain to you guys a little bit. The problem that we're having is flow. We're not getting flow out of that lake, right? So the pumps that you have originally, and I could be wrong, Josh said they're a 250 gallon per minute pump. I don't know because there's no drawings. You cannot see the pump. As soon as I lift the lid, everything down is rusted. It's rusted. So my guy, to answer your question tonight, is working right now. One of the caps snapped on him because it's so rusted, so he's got to rebuild that. He's doing that right now. The problem is I've got only one pump. You have three pumps out there. The way it's set up on the control panel is I can only run one pump, and that's not normal. Whoever set that up was very lacking in what they're supposed to do. You should be able to run one, two, and three pumps all together if you have two or two pumps together. But the way it's set up out there, you can run one pump only. And the max we're getting out of that is 90 gallons per minute.

Okay?

We're only getting 90. The best one is getting 90. It's because of... I don't know. I don't know if it's the pressure. I don't know if those pumps are worn out inside. I don't know... The VFDs are running. The VFD is running, which is the problem. That is not a normal thing. Each pump should have its own VFD. You have one VFD for three pumps.

You ever seen that?

What happens if you blow the pipe out?

If we blow the pipe out, then I guess we're fixing pipe.

Okay, what happens if we do have a big blowout and it never makes it to the plant and you open the line up and it's that big? Are we replacing it at all?

We're going to have to. Because we don't know that. There's no way to see that, right? I've got three...

If I could remind everybody, if we allow one person to talk at a time, we can all hear. Thank you.

I've got three miles of pipe. I saw a picture, and I hate to even want to tell you guys about this, but I'm going to tell you about it. I saw a picture of a pipe that had 17 Band-Aids on it. 17 band-aids is not a normal thing guys that is not a normal thing to band-aid pipe 17 times before you cut it out so if we blow a pipe great then let's fix it go to the next one well i mean in that like you've seen pictures is there no way we could camera the line to see what is actually down there i am not sure of any camera that can run three miles that we're all that we're all water Like I said, there's no interceptions anywhere. So like we have no way, that's why we were saying, even if I got to blow something through the line, there's no intermediary areas that I can open up and let it pop there. I got to go all the way. There is no camera that goes three miles.

I guess what I'm getting at in this is, okay, you do put this pump on and we get 15 feet down the water when it bursts, we fix it, it does it again, 25 feet down. We're going to keep following the annex.

We're going to have to.

Yeah, at this point. If you guys want to do that, then...

then let us know because right now the way we're doing it is we've got a pump hooked up to get you guys water that we're going to try to blow through the line. It might not be, it might not have anything in the line. It might just be that I need that much pressure to go that way. We don't know. The problem is the infrastructure in the city is just older than dirt, man. It's older than dirt.

So do we need to replace all of our lines in town?

Eventually, I mean from the picture I saw of one line with 17 band-aids on it kind of scares me that yeah I would definitely want to change your lines. I mean I would put some money into changing some pipe in this town. I mean I don't know what your water looks like but when you turn your water on is it brown? Well then I would definitely take a look at that you know. All we're trying to do is get you guys water at this point. That's where the emergency's at. is to make sure that I can get you guys to be able to take some showers, drink some water, cook what you need to cook. But as far as your infrastructure and your lines, I'm sorry about that. I mean, there's nothing we can do.

I have a question on that. Yeah. Because it's been mentioned a couple of times on picking that line. So what you're doing and going through, hopefully that will take care of it and not need an actual picking.

If we can do what we're hoping, we're hoping that there's just some type of lake grass and whatever is in the line. I'm hoping to put enough pressure in that line that it just pushes it through to your clarifier at your water plant. and we'll clean it out from there. If that works, then we can go ahead and continue running our temporary pump. We have it for a month. By the way, I hear what he's saying, but you don't want to have that cost for six to seven months. That's 50, $60,000. So what we'll want to do is get the pumps that we have that we think we can use. We want to put them on a small little plate, go down in the well, and use those to pump. Those are 250 gallon per minute pumps. You'll have two of them. That's 500 gallons.

That's more than you need. Brief estimates of cost. So far we've heard pump replacement at $108,000. That's about where we're at. About where we're at with that. Yep.

He's going to try to get it in cheaper. I told him I need some help from you. And I said, I'm going to need you to come get as low as you can. So he says he thinks he can get it around there with the new submersibles. But where we're at right now, I don't know for sure, but I think you're paying about $10,000 to $12,000 a month for that pump right now.

Is that the VFD?

Yeah, the $100,000. We're doing a whole new control. Yeah, we're going to do a whole new control. So here's what we're going to use. Your control cabinet. That's all we're going to use because the cabinet looked good. But the rest of it, don't tear it out.

And we'll have records from now on.

You're going to have records from me and drawings and manufacturer warranties and everything else.

But still, we don't know where anything is other than what you put in.

From this day forward, you'll have records.

I have nothing.

Well, I know, but that's the concerning thing. It's like, who knows where the lines are?

I have no idea.

I have no idea.

Well, hopefully he'll see it. I mean, the way we read that, guys, is... and he'll explain it to you better, he's an engineer. So what we're going to do is we're going to ramp this pump up, right? We're going to go 120, 125, maybe we go to 150. What's going to happen is if we're clearing a line, it'll drop. Boom, it'll go to 50, right? That means we just cleared it or we broke a hole. And then we'll keep it down at that. We'll go to the plant and see, hey, did that come through or not? If not, there's a hole somewhere. There's three miles to find a hole. And then we'll do it again. And then we'll do it again. Until we finally clear the way.

Again, there's... What's that?

Well, we'll dig a hole and then band-aid it. You guys know how to do that, obviously. We'll do that.

How does that work?

It's not long.

I mean, they get a backhoe out there. They dig it where the wet spots at and then they put a bandaid on it. Okay, so it won't even just to speak. You won't notice because your water plant has a storage.

I was just going to make sure that everybody heard her question. Basically, her question was, if we do pop the line, we have to fix it. While we're digging it and fixing it, does that take us out with having no water? The answer is no, because we have water in the ground storage and in the tower already. Correct. So it should be fixed without us actually missing any of that aspect.

Correct. Yeah, I'll add just a couple of things. What he's talking about doing, it's only on the dirty water from the lake to the plant. It doesn't affect... the delivery of water to your community that's from the tower and typically those repairs are pretty quick if something does happen yeah it would be nice to not have clamps and things like that but you're in a spot really what we're dealing with on this aspect is how do we get the operation running again it's it's a it's kind of an emergency need a quick I don't want to say a bandaid, it's trying to push this out and either the pressure goes down and we cleared the plug or maybe the flow goes up and they just needed more pressure and the pumps are just no good and just need to be replaced. It's going to help us identify that to where then it can be fixed and then you can supply your community with raw untreated water in the rate and flow and the volume that you need to keep your plant running and going. the plant will still function and operate and treat water you've got these kind of cushions here like you know so as the community demand changes throughout the day your water tower is over there to take care of that fluctuation that's why you have storage within your community yeah so I mean supply I'm just talking about what we call raw water guys that's just raw water to fill your plant you guys still have reserves at the plant you have stuff coming out of there

We're just trying to fill your plan all these things that they've done in the past that nobody does somebody if we did this in 14, not put a check valve on somewhere that nobody knows about.

Yeah, so that's the 1st thing we thought of and the guy that I have that's out there right now. Kevin is very good at this. He did this for Lacey, and he did this for St Paul. We've done this exact same thing. And that is not the case. But that was the first thing we thought of. Is there a check valve? I'm just wondering if it's partially. No, that's a great idea. Or we thought, is it pumping from one pump, missing a check valve, and going through the other one? Yes. Not happening.

Even all the way to the plant where they may have done something and maybe some crazy guy went out and dug a hole and put one in right outside the plant.

I think to this topic though, it's worked fine for a number of years after 2014. If they would have put something in, I don't think anybody, to any of our knowledge, anybody's added something the last year or whatever when this has been a problem. So it's most likely some type of maintenance action. It got silted in, something got plugged up, or maybe the pumps are just going bad and are just unable to deliver the flow.

Which is what I mostly think has happened.

They were, yeah, well, I don't know. um we have no idea we can't see we can't see so on top of the there's a there's a tube right so we're over there by the lake there's a four foot wide round tube that goes 30 feet down On top of that tube is a bunch of rusted pipe, rusted everything. I can't even close the door. There's a door at the bottom of the tube. So most of the time you can close that door off and pump that well down so you can see what's going on. Those wheels just spin free. So the next option is we get a diver down there and a four foot tube going 30 foot down. and go down there and try to work on a door. No, we're not spending $60,000 to do that. So we came up with another option, and that is to rebuild all of our pumps and all of our structure above the four foot, above the tube, And we're going to lower the whole thing down with the pumps on it and everything. So then that way we don't have to climb down there and send a diver in. I don't know what that would cost to have a diver. So that's the most dangerous situation that you'd want. A guy that's in a four foot tube enclosed. I don't even think there's a Navy diver here that would want to do that.

What's that? Yeah, I got you, I got you.

So within all that, where we are and what we're working on right now that's a temporary solution, hopefully clears the line out so the new pumps can fit and everything. We still have the aspect of getting those things and that's where they're dealing with our roof already. What are your options that you have for us to actually add that cost in somehow, somewhere?

Well, I'm Max McCliney. I work for McCliney & Company. And we're brought on to help the city figure out how to finance their roofs and, well, how to afford any other project that may require financing. The roof project we had at $215,000, and at that time we had it set up to be paid back for in 10 years. And the reason for that being is that why would you ever want to pay for something longer than its useful life? Hopefully that roof's longer than 10 years, but it might not be. but it's at least gonna be 10. I don't know what the useful life is for water pumps. That's why in front of you, you still have a 10 year schedule on what's gonna be paid back. As you will see, again, it is 10 years. And the interest rate right now on that is 5% because I think that's a very conservative rate for right now. Market's always in flux. Don't know what it'll be till day of. However, 5% is the conservative rate I'm seeing currently. Now the next page is about your guys' revenues and expenses within the water treatment. These are pulled from your audit. As you will see in 2025, you have a surplus of funds. 2026 is projected. I kept your revenue the same. However, I reduced your reimbursed expense because that's not something I felt comfortable saying you're going to make. And it's more conservative to leave it out. And didn't grow your income either. I didn't grow your expenses by 3% because that's what supposedly the national average of inflation is. with that you know you do have a rate increase that should happen based on those preliminary numbers now in 2027 when you guys would actually be paying off your debt you'll see that well again revenue stayed the same however that 2026 increase that i had said and that's that would come out to 68 cents a month per customer putting that into your 2027 revenues now so that increased the revenue Your expenses now are 3% higher than 2026. So we're at 6% from the audited numbers. We have a loss of $12,000 plus new debt being acquired is $45,829 a year. And that's actually the highest one off my calculations. With that as a total increase necessary of $58,512. That sounds... scary that comes out to be about 8.87 per customer per month and that is to fix your roof and get your water supply going again or water script pumps going again and you know We had the water roof, and once you guys called saying you had pumps, well, we paused that so we could add it into this. The reason for that being is that if you guys do these as two separate projects, you're probably out about $30,000 just in legal costs by having to issue twice.

So if we do it all together, we end up saving ourselves about 30 grand.

About 30 grand.

And another thing, what you're saying here is $8.87. would be added on to everyone's water bill? Yes.

For 10 years? No, no. You have a water bill that's, let's say it's $10 you're paying. It'll be $18.87. Well, actually, $19.55 after the 2026 and 2027 increase. But that's what that increase provides you the funds to be able to pay for this project. It is not January you're paying $8.87 and then February you're paying $8.87 plus another $8.87. Annually that comes out to about $106 is what that increases annually.

So the new water bill will just be $8.87 higher by default?

By default.

For how long? Each month for 10 years.

It's going to go up with $2,000 that everybody wants for taxes. Well, this isn't a tax. I missed that last part, sorry. Yes.

To make sure that you guys are able to have a functioning water system over 10 years to replace our roof.

I'm so beyond confusing what you are. We're trying to do the math here. I have a question.

What about people that are, I mean, you know, struggling to make ends meet?

I mean, that's, I know it's $8. That's $8 in groceries, milk, bread, whatever, doctor's appointment, medicine. And I understand, I understand the mess we're in. But, I mean, is there anything else, maybe at least for some of those that can't afford it to be able to help them?

That I don't know. This is not...

Does that include the money for the stream? No. No. No.

This is... For everybody, what I'm looking at here, and correct me if I understand this correctly, we're looking at a $345,000 loan, and the total payoff is $436,000. Yes.

So hang on. So if you do the tax, let's say $8.

It's to pay off your debt plus be able to cover your guys' current expenses. That has to happen every year.

Pay off all current debt.

Not pay off all current debt. Pay off this new debt. It would be $8. And this is off of 550 connections. That is $1,152,000 over 10 years.

hundred and fifty two dollars you do the math at eight dollars there's 1200 people it's not by person Now there's no solution. You know, I'm going to, I hate to say it, I'm going to grant them two. Slash everything that we can to get rid of what we can get. But number one, I really think the roof project needs to go back out again. It's been there this long. If we go into a state of emergency, which is what I'm hearing, is then we can get money from the state. So if the roof collapses, we'd be better off by going to the state and saying we don't have water.

How are you coming up with your calculation? What did you get?

They connected, we did populations and by connections.

Oh, okay. Because there's only 550. 504. Yeah, connections. Yeah, he was doing per capita. That's still an astronomical amount of money. That's $585,420. That also covers some of our expenses because right now we're set to end 2026 in the negative. They included that into the calculation necessary for the water bill rate to fix.

So to be clear, this is for the pumps and the roof and the debt that we're currently entering the next year with.

The pumps, the roof, Plus, you guys have expenses annually. Yeah. Okay. That you guys need to be able to afford. Okay.

I think people were thinking it was just the room.

No.

I guess my question would be this.

That opens the city up to liabilities that are absolutely .

Hold on, let's let our engineers speak into that for just a moment.

The majority of the emergency need type grants and funding are for call it tornadoes, disasters, things where there's no other funding available. Right now, KDHE does have loans for you. We're identifying some loans here. There's ways to fund this. I heard a comment, yeah, it's correct. If you let the roof collapse, you would be out of water. You'd have to call in the National Guard and go through that process, and it's going to be very expensive, especially when you know you have a problem with a solution before you to replace it tonight.

But we don't know if there's a solution that's going to actually take care of the problem.

A new roof is going to take care of it. for grants to get some of that taken care of.

Correct. Yeah, you've got two emergency issues right now. One, the roof is in terrible shape and needs to be replaced. I'm not willing to make any kind of prediction on if it will last through a snowstorm or not.

Why not build a 10 building over the building to take the snow load off? $50,000, we're done. We will hire somebody else out to re-bed the roof to actually build a snow

Let's go over to our attorney here and ask him, in the state that we are right now that we know these problems exist, what kind of liability does it put us in to prolong this more than what we need to?

In general, you're kind of in trouble both ways, but I would think that the plaintiff's bar, if you let a building or a roof fail and let it fail without doing something, more folks are going to come after you. Now, whether they have a case, as we've talked about and some of these other things have been brought up, you can't control whether they win or lose necessarily. I'm sorry, you can't control whether they bring the case. You can only control whether they win or lose, and then it still costs us to get there. So I would caution you against just letting something fail out of neglect because you do have a duty as a governing body to trying to run the affairs of the city, but if that were the only choice, then that's the only choice. I don't know that it is.

If you put temporary roof over the roof, it's not letting it film. It's supporting the snow load that could cause the roof to collapse until we can come up with an ulterior solution and not $210,000.

Now, a roof over a roof KDHE would still be concerned on the inner roof.

I mean, it's got to be designed properly for a building like that. I mean, it's up there a ways, and you've got a roof in the way of putting in the new roof. So I don't see it being $50,000. I think you're well north of what you're spending to replace the roof. And you still have a bad roof inside that.

All right. Let me ask you this question, because even you were kind of disappointed anyway. I mean, I really would like to know this because I know we've had problems paying bills in the past.

You'd have to go ask the bidders. I don't know.

I'm not sure that anybody here could answer that question itself. Moving on with everything, though, so back up to how this can be and so forth, I know nobody wants a water increase of any sort. The question is still, into how do we solve the problem of the money itself on something that needs to get fixed as soon as possible. Because I know that several people were concerned regarding losing water and not having water or different things like that. So, sir?

What about just abandoning the system and connecting to rural water and let the professional company deal with providing this water?

Once again, as we covered that, they can't supply us water. They can only supply us temporary emergency water.

Because of the water supply they're asking us to.

Yes. Wholesale 13, when we talked to them before, they're redoing their whole system and cannot supply the volume that the city needs. However, they've offered to give us an option to hook up as a temporary backup system only at 90 PSI.

But the system we have now, it doesn't seem like it's run by Pleasanton.

It just passed on to the next mayor, and the next mayor, and the next mayor.

What we're working on right now is we see what problems we have, we're trying to solve them. And that's about where we are. To say what was done, what wasn't done, how much it was done, or how well it was done, I'm not sure. I'm curious if that was an option to hook on to another.

We're trying to put out the fires that have been pushed out and going on right now in the city. I mean, that's all we can do.

Okay. Yeah. Putting out the fire isn't fixing the problem. So, yes, sir. It addresses it.

Has anyone ever thought about maybe... Let's remain in order, please. Has anybody ever thought about presenting our treatment plant facility 213 to 5 as a backup for their treatment plant? We could supply 13 as another treatment plant if it wasn't then. It would be all their problems. They've got millions of dollars in the bank to deal with water problems. I know the system like the back of my hand. They might be down to buy another treatment plant when it counts. That's what they're trying to do.

Give it to them.

No, we can't give it to them.

We need the money.

Let's sell it to them. Let's sell it to them. But we don't get another job.

Okay, let's remain in order, please. One of the things that have to be thought of also is the debt that we've encumbered against that already, because most of the debt that the city has is because of fixing water stuff. So those are things that we have to look at also, what the city's debt is and how that's going to continue to be handled and taken care of within us.

Estimating cost, a treatment plant with our infrastructure is probably worth at least six mil. if not more, and then give them another entry level of water.

I say we have to address what's going on right now to make sure that our citizens have water. I know, but this is something maybe to look at.

Nobody can guarantee water. Even you just said that. If we fire up and blow, and then fire up and blow, and fire up and blow, we've got two days of water storage. That's it. 20 feet would place the mine.

Tim, what do you got?

I'm just here to ask someone a couple questions. That's it. And then look at long-term planning, the next meeting, the next meeting, the next meeting. Here's my take on this, and it may be a lot. I believe 1,500 people when I was there, we were in a position where we could no longer sustain that one.

The money's just not there.

The hill that rural communities in this state across the nation have to climb isn't long enough. We can concentrate on what we have to concentrate on should be done for some time. I didn't have a council. It was going to talk about that. That's okay. That's all right. But that's what we're here today. So, while these guys can't make long term decisions, they can get on the same page about putting out fires. Number 1 and number 2, looking at all these subsequent decisions. I had a chance to talk to a representative from 13 who just wandered in my office today. What she said is correct. They're looking at it. They don't have the supply right now. But they also have the wherewithal, the money, the access to funding, and a much larger pool of water clients to be able to look at a study like that and potentially expand and help us out. because I've heard it too much, and just let it go. This idea, this concept, this thing that I've heard time and time again, that there are no plans, there are no specs, there's no proof, is crap. I don't know where they are, We replaced every single hydrant in town. That was a fully engineered project. I know the specs. I know the payouts exist somewhere. Prior to that, we did a water plant improvement project in excess of a million dollars. Again, that was a fully engineered plan, KDHE approved. It's been 10 or 11 years since I've been doing this, but I believe that's a necessity. Mr. Engineer, I'm sorry. KDHE approved. You cannot tell me that the records don't exist somewhere because they do. Every year, every municipality in the state of Kansas has to go to an audit. Do they not? During that audit, I oversaw six or seven of them. The auditor comes in and we lay out every purchase receipt, every repair receipt through third-party vendors. It's all there. It's all reconciled. It's all put in a gigantic binder. And as far as I know, it's stuck up in the attic. There's a shelf everywhere. I would like an answer on why we keep saying there are no records. Or is it that we just really haven't taken the time to look for them?

I apologize if I said that, but that's what I've been being told from day one. Agreed. I have no records. I have no information on pumps and I have nothing else. So there is records. And they're not available.

That's the same thing to me. So I apologize. But it's an hours in my office over water distribution maps. Thanks guys. We did a project that upgraded 20% of our water. What he says is right. 17 patches in a. 100 yard stretch agreed. We thought that at the time too. So we embarked upon that project that wasn't in house project. We have that stuff.

You'll need to find it.

Only, not to blame anybody, only because those records weren't really for your decision making. You have to have good information in order to make good sense. So really, in my opinion, I'm going to quit. I'm going to go back home. I didn't plan on coming here tonight anyway. because it cannot go without water. We can't, okay? That has to be done tonight. The council needs to get on board with nearly about a vision for the future, and we need to start making decisions that lead to some direction.

Is that fair? Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Okay, so this proposal is here on what it would mean for a 10-year way of solving the two problems that we have right now. What is the council's desire?

Why are we not going over to the City Hall and looking for these plans?

Let's do that.

I mean, seriously. If they're here, why are we making a decision right now? I understand.

Moving forward is finding the plan. If we have the plan and we can see the line, then done. This is spending money.

$8,000 plus a month. Every time they're here.

we don't need to argue we need to come to a good solution on this i know that nobody in town wants a water increase but how you know we need to be able to do these things so we can continue to have water so what is the council's desired thoughts would anybody like to speak on this i'd like to hear yeah i'd like to see if you guys go find those plants while we go to city and send somebody to city hall real quick Okay. Hold on, wait. Would, I'm asking the guys that are working with the pumps right now. Yes. Would having the plans that show you where they are change what we need to do?

Not the current time.

It would help the grant looking at what we all need to do, etc.

Right. Planning, long-term planning, it would help. Right now, it wouldn't affect the roof. It wouldn't affect what they're trying to do with the pumps. That's all operation and maintenance type stuff. You don't necessarily need plans for it.

So the question on the floor that's open for discussion and people to speak into is regarding this water rate increase of $8.87 per month. That would enable us for the next over the next 10 years would enable us to fix these 2 problems right now to continue to supply the citizens of Pleasanton with water. Would anyone like to speak into that?

Is that just a flat increase for everybody? Or is that an average which is based on?

That's a flat increase for each meter. So if we're going to go that route, then why don't we just take it off the budget that we don't have already? That means we lose the party partners and we lose the police department.

I'm okay with the increase that helps get this stuff done. The only thing I worry about is there are people who are already struggling, like Social Security, elderly, disabled, that barely make ends meet and can't afford the increase. So I mean, is there a way to offset it that way, but not anyone else taking an additional cost?

OK. Speaking of a potential offset for those that are on fixed income and may be injured by that increase.

So when we were building the Baptist Church out here on 52 Highway, we all pitched in bonds. Give whatever you can to a bond system. And once you get back on your feet, so once the church... was built, once it started making money and everything like that, the church started paying you back your bonds a little bit more, with a little bit of percentage. If we're in such a crisis and we need to come together as a community, let's let the ones who can lift the weight, you know, lift the weight, and the ones who can't, you know, stay the same, what they are. Let's try to work out a, is there a way we can do a bond, like with the water system? instead like doing a flat eight dollars for everybody try to do a bond system uh this is a bond this is a bond yeah that's what we're and then you're just charging everybody eight dollars to be able to pay back the bond to pay back the bond yes sir could it be a percentage

Yes, I don't want it to be per usage because I've got 4 people in my household. I think that that would be fair because the elderly people where there's 1 elderly woman living there. Very obviously spent way less water than me who has 2 young kids and I cloth diaper and wash diapers 3 times a week. That's 2 different amounts of water being spent. I also obviously have a better way to make income than that little elderly woman who's living by herself and has been retired for almost how long. So, it should go based off of the percentages of water used is what you pay. Not just everybody pays 8 dollars.

That fluctuates. Okay.

Okay.

Quiet please.

If you go based off of somebody being elderly or not, because that comes into question. Okay. So I can just say that I'm not able to pay. How would that work?

Because then you'd have to do with criteria base and everything else. Yeah. Yeah.

Let's get you there. You go with the floor flat rate for 5,000 or whatever. Yeah, 2,000 gallons 1,000 gallons and, you know, for them and then for the low people with lower income or don't use water. You know, on those meters, you know, if you were able to, you know, set them at maybe 25%. Now, correct me if I'm wrong here.

The problem with going with the variable rates based on usage would be that we wouldn't have a promise of having the funds that we need to pay back. Exactly.

This is a base rate, and if you are connected to the system, you are going to have that $8 per connection. That's the only way. Because if not, it's not going to fly. Yeah, you would be paying the same fixed rate as the car wash. Is this our only option? For the most part, I would say, yeah, with the time being. Size of the meter.

Some meters are two meters.

And you still will be paying more money because you're going to be using more water.

So do you pay it by volume?

You are paying that $8 increase. If you have, if you use, I don't know how your guys' billing system works. Is it the first 1,000 gallons is your base rate or is it, yeah? If you use zero gallons or if you use 1,000 gallons, you pay whatever the base rate is currently plus that $8. I mean, that's a different bill, or it's a part of your bill.

Yeah, it's part of our bill. So you don't only have the increase of the water bill of the $8.87, and then use it annually is $106.39. And if I did my math right, I took 32.27, because that's the sewer, times 12, and I got 87.24. I added those together. Your bill for your annually is going to be $183.63. I'm confused. There are people on septic that don't have to pay sewer. So the basic way of looking at this is whatever your water bill right now is, add $8.97 to it. That is what the increase looks like over the year.

It's 106 dollars and 39 cents.

All right. I think that's going to be doable for. But I don't know what the roof.

Yeah.

Right now the city is in a liability issue because anybody that goes into the water plants the roof could collapse.

It's just in that kind of shape. If we get any snow on it, it could really collapse. It's already sagging in so much that other pipes that are not meant to hold any weight are holding weight of the roof up. So our roof has to get replaced. The pumps out of the lake are failing. they have to get replaced so we have to spend this money and the idea is the best way that this company has found to help get us that money is to split the cost up between every connection in the city which is approximately 550 or so connections to our water system and that increases everyone both in and out of the city that are connected to our water system gaining using that water in itself.

That would be up to the city when it comes to if you guys are... What would you say would be built into it?

Well, yes, in 10 years. Otherwise, we don't build it.

It is a city decision. But at the same time, 10 years down the line, I know you're gonna have rates, it's going to be rates are gonna have to be somewhere to pay off your annual expenses regardless.

So

Just a quick statement, quick question. One, this is a money guy. He's got money. I mean, as far as how we deal with the water bills, he's not really here for that. He's basically, we have money, and this is the interest rate. That's it. The second thing I'm just curious about is if the city were to take it upon themselves to pay it off, let's say in five years, what would that number be?

that would be built into it and it would be it would be essentially if you're paying off i'm asking a hypothetical i know i know it's going to be the remainder of it plus interest what is the fee that the city is paying I don't know off the top of my head, but less than probably less than 1% or right around $35,000. No, that would say I would say less than $35,000, but you also have to incorporate legal into it. You have to incorporate people actually find the debt or taking the risk with your city being able to pay back the money they lent you.

So if you would guess, you're up $30,000. Yeah.

But also, I'm not supposed to guess that.

That's my point. We don't know how much we're going to be paying them.

When we were hired, we gave them our rate schedule. I get that.

Unless I'm really completely wrong, that should fall off in a year or two. Three, that's the most. And when that falls off, that frees up $150,000, $250,000, I can't remember how much it was, but I paid it this year. So what we need to do is see if your orders didn't break, and when that falls off, you shouldn't have plenty of money left over.

Like that. And I understand that you can raise it now, but when that drops off, that should free up quite a bit of money for you guys to order from.

Well, at that point, then you reevaluate your rates. Well, I don't have anything to say on that.

So as far as GEO bonds go, we have one that falls off in 2032, and one that falls off in 2035, and then one in 2055 and 2056. Now, all we...

You guys have 2014 through 17 still outstanding.

Yeah, we only have 2014 through 17. No, we only have 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 on the paper workers.

I'm not saying anything other than the fact that my memory says that it should fall off in a year or two, maybe three months, and then about three or four of those months.

That's all I'm going to say. This is my answer to that. They fucks for everybody. It's not that it's 10% of someone's bill.

They said, you need to increase the bill to increase the revenue of the system to be able to pay off the debt.

The bill is the bill.

Dollars are dollars.

Your current rate is not bringing in enough money to, with inflation, be able to pay off your current expenses, plus then adding in the new expense annually.

So what he's saying, though, is if the minimum is $80, everybody's paying at least $80. If you take 10% of what everybody is paying, that's $8 for the low end and then more for the high end, is his thought process.

$16,000 a month or $10,000 a month. And you would get your money back quicker, and we would have as much sweat.

We can work out the bill amount of $880,000. I'm not the one acquiring your debt.

I'm trying to find you guys the best avenue to go down. I was trying to find you a better avenue.

I think more or less I know and I though I have the numbers and essentially what the numbers are saying is this is what needs to be charged and Potentially go off with like let's say the average uses 3000 gallons and you do $8 on top of your base plus the 86 cents into volume like the town could decide that I do have an answer.

Mr. Mattingly. We do have this that shows us that the 20 to the 2001 Amount from KDHE of 357,000 it actually ended in 22. Okay So on the rate itself, does everybody understand what this would actually do to the water bill in itself? Yes. What does the council wish to do at this time?

I am asking you guys to essentially move forward with adding this pump this new pump amount into your roofing amount so that we can go and get you guys financed that's all i was showing you the numbers for which would ultimately save us the thirty thousand dollars of legal fees and everything else processing another yes okay you know considering you know i climbed up there and looked at those trusses and they're they're completely compromised there's no quick motion for that it's essentially I just need to go ahead and if I have to go ahead I can move forward and I believe he was saying that you guys will have the exact number for what that'll cost because you guys are currently getting it pumped at the lake you're trying to to get all of that however within this number there has been about a thousand dollars added in as wiggle room for that miscellaneous potential and everything that is miscellaneous would go into your guys's project fund.

Alex made the motion someone said

Discussion I I will tell you I am for getting the water fixed. I'm for getting But that's all right now I'm going to say I am for getting all the water fix and everything we need but that's all right now I'm

They use more water than probably the whole town uses in a day.

They use in a day more than what they use. So there is a motion and a second on the table. Is there any other discussion in the council?

I'm just going to run by and say that maybe you could get with Babcon and do like a dildo type dildo where

How long is he on retainer? This decision has to be made today.

And then there's no money out the city's pocket. Yes, it does.

I mean, this has to be made today.

We need to move to get it fixed. Okay, fix it. So let's remain decently in an order, please. So any other discussion council? All in favor? Are you okay with that? Thank you. And then we'll get from you as soon as you have that worked up and know that more.

I would be grateful. Thank you.

Yep, thank you. There's a motion for a ten minute recess.

ALL IN FAVOR?

Hey. Hi, my name is Shelly. Hi, my name is Shelly. Thank you. Thank you very much. It was hard. We did. Thank you. Roll the Senate.

I walked in and I was like, get out now.

We're a bond. because this has become my life Are we just done? Please. That's pretty much it. That's more secure than you think.

That's such a good question. Oh, gosh. Right there we go. It's kind of such a good question.

I'm telling you, it kind of works.

This is just a quick question.

Would you rather? Right.

Try to be in your favorite.

Try to be in your favorite.

Try to be in your favorite. Try to be in your favorite.

Okay. Okay. I

Yeah, I know. All right. Yeah, yeah, let's hold it here.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Thank you so much for coming.

And thank you for being willing to just kind of answer all the random questions. I know that's fine.

be able to get home information here

We appreciate you and we've sat through a lot here.

A lot of meetings.

I was about ready to call for a motion. I really was.

It's difficult because you want people to be able to speak, but you have to maintain order. Otherwise, it's just lost. And with this room, there's a whole lot more echo to be heard.

All right. Well, yeah.

So it's all about what those friends can do.

Thank you.

I live over at Travis' old house across from her house on 15th Street. Sarah, my husband's daughter, is my wife. He's the one on the house. We have a back corner of the house. We're out for a beer. Originally from Ohio, we came here three years ago.

We came to ourselves.

We're all on the lawn, by ourselves, not interacting. Maybe it's just us. I know. I was actually at your house the other day. I was actually at your house the other day. All right.

Oh, you're going to get it. Hey. You're going to get it.

I don't know. All right, we are officially back in session, please.

I will go ahead and remind everybody, if you can keep from talking, please keep that down because it does, the microphones do pick up a lot of that, making it difficult for those who are online watching also. And if we just continue to just be respectful towards each other and allow one person at a time to speak, that would be fantastic. Y'all have been doing great. Thank you for that. We will at this point move Is James Higgins still here? You could just state your name and address, and you have three minutes, sir.

Three? I thought I got five.

It's three minutes.

I'll change that. Okay. Okay. All right. My name is Greg Stogsdale, 601 East 6th Street in Pleasanton. Okay. There we go. We're on the clock. We've already, you know, went through a lot of stuff with this roof repair stuff, and I understand that. I understand that. I never looked at it inside. From the outside, it doesn't look like any significant sagging in 5-12 pitch. Impending failure, I don't believe, but possible. And, uh, But I think that in the future that maybe we need to look at the way we bid these jobs and the way we specify the jobs with these engineers. They might need, instead of doing the latest and greatest Johnson County type of roof, they might want to look at doing something a little more cost effective for our community. I think sometimes these bids go way up and you don't get as many bids because you have these onerous specifications that these engineers are making. And I understand you want to do top of the line, but you should maybe look at doing something similar. That's in hindsight. It needs to be done now. And it's already been bid and approved. But, you know, I just think your bid process needs to be a sealed bid process. If you only get one bid, you need to go advertise some more and re-bid. That's not competitive that way. That's not the way our system works, you know. It shouldn't anyways. It's totally uncompetitive, you know. And they open the bid, and then they come to the council to have it approved, you know. I just... That's not the way, you know, I've seen any government agent, you know, entity work. Just never works like that. Not in the county, that's for sure. And I've done jobs for both and bid jobs for the city too in the past. So that's it. But neither here nor there, just down the road. You know, hopefully that can be worked out. the pumps and things it's pretty obvious that we're going to have to replace the entire line from the lake you know and uh and and if we can't find the prints or don't know where it's at there's radioactive or radio frequency pigs you can put in the line and find the line okay of course they're probably going to find find the line anyways from the water leaks when they pressure it up if it's truly clogged you know or the clog moves on down the line And so forth. So that's going to be an additional expense that we're just going to have to plan on doing. Three miles a line. I don't know what it is, what it will cost, but everything costs more these days. So might as well do it now because it's not going to get any cheaper. You know? So I guess that's it. Maybe we can do the... bid specs and so forth, you know, and, you know, look at that a little better and talk with these engineers about the things. I know Stege Lake's coming up. Can you just give me a little bit more time? I think there's nothing wrong with Stege Lake, you know, except for there's a sinkhole. Okay. Yeah, is there any way you can give me just a couple minutes on Stege Lake, or you want to shut me off?

If the council member wishes to...

I'll make a motion to give him five more minutes.

Okay. All right, well...

The motion's on the table. It's been seconded. All in favor? Opposed?

Okay.

I only oppose because if we do this for everyone, we're going to be drawn.

Okay, thank you. All right, the Stege Lake issue, as far as the dam goes, it's not leaking now because the water's not up high enough to get up to the sinkhole that's in front of the dam.

Once it gets there, then I think we can repair the dam. or, you know, at least totally minimize, you know, mitigate any further damages, you know, by using, you know, basic oil field sealing techniques, which is bentonite and maybe, you know, a load of sawdust from the local sawmill and some other flow seal materials and get it shut off. And I think you'll be all right, but you can't do it right now because you waited too long and the silt is, has dropped in those cavities that have been being undermined, where it's running through and so forth. But that's just, that's my opinion on how you do it. You might want to get your engineers to come up, you know, look at that too, or talk with, you know, somebody that's done that before. So that would be one cost-effective way to stop that without doing any major, major expenses, which will be major if it continues that way because I tried it last year and didn't work because I didn't do it while it was still flowing before it caved it caved off you know down you can't see it but it's trust me this silt now you can't seal silt you got to seal it while it's flowing okay and So I think we can save a lot of money on that, which is going to be a major expense down the road if we do it right this fall or whenever we get some rain that's running over and leaking again where you can actually visually see it. I guess that's pretty much all I really had to say except for the... mowing of the trails, and somebody needs to grab a weed eater and actually do some weeding. I don't think anybody's done any. I know you can't even get to the benches on the trails at Stege Lake or out on the piers, and one of the piers has never been mowed, and they stopped mowing the lake, the West Lake Dam on the east side, closest to the school. They haven't mowed it at all, you know, and I know that because I've walked out there about every evening for the past three years. It's just gotten ridiculous. The parks, we'd eat them around. We have knocked them down and mowed a little bit and trying to keep up. I don't know if you need to get a contractor or whatever if you don't have the right equipment to do it or just don't have enough people. but something needs to be done. We're past that a little bit. All the dikes and dams and levees need to be mowed and the trees that are growing up need to be taken down or we're gonna have more damage. to the lakes and the dams. And the old West Lake Dam is cracked and leaking, and it has ice that forms and builds on it in the wintertime, which is obvious, and that's not good because that's going to expand and pop the concrete and spoil it out, and then we're going to have a major problem within a few years. These are things that need to be addressed. I just happen to know that because I go there all the time, winter, summer, spring, and fall. And it's pretty frustrating. You can't even get to a shelter house, walk into a shelter house without walking through weeds, you know, up to your knees. They don't even didn't even mow around the outhouses at the West Lake by shelter house to, you know, stop mowing that whole area. You know, and then they cut back on other areas and so forth and don't mow the dam. Last year, you know, at least they came out and they burned it. Now, like it's too much. It's something that is going to have to be done this fall and then start it over again in the spring. It's going to take seasons to be able to get back on track. So that's pretty much it. I think those are the few points that I really wanted to get across.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Can I say something real quick?

No.

Okay. It was just real quick. No, get after it.

What are you doing?

Okay, I'm Catherine Newcomb. My address is 1404 Ashray. I just want to remind the Pleasanton people that live here, whatever. Remember, it also has been over 100 degrees. These mowers and people that are mowing for our city, It's hot. Hot as hell. We just need to remember that because people that work outside, we're thankful for you all. Just remember that.

Thank you. Thank you. Sarah?

Weekends? Yes. Sorry. No worries. Sarah Weekends. I'm at 707 West 15th Street in Pleasanton. I'm here tonight, I just think that there are some serious questions about the city's priorities, the finances, its accountability to the people who live here. I want to start with that accountability. The mayor's recent behavior on Facebook was disappointing. When residents raise legitimate concerns about city government, the response from our mayor should be professionalism and leadership, not automatic defensiveness. I was especially troubled by seeing responsibilities shifted onto other council members in regards to, I do the same thing other council members do. Leadership means taking responsibility for the decisions made while you are leading this city. You cannot take credit when things go well and then throw other council members under the bus when residents start asking the difficult questions. If mistakes were made, just say that it's a mistake. If you disagree with decisions that the council made, explain why. But accountability has to start at the top. That accountability is particularly important when we're talking about our taxes. Our mayor has advocated for increasing the amount of property tax revenue collected for the people of Pleasanton. When residents questioned whether he personally pays property taxes in Pleasanton, he publicly has stated that he does. But when asked what property he owns in Pleasanton that he pays those taxes on, there's refusal to answer. I want to be extremely clear on something. I do not believe that owning property determines whether someone deserves a voice in this community. Renters live here, they work here, they raise their families here, they pay their rent, their utility bills, sales taxes. It all goes into it and ultimately I feel that the effects of decisions made by this council just are felt by them just like they're felt by everybody else. Their voices matter just as much as every homeowner in the city matters. My issue is not whether the mayor owns property. My issue is claiming publicly to pay a particular tax while advocating that those taxes be increased and then refusing to provide an answer when residents question that claim. If you don't personally pay property tax, say that. You still have a voice. But don't tell residents that you pay something if you don't. Accountability requires honesty, especially when you're asking people to pay more. I also have serious questions about how we're handling money associated with our police department. We've heard that approximately $31,000 from the police department was returned to the general fund. At that same time, money associated with programs that they do, like the clicker ticket that the state pays us money for, is going into the general fund rather than remaining available for the law enforcement purposes. And then we have officers who were removing the ability for them to use the digital ticketing technology that would make their jobs safer. keeps them off the road longer, keeps them safer. What happens if one of our police officers dies on the street while trying to give somebody a ticket because we didn't want to spend the $8,000 to use that digital ticketing system? Those things, they don't make sense to me when you view them all together. If the police department can return $31,000 and law enforcement related money is going into the general fund, I want to know exactly where that money goes afterward and why it can't be used to provide our officers with the tools and technology that they need. And that brings us to the city's overall finances. Residents are hearing about millions of dollars. May I continue?

How much more time do you need?

Probably two, three more minutes.

Make a motion to allow her to have three more minutes, please. Second.

All in favor? Any opposed?

Thank you. Residents are hearing about millions of dollars in city debt. We've watched the discussions about exceeding revenue neutral and increasing the amount of tax revenue collected from residents. At some point, residents have to be allowed to ask, where's all of this money going? And when we ask that question, the answer cannot be simply that we need to pay more. The transparency needs to be there. We need detailed explanations of spending. We need to know why certain financial decisions are being made and what alternatives were discussed. Residents need meaningful access to their government. That's why I'm also concerned about being told that a resident cannot be placed on the council agenda for more than the five-minute public comment, which apparently now was lowered to three minutes, unless they first obtain sponsorship from the mayor or a council member. Think about the message that that sends. A resident who wants additional time to question the government must first get permission from one of the very officials that they may be coming here to question. that does not build public trust. I've also raised concerns when city resources appear to benefit particular organizations or individuals, including situations involving organizations connected to elected officials. Even the appearance of favoritism should be something this council takes seriously. None of this is about attacking city employees, police officers, council members, or anybody else personally. It's all about accountability. Pleasanton belongs to the roughly 1,200 people who live here. The money this council spends is ultimately the public's money. The debt belongs to the public. The taxes are paid by the public. So when residents ask questions, we're not causing problems. We're doing exactly what citizens are supposed to do. Before asking Pleasanton residents for another dollar, I'm asking the council to show us clearly what we have, where it's going, and what alternatives have been discovered, and why the decisions being made are actually in the best interest of the people who live here. When residents raise concerns, I'm asking our elected officials to answer those concerns with facts, professionalism, transparency, and accountability. If you're going to ask residents to pay more, you should be prepared to explain why. If you're going to make a public claim, you should be prepared to stand behind that public claim. And if you're going to lead this city, you should be prepared to take responsibility for it. That's not an unreasonable expectation. That's simply your job. Thanks.

Jeremy Gallagher.

Jeremy Gallagher. I live at 125 Leland Drive in Lacing, but I work for the city. I want to start off by saying that I've worked for quite a few governing bodies with councils, boards, different things like that. And out of all of them, this is the most negative place that I have ever worked. Anything that you guys say about the employees has been negative to my knowledge since I've started. And you guys need to not always see the negative, but see the positive in things. Uh, examples, we have Morgan who has been filling a position that she had no training whatsoever for, and she's doing her best. And I thank her for that. We have Joshua, who's been battling a water treatment facility. That's failing that you guys don't see the positive. And he has been busting his butt to keep it running. Um, We have Jimmy, who is constantly... Basically, he's been the public works superintendent filling that position because he makes sure that we have all of the equipment that we need to get the job done. He's making sure that we have all the help that we can get to get the job done. And nobody's getting credit for what they actually do. And I just wanted to make that known to you guys that that is ridiculous in my opinion. And it needs to be... known that not everything that goes on here is negative we we do our best and we try and we get a lot more done that than what is seen to the naked eye and i hope you guys take this into consideration and realize that you guys have really good employees and they should be treated as such

Mayor Portman, 208 East 14th. And before you start my timer, Mr. Mayor, I have a procedural question here. Has anybody on this council voted to reduce it from five to three minutes? Nobody? Okay, on August 3rd, Mr. Mayor, you told the council that five minutes that was printed on the agenda was kind of wrong. That the city policy actually limits general public comment to three minutes. I was on the council when we adopted the public speaking policy. I remember five minutes. We've operated for over the last eight years at five minutes that I know of that I was on the council. And I never voted to change it. Obviously, you guys haven't either. So being the governing body, you set the rules, not the mayor. So with that being said... You can start my timer. Actually, you know what? I'll go ahead and request extra minutes now. Can I get six to seven minutes here?

I'll make a motion to give you eight minutes.

Can I chime in real quick? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I want to get out of here. Hey, we're hooked up. We're not pumping yet. We're not going to pump until tomorrow morning because it's too late. While we were in this meeting, we were out of water for two hours. Because we had some issues out there, the whole system was rusted out. So my guys had to go get some new bit tall at cufflinks and put them all up. We've got the pump ready to go. We're back on electric. You guys have a little bit of water going, but we're not going to pressure up tonight and blow up and have all these people out of water. So first thing early in the morning, when everybody gets up and goes to work, we're going to turn it on and see what happens.

We'll let you know. Thank you. All right.

We have a motion on the table to give them eight minutes. All in favor?

All right, thank you. Mayor, council, we're scrutinizing overtime. We're talking about GPS tracking employees. We're questioning hours and spending. Fine, that's fine with me. Let's apply the same scrutiny everywhere. So let's start with the treasurer. Mr. Mayor, you were asked directly what work she was performing. Your answer was accounts payable, accounts receivable, and payroll. All within treasurer duties is what you stated. At the July 20th meeting, the treasurer said that she was working 40 hours a week and even Morgan confirmed sometimes it was up to 50 hours a week. The council ultimately approved $3,700 in retroactive compensation representing 200 hours and continued pay at 1850 an hour. But the council was not presented with a timesheet or documentation establishing those 200 hours. I'm not saying she didn't work them, she may have. I'm asking where the 200 hours came from and what work accounts for the 40 to 50 hours a week. Because the answer given to the public when I asked you, Mr. Mayor, was accounts receivable, accounts payable, and payroll. You also discussed that once the new clerk is hired, the treasurer may only need to come in roughly once a week. So what changes? If additional work is being performed now, tell the council, tell the public. Don't withhold that information. Then there's how the compensation discussion began. So, Mr. Mayor, you brought it up. We had just got approving Morgan's pay raise of $2.06 an hour. Next thing said is your statement. When a council member asked you what you thought she should be paid, you said because you're a fellow pastor and she is a pastor's wife, you didn't believe you should recommend an amount. Yet you continued the discussion and repeatedly returned to the compensation for her past work. So explain this. If that relationship was significant enough for you to decide that you shouldn't comment on an amount, why was it not significant enough for you to stay out of the compensation discussion completely? I'm not accusing you of favoritism. I'm asking you to explain the standard you applied to yourself. We're talking about GPS tracking employees and scrutinizing overtime while approving $3,700 in retroactive compensation without documentation of those 200 hours being presented. So let's talk about spending. Mr. Mayor, you've repeatedly talked about how bad the city's financial situation is. yet we're paying an outside company $90 an hour for temporary work. Then at the same meeting where this council declared a water emergency, the very next action this council approved was 22,500 plus expenses to that same company to recruit a city clerk. And that's the person being paid. So I understand that we need a clerk, but if the city's financial situation is as bad as you keep telling us, how do you justify more than $22,000 plus expenses for a recruiter while already paying the same company $90 an hour for temporary help? The budget doesn't become a problem only when you're talking about decisions made before you. The money being spent now counts too. Now on this public comment thing, I'm just going to skip over it since you guys already gave me more time, which I still don't completely understand. And I'm not going to beat a dead horse with this water. We've heard plenty tonight, but I will... Mr. Mayor, you've publicly talked about the problems going back decades. You said past governing bodies failed to correct long-term issues and that time and lack of maintenance added up. Those are your words. When a former council member publicly challenged the history of these pumps, you acknowledged that you had not verified when they were replaced. that you were receiving conflicting information, and that you were waiting on EBH for the records. And that's the problem. See, the blame came first, the verification came afterwards. If EBH verifies these pumps were replaced during the 2014 project, you have already spent weeks publicly talking about decades of problems. previous governing bodies failing to act, the lack of maintenance before verifying the basic fact of the equipment you were talking about. The narrative was already out there before the facts were established. So let's get the facts first. Tell the public who's responsible. The water plant roof is another example. The seriousness of this roof was not brought to the council until I was practically offered. I cannot vote to fix a problem nobody brings to the governing body. If somebody can show me where the previous council was warned about the roof or the pumps or had an opportunity to act and refused, please bring it to me. I will answer for the decisions I've made. But missing records and incomplete histories are not proof that previous council simply neglected the city. Mayor, I do not expect you to fix every problem overnight. I expect you to get the facts right. Apply the same standards to everyone and answer for the decisions being made now. If you're going to scrutinize employee hours, scrutinize everybody's hours. If you're going to criticize city spending, defend the spending or spend the spending you're approving now. If you're going to tell residents they have three minutes, show me where the governing body says three minutes. And if you're going to blame the previous council, Establish what those councils actually knew before assigning responsibility. I'll answer for the decisions I made when I sat up there. Mayor, you need to answer for the decisions you're making now. Because eventually pointing backwards stops explaining the problem and starts becoming an excuse. Thank you.

Chloe Allison, 1011 Laurel Street, here in town. I had originally planned to speak on multiple issues tonight, but I have decided to change that and focus on something else today. Mayor, you keep saying you want the county to take over the fire department. Why? I know we have all seen the petitions going around, and yes, I myself made one for the simple fact that if a council member's daughter can make one, so can anyone else. Yes, we all have free speech. Now let's talk about the reason I made mine. I'll be the first to say a petition isn't shit. It's a piece of paper that holds no merit. I made mine as satire. But hey, if the shoe fits, wear it. I'm pretty sure everyone in this room knows how much it would cost to replace members if they step down, but in case you don't, it will cost upwards of $10,000 to hold a special election that wouldn't happen until November. Three months. It would take three months to get new members, meaning by then our water situation is worse, our budget is obsolete, and our town will have crumbled. Now let's get back to why you want county to take over. I want to read a lovely comment left on my Facebook page by a member of Station 920. and please excuse my language, I'm gonna read it verbatim. He says, oh, it's from Zachary Lee Wills. He says, and I quote, listen here, bitch, you have never changed just because you get upset, you try to bring someone else down to make yourself feel better. Always have and always will. Yes, Alex is my brother and I will protect him from scumbags like you who do nothing but complain and bitch about everything and do nothing to help this community. Alex has donated his time, Even before on council, helping with public works. Many, many things. He is one that will actually listen to citizens and note, I think he meant not, ignore them and be rude when asked questions like other council members do. He is probably the only council member that all city employees can trust and go to with questions if they don't understand something. And those are facts, not bullshit like you put out. Now, I don't know about you, but I personally don't want anyone from the county who speaks that way to citizens to be in charge of my safety. I no longer trust 920 to help me if I was in need. I told three of you council members three weeks ago, not three, I'm sorry, weeks ago that you guys need to set up a Q&A meeting every month for citizens and maybe things like this wouldn't be so out of hand right now. I'm not asking anyone to step down. I'm not asking the mayor to leave. What I do want to ask is how a council member, Alex, you can sit there and think your brother's behavior is okay. Looks bad for business if you ask me. And Boli, how can you sit there every meeting and never say a word? You just go along with it. And when they ask you a question, you freak out and leave. Unprofessional. I would like to end this with, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and nobody is allowed to condemn them, speak down to them, badger them, or tell them they are wrong for it. In the famous words of that one girl on Dr. Phil, Hey Zach, catch me outside, how about that?

And our last speaker was David Sherman, who left.

Do you like it to speak?

Okay, so we'll move it down to Chrissy Flores.

Hey guys.

It's the one that says that I think it says paychecks hiring.

So I know that you guys were wanting to pass the thing about paying $22,500 to bring in a company to help hire city administrator. And so I wasn't sure if you guys knew all of your resources that you might actually have. One, you could always bring in past city administrators to train Morgan or whoever wants to do the job. or maybe send them out to different cities around, like Lacing, Mound City, and maybe get experience from them and maybe create a network. Therefore, we're not spending that kind of money, which would just be the hours that she's putting in. And then that kind of dwindles it down a little bit. Um, something else you could do. So I've done payroll for 16 or 18 years now, and I work for paychecks. So I'm not promoting paychecks per se, but I do know, um, what companies like paychecks offers. So I gave you stuff for paychecks, pay core, paylocity, and ADP. They're the top four companies, um, in payroll. and they do do payroll they do do time and attendance which is like your timekeeping system and stuff but they do hiring and onboarding and the hiring portion is they will put everything at your fingertips so you do have to do the manual work but you would have stuff to put out all your credentials if you want in a city administrator or anyone that you're wanting to hire for that manner and then you put your credentials out there and then you can put it on i think linkedin um Zip Recruiter and there was one more. It's on your thing. I can't remember. My phone's almost dead. But you can put it out on there. And then it filters things through. So it kind of weeds out the bad and brings in the good, so you're not having to go through all these applications. And then you can go through your process of hiring and stuff. They do have the onboarding where, say, you hire them, then they can fill out their information and stuff like that. But the great part about it is if you guys do training, so say you do send Morgan out to train or anybody, any of the different departments you have, you can create your own training resources and put it on this hiring and onboarding tab. So people can come in and you sit them in front. Here's your videos. Here's the stuff you have to read through. All this different stuff that you can do for it. I'm not a sales rep. I just know what our company offers. Paychex has been in business for 55 years. PayCore 36, ADP 77, and PayLossy 29. And I think the company you're wanting to use has been in for less than two years. So I understand companies wanting to get up and start up and start a business, but you're going to want someone's more trustworthy if that's the route you decide to go with. But there are other options. Of course, these do cost and I don't know what it is. And if you do decide to go with Paychex or Paycor, let me know if that could probably get you a cheaper rate. But again, a sales rep would have to come out and talk with you guys. I wouldn't, I would say I'm not saying anything against ADP because they are good service. Their reports are a little more difficult to read. QuickBooks, I'm not so much a fan of them just because I feel like the resources aren't as easy to use. But Paychex, Paycor, and Paylocity, Um, their systems are really user friendly. I'm not tech savvy and I've learned by using our systems. So just something out there instead of maybe not having to spend the 22 five, because that's not a set standard. It can go up and I guarantee it will. Cause there's always gonna be something that's going to pop in. Um, again, I don't know how much these all costs. Um, it's different companies, different things. You might build you the hiring all on its own and not have to do, um, payroll or time and attendance but it might be something they'll help you guys in the long run i know money's tight obviously with all the discussions we've had today but if there is a way to maybe save this might be an option to check out So I left the websites on there too if you guys want to check out the companies. Paychex recently bought out Paycor. So Paycor is technically a facility of its own, but I can still send someone to come speak with you guys if that's something you want. And also explain the situation too. Let me know, but I wanted to bring that out to you guys to let you know that you don't have to necessarily go with the company. Unfortunately, people are going to be hitting you guys and saying, oh, do this, do this. Check out your resources to see what there is out there to do it as well. Thank you.

All right, as we get into Mayor's comments, I will make a couple of comments today before asking for an executive session that we need to take. One of those is there is the policy for public comments during council meetings that anybody is free to get from City Hall. It explains the difference between the five minutes allowed at public hearings versus the three minutes allowed at general issues on regular meetings, and then it has a list of rules of conduct for those. You're free to get those and read through those, ask any questions you have regarding that. I will also say the city of Pleasanton is not paying the $97 an hour city clerk thing through interim solutions. That is not a way that the council went in any of that. There was a vote for the $22,500. That contract is in front of the council, which will be spoken about in just a little bit.

That is for the policy that exists that the city has it was wrong on the agenda It's three

THIS POLICY WAS PUT INTO EFFECT. THE 12TH DAY OF MAY, 2025.

CAN A MOTION BE MADE TO CHANGE THAT?

THAT'S THE POLICY. THAT'S WHEN THE POLICY WAS IMPLEMENTED.

I'M ASKING IF A MOTION CAN BE MADE TO CHANGE THAT GOING FORWARD.

There has to be documentation legally for all of that, so a new policy would need to be written if that was wanting to be changed. The council at the time felt that it was bad. You could stop by City Hall and ask for a copy of the policy. So it was written as five minutes here and when some questions came up on how to distinguish between somebody who speaks indefinitely on the agenda versus someone who is public speaking and has a time limit I went back and I pulled out our procedure for running meetings and our policy specifically and upon closer look the policy is five minutes for public hearing items such as what would be at the next council meeting on the 8th of September and then general issues is three minutes upon seeing that error that had been on the agenda I shifted it to what the policy is which would be the appropriate action Just policy for public comment during council meetings. Yes.

I have another question. Does the policy say anything about getting on the agenda and being denied that at a city hall?

This does.

It says who can and can't be on the agenda?

Yes.

Okay, perfect.

Because public comment itself is not something that has to be offered. Right. It is something that we feel should be offered, but it needs to be organized and we don't want to be here until midnight every time we have a meeting because it costs the city a lot of money for us to be here. So we want to be mindful of time and everything. So the way that works is if you have an item, such as Christy Flores had an item that she wanted to bring to council, she contacted me and said, hey, I have this. I'd like to bring it to council. I think it's something that they should consider. I said, I'll sponsor that. You're on the agenda. So I put her on the agenda, and that's where she was able to come and speak and offer that to the council. Anybody can contact one of the council members and say, hey, I'd like to bring this to the council. I think it's something that can improve the city and help the city and the council member can say, I'll sponsor that. Then they'll say, hey, I want to put this on the agenda. I'm sponsoring so and so to bring this and I'll say it's on the agenda. That's per the code of procedures for Kansas City that we adopted whenever we changed the codex in 2025.

So you get to dictate who can and can't speak after they have forgiven and sponsored, and you get to dictate who can and can't speak?

Come again?

After you get a sponsor from one of the council members.

If a council member tells me that they're sponsoring someone, then I put them on the agenda.

But you know, I just thought what you said.

No, that's not what I said. That's not what I said.

Is that what he said? That's what he said. Everybody heard you? So, you are the final say of who gets to speak.

You get the final say of who can and can't speak.

Correct? Could someone make a motion for a 10-minute executive session for not elected personnel, potential hires? TO INCLUDE THE ATTORNEY AND DEPUTY CITY CLERK, PLEASE. IT'S BEEN MOVED AND SECONDED.

ALL IN FAVOR? WE'LL RETURN TO 842.

Hello. I just love you.

Thank you.

I guess I need to speak to someone and see if I can. I know how ridiculous, but here we are. That's crazy that you have to ask if you can speak to people. When did they change that? I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you very much.

It's stopped, thank you.

you know

Yes, yes.

Yeah, that is perfect.

Thank you. I know, but I have people who are pretty good at it. I have people who are pretty good at it. I have people who are pretty good at it.

Are we proud?

Who sponsored that? I was back there on the .

All right.

uh Okay. Okay.

Okay. How big things can happen?

It's worse in here than it was at the other one. Take it back.

Take it back.

All right.

Should I followed you? That's crazy.

Okay, executive session ended. It was just a normal meeting, no action taken. If I can get somebody to motion for a ten minute executive session for attorney crime privilege, potential litigation to include the city attorney and deputy city clerk.

Make a motion for 10 minute executive session with attorney client privilege to include the attorney and the deputy city clerk.

I second. So moved and seconded. All in favor? We'll return at 8.

Thank you.

That's all right, I'll pay for you.

Where does that figure come from?

Like Chloe said, they're working on something.

They're doing something.

Always. .

So, if that's. Yeah, that's the worst thing. Thank you very much. I'm sorry.

We should hear about it.

We didn't do anything. We can't agree on anything else. No matter if you like. So. I'm trying to see if I can get a deal with you. I went through a lot of things. You should have told me. Do you remember our holiday? The 4th of July? I don't think you should have told me. I don't think you should have told me.

Thank you.

Executive session ended, resumed the normal meeting. I'm going to actually take it. Departmental reports.

August 1st through August 16th had 127 calls for service, 10 citations, 9 traffic stops, checked 9 fishing licenses, 2 arrests, 3 drug cases, 10 reports, and 16 call outs. We had five juvenile cases, one runaway, two theft calls, two domestics, two disturbances, one unattended death, one criminal damage for the more major stuff. This weekend I was able to finish doing several theft cases. One of those cases, which I believe is going to lead into another one being solved with the same individuals, I was able to get some stolen property recovered as well as a firearm. That's all I have unless you have any questions.

Good evening. I hope everybody's enjoying this evening. To start off with, four of us from the fire department attended a LP propane gas emergencies class in Amsterdam, Missouri. These classes are put on by FEMA, so we should get certification for these classes. They also have a lithium ion batteries class for electric vehicles coming up on the 30th that they have invited us to. um and again these classes are fema classes so they're all tied to our sid number through the fire department um i have not had any certified electricians get back with me yet about the electrical so if anybody knows of some certified electricians please have them get in touch with me so we can get this laundry room thing taken care of and get it done um the last thing i have is we have been in contact with iso the plan that we presented to them we have completed everything on our end of it so now the only thing we have to send them is any structure fire vehicle fire type runs that we have until october and then so we have all of our stuff completed on that end of it according to what they're telling us so that's all i have unless you guys have any questions

The interim solution is finding a city clerk, such as administrators, whatever needed. That contract is before you. I did send it to the attorney to look over. Sir, how does that look if we were to proceed with that $22,500? And in that I had a question also. Because the city clerk position is appointed by the mayor, And because such appointments cannot be on someone that is not a resident of the state of Kansas, per our city code, how does that play into them wanting to search the states around us and everything else for that? Because from my understanding, they wouldn't be able to be appointed until they were a resident of Kansas.

That's correct. Start first with the general format of the contract. I don't have any legal objection to it. It's pretty standard and I've seen interim solutions contracts in numerous jurisdictions and also the contracts that Mr. Hancock, who I believe is their president or CEO, has had with some of his previous places. So it's a pretty standard contract. The issue you raise is an important one because, and the answer to that is generally They'll need to make clear to the applicants that the job requires someone to live here. So one of two things happens. They either move here if there's available housing, or they may need to get you guys to give them a period of time to become a current resident. If that's not able to happen because it's a matter of your city code, you can either pass an ordinance to exempt that position out, or if necessary, you can even do a charter amendment to get out of, if there's a state requirement that you're worried about, we can try and charter out of that. your particular code is written. Some of them are restricted to the city, some to a county, some to surrounding counties, and that will affect the size of your pool. It is, for expert or professional issues like that, it's gonna be very difficult to find. I mean, how many qualified police chiefs do you have who live in town? You probably only have the one. Is he living in town? Yeah, so you probably only have the one, so cities run into this problem quite a bit. There are solutions to it. My general recommendation is that you work with them to find, well, the candidates will know it up front, but then work with them to find a candidate that you like and you believe serves your needs. And in that case, begin some negotiations with them and find out what you need to do or what you want to do to your city administrator. And it may include passing some additional ordinance changes, or it may include them moving here immediately. That's a decision you can make when you've decided what the candidates are and what you can find. As another general matter, there was an issue raised as to the, and it's been raised sort of here tonight as well, in terms of the Dave Kuntz, The bidding issue, and I just wanted to say that the as a practical matter there's no state of Kansas requirement that you. Dave Kuntz, put out jobs like this for bid, although I would say that the or even even put out this particular contract for bid it's generally a good idea, but there are very few players in this matter. There are also spending issues potentially with your procurement policy and the somewhat unsatisfying solution to that issue is that you have rules in your procurement policy and you are the governing body so the way the phrase goes is the governing body can't break its own law. If you were to passed and say tonight you were to pass the the spending limit requiring bids and then the very next item on your agenda would be to accept this particular contract without additional bids that's not you breaking your own law that's you changing your mind because there's no state requirement that you do in a different way that is an not a satisfying answer sometimes but it is the fact under the law as it applies to the city so other than that is there anything else mr. mayor you need me to cover in terms of the contract itself and how that works no I think that covers the legal side what I will put forth so that everybody is aware of is that the proposed contract is a 16 week long process to find someone

Is there an estimation at the earliest? Yes.

So, what is the criteria to be a city clerk? Capability so, instead of spending the 22,000 dollars in the view. Why couldn't we just send Morgan to get some. Education more education and understanding. And it'd be a whole lot less money and just put her as our city clerk since she's already there.

you know also to the attorney on that state statute 75 37 39 does it not state that a city of a third class does not have to have a spending limit that is only for state? It doesn't apply to government agencies?

That's true. It's not the statute you quoted I was talking about. It's more of the purchasing policy that was passed by the governing body. And I only raise that because the issue was brought earlier about why don't we put out more bids and that sort of thing. That's not a requirement of the state for this sort of an issue.

So it's something that we have in place? Is that an ordinance, a resolution? What is that?

It's the purchasing policy. And I was not here when it was passed. So my understanding is it was put in place by a previous board. But understand that that simply acts as a guideline. It's a requirement for your employees and public works and those sorts of things, but when the governing body decides to deviate from its adopted rule, that's you deciding to deviate from your rule, which is not illegal, it's not improper, it's not even unwise necessarily. It is simply a matter of you can't make decisions that tie the hands of a future body, even yourself. if you decide that it's in the city's best interest to go ahead and accept this particular bid, and I'm not making any comment about the quality of the bid or whether it's wrong or right. I simply bring it up because there was some question from the public earlier and I wanted to make that clear so we're on the front end of it. You are perfectly capable of voting to accept this contract without needing to get additional bids if it's what you want to do in the best interest of the city. And that's a political decision you guys, I believe, have already made. You've adopted the contract. So just to make sure there wasn't an issue later as to whether it was appropriate to adopt it.

So the spending policy itself was put into place while Alfred Whitley was mayor. It's a policy.

Can you provide that to us and that we are aware of these things? Yeah, because I know that the state says that we do not have all that. That is government, many governments.

To answer your question, the City Clerk is responsible for maintaining the official records, fiscal documents, proceedings, and clerical work of the City. The Clerk performs all duties as required by the City Code, Kansas State, and the Governing Body. The City Clerk shall be custodian of all City records, books, files, papers, documents, and other personal effects belonging to the City and not properly pertaining to any other office. Carry on all official correspondence of the City. attend and keep a record of proceedings of all regular and special meaning to the governing body, enter every appointment of office and date thereof in the journal, enter or place each ordinance of the city in the ordinance books after its passage, publish all ordinances except those appropriating money and such resolutions, notices, and proclamations as may be required by law or ordinances, prepare and keep suitable fiscal records according to general accepted accounting principles, assist in preparing the annual budget, audit all claims against the city for goods or services rendered for the risk consideration of the governing body, his or her accounts shall properly show the amounts paid from any fund of the city and the cash balance existing in each fund, keep up Keep an accurate account of all bonds issued by the city. Keep a record of all special assessments. Have custody of the corporate seal of the City and shall affix the same to all official copies of all ordinances, contracts, and other documents required to be authenticated. Have power to administer oaths for all purposes pertaining to the business and affairs of the City. Keep suitable files of all such oaths required to be deposited in his or her office. The city clerk is designated as a withholding agent of the city for the purpose of the Federal Revenue Income Act and shall perform the duties required of holding agents by said act or any other act requiring withholdings from the compensation of any city officer or employee. The clerk shall perform such other duties as may be prescribed by the governing body or the Kansas statutes. So that is everything listed for the city clerk. training itself or there are levels of clerk within our pay scale that has you know clerk that initiates and then a clerk that's certified a clerk cannot get certified until they've been deputy city clerk or clerk for at least two years and but there are other trainings that can be gone to and so forth. There is a potential for even going and shadowing other clerks in the area as a training process also to learn how other communities do certain things that could even improve the way Pleasanton does that thing. In my opinion, the 16 weeks that it would take to spend the $22,000, I believe would be more than adequate time for someone that we already have apply to learn how to do it all without that expenditure in and of itself. So that is a potential way that the council could go also. If the council desires and we feel that Morgan Watts is capable of that, I would be prepared to appoint her if I could get consent of council.

Morgan, have you reconciled the books for July and August? Me and Jay Locker still work on that.

I know that a lot of the work that's gone in with Morgan and our city treasurer has been catching up from the bills that got behind. We are caught up at this point with everything and understand all that and understanding the program that we're using has been the biggest thing because of the nine or 10 layers that it has of processes of doing things. And they're just about at a point of getting to that reconciliation portion. Once they understand that, I believe it would be something that would be second nature to them.

I make a motion to move more lots to the city clerk position.

What I would need is consent. So I would need to appoint and then get consent there. I could go ahead and write. I request consent of council to appoint Morgan Watts to city clerk.

Before we do that, I'd like to call a second session for a personal job performance. I'd like a personal job performance with the attorney and council and mayor, please.

How long?

Ten minutes.

Ten-minute executive?

Yep.

Thank you. Thank you. And I've been wanting to take one of her classes. They last for a weekend.

And the first two that she did were one weekend stories. I couldn't, so I just saw her the other day and I thought,

Not me. No. Thank you.

It was just for me.

All right. Don't be rude to me. So I just got a number. I just want to do one.

Then I'll pay my surgery.

I'm going to have to do some construction papers.

Everything else here. It's just. It's already. So. So. So. That's crazy. To the city. And he's on the fire department. So the fire department could do that. And he says it's only $6,000.

I said, well, we can raise money. So what they, there is another, somebody else.

that he suffered, but only . It's actually for everything. Yeah.

That's that's that's why we were in the back. Excuse me. I would share that question. The SharePoint is more effective.

So I need to get a couple of you guys.

Oh, okay. I'm so hungry.

Okay. I'm sorry?

Is there an actual meeting for the manager as a separate project? I thought about it. I thought about it. I said I could try. And I did. I'm trying. He's not going to remember that. Middle loop.

Executive session into the normal, no action taken. I've got a few details to make sure that we have our time straight. Probably should have said this. So, I'm going to make a motion for another 10 minute executive session.

So, we're not electing personnel potential appointments.

My bar is already on the street. Beautiful.

Well, actually, I gave it to my sister. I don't know if she gave it back to you. I don't have a cord.

My phone's new. Okay, we'll work. I know you do. Thanks. I'm just saying I can't read it.

Did you make something back there?

It looks like you're ready to serve food now.

It's going to be lining up. Check the fridge. Maybe there's some ice cream left.

Oh, come on, I see something in there. What's in there?

Ketchup. Oh, pickles.

Is that stealing?

Serves food and bacon. I mean, no, but I'll come with you. You will? I will.

Tell me when. Have you ever been to Binghamton? Pickles.

Maybe that's why that drawer's in there. we're gonna be here till midnight you might as well just talk us all in

Put the link in here and be like, you're going to have to watch it.

That's.

It's there somewhere. Yeah. Yeah.

But I was like.

It's hard Oh, yeah, I didn't see him.

They have a meter.

It's the one right in front of us. It makes me sad.

It makes me sad. You were charging 5,000. It took me 10 years to get it. I just hadn't seen him take any water from there. He's going to cry.

Like, I take them, I take them out and I let them run around a little bit as far as eventually I had to go to work.

So I had to.

Right now, because he's getting ready for this.

He's getting things. I've had him for a week and a half because I have to go to the office and I just put it in there and put a stage in here.

We have to load the cage.

Get it down there.

I can't remember exactly what city it is. It's by the sun. Nine hours. And we're all up.

Because I've been there a million times. And everyone makes fun of me for it, because that's who raised me.

Thank you.

No, why? I live. Ready?

No, come on. Emotionally. What do you think? I can't believe you made me laugh. I was upset.

It's a frozen meal.

And mom likes frozen food.

So I got her one to keep in her freezer.

I remember seeing when we're not there to cook together. Oh, hey. Oh, yeah. She doesn't though.

That's true, that's true.

Are you trying to break the wall? Thank you.

The executive session ended. No action taken. Resuming normal meeting.

Thank you.

Okay. We were discussing the interim solutions clerk bill there, the $22,500 on that. Much debate, much back and forth, much everything. I would like to see if I can get consent of council to appoint a city clerk. I'd like to get consent of council to appoint Connor Marshall as the city clerk for the city of Pleasanton.

I make a motion to appoint Connor Marshall as- Consent. Oh, sorry. A motion to consent. A motion to consent. Connor Marshall to city clerk.

It's been moved to consent to appoint Connor Marshall as city clerk for the city of Pleasanton. Is there a second? I second. It's been seconded. Any discussion? All in favor? So moved.

So Mr. Mayor, what do we do about the 22?

So what we would need is I would need council to make a motion to withdraw support for the contract with the.

Where I made that motion how to control that.

It's been moved and seconded to withdraw support for the spending of the $22,500 with InterSolutions. Any discussion? Yes, I do.

Look, for legal matters, can we vote since we didn't vote on it? I'm just asking for legal.

The motion is new on... Yeah, drawing it. So they would be able to vote. Yes.

Yes. As I understand the motion, it's a motion to basically not reconsider, but to, to direct the mayor not to sign the contract, which was previously approved for signature. Is that correct? Right. Then yes, everybody who's present. Yes, that's perfectly, perfectly good question. Yes.

Basically, your stance hasn't changed. You're still against it. And I was voting to. All in favor? Any opposed to the drawing? So moved. Okay, we said at the last meeting on the roads that we would determine what roads specifically to start overlaying. Did the council get a chance to drive some of the roads and come up with something beyond just the east side or did you come up with something else?

We're coming up with that K dot grant for Ash Street and Cedar Street. Yes. I would say we jump right over to the other side of Cedar, uh, 4th Street and continue along with Cedar Street around. Do as many roads as we can possibly do over on that section to complete that area of town entirely. On the northwest side?

Yes.

Going up from Cedar and that area? Yes. And possibly putting in 14th Street for Ash going west.

Is that Sycamore too? Because Sycamore needs done.

Yes, Sycamore.

Because I would like to see Sycamore. Laurel.

Is that what you guys live on is Laurel?

Can that grant, can those people do the grant too? Does Ash and Sycamore, I mean Ash and Cedar? Or does that have to be bidded out?

What do you mean?