City Council - workshop

All right, it's 6 p.m. We're gonna go ahead and get started. Welcome to our special budget session tonight. We have, I don't know if I saw the agenda, but we're going over the next, I think, couple departments. So I'm gonna hand it off to, do we need to take a roll?

Mr. Delgado. Mr. Throne.

Here.

Mr. Savage. Here. Mr. Grant. There we have a quorum.

Thank you. All right well now we can move on to first item up. What department is working tonight? Do we get a printout?

Thank you very much Okay, so engineering the newest department at the city I Don't get up.

Do we have a printout of what she has? Okay, same as us Sorry.

It may have changed a little bit, but pretty much the same information. So engineering, fairly new department. We've been around for almost two years. My anniversary is coming up at the end of July, so only two years old. We've been doing a lot of amazing things. This is just our budget, most of it's personnel, and then a few other items like professional development and some of our equipment needs. So we'll have standard increases. The biggest increase you'll see is with engineering. I've been on board for two years. Cassie, our construction inspector, she's been on board for about a year and a half. And then we have a new construction inspector. He primarily does capital projects. That's going to be his charge moving forward. He's been with us for about four months. So most of that's going to be additional staffing needs and additional equipment needs for Okay, that's better. So in the future, we are going to continue to grow and expand. We do a lot of different things in engineering. We touch a lot of different things and support all the departments within the city. So for example, we assist with finance on the grant side. We assist PD on maybe some traffic issues. We'll assist Jacob and Public Works on some of their public works projects. Rideway permit reviews that kind of thing and we support Mike's group with Planning Commission items that we review public improvements associated with the developments will review those to make sure those are in compliance with standards and specifications we also review plot plans to make sure that each residential home as they come in we review the plot plans to for that lot in particular. So we'll continue to provide that support to all the different departments moving forward. But as we continue to grow and expand, we need to grow and expand our staff. So I would like to see us hire a staff engineer, somebody that has about five to 10 years of experience, somebody that is a licensed professional engineer. somebody that could eventually move up into that city engineer position so that we can look forward to that succession planning. That person would kind of fill whatever gaps that we need. They can serve as a project manager for some of the projects as we get some of these capital projects, some of those grants that we're seeking. Those will turn into projects, so we can have somebody to lead those in addition to myself. They could also help support some of the things that Mike has going on. I know he had presented having a development engineer as that person comes on board, then maybe some of our Charges turn more on to the capital side, so we can kind of work through as we grow our staff where those needs lie and what gaps, we need filled. This person would also support the staff and, as we need additional inspections, they can go out on site and provide those field inspections. City Council Chambers, Now that we're a baby ms for municipal stormwater system, we are required to follow certain regulations, as far as he he stormwater, we have to inspect our outfalls, we have to provide certain reports. We have to put together an annual report. There's several things that go along with that in addition to our erosion and sediment control inspections and other things, monitoring detention ponds, making sure that those are in compliance, and now with new stormwater quality regulations that we may be adopting here soon, monitoring some of that information. So that's going to require somebody to be in that position full time. Eventually, once we start developing that program, we're right now in year zero and we're developing the plan. So once we have that plan in place, we can hopefully get somebody that has that level of expertise in stormwater. We have a lot of paper that floats around. We want to make sure that all of our contracts are consistent and in compliance with our standard templates. We want to make sure that all of the insurance is collected, all of the bonds are signed, everything is put together and not sitting on the top of my desk and in filing cabinets. So it would be really nice to have somebody that has that administrative assistant type capabilities, but also somebody that's more of a project coordinator, similar to what Amy does to keep all of the contracts on task and make sure that we have all of the contracts in place before a contractor comes out on site. Currently we're just, I'm doing it, Cassidy's doing it, Daniel's doing it. So we need somebody that's specifically dedicated to that to make sure that we have all of our documents in place hopefully once we get a dedicated legal counsel they can work directly with our city attorney to make sure that everything is compliant with our standard forms would like to see us hire a capital project manager that does not necessarily have to be a licensed professional engineer that could be maybe a retired architect it could be an EIT an engineering training or somebody that has maybe a construction background not necessarily a PE a PE would be preferred but that would be somebody that could take on again as we grow and expand more responsibility with doing the project management right now we've got probably any given time seven different projects that were juggling so that person would be specifically on projects and would do everything from the concept seeking all the grants to working near all the way through construction and then final that's period Eventually, I would like to see us have a lead inspector. Currently, we have two inspectors, one for the public improvements with the subdivisions and one for the capital projects. It would be nice to have a third person that could serve as that supervisor of the inspection staff. That way we could have more of a formal structure. It's great that I can supervise all these great people, but once you get so many people on staff, you need to start having users underneath the department head. So I see that as being maybe a lower priority. That's why I put it out a little bit further. Once the needs, we're constantly trying to figure out what we're supposed to be. We're still relatively young as a department. As I like to say, we've been creating this landscape on a blank canvas. So as we start to grow and develop, we're just trying to figure out what we need to be. We're trying to utilize the on-calls less and less for the general engineering stuff and trying to take on some of that, the heavy lift with that. But we are still using our on-calls for the more specialized services like traffic and survey and some of those things that we don't have. We would like to see continued... education and training for our staff just to kind of help fill some of those gaps to see as we start to grow, maybe we can get some additional inspections that we wouldn't necessarily have to farm out to a third party. As we grow, we need more office space. We're kind of shoehorned back in the corner. Hopefully we can get a municipal complex and engineering can be Co located in a spot if we continue in this building it might make sense for us to go down the hall and occupy one of the open spaces down in the. sunflower the meadow lark or something like that, but that's going to take away some of the public spaces that are for rentals. so it's i'm going to advocate for it i'm sure we've talked about it we're going to talk about it soon but we need a municipal complex we're reaching that point that tipping point where we're all shoehorned in the space um software is going to be a big thing right now it would be really nice to have project management software i know Rob, our IT consultant, is working on the dashboards and getting us to a point where we can visually see where we're at and get information out to you guys so that you can see at a glance what progress we're making. It goes beyond that. We need to start taking these electronic files and sorting those and filing those away, being able to have everything at our fingertips. tracking all the materials as it's being placed out on site. That way we can accurately pay the contractor for the work that's been done. Making sure that all the pay applications go through an approval process. All of these submittals, the shop drawings that the contractors have to submit making sure those go through the proper approval process. I would like to see us eventually, I didn't put it on the list, but a contract software where we develop the contracts, but we've been down that road. We didn't like what we saw. We stuck a pin in it for now. What we're doing works for us, but as we start to grow, I see that being a need. to help with that. We would like to piggyback off of what Mike and Jacob are doing as far as some of the GIS software that they're creating so that as they start to develop some of their layers on the public infrastructure that we can store some of our data, the as-built drawings for the public improvements that are being built, the streets, the storm sewer. At a click, we can click on some of those layers in GIS and be able to pull up what the as-built drawing looks like. We could take an area, a layer on GIS, click on that, and be able to get right to a detention maintenance agreement. and what those requirements are, who's responsible for maintaining that, and what does that O&M program look like. There's other things that you can track within the GIS, but especially whenever we've got our MS4 coming up, we need to make sure that we have all of that data at our fingertips. That way we can print out those reports whenever we have to submit our annual report to KDHE. So those are just a few things. I'm sure I'll have even more next year whenever we go through this whole process. But off the top of my head, those are the things that I think would help us out in our immediate needs. And that's all I've got. Do you guys have any questions for engineering?

Go for it. As far as training for staff goes now, do you have a current set of curriculum that you like to follow to make sure that people are being trained appropriately, I guess. I don't know, I'm not an engineer, I don't know the ins and the outs of that, but I know in law enforcement we have specific criteria that we have to meet at education hours-wise to maintain our certification. Managing and tracking that effectively.

Yeah, so I'm the only one that has requirements as far as my professional engineer license. I have to have 30 hours every two years, and I track that myself, and it's, You know, self-reporting, I determine what I need as far as project technical expertise, project management, ethics. There's a whole host of things, and I can usually cover those through some of the conferences and professional development. We've got funding available in our professional development budget to cover that. As far as our inspection staff, they do have certain requirements to have their asphalt and concrete testing certifications and such so daniel he has several years of experience and he has all of that kdot testing protocol already and he'll have to maintain that we've got funding available cassidy is working on getting some of that that training right now she's already gone through some of the kdot training uh some additional kdot training actually um and is looking at doing some storm water training to help with our ms4 so we continue to find we're always on the hunt for free training is always good right but um yeah we're looking at some additional training i i think that there's some maybe some floodplain uh training that we're also looking at just to help support some of the floodplain needs here in the city

I love to see that specifically. And as far as the asks go with any continuing education, recertification, I know that your guys' field specifically gets constant updates on what is considered good practice and things like that. So those are asks that I'd always love to hear and take those and make them happen as much as possible. Developing our staff only makes them more valuable to us. And obviously, it helps them in their career path down the future. And that's what we're trying to accomplish as a whole.

Yeah, Rhonda and Lane have been great about adding more money as we need to, and as we add staff, we add more money so that we can cover all of that. Awesome. That's all I have.

Any other questions?

I'm a huge proponent for training. Yeah.

Mike, anything? The only thing I'd ask is on your future, you've got a position every year pretty much. I don't know if that's something that we'll be able to keep up with, but I'm assuming staff engineer is the most important since you have it next year?

Yeah, I put those in priority order, not necessarily. I wanted to put a year with it just because I wanted to put it in the next five years, but those are definitely in priority order.

Okay, so I miss for his next priority after staff.

It'll be the next priority I feel like I don't know if Jacob would agree, but you know, we're gonna reach a point where the ms4 is Be crazy be a full-time job. It's it's gonna be a full-time job and a lot of things that our construction inspectors do already even on the Community development with the erosion sediment control inspections that could be something that could be shifted to directly over to the MS4 and alleviate some of the pressure off of the construction inspectors that we have. And then that person could track all the things that need to be tracked through the MS4.

And then going back, I believe the capital inspector, we get a little bit of a reimbursement, right, on certain projects.

that we were paying to third parties before and now it's coming back to us yes so it is a little bit's helping their eyes a little bit's helping so going back to the ms4 we do have the stormwater utility fund that could help support uh the salary of that person uh in that position so we've got that we get like six hundred thousand dollars eight hundred thousand dollars per year $800,000 per year to help with that. That's going to be capital projects, but we can use a portion of that for staffing. We currently baked into a lot of our contracts. We currently pay on-call consulting firms to perform those inspections for us for our project inspections. Pulling that in-house is gonna save us huge. Yeah, we wouldn't have to pay a three-point multiplier It's gonna end up being maybe two-thirds of that.

Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was thinking So all right cool whether or not it's all good information Like I said, this is what we wanted is to find out what the next five years looks like So we have to kind of figure out how we're gonna adjust Software for you

Because I know, I mean, it's 2026. We're trying to catch up with the times, and I know that's a big thing.

It's important, but I kind of want to see what Rob has with his dashboard. So that's why I've been looking at project management software since I've been here. It's something I've really wanted to get. I'm not happy 100% with everything that I've seen. I'm still waiting for that magical unicorn to be out there that has everything that I want. I'm actually kind of hopeful that maybe Rob's solution might satisfy a lot of what we need. You know, maybe having some sort of SharePoint or something like that might be just the solution that we need for some of that records retention and tracking purposes. Okay.

All right. So next up we have administration.

It's been a little bit shorter.

Okay.

Okay, I got double stereo here. Administration's been one of those departments where as we bring in new departments like engineering, we've placed those individuals in there until we get to a point where the department can kind of live on its own. So you'll kind of see the numbers are rising. Part of that reason for the 2026 to 27 is we're throwing the it manager and the city attorney into that. And we also have a administrative system that's been floating in that, uh, in this department that gives us the ability to add on another staff member if we need to. The intent is probably in 27-ish that we would have an administrative assistant that would be able to float between HR, my area, possibly engineering to help out with some of the items that you need for filing to help out with HR. Currently, under the succession and staffing We have myself, the human resources director, the PIO, and future positions will be hopefully later this year, the city attorney, IT manager, administrative assistant, probably within the next one to three years is probably a better estimate on that, and the assistant city administrator probably be about a three to five year time frame it'll just get to a point much like everyone that one person can't do that and it's good to have a redundancy and there's somebody to fill in if you know for sickness or vacation or just you know as people move through the position and leave so There's not a huge need, but there will be a significant need with the assistant city administrator and administrative assistant. We're currently interviewing for the city attorney and the IT manager now. So hopefully here in the next, I don't know, month, we'll have some more information on that. Outside of that, there's not much need within the administration office. As we continue to grow, we'll look at efficiencies and look at departments or sub-departments within the administration and other areas that may fold into another department if it makes sense and look at those to save money where we can and have overlays and redundancies to help out with your department or public works. I think they're gonna have a lot of needs too. Much like we've done with community development throughout the last year, we've been bringing people in there and trying to fill some gaps. Wants, needs, continue establishing Spring Hill as a top-rated city within the city metro. Construction of facilities, I think we need to do a facilities analysis to determine what is needed and determine the size of that, where it's needed, start having that discussion. We can have it done within a year, but in the next five years, there's probably going to be, we need to have at least a plan in place on what's needed and how we can pay for that. Help the governing body establish a clear vision for growth, prepare transition to the city of first class. That's something a lot of people don't think about, but as you get close to 15,000 population, then you can transition to the city of a first class. That's probably around that 28 to 2030 range, depending on our growth. It may be a little bit faster. It may be a little bit slower than that, but probably around 2030. The comp plan, look at industrial growth areas. That helps diversify tax base. Look at create a trail and parks plan. And sidewalk plan will be part of that. That's going to be very important as we have these new developments come in, being able to interconnect and link those those projects together to make sure that there's an ability to walk throughout the community and bike throughout the community. The redesign of the City of Spring Hills website, I think Jenna's currently looking into that and be working on that here towards the end of the year. And one of the things that we'd like to have is also an agenda packet software to help out with some of these, keeping the agendas in order, being able to put them on the website. If you look at any of our neighboring cities, they have some pretty good options that you go on there, click, the video pops up, and you can see the minutes and agendas and the packets from current and previous years that they have. Other than that, that's pretty much the wrap-up on the admin, and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Any questions?

No questions. I'm glad to see the administrative assistant added to that list. That's something I pointed out pretty early on in coming in here. More hands on deck is always good, and especially when we're trying to facilitate communication and getting information out in a timely manner, having that extra set of hands. Yeah, I I'm interested to see how the city attorney and IT manager turns out Yep, you know, I know we've been working on that and I agree.

I think an assistant's probably needed here sooner than later I'm talking about it for a while. So This is probably the most straightforward one Didn't we have? a study done a year or two ago about a municipal complex?

We did. The next step of that, I believe, Jacob, I don't know if you remember this, but I believe we went through the very, very preliminary phase. There's a next step to that, which would be the recommendation to come in, bring an architect back on board. start having the discussion with the governing body, with the community, on the needs of what that should be or shouldn't be, where it should be, and start looking at that. And part of that will come up with a better idea of what the facility would look like, what the costs would be, and then start that whole process, which would probably take about a year to go through that. And then the funding portion of it could take a little bit longer to go through.

What I think we probably need to start with is, well, PJ, were you here yet when we did that? I think Mike was, weren't you? So only Mike and I were here for that initial, so what I would say is maybe bring back that old one and do a presentation on it, and just so everybody can see where we were and if we decide we want to move forward with looking at more or not. Absolutely. I think they at least need to know where things are at. I think we kind of decided the time to halt it, but I think now is a good time as any to look at what we have and kind of go from there, so.

I think so. The public works facility, it's much needed. We don't have the ability to park vehicles or equipment inside. I don't know you could have picked a worse place to put either public works on two one-way streets and by the railroad tracks. It's just not a very ideal location for those two facilities.

that's where yeah I think we need to make a decision on whether it's one big complex or if it's a you know we start looking individually try to get things done for them all right any other comments or questions all right we will move on to finance now it gets exciting

The finances, like every other department, is primarily a people department. We don't spend a lot of money outside of people-related costs. And so our budget, basically what you're seeing moving along there is the potential for how employees are impacted, whether it's the cost of benefits or hopefully merit increases if that's, if we're able to do that and things like that. So our budget's been pretty consistent. Our department is comprised of the director and four employees, and it's been at that same level since I got here four years ago.

Four years ago.

And so, in addition to my role as finance director, there's the senior accountant. That was a promotion we did this year. We bumped up the skills we were looking for when we replaced the payroll analyst we had, and we bumped that to an accountant, so that's now a degreed person with accounting background, which helps us out a lot and lets us move the workload around a little bit. So the other thing with the senior accountant is that she is a CPFO. I presented her here. You guys were around. She worked on that certification. And if you think about succession planning, if I don't go home one day and don't come back, she would be very capable to fill that position until you had a permanent solution, things like that. So that gives a lot of peace of mind to me, not that I plan to not come back. But someday, like everybody, I do plan to not come back here, but not anytime soon. The accountant position, we increase the skill requirements there, and that's working out really well. That's a payroll-focused position, and that person works with monication on payroll. And then the accounts payable clerk, we have a very efficient person there, and we're good at that. And then the utility billing clerk, and he handles all things related to that function and does a great job. In the future, a couple of things, we're a support function and I like to think of us that we help other people get things done, whether it's keeping your contract paid or getting the employees paid so they come back to work and things like that. So eventually I think, you know, I go to meetings and the budget team from a city comes and there's five of them and it's me. I hope Natalie got to come with me because we just simply, that's a function that lays down on top of all the other work we do. for a number of months, and so eventually, if I was adding positions, I would add a budget analyst, someone who works that budget all the time and improves on our output from it and makes it more and more accurate, I think would be great. I didn't put a year on that. I think within five years, that's reasonable. The other position, I see us adding clerk positions as we move along as the rest of these functions grow. And things I think of, for example, some of the payables are done in the police department and public works. Well, if he's needing more assistance, maybe that needs to come into finance and not in their department. We'll handle that for them. And then that frees up labor somewhere else. We can handle things like that. At some point, we'll have to add clerk positions. I think it would be a good thing to have a, I'll say shared within the department, someone who can do utility billing, someone who can do payables. They share those functions now, and if we added a position, I don't think it would have to be dedicated to one specific function, but I feel like that comes as other growth comes. When we have enough employees, we need more help in payroll, things like that. I don't have a grand plan. We have a solid workload and work on a good schedule and get things done, but as the workload increases, we'll have to increase people to get it done. When it comes to wants and needs, We have a good budget for training. I hope everybody feels that way. I divide the budget every year by person and assign it to them and tell them this is your money to spend. Don't wait till December kind of a thing. We take advantage of training from Tyler for our software. We take advantage of the government finance, both the national level and the Kansas level. I see that they go to the conferences they need. I offer to send them different places, and I feel like they're getting the training that they need. I do encourage certifications. I think as we have a new staff member who's an accountant, there's some opportunity there if she's interested to work through some of the certification programs if that's what she wants to do. This is kind of tongue-in-cheek. We'd like some striping in the back parking lots. Jacob will knock me out of my chair here in a minute.

I saw the marks. I figured they were getting... We're on our way.

As soon as it stops raining, as soon as it stops. You mean it's finished. It's good enough for me. I don't park back there. And we also, I'd love to see, we obviously need a new building. I started to leave my door propped open so you could go in and see, and Mike's office is probably another great one to see what it's like to have too many people in a space. And we take advantage of the bunker and keep our storage out there and And you'll see boxes around until we get through the audit and things like that. But we have to be very efficient. And we chose to give up furniture for other things. And it's just tough. And you certainly have no privacy or anything like that. We have HVAC issues in this building. It would be great if we're gonna be here years to think that through that. Three of us in my space, actually four of us run space heaters because if we get it to the temperature we want, you're gonna be sweating in the conference room. And so there's some, I think, I would love to see us make improvements like that if we aren't going to get to move. We'd probably reduce the city's electric bill if we quit running space heaters. We definitely need more office space. And my group suggested that if we can't have more office space, we need a better design of furniture. We kind of make do with what we have. We have an office built in there that maybe we need to pull those walls out and make it a better space. But the other thing I wanted to piggyback with Lane is having the governing body set vision and goals strategically is important to finance. A budget should be based on those things. Capital projects should be based, pushing those to make sure we're accomplishing what your vision is. And without that, it makes it kind of hard on finance to figure out where should we be spending money. So I'd love to see us do a vision work session, create a vision for the city and some goals that we can stand by year after year. I think it's great, the work that's gonna come out of the comp plan. The finance department uses the comp plan in the same way. We should be building a budget and a CIP that helps us accomplish the goals in that comp plan. I have a vision of us having a strategic plan at some point, so turn concepts into action I think's really important. Software I think's important. The Tyler ENCODE system we use for finance, I'm not looking to replace it. It was bought in about 2019. I think it's a love-hate. Whatever system you have, there's something you hate, and you're going to buy a new one, and you're going to hate something they do, too. And so it really comes down to customer service and making sure we take advantage of the training, make sure we use their customer forums and utilize the tools they give us. But that isn't going to last forever. Right now, Tyler doesn't have a great tool to replace the one that we have. It's too big. It's for much bigger cities than ours. I'm contacted probably once a week with someone who wants to sell us financial software. Those days are coming, and that's a very expensive thing to do. That can be a million-dollar price tag, and so I take it very seriously. Contract management is very important. I worry about contracts that expire, and we have no system to notify us that contracts are expiring. And I've talked with Rob about he sees some opportunity with our SharePoint kind of vision to maybe do that without buying a software and giving our records over to other people and some things like that. But I really try to see that people get the software that they need to make their jobs easier, which will hopefully make my job easier. So that's kind of our process.

Any questions or comments for Rhonda? I think I was the only one here when Rhonda came on. And although we had a pretty good person before you, you've really turned a lot of things around and had a different outlook on how we were going to handle things going forward. So I appreciate everything you do. I think your group does a good job with what you have. And yeah, we've had some good hires in there. I know Natalie got her certification last year, which was a big deal. If we keep doing those things and making the people that are here better, that's another way we can keep folks. It's kind of the hope we keep moving them up. But outside of that, I think when we ask you to do something, you do it. And if you can continue to do that, we'll be happy. So we appreciate it.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Get it done in Excel. I'll get it done.

All right. Any other comments or questions? Go ahead.

The prevailing theme tonight has been the reality that we're outgrowing our facility. i agree i tend to agree um obviously we've got a lot of areas that need attention immediately and how we're going to pay for that as part of why we're here as a whole um i do i think everybody here acknowledges we hear you um the space is not what it could be and it's not what it is and other municipalities around us so I just want to say thank you for being patient with us while we work through that and make, uh, hopefully make some decisions and then not so distant future to, to, to remedy those situations. So thank you guys. I really appreciate it.

Like you said, it's not necessarily, it may not be the decision you want, but you need to either make improvements here or figure out what we're going to do. So we need to do that when we will. Okay. All right. We will now move on to, is it human resources? Okay. Jones.

Hopefully mine will be pretty quick as well. Hopefully. Okay, so my focus, obviously, HR, my role is to balance the needs of the city along with the needs of the employees. And so one thing we looked at is to look at the staff as a whole over the last couple of years. When this was created, just a short time ago, a few weeks, we were at 60 employees. Right now we are at 59. We did have one that has left us. But as you can see over the last couple of years, the numbers have grown a little bit at a time. You can see that the Public Works Department has remained pretty steady. I'd say the growth is generally coming from PD and then as well as we've added a couple of employees in community development. So that's where the growth has been. I would say that by the end of the year, hopefully if we bring on the IT manager and the city attorney, then obviously that's two, and then backfilling the PD position and the one that we're currently recruiting for. So at least we'll bring on four more people at least.

For quite a few years, although we had the number of positions, Public Works was always really understaffed and had a hard time finding people.

It was a combination of trying to bring in new people, but then the staff that we were having, again, I don't want to say the attrition is what we were doing. We ended up backfilling something and then bring on someone else. The numbers weren't changing very much. but at least we've gotten it up.

What I was saying, in the last couple of years, I feel like Jacob's done a really good job of keeping everybody. So to me, that's probably why just the last couple have been even closer than before. But I know when we first came on, Public Works really struggled to keep people. So it's been nice to see that stay pretty filled the last couple of years.

And so speaking of Public Works and PD, I did break it down more specifically to see where the employees lie within Public Works because we have the administration side, then the street parks, water, wastewater facility, and you can see where all those numbers are. And again, it's been mainly in the street park section and the facility where you've seen the growth. And then the PD, you can see that we've just been growing in, again, bringing on actual police officers, the commission position. So like I said, mine's going to be short because it goes into succession and staffing. So with me being under administration, Lane has already hit on the fact of the administrative assistant. We don't know if we're landing on that title or not, but essentially it is a person that is going to be shared between HR and administrative and possibly helping out engineering as well. And so I'm happy to hear him say, well, maybe that should be in the next year. Cause that's what I was saying. So in the next year to bring on that person, and then over the next five years, looking at a dedicated HR staff person to bring on, I'm thinking more of the generalist type of role, where you have someone that just has a little bit of knowledge in all the aspects of HR, because there's many different functions that are handled within HR. And then if you're looking five years out from that, a total of 10 years, it's just having that whole 2 and 1 half department, potentially even more, depending on where the actual employee base is. Because on average, as it shows, there's about 1.4 to 1.7 HR staff to every 100 employees. So just trying to stay within that ratio. I think we're going to be getting up there, so we'll see how it goes with everyone else. Any questions?

I don't think so. No. Okay.

All right. So when it comes to wants and needs, I didn't feel like it was very conducive to me to say this is a priority and put it in order that way. City Council Chambers, Again, looking at HR is the balance of the city and those employees as a whole, so my thought was to look at it from just the overall. City Council Chambers, Having a positive morale and culture impacting perspective for HR, as well as the city staff so from the HR piece of it obviously just continued opportunities to educate the staff, whether it's me the. the half person, the whole person, looking at conferences, networking, all of those great things. And then from city staff with just taking from the conversations that I have with other employees, just making sure that just as a whole, we just continue to get support from the city council, that the directors continue to collaborate with each other on different things. making sure that the staff that we have feel like they are being able to demonstrate their capacity to handle what they're supposed to be doing day to day, executing those things, and feeling like there's confidence in the staff and what they're able to do. And then finally, knowing that when any of us come to you guys with anything that we've put in a lot of, it's been exhausted, the consciousness about looking at the financial piece of it when we ask for something. So that's my wants and needs for you guys.

All right, any comments or questions?

No.

No.

Well, thank you. Are we going to try and move on to court? Do we have enough time? How quick are you going to be, Ashley? You got 10 minutes, 12 minutes.

So,

Our current staff, we have a full-time court clerk, and then I am the supervisor of our department, which is community services, which does include municipal court and customer service, which we'll get to in the next section. But I'm also the deputy city clerk, so if Glenda is gone, then I am handling those duties. In our department, we also have our customer service representative, which, again, is a shared role. She handles utility billing payments. She's kind of the front line. If someone comes to the front counter, she's answering questions, trying to help them. We also handle reservations for this building. community center we also have a judge and a prosecutor that are here the first and third Tuesday of the month they're also more so the prosecutor we work with throughout the the month in between court days our court days are the first and third of the month at 830 we have a public defender who the judge would appoint to anyone who who meets the criteria for that. And a state statute requires us to have an interpreter available. And while both of Our court clerk and our customer service representative are bilingual. It's better to have a third party come in the courtroom and help those defendants that might need that. And so with our growth, we will need two additional clerks in the next three to five years. With our prosecutor, we are having a lot more offers of diversion and probation, which requires a lot of hands-on work with those cases. And a dedicated full-time court administrator in the next five to 10 years. It would look a lot of what my role is, but more so dedicated to the court 100% of the time, and being able just to oversee all those day-to-day operations without having to hop into customer service or city clerk. So our wants and needs. Number one, what you'll see throughout is safety. We don't have a dedicated court bailiff and our prosecutor sits where Glenda is sitting and I sit right next to her up at the dais and we can have some pretty unhappy people that come in to see us and so to have a full-time, well, a someone that's dedicated on court days as the court bailiff for safety reasons would be very helpful. Also to have a walkthrough metal detector at the entrance there. We have a wand that we have an officer that wands people when they enter the courtroom. But if for some reason someone leaves and sometimes they can slip back in and just to have that there, especially with the exposure that we have here would be, Very nice. And of course, what I think Chief talked about at our last work session, the digital fingerprint device, that we can share that cost. Anyone who has a misdemeanor, we have to fingerprint and send them to KBI. So just to have that readily available would be nice. and then the courtroom renovations um to have a dedicated private meeting space for the public defender to meet with their clients victims to meet with the prosecutor so they're not out in the open and just any other party that might be here to discuss a confidential matter for court with The spaces we have, our conference room that we used to have dedicated, there's lots of meetings that are being held in there. We can't necessarily dedicate that all the time on our court days. And the other spaces down the hall, we have rentals. So while we try to avoid renting spaces on court days, we have to do that. Um, and then, um, just to have, um, bulletproof, um, dais, the wall behind the dais at our front just for safety. Um, and then just eventually a reconfiguration of the space in general, just a better suit, uh, court needs. And of course shared needs, cause this is a shared room. So, um, and then, um, panic buttons in different areas throughout the courtroom and in our office area in there. And eventually, just the office space in there, with growth, we're kind of maxed out in space in there. So with growth of more employees, we would need more space. And just as far as technology tech improvements, we just have a replacement laptop for the judge and then an electronic defendant check-in system. Currently, our court clerk and our customer service rep check in our defendants at the front. And having something electronic like that would save some time. So the court clerk could be with the judge reviewing certain cases that are needing her special attention. Probably capped out right now.

Any questions or comments?

That's something chief and I've talked about and trying to figure out within our budget. Our prosecutor asked for that. We had an incident a few weeks ago that She asked for that to happen. So Chief called me or emailed me later that day, and we chatted pretty quickly about how we can figure out to make that work in the budget.

As far as, I'll just add something real quick. So usually the detective and an on-duty officer will be here at court. But if we have calls that pull us away into the community, then that leaves the court at a vulnerable position. So having funds or funding available to allow us to dedicate someone to that would be helpful for the court. And that's something that they've shared their concerns about personally.

I definitely feel like that's probably something that we need to make a priority sooner rather than later. Leaving anybody in here unattended during those court proceedings, in my opinion, is unacceptable.

I can't imagine that those cost too much.

Well, you kind of talked about the panic button inside the building. What about having one parking lot, too? Is that a need just for coming and going between court sessions?

You know, we don't specifically leave the building. Honestly, the restroom is a concern. To go to the restroom that we share with defendants, that is a safety concern. We, at the end of the day, we all walk out together. So none of us are typically leaving the building by ourselves. But I could see as we grow and the court becomes bigger, something in the parking lot to separate from the general public would probably be a big safety issue.

Yeah, this is one that I think is probably more of an immediate need than anything else right now. So yeah, I think that helps quite a bit. Um, so Rhonda, I think hear that and think that figure out which ways we can address some of these things. We probably can't get all of them, but if we can get a couple of them to help out. I know a little bit when we've talked about even if it's just a single locations for PD to get a new one, being able to find a place that could also fit court in if we don't do a full municipal complex.

We could even do overtime for the officers.

Yeah, I mean, I'd be open to increasing budget for that, yeah, towards somebody who's off that day and just dedicated here. So, yeah, just come up with solutions and we'll figure that out. Okay. At 6.52, we're going to go ahead and adjourn this, and then we will be up on the dais at 7. Thank you. I want to apologize up front. I've been battling some sickness, so if it's hard to understand me, I'm doing my best. We will start with our invocation, and I think we have Zach here to do that for us.

Come on up.

father we come before you with gratitude in our hearts for the city that we live in spring hill kansas and god we thank you for the growth that we've experienced the many families and people who have been coming here and the opportunities that come with that why we ask that you would give us wisdom about what we should say yes to and what we should say no to what ways we can position ourselves to best receive your blessing and favor and we do ask for favor on our community god for schools and for the uh the civic organizations for uh our businesses and most of all for our families lord we we pray that you would give us the very best from your hand and we pray that you would give us wisdom so that we might choose rightly in order to be in a position to receive it god i pray uh thank thankfully for the civil servants all of those who are serving day in and day out in various capacities and especially for this governing body God, I pray, thank you, Lord, that you've given to us the privilege of representative government, people who can serve our community. And I pray for wisdom and humility as we consider things together. Lord, help us to make good decisions. We pray that you would have your way in our city and in our community. We pray that it would be in Spring Hill as it is in heaven. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

Next, we'll do the pledge of allegiance. Madam Clerk, please take the roll.

Mr. Theron?

Here.

Mr. Grant?

Here.

Mr. Delgado?

Here.

Mr. Savage? Here. Mayor, we have a quorum present.

Thank you. Next up, we have our approval of our agenda. We did have a request to add executive session number four to the end of the meeting. Outside of that, I don't see any changes. I'll entertain a motion.

I move to approve tonight's agenda as amended. Second.

Motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 4-0-0. Next up, we have a City Council vacancy appointment. Kristen Feback stepped down from her seat a couple, about a month ago or so now. We had four applicants that applied. Jared Hostin, Sammy Veltri, Kendra Kavir, and Caleb I believe his name was, um, I interviewed everybody and I went through and, uh, made a decision. I'd like to appoint Kendrick Revere, a little bit of her background. Um, she's lived in Spring Hill since 1989. Uh, since she was one, she attended all K through 12 here and she's now raising her children here. She's been a board member on the fall festival committee since 2020. She was appointed to the planning commission April of 25 and voted by her peers as chairperson of the planning commission in March of 26. Um, it's also a small business owner here in town and a lifelong resident, which I feel like is a good addition to this board. There's a lot of us are transplants here. I believe all of us actually. So, um, with that, uh, madam clerk, do we take a role on that or just a all in favor? You get it. All right. So, uh, for approval, there's no motion or second. It's just a all in favor with an eye or, uh, so all in favor. All right. Opposed. Uh, the appointment passes four zero zero. And, uh, Kendra, I believe she's here. Oh, come on up. And Linda, I think had everything ready for her to get sworn in tonight. All right. Let me sit down for now.

I'm sorry?

Yeah. Oh, OK.

Thank you. Appreciate that. You're a girl's girl. I, Kendra Kerver, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of Kansas faithfully discharge the duties of City Council member for the city of Spring Hill Kansas so help me God if you'd like to take a moment take a picture with your family that's here you can I will get out of the way you guys want to do that

Then you guys

All right, Glenda will get her bearings here, and welcome, Kendra. We'll move on to announcements and reports as she's getting set up here. Don't have much for announcements and reports from me tonight. We do have our first Fridays for July coming up next Friday, and there's going to be a strut where you could walk, bike, golf cart, or side-by-side in it, and it'll be led by the... Why am I losing it? Who's the... Yeah, sorry, American Legion. I don't know why I went blank. American Legion will lead it for us, and so anybody who's welcome, meet at the Early Childhood Education Center by 4.45, 5 o'clock. We will leave at 5.15, and then First Fridays will be ready to go once we get there. Two very good bands. We have an alumni kind of band from the school district, and then we have kind of a big rock band that will be there for the second half, and there will be Food trucks, food tents, all that kind of stuff from local vendors. So it's going to be very exciting, very fun for July 3rd. PJ. No reports. All right. James. No report. Kendra, do you have any report?

I have no report.

All right. Ivan. No report. Mike. No report. All right. Lane. Lane.

I would like to say I don't have a report, but 191st Street staff is still working with KDOT on that and 183rd Street signalization project. We anticipate going out to bid sometime in the fall, September, October-ish time frame, and then hopefully starting that project later this year and completing it in late 27. So it's moving. It's just moving kind of slow. I just want to keep everybody updated on that.

And 191st has been taken over by KDOT. We were kind of the lead on that, and then now it's been taken over by KDOT. So with anything, it's now going to take a little bit longer, I think, as things progress. Spencer? No report. Chief? No report. All right. Mike, that was a lot of work for that microphone.

Yeah, right? I would just like to let everybody know that we... We are going to be publishing or at least making available a draft of the building code amendments that we're going to be bringing forward. We're going to be getting that out on Friday of this week to adopt the 2018 IRC for single-family homes duplexes and up to three a three plex and then also the storm shelter amendment I have sent those to the Kansas City Home Builders Association and they've already had some comment and would like clarification and so because these will affect not just our builders and developers it allows affect some of the permitting requirements what is exempt from permits, what is not exempt from permits, some of those other building code provisions that may not be kind of what everybody thinks about. And so we want the chance to have the public and or general contractors who are doing all of the work and pulling the non new construction permits to have a chance to provide feedback prior to bringing those back before the governing body first meeting in August.

All right. Thank you. Allison.

No report.

Rhonda's not here. So, Linda?

Yes. Mayor, at your request, I just wanted to let everyone know that the newly formed Community Improvement Committee, the letter of interest form is out on the website, and those are due to the city clerk by noon Monday, July 13th. So, if anybody is interested in that, I know that Jenna put out a post on our Facebook and our news center for that. board position, and that's all I wanted to let you know.

I've already had quite a few people reach out to me, so it's been good traction so far, so glad to see it.

Great.

Thank you for doing that. Monikisha?

I'll report.

Jacob? We know you have something.

The summer construction season is upon us. So we had a contractor that recently completed some asphalt repaving work on Webster Street from South Street to Victory. That work is mostly completed. There's some spots in the intersection of South and Webster. We weren't weren't quite satisfied with the quality. There's still some drainage issues and standing water issues there. So that still needs to be addressed. Because of that, you'll notice that not all of the crosswalk markings have been put back at that intersection either. We didn't want to pay to put markings in areas that we know is going to be torn up to be redone. So those markings will be finished after that work is completed. also the sidewalk this summer sidewalk project is is ready to get going that contractor is scheduled to begin work the week of the 20th of July between now and then we'll be communicating with residents along the route on what to expect how that will go also the This summer street resurfacing project is also ready to get started that contractors indicated it will be late July early August when they move in and that will be the resurfacing and in a number of subdivisions predominantly throughout the city. And finally, this summer's, this year's CARS project, which, just to remind you, is a rework of 191st Street, just east of the traffic signal that Lane just mentioned. That's from Madison to Woodland, the all-new pavement, regrading the ditches, replacing a couple of storm drainage pipes under that roadway. And something new that we haven't done in the past but we included with this project is, in addition to new asphalt, They will be adding about a foot of gravel on the edge of the pavement before the ditch starts. I think it will help, one, give motorists some warning if they're leaving the pavement before they're in the ditch. It will also help from just a roadway stabilization. That asphalt tends to give way if it's right at the edge of the ditch. So I think structurally it will be good and also a safety enhancement. So that's something we haven't done. in the past, but we've added to this project. That work, that project is scheduled to start on the 13th of July. So July will be a busy month for road construction in the city.

And that one's in tandem with the stoplight. So where we're going to improve for the stoplight section, we'll kind of meet up with that one, correct? Correct.

Yeah. So the west edge of this project will be the east edge of pavement improvements for the traffic signal project.

Okay. All right. All right. Is that? Looks like Webster's complete, which looks good.

Or is there anything more? Other than those fixes in the intersection that still need to be reworked, it's complete.

All right. All right. There's no other announcements or reports. We'll move on to our next agenda item, which we have an executive session. And I will entertain a motion for that.

All right. I moved the city council recess into executive session for 15 minutes as well as a five minute, uh, bathroom break before that, uh, for consultation with an attorney, which has been deemed privileged, um, to discuss the pro a proposal from developer pursuant to KSA seven five dash four three one nine B two of the Kansas open meetings act. The open meeting will resume in the city council chambers at. 7.35 p.m. No formal action is anticipated following the session. Persons to be in attendance are the following. Lane Massey, Rhonda Dunn, Alex Felzin, Braden Rouge, Ben Hart, and Mike Mellon.

Second? Motion and a second from James. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0. We'll see you back here. All right, let the record reflect the governing body reconvene at open meeting at 7.35 p.m. No votes were taken or decisions made during the executive session. Discussion was limited to the subject stated. Next up, we do have our citizen participation. We will be limiting time to three minutes tonight just because we have so many people signed up per our guidelines. So with that, we will start with Lance Caldwell.

Good evening, Mayor, members of City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to address you again tonight. My name is Lance Caldwell. I live at 15275 West 191st Street. I come before you tonight to highlight two items on the agenda that deserve far more scrutiny than they appear to warrant, and the residents have a right to understand what is being proposed before you vote. Item 10 creates a brand new M2 heavy industrial zoning district in Spring Hill. The ordinance itself describes into generally is considered incompatible with residential development. The setback of 100 feet is a legal minimum, not a guarantee of compatibility. This buffer does not make heavy industrial a good neighbor to a residential neighborhood. This is not a controversial planning position. It's common sense, and it's exactly why your own zoning ordinance acknowledges when it uses the word incompatible. The Planning Commission understood this at their June 4th hearing. They recommended limiting the height exception for oversized industrial structures in the M2 district only. However, staff chose not to implement that recommendation, stating they did not want to overly restrict potential for development. Along the u.s. 169 corridor. I want this council to hear to what this means an unelected staff member Substituted their judgment for that of an appointed commission in the name of developer potential I understand staff does not answer to the voters of Spring Hill. However, this council does for item 11 These two items are directly connected that the council is being asked to approve the under $25,000 contract with multi-studio to update the comprehensive plan while the proposed contract was not included in the original general published a few days ago I did look at it earlier today and I noticed two things on page 16 the agreement has a task 3 which is talking about a deliverable described as a more a map I'm sorry I thought I was gonna have five minutes tonight so I'm skipping a more specific and refined future land use map. And on page 19 under task four of the contract states that there's a key focus that will be established in a set place suitable for a variety of type of existing and future development contexts. Place type zoning embeds broad intensity designations into the comprehensive plan itself. Development that fits within those designations can then proceed administratively. So we're talking about doing things without rezoning, without a public notice, without a hearing before this governing body. the public participation that currently protects residents from compatible land uses is quietly removed upstream in the planning process. So you know what you're being asked tonight is, uh, These are not two separate decisions. These are two chapters of the same story. Tonight, this council is being asked to write both. I'm thankful that many residents in Spring Hill are paying close attention to these proceedings, even if they couldn't be here tonight, that the votes that cast this evening will be part of the public record available to every Spring Hill voter for future elections. So I'm asking to vote no on this ordinance, return it back to the commission, and if you approve the consultancy contract... make sure that it recommends that we preserve the mandatory public hearings of the government body approval for any significant land increases.

All right. Thanks Lance.

All right.

Next up we have Sarah Grady.

Sarah Grady, 15690 West 199th Street. I hope to have a meaningful discussion with each of you before tonight, but unfortunately only heard back from two of you. So I thank both of you for your response. I think you changing our time from five to three minutes says all that this entire room needs to know about what you think about our opinions. That's it. Especially telling us right now when we just sat here for 20 minutes and you didn't give us a heads up. I don't appreciate it. My concerns tonight are regarding the proposed changes to the zoning codes in addition of the M2 heavy industrial district. In reading the proposed language, I have several concerns. Allowing M2 heavy industrial next to residential areas, even with the setbacks, the landscaping and screening, will leave residents like me feeling vulnerable because many impacts of heavy industry are not fully addressed by physical buffers alone, not to mention a setback as minimal of 100 feet. Setbacks and buffers between heavy industrial and residential does not negate many other negative factors. I would go through them all but that's been scraped. I think you know what all of those changes that cannot be such as property values, marketability, changing the neighborhood character. Residential areas are generally planned for quiet, predictable living where families can enjoy our downtime together, especially families that choose to make a home in Spring Hill. Even though it is experiencing growth, it is a rural small town. Heavy industrial districts are designed to support activities that can fundamentally change this character. My biggest question for you tonight is what evidence supports the conclusion that a hundred foot minimum setback is sufficient for every heavy industrial use that's allowed in the M2 district? Not the minimal ones, not the churches, but all of them. Has the city evaluated whether the full range of permitted M2 uses can operate next to homes without creating significant impacts to the residents? Zoning codes should be written to protect the city and the residents for decades into the future, not accommodating existing industrial businesses currently operating in Spring Hill today. If an M2 district includes uses that would not be appropriate next to neighborhoods, schools and parks, then those usage should be prohibited near residential areas. The Spring Hill mayor today and the council members will change as the years go by. We are seeing turnover even in a council member tonight. After time has passed, all future mayors and city council members and others will have to go off of is the written code. There's no trust me's. This isn't what we meant. There's assurances that maybe are given to us now. All that they have to go off of and we have to go off of is written. residences is what is written in the code. A minimum setback of 100 feet for M2 heavy industrial adjacent next to residential is completely unacceptable. Another area that concerns me, well that's it. I just ask that you reject ordinance number 2617-17 amending chapter 17 article 3 section 17. All right thank you.

Next up, we have Julia Bergmeier.

My name is Julia Bergmeier, 18908 Mahaffey Street. here to ask you to reject ordinance number 26-17. the proposed code explicitly states that heavy industrial uses are generally incompatible with residential development unless heavily buffered and separated yet this ordinance sets the heavy buffer at a mere 100 feet as an adequate protection for existing neighborhoods families and schools let's put 100 feet into perspective mayor young you know baseball you know that the distance between home plate and first base on a standard diamond is 90 feet think about that the ordinance says it's perfectly logical to place massive 24 7 heavy industrial operations just 10 feet longer than a single baseball path from a child's bedroom window a family's backyard or a school property line if a short stop can easily throw a ball across that distance it's not a heavy buffer it is an absolute threat to a neighborhood quality of life Heavy industrial is classified that way for a reason. It brings constant noise, commercial traffic, intense lighting, and around-the-clock operations. You cannot mask that with a buffer that is practically the distance of a baseline. This ordinance is not just about one project. It's not just about data centers. It creates a new heavy industrial zoning district that could allow a wide range of future industrial uses. Are you even considering the survey you asked citizens to complete for the comprehensive plan, or are you so focused on steamrolling and gaslighting us that you lost sight of your roles within our community? many residents have not come to these meetings simply to oppose development we've offered solutions we requested a temporary moratorium to allow the community time to study the impacts of large-scale industrial development and update our policies accordingly that request was denied we also asked that uses such as data centers in both M1 and M2 districts require a conditional use permits. That request was also ignored. Instead of adding safeguards, this ordinance moves in the opposite direction by creating a new heavy industrial district while leaving residents with fewer opportunities for meaningful input when future projects are proposed. Look at the code on the table tonight. In M1, data centers are crossed out, which proves you know they are high impact. Yet the new M2 code there explicitly underlined as a permitted right, completely cutting the public out. Why are we handing multi-billion dollar out of state developers a buy right blank check to build just a first baseline away from our properties, while leaving local taxpayers with zero voice and fewer protections? Residents asked for a moratorium, twice actually. We asked for conditional use permits. We asked for additional safeguards. We asked to complete the comprehensive plans before the zoning codes. Those requests were not unreasonable and they were not anti-growth. They were requests for transparency, accountability, and local control. Tonight's vote is about more than zoning language. It's about deciding what kind of community Spring Hill wants to be and whether existing residents have the meaningful protections when heavy industrial uses are proposed near their homes, schools, and neighborhoods. For those reasons, I ask you to reject ordinance number 26-17 and return with a proposal that includes stronger protections. Please actually listen to and represent the people who live in this community and protect their interests through common sense policy. Decisions that will shape our town for generations should be based on what is best for residents, not an administrative convenience, budget-driven pressures, or the preference of officials who are not even residents in our community. Protect Spring Hill. Thank you.

Next up, we have Leah Langley.

Leah Langley, 16960. I drove a thousand miles to be here tonight to do this speech. It's under four minutes and I plan on finishing all of it. Most of you know who I am. For those of you that don't, I have been in Spring Hill most of my life, just a few years shy of Kendra. I have watched Spring Hill grow. Out of all of the administrations that have come through this town, there has been one good one, one decent one, and now this one. I actually like this one because I can see the backbone in some of you. However, the men sitting behind me have stronger backbones and apparently that is the problem here. The men sitting behind me stepped into development decisions in this town like they knew what they were doing before they got here. I was here when the men behind me blinded the past city council members with saving citizens costs on water and improving their water quality and moving from Miami to water into water one. May 8th, 2025, it is on record, going with Water One gives the city greater ability to grow. Miami Two has a limited amount of allocation available for water rights. Water One has more availability, so as Spring Hill gets projects such as residential and industrial, there is a higher likelihood that Water One has the ability to cover that, and that was from our city administrator. It was later added in discussion that Miami 2 water wasn't poor quality water but water one had awards for higher standards. That's why we made the switch per our city attorney. That whole time last year talking about the water, you guys planned a data center behind steak dinners. You not only blinded the past city council, you blinded the citizens of Spring Hill. And now you're trying to do the same damn thing with M2 zoning and you're not eliminating a review with M2. You're painting a picture for the citizens that it's still in our hands. However, you do appear to provide the city with significantly greater discretion and flexibility when considering future development proposals because of the planned district in the code. This is why we are falling on deaf ears here. From the outside lens looking in, this council is representing the staff. You are supposed to be representing us in the town. I want to like each of you, but who is your backbone for? It's not for the citizens. Have any of you ever heard the phrase, don't tread on me? It originated during the American Revolution and it represents a warning. a warning against government overreach and loss of individual rights. At its core, it means citizens do not want decisions imposed upon them without their consent or representation. That principle applies here tonight. When citizens ask for reasonable protections, reasonable transparency, and a seat at the table, we are not standing in the way of progress. We are asking for accountability. We are asking for local control. We are asking our elected officials to remember who they work for. You work for the citizens of Spring Hill, not the staff of Spring Hill. Your job is to represent and protect your citizens' welfare. Do your due diligence. If M2 zoning moves forward without due diligence like a conditional use permit or meaningful modifications like you have under M1, safeguards for citizens, then I want this council to understand something very clearly. This issue will not end tonight. The citizens of Spring Hill will return here with a formal petition signed by the citizens of Spring Hill seeking an ordinance on a ban for hyperscale data centers within this city. We will send it to the county attorney for review and we can drag this on another six months. We won't make any money from anything at all because what all we have told you to represent us with has fallen on deaf ears. We will continue organizing, educating, and engaging voters because we believe the people of Spring Hill deserve a direct voice in decisions that impact our kids' future. The responsibility now rests with this council. I have called you all out, I have made it clear what it seems like you are doing, and you can choose transparency, you can choose to represent us, you can choose to represent our children in the next 30 to 45 minutes in a public discussion, or you can choose to ignore your constituents, once again, and let our requests for protections fall on deaf ears, and force this discussion into a much, much larger public movement. Because we are not gonna give up. We have at this point been too nice to you guys. I demand that you amend the newly proposed M2 district, require conditional use permits for high impact industrial uses, add modifications to allocated resources, and place the interest of Spring Hill citizens welfare first.

All right, thank you. Next up we have Tracy Schumann.

Hi, my name is Tracy Scheinman. I live at 15349 West 193rd Terrace and I agree with everything that has been said prior. Thanks for allowing me to speak this evening. I am happy to hear that you're in favor of new zoning classifications to help provide greater clarity and stronger protections for the Spring Hill community. However, I expressed my concerns about the wording in an email to all of you last evening. And I heard back from one of you stating the importance of these classifications, adding an additional layer of protection, allowing the city to establish specific standards buffer setbacks and review criteria for heavier industrial uses. I disagree that a minimum of 100-foot buffer from a residential home is a sufficient buffer for heavy industrial M2 zoning. It's ridiculous. As a teacher, I have always taught my students that words matter. These words you have placed in the property development standards matter. Each site in the M2 district shall be subject to the following minimum property development standards. Minimum rear setback adjacent to residential 100 feet How is this new proposed language added for M2 supposed to protect our city? Words matter. I respectfully ask you to consider your newly proposed language to support the city by not allowing M2 anywhere near residential and I'm asking that the code be changed to reflect that. The email I received also mentioned that having these specific standards in place would allow future governing bodies and residents to evaluate those industrial uses separately and more carefully. Is this truly the case or is this proposed amendment going to make it easier to approve projects that do not fit neatly within existing zoning requirements by allowing site-specific modifications negotiated between developers and the city, circumventing the citizens of Spring Hill? If you believe residents have a voice, this would lead me to believe that you fully support adding conditional use permits for data centers. These conditional use permits would add an additional layer of protection, allowing citizens a voice in the approval process. If your goal, as stated in your email, is to ensure that Spring Hill has zoning regulations that better reflect the expectations of our residents and to provide the legal framework necessary to support decisions that protect existing neighborhoods, exact words, when a proposal is not appropriate. If this is truly your goal, it only makes sense that the city council would at the very least agree that a conditional use permit be enacted for data centers. I appreciate your time and hope to hope you continue to make the right decision for spring hill community.

Thank you. Uh, next is Todd. Is it Simon? I think is what, how you said it better that time. I'm still not right, I know.

Hello, Todd Scheinman, 15349 West 193rd Terrace. I reiterate what my prior people have talked about tonight as far as with the buffer zones and the 100 feet being very much insufficient as far as next to residential. I joke with people because I have learned more about city government and data centers in the last six months than I ever cared to have in my little brain. Anyway, here we are. As I stated that Amendment 2026-17, I'd ask that that be rejected. Then never would I ever imagine that I'd ask you to look at Kansas City, Missouri as a Model as far as what they're doing and not allowing the heavy industrial next to the residential from an aspect of data centers Another example would be a great article that was just in the star this last week and it talked about Peculiar and their fight that they had back in 2024 If you didn't catch it, it was a great six-minute read basically talked about when a data center came to peculiar divided the city caused a lot of anger, uprising. That was for a 500-acre data center. They ended up in the end passing on it, got rid of some of the city administrators, turned over the city council and now it was basically a reflection of the city looking back as what if and where are we at now and basically saying they're very happy with where they're at now and the city continues to grow and thrive. Other than that, I'll stay under my time, but I thank you guys for your consideration. I just prayerfully and carefully ask you to consider not allowing that 2026-17 and really taking a look at the 100-foot buffer that that's not sufficient being adjacent to residential. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. All right. Thanks. Next up, we have Jamie. Yes. I couldn't read your last name. Is it rainy?

Thank you so much for this time to be able to speak to you. My name is Jamie Rainey. I live at two zero five six two West 220th street, Spring Hill, Kansas. I'm a 25 year resident of Spring Hill. My husband and I have five kids and a grandchild that's still living here in Spring Hill. And I'm also, I agree with everything that everybody else was much more eloquent and really awesome, so I absolutely agree with everything that they've said. I'm asking you to reject the creation of M2 heavy industrial zoning. While industrial might come with the promise of more property taxes, they also ask for abatements. And really money is the least of my concerns when it comes to areas and zoning that has to do with heavy industrial. I know it's been said that you've been asked twice already for a moratorium. I'm going to ask a third time. I'm going to ask that you put a temporary moratorium on these types of developments, specifically hyperscale data centers. Land here in Kansas might be cheap, but I think we need to show that we're not easy, and we need to have all the studies done. It needs to be third party. Studies regarding impacts on health, land, air, and water should be done. Land here in Spring Hill is limited, so I think we need to use it wisely. I want us to perhaps consider more commercial zoning, places to shop, eat, and play in Spring Hill. We've got Moody's, you know, which they're posting that they're having a hard time making it, and I think that if we had more places that kept people here rather than making it a habit to go out to Olathe, it would really help support these local businesses, and we'd be keeping all of the sales taxes here without the the possible dangers from places like data centers and and other heavy industrial areas so i really hope that you consider everything that that everyone behind me has said and you know i think we need to build a thoughtful community that is not just a possible suburb of aletha we need to build a place where we can all have homes and businesses here so that's it for me thank you for your time tonight all right thank you

Next is John Waterman.

Good evening, John Waterman. Excuse me. John Waterman, 21110 West 186 Terrace, Dayton Creek. I just wanted to speak again tonight. I know It's been two and a half years, or not two and a half, two years, three months since the first comprehensive plan kind of stopped work on that. We're now at a kind of a critical point where we're getting ready to relaunch the comprehensive plan. But yeah, we're pushing a zoning ordinance, one agenda item before the comprehensive plan. It's ironic, isn't it? Is that intentional or, you know, something seems wrong with that to me. Um, I would think that, you know, comprehensive plan, you know, is paramount, you know, at this point, not, not voting on a new, uh, industrial zoning district. I mean that the comprehensive plan is supposed to set in motion and, and, and ultimately create the idea of potentially having an empty zoning district or in complete reverse. think everybody here tonight has already mentioned why why this isn't a good idea what I think is a great idea is agenda item 11 and I am so excited for that assuming we get approval for that I'd really like to know tonight what does the plan look like and how do we get started with that I feel that that currently The council is more interested in seeing how we can get started on M two zoning. So how do we flip the script here? How do we, how do we change? How do we amend the agenda tonight to vote on the comprehensive plan initiation first and then let's talk about him too. That sounds like a reasonable compromise to me. So I'll, give up my 50 seconds left and you know, let's, let's talk about that and get to it. So appreciate the time. Thank you.

All right. Thanks John. Next on the list I have Rodolfo Arvalo.

I think I'll give you an opportunity to lower the temperature because I have a different topic to discuss. This deals especially with some of the discussion that you'll probably have with item number eight, which is the budget that you're working on. You've had two budget work sessions, one on May 14th which Ms. Dunn presented the fact that additional resources had been generated by the city this particular year and that she estimates that $2.8 million in change will be left over at the end of the year. In addition, she said that because they've been very prudent in terms of expenditures that they will They're currently running $5,900,000 in the good because their spending hasn't been as high as it had been projected in the budget. Those two numbers together give you $3.3 million in change. That means that you'll start next year with $3.3 million in addition, and then you add whatever revenue you're going to generate. Interestingly enough, in the data that she presented you, in the area of development fees, over the last three years, you've doubled development fees, the collection of development fees. But yet, she projects that for 27, you'll only generate $2.4 and change million dollars in fees. If the doubling of fees were to actually occur again, which you've got a three-year time frame that shows you that it's doubled every year for the last three years, you'd generate $9.2 million, not $2.4 million. which means that at the end of 27, you'd have close to 3 million plus, depending on whether you are prudent in your expenditures and you don't expend as much. Which leads me to the fact that she's also proposing that you continue the 21 point something mill levy. I'm suggesting that that doesn't make any sense because you're gonna have more money than you know what to do with. You have 3.3 million that's left over this year and you have another potential of having close to seven million at the end of next year. So I would suggest that getting closer to revenue neutral is where you wanna go, not at the current rate that you have, thank you. All right.

Thanks, Rodolfo. All right. Um, Rodolfo's the last one that was signed up. If there's anybody else in the audience that would like to come up and speak, now would be the time. If not, we will move on to our, uh, we'll close citizen participation and move on to our consent agenda. We did have the, uh, changes on there, but it wasn't actually. That was before. So yeah, we can entertain a motion for the consent agenda as presented.

So moved. Second.

A motion and a second. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0. We will now move on to formal council action. Our first item up is considered notification Johnson County treasurer of intent to exceed revenue neutral rate.

Good evening. Last and welcome aboard. Glad to have you. Welcome to the deep end of the pool. Actually, this is a pretty straightforward item that is statutorily required in the budget. We met last time and we had a discussion about R&R and the purpose of your vote tonight is about notifying the treasurers of both counties that we do or don't intend to exceed the revenue neutral rate and to set a ceiling for the mill levy going forward in the budget. And so those are the two things that we are gonna do tonight. So I wanted to give you new assessed valuation numbers. Those are now official from Johnson and Miami counties, and our mill levy, our assessed valuation has grown to $233,144,000, which is a 14.03% increase over the prior year. The average of the... seven years on this list is growth year over year of 14.27%. So this year's growth is at average, basically. You're always welcome to interrupt me anywhere along the way. So what does that mean in a budget? And that means that the 25 mil levy was $204,000. The 26 mil levy is at $233,000. That's a 14% increase, or $28,682. We currently get 21.861 mils. that assessed valuation, if everything stayed the same, you'd have new tax dollars of $627,000, and that averages out, we have about 4,064 homes in our city, and that averages out to, I didn't say that correctly, properties in our city, that averages out to $155 a household. So you're probably tired of seeing this graph. I show it to you a lot, but this is a history since 2019 of the mill levy, but it's updated because we've now gotten the R&R rate from Johnson County sets that, and to remain equal amounts of revenue from one year to the next, our mill levy would need to be 19.486. So what does that mean? The current mill at 21.861 and that revenue neutral rate of 19.486, to meet revenue neutral, you would need to reduce the mill levy 2.375. Mills worth 233,000, that would mean to reduce your budget by $533,717 or $137 a household. to give you a comparison of what that means in the budget. As we go forward, like with 199th Street, when we're done, we'll bond about $5 million in debt and a payment at 4.5% interest is about $307,000. And then debt for two stoplights, that's going to be about $6 million, depending on how that all works out, is about $368,000. So by 2028, when we fully bond those projects, we'll be adding $675,000 worth of cost. So I just wanted to give you a view of what those kind of dollars mean to our budget. Go ahead. The next thing I want to do is to show you that today, if you were to lower a single mill, that's worth 200, in this calculation, we had different numbers at the time, $226,000 this year. As years go out and we still, we don't get that mill levy back, the value of that mill will grow. So a mill worth $226,000 today, with our 10% growth, which I just showed you is conservative, because we're averaging about 14, that mill could be worth $3 million every year in the future. Over the next 20 years, it would be worth about $1 million. So protecting $233,000 today means a lot more money in the long run. Just wanted to, again, give you a frame of reference. So I know you always like to know per household. So I took the number of households we have and where I think that we'll be in 2027. And I took the property tax we budgeted for 26 and what we would be budgeting for 27 at the same mill levy. And that's a difference, actually a lowering of about $27 a household in taxes. bring you back to this my favorite screen clearly I show it all the time because tonight what I'm asking you to do is not set a mill levy that will not happen until September what I'm asking is that let's tell Johnson County for legal reasons let's tell them we're going to exceed the revenue neutral rate because that lets all the dominoes fall in place and And I think you should say that the cap is the current mill levy. I don't see any of you voting to raise your mill levy. So let's put the cap in at the number we have today. And my job and the challenge you've given me is to bring it in under that. And so this gives you options. If you say no, don't tell them we'll exceed it. And then we get down the road and you need to even by .001. the clock has to start over and it creates a lot of problems. And so it's better to notify the county, set a reasonable cap, and work to achieve the things that you set out to do and have all of our dominoes or ducks in a row.

Next.

Go for it, PJ.

Yeah, so we discussed this at one of our work sessions. We're all of the same mind that nothing would make us happier than to see that mill levy as low as we can. You showed us a very interesting slide on your presentation directly pertaining to that, as well as discussing the revenue neutral rate, and it was our standing in the area versus where we were a considerable time ago. And we have gone from one of the highest mill levies in the state, especially in comparison to cities our size, and now we are very, very well in contention as far as our rates compared to how many people we have living here. With that being said, I think that your advice on this is prudent and your assessment that we don't intend on raising the mill levy, it's absolutely true. I understand that the mill levy right now as it sets is above revenue neutral. Revenue neutral is a a concept that works when nothing is happening in your city. When you're not growing, when you're not shrinking, shooting for revenue neutral always is a, it makes sense. We are in the unique, or not necessarily unique, but in the pleasant position of being in a growth time period in our history. um so taking advantage of our growth and seeing that those tax dollars over at the time are going to uh to each mill is going to be more valuable over time i like the idea of continuing to pursue trimming the mill and shifting those uh tax responsibilities on to other um revenue sources so for just clarification in this instance i support um sending a letter of intent for exceeding revenue neutral not to exceed what we currently have it at. That way we can watch the financial year flush itself out, get us closer to the year end and see some of those numbers that Rodolfo was referring to are projections based on current trends. We don't know if that's money that we're actually gonna have yet, which is why we are very hesitant to make plans on those dollars because you can't catch chickens before they're hatched and those projections are not real dollars in hand. Those are what we hope we get based on the current trends and data we have available to us. So I think this is prudent and I support it.

Any other comments?

Yeah, I just don't want to screw ourselves down the line if we set our limit too low and then, I'm sorry, set our limit too low and we're not able to change it.

Right. This is good. Prudent is a good word, really.

Mike? I agree kind of with the two predecessors. I mean, I like the idea of setting it at the ceiling of what it is now because it's not going larger. We always have the ability to reduce it and to lower it. And we've done that in the years past as the trends show. And I think by not reducing it now, it doesn't, hurt us, whereas we can find the dollars when we do have the budget and everything all set and ready to go.

Good.

James? Kendra, any thoughts yet?

I mean, you guys basically covered it all. Sounds good.

Okay. My thought on it, this is the first year we're not looking at going higher than the actual mill rate, which is kind of funny. I like that everybody's on that same page. I would like to, just as a olive branch say hey i would maybe around number of like 21.75 just to show that we are going to be lower than what we currently are uh that would be my recommendation but obviously it's up to what you guys think but i it's not a huge difference like you said it's not going to put us in a really bad position but it shows that we are not going to be looking at going higher this year um so that'd be my only recommendation to y'all uh when we do this so uh but outside of that Like we always talk about, those development fees, those are kind of like a rolling hills. And every year we try to take that. We put a little bit in savings, a little bit in cash projects, a little bit in knocking down the mill. And so if we continue to do that, I'm happy with that approach.

i'd like one last comment the legislature is working very hard to create some sort of cap or some sort of limit on property taxes and assess valuation and i am encouraged by your approach here we don't know what we're going to get and so we need to be careful not to set too lofty of a goal that we can't recover from. Um, you don't know what five years it's going to bring and some things like that. So I feel like we're doing what's reasonable, but you're still in control of what that number is going to be in the end. And so this is the prudent step.

Okay. Any other comments or questions? This is, you know, first step in long, long process. So, um, I will entertain a motion on whatever you decide to do.

I move to approve agenda item number eight as stated in tonight's agenda. Second.

The motion is second by Ivan. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0.

Thank you. Appreciate it. You guys clearly have a good grasp on what we're doing and that's good to work with.

Thanks. All right. Thanks, Rhonda. Thank you. Next up, we have number nine, consider approval ordinance number 2026-16 site plan. and associated conditional use permit for the new Spring Hill High School CET addition and commons area.

Okay. Good evening, the Interreference City Planner. This evening I am presenting the Spring Hill CTE addition.

This is a, excuse me here.

This is an approximately 29,217 square foot career technical education facility addition to the rear of the existing Spring Hill High School building, as well as a 6,458 square foot commons area addition to the southern end of the building. The third component to the project is a relocation of an 1,800 square foot greenhouse to the north side of the high school. The development application meets all adopted development standards and is requesting no modifications. It's being submitted under a regular site plan application. Elevations, this is the CTE edition itself. You can see it's a modern contemporary design. It looks pretty nice. At Planning Commission, signage was approved, this 32-square-foot attached wall sign. Under our adopted code, we do not have a mechanism to do this. However, with the advice of counsel, there is some case law that we were able to have Planning Commission make the recommendation for approval to allow signage despite it being in the R1 zoning district. Then the commons area addition, here are the elevations for that. But once again, this meets all development standards and staff recommends approval for this. Thank you. Thank you both.

All right. Do we have any questions or comments?

Um, this is clearly much needed. Um, as we've talked about over the last two years, the, the city is growing. Our needs are growing. Our, uh, our children need place to places to, uh, go to school and have the, uh, the facilities that are required that we provide them them. The CTE project as a whole, I think, is really, really good. It's going to give us the opportunity to provide a lot of new functionality to our students and their education. I love the plans. I think it looks great. I am... frustrated with the amount of time the Planning Commission had to spend on discussing signage. Moving forward, I'd love to see us address that in a more comprehensive way so it's not a roadblock that we run into on a regular basis. It's very, very normal to want to put a sign on front of a school that shouldn't be something that requires any kind of legal jujitsu to get it wrestled down to the ground. So outside of that, what I felt was just kind of out of left field, I think the project as a whole is sound and everything looks good to me.

All right. Any other comments or questions?

Do I need to recuse myself from a vote?

Did she vote on this one?

On the June 4th Planning Commission.

You can abstain.

Oh, abstain. Okay.

All right, if there's no other questions or comments, I will entertain a motion.

I move to approve agenda item number nine as stated in tonight's agenda. Second.

Motion to second. All those in favor? Aye. I'm sorry, this is an ordinance.

We need a roll call.

Hang on by a thread here. I'm going to ask for a break here.

Mr. Thrawn?

Yes.

Mrs. Craveer? Abstain. Mr. Grant?

Yes.

Mr. Delgado?

Yes.

Mr. Savage? Yes. And Mayor Young?

Yes.

And just for the record, Mr. Rivera, you're abstaining because you're a planning commission member? I voted on it at planning on June 4th. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, ordinance 2026-16 passes 5-1 abstain.

All right. Thank you very much. We are going to move on to item number 10. I'm going to request a five-minute break so I can go hack up a lung in the bathroom. I'll be back. I want to make sure we have a good discussion. I don't want to have any issues with that. Absolutely.

I move that we move into recess to return at 8.27 p.m. Second.

Motion to second. All those in favor? Aye. All right. We'll be back.

It's all right, I've got pocket gum

All right, we'll come back a minute early, 8.26. Thank you. Ian, go ahead and get us started on item number 10, consider adoption of ordinance number 2026-17.

Thank you. Okay, so I broke up this presentation in two tranches. The first deals with the M1M2 industrial component, and the second deals with the PD. The second deals with the PDPO. So M1 first, then we'll talk about PDPO. So under the current zoning guidelines and the way that our code is currently written, there is a gradient of industrial that goes MP Industrial Park and M1 General Industrial District. The MP Industrial Park is for more limited commercial services, research and development, some administrative facilities, and higher standard manufacturing. The M1 General Industrial District is the catch-all for other forms of industrials. That includes some of the higher intensity, primary manufacturing, basic industry, things of that nature. What this leads to are two types of typical development. These are not taken here in Spring Hill. This kind of shows the typical typologies. So for the industrial park use, you have things like contractor storage, self-storage facilities, generally lighter industrial with off-site impacts that can be relatively easily mitigated through screening. They typically have outdoor storage and operations. These photos don't have enclosed fencing, like opaque fencing. The city of Spring Hill does require opaque fencing for screening. And on the right, you have M1 General Industrial. This is going to be your concrete batch plants, things of that nature, heavier industry. They have off-site impacts with noise and dust. The gap that is identified with this is the middle. So this is true light industrial. These are enclosed operations, higher-tech manufacturing. Think CNC machine shops, precision manufacturing. These can be done entirely within an enclosed structure with very little, if any, off-site impacts, no noise, no dust, things of that nature, service-based commercial and industrial. This is becoming a very common type of industrial development throughout the KC Metro and throughout the country. Under our current zoning ordinance, there's not really a good spot for that. So the proposal that staff has for you tonight comes in three parts. The first is a redesignation of M1 general industrial to M1 light industrial, establishing a new M2 heavy industrial zoning district, which is kind of a reflection of the existing M1 general industrial in terms of land uses, and then a redefinition of development and land use standards associated for both. Looking at proposed uses, this table has the current standards on the left, M1 general industrial, the new M1 light industrial in the middle, and heavy industrial on the right. So you can see that the properties that are currently zoned M1 general industrial today, if this amendment were to be approved, would become M1 light industrial. It is not re-designating them as M2, so the effective land uses become more restricted based off of this table. So properties that are currently zoned M1 today will no longer be able to develop recycling collection stations, information technology facilities, and so forth. This is not a comprehensive list. The ordinance itself has all the land uses that are currently adopted and details them specifically. It's just kind of a taster, if you will. For the development standards, I think it's important to look at what we're proposing, but also where we are right now. So under the current zoning ordinance and the development standards, an M1 zone property only has a rear setback requirement of 20 feet irrespective of whether or not it abuts a residential, commercial, or industrial property. Under the new designation of M2 heavy industrial, it does define industrial, commercial, residential setbacks, but that does not exist today. So I know that there's been a lot of concern over the 100-foot setback. It's important to note that this is not the only thing that's factored into it. It does not imply the ability to place industrial next to residential. It's simply setting a floor that doesn't exist today if it were to be. But here you can see the development standards, notably an increased setback for all the development standards for the M2 heavy industrial. When staff was doing an analysis of surrounding communities, we came across a realization that the currently adopted M1 general industrial standards better align with a light industrial district rather than a true heavy industrial. So that's why the proposed standards for the M2 are an increase across the board from what we have today. The next component of this are landscape buffering standards. This is a very large table, but to kind of summarize it, the M2 district will have a heavy buffer requirement when abutting any property except for an industrial park MP or M1 light industrial. Everything else will be heavy, medium for the industrial park and light industrial. So what does a heavy and medium impact screen look like? The high impact screen is a six foot masonry or opaque fence with a low impact screen on both sides. So that low impact screen is plantings that can have a variety of different combinations. There's three different sets here, but it's a mix of shade trees, ornamentals, evergreen, and shrubs. So that's what that high impact screen looks like. And that's in addition to any building setbacks, and it requires a certain amount of space to fit all the plants. So some important things to note about this. All new projects that require M2 heavy industrial will have to be rezoned with a public hearing if this amendment were to be approved. This amendment does not proactively rezone any properties from M1 to M2. It creates a new zoning designation that no property in the city is assigned. So anybody seeking to develop something with a land use that requires an M2 zoning district will have to seek that rezoning. Another thing to consider is that the setbacks adjacent to residential, as I was referring to, do not apply a right to locate industrial next to residential. That is ultimately at the discretion of the city council whether or not they would like to approve a zoning change that would have that pattern. And of course city council still retains the right to reject any rezoning on the basis of incompatibility if they feel that the development standards are not sufficient to buffer or if there's just not a compatible use surrounding. So with that component, if you'd like to ask questions about that or I can move into the PDPO portion.

I personally think breaking it up to address it because this is a heavy lifter on a lot of moving factors. I'd love to start, if you could go back to the last couple slides there, starting with the offset specifically. All right, I answered many, many emails over the last couple days addressing this topic specifically. I tried my best to point out that when it comes to where we are currently and what we're trying to accomplish, it is a qualitative leap forward as far as our ability to create some kind of a buffering for whatever properties abut these M1s and potentially these M2s as we move forward. This is a perfect example of if we don't do something today, this is the standard that we're sticking with. These offsets are what we are sitting with. If currently an M1 property is purchased and a developer brings forward their plat and it is approved because it meets all of our standards, These are the standards that they're going to be held to regardless of whether we like them or not. That's the reality that we find ourselves in. It is not at my discretion to say, I don't like that. I'm not going to vote for it. I have statutory obligations and I have laws prescribed by the city that I have to enforce. That is my job sitting here. As much as I would love to say that I'm the king of Spring Hill and I can say no to whatever I want to, The reality is all of the commitments and all of the votes that I make in regards to these situations hold us to a specific standard and can make us liable in specific instances. So it's not simply a, I don't want these things, I can't, you can't build them. It is a, we have a standard and if they meet those standards, I have to find a legal justification for saying no. So when we look at these M2, this new M2 zoning, we can clearly see, based on this information alone, that we're already putting ourselves in a better position. And as we continue on with some of the explanation for wording and things like that, which I'm assuming you're going to get to, you're going to see that it only provides us with greater platitude, or greater flexibility in setting standards specifically for each individual project as it moves forward. And I think that's a huge step forward compared to what we have now, where it is very much a cookie cutter process when it comes to either having to rezone having to approve current plats like we we have very very little discretion as it sits currently and I really think that just on this offsets alone we're taking a qualitative step could you move on to the next one please the buffering standards I think is a big one and I actually had some questions about that you answered that very very well that that term heavy buffering standards, I believe was the term specifically, heavy buffering. As it reads in our current zoning, I don't know if maybe there's a way we can reword it to cite specifically where those standards are located. Um, but for me, once you explain that to me, it made perfect sense because we saw that term heavy buffering, but we didn't have a specific, um, definition and how, and as it was currently, uh, or as we currently have the amendments change. So I don't know if that's a small thing that we can adjust to, to cite where those buffering standards are, um, to make it easier to understand. Um, but outside of that, this, These are things, again, that as you continue explaining, it's one tool of many that are going to allow us to set a very positive standard. As far as this goes, that's kind of where I'm at with this. As we continue on, I'll have more comments.

I'd like to go back to the uses if we can. So confirming, I just want to make sure that I'm understanding correctly, we're not adding any new uses. We are taking everything from M1, basically putting it over to this new M2 and then taking out what we think is lead industrial and putting it back to M1?

Yes. There is no new defined land uses. For the most part, it is a one-to-one copy. I'm trying to think. If anything, yeah, things have been removed but not added.

There's nothing been added. We're not creating a new zoning that's going to add new uses that aren't currently there. This would help protect from current uses that are allowed that if somebody brought a plan to us, like PJ said, we wouldn't have any really recourse to stop it. Um, I know we've talked a little bit, there was some comments about doing this before the comp plan. I made a comment back when we talked about this, I think back in January, on doing this before the comp plan to give us some protections going forward so that we're not stuck with some things that we have been in the past that kind of an area got rezoned, we didn't do a productive overlay, we didn't do anything, and another business comes in and comes in. And we didn't really, we probably wouldn't have rezoned it for that particular business, but since it's already rezoned, they have the ability to go there. So this is kind of giving us another layer of protection while we get through the comp plan, while we figure out if there even is M2 area that we want to have in the city. And who knows? We'll go through the comp plan, and we'll see kind of what that says. But to me, that's what I just want to make sure that there's no new zonings going here so it doesn't seem like we're slipping something in to try to allow something that's not already allowed.

The reality of adding this before the comp plan is specifically so after our comp plan is finalized, we don't immediately invalidate it by considering another zoning location. We're going to have this comp plan and it's going to take into consideration all of the current codes that we have on the books and they're going to project what as appropriate uses based on the information that we provide them that includes our zoning. If we don't have this zoning designation in and ready when they start these comp plan, all of that work is gonna get done and the second we go through and decide that we do want to have control over where these industrial businesses go, we have completely invalidated the comp plan as a whole because now we have to completely revisit the topic of what is appropriate for M2 and where. We're paying a group of professionals significant amount of money to provide us with that information and not having the complete picture Locked in and ready for them before they start providing us with with advice that seems really responsible to me So I have a question for the the setback that we have, you know, I'm okay with I Understand why we're doing this But my concern is how close it is.

Is there any way that we could extend that a little bit further and I mean 100 feet is really that bad. I mean, it's really not that far away from anything Right now I live I have neighbors all around me But if my property line was 100 feet away from an industrial zone like a Clorox plant or anything I don't think I'd be okay with that. Especially with just a six-foot fence, you know Is there any way we could extend that?

Yeah, how did those numbers come so the numbers came from looking at other communities in the area the 100 foot setback is on the higher end of it. Other communities in the area typically have the 75, 80 range. And some of them don't differentiate between residential, commercial, industrial. But ultimately, if you get a development application that comes through and they're seeking a rezoning and you feel like it's not a sufficient amount of distance or separation to create compatibility, that is one of the factors that can be considered in a site plan application and a rezoning application is to what extent that project is fitting in with the surrounding area. So there is some leeway still when it comes to the actual entitlement phase where both planning commission and city council can recommend and decide respectively what standards need to be changed or tweaked to get a vote of approval.

I don't know. I had asked Mike earlier in the week to find out kind of what is currently in the city limits that would kind of fall into this new M2 zoning if they were to come to us now and what the general area around them looks like. Were you able to come up with a map on that or any kind of information?

Yeah, I believe Ian has that pulled up with some examples not just here but in other kind of surrounding communities. But I just want to reiterate what Ian said is those proposed setbacks are the minimum setbacks and doesn't necessarily mean that that is what is most appropriate for that property and what portion of the site is being used for what. A 100-foot setback, for example, a lot of these industrial uses, even the heavy industrial, have a portion that does not contain any of those high industrial land uses. They may have offices or a cafeteria or something that is not going to potentially generate the external things that could impact a neighboring property. And so if a portion of the building being proposed is proposed at 100 feet, and the criteria under the site plan review allow enough subjectivity on the part of the planning commission and the city council to say, I don't believe in this instance that 100 feet is appropriate based upon what is going to go on in this portion of the building, I would like to see it be 150. I would like to see it be 200, 300. There is that ability through the site plan process to essentially say, I would not, you or the Planning Commission would not recommend to approve it or approve it without an additional setback in that portion of the site. So I just wanted to point that out first. Yeah, so the first one we have right here is, This one is in Olathe, up at 159th. We looked at all of our neighboring cities when we came up with these. We didn't want to be too restrictive. We didn't want to be overly permissive either. Generally try to keep up but we took a step further and we added more feet already to those In this one here you have a property in the purple that is zoned m2 and that is zoned right across the street in the The orange is a m3 or m4 which could allow up to townhomes But could also allow single-family homes to the further south they have the light yellow color that is single-family home zoning so In the city limits, as we looked at some of those uses that we do have that would be considered M2 under this if it gets adopted as written, the properties south of 207th and Woodland that run along the west side of Woodland in between the railroad tracks on Woodland are primarily outdoor industrial uses. Storage of materials, storage of equipment along that path. Those would all, in order to develop those under the new code, would need to be rezoned M2. As just to the east of that across Woodland was recently approved preliminary plat for Woodland Ridge single family homes. So the idea of having a You can't ever put industrial next to single family is not commonly found throughout any of our neighboring communities or throughout the metro and in land use planning. It is more of Does it work? And if there are concerns about the external impacts to neighboring properties, can there be something done to help mitigate those or offset those? Ultimately, that decision lies with the Planning Commission and or the City Council to determine whether or not it can be and whether or not this use, this site plan, whether rezoning is any appropriate or is it appropriate at all. Again, we are not zoning any property M2 tonight. This is only creating a zoning district. that somebody could request. It does not obligate anybody under planning under the under staff to support it. It does not obligate the planning commission to approve it or recommend approval and it does not obligate the city council to approve it.

Um, is there any reverse? Obviously this was all here before this neighborhood. Um, but I assume at some point there was probably a farmer there, there's other kind of County residential over here on the other side. Um, if we have the a hundred foot setback and somebody wants to build right next to it and it's less than a hundred, is that going to limit the residential neighbors to build there?

Are they still able to build as close as they would like to the, it would not, the way we have it proposed, it would not limit the residential property. It would only impact any industrial property.

Okay. Um, really for what's existing they are able to stay operate the way it is the only reason they never have to rezone to m2 is if they want to expand or change something about their facility is that correct that's correct either whether they would because they would all be considered legal non-conforming because they came into existence before the code was changed and so

There are different provisions in our code and state law that talk about when a use loses that nonconforming status, whether they want to expand the footprint, expand the intensity of the use is also something that I'd like to point out is if they're just doing outdoor storage today and they want to expand that use or add a new use, such as light manufacturing or something of that nature, they would need to up zone that to the M2.

Right. And that process will always include public and a public hearing before it makes it to any point where approval is an option.

That is right. There is no administrative approval process anywhere in the state of Kansas to allow for a change in zoning that I'm aware of. Spencer, correct me if I'm wrong, but Zoning the decision whether or not to rezone a property solely lies at the end of the day with the government to approve that or not approve that Can we go back to the uses again that page?

So, where's the thought process behind what we considered conditional what we considered permitted It depends

I think to some extent it is the very measurable offsite impacts. So with things like auto wrecking and salvage yards, you're looking at very explicit noise and dust pollution. With things like basic industry, it could be light, it could be noise and dust. But ultimately, it's not a rigid definition. We also look at surrounding communities, see how they define it. it's really case by case.

At what point are we, do we have the ability at this point to say these uses we'd like to see as conditional or could we say for right now we want all of them to, to be conditional uses? Do we have that ability right now?

Yes. You have the ability ultimately to decide which uses you feel like should be, uh, conditional or, um, allowed or permitted by right.

I mean, I don't have a problem with this being a whole new zoning and saying, hey, let's just make them all conditional for now. And then that gives another layer of protection to help with whether it be now. Some of these things, after the comp plan, we may decide, hey, these particular areas, we don't need that. And we can always go through and adjust, I think. But for now, I don't necessarily see a downside to it personally.

No, I tend to agree. And again, the plan is not immediately to jump into rezoning things as M2 and starting to throw developments wherever we feel like the whole point of this is to create a situation where we have control of where these things may or may not exist in the future. So if the general consensus is changing them all to conditional, I'm totally open to that.

I mean, go ahead, James.

The 100 feet thing, I think, is a big... I mean because what I think is okay within a hundred feet. I wouldn't want a scrapyard under my house. Yeah, and Somebody a city councilman.

That's 20 years down the road Might not have the same idea and want to be around 50 feet So I think that that's a concern that I have one I think that's where you have to be a little careful because you can't legislate future But that's where the conditional comes into play because it's there's a lot more I think the biggest issue is we just don't know

You know, we just don't have the plan of hey this residential. This is gonna be light industry I just don't want heavy heavy industry to be right next to residential Which is again the point of doing it the way we're doing it is specifically to well And if you look at the example they gave to me, that's not considered heavy industry just falls into that because their storage That's that area right there.

There's pretty light there if you go through the entire list of into uses of there is everything from churches to warehouses, and again, everybody's favorite topic, data centers. The reality is that a church's offset is significantly less restrictive and problematic than a data center, and having a minimum standard allows these organizations or groups that are trying to develop their properties, that minimum offset may be the difference between them being able to have this site as a viable site for them to locate and not. So if we become too restrictive, which again, We are already more restrictive, as far as the proposal goes, than most municipalities. And I don't want to speak out of turn, but in Kansas, that 100-foot offset is already well within established good practices. This is a good starting point. And then as we go through each individual site, again, with the power now to weigh them on each of their individual merit, we'll have the ability to make those determinations.

I agree completely that You don't want to be too restrictive because you don't want to scare off businesses because, oh, well, if it can't be 200 feet from whatever, then we're not going to do it. But at the same time, I think the fear is that how can we, because again, you can't legislate the future with it being a suggestion or a case-by-case basis. I think the fear is what if in 10 years down the road when none of us are here anymore potentially that you know, others will honor that. And I think that's ultimately the fear from everybody talking about the setbacks that they did. And I understand that fear and everything. But it's such a fine line of what's too restrictive versus what's too lenient and hoping that others in the future will have the same wishes or close to.

I absolutely agree with you. My focus is going to be When it comes to a situation like this, what is good practice? What makes sense? And what can I assure? I cannot assure anybody ever what a governing body member 10 years from now, five years from now, two years from now is going to decide is appropriate or not appropriate. All I can tell you is what I believe is appropriate. And in this situation, we are never going to go out of our way to put residents in a position where they're not happy with what they've got going on. We see a lot of people getting unhappy with the way things are going. because of our current zoning codes. This is a change to provide those kinds of stop gaps so we can provide you with the concerns and the flexibility that you're demanding of us even though we don't currently have a legal right to. We're trying to establish that legal right so we can listen and provide you with the representation that you're looking for.

I do like the idea of the conditional just being laid over just as a placeholder for now until we can. Um, I feel like that would be, um, a cautious way of moving forward.

How does that affect tonight? Can we, can we make that part of the tonight's decision if we do that?

Yes, it would require some tricky motion to be moving items from your proposed Seventeen three thirty one B to seventeen three thirty one C which is moving them from permitted uses to conditional uses I Guess the question I would have to guide you all is which of the permitted uses Are you moving are you talking about moving to condition is it all of them?

I would just say do all of them the entirety of them to for the time being Okay. Yeah, my thought would be I mean, to be honest, I don't have really any... I don't know how to say this without getting in trouble. I don't have any appetite to look at M2 until the comp plan's over.

I agree completely.

I think we do this, we put these over, get through the comp plan, we figure out where we want places to be, and then, you know, we can reassess M2 and see what changes we need to make at that point. But, yeah, so I think doing conditional now at least gives us a placeholder there, go along with it, and, you know, that puts us in the right direction of where we want to go. So, if you all are good with that, we can have Spencer figure out if we decide we want to.

Yeah, if you could draft a suggested motion, I'm happy to read whatever you feel is appropriate.

And we can let... So I have some experience with this. Oh, go ahead. In the city of Blue Springs, they had an overlay district. And the way that they were able to essentially do the same thing was to just have a blanket statement that would fall kind of somewhere probably under the M2 where it says allowed uses. And it would say... Just to catch it all, either we copy it over, but that could be a very long motion where you say I move to have auto wrecking and salvage be conditioned.

Yeah, no, I would say it was just a blanket statement.

A blanket statement that said all uses currently allowed by right or on a conditional basis in the M1 district may be allowed in the M2 with approval of a conditional use. And all of those allowed in M1 currently today may be allowed in M2 with the approval of a conditional use permit. We're copying and pasting over there, but adding an asterisk that says they all require a conditional use permit, regardless if it says permitted in M1 or conditional in M1. Everything would be conditional in M2.

And so all of our M1 light industrial, new M1 light industrial, would that all be conditional also? Because it looks like everything on here

No. So we're creating two new zoning standards at this point. So by phrasing the motion that way, we're creating the blanket statement. So as we move from M1 to M2, they're all conditional and everything that's going to be in the new M1 light will be as it's currently recommended.

That would cover the uses allowed in M2. Right. The uses allowed in M1 that we have removed those M two. Um, I don't know if unless we were directed to do so, I don't necessarily know if there's a need to alter the land uses in M one that we have proposed unless you had specific concerns.

I was okay with the M one uses the way they're, uh, the new end to stay the same. Yeah. So, um, yeah, no, I think, I mean, that's, that's how I'd like to, if either of you could,

draft me a general motion so I have something to read and not mess it up, I would appreciate that. Are there any other questions?

I don't have anything further on this particular section. I think now we need to go through the PD and the PO.

Yeah. I did have one question. Go ahead. So in the future, if we're going to be like the Cardinal Glass Plant, They're going to be going to M2. I assume that they're going to have to come to us to rezone. Is there going to be fees associated to that, or is it something that we could waive for them since they are good partners of ours?

Whether or not we can waive them, I'm not certain. We do have fees.

They don't have to rezone. It's only if they have changes to their property. Yeah, we'd probably do that for them. Yeah, they would only need to do that if they have changes they're making. They won't have to change. Yeah, they'll be operating as, I can't remember the verbiage. Legal non-conforming. Legal non-conforming.

Kind of like seats is expanding. Yeah.

So since seats has already started, unless they're going to do a third expansion. Yeah. You know. So, okay.

Thank you so much for taking that extra time. Thanks. Appreciate it.

Okay. So the second half of this presentation is related to the plan district and protective overlay amendment. Current conditions of the PDPO, uh, the plan district, uh, grants the, uh, planning commission, uh, to recommend and city council to decide whether or not, uh, modifications can be provided to a specific project to development standards. Uh, this does not permit the modification of permitted land uses. just the development standards themselves. So setbacks, density requirements, lot area coverage, those kind of quantitative measures can be modified with the planned district. The protective overlay as currently adopted grants the Planning Commission the ability to modify land uses by restricting them and to heighten development standards. So to basically take whatever is existing and make it more stringent. Once again, it does not permit the granting of land uses, only restrictions. The consequence of this was kind of brought to light a couple months ago when there was an application to develop a property in the commercial zoning district that had an outdoor storage component. In the C2 zoning district, outdoor storage was not permitted by right. It was not permitted at all. Because of that, the applicant had to seek a rezoning to a more intensive zoning district, in this case, MP Industrial Park, and then use a protective overlay to restrict all other land uses except for the outdoor storage, and what they'd intended to do in the C2 district. So because of this, it creates a bad planning practice where we have areas that are zoned one way, but effectively are reduced and permitted land uses to an entirely different zoning district. It's just not good practice. So the proposal that staff has for this component is an expansion of the planned district to permit the application of it to all zoning districts. As of right now, it could be applied to any zoning district except for Ag, Rural Residential, Industrial Park, and M1, in this case, General Industrial. But it could be applied to all the other ones. The second part of this is the change to the protective overlay, which alters the verbiage from restricting land uses to modifying them, such that development standards and land uses can be permitted or restricted via the protective overlay. It's important to note that in the event that somebody were to seek an expansion of land uses via a planned district, a protective overlay would be required concurrently. So if somebody wanted to come in and, let's say, apply for a site plan that had a land use that was not otherwise permitted in that zoning district, they would have to come in with both a PD and an overlay, a PO. Planning Commission and City Council retain the right to approve or deny, and they also retain the ability to apply additional development standards, kind of as was described earlier when it comes to site plans, you can still impose additional restrictions if desired. And you can also impose, well, yeah, same thing. I guess I said it twice there. An important thing to note with this, any modifications to development standards must be approved by the Planning Commission and City Council, and this goes for land use additions or removals. This amendment does not permit staff to do any sort of administrative modifications to land uses or development standards at all. It's still up to the discretion of the Planning Commission and City Council to grant or not grant those changes.

With these particular designations, does it also require the regular public hearing for rezoning?

Yes. So PD can only be applied for with the rezoning, so it will require that public hearing.

So there will always be a public hearing in regards to these particular rezonings also? That's correct. Awesome.

These are things we use a lot on the residential side. We're actually using it kind of in the opposite way for a current development that's coming through to make lots bigger, have some other uses that they're allowed to have out buildings and things like that. So, um, it's good to be able to go both ways with it, be able to add uses or remove, uh, whenever required to. So that's the nice part. Just gives us more flexibility to not rezone something, you know, in the M district when we don't want it to be. That was kind of what triggered this, uh, when we had to rezone to, that to help a business get into a spot that made sense for them, but they had one small use that didn't work. So, uh, I'm, I'm in favor of this change. I agree. Any questions or anything?

More flexibility for our ability to do what the community needs of us. I think it's perfect.

Any other comments or questions on this portion?

That's good.

And this is all wrapped up in that ordinance? That's correct, it's all tied into one. Were you able to come up with what we need for, are you typing it? Yeah, Spencer's working on that. How long do you need for that? Or you have more to go over?

I do, I sure, I got one more slide.

Oh, he's got one more slide, go through that.

This is just kind of explaining the current route for approval versus what would be, what would happen underneath the proposed. Currently in that case they had to reason to MP then apply the PO to restrict all non desired land uses and then approval and adoption under the new route they would be able to Simply rezone from c2 commercial district to CP to adopt a protective overlay concurrently to permit additional land uses and they get approval for both that way You're still staying see commercial instead of seeking an alternate.

Yeah, so I would just like to add that what this really is The only thing that this really changes is we're able to change development standards today through the protected overlay and the planned district paths, those two processes. All this allows us to do is modify the land uses a little bit. Whereas we can only restrict them now, that means we have to up zone and then remove And this says we can take the base and just add those that are appropriate and not appropriate. So it's actually more protective in many ways. Every city... that I've ever worked for and that I've ever encountered has some form of a planned district protected overlay process to allow some flexibility and to really commit to not just using this as a way for the developer to get out of meeting the city standards, but to employ it when The project justifies that because of unique design, additional amenities, a different development type that maybe the city's code doesn't contemplate. I have not come across any perfect code in any way. And I think that's why cities use this, some more than others, is because they recognize that their code can't possibly think of every type of development that's coming through. And so this allows some flexibility to meet that demand. Staff ultimately the Planning Commission and at the end of the day that everybody feel that those Modifications are warranted based upon the project that's being presented to you All right And really for me this goes back to that area will be approved this particular one.

I And if nothing ever develops there outside of that particular building, in 10 years, 15 years, they may not know why it was industrial zone. Well, now they're going to say, well, there's an industrial zone, so we should continue to let that happen there. That's what we don't want. We'd rather say C2 with one additional use. And it's a lot better for long-term planning. So that's kind of the gist behind this one. Do we have what we need, Spencer?

Yes. I'm going to walk you through this, and then I will bring my laptop up for you to read the motion. I appreciate that. What it sounds like, and this is where I want you guys to tell me if I'm wrong, currently in the proposed 17331M2, that's heavy industrial, permitted uses are in subsection B. Within that, B4 is permitted commercial uses. B5 is permitted industrial uses. proposed motion will be to take B4 and B5 and move them in their entirety down to C4 and C5 and subsection C is I'm sorry is conditional uses only the resulting 17331 for M2 will have no permitted commercial or industrial uses and Any commercial or industrial use will have to be a conditional use to be listed there only. What will remain as a permitted use in M2 heavy industrial are agricultural uses, which is sales and service grain storage and typical agriculture discussed above, the residential uses of none, and the public and civic uses of churches, community assembly, cultural groups, golf courses, government service, library, parks and rec, recycling, and utility minor. Are there any of those public civic uses that you... What was the one before utility minor? Recycling collection station, public, subject to, and it refers to another section of city code, 17336A14. So that is not the large scale... No, that is a ripple glass dumpster in the back of a...

Okay, so it's not like a trash yard. Correct.

No, it's not a processing plant.

All right, cool. I think that sounds fine to me. Um, light utility is kind of like the, uh, our, uh, like the pumps we have, the wastewater pumps and stuff like that.

Yeah. Lift station.

Lift station. And, uh, I know like Evergy has a small lot that they have like a small substation on and stuff like that. When, when the, uh, big substations are considered, those aren't considered light, right? For Evergy.

I would not imagine an average substation is light. Yeah, we're going to double check.

Thank you.

There's one other slight thing in the motion, which is the numbering and the new C5. It goes 1, 2, 3, 5, 5. So I'm just going to note that you're also renumbering the first C5 to C4. You'll see that in there.

A utility minor would mean services or facilities of agencies that are under public franchise or ownership. Provide services that are essential to support development and that only involve minor structures such as poles and lines and structures not exceeding 150 cubic feet in size, six feet in height, which do not generate discernible noise, odor, vibration within any nearby residential district.

Okay, that makes sense. Yep.

Before the motion is brought forward, I will need to abstain as this was voted on in the June 4th meeting.

Yeah, just abstain.

Oh, I didn't know. I thought I had to explain why.

Well, they'll ask you after.

Oh, okay. I get to say it twice then.

Maybe she can just hold it.

Okay, so what we are pulling up here, sorry, what we are pulling up here is these are the proposed changes. So what you see in permitted uses, one, two, and three are staying as permitted uses in heavy industrial. If you scroll down, four and five are moving completely down to conditional uses only. Does that capture what the intent of the governing body is this evening?

Yes, scroll back up just so we can verify. Yeah, those are the ones you just said. All right. I'm okay with that if everyone else is?

No. Okay. Thank you very much for drafting this. Yeah.

All right. Unless there's any other comments or questions, I'll entertain a motion for item number 10.

As far as this motion, it encompasses the entirety of this item as old. So reading this will, in fact, move those forward with the changes that we've made.

Yes. Yeah, that was based on the motion that was in the staff report. Thank you.

All right.

Want to take a motion?

All right. At this time, I move to adopt Ordinance Number 2026-17, Amending Chapter 17, Article 3, Section 17, pertaining to the Unified Zoning Ordinance and Subdivision Regulations of Spring Hill, Kansas, Third Edition 2025, related to zoning districts zoning district regulations and development processes as presented in the agenda packet with two changes. One, all uses listed in 17.331B4 and 17.331B5 be moved to 17.331C4 and 17.331C5 respectively and two, the section of section 17.331C relating to commercial uses be renumbered to C4 correcting a minor typo.

We have a motion. We have a second. Second. Motion and a second. It's Mike Grant. I believe this is a roll call.

Mrs. Craveer. Abstain. You want to state your reason, please?

This was presented and voted upon at the June 4th Planning Commission meeting in which I voted.

Okay. Thank you. Mr. Grant? Yes. Mr. Delgado?

No.

Pardon?

No.

No. Thank you. Mr. Savage?

No.

Mr. Thrawn?

Yes.

Mr. Young?

Yes.

Motion passes 3-2-1. for ordinance 2026-17.

Moving on to item number 11, consider approval consider approval of approved professional services agreement for the comprehensive plan update.

I don't think it's on.

Sorry about that this is consider approval of a contract for process for the comprehensive plan and Um, the city staff, um, issued the request for proposals. Uh, earlier this year we gave it a roughly a 30 day, 45 day turnaround. We received five proposals from a variety of consultants, both locally and nationally. Um, we enter, we selected the top three. Um, we had a diverse group of city staff that was on that, that represented a diverse set of disciplines. So it was Ian and myself, um, along with Amy, um, who had most of the experience with the last comprehensive plan from a staff perspective, but we also brought in Rhonda from a financial perspective and Jenna to help us because we believe that, uh, public engagement and, uh, really getting that public feedback is going to be so critical to this next phase that we do that we invited her in to do to help us give her opinion on that. Um, we had three interviews, uh, with different, uh, firms and, based upon the recommendations and the plan and approach. We selected Multistudio, which is a local, they're a national brand, but they have prominent local offices here in Kansas City. They have done comprehensive plans for a number of, and area plans, park plans for other jurisdictions in the Kansas City metro. We believe that their scope of services is very well aligned with what we are looking to do. Their price point was within our you know anticipated budget and so And they had the ability to get the project done on our anticipated timeline. So the scope of work Their timeline to deliver on that scope of work and their fee all made them in our opinion their best pick based upon the those items we still believe that we can bring forward a comprehensive plan to the Planning Commission sometime at the beginning of January and then back before the governing body at the end of January and We had hoped by the end of the year, but given, um, the holidays in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there's always trouble trying to get people, uh, to attend those meetings, uh, and to get them the public hearings and the feedback. So, um, we believe that we can get this done. We're very confident in that ability to do that. Happy to answer any questions the fee that they quoted us based upon the the work plan is 93 thousand three hundred twenty dollars we do have a contract here before you that has a not to exceed amount of a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars and to allow some flexibility should we be going through this process and There's the desire to add something to say hey, we really want to explore this part further and Potentially to add to that scope without having to necessarily bring a new revised contract back to you As long as in keeping with that and staff always does retain that right to say well We're not comfortable just doing this. We want to get some feedback to bring that back before you so That's why we included a higher amount than not to exceed. I think when we go through this process, we will see those different areas where we may want to do a little bit deeper dive or to have some additional money left over that we could add something that may follow the exact adoption date of late January, but we wanted to leave that flexibility. And these are not what we have written in anywhere, but I'm just coming up with ideas, is maybe there is a desire to look at Webster Street and to do kind of a corridor plan, a specific corridor plan or a specific plan for the downtown area and to have something a little bit more in depth for certain areas that may not have been included in that original scope. So we believe that that flexibility is there to be able to do that if the consultant has the time and is able to do that in a short order. So that's why the difference in the dollar amount. So some of the items in here that I would like to point out is that we feel are very important. Ownership of all documents. Any work that the consultants do for us, the city will retain ownership of those documents. We will allow the consultants to use those as marketing purposes to show the wonderful work they did here in Spring Hill to be able to use that. payment will be made once services are complete. This is not a hundred or 93 or 120 or a hundred thousand dollars just broken up into, you know, six monthly payments, um, split out evenly and we're just going to pay them no matter what happens. This is, We're only going to pay them for the work that gets done. They will bill us monthly, but they'll give us an itemized receipt of everything that got done. So we're not just cutting them a blank check and saying, oh, boy, we didn't get much done the first two months, but we still paid you. This is a performance-based contract. So there is quite a bit of, in that scope of work, public engagement, like I mentioned. To kick off the process, we are going to establish a clear project structure after we have some more detailed conversations with them and city staff. A project management team may include an advisory committee, which we have merged a technical committee and a steering committee, stuff that there was a steering committee during the last process. This would kind of blend those two because we don't It would only take more time if we had a full steering committee and a full technical committee of, say, eight to 10 people on each. And we're trying to have meetings and coordinate schedules over the next six months. It would be very difficult. So we believe combining those two and utilizing the work that was done previously will best serve our needs. A detailed work plan, including tasks, engagement, education, the timing of events will be created. A public involvement plan will be created very early on in the process. Establish a process that is open transparency inclusive of all community members There will be a visioning charrette pop-up events stakeholder engagement interviews and focus group youth engagement community services websites We are going to try all the different methods whether it's the old-school methods of showing up and meeting people face-to-face at community events, but also those you know more online services or surveys where people can provide input if they have busy lives and they don't want to take two hours on a Tuesday night to come out and meet with us so we're gonna try to really cast a wide net and get as much input as we can then we'll be developing a comp essentially a draft plan with different, based upon the criteria and some of the themes, with different development scenarios, and then bringing that forward to the Planning Commission and working hand in hand with them to help get their input on some of the different development scenarios, and then ultimately asking the Planning Commission to provide one that has the most recommendations in it. Again, I just want to reiterate, I don't think this plan will be able to appease everybody necessarily on staff, on the planning commission, maybe not on the governing body or members of the public or business community. I think people have, everybody has some wants and things they don't wanna see. And our goal is to find consensus to help us have something to move forward with at the end of the day that meets as many of those wants while addressing some of those things they don't want and move forward. But I don't think as CISI as our size it's gonna be possible to get everybody to agree on everything. That would be our goal at the end of the day. but we also want to be realistic and try to bring forward something that while everybody may not get everything they want there's something that everybody can say i had a hand in that and then that way there's some ownership of everybody who is involved in the process going forward so i'm happy to enter answer any questions but based upon the time the consultants workload staff's time we believe we can get this done for this price or even include maybe some additional items and get it done on the schedule that we had told you back a few months ago

Yeah, I want to make sure that we have, you know, we're doing events in the neighborhoods and things like that, too. So even outside of our normal kind of fall festival, kind of how we did it last time, main events, set it up specifically for those neighborhoods that they can come to it, whether it be their HOA meetings or, you know, I think we need to find contacts everywhere to make sure we're getting good feedback. And then have some of those electronic ones there also, because they may not want to say it to us or... or there's too many people so they can't, so having a way for them to get involved. I think all those things sound good. I know it was a long process to find the right company, and it sounds like this one's giving us all the things we're looking for, and they're willing to take on more as we ask for more. So I like that. And then we only pay for the services rendered, because last time I think we paid a lot up front, and we didn't get what we asked for. Yeah. I don't have any other questions or anything.

The only question I have is, I know you said that they would be sending an itemized detailed receipt every month. How else are we checking up on that aside from just them being like, oh, this is what we did? Because referencing what Chad just mentioned is, we were burned last time. And so just to make sure they're truly doing that, do you have any? Well, we're going forward for that.

Yeah, we we're gonna have a heavy staff involvement in and will be the project manager making sure all of that and then Amy will be Helping with that and and helping pay those bills as a second review set and then I will be But they'll be sending like updates to you guys for you to see what's actually Tangible things. Yeah, we're gonna be very hands-on and perfect overall project management of this.

Okay.

Thank you Thank you

Community involvement is the single most important thing in this. I know when we did the Safe Streets for All, the people, I forget the company's name specifically, that offered that service to us and helped us prepare those documents, they were very, very excited about, I think, the number, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, but it was not an impressive number, in my opinion, less than 1% of our general population. Um, I would like to see a standard a little bit higher than that for this particular project, um, within all reasonable due diligence. Obviously you can't force people to take any, any surveys, but doing everything we can to try to get closer to a, a, even if it's, if it, if it's double, well, that's, what's crazy.

This is for, it was the highest by far, which is again, that's the sad part.

That's the, uh, been one of the most. frustrating situations being sitting here and being involved city councils how few people actually engage when we're trying to get their input to to make any informed decisions I think so that's my standard I think everybody can agree that whatever you can do to force or not force but to to encourage people think I was the word I was looking for encourage people to participate we would greatly appreciate it yeah absolutely

Any other comments or questions?

No, I think that the SS4A did set a pretty high standard as far as what we received and the quality of work. And I would hope that this would exceed that, especially with the citizen participation and the efforts being put forward towards it and how much it will impact not just roads, but our future of our city.

Yeah, we hope for that as well. We're going to make every effort we can. We're going to advertise it as much as we can and try to get everybody to come to the table. I think word of mouth will be very important. I absolutely want some people in the community and businesses to become champions of the plan. And even if they may not agree with everything in it or they agree with everything in it, they encourage and become champions of the process to get that input.

Well, I think robust feedback as we go along, too. So not three months in, this is kind of where we're at. Maybe the first month as we're paying the bill, we should be like, this is what we've figured out so far, this participation we have, so maybe we change directions if we're not getting what we want.

Yep, absolutely.

All right. Any other questions or comments?

No.

If not, I entertain a motion. I move to approve agenda item number 11 as stated in tonight's agenda. Second. Motion and a second. All those in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0. It's 9.30. Could we take another small break?

Absolutely. I move that the City Council go into recess for five minutes of return in Council Chambers at 9.30, 6, 32 p.m. Thank you.

Second. Motion and a second. All those in favor?

Aye.

We'll see you back here in a few. You're the problem. All right, it's 9.32, and we're back. Sorry for so many breaks tonight. I'll try to get through the rest of this. Next up is item number 12, consider approval of a construction agreement with NUCO Concrete LLC for the 2026 sidewalk program, and we got Jacob Spears.

Thank you, Mayor, City Council. My goal is for this to be the most simple, straightforward item you've had so far tonight. We've been talking about the sidewalk project for quite some time. Just to give everybody a refresher, the area that we're planning on starting with is along Madison Street from Spring Street to Nichols, and then also along Harrison from South Street to Spring Street. Staff put together a request for bids, put this out on the street. We had five companies submit bids. The low bid was by Nuko Concrete in the amount of $146,370. It's about 25% under the budget and under what we thought we might get, so we were very pleased with the bid. All five bids were pretty tightly grouped together, so I felt like it was a good sample. Assuming everything is going well, with the project, with timing, with quality of work, the contractor's availability. This price, coupled with our current budget, gives us a little room to add some sidewalk and potentially do more than what's outlined here. So that's another benefit. The company has good references. No, no issues or concerns from staff's perspective and staff recommends approval of the contract with Nuko Concrete again in the amount of one hundred forty six thousand three hundred seventy dollars happy to answer any questions yet.

I Don't know any questions. I'm glad to see this started. I know we've been talking about it for quite a while now, so I know this is only the first half of this project so Once we get it going, it'll be nice to move on to the next portion. But I think this should be fairly quick, right? Yes.

Yeah, they're estimating two to three weeks start to finish.

And they have a start date?

The week of the 20th of July. Okay. So here within the next three weeks, they're ready to get going.

All right. I'm glad to see it. Thanks for working on this. I know it's kind of been a pain.

Thank you.

I know we ask for some of that stuff sometimes. Any other comments or questions?

I'm glad to see it done.

All right.

Good to see you.

I'll entertain a motion.

I move to approve agenda item number 12 as stated in tonight's agenda. Second.

The motion is second. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0. I'll have to get used to that again, saying 5. All right. Number 13, consider approval of the BNSF agreement for a northeast river interceptor.

I will try to be even quicker than Mr. Spear without causing any more damage up here. As part of the northeast sewer interceptor, one of those...

I don't think you're on, Spencer.

Can you hear me now?

Yeah.

Okay. As part of the northeast interceptor, one of those lines will need to go under the railroad along Woodland. So we have to request permission to do that for BNSF, who owns that right-of-way and that land. This is an agreement. It will not surprise you largely form agreement from the railroad. We are still negotiating a few last items The major one was ensuring that the term of that license to go into their railroads extended they proposed 25 years We've asked them to increase that to 40 just to make sure that that sewer infrastructure can be under there for its full lifespan, so With that in mind, because we wanted to get this before you all and get that project moving, we would like an approval of that contract subject to minor additional negotiations between BNSF and staff, including myself. We have been advised they are on board with the 40-year term. The price will increase from $3,900 to $6,240, so just over a $1,300 increase for those additional 15 years. Some other minor non-monetary terms, we're still working out with them. They move a little slower than I do. They have a larger legal department. So with that, we are requesting the motion in your staff report for a little bit of flexibility for the mayor to sign that. there will be no monetary changes beyond that. Uh, 62 40 will not go any higher than that.

So what type of change do you think will happen?

Um, there's some insurance things we need to iron out with them. I think we're there. We just need their final sign off. Um, and then some notification provisions as that contract ages. I want to make sure that in 15 years when most, any, some of us might not be around working for the city, that there's a clear set of guidelines. So the years is the biggest thing and the number one change that we're asking for.

But you said they've already conditionally agreed to the 40-year?

Yeah.

If there's anything too big, I assume you'll bring it back to us.

If there's a material change, we will bring it back to you. It's really just minor agreements like that, changes like that. Okay.

All right. I don't have any questions or comments. Is there anything else?

Pretty straightforward.

Yeah, that's straightforward.

All right. I'll entertain a motion.

Move to approve agenda item number 13 as stated in tonight's agenda. Second.

Motion is second. Any other questions or comments? All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0. That concludes our formal action section and moves us into our next executive session, number two, which I believe for 10 minutes. I will entertain the motion for that. Just a minute.

I move that the City Council recess into executive session for 10 minutes for the preliminary discussion of the acquisition of real property pursuant to KSA 75-4319B6 of the Kansas Open Meetings Act. The open meeting will resume in the City Council Chambers at 9.49. No formal action is anticipated following the session. The persons to be in attendance are the following. Lane Massey, City Administrator. Mike Malin, Community Development Director. Spencer Lyle, City Attorney. Second.

Motion and a second. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0.

Never let them know you're next to them. Oh, my mic's on. Where did PJ go? Oh, he might have gone.

There he is.

Let the record reflect the governing body reconvened the open meeting at 9.49 PM. There were no votes taken, no decisions made during the executive session. Discussion was limited to the subject stated. Now we have a executive session number three for 10 minutes.

I move that the city council recess into executive session for 10 minutes to receive advice of council regarding matters of non-elected personnel pursuant to KSA 75-4319B2 of the Kansas Open Meetings Act. The open meeting will resume in the City Council Chambers at 10 p.m. No formal action is anticipated following the session. Persons to be in attendance are the following. Spencer Lau, City Attorney. Second.

Motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0. Let the record reflect the governing body reconvened the open meeting at 10 p.m. No votes were taken or decisions made during the executive session. Discussion was limited to the subject stated. We will now move into our fourth executive session and final for the night for 20 minutes.

I move the City Council recess into executive session for 20 minutes to discuss matters of non-elected personnel pursuant to KSA 75-4319B1 of the Kansas Open Meetings Act. The open meeting will resume in the City Council Chambers at 1022 p.m. No formal action is anticipated following the session. Persons to be in attendance are the following. Spencer Lousey, attorney. Lane Massey, city administrator. Second.

Motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passed 5-0-0.

Thank you. Wait, is this like a story on a tree?

Thank you.

All right. Let the record reflect that governing body were giving an open meeting at 10.22 p.m. No votes were taken and decisions made during the executive session. Discussion was limited to the subject stated. We do not need another executive session. We are ready to adjourn. I will entertain a motion.

Second.

Motion and a second, PJ and Ivan. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 5-0-0. See you next time.