City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, six o'clock. Do we want to get started? Do you think I'm wrong? Checking the time like I don't know what time I'm just I know. I'm just teasing it. All right, welcome to tonight's work session. Um, we'll call the we'll call it to order and then uh do we take role for this or do we not take ro? Probably should since we have a quorum.

We don't need to just is work session. So fine. Okay. All right. So, um, tonight I called this work session. I basically wanted to go through uh since we have a new member, we'll have another one hopefully later tonight. But I wanted to get out there to the staff kind of what as a group our vision and goals are going to be over the next year or two and some maybe personal goals that we have that we'd like to accomplish and that as a group kind of what we to work on. Um so if anybody I can start if want to get kicked off but a couple things that I know that um L and I have talked about a little bit was um the park across from the pool is something I'd like to look into as far as moving that back forward. It had gotten pretty far along a couple years ago and then uh kind of died out the last three or four years. So, that's something that to me it was the skate park, bike park over by the pool that uh shifted worked on and I think, you know, they kind of had some issues so they um were a little um out of it for a while and I don't know if they're back into it, but I think as a city we could pick it back up and I know we have some volunteers who are willing to help with that. Um, the other thing is there's committees and I know I talked to Spencer about this, so maybe he can speak more to what we can and can't do, but um, with his mouth full of food, but uh, but committees, so if there's any committees that you'd like, I'd like to start a parks and trails one. It's not one of my specialties, but I think it's something that we need to try to attract. And if we can use some of the specialty citizens that we have out there that are willing to participate, I think it'd be nice to maybe talk a little bit about what those committees can be and then we can have other people that are interested in maybe having one or something. Yeah, sure. So, I mean, your bylaws allow you to create committees. Um, and you know, there's not really a clear picture on that. Kindly, your bylaws are fairly out of date, and that's something we'll probably be taking to you in the next year to revamp some of those. I think some of those rules are pretty antiquated. But yeah, generally if you

all want to, you know, set out some committees, I would say no more than two city council members on there so that we make sure we're not creating a full council meeting on accident or running into open meetings, open records act issues there. So, two of you want to join and you want to appoint maybe one or two members of the public who have some subject matter expertise onto that committee um and come back and do you know committee months every committee reports every month or you know every three meetings kind of what you guys are working on that's totally fine. If you want it to be a shortlived committee of we want a committee to look at this one specific park and get it beautified up and in six months we'll probably vote to disan disband that committee also permissible. They don't have to be uh in perpetuity. You can kind of have a limited run if you'd like that. So

that's my thought was that if you guys have something in partic I know when we had Chip up here, he was very much into trails. So for him to be able to create a committee would have been nice. We didn't do that back then, but it would have been nice to do. If you guys have anything you're really passionate about and you want to do that, I just wanted to open that up so you knew that that was an option for something to help you do uh going forward. Outside of that, I mean, um, I think bringing up the bylaws, uh, one thing that I'd like to clean up over the next, you know, year, we had some, we tried to work on the charter ordinances. There were some things that came out of that that we realized, hey, we didn't actually touch on these pieces. And I know PJ, you may have talked a little bit about that, but I even think looking at some of the um planning commission stuff as far as uh what we want to do with the county positions, if we want to continue to have those I was thinking maybe making dual positions where they could be city or county in in that particular county. So, there's just a lot of things like that that I'd like to look at over time. We don't have to make any decisions tonight, but I'm just thinking of ideas that we kind of give them to come back with, hey, you brought this up. So, does anybody have anything that they'd like to talk about? Bring up Ivan, I know you're new, so if there's anything there, but PJ

were you referring to some of the things we spoke about as far as uh voting and election ordinances and Yeah. So, different ordinances that we had talked about over time. I can't remember exactly what brought up.

So, I had a couple discussion items. Um, it's been a a situation that's been brought up mostly. Brian Peele was a member or director over our um Rex department and there's a lot of issues with a lot of people regarding whether or not it was appropriate for him to be in that position based on him being the head of one taxing entity and then being a voting member on another taxing entity. Um so I wanted to kind of discuss that with everybody see how what their feelings were. I know that there are other municipalities that have very specific uh rules um dictating who and who cannot be in a governing body position and I thought maybe that was a uh a topic that we could brooach and and discuss in further detail and see how people feel about it.

Yeah, I mean that was something as far as we have a lot of tax entities that we cross paths with being on two counties and you know different entities out there. So I thought it was something to bring up. I don't know if we had any power to talk about that or if that's just a hey it's a state thing. I mean it's

sure. So and I will tell you I mean Mr. Peele's situation specifically is something we did quite a bit of work on four years ago when our uh mayoral crisis trying to determine uh they call it compatibility of office. So one person cannot hold two public offices that are incompatible with each other. An obvious one would be you can't be the mayor and a city councilman. Um, typically it turns on financial considerations. So, with Mr. Peele, you'll notice he would always step out of the room and recuse himself for issues with the rec commission. Um we felt back four years ago that he couldn't serve as mayor because one we don't want the mayor recusing themselves from that situation and two the mayor because of the financial I guess guidance that the mayor gives on situations and the overlapping taxing entities the decisions the city makes for contributions to the rec commission that was an incompatible office and uh that was Chuck and I worked on that together and determined I was incompatible. So, we did quite a bit of work. We tried to get the attorney general to weigh in on that specific issue and um the attorney general has the ability to say no thank you and that's they exercised that right. Um there have been some opinions on actually rec commissions and city officials. So, that was something we felt pretty comfortable with of city council and rec commission were not incompatible. Um at the end of the day, you know, it's up to individual members. As long as there's not a clear attorney general opinion or statute says you can't do it, it's up to that person at a later date. And we walked through this, Mr. Peele. If someone were to find that office incompatible, you know, he understood that that meant he would have lost his job at the rec commission. Um, so that's typically how that works. If you have one office and you take an incompatible office later, you automatically leave that first one. Um, there's a lot of folks around that have multiple public positions. So like in

the UG, one of their county commissioners is also a state representative senator Tom Burroughs. So yeah, and one in THA. So I mean, and that's something that a lot of people when they first hear about it think, "Oh, that's odd." But because there's not a lot of overlap in directing those positions that at the state level and the municipal level, there's some fund transfer, but they're not bossing each other around, so to speak, to really dumb it down. So it's really a case by case. you guys, you know, Councilman Delgado, you're new enough that you haven't heard me say it a lot. You guys are tired of me saying it depends and it's case by case, but it really is. That's a perfect example of there's a lot of state guidance on specific offices that are incompatible. So, sometimes we can hit jackpot and say, "Oh, this has already been an issue in back in 1974."

Um, otherwise, I'm here to help you guys research that issue and kind of dig into it and give reports. So essentially it's is it's the state's call on this as whether or not it is or is not appropriate or is that a standard that we can set for ourselves as

typically it's not the municipal standard of this these offices are incompatible. Um if you all wanted to talk through the charter ordinance process [clears throat] and designate certain people as ineligible to serve on the city council. we could have that discussion. That's a fairly new thing for me. I don't know there's that there's a lot of charter ordinance ability to do that. You know, you all have the ability under the Kansas constitution to charter in and out of certain state statutes. I don't know that the eligibility rules for a council member are necessarily that type of issue of what job they have outside of this is something we can legislate them out of. We can continue looking at that if there's spec, you know, here's saying I understand what you're trying to do and get out ahead of it, right? And that's good planning and that's what we're here for tonight. Certain things we can't get out ahead of because we can't over legislate down to minute detail. So, um, probably want to hit as we come, but if there's things, you know, we're here tonight. If there's issues you wanted to talk about, specific positions we want to start looking forward to of saying what we want in eligibility rules, we can start talking about that.

Yeah. I think for me my biggest concern is just there are those overlapping issues. Um at the end of the day it falls on the individual to to recuse themselves in those situations and the more a person has to stand up and walk away because they've got a conflict of interest, the more it speaks to the I think the public as a whole that they have a conflict of interest and that's obviously something that we all want to avoid. We want things to be transparent cut. So if that's something that we can start looking into to see what our options are legally that I think that would be a good use of time um just to make sure that we don't continue having these same situations. I think it's important that anybody who's sitting on this uh council is able to take my seat if I have to vacate it and then take the mayor's seat if they have to vacate. I feel like that's a pretty clearcut uh requirement for the job is you have to be able to do the whole job as part of the job.

So, yeah, I think that was Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Speaking about that, um is there anything that we can do as far as limiting how many different positions that you can uh try to get elected for? Uh this past election we had three I was running for three different positions. Is there anything that we can do to prevent that? Because that would have put us in a very interesting situation had it turned out a different way.

You probably I [clears throat] think I think we can look into that. You know, obviously this last election was unique in that most of the time you're not going to have three open types of position. There's either going to be just council or council and mayor. Um, and we designed uh our charter ordinance for filling vacancies that there would only rarely be that extra two-year seat. Um, so we can go back and maybe tweak that two-year seat and make it if you're just going to run for that, you're just going to run for that. Um, I'll look around and see. When we did our charter ordinance the last time, I looked at most of the area municipalities and there aren't any necessarily limits on who's running for. you can only run for one of the two. Um, it's a fairly unique situation. So, we can try to put that guide rail in and I can come back to you all with some suggestions. If no one else in the area is doing it, we can have that talk as well. There's nothing wrong with being the first or the leader on it. Um, so we're happy to do that. typically, you know, moving with the pack and some of those things has kind of been the safe harbor provision just because there's some strength in numbers of you don't want to be too out in front on everything.

Um, but happy to kind of put that together. No, I think that was something we I felt like I overlooked when when that came through because I you know that individual and I had a conversation. He's like, "Yeah, they told me go for it." I'm like, "Oh, yeah." I guess we never thought about multiple positions being available. So, um it just it can present issues by the end if for somebody sweeps the board, you know. So, um no, those are yeah, two things that I was kind of thinking. Anything else along those lines of charter ordinances?

Not not at the moment. When it comes to the ineligibility part, I was when we had that initial conversation, I kind of thought anybody kind of in administrative capacity within the overlapping um municipalities, whether it be school district or whatever, that's where we'd have to, you know, maybe look at like a superintendent, the head of the wreck, the, you know, the sheriff's department, the, you know, the county somewhat just because, you know, there is kind of that overlap where things can get a little messy sometimes. So, no, I think those two things, if you can look into those and get back to us, I think that's going to be important. Um, Mike, anything to add?

No, I mean, I think you guys have covered a lot. Um, I mean, as far as the like the two council seats, can we combine those into one? So instead of, you know, like this election we had vote for two and then vote for one, could we do like a vote for three and then it's by vote on who who gets the four-year terms versus the two-year terms. So it kind of eliminates that whole multiple seats for the same position. You can So we talked about that option. I think when we brought

that was one of the options that we had was um I think concern that everybody at the time was that if somebody's putting their name in for them to know that they're putting it in for a two-year rather than spending the time, effort, money to run an election, only get a two-year position. I didn't have a problem with that. I think some of the other folks up here at the time did. And so, I mean, going and changing it every time would be kind of weird, but I think that was the conversation we had was separate it. That person that was appointed to that seat had to run in the two years, like PJ was forced to run in that one,

right? And so it was basically that the thought is that typically as long as they're doing a pretty good job, they'll probably get reelected anyway. So let's make sure they're not going to taking a four-year position. And now we have nobody in the two-year. We got to reappoint again. So it's kind of staying away from that type of stuff. Lane. Yeah. The other thing is the legislature right now is looking at different years. Yeah. Yeah. potentially changing election years and that could throw a little curveball at us, but we'll keep an eye on that and see how that impacts this. So, they're looking to move everything to potentially partisan and years and even years. So, even at the municipal level and school district. So, okay, we'll see how that plays out this this cycle.

Yeah. Which will make it so that the for us the 27 election will have like threeear positions because they're going to reset kind of in 30, right? So, um, but it'll line it up with the federal elections and stuff. So, I mean, I'm sure it's a good thing. I know when they switched us from the April to November, it was kind of a weird because everybody got like an extra six months on their term that time around and that was only in like 15, I think. So, uh, there's been some changes. I'm sure there'll be more. Obviously, we've made some changes. I thought overall it worked well. I think we had, you know, we had uh, you know, we had the two-year and the two four-year positions and so we didn't get off track because that was the other big concern is just going to [snorts] three straight positions, Mike, and then having a that four year be now off track of

Yeah. the group that it's supposed to be with. So that's kind of it was kind of an awkward setup. I mean, just Yeah, it's one of those deals. It's never perfect. But yeah, the part I didn't think about was, oh, now we have multiple positions for one person to run for and and if they win all three or two, it could be now we're back into an appointing situation. The other thing you can consider on that is, you know, you can legislate for cause or effect. So you can either say someone can only run for certain positions or you can put in the alternative of if somebody wins multiple positions, here's what happens as you go to the next highest vote getter or something like that. I mean that would probably be our next best

change they go for. But I mean I don't know what's easier or cleaner I guess would be the question to you. Yeah, it'll I'll go in there and start drafting it up and see which one has less words. The last thing I want to do is bring you guys a four page wordy. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so that contradicts itself like our old. Mayor, if I may, because I spoke to the election office because that was the first time that I was familiar with an individual running for multiple seats.

Yeah. And they had told me that um if the individual let's say for instance if they would have won the position of mayor and a city council then that individual can choose which position that they would want to serve and then that other position is a vacancy then it doesn't just go to the next Yeah. And so that's what he was saying that we could change it possibly to that wording to where it goes to the next highest winner. But I don't know. I'd be more apt to say just stick with one position if we can word it that way. But I I it would be whatever you guys, you know, whatever the group as a whole kind of wants to do if anything,

but that's why we're here to kind of talk about that stuff. So, um, moving off that, maybe into more positive things. Um, growthwise, is there anything that you want staff to focus on as far as sidewalk streets? um any new I know we did the golf cart thing last year which was very happy for some people very unhappy for others so you know everybody has their opinions on them but different things like that is there anything that's like a an item that is important to you I know I think I haven't had one even related to that

the uh the UTV one I think we kind of missed the mark on that people are going to cross 169 uh illegally and they're going to do it like 183rd where there's no controlled intersection I would like for us to take a look at it again and allow UTPs to cross at the intersections uh where there's a stop light. So 199 that's a safest safest place for them to cross. I think that that will definitely help a lot of the people out in the county trying to come get gas and do other uh businesses that they need to do.

My initial response with when uh when Chief was talking about it was, "Oh, no, that's probably not a good idea." But I've gotten quite a bit of feedback from people that are on the other side and they're like, "I used to go to the gas station all the time and it wasn't now it's like specifically spelled out that I can't do it and they're concerned about it." So, I'm kind of up in the air on it. I don't really have a super strong opinion. I don't love 199 Street the way that it's built right now. I know 191st and 183rd will be built better when they're done. Um, so I don't know, Chief, if you would want to give any feedback on that in particular. Maybe I can just talk loud. You can hear something.

There it is. It's on now. All right. Great. Um, my opinion at this moment is is that it's very dangerous for UTVs to cross 169 highway. You have vehicles traveling at 65 miles per hour. UTV says substantially less protection than motor vehicles. Um, and we already have crashes that occur at these controlled intersections already where uh sometimes there's injuries involved um and substantial property damage to vehicles. So um we can look into it. we can provide some statistics to you, but um it's always been that you couldn't cross an interstate highway with the UTV, even though maybe people were doing so

um unless you were doing agricultural work. Uh there's always been an exception for farming and agricultural um provisions. So, um right off the cuff, my opinion is is that um I'd be worried about increased accidents and injuries and maybe even fatalities. Yeah, that was my initial concern, too. I I think if you even broach that subject, I think we do need to change probably you're now you're we got to be more strict on who the drivers are. So, probably 18 rather than 16 year olds in that one where right now it's any licensed driver, unrestricted licensed driver. So, you know, it's it's almost like we're going to have to govern more in one area and less in another. But I I mean, what are your guys' opinions on it? Um I tend to agree with uh Chief. He's our public safety expert when it comes to things like that. Um vehicles that are not designed for a side impact, especially a high speed crossing the highway. Just saying yes to that. It's a hard cell for me.

At the same time, I look at it, motorcycles aren't designed for a side impact. Yeah. We don't have control state.

Yeah. I mean, if they have to get across, I mean, there's always the 223rd. They can go to the bridge and get across. I know it's an inconvenience, but I mean, that is the safest place. Um, because you're not really going over the or through the highway. You're going over it. Um, and maybe when we start addressing these other other intersections, it may be a good idea to look at, you know, creating an overpass or something like that just for UTVs or pedestrians so they can get across to Victory or get across to um Veterans Park or, you know, the golf course or things like that. And I think that may be something we could look at and I as kind of alternative. But I do kind of agree with it. the safety of crossing highways. This kind of makes me scared.

Yeah. My thought is as we add those other intersections in, maybe that's when we look at it because I'm assuming speed limits are probably going to have to change and things like that. So, if that's the case and it's not 65 anymore, I'd probably change my mind a bit on it. Um, right now, like I said, I'm 50/50. I could if everybody was for it, I'd probably be okay with it. But I have some of the same concerns, but I also struggle with telling people what they can and can't do. um what what is considered farm use? Because I know that was one of the person one of the people that u messaged me about it said they used it on their farm. They want to go fill it up a quick trip and go back, but it's not a farm vehicle. It's a sidebyside.

Yeah, I'd have to get um I don't know, Spencer may have to weigh in on that on the ordinance to see what um if going to the gas station to get fuel for a farm vehicle just because there's not Yeah, there's nothing on the other side. Yeah. Um usually, you know, the typical um is moving from um parcel of land to another parcel of land um in the course of, you know, like you're pulling a hay balor or something or you're you're spraying for weeds, those kind of things. Um I'm not saying it couldn't be legal to go across the highway to get gas. That would be something I'd have to do a little bit of research on and get back to you just to make sure that that wasn't outside the ordinance.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So that would be the only thing I' but I mean it's still unsafe but at least it's not everybody if we say hey it's for these particular hard to manage that you pull them over and figure out what for to do that so you're still hassle a bit but okay well that's I think at this point I would maybe get some statistics on it and just see what what it's like around in neighboring cities. I think some of them still allow it. Um I don't think they have as big of a highway as we do though. So I think it's more like 68 highway they're allowed to things like that. So although they go pretty pretty dang fast on 68 highway still kind of running that but okay Mayor if I could just add one thing I apologize.

Um in the ordinances when we were doing our research to bring this forward to you for approval most of the cities Lewisburg um Pola allowed UTVs did have a restriction on driving them on or across an interstate. Okay. Um Lewisburg may be a little different, but um one of them allowed 68, but that's not interstates. That's it. Yeah. And it's because obviously it runs right through the center of their city. So,

um the ones that we looked at there were some prohibitions against it, but I'll I'll pull some stats. Okay. Give you some more information about it from the council. Sounds good. Anything else on that? No. All right. Um, Mike, do you have anything that I know you've been up here for a while and I'm sure there's some things that you'd like to work on that we haven't talked about.

I mean, we've kind of touched on sidewalks and connectivity. And I I think that just in the future, I love the idea of connecting Spring Hill. It seems like we have so many different pockets, whether it's, you know, south of 223rd or north of 23rd or even some of these outlying little like almost pocket communities. I think connecting those into Spring Hill, whether it's through like events like First Friday, just having more of those type events or even just connecting them with trails, sidewalks, walking paths. I mean, even just connecting the walking paths we do have, I think would be awesome. Um, and that's kind of where I stand. I think a lot of that stuff just connecting would be good.

I I think connecting and also for feedback I've gotten a lot of is that the trails we do have are pretty beat up. So, Jacob, I don't know what repairing those looks like or costwise or if it's a lot of them are I don't know. Blackhawk is like there's some it's like a ramp as you're going down it. So, I don't know how hard it is to refigure those or or patch or patch, you know, whatever it is. We just don't want him to talk, do we?

All right. Um we and we've talked about this at the staff level. There's there are some things that we need to do to get better consistency. Um in the past subdivisions and the trails that go in, sometimes those are in located in public easements. Sometimes they're not. So, so we run into issues where in some cases we've we have the legal ability to to get on that property and perform maintenance and some we don't. The other another challenge that we have found and this goes back to standards that you know were required or allowed in the past and really anything less than a 10 foot wide trail uh is really really difficult. you know, eight feet, it's fine to ride a bike and and jog, but it doesn't work well to get paving equipment in.

And so, when you're, you know, to to do that maintenance, to get a full-size dump truck and a lay down paving machine, you really need at least 10 feet. Even that gets, you know, gets challenging if it's treelined on on both sides. Um, so those those are some of the issues that we've run into maintaining trails around the city. In some cases, we don't have the easement and the the legal right to get on there. And in cases, even when we do, there's just physical limitations. There's not space to get the equipment in. So, it was a lot easier, you know, those were built. There were homes built.

Yeah. It was it was easy. Um that that thought about, all right, what are we going to do 20 years later to maintain it is is what we're facing now. Okay. That'd be something to find out more about and see what areas we can maybe address sooner than later. Um because we do have some we'll talk about, hey, we have trails here, but then people are like, well, they're not really usable. So, and they are, but they're not for like bikes and things like that. So, um or children or whatnot. So, I would say that's something that we can look at because I know the um condos over by the highway, I think they kind of have the same issue. There's some real rough spots over there. Um where they have the barbed wire that we were dealing with for a while.

Yeah, that that one private too. Okay. Yeah. So, maybe identifying all those that we know which ones are private and then we can say, "Hey, let's maybe attack these ones that have the ability to be repaired and even to start with justformational meeting just if we can get that information together so we can talk to people and address people as uh we get it. Just here's a layout of the trails in city. Here's what the city owns. here's what's private. Here's what we can work on right now. Here's what we're having struggles. Like just to get a comprehensive breakdown. I think that would be really really just for the whole city. It would be nice. Yeah, that'd be great. Uh I know at the sidewalk meeting, I think Ivan was there.

Um one gentleman brought up looking at trails through the backyard um alleyways of kind of old town where we're looking at sidewalks. Jacob, is that something we can look at too to see what areas have the availability to do that? Sure. Yeah, I thought that was a good idea. They talked about kind of the um north south alleyways that have the easements to put like a trail in so that because we're kind of addressing going east west and through the neighborhood but not north south. So might be a nice, you know, easier way to do that rather than try to deal with sidewalks in that area is pretty rough. So

giving some additional areas to that. Um, anything else on roads, sidewalks, trails? No, I think as a whole, like we've been been paying really close attention to those things over the last couple years and then the last year as I've been here. So, I think we've got a pretty solid road map as long as we keep pushing forward, keep progress. I think we're making good headway. And I like staying specific on it, too. So, we're like, hey, this area or you know, whatnot. So, that absolutely. And and like you said, knowing I think for us, knowing is half the battle, right? So knowing which ones are ours, which ones aren't, which ones can be worked on, which ones aren't going to be very tough, too, and things like that. And then obviously always adding new, you know, that's that's a hope, too.

And if we're planning on adding new, maybe plan to just add 10 more feet and connect it to the next one, right? That we can continue that route.

Yeah. And I know we have the grant that we're working on, and I think that's one thing we're looking at tonight is uh somebody to help with with that. So um that'll be nice to hear about. Um, we do have, um, I wanted to bring up IT and data because I know we have somebody here that can answer maybe a couple of those questions. Is there anything that you guys would like to see data wise or through this process that we're going through with this IT company that's going to help us find how to make sure everything works together better? Like what information would be helpful for everybody up here to be able to make decisions andor see how, you know, things are processing or working through the system? I think for me that's th those expertise are not things that I have. Um having somebody providing those services going to be valuable. Um right now I don't deal a lot with uh what the rest of the city employees deal with day in day out on the computers and our our different softwares our different uh

yeah programs. So well I'm thinking more like one information and end information we'd like to have. So like what do we want to know? How many permits do we want to know a certain way or do we want to Oh fair. Is this area actually growing that we've approved? But, you know, people say, "Hey, you approved this much, but actually nothing's moving over." Like, how do we f I'm more wanting to see that kind of stuff? Like, hey, we've we're working over here and we're planning on doing a big road project, but are we actually getting new housing there or is it still kind of stalled out and do maybe focus somewhere else? That's where Robin, you can come up and answer, I guess. Yeah. Because that's the kind of stuff I'm thinking is

like when we did 199th, it was, hey, we have this big development that's to come in. We approved everything and now I think that gentleman passed away and so we're kind of like, okay, well, how long is it going to be? And we're doing this big road improvement. How long is it going to be till it happens? So, and I know we have opportunities there, but I'm just thinking in other areas, you know, 207th, we have three corners that are talking about being worked on and we need to do a big improvement there. So, are things actually moving forward there? Do we really want to go that route? So, that's the kind of stuff I would probably want to see. I don't know if that's possible or not or what what we need to see or what we don't need to see, but you know.

Well, and I'm talking to Lane's team in more detail on Monday, but really almost anything's possible. Uh we just need to identify where the where the information's at, which Chad's mentioning is true. It's it's not about it. Truthfully, there will be metrics on that. That's part of what we're doing in the first phase, but really it's organizing what you guys need to to measure, whether that be safety, growth, enterprise, commercial, you know, just uh construction projects, certain projects, checking status on it. What we're putting in place allows you to have a view of that ready at your fingertips, not not ask for special reports, so you can track progress as we go. So we're doing it for the for the departments so everything they do on a daily basis they'll have access to that right to to manage their business just like you that should probably roll up to some objective your your

yeah whatever we get probably needs to be dumbed down quite a bit. It would be uh it would be actually I think there would also probably be a concern because as our relationship with the city employees is different than your relationship city employees. I think making sure that we're not letting there's different levels of it. Yeah. Too many hands into the pie can really trust me. Trust me, we will have that segregation. There's the stuff they need to work and there's the things that you guys need to to to measure. They can be completely separated and you don't and everything has access control.

Um but you know you guys do have you you do have objectives and goals. So anything you Chad mentioned need to see how you are tracking against those those goals, those project objectives and it could just be project based too. Well and really yeah for me like when we asked Jacob to hey go find all the trails we have and what's ours and what's not. How do you make it easier on him? That's kind of what I would hope you could probably do too is that kind of stuff too is find them the information so that they get to it quicker rather than spending a ton of time trying to find certain information. You're you're spot on. You're actually probably giving them a little bit of a preview of what they're going to hear more on Monday. Okay.

But we the the goal or what we will accomplish, not the goal, is to give them the information they need and to manage their day-to-day business. Should you ask for that, it's already at their fingertips. You don't necessarily have access to it, right? Because like you said, it's operational. Yeah. But that does and can roll up to a higher level view that you would care about. Not necessarily certain areas, but it could just be the total total number of park streets, you know, or or drives, but that's exactly good talking points to have, too. It's like, okay, we have this many miles of paved road, right? That's the kind of stuff we probably need to know when somebody asks like,

well, why didn't you do this? Well, we have this many miles of paved road. So, we're having to try to figure out where where money should be allocated. So that's the kind of information I'd probably want to see is more high level like this is how many paved roads, this is how many paved trails, this is how many unpaved trails, this is how much is private, this is how much is public. You know, these are the ones that we can work on, these ones we can't. When it comes to that kind of stuff, when it comes to budget, here's where increases need to happen because and and Rhonda works closely with you, so I'm sure she's going to have probably the most robust one. But um you know so that's where for me that's the kind of stuff and she'll figure out what disseminates up to us probably and then we can always dig in deeper if needed. But that's the kind of stuff I'm looking for. I don't know if there's anything specific you guys were

I like how you were like yeah we don't want to have too much information but we want to have kind of over even even a just rudimentary pro progress reporting system for us just to say hey here are the things that we've talked about over the last six months. here's where everybody's reporting on these like completion of these projects where we're at. Just a base even a basic information level would be really really useful to me just to be able to track um all the things that we talk about. You know, I check in regularly with um with Lane. I talk to to chat a lot. We try to keep each other on track with things, but having something I can refer outside of calling them to bother them while they're trying to do their other things. I think any Yeah. reporting there would be awesome.

Agreed. And so and you will have so what we're going to do and we'll talk more about it next week. We're going to start with the organizational and the departments and make sure they have what they need to to you know that's helps them dayto-day run their business. From there what we can do is then wrap it up into areas and tag areas that are specifically that they feel are relevant to your guys's to view they can that they get asked a lot on. Uh so it kind of makes it easier all the way across. you're able to see it, but also helps them answer your questions and it actually rolls up. So, and that gives us more areas that was actually used to it. Yeah.

So, is there a is there a a larger vision for integrating this into site, making things easier to to refer for just the general public? Is that is that a part of the plan? It it absolutely can be. I would think so. Like, you know, the whole how many paved roads we have, how many Yeah. Yeah. Where the budget is, that kind I know we've already started doing some of that, but yeah, how do we make it even more, you know, robust on that? Yeah. And to rain on a little bit of a parade, there's going to be some work feeling out what staff has and connectivity and things that are information data that's not public. Yeah.

Not that the city's trying to hide information from its residents and from interested parties, but there's preliminary reports that they need to have access to that Rob's going to get connectivity and get all this together that you all might be able to see. And then we don't want that on the website quite yet because maybe it's a planned development that's not there yet. So there will be some phasing issues there that's probably going to slow this down that staff will have all their reports maybe before we have something for you all. Maybe something for the So yeah, don't if you're feeling there's delays and you're hearing that Lane and Rhonda have all this great info and you don't have it. That's probably me stopping that more than Rob. So I'll go ahead and step in front of that one.

No. And there's always I mean there's we have that already, right? We have things that are public and private information. So, we have to we have to make sure we we're cognizant of that. But at the same time, I just wanted to make sure we all had anything that we were talking about that he knew from us too because the staff obviously has exactly what they need or know what they need. But for us, we don't necessarily know what we are missing or need. So, I think that initial report, you know, whatever you guys decide for us and from there, we can kind of, hey, we kind of want dig in more here. What we can maybe we can exactly as we get to more situational examples. This is exactly what the first phase will flesh out through interview processes and questionnaires.

And to Spencer's point, what the good news is, we're not putting anything, everything's behind just as if it's your own your own email. Everything's only userbased controlled all the security around it. Okay.

What we do end up with though is the structure that when we make a decision to put something on the internet, it's there. we have the opportunity to do that in a very structured way after Spencer approves, everyone approves and then that be just becomes another view into a segregated section of the debt. So it's it's really easy once we get there. The hard part is getting there and organizing and really getting our feet wet. So but it will be a fairly reasonably quick process and within, you know, next couple months you guys should have some views some information of what you need to see for sure. Okay, cool. I just wanted to touch base on that while we were here. Yeah. I knew you came. Yep.

Um, anything we're kind of running short on time, so is there anything else that's kind of uh only thing else that I'll talk about is on February 5th we're going to be meeting with planning commission. Um, my thought is I want to give them some, you know, some direction of what our vision is for the city, too. Um, kind of what our roles are. I know some of us are still pretty new and so uh and we'll have a new one here shortly. So, hey, this is what city council kind of does. This is what planning commission does. Um this is what you know really need you guys to look out for and what we need to look out for going forward. I know we're really cranking down on developers and doing development agreements and doing that kind of stuff, but what else are we putting in place to make sure that we're protecting ourselves from some of the previous developers that have we kind of like, oh well, this happened and we don't want that happen again. So, think about those things before that meeting so that we kind of have those to talk about. Um, is there any feedback from Lane or Ronda or Allison? Anybody? Mike. Mike has probably everything to say. Uh, he's on his third day, I think. Yeah. He's going to tell everybody. Um, but yeah. No, so I mean I know that we're also going to be talking about finalizing the comp plan. That's a big priority for me. So we're trying to get that done by June and I've tasked Ian over there with that. He's he's tackling it hard. So um he's like Chris Jones just taking it out. But yeah, so we're trying to get that done by June because that's something that's really lagged for a long time and it was I don't think anybody's fault in particular. I think we just kind of got a raw deal and so trying to make sure that we get that done because I think that's going to make a big difference on how we move forward. Also to make staff's life easier if they know what we've decided as far as future use and things like that. So any opinions on that or thoughts?

I'm excited to see what they come up with. Obviously as we get more information I'll be able to poke my finger into it and see what feels right. Any anything from you Rhonda? I get the chance. I I figured

I think this has been really good tonight. You know, as we um we're it's time to build a new budget. And so, as we're doing this, this really helps with those priorities. When we get to budget time, we may talk more specifics under some of these different topics. I think it's important when you talk about it and data, we're definitely taking some steps forward. We have some other steps to take and and what Rob is working on is helping us get to the next phase and the next phase and you're going to see some things coming up on the agenda for that. I want to give you an example of data. So for example, you would like to know the progress of projects and um Allison has been looking at for months for the right project management software for us. We don't really have a system in place. I'm guessing she has spreadsheets and a great memory and lots of things that she tracks with, but we'd like her to have a system. And then I sit in meetings with her with these vendors and I'm like, "Oh my god, how am I going to get the data? How am I going to get all this stuff out of the financial system over to her?" Well, what Rob's working on for us will bring that

circle where we can say, "Hey, you go get the system you need and we'll feed it with data." I feel that way about asset management. Jacob has a new system. Are we feeding the right data to it? besides what they do day in and day out. Does he have all the financial information that he wants? So, I think some you guys are taking some really great strategic steps uh forward in our IT structure is the way I'll put that and it's great timing to do that is way I'll put it and I look forward to turning your thoughts here into a budget and a plan to get those things done.

Well, I think at the end of the day everything runs through budget. You know, nothing can happen unless we have money for it. So knowing hey we can have all the priorities in the world with our CIP but have you know majority of it's not funded. So how do we make sure we take what's most important to us and the what we hear from the community and and making sure those things are priority. So yeah no I mean I like doing these. They're short and sweet. We don't get a it doesn't feel like a whole lot but they'll come back with all kinds of information and you'll be surprised at how much we get out of it. So I think these are really beneficial to do and if there's anything when we come into these I'm kind of especially in this type where it's kind of open form come with whatever you guys got. I mean it's you know I'd like to like to be as open and transparent as we can be.

I appreciate it. Mayor this is these these kind of meetings really really u again they help uh the citizens see what we're working on and get to kind of look behind the curtain a little bit. This is kind of what we do behind the scenes a little bit now. It's nice because we can't all get together, right? So it's nice when we can all get together like oh that's we're not doing that. when you can you can get down the road on something and everybody's like, "No, we don't like that." So, it's nice to hear if everybody's like, "Okay, that's fine. Go ahead and move forward." So, well, just so we have a a little bit of a break in between, I'm going to go ahead and uh look for somebody to a motion for. I move to adjourn. Second. All right. Have a motion, a second. All those in favor? I

opposed. All right. Passes 30. Your turn.

We'll call the meeting to order and we're going to start with our invocation by uh Chief Sutterby. Please stand. Will you bow your heads and pray with me? Most holy God, we are thankful for your presence here tonight. I pray for the council, Lord, as they make decisions for the city, that you will give them wisdom and guide them in their decisions at what's best for for the community. Lord, thank you for the employees here who prepared to answer questions, Lord, that we just pray that you would give them uh what they need to to answer uh some of the questions that may be posed to them. And then we pray for the community, Lord, that you would just be with them, watch over them, keep them safe. and in your name God we pray. Amen.

Please to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right clerk will you please take the role? Mr. Throne here. Mrs. Feedback, Mr. Grant here. Mr. Delgado here. Mayor, we do have a quorum present. All right. Thank you. And Dr. Feedback will be here soon. So, do we need to do anything when she arrives or since we have a forum, we're okay.

So, we have a quorum so we can continue. When she arrives, we'll just announce that she's now present for the record. So, all righty. Perfect. Thank you. All right. Next up is the approval of the agenda. Um, do we have any requested changes? If not, I will entertain a motion. So moved. Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed. All right, passes 3000. Next, we'll move on to the city council vacancy appointment. So, with uh with my uh movement over to mayor, we have uh one position open and we had five applicants. Uh the applicants were uh John Reed, um Rachel Jones, Kendra Kier, and Travis Nace along with James Savage. Um I interviewed everybody in person. I appreciate everybody applying and uh taking the time to come in to city hall and interview with me. Uh I went ahead and uh the person I'd like to appoint is James Savage. His name probably sounds familiar. he was on the ballot here in November and uh that had had a pretty good turnout. But after interview interviewing everyone um with his uh his uh military past, he's a small business owner, his ideas for what he'd like to see with the city, I thought he'd be a great fit for that position. So uh with that, I'd like to appoint James Savage. I think we need to have a vote. Do we need a a motion and a second for that or just a roll call vote?

Yeah, just a roll call vote. All right. Um, would you please take the roll up? Do we have a discussion board? Oh, does anybody have any comments? Just a nominate. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. Let me make sure. Is there any comments by anyone questions? Yeah. Um, I'll [clears throat] say, you know, this is one thing that I did not want to do is appoint anybody. Um, but it makes me feel a lot better that uh James was on the ballot, so people did vote for him. And I've had the opportunity to meet James. Uh got a similar background that I do. Military background. Uh good head on his shoulders. He's a father. He's a family man. So I think that he'll do a good job up here.

All right. Any other comments or questions? All right. Madam clerk, please take the uh the roll call. Mr. Grant? Yes. Mr. Dougado? Yes. Mr. Throne? Yes. Mayor nomination for James Savage to serve on the city council passes 3000. All right. Thank you. Would you like to bring him up to

Sure. I have it up. Mr. Hi, I'm G. I'm the city clerk. And so you'll just raise your right hand and repeat after me. Yes, ma'am. I, James Savage, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the United States

and the Constit Constitution of the State of Kansas and faithfully discharge the duties of city council member for the city of Spring Hill, So help me God.

Yes ma'am.

Okay. Thank you. And then you can have a seat next to Mr. Take a quick picture. Oh, cuz sure. Thank you. Congratulations. [applause] Help yourself. James, welcome. And again, I wanted to thank all the applicants. Uh, like I said, we had a lot of really good ones, and I know we'll have one here in the future. So, I plan to move all those applicants forward uh to the next goound

when we have uh the next opening on the council. Uh, next thing up, you can say anything now or did we? No, we're going to announcements, reports, I'll just go through. So, yeah, I'll let you say what you like during then. Uh, next we'll get into announcements and reports. This is something that we used to have at the end of the meeting. I wanted to move it up to the front so that anything that was discussed at the previous meeting could be addressed prior to citizen participation so we kind of know what's happening. Um, I don't necessarily have any announcements or reports today. Um, Mr. Thron, no report today.

Still got them. Yeah, I just had a couple of questions. Uh, one is going to be for Jake and Lane. Uh, the Dayton Creek um I spoke to you Jake about ago about two months ago about uh crosswalks or speed limit signs uh at the school. Um, were we able to do anything with that yet? We haven't [clears throat]

we haven't got uh those are not in place yet. The twofold. [clears throat] There's uh crosswalks uh for crosswalks near Dayton Creek Elementary and and then the school speed limit signs. We're trying to put those in place at the same time. And and honestly, just in the winter time, temperatures need to be um up fairly warm for the pavement markings to go down. So, as soon as we get warmer weather, plan on doing both the crosswalks and the speed limit. Perfect. And then, uh the other question is um where are we at with the odor in Brookwood Farms?

Uh we are we are still still investigating. Yeah, I'm in touch with several of the residents there. we'll get notified when you know as that that odor comes and goes. I've found we've done a lot of research on the topic, but found a product. It's it's fairly new that the few people who have used it have expressed uh some some good luck and good results. It's a it's a device that goes in the manhole uh that helps to control odors, you know, emanating from that manhole. So, the city of THA just got one that they've been using for the about the last couple of months. So, uh want to it's it's not inexpensive but not cost prohibitive. So, I think we're going to going to give that a try and uh put one of those in in the manhole there. that seems to be the the most common culprit and uh see if we have any luck, but I honestly think, but I haven't been able to confirm this yet, but I think there are a couple of issues going on there. Uh I think some of it's related to the sanitary sewer from a manhole. I think I think part of it also is some uh odor coming from the storm sewer system. The middle of February is when they've told us we should take delivery of the new flusher vacuum truck that council approved uh here late last year. That will go a long way, [clears throat] excuse me, in letting us um clean not only the sanitary sewer lines, but those storm sewer lines. Um the storm sewer lines don't get constant flow. Uh this isn't a great topic right after everyone ate but the uh it the material you that

gets washed into inlets and and coverts through a storm then it sits there and uh you it doesn't have that constant flow. So it may, you know, we go six weeks between rains, that material is just sitting in there, you know, getting getting stagnant and and all of those have openings, too. You know, every inlet and and the end of a pipe, you all goes, you know, straight to the atmosphere. So, as people are walking by, um I think it smells like a sewer odor because it that material has sat in there and gone stagnant, you know. But uh so I think I think there may be a couple of issues and and we intend to use that new equipment to clean both the storm sewer system and the sanitary and I think that will have good luck as well.

Yeah, I think that's when we started that conversation was actually the storm water was the biggest culprit of smell anywhere but especially here is the storm water because the water just sits in there. So, I know the back truck is something we've been waiting on because that's I think we tackle Brookwood Farms first because that's been kind of a long-standing issue there. I don't know if you guys ever smelt it. It's pretty bad. I've been over there when it's when it's going sometime. What um what's the time frame for that lid for the sewer drain?

I I don't know yet. We haven't you know, we [clears throat] haven't purchased it um yet. So, I don't know what the lead time is. Um, I'm I've been in communication with folks with the city of THA to go over and and take some of our staff over and and kind of look at the system uh that they put in place. Uh, there's a little modification that it's not a one-sizefits-all. So, there's some modifications that have to be done to make it fit, you know, one manhole versus another. Uh, so trying to find a time again when the weather uh is more conducive to going over and looking this installation and seeing how we can make that work for us. Uh want to get that done before we before we commit to that that expense. But uh that's that's what what the plan is.

And that's not something that you need approval from city council to do. You can just do it. The Yeah, the dollar amount is is within you staff's authority. I'm happy to let you know bring it back to you if you like to see it, but you know, we're talking about a $2,500 expenditure for for one manhole. So it's with certainly within the staff's authority to find the right product and and order probably expedites it if they go through and do that. So anything else? All right. Uh Mr. Savage would like to say anything.

I just want to thank everybody that uh voted for me in the election. I didn't lose by many votes. Um uh you know and I want to thank you guys that uh appointed me up here and you know my family they're going to have to put up with me dealing with this. So uh I just want to thank everybody and you know I hope I do a good job. All right. Thank you. Mr. Grant, no report. No report. All right. Lane, what do you got for us? Uh with the winter weather coming in this weekend, I just want to ask everybody in the community to be careful. Uh take a little bit extra time. We're going to have staff out there. It sounds like uh as soon as the snow gets to the depth to where we can have vehicles out there cleaning. I'm not going to steal Jacob's thunder on this, but it sounds like it's going to be off and on all weekend. It's going to be extremely cold. So people uh everybody please take their time, be safe, stay warm. Um, and I also want to thank staff ahead of time because this is going to be a long weekend for them, I think.

Yeah. Long weekend and Monday, I think. So, it's going to be anywhere from 1 to 18 inches from what I've heard. So, we'll see. Yeah. 1 to 18. Yeah. [laughter] I've seen some that say 1 to three and some that say 12 to 18. I'm like, I don't know which one's going to be us. All right, Mr. Laauo. No report. Chief.

Okay. Yeah, just to uh add on to that, uh we'll be putting something out on social media that uh when the snow gets to a point where it's unsafe for people to be sticking around for the police and if they're involved in a non-injury accident that they can walk that in at a later date. Obviously, we'll respond to uh emergencies and um and obviously we'll be out there to help people, you know, who are stuck and off the road and that kind of stuff, but tried to keep our folks clear for emergency purposes. Uh, another thing that's on the horizon is encryption of our south zone radio channel. Uh, this is going to be done because of uh, privacy issues for community members and for the sensitive information that gets put over the police radio. So, in order to make sure that the community has the information that uh, you know, about kind of what are we up to, what are we doing, there's obviously going to be links on our web page for our call for service log. It'll be updated in real time. So, you can go there. The link will be easy to get to and it'll show you not in specific addresses, but just kind of general areas, what where we're at, what are we doing? Um, just to have that transparency. And obviously, there's also the crime map that's on our web page where uh citizens can go to uh to look up, you know, what's going on in their neighborhood or around the city and they can stay up to date that way. So there will be ways for the community to to know what's going on in the city.

I know there's Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say I know there's certain websites or Facebook pages and things like that that kind of do like crime watch where it says, "Hey, this is going on here." Are they still going to have access to that or are they kind of losing access to those? Those Facebook pages will be available. They're run by private. But I mean, are they still going to have access to what's happening based off just our website probably rather than the radio calls? Okay.

Yeah. Correct. And then uh just as a another update for the council, uh the police department's in preparation along with other metro agencies for the World Cup that's coming, we will be dedicating um and partnering with the metro agencies who are all going to be uh staffing events to keep uh the community safe. And so I don't have any real specific updates for you at this point. Just I wanted you to know that we are planning um and making sure that staffing is sufficient here in the city as well as being able to partner with other agencies to do our portion to uh help with security. Okay,

cool. Uh Mr. Mike, first meeting, third day on the job. Anything to anything to say? U no formal report but just want to let you know I've had a wonderful first week and a very warm welcome from everybody in the community and I'm happy to be here and excited to be able to contribute moving forward. We're really excited to have you and look forward to all the things you do. Thanks a

Okay, in our next meeting we've got a couple of exciting things that we're going to be presenting to you. So, u we put this out on public notice which went out into in the Miami County paper. Uh we will be hosting a public meeting uh our next meeting on February 12th. In that meeting, we will be presenting our new wastewater treatment facility. Uh I don't want to steal my own thunder with that presentation, but um that public meeting will be uh giving you a general overview of uh where we've been, where we're at now, and where we want to be in the future. So um we will have that presentation, and then um have the public uh have an opportunity to ask questions and get general information about the project. And then on February 26, which is our regularly scheduled uh meeting, we will have a public hearing. Uh that public hearing will go a little bit more into Rhonda's department with the financial side of things. How are we going to fund this? What is going to be the financial impact to the residents, the users, and all of that. So, we will have both of those presentations coming up. The public notice has been released. Uh so, we'll have, you know, great opportunity for everybody to do this. The reason we're doing this is we are applying for uh some SRF state revolving uh fund um funds. Uh this is a loan program through the state of Kansas to help us uh fund the project. It's a low interest loan, so it's better than any other, you know, bank loan or anything else that we can get out there. U we're also preempt this for WHIPA and WIFIA stands for something and I couldn't tell you exactly what it is. infrastructure

water infrastructure financing something or anyway it's water infrastructure financing and um it's another loan program and that is through um the US EPA um and that helps communities just like ours with a little bit higher interest rate loan opportunity we would still pay it back but we would pay it back over a long period of time so again we'll go through all this stuff um public meeting and the public hearing, but I wanted to give you guys a little bit of a heads up that we will be doing that in the next couple days.

All right, sounds good. Uh, Miss Rhonda, [laughter] Glenda's un flabbergasted over there. I've been good at no report. [laughter] Oh, really?

All right, go for it. Actually, mayor, this is um your report that uh we have the board uh appointments for uh these are annual appointments that are in February and that is out on the website. So, if residents want to go out and look to submit their letter of interest for either the planning commission, cemetery board or the parks advisory board, um those are out there and those are being accepted until noon February 6 and then they will be forwarded to you for consideration. And Oh, go ahead. Oh, go ahead.

I was going to say what are the frequency of those? I know planning commissions monthly. Parks and cemetery are quarterly or monthly also as far as meeting. Oh, the meetings. Uh, planning commission, I guess they're all once a month. And Okay. So, both of those are Yes. Cemetery board is the first Tuesday. Planning commission is the first Thursday. And then the parks board is like every other month on the third Monday. Yeah. Yeah. I thought parks was at least every other month or

Yes, they they did, you know, change that. Um, and then I'll just uh this week the directors we met or we were able to present to the chambers leadership group and that was a really good event and uh it was nice to be involved with their leadership program um for the uh group of individuals that are in the leadership and I believe Jenna is from the city and I don't know if we have oh and my chief's in there too. Oh, chief is in there. I'm sorry. Okay. Well, those are the individuals from the city involved. That's all I got.

All right. Yeah. No, and we had that was really good. I think it was on was that on Tuesday or Wednesday? Wednesday. And then we had the sidewalk meeting on Tuesday night, which was really good, too. So, it's it's been busy up here this week. A lot of HOA meetings, too. We were walking through almost every room had a HOA meeting. Um, Monaisha. Do we want to go back to Kristen first? Go to Jacob because Jacob's gonna take all night. [laughter] Christian, do you have any announcements or reports you'd like to go over? We do it now. We're not doing at the end. Oh, well, not yet. I usually have that after meeting. Not right now. Okay. Uh, Jacob, what do you got for us?

Won't take that long. Uh [clears throat] besides the the sidewalk meeting that you that you've already mentioned and as Lane kind of teed up for me, we've been watching the weather uh forecast and uh we're you prepared. We've got equipment prepared and um we'll actually So when we when we go to snow removal operations, because of our limited uh staffing numbers, we have to we go to uh to to do 24-hour operations, we do two 12-hour shifts. That's half of our staff working days, half working nights. It it takes about a day to transition into that. So, uh we will start begin snow operations at 700 p.m. tomorrow night. So, in order to do that, our staff that will be on tomorrow night will not report tomorrow morning at their regular time. So, that that's kind of the process of beginning to uh roll into that. And um you we'll we'll begin with pre-treatment. And then as Lane said, uh we usually need about two inches of snow uh on the on the roads to to really make it, you know, worthwhile to uh to get out there and and begin moving it. And we will clear snow until we have all of the roads completed. And that will depend on Right now, this forecast looks like it's going to be a pretty dry, fluffy snow. uh which makes it easy to push, but it also makes it really easy for the wind to blow around. So, we'll be clearing the same snow off the road half a dozen times through the weekend. Um anything I know it especially when we get a a significant snowfall event, it's it's a lot of fun to to go out and and get around and see what the community looks like. I would urge folks if you don't need to be out, please stay home. It makes it much easier on our staff to clear the roadways if there is not a lot

of traffic. Let lets us keep moving and and uh can be both safer and more effective in clearing snow. Well, that and if you have the ability to park in your driveways, I think that's a big piece, too. Absolutely. I know the streets that have no cars on the or no the streets have no cars in the street have a huge difference compared to the ones that have a bunch of cars you got to go around. But I know it's sometimes you have to, but Sure.

if you have the ability. I know all my kids stack their cars up and it's a nightmare, but we try to do our best. Um, all right. So, we'll move on to citizen participation. This is the time for citizens to come up and talk [clears throat] about anything they'd like to. We only had one person sign up and that was Susan Johnson. So, please come on up and just state your name and address, please, for uh city. If I I think I said it right. Susan Johnson. Yeah, you have an easy name. So, we're

305 South Madison Street. And I just want to say first of all, we love living here. We've been here since 2020. We moved here from tha. Um, we're just down the street. And I apologize if I missed public forum on the sidewalks. I don't know if I did. We had a meeting Tuesday night, but yeah. No, it's no problem. I don't remember all of the sidewalks that are going in this year that I saw the map, but one of them is right across the street from us on Madison and then on South Street.

And we we think that's great. Although my experience, I guess, is um on or I'm sorry on Spring Street around the corner from South Street just seems more urgent to me. But I don't know the criteria. I'm not involved. I don't know all that. I just know I see a lot of walkers, kids and walkers and stuff on and it's really narrow and I meet a lot of school buses um and big trucks and I drive a a Ram truck and I have to kind of I just I don't know what the criteria was but my input would be I would like to see that go in first if possible. Um, that's that's all I wanted

and we can speak to a little bit because I know there was a couple folks that weren't there, but Jacob maybe because that was a big talking point on Tuesday night. So, Jacob could probably reference it a little bit of what we especially when the sun is just right coming down when you're trying to drive east or west and there's kids walking and I try to avoid it. I don't go there. And then unrelated I guess is I've reported it before on Madison Street. Um I guess I'm a little protective of our tar and chip and and I love hers. We we use them for our equipment. Um but when they get a delivery those semis use Madison Street

and I feel like they're too heavy to be on my street but I'm not a engineer. I wish they do that. Um, so anyway, I've reported it on the the portal before and Okay. I don't want I don't want to walk over there and tell him to not do it, but I'm probably listening to me now. But anyway, um, that's it. But yeah, I mean, Jacob, if you want to just I want to at least address [snorts] that because I thought it was a good segue because we talked about it Tuesday night, but the main reason we looked at Spring rather than South Street as far as the sidewalks go. Thank you for listening. Yeah. No, thanks for coming.

Yes. All right. So, the the primary reason we we completely recognize and and agree that South Street um needs sidewalks as well. The the additional work um there's a lot of work that needs to go into South Street in order to allow sidewalks to go in. um that will take a lot more time and a lot more money uh to do that. So, while we aren't saying no to South Street, uh there there were some other streets that were uh set up, it was just more favorable to be able to get that sidewalk in sooner rather than have to wait for all of those other pieces to come come into the fold. So, that's why we really honed in on Spring Street. It parallels South Street. Um, so just one block away and we can do that much more easily, get that in and and hopefully pedestrians will see that as an alternative that that may be walking in the street on South Street today once there are uh sidewalks along Spring that will give them an alternative route while we continue to work and plan toward the installation on South Street.

And I think roughly the difference is like we gave about a $400,000 budget is what we've budgeted over the last two years. And I think to do South Street the right way, it's probably closer to four to six million. Yeah.

So, it's, you know, it's a it's a it's not a permanent fix, but it's a fix that maybe we can work with the school district to reroute kids that way to keep them off South Street the best we can. We can't force anybody to do anything, but we can do our best to try to, you know, that was kind of our thought process behind that. But that's where the the numbers come into play and it makes it kind of tough. But, but yeah, thank you for coming. And then I would say I don't know if we can address the Madison Street at some point, maybe next meeting. I'm I'm I'm guessing direct access to a business, we can't really control how they get there. Um, if they were coming to go through the town, it's different, but when they're going to a direct business, it's kind of a crummy deal. They kind of can just go wherever they need to to get there, you know, uh, what they see fit to need to get there. Um, nobody else signed up, but if you'd like to come on up, feel free. And name and address, please.

Tired of signing up. Yeah.

Bill Peterman, 1943 West 200 Street. Uh, I like hearing about the sidewalks. For the last 12 years, I just will get it done the first day, our first meeting. Uh, everybody when I moved here 12, 13 years ago kept telling me Mayberry. This is Maidberry. Well, Opie walked to school on a sidewalk. [laughter] Remember that. I've said that for 12 years. So, my big thing is now possibly is there a way that we can pour concrete or have concrete or asphalt on the side, right? and and paint a line an 8 foot 8 inch line where two they're not in the street but they are they do have a sidewalk. Uh

that's what that's what basically we're doing on on spring. It's kind of Okay. Well, that's a great idea. I think you Yeah, at least you're getting something that's that's there. Yeah.

Uh trying to think of all the things I wanted to say. Uh, I want to thank the uh chief for getting the signs up and going 30 m an hour down Main Street. Now, we've slowed people down, coming to our town to see, maybe have to see something. Now, let's figure out something that can bring them into town and stay for a little bit. Uh I brought up to somebody here a while back about uh have you ever seen the angel wings that they put downtown uh Kansas City, Missouri on on the back back sides of some buildings and stuff? Kind of like maybe if we was out by uh the barber shop on the one side we could have uh some angel wings. Don't need a bunch of them. Just maybe one set for people this tall and maybe one set for people this tall. people will come and take pictures with of their kids and them with those angel wings. Now, how do we pay for it? I don't know. We find some some deal uh maybe we get some uh kids from the high school to uh do the artist work. Uh maybe we find somebody that wants to is an artist and wants to do that kind of stuff. But we can people to get them we got to get them to stay here for a minute. The other thing is that book that we've been I've talked about for 900 years about getting

you forgotten.

No, I don't for hell I I remember Pearl Harbor. I was born then. Uh we need to take not just that book. Let's just take a couple pages. There's a couple business people in here. You wouldn't mind having a stack of maybe some cards or some papers. regular sheet of typing paper that's got this is Spring Hill, Kansas. And our cemetery, we we have the oldest female or the first female doctor west of the Mississippi buried. John Brown's uh her son was the lieutenant or whatever. He got killed by Contrail's raiders. Uh things like that. At one time when we didn't have a sheriff or a marshall or whatever here in town, there was four people picked and they each had a rifle. That's why they was picked. And when two guys from came to Spring Hill to rob the bank, the four guys got together and chased him. And they shot the one and then they could had to go around looking for the other one. He was up in a tree. Well, they shot him out of the tree. So, I mean, just things like that. I mean, it's interesting. It's entertaining, but it's educational. Let's educate people coming to Spring Hill. Well, hell, I want to go there again. The wing thing, I swear to God, it works because it sucked me into Kansas City, Missouri. My wife had to go and take a picture of the granddaughter with one of those wings. So, let's think about something that brings people to town and builds our town up.

Yeah. Thanks. Thank you.

No, I know. I kind of started last year with Rhonda doing the first Fridays. You're helping with that. So I think as we expand on those things and I think POPS may have something similar to that um so we need to however we can highlight these things I think are good I think that's a good idea. So thanks Bill always has good ideas comes up and talks. All right anyone else that would like to come up and talk. All right we'll move on to the consent agenda. Um there's any questions or comments? If not we'll entertain a motion to approve that. I move to approve the consent agenda. Second.

All right. All those in favor? I I opposed. Passes 500. I'll move on to formal council action. Uh, first up is consider ordinance number 2026-01, Spring Hill Municipal Code, Chapter 13, Section 13-101, Sewer Rules and Regulations, First Edition, 2026. Good evening.

It's some exciting business. That's your first formal item tonight, but um the SER regulations do exactly what that says. They are the rules and the regulations that we use to operate uh the sewer utility. We do follow them uh closely because that's how the the system works, if you will. Um we have not updated them since 2021. It is a project that Jacob and I have been working on for several months and Ashley before this worked on them for quite a while. So, we're starting to see those things come to fruition. I'd like tonight just to update one section that I need for the billing and rates, and that's um article number three. And it's about and and one added definition that we need in article number three are the things that were updating should have a presentation there. If not, I'll just keep talking. Oh, you know why? Microsoft didn't work this afternoon. So that's okay. I happen to have an oldfashioned printed copy and that will work just fine. Um, so the the key change that we're making here is around the billing date. In the current regulations, it's exactly the 15th of the month. No exceptions, no changes, no holidays, no weekends. It's the 15th. We would like to change that to say the date on your bill. So that way we can work around weekends or holidays that when the 15th falls on those days. In 2026, the 15th will fall on a weekend four times. And so we would like to um error to the side of the customer and give them that Monday as their due date so it gives them a couple extra days to pay on time. Um that's a real key thing to us so that we can control the due date instead of being rigid to be exactly on the 15th.

We're going to change some language in here to be consistent with other documents. as an example is throughout this we say treatment works treatment works treatment works and our terminology is wastewater treatment plant some things like that um I'm changing this one to say penalty as opposed to delayed payment charges some things like that and then we'll update the fee schedule and things like that to get everything matched up to terms that we actually use it also references the comprehensive fee schedule which is something we adopted last year and it changes is the references there to reference a comprehensive fee schedule. And then it re removes a couple of procedures that can't be easily maintained. And an simple example of that is it requires a two-year rate review when we actually do that every year, sometimes more than once a year depending on the environment. Another one is around the the procedure or the policy for um credit for our credit enforcement for our collections um procedures. So those are the big highlights of what article 3 would change. It also includes a definition um in the early part to talk about what being in default means. We think and when you do these policies, you have to define terms that people may not know. Default means that you either haven't followed the regulation or you haven't paid your bill and so we're adding default so we understand what we're giving penalties for and things like that or procedures for collection. Can I answer any questions about the policy? Then I've got some another topic around this to talk about. Be happy to talk about the policy.

It's pretty straightforward. It just seems like a lot of verbage changes, right? I'm always uh going to ask questions when we talk about rate reviews. Um, okay. I think some people hear that and think that you're only supposed to be changing my rates every two years. Um, just to be clear that the current ordinance doesn't read that we only review rates every two years and make any adjustments at that time. That's a that's a thing we have a constant authority and and that's good practice to do as a whole. Absolutely. Okay. That's why we want to get it

just removed so it's there as necessary without those need extra words. You bet. Another um piece to this that I want to tell you about is, and some of you may not know, but there's a dropbox in our back parking lot, and you can drive by and toss your well, don't toss it, but put your um payment in the dropbox. We'd like to change the procedures to match more what people are accustomed to seeing that if you put it in that box after three o'clock, that'll be on tomorrow's business. Right now, we take everything overnight and everything and try to get it in as po early as possible the next day. We'd like to take some of that burden off of our processes. Do it at 3:00 in the afternoon, process everything that's in the box, and start over again. We And the sign that we would put out there, it would say if you're trying to put it in on the due date and it's after 3:00, you should go inside because you could get a penalty. We will work with people to get used to a new way of doing things when the time comes. But that helps us internally process payments easier and not be so pressured to make sure we get everything in at certain times so that people don't get penalties when they shouldn't have and some things like that.

I think that's fair. As long as we give probably like a 60-day, right, maybe two months like Well, not even that. Put the sign up because once they have the sign on there, I think if they see it twice, they should know. But give them a couple months grace to if they put it in there after. That would be our plan. And and we also would use um social media and the website and things in a positive way to say, "Hey, watch out for this change and that kind of thing." I'd venture to say a lot of people using the Dropbox maybe don't use social media too. And so that's where having the actual sticker on there I think is real important. Which I like right now. I like the option too. They'll come inside. Right. Absolutely. If you're coming in the evening, of course, it's different. But, um, I mean, could we include something maybe with their bill?

You know, they're currently getting a bill and just include something in there so that they get their bill, they notice, hey, yep. Times have changed.

We have messaging on the kind of the bottom third of the bill and we'll put that there. Um, there's newsletters and different things we can use um for for customers. The sign the box today doesn't have a sign on it. So, it's kind of easy. Whatever you put in there, we get it done the next day and and makes it kind of simple. But, this will be a little bit of a change management that we need to work with customers on. It will be flexible and reasonable. Just to give you an example, probably most days overnight, there's a few checks. I'm gonna say less than 10, less than five. When the due date hits on a weekend, recently a weekend we had a hundred. Oh wow.

So we're trying to get a 100 payments in by 9:00 on Monday morning so we can do the next step in the process. And so this this change helps us do be better at things like that. Well, one changing it to Mondays and then two. Right. Exactly. No, I think that's all sounds fair to me. Great. Any other questions or discussion you'd like to have? All right. With that, we'll uh entertain a motion. This is the one that you can shorten up. Okay. I move to approve ordinance 2026-01 as uh written in the agenda. Second. All those in favor? I opposed.

Oh. Oh, we're doing Oh, is this a roll call? Okay. I apolog Okay. Mr. Throne, yes. Mrs. Feedback, yes. Mr. Grant, yes. Mr. Delgado, yes. Mr. Savage, yes. Mayor, ordinance 2026-01 passes. Oh, 500. Is this the mayor? Should I get No, sorry. See, 5 Z. That's just me. I'm new. You're throwing us all. Yeah.

Thank It's my turn [clears throat] to throw everybody else off. All right, we'll move on to uh number seven. Consider ordinance number 2026-02, Spring Hill Municipal Code, chapter 18, section 18.101 and the rest is on. What do you got for us?

Okay, so we're changing codes all over the place tonight. Uh the next item before you is a request, it's a small request to change the municipal code relative to our storm water criteria. So the Kansas City Metro chapter of the American Public Works Association has a great guide that will um that outlines all of the technical uh technical specifications, the design criteria relative to uh storm water design. Um, this was adopted, the previous version was adopted in December of uh, 2010 and it's been something that we've been using ever since. Uh, in December of 2025, the APWA uh, update, they had a whole process of updating the um, their storm water standards section 5600. uh they hired a consultant. They worked with Mid America Regional Council. They developed a great guide for um storm water. Um we want to take some time to come through the standards, the specifications, make sure that it's a good fit for our community. uh we are used to using the 2010 version and we are recommending continuing that until we've had an opportunity to um again make sure that this is a good fit. Uh in other communities that I've worked for, we have um done a technical um document that gives exceptions to different areas of the code to um require concrete pipe and not allow uh metal pipe. There's other things like that that might be a little bit more palatable for the community. So, um honestly, I'm waiting on Overland Park, Oletha, Lanexa, and some of the other communities in Johnson County to uh go

through the process of figuring out the new standards and making it fit their community. And then I'm going to look at what they do and copy and paste. Um, the other thing that is going on, uh, Johnson County Stormwater is going to be engaging a consultant to thoroughly review these new standards and specifications to do an economic analysis on it to see what kind of impact it's going to have on um, development on public works maintenance. This is something that's going to affect not only the uh, infrastructure and new developments, but it's also going to affect our road rate roadway construction as well. So again, staff's just looking for a little bit of time, a little bit of grace to make sure that we develop a technical standard that fits our criteria. So that requires a small change in um our municipal code to our current code uh reflects the uh latest version of the APWA standards. So, we want to dial that back to the December 15, 2010 adopted standards just so that we are still in compliance with some of our recent reviews and some of our projects moving forward. And we'll come back before you uh with those recommendations in the future whenever we've had a Jacob and I have had a chance to thoroughly review that. We might try to get some feedback from some of our on call consultants who are working in other communities just to see what other people in the metro area are doing. Uh with that, staff recommends the approval of the uh updated ordinance. I am available if you have any questions.

Changing these as they're written now to go back to this 2010 standard, is that going to affect any projects we currently have? It's not gonna not going to make anyone either out of compliance or help them be in compliance where they weren't to begin with. Uh I believe the standards were approved on December 10th of 2025. We've not approved any subdivision projects in the last month. So, um we do have a couple that are ready for approval. So, um I was kind of waiting on this action to occur just to make sure that we were in compliance. Sounds good. What's the timeline on the review of the updated codes to see what we want to use and what not used?

Um, I'm not sure what the timeline is for the Johnson County Economic study that they're performing. I know they were waiting on the new standards to be adopted. They're going to engage a consultant. That's probably going to take some time. Um, I'll check with some of the neighboring communities to see what their process is going to be, but it's usually a pretty detailed process. It's it's a long manual. It's a pretty thick manual to go through. So, I know we were kind of trying to use the other cities to do some of the work for us so we don't have to dedicate so much of our our smaller staff's time to it. So, um definitely think it's important that we keep up on this. I like that we're getting back in line at least with what we have, but I would definitely say at least updates of hope this is over the next six to 12 months of

this is what we've heard so far. We're still waiting for you [clears throat] just to just to stay on top. I'm hopeful to have this updated within the next 12 months, but I can provide you with updates as you know we've got them. Okay, great. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? All right, we'll entertain a motion. I move to approve an ordinance number 2026-02 as written in agenda. Second. We're going with another roll call on this one. All right. Mrs. Feedback. Yes. Mr. Grant. Yes. Mr. Dougado. Yes. Mr. Savage. Yes. Mr. Throne.

Yes. Mayor 2026-02. [clears throat] Passes 500. Thank you very much. Next one up, we've [snorts] got Miss Alison Ael again. Are you gonna take over again tonight? I usually do. All right. Consider approval of task order number three with C Valley Engineering to provide construction materials testing services for the 109th Street roadway improvements from Ridge to Runner.

Okay. The next item before you is a request to approve a task order. Uh back in January of 2025, the city went through a pretty exhaustive um process to hire engineers, architects um on an on on call basis so that whenever things like this [clears throat] come up, we can quickly engage them and get them under contract and get them out there working instead of taking time to go through a qualifications process and start a project eight weeks later. So, this has um been something that we've implemented since January of 2025, and we've uh successfully uh hired a lot of engineers working on some of these smaller projects that are within staff's authority. Um so, as you know, 199 Street is currently under construction. They've been doing a lot of great work on relocating the storm sewer um along that section. They're getting ready to get into the meat and potatoes um here once, weather permitting, after the snowstorm. Um hopefully they'll be able to get some work started in early spring on some of the concrete and asphalt that is necessary for the project. Um to be in compliance with our standards, we do have testing frequencies. So, we're going to go out and take a sample of the concrete and the asphalt and make sure that it meets the testing requirements. They're going to do strength testing. They're going to make sure that everything is uh within the standards that we have written. In order to do that, we have to hire a third party uh to perform these inspections. Um the uh Call Valley Engineering is one of the engineering uh consultants that we've hired. We've used Call Valley a couple of different times on um construction construction testing. They are very familiar with city staff. staff is familiar with their um testing professionals. They know our testing frequency. They they just know they know

us. They know what we need. Um so uh having them under contract for this is very helpful for staff. We can call them up whenever we are getting ready to pour concrete. They'll be out there within they can schedule it within a 24-hour notice. So having a task order uh we've taken um the opportunity to uh figure out what you know based on the size of the project what our um estimation is for the number of tests that would be required and such. So this is an estimate. We'll try to stay within this but if there are times that we're going to need some additional testing or pull an extra cylinder for concrete uh we might go outside of this. I'll be back before you to let you know um if we do exceed this budget. I did include in the staff report um the initial estimate for the project as well as um our actual cost to date. So we are still well within uh we're what $1.7 million under budget with this project. So we've got project budget available to fund this. Um the total estimated cost for the construction materials testing for the 199 [clears throat] street project is 50,000 57,000. Um again, this is just an estimate just to get us going and get us started. Um hopefully we'll be under budget with that like we've been with some of the other things on this project. And with that, uh staff recommends the approval of a task order with Call Valley to do construction materials testing on 199th Street. I am available if you have any questions.

Didn't you admit initially? Was it not 133,000? It was the initial estimate that was put on this project was $133,000. I had um BHC who was our on-site um construction inspector. They also took a look at the um proposal from Call Valley. They thought everything was in line with this. So, if we do go over a little bit, you have that cushion. We have enough cushion to make this work. Okay. I just want to make sure. Thank you. What kind of criteria would lead to us having to do multiple tests once we've already uh collected all those all that information from the initial testing?

So, the way our testing frequency goes is it depends on you know how much work they do in a single day. How many linear feet of curb is laid in a single day. They may have to do multiple tests throughout the day to make sure that that concrete is in compliant. What they typically do is they take five cylinders so that they can do various testing um for u an early break which could be like a three three-day break, 7-day break up to a 28 day break. Sometimes they'll take an extra cylinder if there is a concern that the concrete isn't performing well so that they can do a later break to see if the concrete doesn't get strength within 28 days. They can do a later break to see if eventually it does gain strength. Um depending on how much they do in a single day, they may have to come back and get additional samples of curb if they have remaining curb the next day they hadn't planned on doing it. So, it just depends on how efficient the contractor is and the time, you know, how much they do in a single day and if it spills over into another day.

Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Other questions or comments? I know with this we've done Are you staff's done a really good job of getting all of these numbers down outside of the utility adjustments? We're not going to talk about that. But we're able to have one kind of large outlier and still be very very far under budget. So, um, this is going good and I think with this obviously it may have a little bit of an increase, but I think overall it's still a really good number for what we kind of anticipated. So, I'm happy with it. Good job.

Thanks. Any um any other questions or comments? All right, I'll entertain a motion. I move to approve task order number three with uh Call Valley Engineering as noted in the the agenda tonight. All right, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed. Um passes 5 Z. Moving on to the next number nine here. Consider approval of task for number 11 with Lampernerson for the survey services for the sidewalk improvement project. I'm still here. Still you. It's still me.

Uh the next item before you is a request to approve a task order with Lampray N. Uh we've talked a little bit already tonight about the sidewalk program that we have planned. Um the first phase of that program is to uh do uh a few sidewalks in some what I like to refer to them as readymade areas. They're areas that are great areas that already have curb and gutter. We just need to put a sidewalk in. But in order to do that, we need to engage a contractor. And in order to do that, we have to have some construction drawings. So um staff is um moving this forward. The first step is for us to um hire a surveyor to survey some of those areas um that we are putting sidewalk in so that we can um uh go from uh property line to the street. Figure out exactly where those property lines are. Figure out where the utilities are, what the grades are, if there are any other obstructions that might be in our way, landscaping, utility poles, that kind of thing. So um we've engaged Lamprene um they've done a lot of survey work for us over since 2019 whenever they started with us as an on call engineer. They've done several of the projects for us on the survey side.

Um they recently helped us out with the city city-wide survey um surveying the city boundary. So um very confident in their survey capabilities and uh they are one of our on calls from the January 2025 um list of projects. So we reached out to them, gave them our list of um projects that of the segments of sidewalk that we wanted to get surveyed and they provided us with the cost estimate. So um that's pretty much it. The staff recommends the approval of task order 11 with lamperson for the sidewalk improvement program so that we can start working on phase one so we can get that done here relatively soon.

So that's 10,000 right? Yeah, I believe so. And then so we allocated 400,000 and then I was when I was talking with Lane we actually have 430. So that 10,000 would come out of that. Is that correct? I guess that's what they're he says. Yes, like here you guys have it. Okay, I should make sure I understand it. Questions? Thank you. And this does not include the spring street portion just just for Harrison and Mass.

This is the phase one. So, it's just going to be that initial spring of 2026 program and then we'll have a separate 20 uh the fall program will be separate. That's going to require a heavier lift, hiring an engineer to help us figure out what to do with those ditch line streets,

moving all the utilities that it might even require some uh property acquisition. So, um yeah, that's going to be a whole whole project within itself. So, we're recommending um hiring an engineering firm to not only survey this, but probably do the utility coordination, the uh property acquisition, as well as the design and um putting together the the bid docs. A lot of the stuff for phase one staff felt like we've got the capability to do this. We kind of I'm kind of looking forward to doing this. Yeah, I think it'll be it'll be good to get something going right away. You know, we have the rest on the on the docket, so Yep.

Yeah. Okay, cool. Any other questions, [snorts] comments? Motion. I move to approve task order number 11 for lamprey for the survey services for the sidewalk improvements project. Second. Have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion passes 500. Was that James that second? You're not moving. So that means you're up again. [laughter] I'm not moving for a little while. Just to warn you. Consider approval of conceptual plan for 223rd Street improvement project.

Okay. Um so we had this as a um discussion item in our last meeting. The city engaged HDR to help us figure out what to do at these two key intersections along 223rd Street. Uh Jay Aber and uh uh Taylor Mckenry, they provided a great presentation of all the great things that went into the report. I'm not going to go through all of that. Um that report is included in your packet. Um the two key takeaways, at least for me, is um we wanted to have a master plan for these intersections. Uh this area just north of 223rd Street is ripe for development. There's a lot of great things that could happen there for the benefit of the community, but there are a lot of great things that need to happen with these intersections, too. So, we wanted to go ahead and get a master plan put together for the roadway network in this area so that as development comes in, we will have a footprint that we can go off of and as final plats get approved, we will know exactly where sidewalks going to go. We'll know exactly what easements we need, what right away we need and such. So having this adopted by city council will help that that'll have great strides as Mike and I start negotiating with some of these developers on um the great things that are going to happen in this area of the city. Um so the intersection in front of you right now is um the Harrison Webster 223rd Street intersection. um due to the proximity of uh this intersection to um highway 169 very limited things that we can do in this area. So um whenever we went through our SS4A safe streets for all program last year um one of the safety

countermeasures that was outlined in our comprehensive safety action plan was the strategic use of roundabouts. Roundabouts are a safe a safer intersection because it eliminates the the T collisions that you're seeing and those are sometimes the worst kinds of collisions. Um having the roundabouts in the community, a lot of people questioned whether 199th Street would work as a roundabout. Those same people whenever we had our public meeting, I think we had about 78 people come to the public meeting that we had back in October, I believe. Um those same people that didn't want the 199th Street roundabouts, they're the ones singing the praises right now. So um these work. These work. Um we have had some comments from some of the farming community uh with concerns that their equipment might not be able to go through these intersections. uh we will work directly with Farm Bureau and some of the local farmers so that whenever we do get to the design phase of this uh we can take that feedback into account. Maybe have a lower profile curb so that the wheels can go directly over this area. Maybe we don't put a big sculpture in the middle of the green space in the center of the roundabout. Um so those are things that we can do but again this is a con conceptual plan. We don't have funding planned for these projects, but I will cons I will continue to uh look for funding opportunities so that we can get these funded sooner rather than later so that we can get these these areas improved. So, um some of the comments we received um we went through this last time, but I'll highlight that again. Um the owner of Price Chopper came to the public meeting. He was concerned that the um Splinter Island on the south side of this intersection was going to impact people coming into the

entrance of Price Chopper. We shortened that up so that everybody can have full access to that entry. Now, um there was some concerns about the Splinter Island at the ramps of 169. Um there's a reason why we continued having that continue through the intersection. If we were to open that up, it would short circuit a lot of people would short circuit that and it would reduce the effectiveness of the roundabout since that ramp is so close to the roundabout. So um based on the recommendations of the traffic engineers, we decided to keep that in place. in the future if we decide that maybe we do something more temporary to block that area and just see how it goes, we could always do that. But again, right now tonight, we want to approve the concept plan so that moving forward we have this as a planning tool. So the other intersection is at 223rd in Victory. Um again, this is another roundabout so that we can effectively get traffic moving through this intersection. Um, there is a couple of intersections in between these two roundabouts. We don't know what those are going to be. I think it's all going to depend on what happens just north of there. Depending on what the development needs are, um, where the service roads are going to end up being, there might be a couple of signals at that intersection, at those two key intersections. Um, so as those development applications come in, we will review that as staff. We'll engage our traffic engineers. There will likely need to be a traffic report that uh will be done to study what the best intersection types are for those those two intersections. So with that, I am available if you guys

have any questions. We recommend the adoption of this master plan so that we can use this as a planning tool moving forward. Two things. Um, were there sidewalk? Okay. Is that just Are these sidewalks on the side or No. Yes. So, graphically we wanted to show that sidewalks could exist. Okay. On along the east side of Victory as well as the west side of Webster. Um, I am a future item that you're going to be hearing discussion item.

I got another discussion item for you guys. I'm not done with it yet. Um, we are going to be constructing a loop trail on the inside portion. of that area. We just wanted to show there's going to be sidewalk on both sides. Okay. And then what about that house on the one that's over I know I think it was brought up. I didn't bring it up. Somebody else did, but the driveway there. Yeah. So, um

you going to do that [snorts] one? So, worked with our traffic engineers to figure out exactly how we could still give access to the property owner um there in the corner in the uh northeast corner of Victory and 223rd Street so that they can continue to have access to their driveway. Um, I believe the garage is on that side of 223rd Street and um, you know, they have the ability to have a driveway that is offset from the intersection so that it is outside the influence of the roundabout so they can safely enter and exit their property. [snorts]

There'll definitely be something to once we get to that point, it's going to be a, you know, a big thing we got to figure out. Yeah. And those are um details that we can work with as we start to design this. Kind of like working with Farm Bureau to make sure that we have the right curbs in there. We can adjust this if we needed to one way or the other um based on some of that feedback, but you know, this the traffic engineer spent a lot of time um particularly at this intersection to make sure that this is the least impact on that resident. And has the resident had an opportunity to voice their feedback. I

believe they were at the public meeting or at least the relatives of of them were at the public meeting. So, um I interacted with them. They didn't have any um major concerns with it. They are still able to use that um the driveway on the south side there. I just I think everything was handled right with this. Um I was at the public meeting. I saw, you know, I actually got to talk to some of the public, too. And um I just think we went about it the right way. So, good job. Thank you. I got two questions for you. So, I know this is just a drawing and not a representation, but looking at the picture, I can't not see it, but are the sidewalks [snorts] on the south side of that uh Webster Street, are they going to be narrower than the north side, or is that just a picture and it's just not the scale?

Uh, so typically with our complete street design, we'll have trails on one side and sidewalks on the other. So, what you're seeing is where a sidewalk could go. We're going to focus most of our efforts on having um the trail around the north side of 223rd Street. If the um city council would like to have trail on both sides, we could definitely do that if that's something that um the community would like. Um and again, there's still um some areas in there that that still need to be developed. So, um right now we just have that depicted as um trail on one side, sidewalk on the other to follow our complete streets program that we've we've established.

Okay. And then my other question on victory, I know Chad had talked about it last uh meeting. Um could we do some notches in there for crosswalks? We don't have to put the lines in. We can just put the notches so that way we're doing it one time and we're not having to come back and break it up to put crosswalks there. Uh you're talking about the south side on victory. Yeah, I'm talking. Yeah, the three that don't have any Yeah, we can definitely look at that. Okay. Yeah, that's not something that's going to impact the the footprint of what we're looking at. And I think that, you know, as some of this area starts to grow and develop, then uh yeah, there will be a need. Um it just makes sense to do it now rather than go back and destroy all that work and cause more traffic. Yeah.

Yeah. Both those corners are C2, so eventually we'd hopefully have some walk back and forth. Well, and with this, we do have a little bit of flexibility with the plan to make these modifications as we start to move forward. It's not it's not set in stone, but it's a good guide.

It's a good concept. And I think the biggest thing is what I've heard from land owners and developers that I've talked to in this area is we just don't know what you guys are planning or what we're planning to do. So, it made them uncomfortable to move forward with anything. So now if we have at least this concept of this is what we're going to do eventually. This is kind of exactly what it's going to look not exactly what it's going to look like but it's you know 90% there. Um it gives them an idea of how traffic's going to flow and where they want to go and

I know um Blackhawk's got a couple openings over there that had you know people have had concerns with traffic flow. So now that we kind of know how it's going to work when it is improved that's that's going to be a big help for getting you know getting those properties developed. So, I think it's good to have an idea of what we want to do. And I I'm for this. I think it's good. I like roundabouts. It's funny. I was talking to my kids about it because they only know the one stoplight we have and the roundabout. They didn't drive before then. And for them, roundabouts are way they like we like the roundabout better than stoplight, which I am the other way around, but I grew up with stoplights, not roundabouts. So, I think all of us kind of have a predetermined notion on what we like. So, that's why it's funny to hear that all the people that were opposed to the 199th Street one are now like It's not so bad.

Yeah, that'd be okay. I'm getting used to it. I grew up in rotaries, not roundabouts. [laughter] Yeah, Northeast. That's weird out there. All right. Yeah. No, I think this is uh this is good. I'm I'm glad to see it starting to come to fruition and we're now we can figure out now. Do we have any kind of roundabout number what something like this cost? Give us an idea of how quickly this could happen. Depends or not happen. It depends. A lot of things depend. Um I'm anticipating that it's going to be about2 to3 million per roundabout. Okay. Just based on just, you know, my general feel for what these are going to cost. Yeah.

But then you're going to look for Oh, I'm looking all you've done pretty good on that.

So, well, this one in particular, um, uh, Victory Road was one that we had, um, included in the SS4A implementation grant. So after we uh adopted our SS4A comprehensive safety action plan, uh we then write went right into applying for an implementation grant that was 11 million to fund several projects including South Street sidewalk, couple of roundabouts, couple of uh segments along uh intersections along 169. Victory Road was one of the projects in that in that in that grant application. Unfortunately, we did not get funded for that. we did not get it approved. Um, I will be asking for a debrief so that I can find out how we can do things better and they'll have another opportunity here in a few months for us to apply for another round of implementation grants and you know I'm going to be applying for anything that I can.

Well, and although I know Miami County doesn't have a cars program like Johnson County does, this is probably one of their biggest sections of retails sales tax that they get. And with that sales tax that passed last year, year or so ago, that is some funding that we could probably even go after too for something like this. How much is that? It's every five years. It's a certain dollar amount. Anybody know off top of their head? Rhonda, two or 400? It's like 500. 500 every five years. 200 back. 500 be better. Do I hear 500,000? I go with 500. 750. Give me some 500 over five years, right? That's what Okay, that's what I thought.

But I know there's some other money out there, too, that possibly. So, yeah, as we attack this now, I'm assuming these can be siloed where we're like, hey, we're only going to do the Webster one for now and then victories not nearly as probably as busy as the Webster and Harrison. So, um I'd even say if there's funding out there, even tackling that one first would be would be nice. Yeah. So, the reason we had Victory on there first was we actually some significant accidents at their and the benefit cost analysis was a little bit higher for this intersection. So that's part of the reason why Victory rose to the top of the primary list because people are flying from the east side.

We we do I believe currently have uh 200 $250,000 from the previous sales tax from Miami County.

Um and once the new sales tax goes in, is that 27? I believe it's 27 that the new sales tax goes in. Then we would have that opportunity to [clears throat] grab the 500,000 too. So potentially 700 750,000 we could receive from Miami County sales tax. What's nice is that we're doing this tonight and next week is the city county meeting that I'll go to. So we'll be able to present this as something that we've we're talking about and I know everybody up there is pretty excited about us improving to the 23rd. So we'll kind of see where things go from there. Well, and we will be applying for um build planning grant for 223rd Street um from basically highway to highway. It's going to be from Columbia Street, which is west of 169, a 9 mile segment to highway 69. So, we will be applying for that next month. So, I'll be um asking everybody for letters of support.

That's with Miami County, right? That is with Miami County where it's a 50-50 partnership, but then we entered into an interlocal agreement to help with the local match. which the feedback I got, they were very happy with how you worked with them. So, thank you. That makes a big difference if we can be on the good foot with the counties. I know we're on pretty good foot with Johnson County. So, if we can be there with Miami, it's even even better if we have both counties on our side. It's been great working with their their staff. Yeah, I know it went pretty well. Thank you. All right. Any other comments or questions? Look for a motion. I move to adopt the 223rd Street Webster Harrison and Victory intersection concept plan. Second.

Two seconds. [laughter] All right. All those in favor? I I opposed. Motion passes 500. Is that your first one? Second one. You gave it up. should have kept it. All right, now we get into discussion items and she's still not moving. So, I guess she's gonna This is my last one, I promise. All right. Pre-qualified engineers for 223rd Street loop trail design.

Okay. So, um the last item was on 223rd Street, so I thought it would be appropriate to talk about 23rd 223rd Street. for this item. Um we uh the city received a car carbon elimination grant from uh KOT last year um to make improvements to uh and install that loop trail along um it would be the east side of Webster, the north side of 223rd Street and the west side of Victory. So that triangular piece, we would be putting a loop trail on the inside of that. Um that grant application also includes the installation of some RRFBs, the rectangular rapid flashing beacons for crosswalks so that we can have strategically placed crosswalks along these areas. Um as well the total cost of the project is about $1.7 million and we are going to get a million dollars from uh KOT to help support that. The city is responsible for the local match um associated with the project. Um and we are also responsible for any of the um engineering costs. So to hire a consultant, we estimate that it's going to be about $200,000 to hire a consultant to do survey, the design, the utility relocation, the property acquisition, all the great things that go into putting the bid documents together so that we can take this out for contractor bid. Um, so we've got the funding is available to us um for fiscal year 2027, which means we're planning on um putting this out to bid in October of this year. So um as I had previously mentioned, we went through this whole on call engineering process. So, back in fall of 2024, right after I started with the

city, um I knew that there was a need for us to hire specialists. You know, we've got an engineer on staff. We've got an now we've got a construction inspector. We're going to continue to hire great staff members, but we can only do so much. We need to hire specialists so that we can have structural engineers review retaining walls. We can have electrical engineers do some of the electrical work. Depending on what the the specialty is, we would have them on call. So, the city released a request for qualifications um for on call engineering and architectural services in the fall of 2024. We received proposals from 39 well actually 40 uh consulting firms. One of them came in seven minutes late, so we had to disqualify them. So, staff reviewed 39 proposals. was really upset that it wasn't an even number. But um so we reviewed 39 proposals, the selection committee reviewed them, and we decided to move forward with contracting with 19 firms. Those 19 firms cover 11 different specialty areas. traffic engineers, survey, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing architects, landscape architects. The list goes on and on of all the specialty services that we would ever need at any moment's notice. And we did this specifically, this was something that I did whenever I was at the city of Parkville, just because again, we had limited staff. We wanted to make sure that we had we could pick up the phone at a moment's notice and contact a surveyor if we needed survey for a sidewalk area. and we can easily get them under contract and it would just be a task order. So, um, this helps with staff efficiencies to get us moving on projects quicker so that we can get them in front of you. I've been trying to do regardless of the dollar amount still coming before you with all the task orders. That's why you see me a lot because we have a lot going on. Um, so

just to give you some idea of how we've utilized this on call over the last year that we've had it. Um, we've hired Terracon uh, consultants. They're a geotechnical firm. They also provide um, the environmental reports. So whenever we go to purchase a piece of property like the wastewater treatment plants, we wanted to make sure that we were being responsible and do an evaluate envir environmental evaluation on the property to make sure we knew what we were getting into, that there wasn't some nastiness underground. Um we've had a couple other opportunities where we've done environmental phase one and phase two um on several different properties around Terracon is they've provided us with the best price. Um they are very uh they're very quick with their response and they turn that around fairly quickly. Uh we've engaged Col Valley like we did tonight with construction materials testing. They're familiar with our staff. they're familiar with our testing frequency. Um, they know what's going on in our community. Um, George Butler Associates has um done a fantastic job with supporting community development while we've had the transition. Before Mike came on board, we needed help with building inspections, building permit reviews, all of those things. And they work as an extension of our staff and have helped us out tremendously. Um, HDR has helped the city with grant support on some of the 223rd Street build grants and the SS4A implementation grants. I've got a lot of experience, but grant writing is one of those one of those things that I don't have the knack for. So, hiring them to provide all the graphics and all the key words and we can work together again as an extension of staff. um in Merge Midwest. Um Janelle has been a great value to us um

helping out with the traffic committee and being our on call traffic engineer as a sounding board so that you know making sure that if we need a traffic study or anything like that, she's she's been great to just be able to pick up the phone and call her whenever we've got any traffic related questions. So, moving forward, we've got several projects, and I started off with 223rd Street Loop project because that's our immediate need. We've got several projects that are kind of in that sweet spot of I I would like to refer to them as like a middle level project. It's not small. It's not within my authority. I can't sign a task order, but I would like to help expedite getting some of these engineers on board so that they can help us out. We've already gone through the pre-qualification process of getting the 39 proposals, reviewing them, determining who was the most qualified for the different specialties and such, but utilizing that list of engineers and architects each time that we have some of these mid-level projects that come up so that we can get a proposal in hand, a scope and fee so that we can evaluate that. So, one of my recommendations is to um put together a small proposal request to five of the firms listed um on our on call and give them the opportunity to respond uh with a thoughtful scope and fee. Include some resumes, maybe some project experience, but focus more on the needs of the project. And then from the from that staff will can evaluate those five metals and then try to um engage in a task order uh for those projects. So, um the alternative is a little bit more timely. It's going to take a little

bit more staff time for us to put together a more thoughtful, more detailed request for qualifications. We would release that out to the public market. We may end up with 39 proposals. That's going to take staff time to review those. That might include a lot of engineers and architects that we've never worked with before that aren't familiar with the needs of our community with staff and how we operate. Um like to cut through some of that those unknowns so that we can move forward and get some of these um engineers under contract sooner so that we can start working on the projects um and we can start seeing construction happen sooner. So that would be my proposal is to use the on call engineers and architects list as a pre-qualified uh list of professionals so that we can get proposals from let's say five firms or whatever number you guys would feel comfortable with. I can send it out to all 19 and they can respond back to me. Um I just feel like this would be um a little bit quicker. we could shave off about a month's worth of work um and some additional staff time to um go through and review tons of proposals and put together a detailed scope. So to clarify, it sounds like are you wanting us to set kind of a dollar amount that we'd say, hey, under this amount, let's do the RFQ, a smaller RFQ within the pre-authorized uh or the on call firms that we have rather than take it out to full RFQ that's going to take us an extra four to six weeks so that we can get some of these smaller projects moving quicker. That's exactly what I'm looking for is um what would you guys feel comfortable with this project for the loop trail? As I mentioned, it's $200,000. I think this

one is a good one for us to utilize the uh on call as a pre-quall. Uh there are other projects like trying to think City Lake Dam was another good one that was about $300,000 due to us uh uh trying to fit the needs of uh getting the improvements designed and under construction sooner for insurance purposes to get improvements done to the city of Lake Dam. We came before you with the request to uh direct award that to Lampre. We've done that on other projects right around that $300,000 mark. And that would be my recommendation is to um somewhere somewhere right around that mark. We would still come before you before we would sign any task orders or do anything like that. This is just an effort to save that six weeks that it would take for us to go through the full process.

Do you already have a process in place for this or a policy? I mean, are we doing any changes by what we're currently doing it or are you trying to establish something here tonight? I'm just trying to figure out like what what's the current procedure with it? Uh there is not a written down policy. We do have a procurement policy, right? Um you know, we've got and that's got staff authority. Sure. Uh levels and such. Um we, you know, after the discussion tonight, Sure. we can come before you. I can work with Rhonda to um maybe come up with some wording that we can supplement that um purchasing policy

so that we have some guidelines so that we have that target. Um specifically, you know, the new thing is we've got the on call list. How are we going to utilize that? How can we move forward with projects more quickly so that we can get get results? I would have that spelled out. I'm just telling you, I think that's the way to go. Yeah. When I look at this, I seem in my mind, I don't know what you guys think, but I don't think we should treat a $100,000 project the same as we do a $10 million project. So maybe that's what this is, is that we're maybe setting up a zero to 500 policy process, a process, 500 to million, and then million up. I don't I don't know what that looks like, but that's kind of where my mind goes with this because

if we can if we can save time on smaller projects, but not also also not lose that competitive bid process, right? Uh there seems to be a happy medium that we might be able to find. Um I don't know what anybody else's thoughts are. How often how often do we revise our on call list?

It's every three years. So they're under a three-year contract right now. And uh the way that our on call list works is um they are able to update their billing rates as they have, you know, staff salary increases, that kind of thing. So they have the ability to update update their billing rates every year during that three-year period. So we will take this back out in fall of 2027 um so that we can again go through that same process. One thing I'd like to point out with engineers and architects, they do have a qualifications based selection process, it's really you get what you pay for whenever you hire an engineering firm, when you hire an architectural firm. Um, having the specialist like we've got on our on calls is really helpful because you get exactly what you what you need and you can get it more quickly and sometimes cheaper than if you've got a jack of all trades engineer that might be spinning their wheels that may not always do traffic studies and they're trying to figure out a traffic model when Janelle's out there doing traffic models every day and knows exactly what to look for.

I I'm not opposed to reviewing this process and looking for a way to make it easier for you guys. I we know that the workload is always dialed up pretty significantly, especially with so many different irons in the fire. My only concern with this is while a $200,000 project doesn't sound like a lot, especially to some of our our larger on call firms, that's that's a drop in the bucket for them on a lot of their yearly budget and uh yearly projects. Um I do like the idea of the city providing opportunities for people branching out on their own for you said Janelle decides to open her own firm and can't operate up the same but level as Lampre and all those other firms, they she's going to have the opportunity to say, you know what, I've decided to go out on my own and I want to I want to bid for the city, too. So, I want to make sure that we're real careful

going through this process to not cut out those people that can potentially be people that we've worked a long time with that are deciding to go out on their own.

And funny you mentioned Janelle. She used to work at GBA. She did go out on her own. So, she is a womanowned business. believe they have three employees and um they are all fantastic traffic engineers. We've got other people that are and we tried to have a really good diverse mix of people on our on call list that were you know smaller firms that had you know the capabilities to do some of the work. We have uh water resources engineers that's another smaller firm gentleman from Black & Beach opened up his own firm and he is a specialist in water resources and they is currently working with us on the Legacy Lake Dam. So, we do try to, you know, have that diversity within our on calls to get some of those specialists and that comes through with the resumeumés and their project experience. That was one thing I really liked about the water resources proposal whenever they uh submitted it. They had projects from Mission Hills on sidewalks, storm drains, those kinds of things. So, as I was reading through their proposals, I was dreaming and scheming about all of the great things that we can do in our community that he has already done in smaller communities just like ours.

But she would have to wait three years. Janelle's already on our on call. I know, but I'm just theoretically had somebody come in um that, you know, they'd have to wait three years if they were, which I don't I don't personally have a problem with that. I think as long as we're really doing it every three years or we decide it's two or whatever it is, but I think that that's the cost of doing business too is okay. Well, if I know I'm going to branch out and I know there's certain cities I work with or projects I do, I'm going to try to make sure I do it at the right time. So, as long as we're constantly updating that or redoing it, that's where I'm okay with it. Probably like every three years though. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Like at least every three years. I I would venture to say I know it's probably a lot of work. So doing it more often than that's probably tough if you're going to keep getting 40 50 applicants for you know on call list but um you know that I would think at least three years would be probably the better renewal. I would also like to mention that it seems like as we've got more projects the uh staffing is always going to be a conversation that we're going to have. So, if it's getting to the point where the workload's justifying another position, those are conversations that we need to have also because sometimes we can save ourselves money by not doing all of that extra work.

It's funny you say that. We do have a couple of staff positions in the engineering part department. We've got one out right now and we're hopefully going to have that justification to hire another one. Put it in perspective, we have 19 on call firms. uh I don't have the exact number but it's probably around 10 to 12 that we have engaged right now

in various projects. We we have just enough projects that one or two firms would not be able to do this. So um we are definitely working with a lot of different firms and I've always been a fan of third party firms on call only because you talk about the specialties we have to deal with. We're never going to hire somebody that has all those specialties or or you're going to pay them out the wazoo. So for me, I like having a specialy here that we can go after or five, you know, like, hey, five, I know these five are good or I'll put it out to all 19 and then

whoever gets back with me, I know who's good or who's not. So that's the only reason I I always venture to say until we really have like just the day-to-day business that we need the person, I would prefer to still go out third party as much as we need to with Allison's group kind of monitoring all of it. But that's my forethought on it. But, uh, I know we're getting to the point where we're going to have more people here. Then we'll probably see a little bit of a lull on how much we have to use on call and then we'll get busier again and then we'll start and just keep growing and growing.

I wish this on call had lightened my load. I managing all the projects and doing it. It's like hurting cats. U trying to make sure that the consultants are, you know, managing their time wisely, getting us the milestone documents that we're asking for, you know, making sure that the projects continue to run. So that's what staff does is we're not just sending this out and putting it on cruise control. We're actively engaged in reviewing and managing the projects and having progress meetings and everything like that. What's nice is if we are reviewing it every two or three years and we have people that are a problem or or firms that are a problem, we can offload them and bring on. So

that's why I like the fact that we give them a little bit of time to kind of establish themselves and then we can kind of move on or you know keep them in there. So I I would think so like in my world we had standards for loans from zero to 500,000 and loans from 500 to 2 million and 2 million and up were kind of you had to do 100% of the underwriting compared to you know more limited. So in my mind this works kind of the same way where it's for me you know 0 to 500 300 250 whatever we decide but in that I think we can stay within our group and we get above that dollar amount I think we need to go full RFQ and there may be smaller projects where we say hey we actually need to go and I think even in this process we could come back and say actually on this one we don't want to stay within and we want to push it out but I think for a lot of stuff that especially us that want to see

to have is the on call that we've got. I feel comfortable with with that process at this point. So, my hope would be that we could figure out a dollar amount that we're all comfortable with to say we can bypass the long route and go a little bit more streamlined route and um and do that. But kicking mic over [snorts] just kidding. But yeah, so um so yeah. No, that's kind of where I'm at with it. I don't know what I mean if you guys want to I don't know if you need a consensus for what you need to go back and look at or I can come up with a proposal and present it to you guys and then we can look at adopting uh a revision to the U purchasing policy based on that. So does anybody have idea in their head of what a dollar amount would be that

I'd personally like to see Allison's recommendations on based on the All right. Cool. that she deals with. Yeah. Well, that's what I've been doing so far. You asked if I had a policy. It's all up here.

Yeah. Um, but no, it's one of those that I'll know it when I see it. City Lake Dam was a small enough project. It made sense to go ahead and Lampre had done the inspection. They had done a lot of the leg work, the preliminary concepts. So, it made sense to direct award that project. Um, the next project we're going to have is the Eastreamway Trail. That's going to be a relatively small engineering fee. That's another one that would fit under this pre-qualification program. Um, like to also note that Overland Park has a pre-qualification program. They they utilize that on all of their projects regardless of the dollar amount. So, the multi-million dollar college and metaf project, you had to have been on their pre-qualified list, they shortlist it down to five firms, and they give you the opportunity to submit a proposal and a fee. So, it's very similar to what Overland Park's done, but I do like the idea of setting that dollar threshold because I really want to give competitiveness out for the larger projects because we'll have the railway project that will be a collaboration with us, Fort Scott, and Fontana. There's going to be rail engineers that aren't on our on call right now that would be a great consultant to work on that project. and that's going to be a $ 1.5 million project for a design fee. So, we definitely want to make sure that we give those opportunities, but again, I like this the sliding scale so that we have that written down so that we have some guidance.

Well, when it comes into like the damn one, I think we were on a timeline anyway, right? Because we were kind of out of compliance. So, if we had to, we were going to have to bypass our normal process anyway. So, if we can make it that some of these ones that are a little bit smaller that we can streamline through. Yeah. And you said something earlier and I didn't quite understand. You said it's not necessarily we can't choose by pricing. We have to choose by qualifications or how does that work?

So like the state of Missouri um they have what's called QBS which is qualification space selection. You cannot take price into consideration whenever you're hiring an engineer or an architect. Kansas is a little bit more flexible than Missouri is on that. Um, what I've done in the past on some projects is have the engineers or the architects submit a proposal and then they they submit a separate sealed envelope with their fee inside so that you still evaluate the proposal based on its merits, based on the qualifications, but you also have that submitted bid, so to speak, of what that um competitive price is, but you're not making the decision based solely on the price. Uh we did that for Northwest Sewer was uh one that we sent out. Same thing, pre-qualified them, sent it out to five engineering firms. Three firms responded with proposals and fees. We did look at their proposals. We did look at their fees the and we reviewed both of those, but it wasn't we didn't select the engineering firm based off of their fee alone. We selected them off of their proposals, their qualifications. Are they a good fit? And then it just so happens that they happen to also be the low bid. So, um, sometimes things work out that well, that way. Um, again, staff likes to have that flexibility so that we can make sure that we're getting what we pay for. Um, getting that quality in the services that we're asking for.

Feel like over my years, the most qualified tend to know what the pricing should be. It's not usually super outlandish, but I'd be terrified if we didn't have a choice in that based off pricing. Well, and when we Nothing [snorts] you can do about it if you can't use that as a qualification.

When we went out for consultants for the SS4A uh comprehensive safety action plan, um we took that out. I believe it was a public bid, but we specifically said, "We have a budget of $150,000. what can you do for us? And we had them spell out the scope. I could do this on this project and say, we have a budget of $200,000. What is your proposed scope? And then we could hire them based off of the scope. So, there's a lot of different ways that we can handle this. And I kind of want to build that flexibility into that pre-qualification program because again, I'll know it when I see it. Doing this for as long as I've been doing it. I'm not going to say how many years, but doing it on both sides, both public and private. I'll know it when I see it.

I'm I think yeah, I think PJ's right. Come back with a proposal or you know what you think and and then we'll kind of go from there. But I I'm for trying to figure out how to make things a little bit more streamlined and so that we're not jumping back and forth. Are we going to overturn this one and not this one? It just gives us a little bit more of a clear path to get to where we need to be on certain projects.

Great. Well, so this is the next project and for us to bid that uh take it out for bid in October. I'd like to go ahead and move forward with the $200,000 uh solicit the pre-qualification if you're okay with me moving forward on that so that we can uh approve that task order at the same time as we approve the new purchasing policy. You guys are okay with that? I think based on the scope of the project, I think it's appropriate at this point. I I think it's probably fine, especially since we need to get this one moving. Yeah. Um and we've talked about it enough and I think that's within the budget that we kind of kind of anticipated. So, okay.

Um I don't love going out saying this is our budget for this project because then I feel like we're always going to hit that ceiling, but I think sometimes it's going to be needed. So, yeah. Again, I don't know. I don't know exactly how you know more what 200,000 is going to get us than I know you know. Yeah. They'll come back and be right at it. I'm like see I told you. I I honestly would love to hit the budget if I could. $199.99. Yep. Exactly. Okay. Well, thank you. All right. Thanks.

All right. Jacob's taking over the rest of the night. We got uh the 2026 street maintenance project discussion. Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'm here tonight so that Mrs. Able to have a chance to sit down and catch her breath. The uh So, I wanted to I wanted to just talk with you a little bit about the street maintenance project, get a little feedback as we work toward uh bidding this out.

I apologize this presentation is not in the form that I want it in. thanks to the earlier mentioned Microsoft glitch uh today but uh but I will get through this. So, what we have on our from year to year, uh, let me back up and and Rhonda can jump in here if I misstate anything, but it was three years ago that the city um had um issued bonds for uh street maintenance projects. And I think that was a time where this the number of roads just the sheer magnitude of work. So many roads that needed so much attention that you know bonding that was was really the only you know real viable way to to gain the ground that needed to be gained in the time that it needed. Since then, we've been, you know, we bring in uh money every year from the state fuel tax, but we only bring in about $260,000 a year uh from that. $260,000 a year will not get us very far uh when it comes to road maintenance. So what we've been doing through the last few years is we're we're using each year's uh fuel tax and then we you know we've been using up all of that bond money and then you know also using some some reserves. So I want to talk to you a little bit about our long range strategy um because that will that will help staff know how to scope these projects, how what should we plan for in terms of quantities. So no time like the present. So, one of the things that we looked at uh for this year, there were five subdivisions

whose roads are in need of uh resurfacing sooner rather than later. And when I talk about resurfacing, the the goal in that is to catch these roads before they get really bad. When most people would think there's nothing wrong, that road's still smooth. I don't I don't notice any problems. Um, and that's how we want it. If you get um if you get look closely, you can begin to see signs of deterioration. And if you catch the roads then and resurface them and eliminate the possibility for water to infiltrate the pavement and the subgrade, then you can prolong the life of that pavement. And those resurfacing um methods are much more cost affordable than a full reconstruction which if you wait too long that that's what you're facing. So we um we tried it last year for the first time. There's a a process the acronym is Ubass. It stands for ultra thin bonded asphaltic surface. It's just a really really thin overlay and uh it is affordable but it's a a much it's a much more resident friendly uh process as opposed to chip seal. And we've we've talked about we all know the some of the challenges with chip seal and what that uh what that's like. So, what we're looking to do with the Ubass is get something that functions looks and functions more like asphalt, but at a price that's actually uh much much closer to the to the chip seal process. So, we looked at these five neighborhoods, looked at the streets within those neighborhoods that that need resurfacing, asked the engineering firm to go out and and make some some cost estimates. We

put that together. It was right in line with kind of what we've been spending over the last several years. It's about a million dollars worth of of work. And and and honestly, at least with today's pricing, that's about the level that I would I would recommend we need to be at in order to keep pace to to keep up with what needs to be done and not fall behind again. So, we looked at those five neighborhoods. Um, but also as we drive around, I can't help and and some of the council have brought it up, community members have brought it up and and staff level. We definitely see it. Webster Street from South Street to down to Victory. It's a it's a concrete street, not not an asphalt street that is is showing uh fairly significant deterioration right along the joint lines. And I won't get into all the details, but the the pavement itself and the subgrade still seems to be very very sound, but it's along those joint lines um that it's really problematic. So, we've come up with a I think a good method to not have to rebuild that. One of one of the problems with concrete streets is they they last a long time, but it's kind of all or nothing. There's not there's not really a resurfacing treatment that's all that effective for them. What we what we can do with that is mill on the edge down a couple of inches. um and then um bring that over about a six foot period that would taper out to nothing and it would create a that that 2-in uh milling would create a lug that we could do a 2-in asphalt overlay on top of that concrete. Take

advantage of the good base uh that's there, but get a good asphalt surface that would help in the short term. The other benefit to that is going forward it's an asphalt street and and all of those resurfacing methods that we use on our other streets would be a viable option for this portion of Webster. Also, one of the problems though is okay now now we've identified 1.2 1.3 million uh worth of worth of work. So, one of the things that so this is a you know street resurfacing. Uh this is you know one of the streets uh believe this is in the Sweetwater subdivision. You see the crack ceiling has been done. Um you know it's not in horrible shape. Not in great shape. But so doing that resurfacing in all of those subdivisions, those five that I had outlined is is just over a million dollars. That's to do a few base repairs where where it is necessary to to go down deeper and and do those base repairs. It's doing that. It's doing the paving, any striping that's necessary and and there's a little bit of contingency in that number as well. Here's south picture of South Webster. And again, it's the method that I just outlined about a little over $230,000 for the paving striping is fairly significant there with the uh continuous left turn lane and and other pavement markings that that adds to that as well. So I just wanted to I just wanted to talk kind of talk through this concept and and both short term for this year get a sense of where you wanted to be but also long term where how much work what do we want to

include um scope-wise and and therefore dollar amount wise in our annual street resurfacing project and and then you at the staff level myself Rhonda we can sit down and and and try to figure out and come back to you with with ways to make that happen. But right now, anything over about 250 $260,000 is going to require some subsidy. uh whether that you know we can as we do we will reach out to our um our partners with both Miami County and Johnson County and there's some assistance that we can get for some projects um grant opportunities and other cost sharing opportunities but where where do we want to be? Do we want to just utilize that that motor vehicle gasoline tax and and any other, you know, grants or funding participations? Or do we want to do we want to try to build into the budget um additional dollars into our operating budget to keep up with these annual maintenance operations? So, generally, that's the topic that I wanted to to bring up, get you thinking about answering any questions that I can.

So, off the top of it, if you're you're talking about um using bond money right now, eventually that bond money is going to be gone, right? It's gone. It's got word used it all. So, at what point are we going to be at a point where you're going to have to go back to the way business had been handled prior to us all being here? So, it's not just coincidental that I'm bringing this up now. Uh, so there is the current balance in what what we call our consolidated highway fund. It's it's the fund that that gasoline tax money uh goes into. There is currently 1,329 330 million uh one 1,330,000 in that do it all.

Yeah. [laughter] So 30 million at all. So essentially the projects as you're showing them now are going to completely wipe that fun.

That it would wipe that out. Um which and and I'm I'm not necessarily recommending that, but uh it's that's where we're at. So that's kind of some of the decisions that we have to make. If yeah, if we wanted to, we could we could keep plowing ahead and and do all of that this year and then we're in a in a really untenable position next year. So, I wouldn't recommend taking that down to nothing, but uh it's time for us to start planning and come up with that long-term strategy, whether that's find a way to fund a million dollars a year or let's scale back and and we'll do, you know, 250 $260,000 worth um per year and and you know, get the worst first and and make the most of that or or some other combination. Ideally, we'd be fixing everything that needs to be fixed every year as it comes, especially with our tax rates and the way everything is people expect a certain quality in the roads in Johnson County and Miami County. Um, I think this is kind of one of those things we're kind of back to how we just said with Allison, I would love to hear your input on that, especially working with Rhonda. Um, painting a say picture, right? Like, uh, here's what it would look like if we're only doing $250 to $300,000 a year. Here's what the tax um or potential budget movement that we have to do. Here's how it impacts the year in budget. Getting a proposal together like that that gives us a worst case scenario or a best case scenario and a couple like in the middle options I think would probably be the best for us to inform any kind of real decision at this point. I I think there's a really good

easy answer. Yeah, sorry. Let's go next. I think on Webster Street, uh the good news, the silver lining of this is uh we have about 200 250,000 with Miami County. Um that would be a really easy fix for that the South Webster portion. Uh we would just have to have the governing body give us direction. We would go down and ask Miami County for those funds for that particular project. Um and and at least this year it's an easy answer that fixes a big pro uh problem that we have. Sorry, they have to approve your thunder.

They have to approve that, right? As far as it's not whatever we want. We because we kind of ran into that with that initial where we picked some roads and then we went back to them and they said, "Oh, we actually don't want we're not going to give you the money for that." But it's just for improvements, right? There you can't do new. No, no. There was it was improvements, but they didn't like where we did the improvements. So, they have a little bit of say on Yeah, they can hold that many hostages. That's I don't think this would be a huge issue because it's a main thoroughare. Their issue was I think that was neighborhoods. They didn't like that. Um my question would be do we take anything out of the normal budget this year for roads or 26?

We have not done that. when we wrap up 2025 and look at budget to actual and if we have any cash left over from 26 this you'll have the opportunity to decide where that money is spent. I think as we look at the 27 budget year, we're going to have to look hard at budgeting an amount to be spent on streets from the general fund thing last year with the uh sidewalks funds, right?

Is the 260 is that pretty standard every year? Yes. So, we can kind of say, hey, 260 is what we know we're going to get. I would venture to say that I would like to see us budget like 500 in including the 260 and then at the end of the year we try to find the other 500 and keep it at about minimum about about a million a year but at the end of the year we try to find that 500 and what we have left over is kind of would be my thought on that but whatever you guys I I would be a little cautious with like commit committing to looking for those in our we've had a a really good couple years where the surplus year has been awesome but we also have a lot of other projects that we're working on. So, I'd be a little bit more hesitant to say, let's look for another half a million dollars this year.

Well, that's the only reason I say we just guarantee 500, right? And then it's, you know, if we have it there, then we can look at an additional 500. But we've had that for four or five years in a row now. So, I feel like we're the way that Rhonda budgets, we typically have a surplus, right? Absolutely.

purposely so you can spend it on projects like this. The other thing is that we um we have this past year we funded your cars project um out of the general fund. Some of that money will come back to us. So we'll have a little bit extra that then could be moved to the next cars project and some things like that. So I think we have some opportunities. The 1.3 million is highway tax money, gasoline tax money, which is meant to be spent on streets. So spending it down, you'll never hear me say it very often, but spending it down is spending on on what it's meant to spend. Right. Right. I mean, I I feel like we've been doing about a million a year. Yeah.

I feel like that's kind of what we need to spend because that's the only way to get ahead of where we're so far behind, right? Unfortunately, we have these bigger ones like Webster where it's going to cost a little bit more for a shorter period. But and again, ideally over the course of the next couple years, our situation financially changes. revenue off of these different tax funds. We can have staff come back to the governing body with with a number an estimate of where we think the sweet spot is uh to not only maintain what we have, but as we grow, we want to make sure that we keep that, you know, that 500,000 or that million dollar number may go up 50,000 or 100,000 a year to to

for the extra lane miles and things. when I think we're doing a better job with the developers and people building as far as making those improvements or at least a a push there. Yeah. As part of the deal. So, if we can continue that, I think that helps, too. Um, excise tax. Are we still collecting that on new developments? Yes. And that's another place. I know we've pulled money for roads before, so that's another place we can look at that's kind of that one changes quite a bit depending on what we have happen. But that's been a big um of our surplus, a big portion of our surplus over there. There's $2.25 million in your excise tax fund. Um that is meant to support the neighborhoods that create that excise tax, which is which is good. Yeah.

But it is meant for roads and infrastructure that can be sidewalks and crosswalks. So maybe that's more of like where we get some of that the Ubass area where it's because it's all neighborhood based and then we have more of the highway tax for the larger roads.

Think a great idea. So, um, those are just some ideas of, but I think that million dollar number is kind of the sweet spot right now is where we kind of need to be. So, how we get there could be a lot of different ways, but um, and right now we have a little bit of a cushion in all those areas. So, using that as we figure out over the next couple years, we have new developments come in, whether it be hopefully some commercial ones that are going to help offset and um, no, but that I mean, I think you're on the right track, Jake. Now, I will say on the Ubass, I remember we talked about last year, but I don't know if I ever really saw, it's not like a chip and seal. Correct.

No, no, it it looks when it's finished, it's hard to tell the difference between Ubass and a traditional asphalt overlay. So, that was kind of why we went that route. Yeah. It it just uh it's a it's a thinner it's about 3/4 of an inch thick mat. And not I won't get into all the technical parts of it, but it it acts like asphalt. So it doesn't come loose and kick up with tires and see where every you know every vehicle is turned. Doesn't doesn't leave the road rash if you uh you know wipe out on a skateboard. Yeah, that kind of thing. You can ride a skateboard on it. That's Yes, you can ride a skate or a scooter.

Some people scooter was like oh man. No, because that was I know one thing that we kind of committed to was like hey neighborhoods were not going to do chip seal anymore if if possible at all. So, um, yeah. No, that's kind of where I'm at with it. I mean, you guys talk about yourself, but So, Ubass, can you do that two layers thick or is it like when we go back to re-evaluate these areas that are getting Ubass, how is that done? So, traditional.

So, yeah, you can so it the the first stage of Ubass they call it a micro texture. So, they they scuff the surface to to get it um a rough texture that that that layer of the Ubass can can adhere to. You could go back 10 years later and microexture the previous Ubass and and put Ubass over it again. Okay?

The same way you can do a you can mill asphalt and put another layer of asphalt over it. Ubass works the same way. You're just dealing in in thinner layers. Um that that makes it that just brings the cost down. Okay. You know, I like I like that idea of using what we were kind of previously using. So, thanks for going that route when I that was the feedback you got. So,

great. Um, other than that, I mean, that's I think at this point million still probably where the number is. I think we have some opportunities for them to get um creative with how we fund that, but I don't know what any other feedback or do we have a consensus? That's kind of where we want to I said I I just want to make sure that we're being cautious and we're thinking it through and looking at a range of options instead of just saying this is what we need to do what we do. Yeah. So, as long as we're doing that, I'm good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what we do,

one other thing, excuse me, I should [clears throat] have mentioned another another reason that it's very helpful to staff to not that it has to be an exact number every year, but have a a a general idea year-over-year of where we're going is we've also um tried to shift to a a multi-year approach to our street resurfacing. So knowing two years ahead of time, you know, which roads we're going to do in 2028, that lets us um we've been using city staff inhouse to do some of the base repairs and crack sealing that needs to be done in advance of the resurfacing. And if we know two years ahead, you which streets we're going to be doing, then that lets us one year out, we can do the base repairs, crack ceiling, and and then follow in with the contracts. So u if it if it varies a lot year over year then it's hard to know how much we can get done year one two three and four. So coming up with a consistent number also helps us take a more systematic approach.

Makes sense. Yeah I think if we can agree on kind of a roundabout number. I mean like this year if it's 1.3 we're still in that about a million of kind of regular um like yeah like Kristen said I mean we've been pretty much year it's like hey this is what we want to do where we and we kind of reign it in. So as long as we continue to do that I don't think it's going to be a huge issue. I think we like I said we have a little bit of a buffer to get us through probably the next couple years with the excise size and the and the highway tax. So let's continue to use those and maybe start slowly moving it into our operating budget so it's not like a huge hit the first year

of a million bucks that we're looking at. But if we're if we're continuously getting 260, that's only going to grow, I would think, and then the rest of it, you know, we'll find ways to to find that. Thank you. All right. Thanks. Just so you know, that tax was about 230 when in 2022, I say it was quite a bit smaller and then now it's at 260. So that's as population grows, it'll continue. And as the number of streets we have, it will also grow. All right. And last one here is going to be 2026 aquatic center rates.

Yeah, [snorts] this one [clears throat] will be shorter. I just want to talk and and uh given depending on your feedback, we'll come back with uh a resolution probably at the next meeting for for any any fee changes necessary. But um we have not changed rates at the aquatic center for several years. I think 2023 was the last uh was the last time we changed rates there. So, I think it's time just to just to keep up. Want to just show you quickly. There's a lot of information here, but uh our daily visits uh just somebody comes to the pool and and price of admission for that day. Uh it's currently $6. the vast majority of our visitors, so 17,500 of the folks that came to the pool last year out of about 20,000 total paid the daily rate. Um, that's the vast majority of our patrons pay the daily rate. Um, we do allow for a reduced rate for groups, uh, 12 or more if they schedule it in advance. um the YMCA, the Rec Commission, there's a few others that will do some group outings. Um we offer a discounted rate for that. It's the same rate for Twilight. Somebody comes in at 6 PM or later, uh they pay a reduced rate. You can see the uh passes, both a an individual pass for resident versus a non-resident and a household pass, resident versus non-resident. So, those are kind of all of the different categories of fees that we have. And and gave you a little bit of information on the sales uh that you know, how many people actually pay again 17,000 at the daily rate, 300 resident uh families

with the household pass. So, what we're what we're recommending is try to keep this to reasonably round numbers and not get into a bunch of of cents that makes it really hard to to make change at the front counter. But, uh, going from six up to $7 on the daily visit. Similarly, you know, from $450 up to around $5 for the, uh, group rate and the twilight rate. taking the passes from 65 up to 68 on the individual resident pass from 85 to 90 for an individual non-resident 135 to 142 for a resident household pass and uh from 170 to 178 for a non-resident household pass. Um on the on the household passes, maybe worth noting the what we're seeing is it's running around five people per household pass um on those. So it's um that's that's the average. So those numbers that you see there, 300 household passes for um almost 1500 people, 18 non-resident household passes for for 96 people. So, um they're they're maxing those out and which which is

we have a max number of people we do. Um six is the max. I was going to say I thought we did. Yeah. So, um that those are the fees that that we're recommending changing. Just there's a lot of other fees for group swim lessons, the riverw walk, um the cabana rentals, private party rentals, things like that. We're not proposing any changes to those rates this year. The same exclusions, if you will, you know, free admission for two and under, 62 and over, those things we're recommending to stay unchanged as well. So, happy to answer any questions you have. Would love to get your thoughts to um create a a fee resolution to bring back to you.

Were you here on on the initial when we did the change a couple years ago? I was had you started yet or was it I had before that it was it was just before because we got a ton of push back on the non-resident and resident pricing from I think whoever was in that position or so has that become an issue or is that fairly easy to monitor or manage? I mean it's it's largely I won't say it's completely the honor system but but if someone says this is my address um you know I know you have to show your ID

your name's on the list and they just check the household well I'm talking like for even I I know we were doing the because I think it was online where they could buy them. Yeah, we don't always give money. Yeah, we we don't have the ability um to do that online and that's that's one of the one of the reasons is is it is a lot harder to check residency um you know online. But um it's part of the [clears throat] reason it's it's referred to as a household pass, not a family pass or I know of situations where you know it's grandparents are Spring Hill residents and they get a pass for you the grandkids. you know, to use it and um I think that's fine,

right? Um no, I just remember that being a huge push back that didn't want to have that. I think we end up obviously we end up doing it still. I just want I just want to see how much of a pain it was or if it's really at this point you guys have been doing it. So it's

Yeah, I mean most cities around have switched and gone away from the resident non-resident distinction. We talked about it two years ago with with council here that the sentiment was still we we like the idea of giving that break to the residents whose taxes help you know subsidize the cost of running the pool. So we've you know left that in there but but I think it's been a few years and and it I think it'd be appropriate to to raise those rates up a little but still still keeping that separation.

Yeah. I don't feel like we touched the daily and pass rates nearly as much, but I know that, as you can tell, the group rates and the party rates, we did a significant change. Um, I know Mark's not here, but is there a have we seen a big decline in the party usage? It's it's stayed about the same. Um, our cabana rentals last uh last year were almost double what they were the year before, and the private party rentals um were almost identical. Okay. So, um that that five per year for the to rent the entire facility, you know, that's

$950 um to to you know, rent the whole facility out. And for the last, I think, three years, it's been five. I don't know that it's the same five. We were taking a significant loss before we changed the price. Like, it was costing us money for people to rent it out to have a party almost double. So, we had to like double the price just to cover our cost. Um after the staff. Yeah. [clears throat] After because Yeah. You have to have so many I mean you have to fully staff it like you would pay. Yeah. Just to make it clear with all of these rates increased the pool still is not a a profitable for the city as a whole. It is subsidized by tax every

very much so as and as is every other municipal uh pool aquatic center. It it there is a reason why the commercial water parks are so expensive. um it's because they're really expensive to operate. So, every every municipal pool and aquatic center to keep the rates down, they take a loss. And if honestly, if you can in this industry, if you can recover a third of of your expenses, you're probably anything over a third is a is a success. Do you know where we are? We're running about 30%. Oh, so we're not doing terrible.

You know, I think these all seem, at least in my opinion, reasonable increases. Um, as long as, you know, we're we're doing our part. I do like the the resident and non-resident rate because I do think if you're don't live here, you should probably pay a little bit more to use our pool. So, I'm fine with keeping that as long as it's not a huge issue. But I agree. Um, yeah, other than that, I think everything else looked fine to me. I had a question on the the household rights. You had like 78 people like use that. Do we know how many times they visited the pool?

Yeah, we we do. Um it uh it's interesting. It wasn't I don't have those numbers in front of me, but I looked at them earlier today. The passholders um we logged about it was just over 2100 21105.

Okay. that. So, so of those 1,476 people, we had some combination of them came through the gates 2100 times. So, it it's barely more than one visit per passholder, honestly. So, what that tells me is clearly there are some passholders who are there regularly and there are a whole lot of passholders who buy the pass and and never come to the facility at all. So, so would it be beneficial to move to a daily pass versus having a household?

I mean, I think for those for those 300 households, it definitely represents a a savings. Four visits is about the family of five. If you have five uh folks on that pass, the which is our our average, um four visits is your break even point. your fifth visit, your your money ahead with the season pass as opposed to the daily rate. Um, my my own personal opinion is it's nice to give people that option and they can think about how much they they may use the facility and and make kind of that financial decision on their own, which way is a better way to go. I know I get the the family pass and you know my sons will go like three times but it's still my older son goes quite a bit more but my younger one only goes like three times but it's still worth it because he goes so much that if he was paying the daylight or just for his individual it probably end up being more so and me to get in to go with them and all that stuff. So I I

I get the household pass. I bet you they Yeah, they just don't use it nearly as much probably because you know, but yeah, I'm fine with keeping it. Everybody else is I'm good with all these if Thank you. No other concerns. All right. Thank you. All right. Now, that moves us into the executive session number one. Do we have I wouldn't mind. Yeah, we can build one into that. Uh, do we have Yeah, the [laughter] Oh, you have it on there. Okay.

So, we need 20 minutes and then let's add a five minute break before that. Yeah, I've done that plenty of times.

Get up. I move that the city council recess into executive session for 20 minutes with a fivem minute break beforehand to receive advice of council regarding contracts and contract negotiations pursuant to KSA75-3419B6 of the Kansas Open Meetings Act. The meeting or the open meeting will resume in the city council chambers at 21:35 p.m. Uh, no formal action is anticipated following the session. The persons to be in attendance,

oh, excuse me, 21:45. Uh, no formal action will be taken um or will be anticipated following the session. The persons to be in attendance are the following. Lane Massie, city administrator. Ronda Dunn, financial director and Spencer L, city attorney. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Hold on. Did I read it wrong? Now we got to have one person. Sorry. From management. Andrew Locer. Andrew Ler will also be in attendance. All right. Have a second on that. Second. All right. A motion and a second. All those in favor? I

opposed. Motion passes 500. five minutes. Thank you.

All right. Let the record reflect that governing body reconvened open meeting at 9:45 p.m. No votes were taken or decisions made during the executive session. The discussion was limited to the subject stated. And with that, we will go into our second executive session. PJ I move that the city council recess into executive session for 15 minutes to have preant discussions about acquisition of real property pursuant to KSA75- 4319B6 of the Kansas Open Meetings Act. The open meeting will resume in city council at 10:02 p.m. Uh no formal action is anticipated following the session. person persons to be in attendance are the following. Lane Massie, city administrator, Spencer Laauo, city attorney.

Second. All those in favor? I opposed. Uh motion passes 500. We'll be back.

All right. Let the record reflect the governing body reconvene the open meeting at 10:02 p.m. No votes were taken or decisions made during the executive session. The discussion was limited to subjects needed. with that. Um, real quick, I know you thought it was at the end of Do you have any announcements reports you'd like to bring up? Surprisingly, no. [laughter] I was like, "Oh, man. She might have some." All right, I will uh is uh entertain a motion to adjurnn. So, moved. Second. All right. All those in favor? I I All those opposed? 50. Thank you, everyone.