Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. We'll see.

All right, it is 6-0-1. I'm going to call this meeting of the City Council to order. Roll call, please.

Council Member Cain.

Here.

Council Member Alvarez. Here. Council Member Wells.

Here.

Council Member Larson. Here. Council Member Click is out. Council Member Saper.

Here.

Council Member Bailey.

Here.

Council Member McGowan.

Here.

All right, now I have the Pledge of Allegiance led by Council Member Cain. Okay, item four, approval of the agenda. Before we do that, I'm going to go ahead and remove item 12. So do we have a motion on the amended agenda?

Move to approve. Second.

All in favor? Yes. Yes. Any opposed? Motion passes. Item five, comments from the public. If you are a member of the public wishing to speak, please approach the podium, state your name for the record, and please limit your comment to five minutes. Thank you. Good evening.

Good evening. Okay. That's on. Okay. Is there a button? I can talk really loud if that works.

Hello, there we go. Got to get really close.

Hi. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to everyone tonight. My name is Phil Daly. I'm the president and CEO of Davis Paint at 14th and Iron Street. And real quick, next slide, please. You can see we, I say we're all in the family. So Barry Davis founded the company in 1921 here in North Town. And James Davis was president from 62 to the 1988, and Kevin Osby has been president since. So Kevin is a member of the Davis family. I am not. So I am the outsider. But there are two gentlemen that are in the business. Jonathan Lee, who is our executive vice president, and Eric Osby, who's our territory sales managers. They are Davis family members. So I'm the intermediary at one point. At some point in the future, Jonathan will be running the company and it will still be under the control of the Davis family. I am a, I've worked, this is my third company here in North town. I worked for Valspar on Fayette street for eight years. And then I worked for CCP slash CCP composites slash plant composites for four years. And I've been here at Davis for nine. We have one shift. We have about 24 employees. And we work five days a week. So what do we do? Next slide, please. We're not a painting contractor. So the number one question I get, whether it's through our website or through phone calls, is are we a painting contractor? You can see we are a manufacturer of architectural paints as well as industrial paints. We private label, and you can see the Golden Glow label there. Next year we'll celebrate 100 years manufacturing that for the Southerlands Group. And we also manufacture our own paints under our own labels. Our custom formulations for the DIY market, so chalk paints and furniture paints, and that market is something we also do. And next slide. That's about half our business. The other half is industrial coating, so pretty much anything with steel. So structural steel, transportation, beautiful trailers and rail cars. And then our specialty coatings we sell both to industrial customers as well as the government. So our non-skid coatings, pool paints, transportation lubricant is for the car haulers. They paint the rails so the car haulers go up and down pretty easily. So that is what we call our specialty segments. Our friends in North Town, we try and consolidate as much business as we can to other folks in North Town. Quality Plumbing and Mechanicals, probably our largest vendor that supplies the plant, both from an HVAC standpoint and a plumbing standpoint. Pro Print, Pro Peril, Norton & Schmidt, Red Cedar, Mac, Tanemic, all companies we do business with here in North Town. I produce for Tanemic. Tanemic makes some products for us as well. So we share some technologies there. And then, of course, Marriottos, because any time my wife comes for lunch, that ends up costing me a few hundred dollars. What's new with the CEO? So after, you know, Kevin's tenure, 48 plus years, a couple of things we want to do is expand our involvement, get back more involved with the community. Through the business council, we used to be a prime player. I'm very familiar with it at Valspar. I was also a member of the council and very active in that. And that's something that Jonathan and I are going to actively engage in going forward. Refresh our branding. You know, we've been around for 100 years. We've got a great story. You know, 30 years ago, there were 60 Davis Paint stores all over the country, or all over the Midwest. Those stores obviously got ate up by the Home Depots and Lowe's of the world. So we've been working ourselves into a position where getting back into the contractor market and refreshing that branding. We're out there. We make a great product. We test exceptionally well against the big guys, and there's nothing that makes us happier than taking some of their business. Expand our product offerings. We get a lot of requests for custom formulations. We want to expand that a little bit so we can get more consumer-friendly and maybe try and get back into one of those retail outlets in addition to the Sutherland store. And then dominate the local scene. I was just talking to Rich about it. There really shouldn't be a school district or municipality that doesn't have Davis-Payne on it, in it, and around it. in the metro, and that's on us as much as it is anything else in terms of, again, getting ourselves out there and getting our name back out there. The other piece is the number of painting contractors in the area, getting them familiar with us and trying to earn their business back through quality as well as price. Some thank yous I wanted to put out there. Chief Williams and Chief Freeman and their teams for the protections they provide, especially the off-shifts. I spent my first 10 years working the off-shift. I know how difficult it is on a family standpoint, but again, Nothing really bad happens at 2 p.m. It's usually 2 a.m. when I've got to meet the officers down there to chase somebody off the roof trying to tag the building. Mayor Smith, Mike Nichols, and the council for allowing the variants on the Banner, we got some very positive feedback. I wish the banner could have been bigger, so you could really see it from I-35, but we appreciate the consideration there. And finally, just one shout out to David Wendt, who retired at the end of July. I worked with David in all three of my experiences here, and he was just a great person to work with. in terms of our responsibility to the city and the water pollution control. And I just, we're going to miss them. And we're ready for the new.

Awesome.

That's it.

Thank you so much. And appreciate the shout outs, businesses and folks up here. So thank you very much. Further public comments? Good evening.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council. 106 years ago today, a very eventful thing happened in the United States. We ratified the 19th Amendment, which allowed women to vote. And I'm proud that our councils consisted of four women. I think it's wonderful. Sideline, my subcontractors, I call them trade contractors, used Davis Pink.

Yeah, there you go. All right. Further public comments? Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Jim Dunn. I'm a Ward 2 resident. I haven't been here for a while, so I have a laundry list of things I want to chat about.

Let's go.

First of all, notice the utility boxes around the city have new wraps on them. Those are fun. And I just want to, you know, that's the kind of small detail that a lot of cities just don't bother to mess with. And I just want to give some kudos to whoever's responsible for making that happen. I think that was fantastic. Really cool. My wife and I are proud users of the Y. We really appreciate the subsidy that you all provide as a city. The thing I would like to really encourage you to do, if you're not, I know that you always have to be looking for places to cut funds. And I understand that. And you should be looking at those funds. What I would encourage you to do, though, is if you do that, make sure that you're getting data from the Y about usage at all of the facilities. My wife goes to the Kirk Center, to Riverside, to Parkville, and to North Kansas City based on the days and the particular offerings at those places. So if they're pulling data from just here, it would look like she comes once a week. But she's going to two classes a day every day of the week. So that's a piece that I would encourage you to take a look at if you hit a point where you really need to be looking at some of that data. That said, the other piece I am going to sort of grinch a little bit about, City Hall looks terrific. The public library looks terrific. The Parks and Rec building looks terrific. The YMCA looks like it has been a neglected building. The front apron of concrete has been paved over a number of times. The exterior landscaping is terrible. The brickwork, the curb work, it is really in poor condition. And it stands out in a community where everything else looks fantastic. So it doesn't make sense. And I know that the city has gone through some transitions with relationships with the Y. I get all of that. Whether it's holding someone else's feet to the fire or it's time to hold our own feet to the fire, that's a jewel of this community. Any given time, there are hundreds of people on a daily basis using that facility. And I would really encourage you to take a look at some ways that we could get that facility really looking better. I do want to note, in terms of streetcar, I know I'm all over the place. So you're going to see me again in a year with a new list. In terms of the streetcar my biggest concern with that is please be cautious not everything shiny and new is is great for a community and my concern is I Value what we have as North Kansas City, and I have really no interest in becoming, Kansas City North Just another part of the of the consortium here There are valuable things that that would bring with it one of the concerns that I have is is the variances that have been assessed against folks, I believe, a quarter mile on either side of that rail into the city. If that continues across into North Kansas City, we're talking about a lot of churches, a lot of businesses, a lot of residences, a retirement community. We're talking about a lot of folks who may not be able to hit those kinds of subsidies on a yearly basis. That's the piece that I think really needs to be looked at very closely. Some months ago, I was here talking about wireless access in the apartment buildings, and I just haven't heard anything about that lately. I'm not asking for a response tonight, but I would really appreciate some kind of bringing that issue coming back up so that I can hear on the council notes where that is, how did the pilot project go, Has there been any expectation or effort to expand that? And that's a piece that I think is important. And finally, I just wanted to say the issue of homelessness is a very complicated issue. It's going to continue to be a complicated issue. Complicated issues require complicated solutions. But I just wanted to say that I really support your efforts. I think the ordinance was a first step that needed to happen. And while it's a difficult and painful one, and I understand that, my career has been in public service. And I have encountered issues of homelessness as a probation officer, as an educator. But I want to tell you, I appreciate the efforts that you're making to take some positions. And that's my time. Thank you.

Thank you. And I will point out, Jim is a season debate champion, I believe, and used his time right down to the last second perfectly. A couple things just to follow up, because you raised some excellent points. Maintenance at the YMCA, I don't think anybody's going to disagree with you there. We've got a multi-year plan to get that place looking a lot better. It's going to take some time to get our arms around a building that's been Effectively, not a lot of capex on it since it was built. Second piece, streetcar, we're always looking at how we get that funded as little burden on our resident base as we possibly can. Wireless access, great question. Turns out pilots are really difficult to get up off the ground. It's been a handoff between Evergy and KC Fiber, figuring out how to get poles and mounting systems far enough back into the Spanish 8 apartments where it can actually beam the Wi-Fi in. And unfortunately, the last light pole was not far enough. So we had to have Evergy come out and find other opportunities to get power and mounting opportunities. So it's in the final phases of being launched out. We're going to take that one. And as soon as it's live, we're going to learn everything we can and run with it. So thank you. Further public comments? Good evening.

Good evening, I brought friends this time. It's your friendly neighborhood SEAC. My name's Bess Bailey, 510 East 30th, SEAC member, and I brought with me.

Brandy Collins, Park Lofts, Ward 3, yeah, SEAC member.

We're excited to tell you about our next thing we're doing. We're really excited with our Earth Day event, which I could not remember the name of at our last meeting, but Earth Day. And we're bringing to you a fall event that Brandi is going to tell you all about. Yeah, thank you so much, Beth.

So Community by Design, it's a free community workshop that's grounded in crime prevention through environmental design. Some people call it greening, third spaces, things like that. But It is the practice of using the design and upkeep of physical space to reduce the opportunity for crime. Residents will learn how everyday features of a place, things like lighting, sight lines, landscapes, signage, or wayfinding, entry points, and general maintenance either invite harm or they discourage harm. The session is going to cover the core principles. It's going to walk through real examples of how to keep our community the way we like it, beautiful and thriving, right? But then also it gives participants a simple way to assess our own streets here in North Kansas City. We also get to assess parks and other gathering spaces, right? And if the group or the community is interested, we can even do a mini walking assessment where we kind of go through the neighborhoods, look at what we could improve and ways we could do it together. But it would just be a short guided walk. But that's where we can practice spotting design cues that we just covered in the training. And then our community is going to leave with a shared vocabulary for talking about safety, but then also a short list of practical, low-cost changes that we can advocate for in our own neighborhoods. Now, we have, so I work at MOXA. If you're not aware, that is your rape crisis center here. It stands for the Metropolitan Organization Countering Sexual Assault. We are the largest rape crisis center in the United States. So we work heavily in the community. My department is the prevention department because we want to prevent it. We don't want to intervene. We want to prevent immediately. Yeah, I said that right. So what we have is a toolkit that is based on every single neighborhood and it is tailored to the neighborhood. It talks about where you can go to make a report. It talks to you or you can look inside of it and you can write down areas of concern for you that you have in your neighborhood and we can help you draft that to the right people. We want to empower our community and so we are looking at doing this on September 26th at the YMCA. We're looking at four hours, so it's going to be fast-tracked. I am going to be the facilitator of the workshop, and it is going to be sponsored by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, so it's offered at no cost to the participants. Bess, you want to take it over?

Yeah, sure. Okay. So, again, nope, I wrote down the absolute wrong month, September 26th.

8.30 a.m. until 12.30 p.m. That's going to cover lunch.

We'll have sign-in with breakfast. We'll have shirts because who doesn't love a free shirt? We'll get a sign-up going. We wanted to announce it here to let all of you know because we'd love to have you there. We're excited for this because I know our goal for the summer was community building. We want this to be a safe place for our citizens. for our kids to grow up and play in. And I think this is the right step led by community members. With that, I think that's our big thing for the summer and our launch into fall. We also wanted to thank Councilmember Larson for her appointment of Christy to the committee. And we'd love to have three more people appointed. We're missing those three slots. And please continue to look. I know that I think Council Member Larson's appointment came from a Facebook plea and a community member just said, oh, I think I can do something here. And that's all it took. It led to a conversation and someone who's really ready to actively engage. She's an advocate for Alzheimer's patients and just the ways we can connect across the board and we see assets within each other, within our community. We've already started making connections to people who need a little support in different ways. So again, those Facebook plays are actually really helpful and just start conversations.

Also, I just want to give a shout out to, I moved to North Kansas City at the start of the pandemic and I had lost my ex-husband and his mother-in-law really quickly right after that. And I just want to say thank you. This community has been very healing for me in a safe space. And so I love being here. I cannot imagine moving away. So thank you to all you all in making North Kansas City safe.

Thank you. We're glad you're here, too. And if you are watching the meeting and have any interest in joining the Community Enrichment Advisory Committee, please submit an application at nkc.org. We'd love to have you. Further, public comments? Good evening.

Hello, I'm Chandler from Center Block Brewery, and I'm throwing out the idea of the streetscape improvement for 18th Avenue. I personally just had problems with it because I have to get out of my car into the, we call it jokingly at the brewery, Lake North Kansas City. So there's not a lot of street drainage for just normal storm drains in that area. But in talking with a couple people in the city... and had some ideas that I supported, and it just kind of snowballed from here. But basically, the whole 18th Street Avenue doesn't have any rain or sewage, storm drains at all. Yes, it's a mild concern when it's just a light rain. People have to get out and hop over a big puddle for getting out of their car. But we've actually had times where, in more extreme weather, the water will intrude into our building. but that's obviously pretty severe, but it'll flood up to that point. And also, I handle the landscaping in the patio and water the plants out there, and there's a lot of plants, and I've noticed that there's a lot of water that floods in the patio. That's a me problem, not a you problem. But I can put a drain in to have it funneled to the road. The only problem is that the curb height is too low, and I would not be able to create a slope from the patio to drain out onto the road. So if there was a, you know, I don't know how this logistically works. I'm not a professional in the storm drains. But I think that having the storm drains in the appropriate curb height would help give a place for me to funnel my overpill work from whether it's rain or me watering plants for too long or whatever. Also, during wintertime, we have a safety issue with icing over that whole entire sidewalk. So our drains from our building, our gutters, drain out into the sidewalks, which completely creates a sheet of ice every winter. We recently got a snowblower and do a lot of salting every winter, which helps, but it kind of just continues as the snow melts. It just continues to pour. So it's an icy area. It's unsafe. I got another topic on the drains. The drains are important. Oh, so then it spiraled. Here we go. So it spiraled out of control with the different ideas of how we can improve that area because it's a very narrow sidewalk. So we do have a crosswalk now, which is great. I'm assuming that was the city's work over kind of closer to Chicken and Pickle, which is very nice. The curb has been redone. It's very walkable. But since we've got this whole kind of entertainment district that we're creating, it's walkable, but it's not walkable. We have the two-hour parking weekdays. I don't know what it would look like if we expanded the sidewalk a little further to create more walkable space as more businesses are continuing. We've got Chef Jay coming in. I guess I probably shouldn't state some rumors I've heard of other businesses coming nearby, but it's going to be like a hub. It's going to be a cool district, and I know there's talks of the streetcar coming up, and I think it's important to focus on this area as another entertainment district for the whole city. And Center Block's been around for a while, coming up on 13 years. I think that having a larger sidewalk obviously drains. It's safer. It's more comfortable. It's more leisurely and obviously prettier. I think setting that up would kind of set the tone for things we could do further out, like Maybe I could have a little patio cafe. I'll deal with the licensing on that another time. But, you know, it would give us more options for different fun things for North Canton City and tourism. I think that's all I got.

Excellent.

Thank you so much. And I will say I've held a number of events at Center Block and the Reclamation Room, the Commons. It's true. Anytime it rains, and anytime I hold an event, it does rain. Guaranteed. And I've been coming in to set up and stepped my, like, dress shoe foot straight into a puddle ankle deep and filled the shoe up right before doing a presentation. So let's get this fixed. And the good thing is the person sitting right behind you is an expert in drainage and all things stormwater. So perfect. All right. Further public comments? Anybody else?

It's been good discussion already.

All right. Thank you so much for all those who spoke. We're going to move to the consent agenda. Do we have a motion on the consent agenda?

So moved. Second.

All in favor? Yes. Any opposed? Motion passes. A regular agenda. Item 10.

Public hearing for sewer surcharge rates.

We need a motion to open the public hearing.

I move to open the public hearing. Second.

All in favor? Yes. Any opposed? All right, public hearing's open. We're going to start with a staff report and then take any comments. Go ahead, Nick.

Good evening, mayor and members of the council. So the ordinance following this public hearing increases the surcharge rate that we apply to our large industrial consumers for higher than normal sewage that is placed there. and then treated by Kansas City. So what this rate does is it keeps us up with the rate that Kansas City charges us plus 10% overhead fee to count towards the testing that we do daily at those sites. So staff's recommendation is to pass and we'll get that implemented with the September bill. All right.

Thank you so much. Do we have any comments from the public on the matter at hand? Going once. All right. Do we have a motion to close the public hearing?

I move to close the public hearing.

Second. All in favor? Yes. Yes. Any opposed? Excellent. All right. Discussion on item 10. To be clear, we're passing along what it costs us to do this. It's billed through KCMO, and we're, as Nick said, adding the 10% to cover our testing costs. So this isn't something we're doing to make a lot of money. All right. I assume we need to move to 11. Okay. Item 11.

Consideration of an ordinance establishing new sewer surcharge service rates. Bill number 8005, ordinance number 9802. Okay.

Any discussion on this one? Do we have a motion?

First reading. Second.

All in favor? Yes. Any opposed? Motion passes.

An ordinance establishing new sewer surcharge service rights amending section 13.08.020 sewer charges of the code of the city of North Kansas City, Missouri.

I move that bill number 8005 be placed on second and final reading and passed as ordinance number 9802. Second.

Call the roll.

Councilmember Cain. Yes. Councilmember Alvarez. Yes. Councilmember Wells. Yes. Councilmember Larson. Yes. Councilmember Saper. Yes. Councilmember Bailey. Yes. Councilmember McGrone. Yes. And ordinance establishing new sewer surcharge service rates amending section 13.08.020 sewer charges of the code of the city of North Kansas City, Missouri.

Right. Item 13.

Presentation of fire station location studies.

All right, before I kick this over to Chief Williams, I will say, first, thank you for sending it over. It's a 79-page study. I trust everyone read every page. Chief Williams is going to run us through the high points. Tonight is an information session, so he's just going to be delivering the key findings of the report. We'll have time at a future meeting to ask a bunch of questions. Go ahead.

Okay, good evening, Mayor and Council. Tonight we have Daylon Novak from WSKF and Jeff Grove from ESCI. They're here to present the information regarding North Kansas City's fire station studies. They will present location studies and a facility assessment space programming and budgetary overview prepared by the project team from WSKF. I just want to reiterate, as put in the memo, that the remodeling of both Fire Station 1 and Fire Station 2 has been a part of the long-range plan since 2018. with an original target start date of 2023. In 2023, the decision was made to push these off due to some major changes that were going to be done within the core of our city, or could be done in the core of our city. Now that we have answers to that, we felt like we're at a point where we have the clarity needed to move forward with some informed decision making. I also want to acknowledge that you all have been asked to absorb a ton of information over the last couple meetings with budgets and like the Burlington Water Main Project, other infrastructure upgrades that are already in place. I don't take that lightly. I recognize that you're adding to it. I'm adding to a full plate tonight. This purpose is to The presentation is not to ask for a decision or direction. It's just to give you information, give you time to absorb it, find the questions that you have, and then at a later date, we'll discuss those questions. Feel free. I'll talk after they get done.

I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Novak to start the presentation.

She'll and Mr. Grote will come up and help in a minute. All right. Thank you.

Good evening, guys. I'm going to change the page here. So, Daylen Novak with WSKF Architects. I'm the president of WSKF Architects. It's been 20 years since I've been there. The company is 60 years old. We're right down the street. I'm sure you guys know us. Homer Williams founded us that many years ago. So, you may not know that we do a lot of public safety design. Eighty percent of what I do is public safety design, and so it's one of our largest markets at our office. So, Done over $225 million in public safety facilities, over 50 fire stations specifically. I'm working down in Georgia right now. We've been on Wyoming, Oklahoma, Illinois. So we've been quite all over the United States as well. So it's a little bit weird that we're right here helping you guys. I love that. I'm excited about that since this is like my second home since I'm here probably more than I am at my actual house. So with that, I want to talk to you a little bit about how we got to here. So we are part of McClure's team, their on-call contract team. You have a couple different on-call contracts with engineering firms, and so WSCAF was partnered with McClure. In the process of that, they were awarded the project here, this on-call contract, in March of 25. Then in October, there was a facilities assessment, which we've kind of been talking a little bit about, the facilities and what assessment needs to be done, what needs to be done to make them better. That was task five for us in October. I did help with a little bit of that in terms of the fire stations and health and wellness and different topics, but the actual confirming the building's status, materials, all that kind of stuff, I was not a part of that. But in October, we also started space programming for station two, for fire station number two. So I started working with Chief Williams at that time. By November, we were into preliminary design of Station 2. And at that point, he and I were kind of like, does this make the most sense? Are we doing the right thing here by just renovating Station 2? And I'll dig into the details of Station 2 in a little bit here. So with that, I mentioned ESCI is a partner that we've worked with in the past. They are a national firm, part of the IAFC. We did some station locations and facility assessments on 16 buildings down in Gainesville, Florida. So very familiar with them, some other projects we've done. So I talked with Chief Williams, and they brought him in. And then once we got that study, which he'll talk about here in a little bit, I also then went back and looked at some costs. How much is this going to cost? Renovations, new buildings, all those things. So we'll dig into that after that's talked about as well. So a little bit on the facility assessment. There was about 18 different areas that were discussed about all the different buildings here that the city owns. Health and wellness, as well as staffing, was added into the fire station scope as well. So those were parts that I did help with on that study. And while we can look at the buildings themselves just structurally as buildings, we need to look at how it functions, best practices in terms of fire station design. And so that's what we're going to dig into here. The space programming of station one and station Two I'll hit on here first. So station one is 49, almost 50 years old. Station two is 59 years old, almost 60 years old. Those are some old stations. This is at the point most projects that I work on, we are replacing stations and not renovating them. I appreciate the nodding of heads here. When we did the space programming, I look at the whole, like, what they need to function, not necessarily what will fit into the building. So as you can see, there's about 6,700 square feet that needs to be added to Station 1 and about 2,300 that needs to be added to Station 2. So we can make additions to buildings, but is that going to get you what you really need for these facilities, as they're both inadequate for best practices today? So digging into those kind of inadequacies, as I mentioned, functionality is really a struggle here. Spaces that are undersized and not utilized properly, spaces that we're missing that really are part of today's best practices in fire station design, physical health. You guys may have heard of the green, yellow, red zoning, right? The green area being offices and the living quarters, and we keep that completely separate from the apparatus bays. But right now we have a fire hole that opens up directly between the apparatus bay and the living quarters and just lets all those contaminants into the living quarters, which causes cancer and all kinds of other things. Those are the things I'm talking about. The NFPA standards that are in fire station design dig into this even more, and so those things are things that we want to talk about. Mental health, as you are very aware of, with public safety is also very important, so there's things that we design into facilities as well to help with that. And then just security. Once you're in from the vestibule, you're into the whole station. There's no other facility. stops for security. And we like to do different levels of security throughout that so that you just never know with people, you know, today. With that, I'm going to pass it over to Jeffrey here so he can talk about the station location. Then I'll come back and talk about the unhappy item of costs.

Good evening, everyone. On behalf of ESCI, I'd like to thank the mayor, the council, the fire department, and city staff as we conducted interviews to hold this study. We are providing the city tonight with an analysis of all five years of data that we've collected from your emergency runs. That one? Good. All right. I got it now. Thank you. ESEI was founded in 1976, and we're more than just a fire department consulting company, right? We consult police departments, medical departments, emergency management organizations all across the country. These are just an example in front of you right now of some of the projects we've worked on in the last couple years in the region. We bring national experience, but we also understand Kansas City metropolitan area. environment. So onto that is most of my fire service experience has been in the Kansas City area so that we have consultants all across the country. They try to pick people that are in the general area that know that environment. The nature of the report. This is more than just a station location exercise. We looked at several different things when we put our scenarios together. We looked at, like I said, five years of data for calls of service, personnel an apparatus deployment, response performance, community risk, future demand, facilities, and staffing. And being a lifelong Kansas Cityan, you know, as I was digging into this report, I never realized there was a levy around the whole North Kansas. I've driven over these levies. I can't tell you how many times my children graduated from North Kansas City High School. But it wasn't part of my risk profile, so I didn't recognize it. So... All these pieces that we looked at fit together to tell a story. How do we interpret the findings? So this study is about North Kansas City. It's not a comparison of other fire departments in the region as they line up to North Kansas City. Every community has its own aspects, right? The geography, the streets, the development, the risk. So you can't, it's not a comparison. As we go through the scenarios in the next few slides, the planning locations are just planning points. And there's nothing that ESCI wants you to think has to go on this parcel of land that we list. It's just all for planning considerations. As you all know, final site recommendations requires property. You've got to have the property, the cost, the infrastructure, the development, and city priorities. So one of the first things the study that glared out was a deployment imbalance, right? So you have Station 1 and you have Station 2. Station 1 does over 80% of the work. And you say, well, why is that? Well, Station 2 is just in a bad location. It was a really good location 60 years ago, right? But now in 2026, we see that it's really impacting the emergency calls for service. It's not about the current location of Station 2, but if you're talking about new facilities, it's how you can reposition that for the best bang for the citizens, right? Then we look at the density of calls. So on this map, you see Armor Road Corridor is just slammed. Of course, I'm not telling you nothing. You all don't know. And the Fire Department knows this. And Chief Williams... every day, the amount of services and the hotspots. But the dark spots are the highest calls for service. Over the five-year data points that we used, there was over 11,000 runs we did to compile all these hotspots and incidents. This map is really the foundation of the next slides and the rest of the report, that imbalance. Why are we here? What can we do better in the future? So we look at the current four-minute coverage. As you see on this map, right, it shows the four-minute coverage of the current facilities in North Kansas City. They're in the red dots. And the green is the four-minute coverage. But some, if you go back to the Armor Road corridor, And you see where all the high-density calls are around the hospital, Harrah's, over on the very east end of the corridor, and you go back here, all those are outside the four-minute boundary, right? And four minutes is an FPA standard used across the country. It's a benchmark for fire departments across the country, and it's a four-minute drive. And if that was going to be a question, why the four minutes? Well, it's just what we use. There's other parameters we can use, but it's an NFPA standard. So we look at one scenario. We're getting into the scenarios here, and this is scenario one. We asked the data, if North Kansas City only had one fire station, where would you put it? So this is what that shows. It's at 835 East 21st Avenue. That lot is a duplex, right? But if you only had one resource, and that was what was going to be for North Kansas City, that's where it would be, and it would cover 82% of the calls. But when you do that, you lose redundancy, and you lose so much with just one resource. Station 2, much the same example, right? I mean scenario two. I call it station two. I'm sorry. I did that when I was practicing too. Same example, but we used a different address, right? The city owns a lot at 1901 Iron, and the chief says, hey, just for the report, put that in there. The city owns it. It's relatively close, right? And with that point, you see that it really, really drops down to 72%. Just by moving one facility, you lose over 10% of the amount of calls covered. Property ownership is certainly a consideration when you're planning all this. But our job was that when we asked the computer and we crunched it, hey, just give me a data point, right? Scenario three, same thing, we asked From the historical data points, where would you put two fire stations? North Kansas City has nine. Where would you put them, right? And this is where this comes. It's a two-station model, right? And they're at 1911 Armor and 202 East 18th Street, basically a little bit east of Chicken and Pickle and Starbucks. So any of you that go to Starbucks, that's kind of right where that is. this would align a lot better, covering your resources. As you can see on the map, the green goes to all your high-volume calls, right, along Armour Quarter, the Ayers, the hospital. It does, however, bring the industrial park outside the four-minute because, as you all know, I'm not telling you nothing you don't know, but there's one way in, one way out. Scenario four. Now, this scenario, we start really getting into the meat of the study, right? We keep station one at its current location. And the data shows putting a fire station somewhere in the vicinity of Diamond Parkway in Tanning there, right? Kind of like the other address before was Starbucks. It's right in this same general area. It retains the current station. It moves the second resource. to a way that has multiple response avenues except one way in, one way out. This comes with some of the more practical options of the study. It produces a significant operational improvement of leveling out calls where one group of personnel aren't just slammed and another aren't doing too much. It solves that. Station 5, keep one station. And this time we moved it down Diamond Parkway and seen what it would do. At this point in the study, we're starting to pick, we're starting to play with addresses in the system and just kind of see what it does to the mapping and the response. Moving it south on Diamond Parkway really impacts the amount of calls to be covered. And it kind of shows it's not the best move, right? From what it does on that map, it takes harrows out of it. You still get the hospital, of course. And you do get a little bit of the industrial park. But just moving it that far south on Diamond Parkway makes that big of a difference for time. Station six, scenario six. Same as two new fire stations, we asked, okay, we're going to build two new fire stations, right? And the address points come up with 16th Street, 406 East 16th, and once again, Diamond Parkway, right? This scenario, scenario six, covers 98%. of the historical calls for service, right? And that's huge. That's really, really good. Most communities, and I don't know if you know this, don't have that, all right? It has strong operational performance. It allows the city to design the facility around future staffing needs, apparatus, health and safety, and administrative needs. Operationally, this performs very well. The policy question comes whether additional improvements justify the capital outlay. Scenario seven. Here we have two fire stations, 835 East 21st and Bedford and Edelbrock. Ellerbrook, I'm sorry. Another complete two-station repositioning on this model. We really wanted to put something really right next to the highway, right? So it could jump on highway access or get through the community. And that was the movement down to Bedford at that location. 87% of historical incidents covered, right? Strong. And it's a useful alternative when you start pulling them down. This is a good example of why we looked at more than one metric, right? We started putting in highway interchange and access. Station 8. Scenario 8. Scenario 8. I don't know why I'm stuck on that. Sorry about that, everybody. Scenario 8. This, we asked the computer, okay, we're going to have three fire stations.

We're going to have two fire stations at the current location.

and where would you put the third, all right? And in this scenario, guess where they said put it? Diamond Parkway in Taney. Now, you know, all the address points typically came up to that south side of Armor, but, you know, with redevelopment and everything, anywhere in there, you know, the other side of the road would work as well. You know, we'd get that same benefit. And not surprisingly, this one, covers 99.25% of the incident, covers if you had three fire stations, OK? Now, in the study and speaking with the city and speaking with the fire chief, they said, well, that's really not what we wanted you to look at, but we just put it in there for the elected officials to see. So then we do a comparative analysis of all the scenarios, right? There was no one single benchmark, right? If you looked at the benchmarks, we covered square miles of the city, total incidents count, and structures covered, right? And there's several really strong ones in there. Some scenarios perform extremely well, and especially the ones with two and three fire stations. And if you look at scenario eight with three fire stations, we have three compared to some of the others with two. Highest number on the chart is not automatically the best recommendation. The best option is one that balances operational performance, cost, feasibility, city's long-term vision. Critical recommendations. Maintain the two fire station response model, I think is best for North Kansas City. Options four and five, consider the most strongest planning options. Three, six, and seven still are strong as well. A future facility needs to have administrative separation, which North Kansas City currently does not have that adequate crew space, apparatus expansion. So when you build a new fire station, plan for 50 years from now what's North Kansas City look. Allow that organization to grow. If you add another apparatus, you need another engine company or another ambulance, that we have room for the personnel and the equipment. Another thing with Station 2 is when we looked at the training for the organization, that they lack proper training place. You know, they have to contract with some of their neighbors to come out and do some types of training. If you remained with the two-station concept and moved Station 2, they do think it would be a good opportunity for the fire department to keep that facility for training and do some neat training things. And Daylon will talk about that in the future. But the central finding in the study is not simply North Kansas City needs a new building. It's not. The larger issue is making sure the city's fire department resources are positioned where they have they can provide the greatest benefit to the community. These recommendations give the city several realistic pathways forward. Ultimately, the final decision will balance operational performance, property availability, cost, and the city's broader priorities. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

So after we received the study, we needed to figure out how can we start thinking about these, and are they realistic or not? So Chief Williams and I sat down and looked at the four different options that are on the screen. They're a little small, so hopefully you guys can see them on your screen a little better. So I'm going to read you up close, too. Option one was a new fire station one and renovate station two. And we're going to dig into these and costs and things here in just a second. Option two was build two new fire stations and then renovate. All of these include renovating station two with training facilities, either if the station stays there on training or just make it training in general. And then option three was renovate station one, build a new station two. And then option four was renovate both stations. So that option four did not have one of those options. You saw what the stats were for the current, so it wasn't technically one of the scenarios. And then we did not put together a costing for option eight or scenario eight that he put together. Three new stations is probably not a realistic or feasible option for North Kansas City, so we left that one out. Okay, so with that, we have to think about timing of when this might happen, right? So then Chief Williams and I dug into when might this happen? This is not set in stone by any means. We're not trying to say this is what we need to do. This is just kind of to give you an example of how we need to come up with costs. So what really matters here, you can see I've got options one through four again. The biggest thing is where that bid date happens, when we're having the contractor actually bid the work. So each of the buildings, you've got Station 1, Station 2, and then the training facility on that far right side. So you can see, like, in Option 1, the bidding would happen for Station 1 in 2028. So it takes a bit to plan this, even though we're here today. And this is saying we can go pretty quick, and we, of course, need to find the funding as well. But it's at least 10 to 12 months for design time, and it's going to be about 10 to 12 months at least for construction time, too. So that's kind of what this is taking into account. Okay, next thing I want to talk about is cost escalation. You guys all know costs don't stay the same. They go up all the time, right? So, I'm using information that I got from Turner. All of the big contractors look at where they've seen costs going each quarter, and so they're at the very top of that. You can see it's got the last four quarters, which is about 5 percent increase in cost. So, we need to think about that when we're talking about this, because if we talk about building it now versus building it in five years, It adds up over time, unfortunately. So I've also looked at kind of a conservative estimate and then also more aggressive because I don't know what the costs are going to do, right? You can see, too, like 2025 was 4.1% increase. 2024 was 3.9. We had a really bad year in 2022, 8% increase. That was a crazy year. Those numbers are what I'm looking at, but I don't know what it's going to do in the future. None of us really do, but I'm trying to guess. So we're doing one at conservative at a 6% per year and another more aggressive at 5% per year, which is what is occurring right now. Other factors that really need to be thought about when we look at cost estimating is the overall master budget. When people talk about, well, how much did that fire station cost you guys, North Kansas City, everybody just automatically thinks the hard cost, right, the construction cost. But that's not all the cost that goes into it. That's considered hard cost. We have soft costs, too, so all the design fees, surveying of the site, furniture, fixtures, and equipment that you have to have in the facility. I know you know exactly what I'm talking about here. There's a lot of extra costs, and a lot of times we estimate that from 20% to 30%. So in these estimates, I did one at 20% and one at 25% of that total cost. So those are estimated into the numbers that I'm going to show you here in a little bit. Cost per square foot, that is all over the place depending on what level of finishes we do. Of course, you know, we need to make it match North Kansas City. We're not going to build a Taj Mahal. We need it to be functional. Functional design is what I'm huge about. It's nice that it looks nice, but it needs to function so that it can last 50 years for this next, you know, version here. So where is that going to land, cost per square foot? Also, construction delivery method. I don't know how much you guys know about construction managers at risk versus design, bid, build, the traditional method. There's different costs involved in that. So that's going to change the cost of the thing as well. So that's not part of the study. I'm not estimating that part for you. But those are things that we can talk about in the future. Market timing. There's a lot of construction in Kansas City, right? We've got data centers going up everywhere. We've got the chiefs wanting to build and the royals wanting to build. That takes a lot of contractors, and so what does that do to costs of other things like fire stations being built? It affects it, too. Contractors ask for more money because they can because there's plenty of work to be had. So we try to time things as best we can, but Kansas City is a very busy market, busier than most other places in the Midwest, actually. And then just site selection, right? If we choose a green-filled site, it's going to be a lot different than a brown-filled site, and we're having to remediate all kinds of stuff. Topography, you know what I mean. There's all kinds of different costs in that. And so trying to just do basic costs today for you, but those are all going to change the overall cost of things, too. So with that, I've got the costs on the screen for you here. You know, the most expensive option, of course, is going to be option two, your conservative with the 6% at $43.7 million. And then your option four with the more aggressive 5% a year is at $27 million. 0.4 million. So those seem like very large numbers, and I understand that. This is not uncommon, though, for what other fire stations that we're seeing as well. But you have to start thinking about these things now. Also, the biggest concern that we have, too, is if we go with that option four, we're going to be renovating the stations in 20 years again. They were renovated in the early 2000s right now, which was 20 years again. So it's going to be something that you think about. We'd rather wait and go 50 years by building new stations, right? Not having to pay that.

I'm getting a little crossed up because we started with like eight options and they get condensed. And I'm not sure which one is.

So again, option one is one new fire station and keeping station two. Option two is two new fire stations. Option three is renovate station one and build a new station two.

So that's option, the original option is four and five. Or consolidate to option three.

Yeah. Okay. And then option four is renovate both. Got it. So I've got that listed on this far side here. It's just really small print on your screen. So that's really what we wanted to talk about. Of course, there's lots of factors, as I mentioned, that's going to change these costs. So don't just drill in on these are the costs, right? But that's what we're seeing today. So with that, if you have any questions for us.

I think we're going to hold questions on this one. Thank you for all the information. This is a lot to absorb, so let's absorb it and we'll touch base again next week. You had some more to add, I believe.

Thank you for your time, guys.

I do have one question. Since, as I understand it, the bulk of our calls are EMS, emergency medical services, and Have you considered the option of having an ambulance-only location in addition to the two fire stations, whatever their location, to increase the coverage and transit times? Has that been considered?

No. We didn't look into that at all.

What are the pluses and minuses of doing something like that, having an additional ambulance-only location?

It could be an option. I'd have to look into it a little deeper to really see what the pluses or minuses would be in something like that. There's a lot that goes into that. That's why I'm asking. Do you have an ambulance there? Do you have an ambulance and all the fire trucks over here? Do you have the ambulance? Do you have two stations plus an ambulance station? You could have a lot of There's a lot of different factors that go into that.

I was envisioning sort of a mixed-use kind of thing in which you'd have two fire stations with ambulance services, and then another location might be just ambulance. Yeah, and that certainly could be an option.

I think that would be a future option, like as the city grows and things get busier and stuff like that, then that option would definitely be something you could look at. Thank you. All right.

One more question.

I have one question, and it's not about the fire stations, but it is about something that was in this report. Okay. It mentioned that it sounded like that there was maybe a disconnect or a potential opportunity for improvement of dispatch information. At some point, it sounded like there was information in this report that said that oftentimes the EMTs or the firemen don't get enough information from dispatchers and that there was a that there was some recommendation that fire police and city all kind of work together to improve that and I just want to make sure or ask the question are you guys looking at process improvements related to that piece of this report separately from the new fire stations or renovations.

Well currently right now we're We have had discussions about different things, but we are not. And this report covered a lot of things. Communication was a portion of that. That is something that a lot of the stuff in this report is stuff that down the line we would actually look at or look at changing things. It's important that we distinguish between what like what the consultants identified through their process and something I did. I didn't personally bring that recommendation up or we didn't personally. It was just as they were looking through the process and they were interviewing people and they were looking at all of our processes, that was something that came up during it. But there are other things in the report that are also that. And so there are things that we want to look at down the line you know, in the future, okay, how can we improve in this portion of what we're doing? And when you're looking at location studies, you're looking at the future, you're looking at, you know, adding, if you had to add something to the process, then how do you do that and how does it go forward?

Well, I was wondering if it's not possible to knock off some low-hanging fruit, right? That the discussion of process improvements doesn't cost $27 to $42 million. No, it doesn't cost. It's an easier way to have a win from this report. And it's separate, I think, from the discussion of a new system. But there are other things in this report that seem to be that they could be helpful to implement that could improve process.

And we are going to look at all of those, but currently right now, this discussion, I want to keep it on just the station locations and things like that. Chief and I, we have discussions about that other stuff also.

We've got a former dispatcher on the council, so I'm going to give her the opportunity. Then after that, we're going to hold questions until the next meeting. Everybody good? Capisce? All right, Council Member Alvarez.

I'm sorry, but since you said to hold the questions, I wasn't going to bring it up, but Council Member McGrone brought it up, so I feel like I have to comment on it. And I'll make it quick, but on page 17, I think that's what you're referring to. I was very disappointed when I saw that in the report, because back in 2017, we did that process of having Kansas City Fire dispatch for us, and it was a disaster. And so I was surprised to see that it was even mentioned in here before. It states in there that Kansas City Fire dispatched for us for a few years. It was like about seven months, I believe, until it was identified there were several incidents where Kansas City Fire had dispatched to the wrong address, more than one incident. And that one incident where they responded, a house actually burned to the ground. And so, I mean, there's some more information, but with Chief Williams knowing that history on there, I was surprised that it was in this report. So I was very disappointed to see that, and I'm not sure where it came from. I know the consultant firm put the information in there, but it came from personnel at the fire department or Chief Williams or whoever. gave that information. I was just really disappointed to see that.

I'm not sure I understand it, understand why, since we have done that before.

And it cost a small fortune. When we transferred to Kansas City Fire Dispatch, realized some of the mistakes that happened. Then we had to bring all of the equipment back, which cost, I think, about $100,000 to reverse it. Plus, we were still under contract, so it was just Like I said, there's history behind it.

It was a disaster.

So I was just really surprised that it was even in this report. So I was actually disappointed that it was even mentioned.

Appreciate the perspective on that and the history of it. We'll have a lot of good, fruitful discussion coming, meeting near you. Did you have a closing statement on this one?

Yeah, I want to thank Ms. Novak and Mr. Grote for their work on this process and again, I know it's a lot to take in tonight and on top of everything else you've had on your plates and I'd ask that you take the time to review the materials and if you have any questions or comments and you'd like to email them to me, I'll answer your questions. And we'll have another discussion on this at a future date.

So appreciate all your time.

Thank you.

Appreciate the presentation. And thank you for the hexagonal heat maps. It was fun watching and guessing where those locations were that were the hotbeds for activity. All right, moving on to item 14.

North Kansas City Business Council Contract for Services for City's Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Presentation.

All right, we got Mr. Groves here representing the Business Council. We're going to have you sing for your supper, I understand.

So I'm Rich Groves, North Kansas City Business Council, and the purpose of why we're talking tonight is for Contract for Services for the things the Business Council does that benefit all businesses of North Kansas City. And so it's a pleasure to represent the things that the Business Council does that does benefit all the businesses of North Kansas City. And I just wanted to reinforce the importance of the business community. You've heard me talk about it before, but how they create jobs, they drive investment to North Kansas City, and they contribute to the quality of life with the the proceeds from the taxes and fees that they pay and the business that they bring to North Kansas City. As a reminder, the North Kansas City Business Council is a 501c6 nonprofit corporation. And it's similar to a Chamber of Commerce, but with one really important difference. Its roots were at a time when North Kansas City was kind of in a crisis due to a flooding, almost flooding. And so our members have to have a physical presence in North Kansas City. We only focus on businesses of North Kansas City. Excuse me. We offer a lot of opportunities to help the businesses of North Kansas City. We help build relationships with monthly luncheons, Northland Coffee Connect, and First Friday coffees. We help customers find North Kansas City businesses with an online and printed business directory, spring and fall printed newsletters, which often have inserts in them representing different businesses, and a plethora of emails and e-newsletters. Everything I just mentioned is open to all businesses, not just members of the North Kansas City Business Council. We invest in the community with spring and fall fundraisers whose proceeds go entirely to nonprofit organizations. We have an annual golf tournament which provides funds for scholarships. And we coordinate the annual City Sidewalks Tree Festival which enables 50-plus businesses to sponsor and decorate Christmas trees. And I want to give special thanks to one of the departments of yours. The municipal services team is responsible for putting the trees in place, maintaining them with watering, and taking them down and recycling the lights. And again, everything I've just talked about is open to all businesses of North Kansas City. So it takes resources to do what we do, and I wanted at this point to introduce Audrey Parker, who's one of our, she's our newest employee. She works part-time about two-thirds, three-fourths time, and she's in charge of events and marketing. And the other person on our staff also works part-time 25 to 32 hours, and that's Jennifer House, who handles administration and member services. And so, It takes a portion of the time of all three of us to do the things that we do. We have also the cost of a business infrastructure for the data we control that has the email addresses and other information, registration for events and collection of that, and the things that we use to communicate with the businesses. And during the months leading up to the World Cup and during it, we did a lot of extra communication with the entire business community. And then we have costs related to the printed communications we do. This includes mailing business directories and spring and fall printed newsletters and frequent updates to the attractions and destinations trifold, which I think each of you have seen in the past. And again, all of these are things that benefit all the businesses of North Kansas City. And we've had discussions before about printed materials, but we believe that there's a need for a mix of communications. We do an awful lot of digital, digitized communications, but it's also important to have some printed media for certain things. So the resources that, or the sources of income that we have, I'll just go over that really briefly. Less than half of our funding comes from membership dues, about 42%. And the gross income from events is about 39%. So it's almost the same as the membership dues. And then we hope to have a contract for services with the city, which with the budget we have for next year would be about 14% of our total. And then we have a few other miscellaneous income sources. And so the way we spend our money is essentially 55% of our funding goes to payroll and payroll taxes. About 19 percent goes to the cost of the events, and so we do have a net profit from the events significantly. And then all the other resources used to serve all the businesses except payroll is another 11 percent, and then other operating expenses about 15 percent. So, you can see from these slides that this adds up to a cost of more than $47,000. We are asking for $40,000. I think in your budget you have currently $35,000. And so we hope that we can provide those services for you the way you want. And I just want to thank you for the opportunity to share this information and hope that you will consider adjusting your budget a little bit to make it $40,000 instead of $35,000. And we look forward to supporting you and all the businesses again next year. All right. Any questions?

Thank you so much. And I want to say thank you for all you do. You are engaged. You hold great events, luncheons. You send out newsletters and emails after every council meeting. And I know that's a valuable service. One thing that you mentioned in your presentation we will come back to again is the printed media. There's $9,000 worth of printed media in here, and it comes up each time around, and it's about the same number, I believe. But I fail to see the value from a city standpoint. I may be alone in that, but of $9,000 in printed media of a $40,000 request, I would pare that back and focus on the digital. And from a contract for services standpoint, It's hard for me to green light paying for a lot of print media mailing and things like that when oftentimes it sits on a desk or on a table at City Hall and isn't necessarily engaged with. But I would open that up to other council thoughts or questions. Can I respond to that? Yeah, absolutely.

Go ahead. So we do believe that there is a need for some mix of this. And some of the printed related to the printing had to do with the business directory mailing. We actually don't pay for the printing of the business directory. That comes from ad sales. That's done by a third party. And so we don't pay for the cost of the printing of the business directory. But we've been getting a number of questions in the recent couple of weeks since we last distributed the newest business directory. So people are looking at it. They appreciate it. And we do now just two spring and fall printed newsletter. It goes to all those addresses that we have. And for some of the addresses that we have, we don't have email addresses for every business in North Kansas City. So for some people, this is the only way they hear about us. We're always in pursuit of email addresses of representatives of every business, but we don't have that. So we believe that mix is important to what we do. And the trifold, again, is highlighting all the eat, drink, and play businesses in North Kansas City, and that is printed also. That's why we do those things.

Appreciate it. Council Member Larson.

Is there a way to go down to just one booklet a year instead of doing a spring and fall and just have one?

We used to do a quarterly one, and we have cut back in recent years to two. We could consider that again in reducing it to one, but we think what we're doing right now is what we think is appropriate. We're willing to consider that.

Council Member Wells.

Yeah, again, thank you for all you do. I make an effort to come to the coffee hours when I can make the scheduling work. And I love a business council luncheon as much as anyone else up here. So yeah, it's great work. I do have to concur to a degree on the print material. I just wonder if those resources could be focused elsewhere. So much changes so quickly in this world. We just saw a restaurant on Swift just recently just surprisingly close. And so I question the value of having a static business directory printed once a year when things change so rapidly. And I wish I had a question there for you. This is mostly me expressing kind of concern on the print budget.

Further questions or thoughts? The same database that ends up letting us produce the printed one is in the online version. And it is as current as we can keep it. Obviously, the printed one is obsolete the day it's printed, because something's going to change almost immediately every day.

Correct. All right. Do we need a motion on the amount or advice to staff? Because I know the budget's coming next meeting for ratification.

If you could just provide some direction.

OK. Where are we at number-wise? 35 is in the budget currently. 35. 35. Asking for 40. We've got 35 in the budget, which is balanced at this point. Where are you at, Tony? Council Member Saper.

I tend to think they're doing a terrific job. And as far as the printing costs, I mean, we spend so much money on businesses and enhancing businesses and as we should. And this is really a tiny fraction of what we spend on so many other things to attract businesses and events that we want to do. We're talking about a fall event. All of those things attract people to North Kansas City and enhance our businesses and This is such a small amount compared to what we spend on those that I would really favor the 40. Appreciate that.

Can I make one other point I failed to make adequately? We use an arbitrary figure of 10% of our payroll-related costs for this. I could make an easily strong case that it's way more than 10% of our time that's used for this. Okay. And that was a big portion of that.

Appreciate that. Council Member Alvarez.

I think I would have a tendency to agree with Councilman Sabra. I think they do a lot of work. I appreciate everything that they do. I think I would be in favor of what they're requesting, is my opinion.

And bear in mind, this is a contract for services, so if we're having this contract, it needs to be services that we want, that we are paying for the services that are lined out, are these services that we want and value. Council Member Alvarez.

So it sounds like you get the items printed for free, and the cost is the mailing. Is that correct? The what? The cost. It sounds like you get the items printed for free, and that the cost associated with distributing them is the mailing cost. Is that correct?

It's only the business directory that's printed with Other sources cover that cost.

I guess what's not clear from this, and maybe I missed it.

Go back a slide.

Yeah, go back a slide. What specifically is covered with the $40,000 funding request?

Do we have a way to go back? Keep going back. Keep going. There you go.

So it's $1,500 for mailing and then printed newsletters. Are those printed for free also? No. So that's a cost as well. I'm still on $35,000. I know that it's a small amount, $5,000, but it's... It's little drops. It's death by 1,000 cuts. It's 5,000 here and 5,000 there and 15,000 there. And eventually, we don't have enough money to fund a fire station. So I know it's a little bit of stuff. But I appreciate everything that the business council does. But I wonder if this isn't an opportunity to modernize some of the processes.

All right, do we want to do a show of hands on who's at 40, who's at 35? I've heard two people at 40. I've heard one, two, three. All right, I need a number. 35. So we got four to three? It sounds like 35 has it. Yep. I'd bring back the budget at 35. Appreciate all the work you're doing.

We will look forward to continuing to work with you and providing these services.

Thank you, Rich. Right. Item 15.

Downtown streetscape phase two design update.

I believe that is Anthony or Shu. That's me.

Anthony. Good evening, mayor and council. So looking at the next four items here, it looks like we're going to be talking a lot about street redesigns. The first item here, downtown streetscape phase two, So this is continuation of what we did and finished back in 2023, 2024. It's the revitalization of the downtown streetscape elements. So like the streetlights, the pavement, putting in new benches, kind of the just refresh of the downtown area. So currently Olson is designing phase two, which is on Swift from 21st to 23rd and 16th to 18th Avenue. Again, kind of those same elements. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel. We're trying to use the same new black streetlights that we've looked at, new pavers. There's a five-foot paver space that goes down the middle of the sidewalk. New tree wells, they're widened out from their five-by-five foot dimension now to 15-by-five foot. And this would continue that pattern all the way down. So again, just wanted to kind of touch on some of the, you know, where we're at with the status at 50% design. At that rate, we'll probably be looking at maybe like a spring, summer 2027 construction if we continue on that path. Hsu has pulled up here the current rendering. One of the bigger elements we wanted to discuss that is a bit of a change is looking at 18th Avenue and 21st and 23rd with bump outs, so curve extensions that are not currently there. It was considered to maybe put some at 16th Avenue as well, but that is the truck route, and you do get benefits to pedestrian traffic by doing curb extensions, shorter routes for pedestrians to cross the street, better sight lines, but you do sacrifice turning movements. So we thought up against adjacent to the truck route, probably not a good idea, but at 23rd, 18th, and 21st, again, more pedestrian zones, we kind of wanted to consider that for the design, so. Happy to answer any questions. Again, pretty straightforward except for maybe those other changes, but I just want to take any discussion items or comments to take back to the designer.

All right. Appreciate all the work that goes into designing this, and the presentation is excellent. Top down is always useful to see. I know this is kind of a legacy project that we started with the downtown corridor along Armor, and then we expanded it out kind of in the cross section out to 18th and 21st. I'd love to see it extended. The only struggle I have is now that we're talking about streetcar, if we move forward with this, are we going to have to tear it up in the event that the streetcar comes through, or is this something that would accommodate? I mean, the bump-outs sound like they're going to narrow the roadway, which would be troubling.

Yeah, curb extensions would be a conflicting device there. I think the streetcar... Design, typical section through this area has parking kind of staying the same way. I think that it is shared, though, with the traffic. But then there's the bike facility that was contemplated that would fit in somewhere. So, yeah, I think it would be a challenge with the curb extension. So that's one thing to consider. You know, timing-wise with the streetcar, we're probably a lot more current than, you know, I don't know. I'm not going to give an estimate on the streetcar. Right.

I'm hoping to have some clarity on that as funding sources do or don't emerge. So my goal would be to hopefully have the design ready and sitting on the shelf when we're ready to activate it, but not to roll pavement until we have clarity because I just hate spending money to do something and then spending more money to undo it. So any questions from council on this one? Go ahead.

Yes, thank you, and Mayor Smith, good point here when it comes to that tradeoff between some of these pedestrian elements, which curb extensions I will celebrate any day of the week. People know that. But again, the tradeoff for the potential much-anticipated streetcar expansion, that's a good tradeoff to consider. But then, yeah, that being considered, you know, again, curb extensions, great. Celebrate them all the time. 60% crash reduction, I think, is what's associated with curb extensions. I do want to just note, I actually think it could be a bit of a tangent for this item, but the BPAC recently completed their Ward 2 walk audit, and our southern route just went by this area. So it's 23rd and Swift. We made a turnaround. So I do want to note that they submitted a draft audit, and I'd be happy to share that with Public Works and with Community Development just so they can see that. But they only had one minor note on this area when it came to cycling. And so obviously there's protected cycle track going all the way southbound to 23rd and Swift. And then it just kind of ends. And, you know, obviously that's a consideration for further bike infrastructure. But there's sort of this awkward angle where cyclists have to negotiate and get back onto southbound traffic on SWIFT. So, again, just something to consider, I think, with bump outs. Does that warrant something like a bike box or something to get cycling traffic out further into SWIFT, just more visible? When it comes to what specific infrastructural recommendation, I don't have any, but I just at least wanted to point that out.

Sure. We can look into that.

The one other piece I would bring to the discussion is I just got back from Europe, so I'm in this mindset of roundabouts being the truth. And 23rd is that weird intersection at 23rd and Swift where we had the big green field. We ended up putting the apartments there, which are fantastic, but we didn't take the opportunity to realign that intersection. So I'm curious if there's room to put a traffic circle there rather than a, and I know that hasn't been looked at, but if it's something that we've thought about.

I have, I have personal feelings on that. Um, we, we, I do think maybe before the construction of the apartment complex, it would have been definitely something to consider. Your typical single-lane roundabout is going to have like a 130-foot inscribed circle, and that's going to be very difficult to kind of get in there. Still something we could look at and see how it laid out. I do think it may have been, when I started, that was already on the drawing board. The window of opportunity. Yeah, I was like, wow, that would have been a great time to look at a roundabout there. But now, I think with the apartment complex, it would be a lot harder. But it is still something we can overlay just to kind of look at and see.

Yeah, not to muddy the waters too much. But directionally, I like what I see on the paper. I do appreciate the bump-outs for visibility and sight lines and pedestrian safety. But I would say let's hold at least until we have some idea of when and how the streetcar might emerge on this particular piece of road. That's what the council is. I've seen head nods. Very good. Okay. All right. Anything else on this one? Perfect. Moving to item 16.

Sideline review 29th to 31st on Swift Avenue.

Who brought this one in? That's me again. All right. So if you want to talk about curb extensions, this is definitely the one. So this started because we did receive pedestrian resident complaints from this area. And we still do. It was a while back, and then we kept getting more and more, so we started to look into it. When people are on the side streets coming onto Swift, it's very hard to see around some of the parked cars. There's some monument signs that are there. And so we had our previous, one of our on-call engineers look into this. And what you're seeing here, if you scroll through the packet, those triangles, those are determined by, it's called the AASHTO Green Book. It's the American kind of standard highway transportation guide. And what they look at is, you know, how far should a driver be able to see down a non-stop controlled street? So again, you know, you come up to 23rd, I'm sorry, 29th or 30th, you're at a stop sign. SWIFT is not stop controlled at these locations. And so you have to be able to see a certain distance to perceive the traffic. figure out if you're going to make that move or not, and then react. And so that determination kind of sets that distance down swift, how far they carry that triangle. So those are kind of overlaid on there. And what you see is that a lot of the parked cars are kind of in the sidelines. We did have them, you can see in the red there, kind of play around with the idea of bump outs, what that would look like.

That, again, gets the car further out, out around the parked cars, you can see farther.

THAT DOES HELP DECREASE THE AMOUNT OF PARKING YOU LOSE, BUT IT DOES NOT COMPLETELY ELIMINATE HAVING TO ELIMINATE PARKING SPACES. BUT IT DOES KIND OF HELP THE SITUATION. SO WE WANTED TO BRING THIS TONIGHT TO COUNCIL TO KIND OF START THE DISCUSSION ON THIS AND FIGURE OUT WHAT MAYBE DIRECTION TO HEAD. YOU KNOW, WE'VE LOOKED AT THREE DIFFERENT MAYBE PATHS. ONE, ELIMINATE PARKING. TWO, LOOK AT CURB EXTENSION BUMP-OUTS. OR THREE, YOU COULD ALSO LOOK AT STOP CONTROL ON SWIFT. Again, just kind of responding to the residents' request of, you know, these are hard to see around. And now that we have some diagrams and information here, we feel like something probably does need to be done. But wanted to open it up for discussion.

Thank you for this. I and the two council members to my left live just on the edge of these streets. And it is treacherous pulling out from any of the numbered streets onto Swift. And it's a spot where there's also a lot of pedestrian activity between there and the dog park. So I come out, I'm looking to my left trying to get around a giant truck parked there and to see a car, and then I look to my right and I'm already in the crosswalk and a pedestrian is glaring at me with their dog. It does look like all the sight lines drawn assume that the car stops at that line and doesn't keep creeping out until they can see, which is clearly a hazard. So suggestion, I would go ahead and probably remove the putting stop signs at every street. That might get it'd take you half an hour to go down swift. Uh, and I sure emergency response wouldn't like that either going to the gardens every few hours. Um, so removing parking and bump outs are, are the two options that I think that leaves, how much parking would we need to pull?

Well, as you can see the, the diagram here, it leaves the card, the current stop bar on the side streets. And so, um, If that parking is inside that gray area, that puts it into the sideline. So at some of these locations, you're losing maybe four to five spaces, which is kind of all of them at certain locations. Yeah, it is a challenge. This is a very tight intersection. Swift is very large also. Going back to the benefits of the curb extensions, it does decrease the walking distance for the pedestrian crossing Swift. But then I'm just gonna start rambling about Pluses and minuses. But yeah, you do start looking at a good amount of parking being lost.

Yeah, it sounds like, I mean, to remove the, within the gray triangles, it's gone. Everything's gone. And I know we'd get some revolts from the people who live there as well, because that's relied upon pretty heavily. And again, I go back to not ideal to touch swift until we have some clarity on streetcar. But this is a pretty tight spot.

Go ahead. Rather than actually considering at this point spending a lot of money on bump outs, we're going to need it for the fire station. We can try maybe painting no parking zones in that area to clarify and see how it works out and see how residents react. And if they can adjust to the reduced parking.

Removing all the street parking there on those blocks of Swift?

Well, no, just the areas that would be covered by the bump-outs and the restricted area. Two or three parking places you were saying.

If you look at the top image here, it's bump-out plus.

I know, yeah, but that area would then have no parking. Increase the sidelines and safety, not only for the people in passenger cars and trucks... but also for people crossing and see how it works. It's a lot lower cost and it's a practical alternative.

I was going to suggest something similar to what Councilmember Saper said. I pull out off of 30th, 31st, 29th every day and it's very hard to see and we get, I don't want to hit somebody, I don't want them to be mad that I'm in the crosswalk. I wonder if a cheaper alternative is not even to remove all the parking, but remove the one to two spots that are right next to the intersection. because it's not going to clear out the entire sight line, but it'll at least make it so that we might not have to creep as far forward into the intersection, and it's not going to cost very much to just paint red on those areas. All of the townhouses have at least two to three parking spaces. The gardens does provide parking. So it's not like we're going to be removing required parking for these spaces. And if it's just like the one to two at the edges of each intersection, then I think that could solve the problem, or at least 90% of the problem.

One space to each edge.

I would like to study it further. After we got this data back, we did want to advance another task order with our new on-call engineers, Olson, to look at this and maybe come up with different options. That's kind of mentioned in the memo. We've been holding onto that to have this discussion and see if that's maybe amenable to see if they can come up with other design options. Or do other further engineering studies like remove a couple spaces, try it. There are certain rules to that that I want to make sure we follow correctly. We do adopt in our city code the MUTCD manual, which kind of outlays how we should handle traffic changes. Kevin's rolling his eyes at me, but that is something that we adopt. So that is also maybe a path forward as well.

Could we, sorry, I'll get to you, I promise. Could we do temporary no parking signs at the site? Like, we're not painting, we're not doing, just temporary no parking and see if it helps with sight lines. Because you know I love a good study, but studies take a long time and they cost money. Can we study it in real time by throwing the no parking signs down this week and seeing what that does to sight lines? If it's great, we roll with it. If not, we can go study it some more.

Sure, yeah. That is something we can definitely try. I just want to, again, I want to. make sure we follow the traffic rules.

But yeah.

I believe we got a grant for some equipment or paid for some equipment to do some of this kind of studies on the fly that doesn't require a ton of engineering dollars, but we actually test it out with equipment. Is that in process?

so we have applied for safe streets for all demonstration grant and that is a planning slash demonstration because that is exactly the purpose for how we have a temporary tryout on things gathering the data and remodify so one of the things i could suggest over here is probably consider something that's like a demonstration project instead of just having a no parking sign and then ticketing people, which I don't know if we're enforcing, we might consider something like a delineator, temporary barriers, planters, things like that, that we could.

So we've just applied for the grant. We haven't secured it yet. Okay.

We haven't heard back. Last time I heard is probably going to be later this fall.

Yeah.

Council Member Wells.

Councilmember Bailey actually took the words right out of my mouth. So perfect. Satisfied.

All right. Okay, so it sounds like there's a consensus around like, let's see what it looks like to remove some parking spaces along the edge. semi like not permanently just just to see how it how it works out. If that's if that needs additional approvals or something through the manual you were talking about, make sure to bring that forward. But we'd like to see it what it looks like. Okay. Very good. Anything else you need from us on that one? Very good. Item 17.

Discussion of Hawaiian Brothers Island Grill driveway sideline. Council Member King.

Councilmember Cain.

All right, thank you.

So first off, I want to thank city staff and the mayor for chatting about this issue. I also appreciate a council meeting that is this pedestrian-centered and focused. Like, this is my kind of meeting, so I really appreciate it. And I feel really grateful to live in a community where, like, electeds and city staff really care about pedestrian safety and street safety. I'll keep my comments relatively short because the technical aspect, you know, folks will have to help me out, but I really appreciate the time just to talk about this issue. So this is related to sightline visibility in front of 101 Armor Road. This is currently a Hawaiian bros. There are currently six on-street parking stalls in front of 101 Armor. There is also a shared parking lot that is between 101 Armor Road and 119 Armor Road. That's between the Hawaiian Bros and Tropical Smoothie Cafe. This parking lot is used as a curbside pickup location, but also is shared among several businesses on that block. I received comments from those who frequent this lot and difficulty exiting due to the parked cars in front of 101 Armor. So, again, those six diagonal parking spaces. So, as you can see from some of these examples, usually, you know, these spaces are pretty well frequented during the day, and these are often taken in the evenings just for reference. So you can see the diagonal of Armor Road actually does lend to some challenges, and I think there's a lot of vehicles that hide behind this wall of parked cars. So again, in my experience, it's been most of the day and then hot spots during the evening when there's a lot of parked vehicles here. This seemed like a prime candidate as we were talking about sight lines here in town. I just wanted to open it up for some discussion and just to see what's potentially on the table. I also do want to note just really quickly, too. You can see that there's often a truck in this last space, but even with a regular-sized vehicle. So this was right before the meeting started, this very last photo on the right. And even with a standard car, this is pretty well blocked. There's a lot of traffic coming down Burlington and turning right to head eastbound on Armor. And I can personally attest that vehicles really have to creep up pretty far into the sidewalk to get a good look. So I just wanted to open it up to members of council if they have any questions or thoughts on this, and then just to kind of get some guidance on where to go from here.

All right. Sounds like Councilmember Cain is enjoying his dole whip quite a bit coming in and out of that parking lot. I will say I honestly avoid this lot because of that exact reason. I'll be the truck parking in that diagonal spot, blocking your view coming out. It's a tricky spot, partially because traffic coming off of Burlington hit the slip lane and barely slowed down to enter Armor Road. So it's a spot that's fairly dangerous. I don't know, given the diagonal that you mentioned, how much just removing that first space or even two of them would do to open that sight line. Is there any thoughts from, like, is there crash data at this spot, or is there a thought from our professional traffic engineer on what we could look at?

He has to do first.

Yes, crash data. We do have that. Thank you to Officer McDonald, who found a new tool today that we didn't know we were able to get to. But basically, we can geofence our crash data with MoDOT and put any location in there you want.

So one-year crash data for roughly the intersections of Buchanan to Clay on Armor.

There's been one crash in the last 365 days at Buchanan. Five-year crash data, there's been four crashes total, one roughly plotted at that intersection of where you would come out from the restaurant there. I think the five-year jumps up to like 14, so I don't know if there was something else going on in that three- to five-year run that caused more traffic on Armor Road, maybe a bridge closure. Who knows? We happen to have those every now and again around here.

What was that time frame?

That would have been the five-year, so pushing back 2021. That's when we had 18th Street closed. yeah we were diverting traffic onto clay and anyways go ahead so and then just you know my personal traffic engineer opinion if you've been around here long enough you know we got sideline problems everywhere in this city and we also have a lot of economic activity going in in and around that area where those parking places are going to be prime i was invited to speak at a lunch at paul and jack's a couple weeks ago i parked in one of those spaces because i couldn't find anything closer so that's just my opinion yeah

And something we're always hearing is parking shortage. So we have to be cognizant as we start to pull spaces off the road, what are we sacrificing for a marginally better view of the road? But it's a fair question to ask. Any recommendations at this point, Anthony?

As Chief Freeman said, you know, it is an urban area that does have a lot of site constraints. I mean, just like we talked about with SWIFT. It is something I'd kind of bring up in all of our Citizens Academies, our version for public works, you know, just The way this is calculated is going back to that design reference manual, looking at the speed limit, looking at how far you can see. Is the main street stop controlled? Of course, in this instance, not. It would be really hard. This is a driveway, not an intersection with another minor street. So it would be hard to kind of implement any kind of traffic control there. But, yeah, I mean, it's kind of a balance between parking and, And sidelines, the angle, like Council Member Cain said, the angle of armor does make it a lot more difficult, too. It's not a perpendicular intersection.

Council Member Saber.

Our question is, how many parking spots would we lose if we went from angle parking to parallel parking?

Without kind of playing around with the geometry, I would say probably three. It would be really hard. You have to still kind of keep that sideline You have to keep them back from the corner, probably like 15 feet, 10 feet. So you'd probably only fit about two cars in there after playing around with that.

But having parallel parking would increase the sideline visibility. It could. Rather than the angle parking, which is hard to get in and out of no matter where you are.

It could. I just want to hedge that just because the angle of armor, it kind of changes the calculation. I'd have to look at it closer.

And also Swift is parallel parking. The previous item is cars that are parallel parked blocking sidelines. So sidelines are tricky everywhere. Yeah. Do you have more?

I would just also add that parallel parking there. You're asking a car to stop on Armor Road with what Mayor Smith already talked about, the people coming off the slip lane on Burlington at relatively higher speeds. Yep. I think you're potentially causing another problem there.

You're inviting a crash when somebody hits the brakes. So it sounds like, thank you for bringing this forward, but Council Member Wells has something to say.

Yeah, so since it's difficult prospect to remove parking spaces in that area, can we look, is there a way to look at slowing traffic coming off of Burlington? We heard, pardon me, we heard Council Member Kane earlier talk about curb design as being a significant way to reduce traffic incidents. And I'm just wondering if something could be done on that way from Burlington to Buchanan and Clay.

The slip lane piece?

We can do a lot with our roads. The one thing I'd want to look into in that is it is MODOT right there. They have what they call the functional area of their intersections. If you slow them down too much coming off, you could cause backups at 45 miles an hour, which are causing other kind of crashes. So you want to make sure you don't cause a domino effect. Again, something we could look into.

I think the Burlington Corridor overlay had that squared off in a turn lane. It did. So instead of a slip lane, it would still have to slow down a bit more. Right. Council Member Alvarez.

Yeah, I was going to say that I think the traffic speed off of Burlington, coming around that corner pretty quickly, the possibility, I think if we did take away maybe just one parking space on the end there, that maybe more people would feel comfortable to use that parking lot that's in between the two buildings. Because I know I don't go in that parking lot because I don't want to inch back out, same thing as you were saying. So maybe just the one parking spot on the end. I mean, it's worth a try to at least try it, see if it improves.

Council Member Kane.

Yes, and thank you, Council Member Alvarez. I think you make a good point there, too, because at least for these particular parking stalls, I'm not 100% sure, like, their daily usage. Is it visitors for, you know, Hawaiian Bros or those associated businesses on the block? But I think for those folks that are visiting for those particular businesses, if it's a better sight line and a safer sight line to use the parking lot, I think it would encourage maybe a little bit more usage of that lot.

So based on the study we have done for parking data analysis, and again, I'm going to advertise for North on 2040, there is a little bit more detail about what we have found out. And I would second what Chief Freeman just said. These are prime spots. they're an 80 to 90% full most of the time. And most of them, from our understanding, are the business visitors. Now they're employees, not the other businesses that would like to walk a few blocks. These are really the customers of these businesses within this block. So I would be very hesitant to lose those spots for these particular business purposes. However, I do think there are mechanisms that we could looking into. One of the recommendations, this is a spoiler alert that we've been talking about through the parking study, is maybe looking into implementing a shorter amount of turnover time per few blocks, depending on the feedback we're gathering and everything like that. What that could do is it could change the actual business activities over there. like redirecting, say, if their customers, they want to sit down there and dining in, that will be more than 15 minutes, then they're not going to use these spots. They're going to use other spots. And then these will be turning into more for pickup and quick orders online, and then they just swim by and then leave. When you have more activities, again, this is not something I'm setting stone. It's just an idea, rough idea thrown out there. If you have more turnovers with more people backing in and coming in and backing out, maybe that can naturally change or cause a chain reaction to the slip line that needing and causing a necessity to slowing down. Because you just see more people coming in and out. You naturally, when people come in, I don't know, this is my personal experience. I would always slow down when I see people are about to back out. So maybe that's something we could look into. Again, I feel like this is something we need a little bit more study and data to kind of support us in understanding what are the churn reactions, what is the butterfly effect that it's causing. I know it's just for a lot of people, they're looking at one or two or three spots, but these are like 90% used, the prime spots. So for that purpose, I'll just throw that out there.

Okay, so it sounds like a challenging spot, probably not going to make a change now. Is that where we're at? Thank you for bringing it forward, though. Appreciate you advocating. All right, moving to item 18.

Discussion of proposed streetscape project for 18th Avenue, Mayor Smith.

All right, so as Chandler from Cinderblock came and spoke about 18th Avenue, it is a bit of a hostile area to be a pedestrian. It's also stormwater does sit up on the curb. It will pool up. There's not adequate drainage. I think this is something that is more than a pretty picture. It's more than just creating a spot that looks nice in a picture. It's real hardscape problems. And so I think we should take a look at what the design could be. Now, there's multiple versions of this. Some where we spend a lot of money and put the power lines and the poles out of sight and drop those all subterranean. I think we need to look at cost and benefit analysis of each of those ad alternates. But if we could get some design moving on this, I think, as Chandler put it, this is a growing, attractive area for people to come visit North Kansas City. We've got businesses there. We've got more businesses coming in. McLean, Cinderblock, Commons, Chicken and Pickle, F325, Canelo, there's a lot going on. And I'm not sure, did the images get dropped in

Did you want those images?

No. I had Kim take some pictures and then throw some AI mock-ups together. If you're thinking through this, you're standing between McLean's and El Canelo, cinnamon roll in one hand and a burrito in the other, and you're looking down 18th, it's tight. The sidewalk is tight. The poles are pretty aggressively placed in the sidewalk, especially on the north side. So I would love to see some sort of design done for this. And I know it's being asked for by the businesses there as well. Thoughts on that? Yes, sir.

I guess my concerns are that it's a narrow street. And if you extended the sidewalks further out, you'd really have some narrow passageways. And you could maybe increase some of that passageway by eliminating parking. But then we go back to the issue of the people complaining about eliminating the parking. Certainly, dealing with the rainwater flooding and things like that, that we should definitely do. But beyond that, we've got some physical constraints there that make any kind of change very difficult.

And that would be borne out by the design. We don't know the width. We can say, yeah, it feels narrow, but we don't know what the actual width of the street is. I don't, at least. It would also give us a opportunity to point better to our parking lot asset that is right there off of that people still seem to not know much about to get people headed in that direction by design.

And if you could cut off some of the, eliminate the parking on the street, you get some space, but we're going to get some kickback on that.

I think we keep the parking and still are able to do what we're, I mean, we need to look at the design. We got to take some measurements.

I'm skeptical of that happening, but we do need to look at it.

Sure.

Again, we're spending money looking at it, and we have to be careful how we're spending money. Yep.

Council Member Wills.

Yeah, this is probably a question for Anthony, and I'm going to put you on the spot here. But, you know, when Chandler from Cinderblock was speaking, a lot of it was related to getting rid of stormwater.

and when you don't have a slope like that and there isn't stormwater infrastructure already there what are some of the realistic approaches to that it's very challenging uh north kansas city in general is a very challenging spot for stormwater um to your point very much so yeah there's no slope on the street so um you're basically looking at installing a lot more ways for the water to get in over a shorter distance. So as a street that has more slope to it, you might have a curb inlet every so often. You're going to have a lot more, or even maybe trench drains or slot drains or something like that running the entire street if you want to keep the nuisance water, the ponding water. I'm always really cautious the more I've learned about North Kansas City to say, yeah, this is going to fix it because there is a certain level of storm that we will get that even our bigger pipes, that these pipes go to, will not handle. So I don't want to get in everyone's head the expectation, yeah, we can put in all the curb inlets in the world and not have a puddle because there will be a certain storm. And it won't be as, it'll be more frequently than you think just because, again, it's a challenge for the entire city. But Um, more inlets would probably help that. Um, if you did a streetscape project, there's different ways of doing that. If you're talking about a full reconstruction, you can kind of create artificial, uh, high points and low points. Um, but the sidewalk being so close does kind of present a challenge. You'd have to be a really thought out design. Um, so there's options. It's just, I want to hamper the expectations of it being the perfect, you know, solves all the problem kind of thing. Right.

Thank you. Councilmember Bailey.

Have we talked any more about a CID district in this area where we get the input not just from what we think but from the people who are going to be doing business on the street and let them put their skin in the game?

Yep, discussion is in process. CID to include streetscape improvements, parking support, and economic development across the downtown and 18th and Swift areas, but nothing concrete yet. Still surveying interest in forming that.

I think this needs to go hand-in-hand with that group.

100%. Further thoughts on this one? All right, the last point that she made that I think is very relevant is the ice forming when it snows and when that melts and creating a pedestrian hazard along the sidewalks. That's real, and that's a safety risk for our people. And this does, regardless of how cold it is, people still go drink beer. And oftentimes, because it's so cold outside, and beer plus ice is a slippery situation. So something to think about as we plan this out. Go ahead.

So is the direction for us to kind of go with our on-call and bring back some options for council to consider?

Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

I see more thumbs up than thumbs down.

And we'll tandem that with working on a CID to get the big stuff paid for.

And we would need to do some extensive engagement with the businesses. We would be partners with any kind of design that was brought forward.

Perfect. Okay. Any further on that one? Item 19.

Fiscal year 2027, budget update.

All right. Who's got this one? Is that you, Kim?

so I'll kind of kick it off. Just like the memo says, we have not received any more questions from Governing Body members. We did host our Bounce and Balance event. It was very hot, and there was very little bouncing because it was very hot. But we did give kind of, that's our opportunity for residents, businesses, anybody who has kind of any interest in all things fiscal budgets to come out and have their questions made. We didn't really receive any questions at that particular event either. So kind of what we were looking for, are there any additional questions from the governing body? And if not, would you like us to bring forward the documents for adoption?

Council Member Cain.

Thank you. Yes, I just wanted to follow up really quickly because I know the public transportation budget was still kind of earmarked around what we had last year, that $770,000-ish. And I know that's sort of a question mark in a lot of ways, our transportation budget, just knowing that cost increases could be coming down the pipeline. But I was just curious if we'd heard back from KCATA on any – you know, potential increases for fixed route transit?

So we did get some pencil numbers. And I'm reading it off my phone, very sorry. So the initial service costs are about 736,000. And they are estimating that we will get $40,000 in fair revenue and about $300,000 in grant. kind of our out-the-door costs would be $478,738. So around $480,000. for our contract for services this coming year. Again, we will have KCATA come forward. The grant funding is not set in stone, as we have learned just this week, that some of the federal funding is being caught up right now in public processes. So that number right now, I would consider it pencil, but it is within budget. Perfect. Thank you.

Excellent. Further questions on the budget? I did watch the last meeting from the banks of Norway, and it was well presented. Thank you for all that, and fully in favor of this budget. I think staff's done a phenomenal job. So it sounds like we need to bring it back and stamp it.

We'll bring it back to you at your next meeting.

Awesome. Thank you. All right, item 20.

Consideration of an ordinance approving accounts due and payable by the city through August 14, 2026, bill number 8006, ordinance number 9803.

Who wants to pay the bills? First reading. All in favor? Yes. Yes. Any opposed? Motion passes.

An ordinance authorizing payment for certain accounts due and payable by the city through August 14, 2026.

I move that bill number 8006 be placed on second and final reading and passed as ordinance number 9803. Second. Call the roll.

Council Member Cain? Yes. Council Member Alvarez? Yes. Council Member Wells? Yes. Council Member Larson? Yes. Council Member Saper? Yes. Council Member Bailey?

Yes.

Council Member McGrone?

Yes.

An ordinance authorizing payment for certain accounts due and payable by the City through August 14, 2026. Staff comments.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. In your packet, you have several reports, and it is time for the monthly department reports. I'm going to call on Chief Freeman.

All right, Chief, tell us what we need to know. That was rude. That's out of order.

The report in itself just speaks for itself. I'm happy to entertain any questions. I do want to throw a great shout-out to our animal control unit, If you follow them on social media, follow us on social media, you will see that we've had at least now three times this year where the shelter has been completely empty. All animals have been adopted out. Even on the report, I think it's Latte and Butters still listed there. They've been adopted out since this report was printed. So much so that we borrowed animals from Liberty to bring down to National Night Out, and those animals were adopted out.

Whoa.

So... They're doing a great job down there, and I just want to give them their proper due. As far as National Night Out goes, not a competition, but it was hotter than bounce and balance. And I do appreciate the members of the council that did come out and suffer with us out there. It was a well-attended event, given the heat. A lot of fun, I think, had by all. A few hiccups that probably nobody noticed, and again, a great appreciation to our administrative assistant, Samantha Thompson, who does the lion's share of putting that together and executing that. So happy to answer any questions about our report.

Great job, Sam. Any questions? Chief?

All right, I'll go next. So in our report, one of the things I want to highlight is that July 26th compared to July 25th, there was a 25% increase Increase in the number of medical calls, we can account that to heat-related, mainly heat-related calls. I look back on the year of 25 in July, and it was fairly cool in July of 25. And as you know, July of 26 has been very warm.

So that would account for those.

The other thing I want to highlight is the graduation of two new paramedics. Patrick Bradley and Eric Chambers. I want to congratulate them on completing their paramedic school and getting their licenses. Any questions? We have a recent retirement. Oh, and the recent retirement of Joe Bays after 32 years. So Battalion Chief Joe Bays. I want to, you know, yeah, I can't speak enough about him. He's a great friend and has been a great Great employee for us for a long time.

Love that guy. He's an excellent firefighter, great guy, and an above-average golfer. All right. Shoe?

I'm going to let Anthony go first.

Wanted me to go first. So our monthly snapshot is in the report, 17 active permits, 130 locates this month. Kind of highlighted some of the bigger projects. We have a lot of bigger projects coming up this fiscal year for 27, Burlington, Watermain, and replacement design of 19th Avenue and Bedford Pumping Station. Those are two very, very, three very, very big projects. So if there's any questions on the report, happy to answer it.

No questions, your honor.

All right, we're saving the best for last. I have a long update. So I would like to reiterate everything that all the department has mentioned. And I thank you all for your time and interest in a lot of community-based projects that we're dealing with. We did have a kickoff for a heat smart project. That is our heat island study. And by far, this is a new experience I learned. The best public engagement time for this project is when the heat index is 110 degree outside. We get a very fair and very loud voices about concerns about heat. So thank you all who have attended our pop-up events. And if you see our branding logo, have any questions, please let me know. Then the second opportunity I want to bring it up is I promised a friend update about North Town 2040. That is our master plan. I only have seven slides, so bear with me. I would like to let everybody know where we are at now during the entire planning process. We essentially, Mayor has already heard about this. We essentially have four different stages for our particular plan update. We have a discovery stage. That's where we're gathering all the data from different resources. And then we have the engagement component. That's where UC staff do the pop-up events. We do the visioning workshops. And we do charrette events. And we also have a planning stage. That's where we do our designs and plan development. And essentially, we're going to get into the implementation part, which all you will hear the conclusion and the draft plan. And you'll provide comments. And essentially, we're hoping to adopt the plan. And I'd like to summarize what we have done till today. We have about 60 people signed up to be part of our steering committee. And I thank you all who signed up and being part of our steering committee, because that is a commitment. We follow you up in every way we could. We send out a lot of emails to you, ask you to do a lot of homework. So I just want to thank you for your time at this moment. And then we also have collected over 120 responses through our community survey. These are not the easiest to survey. Each of them takes about an average 20 minutes. I've tried it, maybe because I'm a slow reader, but I wanted to thank everybody who have taken the survey. And then the second one I want to talk about are the events that we have hosted. We have went to six pop-up events and gathered a lot of feedback and comments through the entire planning session. And we also hosted two visioning workshops. One of the visioning workshop was hosted at the Y. And we had about 30 steering committee members sat through the entire session. And the other visioning workshop, I want to thank the council and the planning commission. That was a joint visioning workshop that you all participated. And then we also have developed four different discussion starters and I'll talk a little bit more about what these are and everybody is welcome to visit the website for the discussion starters. And we have done about five different market analysis. These cover everything from demographic in the North Kansas City region and compared to Kansas City region and including the nation as well, all the way to real estate for both residential and commercial properties. And then we have done one parking study. And this is the spoiler alert I mentioned earlier. There are a lot of good information in the parking study that will be presented at the charrette event. And essentially, I want to talk a little bit more about the planning and design charrette that has been scheduled here in early September. So what is happening now? I mentioned earlier about the community discussion starters. There are essentially four different topics over here. One is about walkability. One is about stormwater. So stormwater is also very correlated with our parks and recreation infrastructures and as well as our water. all the other utilities. And then we also have the third discussion starter that is for adaptive reuse and redevelopment. This is a focus on future land use in our city. What type of uses are we talking about? Where are they going to be located at? And the last part, but not the least, is the parking management. We have heard a lot of site line issues that are related to parking. Is this a good idea to eliminate a certain type of parking or changing the particular driver's habit or behavior? So these are good components. And I want to talk about the discussion starters. Please visit these websites. You can find all the discussion starters at NorthTown2040.com. And when you're clicking to each of these discussion starters, you'll have a landing page. It has the background information, including the data analysis. And it will ask you questions and help you to be engaged and then consider, oh, how do I want to impact and reform North Kansas City? So here are some detailed analysis that we have already seen. Again, these will be presented at the charade event. As far as today, we have divided the downtown area into seven different parking zones. And these are particular data showing us, at a peak time, what are the capacity for each zone. And there are a lot more details. If you're interested, please reach out to me as well. Also, we have looked into our lifestyle clusters. There are a lot of funding names out there. I'm sure Council Member Wells already started joining into that. And what does that mean? and how we accommodate our housing inventories to these particular lifestyle clusters. So those are information you will find at the planning and design charrette. So this is a two-day event. And they're particularly designed for the steering committee. And I just want to expand this to everybody. If you haven't signed up for a steering committee, it's OK. You can still come. We're not going to kick you out. The first session is going to be on Wednesday, September the 2nd. I don't know. Why didn't we put Wednesday there? On September 2nd from 9 a.m. to noon. And this one will include a particular long, lengthy presentation about everything we have found out. And then the second session will be September the 3rd. That's a Thursday. It is in the later afternoon. It goes from 4 to 5.30. We ask all the steering committee members to join both sessions. And if you could not make it to the steering committee session, that's okay. Anybody, and I strongly encourage all council members and the planning commissioners to come to the open house. which is followed by the planning a charrette event. It is starting at 530 on Thursday, September the 3rd. So please come. All of the charrette events are at the North Kansas City Parks and Recreation Center. There will be snacks and will be surprises. That's it. Any questions?

Thank you. And to clarify the first two sessions are for the steering committee, not for the city council.

Correct.

Okay. So stay away, uh, show up at five 30 on the third. And, uh, we will have an open house. We'll learn about what everyone has brought to the table. And if you're one of the first hundred in the door, you might get a sandwich or a wrap. And if you're watching this, you deserve one. So come on out and join us.

So there's also a finance report if you have any questions. And then just real quick, the school district will be hosting their convocation at the North Kansas City High School this Friday. So you'll see lots of activity down and around that area. And school starts on Tuesday. So please remember that we will have a lot of teenage drivers in town.

Any other staff reports? Crystal, you got something for us? All right. Councilmember Cahn, starting with Councilmember Cain.

Thank you so much. So first I want to thank the folks that came out for public comment tonight, a lot of folks. So Phil, George, Jim, Bess and Brandy from SEAC, and then Chandler as well. I also know that there's been a lot of activity with the ad hoc committees in the last couple weeks or so, so I want to thank Those folks were putting on events in KCBPAC. So Jordan, Bart, and Kyler for organizing a bike audit of North Kansas City. So that was a fun time. Got some turnout from folks even in KC Metro that we hadn't seen before at previous events. So it had a lot of good engagement. The NKC New Neighbors Group for putting together a happy hour at Rewind that was well attended and got to meet some new neighbors there. So I appreciated that. So thanks to Amanda, Riley, and Jack. And then the ribbon cutting for the compost bins. Those are going to be a big hit. And I know, I believe this might be, you know, two week old data, but I want to say the compost bin just at the YMCA lot was already like 25% full. very early on so I think those are gonna be a real hit especially for renter communities south of armor so it's gonna be tremendous so as Kim mentioned school starts here very soon so next Tuesday so for those students and families preparing have a great school year there's a lot of energy with school returning and And there's a lot of energy with our ad hoc committees. So that's just a call out to say that if there are folks that are interested in our community that want to get involved, I think folks would be more than willing to work with those folks and kind of get a youth perspective on what goes on in our city. So you look at, there's a lot of really interesting data around like Gen Z political involvement. A lot of folks, I want to say 66% talk about politics with their friends, 56% sign physical and digital petitions, 75% help their neighbors or their friends when they're in a time of need. So I look at a lot of that, and I think that there's a lot of opportunities and channels for young people to get involved in even these meetings. You know, we keep things simple, but there's a lot of drama. There's a lot of intrigue. So, you know, there's a lot to see, and I just want to make that a general call to action that folks that are interested in what we do, you know, we're more than welcome to hear those voices and to create some opportunities for folks to be involved.

summer alvarez

Yes, I don't have a lot. I just want to say thank you again to the people that did come out this evening. Also, I will say to Bess Bailey and Brandy, she always does a good job of being very clear and presenting the information in the upcoming events. So I appreciate that. Actually, I did attend the Bounce and Budget and also the Friday Night Out at Mackin Park. And I can say it was a close tie as to which one was hotter. It was very hot both days, but at least the Friday night out, they did give us, we had little bandages, things, or bandanas, rather, to put around our necks. So that did help, but they were both very, very hot. But both were fun, and both had a good presentation. So that's all.

Thank you.

Council Member Wells.

Yeah, thank you. So library board met last night. The library's doing well, so that's what I will say for my liaison duties there. I want to mention the North Kansas City Historical Society. We had a, on the same date as the Bounce and Balance event at Mackin Park, we had our first volunteer event where we asked people in the community to come in and sort of help us sort out our collections and sort of make some sense of things, the stuff that we have down in the basement of the public library there. And it was really great. There was a lot of great age diversity in the room, and people, you know, younger people were learning from the long-time residents and things like that. There was just a lot of really good positive energy. I thank Councilmember Kane and George for coming, and we look forward to putting together more events like that, so stay tuned for those. We have another event on Saturday, August 29th at 10 a.m. at the North Kansas City Public Library. I'm going to do a presentation on researching the history of your house or really any building you're kind of interested in. That's sort of what I do in my line of work. You know, happy to share those skills. So if you have that Saturday morning off, come down and see us and we'll get you all prepared to research the history of your house. I do want to shout out just, you know, Chief Freeman and the police department. I took Chief Freeman up on his offer recently of going on a ride along with the police. And a couple Friday nights ago, Sergeant Josephson, or as MJ as he asked me to call him, was good enough to take me around the city, give me kind of the North Town after dark experience. And I learned just a ton about what goes on sort of when I'm, you know, nodding off on my couch usually, what happens out on the streets of North Kansas City. And so it was a great learning experience. Sergeant Josephson really did an excellent job of representing the department, just showed a lot of care for the community, great level of vigilance. You know, I wrote Chief Freeman a note about this, but, you know, at one point, we stopped because he noticed a small trickle of water coming out of someone's yard. And it's just something I wouldn't have even thought about, you know, like I would have just driven right past it, but we stopped and pulled over and we checked on it. He wanted to make sure that somebody didn't have like a busted pipe or something like that ended up, they were empty in a swimming pool. So not, you know, no, no emergencies there. But the fact was is that we, We had somebody out on the streets that was, you know, cared enough to stop and double check. So that really made an impression on me. I also just want to say I didn't know that dispatch was going to become kind of a hot button issue tonight, but I had down on my list of things to mention. I really got an education on the importance of dispatchers and the work that they do for our emergency responders. So constantly throughout the night while Sergeant Joseph Josephson and I were talking, I was hearing just that constant stream of information come in. He really stressed the importance of having good quality dispatchers for the work that they do. And so I just hope I just want to be a voice to say that, you know, everything that the city can do to sort of hire and develop and keep good dispatchers. I think that's an important thing for us to do. And yeah, that so again, thank you, Chief Freeman for that. And that's all for me.

Council Member Larson.

I also want to thank everybody who came out and spoke tonight. I hope that we're not an intimidating bunch and that if you have something you want to say to us, please attend a city council meeting. I would also like to shout out Public Works. You guys were out, and you fixed a couple pieces of sidewalk on my street that I've embarrassingly tripped on multiple times in front of my neighbors. So it's been really nice to have smooth sidewalks. From the Parks Department, a week from Friday, we're going to have our final movie at Mackin Park. On August 28, it will be Goat. The movie will begin at 7.30 on the parking lot area. Snow and roast will be on site, so you can get shaved ice, drinks, popcorn. Don't forget to bring your lawn chairs and blankets. We are transitioning from our summer activities to more of our fall activities. So more to come. I'll be announcing more events as the months go by. And just to echo what Bess said when she came up and spoke about SEAC, we do still have three positions available on that board. If you're interested, please reach out. It's a great way to get involved with the city. And that's all I've got for now.

What time was that movie in the park again?

730.

Perfect. Council Member Saper.

This council meeting was a great example of the kinds of issues that individuals living here can have a direct impact on. All the things that make day-to-day life not only possible and safe, but productive and satisfying. We can be overwhelmed with the lack of any kind of impact on the international scene, on the national scene, or even the county and state scene. But at the city level, you can come, you can have an impact, and get things done, and bring issues that make everyday life better. So keep getting involved when you are, and if you aren't, get involved. It'll benefit you. Council Member Bailey.

The joy of being late is everybody already sizzled the thing, so I'll be quiet.

Council Member McGrone.

I am going to echo Council Member Bailey's sentiments, but I will say one thing. And that is, I think that the SEAC Committee's Community by Design Workshop sounds like an excellent opportunity. And I look forward to attending. I think any way that we can help our community help each other is an awesome idea. So everybody, please look into that and attend. I think it was September 26th. 26th, if I'm not mistaken. 26th, and I think it was from 8 a.m. to noon. 8. 8. 8. 30 a.m. to noon. Oh, that's even better. Yeah. But, yeah, I think that, and if you are interested in participating in events like this, please reach out to us. We do need more people on the SEAC committee.

All right. That brings it around to me. I am fresh back from a lengthy family vacation that was much needed. I want to give a hat tip to the Mayor Pro Tem for hosting an excellent meeting last time. staff and the rest of the council were keeping things running. I did get a note from the city administrator like three days after I left to say, just so you know, fire alarms are going off at City Hall. We've evacuated. Everyone's safe. We'll let you know if it's still standing here in a few hours. Spoilers, it is still standing. To the people who have expressed a lot of concern over the closure of Save-A-Lot, our only actual standing grocery store in town, we are working on solutions. We're starting to talk to different parties about what we can do there, and we do have the grocery store to look forward to that is anticipated to open next year. I want to give a huge shout out National Night Out. I know that's a labor of love. It's hot every single time. The dunking booth would have been great this time around, I'm sure. Hated to miss it. I want to also say thanks to Councilmember Wells since I wasn't here last time. Contract for service with the Rotary Club and Oktoberfest and Northtown Days. Very excited for October for that. A bit of a frustrating bit of news is our application. So after we talked about the camping ordinance, we were fast-tracking that to get in line and get our application in for the HUD grant for the balance of state continuum of care. We scored well enough to get in the pool. And then HUD got some process lawsuit in Maine, I believe, that holds things up, and now they have frozen that for the foreseeable future. So we will continue to pursue other funding opportunities and partnerships, so not to be dissuaded from doing good work. And then finally, if you're watching things happening around our region, there was a committee meeting with the Kansas City Royals downtown today. I'd encourage you to watch it back. A lot of fireworks going on. Better them than us. And a judge in Cole County heard the Denny Hoskins case on blocking a ballot petition. Should rule tomorrow, according to the latest news coming out. So something to keep an eye on. That's all for me. Let's move on to... Item 24.

Consideration of a request to hold in recess into an executive session as requested by the city administrator to be held on this date pursuant to Missouri revised statute section 610.021 legal matter, 610.0212 real estate matter, and 610.0211 potential litigation matter. Legal matter, real estate matter, potential litigation matter.

Do we have a motion? So move. Second. Call the roll.

Yes. Council Member Alvarez? Yes. Council Member Wells? Yes. Council Member Larson? Yes. Council Member Click? Oh, she's not here. Council Member Saper? Yes. Council Member Bailey? Yes. Council Member McGowan? Yes.

At this time, the live stream in Channel 2 will cut off. There will be no further votes for business this evening. Thank you for tuning in.