City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to City Hall. This is the regular meeting of the Olathe City Council for Tuesday, August the 18th, 2026. The first 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 for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty Okay, we might have a little music in the background tonight for our meeting, which is kind of nice. They're working on getting that turned off. There we go. Okay, thank you. So to start things off, we'll start with public hearing. So item A is consideration of a resolution number 26-1070 on behalf of 16708-4 LLC and 16708-5 LLC for the issuance request for a master resolution for industrial revenue bonds and tax phase-in for the construction of manufacturing facilities. The project will entail approximately three buildings totaling 1.5 million square feet on a total of 118.08 acres located on the southwest corner of 167th Street and Lone Elm Road. As far as I know, no one has signed up to speak in this public hearing.

Item A is not a public hearing. It's just the measure resolution. B and C are the public hearings.

Okay. So item A is just a resolution. Okay. So this item and the next two are projects that will include three manufacturing facilities. This first item is to consider the master resolution for the overall project. The next two items are for industrial revenue bonds and tax phase-in for buildings two and one, respectively. So is there a need for presentation on this first item?

No. Okay.

Seeing none, a motion to approve resolution number 26-1070 would be in order. Thank you, Mayor. I move to approve resolution 26-1070. Second. We have a motion and a second. Will the City Clerk please call the roll?

Mr. Bacon. Yes. Mr. Schoonover. Yes. Dr. Felter.

Yes.

Mr. Vakas. Yes. Ms. Essex.

Yes.

Mr. Creighton. Yes.

Mr. Dinault. Yes. Motion passes 7-0. Okay. So the next item B is public. So I'll entertain a motion to open a public hearing in consideration of resolution number 26-1071 on behalf of the 16708-5 LLC building 2 and assigns for an issuance request. for industrial revenue bonds and tax phase-in for a one or more series application under a master resolution. The project will entail the construction of a 500,000 square foot manufacturing facility on an approximately 40.23 acre lot located at the southwest corner of 167th Street and Lone Elm. Is there anyone that is signed up to speak? Is there anyone here in the audience? that would like to speak on this public hearing. Seeing none, a motion to close the public hearing be in order. Thank you. I move to close the public hearing.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Will the city clerk please call the roll? Mr. Schoonover?

Yes.

Dr. Felter?

Yes.

Mr. Bacchus?

Yes.

Ms. Essex?

Yes.

Mr. Creighton?

Yes.

Mr. Dinault?

Yes.

Mr. Bacon? Yes. Motion passes 7-0.

So a motion to approve resolution number 26-1071 would be in order. There's no questions or comments.

Good. Thank you. So I move to approve resolution 26-1071. Second. We have a motion and a second. Would the city clerk please call the roll?

Mr. Dinault? Yes. Mr. Bacon? Yes. Mr. Schoonover? Yes. Dr. Felter? Yes. Mr. Vakas.

Yes.

Ms. Essex. Yes. Mr. Creighton. Yes. Motion passes 7-0. Okay.

Item C is a public hearing and consideration of resolution number 26-1072 on behalf of 167 Olathe 4 LLC building 1 and assigns for an issuance request for industrial revenue bonds and tax phase-in for a one or more series application under a master resolution. The project will entail the construction of a 500,000 square foot manufacturing facility on an approximately 37.63 acre lot located at the southwest corner of 167th Street and Lone Elm. No one has signed up to speak in this public hearing. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak in this public hearing? Seeing none, a motion to close the public hearing be in order. I move to close the public hearing.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Will the City Court please call the roll?

Ms. Essex? Yes.

Mr. Creighton? Yes.

Mr. Dinault? Yes. Mr. Bacon? Yes. Mr. Schoonover? Yes. Dr. Felter?

Yes.

Mr. Vacas?

Yes. Motion passes 7-0. A motion to approve resolution number 26-1072 would be in order.

Thank you, Mayor. I move to approve resolution number 26-1072. Second. We have a motion and a second.

Will the city clerk please call the roll?

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

Yes.

Mr. Bacchus? Yes. Ms. Essex?

Yes.

Motion passes 7-0. We'll now 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. Councilor, 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 presented. There are 13 items A through M. Second. We have a motion and a second with the city.

Mr. Bacchus.

Yes. Ms. Essex.

Yes.

Yes. Mr. Dinault.

Yes.

Mr. Bacon. Yes. Mr. Schoonover. Yes. Dr. Felter.

Yes.

Motion passes 7-0.

Okay, and we'll now move to new business. Item A is consideration of ordinance number 26-42, authorizing issuance of the city's taxable industrial revenue bonds in an amount not to exceed $10,521,660 for CB Olathe Holdings LLC for the construction of a 26,271-square-foot commercial facility at 200 West Santa Fe. This is for the construction of Charbar in downtown Olathe. The City Council expressed intent to issue these bonds back in August of 2025. Is there a need for a presentation from staff or questions of staff? A motion to approve the bonds would be in order.

Thank you, and I'm happy to make this motion. I move to approve Ordinance 26-42. Second. We have a motion and a second.

Will the City Clerk please call the roll?

Dr. Felter?

Yes.

Mr. Vakas? Yes. Ms. Essex? Yes. Mr. Creighton? Yes. Mr. Dinault?

Yes.

Mr. Bacon?

Yes.

Mr. Schoonover? Yes.

Motion passes 7-0. Now we'll move to item B. Item B is consideration of resolution number 26-1075, which is SU 26-0006, requesting approval of a special use permit for community food and personal support services, non-residential for Starfish Project Foundation located southwest of West 135th Street and South Brougham Drive. Planning recommended denial 5-3. We've received, and the room is full and I'm sure a lot of people are here for this particular item, but we have received a significant amount of input on this permit application, emails, text messages, phone calls, letters. We actually, many of us had an opportunity to see the planning commission. So hundreds of emails as well as phone calls and text messages, as I said, in addition to the public comment. at the Planning Commission and also at our council meeting last two weeks ago. So thank you to everyone for sharing your input. It's clear that those on both sides of this issue are very passionate and this is very incredibly important to all of us. So with that, I'm going to let Planning and Development Manager Kim Hollingsworth present or give us a presentation to start us off.

All right, thank you, council members. Kim Hollingsworth, planning and development manager. So this is a request for a special use permit for the community food and personal support services use, which is the collection and distribution of food and personal care items. And it does require a special use permit in this zoning district. The property would retain the CP1 planned neighborhood business district, which it has maintained over the past 47 years. This special use is in alignment with the Elevate Olathe Conference of Plan Future Land Use Designation of Community Commercial. Community Commercial is for commercial developments located along major roadways. They are located within areas that serve the local population and those traveling throughout the city. Special use permits are considered against the approval criteria outlined in our Unified Development Ordinance, or UDO. The first being that the application meets the UDO golden criteria, which is outlined in the staff report. Second, that the governing body can place restrictions on the duration of the special use permit and other requirements that are deemed necessary. And finally, a final site development plan can be required, which our staff is recommending that in this circumstance to make additional improvements to the property. So the presentation this evening is really going to focus around what we have heard. Most frequently discussed items during the Planning Commission public hearing held on July 27th, and we received a total of about 215 letters related to this application. So those topics include character of the neighborhood, traffic volume and access, public safety topics, and support for the organization. I'm going to start with character of the neighborhood. This is a key golden criteria factor and a special use determination. It is used by all cities in Kansas, but in Olathe, our UDO defines it more specifically with the following criteria. So we're looking at land use height, floor area, structural mass, siding, open space, architectural style, and building materials. So for land use, there's a mix of office, retail, and restaurant uses along 135th Street, which is a major commercial corridor throughout our city. It is actually classified as an expressway in this area at the intersection of Brougham, which is classified as a collector roadway. Additionally, the nearest single-family residential home is located about 230 feet away from the existing building, and the homes are located to the south. So the remaining criteria are really revolving around built form, building placement, construction features of the property, which are not changing with this application. So I'm going to turn it over to Charlie Love, our chief development engineer, to start to walk us through the traffic topic.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Charlie Love, Chief Development Engineer. I really have four topics that I'm going to kind of touch on. The first is access. The second is going to touch on hours of operation. The third one is going to be a discussion about vehicle trip generation. And the last one is going to be a short discussion just on the ongoing improvements that are going out there along 135th Street. So first, access. There's two points of access to this property. These are original to the property when it was first developed, and they've mostly remained unchanged for the last 30 years. And those points of access are there is a right-in only right here off of 135th Street. If you were to take that access and come into the site, there is a access easement that actually goes across this AutoZone property that could also access this property. So that's the first access. The second access is here off of Brohm, circled there on the screen. And that's a full access. So that's in, out, right, left. It's a full access there at that location. So those are the access points. The next topic I want to touch on is hours of operation. And I want to start by showing the hours of operation for the surrounding commercial properties at this intersection. Most of the properties, so I'm showing all the different uses that are kind of around this area, Kohl's, Library, the AutoZone, the dental offices. Most of these businesses, they're on the north side. They have that kind of starting time about 9 a.m. There is some retail right there next to the library, and that starting time kind of varies depending on the day of the week or which business. I think there's four or five small businesses that are in there. Additionally, there on the south side of 135th Street, I think the AutoZone, it has a 7.30 a.m. start time and also 8 a.m. start time for that dental offices. Previous uses that have been around in this area, there was Of course, previously there at the Indian Creek Library, it used to be a Hy-Vee. It used to have an operation hours of 6 to 10 p.m. And also the Aldi's actually used to be in this exact building. I don't know the exact time that it actually opened, but the other two Aldi's in Olathe actually have a, one opens at 8.30 and one opens at 9. So I've provided both of those, but they do both close at 8 p.m. So those are just kind of the operating hours. The reasons why I'm kind of pointing these out, first, I'm kind of just trying to show that the surrounding properties, these proposed hours are consistent with the neighboring commercial properties that are out there. And then the second one, mostly that I really want to key in, because this is going to kind of lead into what I'm going to talk about in regards to what I'm looking at. and what staff looked at in regards to peak hour traffic volumes. And the applicant's hours of operation are Monday through Friday. They're proposing to have a 9 a.m. opening time and a 5 p.m. closing time. Additionally, every second Saturday of each month, there's a time where they will be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. So that's the proposed, and I think that's in this special use permit. for the proposed hours of operation. I want to key in on that 9 a.m. start time. I also want to, like we talked earlier, or I pointed out, there's 9 a.m.s for quite a bit of the commercial properties that are on the north side of 135th Street as well. That becomes important because when we look at the peak a.m. traffic, that morning rush hour traffic, that typically falls around that approximate time at 7.30 to 8.30 a.m. So these hours of operation when a lot of these businesses are opening their doors for business in this commercial area is right after that peak hour volume. So when I go forward and we start talking about traffic volumes, I'm going to focus on the PM peak hour in that traffic because it's the most critical one. So I'm going to move to that now. This slide here is showing a lot of uses and it's showing it in a format that's Maybe not typical for what I have traditionally showed you all on other applications. And there's a couple of different reasons why I've done that. But what I really want you to key in on is all these land use codes are permitted in this CP1 commercial district. That land use code comes out of the traffic engineering's manual. It's a trip generation manual. And I'm showing a PM peak trip generation. And that trip generation is based on 1,000 square foot of a building. And so, for instance, Strip Retail Plaza, which is the one that I've chosen to kind of highlight on this one, is 6.6 trips per 1,000 square feet of building. And I'm keying on that one because the other thing I want to point out is this particular use of starfish, there is not a glass slipper perfect fit. in that trip generation manual that fits this use and their exact services exactly. And that happens occasionally on just different types of businesses and the way that they operate. And so what staff has done is we said, okay, let's take a conservative approach. What's kind of a mimicking type of use that is here, but also choose something that is conservative. And what I've chose and what I'm showing there is a retail plaza. Just basically retail. And so that's generating a 6.6 traffic for a 1,000 square foot building. This particular building is just over 15,000 square feet. So for that particular one, that retail, you're generating about 99 trips. That's in, out, it's total trips, okay? In comparison, there's the Aldi's grocery store. I have that used that's right below it. And the PM peak that it generates is nine trips per thousand square foot. okay so that's 36 percent more than what this conservative number of this retail is that that i've shown here um there's been different numbers that have been thrown out there in regards to well how much traffic will visit the site we've we've heard that there's 40 people that come in and so 40 and so i say okay well there's 40 people that come in the building that means there's 40 cars coming in there's 40 cars going out so 80 trips and And that retail plaza, that retail, I'm telling you is about 99 trips. So it's a conservative number in regards to giving comparison to other uses that could come in on this site. Now, the other reason why I'm breaking it out this way is this is a unique little, this is a three acre site with a 15,000 square foot building. There's not, a fast food restaurant is not going to move into a 15,000 square foot building. So how do I give you some type of frame of reference for, okay, so if something, that use was to come in on site, it would probably be a redevelopment project where you tear down that building and that use comes in on site. It's an approved use within that CP1 district. So what I'm trying to do, and the reason, again, why I focused on that PM, peak and that rate was to really give you what I would say is more of an apples to apples comparison of if that commercial, a different commercial use came in on that site, what type of traffic would it generate? Now this specific 15,000 square foot building, there's a possible that that 15,000 square foot building may be broken up even into different uses. There could be three businesses put in there. There could be four businesses. And all of these different things, depending on what goes in or what goes on that side, is going to generate different types of traffic. For purposes of comparing this proposed use, we used the retail, which is a 6.6 PMP, and it compares to that grocery store of Aldi's, which was previously estimated about nine trips per hour, or nine trips per 1,000 square feet. The next thing I'm going to move on to is just specifically just the intersection improvements that are going on out there. The city has a street preservation plan that's of course milling and overlaying and making some storm sewer and a lot of various improvements on 135th Street. The other thing that it's doing is there are some old poles out there. They've reached their maximum service life. I think they're approximately 30 years old. And so those signal poles are getting replaced. Because those signal poles are getting replaced, to be proactive and try to make sure that this intersection meets really what we would say is more of our standard fully improved intersection, we're moving those poles in order to do so to accommodate two new turn lanes are going to be added so those are shown in the red there there's going to be a new right turn lane if you're traveling westbound on 135th street you can turn right and then go northbound on brome or if you're traveling northbound on brome there'll be a new right turn lane there as well that you can take and then turn to go east on 135th street both of those two improvements will make improvements just the whole efficiency to the intersection itself. These aren't related to the Starfish project. They were already planned and programmed with the city's street preservation plan. But I just want to point these out because I think it's beneficial to understand that there's actually improvements going on to this intersection. And I'm also comparing this proposed use to And all these grocery store that sat there for many years and operated effectively without significant issues. And we also know that there's also other improvements that are coming to this intersection. So with all those things combined, it's staff's opinion that the traffic impacts based on this use will not be an impact that's negative to what we already have seen in previous years at this site. So this time I'm going to turn it back over to Kim.

Council member Schoonover had a question of Charlie.

Yes. Okay. Charlie, thanks so much for that presentation. Can you confirm, are those improvements that you just pointed to, are those going on right now as part of the current work that's going on over there? Yes, it's going on right now. Okay. So when will those be open?

Do we know? It's going to be done by this year, I would anticipate. October is what Nate Baldwin, city engineer in the back, is nodding to me. So this October.

We've got a room full of people, so I guess it'll be done in October. Okay.

I said fall just for clarification.

Okay. Is that it?

Yes. Councilmember Dinnall.

Hey, Charlie.

One more question.

One more question. Thank you, Mayor. Yes. Speaking of the traffic, real quick, did you by chance have on hand traffic numbers for that intersection during the time when Aldi occupied the building. And I guess Quilter's HQ is what was in there most recently.

We have a couple of different traffic counts that we've compiled. So there is a traffic, we had a traffic count there in 2012. And so Aldi's opened in 1995. And I believe it closed in 2017, 2018, where there's a timeframe. The total traffic that was going through that intersection was approximately 44,000 vehicles. So that's in every direction. There's different, of course, like the north and south doesn't have nearly as much. Just like east and west, the traffic volume that's going east and west on 135th Street was about 33,500 vehicles. That's 2012, okay? Now I'm going to flash forward to we took a traffic count in September of 2025, and so that would have been after Aldi's close. The total that was actually going through that intersection was right at 35,000 vehicles. So I can't necessarily say or attribute why that actually is. I will tell you that in the 2012 vehicle count, the traffic that was actually coming northbound seemed significantly higher than what it was in 2025. But when you look at the east and west vehicles, they seem to be in 2012, it was 33,000, 33,500. And in 2025, it was 30,500. So relatively speaking, day a week, what's going on, you can get variation through traffic numbers. But for the most part, it's been consistent through the years.

And did you say, I heard you say northbound. Did you have north and southbound numbers at all?

We do.

So I can go through all of them if you want me to, if you want exact numbers.

Just for the two years that you were saying? So like, for instance, all the traffic that was on the north leg of that intersection. So this is the north side of the intersection on 2012. It was like 3,100 vehicles. In 2025, it was 2,300 vehicles. When I look at the south leg of that intersection, this is where there's a little bit of discrepancy maybe in those numbers. But in 2012, it was 7,300 vehicles on the south leg of that intersection. And then in 2025, on the south leg of that intersection, it was 2,000. So I don't know why that discrepancy was. I mean, that's a long time ago that we took that 2012 count. I don't have a lot of counts in between those, but it still gives you an estimate of what's been kind of going on. And I think that really what I would key in on is really more of that 40,000 type numbers, really what you're going to see traveling through the corridor. Okay.

That's interesting. Thank you very much. Yeah.

All right, a couple concluding items, and then we will wrap up. I'm going to move on to the public safety topic just briefly here. After the neighborhood meeting, which was held on July 6th, the applicant did meet with several adjacent neighbors surrounding this property. Also with our Latha Police Department discussed potential mitigating opportunities that could occur on the property. And then also discussed further was staff potential for security cameras and enforceable signage on the property that was primarily around this door located on the west, I will circle it on the aerial in the image, west side of the building. That is where passenger vehicles would arrive to provide drop-off of donation items or individuals can walk into the front door of the building. but we talked about the use of security cameras and other factors that could be added to the property. So I'm going to transition to the letters of support, items that we've received through public hearings. I am giving you a summarized version of what we heard, right, from individuals that submitted information and support. So one being overall community need and public benefit of the organization, proven history of successful safe operations at past locations, an appropriate site with adequate parking access and facilities within the building, Concerns about traffic, loitering, and homelessness are considered unsupported or manageable. And Starfish Project Foundation is viewed as a valued community asset that reflects Olathe's values. Again, items that I'm translating that we received through public comments and support. All right, I'm going to transition to the Planning Commission public hearing. So during the Planning Commission meeting that was held on July 27th, Planning Commissioners talked about many topics, but a few that were talked about the most were compatibility of the use with the neighborhood, the public safety topics, traffic and access, and use of the box truck. There's a very small waiver request for the use of a box truck that would be used to pick up items from other locations and bring it to the property about twice per week. So ultimately, the Planning Commission did provide a motion to recommend denial, and that did pass by a vote of 5-3. After that Planning Commission meeting, we did start receiving protest petitions. And so the culmination of that, that the protest was considered valid because 42% of the eligible land area, that's within 200 feet of the property, did submit a valid protest. What all that means is that the council vote needed this evening to pass support the special use permit is six council members. So I'm going to conclude on my recommendation. Staff does recommend approval of the special use permit with the following stipulations. First, that the duration of the permit be limited to a period of two years. Second, that the uses, activities, hours of operation occurring on the property will be as described on the statement of purpose, which we provided as an exhibit attached to your resolution for consideration this evening. Also that no donations, merchandise, equipment will be stored or displayed outside the building. And granting of that waiver that permits the use of one truck where the box portion of the truck measures 20 feet or less in length. Finally, stipulations on a final site development plan. It's typical that you do that after approval of the land use. And so we would review a couple things, landscaping, screening, parking lot paving, things like that during that time. So city council action this evening can be approval of the special use permit request, which is six votes, denial of the special use permit, which would take four votes, or returning the application to the planning commission for further consideration. So that does conclude my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions. Also following me, the applicant, Mr. Laverne Fields, is here to make a presentation for the applicant team. Thank you.

Thanks, Kim. We do have a couple of questions. Council Member Creighton.

Thank you. Ms. Hollingsworth, a couple of questions. I had three, but Mr. Loves took care of the traffic. First of all, it wasn't too long ago that another organization called Goodwill attempted to locate that. Could you please explain why this is different and why the Goodwill did not advance and why this one is something that staff is...

supportive of and then i'll get to the second question after that yeah great i will start and then i believe our city attorney can chime in with any more information because he was more directly involved at that time so this community food and personal support services use is not classified in our olathe municipal code as a distance restricted business we have a couple business types that are classified in that category And really the main difference here is that there's no exchange of money for the items, for the food or clothing. And the different land use type that would be distance restricted, there is an exchange of money in receipt of those goods. And, you know, if there's anything else... that you'd like to provide? Sure.

So in regard to the Goodwill situation, so they, you may recall they had operated where the Crunch Fitness is located to the west of this location. They then closed that location and then sought to open, renovate and open their Goodwill store at this location. However, their license, they did have to obtain a distance restricted business license to operate at that other location. as a thrift shop they're selling used goods there and they were grandfathered because they were located within one mile of another thrift shop being savers at the point that they let their license lapse they're no longer grandfathered they later applied for a new permit they were denied the permit by the city clerk's office litigation ensued and ultimately they chose to locate a different location they they operate up off of stringline road now but that was entirely the basis for that that issue involving Goodwill. Does that answer your question, Councilmember?

It does. Thank you. And then Ms. Hollingsworth, the second question. This is a special use permit, much more restrictive than a general business classification. We have SUPs all over the city. And I just want to make sure that it's been communicated very well to the applicant. We don't discuss, so I have no idea if this is going to pass or fail. But if it passes, first of all, are they fully understanding that they are going to be held to higher standards, that at any point there could be complaints and they could lose the SUP. There could be a cease and desist or plus, If it does pass, they're going to have to be back here going through this again in two years. I just want to do two things. One, can you talk about what the enforcement is? And second, making sure that we, as a city, were very clear with the applicants what the potential ramifications was if they fail to uphold if it's passed.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll start with enforcement of issues that would not impact the entire special use permit. And so we've taken feedback, any concerns, complaints, the things that come in through Olathe Connect, staff reviews that, completes an investigation. An example might be a property maintenance item, right? Our staff would go out to the property, investigate, and then reach out to whoever property or the applicant and make sure that is resolved. There's usually a reasonable amount of time that has to be resolved. That's kind of a one-item issue. There is also a process formalized in the UDO that is the revoking of a permit. So you go through the revocation process. That would be removal of the entire use. You cannot operate on the property any further. It's a very detailed process. There's a public hearing. It actually spells out, you could go to the planning commission or the city council to be the determining body on that, but it's a very clear process. And that means you would not be able to operate further. Those are items that we discuss with applicants. So they're made aware. There's the criteria, the stipulations, right? So in most zoning scenarios, sometimes there'll be some land use restrictions, but typically we just rely on the UDL. Special use permits have that little deeper level of scrutiny and items that get memorialized in stipulations that we check up on. We look at, especially in the renewal process that would occur right after that expiration period, usually we're before it, right? Making sure we're renewing and actively going through the process. There's another public hearing held, right? Let's say it's approved at two years. You're coming through with all of these same steps that we're doing now. So it's a much more detailed process that we have discussed.

Thank you. Council Member Baucus.

Thank you, Mayor. Kim, I want to come back to a couple of comments Charlie made, but for you. We talked about other potential businesses that could move into this location, not requiring an SUP. Charlie mentioned a liquor store, but it could also, he said it was too large of a space for a fast food place. Could be fast casual, though.

Yeah, either one, yeah.

But it could also be a corn-operated laundromat.

Could be.

Could be a vape shop?

Yes.

Could be an outdoor animal kennel?

Yes.

Could be a commercial bus depot?

Could be.

And I would think, if I imagine a liquor store there with the bright lights and extended hours, or a vape shop, or a corn-operated laundromat, those aren't a particularly good look into the entrance of Briarwood, in my opinion. It's my opinion. Thank you. I appreciate that. Mm-hmm.

Council Member Felter.

Thank you, Mayor. So the four votes to deny it, is that moving the goalpost on previous requirements? Can you talk about that a bit? Has that always been the standard, or has it just been when there's a protest petition, the six positive votes required, if that standard wasn't met, was it by default denied?

Yeah, I'll say one thing, and then I see that Mr. Shaver is leaning forward as well and can provide additional feedback. So this one has the protest petition, right? So all of these criteria or action options are based on that. If there had not been a protest petition, it was considered not valid, none were filed, it actually would have been five positive votes required because of the planning commission's action. So that's an example of sometimes where you see that number change to five.

Have we always had the deny element meet requiring for, or has it defaulted to a denial if it hasn't passed?

So, Councilmember, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled in the case called Austin Properties v. City of Shawnee in 2025 that the applicant in a special use permit or rezoning case is entitled to a final decision by the governing body. They determined that the inability to obtain enough positive votes is not akin to a final decision. That means that the governing body, in this case tonight, would need to continue taking votes until it got to either six to approve the special use permit, four to deny, or four to remand. Another option could be to You can table it, ask for us to reconsider this whole thing again and add a date certain. You could amend the stipulations and vote on that, independent of this. But we can play it out depending on what happens. There's other, I guess, permutations to what could happen here. But I don't want to get in the way of whatever process the council wants to choose here.

Thank you. So I'm just clarifying that we haven't moved the goalpost that the Kansas Supreme Court has ruled on. Did you say Austin versus Shawnee?

Austin properties v. City of Shawnee. Correct. Yeah.

Okay. And so that is what has embedded this. four positive votes required for a denial.

Correct. And you're tracking how we had traditionally interpreted the statute, and many cities had interpreted the statute before, that the lack of the ability to achieve the number was akin to a denial, but the Supreme Court determined that's not their view of what the statute is, so got to keep going.

Great. Well, I have confidence in us that we will come to some resolution tonight, but I wanted that on the record so that everybody would understand what we're dealing with here. We need to have a plan going forward.

I have a follow-up on that, Mr. Shaver. So let's say that four votes and we turn it back to the Planning Commission. That was one of our options. How many times can you do that? I mean, we send it back to the Planning Commission, they deny it again, we are stuck here, and we send it back again. So how long does that occur? The

Austin Properties case didn't say how many times you could have the volleyball match if you chose to engage in that, Mayor. There's no limit to that. As long as you keep working and working, you can keep working until you come to a final determination. As long as you're trying. What happened in Austin Properties is they simply didn't get to, they had to overcome protest petition, didn't get the required votes, and just, they were done. and that then the property owner...

Didn't it say, too, that one of the options was the applicant could then sue the city, I guess, at some point?

Correct. And so if that happened, if the governing body didn't achieve a resolution of some sort, the applicant could sue to compel the city to act. It doesn't mean that they sue to force an outcome. It means that they sue to force the action. one way or another, they would have a right to ask the court to compel the city to do that if the city were unable to do that.

So would the court then decide for the city? No. No? They would just say, you need to do this, and we're like, we're trying. It's going back and forth. The decision remains in the governing body's hands. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Felder, do you have another question?

I do. Thank you, Mayor. Kim, do you have more to present, or is it time to ask the police chief for some data. That's what I wanted to ask. Yeah, I have provided all the information I was going to provide. Yeah, let's go ahead and ask questions of staff. Yeah, I would love for Chief Butad to speak a bit about the data that you provided this week to counsel.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. Mike Butad, your police chief. Kim, can I take this off? I don't have a formal presentation, but I have a couple of slides that you were provided previously, probably slightly different, and I'll explain that. And then, of course, I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. I tried to do these for perspective. So the starfish location on Clareborn, this is the dates that they were in business at that time. And this is at the town square shops. So for the entire area, which is the area in pink, The police department responded to 104 total calls for service in that area. That is a lot of different things. So that's traffic stops, that's alarm calls, a fire call where a police officer may respond, a lot of different calls. I know that there were some questions about If any of those attributed to or were associated with people that were homeless or unhoused and 11 of those 104 calls dealt with somebody that was homeless. And then out of all of the 104 calls, only seven of those calls for service were specific to the address that Starfish was occupying at the 134 South Claiborne number B or letter D address. And then only two of those incidents actually resulted in a police report of some sort. And then when they moved to Santa Fe and K-7, very similar. They were there for about a year as well. There was 52 total calls for service in that defined area, so we shortened it a little bit. Starfish is really in that corner next to Brown Bag Liquor. The orange dots represent calls for service, but they could also be multiple calls for service. So similar there was 11 calls for service involving a homeless person or unhoused person, but there was only two calls for service that was specific to the address that they occupied at 1078 West Santa Fe. And only one of those calls resulted in a police report.

And that's the two you're presenting?

Yeah, that's the two places they occupied. The location that they're at on 119th Street, we have not been to.

Okay. Okay. Thank you for this. I think it's very helpful and data-oriented decision-making. So I really appreciate it. Thank you, Chief.

Council Schoonover.

Thank you very much, Mayor. Thank you, Chief. I just want to confirm, it's illegal to be homeless in Olathe, is it? Not that I'm aware of. All right. That was my impression, too. But based on some of the feedback we've received, I was starting to doubt that. So that's what I have.

Council Member Bacchus. Thank you, Mayor. So, Chief, the area around the Indian Creek Library on the north side, alleged homeless camp. I mean, we have bicycle patrols back there routinely. There is no homeless camp back there, right?

Yes, thank you for asking me that. So I was paying attention to the Planning Commission meeting as well, and I think somebody stated there may be some encampments on the trail, and I really highly doubted that, and I wanted to confirm that. So I sent our bike unit out. I think they were out on the trails at different times of the day, five to ten different occasions, and there was no sign of any encampments at all in that area.

And the bottom line, I mean, if we had a couple of neighborhood kids who wanted to camp out or a homeless person that wanted to camp out, it's illegal, right? That is correct.

Those are city trails. They close at night. The trails are not closed at night, but you cannot camp on public land overnight, correct? Good. Thanks, Chief. I appreciate that. You're welcome.

Council Member Dinnall. Thank you, Mayor. Chief, one quick question. You showed us these two sites, and I was curious, how do the incident rates for these compare to others, similar size retail locations? Are they typical? Are they high and alarmingly so? Like, what's...

I would say for these locations it's typical, but every strip mall is different, has its own uniqueness to it. So there may be a large retailer. If there's a large retailer, we're gonna be there way more often. If it's a busy strip area, we're gonna be there way more often. If there's a bar and grill that's very active, we may be there way more often as well. So it's hard to equate or compare strip centers, but I would say that yes, this is very average.

Okay. And one other question. In these two, you had mentioned, I think it was the first location, Claiborne, there was, this one says 11 involving, so that's not Claiborne, but involving a homeless person. And I was curious, are there other locations that you're encountering homeless people?

Yes.

Okay. A little, a lot, not really sure how to ask that question.

I have a hard time explaining that. So I don't know what a lot would be. There are homeless people in our city. Yes.

Okay. Thank you. Council Member Essex.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chief, for being here to answer questions. I got, probably all of us got communications claiming that police have responded to homeless people and just left them there. Can you clarify what do we do when we get a call that there's a homeless person in a place they're not supposed to be? What is the process?

So it's okay to be homeless.

So let me clarify.

I know exactly where you're going. If a person is not wanted on private property, Yeah. You know, we do a lot with outreach. We try to find assistance for people through community charities. And we have our ACT unit that does a lot of outreach and has hygiene products and things like that as well. Not everybody wants help. But if somebody's in a place where somebody doesn't want them to be and they have the ability to remove them, then we can certainly do that.

I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you.

Chief, my office is pretty close to downtown, so I've had a lot of homeless situations over the last five years, dealt with people that have been sleeping there, camped out. Matter of fact, one, I had two guys at once. So dealt with it a lot, and it's disturbing to a business, obviously. And sometimes it's difficult to try to find solutions, and when we were trying to work for a place for these people to go, it didn't happen overnight. It took sometimes months. So I don't know, you know, it's not illegal to be homeless, but trespassing is obviously illegal. So how do you go about enforcing those rules and, you know,

Right, so we have somebody that is experiencing somebody on their property they don't want there. That's trespassing and that is obviously a violation and we can do something about that immediately. It doesn't have to take months or even 24 hours in most cases. The thing that I would ask is if people do find encampments or people are on property that they don't want them to be on and we can legally do something about that, please let us know so we can take action. You know, sometimes we're just not aware of that.

Okay.

Council Member Vaucus.

Thanks, Mayor. So on the topic of homelessness, we ought to talk about it a little bit because it comes up again and again as relates to this SUP, and the reality of it is Starfish, while they certainly will support people in a homeless status. That's such a small percentage of the actual business. I want to take a moment and talk about homelessness because if we're going to talk about that, we shouldn't be collectively vilifying that population because it is very complex, period. So I take a moment and say that Johnson County United Community Services orchestrates what is termed an annual point-in-time count. Now, this is a KC Metro-wide endeavor, but specifically here in Johnson County, it's JoCo UCS that does that. And they work with the various social welfare organizations who interface with the un- or underhoused people in their canvas to develop a countywide count. The most recent point-in-time count occurred on January 28th, and that count is 321 people in Johnson County that are experiencing homelessness. A couple of points to be made is that 37% of the adults in this category are actually employed. 52% have actual income, whether that's employment income, Social Security, and or disability benefits. The average monthly income of this 321 people group is $1,868 a month. But note that in Johnson County, the medium cost for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,324. So you can understand that 52% of the folks in this report are having to live in their cars. They don't have a choice. And 45% of the respondents who are experiencing homelessness say that this is new for them this year. They moved into a homeless status because of circumstances beyond their control. Does the homeless community include bums, however you define that term? People with substance abuse and mental health issues? People who are lazy and work as panhandlers? Well, yes, I think it does, in my opinion. But arguably, the majority of people experiencing homelessness this past year, this past January 28th, were people of all ages and backgrounds simply struggling to make ends meet. We should not be vilifying the homeless population. Portraying them as a boogeyman who will run amok through our neighborhoods is just pure poppycock. And it's a red herring for us to be having that conversation. I'd also note there's one other way that we look at homelessness, and that's within our school district, USD 233. Now, some of the kids that they identify homeless are also in the point-in-time count, but they have different measurements. And currently, the school district is treating about 400 kids in the district who they consider in various shades of homelessness. That's the homeless population. The vast majority of those people that are homeless could be you or me if we just had a different set of circumstances. Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Dinnall. Thank you, Mayor. Dean, I appreciate you saying that. I want to add one comment. This is how I feel. At the end of the day, we are talking about people who are disadvantaged, and my goal is to see better outcomes for people. I KNOW THIS IS A DIFFICULT SPECIAL USE PERMIT TO CONSIDER. WE'VE HEARD A LOT OF FEEDBACK BOTH SIDES. BUT I'LL BE, YOU KNOW, I'VE BEEN CONSIDERING THIS VERY HEAVILY FOR THE LAST MONTH OR TWO. AND I JUST WANT EVERYBODY TO REMEMBER THAT THE BEST THING WE CAN DO IS LOOK TOWARD THE BEST OUTCOMES FOR PEOPLE AND AS WE THINK OF THIS. SO HOPE EVERYONE WILL KEEP THAT IN MIND WITH ME. THANK YOU.

I've got a few questions. First off, I don't really necessarily want this to be about homeless, but I did want this to, because we all know that there are certain businesses that affect other businesses, depending on who your neighbors are. And I think that's what we got in our information here from the location at Santa Fe and K7, is that this particular operation was having a negative effect on its neighbors. And so I think it's safe to say, and I think I believe, that this particular use can negatively affect its adjacent property owners. And so nobody here is disparaging Starfish or their efforts in wanting to help people that are needy. That's not the issue. And believe me, I would say 99% of the emails we received were all in favor of Starfish's efforts. It was just whether or not this particular location is the right location for them and how they would negatively impact their neighbors. And we are looking at history, too. So that's where I'm coming from. I'm not trying to disparage homeless. I'm just saying that there are particular businesses that can have an effect on their neighbors. And so trying to find a place for them I think is a little bit challenging, especially when in our code we say that this particular use requires a special use permit. And with special use permits, there are requirements that are in our code that applicants have to go by, you know, public hearing and notification, and we have a protest petition. opportunity. So my question around the protest petition, Kim, this might be for you. THERE WAS AN INDIVIDUAL ON THE SOUTH THAT IT'S BLUE. SO I'M GUESSING THAT THEY PROBABLY FILLED OUT A PROTEST PETITION, BUT IT WAS INVALIDATED FOR SOME REASON. IF THAT HAD NOT BEEN INVALIDATED, WE PROBABLY WOULD HAVE HAD ALL OF THOSE PROPERTIES ON THE SOUTH RED. IS THAT CORRECT? THEY DID SIGN SOMETHING THAT WE INVALIDATED IT. IS THAT CORRECT?

Yeah, I'll start there while I'm reopening the presentation so I can show you the map. So, yes, there was an individual that filled out a petition, did not have the proper documentation attached to the deed. And so we did claim, we looked at it amongst various staff. We do a lot of thorough checking that that one petition was counted as invalid. Overall, really, it's that 20% threshold that matters. Right. But looking at the map visually, this is the property we were just talking about, the blue that I circled that would be invalid. Ones that were in green, though, did not protest at all. So there was a little bit of a mix.

Okay. You talked a little bit about a restriction, or maybe it was... Mr. Shaver, that talked a little bit about the restriction that we have on thrift stores. And it looks like there's a little loophole in our restriction, and that is the only time it restricts it is if you sell. But if you have secondhand goods and you're just giving it away, then our restriction of a mile doesn't apply. Is that what occurred here?

It's really a like-to-like restriction on the same type. that the council has chosen to include in that ordinance which it was we were intentional about including the definition of thrift stores to include sale and tobacco shops um shops as you mentioned those those are the general category of those that are restricted and There are some provisions for grandfathering for those that existed at the time we did the ordinance, but council was intentional in our view of why it chose to define thrift shops the way it did.

So there's a possibility that this might have been restricted based on distance, but because they're not selling the items, I heard that tonight, that is... A potential loophole, and that's why it didn't apply, and so we can't restrict it based on distance from savers.

Yeah, that's why it's not categorized the same way as a thruster.

We have this particular zoning is CP2 or CP1. CP1 is correct, yes. And the P is planned. It was a special planned district for Aldi's use, I guess.

It actually predates Aldi's. It was zoned in 1979. It was hundreds of acres that included the commercial properties along 135th, the entire Briarwood subdivision. So it was a significant area that received that planned district zoning. In the 1970 version of the UDO, it was very brief. There's not a lot of description about what a planned district means, but we have evolved that district over time, added additional standards into the CP1 district.

And now CP1 isn't even in our zoning.

It is a retired district, so you cannot actively zone to the district. It was retired in 2014. It still exists on properties. We have about 40 properties that have C1 and CP1 zoning. I think it's more like 20-some that have CP1 specifically, but it's nothing you can actively zone to.

So how common is it to have loading docks in C1?

There are a couple instances where that might occur. I wouldn't say it's very, very common because a lot of the land uses in that zoning district are offices. You do have some retail. The YMCA is in C1, so there's quite a variety of items. There's even some residential. Some of those were zoned back in the 70s, 80s, and they've just carried forward. I'd say it's slightly less common to have the loading dock, but there's a large variety of uses in this district.

Okay. COUNCILMEMBER SCHMIDT, OVER.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. AND I AGREE, I THINK IT'S A LITTLE BIT OF A MISNOMER TO FOCUS ON THE HOMELESS ISSUE BECAUSE MY UNDERSTANDING OF of Starfish based on what we've received. Starfish isn't a homeless shelter. It's an organization that provides food and clothing assistance to people in need. And so I wanted to focus Councilmember Baucus throughout some statistics. And I wanted to say that to qualify for the SNAP program in the state of Kansas, a family of four has to make under $3,483 a month. $3,483 a month. In 2024, 9.5% of households with kids participated in the SNAP program. 23.6% of single mom households participated in the SNAP program. So when we look at, I think, the issues of this, there's certainly a need for this in the community. And I think you're also right that we do need to focus on the impact to the neighbors in the community. Chief, I would ask, how long have you been a police officer?

Just a short, almost 34 years.

Thank you. I would imagine that of all of us in this room, you are probably the foremost expert on policing, right? I would think so. Yeah. So based on your 34 years of policing, do you agree with this statement? Crime is lower when people's basic needs are being met. In general theory, yes. Okay. So I think when we look at organizations like Starfish, we need to take a broader look at what it is we're looking at our community here and the positive impact that these organizations bring. Yes, I understand that there might be sometimes that a business has somebody called on or the police are called to help with somebody, that's no different than Walmart. That's no different than Aldi. That's no different than anywhere else. And when somebody's breaking the law, you guys come in and you deal with it. We're very grateful for that. But I do think this idea that just because we decline to approve this or we deny this, the problem will go away. It's just a farce.

Council Member Felter.

Thank you, Mayor. I don't think that anybody that is opposing this believes that denying this will make the homeless problem go away, nor do I think we should make them villains in this scenario. We're looking at a land use application. And what is often the most significant investment in a family's life, their home, is potentially being impacted. We owe it to them to look and make sure we have the best policy written if we are going to grant a special use permit for starfish. And quite frankly, I think we can do a little bit better. I don't know if it's the appropriate time, but I would like to I mean, I have hesitation with the SUP as presented. I'm a longtime Starfish supporter and a big fan of the work you do, as you know, Laverne and Johnny. I've spoken with those in leadership at Starfish, and I've listened, I hate to admit, how many times to the planning meetings. And I think most of this is embedded in their comments that they are like, we are going to embrace these practices. But I think perhaps those with concerns with this location for this project, I think if we embed some of these SUP requirements or stipulations, it might give us guardrails and they might have more comfort going forward should we pass this. So could I just throw those out for consideration?

I think that might be appropriate. At some point, let's let the applicant speak. We are going to allow the applicant 10 minutes to address the council tonight.

Let me ask this. Laverne, would it be okay if I throw these out and then you can respond to what I've thrown out? Yeah, that'd be fine.

It might help them.

Because I did, I pulled Laverne and Johnny over and I said, surely we can find, we are Olathe, we can find a path forward. And they were amazing to talk to. So if it's okay, counsel, I just, and these are things that were basically spoken about, but I would like to see added as a stipulation. And Kim Hollingsworth, if you need to stand up and flag anything that's impractical, please do. But, and Eric, I emailed this to you. So the text you have in your email. I'd like to add prohibiting vehicle queuing, loading or unloading on brome and 135th. street, those neighborhood streets or 135th Street. Require all visitors and volunteers and employees to park on the property. You have a lot of parking spaces. Require a traffic and parking management plan, including designated circulation, drop-off and loading areas, kind of like we do at the schools. I know Laverne from back in the school board days. He was over our safety and security department. Yes, ma'am. Restrict truck deliveries and pickups to, so pickups and drop-offs, however you want to word it, deliveries to the hours of operation. So we won't have big trucks coming and going all hours of the day. Require functioning exterior lighting and security cameras covering entrances, the donation area, loading areas, and the parking lot. Designate a local manager who can respond to neighborhood concerns during the operating hours. Post this information on your website so they know who that is. Require Starfish to maintain a complaint and incident log and submit that periodically to the city staff. That's protected for you as well to make sure everything matches report-wise. Require review by city staff after six months of the SUP and then again at one year with the public SUP renewal hearing at the end of the two-year term. So that's a little bit of a change that we talked about. This was a two-year SUP, so we're modifying it a little bit. So we're reviewing at six months and then a year for the two-year SUP. And then clearly state in the stipulations that repeated or material violations may result in enforcement or revocation proceedings under the UDO. And then the last thing that I brainstormed was to establish a good neighbor committee. And this is an opportunity for us to show the world who Olathe is. consisting of representatives of Starfish, nearby residents, and the Briarwood Home Association, include a city staff member and someone from the Olathe Police Department. And this is primarily for communication. It's not a governing body. It's to work together. And I know you're going to be a good neighbor if this gets through. And to me, this embeds the most meaningful protections based on the biggest concerns I've heard. And then it allows Starfish to have a path forward and a framework to work in. And with that, Mayor, I pass it back to you for Laverne to do his thing.

Go ahead, Laverne. Okay, thank you. Thanks for being here. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, honorable members of the Olathe City Council. I am the Board Vice President and a volunteer for Starfish Project. I've been a volunteer for approximately eight years. As a representative of the Starfish Project, I'd like to take a few moments to provide important factual information to you. It is my hope to provide additional clarity regarding some of the information that has been shared and to dispel misrepresentations. To provide a little history regarding Starfish locations, we were first located at Claiborne in Santa Fe. We operated there for nearly eight years, but were forced to relocate due to the anticipated interstate interchange improvements for I-35 in Santa Fe. We became aware of a 1076 West Santa Fe location through a realtor who was assisting us with locating available commercial properties. We viewed it knowing full well this was not our ideal location, but also knowing this would be temporary as we continued our search for an appropriate building. That search had yielded nothing adequate for our operation and nothing we could afford. Our goal was an attempt to continue providing our services to the community. Therefore, we signed a two-year lease agreement with a 90-day vacate clause. There were challenges with this location almost from day one. Traffic became an issue, not because it was anything the community was experiencing. It was our access and servicality in competition with neighboring businesses receiving deliveries and parking vehicles. Customer client parking became a major concern. Neighboring customers were complaining they had to park too far away because our clients were consuming premium parking spots. We took ownership of those concerns and attempted to make adjustments to comply with neighboring business requests. However, the problem persisted. Parking became such an issue that we were served a 90-day vacate notice. While the sole issue driving the notice was parking, we took some bad press regarding litter on the property. We accept that. Though identifiable and not all ours, we chose to own it, clean it up, and not fight with our neighbors. We relocated to another temporary commercial storefront at 14910 West 119th. There have been no complaints from adjacent businesses regarding our operations or our clients. We've actually had neighboring businesses visit to inquire who was moving in and were surprised to know it was us. One business manager indicated she didn't even know we were there. This, too, is not an ideal location. More importantly, this is only a short-term non-renewable occupancy. A major question regarding the 161-75 West 35th that has been repeatedly raised is why this building? My direct response to that is, why not this building? It represents a standalone, commercially zoned facility that faces the neighboring commercial structure to the west. It's located among several commercial businesses to the east, north, and west. It also provides immediate access to a major east-west thoroughfare and possesses several features that Starfish desires but has never experienced. The building is standalone. Both of our previous locations, Clare Bourne in Santa Fe and 1076 West Santa Fe, were storefront shopping plaza structures. Our current temporary location is also a storefront shopping plaza facility. All of them shared the same operational challenges. parking was the number one concern registered at the West Santa Fe location. Providing some 130 dedicated parking spaces at the 161 75 location illustrates more sole use available parking than we've ever had and more than we consider adequate. It provides accountability. For the very first time, we can be held responsible for our own operational conduct and that of our clients. Because the property is not shared, we will own the activity on that property at the address of 16175 West 135th. The light commercial aspect of the building provides a welcoming, private, and professional appeal to our clients, affording them some dignity as they seek food and clothing assistance. The building has a dock, which for the very first time would provide us a safer and much more efficient transfer of food donations into our sorting and registration processes. Previously, we only had the option of offloading palletized items by hand, taking them through standard pedestrian doorways, placing them on pallets again, and then moving them to sorting areas. We've heard that Starfish Project doesn't fit the character of the neighborhood. We have learned that the City of Olathe's strategic plan addresses character of the neighborhood to be the compatibility of the physical structure adjacent to a residential neighborhood. We are not changing the physical structure of the building. We are changing and improving its appearance. We've committed to maintaining the replacing landscaping that hasn't been in place for many years. We have already trimmed hedges, mowed the lawn, pruned trees, all of which were severely overgrown and neglected long before we took interest in the building. In a concerted effort to be good neighbors, we will continue property enhancements pending the outcome of tonight's vote. For these reasons, I feel Starfish Project and the building at 16175 West Santa Fe does, in fact, meet the City of Olathe's character of the neighborhood intent through their comprehensive strategic plan. We have attempted to do our homework regarding the impact of our services, our community engagement, operating partnerships, and support provisions. These are all very well documented as part of the Elevator Latha, our community, our future. Due to my limited presentation time, I cannot provide a deep dive detailing all we do. You have been provided these documents in your data packets. I will share that we have and will continue to cooperate with support and support students in need through the Olathe Public Schools by providing food, clothing, and toiletry supplies to those families trying to make ends meet. Starfish Project is the grateful recipient of funding through the Mayor's Children's Fund for the past five years. We certainly appreciate that support and guarantee those funds go a long way toward supporting the children in our community. The need in our community knows no geographic boundaries. There is no east versus west or north versus south. The need was there before Starfish Project and it will continue to exist. That community need is why Starfish came to be. Due to the economic challenges and life in general, the need could increase. Starfish Project is trying to provide a small amount of non-qualifying and non-discriminatory support to those persons in need. The clients we currently serve represent families and people like you and me. Some represent domestic situations where the breadwinner is no longer providing support. Others suddenly find themselves in financial straits due to corporate downsizing, layoffs, etc. Neighbors are having to make difficult choices. Do we eat? Can I make the mortgage payment? Can I buy kiddos school clothes? Do we have to continue sharing a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo? We serve seniors whose Social Security, pensions, investments, et cetera, just don't keep up with the rising cost of living and the continued reduction of government-funded community support programs. We provide support to anyone who comes through our door. And yes, that includes those folks who are current without roofs over their heads. The unhoused community was already present in and around Olathe. It's a small number, but they've been there for years and they will be there whether we are permitted to open and operate for the special use permit under consideration this evening. Don't let the unhoused become the brunt of everything perceived wrong in our community. This is not true. This is not fair. Our unhoused clients comprise less than 5% of those we serve. The walk-up, walk-in numbers are minuscule. The majority have cars and are only temporarily unhoused. They are working to get back on their feet and find affordable housing. Traffic and safety have been raised as major concerns in the area. Realistically, regular day-to-day traffic is a non-issue. The City of Olathe is already making improvements to the intersection of Santa Fe and Broome. My experience tells me these enhancements will improve ingress and egress north to south on Broome from that intersection. Even before these improvements, Day-to-day traffic generated by Starfish Project is a non-concern. We have spoken with the Olathe Police Department to garner a professional relationship and to seek guidance in addressing any adverse community impact relative to Starfish Project's presence. Nothing has been documented. However, we are not stopping there. In our effort to be good neighbors, and I see I'm going to run over a little bit. Mayor, I've got about 30 seconds more.

You're fine.

Thank you. I told you I couldn't get it done. But continuing, thank you very much. We are not stopping there. In our effort to be good neighbors, we have already had a law enforcement professional conduct a septet audit of our facility. That is crime prevention through environmental design. We have met with Chief Boutot and his staff to discuss activating a city ordinance regarding unauthorized presence. which will call for a seamless enforcement of trespassing on the property. At this time, we are only asking that you, members of our city council, review the facts, work past false perceptions, baseless innuendo, and the fear of the unknown. Starfish Project and the clients we serve are counting on you to make the right and proper decision to approve tonight's special use permit agenda item. Please give us a chance to occupy Please give us a chance to occupy and operate this location. We will prove to be good fit. I guarantee that. Please vote to approve. Without it, we will be forced to cease our community support until we can locate another temporary site for operations. Currently, we have no idea where or when that might be. Thank you. Thanks, Robert. Thank you.

We have a few questions if you would stand for some questions.

Council Member Vakis.

Thank you, Mayor, and thanks, Mr. Fields, for really focusing on the nuts and bolts of what it takes to run this operation. And thanks for owning the challenges you had at the Santa Fe West Plaza shops. You know, I've never met the owner of that strip mall at Santa Fe West Plaza shops. I think I've got the name right, but I want to take a moment to publicly thank that person for really stepping up in support of public service when he offered the lease to you all because you had to move from Claiborne.

Absolutely.

And I think we all knew going into it, it was a subpar location and there would be problems. And I mean, that materialized, you know. So that's a location where there are 17 businesses counting starfish. but only 290 parking spaces. It's just not enough. And you alluded to the problems on the backside, you know, the service area, where it's a cluster back there with multiple businesses trying to move product in and out of their shops. You're back there trying to do the same thing. There's no loading dock. It's just problematic. You did not cause homelessness at that location.

Absolutely not.

There was a vagantry problem there all along, and I think there still is. And I don't know if it's homeless or if it's just vagrants, but that gas station is a collecting point for people, vagrants. And, you know, at any given time. You shop at Walmart across the street. It's not uncommon for someone to be there curbside with a sign. And, you know, on the one hand, you can be very sympathetic. On the other hand, the person's panhandling. You don't quite know what the deal is. But they were there all along. And the idea that some of that would be associated with your operation, I understand that. You know, fair or not, that's the way it was. So Claiborne was never a great location, but it was adequate. But you had no loading dock there. You had to move. By the grace of good fortune of the West Plaza shops owner, he gave you a site, knowing full well that would be temporary. You're at a temporary place at 119th Street. But I want to make sure I understand, there's a back lease there, so you can't stay there indefinitely. You're going to have to move. Exactly. So Aldi's then becomes... the next thing, you know? And I'd offer a couple of things. Whereas at West Plaza, 17 businesses, 290 parking spaces, at Aldi's, it's just you, and you have 114 dedicated parking spaces.

I think it's actually 133.

Better yet. So parking will not be a problem. And, you know, you have the potential there to establish Fortress Starfish, where you control the land in and around the building and you prove, you demonstrate to the community that you can perform to the high standard that we all expect of you.

Absolutely. Okay. Good. I'm sure there's a question in there somewhere.

Somewhere.

Councilmember Dinnall. Sorry, Laverne. Thank you, Mayor.

Laverne. Yes, sir.

I knew you were on Starfish's board. Yes, sir. Because of talking to you after one of our meetings. It was after the mayor's children's fund.

Yes, sir.

I believe you told me that. What I didn't know, and you're going to have to remind me, what is it you did at the school district meeting?

Well, at the school district, I was the manager of safety and security.

Safety and security.

But I'm retired from Olathe Police Department.

Understood. So you handled safety and security of our children? Yes. I felt that was very relevant. I wanted to hear it again.

Yes. I did that for just under eight years.

Okay. Thank you. So not so much a question it was, but I just wanted to get that straight so I knew exactly what it was.

Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you.

Other questions? Councilmember Baucus.

Thank you, Mayor. This is a question. Not a statement, not a soapbox, but a question. So when we talk about you potentially moving into this Aldi's location, there's no intent to grow the business. and serve Kansas City, Missouri.

Absolutely not.

The focus is on Olathe. Yes, sir. And this is where your client base is.

Yes, sir.

It's to offer your suite of services to the residents in need here in Olathe.

Absolutely.

And I think the additional space of the loading dock enables you to operate more efficiently, right?

Yes, sir.

Okay. But no business expansion, except there is an expanded requirement based on tough economic conditions, regrettably, we see a growing need in Olathe itself. So your expectation is to be able to cover that need here in Olathe?

Our expectation is only to serve the Olathe community in an attempt to get back to serving the numbers that we were accustomed to serving prior to this last disruption in service.

Good. Thanks, sir.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Laverne, do you know, is this the first time that Starfish has had to have a special use permit? Yes, it is. Was it by right when you were on Claiborne in that shopping center and it wasn't required? I guess it's by right in a C4. Is that right? Kim's here.

That's correct.

Oh.

Kim Hollingsworth, Planning and Development Manager. Actually, this land use, the community food and personal support services is allowed by right in C4. That is correct. It also can be classified as social services. Those definitions really overlap. So it is allowed by right in C2 and C3. C2, C3, C4.

But excluded in C1. C1 requires a special use permit. Correct. Okay. So at some point when you were looking at this property, then you knew that it had to have a special use permit. And was that right away or at what point did you know this was going to be an issue?

It was, I believe, I believe we were notified by the planning office that we were going to have to have the, excuse me, the special use permit. And we were given a stipulations to that, which we immediately started working towards.

Did you visit with the neighbors to the south? at your proposed location and tell them your operation? I mean, all of them have signed protest petitions for one reason or another.

Sure. I can't speak to why they signed those, but I can speak to that we did have, as part of this process, we had a neighborhood meeting. Right. I'll call it a meeting. But where a lot of those issues were brought to our attention, we attempted to address them there. We have continued to try to take the high road in this matter. And our goal is simply to try to be good neighbors. And we spoke to that even at that neighborhood meeting. Not to any real success, I'm going to admit. But I spoke to that. And our goal is just that, to be good neighbors. And the stipulations that Dr. Felper spoke with us about prior to the start of the meeting tonight, there's absolutely nothing there that we don't agree to. In fact, the majority of those steps We're already planning to make that happen as good neighbors and part of our transparency in the operation we perform. And so I'm not going to be condescending, but that's not rocket science. That's being a good business partner and being a good neighbor. And that's what Starfish is. We have been before, and we're going to continue to do that. Like I said in my presentation, we took some bad press on West Santa Fe. We probably could have fought some of that. But we chose, again, to take the high road and not go into combat, you might say, with our business neighbors out there. And we just said, we'll move on. Because it wasn't a good location for us to start with, so it wasn't worth the fight. And that's why we decided to go ahead and move.

Thanks. Councilmember Schoonover.

Thank you, Mayor. Kim, this is probably a question for you. I understand you had said that we're currently in a C1, which this use is prohibited, but it would be allowed in a C2, C3, or C4. So explain to me the process for downzoning. Why couldn't they just downzone this parcel, this property, the owner? to C2 and starfish to be able to do this as of right. What does that process look like?

Yeah, there is a process to rezone the property to the C2 district. We did talk about both of those options in brief when we came in and it was like, all right, we got to move a direction and make sure you're tracking down a path towards a permit, you know, approval process. And so it would be a process, public hearing, all the same steps as a special use permit, but then you're vetting is the C2 district appropriate here? And there are some differences in the land uses allowed in C2. So it's something that we would really look at carefully. There are some height different, like there's some dimensional standard differences that might not be appropriate for this property. I've not done a full review on that, but that would be the main difference. Okay.

But it would go through the same. Same steps. Yep. Same steps. Okay. Thank you.

Except you wouldn't necessarily have the two-year limitation. You wouldn't have, you'd be good for golden forever. You know, in C2, you wouldn't have all these stipulations over your head.

it could be there indefinitely and then you wouldn't have really the same opportunity or it'd be challenging to have very particular stipulations about hours of operation, et cetera. Okay.

Any other questions? Thank you, Laverne. Thank you. I don't see any other questions of staff. Any more comments? I'll just remind everyone about the process. Because there was a valid protest petition, obviously six votes are required to approve, six positive votes are required to approve the special use permit. If that motion fails, a separate vote is required to either deny the permit or send it back to the Planning Commission. The City Council may also entertain and add amendments to the original resolution such as Councilmember Felter had recommended. And that's done with four votes. So with that in mind, I'm open for motions.

I would like to offer a motion, Mayor. It might take for a moment.

Excuse me.

I didn't see your light flashing. Okay. Before motion, I'm going to let Council Creighton.

Thank you. I was anticipating some more comments, so I did not say anything. I'VE BEEN KIND OF QUIET HERE TONIGHT. AND THIS GOES BACK TO 1999. I FIRST WENT ON THE PLANNING COMMISSION AND SINCE THEN I SPENT 14 YEARS. A LOT OF WHAT WE'VE HEARD THROUGHOUT THIS EVENING AS WELL AS FROM THE COMMUNITY HAS BEEN a lot of things about opinions, about homelessness. And I remember my very first planning commission meeting in the spring of 1999 was a controversial special use permit. And I voted in opposition because of my emotions. I got taken to task by the then city attorney and a variety of other people. Since then, I have learned to be very devoid of emotions. This is a land use, and I think we spent way too much time talking about what may or may not be relevant. Homelessness is not a land use issue. That said, Again, we have to take into account just the criteria of the golden criteria. And staff outlined a lot of those items. And some of them are not quantifiable. But the bottom line is this is a land use item. And so I didn't set up here meaning to be like in a person who has no emotions. But I just simply want to state this is a land use issue, and I'm only looking at it from that perspective. And from a land use, it checks the boxes, and I will support it if there is a motion.

Okay, good. Okay. So I'd make a motion. And just for a moment, I want to talk about the protest petition. That's an important document. And the people that signed that have valid concerns. In some cases, the concerns may be based on misinformation. In some cases, it may be just a predictable level of not in my backyard. And that's to be understood. I in no way want to minimize the concerns of the adjacent community. that isn't necessarily reflective of all of Briarwood, but certainly the landowners in proximity of this proposed location. And based on that, you know, I would recommend approval of staff recommendation with five stipulations. I want to add two more stipulations. And quite frankly, Council Member Felter threw a few more things on the table that as we pour through that, that might lead to yet one more stipulation. But at this stage, what I would recommend and what I do recommend is that we approve staff recommendation as presented with these two additional stipulations, stipulations six and seven. Six is the applicant shall implement and maintain a site management and security plan reasonably designed to prevent unauthorized, authorized use of the property, including overnight parking or camping, obstruction of access, accumulation of litter, and other activity that materially affects the safety or use of neighboring properties. The plan shall include appropriate signage, regular monitoring of the property, prompt removal of letter, and procedures for contacting law enforcement or other appropriate services when necessary. Before beginning operation, the plan shall be filed with the planning official, and the planning official is Ms. Hollingsworth. Most of this has already been talked about. I'm just codifying it in a stipulation. The seventh stipulation is in addition to the annual report required by UDO, 18.40-100.F.4, the applicant shall submit no later than February 19th, six months after full operations commence, a report for review by the planning official, again, Ms. Hollingsworth, and the governing body, that's us, the city council, documents that they are in compliance with these stipulations, with the title and any conditions of special use permit approval, and shall provide any additional information requested by the planning official. And the planning official, again, is Kim Hollingsworth. So what I'm saying is, look, if we vote to support this two-year SUP, it's a two-year SUP. But the council gives permission. It's a permit. It's permission. We can withdraw that at any time. And in deference to the folks that signed the protest petition, what I'm saying is six months into the operation, we want to see the full report back to planning staff, back to the state council, verifying that some of the concerns that have been expressed simply don't materialize. That's a good control measure that protects all of us, makes us all feel good. And then finally, again, I would offer that we may need yet one more stipulation to be determined. But my motion at this time is planning, move to approve, recommendations of planning staff, plus these two additional stipulations. Is there a second?

Will you repeat your motion?

You wanted him to repeat the two additional stipulations, 6 and 7? He's basically saying everything that staff has presented with those two additional. Still a two-year SUP with some reporting? No, we're not talking about lead edits. And I don't know, do we need to have an amendment to amend and add these two to the original

Yeah, you can handle it. I think the way that Council Member Box has suggested it is just make a motion of approval subject with the, basically, are you asking that for the matter to be considered with the amendments? Are you asking for an amendment to be considered?

What I'm asking, Ron, is that we approve staff recommendation with the addition of these two additional stipulations.

Okay, based on that, then you'll need six votes to approve that.

Sure, add these two. Otherwise, it would be four votes to amend it.

Otherwise, if you're asking the governing body to consider an amendment, then you need four votes whether to approve the amendment. And then you consider the special use permit as amended.

Do you have a whiteboard?

I should.

No, I think that's plain enough.

Yeah. But we'll go with what your intent is, Council Member Bacchus.

But I think the intent here is this is going to be two additional stipulations that would require six votes, a super majority of the council to approve.

If I may. We have a motion. We don't have a second at this point. Council Member Bacchus, I wanted to get back to Council Member Felter's suggestions. I think... we had talked about this with council member vacas during the day and it sounds like a lot of the stipulations that you had suggested may be encompassed in what he is talking about the two exceptions being there's a traffic stipulation pertaining to public roads and then the the second to last one about if there are issues then WELL, I'LL ADDRESS THOSE SPECIFICALLY. THE FIRST ONE IN REGARD TO TRAFFIC, THERE'S A PROVISION IN TITLE X IN THIS BOOK OF THE TRAFFIC ORDINANCE THAT ALREADY PROHIBITS THAT ACTIVITY TO STOPPING STANDING IN PARKING WHERE THERE'S SIGNAGE. THERE'S ALREADY SIGNAGE ALONG BROME THERE. SO WE DON'T THINK THAT ONE MAY BE NECESSARY. and then again we would recommend that the revocation language in the udo and 184260 be what we are guided by there rather than trying to modify that okay if if that's okay with you council member felton yeah yeah those two otherwise um i'll let you all sort out what you want to do thanks ron

So we have a motion on the floor with two additional stipulations, and would you like Council Member Vakas to repeat those again?

Yes, if we can.

Sure. Briefly boil it down, if you can. I want to use a legal language.

The applicant, this is stipulation six, the applicant shall implement and maintain a site management and security plan reasonably designed to prevent unauthorized after-hours use of the property including overnight parking or camping, obstruction of access, accumulation of litter, and other activity that materially affects the safety or use of neighboring properties. The plan shall include appropriate signage, regular monitoring of the property, prompt removal of litter, and procedures for contacting law enforcement or other appropriate services when necessary. Before beginning operation, that plan will be filed with the planning official. Stipulation 6. Stipulation 7. In addition to the annual report required by UDO, 18.40.100.F.4, the applicant shall submit no later than February 19, 2027, a report for review by the planning official and governing body that documents its compliance with this title and any other conditions of special use permit approval and shall provide any additional information requested by the planning official.

Okay.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. I had a couple of quick things on these stipulations. In the planning commission minutes, I think it was our Deputy Attorney Amanda Stanley did talk a little bit about the applicant's need to enforce litter, panhandling, things like that. And I think the terminology there was used, best or good faith efforts. So how do you determine, maybe that's for Ron, best and good faith efforts? And then, Kim, could you please just remind us the process of canceling a special use permit? and how difficult it can be or easy.

Okay. Maybe we could start with Mr. Shaver responding to the first part, and then I'd be happy to provide the revocation. I'll try.

Yeah, Amanda and I talked a lot about this particular application, but we didn't talk very much detail about that particular matter, Mayor, so apologies. When you get down to... The fundamentals of what's happening here is a liberty interest in someone's property. And the government's interest is guided by reasonableness and how it applies its rules. Fundamentally, so long as we're being the applicant in good faith, that's really a common law concept that is really important. having the intervention only if we don't think they're being reasonable in their efforts to make sure that these stipulations are being satisfied. Again, you all can ask for a public hearing on this matter to revoke the thing at any point. It doesn't have to be waiting on a six-month thing. If you think there's not good faith efforts being done by Starfish to deal with litter, to deal with people dropping off materials after hours, all those things, that's your prerogative. And I would think that we'd definitely defend you if you chose to go that route. If you did not feel that they were being reasonable, we'd defend whatever prerogative you had had. We'd be glad to advise you along the way on the specific circumstances. Does that help you, Mayor?

Yeah, I think what Amanda tried to explain a little bit is that we couldn't hold them to 100%. trying to police everything on what the public might do, but we had to measure it by a good faith effort, I guess.

Sure. Right.

I agree. All right. Just making sure that that was what the expectations were. Correct.

It would be impossible for us to hold any way to that.

All right. And then a little bit on the process for taking a special use permit away.

Yeah, and Mr. Shaver alluded to it can happen any time. And so if the special use permit, the use on the property commences, it does take a majority vote of either the city council or the planning commission to initiate the process. And then it really all depends on if it's the planning commission or the city council overseeing. But in summary, there is notice, written notice to the property owner, applicant, whoever's operating the use. So they have a time to see that ahead of further steps. Then there's a public hearing that is held, right? So that's time for the applicant to share their perspective. It's that public hearing component. Then you move on. It depends on which board is overseeing the process, but you're really looking at findings of fact. It has to be very factual proceedings, and ultimately it's a final decision if it's the governing body that would be saying we are revoking the permit. And then the use would have to cease on the property.

Thank you. Council Member Felter.

Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to amend the motion under consideration to include some of the additional items. And I think we can whittle away the first two by our legal counsel's mentioning. And I think we can whittle away my desire to have it stated clearly that repeated or material violations may result in enforcement or revocation proceedings under the UDO. I mean, that's the way it works. So we can not do that one. But I do want it spelled out that we will require review by city staff after six months and one year with a public special use permit renewal hearing at the end of the two-year term. And then require Starfish to maintain a complete an incident log. I mean, that could be part of the plan you spoke about, but I'd like to call that out. I think that's important for your protection and the neighbors. And designate a local manager who can respond to neighborhood concerns during operating hours. Post that information on your website. And then this also might be part of your safety plan, but part of it should be, and I think we ought to stipulate this, require functioning extinguishers lighting and security cameras covering entrances, the donation area, loading areas, and the parking lot. Restrict truck deliveries and pickups to the hours of operation and require a traffic parking management plan. And then the good neighbor committee. I think that's a good Greasing the Wheels, great opportunity for living life on life. In Olathe, we do really good with that. I mean, it's been prickly. Nobody can deny that. But everybody has their preference here and is very passionate about it. I mean, that's great. But we can come together in this Good Neighbor Committee and facilitate the concerns on both sides. So I could support this if we just embed those guardrails for those who have concerns about about their potentially biggest investment in life. Thank you.

Councilmember Baucus.

Okay, good. So I think we're there. And I come back quickly. The idea of the six-month report, look, it's a protection. In the off chance this isn't working out, we're going to know pretty quick. So we won't drag it out. You know, if six months into it, it's just not working out for whatever reason, I don't think we're going to be there. You know, quite frankly, I think everything will be fine. But if it's not working out, it's incumbent upon the council to revisit this thing, and if need be, pull the SUP back. And in effect at that time, I think we'd be putting Starfish on a six-month notice that they'll have to find yet one more spot. I don't see that as an eventuality, but that's the guardrail that we have in place. The things that Lieta has mentioned, I think she's right on. I think we need to massage this a little bit, Ron. Is that a second to her amendments? Well, I'd be... ACTUALLY, WE'RE SUPPOSED TO VOTE ON THE MOTION PUT ON THE TABLE.

WE HAVE A MOTION.

BUT IF WE CAN ACCEPT THAT AMENDMENT, CAN YOU WORK WITH THAT? Okay. So I second the amended motion on the table. Okay.

So the items that were not included was a complaint log. You did not, you're eliminating that? You left that in?

Mayor, I think the items that Council Member Felter didn't include were Prohibit vehicle queuing, loading, or unloading on Broem.

Pardon?

35th.

Louder, Ron. Sorry.

Prohibit vehicle queuing, loading, or unloading on Broem Drive 135th on neighboring streets. That was what I addressed with 10.01.085. 10.01.085 also addresses the second one about require visitor or volunteer employee parking to remain on the property. And then she did not include The second-to-last stipulation pertaining to stating clearly repeated or material violations may result in enforcement. Otherwise, I believe Councilmember Felter included all the other stipulations she outlined.

One of these stipulations that she talked about was a requirement at the end of two years to apply for another special use permit. That's automatic, isn't it?

Yes, and it would be.

Yeah, because it expires, so you'd go through the same process. You'd go through the same process. Notification.

I think it would be self-evident by the language of the UDO. Okay.

Is everyone clear on the motion to amend and the second?

Council Member Creighton. I do have a question for Mr. Shaver. Since there was already a motion and a second by me, do I need to rescind my second of the first motion?

No.

Okay. Please don't.

All right. Please don't.

I think we're good. Okay. Thank you.

Okay, we have a motion and a second on the amended amendment suggested by Councilmember Felter. Would the City Clerk please call the roll on the amendments? Simple majority, four votes to pass.

Okay, just for clarity. Six votes. You're in, Councilmember Felter, what was your intent?

I amended the motion.

You amended Councilmember Vakas' motion. So it was your intent that that would be six votes? You're pertaining to the permit itself.

I amended his motion.

You amended the motion, so you're looking for four votes to support the amended motion. That would then require six.

It would still require six, in my non-legal expert opinion.

Yeah, yeah. So, if we're talking about, that's why I wanted to clarify that first with me. Sure. If, Council Member Vaca, apologies. Whether we're talking about the, because it allows the council to go back to its prior action. So, if the council, I wanted to get clarity on your action. If the council wants to take action to get the four votes on that amended motion to add your stipulation. You can do that with four votes and then tack it on and then the action is this is the entirety of the action that you're looking for six votes on pertaining to the special use permit as amended.

What is your preference here? I think both are parliamentary.

I want to do what the governing body wants to do.

So the most direct route is just to accept this as the amended motion on the table and vote now with an objective if we're going to pass it of getting six votes.

Yeah, if Councilmember Felter is amenable to that.

Friendly with it, thanks.

Okay. So the action now is to just accept the friendly amendments as part of the original motion, which was seconded by Councilmember Creighton, which do you second? With these friendly amendments? Second. So that would mean that we need six votes to pass the motion.

Because you're voting on the special use permit with the three additional stipulations. Okay.

All good? I'm going to ask the city clerk to please call the roll.

Mr. Denault.

Yes, I support it.

I apologize, what was that? Say it again. Yes. Yes.

Thank you.

Mr. Creighton.

Yes.

Ms. Essex.

Yes.

Mr. Vakas. Yes. Dr. Felter.

Yes.

Mr. Schoonover.

I don't think that all of these stipulations are necessary, but yes.

And Mayor...

No. No. For the record, Mayor Bacon? No. Motion passes 6-1.

So I would explain my no vote. And it's just that I feel like I've had some experiences dealing with people that are needy in my business. And I think it has affected us negatively. And I would prefer that to go on if I had a choice. And I think that this particular use is going to potentially have a negative impact on people that have invested in their homes for many years. And so I like the special use process that we have, and six votes approved it. So we are off, and we'll see how it goes. But it's not about Starfish or the good work that they do in our community. We've all said how much we appreciate that. So we will go on to the next item. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. So now we'll move on to, let's see, we are on item C. Item C, I wonder if we shouldn't take... Well, actually, people are quiet. So that's good. If you can leave quietly, that's fine. We'll move on. So item C is consideration of ordinance number 26-43, amending Title IX of the Olathe Municipal Code. This item follows our annual review of public offense ordinances to ensure they align with state law as well as the needs of city police and prosecutors. So this was a report at our July 7th city council meeting. I know staff is not... PLANNING TO GIVE US A PRESENTATION TONIGHT, BUT IF WE DO HAVE QUESTIONS, I HAVE A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE HALO EDITION. SO IF THERE'S OTHER QUESTIONS, NOW WOULD BE A TIME TO DO THAT. SO COUNCILMEMBERS, ANY QUESTIONS ON THIS ITEM? I HAVE A SPECIFIC QUESTION. I THINK WE'RE NOT ASKING FOR A PRESENTATION. But in regards to the HALO, and that's section 9.08.35, this is an addition. And even though I noticed it was in black, and usually if we add things to our ordinance, it's in blue, but it is an addition. It's new, right? This is new to this ordinance.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, Bob Gallimore, Assistant City Attorney. You're right, Mayor. Generally, amendments will show in blue underlined type unless the entire section is new, in which case that designation is shown in the title of the section as new section 6.

It threw me up, but I got there eventually. So my question is, So how does the police, do they have some discrepancy when it comes to somebody that might be disabled, deaf, autistic, have other needs, and have a guardian or a parent or something? Maybe they're underage. And if that person is truly trying to be helpful in the situation, how do you, do you still say, hey, you've got to be back 25 feet? Or how do you address that?

MIKE PETOT, YOUR POLICE CHIEF. GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND COUNCIL MEMBERS. IT'S ON. COULD YOU REPEAT YOUR QUESTION?

THE QUESTION WAS IF YOU'RE A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL, has that 25-foot requirement, anybody stay away so they can do whatever they need to do with the person they're trying to take into custody or whatever. But if you have a person that's deaf or a person that's autistic that can be difficult to handle, and you have a person that's trying to help, but you're saying, no, you got to be back 25 feet. How does the officer handle that?

Right. So this isn't really going to be utilized for somebody that's trying to help. It's going to be utilized for somebody that's absolutely trying to interfere in some way.

How do you draw that distinction sometimes?

based on their activity. Okay. There's, we can get way more into it, but there's four caveats that are part of this ordinance that have to occur for us to take action. And we have to be able to articulate all four of those points. It's not a standalone, you're within 25 feet of me and you can't do that. There's other criteria that needs to be met as well.

Okay. Other questions of staff on this particular point?

Council Member Dinnall. Thank you, Mayor. I've been studying this for a little bit. I know we've had a few conversations with you. And I think the part that I struggle with most was a couple of pieces. Within 25 feet, of course, in the heat of the moment, that can be a little bit difficult. And then Increased level of concern of physical harm, which I understand, but also feels a bit subjective and difficult once it might go to prosecution to prove or disprove. And then being distracted from performing such duties. That one's stronger. It leaves just a little bit of unknowing, I suppose, feeling. And so I'm wondering... what level of risk or liability the city might have for the wording being that ambiguous.

So we'll say that a lot of the ordinances that we have are written in more general terms and not so specific. I can have our deputy attorney, Amanda Stanley, come up and explain a little more detail about that. But I think we've been talking about it in terms of an individual person trying to interfere. And the way that I really envision this as multiple people, like a large disturbance, is when it's going to be helpful. If we have one person trying to interfere, we can handle that pretty easily in a lot of different ways. So again, it's something that when there's A large party, that a fight breaks out, and there's a handful of officers trying to control numerous people, that's where I see it being beneficial, not for the one-off person that may be within 25 feet or not, which we can absolutely determine. But if you're asking about liability, I will refer to Amanda so she can talk about the ordinance in more detail.

Okay. I have one other. I'll think of it when I get done.

I didn't want to interrupt. I think Bob's going to take us off the special use permit, though, so that we can all stop thinking about it. Also, we made a nice slide that gives all the elements of the statute, but I think I'm just in the way of what he's doing. I think while he's pulling that up, I would say that there are lots of statutes, especially when you look at criminal law, that it can be really hard to say exactly how do you prove that. And so criminal law, oftentimes you are looking at the totality of the circumstances. How do you prove someone intended to steal? How do you intend to prove that intent? That's where the chief can talk about it a lot, but prosecutors and the officers, they have to make their case based on the totality of the circumstances. When someone steals at Walmart and they said that they forgot to scan it on the self-checkout, how do you improve whether or not that was really just a mistake or that they intended? Well, maybe you look at the totality of the circumstances. Did they scan a cheap item twice and then put the bigger one in the bag? What did they do? And you're looking at the grand totality of that to prove intent. So this is not uncommon from a criminal law standpoint to have things that feel subjective, but it's because you're looking at the totality of it and it can be really hard to write criminal laws because it's hard to see into the brains of people to be able to improve intent. This statute does require several different factors. So from a liability standpoint, I think those are two different things. Like we charge people with crimes all the time and when you're looking at is there liability for charging someone with the offense, then you're looking at did we have a good faith effort to prosecute them for that offense. That's a different standard than is this maybe a First Amendment issue and we didn't have a reason to charge them in the first place because they didn't meet the elements or we think there's a First Amendment violation. That gets into 1983. Um, so there's two different aspects of it from a, did the officer have a good reason to charge someone? One, you're looking at their whole case report, right? Like what is the body cam footage show? What is the police report show? What are the witnesses show? Is the officer being truthful? And as long as there's a reasonable good faith basis for having made that offense, your liability is pretty low for, um, charging like and as long as the statute you feel comfortable with it that you don't have potential First Amendment violations your 1983 liability can be pretty low too. That can all flip in an instant though if you have a case and an officer lied for instance or the body cam footage didn't show up or that there were some other factors so that can add different levels of liability so each of like what is your liability that's a very lawyer answer it depends on the facts of any given case.

And to clarify, I heard earlier all four of the criteria have to be met?

Yeah. So on this slide, it goes through each of the elements. So first, you have to knowingly do this. So the individual has to knowingly approach or remain within 25 feet of an individual who the person knows or reasonably should have known as a first responder. So first off, they have to know they're a first responder. And you have to be able to show... that they had a reason to know they were a first responder. Were they in an ambulance? Were they wearing a chief of police outfit? What were they doing that gave them reason to know that they were a firefighter? The first responder has to be engaged in the performance of their job duties. So if you're just checking out at Walmart off duty, just because you're a first responder doesn't mean you're engaged in your job duties. And then the first responder, they have to give a visual or an audible signal to not approach or remain within 25 feet. So let's say the officer doesn't give any kind of signal, then you don't have that element. And that first responder has to give that signal because of a reasonable belief under the totality of the circumstances that separation is necessary for the safety of a person or property. And that that reasonable belief has to cause the first responder to be distracted from performing or not the reasonable belief, but that the separation is necessary because they're being distracted from performing their job duties or it's causing them to have an increased level of concern for physical harm to any person or damage to property. So you've got to go through all of those. You've got to know that they were a law enforcement officer or first responder. You've got to actually have a reasonable reason to know that. You've got to approach them within 25 feet. You've got to be warned to get back through a visual or audible signal. They officer or has to have a reasonable belief under the totality of the circumstances that separation is actually necessary for the safety of any person or property. And it has to be causing that first responder to be distracted from performing their duties or have an increased level of concern. So all of those elements have to be met. So this is not a statute that says just because you're in 25 feet means you can be charged with this offense. that's not enough. You can't be standing in a front yard and happen to be within 25 feet and not in any way be interacting with the officer and have that be something that would rise to the level of charging. And so these various provisions, if you look back through the legislative history, it appears pretty probable that they wrote them in response to court cases and other jurisdictions that had found less specific statutes to not be constitutional. So other courts had found it's not enough to just be 25 feet. It's not enough to say you can't film. You have to have more. It's not enough to not give officers standards for why they can tell people to move back. So it appears as if this was written by revisers that had done their research in other jurisdictions on what the courts have said you would need to get past a constitutional bar under the First Amendment. That was probably more than your question asked.

No, it was good though. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. You know, I very much want for our first responders to have something that provides them the safety that they need doing their jobs. And I know we've got some laws that have been around a long time. They're probably a little bit old and don't take into account today's real-world things that we have today. But I've been hearing from residents a lot of concern, and I take that seriously. Would it be two questions. One, if the state law were to be repealed, changed, what would be the mechanism in Olathe? Is it automatic that we would follow suit? When would that happen? And the second part would be if we go ahead and get this put in as written the way it is, can we get a report in a year, for example, to kind of see how much is it getting used and to what extent?

Yeah. I'll give a good lawyer it depends answer again. If a court enjoined the statute is unconstitutional and enjoined statewide prohibiting of it, we have concurrence jurisdiction. So that would strike ours and we would have to hit pause on that. So that would be one if a court did it. The state legislature just decided to amend their statute. then you as a city council would have to decide whether or not you wanted to amend your ordinance. So it's not an automatic because the state amends theirs that yours automatically goes away. It stays valid on the books unless it's in preemption that's preempted by the state. They have various things that they can preempt you for under home rule. So it depends on how they wrote it. But generally, you as elected officials, this is your local control and you would need to amend it yourselves.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Creighton.

Thank you. First, a general comment about the reports. And frankly, I was kind of disappointed that when we heard the original report last month that it was not more clear that this was about HALO. And so I would encourage staff on future reports to please be a little more clear so that we understand this. When it did come out, I began to receive emails and phone calls and letters. Most of the complaints, one, you've already hit the First Amendment. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not constitutional. I'll let the courts deal with that if there is a lawsuit. The other thing is a complaint that they thought this had something to do with ICE. That's a federal problem. I'm not going there. But as a policymaker, I have some concerns because I am an old school conservative. And frankly, I don't like the federal and state governments getting in control of things. I think there's been too much of that. We need less regulations. I'm kind of one of these kind of people, live and let live. I feel like what this is doing is we already had a law that protected law enforcement, so I feel like we're adding that. concern that it's taking away local control. So, basically, what I want is some feedback because I need compelling reasons to say yes to this. Frankly, right now, I would be a no. I need compelling reasons why my concerns about over control is not valid. And let me get to a yes. Hopefully, I'm clear where I'm going and what I'm asking about, and we'll go from there, and I may have some more questions.

Of course. The first thing I want to point out is the title of this ordinance is interference with a first responder, not law enforcement. So, yes, law enforcement has other avenues. that we can utilize, but our partners in the fire department and emergency medical services do not. So this applies to them. It's unfortunate in today's time that there are moments when somebody tries to interfere with someone putting out a fire or doing CPR on somebody, but it is a reality that that does occur. So that is another opportunity for utilizing that ordinance appropriately. As far as losing local control, I actually see it the opposite way. I feel like we're gaining local control. A majority of our city ordinances have a corresponding state statute that we update when they're updated. And this is no different. So By adopting this ordinance, we're able to control how our prosecutors and our judges rule on that from their perspective. If we only use the state statute, then we are forced to take somebody into custody and lodge them in the county jail. until they go to their first appearance in front of a district court judge. And, you know, that more than likely will be a 24-hour period. There's costs associated to that to the city and lodging fees, detention boarding fees. And if we are able to have local control with the ordinance, we have the ability to cite somebody on scene and release them if that's appropriate, opposed to having them lodged in the county jail.

Thank you.

We got a yes? We'll see what else is said. Council Member Schoonover.

Thank you. And I just want to focus on elements three and four here. Well, I don't just want to focus. First of all, thank you all. I know we've talked about this. It's no surprise. I'm a hell no on this one. Sure. Hopefully I can convince Jeff to get there with me. But I want to know what conduct is prohibited under this ordinance. Because what I see in items three and four is we are prohibiting in officers or first responders, whoever it is, subjective belief that the person's presence creates some type of risk. There's no requirement in this ordinance that I see that this person actually engage in any conduct other than being within 25 feet. Now, you're going to come back and say, well, it's under a totality of the circumstances and all of that type of stuff. I'd contrast that with the existing ordinance that we have that says if you take any action, that is at Title IX.08.030, if a person takes any action that substantially interferes with law enforcement. That's what we're penalizing. Here we're basing that liability solely on somebody's in the moment belief that they may pose a risk to something.

So can you assuage me of that concern? I'll let Amanda give a way better explanation of that. But in my mind, it's not much difference than interference with a law enforcement officer. And that is based on conduct. And that will be something that we have to articulate. And it will be viewed on evidentiary things like our body camera footage, which we will have the burden of proving. So I think a lot of the verbiage that's that's used in interference with a law enforcement officer applies. That is the way I intend to interpret it and to train my officers. Sure.

And I appreciate that. Let me be clear. None of my concern has to do with the Olathe Police Department violating our residence rights or anything like that. But I think what you're suggesting is After the fact, when this person is prosecuted, it will then be determined whether that officer had a good faith belief that they were engaging in some type of conduct that warranted invocation of this section, right?

I think that is what the statute does. The question is, can a prosecutor looking at that case say, can I convince a judge if it's a bench trial or a jury of your peers that what the officer thought was reasonable? Because it has to be reasonable. So maybe in that moment, people shoving in or contact or fighting with themselves, other bystanders is enough to distract the officer that's in an intense situation. standoff, maybe that is reasonable.

But that's otherwise prohibited, right? I mean, fighting with an officer is otherwise prohibited.

I meant two people that are on the side of the road fighting with each other while you're arresting.

It's still illegal to fight somebody.

Correct. Outside of this ordinance. But this would be a separate offense. So the conduct could be anything. I mean, that's the thing, though. But it has to be reasonable. So the prosecutor has to be able to prove that.

It has to. Well, but that's after the fact. Right. That's after the fact.

Oh.

I think that every time we take an action after the fact, we have to prove it. Oh, absolutely. In every situation.

Absolutely. But my concern is that the First Amendment violation, we have the right under the First Amendment to be out, to peaceably assemble, to photograph our government in action, to hold a cell phone camera up in a first responder's face and to protest and all of that type of stuff. My concern is that the violation, the First Amendment violation, happens not after the fact when a prosecutor decides to not press charges. The First Amendment violation happens when that person is removed from public from doing what was otherwise protected. So we're basically saying... well, we're okay with possibly violating the First Amendment because afterwards a prosecutor may decline to press charges?

No, we're not saying that at all.

There are lots of aspects where you are allowed

first amendment there are lots of ways that you're allowed to regulate with reasonable time place manner restrictions and those all have to be narrowly tailored that's absolutely right to the least intrusive means and so that gets to the next question how did we come up with 25 feet why won't 10 feet do why won't eight why won't six how did we come up with 25 feet

State legislature makes policy choices. 25 feet is used in other states. Indiana's first statute was struck. Their second one is still on the books and enforceable. It uses 25 feet. So I would imagine that they looked at cases like the Indiana case law that said 25 feet by itself is not enough. 25 feet plus more like objective standards for what the officer has to do or have a reason to back up is okay.

Well, but under time, place, and manner restrictions, it wouldn't just be that 25 feet plus this would be okay. It would be 24 feet won't do. It has to be the least intrusive means on the exercise of somebody's First Amendment right. And I'm concerned that we haven't taken any effort to actually understand what that is. Yeah, I understand the state gets to make a policy choice. I think they made a real dumb one here. And it doesn't mean that we have to adopt it without thinking about its impact on our residents. You know, I just... To me, there's no reason for us to adopt this. I think the potential of it infringing on First Amendment rights is just too great. And I'm concerned that we haven't done the analysis to say, is this 25 feet reasonable?

I think we're really keying in on a distance. And there's nothing that says that you can be 10 feet away from me videotaping. that alone isn't necessarily going to be a violation of this ordinance. Right. Right. So there has to be some behavior based to that as well.

Well, the behavior, again, this goes back to the first point. The only behavior that the person... in this ordinance is accused of doing is being within that zone. They're causing subjectively somebody else, based on something that's not articulated, a belief that there may be a risk, but the only thing that that's pegged to is them being inside of that 25 feet. I mean, is shouting at somebody within 25 feet enough? And if so, how does that not violate the First Amendment?

There are lots of constitutional case law that relies on reasonableness. Fourth Amendment use of force cases, would a reasonable officer believe? That's pretty common when you look at constitutional case law. The question on shouting, again, very lawyer answer, but it depends. Did that shouting cause the officer to be so distracted that it causes another issue? Ultimately, like lots of Fourth Amendment case law, it probably all gets up to the Supreme Court and it decides whether in that instant an officer should have known that wasn't reasonable or it was. I mean, that's how under the Fourth Amendment those cases all wind their way up to the Supreme Court about was what you did in that particular instance, should you have known that was not reasonable or not. And that's... Whether or not that's a policy choice for you guys on whether or not you want to adopt it in your local ordinance or not. The only other thing I would mention, though, is that this is state law, so officers can enforce this in Olathe. Even if you don't put it in ordinance, it will just go through district court.

So it's unnecessary for us to do this today. Officers still have the ability to do this if they truly feel that somebody is interfering with their performance of the duty. We can do absolutely nothing today and it won't impact our police and the performance of their duties?

I think Chief Butad articulated some reasons why it's quite valuable for this sort of thing to have an option of being prosecuted in our municipal court rather than in district court.

The reason why is because we want to layer criminal penalties. You can't layer. By statute, you cannot layer. But why are we criminalizing something that's already criminalized? I mean, my belief is we need to be... criminalizing fewer things rather than more things. So I guess why are we adding another offense to the books?

Ultimately, I think our view is the legislature chose to look at this from a first responder perspective. The statute you mentioned earlier, the miscode provision only pertains to law enforcement officers, not for first responders. And, again, it's an option to prosecute it in our court where we don't have to put people in jail. Otherwise, you have the risk of putting someone in jail for the offense while they're pending the charging determination by the district attorney, like Chief Butot said.

Well, I'd certainly be—if the concern is our existing statutes or existing ordinances— don't protect first responders in general. They're only geared towards police officers. I think that's a different problem than what this ordinance is trying to address. I think we need to look at those ordinances to amend those to be more inclusive of first responders, not create something new out of whole cloth that has really dubious constitutional issues. I mean, is there a way that we could solve the problem that way?

I mean, we could look into it. What we're adopting here is really, and I'll defer to Amanda to talk through this a bit more, Uniform Public Defense Code is something you hear other cities adopt. They just adopt it. They don't amend it at all. It's what the league puts together. It's codification of all the things that the legislature has done, and there's really no deviation at all to our understanding. No city in the state has deviated from it. There's a few states like us, or cities like us, that choose to take it piece by piece, and from our understanding, no city has chosen not to adopt it. Overland Park just adopted it last night. took 11 to one vote. So we can look into those things. It may be something that we defer to the legislature to look into in regard to first responder protections, those sorts of things, similar thing. You know, staff's recommending approval of this for the reasons we noted.

Yeah. Well, and I appreciate that. I know we've obviously had, this is in public how we've discussed this already kind of in private.

And I'll say, Councilmember, we've had an opportunity to talk about this with pretty much everybody on the governing body. And so we appreciate everybody's interest in this particular small subsection of a larger set of ordinances that we have in front of you that we had for you as a report on the July 7th agenda.

I think, you know, listen, it's I'll get off my soapbox in one second. But I think if the state legislature was really interested in protecting our first responders, I think they would actually. give us the chance to do so. I think they'd repeal or revise KSA 12-16-124 to allow us to enact common sense gun legislation. So that way, when our first responders show up on site, they would know if they're showing up to a place where a firearm might be. I think this is just a distraction. This is a sideshow. And there's no reason for us to to adopt this. I think it's wildly unconstitutional. And if you can't tell, I oppose it. Council Member Essex.

Thank you, Mayor. I just have a couple questions for Amanda, if that's all right. So let's talk about state law for a second. We cannot choose whether or not we enact these laws. This is state law, so it preempts

Yes and no. So you can choose whether or not to adopt any state criminal code at the local level through your local ordinances. So you could exempt a section, you can add sections, home rule, you can write things. What you can't do is order a police officer to not enforce state law if necessary. They see that and they want to prosecute that through district court and they see that they're compelled to do that. So you can't order an officer to not enforce state law, but you can choose at the local level what you want to adopt or not adopt. You can make stricter things. You can make less strict things. You can leave things out.

You can set your own destiny. I was always under the impression, and maybe I had this wrong, is... When a state law, the way the law is written, you can make it more restrictive but not less because state law would be the least restrictive version. Is that not right?

Only if the state law preempts you from acting in that field or specifically. If they don't have any rules on preemption, you can choose not to or not. But criminal laws, you can choose whether or not to make them a municipal ordinance offense. You can't choose to opt out of the state level because that's the state statute and you have to allow officers. But whether or not you want to add it as a specific municipal ordinance, you can choose on it. criminal laws, whether or not you would like to or not, unless the state legislature specifically preempts you from making that choice, which they have not done in this case.

They have not. So it was written to be based on what cities thought was best. If we add those ordinances...

Not every city in the state even has a municipal court. So lots of cities don't adopt any criminal laws at the local level.

So this is local control at its best, in my opinion, because we can be less restrictive. We can determine well. We warned them and we think that was good enough. You know, our municipal judges, the relationship they have with our law enforcement, the say that we have at the local level, I agree. I just think this is only a bonus to make sure that we're in control instead of a district court throwing someone in jail, waiting 24 hours to be seen by a judge. I mean, that just sounds not appealing to me. If we can give a citation and then say, hey, you're doing court in a month, you know, it's so much better to handle it locally. That is just kind of my thoughts on that. But thank you for answering my questions.

No problem.

Council Member Felder.

Thank you, Mayor Bacon. Chief Butad, so I asked for a meeting about this because I had grave concerns as well because I am a huge fan of just checks and balances. And, you know, having eyes on you when you're performing your job and videos going does tend to make you act better. And that would be my hope in general if we had bad actors enforcing laws, which we've seen on the national level at some point. to some degree, that being able to have people videoing what's going on would kind of put guardrails on that. This, to me, is like Robin mentioned. It's bringing it down to the lowest local level with control. And something that you said today kind of won me over is that right now without it, then our only option is to enforce the state's sweeping mandate and it's a night in jail and the cost associated. Can you speak a little bit more to that, what that looks like?

Yeah, I was just saying, I totally agree with you. I think local control, it's absolutely local control that if we have to utilize the state statute, then we're forced to take somebody into custody and lodge them in a county jail. So they can await their first appearance to see a judge, which is typically the next day. So if somebody's staying in jail overnight, which may be detrimental to them, the city has to pay boarding fees for that. And the converse of that would, like you said, the ability for us to write a citation and I noticed to appear for them to appear in court at a later date and release them from the scene if that's appropriate.

And we have very innovative judges that have done some amazing, they brought about change instead of just throwing the book at folks, especially folks that are experiencing a crisis in their life. They're finding innovative ways to meet their needs. So I don't think in our current context that we would experience heavy-handedness, but you do have to write policy for the worst-case scenario, and I understand that. We are barred from the layering because it's double jeopardy, right? Right. So the states and the municipality, I asked about that. It's not a thing. And then could ICE use our municipal law, for example? can they leverage that at all?

No, they could not. Not without our assistance, which I had the opportunity to do already and declined. I don't see it's appropriate for utilizing our ordinance for something of that nature. If it were the right circumstances and that were to occur, it would go through the state statute.

State. Okay. Okay. And I'm trying to think if there was... Just looking through my haphazard notes. Oh, the... The ACLU sent a very informative email, which I forwarded and just basically said, what are your thoughts? And Amanda, you spoke to the cases that they cited as unconstitutional. Would you speak a little bit about that?

Sure. So part of the letter talked about, sorry, I pulled my own notes, talked about how the similar statutes have been found unconstitutional in other states. As I briefly talked about earlier, What appears in Kansas is it was drafted in mind of those particular statutes in other states that have been enjoined. So, for instance, in Indiana, the first version of it required no standards for the officer to tell someone to stop. So if you were in 25 feet, there didn't have to be a reason for them to tell you to stop. That was enjoined. While that was enjoined, the Indiana passed a second statute and didn't repeal the first one. With more specific statutes, that appears to still be in effect. Louisiana, that was cited. Again, that did not have any of the additional standards for why an officer could tell someone to stop. That was based off of just 25 feet and the opinions that talked about how an officer could tell someone to stop for legitimate reasons. reason or no reason or just because they had a bad breakfast, but because there was no reasons and standards in there. Kansas did put specific standards about why someone would have to be able to stop. The Arizona case, Arizona banned you from recording an officer within eight feet without consent. That's blatantly unconstitutional. There's a case law about that. So that one got struck as well. You have the right to film officers in the course of their duties. What you It appears to have the right to do is able to do some kind of conduct that would interfere. And so that's what these new cases and statutes appear to try to get to is you have to have a reason to tell someone to stop. Just like under current case law, an officer has to give a lawful order to tell someone to stop. So you can't just tell someone to stop. you have to have a reasonable reason and the chief can get into that um florida does have a similar type of statute that does not appear to have been enjoined it still appears to be in effect it was passed in 2025. so we also thank you for that we also talked about the um verbal or visual

indication that they need to stay back. The visual indication you, Amanda, were interpreting as for people with disabilities.

Well, is that broadly? More broadly, like you have to know that you've been told to stop. So maybe you're turned in the running the other direction, like you wouldn't know. So you either have to be able to see or you have to be able to hear. If you can't see, you have to be able to hear, like you have to be put on. So that's, you know, it's a one, making sure people can reasonably see, but also if you can't see, then you have to be able to at least be given an audio. There has to be some reasonableness that you had a way to know that you were being told to stop. Otherwise, you can't intentionally continue to go forward.

And so it's not our way of slipping in a subjective little gotcha in case there's a scenario that an officer wants to say, yeah, 25 feet, you know, and It's literally for that visual confirmation, stop, get back. And speaking of 25 feet, so approximately, and then what if the officer is walking towards the person? Is it a bubble of 25 feet? if the officer is aggressive and comes, if you have a bad actor, which we have seen, 25 feet, 25 feet, what's going to happen in that scenario? I'm not okay with that.

No, I'm not okay with that either.

I know.

You know, I see this as someone approaching you when you're trying to perform a task. And so if I am taking somebody into custody lawfully and there's somebody that is directly next to me screaming in my face and acting in a way that they, I have some kind of concern that they're going to do bodily harm to me. And this person that I'm arresting is also being uncooperative. That is an incredibly dangerous situation. And we want to try to find a way to solve that problem safely.

Okay.

Thank you.

Council Member Creighton.

Thank you. Ms. Stanley, you had indicated, let me just walk through a scenario. We have an incident. If we do not pass this ordinance, then it goes through the state, and that individual goes to district court. But if we have the ordinance, we bypass the district court, we go through municipal court, and if they are found guilty, Is there a difference in the record as opposed to what happens at the municipal court level and what happens at the district court level?

When you mean the difference in the record, like to someone's criminal history record?

Yeah, the criminal history record. Does a municipal code carry the same weight as a district? So if I'm defending Mr. Schoonover on something and I get taken in, Yes, it's still a misdemeanor. Of course, do I still have the same record that I would have? So it doesn't matter. It's just that we have the control.

On municipal court, you actually get two bites at the apple for defense, though, because first you get tried to a judge and then you have a de novo right of appeal to the district court if you start in municipal court. So then in district court, you would get retried because you have a right to a jury trial. So you could if you were found guilty in municipal court. appeal, get a completely de novo trial at district court, and then you would still have your right to appeal to the Court of Appeals in Supreme Court. So that would, but it's the same misdemeanor if you get convicted. So it's the same criminal history. So from a criminal history standpoint, it's the same.

Okay. That's what I wanted to clarify. Thank you.

Council Member Schoonover.

Just to confirm this.

Sorry. Just to confirm, the ordinance doesn't make any distinction between private property and public property, right? Correct. So I can be standing in my front yard along Lula Street, and if somebody has, if an officer or somebody has somebody pulled over, in theory I could be found to violate this section if I'm within 25 feet, even if I'm standing on my own property.

Absolutely not if you're just simply standing there. It's also based on your behavior.

Well, okay, so what behavior? If somebody says, what conduct does this ordinance prohibit, what should I tell them? Because, again, this ordinance doesn't point to any conduct that the person is doing. Correct.

So my belief, it's similar to interference with a law enforcement officer. me being concerned of increased levels of potential for physical harm to a person or property is something that you would have to be doing that would have to correlate with your behavior.

But that's not in the... No. Number four. No, not in order to invoke the ordinance on the first end. Again, you're talking about something after the fact.

No.

Yes. No, you have to be... So where in here does the first responder have to articulate to the person why they think that they're giving...

The action you're talking about in your yard... You're not distracting anybody if you're just standing there.

If I'm standing there screaming at a police officer who has somebody pulled over.

That's different.

But again, I've got the First Amendment right to stand in my yard and scream at the police.

Which there are certain limitations on our free speech rights under the Constitution.

I understand, but they have to be narrowly tailored.

And like Amanda said, remember, a point we want to make sure we're clear about in regard to the ACLU memo and the case law it had concerns about. The Florida law is the closest law to this law. There have been no challenges to that Florida law. There have been challenges to the other ones for the reasons noted. But there have not been challenges to that law. We can't make a presumption of unconstitutionality of this being put in front of you just because I get you disagree.

There's debate on this 25 foot. Is it reasonable or not? Totally understand.

But we can't presume that it's unconstitutional. just on its face. I mean, it has not been challenged in the state that it's closest to and it's been on the books for over a year and a half.

Why can't we presume it's unconstitutional on its face?

What if we had an ordinance that said it's legal for our police to kick your door in for no reason whatsoever? And we just, we wanted to pass that ordinance. Would we say?

Well, we don't have that in front of you. What we have in front of you is what we have. And then what we have is four elements that have to be satisfied. It's the most robust version of this of any state that's adopted this. I understand you disagree, but of the options that we have that we've seen states do, this is the most elements that make it a little different circumstance, I think, than just the mirror standing in the driveway.

agree to disagree. Of course, you guys make the decision of the ordinance. I just enforce it if it occurs. If you're asking my opinion, then I will provide it.

Thank you. I think we're ready for a motion.

Thank you, Mayor. So, you know, I very much appreciate the valued support from the ACLU. an important partner for us, but I'm perfectly comfortable with this ordinance as written. I move to approve ordinance 26-43. Second.

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

Mr. Schoonover. No. Dr. Felter.

Yes.

Mr. Vacas. Yes. Ms. Essex.

Yes.

Mr. Creighton?

I feel better about it. Still have concerns, but I will say yes. Mr. Denault?

No.

Motion passes 5-2. We'll now move to item D. Item D is consideration of ordinance number 26-44, amending title 10 of the Olathe Municipal Code, the Olathe Traffic Ordinance. This follows our annual review of traffic ordinances to ensure they're up to date. This was a report ordered July 7th. Council meeting, is there a need for a presentation or question about this item? Motion be in order. I move to approve ordinance number 26-44. Second. We have a motion and a second with the city clerk. Please call the roll. Dr. Felter?

Yes.

Mr. Vakas?

Yes. Ms. Essex? Yes. Mr. Creighton? Yes. Mr. Dinault?

Yes.

Mr. Bacon? Yes. Mr. Schoonover?

Yes.

Motion passes 7-0. We'll now move to item six, general issues and concerns of citizens. There are two individuals that have signed up to speak tonight. I'd ask the city clerk to please read the guidelines and call up our first speaker.

The council has established a policy to provide time during its meetings for people who live and work in Olathe to address concerns to the city council. Speakers should only address the council. Council members are not required to respond. Please treat others with kindness and respect. The council has allocated no more than three minutes per speaker and up to 30 minutes total for this portion of the meeting. Tonight we have two speakers. So each speaker will be given three minutes. Our first speaker this evening is Christy Bumberger. Please come to the podium. State your name and address for the record.

Christy, are you here? She is not.

The next one, please. Second speaker that we have on the list is Jane Uraut. Please come to the podium. State your name and address for the record. Is Jane here?

Don't see Jan. So then we'll move on to our, we'll convene a planning session. We have one item, a discussion item, and that is the general overview of the proposed 2027 recreation, park sales tax, street maintenance sales tax, tourism and development fund budgets, capital improvement plan, and fees. Clara Bernhauer is here for a presentation. She is our budget manager. Welcome, Clara.

Thank you. It's kind of a mouthful of a presentation. We're covering a lot tonight. Yes. Let me get clung up in here. Sorry for the clatter. I'll try. All right.

Let me go into... We may have a power issue because of the long reading, so I'll troubleshoot that while Claire starts.

Just so we don't have a money issue.

Not a money issue, just some electricity. Just some electricity. A battery problem. I was like, I thought I'd spot it really quick.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council, and our budget manager. Tonight is our third budget workshop of the 2027 budget process. And you had it described correctly. We'll open with rec fund and fees. I should be fine with the power. I've got this, Tim. Okay. So we'll open with recreation fund and fees, go into street maintenance, sales tax fund, and this capital improvement plan, park sales tax fund, and that capital improvement plan. And then we'll go into tourism and development fund. And then we will hand it off to the chamber. to close up the night. So first, recreation fund. The Recreation Fund accounts for user fees from the city's many excellent park and recreation program offerings, as well as the Olathe Community Center starting in 2014. So we present this as a single fund, but administratively we are tracking those separate elements. And so we'll show those in the budget as it's presented. But just so that you know, we do track those separately, but we present them together. So this slide shows some of the highlights of Recreation. At the community center, the city's welcoming in a large volume of visitors, over 260,000, and they are giving really good feedback on the facility. We have an 84% facility approval rate there. We've seen increases in group exercise and personal training. Rec Sports have over 11,000, 11,250 participants, and we have 215 offerings for adaptive recreation and Special Olympics. Camp Olathe is also serving a lot of kids too, 3,518 youth have been served by Camp Olathe. And we've actually seen, you know, capacity reached there. Recreation sees a wait list for this actually. And so in 27, we will see the seventh camp open for Camp Olathe, which is exciting. That'll be at Prairie Center. Like I said, starting in 2027. We're also seeing an increase in one pass participants. So people are utilizing that. And we have a projected uptick in party rentals. So people are having birthday parties at the OCC, the Olathe Community Center, OCC, Black Bob Bay and Lake Olathe. And the city has expanded operations to be seven days a week at Lake Olathe, Swim, Beach and Marina. And we have had over 85,000 visits to the pools, Black Bob Bay, and Lake Olathe. So that was a lot of statistics. But what we're doing here is we're trying to highlight all these numbers because they demonstrate how recreation seeks to improve cost recovery, optimize their programs, find revenue generators, all while keeping great customer service. And this is all built... momentum that's being sustained by strategic efficiencies that have been found and getting on a really good track, especially in line with recommendations that have come from an optimization study that was completed. So I'll take us into this next slide here. the Olathe Community Center entered into, you know, with a consulting firm, an optimization study that was completed in 2025. So it actually, we alluded to it in the last budget cycle, but it was completed since then. And what we found there is that the rec group was already doing a lot of the things that they needed to do to find efficiencies and generate more revenue. So we're highlighting a few things here, there with the kids club and finding more opportunities for the revenues for birthday parties and realigning some of the customer service pieces that we have at the community center through staffing realignment. And so what this is. helps illustrate is that we are finding efficiencies. We know that the rec center or that the community center is being subsidized partially through a general fund transfer. We've talked about this and the 27 budget still has that as a transfer, but we're seeing that need for the transfer possibly not needing to be to the full extent. We are still proposing a transfer, but we're looking to find that balance on cost recovery for the full system. So It's a positive story this year that we have for the rec fund.

So here, these two pie charts are to show the proportions, the types of revenues and expenditures in recreation.

On the left are the revenues. 81% come from charges for services. So when we have those revenues from the kids club and we have those birthday parties, that's where you'll see those charges for services revenues. And then when I talk about the general fund transfer of $1.5 million, that's that 19% in transfers that you see on the revenue side. On the expenditure side, personnel services make up a majority of the fund's expenditures at 73%. A large portion of the personnel costs are for seasonal employees who are helping work with those groups. And then the second largest expense category is contractual services. And the largest piece of that is for the facilities maintenance chargebacks that we have to support those programs. That's kind of one way to look at the expenditures. Another way is here in this table, which should be familiar to you with the format from the previous workshops. But what we have here are 25 actuals, 2026 projections, and then the 2027 proposed budget. And what we have is broken out by recreation and the community center, OCC, here. It's a slight decrease in 2026 projections. proposed budget over 2026 projected actuals. That's largely because we're being kind of conservative in our projections for the fund. It's been a little difficult to find, you know, the new baseline since COVID. And with getting a few more years of trend data, we feel confident with the budget we have proposed. But that's really the reason why there's kind of been a wobble in the community center line there. So this is a peer comparison cost recovery table where we're taking the city's recreation kind of all in percentage recovery, comparing it to other benchmark cities. And we see that we're in line and even doing a bit better than where other cities are at for cost recovery for the recreation program. This is assuming the full general fund transfer to the rec in the proposed 27 budget. So even with that, we're at 92%. cost recovery, we believe, with the expenditures versus revenues. So here is a recreation fee kind of logic, you know, philosophy slide, basically. So we have in your binders and on the web page, there will be an updated explanation of fees and fee schedule. So every year, there will be little tweaks to the recreation fund fees. I think it's... over 10 pages. We do a really good job detailing out all the offerings with our fee explanations and our fee schedule. And a lot of them are set through ranges. So when we do adjustments to those ranges, they might be $1, $2 different within the range. And it's really kind of taking like a scalpel, like a refined look at those. So we're not going to detail all of those here in this slide. Staff is available for questions if you have any call-outs for fee questions that you have. Instead, what we're trying to highlight here is the thought process behind why we recommend those range shifts. So what we look at is an annual review of fees across all the recreation services. They are looking to balance affordability with the cost recovery. They're looking at individual programs, what the costs are to run those, and then what revenues can be brought in to support those. They are also looking around at those peers with benchmarking to see how we're priced compared to other offerings. And then where there's possible to make, you know, maybe we offer, you know, something that could kind of map across programs that could be a cool thing to see in other areas of REC. They're kind of looking for strategic alignments where they can make them. And overall, it's kind of a philosophy of, you know, stop, start, continue, I think is what I've heard from the group a lot. Where can we find new offerings? Do we need to stop things? Do we need to rethink other, reimagine things? So staff's there for questions, but that's kind of an, it's a good philosophy to lay out. We wanted to show the thought behind the fee changes rather than just a dollar here, a dollar there.

Except for the dumping fee. It like went way up from 40 bucks to 65 in solid waste. Oh, yes. That was a huge increase. But so some of them aren't a dollar here, a dollar there.

Oh, that's fair. That's right. Yeah. This is just for the right, just for the recreation. Yes. Gotcha. So yeah. And in that one, we did lay that one out. We did make a point at a bullet point for that. We thought that was worth definitely because it was large. Yeah. Large increase. Yes. Good point. Um, so, so that is, that is recreation. If you guys have other questions, feel free to, to ask them through the slides, but that would take. Council member Bacchus has a question.

Mm-hmm.

Hey, the general fund transfer, maybe I missed it, but what is the amount of the transfer projected for 27?

1.5 million. It's projected. We would transfer what was needed. So that's kind of to protect.

What do we expect to transfer in 26?

Oh, when would we expect the transfer?

No, for this current year, what's our expected level of transfer?

It is right now in our projections, we have it at the 1.5, and it would maintain some of the fund balance, but you would actually be able to see it in the fund pages. I'll get closer to the mic. You'll see it in your... Page 11 of your fund schedule. So, yeah, we have the projected full 1.5, but you can see it does allow for a little bit of an ending balance. We've been finalizing fund balances through the audit process. Sure, sure. We kind of held that just so the general fund didn't have a bad surprise if it had to make the full 1.5.

So when we say the 92% cost recovery, the balance is that general fund transfer balance?

Yes. It's the gap. Yes. The general fund is intended to close the gap between expenditures exceeding revenues.

Yes. Okay. And so really in comparison to the other cities, we are doing a good job. Yeah. Okay.

Yes.

Maybe we don't need to. Well, it's just rec, so we won't talk about the dumping fee. Okay. Okay. I got it. Thanks very much.

Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Schoonover.

Thank you very much. Let's argue. It was a joke. On this, there's a recreation fee overview slide. And the third bullet is to maintain competitive pricing within the regional market. Can you explain that? I mean, it sounds simple, but I guess what I'm concerned about is on one of the earlier slides, we had, you know, kids having birthday parties at Black Bob Bay and Lake Olathe. And I guess what I'm concerned about My thought is when we're trying to recover these costs, I hope we're not doing so in a way that's being cost prohibitive for some of these things. Like I always think it's neat when you go and there are kids having birthday parties and stuff there. So I just want to be cautious that we're not trying to do too much to balance the fund on the back of birthday parties and kids and all of that type of stuff.

Yes. Yeah, Susan, you got it. I'm sure our staff in the back could answer this as well too, but as I think of that, I think of things like adult softball. Where regionally, you might play in Shawnee with your buddies or somebody. And so we want to make sure that our costs for adult programs that are competitively priced. So we have a better league. So you should come to Olathe and spend $300 or something like that competitively regionally. But we totally understand that kids stuff, we want that to be something that you really are able to bring your kids to do that. And Shannon is back here and I'm sure.

Am I right? Yes. Shannon Broughton, Recreation Manager. Susan is speaking perfectly to it. Our goal is to make our youth programs very affordable for everybody to participate. That's our number one goal is for more individuals throughout the community to be involved in all of our activities. But, yeah, eye on my glass, I apologize. Maintain competitive pricing within the regional market. She hit the nail on the head when she was talking about an example, our adult competitive leagues, our fun leagues as well. That's exactly what our target is. So, yes. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.

Please proceed.

Yeah.

All right. So before we jump into the actual funds of street maintenance and park sales tax that have the dedicated sales tax revenues, we did want to go into the trends and cover that kind of forecast piece. So what you're looking at here is like a long-range look, you know, looking back to 2015 for street maintenance sales tax. And we spent a long time in workshop one talking through sales tax trends. So there's a bit of a nuance here with both street maintenance sales tax and park sales tax that I did want to hit on. These are both city sales tax. city sales taxes, right? So they are not getting state distribution, county distribution level things. So when we have concerns in the general fund around those reductions, and you'd actually saw a decrease 27 over 26 in the general fund, that was because of those kind of external sales tax pieces. This is a pretty... stable considering the volatility of sales tax, city sales tax revenue. So what you see here in the dashed orange lines, I will lay it out, but it's a 2.5% year-over-year increase in the forecast that we see for these funds. That is in line with the general fund city sales tax portion of the forecast. But what you can see, too, with the orange and blue lines, blue being the budget, orange being the actuals, this is a volatile revenue source. We don't always hit the mark with our budget. Sometimes we're over, sometimes we're under. We'd love it if the blue... solid line was just always a little under the orange line we always had you know we were dead on except maybe a little extra but that's not always what happens sometimes we're you know trailing behind the trend so when we have these funds we're trying to be conservative with our forecast we're tracking these trends so we believe what we have in the out year forecast is conservative and realistic but it is a volatile revenue source all the same so that's kind of what we're laying out here Um, park sales tax is similar. You basically see a similar sort of, uh, line there with the dash dotted line. That's what we're getting at. Um, and here's that table. We're scoring it one more time, 2.5% 2027 to 2031. The odds of us getting 2.5% every year, year over year is not going to happen, but that's what we're having in the forecast. If we had a crystal ball, we'd, you know, we'd be really lucky. So street maintenance sales tax fund and CIP, um, kind of taking that into consideration on the context of the sales tax and what we're having. I do want to provide context on this fund's purpose. It was established to account for the 3.8 cents street maintenance sales tax, which was originally approved by voters in in 2013 and then renewed again in 2023 with 79% support. This is dedicated to cover street maintenance, all things street maintenance, repairs, rehab, improvements of streets. And we track it through. year over year with all of those expenditures going to those annual programs for street maintenance. So every dollar that's coming into the street maintenance sales tax fund is going out into the street preservation program to help support those street maintenance projects. So what you see here is again, 25 actuals, 26 projection, 27 proposed. You can see an increase in 27 budget over 26 projections. So we're going from 16 million to $16.1 million to about $18.1 million in the transfers to projects. That's because with our current projections in sales tax of that 2.5%, we believe that this fund can support that higher contribution to the street preservation program. If sales tax shifts, we'd have to reevaluate possibly. So when we're making those transfers, that went a little fast, sorry. When we're making those transfers, it's going all toward the work that's going on across the city with the 2026 street preservation map. Here you can kind of see where the... It's pretty detailed, so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask and we can have staff answer, but it's going toward these areas of the city. The city has over 1,400 lane miles and it's really large value, $1.8 billion value. Year by year, we're addressing the needs in a database way so that we can maintain what we have. Here's what we've done since the start of street maintenance. So what you saw in that first slide, that's a single year. This is what that can do for you when you have that sustained energy behind it for the period of time. So we're touching a lot of the city, not just little bits and pieces year over year when you look at it over the long term. So I think this map shows a pretty good story with what that program's done. This chart here, it's maybe been a minute since you guys have seen this, but overall condition index. It's one of our key performance indicators that infrastructure has in the street preservation program. So that's the condition of the streets. We'd have a target of 80. And an index is just kind of a quick way to look at something, right? So if it's 100%, it's perfect. And if it's zero, it's perfect. Not perfect. So... What you see here is we've kind of hovered around that target of 80%. We want to call out that just like everything else that we've been talking about, that 2.5%, it's a good stable sort of assumption on the out years. It doesn't cover the cost of inflation. So the cost of these projects is also outpacing this revenue source. So what you're seeing is a slight decline in the out years on the OCI because you are not able, the city would not be able to necessarily keep up with those construction costs with the way that the sales tax is looking currently. We have been able to do a lot of work with the sales tax dollars that we have had, but this is the impact of that inflationary cost. What you also see here and the difference between the orange and blue lines is a decision that we had made for this budget just considering the outlook of the general fund and the debt service funds to shift some of the funding that the program previously had that was afforded to it by the debt service fund and or general fund transfers of $2.8 million, taking that down to a million dollars in general obligation bonds. So it's kind of almost like a protected sort of stable revenue source as opposed to the volatile sales tax funding source. So we just want to make a call out there that when you have a volatile source and if it declines, the OCI would decline as a result slightly. Yeah. So this is the Street Preservation Program CIP funding for the five years. This is what I was talking about with those geo bonds being $1 million annually. We touched on this already in the first workshop, but that's a decrease from the 2.8 that you would have seen in a 2026 CIP. In the 2027 CIP, you'll see $1 million annually. Right now, we believe the Street Maintenance Sales Tax Fund can pick up the difference. with the way that sales tax is looking. So that takes us to $99.6 million for the five-year total, just a small portion with debt, the rest with the sales tax.

Claire, real quick. Yes. So do we still evaluate our streets every year in the summer?

Yeah, even more.

Are we doing that internally now or do we have interns or who does that?

And are they consistent? Yep. So Nate Baldwin, city engineer. So every street gets inspected every three years. So we have interns that look at our local collector streets. So they look at a third of the streets. In one summer, we look at another third. The next summer, third and the following. And then we hire a company that actually gets data on the arterial roadways. So they've got a little van that drives over it with some radar information and gets us that information. that. So every street is inspected every three years. And that data goes into helping us determine what the overall condition index is.

So as long as the street measures 80 or better, we don't plan any kind of maintenance on that particular roadway?

That's correct.

Okay. Okay.

Thanks.

Council Member Bacchus.

Thank you, Mayor. So Nate, Clara, thank you. Nate, so we...

not yet set in place our 2027 project list that's still being massaged at this stage uh yes and no so we have we know what our trail roads we're doing those are under design right now sure the local and collector streets we're still gathering that data and putting that list together we'll come to you in january with that full list and authorization of the 27 program good have we um

Have we ever done, and I'm sure we probably have, a cost avoidance? Having this money to spend on street maintenance saves us a lot of money because we avoid street reconstruction. Have we considered how much we're saving?

Yes. So we say that for every dollar spent on preservation right now saves $8 on future improvements that we otherwise would have to do. So it's huge. Yes.

I mean, it really is. And for the renewal of that sales tax, I mean, that's the best deal going, I think. And the public appreciates that based on their approval rating for the sales tax re-up. Question for you on the SMST, is it called the Advisory Committee?

Yes.

Do they just meet once a year?

That is correct. So their primary function is to take a look at what we did like last year in 25 and say, did we spend the SMST dollars wisely? Okay. Because we invest in the community as is determined by the purpose of that sales tax. Sure.

So later this year, would we expect SMST to provide some sort of a verbal report to council?

Correct, yes. I believe we're meeting in September. We'll probably come in October. Okay, good.

What I want to make sure is, I mean, we've appointed these, gosh, is it eight people? Is that the right number, thereabouts? But I want to make sure that we are using them, you know, quite frankly, and I want to make sure that they feel that they are valued part of the team in this process. Mr. General, come. Yes. Okay. Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Creighton.

Thank you. Based on some of the business publications I've been reading recently, I think the conservative 2.5% estimate is wise. Remind me though, am I correct in remembering though that there's usually a three-month lag time between the time that I spend money at the local store and it actually gets into our pocket. Is that correct? And if so, how quickly does that give you enough time to pivot if we start seeing that fall off and how do you prepare for that?

That's a really good question. Yes. So yeah, two month lag time that we have there on the sales tax from when you're paying it to when we get distributed it by the state. And I would say that as far as the ability to pivot, it won't be one month over another that would make or break the fund. It's the full year sort of look. So it would take kind of a sustained decline for us to really need to pivot. And we have a bit of a fund balance in all of our funds for that sort of reason. So we hope that we are staying conservative enough that we don't have to do a sharp pivot ever on these.

Very good. Thank you. Council Member Schoonover.

Thank you. And Nate, I'd like to follow up on a question that the mayor asked. I understand that if a street's OCI is above 80, we don't plan

like maintenance on it is that right that's correct most of the streets that we're doing maintenance on are going to be in the 50s and 60s so that overall condition and when you look at that oci that's the entire system itself so our goal is for the entire system citywide to be at 80 or better do we what's what's the percentage of streets that we have that meets that goal i would have to get back to you on that i don't i don't know and do we is is is the oci something that is

unique to Olathe? Or do we know what, say, Overland Park streets would be? Or Kansas City, Missouri? Those streets are all terrible. But I mean, do we know how we compare other than just driving from one location to another?

Yeah, we do. Every city is a little bit different, but we have a general sense of what that condition index is going to be. And the county actually, through the CARS program, has gathered a lot of the data the past few years. So the average throughout Johnson County is about a 70.1%. Now, take that with a grain of salt because there's going to be a few points of difference. But overall, we are doing a great job in Olathe compared to our other peer communities in Johnson County. Okay. Thank you so much. Yep.

Okay. Thanks.

Yes. Great. All right. So that would take us into the Park Sales Tax Fund and CIP. So the Park Sales Tax Fund, it is responsible for accounting for the revenue collected through the dedicated one-eighth cent sales tax in Olathe for park improvements. This was also most recently approved in 2023 with 77%. And that was actually its fourth time being approved since 1999. So it's had three renewals over the course of that sales tax. So the park sales tax proposed budget here, as you see it, we're breaking it out into an overall increase of 16.6 proposed over projected. That's because of the transfers to projects, which we've talked about, can kind of go up and down depending on the planned project timing as we have it. But the operating cost is increasing about 6.3%. That's a personnel increase. sort of cost for the operating side. So we'll get into a little bit more into those transfers here in a bit. But here is that two pie charts that we show every time. So for here, it's that sales tax dedicated revenue source with some investment earnings that it gains just a little bit. And on the proposed expenditure side, this is just illustrating how much of the percentage of the fund goes to the transfers to projects. But there is 11% that goes to personal services, and that's for eight positions that are you know, parks craftspeople, technicians, superintendents that are doing the work and helping move the needle on our parks perception scores. So that transfer from the parks sales tax fund is contributing to the overall Park CIP, which does have a little bit of a mix of funding sources. Overall, for the five-year CIP, 2027 through 2031, we're looking at $32.5 million total. And we'll call out here, no debt in this fund. It's all cash. And 85% is coming from that Park sales tax transfer of cash. One call out here too, just as we have, it's similar to the street maintenance sales tax fund. We did do a bit of a reduction in the general fund transfer that we see into parks. So it decreased just about a million dollars over the course of the five years. And that's also because we believe the park sales tax fund could pick up the remainder bit where there was kind of a bit of an opportunity for it to take up more of some project costs. just a mix in funding sources if you were to compare CIP to CIP. This slide here is trying to show where all those transfers, where all that cash is going for projects, and all of that funding is going towards supporting priorities at the Parks Master Plan from 2023. So the bottom line takeaway that we have from the Parks Master Plan is that we need to take care of our current system and develop connectivity. That's what the residents are asking us to do. But if we break out the funding of the projects by those four categories, we see that 55% of the funding is going to enhancing and upgrading community and regional parks. And as part of the master plan, the citizens poll showed that that was the number one or, you know, maintenance of our current parks and facilities was number one parks and rec service that the citizens believe should receive attention over the next five years. So we're putting money toward where people are wanting our priorities to be. 26% is going towards trails and connectivity. And that also was really where citizens wanted us to be able to fund things. It looked like to us that they would say that that would be one of the most readily funded things that they would like to have. So again, top two there with trails and connectivity enhancing and upgrading community regional parks. 17% going toward revitalization and maintenance of neighborhood parks. We do really want to call out these really help increase the quality of life of neighborhoods. So that is also a really great way for us to spend our dollars. 17% is going toward that. We conduct internal inspections of parks infrastructure to generate actually just really similar to the street maintenance, a parks overall condition index for our parks. And that helps us make data-based decision-making on what needs to be in the renovation space. what needs to be renovated in parks. And that last bit, 2% is going to growing the system to meet community needs. You could make an argument that the trails and connectivity also helps with the growth of the city. When you have a developing city and you're trying to connect gaps in the trail system, that helps there. But 2% is going to be dedicated that we're just really carving out to be the city's growing. And so we're trying to meet the needs there. So these next few slides are going to have some call-outs of the park CIP projects. If you have questions, we also have staff here for answering questions on those parks. But I just wanted to highlight some of the ones that have a larger dollar contribution to the CIP that you would see, or a larger funding percentage. So here, Black Bob Bay renovation, that has $850,000 in 2027, and the total project cost is $1.5 million. And so for this project, it's been about 16 years since Black Bob Bay was last renovated. And we hope that with this project, it could help extend the life of the facility for another 20 years. And so it'll go toward, the funding on this will go toward new deck surfaces, replacing filtering systems, resealing concrete, having some pool house repairs, really, you know. a true renovation there for Black Bob Bay. Olathe Girls Softball Complex, the restroom and concession facility, it's going to get $900,000 in 2027. And the total project cost is around $1 million. And that's really modernizing the current facility for the growing youth or youth spy athletes and all of the visitors and spectators that come there. So seeing some great things there. And another bit, there's a number of annual projects that are in the Park CIP, so I'll just call out a few of them here. But the recreation facility renovations, that kind of helps. That can help from all sorts of stuff, but it could be sports field lighting, irrigation systems, field enclosures, backstops. When you see historic site improvements, think Mahaffey Farm and Heritage Center. Ensor Farm and Museum, Olathe Cemetery, kind of getting renovations that they need and assistance they need there. REC modernization project, that's going to help with some of the technology upgrades that need to happen, and then some pool and lake enhancements for the services there. Another project that we wanted to highlight is Prairie Center Park improvements phase two, that's $2.9 million total. And that's starting in 28. So it doesn't have a transfer in 27, but it'll be a big dollar project in the five years. And Prairie Center Park, it's actually one of the oldest city parks. And so it already had, this is a multi-phase project, so it already had a first phase a few years ago that covered parking lots and some field reconfigurations. But this phase is scoped to address some access points or possibly some access point restroom facilities and repairs to the disc golf course. So there's a lot of stuff going on. We have a lot of perks and there's a lot of things that we have for enhancing and upgrading them. Trails and connectivity. This other section, we'll just call it a few of those things here. Cedar Creek Trail, it's about a $2.5 million project. It's mostly happening in 27. So it's a big piece of the 2027 transfers that you see. It's a continuation of 4.1 mile, 10 foot wide asphalt pedestrian and bicycle trail. And it also includes a pedestrian bridge that spans Lake Olathe and completes the connection between Cedar Lake Park and Lake Olathe and helps close a gap that we have in the regional park trail system there. We also call out the Trail Improvement and Development, which is another annual project. That's $350,000 per year, and it helps with trail repairs, works on segments of the trail, and upgrades to assets like the bridges and things. So that's a continuing thing other than just a call-out per section. For revitalization and maintenance of neighborhood parks, Mill Creek Pool and Splash Pad has been a $4.5 million project, so a pretty big deal there. And it'll receive its last $500,000 transfer from the Park Sales Tax Fund in 27. And it'll include new shade structures, filter systems, drains, concession space renovations. It's going to look great. And then the neighborhood park development, that's $450,000 per year. It's an annual project that we've seen for a long time. and it has the goal to invest in the construction of new neighborhood parks in developing areas. The growing system to meet community needs, not too many projects here. You might guess by the 2% that we have kind of called out. But again, there's a little bit of gray area in how we divide things out. But the dog park, it'll be designated off-leash fenced-in area, one to four acres. And actually, I learned this. It was ranked fourth, dog park ranked fourth in the master plan. It was only really behind rec trails, farmer's market, and park restrooms. So we're addressing that.

Have we identified what park it's going to be in yet? It's happening next year, correct? Yes.

Johnny Brock is the park superintendent.

We are still working through a couple of options that we have.