Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Sedgwick County Board of County Commissioners meeting. Welcome to those joining online, Facebook, and YouTube, and everyone joining us in person. We're glad you're here today. When you walk in, we encourage you to grab a meeting packet agenda that allows you to follow along with all the items we're discussing at the county commission meeting. If you're ever curious about supporting documents, you have access to those at sedgwickcounty.org. Now, let's get to work. We've got a great meeting ahead of us for August 19th, 2026. Madam Clerk, what's our first item?

Invocation to be led by Pastor Jeff Isaacs, River Lawn Christian Church. Please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Before I pray, just as always, thank you for doing what you do. We appreciate you. And I know you don't get a lot of thanks all the time. You get all the comments that aren't as kind. And to those in blue, thank you for what you do. We appreciate you and your service to our community. So let's pray. Father God, we thank you so much for being a good God that has shown us what life's about, Lord, loving each other, caring for each other. And Lord, I pray for this meeting right now that you would be glorified in the decisions that are made and the comments that are made, Lord, that the truth would be spoken in love. And Father, we just thank you for the brave men and women that protect this community, the brave men and women that serve. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Hey, Pastor Jeff, I just want to thank you from the commission. Thank you so much, man. Thank you for your leadership at Riverlawn, but thank you for your church's commitment to the foster care community. I don't think a lot of people understand how fully committed your guys' church and your family in particular, what you're doing for our foster kids and our adoptive kids in this community. So you're a hero, man. We love you. We appreciate you. Thank you. Next item, please.

Roll call. Commissioner Meitzner.

Present.

Commissioner Beatty. Present. Commissioner Howell. Present. Commissioner Weiss. Present. Chairman Blubaugh.

Present. Next item, please.

County announcements.

Good morning, Nicole.

Good morning, Chairman and Commissioners. Nicole Gibbs of Strategic Communications. Today we have an excellent good news. We have the Sheriff here with us. He recently announced his Employees of the Year, and so we'd like to take the opportunity to let him talk about them, but then also let you meet them.

So, Sheriff.

Maybe. There you go.

Well, good morning, commissioners. It's my honor today to present to you the three individuals that were awarded Deputy of the Year, Detention Deputy of the Year, and our Civilian Employee of the Year. If you indulge me just a second, I'll read why their nominations and why they were selected. During the first half of 2026, Sergeant Bliss has not only led members of the Central County Sheriff's Office, but also multiple outside agencies in two critical incidents. In January of 2026, Sergeant Bliss and deputies were dispatched to an armed subject experiencing a mental health episode. The male had pointed a firearm at passing motorists, and there was an obvious need for law enforcement intervention. Sergeant Bliss diligently coordinated a team to create a barrier between the subject and members of the public. Sergeant Bliss utilized tactical training he received to attempt to deploy less lethal options to gain compliance before the subject discharged his firearm at law enforcement. In June of 2026, Sergeant Bliss overheard Park City officers attempting to stop a wanted subject following a domestic violence dispute. The subject fled from officers ramming through the perimeter ignoring commands. Sergeant Bliss responded and the subject fled the vehicle and exchanged gunfire with law enforcement. The subject was later taken into custody. Sergeant Bliss' coordination on scene, planning, and overall supervisory response led to an outcome which protected the life and safety of everyone on scene. And because of that, he received the Deputy of the Year Award. Deputy Hume, who is a detention deputy with us, in November of 2025, Deputy Hume responded to two separate medical codes on back-to-back nights in which Deputy Hume had to perform chest compressions on inmates, which resulted in saving both of their lives. Deputy Hume is also a part of a team that put new NFC tags on all doors. Deputy Hume is always finding broken door strike plates needing fixed or missing screws on items inside the jail. Deputy Hume works in Pod 2, which is our mental health pod. The majority of the time, Deputy Hume assists in getting some of the most difficult inmates out during a shift and ensuring their cells are clean. Deputy Hume is continually willing to assist other deputies without being asked and gets the job done. And thus, the reason why he received attention, Deputy of the Year. Since her first day with the Sheriff's Office, Laura Oblinger has developed a friendly, positive attitude and provides outstanding legal advice daily. Laura is well-versed in employment laws, laws governing jail operations, case law, and Supreme Court rulings. Laura's biggest attribute is her ability to conduct research to determine best practices or options when it comes to policy creation and interpretation of state statute and court decisions. Over her tenure with the Sheriff's Office, numerous lawsuits have been filed against our agency. Laura works closely with county legal and outside attorneys to defend the Sheriff's Office. She provides all discovery materials, policies, and Supreme Court decisions to assist in our defense. Most of all, Laura does a great job explaining the process to deputies involved and keeping them updated on the process. Laura spends an incredible amount of time teaching recruits, commission, and detention staff, along with teaching for the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center. Laura is known throughout the state of Kansas for her knowledge of core statutes and her teaching style. Thus, she received the Civilian of the Year Award. So we give these once a year for deserving members, and I'd like to introduce to you Deputy Hume, Sergeant Bliss, and Laura Oaklinger.

I don't think any of them want to speak. Well, congratulations to each of you. Whenever we get done with the county announcements, we'd love to grab a quick picture with you guys. That'd be okay. So thank you. Congratulations to each of you.

fairly certain everyone in this room knows what's coming next week but i want to do a reminder for the public that we do have one week left to share feedback or to receive feedback on the 2027 recommended budget residents can give that online through the public forum at sedgwickcounty.org or they can do so in person for our final public hearing next week at 9 00 a.m on wednesday august 26 in this room the lower level auditorium at 100 north broadway and that's all i have today i'll stand for any questions commissioners do you have any questions

All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. And we'll take a quick five-minute recess. We'll just go out and grab a picture real quick and come right back in.

Thank you.

Sorry. Were you still going?

No, sir. You're good to go.

Okay. Thanks.

Appointments.

Yes, Chairman, thank you. Justin Wagner, County Councilor. Item A is a resolution nominating John Frederick for appointment to the Wichita Airport Advisory Board as recommended by Commissioner Howell. This is just a nomination because ultimately the City Council does make those appointments. This would fill the unexpired term of Scott Stiles, as you all know, passed away recently. He was serving on that board. The recommended action is to adopt the resolution. Okay. Commissioner Howe?

Well, Mr. Chairman, I am fairly pleased this morning to make this nomination. This is for John Frederick for the Airport Advisory Board, and I have known John probably for two decades at this point. All right, I should be on. I've known John for about probably, I believe, the better part of two decades at this point. I worked with him in kind of an ancillary way at Boeing when he was there many years ago, and I gained a huge respect for him. He's extremely professional, incredibly smart, and I think that those are the qualities that we need for someone in this role. He's a faithful man. He has the background of working at Boeing in a... white-collar job there at Boeing for many, many, many, many years. He knows the business. And so he's also well-known in this community. I think he's well-respected by really everybody. So when his name was announced last Friday, the board reacted in a way I've never seen before. They thought, what a great appointment. So I'm excited to make this nomination this morning. I've held off waiting for God to bring the right person forward and not saying anybody else would not have been good, but John is an exceptional selection, I think, to be in this role. So, Mr. Chairman, I make the motion to we as a board would approve the resolution putting him in this position. Thank you, Chairman. Okay, and I'll second that motion.

We have a motion and a second. Any other questions or comments? Call the roll, please.

Commissioner Meitzner. Aye. Commissioner Beatty. Aye. Commissioner Howe.

Aye.

Commissioner Weiss. Aye. Chairman Buwa.

Aye. The motion passes 5-0. He's here. Is John here today? He's here. Come on back. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. Oh, he can't be sworn in. Yeah. All right. Next item. Does he want to say anything?

Public agenda. Okay.

And we have three people signed up on the public agenda. The first person is Mary Mumbitt. Please state your name and address again when you come up. Mary, did I say it wrong?

Mary T. Okay.

Okay.

Okay, good morning, commissioners. Morning, Terry. I'm Mary T. Murabito. Terry, I'm the administrator of St. Jude Home Care, a small nonprofit that provides in-home services to Senior Care Act clients in this county and under contract with the Central Plains Area Agency on Aging. I emailed each of you a written statement earlier this week, and I brought copies today for the record. I'm not going to read it to you, but I'll let you know briefly what's in it. It documents five concerns regarding the Senior Care Act program's administration. The program's decision about how many hours of care an older adult receives are made using a methodology that CPAAA describes to clients as a tier system, and which, when I asked for it in writing, it refused to share because it was stated to be an internal document, an internal tool. Every plan of care that I've examined charges 25 units of care of case management per month about $650, regardless of whether the client receives one hour of care a week or 12. When a decision changes, the visits a client has relied on since admission, no one is required to tell that client. The only review of these decisions come from the same office that makes them. The complaint policy in my own contract has no channel for a complaint about the executive director whose decision is said to be final. Everything in my statement is supported by records. Most of them are the agency's own documents and my correspondence with them. I am asking this board for three things. Direct that the questions in this statement be answered. Direct that CPAAA state in writing how clients are to be notified when their services change. And direct an independent review of the program's administration. Commissioners, These are your constituents. These are older adults who mostly don't know how decisions are made and cannot advocate for themselves. I've put my working relationship with an important payer at risk to bring this matter to you. And I've done it because no one else is positioned above this program but you. Thank you.

Commissioners, do you have any questions?

Brian. Terry, thanks for being here today. I wanted to let you know that we all received the letter that you sent the email and your correspondence. You said you also brought some other copies. We'll make sure the clerk and make sure the commissioners are all aware of all of that. We also received an email briefing from the Director of Human Services. And she is going to follow back up with questions from the board. So I want to let you know that everything that you said, we acknowledge, we understand, and there will be a follow-up action. And then we'll ask that either Anna or Stephen follow up with you that a way that we can kind of close the loop on some of these concerns. So you are absolutely... We're grateful that you came today. We're grateful that you're here to voice these concerns. We obviously want to be aware of any concerns so that we can help address it. We're very confident in the leadership that we have at CPAAA and the leadership here at the county, and none of these things will go unnoticed, and they will all be opened up in conversation and discussion with you. So we'll see to it, and we'll ask Anna to follow back up, okay? Okay. Thanks, Terry. Thank you. Thank you for coming.

Deanna Grubenbacher. Or is it Dennis? Sorry, Dennis. Sorry, Dennis.

Our writing isn't very good.

The I in this looks like an A. Thanks for being here, Dennis.

I'm Dennis Grunbacher. I was back here in May. It was the last time I was here. We alone, the land just in between Colway to Nandale, where the proposed site is, and our farm is right across the railroad for a mile and a half from the proposed... data center. I have a son, Brent. I lived there for 61 years of my life. I'm 76 now. In the last 15 years, my son and his daughter, my daughter-in-law and I got four grandchildren living there. So I'm very concerned what the data centers are going to be to this area. We used to get snow water coming from Colorado. They started building reservoirs back in the 70s and 80s there for electricity and water. And now we don't get any water down the Arkansas River anymore. When I was on the Equus beds board, we finally did a project to recharge the water in the Equus beds. But we have to have rains in McPherson and Harvey counties to get that water. And now we don't, we haven't been able to recharge for about a year now because of the drought. We've been dry four out of the last five years. And you read a lot of, you get on the internet and you read, I've seen several times where they say Kansas or western Kansas especially will become a desert. I mean, it weighed the skies and we don't get the, especially Western Kansas, don't get the humidity which you need to help rainfall. I am concerned about noise, cancer, headaches, and electricity besides the water work. You're going to have to get the electricity to supply these plants. You're going to need water. I have a concern. One of your commissioners made a comment that He couldn't sell his farmland because land in Western Cedric County is bringing $5,000 to $20,000, $30,000 an acre for homes and everything. If a farmer out there wants to sell his land, there's plenty of buyers. Every time you go to a farm sale, a land farm sale, there's five to 30 buyers there wanting to buy land in Western Cedric County. People want to live in Cedric County, Western Cedric County especially. we need to keep this area open for homes which will pay ten thousand dollars a lot of those homes will pay ten thousand dollars a year property tax so i guess i just don't understand why we'd even consider it uh Land was bringing $300 an acre when I was a junior in college at Sacred Heart here in Wichita. And we bought some up in Harvey County for $300 an acre. And I don't know why we have to get our land prices any more higher. I know I'm probably a little different. I own quite a bit of land. I don't know why we need to get it any higher. And you guys are lucky. You serve the Sedgwick County Commission, and you're probably one of the top two or three counties in the state of Kansas. Why not protect what we got? And we've got a lot of reasons not to have data centers. So I hope you vote down to data centers. Anybody have any questions? Commissioners, any questions? Thank you.

I'll just thank you for coming and voicing that concern at this point. I just want to remind everyone we don't have any applications and we still have the pause on any applications being submitted for data centers. So I appreciate you continuing to come before us. I have not, it does not fall on deaf ears. So Dennis, thank you so much for coming.

Okay, thank you. All right. Next speaker, Kelly Anderson.

Good morning, commissioners. Kelly Anderson, the director at the Sedgwick County Extension Education Center at 7001 West 21st Street North, District 3. I'm here today because I'm excited to share with you our new hire, Aubrey McKenna. She is our new horticulture agent here in Sedgwick County, joining Abby Drought, our other horticulture agent. Aubrey, it's Abby and Aubrey. Aubrey started with us on Monday morning, and she will be our lead agent in taking questions on consumer horticulture, things like landscape, water-wise resources, things of that nature. And so I just wanted to introduce her to the commission and to the public. and share with her that we are so excited to have her on the team. She is a native of Andover, Kansas, but now lives here in Sedgwick County. And so she is very familiar with the region. She's a graduate of Andover High School and a K-State a horticulture graduate. And so we welcome her to the team. She's going to be a wonderful addition. We welcome her enthusiasm and passion for horticulture education. I also wanted to share that, as Mr. Gruenbacher alluded to, as our climate gets drier and as we're experiencing a lot of water concerns in the county. I want to make sure that the public is aware of the resources of K-State Extension. We have a lot of WaterWise resources, and we're seeing a huge increase in calls and visits to our website asking questions about water concerns. So I want to make sure that that resource was highlighted and also share our excitement in having Aubrey on the team as well. Any questions? Commissioner Rice?

Well, welcome, Aubrey. You might have already answered my question. I was going to just give you a moment to highlight what that position, what those agents actually do to serve the constituents in Sedgwick County. So if I have a question regarding maybe landscaping water concerns. Can you give just a couple of examples of what someone might call in your office and need help with? Sure.

So we take any questions on anything from consumer horticulture issues, things like lawns, gardens, and trees, also to agricultural questions as well. That could be anything from weed and pest control to soil concerns. And so those are free resources to the public. They can call and talk to any of our extension agents about that. But we also staff a Master Gardener hotline from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. So the public can call in with any sort of horticulture question, soil question, tree question, whatever that might be, and get an answer right away. Or we can direct you to a, if we can't answer it, we're going to get you to a specialist at K-State that can share research with you in that regard. can also stop into the office at any time we have a master gardener rapid response room so if you have a bug or something a plant you can't identify something you need answered we have people staffing that room at all times so you can walk right in and get your question answered or we can or we can find that information for you as well awesome thank you all right thank you thank you very much

I'd like to make a motion to receive and file public comment.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Commissioner Meitzner. Aye. Commissioner Beatty. Aye. Commissioner Howell.

Aye.

Commissioner Weiss. Aye. Chairman Bubba.

Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Next item, please.

Consent agenda.

Tom, what do we got? Chairman and Commissioner, good morning. Tom Stolz, County Manager's Office, recommending approval of consent items B through E this morning. Okay.

Commissioners, do you have any questions on consent items B through E? I'd like to make a motion to approve items B through E. Second. I have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Commissioner Meitzner. Aye. Commissioner Beatty. Aye. Commissioner Howell. Aye. Commissioner Weiss. Aye. Chairman Buwa.

Aye. The motion passes 5-0. Before we go into new business, I'd like to go ahead and take a quick recess, but I'll move over to the fire board. So, Madam Clerk, if you would please call the roll for Governing Body of Fire District Number 1.

Roll call. Commissioner Meitzner.

Present.

Commissioner Beatty. Present. Commissioner Howe. Present. Commissioner Wise. Present. Chairman Buva.

Present. Next item.

Appointments.

Thank you, Chairman Justin Wagoner, County Councilor. Item A is a resolution appointing Jacob Coley to the Sedgwick County Fire District Number One Steering Council as recommended by the City of Mays. The recommended action is to adopt the resolution.

And I would like to go ahead and make a motion to adopt the resolution.

Second. Sorry.

Okay. Motion and a second. Any questions or comments? If not, Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Commissioner Meitzner.

Aye.

Commissioner Beatty.

Aye.

Commissioner Howe. Aye. Commissioner Weiss. Aye. Chairman Blubaugh.

Aye. Motion passes 5-0. All right, good morning, Commissioners. Morning.

All right, if you'd raise your right hand. I do solemnly swear I will support the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Kansas, and faithfully discharge the duties of the Office of Sedgwick County Fire District No. 1 Steering Council, so help me God.

I do. Congratulations. If you'd like to say anything, you can. Morning, Jacob. Morning, Commissioners. I just want to say thank you for this opportunity, and I look forward to working with the Fire District. Okay. Thank you for being here. Thank you.

All right. Next item.

Public agenda.

We do not have anyone signed up on the public agenda. Next item.

New business, item B, report of the Board of Bids and Contracts regular meeting on August 13, 2026.

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners, Joe Thomas, Purchasing Director. The meeting of the Board of Bids and Contracts on August 13th for Fire District Number 1. We have one item that we're seeking your approval for, and that's the personal protective equipment and accessories for the Fire District. This recommendation is to accept the low bids at the rates listed, and this will be for a contract period of two years with two one-year options to renew, and this is with the following vendors. For Item Number 1, Conrad Fire Equipment. Item number two would be Ed M. Feld Equipment Company Incorporated. They're doing business as Feld Fire Equipment. For item three is the North America Fire Equipment Company doing business as NAFECO. For items four and six, we recommend Casco Industries Incorporated. Item number five, Danko Emergency Equipment. And item number seven with MES Service Company, LLC. I'd be happy to answer any questions and recommend approval. Okay. Commissioner, do you have any questions?

Is this... On the, is that item two, the register of deeds? We're doing the fire district right now, sir.

Thank you.

If we don't have any questions, I'd like to make a motion to approve the recommendations of the Board of Bids and Contracts.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Commissioner Meitzner. Aye. Commissioner Beatty. Aye. Commissioner Howell.

Aye.

Commissioner Weiss. Aye. Chairman Blumenthal.

Aye. The motion passes 5-0. Next item.

Budget discussion.

Do we have any discussions on the board? Okay.

Next item?

Other.

Anything on other? Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, Commissioners, I'd just like to give you a quick update on some of the conversations that have taken place in the last 18 hours, I think, probably. As the public knows, and as we obviously know, in October of last year, we received from our Fire and Steering Council, we received a resolution asking us to address specific issues in some of our aid agreements that deal with Some of our partner cities, five in particular, that operate either a volunteer department or a hybrid volunteer part-time department. We've engaged with discussions with all five of those cities. In my district, one of those cities is Valley Center that operates a part-time department with five full-time firefighters, the part-time department on a 12-hour shift. Last night, after significant conversations over the last probably three to four months, myself, Chief Williams, Fire Marshal Chris, Rusty Leeds attended their city council meeting to help just answer questions and to help walk them through this process. They took a vote last night to explore the option with the public of a 1% sales tax to help partially fund some of their fire operations. That'll be on the ballot in November. So I think the direction we received last night is if that sales tax does pass, that they're going to try to just bolster their department and maintain internal and then seek a mutual aid agreement with Sedgwick County and other partners. If that does not pass in November, then we're going to reengage conversations to figure out and kind of level set where they're at and what they need to do and what they need to accomplish. So obviously I have a lot of observations, a lot of opinions. The primary focus for us as the fire board maintains the same though, is that we will reinforce the need for safety for our personnel, for all fire personnel on scene and for citizens. We arrived at this moment, because of a lack of turnout. When you go on a structure fire scene, when we're sending in an aid situation, when only three to five firefighters from the primary jurisdiction is showing up, it puts everyone in that situation and on that scene in jeopardy, from the citizen to the firefighters. I was grateful last night that their interim chief, their public safety director, and their city manager acknowledged that we have a problem we have to solve. So we're building from a premise that everyone agrees this lack of turnout is a significant safety concern. The question now is how do we deal with it? Does Valley Center bolster their own department or do they join with an open invitation into the fire district where we will reinforce and re-bolster the fire response? And those are the conversations. Apparently we're going to wait until November to answer that finally, to get a final answer. So I wanted to give an update to the commission because we're all intricately involved in these conversations. I'll continue to contest that safety is the priority. that we will not compromise safety of our firefighters. We will not do it. In doing so, that we personally, me, I have a specific opinion of what I think would be best for my citizens in Valley Center, for the firefighters in Sedgwick County, and the firefighters for Valley Center. But that is a decision that is left to the cities. And we'll support and do the best we can with what direction they want to go to create an agreement that will provide safety for everybody on the scene. So my last thought is, and I've said this publicly from this bench multiple times, These archaic old models of government, if we continue to try to scale them, it will only increase the cost of government to its citizens. Safety is a component here, but we have to reform some of these models. We have to reform some of these models, not only to increase efficiency and safety, but we have to reform models to lower the cost of government to its citizens. This is one example of many examples all across the organizational charts, all across our 20 cities and Sedgwick County government, to where this is just another example that we're trying to scale old models. When there is a reform option, a modernization option that is available, that will help us gain efficiency and cost savings and safety. So I'm going to continue to advocate for the plan I think is best and continue to advocate for our firefighters and as the fire board and the fire district taxpayers, but also for my citizens and constituents in Valley Center. So hopefully we land the plan in a good place. I'm still hopeful, but I'll keep you updated on the Valley Center side of things. I'll keep you updated as we go. Just quick update, Chairman. Okay. Thank you very much.

All right. Next item.

Executive session.

We do not have an executive session. We will adjourn fire district number one meeting and go back into our BOCC meeting. Next item on our BOCC, please.

New business, item F, report of the Board of Bids and Contracts regular meeting on August 13, 2026.

For the record, Joe Thomas again, and this is the regular meeting of the Board of Bids and Contracts, August 13th, as was mentioned. And we have three items that we are seeking your approval. The first one is change order number one, Q-Less Incorporated with Treasurer's Office, and that recommendation is to accept this change order by extending the contract through September 23, 2027 with Q-Less Incorporated, and that will be at a cost of $41,059.89. Item number two, register of deeds, legacy document imaging and book scanning solution for a register of deeds. Recommendation is to accept the proposal from Fiddler Technologies Incorporated. This is in the amount of $1,626,400. and our final item item three is the master consulting services for division of information technology this recommendation is to utilize the state of kansas contract 56660 with logic callus incorporated at the rates that are shown and this is good through april 30th of 2027. i'll be happy to try to answer any questions recommend approval okay commissioners do you have any questions

Commissioner Meister yeah thank you Joe you know I've got rarely do I ask questions on the bid boards I got a tremendous amount of respect for you and for the whole process of our our County bidding and RFP I am questioning item number two and in a way I'll take some of the blame we've talked for the last year or so about looking into various items to update in Charter 68 as well. And one of those would be included some bid corrections, allowing state use laws, things like that. So shame on me for not pushing that harder for us to look at it, because I think there's some other areas as well in Charter 68 that you and finance team have said, hey, we need to upgrade this a little bit. But that said, on this item, and I'm not trying to... pick on a $1,000 difference on a truck and things like that. But in $1.6 million versus $9.90 and $6.30, it's a pretty big difference. Can you explain that? That's a sizable difference.

Yes, this is a proposal, and basically the solution that came up was – Not dependent on the cost. I mean, it was an important factor, but not the determining factor for their solution that they picked. And I think Ms. Ziering is here. She was on the evaluation committee and can provide you with more details about how that process went.

Good morning, Commissioners Kinley-Ziering, Chief Deputy, Registered Eats. With what Joe was saying, yes, that was taken into consideration, the price, but we also, when we were evaluating them, Fiddler was the only vendor that understood the scope of the project. They have experience with scanning books like ours. They have specialized equipment that can clean up the images. And during the scanning process, this is especially helpful with our older photostat books that are really hard to read anyways. So this would clean that up. They were the only vendor that showed us before and after pictures of the images going through the entire process. They also have experience working with the county of our size and they have completed those projects within the timeframe that they let us know what we are requesting. So that's why we felt comfortable going with them. They are our current vendor for our recording software as well. Did that help answer some questions?

Yeah. Okay. Where are they located?

They're in Davenport, Iowa. But they'll be on site to do the scanning, the entire process.

Okay. Well...

I'd like to add also, you know, we are utilizing our tech fund money, and that's what it's used for, any technology-related projects.

Okay. All right. I'm reluctant, but I will respect your department and the process. This just gives me an opportunity to – I know we've got – we're very, very busy. All the planning and everybody's stretched pretty thin. But I'd sure like to put on some kind of a small staff meeting or review about the Charter 68 corrections that we need to do in the future if we could, please. But I will respect –

accepted. We've got a couple more questions here. I wanted to ask too, when I first came on the commission a couple years ago, wasn't there some of the research that we used to offer free to the public and then we started charging for it and that was through Fiddler as well? Is that correct or is that something different?

Research projects we would always charge for if it was over a certain amount of time.

As far as... I think he's referencing just like the Register of Deeds, if you look up... Just a document search. Yeah, which... If I remember right, when you chose and went with Fidler, they're actually serving all of the other, most of the other counties within the state. And we were the only county that wasn't paying as citizens to utilize or receive that information. And it was an in-house built system that we were using that was broken beyond repair, if I remember right. I was going to bring that up as well, just asking how you have been, I mean, obviously you've been satisfied with Fidler as that new vendor, if you're willing to give them more business.

Yes, we're satisfied with what they have shown us so far. Any issues that arise, they are quick to respond and get that issue taken care of. And again, like you said, we were one of the last counties, actually the only county that was not behind a paywall. But, you know... The first couple of months, there was a little bit of heartburn, but that's just the cost of doing business with maintaining our system. I will go back to the book scanning project. Prior to putting this out to bid, We were utilizing our own staff, and we've been working on this project since 2018. And we barely scratched the surface. We've only scanned about 1,800 books. This would get us all the books online and available to the public.

Do you have any idea? I don't know if you'll know this or not. Do you know off the top of your head what we're paying them for the other services they're doing with the county?

Fiddler is only with our location, with our department only.

Right. But the other services they provide on top of this, this is not the only service, correct?

Is there a contract price related to the research projects that we were talking about earlier? Not related to this project, but I think that's what he's getting at.

If you're talking about research, they can sign up for subscription fees.

Is it a fee to the county, though, that you already paid to them? No.

What I'm getting at is we used to offer, if you want to go research a property, we used to offer that for free. And then we started charging that. And Fidler took that over. So I'm just trying to get an idea as to how much total business is Sedgwick County doing with Fidler.

I don't have those numbers off the top of my head, but I can get those for you. But, again, the fees are charged through our office, and we collect those, and those fees go to pay for our system.

I guess my concern is hearing of all 104 other counties use Fiddler, and then they're a million dollars over it. I'm just, for the public's sake, is there a monopoly going on or something like that? No.

Well, respectfully, they're not the only vendor. There are several other vendors, but the majority of the registered deeds offices have partnered with Fiddler.

Commissioner Reddy. Kenley, thank you. And thanks to Tanya, our elected register of deeds. So I have a lot of trust in the stewardship of your office, and I think you do a terrific job in many ways. I do have some questions. Commissioner Meister asked a question on the disparity. Anytime we see a bid board where we're not going lowest bid, I think it's our fiduciary responsibility to say, hey, help us understand why we didn't go low bid for the taxpayer. I think you made the case, and I appreciate that. I do have some general questions about tech fund. The state statute gives our elected register of deeds some authority. Correct me if I'm wrong. They don't have to ask us permission to do this? Right. Okay.

So, Lindsay Poverso, your CFO, just real quick, at a high level, we'll talk about technology funds and the authority that the commission has relative to those versus the independent elected officials who have those. So under state law, there are three technology funds, one for the Register of Deeds, one for the clerk, one from the treasurer. The Register of Deeds fund has historically been there. However, when the state morphed out or phased out the mortgage registration fee several years ago, they also added a smaller portion of... I'll get to that in a second, but one for the clerk and the treasurer. So basically, when you go in and you file a mortgage document with the Register of Deeds office, you pay fees now in lieu of a percentage of the value of the mortgage. And that per page fee is then what's distributed across those three different funds, plus the county general fund. So the County General Fund gets the bulk of the dollars, but then there are special dollars that go into what's called a land technology fund. So the State of Kansas Legislative Division of Posts Audit has done an analysis that says when an elected official spends money out of that technology fund, it has to be on land records. State statute further says that the County Commission has zero authority over those funds. They are not included in your budget. There's no pay plan provisions that apply to those funds. They are separate and distinct and solely under the authority of those bodies. Now, they are included in our audit, again, because they have state authority to spend these funds and there are restrictions on how those are done. So literally the only thing that the budget office does when we have requests from one of these offices to access that technology fund is to ensure that there's not going to be a cash basis law violation, meaning they're not going to spend money they don't have. Understood. Other than that, I think because there were concerns the last time when the Register of Deeds office moved to Fiddler, that is why they then chose to use it this way as a way to give some of that credence to the commissioner's concerns. But again, at the end of the day, it's technically their decision.

Understood. That's very helpful. Very elaborate. I appreciate that. Thanks.

Commissioner Huff. Thank you, Chairman. Just to reiterate what you just said, we don't really have much discretion here. You have zero discretion here. Zero is a pretty small number.

It is.

All right. I do appreciate that. And this is not Nylander. This is other state law.

This is state statute.

Okay. I guess I do have a question for Joe or for Kenley. But I just want to clarify, there is no time frame on this. They're going to complete the job of finishing the digitizing of these books. They're going to finish the job. So once this is done, this is 100%. There's nothing else for anybody to scan at that point.

Correct. This will complete the project and we'll be able to offer all of those records online from the very beginning.

I am curious how often these particular records are accessed by anybody because I assume these are older and may not, maybe not have anybody access them in years. I don't know. I'm just curious if that's, if that's the case.

It just depends on the day, but we do have lots of people coming to search genealogy. Sometimes they're looking for oil and gas rights, you know, railroad.

They're looking for older documents. And today those books were physically in the office upstairs. Right.

For the most part. Otherwise, we have to pull the books from the salt mine and wait for that to come in one to two weeks and then let them know it's back.

I guess I would just say this. I respect the fact that this is not our decision because I have zero discretion. I was just wondering, though, is this still, you know, in a sense, even though it's a fee, it's still, my opinion, is a tax on people that are accessing parts of government. And to the extent that this is, you know, maybe a delay in their access, is it really worth $1.6 million to solve this problem? That's my question. I would say if it was my money, I probably wouldn't do it because the immediate access is not worth 1.6. I would say that there's not a problem that has to be solved that could physically use the same system we have today, and there's no real problem with doing it that way. So it's not my decision, but I would just challenge 1.6 million for basically helping maybe a very small number of people get, if you will, more immediate answers to their questions. So, thank you. Thank you for answering all of our questions this morning, Kenley.

All right. Okay, make a motion. I guess if we don't have any questions, I'd like to make a motion to approve the recommendation to the Board of Bids and Contracts.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Commissioner Meitzner.

I just want to thank staff and Lindsay Poe for explaining the tech fund and all the legalities around it. It just further endears to me that... This division is using state statutes that allow that, and we could also easily include some state use laws in our Charter 68 process that just not even required, but just as an option. So those kind of things. So this is eye-opening for us overall, and I guess adding to our to-do list. But anyway, with that, I support aye.

Commissioner Beatty? Aye. Commissioner Howe?

Aye.

Commissioner Weiss? Aye. Chairman Blubaugh? Aye.

Motion passes 5-0. Thank you. Thank you.

Next item, please. Item G, DER 2026-00007, Adoption of the Downtown Wichita Action Plan 2035 as an Element of the Community Investments Plan 2015-2035.

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Commissioners. Justin Constantino with the Planning Department. This agenda item is whether to replace the previously adopted Downtown Master Plan with this new version as an element of the Comprehensive Plan. I will provide a brief overview of the process, and then I'll turn it over to Heather Schroeder from downtown Wichita for her presentation. On July 23, 2026, the MAPC considered the Draft Action Plan and unanimously recommended that the Wichita City Council and Board of County Commissioners approve the Draft Action Plan by a vote of 11 to 0. Yesterday, the City Council adopted the Downtown Action Plan by overriding the MAPC and making modifications that removed the word new from text referencing a performing arts center. Examples of this are included on pages 138 and 139 of the draft plan document. If adopted as an element of the comprehensive plan, then the new downtown master plan would serve as a guide for the city of Wichita, residents, business owners, and other community stakeholders by establishing a vision for downtown and identifying goals, strategies, and actions to achieve that vision. You'll see shortly that the draft action plan area extends beyond the traditional downtown Wichita boundaries. The recommended action for today is to approve a resolution adopting the Downtown Wichita Action Plan 2035 as an element of the Wichita-Sedgwick County Comprehensive Plan, which requires three to five votes, and authorize the necessary signatures and authorize the resolution to be published. There are alternatives listed in the staff report to that recommendation. I'll turn it over to Heather Schroeder from downtown Wichita to discuss the specifics of the plan and planning staff is available following her presentation for any questions that you may have.

Good morning, Heather.

Good morning. Thank you, Justin. Good morning, commissioners. I am so pleased to present to you the county's, or excuse me, the community's vision for how they would like to see their downtown evolve over the next decade. So to recap where we've been in 2010, Project Downtown was enacted as the guiding document for downtown Wichita's growth and development. In the intervening 15 years, we have calculated a $2 billion investment in downtown by both the public and private sectors, 119 completed projects, 6.3 million square feet transformed within the plan area, and almost 2,000 new housing units added to the district. To give a sense of the scope of that investment, here's an image from the early days of plan implementation compared with December 2025 when we wrapped up the project downtown plan. So after all of that investment and change, we realized it's time to update the plan as we move forward. We still have the guiding tenants from that project downtown, and we've updated them to reflect the momentum that we have now with exponential growth in the core. So the first step in setting a new plan for downtown was to define the project area. The area that you see in the blue dotted outline is the traditional SMID boundary where downtown Wichita operates. And we've expanded the scope of the plan to look at our neighbors to the west in Delano and north of central to Murdoch, encompassing the Ascension Via Christi campus. The reason for those expanded boundaries is to make sure that we are sympathetically growing with our neighbors. There's a lot of development pressure to the west and north of downtown, and we want to make sure that we are consulting our neighbors as we continue to grow. The next step after defining the project area was to do market research. We went back to the firm that we've worked with since 2009 and asked them to provide updated projections for the growth for downtown. You can see that we have very healthy demand for downtown residential products. We anticipate that we could grow by 3,000 units over the next five years if our development community keeps up. There certainly is demand for that many units. Our office market has been relatively COVID-proof. We were pleased to learn that between 2017 and 2024, 90% of the new Class A leases that were signed in Wichita were in downtown. So we remain a destination for our office community. And our hotel market has not yet reached its threshold. We still have capacity for about 500 to 600 new rooms before we see any cap on that. The next step was to assemble our steering committee. So we thank Sedgwick County and the City of Wichita for their financial contributions to the plan, as well as their staff support. We also incorporated downtown major employers, property owners, healthcare and academic institutions, nonprofits, and our downtown business community onto that steering committee. And then together, we set forth a request for proposals in the fall of 2024. We were hopeful that we would receive a handful, you know, maybe four or five responses, and we were overwhelmed when we received 17 proposals to do this work in Wichita. It was a really great indication to us that Wichita as a top 50 U.S. city is on people's radar. And so we were able to select the best of the best, global planning firm Sasaki and their sub-consultants in the areas of real estate, landscape design, neighborhood branding, walkability, and community engagement. So what is an action plan? It is the community's vision. But without actionable steps, we would just have goals and no way to get there. So it's a vision and a roadmap for how to achieve the goals and the plan over the next decade. When our design consultants from Sasaki came to town, they were very impressed by our historic building stock here. That was one of the major assets that they defined. Wichita is unique in that we still have many of our historic buildings intact in our downtown core, and they reflect the quality of design, materials, and construction that helped to shape Wichita in its infancy. They also looked at our zoning. The majority of the plan area falls within the central business district zoning, which allows a mix of uses to be built on the same site. As you can see on the left is our current built environment, and on the right is the capacity, how far we could go if we develop to our full zoning capacity. So that little chart at the bottom shows that we have 85% more development to do as of right in the downtown core. We have only realized 15% of our growth potential. Part of the reason for that is the majority of downtown is dedicated to surface parking lots. 48% of the plan area is currently a surface parking lot. When we incorporate garages into that mix, it's 60% of our land area is dedicated to parking. So we saw a huge opportunity for higher and better uses on many of those surface lots. Every surface lot to us is a potential development site. The other item I wanted to highlight from this slide is the lack of open space. Only 7% of this map is green, which means that that's space available for the public to get out and enjoy natural area. The next step was to ask the community what they want. What did they want their downtown to look like over the next decade as we continue to grow at this momentous pace? So we held three large open houses over the course of 2025. We held three pop-up events to meet people where they were at Riverfest and the NCAA Fan Fest and the Downtown YMCA. And then we convened more than 50 stakeholder group meetings on specific topic areas like cultural resources, our developer community, our young professionals, downtown residents, et cetera. So just to give a sense of the timeline for the project development, again, we started in January 2025, wrapped up that community engagement in September of 25, continued writing the plan through the winter, and released the draft plan this past spring. As an example, for the kinds of questions that the community was asked when we did those community engagement events, we had participatory exercises, asked people to put stickers on a board of where do you take your friends and family downtown. It was clear that the Arkansas River emerges a major destination within the plan area, as well as Douglas Ave connecting from Delano to Century 2, the First Street Cultural Corridor, Old Town, Napsker Park, and Interest Bank Arena. One of the more surprising findings from the community engagement was that people would love an opportunity to purchase housing downtown, but our current housing stock does not really afford that opportunity in more than five properties within the core. So we have a bit of a mismatch there. We asked what people would like to do on the river in the future, and they said they want an opportunity to buy a drink and food along the river. Currently, we have no options for that. No kiosks, no restaurants with outdoor seating that faces the river. So that was really a gap in what we currently provide. They also want more opportunities to just enjoy being by the river, whether that's playscapes, areas to have a picnic with your family. Currently, we have a great multi-use trail along the river. And that's about it. And we also asked about areas of importance to the community in terms of our historic and cultural assets. And you can see the kind of popularity of the places that they reported spending time in. So at the end of the year-long community engagement, we had heard from more than 1,000 distinct Wichitans on their thoughts for how they wanted to see their downtown grow. And then we were tasked with condensing all that information into the plan. So their thoughts aligned with four major goals, and we then devised 17 strategies and more than 100 actions to help meet those community goals. What are the community's goals for downtown Wichita? They would like it to be more connected. They want to make sure that whether you're driving, biking, walking, strolling, scootering, you can get from point A to point B. We are blessed with a very large downtown, more than 100 blocks. And so having those points of connectivity are extremely important. Again, they want to make sure that we are engaging with our riverfront, using that natural asset that is a little bit rare. We're so fortunate to have a riverfront downtown. They want to make sure that we're continuing that history of great design and that legacy of quality construction, especially because downtown is such a center point for our community. We want to show off the best of the best right here in downtown Wichita. And finally, they wanted to make sure that downtown provides a full service community so that In the event you don't have a car or don't wish to drive, you can still shop for all of the amenities you need on a daily basis. That includes food, that includes pharmacies, making sure that we have the necessary mix to live your full life downtown. We noticed that there were five themes that emerged from the community feedback. First and foremost, getting around. Again, we talked about that connectivity. So how we design our streets, how we design our bike and transit networks affects people's ability to make those connections. Living and working was a major theme. We have a housing shortage in the city of Wichita and building new housing at all price points and with a mix of for lease and for sale housing was important to the community. And then how we manage our parking to make sure that we're sharing that limited resource among our daytime and evening users, our employees and our residents is important as well. A focus on urban form, not just how we design our buildings, but also how we design our streets to make sure that we're incorporating safety and accessibility, and that we have active storefronts on the ground floor to keep people engaged. Landscape and public realm was a big theme that covers everything from tree planting to making sure that downtown is clean and welcoming to investing in our parks in our riverfront. And then finally, history and culture. How do we tie together those cultural assets that the community identified and make it easy to navigate through a wayfinding system in our downtown? So I mentioned there were 17 strategies and more than 100 actions. I will not take up your time to go through each of those today, but I did want to highlight five of the strategies as a sample. Number one, redesigning Douglas Avenue as a signature street. What we learned is that downtown street grid lacks a hierarchy right now. Broadway and Main and Market are kind of competing north-south routes. Douglas, first and second, also competing routes. And what we've seen as a sign of success in multiple communities is designating an east-west and a north-south arterial as signature streets. And so those streets in our community were identified as Douglas Ave and Broadway. We spoke with our city's traffic engineer who told us that Douglas Ave sees about half the number of cars on Douglas Ave that it has capacity for. And the reason for that is that we built the Kellogg flyover. So when people are crossing between East and West Wichita, they can use Kellogg, whereas Douglas can be used as a destination to downtown rather than through it. We hear frustration about the, you know, asynchronous traffic lights and, you know, that's by design to make sure that people are spending time downtown. But our current streetscape design does not reflect that. So we've over budgeted our space for cars on Douglas Ave. And there are opportunities to afford other modes of transit some of that space. So as we look to Douglas Ave redesign, what was proposed is to reduce from two lanes of traffic in each direction with a center turn lane to one lane of traffic in each direction with a center turn lane. So three lanes total. By reducing the total width of Douglas Ave by two lanes, that gives us 10 additional feet for sidewalk and bike space. So that means that when you're walking with your children along the sidewalk on Douglas Ave, you will not be run over by VO scooters. or bicycles, or have to compete with sidewalk cafe space. Our sidewalks are being used by multiple populations, which is a great thing, but we need to provide more space so that every party has their lane, if you will, including dedicated bike lanes. As a sample of what that redevelopment might entail, this is a view of Douglas Ave looking west from Emporia today. And a proposed sampling here would be to shorten the distance for our crosswalks, have these kind of islands of refuge that we've seen established elsewhere in the city. have a greater tree canopy. It is hot this week. It's been very hot this summer. And we really lack a shade canopy to make it comfortable for people who are walking and biking and strolling and scootering throughout our downtown district. We have great precedents that we can look to in our community. Again, Douglas Ave and Delano has already gone through a street narrowing a couple of decades ago, and their retail community has really benefited from that emphasis on the pedestrian environment. It seems like every week we're hearing of a new business opening in Delano, and we congratulate them on that success and look to replicate that with Douglas Ave Design in downtown. Looking at case studies from other communities, for example, Lancaster, California invested $11.2 million in their signature street design and experienced $282 million of economic impact. including 800 new homes along their main street. So you can see from left to right how that street was transformed. Also, Greenville, South Carolina has created a signature street. One fun fact from the planning process that we learned was that if you look up on TripAdvisor what the top attractions are in Lawrence, Kansas, Mass Street is number two. Not a destination on Mass Street, not a particular business, but the street itself is such a draw for visitors to Lawrence. Another strategy, activating the river. Right now, we have one front door that faces the river, and that is our boat and bike rental facility run by Shocker Rowing. And so we're grateful for that start, but we've got a ways to go in terms of making sure that future design really faces the river, engages with it, and provides people with opportunities to enjoy it. Starting in downtown shuttle, the queue line used to run every 10 minutes back and forth along Douglas, and so it was a hop-on, hop-off service that people could use to go out to lunch with their coworkers and kind of avoid the heat on weeks like today. Unfortunately, due to funding constraints, that shuttle service has now reduced to at most a 45-minute frequency. Its regular frequency is once an hour, which no longer provides that shuttle-like service. And so the recommendation is to provide a new service that would have a 10-minute frequency. And I'm pleased to share that yesterday, the Business Journal reported that Wichita Transit is going to reintroduce a shuttle service that connects the new hub in Delano, down Douglas, and Waterman within the downtown core. Encouraging new housing to meet our housing shortage. Again, this includes a variety of housing types. Our design team went parcel by parcel through the district and put together a developer toolkit. So if you own property downtown, you can now look up in that kit where your parcel is and what type of housing development would be appropriate for that site. As we look to support some of these day-to-day full-service living amenities in our downtown core, making sure that we continue to grow our population helps to support the very retail services that in turn support that population. So a grocery store, a pharmacy, et cetera. Just a sample of that developer toolkit, some of the proposed housing types that we do not yet have in our community are town homes, row homes, family size housing of three bedrooms or more, making sure that as people age and grow, they can stay within downtown if they choose to do so. They don't have to leave the district when they have their first child and continue to grow their family. And then the final strategy to highlight is creating that cultural loop to tie together points of history and museums and such. I'm proud to report that we have a private sector solution for this one. We applied for the Downtown Rotary grant and were awarded $150,000 over the next two years to begin implementing this four-mile history loop. A sample of potential sites is shown here, as well as blade signage, facade signs, and a digital platform so that you can collect all the sites and compete with your friends on scavenger hunts. Karthalite medallions will mark the trail. This is a uniquely Wichita material made of depression glass and concrete, and we'll be proud to feature that on the historic trail as well. And with that, just to recap Justin's summary, we spent the spring presenting to various City of Wichita advisory boards, from the Ped Bike Advisory Board to the Transit Advisory Board, Historic Preservation Board, the MAPC Advanced Plans Committee, and the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission itself with their unanimous vote to support the plan. excuse me to adopt the plan into the comprehensive plan that was held on july 23rd so what we ask of you today is to vote to adopt the plan into the city county comprehensive plan and that is our next step

Okay. Thank you, Heather. Commissioner Beatty won't speak here, but I wanted to ask you a couple questions real quick. The SMID, you're wanting to grow over to Seneca, correct? No. Or you have or no?

No, that's incorrect. We have no interest in expanding the boundaries of the SMID. Those 100 blocks are more than we can... There are plenty to handle right now. What this is just saying is that Given the growth that's happening in Delano, we want to make sure that we're working with our neighbors and not growing one side of the river in isolation.

OK. OK. OK. Thanks for clarifying that. And then also, I want to talk about parking a little bit because Right now, you're saying 48% of the land is surface parking. And what's parking look like today? I mean, obviously, as you take up that density, you're going to want to go vertical.

Right, right. So what we're suggesting is that... One of the areas where public funding can be so crucial to unlock future development sites is for Sedgwick County and the City of Wichita to help build parking garages so that we're freeing up a lot of those surface lots for future development to increase our tax base. I know that there was an article in the paper this week that Sedgwick County is supporting the development of a garage on the former transit center site. And that's exactly the kind of action that's recommended in the plan of consolidating our parking onto limited sites so that we can have more things to do, more places to live, more entertainment in our downtown.

Commissioner Brady, that's good. Heather, thank you. I'd also acknowledge Jeff Fleur from the Greater Wichita Partnerships here, too. Welcome. Appreciate all the work from the partnership and the Downtown Wichita Board. I've got a comment, a couple questions, and then a final comment. But I was the county representative for a couple years in the Downtown Wichita Board, and now Chairman Blubaugh is now the representative. I learned a lot in this process. just about urban design, urban planning. And I'll acknowledge, publicly acknowledging, when we first started talking about the Broadway corridor transformation, I was always a little skeptical. And then I traveled and I got to see other places. I got to see Des Moines. I got to see Bentonville. I was recently in Vail, Colorado. I got to go to, obviously spent a lot of time on Mass Street, a lot of time on Mass Street. And then Oklahoma City, Norman, all these places. And I would acknowledge, based on the information we were being provided of what their downtown corridor looked like, comparing that to Douglas Avenue. And I quickly began to notice a difference and became a fan of some of these things and the environment and the vibe that it would create. There are some things that are missing in the downtown Wichita plan on purpose because it's not part of the comprehensive plan, but I think it's important to acknowledge. There are two projects in the pipeline happening now that's roughly $700 million of development happening, 25 years of planning compressed into about a five-year period, one being the biomedical campus happening, and the other is the movement music project and the revitalization happening there. We're looking at roughly $700 million plus of investment happening right now. Can you comment on the impact to downtown Wichita? There will be an obvious impact. Does it change the plan at all? Because this is a significant investment happening that we've all been waiting for.

Yes, thank you for an excellent question. So I'm pleased to report that as the plan has been developed and we've shared out results of the iterative planning, community engagement processes. Our development community has come to us to say, what did the community say they want? How can we incorporate that into our plans? So both of those developments that you're talking about, both south and north of Douglas, have been working with downtown Wichita as they develop their scope. So the grocery store that Movement Music announced stemmed from this plan and that identified need. The open space, the up to two acres that they're talking about, creating kind of a public-private environment there. That stems from the identified need for more open space in the downtown. The affordable housing component that the Shirk Mirror Apartments are incorporating stems from that market research. And so we're proud to collaborate with our private development community. And they have sourced several of their ideas directly from this process.

That's great. I could ask a dozen questions, make a dozen comments, but I think here, leaning into what's happening, we share a planning department with City of Wichita. There are things that we do throughout the county where Wichita probably chooses to stay in its lane and not talk about what's happening out in the county. And there are opportunities also when what's happening, particularly in downtown Wichita, where we try to give... priority to the opinions from the Wichita City Council because this is obviously part of their scope, more so than what we do here. But they did make a specific change and they removed the word new, you said, about performing arts. Can you just help us understand? We do see that in our potential motion languages. Help us understand why that change was made and why we should support that change.

Sure. There was an impression that the language in the plan stating that we would advocate for a new performing arts center was indicative that the performing arts center at Century 2 would be decommissioned. I will say that impression is not supported by the language in the plan. There was never a statement that the performing arts at Century 2 should be or would be decommissioned. There's just an acknowledgment among our performers in the community that our current facilities do not meet their needs, and that a new performing art center would meet industry standards.

OK, that's helpful. I will gladly support. I appreciate all the work. I remember when you threw this thing out to bid and how excited people, I mean, everyone was calling. worldwide global companies calling to do work here on behalf of this plan and how exciting that was to know the attention that was coming here. So I will appreciate the work you've done, all the work and the entire board in particular. Thanks for this and thanks for the work of that consultant and I'll gladly support today. So thank you. Thanks, Heather. Commissioner Meister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thanks for the presentation. And the chairman asked about, I was curious if there was any desire to expand the Schmidt District, because we both are very familiar with it. So you all entertained that thought. Otherwise, which is fine.

We've actually never discussed that. Yeah, that's not a priority. We're very happy managing our 100 blocks in the Corps.

Yeah, okay. Well, and thank you. I know that Jeff Fleur is in the audience with GWP and what between that organization's supporting downtown wichita with all the things you've been doing thank you for bringing the uh idea of uh whatever your your clean clean team that's awesome i i on purpose try to walk both ways whenever i have meetings and it's just it's noticeable and same with the with the flowers that gwp has been the flower pots that they started a couple years ago with private donations. Those are some positive steps and just make you feel good about stuff. quite a plan and I think Commissioner Beatty was right. We as the county have to respect the wishes of the city and what you all are doing and try to be supportive whatever way we can. But it is your and the city's decisions on these things and prioritize. So I respect that and I'll be supportive as well. Thank you.

Commissioner Howland, but Commissioner Howland, I do want to say the same thing about the clean team. I mean, it's impressive seeing them south of Kellogg or south of Douglas going down to Kellogg. I mean, especially back there, you've got construction debris and stuff. They're doing a pretty good job keeping it up.

Thank you very much. I'll pass that along.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Heather, for the presentation. Can you remind me, when did this document start the process of developing this?

Sure. So fall of 2024 was when we put out the RFP for the design team and started with the market research updates.

And you had roughly 1,000 people engaged in three different events, 50 pop-ups or whatever. Can you please describe that again?

Yeah, so that was between March 4th and September 24th of 2025. We held three very large community open houses. We held three pop-up events to go to community events. And then we held more than 50 stakeholder meetings that were topic-specific.

Do you feel like this document was revised based on some of those meetings? Was there an effort to simply pivot the document a little bit and tailor it based on information that you learned at those meetings?

Absolutely. So it was a three-phase process. immerse in the kind of status quo and the current data. They called it ideate and iterate. So looking at what we learned from the previous open house, testing that information before the public at the second open house, getting their feedback, and then What was the last step? Basically, just kind of confirming the information at the third meeting that the initial thoughts that were presented, the amendments that the public made at the second meeting were all rolled into the third meeting.

So I do, just a couple of points here. A lot of this planning, a lot of this implementation is going to require a lot of, you mentioned public-private partnership, but in terms of public side of that, what's your intent for funding the implementation of this plan?

Yeah, so adoption today would make the elements of the plan eligible to go through the CIP process. So adopting the plan associates no funding with any items in the plan. It just makes it eligible to pursue that public funding process that any other infrastructure project would also have to go through.

So right now there's no intent, there's no plan to do anything like a countywide sales tax or anything like that?

No.

That's not being discussed? Downtown Wichita would have no control over that. Okay. All right. Very good. And the timeline for this, it looks like implementation is basically the next step. So once this is adopted by us, I suppose we're moving on to implementation.

Yes. And private sector implementation has already begun. So we have about nine of the actions in the plan that we've already checked off the list. And we're just asking the public to come along.

One of the things I think that is on the minds of many people, I think people in this room, including myself, one of the things that's on our mind right now is how we're going to address or solve or impact our homeless situation downtown. And again, you could put a lot of money downtown. If you don't solve that problem, it's still going to be... It discourages people from doing some of the things I think you're envisioning in this plan here. So we have to deal with that. And I'll just say this. There's only five mentions of the word homeless and four of those in the same paragraph on page 114. It's really not a major theme of this plan. It's barely mentioned. So I'm concerned that this plan is not really... Focused on that as an issue that may be one of the larger issues. It's not really reflected in this plan today.

I will say this is the community's vision. We heard very little from the community about aspiring to continue to be a concentration of unhoused activity and so this is an aspirational document for where we want downtown to go. That being said, I hear your concern and I will say one of the questions we got from council yesterday was, why are you saying that the Clean Team will grow from three full-time members now to 10 full-time members in 2035? Part of the reason for that is that the company we contract with called Block by Block offers a variety of services, not just cleaning. They also offer homeless outreach personnel. They offer landscaping personnel. So as we grow the Clean Team, we would be able to incorporate some of those other uses that help to address other community concerns.

I would say, Dylan, I went to several city-to-city tours in my time here, and I remember Nashville specifically, and I think Raleigh was the same way, but they had a similar team that early in the morning they would essentially sweep the downtown and go through and just kind of make sure everything that was picked up, the trash was taken care of. If someone broke a bottle on the street, they would clean that up, for example, or whatever was happening so that our presentation to our visitors would be a good experience rather than something they might take home that would be considered a negative experience. I do think that's important to make sure our downtown is welcoming.

Yeah, and I also don't want to lose the fact that our clean team is often the first person to engage a member of our unhoused community when they wake up in the morning and they offer them water, they make sure that they're doing okay. And so in an unofficial capacity, we are already very much providing care for that community and making sure that we're respectful of their space.

Okay, so one other question. Did you feel like there was any, I read in here, it looked like there was 0% likes this entry to the way it is and 75% wants something different. But I would imagine that there may be some people who would be in the middle on that discussion. So they might say, I'm not happy with the way it is, but I don't want to bulldoze the building. I don't necessarily want to repurpose it. I want to fix it. Did that conversation happen in your discussions?

Yes, absolutely. So throughout downtown, we've seen great examples of adaptive reuse. We've seen vacant office space converted into housing. We've seen the Masonic Temple was used as a music venue for a while. And so as we look at adaptive reuse for civic resources as well, You know, we currently have a vacant former central library that's being converted into, you know, partially into an event space for ASM Global to use in conjunction with Century Two. You know, the idea is that Century Two itself can reinvent itself, whether that's, you know, the community groups that we already see using it, like Ray Alana's Children's Consignment Store, Automobilia, Riverfest. You know, there are countless community uses that already are leveraging that public resource. So it remains to be seen how the community will choose to use Century 2 going forward.

Just to be clear here, I will support the plan primarily from what the previous commissioners said. I think exactly the right thing. This is downtown Wichita, and I respect the city council and really the process that got us here. So I don't love everything in the plan. I think there's some things that I would love to be able to change personally, but that's not my city. I actually live in Derby, so... At the end of the day, I think we all have an interest in this, but I do want to respect the city council and the process that brought us to this point. Having said that, I see the plan is asking for a convention center. It basically lays out the idea of a new convention center of around 400,000 square feet. Am I right about that? Yes. And it also talks about performing arts as a new venue, and it actually lays out some suggested locations for these new resources, if you will. I don't, I just want to share my personal opinion. I actually do agree completely that the new performing arts is needed. I think that having that, especially on the river, would be an amazing thing that we ought to have in this community. I wholeheartedly embrace that. But it just so happens that the roundhouse or the century two that we have today is out of date and it is needing something. But it is 400,000 square feet at the corner of Douglas and the river. And if there were a way, and again, if it wasn't there, I would imagine that new convention center would be on that same spot. But this is pretty political, and there's a lot of folks that don't want to see that building go away. So the split the baby solution is to repurpose the building and build a new convention center somewhere else. I would just like to throw out there another idea, and that is let's consider, and I'll just say this, I know it's expensive. I know there's a center column, but I think there ought to be the discussion about fixing the building to make it a 400,000 square foot convention center, modern, with modern sound, modern electrical, vehicle access, configurable, that has, if you will, the elements of the current building, but have a modern building. I think there's another option that we ought to take a look at. In my opinion, if we were to propose that idea, the people who love Century 2 that don't want to see it go away might get on board. To me, that is a way to maybe move us forward. Because right now, what I see in this document is we have a spectrum of people on far ends of the spectrum. People who want new and people who hate the Century 2 that want new. And there's people out there that love Century 2 that recognize there's some issues with it. but don't want to see it necessarily replaced. And so is there a way to take the convention space, the 400,000 square foot that's on that spot, and essentially modernize that building to become the modern convention center in exactly the right spot of our city, which is Douglas and the River. I love that location. The question is, how do you get there? I know it would be expensive. It may be less expensive than the plan that's described here, though. And the question is, if we were to find a way to satisfy both ends of the spectrum, that might move the city forward. I've been here. This is my 12th year. And I've had these discussions all the time I've been here. And yet I feel like, you know, with several sales taxes under consideration that didn't go well, I think part of that was because of this underlying issue. It's just we don't have agreement amongst our city about whether this is the right path. And so how do you move the ball forward? I think you've got to address the fact that we have people on opposite ends of that spectrum. And I think, again, if Performing Arts wasn't part of that building, that was its own brand-new building, and you take that same spot century two and convert that into a real modern convention center, do whatever is necessary to make it configurable, updated sound and lights, updated vehicle access, having inside the building things that are necessary to make a convention center work well. I'm just wondering if that's a way to bring the two sides together. And no one, as far as I know, is really talking about that as an option at all. That's really not on the table. What I'm seeing on the table is leave it alone as is and do nothing, which I don't think anybody loves that idea, or to replace it with something entirely different with a very expensive cost. I just propose that as a Jim Howell. I'm always in my own little world, apparently. I present that as a Jim Howell idea, just as something that you want. So with that, I do support the plan. Thank you so much. Commissioner Wise.

Heather, thank you so much. I'll be quick. I really wanted you to be able to share this plan. We have different people that pay attention to our meetings that pay attention to the city of Wichita. So to give you another platform to inform more people what you guys are working on, I know you're new-ish to Wichita, and you're actually fully... into the downtown Wichita. So you're living the life and you're sharing your personal perspective as well. I just have a couple of questions. You may not have the answer, but maybe they're probing questions that either give you a way to introduce us to something new or maybe there's an opportunity. But within downtown Wichita, are there ever any grants available for new businesses to buy into this vision and start new businesses downtown? Or are there resources that you could point them towards? Rather than, I know there's CID, that's an option for developments, right? But I'm talking, this is your boutique retailer that wants to come downtown. This is your vendor that wants to set up hot dogs on the river, as you've kind of painted that vision for. What opportunities are there out there for those business owners?

Yes, thank you for asking. So in November of last year, we hired my first full-time staff member. Amara Kniep is our business engagement specialist, and she is your go-to person for all business concerns as it comes to downtown. She has a great background in business support from her previous role in a statewide network. And so if you want technical assistance, if you're looking for loan information, If you want to know about various support programs for businesses, she is your starting point and clearinghouse for that information as it pertains to downtown.

Awesome. And then second, so this gets implemented. What are the next steps for downtown Wichita or GWP? How do you get this vision out? Outside of our city limits, are you attending ICSC, which is a retail convention in Vegas? Are you going to the ICSC in Dallas to get maybe some of those retailers closer to our market? Where do you guys go from here?

Yeah, we really see ourselves as sharing this vision, especially with our commercial real estate community, to make sure that they're armed with it when they go on these visits to engage directly with our commercial community. prospects, right? Whether it's a retailer or an office tenant, we want to make sure that they are armed with the market research, the vision, you know, kind of the community proof and the pudding that these are uses that we want in our downtown. You know, again, we were able to share information with various downtown developers who have been pursuing grosser relationships and help support those conversations that they're having.

Yeah. And you do. You arm them with a lot of information. And I think, you know, I'm in the commercial real estate family. I think that we do a good job selling, which Todd, but you guys do it better. And so I would encourage you to look into what it would take. I mean, we see how you represent us on the aerospace side when you go to the International Air Show and we're a really big deal up there. I think we could be a bigger deal at some of these market events. driven, uh, retail conventions, uh, for lack of better term. Um, so I would encourage you to employer that you guys do a really good job and we can only do so much, um, you know, uh, with our platforms and you guys do it for a living. So I'd encourage you to look at that.

Um, I can't, I can't take credit for the work of the greater Wichita partnership. Um, my, uh, my, my shared office space tenants, um, you know, our, we partner very closely and they do excellent work. representing us on the regional and the global scale. But absolutely, there's opportunities to partner with them as they help to spread that message.

Yeah. Well, thank you very much for being here. Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Heather. At this time, I'd like to ask if there's anyone from the public that would like to come up and comment about the plan. If so, you'll have five minutes. Just please state your name and address. I was hoping we'd hear from Mr. Block One.

Just going back in history a little bit, Jeff. Jeff Fleur, president of Great Wichita Partnership, 505 East Douglas Avenue. I really just want to say how we're thrilled with the work that downtown Wichita has done on this master plan. The thing I think is important for our community to understand is that we're building on a previous plan that had a lot of success, but this plan will take us into a whole other tier of economic development, which is what it should do. One of the things this community has done underneath your leadership and others in the private sector is really look at economic development holistically now as a region. So downtown to the regional perspective and the region to downtown's perspective. And I think that's really positioned us uniquely in that opportunity to develop this city. You know, we've had a lot of great conversation this morning. One of the things I love about Blueprints or Master Plans is that They really are a living document. It's a blueprint. There's new dynamics that come in today that will shape a decision. However, what happens with a master plan, at least you have a perspective to take when you make those decisions. What's the market research that's been done around housing, commercial, hospitality? What is that market potential? And then working with the development community or working with you as well, how do we unlock that? There was a conversation point about the biomed. If you go back to 2009, Project Downtown did not envision an osteopathic school. It did not envision a biomedical center. It did envision the biomedical corridor. However, what it did do is it laid the foundation to create the opportunity to have that opportunity as a city to see that type of investment in the future. So you think about how did it do that? The walkability of Douglas from Old Town to Delano. Think about the Kansas Leadership Center. There is an example going to block one where the public sector did infrastructure, the parking garage. It unlocked the opportunity for the Ambassador Hotel and the Leadership Center to be built in the same block. And now Niche is viable as well. When the Leadership Center was built, that was the first new building on Douglas Avenue in the Corps in 30 years. The last new building was the one we're in today, which was kind of crazy to think about, but that was the reality in that moment. The master plan also helped us secure Cargill in the future. As you remember, back in 2016, so 10 years ago, there was the real threat that they were going to move to Plano, Texas. And actually, Brian Sykes would tell you, who's now the global leader of Cargill, they were pretty well going out the door. However, the community rallied around the master plan and where downtown was going, and it was convincing to Cargill to say, you can be a part of our future, and this is how you can shape it. The other things it's allowed us to do is get IMA. Look, IMA is back in the core. Again, a viable commercial interest. The other thing it's helped us do is activate the public spaces. So you think about NASCAR, Gallery Alley. Union Station, Chester I. Lewis. The new master plan will continue to build upon that. Heather talked about the activation of the riverfront. Very critical as we go forward. From our perspective, the partnership is charged with increasing industry depth, the expansion of existing companies, but also the attraction of net new. So a master plan of this nature helps us do that. So a couple of examples of that is that NovaCoast has now got their global headquarters in this building. It used to be in Santa Barbara. If you ask Paul Anderson why the decision, there's several reasons. One is certainly the McConnell Intelligence Division is a talent pipeline for him. But he also recognized the city with a vision. And he understood how their company could fit into that vision. So, very successful attraction of a company from the West Coast. Nomadics from the East Coast. They were in Virginia. I was with Paul this last weekend. Extremely excited about the future of this city because he understands, as a business owner, where it's going and how Nomadics fits into that. The other is Block Digital. So, we talked about international. Block Digital is a company that we actually recruited from the UK during the air show. They see promise here as well as the air capital, but also as a thriving city. So we're excited about what's happening. You know I can get very excited about urban development, regional development. This plan puts us on an incredible trajectory going into the future. Our goal is, as always, is to work with the public sector to say, what is that key investment you make to unlock the opportunities of the private sector? Because they're really raring to go. And one of the reasons for that is that we have local banks still. And so, again, that helps us make decisions quickly and move expeditiously. So thank you for the opportunity just to express the partnership support of this. It was unanimous with our board to say let's go and make these things happen. But also we appreciate your support of it today. So thank you. Thank you very much, Jeff.

Would anyone else in the public like to speak? If not, bring it back. Any other comments from commissioners?

Questions? Okay.

Well, I would like to move that the board adopts the findings of the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission and adopts the Downtown Wichita Action Plan 2035 as an element of the Wichita Central County Comprehensive Plan, but the modification to reflect the City of Wichita's change in removing the word new from reference to the Performing Arts Center. All this replacing and repealing the present project downtown, the master plan for Wichita. This motion also includes authorizations for staff to craft a correlating resolution, signatures of the resolution, and authorize the resolution to be published.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. Any questions? Okay. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Commissioner Meitzner. Aye. Commissioner Beatty. Aye. Commissioner Howe.

Aye.

Commissioner Weiss. Aye. Chairman Blubaugh.

Aye. The motion passes 5-0. Next item, please.

Item H, CIP Amendment, MCH and ADF Elevators.

Good morning, Chairman and Commissioners. Andrew Dills, Director of Facilities here to present on the Maine Core House and Adult Detention Facility Elevators CIP Amendment. So facilities maintenance, we're responsible for 34 elevators in the county and county-owned building and operated buildings. We have a combination of traction-type elevators and hydraulic-type elevators. Basically, the difference there are the traction elevators use ropes, a motor and a counterweight to move the cab up and down. They're usually found in buildings that are six stories and above. Hydraulic elevators use a fluid-driven piston to push the cab upward, typically found in buildings six stories and below. We have a five-year comprehensive maintenance and repair contract. that covers basically 98% of anything that could go wrong with the elevator. There are some components that aren't covered in that. Some of the components that are covered, when they become obsolete or they require a modernization, a redesign, replacing their equipment that goes beyond just a plug-and-play situation, that goes beyond routine maintenance, those items are something that we would pay for typically out of our maintenance budget or it's made into a CIP. Here is a schedule of our CIP going back to 2018. So this shows a little bit of the history and what we've done most currently and what we're looking at here in the adjacent or near future. One thing I want to make a comment on, when I was looking at these numbers, kind of brought to my attention that we really need to adjust what we're looking at in the future for what we've budgeted for our CIPs on these elevators, because they're just a lot more expensive than what we had anticipated. And I'd like to look at the proposed 2027 elevators. Right now, as part of our forecast for 2027, we had planned on three elevators at the main courthouse. This would be the elevators in the lobby. There's six of them. So this year, we're planning on doing three. Next year, we're planning on doing the remaining three. Most likely, we'll be in a similar situation today, next year, when we're looking at the three elevators on the north side. And then we've added two elevators at the jail because those elevators are very critical to the operation of the jail and something we'd like to start design on this year. And then once we understand it a little bit more on the cost, do those elevators come back to you next year and look for funding for the construction cost on those? Today, we have a CIP amendment that will take our existing budget of just over $685,000 for the three elevators at the main courthouse, and we're asking to increase it almost $800,000 to cover the low bid for those three elevators. The low bid is just over $1.2 million, and we have just over $200,000 in permits, plan review, and project contingency as part of that, bringing our total to just shy of $1.5 million. It's part of that that I mentioned in the previous slide. We'd like to start looking at design for the elevators at the jail. And part of that is because it takes so long to get through one of these modernizations on these elevators. And we're kind of playing catch-up a little bit on some of these. And so we'd like to add $100,000 so we can get design going on those. It'll basically bring our total increase to just shy of $900,000 for a total budget of just shy of $1.6 million. Kind of looking at the low bid, categorizing those, we have a significant chunk going to our elevator portion. The elevator portion that's going to include new controls, new drives. The machines consist of motors, a gear case, a worm gear, a drive sheet of electromagnetic brake, brake coils. clutches, cable car ropes, door operators. And you think of a door operator, each floor, when the door opens, it's four different operators. You've got the cab side, you've got the lobby side, and there's a lot to those components. So we did look at, we had a conversation about what the codes were adding to the cost of these elevators. And We have some rough figures here that was affiliated with the 2019 code that was adopted in 2021. The two-way AV communication for each cab brought on an additional $7,000 to $8,000. We also had a 3D infrared door protection that was approximately $900 per elevator. I can't speak to some of these codes in a lot of depth. We have Chris Labrum and Mr. Chris Nordick here with MABCD. They can help if there are specific questions about this. I do know that the 3D infrared door protection, that is something that... When the elevator is closing and somebody sticks their hand in the elevator to try to get the doors to open back up, this is designed so that you don't actually stick your body parts between the doors that are closing. It senses you as you're approaching and will open the doors. The 2022 code adoption. that happened in 2024 added pit ladders at approximately $15,000 to $2,000 per elevator, and then also added lighting in the hoist way. That's kind of a shared cost. The elevator side, you know, it's going to depend on how tall the building is, right? When we're looking at this, we were looking at the courthouse, which is one of our tallest buildings, and it's approximately $3,500 on the elevator side to run that car, and the electrician is basically on top of the car, going in the shaft, installing lights. I recommend approving the CIP amendment to increase the 2026 budget by $896,971, and I will stand for any questions. Okay. Commissioners, what questions do you have?

Mr. Ralph. Thank you, Chairman. I appreciate the presentation. I'm just wanting to understand, at the courthouse, are we planning to replace all of the elevators in the lobby area?

That is the plan. Today, we only have three elevators as part of this CIP. The plan is to come back in 2027. We'll receive additional funding in 2027 to do the north three, but I do anticipate a similar situation to what we have today where the funding that is planned is not going to be sufficient.

So if I understand correctly, what's approved right now is $685,000. Well, let's round it up. So is it $686,000 to replace those three elevators? That's what we have approved today? Correct. And what's it going to be when we're all said and done with these amendments? What's the price going to be per elevator, roughly?

At a rough guess, it's going to depend on the elevators, how many floors they serve, the type of elevator. But at a rough guess, what I am looking at proposing is probably budgeting $600,000 per elevator going forward.

And I believe I'm aware of at least seven elevators. There's six in the main lobby. There's one other for... That one may have different access to where it goes. But anyway, there's at least seven. I was going to say seven times this. We're talking... $600,000 times seven. Am I saying that right? It's rounded up to roughly $5 million. There's a roughly $5 million adjustment to do this. Right now, we're planning for basically less than, well, again, just for that courthouse, we're talking about we're planning less than $1 million, and now we're basically going to be up closer to $5 million. So that's why this is before us today. It's a huge change It's not even in the ballpark. We're far, far from where we ought to be. Of course, this is, again, for three elevators. That's not fair. I should probably double that for the six or seven. So we're probably going to go for maybe 1.5 to do the seven based on those, extrapolate this out, about 1.5 to close to five. So it's roughly almost a tripling, if you will. Of the costs. So that's why I'm here. What I wanted to know was how much of this cost is tied to these updated regulations that we're dealing with. Again, I presume, maybe I misunderstand this, but I presume this is basically removing what's there today and replacing it 100% with brand new.

It is not quite everything, but it is everything that is basically behind the scenes of the elevator that has to do with the operation of it.

And so, again, let's be clear. I know there was an email sent out. I wanted to clarify. I'm not asking to not take care of these elevators. We're not asking to do something that's going to create risk or liability. We obviously need to maintain these elevators. They have to be in good repair. They have to be... in good operation, but even a brand new elevator at some point will fail in some way. It'll have to be repaired again. These electromechanical devices, a lot of sensors involved, things happen, and so even though they're brand new elevators, at some point someone's going to have a problem with it. Do you agree with me on that? Absolutely. Because that's what happens. I think every elevator at some point has an issue. And Lord willing, there's lots of things in place so no one gets hurt. But elevators don't necessarily operate perfectly all the time. They require adjustments and maintenance and things like that. So whether these are new or whether these are refurbished, the standard of having safe elevators is the same. My question was, even though these are old, is replacement the only option? Do we have any option of, if you will, upgrading these and modernizing these without, you know, you could essentially update the interior, for example, update the cables, update the pulleys, update the motors, update the control panels. Those are all things that are something that could be done. The shaft itself may not need much. The rollers might need to be replaced. The guides might need replaced. What I'm wondering is if there's a way to refurbish this for a more competitive price rather than replacing it. If we've not done the due diligence to answer that question, then I would like to slow this down and maybe have that conversation or that thought. Go ahead.

Absolutely. Our maintenance agreement covers us on all those rollers, all the components that wear out. we are covered by that agreement. And so what this is doing is when we have an elevator go down and the parts are obsolete, and this happened to us a couple years ago at Historic Core House, this has happened to us today at the main core house. We have an elevator that's down and we're having to use it for parts to keep the other five going. So what happens is when these things, when these components go down and they don't have a replacement part, it's not compatible with the new parts are not compatible with the old parts and we get in a situation where we we have to close an elevator and and we can't keep it operational at that point and that's that's why this cip was put together was to try to prevent us from getting them getting in that situation have we talked to any companies about you know upgrading these to make them more modernized parts like sensors and motors and things like that that would make this more maintainable

versus simply trying to find the same form, fit, and function of the old elevators like the old motor and the old control panel. I'm not suggesting we keep the old stuff and never modernize it. I'm suggesting is there a way to modernize it so it becomes more maintainable without basically doing a total replacement.

I'm not aware of that option being available.

Okay. Well, anyway, that's the reason I hit pause. Again, all we're doing right now is authorizing a CIP amendment. I don't know that we have a vendor. Has this been bid out already?

It has. So the low bid is the lowest bid that came in, and we actually valued engineer what we could out of that bid to try to reduce it as much as we could.

So our path is defined. Once we do this, our path is done, at least for these elevators. For these three, correct. Yeah. Well, really, it's not just these three. There's actually more. There's three, six, seven. There's 13 elevators here. Am I not seeing that right?

This CIP amendment today will cover the cost of the low bid for the three elevators at the main courthouse. That's all we're doing right now. It will also give us some money so that we can start the design for two elevators at the jail. Okay.

Well, obviously we need to go forward, so I'll support it. But I just would like to, again, I know I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, but we often talk in government, what would you do if it was your own money? And that's my position. I would do everything I can to try to find another way to do this because that's a huge amount of money. And getting brand new is an option, but it's not the most affordable option. If there's any other option, I'd like to know what those other options are. And I'm not sure that we actually... how hard we worked to look for other options. I'm not saying we didn't. I don't know. I'm not trying to condemn anybody or anything. I'm having trouble with this idea of that much money for something that, frankly, it's got a lot of sticker shock to it. All right. Well, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Commissioners, what other questions do we have?

Well, I would like to make a motion to approve the proposed capital improvement program amendment increasing the 2026 public elevator upgrades project budget.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any questions? Okay. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Commissioner Meitzner. Aye. Commissioner Beatty. Aye. Commissioner Howe. Aye. Commissioner Weiss. Aye. Chairman Bluwa.

Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Next item, please.

Budget discussion.

Chairman, I don't know how you want to handle it. I think we have a couple of presentations, but I think commissioners also have some items they want to talk about. So your choice on how you want us to handle it. We could have Lindsay go first or you will let commissioners react and then we'll react to that. Lindsay, would you like to lead it off?

I'm always delighted to lead things off, Chairman. Lindsay Perverso, your CFO. Lorien Showalter-Ayer, your budget director, is here in the audience, too, and so we may be calling on her for some help. So the first thing I think I would like to address is the fact that in your budget book, and as you had heard, we have a parks CIP for two floating docks. We had said, when we briefed you all on that, that we would only move forward with that CIP project if we received a grant. We just received notice that we are not receiving that grant. And so I know that at least one commissioner had mentioned that as a topic to discuss, but we will have motions for all of you on Budget Adoption Day. You don't have to technically remove it from the budget. Because it says if there's no grant funding, we're not going to proceed. But we will have language for you to strike that from your budget that day. So that's the first update I want to provide. The second update is on our... And actually, I have copies for you. Please bear with me while I pass out some materials. Entertain yourself.

Okay.

So what we're going to talk about now is what Commissioner Wise had requested earlier, and that is some options for how we can essentially take our non-property tax revenues, our non-tax revenues, in fact, in general, and display that information in terms of how much revenue is coming in relative to the amount of expenditures we have, I think focused primarily on the general fund for now, for things like Holter and Rec and community development so that we can demonstrate to the public in a very clear, transparent way what exactly we are using, how funds can potentially be used to support those expenses. Now again, money in the general fund is fundable, but I do think it's helpful to be able to illustrate those two factors together. So what you have in front of you are four examples as well as some notes that explain the examples in terms of how we could try and present this information. by Lee McCray.

Did my mic just cut out? Are we doing okay?

All right. Lee McCray and Carly Sanchez are two of our principal budget analysts in the budget office. So my thanks to them for working diligently on this along with our friends in ERP. So the first one we're going to look at is an example of a graph comparison with narrative that could be included in either our monthly or quarterly reporting. I going to jump ahead to the final slide and basically say that they recommend that we do this on a quarterly basis. Again, because on a month-to-month basis, there's just really not going to be that much activity. So I think when we see these options, that's one of them. So what you can see on this particular slide here on slide, or on slide two, And I think we're going to get this PowerPoint maybe pulled up. And if not, we will get it loaded into the documents so folks can see. I don't know that the public's going to get real excited about this. It is very small. Just put your get better glasses. It's fine. Well, get better ones. I mean, you can shake your glasses at me and go get better ones. Okay, so what it says on this graph is it's a comparison of general fund revenue, non-property tax, to general fund expenditures in culture and recreation and community development. And so what you can see is a darker blue bar graph that says in small font, 2025 revenues. Next to that in a lighter blue, it says 2025 expenditures. So you can easily see a visual just quick snapshot that the revenues that are coming in from these sources are much greater than the expenses we have for the same. And then if you go to the red columns, I'm sure they didn't do this because I'm a KU person, but I'm excited. So you can see that there is a red bar chart that is for 2026 revenues and then the same lighter red for 2026 expenditures. And then if you come over to slide three, what you'll be able to see is basically a narrative description of that with additional details. Then if we go over to slide four, there's a slightly different way of looking at the same information, a different line graph, exact same content, just a different way of displaying it. In this case, though, what you'll see is this one focuses on community development. as opposed to culture and rec. So we would be able to break it down by those different functions. So then if you go over to slide six, you'll see it's the same thing again. This time it's for culture and recreation instead of community development. Then if we come over to slide 8 or page 8 in your packets, you'll see that we could create what you are used to seeing. Example 3 is a budgetary account page. Oh, thank you. Look at that magic. Good job. I'm just going to let Nicole run the show here. Thank you, Nicole. Okay. So I'm going to jump us ahead a little bit here to slide eight. And this is our example three. So again, the first two were charts. This is more of a standardized format that we already have in your budget book. Or I'm sorry, not your budget book, your quarterly and monthly financial reports. There are different pages throughout. Within your general fund, you have a page that shows you all of the revenues and all of the expenditures aggregated for the general fund. And then there's a detailed set of pages that, by department, list out, for example, county commissioners, you would be able to see the budget for personnel, contractuals, commodities, equipment, transfers. You would be able to see expenses year-to-date and then the forecast estimates. So the idea is that we would do something similar to that Master General Fund page, except only the departments in Culture and Recreation and Community Development would be shown there, and only non-property tax funds would be shown there. So if that's a format that you already like and use, as opposed to the other examples we looked at, that would be something we could do. And it would look something like this. And then finally, this is maybe a little more technical, and I assume is going to be one that the commissioners aren't quite as excited about, but we do have something called a business intelligence launch pad, which is in our SAP suite. And so what we would be able to do is create a custom report that could be emailed to you. on a routine basis. Again, the challenge there, I wouldn't say the challenge, the only potential downside to that is, of course, it's designed to go to commissioners or internal. It's not necessarily an external facing report. So we could create that. That could be something that you get on whatever frequency you want along with any other materials, but that's an option. So you'll see the final slide here basically says we do think it should be a quarterly basis. And if it's just for informational purposes, then we think we've got some good options for you embedded here. And then another option if you want to get more granular and detailed at a commissioner or internal level. So with that... Commissioner Wise, I hope some of these options maybe meet your needs, and if you have a preference on what you want, we're happy to proceed with that in the next quarterly or monthly report.

Well, thank you. You guys put this together pretty quickly for us to look at. My goal here, just for the other commissioners to know where my head's at, is we receive pressure on both sides, whether it's you know, don't support or cut all the, um, the fluff is what they would call it spending. Um, and then we have the others that say, we want to see you invest more into central County park or take care of, um, some of our cultural, um, arts. So, um, I think what I was looking to demonstrate to the public on a quarterly basis is that we do have revenues coming in that are covering these costs. And, in fact, those revenues are probably funding some of those core services as well when we have shortfalls. So I like visuals. I think by having this quarterly, we can tell a more in-depth story of where some of this discretionary money is coming. both received and spent, and what those balances could be at the end of the year. And then when we face discussions like the arena, could that fall into this category? So that was where my head was at, commissioners. I'm a bar chart kind of girl, but I can... you know, see what the other commissioners like better. I'm not going to be picky on that, but I think that it would be helpful information if we receive this on a quarterly basis. And thank you again for getting this done so quickly to the budgeteers, as you call them. Lorian, thank you.

Thank you for putting together the analysis. I'm just trying to... understand is this include facilities? Does this include... Okay. So that's what I got. I don't want to be misleading at all to the public. I want to make sure that, you know, if this is my business, if I own the Sedgwick County Zoo, how much... Am I getting into the outside cost, whether it's facilities, whether it's manpower, whether it's an elevator, whether it's anything that comes up like that? I want to make sure that we're being as transparent as possible. And I know you're trying to do that as well.

So I think if it is being paid currently out of that departmental budget, then yes. And so when there are these unique capital improvement projects and things like that that are cash funded, that will be in the departmental budget. But what you're talking about, so I'll use Extension as an example. They live in the community development section of the budget book. They also have a program specifically, a budget for them in our facilities department. So yes, certainly that could be something that we look to do in these charts is to go out and find those ancillary costs in the other parts of the budgets and include those so that it's all inclusive and add some caveats. So that's a really good point, and we're happy to try and incorporate that if that is what the commission is after and if that would be useful. Okay. Commissioners, what other questions?

Commissioner Howell. I apologize. I missed some of this. Can you just back up to a couple of these charts here for fun? For example, we would do page seven. It shows me expenditures for two different years for parks, zoo, and community programs and exploration place. And then there's a line graph. Why is the line on that chart?

So the line just simply shows you for what the... So the blue up here says that it's your 2025 expenditure level. So you're going to see that for Sedgwick County Parks in 2025, it was less than a million. It's the same for 2026.

Let me interpret this then. That means that for the... the number was almost identical because those dots are almost on top of each other, correct? And then for the zoo, the blue dot is a little bit higher than the red dot, which tells me there was an increase. The line doesn't show me a trend between those two things. The line is misleading to me because it indicates that something's changing from a low number to a bigger number, but really these are unrelated. Other than the fact that they're both in culture in Iraq, The dots matter. Again, maybe a bar chart for the parks would be better to show the difference from year to year. But the line itself, in my opinion, is trying to tell me something's increasing. And then it shows me something's decreasing. When I go over to the... community programs. The reality is on that community programs, the blue dot's a little bit higher than the red dot. But it's not trying to tell me that from the Zeus spending to the community programs, we have a large decrease. That's not what that chart's trying to tell me. It's what kind of says there, but that's not what it means.

Well, and I mean, I can understand your perspective. I think that's why we've tried to insert these lines here to try and show that we're talking about different contexts and then maybe trying to put in context the different levels of funding for each of those. I understand your concern and I understand how you would look at it. I think it was just an option that we were trying to put forward. Again, we can do any, all or none. We can go back to the drawing table. I think what Commissioner Wise is saying she finds most useful is this example one.

I do think the dots are useful. I just don't think the lines are useful. The lines are misleading to me. I'll just say that. And, again, only because of the... It's hard to see the detail. When you put those together on the same chart, the numbers are so strikingly different, it's hard to see the detail between year to year, what we're actually talking about. So if they were on separate charts, you might be able to zoom in a little bit on the y-axis and see those a little bit more clearly. Okay? The intent of this, I guess, is just to let us know where the money's going. This is how we're supporting culture and recreational parts of our budget. Is there anything else to this?

No. I mean, Commissioner Wise had said she would like to see those non-tax revenues... relative to our discretionary spending and so this was we were trying to come up with good options for you all to consider in terms of how we can illustrate that to commissioners and so that was the purpose of this exercise was to provide that additional context that the commissioner asked so you see non-tax revenues you do what do you mean specifically i mean literally non-tax revenues non so if we well i don't know if we've got it broken out in here So it would exclude things, your current property taxes, motor vehicle taxes. Sales taxes? Yes. So all of those literally non-tax revenues. So we have a category called 3100 in our system. So we basically would take anything that's got a tax line in it in the general fund, and that would not be a part of what is being compared here. It's literally any non-tax revenue. Okay.

I have a budget book in front of me. Is there a place in the budget book you would be able to indicate that would show me that?

Yes. So let's go back to your appendices section. Bless you. And if you go to page 791, which is the very first page behind the appendices tab, you'll see the list of, when I talk about 3100, you can see all the 3100s listed there. Those are not included in this figure. Okay.

Okay, so what is included in this figure?

If you flip over, page 792 and beyond, everything else. Go from page 792 through...

So state and local grant funds would be part of that, non-tax?

Yes, but again, this is only in the county general fund. So you're not going to have many of those revenues coming into the actual general fund. Those will mostly live in grant funds. And we can put together a comprehensive list, too. If this is something that the commission wants, we can add additional details.

I guess I presume this was going to be something more about sales tax transparency, but that's not what this is at all. This may be very useful data, and I might really appreciate it once I learn how to use it. I'm sorry. I'll wait. This may be useful data, and maybe I'll really appreciate it once I learn how to use it and how that changes any decisions we have to make here, but I'm not quite sure what the need is that's driving this presentation specifically.

The idea here is just giving us something that we can utilize to inform the public. I think, you know, on my page and I saw on yours yesterday, we're getting comments about Sedgwick County Park and are we going to invest in it or, you know, the zoo, whether or not we should be putting more money into that. And I think that what I'd like to see, and this could just be me, and if it at all confuses to the public or to the commissioners what we're trying to do here... That's okay. We don't need it. But it's just display that we have revenues that are paying for some of these discretionary things and that not all of this is property tax supported. I think that it's a very... telling description of how we're managing our money, both property tax-based mandatory services versus income-based discretionary services. So this is just a tool. This has nothing to do with our budget. There's no strategy behind it other than if it's a reporting addition that we can have on a I would appreciate it if others don't see it. I can just go see Lindsay and break it down with her each time.

Thank you. To those comments, some people are advocating for more spending or less spending, for example, at the Central County Zoo. I think what they're referring to probably is our property tax support to the fact that those are our employees out there. We have... an obligation to take care of the buildings and pay those employees. And so that's what's in the budget. And what I'm wondering, just going back, so to those comments, when I hear them, I understand what we're talking about there is how we spend tax dollars, their money, taxpayers' money for the zoo. And they may not realize it's Voter approved that caused this to happen and that we have ongoing commitments to that zoo because they just may not understand the background of that whole discussion. We're not just being generous to the zoo. We're actually paying for things that we own and our employees. Back to this slide here just so I understand a little bit better on that slide on page seven or slide seven. I'm just going to guess at these numbers here a little bit, but the 2025 expenditures on this chart are, let's say, around $5.5 million for Sedgwick County Zoo. That's through second quarter. That's through the second quarter. So those expenditures... That's from our, that's from, what is that?

That's actuals. That is actuals through the second quarter. So basically they took the content of your second quarter financial report that was just prevented a week or two ago. Right. And they showed what had happened through the second quarter of 2025 versus through the second quarter of 2026, which is exactly the same content that's listed in your quarterly financial report. It's just shown differently here.

But my point is, this is expenditures that are being borne through tax funds. This is tax dollars.

This is the general fund only. And so I think that's the purpose of trying to show, if we go back, if we look at the prior slide, for example, here's expenditures. On the blue, here's revenues on the red when we back out the property tax. And so it's able to contrast and show that expenses are much less than the revenues that are coming in. So I think the purpose is to be able to show that we're not necessarily having to rely on property tax to cover the costs of these expenses. I think that's what Commissioner Wise is trying to illustrate to the public. is that we don't necessarily have to rely on property tax. We can essentially show that we've got these other revenue streams coming into the general fund that are enough to cover these expenses. And if I'm mischaracterizing anything, Commissioner, please correct me.

So that shows roughly, again, in 2026, it's going to pick them up around $75 million in revenue without property tax.

That's what we've already collected through the second quarter are those revenues. That could include everything like your gaming revenues, your investment income, the sales tax. Well, any of those non-tax revenues, mortgage registration fees, all of those things that flow into the general fund is primary revenues.

I think what's confusing me on this slide is the title because it's talking about cultural recreation, but that's not what that is. That's what this is.

Well, you're right. No, these are actual expenses. I understand. This is expenditures through the second quarter for culture and recreation. But you're right. The revenues are not just revenues collected by culture and rec.

My point is this is everything that's in our budget and expenditure, the entire county budget and expenditures, not just culture and recreation.

For revenues, you're accurate. For expenditures, that's not accurate. Expenditures are only capturing culture and recreation expenses in the general fund on this slide.

I appreciate that. I apologize for my confusion.

You're fine. I mean, we're throwing this at you for the first time here. That's why I think we like this one, because you can do that quick and easy comparison. Here's those revenues that we just talked about. Here's the expenses. Here's the revenues for 2026. Here's the expenses. And so I think that's why Commissioner Wise is saying that one might be the simpler one to use because you're right. There are some intricacies and details in those other ones. I think they're good options for us to think through. But I think for understanding the purpose of what we're after, this might be the easier way to do it.

I think that chart's actually very good. Yeah. So what we're discussing today is just that charter.

It could be any of them. You could pick any of them. And I think what Commissioner Wise, and I think maybe you had to go to the restroom, but I think she mentioned that example one is the one that she would prefer to move forward with. And so you can see on example when we've got the graph and then we have a little bit of narrative here that we can add to flesh that out. And so our intention would be to add that into the narrative of your general fund section of your quarterly financial report and then to potentially add this or a variation on it to each of the quarterly presentations that we do to you.

Well, just for the discussion's sake, I don't know if this will make people happy or not to see this. To me, it doesn't necessarily scratch the itch. I think at the end of the day, I would like to see an assignment, if you will, an assignment of sales tax dollars to where does that money go specifically? What does it do in our community? Because those dollars have a little bit more tolerance, I guess, from the taxpayers that sales tax dollars, if they fund the zoo, versus property tax dollars spending in the zoo, people might feel differently about that. So if we would assign sales tax dollars to cultural recreation to say that we know where those dollars are going specifically, that might make people a little bit happier about what we do here. That, to me, is not what this discussion is today. Right. All right. Thank you so much.

I think we can certainly have that. continue that conversation. I know you're right. That is something we've brought up several times. But I think for today, it's just trying to get that reporting function. So that was this item. Next, I have Lynn Packer, who would like to talk about his July 13th email to you. And then I think we'll have maybe an alternative thought to think through in a little bit. But he technically sent that email July 13th, so I'm going to let him come and talk about that. Real quick, related to the Northwest Expressway. Then we're going to jump to the different commissioners. And you guys can duke it out who wants to talk first.

Calling Chairman, Commissioners. For the record, Lynn Packery, Director of Public Works, County Engineer. I wanted to make sure it's been brought to my attention that there might be a little misunderstanding with how we have allocated funds for the Northwest Expressway and moving forward with the study that's kind of in limbo at this point. So I wanted to clarify, per our previous email and individual conversations with you, Right now, what is being proposed is no funding for the Northwest Expressway in 2027. We had no funding go this year. There will be no funding next year. Our partners, the City of Goddard and the City of Mays, understand that. We are no longer in a contract with them, so they are bypassing 2027 as well. What we did is, obviously we did as of last year have proposed funding that was going into the Northwest Expressway. What we've done is move those funds into three other projects that we have determined this year that are going to fall short of their funding. Those projects include a District 4 project on Ridge Road from 69th to 85th. that was looking at being about $150,000 short. So we went ahead and put that money into that project. We have a District 3 project on Pawnee from 135th to 151st. That was going to be about $225,000 short. due to some right-of-way and changes along that route that were not expected. And then in District 4, we have another project, a bridge project, that's going to need about $365,000 to shore it up. That comes to about $740,000 that we're going to use basically in place of funding the Northwest Expressway. We have about $900,000 in our reserves right now. We'd like to have a little over a million dollars in that account. So if we were to go into next year and use that money some other way, we would deplete our reserves entirely, almost entirely. We don't want to do that. So we took the opportunity to fill these. We know we have projects coming up in 28, 29, going forward that are also going to end up being a little bit short from what we recommended a couple of years ago. Inflation in the construction industry just continues. Right now it's at about a 30% gain, and we can't keep up with it. And so we know we have more projects coming up, but we were able to shore up those projects now for 2027-28 with these projects. Are there any concerns or questions about that?

Lynn, I want to specifically ask about, tell me where exactly the Northwest study is now?

Sure. So right now, KDOT and the consultant that they selected basically had some issues early on with a subcontractor and contracting. That pushed what was supposed to be due really back probably any day now, ended up pushing that out about four or five months. And they just last month entered into a notice to proceed that allowed the consultant to move forward. So now they're projecting a completion date in early first quarter of 2027.

Okay. Can you tell me, what are we doing, or is there anything we're not doing we should be doing to advocate for Wes Kellogg? Because Commissioner Wise and I were talking about this before the meeting. I mean, we've got to put an emphasis on Wes Kellogg, but I think everybody agrees that's the most important of all these projects out there.

we did start with an advocation for that project at last year's end of in october 2025 at the local consult with kdot along with northwest expressway also west kellogg which intertwine they we advocated for both projects i know the city of wichita now is they have most of the design done it's just a matter of advocating for uh getting funding into the construction pipeline. Right now, the construction pipeline under the current bill is, in fact, it's overfilled. So we're really advocating for funds in the next bill's construction pipeline.

Okay. Commissioner Weiss?

You kind of started off with my question. I wanted to kind of replay what has happened with Northwest Expressway. I've been disappointed and kind of feel a little bit misled with KDOT's intentions to do the study and really tell us if we should be putting money into that project yet And I just think strategically, you know, that West Kellogg does need to happen before we can get to Northwest Expressway. So I want to be strategic. And do I need to be focused on West Kellogg and really boisterous about that first and maybe be planning on some investment there before we get to the Northwest Expressway? Because I think... I'm behind it, and I support it. I think we need it. I think it's further down the line, and I think that some people get lost in that asterisk comment at the end of all of the conversations. But I also understand that if we spread our attention amongst two projects, maybe we lose a little bit of momentum there. If you look at the last 20 years, KDOT hasn't had much investment in the west side of Sedgwick County. Now we're seeing, I mean, the city of Wichita, Mays, Goddard, they're all investing. We're investing. We're doing road projects. But we need West Kellogg. So I guess... What do you suggest our focus is? Because I don't want to sit and wait. And, you know, we thought they were going to be done soon with the first study. I'm glad to hear that they've actually entered into a contract now. But we thought that was happening all along until, what, April? Yeah. When we found out. We weren't really told that that was never started or happening.

That's correct.

So I'm just frustrated, and I want to be a good team player. I want to be strategic and make sure that we get the investments to the two fastest-growing cities in Sedgwick County is Maize and Goddard. Fielding a lot of questions that aren't road-related, I do get a lot for West Kellogg, and I live there, so I can join the pity party sometimes, too. But

I will just say that two things, really. Number one, Wichita is the lead on this project. This is going to be an extension of their expressway, which is right now from 119th Street out west all the way out to K96 out east. This is going to be a mile and a half extension, maybe even two miles in the end. of that expressway. So they are the lead. And I think the best thing we can do is to follow their lead. Right now, they have the majority of that project designed. It does need to be refined a little bit. And then, like I said, in this current bill, there are no funds available. We need to wait for the next bill to come down and try to advocate at the next, which will be in 2027. advocate at the next local console with KDOT for how we want to do this. There's a lot of things coming up in our area between the canal route, West Kellogg, the second phase of K96, the current phase of East Kellogg that are all out there that are all going to need funding. And probably the most important one, in my opinion, is going to be the canal route. That's a... a project that involves that entire, all those are actually multiple bridges that are going out there. They have a finite life left, and KDOT has strategically started that conversation early so that in about 10 years, we're ready to act on that. That is not going to be an easy project to implement. That's going to be a very difficult project to implement. You thought that North Junction was a headache. That's going to seem easy compared to what we're going to get into.

So if you don't mind me jumping in here, and this is years of frustration, not with the county, but 2014, 2015, when I was at the city, we were going to do 119th, 135th, 151st. We had that in Wampo. All that went away for the North Junction. Then Kellogg keeps going east. And I just feel like West Kellogg is going to become a stepchild over. And I... I know you're saying wait until 27, but 15 years has gone by, and there hasn't been anything much more done to West Kellogg other than pulling the 111th light out there.

I will note that my understanding is West Kellogg has been in the design phase for a long time. It has been designed more than once. at the city side, the one thing they've never done is they've never gone to the construction pipeline. Because up until this point, and really not even at this point, has West Kellogg got to the point of needing to be enhanced. And I say that as a Westsider. I'm very familiar with out there. But I would love to see, you know, I think they're projecting a bridge over... Kellogg on 135th is going to be six lanes wide. And those would be gauge separated. I live near that area. I'd love to see it. But I also realize that right now, with the exception of about two 20-minute periods during the day out of a 24-hour period, is about the only time you're backing up. And when you back up, you're not backing up very much. We are very, very fortunate in this area to have very good traffic flow. We rank number one Of the 100 largest cities in the U.S., we rank number one in commute times.

But wouldn't that be the same in these other locations, too? They're only backing up a couple times a day.

You will find, in the case of the canal route, that's a matter of that infrastructure having a finite life. Not about the number of traffic it's taking, just it has a finite life. With what you're doing out in East Kellogg, there is in Andover, that is carrying more traffic than we are carrying out west. And is it with K96 as well. It's currently two lanes each direction, two, three. We're looking at widening that out again.

And I appreciate everything they're doing over there, but I'm more focused on Wichita and Sedgwick County than I am Butler County. How do we get in the construction pipeline?

And that's going to be really when the local council comes up next year. It's taking that opportunity to advocate for that project. I know that the South Central Transportation Group is going to be looking at advocating for that project, along with others as well. We have a list coming together. our northwest excuse me arc 95 is on that list as well um so we do have a lot of projects to advocate for but we understand that our list is 20 plus years long it's not in the next five years okay um and i'm jumping back to northwest expressway again is there an opportunity to

Hopefully they're looking at another plan, because I'm just not convinced that the plan from 35 years ago is going to be the plan that we want for the effective connector. Or is that just how we go forth with the study? No, not at all.

In fact, what really is going to happen is once we get that study back, another group, a third-party group, is looking at an economic study of that area that should be out here soon. late summer, early fall. We're going to have that study. We're going to have KDOT's study with the fundamentals of Northwest Expressway. But it's basically looking at the general location, not the exact layout that was put out there 25 years ago. It's going to look at that general area. You know, maybe right now we're showing a connection that's going to be between 161st and 183rd. Excuse me. It's going to be out there just to the west of 183rd or east of 183rd. Maybe that needs to be pushed out a little further west. Maybe that's what makes sense now. What made sense 30 years ago obviously may not come into play now. Maybe it does. Maybe we had the crystal ball out and we hit it just on the nose. We're going to find out and we're going to go in that direction.

And I'll ask again what Commissioner Wise asked. And I know it's difficult, but are we taking, with the Northwest Expressway conversation, are we taking momentum away from West Kellogg?

No, not at all. The idea being that whether we're talking about West Kellogg, Arc 95, the canal route, and Northwest, we're trying our best, and we're doing it at an early junction, where we're trying to get those in. Currently, they are, and I want them to stay at different facets of design and construction so that we know that we've got one, two, three, four, and they're not overlapping, and we're not having to pick between them for which one goes first, second.

Okay. I kind of jumped in there on you. Do you have any other questions? I'm good. Yeah. No, thank you.

Okay. Commissioner Meisner. Thank you. Thank you. Back to your original, I just want to understand your original comments. So these three projects that you're shortfalling, you said a number of 780,000, but it

So we have a total of $740,000 that we are moving from 2027. What was originally proposed for 2027 Northwest Expressway, we've moved that money over to those three projects to fill those in to get them fully funded in 2027-2028.

The previous years of $1 million is not relevant.

That's not even a play. Right now, we do have a placeholder in 28 and 29, and I think maybe even 34, Northwest Expressway funding, assuming the best thing. It's easier to take money away than add back in later on. We've kept it. If we find out next year, we've got to go a whole different direction with it. We've got that funding that can go into existing projects.

All right. Thanks for clarifying. Thank you. Commissioner Brady. Yeah, Lynn, thank you so much for this. A comment and then a question. I think it'd be really helpful if Brett maybe came and briefed the commissioners on some of the conversations around the South Central Transportation Coalition, some of the preliminary conversations we've been having. Wes Kellogg is a big part of the conversation. It is, and for very important reasons. And I think everybody in that room agreed. Pete, you would agree as well. Everyone agreed it needs to be elevated and a big topic for local consults. So if Brett maybe can help in that conversation I think that would be useful for everybody to understand because City of Wichita has taken the lead. Gary Jansen gave a presentation about the West Kellogg expansion and what they want to do and other things. So I think it would be helpful for all the commissioners to hear that. Second point is I fully support what you want to do here at Northwest Expressway. I share in my frustration as well. for a 30-year frustration, really. I think what we need to do with Northwest Expressway is finally get some resolution of what is or isn't going to happen or could happen and what the mechanism could be. And this is what that study will provide. This community has invested over $20 million into this project with no, it's a bridge to nowhere right now. And 40% of the right-of-way has been purchased. And the whole community between Commissioner Wise and I's district is sitting there with their hands up saying, well, where are we going with this thing? And it's just absolutely asinine to think that we've thrown this much money at this with no plan. It's crazy to me, frankly. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing.

I do want to know, you know, we've always had a plan for Northwest Expressway. And they had the best of intentions back in 2006 when this all started with the overlay and funding.

but it just dragged on much, much more. You know this as I know this. The plan has been there, but on the back channel, we have all the whispers, this will never happen. Meanwhile, Sedgwick County taxpayers were worth throwing a million dollars a year at this thing to buy right-of-way based on the agreement. Yes, you have a very... We need finality in where we're going. The funding mechanism is different. Nobody's asking for a shovel to be in the ground tomorrow. Nobody expects that. But we actually have to have a plan that we can actually move towards, and that's what we're going to be asking for. I'll be having that conversation next week with one of the governor candidates, too. So they absolutely understand the emphasis from me and my district that we need a plan. And we're enough jacking around with this deal. I completely support. I want to be clear, though. The million dollars we were given toward Northwest Expressway, the last two budgets, we reduced to $750, and $250 went towards ARC-95. That's not going anywhere, right? No, that's still there. So we're just talking $750, correct? Correct. I fully support what you're trying to do here.

Technically, it's $740, but, I mean, it's...

It makes sense. I appreciate the thoughtfulness, and I appreciate the capacity to use those funds in a more productive way this time.

Very good.

Commissioner Hill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So a couple questions. You talked about a reserve fund a minute ago. Where does that money come from?

That money is from when we have projects that don't utilize the full budget. It's pieces and parts that come together over the years that allow us to put into a single fund project. money that's left over. We utilize that for exactly what we're facing up here. We end up with a project that needs to come up on us last minute that we didn't have time to plan five years out, or we have projects that need additional funding because of something that's found during construction or during design that was unexpected. We do try to keep about a million dollars in there. They have the same side on the facility side. They have a reserve funding that allows them to dig in when they need to. Recently, we have been as low as $250,000. We've never hit that low a threshold in the past, so we're starting to build back up and get that reserve.

Do you ever spend money out of that that doesn't come before the commission?

I'm sorry?

Do you ever spend money out of that reserve?

No, they go into either existing funds or new funds coming up in a CIP, and everything is done through a CIP amendment, which goes through you.

So if you have another project that runs a little short, you just transfer the reserve fund over to cover the CIP amendment?

We will do a CIP amendment to make that happen.

It is interesting to me the three projects that you identified that need additional funds. One of those was the R365 project, which is not until 2028. Okay, we have another budget to go through between now and then we have another budget next year. So if there's a shortfall in that, why would we not just deal with it next year?

We will have, I guarantee you, we're going to have other projects that's going to come up the next year that's going to need funding in 28, 29.

I understand that. I guess my point is we have a budget cycle to anything we need to do, this priority, we would identify those needs and we would appropriate the money through the budget process. This... Again, just to be clear, this was $750,000. I guess it was a $10,000 reduction because of something.

The money we get from Goddard and Mays.

Did that go down? They're not putting into it.

Say that again? They're not putting into the funds. Why? Just like we're not putting our money into the fund, they're not putting theirs in.

Okay. So our $740,000 that we would have put in, we're going to redirect that. And you've identified three projects that would basically be the exact same amount of money.

We tried to make it a concise list that was very easy and not go out and list eight different projects that needed $10 each. Okay.

If we had a need for more revenue to one of these projects and we didn't have the money in the reserve, what would happen?

We would look at, most likely, our first choice would be to go into another project that is due that same year, in this case, 2028, you're talking about, and push that out or delete it, and then bring that funding over in a CIP amendment to you to put that funding into that project.

Has that ever happened?

In my time here, it has not happened. Since I've been here, yes, I have seen projects that have been pushed out to bring those funds available for another project.

Okay. So, again, one of these is a $2.75 million project, Pawnee Street between 135th Street and 151st Street West. Yes. And is that a repaving project? What is that?

We are adding shoulders. We are basically going to calm the ditch. We have some steep ditches out there. We're going to extend those out, improve the safety of that, as well as add a little bit wider pavement out there. It's still going to be a two-lane road, but we're adding pavement. We're also addressing the intersection of 151st and 183rd, or excuse me, 151st and Pawnee intersection with that project.

And then the second one of these was, well, one of these was also B520, which is just your general major bridge maintenance fund. It's $350,000 every year. It's not, it doesn't specify necessarily which bridge. It just talks about putting some money into that.

Correct. In this particular case, we have a project that's been identified. It is the bridge repairs on a bridge located on 53rd Street North between Hoover and West. We are using some funds from this year. We're going to have additional funds from next year. What we thought was initially going to be A moderate project to go in there and get some repairs done. And once the consultant got into it and looked at it closer and what we're going to need for traffic control, the cost skyrocketed on us.

Is this going to be a replacement now?

It is not going to be replaced. It is going to be repaired. It's all it needs repairs at this time. The biggest issue we have, which is 53rd Street, very close to, between Hoover and West, We have a lot of traffic. We're not going to be able to shut that down, and we're going to need to use temporary traffic signals through there to help out with the traffic and be able to do the closures we need to for repairs.

Okay, and then I lost my spot here. The last one of these is R365, is that right?

Yes, you talked about that one. 354, the Ridge Road Shoulder Project.

B354, there it is. And this one is a bridge on 109th Street North between Ridge Road and Hoover Road.

No, R354.

Oh, it's 534. I did it wrong, sorry. I don't know where I'm at.

This is a Ridge Road shoulders from 69th Street North to 85th Street North. We're going to add $150,000 to that. There it is.

Yeah, R365? R354. R354. This book sometimes messes me up. There's not a detailed page on that one for some reason.

Yes, the original funds were due last year. We've had delays on that project due to right-of-way acquisition.

Okay, so...

Yes, that went into the CIP a number of years ago and was due to start construction in 2025. Going forward, the funds are there, but we do need $150,000 more to complete all the funding of that project.

Okay, so is this an emergent issue then?

I mean... define emergent. I guess that's a little bit different for everybody.

If we don't do this, are we going to have to close the road?

It's going to greatly enhance the safety. We did the south half from 53rd up to the Nittescar Bridge or Arkansas Bridge here two years ago, finishing up last year, and this is a continuation of that. Right now, we have basically no shoulders, steep ditches, and a lot of truck traffic.

Well, I don't have any questions for you right now. I am not so sure I... I'll just say this. If it was another million dollars, you'd find a place. Again, there's lots of projects, right? We can add projects to, yeah. I'm not saying it's not something that doesn't need to be done. I'm not saying that. We're not wasting money. But if you had more money, you would fund other projects. I think that's what this is. It's a matter of priorities. If I said there's another million dollars, what would you spend it on? You would say, well, we've got this project and that project and this project.

If we had another million dollars, I'd be adding projects. We're not adding any projects. We're just filling up and funding the projects that are already in the CIP.

And just to clarify, I'm not saying we're wasting anything. It's just, you know, we take on these projects when money is available. And should there be any additional funds available, we might, you know, accelerate some of these projects in our timeline as to when we would get to them. Or, again, as you already stated, there's projects that are more expensive than we initially thought that would get the money from this versus our reserve funds currently. I guess I'm wondering why we don't budget the reserve fund and why we don't appropriate the funds as our budget process. Why is this done through a reserve fund and CIP amendment process? Why are we doing it that way?

So this was built into the policy that you all approved in 2024. It's a way to cover overages and projects because, again, at the time you approve a capital improvement plan, we haven't gone through any of that. the bid letting or any of those. And so what we had decided to do was to set up both a facility side reserve and a public works side reserve. And when we do have overages, which are inevitable, we now have a funding source instead of having to come back to the commission and ask for cash from contingency. So certainly that's a policy decision the commission could choose to say, we don't want to do that. We want to budget it all. We think it's safer to have a funding source when we save money from other projects. We've already spent the money to then use those funds to cover overages and to have a balance available. But again, policy decision for the commission.

I guess my problem with this is it doesn't have as much visibility as I would like it to have. There's a project comes in under budget, and that money ends up in this reserve fund. We're not really voting to approve that. It just happens to sit there. And then we approve a CIP amendment, and when you spend the money, we see it there. But we're not seeing, if you will, the projects coming under budget and that money essentially being returned to the general fund for, again, appropriation to the reserve fund and appropriation to projects going forward.

So the funds don't come ever back to the general fund. They remain in the capital improvement fund so that we don't have to do the inner fund resolutions of moving cash from one place to another. I also think, so you have, for example, and in the, I'm going to pick on the sales tax road and bridge fund because that is a dedicated stream of funding. We wouldn't have the option to return it. It literally can only be used on other projects. So again, policy decision for the commission, but at least on that particular funding source, returning any of that cash would not be an option. Also, we do have a line for that in your quarterly financial report behind that capital projects. So we can start talking about that and calling that out maybe in our quarterly reports, but we do try and provide that information to you all. And I'm sorry that it doesn't feel like we are.

Again, I don't think what we're doing is wrong, so I'm not criticizing the current process. There have been, maybe before you were our director, there have been times where some of that money in reserve was looked at as an opportunity to go spend money, perhaps, and there may be an idea that there was more authority there than maybe what I think we intended as a commission here. So I come from that perspective, and I would just say that If there's money that comes in, money left over on a project, I would like it to be essentially recycled into the process so we have the chance to essentially make a thoughtful process on how much money should be in the reserve fund and then appropriate money for projects. And when something goes over budget, we know we're pulling from a contingency fund or a reserve fund specifically because that was a process that was brought before us for that reason. So it's just another way of handling the same thing. I guess... I don't know. I guess I'm not completely satisfied with what we do. I think maybe we can maybe improve it a little bit. But I have some other ideas on what to do with the $740,000. So I do appreciate your advocacy, but I might be the only one that sees this differently. But I'd like to maybe advocate for something slightly different. So thank you.

Do we have any other questions for Lynn? Any other questions for Lynn? Okay. Thank you. I'd like to ask Kelly Anderson to come up if that's okay. I've got a couple questions to ask her. Kelly, would you go ahead and let them know your official title?

Sure. Kelly Anderson, Executive Director of the Sedgwick County Extension Education Center.

Kelly, you and I have had some discussions back and forth and talking about your request for you'd like to have your funding restored to what it was whenever we stripped it down with core services and Some of the conversations have come up amongst me and some of my colleagues about the ROI. Could you help us better understand the business case for how your dollars go back into our community and try to get us any kind of better understanding of that?

Of course. Thank you for allowing me to share some of that information with you, Commissioner. And I also should say, I'm going off the cuff here today. I'm a little bit unprepared for this, but I'm happy to share that with you. So historically, our budget and county allocation has fluctuated over the years. But from 2014 to 2024, our county allocation from Sedgwick County government was $825,000 and some change. I think it might be $825,486, if I remember off the top of my head. Starting in fiscal year 2024 and continuing, we've seen about a 15% budget reduction from that $825,000 over those past three years. Our 2026 fiscal year allocation was $705,000, and that is the manager's recommended budget for 2027. What that has meant for us is that we have had to reduce our FTEs in terms of agents and program assistance to be able to weather that 15% budget reduction. We've been able to do that through not rehiring most. The largest program that has weathered that reduction has been our 4-H staff and our school enrichment staff. But that does not take away from the fact that we are continuing to see increased requests for school enrichment funding, STEM education, science education, leadership and civic engagement programming going into schools through the 4-H youth development program. But youth are not required to be 4-H to receive our educational programs. programming. So our agents and our program assistants go into schools doing that sort of education without any expectation of those youth then joining 4-H. What I truly believe the value and the impact that we provide to Sedgwick County citizens at the core goes to upward mobility. I think I spoke about that in my quarter one budget update is that what extension does is it is that bridge between the university and the general public. We have a mission and a A core tenet of our mission is to bring educational programs that help people improve their lives and allow them to better themselves through the core topic areas that we provide. It is hard to quantify the ROI of that, but when you see people going through some of our diabetes education classes, when you see people utilizing SHIC services to understand their Medicare benefits through our volunteer base, when we're beautifying the community through our horticulture programs, One of the things you might not know that we do through what one of Aubrey's core programs will be is we provide all of the training and certification for commercial pesticide application in the whole county. So on a random Tuesday at our office, you might see 300 vehicles parked there, all from landscape services that are training on how to use pesticides safely in their work. We do that training in our office. So it's hard to quantify the ROI, but across a person's lifespan from youth, from our parenting classes and our infant development classes, all the way through Medicare programming and programs to help strengthen older adults. We are helping people through their lifespan to live better lives through the programs that we provide. If we could see our budget restored to $825,000, I think that would greatly help us restore the FTEs that we had previously had in the years leading up to these budget cuts. And I've also detailed four other strategic priorities that I had shared with and you in my budget proposal. Those four strategic priorities are increasing our 4-H and school enrichment funding, possibly providing funding for a marketing and public relations type of professional so that we could release the pressure on our agents to be full-time marketers of their programs. I'd like to see a little bit of budget restored so that our people could see a cost of living increase that they haven't seen over the past three years. We haven't been able to afford that with our staff. Oh, and general facilities. As part of our lease agreement with the county, we are responsible for all the projectors, tables, chairs, anything within that facility that impacts educational programming, that's on us to replace. We haven't been able to upgrade that in many, many years, so we're starting to see our rental income in that facility decrease because we haven't been able to. We're seeing some We're starting to see some real aging in that, so we'd like to be able to upgrade the facilities for the public as well.

Okay. One thing, help me understand how these allocations work, because I believe Stephanie Hayes sent an email a while back, or I don't remember how I got a hold of it, but it was like a $10,000 budget for the Sedgwick County Fair. Yeah. And a lot of that was just paying for your judges to come in there. And, in fact, one of your judges, I think, was a no-show, and they had to call somebody in, you know, which isn't good. You've got hundreds of kids there that have worked on our projects for months, and you're trying to get somebody there. And I believe it was only funded to, like, 5,000, and they had to fundraise for the other 5,000? That's correct.

I am not. I don't have a huge depth of knowledge around your allocation to the Sedgwick County Fair. Okay, that's different.

That does not go through your office.

You allocate the money to the Fair Board, and then they allocate money, a portion of that money, back to the 4-H program. to put on every part of youth programming at the fair. And we're not sure. That's something to discuss later. But that allocation from the fair board has significantly decreased over the years to the point that it is not funding the portion of the fair that supports 4-H and youth programming. And I will tell you that no 4-H'er is getting rich. I think to get a blue ribbon at the Sedgwick County Fair pays a premium of $1.25. So there's very minimal. And most of our judges donate their judging fees back to our youth program. And so that $5,000 that we receive from the fair board does a small amount of funding our portion of the fair.

Okay. Commissioner Beatty's got a question. One other thing I wanted to ask that's come up. Have you guys ever looked at, is there ever corporate sponsorship opportunities with the Extension Office? You mentioned the pesticides. Is there an opportunity to work with any of our distributors or anything locally to help out with some of that?

Thank you for that question. I forgot to share a little bit with that. Our agents... spend a significant amount of their time searching for grant and partnership opportunities to be able to do the work that we do. I believe in 2026, we've secured almost $86,000 in grants among our eight agents. And so that's about each of our agents individually, a little bit more or less, depending on that, for an average of about $10,000 an agent. We are currently in pursuit of a Cargill sponsorship as well. One of the things that as an unbiased source of information, one of the things we have to be careful about is we want to make sure we're aligning ourselves with organizations that support support our unbiased nature so the public trusts us to provide information to them that is not sponsored by a corporate entity. So of course we're looking for partnerships and we actively pursue grant opportunities. It's just that we're careful about who we solicit partnerships from. Okay.

And then on the funding real quick, whenever they made the change there around 24, was there an operational change a little bit where we gave you more Didn't we give you more access to the revenues for renting your building or something like that?

I believe our lease agreement states that Sedgwick County helps maintain our facility while we enjoy the revenue from that. I will share just in full transparency, you know, We have an aging building. We have an almost 40-year-old building that is really starting to show its wear and tear. And that has significantly affected our ability to rent that facility. We regularly have complaints from renters about the smell of carpet. paint, things of that nature. And so while we do enjoy that revenue, and I thank you all for that opportunity, it's getting harder and harder to rent that facility to some of the groups that we would like to rent to at a at the prices we would like to rent to because of the age of that building.

Okay, okay. Thanks for answering my question on the spot. Commissioner Brady. Yeah, just a comment more than anything. I just want to, again, we know you're new here, so thank you so much. We think you do a fantastic job, and we're excited that you're the new director over there. You replaced a great director that we all had a good relationship with. And I think you've picked up the torch and ran with it. I would just say I remember these conversations in 24. That was my second budget year. Not only was this Extension Center, but we had to make drastic cuts across the board. I don't think they were dry. I think it was 10%, Tom. It was 10%, but it was across the board. It was Extension Center, Kansas African American Museum, the Fair, Central County Fair, but it was also Exploration Place Capital Improvement. It was the Zoo's Capital Improvement Plan. I mean, it was big. And I remember, and this is a point I want to communicate. Those decisions were made because we had significant challenges in public safety investment. We had a massive 911 remodel and massive 911 restructure that we had to do. We had EMS coming. The sheriff that year, remember, it was a significant dollar increase to stabilize the staffing. It was because of public safety. So I want to tell you what I told your previous director and what I told TCAM and told Exploration Place and the zoo. It has nothing to do with our belief in the value of what you do. It is everything about priorities and understanding that there were significant public safety priorities that we had to address and reallocate funding because we had two balances. The balance is we are a service organization and public safety is the bulk of what we do at Sedgwick County Government. But the second thing is, is we truly believe that property taxes had reached a point to where it was diminishing returns. It was hurting working class families. And so we had to balance infrastructure investment and investment in general into public safety while also trying to find a way to limit the growth of government. So we try to do it in a way and mitigate that with only 10%. But I know you felt it. I know you felt it. I just wanted you to know that it's not because we don't believe in the value of what you do. It's because, and here we are again, we have EMS that we're having to scale to meet these needs. We're going to have to make some compensation adjustments to meet some needs. So again, we love what you do over there. And you have some... hillbillies sitting up here that really enjoy some of the stuff that you do in regards to Ag and some of the things that you do and we are so glad that you're a part of that team But it wasn't because we didn't believe in you. It was because we had to prioritize public safety. So Thank you.

Thank you very much for your time Lindsay, do you have any clarification on any of that or do you think we okay? Okay. All right. What else commissioner?

So, yes, at this point, we are done with our staff presentations, and it's now time for commissioners to talk. I know we have provided some information to commissioners, and it's up to them to choose whether to share any of that amongst the team or if they want to wait for Friday or however you want to handle that. So, Chairman, I'll defer to you to run that, and I'll stand here and take notes and answer questions. Okay.

Yeah, I'm happy to start. Thank you for yesterday's conversation about interest bank arena. I'll just kind of tell you where I feel, where my head's at, is I understand the need for the capital improvement that we're going to have to make there and the cost of that over a period of time. I understand there's a budget request for $2 million. I, and I also understand, and because of the clarity you provided yesterday, I hope the community better understands that this was always going to be projected. This was not a surprise to any of us sitting here. We always knew this was coming. We believe that that was communicated early on when they actually did this ballot initiative, that that reserve fund was always going to run out and we'd have to find another source. Here's my position. I do not want to fund frankly, any cultural arts and attractions via property tax dollars. I want this funded out of a sales tax fund. My two primary goals is to make sure we're meeting capital needs of our asset, but also reduce the dependence on property tax. So I've asked you to prepare a resolution which you have a working draft of that that I think we're going to put some final touches on that's going to basically incorporate the ideas that we had yesterday of using a couple different revenue sources to accomplish that. The first revenue source would be The gaming. This is Commissioner Meitzner's idea. The gaming zone revenues that we're going to be able to use that in the net over from... What's that people? The casino. Forgive me. Yeah, the casino gaming. We'll use those revenues also with investment income to be able to use those and not to use property tax revenues to fund that $2 million shortfall. Here's where I'd like to throw a caveat in. And I'm going to ask you if you can circulate this to my colleagues. I think it'd be helpful. We know that those gaining revenues from the state might change. That runs out in 2032. Is that correct?

As far as we understand, there's some question about whether that was extended or not already. I did not find it in statute, but we can investigate.

Here's my rule here is, and what I'm trying to do is get basically a stopgap, a short-term plan while we as a commission and as a community talk about how we're going to fund this long-term. So- I want to be able to use other revenue sources to do this. So what I've asked you to do is put this through 2032, unless there's another formula or funding opportunity that comes before that. So we can rescind this at any point in time if there's another plan. That gives us some time to where we're saying we're not going to fund this through traditional general fund property taxes, that we're going to fund this through other revenue sources, the two that have been identified. And this is a short-term plan while we as a community work on a long-term, more predictable, different plan for funding. So if you could circulate. You've already given me a draft. Thank you so much. You did that quickly of what this would look like. If you can circulate, make that change maybe to point number five, which would be rescind if there's another option, and maybe circulate that. That way everybody's got an idea of what I hope to propose on adoption day.

Happy to. And I'll run it by Justin one more time before I recirculate it just to make sure he's okay with it. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Commissioner Beatty, for taking a lead on that. I thought yesterday's discussion was very, very valuable, not only for the public, for sure, but for us to have a clear understanding of where we're at, the history, and the options that we have in the immediate future, as well as a chance to really get our hands around permanent solutions going forward. I did get a chance. I stole a glance at the draft resolution, and I think that covers a pecking order of a nice plan. So I'm eager to get my copy for consideration as we get into the final week of budgeting.

We'll make those changes today and get it emailed to all five of you. And so if there's any changes then maybe we can talk about them on Friday too at agenda review. Okay.

Thank you. That's my comment.

Commissioner Howell. Thank you, Chairman. So if anybody didn't watch the staff meeting yesterday, I think that we had a very good discussion. I'll probably repeat myself a little bit today because I think it's what we need to do here. But, yeah, my concern with the gaming revenue is it does have a short lifespan. It's 2032. Right now, we don't know what the state's going to do. And if you think there's some... discussion or decision that's already been made. I'm not aware of that. I'm pretty tuned into this, and I don't know that that's true. But again, Mulvane's in my district. They have the same challenge, right? And the idea of using investment income, I'm not necessarily against that. However, we already use investment income. We already use gaming revenue to run other parts of the budget. So that's what makes us feel better. But really, what this $2 million is an additional cost to our budget we didn't have last year or the year before that or the year before that. This is a $2 million hit to our budget going forward from starting this year. No matter where the money comes from, that's not the question. The question is, this is a $2 million addition to our budget. And what I talked about yesterday was, let's not make that decision today or next week. Let's do something to give ourselves some time to work the issue. I think we have questions to legal regarding transit and guest tax. And other, I guess there's two potential options with that. We talked about talking to our friends across the street, Wichita City Council, because it sounds like they're taking in nearly $15 million or so per year on their guest tax, whether or not that would be appropriate for them to share some of the cost. We talked a little bit about adjusting the ticket prices, at least I did, talk about adjusting ticket prices just a little bit to cover some of the additional costs. And we know that right now the $1.50 per ticket is generating somewhere around $400,000 a year. Could we offset some of this concern? by having at least an adjustment to that ticket price. Would that be $2 per ticket or $2.50 per ticket? Would that substantially change ticket buying behavior? I don't know that it would. Should we not have that discussion? I think we should. And so my point would be that I don't want to solve this today, and I don't really want to say that we should use gaming revenue or investment income to solve this today or next week. I think it's just too quick. So I have a motion I'll probably read next week. It's similar to what, I think it's the same concern we've all had. I'll read it. I don't expect we can have some discussion today. We're not going to vote on this today. I'll make the motion next week. But this is a motion to remove the specific transfer of $2 million from the budgeted transfers to the Arena Reserve Fund and instead reallocate the budget authority to the Operating Reserve Fund. In addition, we direct staff to evaluate options and alternative funding mechanisms for capital needs of the facility, to include conversations with the city of Wichita regarding transient guest tax and tourism business improvement district tourism fees, as well as legal review regarding other options that the county commission could go on its own. To me, moving this money to the operating reserve gives us time. Right now, what we don't have is time. So I'm not necessarily saying I'm against the previous discussion, the previous commissioner, but I don't know that I'm ready to make that decision next week. And so I think pushing the money over to the reserve fund gives us options until the end of the year or later in the year when we have to make a decision for real. So I welcome some discussion, and I have a few other things to chat about. So, Chairman, I'll stop for just a minute.

unless there's no discussion. Commissioner Brady? Yeah, Lindsay, can you just let us know, and you don't have to do this today, I think we're all on the same page that we want to find alternative sources to this. So the use of reserve fund, could you just maybe email us some thoughts as to what you would think that would be in regards to if you have heartburn over that or if that's a viable option for that? I like the idea of using temporary revenue sources It's a short-term plan, knowing that we've got to develop a long-term plan for this that is different. And we have a lot of creative ideas. And I think that does buy us some time as we do have some revenues coming in. I think we're all, I'm not speaking for everybody, but I think we're unanimous in saying we're not going to fund this out of general fund property taxes. And so I do have some heartburn out of doing this out of reserve when I know there's another revenue source that we can earmark that signals to the community what our intent is. Yes.

So there's, and I've shared this with Commissioner Howell, my primary concern is that, and it was something we mentioned yesterday, is the arena, the management company is required to tell us, and we approve within 30 days, They tell us by October 1st what their capital improvement plan is, their operating budget, and their plan for the next calendar year. And then under the management agreement, we have 30 days to respond. So at this point, just based on what we know needs to happen in the next few years, we do not have enough cash in that fund, nor do we expect enough cash to come into that fund. in 2027 to pay for the capital improvement plan that they will put forward October 1st. So that is my primary heartburn with delaying now. From a technical standpoint, the reason we like doing this in budgeted transfers and not necessarily from contingency reserves is because state law and our auditors require us to have a resolution from the commission any time we move cash from one fund to another. And so by virtue of adopting a budget with that transfer there, we've taken care of that part when you pass that resolution. Otherwise, it will take explicit action from this commission to, again, do that transfer. And the operating reserve, yes, would be the source of budget authority, but we would still have to go through that additional action. So just at a high level, those are my concerns. That doesn't mean, again, that it's not a policy decision for you all to make, and we'll respect it and we'll figure it out.

Okay.

Commissioner Wise?

That answered exactly what I was going to ask. I needed a little bit of more information on the cause and effect from your office on what that would offer us versus what Commissioner Meitzner had suggested. So I agree with everything that Commissioner Beatty just said. I think we're unanimous in wanting to make sure that this doesn't come out of property tax funds, but maybe what we are using is the source of supplying what's needed over there. So thank you.

Mr. Hill. Thank you, Chairman. So, yes, wrap this up. Again, if we have no other options, I think using this temporary solution is not something I would not support at some point, but I hate to do that immediately. Again, What Lindsay just described a minute ago means we have to do another resolution down the road to transfer the money back to the reserve fund if that's where we end up. Unless we substantially solve this another way, again, the money would be in the contingency operating reserve. We'd have to make a resolution and pass that back over to the arena reserve fund. to cover the CIP. A couple of other things I would say is I would encourage the interest bank arena to be aware of this discussion, and maybe if there's anything they can push off for a year, I'd say this is not the year to go high. They need to stay low. If it's something that's substantial that has to be done, there's no way you can delay it, it belongs on that list. If they're simply asking for carpet replacement, for example, maybe this isn't the year. So I think we need to have – my concern about doing this through temporary solution next week is I think that becomes our status quo. That becomes our default solution. And I think the conversation falls flat. By pushing this off, we have – and bear in mind, even if we approve the CIP, maybe you're going to say this is not something we should do. Even if we approve the CIP, we don't make that transfer until towards the end of the year. Is that a problem?

January of –

By January 1, we have to make the transfer.

Right. So we require them under the management agreement to get those capital projects done within the course of a year as much as humanly possible because of the reconciliations, the assets, the audits. So that's why under the management agreement, that's why we make arrangements by October 31st and give them an answer one way or the other about a mutually agreeable capital improvement plan. And then we make that transfer in January. We're invoiced for that so that it gives them time to go through their procurement, build in the construction. And of course, it's not as easy for them like it might be for us to do facility improvements. They have to work around shows and unexpected things like that, the thunder season and things like that. So that's why the management agreement was built in the fashion it was.

Okay, so my question would be this. If we approve the CIP plan in October, as it's presented to us, and we don't make this transfer from the Operating Reserve back to the Interest Bank Reserve Fund until, say, December, is that something that we can't do?

So the way it's contemplated now is it would be in the January 2027 budget. So what I think you're suggesting is in lieu of doing it in the 2027 budget, we could do a year-end transfer in 2026 of cash to cover the 2027 responsibilities. Yes, that would be an option. Okay.

So my point is that buys us about four months to have this discussion. And I think that four months is necessary. I'll tell you this. If we do what was suggested previously, this is a property tax increase. No matter how you slice and dice it, that's what this is. Because that revenue from the investment income and the gaining revenue are supporting the budget elsewhere. So if you divert that money to this, it leaves a budget hole that you're going to backfill with property tax. It has the same net effect to our budget. It's still a property tax increase, no matter how you slice and dice this. Unless we find a different source of revenue, that's what this is. So I'm not willing to concede right now that we have no other options. The conversation needs to develop. I want to look at all kinds of options. Talk to Wichita, for example. Talk to legal. Talk to Legends or ASM about ticket prices. Maybe consider renegotiating that contract. There's got to be some discussion that needs to happen about revenue streams until we identify a different revenue stream. If all we do is what was suggested, it might make us feel better. Kind of like saying we're funding culture and rec out of sales tax funds that are currently funding other things in the budget. It might make us feel better, but at the end of the day... And I used the word yesterday, it's rearranging the deck chairs. It doesn't really substantially solve the problem. What I want to do is I want to find a revenue stream that's not what we have today to cover the new expenditure that we don't have in this year's budget. In the proposed budget going forward, we have a $2 million budget. expenditure we didn't have in years prior to now and that new expenditure needs to have a revenue stream that solves that problem if we solve with any existing revenues it simply ends up as a property tax increase i hope that makes sense so again i think my motion is still reasonable because it gives us some time to have the discussion if we end up not solving the problem substantially we can go back to temporary revenues we can make that decision later in the year We don't have to make that decision this week or next week.

Thank you. We're keeping score. There's two viable options here. I think both are viable. I think we can flesh those out, get commissioners more information between now and next Wednesday. The only thing I'd add is that the $2 million is in the recommended budget, which is a balanced budget that we have... suggested to you. So if we change it, if we would go with option one, it's not a property tax increase. You are correct, Commissioner. It is a movement of funds from one to the other, but it's in the budget for 2027. So I would ask as we go through these, we come up, and I'm not hearing any other options. I'm almost to three options where Commissioner Halzett, where we just create other revenue on the fly here with either ticket increases or whatever, but I've heard two clear, distinct options, which I think we can flesh out, and then I'll talk to Commissioner Howell on the side on some revenue, potentially a third option. Let us put meat on those bones, and then we will bring that back to you in resolution form, and then the commission can just make a decision. They're both viable, in my opinion.

So to wrap this up, we don't have to make a decision right now. And by the way, what I suggested, it still leaves you a balanced budget. There's no change in that truth. It doesn't change the bottom numbers. It just where's the money sitting in the budget and whether we have to do something in the future.

I was thinking through it as I listened to you discuss it. If we create more revenue coming in, now all of a sudden we've got... We have a balanced budget currently. If you add more revenue to it, and we can cut something else or do something different, but we'd have to calculate that. And the balanced budget has $2 million going to Interest Bank Arena. Where it comes from exactly is up to the commission, but it's there today, and it's balanced. And if we add revenue to that, then that changes scenarios slightly.

And if that was to happen, I think that new revenue would go to this problem. So it's predetermined that we're trying to solve an interest bank arena long-term maintenance challenge. We need $2 million. If we have a new revenue stream, that's where the money's going to go.

I just want to make clear to the public that The maximum amount of budget authority we have has already been established by this commission last month or at the beginning of this month. We can't go above that. There's no property tax increase in any of these scenarios. We've got to work within our means. So I just want to make sure that the community understands that there can be no property tax increase at this point in our budgeting process.

And I agree with you, Tom. The point I make, though, is that that number includes recommended budget, which is a $2 million transfer from property tax funds to interest, bankery, and reserve fund. That includes a $2 million transfer. So with the mill levies and revenue neutral rate notifications as it went out and everything that's been discussed includes that as the plan. Go ahead.

I do want to clarify, though, we have had this in the forecast for some time. We did have the initial conversation about this at your retreat in 2025. So this has been anticipated, but at no point in that consideration have we assumed that a property tax mill levy rate increase is going to this. In fact, when we have talked about the amount of assessed value we've captured, we've been crystal clear that those dollars are going for compensation adjustments, EMS additions. It's all based on inflationary factors. So I don't want the narrative to be that there's a property tax increase because of this $2 million. There is not. If we were to cut it out when we talked earlier, I mentioned that I would still not advocate for mill levy rate reduction change because we have always considered this in our financial forecast, one-time dollars for this five-year period to get to that $20 million, or the $10 million, excuse me, that's needed in the five years, and that hopefully we will have an alternative funding stream. So I want to be very clear that in our planning, at least on the finance side, We are not relying on property tax revenues now or in the future. We are relying on those property tax revenues to support other components of our budget. And it is things like the fact that we are able to invest at a higher rate and we're able to buy longer terms of investment and get those dollars back. is really what's able to do this. I don't have any comfort level with having to use the general fund to subsidize the capital projects either. I'm right there with you. I would love to find an alternative revenue source. We just have not been able to do that since we first started this conversation.

With all due respect, though, this is a new expenditure to our budget. Yes or no? It is. It's $2 million. Absolutely it is. That's about a fourth of a mil. A little bit less than a fourth of a mil. Less, yeah. $8.1 million is one mil now. Yes, in 2020. So slightly less than a fourth of a mil. And because that's a new budget expenditure that's never been in our budget before now. That slightly less than a quarter of a mil is being earmarked and spent for this specific purpose. If it wasn't for interest bank arena, if this was solved some other way, without changing the mill levy, without changing the revenue, I have no doubt we would find something else really important, like maybe paying off some debt or whatever it would be.

Well, we had $7.5 million of decision packages that were submitted this year that weren't funded. We have EMS that has told you they want to add 80-some positions over the next three years. So, yes, you're right. It's all a matter of prioritization. But we're considering this one-time funding, not recurring dollars that we have to support like we have to with EMS.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm not trying to say it's semantics, but really when we say it's not a tax increase... I'm sorry. From my perspective, it is a tax increase. It's a quarter of a mil. We didn't charge it last year. Now we are. It's because we have a new problem. It's a quarter of a mil. It's not a lot of money. In terms of someone's house out there, let's talk about a quarter of a mil is like 30 cents on a $100,000 home per year. It's not a lot of money, but it still is something. We can't just act like it's nothing. It is something. If we want to solve it, as it was recommended or solve it as Commissioner Beatty recommended. Those are discussions I think that we should have. The question is, do we want to stop the conversation now and do it next week and be done with it? Or do we want to work on this and have conversations for a couple, two or three months and maybe settle in the same direction we are right now? Maybe we don't have no other new options. The question is, do we not want to have the conversation for a few months or do we want to basically just stop the conversation and just move on? That's the question. So... I have a few other things to discuss, Chairman, whenever you're ready. Do you need to take a break? I'm good, unless somebody else needs a break. Keep going. Okay, let's talk about a few more things. I know this is... Probably not even necessary, but I was going to suggest we eliminate the money for the two floating docks. I guess that's something I don't need to do that, I suppose.

Well, one of you will need to. Well, I have a motion.

Maybe this one might pass. Okay. I have a motion to eliminate the facilities project to replace two floating docks at Sedgo County Park. We know that the grant funding application has been rejected. And I would like to reallocate the funding for the grant match from the Parks Department budget to the Operating Reserve in the amount of $22,132. Now, I'm excited about this one because I think this one might pass. I'll second it.

We're not moving it today.

We're not going to pass it today. We're simply talking about it. Okay. Well, I hope you guys are going to be the privilege of making that motion next week. Maybe in my... We're not doing preliminary motions. All right. Well, anyway, I'll make that motion next week. Any questions on that one, Mr. Sherman? Okay. I know this is a principal issue, and some of you are not going to like this, but for me it's a principal issue. For years we've talked about the Arts Council. Again, it's a Wichita deal. There's no Derby Arts Council. There's no... I don't know that $9,000 is going to make and break any organization in this community. There's a principal issue. Again, a few years ago, we cut it to zero, then we added it back in. It was zero for a few years. They survived. I think there's things out there that would use this money. We could redirect this money if we wanted to. That might be another discussion we could probably have. But to put $9,256 into the Arts Council, in my opinion, it just violates a principle in my mind. This is property tax dollars. We hear about people saying you've got to cut spending. You've got to find a way to trim your budget. Well, this is a low-hanging fruit opportunity. I know we like the arts. I know they have a huge return on the investment of apparently billions of dollars. I remember reading that last year when they brought us information about not cutting them. Literally billions of dollars. So I know this $9,000, the ROI is unbelievable. I would like to see us reconsider trimming them to zero because simply we've got to find a way to get our budget under control. This is a small amount of money. It's not going to change the world. They'll tell you it's going to change everything, but I don't think it's going to. So I'll have a motion next week to consider removing that $9,256 and bringing that to zero. That's another motion I'll have next week. Any questions on that, Mr. Chairman? Nope.

Okay. Do you have any questions?

All right, I've got another one I'd like to talk about. This is because I've talked to lots of legislators. The Kansas Highway Patrol hangar, right now, if we do nothing, it's going to move forward. In fact, there'll be some spending this year in 2026 to start this process. And as I've talked to legislators, I think that there is an interest in maybe reconsidering this project from the state level. I think one of the things that wasn't understood by some of them was that there was a hangar already in place. They were under the impression there was no hangar, and this is something that was necessary to create an opportunity or a facility that they did not have. Once again, off my memory, I'm trying to say I think this is like a 14 times more expensive than what they have currently. Today, they're spending a little bit less than $60,000 a year. And the new solution, which implicates us to, again, if they take care of our airplane and that works perfectly, we still have about an $80,000 a year hit to our budget. I don't like that. And we don't have a long-term contract with the state of Kansas. That also is a deficit. But I'll tell you all the reasons why they can't have one. Fine. But we're putting our neck on the line for a 50-year lease on this land and adding money to our budget for the state of Kansas is doing them a favor. In my opinion, if they want this, they should pay for it 100%, and there are legislators out there that don't feel like this was presented in a fair way. I believe this was added as a proviso in a conference committee by a senator, and then it was vetoed by the governor, and then it was overridden by the legislature again, and they did not understand everything. They did not know everything they should have known when they did that. So it was a line item vetoed by Governor Kelly, and it was re-put back in by the Republican legislature. Again, if they had known everything, I don't know they would have voted to do that. So there is an interest in reconsidering this, and what this motion would do is simply put this decision backwards a little bit. because I believe this will be an item of discussion in the 2027 legislative session. This motion, I'll read it. I'm not making the motion today. I'm simply reading what's going to be up next week. I would be motioning that we would shift the Joint Sheriff Kansas Highway Patrol hangar facilities project from the capital improvement plan to the watch list. Doesn't mean we can't do it. It just stops us spending money right now until we know for sure what they're going to do. Depending on the outcome of the 2027 legislative session. This protects the county. I think we ought to be very careful here. So that's my motion, Mr. Chairman. Is there any questions or discussion on that? Okay. Any questions, Commissioners? Talk about this a lot. Okay. Okay. I have one more. This is Project R372, and I know Lynn's still here. Let me go to what that looks like in here real quick. R372. Okay. This is... 2027 only has $100,000 in this, but it gets very expensive. Overall, it's a $1.9 million intersection improvement. And the location of this is 21st Street North and 167th Street West. My question is the $2 million. I think that's so much money. I feel like if we do the CIP as it's been presented, we're essentially greenlighting this project to go forward as is. And I've got concerns about the $2 million intersection that far out of the county. This is out in the middle of... It's quite a distance from the city of Wichita. And I'm not sure what this entails, but I'm assuming it involves quite a bit of concrete, winding of the roads, maybe left-turn lanes, right-turn lanes. I don't know, maybe more than one lane going across and probably steel or aluminum poles. Because to get the $2 million is really kind of surprising to me. Go ahead.

Good afternoon. For the record, Lynn Packard, Director of Public Works, County Engineer. That project is actually just about a mile away from the City of Wichita now. The City of Wichita is quickly growing out in that area. We went to a four-way stop intersection a couple of years ago as a temporary measure. It has done very well as a four-way stop. We did rumble strips in the east-west direction, and we have it in the CIP in 2028. We attempted to get Highway Safety Improvement Program funding for that in 2028, and were unsuccessful last year. We made a run through WAMPO late last year and was granted funding through WAMPO to keep that running. The project moving forward is a 2028 project. Currently, WAMPO has about 52%, I think, in covering the cost of that project. And we're expecting, if we can leave it, over the next year, that funding from WAMPO can increase to as much as 80% of the total cost of the project. going through WAMPO. So we expect to be able to recoup some of the local sales taxes in that project back into other projects. That is something that I believe was... April of 26, we received that word from WAMPO and prepared our CIP accordingly. So what you see in there for the federal allocation is the WAMPO dollars. And then we're expecting those WAMPO dollars to go up. If we move this project or delete it at this time, we will have to report that back to WAMPO. They will take that funding and reallocate it to another member.

So do we have any idea when Wichita is going to develop right there at that intersection? I'm sorry? Do we know when Wichita plans to develop anything right there at the intersection?

They've already, a development in the southwest corner has already gone in. They're working on development on the southeast corner as well as a mile away. They have two developments going in.

So shouldn't this be something that they would share the cost then with not just Lampo but Wichita itself?

We're working with the developers on sharing in that cost.

But we're approving the plan right now, which is $1.9 million, $1.032 million to Sedgwick County. A little more than a million dollars to Sedgwick County.

Yes. So if you go back and look at the funding that we've already put in for design and everything there, what's going to go up and... We're hopeful and very likely we're going to see the federal funding increase and then the local sales dollars decrease.

Do you have in this, and I didn't see it, maybe I'm missing it here, but is there a similar project for 55th Street and Rock Road?

55th and Rock?

Yeah, 55th Street, South and Rock Road.

No, because we don't have any money in that. That is all being paid for by the city of Derby.

Okay, so at some point, they're in the process of developing the southeast corner of that property, and there may be other developments in the future. But right now, the southeast corner is being...

I believe they are constructing that next year.

It's not inside the city of Wichita yet. And what we've had there for about two years now is wooden poles with a cable over the intersection where there's a stoplight. We're controlling traffic with a traffic signal from an overhead cable. What did that cost to do that?

I don't know the cost of that. I know it is significantly less than a traditional traffic signal. We did that in agreement with the City of Derby that we would put up a temporary signal until such time as they could get funding together and working with the developers to be able to move on making permanent improvements to that intersection.

Did you say that Rock Road traffic is higher than 21st Street traffic in this case?

out in this area, 55th Street.

I'd have to look at it. Rock Road.

Yeah, I would have to look at it at 55th Street.

Rock Road is massively busy. It is. It's one of those two avenues into Derby that, frankly, is just... There are certain times of the day it's not that busy, but a lot of the day it is backed up a long distance. I would say that the road appears to be not really sufficient for the number of vehicles per day. We need to find a long-term solution to Rock Road, but we don't have anything in here that I'm aware of.

I apologize. The city of Derby has made Rock Road a safety corridor, and they are working on improvements through there because the crux of the traffic there is up on McConnell and down in the city of Derby. In between what you talk about, like 55th Street, a lot of the traffic coming south really heads off at 47th. So between the Derby city limits and 55th, we do have this lull in traffic.

Well, I'm concerned about us taking on this much of the responsibility at this intersection. Again, I know that if we really just need a traffic signal, we have less expensive options we could do. I know it's nice to do what's probably planned here. It's a full-up intersection, but we're taking the hit. And again, I appreciate WAMPO's support, but you said April 26th, so it hasn't been that long. But nevertheless, it still requires us to put in over a million dollars.

At this time, we are expecting additional funding coming from WAMPO. If we can leave it as is over the next year, we'll get additional funding that will put us on 20 cents on the dollar.

So our cost is going to go down? Yes. So why do we need to approve a million dollars then?

At this time, we have not been authorized, nor does WAMP have that funding. Next year, they will have that funding. The Project Selection Committee will reconvene, and they will look at taking the funding that's available and being reallocated into those projects. All the projects that were approved at less than 80% funding were given the idea that we're going to do our best to get you up to 80% as much as we can. To this date, we have been successful in doing that at WAMPO. If we aren't able to, this will be like the first time or second time we have not been able to get completely to that 80% threshold.

Okay. Well, anyway, I'm not going to talk about the motion right now. I just need to chew on this. But right now, I'm just telling my colleagues that, to me, this one stands out as being especially expensive. And we're taking, in my opinion, way more of the cost on our budget than we probably should. Maybe it's one of those things where, you know, for example, I'm trying to think at Pawnee, 143rd Street, we, you know, Wichita had all the property around that. They're the ones that are taking all the responsibility to improve that intersection. I think we had a small part of it, but basically they took on most of it. So Greenwich and Pawnee is another example where they did that improvement. So I would like to see, is this on Wichita's CIP list?

I will note Greenwich and Pawnee, we were financial contributors in that project.

I know we were contributors, but we didn't do it all.

No, we paid for a portion at that intersection.

That's my point. So is this intersection in Wichita CIP, do they plan on funding this at some point?

This time, no.

So again, I'll leave it with that. I have a concern about that project. Second of all, since you're still there, I'll do this next one here. Last year we had a very robust and maybe almost not the best discussion regarding intersection safety improvement program. I'm still not happy. We've continued to have accidents at intersections where, let me just say it again, we have two paved roads that cross each other, and there's 55 miles an hour in both directions. And one direction has a two-way stop, and one direction has a straight-through no-stop.

Does that make sense, what I'm talking about, that type of configuration?

That is the type of intersection that if someone is half asleep or they're not paying attention or they're on their phone or on the radio or taking a drink or whatever, and they miss the stop sign, it ends up being a very, very bad accident if they hit each other. And this is the type of thing where I think we could do some things to hopefully mitigate that type of accident. I don't want to get into specific details. I've been paying attention of intersections like this that have had these types of accidents. They continue to happen. I mentioned last year I wanted to move some of the money from the Northwest Expressway over to an intersection safety program. We had a discussion, and I know, Lynn, a minute ago you just talked about we had an intersection that did not qualify for the intersection safety program. Can you please elaborate what that was specifically that we did not qualify for?

167th and 21st Street.

What was the program? What did we try to do that did not qualify?

Try to get funding for those improvements at that intersection.

Funding to do what specifically?

To either do a roundabout or a traditional signal.

So let's be clear. I'm not talking about, for me, when I talk about this, I'm not talking about roundabouts. I'm not talking about traffic signals. I'm not even talking about changing from a two-way stop to a four-way stop. I don't want to change traffic flows necessarily. What I'm saying is, what can we do to help the people not hit each other at 55 miles an hour? So when I talk about intersection safety program, I'm talking about doing things such as, again, stop ahead signs, intersection ahead signs, depends on which leg you're on, red flashing beacons and yellow flashing beacons, depends on what leg you're on, pavement markings that might get your attention, and things like intersection ahead or stop ahead. Subsurface rumble strips. Overhead illumination. Ideally, there'd be solar-powered illumination. Larger stop signs up to 48 inches. I'm talking about reflective sheeting or reflectors on the posts of the stop sign. Those are all things we can do to help people not hit each other in the intersection. And I don't know how many intersections are like that across Cedric County or what one intersection would cost. But it seems like we ought to earmark. I've talked about this for I don't know how many years now. Ten years? Let me say that again. Ten years? We're talking about this? Well, last year we had a robust discussion. It did not go well. I was trying to move some of the money or even all of the money to this program, and it didn't go anywhere. By the way, where did that money go last year? Where did that money actually end up? Does anybody know?

It was the Northwestern.

The Northwest Expressway funds. I'm trying to make a motion to move that money to this program. Where did that money end up? Yes. Say again.

That funding remains, to my knowledge, in the Northwest Expressway budget.

Did it get sent to the state? It did not get sent to the state. So where is that money today? Is it still there?

I believe it is untouched.

Okay. Well, once again, I would like to have this discussion. I have a motion next week to create what I call a intersection safety enhancement program. I'll give you some initials, ISEP, just to make that short, and we get used to the new acronym, correct?

If I may, I think I might be able to save you a little bit of effort on that front. And I'm very glad you're talking about those low-cost countermeasures that are coming up. We applied for and received a grant from KDOT for high-risk urban roads in December 2025. The contract came through you guys in April, I believe, or February or April of 2026. in which we are going to use those exact countermeasures at seven different intersections in the county. Four of those are on completely paved intersections that are stop-controlled for two-way. We have two more that meet that criteria, except for they're only three-legged intersections, and another one that the minor road is graveled. The second phase of that HRUR, the high-risk urban roads, comes up this fall. We plan to apply more intersections to that. In addition to that, the current proposed CIP includes the intersection of 63rd and Clifton to make improvements there, which again is four-legged, all paved with a two-way stop. And then on top of that, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, ten projects over the last two years where we have made improvements at intersections that are two-way with, or excuse me, four-legged two-way stop. So we continue to make those investments. We continue to make those improvements at those intersections. We're doing our best to leverage state and federal dollars where we can. They have put... This is something we can also do. There's... high-risk urban roads, and there's high-risk rural roads, so we can also use that funding opportunities in the future for those intersections. We also have the local road safety plan, which includes some of those intersections, and we are ticking off those projects as we can. And we're able to do that without dedicating any funding specifically to this, so that funding is available for other projects. We do those as they come up.

Curiously, how much did the seven intersections cost? What was the grant money? Zero dollars. How much did it cost for the grant? How much was the grant dollars to do the seven intersections? Zero dollars. So how did you do anything without any money whatsoever?

We applied for a grant from KDOT. They provide all the materials we need to do. Our guys are familiar with how to install that material, and we're installing it.

So they gave you the physical resources?

They handled outsourcing it and everything.

Well, I don't know how many intersections are like this in the county, but I don't think seven is the right number. And I'll just say, I remember going out to Lake Afton a year ago to the township meeting. As I drive around out there going down county roads at 55 miles an hour, I'm terrified because there's a two-way stop coming up and I've got to stop. And I always think to myself, if I miss that sign somehow... this could end your life, okay? I should have also added to that, cross-traffic does not stop signs. That's another mitigation you can add. So, again, if you added up all of the mitigations, the beacons and different directions and the stop ahead and intersection ahead, you add all that together, it might be somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000 per intersection, let's just say. We can get a lot more. I want to invest. I want to invest in intersection safety.

That is exactly what we have been doing the last three to four years.

Well, I'm not happy personally with what we've gotten accomplished. I think you may have done some good things, but I don't think we're where I want to be.

It's very important. You've heard me say this before, and I'll say it again. putting up stop signs and even additional measures to stop controls in advance of MUTCD and engineering judgment only creates an increased disregard of those It's well established. It's all out there if you want to read it. But what we're basically going to do is put stop signs out and additional heightened awareness control aspects out there that are going to end up getting ignored because they know they're going to come up an intersection that that's not really necessary. They can go ahead and do a rolling stop or just completely blow through that intersection. We don't want to do that, which is why the MUTCD as well as KDOT and us recommends to work up those intersections from no control to fully signalized control. And to do that under meeting warrants traffic warrants as well as crash warrants, and we are doing a very good job of keeping an eye on that. So far in the last two years, we've touched 17 different intersections in some manner.

Well, I know that's your strong opinion. I know you're completely convinced. If I ask somebody, do you think rumble strips is a good idea to stop someone from going through an intersection? Is that a good idea? Will that wake them up? Will that help them not blow through? The common sense answer is, of course, it will help them.

And that is in our bag of tricks for those intersections. And that's one of the cheapest things we can do, yet we don't do it.

Because we think we're going to have people who are going to get numb to all these, numb, if you will, not notice these mitigations. You know, I drive, if you drive down the same street every single day, and you might get numb to those things because you see them every single day. For people who are unfamiliar with the area, they notice them. I don't know the psychology behind exactly what you're talking about there because I'm not the engineer. But I can tell you that these mitigations are, I think, in the opinion of most people, are steps in the right direction that creates additional safety. And I know that you're going to argue the other way. We can agree to disagree. And I love you as a staff member. You did a great job. But I've been asking for this for 10 years. One of the intersections that bothers me greatly, what was the intersection that Cindy Carter was killed at? I'm sorry? Sidney Carter. What was that intersection again?

29th and 135th.

Was there a fatality accident after that Sidney Carter accident? Not that I am aware of. So? Whose district is that? I believe that is, yes. I believe there was. Maybe I'm wrong. I think there was. And I begged us to do something at the intersection when she died. We didn't, I don't know what we did, but we didn't do what I talked about here.

It's currently a four-way stop. I... And has been since shortly after that.

And, again, a four-way stop. People blow through four-way stops. We did a four-way stop on Greenwich and 79th Street. Bad accident just a little while ago. It's a four-way stop. It doesn't stop necessarily someone from blowing through a stop sign. But the rumble strips and, again, additional beacons and things like that, especially if one way doesn't stop. Again, if you have someone going high speed and someone is in the intersection that's not supposed to be there, it's a bad accident. And I was going to say once again, we have $740,000 that we could use to direct it towards intersection enhancement safety program. Why we don't, we as elected officials, need to get behind whatever policy we're going to get behind. I know you have a strong opinion. I want to invest in this. I'll say it once again. It's not just my district. It's everyone's district. But we have not done what I'm talking about has not been done in Sedgwick County. You've helped 17th Intersection. It's great. You've not done what I'm talking about here. This is a little bit different.

I think I've looked at what you have in the resolution. I think it is exactly the same, and we've been able to do that without allocating additional resources and pulling from funds. If we pull that 740, then we have to go with three other projects that are going to have to be pushed out or we're going to have to push out other projects to fund those. We've got that $740,000 allocated in the proposed CIP, and I think we can continue to move down the road with grants and with what we're doing now without having to allocate dedicated resources. I stand here telling you that I usually love having dedicated resources to some type of improvement. In this particular case, it's not necessary, and we've taken on those improvements as we go through. And we've done it in such a manner that we're not degrading those improvements throughout the county.

Again, with all due respect, I'm not here to debate you today. I'm here to present an idea that I'm very passionate about. I'm going to make this motion next week, and you guys can do whatever you feel isn't right. If you want to not second it, not vote for it, that's fine. I'm going to do it. I will make this motion next week. And again, we can all disagree.

I just want to make sure all five commissioners are very well of what we're doing and how we're funding it.

All right, Mr. Chairman, I'll wait for discussion on this item. Again, it's not a motion today. It's for next week's discussion and potential action, potentially. I have one more item to discuss after this one's complete. So, Mr. Chairman, I'll wait. Mr. Royce?

I don't mean to reverse the meeting. I hit my button quite a while ago, but I just wanted to clarify 21st and 167th project. I'm not worried so much about the city of Wichita growing out that way. They are. But this is an intersection that serves Colwich, Andale, Cheney, Garden Plain because they share in sports. So out of the nine cities that I have in my district, this is going to support a lot of them. So sorry about my voice. I also wanted to apologize ahead of time. I totally misread on how long this meeting was going to last. I do need to leave for a 1.30 meeting, so you might see me sneak out. So I apologize and ask for dismissal soon.

Commissioner Beatty? Yeah, Commissioner Brown, if you'd be willing to circulate that resolution, I'm happy to look at it. I think these are conversations that we're willing to have. I will say that if we're going to create new programs, I think this is a conversation we should have had months ago to create a new program. I understand, but we haven't talked about it until today. And we're a week from passing a budget. What you're saying makes a lot of... I would love to have it, but I'd like to understand what we're currently doing, what we're not doing, where the gaps are. If we can get that done in a week, this motion might stand a chance to get a second and pass. But to do it... I'd like to understand what program we could actually implement and have a conversation about a program and a new program. Because I think all of this is very keenly important. And you're right. When we talk about responsible growth, we have to look at these roads and these intersections and what does that look like. But I'd love the county engineer to inform us, here's what we're doing now. Here's where we're going. This is why he obviously feels like what we're doing is sufficient. So I don't want you to be offended that we particularly don't support it. I have no idea what your program is entailing. And this is really, really important, and I'd love to have that conversation. But to do it on budget day would be very difficult to support a brand-new program.

Can I respond? Please. Again, I don't think we have to have the details of the program. What we have to do is earmark the funds and then develop the program. And if we don't spend the money, because we don't, develop the program, that money just stays there. It's not going to go away. So again, Commissioner Beatty, we have talked since last year at least once or twice about this. It's never gone away. I've been talking about this for 10 years. And for me to say, as if this is a new idea, it's not. I've been talking about this for 10 years. And so I'm stuck because I can't get us as a board to agree on investing this way. So I appreciate your hesitancy, potentially, because you feel like we don't have the details. We don't need to have the details. What we have to do is identify the name of the program, what it's intended for, and fund it. And then we can work on what that's going to do exactly and how we're going to prioritize intersections within the county, for example.

Commissioner, I appreciate that. And just a word of just advice. If you've worked on something for 10 years and we're not getting it done, let's change the means in which you're communicating to us. And let's try to do this, staff this thing. Let's have a real robust conversation throughout the year. If it's not working for 10 years, then let's try a different approach. Instead of just propping this thing up on adoption day and saying fund a program and we'll figure it out later. I don't think anybody's comfortable with that, but we all are comfortable with intersection safety. And I want to understand what we're doing now, what our county engineer's plan is moving forward. And then I think we can have reasonable conversations because you'll get my support in those things. And I just want to make sure that I'm in agreement and in alignment with what our projections are now and what we're doing now versus what we could shore up. Intersection safety, yes. Second, amen.

And Commissioner Beatty, I do agree with you, but I would just say I have done this in staff meetings. So, again, the suggestion has been I've done that. We're just not getting movement. Understand. Again, when I talk about stuff, even a staff meeting, I talk, I present an idea, and there's silence. We leave the staff meeting, and that's as far as it goes. Not that you guys don't care. I know you do care deeply. And let me say it again. I know you care deeply. I said that last year. We all care deeply. The question is, when are we going to invest in moving this idea forward? If never, that's fine. I will no longer be commissioner someday, and this may never get done. But I can tell you, I did my best. I get it.

I get it. The misalignment is that we have accounting engineers saying we are doing these things, and we need to try to better understand it. So I appreciate your conviction. I share in the conviction. We just want to understand it better.

Mr. Meister?

I think I'll refrain from my comments until next week. I have some strong comments, but I'll refrain. Thank you.

If it's helpful at all, I could share information on the numbers I presented today to help you understand what we're doing and what we've been doing the last couple of years.

One more. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, this is easy. Basically, last year there was a motion to encourage to find a way to reallocate the Oakland Transit Services funds to create, if you will, an ultimate program once again. We put on RFP, no one responded, but I think we need to try again. I think that the ridership is too low and the cost per rider is too high. They desperately need the help, but what we're doing right now is not really a good fit for Oaklawn. So I'd like to find a way for us to do this differently. I'd like to maybe work on a voucher program. Maybe work with a taxi service or whatever we can that would be on call. We would find a way to bill, to fund the bills for those rides or whatever. But to run a bus through the community once or twice a day at different times of the day is not really getting people to work. or people to the grocery store, whatever they have to go do, we've got to find a way to use this money in a more effective way. So this is an intent to, if you will, question what we're doing there and hopefully move it forward to a more effective program. That's all it is. Thank you, Chairman.

Okay.

Lindsay, I do want to ask you about an article in the Wichita Business Journal yesterday that brought up that the county's building a parking garage at the Biomed Center that I don't believe you have in our budget. I don't believe we've staffed the idea. I don't believe we've had any public discussion about it whatsoever.

That's correct, and I'll defer to Mr. Stultz to clarify.

I was in that article. So what I had told the Business Journal yesterday is, let me, they called because I think Zach Gerhardt from Wichita State is the one that broached the topic, but basically I told the story, our historical story of how we were approached. and how we got involved and i was clear a couple of times in articles that the commission has yet to vet this they've yet to find funding and really we can't do anything until the city of wichita makes a decision what to do with that property so i i think as this moves forward and i'll let lindsay carry it from here we've talked about it financially if it would could or would happen and the options for the commission going forward on funding of this. I'll let you talk about that. Sure.

So, again, the bottom line is going to depend what happens with that land because that will dictate what happens if it is land that is transferred to the county. and the commission chooses to construct a parking garage, then the goal would be for us to charge back the expenses to any user in an amount that would be equivalent to any annual debt service. So we would anticipate bond funding the project ComCare, as a likely user for the Crisis Center staff there, we would charge fees back to the ComCare Revenue Fund to collect those. HeartSpring has been mentioned as a potential user of that garage. If one was constructed, they would be charged the equivalent amount. Same to WSU and or their students, depending on how they want to handle that. And then obviously nights and weekends, that would be a conversation for the commission about how you wanted to handle access to that facility. But we would essentially plan for that eight to five, five days a week to be the primary revenue generator to cover the debt service. But again, that's if the county owns the property. or something like that, that will change the dynamic of all of this. And so we have not yet had that conversation because we don't yet know from the city of Wichita what's going to happen with the grounds. So that's going to be the key driver. If and when that happens, we can handle it as a CIP amendment and go forward at

that point. Okay and going back from my own personal experience and recent discussions we've had, I believe all there is right now is an expired MOU from the City of Wichita to WSU.

My understanding too, Chairman, the article mentioned that that MOU was still being discussed but as far as I was under the same impression as you just mentioned it was expired.

Okay. I'm getting some inquiries, and even one of my former colleagues, former council member Brian Fry, is kind of looking at it through the same lens I am. He just heard him say it, and I thought the same thing. We just said 48% of the area is surface parking. So that's why I've got a lot more questions about the need for parking. And obviously, they want to absorb that area, but how many years is it going to take to absorb the footprint? And just... A lot of questions, and I just feel like it was pretty premature for anyone to make an announcement that the county's invested in a parking garage when we haven't had any public discussion.

I agree with you emphatically.

And, Chairman, Justin Wyatt, our county council, just wanted to chime in on the MOU from 2023. You're correct on that. It was a 180-day term on that. between where the city of Wichita and Wichita State could make an arrangement with that property. No arrangement was made in terms of transferring the property. And it's, as far as I understand it, null and void. And there is an encumbrance on that property, a federal encumbrance. It was subject to a Federal Transit Administration grant that still, as far as I know, still exists on the property today. And that was mentioned, I think, some in the article as well. But it's So that could be a possible hurdle, just like the encumbrance we have on the... It could be. There's some mechanisms to where, and it's the city's encumbrance to try to, you know, it's their responsibility to try to get it lifted because they're the owners of the property. But it's not the same type of encumbrance, and there's some exceptions to it, one of which is if local government, if it's transferred to local government, that the encumbrance, there's a little more flexibility on the part of the U.S. Department of Transportation. So there do appear to be some flexibilities and capabilities there that are a little different than our parks encumbrances.

Okay. Commissioners, any other budget discussions? Okay. Madam Clerk, next item.

Other.

Anything on other? Next item.

Executive session.

We do not have an executive session, so we are adjourned.