City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone. Are we gonna Oh, did you see that? Trying to hit Monich with my fork. I won't use it now. Um, good evening. Welcome to the work session tonight. We are going to go from probably 6 to about 6:45 650 and I believe all of our topics are budget tonight. So I will hand it off to you Rhonda.

Perfect. I can take that. Um thanks everybody for being here tonight. We appreciate the extra time. We're this is kind of the session that kicks off the budget for the new year. So for 2027, I'm hoping to put out 27 and 28 uh together. Um, this is the time where we're going to have two primary things we want to do today. Let me get over closer.

Actually, it's good to figure out that's going to work. There we go. So, we have two main goals tonight. We're going to talk about priorities and then we're going to talk about um the schedule. We have a work session plan for every meeting in May and in June. Oh, you have a hard copy of this in your binder as well.

How about this?

We're nothing if not flexible, right? Um So the these are our two uh goals to get accomplished tonight. I wanted to do a little budget 101 with you and talk about how much information I have so far on assessed valuation which is we have the numbers preliminary numbers from Johnson County which shows the assessed valuation now at 168 almost $169 million. I don't have any numbers yet for Miami County. So, looking around the table, if any of you have gotten something from Miami County, please pass it on. I have reached out to them and asked them to send it to me, and I'm sure they will very shortly, but the final numbers are due from Johnson, from the counties, um, by June the 5th or June the 15th, and they usually come a little bit early. So, we're looking at, if Miami County is unchanged, a $226 million assessed valuation, which gives us a mill levy worth about $226,000. And that's this year that's a 10.64 increase in valuation. So, then you often ask me about, well, how much of that's new construction? and how much of that's on the back of the existing um properties. And this gives you an idea that about 8% of that new valuation number comes from brand new construction in single family or commercial and then the remainder of it comes from not new um projects. What was the number 147 about 18,

right?

I also um gave this to you in a notebook. This is a book I'm asking you to bring to each work session. I'm going to add to it each time. Um, I wanted you to have things in your hands so that if you can engage with a taxpayer, voter or citizen that you would have on hand references um for your your use. This is a just a restatement here of the mill levy. Since 2019, we've seen a 4.7 mil decrease at the city and in the last five years it's been 1.351. But this gives you that history. So if you engage with the public um these are the published budgets and final mill levies for this period of time. And then this just gives you the mill levy is down and relatively flat and pretty consistent. And it shows you on the other hand how assessed valuation is. So actually I'm gonna go back one. I'm missing something here. So I did the math and apparently didn't put in my presentation that when you take the combination of this portion of the increase of assessed valuation and you keep our mill levy the same, we're looking at about $400,000 worth of additional tax revenue to the city. So that I just want you to have that as a factor to understand where we're starting on the top line is maybe about a $400,000 increase in revenue if we don't change. construction.

I don't have any data from

just to give a rough estimate. I think roughly people I talk to it's about 3 to 5% as far as I know I was say 10 to 15 makes sense Miami county used to have a meeting and they would invite the mayor to the meeting I have not heard about I usually get told about it and they hand out a book and all those things and that hasn't happened the last two years at least the book never trickles down and so I have reached out to them and said, "Hey, do you have this detail?" Um, so I like to have that historically so we know what happened on both sides of the county line. So, what that brings us to tonight is thinking about the next time we get together, we're going to talk about all the pieces of revenue and I hope to have the Miami County information from there. But the thing that we want to talk about from here is what are the priorities for this budget? What why do where do we want the money spent? When we're I'd like to show the buckets that get filled up based on priorities. I like to do priority based budgeting. So, we spend the money where we think it's important and then build um from there. You talked about priorities early in 2026 when you took office, which was great. And I sent out some notes to all of you about what had been said at that about trails and community involvement and some things like that. And I kind of gleaned from that these topics up here. And some of these were on the list for last

year. Some of them come up like bikes and trails and things like that. I also um took a shot with AI to be perfectly honest and said, "Hey, look around. What a budget priorities in a growing city in Kansas and that kind of thing. And I have shared that information with you in this book as well. Um I'm proud to say that we're working on those things where they talk about your infrastructure, they talk about your um utilities and about engaging the population and bike trails and amenities and things like that. So from that I added some more things on here. I think mill levy is important to this council and so I think we ought to talk about how that gets prioritized in budget. I think that there's a the community is very interested in smart growth and your zoning updates and making a plan for our community. Um I'm selfish finance director. For me, reserve management is very important. That helps our borrowing ability and our rating. So, I want to make sure we don't lose focus. And this is a people business and employees are the largest expenditure we make in a year. So, I didn't think we could have a list of priorities and not at least address employees. So, these are just proposed topics. And then from there, it's up to the council and the staff to support you in setting those priorities so you know which where we want to focus our investment from the budget.

I leave the floor to you. I mean, obviously my whole time up here, it's always been mil driven and really actual dollar value. I think we did a good job of that last year

of making sure we're not just talking about mil levy. Talk about the way people actually on their tax bill. So, that's going to be important. Um, obviously, I think Lane and I were talking the other day kind of sidewalks is still something that we've talked about and hasn't actually happened. So, we'll probably talk about that at the meeting a little bit tonight. But, one thing that I brought up, and I don't know what your guys' thoughts are, but I was driving through and I found some spots where like there's sidewalks and there's big gaps of where there isn't. Maybe we could fill those in and that would be short-term areas that we can make some progress that we haven't really made a whole lot of progress on. I know Jacob and Allison are working on the ones down here and hopefully we'll get some sort of update tonight on that. But those are things I'm thinking outside of over here. It's really tough right this part of town. But in the parts that do have sidewalks, there's some areas where maybe we didn't do a good job of following up in the past and there was a sidewalk that didn't get put in. So there's no connectivity and people are jumping in the street to get around or kids and whatnot. So, that's one area I'd like to look at. The bike trail thing, I've kind of got a volunteer group that's working on that. So, I think that'll be something. And I I was going to introduce Mike to somebody at Johnson County Trails that reached out about wanting to get more involved with Spring Hill through the Johnson County portion. So, hopefully that'll make it so that we don't have to pay for it as much. We can just kind of give them some guidance of what we're looking for. Um, and at the end of the day, I mean, that those are the main things. streets. I think we've already decided we want to keep that same budget every year or or similar to it to what we've been doing. And I'll be excited to see how this year's street projects work out. But, uh, I mean, at the end of the day, it's still kind of similar business. Just a matter of how we're going to shift that money around each of these. Is there anything employeewise? I know we've we've kind of had reserve employees in the on the books for a while that we haven't filled. I know

there's quite a few positions that we're looking at trying to fill. Now, what what is a absolute need right now? Typically, it's usually in the police area. Police department, we've always talked about we need need. I think we've kind of caught up a little bit. He didn't like that one. Hear that cough? But, uh, so, you know, where else have we Community Development? I feel like we've added quite a few people, which has been good. And so, streets has always been a struggle just to even find people.

So I know Jacob's worked hard at that. So that would be my question to the staff. What and so and let's hold off. That would be my only question to the staff is what is an absolute need you you all see? What do you everybody over here? What needs do you see or wants that you have that we'd like to see? Well, zoning updates. I mean, Mike and I have met multiple times about that. get just getting us into the uh at least the 2023 2024 zone codes and get that taken care of. That's big thing for me. And then streets obviously because we do I mean if you drive around uh we do have some streets that need that got chip and sealed that may or may not have gotten the proper prep

and the cracks that were an inch wide are now six inches wide kind of thing. So that's a big thing for me. Okay. My biggest

I would say probably bikes, trails, sidewalks DJ, you and I have agreed on levy since I started here. Every year qualitative down reliance on property taxes always start looking at lots of things like usces that create jobs on the top streets. I feel like we haven't really mentioned it before, but as we have these higher quality streets and maint costs stacking up streets for a higher operating budget at the beginning of the year. We have stay on top of each street as we Christian, you have anything to add?

Um, yeah, I would just say it's been a a topic that we've talked about for a while. Our citizens are passionate about it for sure. I would also say community development. I think that drives a lot of things. As our community grows, then you know, the rest of the needs are going to fall underneath that. been a big proponent of law enforcement as our city grows. You know, thinking about um we have a great city and it's safe, but there are times where we got to make sure it's protected. So, I've been proponent of that. And I would say lastly, the wastewater issue growth all kinds of complexities and that's one that we definitely need to be focused on. I think the one consistent we heard was Milvy. So Rhonda, good luck.

I am I am unafraid. Uh but outside of that, anybody here, we have all the department heads here who is like I really need something and I don't have it because that's I know something that even PJ has brought up before like let us know then we can it now is the time because then we can figure out how to do it. So who out there is in dire need? Don't be afraid, Mike. You look like you are.

This is the opportunity, putting it on the radar, keeping it out there and open so we can communicate it. Jacob really embraced this part of the conversation last year. Army need help. So by the time you're not strategically we're looking at certain positions within the city uh it currently resumes for we've also talked about u bringing city attorney functions inside the Uh so I think those will be two things that you know we're if if the governing body is receptive to that then then we can move pretty quickly on that. I think the PD chief and I have talked about as we grow and the geographic size of the city expands having the ability to have additional officers. I think probably the request will be two again.

Um you know we stay in that one to two range per year. We won't be so far behind in the next five years. Uh but we're going up I don't know approximately 800 to thousand people a year and our boundaries are growing. It's going to be that's probably going to be our biggest priority. Uh Jacob's area I mean we all know that's going to be one too. As lane miles increase, we're going to need equipment and people to do that. We're pretty lean throughout the the entire city, but I think community developments, thank you to the governing body. We've really had a big step up there. Uh engineering, we've had a real nice increase there with with staffing we needed. So, I think we we have not very many what we call them reserve positions or kind of on the whole, but I think we have about one of those that we've kind of held open to That's kind of a combination HRADMIN assistant. U and that's something we we look at and see if that's needed within our area or if that those funds need to go to uh PD or public works or somewhere else where it's much more need. So we we try to look at that on a monthly and annual basis to see where that fits the best. We just don't want to throw somebody in a sp just throw them in that spot. Absolutely.

Jacob, is there any big equipment needs? I know we did obviously the water pressure truck which seems to be working out pretty well. What else? I know you talked about some other big purchases that we looked at.

Yeah, we've got those, you know, slated in, you know, in the capital budget in the coming years. A couple of the couple of more immediate needs. Um, one is a as a dump truck, kind of not just a dump truck, but a um dump truck and plow truck set up. We have we have one of those. We need probably need three ultimately, but there's definitely need for one. Now, the other thing that we talked about is a a dedicated pothole patching truck that uh that will let us be more efficient and effective on that. So, uh, over the next couple of years, and those are those are both, you know, big ticket items, 350 to $450,000 each. So, those are those are big ticket items. We are we are really though starting to reach a point where we talked about staffing. Um, we've got, you know, the equipment that we have it state differently. We don't have the staff to operate more equipment. Um, that uh so it doesn't make sense to have, you know, to buy hundred, you know, equipment at three, four, $500,000 and have it sit because we don't have any money to operate it. So, you know, it's it's either it's either off on on the equipment, you know, just continue to run lean or it compounds because then we're talking about expense on both personnel side and the equipment side. But that's that's kind of the spot that I feel like we're at now.

I mean, I'd probably veer on the side of adding the people first, getting them up and running, and then adding the equipment. So, if our plan is, hey, in a year or two, we're looking at a pothole truck, then we get the people, at least one on board that would run it or two people that would run it, get them on board so that when we go to buy it in 28, they're ready to go. I think you did a pretty good job. It was perfect timing when the water guys moved or the water guys moved over to streets and they took over the the new truck. I would sim I like that process. So we had people kind of in place that could train on it right as it came. They knew how to use everything and they're kind of the point people on it and then they could probably teach others as retirements happen or people leave and whatot. So I think that's how I'd like to see it happen. I don't know anybody else's thought up here is that's how I would think we'd want to probably operate

rather than do it all one time like you said like it's not really worth it to buy the equipment first. I think also in looking at people like what you just mentioned about retirement so just planning for the future I don't know did you all have a succession plan or something to where um you know I mean it's not right but um I do think that's important as we're growing and then I was also going to say I really support what you're saying the infrastructure as you grow. If you don't have that place as you're growing, it's just not get as far as you want. Definitely automation in your systems and stuff like that. Great investment.

That's sort of what I meant it. I didn't want to list every single possible function that we do. When I think about general government, it is one of those things to me where we've made really great strides this year and invested money where it needed to be. We've spent the last few months absolutely cleaning up our infrastructure and I don't want us to step backwards. I want us to step forward. So I you'll see money in this budget for projects that take us to another level. Um whether it's better management of our data or better systems. Um and I think of like zoning that's going to require an IT investment I believe to get everything they want for zoning and and available the way it should be. There are investments like that we'll need to make and I think they're justified in the conversation that you're having as a priority to the city. I think it's a whole list of priorities there is pretty pretty well.

Well, to that point, you know, you were talking about succession planning eventually. I would like to see hiring a junior somebody that's got seven to 10 years of experience. that could be trained to be on that role. But right now they can take on some of the project management responsed with the inspection. So, just somebody that can kind of help come in and fill the gaps. So, eventually I'd like to have that position. I don't know if that's a next year thing, but

I'd like to see, and this is kind of budget, not budget. I don't know what everybody's opinion here, but I think every department head should go through and write a succession plan for themselves,

what their next 10 to 20 years looks like and what that looks like for the city, what you think the person that was going to take over for you whenever you're gone. Um, I think one it tells you, it puts a little bit in your face like, oh yeah, I guess I'm getting to the point where I need to think about this or I'm 20 years out. You can bring people in, but it's going to be 10 years before 15 years before, right? And so or you know the city's not going to be big enough for me and I'll move somewhere else and that's okay too. I don't have a problem with that. I never would put that against anybody. I'm like okay let's get the most out of you that we can here. So I think if we do that with start with the directors doing that I think that would be really good even with you since you're the only only one department. At what point will you need somebody else over there assistant all that kind of stuff or can you share it with an assistant? Those are the type of things that I'd like to see kind of written out by each department head because then for us I think we can say okay well all right we really need to look here because we should have probably done that with community development before and I know that the previous director told me that hey need to think about succession for me and then we kind of were at without one for a while we got lucky with Mike brought him in pretty quick and he's been working well but you know it doesn't always go that way and u I think if we can start putting those pieces and then from there we'll go down and say whoever's below you what is your plans what would you like to do where would you like to be see yourself and then we can start building those people up to make sure that they're ready for the next positions as they come up and then there and it's a lot easier for us to we don't have that big stop gap where we have to retrain somebody you know get somebody back into it

reality is we're not subject to know what's to the next person. So for us whether we pass it on whoever takes our seat or not I think that gets like I think it's a great point. Hey maybe we needed we look at it and say this is how they would spend their time. I'm ready for it because or I think I can go one more year but next year we're really at it. Like I said, PD's always been really good at that because they have to. They kind of they're kind of forced into it where community development for a long time was like, "No, no, we can handle it." And really, they were probably over, you know, overboard with things. So, same with Jacob. You know, I know we've talked in the past with your predecessor and he was always like, "I need more people, but I put the positions out and nobody applies. So, how do we get there?" And I don't feel like we've had that issue since you've been here. So, if it's like, "Hey, we're ready for one or two more." then let's, you know, look at it and see what we can afford and how we can do it. So that's what I'd like to see maybe before our next session so that we have an idea of what directors think they're going to need. And I would do it at least over the next five years. Project out this is what I'm going to need in the next five years because really with the state and how they're changing and those guys are kind of the wild west up there and they talked about making us do budgets two or three years out, it's really tough that happens. So I think if we start structuring that way it's gonna be good.

Yeah, it was a good idea. Thanks Kristen because I didn't even think about it right now. Well, I was also gonna say but if you do have open a recruiter when you start getting a lot of positions open. They had some experience in recruitment where you post your jobs, how you know how you message that things like that. So I just

I'd like to tag on here and if it's out of school link or something, I'll leave it. I think it's a wonderful thing that now we have to worry about the next um level or or the worry about the depth of our bench. Um Lane brought up having an administrative person shared with the he and and HR. That's really really important. There's a whole lot of work that goes to other departments or or employees or directors or something to get done because they don't have support staff. So we and year after year that's the position we don't fill and now we filled it in another department because that's where we really needed the person. They sacrifice each time. Then I go to another step. I see the stress in department directors because I interact with them differently than other people. And I am thinking now it's time to have an assistant public works director and assistant city administrator. We need to start looking at the depth of our bench as well because this group of workh horses here will continue to work and work and work and do as hard as hard as they can when we really sometimes need to step back and say do we have enough leadership? Do we have the and then you got to have succession planning that'll probably point this out where what would we do if Mr. Massie didn't come back and how would we handle that and those kind of things. So, I I hope we c I'm glad to hear you say that. Let's do succession planning. I have that in my department and it's an insurance policy. It's a wonderful thing, but we have lots of we have positions I think we need to start looking at that once upon a time would have been an absolute luxury. And I think we're getting to the point they're becoming a need.

One of the great things about where we're at is the community is growing. You can look across the state of Kansas and the majority of cities in the state of Kansas are not growing. And so we we're not unique, but it's nice where we're at. Uh some even some of the school districts around us are are shrinking. We're we're kind of I use this analogy. We're kind of that awkward teenager stage right now. We're we're we're growing but we're not Yeah. We're a tween kind of in between, you know, with 58 employees, you know, and, you know, on our way to how whatever that magic number is over the next decade, probably be in the 70s or something. Uh, and and trying to fit the right people in there. But you're absolutely right. There's it may not be right this year, but probably in the next two to five, there's going to be some asks that we need to have to make sure that that succession planning is uh that there's that ease of going in from one person to the next person even if that person isn't the the one that's going to be the director or the the manager or you know whatever that position is.

So that's my major ask is that I don't want to see it at this meeting like if this doesn't happen we're falling off cliff. We need to know that years ahead of time so we can be prepared. Well, then I'll step up. Here he comes.

Slap me down later on. But I do think an immediate need, and when I talk about immediate, I mean, you know, in the next five years, is a building. Um, as we continue to grow, I can tell you now that I'm going to run out of space pretty quickly. Um, just out of natural growth. And we don't there's a lot of things that we can talk about and and I don't want to just say I need a I need a building but I know public works is also in need of a facility that fits their needs too. So, I know there's multiple needs when it comes to facilities, but I think I see that as an immediate need, not tomorrow, but for a lot of safety reasons, for a lot of efficiency reasons, being effective, how we deliver services and these kind of things, I think it would be very good to start planning out when does that become a reality. And so, I just bring that up here because you're asking, hey, what's the be pretty every time we ask.

It's a big ass though. I know it's an I know it's a big it's a big expense. Well, and just for everybody here because I know there's a lot of folks, what was the dollar amount on the last one we looked at? Uh about 25 to 30. Yeah. And that was Yeah. couple million. So, it's going to be more now. And we've tal I've talked to Lane about this, but

I think there needs to be a community um community center portion to it. Um, I'm not a big fan of employee buildings without benefit to the community. So, to me, I think it needs to be kind of a mixed use if we're going to do something. I know we're going to have to. So, that's where we need to look at it. I brought up a year or so ago trying to do it almost like a bond issue like the school districts do for their schools. I think if we want to really have it very quickly, I say we do something like that and see if if people are willing. We did it with the pool, I believe. And however we tie it to whether property tax or sales tax or something, but I think that's something we look into more. I know Spencer, did you ever look into it to see what viability that had?

Uh complicated. I don't have a great short answer for you. We've looked into it on the back. typical lawyer. No short answer,

but yeah. So, that's something I think and I don't know what everybody's thought is up here. I think if it's going to be quicker, we put it up to the community and say, "Hey, is this something you want to add to your tax bill in one way or another?" Um, I don't mind the sales tax portion. I know it's there's been a lot of rumors about the pool back and forth whether there's supposed to be multiple phases and stuff like that. So, that one has kind of been not the the best. I know it's worked out well for Miami County. We get what a half million every five years or something like that off of their sales tax. So our sales tax is already pretty high. If we start to get some new development, there's probably be CS involved. So then there's sales tax there. So pretty soon you're hitting double digits and people are like what the heck are we paying for? So uh there's some just different ways to look at it. So I don't know if there's a once maybe Spencer if you can look into it a little bit more and give us kind of options and then we can talk through options. But I think that's the quickest way to do it. Personally, um I just don't see unless we have some huge blow up of a bunch of industrial that we get that is going to have this, you know, huge impact on us right away. It's it's going to be a tough go to get 30 million bucks for out of a general budget. Wastewater treatment plant is a little different. It's on its own. It's kind of self-sustaining. So we have different options there that we're going with, but you know that dollar amount's huge. And so that's where it's do we look at just the PD and or we you know and do we look at going and trying to revamping some other building in town or this building or whatever it is. So I'd like to start with looking into what options we have as far as kind of voter decision base and then from there we can kind of look agree with you. As much as I hate to say that, I think it's I think five years is going to be rough. If we keep growing and we get to we have one or two officers a year, it's going to be tough

to stay where you're at. I know some of you tour if you haven't love to have you tour that and probably public works and I think it'll give a whole new perspective on what chief is saying about safety, you know, taking through the lunchroom to be booked. I just think you start using that outside jail.

I hope that you'll do that same tour here, right? Especially when here in the civic center when I don't go in Mike's space very often, but adding new employees in there, there's no warm room left. Like in my group, I don't I can't put person in um you talked about an IT or city attorney position, but we're going to have to take some of the rec center part of this building to do things like that. And that's what we need to do. That's how we'll do it. But it's people might be surprised at how tightly packed we are in every building. It looks like a big building, but the majority of it gymnasium

cafeteria. Let's see as we continue to grow and get more attention and development staff how we are updating.

Yeah. Well, no. And there's days that I've been here for like, oh crap, this one was booked up. Can we go in here? So, I It can be tough. It's uh it's not the most ideal. That's for sure. So, it's a good problem. What else? Anybody else have anything to add at this point in this particular section? If not, do you have anything else that we need to go over?

I want to go through the list here. Just talk. I took notes and looked at kind of in a voting way that oh, this was mentioned by different people and things like that. Parks was not mentioned at all. Okay, just just saying that. I think we have to fix the connectivity. Okay.

Before we I mean, we can add parks. Like I said, I've got a small group and actually a scout that's working on a little bike park now over by the middle school. I think the connectivity is going to be a bigger issue. And then once we have that, then it's easier to talk about what are we going to do parks and add on so on so forth. We didn't talk a lot about community amenities. It's more of an outcropping of more community development that if we get more restaurants or a new library or whatever, um those will be an outcropping of something else is kind of how I took that away. just the priority.

Well, and I think one thing that at least community development and I know Lane and I have talked a lot about is holding the new developments to much higher standards than what we have in the past, which is going to make it a lot less on us to for these sidewalks and trails and things like that. So, I know uh Mike's been doing a really good job. He's actually taken over some of that and uh with SP him and Spencer work with everybody on development agreements and so and some of them are pushing back. I mean, to be quite honest, they've worked here for a while. A lot of times their engineer has or somebody else. We never had to do this before, but yeah. Well, we're not we're kind we're a little bit bigger now.

Yeah. So, it's, you know, just a bigger city. We're gonna have some more needs requests and we're gonna have to do it. So, uh, so that's why sometimes we'll see things that pop up that maybe don't happen right. We pull back, but like Allison, thanks. I saw them digging up that sidewalk today over there. I know I called was kind of giving landing here full of like seen these flags out here for weeks and they haven't done anything. I did the Bill Peter on and they uh and they started digging it today. They had planned on digging today. Oh, did they? Okay. So, it just worked out. I'm going to say it was my phone call.

I'm going to use that. But, uh, yeah. So, I think we're just trying to be a little bit more on top of that. And I think that's going to actually alleviate some of these deals here. If we can be that way, it's going to push I mean, we're going to have that time frame where we lose or lose developments. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. The right priorities.

Yeah. The other one that wasn't discussed a lot was economic development. Um, I know PJ mentioned that specifically in his uh comments. I feel like that comes from it kind of like community development. It's it's both sides of that uh that need and that that then will bring us amenities and more money for parks and and all those kinds of things. Is there anything that I don't have on this list you want on this list? I think with the zoning I think we Just look at that as codes and zoning.

I was going to say that you get the comp plan done this year, early part of next year, it typically follows would be an implementation strategy which could involve economic development parks open space master plan and honestly will involve a a zoning code update service pretty out of date and um the formatting that we offer online is keeping up with neighboring communities that have an electronic code that is published by a service and you search keywords and things like that. The more we want to attract kind of development we want in the types of developers, we have to make our process as clear and transparent and navigable as possible with updated codes. It makes their their job easier. They don't have to spend more on consulting fees to get their projects approved. So the faster we can get them to market with their developments is better.

Yeah. I think there's a mix of telling them what they need to know up front that makes us easy to work with. Not we don't need to be easy to work with by being lenient. I think it's just yeah the communication up front. So if we can include that and that's where kind of falls back to the IT stuff. We're going to have it investment that goes into that that requires that is going to require us to to put some money into it so that we have those out there. Yeah, I think I think the economic development is without saying. I mean, it's we're always I think I feel like all of us are that's always top of mind or it's like what we see that first dominant fall.

I think that falls too with smart growth. We're getting the right things in the right places and right updates and all those things. So,

I have a question. Um, so we had all those surveys have have an opportunity to come in all those utilized in terms of growision terms of That's what I would think it would be, right? It's it's taking into context of what the citizens have all those. I'm not trying to like pin it on anybody. I'm just

Well, I think that's part of the comp plan that we're getting ready to start back up. So, we're utilizing that data. Yeah. So, we're going to take everything that we already have and then the new company will come in, take that kind of pick up where it left off. Um I don't think we actually ever got to like a like I didn't see the one that we even had, but it was there's future use really that that data is in the in their report out. So yeah, so we'll basically take all that but we didn't get a ton. Remember we were not getting great feedback last time around. So this time I know Oh, it was crazy. Yeah. And I think so this time from what we've talked about is meeting with every HOA trying to set up different group clusters of neighborhoods over here that are not HOAs.

Yeah. And figuring out how to get out in front of people even if they don't even that we could just call it whatever kind of meet up with the city to try to get feedback because yeah, it was just such dismal and we had and they tried. I mean, it just wasn't it just didn't really ever come to fruition when it came to that. So, yeah. So, that's definitely part of what we're doing now. Yeah.

Yeah. But I would say we haven't been able to use any of that information yet towards decisions, unfortunately. If you don't have other priority conversation, um just a quick thing, the next section in your book is actually the presentation that's on the 7 o'clock agenda um on a quarterly review. And so some of the things you've talked about, other revenues and things that's coming here in a probably an hour or something like that. Good. This I really like these budget work sessions. I like that we talk like this and it's not a presentation and and that kind of thing. Um then my like I said at the beginning of the meeting, my plan is to have a work session before every regular council meeting in May and June. The next one is revenue. The one after that's expense and the one after that would be the capital plan. This is your budget and your decision in the end. So I want it to meet your needs. So if you you can at any time say I want more on this. let's have another work session. You can say, I already feel like I don't think that'll be enough. Let's plan some in between. Um, we try to keep your extraneous meetings to a minimum. You're used to meeting on Thursdays. Let's meet early. Um, last year we did some at lunchtime. So, I just want to make sure it's meeting your needs, that you're getting lots of information and getting to ask questions and and able to engage with the public. So, my plan is to have an a work session for the next four weeks. Would you like to see anything different at this point or do you want to start working through and then see how we're doing?

I I think this one was fine. I think revenue is probably okay for one meeting. I think with what we've asked of the directors, the expense is probably going to need to be more than one. Okay. Because I would like each one to go through when they're talking about their expenses, also that succession plan because I think that's going to be a big what the expenses are going to look like in the future. So that one I don't think could be in a single meeting. I think revenue we could probably do this in an hour just like this one where it's you know

kind of a shotgun approach where we'll touch all these items because revenue is revenue right we can't we're not going to change that but expenses are what is the one area we can kind of pull the levy so change so that's where for me I'd like to give everybody an opportunity to talk about their department the expense they're going to have the future expenses they see coming and so we can really take it in and say maybe we can absorb this cost this year even though you don't think you need it maybe this year. Maybe we add that extra person to Jacobs or we say, "Hey, we can go ahead and get that assistant for HR and the administrator office." So, that's where I'd like to see it because I think we're going to have a goal of what we want to do with the mill levby and then from there we can kind of say, "Okay, well, what can we fit in?" Because we know we have needs, but there's a certain spot and I don't know where that is yet that we want to be. Um, and I think what's going to happen

getting close on that. And I think what's going to happen is is we're going to see this is where everybody comes in. We're above that mil levy. So, let's try to fit in what everybody kind of wants right now, our needs, and then we can go back from there so that we can save. I've done a lot of work on the budget already, and everyone at this table has, and I don't see any massive like uh oh,

you know, like, oh, how are we going to handle this? I don't have the people part like different positions that we need like this conversation tonight. Um I see a lot of you know I I look for dollars and dimes and nickels and $100 bills all through the budget and I think we've done a really good job of whittling out where we can and getting rid of things we aren't using sort of a deal. Canceling things that aren't beneficial and and different things like that. Also, I'm consolidating some things like an IT budget together. You're going to have an IT manager, man. Let's get all those expenses in one spot and that number looks healthy. Yeah.

But it came from other budgets. It's not new money. So, I feel like I feel like we have a good number coming that way. Okay. And then we'll see where we are. I didn't again I haven't we haven't had a position. So, all right. Go back to your point. You're talking about time. This time you do it at noon like you guys were doing. A lot of people in the community can't make it. I can't make it. Yeah. Um, another quick thing on that. Um, lost my train of thought. No, I think six is good. And then if we have to do an off meeting one, six is probably fine. Maybe that that's the one we could do for two hours. I do like six to eight.

And you do want to see every department. And I pick myself out of this. Mine won't take very long. I don't spend very much money. And that's where you guys can know. It's it's it's more of and this is what I have these people. Yeah. If something if I drop dead tomorrow, these people can come and over the next few years over the extra few years I'm gonna need somebody in this position to do that. Okay. So that that's what I've

Yeah. I'm not asking you to come like I'm retiring and so this is what we need. This is what the next 12 years have to look like. No, it's just Yeah. if you know some of it's if I drop dead tomorrow or if I had to leave we don't want to have six months of you know reconfiguring what how we do things.

I think the only other thing I would add is when you talk about budgets I know I'm doing this organ organization is getting people like even the direct direct contact people involved in the budget too because you know I just think that people that are directly providing the services or um doing the work have a perspective that maybe leadership doesn't have because they're not in there doing it. Um, and I've learned so much through the budget process where I'm at just, you know, so some of your people that are actually working even though they're not at the table doing the budget, it always is good from them. I just think sometimes

I agree. All right. Anything else? We're at 652. So we got about five minute break before we get to our meeting. Anything else? Have the truck out there if you want to go out and take a look. Oh, does he got it out? Okay. All right. We will we will adjourn as of now. Thank you. I have not

with me this evening. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to gather here in service to our community and we thank you for the servant attitude of this council, our men and women in blue, our firefighters and our emergency response teams. And I pray for your shield of armor and protection around each one of them. And I ask tonight for wisdom and guidance for each council member that their discussions and decisions reflect compassion and the foresight in the desire to serve the best interest of every resident in the city. Working together with respect and integrity and harmony and it's in Jesus name we pray all these things. Amen.

Amen. Now for the pledgece 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.

All right, madam clerk, will you please take the role? Mr. Thron here, Mrs. Excuse me. Mrs. Febac here. Mr. Grant here, Mr. Delgado here. Mr. Savage here. Mayor, we have a quorum present. Great. Thank you. Also wanted to mention, thank you uh Pastor Smith and Generation Bible Church. During the last storm, they opened up their building. Uh they have a nice basement over there and they let the community come in. They had snacks and everything for them as the storm came through and I know we had quite a few people take advantage of it. So I I appreciate that very much. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you.

Uh next up we have the approval of the agenda. We did have a request to move item number five, the task order number 10. Um Allison I think is just going to be taking that in house so we're not going to have that. All good. Okay. So I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda as amended. So moved. Second. A motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion passes. 500 Z. We'll now move on to announcements and reports. Um I don't necessarily have too much tonight. Um I think I'm going to let everybody else around. I'll probably chip in a little bit as we go. Uh PJ, do you have anything?

Yeah, absolutely. Um just starting out, uh just wanted to kind of reiterate if you're just joining us now, we just spent about an hour uh discussing uh priorities for the 2026 budget. I wanted to thank uh everybody involved in preparing that information for us and facilitating that conversation um moving forward. That's going to be a priority. We're going to have several more work sessions. So, please um tune in as we have those things and listen in on or come and uh give us some feedback as we uh move on through that process. Thanks. I No report. James, no report. I'm gonna skip Kristen. Uh Mike, no report. All right. Now, we're back to Kristen. Go ahead. Just wanted to make sure Mike's Mike's quiet to begin with. Wanted to make sure he got his chance.

So, I have two things. One is um I'm wearing green uh to signify uh mental health awareness month. As some of you know, I'm a mental health professional. So, this is an important month. Um it's just a reminder to check in on people, see how they're doing. Uh there's a lot of resources out there. So, um for people that are in crisis or whatever, 988. Um, so I just want to say that. Um, I also prepared a little bit of a speech tonight. So, um, anyway, I'm gonna try not to look up. So, if I look down, usually I'm a good eye contact person. But, um, anyway, I'm going to go ahead and and read it here. Um, I'm just, uh, serving on the Spring Hill City Council over the last three years has truly been one of the greatest honors of my life. Um, while my term officially expires in 2027, as many of you know, I will no longer be a Spring Hill resident, and that is of uh May 26th. Uh, which means tonight will be my final city council meeting. Um, as I reflected on what I wanted to say this evening, I realized this speech is not really about uh accomplishments or projects or even decisions made over the last few years. But to me, this moment is about gratitude. Uh it is about saying ask or saying thank you. Um I already have a have an established career serving individuals with mental health needs and helping communities navigate some of life's most difficult challenges. But years ago I decided I also wanted to serve in another capacity. Not because I viewed an elected office as a career path but because I view it viewed it as a service. I believe public service was another way to contribute, give back, and help strengthen the community my family and and I call home. And Springall has been an exceptional place to call home. Uh this community has been where my husband and I raised our three kids. It has been the place where we

built friendships, memories, and roots. Like so many families here, we chose Spring Hill because of the values of community um and how it represents hard work, growth, um connection, and people who genuinely care about one another. Over the last three years, I've had the privilege of sitting in this room and learning far more than I ever anticipated. Uh serving on city council gave me a deeper understanding of city government, infrastructure development, budgeting, public safety, and many moving parts required to support a growing community. But more importantly, it gave me an appreciation for the people behind the work. One thing the community or one thing the public often does not fully see and how much effort and preparation and thought goes in every decision and how that impacts the city. The work does not begin and end during council meetings. There are countless conversations, planning sessions, challenges, and problem solving efforts going on behind the scenes every single day. And that is why I want to take some time tonight to thank individuals who make this city operate so effectively. First, I want to thank Lane. Lane, I thank you for your time, your leadership, your willingness to educate. You have spent decades in this field and yet always remained approachable and open to questions. I know I had many learning curves coming into local government and you consistently handled those moments with patience, professionalism, and understanding. I truly appreciate the time you invested in helping me better understand the city issues and the complexities of municip municipal leadership. Rhonda Thank you as well. You are an exceptional financial director. From the very beginning of my term, you have always been transparent, authentic, and willing to answer questions openly. Um, financial discussions are not always

easy and especially in a growing community with competing priorities. But I have always respected the integrity and professionalism you bring to your role. Spring Hill is very fortunate to have you. Allison, Jacob, Monaisha, thank you for everything you do behind the scenes and for the professionalism you bring to this organization every day. You all have been wonderful to work with and I appreciate your continued dedication to this city. Glenda, I honestly do not know or not have the words fully to express how much I appreciate you. You have simply been a steady and valued presence and I want you to know how grateful I am. Amy, thank you as well. and Ashley, you both are truly wonderful people and some and people that I've generally enjoyed working alongside throughout my time here. And Spencer, thank you. Um, throughout my professional career career, I have worked with many attorneys and sat through depositions and navigated difficult conversations and legal matters. But every interaction I have had with you has been a learning opportunity. Um but every okay I appreciate your candidness because he always says candidly. I love that. Um your professionalism and your ability to guide difficult discussions with clarity and thoughtfulness. So thank you. I also want to acknowledge my fellow councilmen and women or councilmen, excuse me, um past and present. While we may not have always agreed on every issue, I generally respect the commitment each person brings to serving this community. Public service is not always easy. Uh decisions are often complex and leadership sometimes requires balancing of differing opinions while trying to do what is best for the city as a whole. And I appreciate appreciate the opportunity to have served alongside each one of you. And finally, to the citizens of Spring Hill, I want to thank you. Thank you for trusting me with your concerns, your questions, your

frustrations, your ideas, and your hopes for this community. Public trust is not something I have ever taken lightly. Every email, conversation, and phone call and interaction mattered to me because at the center of all of it, it was shared desire to continue to make Spring Hill a strong and healthy community. This transition has not been easy for me. Uh leaving this role and this community is bittersweet. Spring Hill will always hold a special place in my heart because of the experiences, relationships, and memories that me and my family have built. While my while my journey is taking me elsewhere geographically, my commitment to serving others will continue. I will continue working hard in other communities and alongside individuals to make a positive impact wherever I am. But Spring Hill will always be part of my story. So, thank you again for allowing me to um have the privilege and honor of serving this community over the last three years. It truly has meant more than words can express. So, thank you.

All right. Thank you.

All right. Maybe I should wait till the end. That was good. Thank you. Yeah, probably should have. All right, Lane, you have anything for us? I I don't know how to follow that up, but I would say thank you. Um, and I think I think all the department heads would say this that it's it's not just us, it's it's all of our staff uh that that help create those answers that we can provide to the governing body. Uh, and in in final fashion, I'd like to answer a question that you forgot to ask tonight. 191st 191st. Give it to me. Give it to me.

Um, we we had met with KOT this week on Tuesday. had a discussion about the timeline. Uh it sounds like we're going to be just a little bit behind the July 1st. We're going to be in that August September timeline before we can go out to bid that project. And I think Allison, correct me if I'm wrong. Hopefully, we can get that under construction sometime in in the fall, but it it sounds like we're we're 30 to 60 days uh longer than we had anticipated with GDOT. There's final reviews here and there and some processes that they have to follow. So, that's kind of the update on that. And then hopefully 191st Street will be under construction later this year. And then we're still working on 183rd Street uh to get that through the approval process which will be more than likely we will be in uh 27 project. There was one thing that we or you learned uh when you told me the other day was we don't technically manage this project. uh K dot will manage it all the way through. So I was under the impression that we kind of take over once they approved everything, but it sounds like that's why there's a little bit of a delay because we don't necessarily have control over the bidding process.

So we're on their timeline of how they put bids out and their projects and things like that. I I believe we missed the I say we missed but it's due to the back and forth between KOD and us and our engineers uh the June letting or the June timeline. I think there's a two or three month process that they have to meet and so that pushes us back another month. So we'll probably be in that August September timeline. Okay, good to know. Thank you, Spencer. Candidly, I've got nothing, Chief.

Nothing. Thanks, Kristen, for your support of the PD. Appreciate all your service. Um but yeah, I have no reports tonight. Mike, yeah, I have three things. Uh we are going to be having a planning commission work session on May 21st to discuss the comprehensive plan. There'll be a short presentation by staff uh components of a comprehensive plan, how that interacts with zoning and land use uh and development. And um also we're we're working on trying to have a interactive uh portion to that. some maybe real-time polling through apps on phones that we can interact with uh the public that attends. Uh so the public is welcome to attend. All of you are welcome to attend. We're doing that at 7 o'clock.

Would they be able to do it through the if they're watching at home live? That's something we'll have to check if it would be a real time thing. So we're looking into the different app uh platforms that may be able to to work.

Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Um the second is that the uh US Census Bureau released their 2025 population estimates today. Uh so these would be the population estimates for July 1st, 2025. City's population is according to the Census Bureau is 10,777. Uh this puts us at approximately a 5.9% population growth uh over last year, the 2024 number uh which is uh number two in the Kansas City metro area behind Dotto which was in the 7.9% range uh due to their you know multif family development and development surrounding the Panasonic battery uh development um and overall growth rate number five in Kansas and one of them grew by one person and they only had 23. So it was a little bit more uh of a percent boost. So and then finally uh just wanted to point out that we issued 53 uh single family permits in March which was uh second in the metro area behind Kansas City, Missouri. Um, and we've issued 138 through the first quarter. So, the first three months, which is also number two in the metro area.

And those are single family or just all permits? Single family. Okay, great. So, we're on pace for quite a year. That keeps up. All right. Thank you, Alison. Thank you, Kristen. We are going to miss you. And yes, I will talk to you offline about all the things about Parkville, all the places to go, all the things to do. all of that. So, I'll be your park your Parkville build connection coffee date.

Yes, definitely. Well, I wanted to expand a little bit on what um Lane was saying on um the 191st Street. Yes, all of that is correct because we received that federal funding that put additional requirements on the project um and additional um items that needed to be in the plans. And because it's a certain level and certain complexity, uh, KOT will administer that project. That is something we had a long conversation about a month ago with KAT staff on the requirements for handling this project and the staff just does not have that bandwidth with all the other capital projects that we've got going on. So, this is something that KAT does day in and day out. We also have our funding agreement that we will be bringing before you in the next meeting. Um that is going to include the $2 million that we will be receiving from KOT as well as the federal funding in the amount of 850,000 from the Sharice David the Representative David's uh earmark. So um just wanted to kind of give you guys a snapshot as to where we're at with that. Uh we hope to have the plans completed within the next few weeks so that we can get that to Kot so we get everything moving. So, we're doing we're pushing everybody as as quick as we can. Um the Oh, on May 21st is going to be a very busy night. In addition to the comp plan um work session that we have with the planning commission, we will also be hosting a K7 corridor uh public meeting. So KOT has hired a consultant HDR to um do the K7 corridor study that's been underway for several months now. So it's time for public input and public engagement. So they're inviting the public to come out and review some concepts, get some reactions. I

encourage everybody to come. It's going to be in the 401 event space uh starting at 5:00 on May 21st. Uh there's information about that on the city's website. So if you've got any questions, just go to the city's website. I'm sure all the information is out there. Um but this is a study that they're reviewing from I35 down to the Johnson Miami County line. Uh and they are looking at um conceptually looking at half the corridor differently. So 175th Street's going to be that dividing line of what would be urban versus rural. So they're not going to be treating 159th Street the same way that they would be treating 207th Street. So um encourage everybody to come out and u provide their comments for the segments along the corridor. Um there was a question about providing some additional information on grants. um want to give you a snapshot as to um since I've been here we've received 14 grants. Uh four grants have been unsuccessful that we've pursued. Um we have 18 that are in various stages of review whether it's the WIFIA that we need additional information um SRF uh we've got five congressional appropriations that we submitted. So, all of those are kind of factored into that 18 number. Um, and then within between tomorrow and going into the end of June, I've got about six uh grants that are cooking right now. So, um I've got one maybe two that two I think that I'm going to be submitting tomorrow. So, more information on that, but um 83 communities within Kansas are under that 10,000 population. Uh, and because of

that, the Kansas Infrastructure Hub has funding available to small cities, small communities to help assist with grant writing services. This is to help cities that don't have the staff available. So, they pay 100% of that through the grant uh assistance program. I know I've presented that numerous times every time I give ask for a grant application. Um we did um get gap funding for the SS4A implementation grant last year when we had the 11 million program and we were not successful with getting that SS4A grant. However, we did get reimbursed for the $40,000 that we spent to have a task order with HDR. Uh, another example is um we went 50/50 with the um for 223rd Street we had the study from Columbia Street all the way to uh 69 highway. So about a nine mile segment that we applied for a study and it was a cooperative with Miami County and we entered into an interlocal agreement um to pay 5050 of whatever costs were associated with that project that included HDR's task order of $50,000. We applied for and received the gap funding um for to cover that $50,000. So, we will be out zero uh money regardless of whether we get the build uh funding or not. We still haven't heard whether we've received it or not. Um but um anyway, just wanted to let you know that we've got um two items on the agenda later tonight. Both of those are for task orders with HDR. Both of those will uh be applied for gap funding. So that inor the city if awarded the city

would be out zero dollars uh to compensate for that. Um I'm going to stop right there. Well, I guess this isn't a discussion, but um the next one is um the woodland sidewalk. We've already discussed that. There was a question on when that was going to get started. The contractor did mobilize this week. They started the grading for the sidewalk. Not sure they're going to get it in tomorrow because the forms are not there right now, but hopefully um it's going to take them a day to put that day, maybe two tops once they get started. So, I anticipate that they'll get a lot of the form set tomorrow um and then start on that and have that done by next week. Hopefully early next week. And I think that's it.

All right. Thank you very much. Any follow questions? Thanks for answering those questions on the on the grand writing. Rhonda, no report. Wow. I've got a whole section. Oh, okay. Glenda,

uh, I just would like to respond to, uh, council member feedback. Thank you so much for your service here for Spring Hill. Um, it's bittersweet for me as well. I've truly enjoyed getting to know you and working for you. I know you did best for Spring Hill. You handled everything professionally and I appreciate that. It's easy to work for um somebody that handles things the way you have and I know that um I'm from the Northland. I was born and raised there and I know they're in good hands for their mental health and I appreciate that and uh you look great in green. So,

thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you, Monisha. No report.

All right, Jacob. So, piggybacking on the discussion earlier from the works work session on sidewalks, just giving you an update where we're at. Um, staff at Engineering Public Works have been working. We had a consulting engineering firm that did the survey work for all of those areas. Where are exactly where property lines, rightway lines, where are um transformers and boxes and things that that may be obstacles that we need to work around. We've received all of that information and made the decision, in fact, the one item that was pulled from tonight's meeting was rather than outsource the a lot of the design work for that, which is going to add time, uh we're going to take care of that inhouse. Um Allison's going to do a lot of the heavy lifting and uh the idea is uh we should have that out to bid early next week and our goal and expectation is to have bids received and and have a uh contract for you to award at the June 25th council meeting which should allow the contractor to mobilize and get that work done this summer. And that's for the north south portion.

That is for um No, that will start with the Harrison and Madison um pieces. That

was the uh fewer fewer issues. The north south on Spring Street was a little more complicated involving retaining walls, a little more sensitive on the uh you know how it affects uh adjacent residents. So, uh, we're starting with with Harrison Madison. The way we will, um, structure this bid, um, envisioning hopefully we get a a really good contractor. Um, that goes really well and there may be some opportunities to expand the scope of that work, do some change orders to bring in some of that additional work.

Okay. Do we have a timeline for the Spring Street portion? It will follow uh it'll follow right away. I don't know that that will be done before, you know, school is back in session, but my I think it's still, you know, completely plausible to have it done still this calendar year. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other announcements or reports? All right. Well, thank you, uh, Dr. Councilwoman Feedback. I don't get to say it very often, but uh that was I wanted to do it one more time before before she was gone.

All right, we're going to move on to uh citizen participation. And we had a couple people sign up here. First up, we have Tammy Null. Sorry, just your name and address for the for the clerk. Sure. Sure. My name is Tammy Null and I live at 1 19440 West 22nd Street. Thank you.

Thank you so much uh city council for your service to our city and for having and encouraging the community participation in your meetings. My hope is that you're listening to our concerns and also watching and seeing the concerns of our surrounding communities as well. Um, considering these the subject of the hypers hypers scale data centers because what happens in one city will ultimately affect those surrounding cities as well. I've spoken at one city council meeting prior and three planning commission meetings. In each time, I have respectfully asked that you would put in place a moratorum. This would give us the time needed to research and discover from other communities that are already experiencing the ill effects and negative consequences of these developments and learn from their experiences before it is too late for us. At last week's city planning commission meeting, I once again asked for a moratorum during the public participation portion. At the very end of the meeting, one of the members asked if we could have a discussion on the issuance of a moratorum and Mike Malin then spoke of when a moratorum is to be put in place. there was some discussion and essentially um it was ended by him saying that um in this circumstance we don't need one and respectfully and wholeheartedly I disagree with that perspective. We do not have up-to-date city codes that directly address these types of developments. We must put in place the protections that we need surrounding not

only our water use and our electrical consumption but also noise ordinances. We need updated noise ordinances to address not just the noise that we can hear but also the noise below the 20 decel range that we can't hear audibly but that certainly does affect our health. This noise is called infrasound or it can also be known as tonal noise. And this type of noise not only affects human health such as cardiovascular health, but it can also affect livestock by decreasing cattle reproduction and milk production. And this is only a small portion of the negative effects that this can have. We need time to research and put in place these restrictions and update our city code to reflect these protective measures. This is exactly what a moratorum would allow. It would allow time and protection. I have a statement from the state senator Doug Shane who is asking all municipal and county governing bodies in Miami County and Johnson County to issue a formal moratorum resolution on data centers. This statement came out today and I have a copy for each of you. I would also ask that a copy of this be placed in the official um official record of tonight's meeting. The Miami County commissioners have already done the right thing and they have passed their own moratorum. So I am once again here asking for you to do the same before we have another development corporation seek to knock on our city's door.

I have to ask each of you, what do you do when someone comes and knocks? I have just a few more seconds. What would you What do you do when someone knocks on the front door of your home? Do you look to see who it is before you just open the door with no concern of who might be on the other side and what their intentions are? We have locks on the door of our homes for our protection. All we are asking is that we put the moratorum in place to give us time to put the locks on the door of our city. I've never been one to be active in politics and before March of this year I have never attended a city council meeting and I am learning so much about how city government works. So why now you may be asking why am I becoming so active now? because it is that important. There is ample information out there to let you know and understand that these data centers will cause issue with our health and they will contaminate our water. So I can't for the life of me understand why you as our elected officials that are sworn to act in our best interest and protect our health and our property values would choose not to put a moratorium in place to protect the citizens that have elected you. Thank you so much for your time and your consideration.

Thank you. All right. Thank you. Next up, I had Sarah Grady.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Sarah Grady and my address is 15690 West 199th Street. I would like to respectfully ask the city council to consider consider implementing a temporary moratorum on new data center and largescale industrial development proposals while the community has time to fully understand the long-term long-term impacts these projects could have on Spring Hill. Spring Hill is at a critical turning point. Decisions made today will shape the character of our community for generations. A data center or heavy industrial project is not the same as adding businesses, restaurants, family amenities, parks, or thoughtfully planned residential growth. Data centers in particular permanently alter land values, noise levels, utility usage, and change the rural character that many families have moved here for. And a moratorum is not anti-growth. It is pro- planning. It would simply provide time for community engagement and transparency, independent studies on infrastructure, water, power impacts. And of course, we all know that we are updating Spring Hill's comprehensive plan. So, it would also allow time for that and it would provide for thoughtful discussion about types of development, which types of development would align with long-term vision the residents of Spring Hill have for Spring Hill. And one more thing, which Tammy just touched on, um the Kansas Senator Doug Shane issued a statement today calling for a moratorum on data centers in both Miami and Johnson counties, which she has provided. The second thing I'd like to mention is our recently hired community development director. I recognize the importance of economic development for our city. It's imperative and as a Spring Hill Township re resident, I would greatly appreciate the opportunity

to provide input on the kinds of businesses and development priorities that we want this position focused on bringing to Spring Hill. I would love to see efforts directed towards family oriented retail and restaurants, small business growth, event space or community gathering space, recreation and entertainment, and overall highquality commercial growth that supports families and strengthens property values. Spring Hill has something special. People chose to live here because it is rural and it is not an industrial corridor. growth should enhance that identity, not erase it. This would also provide Spring Hill the time to see how a hyperscale data center affects a community. And you have to look no further than Lake Tahoe where they are being told that their grid can no longer handle thousands of their residents usage. Corpus Christi with devastating lack of water, Memphis and their air quality, Oregon, just to name a few. Please consider slowing this process down, listening carefully to your residents, and placing a temporary moratorum on data centers and similar industrial projects until the community has had the opportunity to fully participate in shaping Spring Hill's future. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Next up, I have Ja Zuk. Hello, my name is Jamma Zuk and I'm a regional librarian with Johnson County Library and uh we are at 109 South Webster Street here in Spring Hill. I just wanted to come and personally invite all of the council members and the community when we reopen the library on June 3. uh we have almost doubled in size and we have added things to enhance this community. As community is growing, the library needed to grow too and so we are hoping that this remodeling will do that. I also wanted to mention that we are going to be piloting a program in Spring Hill called extended access where patrons that are 18 years or older will be able to get an after hours um key fob to let themselves into the library. We know we have hours that maybe don't match everybody's schedule and the larger libraries are able to provide those, but if you have the key fob, you'll be able to let yourself in during unstaffed hours. Um, you will have to sign some paperwork and stuff like that, but um it will hopefully balance out the hours when staff is not able to be there. People will still be able to use the library here in the community.

Great. Thank you. What time is that uh grand opening? Uh just in the morning, 9:00 am. 9 a.m. Yep. So on June 3rd. All right. Great. Thank you. Yeah. I know we're the pilot for the extended hours, so that's pretty exciting. I think it's gonna be pretty cool. Yeah. Very. Thank you. Next up, I have Bill Peterman.

Evening. Uh, Bill Peterman, 1943 West 200 Street. Good to see you all. Sorry that you're leaving. You've been a good good help, good fit for us. Um, I wanted to bring up about the sidewalks, but at 1:00 today, they started moving dirt. They haven't put any forms in, but they're moving dirt. So, at least we got a dirt sidewalk. Kids won't be I was walking a little watching a girl walk home on 199th Street carrying a instrument of some kind in her backpack and she had to walk get up into the weeds that were about this tall

to walk home uh from high school over on 199th. She tried to use the uh bike lane, but uh tractor trailers they only get told to stay off over around Gardener Edgington. We we want them to come in here so we can hit somebody. So anyway, uh I do appreciate you guys staying on that, especially you. I know it's not any fun, but these developers and contractors, they own us. Who signs the contracts with these people? 20if let's see 53 years ago I started a company of my own out of college and uh when I would sign contracts for jobs uh and $50 53 years ago was a lot of money and it was $50 a day if you was late. Do we do that? Do we do we say, "Hey, we got a date here. If you don't get done by then, then it starts it kicks it in and it's $50 a day." If you put it on paper, we have got to start learning from our mistakes. We've got to not If you make a mistake once, that's bad. That's shame on, you know, what's going on. But if you do it twice, that's shame on you. That's stupid. There's no reason for us to make the same mistake three and four and five times. When you get a contract, tell them if you're what's your date, what dates it going to be done. It's like right now we got work going on the streets of 199th Street down there. How come I've only seen one person working in the last week down there? Have you seen If you go by, have you seen anybody working on that street? They're always, "Oh, we're waiting on this. We're waiting on that." Well, damn it. We got a $2,000 a day for waiting because we're

hurting our public. So, let's do something. Let's start making our contracts out so either they get the damn work done or they start paying us. Thank you. Thanks, M. I don't have anybody else signed up. Is there anyone else who would like to speak? If not, we will close to this on participation. And next up, we have a couple presentations. Our first one, I believe, is Rhonda for our 2026 first quarter financial report and our 26 through30 capital improvement plan review.

All right, thank you everybody. Um, we have always I've always tried to come in and do a quarterly review. Um, and we got got out of the habit in 25. So, I want to get us back in that groove. A lot of new members on council. And so, this is a time to talk about what's been going on in 2026. Um, I want to point something out to you. I'm not going to go over CIP tonight. Um, we'll do that not in the near future. We may make to wait until a work session to talk about the projects on the list, give you an update on each one. Ones that are getting pushed forward or cancelled will change. So, we'll do that in the future. So, let's talk first about the positive side of the equation with revenue. And this is sorted um by the estimated value at the end of the year. So property tax is still the big uh revenue generator at 4.5 million and that I estimate to be right on budget. I don't have a great way to estimate that we get half of it in January and about half of it in June. So I think we'll be right on target there. The one that's really moving up and Mike um gave you the numbers that go behind this, but the one of the biggest things that's moving this year are the permits and license fees. We typically budget this conservatively because it's outside of our control. And as Mike has reported, there are a lot of building permits being issued this year. Based on the revenue we've taken in, that income will grow to about 4.2 million, second only to property tax. Will it come out completely that way? I'm not sure. I think we'll be a little less conservative in the budget for 27, start capturing some of those dollars. Um, but we want to be realistic because again, it's outside of our control. And that should be about $2.9 million above

budget um if we make it at this level by year end. Sales tax. to talk about in a little bit more depth in a minute, but it is for the first time in a while sitting right below our budget year to date. And so I'm going to talk about that here in a second. Franchise fees basically right on budget. Um other income that increase is due to the interest on money. So we are getting um close to 4% just under 4% on our money sitting in our account and it's reflected here. The aquatic center hasn't opened yet. We tend to run right close to plan on revenue. So, um, I expect that to hit that target. Rentals are going to be a little bit above. Um, and then the municipal court has had a bouncing few years here. We had a really, really strong year and then a pretty good year. And this year's down a little bit. So, um, in the end, I think we'll be about $2.8 8 million over plan on revenue and that is basically due to permits and licenses, building fees.

Did that uh that 4.2 did that include kind of a little bit of a drop off? Can I I can't imagine we're going to keep the pace that we're at now or is that just basing it based off how we finished first quarter? It's mostly based on the first quarter. I do look through it pretty significantly to see if there's anything usual here. Doesn't include excise tax. it's in in another fund and some things like that, but it's pretty much on this one a straight percent, you know, where we are now, where we're going to be. I've also done it the other way where I looked at um Amy does a report every month on permits and fees. I also did the math on her report separately and it comes out at the same number probably more like 3.8 something like that. So, okay,

we are tracking that way. And I did her report with 2026 data and then the other nine, eight or nine months from 25 saying we repeat 25 and we're still coming out really strong. I know we definitely got a little bit more aggressive on the sales tax this year compared to previous years. So, I'm okay with being a little bit under because I know we we tried to really capture what because we were way we were kind of like permits and licenses on sales tax for a while. we're right kind of way under hedging a little bit and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that.

So, just wanted to show some people prefer to see it in a picture versus numbers um that you know property tax is 32% permits and fees are going to be about 30% and sales tax at 26. So, you talked earlier in the work session um about the different revenue streams and not just rely on property tax. Well, we are not solely reliant on property tax. We have other that's the benefit of our growing community is sales tax grows usually and permits and fees grow and and those other things. So we're working all sides of that puzzle. Um sales tax, you won't often hear me get up here and say I'm concerned about something, but sales tax is not following our normal trend. I have some analysis being done on it at a much low lower level or much more detailed level um to see if is it a certain industry, is it a certain retailer, some information like that that eventually I look forward to sharing with you. But as you can see and you look at each year on this line chart, each year carries above the prior year. 26 is not following that trend. For two months, it's been above. Then it dropped two last year and now it's trending below. I'm afraid that's a sign of the economy that people are putting it in their gas tank or somewhere else and not spending. And so it's reflected in our sales tax. I'm not ready to panic. You don't see me panic very often. I'm not ready to get excited about it. I just feel like we need to be aware that sales tax is being impacted somewhere. and we'll find out details and then we'll see how the trend goes through the coming months. It may bounce right back.

So, I'm not I'm not completely surprised. I read an article about how Amazon actually saw a big decrease over the last two months just because of all the costs that are up. So, makes sense because don't we get the home rule sales tax from those online? Yeah. Tax to delivery. That's why I have the little yellow line at the bottom which is use tax which is tax on things delivered not sold here but delivered here. That's grown um from 30% in 2025 to 35% in 2026. A 5% swing. That's even in over retail sales tax is a big swing. Yeah. And so people are buying not from our retailers. Yeah. Even less from

they're buying more and more and having it delivered. I give you an example. A big furniture store is one of our biggest sales tax generators. Yeah.

Makes sense. Building new homes, people are moving into the neighborhood. They buy new furniture. Makes sense. Maybe we need to build a furniture store. Sorry, I went the wrong way. So then let's talk about expenditures. And I did this one based on department and took a look at every department and how they're um performing. five uh just over $500,000 is about 5% of our annual budget is how far we're running under under expense budget. Most of this almost 100% is pos is people and that meaning that we had positions we budgeted for that were just now getting hired. So we have a period of time here where we had no expense but we budgeted for it. We also have positions like I have one in my department where a person left. It's taken some time to fill it. So this variance is really about people. It's getting people into positions that we planned for. And um we were we're under a little bit on medical insurance spending less than we planned to. And so Monisha and I are working together to make sure we have the right number going forward as well as are we account not accounting but are we giving that the right consideration in the budget each year to make sure that our numbers are good. Um we've done some projects in it that make it a little higher than planned nothing significant. Um I also put some money in at the aquatic center. We have some projects going on there. I hope will transfer money and cover that difference um through the sales tax. So, this is a summary of what I just said, which is basically here are the items that we have the greatest

variance. I looked at any account or type of expense with a variance over $50,000. Um retirement payout, we haven't paid, no one's retired, so we haven't had to pay that. the other people related things I've talked about purchase lease. We paid off some leases last year and we're accounting for it in the next budget to make sure we have those right. Can I answer any questions? Not really. I think uh we can take at least a percentage of that revenue growth when we look at our next budget and that'll help us with

I think we probably at least my opinion always whenever I have something even personally like this is maybe split it between needed purchases and and savings. So, however we can figure that out, I think there's probably a bit of a part that goes into uh, you know, into our reserve portion of, you know, central purchases we need to make and then no levy. You know, those are the three things that I think we need to look at for the absolutely any excess we've got and any savings we've got on the expense side. So, looks like we might have a little bit to work with this year. I'm hoping so. Yeah. Good. Other questions? No, I think this is good. But I think if uh if all those projections are right, we're going to have a good year.

Fingers crossed. I spent a lot of time. I don't just flatline it. I look at each one and and I've made calls to learn about different things I don't think feel quite right, but I learned they're right. I just don't like how they feel kind of thing. So good. I appreciate Good to see the the sales tax how that how that hashes out of where we're seeing the drop from. Yeah. I'm getting um Baker Tilly does an analysis for us analysis for us and um I'm looking forward to what we see in that what we learn from it have more luckily it's not anything crazy I mean if it's 100 and sometimes they bounce back we say that with flip it you know the fluency but really 100 grand in the big scheme of things isn't huge we kind of it's all big estimate anyway so

the other thing with that um remember when you look at the sales tax chart it's two months behind so Christmas shows up in February They collect it in December. They pay it to the state in January and give it to us in February. Yeah. So when you look at it, December is not Christmas. Things like that. Great. Well, thank you for your time. I'll do this each quarter so we have an update and look forward to working on the next thing. I meant to say something in the work session. If any of you ever want individual time to talk about the budget, please reach out to Mr. Massie or me and we'll find time for you. Sometimes that's the best way to learn is your questions, your time, your pace. So, we uh want to make sure you have the information you need. All right. Perfect. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.

Next, we have the North Webster sewer contracts. Miss Alison.

Hello. Okay. So, wanted to float something past you guys um as we start to work on some of these sewer projects. So, uh, back in December of 2025, we, uh, took the Northeast Sewer, uh, project out for bid, we, uh, within that project, that includes, uh, brand new pump station, first mains, gravity mains, um, all of that, I believe the total amount for that project was about $6 million. Uh, we received bids from eight contractors when we took that out for public bid. Uh the pit the bids did come in uh lower than the engineers's estimate and lower than our project budget. Um it was a great way to get competitive bidding. Um the contractor started on that in March of 2026 and is currently um right at the projected schedule uh for completion in December. So fast forward to we're currently working on design of two sewer projects. One is the northwest sewer project that's going to be at 183rd and Lone Elmish and that's quite a bit larger than the northeast sewer. Uh we've got couple of lift stations, four spanes, gravity, all of that. Um and that's going to take us all the way down to about 191st Street. We are also working on the northwest uh the north webster sewer project that is north of the glass plant and that is for a development that's going to be um in that parcel that vacant parcel that's north of there. This is considerably a smaller project. Um probably if I had to guess maybe about a third of the size of the Northeast Sewer project at size-wise as far as like length of um force mane and gravity line and such. Um we have a very short time frame on both

of these projects. So staff's trying to figure out how can we shorten the time frame. We've got to go through the design. We've got to make sure we got we have quality plans to take it out to bid, but that takes time. And then once you take it out to bid, it takes time to get it constructed. How can we shave time off of that is what we're trying to figure out. So, we initially looked at doing a progressive design build similar to what we're doing at the sewer plant. We've got an engineer on on uh on already under contract for the design services. Is there a way that we could do another uh alternative project delivery like a uh Seamar uh which would be a um construction manager at risk. So basically we would hire a contractor which would give us um we would hire them under maybe like a 60% design. They would bid in a lot more contingency to cover that additional design. We considered that but we thought that for a pretty straightforward sewer project this might not be the best and we were getting mixed signals from uh legal counsel from the design consultant on whether we could even do that with linear projects uh like sewer lines. So I'm not sure that that's the best idea but that idea is not completely off the table. So, we started thinking about, and this is something that I did in my former life up north in Parkville, was if I had an active contract that was already went through the procurement uh process, already went through the competitive bidding process, if it was a small enough project, I would change order that project uh under that contract with that contractor honoring the unit prices, I would do a separate change order to capture that. and um do

that project. North Webster is of the two the better one to do that process with. Uh so I floated the idea by the contractor just to see if they would even be interested because if they weren't interested then it it's a non-starter. Uh Infrastructure Solutions is the contractor that was the low bidder on the northeast sewer. Um they said that they would be interested in getting the additional work by the time we would be done with the design uh of this project. We uh they would be able to go right into the next uh getting construction. They can get additional uh crews out here if any of that over overlapped whatever. They they knew that they could take care of this. The other benefit to having them under a uh change order and getting them under contract is that early procurement. One of the conversations that we've had recently is the electrical panels are on back order. It's taking there's a long lead time on those that are taking 50 weeks to get some of that stuff. We don't have 50 weeks to do that. So, um it it gets really messy if the city were to procure that ourselves and then the contractor take delivery. We considered that as well. Um but we we've thrown around so many different ideas on how best we could do this, the cleanest way that we could do this. And I'm before you um asking if there would be a way that we would even consider doing a change order for the 4,400 ft of sewer and the one MGD lift station that we would need to construct. It's again very similar components. We already have the unit prices that are in the northeast sewer. they would honor those unit prices and then extend that final cost out and then we can negotiate any other

items that may not be in the bid and if we don't feel comfortable with it then we won't bring it to you. But I wanted to have the discussion with you tonight to see if that was even a possibility. um just going straight to not going through the bidding process. That's going to shave two, possibly three months off of this because by the time we finalize the plans, we put it out on the street. We have to have it out on the street for at least four weeks. Then it takes us time to review the bids, bring it before you, and get it under contract. So, we're looking at probably two and a half months just to do that. So, we're saving two and a half months just for that. If there would be a way that we could also bring the contractor in um now, uh while we're still designing this as we get some of those design elements completed, uh with the electrical panels, we can fasttrack that design. then we can go ahead and have the contractor order those electrical panels and get that order on the books so that we can continue to design the rest of the project uh while we're waiting on those panels to be delivered. So, there's so many, you know, as as we start talking through some of the different processes, this this is a nice small project that we could try the change order on. We've got the competitive bids. we've already gone through that process. It meets our purchasing policy because we've already competitively bid it. It's a small enough project. If we feel comfortable that it is a small enough project, we can change order it. Um, and we can see how it goes. And if this is successful, then maybe this is something that Jacob could use on his sidewalk program. you know, as we get a sidewalk contractor under under um contract and we need additional sidewalk to be built, then we could do that as a change order to that

original contract. So, there's so many different benefits to this and wanted to see if we could use this not necessarily as a pilot program, but a a way to see if we can have some efficiencies at least shaving three to six months off of you. There's going to be a considerable lead time on those some of those electrical panels. So, I don't know how much time we'll be saving on that, but more than three months. And I know that we have with our development agreement, we have a a a time time limit. We have to have toilets flushing in that development, a certain date. And I am not sure that I can make that if we did this the traditional way just because there's a lot of things that are outside my control like the long lead times.

Yeah. So, I wanted to open that up if you guys had any questions about, you know, what I was thinking of with this process. I would be open to that. All right. So, I'd like to start with just some like kind of covering our basis questions here. Uh the proc the separate piece of this um project that you're discussing, if it were by itself, would it fall under our policy where we'd have to do an RQ or a full bid process as it sits currently? We had that conversation when she was gone. So we we adopted the what we what was presented. So yeah, I think what was we've already gone through the what was the dollar what was the dollar amount on this project though I think is what he's asking for I'm talking about the additional work. Yeah. For the North Webster portion

under normal circumstances we would have to go through our FQ. So um with that answered Spencer um is it within our statutory authority to extend something outside of our purchasing policy? Yes. policy does allow you all flexibility when necessary. So, um it's open enough that you can do these things. Ronda and I have worked over that policy multiple times to essentially allow for this type of exception where we're not just going out and deciding to build something that we've never done bids on, but we do have unit pricing. So, that was sort of the goal of that flexibility. So,

okay. So, um I think I've spoken pretty pretty uh clearly about my my favorability as far as the uh bid process go. I do also acknowledge that sometimes, uh circumstances get in the way and stop us from being able to do things exactly the way we want to do them all the time. Um I'm not opposed to seeing what this looks like. Um as a whole picture, like getting that information together and having that actual conversation. Um as a rule, I really really really like the bid process. it gives people in the area an opportunity to take advantage of the money that we're trying to spend to improve our community. Um, so in this instance, because of the uh the timeline constraints, because we want to make sure that we're fulfilling our obligations as the city, I'm open to this conversation moving forward.

Well, and honestly, well, we've got the favorable bids having bid it back in December of 2025. So, we've got last year's bids and then we also have the benefit of the competitive bids. So, uh, I feel like that's a win-win for the city, especially if they're going to honor that unit price without any price inflation. Absolutely. Yeah. When I looked at it, I was kind of like, oh, I wonder if we'd get as favorable pricing if we did put it out for bid just because that one is so much bigger. And so, I figured if we go with that bit with that unit pricing, it's probably going to save us money, right?

The other thing is the proposed use over there is very favorable to the city. It's got really nice retail and commercial spaces. They're looking at some other types of housing. So, to me, the mixture of those two things is really favorable to look at this. And really, again, why go through the whole process if we've already kind of done it, we found them, they've given us a good price. I have been against it in the past with you before, and I agree with that that this is an exception to the rule, not not the new rule. So,

you know, I think it's good to look at and say if we really do have favorable pricing, where can we piggy back off that to other projects? I have no problem with that either, but I would say that that's probably less often than not. It's not probably not going to be the deal, but this one seems to fall on that. I'd really like to I know I've been pushing on lane to figure out ways to make this faster because we've kind of talked about it for a while and so I like the options you came up with. Actually, all of them were pretty good option. I mean, we came up with three pretty good options from what I heard as far as ordering on our own and having delivered to them,

you know, doing uh the the the bid process with the the buildout and and then this one. So, this one I do prefer just because we know what the cost is going to be rather than going with somebody like you said that's going to have a big contingency and then we may or may not, you know, thing with contingency is like I feel like everybody can figure it out as much as they can. Oh, this came up. I can use that contingency. So, I would prefer just to go with what we know the bid cost is going to be. So, for me, I'm I'm pretty I'm pretty okay with this. I agree. You already have the unit cost. So, there you go. Anybody else have any opinions? Yeah, I agree. Um I am see firsthand on like the electrical panels back order 50 weeks, 60 weeks.

So, I mean, a matter of two or three months is a big deal. Yeah. To keep us on track. Yeah. Not even that. I go back to the cost. I think costwise this will end up saving us money just because the I remember when we got that bid we were like holy cow it was way under what we thought it was going to be. So it's like let's take advantage of that as much as we can I think. And here we are taking advantage of that. Yeah. Exactly. So yeah. No I I sounds like we're pretty much all you know have a consensus that let's let's put some real numbers down and and bring it to us and let's let's figure it out so we can move forward with it. Awesome. Okay. Well, I'll bring this back before you um here soon. Okay. to you for two weeks, but in a month. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Alison.

Mayor, if I could interrupt you for one second. Glendon pointed out to me that I skipped over about a half of my presentation and I didn't cover the utilities with you. One, I'm happy to step right back up there and go over it, but you also have a printed copy and you can all read. Yeah. I'd be happy to answer questions. I'm also happy to cover it next time if you'd rather, whatever you feel. Let's do We're kind of on a roll. Do we want to I mean it's part of the presentation that we're getting so I like it to the information to put out this a bridged version and let people see the slides. Yeah. Let's do let's move to chief real quick and then we'll go back to you so you can get prepared. I apologize. No, thank you so much. Next up we've got the tornado uh storm sirens uh by Chief.

Like the visual there. There you go.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you council and mayor for the opportunity to come speak tonight on storm sirens. So just give you a little bit of background on on storm sirens and how they work. So we have an interlocal agreement with Miami County. The Johnson County Emergency Management is in charge of setting off storm sirens within our city including Miami County. So any storm sirens that get set off are set off by the Johnson County Emergency Management Team and those are housed in the Johnson County Dispatch Center is where those sirens are usually set off. Um when a tornado warning is issued, uh the polygon that you see on the news that they set out and look at and say, "Hey, this is a this is where the warning is." That is where they take uh the emergency management will take that polygon. and they'll lay it over the storm siren system and that will activate the sirens within that polygon. Um, if there is a siren within one mile of that polygon, that siren also is set off. So there is some uh fail safe in the sense of it's not just taking a look at the sirens in that polygon, but there is some sirens that are outside of that polygon that if there is um a onem buffer on each of those sirens, they will go off. So that's a little bit of um education for the public on how storm sirens are activated. OB um I know that this has been out there a lot. Um storm sirens are an outside warning system. They're not intended to necessarily alert you if you're inside your home. If you can hear them, that's an added benefit. And it's not something that we want to discount or take lightly, but it is for the public who are outside and maybe uh don't realize that there's an approaching tornado warning because we all know how quickly the weather can

change um here in the in the Midwest. So, speaking of which, Where's my Oh, I went the wrong way, huh? Okay, here we go. So, here's a current look at our storm siren locations. And I'm just going to lay these out for you real quick. You'll see that on your map. These are uh numbered from one to five. And so the the first one we have at 191st Street in Woodland. Then we have one at Lone Elm right near the golf course. Then we have uh number three is there at 221st Street and Victory. Uh the four SH4 is at uh basically near seats at the end of Lincoln off 183rd or would that be 191st? Uh I have 701 North Lincoln. So forgive me for not uh knowing exactly uh where that's at. And then uh 05 is at 119 or 199th in Rididgeu. It's just south of the football stadium there. So, these are your current storm sirens. As you can see, uh when we had our series of storms, uh last month, um we started taking a look, um uh with uh with Mike and Lane at our locations and how were we doing as far as coverage goes. and we felt like we had some gaps in our coverage and needed to add some additional sirens or at least suggest some additional sirens. The other thing that we discovered uh that you'll be interested to know is that our sirens were mostly installed except for a couple in the '9s and therefore they are really old and that means that the technology of the siren has changed and some of these are belt driven sirens and we were told by uh Blue Valley Public

Safety who uh does a lot of the servicing of these sirens that if we had one that went down the likelihood of getting parts for on to repair it would be very difficult to get if not impossible. So they were recommending some changes also based on the technology that we have and um it should be uh known too to you just as you consider this that um Blue Valley is a sole source provider. They have a contract a contract that contract that we can uh piggy back on. it's already negotiated um as far as these go and because of the technology that Johnson County Emergency Management uses, they're probably the the ones we would want to go with to add additional sirens. And then the other caveat to that is that um the cities are responsible for adding and for uh keeping maintenance on the storm sirens in their city.

So, I'll stop there just for a second. Any questions that you may have so far? I have a question. Um, and I know we're not B Cirrus, but they don't Did you just get the sirens that are kind of around this area or like I'm looking a little further down like B Cirus? Do they? This particular map did not show any any sirens for Birus. Really? Okay. I was just I mean that's what it looks like. I was just like, wow. From what I looked up, it's more of a city thing. The county doesn't really provide that really. So, it's it's almost like as we annex new properties in, we're responsible for the coverage. And that's what I noticed the first time I saw it. I was like, "Holy cow, we've got Yeah, we haven't had any changes. We've grown a lot since the ' 90s." So, yeah.

Uh there's some big pockets with some very, very dense housing that had even if you were in your driveway, you couldn't hear it. So, so and as as you look up to the north, you see obviously tha park kind of off to your to your east. If you were to even widen that out more, you would see um just their how much coverage they have with their you know current storm sirens. And so when you look at their you know kind of how they have their coverage compared to ours um definitely we have some some gaps especially with the new developments in Spring Hill. What's that uh 107 informer? Because you said there's six there's five circles but there's six

and right in the middle it says 107 informer. I think that's uh the the individual who is putting this map for us together. I think that's just an error. There's nothing okay for that. So, um so here's a a depiction of where um and I'll kind of explain this because it's it's hard when you're just looking at circles on a map. So, to break this down a little bit for you, there's we're recommending that we add um four new locations. So the red locations that you see there, those would be no changes to those and they would be left in their current locations. The purple locations, and forgive me because it doesn't really show up on this map, but that middle uh circle that goes through the red and the white and the yellow, that's purple. Uh it just doesn't show up very well on this map. But um so those purple locations would be adding a storm siren at 175th and Woodland. And this would pick up that northern area, especially as we develop north of 175th Street. It would pick up that any future development down in that area. Plus, uh, within that radius, we would add a storm siren just north of 188 Terrace and Lone Elm. And this would be in Dayton Creek or near Dayton Creek. Um, adding one at 213 Terrace in Cleveland, which is the Aendale Meadows new subdivision. So, it's that one that's on the west side at 169 and then adding one near 200 and Woodland, which would be Woodland Crossing. That would also that's kind of that middle one that you're seeing there that's uh being taken up by those other circles. So, that would be four new siren locations to take up that gap. But then as we started looking after we after we saw those new locations, we

noticed that well, we probably need to uh move a couple and that was a suggestion from uh the uh the rep from Blue Valley Public Safety is if we move a couple of these u that are existing, we would obviously increase our our uh our coverage also. So, SH02, which are which is uh white there, um you would uh have that at at uh it's currently that one that's outside of the golf course. We would move that across the lake into Veterans Park and that would then increase that coverage on that side. And then moving SH3, which is the furthest south siren that you see there, the white circle, moving that to uh 224th and victory. And that would again bring us more into coverage as you can see with um with that extension to that one. So you beforehand they were really over on top of one another. Now we've extended that and got some additional coverage. And then the yellow one there, that's that's the one that's located near seats. Um that would be uh one that we would upgrade um for new, you know, a new siren, but also those two white locations, we would also need to upgrade those sirens. So they don't just upgrade sirens when they do an upgrade, they do the pole and everything because if you can imagine that pole's been in the ground for 30 years. So just to be safe, make sure there's no nothing that's going to, you know, get damaged when they're up on top of that pole replacing the siren and then all of a sudden it falls down or something happens because the pole's old, they just go ahead and replace all the equipment at the time they do the upgrades to ensure that we have good stable sirens in place so that they'll work when we need them to work.

And uh so really what we're asking to do is uh do seven new sirens. that's going to replace um three and add four. So, so anyway, if you have any questions to this point, I'll be How much is that going to cost?

It's a big question, right? So, they're about 30 to 35,000 each. So, if we replace seven, we're looking at 20 about $227,000 to do all seven of them. Rhonda, if we uh get a formal presentation and get this approved, what what budget is that coming out of? We when at the end of the year you move some cash around, which we normally do, and we put money in project and facilities and I would pull it from there. Okay.

Um when you see that, you know, I showed where you'll be over better than budget, we could do it in the general fund as well. I don't think I think you would all agree that money is not going to hold us up on this project at all. We'll see that happens. There could be FEMA funds or something that help us, but we want to get going forward and make the upgrades. This was kind of what I was alluding to when I said we take some pay for some things that are necessary. Yeah. Our intent would be uh if the governing body would want us to move forward with this to bring this back in probably the next 30 days and then proceed with implementation of these before the end of the year. Yeah. As soon as possible. Direction.

I think we all agree. as soon as feasible to go through the proper channels, make sure we're doing everything responsibly. Yeah. The first time I saw the map, I was like, "Wow, we got to do something." So, you guys turn around quick. I appreciate that. And I think it'll be good for us to to get it covered. That was the main complaint through the first storm was that I never heard a siren and we're in Kansas. Everybody stands in their front yard or other back deck when a storm when a storm's coming in. So, they were outside. They weren't inside.

Yeah. And and I should add to just for you know anybody that may be listening for your all's information you know this you know the storm sirens get tested um once a month uh they do have technology in the EOC to make sure that the sirens responding that it's uh doing what it is supposed to be doing. So um there is that check and so when they do those monthly checks if they have a problem they notify us so that we can go out and do a physical check on it. And similar to like our last storms, the only ones that'll trigger the ones that are really in the the path of the storm, right? So with how long we are, I would assume that the north side may not be triggering and when the south side is and vice versa, but uh yeah, I think I think this is great. I'm I'm happy to see it happen.

Agreed. Thanks for your hard work. Based on this map, my children are going to be really happy that you're putting really excited. Yeah, we don't want to build All right, I have my marching orders. Thank you. All right, thank you, sir. All right, we're gonna circle back with Miss Rhonda Dunn. Just got a break. Just a little break. Thank you. Sorry about that.

I came to this questions slide and that's when I usually stop. So I didn't go forward. So let's talk a little bit about the water utility. Um we obviously merged with water one in January. We do have the operating budget for the full year of 2026. The plan there was to continue um with the employees where there are and and organizing ourselves out of business until July 1. And so we the revenue we've gotten was 117,000. I estimate our expenses to be about 440 by the end of the year. So, we would have a loss over six months of about 300,000. Um, we have some merger expenses we have paid and we'll have a few more before we're done with water one potentially and so that's another 100,000. The cash at the beginning of the year was 1,476. It will have us at the end of the year somewhere near 1 million50,000 remaining in that fund. The staff is working to eliminate the expenses that don't exist anymore to reduce the things that were shared with other parts of the operation, things like that to get that down to the real cost going forward. Can I answer anything about the water utility?

And did we already get those employees switched over to the street? We're doing that. They're actually working there, but we're doing that July 1st. Okay. So, that's part of what these costs are. And they'll both uh I believe they're both moving to the sewer fund. Okay. All right. Okay. Um when we're done, um after the end of the year, kind of depending how things going, you'll determine the use of the money in this fund, where you'd like it to go next.

Thank you. So, wastewater, our big utility. Um, I estimate year- end revenue. This is a very consistent revenue um at about 3.2 million. I did not include any payments from developers in that. That'll come into the formula later. I estimate the expenses at just under 1.4 million for a gross profit by year end of 1,800,000 from operations. I like to look at this from operations. This is what we're really doing. And then if you add on system development charges that we'll receive by year over the year we should have a profit if you will in the utility of about $3 million in from that 3 million we've had year-to- date projects of 839,000. That's work that's been done say on the wastewater treatment plant and we don't have funding in place yet. Um projects like that. We also bought that uh combo truck which is an expense here. Um the change in the cash for the year should be about 1.7 million. We started the year at 8.3 and we should end the m year at about $10 million cash in the fund. Can I answer any questions? I might have one here that shows you this. I'm just showing you the revenue pieces of the wastewater operation where we have the sewer utility sales. That's the volume, what you pay per gallon. Um the connection fees for new customers, penalties for people who don't pay, the monthly service charge is a flat fee. I'd like to point out to you, we did not raise our fees in 2026. We raised them late in 25. And so we'll probably bring that up for discussion later in the year about moving them again. And then uh the big difference is the interest. We're receiving um roughly that 4% on that $ 8.3 million balance. And

that's basically it. So we're a little better than budget revenue. Um which is good. Can I answer any questions about the utility? No, it's pretty straightforward. Yeah.

So let's talk about storm water. Um, we receive about $847,000 in special assessments from property tax. We don't spend a ton of money. We have some projects planned like getting a storm water plan in place and meeting our EPA requirements and things like that. So, our gross profit should be about 686,000. We came into the year at 740 and so we should have about 1.4 million in this fund at year end. That's money that we're holding back for projects and improvements. that that's the point of this fund and so we're building that nest egg to get some work done. Do we have uh anything on the CIP that's that we're thinking about using this money for?

We're focused on getting the plan in place and meeting our EPA requirements and then from that when we have a plan then we'll execute. Okay. When do you think that'll be? You know what? I'm gonna let some experts behind me answer that question. Anybody have a clue on it, Jacob? I'm sure.

Yeah, I think that uh probably the the best candidate, you know, like Rhonda said, we want to make sure you we have those uh you know, EPA and storm water management plan mandates. Want to make sure we have that funded. Once that dust settled, I think the probably the in my opinion the best use of these funds would be to work in concert with some of the sidewalk stuff. You know, we've talked about one of the things holding us back for adding sidewalks in a lot of uh a lot of the city is we don't have the storm water infrastructure in place that needs to be there before the sidewalks go in. um that storm water work raises the costs of of those projects significantly. Rather than funding all of that out of the general fund, we can probably work out where a portion of those it'd be one project, but a portion of it could be funded out of the storm water funds to cover the the storm water related expense with the sidewalk expense coming out of the general fund. So, I think that's a a good use of that kind of fits in with the community uh goals and objectives once we once we get that uh that plan funded.

No, I think that's what I was going for is I I knew that was kind of what we had initially talked about, but I wanted to make sure that was still kind of the plan because I know there's all these other regulations we have to meet now with that with that utility. So, um, now that we're we're getting to the point where we're almost meeting those, I'd like to start looking at what we can use it for for people to see the results of. Do we have a general idea of what uh these EPA um requirements are going to cost us? Because I know that that implementation always comes with associated cost,

right? That's what I was going to say. Um, September is is when the we have to have our plan submitted to uh to the state. It's a lot of it. We talk about EPA mandates, um, but then they they push it all out to the states to administer. So, um, we will submit our plan, um, late summer, you know, takes some time to to to get that back from them. So, I don't have a I don't have a dollar amount yet. Um, we got to get that plan submitted and approved so we know exactly what all those plan elements are and then we'll put uh we'll we'll have costs for you on that, too. I appreciate that. Cool. Thank you, Jacob. All right. Anything else on the utilities?

No. I what um wanted to tell you that we I left a hard copy in in the back of the room for anyone who was here tonight who wanted one and we'll put this on the city's website so they'll have it for review and we leave it there at least for the year. Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for your time. All right, I think that's all of our presentations for the night. We'll now move on to our consent agenda. We have one item on there. Do we have any questions or changes? All right. If not, I will entertain a motion to approve consent agenda. So moved. Second. Second. Motion and a second from Ivan. All those in favor? I

oppose. Motion passes 500. Move on to formal council action. And our item, first item up is consider ordinance number 2026-10 annexation for 191st in Woodland Road including all rights of way. Mr. Mike Min.

Good evening, Mayor, members of city council. Uh this is consideration of a voluntary annexation and annexation agreement uh for property uh that's known as partial ID 9F 231501-10003. It's near the southeast corner of 191st in Woodland. Uh the owner of Wolf Creek Meadows Investors LLC has submitted a voluntary consent to annexation. uh wishing to become part of the corporate limits of the city of Spring Hill. Uh the subject property is contiguous to the existing city limits and is eligible for annexation pursuant to Kansas law. Um annexation agreement has been reviewed by staff and is consistent with policies and applicable regulations. Property is approximately 125 acres and um happy to answer any questions.

Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry. Starting off with the ones that everybody's going to ask about immediately upon annexation. Is there any expressed intended use for the properties as as of yet? The property uh is we do not have any current applications in for a zoning or a plan yet. Okay. Uh the owner has expressed interest in residential development. Okay. And it's currently zoned that way. Uh it will maintain its current zoning in the county until it's uh affirmatively reszoned and brought back for you.

Thank you. Yep. Perfect. Yeah, this is a nice pickup for us. We kind of been talking about trying to annex land that's within our current city limits so that we can get more continuous uh a city area. So, this will be good. It's right there pretty close to like Catty Corn from Foxwood Ranch and kind of adjacent to Wolf Creek and and F and uh what's it called now? That middle school spring

all the different names. 54. Um, so it's right there in that that same corridor. I know we've done a lot of work on Woodland over there, so that's already um a little bit nicer and and really 191st, this will help us be able to improve 181, too, because that that area is a little rough. We get on that side of the track. So, um, I think that's a good pickup. Um, I think housing there seems to make sense. So if that's what sends it together, I didn't see anything in the annexation agreement for any kind of So right now, like I said, we're waiting on them to come in, but I think this is a good pickup for the city. I agree.

Any other questions or comments? If not, I will entertain a motion. I move to approve agenda item number two as stated in tonight's agenda. Second. We have a motion and a second. Madam clerk, will you take the role, please? Mr. Grant? Yes. Mr. Delgato? Yes. Mr. Savage? Yes. Mr. Thrawn? Yes. Mrs. Feedback? Yes. Mayor Young?

Yes. Mayor Young, Ordinance 2026-10 for annexation of uh let's look uh partial ID 9F231501-10003 and all adjacent rights of way passes. Thank you. Next up we have uh item number three on our agenda. Consider ordinance number 206-11 amending Springfield Municipal Code Chapter 6 fireworks regulations. Thank you, mayor. Uh McMen back.

Yes. Didn't go anywhere. Uh this is a uh an a consideration of approval of ordinance to amend uh a few different sections in chapter 6, which are fireworks regulations. The proposed ordinance would amend section 601 or 6-101-102, 103, and 104. Uh those specific items would um change uh the date uh the end date of the sale of consumer fireworks that's defined in section 6-101B u from the current dates of June 27th through July 5th to ending on July 7th. The the ending date is in keeping with the newly adopted state law. Um and we believe that towards the end this may help businesses especially with the day of July 4th falling on a Saturday um help businesses to you know help sell off their inventory at the end. Um we are not proposing any changes to the proposed or the current uh discharge dates. This is just to follow the the state law at the end. We are also not proposing any changes to uh the additional time at the beginning of the sales period that the state adopted. Um if so desired by the governing body, we can go back and and look at doing that for next year. Uh but the way that the timing of bringing forward this code amendment uh the resolution for the uh discharge dates and then subsequently bringing forward you uh the permits for uh the sale of fireworks would have been difficult for us to bring forward any legislation without also having a a more uh you know full discussion with the governing body on adjusting those sale dates. So we thought um trying out uh adding that to the end might be a good

first step and then also help some of the businesses in town. Uh the other adopt or the other amendments refine application requirements uh including required documentation uh aligns timing for staff review and governing body consideration of permits uh and updates procedures rel related to the display of firework permit approvals. So the just a few minor changes or some rewarding of some some paragraphs and and that's about it for you. Happy to answer any questions. Yeah, I think this is really just addressing the temporary sale. I know we had talked about year round, so this isn't part of that.

Uh this is just kind of adjusting to what the state rules are for the temporary time frame, which I always tend to go and buy after I shoot off just for the next year or for other things going on. So, it would be nice to have a couple extra days. I'm sure it'd be nice for them to sell it off and we get the extra little bit of sales tax we can get from from what's sold. So, I don't have an issue with this either way. Keeping it in line with the state laws is of course our obligation. It's part of why we're here and what we do. I appreciate you taking the time to to work through and make sure that we're in compliance. Any other comments or questions? I'm okay with it.

All right. I will entertain a motion. I move to approve agenda item number three as stated in tonight's agenda. Second. Motion is second. This is a roll call. All right. Please take the role. Mr. Delgado, yes. Mr. Savage, yes. Mr. Thron, yes. Mrs. Feedback, yes. Mr. Grant, yes. Mayor Young, yes. Ordinance 2026-11 amending municipal code uh for fireworks chapter 6 passes unanimously.

Thank you. Bless you. All right. Number four, consider resolution number 2026-R9 designating the days authorized for the discharge of consumer 1.4 G's fireworks within the city of Spring.

Thank you. This is a resolution establishing the legal dates for discharge of fireworks. Uh each year the governing body establishes these dates for the legal discharge of fireworks. Um the resolution presented this year maintains the same discharge dates and times as previously approved. Um those discharge dates uh because July 4th falls on a Saturday. uh we believe that the not changing the discharge dates will still allow for the balance between you know celebrating over the weekend and also the the additional days. Um establishing the discharge dates for July 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th which is the Thursday through the Sunday is what is proposed for you this evening. Hours of legal discharge would be 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Dates for discharging fireworks for the New Year's holiday would be December 31st, 2026 through January 1st, 2027. Uh 11:00 p.m. on the 31st to 12:30 a.m. on the 27th. Happy to answer any questions. Again, these dates are not changed from what they were last year.

Yeah, I think LA was it last year or two years ago that we had a big uproar because it was like seven days long. two years ago, I think. Yeah, was it two year? Because it was like a midweek Fourth of July and it caused a seven-day discharge or something like that. And so that was that was not uh there was a small group of people that were very very upset about that. Yes. And a big group of people who were very happy about it. So it was kind of a problem. Um but now I think you know in these years it's not a huge deal. We'll address that when we get to that situation again in a couple years. But I think right now seems to work well. I always like to make sure the weekend. So that's seems smart and I'm okay with this if everybody else.

Yeah, addressing it year to year makes the most sense. Making sure that we're trying to be as considerate as we can as while still allowing people to celebrate everybody's favorite holiday. I'll be the first one to legally legally off a firework. Did we have any issues with discharge times like for New Year's or you know during the the fourth celebration last year? Um, as I was not here, I would have Well, I mean, I don't think I don't believe I've heard any or I don't think we had any issues. I mean, there's a lot of people. Captain Khan would probably know more than anybody else.

Okay. Yes. Yeah. We didn't have any for New Year's. Did we have any for New Year's? No. Okay.

Used to be when the Chiefs were good, that was a problem in the years, but Yeah. Um there's a couple years that are pretty good. But uh yeah, so I like I said, I I think doing it year by year. This year we're going to have a pretty short 4 day. I think it works out good. These are the good years, but I think when it hits Monday, you get really Yeah. How many days we have? So, uh, this works good. Um, I will entertain a motion if we have no other questions or comments. I move to approve agenda item number four as stated in tonight's agenda. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion passes 500. We do not have five anymore. So, moving on to number six. And uh this is consider approval of task order with HDR for grant assistance and authorized staff to submit grant applications to the Federal Railroad Administration and Kansas Infrastructure Hub for two rail grants.

Okay. So the next item before you is a request to do a lot of things. Uh so we've got a couple of opportunities ahead of us. Um both of them are rail related. Uh we first have the um the RCE grant which is the rail crossing elimination grant. We also have the uh Chrissy grant which is the let's see consolidated rail infrastructure and safety improvements grant. So I'm going to talk about both of them. It's all lumped into this one uh policy report just for simplicity. Uh they're both federally uh funded grants. Um they're the best way that we can get any sort of movement on um getting some of these uh rail crossings elevated, eliminated dealt with. Uh we are currently working on we received the RC grant um which you guys just signed the the funding agreement just a few weeks ago. So we're going to uh have that out for RFQ. While that's all working in the background, this is probably our last opportunity to apply for federal funding with rail. Um, this program is likely going to be eliminated. So, we need to move forward. We have been working with the uh federal uh the FRA people to talk to them about we haven't started our study yet. How can we go ahead and move forward with these grants? So um they have encouraged us to go ahead and move forward with these grants. Uh we are enlisting the services of HDR and there was a question about why are these task orders so high. There's a lot of work that goes into grant writing. Yes, but these particular grants require so much more than just putting words on a paper.

We have to put together conceptual designs. Those conceptual designs include how are we going to span uh span the railroad and woodland road and how how are we going to make this work? So it is a conceptual level uh 3D model of uh two rail crossings. We've got one at 191st Street. We picked that one particularly just because of all of the school traffic. You've got elementary schools, middle schools, uh high schools on either side of the rail track, the railroad tracks. Um I'm sure that there's going to be some school students, some high school students that might be upset that I'm eliminating their excuse for being late to school because they got stopped by a train, but here we are. Um but seriously, we uh we have schools on either side of the the railroad. So, you know, we definitely need to address that. We have the signal at 191st Street that will be constructed. That's going to help out. We've got some projects that Jacob's working on with the cars program that we're uh going to be overlaying 191st Street. We've got future cars programs that include 191st Street from Woodland to Ridge View. So, we've got several projects in and around that area that we're going to make some improvements. So, we want to make sure that we uh tee that up nicely so that we can move forward with this crossing. The second crossing is at 207 Street. We've got SDBG funding that we received through Mark that uh we are going to make be making improvements to 207 Street from Woodland to Ridge View. This will tie in nicely with those improvements. We also have the industrial area that is right there. We also have schools that are nearby. We also have a fire district that is right there off of 207 Street. So, so many

things going on that make that a high need intersection, high need area. So, um we didn't want to go too big just based on some of the previous grant experience with SS4A. We went too big. $11 million was too much apparently for that grant. We would have been $9,999. we would have had that grant, but um because of that, we didn't want to go too big. So, we selected those two areas just to just to to get some movement. We definitely have some other crossings that we can deal with. Uh but those were uh ones that we wanted to move forward with. So, we've got um HDR provided us with the scope and fee and the task orders for both the Chrissy and the RCE. Uh there is additional work that is required for the Chrissy. Um that requires a benefit cost analysis and that is a specialized field that apparently not very many people have to do. I had to put my blood, sweat, and tears on a FEMA project and do a a benefit cost analysis and it almost killed me. So I can totally respect the work that goes into justifying the project. Making sure that the cost of the project um that the benefits of the co the project far outweigh the costs associated with it is what you're trying to establish that there might be some life saving um things that go along with that. So all of that is factored into those task orders. the conceptual design, the conceptual cost estimates because we got to know how much the project is going to be to know how much we're going to ask for and then also that benefit cost analysis. Um, so we've got a lot of things that we're going to be doing with this. So again, lumped it all together since it was all the same thing. Uh, we are approving the task orders, the two task orders with HDR for Chrissy and RCE.

Uh we are requesting authorization to submit the two grant applications for Chrissy and RCE. We are asking to submit grant applications to the Kansas Infrastructure Hub for the grant assistance program so that we can get 100% of these task orders reimbursed so that the city is out no money for the cost of doing this. So we have no risk involved with this if we don't get the grants. Um and then the final thing is there is local match assistance available through Kansas infrastructure hub to help us with our local match. We are responsible for 20% local match. We will be asking um BNSF has funding available. Uh we will be asking for that separately. Um I don't know if I need to include that in here, but I'm just going to put my hand out and ask for it. Um and then um but we will be applying to Kansas Infrastructure Hub separately for the local match to help assist with that 20% local match. So hopefully I explained all of that, but um we have a pretty short time frame. I think there was 45 days from the uh when they released the notice of uh grant funding uh to the deadline. And I think our first deadline is like June 8th and the other deadline is June 22nd. And I have to get the gap funding uh applications in by tomorrow because I'm running up against a deadline on that one, too. So, a lot of moving pieces and parts. So, with that, staff recommends approval of all the things that I just said. I am available if you have any questions.

Go for it. So, um I was the source of most of the requests of extra information on here. Um, you are our subject matter expert when it comes to all things grants. We know how hard you work and we appreciate it. I want to make that very very clear. Um, I I know we we ask for a lot of money. Sometimes we get it, sometimes we don't. Um, it really helps me keep a a tally on how things are going, how things are working. So, thank you so much for taking the time to add the extra information. It's a great piece of mind and I think it's good for people to hear the handful of people that watch these that these uh us putting our our hands into the federal pots doesn't always cost us even though initially it cost us some money. Yeah, we always get reimburseed long term. So, thank you so much for bringing that extra information out for me. Appreciate. No problem. Anytime. Thank you so much.

Do you have any idea what we're proposing? Are we proposing to go under those railways or over? We're going to go over with both of them. Okay. Oh, yeah. I was wondering because 207 is a little bit up on a hill. That one's kind of tricky. Yeah. Um I think they're still working on that one and navigating what that looks like with the industrial park because there's a lot of access and there's already Yeah, there's already stuff there. Yeah. Yeah. But um we have to have I think we're planning on having 25 foot of clearance um between the roadway and such. Um the way that we I believe it was 207 Street. The concept that I looked at the other day um they had the rail and uh woodland was underneath. So they had one large bridge that and both of them.

I was going to say because 199th is so large. When I try to picture that 27th, I'm like, I don't know how you do that with everything already built over there. Yeah. So, it's going to be I could see I could picture 223rd a lot more than I could. Oh, yeah. 189th, you know, because 223rd just seems like they didn't take nearly as much space up to go underneath it, but to build that up, too. It's like at this weird spot. It's not high enough and it's not quite low enough to make to me makes sense either way. It's going to be tough either way. It's going to be tough either way. But uh the concepts that I saw, they work. Um there was a little bit of tweaking here and there based on you know just feed feedback that we had on access and alternative access and everything because even on 191st Street

I believe there was um you know we were looking at you know alternative routes to get in there because we had just enough grade separation where we're going to have a wall that one business might be affected. So, we're gonna have to figure out how to get them alternative access. Yeah. Somewhere else. So, we're still tweaking with the concepts and everything, but it's actually pretty impressive some of things that they're doing in the 3D modeling and showing at different elevations. You know, what does it look this way and that way? So, yeah, it's it's pretty impressive. Yeah. Sticker shocks all crazy until you start talking about you're like, "Oh, man. There is there's a lot of grading. There's a lot of walls. There's bridges aren't cheap,

right?" Are they going to include sidewalks? Uh, I would love to include sidewalks. Yes, they will. That's going to be in the design. Good. Yeah. Well, sidewalks and trails. Don't forget trails. I mean, it works. My my my plan was to uh basically do our complete street uh concept with the trail on one side and the sidewalk on the other. I just don't know how finicky the rail is going to be about some of those things. So, we may have to negotiate some of those. Maybe we go ahead and build it so that we can add the trails later

type of thing and maybe put sidewalk on one side. I don't know exactly what that looks like, but we're we're gonna we're gonna go we're going to go for gold on this one. Yeah, go for the whole kit to that might as well. All right. Any other questions or comments? If not, I'll entertain a motion. I move to approve agenda item number six as stated in tonight's agenda. Second. A motion and a second. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. 5 Z. Thanks a uh next we have a discussion item about our city attorney contract. And I think that's old Lane Massiey's coming up. I'll kick it off real quick.

Okay. Um this is a an item that we've talked about probably for the last three or four years. Not only this contract, but any service contract that we have. Uh as the community grows, the discussion comes up of at what point is the time to look at bringing it in-house or keeping it with um the current provider. Uh the mayor and I had talked about this recently. And so basically tonight's discussion is just to open the door with the with the council to kind of get the feedback uh from you on your thoughts on this. Uh his contract is coming up and and let me first lead off with this. Spencer has done a great job for us. Um it's it has nothing to do with performance. His his company and himself have done a a great job over the last several years. This is more just of a as a need for the organization of you know where are we going and do we bring that service inhouse uh to help us with that. So with that I just kind of want to open the the door for discussion. Monisha is here also to answer any questions. And if the governing body does decide that we want to test the waters, what we would propose is going out for uh requesting or putting out a a a job uh notice saying that this is open. Probably do that for around 30 days. See what the application pool is. uh go through that process, come back and you know if it looks like it's favorable, then we would move forward with hiring that individual. If not, um we would definitely want to keep Spencer on board. This will not even if we bring them in house, it's much like the engineering that we've done in the past. Even though we bring engineering in house, we will still have external uh legal requirements that we have working with attorneys or law firms on various

issues that come up. So I I do not anticipate that that's going to change at all. I think this is just a opportunity for us to look at, you know, what's best for the growth of the community or I mean the organization and see if if this fits or not at this time. I think the biggest thing is cost. So like I don't know what can be discussed and what can't but in terms of contractual fees versus bringing somebody in house looking at what their salary is going to be plus fringe. So are you are you open to say like kind of what the range is what we're Yeah. I think I think we can talk about the existing I don't want to make Spencer feel in I mean yeah the contracts with this company.

So my contract is public. It's a flat fee of 20,000 a month. The only variable in my contract is when they're separately litigated or highly specialized matters, okay, that switches to an hourly. So, um, those are pretty rare. For the most part, your litigation is going to be covered by an insurance carrier that's going to assign outside counsel and it won't come back to me. U, which is what the last couple have been. So, that doesn't get invoked often, but that's a pretty set sum from me. And then I think Monisha can correct me. I believe the city attorney has a salary range on our already kind of set up. So yeah, just go ahead.

City attorney on our salary resolution already. And so with his existing contract being that 20,000 a month, that equates out to 240,000 a year. So well within even with fringe benefits being able to bring someone house. I I think the only thing I would say is if we're going to bring it inhouse and I don't it's how everybody else feels about it, but just doing some maybe having a little bit of crossover and training. I mean, of course, not teaching them litigation. They should know that by then, but I'm just talking about like, you know, so there's a smooth transfer, right? That would be my only thing.

Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why we wanted to bring it up now because it's one of those positions where we're not just I mean we could get lucky and find someone right away but most of the time when these types of positions it's going to take a little while to go through candidates and so we want to have that time where there is that transfer of knowledge and crossover because he has been with the city for so long and his contract is over um at the end of January. So yeah, my my biggest concerns Oh. Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off.

If it makes sense financially, I mean, I'm totally for it. And I want us to take our time with it. Make sure we get somebody that's as good as Spencer or better. Um because I I just don't want somebody that can just fog him, you know? We want to make sure we get the right people in there. Yeah, that's always been my biggest concern is that when you have somebody like Spencer who has a firm behind him where he's probably he can go and bounce things off other people, so on and so forth. You're not going to get that with a oneman at a or one person attorney in house, right? And depending on what the pay is and depending on what we're paying out, like you said, costwise to get a good attorney that knows what they're doing and knows how Kansas works and municipalities. I was always worried that we weren't going to get somebody for what we could pay. we're paying enough now that I think it's worth putting it out there and seeing. Um I I'm still 5050 on it. Like I I have no problem putting the the job posting out, seeing what what applicants we get and if we get a good applicant that maybe has worked in another city and they're kind of in a junior level and looking to move up or that's what I think our sweet spot probably is. Um, I would ask that and I Spencer and I had a long conversation about this and he's willing to do multiple different things whether it be have a crossover period where's one to six months of him staying on to help out and train the new person. There's options to have him finish out projects that he's worked on already. Yeah. Consult on just particular things. So I think the relationship we have with him and his company definitely gives us some flexibility when it comes to that and renegotiating power to say hey this point we I think the upside to having somebody inhouse is one they're here so if you know he's got other clients I mean that's the matter of fact right so maybe he's in depositions all day and we had a quick question we needed that's the upside having somebody in house

uh the other thing is I've had both

you know we don't have a conflict of interest every once in a while obviously we haven't had a hu a ton of those, but when they come across, we have to figure out what we're going to do, right? So, when you're in house, you don't typically going to have that happen. So, there's a lot of these different things that could happen and and I've always kind of been opposed to bringing in house because of that, but I think we're at a point now that I would like to look and see and, you know, kind of go from there. And, um, again, Spencer's been with us now through two firms. I mean, he he moved over and we kept him because we like him and it's not have anything to do with him. Uh, for me personally it does, but I'm just kidding. No. Uh, no, it has nothing to do with Spencer. It's just we're at a point where we got we're six months out, eight months out. Let's figure out if we want to make a change. If not, then we can renegotiate and go through the process of looking at we probably need to do that again anyway because it's been a while. Look at all the firms. But, you know, then we can, you know, we have apples and apples compared to right now. We've never really gone out there and looked at it. So that's all we were really trying to discuss tonight is is anybody veheumly against it or you know if not then I think we we move forward with at least put a posting out there and see what we got options.

I'm absolutely open to it. Um Spencer as you were my my first city attorney um I don't know what it looks like having an in-house attorney. So for everybody that's probably not familiar with that like I'm not familiar with that. Do you have like a general like idea of how that looks versus the way you associate with your firm now versus the way a city attorney that is ours alone would look?

Yeah, sure. I mean, the mayor identified a really nice part of having someone in the house, especially the past several months. I've had a pretty heavy case load outside of you all. There's been a lot of days where I'm missing emails until late in the evening till I get have a deposition or the next day. So, you don't have someone necessarily playing catchup all the time. you have someone who just answers to you. Um, which is nice. Uh, candidly, there's there's a reason, you know, a lot of cities when they reach a certain size and most privately held companies when they reach a certain size bring somebody in house to just always be there.

Um, conflicts is yeah, hasn't really come up, but I did move to a much larger firm. So, the spectre of a conflict is more significant than it used to be. So, another good time for you all to kind of analyze that, consider someone to be a dedicated resource. And then also that can take more of a proactive look. I think because I'm on a flat fee and an hourly rate and I work outside, it's a lot of I do what comes to me. Someone who's in house, you know, might have a little more extra time to start really looking two, three, four years down the road, really get their elbows into, you know, the zoning code or things like that. So

that's that's kind of the component that I was actually kind of hoping to hear um as we're you know the the uh the overall tone of the night as we've had both our meetings has been starting to stop playing this reactive here these things have happened and start looking more towards how we can plan for the future. So that's a that kind of gets me on board with it as a whole just knowing that we'll have somebody that has that kind of attention to dedicate to the city.

I think it's going to matter how you post the position. So, I think it's, you know, highlighting, um, you know, I agree with what Mayor Young said, but I think that if you specify in the posting about the experience about, um, you know, having Kansas state municipality experience and all that and having a range of the number of years of experience, I think, you know, you're still going to get some people that don't read the ad fully and apply for it because I've had that, too. Um, but if you highlight that in the uh job description, I think that kind of lessens and and gets you pretty good. I mean, that's at least what I found. So, Mike, anything to say?

I I think it's good to explore, to see. Um, it's always good to just like we do RFQS. It's it's just another tool to see and I think it's worth looking for. Worst case, we keep Spencer, you know. But yeah, other than that, I mean, if nobody has any qualms with that, I think we go ahead and give Miss Jones the go ahead to to work on that. And will you bring that to us or will that just happen? It is going to happen. Okay, great. Um, but I will tell you that the city attorney position is considered like the director one. So,

it'll be a different process like when we brought on um Mike, you know. Yeah. So, well, and I think Spencer offered to be as involved as we'd like him to be. Oh, at least. Yeah. From what? Yeah. Yeah. So, I think that would be great. Help review resumes, do interviews. When you find your successful candidate, we'll find a way to flat fee or is that on the hourly? Yeah. So, I'll keep all that on the flat fee. When you guys find your successful candidate, we will modify my engagement letter to move to an hourly so that you're not overpaying for me to transition work. I can you're just paying me to sit there and transition stuff. So, yeah. Yeah.

I was just also going to say it's a good added support for HR. Um, as time goes on, you know, it's just some of the personnel litigation, it's really nice to have somebody close by to ask just bounce something off of because seems to be sometimes more complex as time goes on dealing with some of those issues. So, I think that'd be a good thing, too. All right. Well, I think we have our our marching orders there.

Thank you for that. Thanks, Spencer, for being open to everything and being really good about it. There was no He was like, "Yeah, whatever you want. I got you. I can stay. Go." We figured you just apply and then come here. Just work here for that work out. He's like He's like, "You're only a part of my business. You're not He's got a boot on. He can't Yeah, he can't run. Yeah. All right. So, we will move into executive session. I would ask uh for a small break in between. And I know You good? Okay. All right. Um, so just a small break before this first one. Five minutes. Okay. Five minutes.

All right. So, five minutes. I move that the city council recess into executives executive session for 15 minutes to receive the advice of council regarding economic development. Pursuant to KSA75-4319B2 of the Kansas Open Meetings Act, the open meeting will resume in the city council chambers at um 9:22 p.m. You want to do the five minute break? Yeah, that's with the fivem minute break. N 26 26 26.

So 26. Okay. So 9:26 p.m. No formal action is anticipated following the session. The persons to be in attendance are the following. Lane Massie, city administrator, Mike Melon, community development director, Rick McConnell, bond counsel, and the Kate Dylan, bond council, Kobe Krisanowski, um, municipal advisor, and Rhonda Dylan. And Rhonda Dunn, financial director. They didn't put her on. We have a second. We have a second. Second. Motion a second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion passes 5 Z. See you back in at 26. 26.

reflect the government body reconvene the meeting at 9:26 p.m. No votes were taken or decisions made during the executive session. The discussion was limited to the subject stated. We had executive session two and three. Um Ivan had to leave but he will be joining us by phone in the executive sessions. So if you want to

go through number two. Yeah. I move that the city recess into executive session for 10 minutes to receive advice of council regarding matters of non-elected personnel pursuant to KSA 75-4319B2 of the Kansas Open Meetings Act. The open meeting will resume in the city council chambers at 9:38 p.m. No formal action is anticipated following the session. The persons to be in attendance are the following. Spencer Laauo, city attorney. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I oppose. Passes 300 301

I'd like to not have to come back. Let the record reflect the governing body reconvene in the open meeting at 9:38 p.m. No votes were taken or decisions made during the executive session. Discussion was limited to the subject stated. We will now move into executive session number three. I move that the city council recess into executive session for 25 minutes to discuss matters of non-elected personnel pursuant to KSA75-4319B1 of the Kansas open meetings act. The open meeting will resume the city council chambers at 10:05

10:05 p.m. No formal action as anticipated following the session. The persons be in attendance are the following. Spencer La, city attorney. Second. A motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion passes 301. One.

10:05, right? Let the record reflect the governing body reconvene the open meeting at 10:05 p.m. No votes are taken or decisions made during the executive session. The discussion was limited to subject stated. We are going to extend for 10 minutes. So if I can get a motion to extend I move to extend executive session number three for 10 minutes to return at 10:16 p.m. Second. A motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion pass 30 0. Thanks. Three 0 one.

Let the record reflect that the governing body reconvene an open meeting at 10:16 p.m. No votes were taken or decisions made during the executive session. The discussion was limited to no the subject stated. We don't have any more executive sessions. Luckily, we are ready to adjourn. I move that we adjourn. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion passes 301.