City Council - Regular Meeting

Lee Summit has lots of local destinations, but where do you start? Green Street, a vibrant community space in the heart of downtown, is where Lee Summit comes together. Its three dynamic areas have something for everyone. Green Street Market is a modern event venue and home to the downtown Lee's Summit Farmers Market. Green Street Lawn is a covered performance space hosting live music, family activities, and more. Green Street Grove is a mixture of gathering spaces, an immersive playground, and bold architectural features. And all three areas host community events year round. So the next time you set out to enjoy the city you love, remember, meet at Green Street.

Hello Lee Summit, I'm Jordan. Here's your flash briefing for the week of August 10th. City Council will meet for a joint session with the Planning Commission Tuesday night at 6 in Council Chambers and City Hall. Meetings are open to the public or watch live on the City's YouTube channel. If you can't watch, catch the recorded meeting on demand on the YouTube channel or by subscribing to the Council Debrief Newsletter, which breaks down three to four key agenda items. Subscribe at cityofls.net. If you see a pothole, report it on LS Connect. It's a quick and easy way for residents to report common non-emergency concerns, such as potholes and streetlights. Simply snap a photo, mark the location, and submit the report. The LS Connect app is free to download on any Apple or Android device. LS Connect is also available online at cityofls.net. And Green Street has a full list of free events coming up, including silent book club, fitness classes, and a back-to-school fair. Find all event information at greenstreetls.com slash events. Thanks for listening, and have a great week.

The City of Lee Summit has hundreds of traffic lights across its more than 1,000 lane miles, all managed by the City's Public Works Traffic Technicians. The work happens inside those metal boxes on the side of each intersection. Inside, technicians program a device called the controller. The controller communicates directly with each signal head via underground wires, telling each light when to turn on and off based on a program cycle. City traffic engineers design this cycle to allow traffic to flow as efficiently as possible for that particular intersection. In order to best match current traffic patterns, they install something called a detection system. Detection systems have taken many forms over the years, from sensors in the pavement to radar boxes. But in Lee's Summit, they primarily consist of cameras, which workers mount above the traffic signals. These cameras don't record video or your speed. Instead, they monitor the spaces at the front of the intersection and identify when a vehicle is present in a specific spot. Once a vehicle is identified, the detection system sends a message to the controller, which then adapts its standard cycle to best serve the cars that are present. The pedestrian button works in a similar way. When the button is pressed, the controller receives a signal requesting that it allow that section of the pedestrian walkway to go, which it then inserts into the signal pattern. Technicians also install something called a conflict monitor. The conflict monitor is a device in which they program all the potential patterns of lights that would lead to a collision. If the other systems mistakenly trigger those patterns, the conflict monitor sends the intersection into flash. causing all lights to flash red and directing drivers to treat it like an all-way stop. City traffic technicians implement and maintain these systems so effectively, we rarely consider them. But every time we safely pass through a signal-controlled intersection, it's all thanks to their work. So the next time you're waiting at a red light, remember the delicate coordination of super smart systems that move you through that space safely and efficiently every day.

Lee's Summit has two dog parks, Happy Tails and Dogwood Park. Dogwood Park is more on the north side of town. It's off of Victoria Drive, right off of Douglas. And Happy Tails is down south, right off of Ranson Road, near where the water tower is. dogwood park up north has a walking trail a puppy splash pad and an activity area for dogs so that you can work out your dog and work on different techniques and tricks and a lot of open space too so you can just run around and play with your dog the happy tails down south has a walking trail a lot of trees and also has a puppy activity area but doesn't have a splash pad so if you don't want your dog to get wet i would recommend going to happy tails Both parks have a paved walking trail that goes all around the outskirts of the park so that the owners can walk around while their puppies play. It's important to also note that we do not discriminate against any type of breed. However, no aggressive dogs are allowed in the dog park and all participants in the dog park must have a City of Lee's Summit animal license and be up to date on their shots. I would also note that there is a separate area in each park for large dogs and for small dogs. And the definition of a small dog is posted on the gate. So outside of our dog parks, the rest of our parks require your dog to be on a leash at all times. There's a city ordinance requiring that. So our dog parks are the only place that you can allow your dog to run around loose outside of your own yard. We provide the opportunity for people to play with their dogs off their leashes and have a chance for the dogs to socialize so they can run around free off the leash inside of a contained space. They're open year round from 5 a.m. until sunset, no later than 9 p.m. And they're open all weather. So you can come play in the snow, you can come play in the rain, but just be sure to have fun. To find more information about our dog parks, please visit lsparks.net or find us on social media.

Keeping 500 miles of public sewer lines flowing keeps utility costs low and our environment healthy. The Lee's Summit Water Utilities Operations Team does this every day. Sewer lines can be blocked with everything from roots to flushable wipes to food grease. When a potential blockage is identified, teams use detailed mapping to locate access points. My camera's at 18038. A camera truck parks at one end of the sewer line and a jet truck at the other. The camera truck carries a rover-type camera, which the team lowers into the manhole. The operator then drives the camera into the pipe, where it views and records from its adjustable lens. Here, it can identify the cause and precise location of the blockage. The jet truck will then use high pressure water to remove the blockage. Starting at the opposite end of the line, the operator inserts the jet head into the manhole. Pressurized water shoots out of the head, clearing out debris and propelling it forward. The camera observes this process and the two operators communicate via walkie-talkie to coordinate movement.

Hold it right there. Go ahead and fire it up, half pressure. I'm in front of you.

Once the jet head has passed the blockage, the operator reels it back in. The camera can then inspect the pipe to see if the blockage is cleared.

Yeah, go ahead and pull out. We're done.

With the job complete, the camera is removed, cleaned, and returned to the truck, and the crew moves on to the next job. In addition to addressing identified problems, the team will systematically check every line in the city in a five-year period, keeping costs low and our community healthy, today and for years to come.

Traditionally, we think as police officers, those responding to law enforcement needs within the community. But honestly, we are there to serve our citizens. And our citizens do go into crisis. They do have mental health crises. And we're being called to those scenes on a regular basis. In order to help serve those citizens better, we did initiate the crisis intervention team program. These are officers that are specially trained to de-escalate crisis situations. Recently, we've brought co-responders onto the scene, licensed, qualified mental health professionals housed within our police department. and they respond with those officers directly to those scenes where a crisis is occurring so they can interact with that citizen and get them the help they need right there on that scene.

The co-responders are either a bachelor or master level in a behavioral health related field. They wear plain clothes. They don't carry weapons or anything like that.

I have a police radio that I listen to all day. Listen for, you know, those key words. Mental health, behavioral health, crisis.

There's a lot of officers that just call for me. I have my own radio number.

I also have the ability to self-dispatch to them and say, 982 is en route. Officers en route. 914.

So typically I arrive after they've made it safe. I'll make contact and get kind of the rundown. And then I just kind of jump right in.

Like, hey, you know, my name's Allison. I'm a mental health professional. I'm here to help you. I'm not here to take you to jail or arrest you. Sometimes

All a person needs is a voice, someone neutral, someone outside that can listen. I do a lot of safety planning, including family, their support network. Who's close to you? If they're home alone, who can come over and hang out with you today? Can we lock away your sharps? Can we put up your meds? Do you need meds? Can we get you over to the urgent care to get you assessed for your medications? Some of them also are like, oh, I'm so glad you came. This made me feel so much better.

Our main goal as co-responders is to, one, get people connected to the services that they need and also divert from emergency rooms and jails.

And they almost get a different view of the police responding. That lets me know you care and the officers care. Please call the police.

How can we help? In 2020, we had 722 mental health related calls for service. 2022, by that time, 1,479. These mental health related calls for service are increasing. How we're responding to that is increasing the number of crisis intervention team officers we have available, as well as the number of co-responders we have available to respond on these calls.

So what I think is important for the community to know about the co-responder program is that we're here, we exist. All you have to do when you call 9-1-1 is ask for us. You know, say, hey, I want a co-responder to respond to this crisis and we'll go. I was really struggling about eight years ago. My personal journey with mental health and I met some amazing social workers and amazing programs that have helped me get to where I am today. I really couldn't see myself doing anything else. We want to help and that's what we love to do.

So I had a client, we got a call, she had some suicidal ideations and she really felt that she had nobody. And you know, in getting to know her story and getting to know who comes around and sees you, well then we found a support person and they responded immediately and we made a plan. I called back and checked on her in an hour and then I checked on her in two hours. We were able to get her into the additional services to where she talks to someone every week or more. I just took a person that really just thought they had nobody and nobody would show up for them and show them you do. And you'll be amazed who is in your corner if you just simply say, I need a little help.

Thank you. Thank you. you Thank you. you

I'd like to call the meeting to order. Will you please stand for the invocation and remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance? One minute.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the opportunity to serve our community. Please give us wisdom, patience, and good judgment as we make decisions before us tonight. Help us listen with open hearts, work together respectfully, and always remember that we are here to serve all of our residents. Guide us to do what is best for our community. Amen. Amen.

Thank you I Now call the City Council regular session number 10 to order can I please have roll call?

Councilmember Frazier present councilmember funk president councilmember prior here councilmember Cravens here councilmember Adkins Councilmember Carlisle present mayor Pro Tem shields here mayor Lopez here.

Oh

Now we need to approve the consent agenda. I have a motion by Councilmember Funk and a second by Councilmember Atkins. I think I saw your name up there. Yes. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. Missing one. Okay. Can you please say that in your microphone?

Yes.

So all votes are in. Eight yeses, zero nays. Motion passes. Now we need to approve the consent agenda, please. We have a motion made by Mayor Patem Shields and a second by Council Member Pryor. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote.

It's a yes for me, Mayor.

Thank you. Eight yeses. Please record the vote. Motion passes. Thank you.

All right. Takes us to Council Roundtable.

Anything anybody wants to bring up? A lot going on, right? I've seen a few people at Green Street, at Farmer's Market. That was a big success last Saturday. Yeah. Mayor Pro Temp Shields.

I guess it's not really a community event, but I took my son and one of our neighbors to Summit Waves last night and got to enjoy the facilities. I think they are open through the 21st of this month, so if anyone wants to get out there and enjoy one of our great parks facilities, it's always a good time.

Absolutely, thank you. Council Member Pryor.

Thank you. Again, not really a community event, but I had several farmers come up to me on Saturday and just thank us for Green Street and let me know how much they loved it. And everything is ripe right now, so you can get watermelon and peaches. There was a peach person there. Not last Saturday. It was Saturday before, though. And then, you know, all the sourdough. But get there early because they sell out quick. So it's been really fun the last few Saturdays. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Oh, Council Member Frazier.

So last week, I appointed myself the official Dairy Queen. Excuse me, excuse me, Baskin Robbins person. And so this week, just FYI, I was driving down 3rd Street, and there were some ladies in the parking lot of Hardee's, and I said, hey, I pulled over and said, hey, what's going on? And they will be reopening, if you would, the end of September. So for those who asked and wanted to know, that's the information that I have.

More to come. Thanks for the update. All right. We'll move on with the agenda. It takes us to public comments, and we have a few people that want to make some comments. We'll start with, if you can come up. Oh, Yana. Council Member Cravens.

Oh, I'm sorry. I did have a, I'll just, I'll say it for the end. You sure? Yeah, I'm positive.

All right. Okay, then we'll proceed then with the public comments. We have a few people that want to speak. If you can come up to the center podium here, and as normal, just introduce yourself, state your address, and make your comments. We'll start with Judge Dana Alteri.

Ready? I wanted to come here last week because I couldn't because I was still on the bench and I'm pretty sure if I was here I probably would have put my head through the wall at the end of the meeting during the council comments. Council Member Adkins asked about the status of the changes at the court and I do need to thank Council Member Adkins and Council Member Frazier for actively working on the court issues Anyway, she asked about an update, and I'd like an update, too. I guess we were reset for the council agenda for August 18th. Did anyone ask the judges if they could be there? No. We heard it was sent to budget and finance. I guess that's true, but did anyone tell the judges or ask them to be there? No. We've already been to budget and finance twice, so we have no idea why we are being sent back there a third time regarding judges at the courthouse. But during those comments, Councilmember Carlisle, who's not an attorney, misstated the law, and we feel that any attempt to interpret the law or provide legal guidance to the citizens and the rest of the council is improper, dangerous, and reckless. Councilmember Carlisle referenced the charter and apparently her interpretation of the state statute in the Missouri Supreme Court case law and how she determined why judges cannot have additional compensation during their term. Now I know what the charter says and I know how the provision has been interpreted by the Missouri Supreme Court. It allows for additional compensation for additional duties. We are seeking to triple our time at the court as your auditors said we should. Now, for Councilmember Carlisle to be correct, it means that outside counsel hired by this city at an exorbitant cost, as well as four judges, Judge Phan, Judge Helm, who's here, Judge Lopez, and myself, two of which have been elected by this city at large, are wrong, and publicly voiced opinions that were wrong. I do not understand how this city can disregard the legal opinion of seasoned jurists and the Missouri Supreme Court. You've also been provided briefs by Judge Lopez, which I concurred with her findings, and by outside counsel, who also stated that she concurred there can be additional compensation for additional duties. This is a non-issue. Council Member Shields, during the meeting, asked if the charter language had caveats, and Council Member Carlisle replied no, as if this was definitive. This is misleading. Do you think when a charter has statutory language in it that it will also then regurgitate all of the case law and provided interpretations to any given provision as interpreted by courts? No, it would be 900 pages long. And Lee's Summit has to follow the Missouri Constitution and the Missouri Supreme Court. Now personally, I'm tired of the smokescreens, red tape, and fancy talk that goes on that only confuses our citizens into thinking we've got some overcomplicated issue here. We need to put the issue to rest. We need to increase the judicial compensation to provide for additional time at the courthouse. Then the judges need to get to work. The judges need to work on the dockets. They need to get rid of the backlog, work on staffing needs, and then appear in front of budget and finance with proposals. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, we have Mr. John Bedoyne.

Mayor Lopez, City Council, John Bedoin, 200 Southwest 2nd Street, Downtown Lee Summit. I'll give you a little break from your usual lineup of speakers with hopefully a little bit of good news. As you know, a lot of our neighbors deal with constant, intrusive, almost on a daily basis utility work in their yards. A lot of that's born out of what happens in Jeff City and decisions that are kind of made outside of this area. body, but we've seeded a lot of right-of-way. And of course, our curbs, there's an endless stream of non-washable paint that we see all over town. And it's just miles of that on our sidewalks and driveways. And I'm not sure what the solution really is, but I know that we probably need a stronger voice in Jeff City about this. So back in 2019, AT&T severely damaged my sewer line in my front yard. I didn't know it at the time, they were installing a box and the utility and fiber work had become so common at my house it kind of became a running gag on social media. But within a few months and for the next six years I had constant and endless backups in my house. had to pay for that on my own dime. So it wasn't until Bill Fry came out and sent a camera into my yard and took it all the way to the sidewalk near the city line that we discovered that the damage had been done from the pipe from above. So I contacted AT&T. They sent out a local rep from this building who ordered the contractors to come out, and we found the issue, which was that a former contractor who was who has since been banned from working in Lee's Summit, ran the AT&T line not over or under, but right through my sewer line. More disturbing from the contractors, they told me that this happens all the time. But that's unfortunate because a lot of residents won't know that's an issue until these backups start happening into their toilets and their bathtubs. I ended up sending years and years and years worth of invoices to AT&T, and within a month, I had a check in my hand to reimburse me for all those plumbing calls. That's the good news. The bad news is I doubt my home is a one-off. They found damage to my neighbor's home when they went into the yard, and today I want to send, I think, a clear message to council that I hope everyone hears that you can maybe pass on to your constituents that if a utility is responsible for water or sewer line damage, we can't let them skate on their responsibilities. We just can't. I've got to thank Michael Park and Bob Burns and people because they helped me stick with it and beat AT&T up until they finally came out and got this done. I know this is just one homeowner story, but I think reminding residents that digging into something and holding... corporations like AT&T accountable is something we have to do. They constantly leave our yards in disrepair and in worse shape than they found them. I'm going to use my last 10 seconds with this, which is off topic. I'd like to ask that the city council, while it takes up the important topic of accountability within our department heads, turn its current attention to the performance of our city attorney and our city legal department. I think it's beyond time to hold that position and that apartment accountable. Thank you.

Mr. Chip Floyd.

City Manager, can I have a hand doing this overhead deal? Because I don't know what I'm doing here. If you would, please. Cool. All right. Thank you. All right. My name is Chip. Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of German-occupied mainland Europe in 1944. Eight divisions, over 5,000 naval vessels, 13,000 aircraft and five beachheads. Formal planning began on April 26, 1943. There were no examples of large-scale amphibious operations to draw from. Nevertheless, British General Morgan was tasked with providing three plans, interrelated. A deception plan, a rapid invasion should Germany collapse, and a main invasion against prepared defenses. He was given 80 days to prepare those plans. He met that timeline. 327 days later, the invasion began. You know the rest of the story. Fast forward to July 7th, 2025. My two judges first laid out their dire situation to finance and budget. Dire then, worse today. The judges wanted to add new court days, pleaded to add them, but counsel wouldn't pay. Additional days don't qualify as additional duties, don't you know? Or do they? The counsel and staff just couldn't decide, so Manager Dunning hired an outside attorney to decide for them. Here is the invoice. Ah, okay, fine, whatever. We paid 18 and a half hours at $465 per hour, totaling $8,600 for this definition. Besides the impressive letterhead and formatting, notice the work descriptions are redacted. Why? What did she actually do? The city cites attorney-client privilege under Missouri Statute 610.021 as the reason, but that doesn't apply. She was not representing a client in litigation or settlement agreements. She was hired to research and give an opinion. I will escalate to the Attorney General as soon as I run out my course with the City Clerk. This record in full is my property and I will not be deprived of it. It was July 7th, 2025 when Planning and Finance saw the need. It was July 7th, 2025 when Councils Lovell and Shields paid lip service to the urgency and when Council Funk said, quote, how do we start? Let's get it rolling. Let's get it moving. That was 400 days ago today. 400. If only this were a simpler problem to solve, like, say, Operation Overlord. Meanwhile, the courts burn. Is there anybody in charge?

Thank you. Daniel Harden.

Daniel Harden, 3514 Southwest Winsome Drive. Last week, I couldn't help but notice the comment you, Mr. Mayor, and David Bushek directed towards me. I know the difference between a conceptual meeting and a public hearing. You brought up the fact that you're in favor of saving the taxpayers' money. If you were truly into saving taxpayers' money, I have a few other ideas we can kick around. For instance, why are you spending $25,000 a year of city money and taxpayer money on city council dinners? That comes out to over $700 a week. I'm sure the receipts for those dinners are redacted in the files that I had brought last week. Do you not have a microwave in the back to warm up leftovers? $700 a week should be enough to share with all of us up here and sell leftovers for your family. I called Hy-Vee and they offer catering for up to 20 people for $25 to $60, depending on how fancy you want to get with these dinners. You spent $150,000 of our own tax money to send out flyers and do other publications to, ironically enough, get more tax money from us for our stormwater. Where am I? I'm sorry. These are messes that the developers are creating by turning us into Overland Park 2.0, which actually nobody really, really wants. Speaking of developers, Redevelopment Land Reserve Group Incorporated. I'm still going to talk about the timer that's going on over there. We had a public hearing with them on arbor side land clearance for redevelopment. The applicant, Land Reserve Incorporated, was given one hour and five minutes to give a presentation for a rezoning application when they were only supposed to be allotted 15 minutes. That's 50 minutes more than they should have been allowed and demonstrated a clear act of favoritism. But, of course, we have to make sure David Bushek has enough time to persuade the rest of city council to vote yes so the landowners, himself, and everybody else involved receives their kickbacks. The council then... Asked questions for 37 minutes, followed by 29 minutes of public comments strictly timed for three minutes per presentation, cutting citizens off the second their time was up. That was followed by a recess. After which we return to 39 more minutes of council questions. It seems like we throw the procedures out the window whenever it comes to spending taxpayer money, which is the exact point I was trying to make last week. The rule is 15 minutes for presentations allowed by public comments and then five minutes for the presenter to respond. Council discussion and questions are supposed to follow. Yeah, that's pretty much it. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Judge Gary Helm, or Council Member Funk, has a question or a comment.

Thank you, Mayor. Going back to something Mr. Hardin mentioned about last week, I received a couple of phone calls in regards to his comment about an Uber Black suggesting that myself had done something wrong nefarious, but I wanted to address the Uber Black was used in Washington, D.C. You probably received that charge off of the city manager's credit card. That Uber Black was actually a minivan that contained the city manager, former Mayor Baird, myself, at the time, Mayor Pro Tem Lopez, and Council Member Carlisle that drove us back from Capitol Hill where we spent seven hours there with our federal partners and walked away there walked away from there with about 1.5 million dollars, so I Just wanted to make sure you had an answer to what that charge was There was nothing nefarious. Nobody was doing anything wrong. I actually had a conversation with the city manager before speaking tonight and I that is the exact thing that happened with an Uber Black. So there's no more needs to spread anything on social media about that and create any kind of waves that were doing something nefarious. I just wanted to make sure you had the exact definition of what happened with that travel.

Thank you.

Thank you. Judge Helm, come on up.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you all. My name is Gary Helm. I've been a presiding judge of Independence Municipal Court for over 34 years. Also judge of Oak Grove, Bates City, Sugar Creek, and some other places. My address is 23100 Northwest Pink Hill Road, Blue Springs, Missouri. And I practiced in Lee's Summit Court for about 45 years. I'm here for two reasons. One, to voice my support for your court staff. They're overworked and underpaid. Lee's Summit has historically had a high turnover rate on court clerks. Over the years, some of them have actually come to work for me. Like Rachel Carey is my court administrator that I got from Lee's Summit for 22 years. We just recently had an audit by the Supreme Court monitor who gave us a perfect score, which never happens. Carol Wheat used to work at Lee's Summit. She was my court administrator in Greenwood for 12 years until she retired. And then they also close the court. But you need to have court clerks who stay and are trained and adequately paid. And I can't stress that enough. Having good, loyal court clerks are a key for a good court. The second reason I'm here is support of the judges. You all really need to double the size of your dockets or double the number of dockets from two days to four days a week like we have in Independence. We have comparable dockets. Population independence a little bit more now, but at least some is going to surpass it pretty quick. You need court four days a week Because the parking lot is too crowded. It's not adequate It's standing room only vast majority of the people who are in court or Lee summit Residents so you have a duty to make it as fair fast and efficient as possible and you need to compensate these judges for increasing their workload because a law clearly states that they can receive additional compensation for additional duties and even though they're elected, if they have additional duties thrust upon them, which you need to double the size number of dockets to four days a week to adequately represent the public so they're not sitting around in court for two hours, losing time from work and their families and so forth. So thank you for letting me speak on behalf of support of your court staff as well as the judges. But please... Give them extra dockets and the compensation that they deserve.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Carl Jennings. Carl Jennings. Oh, there you are.

Good evening.

My name is Carl Jennings. And I'm an attorney. I practice primarily municipal law, and so that puts me in the courtrooms of just about every town in the area. And I had one incident happen. The judge actually called me to make sure that I was serious about the thing. am 82 and have found with back problems that it's fairly difficult to walk long distances. Anything over about 300 feet and I'm out. And I'm also of an age where handicapped parking went in during my lifetime and I used to wonder why in the world they have those three empty spots right by the door when I've got to park, you know, half a block away. Well, I went to court in Lee's Summit recently and and was meeting my client there, got there my usual 10 or 15 minutes early, and I looked at the parking lot as I turned in. There are cars parked all along the grass. There are cars parked everywhere. There's zero handicapped parking places. There are zero parking places. I circled the lot about three, four times, And I ended up sending a text to my client to request a continuance that I couldn't get in. There was no place for me to park. I went back to my office and I filed a motion for a continuance and left the actual reading or meeting with the judge as to why it was that I wasn't there. And they were sufficiently astounded that, as I said, they called back that it had this thing. This is a real problem. Courts are places where people should be accommodated, and I know that tonight you're getting a barrage of this opinion, this point, or that point with the courts, and I know that it's of apparently some disagreement going on. But keep in mind that people need to be able to park, go into a court, and experience justice. They need to have a judge that is not hurried, that will listen to them for a minute. Judge Altieri is an example of a judge who will listen. But when a judge listens and you're so overcrowded, you're gonna be there till 10 o'clock at night. You need to increase the number of times that your court is there so the judges can do their job. You have two very, very good judges. And I look forward to going to Lee's Summit. because the judges are fair, they're honest, they listen, they care about people, and at the same time, they care about protecting people. Sir, I'll let you finish your point. Okay, that's fine. I've said what I had to say. I don't mean you're all suffering from, I'm sure, some sort of mental whiplash with one point after another of people going with this thing that they're concerned about, whether it's underground this or a courthouse. But I do appreciate your listening. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Teresa Vollenweider.

Teresa Vollenweider, 5201 Northeast Maybrook Road. I'm going to bring up a Planning Commission meeting that occurred back in 2018. The property beside me was divided using a meets and bounds description. This is a letter that Hector Soto wrote to Jackie Maloney, or Jacqueline Maloney, And in it, he stated that Property divided done via meets and bounds description is a violation of the city subdivision ordinance that requires such division of the property to be done via plat. Said platting requirement has been in effect since 1976. The division of a lot number six by meets and bounds took place sometime after approval of the recording of Ransom Farms' second plat in 1985. The property next to me was subdivided in 1999. That's when an acreage could be five acres and be considered ag. But if it was less than five acres, it could not. So this was an illegal lot split. Hector Soto knew it. Look at all these people that were at this meeting on February 22nd, 2017 at 10 a.m. Chris Carter, Doug Horn, Darren Mullins. I'm not sure who that is. Maybe it's Derek Collins. Maybe it's a relative of Stephanie Mullins. I don't know. Hector Soto, Bob McKay, Victoria Nelson, Shannon McGuire, Nancy Yendez, Kent Monter, Scott Ward, Mike Weisenborn, Tracy Deister, Chief, Assistant Chief Jim Eden. Do you think none of those people knew that the lot these people were speaking about was an illegal lot split? Wasn't just illegal that time, it was illegal the time. And the legal description came from this, when that property was sold. When it was sold from Hamline to Doug Horn, it was that. And when it was sold from Horn Baseball to Stephanie and Derek Collins, it was also. So it would be awfully nice to know why Hector Soto never said anything about this. In the Planning Commission meeting he said he could not speak to when the division took place.

Thank you.

But yet the city had it. It was no secret. And yet I ended up getting arrested.

Michael Postrick? Bostic? Apologize.

Hi, so I thought about starting off with a fun Google thing, but I feel like the mood and intensity here would make that seem a little bit silly. So instead, I'll talk about something called Just Wood, which was a case where I had just wood in my yard because it was a protest to what was going on in Jackson County and how the courts were harming my children and continue to harm my children to this day. Now, those aren't the summit courts. However, I had to go to court, I had to write a brief on it, I had to stand for the whole thing, and I was still found guilty. Now I read all of the jurisprudence, I read all of the facts, and I strongly and deeply believe that everyone should do those things. That we should not allow judges or anybody to intimidate us as a way to understand law and justice. But one of the things that I do is technology, and one of the things I've found is is that technology creates perceptions of reality that are inconsistent. Like the Uber Black is a great example where that's a new type of taxi and now there's quality levels of taxi and there's different insights and different information. And sometimes there are things hidden in those black lines that we don't know about. Sometimes we could even solve problems using those black lines. One thing that the city may not be aware of, but I was aware because I've been paying attention to what the Lee summit courts have been doing, is they are dissatisfied with the per diem of coffee. It is a simple problem to solve. It's very easy and it shows that the city council cares. By just allowing for an expenditure immediately today on coffee expenditures wouldn't necessarily solve the problem, but it does recognize the larger issue. But solutions are complex, and when it comes to money, if you give people money, they're always gonna ask for more, and there's always gonna be a desire for more money and resources. So you have to link money to accountability, and that's part of the core things I wanted to cover. I noticed that, I was gonna try to talk to the court administrator when they were here last time, and I was going to talk to them about solutions but they didn't seem interested in that. Instead there was a private conversation behind a locked door between somebody with the city council's administration and what was happening. Now nothing in there should have been kept hidden and all of that should have been made better. Now, I have more to talk about and more solutions and more focused on things where we can find consensus and agreement because it's very easy to complain about things and to be frustrated about them, but it takes a lot of work to solve them. And we're not really presenting solutions, but part of the thing I gave him and part of the thing that I have right here is a solution for more time so that everyone has the same amount of time that the same process is used for everybody so that no matter how much money you make you can get the same amount of time and different groups can talk about it because I don't think we want our crime to be like independence. I think we want to be better and different and I think like we could introduce a tax on places that are generating crime because of the systems that they put in. There is a clear data report on how a certain company has used self checkouts in order to make things faster and has fired employees for that. But it's profitable to let crime grow.

Thank you. Okay, so the next item on the agenda, that's all the public speakers we have, is a present, oh, Council Member Pryor.

Thank you. I just wanted to apologize to Judge Altieri and Judge Lopez. I was looking. The first email we received from you was February 2025, and we're still in the exact same place now as we were then, and so I apologize. Thank you.

Yes, please.

Thank you, Mayor, and... Along those same lines, I did spend a lot of time with Judge Altieri and Lopez this week and learned a lot more about the timeline. And they had actually started working with the city manager and city attorney in July of 2024. So it has been a very, very long time. And when I say that I want things to be expedited, I am very serious, and I know that next week on the 18th, we'll get to hear more from Mr. Downing, but I'm looking forward to making lots of baby steps to get us further and solve some of the things that are low-hanging fruit that we know can be done, including salary comparisons and getting an updated opinion from a new attorney if we need to, or using the four that we had here tonight, or using the The opinion that the last attorney gave, because I think she was in favor of what the judges said, that's what she put in writing. So I, too, am not sure why this is taking so long, and I would like to move it forward. So thank you for everyone's comments tonight.

Thank you. Okay, so we will now move on to item number five on the agenda. It's listed as a presentation, and for this next presentation, we up on the council will come down to the table. square table here and sit down with our planning commissioners to have a joint conversation regarding housing and lease summit. And we'll have a presentation by staff to set a framework for decision making. And so we'll take a minute or two to get down below and meet up with the commissioners. Thank you.

Ever wondered how the city budget works? The total 2026 budget is over $380 million, which includes funding for daily operations, capital improvements, debt service, internal service, and enterprise operations. For example, the General Fund is the foundation for the city's day-to-day services and investments like road maintenance, public safety, and fire protection. The General Fund is supported by property taxes, sales taxes generated by local businesses, franchise taxes, and other sources like licenses, permits, and fees. For every dollar citizens pay in property tax, the city receives 18 cents. This means the city receives $845 a year in property taxes for a median single-family house. These taxes provide public safety, park maintenance, infrastructure, and the best services to keep Lee's Summit going and improving. One of the community's top priorities is infrastructure investment, which is reflected in the Capital Improvement Plan. $113 million of the 2026 budget is invested into the capital improvement plan. The 2026 capital improvement budget includes investments like the 291 and 50 highway interchange, Third Street, Ward and Purcell's intersection, and Prior Road. The budget process includes guidance from the city council, citizen input, and critical success factors from the city's IGNITE strategic plan. To learn more about the city's budget, visit cityofls.net backslash budget.

When the person called on the phone, she said that there was a dinosaur walking down her road. Of course, we had to go out and check that out. We get out there, and it was a big African tortoise, probably 60 pounds, walking down the road. When they walk, they really stand up tall, so I could see why she thought it was a dinosaur. I'm Rodney Wagner, I'm the manager of Lee's Summit Animal Control. So as you can see, we've got all sorts of animals here. We've got some guinea pigs off to the side. All the windows up here are animals that are adoptable right now. Every one of these dogs is ready to go and ready for adoption. And the same thing with our cats over here. A lot of cool cats in here now, so. This is our three-acre lot we have out back. This is where we do all the walking of dogs, exercise. We also have a side yard off to the side over there so we can let them run loose. They can run together, and then we have what's called play groups. Kind of like having a bunch of kids. Here's our vet room. We have a vet that comes out twice a week. This is our sally port where we bring the animals into. This is one of our animal control trucks. And we can hold up to six animals. We have a lift on the other side to put big animals in. We actually have temperature gauges in here and in the truck to tell us how hot it is. Once it gets to a certain temperature, we bring all the animals back here immediately. So this actually has traps in it, but... We do a lot of wildlife trapping. I mean, a lot, so... Bats, hot-bellied pigs, horses, cows, emus, a lot of reptiles. We had a system one time that had over 200 reptiles in his basement.

It is. So I want to explain. I know we have new commissioners and new council representatives. We'll go ahead and get started. It sounds like when you speak to these mics, no one can hear us. When we're above these speakers here, these mics, we can't hear it here, but the rest of the public can hear what we're saying. So just in case you're wondering whether the mics are working, they are working. So I want to point that out. And Devin, could you please do the roll call for planning commissioners?

Commissioner Hatcher. Commissioner Arth. Present. Commissioner Pesch.

Present.

Commissioner Grinnell.

Present.

Commissioner Moore.

Present.

Commissioner Jana Ford.

Present.

Commissioner Yarrington.

Present.

Vice Chair Chisinski. Chair Trafton.

Present. Great. Welcome. I guess we're all official. Everybody's... Uh, roll call. So thank you all for being here. It looks like we have a hundred percent participation. Is that right? On commissioner side, we're missing chip. Oh, okay. That's okay. Somebody needs to stay on him next time. Um, but thank you all for coming. Um, I know we have, uh, some new council representatives, um, and we have some new commissioners. since the last time we conducted this kind of a joint kind of session. I think Commissioner Grinnell, I think that was your first one the last year. Last year was your first meeting that you attended. Yeah, so thank you for being back, coming back. So just for clarification and for context, to kind of setting the context of why we're even here, and even for our citizens and the public, this is something that Mayor Baird initiated a few years back where you all, one thing we share in common with the Planning Commission and the City Council is that we share the same brand, bottom line, right? That's probably the most significant kind of thing that we have in common amongst others. And a lot of times, many of the projects obviously that come before the City Council There's a process, there's a public process of development projects that are fully vetted out transparently and in the public setting, and your role obviously is very critical. There's several of us that are now on the council that were former commissioners, so planning commissioners, and so we understand that process that you go through, but we started this process a few years ago primarily so that to make sure we had some good dialogue and we did it in the public setting in a very transparent manner so that at the end of the day you know besides individual projects each one you know has their own merits you know within their own respective presentations and what they come to us to try to approve WHAT THE DEVELOPERS BRING BEFORE US. HOWEVER, I THINK IT'S ONE OF THE REASONS WE CONTINUE TO CONDUCT THESE JOINT SESSIONS IS THAT IT'S CRITICAL FOR US, AS I SAID INITIALLY, SHARING THE SAME BRAND TO BE FULLY ALIGNED. OKAY. FULLY ALIGNED DOESN'T MEAN THAT WE HAVE TO AGREE ON EVERYTHING. DOESN'T MEAN THAT COUNCIL MEMBER ATKINS HAS TO FULLY AGREE WITH EVERYTHING I SAY. BUT AS FAR AS THE VISION AND THE DIRECTION WE WANT TO HEAD AS A COMMUNITY, AS A CITY, We do have to be on the same page, for the most part. You all have a role. A lot of the procedures and the process that you all go through are, in some cases, and please don't take this the wrong way, are kind of checking boxes, making sure that the presentations, the investors, developers that are coming before you all at the very minimum criteria that's needed to make sure these are credible, safe projects that come into our community. And you all have done a great job. And so this is an opportunity for us to convene so that we can share today's topic. We are going to try to focus, even though Commissioner Trafton wanted to talk about several topics tonight, we're going to try to keep it focused on one, on one that is super, super important. really across the country and across many communities, but specifically here in our community, which is the one we care about the most here in Lee's Summit, and that's housing. I think most of us around this table and people that are in the public and people that might be watching know that this is a very serious, very important issue that we are trying to address within our community, within what we can control here in Lee's Summit. And it's a challenge. It's a challenge. unfortunately this topic really becomes even more prevalent during elections election season so let's just kind of throw that out there be very transparent about that and so one of the things that I heard quite a bit during this past election cycle as I you know attempted to run for my role as your new mayor was housing and That was kind of, you know, for every 10 people I spoke to, that was probably eight or nine people that asked that question or had some kind of a statement or opinion about housing. And we can be here all night and talk about specific things regarding housing. One in the summit that has been very popular is apartments. That's a type of housing, right? I think we all understand that. AND SO IN ORDER FOR US TO HAVE A VERY ROBUST AND TRANSPARENT AND OPEN DISCUSSION TONIGHT, WE WILL HAVE THE ASSISTANCE OF CITY STAFF. TRACY ALBERTS, THE DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT SERVICES, WILL MAKE A PRESENTATION TO US ALONG WITH SOME OTHER TEAM MEMBERS TO MAKE SURE THAT THE CONVERSATION WE HAVE COVERS REALLY THE KEY POLICIES AND CONTEXT AND WHERE WE ARE AS FAR AS FROM AN ORDINANCE PERSPECTIVE. the basic framework of where we are as a community right now so that the basic information she will share with us and some of the recommendations she and staff will make will kind of allow us again to just STAY KIND OF FOCUSED AND HAVE A GOOD FRAMEWORK FOR A ROBUST DISCUSSION TONIGHT. SO I JUST WANTED TO POINT THAT OUT BECAUSE HOUSING, AGAIN, COULD BE VERY, VERY COMPLICATED AND COMPLEX, AND IT VARIES TREMENDOUSLY. AND WE CAN'T TALK ABOUT EVERY COMPONENT OF HOUSING, BUT I THINK TRACY WILL HELP US KIND OF GUIDE THIS CONVERSATION AND KEEP US FOCUSED ON STAYING WITHIN CERTAIN FRAMEWORK. So before we have Tracy come up, I'm gonna have Commissioner Trafton also make some comments and kind of kick us off.

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate it. I also appreciate the ability to come and sit with council members, and so thank you for the time. Our fellow planning commissioners, we talk about these issues a couple times a month, and I also appreciate the community coming before us and also sharing their perspective because that's important as we move forward. to create solutions for some of these issues that we're talking about tonight. I also just wanna say, from a Planning Commission perspective, there are several things that we are focusing on so that we can be better and partnership with city staff and council as we move forward zoning and preliminary development plans that eventually will come before you and get approved. But, you know, we're looking at how we are guiding ourselves with our bylaws, and so Commissioner Janna Ford's heading the committee to review that and making sure that we're doing our procedures clearly and just up to date, right? Things change over time. And then a lot of times we spend talking about UDO standards, current, practical, and how we understand them and how we use them and how we evolve them in the city. to meet the needs for development, to make it easier for missing housing structures that we need in the community. And so I think that on the CEDC as well, these conversations have come up as well. And so we just want to make sure that we're helping support because the train has left as far as growth and we continue to grow. And that will continue to happen as we bring on more land that's available. But making sure we have that wide range of housing opportunities and look at and consider and represent diverse perspectives. we need to be able to have entry-level housing in this community that people can afford at varying levels that support equitable opportunities for people to get into housing if they want to. And I know that that's what you're passionate about as well, Mayor and Council. And so I thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation tonight.

Thank you. So before I ask Ms. Alpers to come up, very quickly, just some context and expectations for this next hour of conversation. HOPEFULLY WE WILL ALL LEAVE THIS TABLE TONIGHT WITH THREE KIND OF THINGS IN MIND. WE AS A CITY COUNCIL, AS I SAID EARLIER DURING THE ELECTION CYCLE, IN LISTENING TO RESIDENTS, I MADE A COMMITMENT THAT I WOULD CONVENE THIS GROUP. I JUST KIND OF VISUALIZED THAT WE WOULD CONVENE. AND SO I DO APPRECIATE YOU ALL BEING HERE AND BEING OPEN-MINDED ABOUT THIS. AND THAT I WAS GOING TO ADVOCATE FOR US TO PUT A HOUSING TASK FORCE TOGETHER. OF WHICH WOULD CONSIST OF RESIDENTS, OUR CITIZENS, OKAY? AND SO I'M TRYING TO UPHOLD THAT PROMISE THAT I MADE TO ALL OF OUR CITIZENS. OKAY, SO THAT'S WHY ONE THING WE'RE HERE, ONE REASON WHY WE'RE HERE. CITY COUNCIL HAD A RETREAT IN JUNE. WE HAD THIS SAME DISCUSSION THAT HOPEFULLY PART OF THAT WILL BE LIKE TONIGHT WITH YOU ALL AS THE PLANNING COMMISSION. BUT WE WERE LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING TOGETHER WITH THE PLANNING COMMISSION, AND WE HOPE TO GET TONIGHT, OUT OF TONIGHT, GET SOME SCOPE. And without Ms. Albert's presentation and the information she'll share with us, we hope to walk our way out of here with a scope of what direction we want to head collectively as a group, a timeline of when this task force would be put together, and the timeline of which THEY WOULD CONSIST OF THEM DOING THEIR WORK AND HAVE AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF PUBLIC CITIZEN'S INPUT. CITIZEN'S INPUT, THIS DOESN'T WORK WITHOUT THE COMMUNITY'S INPUT. SO THIS TASK FORCE WILL WORK ON A SCOPE, TAKE OUR SCOPE THAT WE DISCUSSED TONIGHT AND TAKE IT AND RUN AND WORK WITH CITY STAFF TO ACCOMPLISH THIS WITHIN A SIX TO SEVEN MONTH TIMELINE. AND I'LL PROVIDE MORE DETAIL AT THE END WHEN WE CLOSE. And lastly, we've had many discussions amongst council as well and staff and Commissioner Trafton, Chair Trafton, for us to come up with a number of how many task force members we're going to have. So I'll share those details once the discussion is complete and the presentation is presented. And I will entertain input from all of you in those three areas. OK? So Ms. Alpers, come on up. And Mr. McGuire.

Good evening, Mayor and Council, Chair and Commissioners, Tracy Albers with Development Services. Before we get into the report tonight, I'd like to take a quick moment and acknowledge Development Services staff who are here with us representing Plan Services, Field Services, and Grants and Administration. These are some of the people, more so than I, who give rise to housing in Lee's Summit each and every day. They are working with applicants to move projects from an idea through entitlement and permitting, through construction and ultimately to occupancy and beyond. Through the administration of our Neighborhood Services Program and Community Development Block Grant Program, our team works to preserve existing housing stock, support housing stability, and help residents remain safely housed. While just a few of us will be doing the talking tonight, this report and really the city's broader work around housing reflects the work of a much bigger team. I'm grateful to have them here tonight and you may see some of them here at the lectern in a little bit. So with that, here's the plan for this evening. Our hope is to keep the presentation concise and leave ample time for council and planning commission discussion. Staff's going to provide an overview of Lee's Summit's housing landscape, where we are today, the forces shaping it, and the issues or policy questions that may warrant further exploration by the future mayor's task force. I want to be clear, though, about what tonight is not. Staff is not here to advocate for a particular policy or outcome. Our role is to provide data, context, and a common foundation for the broader policy conversation. And we're certainly not going to solve housing in one night. In fact, housing may never really be something we solve for. Communities are always growing and always changing, and their housing needs change with them. Lee's Summit is no exception. Tonight's about understanding where we are, identifying the questions that deserve more discussion, and helping to determine where the housing conversation goes from here. Now, before we dive in, it wouldn't be a true work session without the obligatory icebreaker exercise. So I'd like to introduce Carson Stone, our GIS technician in planned services, who's got a little pop quiz for you.

Hi, everybody. I'm Carson Stone of Development. So just a couple of quick questions to get us all thinking about housing and get us moving in the right direction. Just some basic information. Anybody's welcome to just shout out the answer. So what percentage of our city's land is currently zoned for residential use? B. B. Not correct. All right. No. C. So we got there eventually. Bob?

Carson, you might announce over the mic, so keep watching me here.

41%? 41% of our land is currently zoned for residential use. Next, what percentage of land currently zoned for residential use is zoned primarily for single use housing? So all of our land that's already zoned for residential, what percentage of it is single use? I haven't heard the right answer yet. Still haven't heard it. 87.3%. is the percentage of residential area zone for single use. So of residential and single use. Single family. Household size versus home size. The average US household size is shrinking but the average size of newly-built single-family homes continues to grow. What is the average size of a newly-constructed single-family home in the summit? C. A. Still waiting. E. I have not heard D yet, but that is the correct answer. D. 2,642. Sorry if I said I didn't hear you. But yes, average size is 2,642 square feet. All right, two to go. The average household size when we sum it in 2026 is 2.52 people. What do you think the average household size was in 1990? Not there yet. B. B. 2.6. So our average household size has decreased by a little bit. No points will be awarded. You get points with me for answering .

Me.

Bonus points. What type of housing makes up the smallest share of our housing stock in ? Single family, duplex, fourplex, triplex, . Correct. C. Triplex makes up the smallest number of units of our housing. All right, and then a bonus question at the end. What is this? How would we classify this structure? Any other ideas?

Villa, double villa, townhome.

I have heard the right answer, because the answer is that any of them could describe the structure, depending on the situation. Depending on the situation, it could be a rental, it could be a townhome. Some of them are racially exclusive, but it could be some of them at the same time. Structures like this make it a challenge to study housing, and we have to classify buildings like this. Yeah, a little short question.

You were.

You were. He said he answered last when you were right.

There's also... Thanks, Garza. There's also a bonus answer, G, which is my parents' house. Sorry. The first section of the report tonight is what we've called setting the table. The goal is very simple. Before we have a policy conversation about housing, we want to make sure that we're speaking the same language. This section of your report tonight addresses terminology, answers to questions that we've had posed in neighborhood meetings, in public hearings, and also addresses a few misconceptions that are out there. But there's one concept I would like to spend a little bit more time on tonight, and that's the idea of the housing continuum. Councilmember Frazier actually referenced this a few weeks ago, and it provides an important lens for tonight's discussion. Simply put, our housing needs change throughout our lives. What works at 25 may not work at 40, certainly won't work at 65 or 85. A young professional, a growing family, an empty nester, or an older adult hoping to age in place may need all of these very different things from the housing market at some point or another. A healthy housing continuum provides enough variety that people have options as those needs change. And that's really what we mean by housing choice. It's not simply the different types of buildings, but opportunities for people to call Lee Summit home throughout those different stages of life. Another distinction we wanted to point out is the difference between housing typology, tenure, and ownership model. These terms sometimes get blended, but they describe very different things. Typology is the physical form of the house, a detached home, a duplex, a townhome, or an apartment. Tenure describes who occupies it, most commonly an owner or a renter. An ownership model describes how the property itself is owned. Fee simple, condominium, cooperative, or ownership by a single entity. An important point is that one does not necessarily dictate the others. A detached single family home can be owner occupied or rented. So can a townhome, a duplex, or a condominium in whole or part. And that can change over time. A home sold to an owner-occupant today may become a rental 10 years from now. So put very simply, what gets built, who owns it, and who lives in it are three very different animals. Now, I'm going to pass the baton over to Shannon McGuire, who's our Assistant Director of Planned Services. He's going to talk a little bit about the city's demographic trends and our current housing portfolio.

All right, thank you, Tracy. So Lee Summit continues to grow, and the community is also changing while we grow. Population growth, aging population, smaller, more diverse household types, changing income levels, a growing employment base are all reshaping the types of housing our community will need in the future. Demographics provide an input or an important foundation for understanding not only how much housing is needed, but also what type of housing is needed. Over the next few slides, I will cover some of those key demographics and the trends we are seeing in the community. These trends point towards a common thread. What is that thread? Lease home will continue to need housing, but the future demand of that housing may not look like the past demand. Traditional single family housing will remain an important part of the market, but an aging population, smaller households, workforce needs, affordability pressures, and changing preferences suggest increasing demand for a broader range of housing types, sizes, and price points. So what are we seeing in our community? We continue to see strong growth in population from about a little over 101,000 in 2020 to roughly right under 113,000 today in 2026. We're projected to go over that 120,000 by 2030. Our population is aging and we are becoming a more balanced population. Seniors represent a growing share of residents in our community. While families with children will continue to remain an important part of that community as well. We are seeing smaller and more varied households. This is an increasing number due to one and two person households. empty nesters, young professionals, and older adults that are aging in place. Our household size has been showing a slow decline over the years, and like Carson has said, it's currently at 2.52 people. At the same time, the community has evolved from one dominated by households with school age children to one that has a broader mix of household types, including single person households, couples without children, empty nesters, older adults. These demographic shifts are expected to continue as the population matures and household formation evolves over time. This is important because different household types have different housing needs, preferences, and budgets. With traditional single family homes, we'll, like again, like I said, continue to play a central role in our housing market. Housing stock dominated by larger homes may not fully serve young professionals, first time home buyers, smaller households, or residents seeking a lower maintenance living. Providing a broader range of housing options can better align the city's housing supply with the changing needs of its residents, while allowing households to remain, well, allowing households to remain in lease summits throughout different stages of their life. So lease summits' median household income has increased significantly over the past decades, reflecting the community's strong economy, a highly educated workforce, and our continued desirability as a place to live. Today's city's median household income exceeds both the Kansas City metropolitan average as well as the Missouri average. While rising household incomes generally increase purchasing power, they do not necessarily improve housing affordability. In recent years, housing costs have risen faster than many household incomes, making it more difficult for households to enter or remain in the housing market. Understanding both trends of household incomes and cost of housing is essential to evaluating whether Lee's Summit's housing supply remains attainable for residents across a range of income levels. One of the metrics we look at is jobs to housing relationship. Lee's Summit is increasingly both an employment center and a residential community, making both workforce housing an important consideration. The jobs to housing ratio is a useful measure of how well employment opportunities and housing supply are balanced within the community. With that being said, there is no universal accepted ideal ratio to maintain a healthy balance, help support economic development, reduces community distances, expands that workforce housing opportunities, and provides residents with greater flexibility to both live and work in Lee's Summit. So evaluating changes to this ratio over time can help us determine whether housing prediction is keeping pace with employment growth. So over the last few years, or quite a few years, Lee Summit has become more racially and ethnically diverse over the past several decades. This is reflective of both broader demographic trends across Kansas City region, as well as the nation as a whole. This diversity may contribute to changing household structures and housing preferences. As a city becomes more diverse, the community may experience increasing demand for a housing that can accommodate multi-generational living. Although future demographic changes cannot predict with certainty, these trends are expected to continue as the community grows. So owner versus renter occupancy, lease summit continues to be predominantly diverse. owner-occupied, our ratio right now is about 75-25. So 75% homeowner versus 25% renter occupancy. This homeownership rate is higher than both Missouri and national averages. Renters still make up a substantial segment of our population, are an important part of that local housing market. A balanced housing portfolio provides entry points into the housing market, facilitates the household mobility, and allows residents to remain in the community as their needs evolve over time. So this graphic here kind of illustrates the progress of our residential development through the city's development review and construction process. So it tracks housing from its initial entitlement and zoning approvals through infrastructure permitting, vertical building permits, construction, and ultimately into issuance of certificates of occupancy. Viewing projects at each stage provides a more complete picture of the housing pipeline than just looking at building permits or completed homes alone. It reflects both the current activity and future housing expected to enter that market. So currently, Lee's Summit has approximately 46,765 dwelling units, including units that are under construction as we speak. Nearly two-thirds of those are traditional single-family homes, while apartments, duplexes, fourplexes, townhomes, and other housing types make up that remainder. In addition to tracking those, we also track dwelling units currently under vertical construction. We also track what we consider to be in the pipeline. These projects are projects which have an FTP has been approved and infrastructure permits have been issued allowing developers to go out there and build those developable and build ready lots. Currently there are approximately 838 dwelling units that are in this stage of the development in some part of the process. So beyond the pipeline, what do we see? Beyond the pipeline of active development, we see, I'm sorry, Beyond the active development pipeline are larger residential projects that have received city approval through the PDP process but not have yet advanced to that FTP or infrastructure permits. These developments are vested, are not quite yet vested yet until they submit that FTP. So they're They represent an additional inventory of housing that could enter into our pipeline in a short notice. Currently we have about 911 units that have received the PDP approval but have not yet vested through the FDP. So despite all this activity, long term housing production remains below the levels experienced before the Great Recession. Single family construction declined significantly after 2008 and has never fully returned to historic production levels. Multifamily development has increased periodically, particularly since 2020, but has not offset that decline. Housing production has not kept pace with demand. Population and employment have continued to grow, while overall housing production remains below historic levels. Sizes of homes influence who those homes are likely to serve. Larger homes generally require larger lots. Larger lots generally have larger homes, higher construction costs, higher purchase prices. With smaller homes, smaller homes can expand housing options for a broader range of households. Examining changes in dwelling size provides additional insight to how the city's housing supply has evolved over time. The average size of a newly constructed dwelling has increased across nearly every type of housing. This trend has occurred even as average household size has declined. Although larger homes continue to meet the needs of many households, these trends suggest that expanding the supply of moderately sized housing may better align future housing production with our evolving demographic profile. Both the owner and rental housing markets in Lee's Summit exhibit relatively low vacancy rates. This indicates constrained housing supplies. Low vacancies generally reflects a strong demand and limited housing availability means fewer choices for buyers and renters. This can cause upward pressure on home prices and rent. While some level of vacancy is necessary, persistently low vacancy rates suggest that housing production has not fully kept pace with demand. So what does all this data and demographic trends mean? The data kind of points to that one common theme. Lease summit will continue to need housing, but future demand will not necessarily look like the past demand has. Traditional single-family housing will remain an important part of the market, but an aging population, smaller household, workforce needs, affordability pressures, and changing preferences suggest demand for a broader range of housing types, sizes, and price points. And now I will go ahead and turn the presentation over to Dr. Chris Raymond, a performance management analyst, to talk about data on housing affordability.

Hi there, Chris Raymond, performance management analyst for the city. So let me talk about a few points related to housing costs. Let me give the takeaways, the summary lines first, and then I'll go into a little bit more detail. So there's a measure that I'll talk about here of cost burden here in a moment, and we're using a pretty standard measure. And the take-home point is roughly a third of our households in Lee's Summit meet that definition of cost burden, where housing costs are a bit of a challenge for the household. Roughly, and the second point to take away is that that those costs are not evenly distributed across households, that that cost burden falls more on rental households, households that rent their property. Roughly half of our renters meet that definition of cost burden versus roughly a quarter of those who are holding a mortgage. There's a silver lining to that, but I'll come back to that in a little bit more. But the point at this point to note is that roughly, and I'm gonna stress roughly, half of our single family inventory for those houses that are intended to be, by design to be owned, meet a definition of affordable. And again, I'll delve into that in a little bit. So first on the question of housing costs. Here, like a lot of the previous slides, I've pulled data from the American Community Survey that allows us to get at what households in Lee's Summit are spending. These are estimates. We don't take them as verbatim, but these are good indications of roughly what households are spending on housing costs. And what do I mean by housing costs? Well, the American Community Survey includes in their measure of housing costs the cost of mortgage, the cost of rent where applicable, or if neither of those are the case, that is not included. This includes taxes, this includes various forms of insurance, utility costs, so gas, water, electricity, condo fees, HOA fees, where applicable. So broken down by tenure and mortgage status, what do we see? In 2024, the average housing costs for mortgage holders was about $2,220. For those who owned their home but no longer have a mortgage or never had a mortgage, the average cost is much lower at $755 per month. And then for renters, they fall somewhere in between at $1,464. Now, you'll see in this graph that housing costs have risen over time for all of these groups. This is not surprising given inflation for those that are purchasing or entering a new rental property during this period. It's no surprise that building costs have gone up. Inflation has gone up. So housing costs have gone up as well. But you'll see that housing costs in the last few years since 2019 have risen the most among those who own their own house with a mortgage, which makes sense given the other factor of interest rates. Well, you'll see that housing costs have gone up quite significantly for the other groups as well. So whereas mortgage holders have seen their costs go up by 27.7% since 2019, for renters it's around 22.6%. So nobody is immune to the increasing cost burden. Well, I mentioned that term of cost burden. So even though housing costs have risen across all groups, across all tenure groups, those costs are felt particularly among those who rent their own properties. And so here we're using a measure of cost burden. That's where you take the total housing costs and divide that by the gross household income. And those households where 30% or more of their gross income is spent on housing meet a definition of cost burden. That's a significant chunk of your income to be spending on housing. And these are where we tend to see the pressures rise. Now, some households will choose to take on more, some will choose to take on less, and will still have financial difficulties, but this is a fairly standard measure that is applied. So as I alluded to earlier, we see that that the cost burden is felt particularly among those who rent. Here it's in 2024, we're sitting just under 50%, 48.1% in particular in 2024. And this is a particular concern because if you're spending more than 30% of your income on rent, and other associated costs, that makes it hard to transition to the next stage if one wishes to buy their own house. If you're spending, you know, more than 30% of your income on housing, that's less that you can put away towards saving for a deposit, down payment, rather. What we also see is that the cost burden or the percentage of households that are cost burdened has increased also for those who have their mortgages, which again makes sense given the rising interest rates over the last four or five years. But even among those who don't have a mortgage, they've also seen their costs rise. Inflation for any sort of repairs that you might need to make to your house for utilities, costs have gone up across the board. And so we do see that there are more cost burden groups or more cost burden households within each of these groups. But the big points about the two aforementioned groups of renters and those owning their mortgages stand out in particular. Now this is the point where I started by giving it a nice caveat, but I'm going to go a little bit more into the details of how I got to this point. But there's a slight silver lining to the rising housing costs in that despite rising costs, we still have a rather robust base of affordable housing stock. Now how did I go about determining what's affordable? There's a definition that we applied known as naturally occurring affordable housing. So you may see the acronym NOAA thrown around, naturally occurring affordable housing. Often you'll think about this in terms of older housing tends to be more affordable, at least easier for younger families, those entering the property market to get into. But that's not necessarily the case. The definition of NOAA that we apply here, and again, a fairly standard one, defines naturally occurring affordable housing as those houses that are affordable for those at the median income, at 100% of median income. There's a similar measure for rentals, but due to data limitations, we're not able to delve as deeply into that. But in terms of housing that meets that definition of naturally occurring affordable housing, we took our existing housing stock, looked at current market values for these, and then compared those to the median income. And then we built a means of estimating housing costs for somebody at the median income to take into account the price of a loan, interest rates, taxes, insurance, to get a sense of how much could the median household afford. And then look to see, well, how many properties that were designed not specifically for rental use met that threshold or below. And so what we see, at least when I ran the numbers earlier this year, was that just under 58% of our single family and large and medium lot housing met that definition of affordable. Just over 50% of single family small lots met that definition. And more than two-thirds of our single family attached housing met that. I wasn't satisfied with this and so I've taken into account several developments over the last year that have made housing even less affordable with interest rates rising even since I originally ran these numbers and then taking into account differences in the market between now and then. We've seen purchasing power decrease even more. But even with that, when I ran the numbers earlier this week, we still see that, again, roughly half, when I ran the numbers, about 48% of even large and medium lot single family housing, even in this current market, where some houses that I'm very surprised are going for the values that they are, still met this definition of naturally occurring affordable housing. So the silver lining is though, even though more households are cost burdened today, even though things have gotten worse since I originally produced these numbers, we still have a strong base that we're building on in order to serve the housing needs of the population. So with that, I'll turn it back to Tracy.

Thanks, Chris. So this is where the housing conversation gets more nuanced, and Chris touched on this. A critique that we hear often is why can't the city make them build, insert housing type here, more affordable housing, more attainable housing, different types of housing. The city has several tools that can influence housing outcomes, but influence is not the same thing as control. The city can decide where housing is allowed, establish development standards, invest in infrastructure, and make the development process as predictable as possible. But the city does not control interest rates, construction costs, financing, or whether a developer can make a project pencil. And even when a project is viable, we can't dictate what lenders are willing to finance or what households ultimately choose to buy or rent. So while local policy does matter, and it matters significantly, the housing market is ultimately the product of many forces that are operating together. Which raises an important question. If we can't control the housing market, how do we use the influence that we have to the best of our advantage? enter the Ignite Comprehensive Plan. Ignite establishes the city's broader vision for growth and housing and provides the policy framework for how we use the local tools that we have at our disposal to help move the community forward to accomplish that vision. Ignite is the city's comprehensive plan. It was adopted in 2021 following an approximately 18-month process that included extensive community outreach, engagement, and education. Well, the next major update likely won't begin until late 2028 or early 2029, which sounds far away, but it's actually a lot closer than it sounds. The planning team continues to make timely updates to the future land use map that's had in the comprehensive plan as both development occurs and conditions change. A good example of this is the shear roadway realignment or some of the comprehensive plan land use changes that have been predicated on new development that was approved by the Planning Commission and Council. The overarching goals though of the plan remain as relevant today as they were when they were first adopted back in 2021. From a housing perspective, IGNITE is about creating strong neighborhoods and expanding housing choice. The plan envisions a community-wide housing mix of approximately 65% lower intensity housing, 20% missing middle, and 15% higher intensity housing. The intent is not to replace one type of neighborhood with another, but create more diversity, not for every neighborhood to look the same, but for the community to offer different housing choices for different households at different stages of life. Importantly, those percentages are long-range community-wide targets, not quotas or caps for individual housing types. The horizon year for the current comprehensive plan is 2040. So we've got another 14 years, give or take, before we hit that horizon. The target should help guide the city's overall housing portfolio but they should not be used in isolation to deny an otherwise appropriate development simply because the community is at or temporarily above a particular percentage. Housing is built incrementally and the mix will naturally fluctuate as different projects come online over time. I'd also be remiss if we didn't acknowledge the meaningful housing work that has occurred since Ignite was first adopted. First, the report acknowledges the role that economic incentives have played in facilitating housing development in the city. Incentives have been used selectively to support infrastructure and advance projects that may have not otherwise been financially feasible. Importantly, these tools have not just been limited to traditional multifamily development. They've also supported senior housing, mixed-use projects, and other housing types that contribute to a more diverse housing supply. The city's economic development program policy is reviewed periodically to ensure its incentive tools remain aligned with the community's economic development priorities, with the next review actually slated to kick off later this fall. Accomplishments also focus on preserving the housing we already have, reinvesting in existing neighborhoods, and helping residents remain in their homes. And most recently, the Big Rocks effort resulted in several processing efficiencies that are now incorporated into the UDO. Even tomorrow, the CEDC will be considering minor amendments to the ADU ordinance intended to coax future ADU construction in the community. In a community that relishes community engagement and public participation as part of the policy development process, to accomplish this much all while balancing a heavy project load is deserving of recognition. So we come back to the slide that we started with and we're going to wrap things up here with the staff portion of tonight's presentation and turn the conversation over to Council and Planning Commission. It's our understanding that the Mayor intends to launch the Housing Task Force this fall. Our hope is that this report, together with your discussion this evening, will help the work of the Task Force and also to aid in your discussions tonight. we've provided as an attachment to the agenda packet, the National League of Cities Housing Supply Accelerator. In that document, there are several case studies or housing spotlights that are provided of municipalities all over the country, some that are apples to apples with lease summit, others that are not, to show different policies, programs and projects that they put forward in their communities. And we did this largely to spur the discussion, not necessarily as evidence to replicate. Staff is available this evening to answer any questions that you may have. It may not necessarily be me, but we've got a wealth of individuals at your disposal. And we thank you in advance for your thoughtful dialogue this evening.

Mr. Mayor. Excellent. Thank you, Tracy. Shannon, Chris, and Carson, thank you guys very much. So let's go ahead and start the dialogue. Who wants to kick it off? I know a lot of you have this on your mind. Can I try?

I'll try. Go for it, Council Member Cravens. Go for it. Yeah.

I saw you smile.

So I just want to first start with the big elephant in the room, which is the apartment conversation, because that is the conversation that is being heard loud and clear. And if, Steph, if I could go back to a slide, I wanted to, and I think that slide was kind of showing what the comprehensive plan predicted versus where we're at today. There was one that had different types of housing, so apartments were on there, single family. Is that the one? No, not that one. Let's see. Whichever one talks about where we predicted the percentage that was...

Forward or backward?

Yeah, because it was pretty clear. Some of these other ones scare me. Let's see here. This wasn't it, and I could have been interpreting one wrong. I think it's this one. Okay. Oh, yes, yes. This is it. This is it. Okay. So category three, higher intensity, is that the apartments? What do we say?

So yeah, that's going to be the category that the higher density housing type would fall under. Not just apartments, but just the higher density. So your mid-rise apartments would fall in that category, yes.

Okay. So I guess the part that I'm trying to kind of get a clearer understanding on is during the community conversation on the comprehensive plan and kind of where we saw ourself and where we want it to be with our housing options, the percentage that we thought was an adequate percentage for our community and apartments was what percentage?

So apartment-specific, I don't know that we identified it to that level, but that higher intensity density type housing unit would be that 15% range. So like Ms. Alvarez stated, it's not a hard cutoff. It's just kind of that range.

And we're currently at?

Around 17. 17, okay. Right.

Okay. So as we are looking at that and we are considering And we still have a lot more that, a few more, some more.

We do have more coming online, yes, but we also have single family coming online, so that all shifts.

Yeah, and then the ones that we have coming online, where does that then put us? So we're at 17%.

So the ones that are under construction are in that category. They're counted as... It's counted with that 17%. Yep.

Okay, so we're just a little over-indexed from... the target at 15% as it pertains to apartments.

Am I reading that correctly? Yeah.

OK. Yeah. OK. So the reason I bring that up is just because it looks like we are way more over indexed with apartments as we kind of look at how our city is developing. And this kind of gives the data that shows the looks versus kind of where we're at is maybe a little more in line of what we kind of talked about in this plan. And then it also includes what's still in the tunnel. So I just kind of wanted to re-look at that and kind of put some more perspective over that. Just because, you know, we're constantly getting emails. We're constantly having conversations about, you know, this whole apartment situation. And I just think you know, information like this kind of helps put some things in perspective and also kind of helps us as we're going through, you know, what the plan is and what, you know, we want to, how we want to, you know, kind of fold things or projects through. This is just a good thing to constantly look at, but that's all I just wanted to touch on that.

Anyone else?

Thank you. No worries. I really liked this presentation and the staff report that you all prepared. I thought it was, I love getting all the data and having a chance for us to all kind of look at the facts together. I think like Councilmember Craven said, sometimes it can feel when you're driving down Douglas or whatever that there's so many apartments going up. It's actually kind of amazing to me that with what we were targeting in our comprehensive plan, we're not off by more than like 2.5%, 3% on any of these categories, less than that, really. So I think we've been doing really well at executing on that plan. I do think the percentages are interesting to me, but I also look a lot at things like the vacancy rate and the overall cost, because you could get these percentages exactly where you want if you just tore down a few buildings, but that wouldn't make anything better for anyone. It wouldn't make more housing for people. This is about, of all the housing we have, what buckets does it fall into? But I think a lot about how can we produce more of what people need? I talk to friends sometimes who have aging parents who are trying to figure out what to do. They can't stay in the single family home anymore. There's not enough assisted living units available. There's not enough maintenance provided available. And especially when you're at that phase of life, you don't always have five or 10 years to wait until the right thing comes along. You need something to be available when you need it so i think a lot about that and the word that i always come back to is choice like i choose to live in a single family home in downtown lee summit i love it i love where i am i love having a big garage even though now it's mostly taken up with smokers because my husband can't stop acquiring them for some reason but that's a choice that we made i love that in downtown lee summit there is a small house with no garage that has two bedrooms. My mom has a room for herself and her office because she works from home. I love that that's available super close to us. I love that there are apartments downtown that I know when my son goes off to college eventually and I want to downsize that there's somewhere that I can stay in this community, in this neighborhood that I love and have those options. I want to see everybody else have those options too. I think we've done A LOT TO ACCOMPLISH THAT. I SEE THESE NUMBERS. I SEE THERE ARE A LOT OF OPTIONS FOR FOLKS. BUT I FEEL LIKE THERE'S MORE THAT WE CAN DO. AND SO I REALLY LIKE THE IDEA OF HAVING THIS TASK FORCE TRY TO LOOK AT WHAT ARE THE THINGS WITHIN OUR CONTROL. BECAUSE I THOUGHT THAT SLIDE THAT WE HAD THAT HAD THE LIST OF HERE'S THE THINGS THAT THE CITY CAN DO. HERE'S THE THINGS THAT WE DON'T HAVE CONTROL OVER. LIKE WE DON'T CONTROL INTEREST RATES. WE DON'T CONTROL YOU KNOW, NATIONWIDE JOB TRENDS AND FINANCING AND THE MARKET. THERE'S A LOT OF THINGS THAT WE DON'T CONTROL, BUT WHAT DO WE CONTROL AND WHAT CAN WE DO WITH THOSE LEVERS TO TRY TO MAKE MORE CHOICES AVAILABLE SO THAT IF YOU WANT TO LIVE IN A SINGLE FAMILY HOME ON A BIG LOT THAT YOU CAN, THAT IF YOU WANT TO HAVE A STARTER HOME WITH MAYBE ONE CAR GARAGE THAT YOU CAN, IF YOU WANT TO HAVE If you want to sell your big house and take your pile of money and go live in a maintenance-provided townhouse or an apartment, that you can do that. I just want people to have choices and be able to stay in our community. It's really important to me, because I feel really rooted here, that my family can live close by, that as we grow older, that we can stay together. my mom is dead set on my son inheriting her house when it's her time like that we want to be able to have people have options throughout their life cycles and i think the report captured a lot of that but also asked like what are the trade-offs that we want to make because that was the other thing that i found really interesting in the staff report was things like We can have discretionary zoning, or we can have by-right zoning. We can say, if your lot is zoned R2, you can build a duplex as long as you meet our design requirements. Or we can say, if you're zoned RP2, you have to come to us and show us a preliminary development plan and go through all these approvals. And there's not a right answer. It's a trade-off. And that's what I want a housing task force to discuss. What is the trade-off that we're making, and how is that impacting us? If you have discretionary zoning, you have more ability for appointed and elected officials to have a say and through our voters to have a say. You have more ability for neighbors to have a say. But you also have more uncertainty. And so if you are thinking about, I want to build a bunch of duplexes that people have somewhere to age in place, you ask yourself, well, I go through all these hoops, and there's a chance that I get to the end of it, and somebody had a bad day, and they vote no, and I just don't get to do the project.

IT'S A TRADE-OFF.

DO WE WANT MORE DISCRETION OR DO WE WANT TO SET RULES THAT WE THINK ARE FAIR FOR EVERYONE AND THAT IF YOU FOLLOW THEM THAT YOU GET TO DEVELOP HERE? I THINK THE REPORT MADE IT CLEAR THAT THERE'S NOT A RIGHT ANSWER, BUT THOSE ARE THE KIND OF THINGS THAT I WOULD LIKE A TASK FORCE TO DISCUSS. WHAT IS RIGHT FOR OUR COMMUNITY RIGHT NOW. SO I LOVE THE IDEA OF PUTTING THIS TOGETHER AND HAVING THEM WORK THROUGH SOME OF THESE QUESTIONS, FIGURE OUT WHAT LEVERS WE HAVE. I LOVE CONTINUING TO WORK THROUGH THIS ON CDC AT THE SAME TIME IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THAT GROUP. AS IT WAS MENTIONED, WE'RE WORKING ON OUR ADU ORDINANCE RIGHT NOW, JUST KIND OF SAYING, HEY, WE DID THIS A FEW YEARS AGO. WHAT'S THE IMPACT BEEN? IS THERE ANY IMPROVEMENTS THAT WE CAN MAKE? looking at those iterative changes, and I want to do that at the same time that the task force is doing their work. So that was a very long way of saying I want people to have choice, and I look forward to the task force looking at ways to help make more choices available. Thanks.

Anyone else? Yes. Commissioner Ford.

Thank you, Mayor. Okay, so bear with me because everyone was talking and writing notes all over and trying to, like, arrow them together. So I'm going to start talking just really quickly. I know some time ago Lisa was considered, like, a bedroom community. You know, a lot of businesses, myself included, go downtown Kansas City, cross the state line. And with development, which I know we're not going to talk about in terms of commercial, it's what kind of helps them the housing market it's like a chicken and egg which comes first they kind of both come together so knowing that we're sending away and trying to make more of an inclusive community where we can you know live eat play work all of it i think it kind of helps It's tough, I think. Bear with me. So you originally said that planning as a body, our goal is to ensure, as the application comes to city council, it checks the boxes, which I will politely correct. I feel like we try not to just check the boxes, but to make it at a better application for you to review, so then you can focus more on the incentives, those things that, as a planning committee, we try to kind of put our blinders on. We're more focused on what does the development bring to the table? How does it help the community? Does it fit? Does it align with the vocabulary? Is it something our community can benefit from? So how, as a planning commission, can we further evaluate development projects? so that it better aligns with our needs and targets. Specifically, let's talk about the apartment. And I definitely agree with you, Councilmember Shields and Cravens. When you're driving down and you see it, it's so much more apparent. It's like a thorn in the side. But in the grand picture of things, it's not as densely populated as we might see. so circling back what can we do as a mission better evaluate so then it aligns more with these targets Also knowing that trends shift and people's desires change all the time. And then as our community evolves, we're tracking roughly 2,000 citizens per year since we're at 1,112. So in the next four years, we're supposed to grow another 4,000. Who's to say it's not another 8,000? So how can we better anticipate without having a crystal ball? I KNOW IT'S A VERY, SORRY, THAT'S JUST MY THOUGHT. SO ANYONE THAT HAS ANY THOUGHTS OR OPINIONS OR, YEAH.

I'LL GIVE IT A SHOT, BUT I'LL ASK STAFF TO COME UP ALSO AS WELL FROM A DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE AND FUTURE PLANNING. WITHOUT A DOUBT. This is being open here with the open discussion. I take your comment well, and you're right. I want to qualify what I said about checking boxes. Planning Commission has a much, much more, a very important role, and Planning Commission is the one that puts the comprehensive land use plan together. along with staff, which is super, super critical and important for future planning of our city. And so when I said checking boxes, that's project by project. I think you're checking whether they fall within the criteria of the land use and the scope and the zoning. That's what I mean by checking boxes. But absolutely, you all play a very critical role in the planning commission. And then as we continue to absorb the population, absolutely, you all... For now, we have the IGNITE plan that we're all following as our guide, right, to help us address and absorb some of this population growth. But the activity centers that, again, were put together during this plan, of which the planning commission, citizen-led process, and city council at that time were all involved with. So I think we need to continue to – I'll let you answer that, maybe Shannon, but we need to continue to evaluate that plan. modify it it's continuing to evolve and I think it can't be static I think we have to continue to make adjustments as we go and and not look at one specific project area and I think you're right I think sometimes it's it's hard not to notice when you had we have so much vacant land ten years ago we had so much right and then all of a sudden you see buildings just pop up everywhere and we were behind in multifamily apartment type development for many years and AND ALL OF A SUDDEN YOU SEE A BUNCH. WELL, THERE'S THE NUMBERS RIGHT THERE. THE NUMBERS DON'T LIE. AND SO I THINK WE NEED TO CONTINUE TO USE THESE NUMBERS, THIS DATA AS OUR GUIDE AND CONTINUE TO EVOLVE. I DON'T THINK THERE'S A SET ANSWER, A FIRM ANSWER. I just think collectively, so long as we all understand this basic data, I think that's how we can continue to be aligned. I said that word earlier. We can continue to work together towards a common vision of how we absorb the population increase. So, Jan?

So yeah, I think you nailed it right there on the, you nailed it. The Ignite conference plan, I like to describe as an umbrella plan, right? It sets our direction in a broad sense. That plan does encompass other plans that kind of house underneath that that says that more specific direction. So how do we want to see our thoroughfare master plan or thoroughfare development as a whole? So really utilizing the Ignite comprehensive plan as that direction setting document is kind of where I see some good opportunity to really set that tone for the future. Again, like we're seeing here, these are ranges. I feel like we're right on target for these ranges. I build more single family, or the community builds more single family homes. That pushes those ranges here and there. I think one of the more telling side than just looking at these ranges is the actual housing unit numbers that we have, one of the other slides, and it shows how many housing units we have overall. And it really kind of highlights that we are predominantly single family. While you may see those apartments up front on the arterial corridors or the more heavily street, but you may see a few hundred apartments up front. There's hundreds of single family behind that you don't see. So I think we're on track with where we should be.

Yes, that's Member Frazier.

I appreciate the data that you all put together because as commissioners and I'm sure as council members as well, we are hit with this constantly. And as someone that looks at data also, I'm constantly asking, we need operational definitions. And when I review this chart, I see a couple of things. I see higher intensity and I see missing middle. I see lower intensity and all three of those overlap. And we are not saying that category three is strictly apartments. They are not. The other piece that I appreciate in being a part of Lee's Summit is the citizen engagement. It is frustrating at times. Many times it's frustrating, but we have to appreciate that and take the diversity of our residents into consideration. i had the pleasure this week of attending an hoa meeting and i'm going to give you a brief example of how the citizens engage they came there was a proposed development they came together and said hey we don't particularly care for and what they were using the term they were using was higher higher density So we want these townhomes off the table. Went to the developer, they worked with the developer, if I'm remembering it correctly, they worked with the developer, developer said, okay, we're gonna pull these townhomes off of the table. But then there's the higher intensity that doesn't always mean apartments. Higher intensity could mean higher intensity or higher density, if you would, with smaller lot sizes. And so I'm asking, what do you want? Do you want single-family homes with smaller lot sizes, or do you not want anything? And I think that's where the diversity, when you put together this task force, is very important. I have said for years I am on that housing continuum. Right, and I'm headed to the right on that. My son, and he's gonna be mad at me because I keep bringing him up. My son, we had this conversation this week. Mom, when I get out of school, off of the Mizzou payroll in a year now. When I get out of school, what can I expect to afford? Where can I expect to live? And when we look at the 30% of your income and that sort of thing, he's like, oh, wow. I'm like, we can get some roommates. So Chris, you can stay with me, that sort of thing for a little bit of time. But still, those are conversations we need to have. He's on this end of the spectrum, or on this end of the continuum, and I'm on the other one. My mom is going to be on the other one as well. So I think we need to have those conversations with a diverse group of folks that are going to be able to say, OK, I'm looking at that provision. I think it is very misleading when we always say apartments. I looked at some of the questions. I'm tired of my 16 steps in my house. I'll tell you that right now. I want a single level. If that single level is a duplex where my mom is on the other side, I'm all for that. But we need to have those discussions. I constantly find myself asking, well, what is it that you need? If you say you don't like apartments, if you say you don't like high density or you want lower density, explain to me what that means so that we have something to work with. So I think, you know, Lee's Summit has been, you know, we use the word bedroom community. That kind of sounds negative. But we just need options, choices, I think, for everyone. And that changes depending on where you live or what part of Lee's Summit. So I just think, and I know we can. I know we can all come to the table. We can agree to disagree, but at least we're going to come to the table and say, hey, we need to know what's best for Lee's Summit, where, when. We're going to have that discussion tomorrow about ADUs. That's huge. My mom keeps suggesting that as well, and I'm like, no. But we need to have these discussions. And many times, I'm going to say, during an election season or a campaign, it gets really negative. And now, we're in a position where we can discuss it. And I think, again, we just need to bring a diverse set of folks to the table. And honestly, get the young folks younger and . But get the younger people involved. Get the people that are invested in the community, because we don't want them to go across the state lines. And I think in planning, and at least in my tenure on planning, that's one of the things we think about. When we look at development, why go to Kansas City or Independence or anywhere else when they can get whatever they need right here? I'm biased in that, but I think we can make this a blossoming, blooming community for everyone and have something here for everyone as well.

Thank you. Commissioner Pesch, I thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Really appreciate the presentation by city staff. A lot of good information. One of the big things, I'm going to mention my son too. So I have a very small son. He's three and goes to daycare. And one of the things I constantly hear from the people who work at his daycare center is it's hard to find good housing and good affordable options in Lee summit. So there's people who want to, you know, live and work in Lee summit and it's just hard to find, especially the more bedrooms. So if you're looking above a two bedroom, so that's something I would want to ask city staff or whoever will be on this housing commission. If you can really look into a multi-generational, like how we're, providing for just different types of families than what maybe we traditionally saw, at least not in the past. But that's all I have.

Good point. Council Member Atkins.

Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for the presentation. I think that was wonderful. For all of us who are new this year coming onto our terms, there was an onboarding process, Ms. Albers did pass out a missing middle book for all of us to start reading. It's been delightful. It's very riveting. And it is long, lots of chapters about square footage and the zoning requirements. And it brings up a lot of the points that we're talking about now. So I assume there's a lot of alignment with the strategic plan that we already have in place versus the leading developers around the country that are making plans. And the statistics that they're finding, the research they're finding, is that since the 70s, cities all over the country have kind of split between single-family homes in the suburbs versus high-rises in the urban areas, and that removes a lot of the missing middle, and that creates... kind of silos for where you live, and we are maybe losing the charm of living next door to neighbors and walking down your doorstep and going down to the coffee shop. We're losing the walkable community environments that you see in some of the more charming areas, which is why our downtown Lee Summit is such a great place to live and be because everyone's walking around and then there's like apartments on top and there's retail down below. And that's what they're finding is the preferred environment for a lot of people, especially as people are moving away from large families and single-family living or whatever, that you want to have stacked mixed use in as many places as possible because that increases our quality of living. But they also talked about... changing zoning not only to create smaller lot sizes but like think of some of our big houses in our bigger neighborhoods like our house could probably fit a couple different small houses inside of it and that's what they pointed out like a lot of the big homes that he was talking about on his chart a lot of the multi you know several thousand square foot homes could fit many homes inside of them so we can use lot large lot sizes but maybe look at policy that would allow multifamily inside those large lots And I don't know how that would be structured, but surely there'd be feedback and guidance. And I would hope that a committee would look into that. And I think that might have been what you were saying is there's some cities that did a blanket policy. Like from now on, ZAP, every single family home lot can automatically be a multifamily lot if it feels like it. And I think they did that in a few cities. I'M NOT RECOMMENDING THAT'S WHAT WE DO, BUT I THINK WE SHOULD HAVE IT LOOKED AT TO SEE IF THAT WOULD ENCOURAGE DIFFERENT BUILDERS TO BUILD ON THE LOT SIZES THAT WE ALREADY HAVE. AGAIN, THE ACTIVITY CENTER IS COMING ON BOARD, ESPECIALLY LIKE THE LAND RESERVE. IT SOUNDS TO ME LIKE THE LAND RESERVE OVER ON THE EAST SIDE IS GOING TO BE VERY MIXED USE AND VERY ACTIVITY CENTER FOCUSED, WHICH IS WHERE THERE'S THE HOUSING ON THE TOP AND THE RETAIL UNDERNEATH. and walkable spaces so you don't have to drive. And that's fantastic. I think that's going to be ideal. And I think we should be looking for more of those and figuring out how to prioritize those when it comes to incentives. And so I don't know if incentives is rolled up in this housing task force, but surely there is a connection and keeping a certain amount of green space or keeping a certain amount of trees in an environment might also be included and then the last thing i would say would be to consider partnering with the edc or including them rolling them in because i know joe perry and the edc has a lot of plans because there's a lot of cities who do design build work where you would come you know a developer would come and they would say show me your seven kinds of multi-family unit housings that we can build i'll take this one and then they just build that one instead of using Instead of spending hundreds of thousands on architects and engineers to do everything different, they would choose the design-build options that we have. And through our advocacy work, I heard that in Missouri, they updated a law around design-build this year. So I don't know what that law was, but maybe we should track it down and see if it impacts us or if it could make things better for us. But looking at partnering with EDC to get some guidance on how we could expedite housing that's going to improve outcomes. Next slide.

Anyone else? Commissioner Hatcher? Thank you.

Thank you to Councilmember Adkins for bringing up specifics of meeting with developers. That was something I was going to suggest of meeting with developers and builders for the task force to try and dig into. some of those drivers and why they're bringing in particular projects to us. And in general, the slide from the presentation, which overall presentation was excellent, thank you to the staff, specifically the two columns of factors they can control or influence and factors that they can't, trying to meet with anyone that is able to speak to the factors that we cannot influence and what is driving their decisions, typically economically based as far as the capital and rates and things like that, but anything we are able to influence that might influence or how those work together specifically thinking about setbacks and floor area ratios different things in our development ordinances how those interrelate with cost concerns as to how we could make that kind of work for everybody in bringing potentially different product types and with that specific to the setbacks and zoning Um, multiple folks mentioned, um, the, I guess prominence or kind of front and center aspect of some of these apartment projects. There's any way to, uh, dig into that residential zoning that already exists within the comprehensive plan. look at that makeup and how that is separated. Many of these projects are just right next to each other and they are on those arterial corridors that make them extremely prominent as you drive through. Do we have any ability to break that up a little bit Or set those back a little bit further from the street that might decrease just how prominent they are as far as that density where you do see those, you know hundred units within a couple acres rather than a Subdivision where you've got 100 plus out over a larger acreage away from the road so Those are specific thoughts on the task force direction.

Great, thank you. And just a reminder, everything that's being discussed right now is being recorded. And I'm not taking a lot of notes, but someone's taking notes. So we'll remember these points you're making and make sure that the task force has this information in front of them as they get their scope put together. So yeah, Council Member Pryor.

Thank you. So how is the task force going to be formed?

I knew you were going to ask that question. Yeah, we can get into it now. I'll answer that question here in a second when I kind of give some kind of closing comments.

I have a few thoughts.

And I'm open to suggestions.

Well, no, I have a couple other. I have another thought, too.

I'll go ahead and share it, and then you all can provide feedback. Yeah, so the intent, we kicked this around quite a bit. Mayor for Tim has been very helpful. She holds chair. Trafton has been very helpful, and staff has been very helpful with these kind of questions. We kind of anticipated these, obviously. And so I think the... limiting the size of the of the task force is really important we don't want it to be super big and then not be very productive so kind of smaller is better and so we kind of keyed on a 12-member task force okay and that 12-member task force would be made up of two two citizens from each council district selected by the in-district council representatives would have input on how you come up with those task force members. There would be Chair Trafton would be a part of the task force and one additional commissioner. And from a council, it would be myself and one additional council representative. So there's 12 of us. AND SO THAT'S KIND OF, WE THINK THAT WOULD BE A GOOD MIX. AND DEPENDING ON THE KEY, YOU SAID IT EARLIER, THE DIVERSITY OF THE TYPE OF RESIDENTS THAT COULD BE INVOLVED, CITIZENS THAT COULD BE INVOLVED IS KEY. AND SO THE IDEA WOULD BE FOR THAT TASK FORCE WITHIN A, I'LL GO AHEAD AND JUST GO THERE, AND THEN YOU ALL CAN ASK QUESTIONS OR GIVE YOUR OWN OPINIONS. THAT TASK FORCE WOULD BE BEGINNING MAYBE REALISTICALLY MAYBE END OF SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER, AND IT WOULD BE A SIX TO SEVEN MONTH PROCESS. And that process would entail a lot of public comment type opportunities, for sure. But they would also be with stakeholders, such as the EDC and other key stakeholders, as well as industry representatives. So industry representatives could mean a lot of different things. It could be residential builders, developers. It could be multifamily developers. It could be... WE'LL GO AHEAD AND GO THERE. IT COULD BE EVEN PUBLIC HOUSING TYPE REPRESENTATION. I THINK IN ORDER TO GET A FULL ROBUST PERSPECTIVE, I THINK THE MORE STONES WE TURN, THE BETTER INFORMATION WE'LL GET TO HELP US EVENTUALLY WHEN THE ADVISORY TASK FORCE, IT'S AN ADVISORY TASK FORCE. THEY WILL SIMPLY MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS AND NOT CREATE POLICY.

so that'll be up to the council to determine what we do with that information and that report so does that help okay okay any questions you have no i actually don't have a question about that i wanted to um commissioner hatcher brought up and i think it's a i think it actually goes back to the phyllis edson days where she used to talk about when you drive through lee summit you see the apartments you see all of them well, monstrosity that's literally right on top of Douglas that looks horrible in my opinion, but they're right there, right on the road. And you don't see that when you're in places like Overland Park. They've done, they have great landscaping. They, I don't know, I guess they kind of, I have a lot of pictures in my phone that I've taken, but they kind of build up the land around it. So it almost looks like it's not right on the road. They're a little bit kind of down the hill. So I mean, they have way more apartments than we have. They're just not as noticeable because of the way that they, so I'd like to see us, and it's been a talk for years, I know Council Member Carlisle has brought it up numerous times, but I'd like to see us focus maybe a little bit more on if we're going to have the multifamily, and I know not as much is going to be coming before us. We're at the numbers, we're not gonna, But for the ones that do, I'd like to see us discuss maybe parking lots in the back. Just different things to keep our city looking good. I want our city to look great in 20 years. I want it to look great in 50 years. And the only way to do that is making sure of that now. And sometimes I feel like we disapprove whatever comes before us. And we disapprove whatever the developer wants to do. And I think that... We're a community now that people want to be here. Developers want to be here. They make money here. Otherwise, we wouldn't have the amount coming in that we do. And I feel like it's OK to be strict. And it's OK to say, no, we don't like that. We want it to look better. We don't want you building right on Douglas. We want it to look better than that. So I don't know. I want to make sure that we're approving good products here.

That's a good point. And I know that, and I'll go here and then there. I know that in recent years, both Planning Commission as well as the council, HAS BEEN VERY MUCH ON THE SAME PAGE WITH REGARDS TO BUILDING MATERIALS AND THE HIGHER QUALITY OF BUILDING MATERIALS, PRIMARILY, WELL, FOR BOTH COMMERCIAL AND RESIDENTIAL. SO IN KEY AREAS, ESPECIALLY THAT ARE MORE ARTERIAL ROADS LIKE DOUGLAS, I REMEMBER THAT WAS A LOT OF DISCUSSION, AND I'M NOT SURE IF YOU WERE ON THE COUNCIL, COUNCILMEMBER CARLILE AT THE TIME, BUT THAT WAS THE FIRST APARTMENT COMPLEX THAT I KNOW THERE WAS DISCUSSION ABOUT. WHERE THE DEVELOPER CAME IN WITH A CONCEPT THAT WAS NOT NORMAL OR HAD NOT BEEN REALLY DONE IN LEE SUMMIT THAT WAS SIMILAR TO A COUPLE PROJECTS ON THE KANSAS SIDE IN LEEWOOD AND SOUTHERN OVERLAND PARK THAT WAS DIFFERENT WHERE THE PARKING LOTS WERE NOT CLOSEST TO THE STREET, WHERE THE LINE ITSELF, THE CONSTRUCTION setback was closer to the street with the idea that once those are finished, the ones that we're all thinking of, the Averin, is that the name of it, on Douglas and Tudor, that one was supposed to have heavy landscaping along Douglas and the street. And the parking was on the inside, where all the other ones, the parking is on the exterior and the multifamily structures are on the inside of the parking lot. So anyway, I know there was a lot of discussion both on planning commission and on the city council with regards to that project. But we had that opportunity with this task force. I think these questions are valid. And these are the type of questions they can consider and take a deep dive in and for us to consider again. COME BACK TO US, AND I'M HAPPY TO CONVENE THIS GROUP AGAIN AFTER THAT REPORT IS FINISHED. SO WE CAN HAVE MORE DIALOGUE ON THAT. SO COUNCILMEMBER, OR MAYOR PERTIM. OH, COMMISSIONER, YEAH, COMMISSIONER. ARE YOU SURE? SURE, ABSOLUTELY. OKAY.

SO INSTEAD OF REITERATING WHAT EVERYONE'S ALREADY TALKED ABOUT, I THOUGHT I MIGHT POINT BACK TO THE STAFF'S REPORT AND SOME OF THE COMMENTS AROUND STARTING POINTS FOR THE TASK FORCE DISCUSSION THAT I JUST WANTED TO MAYBE ADD A COUPLE MORE NOTES IN. So one of the things that we've heard a lot, and fellow planning commissioners jump in here and help me out, when we are reviewing development plans, be it that it's, I know we're focusing on housing right now, We hear a lot about infrastructure. We hear a lot about the impacts of the infrastructure, roads, sewer, water, traffic, parks, schools. I think that that is something that should be taken into account as we're reviewing these things and that it should be POINT THAT WE ARE ADDRESSING WITH THE TASK FORCE, THE IMPACTS OF THOSE THINGS. THE OTHER THING THAT WE HEAR A LOT IS MAINTAINING NEIGHBORHOOD STABILITY, QUALITY, AND COMPATIBILITY WHILE ACCOMMODATING GROWTH. I THINK THAT SHOULD BE ANOTHER KEY FACTOR AS WE ARE LOOKING AT HOUSING AND the task force discussions moving forward. And the other thing is we've heard this, and I'm sorry, I'm going to echo it. The report and all of the information was fantastic. Thank you. We've been looking for this information. It's so helpful to actually see the percentages and the numbers so that we understand it. I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW IF WE WILL CONTINUE TO GET THIS TYPE OF INFORMATION ON A REGULAR BASIS. I DON'T KNOW HOW DIFFICULT IT WAS TO PUT TOGETHER. I CAN ONLY IMAGINE. BUT I ALSO FEEL THAT WITH THE RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE TASK FORCE, THEY SHOULD BE EVIDENCE BASED. and it should have kind of a here's the problem, here's the cause of that problem, here's the controlled barrier, here's our proposed change, and this is what our expected outcome is. That would be really great to see, so then we're seeing a little bit of cause and effect, and then we can measure that success and why we think it's successful, or reevaluate it to say, hey, this isn't quite going the way we thought it would, so let's pull that back just a little bit and reevaluate. I think that's all my thoughts for now.

Oh, will we as planning commissioners get updates or hear from the task force as you are evaluating things?

That scope is not set in stone. So absolutely, that's possible, yes. So I think we're going to go to Commissioner Jennifer, please, first. And then we'll go to Council Member Funk after that, and then yourself again, since you spoke first.

Thank you, Mayor. I do want to chat with you, Councilmember Pryor. I want to call you Priya. And I was like, that's not right. Sorry. I absolutely appreciate your thoughts and intent on trying to be more strict. Now. Everyone here is probably sure and knows that I was not very happy with the Dillon's application, especially the back facade. Made myself very clear. But to that point, I feel like that set the precedent for, wait, if Overland Park or like the, has the ability to just say, nope, stop right there. You're not coming in the door until you meet all of our minimum requirements. And they don't blink an eye. I don't see why we can't do the same. I'm not saying we want to be Overland Park 2.0 or anything else. We want to be Lee's Summit. But we also need to be able to stand our ground. development and people and places, they want to come to Lee's Summit. But we can't just be like, sorry, don't quote me. I don't want to be the redhead stuff out. I don't want people in development to say, oh, it's okay, it's Lee's Summit. We know they want our business. We'll just do like 75% of the minimum. So I wonder if in this task force, you know, it's not specific to commercial building, but maybe housing, apartments specifically, right? Like what can we do to really drive at home that, hey, we're welcoming, we understand you're bringing something to our community, but there has to be a little give because we want to make sure that our fabric that creates our community is cohesive and not just arbitrarily because we want the development. So that may or may not fall on the task force itself, but it leads to my next point. With this task force, is there going to be a liaison who is impartial that has the connections that can make those connections to the group for organizations or other professionals in this street? I think that might be something we could consider or talk about.

Someone from within the task force that would

Someone not part. So you said the task force, you're anticipating to be 12 folks. Maybe another person is going to be the point that can say, okay, guys, I see you're talking about community development or, you know, maybe this conversation can be best with Mark. I have a connection. Let me set you up. You know, someone that's kind of just sitting, listening, unbiased, but can help connect the dots, considering that a majority of this task force is going to be citizens that have a genuine interest, but they don't or may not know what other experienced professionals out there that could answer their questions or help them ask the question.

I don't want to speak for staff. Aside from all of us, even commissioners and council, we're all residents, right? But we were going to rely on staff to guide us and be the facilitators. So, however, I think that's a good concept or good idea that, I mean, we could talk about and see if that makes sense to have someone else just be an independent kind of perspective and, like you said, help us build those relationships or connections to some other industry leaders or things of that sort.

I think that would be great. And I wonder if it might be a staff driven adventure, I'm going to say, to help kind of like tie everything together. I personally feel very strongly about making sure that our developments have a little bit more of a strict standard than allowing someone to just say, well, This is the reason why we're not doing it, and just kind of, yeah. That's the hill I'm going to pass out on. Thank you.

Councilmember.

Can we do a short recess?

Sure, absolutely. Y'all, is everybody okay with that? Okay, let's do a 10-minute recess.

Ever wondered how the city budget works? The total 2026 budget is over $380 million, which includes funding for daily operations, capital improvements, debt service, internal service, and enterprise operations. For example, the General Fund is the foundation for the city's day-to-day services and investments like road maintenance, public safety, and fire protection. The General Fund is supported by property taxes, sales taxes generated by local businesses, franchise taxes, and other sources like licenses, permits, and fees. For every dollar citizens pay in property tax, the city receives 18 cents. This means the city receives $845 a year in property taxes for a median single family house. These taxes provide public safety, park maintenance, infrastructure, and the best services to keep Lee's Summit going and improving. One of the community's top priorities is infrastructure investment, which is reflected in the capital improvement plan. $113 million of the 2026 budget is invested into the capital improvement plan. The 2026 capital improvement budget includes investments like the 291 and 50 highway interchange, 3rd Street, Ward and Purcells intersection, and Prior Road. The budget process includes guidance from the City Council, citizen input, and critical success factors from the City's IGNITE strategic plan. To learn more about the City's budget, visit cityofls.net backslash budget.

When the person called on the phone, she said that there was a dinosaur walking down her road. Of course, we had to go out and check that out. We get out there, and it was a big African tortoise, probably 60 pounds, walking down the road. When they walk, they really stand up tall, so I could see why she thought it was a dinosaur. I'm Rodney Wagner, I'm the manager of Lee's Summit Animal Control. So as you can see, we've got all sorts of animals here. We've got some guinea pigs off to the side. All the windows up here are animals that are adoptable right now. Every one of these dogs is ready to go and ready for adoption. And the same thing with our cats over here. A lot of cool cats in here now, so. This is our three-acre lot we have out back. This is where we do all the walking of dogs, exercise. We also have a side yard off to the side over there so we can let them run loose. They can run together and we have what's called play groups. Kind of like having a bunch of kids. Here's our vet room. We have a vet that comes out twice a week. This is our sally port where we bring the animals into. This is one of our animal control trucks. And we can hold up to six animals. We have a lift on the other side to put big animals in. We actually have temperature gauges in here and in the truck to tell us how hot it is. Once it gets to a certain temperature, we bring all the animals back here immediately. So this actually has traps in it, but. We do a lot of wildlife trapping. I mean a lot, so. Bats, pot-bellied pigs, horses, cows, emus, a lot of reptiles. We had a citizen one time that had over 200 reptiles in his basement. Caimans and alligators in here that are four or five feet long, you can't keep those. And people do, and they're surprised when they can't keep them. I'm like, really? You're surprised you can't have an alligator in your house? Our main goal here is public safety and also the safety of the animals, and we have very dedicated people back there, and they definitely stay here for the love of the animals, which also includes getting them adopted out. We'll have about 4,000 impounded animals a year, probably about close to 2,000 are dogs and cats. The cats and dogs, when they get impounded here, they go on a five-day hold, and then after the five days, if the owner doesn't show up, then we can put them up for adoption. Adopt an animal here is actually really simple. You just come in, look for whatever animal you're looking for, find the right pick. You have to go to the adoption room up there and see if you get along with them. You spend as much time as you want to in there. From that point on, it's just a matter of making sure they're spayed or neutered and all their vaccinations up to par and they're good to go. We have a very high adoption rate because we try everything in our power to get animals adopted out. We have Heart of America, a humane society that we do a lot of adoptions through. And then we also have other groups. We have some people that literally will just look all over the country for somewhere for a dog to go. And we sent dogs up into South Dakota, North Dakota, Washington State. So it's actually, it's a huge united effort to get all these animals home. And the good thing about the people here is that they get all their friends to get animals too. All of us have probably the limit of all the animals that we can have at home. You know, they are huge animal lovers. If it was up to the people here, we'd have 15 cats running around in here. We had a citizen one time out there, and he was bathing his two nine-foot-long boa constrictors in the front yard. Apparently, that was garnering some attention, and so we went out there and had to talk to him about that. Do I do this job? Oh, dude, I love this job. I grew up on a farm, and taking care of that many animals, you can't help but like animals. This is just like fancy farming. You know, you're just bringing animals in here, taking care of them and finding them homes. And yeah, absolutely animal lover.

Traditionally, we think as police officers, those responding to law enforcement needs within the community. But honestly, we are there to serve our citizens, and our citizens do go into crisis. They do have mental health crises, and we're being called to those scenes on a regular basis. In order to help serve those citizens better, we did initiate the Crisis Intervention Team Program. These are officers that are specially trained to de-escalate crisis situations. Recently, we've brought co-responders onto the scene, licensed, qualified mental health professionals housed within our police department. and they respond with those officers directly to those scenes where a crisis is occurring so they can interact with that citizen and get them the help they need right there on that scene.

The co-responders are either a bachelor or master level in a behavioral health related field. They wear plain clothes. They don't carry weapons or anything like that.

I have a police radio that I listen to all day. Listen for, you know, those key words. Mental health, behavioral health, crisis.

There's a lot of officers that just call for me. I have my own radio number.

I also have the ability to self-dispatch to them and say, 982's en route. Officers en route. 914.

So typically I arrive after they've made it safe. I'll make contact and get kind of the rundown. And then I just kind of jump right in.

Like, hey, you know, my name's Allison. I'm a mental health professional. I'm here to help you. I'm not here to take you to jail or arrest you. Sometimes

All a person needs is a voice, someone neutral, someone outside that can listen. I do a lot of safety planning, including family, their support network. Who's close to you? If they're home alone, who can come over and hang out with you today? Can we lock away your sharps? Can we put up your meds? Do you need meds? Can we get you over to the urgent care to get you assessed for your medications? Some of them also are like, oh, I'm so glad you came. This made me feel so much better.

Our main goal as the co-responders is to, one, get people connected to the services that they need and also divert from emergency rooms and jails.

And they almost get a different view of the police responding. That lets me know you care and the officers care.

In 2020, we had 722 mental health related calls for service. 2022, by that time, 1,479. These mental health related calls for service are increasing. How we're responding to that is increasing the number of crisis intervention team officers we have available, as well as the number of co-responders we have available to respond on these calls.

So what I think is important for the community to know about the co-responder program is that we're here, we exist. All you have to do when you call 9-1-1 is ask for us. You know, say, hey, I want a co-responder to respond to this crisis and we'll go. I was really struggling about eight years ago on my personal journey with mental health, and I met some amazing social workers and amazing programs that have helped me get to where I am today. I really couldn't see myself doing anything else. We want to help, and that's what we love to do.

So I had a client, we got a call, she had some suicidal ideations and she really felt that she had nobody. And you know, in getting to know her story and getting to know who comes around and sees you, well then we found a support person and they responded immediately and we made a plan. I called back and checked on her in an hour and then I checked on her in two hours. We were able to get her into the additional services to where she talks to someone every week or more. I just took a person that really just thought they had nobody and nobody would show up for them and show them you do. And you'll be amazed who is in your corner if you just simply say, I need a little help.

Yeah, down the final stretch. I know there's a couple more individuals that want to speak, so we'll go ahead and have Commissioner Funk first and then Commissioner Arndt speak, and then we'll go around the table one more time. We promised we would have this conversation within an hour and a half time period, and I want to honor that. So we have about 15 more minutes, and so we'll try to be brief. All right? So let's proceed. Council Member Funk. Thank you, Mayor. I can't talk as fast as Council Member Shields does, but...

NO, I THINK, STAFF, THIS WAS GREAT, A LOT OF GREAT INFORMATION. I'M NOT GOING TO REPEAT A LOT OF THINGS THAT WERE SAID. COUNCILMEMBER CRAVENS BROUGHT EVERYTHING RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE THAT I WAS THINKING, AND THAT WAS THE DATA. AND I LOOK ACROSS, AND I SEE COMMISSIONER ARTH, WHO SPENT A LOT OF TIME WITH ME ON PLANNING COMMISSION, AND WE TALKED ABOUT THE DATA. AND I THINK THIS IS AN EVER-CHANGING MARK WHEN WE LOOK AT THE SLIDE THAT WE LOOKED AT WITH COUNCILMEMBER CRAVENS. AND IF THAT COULD BE SHARED, Maybe on a, I know monthly is probably asking a little bit much, but maybe every other month we can just have an update and we can put that somewhere that the public can find really, really, really simple and see that data change. But that's all I had, Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Arms.

I was wondering if this, if we could see the slide that shows the It had ages of people on it. It had demographics and then housing types, I believe. Or maybe it was just ages of people in the community. Oh, here we go, here we go. It's just percentage of the population by age. So, as we know, the boomers are a big part of our population and so, Can you hear me okay?

Yeah, speak closer to the mic.

Okay, so we're seeing a trend of older people, more older people than younger, or seasoned, or however we wanna say it, seniors. And this will be an issue for the Housing Task Force as the trend seems to be moving toward multi-generational housing. Many people have parents living in their home, but the ADUs will be something that I think will be very desirable. And I think if the Housing Task Force can also focus on that and maybe have somebody representative to help out with that piece of the task force.

Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So I think everyone has spoken at least once that wants to speak. So again, we've got less than 15 minutes. Chair Trafton has not spoken. So why don't we go clockwise this way and have you speak or you want to wait to the end? Okay. And then we'll go around this way. If you want to speak great. If you don't, you don't have to.

You do have to speak if you haven't spoke. So commissioners, I know you can. So I think a lot of great comments tonight. I appreciate all the dialogue, so thank you. Some of the things I do just want to underscore, because I think they're important. I mean, first of all, the staff have done an amazing job with the research. And this is not a new problem. This is across the country. lots of research done nationally, but locally. So all levels of cities. And so I don't wanna lose that we're not starting from ground zero, we're starting someplace along the continuum, I like to say. And I know that we do need to be partnering with housing experts, we do need to be bringing them to the table, we do need to hear their voices. And so I think that's gonna be super important as we move forward and build those focus groups out for input from the community input. focused on different, and there's a structure, and I know it's not all worked out yet, but I know there's opinions about it, and so if you have those opinions, and I think you've shared some of them tonight, so I appreciate it. You're speaking my language when you talk about setbacks, because... I've been talking about it for a while, and I want some UDO changes related to it. As Council Member Shields sometimes says, let's get those ADU, UDO changes so we can simplify, make it easier, reduce friction to help get multiple levels of housing in the community. Make it affordable so kids that want to buy homes in their 20s, because the average age of buying a house now is 40, that they can afford to do that because it's not affordable right now for those people that want to work and then live in the community. It's not affordable. And so how do we build that? But we also have to make... concessions or trade-offs, right? Because NIMBY is live and real and it's like we need to figure out what we can tolerate, right? And what people are willing to tolerate. I love the comment about compatibility. How do we kind of figure that out? Because we do have a plan. We have talked about it. So I think it's important to just continue to think about how are we partnering with developers to bring the middle housing in? How do we build six plexes or four plexes that don't look like they're straight up on the road and there's no setbacks? I mean, I drive through a lot of communities and I've been taking photos as well because it's like, We can do this, you know, we can create density and it we don't have to see it all either Right and I say the same thing about commercial development. I don't want to see the gas station up against the road I want you know, and so I'll just say this because I get on this soapbox a lot Commissioner Jana Ford knows and she keeps me in check but You know we we have to set a stake in the ground and say this is what we expect. Developers will wanna develop every inch of the land if they can, and they don't want the setback. And so we make concessions, and we have to figure out what are the trade-offs of that. So anyway, I'll get off my soapbox, but I just wanted to underscore some of the important things you guys have said. I appreciate all this dialogue, so thank you very much.

Thank you. And I appreciate the presentation that the staff has done. It was very informative, especially for the data that I like to see as well. And we often spoke of, and I'll echo Chair Trafton's accountability for FOR QUALITY DEVELOPMENT IS REALLY IMPORTANT TO TANYA'S POINT AS WELL. AS WELL AS COUNCIL MEMBER PRIORS.

HAVING THOSE SETBACKS ARE REALLY IMPORTANT TO MAKE IT

nice for us to come into the community and see that we're proud to say, oh, there's a car wash, but it's not right in front of us. So I got some problems with one of the car washes that's just right in front of us and prior, and I don't like to see it. And so I support what everyone, and echo everyone, what they're saying. And to recognize that we do need senior living is in more of a demand. And so what can we do to make that achievable and affordable and not put a burden on the the cost that these residents have to commit the younger the younger generation as well as our older generation and so how do we make that effective so thank you

I agree with our approach, Mayor, and again, you spoke to having a diverse team. I also agree with, I think, something that Commissioner Guino said, and that is to be able to bring in and partner with other members of either our community or even outside of our community. That's not to say that we want to be Overland Park 2.0, but to be able to take the lessons learned from them the lessons that work for them and try to apply them or incorporate that into what we are trying to do. More importantly, I think it is important that we continue to look at the data. We also need to continue to provide an update or progress to our residents. There's misinformation out there, and to the extent that we continue to provide information, then at least most of us are on the same page. And finally, I think I'd like to say that we have to focus on what we have control over. It's easy for me to say we should do this, this, this, and this. But we don't have control over the interest rates. We don't. But what we do have control to a certain extent is the processes that I think staff has streamlined and made it much, much simpler. So I think let's work within our purview, again, what we can control. And I think we will be golden. because it is a community that we come together, that we work for, for the common good of our residents.

I don't think I have anything new to add, and I'm going to help you keep with your time promise.

Thank you, Mayor.

So everything that I've heard tonight, and to staff back there, sorry, I'm not going to turn around. I really do appreciate all the information that we've been given. But for all the conversation we've had, I think, and I'll say this again, but I think this is why it's very important to master plan areas. When we master plan areas, then we get to tell the developers what we want to see. And we don't just get what they want to bring us. So I want to say that again. Master planning is very important. I think we need to also keep in mind that the infrastructure of an area even though that area may have houses and commercial and everything else on it the infrastructure surrounding it and underneath it may not be able to handle much more so when we're looking at areas and we have residents coming and saying come look at this sinkhole in my backyard come look at my street that does not have any curb or any gutter and now you're going to develop this parcel And all of these huge trucks are going to drive on this. And this road is going to crumble. And then we are going to be stuck and not be able to get in and out of our neighborhood. So I think it's important to look at those things as well within this task force. And then just the last thing that I will say is we're talking about being sticklers on what we want to see and the way we want these things brought to us. And not only following what we have put into ordinance is one way to do that, but also incentives. If they want an incentive, then it better look good, and it better be what we want. So thank you.

Thank you. So a lot of great comments tonight. Staff report, I'll ditto that. Great job on the report. I love data as well. Just from an industry standpoint, I do think it's a great idea to get industry folks in here to help the task force overcome these roadblocks, at least some of them. And so that's pretty much it.

Thank you. I'll be quick. But I love what Council Member Carlisle said. Incentives. I feel like... I feel like that is a great way to hold a developer accountable. And I know incentives are not super popular. And we're having an incentive discussion, I believe, tomorrow night at CEDC. And I'm excited to do that. But yes, I think incentives are a great way. If we're going to give an incentive, we need to make sure that we're getting the product we want. And sometimes not let the developer call the shots, but we can call the shots too. But that's about all. Speaking of pictures, I was in Bentonville, Arkansas. I took a lot of pictures. They have brownstones that look so good. So I was really impressed with a lot of what Bentonville, Arkansas does.

Thank you.

I don't have anything else really to add that hasn't been said before. Just thanks to the staff, and let's get out in 15 to 20 minutes. Thank you.

The last things that I would add would be to recommend or request that the task force partner or work heavily with the development department in terms of infrastructure, because they're the ones who are planning the CIP five to 10 to 20 years ahead. And if there's some metric that can be built into the development proposals in the future, that would indicate what the anticipated wear and tear is, or I don't know what the metrics would be, IF THIS IS GOING TO BE SOMETHING THAT WE CONSIDER, IS THERE A REGULAR WAY TO GET FEEDBACK FROM THEM IN THAT WAY TO ESTIMATE WHAT THE ACTUAL IMPACT MIGHT BE? MAYBE IT'S A PLACE THAT'S NOT GOING TO HAVE ANY KIDS AT ALL, SO IF SO, WE WANT TO KNOW THAT. BUT IF THEY'RE GOING TO BRING IN A BUNCH OF KIDS TO THE SCHOOL, THEN WE DO WANT TO KNOW THAT. SO THOSE TYPES OF METRICS WOULD BE GOOD TO LAYER INTO THE PROPOSALS. based on what they say is relevant. The next thing would be the same thing with incentives, because I know that Mr. Elam and Joe Perry and whoever else are going to eventually start an incentive review task force. So the incentives that we have right now have been in place. They've been updated every year, but the path that we have been on They are structured to say, if you build in this corridor and if you bring this type of product or if you do this, then we can provide up to this percentage of whatever. So as they're reevaluating, it's probably time to partner with them in this effort to say, to trim down what we will allow in incentives so that it's not even on the table as an option. Because right now the incentives can go up to 25% or something, but maybe they could to reshape or update the incentive packages to match some of these details that we're saying are more and more important. Now that we've become a more desirable community, now that developers know how to work with us and they have a really fine-tuned system and everyone loves working with them because they're so regimented with their predictability, that making the incentives tighter might help achieve what we're talking about here. And then the last thing is I really enjoyed this process. So even if the staff, what are we doing here? Whatever this thing is that you're creating, the task force, if it goes temporarily, could we still revisit this annually to share what our next most current concerns are? Because all of us are turning on and off and whatever. We've got new people. Let's make sure that we're staying in touch regularly about these things and what's important. Thank you.

Council, thinking about commissioner versus council person is really getting to me today, sorry. Council member Carlisle, I completely agree with your comments about master planning. It actually came up in a planning commission meeting not too long ago where we have continued that particular application. BUT THE CONVERSATION WAS AROUND, HEY, THIS IS A CORRIDOR AREA. WHAT ARE WE DOING WITHIN THE ENTIRE AREA AND WHY ARE WE NOT LOOKING AT IT HOLISTICALLY AS WE'RE MAKING DECISIONS? I THINK THAT WILL CREATE A LOT OF EFFICIENCY, A LOT OF TRANSPARENCY, AND WILL JUST CREATE A LOT OF ALIGNMENT. SO I COMPLETELY AGREE WITH THAT AND WOULD RECOMMEND THAT AS WELL. MY OTHER COMMENT WAS TO, TWO OTHER COMMENTS REAL QUICK. ONE IS I WOULD LOVE FOR US TO GET BACK TOGETHER AS A CHECK IN ON THIS TOPIC. I think that it is very, very empowering to me and is insightful and just knowledge sharing. And then my last comment is to Council Member Frazier. You gave me the best comment or compliment. I did not make those comments about Overland Park 2.0. That was Commissioner Donna Ford over there. So thank you.

Thank you. I had a pretty good run of comments earlier, so I'll keep it brief, but thank you all. This has been great. Thank you for also bringing up infrastructure concerns that I did not touch on. More specifically, I did bring up the makeup of some of that residential zoning as we look at those density areas as it relates to infrastructure. I did not bring up an increasingly large concern of my own and I know a lot of others in the city share traffic specifically as we look at where that density is located and to my point about stacking some of these high density projects next to each other, potentially revising that moving forward. the traffic impacts of those decisions as well and where those are located or not located or co-located rather, I think will be very important. So thank you all.

Staff, I'm not sure if I said thanks for the presentation. Thank you for making that easy to understand and digestible. So thanks a lot. That was very informative. One of the things that I just wanted to add as we look at things to consider and while we're being creative in these housing options is with some of our senior aging population we can look more into some of the developments for these senior living facilities because they are very expensive and looking into having some of the units subsidized for some of our aging population. Because again, with our aging population, when they move into those facilities, that opens up more housing for our community. So I personally, and I know I've said it a couple of times on the dais, but subsidizing or making a requirement if we're giving incentives for a percentage a percentage of the units to be subsidized.

I'll try to be brief. I do not mean to be a little bit granular, but I will make this point because Councilmember Atkins brought up Kansas City is developing, making it more affordable for people to develop houses. Now, I take it as a sting because I'm an architect, I don't want to not have a job, but I feel like there's also importance on being intentional about how we do these choices. So maybe another layer of the task could be considering for these developments when it comes to the density. You mentioned density could be single houses on multiple on an acre versus one on an acre. So therefore, it falls into category one to category three. Also a mixture of architectural custom plans versus cookie cutters or pre-selected plans. So you still provide choice within the density, also the choice within the family types. And again, I'm just going to say I feel like this is a great opportunity for it to be more intentional with what we develop, regardless of type. Thank you.

Thank you. I think I covered everything I said. But again, Tracy and your team, thank you guys for the information and all of the data. That was so cool. We've been waiting for that for a long time. Thank you.

So I've really found it interesting listening to everybody's ideas. And I think there's a lot of... GOOD IDEAS, BUT I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE AS WE THINK THROUGH THESE AND AS THIS TASK FORCE THINKS THROUGH THESE THAT WE THINK ABOUT THE TRADE-OFFS BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT IT ALWAYS IS. SO, FOR EXAMPLE, A LOT OF FOLKS HAVE MENTIONED HAVING APARTMENTS RIGHT UP NEXT TO BUSY STREETS. WE DON'T LIKE IT BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT EVERYBODY SEES AND IT JUST MAKES IT LOOK LIKE OUR COMMUNITY IS CHANGING. But a lot of that has been done sort of intentionally. There are ways probably to change some of the landscaping things, but we intentionally have said we want apartments and activity centers not spread all through every section of our city in order to keep that stability and neighborhood character in other areas. And we intentionally put apartments next to busy streets and then put townhouses behind them and single family behind that to be kind of a buffer and a transition from busy corridors to more single family. So it's a trade-off. Do you want to have... big avenues that you don't see apartments or do you want to have, I guess, no apartments or do you want to have them sprinkled through the city? You have to decide which vision you want. The same with all of the setbacks and design standards and everything else or even affordability requirements. Those costs will always get passed along to the eventual buyer or renter. or the projects just won't get built. They have to pencil to happen. They have to provide a certain rate of return or people just will not do it. So if you make it more expensive because you have to have a certain kind of material or because you have to have a bigger setback so you can have less units on a lot, either it will become more expensive or it just won't get built and there won't be anywhere for folks to live. I'm not even saying like none of this is doable just that I really hope as we have that discussion that none of these are without cost and none of them will I just don't think that you can do all of them and then also expect to have more attainable housing in the community. I do think it's important to have some flexibility, that I like having standards, but I like also being able to look sometimes case by case and grant a variance. That if we have a reason for a standard and if a particular project there's a compelling reason not to apply it, we should have that flexibility and we shouldn't take that away from ourselves. So I hear a lot of we need to... ALWAYS ENFORCE A STANDARD, BUT THERE ARE OFTEN GOOD REASONS, I THINK, FOR HAVING SOME FLEXIBILITY. SO I JUST, AND AGAIN, THAT SOMETIMES IF WE ARE, IF WE JUST ENFORCE IT TO THE END, WE JUST MAY NOT GET THE PROJECTS AND PROJECTS THAT WE MAY THINK ARE GOOD FOR THE COMMUNITY. I'm not presupposing what recommendations the SAS course will come up with, but I just want, as they look at each of these, to consider the costs and benefits in both directions. Again, something like, do you want the apartments right next to the street, or do you want them back in the neighborhood? It's just two different outcomes. One of them where you preserve your neighborhood character, but you see apartments on the street, and one of them where the street looks nice, but you get the apartments back in the neighborhood, which as I've said many times, doesn't bother me. I live in a neighborhood that has apartments right down the street from my house, right next to duplexes on the other street and apartments a couple blocks away. I don't mind that, but a lot of people would rather have their neighborhoods a little bit more just single family. So that's all I have. Thank you, Mayor. All right.

Thank you. Okay. So I'll make some final comments and I'll let Chair Trafton do the same. Again, thank you, Tracy, Chris, all of you. Thank you guys for all the time and effort you put into this presentation and making this conversation possible tonight. So everyone has already acknowledged them. But I'm grateful for you guys, all of you around this table. Thank you for the engaged conversation. It's a conversation. We're not gonna walk out here with solutions. But we have to start somewhere. And I personally think that, I know there's regional efforts like with Mid-America Regional Council that are working on housing type kind of initiatives. I'm aware of maybe one or two on the Kansas side as far as municipalities. I'm not sure that anyone else in our area is doing what we're doing. So I think we should kind of be open-minded about that and be kind of proud of ourselves that we're taking the initiative. I and some of the council representatives have had this discussion before. I've had the discussion with Chair Trafton. This is kind of a big issue across the country and our region, but here in our community, I heard somebody say it earlier, and I say this a lot, control what we can control, right? And so that's kind of what we're attempting to do. It's not perfect. We all have different opinions. We're not always going to agree on everything, but at least we're aligned. We all agree that we need to at least go through this process, and that's the whole purpose of tonight. I'm very grateful for that. I wrote down a lot of notes. I know Tracy did as well. I spoke to Tracy during the break, and I think this has met her expectation. It's met my expectation, the dialogue that we had, and it's a good start. And after tonight, I've already shared a little bit. We're forming the scope is what we're trying to do tonight. We're not there yet, but hopefully with staff and a little more dialogue amongst Chair Trafton and I, and when we get the task force together, We'll complete the scope. But the timeline, again, I've already talked about the timeline. I'm hopeful that we can get this going within the next 30 days, 30, 45 days. And it'll be a six to seven month process. It's an advisory group. They're going to make recommendations to the city council However, I heard it loud and clear. I think I'm totally open and very willing to make sure that we convene again together as a collective group. We can discuss that later. It could be during the process of that timeline or after the report, whatever information they put together. We can talk about that. And then the makeup of the committee itself, the task force, not committee, task force, because it's not permanent. Are you guys OK in general? Just nods at heads, keep it small, 12. Each council representative will have direct input and impact on who you select, right, each district. So be mindful of that. Commissioners, we're open to your guys' suggestions as well. So offer that to you guys on selecting viable people that can be engaged and bring good perspectives, right? Everything that we've talked about, our community partners have to be part of this. Someone mentioned the EDC. you know, the chamber, downtown, main street, they all have to be part of it. So I think that'll be incorporated in the process. So, so, but your, your comments are loud and clear. Let's, let's move forward and get something done. And we should be proud of this where this is kind of like kind of ahead of the game, kind of cutting edge. And it's a very complex, complicated discussion. So again, I'm proud of you guys, everyone here for just being open-minded. And again, it's, it's, We're not gonna agree on everything, but at least we're heading down the right path together, so I appreciate that. Any closing comments?

I think you did a great job, Mayor, and I appreciate you leading this conversation. Just a couple things to add. I think it's awesome that we're gonna have eight citizens in the community, but I also think that it's very important to be intentional about varying lived experience, having different variety divergent opinions, people with different expertise, we don't want just development, or we don't want just housing experts, but we do want that perspective, right? But, you know, I heard older adults, I heard lower income households, you know, like we need to be able, people trying to enter the market, and so I just, employ the council members to be thoughtful about trying to put a lens on, okay, who are the right people to help bring that voice to the table on the task force? And so that was just the one thing I just wanted to add. And I think you did a nice job of just saying, you know, there's gonna be focus groups and I love, and I will also lobby for bringing the recommendations to Planning Commission before they go to council or at the same time or whatever, however we wanna do it. and what's decided, understanding ultimately council's gonna make decisions. Hopefully, we're already in work for some UDA stuff. But anyway, I'll stop there. We're past nine, so thank you. A little bit late, but that's okay.

Get information. That concludes this presentation and this dialogue, so thank you all very much again. City Council has a little bit more unfinished business, which you all can sit through. It's not a whole lot. We're going into a closed session, so you guys can stay with us if you want to. You don't have to. No, you can anyway, but we're going to be here a little bit longer, so you all can get up, and then we can finish the rest of the meeting, or we can finish whatever's up. It's up to you guys. Do you want to get up? I see everybody moving. All right, have a good night. Thank you guys.

Ever wondered how the City budget works? The total 2026 budget is over $380 million, which includes funding for daily operations, capital improvements, debt service, internal service, and enterprise operations. For example, the General Fund is the foundation for the City's day-to-day services and investments like road maintenance, public safety, and fire protection. The General Fund is supported by property taxes, sales taxes generated by local businesses, franchise taxes, and other sources like licenses, permits, and fees. For every dollar citizens pay in property tax, the City receives 18 cents. This means the City receives $845 a year in property taxes for a median single-family house. These taxes provide public safety, park maintenance, infrastructure, and the best services to keep Lee's Summit going and improving. One of the community's top priorities is infrastructure investment, which is reflected in the capital improvement plan. $113 million of the 2026 budget is invested into the capital improvement plan. The 2026 capital improvement budget includes investments like the 291 and 50 highway interchange.

Mayor?

I'm sorry, I don't know if I can hear you.

Mayor Bertin?

As was mentioned tonight, CEDC will meet tomorrow at 4 p.m. We've got a packed agenda. We're gonna have a liquor license updates I know that's been an ongoing discussion that everybody's anxious to see the results of also going to discuss the adu ordinance And then also start start to talk about what an update to our incentive policy and what that process would look like so again if anyone has Thoughts on that feel free to reach out to the committee and we will continue to update.

Thanks Anyone else we get on committee reports I Okay, we'll proceed then. Council comments? Any council comments? I think some computers are down, so I think you raised your hand first, Council Member Craven.

Yes, I just wanted to mention Donnie and I had the privilege this morning to go to the ribbon-cutting ceremony for KVC Foundation, which is a... child abuse and neglect prevention organization and also helps children and adults achieve mental awareness. So they have a new facility here in Lee's Summit, beautiful facility at that, and they had their ribbon-cutting ceremony today.

Thank you for sharing that. Appreciate it. Anyone else? I'm not seeing anyone else. Then we will go to staff roundtable.

Thank you, Mayor. I sent an email out earlier to all of you, but it's my understanding that County Executive LaVoda put out information about restoring the tax collection services here at City Hall. And while, yes, we are working on that, a status report on that is that we understand the legislature takes that up at their meeting on August 17th. as their charter requires intergovernmental agreements to be considered by the legislature. So we do have some additional steps to take in order to get across the finish line, but we're actively working on getting that agreement in place. And then we're also working with the county on the dates at which we can also flip the switch and then restore those services. So efforts are underway, but I just wanted to make it clear Works underway. He did sign the agreement, but there's some additional steps that need to be taken and some additional work that needs to be conducted to make that happen. I will tell you this, that we as staff are positioned and ready to make it all happen once we can get through those final steps. So just a status update on that.

Thank you, Mr. Denny. Appreciate that. Anything else? No? Okay, so I guess we're going to stick around a little bit longer for a closed session. So, Mayor Pertem, could you read us?

Pursuant to Section 610.21.1 of the revised statutes, the State of Missouri pertaining to legal actions, causes of action, litigation involving a public governmental body and any confidential, privileged, communication with a public governmental body or its representative and its attorneys. Pursuant to Section 610.21.13 of the revised statutes, the State of Missouri pertaining to individually identifiable personnel records, performance ratings, or records pertaining to employees or applicants for employment. I move to enter a closed session.

Councilmember Cravens. Aye. Councilmember Pryor. Aye. Councilmember Carlisle.

No.

Councilmember Frazier. Aye. Councilmember Adkins. Aye. Councilmember Funk.

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Shields. Aye. Mayor Lopez.

Aye. Okay. Thank you very much. Everyone else have a good night.

Thank you. Thank you.