City Council - Regular Meeting

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

Keeping Our City Beautiful is a collaborative effort for all citizens. The City of Lee Summit supports these efforts with a set of guidelines or ordinances. And the City's Neighborhood Services team helps put those guidelines into practice. these guidelines ensure grass stays trimmed fences are maintained home exteriors are kept up and much more we can all help out by first making sure our property meets these guidelines if you notice potential violation on a neighbor's property first check the guidelines on the city's website if it is a violation the next step is to communicate with your neighbor directly if that is not possible or if the problem persists it can be reported through ls connect LS Connect is an online platform for submitting issues to the city. You can access it on the city website or by downloading the app through your mobile device's app store. Once you submit an issue, it is reviewed by the neighborhood services team. A neighborhood services officer will then visit the site. For any violations found, the neighborhood services officer will leave a notice and speak with the property owner if possible. The officer's goal is to help the property owner solve or abate the problem as quickly as possible. After a 10-day period, the officer will inspect the site to see if the issue has been abated. Normally, by this point, the issue has been resolved. If not, depending on the type of issue, an extension could be granted, or the city might fix the problem at the owner's expense. In rare cases, if all other measures have been applied, the issue will be resolved in the municipal court. Neighborhood services officers work hard to resolve problems quickly and positively. They are here to support the community as we work together to keep our city beautiful. Keeping 500 miles of public sewer lines flowing keeps utility costs low and our environment healthy. The Lee's Summit Water Utilities Operations Team does this every day. Sewer lines can be blocked with everything from roots to flushable wipes to food grease. When a potential blockage is identified, teams use detailed mapping to locate access points. My camera's at 18038. A camera truck parks at one end of the sewer line and a jet truck at the other. The camera truck carries a rover-type camera, which the team lowers into the manhole. The operator then drives the camera into the pipe, where it views and records from its adjustable lens. Here, it can identify the cause and precise location of the blockage. The jet truck will then use high pressure water to remove the blockage. Starting at the opposite end of the line, the operator inserts the jet head into the manhole. Pressurized water shoots out of the head, clearing out debris and propelling it forward. The camera observes this process, and the two operators communicate via walkie-talkie to coordinate movement.

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to the Leaf Summit sign department. We are going to walk you through our process from start to finish. We make signs as needed here. It's not like we just go out into the field and place a speed limit sign here, no parking here. Our traffic engineers, they go through and they'll do field studies. They'll send us down an engineering work order for us to go out, place new signs or remove signs as needed. Coming from the material, our blanks come in and they're just aluminum blanks. our red, our fluorescent yellow, green, whatever. And basically what it looks like is just that there. Throw it up into the roller. And once we got it covered, take it to our work table here and Tim will cut the corners, cut all the access off to where it's lined up right. As far as the plotter and the software that we use, there's a street name sign there and he's gonna go ahead and print that out on the plotter so you can see the plotter and how it operates and runs. There's standards for the height, even just on letters on the sign blind. Basically what we have on the computer there is it's pretty much set up to those and it goes through. It's got a very small but sharp needle that goes through and cuts everything out letter by letter. Once that's done cutting, our next stage would be bringing it over here. Currently picking out the sign letters right now. We call it weeding or picking or however you want to call it. Next putting it on the transfer tape. Then after it's taped, we bring it over to the roller. That's where we apply it to the actual sign blank. And we'll roll it through one time just to get the air bubbles out. And the last stage is basically just Taking the transfer tape off the front of it. And there's the finished product of street name sign. We'll take you out to the field and show you our process that we go through.

We're gonna go out and follow our sign guys and get something installed for you.

This is where we check our underground utilities. Tim, you got AT&T?

AT&T is back here. Ever-G, Google.

We should be good to go. We normally put all of our stuff together out in the field. Then once the base is installed, we'll go ahead and put the post in there. Perfect. And that's how we do it. Simple. Quick.

So, Thank you.

Would you please stand for the invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance?

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the opportunity to serve our community. As we gather tonight, we ask for wisdom, humility, and discernment in the decisions before us. Help us to listen with open hearts, treat one another with kindness and respect, and remember that we represent a community of many different voices and perspectives. Guide us to make decisions that serve all with integrity and compassion. May we lead with grace and always honor the responsibility you have entrusted to us. Amen.

Thank you all. I'd like to call the August 4th City Council regular session number nine to order, please. Can I please have roll call?

Council Member Frazier. Present. Council Member Funk.

Present.

Council Member Pryor. Here. Council Member Cravens. Here. Council Member Adkins. Present. Council Member Carlisle. Present. Mayor Pro Tem Shields. Here. Mayor Lopez.

Here. All right, thank you. Then now we need to proceed with the approval of the agenda for tonight. We have a motion made by Council Member Funk and a second by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? Hearing none, please cast your vote. All votes are in. Motion passes. Thank you. Takes us to the consent agenda. Motion has been made by Council Member Funk, seconded by Council Member Carlisle. Any discussion? If not, please cast your vote. Consent agenda is approved, date zero. Please record the vote. Thank you. All right. Takes us to Council Roundtable. I know that we were... outside of this room for a couple weeks. I think there's people that took some time away and hung out. Any news from anybody? Anything you want to share?

I think Council Member Carlisle has something.

All right, Council Member Carlisle.

Thank you, Mayor. I would just say that I attended a park board meeting while everybody was on vacation. They will be having their groundbreaking ceremony this Thursday, I believe, is the 6th, at 4 o'clock. And a whole bunch of other stuff went on, but I won't bore everybody with it. But we are in the planning process for the Longview project, and they will have community engagement opening very soon.

Great. Thank you. Appreciate that. So nothing else fun at all besides that? Okay. All right. All right. We'll try next time. Mayor for Temp Shields.

Thank you, Mayor. A couple of events that happened this past week. Myself and several other council members attended the Hope House Gala, a great organization that's one of our... community partners and really appreciated seeing folks out there supporting them. And then also Q39 had their grand opening that included a fundraiser for Lee Summit Cares, which is another great community partner. And I know several council members attended that as well. So appreciate everybody who works hard for those organizations. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Council Member Atkins.

Thank you, Mayor. Last week I attended the Downtown Main Street, their annual planning retreat. because they were reconvening to figure out what they're going to do for 2027, and they do this every year. It was amazing. There were about 50 volunteers that they had there because they have a small staff with like four people, and then Ben Wine is the board chair, and then they've got all these volunteers. They do 35 events per year for Lee's Summit, and after the switch in downtown days, since they're going to discontinue that, Because it's grown too large for their capacity. They're trying to figure out what to do next You know how they might replace that with one event or maybe two events or three events They don't know but it was a huge brainstorming session and lots of sticky notes and lots of charts and narrowing things down It was really well done and lots of good ideas for how to keep moving forward with the city And I'm super impressed by them and how how much energy they have to keep preparing providing that for us. So we're super lucky to have such a strong organization downtown. They did great. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Councilmember Frazier.

I received a call today from a resident that complained that she She went to Baskin-Robbins and there's a sign on the door that says that they are closed. And so she was distraught. And I said, we have at least seven other ice cream establishments in the city of Lee Summit. So I am going to tell you the seven that at least I know of. And I directed her to them. Dairy Queen, Andy's, we have two locations, not to mention the two locations of Chick-fil-A that have great shakes that make you smile. Cold Stone, Betty Ray, Howdy's Homemade Ice Cream, Buster's, and Poppy's. So if I've missed some, I apologize. I will come back next week and give you that which I missed. But I told her... Oh, Custer's last day on 291. So I told her that she was very upset, and I don't know why they closed or anything like that, Baskin-Robbins, but I told her that I would mention it here at council tonight.

Thank you. That is great information. Amazing. I think I've been to all of those. Both Andes, too. So thank you. Appreciate that. All right, so that takes us, moving on with the agenda, takes us to public comments. I know we have a few people that want to speak. I believe Mr. John Hewlett has a commitment and wanted to speak first. Come on up and state your name and address.

My name is John Hewlett. We've lived in Lee Summit for almost 49 years. Thank you for allowing me this time to present my proposal. In the time we've lived here, Lee Summit has gone from a cow town to a thriving city. There have been countless improvements over the years. One of the latest and newest under construction is the Old Ham Village. Between that project and Costco development, a large traffic nightmare could be on the horizon. We live in Hinsdale, adjacent to Oldham Village. We have two outlet streets. One is on Purcells on the south side, and Oldham Outer Road on the north. There are three streets that connect to Oldham. They are Allendale, Lakeview, and Lee. I foresee this outer road becoming one of the heavily traveled outlets for Oldham Village. That is why, for traffic control and safety, I am proposing a major stop sign, if not on all three of the outlets, at least on Lakeview, because that is where the bus is turned to go into Pleasant Lee Elementary. I offer this proposal for your consideration for traffic control and safety of your citizens. I further would ask if this proposal were accepted and signs installed, that this be done well in advance of completion of the construction of Old Ham Village. This would allow drivers using this road to become accustomed to the change. Thank you and hope you will consider some discussion on this proposal.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. The next person, I'm going in alphabetical order. I'm reading as the last name is B-O-S-T-U-V-A.

Is that right? B-O-S-T-W-I-C-K.

Okay. All right. Sorry. I don't have my glasses and couldn't pronounce it. Welcome.

Hello. My name is Michael Boswick. I do research. I used to not really care that much about government at all until my son was a victim of exploitation as a result of Jackson County court systems. Now, I'm still on the journey of being able to rectify and reconcile the specific issues that are taking place in Jackson County, Missouri. And as part of that, I've also had to interact with and be aware of some of the things that are going on in the summit. Generally, I would have preferred to prepare a more diligent expression and send some of that information. But as a result of a budget proposal that was covered in a previous session on the courts asking for more money, I thought it was imperative that I speak today. So forgive my lack of preparedness with all the facts and details. I used to work in business intelligence. And what you do in that space is you reconcile data and you use data to understand realities that take place in the real world today. So if I say that there's corruption, you really have to be able to tie that back to the RICO Act, which allows you to specifically articulate how individual parties are taking part in exchanges of quid pro quos and other acts. In the Lee's Summit court system, I've been unable to find any specific acts that relate to that. I have, however, found members of the Missouri Bar who do communicate at fundraising events and who do facilitate a environment which allows for that. So there is information that connects to Lee's Summit Police Department and the Lee's Summit courts. However, what I want to focus on is specifically the financial proposals that were presented. The one thing that was not said in the previous session is the way that it was collected and how that biases what the proposal that was put before you guys in the past session, which is that it was an expression of these are the things we want. And of course, they want more money and more people to be able to solve the problems. But you have to connect that back to the data. Why is it that we have more crime now than we've had in the past? Yes, populations have increased, but that doesn't necessarily center on crime and how that's connected. Financial disparities, though, do. So there is a difference in financial disparities. You'll find members of the community have commented on how apartment complexes have created some of that issue. But the reality of it is in how the Lee Summit City has been navigating So I've sat in the courtroom and just watched. So just go spend a day at the Lee's Summit courthouse and you can see exactly what takes place. They don't talk about any of the efficiencies that the courts can do. Number one, the parole agents that they have are for a financial disparity. A lot of individuals that show up for a lack of insurance just can't afford it. So then they get put on parole. And then they violate the parole because they can't afford their insurance. And they get stuck in this vicious cycle of being unable to afford the needs and then entering into a state of crime. There's driver's license where people can't get through the IRS and they have to navigate that. And I would caution the city as it considers whether or not to connect the other interests. Again, a lack of time, but there's a lot of things that were omitted from that report.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Mr. or Ms. Dowd? Is it Patty Dowd?

I'm Patty Dowd.

I'm Patty Dowd, and I just have several things to talk about in the public comments. The Baskin and Robbins thing, I know the people were in financial constraints, and I think it's like, where can we support all of our businesses to make them prosperous? I think they were probably trying to say, hey, can you do something about getting people to go there? But I think in the meantime, they have closed down. Have we had any status update regarding the court Getting help getting staff over there the communication be seen between City Hall and the court system You're going to discuss later on about the vacancy Are we're going to be able to vote on that? I would sure like and I'm sure you're going to tell us later on but that is a concern of mine Also, I want to say can we chill on the building process? It feels like we're building building building yet. We were in the hole on money and Where is this all coming from? Okay, my taxes, I don't want them going up anymore. The water tax today was, so they would have be able to support more employees, I understand that. Maybe that should have been done over the years. So anyway, it's just, there's so much coming at us, like the building down here on 4th and Green. There's a house already there. It looks like it's been very well kept. Are you guys gonna plow that down to put in these condos that you want? Do the neighbors know about it? I didn't see any signs down there. So I just want more transparency, making us more aware of things that are going on. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you. Ms. Giddings.

Debbie Giddings, 1015 Southeast Boardner Drive. I want to acknowledge the changes to the city portal website. It is an important improvement from the old one, but I have some concerns as it relates to the development information aspect. In order to access the project development list contents, you have to create an account with the city. That's intimidating. Will my searches be tracked? Then you get to the account setup. Still, you can't see a document because you have to enter the code that shows up every single time you want to see a document. If it works, the page appears, but not all the listings have descriptions or are very dated. Finally, you find the PDP you wanted. Click, and you find circling dots tell you this may take some time. And it is downloaded to your computer to open. Why can't I just open it? Why does it have to be downloaded? I don't want that. Just today, I got locked out and had to call City Hall. They had no idea what was wrong and would have to start an IT request. I wanted to come to the meeting tonight and know what was going on, so I changed from Yahoo to Google, and it worked. I called City back, but the average citizen probably would have just given up. The development page itself has project lists at the bottom of the second web page. It used to be on the first. If you click on all those circles at the top, It seems logical you would find the information, but you get nothing about current projects. Also on the first page, there should be instructions about how to sign up for that city portal and how to be sat, the process of what it does. The first page the citizens encounter at the city website should have a calendar of city meetings that are open to attend. Also, we get neighborhood meetings for development projects that should be made known to the entire city not just the 300 foot boundary. These meetings can be attended by anyone, and by the time you find out about it on the city portal, they've already happened. Make it easy to find information that citizens can't take the time to search the entire website for. Speaking of finding out, I see the vacancy, just as Patty mentioned, for the council seat. Is a piece of paper posted inside City Hall the only way District 4 people are going to be aware of this? Nothing on the city webpage? There's lots of information available for the city's activity for the World Cup. It would be nice to have more of that type of communication. Speaking about the World Cup, the city gave $50,000 to help with expenses. Has there been an accounting of how that money was used? Is there still some left? Shouldn't the city have the excess returned? Transparencies go a long way with the community about how their tax dollars are used. I will have further comments at the appropriate time about the fourth and green project and the huge boutique hotel, but I'm not in favor either as they have been presented or will be presented. I'm here and I will be back. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Floyd?

Hey, my name's Chip. This is about the courts. So this is a bad situation. What I heard when the judges came up and presented was broken arrow. I heard broken arrow. If you know what that means, then you know what it means. Dire situation, emergency thing happening, let's fix it. I shared, Council Cravens, and counsel Frazier's and I hope other people's counsel's embarrassment and shame when I saw my judges, who worked for me, my judges come up and beg and entreat themselves and beseech you and the defense counsel implored you, do something to help us. Back in November, when they first rang the bell, There was some apathy. There were a couple of council members who either didn't want to hear it or couldn't find the mechanisms to change things. I saw that. And then comes August, and here they come again, pleading with another judge, the defense counsel, every probation officer, and a visiting judge saying, this is as bad as you heard that it was. What do you need to fix it? Let's pay for an expensive audit just to make sure they're not lying to us, all of the court staff and the judges. That came back to reaffirm what they communicated to you. This is a bad situation. The Titanic is sinking. The judges are too busy bailing water out of the hole to even think of what to do for a solution. They need help. Meow. Right meow. Yesterday. There are levers that you can turn. There are parliamentary procedures that you can exercise. There are things that you can do tonight to start to fix this situation. I know that there is. I'm not in charge, but if I was, it would have halfway been fixed by now. Why do I care? Who cares about judges and courts? They're just criminals. Whenever I was before a judge, bad things happened. So why the hell do I care about what a judge pleads for or how crowded the courts are? I couldn't help but empathize with them when they supplicated themselves like the tin man and the scarecrow coming before the wizard wanting a heart and a brain because they had nowhere else to go. Now you know you can't turn away because there's a study affirming what they said. We gotta fix this thing. This is about serving the public and it's about dignity of our barred, educated, credentialed, experienced jurists. who have pleaded with you for some solution. There's something you can do tonight. I know that there's at least one council who's willing to put herself on the line to help move this along. And I'm here for you, and I will help. That's it. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Daniel Hardin.

Oh, Daniel Harden, 3514 Southwest Winsong Drive. I had a couple issues I was going to bring up. Once again, the three-minute timer. I noticed at the last meeting, the courts, that wasn't part of the issue with how long they went on for. That was a very important issue. That isn't in part of the procedures as far as that goes, but the novelist and the thrash group, they went on for 39 minutes and 50 seconds. I set a timer for them, which is well beyond the 15 minute timer that they're allotted. They didn't even ask for the $4 million loan from us until the 24 minute mark. They had the audacity to do that at 24 minutes. but that's really not why I'm here today. I did an audit myself asking for every penny spent that came across the desk of every council member, the mayor, city manager, finance director, and director of finance, and all I received was three pages. And I don't know how to turn this thing on, but... Yeah, probably this way. Doesn't matter Yeah, thank you. Oh Thank you all I received were just three pages of redactions as you can see here, it's just Completely blank And the only thing that is supposed to be redacted on those pages is account numbers. As you can see, that is way more than account numbers. And the only other thing I received besides those were maybe two or three receipts from Uber Blacks. I mean, why take a normal car when you can get an Uber Black on the city's dime? If you have nothing to hide, I don't know why you wouldn't sign this petition for the outside audit. I mean, you made the courts go through it. So why shouldn't the people be allowed to have an independent audit from the state of Missouri? It only makes sense that we get to see what's going on since you wanted to see what the courts were doing. And that's pretty much all I had to say for today. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, last but not least, Ms. Amanda Squires.

Hi, my name is Amanda Squires. I'm the court administrator for Lee Summit Municipal Court. Judge Alteri was planning to come and speak with you all this evening. Unfortunately, she is still on the bench, so she sent me some notes and asked me to read them to you all. So she says, I had planned to come speak tonight, but I can't because I am still at the courthouse. My 8.30 a.m. docket ran into my 9.30 a.m. docket, which ran into my 10.30 a.m. docket. No employee got to take a break today. Our morning dockets concluded at 12.45 p.m., and we had 15 minutes to eat lunch and go to the bathroom because we had to start back at 1 o'clock. The 1 o'clock docket ran into the 1.30 docket, the 1.30 docket ran into the 2, the 2 docket ran into the 2.30, the 2.30 docket ran into the 3 p.m. docket, and we are still in court at 5.30. William, the probation officer that spoke three weeks ago, is still here. He arrived at 7 a.m. Brett, the other probation officer, arrived at 6, and he is still there and missing his son's football practice. Our public defender is still there. She arrived at 8 a.m. Nobody got a break other than 15 minutes. A court clerk was called a name, and we had a disturbance in the hallway because of our wait times. Our public defender was also yelled at today because of our wait times. From an email we got yesterday, it appears certain council members may be trying to send this to the budget and finance committee. That is another unnecessary delay. I need to thank Council Member Frazier for coming to court several times since we last spoke and spending her time to observe and become more informed about our courts. Judge Elsherry ends in saying this might not make sense, but I have been on the bench for nine consecutive hours with one 15-minute break, all while delivering decisions that affect our city. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. So we do have some presentations. We have... conceptual economic development incentive request from the land clearance redevelopment authority incentives for the fourth and green project omni 360 development as is the applicant just to kind of reaffirm in Lee summit we we are unique in the sense of before mr. Bush before you speak in the sense that we provide these conceptual opportunities for potential applicants just to vet out what they have in mind before too many resources are spent. We're a unique city. Most cities do not do this. This saves taxpayers money in many ways. It's a way to vet it out. And tonight, this type of meeting is not publicly noticed. because it's not an official application. So this is just for all of us to learn about what they have in mind and for us to consider and kind of give them some feedback whether they want to proceed or not. That's their decision. So, Mr. Bushek.

Yes, thank you, David Bushek, Economic Development Legal Counsel for the City. Your introduction was mostly what I was planning on saying. This is a conceptual presentation. This is not a public hearing. This is pursuant to the City's Economic Development Incentive Policy. This is an opportunity for the City Council to... consider at a conceptual level the project that they're proposing and the incentive request. The developer will present first, and then I will provide some comments after. And then the end result of this is for you to provide non-binding feedback to the developer regarding their incentive request, and they can decide whether they would like to proceed or not.

Thank you. Prior to you speaking, Council Member Pryor had a question, so...

I did. It was actually regarding the first public speaker. I was wondering if, Mr. Park, during council, what's that at the end, council round, council comments, if you could, I know the school district is doing some road work and stuff near Pleasantly Elementary and Pleasantly Middle School, but I didn't know if you needed time to prepare, but if you could maybe give us a quick rundown during council comments, will that affect the stuff he was talking about?

The staff roundtable.

Round table?

Step round table.

Oh yeah, during staff round table. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Okay, come on up.

Hi, good evening. My name's Ashley Siebert. My company is Omni 360 Development. We are a locally based real estate development and general contractor. Our office is right here on 4th Street. So really grateful and excited to be before you today. As you mentioned, Mayor Lopez, it's a chance to present this conceptually, get your feedback. I'm hoping for transparency, no matter which way you're leaning, just so we can kind of learn and evolve and decide if this is the right fit, which I wouldn't be here if we didn't think it was. So very, very grateful to be here. I'll kind of just go over a high-level overview of what you'll see today. I'll talk a little bit about myself and my team and our company, what the site is today and the location, kind of the vision and the dream that we've come up with for the project, how that aligns with our city's plans, how that will impact our community and our downtown urban core. and obviously the financial framework given the LCRA incentive ask and component. You're going to hear me say our a lot throughout this presentation because this project is unique because I live here. So I was born and raised in Lee's Summit, left to go to college for a bit, did the Brookside thing, and then when I started having kiddos moved back to raise my family here. So although we've been blessed to do projects in other locations throughout the KC Metro, This is truly a passion project for me. I live here, I work here, I own two businesses here, raise my kids here, so it just, it means a little bit more that we can do something so impactful for the community, which with, you know, I am. I'll go a little bit over who we are as a team, and then talk about also the structure of the project. So Omni360, we're unique in the sense that we're actually a vertically integrated company, so We don't just handle one component of the project. We handle this phase and kind of the conceptual, all the horizontal infrastructure. We handle the vertical construction because we are a GC. And then we are long-term owners and operators. So myself and my partners within Omni360 invest personally in all the projects that we do. And then majority of them we own and manage long-term. The property management piece is important. I'm sure you all know just as well as I do, no one takes care of something you own as much as you will. So although, you know, looking into credentials for how we could potentially execute this project and what projects we've done in the past throughout the Kansas City Metro, it's also about what happens after it's built, who's going to manage it, who's going to be there for the residents, who's going to take care of what it looks like and maintain landscaping and those sort of components. So to talk a little bit about the site as it stands today, the top picture is highlighting the outline of the land. So it's right there off of 4th Street. Our office is this tiny little white building next to social services right here. So it does not include the house. That house is currently used for commercial purposes, but it's not included within the boundaries. This right now is technically three separate parcels. So if we were to proceed, we would combine the three. So if you do that, it's approximately 0.96 acres. It's almost one full acre. The pictures on the bottom show you what it is today. It's just vacant land with a few trees. I do believe there used to be some single family residents on there at some point, but it's been a while. Um, the current zoning is our one, um, but it's completely surrounded by central business district. So if we were to proceed, we would move forward with a rezoning to that same zoning. Okay, so this is our grand vision and kind of dream for the project. This conceptual rendering, shout out to Roger and Sam at Collins and Webb who kind of helped me bring this to life. This is as if you're viewing along Fourth Street, kind of down the street and then at the corner of Green. So the concept is a townhome community. So I do want to emphasize that these are townhomes, not apartments. around 28 units and the configuration is kind of a stacked concept. We spent a lot of time on the design intent and what this feels like within our community and our downtown core. We wanted to enhance the walkability and kind of that live, work, resident life. So every unit has their own front door off of the street, and they walk into their home. So there isn't an internal corridor or an elevator like an apartment complex would have. Each has their own individual front door kind of right off the sidewalk. The setbacks are minimal. That was intentional to kind of really create that streetscape and that pedestrian walkway. All of the units have a rear entry attached garage. So that's kind of also unique to town homes where a little bit more privacy, a little bit more space and attached garages that you don't normally see from a typical apartment style community. It might be hard to tell from the rendering, but we spent a lot of time on the intention of the design and how that conforms and compliments, but not necessarily replicates what we have going on downtown. Obviously our main third street corridor here, Green Street, it's very traditional red brick. Majority of this facade is brick, but we tried to just differentiate it because it is a block over and a little bit more of a transition period from our main commercial drag. The concept is kind of a row home, so that's why you'll see the different roof lines and trim and variations in that style and some of the warm masonry. The intent was to make it look more residential. If you just did the same color across the board, it would feel a little bit more like apartments. The way that the stacked concept works is so the portion of the first floor and then half of the second floor is one unit. and then the other half of the second floor and the entire third floor is the second unit. In addition to the residential components, and this will make sense when I show you the next slide, which has the site plan and kind of how this is configured on the property. But we really did want to provide some sort of commercial component to activate that corner at 4th and Green. Obviously, it's a direct site from here, from Green Street, and there's that commercial businesses that kind of run all along. So we wanted to incorporate a commercial space for another small business opportunity on that corridor. We're anticipating smaller square footage, you know, maybe 1,500 to 1,700-ish square feet. It would serve much more of a, you know, office type, not necessarily retail or restaurant tenant, mainly because it's a little bit off the beaten path. We also have the rooftop concept, which you'll see in the rendering. This is TBD on really who this serves, to be honest. It depends on the commercial tenant and what their needs are. Perhaps that's an amenity for the commercial tenant, or perhaps it's an amenity for all of the residents within the town homes. So this is the site. This was kind of the corner I was showing you earlier with the commercial space. These are all the front doors that kind of line the street. The same applies for this building. So their front doors would come on the alleyway. You come in off green and then all the rear entry garages are along the backside. Spent a lot of time, this project has been in the, I know you're seeing it for the first time, but for us we've been working on this mainly since the beginning of the year. Trying to understand what best serves our community and our downtown local businesses, what's really needed. When we were envisioning the site and what could potentially go on it, I really asked myself two questions. What could be done here with such a small parcel that would really impact our city? And then what are we gonna do about parking? So I'll just address that now in case the question comes up later. But we have taken that into a lot of consideration because the parking requirements for the size of units that we have are pretty significant. The attached garages help, obviously, and then all along the entry point into the community we'll have parking. We're lucky to have good neighbors. I've had a lot of conversations and meetings with Father Tim at St. Paul's, We're working towards a parking agreement that's mutually beneficial, something that helps them but also helps us. So that will be something that will come forth in the rezoning and PDP process once we get there. I did fail to mention on the last slide the unit counts and sizing. So these will mainly be two- and three-bedroom units, and the starting square footage is around 1,200 square feet. Um, so that's also just something to keep in mind that was intentional based on, um, what is available within our downtown, um, today. So, again, townhomes were intentional because it's the missing housing choice. We do have, you know, apartments downtown. Those are mainly studio and one bedroom. There are some two bedroom options. And then we obviously have a lot of historic home and single family. But townhomes are something that's not really available. It's kind of the perfect bridge between traditional apartments and single family. A little bit more space, a little bit more square footage, privacy, and then the attached garage component. So that was the intent. It could serve young professionals, people who want to be in the downtown energy vibe, want to be able to walk to work or to restaurants. It also could serve the older generation that has kiddos going off to college and they want to downsize. I put the targeted rent there so you could understand from a price per square foot where we are in comparison to perhaps what Elevate or Ellis Glen has here within the community. It's the similar price per square foot, which equates to about $2,300 a month. The difference is the sizing, right? So our units are quite a bit larger with two and three bedrooms. That was intentional with more square footage versus the studios and ones that are more available here downtown. I probably will get asked the question why for rent and not for sale, so I'll go ahead and answer that now. Townhomes are just a little bit riskier from a for sale perspective and the absorption rate for them to sell takes quite a bit longer. We're already taking on quite a bit of risk to bring this project to life. And if you think about trying to build, you know, 14 condos at one time and sell them all at one time, That's a challenge and just quite frankly a risk that we're not willing to take in case they take years to sell. That wouldn't be good for the city either for them to be built sitting vacant. We have done plenty of townhome communities. Like I said, we own them and manage them, so we do have quite a bit more flexibility. We're not answering to someone. I will say when we go through the PDP process, if we get to that point, We will likely still condo them in that process because that gives us flexibility. Because if someone comes to us and is interested in leasing, but they also say, hey, I'd actually really like to buy one. Well, of course we would do that. We don't have any problem doing that. But saying that we could sell 28 is just not realistic. So in addition to design intent and kind of ideating on what this could be, we spent a lot of time reviewing our city's plans and how this project aligns. So we looked at the Ignite Comprehensive Plan, Downtown Master Plan, Unified Development Ordinance, Green Street, urban renewal, all the things, we looked at it. So I just highlighted here kind of what the city's vision was and how Fourth and Green kind of fits that piece. Transforming underutilized land, the city's vision is to encourage infill and redevelopment of underutilized properties throughout downtown. Fourth and Green is taking a vacant, completely underutilized land, producing not really anything for the districts currently and bringing it to life. Add more people downtown. The city's vision was to increase downtown residential opportunities, help support business and just local activity. So new homes means new residents, new people in our downtown spending at our local shops. Strengthen Green Street. So the city's vision was to establish Green Street as a destination. We know with the farmer's market and all the events, this is just another opportunity for residents at 4th and Green to walk down on a Saturday, hang out at the farmer's market, grab a coffee at Whistle Stop. Build a walkable downtown. So the city's vision was to create a pedestrian-orientated downtown where residents walk between home, shop, dining, civic. Again, that was the intent with the design. That was the intent with kind of the front-facing street concept, having those right off of 4th Street. Respect the downtown character. So obviously we want to reinforce our historic charm and respect the scale. That's why we went three stories, not four. And that's why we brought in kind of the warm masonry and those different exterior components. And then private investment, right? I've said this before, but this is something that we're investing personally on, and it's helping grow our tax base. So why the LCRA? This is a map of the downtown urban renewal area. The little yellow dot is the site today at 4th and Green. So we just wanted to highlight why we're asking for the LCRA tools to help us bring this to life. And this map is just showing they've designated this area as an area that they're willing to help. It is an underutilized site. I know there's been tons of conversations about blight and the definition of blight. No, there's not any sort of dilapidated property on the site, but it is an underutilized site. And you'll see that more when I get to the numbers. And then obviously our equity and financing is carrying the project. So we're not asking for taxpayer dollars. We're not asking for city dollars. We're simply saying that this project can't come to life without help. And so we're asking for the property tax abatement. Otherwise, it's simply not feasible. We can't do it and we can't get it financed. So what does downtown gain by 4th and Green being built? Obviously, we'll have more residents downtown, tons of more spending in our local shops and small businesses, a new corner storefront for another local business to come in, construction activity, right? It takes an army of people to build something like this and resources locally as we can. So that construction activity is great for other local businesses. I'll get into the extraordinary costs and how that infrastructure impacts it, but some of the requirements that we would do on the site wouldn't just help our project, it would help future growth and development. And then growing the tax base as well. So here's the feasibility piece and the extraordinary costs associated with downtown infill. I'm sure you've heard this before, but doing a downtown smaller infill site versus doing a development on a greenfield site is just more complicated. and more expensive. So some of the reasons for the cost are the underground stormwater detention. It can't just be a detention basin. It has to be beneath the site and that's a significant cost. Public water main improvements. So right now along 4th Street, it's a six and it needs to be an eight. So we would incur that cost privately, but that would obviously benefit any future development with that water main being upgraded by size. There are two alleyways along the perimeter of the project. we would be required to mill and overlay those. Again, just another added expense that's still a public benefit. Obviously, the additional downtown parking is a cost. And then just design conformity in general. Doing an all brick facade is necessary, but also expensive. So I really try to not get in the weeds about the numbers. I feel like sometimes from my perspective as a developer who does this for a living, It's just too much information. But at the same time, I believe in transparency. So I wanted to give you all the numbers for you to have the information. Normally, when a project is coming to life, the benchmark, which I'm sure you've heard before, is 8%. So what this slide is showing is the but-for test. Where does Fourth and Green sit without any incentive help compared to what a project normally requires from a return perspective and what could make it financeable? So with no incentives, we're at 5.4. As I said earlier, it's just a math problem. It doesn't work. So that's why we're here asking for help. The table on the right is showing you operating expenses and how we got to that 5.4% number. The net operating income, I just want to make sure everyone's aware, is not cash flow. That's not including the actual mortgage. It's just how you get to the 5.4% number. So what are we asking for? We're asking for LCRA 75% property tax abatement for 25 years. That is a value of $1.41 million. And then we're also asking for help on sales tax exemption on construction materials. That is a value of $393,000. I know there's a lot of emphasis on total project cost versus total value of incentives and what that percentage looks like, which is what I've shown at the bottom. It's 17.2% of project cost. or 1.81 million. One thing I just want to clarify, because you all mainly see incentives come through that are for apartment complexes. An apartment complex averages about 800 square feet a unit. And so their annual taxes are about $2,600. But these are townhomes, and they're significantly larger. So our annual taxes will be about 4,800. So I just want to give you that distinction. Um, so what does it look like today and what does that look like with the abatement? Um, so currently as the site sits today, annually, it's generating $2,000 in, uh, property tax revenue. So Lee summit school districts getting 13, a little over $1,300 and the city's getting $376. If the abatement is in place, even at the 75%, it's a 15.9%. increase right out of the gate. So year one, Lee Summit R7 school districts would increase to 21,000 and the city would increase to 6,000. Then the table shows you once we get to year 26 and the abatement period is over, that's the full valuation. So where does the request sit within the city's incentive history? This is based on the last five years, I believe, so it wouldn't include anything from 2026 or anything that's potentially been approved recently. LCRA average, and again, this is total project costs in comparison to the incentive ask. The LCRA average is about 8.4%. If you include all incentives across the board, CIDs, some of those other components, it's 17.1. Our request at 4th and Green is right in line at 17.2. The highest LCRA ever awarded was almost 25%. That was another downtown infill project, Ellis Glen. So you can see we're in line with the costs of infill. I did want to point out, because it may be asked why 75% and why 25 years. Even at that, it doesn't close the gap and we don't get to this magical 8% number. It just helps bridge it to make it more realistic. Even if we were to come before you today and ask for 100% abatement, which obviously we wouldn't do, that only gets us to 6.9%. So I tell you that because I'm just trying to explain how big the gap is and why we're asking for what we're asking. So we believe in integrity and accountability, but I can't tell you that. I can show you that. So we're here today to say, you know, we're invested for the long haul. This is our risk, but we are also needing help. And so we're open to any sort of accountability, you know, that's meaningful and true to a partnership, you know, benchmarks, compliance requirements, clawback provisions, any of that we're open to. Um, we have met with the school district. Um, I did meet with Dr. Buck and Dr. Shelton to discuss the project, talk about the incentives, talk about the ask. So they have been informed. That's it. I'm happy to answer any questions. I think Ryan or maybe Derek's going to come up and do their portion. I really appreciate your time. I hope you can understand the passion and the intent that went into this. And so I really hope for your feedback so we can decide.

Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Bushek.

All right. Ms. Siebert did a very nice job presenting the project, so I won't go through any of the details about the project. I'll just get right into the economics of the incentive request and not repeat the project details. So to begin with, the developer's request, I typically analyze this from a timeline perspective. So during the construction period, one of the incentives they're requesting is sales and use tax exemption on the construction materials. which is fairly standard. You've received this type of request many times in the past. They're requesting a full exemption for sales tax on construction materials. And then for 25 years, as Ms. Siebert said, the request is 75% abatement. The way that scales out based on the units, the calculations are about $4,500 in taxes per unit without the abatement, And with 75% abatement, that results in what would be the equivalent of a pilot of about $1,144 per unit. So that's how this scales out. And this number, if you remember these numbers, there's another table I'll show you in a moment to provide some comparisons. Property tax benefits to the taxing districts. The first column shows the taxes that were generated by these three parcels last year, a little over $2,000. And then this table also breaks down by taxing district with the city highlighted for you to see that easily. And then based on their request, the pilots and taxes during the first year would be about $33,500. And so if you recall back to slide number 15, I thought this was an interesting benchmark. I've never seen somebody compare it quite like this before. But her slide number 15 presented a number to you which is 15.9. If you recall, it was 15.9 times additional revenue. And what she was specifically saying was that's this number here compared to this number here. Taxes today are a little over $2,000. Taxes during the first year after completion of the project would be $33,000. And so that 15.9 benchmark in her slide number 15, that's comparing these two numbers. You go from $2,000 to about $33,000 in taxes during the first year. And then over the entire 25-year period, It's about a million dollars total in taxes to the taxing districts, and you'll see the city's benefit portion highlighted in green again. Value of this incentive request to the developer, it's about a $10.5 million project. The value of the sales tax exemption is close to $400,000. The net present value of the real property tax exemption they're requesting, when you take into account net present value at 6.5%, which is about what we've been using for several years now, is about $1.4 million in value to the developer. So the total value of this incentive request compared to the total project cost, it's about 17.2% of the project cost as she indicated. And then specifically the impact to the city, the sales and use tax portion and the real property tax abatement portion is itemized down here, and that's approaching 20% of the total value of the incentives, which means 80% of the impact of this incentive is borne by other taxing districts and not the city. And then the one-page summary, that I typically provide to you to give you a very simple snapshot of what this incentive request is. Using one source, land clearance for redevelopment authority, and I already explained to you on the first slide, sales tax exemption on construction materials at 100%, this is the benefit to the developer, and then the real property tax abatement, which we've talked about, that's the benefit. So this is the simple summary of what the developer's request is when you weigh through all of the numbers that they've provided. This is a table that We have presented to the city council on various occasions in the past, and this itemizes the city's use of incentives for residential projects. And I won't go through all the numbers, but I'll just highlight what these two tables show you. The table on the top indicates what the taxes would be if there was no abatement. So we look at all of the various projects that the city council has provided incentives for in the past. And these are largely apartment projects, I would note. We track the value of these, the assessed value, the tax bill, the number of units, and so forth. And so the useful data from this chart is what the taxes would actually be if there were no incentives, as a point of comparison to the second chart, which is the pilots that are actually being paid by these projects. And you can see the evolution of the pilots and the amount of taxes that are paid on a per-unit basis over time. The city went through a period where some of these apartment projects here were in the range of 1800 to $1,600 in taxes per unit. And then the most recent projects that the city council has approved have a much lower per door taxes because these, I think Oldham village East village, um, apartments and town homes were also 75% abatement. So that's a point of comparison to this project. And you'll see that these, um, taxes for the pilot actually per unit is much lower for the reason that she just explained in her presentation. These are much larger units. They're much pricier units as compared to apartment units, and that's why you see these dollars scale differently. And so the average that all of these apartment units are paying on a per unit basis is a little over, it's close to $13.50, and that's a point of comparison to the developer's data also for you to analyze. And then the last chart, this is the summary of all of the incentives that the city has historically provided since the year 2000. We've been regularly updating this chart, and I won't go through all of these. But the thing that we typically focus on at this point is the averages at the bottom. And one of the things that you'll see, the LCRA average, when you look at this chart up here, I think one of the more interesting facts, which we really don't take time to talk about extensively, is we have a number of projects that have been provided incentives. But if you look at this portion of the table over here, There's different incentive tools used in many cases, there are multiple tools used for certain projects. So we have a growing list of data, and I think we have a very extensive data set now to compare to. So back to the averages. The average amongst all of the incentives is about 16.7% across all of the projects and everything that the city council has approved for the last 26 or so years. And then you see the averages by the different types of tools. So the developer statement that their incentive request is essentially right in the middle of the range that the city council has approved in the past is accurate. The range is typically between 5% and 25%, and their request is around that 17%, which is in the ballpark of the average that the city council has approved in the past. Let's see, a few other points that I can make to conclude. You will notice that they are not requesting any deviation regarding sales tax, so any sales taxes that might result from this property, and that might be relatively minimal if it's office as opposed to retail commercial, there's no sales tax change from this. This obviously generates more housing, more shoppers for the downtown area. One interesting kind of footnote is the downtown CID does include some of this property, but actually not all of this property, and I thought this might be useful for you to see also. I just looked this up today. This is the map of the downtown CID boundaries from the CID's website that I printed three hours ago. And you'll notice the corner here, this corner, sorry, down here. Am I in the right place? Yes, right here. This is the corner. So the project would be located essentially here. This line here is effectively the alley that she indicated next to the parking lot there. And so what you see is the corner where the retail would be located is not actually in the boundaries of the CID. And that's one thing that we talked about with the developer. That may not matter if it's all office commercial as opposed to retail commercial, but that's something that we may need to take into account as this moves forward, depending on what your feedback is. And then the other thing that I would note is, The other types of taxes that have not been quantified would still be paid. The excise tax, the city's park impact fee, any of the other taxes that are associated with development in the normal course of developing would be paid by this project. That concludes my opening comments. Hopefully that gives you a good summary of what the incentive request is and the data, and I'd be happy to answer your questions.

Great, thank you. Yeah, we'll start off with Mayor Pro Temp-Shields.

Thank you, Mayor. With respect to the public improvements on the site, so there's, I believe the developer talked about upsizing a water main. I know there's some other kind of extraordinary infrastructure costs. Is there anything else of those extraordinary costs that you would consider like a public benefit that would benefit other properties in the future or the city's?

I don't think we've identified anything, but I'm going to, I think the answer is no, no other extraordinary public improvements.

Okay, so things like the underground stormwater alley improvements are really just for that site specifically?

Yes, I think that's probably accurate. And the mill and overlay of the alleys, that would be a public benefit, but it's not in the nature of traffic flow, additional traffic capacity, that kind of thing.

Okay. I guess to take maybe a generous read on it, when you include the mill and overlay and the water line upsizing, what kind of costs are we talking about in terms of the kind of public benefit?

I don't have an answer to that question. That's something that we could analyze if this moves forward, but we haven't. We haven't specifically asked about it.

To the developer, is that something you have at least a rough estimate of?

No, I don't, because we're not far along with the city to know how long the main needs to be updated, what those measurements look like, and what the cost impact is going to be. We're just not there yet.

Okay. I guess I feel like you must have some estimate because like you're telling us what the total project cost is. So you must have. Yeah.

The total project cost is including land acquisition, horizontal development estimate, which is about 1.8 million. So that includes everything basically below the ground that happens, which would include the water main. and then the vertical construction of the building itself. So I can't give you a specific number just for the water main because I don't have the information from the city yet on what the sizing and how long that run's going to be on 4th.

Okay. I think that's information that I would want to know going forward. I'll start with, like, I like the project as a whole. I think it's, I live downtown. I think it's a good fit for downtown. I walk by that site all the time. It's on my way to take my son to play at the playground there at Green Street. So it definitely is underutilized. I look at that and I say there's nothing wrong with it, but it's this big empty lot in the middle of our thriving downtown that could definitely be put to better use in terms of retail, commercial, residential. I like the idea of the town homes. I think the design looks great. in keeping with the character of downtown without trying to exactly copy it and kind of mixing it with commercial, which it's definitely a transitional place right there. Like you said, it's next to a single family home that's being used as commercials next to other commercial. You go another block, there's single family homes. So it kind of feels like a good transition there. So overall, I have no issue with the project. I do want to understand a little bit more about the incentives and the public benefit. I understand that the project isn't financially feasible without the incentives. But one of the criteria I always look at is in terms of how much of that is basically tax redirection where we're getting some public improvement that'll serve the rest of the city. Sure. As opposed to just increasing a profit margin. Yep.

And I think when we come through around the next time, if we do, we would have the full outline line items of full pro forma, what those development costs are, what those infrastructure costs are, so you could see it more itemized instead of a lump sum.

Yeah, that would be helpful. I guess then the other question I kind of ask myself is, if not this, then what? Because it seems like it's a prime location, so it feels like something should have developed or will develop on there. But if it's not this project with this incentive package that makes it happen, what would go there? Do you own the lots, or are you thinking,

No, I'm currently under contract. So it depends. It depends on how all this goes. Um, it's a good point because it's like, what's the best and most beneficial use for this particular site. Um, one could argue that it should be office to, to bring more employment. Cause obviously that's very impactful to our city at the same time for a 0.9, six acre site and the ability for people to park. it's pretty unrealistic. So that's why the design is what it is, and that's why we came to this conclusion, because of the configuration and just the components of an infill site itself, it's kind of hard to do something different.

Yeah, and that kind of makes sense to me. I could also see it being a couple of single-family homes, but it feels like it's too close to kind of a commercial for that to really work. I mean, I'm fine for people to build a single-family home wherever they want to. I just have a hard time seeing it. Developing that way. Yeah, especially because it's surrounded by commercial exact so and there's a there's a house on the corner Next to st. Paul's but other than that, it's all business district so yeah and and and and even if it did from our from my perspective here and the city like something like this feels like it provides housing to more people plus commercial plus higher tax revenue for the city so like that all seems to me to point in the direction of something like this, but I I would be comfortable to move forward, but I would want to see more information about those public benefits. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Council Member Funk.

Thank you, Mayor. Ashley, can you just spell out your timeline? If this were to move forward, obviously we've got a lot of work you've got to do with staff and things like that, but if this were approved, what would be your projected timeline?

Yep. So the next step would be to go in front of the LCRA, which I think the earliest I could do that would be August 24th. Then we'd go through the entire rezoning PDP final development plan, that whole process over the next several months. My goal would be to start infrastructure and groundwork at the end of this year, which takes at least six to nine months. Vertical construction takes another 12 months. So at that point, we're probably talking 18 months. So early 2028 is probably the most realistic time that this could be done.

So you're willing to move fast. You're ready to go. Okay. No, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you.

Council Member Pryor.

Thank you, Mayor. I think it's a beautiful project. I really like it. My only hesitation is the incentive, and that's... Not necessarily. It's more just I have a hard time incentivizing residential. I do appreciate that you're putting quite a bit back in infrastructure. Quite a bit is going towards infrastructure costs that will also benefit other development. But overall, I think it's a beautiful project. I'd like to see it move forward. I am slightly hesitant on the incentive request.

thank you thank you and i really like that you hold on long term too so i think that's great thank you thank you councilmember cravens thanks mayor so i do like the look of it that that's i think that would definitely fit well in our downtown community i too had questions about how far the the city improvement or infrastructure improvement would go because when we talk about incentivizing projects, what's that give and take? What does the city really get by incentivizing such a large amount? So I would love to see that be built out a little more, more information there. But I did have a couple of questions that I just wanted clarity on. I know you talked about additional parking. Was that additional parking only for those units or was that additional public parking because I know downtown is getting tight and the more that we build, if there are developments that can come in and give us some additional parking space, that definitely will be beneficial.

It depends on what happens between Father Tim and us and how the configuration of additional parking between his property and our property come together. So I wouldn't be able to answer that today because we truly don't know. Um, but once we figure out the parking agreement, um, that, that would be, that would come forth in the next application cycle. Gotcha. Okay.

So yes, we'd love to know that piece of things. Um, You talked about other projects that you guys have. Where are the townhomes, similar projects that we can maybe look at as well? Yeah, of course.

So I've mainly done townhome ground-up development. I did a project in Kansas City, kind of over by the Raytown area. Those are all duplexes. If you go to my website, I can give you my card. That shows you all the projects that we've done. I did a 110-unit townhome community in Raymoor, Missouri. So if you have any colleagues over there at the city, they have really great things to say. We still own that. And then, you know, we're under construction for some town homes up north. So we do a lot of town home development.

Okay, great. And then I guess my last question is how did the conversation with the superintendent, the school, school district.

Um, it went great. They, they understand there's, you know, they're, they're not supportive, but they do have a board policy that anything over 50% they can't support. So it kind of is, is what it is. I, I went for the sake of transparency. I, I kind of knew that's what they were going to say. So cool.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Good. Thank you. Appreciate that council member Atkins.

So did you say their policy is that they can't support when the When the total cost is over 15%?

When the ask is above 50% for the abatement. And since we're at 75%, that's why they can't support it. So he'll come to any sort of public hearing and express his comments if he needs to. But by board policy, they are not allowed to say they can support something that's over a 50% ask, is my understanding.

Thank you. Can you go back to the slide that talked about the parking and the layout of the area? Yes, but I'm going to have to go back to...

Okay, this one.

Yeah, I missed what the, what's the left-hand building? Is that the, is that a second building?

Yeah, yeah, so it's the same thing that you saw here. It's just a second one in an L-shaped configuration here.

Oh, two of them side by side. Oh, I missed that. Like this. That they're going to be, I thought it was one. Okay, so two separate buildings.

And that was intentional, so we had an additional driveway, essentially.

And both of them would have that, like,

Sky room at the end the two layers from no, so that's that's specific to the commercial piece So that's this corner right here because we wanted to activate kind of that corner of fourth and green So that is the commercial component that's specific to this building This building would just look like what the rest of this building does which is basically this without the commercial Corner does that make sense?

Mm-hmm. Okay, so you would have a tenant there a commercial tenant for office space or And then the parking would be between you and Feather Hill in between there. Enough parking for all the residents? Like would there be at least one spot or two spots? How would you?

At least. I think our parking requirements are 75 spaces. We don't need space for 75 cars. A two-bedroom is usually one occupant because they have an office, and then a three-bedroom is usually two. but the parking requirements for the city are pretty substantial. I don't remember them exactly, but I know our total number that we have to meet is about 75 parking spots. So obviously we get one parking spot for each unit for the garage, and then this will be all aligned with parking. But that's why we've been in conversations with Father Tim, because to meet the city requirements for the parking ratio, we need additional by way of code, but not by way of really residents needing it. if that makes sense.

And is the garage on the back end, like where we can't see? Is it on the back side?

Well, you would be able to see it from the back side, but you can't see it from the street. So it's rear entry.

An enclosed garage, like garage comes down?

Yep, just like a house, but on the back side.

And then parking spots against them. Okay. I will say that this type of missing middle is exactly the type that we need in Lee Summit very badly. Like we know that our Master Plan says 65% single and 15% apartments. And then the missing middle should be 20%. And we are not at our 20% yet. And this is exactly the type of housing that we need more of. And statistically, it's a really good type of housing to build up the downtown area and to mix it inside of commercial and residence is a really, really good way to use the infill. So I'm really in support of this type of housing because this is exactly what we're missing. But I'm sensitive to the 17.2%. I'm more comfortable in that 15% range. It might be arbitrary, but it's just where my comfort zone has been with the last 20 years of seeing them come through. So if you've done other townhomes, if you have a different design build, if there's something that you could tweak, To bring it down to the 15%, I'd feel more comfortable with it, especially since many of these edits are under the building, unless you can provide more detail about how many other businesses those sewers would impact. If you're building eight-foot pipes, then what else is that impacting? If you could be real specific about who else it impacts, if it impacts the church, that's great. If you can find other ways to explain what it's impacting, that's all good. super important information. And I do appreciate the extra people down there being able to shop and walk and have access to everything. And this helps our housing balance. So I do appreciate that. So thanks. I'd like to learn more from you.

Thank you. Council Member Frazier.

I appreciate the continuum of housing. And I echo my colleagues here. And I think this is exactly what we're looking for. I, too, am hesitant or would like to be able to tweak the incentive, and that's great. It sounds like we have opportunity to do that. I want to clarify, you know, from a parking standpoint, I know that you mentioned there was 75 or so. Do those include... The question is twofold. In the front on... I guess that's on Green Street. Is there parking there? you know, pull in or parallel. And then my other question is pertaining to the garage spaces. Is that one garage or a double garage per unit? And is that dependent on the number of bedrooms?

Sure. So there is parking along Green and along 4th right now, just public parking. So if guests or residents wanted to park on the street, they could. I actually don't know if that counts towards the ratio. So we could get clarity on that, or I could at least with Ryan. Majority of them would be a one-car garage. It's the only way to fit the configuration. So a one-car garage for one car per unit.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Again, I just echo everything the folks up here have said, and I'm excited. Like I said, I think it fits into the continuum. I've said it before from college graduation to my mom or me. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Council Member Carlisle.

Thank you, Mayor, and I echo a lot of what's already been said, so I won't repeat that. I do think they're beautiful. I do think this is a good match for downtown. I was a little sad when you said that they're going to be rentals only, but then you also said you would be willing to sell if somebody wanted them, so I thank you for that, that willingness at least. I'm kind of along the same lines with everybody else. This isn't a huge ask. I understand there's a lot of work that's going to have to be done to put those there, but I do want more details on what it is. Is it only for this project, or will it help flow down the way or wherever, what have you? Sure. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. I think that's everyone up here on the dais. Just to kind of recap, what I've heard up here and maybe helps you as well. A lot of pluses, you've got a lot of pluses. I mean, people, I mean, everyone here likes the higher quality look that you're proposing. I do as well. It's complimentary to what's happening downtown in the vicinity, which that's a big thing. So you guys have hit the mark on that. You're following the strategic plan. and the downtown plan. It's more housing options that's been brought up several times, the missing middle, those things that are in the strategic plan. So all those things are great. It's just more housing options for downtown and overall for Lee Summit. It's a unique product that you see in other historic kind of downtowns. I've seen those in Bentonville, Arkansas. So I like that. But kind of like everyone else, I think you know kind of you've got a good firm kind of idea of where we're at. I think the ask itself, you know, being at 75% abatement, I've heard, you know, if it could be less overall, like closer to 15%. That number was thrown out. I'm not saying that's the number, but if we can go back with staff and maybe kind of work on that a little bit. public improvements. I think that's the other thing. We just need a little bit more definition on what the true benefit is for public when there's incentives involved. And I know that that takes time and an effort and maybe an expense. But I think that would help us to feel kind of get us over the top a little bit overall. And I think it's really important Projects like this that downtown as we all know is a prize jewel right for all of us for people that live here people that have businesses here just least summit residents in general and You know, I don't know what if you've talked to neighbors, I think that that would be important You know before you come in and present formally to us with an application But overall, I think I think you're getting good vibes. We just need a little bit more clarity. So I hope that's helpful. I

Yes, very much.

Yeah. Do you have any other questions or comments?

I think I'm good.

Other questions or comments? We good? Okay. Hopefully that helps. Mr. Bush, anything else from you? All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right. We'll proceed. We have one more presentation. Um, as, as we all know here in the room, uh, we have a vacancy on the city council for district three and, um, Kind of a good thing is we sort of went through this process about a year ago. So we sort of have an idea of how you proceed with a process like this. And I think it's important for all of us and the city to be transparent about that process. So the next presentation, I think, is who's going to be the next one? Mr. Dunning, we'll kind of kick it off and then we can have some discussion.

Thank you, Mayor Lopez. Mark Dunning, city manager. As you mentioned, a vacancy of District 3 Council Office. And as we experience a vacancy in a Council seat, then we refer to the Charter and now an ordinance on the process by which that vacancy is filled. And so I'll start with the Charter provision. It's very clear in the Charter when a vacancy occurs. the current council, remaining council, shall appoint a qualified member, a qualified citizen, to fill that seat until the next regular municipal election. So based on that language, The way that would work is all of you would appoint a qualified individual to the council seat until April of 2027, because that's the next regular municipal election in which it affords the application process, filing process to occur. And so that's the charter provision. The charter does not dictate the process by which that occurs. And then 2025 is when the council at that time codified a process by which to fill the vacancy. And so that was information that I provided to all of you, some background information from the 2025 process. And I know that Mayor Tim Shields took that framework into and propose some dates that would be applicable to this current situation. So I'm happy to pull up any documents that may be helpful, but that's generally, I would also say that ordinance, it makes it very clear, right, once the vacancy occurs, that the next regular session of the city council, this shall be discussed and application process put in place. So that's the purpose of putting it on this agenda so that we can receive that direction from all of you to, proceed with an application process.

Any questions, comments? I know people want to talk about this. Any takers? Council Member Funk.

Thank you, Mayor. I think the, so understanding this, Mr. Dunning, so we wouldn't, due to the fact that this is a charter year, we're having an election in 27? Is that correct?

Regardless, if we had something on this election, per the charter provisions, it's the next regular municipal election. So in the case we didn't have anything on this April ballot, it would be District 3 council seat only for District 3.

I'll share with my colleagues. I think The first thing that comes to my mind is we're going to appoint someone that will be close to September. The time we get that person acclimated and up to speed of what we're doing and the investment that the city is going to make into this person. They're going to have five months and then we're going to go back to an election process. Just just a thought. I know we can. We can make some changes here on the dais, but I just wanted to put that out there that I think that's just a short window of time for someone to serve and do what they need to do for their district. But I'm open. I just wanted to put that on the floor to everybody.

So thank you, Mayor. So if I could, Council Member Funk, so is your point that for us to maybe consider something else?

I would consider if this person that we appoint would serve out the term of that District 3 person. Okay, so that was the real question. Sorry, I should have clarified that. I just think we're taking a very short window of time and investing in someone that is going to have to turn around and run for an election that may not be reelected, and then we're going to bring another person on that is going to be brought up to speed and have a year to serve or less.

Okay, I just wanted to clarify that. I appreciate that. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Shields.

Thank you, Mayor. So my understanding is that, well, I understand, because I thought about this timeline and I'm like, wow, that's quick. But we owe it under our charter and under our ordinances to provide the citizens of the third district with full representation immediately, or as quickly as possible. But also, I think under our charter, which we do not have the ability to override, that we have to call for an election at the next municipal election date. So I think that's... Love it or hate it, I think it's just our charter is our constitution and we can't pass an ordinance that overrides that is my understanding. Unless our city attorney or someone wants to correct me, do I have that right?

Scott Eisen, Chief Counsel, Infrastructure and Recreation. Council Member Schultz, you said it is correct. We have to follow the charter in this case, although what Council Member Funk discussed is very reasonable and probably something that's best to do. In this case, our charter specifically sets forth, and it uses the word shall, that the council shall appoint a person to the position, and then it further goes on to say until the next available municipal election. And that's defined by state statute as, I believe, the second Tuesday in April. And by my math, it would make it April 6th. So although it's very reasonable what we're talking about doing, the unfortunate situation is our charter is our constitution, and we have to follow the charter, and we cannot pass an ordinance that overrides our charter language. So short answer, yes, Council Member Schultz.

Okay. So... Given that, I think the ordinance that we passed in 2025, I guess, we set out a pretty clear time frame in terms of within this many days we will open applications, closed applications, review applications, interview candidates, and all that. So I think I'm pretty comfortable. The timelines I was looking over, it gives time for everybody to apply, but it's still pretty aggressive in terms of allowing for a couple of weeks for those applications and giving us time to review them and appoint someone. Kind of the dates that I had looked at were to open an application period yet this week, like maybe August 6th, which would give staff time to get the website portal up and whatever we need for people to be able to fill that out, close applications on August 21st, and then have, I think, our September 1st meeting, although I think that might be Labor Day, so do we have a meeting that day? If memory serves.

I think we have a meeting that day. I do think we have one in September on the 1st, the 8th, and then we skip one. I think there's MML in there and then follow-up.

Okay, I said. I did look at our calendar. But anyway, I think the current ordinance allows for us, if we have many applications, to narrow it down to a reasonable number to interview, and then we could do the interviews on September 8th. I think that's when I, and I'm totally open to discussion within the framework of the ordinance that exists. I think we'll be able to move things a week or so one way or the other. But to me, that felt like enough time to put out public notice, make sure that the citizens of the third district are aware that they can apply for this, fill out their applications, give us time to review them, interview someone, get someone in place. To me, it's a balance between making sure that the third district has full representation but also making sure that we make a thoughtful decision and so That's kind of the framework that I proposed But I would love to hear if you guys agree disagree want to see something different If you like the set of questions that I put in there and all that kind of stuff Mr. Dunning, maybe you could pull up that document.

Yep.

I sure can I Think that's all I have right now.

Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate the extra work on that council member Atkins Thank You mayor

And thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, for drafting what the proposal would be. And once Mr. Dunning has it up, if you could walk through verbally with us what the proposal would be, because I have, I'm not really sure what the process would be in between, like if we open it up for two weeks or three weeks for applications, then we receive the applications. Are we supposed to be meeting individually with people or having coffees or like how, what's the behavior supposed, what's the expectation in between receiving applications and then doing a if we do a public panel of some sort like what what what is the ethical way to do this while we're waiting between Everything because if we if we receive applications by August 21st We may not need to wait all the way till September 8th. We could do it faster you know, I'm just, I haven't studied this completely, but if you could walk through it.

Yes, please. So just to, the reason I did it in that order, and we could add a special session to do this, but the reason I did it that way was because the first meeting, as soon as the applications closed, the first regular meeting we had on calendar, I said that's the date we could narrow applications, and then the next meeting after that would be the date for interviews. So I just did it based on our existing calendar, but if we want to add any special sessions or anything to do this, like we could absolutely, I think, move it up a week. And still, I think there is in the ordinance a minimum amount of time between when the application closes and when we...

Right. No less than 14 days, but no more than 30.

Is that for the application period? That's the application period. But after the application is closed, I think there has to be a certain amount of time before we... Look at them. Maybe you need to pull that one up, too.

Maybe it's easier if I just...

When you suggested this timeline and procedure, this process, was that exactly what we did a year ago?

This was taken directly from what we did a year ago, but just updated dates based on our current meeting calendar, and then I, like... In the application a year ago, we had a question about how would you plan for World Cup? I took that out because obviously that's not applicable anymore, and I kind of cleaned up a little bit.

More so the timing.

But yeah, the timing was very similar.

All right, appreciate that.

Thank you. But yeah, so tonight we have to call for applications. Then it's 14 to 30 days to review them. Then we see all the applications. and then not less than seven nor more than 30 from the date of application. So we have to wait at least one week from when applications close to hold a meeting under our current ordinance. That's that number six there on the screen. So.

There you can ask questions. Thank you, thank you, Mayor. Can you provide more, my specific like question mark is what do we do with ourselves between the application day and when we... come to the council meeting at a public forum? Are we supposed to be trying to meet individually with everybody? I think that would be up to you, council member. I mean, you especially.

These are all your constituents, so. Yeah, I'm never going to tell you not to have a meeting with them. I just don't know what the expectation is.

Like, you know, I just want to do it correctly. I don't want to do anything.

I mean, it's not a public hearing where there would, maybe a city attorney, but it's not like a public hearing where we can't have an ex parte conversation. There's nothing to prohibit someone from. Meeting and talking with someone who's an applicant? Is that correct?

That is correct, Council Member Shields. There's nothing in the ordinance that specifies how or when to communicate with potential applicants or applicants for the position. Obviously, we have the Sunshine Law that comes into play. All of you cannot meet privately with somebody or a quorum of you cannot meet privately with somebody in order to discuss it. However, I think it's appropriate if council members want to on an individual basis to sit down with the individual, discuss their qualifications, discuss what your expectations are of this individual, just like any job applicant or anybody else that you would do it with. And I think that's, you know, it's probably a smart ideal to do that with that individual within the time frame that's set forth in there. It's not a requirement that you do it, but it's probably a smart ideal like you talked about doing, Council Member Atkins.

And since we're talking about that, I would offer, too, that when we go into this mode, right, and we know that we have applicants no different than if we were in a regular election, right, if we're inquired here at the city for information from the city, we want to make sure we provide that information to all applicants. So that's the way we would operate here as an organization. We go back into that mode. But from your all's perspective, no, having open discussions about, you know, the roles and responsibilities and expectations, that's entirely up to you.

Yes. Council Member Pryor.

Thank you. I like Council Member Shields' timeline. I think that that's probably the most realistic timeline, even though I'd love to hurry it along. But I can't remember last time. I know we talked about possibly allowing citizens to submit questions during the interview process, or did we just come up with them? I can't remember which one we ended up.

I think we did allow citizens.

Did we allow them? No.

Yeah, the way that that was structured is during that application process, citizens could, and we provided that form online, that if they had questions, that the council could consider, right? We compiled those questions, and then we provided them to you to pick through and figure out what questions you might want to ask them for the meeting.

Okay, so as long as people in that district, I mean, I know it's open to the whole city, but it can feel like they're engaged in the process. I think that's important. I think that is included in here.

The residents will be invited to submit questions.

Okay, perfect. Thank you.

Okay. I'm not seeing any other questions or comments. I think I'm getting the feeling, if nothing's on there, that most of us are comfortable with the proposed process that Mayor Pro Tem Shields has presented. Getting some heads nodding. And I think from my perspective, again, having gone through this, seems like just not too long ago. I think time is of the essence. I think we do need to get started. The sooner the better for a lot of reasons. There's too much stuff going on within the community, too much business that we're addressing. And it's not fair to the residents of District 3 not to have full representation. So that's my opinion. And so it's not fair to Council Member Atkins to be the solo representative. Council member in that district. So so yeah, so if you guys are okay with that, let's proceed with what you're recommending So let's do it. Does that help you?

I'm seeing yes I'm seeing consensus and I would let you know that with regard to staff being prepared we're in a position to begin on August 6th to have this information publicly available in the forums and everything else to facilitate the process.

Excellent. Thank you all. Oh, you have a question?

And Mr. Dunning, I assume that the city will put out ample information on the city website, city social media channels, make sure that citizens are all aware of the opportunity to apply? That's correct.

We'll use our platforms.

And submit questions too, as Council Member Pryor mentioned. That's correct. Awesome. Thank you.

All right. Thank you all. Appreciate that. All right. We're going to proceed with the agenda. We have a resolution. Resolution number 26 dash 14 a resolution authorizing the mayor to appoint successor directors to the i-470 CI community improvement district Thank you, we have a motion by mayor for Tim Shields and a second by councilmember Craven Cravens to approve resolution number 26 dash 14 any discussion Hearing none, please cast your vote Listen one All right. All votes are in. Resolution passes 8-0. Please record the vote. Thank you. That takes us to, that's it, committee reports. Mayor Patem Shields.

Thank you. So we will have a CDC meeting on August 12th. I know we've got another council meeting before that, but I wanted to mention this one because we'll be starting to talk about our incentive policy review. And so we'll just start to talk about what that process will look like. It's probably going to be a little bit of a long process, hopefully engage some community stakeholders and things like that. That will go through committee and then also come to council for approval. But I just wanted to let everybody know, so if there are aspects of our incentive policy that you have particular questions, concerns, anything that you want to be a part of this discussion to definitely reach out to myself or Vice Chair Pryor or to city staff such as Mr. Elam to let them know so we can make sure that's part of the discussion. So I just want everybody to be included since this is a big topic. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Council Member Funk.

Thank you, Mayor. We had the beginning of the month, we had our legislative governmental relations meeting. We had one topic that we drilled down on, and that was the RFP for our lobbyist. We're expected to get that out here real soon. So we'll have that out on the street for bid shortly. Great. Thank you. Appreciate that.

Council Member Pryor? All right.

All right.

Then that takes us to council comments. Council comments. Anybody else? Any last words? Council Member Atkins.

Yes, Mayor, I do have some comments, and I might have to ask you to recuse while I ask about court topics. May I ask about the court topics with the attorney here? Should I ask you to leave in order to talk about it?

If she asks a question, if there's a conflict.

I don't know that you need to technically recuse. If it's just a question...

Okay. Well, then, yeah, so you let me know if we need to kick him out.

Kick me out.

But my question is that I will say that I am so impressed by all the things that have happened in the last few years. You guys have launched a visitor's bureau and you've overhauled the EDC and you have overhauled the public safety and the communications facility and the joint communications and added multiple firehouses, like we have completely overhauled almost every department and water and public works are accredited and Lisa Parks and Rec is booming, like everything is booming and booming and it's amazing. But the next department is courts and it does feel very urgent because it's so tangible. And I was in the in the audience in November when that first when when the judges both came and presented but I was very moved at the time and that kind of sealed my Willingness to run I was like, oh my gosh I am like that made that night made me certain that I was going to run to serve because I wanted to be able to support the courts in the future and in any way that I could. And it's been six or seven months since November, since we saw the presentation. So I know there's a lot going on, but it's been a long time since. I know the results came back in February, and we just now saw them. So there's been a delay. But now that we have the data, and now that it's very tangible data, and there's a very specific ask from the judges so that they can move to their extra days so that we can increase their salary up to the thing that they said before. I know that you're planning to come back and give notes to us on August 18th. I know that you're prepared to come back and present to us on August 18th, but I want to know what I can do to expedite the details about the budget. If they're self-funding, then what trigger, what mechanism do we need to vote on that night to make sure that that happens? If they are self-sufficient with their funding, and the money is in their courts, can you please come with a motion ready for us to move on so that we can activate them? And if Mr. Head has recused himself from being a part of the conversations, then who's our next attorney that we can talk with? There is no reason to delay this anymore because it's been drawn out for so long, and I'm ready to take action and call motions to make the next steps happen. So I need support from the attorney or information from you or next steps on August 18th that we can make motions that night and make things happen.

So before you respond, I will recuse myself. Okay.

All right. Yep.

So that puts me in the hot seat. So, Council Member Adkins, I'm also looking forward to the update on the 18th. We have already assigned this to Finance and Budget Committee for additional discussion. Obviously, we have council rules in place that might allow for different motions to be made, but I feel that it's really important that we follow a normal process on this and that we vet it out through committee and that we continue those discussions in that manner that we have this committee structure for a reason. And that I think this is a big change possibly. And it's also a complex issue that it's not just judicial salary, it's also other resources for the courts. And I think that that's important to go through committee. So I guess I would defer to staff on other issues. I'm not going to tell you as a council member not to utilize any tools at your disposal, but that's the current process that we have in place and that's the current plan.

And I would add the city does not oversee or direct the court, right? The judges do. We don't have full control over their processes, procedures, how they structure their dockets, how many days per week they meet. We don't, that's not the city manager or staff's role. That's not the council's role. That is a judiciary role to organize.

And I understand that, but we're past that. It's time to take action now. They want to work more days. Nobody should be expected to work five days a week at a salary that was established like 30 years ago.

It is time to update our budget. Just to be clear, the salary wasn't established 30 years ago. It was established now. They just had an increase in May.

I think that's insufficient by anyone's objective metrics. By anybody's metrics, that was completely insufficient, especially if they're going to move to five days a week. And so what I'm asking is, can you bring the numbers and be ready to go at finance? We just had a finance meeting a couple days ago. Did you talk about it then?

So I note that Chair Carlyle is asking to speak. Are you wanting to speak on this particular matter? Because she would be the one to be in charge of how that would be handled at finance and budget and to direct how that conversation should roll out. Right.

Well, first, I just wanted to remind everybody that in our charter, Under the courts, under the judges, under compensation, which is on page 14, the last sentence there says, no change in judge compensation of an incumbent municipal judge shall become effective during that judge's term of office. So not only are we not allowed to make that change per our own charter, but also state statute says that we cannot and the Supreme Court says that we cannot. So if we were to make the change, we could make a change in their pay, but it could not become effective until each judge has stood for reelection.

Did it have the caveats about unless their duties changed?

No, it does not. It says no change. You want me to hand it over to you so you can read it? No change in compensation of an incumbent municipal judge shall become effective during that judge's term of office.

So I am going to hop in here and just say I think that we're getting a little bit far out on council comments. This is a pretty in-depth discussion, which, again, I think should be had. at the Finance and Budget Committee.

But did we discuss it at the Finance Committee this week, though? Because if we've already missed one month, what I'm saying is I don't want it to go further without details and numbers and a plan.

I understand. But I also respect Chair Carlisle's ability to handle that topic, which has already been assigned to her committee. And this is how our committee structure works. And so I think unless there's something additional that you want to add in your comments, I think we have to reserve this until the discussion on the 18th when it comes back to full council and it's on our agenda. and noticed up or when it goes to committee. Well, thank you.

And thank you, Councilmember Carlisle, Chair Carlisle, for getting this addressed as quickly as possible because if it's in your committee and you are the decision maker, then I ask you to expedite and to get as much information from staff as possible so that we don't come to the meeting next month and say, what should we do, and then take another month to decide because the information is in front of us. I would like for the dollars to be decided quickly. I mean, if we know that it's going to add on a few parole officers and other people, how much does that cost?

Councilmember, I think that we are, well.

There's no other time to talk about it. I'm saying it now.

There is. It's going to be on our agenda on the 18th, and it's also going to go to finance and budget. So thank you, Councilmember. Thank you for expediting, everybody. Councilmember Fryer? Or I guess Mayor can come back in and actually take that.

Okay, I just wanted to say, I echo much of what Council Member Adkins said. I feel like, and I'm not going to beat a dead horse, I understand the process, I understand, but I will say as far back as maybe seven months ago, back when Council Member Hodges was still on, we had multiple meetings with Mr. Dunning regarding this issue, and I feel like it hasn't advanced any further. So I am looking forward to a resolution fairly soon. Other than that, I am excited that Mayor Pro Tem Shields brought up the work we're going to be doing or the discussing we're going to be doing about incentives because sometimes I feel like they have become the expectation versus the exception. And I think it's past time that we look at that. So I'm excited we're going to be doing that work at CEDC. I also wanted to say, when I was out of town... Council Member Carlyle mentioned parking lots in the back, and I know she's mentioned it before, parking lots in the back. I love the idea when I drive through cities that I'm like, oh, this city looks really nice. The parking lots are in the back. So I really do like that idea. I think it makes a huge difference. So I would love to, I don't even know what committee, is that CEDC, Public Works, probably CEDC? maybe public, I don't know, whatever committee it is, I would love to discuss further parking lots in the back. I think, yeah. I don't know how many years have you been mentioning that? A lot of years. So, yeah, I'd love to discuss that. And then there was more on my list, but there's a lot of people waiting to speak. And plus, we've got some ballots to watch. Thank you.

Thank you. The board is lit up. Council Member Carlisle. Oh. Stop. No? No, don't. Oh, okay. Council Member Frazier.

My question is, I believe, independent of the salary or compensation, we talked about two particular roles. I think it was court administrator and clerk. Have those, they had been approved, have those moved forward to HR? Who handles those? Or is that one and the same?

So my understanding with those positions, so the court administrator was promoted from, we'll say, the court supervisor role. And so the immediate, and I know this in working with HR and the court administrator hearing about the approach. So methodically moving through filling those vacancies, right, the key being, fill the court supervisor role and understanding those strengths of that individual that fills that role, which then informs what the needs may be in that next position in the, in the clerk and the positioning of that, um, skill set for that clerk position. So we're in the process of that. I know that the clerk's supervisor role is in the process right now and that will inform that next phase of filling that last, uh, expansion clerk position.

Okay. So that's independent of the other discussions, so I just wanted to make sure that we can move forward on that.

Yeah, that's in progress. Okay, perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Atkins. All right, I think that's it. I think we're going to go into closed session here in a second, but Mr. Dunning, close it down with roundtable.

Sure. I didn't know if Mr. Park had, maybe in response to Council Member Pryor's, and then I just have one quick topic.

Yeah, I would ask also, could you, I didn't catch the gentleman's name or contact information, so if you could make sure that gets forwarded to Public Works, we can engage with him directly or try to answer his questions directly. What's that? Yeah. Got it. Otherwise, you know, I think there was a lot of traffic analysis that accompanied the East Village project and the Oldham Village project, both from the applicant standpoint as well as staff. Those traffic studies are available still on the city's website for people to reference. In summary, there's not a lot of traffic expected to be generated by those two developments down Purcells or down Oldham. parkway beyond really what just that local generated traffic is, right? If you live in the area, you're going to use those roads to get there. But for the most part, the customer base of those two large developments are going to travel to those large developments using 50 highway and 291 highway. It was a little unclear really what intersection he was referring to when he said Lakeview and Purcells, they don't actually intersect, but Lakeview and Oldham do, but regardless of whatever intersections he was talking about, he was asking for stop signs, right? He was asking for always stop control. That is something that our city traffic engineer would assess based on federal standards and regulations that are codified that dictate things like all-way stop and traffic signal installations based on an engineer's study of the traffic volumes and crashes, and I'll say right out, we have no reason to believe, we have no crash history in those locations to have any suspect that it is a dangerous or high crash location in any regard. So it's very unlikely to meet an all-way stop warrant at any of those intersections. And there are other improvements ongoing with both those developments that are happening. So they are making transportation improvements. You saw what they did to Oldham. They relocated it. They widened it. They put in traffic signals. With Costco coming online, they're doing the same thing. They're making improvements to 291 Highway. They're making improvements to the intersection surrounding the area and providing connectivity, giving a lot of alternate routes and paths for traffic to get to and from those developments. Along Purcell specifically, the city has a project to improve Ward and Purcell's. That is advancing. We've sort of suspended that to allow Prior Road to fully open before we start shutting down Ward Road. But it is a project that has cleared all of its hurdles. The funding is there. The property and easement acquisitions are all completed. In fact, we have approved plans. It's ready to bid. And we'll do that bidding this fall in preparation for that. The school district is also doing improvements to their campus at Pleasant Lee. So you may see some work out there ongoing now where they're increasing their parking capacity, improving their circulation, and a drive is being extended to Purcell. So that might be some of the work that you see happening out there. But with regard to the school district's improvements to their campus, that's not generating more traffic. It may change the way some of their traffic flows. Hopefully that helps address some of the questions. But I think we'd be best if we get the information from Mr. Curry and try to contact the gentleman directly.

Thank you.

Could you keep us in the loop as well on any correspondence? If we have any, yes, I can forward those to the city manager's office for your awareness.

All right. Thank you. Appreciate that. Mr. Dunning?

Yep, one quick item. I know we shot a text out to all of you creating the awareness, but I'd share publicly, right, that last Friday we had Shannon McGuire, part of city staff. I know former Mayor Baird made the trip to the Missouri Main Street Conference. Between the city and the downtown CID and downtown Main Street were awarded a Best in Show Award from Missouri Main Street for the Green Street Project. So they created that award. We were the inaugural winners of that. So something that everyone should be very proud of. So I thought I'd share that publicly.

I saw Mr. McGuire with the big award trophy. Oh, is he back there? Yeah. Yep, there he is. Did a great job. Yep. So thank you. Appreciate that. So I think that's it. We have a little bit of unfinished business, and we'll go into closed session. So after that, we are finished. So may I pretend?

Pursuant to Section 61021.1 of the revised statutes, the State of Missouri pertaining to legal actions, clause of action, or litigation involving a public governmental body in any confidential or privileged communication between a public governmental body or its representatives and its attorneys. Pursuant to Section 61021.2 of the revised statutes, the State of Missouri pertaining to the leasing, purchase, or sale of real estate by a public governmental body where public knowledge of the transaction might adversely affect the legal consideration. Therefore, I move to enter closed session.

This has been made by Mayor Patem-Shields in second, but did you catch that one?

They weren't right on time.

Yeah.

Just pointing that, Council Member Funk.

Council Member Funk gets the credit. He was louder.

Council Member Funk? Aye. Council Member Adkins? Aye. Council Member Frazier?

Aye.

Council Member Pryor? Aye. Council Member Carlisle? Aye. Council Member Cravens? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Shields? Aye. Mayor Lopez?

Aye. Thank you all. Have a good evening.

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