City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'll call to order this regular meeting of the Olathe City Council for Tuesday, August 4th, 2026. The first item on our agenda is an executive session. Do I hear a motion?

Thank you, Mayor. Yes. On item A, I move that the Olathe City Council recess into an executive session for consultation with the city attorney to discuss matters deemed privileged in the attorney's client relationship regarding certain pending quarry special use permit applications pursuant to the exception provided in KSA 75-4319 for a time not to exceed 45 minutes. The open meeting will resume here in city council chambers no later than 645. Second.

We have a motion and a second with the city clerk. Please call the roll.

Mr. Schoonover.

Yes.

Dr. Felter? Yes. Mr. Vakas?

Yes.

Ms. Essex? Yes. Mr. Creighton?

Yes.

Mr. Dinnall?

Yes.

Mr. Bacon?

Yes.

Motion passes 7-0.

We are reconvening from executive session. A motion to recess back into executive session for 10 minutes. Oh, wait a minute. We are going under another reason. So let's hear a motion.

Sure. Thank you, Mayor. So on item B. I move that the Olathe City Council recess into executive session for consultation with the city attorney to discuss matters deemed privileged in the attorney-client relationship regarding a tort claim pursuant to the exception provided in KSA 75-4319 for time not to exceed 15 minutes. Let's do 10. Not to exceed 10 minutes. And the open meeting will resume in Council Chambers at about 7 o'clock. No later than 7 p.m. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right.

Okay. Be back.

Welcome to the regular meeting of the Olathe City Council for Tuesday, August 4, 2026. We just came out of an executive session, so do I hear a motion?

Yes. I move to authorize the city attorney to finalize and the mayor to execute an agreement to resolve a particular tort claim involving flooding.

Second. We have a motion and a second with the city court. Please call the roll.

Mr. Denault.

Yes.

Ms. Essex? Yes. Dr. Felter?

Yes.

Mr. Bacon?

Yes.

Mr. Schoonover?

Yes.

Mr. Baucus?

Yes.

Mr. Creighton?

Yes.

Motion passes 7-0.

Next item on our agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance. Would you please stand with me for the pledge? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic One item of interest before we go to the consent agenda, item F. Staff has requested that item F be pulled and it will come back to us at a later date. So with that, we'll move to the consent agenda. The items listed below are considered to be routine by the city council, may be approved in one motion. These may include items that have been reviewed by the city council in a prior planning session. There will be no separate discussion unless a council member requests that an item be removed from the consent agenda and considered separately. Council members, are there any such items tonight? Seeing none, a motion to approve the consent agenda would be in order.

Thank you. So I move to approve the consent agenda as provided, items A through H, less item F that was pulled, so a total of seven items.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Will the city court please call the roll?

Ms. Essex? Yes. Dr. Felton? Yes. Mr. Bacon?

Yes.

Mr. Dinault?

Yes.

Mr. Creighton?

Yes.

Mr. Baucus?

Yes.

Mr. Schoonover?

Yes.

Motion passes 7-0.

We'll now move to new business. Item A is consideration of ordinance number 26-40, which is RZ26-0005, requesting approval of a rezoning from the AG Agricultural District to the PD Plan District and a preliminary site development plan for 133rd and Black Bob mixed use on approximately five acres southeast of West 133rd Street and Black Bob Road. Planning Commission recommends approval 6-0. This proposal would bring a mix of residential and neighborhood commercial uses. Senior Planner Nathan Jury joins us for a presentation. Welcome, Nathan.

Let's see.

There we go.

That's good. Good evening, council. Thank you. Nathan Jury, senior planner. Before you tonight is a request to rezone from the agricultural district to the PB or planned district zoning with a preliminary development plan for the proposed 133rd and Black Bob mixed use project. Subject site is located generally at the southeast corner of 133rd and Black Bob Road, highlighted in yellow on your screen. The applicant is requesting to rezone from the AG district that it's retained for a long time to the PD district to allow for a mixed-use development. The property is between commercial zoning to the south and west, as well as residential zoning to the north. It is also adjacent to Evergy's AG-zoned substation property to the east. Now, the purpose of the planned district in the UDO is to encourage innovative land planning and design that is not possible under conventional zoning districts. The applicant is pursuing the PD zoning as conventional zoning districts do not allow for a mix of townhome and commercial development on the same zoned district. So the UDO does require PDs to establish their own zoning standards, and the applicant did submit their proposed standards for your review tonight, and those are included in the ordinance before you tonight. This does establish land uses, setbacks, site and building design, and other development requirements for this specific property. Staff and the applicant did work closely together to establish those standards that will create a blockable mixed-use development. Land uses will be limited to neighborhood commercial or C1 and residential type uses. In addition, the applicant is committing to providing a mixed-use development by requiring a minimum amount of commercial land. and a maximum residential density as well. The proposed building height, open space and setbacks and other site design requirements are consistent with nearby zoning districts. The applicant did propose this development and they will install 133rd Street with a cul-de-sac at the end of it. The development will take access at two locations, limited access on that western side with full access at the eastern side of the site. The development does consist of two commercial buildings located at the front with parking in front. These are a little over 5,000 square feet in total. There are five townhome buildings that are three and four stories and will have a total of 44 townhome units on this property. The development also includes three very well-finished active open space areas. The developer is committing to a French Renaissance architectural style, building design standards that also exceed our typical UDO design standards, including 100% Class I materials and facade treatments, including glass and other balconies and other things that exceed our UDO. The developer did provide conceptual images of how they intend to finish the proposed active open space or civic areas. And these will be finished like outdoor rooms with overhead lighting, outdoor furniture, and paving materials that exceed UDO requirements as well. Elevate Olathe's future land use map does designate this site as a community commercial area, and the development does provide a minimum amount of commercial area aligning with this future land use designation. In addition, the proposal does achieve numerous Elevate Olathe policies and goals, and two that I definitely do want to highlight. One of them is encouraging mixed-use development in commercial areas and also promoting the missing middle housing. Housing was a common theme, as you know, throughout the comprehensive plan update. The proposal does provide missing middle housing and will create a transition between the commercial and residential areas to the north and the south of the site. The applicant did meet all neighborhood and public notice requirements. Public hearing was held at Planning Commission on July 13th. One resident providing feedback about traffic and road improvements. Planning Commission asked, did have some questions about traffic signals and if they'll be reviewed in the future. Staff did confirm that a signal at 133rd and Black Bob is not required with a 44 unit development, but will be warranted when the multifamily family project on the north side of 133rd with their 600 units or more is developed. So this request does meet the golden criteria as outlined in the staff report, and both staff and planning commission recommend approval of the rezoning and the preliminary development plan with just one stipulation each. The applicant is here for any questions, as am I. Okay.

Thank you, Nathan. Questions of staff on this side? Councilmember Baucus.

Thank you, Mayor. So, Nathan, these are to rent or to buy?

I don't know if the applicant has decided that yet, but they could answer that question.

We are saying missing middle, so these would be, whether it's renting or buying, somehow a lower price point?

Potentially the market-driven. The applicant could answer that question.

Market-driven to me suggests not missing middle. I just offer that as a comment. One other thing. Do they include elevator shafts?

I believe they do. They're working through their final designs and everything, and that will be finalized.

Because clearly, to the extent that this would be an attractive proposition, and they look beautiful, an attractive proposition for an older person or an older couple. You know, when we're talking multi-story, that elevator becomes very important, quite frankly. So, yeah. And we'd love to see that here in Olathe. I don't think we have much of that, if any, at this stage.

Yeah.

Thank you. Those were my only questions.

Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Dinnall. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to ask real quick about the traffic. I know for me and some of the other people in Ward 4 over there, 133rd and also 132nd coming out of that subdivision can be a little bit difficult to see, especially to get out when the traffic is busier. Can you give me some sort of an indication as to when, aside from when the apartments come in, but maybe some numbers that tell us how close we are to a signal being justified?

Yeah, with this development, a signal is not warranted, but anything beyond this development, the engineer is here to answer that type of question.

Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers. Nate Baldwin, City Engineer. So the amount of traffic coming out of this development is so light that it just does not meet the justifications for a warrant. I mean, it's very minimal to have that few of... you know drivers coming out of this size of development when the development is larger and 133rd connects all the way through you're going to see a lot more traffic at that intersection that's when the signal would become warranted and that's when we would look at having one installed okay and um are there any other factors that would push for a signal happening sooner But the two big things we look at for signal, it is going to be volumes and then also safety aspects. So if there's a number of crashes, but at this location, we're not seeing the type of data that would come anywhere close to signal.

Yes. But if it got worse?

We would reexamine it and we look at all these intersections all the time.

Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Schoonover.

Thank you, Mayor. Thanks, guys. I know we've talked about, in the past, 133rd and Greenwood, particularly when, I think it was a few years ago, we had the Olathe East Gate controversy. Gate, gate. And we've talked about redoing or connecting 133rd Street through to kind of help alleviate some of that traffic or some of that congestion down farther for the high school. And Susan, I know we're already talking about difficulties in the CIP, but to me, it may make sense to revisit that question. If we're doing work in this area anyway, I tend to think that it's probably cheaper to do it while we're already doing work than it is at some point in the future as far as completing 133rd. So I'm just throwing it out there that I would I WOULD SUGGEST THAT IF THIS PASSES, I SUPPORT THIS PROJECT, I THINK IT LOOKS GREAT, THAT WE CONSIDER TAKING A LOOK AGAIN AT 133rd STREET OVER THERE.

COUNCIL MEMBER CRAIG.

Only one thing, and that is I want to echo what Mr. Schoonover said, that I, too, would like to see us try to come up with a plan to extend to 133rd. We're talking less than a half a mile, and it basically runs all the way to state line as a reverse frontage and would take some traffic off of 135th, so I do hope we will consider that.

Nate or someone, there's an elevation in our packet and it's page 78. The elevation shows that this particular street doesn't line up, but it actually does, doesn't it? Correct, yeah. To the west?

Yeah, that rendering was just for conceptual images purposes, but yeah, the civil plans that are engineered do line up with 133rd Street to the west.

Good. We had a couple of questions for the applicant. If the applicant is here and would like to respond to the ownership and also I think the missing middle was talked about as far as housing, if you wouldn't mind giving us your name and address for the record and then respond to it. I think Council Member Bach has had some questions.

Mayor Bacon, thank you. Jim Felter, 14220 South Copper Creek, Olathe, Kansas. And Dean, to answer your question about the missing middle, this really is the missing middle. I started studying some of the Olathe Elevate programming, and I started looking and saying, how could I fill a need in this area? And so I started looking at the last 12 months of homeschooling new construction sales, because that's what we do. In Olathe, there was about 14 houses in the previous 12 months at my time that had sold as new construction with a four handle, so 430, 490, 4-whatever. And everything else, 400 were above $500,000. So I thought, how can I figure this out? And so I began to work with staff on the density because we're going to spend about $3 million on infrastructure. And whether I do 20 or 40, my infrastructure stays the same. And that's what allows me to drive my price down. So kudos to the staff because they help drive the price down. to get there. The other thing that we did is we consciously made a decision that we were not going to sell these houses at market value. We're going to sell them below. So we're going to do 32 units at 1,780 square feet below a half a million dollars. And so we're doing that intentionally because we believe in the missing metal. We want the next generation of Aletheans to be able to find a home. And so this is a start. And it comes from all of us working together. The other question you had is about elevator shafts. So, yes, every one of these units is designed from ground floor, which is at grade entry. So you can go in with a wheelchair in all these units. But they are at grade entry, and there is a designed elevator shaft at every floor all the way up. If you don't want the option of an elevator, you can make that a closet at the time of construction. And so every floor would just have a planned closet. And it's a large enough one to have a full wheelchair in it. Interesting.

I see these advertised, but I didn't. So you're going to have individual elevators in the units at the option of the occupant.

Your other point was, are they for lease or for sale? They're for both. So we would like to keep some as just an investment for rent, but the rest are available for sale.

And the elevators, I mean, they're hydraulic. They're not cables. They're hydraulic. That's correct. And so they work wonderfully well. Yeah. That's wonderful news. Thank you.

Have you installed these before?

No. I saw this product actually in Florida. And so I reached out to the architects in Houston and said, hey, I'd like to do this project in Olathe. Can you help me? And so... A lot of money later, we have it ready for Olathe.

That's cool. Any other questions for the applicant? Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Other discussion or items of questions of staff? Seeing none, a motion to be in order.

I move to approve ordinance 26-40. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Would the city clerk please call the roll?

Mr. Bacon?

Yes.

Mr. Schoonover?

Yes.

Mr. Baucus?

Yes.

Ms. Esses? Yes. Mr. Creighton?

Yes.

Mr. Dinnall?

Yes.

Motion passes 6-0. Thank you.

Looking forward to this. Looks great. We'll now move to item B. Item B is consideration of ordinance number 26-41, amending Olathe Municipal Code 6.09.040, definitions pertaining to the control of noxious weeds, weeds and other uncontrolled vegetation. This was an item at our July 21st council meeting. Is there any need for any more discussion or questions of staff? Seeing none, motion to be in order.

Will I move to approve ordinance 26-41?

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Would the city clerk please call the roll?

Mr. Dinault?

Yes.

Ms. Essex? Yes. Dr. Felter?

Yes.

Mr. Bacon?

Yes.

Mr. Schoonover?

Yes.

Mr. Vakas?

Yes.

Mr. Creighton?

Yes.

Motion passes 7-0.

We'll now move to... general issues and concerns of citizens, we have a number of folks that have signed up to speak tonight. We generally set aside 30 minutes for this portion of our meeting, which if I gave all of the individuals that signed up to speak three minutes to speak, that would exceed our 30 minutes. So what I propose, we had a short agenda. Well, we have other things that we're going to do tonight, too. But I would like, you know, it's nice if we don't hear a lot of repetition, people repeating what other folks have said. So I would like to try to give everyone two minutes to and see how we do. And if some of you don't take quite two minutes, then it will allow somebody else to get their two minutes in. And hopefully we can get to all, I think we have 18, is that right? 17 speakers. So at this time, I'd like the city clerk to read the instructions or the guidelines and then call up our first speaker. And I think we're going to call up two at a time, so make sure you listen for your name, and then you can sit in the chair and be ready to go as soon as the individual at the podium has finished. So go ahead.

The council has extended this privilege to allow people who live and work in Olathe to address concerns to the city council. Speakers must only address the council. Council members are not required to respond. Please treat others with kindness and respect. Council is allocated up to three minutes per speaker and up to 30 minutes total for this portion of the meeting. Tonight we have 17 speakers. Each speaker will get two minutes. Our first speaker is Caleb Bauer. Please come to the podium and state your name and address for the record. Kelly Patterson, if you would please take a seat next to the podium in preparation for your turn.

Welcome.

My name is Caleb Bauer. I live at 823 North Hamilton Street. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, thank you for allowing me to speak. The Starfish Project has been a great asset to our community, as it has been to my family. We've lived in Olathe for around about a year now, and they've been with us most every day. I visit there regularly, as they can all attest. I noticed that the chief complaints from both the neighbors in the Briarwood community and from the planning commission centered around a few different things. The special use permit, the location, and the safety of the people in the community. I decided to do a little bit of homework for myself. rather than pontificate and pearl clutch from an ivory tower, I decided getting hands-on would be a better approach. So, I took to the internet, as most modern-day armchair sleuths do. Do you know how many locations I found that even remotely approached being suitable for starfish's needs? The answer is five. Do you know how many of those required a special use permit due to their current zoning? five of them. Do you know how many had suitable square footage? Just two. Do you know how many actually had a price listed? Just one. Just under three million dollars. I don't know about you, but to me, that is a lot of money. So it seems to me that the special use permit should be granted out of necessity. As for safety, I work at Shawnee Mission School District. If I am a danger to the community or children, somebody should tell them. I am a regular. Perhaps we should all think about what kind of Olathe we want. Thank you for your time.

My name is Kelly Patterson, and I live at 617 West Little Street here in Olathe. And the Starfish culture is always choose kindness and always treat others with dignity and respect. And most recently, we've had to add, always take the high road. Johnny has been an exemplary leader with this, so it is easy to maintain this culture within our organization. Because of these three simple rules, we've had the privilege of getting to know our clients, and thousands of their stories. While we don't vet people, we do listen. Since fear is often based on the unknown, I'd like to present you with a couple of facts. I believe roughly between 97% to 98% of our clients directly served from the building are housed. While we feed thousands of unhoused individuals every year, roughly one to two of them percent actually set foot inside our building. Here's how it works. Part of the client base is street outreach organizations who come in and pick up essentials such as food, hygiene products, and blankets. and then take them out into the community for distribution. We also have clientele who pick up food and supplies to serve people at churches, veterans facilities, my mom's senior living center, and many other places. We send out thousands of blessing bags each year, which allow people to give them to the homeless, unhoused, as they drive in their cars and see them on the street. There are many clients who choose to only come every few months to replenish their children's wardrobe. As we all know, it's very expensive to take care of our kids. They travel to Starfish to collect what they need and then leave the premises just like all of our other clientele. They do not loiter, but at times they do wait for the bus, just like any other human. We would love for you guys to come and see us. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Reed Capel, can you please come to the podium and state your name and address for record? And then David Coker, if you would please take a seat next to the podium in preparation for your turn.

Reed Capel, I live at 18305 West 114th Street. Good evening, mayor and council members. As I mentioned, my name is Reed. I serve as the senior pastor of Trinity Fellowship Church here in Olathe, and I'm here tonight to respectfully ask you to approve the special use permit for the Starfish Project. I know this decision is not an easy one, and I appreciate the care you have given to listening to the voices from every perspective. Olathe has been my home for the vast majority of my life. It is where my wife and I are raising our four children, where our church serves, and where I want a future generation of varied demographics to flourish. Part of my own story is that I was raised by a single mother. My mom worked diligently to provide for our family, but there were seasons when we depended on the kindness of others. I know personally what it means when someone steps in to help a family through a difficult season. Those experiences shaped my life, and they are one of the reasons I care so deeply about the organizations like Starfish Project. As a pastor, my Christian faith teaches me that every person has inherent dignity and worth, and that we have a responsibility to care for those who are struggling. I recognize that not everyone shares my faith, but I believe this is something we can all agree on, that the character of a community is revealed by how it treats its most vulnerable. And that often comes with a cost. It's easy to agree with the concept of neighborly love and compassion in the abstract, but as all of us know, true love and compassion is not without cost. The word compassion literally means to suffer with, which is why I find it hard, with all due respect, to imbibe the rhetoric of those who say I support the work of the Starfish Project and caring for the poor, but it needs to take place somewhere further from me. If even one is not familiar with the Bible, Jesus' famous teaching of the Good Samaritan is undoubtedly known by most here. It is the story of the one who showed compassion precisely by getting close enough to care. I understand that there have been concerns about this proposal, and those concerns deserve to be taken seriously. But I also recognize that Olathe's professional planning staff recommended approval with conditions after carefully reviewing the application. That tells me this is not simply a question about zoning. It is a question about who we want to be as a city. I believe welcoming the Starfish Project into space is good for families. It is good for Olathe. And if this location ultimately proves not to be the right fit, I want you to know that Trinity Fellowship stands ready and willing to be a part of that solution in any way possible. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Good evening. My name is Dave Coker. I live at 18963 West 117th Street, and I've been a resident of Olathe for the last 29 years, and I'm a retired transportation planner. I'd like to address the special use permit being sought by Starfish Foundation on the southwest corner of 135th and Brougham. Since retiring over three years ago, my wife and I have delivered leftover school lunch food from three Olathe schools to Starfish. We also pick up food waste at Starfish to take to the Olathe Recycling Center as part of Olathe's composting program and save probably about 12 five-gallon buckets a week from going into the dumpster and eventually the landfill. Last week my wife and I attended the Planning Commission's public meeting for Starfish's special use permit. Olathe staff made an excellent presentation based on facts and recommended the special use permit be approved. Unfortunately, as brought up, the residents of the Briarwood neighborhood, while admiring the mission of Starfish, don't want them in their backyard, and as such, successfully lobbied the Planning Commission to deny the permit based on what I believe are unfounded fears. The people coming to Starfish are not homeless panhandlers. In most cases, they're women with young children or seniors. Unlike other nonprofit organizations, there's no vetting process at Starfish. Anyone in the Olathe community can benefit from the food and other goods provided by Starfish. When you look at this site, there's no reason to deny the special use permit. The presence of starfish will not be as a homeless magnet, but rather an asset for the entire Olathe community. This new site would not adversely impact the Briarwood subdivision, and I can attest their customer cars look no different than those found in any other suburban shopping area, and the clientele look like any of us here in these council chambers. Please look at what's best for Olathe overall and vote to approve the special use permit for starfish. Thank you.

Kevin Sellers, please come to the podium. State your name and address for record. Kate Gray, please come and take a seat next to the podium in preparation for your turn.

Council. Welcome. Kevin Sellers, 13612 South Locust Street. Been there for 18 years. My wife at Briarwood for over 30 years. Just an observation from the planning meeting. Miss Joni Moreland made a comment that I think is missing the mark. She said her interaction with the Olive Garden, the Olive Garden didn't even know if she was there. And I think that is 100% true. That's 100% true when you have the infrastructure, the business model of services and foot traffic and vehicle traffic, along with land development expected for this commercial-type activity at 119th and Black Bob. No one should or would notice this type of activity that is similar to there. The proposed location at 135th and Brougham does not match that of 119th, so to say that no one would notice, of course they wouldn't. I think it's interesting because Joni has done such an amazing job growing the organization that it no longer just serves Olathe. If you look on her website, she has partnered with organizations in Shawnee, in Overland Park, and even KCMO. It has no longer become just a city organization, but a metro organization that she is serving. And that is the type of foot traffic and vehicular traffic that we're going to get. The Olathe UDO has three SVU qualifiers that all have to emulsify together. One of those is to assure compatibility with the surrounding uses. Lastly, the fact is, the comprehensive plan that the Planning Commission and you guys at City Council voted on to agree upon is, on page 27, use zoning to reduce potential conflicts between adjacent properties ensuring compatibility, minimizing negative impacts. Thank you.

I'm Kate Gray. I live at 13631 Sycamore. At the planning commissioner's meeting, the question was asked of the applicant, how long Starfish expects to operate comfortably in the brick building at 135th and Brougham. The answer was five years. Wouldn't it be wiser for Starfish to find a more forever home? Starfish was evicted from their last location at Santa Fe and Parker for loitering, panhandling, and contributing to an increase of trash at that strip mall. The UDO code addresses that, and I quote, "...growth in Olathe will preserve the character of existing neighborhoods and services to residents," unquote. What assurances do the residents of the neighborhood have that loitering, panhandling, and an increase of trash won't occur again? A Title I school receives federal funding to provide resources to help children from low-income families. The neighborhood elementary school Tomahawk has not been a Title I school for several years. Wouldn't it make more sense for Starfish to locate in an area that is more accessible to a larger percentage of their customers? Thank you.

Eric Bakes, can you please come to the podium, state your name and address for the record. David Miller, please take a seat next to the podium of preparation for your turn.

Good evening, Eric Banks, 15750 West Locust. The permit applicant says they provide community support services, both food and personal, and I don't personally see that in quite a few ways. Taxes, they generate virtually no income or sales tax, and otherwise that would come towards schools, roads, and services that all of us would use. Traffic. The city staff based their recommendation on unproven numbers from the applicant and incorrect hypothetical data. The Planning Commission called this out directly, challenged its validity. There are no other examples in our area of businesses in which all their access is through an R1, neighborhood's main entrance. As one of the oldest neighborhoods and HOAs in Olathe, Briarwood is the only example in the entire city of an R1 zone directly next to an original CP1 zone. This is supposed to be community commercial and low intensity, so a regional distribution center with folks coming from any neighboring cities with no vetting whatsoever wouldn't be compatible. There's too many overall inaccuracies. The dates on the letters notifying us of the public meeting in the first place were incorrect. The size of the box truck doesn't even fit within the stipulations set forth by the city staff in item four of their presentation. The purchase of this land without its compatible zoning has forced us to spend countless hours protecting our families and investments. This problem shouldn't have been pushed on us now or in the future. The lack of specificity, accountability, basic respect, and transparency towards our neighborhood and on social media has already shown me this would not be a very neighborly relationship, thus simply not compatible with the prescribed zoning or the city's comprehensive plan to elevate Olathe. So, thank you for your time.

My name is David Miller. I live at 15851 West Locust in Briarwood, directly behind the proposed Starfish. I ask that you deny their special use permit. They may be a worthy mission, but still the wrong land use for this location. This property is owned for planned neighborhood business. Starfish distribution and service operation is not permitted by right. It needs special exemption because it's fundamentally different from the neighborhood retail used previously by Aldi. The applicant, therefore, has a burden of proving clear, consistent, and reliable information. Instead, Starfish has repeatedly changed its description of size and intensity of the operation. Joni Moreland publicly stated that Starfish serves 700 to 1,000 people a day. She acknowledged traffic and parking problems were being very disruptive to the neighbors, is what she said in a newspaper article. I also chatted with neighboring businesses at the K7 and Santa Fe corridor. They said the parking lot was completely full from opening to closing. He described trash, sanitation problems, people sleeping outside, and repeated police activity. He estimated that his sales declined 15 to 20%. Before Starfish, he said police were called four to five times a year. Afterwards, he said he saw them weekly, and some days he saw them every day of the week. That firsthand account matches Joni Moreland's own public admission. It does not match the smaller and quieter operation presented to Briarwood. The issue is not whether Aldi once generated traffic. It's whether the intensive operation is compatible with homes to the entrance of our neighborhood. A two-year trial would make Briarwood the experiment. Please respect the Planning Commission's recommendation and vote no. Thank you.

Josie Ann, please come to the podium and state your name and address for the record. John Tompkins, would you please take a seat next to the podium in preparation for your turn? Hello.

I am Josie Ann Imho, and sorry, it's my first time speaking publicly.

I live at 407 East Lula, Apartment 21, and I am here to speak for Starfish, and I am a single mom. And Starfish has been in my life for the past three years since I came back to Olathe, and I'm getting emotional about this because I was also... the freight manager at Big Lots and Olathe did away with Big Lots. So now I'm seeing a repeat with this. And my experience with Starfish is that it's been my family outside of my family. And as an immigrant. from Congo, just the way that they help all of us with the clothes and just the sisterhood, the brotherhood, the food, the everything. It's just been a great experience. And I haven't had any problems with homelessness or any of that. And I noticed that sometimes there's a crowd that comes there, but they come in and they leave. I don't see any of that. I volunteer there on Sundays. I just really hope that y'all make the decision to find somewhere if your guys aren't going to keep them there because it's like a repeat. And I feel like we need to help our community because there's a lot going on right now. And, uh, I don't know. It's, I hope that you find somewhere to put them if you can't put them right there. And I used to shop at that Aldi's as well as a kid. I grew up here in Olathe and I, I'm sorry. Um, If you could just put yourself in other people's shoes and just think of everything that we go through as parents and as members of the society, maybe you'll reconsider and think about it. Thank you.

Council, thanks for being here. And thank you everybody for being here. Just to quote Dan Quisaberry, relief pitcher of Kansas City Royals years ago. I've seen the future. It's much like the present. It's only longer. I was here 30 years ago as president of the Briarwood Homeowner Association in the 90s. It was rough. We had a land use plan. It wasn't about Aldi. It was a land use dispute between a residential developer, a commercial developer, his father-in-law and the neighborhood itself had very little to do with the grocery store. It was about a ride in into a commercial zone, but not a ride out back onto the highway, but a right exit into the neighborhood. So sometimes to try to understand what you don't understand It takes some digging. I was also here when we lost by one vote in the city council. A council that was struggling because of the pressure from the Chamber of Commerce with all the distribution center coming in and this little store with one employee and a cash drawer. Their business model, much different. Great company. They've grown out of that. That's why they're no longer there. I served after that on the Comprehensive Plan Oversight Committee in 1997. It was an amazing experience with our chambers and the group. We got a lot done. We wrote it. I served on the recent Olathe 2025. I have sent emails. to all of you with respect to read the special use permit. It is three conditions. Compatibility and surrounding uses. True or false? Public need. Absolutely true. City as a whole, Elevate Olathe. False, true, false. You have to meet all three conditions to approve a special use permit. It's very clear. Thank you.

Jane, you're out. Please come to the podium and state your name and address for the record. Madison O'Brien, please take a seat next to the podium.

Oh, I'm already on? Yeah. Okay. Jane, you're out 11020 South Cottage Lane in Olathe. I'm here to speak about Starfish. I am a retired business owner and a Starfish volunteer. At the former location, I checked in each visitor and monitored the parking lot from my vantage point at the front desk. Here are some facts. Upon entry, I asked each visitor, how many people are you shopping for? If the response was five, I noted five people served, not one, five. Most visitors shop for multiple people, so the foot traffic and the car traffic is less than the number of clients for a traditional retail operation. Clients are often mothers and grandmothers in a new job, looking for a job, or they've fallen on hard times. They represent families trying to make ends meet. As for the homeless, Starfish is not a soup kitchen and it does not provide shelter. Visits by unhoused people were very infrequent and brief. Most had a specific request, they got what they needed, and they left. I never saw loitering or camping or panhandling. Open parking lots near busy streets simply are not conducive to such. At the new location, Starfish will add security cameras to monitor the external areas. As I can see, in the south from Starfish, there is a street connecting 135th Street to AutoZone, and that provides a barrier between Starfish and the backyards of several homes. They're obscured by fencing and heavy vegetation. These homes have no driveways or other direct access to that street. Starfish visitors will have no reason to park anywhere near that. They will park near the front door, which is off of 135th. Finally, Starfish provides a critical service to the city of Olathe. I urge you, please approve the special use permit recommended by your city planners. They did extensive research. Thank you.

Madison O'Brien, are you here? Michelle O'Brien? And then Lauren Lance, can you come to the... Seat next to the podium in preparation.

Good evening, council. My name is Michelle O'Brien. I'm at 11630 West Harmony Lane. And I'm coming to you tonight certainly as a Starfish volunteer. I also sit on the board. But tonight I'm coming to you as a parent, as a caregiver, as a grandparent, and a neighbor. I respect the council's diligence in vetting all the neighborhood concerns, and thank you for the open forum to air those concerns. I feel I have to correct a fundamental misunderstanding regarding our daily operations. Our facility is first and foremost a sanctuary that protects and nurtures the children of our staff, leaders, and volunteers daily. Ranging from infancy to six years old, these brilliant littles are in our building every single day. The safety of these children is our absolute non-negotiable priority, a standard we have upheld with an unblemished safety record regardless of our location. These children are being raised inside our walls to love and serve this community, and we would never introduce a culture or a clientele that compromises their well-being or that of the surrounding neighborhood where we walk, explore, and play. I asked the council to base its decision on the reality of our secure family-centered environment rather than unfounded anxieties, and we welcome the opportunity to show our new neighbors how our continued commitment to safety protects everyone involved, especially our starfish kiddos. Empirical studies show that community centers, food banks, and support services do not increase crime rates. In fact, they frequently help lower them. While neighborhoods often worry about an uptick in property or violent crime, data indicates that addressing survival needs actually stabilizes and bolsters communities. Research by Western Washington University on local food banks and services indicates that these facilities provide measurable economic stability to families. Let me say that again, to families, which correlates with reduced localized crime rates. When data analysts in San Jose studied neighborhoods before and after service sites opened, they found that calls to the police for drug possession, property crime, and assault actually decreased at 80% of the sites. When services are organized inside a community hub, it creates a safer, more managed environment for everyone. Did you know, last I checked, that 1,800 children in the Olathe School District alone go hungry each weekend? Did you know that unhoused individuals are far more likely to be the victims of crimes than the perpetrators? Did you know that your neighbors come to Starfish for services and a helping hand? By sticking to the facts and continuing to prioritize the safety of our children's environment, we don't just protect our kids, we uplift and safeguard the neighborhood and this entire community. Thanks for your time.

Hello. My name is Lauren Lance. I'm at 14641 South Acuff Lane. Thank you for allowing me to speak. I have been in Olathe for about four years now. We chose to come here because it's a wonderful place to raise a family, to live, to work and play. Since relocating here, I've had two children, one and a half and two and a half. And shortly prior to the birth of my son, my husband was laid off. I went from being a volunteer and a person donating to Starfish to somebody in desperate need of assistance. We had to pull my daughter from daycare and just completely figure out what to do next. I hear the concerns of the neighbors, but I have been to Starfish, and I would mimic what many of the volunteers say, that I have not seen any unhoused peoples causing problems. I have not seen these numbers of cars coming in and out. When I go in, I'm shopping for four, but I'm going in alone in one vehicle. And the evidence of the success of this project is just so clear. And we need to be building Olathe to be the community that helps each other. We are all one crisis away from extreme financial hardship. I didn't expect my husband to lose his job. We didn't expect to pull our kids from daycare. You don't expect to get in a car wreck and lose your car. With this new location of Starfish, I could walk there from my house. It's kind of long, but I could walk there. It's across from the library. The students coming and going after school to spend time at the Indian Creek Library, being able to go and get food and get clothes. This is a wonderful opportunity. I personally think this location is really awesome, and I'm grateful at the idea of Starfish moving there. I know that the Planning Commission may have recommended to not go forward, but I've seen you push back on decisions before, and I urge you to listen to all of the people here and support. Thank you.

Alicia Jackson, come to the podium. State your name and address for the record. And then Bridget Moore, please take a seat next to the podium in preparation for your turn.

Good evening. My name is Alicia Jackson, and I reside at 13212 South Locust Street. For 13 years, I have lived and worked in our special community. Tonight, I would like to advocate for the Starfish Project and encourage your support in seeking solutions to locate a permanent placement for this essential community resource. As a small-town transplant, it took me a few years to understand the claims of, we are a big suburb with a small-town feel. The intent behind this proud statement is rooted in our belief that we take care of our neighbors in times of need. I say this with observation, love, and hope. It is not only our neighbors we may assume that benefit from the Starfish Project, as none of us are immune to housing or food insecurities. As humans, it is physically and psychologically impossible to attain a sense of safety and belonging when our basic needs are not met. When basic needs are met, this impacts educational and economic success, among others. I am confident that meeting the basic needs of our neighbors, no matter what your address, is important to everyone in this room. I understand that complexities impact these decisions, but hope that the heart and spirit of our community leads all involved to seek solutions in finding an adequate and permanent location for this invaluable community resource. Thank you.

Council, we have exceeded 30 minutes. Are you okay? We have two more speakers. Okay. Yeah, okay.

Bridget. You just didn't want to hear from me.

Yeah, well, I'm just making sure.

Bridget Moore, 1305 North Leeview Drive. As you can tell from my shirt, I have nothing to do with Starfish Project because I'm not wearing red. I only know what I've read in the newspaper. And... everything else. And Starfish Project, yes, they need to be there. That's a great location. And they help people afford to live in Olathe. We often hear about the missing middle. But to me, it's still scary that the missing middle was going to be less than half a million dollars. Yeah, I just don't know how that happens. And one thing I've noticed in all the newspaper articles and watching the planning commission and everything is like, well, this starfish club will be too close to a homeless encampment. Well, I think the homeless encampment is something else you should consider separate and maybe do a planning session or something. The residents in the encampment live and work in Olathe. I've volunteered once or twice over at Project 1020, and the majority of the people there have jobs. They spend their money here. They're Olathe residents. What's Olathe doing to help them? Are we sending social workers to help everyone get resources and make sure they have paperwork? Are we providing them with trash service? Hey, we could even give them a porta potty. Because we value all residents of Olathe. They are part of her city. Let's give them the tools so they can leave the encampment and maybe find that missing lower cost apartments and stuff that we haven't had yet. And this is where I'm going to get Sunday Preacherist here. Aletha doesn't want to hear that the teacher will turn to the goats and say, Away with you, you cursed one, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil. When you refuse to help the least of my brothers, you're refusing to help me.

Valerie Duncan, please come to the podium, state your name and address for the record.

Hi, my name is Valerie Duncan, and my address is 15690 West 138th Street, and I live in Briarwood. And I know I understand the concerns of the residents in Briarwood, but I wanted to let you know not everybody in Briarwood is against this. I see their concerns, and I understand them, but I think there's pros and cons, and I think the pros outweigh the cons. And I just wanted to basically reiterate that not everybody in Briarwood is against this. Thank you so much for your time.

I want to thank all the speakers tonight. That was very civil. I appreciate that. We will now move on to convene a planning session. So we have three reports, council. Actually, four. I'll just go down the list and see if anyone wants to ask questions of staff or discuss any of these reports. We have a request for a master resolution industrial revenue bonds report one. Report two is also a request for industrial revenue bonds. Report three is a request for industrial revenue bonds. And report four is actually a procurement report. So seeing no, we'll then move on to discussion items. We have one item. It's a general overview of the proposed 2027 water and sewer stormwater and solid waste budgets. This is our second workshop. to review and finalize the 2027 budget ahead of its adoption next month, hopefully. As a reminder, public engagement is an important part of this process, and we look forward to hearing from all of our residents about how we spend your taxpayer dollars. So there are a number of ways that you can give us feedback. You can attend our meetings. You can go to our website. All of our documents that we get are posted on our website so you can look at those and you can respond and give us your feedback, email, calls. So at this time, Claire's going to come up and we're going to conduct workshop number two for our 2027 budget.

That's right. All right. Sorry. Sitting up here. All right. Okay. All right. Good evening, Mayor, City Council. Clara Bernauer, Budget Manager. Thank you for introducing us. So tonight is budget workshop number two of three for this year's annual budget process. So before we jump into the discussion tonight, I did want to call out council members have a budget binder. And so we did provide some green sheets to the water and sewer CIP tonight, along with previous budget. Q&As that we have from workshop one and from the council one-on-ones. And then we also have the full comprehensive fee schedule for you as well. So you already have the explanation of fee changes, but now you have the full list too. So those are in your binders. They'll also be available on the budget webpage for anyone who needs that information and have the digital copy. So tonight we'll review the Water and Sewer Fund, the Stormwater Fund, and the Solid Waste Fund. We'll talk about their budgets, their capital improvement plans, and the proposed rate increases for each. We want to open with the utility rate setting guiding principles here. If you recall back to workshop one, where we talked about budget best practices and council priorities, we of course are keeping those in mind too, as these are all city funds, but they are enterprise funds here. And so for utility rates, we kind of have additional layer of guiding principles that we want to review here. So, For utility rates, we're trying to balance maintenance of aging infrastructure with future capacity needs that could accommodate the growth and development that we're seeing as a city. We also want to ensure rate stability in utility funds. They're a little different from something like the general fund where you have property taxes based off of assessed valuation that we're not necessarily providing. you know, that's being set more by the county and you have sales tax, you can kind of be volatile. Rate stability is an important sort of measure that we take when we do planning for the long-term utility funds. We also utilize asset management principles to proactively address backlog for our current and future maintenance needs. So we're making database decisions in the utility rates and we all the while are trying to maintain a level of service that our customers are used to. So we'll open with the Water and Sewer Fund. The Water and Sewer Fund supports our water and sewer system. It is a significant system. It's valued at over $1.5 billion. It's probably more at this point, too, when you do studies on that. In the water and sewer system, we have facilities above ground, which include our water and wastewater treatment plants. There, we're treating 12.9 million gallons of drinking water on average per day. That totals to 4.7 billion gallons of water in 2025. And then for the wastewater side, on average treating 6.4 million gallons of wastewater per day, and that totals to 2.3 billion gallons of wastewater in 2025. 2025 is kind of a mild year. You might see more or less, depending on if it's a wet or dry year. So we monitor that in this fund. Also, as part of the system, you have the collection distribution portions of the system, which are largely below ground. So as part of that, you have 470 miles of sewer mains, 6,200 fire hydrants, and 650 miles of water mains. So if that slide was kind of saying what the water and sewer system was managing, here's some of the good accomplishments that we've had that we've seen in the past year in the Water and Sewer Fund. So we're highlighting here that the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, or NACWA, awarded our wastewater treatment plants with peak performance awards. We earned at Cedar Creek the Platinum Award. And just for context on that, that's the highest award you can receive. It means five consecutive years of being in compliance. That's thousands and thousands of sample treatments not getting any violations. So it's definitely a high award for compliance. I think nationwide there's around 16,000 wastewater treatment plants in the country. And so we're in around 3% of that that would have received an award like this, 540. out of all those received any peak performance award. Also, we have implemented programs to enhance cybersecurity and physical security treatment facilities. That's a priority. We also have installed new laboratory information management system software, LIMS, that also helps with compliance. And we have begun design of the Cedar Creek Wastewater Nutrient Removal, Wastewater Treatment Plant Nutrient Removal Project, as well as the Supercritical Water Oxidation, or SQUO, project. So those are highlighting generational projects, really exciting projects there. So we're going to highlight those. We also have the West Cedar Creek Interceptor Project, another generational project that will be completed and operating at the end of 2026. Big capital improvement plan pieces here. All the while, we also have very high resident satisfaction results for water and sewer treatment. Here we show that the overall quality of water and wastewater system is 91% and 89%. That's well above the national average for water and wastewater systems. So we're getting good ratings there. We also get very good ratings on pressure and odor. for the water. So it's good results feedback there. We also have the water and sewer budget consideration. So this will echo the workshop one when we were talking about the general fund. But we are trying to prioritize system maintenance here. So you will see prioritizing repair, rehab, and replacement needs with the rising costs that we see with those. And so as you're trying to balance that, we are adhering to asset management principles. And Mary will talk a little bit more about that in the CIP section. Personnel increases are also seen in the utility funds. They are also supporting personnel. So along with what we saw in workshop one, we are seeing benefits in salary increases. System capacity too. So as we're growing system, growing need, the utilities are needing to support that. growth that's happening in all sectors. We also see inflationary pressures. It's similar to workshop one in general fund. There's the three Cs that we talk about, right? So there's a personal increases. There's also the contractuals and commodities costs that are rising. You're going to see here the inflationary pressures are even steeper in the utility side. And these portions are larger pieces of the budget than they are in the general fund. So it's something that we really want to call out here. And there at the bottom bullet, that's resilient infrastructure. So this is putting on that 2040 lens. And the budget consideration, especially for a long-term managing those assets and the utility funds, we want to make sure that we're having resilient infrastructure be front of mind. Here, this slide's kind of indicating that Olathe is not alone. Here's the state of the water industry. This is from the American Water Works Association. So we're really seeing these trends that we're talking about with aging infrastructure and costs rising and trying to find funding for capital projects everywhere. Utilities across the country are trying to address the new regulations that are coming. They're not optional. And we are seeing rising rate increases to support those costs everywhere. When we're talking about Olathe's budget, obviously we're laser-focused on Olathe, but this is fitting into a larger context that we're seeing across the country. In here, this is where I was mentioning the project costs are rising substantially more than the normal consumer price index. That's a good metric to see where the inflationary pressures are at, but that's 45% versus 24% between 2021 and 2025, so steep project costs that we're seeing. In the Water and Sewer Fund Expenditures to Budget, this table is comparing the 2026 budget to the 2027 proposed budget. So overall in expenditures, the proposed budget would be a 5.9% increase. The three rows beneath that top row are breaking out the expenditures across operating costs, debt costs, and the transfer to capital projects. So operating costs, that's your personnel, your commodities, your contractual services. Debt is the principal and interest payments that we have. So when we're issuing debt, that's why you would see an increase there. You are issuing new debt to have a new principal interest payments on. And then the transfer to capital projects, we show a percentage just for scale, but that fluctuates year over year. You're trying to balance how you're funding your capital improvement plan across debt and cash. So that's the reason for the kind of fluctuations there. But when you see the 5.9% increase, it's addressing all those budgetary considerations that we have. Here's a different way to look at the budget for revenues and expenditures, more of a visual way with the pie charts. So you'll see this in all three funds today. The charges for services are the majority of the revenues that you have for these. These are self-supported funds that are based off of their services. On the expenditure side, you can also see what I was talking about, where personnel are definitely – that's a quarter, roughly, of the expenditure budget, but it's – also largely going to debt service and contractual services. So we're managing all those costs here in this fund. The Water and Sewer Fund budget additions that you see here for 2027, they are for the personnel. So the request is for 6.5 FTE increase over the 26 budget. The SCADA and Operations Technology Manager is to help support cybersecurity for the system. The three wastewater control operators for SQUO, again, super critical water oxidation project, those will help along with the plant maintenance technician. That position will help with implementation of SQUO. But as we have that as a new operating feature, you'll need staffing to support that project. The reclass of the utility maintenance yard restoration inspector is really because they're seeing more work that can be done. So it's not really a part-time level work need there. We're seeing a full-time level of work. And that last position there, the billing and support specialist, this is for the growing customer demand. So you have a growing customer base level of service that you're trying to maintain. So that request is for one new billing support specialist. Here are the water and sewer fees that are non-rate dependent. We call these out separately because we'll get into the specific rates here after the capital improvement plan. We do want to call out a few other things. You saw these last year. It's a pretty similar rise in costs. It's to recover costs when you see an increase here. So the connection fees, the secondary meter and inspection charges, and the sustainable fees all have seen 5% increase here. to recover those costs. And then the bottom bullet there, it's been a while since we've done the two-inch fire line tap and inspection rate increase, so that's just addressing the recovered costs that need to happen there. And then that takes us to the capital improvement plan, and I will hand it off to Mary.

Good evening. Mary Yeager, Infrastructure Director. I want to take you through the Water Sewer Capital Improvement Program. We're going to step back a little bit and talk about what we've done, what we're looking at, and what's in the future. So if you look at this slide, I'll set the slide up for you. On the top is the debt repayment schedule. So the top years are really the repayment schedule for all of that in the bottom rectangles. And then the bottom is the CIP year. So you see the orange is past the current or gray is the proposed five-year, and then the Navy are things to come. If we walk through this, when I was standing before you as a new director and slightly before that, we always talked about the water treatment plant. If you remember at that time, the water treatment plant needed a lot of attention. And so we did many projects there. We did the electrical, the conduit, the Recarbonation, we did membrane replacement. There were a lot of different projects that included for the water plant. We also had lift stations. There's 22 lift stations that really hadn't been maintained. And we had that as well as our rehabilitation programs that you see in the top right of that orange section. Now we look at the proposed five-year CIP that's before you. And it really is looking at rehabilitation and maintenance. And a big focus is on the Cedar Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. So those two projects that we'll talk more in detail about later, as well as the West Cedar Creek Interceptor that's going to take all of that raw sewage to the Cedar Creek treatment plant, are encapsulated in that five-year. And again, this isn't the entire CIPs of that time, but major projects. And then what we are looking at in the future, and this is why it's very important for the CIP for water sewer to kind of look back, look future, is because we have some very large projects that are needed in the CIP in the future of water sewer. Rehab programs are always going to be there. We'll talk a little bit more about those later. The hedge lane transmission main and storage, we need storage on the west side of town. We have pressure issues on the west side of town as well as we need a redundancy loop. That's actually a phase one of three phases that we've looked at to plan for that improvement. Harold Street Wastewater Treatment Plant, it was commissioned in 1931. It serves Mill Creek. It's the oldest water plant and the oldest watershed that we serve. It needs to be updated. We are hoping we continue to have it function until we can address it. But right now, we have $70 million in the CIP because we don't know what we're going to do with it yet. We have to do a study on Harold to see, are we able to do the mandatory regulations that we have to do for ammonia and nitrogen removal, just like we do at Cedar Creek? Can we do it on site? Is there room for that on site? Do we need to expand it? Maybe the solution is to take all that raw sewage and pump it to the Cedar Creek wastewater treatment plant, and that may make more sense monetarily. But then what does that do for Cedar Creek and the expansion then needed for Cedar Creek? So we have some work to do, but we know that's in the horizon, and that's actually within the five-year. It's the last year that we need to start looking at that. If we look at water production, we still have things we need to do with the water plant. Plant work is not cheap. Those projects, $20 million, which really doesn't, it looks like a small dot compared to what we're going to talk about next, which is biosolids improvement. And that's really talking about the Cedar Creek wastewater treatment plant. When we talk about Cedar Creek, all of those processes have a limited capacity. So when we talk about capacity, which we'll talk about in the next slide, of the Cedar Creek wastewater treatment plant, they are all controlled by the least capacity. capacity of whatever process that is. That's biosolids improvement in the next one. So when we look at biosolids, we have a lot of different options for biosolids. The tried and true technology is almost $140 million. That's why we're looking at different projects like SQUO. That's why we're looking at all kinds of alternatives to see what we can do to take that monster dot and shrink it to be able to make a little bit easier for our rate payers. So let's go into the Cedar Creek wastewater treatment plant growth. Setting up the slide, if you look at the gray area, 7.75 million gallons per day we can treat raw sewage currently. We anticipate after the two projects that we'll talk about a little later, we will bump that up to 11.25 million gallons per day that we'll be able to treat raw sewage at Cedar Creek. If you look from 2015 to 2025, we were growing very slow and steady in the Cedar Creek watershed. We really didn't have a preface or a project to boost that at that time, and then we did, right? So then we saw the southwest Olathe really boom with our economy. We've also seen some improvements done in the Cedar Creek watershed. We've seen some housing go up at 119th at college. We've seen some other improvements. So we started seeing that increase. This is how we phase Cedar Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant and how we plan for improvements in the future. We have stepped up the future at 3% growth. 3% growth is not a moonshot, right? It's a pretty conservative estimate for that. The orange line is 80% of the capacity of the Cedar Creek wastewater treatment plant. So when we hit 80%, KDHE will come to us and say, okay, what's your next step? Because you have to improve this plant and how are you going to do that? We anticipate once we go with these two improvements and pop up, it's 2036-ish, depending on what we're doing for growth and depending on the type of growth that's in that watershed, that we're going to go ahead and have to look at expanding this plant again. So now let's talk about waterline rehabilitation. And I'm often asked what I'm concerned about when people talk to me about my job. And part of it is underground utilities. Underground utilities don't get the attention that other assets and infrastructure do. And that's just because you can't see them, right? But this is waterline rehabilitation, and this is updated for this year. So the blue bar is annual end-of-life miles. We're not saying that they have failed. We're saying that they're at the end of their design life. The black bar is how many miles that we're going to do in the proposed CIP that you have before you now, and that's two miles. It costs approximately a little over $3 million to improve one mile of water main. The red line is the accumulative end of life miles and the green line is the accumulative end of life with the projects that we have slated. I put this up here to say that we have in the past focused on the water plant. Now we are focused on the sewer plants. We will then have to turn and focus on our underground utilities because while we're doing this, we are not keeping up. This slide shows a 312-year replacement cycle. which is not good, but we're not going to get to the 50-year replacement cycle either because that's not monetarily feasible for rate payers. There's a sweet spot. So once we get done looking at the plants, we will try and focus on waterline rehab. Now for some good news. So if you were here 10, 15 years ago and I would stand here, we would be talking about Collector Well 5, which is the raw water source that is the next in line to be able to come to our water plant 2, which, by the way, we only have one water plant. Why we still call it water plant 2, I don't know. We'll change that next year. But we do. Even in our department, we still call it water plant, too. So this graph shows you the blue line is average day, and that's in million gallons per day. The orange line is max day. So if you remember my talk about water usage, we have our average day, but really our max day is what is limited when we irrigate in the summer. That's our high day. If you look at the tendency of this graph, or best-hit curve maybe, we had a definite drought in 2012. 2012 was when our pumps were cavitating at the collector wells. We were concerned about getting enough raw water to the plant. But since then, we have steadily declined. And especially if you look from 2022 to 2025, the average use has gone down. So our average customer is using less water every year over year. And this number includes growth in our service area. So granted, we are not growing as fast in our service area than we are maybe in Water One's service area, but we are still growing. And the reduction in usage is outpacing the growth in that area. The collector well number five is not on our radar anytime soon. It's been pushed out to 2040s something, and that's a little bit of good news. Okay, let's talk about some of the bigger projects that we have. The next two projects are the projects that's going to take us from 7.75 million gallons per day to 11.25 at the Cedar Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. In your five-year CIP, this is $27.5 million, but the total is almost $42 million to be able to do this. And it really does rehab and then add to a 40-year structure that we've got at Cedar Creek. We're adding, this is all solids handling. So once you think about being able to dewater all of that, we have to handle the solids before it can go into the biosolids part of the treatment. So this is expanding our sludge folding to make sure that we can accommodate. It repurposes buildings to save on budget. It also has a new solids processing building and gravity thickeners. In conjunction with that project, we have this one, which is phase two. BNR stands for bio-nutrient removal. So when we talk about bio-nutrient removal with wastewater treatment plants, we're really talking about nitrogen and phosphorus. Those are the two main EPA regulated at this time. So this project will add one B&R train or one B&R basin and one clarifier. That's the additional capacity that we're going to get at the treatment plant. And that, with the other solids handling project, will raise us from 7.75 to 11.25 million gallons per day. This project is 16.5 in the five-year, but overall it's a little over $36 million. I will say one thing that we have noticed with negotiating these bids, we're in that process right now. The inflation that we're seeing on projects like this at plants has been far and away above what we would have ever guessed. And I've had people ask me why that is. And when we study it, we really get back to, one, the materials and supplies often come from overseas. And The tariff that was said and maybe not done, those prices have never come down. There's a reaction to that, and we've really never seen any relief from that. In addition, COVID took out a lot of our contractors that do this type of heavy work. There are very few now that do this type of like a Garni or, you know, a Crossland, someone that does this type of heavy duty plant work. And so we really are watching when we go out to bid for these projects to try and get the best possible bid. If we continue down this line, supercritical water oxidation or SQUO, it's almost $5 million in the five year, but it's a little over 12 and a half total. This project is funded 61% by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. And there's a reason. This is promising technology. We will be the third in the entire state of Kansas to use it. But if you think about it, it's like an instant pot. It uses a lot of heat and pressure on a much bigger scale to take biosolids and reduce them to minerals. KDHE is very excited about this because it not only addresses phosphorus and nitrogen, which is what we're really looking at to meet our permit at Cedar Creek, it also addresses PFAS or either per or polyfluoroalkylide substances and pharmaceuticals. And that is the next regulation that's going to come. EPA has already been talking about it, kind of got put on hold with the administration that we have now, but we know that that permit will come in the future. And so KDHE, as well as the city of Olathe, we're pretty excited about this. This is one of those projects that could reduce that $140 million that's looming just in our six to 10 year CIP. So we're excited to see how this goes. More new projects for the proposed five-year CIP. We talked about Herald Street already. It's about $70 million, and we just need to figure out what we're going to do, and we'll be back to you when we have more information on what Herald Street ends up providing. The collector well number four generator improvements, we're basically replacing a generator, and we were able to get EPA grant funds for that. Environmental Services Annual Equipment Repairs Maintenance and Replacement Program. So in environmental services, when you think of things that go down at the plants, it's usually not a $50,000 fix. It's usually a $500,000, $600,000 fix when we have to do pump repairs or pump teardowns, anything that has to do with the plant. So we've taken that and put that into the proposed five-year CIP. And then the College Boulevard water main extension is providing redundancy for our water system north of College along Ridgeview. So any of those businesses that are north are fed single fed right now, and we're doing a redundant water system in that area. Okay. Oh, oh, see, now it got to us. Okay. Three more. The Lake Stone Lagoon. We still have a lagoon. It functions. It's an amazing lagoon. It functions very, very well. We don't want to get rid of it. But it does need a little bit of maintenance. We have looked at putting these properties on sewer, and it does not financially make sense to do that. The lagoon is functioning just fine, but it needs to be dredged and have some material removed from it. The environmental services parking lot and road rehab, this project has been on the, well, it's been in our CIP behind the scenes for probably 12 years. We've got to move forward with this or we're going to have to reconstruct it. And that's going to cost us way more money than we really want to put into it. The environmental services process lab renovations, and I don't want you to get this confused with our environmental lab. Remember, we purchased an environmental lab, built it in 2017. These are process lab renovations. So every plant that we have has to have a process lab in addition to our major lab. And those are for all of the samples that they take routinely regularly. in minute intervals to make sure that our processing is going correctly. Those labs have been identified by KDHE, and they've actually brought that to our attention over the last few years. We need to go ahead and improve those labs so they get back up to OSHA. This picture that shows our hood, we're actually not using it for a hood. We're using it for a refrigerator. We need to update those labs, so we're using it for a hood. This is a difficult slide, and I know this is a difficult slide, and I don't expect you to read everything. But I do want to tell you that we've highlighted some projects, but it takes a lot to keep our water and sewer system running. And so we have not talked about the entirety of the CIP. But if you have any questions after this presentation and you're going through your information that you want to ask, feel free to contact me. This does include what we've gone through are the very large projects that are included in the CIP, but we still have small projects like Haven Park sewer replacement that needs to be done. You know, we talk about the elevated storage, the Oak Run lift station that still needs maintained. So there are still very important projects in the CIP that are not covered. in great detail tonight. This is another look at our CIP, but again, past, present, and future projects. So while we've had a very big investment in our CIP, and mainly it's the water plant and the things that we talked about earlier that we're still paying debt on, we do have a five-year CIP that is $275 million addressing the major needs of the utility. We're not completely addressing everything in the utility, but we're okay with that. We are taking a risk on water main replacement. We know we're taking that risk and we're being smart about that risk. But we are getting both rehabilitation out of this CIP and capacity improvements out of this CIP. And then future projects, that's to keep on our radar. We need to make sure that we're... we've got a handle of what's coming next. These big projects like the $140 million for biosolids improvement, we can't prepare for that in three years. We have to prepare for those projects because of rates much sooner before that. So what this slide shows is we are not only looking at the past and the current five-year, but we are very much looking at the 10-year as far as that goes for the water and wastewater funds. Thank you.

Back to dollars. So it's me again, Clara. So this is just showing the dollars behind the CIP for the five years. This is how you get to the $275 million. Just calling out here. So revenue bonds, that's the debt that's backed by the revenue of water and sewer. So it's specific to the utility, not like general obligation bonds. That's the other piece of debt that we can issue. System development fees, those are dedicated to capacity projects. So when Mary talks about capacity projects, system development fees are going to contribute to those. State revolving funds and EPA community funds are leveraged outside funding, so we do pursue outside funding in our projects. And then water and sewer cash, that's the cash funding. We're trying to find a good mix with all of our funding pieces to maintain good key performance indicators in the long run, financial stability of the fund. That's the look here. So that takes us to the 2027 proposed rate increase for water and sewer bills. On average, if a resident has both water and sewer, they would see a $7.41 increase in their monthly bill between 2027 and 2026. If you're looking at a community comparison on that, you can see Olathe is pretty, you know, on the lower end of the pack here, actually, with community comparisons, we're just, you know, just over Water One and Lee's Summit with $44.17 for the water average residential rate. But still pretty good rate on that. And then you have the sewer residential rate comparisons here. Olathe is a little bit more middle of the pack, but still definitely not as high as some of the larger utilities for sewer who are under consent decrees and have to have higher rates. So we do want to call out there. So Olathe is being a pretty good balance on the whole when we compare with peer communities. We do know that residents aren't just seeing individual utilities. Most residents are going to see all of them. So here's how Olathe stacks up when you look at the full utilities together. So it's still second to last. And we are highlighting here in blue and green, the water and sewer specifically, but we'll get into the gray cells here for stormwater and solid waste next. So the stormwater funds.

Do you want to have questions on any of this that you've covered already?

Oh, yeah. Do you guys want to ask questions on water and sewer?

Do we have any questions? Council Member Felder. I had one, so I was going to.

Do you want to go first?

No, you go right ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. Mary, this one's for you. It's the water demand. What do you attribute? the lower demand to? Is it the block filling?

I would love to think that it is behavioral change, but we really haven't seen a behavioral change due to block billing. We thought we would, but the numbers that we've pulled so far Really, if someone wants to irrigate, they're paying to irrigate. What we attribute this mostly to are appliances that are higher efficiency, shower nozzles that are higher efficiency and use less water. We are seeing more and more of that come into houses and even having houses refurnished. If you think about refurbishing your bathroom, refurbishing your laundry room, refurbishing your kitchen, are generally where you put your money, and those are where your appliances are or your fixtures are that are lower in water use. So the industry overall is attributing it more to high-efficiency appliances and fixtures than it is behavior.

Okay.

So it's not education.

Okay. Thank you.

Council Member Creighton. Sure. Clara, jump back to, and you don't have to go back to it, but on page eight, one of your comments was that why it matters to Olathe is regulatory compliance is not optional. Is that coming down from the federal? Is that coming down from the state? And It's all our taxpayer dollars. I get that. But are we doing, what's that costing us? And are we able to get some grants to help us with some of that?

That's good. Mary's got some good color on that.

So when you talk about regulatory in water and wastewater, it really is federal regulations. And those are federal regulations are given to the state and then the state for enforcement, correct? So when we have a permit, we don't have a permit for a wastewater treatment plant with the federal government. We have that permit with the state of Kansas. They are not optional. When we talk about the safety and health of our water and sewer plants, we make sure that we are in compliance and that's why we're getting peak performance awards for both the wastewater treatment plants. I will say it's always been my vision for infrastructure and our personnel that our staff do an amazing job. I would rather walk side by side with the EPA than be surprised by the EPA. So we are constantly volunteering for different laboratory tests. We did a pharmaceutical test. We do tests on our wastewater all the time because we want to be able to give input on those regulations when the EPA comes knocking at our door. We do see higher, I don't want to say higher, lower limitations on phosphorus and nitrogen that are going to come our way. We thought we'd see it in last permit cycle, but we did not. And on the water side, really we're not seeing as much pressure as we are on the wastewater side. And that's mainly because if you talk about point source discharge, where they can get the most bang for their buck on environmental issues is a point source discharge is a wastewater treatment plant. So we anticipate in the future we will see something for PFAS. We will see something for pharmaceuticals. But we have not seen that yet. We are still working with them. Does that answer your question?

And what about, and again, I know it's always our money, whether it's federal money or our own, but are we eligible for grants to help with some of this?

So we are eligible for some grants. Whenever we are asked by our congressional delegates, we are always quick to submit anything that we have that might be in that wheelhouse. We are doing really well thanks to our legal staff on keeping contact with all of those delegates. We also look at federal programs for financing. To date, those federal programs for financing have not, they would have been more expensive than had we do the financing ourselves. And we try and work with the state of Kansas as much as we possibly can. Again, the state revolving fund, most of the time is not as economically feasible as it is for us to go ahead and issue debt. The caveat to that is when they forgive 50% of it, which is what they're doing for SQUO. So we're always talking to KDHE on what we can do to be able to take advantage of some of those programs. One of them is the lead and copper. If you remember lead and copper rule coming out, we had to inventory all of our lines for lead and copper. We were able to get that done much faster than any other community. And we were able to get lead and copper funds for that. You'll see that when we went through the funding, you saw that under state funds or SRF funds. Those type of possibilities always exist for us. And we're always continuing to try and take advantage of that.

Council Member Schoonover.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you both. I have a few questions, actually. If we can go back to slide 16, I think that's the slide where we talk about the underground work. I think it's, what, $3.2 million? Yeah, $3.2 million per mile of replacing underground pipe. I think I've... I think I ask this question every year, but at what point, I assume this is all contracted out, per mile, $3.2 million. At what point does it make sense financially for us to bring this in-house if we're spending $3.2 million? I understand there would be upfront costs, obviously buying equipment, all of that type of stuff, but where does that cost-benefit analysis come into play?

So we do a combination. When we put waterline rehabilitation into the CIP, we do take some material for our own crews to be able to do some of that rehabilitation, depending on the segment. We do have a construction crew. That construction crew has limitations. And so we do contract out some of that work If that work is, say it's a sewer line that's over 20 feet deep, we don't want to take on that liability with our crew. And we have a contractor do that work. So we're always analyzing it. I would say for two miles and the amount of work that we're doing right now, the portion that we contract is well placed just because of the type of work that it is. But we will at some point when we start addressing water line rehabilitation in the future, want to do that calculation to make sure it doesn't make sense for us to bring our own crews on.

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

But just not at this moment. It wouldn't make sense.

Okay. And then on slide 27, I'm going to ask a question that may get me in trouble. And I'm going to preface it by saying, love you all. I think you do amazing work. You're the best. You're rock stars. But I see that on this slide, we're paying less, or excuse me, we're paying more than somebody that has Water One. And we're talking about doing a lot of different long-term projects to increase our capacity, increase our system usage. At what point, you know, similar to my last question, at what point does it make sense for us to look at this and say, does it make sense for Olathe to continue offering this service as a city, or is it something we need to look at perhaps a partnership?

So we ask ourselves this every year, both on the water side and on the sewer side. Does it make sense for us to be Johnson County wastewater as well? The short answer of that is controlling your destiny. The city of Olathe has always valued, and the council in the past has always valued, the control of destiny for water and sewer facilities and to be able to accommodate our growth. Once we give those utilities over to either Water One or Johnson County Wastewater, we don't have that control of destiny anymore. And it's always made more sense for us to be able to do that than it has to hand our utilities over. Now, I will say it would be a very long process for our utilities to be transferred, like a 10-year process. And so that's why when we sit back and look at what is the benefit of us having the utility versus not having the utility, We have to quantify things that aren't necessarily quantifiable, like do we want to control our own destiny? A big part of that, too, if you think about sewer, Johnson County wastewater right now really doesn't want to build any capacity at Bull Creek. When we were going to them asking about that, they've really kind of sat where they've put their mains and are waiting for those mains to be used before they produce any more. That's kind of their tendency. And so when we think about our wastewater, we would not be able to grow like we're growing in Cedar Creek without being able to have our own destiny in that situation. So it really depends on not just the numbers, but also what are we able to do with that utility.

how many of the capabilities in the CIP that we're talking about investing in long-term already exist? Would they be duplicative of something that say Water One or Johnson County Wastewater is already doing that we're now spending the money to to do what they're doing. Does the question make sense?

Totally makes sense. Matter of fact, when we talked about biosolids up there, we're not the only one that makes biosolids or treats biosolids. So we have been in conversations with Little Blue Valley Sewer District, Kansas City Wastewater, all of these other Johnson County wastewater. How can we work with them to maybe have them take our biosolids and then we don't have to deal with it? We're still working through that because the answer you get is no usually right up front, but it takes a little bit more work. And so those are part of the evaluations that we're continuing to go through. As far as water, we... After 2012, we really took a hard look at our interconnect with Water One because is it cheaper for us to peak or buy an amount of water? Water One will never let you peak off of them. In other words, if you're peaking in summer, they're never going to let you just buy water in the summer and not... have to buy water all year. And so we did a cost evaluation of what happens if we buy a million gallons or two million gallons every day for the entire year? And would that push the collector well off? And the short answer is yes, it would. And so we're always looking at kind of those different situations on being able to not pass that off on our our rate payer and be able to keep those costs a little bit lower. We bought water last year because we had a construction project going on and we had half of the water plant down. So we needed to buy water from Water One. That was cheaper than being able to do the construction in a very short amount of time. That construction cost would have been way more than just buying water from Water One. So we're always looking at that. But if you know someone that wants some biosolids, you let me know.

So the biosolid thing, I was looking at the green sheet. Is that the $140 million project that we're talking about? In the future, yes. Okay. Because I do have some questions, and I know it's not in front of us now, but certainly, obviously, if we're talking about spending. $140 million.

Yeah, and that project specifically, we're going to need to come back to you. We've got so many things going on right now trying to find solutions to that that aren't $140 million that we'll come back to you when we get more information. I hope when I'm standing here next year, there's a lot more information. It may take two years to be able to fully dial that in.

Okay. And with the CIP, the numbers are all helpful. Have we done any type of forecasting where based on the five-year CIP that we have, here's if all things stay constant, if the CIP goes through every year like we've forecasted it out, usage stays constant, what's that going to do to our rates? Year over year over year.

We have a rate model right now, a pretty sophisticated rate model that we look at for water and sewer specifically. And it does a lot of things. What it does is it gives us rates for the next five years. Right. And it gives us actually as many years as we want. But once you get to the fifth year, the sixth year, you don't have the same comfort level that those rates are really going to come true. I will say in the next three years, it shows 7% every year. That is based on the assumptions that are built into that model. If you look at the out years, you look at the sixth year, the seventh year, you get even higher. What we're hoping is the amount of work that we do, the improvements that we're trying to find, all of the variables that we're able to keep those rates down. at 7% or lower. That's the goal. But we really won't know that until year from year that we put in those assumptions. Water and sewer is volatile for many reasons, one of them which is weather. It's significantly impacted by weather. I would like it if it would stop raining right now. Because we don't sell water when it rains and we treat more wastewater when it rains. So not only do we not get the revenue on the water side, but then we have to pay more to treat the wastewater on the sewer side. So what we do in our forecasting is really for a mild year. If we get a wet year, this model is going to change. If we get a dry year, the model is going to change. So while we have projections for rates in the future, nothing is set in stone. Sure.

Okay. Thank you very much. Council Member Baucus.

Thank you, Mary. Mary, a couple of questions. It's much on terminology as anything. So I'm used to the term deferred maintenance or maintenance backlog if we're talking about fleet maintenance. They're showing us about underground utilities where we need to replace miles of pipe, et cetera. Is that same term used there? Is that a maintenance backlog?

It is. And that was shown if you look at the slide. It's not responding as quickly as I'm pushing the button, so. Okay, if we look at this slide, you can see the cumulative end-of-life miles on the axis on the right is actually compensating for that where it starts, right? So we have end-of-life miles that we already have inventory that we know about. The deal with underground infrastructure, sewer, we can inspect pretty easily because if it's not force main, it's gravity. We send a camera down the gravity main. Water mains are a little more difficult. And so we don't have a great way to send a camera in a forced, pressurized water main. So what we do is we really do asset management based on the material type, the time that it was installed, and then the soils in which it rests, right? If it's hot soils, it's going to deteriorate. The other thing we do with Waterline is we have a risk and a consequence to every Waterline that's in the city. So a Waterline that goes to a hospital is not necessarily as important as a Waterline that comes to my house.

Mm-hmm.

So when we talk about deferred maintenance, we really look at all of that data and then our break data to see where we can make a difference and where we can't make a difference. And that's why, although we're taking a risk with waterline rehabilitation, I'm okay with the risk at the moment.

Sure. And so as we look at the rate of rehabilitation, then are we growing our maintenance background? Understanding we are deliberately assuming risk, are we growing that maintenance backlog?

We are growing the maintenance backlog. But we're okay.

I mean, we're comfortable with it.

We're okay with it for now, yeah. There will be a day that you will see that $6 million rehab annual amount go up. And the sooner we can do that, the less risk we're going to be able to take. But for right now, we need to focus on the wastewater plants.

Sure, absolutely. I guess we always use KCMO as a poster child. someone who didn't maintain their water infrastructure. So water main breaks all over the place. A couple weeks ago we had a water main break up on Valley Parkway. I think that's what happened. So was that an example of something that just failed?

I will have to look into that specifically and get back to you.

Okay, good. But that's a case where presumably If there was a risk, we took the risk. It failed, we replaced it. We're okay, we move on. We're comfortable with our level of maintenance operations?

Yes. And I would say generally if it happened this time of year and not in October, which is our major break, what happens is all the soils dry out in the summer and everything shifts, but when it shifts back is when we really get problems. It was probably a failure of a valve or something like that. Okay.

Turning real quick to one more question on solid waste. So do we have anything going on on methane recovery?

We do not. So methane recovery, and we've looked at this a few times. I can get you some information on this after the meeting. But basically there's not enough at the Herald Street wastewater treatment plant. So that's why we flame the Herald Street. And The landfill itself, the way that the landfill is situated and what it would cost for us to recoup that methane, it doesn't make sense from an economic standpoint now. Okay. But I can get you that information.

Anything you give, that'd be great. Good. I appreciate it, though, the fact that we're thinking about it and realizing that while it sounds desirable, it just doesn't work. So, yeah. Thanks very much. Thank you, Mary.

Mary, on that slide 16, when we're talking about everything that's under the ground, do we track our water main breaks?

Absolutely.

And is it meaningful or is it just all dependent on soil? Or do we say, hey, we're getting 10 per lane mile instead of five? I'm just using those examples. And do we have a chart that shows that? No.

We do. What we show is we not only do a main break, but then once we have a main break, we have a visual inspection of the pipe because now we can valve off that pipe and do a visual inspection. Then the main break is classified. So it's classified why that main break happened. And then it's put into our asset management system as a point on that pipe. Then what happens is our maintenance managers, our asset managers, look at the entirety of the system, and that's how we prioritize, right? So we look at the ones with the most main breaks, also the ones with the highest risk and consequence, and that's where we spend our dollars.

When you compare us to other wastewater treatment facilities around the country, we're 540 out of 16,000, whatever the number was. Awesome. But I can't imagine some of these other entities being able to afford $140 million in capital improvement. Does that put us in line then for specialty type businesses? Because they should get a flat out no. If these other wastewater treatment, you know, they can't handle their biosolids or whatever, they're going to say, well, Olathe can. Does that put us in line for some of these potential businesses that might come to our community?

Sanitary sewer is very specific to not just the volume, but the strength and the load of that strength. In other words, we look at BOD and TSS in sanitary sewer, and we have additional charges for that as well. So when we look at any kind of development coming in, we have to evaluate in our sewer system based on volume and also BOD or TSS. Other sewer systems are at different capacities and also different stages than we are in our sewer system. So it's really hard to compare apples to apples, but I can tell you that the state of the water industry slide and sewer industry that we had up here somewhere, This is being written about on a national level. We are seeing costs increase, regulations, as well as rising utility costs that are at a level that are not sustainable nationwide, unless one, we get federal funding, state funding, or two, we have a perception shift on what utilities are actually going to cost us. So we track national trends very, very carefully to see what's going to happen. And that's really, you ask what federal legislative agenda item is for me, it's for not transportation, it's for water and sewer. Because I think that is where we really should be focusing our efforts on, not just Olathe system, but all of the systems that are out there. There are a lot of rural communities that are not able to do what we're doing here.

Another thing that I saw on slide 15 was the increase from Coca-Cola and Walmart. If you talk to those guys, they spent like $20 million on their own treatment system when they put their plan in.

So they had to pre-treat before they even sent it to us, or the additional charge would have been higher than their pre-treatment.

Okay. All right. Very good. All right. I think that's all the questions. We can move on to stormwater.

Great. Yeah. Okay. Like this.

Back in. All right. Stormwater Fund. All right. We'll jump into the 2026 to 2027 comparison of budgets here. So overall, 16.9% increase in total expenditures. That's really because of the transfers to capital projects. Mary will get into this a little bit more, but we are trying to capture outside funding. So in order to capture outside funding, we're putting up a match. So you see a large increase in the transfers. It's really because of that. So we'll address that in the capital improvement section. Jumping back up into the operating and At the operating line, that's a 9% increase budget to budget. We'll kind of talk a little bit more about this, but seeing the inflationary pressures, also personnel costs, a big part of that. Also addressing just right-sizing some of the costs that we've seen in stormwater, the difference between operations and maintenance, and then capital needs. So we're trying to get that right. appropriate mix there when we do an operating fund versus the capital funded project. The debt service estimates here, it's a decrease, but that's because we just didn't issue quite as much as what we thought we would this year. And so it's just a difference in the mark on the budget. So that can kind of fluctuate. We are still going to, we do still issue debt in stormwater to help support those projects. So this is the pie chart comparison now for stormwater fund. Still, again, charges for services are what make up the revenues for here. So that's your stormwater management fees, largely. And then on the expenditure side, you can see, again, personal services here makes up about 39%. Contractual services, 22%. And then debt service payments, those principal and interest payments, at 16%. So those are your major portions of your expenditures here. And then you have the transfers following within some commodities and capital outlay, just a little bit. In the fund budget additions proposed, there's just a reclass that's being requested here. So for a stormwater maintenance worker, since it's a reclass, it's that 0.5 instead of a one full FTE. And that will help fully staff the last crew of three for the stormwater group. So more work to do, able to do a little more efficiently when you have that full-time person. And I will hand it over to Mary for this version of the stormwater reclass.

So this is the same type of graph with a little tweak that you saw with Water Lane Rehab. So we're talking about corrugated metal pipe. We've talked about corrugated metal pipe every year. We thought it was a really good idea years and years ago, but come to find out, salt settles in corrugated metal pipe and it corrodes. And so we end up big holes and sinkholes. If you look at this slide, annual end-of-life miles are still in the blue bar. The CIP proposed replacement miles are in the black bar. So the CIP as proposed, the black bar. The yellow bar, which is new, is the CIP that we've done for years and years and years. So if we don't take advantage of the SMAC funding and we just do what we've done, that's the yellow bar. What I'm trying to show you here is accumulative miles on the red line, the yellow line, and the green line. We can make a huge difference in our corrugated metal pipe inventory under arterials and collectors because we've got... 150 miles of corrugated pipe, we're not going to handle all of it. But can we get to the arterials and the collectors so we don't have sinkholes like we did on 151st and Merlin, 151st and Black Bob? We had one at Santa Fe and Casey Road, Santa Fe and Cherry. I could go on and on. What we want to do is be able to take advantage of the SMAC money, the county, and by SMAC, I'm using acronyms again, I apologize, Stormwater Management Advisory Council. That is the sales tax that comes through Johnson County and then gets distributed to cities. It's a matching, 50% matching type of fund. So if we can take advantage of that, we can really do some good work in the city and take advantage just end-of-life miles over the next few years and make that non-negotiable. So we'll deal with the backlog at that point, but we won't have to deal with any more end-of-life miles coming on. Okay, so let's talk about the CIP. Not as big as water and sewer, but just as important. This is a small but mighty fund. Briarwood stormwater improvements, that project, if you remember correctly, came in really, really high. Our construction estimates were going crazy. So we decided in the fund, for the fund's ability to stay healthy, we need to delay that a little bit. We still need to do that improvement project. We still have flooding issues there, but now it's looking like it's going to be 28 and 29. Cedar Lake spillway removal. The spillway has issues. That's a high hazard dam that we have at Cedar Lake. We need to come up with different alternatives to that because the alternatives that we have been showing in the past don't necessarily fit into the stormwater's ability to fund that. And so we're going to come back to you on this project more at a later date. CMP replacement and stormwater asset management, that's what we just talked about. So the ability to take advantage of stormwater funds at the county so we can really do twice as much work. Now, I will tell you, the opportunity like this doesn't come along a lot. The last time we were able to do this with the county was, if you remember years and years ago, we did a watershed master plan. We identified all of our flooding projects. At that time, the county had additional funds and didn't have anybody's ability to take it. We had matching funds and were able to really capitalize on that situation. This last year, the same thing happened with Johnson County, where we were able to capitalize on having some additional funds with stormwater to take advantage of their 50%. So that's what we're anticipating in the future here. These are estimates. After 2027, these are all estimates. And so whether that comes to fruition or not, we will find out and we will adjust the stormwater fund appropriately. We still have lake and dam restoration that we need to do. We did push that out a little bit to be able to have the fund accommodate the CMP for a little while. Same thing with neighborhood flood control projects. The rain that we saw in 2025, if everybody remembers that storm, that was crazy. That identified some localized neighborhood flooding. From a storm pipe and an inlet perspective that we need to address, we are working through those designs and will apply to the county, but that's what that project is. And then stream bank stabilization projects, we're always doing some kind of stream bank stabilization for Indian Creek, Mill Creek, Cedar Creek. We're going to push that off until the fifth year and look at that again in the fifth year.

describing the cip with the funding sources here we also included a pie chart just to demonstrate how large of a portion those outside funding sources are through smack so the county funding is just a big portion we want to call that out but uh stormwater also has the revenue bond the dedicated revenue source for debt and then we have a healthy mix with outside sources like i said and stormwater cash So that takes us to the average monthly residential bill for stormwater. It's one bill amount for residents. And that's a 68 cent increase on a bill versus 2027 versus 2026. Here's how Olathe compares to the communities here. So we're second to lowest. And we want to make sure to point out that Shawnee, which is the only city that's lower than us, also has an outside funding source that's helping them beyond just a dedicated stormwater fee. They have a sales tax for pipes and parks. So they beat us out there a little bit, but it's because they do have another additional funding source. So stormwater is a little bit tricky to get apples to apples comparisons, but we do our best here. And so this is how we're stacking up pretty well. Here's, again, just the sliver, small but mighty element of stormwater in the communities. And that takes us into solid waste unless we have other questions around stormwater.

I don't see any. Oh, Council Member Bacchus.

Yeah, I'll ask just one real quick. So the 50% match with the county, while we really appreciate that, is it unreasonable for us to have an expectation that the county should pick up more of that cost?

I'm I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation. I don't see that it ever would come to fruition. That sales tax has been the same amount since I've started. Okay. So they're not really increasing that, and they're not increasing the CARS funding, the transportation funding either.

So that's stuck where it is also. Okay.

Yep. We always show the submittals for both of those as the need as far outweighs the money that is authorized for that and petition the county. Okay. SMAC and CARS committees to increase that, but they have yet to increase that.

Okay, good. Thanks very much. Thank you.

Thanks. Okay, so solid waste fund. So we want to highlight here, solid waste services are scoring really high with the Direction Finder results. So for trash, yard, curbside recycling, and bulk item pickup, these are really great results from our residents getting great feedback. So great results, but also well above the national average. Kudos to them for that work. So we'll get into the fund numbers here. So year-over-year comparison, the solid waste total fund expenditures are seeing a 5.1% increase. There's a mix of the operating and then the cash transfers to projects. Again, cash transfers of projects fluctuate year over year based off of the need from the project. So the operating costs that you're seeing, the 6.8%, you know, you're seeing moderate increases in the personnel benefit spaces. And then also those contractual services that we're seeing for disposal costs contributing to that increase. Here is the pie chart. You've got revenues from solid waste. That includes, like we said, the residential collection, commercial collection, bulk item pickup, transfer station collections. All those services are bundled into those charges for services in the revenue side. And then on the expenditures, what you see there is really contractual services making up the majority of this fund, actually. Well, you know, the largest part. individual chunk of this fund's expenditures and so you have basically you know you have personnel and you have the trucks to to move around and you have your disposal costs that we're paying through contracts and that's the biggest part of these funds expenses There's a single solid waste fund budget addition for a vehicle here. So we're currently leasing a bulk collection truck, and that's just to support a growing need. It makes more of a strategic financial decision to actually outright purchase that vehicle instead of leasing it externally. The cost that you see here isn't the upfront cost to purchase it. It's what the solid waste fund will pay our own vehicle and equipment replacement fund to kind of lease it to ourselves. So that's the cost that the solid waste fund will be able to bear out Kind of a steady minor addition there. Here are the solid waste non-rate dependent fees. So we have bulk item pickup increase. Bulk item pickups are those large, bulkier items for residents. We are proposing an increase from $30 to $35 per 15-minute loading time for the trash day pickup for those first four pickups. So you kind of remember how the first four pickups of the year cost a certain amount. And then once you start picking up more and more, it kind of tiers up. to be more expensive. But $35 is still a pretty good deal for residents to be able to have those large items picked up. That's kind of compared really to the solid waste transfer station. Tipping fee increase you see in the second section, increasing resident minimum from 45 to 65 pounds. We'd really rather have residents use the bulk item collection pickup rather than drive through the transfer station. So it's a better deal at that 35 rather than the $65. And you can really get a lot picked up within the 15 minutes that you have. So it's Just kind of a comparison across services there. And then the tire disposal at the transfer station shifting to market rate. It's kind of a pass-through cost. A lot of the things that we offer at the transfer station, we set at market rate so that they can have an ability to respond kind of quickly to those needs for rising pass-through costs. Here is the proposed solid waste capital improvement plan. So on the first row here, we have the transfer station disposal study. We're considering potential, well, just considering the potential maximum capacity of landfills. This is looking to explore additional options for disposal. And then phase two of the transfer station expansion on that second line, that's a larger project that you see here at 12, almost $13 million in the in the fourth year of the CIP. If you remember phase one, that was more about traffic flow management and adding a scale house. The phase two is really about capacity expansion. And I believe July had another maximum tonnage at the transfer station. So we're seeing large usage at the transfer station, a need for expansion, and also possibly being able to have more flexibility around managing recyclable materials at the transfer station. So that's what that project's looking at. It's a little bit further out, so there's more information to come on that. And then the household hazardous waste, the HHW, and compost facility improvements. We're seeing great participation in that program, too. This project would be able to centralize into a more efficient area to be able to manage that program. And then we have the transportation tipping floor recoding. That's in the fifth year. It was last recoded in 2021. It has around a 10-year lifespan on that coding, so that's why you see it in 2031. They'll be evaluating the condition of it. But that's what takes you to the $16.59 million five-year CIP in the solid waste fund. For the funding sources, you'll see general obligation bond, 10-year terms in solid waste, along with that solid waste fund cash. So finding a mixture of funding sources there. And then that takes us to the proposed rate increase for solid waste. So the average monthly residential bill would increase $1.14 more for that, you know, the core main solid waste service charge over 2026. So that would be $23.88 per month for all those services. And how we compare with others. We believe we're the best value on there, if not the lowest dollar amount that you see. So you have, like we said, trash, yard waste, recycling. And you also have really great service along with that delivery. People are very satisfied. And we also kind of call out in this slide, typically, you might be seeing for private haulers, you know, more introductory rates here. They might get you in the first year with a good deal and then ramp it up in the second and third. What we're doing is pretty steady throughout time with our residents on our rates. And this slide again, just calling it out, where solid waste is there, it's the foundational little orange bar there. So that pretty much the details, so now we will talk in summation on the utilities rate summary as a whole. What you'll see, if you're a resident and you have all of Olathe's utility rates, you would see an average bill increase of $9.23 per month. On average, that's a 6.38% increase on the whole for the utility bill, and you'd see that average bill total of around $145.

We have a question. Council Member Vaucus. Yeah.

The Mayor offered. We didn't talk about food waste, Mary.

Oh, yeah.

And I gather we didn't talk about it because that's a voluntary program. So we have the food waste program. We're happy with it. Is it a growing program?

We are very happy with our food waste program. So remember the initial food waste station that we set up, we added a second one at Black Bob Park. We were just notified that we got another grant for a third location, and we're looking at the Pioneer Park for that location.

Will there be a hose bib for that one, do you think?

I will find out and let you know.

I mean, that's a nice touch. So is the program actually saving us money?

The way that the program is structured and because we're getting grants to set it up, yes, it is. Okay. We're able to get grants and set up the infrastructure to collect and then we visit those facilities and end up dumping those facilities on our own. That way it works a little better for us. We would like to expand that program, but we're expanding it more intentionally in areas that we see the need for it. In other words, we're monitoring all of our locations very closely to see what we need to do in those locations and maybe other locations. We have been asked many times if we would do a curbside recycling of food waste, and we're just not there yet. We get the food waste station set up where they're growing much more in size, and then we can look at what it would cost us to – The fleet cost alone would be substantial, and so we would really need to see way more usage than we have now.

Pretty onerous, yeah, it really is. So Missouri Organics was picking up. Are you saying now we're turning it in somewhere?

Yeah, to Missouri Organics.

Do we? Okay. And so what trucks do we use for that?

The same. We can put food waste in the same type of vehicle that we put our trash in.

Okay, okay, good. Tire, tire disposal. Do we have any commercial vendors turning in tires to us?

Tire disposal is for residents. It's part of our HHW program. And so when we get a tire in, we're not changing our rates right now, but what we want to do is to be able to, if we get a commercial tire and that's going to cost us a lot more money, pass that on to just cost. We're not making any money there, but pass that additional cost on to the person that's dropping the tire off. So it's a way for us to compensate for that. Normally we just get vehicle tires.

I could bounce back to food waste real quick, just for a minute. So earlier tonight, I think Mr. Coker, when he was speaking about Starfish, mentioned that he and his wife would take food waste and turn it into Latha. That's great. Do we have any other commercial firms using our food waste program?

Not that I know of, no.

Okay. So it's really focused on residential use.

Very much so.

Thanks very much. Appreciate it. Good.

Thank you for your questions on that. So here is the bar chart, but all of the sections are filled in with color now. So that's the full bill. That's really, that concludes our presentation tonight. So we will see you again on August 18th for our third workshop. We'll be covering the REC Fund, Park Sales Tax, Street Maintenance Sales Tax, their portions of the schedule of fees, and then we'll have the Chamber of Commerce come to speak. And then on September 8th, that will be our public hearing on the exceeding revenue neutral rate in the budget public hearing. And we are building towards September 15th with budget adoption. We have the link to our budget webpage here. We have our budget book published, our capital improvement plan published. We will get the presentation file from tonight published very soon, so people are able to follow along with this process at home and ask, you know, if you have any questions, please reach out. So we can stand for any other questions if you have them for tonight, but that concludes our presentation.

Thank you. I don't see any questions. We'll... We'll look forward to our next workshop. All right. Thanks, Lara and Mary. Let's move to – we have – A need for an additional executive session tonight.

Yes, sir. I'd like to move that Olathe City Council recess into an executive session for consultation with the city attorney to discuss matters deemed privileged in the attorney-client relationship regarding a certain pending special use permit application pursuant to the exception provided in KSA 75-4319-B2 for a time not to exceed 20 minutes.

That'd be fine. Okay. 15, 20, how much? 15 minutes.

15 minutes? Okay. 15 minutes. Second.

We have a motion and second with the city clerk. Please call the roll.

All right. Mr. Denault?

Yes.

Ms. Essex?

No. Or yes, sorry. Yes.

Mr. Bacchus?

Yes. Hold true, Robin. Hold true to your...

Mr. Bacon?

Yes.

Dr. Felter? Yes. Mr. Schoonover? Yes. Mr. Creighton?

Yes.

Motion passes 7-0.

Okay. We are reconvening from executive session. No action is required from our executive session. We'll now move to additional items. I'll start on my left. Councilmember Creighton. SCAN OVER. NOTHING FOR ME, MAYOR.

NOTHING FOR ME.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. NOTHING TO ADD? NOTHING. I'M THINKING ABOUT WHAT I'M GOING TO SAY. GO AHEAD.

I JUST HAVE ONE THING. THANK YOU TO ALL THE STAFF FOR PUTTING TOGETHER THE BUDGET PRESENTATION AS ALWAYS.

CITY MANAGER SUSAN SHERMAN?

NOTHING TONIGHT.

I've got a couple of things. So this Friday night is Olathe Live concert at Stagecoach Park. I'll be there along with all the board members or many of the board members for Olathe Mayor's Children's Fund to collect donations. Every dollar collected helps to fund local charities here that provide basic needs for Olathe kids. So if you're able to attend, the concert starts this Friday night at 7 o'clock. I know it's been kind of an interesting summer, but the pools will be closing. The last day to swim at Mill Creek Pool, Oregon Trail Pool, Frontier Pool, and the Olathe Beach. And the beach at Lake Olathe will be Sunday, August the 9th. which is just around the corner. Black Bob Bay will remain open on weekends through Labor Day. September 7th, Oregon Trail Pool will also host the annual, the favorite end of season dog swim on August the 15th. You have to have a dog to go to that. And then school starts this next week. So good luck to all the kids and the teachers as we have our back to school. So that's it for tonight. Thanks for joining us. We are adjourned.