City Council - Regular Meeting

Hope and trust. We ask for your help and your guidance for the work to be done in this room. We pray for council members and city staff. God, we trust that when difficult conversations arise, you can provide calm. When values compete, you can provide clarity. When problems are complex, you can reveal a way forward. So we ask that you open us to your way and your presence so we lean not just on our own understanding, but also on the inspiration you provide. On this election day, God, we pray today for our election process and all those voting. We thank you for candidates willing to offer themselves in public service. Thank you for our poll workers and election officials who'd be working late into the night to deliver results. God, we thank you for the chance to live in a democracy where we can count on free and fair elections, where our voices matter, where every voice matters. We pray today for those candidates who will win and those who will lose. Give them comfort, peace, and hope in the measure they need them today. And God, help us all work together in days ahead to seek the common good. We pray today for all those preparing for a new school year. Pray that you would bless teachers and administrators with joy and energy as they prepare to welcome students. We pray for parents scrambling to get what's needed and especially for those struggling to afford the new clothes and supplies needed as the school year starts. We pray today for students, especially any who are headed to a new school this year. Give them confidence and openness. Reassure them when they feel anxious. Send them friends and help them be friends to those they meet. God, we ask today as we start this work that you send us opportunities to be good neighbors to one another for our own good and for the good of the city we love.

Amen.

Thank you, Pastor Amy. Madam Clerk, can you please call the next item?

Approve the minutes of the regular meeting July 28th, 2026.

Council members, any edits to the minutes? I see none. With that, I will move to approve the minutes for the regular meeting July 28th, 2026.

Second.

Motion second. Discussion? See none. Madam Clerk, please open the roll. Motion passes seven, zero. Madam clerk, please call the next item.

Awards and proclamations. Today's proclamations are national health center week and black business month.

May please ask Hunter health to come forward at this time.

Thank you.

The proclamation reads, the city of Wichita, Kansas, founded in 1870, whereas for over 60 years, community health centers have provided high quality, affordable, comprehensive primary and preventative healthcare in our nation's communities with limited access, having a significant impact on delivering value to America's healthcare system. Whereas community health centers develop new approaches to integrating a wide range of services beyond primary care, including nutrition, oral health, vision, behavioral health, and pharmacy services to provide comprehensive care that allows each patient to thrive. Whereas community health centers are locally owned and operated small businesses that serve as critical economic engines, helping to power local communities by generating $261.7 billion in economic activity and supporting more than 809,000 direct and indirect jobs nationally. Whereas the community health center model continues to be an effective means of overcoming barriers to healthcare access, including geography, income, and insurance status, improving health outcomes and reducing costs. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Wichita City Council does hereby proclaim August 2nd to 8th, 2026, as National Health Center Week.

Good morning. I'm Amy Feimer, CEO of Hunter Health. And I did just want to say that I am joined by my colleagues from Health Corps and Grace Med, the other two community health centers in town. On behalf of community health centers, I want to thank Mayor Lily Wu and the Wichita City Council for this proclamation during National Health Center Week. Since the nation's first community health center was founded in 1965, community health centers have understood that where we live, work, worship, and play impacts our health. With roots in the civil rights movement, the visionaries who founded the earliest community health centers believed that we could fight poverty and empower communities with health and opportunity.

I am Nancy Deeling with Grace Med. Today, community health centers play a vital role in enhancing access to essential primary care nationwide. We increase access to crucial primary care by reducing barriers such as cost, lack of insurance, distance, and language. In Wichita, the federally qualified health centers have been instrumental in serving over 70,000 individuals annually. providing a comprehensive array of services including primary care, dental, behavioral health, vision, and primary pharmacy services. Every August, we seek to increase the awareness of the nearly 1,500 community health centers nationwide.

Good morning. My name is Davna Gould with Health Corps Clinic. This year, the theme of National Health Center Week is Building Innovative Care Where It Matters the Most. Community health centers in every state, U.S. territory, and the District of Columbia serve as a beacon of strength, service, and care in our communities by serving all regardless of their ability to pay. As we celebrate our employees, board members, and supporters, we want to extend our heartfelt appreciation to Mayor Lily Wu and the Wichita City Council for their recognition and support of the significant contributions made by community health centers in Wichita. Thank you.

We'd like to ask the Black Print ICT to come forward at this time. Council Member Joseph Shepherd will be reading this proclamation.

Thank you, Mayor. It is an honor and a privilege to read this proclamation as I hope my votes reflect that I care deeply about black business. I care deeply about small business and the impact that they have on our economy at the City of Wichita. And so I thank the Mayor and also Tasha for allowing me to be here today to read this proclamation. It means a lot when individuals select me to be able to read the proclamation on behalf of the City of Wichita. And it reads, Proclamation of the City of Wichita, Kansas, founded in 1870. Whereas black-owned businesses are essential contributors to Wichita's economic strength, cultural identity, and community vitality, serving as spaces where entrepreneurship, innovation, and connection flourish. And whereas the legacy of black entrepreneurship reflects generations of vision, ingenuity, and determination, creating pathways to opportunity, building community wealth, and inspiring future business leaders. And whereas supporting black-owned businesses, foster economic mobility circulate resources within the local community and advance a more inclusive and equitable future for all residents of Wichita and whereas Black Business Month provides an opportunity to celebrate the achievements impact and contributions of black business owners recognize the important role they play in shaping a vibrant prosperous and connected Wichita and encourage the community to support black owned businesses not not only during the month of August, but throughout the year. And now, therefore, be it resolved that this Wichita City Council does hereby proclaim August 2026 as Black Business Month. Signed by Mayor Lily Wu.

Good morning, Mayor, council members, distinguished guests, community leaders, and friends. On behalf of the Black Print ICT, I am deeply honored to accept this proclamation recognizing August as Black Business Month in the City of Wichita. Thank you to the City of Wichita for recognizing the importance and the impact of Black businesses. Thank you to Councilmember Joseph Shepherd for your leadership in bringing this proclamation forward. And to those standing along with me today, whether you're a business owner, mentor, advocate, community partner, supporter, or just a loyal customer, we thank you. Your encouragement, investment, and belief in black businesses make this work possible. Today, I may be the one accepting this proclamation, but it belongs to every black entrepreneur whose vision, perseverance, and contribution continues to shape our city. This recognition is about so much more than one organization. It's about celebrating generations of black entrepreneurs who dared to build, create, serve, and even when the doors of opportunity were not always open to them, they continued to move forward. Today we honor the pioneers who built Wichita black business community brick by brick. They created the original black print and we are carrying that legacy forward with determination, innovation, and community. Today we carry that legacy forward through our commitment to culture, commerce, and community by amplifying the entrepreneurs who continue to leave their mark on our city. While Black-owned businesses continue to grow, they remain underrepresented among employer businesses across the nation. That is why recognizing Black Business Month, like today's proclamation, matters. It raises awareness, it opens doors, and reminds all of us that supporting Black businesses is not just one month. It's about creating opportunities that strengthen our economy and our community. Behind every successful business is a community of people who believed in it first, the family members, the friends, the mentors. And as we celebrate Black Business Month, I encourage everyone to do more than recognize this proclamation, but to put your support into action. Visit a Black-owned business, recommend one to a friend, share their story, hire them, partner with them. If everyone in this room discovers one new Black-owned business this month and shares their story, we would invest in Wichita's future. My hope is that years from now, another entrepreneur will stand here where I am standing, not because the work became easier, but because this community grew stronger and decided to invest in them, because someone believed in their dreams, because someone opened the doors, and someone supported them. Today we honor those who came before us, celebrate those building today, and invest in those whose dreams are still waiting to become. Because when black businesses thrive, Wichita thrives. Thank you.

Sorry, there we go.

You ready? Good to see you all. Good to see you.

How are you? Good to see you, Sasha. Good to see you as well. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Excuse me.

madam clerk please call the award junior achievement of kansas business hall of fame honoree dr sherry utash i was eight years old and all i wanted was a drum set purchased And I got a snare drum. And I started an all-girls rock band in my garage at eight years old, and I played the drums. And we went to one gig at Edgemore Park at a tarp dance, and we got paid $20 between four of us. That is the only time that we played and the only time we got paid. But it was really fun. And so we called ourselves an all-girls rock band. That was my very first thing that I'd ever made any night yet. So I work in higher education today. I just started my 31st year. I came to education very non-traditionally. I came from corporate business, private business and went to a couple of luncheons and I met somebody from Wichita State University. She calls me on a Sunday and she goes, I have an ad that's going in the paper tomorrow and I want you to apply. And I said, okay. So I went, I interviewed, I got the job And my third day on the job, she comes in and she goes, you know what? I don't need an assistant director of marketing. And I said, what does that mean? And she said, I need an assistant director for this center. And I said, I have no idea what that is, but I will be the best, you know what, director, assistant director you've ever seen. That started my time in higher ed. I did not plan to stay in it. I thought, you know, I was just going to get back in the marketing gig and stay for a couple of years. And now 31 years later. So did I ever think that I would be a president of a college? The answer is no, but I absolutely love it. And I love the mission and I love the work that we do. And it's just been a huge blessing. I'm blessed with my mom. Mom and dad are still living. My mom will be 95 soon. My dad's 93. They recently celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary so certainly they have been a huge support in my life and in my work. I have a wonderful husband that I've been married to for 30 years and I say all the time I could never have done the things I've been able to do without him. And then my five kids, they're all grown. And I'm happy to say that four of the five of them live here in Wichita. And the other one lives in Kansas City, so not very far away. And they have blessed us with seven beautiful grandkids. Junior achievement, you know, it's about lifting people up. It's about helping people be better in a global economy. And so the work that you do so aligns with the work that we do and the philosophy we have here. So I think there's so much of what you're doing that we just continue to build upon. And I say, I mean, I say this a lot. I say, you know, hope has a face and it's the face of students. Whether it's the students that you're serving at JA, whether it's the students that we're serving, our jobs is to collaborate and to partner and to provide all these opportunities that we can to those faces and to help them realize their hopes and dreams and let them become a reality for their lives, their careers, their families.

Introducing 2026 Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame Laureate, Dr. Sherry Utash.

Thank you again City Manager for highlighting these award videos. They will continue and I know that the African American Museum will also be providing us with videos as well coming up pretty soon. So I look forward to these awards and congratulations this week to Dr. Sherry Utash. Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

From the city's recently adopted civility pledge, the city council is committed to promoting civility, they stand united, they lead with respect and dignity, and they honor every resident in all communities. They are working to create an environment that values shared goals with increased empathy and genuine dialogue. We now come to public agenda. The public agenda allows for up to five speakers to have five minutes each to address the council. Please bear in mind this is not a period of dialogue with council or question and answer period. This is your opportunity to address the city council with your concerns. I ask that you address your remarks to the city council as a body and not to any individual council member. No action will be taken relative to items on the public agenda other than referral to the city manager for information as necessary. Speakers will please speak into the microphone. Please state their name and address for the record. A time clock will display the speaker's remaining time to speak. Order and rules of decorum will be observed. The first speaker today is Cynthia Fitz, Wichita Police Accountability.

First of all, my name is Cynthia Fitz, and I'm here for Wichita Police accountability. This is a very tender area for me, and I hate that I have to be here like this today. First, I want to give honor to the Mosiah, who I'm always in his presence. OK. My name is Cynthia Fitz. I am here today not only as a resident of Wichita, but as the mother of DeAndre Hill, who was shot and killed by members of the Wichita Police Department. No parent should lose their child in the way that I have lost mine. Nothing can bring DeAndre back, but I can ask for something that every family deserves, truth, transparency, and accountability. After DeAndre's death, he was treated as though he had already been found guilty before I had the opportunity to review all of the available evidence. A narrative had already taken hold. What I have learned since then has raised serious questions and has not matched what I was initially led to believe. I believe DeAndre died because officers failed to follow their training and established protocols. That is why accountability matters. A badge should never be allowed to hide the truth or excuse dishonesty. My son DeAndre Hill should still be here today. I am also deeply concerned about accountability within our justice system. District Attorney Mark Bennett has served this community for many years and in my view, there has not been meaningful accountability when serious questions have arisen regarding officer involved shootings. This perception has left many members of our community questioning whether anyone is truly held to the same standard under the law. I am asking the council to ensure that officer-involved shootings are reviewed independently and that the evidence, not assumptions, determines the facts. Public trust cannot exist if conclusions are reached before all the evidence is examined. This is not just about DeAndre. It is about our family in Wichita, every family in Wichita that deserves to know justice will be applied fairly. Police officers will be followed, excuse me, police policies will be followed. And when they are not, there will be accountability. DeAndre Hill still has a voice. I, along with members of the community, will continue to be that voice. I hope you take these concerns seriously and act to ensure that no other family has to endure what mine has. This is my son. He was a black business owner. He had several businesses and he was an up and coming artist. And I stood here today and Watch how you guys are reaching in that direction. Well, I hope that that support comes here, too, because that's exactly what he was. And that another black artist, producer, he also worked at Planet Fitness, which shut down for 48 hours on behalf of my son because he was such an amazing person. He was not someone who dragged along the system. And so I hope that everyone here and more will share his story, will be a part of Wichita standing up and the officers being held accountable. Like I said, I'm not just here for my son. Justice for DeAndre is justice for everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Cook.

Deja Hill, Wichita police use of force.

Good morning. My name is Dasha Hill, and I'm here today not just as a citizen, but as a sister of DeAndre Hill. I'm also here because I'm very tired. I'm tired of watching families here in Wichita, Kansas bury their loved ones. I'm tired of hearing about another officer involved shooting, and I'm tired of press conferences before we get answers. I'm tired of watching leaders act like silence is leadership. My brother DeAndre Hill lost his life after an encounter with Wichita Police Department. And since then, my family has fought for answers, for transparency, and for accountability. And we shouldn't have to fight this hard just to understand what happened to someone that we love. The people sitting in these chairs were elected to represent us, not to protect comfort of City Hall and not to protect the reputation of the police department. So I have some questions. Why are there so many officer-involved shootings in Wichita? Why does it feel like families have to fight for every piece of information? And why are query requests denied when the public is asking for transparency? Why do officers remain on duty while families are left grieving and searching for answers? Why aren't we demanding the same level of accountability for those with the badge as we expect from everyone else that's here? To every member of this council, including Councilman Joseph Shepherd and Mayor Lily Wu, where is your voice? The citizens are asking these questions every day. Why aren't you? Leadership isn't measured by how comfortable you are when things are going well. Leadership is measured by what you're willing to say when saying it is difficult. So how can you ask this community to trust this government if the government won't ask hard questions of its own police department? How can we ask neighbors to come together when our own leaders won't stand together for transparency, accountability. Our tax dollars fund this police department. That means the public has every right to expect professionalism, transparency, and accountability. Accountability is not anti-police, and accountability is exactly what builds the community and public trust. This conversation doesn't end here. Across the country, families and community members are organizing for accountability through National Day of Protests, which is October 22nd of every year. Last year, activists organized 22 protests nationwide to demand transparency, justice, and meaningful change, which should not be absent from that conversation. If you are truly here representing the people of our community, then stand with families like mine. Demand answers with us, demand transparency with us, demand accountability with us, because the people you represent are already asking these questions. My brother's name was DeAndre Hill. He mattered. My family matters. And every family that has lost a loved one to those type of circumstances matter. So I'll leave you with one final question. What are you afraid of? We actually hold protests every 20th of every month. And so there will be the seventh protest here in August. If you see signs like this around, these are the officers that we need to hold accountable. Thank you for having me and my mother today. And I understand that you guys have very important roles, and I understand that you guys also have an image to uphold, but we just hope that you guys make the right decisions. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Hill.

Madam Clerk, please call the next individual. Sybil Strum, Home and Exploration Park.

My name is Sybil Strum. My name is Sybil Strum. I reside at 326 North Walnut. I am here to address that behind closed doors, they illegally seized my old house. It was a 1910 home. It was built by Mr. Spears. Behind closed doors. I was at 2909 North Richmond. They seized my house. My house was a safe haven for kids that were in devastated places you wouldn't want to be in. Alcoholic environments, drug addict environments, anger environments. They seized my house without my knowledge. I want justification. The guy came to my property without me knowing and broke the lock. He was illegally there without permission. I am devastated. I've been there for a community. I want justice. I am also mad because They had no right to come into my house. It was my house. I don't care the way they live. I lived my way. And they did not ask me for permission. I didn't even get to go to the meetings. And they destroyed my house. They destroyed it. They took my property. They destroyed that. I had to go through a lot of heck. to get my property back. Mark was involved. Mike Henson was involved. Robert Lincoln was involved. Some of you commissioners were involved. You have no right. and take your house and destroy it. I am very devastated. I have to talk to Dalton. Maggie, you have not been there for me. Dalton's been there for me. You have been running around. I don't know where you've been. You are not those Delano neighborhoods, dissociation. Dalton did it. Dalton, I commend you. for standing up, listening to my story. It was bad. You had no right to come in and take a house from a person that was a single parent, had a disabled child, and make me go to places you wouldn't even want to go to. I also talked to Dalton about the exploration. We want that park to be open because some of us people don't have the money to pay for that park. It used to be a public park. Now the exploration owns it. I am very angry. Now we're going back to the house. I am very angry. The police would bring the children over to my house in the middle of the night and say, please take care of this kid. I don't want to take it to juvenile hall. And some of those kids are now adults out in the workforce doing the stuff you're doing. And I have gone through, heck for you, I've gone through. These people, that person right there, did not contact me, did not let me know what was going on. I was in the dark. And I am devastated. So I called the police. They got them for legal entering. They got damned for being a stranger. I also had Abergy dump stuff in my yard without my permission either. You have to get to the bottom of this. You have to sit here and tell people, don't do that. Thank you. Have a nice day. I'm just devastated. I mean, how would you feel if your house got taken? You didn't know where, you know, what was going on. Thank you. God bless you.

Thank you.

Dalton, keep up the good work. Thank you, Ms. Strum.

Maggie, you better start straightening up. Thank you, Ms. Strum. Madam Clerk, please call the next individual. Helen Riker, Housing is a Human Right.

Hello, Helen Riker, currently District 3. I'm actually here today to talk about our homeless community, because I am part of it. I may not live in a tent, but I am homeless. For the past couple years, I have been a guest in other people's homes, a friend's unfinished basement, a family-owned house, a camper in my daughter's driveway, with my children, and now with a different friend. And that's why I say currently in District 3, because I have no idea if I will ever have a home of my own again. I've lived independently since I was 17 years old. I worked for 30 years, raised four children, mostly by myself, earned degrees and had a career. I did everything I was supposed to do. Then the stress burned me out. By the time I got back up, it was too late. I'm almost 50 and I'm autistic and no one wants to hire me. I'm not lazy or untalented. I work 40 to 60 hours a week on Kansas Helen and exposing Wichita. It does not pay me. In fact, it costs me money. I have skills and experience, but no one wants to hire me. I don't want assistance or help from people. I want a job that doesn't make me want to jump off a bridge and has some actual purpose in the world. But unfortunately, those jobs don't pay you. Money does not motivate me. Purpose does, and purposeful work often does not pay. When you talk about homeless people, remember that you are talking about people like me. Many homeless people are not living in tents. Some stay in shelters, subsidized housing, or with friends and family. They may have a roof, but they do not have a home. When you live in someone else's house, one disagreement can leave you with nowhere to go. Everyone has rules. It's an Airbnb, not a home. In shelters and housing programs, people are monitored and repeatedly required to prove they deserve somewhere to live. Programs end. Rules change. Assistance disappears with new administrations. I'm a grown adult. I deserve the same autonomy as anyone else to make my own decisions, come and go as I please, have my animals, and share my home without being controlled. Some people choose independence even when it means a tent. Help with strings attached does not help. It is control and manipulation. I deserve a home, not because I have proven myself worthy, but because I am a human. I have not followed every rule or made every right decision, but I still have value. If people will die without something, it's a human right. I don't know what the solution is. A man online suggested you shoot us all because bullets are cheaper. But much of what elected officials and community members say about homeless people, about me, is not true. If you are not prepared to house people safely and affordably, stop spreading misinformation. Stop repeating stereotypes that strip us of our dignity. Stop turning human beings into problems to be controlled, punished, or moved from sight. I believe years ago, some member of the city said that we needed to shoo them out of the park before they built navsgar your words matter they give others permission to forget our humanity you may not know how to solve homelessness homelessness today but you can stop treating us like we are the problem thank you thank you miss reicher madam clerk please call the next individual brian fry wichita deserves more better

Good morning. Some passionate people here this morning. Brian Fry, 3109 Ridgeport, Wichita. So originally my comments were going to be about transparency and openness in campaign finance contributions and why no one on council was taking responsibility for the proposed ordinance change. But since that item has been pulled, we'll save that for another day. Last year, I was encouraged by the adoption of the 26 budget when council approved a .48 mills reduction, or roughly 2.6 million. Thank you. Sedgwick County government also lowered their mill levy rate. Then came all the property tax reduction talk with the proposed sales tax. Finally, when Dennis Marstall had his public interview at Botanica, I got excited when I heard him say, quote, it's my role when I recommend a budget to the council, generally revenue neutral is what I'll recommend. So I was optimistic that more property tax relief would be coming. Unfortunately, that appears to be short-lived. There was no property tax or budget talks at the February workshop. I had to core the audio and minutes from the March 12th city council retreat only to learn that the manager and council had very little discussion about property tax relief. At the March 24th budget workshop, staff presented projected valuation growth of 7%, an increase of almost $10 million from 26. There was no mention of property tax relief. The April 28th budget workshop was focused on CIP with no mention of property tax relief. At the May 26th workshop, we learned that the proposed budget assessed evaluation growth increased to 7.1%. With full capture of the revenue, this is now 10.2 million. Again, no mention of property tax relief. The next day at a town hall, the manager says it will be difficult to consider mill levy reduction and thus property tax relief without a revenue replacement. This is right after citizens voted 82% against a sales tax increase. At the DAB 5 town hall, property tax relief was the number one topic. At the June 23rd budget workshop, the assessed valuation growth jumped to 7.4%. Finally, we start to hear some talk about limited property tax relief, the Homestead Act. Thank you, Mr. Hochweisel. Along with the desire by some council members not to capture the full amount of the assessed valuation growth, there was no mention of any expense cuts to aid in relief efforts. Although it was mentioned that the city can run their business without capturing the new assessed valuation growth. So that was encouraging. Finally, at the July 14th budget presentation, the manager's proposed revenue number reflects a 7.5 percent increased and assessed valuation growth, or roughly $4.2 million over inflation and new construction, with no mill levy rate reduction. This proposed budget also draws down $7 million of reserves for budget stabilization and second-line operations, but no plan for backfill or replenishing. That's not how I do my budget at home. Did I mention that one of the county's 2027 budget goals is to not capture all available valuation increases and to reduce the county mill levy again? It appears that they will do that. So what does Wichita have? A proposed budget built not to limit expenses, but to maximize spending. Now the budget seems to have a lot of wants that aren't needs. I'm not here to debate the merits of each new proposed expense or offer suggestions for cuts, but I'm happy to have that dialogue one on one. No, I'm here to remind you of what's dominating conversations in driveways, coffee shops, and social media. Your neighbors are desperate for property tax relief. During my time on council, I always said, you can't cut your way to prosperity, but it sounds like you can spend your way to the poorhouse. Figure it out. Wichita deserves more better. Thank you.

Thank you, former council member Brian Fry. I see no one on the board. Madam Clerk, please call the next, oh, Council Member Shepherd.

Thank you so much, Mayor. I think it's important for me to recognize that there are some people who came to speak today, and a couple of them are personally important to me in my heart, and I think I have an obligation, one, as a black man, to acknowledge them, and two, I would like to ask the attorney given that there may be pending litigation, do I have the freedom and the autonomy to meet with the family of DeAndre Hill?

Mayor, Council, Jennifer McGaughan, City Attorney, that's something we would advise against because of pending litigation, Councilmember.

Okay. Do one of the speakers mention that there is a protest on the 20th of every month? Am I able to attend?

Yes.

Okay, you have my commitment that I'll be there. I wanna say that when you came up, I see in you, my mother, I see my sister, I'm sorry for the pain that you are feeling right now. I hear the pain in your voice. I want you to know that I don't look at you as another number or another statistic. I don't know all the details of the case. But what I do know is that you lost your son and that you lost your brother. And I think I owe it to you to be vulnerable in this moment and to practice what I preach and to not be silent in moments of discomfort. I want you to know that I see you. I want you to know I hear you. And in any way that I can that doesn't violate my role as a city council member, I'm gonna try to do my best to show up and to be supportive of you. And I am sorry if you feel that I have not done my due diligence to do that. And I hope you know that I'm being sincere when I say that. But rest assured, there is not a moment that goes by in this city where I don't see the discrepancies and the hardships that people who look like you and I face. and the weight that we have to carry even if it may not be the reality the perception feels just as heavy i feel it every day in this role this week has been a very hard week i deal with microaggressions stereotypes pain and i think i need you all to know that people see me smiling but on the inside it's a heavy burden to carry And when you all came forward, I felt the burden that you are carrying right now. So I'm not here to get into the details of the case. I'm here to speak to you as a human to say that I see you. And I hope that I have an opportunity to embrace you with a hug and with love that I feel that you need to feel in this moment. So thank you for being here. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member Shepherd. Madam Clerk, please call the next item. Consent agenda items 1 through 15. Council members, any items to be pulled from the consent agenda? I see none. I move to approve the consent agenda items.

Second.

Motion second. Discussion? See none. Madam Clerk, please open the roll. Motion passes 7-0. Madam Clerk, please call the next item. Board of Bids and Contracts, dated August 3rd, 2026.

Morning, Mayor, City Council, Josh Lauber, Department of Finance. The Board of Bids and Contracts convened yesterday, August 3rd, 2026, for the following items for engineering. We have the water distribution system, stormwater drain number 562, sanitary sewer intake to serve Midland Baptist Church, third edition, for NOAC Construction Company Incorporated for $1,131,610.10. We have Excuse me. We have for purchasing riprap 5x9 18-inch and 24-inch contract for All V Brothers LLC for $343,781. We have the traffic signs for National Sign Company LLC for an estimated annual usage of $82,255.69. We have the Grinding Wood Debris at Brooks Landfill for Smithy Environmental Services LLC Group 3 for $468,000. We have the Fortress Muscle Control System Ion Chamber Anodes for ONG Consulting LLC for $270,084.72. We have the Chemical Rehabilitation of Wells Contract Change Order for Lane Christensen Company, requesting your authorization to extend the contract six months. We have the Polyphosphate Bulk Delivery Contract Change Order for Karas LLC, doing business as Condi Holdings LLC, for an amended amount of $494,190. We have the Sodium Permanganate Bulk Delivery Contract Change Order for Karas LLC doing business as Condi Holdings LLC for $252,532.80. And we have the License Track Software Contract Change Order for Progressive Solutions Incorporated for an amended amount of $79,074.26. This is how to become a vendor with the city. This is our purchasing calendar of small business resource partners the city's hosting or participating in. And this is our list of open public opportunities closing on the 7th, the 14th, the 21st, and the 28th. I'll be happy to answer your questions and recommend your approval.

Thank you, Josh. Questions for staff? I see none. I move to approve the Board of Bids and Contracts dated August 3rd, 2026. Second. Motion second. Discussion? See none. Madam Clerk, please open the roll. Motion passes 7-0. Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Amending Charter Ordinance 228 of the Code of the City of Wichita.

Good morning, Mayor, City Council Members, Paul Gunzelman, Public Works and Utilities. For the record, the item before you is amending Charter Ordinance 228 of the City Code. Bit of background, July 21st, 2026, staff presented a recommendation to eliminate one competitive bid exemption, high technology, and add two exemptions, single source of supply and legal services, in city code section 2.64020. Staff also recommended increasing the staff authority to approve purchases. and the level at which advertised or legal bids are required from $50,000 to $100,000. These levels are established in City Code 2.64020. This recommendation to approve the ordinance and amend City Code Sections 2.64.020 and .030 was approved by the City Council by a vote of 4 to 2. Since a charter ordinance requires an affirmative vote of at least two thirds of the number of city council members, the recommended changes to charter ordinance 228 failed by a vote of four to two. Subsequently, city council voted to reconsider the proposed changes to charter ordinance today. What are change orders? The slide before you contains definitions for change orders or change directives from our City of Wichita engineering specifications as well as definitions from contract documents that have been utilized on city projects such as the EJCDC and the AIA documents. I'm not going to read these word for word. However, I do want to bring to your attention that change orders are issued by the city, not the contractor. Simplistically, change orders by simple definition is an official document that modifies the contract and addresses three key items. Scope of the contract slash work, an increase or decrease. Cost of the contract, increase or decrease. Schedule impact of the contract. Change orders are revise the original contract amount, not the project budget. And revisions to the approved project budget require separate city council approval when applicable. Currently, Charter Ordinance 228 requires that an engineer's estimate and sealed bids to be received for any public improvement projects such as sidewalk, curb, gutter, bridge, pavement, sewer, or the other public improvement of any street, highway, public grounds, or facilities over $50,000. Charter Ordinance 228 also establishes any change order or collective change orders on a project above $50,000 be approved by City Council. Change order process. City staff review the scope, cost, and schedule impact within the proposed change order. Is the scope already covered by the plans and specifications? The review is completed by inspector on the project or project manager on site, the construction engineer, city engineer, and public works and utilities director. Most common change orders are a result of a city request to add scope and or for unforeseen conditions. Change orders are not to account for something that the contractor left out of their bid. We also check to see if the change order is within the scope. Unit bid prices are used wherever possible. If the project requires additional quantities and or removal of quantities, we look to the unit prices that were bid for that project. and utilize those. If we do not have a unit bid price for the project, we look at historical record information from previous bids on projects and negotiate those costs. And we also look at independent cost analysis that might discover high risk items that should be tracked on a measured quantity basis. Once the scope, cost, and schedule impact are settled, staff prepares an official change order document for owner and contractor signatures. Per the charter ordinance, as I mentioned before, any change order less than $50,000 is signed by its staff level authority, and again, that would be by the construction engineer, the assistant director or city engineer, department director, and city manager. Typically, this takes one to two weeks for processing, Any change order above the $50,000 threshold requires City Council approval, and typically this takes four to five weeks for processing. The time needed for City Council approval of a change order may result in significant project delay with increased contractor costs. With the higher limit, any change order would still require the approval of the city manager and the due diligence review of the purchasing manager and will not increase the project budget. A few statistics from since 2024. Approximately 71% of the projects had change orders from 2024 to the present. This is not a bad thing. Change orders may be written to account for unforeseen conditions, as I mentioned before. An example of this would be the river corridor project that is currently under construction along the west bank of the river. The contractor was excavating to construct the stairs south of Douglas, and while excavating, it was determined that the bridge abutment footings conflicted with the stairs. Modifications to the stairs had to be completed, thus resulting in a change order. And many of the change orders are issued at the completion of the project to account for the amount of work completed for each bid item. Some quantities are reduced on work completed, others increased. These quantities are agreed upon by both the city and contractor before issuance of a change order and the closing out of the project. In addition, from 2024 to the present, change orders resulted in a 3% increase in total net increase of project cost as shown on the right side of the slide. The proposed amendment, staff recommends amending Charter Ordinance 228 to increase the requirement for completing an engineer's estimate and legal bid threshold from $50,000 to $100,000 for building, facility, street, sidewalk, public grounds, or other public improvements. Increase in this threshold will be consistent with the approved changes to City Code 2.64020. It is recommended that staff recommends an increase in the change order amount included in Charter 228 from $50,000 to $100,000. Staff will continue to review all proposed changes in project scope with the contractor prior to issuing any change orders. And with the higher limit, any change order would still require the approval of the city manager, the due diligence review of the purchasing manager, and will not increase the project budget. The proposed changes will not impact city expenditures. The proposed changes would increase staff efficiency and limit the possibility of delayed costs. It is recommended that the City Council approve the Charter Ordinance Amendment, place an ordinance on first reading, and authorize the necessary signatures. And as a reminder, changing a charter ordinance requires five votes. With that, I will stand for questions.

Thank you, Paul. Questions for staff, beginning with Councilmember Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor. Paul, can we go back to slide 27? Okay, what percentage of the change orders are over 50,000?

I don't know that I have that number for you specifically. Let me see here. I don't know that I have that number percentage-wise, Councilmember Hoheisel, but I can tell you that since 20, from 2024 to the present, there were 37 change orders that were written that exceeded the 50,000 threshold.

37 and any, how many projects is that over? I imagine that would be a couple hundred.

I would, I think there was out of 202 projects,

So roughly 15% or so. Can you just walk me through the process? Why does it take so much longer, an extra couple of weeks for a change order?

Part of that is due to administrative regulation 1.1 that AR states that the agenda request must be submitted to the clerk's office 14 days prior to the city council meeting. And then the two weeks prior to that, as I kind of mentioned in my presentation that staff reviews that change order, including engineering or the department that's issuing the change order, purchasing and legal staff. And then through cabinet review at the management level.

So what steps in that process would be eliminated with the passage of this?

Any change, so if we increase the amount from $50,000 to $100,000, then of those, I think there were, of the 37, there were 10 projects between $50,000 and $75,000 and then there were seven projects between $75,000 and $100,000. So those 17 change orders would then follow the, would only need to be approved by through the level of the city manager and those would not need to come to city council. So that would save time for those. They would go back to the original one to two weeks for approval.

Okay, so the two weeks is more of the barrier, the two weeks that it takes for it to be notified to the clerk's office?

That's part of the, that adds to the four to five weeks, yes. Okay, thank you.

Council Member Ballard. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Does 71% seem like a lot? I mean, when you just look at that chart, 71% looks like a lot.

As I mentioned before, it's not a bad thing. I mean, a lot of the change orders that are completed or final quantity measurements, you know, at the end of the project, as we have been before, you know, some of our outsourced pavement preservation projects, some of the quantities that we have in there come in less than what we had originally anticipated, some more. So I think probably 50% of those are due to final measured quantities at the end of the project.

Paul, I have several follow-up questions. I ask these all via email, so I want them on the record. Of the 37 change orders that you just mentioned, and if this was to get approved, 17 of those change orders would no longer come before the council. However, 20 of those were above $100,000. My question really is about what our peer cities in the state of Kansas do when it comes to change orders and what's that threshold. Can you tell me what Sedgwick County's threshold is?

Sedgwick County's threshold is their staff may approve change orders if the value of all modifications of the contract cumulatively do not exceed 6% of the original contract price or $75,000, whichever is greater.

So a follow-up question to that is, why was 75,000 not chosen instead of 100,000?

I think that's a great question, and we just, probably shooting for the moon, maybe. So we just thought that was a good number to go for. And Mark, yep, sorry.

Sorry, if you don't mind, Gary Jansen, Public Works and Utilities. Sorry to jump in. I will, in answer to that question, as a matter of consistency, I think, in what Mark presented at the City Council two weeks ago, When we look at procurement standards, rules, these policies that we've been considering across the board, I think it makes a lot of sense when the council approved increasing the purchasing limit, increasing the bid limit to $100,000, it really makes sense for the change order limit to follow suit. I don't know where Sedgwick County's number came from, but they actually have at $75,000 or 6% of the contract, whichever is greater. As you start to get into larger contracts, it ends up being more than $75,000. I would, from my opinion, I think it makes sense, again, from a matter of consistency and efficiency, if that $100,000 threshold is the same across the board. Sorry, Paul.

I wasn't here for that vote regarding $100,000, but I just wanted to gain a little bit more understanding of, again, the $100,000, not just for change orders, but for the previous vote that, again, I was not present at. I think that it's important to note that these change orders do come before us through the consent agenda, and so we do view our consent agenda and I did ask the question, of the two change orders that were approved by exigency, so emergency, to avoid any delay costs, what were the actual amounts? And the response was one of those was $60,000 and the second one was $718,197. Both were on the consent agenda and were not pulled. Can you remind me what the $718,197 was for?

That was for the valve replacement at the Hess Pump Station, if I recall right.

Thank you. My next question is a follow-up again to Councilmember Hohaisel regarding the process. I think it's important that we are efficient with our time and I know that the current administrative regulation 1.1 states that the clerk must have this submitted to them 14 days prior to the council meeting. why can it not be reduced to a week to expedite this i think that would be the requirement of the you know we'd have to change the aar because that's what we are following uh city manager

Time frame is to make sure that we have all the right information to make sure that you have the best information in your agenda packet. So we want to have that lead time before we bring something forward to council so it's properly vetted and reviewed by staff and then administration before it gets to you. And we generally try to publish, as we say, the agenda the Thursday before the meeting. So just that whole time frame of the meeting cycle pushes it back 14 days.

Thank you. And then lastly, I just wanted to know what the other peer cities, again, were doing when it comes to change orders beyond Sedgwick County.

I checked a few. City of Derby. Change orders must be approved by the City Council if the change order is over $25,000 for contracts less than $1 million. And then any contract over $1 million, it's 2.5%. City of Olathe. Change orders and or contract amendments on contracts may be approved by the city manager for amounts less than $100,000. Anything over $100,000 must be approved by the governing body. And city of Overland Park, the city manager in consultation with the law department may approve change orders that do not exceed $150,000.

And my question then to you was, with this proposal, would council still receive reports on change orders between 50 and 100,000?

No, they would not. That would be the final approval by the city manager.

So that brings me to the question of, can there be follow-up between the 50 and 100,000 that we could get that in our consent agenda that the city manager has since approved such a change order? Because in that amount, this is a change, maybe city attorney can tell me, when was this originally as a charter ordinance?

that year that it was adopted. I can find that out.

I think to assuage the concerns some of council members may have, I would like to see If this does pass, that anything between 50 and $100,000 gets placed in our consent agenda as a note so that we know that the city manager has approved these and they did not have to come before council, but as a note. What city, Council Member Tuttle?

I just have a question, and you could finish your thought if you're done. I mean, I just pushed my button to speak.

I wanted to see if they wanted to respond to that. What type of barrier would that cause for tracking of knowing what has been approved by the city manager?

I would say, Mayor, we can provide a communication about what has been approved in that threshold. I don't think it's appropriate for an agenda item, if it's already been approved, then to have it on consent. So I think there's a little confusion about, is it information versus action? And so I think that we can certainly do, we do a weekly report or whatever it may be, or even a monthly report, depending upon how many we're talking about. But that's not a...

issue that we can add that to our process but I wouldn't see it connected to the agenda could that be provided as a monthly update that there were so many change orders that the city manager approved without the consent of the City Council because it went above the 50,000 threshold we could easily provide that Perfect. Council Member Tuttle.

I was just going to ask or kind of make a statement. The city manager, we entrust him to make financial decisions all the time. So I'm not sure. I don't think it should be a part of our packet if it's something that's provided to us. But, you know, city manager, how many... financial decisions do you make every day as the city manager of this organization that we don't get a report on so to me i'm not exactly sure what the purpose would be because if it had already been approved by the manager it's already done so i i'm just trying to think of if we're trying to make something more efficient um you know what truly is the purpose of that but just trying to have a conversation

Thank you, Council Member Tuttle. My intention is not for that. It is actually for transparency reasons. I think that a reporter should not have to ask for what, with this change, again, this will not become part of the public record. It will rather be, again, the city manager making decisions between the 50 and $100,000 threshold. And so for transparency sake, since we don't Well, I guess City Attorney Magana is about to share when this ordinance was created. But again, out of transparency, the city manager has provided a solution which is every month provide a list of the ones that he has approved that go beyond that $50,000 threshold. City Attorney Magana.

Thank you, Mayor, for the moment to research this. Charter Ordinance 228 was adopted in March of 2017.

At that time in 2017, our budget was not $800 million. Is that accurate?

I think that's a fair statement.

Thank you very much. Council Member Shepherd.

Thank you. Paul, in the analyst section on our green sheet, it says that you are recommending to increase from 50 to 100,000 for building, facility, street, bridge, sidewalk, public ground, or other public improvements. My question is, does that also mean for internal and external projects? For example, if there was a project that fell within that category that was within the scope of city hall, Yes. The city manager would not need to bring that to us if it was $100,000 or under. Correct. The contract, correct. Thank you.

Or change order, or change order, yes.

Thank you, Paul. And then my question is for a city manager or city attorney. While I appreciate the nod to transparency last week, I mentioned that I voted no because I could not in good faith do this during a time where i think overwhelmingly i'm hearing from my constituents that they want to see more things come to the bench not less things come to the bench for conversation that has less to do with my trust and staff i've articulated time after time again i think we have amazing staff who fall short sometimes and just like all humans do but also balancing that with what i'm i'm trying to you know balance between efficiency accountability So while a note on the agenda packet will be great and certainly help with awareness, once a decision has been made, what's the process to undo that? Because if we disagree with the decision that the city manager has made in regards to spending, What is the process to undo that? I mean, $100,000 is a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, especially as we talk about budget and there's been conversations about potentially reducing across the board. I'm trying to make it make sense here.

If there is a contract that's been executed, the contract would be subject to any termination provision that's in that contract. So it would be a case-by-case analysis. But if the manager had authority to sign, then that contract is presumptively valid.

Thank you, Attorney Magana. That leads me to my final question. We talk about contracts. Depending on the clawbacks that are in those contracts, we may incur fees as a result of terminating that contract?

That would depend on the language of the contract.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Hohaisel.

Thank you, Mayor. How many of these change orders are within the budget that we've allotted?

They are all within it. All within the budget. If it goes over, then that comes back to the city council would have to approve a project or a budget increase, but they are within the project budget. Okay, thank you.

I see no further questions for staff. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Gary. Thank you, city manager and city attorney. We will now open it up for public comment on this item.

I'm not saying don't do this, but I work for a big construction company. We're the mechanical contractors on this building here. I would just be very cautious here. I worked in the estimating department and purchasing was a big part of my job for 30 years during even higher inflationary periods than we're going through right now. A lot of the stuff that I see up there on a weekly basis is price gouging. They call it inflation. I guarantee you it is price gouging. We had tools or I had tools. in the 70s in particular that nobody else had and I was able to figure some of them out. That's just kind of the way I am. I see things from Josh and from Paul every week. I'm not saying I know anything in particular, but it is concerning. Some of the differentials in some of the bids, we never saw that much differential. That concerns me. I'll just tell you, and I know sometimes you can't do anything about it, but if you don't get three bids on things, it's costing you money. I guarantee it. I'm not saying every time. I'm just saying when you don't get three bids, it's costing you money. on a weekly basis. Anyway, that's all.

Thank you, Mr. Ballard. I see no one else from the public.

Margaret Chavez. Like Mr. Ballard, I also work in supply chain currently. And just to follow up with the sentiments of concern that he has, I also have the same concerns when I see, and you guys know, I've come up here and asked about certain things that, you know, were wanting to be approved because I just don't feel like I, and I know, too, that it's hard getting vendors. We need vendors, right? So we can get enough people to put bids out. But sometimes those bids are just, as a buyer, a master scheduler and now a trainer in this field, they're kind of scary to me. And there are a lot of price gouging going on, but sometimes the things that you guys approve, I don't see it all, but I just want to back Mr. Doug up.

Thank you, Ms. Shabazz. I see no one else from the community who would like to speak, so I will close public comment and bring it back to the bench. Council Member Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor. I, I will vote for this because I think having gone through a construction project right now, I know that I might be the king of change orders at the clinic. But it's opportunities to make things better too that you didn't first envision. So, sometimes a change order is good. And like Paul said, that a lot of times a change order is just a final, final accounting versus what was estimated. So maybe you're doing half a mile of road and you got, you know, if we just were here, we got everything set up, we could do, if you do another 100 yards of that road, it would take care of some more problems. Why not just go ahead and do it? And you can do it a lot less expensive than you can coming back and changing it. So I think this is a good thing and I will vote for it. Thank you.

Council Member Hohaisel.

Thank you, Mayor. This is the part of the charter ordinance that I did have more of an issue with. I do think that there is accountability at the bench to be able to look over a lot of these projects and look at the change orders. I would be interested more in maybe expediting the process for the finalization that Paul was talking about. But I do have concerns. I do think that, to Councilmember Shepherd's point, that we are expected to include more in the process. So I struggle with this. I think I will be voting against this particular one.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm staying consistent with my vote last week. I will not be supportive. Like we mentioned last week, When we're working so hard on public trust and transparency, I just don't think this is the time to eliminate items that come before the bench, even if it's just for awareness and for the public to come alongside some of these projects with us. So for that, I'll be voting no.

Council Member Tuttle.

Thank you. I do have a few comments. But first, two of the speakers, thank you for coming today. And I just feel like it should be addressed, maybe. Director Jansen, would you mind coming forward? Or City Engineer. But the part about getting the three bids and the price gouging, I think that it was said publicly that it could happen. And I truly appreciate the speaker's comments. Are there safeguards or are there ways to ensure that doesn't happen? And then I guess my thought or my concern, and please correct me if I'm wrong, price gouging could happen if we do this or not or it won't happen. Do you understand what I'm trying to ask and maybe articulate it in a better way than I can?

No, I appreciate that, and I think we have to be careful not to conflate some parts of this. Price gouging is a really relative term, depending on what angle you come from. What I can tell you, and one of the things that Paul showed you, is just for change orders alone, when we look at evaluation of when a change order's needed, and I might remind, because I've heard this for years, There's this notion that a contractor says, here's my change order, pay me what I want. And that couldn't be farther from the truth. Change orders originate with us. Change orders are not a sign of failure. They're a reflection of what happens in the construction industry. That number, about 71% of the projects have change orders. I would take a guess nationwide that the number's higher than that. They're part of doing business. This is a governance process that allows us to move a project forward more efficiently and more effectively. Price gouging, Paul and I collectively have almost 65 years in the business, all with the city. I can tell you there's been different times. I started my career working through our construction management group. There were different times. We saw contractors trying to do things that we knew weren't right, but we have checks and balances in place. walking through that list that our inspector has the first evaluation, our project manager, our construction engineer, our city engineer and public works director. If you were to take a poll of our contractors in this town of how many times we've told them no, it's probably more times than the change orders that we have approved because we are very diligent in our process. When through the bidding process that you hear from Josh and Mark and what you see, It's only so much control that we have when there's one bid. The process that the city of Wichita uses, and it actually goes out from there, because there's a lot of agencies and businesses that grab a hold of our bids, and they advertise them even further. There's projects, I would bet you at times, it goes out to 1,000 vendors. But there's so many things that control who bids, depending on what's happening in the market. It's busy right now in the Wichita market. There's a lot going on in the commercial construction side. There's still a lot happening in residential development. There's so many factors that can come into play. When you start having the rainy year that we had, you get projects delayed. impacts contractors being able to bid. But even on an informal bid process, what was approved going up to the $100,000 limit for bidding, we still are required to get three bids. But we are doing it in an informal way that creates efficiencies for and provides benefit, especially to the smaller vendors, and we've seen it and we've heard that, so I think that that's a great thing. None of that goes away, none of that changes. I think it's unfair to the process to look at a number and say, that seems like a high number, somebody's trying to gouge us. We have, same that Paul talked about, on change orders. We have a ton of information and data from past projects. We can look across the industry and see what makes sense. Most of our change orders, the costs are from what they already bid. It's just extra work, same type of work, we're going to pay them extra. Had we known, had a crystal ball, and we could see these unforeseen conditions, that project would have cost the same thing at the time of bidding. We're making the change after the fact because something came up we were unaware of. But the fact is, in my opinion, as a licensed professional engineer, and we have a lot of them on board, We are able to look at industry standards, we are able to look at costs across the board, and I think we do a good job. We have come before this body before and rejected bids, regardless of the number of bidders, even if they were below our engineer's estimate, because we thought the price was too high and it didn't make sense. I don't think that that necessarily correlates to gouging. I do think we have lots of checks and balances in place. I think our finance department in purchasing does a wonderful job of making sure that that does not happen. If we get one bid, we get one bid. We all have to make a decision collectively whether it makes sense to move forward. I know that was a lot of information. I do feel very comfortable about where we stand with that. I think we've got a great process in place. I do believe the request before you today provides necessary efficiency, just like the item that Mark discussed with you last week. And I think to the point when we look at the impact of inflation over time, it just makes sense to move this threshold up like we did everything else. Thank you.

Thank you, Gary. I will not be moving this item forward. I had a lot of questions, and given the questions I asked and the conversations we've had from this bench, again, this is about transparency and accountability. And as it has been mentioned, change orders are issued by the city, so that's city staff, adding scope or unforeseen conditions. And I think it's fair that the community should know what those unforeseen conditions are. The example was the river corridor project. They were excavating. Now there's a change order because the stairs need to be modified. Those are the things that, again, we can see within our consent agenda items. We can talk about them. If we want to bring it back in front of the body, we can. And so, again, out of transparency and accountability, especially because right now people are asking us to look at every corner within city government, how we're not growing government, but rather being efficient with government. I cannot move this item forward, so I will ask any of my other colleagues who would like to do that. Council Member Shepherd.

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to add to my rationale for reasoning. And Mayor, I'm with you on this one. I think that this is not the right time to do this. I have had the opportunity, though, to speak to those in the construction industry as I wanted to educate myself and learn about a lot of the barriers that are in place and how this will help with that. and everything that Gary has mentioned and Paul has mentioned has been affirmed by the professionals. And if there is a way to make this more efficient, I'm happy to do that. I think Council Member Hohuis will mention that. I think there is a way that we can come together to make sure that we remove bureaucracy without increasing the spending authority for the city manager up to 100,000. I don't think this is the right time to do that.

Council Member Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor. Obviously, we don't have enough votes to pass this. I think some people want some more information. So I will move that we delay this about a month to our, I do think it needs to be voted on, about a month to our September 8th meeting.

Could we just delay it indefinitely and then decide if we need to bring it up at some other point?

We could, but that's just kicking the can down the road. I think we need to vote on it sometime. And some people have some information they would like to have. Obviously, staff thinks it's important for efficiency. I agree with them on that. And I think if we get some more information over the next month, I think we should take a vote on it.

I mean, I would ask my colleagues that are opposed to this if there's any information that would change their mind or if they would just remain opposed. Thank you, Vice Mayor. There is no information that would change my mind. No, no. Then I wouldn't be interested in delaying it.

So in this situation, we have a motion without a second, I believe. So motion does not carry Councilmember Glasscock or Vice Mayor Glasscock.

Withdrawal.

With that, there is no motion regarding this. City Attorney, Council Member Tuttle.

I think it should be voted on, I agree. The entire time I've been here, I've never had anything that we just didn't vote on. I am going to be supportive of this. I see the rationale for it. One time, and I made a note, and I wish I would have dated it, but it was probably a year ago, Director Jansen made the comment that since 2020, construction costs for utility projects have increased by 66%. And so when we're looking across what we do, not just in the city of Wichita, but all municipalities across the nation, we have increased costs. Things are more fluid than they've probably ever been before because of that. I trust our staff. I trust our city manager. I voted for him. I trust the staff that he hires. I believe that everyone is doing the good work of the city and they want to see it done as quickly, efficiently, and effectively as our residents deserve. So with that, I will move that the charter ordinance amendment place the ordinance on first reading and authorize the necessary signatures.

Second.

second any further discussion I will just quickly mention just so that it's on the record that there have been only two instances where this has been an exigency to avoid delay cost and there was twice in our consent agenda so there's an opportunity if it really does delay or for it to be an emergency or an exigency item. So there's opportunities for this to still come forward before us, before the four week period. So because of that, again, I will be voting against this. So we have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please open the roll. Motion does not carry, four to three. Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

2027 Annual Operating Budget and 2027 to 2036 Capital Improvement Program.

Good morning, Mayor and City Council. Dennis Marstall, City Manager. Wanted to give a little bit of information before we have the public hearing to do a recap of the proposed City Manager's Recommended Budget. So I've got a couple of things. I'm going to do this presentation as well with our Director of Finance, Mark Manning, but as always want to start out with appreciation for staff and for you all as you've already deliberated on this. Part of our process we'll outline here is to have a lot of public review of this, and this is one of those with the public hearing. Also, we do have the proposed budget online on wichita.gov, and also the work that the staff has done from our department level, certainly to our budget and our finance team, so I want to recognize their work. We did propose on July 14th the 27 recommended operating budget, as well as the 10-year CIP. They are both aligned, from my recommendation, with the city's strategic plan and based on community input and different priorities that I've heard from city council members. And we do have the budget, as we've heard before, with a stable mill levy rate. No adjustments from last year is being proposed in my recommended budget. Again, Wichita.gov is where people can find both the information for the CIP projects as well as the recommended FY27 budget. Certainly, as I said, we put this together based on engagement. We have had four workshops, retreats, seven community town halls. We do have them online. And then, in total, we will have five public hearings. This is the third one today. And then we have two remaining on August 18th. and then on August 25th before budget adoption. So it is balanced. We do want to have a fiscal responsible approach so it's balanced. We do have fund balances that are still healthy, meet our thresholds from our council policies about how much we maintain reserves for quote unquote in the city savings account. Again, we're maintaining under this proposal the existing mill levy rate from last year, which was reduced last year. We are funding the core priorities of city government. And then we did review all the departmental requests, and then I took from that key recommendations that I've advanced in my proposed budget. We have showed this before. We do have roughly, with all funds, an $825 million budget. We outline where the bulk of the revenue comes from, property taxes, certainly sales tax, charges for services we outline there on the left. And then on the right, where the dollars go to run government. A lot of it's staff dependent on salaries and benefits. Certainly the contracts that we were just talking about is the second largest portion there tied with debt service. When we take on a lot of our We do that over time, whether five, 10, or 20 years. So we also do carry a debt service load that is very manageable with our current revenues. Manager?

Sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt. Can you go back to that slide really quick? Uh-huh. Is this budget only balanced because we're taking $3 million from the stabilization reserve?

Yes. That, yes. And you can, we'll talk about that here in a little bit. um then the general fund um we have on here specific of our budget we have more than i think 20 different funds when you think about utility fund for water sewer you think about the airport fund for our airport operations we have a bunch of different funds that we manage the general fund is most of our general operating so we're looking at one piece of the city budget here and that is a 352 million dollar portion of the budget where we outline again how much of the property tax supports that but then you also see where priorities come into play on the right hand side where we have there 67 of the general fund budget goes to support public safety between fire and police then you can see our other public works municipal court libraries where all these fall out as well as a proportion of the general fund budget Did want to highlight as we thought about priorities, one, certainly our strategic plan that council adopted. But when we say public safety is our priority, we can document that through where we put our funding. And so here we have 67% police fire. Some of the things within this proposed budget is a real-time information center, adding five positions, and then also software support for that center for $150,000. This gets into some of the details of what I have in the proposed budget for your reaction, the community's reaction, but also something new we want to propose that has come up from the police is having more transparency with police vehicle cameras, something newer for us. We do have body cam, but not police vehicle cameras. So to start that process and install those in 50 vehicles in FY27 is a proposal. Also, we've talked about the Fire Station 23 will be new, adding the staffing for that, as well as we talked about one of our community partners, the Child Advocacy Center, increasing some funding for their operations. Again, we think about priority issues, a lot we've talked about is infrastructure. Clearly a key role for city government, one of our primary service areas. But our budget currently includes $34.3 million in our proposed budget to do the maintenance, staff and public works, parks and recreation. And you'll see that we have part of the capital improvement program has a lot of our maintenance work in there as well for some of our new projects. And clearly our bio-nutrient removal program that we've been implementing It's been significant for our sewer utility and adding some positions for that expanded facility, again, to meet the needs of our operations. Growing our economy, we do have partners who we work with, Downtown Wichita, that has a dedicated mill support for that. That'll be about 1.4 million generated for their operations and promotions. We also do work with the Greater Wichita Partnership on economic development to recruit jobs to the community. We would like to maintain them at our funding partner and then certainly transit. We have an increase for transit where we want to add a circulator service around downtown from our new hub that we just opened this year. So that is an increase in the budget to help start a new transit service from the hub to the downtown area. Also looking ahead at the Parks and Recreation, one of the proposals is to add two new positions. We have done some great work in expansion and renovations at our community center, so we want to support that with staffing for additional programs at Plainview and Brewer. We also have made sure we're highlighting our forestry work and our tree canopy. This funds our forestry division with 34 positions for $4.6 million. And then encampments, we're having conversations now about how we address encampments, that we will have a continued funding in FY27 for encampment cleanup. Also, library, talking about library funding, libraries did request up to $4 million. This budget outlines $375,000 in new funding. I can't give you the exact number of new positions. Part of their structure is to use a lot of part-time positions to support their full-time role. So, depending upon what funding level Council finalizes will determine how they do their service level and service hours. But they actually have a $4 million request. And then animal control, this budget proposes a $180,000 increase as we think about the kennel cleaning and staffing levels for the animal control operations. I want to ask Mark Manning to come forward as our Director of Finance. He'll get into a little bit more of the in-depth things and outline how the budgets come together. We'll both take questions at the end. Director of Finance, Mr. Manning.

Good morning, Mayor, members of the City Council, Mark Manning with the Department of Finance. Excuse me. I want to focus on the growth in the 2027 proposed budget. As the manager mentioned, the budget is recommended to address priorities, priorities based on feedback that we've received from the community, priorities based on our strategic plan, and based on priorities that we've received from the governing body. So the 27 proposed budget is approximately $14 million higher than last year's budget. Now our base is very large. Our base is north of $350 million. And I'll show you a chart that shows that growth in just a second. I will point out that with our centralization initiative, we are actually moving some revenue and expenditures off the general fund. So when I show you the chart, The general fund growth actually will appear as $6 million, but again, that's because we're shifting some costs and revenues off the general fund. So I will show you the growth in the general fund in just a second. I would also tell you that about somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 million of that growth is to fund our core basic operations. We are an organization very concentrated on staff. That's 75% of our cost, and our staff costs tend to grow each year with general pay adjustments for our employees. So let's look at our growth. Again, I mentioned that if you take the beginning amount as the amount we'll spend in 2026, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $347 million. If you take the centralization adjustment away, which is $8.5 million, again, we're taking that off both the revenue and expenditure side. We have about $9.6 million in growth just to fund our employees. That's our general pay adjustments. That's our merit steps. It's a variety of other things for our employees, some of which are under contract in 2027. We did include in the 27 proposed budget the absorption of the safer or the positions for which we have the safer grant application in. We have funded those from the general fund pending the approval, we hope, of that grant, but we do have them currently in the general fund for that new station. Finally, we've got about a half a million dollars in other adjustments. Those are things like utilities. Utilities tend to grow over the years. We've had some pressure on some of our commodity pricings, particularly in fuel. Basically, we have about a half a million dollars in growth for all the other things that we do. Then finally, I would draw your attention to the bottom. That's probably the most relevant portion of this slide. Those are the base adjustments. Those are recommendations that are included in this budget to address priority areas. Most of those are new items. But again, I would draw your attention to those base adjustments because I'll spend most of my time talking about those. So these are adjustments. Some of these are phased in in 2026. Then additional ones are included in 2027. But again, designed to address priorities and things we've heard, including CIP operating costs, or operating costs associated with CIP projects. For example, we have a new rec center, or community center, and we have another one planned, so we added staff for that, one this year and one next year. We also have some needs at our animal shelter. We want to run that facility as effectively as possible and in compliance with state statute. challenges there that we'd like to address, so we did add some money for the animal shelter. The Pinnacle Center, you have already approved, but again, that was not included in the prior year's budget, so we showed that as an addition. We talked about the community services rep. There's one council district that does not have a dedicated staffer. and so that position is being recommended. We talked about the Real-Time Crime Information Center, the manager mentioned that. We have some opportunities to more fully utilize that and I think partner with the county who has suggested they might embed a 911 operator in our center and so that includes five staffing for that. The manager mentioned the cameras as well. We did include some additional money in 26 so that we could start implementing that this fall or later on towards the end of the year. And finally, we have some software needs in the Real-Time Crime Information Center. These are amounts which we had funded previously from grant funds and we need to absorb those software costs out of the general fund. So in summary, the 2026 budget does include about $1.3 million in what I would consider to be adjustments to the base. But again, I've outlined them there. Let's flip to 2027. Now, everything I just showed you on the previous slide also carries into 2027. but I'm only gonna focus on the additional marginal changes from that, 1.3 million. I mentioned the new station staffing that we have. We also have another rec center position, again, for the second community center. Sorry, I'm old school, I keep calling them rec centers, they're community centers. So we have that position. The manager, as you know, has recently hired a new fire chief, and so we have some additional funding for our new fire chief for any improvements or enhancements that he may think are necessary to our organization. I mentioned the animal shelter. We actually put a total of 180,000 in. We put 90,000 of it in 26 and another 90 in 2027. The manager is recommending funding for a tuition reimbursement program. We had a tuition reimbursement program here at the city. I believe that we eliminated it somewhere 10 or 15 years ago. I don't recall exactly when, but it is important to develop our employees, and so the manager has recommended a tuition reimbursement program. Finally, he mentioned library staffing. The library did in fact request about $4.2 million. The manager has recommended $375,000 to begin addressing some of their concerns. So let's talk about what the mill levy would look like based on the recommendation of the city manager. It would include an estimated mill levy of 32.34 mills, which is exactly the same as last year. I will point out, you'll notice I always say the estimated mill levy. That's because we will not know the final mill levy for this budget until November of this year. The City of Wichita does not control the mill levy rate. We control the amount of taxes we levy. Sedgwick County calculates the mill levy rate in November of each year, and it fluctuates a little bit based on assessed valuation that is finally calculated, but it is generally very close to what we estimate. So we estimate this budget would have a mill levy of 32.34, and that would be flat with the prior year. Talk about the impact on taxpayers. As you know, a taxpayer in Wichita, only about 29% of their property tax bill is payable to the City of Wichita. There are other taxing jurisdictions, including predominantly the school district and Sedgwick County, that also have property tax levies within our city. Now, just for example, a homeowner of a $200,000 home in Wichita would pay about $744 in property taxes in 2027, based on this proposal, at the estimated mill levy rate, or roughly about $2 a day. Just for a frame of reference, each mill in the City of Wichita, I know it gets confusing, each mill is about $23 to a homeowner of a $200,000 home. which is to say, obviously, that 23 times 32 is about $744. So let's talk about some of the priority issues that are addressed in the recommended budget that's being proposed by the city manager. I mentioned staffing is a large portion of the general fund. It's important to have a well-trained and professional workforce, so the proposed budget includes a 2.5% merit raise for city staff that are eligible, which is generally somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 percent of those staff the budget also includes a two and a half percent pay adjustment for all employees except for one unit which is still under contract through 2028. we also fund health insurance contributions for employees generally at 80 percent for our group health plan that is a fairly sizable expense group health is relatively expensive and so but the city does contribute 80 percent of those costs for most employees. We fund our pension systems fully, which is one reason that we have some of the best pension systems funded in the United States, because the City Council has always dedicated full funding for that, but that also can be expensive. And finally, as I noted, the manager has a tuition reimbursement proposal for staff. Homelessness is a priority issue that's been identified in our community. To go over this quickly, we mentioned this previously, but the budget does include $5 million from the stabilization reserve to address homeless solutions in our community. We do have other future challenges. We're growing in dynamic community. You heard Gary allude to that earlier on the development side, which is a sign. But with those attributes, that creates challenges for us, challenges in future services demands. You can see a lot of that reflected in requests that departments made relative to this budget, and I'll talk about some of those in just a few minutes. because a lot of those are not funded. The manager addressed a few of them, but a lot of those remain unfunded. Let's talk about stabilization reserve briefly. That came up earlier. Yes, ma'am, the mayor is exactly correct. The budget is based on a Long planned drawdown from the stabilization reserve through 2028 of three million dollars a year And in addition based on the recommendation of the city manager We would also draw down five million dollars for the homeless solutions that would leave us with a stabilization reserve fund of somewhere in the neighborhood of 31 million dollars at the end of 2028 So I mentioned future challenges. I just highlighted a few things that departments requested. You may recall I think at the workshop in May and perhaps in June as well, we shared with you the list. I believe there were 95 items on the list if I remember correctly. Police has requested additional officers. about 2.6 million for 16 officers and five investigators. I think it's probably fair to say their need is probably actually greater than that, because as you're aware, we did discuss applying for a grant here several weeks ago for, I believe, upwards of 50 officers. The manager mentioned the in-car cameras. Police asked for funding to equip their entire fleet. The manager's proposal includes funding for one police bureau. We talked about future CIP costs a lot in the past. In addition to the new fire station we have coming online in the not too distant future, we also have additional fire stations. Staffing for a fire station is somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million, to use a round number, that will present challenges for us, I believe, in 29 and 30 when those stations come online. We mentioned libraries actually asked for $4.3 million. The manager has taken a first step towards trying to address some of those needs, but suffice to say the library's needs are far greater than the amount that we've initially included in the recommended budget. Public Works talked a lot about building maintenance. Our square footage continues to grow of city facilities here. A lot of times the building maintenance budget has increased, but it has not kept up with some of the expanded square footage that they're being asked to maintain. They had a request for $600,000 in additional funding for that. Our fleet, we have a large fleet. Public Works is also doing a number of things to make sure that they operate that fleet as efficiently as possible. For example, now I think they have an initiative where they're trying to drive out low utilization vehicles, so they do a number of things to operate as efficiently as possible. But in some cases, they've identified challenges that we've had in vehicle replacement, primarily in the non-public safety area, and they asked for $2 million for additional fleet replacements. We talked about violence interrupters a couple weeks ago. I included that on the slide here just to note that that is not a funded request right now, but there was some discussion about whether we should continue a violence interrupters program at about a half a million dollars, and I would just note that that has not been included in the proposed budget that you've seen before you. So lots of needs. The proposed budget tries to address a few of them. I pointed out those to you in what I would call the base adjustments lines in those slides, and that accounts for most of our growth other than our base growth for our current existing staff. I'm going to pivot to the CIP with just a couple slides, and then I'll wrap up here. CIP is also associated with the operating budget. You approve them both together. They're both interrelated. They both are aligned to our strategic plan, and they're both very important for us to accomplish the outcomes we want to accomplish. The CIP is dedicated to maintenance. That's very important. The community investments plan requires that. but it's also the prioritization that we've heard from these governing body. So 61% of the CIP is devoted to maintenance. 71% is devoted to high and very high priority areas. I won't go over these in much detail because we've talked about several times, but suffice to say we've addressed priorities. We've got 32 million for public safety and maintenance equipment. This is just in the next three years. You should see progress on K96, which is a large project. We've got more police and fire stations in the next three years. We've got some park improvements, about $6 million worth, a variety of street improvements. I've listed some of the major ones on this slide. We'll also try to address some of our community facilities. We have about $8 million there for some of those. Street maintenance is the big one. We have about $65 million in the next three years for street maintenance. I believe over the 10-year period, the number's a little closer to $230 million, so we invest heavily in street maintenance. Just in the out years, we consider this to be more conceptual, more on a planning basis. We have additional police and fire stations planned, a police training facility, and a new police headquarters. There's a variety of drainage issues that Public Works has modeled into their stormwater utility. The park master plan hopefully will be approved at some point later this year, and so we have a little bit of money in the park CIP to implement that, and likely there'll be future needs associated with that. I mentioned street maintenance. Here's the other $170 million in addition to the $63 million I mentioned earlier. We'll have some improvements to plant three on the treatment side and then there's, I noted a couple very large street projects again in the conceptual period.

So I threw a lot at you.

I apologize for that. Again, I just wanted to get the focus on the base adjustments and the things that are new that the manager included in his proposed budget to address the priority areas primarily. We do have our second budget hearing today. We had one on July 21st. We'll have another hearing on the 18th. We'll have our final hearing on the date you have set previously. which is August 25th. That'll be an evening meeting starting at 6 p.m. Technically, we have three public hearings that night. You'll have a public hearing first on the revenue neutral rate for the city. Secondly, you'll have a public hearing on the revenue neutral rate for the Schmidt. which is a taxing district of which you're responsible. And then finally, after those two items, we will actually have the budget hearing, again, on the 26th at 6 p.m. So, again, today your recommended action is just receiving file input regarding the 27 budget and the 27 and 2036 CIP. But that's the end of my presentation. Again, happy to answer any questions. Apologize for the length of the presentation, but I thought it was important that you had another overview of everything that has been included.

So thank you, Mark and city manager. We will start with Vice Mayor Glasgow.

Thank you, Mayor. I have 48 questions, but I will not ask them all today. These are in my book right here. I'll just ask them the top ones and I'll send an email with maybe all my other questions as well. Regarding page 47, this was in the budget book, and it was a question regarding shrinkage. It listed about $8 million in shrinkage in terms of planned savings. Toward the end it says other $8,340,000 in terms of planned savings in 2027. Majority of our large departments are covered under fire, police, and public works and utilities. That's already included above. So what would the additional eight million be in plan savings there?

Fantastic question, Councilmember. Shrinkage is a very important concept to understand. We budget 100% of the cost for all our positions and everything we expect to do. We know we are not, at least we hope, we are not gonna spend 100% of the amount budgeted. It's literally impossible on the staffing side. We know we're gonna have turnover. So we want to account for that. Because if we didn't, we would probably budget too much. So shrinkage is just an estimate of the amount that we think that we will not spend. Now, it's an informed estimate because we know over the years how much of our budget we don't spend. It's typically somewhere in the neighborhood of 2% to 5%. It varies by year. uh you've heard me talk in the quarterly presentations about public works and their challenges filling positions public works has shrunk a lot the last few years more than we want frankly because we would prefer they fill positions we have shrinkage in other areas i'll give you a example you just saw on the powerpoint i noted in 2026 we've added some money to staff the real-time crime information center uh likely we would not begin that process until after you approve the budget which is august and the amount shown on that slide was represented a full year's funding that's because we accounted for that in our shrinkage we recognize we probably won't spend if you approve the budget 500 000 this year just after real crime information center so it's a variety of things accumulated in a bunch of areas last thing i would say council member i'm sorry for the long-winded answer Every year when I present the fourth quarter report and present our year end results, I typically give you one of two versions. Usually, which has happened the last few years, I tell you that we generated a surplus larger than what we expected, typically because we over shrunk. That's what's happened. Again, we don't want to shrink that much, but that's what happened. The worst case is, and I hope I don't have to tell you this, I don't think we've had for a while, but if we are successful in filling all our positions and we don't underspend in areas that we typically do, then I would tell you that our year-end results probably will be unfavorable because we did not shrink as much as we needed to.

So is the $8 million likely maybe shrinkage in commodities? Because when you were looking at the police, fire, and public works, that's listed above at like $115,000, $478,000, and $1.4 million. So I just didn't know with the other 12 departments in the city if it amounted for that $8 million or if that was also included like commodities as part of that.

All of the above, sir. I'll give you an example, fuel. You know, we budgeted fuel pretty high because fuel price been high. If by chance they decrease next year, we probably won't spend as much. We'll shrink a little bit there. We have contingencies in our budget, for example, in a few areas. We typically don't spend those contingencies, so we're going to shrink there. So the few things are relatively more predictable. Other things are not.

Okay, great answer. I'll ask a few more, then I'll toss it to my colleagues, so I won't ask all of them. In terms of page 193, the finance department gets 28 new staff, which sounds shocking to everybody, but that's because of reorganization of the system. Is there a one-for-one match in terms of the reduction of the number of 28 employees from the rest of the budget? Because when I'm looking at line item by 26 and 27, department by department, I couldn't count to 28 employees that were reduced from other departments to supplement the 28 that are added to finance.

Yes, that is a fantastic question as well. Centralization is complicated. We provided you with the conceptual overview. I'd be happy to provide you the very detailed version, but I will answer your question this way. You are correct. In order to do centralization right, we need to be adequately staffed in the finance department or else we will fail. but you're also correct in that there really wouldn't be any point of doing it from an efficiency standpoint if we didn't shrink positions out of other departments. So what we have done is we've used a consultant and we have calculated the positions that we believe could be shrunk out of the city budget, some of which are in the general fund, some of which are in our other funds. That is a fairly sizable number and it is far greater than the number that we're adding. However, we wanted to have this process very collaborative with our departments. We didn't want to just identify and say, you're taking out these seven positions here. Although again, we have an empirical basis on which we could identify those. So what we've done is we have developed targets for our departments and we have a long runway. We will implement this between the time you adopt the budget and hopefully January of next year. And during that process, we will, ask department directors to identify the positions they no longer need based on the responsibility shifting to the finance department. We have another advantage of doing that. Again, we don't particularly enjoy laying off city employees here, so because we have that long runway, that'll give departments an opportunity to identify vacant positions that maybe they don't need anymore or give the opportunity to place positions that aren't needed for financial services into other positions. That's a long-winded answer to say, no, we do not have offsetting positions identified in the budget, but we do expect those to occur and we do have savings targets. In other words, we've taken away the funding, but not the positions.

You have taken away the funding as part of it, but it's still listed as a commission. You've taken away the funding, but still listed as a commission position or non-commission position. So for example, I was, page 332, the grand total of police staffing in 2026 is 921.5, but in 2027 it says 921.5, so it says that we haven't added five positions. However, the manager's recommendation on the PowerPoint said that we're adding five to the real-time crime center. And that's pretty reflective over the entire budget as well, where it'll say at the bottom, so many positions are being added, but then that's, so either the 2026 number's not correct, 2027 number's not correct, or there's just been a decrease of salary, but not the decrease of the position. Does that make sense?

Yes, sir, it does. Yeah, the new positions, you're right, are not reflected in that table. I don't believe... I won't get into the technical details but again we kind of leave it up to the police sometimes to establish the classifications and a variety of other things and those are kind of technical details that we like to address later so we do have the funding for those positions in uh but you're correct I don't believe they're reflected on that chart right well that's pretty reflective in all the departments so fire will have the exact same number for 2026 to 2027 that we're adding 14 positions as well so I don't

If I'm a citizen looking at this budget and I don't have the opportunity to ask these questions, for me it looks like staffing is the same and is not increased in certain departments or decreased in certain departments. And so I don't know if we can maybe have some update to that. I understand that there may be some complications with the centralization of services, but that was confusing me when I read the budget.

We have a chart which I need to provide to you, and that chart shows the position changes between various departments. It's a summary chart that we prepared supplemental to the budget, but let me provide that to you, sir.

Yeah, that would be really helpful. Okay, I'll only ask two more questions because I know my colleagues have things on the board, and this would be two questions kind of tied to policing. This goes to the CIP. Actually, I'll ask the fire question first, because I see Chief Snowe in the back as well. I know one of the recommendations for fire had to do with the classes for paramedics as part of the training facility. I know, or not training facility, as part of our training. When I'm looking at the reduction of, so for example, there's 250,000 for contingency for the new fire chief. based on what I read in some of these documents, we could offer EMT training for 100, 150,000 per class for some of our fire, which when I hear from firefighters has been a plus. And so Chief, could you maybe talk a little bit to EMT training and per your request that was made, but that was not reflected in the budget?

Actually, let me take a first stab at that. You're right. As the chief, so part of our requirement for fire is to have the EMT certification. And so we do want those applicants to apply. If they don't, then yes, we do training. There's been budget in there. And sometimes we've done two EMT trainings a year. Sometimes we've only done one. We have an applicant pool because we're starting this process now for the new fire station where we have an applicant pool with people who have EMTs. As the chief highlighted, because of our applicant pool, we don't necessarily need to do an EMT class next year. So she's not recommending that. However, as you noted, I do have $250,000 for development that if the new chief wants to do that, we will have that funding available and so she can expand upon that but i wanted to give you how they're connected to that 250 000 line item for the new fire chief 250 sounds like a lot of contingency and so that's why i was if part of that could be line items so chief could you maybe talk a little bit more to that yeah so chief if you want to outline the cost of classes for emt and then the recommendation not to do a class this next year

Yeah, prior to 2023, when we never, the Wichita Fire Department did not teach EMT. The regulation to apply for a position with the Wichita Fire Department was that you must have your EMT. In 2023, we were blessed to get the opportunity to receive the SAFER grant with 42 applicants that we needed. At the time, our applicant pool was 23. So we had to do some outside the box thinking. At that time, we offered EMT. We also received, the city received ARFA funds, and we were fortunate enough to receive those ARFA funds. So it allowed us to teach an EMT class, meaning that we would pay the individuals to sit in EMT class. And at the same time, once they graduated from the EMT class, then they went on to fire training. But then through that class, it was about a 26-week class. Our applicant pool grew to over 400 applicants at the time. We taught that class for five times. And then we didn't have the funding. We ran out of funding, the ARFA funding money. This year, we basically need, we're going to hire 10 this year to, because of attrition. And we opened up our applicant pool. We received just about 200 applicants. Only 60 of them had EMTs training and, or EMT certifications. So we'll hire 10 from those 60 currently.

Did you find it as a beneficial program for fire? What have you heard from our firefighters about those that went through the program? Is there a requirement for retention, or is that something you would recommend for the future as well?

We had huge success in regards to teaching our EMT class statewide. In fact, at our national conference this year, we had an opportunity to present that program nationally. I would encourage moving forward that that be an opportunity or something that the council looks at moving forward and the new fire chief to look at.

Okay. Thank you, Chief. I appreciate it. Oh, one more question, and I'll turn it over to my colleagues. Regarding, and this is not for the Chief, so thank you. It regards the CIP, and when I'm looking at the CIP under police, there is allocation for 650,000 for two new robot dogs. Well, we've already approved one. CONFIDENT BASED ON PREVIOUS DISCUSSIONS. THERE'S PROBABLY NOT APPETITE FROM THE COUNCIL TO APPROVE TWO. THERE MAY NOT BE APPETITE TO APPROVE ONE. AND SO IN LOOKING AT 650,000, THAT IS BUDGETED FOR TWO. COULD YOU TALK MORE TO THAT WHY TWO IS IN THE CIP?

Because police requested two dogs, that request was...

In addition to the one this past year?

No, this was their request that was formulated, what, in the spring of this year, back in February, March, when we developed the CIP. They asked for two. You've had a long discussion. I think approved one. If it's determined now that only one is all they need, then that additional funding is something that we would reallocate in the CIP as we revise it later.

Well, I'm looking at page 72 of the CIP in 2027. It's allocating $650,000 to robotics dogs. Each robotic dog is $325,000, if I remember correctly.

Yeah, I think I understand your question better. They actually initiated a portion of that funding early. The funding that they came to you in, what, July? I don't remember when. June? May? I can't remember the date. They actually were initiating a portion of that 2027 funding, half of it.

So the $650,000 in here is actually $325,000?

Yes, sir, that is correct. We've committed $325,000 of it already, but the other $325,000 is uncommitted.

Okay. I did have other questions in terms of possible usages for that as well. And so I have a question for Reggie for Parks and Recreation. Something that we've talked about a lot is preparing for NCAA, preparing for community events, something I brought up from this bench multiple times, as I feel in some ways we're pushing events out of the market because of the amount of security we're acquiring at these events in terms of barricades, in terms of police staffing, and so trying to look at ways that we can mitigate some of that. Ballards have been, or Ballards, not Ballard, bollards have been a topic of consideration especially at nascar because that's where we have a lot of our community events do you have pricing and what maybe bollards might be to be able to mitigate some of those concerns because we're talking about policing this might be a combo where we can answer the police's concerns regarding safety but also answer the community's concerns regarding community events and not pricing things out of the market so in terms of bollards what do they run what would it take to supply nascar park and i know i'm putting you on the spot as well sure

We've done some preliminary work in conjunction with WPD as well as public works and their team. We anticipate that price is anywhere between the $300,000 to $350,000 range to be able to secure that area to make it where we don't have to bring in the ballers for each time we have special events there. That will help with also reducing staff time and, like you mentioned earlier, making it more accessible for those groups who will want to come in and use that space as well.

okay well that just happens to be almost that exact amount so i appreciate uh that and i have tons of other questions but i will leave it to everybody else to ask them thank you i look forward to your other 43 questions can i just have a quick follow-up reggie to that very question um just because you mentioned that it's going to provide a reduction in staff is that staff time for parks and or staff time of police as well

The majority of staff time will be for parks and rec and public works because we're the one that's having to deploy the actual barricades on site and planning and pulling some of our staff members from other tasks to make sure the area is secure.

Thank you. Council Member Hoheisen.

THANK YOU MAYOR APPRECIATE IT. I HAVE SLIGHTLY LESS THAN 47 QUESTIONS BUT I DO HAVE QUITE A FEW BUT I'LL TRY TO KEEP IT BRIEF AS WELL. I THINK MOST OF MY QUESTIONS WOULD BE FOR THE CITY Now the hope is, is that we step up funding over the next couple of years to try and meet the goal to keep it adequately staffed. Is that correct?

Correct, yeah. As we start thinking about what are some of our future priorities again, we can start factoring that in as we put the budget development together for 28. And so, they still may have another $4 million request. We can see how much of that we want to focus on starting in 28.

Okay. The animal shelter, can you talk about the plans with the budget increase for the animal shelter?

Yeah, so that is specifically for our kennel techs and our kennel cleaning process. And so how we're actually looking to have contracted employees do that to maintain our level of staffing for our kennel cleaning is where the bulk of that's going towards.

Okay. So, increasing to make sure that we have efficiencies. I, I think I hear that we're fully staffed right now, but do we constantly lose employees? That's more the, the concern here is stability.

Correct. And that is for the reason looking at a contractor for staffing, particularly with the kennel cleaning. And so, we are doing fine on our staffing for animal control officers. But it's really about the cleaning level where we do have some staffing issues. And so, we're thinking a contractor can also help us with that.

Okay. Now, when we're talking about the cameras for patrol cars, it was mentioned that we'll do a bureau at a time. gonna do it one bureau at a time, or is that just the equivalent that we're spreading out over all our bureaus?

I've not talked at a bureau at a time, but I'll say that those will cover roughly 50 cameras. And so how the chief, if he wants to do 10 and 10 and 10. I've just thought of it as a number of 50 at a time. And if there's a particular bureau, I've not had that discussion with him about implementation. But the key point is that a lot of people, I think, assume that we have in dash cameras. We do have body cameras, but we don't have the in dash cameras on cars. And so, I did think it was a good opportunity to start that again for transparency.

And that transparency, is that going to be the same policy that we have with body cameras?

Yes, they will follow. I don't know exactly because it's a little bit nuanced with cars. How much we need to do in terms of how much they're on. But yes, they will have very similar transparency policies to our body camera policy.

I'd be interested in learning more about any transparency policies that we have regarding the dash cams moving forward. The SAFER grant. When, when do we, when are we planning on hiring the additional firefighters for the new stations, irregardless of if we get the SAFER grant or not?

Well, we haven't broken ground yet and I know we're working on that. But we won't need to start the hiring process for probably at least six months. And we should maybe know the SAFER grant potentially by the end of October. It's in flux, but it'll be six months before opening.

If the budget is passed as proposed, we could potentially have another $1.7 million for fire, potentially, in the budget. Is that something that we can look into supporting the EMT program and Station Zero?

That is, yes, within the realm of possibility because you're right. Based upon timing, we do have some money identified that could be freed up just based upon timing for the hiring of firefighters.

If we get the safer grant.

Exactly.

Okay. That would be something. And that would be a budget adjustment that we'd have to do later on. Exactly. Okay. Tuition reimbursement, do we expect from our projections and seeing other municipalities do this, do we expect that whole $300,000 to be utilized?

Yeah, so since it's a newer program for us, it was structured so that each employee could have up to $3,000 towards their educational expense once a year. So, based upon that and knowing some of the average costs. But again, it depends on what parameters we put around if we want to expand that program so that we may allow an employee to have two classes. and maybe up that to 6,000 or 5,000. As of now, the thought is up to 3,000 per employee. We do think that knowing the number of our workforce currently in advanced classes, that we could utilize that full amount.

You think people in public works or whatnot, they'd have adequate access to this as well?

Again, how we structure it, we can do it for, it was thinking across the board. So, but you can also do it to employee groups if we want to lessen the dollar amount and just keep it for the employees council or however, but it was thinking citywide to have access to this. And so, again, that plays into it. But if you want to reduce that amount or increase that amount, we can always change the eligibility requirements to the amount available. So if we're thinking 3,000 per employee per class, we could reduce that to 1,500. There are flexible ways that we can structure the parameters of the program to accommodate the funding level.

Okay. No, I support supporting our staff and our employees. I just want to make sure that it's something that is impactful to everybody. So I do appreciate that. I'll have some comments later after we go out to the public. Thank you.

Council Member Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor. Everybody stole some of my questions, so I also am in favor of seeing if there is extra funds in the fire budget to look at Station Zero, and then I appreciate the Chief's comments about the EMT program. The feedback that I have heard is how successful it was a couple years ago, but I just wanted to make sure that if we're not getting enough applications that are EMT qualified that we provide that opportunity to help create our own staff. Thank you.

Council Member Shepherd.

Thank you, Mayor. And I just have a couple of questions to the city manager. Again, wanting to understand, according to Mark Manning's presentation, the $500,000 for violence intervention, which I want to be clear is a strategy. It's not an organization. Violence intervention not included in the budget. Yet when I look at the services that residents rated as the most important, I see crime prevention, is listed amongst that. So maybe can you explain your rationale?

Just knowing, one, that the funding was ended that we had identified, but two, knowing some of the review going on now for the program that's currently been in place to let that have a little bit of air space and see And then to look at grant opportunities going forward. I do know certainly some of our local groups who are interested in justice issues and things also have some other requests out there and have some strategies that they would like for us to explore. And so I think there might be an opportunity to get some more community discussion around what is the best strategies forward.

Thank you. And again, the current program that is deploying the violence intervention strategy, I want to be clear that there is a group, there could be many groups in our city that do violence intervention work. But violence intervention is a strategy. It is a framework. I guess the organization that it was doing it on behalf of the city, those were ARPA dollars, right? And when do those ARPA dollars expire? here at the end of december so they will expire at the end of december yet the data is clear that violence intervention strategies are necessary and your recommendation is to not include violence intervention in the budget

It's actually have a little bit more conversation again from some local community groups is are there some other strategies that we may want to explore? And so I think that's a conversation again about strategies.

So what does deciding on which group deploys the strategy have to do with earmarking the funds in the budget?

Really, my thought was based on all the needs, when you think about police and strategy, putting some of that into the RTIC and other things. And so it's just a choice of where we put the money. And so I understand that. But I think we might be able to generate some other grant support for violence strategies and try that to replace our ARPA dollars.

What work has been done to understand violence intervention strategy in the city manager's office?

Well, we just had a meeting, one working with the police chief on our terrain modeling and where that's reviewing a lot of the analysis. I actually had a meeting just yesterday with a group who's justice informed and went through some of their requests on strategies that they've identified and then figuring out now how we can put those two together and get the police with a community group, as you've talked about, certainly, and then see the best path forward. Is there grant funding for that? So we did talk about landscape analysis. Another concept that came out of the meeting yesterday was some more landscape analysis, but then also focused deterrence. I mean, there are some other strategies that were discussed yesterday.

Correct. Thank you for mentioning that because I do believe focus deterrence is a model that works. I believe that our Wichita Police Department is equipped with the data and the resources, and I would argue that I think that they have the same passion to ensure that the focus deterrence model is embedded within a violence intervention strategy. and so i would just challenge respectfully that maybe we consider air marking some funds for that and i know that it is a trade-off and i'm happy to help to to help assess where that should come from i also think included in that as we look at where the wichita libraries are at i just feel very strongly that when we look at them not being staffed fully since the 1980s that 375 there's got to be a better way that we can get them closer to what they need to be sustainable and there's research that shows as we talk about crime prevention um strategies there's research that shows that our wichita libraries could potentially be a part of that and so i wonder if we look at intersecting the two and maybe solving two challenges at one time. I certainly don't want to put a burden on one specific department that they don't feel equipped for, but looking at consolidating those efforts. I also have a question in regards to data around staffing. We often talk about data from the community about the priorities, which I think is important. But as we look at tuition assistance, Any data from our staff that tell us that is what they would like in terms of a benefit?

We didn't do a survey beforehand. Um, just knowing from other jurisdictions and what other benefit options are when we do a benefit review, that has been one that's come up of late. And when you talk about with the income, because it's a recruitment and a retention strategy. And so, when you talk about some folks, new or younger folks in the workplace, like, um, some student debt relief as a benefit. Don't have empirical data of how many of our workforce has that, but also some men say they want to continue their formal education and would feel supported with job-focused education classes.

i know city manager at the workshop you mentioned uh in the future doing some sort of uh survey or feedback from staff i applaud you for that i think that is the direction that we should be going and as it relates to this particular incentive i feel very strongly that we need to get feedback from staff on if they think that is if we were to add a benefit, if that is something that they think would be worthwhile. I don't know if we can use the employee resource group to maybe get some data, but would love to include them in on that conversation and conversation that we're having regarding the budget, which leads me to my next question and final question, probably for Mark. We had a speaker come today and speak to the budget and perhaps maybe the city manager's recommended budget. Last year we cut the mill levy, that's correct? That is correct. And I'm just curious, what impact did that have on the budget?

I don't know if I can...

I think that's justifiable. You weren't here.

I don't know if the Director of Finance can either. I think as with any conversation even today, based upon the consensus of council and the ultimate vote of council, you make the choices. Are there some things we push off for next year? So the impact, I don't know what all the requests were. But when you look at, we said that a mill... I'm trying to think where we found the one. When you talk about what is the impact, if you reduce a half a mill, what's the impact on a home? So you can kind of think about that in context of what is the trade-off that you want to do for support for taxpayers versus support for city services. That's just a policy decision. So I don't think even the finance director says that something else.

You can't tell me where we cut as a result of not capturing the full valuation or middle levy? I'm not sure and I'll ask him. I would hope so.

If he's got the specific.

Yes, sir. Last year was a little bit different than this year. As you know, we don't get our final evaluation until the middle of June. And last year we had a variety of workshops just like we did this year. But we were pretty firm on where we, at least the feedback that had been provided to staff was pretty steady prior to getting the final evaluation estimate. Final evaluation estimate came significantly higher than what we had expected. And at that point, I think it was the policy direction of the council to stay with where they were and not accept that additional growth that we found out about in mid June. Were there additional requests last year that were not funded? Yes. Could that additional funding have been used to fund some of those additional requests, no doubt had that been the policy direction. But again, the direction was that the budget had been formulated by staff up to that point was consistent with the priorities of the city council and the additional growth was basically rejected and used to lower the mill levy.

Thank you. Would it be possible to look back and share with me maybe what some of those new things could have been that we did not do as a result?

I'm sure I could compile a list of all the requests last year, yes sir.

I just think it's important to recognize that everything is a trade off, as many of my colleagues have said. And I think one of the speakers and I agree with this speaker that I do think that there are people who want property tax relief. And I also heard very loudly at my district one breakfast on Saturday that they also want to maintain services and they want all these things to continue to happen at the same rate and at the same quality as they are now and so the question becomes again what kind of city do you want to be and so i mean the city manager knows me enough by now that when i disagree i'm willing to say that and when i agree i'm willing to affirm and i think presenting a budget based upon a flat mill levy and capturing the full valuation i think is one that is probably a very difficult trade-off to speak to but i think it is one that prioritizes what i feel our community needs right now and is maintaining the level of services that we have right now at the bare minimum so those are just my thoughts right now and i will reserve the rest of my comments for an email

sorry i think we have lots of questions this is a very thoughtful council so i'm going to go down the list based off of the slides can we go to slide number 40 please actually 38 first 38 This is when I interrupted my apologies city manager, but I just wanted to make sure that the community understood that for the first time, which is planned, we are taking away from the stabilization reserve. So. the rainy day fund, the savings account, whatever you want to call it, this is the first time we will be withdrawing $3 million specifically to balance the budget. Is that accurate, Mark?

Yes, ma'am. Actually, I have a slide, an even better slide to demonstrate that to you, which is this slide right here. And this shows the plan drawdowns from the stabilization reserve beginning in 2026.

This year specifically. Yes, this year. I wanted to ask you regarding this withdrawal, can you talk about when they are planned withdrawals versus an unexpected withdrawal, how that affects our ratings?

Rating agencies like reserves. They even have metrics in our ratings that measure our level of reserves and that's one reason that we are AAA rated right now because our reserves are very good. They do not like unpredictability. Financial markets in general don't like unpredictability. It would be very alarming to them if our reserves decreased unexpectedly. They are perhaps a little bit more sympathetic to planned drawdowns or drawdowns that are based on a longstanding policy direction or things of that nature or even sometimes drawdowns that are non-recurring. Those are perhaps more palatable to our agencies. I mean, any drawdown is a risk. Any time you draw down your reserves, that could draw the attention of our agencies. But again, if they're planned, if they're structured, if they're non-recurring, those all probably mitigate any challenges that we might have in drawing down our reserves. And I would suggest that all three of these on this table fit into that category. to some degree.

And since you have this slide up, can you again address homelessness was one of the priorities this council has identified as wanting to be part of the solution. Can you talk about the 4 million in 2027? Can that be that? Is that going to all be withdrawn in one year and given out in that year? Or can they be staggered?

Again, our understanding was that they had a more immediate need in 2026 and it was suggested that a more immediate need was closer to a million dollars. It was also suggested that we could provide a amount of funding for them to try to support them into the future. That's what the four million dollars represents. Again, 2027 is our budget year. It's often better for planning purposes to put new things in the budget year. But having said that, certainly we could transfer the full amount in 2026 if that's the will of the body.

Can that collect interest so that it can continue growing? In other words, if you can do a withdrawal of, say, $5 million altogether at once, but not disperse the $5 million so that it can start accumulating some interest, can that work out? And how would that work?

I'm gonna answer you, Mayor, and say yes and no. I would tell you no based on our current policy direction. Probably about 10 years ago, we have swept most of our interest earnings into the general fund, other than those that are required by statute or other policies not to be included in the general fund. But having said that, that is a policy direction of the body, and so if there's ever the interest in distributing interest earnings to various funds or any particular fund, we certainly have the capability to do that.

Generally, what would $5 million generate in terms of interest earnings?

Well, I'm getting in the high 380s, high 380s. Let's call it 4% just to use rounding. So what, $5 million of 4% is $200,000 a year.

Thank you. I'll continue with slide number 40, please. 40, Mayor? 40, yes. I have a question regarding this police vehicle cameras. This program is for 50 vehicles. How many total vehicles are part of the WPD fleet and will all vehicles then have cameras?

My understanding is that police requested funding for 195 vehicles and I think those are the patrol vehicles that they use out in the field.

So a total of 195 patrol vehicles. This would be the first 50 of 195 patrol vehicles.

Yes, that's how it's structured. My understanding is that police would try to keep them based on a bureau for efficiency. I think it's more efficient for them to have one bureau fully implemented rather than to spread them out. But obviously it'd be up to the police chief to determine the most effective way. But the recommendation's based on funding for one bureau.

What would happen if there was a delay in this funding, if it was not funded in 2027 but delayed?

Again, this is a new program. For the most part, we do not have cameras in our police vehicles now. Our officers have cameras, but the vehicles do not. So again, it's just a new program as to when it's implemented. I think that's up to the level of funding and when it's approved.

Thank you. Slide number 44, please. This right here, I know Council Member Ballard has been very pivotal in trying to get more trees planted in the City of Wichita. This is not new. Is that accurate? This is something that has been ongoing?

Yes, ma'am. We're trying to highlight here that we are trying to address priorities, but you're right. This funding has been included in prior year's budgets. And one thing I did not include in this slide is related to the shrinkage comments of Council Member Glasscock earlier. One additional thing we do for forestry is we typically redirect their shrinkage savings to additional contractors for additional tree pruning and planting. So that's another thing that we do to boost those efforts.

And this entire slide really deals with parks and recreation because the tree canopy is forestry as part of parks. And homeless encampments are also part of parks and recreation. Can you talk about this $300,000 contractual funding? I thought that the city had took that in-house. Is this additional funding?

Yes, ma'am. You're correct on both counts. They do a lot of that work in-house in the Park Department, and this is additional contractual funding. And there's some instances where it's more beneficial for Park to utilize contractors, I think particularly on the larger challenges that they have, and that's what this funding is available for.

So with this additional funding, if it was delayed, would that be, that would not affect, I guess, the level of even current encampment cleanups. Is that accurate?

I think it might present some challenges to PARC on the volume of cleanups that they can take care of, particularly the larger ones. I mean, obviously they do the best they could with the staff that they have. You know, that might be a better question for them to address later. I can't say exactly the magnitude of the challenge that we'd present if this funding would be removed, but I have no doubt that it would have some impact on their ability to clean up camps, particularly the larger ones, depending on how many occur each year.

So I'm looking right now at the city of Wichita's park and recreation operations dashboard regarding homeless remediation. And just in 2026 alone, there have been 366 work orders for a total cost of 254,259. Would this be then this additional 300,000 on top of this then?

I'm not specifically familiar with their work order system and whether that's just measuring the staff effort or not. So Reggie might be a better source for that question there.

So the dashboard tracks are loosening work orders that give staff time and supplies that we put in for the encampments that are there. The $300,000 that's allocated in the budget currently is to supplement once we have larger encampments that we need support from from a vendor.

So for instance, we have an encampment in District 3. Will that be the $300,000 that you would utilize for that cleanup?

That would be what we would look at as an option to help subsidize that because we wouldn't have the internal capacity to be able to do it with our current staff.

just trying to understand the scope of this because already city staff is spending a quarter of a million dollars in cleanup and then this is adding an additional more than quarter of a million dollars for contractuals to then clean up more encampments i'm trying to wrap my head around is the actual number for encampment cleanups going to be half a million dollars

So the amount that's there, that's the $300,000 is what was previously used for the contract that we have for the external vendor. When we brought it internally, that was absorbed within our operating budget, and that amount was to be reserved for once we needed additional support when we have larger encampments that we don't have the capacity to do internally.

So there is a cost every single time that there is an encampment cleanup when someone reports an encampment? and staff goes and cleans the encampment, and if another one comes up, this is a constant cost. Is that accurate to say?

That is correct, and that's what's reflected on the dashboard.

I have a concern for that because I love what Parks and Recreation does, and seeing this dashboard, and I think we all have agreed that it's really sad that this dashboard has to show that there's illegal dumping happening, homeless remediation happening, graffiti removal, vandalism, and those are the negative ones, whereas there's one positive, which is from Councilmember Ballard, trees planted in our community. And so I just want to say thank you to your staff for all you try to do to help make sure that our community is beautiful, safe. But I would rather use those dollars to help you plant more trees than have to remediate illegal dumping, homeless remediation, graffiti removal and vandalism. And so I just wanted to highlight that there is a cost every single time that any of these four things are mentioned, that your staff has to divert your attention towards something that to me is sad, that there are decisions that are made, for instance, vandalism. So thank you to your staff and for what you do. Mark, I have another question for you. This is now slide number 45. 45. Library funding. Is it accurate to say, though, even if this $375,000 was not added, this is in addition to, that the budget for the library would still be increasing despite this $375,000?

Yes, ma'am, that is correct.

So in 2025, the library budget was 12.2 million. In 2026, the budget was 12.8 million. And in 2027, the budget with the 375,000 is 14.5 million. But even if you didn't add the 375,000, the library budget would increase to 14.1 million. Is that accurate?

Yes, ma'am, that is correct.

Can you tell me why there was an increase in the budget and so this is to maintain current levels of library? Is that accurate?

Generally, I do want to point out one thing to you, Mayor, that you're seeing on this page and you will see this in virtually every department. I mentioned earlier when I talked about our initiative to centralize. One of the advantages of that is that it will allow us more accurately and more fully cost out activities. So the mechanism for us to do that is to allocate those costs to various departments. So I will tell you that the library's growth does include approximately $700,000 in a allocation of our centralization cost to them. But having said that, they still have a fairly significant amount of growth. But it's not all just organic. Some of it is based on that technical adjustment.

$672,000 in city administrative charges. Can you share what are some of those charges?

Yes, ma'am. Our concept on centralization is that all our administrative centralized cost will be in one bucket, one separate fund. That improves transparency. You can see exactly what we're spending for overhead in the future. But to fund that, we will... divide those costs out to the various departments that utilize our services because we're a service provider and we have a methodology in which we do that but you'll see those charges for example in police and fire and public works and park all the departments that allows you to more fully understand what the actual cost of providing those services are but it's our mechanism to allocate those costs out to the departments and that's that six hundred and seventy two thousand dollars in the library what that tells you in prior years was We were providing that level of service to the library, but it wasn't reflected in their budget. It was reflected in my budget, effectively, is what that's showing.

So accounting, can you talk, I guess, for folks that may not understand what administrative charges those would be? Would that be building maintenance? Tell me about some of those things, please.

Yes. It's virtually everything the finance department does, which is we buy things, we budget things, we pay bills, we invest money, we issue debt on behalf of departments. It's also services that the law department provides. The law department provides a lot of legal services to our various departments. It's a portion of the city manager's office. His office provides management services to the various departments. It also includes human resources. It's basically all of us departments that serve internal customers. I'm not providing financial services to people outside the organization, only inside. And then we also included building services. Again, they are a landlord, if you will, but they're a landlord in City Hall, for example, to city departments. So all of those costs will be spread to departments so you can more accurately know the actual cost of operating those departments. That's the concept, Mayor.

Thank you. And even without that 672,000 city administrative charges, again, the budget is increasing despite the 375 additional that has now been identified. Is that accurate?

Yes, ma'am. That is correct.

Thank you. I'll continue. Thank you for answering all these questions. I'm going to go to something that's a little bit I think this is gonna be the one that we'll have a lot more conversation. Slide number 47, please. Okay, talking about wages, wages is your highest increase for this budget, $9.6 million. Yes, ma'am. And I think slide 52 might be a reflection of that. Let's talk about this.

Yes, ma'am.

What is the inflation percentage here in our community roughly, average?

In our community, well, it varies monthly. Somewhere between 3% and 4%. It depends on the month. It's been as high as 3.8% in some months. I think it's declined a little bit over the last several months. But again, the federal government puts out statistics on that. But I would tell you it's somewhere between 3.2% and 3.8% maybe.

Thank you. So can you please share the difference between the pay adjustment that all employees receive versus the 2.5% merit adjustment that roughly 72% or how many percentage of folks get a merit adjustment?

Yeah, great question. Our pay model is based on a 15-step pay matrix for the most part. I'm going to generalize. There's a few nuances. But based on that model, employees move a step each year after they've been here for one year. They only move if they have a favorable merit evaluation. But fortunately, most of our employees do. So when they receive that merit evaluation, they move to the next step. And generally, our steps are 2.5% apart So all that is to say that most employees every year, until they reach top salary, receive a 2.5% merit adjustment. Now, we also have a second adjustment for most of our employees, and that is a cost, not a cost of living, but what we call a general pay adjustment. That is typically received by all employees in a particular unit. So for example, an employee might get a 2% General pay adjustment in January, and then that same employee might get a 2.5% merit adjustment sometime throughout the year for a total of, in my example, if they got a 2% GPA and a 2.5% merit, they'd get a total of about 4.5%. That's been longstanding in our organization, and that's how our pay structure is currently modeled.

I wanted to hear from community members and I am looking forward to getting emails regarding this, but what do most employees in our community get in terms of increases per year? Most may get a cost of living adjustment, what we kind of call the general pay adjustment, which is still below inflation. However, they don't go up to 4% to 5%. Maybe I'll be wrong, but I look forward to hearing from our community members what is the fair adjustment and increase moving forward. I know that we had to do a lot of adjustments post COVID to try to hire individuals and get pay to be commensurate to other communities, especially peer cities. But are we now there where we are commensurate to other communities?

Great, great point, Mayor. We had some challenges during the pandemic, particularly recruiting, particularly public service and the city council, based on their policy direction, corrected staff to seek greater comparability with other public safety agencies, particularly our what we would consider our peers, some of which are in the Kansas City area. The City Council approved contracts with very sizable increases, primarily for public safety, police and fire. And the objective of that was to reach some level of comparability with other jurisdictions. I believe we reached that level. So I would tell you that for the most part, we are generally comparable with other Jurisdictions, I would provide one caveat. Comparing wage and benefit packages is incredibly complex. Every city does everything a little bit different. But yes, to your question, I would say that generally speaking, we are comparable to other jurisdictions which we want to be comparable to.

Regarding the merit adjustment again, if that was eliminated, what would be the savings?

Sorry, Mayor, we actually have looked at that previously, because one thing that we do is try to provide different scenarios on our salary basis, and of course we do it on a global basis. I have a note here somewhere. It looks like we believe that a merit step, I believe you asked me about how much the merit step would cost, Mayor? Yes. Looks like we have about $5.5 million, I'm sorry, $3.5 million is what we believe the merit step would cost. Now bear in mind that we do have one unit that's already under contract, so I did not include that unit in this amount, but $3.5 million is your amount.

And the general pay adjustment, what does that account to?

That's approximately $5.5 million.

Okay, so right there, general pay adjustment that everybody receives would be a 2.5% increase for their salaries next year, and that will account for $5.5 million. Right. And the merit adjustment, another additional 2.5%, would cost the city 3.5 million?

Yes, ma'am.

That is correct. So if both of them were approved, this would be $9 million. Is that accurate?

Yes, ma'am. You're 100% correct.

Pre-COVID, what was the general pay adjustment percentage and what was the merit adjustment percentage?

Well, they varied a lot over the years. what year is COVID, 2020. I did some research recently and I don't know that I went back quite that far, but it was not uncommon. I've been doing this for a long time, since the mid-90s. It wasn't uncommon for COLAs to be in the, 2% range, sometimes a 3% range. Very occasionally, we might have a 4% year. Again, all that's part of our negotiating strategy. But generally speaking, I would tell you prior to the pandemic, GPAs were probably more in the neighborhood of 2% to 3% for the most part.

What would be, if merit adjustment was removed but general pay adjustment would increase to 3% to cover inflation, what type of savings would the city find?

Well, we'd save the merit adjustment amount, which is $3.5 million, and we'd probably need another, I don't know, $1.2 or $1.1 million. So you would probably net out about $2.4 million in savings.

a three percent general pay adjustment no merit and then that would be for all employees versus the merit one only for eligible employees so all employees would get a three percent pay adjustment if it was to be increased from 2.5 percent to three percent um and no merit adjustment so it would save the city 2.4 million?

I would say that with one caveat, Mayor. We have some bargaining units that we negotiate with. I would tell you that's what we would budget, if I can offer that preface to what you said. If we made that change, the city would be budgeting to provide all employees a 3% increase without a merit step. Yes, ma'am.

I will bring this back up, but I just wanted this to be reflective of the record that, again, inflation roughly I think last year was just under 3%, and a 3% adjustment in the increase in pay would then level off for everybody in the 3,100 employees that the city of Wichita employs. So I am interested in a 3% general pay adjustment for all employees and getting rid of the merit adjustment altogether. And I'd like to see if we can get a memo to show what, again, that savings will be. You have shared it verbally, but I would like to see it written for the council to consider. Thank you. Vice Mayor Glasscock.

Thank you, Mayor. I just have one quick question left. I have searched this document to try to find the auditor listed by name, and I cannot find it. And so, can you help me on what that is classified? Because it's not used as the name auditor.

Yes. And by name, you mean by the classification title?

Yeah.

I believe she is a division manager. I can find out for sure, council member. I don't unfortunately have all the position titles memorized by person, but I believe that that position is a division manager shown on page 167.

Okay, one division manager and then anybody that works in the audit division. We hear a lot, especially from constituents, about just making sure that we're good stewards of taxpayer dollars. The auditor department does a very good job at making sure we do that. And so I'd just be interested in highlighting that as part of this document because right now it looks like we don't have an auditor. Because if I looked at division manager, I'm not going to assume that's an auditor. or whoever works underneath the division manager who that is an auditor as well. So maybe just clarification on how much we're spending on audit I think would be helpful.

I know it's confusing, but we use the legal position titles in our budget document, but you're right. It does make it a challenge to find out stuff like that.

Okay. Thank you.

Council Member Hohaisel.

Thank you, Mayor. I have one question for Reggie. When we were talking about tree removal and maybe this is also for Mr. Ferris, but I think he disappeared. But we're talking about tree removal and contracting out. Do we have an idea of how far we are behind in that tree removal right now?

it's something that is a public safety issue and it's we've been trying hard to catch up here lately so i am just curious about how much progress we've made with that sure and i pulled some of that data as well so currently we're at 12 to 18 months depending on where we are with requests that's coming in and about 64 percent of what we do are emergency tree responses, and the other portion of it is related to day-to-day operations. If we were to go to looking at completely getting rid of the backlog for that, we're anticipating a cost, and it was based on where we were in 2024, is about $1.8 million would get us completely caught up. If we went to 50%, it's a little over $923,000. If we got 25% of that, it's about $465,000. That was based on where our numbers were in the end of 2024 when we did the last analysis.

Alright, so we've gotten caught up. We're better off than we were a year or two ago when we were almost two years behind. But again, it is a public safety issue. I didn't know this until recently. The governor of Texas, the reason he is in a wheelchair is because of a dead limb that fell on him. So, that was interesting to learn about. So, I appreciate that info. Thank you, Reggie.

And part of that was, as well, we were able to allocate some of the savings that we had in our budget towards some of the contracts for tree removal. So we were able to do a contract last year to help with some of that also.

That was mowing savings, correct?

It was more so from the savings that we had when we weren't watering as much, so our water bill was less. So we didn't have as much of an expense for that.

Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you, Reggie. And then just one more comment to the Mayor's points earlier. One thing we are learning going through the Master Parks Plan is employee retainment and advancement is definitely something that keeps around So we just need to keep that in mind as we parse through this. As employees are more familiar with their job and they grow into their job, they do become more efficient. They have more of that knowledge that gets passed on. So I think the last thing we want to do is price ourselves under undervalue our employees and lose a lot of people that are good employees so just again keep that in mind as we parse through this conversation council member tuttle thank you

Thank you, and Councilmember, all my notes, and I've been sitting back listening. I met with city manager several times, I've met with the finance director many times. I appreciate all of the comments, questions, dialogue. I do want to go on record saying that I will not be in any way supportive of not compensating our employees for what they deserve. And it's not only the financial. It's not only the money that they will get in their check. It is also showing them appreciation and especially for a merit increase. If you've ever worked for an organization where you receive a merit increase, that actually usually means more to people than the pay adjustment or the COLA or whatever, the cost of living adjustment. We have 3,100 employees and approximately 800 of them are not covered under a bargaining unit. And so those 800 employees rely on us. Those 800 employees are boots on the ground. We are a service industry. We are a service organization. The only thing we make or sell is water. Everything else that we provide, our residents depend on effective and efficient service. And I can guarantee you that it will cost us more money to have this sort of cut than if we show our employees how much we appreciate them because they will leave. And it costs more to hire employees and train an employee than it does to retain an employee. I can say this from the seven and a half years that I've been here, the morale among the employees is the lowest I've ever seen it for various reasons. And I think anything that we do to not show our employees that we value them is a huge mistake and I will in no way be supportive of not showing our employees our gratitude for them being part of the City of Wichita team.

Council Member Shepherd.

Thank you, Mayor, and my colleague so eloquently said what I wanted to. I think it's important to contribute to that message as somebody who over the last seven months, I think every month I've made it a point to let staff know how much I appreciate them because it is abundantly clear that this place doesn't run because of the seven of us up here. This place runs because of the individuals behind the scenes who often don't get the credit that they receive. um as i've been out and working with the city manager to really understand how do we get to a place where we add in a benefits package beyond health care and things of that nature that build that morale but also creates a world-class culture within city hall where people want to be here and wake up every day i have heard overwhelmingly that things like child care assistance things like policies that uh pay family leave and and an infants at work policy and different things that are low cost, low barrier are the things that come to mind. And that's why I continue to push for these things. As we look at the public data that's available online from open government pay, the average salary for an employee is anywhere between 57,000 to 60,000. I don't know about you all, but I know that I don't. I live off of that because that's what city council members are paid and I think it's important to acknowledge that in this economy you are stretching your pennies and it is very difficult to make ends meet if you are in that range and I think it's important to also note that the top 10 earners in this organization make anywhere between 117,000 and or more and there's only one person up here that makes that much And so I say that to say, when my colleague mentioned that 800 employees are not covered by the bargaining unit, it is important for me to recognize that those 800 individuals deserve to be seen, heard, valued, and taking away that merit increase could not only signal that they're not, but it could put them in a really extreme bind. So as we talk about folks moving into housing, as we talk about folks struggling to buy groceries, as we talk about making a world-class city for everybody, not just some, these are the things that I want to take into consideration.

Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor. Just piggybacking on my colleagues, our staff is our greatest investment and I will never be supportive of not paying them what they deserve. Sometimes I think we're not even able to pay them. Oftentimes we train people up and they go to private industry because we're not able to be as competitive in wages. So the little raises that we can give them are extremely important.

And thank you to the council members because I have not been suggesting that we should not be compensating employees fairly. Rather, I think we should all have the accurate data. So from this bench, council members make $62,994. The mayor makes $137,512. The city manager makes, and I will have that accurately, said that we're all working off of the same information rather than assumptions. And so city manager Marstal was able to send me the top employees list based off of annual base salary. The city manager makes $298,000. The city attorney makes $253,058. The assistant city manager makes $253,058. The other assistant city manager, which is vacant right now, would make $253,058. And so those are your top, one more, that's the exact same amount as the other individuals. Our police chief makes $253,058. So your top amounts are listed so that everyone understands where we're working from. But I'd rather see another list. And I will ask Mark Manning to provide that list of the 800 employees who are not part of a bargaining unit and would be affected by a general pay adjustment can you please provide the general salaries and the department so that we can have an understanding again prior to the pandemic we had to tighten our belts then during the pandemic we wanted to hire people in the city so pay adjustments were made in large percentages and now we're asking families in 2026 to tighten their belts so we need to do the same thing in city government and that is the reason why I know that my colleagues challenged me a couple weeks ago to find the 4.2 million dollars in increases that we would have to shave off in order to not capture all of that valuation that property owners are having to have as an increase in their own property taxes and so I'm proposing something that yes may be controversial but I do believe that if we're trying to do what is right which is tighten our belts just like families in our community are tightening their belts then some tough decisions have to be made and so this conversation should be had and I'm looking forward to City Finance Director Manning providing the additional information regarding the individuals who would be affected by that general pay adjustment.

Council Member Shepard.

Thank you, Mayor. We all have to share our priorities out loud, and maybe I don't agree with where people are in terms of how to get to where they want to go. I can see the list. It's public knowledge, which is why I feel so passionate about this. In the case that we bring it up and we find that those 800 are a part of the Alice families that we often talk about from the United Way, what are we willing to do to fix that?

Council Member Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor. Is there any early projections as to how much money that would save?

I think Mark Manning said $2.4 million. Is that accurate? If it went from 2.5 to 3% for general pay adjustment, so everyone would get it, not just few.

Yeah, thank you.

I see no further questions. However, I do have just a couple more to bring up. Can we go to slide number 48? Can I have an explanation regarding the cultural service development role?

Yes, Mayor, that is a position that cultural services ask for primarily in the development area. I think they're struggling, particularly at the Mid-American All-Indian Center in the fundraising area. And the concept is that we would add a position to seek additional funds, not only for the Mid-American All-Indian Center, but some of the other cultural facilities. And we actually expect that position to pay for itself with funds that we believe they can generate. So that's what that position is requested for.

And then can we go to slide number 49, please? Can you please explain the fire leadership development one more time for me? Because I have asked the police chief if he received that when he came to the city as a new police chief, and the answer was no. So I'd like to know, with this new fire chief, what is this fire leadership development?

and I'll speak to that mayor since that was my recommendation that is simply money identified for new fire chief and as we talked about if there are some things that he sees as a need as he comes into the department whether it be EMT level training or whatever if there are some things that he thinks will be beneficial once he gets in and understands since he's going to come in with a budget already in place not have input into another budget so basically he's going to have 18 months of operating without a strong input into the budget process and so this is to allow him to have some flexibility for some initiatives or things that he may see would be beneficial for the department under his leadership

So I'm gonna go on the record in saying that I would like to see this delayed. Since there's no clear plan for a $250,000 fire leadership development by a fire chief who has not even taken office just yet, I would like to see this delayed. And so that would be a cost savings of $250,000. Again, I know that this is not for vote right now, but I'm going to be proposing things, again, to help shave off this increase in the budget. In addition, the tuition reimbursement, I think, is a great program. However, right now, I don't think it's the right time. And so I'd like to know why that tuition reimbursement program was disbanded nearly 10 years ago.

Mayor, I can't remember the exact year, but as you know, we've had some challenges in the past during the great financial crisis from 09 to 12, I believe is when that was eliminated. And during that time, we were looking for any expenditures that were Determined to be discretionary at the time and the policy direction at that time was that tuition reimbursement was an expense we could do without, so it was eliminated at that time. I would say the magnitude, of course, that was many years ago, but the magnitude was a little smaller than what's being proposed today, but that's the reason.

What was the magnitude back then?

Again, I believe it was 2014. I believe that year we had budgeted about $50,000. Again, much more narrow program back then.

So it's a $250,000 increase from what the previous proposal was?

I think what the manager proposed would be much more expansive and accommodate much more on a staff development side, yes.

Thank you. I will go on the record as saying that I think we should pause this new program. Again, it's a new program, not an ongoing program. Councilmember Ballard.

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate some of your suggestions. Just even if we don't agree with them, I think it's great to say how you feel and give some ideas. I just wanted to go on the record for saying the fire leadership development, I know we might not need the EMT funds this year, because we have enough people in the applicant pool, which is awesome, but I just want to keep that in mind for moving forward that potentially that money could be used for the EMT. Thank you. Council Member Shepherd.

Thank you. I would just, as we are having conversations about where to find cuts, again, as I mentioned earlier, perhaps the tuition reimbursement program is not the most benefit that staff see. I'd be curious to hearing from the staff about what they feel. I'm gonna leave it to the city manager who's over operations to figure that out. I don't disagree that perhaps tuition reimbursement is not the right option at this time that would generate the most benefit for staff from staff perspective. But what I do know, and going back to our council retreat with the city manager, one of the things I believe that we talked about is creating a culture where staff feel proud to work for the city of Wichita and that they want to come into work for the city of Wichita and that we are focusing in on the the retention efforts of our staff because we know that that institutional knowledge and their expertise is critical to achieve our mission as a city so if if we can do that get that data from staff as we look at what benefit we can potentially provide to them through this budget I would be very grateful

Council Member Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of quick points here. I was saving this more for comments, but it does seem to be topical. I think if we do find savings, the program that will give more bang to the buck for taxpayers, the ones who need it the most, is the Homestead Property Tax Rebate. That is something that I 100% have been talking about for years. We have done it before. I know some of my colleagues support it as well. But if, again, targeted tax relief to the people who need it the most, that is, I think by my mind, by my eyes, and it's also the least intensive for staff to be able to to utilize, that would be the place to go. Also, savings again. Councilmember Shepherd brought it up earlier. It's had a major impact in my district as well. Violence interruption and libraries. Those are also priorities that have major impacts on the quality of life within our districts. It makes people healthier. Drives down violence and it's just an overall quality of life issue. So, I just wanted to reiterate some of those points.

Council Member Hohaisel, I'm in favor of learning more about the Homestead Property Tax Rebate. So I'll ask Mark Manning to share when the program started, how many folks have actually utilized it. Can you talk about this program for those that may not be familiar with it?

Yes, ma'am. Again, I can't remember the year, whether it's 01 or 21 or 22, but at that time, the City Council was concerned about the property tax impact on particular population segments, so we developed a program to provide property tax relief and to reduce the administrative burden, like the Councilmember mentioned, we basically piggybacked on the state's homestead exemption program. And it basically has three categories of residents that are eligible under state law on their income taxes. And there's been a while since I looked at it, but basically it was based on income levels at certain levels. It also included some exemptions for disabled veterans. And there was a third one, which I don't recall off the top of my head. Yeah. So what we did is if you filed for that tax credit at the state level, all we did was we wanted to verify that the state had accepted your return and issued you a refund. And if they did that, we assumed that you were eligible. And so then we also sent you a check for an amount. Now, when we did that, we based our initial estimates on we know how many people participated in the state program. We know how many are in Sedgwick County. So we estimated the impact of it and we expected to receive approximately 700 requests for refunds and we thought the average refund would be about $100. So we thought it would cost us about $700,000 when we implemented it. We did an aggressive marketing campaign. We promoted it heavily at the city's community centers and unfortunately our participation was significantly lower than what we expected. I could provide you the final report. I don't have it with me today, but my recall is that ultimately we provided just a shade over 100 refunds. The average amount was slightly higher. I believe the average amount was somewhere in the 130 range. It wound up costing us about $130,000. Again, that was the program. I think it terminated in 2023. And so that was the program we had at that time.

I would be in favor of getting that information to the whole council regarding the homestead property tax rebate, if that could be reinstated, what that would look like, what the success and failures were when the program was around, and I think that we can have that discussion. Okay. In addition, can we go back? Do you have another?

Yeah, I just wanted to offer some additional information on that. It was designed as a 1 year program. It was because we did have extra money. There are difficulties and making sure that people know about it. That was 1 of the barriers that we did find. with it, but the three buckets that we can have people be eligible for, I believe it's, at the time anyways, it was property owners who make less than $25,000 a year living in poverty, people with disabilities, specifically veterans with disabilities, and also, I believe, senior citizens who make less than $41,000 a year with homes, I think, $300,000 or less and this is also to help address COLA because COLA adjustments with social securities are usually around two to 3% and we see how much inflation is and evaluations are. So again, if we want targeted impactful property tax relief to people who need it, I believe this is a program that we should utilize and continue to look into.

one more question mark sorry can you go back to slide number 52 again on employee compensation can you please talk about one of the things that i've heard from employees is the really great health insurance benefit which is not your salary but it is compensation it is your benefit can you talk about how much this costs the city

Yes, we have a very attractive group health plan and we're aware of that. It is probably more attractive than most employers in the Wichita area. It is relatively expensive for the city. The general fund, we're probably going to spend 10% of our general fund on group health insurance. maybe $35 million a year on group health for our employees. We have recognized that over the past several years and we've tried to study options for making the plan more affordable for the city. And we have a variety of options that we are looking at. Whether we implement those or not, of course, will be a challenge. But it is true our group health plan is very attractive. It's a component of our employee pay package. And our objective is obviously to attract and retain employees. And I think the group health plan is a key component in that.

Can you also talk about the pension system and how much that gets funded?

Yes, our pension systems, we have two. One is for our police and fire members, and the other is basically for everyone else. Again, our pension systems are attractive. They are funded by the city, which is relatively unique in the state of Kansas. Our pension systems are funded at about 91%, which I would tell you is among the very top in the United States. as far as funded level. That's due to a variety of things. We have some very prudent practices. We've made some very good investments. We rebalance frequently, but it's also due to the fact that the city council every year, when I come to you in April or May, has fully funded our pension contributions. It's a mistake that many other systems have made, and it's to their detriment. We have not made that mistake here. In fact, we've done exactly the opposite, and that's why we have very, very, very good pension systems, good financially, and good for the employees.

Hopefully, what's the cost?

They're based on the payroll. We contribute a certain portion of our payroll. You're really taxing my memory today, Mayor. Police and fire is significantly more expensive. Police and fire generally is not eligible for Social Security, so their pension benefits are a little bit more lucrative, again, to basically compensate them for not having Social Security eligibility through the city. I'm going to say that police and fire is somewhere in the neighborhood of 28%. of their salaries. Again, that's not exact, Mayor. I'd have to give you the exact number, but it's going to be somewhere in that range. On the civilian side, I'm going to say it's somewhere in the neighborhood of about half that or somewhere around 15%. Again, I can get you the precise numbers. I'm just going by memory. It varies every year. Well, let's see how good I did. On the civilian side, looks like it'll be 15.5%, so I was pretty close there. Commission side's 27, so I was a little off there.

Your memory is fantastic. When it comes to amounts, though, from the general fund, how much money from the general fund? The group health insurance is roughly 35 million of the general fund. What would pensions be from the general fund?

It's a little bit less than that. I would say I didn't calculate that specifically, but I would estimate it to be somewhere in the low 20s. Again, I can get you that number exact, Mayor. I should also point out, in fairness to our employees, our employees contribute to our pension system too. It's not a free ride for employees. Employees also contribute to our pension system.

That is fantastic. So two benefits that go beyond the salary, group health insurance funded at about 35 million in the general fund and pensions roughly $20 million from the general fund. So I'm going to go back to that 3% general adjustment that I've proposed. Can you tell me what the county does when it comes to pay adjustments?

The county has a little bit different model than us from what I understand. Again, I'm not an expert on the county's pay structure. They are also a little bit more unique in us in that they don't have represented employees, at least for wage purposes. I think they have one unit that is represented for work conditions, but I do not believe that the county has any units that represent employees in their wage negotiations, which makes their environment significantly different than our environment. I did read the county's budget for 2027, not in detail. My understanding is the county manager has proposed a 3% general pay adjustment. I think they use a different term, but I'm gonna use that term. And they also have a merit system somewhat similar to us, but a little different. I believe they have a 1% merit bump to the matrix is what I understand from what I've read from their budget document.

Thank you. So that's about a 4%?

I think that's fair to say.

And the city's current proposal is 5%? when you add merit and pay adjustment? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Okay, I appreciate all the questions. We will now open it up for public comment regarding the budget.

Hi, my name is Jack Gehrig. I'm an intern with the city council, so you all are familiar with me. I don't think it's appropriate for the mayor to make comments about tightening the budget of the city when really she's proposing our city workers tighten their belts for her. in her agenda. I don't think that's appropriate. I think that's insulting to the work of our workforce. They deserve to have merit increases to their pay. I believe that creates a positive incentive for our workforce to work better, more efficiently every year. Now, of course, pay should also increase in correlation to inflation, a both and rather than either or. Our healthcare and pension costs are also necessary for retaining workforce and competing with peer cities. And it's what people deserve, especially if they are not eligible for Social Security. In the future, our employees deserve to retire in dignity. Elderly poverty is a serious issue, a major contributor to homelessness. If we want to reduce costs to encampment cleanup, per se, I would encourage the city fund its employees. Thank you.

Thank you, Jack. We'll continue with public comment.

Just have a suggestion, Darcy had to leave. So when we were talking about the animal shelters, she had a suggestion about is there a place, is that something that we could maybe hire the unhoused? A lot of them have animals and love and their animals are very well, I'm telling y'all, these animals are very well trained. But I thought that was a great suggestion and I just wanted to throw it out there. Thank you, Ms. Shabazz.

Good morning, Mayor, City Council. My name is Brock Booker, for the record. I live in District 2. I wanted to speak just briefly on the budget in regards to Second Light and to the library system. Just a couple of brief comments here. I'm going to go extemporaneously from my notes. This summer, the library, particularly downtown, has been very busy, I will add. I'm a frequent patron. I enjoy going to the library to all sorts of community events and et cetera. My mother is a retired librarian in the Southeast Kansas system in Parsons. So I'm very passionate about how the library plays a key role in our community. The word I'd like to use is collection development. And that goes beyond staffing. And I want to be clear, the library system has absorbed years of flat or minimal budget growth while facing real cost pressures. And staffing is only one part of that picture. Collection development is its own line item. And what it actually keeps a library relevant, new books, replacement copies of worn out titles, digital and audio books, licensing, streaming nowadays, and research databases, many that are online and not just that you can access from home. And that's what is the wonderful hallmarks about our wonderful system here in Wichita. Children's books, large print collections, materials, and the various languages that they come out in. Those licenses and accusations get more expensive every year, and when a collection budget stays flat, the shelves and catalog quietly get older and thinner, even when the doors stay open and the staff stays in place. A $375,000 bump doesn't meaningful change that trajectory for staffing or for the collection itself. And so my ask is simple. Before the budget is finalized on the 25th, or if that's changed, I ask the council to revisit the size of the one-time Second Light allocation, and I realize one is from the general fund and one is from reserves, I believe. Revisit the size of a one-time Second Light allocation and direct a meaningful share, even one million of it, towards the library system instead. This is a $4 million commitment to Second Light, which remains serious and substantial, paired with the library increase that actually moves the needle. I recognize Second Light dollars are proposed to come from the city's stabilization reserve, while library funding runs through the general fund. So this isn't a simple dollar for dollar swap, but budgets are still statements of priority, And I ask this council to treat library investment with the same urgency. You're showing homelessness services rather than to let one crowd at the other in the public conversation. Fund the shelter and please fund the library. Wichita residents deserve both and deserve to see both reflectives as real priorities in this budget, not one headline allocation and one rounding error. Thank you so much for your time and for everything you're doing for the city.

Thank you, Mr. Booker. We'll continue with public comment. I see none. Thank you to the three public comment speakers regarding the budget. We will now bring it back to the bench. Council Member Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

I would like the city manager to consider one thing, please. And that's improvements to 37th Street between District 5 and District 6. A lot of growth in that area. Had another zoning case last night that our DAB approved in that area. That'll bring several hundred homes. So just consider that and maybe prioritize it. At least get it in the CIP, hopefully in the next three years. So that's one thing. Second thing is I really struggle. that we're taking a full property tax evaluation, including millions above our contracted budgeted increases. And plus we're taking $3 million from our reserve for the budget. I just think we need to agree with the mayor in some respects, maybe not everything, but we do need to take a look at some things and see if they're really needed or not. just think that we are just growing and growing and growing government. And I'm not sure that's what most of the citizens want. Not all of them, but most of them. So, thank you.

Vice Mayor Glasscock.

Thank you, Mayor. I'll echo Councilman Johnson's points regarding not just the three million from the reserves, but the five million from the stabilization reserves for also operations of Second Light. which I again have had concerns regarding the number of shelter beds and any vote of mine will be contingent on that. In addition, I think to the Councilman Johnston's point, I don't believe that government should grow faster than the private sector. And this budget grows government faster than the private sector. And I have a challenge getting to that. I will say that people aren't going into public service to get rich. There's nobody in this building or one of our employees that's taking this job because they're going to make more here than they will the private sector. They're coming here because they believe in public service and they believe in a higher calling and I think we should reflect that as well. I know that often forestry or public works struggles maintaining and keeping staff because we'll train them up and then they'll go and work for the private sector or contractors and we can't keep up with the private sector in terms of of the rate that they're being paid. And so I think that is a challenge. And to our point, we want to make sure we maintain morale of our employees. We have 3,000 incredible employees that work in every single day to that.

That doesn't mean that we can't continue to save money as part of this budget as well.

And regarding the Homestead Act, I'm interested in what that looks like, if it's not just a burden on staff in terms of a implementation burden. I'm pretty sure there's a creative way that we can figure out a way to get targeted relief towards individuals, and I'd be open to what that looks like. But I also don't want to create a system where we had previously that maybe the people that needed the most don't even know how to get the help or aren't coming to city hall to get the help so i don't know what that solution is but i know we have great minds to figure out something that i think could be in line with the homestead act to get property tax relief and then regarding the specifics just so they're on the record as we continue the rest of the conversations I'm very passionate about the EMT training program that we have in fire. I think that's been wildly successful. And perhaps that comes from the contingency budget from the new fire chief. That could be 100,000 of it. If not, I think to the mayor's point, I think that's a lot to offer in contingency, and I would be fine removing that from the budget as well. Regarding the allocation of bollards for NASCAR Park and for a lot of our community events, I think that's a good use of using things that will save money in terms of policing and also parks and recreation and be able to support both of those at the same time. And I think that would be a unique way that could also encourage a lot of the really cool events really cool events that we have coming up like NCAA and everything else in terms of activation. I'm with the mayor when it comes to delay of cameras as well. I know Reggie and I have talked about the allocation remaining on Pawnee Prairie Park, which is in District 4. I'd be interested in maybe funding the remainder of the funding for Pawnee Prairie Park, which comes out to about $400,000 to catch up on tree canopy. Pawnee Prairie Park's our largest, especially tree reserve in the city, but I think citizens expect us to the mayor's point also address the positive things that government does not just the negative remediation that we see but how can we also catch up on things so I'd be interested in maybe moving all the allocation from the additional funding for Pawnee Prairie Park to catch up on our tree canopy and I know that would only catch up on about a third but that would go a long way to be able to catch up I also maybe have concerns about the tuition reimbursement, the $300,000. I think that could be a good thing, but as the workforce changes, that may not be what our employees are asking for, especially when we look at vo-tech and we're looking at a lot of the hard-skilled jobs that we're having in this workforce. I don't know if that's the best path, but something that wasn't brought up today that was brought up from our previous speaker in this is also allocation to the Mayor's Youth Council. I want to make sure that we're investing in youth in our community. We invest in the CEA. So even if a portion of that 275 was to go to the Mayor's Youth Council and the remainder towards savings in a Homestead Act, I'd be interested in that. Lastly, there are two additional things that I want more clarification on. There's three new CMO positions. I'd be interested if those are moving from other departments, just locating under CMO, or if that's the budget just increasing for those, and then the $400,000 of contingency for the manager's office as well I feel is pretty high given the low cost of spend previously. So I'd just be interested in more justification. So those are my thoughts after today's conversation. I look forward to three more of these as well.

Council Member Hoheisel.

Thank you, Mayor. If you really look forward to it, I guess you're in the right line of work. As a calling, yes. Just one small, not necessarily small, but just one thing to put in people's ear. We do have the Safe Routes to School Plan that has come through WAMPO. I think it's across the districts. Currently, we have $150,000 a year in the CIP and Public Works for school safety and school crossings um i'd love to bump that up a little more and be able to be a little more effective in getting some of that addressed i did speak to public works about it so again just wanting to put that put that bug in people's ear safety of our kids i think that trumps everything else so member shepherd

Thank you so much, Mayor. I am really interested in knowing the unintended consequences of not having those police cameras on the dashboard. I'm really trying to balance what I'm hearing from community. I think Vice Mayor made a very solid point, but I also think that there's some unintended consequences in terms of accountability both for WPD and for the community in regards to having that. I think when former Mayor Carl Brewer really pushed for the body cameras, it was really out of a call from community for that accountability. I see this as equivalent of a conversation. And so before we make any decisions as it relates to the police cameras on the dashboard. I really would love to hear what are the unintended consequences that may put us in some interesting legal situations as it relates to that. Agree with Vice Mayor, again, as I mentioned, that perhaps tuition reimbursement is not what staff are saying, but I think that we need to invest in creating a world-class culture for them and would love to hear from them. And I know the city manager is planning to engage with the employee resource group so i look forward to hearing back in regards to what is being said and just as a note even vocational schools and trades have tuition and i i would imagine we would write this in a way where it is reflective of the evolving pathways into education and not just the traditional routes i think certification programs even i think of getting trained at the kansas leadership center which we offer right now through the city as we are a leadership transformation grant recipient But there are folks who want to continue that leadership training path and that's a cost and that could also be a part of the tuition reimbursement. So not just the traditional pathways. And finally, again, agree with Vice Mayor on supporting finding funding for the Mayor's Youth Council. We both partnered on the change in that ordinance. I think that that comes with consistent support and I think that is one way to do it. And then finally, I just want to say that I have heard consistently from my constituents about accountability and efficiency. And I do hear what the mayor is wanting in terms of finding that efficiency and accountability as well as council member Johnston. And I'm committed to finding reasonable pathways to do that, but I just don't want that to happen at at a cost that I feel like will significantly change health outcomes, safety and security perceptions, and or just feeling like folks matter and belong in community. And I think depending on what part of town you live in, not everyone feels that they're getting their fair shot at having an opportunity to receive prosperity in Wichita at the fullest extent. And I think when we talk about efficiency, where we cut, has implications to make people feel that they don't belong and I don't want that to happen. But I do agree with what you all are saying and I'm supportive of looking at where we can reasonably come to a compromise.

Thank you, council members. Again, thank you for the discussion. I know that Mark has a long list of things that he will now provide to the council for further discussion. I don't want to leave without saying that I am very grateful to the 3,100 individuals who serve as part of public service for the city of Wichita. And that includes six members of this council. The six of you are also public servants. And so our job is to be stewards of taxpayer dollars. And because of that, we have to be cognizant that, again, budgets do increase. because of inflation. So we have to not outpace inflation. That just does not seem responsible. And so I'm grateful that the 3100 staff members see the value of not just the paycheck, but also the benefits, great benefits at that health insurance and also a pension program. Both are not the salary, but they are part of the compensation to employees. And again, we do value individuals who choose to join the city of Wichita staff so that they can join the city managers departments. But again, as elected, our job is to represent the people who are paying the tax dollars to pay for those salaries and those benefits. And so I know I've brought several items that will have Lots of discussion and among them is the compensation portion of the salary of the general pay adjustment. And so again, I'm looking forward to getting more information from our city finance director. And I also hear the individuals who contact us via email, stop us at events, at church, at various locations to provide their comments, as well as the three individuals who came here today. So again, thank you for that comment. With that, I will just move to receive the public comment for today.

Second.

Motion second. Discussion? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, please open the roll. Motion passes 7-0. We will take a break now. It is 1249 p.m. Let's return at 110 p.m. That will give everyone an opportunity to take a break.

110 p.m. Thank you.

Call the next item.

Public hearing and request of letter of intent to issue industrial revenue bonds for Wesley Medical Center LLC.

Good morning, or I guess it's good afternoon now. Sorry about that. I just have, you know, one presentation for you today. This is a ask from, this is an ask from, this is an ask from, this is an ask from Wesley to, for a sales tax, you know, a sales tax you know, like exemption on some of their facilities throughout the community. So to get into the presentation, Wesley has two campuses which they are going to do some different improvements on. Just to give a little bit of background, on the group, they have invested a significant amount to the community. Most importantly, their main campus. Some of these different improvements include parking facilities, tower, different improvements there. you know, services to children and some of the other community members. And they have created about 200, you know, 200 jobs within these last six years. So the ask is to have the sales tax for some different improvements to the two campuses on your screen there. These different improvements include a new parking garage, you know, some additional you know, fixes, you know, and on the opposite side of the campus, you know, just relocation of the emergency room on the 2610 North Woodlawn Campus. And so with that, they are asking for just approximately, you know, just 150, you know, a million in bonds for that sales tax. There is no property tax abatement with this project and the sales tax is there on your screen below with the cost to the city. This is our standard disclaimer that we have in all of these presentations. There is no taxpayer dollars at risk as a result of this project. And it's with that that I will stand for questions and I have the group here to help answer some of those project questions as well.

Thank you, Corey. Questions for staff or the applicant? I just have one. Thank you for the service that you provide to our community. Can you also share of the 24,000 patients that you serve annually, do many of them also come from outside of our community?

Hi, Bill Volich, I'm the President and CEO of Wesley Healthcare. Approximately 40% of the patients that come to Wesley come from outside of the Wichita metro area. So a large rural, regional referral center taking patients from all over the state, all the way to the Colorado border, northern Oklahoma, and then even close to Joplin.

Thank you, Mr. Vilich. Appreciate that. I see no further questions for Wesley. We will now open it up for public comment. I see no one from the public who would like to speak. We'll bring it back to the bench. This is in council member Joseph Shepard's district number one.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the opportunity to meet and engage with you all while in advance to ask questions about this. I think it's very prudent that you ask, Mayor, how many residents come from outside because we know that the impact healthcare is having on our rural community and making sure that we are expanding our facilities here to serve our rural brothers and sisters is important to me. So with that being said, I recommend that we close the public hearing, adopt the resolution, and authorize the necessary signatures.

Second.

Motion, second. Discussion? See none. Madam Clerk, please open the roll. Motion passes 7-0. Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Resolution authorizing the continued possession and consumption of alcoholic liquor in Delano area.

Excuse me. Afternoon, Mayor and City Council. Isaac Underhaskin, Department of Park and Recreation. Today I'll be presenting the resolution authorizing the continued possession of alcohol consumption in the Delano area. For some background, back on August 19th, 2025, the City Council approved a resolution creating a common consumption area in the Delano District to be active on Fridays and Saturdays only from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. After reviewing the operating hours, discussing potential safety concerns with the Wichita Police Department, the City Council approved a resolution amending the common consumption area to occur daily on January 20th, 2026. The City of Wichita has requested a renewal of the common consumption area in Delano with an annual term beginning Saturday, September 5th, 2026. Renewal of the common consumption area will maintain the same boundaries and continue to allow possession of alcohol within the footprint from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Just the map of the current common consumption area. City Council was also asked to consider a staff report, all calls for services and number of arrests and citations issued for offending occurring in or adjacent to the common consumption area. That's required by the city code. So for calls for service, they appear to be on track for the same as they've been the last couple years. We did start this study starting on January 1st of 2024 and it runs through August 3rd. And then citations issued, still looking about the same as previous years. Same with arrests in 2026 so far. The city shall pay an annual fee of $100 to the state for the Kansas renewal of the common consumption area permit. As the permit holder, the city could be subject to tort claims for actions occurring within the common consumption area. With that, we recommend close the public hearing and adopt the resolution authorizing the renewal of the common consumption area permit. and allow the continued consumption of alcoholic liquor on the dates at the locations and during the time set forth therein and authorize the necessary signatures questions thank you isaac questions for staff i see none we will now open it up for public comment regarding this item

I see none, I'll bring it back to the bench. This is in both Councilmember Maggie Ballard's district number six and Councilmember Vice Mayor Dalton Glasscock for district number four.

Okay, well I think this has been a successful thing for our community. I have heard no opposition from businesses or residents and just yesterday I was in Delano and seeing people partake very responsibly and so thank you for the entire Parks and Recreation team for this. Thank you for the community, paving responsibly, and I think this is a great success. So with that, I would move that we close the public hearing, adopt the resolution authorizing the renewal of common consumption area permit, and allow the continued consumption of alcoholic liquor on the dates, at the locations, and during the time set forth therein, and authorize the necessary signatures.

Second. Motion, second. Discussion? See none. Madam Clerk, please open the roll. Motion passes 7-0. Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Request for proposal, Veterinary Consultant Services.

Good afternoon, everybody. I am Emily Hurst with Wichita Animal Services. We're here because we sent out an RFP for, it is 260121 for our general veterinary consulting services. The consulting services contract is for the general veterinary services for the animals that are at the Wichita Animal Shelter seven days a week. They perform daily site visits. for regular veterinary care to administer all regulatory requirements regarding our veterinary licensures, controlled substances, our state license, those types of things, and any type of administered medication or treatment. Can I? Oh, am I? How do I go to the next slide? I do it myself? Ah, it's me. Sorry, guys. The Wichita Animal Shelter and Purchasing completed an RFP process. Over 115 veterinarian providers were notified of the RFP. The Kansas Humane Society was the only veterinarian to complete a proposal and is the incumbent. The vendor outlined a monthly lump sum of $11,250 per month to perform the contracted deliverables associated in the RFP. The adopted budget outlines the appropriate funds consistent with the contracts awarding. Any questions?

Thank you very much, Emily. Questions for staff, beginning with Councilmember Hohheiter.

Thank you, Mayor. How often are they available if there is an emergency that happens at the shelter? Are they able to immediately come over and help address any of these issues?

That's kind of a nuanced topic. So the general veterinarian services are not typically emergency type services. So this is for more of regular exams for the animals that we have in our care that are sick and injured, as well as exams for things that might potentially be sick and injured. They administering medications, setting protocols that we have to use in order to comply with state requirements.

Okay, is this a daily thing? Yes. Okay. Have we ever had anybody else apply for this in the past or respond to the RFPs in the past?

That is a great question. I'm not I don't have that record in front of me. I can speak casually to my remembered experience that it what used to be. Oh, sorry. You want to talk to it? Thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember Hill-Heisel. Great question. My experience from these services are very difficult to procure for this specific contract. I'm not aware of any memory or institutional knowledge of a firm other than this one proposing.

Same here. Anytime this has come up, that's all I can seem to remember is just the humane side of being the only one to reply. So I appreciate that. That's all I have.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Emily. And thank you, Josh. I see no further questions from this bench. We'll now open it up for public comment. I see no one from the public who would like to speak on this item. I'm gonna bring it back to the bench. With that, I will go ahead and approve the request for proposal, Veterinary Consulting Services. Second. Motion second.

Further discussion?

I see none. Madam Clerk, please open the roll. Motion passes 7-0. Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

ZONE 2026-22 ZONE CHANGE REQUESTS IN THE CITY FROM SINGLE FAMILY RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT TO GENERAL COMMERCIAL DISTRICT GENERALLY LOCATED ON THE NORTHWEST CORNER OF NORTH FOUNTAIN AVENUE AND EAST BROOKS AVENUE AT 2901 NORTH FOUNTAIN AVENUE.

GOOD AFTERNOON. SCOTT WAITLE FROM THE PLANNING DEPARTMENT HERE TO PRESENT THIS ITEM. So as you heard, the applicant is requesting approval of a zone change request to change it from SF-5 single family zoning to GC general commercial. This item is being heard today because the applicant has submitted an appeal of the MAPC decision. In terms of the request, the applicant has indicated they're requesting the zoning in order to allow shipping containers to be used as outdoor storage on the property. And you can see those, there's at least one or two that are located at the north end of this image. Let's see if we can, here they are. The applicant has received a notice of violation for having the shipping containers on the residentially zoned property, which is a zoning code violation. In addition, I would also mention that the shipping containers, part of them at least, are not on the individual's property as well. The code violation was first scheduled for, so they received a notice of violation. They've also been scheduled for court on this case. The first scheduled court appearance was on April 9th. There were two continuances that were granted at the request of the property owner, and the case is now scheduled for September 10th. In terms of the property, the subject site is generally located to the north and west of Oliver and 21st Street. The property address is 2901 North Fountain Avenue. A subject site is approximately a little bit over a half an acre in size, consists of one ownership parcel and is developed with a single family home. In terms of context, property to the north and west is zoned SF-5 and is undeveloped. Properties to the south are zoned SF-5, undeveloped, and some are developed with single family dwellings, as you can see in the image here. Here's the zoning map. Properties to the east are zoned SF-5, undeveloped, and some are developed with single family dwellings. And all of the undeveloped properties are de facto reserves for the subdivision and also may be considered right of way, the way that they were done as part of the plat. In terms of the staff report, the staff report provides information about development standards, compatibility standards, and parking. In terms of review, on June 1st, the district advisory board heard this case and recommended denial of the zone change request. That vote was six to zero. and that was per the staff recommendation. Multiple speakers spoke against the request citing concerns of the appearance of the portable storage containers preserving the character of the neighborhood and preventing additional commercial encroachment into the area. The applicant was not in attendance at that meeting. On June 11th, the public hearing was scheduled to occur at the Planning Commission meeting. The applicant requested deferral to the June 25th meeting and was not in attendance at the MAPC meeting and ultimately it was deferred to the June 25th. On June 25th, the MAPC took it up again and recommended denial of the zone change request and that again, that vote was 10 to zero. There were no comments from the public. The applicant was not in attendance. The applicant had submitted an email two days prior requesting a deferral. No protests were received against this application. On July 9th, an appeal of the MAPC decision was filed by the applicant. The appeal is attached to the report, to the staff report and the appeal does not affect any vote requirements. In terms of recommendations, recommend the city council adopt the findings of the planning commission and deny the zone change request. That requires just a simple majority to be approved. Alternatives include the following. You can override the planning commission, adopt alternative findings, and approve the zone change request. That would require also authorize the necessary signatures and instruct the city clerk to publish the ordinance. That would require five of seven votes because it's an override of the planning commission. Or as always, you can return the case back to the planning commission for additional consideration. Just a quick note about the process, as always, the City Council policies at the public hearing for planning items occurs at the Planning Commission meeting. According to the policy, the City Council does not typically receive public comments on zoning items. So with that, I'll take you through some of the graphics here. So here's the aerial showing the property. Here's the zoning map, again, as described earlier. Here's the map from the comprehensive plan showing residentials recommended in this area. There's also a separate neighborhood plan. It's a rather small one for the Northeast Heights neighborhood and it recommends residential in this location as well. This is a map showing the notification and the protest area. There's similar distance away from the property. Again, no protests were submitted. Here are photos of this property and the surrounding area. And with that, I'll stand for any questions.

Thank you, Scott. Questions for staff, beginning with Councilmember Shepherd.

Thank you, Mayor. Scott, in the case that this were to be denied, what would the resident be granted in terms of a timeline to remove the structures?

Excellent question. I think that would come down to the decision of the court, but give me just one moment. Okay, yes, I have confirmed that that would be, it would go to the court case, it would be up to the judge, the judge would determine the timeframe, and as always, the applicant would have the opportunity to remove them voluntarily if they wanted to before that.

Okay, and then the final question that I had was, other than what has been included in our green sheet no other alternatives are available is that accurate in terms of a zoning change would be required regardless even if there was a pud

That is correct. Some form of zoning change would have to take place. The one that's been presented today is the request was to go to GC. That is the first district, lowest intensity district, which is still quite intense, that would allow outdoor storage of this type. The other alternative would be to do a custom zoning district, but that... requires additional documentation to be created that often involves a consultant firm that helps out with that.

Thank you.

I see no further questions from the bench. This is in Council Member Shepherd's District number one.

Thank you, Mayor. And we had an opportunity to engage with staff and the agent or applicant yesterday, and we also received an email from the resident mentioning that she does not want a zone change. I think what we were trying to think about what was the pathway to get her there in terms of ensuring that the storage containers were able to stay there if that was the need and there was just not a pathway outside of the zoning change application. So with that being said, seeing that we have exacerbated all the options, I move that we adopt the findings of the MAPC and deny the requested zone change. Second.

Motion second. Discussion? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, please open the roll. Motion passes 7-0. Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Textron Aviation Incorporated Use and Lease Agreement. Mayor, I did just get an email that Jesse is on his way.

Mayor, we could just jump to the next item if you wish.

We will go ahead and proceed. And when we see the director here, we will continue with his item. Madam Clerk, can you please call the next item?

Selection of appeal panel to hear appeal of administrative penalty upon entertainment establishment license.

Mayor, Council Member Jennifer Magana, City Attorney. This item comes up to you from time to time. There's been an administrative appeal of a licensing penalty under city code and we need to have a selection of an appeal panel from the seven of you to hear this appeal. Recently there was an appeal panel selected but it did not go to hearing. You could just go with that. This one does reside in Council Member Hohheisel's district. So I believe you've thought about it and he would like to serve on this panel. The other two candidates who did not serve last time were Council Member Ballard and Council Member Shepherd. It's up to you how you'd like to select that, but those are the next in order other than Mayor Wu.

I emailed Council Member Hoheisel giving my spot to him and I'll take his following spot since this resides in his district. If you're okay with that, Council Member Hoheisel, I'll take your spot next time.

I am. I do have some issue with saying I would be happy to jump in on this, but yes, it's my district, so it's my duty to be there for this one.

Thank you Councilmember Hoheisel, Councilmember Ballard, and Councilmember Shepherd for serving on this appeals panel.

So we just need a motion for those three members to serve on this appeal panel.

I move to select the three council members, Councilmember Hoheisel, Ballard, and Sheppard, to preside over administrative appeal of license suspension.

Second.

Motion second. Discussion? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, please open the roll. Motion passes 7-0. Madam Clerk, please call the next item.

Councilmember appointments and comments?

Before we go to this item, I'll ask council members, do you have appointments first? Council member Johnston.

Thank you, Mayor.

I do have one appointment.

The last meeting for our youth representative was last night. He got to vote. He was very excited about that. So that's pretty neat. So I'd like to appoint another one. I'd like to appoint Helen Veazey Hine to District 5 board meeting. Also the daughter of Theresa Veazey. So I think she'll be an excellent member. Second.

Council Member Sheppard. Council Member Sheppard.

Thank you, Mayor. I would like to appoint Elder Joaquila Martinez to the Sister Cities Board.

And Councilmember Ballard. Thank you, Mayor. I would like to appoint Pete Jansen to Parks and Rec.

With that, I move to approve all appointments. Second. Motion second. Discussion? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, please open the roll. Motion passes 7-0. Before we go to council member comments, I see Director Romo here. Can we have the city clerk please call the non-consent airport agenda item?

Textron Aviation Incorporated use and lease agreement.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council. I wish I could blame the airlines for my delay, but that's just on me coming in from the airport, so... Let's get started here. Textron Aviation is one of the Wichita Airport Authority's largest and longest standing aeronautical tenants. Textron operates manufacturing, engineering, delivery, and support facilities across multiple airport properties. The current lease portfolio consists of numerous agreements with different terms, obligations, and expiration dates. As several leases approach expiration this month, the airport authority staff and Textron work together to consolidate and modernize the lease portfolio. The proposed agreement creates a single updated lease that clarifies responsibilities and incorporates current environmental maintenance and FAA requirements. The proposed agreement consolidates 13 existing leases into one comprehensive lease covering approximately 222.4 acres. Several of the existing leases are more than 50 years old, and they will be replaced by a modern agreement. Consolidating leases simplifies administration, improves efficiency, and provides greater consistency for both parties. It's important to note that the Citation Service Center lease is not included in this agreement and will remain in effect. The lease term for the rest of these, the lease term extends just over 18 years, aligning with the expiration of the Citation Service Center, which allows future consolidation of the Textron's remaining lease portfolio. This is a picture of the areas that are impacted. You'll see on the left-hand side, that's kind of the general aviation side of the airport. There are a few facilities that Textron uses for their operations on that side, and on the right-hand side, the picture is Cessna's main campus. The majority of the campus is owned by them, but everything in that red box, there's about a third of all that property, is owned by the airport authority, and that's what's under lease right now. The agreement includes annual rental rate increases that provide predictable long-term revenue growth. The lease is projected to generate nearly $40 million in revenue over the 18-year term. The calculated average, this is just an average because the amounts vary by year, average is about $2.2 million for revenue. The agreement provides long-term financial stability while supporting continued investment at the airport. With that, we recommend the Airport Authority Board approves the agreement and authorize the necessary signatures. I'm happy to stand for any questions you may have.

Thank you, Director Romo. Questions for staff? I just have one. I wanted to know how many individuals work for Textron Aviation in the Wichita campus?

That's a great question, Mary. I'm glad you asked me, but I have no clue. I don't want to speak out of turn on them. It's something I can't look up because those are numbers they have provided to us, and I can come back to you with that exact number.

I actually asked that question. I'm doing this so that it is in the public record. I am looking for it right now so that that is reflective of the record. One second. I know it's somewhere. I can't find it at the current. There we go. Textron Aviation globally has 14,500 members, more than 11,000 of which are located in Kansas and in Wichita alone, 10,700 roughly. So a major employer here in our community. And again, as I just came back from the International Air Show, I'm very grateful that we are the air capital of the world. And it is because of our skilled manufacturing workforce. And so with that, I just wanted to put it on the record how many individuals worked in Wichita. Thank you. I see no further questions from the council. We will now open it up for public comment. I see no one from the public here to speak about this item. I'll bring it back to the bench. With that, I will move to approve the agreement and authorize necessary signatures.

Second.

Motion second. Discussion? See none. Madam Clerk, please open the roll. Motion passes 7-0. Madam Clerk, we're now back to council member comments and the council member agenda. I had previously asked our city attorney, Magana, for a memo regarding the last workshop that we had last week on Tuesday, and I have yet to receive this memo.

I apologize, Mayor, that memo's not yet ready, and we are late with that, and I do apologize. We can just add to what was said. I mean, I can only restate what was said in the meeting at the workshop that was determined as just a legal matter, not a policy recommendation as to the shelter bed requirement at that time.

I would like to see a memo by next Monday so then I can bring it up again during council member agenda. The memo is what staff has said regarding the shelter bed portion of the 2013, 2019, 2024 encampment ordinance. And I would like to know the liability that this poses for the city of Wichita as well as the data regarding issuance of citations because I believe that is not the intention. The intention is not to cite individuals or to criminalize homelessness, but rather get the data regarding this ordinance that was created back in 2013. And if we can have that information via memo, I would appreciate if it can be sent to the whole council, but I will be bringing this up at next Tuesday's council meeting during council member agenda.

Thank you.

Any further comments from council members? I see none. With that, we cannot end this meeting because we have executive session. With that, I will now move that the city council recess into executive session for five minutes to receive information from staff on the potential acquisition of property pursuant to KSA 75-4319B2 for the preliminary discussions of the acquisition of real property. EXECUTIVE SESSION IS REQUIRED TO PROTECT THE CITY'S RIGHT TO THE CONFIDENTIALITY OF ITS NEGOTIATING POSITION AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST. THIS EXECUTIVE SESSION WILL BEGIN AT 1.50 P.M. AND IT WILL END AT 1.55 P.M. AND THE MEETING WILL RESUME RIGHT HERE IN THE CHAMBERS. MOTION SECOND. DISCUSSION? SEE NONE. MADAM CLERK PLEASE OPEN THE ROLL. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes 7-0. We will return to the council chambers at 1.55 p.m.