Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting
The Sedgwick County Board of County Commissioners approved meeting minutes, board appointments, routine consent items, and bid recommendations, while adjusting the motor vehicle transaction fee to $7.75.
About this meeting
- Government Body
- Board of County Commissioners
- Meeting Type
- Board Of County Commissioners
- Location
- Sedgwick County, KS
- Meeting Date
- September 23, 2026
Published excerpts
Only published remarks appear here. The full transcript is not published.
57 sections (from 63 segments)
Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Sedgwick County Board of County Commissioners meeting. Welcome to those joining online, Facebook, and YouTube, and for everyone joining us in person. We're glad you're here today. When you walk in, we always encourage you to grab a meeting agenda packet that allows you to follow along with all the items we'll be discussing at the County Commission. If you're curious about supporting documents, you have access to those at www.sedgwickcounty.org. Now, let's get to work. We don't have too big of an agenda today, but we'll get through it here for We
Thank you very much, Brad. I've actually participated with this with my daughter a couple times, and it's pretty neat. We'd go down to South Wichita and have a lot of people show up and got a lot of fire detectors distributed throughout the neighborhood. So any questions or comments from Commissioner?
Okay. Any questions, commissioners? All right. Thank you very much, Nicole.
And I'll just ask together, does anybody have any questions about any of the minutes for August 26th or September 2nd or September 9th? If not, I'd like to go ahead and make a motion to approve items A, B, and C. Second. Okay. I have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
Okay. I'll go ahead and make a motion to accept the resignation.
I'll second that if I can make a comment. I just want to appreciate Ronald. Mr. Colbert's also a Valley Center council member, and he's got a lot going on in his life. He's dealing with a few health issues as he's aging, and he's trying to give his best to the Valley Center Council right now. And it's hard for him right now to get back and forth. Ron is a great man. He's a veteran. He served his country, and he served his community very well. Ron, if you're watching, I bet you are. I just want to thank you for your service on this board and your continued service in Valley Center. Okay. All ri
Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Next item, please. We do not have anyone signed up on the public agenda. Next item.
Okay. Commissioners, do you have any questions about items E, F, and G? If not, I'd like to make a motion to approve items E, F, and G. We have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Next item, please.
Commissioner, do you have any questions about the items from the board?
Commissioner Howell? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Joe, a couple of comments and a question. So, first of all, a sinkhole cost us $73,000. That's a comment. That's a lot of money for a sinkhole. $73,000 to fix a sinkhole. That's a lot of money. The first one I was going to ask about is the electric pole relocation. I'm just curious why the utility company isn't on the hook to change this location. Seems like that was something they should do that if we need the space. They're located in, I assume, our right of way. About a quarter million dollars. Go ahead.
Okay, and is this right where the pole is? Is this going to be paved as a paved shoulder right where the pole is, or is it off the road a bit?
Okay, so the ditch is the issue. I'm just curious, is it required that the ditch is obstruction-free?
But it's their pole, right? Correct. Okay. I guess I'm just not concerned about their poll as much as they should be concerned about.
Okay. Well, anyway, it's almost a quarter million dollars for that one. That one bothers me a bit. But anyway.
All right. Next question is for someone else. Thank you. Item number three, Joe. It talks about the striker power load electric cots. It gives a price of $88,139 each. It doesn't say the quantity that that covers. Nowhere on this does it talk about quantity. Yeah. How many units are we talking about? Is this one or ten or all of them? We don't know.
So we're only going to buy one of these total? Correct. Okay, and most of our ambulances do have power cots, but this is different somehow?
So where will this be located? And since we have a big county and we only have one of these, where will it be? How do you get this to where you need it? This is to take people up and down, let's say, a flight of stairs, for example, right?
Okay. That explains things better. Just again, by reading this, it's not clear that we're only talking about quantity one. Just throw that out there. So I don't know. Maybe it's obvious, but to me it wasn't obvious. All right. Well, thank you for the answer to the question. That's all I got. Thank you, Joe. And thank you, Chairman. Okay. Commissioner Beatty. Yeah, Atlanta, if I can ask a follow-up.
I also had questions on that electric co-op. I did the research and understood a little bit about electric co-ops and the private easements. and the autonomy they have in these. My question is not about this specific bid board item. My question is in general. We are becoming a more urbanized county where we have growth, and we talk about responsible growth, road construction, updating, modernizing our road networks out in the rural parts of our county. Are we going to run into this where Sedgwick County Electric Co-op and other electric co-ops are more prevalent? Are we going to run into this
Well, that's helpful. I begin thinking about some of the areas where we're talking about modernizing road networks. I think about Commissioner Howe's district, Commissioner Wise's district in particular. I start thinking about 135th, 151st, 167th, all these road networks that we know we've got to modernize. And we're talking about shoulders and all the things that if this is going to begin being something that's a lot more prevalent and a lot more expensive for the county, And if it's something that we need to be proactive in thinking about when we're doing these projects out of the gate, if w
Well, I'll find you in the next couple weeks. I've got more questions. I start thinking about ARC-95, Northwest Expressway, some of the major projects that we're looking, and if there's some costs that I haven't been considering in some of these things that need to be considered. Absolutely. Okay. All right. Thanks, Len.
Any other questions? If not, I'd like to make a motion to approve the recommendations of the Board of Bids and Contracts. Second. I have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Next item, please.
Okay. Commissioners, do you have any questions or comments about the recommended action? Commissioner Wise?
I'll just make a quick comment. Brandy, thank you for going back through the numbers and really trying to hone in on as close to what you need to operate and to improve the services to people utilizing the Tag Office. I just appreciate you coming back with a number that... completes the tasks at need and isn't overreaching that. So I know it's taken a lot of time. I know finance has helped a lot, just making sure that we're thinking about all of the different things to improve your office. And that is our goal. And you're elected to run your office, and we want to support you in that. So thank
Okay. Commissioner Howell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do appreciate you working with our other staff to sharpen the pencils and get this down somewhat. As I mentioned yesterday, we don't know that $300,000 is kind of a guess. It could be more or it could be less, and I would just make the comment that the one option here, if you want to stick to 50-cent increments, the closest option to zero is the $2.50 increase by the commission, so total would be $7.50. $5 from your decision and $2.50 from the decision of the Board of County Commissioners for a total of $7.50. I would like to see us use tha
2002 or three. And I think my calculations is, if you want to round it off, it's close to a billion dollars. It's not quite fair to say it's a billion, but it's closer to a billion if you want to round it to the nearest big number. I think it's over $800 million is my calculation that they've collected to modernize the system. And again, if they want to rename that fee, that's fine. But I think there are things we can do to modernize this entire system. Some of the things I've talked about in the past is I think we should have... And multi-year registrations is a good example. So people have t
Okay. Commissioner Beatty? Yeah. For the public's view, we had a very robust conversation yesterday during staff meeting. So if the public would like to go back and get some of the details that we had talked about and you had presented, it was a good presentation. A good discussion. Let me just say some aims here. Number one is we've got to fix the overall system of the TAG offices statewide. The legislature, based on our advocacy and the advocacy of 105 different counties across the state, really petitioned the state for this adjustment in the transaction fee. And that legislation passed and
Yeah, exactly. The point, yeah, Commissioner Dennis had eight cars. The point being, this should be a fee-funded office, not property tax funds. And we've talked about this since I've been on the commission. This helps us to do that. Now the question is, what's the number? Right. So our CFO is here. Would you be able to, do you mind? I'll follow up the question. I just, the conversation between, we're not going to 10. Right. The current fee is five. Do we go to $750 or $8? $750 has an $86,000 deficit on there, which would require the use of property tax funds to make this up. Does it not fix t
Well, I think if you were to talk to anybody standing in line at 6 o'clock in the morning around the building, would they pay 50 cents more to make sure we can address these lines? I'm comfortable in saying they'd probably pay 50 cents more on their title. processing to make that happen. The question is, and I don't want to spend, I don't want an extra dollar of surplus. I don't think that's necessary. We're talking $750 and $8. There's $86,000 deficit. There's $182,000. If we split the baby and went $775,000, is this something that gets us? It feels like we're in the details, but there's a pr
I understand. $758, we're trying to arrive at a principle here that matters to the taxpayer and to the users of these services. I'll listen to the comments of my colleagues. I think we're really close. The bigger issue here is I truly, I don't want to use any property tax dollars for this service. adamant it's a first principle i don't think we should be doing it so i want to get the number right i know these are guesstimates and then we're going to be close and do i think that would i be supportive of having to make up the gap if we had to do if it improved the service absolutely i don't want
What we got is a microphone. Okay. So thanks for the presentation. I really want to thank, as well, Lindsay in finance and HR and Scott over in IT and communications with... with Nicole's group to help a week later here get to where we're at and with your cooperation as well, Brandy. So I think it's important to remind everybody that The county treasurer and the county tag office is a function of the state. It's a state function. One of those 16 departments that we as the government are required by the state to do. And also remind that... Brandy Bailey is the county treasurer. All county treas
So we had to subsidize your county property tax to the tune of about, if I remember, three years ago it was maybe $200,000-ish.
Yes, it was 200,000. And we didn't panic then. And then it was 500 or 600. Then we kind of panicked. And then we knew it was going to be 900. And that's when we said, enough's enough. And thanks to Brandy and the state treasurers and all of our efforts, we went to the state to say, what can we do to do this? And that's why just recently the $5 allowance fee was approved, that the state allowed you as a treasurer to put a $5 fee on these transactions. And that helped wipe out the property tax liability. So here we are now with the ability to help fix what we've seen. The public has experienced
Scott, if you don't mind, could you come up to the podium? You've laid out three different options for commissioners. Could we go through those options real quick?
Okay. So just for clarification, if commissioners want to go with the 275, we can't just say take option one and replace 275 with three?
Yes, sir. Commissioner Howell. Just doing some quick math on this. Looks like the five staff have an average cost of $50,515 per staff. If you did 775, you have a surplus of $48,228. I should say the bottom line, the column between those two columns would be bottom line of $48,228. So, again, if you wanted to do 775 and do six FTEs, it's almost break-even. It's basically within about $1,000 or $1,800 of zero. Okay. Is that something that you guys would want to consider? Does that help you to have six versus five?
I just want to make sure that, you know, if there are lines because of lack of people doing the work, if that's the thing that's causing this. If there's a lack of staff that that's if that's the genesis of long lines if that's what's going on here I don't know if six is better than five. I'm just just it's more of a question The 775 would get you almost exactly the dollars you need to do six if that was something that everybody everybody was interested in Mr. Meister Yes, thank you, and I just want to remind so I
I think that gets us, 775 gets us today what you think today you need, and it is only for one year. So we will be back next year, and it will really be a healthy review, including I think we have required audit documents you have to provide to the state and to us.
Okay, at the end of three. So you have to show the next 27, 28, 29. So we'd be able to review this next year. Be nice if it was kind of within our own budget season, but it's not required by the state. It is a little different. we can handle it just like we're handling it now, I think.
Yeah, that's a good idea, Brandi. Maybe on a quarterly basis, you just come in and give us an update report because everybody's going to be wondering. And obviously the, the emails or the complaint lines, if they disappear, then we will know that it's working without even knowing what the details are. But if we have, you know, an occasional complaint is not a bother, but if we have a little bit of a surge of comments, then we'll be able to review that. So I... Yes, so Mr. Chairman, whatever I think, if you go to the option two and substitute in 775 as a motion, I think I'll be supportive. Okay
If I'm hearing consistency, I'm going to take option two, and I move that the board modifies the recommendation of the county treasurer and approves a $2.75 increase to the motor vehicle transaction fee and approves a resolution in line with this action. Okay, I have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Next item, please.
Do you want to go to other now? Yeah, we'll go ahead and go to other.
Okay. I just want to make reference to an article that came out in the Wichita Business Journal that I think is worthy of at least an acknowledgement from the county. The discussion around economic incentives is a very broad, common, popular topic right now throughout our community. And, you know, we typically don't talk a whole lot about these because in my time, we've never initiated an economic incentive discussion. Commissioner Howell, in your time, I mean, from the county, have we, we've never initiated an economic incentive at TIF, an IRB, any of these things here at the county commissio
Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Beatty, for your comments on that. I feel like I totally can understand why the city council, as the largest city in our region here, all seven of those council members are were not around in 2019 when in 2019 there was a large confusion of incentives that Bel Air might be using, Cheney, Wichita, that Sedgwick County had to whatever. So there was a real, so I think Commissioner Howell and obviously County Manager and CFO were around where there was a lot of confusion on incentives and There was a lot of even competition that would allow a city to try to help one u
And representing the city of Wichita at that time, I think we had a vision that we didn't want to compete with the city to the north or the south of us. We felt like if someone was doing an economic development thing, it benefited the whole region. So we wanted to ensure that whether you were going to Bel Air, you were going to Wichita, you were going to Hayesville, We weren't saying, hey, it's better to come here or there. There was more consistency over it.
Commissioner Howell. I think the comments of Commissioner Beatty and Meisner were fantastic. I agree with what they've said. I'd just like to add to that. I think one of the things I've talked about for years is maybe the state laws should allow a municipality to opt out and let the other one or two go forward. The schools typically don't get involved in public votes and discussions about these types of things, but cities and counties typically do. We have a default, by the way. We don't have to talk about these. We can simply let them go on without discussion, without a vote. There is a defau
Commissioners, this time I'd like to recess the Board of County Commissioner meeting and call to order the governing body of Fire District Number 1.
Commissioners, do you have any questions about the minutes over August 5th, August 12th, August 19th, or August 26th? Okay, if not, I'd like to make a motion to approve items A through D. Second. I have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Next item, please. We do not have anyone signed up on the Public Agenda. Next item, please.
Commissioners, do you have any questions or comments on Item E? Okay. If not, I'd like to make a motion to approve item E. Second. I have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
Okay. We do not have an executive session. We'll now adjourn the fire district number one meeting and go back to the Board of County Commission meeting. Next item on the BOCC. Okay. We do have an executive session. Yeah. Measure applies.
Yes, thank you, Chairman. I move that the Board of County Commissioners recess into executive session for 25 minutes until 1026 for preliminary discussions relating to the acquisition of real property for the purpose of discussing the potential purchase of land and buildings for use by county departments. And that the Board of County Commissioners returns to this room from executive session at 1026.
And I'll second the motion. We have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
Aye. Motion passes 5-0. All right, we're returning from executive session. There's no binding action taken, and this meeting is adjourned.
These excerpts are remarks by officials whose identity a person confirmed, from a transcript generated automatically from the official public meeting video and presented unedited. Accuracy may vary; view the original recording for reference.