City Commission - workshop

four and a half feet above the- Okay, it is 2.30 and I will call to order the Lower Smoky Hill Water Supply Access District regular meeting. I will look to staff for confirmation that the Open Meeting Act required notice has been properly provided.

Yes.

Thank you. May we have a roll call?

Mike Hoppeck?

Here.

Jerry Ivey?

Here.

Carl Espink? Here. Tom Toll? Dr. Trent Davis?

Here.

Greg Linkowitz? Here. Doug Rimp?

Here.

OK. That will lead us to public hearings.

Did you want to open the public hearing?

Yes. I'm sorry. I will open it.

I didn't want to know if you wanted to formally open.

Sorry. I will open the public hearing.

Debbie Pack, Director of Finance. There have been no changes since this was presented back in May of 2026. The published amount for the Lower Smoky Hill 2027 budget is $127,799. That is what the projections we get from the Corps every year. So really there's been no changes since our conversation on May 11th, and I would just stand for any questions that you might have. And Martha's also here if you have any questions from the administrative side.

Any questions for us? Okay, any comments from the public Okay with that I will close the public hearing and bring it back to the Commission for action The action we'll need today is just the approval of the public here of the 2027 budget for the lower smoky hills.

So just a motion for that I Move we approve the 2027 budget second

We have a motion and a second to approve the 2027 budget. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That item passes 6-0. That will bring us to item 3, approval of the minutes. Are there any additions or corrections to the minutes?

I move we approve the minutes from May 11th.

I'll second that.

We have a motion and a second approving the minutes for May 11, 2026 meeting. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? That item also passes 6-0. Okay. New business. Election of officers.

The district board has four elected officers, president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer, which is among the group of you board members. I just made note that all of the city commissioners are eligible for nomination to any of these positions as they will be here through the 2027 year. So we'll open it up for nominations.

Nominate Vice Mayor Jerry Ivey for president.

Do we need to do these separately or?

I don't think so.

Okay. And I would move that Greg Linkwitz be elected vice president.

Are you wanting a second or?

If you're going to geek it out over the honor of the officership, I guess you'd have to do a one by one. One by one, okay. You can do a slate if you want.

Yeah, probably I was going to do, we don't have a slate. Okay, we have a motion. Do we have a second for present?

I'll second that.

We have a motion second for Jerry Ivey to serve as president. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? I made a motion to have Greg Linkowitz serve as the vice president. Second. We have a motion and a second to have Greg Linkwit serve as the Vice President. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Passes 6-0. Secretary?

Tom? Tom? Tom's not here. I'm sorry, Carl. Carl, yeah. It's all right. Do you feel more useful as a secretary or a treasurer?

Me either. Doesn't matter. I've been the secretary for years now, right?

All right, and that gives that now. You're comfortable there? Yeah. Nominate Carl Esping as secretary.

I'll second that.

Motion and a second nominating Carl Esping as secretary. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, that passes 6-0. Treasurer. Is Tom guilty because he's not here?

I think so.

Okay, I make a motion we appoint Tom Toll as treasurer. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second nominating Tom Toll as treasurer. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? That item passes six to zero. Okay, we need to set the next meeting date.

These dates are the dates of city commission meetings in the fourth quarter. We're required to have one meeting per quarter, so that's why these dates are set like that. Well, actually, if we want to do the fourth quarter, the September ones would not fall in the fourth quarter, so sorry about that.

Is there any dates that work better for you, Carl, and Tom, you think?

I wouldn't think so.

The rest of us are probably going to be here.

I'll be gone on the 26th of October, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.

I'm assuming December 28th is probably not a... And I would say 23rd is near Thanksgiving of November, so... I can't remember what we had last year.

That sounds good.

Pick a date. Make a motion.

I move we meet November 9th, 2026.

Second.

We have a motion and a second to set the next regularly scheduled meeting for the Lower Smoky Hill Water Supply Access District as November 9th of 2026. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed?

That item passes 6-0. Okay.

Any other business? Martha, would anybody like to update us on, or Carl, on the water levels and where we're at on irrigation?

I gave Carl my notes on the lake, so if you want to read them for me, that's fine, Carl.

Well, I can ad lib and be here for another half hour, I think would be fine. It's kind of a tale of the good and the bad, all these rains we've had, which much needed, and then it kept coming and coming and coming. But the lake is now up from, what, 1461 up to the high of 1468. And now it's dropped a little over a foot, foot and a quarter since. And there is adequate water coming downstream for the Salama River Pumper II, of course. But now the dryland people are worried because it is dry. It's hard to understand how we can have that much rain, but the dryland crops are hurting. But no, it's good. We went western Kansas here a month or so ago when they had back-to-back 8- to 10-inch rains. But that's what helped Kanopolis. So, yeah, we're very pleased with the way it stands now.

What's the conservation level?

61. 63. 63. 63. That's the second time.

Okay. Anything else to add?

I think they're, I started to say they're going to try to lower the lake down to 67 so there'll be a buffer there about four feet to play with. It really has to be concerned.

Mm-hmm. Good. Okay. If there's nothing else, I'll accept a motion for adjournment. Move to adjourn.

Second.

That motion is second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? We will see everyone back here on November 9th. And Martha, you'll get that date to Tom and everything for November 9th? I'll see him. You'll see him? Okay. I wasn't sure who was in charge of who, so.

Pretty much, he's retired, see, now, so. But he still comes by about every day, so. We'll kick him around so we can move on to our next one. Well, be that way. Thank you. We can stay. Thank you.

Okay, it is 2.45. I will call to order our study session. Again, we're dealing with the 2027 budget, and I will turn it over to Debbie Pack.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Commissioners, Debbie Pack, Director of Finance. Today we are going to finish up with some of the funds that we didn't get to at the last meeting and then circle back around to property tax so that we can get some more finite direction from you as far as how we want to publish that and present it to the county commission or county clerk. So we're going to pick up with the funds that we didn't do last time. That first one on slide three is the Business Improvement District Fund. This fund really just captures, it's a pass-through. We capture the fees that are charged to the participants or members of the Downtown Business Improvement District. The city does administer that for them. And then we pass those fees through to them less a little bit if we have any expenses as far as collection or something like that. So those get passed on to them. They are currently the amount, they run around $125,000 a year, 120, something like that, depending on the members that they have. So we're budgeting $130,000 just to make sure we have enough to cover what they do collect. Um, I have presented here also that 1 of the decisions that we have to make, or you have to make as a city commission is whether you have concede to what their board is recommending for increases or non increases for their fees for the 2027 year. So as you can see, they did do a large increase in 2024 of 30%. This year they are recommending a 0% increase on those fees. So that will be something that I'll need consensus from you to move forward with. And then later on in the budget process, we are required to come back with an ordinance that adopts those fees for them. So if you have any questions or you want to discuss that fee increase, this would be the time to do so.

I'm going to abstain from any discussion since I'm a BID member.

I would add that as far as what the remainder of their budget is, they do get $100,000. We did approve $100,000 from the Sales Tax Economic Development Fund for their operations, as well as they get CID funds from the downtown CID, which is about $175,000. So that's about the amount of their.

budget for an annual year so I will ask any commissioners have comments could you clarify the question you just asked us that we would have to guard if we needed to approve?

So Salina Downtown Inc. makes a recommendation to the city on what the BID fees will be. And so the city commission is the one that actually sets those fees. So if we want to take their right, we need to know, I guess at this point, do you want to go with their recommendation? Or do you want to increase the fees? Do you want to lower the fees? It's really a fee set by the city commission, but we do it at the recommendation of the SDI board or the BID board. BID and SDI, so Salina Downtown Inc. and BID, they're kind of one in the same entity, but they'd have for purposes of...

structure that the BID is who makes that recommendation so at this point they have not recommended any increase in those fees that go to downtown business owners and typically they would have discussed this with their constituency before yeah yeah they're bored they're bored always makes a recommendation so assuming if there was any fighting it's already been it's already occurred yes okay of course the issue doesn't make a difference because it's zero increase anyway

Do you want a recommendation now?

I would just if you are okay with that zero percent we'll move forward with that because if we changed it could change what this budget number looks like but not a lot.

It looks like you have consensus.

Okay perfect. So the next fund that we'll look at is the special parks and recreation fund. This fund is funded through the special alcohol tax that the state levies against alcohol and drinking establishments so one-third of that goes to the general fund one-third goes to the park special parks and recreation fund and then one-third goes to our special alcohol fund we internally use this fund predominantly for place playground equipment replacement So the estimate for revenue comes from the state. So we basically are using that number from them. The number for the expense for 2027 as part of their 10-year or 15-year replacement plan for playgrounds includes the Indian Rock Playground, which was previously the Glenifer Park Playground. And they're requesting $550,000 for that particular program. So that would be what we are... proposing as the budget for this particular fund for 2027.

Question?

A quick question. Sure. With what is proposed, I haven't went out and seen it firsthand to my understanding. I'm sorry. Thomas Park had substantial playground equipment damage. Is that going to cover being able to take care of the equipment in Thomas Park?

Yeah, so we'll have to look at that. We haven't had an estimate on what that'll cost yet. I'm anticipating that might be an insurance claim, so we'll have to decide whether that's an insurance claim or whether we want to take money out of this fund. But typically how this works, if you can look, if you see back in the years, it's kind of variable over time. One year we spent $80,000. The next year we spent $168,000. Then it's $34,000. We have a 20-year, it's a 20- or 30-year replacement plan for all of our playground equipment. And as those come up, we might save a couple of years in order to do a bigger one, or we may replace a smaller one. just depending on the condition and the timing. So we will come up with a plan for how to fix that, but I think there'll probably be an insurance claim on that. I think it'll be big enough that we can do an insurance claim and replace it that way. Will there be a deductible on that?

Do we have a total?

There will be.

Okay, I didn't know if the deductible was...

Per incident or whatever, so I guess... Yeah, we'll have more information when that comes up and we've got it all kind of figured out.

Yeah, I guess, Commissioner Rimp, what I'd say is I think what we've made sure is that we keep this in a separate bucket of money, so if we do have something like that, we can always pull out of it, so...

And if we do need to do that this year, we have the opportunity to amend this any time when we need to.

Well, looking at the expected capital outlay, it looks like you have included ample funds. Well, that's half a million?

Mm-hmm.

550,000, where the previous high was 228,000. Yeah, we do expect that this will be a bigger playground.

A destination park. So if it's at a destination park, so if it's at Jerry Ivy, or I mean, what we call our destination parks are really like Jerry Ivy, Sunset Park, Oakdale Park, Centennial Park, and Indian Rock. We generally spend more on those playground equipments. They're usually just a little bit bigger. So this would be a bigger year, but we do have money or we do have a fund balance that's there. So if we need to make adjustments, and I don't know what we spent this year already on playground equipment, that $300,000 is an estimate. I mean, it's what's budgeted, but we may not have spent all of that on this year's project. So we'll just have to figure out where we're at with the money that remains in this year's budget um and then and then kind of back into it but if we do because this this has a fund balance set aside we can adjust the budget or we can amend the budget if we need to at the end of the year to account for some of those one-time strange um outlier type incidents and then they would obviously change their 15 or 20 year plan they move that back as being replaced and move something else around a little bit to make sure that they still have it in the in the plan unfortunately the one at thomas park is fairly new i mean it's only two or three years old so i do think there's probably enough value in the one that's there that we will have we will have to look at the insurance side of it and see if it makes sense to do that yeah okie dokie

Okay. So the next fund, we'll look at a special alcohol. This, as I mentioned, is funded through that state tax. This fund, the city uses and provides grants to our local community agencies who provide substance abuse services as we were required to do so with this funding. Again, we are just proposing that the budget be enough to cover what we estimate will be the revenue from this funding source so that we have the ability to pay that out. It's a true pass-through. Every dollar that comes in, those dollars go back out to those entities. Those entities do apply for grants every two years. while these vendors are receiving the subsidy subsidy now um that will change next year or the year after that when that two-year cycle comes back through so And this estimate does come from, I think the estimate is $276,000 or something like that for revenue. So we've just upped it to a little bit just to make sure, because you really don't know what's going to be collected. And as always, we'd come back with an amendment if that funding did come in higher than what the state estimated. And then I'm not going to stop unless you have questions, so I'll move through these pretty quickly. The next fund is special gas tax fund. This one we do use for street maintenance projects and things like that. As part of the revenue, we also budget the federal fund exchange dollars that we apply for through the state. So this one typically is used for sidewalks and ramps, markings, detection, annual street maintenance, like signals and things like that. We're estimating, we're budgeting 2.2 million 166,602 compared to a estimated revenue of about $2,175,000. And this, too, has a fund balance so that any time that something came up, an emergency or something like that, a project they weren't expecting, we would have a little bit of fund balance that if we needed to amend that budget, we certainly could. The next fund is really not a pass-through fund, and it's an internal fund that we created. It's the Neighborhood Park Development Fund, and this is funded through residential building permits. There's a $200 fee that goes into this fund, and it's to be used for neighborhood parks in the neighborhood in which it was collected. So we track where all of those revenues come, Park District and then when we have issues or things that we need to do in that particular Park we can use some of this funding if we have it available to do those projects so if we need to replace a picnic table or something like that at Jerry Ivy and we've had a collection of this funding from that then we could use this source as a source to do those things in that particular Park The next one is TPEC Fund. We're budgeting. They've been doing a really good job on the expense side, or rather the revenue and expense side, but on what they're requesting from us as reimbursement. So we have been able to lower that estimated budget amount to about 880,000. And in this budget, we were also able to reduce what we are doing, the city, the general fund would transfer to this fund. This particular funding fund is funded through a general fund transfer, typically $260,000, as well as transient guest tax, a percentage of the transient guest tax. So with the estimated expense budget on this one. We were able to reduce the general funds expected transfer by $130,000 and still feel like we'll be able to cover that with the fund balance that's currently there. The next fund is the former Schilling Air Force Fund. This is the fund that's set aside with the Department of Justice funding that we received from them. This looks really huge, $50 million. Typically what we've done in the past is we budget that amount because we know when this fund gets really ramped up and starts doing a lot of work, it's going to happen very quickly. They estimate that within the first few years, they'll spend the majority of this funding. And then the final years will be testing, which the expenses aren't as high in those later years. So we've just always budgeted $50 million because they have that available in their resources to do so. And we want to make sure that once they do ramp up, they can certainly get their projects done through their budget system.

And I just wanted to mention, so if you've seen in the articles on 311 about how big our budget is, this $50 million that we budget every year as an expenditure, even though we haven't spent it, it does kind of have the effect of artificially increasing our budget or making our budget look quite a bit bigger than it actually is. So there had been some articles that were, I want to say, a little bit misleading about the increase in our budget and how much money we're spending. We have to budget it in order to expend it. But if we don't expend it, it doesn't come against our budget. So it does artificially make it look like our $100-plus million budget is $150-plus million budget, even though we're not and we don't anticipate we'll expend all of that. And it's typically been, in this fund, a few million dollars a year. At some point, we will expend a large amount. We just don't know when that will be. We're still working through lots of the technical details and trying to get to a point where we are doing some actually moving dirt, doing things that'll be a little bit more visible. But we anticipate that that could be a year or two in the future. It is the best I can tell.

If you look at this in a 2027, it looks like we have a negative balance. And part of that is because that beginning fund balance needs to be, I guess, is there no way to adjust that? I mean, it looks that.

You can. And typically what on the forms that we submit to the state, we'll adjust what the 26 budget is because we know we're not going to spend that money in 26. Even though we got approved to spend $50 million in 2026, we will adjust that number knowing that we're probably only going to spend a couple million dollars. Because we have a better idea now than we did a year and a half ago as to what that number will be. So yes, we could do that on here as well. But when we do it for the state's purposes, we will adjust that number.

Okay. because that like an amendment but it's not really because it's going down not up if that makes sense yeah but it just yeah when you look at this it if if the public looks at that they're going whoa we're 20 but we again we haven't spent the 50 million this year so that needs to come off at some point so that that balance looks correct so yes okay yes

And I can certainly do that as I do reporting as well so that it doesn't get confusing for the public.

That's really just a function of the requirements from the state, which is really not, it's a budget, but it's really more of a reporting tool than it is like an actual budgetary document. So we have to fill all that paperwork out and send it. It's a huge spreadsheet that's pages and pages and pages long. But what we're really looking at is the sheets that we have here and what we put into our internal system. as an actual budget. So the budget document looks a little bit different than the state forms, just because of the form that you have to submit. Yeah.

I just didn't want somebody looking at this and think we're 28 million in the whole next year.

And two, when I produce the budget document that we use internally, I can correct this as well. I'll make a note to make that change. Even though we haven't changed it at the state level.

Just back to the TPAC, when does that contract expire?

I believe it was a 10-year contract.

Yeah, around 2029 or 2030.

So that number is going to be fixed for a pretty good while, at least the next couple of years anyway. Yes.

I think we – I can't remember. I think it was a 10-year contract.

It was. Yeah, we did an extension. Well, we did an extension, so as part of a – OVG spent some money on doing some upgrades. They bought some new table service and some of that. And so in return, so they spent about $500,000 on some of the equipment in the facility. And in return for that, we extended the period or the time frame for our agreement. But I believe it goes out to 20. It's either 2029 or 2030. But we still have a few years remaining.

And then the next fund is the workers' compensation fund, and we have increased this one a little bit because we're seeing that the claims are going up just a little bit. This is funded through transfers from other departments to pay for this because it is basically a self-insurance fund. And we do have a policy for where that target should be. So as we're seeing that that target may fall below what that range is, we increased it $100,000 just to make sure that, because our budget for the last couple of years has been $250,000. So we just increased that $100,000 based on the claims that we're seeing in the last few years, just to make sure we have enough revenue in there to cover those expenses that we anticipate. The last fund is the Bond and Interest Fund. While this fund appears, the source of revenue from this one comes from multiple places. It comes from property tax levied for this particular purpose. It comes from motor vehicle tax that gets part of the levy for those taxes. It comes from special assessments for those that are levied against properties within those districts, as well as from other funds that have general obligation bonds like the solid waste fund or sanitation fund, those go into this fund as well as far as revenue sources. On the expense side, that is really driven by the amortization schedules that we have for our currently issued bonds, including what we issued in 2026 because those bond payments will start in 2027. While this looks like it has a pretty large fund balance, I will say as we've done debt capacity and we've done projections on this fund, because we have a lot of projects that are pretty expensive coming up with West Magnolia and some of those other projects, we anticipate this fund balance to be used probably within the next five years for those projects, to be able to debt finance those projects. That's kind of why we're kind of keeping it close to the tie as far as whether we're balancing it to the zero or giving in a little bit of those funds for that particular project.

And we will be bringing back the capital improvement plan that shows what projects are in what year, and there will be kind of a prioritization exercise there. For some reason, you know, over the last couple of years, it seems like we've had a lot of big projects parked in 2027. And kind of we probably outpaced our capacity to manage those projects and then also to pay for them all in those years. So we do need to look at that and decide. You know, I think we had about 20 some million dollars worth of projects that we had parked yesterday. in 2027 and we we just don't have the capacity as a staff to manage that that much in terms of projects so we will have to kind of rework our five-year schedule and push some things around but we will have a we will have a kind of the ability for the city commission to say hey we think this is the highest in the next a couple of

I mean we could do it within the next month if that's what you so chose. We don't have to do it. We just need to do it before the end of the year. So typically we get through the budget and then we come back to that. That's typically how we do that. But yes, prioritizing those projects from your perspective is going to be important to see. What we've done is kind of internally, as Jacob said, is how can we really do this? And so we've adjusted those dates a little bit based on that perspective. And then we'll need to get from your perspective what those priorities are for the community. And we can re-kind of do that. It would not affect this budget at all, because those numbers are what we owe now. It's not what we would owe in the future. So that could change those numbers for that. So, okay. And so that's all the funds that we have that are being budgeted. The next kind of conversation we need to have, and we started this conversation at the last meeting, is the property tax. I added a few pieces of information in here, just real quickly go over the timeline. We do have to notify by July 20th whether we're going to exceed revenue neutral rate. And we also have to give them the rate that we will be publishing. So that's why today was the date that we felt like we needed to come back. I put there's one more meeting, but there's really not because I copied this slide from last time, so I apologize for that. So we really do need today to know what that rate would be or what you're comfortable publishing. Now, as I mentioned last time, we can publish a rate. We can always come down. We cannot go over. So if we decide to publish a rate and something happens in the next few weeks where a number, you know, we see a number's going down, I wouldn't anticipate it a lot, but we see that maybe we don't need that high of a number, we can certainly come down on that number. But we cannot go over that number once we publish it. Cuz once we publish, we're publishing that this is what it's gonna be, this is what the revenue is gonna be, and this is when we're gonna have a public hearing. So the public kinda knows what that is. And then based on that decision, it drives the rest of the schedule for property tax. So the next slide I wanted to bring back was the general fund, because as we know, the general fund is the one. We talked about the debt service fund as the second fund that is the benefit of property tax, but the general fund is the main fund that Benefits from those property taxes property tax is the second highest revenue source for the city I believe if I looked at the percentage, it's in the 20 percentage rate. I can't remember exactly. It's in the 20s The assumptions that we have in this budget are that we would go at the current mill levy rate Operational budgets are at 2026 amounts The personnel is at a 1.5% COLA, 1.5% MERIT as you directed last month or last meeting. And health insurance premiums are up 5%. And outside agencies are being funded as they requested. The other thing that I did add to this slide that I wanted to make sure that you're aware is to get the budget where it is today as presented at the $700,000 deficit, we did move some money around as one time measures. The 130,000 that I mentioned earlier that we were able to not do for TPAT. There were several sales tax capital transfers that we normally do that we felt like we could skip in 2027 and put those in the general fund. And also, as I mentioned the last time, we did propose that we were going to up the annual transfer for tax stabilization in the general fund from sales tax. So with these numbers, the general fund is about $2.3 million in deficit. We would anticipate as sales tax grows that that would capture some of this. The calculations that I've calculated would mean that about 6% growth in sales tax would cover what we're kind of at now. Currently, we're at about 4%. Last year, we ended at about a little over 6%, I think. So it's really... kind of tough to know with sales tax we would anticipate that we'd have growth and that we would be able to kind of capture some of this as we go along um but you said a six percent increase in sales tax with these adjustments would balance the general fund a six percent increase annually would take care of what we won't have in the future years from these particular transfers, because these are one-time transfers. So we would have to get 6% growth in sales tax to make up for these transfers, basically. Does that make sense? Okay. Okay. The next slide I think that this hasn't changed from the last time just giving you the numbers as far as where we have been as far as our what we've Levied and what a revenue neutral rate is I will say that since the last meeting the county has in their minutes in their meeting stated that they're going to publish at forty two point one four two and which is a 4.8% increase over last year's rate. That is what they're publishing. And in the minutes, they also say their intent is, as always, to look at whether that can be lowered. Also, the airport authority on their, and these are things just that I've found from minutes and things like that. Their number is going to come in above the revenue neutral rate. USD 305, I couldn't find any information. There's some other cities, Lawrence is out there stating their numbers are going to be up about 7% from revenue neutral. And so there's just a lot of mixed information out there right now, whether how people are responding to the new legislation and what they're going to do and whether they're going to be over revenue neutral and kind of what those percentages are going to be. But I felt like it was important that you know kind of what's going on out there in with other entities that are looking at this decision as well.

And we are really the only entity that has gone revenue neutral

In the county of Saline, yes.

In Saline. So of all the taxing entities, we are the only one that has gone revenue neutral and done it for multiple years in a row.

Right. And that's what that graph on the bottom shows you, that we are the only taxing entity in Saline County, in our district, that our rates have gone down. The rest of them have gone up in the last five years. Whether theirs were over revenue neutral or not, which would tell me they're over, because revenue neutral should be going down each year. The next slide that I put in here that I thought was interesting, as my brain works a little bit I think, well what would have happened if we would have just stayed flat for the last five years throughout this revenue neutral rate? So the first year I knew this number was pretty good. We went to revenue neutral because it was only going to cost us about $90,000 at that time, and we felt like that's the right thing. We didn't feel like it. That was the conversation we kind of had. But I felt like it was interesting to show that by going the rates we did and not staying flat from that rate that we started with in 2022, we've basically given up about $2.5 million of taxes. And I just thought that was interesting information to have as we make decisions going forward. The next slide, this is the calculation that I was showing you the last meeting of where we would be at different rates. So using the revenue neutral rate, where we would be using last year's mill levy rate, going one mill over the last year's rate, and then going to an amount that staff felt like we could cover that $700,000 shortfall in the general fund. That's where these rates come in. That would be 29.836. Yeah, that's a split out there. then the next slide is also something that i provided um with all those different rates that we discussed that are on that previous page kind of what effect it has on the on an average 200 000 home in the city of salina by going to that upper rate of 29.836 it's about 29.17 a year which is about 2.43 a month now that's only the city's portion so that doesn't say that every that that your tax bill would go up that much this is only we can only control the city's portion so that that would be the effect of the city and what we what decision we make as far as um where what rate we feel is the best place for the city to be at this point So with that, I'll stand for any questions. We do have to provide the county with that rate. And then, if necessary, with anything that you might have, any changes you might do, if we didn't go with the last year's rate, we'd have to redo our budget numbers just to account for that revenue. That wouldn't affect the expense side at all. We'll need to set our public hearing and then hold that public hearing and have a hearing for exceeding the revenue neutral rate if that's the choice that you make, and then adopt the budget. So that we would anticipate would happen in the next four to six weeks.

So we will need to take action, though, at the next city commission meeting to set everything in motion?

Once you give me a consensus today, we don't need to, depends on what that consensus is. If it's above revenue neutral, it gives us a little time. We do not have to take that action until later because the next action we'll take is to actually set the public hearing date. And that has to be 10 days before the public hearing.

So we can inform the county that we're not going revenue neutral without a public action.

Correct, correct.

So really today what we need to know, it sounds like the last time we had a discussion there was at least consensus around using the prior year's mill levy, which would be not going with the revenue neutral rate. And then we presented a couple other options, which would be a one mill increase or about a one and a 1.4 mill increase. So one mill increase would would cover us almost all of our deficit in the general fund. We would have to find a couple hundred thousand dollars, which we think we can do that within what we have. So if you decide you want to go with just using the same mill levy, we have about $737,000 that we have to either cut or spend into our fund balance. which will be a decision that the city commission can provide some guidance on. If you go up one mill, then I think we can cut and not be too impactful, I suppose.

And this says using prior year mill levy. And that third box in the lower left-hand corner, one mill over. So the current mill level is 28.568. That would be here the same thing as what's called prior year mill levy. Yes. In the upper column.

Go back to that one page up.

Yes.

So even staying the current year, you still have a budget deficit.

These are kind of decision points. We either stay revenue neutral, which would be a cut in revenue. We keep the mill levy the same at 28.568. We go up one mill to 29.568, or we go to 29.836, which is about a mill and a 1.4 mills increase.

Or any number thereafter.

But in full disclosure, keeping the prior year mill level is still an increase?

It is, yes, an increase in tax dollars. It's an increase in the dollar amount that we would collect.

Yeah, because you have higher tax base.

And that comes close to balancing the general fund budget?

Well, it's- Within $150,000?

$700,000.

So it's about $700,000 off.

If you leave the mill rate the same, we're about $700,000 behind. If you increase it by one mill, we're about $200,000 behind. In order to...

So the additional tax... I'm trying to connect the 605-889 to the 737-951.

That's the additional tax dollars that we would recognize by using that mill levy rate over what we would recognize as using the revenue neutral rate.

So getting the additional 605, we're still 737? Yes. Oh, okay. That's the connection I didn't make.

Yes.

So to actually cover that, we'd have to go up?

Have to go up higher, yes.

Okay.

I'll go ahead. Just talk just for a moment. I think I made it clear at the last meeting that I would oppose any increase, thinking we should keep the current mill levy rate. However, we have ran into substantial storm expenses that We're going to have city staff utilizing a lot of resources for probably a couple of months yet. And I know it's only the city's portion, which is only a portion of the overall property taxes, but if the cost to the average homeowner in a $200,000 home, Probably, call it more, average 300,000 would be roughly $30 annually. And I think for anybody that's getting any branches picked up or anything like that, it's really pretty cheap with the city stepping up and providing that service for the community. Just, I guess, bottom line, I'm saying I could support the one mill over current.

option well and again as as this shows uh commissioner ramp you know we've done a really good job of staying revenue neutral which it only lasts for so long because unless your sales tax increases substantially because we uh you know we're not capturing that increase in value and stuff and the other thing that that concerns me is if we don't do that is The discussions in Topeka of how they're going to limit our growth in the coming years could really, and I don't know how that.

I fully anticipate with the change in the governor's office that there will be some restrictions and changes in how we do property taxes at the local level. The problem there is we don't know what those changes are going to be. The state has not necessarily had local governments at the table when they're making up those rules. And so sometimes we will figure it out. I mean, we'll figure out how to work within the confines of whatever they make. But I do... I do feel like this is probably the last opportunity for us to be able to make the decision locally that we're going to increase at any more than a very small percentage rate, if that makes sense. So yeah, and as Debbie showed you in a couple of slides prior, it does have a compounding effect. I mean, not increasing that revenue does. It does have an impact, and it is – the one thing that I think is frustrating at the state level is they always kind of connect this to CPI, which are – CPI is a basket of goods, milk and bread and things like that. Well, the cities don't buy milk and bread. We buy fire trucks, and public safety inflation is much higher than – than just the normal inflation out there. So I do think this is kind of the last opportunity we might have to at least pave our own way. We'll have to figure out what the rules are in the future and work our way through that as well. This is probably the last time we'll be able to have kind of the full authority to do what we think needs to be done.

Can you explain again the 2027 projects you said we had too many to handle? And you said if we were to drop or scale back on any of those, those do not affect this budget?

No, they don't. So the debt service fund, we have set that up in a way where we try to spend kind of about the same amount of money in debt payments each year. So it just so happened that we had a lot of projects that ended up – we had design, and they ended up in 2027. And so – They will be spread over the next couple of years, so those debt payments won't happen. So depending on what projects you decide, the debt payments won't happen on those projects until 2028 or 2029. And so our goal has always been to kind of keep the debt service fund pretty much level-loaded. And in 2028 or 2029, we'll have other debt that falls off, And so that will free up some of those dollars to be able to put towards the new debt. So we kind of try to schedule it so that as old debt falls off, old projects are paid for, we pick up new debt and new projects are paid for.

And also from a revenue perspective, from the property tax perspective, we've tried to project not increasing the need for more property tax for the debt payments as we go along. The only thing we've done in the projection is this is what our property tax collection will be this year based on our budget. And then if the state goes to a 3% increase, that's the only increase we've gone. So we try to always put the most property tax that we're collecting into the general fund and not on the debt service fund. So if for some reason those taxes went up and we had excess, we can adjust where it goes within those two funds. But what we've tried to do is make sure that as we project debt service that we keep that Property tax revenue need fairly flat so that we're not taking it out of the general fund either So there's kind of two perspectives there the revenue side and and the debt side I mean Just doing the simple math

one mill over the current mill levy essentially balances the close enough balances the budget and assuming whether nature is kind uh some people don't get sick and run up i mean we have fun balances in some areas but The last 12 months have shown that $30 million ain't as much as you think it is. It can be wiped out pretty quickly.

Commissioner Rampe, you are okay with the one mill increase? I could do the one mill increase, but I'm still going to push hard that we eliminate some waste. And I think we can find things that we can eliminate, but I'll support one mill over. Commissioner Linkwitz?

I concur. Unfortunately, I think the math tells us that we need to do one mill over.

After being revenue neutral for so many years, I guess we're due for it. A couple bucks a month.

Mr. Davis. Definitely agree. Okay.

Move forward with that then.

Okay. Is there anything else? Okay. In two weeks, will we have another study session on the budget? Is there anything to bring forward, or are we at that point?

We should not, neither.

Okay.

unless there's something else. We have in the past tried to bring water rates forward and CIP but with everything that's going on I don't think we're quite ready to do that and those don't have to be done within this budget. We can budget around those numbers.

Do those have to be done by end of the year then by December 31st? Yes.

So that we can publish what those rates are going to be and kind of make some decisions on what those projects are going to be so that staff knows how to move forward with those steps. We'll try to do it early fall just because nobody likes to wait until the last minute.

I would like to, within the next 60 days, get to the projects so we can kind of... okay hammer those certainly that would be a yep would be advantageous for us so yeah we're we're ready to go with that so we at any time we can do that okay okay with that we will be back in this room at four o'clock for the regular scheduled meeting thank you thank you

you

Thank you.

Thank you. you Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Amen.

Bye.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, it is four o'clock and I will call the July 13th, 2026 line of city commission to order. I will look to staff for confirmation that the Kansas Open Meeting Act required notice has been properly provided.

Yes.

Thank you. May we have roll call?

Mayor Hoppeck?

Here.

Commissioner Davis?

Here.

Commissioner Ivey?

Here.

Commissioner Lankowitz?

Here.

Commissioner Remp?

Here. Will those who are able please stand for a pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence? Thank you. That will lead us to public hearings.

Item 3.1, conduct a public hearing to consider route changes to the Citigo Public Transportation Service.

Okay, I will officially open the public hearing. Mr. Marsh.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Commissioners. Citigo, the fixed route public transportation service in Salina, Kansas, was launched in 2009 following recommendations from a 2008 study conducted by the University of Kansas Transportation Center. Originally starting with three routes, the system has since expanded to five, and as you'll hear today, they want to expand to six, adapting to community growth and increased demand. As per the agreement with OCCK, anytime they have route changes or want to add a route, we need to have a public hearing. And then after the public hearing, if the city commission so desires, they need to approve those changes to make them effective. Trell and Laura from OCCK will be here to walk you through those changes.

Okay. Welcome.

Thank you. All right. We are super excited to be talking with you guys today. And anybody that has feedback for us, they're more than welcome to voice that in this conversation, as well as reach out to us. Laura and I will be holding meetings with anybody that wants to talk. One thing that I will say, we have an adjustment in our launch date. In some publications, we have said an August launch. but we wanted to open it up for a little bit more opportunity to recruit drivers, train those drivers, and also allow for public input. We had some public listening sessions outside of this conversation. We would like to get a little bit more engagement there. So go ahead and go to the next slide. All right, so on June 15th and June 16th, we held community listening sessions. July 13th is today. And then October 12th will be our official launch day. So when our buses pull out of that garage, we will be having some adjustments to the current routes and then have the sixth additional orange route launched that day. Okay, next. All right, new exclamation point, woo! For literally the entire time I have worked at OCCK Transportation, there has been this figment of our imagination, orange route, when are we gonna add a sixth route, city's big enough, city's big enough. It's finally happening, so it's super, super exciting. It is intended to serve the south and southwest corridor of Salina. We definitely had to increase the efficiency of Purple. It is our highest used route, the Purple, at over 5,000 per month passengers on onboarding there. So Orange will support that Purple so we can drive safely through town, but then also create some on-timeness for that Purple route. With so many people getting on and off, it just naturally puts that Purple behind on their time. The orange route will hit its stops every half an hour for the entire span of the day. So we are adding one additional vehicle, which we currently have in our backup fleet. So no additional vehicle costs outside of fuel and driver time. We're not having to procure additional assets. Okay, next slide. All right, for the yellow route, or sorry, for the orange route, people can transfer from the purple, yellow, or red at Planet Dillon's and at Walmart to get to any location. This will serve Salina Tech, K-State. There's a stop at Menards. It will also go around Tony's, Schwann's, connecting people to work, and then also have a stop near the airport for anybody commuting. Then we'll come up. connect at Walmart, and then go over to Lowe's. And then in preparation for potential further expansion, get a little closer to that Avenue A and B, because our next steps later on down the road would be to expand a little farther south to catch employment south there. Okay, next. Purple, like I was mentioning, it is the highest usage of our routes. It oftentimes gets delayed because of those ons and offs, so we needed to address that. Centennial will now be served by the orange. Purple would go down Magnolia, hit Centennial, Schilling, and then back to Walmart. We are removing that to create some flexibility for that route. Next slide. All right, some additional updates. Yellow route, we are going to discontinue the yellow route service to Ash and Oakdale. That is currently being served by the blue, so it will only be served by one route. Ridership data supports that absolutely. And then the mall stop, we will be moving that, and that, because of what the mall is going through, we have already moved that stop. It will be included in this. It is moved a little farther south between Tropical Snow and the gas station. Red Route will discontinue service to Kenwood Cove this past year. It was continuing that to serve a couple of passengers who relied on the Red Route. They have since changed their traveling patterns. So we can allow Blue to be the main service of those two locations. Okay, next. and our continuation of blue. The top map is what we currently do. We have been testing this for a couple of months. We will be adding a second half an hour to the blue to create a very interesting loop there serving the ACE stop, the connection from downtown to where ACE hardware is, the Salina Food Bank and Salina Grace is also there as well. There was a very high need. So when we changed our green route last year, it was very apparent that we needed to get access straight from downtown to that ACE stop. And I drove it a couple weeks ago. My bus was packed. There was only standing room left on that bus. So very, very high usage. Next. We will be adjusting our peak hours by 30 minutes to allow our drivers to change out at 7th and Walnut instead of commuting all the way to Walmart to start their peak routes. That is going to save OCCK a significant amount of driver wage time. Fuel and mileage wear and tear on our vehicles. So by adjusting that 30 minutes, we've recently requested a 5% increase. And with that change and the 5%, we would be able to allow this route to come to fruition without any extra burden on the city. Okay, next slide. Okay, any questions?

Okay, I will start to my right. Commissioner Davis, any questions? No questions. I'm just marveling at the figuring that goes into coming up with where to go and how to adjust it over time.

Yeah. This past year we implemented, or about a year and a half ago, we implemented some new software and the ridership data that we have been able to gather from that, moving from pen and paper and Excel sheets to a software that is designed to run reports and data. It has been amazing help in getting these routes redesigned.

I just had a couple. You stated on the orange route that there's every 30 minutes is a stop and I'm guessing the purple is probably the same or the blue. Are they all 30 minutes or did some of them have longer waits?

So Orange will technically only have one vehicle running on it. We had the stops placed far enough apart that they can cover each of their stops within that 30 minutes and allow the driver some time to stretch, take a restroom break if needed, and then that same driver will repeat that same 30 minutes. The other routes that we have have two vehicles on it for most of the day. And so that's our regular and our peak buses. So with those two buses, the routes are about an hour, 45 minutes to an hour loop where the orange route is definitely different. And we're interested to see how that you can get where you need to go within that 30 minutes, what that means to Salina. So we'll be asking questions about that.

And we just, you know, I know you just recently brought your budget and we approved some funding and I'm taking, I guess that this was all taken into consideration at that time.

Yes, in that budget request, this was taken into consideration as we created efficiencies and our partnership with the City of Salina for fuel. That was all calculated into this to make sure it was even feasible.

Okay, well, thank you very much.

Thank you.

I will open it up to the public for any questions or comments for these individuals. And if you have any, if you'd please come to the podium and state your name. I'll just talk to her. You'll just talk to her, okay. Okay, are there any other comments or questions? If not, I will close the public forum and bring it back to the commission for action.

Mr. Mayor, I move for approval of the recommended route changes. Second.

We have a motion and a second approving the proposed route changes to the OCCK City Go Fixed Route Transportation Program as presented. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That item passes 5-0. Thank you very much, ladies. That will bring us to the consent agenda.

Item 4.1, consider approval of the June 22nd, 2026 regular meeting minutes. Item 4.2, consider approval of resolution number 26-8360, appointing a member to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. And item 4.3, consider consolidating agreements with Axon Enterprise Incorporated and renewing the subsequent agreement for public safety technology, equipment, software, maintenance, and evidence management services, for the Salina Police Department in the amount of $1,178,147.84 for a five-year term.

Okay, because of the size and complexity of item 4.3, I've told the city manager that I would be asking for that to be removed. Are there any other items to be removed from the consent agenda? If not, are there any comments from the public on items 4.1 or 4.2? if not i would bring it back to the commission for a motion mayor i move we approve consent agenda items 4.1 and 4.2 second we have a motion second to approve consent agenda items 4.1 and 4.2 all those in favor aye opposed okay that will lead us to item 4.3

So once again, item 4.3 is to consider consolidating agreements with Axon Enterprise Incorporated and renewing the subsequent agreement for public safety technology, equipment, software maintenance, and evidence management services for the Salina Police Department in the amount of $1,178,147.84 for a five-year term.

My name is Captain Rachel Larson. I'm in charge of hiring and recruiting for the police department and internal affairs. I am for you today to request to approve a five year consolidation agreement with Axon Enterprises for the police department's body worn cameras, our in car cameras, our interview room camera systems, our taser program. and our digital evidence management system. We've used Axon technology since 2014, and our video and evidence storage and our less lethal systems have been built around that integrated platform and ecosystem. Rather than continuing to manage several three different separate contracts with different renewal dates. This proposal consolidates those agreements into a single contract which simplifies administration and provides long-term financial savings for the city. Compared to renewing each agreement independently, the consolidation agreement is projected to save the city approximately $533,000 over the next five-year term. The agreement also upgrades our officers from the Taser 10 to Taser 10 platform, which is necessary to maintain the manufacturer support and warranty coverage. In addition, it replaces our body worn cameras with new units to ensure reliability and battery efficacy throughout the contractual term. And that includes licensing software, maintenance, digital evidence storage, hardware refreshes, live transcription technology to improve report writing efficiency, and virtual reality training simulators for the tasers.

Okay.

Does the city manager have any comments about the... No, this was just a consolidation of all the items, and honestly, it went on the consent agenda. When I first reviewed it, I did not... I didn't realize that it was the entire breadth of all of our stuff going on one. So that's how I allowed it to be on the consent agenda. But obviously, this is kind of a big deal with the $1.1 million contract and didn't have time to pull it beforehand. But this is, I mean, it's just kind of a standard. We've been paying these amounts of money annually for the last several years. It just kind of wraps it all up into one and lets us move forward.

Any questions or comments from the commission?

I might have missed it, Rachel, but I see in year 2020, I'm sorry, put these on, year 2029, the price goes up substantially. What kicks in then to drive that price up so much?

Is that with the integration of the contracts or if we, are you looking at the fees from if we were to renew the contracts independently?

Well, I'm looking at page three, second to the last paragraph.

Sure.

And I don't know what, BWC might be body worn camera, I don't know.

Yes, that would be for the body worn camera cost. Our current contract for our body worn cameras is good through December of 2028. And that would be the renewed cost starting at 2029 if we were to have to renew that contract separately.

Yeah, that bottom one, that's if we didn't consolidate. Okay. If we consolidate, it's the contract costs up above that stays fairly stable with like a $8,000 a year increase, if you see that. Okay. So yeah. Yeah, so without that, there would have been a jump from 219 to 396. I see that here now. Thank you. Yeah, the reason I wanted is we're consolidating a lot, but the good thing is that we're saving about a half million dollars by doing it this way, so appreciate that work.

So they're going to reset the existing three contracts, and so they're all, no matter when they expire, they're going to reset it back to now.

Ask your question one more time.

You said we have three different contracts now. Yes. So they're going to reset all these to where they're going to start now.

Yes, they will all be integrated together and all the times would start September of 2026.

Finally, I can't help but chime in. It's so a consolidation. Obviously, it saves us money, but also not having to track all those different deadlines. And if you were to try and change a provider midstream with multiple different systems, that's almost impossible, I would imagine. It would be very difficult to get a bid to replace part of your fleet with the other part still tied into contract. So, I mean, this would probably set us up to make a better decision when the contract runs out, I would think. Yes.

Then we have to do supplemental contracts generally. The other thing that it does is it locks in a 5% interest rate now at today's interest rates for, I'm sorry, for inflation rates. And then it also locks in today's pricing versus whatever the pricing may be in 2028, 2029, and subsequent years.

Very good. Seems smart to do. Just an observation more about the technology itself. Every time we get an overview of this, I'm impressed. And it just seems like it keeps getting more comprehensive and interconnected. And please correct me if I'm wrong, but if you activate a taser, that activates the body cam. And it's just that foolproof, so to speak.

Correct. So the benefit of it kind of working essentially as an ecosystem is that all the systems speak to each other. So when lights are activated on a patrol vehicle, it automatically turns on all of the cameras within a certain area. When a taser gets activated, it activates all of the cameras that are within a certain distance of that activated taser. Um, all, everything can be mass labeled together. So you can, um, we send out evidence links to our cloud-based system. So if citizens have evidence that they want to send us, we send them a link. They can upload their own evidence to the software platform, and all of it is integrated and tied together so that when we have court come up, we also use it to capture images for evidence. So they're uploaded directly from an Axon app directly to the case file, and essentially then everything you'd have under a certain case would all be together and goes over in one nice package. So all the systems speak to each other, which would be very difficult to accomplish using different systems.

That's impressive technology.

Thank you. Any questions or comments from the public on this item? Please come to the microphone, give us your name and where you're from.

Just a quick question. My name is Christopher Troitz. I was in the United States Marine invasion of Iraq and all that stuff. What happens to the system if it goes down and all the evidence gets erased? Is there a backup system that saves that?

It's a cloud-based system.

Okay. Is that involved with, like, the data center, stuff like that, to where, like, you're going to need a lot of memory to save all that for court and then you've got to save all that evidence for so many years. Where is that going to be saved for?

Could you come to the microphone and answer? I'm sorry, because people listening online can't hear.

It's housed through a cloud-based system that is maintained and managed through Axon and by Axon, not us.

And to follow up his question, I guess there's probably a time period in which that has to be retained.

Yes, we have, depending on what the evidentiary value is, we have it set up to maintain evidence up to indefinitely, depending on what kind of evidence, what type of evidence, what video evidence, et cetera.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for the question. Thank you. Okay, anyone else? If not, I will bring it back to the commission for action.

Mayor, I move to authorize the city manager to execute a contract with Axon Enterprise Incorporated for consolidated goods and services in the amount of $1,178,147.84.

Second. We have a motion and a second authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with Axon Enterprises Inc. for consolidated goods and services in the amount of $1,178,147.84. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That item passes 5-0. That will bring us to administration.

Item 5.1, consider authorizing the city manager to execute amendment number one to the agreement with Lochner for the East Crawford Street design and Brookwood Trail pedestrian bridge.

Mr. Ritter.

Good afternoon, mayor and commissioners. Rex Ritter, deputy public works director and city engineer. I'm here to request city commission action for amendment number one to the agreement with Lochner for the East Crawford and Brookwood Trail pedestrian bridge. Some background, as part of the approved capital improvement program, the city commission authorized the city manager to execute an engineering service agreement with Lochner on August 19th, 2025 for the East Crawford street design and Brookwood Trail pedestrian bridge design. These were two separate projects combined under one project. due to proximity and shared hydraulic information. The amended items we are discussing today are a traffic signal design addition. The original scope of services for East Crawford included a signal warrant analysis at the intersection of Crawford Street, Markley Road, and the Salina Presbyterian Manor entrance. Analysis found a signal is not warranted today, but would be warranted within the next 10 years. Designing the signal and adding it to the construction of East Crawford today makes sense from a logistical perspective. This being the contractor would already be on site and avoid having to pay line items twice at more expensive price down the road. These would be something like mobilization, traffic control, and erosion control. It would also help with new configuration of the pavement markings for the new section of Crawford heading east. It would give pedestrian connectivity for residents north of Crawford to Berkeley family recreational area. And ultimately, the most important reason to do it under this contract is to work with the new fire station number four to coordinate the signal with the preemptive device. Originally it was discussed to have a hawk signal that acted as a pedestrian crossing as well as an emergency signal to stop traffic on Crawford while the fire trucks are leaving. And so with traffic signal there on Crawford and Markley, that is no longer a possibility. So this signal would be the new print of the device. Again, while it is not warranted today, the residents of Presbyterian Manor have expressed concern over their safety as they try to leave the facility. A traffic warrant based off crash history is based off the intersection geometry, a one year and three year crash history and crash severity. There's been two crashes just over a month apart in April and May of this year, both side impacts. A one year history would require five crashes and a three year period would require six crashes. So it doesn't meet it now, but within four months we've already had two crashes. Signal design was not included in the original contract because results were uncertain at the time of what would be yielded from the analysis. The attached amendment number one revises the scope of work and fee to include the traffic signal design under this contract. The next amended item would be detention pond design addition. The original scope of services for Brookwood Trail Pedestrian Bridge included hydraulic analysis of the existing channel and of the proposed pedestrian bridge. While performing the hydraulic analysis, a more focused amount of detail goes into the hydraulic model than the existing FEMA model. Instead of analyzing the channel as a whole, they analyze a small portion of the 2,000 foot section discussed in this project. An example would be the existing low-rider crossing on the north side of the channel was not in the FEMA model, which has been accounted for in the hydraulic model prepared by the engineer under this contract. This more detailed hydraulic model is showing that today's current condition of the channel has a higher water level than what the FEMA model shows. Because of this, achieving a no-rise certificate will require a larger bridge size and additional channel work outside of what would be affordable for this project. To counter this water level rise, we are proposing to add a detention facility on the south side of Crawford to the west of Prairie Lane. There is already an existing detention pond near this location that detains runoff from the new fire station number four and a portion of runoff from Berkeley Family Recreational Area. The proposed pond would encompass this existing detention pond just discussed and also expand to the east. The existing box culvert under Crawford Street would act as the metering device during high rain events. This is an investment that resolves an issue that exists today while also addressing the future needs of detention for future development of Crawford to the south. The detention pond would be a regional detention pond. It would be low maintenance, no pumps would be used. An additional positive would be the Crawford Street job is a widening job where we're adding an additional lane, so that's going to require earthwork. And so this would have earthwork right on site where earthwork wouldn't have to be hauled in from a different site. The attached amendment number one revises the scope of work and fee to include the analysis and design of a detention pond. And the last scope amendment is the Brookwood Trail pedestrian bridge. Due to the span opening of the pedestrian bridge required, as well as the additional channel changes needed to achieve a no-rise certificate, the cost of the bridge at this time is above what the city is prepared to spend. Currently, the Pheasant Ridge subdivision has no pedestrian access other than the low water crossing on Brookwood Trail. This low water crossing is only usable during dry conditions and is why the city pursued installing a pedestrian bridge. With the addition of a five foot sidewalk and a ten foot hike and bike trail planned for East Crawford, the Pheasant Ridge subdivision will now have pedestrian access besides the low water crossing. A portion of the fee for Brookwood Trail has been billed, but the attached amendment number one revises the scope of work and fee to remove the remaining design tasks for Brookwood Trail pedestrian bridge. So a fiscal note, the project will be funded with general obligation bonds supported by property tax. The original East Crawford contract was 297,244.78. The traffic signal supplemental will be 28,995.62 and the detention pond supplemental will be 86,531.28 for a total of 412,771.68. The original Brookwood Trail contract was $79,939.22. The remaining tasks that have not been done that will be removed are $42,837.92 for a total of a contract of $37,101.30. So the original combined contract of Brookwood Trail pedestrian bridge and East Crawford is $377,184. And the amended combined contract would be $449,872.98. With the additions of the signal pond and subtracting the pedestrian bridge, the total contract change is $72,688.98. The action options, staff has identified the following options for city commission consideration. Number one, approve a motion authorizing the city manager to execute amendment number one with Lochner for East Crawford project for an additional 115,526.90 for a total design amount of 412,771.68. And to reduce the Brookwood Trail pedestrian bridge designed by 42,837.92 for a total of 37,101.30. Option two, approve a motion with amendments as used deemed appropriate. Number three, postpone consideration of approving the motion to a specified date and time and provide staff additional direction. Or vote to deny the execution of amendment number one and provide staff with any further direction the city commission deems appropriate. We're recommending number one. I'll stand for questions.

Okay, hi. Mr. Ritter, quick question, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Where is Brookwood Trail?

Yes, so north of North of Berkeley Family Center, there's between Presbyterian Manor and Pheasant Ridge, there's a channel and it runs to an open field and Brookwood Trail crosses that. So there's a gravel trail that basically is a low water crossing, so it kind of goes down into a channel where you can cross when there's no water there. And so the idea was to put a pedestrian bridge there for when there's water in the channel.

And it leads to where?

It connects that subdivision with other subdivisions to the northeast. So kids that live down there to get to Meadowlark, that's how they would get there. Okay. There's no other pedestrian access.

Okay, thank you.

On here, it shows if you did not do anything with the detention point, the houses would now be in the floodplain. How many houses does that affect?

I apologize on that. I didn't portray that accurately. Houses will not go into the floodplain. They'll just need to be revalidated, their LOMAs, their letter of map amendment with the change in the channel.

They'd still be out of it?

Most likely, yes. Okay.

But that's without the change. With the change, they don't have to worry about the Loma. Correct, yes. Okay, thank you.

For the traffic warrant at Crawford and Markley, let's say it does take 10, 15 years for the traffic to build up. How much of that hydraulic study would have to be updated or repeated? I mean, just, you know, the measurements that, well, the traffic, would there be any more?

I mean, no, we would not need to. We could do additional studies to see that, to see if that actually, the 10-year did change, or just be traffic counts to see.

So that shouldn't, the water status should not impact the traffic? No, no, no, no. Okay.

Okay. I know we've received several comments from Presbyterian Manor.

Yes. I was curious. I know she's...

So I'm sure they'll be glad to hear this. Okay. With that, I'll open it up for comments or questions from the public. Please come to the podium.

My name is Susan Cooper, and I live in that area. And I do agree that the stoplight at Presbyterian Manor and the new fire station is desperately needed. But at this point in time, I don't think we need another project that addresses walking trails or anything like that until there is clean water in all of Salina. No more. Is there an option to get the traffic light? Because I use that area quite a bit. And I understand what those Presbyterian Manor folks are going through. But I don't think we need to be allocating money, putting more taxes on people for trails that can be done in the future when the infrastructure in Salina is taken care of. Thank you.

Thank you.

It might be worth pointing out that the purpose for this trail is, as stated, so that when it's raining or water's flowing, kids have a safe way to get to school. This is not a tourist trail. This is, and when that development was planned several years ago, it was noted that there was no easy pedestrian access for those kids to get to school. So this is as much a safety issue. No matter what's happening in other parts of the city, we still have regular required maintenance. And this is almost a maintenance issue. If it's your grandkid out there, And they have to travel through water to get to school. We've received criticism for not having safe access. There just isn't any other way for them to get there.

How many children use that to get to school on a daily basis?

If it's one child.

Now these children walk or ride their bikes.

Tony Johnson, Celina. You brought up school. I don't see that anywhere in here unless I've missed it. But my thing that I was looking at is there's a detention pond already there and it's going to take another $86,000 to design an enlargement to an existing detention pond. I mean, I don't know. It just seems like some of these design firms and engineering firms kind of use us as an ATM because I mean, that's a lot of money just to enlarge an existing detention pond, I feel like.

Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. If not, I'll bring it back to the committee.

Was that 86,000 for design only? or is there any construction costs, or can you, and if it's design only, can you... expound upon why the cost is high?

Yes, it's for design only. And the existing detention pond is not sized for, it's not a regional detention pond. It's only detaining water from the fire station, and we don't even know what kind of, we assume it's an old borrow pit. It wasn't even designed to be a detention pond, and it just collects water, and they've used it for... the fire station as well as some of Berkeley Family. It does not account for all the runoff. It comes from almost all the way south of Berkeley Family Center between Holmes and Crawford up to here. So this, again, will be a regional detention pond, not just a site detention pond.

Could you easily explain what goes into designing a detention pond?

For sure. This is... a blue line stream okay so meaning it's federally regulated and it's been studied by FEMA so it's not a simple uh... there's a lot more that goes into it in terms of design where uh... you definitely want to be qualified and somebody that normally does design on something like this verse just normal site a site detention pond it's way larger scope than what I would normally see in a detention pond, myself.

Okay, is it data that has to be collected?

Absolutely, yeah. Data, they would use what we call a HECRAS model. So their specialty is a model where they kind of cut cross sections through the channel and analyze based off the hydraulic. information where they look at the amount of water that's running there, the area, the type of characteristics of the channel and so on and so forth in the channel and so they'll input that in their HEC-RAS model and then that will kind of give the water surface elevation. So it's They're going to be doing that as well as looking at the detention pond and see how these counteract to say, hey, we put a detention pond here. What does that do to our water surface elevations downstream? So it's, yes, looking at a detention pond, but also looking at how does that affect downstream? So it's normally you'd just be looking at a detention pond and analyzing that detention pond, and you make sure it outlets at the pre-existing conditions and move on. So this kind of has two things in it.

So it's more than just designing a bigger hole?

Yes, yeah. Make sure there's no utility conflicts there. Make sure that it can fit in that footprint that you want. And yes, there is a pond there, but this has way more capacity and does a lot more for the city.

And the space is there if it needs to be larger than...

Yes, now it's... We don't own that land yet, so it would be contacting the landowner and kind of seeing... And it's going to be in their best interest, too, with how that's zoned. They... If... with what they would potentially put there, they would need detention. So it would act in their favor too. And so in reality, the city would be paying for this someday if development happens there for this detention pond, whether we do it now or later.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Just a question. I'm confused on where this is going to go. It's going to go behind, so Markley Road, the new fire station, Presbyterian Manor is on the other side.

Fire station. There is a detention pond here. An old borrow pit. And then it's going to connect. We're going to add to that and kind of go to the east. Not all the way to Holmes Road. Okay. Kind of just south of Prairie Lane.

So any kids that are going to be walking to... Meadowlark are going to have to cross the street regardless.

They would stay on the new sidewalk. And as well as this will hopefully alleviate some of the ponding of water. There's a low water crossing that kind of holds water. And the idea was to put a bridge over that. This is behind Prairie Lane. So they would walk there and kind of go up to Meadowlark. And so the idea is...

The sidewalk's on the north side, the retaining ponds on the south side of Crawford, correct?

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Yeah.

okay and then so to alleviate some of that low water crossing we're gonna allow less water in there but that will still be there a low water crossing but now we'll have with the Crawford project we'll have a five-foot sidewalk on the north side so it is a longer route for them to go but there is if there would be water in that channel there's somewhere for them to go but adding a stoplight

And a crosswalk in that area would do the same thing for those children walking. Tell me if I'm not right. I mean, am I not adding a stop walk?

Am I thinking? They're already Crawford Street. They're already on the north side of Crawford Street. So they would be coming this way, going up to Meadowlark.

Okay. There's not too many kids that live past. that wouldn't already be getting a ride if you're looking at those places over by Ohio Street, those new buildings over there. Most of those kids are usually probably going to get a ride. to the other side of Crawford Street. So I'm not seeing a purpose for having a bridge for them to walk.

We are getting rid of the bridge. We took that out of it because we didn't feel that it was necessary. We wanted to save money, and it was too expensive to not, with the water level rising. Okay, so we're not talking about a bridge anymore? We removed it. We removed it. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

I thought we were talking about building a bridge.

Okay, anyone else?

Okay. Thank you.

Krusty, Dix, and Celina, sorry.

Lucille Sanders and Celina, who tripped up this project? Who requested this project? Can you answer that?

Well, I can answer that question. So anytime we have a new development, we require the new development to upgrade the street to a certain standard. And so the city of Salina did a fire station. And as part of the fire station, we are upgrading the street that we are located on to the city standard. So that is the basis of why we are upgrading East Crawford in that area. So we're treating the city the same way we would treat any developer. So if a developer came in and put an apartment complex there, we would tell them you have to upgrade the street in that area. So that's exactly why we're doing it.

I think we've got a lot of other problems in this city before that needs to take place. It just doesn't seem reasonable. I am familiar with that area, and I'm thinking, how many kids are you talking about? There's not that many, in that one development, there's not that many kids. And do you think the parents are going to let the children, the younger children, walk to school? No. This, Salina, it's not safe anymore to have kids walking. We're more like California. They'll stop and pick them up. No, they're not out on the high road. But still, no parent is going to let the kids walk to school until they get probably in junior high or middle school, they call it now. But it just seems like it's going to be money spent now that's not necessary now. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, I'll bring it back to the commission for action.

Here I move that we approve a motion authorizing the city manager to execute amendment number one with Lochner for the East Crawford project for an additional $115,526.90 for a total design amount of $412,771.68 and to reduce the Brookwood Trail Pedestrian Bridge designed by $42,837.92 for a total of $37,101.30. Second.

We have a motion and a second authorizing the city manager to execute amendment number one with Lochner for the East Crawford project for an additional $115,526.90 for a total design amount of $412,771.68 and to reduce the Brookwood Trail pedestrian bridge design by $42,837.92 for a total of $37,101.30. Mr. Mayor?

Just a point of order if I could, I know I'm the newbie. Any consideration for just removing the Brookwood Trail altogether?

We have a motion and a second we need to vote on because that's the way it was. All right. So we can vote. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. That item passes five to one. Okay, that will move us to item, please. Four to one. Four to one, I'm sorry, I said five to one, thank you. That will lead us to item 5.2.

Sorry, Nikki, go ahead.

Item 5.2, consider approval of ordinance number 26-11291 amending section 17-28 and 17-31 of the Salinas City Code relating to smoking regulations.

Yeah, commissioners, I have this item. This is a fairly unusual one, but before you today. But it doesn't cost any money, so there's that. You can decide what to do with it. So a little bit of background, and one thing I want to make clear for the public. We are not going back to the smoking section, non-smoking section of restaurants. This has nothing to do with the general prohibition of indoor smoking. We won't be putting ashtrays back in the lobby or anything like that. A little bit of background is in 2009, the city of Salina passed an ordinance banning indoor smoking and we were ahead of our time in terms of one of the early cities to adopt that position. Because we adopted our own city ordinance before as a state law, when the state passed the Indoor Smoking Act a year later, the state carved out certain exceptions that weren't available in our Indoor Smoking Act. So as a result, currently today, the statewide indoor smoking act allows for certain exceptions of things that our city ordinance doesn't allow. So the ordinance for consideration basically would put us back into conformity with the rest of the state in terms of what our indoor smoking act would be. For the most part, the exceptions the state allows are very limited and don't come up very often, but they are listed in there. Probably the main one that people might see as they travel to other towns is places that have allowed cigar lounge or tobacco shop or something like that that would be a place that has to derive at least 65 percent of its revenue from the sale of tobacco or tobacco accessories and the idea behind that exception from the state is that people go into those places intentionally to smoke with other people and they are kind of putting themselves at risk of doing that That is the ordinance. Your options, of course, as always, are you can adopt it as presented, you can decide to modify it, you can decide to reject it, you can table it for future consideration. When it came time to do a staff report, I did say I recommend passage of it, only because In general, my position is that it's better to be in conformity with the rest of the state if the rest of the state's law is working. And generally, the Indoor Clean Air Act of Kansas, with its exceptions, has been considered successful. But this is clearly a legislative decision for you guys to do however you feel is appropriate. I'll stand for any questions you may have.

Is inconformity different from in violation?

No, what I mean would be, so state law, we can do an ordinance that's more restrictive than state law, which is what we currently have. the ordinance would relax our restrictions to put us to to match the rest of the state so in other words the state allows exemptions for um private clubs and cigar bars are kind of the main one and then casinos and some things like that that aren't very applicable but currently our because because we wrote our ordinance first we didn't really in my opinion My guess is we were just ahead of things and the legislature looked at ours and copied most of it, to be honest. But they threw a few exceptions in there that don't exist in our ordinance because we predated them. So does that answer the question at all?

Right, so we can be more restrictive than- We absolutely can be more restrictive, yes.

That's what we currently are and that is absolutely our option, that we can do more than the state requires.

characteristic trumps the other, a place of employment or the tobacco specialty retail store? Because technically it's a place of employment. Is it a carve out of that?

It's a carve out of the place of employment. So yes, yes. So it's, you can't, you know, generally we, you can go to work in a smoke-free environment unless you choose to work, I guess, in a place where these exceptions apply, which would be the private club, tobacco lounge, or, you know, if you're at a casino in a place that allows those. So So that's why, by exception, they do carve those out for those places.

Okay. I think I have one more question, but I've got to form it up here first.

Okay.

It seems pretty straightforward. I don't have any questions.

I don't have any questions. No.

Come up with that question.

Yeah. As far as where do we currently stand on outdoor restaurant areas? They're not an enclosed space by definition of an enclosed space, but they are restaurants and employment places. Where do they stand?

They stand at, and by our city code and by the state law, if you're not, and it is clunky wordage or verbiage because both of them were talking about non-enclosed places, but if you're outside and it's up to the restaurant, the business can allow smoking out of doors. So even though that would, if you're working in a place like that, you still, if they're allowing the smoking outside, they can do that, is where it currently is.

All right. And I did it. It's sort of a subset of that. Campbell Plaza, that's still technically city. We lease it, but it's technically city property. Is smoking allowed in that? Do we treat it as a park?

Smoking is not allowed in any of the city parks. Unless there's some special rule on Campbell Plaza, it would be treated the same way. I don't know of one unless someone else does. I guess if Jeff were here, he might know.

That's my recollection of how we did that as well. Okay.

So the city parks would be an exception to the exception to the exception.

Okay. Okay. Any comments from the public?

Ben Winhold Salina. Believe it or not, I'm going to be the good guy here on this one. If I remember right, um, In the history of Salina, as far as taking smoking out, I think we are to thank Dr. Davis for this, because I think he was the one that instituted that Salina went up and beyond the state and put no smoking in the type of buildings. Am I correct on that, Doc?

Certainly part of the team, yes. Group effort, but yes.

Yeah, so as citizens of Salina, I think all of us non-smokers can thank Dr. Davis for what he did because Salina set the precedence for the state level as far as non-smoking in restaurants and other places of business besides casinos. So thank you for that. Thank you.

Okay, any other comments? If not, I will bring it back to the commission for action.

I'll move.

that the City Commission adopt ordinance number 26-11287, amending section 17-28 and 17-31 of the Salina City Code and making the City Code consistent with the Kansas Indoor Clean Air Act.

I'll second that.

We hit. That ordinance was changed.

No, it should be 9-1. What should the ordinance number be?

It should be 26-11291.

11291, okay. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Adopting ordinance number 26-11291, amending sections 17-28 and 17-31 of the Solana City Code and making the city code consistent with the Kansas Indoor Clean Air Act. May we have a roll call, please?

Commissioner Davis?

Nay.

Commissioner Ivey?

Aye.

Commissioner Lankiewicz?

Aye.

Commissioner Remp?

Aye.

Mayor Hoppeck?

Aye. That item passes four to one. That will bring us to item 5.3.

Item 5.3, consider approval of resolution number 26-8362, authorizing the city manager to develop, implement, and administer a water rate relief pilot program.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, Mayor and Commissioners, if you'll just let me do a quick recap of our study session that we had last week so I can just kind of show you where we've been and where we're at today with the action that we're requesting today. So obviously we had a study session to talk about water quality. I'm not going to rehash everything that we talked about, but just talk a little bit about the process. that we go through when we receive a water quality complaint. We have a crew that goes out, they test the water, and then immediately what they start to do is try and flush the system and try to do anything that they can do within the system to try and clean that water up or get some of that sediment out of the water. At the point that we can't really do anything and we've exhausted all of the kind of mechanical things in the system to try and to get the water in a better situation, we put that water main on a replacement program or a plan to actually get it replaced. And so during that process, we have to design it and we go through the bid process and it becomes part of our water main replacement program. We have replaced close to 45 miles of mains in the last 10 years. And obviously we have additional work to do and we'll continue to go through that process. So where we're currently at with the upcoming project that we have, we have a project that's out right now that's in the process, but we do have the next project which will include Dover Street, 10th Street, 11th Street, And Larson, we know that there's quality issues in those locations. Our guys have gone out and tried to do everything they can to improve that quality. And the system is just in a situation where really the only option that we have is to bid that project. So it's all designed. It's ready to go. We are working through kind of the final kinks in the design, and we should be letting that process in the next two weeks. And then it usually takes between 30 and 45 days from the receipt of the bids. We usually leave it open for about 30 days before we award a contract. And at that point, we will know what the timing is of the next construction cycle when we think that project will be done. Four streets. They are moving as fast as we can possibly move them. We're going to get them through the process as quickly as we can, but there's just really nothing else that we can do to move it any faster. We will know once the bid comes back and it's awarded kind of what the timing of the actual project is, but that's going to depend on who bids, and it will also depend on their availability to get that work done. get it working a couple of other things that we talked about at the study session I think there was a consensus among the City Commission that we need to develop a plan to do more water main replacement so we will be looking at that and over the next probably you know 60 to 90 days have something to bring back to the City Commission in terms of what a plan would look like there's several different options that we can look at In terms of how do we how do we get more funding for projects? How do we do bigger projects debt financing? We will go through all of those things and come back with several options for the City Commission to look at as we move forward so I think that that It kind of brings us to today, and the item that we have before you, which is part of the consensus from last week, was that the commission wanted us to take a look at some sort of monetary relief for folks that are suffering from quality issues. So what I have before you today is a resolution that would give me the authority to develop, implement, and administer a water rate relief pilot program. We tried to start putting together some sort of policy, and this is a little bit more complex than what you might think. We are the only community in the state of Kansas, we talked to KDHE, Kansas Department of Health and Environment, and there are no other communities that are doing a program like this in Kansas. Did some searches out on the web and I found a few other programs that don't really match up to what it is that we're trying to achieve here. So this is a program that we're kind of creating from scratch. So it's gonna take us a little bit of time to do that, but the intent here would be to put together an administrative framework that would provide monetary relief for residents who have verified quality issues. The parts of the water relief that we're looking at would be a relief from the water base charge, the water usage charge, and the state water fee that show up on your monthly bill. So there is a little bit of, people talk about the utility bill, and there's a lot of utility bill that has nothing to do with water. There's trash fees, there's wastewater fees, There's also fees for a recycling center that don't really have anything to do with water, and so I'm not proposing that we reduce those out, but I think we can reduce out or rebate some of the fees that are associated with water usage. I'm proposing that we do an effective date of January 1. It's going to take us a little bit of time, January 1, 2026, which would mean anybody that qualifies for this program would receive a rebate of any water fees that they paid up since January 1 and then also we would look forward and basically stop payment until such time as the water quality is in a better situation. So a lot of details that we need to work through with staff. Right now the city has about 22,000 water customers. We have about 20 complaints that we get consistently that we know of, and those are generally on Dover Street, 10th Street, 11th Street, and Larson. There are 20 consistent customers. We do get more complaints up and down, but it really depends on the time of year. And sometimes that's, you know, we're doing a flushing program in the middle of the summer, and that's a temporary issue. But we have about 20 to 25 that we know are long-term issues that we need to probably replace the water lines. There could be more. It is hard to know until we start to get applications and do water tests what that looks like. But we don't believe that it's a great percentage of our overall system that has these quality issues. So... At this point, you know, you have the opportunity to approve the resolution. If you have changes that you want to make to this resolution, resolution basically just sets out kind of a set of guidelines. You know, a couple things. We want this to be something that is evidence-based, so it's going to have some sort of an application process, some testing procedures so that we would go out and test the water and verify that it works. doesn't meet our quality standards. We have to come up with a quality standard that we think is the right standard. So we'll be reviewing those things. And then, you know, we would administer the policy. So if there's anything in particular in the framework that I've outlined in this resolution, I'm happy to, you know, if there's an amendment you wanted to make or something specific you wanted us to talk about or throw in, this is your opportunity to tell us that. My plan would be to try and come up with a policy as quickly as we can so we can provide that rate relief. It is going to take a little bit of time, probably a few weeks for us to come up with all the parameters and make sure that we have. We don't want to be in a situation where we have 22,000 water customers who are eligible for a program that just wouldn't work for us financially to manage that. And then I also have to think about my staff and what is their ability to maintain and manage a program like this, because it will be additional staff time in terms of going out and doing the testing and all those sorts of things. So I'd be happy to answer any questions, but before I take questions, I do just want to kind of mention the staff here. I have full faith and confidence in Martha Tasker and her ability to be the utilities director. And I also... And I also want to say, I also just...

Please, can we be courteous? We'll be courteous when you address this, please.

I also want to just mention, you know, the staff out there, those guys work hard. They do care about the quality of the water, and they're doing everything that they can do within the system to make it, you know... to get the water into as high quality as they can. They really do care about it. It is something I know that's, you know, lots of negative comments and things on Facebook over the last few weeks. It weighs heavy on those guys. But they, you know, they're a great crew. They work really hard. They're the guys that get up in the middle of the night. You know, water main breaks typically happen when it's really cold outside or when it's really hot outside. And for some reason, they happen in the middle of the night. And so these guys, they work hard. They get out there. They get in the hole. And they're the reason that our water system runs the way that it does. I also just want to give a plug for them. When we had a storm not too long ago, we were on the brink of having issues with our water system altogether. And they were able to maintain the system without power. They were able to maintain the wastewater system, and nobody had sewage backing up into their houses or anything like that. So I just want to mention those guys work incredibly hard, and I'm proud of the work that they do, and they want to do the best that they can. We certainly can do better. Everybody does deserve clean water. I can't argue with that point. We're going to work as hard as we can to get water mains replaced as quickly as we can. But these projects are hard. They're big projects. They're in people's front yards. It's not an overnight fix. But we're doing what we can to move the ball in the right direction. So happy to answer any questions about the policy or anything that you might have.

I have comments, but not questions. OK, go ahead. Well, like I think many people in the room, I was shocked. at the water that was brought in, some of the samples from people's homes. It seems like Dover Street, Dover Drive, Dover Court is ground zero for these problems. Along with what you proposed, I think we should be putting a whole house filtration system in. I have talked to Culligan and they talked about that being roughly $500 a home. I should note, I live in not a brand new neighborhood, probably that water piping and infrastructure has been there for well over 20 years, though, and I have a whole house. filtration system, and I know I have neighbors that use Culligan to improve their water. So it's not unique, no secret, no secret that I have a, at this point in time, a little winter getaway in Arizona. And that metro area is terrible. We have a pretty elaborate, I think we spent roughly $1,500 to put that system in to make the water drinkable. At least with a whole house filter if we were going to do that, laundry wouldn't be an issue anymore for them. When I talked to Culligan, they said they would have to determine the type of filter needed to get the water to an acceptable level. But I would think they'd have the resources to move on that immediately.

Yeah, absolutely. If that's something the City Commission wants us to go down that route, we certainly can. I have seen one other program that is a rebate program that basically says you prove that you put in a filtration system and we'll provide a rebate up to a certain dollar amount. So we could do – I mean, if you want me to shift gears away from this and go to a different type of program, I certainly can do that. This we felt like would be – kind of the easiest thing maybe to administer, but we could certainly do a rebate program as well. I was going to bring up

Not as much detail as Commissioner Remp was able to obtain, but just to see if staff had considered temporary mitigation options. I'm thinking of actually doing both programs. Me too. We're going to fix the pipes, but the filters would help them get through. Better than they are now.

Yeah, and I think when we looked at the filtration system, those typically have a lot of maintenance. And so we don't want to be responsible for maintenance in somebody's home or anything like that. So that was one of the biggest concerns about, and then trying to figure out what the right amount is, what's the right dollar amount, what's the right type of filtration system that people want to use. But if we did a flat dollar amount and said, I think you mentioned that you thought it was around $500. If we wanted to say, we can do a $500 rebate, tell us. You could buy a $1,500 system, but we only rebate a certain amount. I think that makes it easier to administer. We can certainly do that. I don't have a problem trying to come up with a solution like that.

And obviously, we're not going to be the experts on that. You'd have to meet with the folks who offer those products.

Yeah, we would certainly want it to be, I mean, I guess if we do some sort of at home filtration system, we really want that to be on the homeowner to pick the system, to pick what they think would work. And then we would rebate them, and we don't have any part of it. So I'm not having to have my staff go into somebody's house and you know maintain a system or do anything anything like that. So certainly that's an option and I'm happy to I'm happy to do that. I'm happy to come back with a policy or a program that would look something like that.

Actually I think that might be a little that might be easier to manage but we'll we can be possible to perhaps put out an RFP to the water filtration companies to where we have an X amount that they could quote on that I mean, they would be the ones installing it and managing and stuff, but maybe we could get a bulk discount by having multiple.

That's what I wanted. Do you know- Yeah, we could certainly have some conversations with Coligan or somebody who's local that provides that service and see if we could- Commissioner Ramp, did that $500 include installation or is that just the unit?

That was installed.

Installed, okay. As I understood it. That would be. Wow. That's not bad, okay. Hand the ball back. Yeah.

I did replace mine last year, it was, A little more than 500. And again, I'm sure they have different types of filters. Yeah, I think it depends.

It also depends on how much you use. Some of these users that we've looked at, well, they don't have very much water usage. So it really just depends on if you have my water usage is higher because I have four kids or whatever. So I think there's some differences based on usage.

And the cost, the installation would also, they mentioned, based upon the way the home is plumbed. If it were relatively easy to put it in line, it's going to be less expensive, of course. If they had to do more work, it would cost more.

If we did the filtration and the relief of the water bill down the road, that would kind of be offset by the filters. I believe they'd have to replace as well.

What would be the easiest way to move this forward if we want to do the filtration system? I'm trying to think. And again, it's a tiny deal.

If you want to do it both, I think you can just pass this resolution tonight, and I will start working on that policy. And then I will start, I think we can come up with a, we may be able to even come up with a I don't want to make any guarantees, but I'll work really hard to try and bring back a solution at the next city commission meeting or a policy about the rebate side of it in the next couple weeks. I don't think we could, I mean, I suppose you could amend this to also include a whole house filtration system rebate if you wanted to just add a line somewhere. I think we could do that. But I would need to know, I guess really what I would need to know and that I don't think I know today is what kind of cost do you want to, unless you want to say 500 is it, but I haven't had a chance to talk to anybody about whether that's the right number or not. And I think we would probably want to talk to a couple of say is this in the right ballpark or we could just go with 500 and I can create a policy and a program and we can get it going. I don't think it's that complex if we're just doing a rebate program. So I think there's examples of that that I can copy pretty quickly.

The other issue I wanted to discuss, looking at the time that we've known about the water and subtracting the time it would take us to fix a main in a broad geographical area anyway, I would want to move that January 1st back to July of 25, or even January of 25, but at least a year. I mean, if we... got noticed January 1st that a whole neighborhood was having problems, we wouldn't be fixing it January 2nd anyway. I mean, just through the process that's been well described, it takes a while to, you know, you try remedies, those don't work, then you eventually replace it. So there's some time that would have been built in anyway.

We can start the program at whatever date you feel appropriate.

I'd go back at least a year.

So yeah, I would need to know that, what date you want me to go to, and we can do it.

I think that's probably a good idea too to provide that relief. I would think that if a home filtration system brought the water up to a level that meets all the standards, I would think at that point in time the water bill would resume. But we have to bring the water up to clean potable water.

Commissioner Rem, that kind of brings me to a point I wanted to make really quickly about potable water, since you used that term. And just to clarify, in my world, from the legal standard of water, usually when we're talking about water quality issues, we're talking about high nitrates, a KDHU failed test, or bacteria that requires a burn ban. This water is potable once it's been flushed through. The sediment from the pipe is stacking up in these pipes, and when they open the water, when they start pouring water out, it is nasty gross because it is rust. It is rust and sediment that's coming through there. And it is terrible, and it's wrecking their appliances. Once that's flushed through, whether we're able to flush it at the hydrant or if they're just flushing it through their internal system, their bathtub or their faucet, It's the rest of the city's water that comes through after that. So I know people, I mean, obviously we all feel water is life, right? So we all feel very emotionally attached to this. I've seen a lot of comments out there where people feel like the water is contaminated. It is contaminated in the sense that it is rusty and sediment from the pipes until it's flushed through. And that's kind of why the theory of when we were working on this or talking about it, the water rebate makes sense because they're using more water than they would need because they're pouring it down the drain to get to the good water. So I just want to make that point real quick. Thank you.

Do you all have any...

opinions on how far back to go 12 months i'm okay with january 2025 i mean it's not it's not that I think it's a sign of goodwill to do that. My question is how we, without having to wait two weeks, how we move forward the rebate program. If we set a dollar amount, I don't know, does anybody have a thought process on that?

I think the dollar amount is a good way to go because I think the sky's the limit on filtration systems. So yeah, they could go as elaborate as they want, but a $500 rebate program sounds very reasonable to me.

So I think if you pass this resolution, this gives me the authority to make a rebate, to make a something that's attached to the water rates. And then if you just want to do another motion that gives me the authority to make a rebate program with a maximum of $500, then I can start that process as well and we can get it kicking. Does that make sense?

And there's one thing that you mentioned in the resolution, I believe, that I guess folks should Remember that sometimes the problem might be on the home side of the water.

Full of shit. Filters only get sediment, not the chemicals you keep dumping in the water. I was poisoned in Iraq from poisoned water. It's not the damn sediment. You're over-chlorinated the water, you're over-fluoriding it, and that has issues. You guys took my fucking kid because of this. Until I gave my kid bottled water, it was proven in the freaking courts that it wasn't my damn fault. Who's coming after you guys for the medical issues, gastrointestinal issues? You guys ain't talking about any of that.

As I was saying, you may find that there are problems on the home side of the block. What's the thing that measures? I'm just blocking on the word. Meter, thank you. And that what we're going to be doing to the water mains obviously won't fix that. So if there is a problem. And that part of the pipe that the homeowner is truly responsible for, this program won't cover that.

Yeah, that's correct. Not the homeowners. Correct. People took water purification classes, you'd have a better understanding.

Okay, any other comments or questions from the commission?

Vietnam, veterans, people who got hurt, who covers their medical?

Okay. With that, we will open it up to the public for comments. We ask you to give us your name and have your comments to three minutes or less.

Kay Schwartz, Dover Drive. First, I want to say our street's not the only one. I took water to one of the ladies that was here that was a school teacher with little kids. That's on Vassar. How is every street supposed to say, I need my water tested? And then if you go and test it for us to prove we have bad water, how are you? First of all, the water pressure's down to nothing. No, it's not as orange. It worked. But they're not flushing the hydrant in my front yard either. So yes, the water looks better the days you have no water pressure. How can they come out and test the water and say, yeah, your home's one of the bad ones? I mean, my water bill went up $10 a month simply from flushing the toilet over and over and over because I'm tired of scrubbing them. I just don't know how you justify which neighborhoods. And we did have that one lady here that she had water filters out of a full house. And she pulled them out of the bag and she said, I just changed these. I can't afford to keep changing these. So, I mean, I don't know how much more we can put out. I mean, it's cost us all, but you've got to know if they're going to test the water when it's low pressure or it's higher pressure, because common sense is when they run that fire hydrant, oh, my God, here comes everything off the inside of that pipe straight into our homes. Now we lowered the pressure. I mean, it's obvious. Oh, somebody found it on the web. But anyway, those are just kind of some of my questions, and how much are these filters and stuff going to cost people? You know, I'm getting ready to retire. My husband's partially retired. Our home's paid for and stuff, but you look at the families with these little kids, and it crushes me because I wouldn't be bathing my babies in it. I mean, it's a sad situation, but we need to look at it from all different ways. And if that would help us, so be it. The other question was is they brought up a water rate increase of $20 a month.

We haven't made any decisions on water rates.

Okay, because it was brought up at the water thing that we may have to have an increase in the rates to pay for the water lines to be replaced.

Well, I mean, it is a value proposition. If we're going to replace the water lines, we have to do it with something. So generally speaking, the water...

What about the money you used for the Cozy's lawsuit? You lost under the first amendment. Yeah, misappropriated.

No decisions have been made on water rates.

That will happen in a little bit. Okay. Thank you.

Tony Johnson, Celina. First off, I think this is a good idea. A bad situation that it had to come to this. I mean, we've kicked this can down the road for at least, what, three years now. We've got to do better on prioritizing basic government functions, guys. Secondly, as far as Jacob overseeing this and implementing this program, drawing it up, I'd like to see a commissioner on it. I'd like to see somebody from the water department sitting in on this. And I'd like to see a citizen that's greatly affected by this and the four of them get together and put their heads together because it's a bad situation. I like Commissioner Rimp's idea of the filtration system coupled with the rebate, backdating it, as Commissioner Davis said. But I'd like to see kind of a committee formed real quick. I don't know that that would be hard to do since this is something new that we're just taking off with. So, anyway, that's my thoughts on it. Thank you. Thank you.

Ben Winhold, Celina. I'm going to tell you right now, a whole house filter system, the common one here in Celina is a Kuno whole house filter system. It's just a cartridge, basically it's this big. You saw the filters from the study session. There are different filters that go into these based on the wants and needs of the homeowner. In this case, if you're to do the cheapest filter that Kuno makes, which is for discoloration and sediment, which a lot of these people are dealing with on Dover Drive and the other streets, that's $50 a filter. Now you're going to expect people, since you can't give them clean water, you're going to expect people, and according to the manufacturer of Kuno, a normal filter like this is rated for six months to one year, depending upon the water quality going into it and going out of it. These people will have to change these things at least every week, maybe every two weeks. And the one lady that you heard the other day, it was every two weeks. So it's costing her $100 a month in filters alone.

And that's just for sediment?

Just to catch the sediment and the discoloration. There's nothing else. The filters go up in price as they get more elaborate. If you got charcoal in them or anything else like a regular softener would have, basically, so you're asking the people by doing this instead of biting the bullet, putting everything else as the wants and desires of everybody else in the town, putting them on hold, Bonding this, getting it out there, I did the numbers just the other day with what we're spending now per foot for the $2 million that we're spending each year for two or three blocks of mains being changed. And with 180 miles that are left to be changed, all the different sizes, all the different cast iron that supposedly is out there, the city needs $254 million to change every main in Salina. That's an astronomical amount of money. But putting a Band-Aid by giving people, and yes, you need to do that, start rebating people for the use of their water. But asking them to put a filter system in when the water should be clean in the first place instead of being proactive. And actually changing the mains so that we don't have to do them down the road, basically. And getting rid of a lot of the main breaks you keep talking about. It's because of the age of the system, period. And all of the other issues that we have up and beyond the dirty water that I haven't brought up yet. And I'm not going to, I will do that in Mr. Wood's office at a later date. It just seems to me like instead of a Band-Aid, let's just go ahead and bite the bullet and get it done. You get a contract out there of multi-million dollars, a whole bunch of miles, you're going to have huge contractors come in and want to do this and get it done quickly. A lot faster than what we can do at $2 million a year for the next, that came out to be like 50 years before we could change, everything changed. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm gonna look at the city manager and try to answer that. And as far as like Dover and 11th Street, we're doing everything we can as quick as we can to get those fixed. So this is a Band-Aid and we realize it until we get those fixed. And that's the other thing we're gonna discuss as we mentioned is, you know, how much do we debt finance? How much, you know, are there other funding mechanisms, you know, water rates? What can we do to do a larger project? And that's, but that we're not going to be able to do that today. That's, but that's in the near future. So those are the things we'll be discussing.

Nobody plans for upkeep in maintenance. So there's no preventive maintenance, so it's up to you.

Hi, Sherry on Dover Drive. I like some of Jacob's ideas. But nothing in that plan pays for our hot water tank that's ruined, our refrigerator and ice maker that's ruined, our dishwashers that are ruined. I mean, all of our appliances are ruined from this water. And there's no amount of that aren't out you can put in it to get it out, because I tried. Tried it in my washing machine, and it says on the bottle, Good for colors. If you pass those pictures around back there, you'll see I now have tie-dyed clothes, tie-dyed underwear, and tie-dyed sheets. So anyway, if you look on the back of the pictures, they have addresses or they tell where they're not all the same place. Richard was nice enough to bring that iron out out to us in a box. The neighbor brought it to me. I delivered it to everybody that wanted it, put down their names and addresses, and turned it back in. That should have been Martha's job, not mine. I don't get paid. And I'm not going to distribute anything anymore because I'm too old. Anyway, I want to thank all the people for Fourth of July weekend. A lot of them are in this room. Come out and help me load and unload a semi full of water. Take it to a place where somebody offers free storage. Anyway, this bottle is from the neighbor across the street that has three children. One was born July the 3rd. How would you like to have a new baby? Bathe in that? Or maybe have to make formula with that without the bottled water that these citizens delivered us. You know? I mean, there's health concerns. You ever heard of ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease? You have, Trent. You diagnosed my husband with it. You know, he came to a point where he couldn't eat or drink or swallow. Had to go to bottled water. That was when they'd only let you get two cases. It's COVID time. I went to another town. It might have cost me $300, but I got a whole pallet delivered to my house. I could not put the water coming out of my tap in his feeding tube. So I think that I am very well self-taught on bottled water. So Anyway, that's about all I have to say unless you guys want to ask any questions.

I don't think so. Hopefully we'll get bids out and get you fixed as soon as possible, dear.

Well, are we going to be informed or do I have to keep coming to these meetings? to find out when this action is going to happen?

We're hoping, as we said, to go out for bid here in the next couple weeks. Everything will be done in open meeting. The RFPs will go out. We'll be able to tell you who's doing it and hopefully their time frame.

And the last thing is, does Martha have any certifications that you know of?

I don't. She went through those when she gave her talk. Okay. Thank you.

I guess not.

Thank you.

Yep. I have not heard anybody discuss what is the source of this problem. Where is this contaminated water coming from? You're going to have the federal government in here because we're having this problem out in the country. They'll bring tankers in. You'll go and get that water out of that tanker, and they will go back to Kansas City every day at 5 o'clock. You're not stopping the source. We've got them right. You had this problem with air base. Now you're bringing all this concrete. Calcium chloride causes chemical burns. My son about died in this county. And you caused it. And you caused it. And you caused it. You're letting these chemical companies pour chemicals on our ground. KDHE cannot touch it. Shame on you. Shame on you. There's no shame on you guys. When your son gets sick and about dies, he spent two weeks in the hospital one time, another eight days the next time. You're allowing these chemical companies, these seed companies, and I've got the books on it. You let these corporations bring these poisons in here. I'm not going to apologize for my actions.

Annette Cox, we heard Trent Davis say it only takes one kid, and you have to make a bridge, you have to do all these walkways. How many people do you have that's not drinking water? That's more than one kid. We heard Jacob say how he loves his people. Boy, he's really for them. No degree, she says. Look at the animal shelters managers. Y'all see video that I've got of everybody just sitting around over there. And you guys don't want to pass something to get something going right now, but yet you want to build stupid bridge over a walkway, one person, one kid, but yet you got all these.

Terrible.

Jess White, Celina. We've got heightened emotions around water, and I'd like to start acknowledging that rather than pivoting away from it, people are more likely to listen to a broader vision if they feel that their immediate concerns have been recognized. And you guys have all been going through it for a long time, and you guys deserve things to be happening and changes to be made. So when people question whether the water is coming into their homes is safe, when they're worried about their children, their parents, or their own health, those concerns deserve to be heard with respect. And every resident deserves clear information, transparency, and confidence that their concerns are being taken seriously. Tonight, we hear about spending, we're going to hear about infrastructure, and we'll hear about animal welfare, economic development, and many other things. At first glance, they seem unrelated, but I don't believe that they are. I believe that they all point to a larger challenge. How do we build a community where people feel heard before frustration becomes outrage? Look around the room. We have so many people in here who are talented. Business owners, tradespeople, veterans, parents, experts with water that why are we going to hire outside sources when we have people who are incredibly knowledgeable that could cut back on labor costs because we could use local people. We could formulate something with the schools or with apprenticeship programs, get with our local plumbing companies and let the programs then be implemented to the local plumbing companies and then receive grant money to fund those programs. There's lots of different things that we could do that's not just giving one person the power over something that's affected a city long before he was here and will be dealing with long after he's here. The expertise is all here, the willingness is here, the passion is here, but we only come together when there's a crisis. What if we do something and we form a framework that connects the strengths we already have, a community ecosystem where the government, schools, businesses, nonprofits, healthcare organizations, researchers and residents remain independent but work together more intentionally. Where people don't just stand at this podium for three minutes, they have a pathway to stay involved and concerns become conversations, conversations become partnerships, and partnerships become measurable action. Imagine if residents concerned about water quality could work alongside engineers, public health professionals, educators, research, and local officials in ongoing collaborative process, kind of like Tony was saying. Imagine if workforce challenges brought employers, schools, technical education, and all of these things together before they become a crisis. Imagine if volunteers knew exactly where they were needed. I'm putting together a community survey, have responses coming in right now, and so far there's 80 hours that people are willing to volunteer their time for. You could put and utilize the people that we have. Communities don't become stronger because they avoid difficult conversations. They become stronger because they build systems that turn difficult conversations into collaborative action. Tonight's not about choosing size, it's about choosing better processes. Processes built on listening, transparency, partnership, shared responsibility, and measurable results. Because whether we're talking about water, roads, housing, whatever it is, at the end of the day we want the same thing. A healthier community, a trustworthy government, a future for our children to be proud to inherit. Let's build that future together. Thank you guys, and thank you all for being here.

Hi, Mrs. Hawk, my friends live over there on Dover.

I'm sorry, your name, I'm sorry.

Peggy Hawk.

Okay, thank you.

And you said something about a rebate, so they have to put more money out for the system and then you'll give them the money back. I mean, if they're on a limited income, Social Security, you get $1,100 a month for Social Security and you got to put out $500 just to get the system put in, how are you going to pay the other bills? I don't know that that's feasible for some people. I mean, that might be something to look at, too, where they just bill him. I'm sorry, I don't know his name. But bill him, and then they can write a check for one lump sum or whatever, however you guys work it out. But I don't think they need to put out any more money. I just don't.

My name is Shirley Ruffus. I live at 811 Melwood Drive. Our water was so bad that our Dalmatian would walk up to her water dish, smell it, and walk away. We put bottled water in there. She would drink it. That's a dog that refused to drink the Salina City water.

Okay, anyone else?

Tom Wilber, Salina, Kansas. Jacob, I want to congratulate you on being so responsive to the people of Dover. You just told everybody that you're right on it. Wow. What have you done so far? Have you taken them a bottle of water? I mean one? That's remarkable. I've heard from people all over the city of Salina about their water. They think it's terrible. I think I try to judge things based upon the results of what I see. And the water that's coming out of the water treatment plants and the water that we are putting into the river from the wastewater treatment plants are unacceptable because we had someone that designed it that had one variable, one idea. And with the input of other people, We're using manual systems to do our water instead of automated systems. Are you guys aware of that? Martha Tasker designed water systems that are designed for manual operation and not automation in both the water department and wastewater. So the bottom line is that if Freddy Boy doesn't dump X amount of chemicals in today, and he does tomorrow, or we try to correct for something with chlorines and other products, at the end of the day, we're just guessing. And so the water that comes out of the plants themselves, before it even reaches the pipes, has a problem. That's why I've called for Martha's resignation. Thank you very much.

Mark Jamison, Salina, Kansas.

Everything I've heard so far is all about reacting to the current environment. What I haven't heard is why we weren't planning for this five years ago, 10 years ago. The plans that we're making for today should be for five, 10, 15 years from now. So they can be spread out. over time. I know there's a plan in place, I've read some of it online, about replacement. There should be engineering data that specifies what the life of expectancy of a water line is. Do we have a plan for taking care of the city over time? And if so, has it been communicated to all of us that are paying for this? Anyway, better communication will help. But in my opinion, it starts with planning. Pretty simple. Planning ahead, not reacting to what's...

Somebody, Christy Dixon, Salina, Kansas. Somebody mentioned the set income of people. We also need to make sure that the lower income people have a way to be able to purchase this. said machine. Some people live on a fixed budget that are also single parents. Just because you and I could afford to put one in our house or Dr. Davis can afford to put one in his house doesn't mean our next door neighbors can't. So we need to make sure we're looking out for the vulnerable, the elderly, and the lower income families because they can't necessarily write a check or put it on a credit card. to take care of that. So I know my grandma would not be able to. My daughter, who is an adult, she wouldn't be able to. So we just need to make sure we're looking at all populations and not just the population that is sitting up here that can afford to wait for the rebate check to come. Thank you.

Susan Cooper Salina. First I want to say that I think 45 miles in ten years is ridiculous. And I think that the water money that we pay is supposed to go for making sure that infrastructure is replaced, upgraded, whatever. And obviously, this is an issue that, from some things I've read, has been in the public knowledge, maybe not for Greater Salina, but of the Water Department since 2018. And I'd like to know where the money that is supposed to be going for replacement of the infrastructure, the water mains and the lines and all of that other, where that has gone. And I understand that the city manager wants to take this on by himself, but I have to admit, I'm not very happy about that because when he came into this position, the water was in this condition. And I don't know how long he's been in his position, but just now he's taking action on this. That is not acceptable. I'm sorry.

I'm Terry Walsh, Solana, Kansas. And I don't think that there's any of these people around the line I'm trying to explain to you that you all got tunnel vision because you want to say, well, we're going to take care of this right now. This here is this big. It's all over the city of Solana. It may not be the same exact situation. And believe me, I'm not making light of Dover Street, 11th. Tenth or Larson. I'm not making light of any of it. I wouldn't even give my dogs, like Shirley said, the water that come out of my faucets. And that's sad. For years and years and years, I have spent money on water. And paid my water bill. For what? There has been nothing done over the years, and you can't tell me y'all didn't know something was coming. Because my water might not have been as discolored as theirs, but there was chemicals in there. There's something. I think there's, on a lot bigger scale, the water in the salina needs to be checked. And I think somebody needs to raise their head up out of that hole in the sand and say, let's do something and do it now.

My name is Janice Tech, and I'm a Salina resident. I have lived here for 34 years, and I have never relied on the city water for drinking. And I've also paid my water bill. On the other half of this, I believe that something we need to look at as a city is to cut expenses. There's all these want things to beautify the city and make it better and bring in income and everything. We have two priorities, the clean water in our city and the animals. Everything else has to stop.

My name is Diana Frobenius, and I came tonight to talk about the dog shelter. However, I married into this town 35, 36 years ago. My husband and I owned and rose, made work, rose on. We have since, my husband has passed, And I have now moved to about three blocks away from my youngest son in the North End. And when I moved in, the water was yellow. And I asked my son about it. And he says, well, that's just the way the water is here. So I started using Culligan. And my oldest son bought me a reverse osmosis for under my kitchen sink. I won't let my dog, either one of my dogs, drink the salina water. This is not the same water I was drinking up on East Crawford. And according to your own map, my water is over, my pipes are over 100 years old. Yet you're going to work on just one area that is evidently 60 to 40 years old? Granted, they probably have horrible water. But what happened to the rest of us? When I've asked some of my neighbors, you know what they say? We're the north end. They don't care for it. These are beautiful, wonderful people. They're intelligent. They're hardworking. They will look out after each other. And it's mind-boggling how they have been left out in the cold. And I apologize if you're on Dover or whatever. But I love my country. I love my God, I love my family, and I love my city. And now that I'm retarded, I think you're gonna see more of me.

Okay, is there anyone else?

I'm Lucille Sanderson-Salina. Jason, I'm not affected by this water, but if the people don't pay their water bill, what happens? They get turned off, don't they? Can't you go back to the time that this problem started? See how much each month was for water only charge. And I bet you that most of them have already paid that high filter that you're thinking about. Now, you've already given credit. They've already paid that money up front, right? Oh, I'm sorry, you can't answer. But they all have paid their water bill every month or they would not have water. So look back. See how much these people paid. They probably have paid more than what would be to their advantage. And then you can go ahead and give them this filtration because they've already paid you up front. Right?

Michelle Simpson, Solomon. I just wanted to let you know that we kind of heard from someone, one of the vets in town, that one of the dogs were diagnosed with an illness from drinking tap water. So we made a call, and sure enough, they let us know, and we do have it recorded, that if you live in a certain area in Salina, please be advised to give your dog bottled water. So I just want to let everybody know that that has been advised by one of the vets in town, and I'm not going to blast what vet it was, but it has been advised now, so you guys know that Salina City Water... will make your animals sick so i just want to let you know and that people are now reaching out to people who have been here fighting for the the shelter animals because we've been here fighting the commission and the city since 2023 and we know what the people who are fighting for water rights are up against because they lack transparency here And there is some corruption and you guys have a fight. So keep up the work and keep up the fight because transparency, you won't find it here. But keep up the fight and we have your back.

Vicki Reinbold and I live at 811 Millwood Drive. And back January the 22nd, I had a plumbing company come in and put a whole house water system in. And it cost $686.31. And that's not including the filter. So that's about another $200. And I've been having water problems for five years. And I've had... new fixtures put in my house, hot water heater, and the hot water heaters I put in, they put in 2023, and it's pretty bad already. And Back in May, my water was so bad, so I just hooked. It was, even after the filter, it was so yellow and rusty, I let a lot of water run out in my back lot, and quite a bit of water. And the filter, you have to change the filter at least every two and a half, three months. And it's supposed to be a nine-month filter. I thought I'd tell you that. Thank you.

My name is Chris Trites. I live on North 10th, on the dead end road between North 10th and 11th, right in behind there. I moved to Salina in 2014 from Massachusetts to escape fraud and bullshit. And I just came into a city doing the same thing. Since 2014, I lived on South 2nd, North Salina, and brief stay at one of the hotels because my daughter was taken. You know why my daughter was taken? Because the hospital was giving her tap water. And then they told me it was my fault that I was poisoning my daughter I was in the frickin' NIC unit for. She was in the NIC unit from February to Mother's Day weekend. And then they tried saying we were trying to kill our own damn kid because the hospital was giving her frickin' tap water. So your filtration system only gets sediment, doesn't do with the chemicals. I fought two years in all the damn state agencies. She was here behind my back when that happened. I almost lost my damn daughter. She had to go down to Wichita to get a G-tube in her system. You know what Salina Regional did? They used DCF to weaponize them to take my daughter away from me when I was waiting transfer to Wichita. And then you're going to tell me that you guys didn't know about any of this shit since before 2014? Where is the upkeep? Well, I work at Tony's as a control tech. I have to deal with equipment and repair a lot of electrical shit that I don't know what it is. But you know what? I'm trained to do that. I'm trained to go through the manuals and figure it out. Who's trained to do all this water filtration system in this damn city? Amen. Not one proper certification. I've had certifications in pool stuff. Certified pool operator. All the stuff that goes into water filtration, like, it's beyond your guys' comprehension, apparently, because all these people here, I'm fighting for the veterans. I got GERD. I was poisoned in a water in Iraq. You know what the effects are? You have no idea what a heart attack feels like when you have so much acid reflex due to poisoned fucking water. And you guys are just sitting here, oh, we're just going to take our time with it? Where's all that money you guys spent on the Cozies lawsuit to go to the upkeep for the damn city? Every other city I lived in always had upkeep. Always preventive maintenance. Preventive maintenance, even on your damn vehicles, will prevent further bullshit. You guys need to look at preventive maintenance for future. That's my main issue. And then whoever has medical issues, I think they should bring it to you. And you guys should have a class action lawsuit for anybody medically affected by this.

All right.

Kim Hill, Celina. First, thank you for your service. My husband and I, we're fortunate enough that we can afford to replace the hot water heater in our house every two years. Because that's how often we have to replace the hot water heater in our home. And that's not cheap. And plumbers have flat out told us it's due to the city water. And I know we're not the only ones. And so, I mean, that's just another aspect. And for those of you that may have to give your dogs or your cats bottled water, a water bowl about this size, about this deep, it takes about four bottles to fill it up one time because that's what we do.

Yep.

Ben Pruitt, Salina, Kansas. You guys talk about the $500. I think you need to bump that up to $1,000. And I think some of you need to come to the west side of Salina and spend a substantial amount of time paying attention. What is going on at Broadway and Republic? Hello? What's the blue pipe on the ground? Is this thing working? What's the blue pipe on the ground, Broadway and Republic? Is it Waterline?

I would assume so, yeah.

Broadway, Republic, Osage, blue pipeline on the ground, is that Water Main? I would assume it is. You would assume? Yeah, I don't... So, Republic and Osage, we've got Water Mains going in there, and Overdrive is just east of there. You can throw a rock and hit it. I've lived here my whole life, and this is sickening to hear about the children that are suffering. This is horrible. I have a mother that lives here. Time moves on. Go back to Martha's study session. We have water mains in this town that are 100 years old. That's unacceptable. I was a city employee here 20 years ago, and that was talked about then. And city management then didn't want to do anything. So I appreciate what you guys do. This isn't good. This isn't good. It is very unacceptable. And I think you as a commission need to look at some other avenues. So, anyways, thank you.

Okay, anyone else? Okay, I'll bring it back to the commission for further discussion.

One moment. Thank you, sir.

First of all, I'm really impressed with the turnout. A lot of people have come out here today. My name's Alex Bishel, Salina, Kansas Fuel Circle. A lot of people have come out here for the disgusting water in Salina, especially on North Town. This has gone on for many years. I'm also mad about the shelter. Killing puppies unsuscitated. The shelter's also been struggling with funding for many years. I totally agree about the private contractors and how they can rip us off a lot of the time because they're for profit companies. They're about making money. They do that everywhere. I think the real issue that people are getting at is that we need some kind of planning to get this done expeditiously on time without dependency on other sources like the federal government and private companies as much. And I think that's going to take asking some uncomfortable questions. Like, should we hire permanent staff instead of contracting out to these private companies? Should we raise taxes for these kinds of services instead of doing things like funding a new jail a couple years ago? So I think we're going to have to dig deep and ask these questions. Do we need to raise taxes for self-sufficiency like this? Do... And do we need to do things like have the Animal Advisory Board have more accountability over the shelter? Do we have to look at the... Do we have to look at the... the pool and see if, because the chlorine runs through the water every year when they fill up the pool, do we have to look at holding that company accountable? I think we have to look at our priorities and really consider changing some major things and then just doing it. Thank you.

Hi, Greg. I'd like you to look at me this time instead of taking notes. You can take notes afterwards. I really don't have anything you need to write down, but I'd like your attention this time, sir. What's your name? And I appreciate that. Mr. Hoppeck, Mr. Ivey, Mr. Davis. I think everybody, starting here from Mr. Brimp, over to this side can tender resignations in all terms. Be just fine with it. Because you guys are not representing your community. You're not taking care of the problems in front of you. And you're allowing things to go on that should not be going on. Mr. Davis, I'm talking to you. Would you please look at me? I know you have a lot of notes to take, but it would be appreciated if you could pay attention to the people who put you in this place.

Sir, I can hear you.

I know you can. Well, you're not listening or else you would have listened to us earlier. And I don't need retort. I can address you in any manner that I wish. You work for us. For some reason, that has flipped. And we're not beholden to you. You are beholden to us. You need to start pulling your head out of your ass. And I don't know which one of you needed that as a child. Mr. Davis, I know you are taking notes, but I would like your attention. This is exactly the kind of thing that I'm talking about. demeaning people and being condescending and not listening. And I know you're a doctor and I appreciate that, but I've, I've actually been harassed online by some of the people at your hospital standing up for some of you guys and trying to say, Oh, you need to do a better job. And you're still not looking at me. You're just, it is beyond. You're wasting your three minutes directly. And I've been looking at them and they're looking at me.

You're wasting your three minutes.

Don't look at me. You've got, what is it, 26% approval rating? 18% approval rate? 22% approval rate? I think it was 21% last time I looked. You're in pretty bad shape too, Mr. Hoppeck. And you're the mayor. And you, everybody passed you like bad sushi in Abilene. And I don't know why you ended up landing here, but I know what came out of it. Horse shit. Please, please, please. All we're asking for is for you to address the problems that are present now that have been here since 2010. No, it's not all your fault because it started in 2010, but you can't replace two miles worth of 100 miles that needs replaced. That'd take 50 years. It doubles in cost every five to eight years. What kind of financial sense is that? Let's put some more money back for the river dream down here. I'm sorry. It doesn't fit your needs. We need this. I mean, you're going to get your pants sued off of you. And I want you to understand that. I really would like to see a resignation letter from here over. But I know that's not probably going to happen because it will leave us all hands full. And I'm sorry I'm raising my voice, but I drink brown water constantly. And when it's not brown water, it's filled with so much chlorine it turns my clothes a different color. And I'm tired of it. I can't give it my dogs. I don't brush my teeth with it. I damn sure don't cook with it. And I'd love to bring you some of that. Oh, and you can smirk and you do whatever. I don't know. But I'm tired of it. And I'm probably close to my three minutes. And I'm sorry if I went over. But I think I addressed it. And I... I'm tired of the inaction that this group has shown. And I'm just Joe Blow. I moved out here to get out of this crap because I lived in Colorado in the cesspool that this community is stupid.

Right here.

I'm sorry. I don't mean it personally, but you don't know what you're doing. And you should know what you're doing. You run the title company. You own several, excuse me, Mr. Linkwitz, you own several rentals.

Thank you.

You should know about that kind of thing, Mr. Hyvie.

Okay.

You've got a pretty successful business, don't you? And I know Mr. Davis, he saws on people all the time. I hope he looks at them when he's doing it.

Let me close Dover Drive again. And I just wrote down a few notes before I came. I really didn't know if I wanted to talk, which I probably shouldn't be. But a neighbor called me this morning and she said she has information that she had contacted the city February 25th of last year. Or no, of 25, excuse me. That was last year. It was remarkable. The city water tests are just at the loud readings to not go over to fail the water tests. The water certainly didn't come from Dover Drive. And I'm wondering if we should be using paper plates to eliminate some of this exposure we're getting from our water. The study session has been done, so doesn't that mean that they can go forward soon before next year? Not 28, this year. And it's just not acceptable. We want to enjoy good water, clean water, healthy water, and not have health issues like we're having. And I hope I live long enough to appreciate good water. The community has been very helpful, especially donating water. Every little bit, someone says, I donated water. I donated water. And they're all donated at one time, so we're having to put it in storage. And my neighbor, again, said that heat is not good for that water in the plastic containers. She's done a lot of research on this. But we do appreciate the water, and we will need it more than just... this several months, and we need the solution done with the new pipes, not water bottles. We need a good solution quickly. Thank you for listening.

Thank you.

You guys need to re-vote on a bridge and a walkway.

Go ahead.

I'll allow the time to wait just for a moment. I did not plan to speak, so my name is Shannon Wallace of Salina, since 94. Like I said, I did not have anything planned, but listening to stories of people that I've grown up my entire life with, I would like to offer, this is my cup filled with filtered water, some Mio things to stay hydrated because I delivered mail in this town for eight whole years. I would like to go dump it out and fill it in a sink in your bathroom. How's that sound? I mean, this area particularly I grew up in. So I will go dump this out, and if anyone will offer to drink from it, Please, because it's terrible. The city water that I grew up drinking straight out of a hose has only ever gotten worse and worse and worse and worse. So people demanding change now, I demand that someone drinks this once I dump it and fill it from a restroom sink.

And I'll be back in like... Yeah, no, I understand.

Some people can afford bottled water. I live in the Kansas Wesleyan area now in a home that I purchased. And guess what? I can't drink the water. I can't feed it, drink it to my dogs. My two senior dogs that I've cared for for 10 and 11 years. that grew up on city water and maintained, my Great Dane somehow is not dying of hip dysplasia and things like that, but you know, the average life expectancy of any Great Dane is around 10 years old, and I could provide records from my vet over on East North Street of how he's maintained such quality of life, and I can guarantee it is not from drinking city water. I will just give my time to the audience because, like I said, I had nothing planned to say, but it's so compelling to hear people from the north end that are my best friends' mothers and people from Indian Village, which I delivered to over the years. I could count up like... Thousands of times that I would have walked Dover Drive specifically. Back told by like every little corner of the mental map of Salina that I'm blessed with. It's ridiculous and it's very upsetting and I do not publicly speak because this shaky voice so. I would like to go dump this and I'll just be back and roughly I'll find a bathroom as quickly as I can in this confusing building. Thank you.

Is there anyone else? Okay. I will bring it back to the commission.

Do you have a motion?

Go ahead. Any more discussion? Please. Any more discussion after? Motion?

I'm going to jump ahead a little bit here. I

realize I have privilege. I have privilege compared to probably most of the people in this room. And how did I get that privilege? I ran businesses on every corner of our community, and I listened to people. And when I ran for commissioner, I vowed that I would listen to people and I would be their voice. I understand, again, I have things that a lot of people can't have, and it's the community that gave me that. which is why I'm motivated to work for the community. It's apparent to me that we need to do more, and I've been right there with you. We need to do better.

That's why they said from you over. Resignation?

Anyway, did you have any other suggestions? I, as far as other... As far as other suggestions, I think we need to go back to January 1 of 25. That money needs to be rebated. That money needs to be rebated back so the people have seed money to work with. Okay, come on guys.

I drink out of the water faucet here every day. Okay, please can we? Thank you. Mr. Rimp, go ahead.

Well, as I mentioned, I think we need to go back 18, 19 months. Jacob or Mr. Wood, how much? doing rough math, and I'm talking the whole enchilada of their bill, not just the water portion. I know that includes trash and a basic service fee and things of that nature. But for the average home, going back 18 or 19 months, what type of dollar amount do you think that represents?

Yeah, I... I mean, the three houses on Dover that have been in question, their typical bill is between $50 and $60 a month.

Okay, so a year and a half, about $900?

That would include the entire bill, so that would be a distinction from what's in this. Yeah, I think we need...

I mean, it would be nice... I've only been a part of the... Commission since the first of the year. I know there have been people that have stated that they've had bad water forever for the entire length of time they've been here. I know from a big picture perspective, it's kind of where do we start, where do we stop when we start looking at these programs. But I think we need to go back a year and a half, the entire bill, rebate it. And I think for the whole house filtration system, I'm going to say a rebate up to $750. So if they're getting $900 back on average, they would have that money in hand to instantly work on a filtration system. And I think that's minimum what we should do.

Just for discussion, I think we need to make a distinction between total water bill and the water portion of that bill. Because the total bill includes the recycling center fee. I understand.

Right. But I'm talking the total bill.

But didn't they pay for one that they should have already gotten?

Please. We're just, we have to do this in open session. But I can see it's definitely going back to January 2025. We're going to start to introduce other variables other than the water if we go beyond the water portion of the bill. The other thing that I would, and actually the rebate up to 750, That would be reasonable, I think. It's a good idea. And I would also want to amend it to include development of a program that would consider special circumstances for those with insufficient funds to upfront. afford the cost of the whole house filter. I think the city manager can probably come up with a plan faster than we're going to sit here and do it in open session. But I would like us obviously to be kept abreast and the public as well. He needs the ability to get something moving without waiting for these artificial every 14 day times that we meet. So the real only amendments would be the January 2025 start date, increasing the rebate to 750 and coming up with some

plan for those who who can afford to just write a check for water filter and we would be um uh what could we please we're trying to come up with the plans please just a second just you guys have been failing to make plans for a long time please

Please, I get to redress you in any time, in any form that I wish. You work for us, sir. And what I'm trying to say is there are people that would like to add to this conversation. I know that you guys are super important and way above us and we know you can do that. Mr. Davis doesn't even have to look at us. It's pretty nice.

We are trying to conduct.

Everybody loves you like that. We're trying to conduct. It's just not working. You guys have had plenty of opportunities.

I would love for you to be able to stay in this room, but I need you to please. Go ahead.

I'm not causing any problems. I'm trying to address the ones that you are not. and yeah thank you please have somebody have a surgery and then send them outside to sit in the parking lot to get over it i think okay for the entire bill that's my yes thank you okay thank you thank you no one's listening we

Okay, go ahead. So it would just be those three amendments.

Okay, good. January 25. 25. $750. And if someone needs, we'll prepay or whatever. I mean, I guess. That's what it's probably going to amount to. Okay. Say the rebate.

And what was the third thing? The prepayment or a way to get it for a person that just doesn't have the money.

You're okay with, everybody okay with that? I guess you want to make a motion and see if we can?

Okay.

Point of clarification first.

Are we only talking Dover Drive? No, no. Any home that has a demonstrated water issue? Right.

Yeah, it's others.

Thank you. Yeah, we have 11, wherever. Okay. But that's- Just want to be clear. Yeah.

Okay, move to approve resolution number 26-8362 with amendments that would include the start date of January 2020.

Can we please, we're going to take a five minute break if we can't. We're trying to make a motion and we're trying to conduct business, please. I just ask for a little bit of courtesy, thank you. You'll hear it here in a second. We're making a motion. No. That's what we're reading. Listen, okay.

Yeah, go ahead. Move to approve resolution number 26-8362 with the following amendments. Moving the start date for consideration of rebates to January 2025. Increasing the amount of coverage for a home filter system up to $750. And charging the city manager to come up with some plan that would accommodate those with insufficient funds to purchase a filter.

Okay, we have a motion, do I have a second? Second. We have a motion and a second to approve resolution number 26-8362, authorizing the city manager to develop and administer a water rate relief pilot plan with the following amendments. Moving the rebate date back to January 1 at 2025 and allowing up to $750 for a home filter filtration system. Does that sound right? Yeah, and coming up with a plan- Coming up with a plan on whether to rebate or paying that in advance, okay? Do we have a second? Did we have a second? Is there a motion and a second? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That item passes 5-0. Okay, do we need a recess or are we going to move on? What's next on the agenda?

I need to run to the hall and back.

Okay, we're going to take a five minute recess. We'll be back here at 6.34.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, we are back in session.

I know, I know. Thank you, Wendy.

Okay, we're back in session. We'll move to item 5.4.

Item 5.4, consider approval of ordinance number 26-11289, approving the Santa Fe Showdown as a special event in authorizing the consumption of alcoholic liquor within the boundaries of barricaded street right-of-way areas.

Mr. Marsh.

Good evening, commissioners and mayor. The owner of Calvin's Customs and Hot Rod Repairs has submitted a special event permit application, an alcoholic beverage special event retailer's permit application, and an amplified sound permit application for the Santa Fe Showdown event scheduled for Friday, July 24th, 2026. Only the alcoholic beverage special event retailer's permit requires city commission approval. The remaining permits may be approved administratively through the city's special event review process. The Santa Fe Showdown is scheduled from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., like I said, on Friday the 24th of July, 2026, with setup beginning at 3 p.m. and teardown concluding by 1 a.m. The event will be held in the 300 block of North Santa Fe Avenue in the area that is on the attached exhibit in your packet. The applicant is requesting approval of an ordinance authorizing the possession and consumption of alcoholic liquor within the approved event boundaries. Although the event is located outside the boundaries of Downtown Business Improvement District Number 1, Salina Downtown, Inc. was notified as part of the review process and indicated they are aware and support the event. If approved, the event boundaries will be clearly identified by barricades, signage, a posted map, or other reasonable means. as required by state law in Chapter 5 of the Solana Code. There's no significant fiscal impact on the City beyond the routine provision of traffic control devices. Staff has identified the following alternatives for City Commissioner consideration. Adopt ordinance number 26-11289 approving the Santa Fe Showdown as a special event and authorizing the possession and consumption of alcoholic liquor within the approved event boundaries. Adopt or the ordinance with modifications to the location boundaries or conditions of the approval Postpone consideration of the request to allow additional information to be provided by the applicant or staff or decline to adopt ordinance number 26 dash 1 1 2 8 9 the recommendation from city staff is to Approve number one I stand for any questions Any questions or comments, mr. Marsh?

How many? I think they've done this for like five to seven years in a row, perhaps. Something like that, yes, Commissioner. It's just what they've done every year during the lead sled. Yes, correct. Yeah. Correct, same thing.

Okay, any other, any comments from the public? I'll make a motion to approve.

I make a motion to approve ordinance number 26-11289, approving the Santa Fe Showdown as a special event and authorizing the possession and consumption of alcoholic liquor within the approved event boundaries.