City Council - Regular Meeting

June 12th.

Can we please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance?

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

to secure federal funds to help support staffing levels in our fire department. They're talking about who can take for grant where we're looking to utilize federal funds for 14 positions so pushing nearly four million dollars but you'll also see two of the grant requests in there to authorize approval one for a health and safety for screening and safety initiative but then also the third grant is for three positions in risk reduction, part of our fire marshal services, how we do inspections, adding to that staffing. So you'll see those in there. You will see there's a comprehensive kind of change to seven different charges that we are now mirroring our local ordinance with state legislation. When the state legislature convened this past session, they made some changes to state statutes. So we have to do some of our local statute changes to mirror what the state did related to some charges within the criminal code.

High level, can you just kind of go over what those changes would be?

Yeah, one of them is domestic violence. Let me pull those up here. So one of them is about not using lasers or how lasers are used and how they're looked at as a criminal offense. One's about petty theft, how we look at the petty theft. A value of 500 or more must be charged as a felony. So there are some changes in that regard. Then how people, unlawful use of a financial card or credit card. But then even talking about the buying of sexual relations, the municipal court will no longer have jurisdiction over those offenses. That was a state legislative change. And then talking about domestic battery, it amends the penalties for domestic battery convictions. And the second conviction has a mandatory sentence of 20 days in confinement. And then lastly, there are two other ones, aggressive conduct. The chapter was changed there to be repealed for part of it. And then on criminal trespass, how trespassing is not allowed upon floodway property. And that includes a big ditch for us. And so signs are being placed to update that information to conform with state statute.

Would that also apply to, for instance, by Chapin Park in district number three?

We're looking at that. I don't know. I'd let us get back with you on that because the thought is yes, but I don't want to definitively say we don't have that information for you.

Because... And would that also apply to the Arkansas River?

And that's what I'd say. Knowing the ownership along the Arkansas River, how that affects anything, we're trying to determine that as well. So we'll have that information for you. We'll try to get that out to you in a separate email today if we can for sure on Monday. So those are of note just again more conform with what the legislature did in this last session that impacts some of our statutes. You will also see on the 16th agenda we do have the golf cart legislation that also was adopted or permissible from state legislative action. But our proposal states that golf carts are permissible on sidewalks within one mile of golf courses. That's the legislation that's presented. You'll also see within there, there's a lease for a sports complex, South Lakes.

City Manager, can we go back for one second? Sure. On item number six, it's golf carts. I'm sorry, excuse me. But then also, it's the use of mobile telephones in road construction areas. Oh, thank you, yes. There are two different changes. Thank you. I'm wondering why they're lumped together. I know they're both to get in line with state statute, but could they be addressed separately? Because one might want to vote for one of them, but not the other.

Oh, I got you. Yeah, I don't know. we just yeah you're right we just consider them as updates yeah but um could we have them separated yeah i think we can take care of that right now by now and monday we should be able to have that uh split out to separate those if that's uh any other interest in that that's fine i would consider it about six a and six b okay thank you yeah if the council member wants to separate it again if the customer wants separated then i'm perfectly fine voting to separate All right. So that's that. And then, like I said, we do have a lease on there. We have a sports complex. We do have several zoning items on there. And we do have some continuation of sale of housing. When you look at temporary easement, but also to highlight, we do have one eminent domain item on the agenda for the 16th as well. So those are some of the highlights of note for the 16th. Any other questions related to the 16th before I move to the 23rd workshop? All right. So just a couple of things on the 23rd agenda plus the workshop is again on the 23rd we do have some acquisitions, temporary easements. You will see that we do have several lot cleanups, nuisance abatements that we will be seeking approval to initiate. And then there is some road work on McLean that's on there as well. We do have some more planning items. And then again we do have some sale of land related to the housing authority or housing board. So that is the business items on the 23rd. And then in front of you, we have the agenda for the workshop on 23rd. We will have our customary waterworks update for the month as part of the workshop. We will have budget information for you where we will talk again about operations and operating budget. You were. presented with departmental request information based upon your last conversation. We'll kind of give you a check-in and some, I think, some prioritizations I'm looking at and then getting some more feedback from you. But we will also spend time on the CIP so you understand What are some of the components or items in the CIP and that is over the next 10 years. And so we'll highlight that for you what's coming up in 27 and then what's on the horizon as well. And then we will have a pretty focused conversation and kind of two parts related to homelessness outlining the community's continuum of care. and how that process is working and different players within that. And then a second component, more about our community service delivery, how city departments are addressing homeless issues. It's not just a police issue, not just a housing issue, not just a parks issue, but looking at how we are doing collaboration among departments when we encounter homelessness in different reports. And so we'll give you a little overview on that. And then we have this open air ICT permits. That's basically outdoor dining. We do need some council action by August and so we want to tee that up with you here in June and give you some of the information about what the program currently is, how we're administering it, and then what are some options going forward for maintaining or discontinuing or implementing fees related to outdoor dining space within the right-of-way that's why it's um coming to you because it deals with right-of-way issues so those are the items that we have identified for the workshop and the 23rd agenda and then for today unless you have other questions we do have a departmental presentation from public works is there any other issues i can address yes

Yes. I'm just curious, for this conversation regarding homelessness resources, how is this conversation going to be different than the many conversations we've been having?

So two frames. One is from the continuum, which generally is United Way is leading some of that. And so understanding different funding structures, because the continuum has federal funds, also leverages some local partnerships. And they're the ones who focus on the point in time count, so they can talk about that a little bit. So one is more the community conversation about how that's being administered or structured. And then the second part is really more how the city is addressing homelessness on a collaborative, coordinated effort. and even talking about more encampments. But when we encounter, again, a lot of folks think when they see homeless or whatever, the reports can come in through our C-Click Fix App, calls to 911, calls to our housing department. There are multiple ways on which we are hearing about different homeless issues. So I want you all to hear how we are coordinating those. But then again, talking about our partners, And even we can have conversation if you think more resources talking about some of the partners and the multi-agency center. But we want to make sure everyone has the same understanding of how we're doing the process for service delivery. And so

Who is the city's representative on the continuum of care? Do we have a spot on the continuum of care? Okay. And then for the encampment conversation, will you have data that shows us how many encampments have been cleaned up and how many of those individuals have actually been directed successfully into resources? We should have the bulk of that information.

I don't, the specific, yeah, so what I'm,

seeing that we do have that data that we will be sure to include. So what does success look like for this conversation? And I'm asking because we continue to talk about homelessness and housing, and I'm not sure if we have a clear direction on where we're going. But I know we continue to talk about it being a problem, but I don't know if we have a clear roadmap to where we are going. That's not to say departments aren't doing an amazing job.

i don't know if we are unified in the direction that we're headed so i'm just trying to figure out why we're having this conversation again and what does success look like i think um one thing about what does success look like is really for everyone to understand the process so the person who's homeless today may not be the person who's homeless tomorrow so with someone new but we also have a lot of folks with chronic homelessness And so when you have a veteran homeless or when, because the concern has been if we're cleaning up encampments along the river, we even have some encampments internal to the city and we see them along in vacant lots or whatever it may be. Are those the same people? We're not. So how are we addressing them so you can see the flow of service delivery from our end? But the ultimate question is, what is the goal? Are we reducing homelessness? I would say yes. I want to be sure that we quantify that and qualify that in this conversation. But when you have new people entering homelessness, Do we have the resources to keep up with that and how are we doing that? So yeah, we can tell you that we placed last year, this is an estimate, we placed 100 people into shelter or into housing, but here we have another 100 that we're seeing on the street or whatever it may be. And so a lot of people say, well, what's the city doing about homelessness? And so I want to be clear that we do have processes in place, but the nature of homelessness changes and ebbs and flows. Some's chronic, some's mental, some's situational. And so the duration is a variable on there, but they all get in the same process and same service. Okay.

I appreciate that. I think we've had this conversation at the District 1 breakfast. Thank you, Sally, for coming and sharing robust information about the great work housing is doing and what the city is doing in regards to homelessness. You also presented at the WAMPO meeting as well on this, and I think you do an amazing job talking about exactly what we're getting ready to talk about on the 23rd. What I'm interested in is what is the role and the responsibility of this governing body to have a level of accountability to create the ecosystem that actually works. And I think we are all interested in that conversation. I think it's one thing that we can be united on. So an idea is, when we provide funding to homelessness agencies and i think vice mayor glascock and council member jv johnson started this conversation of what are the parameters and our expectations we're putting on agencies when we provide city funding i would love for that to also be a part of this conversation and then looking at the system that we currently fund outside of the city and how are we bringing all of those individuals together to to really Talk about the unified vision that the city has and how we need them to work together to work towards that goal I don't see second light as the the builder of that ecosystem And I think that there's a lot of confusion around second lights purpose I think that they are an agency provider and I think it is the city's responsibility to help vision the ecosystem to help solve housing and homelessness and I think that that should be a part of this conversation and

I also want to correct the record. I'm not in the continuum of care. I'm on the coalition to end homelessness. So who is on the continuum of care?

It's the same thing.

Oh, okay. There's lots of that.

Yes, the COC has a name change, has had it for a couple years now, so that it's more understandable for community. That coalition is the coalition to end homelessness, which you are... I think there are several others. Captain Moses is also on that board. Council member slash Vice Mayor Glasscock. Any other city individuals? Thank you. And so I wanted to add one more caveat to all of this. One of the things that spurred this conversation was actually something very immediate, and that is emergency winter sheltering. What is the game plan? Because I know we're in summertime, we're thinking about heat, but I'm already thinking about our cold weather season. And Second Light housed more than 400 individuals, and that's just one of the shelters, long list of individual organizations that do this. So I agree what the unified vision is so that homelessness is rare and non-recurring and brief. And so if that is the vision, how do we get there? But when you ask what is the responsibility of this body, we're a policymaking body. So one of the things that also needs to be part of this conversation is our rules regarding encampments, panhandling and loitering. So I would like that to be holistic then if we're going to talk about what's the role of this body.

And please include in that the resources that are available. Second, because I mean, I keep hearing mixed reviews of there are beds at second light. There are no beds at second light. Then there's Union Rescue Mission. So I just need a I need a full understanding of like I'm with the mayor. Yes, to policies around panhandling, watering and encampments. But if these folks don't have anywhere to go, we're putting the cart before the horse. And that could be wrong. I reserve the right to be wrong. Maybe there are places to go, but I want to know. through the data that we actually know that that is true.

We'll work on that to make sure we have the robust information you're looking for for a good conversation. But we'll have a couple different community partners through the continuum or coalition to end homelessness.

Can I add one more? This is something that I did send an email to the city manager and the county manager because we have been talking about this holistically and I wanted to know So if we're talking about resources, the Lord's Diner provides three meals a day for individuals that need it. But then just down the street at the same exact time, someone was feeding individuals right off of Topeka. literally a block away, same time, same service. So we're duplicating services. We're not really being coordinated. So that is an issue. So this also needs to be part of that conversation, coordination of those services. And I appreciate people who have a big heart. I know that the Lord Steiner needs people to volunteer. I know that other nonprofit organizations in this ecosystem need volunteers. And so That coordination is really that it's back to the community and as a whole, we all need to be rowing in the same direction. And I don't believe we are doing that at the current moment. So while the city can only row the city departments in one direction, we also need nonprofits to be also rowing in that direction and we need community to be doing the same thing so it's multiple layers and again it goes back to the conversation that I think Councilmember Shepherd was talking about what is the responsibility of each of these organizing bodies thank you

So that's all we had for agenda items. Before we do our departmental update in Public Works, I didn't know if we wanted to highlight anything.

So on Tuesday, I forgot to recognize that Council Member Shepherd won an award. So I'll let him talk about it. But at that event, it was the Choose Wichita event. And this is a booklet of data points regarding people that moved to Wichita, accolades that Wichita has received. And again, it talks about why people choose to come to Wichita and live here, affordable cost of living, enriching quality of life and competitive employment and education among the three top things that people cite as why they choose to come here and stay here. So congratulations, Council Member Shepherd.

Good, and then we'll end the session today with Public Works. We have Gary Jansen as Director of Public Works and Utilities to come forward and do a departmental update.

Thank you, manager. Mayor and council members, Gary Jansen, Public Works and Utilities. I wanted to provide an update on our water reuse efforts. And this PowerPoint, you can see there's some technical stuff in here I won't spend a lot of time on. I just want to give you a good overview. So there's next week, there's a webcast being hosted by the Kansas section of the Water Reuse Association. And I'm going to be making this presentation then. So it talks holistically about where we've been and where we're going. And so a lot of this will look familiar to you, but I wanted to give you an update, especially on what's next for us timing wise. So we do have a draft master plan from CDM Smith that covers what you see on the right. As you know, the historic drought impacts to our community, particularly in the years from 2021 to 2025, led to this effort. Just as a reminder, Wichita is a regional water provider. One in six Kansans receive water from us. So it's critical that we look to the future and find a path forward and make ourselves as responsive as we can to these issues in the future. This plan contemplates industrial reuse, indirect and direct potable reuse, things that I'll talk about in just a moment, with an initial focus on the creation of state regulations for the last two applications. The state regulation part has been really critical, and I want to talk specifically about what has happened there that we've had some real success on so far. Public engagement, we've had a holistic plan in place already, including some cool things we're doing with Exploration Place I'll talk about. We're also looking to identify funding opportunities and deployment of a potable reuse pilot project, which is going to be really critical to keep things going. You've seen this map before. I mentioned that we provide water to 500,000 people, which is 17% of the state's population. That includes 11 wholesale customers and McConnell Air Force Base. Derby and Valley Center are both working on their own treatment facilities, utilizing groundwater rights that they have in place that have been untapped in the past. That helps us look at our long-term water supply and provide more water that we'll need into the future as our community and region continue to grow. There's a lot of information on here that's probably a little bit hard to make out. Cheney Reservoir being one of our main water supplies to the west. We've talked about that is the crux of where we came from. I want to show you something related to Cheney here in just a moment. I might remind you we've had discussions over time of the reason why we started looking at reuse. The question came up about why don't we dredge Cheney. We've done a great job of keeping the sediment out of Cheney with very strategic investments over the years. for watershed protection. The question was asked about why don't you build another reservoir. We're talking about, you know, getting upwards of half a billion dollars just to build a reservoir, but there's so many other issues related to that, and we're still related on what happens to us precipitation-wise. Our ECHOSPEDS and aquifer storage and recovery project we've talked about too, and that kind of big odd-shaped area stayed in great place because of our ASR efforts. We take high water from the Little Rock River, we treat it, we put it back in the ground, we recharge the aquifer. Even throughout the drought, we never saw the level drop below about 92%, and that is a real testament to what we've done over the years and the investments that the council has made in that. The green areas show our wastewater treatment facilities and where we're headed to the future and that we look for the effluent that's coming out of those facilities as possibly a way to close the gap on our water sources and create a new water supply for the future. And of course, Wichita Water Works being in the middle and our main water treatment plant. Yet to be determined how those come into play with reuse in the future. The data on the right just shows what our capacities are, what we're seeing for average flows. This all becomes part of this master plan in looking for the most strategic way to close the loop. You've seen a similar table to this before, but I wanted to walk you through this real quick because this tells a real story. and the challenge that we face for the future. So the dark blue line is the conservation pool. So keep in mind, our drought stages are triggered by the 12 months we're all in conservation pool in Cheney Reservoir. Not just the elevation, but basically the capacity of water. This was developed in 2013, coming off the heels of the last drought. If you look over towards the right side, where it mentions November of 2024, that was when Cheney Reservoir reached an all-time low. We had seen relatively no inflow into the reservoir for multiple years, and we hit a low spot then. We started getting close to that red line, which was stage three. Quick reminder, stage three is elimination of all outdoor watering. We want to stay away from that in the future. So if you look at the dashed blue line, is the actual level of Cheney Reservoir. The dark blue line is the conservation pool. The reservoir itself recovers a lot quicker than the community can, right? That makes sense looking at those two. We need to safeguard and protect ourselves against that into the future. Find a way to be prepared. We're going to see more stages of drought. so many things happen i've been in recent meetings talking to community members about we've talked about these 100 year rain events that we have that means there's a one percent chance every year you could have that type of rain event it doesn't happen once every 100 years however If you look over the last five years, it seems like we have a handful of 100-year events every year, right? We get these drastic events and things happening in between. That's the unpredictability. That's what we need to protect against. We want to safeguard against. We want to create a sustainable water supply for the future. A great thing that the council did last September was to put in place permanent watering restrictions. We are seeing, we think, so far as we get into the summer, a reduction in water use from previous years based on this watering schedule being in place. Keep this in mind. If anybody's got questions for you, we have staff that's out and about watching to see if people should be watering or not. We still offer a warning, first warning. But this is not meant to be punitive. We're not making money off of violations. We're trying to get everybody on the same page and understand the value for the future. We have been in the industrial reuse business since 2015 with Spirit. That map on the left, the upper left, is our main wastewater treatment plant at the south end of the community. The pipeline going to Spirit. Obviously, you all know what Spirit and Boeing does for our community. I don't need to provide any detail on that. On the right side is the pump station. So we provide them almost a million gallons a day of recycled water for their industrial processes and for cooling. We continue to talk to them about the future. We are also looking at other industries that may use non-potable reuse. And I'll talk about that again in just a moment. But there's a lot of possibilities here. This becomes more of a challenge. So you've seen this picture before, the one on the left. is the treated effluent coming out of our main wastewater treatment plant to the Arc River and heading downstream. That's 25 million gallons a day. Just a reminder, our average demand typically over the years is 50 million gallons a day. Think about the idea of being able to eventually capture half of our daily capacity and create a new water supply for the future. That starts to create a generational water supply that helps us to drought-proof our community. It helps us to continue to grow. It helps us to look at economic development opportunities and all of these industries and businesses we talk about with water use. if we can start heading that direction, which is where we are. The diagram on the right really talks about what this means as far as direct and indirect potable reuse. So I'll walk you through this real quick. On the right side, where Cheney Lake is, we'll just call that both of our water supplies for our surface water and groundwater. Dark blue arrow is what happens now. It goes to our water treatment plant. It's distributed to for consumption for residential and business purposes, industrial. It goes back to our wastewater treatment plants. It goes to some non potable use like we have a spirit. Our sewer maintenance crews use some of that water. from our water center for cleaning sewers. Park Department uses some for irrigation or it heads downstream for others to consume it south of Wichita. What we want to do with the light blue arrow is provide options then that we can go through an advanced water purification process We could do what we call indirect reuse, where we augment and recharge our water supplies. One of the ideas, and I'll show you details on this in just a moment, is we could take water back to Cheney Reservoir and keep Cheney Reservoir at a manageable level. We don't have a lot of room to recharge our Equispeds aquifer because we're already doing that. So that starts to lend itself to looking at direct potable reuse, which is the inner circle. where we go through advanced water treatment, we blend that water to water treatment plant, and we send it back to the system. So we close the loop, and we make a cycle for ourselves out of our own water. Our Regus Master Plan, there's multiple steps here that I'm going to hit on a few of these. I just wanted to talk about them holistically. We've been conducting water quality sampling of our wastewater for some time now and working with KDHE. We're looking at supply and demand analysis. We've done a lot with the funding strategy plan. We're looking right now with what will be the next phase of our water use master plan, which we'll talk about in a moment, the return on investment for our community. This is a costly endeavor long term for looking at the actual water reuse facility and what we do to try to make this work. The pilot's going to inform a lot of this. It will help us look at what the future costs might be. We want to see what rate impacts might be. There are some funding grant opportunities out there we're looking at. Nothing committed anywhere yet, more so than just the pilot, but want to see how we can make this work in the future. As you know, we're currently financing almost a billion dollars in improvements between Wichita Water Works and our B&R. Once we get past that point, I think it's practical that we can start to look to reuse. This is something we would want to talk to you about and we will here soon. Community and public outreach has been a big component I'll talk about in a moment. Pilot work plan I'm going to talk about too and what we've done for alternatives. We have submitted our feasibility study to the Bureau of Reclamation, which has been approved, which is a critical step to make us eligible for future funding. Regulatory effort has been a huge first step. For us to be able to do anything related to potable reuse, currently there's no regulations in Kansas that allow it. There's only five or six states in the country that have regulations in place. The first thing we had to do was to get legislation passed that allows KDHE to start developing regulations. We went through multiple steps. This became law in April of 2026. I think you all saw that on the 23rd there's going to be a ceremonial bill signing in Topeka. I'm going to be there anyway for the water program task force. So I'll be fortunate if I can be there for that. And that really means this is a big deal. This was a big, big step. I value and appreciate all of you for supporting this along the way and the things that you did to make this happen. There's not much else we could have done going forward without this part happening first. We will continue to work with KDHE now on what that looks like to develop regulations.

And we're the sixth state in the nation to have regulation legislation. So that's, I think, really an amazing accomplishment. And kudos to you and your team for getting us to this point. Thank you.

And thank you for your support. The communications and public outreach, CDM Smith has got a great sub-consultant that's done this around the country for many, many years. And we continue to work on that. We are going to, as we start moving forward with this pilot project, assuming we do, We want to then look at an actual steering committee, and we'll be asking for more input from you on what that looks like to help not just to promote this. We want to have a good balance of folks on the steering committee that understand what this is about. We've looked to the health community, education, everybody that we can get input from. Even if there are folks who may not think this is the best idea, we want to make sure we hear from everybody. So we'll keep working on that. Exploration Place, we've got some cool stuff going on. They are working to create an exhibit

Can I make a quick suggestion? Please do. Post the conversation we had on Tuesday regarding youth members of the District Advisory Board, I would recommend that you ask either the Mayor's Youth Council and or the USD 259 Student Board. The two leaders of those youth organizations would be really good individuals to represent youth as part of that conversation.

I think that would be great. We're looking for diverse opinions as we can, expertise, even those who may not know a lot about this, because this is a long-term effort. We're looking way into the future, and so that would be wonderful.

We're all the kids out at Independent. We put them on it, right?

Yeah, sure. But there will be more to come with this. We have done a lot. We've got a lot of information on our website. The exhibit that Exploration Place is working on I think is going to be really cool. They're talking about a short film that would accompany their IMAX productions. I don't know if you all had a chance to see the link to the video I sent you. It's called Renewed. It is really cool. It does a great job of talking about where reuse is. If you want to see that again, let me know. I'm going to spend very little time on this, but I wanted you to know we're spending a lot of time looking at options. So when we talk about non-potable, this is the industrial reuse like Spirit and Boeing. We're looking at other industry needs of what might be possible to make this work. One of our challenges here is who pays for the infrastructure? How do you structure the cost of recycled water? That's going to be hard for us to overcome. Spirit's a lot closer to the source, but to this point, When we talk to the Greater Wichita Partnership and those who are involved with economic development in our community, one of the things we've really pushed for is try to look for locating industry closer to recycled water opportunities because the cost for conveyance becomes significant. The closer you can build to our wastewater treatment plants, the more it can make sense. i mentioned indirect potable reuse on the top one where we would augment our water supply it's 37 mile pipeline from plant two to cheney now it becomes a real challenge cost wise but it's an option it's what's being done in california would never offer a comparison to the things that are being done in california but what they're doing instead of sending their treated effluent back out to the ocean they're augmenting their water supplies with their aqua ducts and their underground reservoirs, they're sending the water back that way. Keep in mind, and I think most of you already realize this, if we have a good year, a wet year, we kind of have a stranded investment, right, of sending water out there. So we would have to change how we use our water supplies. That may not be real viable. That's where we start to get to a point of looking at direct potable reuse. where we're going to go through an advanced water treatment facility, blend at our water treatment plant, and then out to the system. The table on the right just contemplates that this would be a stepped approach, that we would look at phases from a cost perspective, from a timing perspective, and over time get to where we could utilize more of this. I won't spend any time on this, but the advanced water purification process has come a long ways. The fear in the past of the idea of treating wastewater, the communities have been able to overcome this that are moving in this direction by using a multi-barrier advanced water treatment process. And what this does, you'll see right in the middle at the bottom, we've talked about PFAS before and emerging contaminants. It helps respond to that. One of the biggest things we see in the wastewater component is the human pathogens that you don't see in our raw water supply. That's where the fear factor comes from. These multiple barrier treatments where we go through ultra filtration, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet disinfection, That gets us to a point that the water coming out of here will be cleaner than the water that's coming out of our water treatment plant. And then ultimately, up here on the upper right, we would blend this water with our raw water supply. We'd go back through our water treatment plant. This can work. Other communities have shown it can work. I promise I've been down to the last few slides. I just wanted to show you some kind of cool stuff. This is from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and a pilot project that they have in place that I got to visit. CDM Smith also designed this. It would be similar to what we would be looking at. They have the ability with their weather to put the equipment outside. We would not be able to do that, so it would go in a storage container like you see there. This is one of the processes. This is another. This is a smaller scale facility compared to our 50 million gallons a day, but it will do a great job of informing our needs. This will allow the regulators to see how this works. It allows the community to see. Most of these facilities have a drinking station with them that if you want to and are interested, you can see what the water looks like coming in and then see what the water looks like going out. One of the cool parts of this is we would expect to have a trailer on site to have an education center so we can bring classes down here, elected officials, anybody from the community could come and see how this process works. We could spend time here showing videos. take people on tours of the facilities. Right now, we would plan for this to be located at our plant, too. Last slide. Thank you for bearing with me. What's next? On or around July 7th, we'll be coming to the City Council for consideration of an amendment for water use master plan. That will include some initial funding for the pilot project so that we can keep everything moving forward, so we can continue with the public engagement, so we can work on the steering committee. We will have continued collaboration with KDHC for approval of the pilot plan. We're working on application for grant funding for the Bureau of Reclamation. We still have to work with the Division of Water Resources on confirmation of downstream water rights. You heard me talk about that treated water that's going down the river. We do have to make sure we honor existing water rights for those south of our community. We think we're in a really good place with that. We have modeled that even during drought conditions and we think we're good. We will support KDH in the development of reuse regulations. And then I mentioned that we'll have continued multiple facets of public engagement. That was a lot of information, but I'm happy to answer questions if you have any.

The one maybe comment I'll have is the earlier we engage our district advisory boards, I think the most helpful so they can also be ambassadors for reuse and so I don't know if that looks like early fall but I want them brought on really early in the process and maybe multiple rounds because this could be one of the most transformational projects in the city. I think just being good stewards of all of our assets this could be incredibly helpful so I just want them to be informed so they don't feel that they're just being included at the end of the process.

I think that would be wonderful and I would suggest if it sounds reasonable is to get through this next step with the council sometime in July and make sure you're comfortable with where we're moving next and then follow up with the DABs after that because it would be nice to get some input too on the public engagement part.

Gary, I appreciate all this work and being along on this process. Just two questions, one related to funding and maybe this also goes to Jim. Is Jim Davenport or anybody in D.C., are they actively looking for federal grants to help with this process?

We submitted a formal request, Jim, if you don't mind, when you all were there, along with the Wes Kellogg request, through Senator Moran's office for potential funding for the pilot project. I haven't heard anything back on that, but we are meeting with Jim Davenport next week, so we'll ask that question. We are working on applications through the Bureau of Reclamation for what's called Title 16 funds. We have previously received some of those same funds for work that we're doing with ASR in our well field. We've got a great relationship with the Bureau of Reclamation. I think we've got a good opportunity there. Also working with, while we're talking about that, the Kansas Infrastructure Hub has got available funding for matches on projects. The most recent award that we got for the Safe Streets for All for the Broadway corridor The $20 million in federal funding we got, the infrastructure hub provided almost $5 million match. So we're going to be working with them too. So we're scouring every area we can, but I appreciate that question because I think this is something that I want to make sure the federal delegation is aware of that we're working on too.

And when we're talking about state funding opportunities, are we talking about the rotating grant or the rotating loan? that we use for the sewage treatment? It's always an option.

The WIFI and SRF loans are always an option. They fit a little bit bigger on larger scale projects. That's something we would look at potentially for the future when we start to contemplate full-scale development of water reuse.

okay and then the last question um you know realizing that there might be times that for example the corps of engineers have to lower the the dam on cheney to lower the water level do we are we looking at anything that might actually help farmers nearby is that an opportunity to tap into this in some sort there might be some state grants out there that might help with that because A lot of farmers are dealing with the drought and whatnot. Being able to kind of utilize the extra water that we would have to have an extra customer to again help them with the drought and kind of some of the issues they're facing, especially as the Ogallala Aquifer kind of dries up here nearby.

That's an interesting question. There are some things being done upstream of the Cheney watershed further to the west that actually could impact the inflow related to some other statewide issues with Guevara National Wildlife Refuge. But to that point, on the positive side, we have had a long-standing relationship with ag producers and the farmers in the area. I hadn't contemplated that thought. We don't see a lot of release from Cheney. We've had a fairly wet year already. We seem to be getting more rains. We're actually still in the flood pool stage at Cheney because we wait on the core to dictate when we release. But that's a good question, and we'll make sure that's part of our discussion going forward.

Okay, yeah, because, I mean, if we're cutting the usage out of Cheney in half, essentially, with 25 million gallons a day, maybe there's opportunity for some of that or whatever goes through us as well. Sure.

It's going to take a while to get to that point. Not a great question. It'll take us a while to get there, and keep in mind... We're looking at growth for the future, regardless of what happens. Set aside data center, set aside the other high water. We still see, we hear quite often, a new potential new aircraft industry that needs water. Integra is not the best example, but when we were talking about Integra, they initially needed so much water, we had to draw a line and say we can't provide that much. We don't want to be the limiting factor if we don't have to be. So I don't want to diminish your question, but what we're looking at with that future 25 million gallons is going to support the continued growth of our community. Probably the bulk of it, but that's a great question and we'll keep that in mind.

water security is one of the things businesses are taking a long hard look at when moving into areas and to the Integra point from what I understand the water that would be useful at a chips plant would have to be like ultra pure is what would be coming out of the sewage treatment plant pure enough or something like that or would I have to go through and be refined even further

My understanding with a lot of those is they have got to apply their own process regardless. I don't think we can make pure enough water. And that's got nothing to do with our processes. That is entirely on their end. And it just becomes a part of who they are. I think ultimately with Integra and others, they were going to have on-site recycling. They were going to have to be looking at reuse anyway. It was just their first blush at a really big number. Okay. I appreciate that.

I was just going to add on to what council member whole. I just said in June, I talked about it maybe this morning. I can't remember which day, but when we're looking at our legislative agenda for next year, both state and federal, making sure this is one of the highest priorities that we have so we can continue to seek funding. Last night when I was at the chamber event, I was speaking with several folks at the state level and there's great support. I think we just need to continue to do the education and continue to make sure that they understand what this could mean, not only for Wichita, but also for the state and for the region in terms of economic development and conservation. And it's really helping Hays, it's helping the Western side of the state as well. So I think we're at a good place, but as you and I have talked, we just need to make sure that we're keeping this on the forefront I think a lot of people in Topeka, the legislators I spoke with last night, said, oh, well, we passed that. You know, hey, go have fun. It's like, no, no, we're going to need your help, and especially when it comes to community education and funding.

I appreciate that. That was a huge first step, but we have a long ways to go.

Gary, I just want to say both on this and just in general, I really appreciate your approach to the work that you do. It's very hard, complex work, but I feel like you're always thinking of innovative ways to try to solve challenges. And I think that that not only helps us today, but it'll help us 10 years from now. So I just want to give you that acknowledgement. I have thoroughly enjoyed engaging with you, not because I always understand a lot of these topics, but I feel that you're patient. You take the time to help me understand. And before you give me a no, you at least try to research what it is that I'm trying to do to solve problems as well. And so I just want to say publicly, I appreciate that. I think you can see it in the work that you're doing with this. but also in several conversations that we've had related to graffiti and partnering with artists and just the many calls that you get from me about potholes and all the things. So I just want to say I really appreciate the work that you do and the innovation you bring to the work as well.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. We have some really, really good people in our department, and I'm glad that you know what a concrete flume is now. Thank you.

That's all we had for you today, Mayor and Council. Is there anything else before we adjourn? Go USA. What time today? What time? What time?

So there is a free community event at Napsco Park in district number one, thanks to Empower. Empower helped organize it with the support of Parks and Recreation as well as Visit Wichita. So I like this collaborative effort that's happening again today from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. The USA game is going to be shown on the big screen at 8 p.m.

I drove by yesterday at like four o'clock and there were probably nearly a thousand people out there and it was loud, but it was like a lot of fun.

And also mayor too. Yes. And it's going to be even more packed tonight. So come out. have a libation if that's your preference and some good food and enjoy the game. And to the mayor's point, downtown Wichita also helped provide some funding for this event. And one of the initiatives that they have is they want to see new activities in downtown Wichita. So if your event is free, if it's the first time that it's ever happened, they have some cash for you to do an event in downtown. It's their way of opening up downtown to everyone. So if any of you have any organizations in your districts that would like to do a new event in downtown Wichita, please utilize that funding.

And if you're not too hungover or if you are hungover and want a good breakfast, District 3 breakfast tomorrow, we will be having Amy Drout from the Neighboring Movement talking about Weaver Grants and organizations around that can apply for that. So hope to see everybody there and have a safe Friday evening.