Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

All right, it is 6 o'clock. We're going to go ahead and call this meeting of the City Council to order. Roll call, please.

Council Member McGrone. Here. Council Member Kane. Here. Council Member Alvarez. Here. Council Member Wells.

Here.

Council Member Larson. Here. Council Member Click. Here. Council Member Saper.

Here.

Council Member Bailey.

All right. Next item is the Pledge of Allegiance led by Council Member McGrone. Item four, approval of the agenda. Do we have a motion?

Move to approve. Second.

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

Good evening. Hello. Hi. My name is Bart Gurman. I live on Gentry Street here. And I'll be quick. I just wanted to voice my support for not renewing the recent homeless ordinance. Just wanted to say I don't know why we need laws that make life harder for people that already have it hard enough. And why are we spending money to arrest and detain people when the same money could be used to help them? I honestly think even doing nothing is better than actively making things worse by criminalizing them being here. So if they're breaking other laws or harassing, stealing, whatever, deal with it like anybody else. But we don't need to make this situation worse, in my opinion. Thank you. Thank you.

Further public comments? Good evening.

Hi. Can you hear me? Okay. My name is Kyler Wooldridge, and me and my wife, Amanda, live on 24th Avenue here in North Kansas City. And I would just kind of like to add on to what Bart talked about in his comment. You know, I know that, you know, the homelessness problem is a problem that we face not just here but all over the country. It's a huge multifaceted problem. It doesn't just have one cause from, drug addiction to PTSD to mental illness to, you know, the list goes on, right? And I know that many municipalities like North Kansas City, they want to try to get a handle on it in whatever way they can. And I would just ask, as you all consider, I know many of you on the council, and I know that those of you that I know are decent people. And I'm sure the rest of you are, too. I just don't know you yet.

So, you know.

But as far as, like, me and my family go, you know, we would just ask that as you consider these ordinances, you think about the fact that our homeless people are kind of the least of us, right? You know, they have the least access to many of the things that we take for granted, and they often suffer in ways that most of us could not imagine. And so as we consider whatever, as a city, we're going to do to address that problem, I would just ask that you don't try to take a one-size-fit-all solution to these problems when they have many causes. And as Bart said, you know, sometimes trying to address them in a head-on way can actually create more problems than they can solve. And so, as you debate that, I would just ask that you think about these people as individuals that have individual issues and not just think about laws and punishments and ordinances, but also as a city what we can do to maybe help some of these people. Because the fact is that if they're driven out of our city, they're just going to set up camp right over the border or somewhere else, or they'll stay and they'll just defy it because they don't really have a lot of other options.

So those are my thoughts, and thank you for your time. Thank you. Further public comments?

Good evening. Good evening. Rich Gross, North Kansas City Business Council. And the last time I was here, I spoke about the number of businesses that are corporate headquarters. And this time I'd like to talk about manufacturing.

Can you bring up the, I think I have a presentation in here somewhere.

There you go. Go ahead to the second slide. Oh, I have it. So I wanted to say that manufacturing has always been an important part of the North Kansas City economic picture. from the earliest days in the 1910s and 20s, and it still is. It seems that North Kent City is now more well-known for all of its appealing food, beverage, hospitality, entertainment venues, like Chappell's, Chicken and Pickle, Cinderblocks, Greenland Armor Theater, Jefferson's, Paul and Jack's, Harris, for example. But the manufacturing segment continues to be contribute more to the economic vitality of North Kansas City than any other segment except healthcare, with their number of employees who frequent the other businesses, the taxes and fees they pay, and the business visitors they attract to North Kansas City. This slide shows some of the manufacturing that happened in the early days. 10s, 20s, 1930s, 40s, 50s, steel, oxygen, paint, metal cans, cornstarch, and some others. And then I wanted to acquaint you with what we have now. So manufacturing hasn't gone away. It's increased, if anything. Now we have a gigantic plant that does steel tubes and pipes. We still have two or three major paint and coatings companies an ingredient with cornstarch, books, commercial printing, trade show exhibits, even mushrooms for restaurants. You might call that a manufacturing business. They market to restaurants the gourmet mushrooms. Greenhouses, RFID tags, all kinds of things that you might not even imagine. And so here's some of the names, some of the, manufacturing companies, there's about 20 that I have identified, and many of them are familiar to you, and some of them aren't. So, hopefully, you will find ways to become acquainted with them, and we're going to give you an opportunity at our luncheon this month on the 23rd of July at North Kansas City Parks and Rec. We're going to have about a half a dozen of these manufacturing businesses kind of tell about what's behind those walls that you drive by and you have no clue what they do there. And so an opportunity to learn about that. So hopefully you'll be able to register and attend that. And then while I'm at it, just to let you know, there's a second Friday coffee at that same place at the North Kent City Parks and Rec Center on July 10th. That's this Friday. So hopefully you can attend to that. So just wanted to do a little bragging about the manufacturing sector. Thank you.

Thank you. Further public comments? Seeing none, I'm going to move on to the consent agenda. Do we have a motion on the consent agenda?

Move to approve. Second.

All in favor? Yes. Any opposed? Motion passes. All right. Regular agenda, item nine.

Discussion of ordinance 9785, camping and sleeping in public property.

Okay, so I want to go ahead and lay the groundwork for this one. The goal for this item is to discuss what aspects of the ordinance that we have passed for a temporary basis through the July 21st deadline that we want to keep in perpetuity, if any. So let's work our way through that. I want this to be a respectful discussion. I know this is a topic that can have a lot of emotion, a lot of Big feelings on all sides of the issue. So I want to make sure everyone stays respectful. I also want you to please wait until you've been called on. I know there's a tendency to jump in when you're getting really charged up if you hear something you do or don't like. Please wait until you're recognized. So raising hands. I'll try to not have dais bias. I won't just call on this side. I'll call on this side as well. But just please wait until you're recognized. I'm going to ask Chief Freeman to speak on how things have gone since we put the ordinance in place and what they've seen operationally. And then we also have Josh Hinges here from Kansas City, Missouri, I believe. Josh, I believe your official position is Homeless Prevention Coordinator for KCMO. Close enough, close enough. All right, you can tell us your real title when you come up and speak. So we'll go ahead and kick it over to Chief Freeman.

Sorry about that, I wasn't prepared to bat lead off. Since enacting the ordinance, numbers-wise, we've had 24 calls for service, either self-initiated or actual calls into dispatch to address one element or another of the current ordinance, as it says, camping and or sleeping. When the ordinance was enacted, we entered new dispatch codes to specify this type of activity so we knew what we were going on so we could more accurately report it back to you. One of the heavier encampments that we found was what we thought was on city property out by Harris Casino. What we've learned through the investigation is that's actually private property owned by that entity. I've been working with them and the people out there to try to get them into services if they choose at this point. To my knowledge, only one has taken up the opportunity to take services, and the rest have refused that and, for the most part, abandoned those camps. Now, whether or not, to the commenter's point, they've moved just to another side of the city limits, I don't know. Then we also had the levee, which was a heavily entrenched encampment there for a while. I think they counted at least seven or eight different encampments on the levee. And as has been reported to this body before by the levee district, there's been damage to the levee done by who they believe to be the homeless people. And to be clear, I know one of the commenters said this is a homeless ordinance. This is a camping and sleeping ordinance. This is to prevent the establishment of camps in any nature of any kind on city property, city right of way. So that's by the numbers, what we've seen so far. Some of these are, I have a slide deck with some photos in it if you want to see them. We can roll through them relatively quickly. This is one of the camps that we came across. Go ahead. Camp two, abandoned. Again, camp two again. I'll slow down, we can go back. These are things all found out near Two-Tenna Railroad, Two-Tenna and Showtoe, Two-Tenna Walker area in the woods out there. I want to stop on that one just to show some of the dangers that we're coming across in some of these camps and some of the fashioned weapons, some of the real weapons. Come across one individual myself that the individual had just stolen and we came across him. He had an airsoft gun in his possession. Didn't look anything different than a real gun and if he had pulled that gun out it would have been a bad day for everybody. We've had two felony arrests related to the camps just this month. One that was frequently in a business that was being trespassed from the business and ran back to their camp and had a felony arrest outside of outside of North Kansas City. That's under the bridge. Right there. You can see there. And again, Harris has reported damage to the bridge from from encampments and that's the location. It's kind of hard to see on the GIS. But as you can see 210 running out right there, Old Birmingham Road is where we're looking at, which is where several of the active encampments were out there. And also on the levee, we had a couple active and several inactive camps on the levee as well. We're working with the business out to Harris. We're working with Harris to get some of that cleaned up out there too. So there's the two felony arrests that were made. And that's some of the activity that we have seen on the levee. Yeah, the calls for service a little bit more updated, 26 there. Some of those are related specifically to camps. As we know, some of these camps are on private property, but also some of them are just people sleeping on our benches, which are some of the slides moving forward here. There's a gentleman sleeping in that lower left-hand corner right outside of Jefferson's on the bench. Again, we never came at this even a year and a half ago when we first brought this up saying this was an epidemic. This was just in your face a problem. but we're trying to be proactive. We're trying to craft an ordinance that can help us have a tool to allow people to get the help that they need and not be a further burden on society. It's just topical, I guess, or one of our legal trainings this month that we're required to do every month throughout the year is on this issue specifically, and a statistic that was quoted in that that the city of Reno, Nevada estimated that They spent over $1 million on one person over the course of 10 years and other causal factors for services. We talk about the police, the fire. We are the first responders in this crisis, not the citizens. The citizens do want to do right by these people. We all want to do right by these people. Our people are the ones that are in the trenches doing this every day. Every day they're dealing with some aspect of this. And we all want to get help, and we all want to solve the problem, but we have to start somewhere. And I feel the best way to start is getting people into the services, the professionals that know how to deal with this issue, not police officers, not firefighters. I got too passionate.

I know. I appreciate you. Thank you. Does anyone have questions for Chief Freeman on what he talked about just now? Okay, I'm going to go ahead and call up Josh. Josh, if you could come up to the podium, please introduce yourself and tell us what you do. And I spoke with Josh. We had coffee together, and I really didn't know where that conversation was going to lead. But Josh does this 24-7. He's working with homeless folks in Kansas City, Missouri, putting together plans and all of that. So take it away. Tell us what you've seen and what you've found to be useful.

Yeah, I went to North Kansas City High School. I run in North Town every day. I love this community. I don't live here, though, so there is a – I get it. Living here, it feels different. But I feel really connected to North Town. Born and raised in Kansas City. I work for the city of Kansas City. My team and I oversee homeless solutions for the city. That position, houseless prevention coordinator, I think is what they called it, four and a half years I've been in that spot. I came from the homeless service providing world. So I've been in homeless services for about 20 years. Street outreach worker for seven years, homeless shelters, transitional living, helped get Veterans Community Project going. When you come to the city, it's different. I can't think like a service provider. Cities, they're responsible for so much more, and quality of life's a huge part of it, but the quality of life isn't just folks experiencing homelessness, it's an entire community. So one of the first things we had to do was come up with a really responsible encampment strategy. And it's tough because encampments, If there was a pie chart of why citizens call the city, the three biggest pieces of the pie, maybe it's different in North Town, it's going to be crime, trash, and homelessness. Homeless encampments are all three of those. So they are a hot, they're a nexus of communication with the community, for better or for worse. So city council is aware of them. Citizens are aware of them. So it can become a political issue. It can become a public safety, public health issue. So we knew we had to come up with something reasonable with encampments. But that reasonability, it can't be one way. So when we create homeless policy in the city, and look, it's not up to me. Council decides. And whatever council decides, we solve problems in that reality. Every city is entitled to however they want. We problem solve around that. That's fine. What I found is the best approach to creating homeless policy, you have to ask three questions, not just one. And it's tough with homelessness because we're so passionate about it. Regardless of our motivation, the outcome is what matters. The three questions are, how does this ordinance impact homeless folks? How does this ordinance impact homeless folks? How does this ordinance impact the general public? And how does this ordinance impact business? But with homelessness, I see in city after city, we only ask one question. How does this impact homeless folks? And when you alienate two-thirds of that, those folks will find a way to be heard. And when they are heard, it often becomes a much more blunted response than the original starting point. So taking a maximalist position, no encampment bans whatsoever, you're removing a tool, but you're also positioning the city for a much more aggressive approach later. That is inevitable because people do not get more tolerant of encampments over time. They don't. I'm someone who has been in homeless service. My dream is to be a part of a team that gets, we get to see functional zero in Kansas City. That's the term we use for ending homelessness, where homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring. That is my dream. But I recognized very quickly, if cities cannot get a handle on encampments, you will lose the support from the general public to actually solve homelessness. Because it is those folks, the voters are going to decide, are we going to spend money on addressing homelessness? Where can we put homeless infrastructure? They're not going to support it if they don't see the city supporting the quality of life and the respecting of public space. I think this is the dilemma that we've run into. We see this, especially in homeless services, it's a homeless issue. To the general public, it is not. It is a public safety and public health issue. They want that solved. So when they're calling 911, they're not saying, hey, homeless. They're saying, hey, fires, fights, nakedness, substance use. Those are issues they're calling 911 on regardless of the housing status of the person doing them. Homelessness is not what is frustrating the general public. The behavior that they're seeing, that is what's frustrating them. So a camping ordinance is designed around that, not housing status. And it's just a tool. And the other thing to keep in mind, you get to decide what enforcement looks like. It doesn't happen to you. You get to decide. And we play an intimate role in what enforcement looks like in Kansas City. In whatever resource we can be, we want to be. We want to be a part of whatever, however we can help, we are down. Any questions, any thoughts? I'm down. However I can help.

Excellent. So when we talked about sort of your strategies and the way you've encountered this, I said we've funded cold weather sheltering for the last, I think, five or six years in North Kansas City, and each year we take, it's anywhere between, at a high point it was $55,000 all the way, between $30,000 and $55,000 a year. We're putting it toward basically putting people in hotel rooms when it's really cold.

That's expensive.

It's expensive. And then after, they're just back out on the street. What we talked about is if we took that sort of money and allocated it with a partnership with your group, what could that look like?

Yeah, so my team and I create the extreme weather plan for the city of Kansas City to include cold weather. Last year we had 938 cold weather shelter beds. It was our biggest cold weather shelter. And what's great about cold weather, what's great about it, is folks who ordinarily would not connect to services, they'll come inside. So, like, it might be the only chance of the year that you can get someone out of homelessness. It's the best opportunity to get folks out. So the way we do it, and we had to do it this way because we recognize there are There could be community pushback if you have a gigantic campus. So what we did was we went to a bunch of different nonprofits that already serve this population. The community is aware of it. They're cool with it. They've done it for a while. And we say, hey, can we buy space in your operation? 20 beds here, 50 beds here. There's a couple of benefits to that. Obviously, subpopulation. We need a place for women. You don't want to put women where single adult men are. It's not going to work. Senior citizens, folks that need ADA access. And you also want different geography. We would love, I mean, I think we should, absolutely we could explore. What does it look like? Funding availability, we'll work through all that too, but it's not far. It's not far. It's just across the other side of the river. We can work through transportation. One of the best things is our goal is not warehousing folks. It's how can we use winter to get someone out of homelessness. That is our goal.

And you mentioned sort of the opportunity you have, not just with cold weather, anytime you get somebody who is willing to take that that leap into a shelter of some kind, and often folks won't, but cold weather can really be that catalyst, is getting them into a shelter that is then in the hands of professionals who know how to add services and offer specific tailored help to that person's needs. That's what we don't currently have. We're putting them in a hotel room, they shut the door, we don't know after that, and then they walk right out at the end of however long. This could offer a secondary, because what what we've wrestled with is if we enact an ordinance that says you can't camp, then what? That becomes the big question is, okay, you can't be here. And now that's not necessarily our role to tell them where to go. But having something on offer or an opportunity that they could take is important, I think. And it sounds like there's a possibility there if we were able to partner up. Another thing you said when we had coffee was that you can't be serious about ending homelessness if you're continuing to allow or to make it functionally easier to camp, to do these sorts of things. And that kind of stuck with me as well. What other questions do we have for Josh?

One of my first questions is, you mentioned that you had, last winter, you had almost 1,000 beds that you had available, and that the goal is to use the winter housing to help get people out of homelessness. How many people that you served last year do you think you were able to help get out of homelessness because of this program?

I need to look. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but it was our most successful year. I'm happy to email all of it. So one of the things we do, we partner with another nonprofit, it's called Heartland Center for Behavioral Change, and we hire them as navigators. So yeah, we have low barrier shelter options, but we don't want to make it the responsibility of just the shelter because it's so, shelter is so hard. It's so hard. It's exhausting. So to also put on top of that, you need to case manage. It just doesn't happen. So we created a whole housing navigation team, and their job is to go shelter to shelter to shelter, connecting folks. And part of that 938 beds, it's treatment beds too. So let's say you go to an encampment and you say, I'm ready to go to treatment. If you don't have a bed right then, you might lose them for 10 years. But if you've got a low barrier shelter you can take them to and say, hey, you're going to be under a roof. But in 10 days, this bed is going to open up. That bed is reserved for them. That's the number one way we're able to do it. I'll get you the number. I just don't have them off the top of my head.

Just kind of a follow-up and kind of attaching on to what Chief Friedman mentioned. You mentioned that you had had one person accept referral to services. approximately how many people did you refer to services and then only one accepted?

I would just go back to our call volume with the 24, 26 calls for service. Some of those were follow-ups. Some of those were repeat contacts. I would say, again, I don't have that number, but from my understanding, provided the street sheet to everybody that would take it. There were a couple of others that we know were in contact with Turning Point. We just don't know to what degree of success they had connecting.

So if we were to partner with your group, how would the people that Chief Freeman's group encounter get connected with your group and get into a bed? Because if the goal is to get them out of homelessness, how do we bridge that gap between we've chased people out of the woods. They've got to go somewhere. Only one of them last time went to a shelter. I don't know where the other ones went. But I guess it seems to me we need to figure out how do we actually get the people who We want not in a homeless encampment into help that they can then get hopefully out of homelessness. Because right now, this ordinance doesn't bridge that gap. This ordinance just makes it so that we are able to chase people out of the woods. But this doesn't do anything to help them once they are chased out of the woods.

So one of the things we recommend, at any given moment, we're working with about a dozen different cities. And it's almost always about, it's encampment related. One of the things we always recommend, if you're going to do a level of enforcement, if it's not the same ordinance, that's fine. But have a separate ordinance asking the city manager to come back with a plan. Come back with a plan for what does this look like. To me, enforcement and services need to be commensurate. They've got to be commensurate. But there's got to be a strategy attached to it. I was talking with Jen from a turning point on the way here. We love them. They're getting goosebumps thinking about. They're among the most incredible and amazing people I've ever worked with. So bridging that gap, not too hard. I mean, there's some logistics that definitely have to get worked out. But yeah, a camping ordinance, especially this one, it's not designed to be a service to homeless folks. It's a service to people who call 911 about an encampment. Separate from that is what do you do next? And that has to be equally thought through.

Council Member Larson.

Do you have an idea of how much money you're spending per person when they go into your shelters and then if they accept services?

Homeless dad is terrible. Here's how we do it. I'll just say how we create the contracts for low barrier shelter beds. For single adult men, we do $50 a night per bed. And we pay for availability, not if they're full, although they are always full. Because they have to have staff, all the things. For families, it's 80 or more, depending on the size of the family. That's how we do it. I don't have it up top of my head. Per, per, I don't know. I need to look. And then there's going to be, how long are they staying? How many times do they return? You know what I mean? There's a lot to it. I think it's find-outable, but it's not going to be great data. But I can find out. Yeah, that's an important question.

Council Member Wells.

Thank you for being here tonight. So I've been interested in this topic for a little while. And I think any time there's a system that's clearly not working and then people out in the world

find a new approach to something.

I'm always a little intrigued by that and what has worked for them. And I know that there have been other cities, Houston is of course cited very frequently as a municipality that sort of took a different approach to addressing unhoused homeless populations. Is that the approach that Kansas City is now employing? And if so, How are some ways that we can learn more about how that looks in practice?

I love this question. I also love, I'm so deeply fascinated by homelessness, too. Wherever a system fails, people create their own. And I love the ingenuity of that creation. You can see, it impacts the community in a way that often hurts them. So you know what I mean? Enforcement comes eventually, and I don't want that. So when I wrote the strategic plan for Kansas City, Houston was what I was modeling it off of. But the original document is a worldview document. So like if you don't think about homelessness a certain way, whatever you're going to implement probably won't work. So it's a worldview building document. After you do worldview building, like here's how we're going to think about it, then you create the implementation. We're doing the implementation now. It's called Housing Gateway. We actually hired the person who created Houston's plan to come here. Her name is Mandy Chapman Semple. We also hired in Milwaukee. Milwaukee had the greatest reduction in unsheltered homelessness in the country over the last three years. We hired Jim Matthew to come down and help us, too. We're going to do it a couple ways. It's commensurate services with enforcement at the same time. So the way they did it in Houston, they smartly used COVID money, first of all. That was good. Let's move that. Assume money exists. They're going to get people out of homelessness and into housing. Case management is there, too. But they do it zone by zone. So once a zone, you flood it with outreach workers, you flood the zone, you get everyone in that zone housed, and then you shut that zone off to unsheltered homelessness. You're going to know really quickly who is uninterested in services. You're going to find it's very few people. 99 out of 100 folks I'm working with outside, if there's a pathway to permanent housing, they'll take it. They want it. It's when there isn't a pathway to permanent housing, they're like, I'm not interested. Totally understandable. Totally understandable. That's how we want to do it in Kansas City. It's going to be hard. Kansas City's pretty big, like geographically, so the zones are going to be hard. But we've seen it work in Houston. But what worked in Houston is they had to say out loud, the services exist, so we can't allow unsheltered homelessness anymore. But that's how they did it. They did it in that order. Services exist. Let's do this.

Thank you. So at this phase, given what you're building, do the services exist? So that we can say... For the North Town population?

Certainly.

Okay.

Oh, certainly. This is imminently solvable.

Okay. Yeah. All right. I saw other hands. Go ahead.

So I was just going to point out, you mentioned Houston, and one of the things that they did was they didn't clear out a camp until... Housing was identified for the people in the camp. Is that correct?

Yeah, for the most, so like, but not everyone took it. Right. But what they did was they had like a step. Oh, yeah, yeah. They had a step. So, I mean, whether North, it would be tough for North Kansas City to create its own shelter system. I would say it would be close to impossible. it would be so much easier to find partnerships. I'm happy to help with that too. We love that. We would love to work, any municipality that wants to say, hey, let's all work together, we are down. We will help do that for sure. But yeah, having services available is the easiest way to create any kind of enforcement mechanism.

Council Member Alvarez.

Yes. In my experience, I used to work for the police department. I've since retired, so now I'm on this side of it. But in my personal experience, when we came across some of the homeless people, and I actually spoke with them myself, services were offered. Many of them stated that they did not want the services. And so we were wondering why. Why would you not want to go? Several of them had said things like, had too many rules they're not allowed to bring certain things in there's a curfew they didn't like living under certain rules so when you have come across people like that that don't want the services then what's your what do you recommend so it's a couple things it's a really good question there are three ways City of Kansas City deals with encampments our favorite way is what's called clearance and closure with support this is where we

One of the things we had to create very early on, there's a lot of encampments. What I didn't want to do was whoever was yelling the loudest, by whoever I mean city council, whoever's yelling at us the loudest, go deal with their encampment. Forget that. That's going to create so many problems. So we created an encampment scoring system. I named it after the best outreach worker in the world. His name is Nick Allen. It's called the Allen Index. You can actually look it up. It's called the Allen Index. Go to allenindex.com. We created a whole site for it.

You can see how we do it.

So we go to an encampment, we score the encampment. The higher the score, the higher the priority that encampment gets. What we have found is if the score reaches, I think it's 80. We might have moved it back to 75. I think it's 80. If it's 80 and above, there's going to be a death in that encampment within seven days. We are 10 for 10 in predicting deaths in encampments. 10 for 10. So probably a good idea to prioritize those encampments. So we flood that zone. We go there and we bring services for 30 days. 70% to 80% of the people say, I'm in. But either way, that encampment's closing, no matter what. That encampment is closing. We hope you choose this. But the choice isn't every array available of services. It's this or that. And the this could be treatment. It could be shelter. It could be permanent health. That array is there. But ultimately, it's we're having this or we're having this. So creating those guardrails makes that 80% the 80%. They say yes because, look, I don't want to do this again. That guardrail really helps us get that number high. I think when we have more permanent housing options, that number is going to be close to 90.

And I think that's what, from what I understand, we're trying to do already. When we go to the camps, I don't think we're going in just to say, hey, pick your stuff up, leave. We offer that when we go in to them. And when they deny the services, then it's like, okay, but we do still need to close the campsite down because you're not accomplishing anything if you don't.

Yeah. And that's like, so the way we work with, a private property owner has every right to say, I don't want human beings on my property. The housing status of the person is not relevant. So a homeless encampment on a private property is just someone on my property. I don't want them there. What we have found is when we can work with that private property owner, they'll allow us to come in and say, hey, can we talk to the folks that are on there? But they don't have to. We respect that. We will always respect a private property owner saying that. Most encampments are on private property. Anyways, that happens all the time. Not interested, stay in here, and then enforcement happens.

Council Member Cain.

Thank you so much for coming in today to kind of share your experience. Just for a basic definition setting too, because there's obviously in the housing world, there's a lot of definitions and a lot of terms. So could you define like housing first, permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing, a lot of the things that we hear kind of in this policy space and what each of those measures kind of contribute to the equation?

You want to do this? I'm down. We can go the whole history. So Housing First was implemented in 2013. It was created in 2009 under the Hearth Act. Obama, one of the very few bills that was voted unanimously in Congress. It didn't get implemented until 2013. The homeless system for years before Housing First was a progression model. Street, shelter, transitional living, permanent housing. Work your way through each step. In 2013, when the switch happened, Housing First changed that.

So like I said, street, shelter, transitional living, permanent housing.

goes straight to permanent housing. So permanent housing was an ideology to address homelessness with the first step being permanent housing. It was invented by a guy named Dr. Sam Cimberis in Brooklyn, New York. When the federal government implemented Housing First as a strategy, they decided they were not going to fund treatment, transitional living, or shelter anymore. They're just going to fund vouchers. And the vouchers primarily that they funded were two of them, rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing. Rapid rehousing vouchers are vouchers that are paid by the government for two years or less. And at the end of that, the individual is going to take over rent on their own. Permit supportive housing are vouchers that could be paid for indefinitely. Those are reserved generally for folks who are experiencing higher chronicity. They're less likely to be able to pay for housing on their own. Some would Diagnosed schizophrenia. It's a small percentage of the population. But you absolutely need an option for them. They're never going to work. Stop trying to make them work. Let's just do it. It's a very small percentage. Okay. There were consequences to the decision to go to housing first. The consequences were supply and demand. There was always going to be more demand than supply. Also, housing is not a human right. I know we love the slogan. I know we love the shirt. I know we want to believe it is true. We can't go down to an apartment complex and ask for our human right to a bedroom. Doesn't exist. Not in America. But the ideology of Housing First believes it is so. Landlords didn't. Case management was never part of the funding model of Housing First. So when we put people into housing, we were putting people in based on chronicity. Once again, prioritization. Just like we did encampments, we do with homeless folks. The higher the score, the more likely you're going to have a voucher. But the higher the score to us is, yes, it's noble. Let's help them. But that higher score to a landlord is someone they would never rent to. And when there was no case management, landlords really quickly said, I can't do this because it's destroying my investment. And because the federal government stopped funding shelter and stopped funding treatment and just funded vouchers, we had a bunch of vouchers we couldn't use, and everyone was waiting to get into housing outside because we didn't have shelter and we didn't have treatment. So there was good and bad with housing first. The ideology, okay. The implementation was fine. where we're at now. We have record unsheltered homelessness. So yeah, that was a long way to define those things. And homelessness is a big word too. It's a spectrum. 80% of homelessness is transitional. It's single mom with two kids can't pay rent. That's most homelessness. You don't see them. The 20% you do see is overwhelmingly about untreated health conditions. Overwhelmingly. People are not in encampments because they missed rent. Folks are in encampments because they have untreated health conditions. Overwhelmingly. Are there exceptions? Certainly. So when the general public is frustrated about an encampment, it is not the homelessness that they're talking about. It is the behavior manifestations of untreated mental illness and substance use disorder. Overwhelmingly.

Thank you so much. I was also kind of curious, too, because obviously in the literature there's a lot of information about co-response and alternative response and things that sort of more occur at the front end for interaction with the city and law enforcement. Lead programs like REACH in KCMO on Prospect Avenue. So could you talk a little bit about maybe some of those programs and, again, thinking about ways that the city can get ahead in a more strategic plan?

Yeah, it's a good question. So enforcement is what we, we can create enforcement. We decide what enforcement means. Law enforcement has more interactions with unhoused folks than any outreach worker by a mile, times 10. So we did a couple things. We created a HEAT program, which is a homeless outreach embedded Kansas City Police Department, so we do outreach with them. But also, and this was way more valuable, we created a homeless court. We had a homeless court and a care court. Care court is for folks in encampments. They're never going to leave the encampment until we deal with it. So we literally bring printers and we FaceTime with the prosecutors, the whole thing. It's the same number by percentage of folks who need a permanent supportive housing voucher do care court. Most folks, though, do community court. So we have it in a nonprofit, not the court. No one wants to go to court. They think they're getting arrested. At a nonprofit, they're less likely to. Also, we're able to, there's services they can sign up for right then. We knew law enforcement was going to interact with this population a lot. And if there's going to be tickets for loitering, not having your light on at night on a bike or something, all these things. Yes, they're whatever. You can write them up. But it's a huge barrier to getting someone out of homelessness. It's such a pain. We're seriously dealing with this? Homeless court has revolutionized this. Law enforcement has to have a tool, has to. I might hate that they wrote the ticket for the bike, but there might have been a really good reason they did. And there might have been a really good reason loitering was written, because that person that lives right there has called 50 times, and if the police officer doesn't respond to that, that person's going to feel unheard. So we have to have an avenue for that. Police can do their job. They can make the citizens happy, but we have a way to remedy that. And the remedy is, let's get you connected to services, and we're going to clear those warrants. We're working with most jurisdictions in Kansas City. We've still got to build this out a little bit more. We've cleared 1,000 warrants in the last year. It's incredible. It's not free, not money-wise. You've got to get connected to services. That's what the judge wants. That's what the prosecution wants. That's the way we've done it, the co-response. Thank you.

Council Member Wells.

Yeah, so it sounds like your office works quite a bit with law enforcement in Kansas City, Missouri. Oh, yeah. Can you just describe sort of how that relationship is and works and just the tenor of it?

It's mostly good. Kansas City, though, has a police department that is not controlled by counsel of the mayor. But ultimately, police can do whatever they want. So it's literally built only on relationship, handshake. So it's important that we have great relationships with law enforcement. Like I said, it's mostly good. Almost always there's a reasonable response. Where we run into trouble is there's also county and state police that can come in. There's U.S. Marshals that can come in. They have to do their job. It's one of the reasons we wanted the avenue of homeless court, knowing that this was going to happen and knowing that police can respond in ways that maybe we don't like, but it might be necessary to the situation. We have to have a good relationship with PD. There is certainly a tenor in homeless services that don't do it, don't work. It's not possible. They have more interactions with this population than we will ever have. So we train their CIT officers on responding to homelessness. We do that regularly, which is awesome. But we also, doing the outreach with them has been the best. We also always have a point person within the police department that we can go to around encampments. Public safety is always the issue about encampments. But we want to make sure, just give us a call. If you're going to clear something real quick, let us know. So what if there's someone who's got a voucher that's going to come up in three days? Now we don't know where they're at. So they'll call us.

Yeah.

Thank you. Council Member Alvarez.

You had mentioned that in the homeless camps, maybe 20 percent are the ones that we deal with that have mental issues, substance abuse. I think those are the ones that our officers have to deal with. I don't think they really want to deal with them any more than anybody else because they can be dangerous. Is there, other than moving them, what is the alternative?

So it's a couple of things. If there are public safety issues, police have to respond. They just have to, public safety. It's not a statement of judgment. Chronic unsheltered homelessness is beset with untreated mental illness and substitutes stored. Like I said, it's not a statement of judgment. I have no judgment for that. But we have to solve problems in the reality we're in. That is the reality. We can't act like it's just a money issue. It's a couple things. So with this free outreach, it's a term we call progressive engagement. Progressive engagement is you show up and you show up and you show up and you build a relationship. That takes time. And if public safety issues are happening during that time, it can be really tough. It can be really tough. One of the things we've done... We partner with University Health, so every Friday we do psychiatric outreach. We've got a psychiatrist that goes into encampments. I cannot tell you, it's just the most amazing thing when folks are like, did you get your shot? We're talking about the 30-day shot for folks with schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia. Life-changing. In 30 days, 30 days, their sister says they can move back in with them. In 30 days, literally, that is all it takes. And the only way we're able to do that is by building a relationship. And at some point in that relationship, they say, I trust you. I'll take that medicine. What's great is once you do one, they'll tell them, and they'll tell them because they trust each other. It's incredible. Progressive engagement is the only way.

Council Member McGrone.

Okay.

So I think everything that you're saying is absolutely wonderful, and I love the idea of having a good relationship with PDE in North Kansas City and in Kansas City and them using your services or services like yours to help people when they are working with them. My question, I guess my first question is for Chief Freeman. Of the camps that you cleared out in the pictures that you showed, were all of those city property? So I guess the big question is, would you have been able to clear out these camps if the temporary ordinance we passed for World Cup did not exist?

The camp's on the levy. The levy board is in control of those camps. So that is not city property.

So that would be private property. So that would be trespassing.

And Harris is the same mechanism. What we thought, again, what we thought when we went into it, it was city property. We thought city owned all the land out there. Harris leases from the city. That's going to be city property. Turns out Harris has purchased a couple tracts of land out there, and that's where we found these. I will caution that to say, like, There is no protections for the city right now without this ordinance. So if those private entities close those camps down with our assistance, and to the commoner's point, they're going to go somewhere. Could they end up on city property? Could they end up on the front lawn of city hall without no recourse or mechanism? Without this ordinance, they could.

Well, I think I want to, I get that. Anything could happen. If we don't have laws for all sorts of things, they could happen. But we don't need laws for some things because they're unlikely to happen. I'm not, I guess my big concern is, does this give you, does this, you answered my question when you said you cleared out the camps and you didn't need this ordinance. I don't want to just make rules to make rules. I want us to work to try to help the people, but I'm not seeing evidence right now that This is something that is, like, that you would have needed this in order to address things up into, like, ever. Like, have you ever needed anything like this? And what did you do when you didn't have this? Have there been camps for years and you've used other tools that currently exist to address them? Or does this literally give you something else and there's other, there's things that you could go out there and fix if you had this? Fix right now if you had this in place.

I'm not sure what the question was, but you don't have to be proactive. You can be reactive. Certainly, you're right. We're just trying to provide an opportunity to see what has happened in other communities, including Kansas City, and try to be proactive to set the standard here in North Kansas City that we're going to be in front of this. We're not going to be behind it. We're not going to be chasing it. To answer your question, You know, we keep talking about camping, camping and sleeping. I show you several pictures of people using city property to sleep on, okay? That's a piece of property now that another citizen can't use because that's going on. It's a piece of property that someone has to walk by with their children, with their mother, with their father. I had a situation myself out here on this sidewalk. prior to this ordinance being enacted, a gentleman was sleeping on the sidewalk right out here by Dag Park. Asked him to move. I won't say it on the record. He didn't say too many nice things to me. And I had no recourse. I walked away. Let him sleep on the sidewalk.

But wouldn't your recourse have been he's blocking the public right of way on the sidewalk?

But he wasn't really. He wasn't really. People could get by. Mr. Nichols couldn't have got by, but someone could have walked by.

But again, he was blocking the right of way, so there was already something that existed. If he blocks the right-of-way for one, he's blocking the right-of-way for all.

You mentioned when we talked that many other cities, you work with lots of cities, others have no camping ordinances. Kansas City, Missouri has Gladstone, KCK, and others in the region also have those. The ordinance that we've temporarily passed, I sent that over to you. Yeah. It's similar to what Kansas City has. Are you seeing, you also, I think you mentioned something about federal grant funding tied to this. Could you expand on that as well?

Yeah, and this is where there's just no way out of it. So the federal government, it's a point structure. So the federal government, through what's called a continuum of care, it's how federal funding gets distributed. North Kansas City is not competing with just the around here. They're competing nationally. And North Kansas City is going to, if you don't have some kind of camping ordinance, I think it's 13 or 15, you're automatically going to be 15 points behind every other city. There's no way to make that up. It's not possible to make it up. So you will, guaranteed, lose federal funding to address homelessness if you don't create a camping ordinance. There's just no way around it. So there's a risk to that. So you're going to weigh, you have to weigh that risk. It's a really big deal.

Further questions from the council? Council Member Click?

I guess this is sort of less of a question. Just first off to me, the camping and sleeping should be a little bit separate to me. That feels pretty different for someone to be sleeping on a park bench from midnight to 5 a.m. So maybe considering like separating them a little bit first off. And then second, I think it would be worth it. And maybe it's not in the exact ideal time frame. Like this may take time. But I do think it's worth exploring the partnership and exploring having a specific plan what to do with encampments. instead of going into it just telling people to leave after a certain amount of time. I think it's really important to at least present the services. Sorry, I get so out of breath now, it's really annoying. So even if it's not immediately continuing this temporary ordinance that we put in place, I do think it's worth taking the time to talk with partnerships, talk about funding. I mean, with the federal funding, I do think it may be worth the balance. If we need to put in a camping ordinance to get some federal funding, that's definitely worth exploring. So I guess just pointing out, this is a big thing that I think we need to continue talking about. And if that means not continuing this exact ordinance right now, I think that's OK. and that we should take the time to really explore the best options.

And to be clear, we wouldn't be voting or deciding on that tonight.

Yeah, okay. Chief Freeman, you had something? I just want to be clear, like every single time we have been offering services, we are not ever not doing that. We have created a card that the officers read verbatim to make sure that we're being consistent and saying the same things every time. I'd invite any of you to come out and ride with us and go see what the officers are dealing with on a daily basis. You may see it, you may not. It may not be a good night to see it when you come out here, but these pictures are not midnight to 5 a.m.

Which I would be interested in doing that. I think that would be really... beneficial probably for a lot of us and I appreciate you doing that but a lot of what you've talked about is building the relationships and the consistency so I think it would be worth it to build that into the ordinance to make sure that people feel because I have a limited understanding of of the issue, but I know that a lot of people do deny services and sometimes it's because they've become more comfortable not having a home, like that's what they're used to, it's what they're comfortable with, it's how they feel safer in this lifestyle, just because it's been what they're used to. So I think finding a way to build those relationships would be really important.

I want to go back to, so what you've talked about here, you've done a remarkable job of taking siloed services and tying them together, taking that 938 beds, I think was the number you cited, from various different groups that are serving and doing their very best. And now you have a centralized piece that can point people out to all of those. And I think given the fact that you noted, we're North Kansas City, we're 4,500 to 6,000 people, depending on how you count it, four and a half square miles, we're not going to be able to do that ourselves. And I think it would be a fool's errand to try that. And I think it would be really beneficial and important for us to partner up. So I think between now and our next meeting, I would like to meet with you a number of times and and work out what that would look like so that your team is as welcome here as you are in any part of Kansas City to partner with our officers, to partner with our city. And then something you said earlier was drawing a distinction between the ordinance for camping, which is a public health sort of ordinance, and a directive to the city administrator to set up the program, to get the plan in place. And I think we can do those, rather than trying to build an all-encompassing omnibus style of ordinance that would get pretty messy, we can have one and the other, and we'll accomplish that goal. I saw your hand. Council Member Saber.

Yeah, I've talked to a lot of people about this in the last few weeks. and listening to the conversation going on this evening. It's sort of the impression I'm getting at this point is we need a comprehensive kind of plan to deal with it. We can't have just enforcement. We can't have just services there. We have to connect them, as you've been very eloquently pointing out to us. So, at this point, I would like this, We don't want to dump this on our city administrator. That's an unwieldy task for any one person to deal with, and the city staff at this point. I'd like to see a combination of a council task force working with city staff to try to put together something like the comprehensive plan you're trying to put together. I know it's not working perfectly by any means. Oh, yeah. And that's what I would like to see happening at this stage. All right. Dr. McCain.

Thank you. And I hear there's a lot of conversation about what's reactive and what's proactive. And a lot of what I'm hearing from you is about progressive engagement is the proactive side, right? addressing housing and addressing barriers to housing and building that trust first. And that's something I would like to see, you know, as a general rule. It's just like our policies being informed by broader plans, by a broader understanding of our own unhoused population. What are those barriers now? Like starting with the needs assessment of what's going on in our community. Thinking a little bit about what our goals are and like measuring those goals. It sounds like there's a lot of cities that try as a transparency measure to really put out a lot of information about you know, what are we doing for our community, again, to respond to those two-thirds that have concerns, to say this is what our program does. And I think, you know, anything that we do should engage with our own public health care sphere, you know, thinking a little bit about NKC Health. You know, we know, at least to some extent, you know, rates of hospitalization are a common, you know, topic in this area. So thinking a little bit about, like, how is this going to affect their bed space, right? We have those relationships. I think we should, you know, be building on those. Our school district, McKinney-Vento, the requirements that schools have to know the families that are unhoused in their school district and the requirements for getting those folks transportation to school every day. That's important. You know, I think there's so much to weigh, again, thinking in terms of public cost, cost of enforcement versus cost of housing. It seems like there's a lot of studies that are all over the map in terms of estimates. Yes. But again, if we could in some way try to get an understanding of what those costs are or what the range is before we put out a plan. Thinking a little bit about the front end response. Thinking about our code. How does our code make housing harder to build? Starting at the front. Thinking again about, like, what does our response look like, right? Is there a right-sized reach program, you know? Is there something that we had, what, two meetings ago, talked a little bit about a downtown CID. There's a lot of communities that, as part of their CID, have some sort of street outreach program. How could that be adapted? A lot of those street outreach programs are privately funded, right? What partners could we start engaging now? So again, I think regardless of where people stand on it or regardless of whether people agree with my personal thoughts on it, I think people support a plan and they support an effort and being intentional about our policies and our ordinances. So that's what I'd prefer to see. I'd prefer to see this sunset and to be intentional before moving forward.

Council Member Bailey.

I wanted to thank you for coming out and talking about a hard topic where there are no easy answers, and it is laden with emotion.

Thank you for that.

Am I right in understanding that your organization, if there was some potential partnership, could bring us kind of better under the umbrella of the BOSCOC? That's not something that I know enough about. I've had one or two conversations with Jen. They're at a turning point, and I just know that I'm not educated enough on it at the moment. it does seem like there are some larger government entities, both state and federal, that we should at least be aware of and working together with where we can as best we can. Is this something that you might be able to kind of help bring us into the fold on?

Probably not the balance of state. It's interesting because obviously the river, and it straddles both, but the Missouri 604 is the more predominant, which is the one south of the river. It's the more predominant COC in this community. We could make the connections. I just don't know. Okay, so Northtown ought to apply for federal funding to address homelessness. You would be an incredible candidate. I don't know what the history of the city applying for or even what entity would do it. You would have to do it through balance of state, no question about it. You're definitely going to get hammered if you don't have something on the books. You will have no chance of getting it. An appropriate amount of funding. It's just not possible to make up that score. So you definitely want to do the math. Is it worth it to not have this to miss out on? If you can make that money up somewhere else, awesome. It's just unlikely. It's tough to do. Yeah, partnership. But the thing is, the continuum of care is going to be focused on one thing. Vouchers. One thing. One real avenue. Vouchers. Vouchers are going to be, they're essentially, you've got to do a housing assessment, you get a score, the higher score, you get a voucher. A lot of folks you're going to run into aren't even going to qualify. And if they do qualify, they're not going to qualify for a year. What are you going to do? You're going to wait a year? Like, the encampment's going to grow, there's going to be more encampments. And as more municipalities decide to have this, folks are going to go to where the least restrictive environment is. They're going to come here, and the word of mouth is going to be very quick that they can come here. I doubt very seriously that this council would put an advertisement on YouTube saying, unsheltered folks, you can come live here. But that's essentially what is going to happen. I don't know any other way to say it. It is unlikely that you want that. That will happen. It's inevitable. If camping restrictions are going to exist in the municipal subdivisions around Kansas City, they're going to go where they don't exist. It's just inevitable. Just how do you want to respond to that, you know? Up to you. We'll support whatever, genuinely, whatever decision we're in. We will help whatever.

So what I'm hearing is that it's for federal funding and for not to become a beacon that would be more welcoming for this sort of, as you've termed it, public health issues, that it would be wise to pass some form of a camping ordinance.

Yeah, enforcement is up to you. You choose what enforcement looks like. Everyone does. I'm going to pull them over at 5 miles an hour or 10 miles an hour. You know what I mean?

Right. And we've made the point, and we talked about it last time, that we're not looking to write tickets and collect fees and fines. It's not something that we're trying to be draconian about. It's light touch. It's service offered. And so I do see it being an imperative to get something durable passed at the next meeting. So that's what I want to kind of direct the discussion back to what aspects of this ordinance are we willing to entertain while also building out these partnerships, the structure, the then what next steps? Council Member Alvarez.

Ms. Actually, sorry, you just hit on exactly what I was going to say. So, you're actually recommending that we do have an ordinance? Mr. Yes. Ms. Yes, and- Mr. It's just a tool.

You can use it how you want, but have the tool. Ms.

Yes, but to actually have it on the books, and then there's federal money to help with that, but you need that ordinance.

Yeah, you're going to get, yeah, HUD is, it's going to be hard to compete without that ordinance.

And I do think if you're not proactive, it snowballs. And then it's really hard to get a handle on it. And like you said, I have, This is my own personal thing. I've seen where different agencies trying to do what they think is right, trying to help. We'll bring in food on a certain night. It takes one week. The next week, you've got maybe the first time they bring in five people there. The next week, there's 20. The following week, there's 30. Word of mouth, it goes quickly. So if you're known as a city that allows it, I mean, it doesn't matter if it's camps or if it's people sleeping on the bench during the day. It grows if they know it's allowed. So I think in order to get money to help, it's a combination, like you said.

It is.

It's a combination of we need that ordinance in order to get money to help the people. I think that's a win-win situation.

Council Member Larson.

Thank you for coming. It's really been informative to hear your experiences in Kansas City, Missouri. Do you feel, in your experience, that progressive engagement with these encampments Is that more successful if it's held, like, if it's implemented with, like, gentle touch communications, or is it better to go in and more of an iron fist approach?

We would never do iron fist. We just can't. It's tough to build a relationship if you're also enforcement. That's one of the delineations we create. Now, if someone submits a 301 report, Kansas City, or an email, any time they communicate the word homeless, it comes to my team and I. 90% of those communications, probably 99, it's this crime is happening, this crime is happening, this crime is happening, do something about it. I have to respond like, that's not what we do. If you want us to address this, it's going to take time. If you want these issues that you're bringing up resolved, that is a call to a different department, usually law enforcement of some kind. The issue they're having is almost never homelessness related. We communicate this for sure. So we know that's coming. We also know wherever that is happening, there's pressure that's being built in that. And it can become political pressure very quickly, that frustration. So this is why we prioritize the encampment center. We build around risk, the biggest risk to the community and the biggest risk to the folks in there. So if it's a bunch of 80-year-old women, we're going to prioritize that. Also, if there's crime happening and it's impacting a daycare, we're going to prioritize that. The best success we have is we get to know them. Sometimes we don't have time. We recognize that. We cannot build it around the reality that we have six months. So what really helps is that guardrail. Guys, in six weeks they're coming. In two weeks they're coming. In two days they're coming. Either way, that guardrail, it gives us something. But we will never be enforcement on our side. It's impossible to build relationships. Quick follow-up to that.

So who are, it's your team that's going out to do that? the engagement, or are you working with the police?

Yeah, we'll definitely work with the police, but yeah, our team, we actually just hired three more. So yeah, every day we're in encampments, eight to 10 hours a day, yeah.

Thank you so much. Yeah.

Council Member Wells.

Yeah, so we have the ordinance that we temporarily passed recently. So that's, you know, the only one that I've read cover to cover. Who has, out there in the world, has the model ordinance in your opinion?

Probably San Francisco or San Jose. Check Austin. Austin had to get theirs, though, from a ballot initiative. If you polled the citizens here, they want this. I promise you. I promise you if the citizens voted, they would vote for this. No question about it. That inevitably will happen. That is a political strategy, though. It's fine, like whatever political you want. San Jose, I mean, this is what's interesting. You're finding the more progressive mayors have discovered services without enforcement, you will never solve homelessness. Enforcement alone, total waste of time. It's not effective. It's simply not effective. You have to have that balance. But enforcement must exist on some level. You're not enforcing, you're not criminalizing homelessness. That's not what you're doing. You're creating a boundary on public safety and public health while addressing their homelessness.

Thank you.

It sounds like you are kind of indirectly doing this, but is there any kind of like Northland or Kansas City Metro as a whole like initiative partnership to work kind of together with all the municipalities towards any kind of joint solution or joint effort? Let's do it. Let's start it. That's it. Okay.

I would love it. So the meeting with Josh was kind of a hopeful foray into this discussion, this partnership that we can build, and then post-World Cup, once we're all out of the haze of every city trying to plan a big watch party and all that, We're planning to get together, which we do every month and a half, with the mayors and city administrators of the five Northland cities. This will be on the agenda for that. And so in the next couple weeks, I hope to build a framework of a partnership with Mike and with Josh and with Chief Freeman to figure out what this will look like that we can then take and copy and paste out to our other city partners in the Northland. And let's not forget, Kansas City, Missouri is everywhere around us. For us to jump in like we're already surrounded by where their service area is and then to extend it as far into the Northland as we can go and

It kind of sounds like the piece meal isn't ideal. So that sounds great.

And it's a ton of organizations doing their level best. A lot of good hearts, and I've seen this with all the food-based organizations, are siloed. So each one's asking for $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 here and there. Centralizing that and then being able to provide services across all of them, I mean, it's the way.

Yes, and this is, I'm just adding an item to the menu because it sounds like we've got a lot of good stuff going in terms of, you know, the progressive engagement, the positive side. I also just want to note, too, that the Clay County Public Health Department, they have a new program, the Health Impact Assessment Program. that they do. And what it does is it's basically a way to evaluate proposed ordinances for their public health impact. It's a new program. And most of the time it's free for desktop review. So like looking at things like housing, transportation, safety, economic opportunity, access to services, environment. Look at what the public health literature ultimately comes up with. And it's... pretty agnostic to what the community ultimately chooses to do. It's just a way to engage stakeholders and let them weigh in in a way that's based in research and evidence. So just wanted to share that and promote it.

Do you know the turnaround time on that review?

I think it could be relatively quickly, but I also think that this would benefit from something deeper. I just think, you know, it sounds like successful programs are like really deep and intentional. Again, this is something that can be an informative tool, and so I don't want to discount that. Excelsior Springs, they actually were, I believe, the first model of this. I know somebody that works at the public health department there and talked to her a little bit about the program. So again, desktop review, it's free. And I know they already have connections because, you know, they're putting out a CHHA community health assessment, you know, and working on a lot of these things already. Again, those existing barriers, transportation and all kinds of other health impacts are So I at least wanted to mention that in the middle of this conversation. Kind of off point, but...

Very much on point.

Further thoughts or questions?

Okay. I would like to zero back in on the next meeting. So at the next meeting, as Josh has mentioned, guardrails for public safety and an access to funding that I would hope we could start applying for quickly once... We're building this framework. It's like money. It's gonna take money. It's gonna take that no-follow that federal I'm sorry Yeah, go ahead.

Please that federal no-follow is gonna be due at the end August. You gotta have something Okay, if yeah, unless you I mean it's up to you all but just know that that deadlines. Yeah that date But yeah, that can't gonna have to be do way before then cuz that's government's gotta review it no, but it's coming. Yeah, okay so

that in mind we have an ordinance currently in place until the 21st of July which is our next meeting at this stage what support or lack of support do we have for renewing that ordinance as written while also working toward this partnership the other solutions I don't know how to ask that or do we if we can do Thumbs up, thumbs down, because the idea would be to bring back an ordinance at the next council meeting for further discussion and workshopping and then ultimately a vote of yes or no. Go ahead.

I think any ordinance, first of all, I'm not in support of passing the ordinance permanently that we passed for FIFA, for the World Cup. I do think we need something. I do. I've had really, really positive experiences and chats with some of North Kansas City's officers about this. They've shared some of their thoughts with me when we had to call someone about an issue with somebody who was on property. And they shared that this ordinance has helped them in ways. And I don't want to take away tools that help our officers help people. But I think that into any ordinance, we need to build tools that connect what we're trying to enforce with getting people to services. I think we need to include in an ordinance things like, well, I don't know. I don't know. I think we need to look more at the ones that you recommended, Austin, San Jose, and San Francisco. Look at Houston. Look at places that have had some success with this. Figure out what they put in their ordinances that link enforcement to providing services to people. And I don't know if it's possible to do that in two weeks. I don't necessarily want there to be a gap, but all of the issues that we've had up through today with the ordinance that we passed for World Cup didn't rely on that ordinance to enforce the actions that they took. Again, I don't want to leave our officers without tools while we figure out the permanent path forward. But I'm not permanently passing what we passed for FIFA.

The word permanent is tricky because ordinances can be repealed. They can be updated and changed. What I worry is if we delay and wait for perfect, we miss the window for any chance at an application on a scoring rubric that will effectively knock us out. I understand looking at San Jose, pulling some other options for language and tactics. What are the thoughts, Council Member Alvarez?

Well, I just want to say that I would support it. It's a basic, at least to start with, so I think we need that. I think it's very tricky if you try to dictate what happens or how the ordinance, how the law enforcement has to deal with it because every single situation is different. So, I think having a basic enforcement of it's not allowed and then because I don't think that our intention is to harm anyone or to feel like People are being mistreated, but you never know what kind of response you're going to get. So I think you have to have that basic ordinance foundation so that it pretty much covers whatever you run into. And then from there, I don't see that we're not trying to help people anyway. So I'm definitely in support of the ordinance, at least as a basic foundation and to build from there.

And again, how Kansas City, Missouri does this, they pass the enforcement side, and they pass, it's an ordinance or resolution directing Mario to negotiate and form a plan, which isn't just Mario. It's never just the city manager. It's the whole team figures it out with buy-in from council and everybody else to then bring back and pass as a plan adopted. And I think we could take that approach because that states our purpose, our plan to find these, build these partnerships.

Then I would recommend if we do pass in order to just kind of keep the something in place, if we were to pass that again, I think we would only need, I would then prefer to pass that for just a short period of time.

Pass it for, again, a six weeks, six months, something that gives staff and your time to build

a more comprehensive ordinance. I don't just want to pass it and then say we're going to revisit it at some point. We have to build in some sort of deadline that we will actually revisit this. And I would want that window to be not super long.

Just for clarity's sake, the ordinance we would be discussing would be, again, the enforcement side, the public health aspect of it. Ideally, it would be a separate sort of plan that we would adopt, not cramming them together in a single ordinance, because ordinance lays out the law, not so much what partnership would look like and what those services would look like. That wouldn't be built into an ordinance. So if we pass it with the intent here and then adopt a plan, now, I mean, we could put a trigger point, like we haven't adopted a plan in six months and the ordinance goes away, something like that. And then that would give us the runway to get the plan done while we're eligible for federal funding, that sort of thing. Council Member.

Would that hamper our ability to apply for federal funding? If there was like a dead man's switch? A sunset, okay.

Just needs to be on the books.

Council Member Clayton.

That's something similar, kind of what I was thinking. Just extend it, give us some time. And maybe we stick with close to what we have and add in the resources and whatever else gets added in. But as long as it wouldn't affect the federal funding, because I was curious about that, too. I'd be okay with extending it temporarily, because I do want you all to have tools.

Council Member Saber. When is the call coming out for those federal funds and plans?

This current administration...

I mean, I guess I don't want to be chasing imaginary funds, federal funds, and having that determine our policy. Federal funds that really are just that, imaginary. So what do you know about the call for the proposals?

We thought they were coming out today. So it's going to literally, it's going to drop any moment.

Okay, drop any moment. And when are they wanting responses? What's the deadline?

I think the deadline's August 28th. I'm pretty sure the deadline's August 28th. Okay. Because with the last NOFO, they gave a two-week window. It was the shortest NOFO. The federal government put it out way late. But it's coming. 100% it's coming. It's against the law for them not to put this out.

They have to. And you're looking, from the past, you're thinking it'd be like August 28th, as you said.

Yeah, but it'll come out. So... They'll do the NOFO, the federal government. They'll say, all right, you need to tell us what you're going to spend your money on. When they do that, there'll be a window. You have to turn that in, turn that in, then the federal government does the turnaround and says who gets what. It's competition. Yeah, I understand that. Oh, sorry, yeah.

Yeah, okay. But I just wanted to know the deadlines for these issues because with that, if that deadline holds, it seems to me that We would be wise, I think, to put together a comprehensive plan instead of just a piecemeal enforcement plan or some kind of six months from now come up with some kind of other plan in which we would miss that window, obviously. So I would actually favor pushing for a rapid turnaround for the council and the various departments of the city to come together put together at least some kind of comprehensive proposal, not simply just sort of kick the can down the road with using the existing camping ordinances, then we'll come up with something later that may or may not get funded.

Well, if all goes according to plan, we'll have it in two weeks alongside the ordinance to pass everything and adopt a plan together, but that's optimistic. Like, I don't know what the next...

Yeah, it may be optimistic, but it seems to be needed at this juncture. Time is of the essence.

I'm down to help, however. Appreciate that.

Yes, sir.

Mr. Mayor, since we have a number of council members that are still relatively new on the city council, I would like to remind you of something. It takes five people to pass an ordinance. It takes five people to rescind an ordinance. You may rescind an ordinance, any ordinance that we have on the books, any time you want. Knowing nothing about what the federal requirement may be, first time I've even heard about that tonight, okay? What I'm concerned about is if you put, because at first I was thinking just like Council Member McGrone well this put some date on it what I'm concerned about is if you have to turn in the ordinance And there's a sunset provision on it You're going to be set in some other pile, or maybe just discarded But if you don't like the ordinance folks remember this you can rescind it at any time It doesn't take any more votes to rescind an ordinance that it does to originally pass the ordinance now will require five votes and Okay, because you're therefore it's the same as amending an ordinance in this case you would be Rescinding an ordinance and this city has done that before I might add but Probably if if there is some fun that comes about and some federal requirement that you have to have an ordinance I'd be really reluctant to have any kind of a sunset provision in that ordinance and And that's why I'm not advocating one way or another what you folks should do. Now, please understand that. I'm just reminding you that what can be done can be undone by you folks.

Appreciate that. And I think what we could do for next meeting is to have the ordinance brought back as it's written, unless there are some substantial changes that people would like to see made tonight. bring it back as written with language of some kind of a sunset in your back pocket that could be added if so decided, that we could add that in and pass it if that is the will of the council at the time, but to bring it back for the next agenda as it's stated currently.

And if the sunset provision to have in the back pocket, so to speak, is, Six months, okay. I mean, I'm not trying to commit you, but would you like some different time than that? Councilwoman McGrone happened to suggest that.

Something to the effect of, like, the city council will have adopted a plan. I don't know what the plan to address. Oh, I see what you mean.

If not, after this date it would sunset, something like that.

You can handle the legal language. Is that what you had in mind?

Yeah, I think so. I think I just want to make sure that we really do partner with either Josh's group or somebody to address this and work hand in hand with our law enforcement officers because I don't I don't want our community to be frustrated by our lack of giving our officers ways to address real crime and trespassing and health issues. But at the same time, I don't want us to fall back on our laurels in, oh, we've passed an ordinance. Let the police handle it. And then we go and think about other things. And we don't ever actually come back to this again. And we just keep whack-a-mole. I don't want to whack-a-mole anymore. I want to actually have a real plan that's working with some group, and preferably doing what you're doing right now, which is if we know that there's an encampment out there, sending people like your group out there first, or at least after it's been identified, and trying to give those people some assistance over a period of time, and then going in and saying, all right, whoever's left, we've tried. And community, we are trying, but here's the people that are still resisting and we're gonna try to figure out, we gotta get this cleaned up because it's actually an issue. But I want there to be time for your group to address it without just they go in and we're going to give them 24 hours notice and then we're going to take all their crap and leave them. You know what I mean? I don't want that to happen. So we've got to really think about making this a real thing and not just voting for the ordinance again and then forgetting about it.

So, yeah, certainly want to make sure that we keep up on it. And ideally, like I say, we'd meet multiple times over the next few weeks and have something, at least a framework hammered out, that's something we can adopt and get moving, because this is something that the community really wants this. The public health side, I mean, you laid it out perfectly. Public health side, they don't want to see the crime and the behavior. The people who want to see zero homelessness, getting these people in services as much as possible and building those relationships, I think that's exactly right. Okay, so we've got our work cut out for us. Any other thoughts, comments, or questions from the council at this time? Josh, thank you so much.

Thank you all. Thanks for your time.

You're a gentleman and a scholar. Appreciate you all. And just to take a second before we move to the next one, thank you all for this discussion. It's been thoughtful. It's been respectful. It's been exactly what I hoped from a group of professionals like yourselves. So thank you so much. Staff, did you get the direction you needed from that one? All right. Moving on to item 10.

Consideration of a resolution approving a contract with resistant for a turnkey demolition services at 1400 Nottaway resolution number 26-020 You got this one?

I got this one.

You got it.

Good evening mayor and city council members. This one is a proact and also react to what we long-term known the formerly known Perenna Mill. So as stated in the memo City staff has followed the city's procurement procedure and has sent out a request for proposal for both the base and alternative bid for demolishing the Perina Mill. And we received the seven bids back. And the lowest is bidded by Renasant. And we believe we have done our due diligence. We have interviewed them. we have requested reference from several different former jobs that they have completed and moving forward we want to make a recommendation to the city council to approve the contract with renaissance for the alternate bid which is the total demolition of the entire site so with that if you have any question i'm happy to answer

Thank you for just sticking with this. This has been evergreen since I joined the council in 2019, and the number has risen every year in the budget, and this is lower somehow. So I'm going to give you all the credit for that. Thank you for bringing it to us. Any questions on this one? Go ahead.

This isn't a question. I just want to comment. I spoke with Tom right before this because my question was, how is this bid $2 million lower than every other bid or more, $2 million or more? And it sounds like city staff has really done their due diligence on this. This particular company is the one that was responsible for tearing down Terminal A at the Kansas City Airport. They've done nationwide projects. They have some special tools that some other groups don't have. So anybody that's looking at this and is thinking, oh, my God, we are picking the group that is not going to do very well, apparently they do great work, so be okay.

And for anyone following along at home, if you scroll to page 159 of the paperwork attached and work your way up from there, you'll see how bad this structure is and how genuinely due it is to be torn down. Do we have a timeline if we approve this when it will actually disappear? Yes.

Yes, part of the reason that we believe the cost is reasonable is because of how they lay their logistics and their equipment. We had the same question as Council Member McGurn had. We want to make sure we select a qualified company to do so. Not bragging about this company, but we are confident at this point they're qualified. So moving forward, we're hoping we could receive the bond documents and all the other requirements for the city to issue a notice to proceed We anticipate that probably to be turned in in a couple weeks, and hopefully we can go from there. Once when the notice to proceed is issued, city staff will schedule a pre, not construction, but demolition meeting between the city and, remember, this is a turnkey. So essentially this site will be turned over to this particular contractor, and they will be in charge of all the demolition plans and site controls. but we will have a pre-demolition meeting with all the fire, police, public works, and our group as well. We'll go from there. And last time I heard from this team that they're anticipating any time between six months to nine months for total demolition. So maybe by this time next year, we'll celebrate.

Yeah, and what is the opposite of a ribbon cutting? What do we do to celebrate this?

Fireworks.

Can we raffle off who gets to push the big red button?

I'm in for that.

I like that. Council Member Alvarez.

Yeah, I just want to say congratulations on getting this far. I know it's been working on it for a long, long time. The building's been in eyesore and graffiti and then chance of people getting in that area and getting hurt. It really, really needs to go. So anyway, congratulations on all the work that's been done.

Councilor Saber. Thinking toward the future when this is cleared, what are we going to do with a piece of land in the middle of a rail yard with almost no access?

I like your forward thinking. Just join the planning team. We have a thought about it, and we can have a different topic about what we plan on doing. But now let's focus on getting that done. I keep reminding myself the same thing and thinking about how bright the future is. But I want to say thank you to you all for your support. And I want to reiterate this is not a person, one person's effort. This is a team effort. all city staff, all PD, fire, our city administrator, and Tom, of course, put a lot of effort into this. So we're very excited where we are right now.

Love it. All right, do we have a motion?

Move to approve.

Second.

Okay, Tom has asked that we call the roll on this one. Call the roll.

Council Member McGrone.

Yes.

Councilmember Cain? Yes. Councilmember Alvarez? Yes. Councilmember Wells? Yes. Councilmember Larson? Yes. Councilmember Click? Yes. Councilmember Saper? Yes. Councilmember Bailey?

Yes. Motion passes. Item 11.

Public Art Mural Easement Agreement. Bill number 7963, ordinance number 9760.

Who's got this one? Me. All right.

So what is before you today is actually an extension of an easement agreement. So the Tim C. Crummett Foundation met several months ago now because this particular easement is expiring. So the original easement was for five years, and the committee kind of asked to see if we could begin negotiations to extend it for another five years. This particular one is The Power of the Titans, and you probably know it. It's our largest public art piece in the city, and it's kind of a gateway piece. As you know, right as you come over the HOA Bridge, it's right there on Burlington. I've seen a lot of photos of people taking this particular mural and marking their life moments with it. So we have worked with XL Tube or its legacy company, Steel Ventures, for quite a long time. It is the only public art mural that this particular parent group has. So the new ownership group is out of Chicago. So it took quite a bit of time to get these legal papers back from them. But what is before you today is a five-year extension, so it would remain in the community five more years. Should the City Council move forward with it, the next step would be to contact the original artist to make sure that it is sealed so it can serve the community for another five years.

Any questions? Do we have a motion?

Move to approve.

We're going to need our first reading on this one.

First reading.

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

An ordinance authorizing and approving an art easement from EXL Acquisitions LLC as grantor to the City of North Kansas City, Missouri as grantee regarding the continued display of a mural on the east exterior wall of the EXL Acquisition LLC building which directly faces Burlington in the City of North Kansas City.

I move that bill number 7963 be placed on second and final reading and passed as ordinance number 9760. Second.

Call the roll.

Council Member McGrone. Yes. Council Member Cain. Yes. Council Member Alvarez. Yes. Council Member Wells. Yes. Council Member Larson. Yes. Council Member Click. Yes. Council Member Saper. Yes. Council Member Babel.

Yes.

an ordinance authorizing and improving an art easement from EXL Acquisition LLC as grantor to the City of North Kansas City, Missouri as grantee regarding the continued display of a mural on the east exterior wall of the EXL Acquisition LLC building which directly faces Burlington in the City of North Kansas City.

All right. Item 12.

consideration of a resolution for the first amendment to the on-call professional engineering services agreement with BHC LLC, resolution number 26-019. I believe this is Mr. Sainz.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So these next two items kind of tie together. In March of last year, in 2025, we went out to bid for a qualification-based selection for three engineering firms, Olson, McClure Engineering and BHC all submitted to that qualification process and were selected as our three on-call engineering firms. BHC has undergone some corporate changes, some mergers with a different company, and so this first item here on the agenda deals with basically amending our agreement with them to continue that service agreement.

Any questions? Take a motion.

Move to approve.

Second.

All in favor? Yes. Any opposed? Motion passes. Item 13.

Approval of a task order with BHC for Bedford and 19th Avenue Pumping Station's Construction Design Services, Resolution Number 26-021.

So the story continues. So when we submit, when we advertise for qualification based selection for engineering firms, we had a bunch of different criteria in those selections talking about pump station design, roadway design, water design. We, you know, reviewed all the criteria based on everything, any kind of project we thought we would get into with these engineering firms. All three were qualified for all these different things. We selected all three. And as we've gone on in time, we've done things like the Wastewater Master Plan. The Wastewater Master Plan identified citywide what are kind of our long-term goals for the city's wastewater system. We have aging pumping stations, we have aging lines, we have two major pumping stations that were identified in this master plan as being well past their useful life and kind of, in a roundabout way, dangerous. They are barely working anymore. They have a lot of repairs that are needed. So we solicited to all three already selected qualified engineering firms on designing these two pump stations that were identified in the Wastewater Master Plan. BHC has partnered in their group with Stantec Engineering. Both engineering firms, BHC alone is really good pump station design, wastewater engineering. Stantec brings a very heavy hitter to their team that is globally recognized as being elite in this kind of design criteria. So this group together, as we evaluated those different submittals, so we kind of basically asked for two different levels of qualification selection. The first one, selecting them as an agreement, and then this one for this specific project. They got into it, looked at it, and we selected them as, hey, can you give us a proposal on designing moving forward with our wastewater master plan? And this is the item they've come up with. So the task order in front of you involves preliminary design of both the 19th Avenue and Bedford Avenue pumping station. The 19th Avenue pumping station was built in 1949. Again, lots of degradation, well past its useful life. something we're looking to replace. It handles two-thirds of the city's sanitary sewage, and it pumps it over directly to Bedford. In the 60s, these two, well, in the 40s, 19th Avenue was built. In the 60s, Bedford was built. So it's going on 70, 80 years itself. These two pumping stations were designed to work together. So we kind of determined it was, you know, very important to consider how they operate together in the future. as the city grows, and that's why we kind of consider it important to design them together for the next generations. Again, this task order kind of summarizes everything that BHC would get into and Stantec would get into in designing these stations. Those evaluation and analysis they will get into also really lends itself to understanding what initial criteria we would need for a wastewater treatment plant. So we also ask the question, can we, you know, of piggyback on those analysis and items we'd get into anyway to kind of further that that was also talked about in the wastewater master plan further that process along a little bit as well again this gets you to preliminary design two stations and evaluation more of the wastewater treatment plant option should we decide in the future to look at that option so there's kind of three big things that are identified here i've realized this is a very big amount of money that we're talking about for design i just want to you know pinpoint again it's three big large considerations for the city um randy gordon with bhc roads is here tonight if you have any specific questions design criteria about the task order but i'm happy to answer any questions i can excellent uh so i'm trying to reach back into my brain when we talked about this before um you very well illustrated the need to get these either replaced repaired or something and i think the council ultimately landed on like we got to replace these

We also talked about the option of the waste treatment plant. Am I remembering correctly that if we built our own plant, it would remove the need of having one of these pumping stations, or do we still need both? And if we did the plan, we'd need them both still.

You were still in both. So 19th Avenue is around the One North area. Yep. It, again, collects about two-thirds of the city's waste, and it is a lift station. Basically, it gets to a point so low in the system, the pipes can't carry it. out the rest of the way of the city. So it lifts it up, dumps it into another system that directly sends it over to Bedford. Bedford at the time when it was built was part of our original wastewater treatment plant. In 1962, we narrowed this over there. It was built by the Animal Control Facility. We actually had our own wastewater treatment plant. It was what's called a primary treatment works. As the Clean Water Act came online, different regulations came online. That was way behind the times, not enough to dump things back into the river. In the 80s, the city decided to go with treatment with Kansas City, Missouri, and that's just the path we've been on. Originally, Bedford was designed to lift up all the waste coming to it and dump it through the treatment process. In the 80s, when we got rid of our treatment plant, it was converted to a pumping station that pressurizes it for a two-mile stretch over to the Buckeye pumping station in Kansas City, and from there it's sent over to Blue River. So ultimately, yes, either way, you would need both pumping stations, definitely 19th, just Bedford would be reconfigured maybe in a way, either being a lift station or a pump station.

No, that's a fair answer. The price made my eyes bulge for like $1.9 million roughly to design. When we looked at numbers before, again, I don't recall exactly the numbers. I think it was close to $100 million to build the treatment plant itself, just wild estimate. And then the other pumping stations were $9 million and $15 million.

Yeah, you're looking at somewhere in the range of maybe like $7 to $9 million for 19th Avenue. 19th Avenue is kind of a smaller station. Again, it only handles two-thirds of the city. And then Bedford itself handles all of the sewage of the city. It's probably, I don't know, $10 to $15 million. It's very early, again, we don't have design or any kind of justification of, you know, geotechnical engineering involved, all the different things that would go into those designs, so that's kind of why the range is so big.

Were the design, was this, like, $2 million in design factored into those estimates, or was that also? I think the estimate was just for construction.

Gotcha. Yeah, just for rebuilding the stations themselves. Again, it was kind of contemplated in the Wastewater Master Plan. Could you renovate these stations? Yes. The 1949 one from 19th Avenue is pretty far gone. Bedford, we deal with a lot of industrial sewage. There's a lot of corrosion, a lot of parts that don't work anymore. By the time you got through renovating it, you'd basically rebuilt the whole thing anyway. So that's why we kind of ended up where we were.

And if we go the route of doing this, it sounds like very specific types of engineering going into the Bedford station. If we do decide that it's worth it financially to build our own treatment plant, would we have to go back to the drawing board and re-engineer the Bedford station at cost again? Or would it be able to be built as a transitional kind of thing?

It's hard to say. I think at this point, yes, you could, in theory, pause in the middle of the design. Again, this design is just preliminary design. So this will get us to what's basically like 60% plans. We will have to come back again later on. not enough that they know now to get the final design so this will get both stations to 60 design at that point we will be further along in the wastewater treatment plant consideration and then we'll know a little bit more you know is this a good idea or a bad idea to maybe follow that path that would influence in the final design is that ongoing that consideration have you been like working on should we build the plant i mean

Is that something we're grappling with right now?

I'm going to say that that is a very, very large decision for the city. The Wastewater Master Plan, and it was Councilmember Saper who brought it up to me a while back, that, hey, have we ever looked at that and considered that again? We threw it in the Wastewater Master Plan, a 50,000-foot view, right? What would that look like? It was borderline, right? It was on the fence. It was like, okay, there's a lot more things to consider, a lot more analysis that needs to be done. I would not feel comfortable saying one way or the other without more look into that. Um, just because, you know, one of the bigger factors is, you know, you'd want to make sure that from an economic standpoint, is that actually going to be a viable option for the rate payers? Um, don't know if that would actually be a higher cost to have our own treatment plan versus what we pay to Kansas city. Yeah. I mean, these are all things that would need to be kind of,

It seems like almost a purely financial analysis that could be run fairly easily. I take the current rate that we're paying and lock that forever. This is the cheapest it's ever going to be. If that doesn't pencil out, then build in some kind of growth rate. I could see us doing that analysis and spitting out an answer fairly quickly. And then it's a council policy decision. Do we bond and put revenue bonds out there? That kind of thing. But it'd be useful to have that going on so that we know as we're building out these engineering plans, which direction we're pointed at.

Right. And that would be the goal of this. And then another thing too, is that, you know, there's a lot of regulatory compliance to that side. We don't know, starting with regulatory approval, you know, would we even be permitted through DNR to have our wastewater, a wastewater treatment plant again? That is a question because where we are in the river affects other users on the river. What's the loading of contaminants that other users are putting in where maybe independence is pulling their water from downstream, things like that all come into play. So there's the approval process, and then there's also ongoing regulatory compliance. PFAS is a big thing in water treatment right now for drinking water, also for wastewater. In the future, we could set up a whole economic process for it and then completely get it blown out of the water because now we have to treat PFAS or some new compliant thing that comes down the line. So there's a lot of considerations.

Council Member Bailey.

And from my recollection, I did get to tour both Bedford and 19th, and I was a strong advocate of adding 19th to this, so I'm glad that it's in there. I know it raises the price ticket, but the comprehensive view of bringing both in at the same time, I think 19th isn't that far behind Bedford, and Bedford's in a sad, sad state. From our earlier conversation, though, I pretty quickly – came to the conclusion that adding wastewater treatment was probably not worth going down any substantial cost of evaluation simply because a big chunk of our water comes from one user. If they leave, we have a giant asset that becomes a liability. We have all the liabilities of changing regulation. We have all of those problems that could just jump up out of nowhere, and really we're not changing that much. There's not a lot of benefit to me, at least from the initial thing. So if we could pare this back in terms of I would not want to spend a lot of money going down that path.

What is the portion of this cost?

I think there's $534,000 that are involved in that and looking at that process. I will say you get a little bit of an economy of scale, if you will, just because of where we're looking at Bedford and 19th at the same time. You'd kind of do some of the initial, say, math, basically. It'll veer off a little bit because, again, you're looking into river degradation things where that treatment plant wouldn't go to the river, not be pumped, but you will start to look at industrial loading. Both 19th and Bedford have to consider those things. A little bit of crossover, I guess you could say, at this point in time.

I do recall now that it's that one user piece because the revenue bond projections were way off if we lose one user that's 50%.

I'd save half a mil.

I would go that direction as well. I don't know if we can carve that out of the task order if we need to reassess. But I agree. It's half a million dollars to analyze a possibility that's very unlikely.

It is a not to exceed cost proposed in the task order. I think we could scale it down. Okay.

So if we approve it, we could scale back based on council direction?

Yes. I think, well, I don't want to speak for Tom, but I think we could. The other thing is that I don't know what components, because there is some crossover, I don't know what you're taking out. We got the guy here.

Oh, yes, yeah. You hung with us for an hour and a half of other discussion items, so come on up. Welcome.

Good evening. I'm Randy Gorton. I'm with BHC. Appreciate your time and service, certainly tonight. To try and answer some of your questions, as Anthony pointed out, we're just providing a limit, and it's time and expense, right? So we spend an hour, we charge you an hour. Your economic analysis question is very much a very important part. We can do that early. That is obviously part of the scope. There are some interplay items in the preliminary design for the pump stations. Because it is a system, they all have to work together. So we want to make sure it's economical efficient. It's up to you. You can choose to direct staff to only approve a reduced scope right that's it's what you want our understanding was there some questions about long term right does it make sense for the city to take responsibility and ownership of your treatment back in-house instead of being somewhat at the right mercy of somebody else yeah so and I've trust me I've dealt with a lot of cities and they've they whether it's water or wastewater They go through the same sort of decision-making process every time. You have to decide for North Kansas City what makes the most sense for you and residents. But we can certainly adjust that scope or resequence some of the scope items. And if very quickly you go, no, we just shut that part off. That's why we broke task and fee separately between preliminary design on pump stations you know you need. It seems pretty universal. And the question, right, your policy question of do you want to take that back over or, right, is it better to chase the economics of a bigger regional treatment provider?

I will say, for those of you who have talked to me, you know I'm very cautious with things. I will say, though, this is probably the moment in time. Bedford and 19th have operated for very long times. this is probably the moment in time to look into this. If there ever was, um, I know it's a, it's a look into what wastewater treatment plant our own.

Yeah.

Okay. I do think, you know, there's a lot of, it's an uphill question, you know, you got a lot of things to consider, but if there was ever a time to look into it, it's probably now because of the considerations rebuilding 19th, looking at a wastewater master plan, look, you know, that 19th and Bedford, um, You know, there wouldn't be a different time, really, that would not make as much sense.

That is true. Everything, right, you're changing everything up to where the plant would be. And again, Bedford's either going to keep doing what it's doing now, or it's going to feed the front end of your plant if you decide you want to plant again.

I like what you said about resequencing, though, to basically front load the logistical piece of, like, does it make financial sense to do this? And if the answer's no, we don't get into the weeds of, like, where the pipes might go or how it would feed into the river.

I would say normally what we would start with is the regulatory side to say, you know, DNR, right? What are your limitations, right? And I've run into cities where, like, there's a raw water intake for drinking water immediately downstream. All right, well, never mind. Gross. Right, we're done, right? You don't have to think about it anymore. We can put in the file for your future successor. Council members, not allowed. Good. currently impossible. We can put the financial analysis. We'll just build in some ranges for you because we get in a little further and we start saying these types of treatment options make the most sense for you. This one costs X dollars. These cost Y. We can give you the range on the rate kind of analysis part so you know how does that compare to current and anticipated KCMO treatment rates.

Mr. Saber? Yeah, I would agree that this is the time to look at this and get some information, hard data that we can look at. And that approach and the timing sounds to make sense. The other is that dealing with, well, we might not need it if ingredient would move. Well, we might not need our... extensive water supply system as well either. There's all kinds of things. We may get new industries. Those are red herrings, frankly. And so I'd like to just dismiss those outright at this point and get some data at this time when we're doing the rest of it so we know what we're talking about because we're talking about the future here. We're talking about North Kansas City in 2040 and 2050. not 2027, 28. So we need this improvement.

I certainly love the long-term thought about that. What I would caution you before you dismiss it is we would be paying for this very likely through revenue bonds, and revenue bonds don't revenue if you lose 50% of your user. True. Further questions from this side? Nope. All right. Do we want to move forward with the task order? Take a motion.

Move to approve. Second.

All in favor? Yes. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thanks for sticking with us. All right. Item 14.

Consideration of a resolution to execute an indemnity agreement, an accompanying letter agreement for FIFA World Cup watch party. Resolution 26-018.

All right.

This is simple. It's the indemnity agreement with Armor District for the southwest corner of Armor and Swift for this Saturday's watch party, which Kim is going to talk more about later. I'm not going to. get into that. But that's what this is for.

All right. We're using their ground. We're indemnifying them from the risks. That is, we've done this many times in many different spots.

Correct.

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

Move to approve. Second. All in favor? Yes.

Any opposed? Motion passes. Item 15.

Consideration of an ordinance amending agreements with One North Development, LLC, authorizing the mayor or city administrator to extend the agreements up to 90 additional days. Bill number 7995, ordinance number 9792. Tom?

Yes. During the purchasers' due diligence, it was revealed that the TIF plan will need to be amended to accommodate the purpose now for which they are going to use it. And inasmuch as that requires the TIF commission to get together, consisting of 12 people, most of whom are not city appointees, and there's a 45-day notice before the TIF Commission can even meet to discuss it, we figure that between 60 and 90 days would be sufficient for this. So let me assure you of one thing, though. This is a limited procedural extension to accommodate the TIF plan amendment timeline And in no way is it a renegotiation of any of the terms of the development agreement or of the real estate agreement. And so we recommend both outside council and myself as well as staff that this be approved and passed.

This is a relic of government moving at a glacial pace sometimes. We had to reorganize the TIF commission because Clay County hit 250,000 people, so the The presiding commissioner gets many of those appointments, plus the school district and a whole host of others, as you mentioned. Twelve individual humans have to get together and figure this out. It takes some time. So we have this ordinance before us. Any questions? First reading?

First reading.

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

I move that bill number... Yeah, I have to read the title.

I'm so sorry.

The first reading, one might say.

An ordinance adopting and improving extension of deadlines in a development agreement between the City of North Kansas City, Missouri and One North Development LLC for a certain development project in the city and approving extension of deadlines in a real estate sale and purchase agreement between the City of North Kansas City, Missouri and One North Development LLC.

Now I move that bill number 7995 be placed on second and final reading and passed as ordinance number 9792. Second.

Call the roll.

Council Member McGrone. Yes. Council Member Kane.

Yes.

Council Member Alvarez. Yes. Council Member Wells.

Yes.

Council Member Larson. Yes. Council Member Clegg.

Yes.

Council Member Saper.

Yes.

Council Member Bailey.

Yes.

An ordinance adopting and approving extensions of a deadline in a development agreement between the City of North Kansas City, Missouri and One North Development, LLC for a certain development project in the city and approving extension of deadlines in a real estate sale and purchase agreement between the City of North Kansas City, Missouri and One North Redevelopment, LLC.

Item 16.

Consideration of an ordinance approving accounts due and payable by the city through July 3rd, 2026. Bill number 7994, ordinance number 9791.

First reading.

Second.

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

An ordinance authorizing payment for certain accounts due and payable by the city through July 3rd, 2026.

I move that bill number 7994 be placed on second and final reading and passed as ordinance number 9791. Second.

Call the roll.

Council Member McGrone. Yes. Council Member Cain. Yes. Council Member Alvarez. Yes. Council Member Wells.

Yes.

Council Member Larson. Yes. Council Member Click. Yes. Council Member Saber. Yes. Council Member Bailey.

Yes.

and ordinance authorizing payment for certain accounts due and payable by the city through July 3rd, 2026.

All right, staff comments.

All right, we've got a few for you tonight. Okay.

We'll start with Kevin. Good evening again, Mayor of City Council. Just wanted to give you a little brief on an updated item that you, I think, were all briefed on from Sunday night. A little shout out of good work done by our department and the fire department. But about 4 o'clock on Sunday, we got a call to a local business on a person in crisis. And unfortunately, this happens often, but not to this degree. The person was threatening suicide by cop. which means that they wanted to provoke a confrontation with the police and then force the police to shoot them. Luckily, this didn't happen. It started from the call, came in and dispatched, dispatched our officers on the scene that were on duty. As you may or may not know, our tactical team has other duties. They're also patrol officers. They're also detectives. So several members of our tactical team were already on the scene when the call came out, established initial perimeter communications, evacuations of the businesses. and then waited for the rest of the tactical team to arrive, which included members of the fire department. We have three medics on our team that are trained from the fire department. And then our negotiators started. So this all started, kicked off about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. By the time all those resources got to the location, negotiations started about 5.15, 5.20. I want to recognize Sergeant Chanda Harmon. was the primary negotiator in this incident and negotiated with this person for over two hours on the telephone. And it did come to a successful conclusion. The person surrendered with no harm to any of our officers and only slight self-harm to the individual. So just a shout-out to the work well done on a holiday weekend when a lot of people were out enjoying barbecue and illegal fireworks.

Speaking of festivities this weekend, Swift Kick will be this weekend. It is Saturday, July 11th. The futsal tournament begins at 9 a.m. and it is at the corner of Armor and Swift. Food trucks will open for business at noon. The beer garden opens at 3 p.m. The first game will be airing at 4 p.m. and it will be Norway and England. with the DJ at six, and we now know who the second game will be, and that is Argentina and Switzerland. This is a family-friendly event. We're hoping a whole bunch of people come down and enjoy the festivities together. Please bring your camping chairs. Do not bring your cooler.

All right, last thing. I threw a budget memo and staff comments just to point out the timeline. Our plan is for the next meeting, July 21st, we'll get you the preliminary budget to look over. I've got on there the next meeting, August 4th. However, that brings up another comment. The 4th is an election day. So by code, our first meeting in August will be the 5th. We'll remind you of that multiple times, but that's wrong on that memo. But that's when we're going to go over the operational and capital budget, the big discussion. August the 8th is our bounce and balance. That is, I think we'll end a half an hour early.

We say 9 to 10.30 this year.

And then we'll go through budget updates and discussions at succeeding meetings from there. As with every year, part of our passing the property tax levy and having the hearing depends on when we get it from the county. Last year we were able to get all that without doing a special meeting at the end of September. It's always a possibility, but the big thing is we'll – We'll get the first blush to you for the next meeting. But discussions won't start until the following, the first meeting in August. If there's any questions. There's a lot going on. Anybody else?

Reports, comments, thoughts, musings? Got anything for us there?

No?

All right. Perfect. All right, let's go ahead. Council Member comments, starting with Council Member McGrone.

I just want to thank Bart and Kyler for coming to speak about the camping ordinance. I want to thank Chief Freeman and NKCPD for providing data on their experiences with the ordinance. And I want to thank Josh for coming out and sharing information with us about a really challenging topic. There are lots of big feelings and valuable perspectives from everybody that spoke. And I am grateful that we as a community are moving in a direction that will help us connect the most vulnerable people that come into our community with services that they really need. That's the ultimate goal. It's not to penalize people. It's not to punish people for being homeless. It's to help them. And the people that connect with them the most happen to be the PD. And so if we can give them resources and connect them with groups that can help those people, then everybody benefits. I also hope to see a lot of familiar faces at the SwiftKick event. It's going to be a lot of fun, and that's all I got.

Council Member Cain.

Yes, thank you. I want to thank folks that came out for public comment today, Bart, Kyler, and Rich Groves. I also want to remind folks of all the fun events we've got coming up. We have our second coffee. What are we calling it for today? or the Business Council, our Coffee Connect. So that's coming up this week, quickly followed by a swift kick. NKC New Neighbors is hosting a legislator forum with Senator Nirenburn and Representative Woods at the Parks Building. That's on Wednesday, July 15th. I didn't spoil your event. You've got one.

Go ahead.

Oh, well, sure. What the North Town, what are we calling it, North Town Hall? That's going to be on, what, Tuesday? Tuesday. 14th at 7 p.m. And then the Columbian Independence Day Festival on Swift. So that's going to be on Saturday, July 18th. Tomorrow, July the 8th, that's going to be the voter registration deadline ahead of Missouri's August 4th primary. So that's incredibly important. If you're not registered to vote... or you want to check, you can go to the Secretary of State's website. You can go to the Clay County Board of Elections website as well. And for in-person options, there's a lot going on there as well. You can go to the Board of Elections office tomorrow from 8 to 5. You can go to any Mid-Continent Library location in Clay County to register. And the UAW local 249 office in Clay Como will also be doing a registration drive from 3.30 to 6.30 tomorrow.

Council Member Alvarez.

Yes, I also want to just thank the people that came out and spoke tonight. Also, Josh had a lot of good information for us. I do want to reiterate that I care about the people that are down on their luck, and different things happen. But I also care about my community and keeping it safe. We talk about being a walkable, bicyclable, et cetera, community, and I'd like to keep it that way. I'd like to make sure that it's safe for people to walk around, to walk through the streets, and that we don't let it get out of hand. So that's my take on it, just to make sure that we are proactive, not reactive. Because a lot of times, if you just wait until you're reactive, you've got a huge problem. And it's just much easier to keep a handle on it if we're proactive and we provide our police department with the tools that they need to keep us safe. Because I do think we probably live in a very, very safe area and take pride in that. And that's it. I hope to see everybody Saturday. Oh, and I guess we'll have our big screen. Okay. Looking forward to that. Cool.

Bye.

Council Member Wells. Yeah. I'm just really proud of the discussion we had tonight. It was open and frank and beneficial, I think, about a very difficult topic. And I want to thank the mayor for doing the groundwork to build a relationship with Josh to get him here tonight to speak with us and also to explore building a working relationship with North Kansas City. So that's great. I want to thank Josh, of course, for coming out and doing that and for Chief Freeman for his comments. You know, I tried to speak to as many people as I could about this topic in the lead up to tonight. I spoke to Chief Freeman. I spoke to people that feel the complete opposite way about it. And the common thread was that everyone wanted to do something to help. So I think if we can harness that and build on it, I think we really can. We do have an opportunity to build something unique and beneficial to people here. So yeah, I'm just really excited. to see what the future holds. And I mentioned that I tried to get a hold of as many people as I could to talk about this. So if I haven't gotten a hold of you out there, please get a hold of me and find my email on the city's website. Get my phone number for somebody, but I would really like to talk to you.

Thank you. Council Member Larson.

First, I'd like to commend our police department for your excellent handling of the situation on Sunday. That could have gone poorly, and it happened as successfully as it could have, the outcome. I also want to acknowledge members of the public who came out today to give their comments, and then also those who have reached out to give us their thoughts on the camping ordinance. And I just want to encourage everybody to reach out to your City Council member, if you have any feedback or information you think that we should have as we're making, having conversations, making decisions at our next meeting. For the Parks Department, Friday morning is the North Kansas City Business Council's second Friday coffee at the Parks and Rec Center. On Friday evening from 7 to 9 is the Friday night concert at the Festival Shelter in Mackin. featuring the band Jamoji and the Jammers, which is a funk jazz band. So hope to see everybody there on Friday night. And then, of course, Saturday night, we'll see everybody at Swift Kick. And we're excited to use that big screen here in our backyard. And then also, as Dylan said, on July 15th, we're going to have a legislative recap with Representative Eric Woods and Senator Maggie Nirenberg. So I think that'll be a great time to learn about some of the ballot questions on that August 4th election. So if you have any questions for your... local Congress folks, I encourage you to be there. And then also, I want to acknowledge how amazing the ribbon cutting was at River Forest Park. I have been out there like 15 times since it opened up, so thank you, Parks Department, for everything you did, and of course the city for everything you did to make that happen. I love that new park. If you haven't been out there, please go walk around and see the only waterfall in North Kansas City. And Compost NKC had a workshop couple Saturdays ago and they just gave us some information on how to compost in your backyard or if you're an apartment what you can do to compost and I think that that's it's always interesting to learn new things and then also our SEAC committee is needing more members I need to nominate somebody from Ward 4 to represent us so if you're interested in serving on SEAC email me at If you want to be more engaged with your city, this is a great opportunity to get your foot in the door. Give me a call, send me an email if you have any questions. Thank you very much.

Council Member Click.

So many exciting things happening. So many opportunities to come and meet your community and have a block party. Everyone have a block party. Erie Street had one on July 4th. It was awesome. No illegal fireworks that I'm aware of. But I was there, so I feel like I would have noticed. I wanted to reiterate tomorrow as the deadline to register to vote, even if you think you're registered, just go double check that you have the right address. There's some really important questions on that ballot, and excited for that. July 15th event where we can kind of ask direct questions.

That'll be really great.

And then just follow up on the homelessness conversation. I think we live similar to what a lot of y'all have said, in a really great community who really does want to help. And there's so many different ways to help, and I think it's a really important conversation. So I just encourage even more people to come speak, share your thoughts, share your ideas, even your experiences, positive, negative, whatever they may look like, I think will be really important as we continue this conversation and hopefully figure out a solution that will work for as many people as possible. And that's it.

Council Member Saper.

Yes to all of that.

Council Member Bailey.

No comment.

All right. That brings it around to me. Happy birthday, America. 250. Going strong-ish. I joke, but we live in an amazing country. We should be grateful for all the freedoms we have. And had a great time on the 4th of July celebrating at the Erie Street Block Party. So put in a plug for block parties. It, again, is block party season. We will give you $400 to Shut down the street and party with your neighbors. Keep these things happening. They're so much fun. Council Member Saper will show up. And it's a blast. I don't know how to put into words how much fun this guy has at these parties. Speaking of parties, with the World Cup Watch Party Swift Kick, it will be all-day stuff, starting at 9 a.m., running through the end of the final match. High, high-quality football being played. River Forest Park, it's hard to believe that the ribbon cutting happened between the last council meeting because it feels like so long ago. But amazing job, Parks Department, everything about that park is so much fun. Parks Department is also putting on some phenomenal summer camps. If you're not paying attention to those, Miss Heather is the best. I don't think there's any sign-ups available still, but maybe next year. Think about it because it's fun. My girls are loving those. Huge props to the police department, the fire department for handling the situation. Sergeant Harmon in particular can't say enough good things. As Dylan mentioned, I am hosting a North Town Hall. This will be Tuesday the 14th at 7 p.m. at the Commons at Center Block. So bring a lounge chair or a lawn chair or whatever and come out and shoot some pool and ask your questions. A lot of people have mentioned registration for voting closes tomorrow, so make sure you're registered. But while we're on that topic, we have some important things on the ballot, and I have promised to keep people updated on my research and my discussion. So Amendment 4, this one is a ballot. It's citizen ballot initiatives. It basically makes them impossible, and that's the goal. The word around is that it gives rural communities a voice, but I would flip the script on that and say, what happens if a farm, a bill that would really benefit farmers comes up and the cities don't like it? All it takes is one district. If this passes, it takes one district to vote something down. Literally 5% of the voters of the state could kill a ballot initiative. That's the point. The other odd wrinkle to that is it outlaws foreign money coming into influence ballot issues, which they could already do without a constitutional amendment. They could drop that amount to zero with no problem. But the great irony is much of the money in support of this is coming from outside of the state. Take that with what you will. The other one is Amendment 5. This is the one that would just remove income tax. And I've had a lot of discussions, particularly with the school district. And the school district, to be clear, cannot advocate for or against They can only provide information, and since they cannot advocate for or against, I will advocate strongly against this. What it would do is gut school funding, despite what the ballot language would suggest. It talks about protecting funding for education. Schools would get gutted with this. We would lose income tax revenue, which makes up a huge chunk of what goes into the schools, and the back end of that to replace revenue is No specific plan. It's sort of a trust us, we'll figure it out. And at this point, there's really no basis for that trust. So no on four, no on five. That's all for me. Going on to item, go ahead.

Sorry, just to piggyback off of that, there's a website where you can enter your school district and see how much estimated funding would be lost if that amendment passes. and it's over $1,500 per student. It is just an estimation, but that adds up to millions and millions of dollars just for North Kansas City School District. Multiply that across the entire state is huge. So, sorry.

Yeah, North Kansas City also, the school district just published their budget, and just off of SB 190 impact, and the fact that the state has already not funded public education to the full amount, they're having to cut $16 million out of their budget for this coming year. They're doing their best to keep that away from classrooms, but I don't know how that's possible. So yeah, and of course it'll hit us, because we rely on taxes as well. Okay, moving on to item, I guess we had two item 17s on my agenda, so we're going to the executive session one.

Consideration of a request to hold in recess into executive session as requested by the city administrator City Councilor to be held on this date pursuant to Missouri revised statutes 610.0212 real estate matters and 610.211 litigation legal matters, real estate, real estate litigation, legal actions caused of an action or litigation involving a public government body, and confidential or privileged communications between a public governmental body or its representatives and its attorneys pursuant to section 610.211 RSMO. Do we have a motion?

So moved.

Second.

Call the roll.

Council Member McGrone. Yes. Council Member Kane. Yes. Council Member Alvarez. Yes. Council Member Wells.

Yes.

Council Member Larson. Yes. Council Member Click. Yes. Council Member Saper.

Yes.

Council Member Bailey.

Yes. At this point, the feed will cut out. There will be no further public votes. Thank you for tuning in.