City Council - workshop

Ivan is unable to make it tonight and PJ said he's run just a few minutes late But we'll go ahead and get started since we have a quorum. Would you like to take the role?

Okay, great we will jump right in we are going over this yes, I

these work sessions and tonight, I believe, are we starting with Public Works or are we starting with?

I thought we'd start with Community Service London. Let's get her a microphone then. Thank you. Okay, so let's look here.

So as far as succession and staffing, currently we have a city clerk, a deputy city clerk, and then the customer service representative. It's a split position with customer service and municipal court. So as far as future positions, it's really gonna depend on the growth of the community. Nothing on there. Yeah, we don't have, I don't think there's a... Oh, sorry. So as far as the staffing, the future positions, it's really going to depend on the growth of the community, depending on if we're still in the business of reserving rooms, depending on where we are, licensing, the growth for our sewer with utility billing, because... that customer service representative does process all of the utility bill payments. So it's just really going to depend on how the community changes and what we need. And then as far as our wants and needs, a couple of the other departments have already covered some of these items. Community development was talking about the municipal codification software. That would include the entire code book, including all the zoning regs. What I hopefully foresee is that when we go through that process, that there'll also be a legal review of each chapter so that we're in compliance, because I know some of it is outdated. So we've just kind of been holding tight. We've been changing some things, but it's kind of been piecemealing, so it would be nice when we get to that point that everything is done in one full swoop. There's another item, the city clerk agenda and minutes software. That hopefully will be an option when we stay with our update for the website. I know that they have a program in there for agendas and minutes and actually I took some training today and learned about the ADA for our website that we will be having to be qualified for in a couple years but what I can do is at least start hopefully getting the documents that I'm working on now in when it talks about being ADA accessible. So that will be a big project for us. And then also, customer service has asked for a new reservation management software. So depending on how that comes out, I don't know if they've done any research on that yet to know the cost of that. But I know that those are three. And these are all major projects. but I just wanted to put those out there. And then as far as education and training, uh, still continuing to attend the city clerk conference and continuing to be a member of the international Institute of municipal clerks and, um, continue doing online training that they offer through both organizations.

Cool. I think you do a good job too of pushing out. Like I know you pushed out some training that we could use and I think I encourage everybody to do that as they come through. I know, when I first came on, I think I was the only one that jumped in and did all of the training right away. And, uh, it makes a big difference because once I knew what the guardrails were, what we're allowed to talk about or communication and things like that, that makes a big difference. Outside of that, I think, um, real quick, um, So right now you share with kind of what Ashley went over last time with the court and stuff. I know there's some overlapping. How do you foresee it as they get larger and your department gets larger? Do you see it separating completely or do you think it'll still be kind of overlapping?

Yeah, I definitely could see that. The city clerk being more of the administrative piece and municipal court is its own department for sure. It's a lot different. A lot of things that happen through the city, just from my experience, is that when something needs to be done, it's like by default by that employing stepping in and taking care of that position. So I know that with Ashley being the deputy city clerk, a lot of her duties now are more heavy in municipal court. So she's available when I'm not here. So it's just the workload and trying to balance that out, figuring out how much staff is available and how we can all work together. Yeah.

Well, I know last year we split the duties a little bit more than before because everything was kind of convoluted and overlapping. And that was, like you said, based off of just the quick growth and figuring out who did what. And I think as we keep finalizing what department does what I think that'll make things a little easier too because right now there's a lot of cross cross job needs but I don't really have a ton of questions I think you did a good job of putting this out there do you all have any questions for her I do think we've seen a constant thing across the board software that's I think that's probably going to be one of our top priorities next year is figuring out what software to switch to. And I think, was there some good options that overlapped into all departments? Or do you think staying, like, is there one that's specific for the agendas that maybe could overlap in the community services or community development?

I would think so, because it would just be an agenda program on the website.

Like an add-on to it?

Yes, probably. Because right now, as we're doing, is taking Word documents putting it into a PDF, and then putting it out there. I think with the program, it's more like you're uploading the information on the website. And then also, I think there's a doc access. And I'm not real familiar with it as far as our website. So, yeah, it's just something that we need to work toward. But, yeah, I'm thinking that hopefully it would help the Community Development Department and some of their agenda procedures as well.

Yeah. Yeah, because you're not going to be here forever, and you're the only one that has been here for a long time to be able to tell us, we've tried that 10 years ago or 15 years ago. Yeah, this is why we're doing it this way. Whether it's right, wrong, or indifferent, at least we know how we got there. So I think if we can get some of this stuff figured out in the next couple years, it would be good. Because we're not going to have that forever. But I appreciate that we do. Thanks for all the answers you've given me for... Why do we do this from, well, back in 98.

I wanted to, um, I don't know what's next in your packet and the original packet. The next one was actually the governing bodies budgets, which of course is your budget. Um, we've kept it consistent year to year. We've kept money in there for training if you'd like to do some training or organize some training as a group. We have money that could be donated if you'd like to support a cause locally. We put some money in for public relations for different things. And so you don't often talk about the money that you spend if you guys have some ideas or things you wish you did that we aren't spending. or if you think it's fine like it is, I just want to make sure we don't skip over the department that covers the governing body.

Well, the main thing I see is 25 to 26, we had a significant increase. What was the change there?

I'll have to look that up. I know we bumped it. Oh, one is actual, right? 25 is actual. Oh, okay, okay. And 27, you don't spend what we budget for.

Oh, so yeah, we just have a...

So you could lower budget if you want to.

Well, that gives us some money there to figure out in the 27 budget that could go to something else if we're not using it.

Room in there in case we want to do retreat or goal setting exercises.

Yeah. Is there trainings that we should be doing that we're not taking advantage of?

Well, she just sent one today. Yeah.

So it's usually stuff like that. But I didn't know if there was anything else potentially.

Glenda's pretty good about it. If there's something that comes through, she'll send it over.

Usually once a year, the legal. put on a training for governing body members at the annual conference.

It's usually, for that one, it's usually after an election because they know that there's probably new members on there. So probably next time in 27. It's usually in October. I can't remember. But anyhow, when things come in like that, I definitely will share it and feel free to take advantage of those training courses. I think they're helpful. Very cool. Thank you.

Yeah, I will say at the beginning of the year, I felt like there was a lot more out there to be able to check out. A lot of times, Kansas, the league, they have just a lot of different things, too, of what's happening at the state capitol and stuff like that, too. So I'll usually watch their YouTube videos to find out what bills might be coming through. That's where I found out mainly about, like, Rhonda or Lane will send it over and say, hey, check this out, because this is what they're talking about. They go by the league, yeah. Yeah, so I like watching them. I don't know, I think PJ watched them too.

Yeah, I've done a couple of them. They're very, very informative, but we don't spend a lot on ourselves for anything. I actually was not aware that we had the flexibility and the opportunity to use these dollars to donate. I just thought these were dollars that were there to be looked at and had for, oh no, moments of training opportunities. I did not realize we had donation abilities, so that's an exciting thing.

I think as we get to the end of the year, it might be something to look at as a governing body, what we say. It goes here or there.

About $10,000 of that is budgeted for public relations issues. The previous mayor would do extra things at fall festival, maybe parade things, stuff that's in the public that's discretionary for you all to spend. Is this kind of where we got the first Friday money? Say it again?

Is that where we got the first Friday money and stuff too?

No, we took that from transient guest house. Okay.

So, yeah, I mean, I think we talked about doing more at hometown holidays this year. Yes. This is where I think that money would come from. That's right.

But it is at your direction, right?

So it's nice to know that's there. Yeah, absolutely. Because if we're underusing it, then we could be putting that towards something good. I feel like we are doing more community events now than we ever have probably, so that might come into play even more. in previous years. Outside of that, any other questions about the governing body or for Glenda? Thank you. Nice and quick. I like those ones. Now we have Jacob.

Everyone relax. Here goes Jacob.

Five minutes per line on this sheet is out of this.

I've kind of tried to stick with the format that you're used to seeing. A little difference for Public Works rather than just having this grouped by one department. We've got four divisions within the Public Works department. I kind of went through this exercise division by division. You can see the budget numbers there. Wastewater jumps out, but we we know what what that money is being built up for All right, so we'll start speaking of that we'll start with utilities Currently there are only five people in the utilities division So there's a supervisor who also acts as the lead operator at the wastewater treatment plant and then We have four maintenance workers we've got We've got some ability in there. Our maintenance workers, whether we're talking utilities or streets, parks, we have a maintenance worker one, which is kind of that entry-level position, and there's also maintenance worker two and worker three experience responsibilities. Usually when you get into that two and definitely that three level, those are acting as crew leaders for a group of folks. So I think... In addition to, I'll get into this, in addition to adding staff in the future, we've also got some opportunities to spread out and provide some promotional opportunities for existing staff, which then will allow us to backfill and create some entry level positions as we grow. So, positions needed. I went through, looked at some of the, industry organizations and standards. So we're talking about utilities. I looked at the American Water Works Association as well as the American Public Works Association. There's some good resources out there that says, okay, yeah, there's differences in how you operate and what responsibilities are, but there's some pretty good metrics on staff per staff per mile of of maine um and so went out and did that did that work there's also with wastewater treatment plants it's based on the size or capacity of the plant but there's some good metrics on the average staffing for that um not surprisingly when i looked at infrastructure the size of our wastewater treatment plant the the infrastructure that miles of mains and manholes and things that we have in the ground we are under those industry standards even taking the low end of the range and we're still underneath that one of the things to remember as I go into this is a lot of it you know it's a it's a judgment call and you're balancing cost with service delivery. And so when we're talking about these ranges of staffing, we can keep costs low with kind of bare bones staffing and take the approach of we'll address what absolutely has to be addressed. We'll put out the fires as they crop up. When we start to look at those value adds and enhanced service offerings, that generally requires more staffing and more equipment to offer those services. All along here, and really the feedback that is really beneficial for me from you all is, where do you want us to be in that balance of level of service, service delivery, service offerings, And then I can tell you, all right, here are the cost implications for that. But knowing where we want to be, vision for a city and the type of service, then makes it easier to go back and say, okay, what do we need to support that? So what I have in here, just to get us kind of up current where we need to be staffing wise, we need to add One person on what I'm going to call the operations side, that's out in the field. That's the mains, the sewer mains and storm sewer throughout the community. And then we've got the wastewater treatment plant. And I'll think about those separately because the staffing needs are very different there. We're not too far off of where we need to be for the field operations, but one additional person would help us, again, up those, I say service offerings, but it's really just doing the maintenance that we need to be doing on our system to keep it in good health. And then also a... What I'm calling for in this kind of the first year just is taking one of our current maintenance worker ones, changing his title to a plant operator. The reality is we have one maintenance worker who spends 96% of his time solely at the wastewater treatment plant. I think it makes sense just to make it clear to that employee and future employees this is really what the expectations are and here's the, here's the role and responsibility. Um, also, so that would, that's a title change. No, no change in, in head count involved there. Um, and then, you know, you'll see every, every couple of years it's adding staff, um, knowing that, that we're going to be growing. And what I did was again, taking, I didn't get, Didn't get too sophisticated, but just taking our current infrastructure levels, the amount of mains that we have in the ground, and looking at our current growth rate. It's not exactly a one-to-one, but it's pretty close. If the city grows by 8%, our infrastructure is going to grow by about 8%. So when I start applying those escalators, we pretty quickly – hit those those triggers so it's not a it's more stair-stepped than it is linear so every two or three years we kind of hit that threshold to say okay we have more infrastructure that we're responsible for we need to add some staff so then we may be good for a couple years and there's another there's another jump so you know i won't go through it word for word but it's you know it's every couple of years in there either on the field operations side or the uh the treatment plant there's a big jump in there also thinking about a new wastewater treatment plant with a larger capacity that's going to be a significant increase in our staffing needs that's a we'll talk a lot here in the coming month or so about the wastewater treatment plant and a lot of the capital costs from an operating cost perspective you know personnel is a huge huge part of that and A larger, more sophisticated plant is going to require more staff to run it. We're also approaching that point right now. We do not operate our wastewater treatment plant 24-7. We don't man it. It's running, but it's not manned. 24-7, the nights, it's not manned. And then we have someone that comes in, kind of checks on things. We have an employee that works about four hours each day of the weekend and holidays just to make sure everything's running okay. As that treatment plant grows and becomes more sophisticated, we will fairly soon reach the point where that facility needs to be manned 24-7. That really adds to the staffing level, even without growth, just switching from a single shift to what you're really looking at is three shifts, and probably an extra person to fill in for vacation, sick time, things like that. That'll be a big hit to the budget from a staffing perspective. Um, I've also, I'm showing, so one highlight in there, I've got. Around these are, you know, these are ballpark estimates, but I'm going to say around 2032, it would make sense. Um, we'll be getting bigger and things will be getting more complex and more sophisticated. And I think around that time, it will make sense to separate, um, that plant operator and utility supervisor position. It works okay to have one person wearing both hats right now, but but there will come a time, say five years or so down the road, where we probably, that needs to be two different people. Any questions on the utility side? I guess I haven't even got to the, well, people are a lot of the wants and needs there, but then there are things that support that staff. That one person that I would like to add next year is almost a no net increase because right now we outsource line locates. So when anyone's digging and they call 811 or the one call, we pay a company to go out and mark the location of our utilities for us. That's expensive. And we're currently spending, it varies depending on the number of requests that come in, but around $12,000 a month. So we're knocking on the door of $150,000 a year that we're paying to outsource line locates. I think we could do that in-house. probably get a better more accurate line locates if it's coming from someone who has a vested interest in protecting our infrastructure and we'd see a savings as well the combo truck that we added this year there is a a basic inspection camera that doesn't record, doesn't do anything real fancy, but it will allow us to deploy a camera inside of those pipes and see what's going on. And that's really, really valuable from just as an inspection or helping residents. If we've got an issue, something's going on, we're not quite sure what, that could save us a whole lot of money for not a real large investment. And then you'll see if you jump down a couple of lines, that basic inspection camera would bridge the gap before we are ready to graduate, if you will, to a full pipeline inspection truck and camera system. And that's robotic crawler cameras, computerized video inspection that tracks both the video and the operator can track Indicate what they see, you know, okay. There's a crack here when they when they say there's a crack here or there's a service lateral there It automatically correlates it to the footage along the pipe and it kind of builds a map if you will We can do condition assessments We have from that and the software and camera system and that operator all work together to do that, but we're talking Well into the six figures probably six seven hundred thousand in today's dollars for one of those. I don't quite think we're there yet in terms of being ready for it. We can outsource that for less money than that right now. But as we grow and our needs increase, those scales will tip, and it'll be financially advantageous for us to have that in-house rather than contracting for it. That's a lot of information, questions there.

I was going to say, do you want to go back to the employee side? So before water was discontinued, was it two employees that went over to wastewater?

Yes, we had, um, we had two in wastewater and two in water, one supervisor, but they were kind of crossworking at that point.

So I was like, I know there's a huge difference. I know two of them are working on the truck mainly. Yeah. So that one that's like the plant operator. Would we put into stages the plan operator, like one, two, and three, like we have for all the other positions? Yes. Or how would that work?

Yeah, I think, or at least there might be a plan operator and that senior plan operator. I think it, I don't know, it's conceivable that it could get, you know, even get complicated enough that it warrants a plan operator one, two, and that chief operator position. see how that goes. To me, it really comes down when you start identifying duties and responsibilities. If there's a break point, then that's two different positions. If we say, maybe three different shifts, but it's all the same duties, then it's probably just one title, one position.

I will say, I like how you went through and said title change rather than adding new people, because I think that's important, too, is that as we develop this now that things have changed, it's good that you're looking at it that way rather than just keeping people all the same.

To me, that's part of that succession planning. As the operation becomes more complex, those positions become more complex. And honestly, it helps if we can create a new position that's seen as a promotional opportunity, then it gives the employees something more to shoot for and, you know, another reason to go get that extra certification, take that additional class, take, take on that extra responsibility and all the while preparing them to move up and move up and move up. So, uh, it, it will help grow that base and make it easier to fill from within.

I'm all for that. So I, I appreciate that. Um, I will say so for years now, we've talked about how we need to grow. wastewater or the utilities and public works, you know, street maintenance, but we always had open positions. So I think now we're at finally at the time where it's like, yeah, let's add the extra positions because we've done a good job of keeping the folks we have. They're all getting there. And I'm, I like the fact that you're going to a maintenance worker too, rather than just adding another maintenance worker one, because like you said, let's promote people. And then if we're going to bring new ones in, bring them out one and give the opportunity to the folks we have here that are doing a good job. So I'm, To me, this all looks great. Obviously, the years are based off of if nothing changes. It's probably that fast, but we'll see kind of how it goes. But I think this, to me, looks like a pretty accurate timeline. Like I said, I liked how you integrated the change of titles and duties rather than not explain that part because none of us up here know anything. At least I'm speaking for everybody. None of us know anything about the day-to-day operations of a wastewater treatment plant. I don't want to know. I know enough, yeah. I know enough already. And so this is very helpful for me to know from a high level what we're looking to do over the long term. So this is good. Thank you. Sure. So then... Oh, and if you want to go to the next one, I think this is all... I mean, the camera makes sense. I don't see why we wouldn't do that. I like the fact that I like to attack everything that way, and we're doing it with different departments now. When we hit a certain dollar amount on outsourcing, that's when we can bring it in and save money. Even if we're not saving money, if it's breaking even, it's better to have somebody here that can do multiple jobs than just paying to have one thing done.

I'm looking and I'm trying to balance. There's that cost of outsourcing. When we hire a company to come in with a camera van and video and inspect our lines right now, it's running about $2,500 a day. That's a big number. If we were running one every day... We're already there. We could justify it. But the reality is we don't need that every day right now. The other piece to that is if you said, hey, here's a pot of money. Go get a camera van. I don't have anybody to operate. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to add that van until we can get that staffing up so that we have somebody to operate it.

I agree. Like I said, I think these all, in my opinion too, I don't know if anybody else has an opinion on it, but to me this all looks very reasonable.

It doesn't have it with it. There is separate company, separate brand, but there are third-party camera devices that can be attached to that combo truck, and without getting too far in the weeds, just the hoser that you deploy down the line for flushing, you put a camera head on it, and it doesn't record it, doesn't do anything sophisticated, but you can sit and look at a screen and get a view of the inside of that pipe, and that's valuable. Not pretty, but valuable. Oh, yeah.

Was there any other questions about these two slides for Jacob?

No, we've talked a long time about how lean we've been running, and at a certain point when you run lean as long as we have, we hit that point when doing more with less is no longer feasible. So I'm liking that across the board we're acknowledging that we're at the point where it's time to start looking for more bodies and making things make more sense.

All right. Anything else there before we move on? No, let's go on. Okay. So, uh, streets parks, um, our, uh, our streets and parks divisions, um, or streets parks functions are combined, uh, into, into one division that, that change was made. What about that's before my time, but five, four or five years ago. And, uh, so right now we have a supervisor. There are two maintenance worker threes, a maintenance worker two, and four maintenance worker ones. As the mayor mentioned, all of those positions are filled and we've experienced very little turnover and we've had better luck at filling the vacant positions. I think that's honestly, thank you. I think a lot of that is due to the increases in salary and just the overall compensation strategy of the city. the upgrades and equipment, vehicles and equipment, all of that is effective at attracting and retaining staff. So thank you for that. This again, it's just, there's nothing particularly exciting about this. It's more staff. It's just adding people to be able to do more. I really feel like this is one of those areas where From a service delivery perspective and a service offering, there's a lot of runway. There is more that we could be doing with additional staff. The staff that we have is tremendous. is doing a good job. Um, but, but with additional staff there, there are a lot of things that we aren't able to do and address right now, um, that, that we could add. So this is one of those areas where there's, there's a lot of room for, for increases and improvements in, in the service offerings.

Got a quick question. Yeah. Are there certification differences between one, two and three? So or things that they like threes can do that twos and ones can or vice versa.

So that, you know, thinking about streets, parks, a couple of the I don't know, the thresholds there, what what differentiates one from the other is equipment operators being able to to operate equipment and the more equipment you can operate. the more proficiently you can operate that equipment, there's value to that. And in fact, a lot of larger public works organizations have dedicated positions that is just an equipment operator separate from from other positions, we're not there. And I don't even look at 10 years out. I don't see us being at that level. So that's one, is the difference. Someone who can operate an excavator versus operate a shovel. And so that's part of it. And then the other part is supervision. I mentioned a crew leader, while may not have the title of supervisor, somebody has to be in charge. And I can't be out on every job site every minute of every day. And our supervisor can't be on every job site every minute of every day. So it's important. Well, and it happens now. There are people that we tap and say, OK, you're the crew leader. This is your job. You manage the folks. You make the assignments in terms of who's going to be flagging and who's operating this piece of machinery and who's in this piece of equipment. And so by having those different job titles and different job descriptions, it just clarifies everybody wants more money. And so if somebody's at a maintenance worker one level, they'd like to be a two or a three if for no other reason than it pays more money so it's important for us in those job descriptions to also um describe it's not just a difference in pay but there are additional responsibilities that come with it and so it lets us highlight those expectations and gives people something to to grow into um one of the training um kind of going from that one to two to three the Public Works Association has in Kansas City what is called the Public Works Institute their classes that are really geared toward taking frontline workers who who started you know as that maintenance worker one and getting them information education training on topics like budget and public finance and equipment maintenance and supervision and some basic legal issues, whether that's in terms of human resources, management kind of legal issues, tort claims issues, and things like that. So that training is really good for... It's good that it's offered and that we have some budget for it. And honestly, I find... when I talk to employees, there are some entry level folks who want to learn more and want that opportunity to, to grow and climb. And we want to make that available. And the other people say, yeah, that's not my thing.

I'm good with where I'm at.

Yeah.

Well, that was kind of my thought is seeing four and worker one that have all, and I feel like they've all, we've had a pretty, not senior, but seasoned staff. How do we get them to two and what, what additional responsibility can we give them when we get them there? it's kind of my thought. Cause then, like you said, as we stretch them out and really one should only be coming in. Now there's going to be, like you said, there's some people that are like, I'm good with staying at one and I like what I do every day and I don't mess with it. But, I would say more often than not, people want to try to move up. So it's, are we, I don't want to stranglehold us to saying we want to keep these levels, but what's your thought there? Um, you mean in terms of like, could we have four twos, one, one and two threes?

Yeah, I think, um, one of the challenges, I know, I know it challenges budget, but it challenges budget. It also challenges, uh, that organizational structure, you know, like for example, if I talk about a crew leader, well, if you, if you have more crew leaders than you have crew members, who are they leading? Yeah. Um, that, uh, so that, that becomes a challenge. You know, I, you know, you probably have, if you, uh, there's a hierarchy there.

That's why for me, I'm thinking two should be more of the long-term spot because threes are going to be like your crew leaders and stuff like that.

If you, if you have, if you have two maintenance worker threes, then, you know, I would say you, you could have three or four maintenance worker twos, but you need, if you have three or four maintenance worker twos, you probably need seven or eight maintenance worker ones to, you know, just as you, if you think of those as little organizational charts, there are times...

If there's not like a huge like, oh, only twos can use this equipment, then I guess that's not a problem. They all have CDLs, correct?

They all have CDLs. They're all able, you know, legally able to operate everything. The... And because we're still pretty small, it's really important for us to cross-train our employees. And honestly, and this is just my philosophy, I like keeping our job descriptions fairly broad so that it's very clear to all employees that You may be tapped to do any number of things. I feel like when you get too many titles and those job descriptions get too specific, then you get the, hey, that's not my job. That's somebody else's. And the reality is we are not big enough to have things divided that much. We're not union workers here. Don't touch my hammer.

No, I get it. I was basically thinking if we have too many ones that maybe can't use certain equipment, are we being held back by not having more? But I'm fine with it either way. I was just kind of trying to understand the scope of what work they can do in those levels.

I have honestly, and I've started, and so our one, the maintenance worker two that we have, has done a really good job in the last year. He has really stepped up and taken on the role as a trainer. And so those tech ones, getting them, in fact, he got his certification to be able to be a, I don't even know if this is the correct term, but an instructor for people getting their CDL. So if we bring a new employee on who does not have their CDL, We don't have to pay $6,000 or $7,000 to send them out to a school. We have the folks in-house who can do that, provide that training with the trucks and equipment that we already have. It saves us thousands of dollars, but it's another way to differentiate. So, yeah, everyone has to be able to operate that truck, but as Tech 2, you need to also be able to teach others how to operate that truck or to operate that piece of equipment. So getting people to think about we're all here to do the work, but get those more senior folks thinking about themselves in a mentor role. And I think that's big, again, back to that succession planning and getting people prepared to move up through the ranks. Cool. Sounds good. Any other questions here? There are a lot of items on the next slide. Again, it's just equipment. We talked about snow plows. We talked about adding another one, so I would still strongly recommend that for 2027. Speaking of snow plows, our salt storage building is in fairly significant disrepair, and there's not a good way to – repair it so it has a it's that kind of fabric dome type structure so my initial thinking was we'll get a new fabric cover for it I've been talking to folks in the industry I've now learned the frame of our particular building is on the lighter dare I say, cheaper version, and it has bowed and bent and moved over time such that a new cover won't fit over it because it's no longer that standard shape. So what you'll see, what we've put in the capital budget is money for a new structure still sticking with that fabric because I think in the long term it's more economical, but A little more substantial framework under it so that it will last for more than one you know one fabric cover so salt storage building is is a pretty immediate need. I have on here a roadside mower tractor. You've seen the counties using these. It's a little bit larger tractor than we have with a mower, a heavy-duty mower that's on a telescoping and tilting rotating arm so that you can drive down the edge of the road and mow a slope for a ditch down one side, up the other side, heavy enough to even get small branches and limbs cut back to improve visibility. You see those with all the counties because it's a pretty essential piece of equipment for maintaining those roadsides. The reality is as we've grown and as we annex land But the full development hasn't happened. A lot of those county roads are becoming city roads, but they still look and function like a county road. So just to be able to mow the roadsides. Right now we have a small tractor and a brush hog that pulls behind it. Well, get down to those ditches and that uneven ground, you can't do it safely. And so that's a need. Um, we've talked about getting a brine, a liquid salt or brine system to apply on the roads. Um, we can do that with effect. I hope to do that with this 2027 truck and we can retrofit our existing trucks. Um, the adding the system to spray it, I consider that a part of the truck. Um, and right now we can go Johnson County, the city of Olathe. they have the machines and equipment that makes that brine and they'll, and they'll sell it to us. So I think again, in the short term, we can go, we can go buy a couple hundred gallons from them, fill our tanks and put it on the roadways. But moving forward, it will make sense for us to have that equipment and be able to bring it in house. Um, I have on here going out a few years, a sign truck that's, uh, Within the street side of things, just maintaining our street signs, that will become a bigger and bigger thing as we add more and more signs. There's some equipment on the truck that lets you drive those posts, pull those posts that's mounted on the truck, a little more purpose built. And as we start doing more sign work, that will make sense for us. We talked about a new building, and it's not just about a building for Public Works. It's about a place to store our vehicles, our equipment, and our materials in a way that we can make the best use of that money. And what I mean is almost all of our equipment sits outside right now. subject to UV rays. Really, it's the UV. The temperature fluctuations aren't as hard on it, but even just as simple as rubber hoses that sit out in the sun all the time, it degrades so much faster. And when it's out in the elements, it draws moisture, metal rusts out much more quickly. So being able to, you know, we spend a lot of money on equipment. We want it to last as long as possible. So investing money into a facility, and I'm not envisioning anything fancy at all. I'm thinking about a of lean-to style three-sided you know it's got a roof and it may be enclosed in the back and the front side is open that's about 30 feet deep that we just back trucks you know into you know in a line so um if you think about a you know in in that regard a 60 foot long lean-to building you know there's storage for six vehicles or pieces of equipment uh in out of the weather um Having that in one complex laid out so that it makes sense. Our equipment, whether we're talking about the material to patch potholes or a concrete mix and things like that, keeping those in out of the weather would be very helpful, useful. a wash bay that so again in the wintertime we've got all that salt and material on that if you don't get it off really causes things to corrode quickly. Having a place to wash those out and then but safely handle that water as well. You need to be able to collect. When you've got salt and concrete and asphalt and road oils, it's not like washing your car in the driveway, so it takes some fairly specialized facilities to be able to handle that responsibly. Anything else on there? There's a lot of other things, but anything jumping out at you that you want to talk more about? Go ahead.

No, for me, I think the list makes sense as far as wants and needs. Obviously, budget is always going to be the controlling factor there. The asks are reasonable. Hopefully, we can continue to give you guys the equipment you need to do the job the way you need to do it. The facility is higher on my list of priority, kind of like with the PD. Those are things that we need to get a firm handle on and figure out what we're going to do next because the growth isn't going to stop and we need somewhere to put our people.

On another pothole patching truck, that was kind of, it was between that and the truck we got, right, when we were kind of deciding. So that one, I think, would be, like you said before, we didn't really have people to operate it. So that seems to be right in the right spot. If we're going to be able to add some more folks next year, then getting that pretty quick would be a big help because that is one of our biggest issues, right? Yeah. Snowplow, you're talking the whole kit and caboodle, right?

Truck, plow, everything. That's a truck front, and I'm talking the larger trucks. Yeah, the big trucks, right?

Like a dump-style truck.

Yeah, a good-sized truck with a front plow, a wing plow, so that it can, especially our major thoroughfares, you can go down through there and in two or three passes clear a road. Whereas if we just have the front plow, it may be four and five passes to get through that. And as the city grows, we run out of time if we're having to run over the same road four and five times. So I see those large snow plows hitting our major thoroughfares and then the smaller trucks like we already have deploying those into the subdivisions where So they're a little easier to maneuver and a little less likely to do damage.

Do we need any more plows for those trucks to be able to add more small ones into the fleet?

No. Every truck we have, every full-size truck that we have, we have plows for. Okay. All right.

What kind of trucks that you're needing that you're asking for? What's the cost on that?

Ballpark.

So a dump truck outfitted with all the plows, we're probably talking $350, $375.

Is that in addition to the six-yard dump truck we already have on the list?

That would be the same.

I was going to say, because it's dual threat, right?

Yeah, in the non-winter months, plows are often, and that's available to haul material and use daily.

That's the one nice thing is, yeah, as we have more and more other stuff going on, it's the dual use or triple uses of these things is nice, too. So we don't have the budget to get specialized equipment as much. So to have ones that can work in three or four different ways would be nice.

Yeah.

Well, we're running out of time.

Do you have anything else? I can hit quickly. So facilities, a little more straightforward, but. When I look at the square footage of space that we have, we have one custodian right now for all city facilities. If you look at kind of the industry averages and custodial staff per square foot says we should have two plus. So I think there is absolutely a need. That's one of those where I talk about service level. We're The staffing we have now, we're just kind of able to do the bare minimum. So I think just from keeping things cleaner and in better shape, that's where we could see a real up in the service level by adding some staffing there. That's really the highlight there for facilities. And maybe way down the line, if we're talking and we have a new municipal complex and public works complex, we might need to add an additional facility maintenance worker in addition to that custodian. But it's the custodial staff where we're already short. And if we add buildings and add square footage and grow, that need just gets greater as well. Okay. All right. Any other questions or anything? I know we have... about oh go ahead the other so the other piece on this that you may we're talking about succession planning on the administration side of Public Works there's currently myself and one administrative assistant I think again as we grow more people more complex again grabbing it at time durations here but say four years down the road an assistant director probably makes sense to begin to split things out and that'd be maybe somebody dedicated just like the wastewater plant it could there are a lot of ways and i would say my recommendation would be wait and see what kind of candidates you get for that position and see what their strengths are and then figure out what makes sense from a division of labor perspective and but yeah it could be they take one division or they take the operational side i would say just kind of wait and see and don't They'll get blinders on to that and see what that brings. And then also, again, as we get more complicated, a second administrative assistant where maybe you have one that is devoted to facilities and utilities and another one for streets, parks, something like that. But that's down the road a ways. All right. That's everything I've got.

Just in the nick of time. We got about seven minutes before our regular scheduled meeting, so we're gonna go ahead and adjourn. Jacob, thank you, Glenda, and Rhonda.

Comments, so we've covered all the departments. I wanna make sure you have covered what you want to related to the operation so we can move on to the next budget section. And if not, let's talk about what you'd wanna see next time. Otherwise, I'm gonna move to CIP.

Let's move to CIP next time. Okay.

So with each of you got two pages, two different sorts front and back on the CIP projects that are currently on the slate. And next time, so please take a look. Is something missing that you want to see on that list? Are we putting enough money towards things the way you see that fit? One is sorted by amount, so big projects at the top, and then the other one by category, so all the facility things are together, all the equipment's together, things like that. And I think we'll try to do an update on some projects and then talk about the future so we can build the CIP for it.

All right, sounds good. All right, now we'll adjourn. Thanks, see you back in about five minutes. start our regularly scheduled meeting. We'll call that to order and we'll start with our invocation with Pastor Sarah Terrell from Become Church. Please stand with us.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for your presence here in Spring Hill. I thank you for this council. Lord, I pray that you would just help them to make wise decisions, just give them understanding and insights, Lord, and I thank you for the citizens of Spring Hill. God, I pray that you would bless them. I pray for your protection, and Lord, I pray for your kingdom to come and your will to be done in Spring Hill as it is in heaven. In Jesus' name, amen.

Now for the pledge. Madam Clerk, will you take the roll, please?

Mr. Theron?

Here.

Mrs. Cravier? Here. Mr. Grant?

Here.

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

All right, thank you. Next step, we have the approval of the agenda. We did have a couple changes. Item number six, delete task order number two, which was a duplicate number, and then add task order number five.

And I do have a question for the city attorney. Are we deleting number four?

And you can also remove executive session number four. And also remove executive session number four. Do we have any questions or comments? If not, I will entertain a motion to approve as amended.

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

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 4-0-0. Next up we have a public hearing on the Northeast sewer benefit area. And that looks like it's going to be Spencer Lau.

I'm sorry. I'm going to try to pull the map up again. I had it up and then my computer shut down on the drive down here. So, um, generally not tonight. What this public hearing is for is open the public hearing, right? Yeah. Do you want to open that? That's fine.

So now we're going to open the public hearing.

So as you'll see in your packet, this is the Northeast sewer interceptor project. So this is a interceptor line that will start with a pump station at 183rd Street and run up to serve properties just on the other side of 175th. This is all on the east side of 169. A while back, we created Chapter 20 of the Spring Hill Municipal Code. And Chapter 20 allows the city to do a sewer benefit area, which is a similar offshoot to what you all are a little more familiar with, which is a benefit district. And it's under state law. This is not part of those state statutes. It's a completely separate vehicle. What a sewer benefit area is, it allows the city to estimate construction costs of a sewer infrastructure or trunk line to serve large pieces of land, large amounts of land all at once. We can build that. And then the owners of that property, when they are ready to connect, will pay a share proportion of the cost to expand that line up to their property. That share is equal per acre. So everyone pays the same amount per acre for their property, whether it's a one acre property or a 200 acre property. This is step one of the process, which is this resolution kind of sets the estimate We're estimating at $12.5 million. And in the resolution is a breakdown of each property owner, how many acres that parcel is, and then what their share of that is on a per acre basis. When construction is done, we're going to come back through again and do a second resolution. We're going to amend that to have the actual costs. So no one is going to pay the city yet for this. They will pay at the time they connect or the time they have a plat that will connect. If they're going to plat up a hundred acre property for plats, they'll pay per plat. So breaks it up four times and they will pay based on what the second resolution will set forth for the actual costs, which we anticipate to be pretty close. But I'm guessing this isn't going to be exact, so those actual costs will come back in when construction is done. For now, we are going to record this resolution against each of these parcels so that the current property owner who have been made aware of this public hearing and any subsequent property owners will know for sure that this is out there and will have a good idea what their buy-in will be to get sewer service to those parcels in the future. There's a 25-year sunset on this, which just means that if someone doesn't develop for 25 years, they won't pay at all. The goal there was that this sewer infrastructure is not going to last forever, and we don't want someone paying full price for a 25-year-old sewer line that will then need to be repaired again and probably require another benefit area. So that's kind of the general outlay right now. What this is is a chance to Uh, let the property owners who are affected by this, uh, be heard in the public hearing. Um, if they have questions, they can come up. A couple of them have reached out to staff, um, through this process, allow a chance for you all to ask questions of me or staff. If it's technical, I'll probably be tapping in or said engineer. Um, but otherwise, yeah, I'm happy to answer questions or if you want to move to any public comment, we have a map we can put up on the screen. Yes. Here it is.

Yeah. So I have it. I just wanted to hit there. Yeah.

So this is our map. The teal lines there will be the new line. And then you can see in yellow the new pump station just to the, by the number 11 to the southeast of that.

So all of these numbered parcels are included?

Correct. So those are each of the parcels that are included. As you'll recall, we went through some eminent domain to secure easement area for this line and secure the deed of dedication for the land on which that pump station's being constructed there on track 11. So this has been, this general project has been before you a few times. It's also been before you for the bids. So if it sounds familiar, that's why. But this is the funding side of that construction.

Yeah, and this kind of goes back, and I don't know how much we can talk about this, but there was a, Residential development up in kind of the four area there That we kind of I think we had a contract with and we had to get sewer there by a certain date They've since then backed out, but we've already kind of gone through the entire process So we're going ahead and finishing it so that whenever those properties develop There is some rules there if they're within a certain Distance of a sewer line that that we were the ones that service them and they come into the city So it gives us some of that ability to, like we've talked about, protect Spring Hill from the northern side coming down in development, and we can kind of control the development there. So yeah, that's the majority of it. We've gone through every other piece, I think, at this point. Like you said, we really just have to, I don't know who, I think PJ and Mike may have been here for some of that.

Yep. The tail end of it. For just posterity's sake and for the room and people watching currently, could you give me just a rough breakdown of why the benefit district is how our benefit area is, how we're doing it now versus the way it was done prior to that?

Sure. So, I mean, prior to creating this, there was no mechanism in this range. You could set up a benefit district under state statutes. It's hard to get this many properties all on board with a single benefit district. The goal here was to allow the city to start construction, get this out there, and allow landowners to connect when they're ready rather than forcing a payment immediately. So under a benefit district, those payments and assessments are due right away. A lot of these properties haven't had any conversations or minimal conversations with the city about impending development. So this is sort of a long-range planning tool that allows some of them to get served now, some to get served later. It allows some flexibility for developers. And it allows these properties to start marketing themselves as serviceable by sewer, because right now there's no sewer running to it. So while they'll have to pay to get the sewer, it's at least there, which allows that kind of next step of development to start working so when we had a really nice one that's come in here in that 10 11 area that'll be starting fairly soon so it's nice that we have it there available so that we can bring those folks in having to be a part of the city so and for what it's worth to hook into the sewer under this benefit area that property does need to annex in so you just had an annexation agreement from 10 and 11 fairly recently um i think property seven is the only one i can think of off the top of my head that hasn't annexed in yet so they would not be able to hook up until they annex and then also pay.

So forgive me, I'm trying to get caught up here. What would be, without doing a benefit area, what are the other ways to get sewer to those properties potentially?

Yeah, so the city would just pay to build it. And then one by one, try to negotiate a development agreement as those properties come in to facilitate costs. So, you know rather than kind of doing a patchwork We wanted to be upfront about what the costs were set this up and to make it clear to everyone If you know if the city is going on the hook to build this, you know We like to see partners in the development community reimbursements nice So does are they required to hook up if they develop there or let's say a homeowner moves into number six and decides to do You know septic system so No, no properties required to hook in if they want sewer they are required to hook in and pay There are some county and state statutes that you cannot build a septic center septic system Within a thousand feet of an existing or planned sewer line So most of this will need to hook into sewer Okay Yeah, we can move on to public comment for now and we didn't have anybody sign up but there's anybody who'd like to come up and speak and

On the I'm talking about just for the public hearing sorry just the public hearing portion Yes, it's a participation will be after this This is just for the for the sewer line for the sewer for the public hearing.

Yeah, okay Bill Peterman 19 431 West 200th Street and nice to see it. We are our new council person and hello to the rest of you I See a few are not here though or one's not here. I My question is, benefit districts, I hate those words. You guys was involved with part of that wording when people was having problems out here at, what is it, across the highway?

On Dayton Creek.

Dayton Creek. Benefit districts. When my son built his first house here in Dayton, Where it said any other assessments, there was a big zero. There was a line through it, zero. And then when they moved in, oh, this is a benefit district. You have to pay this extra $8,000 or whatever it was, or $10,000. So we go to talk to people and find out. By the time we find out, the realtor went back to Chicago. Because she knew she was wrong. She had been playing that card all along. You guys get taken. Not just you guys, but the people before you were taken. Benefit district is a terrible, terrible thing. You sat here and said that yourselves at one time. It was a terrible thing that these people got caught up in. Benefit districts suck. And I mean it. Because they're only good for developers. We keep catering to the developers and the builders that come in here. We don't care about our people that live here. We'll screw them all we can. Thank you.

Is there any other comments or questions people would like to come up and ask? So this one, oh, come on up, Harold.

Thank you, Mayor. Harold Phelps. I'm actually representing Bonita Station Investments as one of the property owners, which is track number five on the map. So we have about 125 acres there that is primed to be developed. And the bottom line is it can't be developed unless there are sanitary sewers there. This is not a benefit district. It is a benefit area. And I think it's very good that you guys are moving forward and getting it published and on the record so that the property owners that are buying the property understand what their obligation is. So with that, I just want you to know that we're supporting the resolution as property owners. I have talked to staff this evening about maybe some different ways of possibly financing it over five-year periods instead of 25 so that the buy-in is over. You're not paying 25 years of interest if we bring the property in and buy the property into the property or into the sewers within the next three or four years. So I think a significant amount of this area is going to develop since sewers are there. Water's there. There's gas there. I mean, all the other infrastructure items are there. So I anticipate seeing more development in that area. So I appreciate it.

All right. Thanks.

Was there anyone else who would like to come up and speak? The only thing I'll say is that, yeah, so benefit district is something different where the end user is on the hook for it. This one's more of what they call benefit area, so it's the actual developers that will pay that to us. So it's a little bit different. The one you're talking about is where it hits their property taxes for 20 years or something like that. That's what Dayton Creek had and some other neighborhoods. So we have not done any of those here recently, but this is something a little bit different for the actual infrastructure portion that the developers would pay so that landowners right now aren't having to pay for it that don't use it. So it's not the same thing as what we were talking about, but benefit districts can be good, but the way they were used in the past were not good, and the way that they were communicated was not very good. So that's at least my opinion on it. Any other comments? It doesn't sound like we have any more public comments. Is there any other questions or comments?

I think as far as this benefit area goes, it really, kind of makes it as transparent as possible not only to the citizens when we take because we're talking about a large dollar amount of investment in the city but that's the reality of it is going to be an investment and uh making sure that they see not only what the city's planning on doing but how we're going to get reimbursed clearly by the developers as they develop these properties so this this makes sense to me this is this is a uh a step forward in the right direction investing in the city so we can bring the amenities that everybody's been asking us to bring we're trying to make spring hill the place where people want to develop restaurants where they want to develop commercial strips everybody's that's all that's all i've been asked about since i've been here is when are we gonna get the next restaurant what's the next big thing coming in and setting this up so we have property that has access to all of the utilities they need to come in is how that happens i know sometimes it's hard to understand the the nuance because i'm learning as we're going with this whole thing there is a lot that goes into developing a single piece of property let let alone an entire uh

entire highway so this is as far as I can see as far as I've been able to understand it this is a good thing though I have a question on kind of what bill was saying not that it's benefit district necessarily because I understand how this is so much different than that however how will the information and fees be relayed to developers Like, when would that happen in the process of development? Just so there are no surprises, like Bill was saying.

Yeah, sure. So developers were issued a notice of tonight's hearing. And then the resolution, if you all pass it when it comes up during a formal council item, will be recorded against each one of these properties. Okay. So that will exist there. And we will make sure, we'll go ahead and mail a copy of the resolution also to the property owners of records. They also have that in front of them. By recording it against the property, when someone wants to come in and buy one of these, they'll hopefully run a title search. And that title search will hit on this recorded resolution against it. That'll come up and they'll see, oh, I want to buy a property, whatever. The buy-in to get sewer there is this much money.

So then they will back out from there if they wanted to or keep going forward or whatever.

They will know going in what that will be, roughly, since this is the estimate stage. Sure.

they if that happens after the final one the final resolution is passed the sewer and structure has been built they will have a some certain okay thank you yeah since that that area is a multitude of land uses say somebody wants to come in and build five houses on track seven do they pay the same amount no matter how many parcels there are how many bots they have or is it based off of the type of usage or per acre Okay, so straight fee based off the acreage.

If you buy one house or 100 houses, that tract seven pays the same.

Okay, all right. Yeah, those are probably the main questions I had just to see kind of how the reimbursement works. Again, this is an area we get lots of questions on from developers, whether it be housing or commercial, all of it. So, you know, as we go through, this will be nice to have them ready to kind of build. But I don't have any other questions unless anybody up here has. If not, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing. That one better? Much better. I didn't do it very hard the first time. And we will move on to announcements and reports. I don't necessarily have any announcements reports. I think the first Friday, I think that was in between the last meeting and now. I was a little sick last meeting, so I was a little hazy. But yeah. No, we had the little strut parade where Chief was riding around with kind of a funny helmet on. That was kind of good. It was very hot out, but we had a good turnout. We had two really good bands, the community band and the rock band that was out there. There was good food. There was a grilled cheese truck thing that I went to. That was really good. It was really fun. I'm glad to see it gaining every month, so hopefully more people will keep coming. I think the next one is... If Rhonda's not here, she knows more than me. Oh, there she is. The next one, I think, is more geared back to back to school. So we'll probably see a lot more little kids next time. This time we saw more teenagers, which I think was kind of cool. So, BJ.

No reports. I had a question for Chief, actually. I've been, as we were going through making my prep for this... For this meeting, I was looking back over some other things, and I had a question about dispatching as a whole. We've added a lot of acreage to Spring Hill as a whole, which obviously adds to the area that you guys are responsible for and policing. So I was curious, what's the mechanism as we annex in these new properties? Do you guys go through a review process? Do you have districts set up that you expand or change shape as it works? I'm not super familiar with how you guys handle that, so I was curious if you could give me some feedback on that.

Adam jumped up. He may want to answer.

Dispatch is kind of my area. I was going to defer that. Good job, Adam.

So I actually work with gyms and the sheriff's office when we do annexations. I get them the new maps. They publish those. They update their CAD software maps and our computer maps. That way we can sort that out. Sometimes you get a dispatcher that is still used to the old way of doing things, and they'll dispatch the sheriff's office to a call in our district.

We've hung new physical maps throughout the PD also So our officers know when that's a miss dispatch and they'll go out there and correct that awesome Yeah, I was just I I was thinking through it and I was like I know a lot of these areas belong to either Miami County or Johnson County and I know how we dispatch is Wildly different across County lines let alone across municipalities.

So I was just curious what the mechanism was Yeah, and all of our dispatching goes through Johnson County even on the Mike County side and they also handle the fire DMS dispatching for the Miami County side so if you're on the Miami County side and you call dispatch it'll ring to the Johnson County ECC awesome thank you that was all I had all right anything else PJ that's it all right James no report Kendra I don't have a report or anything but last last meeting I was so

Overwhelmed and frazzled and nervous. So thank you for the appointment and for letting me get up and represent The citizens and I hope to do hope to do my best for everybody because I'm very passionate about this town Probably more than I should be but that's why I'm here. Um, so I appreciate everybody giving me a chance.

All right. Thank you. Welcome Mike no report Say something

Lane. Quick update. Staff is still working with KDOT on 191st Street signalization project. We still anticipate that project to go out for bid sometime this fall and hopefully get under construction and completed by the end of 27. Another thing that we're working on is 183rd Street signalization project. What will probably come back to you, and Allison can probably fill in a little bit more tighter timeline, is that we're gonna be asking KDOT to allow us to have a temporary signal at the intersections of 169 and 183rd Street. That will help out during the construction phase of 191st Street. So that will be coming back to the governing body once we have a little bit more information of costs and the timeline of when that will be implemented. So there's progress, it's just slow.

Yeah, all right, thanks. Spencer.

No report.

Mike. No report. Allison.

Let's see, back on July 1st, we held a meeting here at City Hall. It was with the Prairie Ridge subdivision. We wanted to give them an update on the 199th Street project. Here in a few weeks, we are going to be working on the entrance to Norton Street, which is their only way in and out of their subdivision. So we wanted to fill them in on the project, answer any questions if we could, and review the construction sequencing plan that we have. It's divided into three different phases. It allows for full access at all times during construction. During the daytime, while the contractor's out there working, they will have it down to one lane with a flagger flagging in and out so that people can get in and out as normal. And then at nighttime when they're not working, they will take everything back and there will be two-way access in and out of the subdivision during the non-construction hours. So I thought we had a really good turnout. There was about 35 to 40 people there. We had the contractor, the engineer, the inspectors, everyone from... The engineering staff was there to answer any questions. We had a lot of great questions related to the project and related to 199th Street in general. So thank you to the mayor for also being there and providing moral support. That's all I've got.

All right.

Who wants to touch on the 191st right now? Would it be you or Jacob? Jacob? Okay. We'll wait then.

Chief, anything? Yeah, so tomorrow we'll be going to Hutchison, Kansas. We have our officer graduating from the police academy. So two sergeants and the captain and I will be going down to celebrate and acknowledge and recognize him for the work he's done in the academy. And then just a short summary of the fireworks calls. over the weekend or this past weekend. So we had 30 total calls for fireworks. Fifteen of those calls occurred between 6-25 and 7-1, which would have been prior to the ability to actually legally discharge the fireworks. 10 calls came in between that July 2nd and July 5th time frame when it was legal to discharge them. And we also received five phone calls. And what I mean by that was the officers will sometimes get on their MDTs a call for service that says, hey, call this person regarding this particular incident. And then it may be just that we're handling questions or you know, they may, um, or we may be giving guidance or something over the phone. And in some cases when we get those calls, we, we automatically then go out to where the incident is and check on it. So, um, we did not issue any, um, citations for discharging farms. And, you know, um, we did have, um, several people that we tried to educate on, uh, fireworks. We also tried to, there was a lot of times where we couldn't determine where, The fireworks were coming from and so or we didn't have any contact with anybody by the time that we arrived on scene So that's a quick summary for you. If you have any questions be glad to answer any for you.

I Don't have any questions. I think this year did seem a little bit more Yeah, I would say busy Especially with the rain I kept it that fog in which was a little bit scary in some places if you're trying to drive around But I do think feel like this year may have been worse probably because we were shorter on actual firing times that people were shooting outside the times allotted so I wouldn't mind you know having a discussion about how much tougher we want to be on that because I think we give plenty of days to to shoot off I think if people are taking advantage of it outside of that we probably need to make sure that's not happening but I don't know what all what your all's opinion are and I know We don't have a discussion item for it tonight, but I figured probably in the next couple months we'd probably start gearing up for next year and see how we want to handle that, because this year was probably worse than others as far as, although we had like a seven-day one, I think, a year or two ago. So, you know, that's a little too long, I think. But the couple days we did give, it still seemed like people were shooting outside of that. So I would like to address that a little bit.

Any other comments or questions for Chief?

I'm always curious how many calls we get. Like I said, typically it always seems like it's outside of the shooting times. But, you know, there's some within. All right, well, thanks for the update. Glenda? No report. Monikisha?

No report.

All right, we know Jacob does.

Only because you asked. So, yeah, you've no doubt seen the signs and message boards up. The project on 191st Street between Madison and Woodland is set to begin on Monday. That project will involve some sporadic closures, full closure of 191st, so it won't be – It won't be every day, and it won't be all day necessarily. But from time to time, there are two culverts that will be replaced across the roadway. When they're digging those old culverts out, putting the new culverts in, that will be a full closure of 191st. westernmost culvert. We're trying to minimize, working with the contractor to minimize the inconvenience to motorists. The westernmost culvert, at the same time they are replacing that culvert, the project also involves repaving the complete intersection of Woodland and 191st.

I think we lost you on the mic.

No?

All right, take two. So the intersection of 191st and Woodland is scheduled to be completely repaved as a part of this project. As rough as that's going to be when they're doing the intersection itself, that will involve a full closure of both 191st and Woodland. That's expected to last about four days. So they're going to do the intersection and one of the culverts at the same time so that at least it's going to be inconvenient, but it will be a one-time inconvenience rather than doing it at two different times. And that will all be done before school goes back in, right? All of that is going to be done before school begins. That project will probably still continue after school starts, but it won't involve full closures. There may be working on one side of the road or the other flagging traffic around. There's still going to be some congestion. I don't want to downplay that. But the full closures, detour routes around, weather permitting will be complete before school is in session.

Do we have the ability to kind of avoid pickup and drop off times as far as going down to one lane for those areas?

Yes. we do. It's a drop or pickups probably harder, but drop off.

I would assume we could start later.

Yeah. The fine line with that is trying to strike that balance. When you, when you shorten that workday, you run the risk of extending the total number of days involved. And so finding that, you know, that sweet spot is, uh, you know, is a challenge, but, but yes, we will, we will look at all of that. And if it, If working in between the drop-off and pickup times adds one day, then it's probably worth it. If they say that's going to add three days to the project, well, now it may not. So that's that back and forth. But that's the 191st Street project that will begin on Monday the 13th. The other project following week, beginning the week of the 20th, will be the sidewalk project here in the central part of the city on Madison and on Harrison. Much less disruptive from a traffic perspective. No full road closures. But that work also is anticipated, weather permitting, to be completed before school starts.

OK. All right. Any questions or anything for Jacob? Thank you, sir. That cleared up a little bit. I think as long as we continue to communicate effectively, it should make things a little bit easier. Sometimes it's hard, especially in those areas where there's not a whole lot of options outside of kind of a congested regime, but we'll get through it. All right. That is all. Actually, Rhonda, do you have anything since you're back there today? No report. Are we rotating out?

I don't have anything on the agenda, so I...

So you removed yourself. Okay. I like it. All right, so next we'll move on to citizen participation. We did have a few people sign up. First on the list is Bill Peterman. This one you can talk about anything, Bill. This time you can talk about anything you want.

Anything. Well, I was serious about that. No, I know. That was a big deal. And I remembered you was very upset about the deal that people before you had done with Dayton Creek and We didn't want to ever have that happen again. Anyway, what was I going to say? Thank you for sidewalks. I love to hear that. Sidewalks. That's wonderful. Somebody told me the other day, those were my sidewalks? No. I told them that wasn't me. That was the city. You guys did that. You did that. All I did is bitched about you being nice to them. Developers and builders, they take advantage of you. Why not? If I could get an open check... I'd take it too. So my big thing is right now that I wanted to talk about was, what was her name? Erin Brockovich. Was that a fiction or nonfiction story? Was that fiction or nonfiction? I just want you guys to think about what's going on, because I'm seeing a lot of electrical things, new plants going in over here. off of 231st and off of Clare. And anyway, there's more electrical stuff going on. So they're getting ready. They're getting ready to, first person that jumps in, and don't get me wrong, I would love for this city to make money. But I still don't want to, well, we'll just, let's see, there's a girl here and a little boy there. Let's just kick them out. They're dead. Now we got to get our money. I went through a granddaughter with leukemia. I'm not happy about it. I don't ever want to go through that. I wouldn't wish that on anybody. I just think it's terrible, and I'm sorry. And Erin Brockovich's story, which was nonfiction, it was about people that was dying of cancer and different things because of the water. Well, I'm finding out that the damn noises is about as bad, but the water was bad. When it goes back into the ground and right here, it all drains back into Hillsdale. I don't want to catch fish that got four eyes and two tails. I want to be able to go fishing. I'm in my golden years. I want to be able to go fishing and catch fish and have fun. I don't want to be, oh, God, I can't touch that. That's weird. So think about it. When it does come back up to you, think about it. It's just somebody with money is building these things. I'm going by what some people in Ohio told me about. Yeah, they didn't think it was going to be that bad, and they kind of rushed it and pushed it through. Don't rush anything. You guys are up there for a reason because you're there to – People voted you in. People put you in that position and listen to them people. Not me, listen to them people. Because they all want to live here. The other thing I wanted to bring up is 199th, because it's owned by Quinn and his development, right? Right there by the high school. And there's weeds that go all the way out into the road, 199th Street. So the kids have to walk in the weeds, because we don't have sidewalks there. Because later on, he'll probably put sidewalks in when he builds down to that point. But right now, could you get rid of the four-foot weeds and the 20-foot trees? Stop and think about it. Just drive by there and look one time. The trees are up high because nobody's done nothing. Nobody's had to. So I'm going to bring it up so that you guys get this man over there. When he gets his new machine that goes out, telescopes out, boom, get it working. Make it where these kids, when they're walking in the weeds and this stuff, they don't get bit by a snake that they can't see. So I appreciate your time. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Bill.

All right. Next up, we've got Pam Heffinger. I hope I said that right. Heffinger. Okay. Come on up.

Thank you.

I sent you guys all videos.

Sorry, can we just have you say your name and address on the...

Yes, my name is Pam Hettinger. My address is 20650 West 219th Terrace, Spring Hill, Kansas.

Yeah, thank you.

Yes, and she's my neighbor. She lives Caddy Corner. The videos that I sent you were from the camera... From my garage that looks out into we live in a partial cul-de-sac. She lives caddy corner from me I just moved here a year and a half ago. Okay last year when I first moved here Was the first time I had encountered the 4th of July I'm a military vet and I didn't say nothing last year. My husband works for Homeland Security. So he was gone last year and Last year, we got pelted, just like we did this year. Everything was hitting off my car, my house, our pool, like you saw on there. And the people that pulled up pulled up in three trucks last year right in front of my house. I didn't know these people from Adam. And last year, they blocked off most of my driveway. So if I wanted to get out for an emergency, I couldn't have got out for nothing. So this year, I had called the police department to say, if I wanted to get out of my driveway, what do I do with them? Is it legal for them to block my driveway? The first person I talked to said, no, they're fine. I'm like, no, it's not fine. They're blocking my driveway. And so he said, well, let me have you talk to somebody else. And he said, no, they can't block it. They'll have to move. So when they showed up, they started packing everything right almost on top of my grass, which if you look on there, you can see the burn marks and everything almost right on top of my grass. They burned from 7.30 till almost 10 o'clock at night. Her house and my house were pelted. I mean like a war zone, if you can see on there. Stuff all over our cars, our houses. You know, if we had had a dry season, my house had caught fire. because it literally was stuff burning down onto my house, my car, in the backyard. My cushions on the backyard were partially singed, everything else. Now, if those had caught fire, why should I have had to pay for their damage? You know, seriously. Would you have? Would you have accepted that in your house? That damage and stuff on your house? So I called the police the next day and said, okay, this is not acceptable. Why should I have to clean up this mess? I'm not going to. Because if I have to clean it up, I'm going to take it down and I'm going to drop it off in their driveway and it's not going to be pleasant. Because I shouldn't have to. If I make the mess, fine. But if I didn't create the mess, why do I have to keep cleaning up a mess? I'm not creating. You know, this is ridiculous. So fortunately, it was nice enough that they sent out an officer and said, okay, I'll go down and talk to him and see what's going on. That was at 8 o'clock in the morning. At 2.30 in the afternoon, nobody had still showed up. I called again. I said, is anybody going to show up today to help clean this up or what? Because I'm not cleaning it up. So he said, well, let me send somebody back down there again. He went back down there. Finally, the neighbor showed up, an older gentleman. And as long as the guy was there, the officer, he was nice. As soon as he left, he turned into the number one asshole. Well, why should I have to clean this up? This isn't my mess. I didn't make it. And he goes, well, I shouldn't have to clean it up. So I should have to clean your mess up. Yeah. I didn't make it. OK, it just appeared. Okay. This is the kind of stuff she's lived there for over 20 years and her family has dealt with this the whole time. I've only lived there a year and a half. So here's the thing. I contacted the fire marshal. These displays are illegal in the state of Kansas. The aerials, the bottle rockets, all of that are illegal in the state of Kansas on public roads. Why are they firing them off? When I asked... The officer, he said they're legal here on our roadways. Really? No, they're not. Not by the fire marshals. No, they're not. And why aren't they doing them in their house, at their yard? Why my house? You know, not right. There needs to be restrictions on this. I went to war. I don't need to go to war again. You know, I did my time. Seriously. So, come on. Can we not do something about this? Do you want them in your yards doing it? Because I'm done with my yard. And they have stuff too that happened to them.

My name is . My name is . No, my name is Linda . I live at 22541 South Franklin in the behind Pride Shopper. I've been here for eight years. Every year, it's gotten worse and worse. We have people on our streets. We can't even drive down Franklin and those streets. On Thursday, they were not so bad. Friday, it was a little more. Saturday, for five solid hours, there was a minute that there was a firework. in our backyard, right where our master bedrooms are and everything. We have debris on our roofs, in our yards. People had our windows shook and people had things falling off of shelves from the fireworks that were being done on our streets. And we're all, we're furious about it. It's dangerous. It's dangerous for all of us. I mean, like I said, you can't even drive down the street. It needs to be stopped. What are the rules and regulations for spring health?

They're listed on the website. I couldn't speak to exactly what they are. We have certain discharge dates and regulations. there's timeframes that they're with withheld and then there's certain types. It's like bottle rockets aren't legal and there's certain aerial types that are not legal or certain sound.

And all of these other towns forbid them. Why is Spring Hill allowing them?

That's something that we can have a discussion item about. That's one, that's one, that's one reason I brought that up earlier. We'll have a discussion probably in the next couple of meetings.

I know, I know that there are things that we're in Miami County.

Mm hmm.

And I was told that Johnson County says no fireworks.

In the unincorporated areas, they don't allow it. Okay.

Well, I know in Paola they do not. Miami County does. I mean, it's not a county. It's the towns that make the decisions.

Yeah.

And we are so close together up there and so populated. I mean, there's assisted living right there. And it's just... It's just really needs to be taken care of.

Well, I appreciate you all coming out. Like I said, we do have, unless you wanted to speak.

Leroy's going to talk. I'm going to help him because he has a hearing problem.

Sure.

I'm his wife. My name is Ann McCoy Anderson. This is Leroy. Hi. We live at 706 West South Street, Spring Hill, Kansas. Okay. Our next-door neighbor had a party from, I think it started like 10.30 in the morning, and it went on all night long until like 4, and it was horrible. I mean, we had rockets going off, and Leroy brought pictures, but he put them in his phone. The one, the red one, was horrible, and my dog was petrified.

You can bring it up so we can see.

You can take it up there, he said. Make it larger. My dog was petrified. I had to drug my dog with Benadryl because It was annoying for her. It was annoying for us because I couldn't keep her calm. And it was terrible. And so he finally said, you know, we both believe in celebrating, especially since it was the 250th. I have nothing against celebrating and putting off fireworks, but these were horrible. They were like bombs. I mean, it was like a bomb going off. And our house shook. And we live in a brick house. So I don't know. And Leroy suggested if they were going to have them and let them take them out where they go fishing someplace, you know, out of town with all the new homes that have gone up, we're no longer all that open space that we used to have. It used to be country out where we live, but it is no longer country. So that's my part. I'm sorry.

And when I come to Spring Hill, they wanted to keep it small. Yeah. But it ain't no more.

And we did call the police as well.

And I did. And the dispatcher, he says, sorry, there's nothing I can do about it. He says, that's up to the city council.

And that's one thing. We will have a discussion on him here in the next couple months.

Why do y'all let something like that happen?

But I think it was the worst thing here. It was.

And I'm going to speak to it. Understand that this is not fair and there's a lot of a lot of concerns here and the the larger part of Spring Hill as you can see by how Festively it got over for one of them rockets up on top of my house. Yes now Yeah, I understand And like I said, I'm not I'm not saying that this is okay I'm not saying that what you guys are going through isn't isn't pleasant but the vast majority of Spring Hill is in support of these and these celebrations. I think that there are reasonable things that we can do to maybe make it a little bit more amiable for people as a whole, but there's a reason Spring Hill explodes on the 4th of July, it's because people are really, really excited to celebrate.

And that's fine. You know, celebrating is great, but find a place for them to go celebrate. You know, when we're in small areas, you know, and then letting off fireworks, the chances of my house catching fire and burning is not okay. And them doing M80s, you know, right down my block, me being a vet and have gone to war and being in terrorist bombing and crap blowing up is not okay having M80s right next door blowing up next to me.

Yeah, just so you know, you've got three veterans sitting on your city council. We take it seriously.

Yeah, you know.

So, Chad trying to get back into it. This isn't typically a back and forth thing. We take what you guys are saying really seriously. This is a comment time for you to bring things to our attention. the mayor is going to add a discussion item in the next couple of meetings. And we'll look into it for you guys.

Maybe you can find places for them to go do those. But it is against the law for them to go and do it on public roads.

On the roadway specifically. Yes, it is. That's something we'll talk to chief about and we'll work on it.

Well, it is. Look on the fire marshals because I've already contacted them.

I understand.

And I've told them. And they said, no, it is illegal for you to let them be on public open roadways. It is against the law.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make sure in the next couple meetings we have a discussion item. I do have your email because I received it today. I'm having issues sending emails out on my email for some reason. I will let you know when it's a discussion item. And we'll have it as like not necessarily a public hearing, but a discussion where folks can come and give feedback and things like that too. So we can have more of a discussion because this citizen participation isn't necessarily made to have the back and forth. But I'd like to be able to offer that up to folks.

That would be great. Because some of our people have videos also.

Yeah. Is there any other comments at all that you don't make, Tay, just as a comment?

You guys have a city lake here. Why don't you all have the fireworks out there for them?

Well, and that will be something that we can talk about in the discussion when we have it today. Like I said, this is a citizen participation where it's just comments, not necessarily a discussion back and forth. So we're going to have that set up, and I'll make sure I get with Pam on it. Okay.

And how will we know what your outcome is?

If you'd like to come to that meeting where we have a discussion, that's where we can do. You'll have kind of an idea of where things will go.

Would that be published?

Every meeting is published online, and you can also sign up. If you stop with Glenda there, she can tell you how to set up for Notify Me, and what happens is any time our agendas come out, you get an email, text, however you'd like to be notified, and it tells you exactly what's going to be on the meeting, and it'll give you our agenda for that meeting and what we're going to talk about. So you'll see a discussion about fireworks on that.

And I did go out there and talk to the fire department. And he says, sorry, that's not my call. It's the council.

Yeah. Yep. And so we can have that discussion. So I would encourage you to come back when we have it because we'll have a back and forth discussion at that time.

It's not his fault. I mean, it's his job to put out the fires.

No, I understand. So thank you for coming out. And like I said, we will have one that's more of a back and forth. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right, I think Leroy was in that group, so we can move on. Next up is Michael Klutz, coming up.

Michael Klutz, 18512 West 194th Street. Nice to see you all. I haven't been back in a while. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

A couple things. This is my first Fourth of July. I always start with something positive. I had a lot of fun. It was pretty cool. Maybe to kind of piggyback on them, maybe in the future we can talk about getting a committee together, maybe help with cleanup in some of these areas maybe in the future. I think probably seems, the little time I've been here in almost a year, but seems like citizens come together pretty good to help out. So might be something we can discuss. I also kind of, little shout out, For our 4th of July, I appreciate the fire department. They came out. They had to leave. I think there was a couple fires. The police department came out, led our parade. That was pretty cool. I know my kids really liked it. So I appreciate what they did. Interacted with the kids really well. It was a lot of fun. was it was awesome so really enjoyed 4th of July I'm kind of kicking myself what was I doing the last 30 years living in southern Johns County and in Olathe mostly and never came out here so missed out on a lot so the other part reason I'm here I wasn't actually didn't think I'd be here I sent an email yesterday I don't know if y'all received it you did receive okay I just want to kind of make sure that you receive that I'm not here really kind of to talk about that specifically. I think that'll just work itself out, kind of my comments and what I've been, in regards to a quarter request. I do, I try to look at positive intent in everything. I try to stay polite, professional when I'm talking with, you know, whoever I can. I think that's important in business in general. I will say I do have a few concerns just in general on really the, Court requests, I mean, as a citizen, we're all taxpayers. I know we all wanna be heard. You guys have been in the same spot I've been in before. I feel like right now, and I don't like to speak for other people, but I kinda am, because I have been talking with a lot of people. I feel like there's a lot of city staff in general that's really working against the citizens, and I don't think that's right. The whole purpose of the governing in the city, I mean, it's because of taxpaying citizens. None of this is here without taxpayers, right? We pay a lot of taxes, obviously, in Spring Hill. It's just the nature of our city and it's the heavy weight of it because we don't have a lot of industry businesses, which I know you guys are trying to help promote and grow the city. But if we feel like we're not being heard, or we almost feel like, and I hate to use this word, but I feel like some Kansas statutes are kind of being weaponized against us. I feel like there's a lot of time being spent, and I don't know who it is, but are being used to prevent us to get pretty relevant information to public interest that shouldn't be kept from us. I think it's important. People have a right to know what's going on in their city. When developers, whoever comes, if we ask for those documents, I think it's important that they're provided. There are Kansas statutes, there are exemptions. The important thing is those don't have to be used. I don't know why. They don't have to be used. So a lot of those decisions are being used. Somebody's asking them to look in depth. How can we get around giving this out? Some of that stuff can be voluntarily given out by city council. I found that out in Edgerton. So... just would like you know just to kind of remind people that especially those that work and I don't think this is a slight on public employees or anything but it is important to remember that the taxpayers are important I mean they're the reason this is here you know city staff works for the taxpayers in the in the interest of the taxpayers not the developers if there's a developer they don't take precedent over us we got to remember that and if there's people in this building that are doing the opposite we need to find that out and they need to be gone because that's not how it's supposed to be and there's a lot of people that feel that way so I don't hold any grudges against anyone I don't hold anything personal against anyone try to get along with everyone I can so I think you guys seem like all great people I really do I know I haven't got to meet you all and I know I shake hands and talk to everyone individually. Pretty busy. I would like to make first Fridays, but just want that to be taken to heart and remembered going forward because people are watching. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Michael.

All right. Michael's last one that was signed up. Is there anybody else I'd like to come up and speak before we close citizen participation? All right. Thank you. We will now move on to our consent agenda. These are items that are considered routine by staff, and we had the one change, so if we have no questions or comments about the consent agenda as amended, I will entertain a motion to approve. I move to approve the consent agenda as amended.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 4-0-0. And with that, I'll move us into our formal council action. Our first item, number seven, consider approval of resolution number 2026-R-11, establishing a new sewer system benefit area in the city of Spring Hill, Kansas, pursuant to Spring Hill Municipal Code Chapter 20.

Good evening. Nice to see you all again. So as promised, this is the resolution on which we held a public hearing earlier. So nothing has changed in the past 20 minutes from my end. Resolution number We'll establish the sewer benefit area. This sets out the estimated costs. It will be recorded against each property, and when construction is completed, you all will be presented with a second resolution to establish the final actual costs.

Okay. Any questions or comments? I think everything was said during the public hearing. Kendra? I do have one more question that I just thought of. Of course.

Okay, so I know you said that the developers take on that cost. Mm-hmm. I don't know if I can ask this how to ask this. Can they pass that on to, like if they were building 100 houses on lot seven or whatever, can they pass that on to the buyers? Or do they have to take on those costs? Or is that something we can even answer?

Sure. So the payment is a one-time payment. The only way a developer or landowner can split it up is if they're developing in phases by plants. They can and cannot pass it on. If it's a million dollars and there's 100 lots, they can raise the price of each lot.

Now you're making me do math. $10,000? Yeah.

Thank you very much. Up front. Okay. What this doesn't do is, like we're used to seeing with a benefit district where there is a tax assessment that gets hit every year, that is not what this will create. So if it gets passed on and a developer could pass it on, it would be,

Just as part of like the lot price typically so it's kind of it's actually the normal way you would do it benefit districts are kind of the backwards way I say because it puts it on the actual homeowner or the end user. So the only time an end user in this would be affected is if a single person bought that big lot and built one house on there and they're the ones that have to pay the hookup to the sewer. So that's the difference from benefit district to the benefit area, which is why I prefer it because it goes back to the old adage where it's just in the price of the house or the building or whatever it is.

Thank you. Thank you. Good question. Thank you.

Good clarifying question. Any other questions? All right. If not, I will entertain a motion to approve.

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

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Is this a vote or a roll call? This is a vote, right? All right. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes 4-0-0. That'll move us on to item number eight. Consider approval of task order number HDR-2026-14 with HDR Engineering Inc. for the engineering design of the 223rd Street Trail. And we got Ms. Abel.

Okay, the next item before you is a request to approve a task order with HDR. The city received KDOT funding through the carbon reduction program for the improvements around 223rd Street. That would be the installation of a loop trail on the inside of that area. It would be along the east side of Webster Street, the north side of 223rd Street, and the west side of Victory Road. This is going to be about a 1.6 mile trail. It would be a 10 foot wide trail. We would install it in concrete just because of the Long-term maintenance. It's easier whenever it's concrete. It's easier to install when it's concrete and we prefer it We would also be looking at doing a traffic study to install up to three crossings Along each of those streets and that could include some additional signage with the push-button crosswalk signage we since we knew this was a smaller project we wanted to use our new purchasing policy a little bit of background for our new city council member back in january of 2025 we hired 19 on-call engineering firms we went through a qualifications-based selection we received 39 proposals of those proposals we hired 19 firms there's about 13 maybe 50 maybe 15 different disciplines it would be architects, landscape architects, traffic engineers, structural engineers, geotechnical engineers, any kind of engineering and architect that you could think of, we try to get those specialty services because staff knows what we don't know. So we wanted to hire some of those specialty services as we needed them. We updated our purchasing policy a few months ago to allow us to, on some of these smaller projects, utilize that on-call list so that we could pre-qualify some of those services. So from the 19 firms that were selected for our on-call, we selected five of those firms and shortlisted them. We sent out a request for proposal to each one of those firms and asked them to provide us with a scope and schedule. We had certain things that we were specifically looking for whenever we got those back, so we reviewed those. The selection committee was myself, Jacob, and Ian from our planning department. And we reviewed all those proposals. We received four of them. And we cannot take cost into consideration whenever it is a professional service. Engineers and architects are hired based on qualifications. So whenever we selected the engineering firm based on their proposal, then we went to them and negotiated a fee. You can't do it based on low fee like you can a contractor. Gotcha. So, moving forward, we received their fee. We put it into our task order. It makes life a lot easier and shorter whenever we can just go right to the task order and get that approved. So... HDR provided a cost estimate of about $250,000. We went ahead and just rounded it up. Rhonda likes nice round numbers. Hopefully we'll spend less than that. Taylor McHenry with HDR is here. He has assured me that it's actually gonna be less, so I am gonna hold him to that. And...

He just dropped his head, so I don't know if he really...

I'll hold him to it, because this is being recorded, too. HDR has been a great asset to the city. They've worked with us on getting a lot of the grants, including this one. They were selected specifically because of their familiarity with this project. In addition to helping us secure this grant for the loop trail, this actually started out being an SS4A grant. We were denied that grant application and I don't like hearing the word no. So we actually, it was Taylor that had the connections at KDOT and started the conversation of this is a great project. How can we get it funded? And that's where they found this funding opportunity and just basically handed it to us. So it was a great relationship building, you know, great project for us. So again, HDR has been a great advocate. They also worked on the 223rd Street concept for us. They provided great service to us on the SS4A program. They've got, again, that familiarity with the design that they provided us with the roundabout at 223rd Street. So they've got a lot of information, track accounts and other information that they can start on this. Actually, Taylor's gonna start on this design tomorrow. is what he told me. So we can go ahead and get this started so that we can get the design completed by the end of this year. So that'll be a preliminary design, a final design, and then we'll be able to do utility coordination with that as well as property acquisition if there are any easements or right of way that we need to put this trail in. My hope is to put this trail in its forever home because I do anticipate that we're gonna have some improvements along those roads So with this, I would like to figure out what that ultimate configuration of the roads are in the preliminary design. That way we can set that trail back. And as we start to grow and develop, hopefully that trail will have its full life right there. So, um, with that staff recommends the approval of task order 14 with HDR for 223rd street loop trail and an amount not to exceed $250,000.

available if you have any questions I think you said up to three crosswalks but on here on the it looks like there's quite a few more than that is that not included in the engineering or is there are they gonna hit all these crosswalks I mean it looks like five on here so

We requested funding for some additional crosswalks. Oh, okay. But KDOT was able to give us enough for three.

Okay. But can we pay the additional or the difference for the additional crosswalks? Or do we have to stay within what the grant allows?

Why don't we do the traffic analysis and have the traffic engineers tell us where they would recommend these crosswalks?

And then see how it works with the three that we got. Okay.

Yeah.

But there's flexibility there. We're not stranglehold to three. Okay. All right. Yeah, because all these look like great spots for it for me. So that's why I was like, well, if we take a couple of these away, I don't know how great it's going to be.

Yeah, we can definitely look at that during the preliminary design and make some of those decisions. If it makes sense for us to have additional crosswalks and it's safe, we can. But being that close to 169, I just want to make sure that we're making the right decision. Yeah.

And keeping one away from there, I'm fine with. I think Jefferson looks like a good spot. Two into the neighborhood, but I do think you probably need one up there on the north side of that Webster-Victory connection, but Yeah, no, HDR, you guys have done great in everything you've done for us so far, so I'm excited to see how you come up with this. What's the total timeline, you think, for completion of the total project?

Do you have an idea? So the schedule that Taylor put in, the proposal was for us to have the design completed by the end of this year, and then the construction completed by the end of next year. And I think that that's a very... it's all going to depend on utility relocation and property acquisition. So I think that that's a reasonable schedule. Hopefully we can finish it earlier. Probably fall of next year would be a reasonable time frame.

I have a neighbor. She's 11 years old and she's going into seventh grade and she's been asking me about when she's going to be able to ride her bike to middle school. And I told her I'm hoping by eighth grade she'll be able to. So I think it sounds like, The second half of eighth grade.

How about August 14th of next year whenever school starts?

Yeah, let's shoot for that one. There you go, HDR.

Our deadline.

No, but she's been asking me because she's like, it'd be really nice to ride. I go, you're in luck. I said, we're going to be getting one, but hopefully it's before you go to high school.

Can we borrow her whenever we go to negotiate?

Do it because she'll negotiate the hell out of it. But yeah, no, I think it's going to be really nice to have because right now that section has been a little bit, a lot of us live in that area and it is a little secluded. Kids can't get out to the other parts of town, pool, all that kind of stuff. So it would be nice to have this connection. I think it's going to be really great. Yeah. Well, yeah. And victory, all the runners and stuff are going to have a place to go, which, It's kind of dangerous for them now.

Yeah, and there is potential for future development in that donut hole inside of this trail. So hopefully we can take that into consideration whenever we go to design this. And then there is public input and public meetings.

There will be a public meeting.

There will be a public meeting. So once we get the preliminary design all set and everything, then there will be an opportunity for you guys to preview it before we get too far down the road of engineering.

Great. Will this connect to the sidewalks north by the pool and that way, or is that still going to be separate?

That's a really good question. We could probably contemplate that and include that in some of the design discussions.

I mean, if we're connecting to south, I'd want to connect to north just to make it one continuous.

on the north end, well, really all over, right? And so we try to connect those.

Yeah, right at Victory there, it goes from sidewalk to no sidewalk, so it won't be a perfect tie.

No, I'm talking more up by Sycamore, because those don't go past.

We can take a look at that as we're designing this, and if we need to. Add some additional sidewalk with Jacob's sidewalk program.

I was going to say, I think there's some areas that we've talked about that there's gaps that we could easily fill. That's, I think, something next year we're going to look at trying to do. So this will be a good time to look at all that, too.

Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. That's really good input.

And she said you're going to get it for cheaper, so we're going to hold you to it now. All right, cool. No, I think this is great. I'm excited to see it moving forward. I've asked about it a couple times, and every time it's like, yeah, it's coming up.

I'm working on it. I'm working on it. Was this loop part of the CARS project? No? OK. I didn't know if it was related or not.

This is part of SS4A, the Safe Streets for All.

Oh, Safe Streets for All.

So it kind of broke off on its own because they were able to find this grant.

OK, yes. Well, it's not necessarily Safe Streets. It started there, right? It started as Safe Streets for All. We got declined by the USDOT. So then we had to go to State KDOT, and they had a pot of money available for us.

That makes sense. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? All right. Thank you. Thank you.

If not, I will entertain a motion. I move to approve agenda item number eight as stated in tonight's agenda.

Second. The motion is second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 4-0-0.

Start that yesterday. I like it.

All right. We have a discussion item. That's what chief moved up front cause he's got a discussion item nine permission to apply for the cops COPS hiring grant, which would partially fund additional police officer positions for fiscal year 2027 and fiscal year or is it 2027 and 29 or 27 through 29, 27 through 29. Okay, perfect.

So thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Governing Body, for allowing me to step up here and request permission to apply for this COPS hiring grant. Initially, we thought that this would help us with the two positions that we are requesting for 27. But as I dove deeper into the grant, really what this is is a community policing grant. And so there are specific focuses that the grant wants us to look at when we're applying for these some of those are violent crime squatting and encampment enforcement homeland and border security nuisance abatement and combating domestic terrorism as you can tell those don't quite qualify for us in spring hill but there is one that does And so I kind of shifted the mode of what we were trying to do here by going for a school-based policing initiative. As you know, I have been in several discussions with the school district, school board members, laying on wanting to put an SRO back into Spring Hill schools and at least starting when the next contract negotiations come up having that accomplished so this would help us do that so what this is a matching grant if we were to receive it the the DOJ would pay for a 75% the cost and then we would be responsible for 25% or whatever other costs to make up you know for the officers salary this grant is a maximum of 125,000 for the three years so basically when we break that what we're looking at and it doesn't have to be paid in this way I just broke it down on kind of a yearly basis for the three years you can kind of see what that's going to look like but the grant would pay So right now we're about at $120,000 for a new officer. That's fringe benefits and everything included. If we were to go and be awarded the grant, $41,600 would be paid each year on average by the grant. The school would be responsible for some of that because when we enter into our contract with them, typically I don't have the number in front of me because I tried to To get the current contract that the county has with them and just didn't have it available But my understanding is it's about 50% So if we look at that as a kind of an approximate that's almost 60,000. So we're looking at a little over $100,000 in between the grant and the school district for that officer which would leave us with about $20,000 to make up For the officer and that would be $20,000 per year. So over the life of the granted be 60,000 but that would pay for almost pay for a couple of years of the officer and you know We would be on the hook maybe for the third but the obviously would this be you know continuing this position and we already have outlined in our budget with you in discussions that we do want to add a sros the current contract with the county in 6 30 of 2027 so that would be right in line with getting that position for the school district in the coming school year in august of 20 27 so um that's kind of where we're at so i'm just asking for permission to submit an application to see if we could be eligible for this position and it would be an additional position than what we're requesting because we cannot use We won't get the answer until October of this year sometime. Our budget, I think, will be already solidified. We can't use the funds to supplant any of our budgeting items, so this would be an additional officer for this particular spot. Be free to answer any questions if you have any.

Can you tell me a little bit more about the grant as a whole? Do we know how many cities are going to be awarded, how many positions?

So it sounds like there's about 250 of these grants that are going to be awarded. There's about $15 million in grant money to be had. The focus of the grant is for cities that have over 150,000 officers and those with less than 150,000. So their goal is to try to award at least 1% to each state of the grant money. That's the minimum that they're looking at. So you can only apply for up to, I believe, 10% of your total staff strength. So in this case, we would only be able to apply for two at the most if we were to do that. But we've decided that one is the focus because of the SRO position that we're trying to attain. And so I think you can apply for up to 50 police officers if you're an agency that's a lot larger than the rest. But those are some of the particulars of the grant. Gotcha.

I have two questions. The first one is, does it take into account the reimbursement or, I guess, the pay we'd get from the district? That's not going to affect the grant at all as far as it doesn't lower the amount we would get there? No. That's good. And then the other question was, shoot me. Thanks, PJ. I'll think about it. Everybody else ask your questions.

So it sounds like the grant's kind of structured in a way that its goal is to serve communities of all different sizes. I'm personally not opposed to it at all. I just want to make sure that when we're looking for these opportunities, both everybody understands here that as far as I'm concerned, when it comes to the SRO thing, the police department here has my complete support. staffing an officer in every school however we get there fixedly responsible obviously matters but whether or not we get additional funding that's a priority of mine regardless of the situation as a whole so no going into this this is not dependent on whether or not that happens for me I want to see that happen I want us to see us develop that program it's important to the community important to me and then second as long as we're Like I said, based on the structure of it, it sounds like we're not stealing opportunities from other places that have a lot, check off a lot more of those boxes than just the in-school thing. So as long as that's how it's structured, I'm fine with the play.

I remember my other question now. Initially, we had talked about the SRO position being almost like a opportunity for growth for current officers. How does that affect this grant if we wanted to promote somebody to SRO, or does it need to be a new officer?

That's a great question mayor. No, we can actually use it to promote so that would be our desire We would we would state that in the grant that this that this position would be to backfill The selected officer who's okay, so it kind of works.

Yeah, it kind of doubles up So it's not necessarily the use specifically that might doesn't have to go straight to this or I just goes I Because we're doing that program, we become eligible for the grant.

Yeah, it goes to support our ability to be able to have an SRO.

That was the main one because I was like, crap, does that mean we have to hire from outside of the SRO? Because I really like the idea of promoting somebody from within that's been good in the community with the kids and giving them an opportunity to have growth because we just don't have a ton of options now.

I agree.

Okay, good. Yeah, those are the only two. I mean, I agree with PJ. I think I've always said I didn't understand why we were using sheriff's department and why we weren't handling the SROs personally because I don't like having a different agency. It's also tough when we, like I always tell the story, my daughter got in an accident right by the roundabout. We showed up and they were like, oh, sorry, we got to wait 15 minutes for the sheriff's department to show up because we can't do it because you were 15 feet before city property. So, It's already kind of a cluster, so to take that piece away and have the city PD take over the school, they're the ones that are here all the time seeing these kids. I think it's good to have our folks in the schools.

I'm a big supporter of it. I appreciate always the support of the city council for the police department and to take a line from Allison. again, looking for ways that we can use money to our benefit that's out there for grants and things like that. So that was the main goal is to try to use this to further this goal of getting an SRO, and I appreciate that.

What does COPS stand for?

You're going to put me on the spot. Yeah, yeah. It's for community-oriented policing, but... But the other piece answers something. I can't remember what it is.

Cool. No, it's when I saw them.

I'm like, yeah.

No, I mean, I'm in full support. I think it's needed. I want to make sure we have the opportunity to take over that contract in 27.

You've got five nodding heads here, too. Thank you.

I do have one quick question. I'm in support of this, just so everybody knows. But I was just curious what the current number is.

So sorrows are because I thought we had like one for the high school and then one for the middle schools We do so we don't have the ability at this point to take on the whole SRO program so in my conversations with sheriff Roberson and sheriff staff and with the superintendent of the school, you know, we have a our our goal has been to Start with one and then gradually process.

Okay. Okay, so

And we'd be what, Spring Hill Middle probably, I assume?

Yeah, that's the goal is to start in Spring Hill because that's in Miami County.

I was going to say, probably good, yeah, with a different county too.

Makes sense. Makes sense.

Yeah.

All right, cool.

Thank you.

All right, great.

Okay, thank you.

All right, that is our formal action discussion items. We don't have anything else on the agenda outside of executive sessions. Do we need any kind of break before the first executive session? Or is everybody good to go? Power through. All right, we'll look at our first executive session here.

Run.

All right.

And we're doing 15 minutes, I believe, for the first. 15 for the first one. All right. I move to the City Council recess into executive session for 15 minutes for consultation with an attorney, which would be deemed privileged to discuss proposal of developer pursuant to KSA 75-4319B2, the Kansas Open Meeting Act. The open meeting will resume in the City Council chambers at 8.40 p.m.? 41. 41 p.m.? No formal action is anticipated following the session. The persons to be in attendance are the following. Lane Massey, Rhonda Dunn, Alex Felzine. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passed 4-0-0. We'll see you back here at day 41. Thanks. All right Let the record reflect the governing body reconvene an open meeting at 9 o 3 p.m No votes were taken or decisions made during the executive session discussion was limited to the subject stated.

We have one more executive session and That one we're gonna do for 15 minutes I Moved that City Council recess into executive session for 15 minutes and 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 9.20 p.m. No formal action is anticipated following the session. The persons to be in attendance are the following. Spencer Lau, city attorney. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 4-0-0. Thank you. Let the record reflect the governing body reconvened at the meeting at 9.20 p.m. No votes were taken or decisions made during the executive session. Discussion was limited to the subject stated. We are going to extend for 10 minutes, so that will take us to 9.31 p.m. I move that the City Council extend to return at 9.31 p.m. Second. Motion to second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 4-0-0. All right. Let the record reflect the governing body convened the open meeting at 9.31 p.m. No votes were taken or decisions made. During the executive session, discussion was limited to the subject stated. All right. That's it for tonight. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved.

Second.

Motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 4-0-0. Thanks, everyone.