City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I would like to call to order the Hutchinson City Council meeting September 15th, 2026. May I have you call roll?

Truin.

Here.

Garza. Here. Goss. Here. Fast. Here. Magers. Here. I pledge allegiance. pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Tonight, giving the prayers, Pastor Glenn Costner, First Church of God.

Good evening. Shall we pray? Our gracious God and Heavenly Father, We come to you to start this meeting asking you to be here, be present with the council, with those in attendance. Lord, help the hearts to be open, the ears to be open, our minds to be open. Lord, we pray to be with the council as they seek wisdom. May they seek... the benefits of all of our citizens. Lord, we just pray that you'll be with those who are sitting in the audience, that they might be able to listen and hear and take with them what this council deliberates this evening, especially as some of the concerns are with the budget. And Lord, there's also issues with upcoming seats need to be replaced. Lord, grant your patience and your peace with all who are here. We ask this in the name of Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen. Amen.

Thank you. So before we get started in tonight's meeting, I wanted to announce that, as most of you are well aware, we hired an interim city manager yesterday, so I wanted to welcome him to his first meeting, and I think he had a few words to say.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Good evening mayor and council members. I'm deeply honored to accept the interim city manager and grateful for the trust that you have placed in me during this transition period. I recognize that this is a time of both change and opportunity for the city. My commitment is to ensure stability, maintain transparency, and keep our essential services running smoothly while we work together I realize the importance of listening to the needs of the residents, collaborating with city staff, and supporting the council's vision and priorities. While my role is temporary, I can assure you I'm dedicated to this community. I firmly believe that strong communication, mutual respect, and a shared sense of purpose will carry us through this transition successfully. I look forward to engaging with residents, businesses, and community members. I appreciate this opportunity to serve the Hutchinson community. So I do appreciate this opportunity and look forward to working with our staff, the council, community members during this process and do what I can to help move the city forward.

Thank you very much, and we're glad to have you here, Gary. Thank you. Move on to the next item will be the approval of the proposed agenda. Council members, is there anything you would like to add or change or modify to the proposed agenda? If there's not, I just need a motion to approve it.

I'll move to approve the proposed agenda as presented. I'll second.

Truen? Yes. Garza? Yes. Goss? Yes. Bast? Yes. Nagers?

Yes.

Item number five, petitions, remonstrances, and oral communications from the audience.

This is part of the meeting where any person wishing to address the City Council shall be first recognized by the Mayor, come to the microphone, state their name, address, and subject of their comments, including whom they represent if applicable. Public comments are limited to three minutes and must address matters within the business and jurisdiction of the City Council. Comments may address the agenda or non-agenda items, but all comments regarding agenda items must be made during the designated public comment portion of the meeting. Public comment will not be taken when an agenda item is later considered by council. Comments shall be addressed to the city council as a whole. Rebuttals, back and forth, exchanges, and debate are not permitted. The council will generally not engage in discussion or debate during public comment. The mayor may require a spokesperson for groups to avoid repetitive presentations. So stating that, if someone would like to come forward, come to the podium and state your name and address.

Long time listener, first time caller. My name is Miles Everhart. I live across the street from the state fairgrounds parking lot. I'm going to make this pretty short and simple since you took two minutes off. I had a prepared statement about last week, but since things have changed, I am very disgruntled and upset with the direction our city has gone. The reason is the lack of the ability to communicate with one another. I thought our city manager was a great city manager. He was forced out. You could tell just by watching the city council. I've been watching it since it was on Channel 7. There are certain people on the council that did not like him. I apologize to this gentleman here. He's running into a program where you're going to have some angry citizens. And we have the right to be angry at our council members right now. There's a lack of leadership and a lack of accountability among you, specifically a few of you. Leadership is listening to us, not just to your base people, but to everybody. Okay? It's listening. It's comprehending. It's being able to communicate with people what your ideas are. There was other ideas that I heard last year that dropped off the books. Where do they go? I may disagree with some of you, but I do agree with some of your basic needs that we need. I am happy that we passed the sales tax. I'm not happy that we had to raise our property tax again, but it had to happen. The city needs funded. And as citizens, we are that funding. And the last thing that I want to state, we're not looking at how to get more money into Hutchinson. We have been on a static line of population, what, 30 years, 40 years? No growth. Maybe up one year, down the other year. Up one year, down the other year. That's a static line. We need to bring in more people to help pay that property tax and to bring in more money for the sales tax. We have big events coming. I like the idea of, Ms. Goss brought up, the... Hotel tax. We don't live in a hotel. That's a good tax. But I also disagree with certain people, unfortunately, Ms. Goss, about looking at the future and knowing that we're going to run out of water.

30 seconds.

Thank you, ma'am. And we're going to run out of water. We have to have a 5-year, 10-year, 15-year, 20-year plan. I saw the city manager not wanting to kick the can down the road anymore. We need to stop it now. So our kids, well, mine's 25, and his kids, my grandkids, can live in a future not worrying about other stuff.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Charles Melton, 207 South Ford Street. Glad it's three minutes instead of five. I had a five-minute speech prepared, but I'll go three, keep it short and sweet. Last week was a bad week for Hutch. He lost two-time city manager of the year. He lost a great city attorney because he stood on principle. And I admire him for that and I respect him for that. I've done that twice in the past year, in D.C. when I wouldn't. go with the unlawful orders I was given, I resigned. With my employer here, when I was asked to write hidden pieces, I wouldn't do it, so I resigned. Now I've got questions for y'all. Who are y'all scared of? What are you scared of? And why are you scared? Because they resigned because they didn't have support when they were doing the right thing. You know, I don't blame them. I would have resigned too. And since I drove 550 miles today, I'm going to close with one last question. Who runs the city? Is it y'all or is it Hutch Rec?

Thank you.

Council Lacey Mills, United Way of Reno County. Thank you guys for letting me have a few minutes tonight. I really appreciate it. I've actually gone back and forth on whether or not to come stand up here or not. And really this is to Council, Mayor, and the City of Hutchinson. I'm standing here in front of you because I love this community. Like I know all of you love this community. And I feel like after the last couple of weeks and the last couple of months, I just wanted to have an honest conversation about what I'm seeing in the trenches among those who I work alongside. And I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what leadership looks like in the seats that we sit in. I know that you guys sit in seats of leadership, and I know that a lot of people in our community, whether or not they have a title of leadership, they're sitting in leadership positions. Leadership is hard and making decisions is really hard. Disagreeing with people is hard and being in a public leadership position is really hard. I understand that and I live that every single day. But something that's been weighing on me is we have to find a better way to work together. Not because everybody has to agree. They don't. And honestly, they shouldn't. I think that's what makes a community fantastic and great is that you have so many different perspectives at the table. But I think the way that we're showing up, there's a cost to that. And because there's a lot of people in this community that are working incredibly hard behind the scenes to make Hutchinson and Reno County better, people who aren't looking for credit, people who are sitting in rooms together trying to figure out how to solve hard problems. And I think sometimes I worry that that work that's happening quietly in those rooms is getting overshadowed by the conflict that's happening publicly. And that matters because people in Hutchinson, they see that. I tell people how much I love this community. I talk about the people here. I talk about generosity, the incredible organizations and businesses and volunteers and leaders who show up every single day. But I will be honest, it becomes harder or it's becoming harder for me to explain why I love this community when what people see publicly so often is the dysfunction that's happening and it breaks my heart. Because I know that that's not the whole story, and it's not even close to the whole story of what's great about this community. I don't think that we're lacking in ideas or talented people or people who care. I think we're struggling with something much harder, and it's just trying to figure out, not even just at this table, but as a community, how to work together and how to disagree. And it's okay. My ask for you guys tonight as leaders and people who are sitting in front of community is to dig deep and try to figure out how to disagree with each other and how to work across those lines because people are watching and we're looking to you as leaders in this city to try to navigate that conflict and that line for the betterment of our community. So thank you.

Thank you, Lacey.

By the way, I've never actually fit in the timeline that I've been given. Thank you.

Anyone else?

Bruce Miller, 1804 East 26th here in Hutchinson, Kansas. Back in June, I submitted a formal complaint to you, Scott, and to our past city manager, lawyer. Today, I'm putting it on the public record today because we have a new city manager. So if I go over the three minutes, I'm asking for an extension, please. I'm submitting this formal complaint in regard to the city's continued failure to control Kansas-designated noxious weeds, poison hemlock, and other invasive vegetation growing on city-owned drainage ditches, rights-of-way, adjacent public property. For multiple growing seasons, these infestations... Infestations have been allowed to mature, produce seed and spread onto property and properties of other landowners along this drainage corridor. Because this drainage system carries water throughout portions of the community, it also serves as a pathway of transporting seeds and propagating invasive vegetation. The city's failure to maintain this property has created an ongoing public nuisance, has imposed significant costs and burdens on adjacent property owners. Public safety concerns among the vegetation presents is poison hemlock, one of North America's most poisonous plants. Its presence on public property creates an unreasonable risk of children, pedestrians, pets, livestock, maintenance workers, and the public. Mowing and disturbing poison hemlock can increase the exposure risks. In addition, several designated noxious weeds are present within the ditch corridor. They continue to grow and spread in consistence with the objectives of the Kansas Noxious Weed Act. which requires, it doesn't ask, it doesn't say it may, but it says it requires the control of those designated noxious weeds by landowners including all government entities on the land under their control. The financial damages that will occur or the city as a direct result of the city's failure to maintain this property I and other property owners will incur and have incurred additional expenses in fighting those with herbicides and weak control and chemicals. The labor and time spent controlling the infestations, the continued annual treatment costs, damage to the use and enjoyment of my property, and the property value itself. In some cases, there's reports of because of this, if you don't, reveal it on the time of sale of the property, you become liable as a property owner if any of those children become sick, ill, or damaged. So I'm required to disclose that. In that disclosure, they're revealing that you could have up to a 30% reduction in the value of your property when you want to sell it because of that. 30%. These damages continue to increase each growing season, and... remains unaddressed. I've asked for a records request and I'm not sure that they understand I don't need records in the past. I request the city preserve all and provide all records relating to this matter including plan for weed inspections, a plan for herbicide applications, maintenance schedules, work orders, internal correspondence, previous citizens' complaints, budgets.

Council, do you want to let him finish? It's up to you guys. Yes. Yeah? Yeah. Okay. You can go ahead and wrap up. Okay. Thank you.

Policies concerning maintenance drainage of ditches, rights aways, the requested action I'm having is I respectfully request the city immediately respect the affected areas and identify all Kansas listed noxious weeds presence in those ditches. Eradicate the poison hemlock using accepted management procedures and practices. They implement a long-term vegetation management plan, prevent future seed production and spread, provide a written response outlining corrective actions and timelines. I'm asking that they explain how the city intends to comply with the applicable Kansas law and the act. And in talking with Cecil and some of you here, the concern is you can't spray certain chemicals in there. Topeka's aware of that. They provided all the information that you need to use the proper chemicals for me as a citizen and the government, so there's no excuse. I reserve all rights available under Kansas law, and including pursuing recovery of damages or any legal remedies. This letter should and also be considered a request that the city preserve all documents, photographs, emails, text messages, and reports electronically stored information relating to this matter. Thank you. Now, in addition to, if I could have an extension, I noticed on the agenda today that, and I'd like a clarification when this comes up, Scott, because I asked several weeks back or quite a while back about the stormwater runoff fee, and it was brought to our attention. There was $7 million in it. Today, I'm not quite sure what's going to happen with that money. Back then, Scott, you assured me that that wouldn't get rolled over into another fund. It looks as if today that's being happening, and I'd like a clarification since we can't get up here and speak during that time as to a really clear and concise what's going to happen with it.

Yeah, we'll have Angela talk about that when she comes up because she's going to talk about some of those, so thank you. Thank you so much.

Good evening, Council. I just wanted to clarify a few things. We have been working towards a solution for that. We're also wanting to make sure we're attacking the right vegetation that is in that area. I've had some people from the Park Department come out with me and look at it that have a better knowledge of what plants are. One of the plants we're looking at in that area, we want to make sure we're actually explaining it for the right thing. Some of our department has found that some of that plant that was told that was poison hemlock is actually a plant called mugwort. which would not have the same effects, we wanna make sure we're doing the right thing before we throw money at something that's not needed. We did spray the fence lines in this area to help keep that from moving from city property to private property, and that's gonna be our normal stance, but we're also working with the state of Kansas to make sure what we can do is doing the right thing. So we haven't forgot about it, we are working through it, but we're not just gonna jump into something head first and not make sure we're doing the right process.

Hey, if you could just do a favor, maybe by next council meeting, just kind of give it, maybe come give a follow-up report. Because I know it's been kind of ongoing, just to kind of what we found, where we're headed, and what we're going to do about it, just to make sure it's getting taken care of. Absolutely. Okay, thank you.

And Bruce, if you have any questions, please call.

Anyone else like to come to the podium? Okay, seeing none, we need to move on to the next item.

Item number six, consent agenda.

Does council have any questions, comments in regards to the consent agenda or items in it? If not, I would just need a motion.

I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented, amend it, and authorize the mayor to sign it. as presented, and authorize the marriage.

Second. Second. Druin? Yes. Garza?

Yes.

Goss? Yes. Fast? Yes. Magers?

Yes.

Item number seven, public hearings. A, continuation of public hearing to consider Meadows on Monroe RHID and development plan.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Matt Williams, Director of Community Development. I'm here asking you to again continue this public hearing to the next date. We really need to discuss with an attorney that represents the city on how to move forward with this project. So hopefully we can get direction in the next couple weeks on how to move this project forward.

Is Council okay with that? Yes. I move to continue the public hearing.

I'll second.

Truen? Yes. Garza? Yes. Goss? Yes. Fass? Yes. Magers?

Yes.

Item 7B, public hearing to authorize the filing of an application with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment for a loan under the Kansas Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund Act, KSA 1988, supplement 65-321 through 3329 for the sanitary sewer collection system rehabilitation.

That is a mouthful. Thank you, Mary. I am Erin Patterson. I just need a motion first. Hold on. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I move to open the public hearing.

Second.

Can I go now?

Yes.

Garza?

Yes.

Goss?

Yes. Fast? Yes. Maggers?

Yes.

Okay. I'm ready to go, apparently. I am Erin Patterson. I am the project manager for the utilities department. We're going to be doing two public hearings tonight, one on our sanitary sewer and then the other one on our reuse project. I have a few slides on both of them that I'll just go over what the scope of these projects are, what we are trying to do with these. At that point in time, we are needing to allow if there's any public comment for people to speak at that. And then once we're done with those, we'll close them out. And then we have a resolution that you guys will be voting on, which will then allow us to formally apply for the SRF loans. The first one we're going to talk about is a loan application we're looking at submitting. This is for rehabilitation of our existing sanitary sewer system. What we've looked at with this loan application is for two different options, really. The first option is using a process known as, hold on, CCAP. in place pipe so it's a low disturbance issue where we actually go through and we do an internal lining of our existing sanitary sewer system it helps to strengthen the system prevent infiltration and inclusions without being invasive right so we don't have to rip up the ground the second option would be actually Where we go through, we either do burst in place, where we, that's really cool, if you've never watched a video, they send a little widget down, and then they pull it back, and as it pulls back, it pulls the new pipe, and it breaks the existing pipe in place. So we're looking at a combination of that, and then also where we'd have to be going through and doing excavation and replacement of the sanitary sewer system.

We have estimated pricing for both of those.

Option one, which is the least invasive, has a probable cost of about $2 million. Option two, which is more of an extreme replacement method, is a little over $5 million. Our intention is to pursue option one for rehabilitation of the existing system. We actually have another SRF loan from last year, which is for the cast in place piping. So it's very similar to what we are looking at doing on the other loan.

And we've already done option one in other areas of town already. Yes, that is. Success with that?

Yes, that is correct. Yeah, and we haven't even, we've done it in addition to just like under SRF, we've done it when it was being paid for directly from the utilities fund.

What street was that done? Was that like third or fourth street?

There's been a bunch of it. I don't have it off the top of my head where we have done it, but I know that the sewer maintenance guys have really been impressed with how it's held up. It's important when we do it, we do it from manhole to manhole because that gives us a nice continuous lining and prevents intrusion behind that lining because that would be where we would have a failure point.

What's the estimated longevity of it?

I, in my memo, I think I put like 30 years, but I've also seen estimates of up to 50 years.

Okay.

So we are intending to pursue option one, which is the cast in place. Like I mentioned, it inserts the flexible liner inside the existing pipe and then it gets cured in place. We go manhole to manhole to ensure that we get that nice coverage, 30 years. And right now what we've been told from KDHE, we've put in for a loan request of $2 million. They've come back. with potential terms of $600,000 loan forgiveness, a loan duration for 20 years, and when we received the notice, it was about 2.84% what that interest rate would be. We are not forecasting a rate increase from this KDAG SRF loan because it was included in previous works. And then just to give you a heads up on what the process looks like for the next six months approximately. So we're doing our public hearing tonight. We'll go in front of you guys for the resolution to actually allow us to formally apply for the loan. Application is due October the 15th. I'm probably a little optimistic on here, but I've written SRF approval early 2027. City Council will then get approval of that SRF loan probably the middle of 2027. We have to actually go through, pass an ordinance, get Council to approve on those loan documents before they can be executed. And then pending execution of the loan, we will go through, do the final selection of what part of the system gets rehabilitated, and then we'll go through and start the engineering on it. This is not like a shovel-ready project where we have it on the shelf. And then I can answer any questions from council or if the public has anything they'd like to ask or speak about.

What, with that 2 million, what kind of distance are we?

It's about 7,400 feet. Okay. And some of it's, it's a combination, some of it's actually located underneath buildings, and then the rest of it's just going to be regular sewer collection system.

So say this all gets approved, what's your timeline for installation?

So knowing that we still need to do all of the prep work on the selection, design, KDHE submittal and approval of the design, going out for bid, I think that if we kick it off in 2028 or 2029, that's probably a realistic timeline. And how long would it take to complete that 7,400 feet of work? It's pretty fast. I want to say six to eight months.

Okay.

And then, so how do you identify what street or what area you're working on first?

Yeah, so that's a great question, actually. So we've got a sewer maintenance staff, and they, as part of their routine duties, go through and do a CCTV scan of the entire sewer collection system. And we use that along with HDR, who is building out our integrated master water plan, They've put together a distribution model basically of where there are areas of the highest concern. So we focused on the areas of highest concern based on the work from our crew and then the consultants. And then there's a couple of larger areas where we will need to go back through and do another CCTV just to make sure in those, we call them basins, right? They're just kind of like a map zone. Go through those basins to identify in those basins which of those sections are more critical.

And so for the end user, the resident or the business who is using this particular section of the pipe, is there any interruption to service or is there any, do they know that the work was completed?

That's a great question for David Gwynn, our director of utilities, because I am not 100% sure.

I know last time we talked about this, we talked about new tabs and stuff like that, but I don't recall. They basically don't know that it's happened.

This should not be an interruption. If it is an interruption, it will be very small.

Okay. Okay. And so how... So I think that... I like the idea. I think this is great. And I know we've done it before and it sounds like... If I remember right, the piece that we did was not a whole lot, but it was kind of like a test strip, if you will. So how do the people... I think there's a perception of... There's a whole lot of pipe that needs to be worked on and we're doing it this way and it's not highly visible that people aren't going to know that the work was actually done and so how do we get the people to know that hey we just did 7,400 feet of we're going to utilize Jessica and that and communicate that out.

So a lot of things that we're going forward with there may not be because a lot of it's going to be at the wastewater plant too. We're going to incorporate Jessica into that so that everybody knows where their dollars are going and what's going on.

Awesome. Sure.

Is that it?

So I think if there's no further questions from council, I want to just make sure that the public, if there's any questions, you can come up now. Or if you'd like to speak, it is open. Please.

Miles Everhart, East 23rd here in Hutchinson. I'm not disagreeing with the project, but since this is a budget hearing, when does this take effect to the budget and how long does it take to pay off the $2 million?

Those are great questions. So like I said, we'd be looking at doing the work either in 28 or 29 and the loan repayment doesn't actually kick in until we've completed the work and it's a 20-year payback period on the loan. Yes, we can pay back the loans sooner with no penalty.

Real quick, Bruce Miller, 1804 East 26th. Does any of this going to include the line, the sewer line going out to the plant? Is that all good? Yeah, it's not in that scope. It doesn't need repaired. Okay.

Anyone else have any questions? Okay. Thank you, Erin.

Yes.

I'll move to close the public hearing.

Second. Truen? Yes. Garza? Yes. Goss? Yes. Bass? Yes. Magers?

Yes.

Item 7C, public hearing to authorize the filing of an application with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment for a loan under the Kansas Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund Act, KSA 1988, supplement 65-3321 through 3329 for the Water Resource Recovery Facility Reuse Project.

I move to open the public hearing.

Second.

Truin. Yes. Garza. Yes. Goss. Yes. Fast. Yes. Magers.

Yes.

I'm going to be a pro at this eventually. So again, I am Erin Patterson. I'm project manager with the utilities department. And I am hosting our public hearing regarding the SRF loan application for the water resource recovery facility reuse. It's a very long phrase for what we've been referring to as the reuse project for the last five months at this point in time. And we have covered a lot of this material previously, so I did reduce the slide content a little bit to try to keep it streamlined. So as hopefully everybody knows by now, we are pursuing implementation of indirect water reuse. Indirect water reuse is taking our treated wastewater effluent and using it in this case specifically for irrigation and land application. When we were looking through this reuse project, we looked at several options, but I've shortened it down to kind of the three main ones. The first option is including UV treatment out at our wastewater treatment facility, pumping of the effluent, Three miles of pipe up to Cary Park, an outfall structure out at the park reservoir, and then modification of the existing irrigation system. That's option one. That's the one that runs along the north edge of the arc in the shared easement with our sewer line. Estimated cost of that work is about $7.2 million. We did look at option two. It again uses additional UV treatment at the wastewater treatment facility. We had an alternative method of routing of that pipe. We would actually go north along Halstead and then travel westerly around Highway 50 until we could tee into Cary Park. Same outfall structure and irrigation system modifications, but with the increased piping and the change in routing, it was about $9.4 million. And then, you know, option three, because, you know, it is an option and that'd be do nothing, right? We just say we're going to leave. We are not going to pursue indirect water reuse. And our intention and recommendation is to continue to pursue option one for implementation of indirect water reuse. I did not include, because I feel like this can be a question, I did not include the option of irrigating Cary Park with well number two because it's, an option for irrigation, but it's not an option for indirect reuse. So I know that's something that's been discussed, but it is not included as a direct reuse, a direct indirect reuse option. So that's why it's not listed on the table. A little slide, you guys have probably seen this quite a bit. You can see where the wastewater treatment plant is, our intended routing of the pipeline, and then where we would put the outfall structure for Cary Park. So again, just to reiterate the details with option one, the pump station, three miles of pipeline, reservoir at Cary Park, irrigation pump station, and then modifications to the irrigation system. For this portion of the project, which does not include any large-scale park improvements, because that's being pursued separately, we are planning to fund this through a low-interest SRF loan as offered by KDHE and as we have received a pre-approval on. Loan amount $7.2 million, loan forgiveness from KDHE sitting at $1 million, loan duration for 20 years and same interest rate as the previous slide of, we're thinking 2.84%. And then additionally, this was accounted for when we did the rate study and no rate increase is needed due to this loan. And then process for the next six months. Obviously, we're doing our public hearing right now. You guys will get the resolution shortly after this. Application is due into KDHE on October the 15th. SRF approval early 2027. Again, I'm trying to be optimistic on that one. And then presentation to city council middle of 2027 for approval of that loan.

And so I want to go back to the conversation we had about this project already, that if we don't get the, the overlap, um, then we're not going to pursue the other line coming from the wastewater to Cary park. Yes. So, and if David liked come speak again, a little bit, David's answer this one. He did a great job with presenting with a lot of information last time, and I want you to do that again.

So, yes, that is we can completely not pursue this, or we can come up with an option B to where we can continue to do this, even if Justin does not get his grant funding for that project. So we'll have options when we come back and talk about this again. Just if you guys don't want to do it, we don't have to do it. If you want to do something else, which it will add some capital to what we're going to do here. Okay. But we'll have more options for you in case you just don't want to. Or that option is on the table of, nope, we just don't apply.

Yeah, my part of the equation is just to give staff the leniency to basically, this is all this is to me, is to pursue this to see if it's possible. If it's not possible or something else, we can have that conversation later, whether we receive the award or we don't.

That's right. We can get all the way down to the wire, and then you guys get to decide whether we actually sign on the dotted line and go through with everything based on everything that's in front of you. We can do this, we can do this, we can do this, or we can do nothing. But we just want to move it forward so we can keep figuring out those options and see what that actually looks like when we get there.

Okay. Council, any more questions?

Yes, Mr. Gwynn.

I don't know if you remember this. When I was an electrician for the city of Hudson, this is way back to how old I am. We used to pump water to Fun Valley. We have pumps out there that used to pump the water to the irrigation system. Is that system still there or...? Or do you know what I'm talking about? That is beyond my time.

I know.

Okay.

She knows.

I know because we talked about this. So it's our understanding that the system is still there. We have not checked it to make sure that the pipes are all intact, but it was not removed. And it actually goes underneath the arc right off of Cary Park.

Did it use the pond water? Did we grab the pond water and send it up there?

No, it was actually coming from South Hutchinson.

South Hutchinson. Okay.

Well, it was City of Hutchinson water that was getting, it was going under the arc, and then there was a pump located in South Hutch that was being sent to Fun Valley. So it was still the city's water, but the physical pump station was in South Hutch.

That's right. Well, that's what I was remembering. And when I used to work on it, what I was wondering, why can't we use those pipes? Is it that it's not feasible?

I'm not saying we can't. We don't know yet. But we're looking into a lot of stuff. And that is actually something that we've talked about. I didn't know the history of all that, so I'm glad Aaron did.

I'll just tell you how old I am.

But we're looking into a lot of that stuff, and that's one thing that I think we're potentially looking at down the road.

Yeah, there was a pipe there that we got water. We pumped it from the South Hutch over there to Pun Valley, and then we picked it up from that pump station, picked it up where Pun Valley has their irrigation building, and then we set it onto the fields. We may have to sit down with you and pick your brain about that. So it's still there then, right? I'm remembering right, right?

Yep.

Okay.

We haven't scoped it yet, though. That would be the next stage is to actually send the camera through the line.

Do you remember how big the pipes were?

I want to say it was like eight inches under the arc. It was a pretty big line.

Six or eight, yeah. Six, okay. Cecil's back there mouthing what they are. Yeah, me and him, we go back to our dome.

Okay.

Any more questions from council?

I don't have any objections. Again, I'm not against conserving water. I just think that this is poor timing. I do want us to conserve water. It's part of the reason why I've been pushing for us to rework our water plan that we have to turn into the state. I made revisions on it last year or I suggested some revisions on it last year and that sort of thing. I just think that it's not the best timing for us considering the financial situation that we're in as a city but I do think it's a good idea to conserve water and I understand the benefits of taking the golf course off of the RO off of using the RO water so and I understand that the long-term vision of Mr. Quinn for this whole thing. I still just don't like the timing of it all. Sure.

Understood. Like I said, we'll give you plenty of options. None of this hits the general. This is all borne by utilities. The way that it factors in with the rate increase we already did, it fits. I know the timing may not be there for you on some of that stuff, but We'll make it work in that respect without throwing things completely out of whack here. But we need to pilot it somewhere. Yep. So for the long-term goals, which I'm going to get in the weeds.

I'm going to set the timer on you.

Have anything else for me?

Council, any more questions? No. Any questions from the audience? No questions then. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Move to close the public hearing.

Second.

Truen? Yes. Garza? Yes. Goss? Yes. Bass? Yes.

Next. Yes. Next item.

Item number eight, ordinances and resolutions A, consider a resolution authorizing the filing of an application with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment for a loan under the Kansas Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund Act. KSA 1988 Supplement 65-3321 through 3329 for the sanitary sewer collection system rehabilitation.

Somebody come to speak about this?

This is just the motion of what we already held the hearing for.

Yeah. I didn't know if there's any more you needed to add to this or not.

Nope. Just the resolution if it's a yes or a no.

Okay. All right. Well, I'll move to approve a resolution authorizing the filing of an application with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment for a loan under the Kansas Water Pollution Act. Control Revolving Fund Act KSA 1988 Supplement 65-3321 through 3329 for the Sanitary Sewer Collection System Rehabilitation and Authorized Emeritus Sign.

Second. Truen. Yes. Garza. Yes. Goss. Yes. Fast. Yes. Magers.

Yes.

Item 8B, consider a resolution authorizing the filing of an application with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment for a loan under the Kansas Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund Act. KSA 1988 Supplement 65-3321 through 3329 for the Water Resource Recovery Facility Reuse Project.

Okay, so basically the same thing, just need a motion on this one.

I don't think I can read a motion. Sorry.

I'll make a motion to approve a resolution authorizing the filing of an application with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment for a loan under the Kansas Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund Act KSA 1988 Supplement 65-3321 through 3329 for the Water Resource Recovery Facility Reuse Project and authorize the mayor to sign. Second.

Truen?

Yes.

Garza? Yes. Goss? Yes. Fast? Yes. Magers?

Yes.

Item 8C, consider a resolution authorizing the filing of an application with the National Park Service for an outdoor recreation legacy partnership grant funding for improvements to the Cary Park ponds.

Good evening. Justin Combs, Director of Parks and Facilities. So this is the second half of the reuse project, which is the improvements to Cary Park and to the ponds at Cary Park. This is the presentation that I did at the public meeting on August 27th. It was not going to run through the entire presentation. presentation. I just have it available if there are specific questions about the project. I know we've talked about this numerous times, but the key highlights is the grant request would use the SRF loan that we just discussed as a match, as the 50% match. So it is a 50-50 match. So the total project would be $14.4 million, $7.2 from KDHE SRF loan, and $7.2 from the ORLP or ORLAP grant. Again, this is specifically for the improvements to the ponds at Cary Park that would act as that reservoir. And then we'd use that for the irrigation, but we'd also include things like bringing back the boathouse, potentially doing an amphitheater, some nature-based play, sidewalks, walking trail, and lots of other amenities. And we're working with some concepts. I have those if we want to look at those again. Those are purely concepts at this point. That would be part of that application. If we're awarded, then we'd have a year. So the application is due in October. We would hear back from National Park Service in May of 27, and then we'd have a year from May of 27 to May of 28 to finalize all the drawings, to do all the permitting, those sorts of things, until we would actually have an agreement with the National Park Service in May of 28, and then construction could then begin afterwards. So with that, I'll stand for questions. Like I said, I've got all the slides available. I just didn't want to recycle everything we've looked at multiple times.

Just curious, I like this project, first of all. What are the chances you think of us getting this?

I really don't know. I mean, I think it's a strong application. You know, I've talked to the state of Kansas who technically is the applicant. They've reviewed the idea. They will review the application when it's a little bit further along to be presented. I've talked to Trust for Public Lands. They are the nonprofit that's helping the National Park Service with these projects. They are excited about it. So everybody I've talked to is excited about the project. It's going to be extremely competitive this first round because ORLAP was not available last year. Funding was held back. So I wish I could tell you it was a 50%, it was a 25%, I really don't know. It's going to be extremely competitive, and I think we've got a good application.

And is the ORLAP funded? I don't think I ever asked this. Is it funded 100% of what you asked for? Is it all or nothing?

It is my understanding, yes. It's either an all or nothing. It's not a – there are other grants where the state can come back and negotiate a smaller amount, but that has never come up in any of the education I've done as part of this grant.

And the survey that you're doing currently about Cary Park will be used during your application process, or will it be used – when you are determining your agreement?

So the survey is specifically for the master plan that we're doing. There are some questions that kind of revolve around access to water and access to the river. So we will pull some of that feedback for the application. But the primary intent of that survey is to guide the master plan for Cary Park. Gotcha. Thank you. Again, all this resolution does is just basically authorize us as staff to submit the application, and then we'll know in the spring, and then there'll be multiple other opportunities for the loan and for this grant application. We'll have to come back to city council for final approval.

And I guess, again, I know we're in that situation we're in right now, and that's why it's one of those things to go, we can at least give you the leniency to try and see what you can do. If you get it, then great. We can talk about that at that point. So I just think it gives us a good, if we can get that money back to Hutchinson, then we can actually have that discussion. Council, do I have any other questions?

No.

I'll move to approve a resolution authorizing the filing of an application with the National Park Service for Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership grant funding for improvements to the Cary Park ponds and authorize the mayor to sign. I'll second.

Truen? Yes. Garza? Yes. Goss? Yes. Fast?

Yes. Magers?

Yes.

I have a point of clarification on that one. Justin, your ORLP doesn't require Any public hearing, right?

It does not. It does not require public hearing, but public engagement is part of the criteria for the application, but not a requirement.

Okay, thank you.

All right, Mary, next item.

Item number nine, continuation of budget discussion. Consider approval and adoption of the 2027 budget.

Angela Richard director of finance. We met on September 1st for the public hearing for the 2027 budget. At that time, council wasn't ready to approve the budget and wanted to have a budget study session. So last Thursday we held that budget study session. And so I want to start by going over, uh, where we were before that and, um, the decisions we made during that study session or suggestions and where we are now. So as a refresher, here are the mill levies and the levels over the past several years. Beginning when revenue neutral rate was enacted, we started lowering our mill levy. The suggestion for 2027 is to keep a flat mill levy. 42.095. So what does that mean for taxpayers? For someone with a $100,000 home, that would mean a $13.23 per year increase. For a $400,000 home, it would mean $52.90. And then for a $1 million commercial building, it would mean an additional $287.50. Okay. Before we met for the study session, we were at approximately 2 million for our ending balance for 2027. The 2026 projected general fund balance would end at 1.8 million, and then we would see a slight increase to 1.3 million at the end of 2027. As it was pointed out during the September 1st meeting, that is just over half a month's worth of expenditures in the general fund, which wasn't a comfortable number for a council, and I would tend to agree with that. So we made some changes and where we ended up at the end of 2027 with the changes from the study session is just over 4 million. As a reminder, we should have about 7.3 million in the general fund. This is a significant move in the right direction, but we probably still have work to continue in future years as I'll discuss. So this is what it would look like at the end of 2027. We would have $4,057,000. So what changes did we make to get there? Well, first of all, staff recommended removing the fuel-based operation expenditures and revenues from the airport. So this decreased the revenues from the airport by $2.2 million and decreased the expenditures $2.2 million, plus we removed some of the FBO MRF expenses. We added back a zero-turn mower to the airport for $35,000. I want to remind everyone that union negotiations are still in progress. So this may not be what actually happens, but we are reducing the raises in the budget by 1%. So this will save the general fund approximately $92,000. So after discussing with the HR director, we are suggesting a 2% COLA and then a 2.25% merit-based raise for the average. Looking at the fire department, they were about 4.5%, so this number is a little bit lower because I didn't lower them by a percent. So that would be the savings for the general fund. We also agreed to remove the assistant city attorney position from the budget and instead add 80,000 of miscellaneous contractual in case our new city attorney needs to hire additional help. It'll give them a little leeway. So this saves approximately 83,000. What we're proposing to do with the sales tax is to not fund a new sales tax stormwater fund for 2027. So that leaves an additional 2.16 million in the sales tax fund that would have been transferred to the new sales tax stormwater fund. The idea was to keep the new sales tax stormwater fund money separate from the old stormwater fee money. So what we're proposing to do is use the old stormwater fund money to fund the operations for the stormwater department in 2027. This is going to be a not a long-term solution. We can't keep depleting the stormwater funds indefinitely, but this will help the general fund tremendously for 2027. So what we did to do that is we moved 1.96 million to the general fund. Part of that is to help parks operations even further, and the rest is to help with the general fund reserve balance. We are using some of that sales tax money to go into the golf fund and help operations there. That's a net zero change for the golf fund, but it does help the general fund. Then we are proposing to use some of that sales tax money for brick streets and pavement markings. So that's where $200,000 of that sales tax money went. I do have a graph here that will show where that sales tax money is going and have a better breakout of how we ended up after making those changes. We discussed restoring two construction techs in the engineering department, adding a project manager for the general fund in the engineering department, and then adding a project manager that will be split between water and sewer. So this will cost the general fund approximately $276,000. Part of that then gets allocated to water and sewer as well. Then in the CIP, we are proposing to move the bike park addition back a year to 2028. So this reduces our bonding and our expenditures in this capital improvements fund. We're also doing the same thing with the golf course master plan. That was bonded. We are going to defer $330,000 of that, leaving $330,000 Sorry, $330,000 in 27 in the budget. So that decreases the bonding and the expenditures in the CIP fund. Are there any questions about those changes?

I have one question and it's probably... I think I answer it in my question, but I was getting some questions via email about the stormwater fund. So the stormwater fund that was through the fees, now that we have ended the fees in October, It's okay that we are going to use up that fee, that fund from the fees entirely and let it drop to zero. We're not required to keep any funds in there or anything like that now that we've killed the stormwater fee for the future, right?

We are not legally obligated to keep that. We can use it. It would be a discussion point going forward whether we would want to drop that to zero. The thought was to keep some of that intact in case the sales tax doesn't renew in 10 years so that we have something to fall back on. So ultimately, that is a council decision on whether we want to continue spending that down. or whether we want to use the new sales tax to fund that.

And how much of it is being...

So we're using approximately $2.2 million of what was in that fund. So there was about $7 million. So it'll take us a little bit below $5 million, if I remember right.

So after 2027, there will be $5 million in the... of the old fees still in there. And then something that, hold on, I have to finish my note to myself. Okay. Something that was mentioned at the meeting Sorry, there's been a lot of meetings. I think it was Friday. I don't know what day. I don't know. Anyway, some one of the last means when we were talking about wage compression. Is there a way to set aside whether it's from Like to take it from some of the savings that we've found in these proposed cuts, is there a way to set aside like $100,000 to address wage compression within I don't know, within the ones that had fallen in the study that were admittedly not addressed yet, how would we help remove the compressed employees?

That is a discussion we can have. It's probably something the HR director and I would need to discuss more in depth, maybe with Gary Meager while he's here, and a plan to address some of that wage compression.

Is that something that we as a council would need to decide tonight and instruct you guys to set aside? Or is that something that would be discussed internally and the funds would be taken from something else?

So normally those discussions and decisions are left to the city manager. They don't normally come back to council. So I don't know if Gary wants to weigh in on this or if the HR director does or not. But those are discussions we could have internally and let council know what type of funds that would take.

And so do we need to say, I guess my question is, Do we just instruct you guys to continue the process of addressing the wage compression issue, or do we need to, say, take a certain dollar figure from X fund and do it that way? So I don't want council, obviously, to be involved. We weren't involved. when it was addressed a couple of years ago, and I don't believe that we made a budget item for it, but it did sound like it had been partially addressed in years past and then kind of not addressed or not finished.

Council could address this, or... guide us in making that decision or that direction, give us that direction to look at that and we could have that conversation internally and update council. I don't think you need to designate certain funds to do that.

Okay. That's all I wanted to know.

Couldn't we continue this discussion, like Stacy mentioned, and take it out of the reserves? I mean, if it's $100,000 out of the $4.2 million or $4.1 million, would that be a fair way of doing it?

Yes. So the way the state budget form works is the state advises us to use what we anticipate our ending cash balance to be as an expenditure. So when you look at the state form, it will have that $4 million ending cash balance as an An expenditure, essentially. It does show up as an individual line item, but it continues to the front page where it lists the total expenditures. So we have budget authority to spend that in if needed. And the reason the state does that is if you ever have an emergency, then you can spend that without doing a budget amendment. So we have in the state forms the ability to spend an additional $100,000 if that's what it takes. So council wouldn't need to do any formal budget action to allow us to make that decision internally.

Okay. And that's a dollar figure that I made up, honestly, because we weren't told how many employees were impacted or what the number, what the compression numbers were for those or predictions of salary increases. It just was a concern of mine that was mentioned that we still had employees that had been identified as being impacted by the wage compression study that we did a while back and that they hadn't been addressed. And so I want that to be addressed and to make everything fair for everybody. Looking at, I think this is really something to celebrate. If you could go back to the slide with the, yeah. I think that's phenomenal, and I think that this increase from 1.8 to 4.057 really speaks to the work that council and staff has done over the past two weeks, a week, being allowed to communicate with each other openly and freely and answer questions. And I think that this makes me feel a heck of a lot better moving forward as a city. I know we're still not hitting our target at 4.057, but that is a lot better And for people at home, just regular everyday people who don't pay attention to any of this stuff, the reserves help us basically have good credit and get good bond rates, which then save us money in the long term. And that's why the 7.2 target is set where it's set. I feel a lot better about the whole budget process leaving with a predicted 4.057 in the reserves.

And another thing to point out is the general fund is the fund that can pay for any legally allowed expense. So it's good to have this in the general fund, maybe in comparison to leaving it in the old stormwater fund, because you could pay for stormwater out of the general fund. You have that flexibility. So that is a good reason to have a good balance in your general fund.

Yep.

Any other comments on the changes?

Just a comment in agreeing with Stacy. We didn't get in this position in one year. We don't have to fix it in one year, and I've told you that and have told Gary that and told Enrico those things, too, that we'll fix this, but it doesn't have to be today. And that's a huge step after our meeting Thursday or Friday, whenever it was. I'm in a blur, too, Stacy. I don't remember what day is which now.

But... yeah i want to say that as well um i really appreciate angela and all staff and council in putting the time and effort to bring that back up because that was a huge concern too is like um and i know we talked about that multiple times angel about can't we just pull some of that storm water and i know we're gonna have to fix the problem a little bit later but can we pull some of that out of there to get that reserve back up so i really appreciate the time you took to explain What we could do what we couldn't do and I just want to know community members We are really thinking about those taxes all to make sure they're in the right location to to keep us going in the right direction, so I Do appreciate all that Angela.

Thank you This next slide lists out where all of the new sales tax is going. We have the parks operating costs at 3.1 million, street operating costs at 1.4. In the CIP, we're using 1.3 for streets. We're using 1.062 for general fund reserves. We're using $406,000 for golf, and then there's a list of other CIP projects that will be funded by the sales tax. This is a list of the personnel changes and where we ended up after our study session. We are still at a negative one FTO at the end of 27. This was because we eliminated the airport positions. We did add back the engineering and then remove the city attorney. And so those offset each other. So we're still at the negative 1.0 FTE.

And I did like some of these moves, too, because I know we had the need in engineering because I know we have a lot of projects in play that we weren't getting off the ground because we didn't have that staff in place to keep things rolling. So I'm really glad that we decided to make that move as well.

And it should save in engineering costs to vendors. Yes. And I wanted to remind you that we are still looking at revising the purchasing policy. We do have that ready to come to council and then we are working on revising the budget policy, defining what level we should be at and what steps we take when we are not at the general fund target balance. Are there any questions?

I do want to bring something up and I don't know, see what the rest of the council thinks. There was one, uh, one item that was taken out of the, or held over for a year at least.

And that's a security fence around the police department.

It's a hundred thousand dollar project. Um, I wish we could figure out a way to put that in. One of the things I'd heard was from Stacey, our dispatch director, that that would be so good for her dispatchers, because they could pull in there, shut the gate, and be secured at night. I don't know if there's any way we can add that back in.

Well, I'll just speak that I questioned that, and the answer I got was very satisfactory to me, and then the next thing I know, it was pushed out a year. And I'm fine with spending that money for that, just so everybody is clear on that. I question it, because I'm like, we have armed people wandering around

why do we need a fence around them and it was explained to me and to my satisfaction and certainly have no problem with that and and from experience i mean there's a lot of people that wander through that parking lot and uh you know most of the police officers assume or even when they're getting off duty or armed but our dispatchers aren't and uh i just think that for safety and benefit of them, that would be something we should add back in.

I guess I didn't realize that it had been pushed off.

I think it had been moved. I see it's zeroed out.

If you want to add that back in, you can make a motion to adopt the budget with that change as part of your motion. It would not affect the state budget forms, and we could still sign those tonight because the CIP fund is not a budgeted fund on the state forms. So we could bond that project, or I could look at other ways to fund that. That wouldn't involve a transfer from another fund So likely, probably bonding, but we could add that back into the budget.

Is that something we have cash we could just pay for that just to save us all of that expense on the bonding side of it?

I will have to look and see what I can do.

I'm asking you questions.

It would be bonded with other things, but yeah, I'm in...

I would agree that usually we wouldn't want to bond that, especially with the new policies we're trying to implement. I can see what we can do. It's an ask. That's all it is. Yes. But if you want that added back to the budget, I'm sure there's a way we can make that work.

So it was zeroed out in the CIP for this year. I was trying to find, just to confirm that it was just $100,000. It was. Okay. Mm-hmm.

Well, in my two cents, I don't have a problem if we can put it back in. It's a safety thing. There are employees we need to take care of.

Well, it secures our patrol cars and secures our employees and dispatchers.

Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. I didn't realize it had been pushed.

No, I didn't realize it either. So if that's something that council wants to add back in, I just need a motion basically to, like Angela was saying, to amend that.

Well, I'll make a motion that we... fund the fence project for the law enforcement center and add that back into the 2027 budget?

If you wanted to make a motion to approve the 2027 budget with the addition of the LAC parking lot fencing, that would be the appropriate motion in my opinion.

Okay.

I move to approve and adopt the 2027 budget with the addition of the LAC fencing. Do I have to say the amount? And authorize the mayor to sign.

Second.

Truen? Yes. Garza? Yes. Goss? Yes. Bass? Yes. Maggers? Yes. Thank you, council.

Thank you. Thank you. Next item, Mary.

Item number 10, new business. Consider an amendment to the Plum Creek MIH ARPA grant agreement and authorized merit assignment.

Good evening. Matt Williams, director of community development again. Good evening. I'm here this evening to present a proposed amendment to the MIH ARPA grant agreement for the Plum Creek subdivision. In April 2023, the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation awarded Plum Creek approximately $1 million in MIH ARPA funds to support middle-income housing. Since that time, the city also established a rural housing incentive district and approved related development agreements to reduce special assessments and support the project's viability. Development of the subdivision has progressed slower than originally anticipated, making it necessary to amend the MIH ARPA grant agreement to reflect the project's revised timeline and circumstances. The developer of the project has been notified of noncompliance with our current development agreement. That agreement will need to be amended or replaced at a later time. To ensure Hutchinson does not lose the awarded funds, we are proposing four adjustments to our agreement with KHRC. Number one, we need to amend the disbursement schedule to allow KHRC to disburse the grant funds to the city prior to their September 30th deadline. Disbursement to the city would be based on eligible infrastructure costs that have already been incurred for the project. Number two, extend the project completion deadline to January 2029 to provide additional time for residential build-out. Number three, maintain the requirement for 52 total residential units while allowing flexibility in the mix of single family and duplex units. And number four, maintain the requirement for 24 MIH ARPA assisted units while allowing flexibility between rental and home ownership units. Collectively, the proposed amendments preserve the city's $1.02 million award, maintain the project's overall housing production commitments, and provide the flexibility needed for Plum Creek to continue developing in response to current market conditions. KHRC staff have reviewed these proposed amendments and indicated they're comfortable with the requested provisions. Importantly, this revision does not reduce accountability. Funds remain performance-based. If the units are not built and verified, reimbursement does not occur. The city retains control of funds until those benchmarks are satisfied. So with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

I think this is a perfect example of taking the lessons that we've learned of a contract that didn't really work out great for us and caused a lot of delays and strife within the community as well. Turning it into a positive, and I think that a huge part of that is to your credit specifically and to the relationships that you've built at this state and the fact that you were able to be honest with them about the process and how... the contract that I actually think that contract was written way before you got here the ARPA stuff how it just wasn't the best contract in hindsight so I'm glad that we've learned our lesson and we're moving forward and hopefully this should all make everything smoother and still work out great for future developers too

Yeah, I appreciate that. It really does ensure that we weren't awarded a million-dollar grant that we have to give back to the state, which makes us look bad to the state and makes the state look bad to the federal government that gave us the money. So hopefully we can get the project completed and use this.

Yeah, I appreciate all your hard work too. I know you've worked a lot as well. And it's really great to see those houses already going up. Almost all of them, I mean, it's almost like they're ready to work on the inside already. That's how quickly they went up. So it's great to see that movement that we've been waiting so long for. And to be able to continue to use this money towards that development as well. So great job.

And I'll express my appreciation by moving to approve an amendment to the Plum Creek MIH ARPA grant agreement and authorize the mayor to sign. Second.

Druin?

Yes.

Garza? Yes. Goss? Yes. Fast? Yes. Makers?

Yes.

Item number 10, report of city officials.

Mr. Truen?

I'll start.

I don't have a whole lot other than I just want to tell our staff I appreciate them hanging in the last week or so here and we've all kind of got a shock last Wednesday morning and I know we have excellent staff, excellent employees and they just keep moving to take care of the city and we'll keep doing what we need to. We've got a good man in place now and And we'll keep moving on. So I just thank all our staff and department heads and everybody that works hard for the city.

Mr. Garza?

Yes, I'd like to say the same thing. We all went through some stuff and big surprise. It's a big loss that we had, but we have to go on. We have to get up and dust us off and keep going because we represent the city of Hutchinson. We represent the people of Hutch. Like I always say, it's hard to be a city commissioner. I've got two more years left, and hopefully I'll have hair by the time I get done. We'll see. But it's not easy up here. We make decisions for 47,000 people. And trust me, when we say things, anything we say, my phone rings off the hook. And I got elected by the people. It's their job to call me and let me know what they think, good or bad. So, um, I think we're well, we've got a good man in place. He's been here before and helped us out. So I think we're going to be okay. So other than that, I'd like to thank the city council too. We have a good council still. So let's get on and beat this and go on. That's all, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Greg.

Um, I don't have a lot. I just appreciate the community members that have reached out and encouraged me. Um, It doesn't feel like it's a very good day. And so there's been several people that I haven't heard from in a long time that have encouraged me. I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Gary, for agreeing to do this. Thank you, Scott, for twisting his arm a little bit. The Southwest Bricktown Fiesta will be September 26th, I believe. Just want to put that. out there. I'm almost certain that's the date.

It's correct.

I've been busy with other things and haven't paid a lot of attention helping with that, but I would encourage everybody to attend that. It's always a great time and a lot of work goes into that. That's all I have.

Real quick, Defidencia is playing. If anybody ever been to those things, I love to dance Mexican music, and I love it. This is a good band coming from Garden City, and I'm recommending you come out and hear it and try that Mexican dance, and it's fun. All right. Stacey.

Stacey.

I just want to say I'm incredibly proud of the work of the council. We, with the budget that we just passed, basically doubled the reserves that would have been projected at the end of 2027, and that's amazing and I'm really proud of the work that we've been able to accomplish in the last week. Also to the staff for the work that and all the questions that they've answered for us over the past week and their willingness to communicate. Gary, welcome back to the team. And if anybody has noticed I can barely breathe tonight, it's because of the state fair, which I love the fair and I would go every single day if I could. It just doesn't love me back. Um, but I did win a purple ribbon, um, in the porch goose decorating contest. Yes, it is a thing. Um, so if you are in the Oz gallery, um, which is, I don't even know where it is and you'll figure it out. But in the Oz gallery, there's a bunch of geese in the center of the building. Um, and mine is decorated as Rosie the Riveter. So please go check her out.

Say that again. What did you win?

I won second place in porch goose decorating contest. A porch goose. Yes. Okay.

I mean, my hearing aids, I've got them turned up. But I didn't know there was such a thing.

Yes. It was my first year entering anything in the State Fair, actually. And I can't remember the name of the people who won. I think their last name was Green. So the first place goose is really cool, too. But that's all I'm going to say. Everybody should go check them out. They're really creative. There's a lot of cool stuff in that building. There's a lot of cool stuff at the fair in general, but that building is where all of the static exhibits are. So the kids with their Legos and their art and the clay and a bunch of the art, professional and non-professional art, is in there. But anyway, that is it. And yeah, that's it for me.

Okay. So, you know, we still have a great thing left in Hutchinson for a while. We have a lot of great things. But we still have the fair remaining until the end of the week. So make sure you make it out there to the fair. There's a lot of people in town supporting our community by attending. So make sure your attendance, make it out there. And then we're welcoming some rain, which we much needed as well. I hope we keep getting more. Um, I do want to, I know it's been a hard last week. Um, and I, I just want to reflect on that, getting a call on mid Tuesday morning, um, as well as a call immediately thereafter from staff, um, and meeting with them. Um, and basically the conversation, it was that it was a hand we were dealt. It's not the hand we wanted to be dealt. Um, but that's what it was. Um, so in meeting with staff, they just were more concerned about direction. Um, And I basically said, you know, guys and gals, you know what you're doing. You're great department heads. You have great staff below you. So what we're going to do is we're going to figure out the next step. You guys go do your jobs because you know what to do. And we'll figure out the next steps. And so the progression of that was talking with council and figuring out the next step because I did not want us to delay finding the interim city manager because I felt that was very important for our council community. to put some in place. So the goal for myself was to have something in place by Friday, which is a quick turnaround. But I thought if we could achieve that, that really puts us a really good step forward into making things happen. I think somebody reached out and mentioned Gary and conversations. And so I reached out to him, and he was willing to listen. And I've got to thank Renee, HR, everybody involved. It just goes on and on. But everybody that came to play, community members that reached out, contacted, I know, multiple members of council, and just trying to keep things moving forward in a positive direction because we love Hutchinson and we want to keep this moving forward. So we are all working very hard to – take the next steps and I want to thank Gary for accepting the position because I know you're not walking into the most the best conditions but I think we have a great staff and employee base to keep the city moving forward so I just want to thank everyone involved and we are going to keep going and we're not going to stop because we have so many things we're still working on and that's the thing that council did not want to sit back and and just on our heels and not do anything so That's all I have. Thank you, everyone, and Gary.

Well, I just want to say it was an easy decision for me because I know a lot of the staff, and you do have a good staff, and it was easy to come on board. They've been very welcoming. I think we're working together well. They do know their jobs. They are professionals, and I do appreciate, you know, I've had a good relationship with the council, and I want to continue that and, you know, be part of that team to make things happen and move the city forward. So thank you very much, and thank you for the staff. One thing I have been working on, the mayor took the lead in trying to initiate a way to get a city attorney on board, and he handed that off to me, and the last couple of days I've been working on it. I think we'll have somebody in place soon. possibly tomorrow with an agreement. I'm working on that negotiation. So I think we will have somebody. It won't look the same as what we've had in the past. It won't be somebody that's sitting in the chair, but it will be somebody that we can... refer to you know to get information from and get advice from and it'll like say it'll look a little bit different the person may not be here sitting in the chair during the council meetings but we can bring them on online you know it's not easy to find somebody that's got the experience in municipal government and So some of the people that were referred by the league are from maybe Wichita or they're close by. They can be here if we need them to have them here. But we'll probably be doing things remotely just for a short period of time. Renee is working hard. She got the job description updated. We're getting that out. We're going to really try to put a full-court press on trying to get somebody in place as quickly as we can. So if anybody knows somebody, this is a great place to work. Great organization. So it's going to be a good opportunity, I think, for someone to be here. So anyway, I just want to kind of report that and again say thank you.

Thank you. So I guess with ending with that, the next item we have is the future agenda items. If council has any future agenda items they'd like to see added, now would be the time to bring those forward. And I know we have some that we pushed off that are going to be on the October 6th council meeting. So anything you guys would like to see added in the future?

Angela, I have a question for you. about the transient guest tax, because we had talked about it, or I'd sent you an email about it, I don't know, like May, after I attended a League of Cancer Municipalities conference. And I don't know if you recall the timeline, but when do you think would be a good time for us to pick up that conversation again, like when your budget stuff is done and submitted and you can breathe again?

Yeah, I think we could pick up that conversation this fall. I'll revisit that email and get with Gary as well and see what we can do to move that forward.

Okay. And I think the email had a couple of timelines baked in as far as you'd already kind of known Somebody had said in one of the emails that they knew what the future timelines of reporting and that sort of thing was.

I believe the city attorney had commented on that timeline, so I'll revisit that.

Awesome. Thank you.

Anything else? No executive session, so I guess I would just be looking for a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second.

Truin. Yes. Garza. Yes. Goss. Yes. Fast. Yes. Yes.