Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. It is six o'clock. We're going to go ahead and call this meeting of the city council to order roll call please.

Council member Alvarez. Council Member Wells is absent. Council Member Larson? Present. Here. Council Member Click is also absent. Council Member Saper?

Here.

Council Member Bailey?

Here.

Council Member McGrone? Here. Council Member Cain? Here.

All right. And since Council Member Alvarez is in the parking lot, we will have the Pledge of Allegiance led by Council Member Cain. All right, moving on to the approval of the agenda. Do we have a motion on the agenda?

I move to approve the agenda. Second.

All in favor? Yes. Any opposed? Motion passes. All right, item five, comments from the public. If you are a member of the public wishing to speak this evening, please approach the podium, state your name for the record, and please limit your comments to five minutes. Looking out there, anybody? Back row? Frank? No? No? All right, we're going to go ahead and close the public comments and move to the consent agenda. Do we have a motion on the consent agenda? So moved.

Second.

All in favor?

Yes.

Any opposed? Motion passes. Trucking right along to item 13.

Presentation of downtown planting study.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Tonight, we have McClure Engineering with us. A while back, a couple times throughout the process of the downtown streetscape, we were asked to look at reevaluating some of the plants downtown. A lot of the plants that were put in were grasses, strictly native, kind of more more green than vibrant and colorful, so we were asked a couple times to look into that and see if there's different plantings we could include in the existing beds, not reinvent the wheel, but kind of start incorporating that into all the downtown plantings as time went on. So we reached out to McClure Engineering, one of our on-call engineers who has a landscape architect team. They are here tonight to talk about what they found.

All right. Welcome.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you. Yeah, my name is Anthony DePriest. I'm a landscape architect with McClure. This is Danielle Yatsuk. She's one of our landscape designers.

Let's make sure we get it in the microphone so that the dozens of people watching at home can hear all the beautiful things you have to say.

Yep. And as Anthony had said, this kind of stemmed from the original – plants that were in downtown were very vibrant but weren't really native. So what we heard from the community was that they wanted more natives and then so another firm had put in a lot more natives and then lost the color. So we're here to kind of bridge that gap, provide color while still maintaining that native character. So the study area that we're looking at was just within the downtown North Kansas City area. so roughly from Burlington to Howell Street along Armor from 21st to 18th Street. We did a couple of different site walks, one with city staff and one just the McClure team. There we looked at the sunshade conditions of the site, the irrigation and soil conditions, as well as trying to understand the existing plants that are already on site. One of the key factors that played a role in our recommendations was sunshade. Along Armour, the beds on the north side are going to receive a lot more light than the ones on the south side, just because there's buildings there that are going to block that. And then along Swift Street, you're going to get kind of a 50-50 condition. So we wanted to provide recommendations that would have both conditions. They'd support a full sun condition, condition, one that supports more shade, as well as some that are in between. Here we kind of go into detail about what each one of those means in terms of full sun, intermediate, and heavy shade. And then this last map is the inventory of the existing plant material that's out on site. We classified that into five different typologies based off of the existing plant material. So the first bed is, or the first typology is the mixed species bed. That one's going to contain a variety of species found, and all the other ones just kind of morphed into one bed. And then the next one is going to be the native species ones. These ones are found right outside of City Hall and near the YMCA. They're a lot more experimental, have a lot of natives in them. We really like these ones. And then I'll let Danielle talk about the others.

Yeah, the remaining three typologies that we're going to talk about, they're easy to distinguish downtown because they have very consistent plant combinations within them. So there's three particular, and the first plant combination is daylily and spirea, and the second is growlow sumac and carl forester grass. And the third is simply hydrangea. So we're going to walk into kind of breaking each of these down and our recommendations and kind of how we got there as well. So this was taken on our site inventory walk. So you'll see throughout this we have images of exactly what everything looks like right now existing out on site. So the way that we are gonna be presenting this is that the existing conditions are gonna be on the left hand side of every page that we walk through and then our proposed will be there on the right. So here we can see in this first one what we're presenting here or the way that we have broken the hydrangea down is we're gonna have a full sun intervention and we're gonna have a full shade intervention. This was something that wasn't necessarily taken into consideration beforehand. You can tell that just by the pattern, the kind of AB pattern that these have throughout downtown. So that's something that we certainly wanted to take, we wanted to take all of this stuff into consideration. so the hydrangea um if we go but we'll just look at this picture the hydrangeas are doing wonderfully downtown they're very happy um really they're a very adaptable plant so regardless of whether they're in full shade or if they're mostly shaded they're doing very well the one thing that we noticed with these is that kind of on the periphery edges of each of these, there's a little bit of blank space that we saw that there was an opportunity to fill in a little bit. And so with the hydrangea, the one stipulation is that sometimes throughout downtown, they do include either catmint or sage that have been, you know, since they're kind of blank spaces, they've been filled in. But our recommendation for full sun The hydrangea is gorgeous. It is a native to this area. Hydrangea species are native to this area. So we wanted to integrate native grasses, let hydrangeas continue to take the center stage and fill in that space. So little bluestem in a full sun condition is a gorgeous native grass that we have that will provide a lot of that seasonal color as well and that seasonal form and interest throughout the winter. And then on the shaded side, Pennsylvania sedge, very similarly, we wanted to let hydrangea take the center stage and have another native grass that does really well in full shade conditions. And so the next that we'll break into is spirea and daylily. The thing that was very interesting with this one that we definitely took note of, and you'll see that as I move through this, spirea and daylily is the only combination that this has, neither of these species are native to this region at all. So this is something that we wanted to move forward with that knowledge the daylily and spirea combination this is a little different we didn't break this one down by full sun and full shade um though they are non-native the daylily and the spirea they're doing quite well throughout downtown so this is an investment that you all have already made into downtown so the first kind of intervention that we wanted to give you all is more of a light intervention, which we keep those two and we kind of make space to add butterfly milkweed, which is a native that really packs a lot of ecological benefits in here. And it has the same color kind of palette that the spirea and the daylily already provide. And then also wanted to make sure to provide something that, you know, this could be phased and that this would be high intervention, but this would be the beauty berry taking spot of the spirea and purple coneflower taking spot of the daylily. So this is, we wanted to provide two tiers with this one, just since the daylily and the spirea were doing so well, they're healthy, you know, so wanted to give two tiers of options for that one. And for the Grillo sumac and the Carl Forrester grass, we can see from this picture, and Anthony kind of, you know, we talked about this when we were here out on site. The Grillo sumac, this is one, I don't know if you all have walked by and seen it in the winter, but it's very twiggy. It doesn't have a lot of It's also, it's very twiggy. We do not believe that this is the Grow Low Sumac variety that actually was planted here, because it's not growing very low, is it? It's kind of taking over, and it's spilling over into the sidewalk, and it has just generally gotten a little bit unbrewly. So for this one, we kind of took the liberty to take it out. And take the feather reed grass out as well, because that's also a non-native. So replacing this with some native species that do really great in full sun. Arkansas bluestar, dwarf father gila, and purple poppy mellow. And then going into the full shaded intervention, which similarly, we've replaced all of these species in here. And really, this was a spot that we got to be experimental and got to really take into consideration the difference between the full sun and the full shade. And then the mixed species plantings. These are the ones, as Anthony had said, the full planting list is there kind of on the left side. This might contain any variety of those species. This is the whole list of species that had been integrated beforehand. And these are commonly at intersections. So these have a lot of visual interest. Really, our recommendation for this, we like that it has a lot of visual variety. We want it to continue to stay that way. Site line wise for cars driving by we want to make sure that the lower growing species are closest to the road So that's really our recommendation is that we integrate the species that we've recommended to be placed in place of these other species throughout these beds But make sure that they're placed low growing to tallest in the back for sight lines And lastly, we'll talk about the native species plantings. Again, these are the kind of more experimental beds that are out here by Dagg Park and by the Y and right outside here. So this kind of diagram up top, this is not how they're planted. This is just how we wanted to represent this, all the species that are currently existing there. And really, I mean, we love these, you know, when we walked through with Anthony, they're so much fun. They add a lot of beauty and life to this area. And so that is our, that's what we wanted to do in this space is these plants that we've recommended to be introduced in other areas is integrate these as well into these species beds for downtown cohesion.

Thank you all.

Thank you so much. All right, a couple follow-ups. So when we first started down this road, a lot of the energy was, as you said, put into native plants because there's a lot of good to putting those in. But I think at the point we did that, we didn't put irrigation to these beds. Is that right? There's no...

irrigation to some or do they there is irrigation it's just uh like a drip irrigation so not not everything can survive on that okay these species that they've identified they they're aware of the drip irrigation what we have out there very good i think all these are geared for that okay um and i will say um short term there might need to be some watering just to help get them established but once they're established they'll be pretty uh drought tolerant

Excellent. That sort of dovetails into my second question, is the maintenance piece, because that was the allure of the natives as well, is that generally minimal maintenance, because they do their thing. The struggle is that they also kind of do their thing, and they turn into what look like weeds over time. I'm curious if any of the ones that we've specced here have that propensity as well, where if they're not constantly maintained, are they going to look like weeds in downtown?

I can speak to that to begin with. So when we walked through, one of the grasses outside is northern sea grass or river oats. And that is one that's very prolific. It definitely seeds itself and it takes over. You can kind of see by Dag Park that it's taken over. We jumped into this knowing that and knowing that these were species that we wanted to make sure that they kind of, first of all, they were also really identifiable so they don't get confused with any weeds. They've got very distinct language to them and they do kind of keep to themselves as well.

That's the number one complaint I get from residents and businesses is like, what is this? What is this stuff here that's planted in this corner lot? It's kind of growing outside of its bounds. I think it might have been the one you pointed. It was really twiggy in the off season. Of course, the time you've gone to take the pictures, they all look great. They look beautiful. The hydrangeas can turn into monsters as well as they get huge and then they kind of fade out of the nice white color. just trying to balance that ornamental bit with the maintenance so that we're not constantly having to spend a bunch of time and effort from Public Works. Do you think that we've got that here?

Yeah, we've worked with, we ran all these species by maintenance staff to get their approval and sign off on them, so.

Excellent. And then the last piece you touched on it briefly, but did we did we look at sight lines all the way around? I know that when we first planted Armour Road was fresh, we had just done a crosswalk and we put these planter beds out and immediately a grass was planted that got like this tall, like really tall and cars couldn't see around it. You mentioned it on some of the mixed plantings, but was that looked at at all the intersections?

We didn't take, like, specific sightline measurements in terms of, like, engineering and all that. But the species we recommended, usually the shorter ones are only two to three feet tall. Perfect. So those should be clear sightlines.

Awesome. Council Member Saber.

One thing I'd like to see with this project as we move forward is sort of a rollout of public information. Because people see tall grasses and think they're wheat. but they're not necessarily, especially if they're kept short and don't grow that tall. But people have misconceptions about plants and weeds. And sort of a public information rollout, I think, would do a lot for the residents and businesses that say, hey, what's growing out there? It's junk. Well, it's not necessarily junk.

Sure. Maybe some labels in the plant beds would be useful, little placards. I will say, like, I've been intimately involved in all the planning of this, and as I walk down by, no knock to Public Works or anybody, but some of them looked pretty overgrown and pretty kind of, and I don't think it's a knock to the type of plan or the, it's just that was, that's how it worked. And so this is kind of an address to that. Any other thoughts or questions on these? Council Member Alvarez?

Just a comment. I think the hydrangeas,

I think they look gorgeous in the summer.

It really catches your eye. I love them.

I had a question. Thank you so much for presenting this. I think you have wonderful options here. Do we plan on letting all of the foliage remain over winter to provide habitat for birds and insects?

I would say that's part of the reason why we chose the species that we did is because we heard that that's what the citizens want is seasonal interest. I think a lot of these plants have like, some of them I think are more beautiful in the winter than they are when they're blooming. The hydrangea also, they do have their seasonality, but the way they hold their form of like the florets in the winter, they do end up providing like some winter interest as well. But that's certainly, we chose those species.

Perfect. I just want to put it on record that we shouldn't cut them down. Over winter. We would love if they weren't cut down.

Okay.

Any other questions, thoughts? Okay, what are the next steps on this?

So we budgeted next year's FOI 27 budget to slowly start integrating this. We don't want to do a mass, you know, change again. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel and redo and have beds that are completely bare, you know, for different times. So we've, as they said, they work with the, Public Works staff. And so the idea is to kind of integrate these over time and slowly morph each bed into more of these plant species.

Okay. Do we need to do any sort of selecting of anything, or are we just going to go with the recommendations as they're written? I didn't know if there was like a buffet of choices or if this is just how it's being laid out.

I think this is just kind of how it's laid out. Again, we're kind of looking forward to just kind of a nod that this is a good way to go forward. Good.

One last question is, as we switch from one to the other, I say this as a frame of reference where I'm trying to get some invasive weeds out of my garden bed. How confident are we that we're going to be able to get the current species out and not have them recurring while we're trying to plant something else?

city or the staff that we worked with uh have a pretty good understanding of the existing species and the ones that we're recommending um and so i'm pretty confident that they'll be able to okay um accomplish that good deal yeah two of our internal staff have actually gone to horticulture quarter culture classes and are trained on what to look for for these things love that all right thank you for your presentation thank you all right moving on to item 14.

Consideration of a resolution adopting fiscal year 2027 budget, resolution number 26-028.

All right, we've talked about this at the last 41 meetings, I think. Do I dare ask, do we have questions on the budget at this point? Do we have a motion on the budget?

I move that we accept the budget through resolution 26028-028.

Second.

All in favor? Yes. Yes. Any opposed? Motion passes. Mike, are you going to add something to this?

I just want to say thank you to the council and the staff.

Thank you.

And thank all staff, Nick in particular.

Thank you so much for all your work in this. I know the department heads have put a ton of time in. And yeah, this is a balanced budget. I mean, that's quite the accomplishment. So thank you for all your hard work on that. All right. Item 15.

Discussion of regulating Kratom products and products with high concentrations of 7-OH. Council Member Kane.

I'm going to need you to read that word. Council Member Kane.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And that's 7-hydroxymetragynine. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And actually, that's a good place to start. I'm no expert on this. I'm not a public health expert. I'm not a doctor, and I'm not an attorney. But this is something you all might have seen lately in the news. You might have seen headlines about an unregulated gas station drug, cities' attempts to regulate them, and the Attorney General's action when it comes to creative manufacturers and distributors. So I also want to thank, before I get too far into it, folks at Beacon Mental Health and the Clay County Public Health Center for some of their education on these topics. So what is kratom? An emerging trend is the recreational use of kratom products. Kratom is an evergreen tree native to Southeast Asia. Historically, its leaves have been used as a stimulant. It was used predominantly by farmers and workers for treating fatigue and pain as well as for religious ceremonies. At low doses, it acts as a mild stimulant and can be used for pain relief. But at high doses, it acts like an opioid. Some of the reported effects can be sedative and include relaxation, pain relief, and confusion. But what causes these effects are alkaloids in plants or plant-based compounds that have marked physiological effects. So I'm going to talk about two alkaloids today, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine. So metragynine's the primary alkaloid in kratom. It makes up about 66% of the alkaloid content in kratom. Metragynine itself is not an opioid, and that's an important distinction to make. But it is an opioid agonist, meaning that it activates opioid receptors in the central nervous system. So it reduces pain signal transmission and alters pain perception. This can create sedative and euphoric effects, but much like opioids, create dependency. So over time, regular activation of these receptors can lead to increased tolerance and cessation and result in physical withdrawal symptoms. The more severe component, however, is 7-hydroxymetragynine. So it's usually present in trace amounts in the kratom plant, but has a disproportionately high impact on those mu opioid receptors. And that impact is 46 times stronger than metragynine, and 13 times stronger than morphine. So a lot of times there are 70H products that are now on the market and are available commercially. And they will directly say that they're 70H. And this is processed by oxidizing raw mitragynine. So there's some other compounds as well. Metragynine pseudoindoxyl, or MGPI, is one. MGM-15 and MGM-16. These are all semi-synthetic or synthetic varieties of 7-OH, and they are also high-powered. So MGPI, that's 100 times stronger than metragynine, and about 22 to 25 times stronger than morphine. But as of last Tuesday, these three substances were now under Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act, meaning they can't be sold, they can't be distributed, manufactured, or possessed. So here's some examples of Kratom products just to give folks an idea of what we're talking about. There are at least four locations that I've seen in North Kansas City that sell these products. You'll see on this shelf here that there are some tablets. Sometimes they are vapes. Sometimes they're gummies. But you see a lot of energy shots with these as well. Here's some other examples. So on that bottom shelf toward the very bottom, if you can tell, it's kind of small. You see raw kratom leaf in capsules. It can be sold as loose powder. It can be sold as an extract, so it's a little bit more potent. And you see all kinds of labeling problems with these as well, because sometimes energy shots will contain far more than one recommended dose. Again, some products are sold explicitly as 7-OH products, and these are often not well hidden. They will use the number 7. They'll explicitly say 7-OH. They might be called pseudo if they include pseudoendoxyl. So these are creating a lot of health concerns, and they're wide-ranging and still being more understood as research continues, but they've been alarming enough to raise concerns among the public health community. So the FDA warns against kratom for risks of liver toxicity, seizures, and substance use disorder. FDA has similar warnings for 708 specifically, including addiction, anxiety, depression, gastrointestinal distress, insomnia, seizures, and withdrawal symptoms. But an important part of this, too, is that 7-OH can lead to respiratory depression. So for folks that don't know, respiratory depression, that is a fatal consequence of overdoses, and it can be fatal. So you would need an opioid antagonist like naloxone to reverse that. So, some recent federal and state actions on this topic. The federal government is increasingly making the distinction between kratom and elevated 7-OH products in its regulatory approach. In the last year, there's been rapid movement to schedule products with elevated concentrations of 7-OH and its synthetic counterparts. Last summer, the FDA formally recommended that the DEA place concentrated 7-OH, MGPI, that's that pseudo, MGM-15 and MGM-16 into Schedule 1. While those synthetic products did make Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, products with an elevated concentration of 7-OH that are far beyond their natural concentration did not. So that is currently in public comment. At the state level, the General Assembly has tried to pass, since about 2019, a Kratom Consumer Protection Act. It's been proposed, but it's stalled several times. Most recently, in 2025, it passed the House by a vote of 148 to 2, but stalled in the Senate. And then SB 927 was sponsored by our state senator, Maggie Nurnburn, but it did not advance in the last legislative session. The Attorney General's Office, I alluded to this in the beginning of the presentation, has launched several investigations into manufacturers, distributors, and retailers of these products and secured voluntary agreements with a number of distributors to discontinue the sale of Kratom and 70H in Missouri. However, without legislation, there's no age restriction for kratom, and it's not prohibited from being sold to anybody under the age of 21. Products with elevated concentrations of 7-OH can continue to be sold absent those specific agreements with the Attorney General's office. While confirming the highly addictive properties of these products, academic literature also demonstrates some of the concerns in these policy spaces. In comparisons of state regulations, states that entirely banned kratom did not have a statistically significant reduction in kratom usage in part due to online sales of these products. Public health guidance also points to the risks of bans in increasing unregulated use, as well as the risk to existing users who use Kratom to self-medicate for chronic pain and for opioid withdrawal. This leads to what I'm proposing that we explore as a city. A split approach that regulates kratom by age-restricting access at large, much like alcohol and tobacco, while prohibiting the sale of those adulterated kratom products, the ones that have the elevated concentrations of 7-OH. We can imagine this lying on a continuum, and this is just kind of how my brain works, so I hope it helps other people. But imagine you've got regulated products in three separate buckets. In that first bucket, you have things that are low risk. We have products that might seldom present, that may present negative health consequences, but are seldom considered for heavy prohibition. Things like products with an elevated caffeine content or sugar content. Maybe energy drinks kind of fall in this bucket. There might be some discussion of regulation, but generally it's buyer beware. You have products with an elevated risk, where risks are known. So some measures are taken, and I would consider those to be like alcohol and tobacco. Where you have that elevated risk, we generally say adults can be adults, and they're perfectly allowed to purchase and consume. There's a lot of public health campaigns that warn about the risk of these products. And then finally, you have products with a high risk in that third bucket, where commercial access is prohibited due to substantial public health impacts. That does not necessarily mean that there's not a medical use, but it would only be used in the cases of medical intervention and with medical supervision. So that's largely what the split approach advocates for. It's treating Kratom products as having an elevated risk by restricting that access to minors. It moves it into a second bucket and then treats adulterated Kratom products, those that have an artificially high 7OH content, by prohibiting sale. Nearby cities have very similar ordinances on this. In Kansas City, adulterated Kratom is prohibited, but other Kratom products are regulated through a licensure program and can only be sold to those that are 21 plus. Independence passed a similar ordinance banning the sale of 7-OH and then pseudo-indoxyl. And then Blue Springs voted down an ordinance on a full ban. but later approved a split approach that banned synthetic 7OH while restricting Kratom sales to those 21+. In my review of this issue, I'm yet to find a community in Missouri that has had a ban. In my opinion, Excelsior Springs provides the best approach because it's a localized version of the Kratom Consumer Protection Act. It establishes separate definitions for Kratom and intoxicating alkaloids, including products with a high 70H composition, mitragynine, pseudoindoxyl, concentrated extracts, and then any synthetic and semi-synthetic derivatives. So it acts as a blanket for any new derivatives that may pop up. Kratom products on the whole cannot be sold to those under 21, must be in an age-restricted area, and cannot mimic candy or be packaged in human, animal, or fruit shapes to appeal to kids. Importantly, this ordinance does not criminalize possession of Kratom products, but prohibits the sale of intoxicating alkaloids. So before moving into discussion, I do want to make one quick note. I mentioned that these are opioid agonists. They act on those mu opioid receptors in the brain. That means that opioid antagonists can work to reverse the effects of an overdose. So we have Narcan stations around Clay County. There's about 11 designated stations, and we have one of them at the public library. So that's available here in our community. So I want to open it back up for discussion. And just to note, again, I'm not an expert on public health. But the fact that you have products that are 13 times more potent than morphine, and that's at bare minimum if we're just talking about 70H products, readily available at a gas station or a convenience store is deeply troubling. It's a complex issue. And we need to consider things like an off ramp for existing users. a lot of public education, a lot of retail education. But this is something that is troubling, and it's troubling a lot of people, and it's troubling a lot of communities. It's stalled federally. It's stalled at the state level. And it's a unique instance where cities have the ability to act and to try to get ahead of these issues as much as we can. So with that, I'll try to turn it over to the mayor.

All right. Thank you so much for the presentation and just Incredible amount of preparation for that. I had a chance to sit down a couple times with Council Member Kane to talk through this. He brought it to me a little while back, and my initial reaction was, how bad can it be, right? Like, they're available at a gas station. So I went on a walk around and saw similar to what was in the pictures. They're just here. 70H is all over the place. And, I mean, the title gas station heroin just can't sit right. That's a wild thing to be like, gas station heroin, of course. Um, the intoxicating effect and the detrimental effect is clear. Uh, the national and local and national state and local direction seems to be headed toward what you're proposing. Uh, so, I mean, this one's got my full support as the split approach. Um, the other part that as I did a little research, it also seems that the content of these packages tends to be relatively unregulated. So when you're buying a tablet of whatever, It could say it's Kratom or 70H or whatever it's on the packaging, but independent studies have pulled these packages, opened the tablets, and found completely different substances within those tablets, which is, again, quite wild. You touched on the dosing, and even within a single tablet could contain eight doses. So what are you supposed to do with that? So I would support absolutely that. I like the three-bucket approach where 21 plus for Kratom and outright ban on 70H. Council Member Saber.

Bill, in your studies, why has there been such a slow pathway toward action at the state and federal level? What's been happening behind the scenes that we might need to know?

Yeah, for sure. So I can at least speak to early federal action. The FDA initially wanted to go after mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine all at once. And there was a lot of pushback.

Where did that come from?

It came from advocates in the community, and again, folks that use these products for managing chronic pain. And so that is an issue. And obviously, and the FDA does warn, this is not an approved treatment for substance use disorder because we don't know the effects. And what we're seeing is a lot of cases. of overdose. Again, it acts as an opioid receptor or as an opioid agonist, rather. So we saw a lot of advocacy against it because I think the federal government went too broad initially. And so the FDA backpedaled, they've done more research, and now they've specifically honed in on these additives and the elevated concentrations because, again, Raw kratom leaf, it has, it can have trace amounts of 7-hydroxymetragynine, but they are intentionally elevating this stuff to make it more addictive. And so they're elevating 7-OH, chemically rearranging compounds, like that MGPI, that's semi-synthetic, and MGM-15 and MGM-16, those are completely based in a lab. I think that regulators are starting to catch up to that, but they are slow to catch up to it. And it is something that I think, in ordinance, if it includes synthetics or semi-synthetics, I think that could be broad enough to get a little bit ahead of some of these issues as we become more aware of them.

Just to be clear, did you ask why the federal government was moving slowly? Just making sure I heard that clearly.

Right now, is there any age restriction on these? Do you have to be 18 plus?

So from my understanding, most retailers will still ask for your ID. They'll ask to verify that you're 21. But without a Kratom Consumer Protection Act, my understanding is that there is no law on the books in Missouri that explicitly says Kratom products, you got to be 21 plus. So that's what a lot of communities, and that's why I think they're including it in their ordinances, is to be very deliberate about that.

I'd also just like to add that 7-0-H is ridiculously addictive. I know that it's already been said, but I do agree that just a citywide ban on the escalated addictive substances, we don't need it here. So thank you so much, Dylan. I appreciate all your information you presented. Sorry, Council Member Kane.

Mr. Saber. Having worked many years in the drug addiction business and treatment, It's a bit of a whack-a-mole. We can deal with this one, but the next one's going to come up, and we need to be on the lookout for it because it will appear. But we need to deal with this one now.

I'm going to open a can of worms real quick. Chief Freeman, a question for you. Enforcement side of this, if we pass an outright ban, that seems fairly clear-cut. If we see 70H on the shelf, that is a violation. Correct, yeah, a ban of 70H. So if that's on the shelf, that would be a violation. I don't know what it looks like right now with alcohol sales or how we catch up on whether people are checking IDs. What does that look like from an enforcement standpoint?

Very manpower intensive. Specifically, if you speak to alcohol enforcement, we have done.

Is your mic on?

It is on. We have done underage alcohol enforcement in the past. There are several steps that we have to get to make sure that it's quantitative and prosecutable and all those things and getting youth to participate in those actions. So I would see the same thing occurring here for if there's an age ban, I think. know we'll we'll act and we'll work with the council to enforce any legislation that you have but i think you know from our perspective from my perspective an all-out ban don't put it on the shelves at all don't don't worry about who you're selling to don't sell it at all that would be our preference that way we walk in we see it it's an automatic violation we don't have to worry about okay Now, we saw you buy that. How old are you? And you're playing a game. I'm not going to say it's unenforceable. It is difficult to enforce when you're there without targeted action, which is manpower intensive.

And what you said there, my initial, as soon as we started talking about it, you can attest to this, my initial thing was just ban all of it. If you're done with it, it's easier and it's cleaner to enforce. Again, through discussion with Dylan and doing some digging, it does seem like there's some utility to the lower concentrations of kratom, and an outright ban on that could push people from that to much harder substances. And that has borne itself out in other cases, I understand. I appreciate that. I do think that once this passes, or if this passes, it'll probably start coming off of shelves in most cases. And the ones that do still sell it, we could be a little more targeted with how we approach that. I don't think it's going to take too many times of them getting caught doing it. They're going to stop, I would hope. Further questions? Counselor Saver.

Not so much a question as how we roll it out and how we get information to the retailers and so forth and the community at large.

What would that look like? Do you have a proposal for how that would look to retailers that are currently carrying it?

Yeah. So I think I mentioned earlier that I had a quick chance to talk to Beacon Mental Health, their manager of prevention. And retailer education is part of their work. I think, again, when it comes to coordinating or collaboration that we need to have that discussion and what that looks like. But that is something that they do in our area. And they're already a partner with us on other things. So I think that's maybe worth exploring. I also know that a lot of these ordinances have an effective date that's a bit later in part because of the consequences for folks that have substance use disorder. So that is something that Kansas City does. They set it about like 60 days out and push out a lot of public education as much as they can.

Because again, that off ramp is incredibly important.

giving people a chance to know what their options are, to talk to their doctor, to do what they can. So, yeah, getting that information out there as a city and however that looks, I'd be open to and I think working with our regional partners that we already work with to learn what our options are.

And then the retailer perspective, is it just us going out to the stores and saying, take it off the shelf, this is now a banned substance?

Yeah.

Who does that?

We'd be working with them through business licensing. We'd ask for some assistance with the police, but they would probably ask for assistance as well. Okay. It would be us getting the word out. Okay. Identifying the businesses.

As far as the off ramp, I certainly understand the desire for that. Dylan and I have both had, or sorry, Council Member Kane and I have both had the experience of now that I've Googled 70H and Kratom enough times, I'm starting to get targeted ads for Kratom. And one of which is buy before the ban. Like that's, you sent me a screenshot, I haven't popped up on my feed very quickly thereafter. Um, and so what I don't want is this rush to stock up on all this stuff before it goes off the shelf. Uh, so I don't want to give really a, uh, fire sale opportunity for, for businesses. I'd rather have it snapped off the shelf more quickly. Um, and I don't, I don't know what that looks like as far as an off ramp. Cause that's true. Do you know anything they've seen in Kansas city? Has it been just selling very quickly as people approach a band?

I'm not sure. That's a good question, though. So I'd be happy to reach out and ask about that.

Okay.

Do I hear... Oh, go ahead. Does this in any way prevent online sales and or production?

Within our jurisdiction.

I mean, I would see... Is there a production facility here in North Kansas City?

There is. Of 70H? Yes. Would this include a ban on production here?

I don't believe so. I think that, well, the Excelsior. I mean, we could work that in, but certainly. Yeah, I'd certainly want to work that in.

Yeah, I find that that would be a little odd. I would not want us to initiate any kind of ban on a product that we are making tax dollars off of, and there's a business here that's actively manufacturing that. I feel for that business. I don't. I feel for the people who are working at that business, and hopefully they find some other place to land. But what is a mechanism for... that side of things because is that a separate ordinance that says that we would prohibit the businesses from operating to create this stuff? That's one thing. And then we also prevent businesses from selling it. That's another thing.

It seems like an all-out ban on production and sale, but legal language being what it is. I don't know that the other cities that have passed bans have had production facilities in their bounds. If they have, maybe we've got to go by for it.

We'll have to look into that. We were just talking that, yeah, I mean, yes, the short answer is yes, there's a way to do it. We don't have a detailed answer for you right now. But the thought being you had mentioned the delayed start, and I know you said 60 days. My initial thought was normally we might bring something to you guys, and then the next meeting. but that's something for all of you to determine, you know, what is that.

To me, this is my perspective on that. I think we pass an ordinance with a 30-day clock, but start telling them now that council has directed staff to bring back the ordinance for a vote, so it's two weeks plus 30 days on the ordinance for production and sale. That would be my take. I don't know if there's, Council Member Roberts, you said something.

Yeah, I was. To the businesses, if it's a federal ban that comes down, that would take care of that, I would think, the production. But, excuse me, for us just locally, I would like to see, I don't know, maybe everything taken off the shelves. I think they all lead to something else, and it's been said, they are highly addictive, and I think they're cheap, easy to get. I think the colors that they put on them entices people. a lot of young kids, so I don't know if just the 21 and over are allowed to use certain products like the Kratom, but in my personal opinion, I've seen some of the things that it can do to people that do get addicted to these, and I don't know, I think they should all just be taken off the shelves if we could do that, in my opinion.

Okay, so taking the temperature of the folks here at the dais, We've got five recommended pieces, and I would add a sixth here about production as well. So in the recommendation, we'll just kind of walk through them. I see a thumbs up, thumbs down. So prohibiting sale of Kratom products to anyone under the age of 21. Okay. Requiring Kratom products to be stored behind the counter or in an age-restricted area similar to tobacco products. Okay.

Okay.

Restricting the display and marketing of Kratom products that appeal to youth. That's the colors, shapes, all the different animal-based things. Prohibiting the sale of Kratom products with 7-OH concentrations above naturally occurring levels, 2% of the alkaloid composition. And setting an effective date a number of days after the adoption of such an ordinance to allow for consumer and retail protection. Are we thinking 30 or 60 days?

I'm amenable to 30.

30s? I would say 30 for retail sales. You may wish to change production. Just a larger facility, there might be a reasonable thing to add more time to that.

I'm curious the rationale for letting them produce for an extra month. It just seems if we're banning the thing, why not stop them from making the thing? I mean, I'll go back to not having a whole lot of sympathy for making this sort of a substance. But if we want to split it, so 30 for, yeah, and it's a question for council, do we want to split 30 for the first bit and 60 for production, or just go 30 for all of it?

Go ahead. I don't want them producing, but I also know that this is probably a business that has employees who work here in town, and I don't want to pull a rug out from people who have a livelihood. So as much as I would like for them to stop producing yesterday, I don't want to not give their employees any kind of opportunity to go out and find another job. 30 days is a really... is a really quick turnaround. And I mean, that business is going to need to pick up and they might move somewhere else. And I just want the people who work there to have some time.

Understood. So to be clear, if we're directing staff to bring it back, it's not necessarily past, but it would also be a two-week lead time plus the 30 days on top. Are we, go ahead. Three weeks, three weeks between meetings. That's special. Go ahead.

This manufacturer that produces this, is this the only thing they're producing, or is this just one of many products they produce?

One of many products. Back to 30? There we go.

Great question. Okay. Go ahead.

Oh, and I just wanted to make one clarifying point, too. So the federal scheduling is a temporary two-year scheduling. So that's on the semi-synthetic and the synthetic products. And that was what was initially kicked to the Department of Justice for elevated 70H products. It's still kind of in another public comment period. So even if it got scheduled from that same notice of intent, it would be a temporary scheduling for two years. So that's where the merit of these ordinances comes into is because regardless of what the federal government does, we still have something on the books.

Okay, so we're at 30 days from notice for compliance on the production and the sales side. Anything further? I know that Council Member Kane highlighted a few different ordinances that give good go-bys. I think Excelsior Springs was the one that kind of had the most comprehensive language defining the different compounds. So it's something to work off of. Excelsior has something on the books. Further thoughts or questions on this one? Thank you so much for bringing this forward. All right. Item 16.

Consideration of an ordinance approving accounts due and payable by the city through August 28, 2026, bill number 8007, ordinance number 9804. First reading.

Second.

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

Consideration of an ordinance approving accounts due and payable by the city through August 28, 2026. Bill number 8007, ordinance number 9804.

I move that bill number 8007 be placed on second and final reading and passed as ordinance number 9804.

Second. Call the roll.

Council Member Alvarez. Yes. Council Member Larson. Yes. Council Member Saber.

Yes.

Council Member Bailey.

Yes.

Council Member McGrone. Yes. Council Member Kane. Yes.

All right. You got to read that second time.

We're reading, we're reading. There you go. An ordinance authorizing payment for certain accounts due and payable by the city through August 28th, 2026.

Throwing off my cadence here. Okay. Staff comments.

I'm going to need to grab the clicker for this one. We actually have nothing tonight, except Shu does have a comment. Okay.

Please give me the chance. Kevin already started the timer. I only have 40 seconds.

You used up your annual allotment of comments at the last meeting.

I did. I thought Mike missed it. I might start over.

There you go.

But, yeah, just a real quick reminder. Tomorrow is our very first session for the charrettes starting at 9 o'clock at the Parks and Recs building. And then Thursday evening at 530 is our open house. Please come join us and see what the planning and design results are from the community. Thank you all.

Very good. Mayor, the next meeting is September 22nd. Yep. And we have an upcoming election in November that will move that meeting as well. But the big thing is three weeks from tonight, not two weeks. Okay. Three weeks.

Yep. Yeah, for anyone listening, we moved it because of the MML conference. Okay. Any further staff comments? Yes. Nick, got anything for us? Perfect. Moving on to council member comments, starting with council member Alvarez.

Yeah, I don't really have a whole lot. Just remind everyone that September 19th, I think, is the citywide garage sale. And if it rains, the rain out date would be the following Saturday, the 26th. And I think that's about it. I really don't have anything. Make it short.

Councilmember Larson.

I just have a couple of things. The North Kansas City Parks and Recreation has a community needs assessment available online that they would like everybody to get on and take it. It was included in Kim's Week in Review this past Friday, but if you need a link to that, you can reach out to me and I'd be happy to send it to you. I also had the fortune of going to the ribbon cutting for a new marketing company in town called Energetic. They are based out of St. Louis, but we are happy to welcome them here in North Kansas City. And it's going to be a hot one, so go play at Dag Park while it's still open. That's all I've got.

Councillor Saber. Just to follow up with what Hugh said, this is for the citizens and residents and people who just come to North Kansas City and want to be a part of our community. What are your thoughts on on what North Kansas City should look like in 2040. And you're all encouraged to come out and take part. It's going to be fun activities. And I understand this is not to be passed around too lightly. There are going to be snacks as well. Is that true?

There will be snacks. Heavy snacks. Sandwiches, even. Even sandwiches.

You can look at the schedule and city website and the timings. There are several of them. Please come out. Council Member Bailey.

Mike, I'm going to have to ask you to help me here. The SEAC committee is putting together a community event at the YMCA. Can you remind us of the date and time, please?

September 12th is coming to my head. It's 26 from 9 to noon.

8.30 for breakfast. 9 should get rolling. And it's a community by design workshop. 26th at the YMCA. 8.30 if you want some breakfast. 9 if you're a sleepyhead like myself. And it goes until noon.

That's a fantastic thing that We encourage anybody from the community to get involved with, and it would be a great entry level. Go ahead.

I don't have anything this time. Yeah, except good job, Dylan.

All right. Council Member Kane.

Thank you so much. And I do want to say I appreciate Council's consideration of this. Again, it's an emerging health topic that cities can do something about. So I appreciate that. I also want to congratulate Jackie Dunn on the reappointment to the Police and Fire Personnel Board. I want to say happy Labor Day to you for this upcoming Labor Day weekend. It's one of those, it falls into a bucket of holidays that does not often get acknowledged for its purpose about celebrating labor. So you can go listen to some labor songs, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, or Dolly Parton's 9 to 5. So that's my comment.

All right. And coming around to me. A few things to touch on. The avenues from, I believe, 27th to 29th are currently being resurfaced, so please don't park on those. We also threw out some no parking signs along Swift that got retracted because those were the sightline signs, but we didn't want to stack those on top of the avenues being resurfaced.

Sorry for any confusion.

As you mentioned, the Charette coming up, that will be 9 to noon on Friday. Wednesday and 4 to 5.30 for the planning session and 5.30 to 7 for the open house. Come and get your sandwich. I went to a gala this past weekend for the KC Mo Angels, and despite their moniker, they are based in North Kansas City, and they support families in the foster care space. They don't directly facilitate foster care, but they support the families who are taking that difficult and thankless step. They bring love boxes. So if you'd like to dig into what they do, KCMO Angels, look them up. Exciting announcement, we have plans for the next North Town Supper. It will be the North Town Supper tailgate edition. So we're gonna have a community-wide tailgate for the first North Kansas City High School home game in October. That is October 9th from 5 to 7. We're gonna have some hot dogs, we're gonna have some games. We're going to learn the fight song, and then we're going to go in, we're going to sit down, and we're going to sing it together and cheer on those Hornets. It'll be very fun. Also, no cell phones allowed. If you are interested, the North Kansas City Rotary Club is having a meeting on Thursday from 1130 to 1. Yep, okay. At Chicken and Pickle, they are wide open to new members, and they have gone from roughly zero to 55, 54, 55 members in a year. The club is on fire. They are a very exciting, great group of folks. Come on out. I hear they have a great guest speaker. And, yeah, come see what it's all about. They will also be putting on a festival the 10th of October here in downtown North Kansas City. And then last piece, I don't know that this was written for me to read, but there's been some questions about how are the campaigning ordinance going so far. And I have just a brief message from one of our police officers who has been on the front lines of working with our unhoused community. She spoke with a turning point moments ago and confirmed that we had two of our unhoused population in housing successfully, and one of which has three job interviews lined up this week. We now have three housing pending with one in transitional while awaiting housing and have scheduled a meeting between them and Beacon combined on September 10th. So good things happening with that. I don't have any further details, but hopefully we'll learn more as we go. That is all from me. Moving on to item 20.

Consideration of a request to hold and recess into an executive session as requested by the city administrator to be held on this date pursuant to Missouri revised statutes 610.021.2, real estate matter, 610.021.3, personnel matter, 610.021, legal matters. So moved. Second. Call the roll. Council Member Alvarez. Yes. Council Member Larson. Yes. Council Member Saper.

Yes.

Council Member Bailey.

Yes.

Council Member McGrone. Yes. Council Member Kane. Yes.

All right. At this time, the live stream in Channel 2 will cut off. There will be no further votes or business this evening. Thank you.