City Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I call this city commission meeting July 14, 2026 to order. Will you join me in a flag salute?

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 and justice for all.

Would Pastor Daniel Refn from First Methodist Church come up and lead us in a prayer?

All right. Thank you, friends. Pleased to join me in a spirit of prayer. God, you are the source of our life, and you're the source of all wisdom. And so tonight, we ask for your wisdom. We have gathered here out of love for this community, and because we all care, and because we want to be part of making this a better place for all people. So help us to do that tonight, we pray. Give us humility, give us courage, and grant us, above all, wisdom. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Thank you. Moving on, is there open to public input? Is there anyone that wishes to speak in public input? If so, come forward, state your name and address. Seeing none, I'm going to move to the consent agenda. Are there any items on the agenda to be removed?

Item E for me.

D?

E as in Edward.

C? Okay.

E. B. No, E. E, okay.

Gotcha. Yeah. Well, I'm going to pull item B, C, D, and E. So is there a motion to approve item A, approval of the June 23rd, 26th City Commission meeting minutes?

So moved. Second.

And motion is second. To approve, roll call vote.

Brooks. Yes. Wetzel.

Yes.

Perry. Yes. Sigley. Yes.

All right. Item B, approval of ordinance number S-1116, levying a special assessment against the lots of parcels of land on which public nuisance was located to pay the cost of abating the nuisance and authorize the mayor to sign the ordinance on behalf of the city. Dexter, I just want you to go through the process because we all get calls from people about several things on here and I don't think they understand the steps it takes to get where they're going because when they call, I go by and look at whatever it is and I come and talk to you. You have a bunch of cases already opened. So if you could just kind of run through the first one. And there's 19 demolitions on that ordinance. So could you tell the process of...

Yeah, so typically the city will receive complaints, whether it be C-Click Fix, which is a big one, or call in or call you, like you've called me. Once we receive the complaint, we will start a case. We'll send an inspector out to take a look at it, whether it's a building inspector for the DLAPs that you talk about or a codes inspector for nuisance, weeds, grass, things like that. They'll go out, they'll document, they'll start a case. Sometimes it takes a while to find the owner if they're rentals. Once they get the case started, they'll send an email, I mean, I'm sorry, mail, and they have 10 or 14 days, depending on what the ordinance says, what type of case it is, to comply with that, the owner does. After that, that time limits up, the inspector will go back and then document whether that's been addressed or not. Then from there, they'll start a work order to go clean it up themselves, and that's how we get to this assessment. It's fair to say that after the work order's complete, or whether it goes to a notice to appear to the courts, which we've talked about that many times, once it goes to the courts, it's kinda on to the courts. But if we do a work order on it, at that point, it'll get sent to finance, finance will send them an invoice for the work order, and either the occupant or owner will pay that, or it'll get assessed in June or July of every year.

So out of these 19 demolitions, have there been some that people demolished it themselves?

Oh, yeah. So, yeah, there's been well over, I think, 30 throughout the year that the building services department has ordered to be down, and homeowners do take care of themselves.

And so what would cause... that letter to it needs to be demolished.

What's the... A state of dilapidation. So that's a pretty lengthy process that goes through, but in short, if a property is valued at X and it's 50% of that or less, it can be ordered to be demolished. It doesn't mean it has to be. We typically try to work with owners to get them to make the repairs, but sometimes they're too far gone.

Right. Anybody else have any questions? So the timeline, a lot of the questions that... I've fielded the question on the timeline from the city, letting them know that it's in that condition and their time frame to get it. adjusted if they Contest this or they want to do it themselves or they're pending some financial assistance or whatnot How does that process work are we talking about delapse or nuisance cases or all the above all the above if they need? Assistance with dealing with their issues on their properties do we have a yeah, so the again.

We're only about compliance We're not trying to build anybody or or make this stuff happen and cause hardships for people so in most nuisance cases there's always a phone number at the bottom or in any case there's a phone number and We urge people to contact that number, work with them. Codes inspectors are really good about working with people, giving them 90 days before we even move on to work orders or notice to appear. And that's, again, case dependent. Obviously, we're not going to give you 90 days because you don't want to cut your grass, but... Right.

As far as the structures, though, they're given an ample amount of time to figure out what's going on. That was... One of the point of questions I got was that the property owner felt that there was a structure they could have repaired, but they weren't given enough time to repair it or quantify the funds to be able to repair it. And some of these, and I drove around and looked, some of them, they've been in bad shape for many, many years. So the city coming and telling them it's time probably was two or three years past due.

Okay. Any other questions? I'll make a motion to approve item B. So move second moving second roll call vote Brooks.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes Item C approval of ordinance s 11 17 11 11 e a special assessment against the lots of or parcels of land on which rescue Refuge matter was located to pay the cost of making the premise safe and hygienic and authorized the mayor to sign the ordinance on behalf of the city 60 properties today that were, and I was going to ask, I didn't see, what's the allotted days on that to clean up the refuse? Ten days. Ten days? Yep. All right. Any other questions? No questions? All right. I'll make a motion to approve item C, roll call.

Item D, approval of Ordinance S1118, levying a special assessment against

the lots or parcels of land on which existed weeds or obnoxious vegetation growth to pay the cost of cutting or removing said growth and authorize the mayor to sign the ordinance on behalf of the city. We have 323 properties today. What's the time frame on that? Ten days. Ten days. How many out of that hundred, well, I guess none of them has, but comply. So you do have people.

So in working day, I think I told you there was 4,000 cases last year, right? Obviously, we're only 323. So, yeah, we had a lot of people comply.

And a lot of these, that's just, say it's the grass. What's the height of the grass?

12 inches.

So this, if they don't comply, is this not one time the city's cutting that? They're probably cutting it several times a year.

So there was an ordinance that was passed by the commission that I don't know how many years ago it was that we sent one letter out for grass a year. Grass, I mean, postage is expensive today. Envelopes are expensive. I know we want to make cuts. This was passed years and years ago, so we we send out one letter a year. I think Tammy ran it or sitting Clerk ran it in the paper this year you guys already talked about that at one meeting previously But just so you know we do reach out to people over and over and over the goal is always to work with somebody It's it's not send a letter out in ten days go cut it It's send a letter out wait for some Correspondents wait for somebody to reach out to us if nobody does then yes We do have an obligation on it to go cut it But if people call us and work with us and say, hey, my mower broke or I've got some hardships and need some help, we obviously work with them.

Are some of these properties year after year descending?

Yeah, we have some absentee ownership. We also have some people that are deceased that the house just sits there until it goes for foreclosure by the county.

And then if it's on the property tax, then whoever purchases it is responsible for all the...

This assessment puts that charge onto the property tax, how that's handled at the county. Okay.

All right. I've seen... No, no, go ahead. I've seen comments about how the community feels this is being handled, and I've spoken to you many times on this, and I've gone again and looked at properties all over the city... It's not something to take lightly when the city opposes a bill upon somebody else for work that they should have been doing themselves or essentially the city shouldn't be responsible for. This large of a number, I feel like we can help some of this with communication. And obviously you guys are doing well with trying to give them time to do it. One of the residents I stopped at, They had got a notice previous year. They mowed it once, mower died. The neighbors assisted a couple times, and then it got out of control once again. The concern was how many times are they supposed to mow it a year to stay in compliance, and again, the height is the primary factor that decides that. I don't know. There's a lot of people that I think are just looking over this and waiting for this stage of it to deal with it. I think if we maybe open up some more communication throughout the year, not just through your department, but as the city as a whole, we could help with some of this.

And I think we're working on a new website. Stephanie's been very good about working with us on putting that kind of stuff out. I think going forward, the new website's going to help quite a bit.

When I spoke to you, all this is documented. This is not a somebody drove by and said, hey, I think it's above 12 inches. There's photos. There's a full packet on this. For those that are concerned that they're being picked on or that they're not doing what they're supposed to or they're not doing it as many times a year, they can come any time and review what they put together before it gets to the court level and making the fines on them. I just want to make sure people understand that, that you don't have to wait until this stage to deal with it or to ask questions.

DJ, are the most calls you're getting, are they from citizens not happy with the process? with the ordinance the way it's written?

Not so much the process, just not knowing the full process, knowing how it works or what they're... So if somebody mows their yard, we've had heavy rains. I think my grass grew nine inches in two weeks. I mowed it right before it rained, and then it grew excessively. I couldn't mow it again until the water receded. But that's kind of what I'm saying about the communication piece. I think if we get out there more and talk to them more, letting them know how the process works, I think we can get through some of those.

I think, Mayor Munsell, most of yours are people that are unhappy with their neighbors not mowing their yard.

Yeah.

So it's almost – I mean, it's nice that it's both of your 50-50 on each side, but – That's the calls we get is the complaints. Hey, my neighbor's not mowing. We very seldom get a call saying, hey, you're picking on me until we've sent you the letter. But what we're asking for is you to call us. We'll obviously work with anybody if you call. If you don't call, then at the end of that time frame, we have an obligation to mow.

And I talked to you about this one, Dexter, the C-click fix. People see something, they get on there, and whatever the process is. And they think automatically that's going to be taken care of. Sometimes it, I don't know, the wording, does it say case closed?

It does. So I think there's a misconception out there that C-Click fixes Facebook or communication tool back and forth. It's a reporting tool. It's how you report a problem, and then we're not going to have a banter back and forth on it. It's not social media. It's a reporting tool. So when you report it and the inspector sees it, they will go out and start a case and close that case.

That's the goal of the... Well, if you didn't have enough to do on checking on these ordinances, when does the shipping container ordinance go into effect?

So that would go into effect 90 days from the date of publication. That date is the 30th of this month. So we will start enforcement after the 30th of this month.

All right, Dexter, thank you.

Wait.

Dexter, yeah, she's got something. I got one more question.

Okay. Tammy had the notice in the paper, and we talked about that in great length. Was that, the way it read, the only notice people were going to get at the time? Because it read that way. And then you were being gracious to send a letter, and then 10 days after the letter.

And we still do send letters.

So I'm just saying the way I read it was what the notice was going to be, the only notice for everybody.

That is correct.

But you were nice enough to say you're sending a letter to follow up.

We are still sending letters throughout the year. We make every effort to notify everybody we can. Like I said, the last thing, we have enough to do. We don't want to go mow yards.

And even at the 10-day mark, I'm sure that you don't have enough manpower to go through and go, oh, I need to call this person. I need to call this.

We do not.

And so you've made every effort to do it.

It's not so reasonable that, first of all, you should know that you have grass to cut or debris to pick up. Number two, you get a letter that says you need to do that. Number three is you should do it. It's that simple. I mean, you can believe it. It's all you want.

No, but I'm just saying that when she sent the notice out to begin with, that was the first notice of the year. And then as far as going back to what he said about C-Click fix, There's a lot of things that seem like they might hang there for a year or matter. Is there a reason why that is that way?

And then all of a sudden, some things just like go away, but it's still... C-Click Fix is a really big tool, and I'm only a small fraction of that as far as what comes to me. C-Click Fix is for roads, for animal control. Almost every complaint I think you could think of is in C-Click Fix. I see a small portion of those. Some of those, there is due process, you know, going onto your property, somebody else's property, and telling them what they can and can't do to it is, people don't like that. And it's very challenging. And sometimes finding the owner can take months. We've tracked down people in other states clear across the country. So before we just go onto somebody's property, short of mowing, anything above mowing, it can take some time. And a dilapidation case can take years. And then if it does go to court, those can take years.

So C-Click Fix automatically sends whatever the way it's categorized to you or to Matt or to Lonnie?

And some of them, depending on the way a citizen may put them in, may fall off into Never Never Land until somebody finds them and digs them out. It just depends on how somebody categorized those. And I'm sure IT could talk more about it than I could. Oh, yeah. I'm just curious.

Okay.

Thank you. You're welcome. The last question I have for you, and I apologize. I know you've explained it to me or I've read it somewhere, but I don't have it in front of me tonight. The process of the cost implied on the property owner for vegetation removal, several of these are different prices or fees.

Okay. On these, you guys set an ordinance, or commission had set an ordinance years ago dictating the price. I believe it's $200 an hour, and then there's an incremental charge, and then there is an administrative charge, and then on top of all that, we have to add on publication charges. We get that from the newspaper.

Let's make sure the public understands how that formula works. And like I said, you explained it to me, so I just want to make sure they hear it so they know that it's not just an arbitrary number we're throwing at them saying, we think it's worth this. It goes off fuel, equipment, man hours, all those things.

Well, and it's actually a little bit... To de-incentivize them to not do it. I mean, we don't want to be in the property maintenance business. We've got plenty of parks and things to mow. So some people just wait for the city to do it if we only charge. I mean, if they can get a cheaper deal having the city mow it than somebody else, then they're just going to let us mow it forever and we're never going to get out of this. So the fees were set to make people understand that we don't want to mow your property, we don't want to pick up your property, and if we do, it's going to be way more expensive than if you just took care of it yourself.

Thanks for that.

Any other questions? I'll make a motion to approve item D. Second. We've been moving second in a roll call vote.

Brooks. Yes. Unsell. Yes. Perry. Yes. Siegel. Yes.

Thank you.

Thanks, Dexter.

Good job, Dexter.

Item E, approval of appropriation ordinance for the period ending July 14, 2026, subject to release of HUD expenditures when funds are received. I'm going to recuse. Same.

All right.

Roll call vote.

Yes. Yes.

Special presentation, 2025 annual comprehensive financial report representing from BT and companies PA, the city's auditing firm will present to the review the city's 2025 audit in ACFR.

Good evening. Uh, my name is Matt Dyche. I'm a partner with, uh, symbol Jansen Hawk and Lloyd. So we were formerly BT and co, uh, name change as of January 1st of this year. So hence why there's a different logo on the reports this year. Uh, you're probably used to seeing Stacy Hammond here presenting to you. And she was the partner on your audit this year, but, uh, unfortunately she had surgery at the end of last week and is at home, uh, resting and recovering right now. So, uh, I've stepped in, uh, into her place for, uh, this evening. Also, I have Trey Shelton, who was the engagement manager, here with me tonight. Trey will close out our presentation. He'll share the results of the federal single audit and other findings that we're required to communicate at the end of the audit. You should have received two documents from us. One is the very thick, the actual audited financial statements of the city for the year ended December 31st. We will not be going through that tonight. That's for light reading later. But the shorter report is our required communication to you as the city council of the results of the audit process for this year. So that is what we will be going through this year, going through this evening pretty briefly. So first of all, I just want to start, our responsibility as your independent auditors is to perform your audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards. We also have to audit the city under government auditing standards. We have to abide by the provisions of the Single Audit Act because of the level of your federal expenditures of the city, which then the OMB Compliance Supplement comes into play, and also the Kansas Municipal Audit and Accounting Guide. So a lot of different regulations that you're subject to that we conduct your audit under. Those standards require us to perform procedures to obtain reasonable assurance about whether your financial statements are free from material misstatement. Our procedures include examining on a test basis, so it's not 100% testing, it is on a sampled and testing basis, evidence that supports the amounts and the disclosures within the financial statements. We also review the accounting principles used and the significant estimates that the city's management uses to prepare the financial statements. So we're pleased to report tonight that as the result of our audit, we determined that the financial statements of the city are presented fairly in all material respects in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles, and we issued an unmodified audit opinion, which is the best opinion that the city can get, is that unmodified opinion. So in the accounting policies and practices section of the report, this is where we would bring to your attention anything identified in our procedures that we perform relating to changes in existing accounting policies or newly adopted accounting policies or principles or significant or unusual transactions or significant estimates. So within that category, we only have significant estimates that we'll talk about very, very briefly tonight. Obviously, estimates come into play with an audit. Not everything is black and white. There are occasionally sections of the financial reporting require an estimate by management. So within the report to the City Commission, we have listed out those significant estimates that we evaluated as part of our audit. Things such as your OPEB benefits liability, net pension liability, deferred inflows and outflows related to leases, a lot of very technical things, as well as accrued compensated absences. So as we analyze those estimates that the city made, we make sure that they're measured and recorded appropriately. And as a result of our work, we can report to you that we believe that the estimates are reasonable that management used to estimate those account balances. There were some audit adjustments that we recorded as part of the audit. Those are attached behind the representation letter in the packet. Those are summarized there, and those are there for you to review as well. We also have one uncorrected misstatement that is also in the packet. I believe it's the very, very last page. That's an adjustment that management and we determined to not be material, and so we did not post that adjustment to your financial statements. The final section of the report relates to observations about the audit process that we would document any concerns or issues that we had while we were going through the process. things such as disagreements with management or where outside counsel was sought to discuss on how to treat a certain transaction or anything like that. We had no difficulties dealing with management. In fact, quite the opposite. Missy and Darren and the team were great to work with. Responded to all of our numerous questions thoroughly and promptly. So no difficulties encountered in performing the audit. And last time I would like to talk about is the representation letter. So that is attached in the document as well. It's multiple pages. I think we're up to 79 different bullets in the letter now. But that letter is very important. That is the final step in our audit process. And so management is required to represent certain things to us as auditors. And those are all documented in that letter, so I really encourage you to read through that letter and understand what the city management is representing to us as the auditors of the city. It also helps you understand the overall audit process and fulfill your fiduciary duty as the city council. So with that, I will turn it over to Trey. And we're happy to answer questions at the end, but I thought we'd run through it real quick and then save questions for the end.

Thanks, Matt. Like Matt mentioned, I was the manager on the audit of the city this year and the single audit, and I'm going to be covering the single audit. The single audit was conducted in accordance with the same standards as the financial statement audit that Matt mentioned. This year, the city had three major federal programs that we tested. And for your reference, the single audit section is in the very back of the audited financial statements, pages 117 to about 124. Those three major programs were the Housing Voucher Cluster, the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, and the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds. Together, those three programs accounted for $20.1 million of the total $21.5 million of federal expenditures of federal awards that the city had in 2025. And you'll see the listing of all the expenditures of federal awards on the schedule of expenditures of federal awards, which is in those pages. For those three programs, we audited the city's compliance with the compliance requirements described in the OMB's compliance supplement. Similar to the financial statement audit, as a result of our testing, we issued an unmodified opinion on the report over this compliance. And as mentioned previously, this is the best opinion that the city can receive. On page 119 of the audited financial statements, you're going to find the schedule of findings and question cost. This is where we would note any written findings that we found during the audit. This year, there were three findings that we deemed as material weaknesses during the audit. Two were related to the financial statement audit, and one was related to the single audit for the coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery funds. The two financial statement findings, one was related to internal controls related to the vendor policy change information that we tested during their audit. And the other was related to just the overall audit adjusting entries that Matt mentioned are listed in that other letter that you received. The single audit finding was specifically related to the suspension and debarment compliance requirement related to those coronavirus funds. We are aware, and you'll see in that schedule there, that the city does have corrective action plans already planned out and are putting in place. And so we did look those over within those pages as well. Before I open it up to questions, that covered my single audit presentation. I just want to thank Missy and her team. You know, we throw a lot of questions at them for a couple of months, and it can be a little demanding, so we appreciate the help and all the time they put in to complete the audit.

Before we move on to the questions, I just want, for the public statement, I've got a few things I'd like to say. In this thing you said, we did not identify any significant unusual transactions, correct? Okay. Just as for the public statement, except as disclosed to you, we have no knowledge of allegations of fraud or suspected fraud affecting the city's basic financial statements involving such and such, whatever. We are not aware of any pending or threatened litigation, claims or assessments, unasserted claims or assessments that our lawyer has advised us are probable of assertion and must be disclosed in accordance with the government accounting standards. I got just a few more here. Management has identified and disclosed all of its government programs and related activities subject to the Uniform Guidance Compliance suit, and the copies of the federal program financial reports provided to the auditor are true copies of the reports submitted or electronically transmitted. Am I right on all of that? Yes, sir. Okay. I just wanted to get that into the report.

Because you have more that you were going to... Yep, that is it. We'll open it up to any questions.

Okay. So what signifies a significant event that is found or isn't found? As Commissioner Seelig is stating, no significant findings were found. What's that tier? Where is the start point?

Yeah, so through the audit, we operate the audit under with the materiality, which is based on certain financial metrics of the city. And so significance is really based on that materiality that we set. And within the city, there are actually multiple materialities that we audit under depending on which fund the transactions take place in. and different things like that. So materiality is really our judgment when it comes to significance.

So it's not really set at a dollar amount, it's at a significant effect to the city by what the issue was. Correct. Okay. And so when you do the length of the audit, you said it takes several months to do this and go over it. The data provided, and like I said, I've gone through it several times and I'll continue to do that, a lot of information in one place. The information that is submitted for this audit, is it holistic for the city or is it batch driven? I know it says it in a couple of different places, but how much information did you cover in this audit compared to the city's entire function?

So we are provided a trial balance at the very beginning of the audit that includes all of the year end balances from the city. So that includes the income statement activity throughout the whole year, as well as the balance sheet activity at the end of the year. And then we take those balances and tie them out, like Matt mentioned, on a test basis. So sampling through supporting documentation.

Okay, so you said sampling. So what's the percentage sampling from categories within the city? What are we looking at? How many... I just want the public to understand that the audit process is there to validate what's being spent, how it's being spent, and the process of it. So as long as they understand... how much of the actual expenditures are filling up in this audit, I think it makes sense.

Yeah, so an actual percentage, I don't think we can probably say that, but just for a little more reference, so we take a risk-based approach to the audit. So risk can be based on size of the accounts, size, you know, number of transactions, or inherent risk worth, you know, a management estimate, for example, is very inherently risky because this involves human judgment to determine the balance. As part of our understanding of the city and its transactions and processes and cycles, we determine based on risk basis which ones we will test at a higher level and which ones we'll test at a lower level through say analytical procedures versus vouching to source documents and things like that. So different types of transactions, different account balances are tested in different ways. And so not every, the audit isn't just, hey, we want all your invoices for the entire year and we're gonna test 50% of them, for example. It's really a risk-based approach, and riskier areas we put more focus on, we test at a higher level. Less risky areas, we do analytical procedures, comparisons to expectations, different things like that. I know I'm not giving you an exact answer to the question, but that's really the approach that we take with the audit.

So the process that took place for this audit, roughly, what's the majority of the time spent on for validating information?

Significant balance sheet accounts, for sure, so all your bank accounts, debt liabilities, significant receivables. We spend a significant amount of time on the balance sheet items. Assets and liabilities are a big part of it. Federal expenditures, we are required, like we talked about, by OMB and the Yellow Book and different things to test significant amount of those federal expenditures, so that's where a lot of the detailed testing. We test a lot of your capital additions. You had a pretty large construction project this past year. We test those at a higher level when there's significant activity like that. And obviously the estimates again, just because they're inherently risky, we spend a lot of time on those as well. And try to get third party validation as much as we can. Sending confirmations to your banks, to bond holders and different things like that to get third party validation of those amounts as well.

I met with Stacy in March and at the time we just, she knew Because he asked me this kind of funny question. She asked me if I was aware of any fraud that has happened. And we were aware of it. But that's not on this report. But I did ask her to look into our credit card purchases. And you guys did. You tested them and found out. I'm not going to go through what that was about. But I'm just going to read, if that's all right, what the email she sent to me. Based on follow-up with the city, the updated policy put in place after year's end and the compensation controls in place, we have given the city a control deficiency as a result of this testing. It is important to note that the control deficiency does not rise to a level to be a written finding in the audit report is a type of deficiency that we communicate to the city verbally and recommend the city work on getting it fixed. We had a policy on on credit card use. And I think some of our employees just got lax in the procedure of how to use a credit card, even though they're written policy, step by step. Like I said before, 95 to 97% of the employees use those credit cards correctly. But, you know, there was some that weren't used correctly. And like I said, it just was probably a lax on the employee's part and not going through the proper procedures. But I'm glad you checked into that and offered suggestions.

That's all I have.

Any other questions?

Thank you very much. I want to thank you guys and tell Stacey I hope she gets better. And I appreciate the numerous hours and Missy and her team, and Jay specifically, the two of them, were very patient. And we kept saying that, you know, they got to go through everything. So thanks for going through everything. Thanks for driving over today. And please tell Stacey. All right. Thank you.

Consider the following. Resolution number 1304, consider approval of resolution number 1304, a resolution of the governing body of the city of Pittsburgh, Kansas, authorizing the redemption and payment of its industrial development revenue bonds series 2017A, 2017B, Kendall Packing Corporation, and the sale and convenience of certain property to Kendall Packing Corporation.

Mayor, commissioners, this is Stacey Steele with Gilmore & Bell. And Blake's out of town today, so she'll be taking care of this for us. Thank you.

Did I say Stacey? Oh, I say Stacey. I got Stacy on my mind. She was the auditor. I'm sorry, Sarah. Good evening. I'm Sarah Steele with Gilmore & Bell, coming over from Wichita. And in 2017, the city issued the industrial revenue bonds for economic incentives for the Kendall packaging bond issue. And they have determined that they want to pay that off early. and so they've given proper notice and they will, sorry, they will actually pay it off on July 23rd. In 2017, the city deeded the property to, I'm sorry, other way around. Kendall Packaging deeded the property to the city. And that was how we did industrial revenue bonds back at that time. Subsequently, we've kind of expedited and made it a little easier and not had deeds. So we need to deed the property back to Kendall Packaging and also release the recorded documents that are on file with the Crawford County Register of Deeds on the property and the bond issue that it was done at the time. So get those released, then they will have clear title and the city will be completely out of it. So early payoff, transferring everything back to kennel packaging, and that's the sum total of what you're approving in this resolution.

Are there any questions? Move to approve. Second. A motion to approve and second it.

All in favor say aye.

Aye. All opposed, same sign.

Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Item B, Sports Complex Improvement. Consider the recommendation of the Economic Development Advisory Committee to allocate $750,000 from revolving loan funds to support the improvements in and around the Don Guthrie Sports Complex.

Mayor, City Commissioners, so today is... An important day. This is a project that has a lot of momentum due to the million dollars of bonds that you put towards it a few months ago. We've been very successful in working with Mammoth to get the turf for the three infields that you had originally specced out in the bond sale. And then quickly we had a donation come in to say that they wanted to do an entire field for the girls softball. And from there it just kind of took off. Joe De La Sega is here. Blaze Bowers here with Mammoth. I'd like to bring them to the mic, and if Joe could run through a presentation, it kind of shows you the vision. But there's a lot left to do on this project, but we wanted to make sure we asked the EDAC for their help. They made a recommendation, and we're here to answer any questions about it. I think Joe's got a pretty good presentation to show you what the EDAC saw when they considered it.

Hello. Hi. I'm here as a community volunteer supporting the efforts of the city of Pittsburgh for an asset that belongs to the city. I'm also supported by several people who've also joined me in volunteering to help raise the money to be able to fund this. We are so excited about this project and I'm excited to share with you kind of what's going on. The big picture is that we have an opportunity to turf JC's. It's our iconic historic ballpark that we're known for and still continue to get rave reviews from everybody who comes to the city. That now is a turf infield. It's been there for a while, and we're gonna have the opportunity to turf that. Mammoth's got the ability to help us get that stabilized so we can turf the outfield, which up until now has always been a challenge with the drainage. but they have the ability to do that, feel comfortable with it. The other part of the process is Don Gutteridge Sports Complex. It has seven ball fields in it, you see a picture there. It's gonna be an opportunity to come in and turf the infield and the outfield for every park in the process. The other part of the project is that working with the city leaders, and when I say that, working closely with Darren, Paul J. Byers, Kim Frohman, and Chris Loy, who've actually absolutely been terrific to work with. So this is what the project looks like. I wanted to jump into it a little bit, though, is the... There we go. This project started with you and we are very appreciative for the bond issue you did and the money you allocated to get this project started. That started a chain of events that have been dreamt about for 15, 20 years in this city. Anybody that's been on those ball fields played with our We played ourselves, our sons, our daughters, our fathers took us out there to hit. There's a lot of experiences, emotion, and history in those parks. We've done a great job in this community with our sports and recreation, kind of known as a leader in the region. But over the last couple years, the parks are not what we call a leadership position compared to what surrounding communities have. So our perspective has been it's been a great 50-year run. Fortunately, our fathers and the generations in front of us set up a great parks and recreation. But now it's our opportunity to get these parks up to a place where we can be proud of them. We can be proud of people coming to town. We have a place for our kids to play well into the future. We are also blessed and come here with a feeling of gratitude towards NOT ONLY YOU GETTING THE BALL STARTED, BUT THE PEOPLE THAT WE HAD IN THE COMMUNITY THAT CAME FORWARD AND MADE SIGNIFICANT INVESTMENT IN BEING ABLE TO TURF ALL THE FIELDS. THEIR GIFTS WERE THAT WE WILL TURF THE FIELDS, BUT THE INFRASTRUCTURE WILL DO AS MUCH TURFING AS WE CAN. THE INFRASTRUCTURE WILL BE PART OF ANY COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT. SO WE STEPPED UP AND SAID WE CAN DO THAT. THE PROJECT IS $2.5 MILLION FOR INFRASTRUCTURE. What we have is we have turf for the infields and outfields. We're talking about fencing, backstops, scoreboards, bleachers, and dugouts. And that's where we've relied heavily on Mammoth to advise us what is state of the art. At the same time, there's always that filter of what are other people doing, what's right size, and what's appropriate for Pittsburgh, Kansas. One of the main reasons for this project, beyond the ones of our kids having great playing surface and being able to reduce the rain outs for our travel teams, the number of people that are leaving our community every weekend to play travel sports on other people's fields is incredible. So just the leakage of people and the cost to our community to have to leave. There is also a part of this project of people coming into our community. And that's a real opportunity from an economic development I'll use just an example. There were a couple of sandlot tournaments. There's a group that brings tournaments that has teams from all over the area. These are small one-day tournaments. And on April 25th, we have information, but there were 5,100 people who came into the park area. And if you look at those numbers and you take out Pittsburgh and Frontenac, 3,700 of them came from communities outside of 25 miles.

Joe, what age group is this Sandlot tournament?

12 and under.

There might have been 13.

Were there any 13s in that? Mostly 12 and under. This next slide just shows you a representation of where these people came from, which is incredible information. The math works because these were the communities that came, Lamar, Parsons, Independence, that had teams in the tournament. So it's reasonable. We were also able, with the technology, Placer AI, that the Pittsburgh has, to be able to see where people came before they went to the park and where they went after. which further reinforces that in the morning they stopped at our coffee shops and at McDonald's, afterwards they stopped out at the town center, the Gibson Shopping Center area, Walmart, the other Meadowbrook. We went in front of the Economic Development Advisory Council and very grateful for them and the time we had with them to be able to lay out this case that what this could do for us and our community to have these facilities. The challenge is, all of this is odd as in terms of Mammoth is willing to come in and be able to get this project done starting at the end of the baseball season, which they planned on doing with the three fields that you had blessed. But for us, it's critical that the infrastructure piece get in the, they know what the scope of their work is. So Mammoth, I'm going to ask Blaise to get out and just kind of talk about that for a minute. In front of the EDAC, we said that we have a project that's $2.5 million for infrastructure to finish this project off right. $2 million of that we will look at to come from the community, from individual donations, and the rest of that would be coming from governmental agencies and foundations and grants. I can just say how proud I am of the people that we approached that were enthusiastic, that were leaders in the community, that have children playing sports. And everyone that we asked was excited to be in the project, but they've also become volunteers and are actually working on the fundraising. And many of them are represented here tonight and so appreciative of their work. So if I could, if I could just have Blaze come up. We had a meeting where we shared the hopes and the dreams of this park, and there were some great comments from Mammoth, who is a national company and has seen parks all over the country. And so, Blaze, if you would please share your perspective for Mammoth.

Thanks for having me back. First of all, I want to say this. I've sat in some meetings with Joe. I've sat in several with Darren. And just to have the vision and one thing about leadership, you have to have the vision and you have to help other people see the vision. And I think Joe and Darren have done an amazing job of that. And they can be very persuasive in talking to people about donating for a project. I'm amazed that the people have stepped up and committed dollars for this project. So right now, we'd come, I think it was back in May, maybe April, and we went to do Stice and two Enfields. And since then, things have changed and set in some meetings where some people committed some dollars. So obviously, if you're going to do this, you need to do it. If you're going to do all of them, it's time to do them instead of feathering them out. Also, we've done a lot of pricing, gone back and forth, and Darren doesn't even know this yet, but we've actually looked at these and done some work on them, and we can show a deduct at about $285,000 and counting. And that's just with just looking at the design of them. I can't get that thing to stay shut. With the design of them, some of the fields are a little bit bigger than they need to be, And if you look at the standard regulation sizes, if you shorten them a little bit and make them standard size where they probably should be, of course that saves on turf. The one thing that we would recommend, and we're ready to go, and we also had a deduct of $53,000, $57,000 if we can do all these fields at once for mobilization and turf prices. We convinced the light people, and we sent that out to numbers and got some quality bids, some local people doing electric work. And we just called them up and said, we need something more. And they said they would do a $10,000 deduct if they could do the lights. on one package. So we're working to try to get that price down, but right now I think as we move forward, if there's commitment to do these fields, we need to go ahead and get that turf ordered and planned and get that scheduled out so we can start that in August. There should be no problem having all those fields done by next spring. But I think the priority starting off would be JC and Stice because the high school teams use those. Very excited. I will say this. Our owner is down from one of our meetings. We had five or six people down, and he was talking about this project. Fortunately, we get to see a lot of these projects, and we get to see the impact of how they impact community financially. but also just the aesthetics of people in the community wanting to be a part of the community. So I'm glad Joe shared some of those numbers to you, too, because always people come up there and say, yeah, but it's good for the community. You'll make dollars. It's good for businesses. It really is. And he did a nice job pointing that out and showing how impactful that can be. We're ready to go whenever you guys give us a thumbs up, and hopefully we can get started moving dirt in August, and hopefully we can get everything packaged together for the rest of the fields, and we're ready to go.

Any questions? Once the fields are completed. What kind of maintenance and what kind of equipment will be needed to maintain?

There is a, and we would recommend that, you do need some equipment, and we put that into pricing. And it's a machine that kind of works and fluff ups the turf, and you don't do that... know often but and we also and i think is including our maintenance plan we come down and once a year you know we will work those fields but there's some maintenance when they say they're maintenance free that's not true everything requires maintenance but it's minimal maintenance and then we will also come down and work with your people and and chris and whoever needs to be there and show them how to work. You know, the pitcher's mounds and batter's boxes are gonna take a lot of wear and tear, torque and turn, and those need to be given attention. But overall, minimal maintenance.

And one of the good things about working with Blaze and his team is we met under a tree out at the park one day. Joe put it together. The coaches were all there. And we just asked them, how does the facilities that you go to all the time, how does it really work the best? And they told us the areas that are going to get beat to death are right in front of the dugouts where the people warm up. So they're like, if you put wings on some of these fields, you have openings so people can get out. You put a... soft toss areas on each side of each diamond. Those are the kind of things that have been designed into the project that allow the turf that's out there to last even longer and not just get beat to death in those few areas where it does. The mounds are all movable, the fences are movable, but the quality of the turf is going to be as high as you can get and we want to make sure it lasts as long as we can.

What's the life expectancy of the turf that you're using currently, this composition?

What's expected for it to... The warranty on a turf is eight years. I don't know of any field that's gone anywhere close to eight years. Most of the baseball, softball fields are going 12 to 15 or 15 plus. And to replace them is not what it costs. You know, the cost is getting them in the first time. The stabilization at Civil Works is critical.

My only concern would be you're asking for $750,000 from EDAC. Is that correct?

That's the question. That was the recommendation.

Is that going to hinder us from doing projects this next year or the year after? Is the EDAC able to do this and have enough money to do projects in the future?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, go ahead. Shane's the chair of the EDAC. I want to speak to him.

I'm going to step in for Blake, who normally has a suit and tie on. I don't, but I'm going to share the information the best I can. You know, when we evaluated this project, we did it just like any project we look at and had discussions with Darren after and before. And the reality is this. We want to make sure there's an ROI on this project. And Joe did a great job of highlighting that. And that ROI lets us return to the fund the money that's required, and it also allows the city to collect the money to re-turf the field, to our best estimate. I don't know what turf will cost in 12 years, but as you just said, normally significantly less, right? So we have an ROI. We're staying below 10%. And our current balance, there's not a project in the foreseeable future that we would not be able to fund in the correct way because we've made this investment. So we're trying to be good stewards of our funds to address exactly what you're saying.

One other thing that jumps out that's pretty unique about this project is We've invested in a lot of projects and I know we gave money to the soccer or the outdoor track this last year and that was very important, but this is literally a revenue generating asset that the city owns. This isn't investing in a company, this is investing in our own community and our ability to have ball tournaments here, to have people, boys and girls grow up here, stay in town, but also with the donor arrangement that's been put into place, there's no payback to a private company for building this and leasing out the facilities. These are city facilities. We have over $6 million donated, and that money will come back to the city, but you also have to go through all the stores, all the hotels, all of those things. So it just seemed like it was truly one of those revenue-generating assets that the EDAC needed to be asked to participate, and luckily they did a, you know, I think they actually came back with $750, and it was unanimous, so that felt good.

I don't know what kind of funds... it's going to be generated from all the tournaments that will probably be there. But that money will go to help maintain the fields and whatever is needed. That money will go back into that project.

Yeah, I think one thing we discussed, not only maintaining the fields, but I think there's real opportunity for tournaments. And those funds also could support someone who runs and is pseudo sports authority to make sure those tournaments attract the people we want to from further areas. Joe, I know you've discussed those tournament fees a little bit.

Yeah, so what, in fact, Jake, the president of Mammoth, was looking at this project, and he stopped and he said, you know, a lot of people have quads, different projects, and he said, you are going to have one of the most unique, beautiful destinations for travel tournaments. There will be, and he's on the, he's affiliated with U-triple-S-A, Perfect Game, several, and he said, believe me, you have a very unique destination opportunity. I WOULD CAUTION THAT THIS ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT SUMMER IF WE GET THESE THINGS DONE IN THE SPRING. IT'S GOING TO TAKE US A WHILE AS A COMMUNITY TO BUILD UP, BUT WE ALREADY ARE HOSTING TOURNAMENTS, AND IT'S GOING TO BE SIGNIFICANT THE AMOUNT OF TRAFFIC THAT WE'RE GOING TO BE ABLE TO What I showed you, I showed just to show a glimpse of a four-hour tournament. But think about when you double and triple those numbers and then put them over a day or two night stays. I was going to say that.

Remember back when Joplin used to have them softball tournaments? You couldn't find a place to park out there. I don't know how many people came to that, but yeah, that's a big deal.

You know, you bring up a really unique point. As this project came about, I went home and I looked through some pictures. And you can see me playing in the jock snitch tournament when I was 19 years old. And you see my wife and I playing co-ed softball when we're 21. And you see me coaching my kids at these parks. when I was in my late 40s. And I might tell you I haven't changed at all, but I've changed a lot. But the parks haven't. We haven't done anything to really revitalize those. And I think it's a commitment from our community to provide all these kids and players the best possible experience. And Joe really highlighted We can find a lot of quads, right? I can drive you in two hours and find quads, and they all look alike. For us to have our own unique identity is something special, and to revitalize Lincoln Park and bring that traffic that you just mentioned from the jock snitch back there, it's a pretty exciting project for our community.

Definitely, definitely.

And allows us to keep the funds to grow businesses, as you mentioned, Dr. Sigman.

And it gets kids off of... There are phones playing baseball out to play baseball on the field.

Absolutely. One thing, you were going down that path of maintenance and that we will have the opportunity for sponsorships and signage out there. And so that's going to take us a little while to develop that program. That is a continued earning that could help put money into our leads, but then also keep and retain part of that money to have to replenish the fields and do the maintenance that's required.

I move to approve.

What's your dream amount that you're trying to hit?

Is it 10 million?

For the project, I look at it more as what, I'm trying to raise two and a half million for the infrastructure. The entire project is gonna be in the nine to 10 range, just because there's continued things that are looking back at the project. But we locked in and gave you a hard number. If you say give us a number, I'd say it's nine million as of today.

So when Blaise was talking about doing the turfs first, the infrastructure as far as the parking and the road through and all that, Does that happen at the same time as he is doing their part? And in a perfect world, if you hit 10 and you have people still wanting to donate to the cause, I mean, you're looking at, you build it, they'll come, but you have to be able to maintain it over the years and protect your investment too. As far as security and that type of thing out in the park area, because we all know that When things are nice, some things happen. So I just wondered if that was taken into account also. You talked about lighting and electrical and parking and asphalt and drainage is a big deal out there, we all know.

So the original condition, as you remember, I think Blaze said it, we had three infields and then all of Stice. And the donor that originally came in first was like, look, if you guys will take care of the road, we have to have the road done. Well, now it's evolved to where all the fields are getting done, the road has to get done. It's been designed. It'll be designed by Pete and Matt. They're working on it right now. We have to do a lot of testing to find out just what condition it is because, you know, everybody's been on that road. It's like a roller coaster. It's not part of kiddie land, but it feels like it when you're driving on it. That, that is, um, a cost that the city is going to take out of the street sales tax that is being planned and it'll be coordinated with blazes team. Um, we don't want to put a brand new road in and trash it out, but it will be, um, put in before the, the fields are, the fields will be opened and they won't all get done in one day, but we will be working on that.

I just wondered if it was going to be taxing on parks and rec to maintain that part with everything else. And if there was extra money, You know, it's kind of like there's somebody there that knows what they're doing, and they're keeping the house clean, so to speak.

You know, it's a great question. Really, if you take, there's the asset, which are the parks, and then there's the programming, which JL Hutch has done, in some cases the city has done, the softball groups, so there's been groups. That is already in place, so it's not gonna have to fall all on the city, but the asset itself will be on the city, and that's where I'd come back to the, between the sponsorship, sales, that annuity, plus the tournament annuity, we're gonna have some money to deal with. I can't tell you what that number is, but I can tell you it's gonna be significant.

Well, clean and well-maintained is a biggie, and other things to do, which are right there in that immediate area with the pickleball, kitty land and all that to keep people entertained even if they're waiting between games and what is your What is it Jay sees that you're gonna do there? Okay, so we'll do both the infield and the out the in and out and then it's in really pretty good shape so the lighting and everything else is good there and So does any of that include landscaping throughout everything through there or try to keep it to a minimum?

WELL, IF PEOPLE COME FORWARD TO HELP US WITH THE LANDSCAPING, IT WOULD ALWAYS BE NICE TO BEAUTIFY IT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. THAT'S SOMETHING THAT'S PROBABLY A SOFTER COST THAT WE'RE NOT TRYING TO ADDRESS RIGHT NOW, AS FAR AS...

I MEAN, IT'LL BE...

BLASE, HOW WOULD YOU ANSWER THAT IN TERMS OF THE WORK YOU'LL DO WITH THE FIELD THEMSELVES, THE DRAINAGE, ANYTHING THERE THAT WHEN YOU GET INTO A PROJECT LIKE THIS,

Yeah, we've spent an extensive amount of time. In fact, our lead engineer was on a meeting with the engineers here in the city today. They had some questions for him, and they've already talked about how we're going to handle the parking lots. We're going to have to bore under them and whatnot. I've talked about the drainage on JC. Obviously, that holds water. So our people are in communication with your people right now to try to bring that together. Does that answer your question?

I just wanted to note, like I said, if you build it, you have to be able to maintain it. And if you had an overabundance of people wanting to donate, would it go somewhere over here and the money's there, even though you might not have used it all right now to maintain it? And then if that's the case, and we're talking about Pittsburgh as a whole, when he was talking a couple months back about the soccer fields being grass, then all of a sudden, turf comes into play on soccer fields is that, are you only right there in Lincoln Park? Would it be for anything else? Because I think you may end up with more than you realize because people will. Yeah. Get on board with that. No.

Yeah. Well, we, you know, there's going to be a wishlist that you could do other things, but we're right now, we haven't gotten about getting excess. We're just, we're just trying to chase.

Well, so when you talk about the roads and everything, are you talking about the parking lot over by the Y also across from that'll be put in a parking as well, but blaze has already, um,

accidentally dropped off a plan of a turf soccer field or two. So, I mean, he's working us because he's in the business. He understands that, you know, we have to go at a pace. But if we do get more donors, obviously some playground equipment. One of the best aspects of of this location is it has a golf course for parents. It has a swimming pool for families. It has kiddie land. It has pickleball, um, and, and, and the seven fields and the JCs. I mean, it's just really unbelievable. So I think the top end is amazing, but what we're focused on right now today is there's a timing aspect of the infrastructure when they put in the turf. If we can put in the fences that go in it, then they sit in the new concrete that the turf is part of. If we do that after the fact, there's going to be an issue with that. But then everything else that Joe's mentioned, the lighting, the batting cages, all those things, the dugouts can have some serious improvements. Those are things that need to happen, but this ask primarily, this 750, is going to go to that outfield fencing so we can get this thing tied in, and those fields will sit there for a long time. I think. Tell me if I'm wrong.

You know, you asked earlier about the total price for this. Right now, and this is off the top of my head, it is right around $9 million. But it's gone from here down to $9 million. And you kind of start value engineering, you find efficiencies. Now, I'll give you an example. One thing of all the things, you call them accessories other than the turf. the only thing that we would request and strongly recommend is you do we would strongly recommend if you're going to replace that fence you need to do it when we do that turf sure and it can save you some dollars because we can realign those fences some of those fields are kind of they're not all just perfectly oval out there and some of them are a little longer in parts of them than they need to be and we can shorten them and we just need to take care of that when we do the turf sure I will say one thing as far as parking lots. I wouldn't do anything with the parking lots until we're done.

Is the season over out there now, or when can you get started?

I think Chris said, he sent out the email. You know, I mean, adult slow pitch is obviously something that goes on into the fall, and I think he made it clear to people that, you know, this is pretty much coming to an end for this year. But people have been very supportive, and all the coaches, I mean, Dr. Sorrell, everybody just sat there and shared so much with their time and their ideas that I think it's going to be an unbelievable place. And I think the money will come in eventually, too.

But that's it. I think we do have one of those, and it's been spoken about, one of those rare locations that it's all encompassing for all the youths, all ages. I like that everybody's getting involved with it like this and all the hard work you've put together for this to explain to people.

We have a motion on the floor.

So I'll second Doc Siegley's motion to approve with the understanding that we're building core memories and the city of Pittsburgh is investing in their parks. That's an amazing thing.

All right, is there anybody with questions to answer that they had? I take it as a yes. So there's been a motion and a second. All in favor of this item signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, same time. Congratulations, guys. Good work. Yes.

Thanks, everybody, for coming.

Hey, good job, Joe. Give him a minute.

We don't have a time.

Before we get started, I'd just like to say when we're having a discussion, I know there was a motion made, but I'd like to see everybody get all their questions answered before we vote on something. Anyway, moving on to item C, five-year financial plan. Staff will present the five-year financial plan received for filing.

Mayor and commissioners, this financial plan you're looking at is essentially the financial plan that we presented to you on our working day back in June. And we wanted to give the general public an opportunity to kind of see it. The previous meeting was open to the public, but we typically don't get public attendance at that meeting. This one will be broadcast, and we want to make sure that this is, as we present this to you, that the public sees it. I'll try to go as quickly as I can through this. The reason we do this, the five year plan, is we want to make sure that we take a look at what our trends have been. We want to look at if there's anything coming up that might impact the next year or upcoming years. We have to balance and look at our different needs for projects that are coming up or any other emerging initiatives that are going to be presented to us. But the goal here is for us, over the life of this projection, which is five years in the future, we want to make sure that we show how you can maintain a structural balance in your budget, meaning that your revenues and your expenditures will balance. Before we jump into the actual details of it, we want to make sure that people generally understand where their tax dollars are going in Kansas. This chart was actually put together by the League of Kansas Municipalities, and it shows a breakdown of a dollar's worth of income and where that goes in taxes. As you can see, the federal income tax is 6.5% and Kansas income tax is 3.4%. Obviously, the city has nothing to do with any of that. That just goes to those entities. Now, the city does collect property tax and sales tax. And 3.5% of that overall dollar goes to the property taxes, and your sales tax is about 4.2%. But it is important, though, to realize that of that property tax that you pay out of your dollar, only about a quarter of it actually goes to the city, all right? OF THE SALES TAX THAT GOES, THAT 4.2% OF YOUR DOLLAR THAT GOES OUT OF THE SALES TAX, ONLY ABOUT 17% OF THAT GOES TO THE CITY. SO THE SHARE THAT YOU SEE OF THAT DOLLAR THAT GOES TO ACTUAL CITY BUDGETS IS CONSIDERABLY SMALLER THAN THE OVERALL SHARE. THE OTHER REMAINING SHARES GO TO THE STATE AND TO THE SCHOOL DISTRICTS AND OTHER TAXING JURISDICTIONS. FOR EXAMPLE, HERE'S A BREAKDOWN OF THE PROPERTY TAX DOLLAR. YOU CAN SEE JUST ABOUT A QUARTER OF IT GOES TO THE CITY. THE PROPERTY TAX GOES TO THE SCHOOL DISTRICT, THE COUNTY, AND A SMALL AMOUNT GOES TO SOME SPECIAL DISTRICTS AS WELL. We made some assumptions about what we're looking at over the next, from 25 to 26. Sales tax, the actual sales tax increase in 25 was 5.6%. You can see the differences we have here from the actual budget. Let's go back up. From what actually happened in 2025 to what we submitted in 2026 and then what the final budget was in 2026.

Those are collections. The sales tax rate hasn't changed at all.

Correct.

Those are just collections.

Did you increase the sales? Yeah, we're not increasing the sales.

Now, it is important to remember that the budget submitted to the City Commission in July, and we're going to be doing that to you at our next City Commission meeting. We're going to be presenting our budget for next year. But the final determination of the assessed value and the final mill rate is actually done by the county in November. Miss is gonna talk a little bit about fund types.

Yeah. We are under fund accounting, and so we thought it would be good to give an explanation of how we are organized. And we have several funds. We have some that are general funds, and the primary revenue from those, they are your property taxes and sales taxes. And it funds certain things like our police, our fire, administration, facility maintenance, parks, and rec. Then we have the utility funds, which are basically those utilities, your water, your wastewater, your stormwater, sanitation. And so the primary revenues are the charges for the services. And, oops, it keeps...

I should just sit here and shake the mouse.

And like I said, the primary services is water, sewer, stormwater, sanitation. That's where the...

I forgot to ask. Can I stop you? Is this... I know last commission meeting, there was a glitch that people that was watching it from home Is it working now?

So, yeah, that was YouTube, which we don't have a lot of control over, but we tested it before the last meeting, and a half hour before the meeting it was working fine. They have tested this one twice yesterday and at least twice today, so it should be working, but we're obviously at the mercy of tech sometimes. Good question there.

And then the final area of funds is special purpose or restricted funds. So those are primary revenues from dedicated sales tax, intergovernmental charges for services, and transfers from general. Primary services that are funded are health care, capital equipment, memorial auditorium, golf course, airport, and aquatic center. And there's just another list of them. It talks about the fundamental source of funding for local government's operations. It's primarily tax-funded. It's the least restricted general funds. Those are the ones that are not as restricted as some of the other special funds. And the funds are created to track specific revenues and expenditures. There's the list of the utility funds, and they're established like they're a municipal business, so... It should be standalone. All their charges and fees should cover all their costs. And those revenues and those expenditures are restricted to those specific operations.

So you say they should cover it. Are we currently covered?

We are. We usually have an excess in most of them except for sanitation, and that's due to the high growth and the added capital that we had to put into having new trucks and such. to do that. But yes, it came very close. I think in the calculation I've done, it's almost break-even this year. It's not quite there.

But it started in the hole by about, you know, we started it out of scratch from the general fund one year. So until we get that money back, we're going to consider ourselves still in the deficit.

Yeah, it's those fixed costs that kind of get you. You know, as you grow, you've got to add that big equipment, so then you've got to you know, cover that. So I think that it was on track to be covered, and then we, what, bought two more sanitation trucks? Yeah, we grew faster than we thought. Added more staff employees.

I hate to interrupt you, but Dexter, how many customers do you have now? 4,000. 4,000. And we wanted to, what, when we first started talking about it, 1,800 or 2,000? 2,000, I think was kind of.

And you were talking about the growth is still going. I mean, like. We need to talk about how many more.

So, yeah, normally we're putting on about 70 to 80 new customers a month. This last month we put on 100, I think it was 140 customers. New customers, so it's it's steadily growing track to do that again.

So we have adequate coverage Truck wise and everything at the present.

Yeah, we I think we're pretty good till maybe close to the end of the year I'll probably be in in November to ask for another truckload of polycards if we keep going the way we're going What this 4,000 customer looked like percentage of the city in the surrounding areas Just less than half DJ to your point we we are

When we talk about reserves, we do try to carry a reserve, though, in each of those funds. So it's not, you know, you have to keep it structurally balanced for the year, but you also want to have a buffer in case something happens.

I think one thing we should make the public aware of, that we have 19 funds, and you can't take from one fund and put it into another fund or take from this fund and put it. That's not allowed. Correct?

Correct. For the most part, there are general municipal funds, and so that includes property tax, sales tax, court fees, some things like that. They kind of just go in all together.

That's one fund.

But that's one big fund. But we do have a charge that we can make. We're about to lose the screen. An administrative service charge, like administration, it wouldn't be fair to just charge the whole thing to the general fund because we obviously help run the wastewater department. So we do an administrative service charge every year from the utility funds, and you're allowed to do that by law to the general fund supporters. We don't have to use property tax to pay for everything.

Better go quick. That mouse doesn't like it. I don't know why it's doing that. Just do it again. I'll keep on with the mouse.

Okay. And then here's a list of special purpose and restricted funds. And these are funded from a dedicated revenue source, either taxes or charges for service or grants or donations. or a project. They are pay-as-you-go, so when we're done with that project, or if it's a project, it's the income and the expenses come into there, and then it's done, or it's ongoing, but it stays contained within that fund that you spend as you have the funds. And they're usually for a specific purpose.

Well, just to give everyone an example of how we spend the general fund, this is the 2025 expenditure levels, and this is what we spent the general fund on. Obviously, half of it is basically public safety, law enforcement and fire. But we also spend it on our IT and parks and recreation, some money for infrastructure, property services, things like that. So this is how we spend the general fund, and you can see it's a pretty personnel-heavy kind of activities. This is how we spend the sales tax. Now, that was property tax. That was how we spend the property tax. This is how we spend the sales tax. Over half is streets and public safety. It's how we spend our sales tax money, as well as some economic development. We have a special sales tax for Memorial Auditorium and a special sales tax for Capital Equipment. We'll talk about it briefly. There are some programs that are funded by both property and sales tax. Over the years, property tax has not been adequate to fund at a level that we feel comfortable with. A lot of our programs, police and fire, for example, that's why they're supplemented by the sales tax. You can see up here that police and fire or public safety actually supplements our general fund expenditures for police and fire. BUT ALSO WE ALSO GET PROPERTY AND SALES TAX FOR STREET PRESERVATION AND MEMORIAL. WE USED TO ACTUALLY HAVE TO SUBSIDIZE MEMORIAL EDITORIUM. WE DON'T HAVE TO SO MUCH ANYMORE. BUT ALSO WE DO ALL OF THESE THINGS TO GET BOTH PROPERTY AND SALES TAX FUNDING.

A LITTLE BIT OF ACTUALS.

THESE ARE THE ACTUAL REVENUES THAT WE RECEIVED IN 2025. AND YOU CAN SEE PROPERTY AND SALES TAX ARE OUR PRIMARY SOURCES OF REVENUE. WE DO GET SOME TRANSFERS, A LOT OF GRANTS, PRIMARILY, AS WELL AS FRANCHISE TAXES AND A VARIETY OF MISCELLANEOUS REVENUES THAT WOULD BE A LONG LIST IF WE LOOKED AT THOSE. THE PROPERTY TAX, THIS IS THE PROPERTY TAX FOR 2026. The USD 250 is going to be 35%. Pittsburgh was about a third. As you can see, it's about a third, a third, a third for property taxes for a total of 159 mills that hits Pittsburgh residents. So Pittsburgh's share of the overall mill rate is about a third. This is the mill rates in 2026. It is our most stable revenue stream. All of the calculations that we do, basically the county takes what we project that we're gonna be needing and then assigns the mill rate accordingly. that before you move on it's going back to the previous pie chart can we in the future get the breakdown of the miscellaneous for this sure well if there's a many many but yeah i know there's a lot but i mean if we could put it on a single front page back or something sure we can it would it would just be like a list yeah we'll get that but just people know it's basically court

The Parks Department, there's all kinds of concession stands and things like that. But we'll get you the breakdown for sure.

We can certainly give you that. Thank you. Just to kind of give you an example, these are the actual property tax collections. The dotted line is a trend line. So we've actually dipped down below our trend line in 21 through 23. But then we kind of went above our trend line again, and we're again going to be tracking higher than trends for our property tax, or we did between 2018 and 2026. This is how the mill rates and the valuations have changed over the years. This change column here is the change in the actual dollars that were levied by the mill rates. You can see it's kind of gone up and down over the years. It's been as high as 10.3% increase in collections in 2024 and as low as a drop in 2021. So the property tax does go up and down. And of course the mill rates are adjusted accordingly. We do collect sales tax specifically for the city, but Pittsburgh's sales taxes are earmarked for specific purposes. We have a 1.5% sales tax in Pittsburgh. We have 0.5% for public safety, 0.5% for streets, a quarter of a cent for economic development, and an eighth of a cent for both capital outlay, which is primarily equipment that we purchase, and memorial auditorium for a total of 1.5%. Our total sales tax collections, this is actuals between 2018 and 2025. You can see the dotted line again is the trend line. And we're slightly, we're really closely tracking with the trend line. We've been above the trend line between 22 and 24. The state limit is 2% for cities. We only collect 1.5%, which means we could assess an additional half-cent sales tax. We have not. Sales tax collections have increased average of 6.4% over our projection period. So our sales tax collections have been strong, well above inflation. But the sales tax, unfortunately, is very volatile. We've actually had increases that have ranged from 0.7%, which is less than 1%, all the way to almost 14%. So that sales tax has varied pretty dramatically since 2018. And, of course, all the sales taxes need to be approved by the voters. And here's kind of how the sales tax works in Pittsburgh. Overall, if you buy something in Pittsburgh, with the exception of some special purchasing districts, you pay 9%, 6.5% of that goes to the state of Kansas, 1.5% goes to the city, and 1% goes to the county. And here's kind of the division of how the city uses its property tax. You can see that a quarter of our available property tax is unallocated currently.

And plan to be that one. The mayor asked me about that earlier. I said, yeah, there's no plans to allocate that.

No, we haven't.

I haven't seen that graph before. This one? Yeah, with that. Unallocated. Unallocated.

Yeah. It's a new one.

It's a new one. It's a new graph we've made this year. Just because we wanted to demonstrate the fact that, look, there's a whole piece of it that is unallocated. And we have made no plans to allocate that. Missy's going to talk a little bit about the categories that we make expenditures under.

Yeah. Our financial statements, our detailed financial statements are broken apart in expenditure categories or groups. And so the groups are personnel services, contractual services, commodities, and capital outlay. Within the personnel services, you've got things like salary, your healthcare costs, your payroll taxes, and your retirement contributions. And they all would sum up into one group. And then the next section would be contractual services. And these would be things that we normally pay, could possibly pay a third party. Software licenses, our utilities, which is our electricity, our gas, that sort of thing. Any kind of professional services, for instance, like engineering or anything like that, would fall in that category. Our maintenance, which is just the overall maintenance of that department, whatever department it is that we're running the financials for, and then training, I think there's even like dues and memberships, and then of course lease payments. And normally the lease payments here in this section would be something like our copier lease or those small leases, not lease vehicles because that's more of a capital outlay thing. The next section, the commodities, these are where usually they're things that you're gonna use up in one year. operating supplies, gas, oil, chemicals, rock, asphalt. And at year end, we generally do an inventory and we make an adjustment based on some of those products that we have used throughout the year. So that would fall in that category. The capital outlay would be those large items that we're going to depreciate, their machinery, equipment, improvements, leased vehicles, purchased vehicles, any of the big machinery and equipment, that sort of thing.

I WENT AHEAD AND PUT THESE GRAPHS TOGETHER HERE. THIS KIND OF SHOWS HOW WE SPENT OUR GENERAL FUND MONEY BY CATEGORY. YOU CAN SEE OBVIOUSLY THE EXPENSES IN THE GENERAL FUND HAVE GONE UP OVER THE YEARS SINCE 2021. BUT THE BLUE SECTION IS HOW MUCH WE SPENT ON PERSONNEL. YOU CAN SEE THAT'S A SIGNIFICANT PERCENTAGE. WE SPENT OVER 40% OF OUR MONEY, WELL, ACTUALLY OVER 50% OF OUR MONEY IN THE GENERAL FUND ON PERSONNEL SERVICES. Then the orange is contractual services, green is commodities, and the light blue is capital outlay. And that's just an example of how this is just the general fund and how those expenses have been distributed within the general fund. What I wanted to do was show, well, what does that look like of a percentage over all of the expenditures? So basically, of all the money we spent in the general fund in 2021, 75% of those expenditures were personnel. And all the money we spent in 22 is 73%. And you can kind of see that the share of personnel services costs has started to go down over the years. which is just a way of us being as efficient as possible with our staffing. Personnel is taking up less and less of our overall general fund expenditures.

And it's partially in play to the automation changes as well?

That's absolutely a big effect. Without the automation, we couldn't possibly do that.

I think, too, your contractual services are taking up a little more there. They're at 19%, and that's probably when we really beefed up our IT and what the new networks and the new security and all of that.

It's offset. It's offset a little bit by the increase in contractual services. But it is helpful. And obviously, for contractual services, you don't have to pay all the fringe benefits and all the other things with personnel. As an example, the non-general fund areas, if you look at the actual water and wastewater fund expenditures by category, this is what an expenditure would look like for something that runs more like a municipal business. If you have a distinct revenue source that is generated by the activity of this operation, you can divide up your expenditures in this manner so that you have a more balanced level of expenditures. If you look at, say, how much money you're spending on capital outlay for water and wastewater activities, much higher as a percent overall and a much lower percentage of personal services. The reason being, of course, is that general fund What the general fund pays for? Police and fire, heavily personnel-dependent activities, right?

Parks, parks.

Well, parks, parks, a lot of parks workers. Hands-on. And we're going to, by the way, what we were talking about there were actuals, all right? We're going to talk a little bit now about the projections.

Here's some of our primary assumptions that we're using as we develop our budget, and we look at our historical and then what we want to project for. So as far as sales tax, Historically, as Jay mentioned, it's 6.4% increase. And so we are trying to be conservative here, so our projection is 2.5. It's what we're going to use when we're doing our budgeting.

You said 2.5?

2.5.

You got 2% in this.

I think you updated that. Yeah, I did update it. Yeah, he updated it, as we're warned here. Property tax, historically, it's been a 5.6% increase. and our projection is gonna be 3% on that. Other revenues, franchise, historically it's been a .9% projection, and we're gonna leave it flat, but we are gonna do a one-time increase for that additional increase in the data center use of electricity, so that's about 200,000. Gaming historically has been 2.6%, and we're just gonna leave our projection flat. Healthcare, it's kind of a beast of its own. Historically, it's been 1.5%. I say we're projecting a 3% increase, but that's going to be modified. I'll get to that here in a little bit. Investments, just historically an average. Same thing with grants, fines, fees, miscellaneous. We're just going to look at our historical averages. And then our utility revenues are historically 4%, and we're just going to be conservative at 3%. on those projections.

Can you go back just one, I wanted to ask you, one time increase of $200,000 for the data center. Explain that a little more.

Okay, so we looked at our franchise revenue comparatively from 25 to what we've been booking each month for 26. And so it looks like we've been increasing it enough that if by the end of the year we should have about a $200,000 increase in our Electrical franchise, so the money we get our franchise fees that we get from the electricity. Okay. And so that's where it's it. We looked at it up through June and it looks like that's right. We're on target.

It's hard to track because it's. Because, you know, electricity is just more expensive anyway, so from year to year. But Evergy has been helpful. We've been working with Cary. So we should have a pretty good breakdown of what we have seen in sales tax and franchise that we can attribute directly to the data center so we have a better understanding. We know what we thought it was going to be, and we know it's up, but it would be nice to know for sure that it's up due to that.

Because right now we don't have a detail of what we get. From what?

We just get the bulk.

It's just a bulk amount that we can see what we're booking monthly.

So I guess the question I have on that one is, so the franchise fees are established at a rate for each. It's a flat rate for all businesses, or is it set up individually? Does it rotate? It's 5%. It's 5%. 5%, okay. And so we're projecting to... Elevate that. Is that due to the data center growing in size and usage?

The data center usage. I consider the data center another house. So if somebody adds on, we get a 5% of the total that energy makes. So the data center uses so much more electricity that we're getting 5% of their electricity bill. That's what that is. Okay. Thank you.

AGAIN, WE ALWAYS, THE PURPOSE OF US DOING THIS FIVE-YEAR FINANCIAL PLAN IS TO DO PROJECTIONS TO SEE WHERE WE'RE, TO TRY TO MAINTAIN THAT STRUCTURAL BALANCE LIKE WE SAID, AND THESE ARE WHAT OUR PROJECTIONS HAVE INDICATED TO US. AGAIN, THE DOTTED LINE, THIS IS FOR PROPERTY TAX, THE DOTTED LINE IS THE HISTORICAL TREND LINE, WHAT WE WOULD EXPECT TO SEE IF THE TRENDS CONTINUE AS THEY HAVE, AND THEN WE ARE PROJECTING THROUGH THE PROJECTION PERIOD SLIGHTLY BELOW THE HISTORICAL TREND LINE FOR PROPERTY TAX COLLECTIONS. Same thing with sales tax. The dotted line is a trend line. We try to project just over the projection period slightly less than what it's showing as a trend as a trend. THE GENERAL FUND, WE KIND OF SEPARATED THE GENERAL FUND OUT OF OUR OTHER REVENUE PROJECTIONS. YOU CAN SEE THERE WAS A BIG BUMP IN EXPENDITURES IN 23 THROUGH 25, AND THAT WAS FOR THE GORILLA RISING PROJECT. WE HAD BUILT UP SOME FUNDS, YOU CAN SEE, IN PREVIOUS YEARS, AND WE HAD SPENT THOSE FUNDS ON THE GORILLA RISING PROJECT, AND THEN WE COME BACK during the projection period to basically have the general fund break even over the projection period.

Those funds for the guerrilla rising, is that for the next 10 years or is it for the next nine years? Has it been a year?

THERE WAS A LARGE UPFRONT AMOUNT AND THEN AN ONGOING, YOU CAN SEE IN THE SECOND BULLET TO THE LAST, WE HAVE A $400,000 COMMITMENT OF CAL SCHOOL GAMING REVENUE THAT WE HAVE ALREADY GIVEN ONE YEAR FOR THAT.

So how many more years?

Nine.

Nine more years. Nine more years after this.

Yeah. That's correct.

The interest income that we had built up and the gaming revenue that we had built up are the red bump. We spent it in one year. But the gaming for the next nine years has also been committed, so that's that $400,000 a year that goes out over time.

And that could be less, whatever it is.

We're capped at $400,000, so it could be more, and we're still only giving $400,000. If it comes in at $380,000, we only give them $380,000. Mm-hmm.

So it's only what is generated from the gaming side of what they receive.

Yeah, with a cap.

I'm just going to keep on going. And by the way, the purpose of that is it's structurally balanced for the projection period.

The revenue that was dormant, just to be clear, was that one-time adjustment there. That was from 2016 until that date or that window. For gaming? For gaming.

It's a mix of gaming and interest income. We used to get $25,000 a year on our interest income, and now we're getting a million a year. So when we were asked to contribute to the guerrilla rising, we were trying not to use tax dollars. Those two things jump to the forefront because you can't really pay salaries with interest income because when it goes down, then you wouldn't be able to pay for your people, and the same kind of thing with gaming.

We didn't program the gaming revenue or the unexpectedly rich interest income that we were gaining. We didn't program it into any operations, so we were able to build up a fund balance.

Okay.

Healthcare. The main thing I want to bring out of this.

I have one more question on that. So you said it could go above $400,000.

If the casino does really well, our share could be $500,000. So where would that money go? Into the general fund. It's not programmed to go to anything, just like it wasn't previously. Only up to $400,000. Yeah.

What you're saying is the excess, if they do well, will go back into the general fund.

Yeah. Correct, yeah. So go gamble.

There is some issues around our health care this year, so Messy's going to talk a little bit about where we've been.

I think the important thing to note on this graph is that since I think it was 2014 that we switched over to self-insurance, And so there's a trend line there that shows the dark line is what we have had as premiums to our employees. So those are the employees' contribution versus a benchmark, which is a research company and what has happened nationwide across the cost for employees. And we're still below that. We're below that for the employee, single employee, and also for family contributions. So what we've tried to do is hold that steady for our employees so they don't have those additional costs out of their pocket. And so in doing that, the last year we have been hit with some pretty hard, pretty big health claims. And so we are working with IMA, who's our our agency that works with us on our healthcare and helps organize our plan and everything. So we've been working with them and trying to get a detailed analysis of where we think we're gonna be for 2027. So I think, is it next meeting we will have IMA here?

Yeah, hopefully they'll be ready to give a special presentation before. the business agenda and we can kind of walk you through because it's a big impact on the budget. You know, every year healthcare is 40% of our budget is personnel and we're self-insured for healthcare. So we want to make sure that you're aware of You know where we are, but they'll I think they're gonna be here on the 28th.

That's the plan Yeah, so we'll have more information on how that affects our health care moving forward for 20s for 2027 budget so for when they come in to brief can we get that a paper packet for the Commission prior to We're trying to get it I mean there's a lot in it, but yeah, we will have it before the meeting for sure I

Just real quickly, this is our 2025 bond debt. We basically have mostly GO bonds, which stand for general obligation bonds, which goes against the full faith and credit of the city. We get very good rates. We get a lot of bidders for our bonds, and we get good rates because of our good credit rating. We have a AA minus credit rating, which is very good for a town our size. And we will be adding, of course, additional bonded debt next year for 26, because we took out the debt we just sold.

So on this pie graph, are we missing a category for a bond? Because the overhead says 15, 132, and if you add those three, it comes to 13, 5, 6. It doesn't add up. Those should add up. If I didn't, then I made a math error.

I'll go ahead and add those up.

I just didn't know if there was a small piece of the pie that's missing that would calculate the remainder.

No, this should be just the debt. There's no administrative overhead.

And that's just the bond of debt because we have capital leases and we have the loans on the wastewater. Yeah, we have loans too.

We'll fix that before we post it to the Internet. Yeah.

And by the way, just for everybody to understand, we have a legal general obligation debt limit, right? And this is a... which is... a little over $50 million, and we're nowhere near that now. Just let everybody know that we're nowhere near. We could take out a lot more debt.

I have a question about that. You and Darren work closely with the league. Do other municipalities of our size and likeness Peter, higher? Do they go farther?

Your ability to increase that red area is based on your willingness to increase your property tax. So that's why ours is so low, because the amount you can do is based on your assessed valuation, but the amount you can really do is based on how much property tax you're willing to spend. So we have it as an emergency. We consider it our credit card, but we just You know, if something happened and we had to do something, we could go out and issue a ton of debt, but you have to pay for it. And right now, property taxes and, you know.

To answer your question, DJ, yes.

I mean, you go to Johnson County, that thing is stacked up right against that line.

Yeah. A lot of communities.

The metro area is obviously a way against it to get things done.

And a lot of communities are bumping up against your limit.

I'm hoping Pittsburgh stays Pittsburgh and doesn't turn into Johnson County. No.

We have no intention of doing that.

Although they're going to wish they had our ball fields.

They are. This is the last graphic. I included this in there to kind of show how the general fund reserves have been since 2021. You can see we built up the general fund reserves UP UNTIL 2023 AND THEN SPENT THEM DOWN OVER THE TWO-YEAR PERIOD UNTIL 2025. THAT WAS FOR THE GRILL ARISING PROJECT. THAT WAS THE RESERVES THAT WE HAD SET ASIDE THROUGH GAMING AND INTEREST EARNINGS OVER THE YEARS. AND WE SPENT IT ON THE GRILL ARISING PROJECT. YOU CAN SEE OVER TIME WE EXPECT TO GROW THOSE RESERVES AGAIN.

And that's it, that's all I have.

Oh no, I have a summary. I have a summary. As usual and as it should be, our priorities are public safety and infrastructure. You can see that in how we spend our money. Our revenues are highly dependent on property and sales tax. with property tax being the most stable and sales tax being more volatile. We always try to do conservative revenue estimates. We don't want to say we're going to, you know, that's one of the tricks that municipal governments can use is inflate their revenue estimates so they can inflate their budgets. We don't do that. And we are anticipating increasing costs. We were a little bit worried when I first presented this. The gas was going to be much more expensive. But it looks like that's calming down a little bit. And then generally, we expect about a 3% cost increase in general costs. The risk that we're facing are the volatility of the sales tax and any kind of inflationary impact that we might have that we haven't anticipated or it's beyond what we expect. And our projections really are for some steady growth and a structural financial balance for our budget.

Well, something that's come up and it's been in the media a bunch and lots of conversation, I'm sure we've all had it, was somebody recently was property taxed at the state level and at our level. We're hearing both sides are saying... It's not directly tied to this. We have people running for governor that are looking at property tax and reduction of property tax at the state level, implementing different programs. So do we have a backup plan? What is our plan if property taxes get changed in the near future, if we're highly dependent on property tax to run the city? I know sales taxes sometimes in lots of places are offset.

One thing that I guess I guess I take away for this is Every every community is unique so you know I've been at the league for 12 years and every year the number one priority is working with the state legislature and the governor to make sure that we Don't just erase property tax because everybody's like hey, that's how we pay for everything but the reality is It's a national trend, and we need to come up with new revenue sources to pay for it. We've been dealing with it for at least 20 years because, I don't know if you picked this up in the presentation, but the voters of this community pass sales taxes to specific questions. And over the years, when they asked the question, are we funding our police and fire adequately, they said no, and they approved a sales tax. When we asked them if they are satisfied with the roads, they said no, and they approved a sales tax. We asked them about Memorial Auditorium, they said no, and they approved a sales tax. We asked them if they were okay with our economic development effort, and they said no, and they passed a sales tax. And finally, we asked them if they were okay with our equipment replacement, our rolling stock, and they said no, and they passed a sales tax. So the function of running the city is always a balance of making decisions based on people for technology and current costs versus inflation. And inflation has just been on the rise so much lately that every time the state has looked at property tax, they've looked at the cities and the leagues kind of pushed back and said, you know, we've seen property tax lids and we've seen... exemptions but it always comes back to there's enough people to state that understand that we want to replace property tax we just don't know what to replace it with because it seems like such a there's so many things wrong with it on how it hits people but to Jay's point it's so much more stable in every community than the sales tax that that you are kind of married to it until you can come up with something else and so we've always tried to that's one reason we're always trying to grow the economy here is because the best way to keep sales property taxes down is to have more people paying into the pot. But we're kind of, I mean, we're not Overland park. We can't just reach over and swipe 25,000 people out of Olathe. So it's, it's always a struggle for us. And we have expected that, um, And we've been on a lot of the lead committees where, you know, property tax change is coming and it's something we need to be prepared for. And that's why we really do try to run a tight ship. And you'll see in the budget we're putting together for next year, there's only one new position. And that was for the soccer field that we just agreed to do. So there's certain things we have to pay for. But this community decided a long time ago property tax wasn't going to pay for the stuff that it wants to have. And that's where those sales taxes have come in. And sales taxes have passed property tax and how much revenue they generate because We are kind of a touristy little area, and people come through and help pay those taxes because property tax just does not pay the bill around here. Good point.

Has there ever been any discussion about nonprofits paying some sort of percentage property tax?

Yeah, I think I've heard every... I mean, they'll probably kick me off the league soon. I've been there so long. But I've heard every scenario. I've got a property tax folder on my desk this big of ideas that have come up every session. And there's more and more people working on it right now. So that is one thing that's come up. But exempting certain members of your community has come up. Limiting it. it's hard to get enough votes at the state to get anything big through, and I think that's where you'll see the pushback continually, but something's going to have to happen because everybody's just, I mean, property taxes are just too high. Life is too expensive, but property taxes in general are pretty high.

The cost of living has gone chaotic for everybody in the last several years, and I think we went through COVID and dealt with all the chaos that that was, and some of that's in response to that. But having some kind of an option, some kind of a plan, I know there's lots of people long before I started doing this to look at that and try to come up with viable sources to make it make sense. I just want to make sure that us as a city are looking at different options, too, and having some kind of plan when things do come.

The 503 is a federal thing, right? 503C? Oh, 501C3, yeah. That's what the mayor... alluded to. So if somebody applies for that through the federal, through the feds and gets it, then we can't do much about it, right?

Well, the state actually controls who it grants those exemptions to. And there's been talk for, well, probably 15 years about, you know, taking some of those away. Restructuring it and providing it. And I'm sure those talks will continue.

I didn't mean that we're looking at, but if there is something federal or state, they can come up with a percentage of nonprofits paying property tax.

There's some, I mean, Jay's always throwing fees for services out because, you know, he kind of reads stuff more than most of us. there's alternatives. It's just a matter of what's right in your community. And we always wait for the state to lead and the state just can't. I mean, the state's so diverse that it's hard for them to lead on local property tax policy because it is different in Johnson County and Topeka and Wichita than it is rural Kansas and half the state's rural. But we think about it, but we're, I mean, we're limited on with property taxes over $9 million of our revenue stream. So we better come up with a new revenue stream. And we're always looking for those. But it's a legitimate question. It's a tough answer for sure.

Well, this is a sticker for me, and I've heard it from several businesses with the Block 22. It's a nonprofit, Colley Jones. But when you have retail businesses in those locations, that are competing against businesses already established, they see it as we're paying property tax and you're not, you know, for some of these businesses. And I can understand their concerns and, you know, I don't know what the answer is.

Well, the one thing I think people need to remember is there's a thing called a funding stack. Block 22 was not built on taxpayer money. It was built, one of the stack pieces was taxpayer money. But the majority of it was federal tax credits and other programs that, we just participated in it. So there's definitely, there's definitely, we have to be aware of what our share is. Because I think if we were wholeheartedly funding stuff like that, we definitely would be crossing the line. But I think as long as we're supporting the developers and the other businesses and people in our town that want to do stuff. We try to really toe that line, but it's a good point, Mayor. I mean, you've got to be really aware of who's paying taxes and who aren't. But right now, the education system is one of those where It feels like the benefit of having that in your community. I mean, if we took Pitt State out of this community, I don't imagine what it would look like, but it would be much different. And they do get knocked for that, and I understand it. But we do too. We don't pay taxes. I mean, we own a lot of property, but we're the community's asset. So it's a good conversation. That's a good point.

As a personal point, if the state is going to make a movement or some exercise to reduce property taxes, that they would enable some kind of legislation that would allow, give local jurisdictions an opportunity to raise additional revenues in other ways. Capping our sales tax at 2% is a way of limiting what we can do. If you're going to take away property tax, maybe raise sales tax. Allow us to. I'm not suggesting that, I'm saying that that

That is an example of what the state could do. I think Missouri state sales tax is like 4%. Ours is 6.5%. So maybe if the state wanted to help reduce property tax, they could allow us to go 3% on a sales tax or something like that, which for us benefits because we live next to three other states. It doesn't really help central Kansas. But there's a lot the state can do with cities. They just need to do it, and those are good conversations. They're going to be happening again this year for sure.

That's it for the projection. Good conversation.

Can we take a break? Five-minute break. Mayor, can we take five minutes?

Yeah, yeah. Thanks. That's a good idea. Do you have to make a motion to take a break or just take a break? Is there a motion to take a five-minute break? Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Five-minute break. We'll be back at 730. Thanks.

. . Bye. so so

Engineering and Inspection for Civil Engineering Design Services for the Pavement Replacement Projects to take place at Fire Station Number Two and Number Three.

Good evening, Mayors and Ministers. So, Earl's Engineering had helped us work on some of our estimates and design basis for what you'd approved previously this year on the bond issuance for this pavement. replacement projects. So if you look at the breakdown for both within their estimate of both projects as in both broke out individually and we'll get those if you approve that tonight we'll get working on those and get that get those projects moving. And with that I'll entertain any other questions.

The only question I had, when we spoke about it before, the process of the repair for the use of the vehicles for both stations, if the plan for that is in place, it's not going to hinder any use?

No, we'll work through a staging process with the fire chief and we'll, they'll modify and, you know, they'll have different access and if we go to the front, they'll have to, I mean, like, well, and I'll present later tonight, but... Like number two, we're going to have to replace the drive as part of the sidewalk project across the front, so that'll have the front down, and so we'll have to make some modifications. So we will work individually on each station with the fire chief and coordinate accordingly.

Yeah, the coverage is covered. I mean, that's the non-issue. I know you spoke about it a lot. You gave us a lot of detail before. That was just some of the questions people were asking about it.

I had a question, and Darren answered it. The concrete around the train tower station, too. Yep. That's included.

Yep. Yep, some drainage improvements associated that'll have to go with some underdrain of all that. But we'll have all that incorporated.

Any other questions? Motion to approve. Second. Motion to approve and second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries.

Thank you.

Middle Mile Agreement. Consider staff recommendation to enter into an agreement between the Secretary of Transportation, Kansas Department of Transportation, and the City of Pittsburgh, expressing the City's interest in participating in the KDOT Middle Mile Project to facilitate the process of playing the fiber optic lines to make high-speed internet available and more robust, particularly in rural areas.

Hi, Mayor. This was actually asked by the Department of Commerce. This is a Department of Commerce initiative, and they have been asking the jurisdictions that are served by their middle-mile project to facilitate the right-of-way access basically to make it a little bit easier for the contractors that they're using who are basically going through KDOT to lay this conduit and this fiber in the public right-of-way and that's what this ordinance does. They've asked us to do this and we certainly want to encourage it. What I'm showing here on the screen is why it's actually very beneficial for Pittsburgh. What you're seeing here are these these new fiber lines that they're running that are going to actually be duplicate lines so that it's more robust to the data centers, or not to the data centers, but to the internet hubs in Kansas City and in Wichita, directly coming to Pittsburgh. So this particular project is of exceptional interest to us as a community. It helps us, gives us better access to the internet, makes us more robust. We're already considered one of the better internet locations in the country, certainly in the state, and this will only strengthen that.

And this is at no cost to us other than allowing them to use our right-of-way.

That's correct. In fairness, we need to work with them a little bit because they're being a little bit cavalier with where they're placing the new conduit, too near our utilities. So we're going to have to work with them a little bit more closely.

I was going to lead into my questions. So under Section 8, Project Limits, it referenced... the right of way boundaries and the scope. It's supposed to be, I don't see the attachment. Do you have the attachment that shows the location And the rest of the details?

Well, each city is different in where the locations are going to actually be. They haven't decided on all of them yet. So that process hasn't been completed yet, where they're actually going to go and where this is going to affect what's in the city. That's right. This is a lead-in to that. They haven't given us that yet.

Okay. So when do we see that or when do we get to look at that?

As soon as possible. That's one of the things we have to poke Kate out about to give us a heads up on when they're going to be here, where they're planning on laying their lines.

Do you say they already have a contract or they have to put that out?

They're laying this middle mile across the state right now.

So Internet Hub is only where colleges are located, the way it looks on the map, or they're just on the route? They're on the route.

They're on the route. Those are just identifying things on the route.

And you're 100% sure about it's not anything to do with the data center?

Oh, no, this is a completely different initiative. I mean, I would imagine the data centers might benefit from it, but it is not something that was initiated by data centers. This whole middle-mile concept was well before any kind of data center initiatives have been started in the state.

And this is a KDOT project. I mean, they wouldn't...

It's a Department of Commerce and KDOT project. I would hope, yeah. It's funded through a federal grant.

Internet Hub, you know, you see colleges everywhere. There's... the line, so Internet Hub, yes, data center.

What would be the cost for that project?

The cost for these kind of projects? I think there's... I forget how much is that. Well, maybe it's in the website. I've forgotten how much it is, but it's tens of millions of dollars.

That's what I thought, yeah. Everything KDOT does costs a lot of money.

Oh, yeah, it does. It does.

All right. Is there a motion to approve? Hold on. Circle back real quick. So the question I had about the attachment for the project limits, is that something that does exist or it's not been built yet? We don't have access to it.

I don't have access to it.

Okay. All right.

Yeah, I'll ask later. Any other questions? Is there a motion to approve? Motion to approve. In a second, I'll second it. So it's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you, Jay.

Sure.

Purchase of Motorola V700 body-worn cameras. Consider staff recommendation to purchase 40 Motorola V700 body-worn cameras, batteries, a transfer station, software support. and licensing, hardware maintenance, warranty agreements, and evidence video library licensing from Motorola in the amount of $95,506.40 to be funded through public safety sales tax. Good evening, Mayor and Commissioners.

The police department is seeking approval to report the acquisition of new body cameras for the police department for our daily operations. Our existing body worn cameras were acquired about four and a half years ago and they're hitting the end of their service life. We picked those up from WatchGuard with a five year warranty agreement back in the first quarter of 2022. They're no longer supported by Motorola. The V300s, our current ones, they're not even manufactured anymore. Parts availability is going down. They're not really wanting to source repairs on them anymore. So we're seeking approval to move forward with the acquisition of the newer V700s. It'll be a one-time purchase, 45-year warranty agreement, software licensing agreement with Motorola for the 40 cameras, transfer station, and the usual software licensing and rights for use of their evidence library. The funding for this will come from public safety sales tax.

So is it just whatever comes up at what time? I mean, it's not, you said five-year shelf life, so to speak?

It was a five-year agreement with WatchGuard, and it's due to the end of service life, and Motorola does not support these current ones that we have.

And Motorola was the ones we had already. WatchGuard was the one.

WatchGuard was its own parent company back then, and Motorola has since acquired WatchGuard in the last five years.

Would you consider that a breach of contract? They agreed to support us for five years.

For five years, and that five-year term is going to come up in the first quarter of 2027. So we want to get these now in anticipation of their big product, like a 90 to 120-day turnaround time for manufacture of the devices and shipping, and we can get those started and the project working before our B300s actually start failing.

Do the new models require an additional training that the officers already have?

No, it's pretty much identical system. It's just a new system, just a new face to it, same thing. What's available? Yeah, we have the infrastructure in place. We have everything in place, just a newer model.

What happens to the cameras that's being replaced?

I imagine, do we have anything they need to turn on those?

Yeah, the one.

Why? If they don't support it. That was part of the original agreement is to turn the ones to just their shelf life is over. That's wild. What do they do for training purposes?

About every five years we're going to be doing this, maybe? Yeah. Probably.

Most likely, yes.

Probably.

You need them.

Oh, they're important. They've become essential pieces of equipment. We use these, like, on a daily basis.

Yeah, you can't win for losing them on the five-year thing.

They're safe and important. It's crazy to think that they're only good. That's the window that they're going to operate with. You would think that they would try to make them last longer or at least...

Not to say at the end of the five-year term that they're still having the B-700s. See, the problem is with Motorola, we're not recognizing the B-300s that we have now at all. They're pushing their new 700s. And in five years, they still have the 700s. We may be able to just extend the warranty agreement and just maybe buy a few new units if the ones have been worn out pretty bad.

So has there ever been an issue with... malfunctions of these cameras?

More physical. They've had a couple like bugs and everything else manufactured, but I think mostly it's been like the physical, like they get in a tussle and they get knocked to the ground and the lens gets cracked or something, so we have to turn. And Motorola had like just in terms of like a no questions asked, something happens, put it in a box ship and then they get us a new one.

What do you do when you send one off and you're short?

They send us a new one replacement first. I get the replacement first and then I send them the defective one. And we've done that about 12 times. for various reasons. Now, they don't sell the batteries, so if you need a new battery, I have to literally armate a whole device in order to get it back.

So your officers always have their body camera, though. But if it's defective, you have to ship it?

They ship also replacement overnight, the overnight air.

So it's not like you have spares sitting on the shelf to replace that until you get reimbursed. Yeah.

increase in the number is to make sure that we have sufficient spares. Good.

Is there any other questions? Motion to approve. Second. Moved and seconded. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Thank you. Ordinance number G1392 consider approval of ordinance number G1392 amending sections 18-261 and 18-262 of the Pittsburgh City Code by adopting, by reverence, the 2024 edition of the International Plumbers Code and the installation, repair, and maintenance methods specified therein as standards of the International Code Council, save and accept such parts or portions as deleted, modified, supplemented, or amended by Section 18.262 and Repeal Ordinance Number G.1235. What in the world are we doing?

I apologize. You're going to have to do that 12 times. So the ICC comes out with a new code cycle every three years. We're currently on the 2012 code cycle, and we're four cycles behind. Tonight, building service is just asking that you update to the current 2024 on all these codes across the board.

Why are we behind four cycles?

Well, it takes quite a bit of time to review each one. I actually, you know, I was going to do the 2018s, and then I don't remember what year COVID was, but right in the middle of that, I think. We worked a little bit with Henry on the 2018s, and then the 2021, the hack shut us down. We're behind, I think, mainly because of the hack and COVID.

What's considered a cycle?

Every three years.

Every three, okay. Why don't we just have an ordinance where it automatically updates to the new?

I would love to do that, so it wouldn't be up here, but I don't know how that works.

Okay, so let me ask you something. Before we go through all this, can we do that?

I would suggest we do this first. This first. And then, obviously, in the next code cycle, we can work on how we get something like that done. But, you know, as a contractor, I did a lot of continuing education for years. You have to. I was always told in every continuing education that as a contractor, it doesn't matter what a city is enforcing. You need to be working day to day by the latest one out.

Twelve years is a long time.

It is a long time.

So every one of these ordinances there's exceptions.

It looks like modified and yes well I worked with a lot of the local contractors and mainly with plumbers plumbers had a local chapter here for years that they they were a part of and They've always worked closely with us on things that need to be amended. You know whether it's type K Conduit in the ground or burial depths for this or that or snow loads and So they were real helpful with that, but we kept the same amendments that we've always had. We didn't change anything, whatever amendments we've had. And whatever we need to do going forward, we'll come back in front of you with.

So on our ordinances, you have to go in and do the exceptions? You have to, like the subsections that you want deleted or modified, you have to? put that in there. It's not up to the discretion of the building official, no matter what.

If we adopt the book as a whole, we're adopting it as a whole. If we want to amend something out, Henry can probably correct me if I'm wrong, but we need to amend it.

Each one of these ordinances or these, you know, whether it be plumbing, electrical, or whatever, They're pretty thick.

Yes. So that's a lot of man hours of looking and... Well, and a lot of times we find it out in the field on a certain job. You know, every job is different. A lot of them are repetitive, but there may be a special circumstance that comes up that we find these that need to be amended.

So if you prove this, like, across the board tonight with all these, and you come across something that you might have missed, do you just... I think we still have the authority.

No, no, no. I still think we have the authority case by case to work with that, but... We obviously don't want to just keep pushing that down the road, so we would amend it.

So after this, what we talked about, about renewing it yearly, would you still have to review each one yearly?

Oh, yeah. I still think it would be city's best interest if we want to keep these amendments to always review and make sure those... Not only does the code change in just verbiage or maybe material... or best practices, but it also, as any thick book like that does, Article 203.2 may not be there anymore. It may change. Right, absolutely. So we may need to change those. And really, that took a lot of time going through. I want to thank Tammy. She helped me a lot, and so did Henry.

Even though we're operating currently four cycles behind, We're still, it has nothing to do with life safety issue with that four cycle behind code.

That's something I couldn't, you know, the whole book is based around life safety, property safety, and best practices. So to say it doesn't have anything to do with it?

Well, I mean, we're operating off 2012, but there's life safety things in there that would not, cause somebody to get hurt or killed. Right.

Correct.

It's a different world from 12 years ago, though.

But remember, these are the minimum standards. What we're adopting and what the ICC is is the bare minimum standards. Most contractors out there today aren't. This is the bottom of the line. Most of them are going above and beyond that.

We're talking about being behind four cycles, but some of these changes are also very minimal. There's only a couple of sections. Some of them are not minimal.

Well, those are just amendments. So when you look at the changes, and they put in complete books out that are analysis of the changes from a 2018 or 2012 to 2015 to 2018. They provide all the changes. Oh, yes, but they provide that language, what's changed. And sometimes it's significant, but sometimes they find that what we, the best practices in 2012, we really didn't need that in 2015. Or, you know, in 2012, we weren't doing as many solar systems as we are today. And they put a lot of language in for those things.

So when we change this, if we do, will plumbers, electricians, heat and air, will they all have a copy of the new ordinances? Yeah.

Well, like I said in the beginning, they should already have. You're a contractor. Me as a contractor, when the new ordinance, or when they, it didn't matter what the city's, Yeah, I may come here and you're only enforcing 2012, but if I go to Kansas City and they're on 2024, I should always be doing it by the latest code. So what they'll be doing is looking at the most current. They should always be looking at the most current.

What's the difference between the universal code and the international code?

Just two different entities.

I mean, IPC is what it looks like all the way across, so you just stay along the same line.

Yes, absolutely.

I didn't know if one was better than the other.

Well, I think that's a matter of who wrote them. They'll both tell you they're better than the other one. But widely used across the United States is International Code Council.

So is there ever an opportunity when these cycles change like this for input from your level and from the city's level to make suggestions up so they can, like the trends are changing? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, every ICC member... Anybody that's a member and there's millions of them have the ability to put in these books are written by Thousands of people not one person so each one of us have that ability to put in amendments for the next code cycle We just got to get caught up yep

Any other questions for Dexter on ordinance number G1392?

Move to approve. Admit a motion to... Second.

Admit a motion and a second to approve. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Dexter, we've got, looks like two and a half more pages. Are you going to need a chair or are you all right?

I'm all right for now. If I do, I'll scoot you over there.

You can just read the ordinance number. Okay. Probably. Probably.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean... And we can catch them all?

The only reason that we typically read the whole paragraph is just for the public's benefit, who's watching and maybe doesn't have a copy of the agenda. Hopefully people are still watching, you know, but if you want to just, say, consider ordinance number 1393, for example, that modifies the international fire code and the international, you know,

Is everybody all right with that? Sure. All right.

Moving on to ordinance number G1393, consider approval of ordinance number 1393, amending section 3431. I don't need to go through it.

So if you just read that part, I'd be happy to tell you what it is. This would be the 2024 edition of the International Fire Code. Just bringing it up to today's date like the rest of it.

Any questions? I guess if we're going to do it that way, the only questions I have, if you would highlight major changes that people need to talk about.

So I can provide a book. Major changes, I'm telling you, is literally a book this thick, thousands of pages. It could be a change of the word the instead of that. I mean, I'll show you one if you want to come down to my office. They literally put classes, training courses, eight-hour courses on significant changes of these codes, one book, and we're doing 12. So, I mean, I couldn't highlight the changes. Okay.

I guess the suggestion to the open public would be to definitely get a new copy.

Once these are all we do so part of this ordinance also states that I have to put one copy of each book in City Clerk's office, so there's always one available for anybody Okay, move to accept ordinance number G one three nine three there's been a motion to approve is there a second second?

Moved in second in all in favor say aye aye all opposed same time Ordinance number G1394, consider approval of ordinance number G1394.

Mayor, this one is the International Fuel Gas Code.

Without looking at it, the questions will be specific. Motion to approve.

Second. Motion to second it. All in favor of approving ordinance number G1394, say aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Ordinance number G1395, consider approval of ordinance number G1395.

International Property Maintenance Code.

Motion to accept ordinance number G1395. There's been a motion to approve and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Ordinance number 1396, consider approval of ordinance number G1396. International Mechanical Code. Second. Seconded. All in favor to approve, say aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Motion to approve. Ordinance number G1397.

This is the International Swimming Pool and Spa Code. It looks like we do have a typo in this that says uniform. And then below that, it says ICC International Code Council, but it is the International Uniform Swimming Pool and Spa Code.

Move to accept Ordinance Number G1397. And then a motion.

Is there a second? With the corrections.

Yes, with the corrections. Second. It is the International, not the Uniform.

It moved and seconded to approve. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. ORDINANCE NUMBER G1398.

THIS ONE IS THE INTERNATIONAL BUILDING CODE.

IS THERE A MOTION TO APPROVE? MOTION TO APPROVE. SECOND. MOVED AND SECONDED. ALL IN FAVOR SAY AYE. AYE. ALL OPPOSED. SAME SIGN. MOTION CARRIES. ORDINANCE NUMBER G1399.

INTERNATIONAL RESIDENTIAL CODE.

I'll make a motion to approve. Second. Seconded. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign.

Did everybody say aye?

Ordinance number G1400. This would be the National Electric Code. It's important to know that the National Electric Code is not written by ICC, and it has a different code cycle. That's why it is the 2026 edition. Any questions?

Move to accept ordinance number G1400. Second.

Motion second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Ordinance number G1401.

So this is not a building code. This was a creation of a code that has been long standard practice in Pittsburgh, the next two. For years, when you go out to a property that's had its utilities disconnected for six months or more, you had to get an inspection. Evergy, back when it was Westar and before that, they always required that. Nobody owned this ordinance. We have decided to own this, so there is somebody to speak to. The gas company and electric company both have asked us to own it, but for years since the 90s, this has been going on. So it's never been written, and every time you ask somebody, it's, well, it's Evergy's rule, or Evergy, it's Pittsburgh's rule. We decided to just own it. That's what these are. Nothing's changed. Practice didn't change. It's the same thing we've been doing for decades.

So just like the gas line that's been setting, nobody occupied, it has to be inspected? Yes.

Yeah, if it's been off six months. Yeah, there could have been leaks in it. We don't want to turn gas on with no inspections. I could give you an example. We literally went to a house one time. And somebody from Evergy, they've got a little meter they plug in and test. And they turned it on. Evergy doesn't go inside a property. We went inside the property and all the wire had been stripped.

Oh, boy.

Extremely dangerous. Just very lucky that there was no short in that wire.

So who's inspecting? Does the gas company and electric company will inspect these?

No, this ordinance will let us do, yeah, take ownership of what we've been doing for years.

So you would go in that resident, make sure everything's all right? Correct. And you'd let everybody know that you've been infected? Yep. Is there a motion to approve?

Move to approve.

Is there a second?

Second.

Then motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. Motion carries.

Ordinance number G1402. So this is the same thing, but this is for gas.

Move to approve. Second just the question on that. So I guess it's for both of you. We ran past the testing process If we find do we need to change that it's not it's not working for the Residents themselves and you'll come back in and yeah make adjustments every time I'm a I would be a fool not to think that I won't be in here amending something down the road and

But I will tell you that these testing procedures, especially GASP, and I look at you because I know your company has been doing this for years. These procedures have not changed. They're the same thing that's been working for decades. Absolutely.

And so the only other part of this that I'm looking for, and I'm not seeing it, but is the reporting process after the testing has been completed. How is that?

We send an email to, there's a group. So it's an Averagee group or a Kansas Gas group that gets these, that notifies them, hey, it's been tested, the city's approved it, and then they go out and turn it on. So if there's issues with it where it can't be turned on But we're gonna hold that information at the city so what we do is like the gas It's required that a plumber the homeowner do that and there's specific type gauges and all that can be found in the plumbing books But they go out and test it and then we go out and verify that it's holding the pressure I mean, it's a very simple process and then if it's not we obviously notify the whoever pulled that permit

So with this, since it hasn't been something that we've done for that amount of time, but we are going to keep track of all the data for this and have it available for the public also? I mean, it can be courted, of course, but are we going to have this in a queue somewhere?

What do you mean keep track?

Well, if we go test it and there are findings from the testing, either it's holding pressure or it's not, that information is going to be stored within the city and accessible.

Well, it's in our city inspection programs, yes, that have failed or passed.

Right.

Yeah.

If we haven't been doing it for a long time. No, we have been doing it. We've been doing it for decades. Nothing's changed. Just not owning it as far as who's not owning who.

So we've been doing it. Maybe I didn't make that part clear. Everybody, when you go out, whose rule is this? Why do I have to get this inspected? Well, it's Evergy's. Evergy would say, no, it's the city's. Nobody really owned the rule. We knew it existed, but there was no written rule. Both entities have asked the city to write that rule and own the rule.

Right, and what I'm referencing to is specifically tracking the information as well.

Well, we have it for decades, whatever we have in there. This has been a no-cost permit for years.

Won't it follow the address? Yes.

Yeah, we have that information.

So the gas line you put a pressure test on, what do you do on the inspection, I should ask, in electrical?

It's visual.

Just visual?

Yep.

You follow all the way to the breaker box, too.

All the way inside. Like I said, most of these have been off for quite a while. It's not that it could have a leak like gas. It's more of we have houses that have been abandoned, and people go in and strip the copper out of them. It's a pretty big deal.

So you have to go up in the attic and stuff and look?

Usually when they've been in there, you can see it. You don't need to go in the attic. Will you walk in the door? They destroy the drywall. They destroy everything.

I'm saying some homeowners could have been up in the attic and rigged something up.

That would be an electrician's job. We don't go that far to test every single circuit. What we're looking for is the bigger picture.

Motion to approve. A motion to approve. Is there a second? Motion to second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, same time. Orders number G1403. Last one.

This is the international existing building code.

So explain a little bit about that.

So the international existing building code was proposed that we should do this in our community by architects and engineers. that have been to our buildings downtown and said, look, you have older buildings, like a lot of other communities, and you don't have a code that supports working and remodeling these older buildings. Anybody in here that's worked on an older building realizes you don't take a brand new 2024 code and apply that. You can, it's expensive, doesn't give you any leeway for the way they built back in the early 1900s. The existing building code gives some leeway. It reduces some cost without reducing safety to these older buildings.

So I thought that maybe could help with the problem we have had to take on.

It can help across the board.

So if somebody abandons a building... We can go and inspect it now.

Well, this doesn't have anything to do with this. This has to do with when you're remodeling an old building and you take the 2024 international building code and it says, hey, if you're going to remodel or do this, you have to do it to this standard, this minimum standard, like it was built today, like we're building it today. And that can get very costly when you're dealing with an old building that wasn't built that way. So the international existing building code says, hey, we realize this was built 80 years ago, and there's gonna be some standards that can't be met. So by adopting this new book, that gives us some room, some wiggle room, without going outside of the international building. Staying within the boundaries. Yes, absolutely, yep. It'll help our downtown in the long run.

Any other questions? Is the motion to approve? I move to approve. Second. Second, and all in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Dexter.

Thank you.

Is there any non-agenda reports or requests?

Yes, Matt has one, and Missy has one. It looks like Missy's going first.

I just have an update on the 2026 budget recap for...

All right.

You got something, Matt?

Matt's got something.

So the document I gave you tonight, this is the award of the KDOT project for the Meadowlark Elementary School on 20th Street. Mission Construction was a low bidder, so this is the actual KDOT agreement with our 80-20 commitment all broken down. And so tonight we're asking you to execute this agreement with KDOT and authorize the mayor to sign. I'm sorry, this is authority to award the contract to Mission Construction. So there were, I can't remember if I talked about this project or not, but there was six bidders. It was a good bid project within the estimate.

Any questions?

This is from Rouse to the school?

This will be from the front of Fire Station No. 2, across the front of Fire Station No. 2, and then down the south side of 20th Street, and go across the face of Meadowark. They've got a sidewalk that ties in with that bus lane on that side.

So it says pedestrian and bike paths, so is that considered the same unit?

It's a five-foot sidewalk. It's the width of it?

Yeah. It qualifies for both.

Would you say it was five foot? Five foot, yep.

Oh, this is important. There's kids walking down the street to get to school. Yep. All down 20th all the time.

No, it'll be a good project. Anticipated date right now, preliminary talk to mission, probably a mid to late October start is what we're looking at.

So the Department of Transportation put the bids out.

Yeah, it was bid through KDOT. It'll kind of be handled. We're going to actually do the inspection with our city staff, one of our inspectors, between Greg and Jesse. We're going to inspect that project internally, and then the local office here will help facilitate some of the contract execution items.